Guilt vs. innocence rests in lone footprint, lawyer says

Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 26, 2007 at midnight

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FORT COLLINS — The only footprint tying Tim Masters to the murder of Peggy Hettrick actually supported his innocence and contradicted the prosecution's theory of the case, his former attorney testified this afternoon.

Attorney Nathan Chambers said the print, which was discovered in the dirt along a "drag" trail in the field where Hettrick's body was found in 1987, supported Masters' story that he had come across the body on his way to school, looked at it, and walked away.

"This was entirely consistent with the statement Tim Masters gave police, that he walked through the field around 7 o'clock, saw an object, wasn't sure what it was, and then he went and looked at it for a time and then went to school," Chambers said.

Chambers represented Masters at his 1999 trial. He has spent nearly two days on the stand answering questions from David Wymore, who is leading the fight to win Masters a new trial.

Masters is serving a life sentence for the stabbing and sexual mutilation of Hettrick, a Fashion Bar manager. He is fighting for a new trial on the grounds that police and prosecutors failed to turn over information about a now-deceased Fort Collins ophthalmologist who his attorneys believe should have been investigated as a potential suspect.

Hettrick's killer stabbed her in the back and sliced away flesh from her vagina and one breast.

Masters was 15 when Hettrick was killed. He lived in a trailer overlooking the field where her body was found, and he was a prime suspect from the first hours of the investigation.

It wasn't until 1998, however, that he was arrested and charged with murder.

He was convicted the following year.

Hettrick's body was discovered in a field, at the end of a bloody drag trail leading from the curb.

A dozen footprints similar to those that would have been made by a Thom McCann shoe were found at the scene. But they could not be linked to Masters — no shoes like that were found in his possession.

"The only shoeprint that could be connected to Tim Masters at the scene was exculpatory," Chambers said.

He also angrily denounced a 1998 search warrant for Masters' home in Ridgecrest, Calif., that indicated a footprint matched to him was found near the curb line.

"That is absolutely not true," Chambers said.

Earlier testimony from Chambers asserted that a prosecution expert whose testimony helped convict Masters helped write the arrest warrant in the case. And Chambers said that Dr. Reid Meloy's position as an unbiased expert witness.

"An expert, to be effective, needs to be perceived by the jury as being objective, as standing back and taking a scientific look at the evidence," attorney Nathan Chambers testified. "That view of the evidence is compromised if they are not objective but rather are a part of the prosecution team."

After Chambers took the stand, Wymore handed him a letter written on July 24, 1998, by Fort Collins police Lt. Jim Broderick, the lead investigator in the Hettrick homicide. That letter was addressed to the two prosecutors who handled the Masters case, Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair.

Chambers read it for a few minutes, shaking his head slightly.

"I don't recall ever seeing this," he said. "It's pretty shocking though."

Asked to elaborate, he said he was shocked that the letter said "Broderick is waiting for Meloy's approval of the warrant."

Chambers then read a portion of Broderick's letter out loud:

"'Here's a draft of the arrest warrant. It's updated from the one I gave earlier. I Fed-Exed this latest draft to Meloy.' ... Here's the shocker, 'Once he gives approval.'

"That is — I have never seen anything like that, a police officer going to someone who's supposed to be an expert and saying he's waiting to get their approval on a warrant."

Meloy, a forensic psychologist, testified extensively at Masters' 1999 trial about scores of his writings and drawings, many depicting disturbing images. Meloy concluded that some of the drawings were, essentially, the result of Masters reliving the crime.

Chambers said he would have been able to attack Meloy's credibility if he had known about the letter at the trial.

Chambers began his second day on the stand by arguing that prosecutors failed to disclose "exculpatory" evidence. As with a full day of testimony Tuesday, Wymore meticulously questioned Chambers about what he would have done if prosecutors had given him information about Dr. Richard Hammond.

Hammond, who also lived within a few hundred yards of the spot where Hettrick's body was found, was arrested in March 1995 after a housesitter discovered an elaborate, secret videotaping system in a bathroom in his home. When police searched the Hammond home, they found hundreds of videotapes, almost all of them depicting women using the toilet, showering and standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Many of them featured extreme close-ups of women's genitals and breasts.

But less than a week after his arrest, Hammond killed himself, and five months later a judge ordered all the evidence in the case destroyed, in part to protect the privacy off the women shown on the tapes.

Now, Masters' attorneys are arguing that Hammond should have been investigated as a potential killer, that he lived near the crime scene, that he was an admitted voyeur, that he had a perverse obsession with women's genitals, and that he had the medical skill necessary to mutilate Hettrick.

When the case went to trial, prosecutors did not turn over Broderick's letter, or a note jotted in the Hammond file of the lead investigator in that case. That note — "look into Hettrick" — indicated that the investigator considered a possible link between her murder and the Hammond case.

Chambers said Masters was "cheated" out of a fair trial when prosecutors failed to disclose information about Hammond. The only document that was turned over was a police report on a neighborhood "canvass" done the morning her body was found that noted detectives had talked to Hammond and his wife and that they'd neither seen nor heard anything.

"I generally trust prosecutors," Chambers said. "I trust that they're going to do the right thing, that they're not going to cheat. I trust cops."

When attorney David Wymore asked Chambers if he got cheated, he answered:

"Absolutely. I didn't get cheated. Tim Masters got cheated. It's not about me."

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