Masters records destroyed?

By Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 3, 2007 at 11:07 a.m.
Updated December 3, 2007 at 11:07 a.m.

Text size  

• 0 Comments
• Email
• Print

FORT COLLINS — Records in the Peggy Hettrick murder case may have been mistakenly destroyed when the Fort Collins police department changed computer systems in 2004.

That disclosure, made by special prosecutors in the case this morning, could help answer some of the questions raised by attorneys for Tim Masters, who is fighting to win a new trial. But it may not answer what is shaping up as the central issue in the case - why important documents were not turned over to attorneys for Masters when he was tried for murder in 1999.

Masters, 35, is serving a life sentence for the Feb. 11, 1987, stabbing and sexual mutilation of Hettrick - a killing he has always insisted he did not commit.

His attorneys, David Wymore and Maria Liu, have asserted that police and prosecutors failed to turn over numerous documents and information to Masters’ original lawyers that would have helped him win an acquittal.

One issue, for example, is a conversation a Fort Collins police investigator had with a plastic surgeon in 1998.

No report of that conversation was turned over to Masters’ attorneys. That is significant, Wymore has argued, because the doctor’s conclusions ran counter to the theory of the crime argued by the prosecutors at the trial.

Efforts to find that original report have proved fruitless.

This morning, Tom Quammen, a special prosecutor from the Adams County District Attorney’s Office, recited the history of how records were handled by the Fort Collins police department.

In 2004, the department switched to a new electronic records management system, and during that process the assumption was made that all documents in a particular case would have been finished in the same year as the crime. As a result, reports in Hettrick’s 1987 killing that were written in later years were not converted to the new system.

“They don’t exist,” Quammen told Judge Joseph Weatherby. “They were eliminated during the conversion process.”

Asked if they were erased, Quammen said, “they decided not to convert it, and when they didn’t convert it, it had the same impact as if they had erased it.”

The records destruction could explain why efforts in recent months have failed to find former Detective Marsha Reed’s report of her conversation with Dr. Christopher Tsoi. But it does not explain why it wasn’t turned over to the defense before Masters went on trial in March 1999.

Hettrick, a 36-year-old manager at a Fashion Bar, was apparently walking home from a south Fort Collins bar when she was attacked. Her killer stabbed her once in the back and then sexually mutilated her, cutting away tissue from her left breast and genitals.

Her body was found in a field behind the mobile home where Masters, then a 15-year-old high school student, lived with his father. He was the focus of the investigation from its first hours, but it wasn’t until 1998 that a forensic psychologist’s interpretations of hundreds of drawings and writings produced by Masters led to his arrest.

Wymore asked Weatherby to stop the ongoing hearings and, in effect, conduct an investigation of what documents exist, where they came from, and why they weren’t turned over to the original defense team.

Just last month, for example, Wymore obtained more documents from the special prosecutors that he had never seen before, and that could have helped Masters mount a stronger defense.

But Weatherby refused.

“I’m satisfied up to this point in time that the materials that the court believes exist have been provided, because that’s all I know,” Weatherby said. “I don’t have the ability to go back and conduct an investigation of the Fort Collins police department. All I can do is rely on some rules of law.”

Instead, Weatherby told Wymore and Liu to wrap up their case and let the special prosecutors, who represent the state, begin their work. If new evidence comes up, he said, the defense will get a second crack at it.

Featured

• Legislature Blog

  

  Read live updates from the opening of the 2009 legislative session.

• Rocky multimedia

  

  The news comes alive in our videos and slide shows. Catch up on what's happening today.

• Who's next?

  

  Complete coverage of the Broncos' search for a new coach.

• Rocky year in photos

  

  View an audio slide show of staff selections from 2008.

• Winter Escapes

  

  Your insider’s guide to the copious joys of the coolest season.

• Sam Adams' Open Mic

  

  Open Mic: Two-man advantage with Avs

• Shanahan's career

  

  See photos from Mike Shanahan's career as Broncos coach.

• 12 days of Drew

  

  Look back at the year that has been with Drew Litton.

• A dream fulfilled

  

  A Rocky Mountain News and MediaStorm production