Lawyer lists wrongs in murder conviction

Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 27, 2007 at midnight

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FORT COLLINS - A plastic surgeon concluded that it would have been "almost impossible" to sexually mutilate Peggy Hettrick the way prosecutors asserted she was at Tim Masters' 1999 murder trial, but that information was never turned over to the defense.

At the same time, a forensic psychologist whose testimony was at the heart of the case against Masters helped write the arrest warrant for him and expressed hope, in a letter to prosecutors, that he would be convicted.

But those details also were kept from the defense when Masters was tried in Hettrick's killing.

Those revelations came Wednesday as attorneys for Masters continued a meticulous, time-consuming effort to show that police and prosecutors improperly hid information that defense lawyers could have used to win an acquittal.

Masters, serving a life sentence, has exhausted his appeals and is fighting for a new trial.

Nathan Chambers, who represented Masters at his 1999 trial, spent all day on the witness stand, and repeatedly asserted that his effort to win an acquittal was thwarted because prosecutors failed to turn over information they were ethically required to provide.

"This is just hugely exculpatory - hugely exculpatory," Chambers said of information from the plastic surgeon.

Chambers was questioned for hours by Masters' current attorney, David Wymore.

Expert opinion withheld

Hettrick, a 36-year-old Fashion Bar manager, was stabbed in the back, dragged into a field in south Fort Collins and sexually mutilated. Her killer sliced away tissue from her vagina and left breast. Her blue jeans were pulled down to her knees, and at the trial prosecutors asserted that she was mutilated in that position.

On Dec. 31, 1997, as prosecutors prepared for the trial, Fort Collins police detective Marsha Reed wrote a letter to Dr. Christopher M. Tsoi, a plastic surgeon, asking him to render an opinion about how long it would have taken to mutilate Hettrick.

No report was ever turned over to Masters' lawyers about his conclusions.

But Tsoi recently signed an affidavit in which he said he remembered meeting with Reed, examining photographs of Hettrick's injuries, and offering opinions. Tsoi said he told Reed he had recently removed a tumor from a patient that required him to make an incision very similar to the wound Hettrick suffered - and that to do it he needed the help of another doctor and had to put the patient in the "frog leg" position.

Making a similar cut on Hettrick while her legs were held together by her blue jeans would have been "almost impossible," Tsoi said.

Chambers, appearing exasperated, said Tsoi's recollection bolstered his own feelings about the case against Masters - beliefs that a 15-year-old would have been able to inflict such injuries.

He said repeatedly that prosecutors had an ethical duty to disclose the information about Dr. Tsoi to him.

Odd handling of warrant

Similarly, he said he was never given information about Dr. J. Reid Meloy's relationship to police and prosecutors on the case.

At one point, Wymore handed Chambers a letter from 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."

"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."

In a letter Meloy wrote to the prosecutors before the trial, he said he hoped for a "successful prosecution."

Credibility questioned

Meloy, a forensic psychologist, testified extensively at Masters' 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.

Meloy did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment sent to his California office on Wednesday.

Mike Goodbee, assistant district attorney in Adams County who is acting as a special prosecutor in the case, declined to discuss the question of whether the information should have been given to Masters' defense team, except to note that he had not yet had an opportunity to lay out his views on it in court.

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