The 1987 murder of Peggy Hettrick has been disturbing from the beginning, but last week the case yielded some dramatic and unsettling developments.
A special prosecutor announced that new DNA evidence was enough to overturn the conviction of Tim Masters, who has been imprisoned for almost nine years for Hettrick’s murder. The evidence points to another suspect.
What an injustice if an innocent man has been imprisoned all of these years. Today, prosecutor Don Quick will ask a judge to set aside Masters’ conviction, a request likely to be granted.
But that should not be the end of the case. Someone stabbed and grotesquely mutilated the 37-year-old woman, and that person must be held accountable. If authorities retry Masters, it’s imperative he receive a fair trial.
Allegations have surfaced that authorities made bad decisions in prosecuting Masters, or engaged in outright deceit. If that’s so, it’s unacceptable and the offenders must be punished. On the flip side, post-conviction defense lawyers David Wymore and Maria Liu, who worked on Masters’ appeals for five years, are to be commended for their dogged pursuit of justice.
They recognized the case against Masters, 15 at the time of the murder, was circumstantial and based largely on his violent drawings. The lawyers believed that Masters was wrongly convicted and went to great lengths, including hiring Dutch DNA experts, on his behalf.
And special prosecutor Quick, appointed to examine Masters’ murder conviction, did a worthy job as well. He has said from the beginning that he and his team would “go where the evidence takes us.” We’re glad to see that he appears to have done just that. We hope that Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck will do the same in investigating allegations of wrongdoing on behalf of those who worked to convict Masters.
Buck’s office is looking into accusations that a police officer perjured himself during Masters’ trial, and that authorities illegally recorded a conversation between Masters and his father.
Also troubling is the acknowledgment by Quick that the original prosecutors withheld potentially exonerating evidence from Masters’ defense team. That alone could have forced a new trial for Masters.
Larimer County District Attorney Larry Abrahamson now must decide whether to retry Masters, or pursue a case against another suspect.
Given the number of missteps in this case and the apparent lack of physical evidence tying Masters to the crime, we trust this will be a well-considered decision on his part.
In the end, we hope the high-profile nature of the case won’t deter authorities from pursuing Peggy Hettrick’s murderer. It would be a tragedy if a flawed prosecution resulted in a killer walking away free.
