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Ex-cop recounts spy tactics

Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News

Published November 8, 2007 at midnight

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FORT COLLINS — A former police investigator testified this afternoon that he was not sure why he never wrote a report about an elaborate surveillance operation carried out in February 1988 on the first anniversary of Peggy Hettrick's murder.

That operation — dubbed a "psychological experiment" by an attorney for Tim Masters — included not only surveillance but also the planting of a story in the local newspaper and other steps apparently designed to link the young man to Hettrick's killing.

Masters, serving a life sentence in Hettrick's murder, is fighting for a new trial. His attorney, David Wymore, has elicited testimony this week showing that details of the surveillance plan were never turned over to the original defense lawyers for Masters.

The reason, Wymore has asserted, is that the information would have been favorable to Masters because it showed that he did nothing unusual on the anniversary of Hettrick's murder and apparently did not react to the story in the Fort Collins Coloradoan that said police were closing in on a suspect.

Wymore recently unearthed details of the plan when he discovered a number of binders containing reports about the case. This afternoon, he asked Jack Taylor, who was the lead detective in the Hettrick investigation during 1987 and 1988, why he never wrote a report about the operation.

"I'm trying to go back 20 years in time and see why," said Taylor, who left the police force in 2003. "I guess the reason why was nothing happened.

"There wasn't anything that gave us an indication one way or another."

Wymore repeatedly asked Taylor questions that asserted that the operation was designed to get Masters to do something that would break open the stalled investigation of Hettrick's murder.

Taylor, who is now a real estate agent, said he was looking for information not only about Masters but about anyone else who could have been involved.

"I was trying not to get blinders on and say, 'This is the only suspect — is there a possibility of others?'" Taylor said.

Hettrick was apparently out walking late at night when she was attacked. Her killer stabbed her in the back and sexually mutilated her, slicing away flesh from her genitals and left breast.

Masters, who was 15 at the time, quickly became the focus of the investigation because he lived next to the field where Hettrick's body was found on Feb. 11, 1987, owned several survival knives, made several curious statements, and admitted that he looked at the corpse as he walked to his school bus stop but did not report it to authorities.

This afternoon, Wymore also questioned Taylor extensively about his handwritten notes of a discussion with an FBI agent from May 13, 1987.

Taylor said several times that he was not sure what his handwritten notes, now more than 20 years old, exactly referred to. At one point, he wrote down that one investigative option might be to check Masters to see if he had "undersize testicles."

Asked if he ever checked, Taylor replied, "I did not."

Wymore also zeroed in on a line in the notes that said "if that does not work use media for bait story. FBI will help."

And, in fact, in February 1988 that's what the police department did, issuing a news release that said that every suspect but one had been eliminated, that the FBI had completed a profile of the killer that matched that suspect, and that authorities were confident they would soon be able to file charges.

A memorandum outlining that plan — and noting that the FBI would deny involvement if something went wrong — was recently discovered by Wymore in the binders of material that were never given to the original defendants.

Taylor testified that he never saw the memo before Wymore showed it to him last week.

Wymore pointed to one sentence in it: "If nothing comes from this surveillance we would essentially close the books on this case."

Nothing apparently came of it — police developed nothing during the operation that helped them arrest Masters — but the investigation went on.

Masters was ultimately arrested in 1988 and tried in the spring of 1999.

Masters is fighting for a new trial on the grounds that police and prosecutors withheld information from the defense that would have helped him prove his innocence.

Comments

  • January 21, 2008

    5:10 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    gert writes:

    It has been reported on more than one occasion that the Fort Collins Police Dept along with the FC Coloradoan were involved in a set up, where they printed a false story in the newspaper in hopes to get Mr Masters (who was only 16 at the time of the false story) to somehow confess or incriminate himself. I my mind, this was in no doubt coercion on the part of FCPD and the Coloradoan. I am certain that there will be civil litigation pending regarding Timothy Masters incarceration. I feel that the Coloradoan should also be held partly liable for assisting the FCPD in what I feel is immoral behavior. Newspapers, as well as all other other media outlets, should be there to report the news, not manufacture it.
    I wish Mr Masters and his family the best in the future. It is shameful that they have had to endure this horrific injustice. It could happen to any one of us.

  • April 21, 2008

    12:35 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    pgwin writes:

    It was about a year ago that this case came to my attention. I was horrified at the police and prosecutorial misconduct. It seems that, f they want to convict someone, they will find a way.

    As another poster said, it could happen to any one of us--you only have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the "wrong place-wron time" conditions could be as simple as being on the street when the police need a suspect in a recent crime.