Latest / Crime Night / The Shadow in the Field

Transcript

The Shadow in the Field · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Usually when you hear medical diagnosis, there's this deep, comforting
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: expectation of precision. You know, it feels almost like engineering.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Right, it's very absolute. You fall, your arm swells up.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: They take an X ray.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the doctor points to that jagged white line
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: on the film and just says, there's the break. It's broken,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: or it's not broken exactly.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: The physical evidence leaves no room for interpretation. You're looking
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: at an objective reality.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: But the moment you step out of that Serle clinic
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and like into the world a criminal justice, that X
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: ray machine just completely shatters.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, it shatters into a million pieces.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Right, So we are jumping into a massive stack of
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: sources today for this deep dive. We're talking thousands of
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: pages of original nineteen eighty seven police reports, grueling court transcripts,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: highly subjective psych evaluations, and decades delayed forensic lab results.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: All regarding the murder of a thirty seven year old
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: woman named Peggy Hettrick and Fort Collins, Colorado.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but our mission today for everyone listening, goes way
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: beyond just the details of one brutal night. This case
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is well, it's a horrifying masterclass and cognitive bias.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: It really is a live action demonstration of what happens
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: when police tunnel vision violently collides with institutional pride, and it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Shows you just how fragile the justice system is when
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the people in charge, you know, absolutely refuse to admit
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: they are wrong.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: To understand a systemic failure of this magnitude, we really
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: have to look past the superficial narrative they've fed to
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: the public. We need to dissect the why.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And the how, right how a system that is literally
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: designed to uncover the truth actively buries it instead. So
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: let's set the scene, because the physical reality of this
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: crime is it's what triggers the entire catastrophic chain of events.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: The physical environment is always the anchor.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I want to take you to the chilly,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: snowless morning of February eleventh, nineteen eighty seven, Fort Collins, Colorado.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: It's just before seven.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Am, the sun is barely up exactly, and.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: A local man, Woody, is riding his bicycle to work.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: He's got his head down, he's pedaling through this biting
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: morning air, just trying to get to his job.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And then he slams on the brakes.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: He slams on the brakes because cutting across the dormant
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: winter grass of this vacant lot is a one hundred
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: foot streak of brilliant crimson, a blood trail, a blood trail.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: So he flags down a passing police cruiser and they
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: follow that trail into the center of the field, and well,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: they find Peggy's body.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Lying face up, and immediately the first responders are confronted
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: with this scene that honestly fundamentally contradicts itself.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: It makes no sense right.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: The coroner determines the cause of death was a single
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: frenzied stab wound to the upper back, inflicted with a
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: heavy five inch serrated blade.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: But then the victim was also subjected to this highly
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: methodical post mortem mutilation.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, one of her nipples have been removed, but not
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: in a frenzy. It was excised with absolute surgical precision.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Using a tiny razor sharp instrument.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly, so you are looking at the work of two
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: completely different ways, which implies two completely different psychological states.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I have to stop you there, because the geometry of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: this crime scene, it just makes zero sense to me.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: It was undeniably a brutal, intimate attack. Her pants and
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: underwear were pulled down around her thighs, but she wasn't robbed.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: That's the massive red flag. Her purse was still perfectly
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: slung over her shoulder, her check book, which is how
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: they immediately identified her as Peggy Hetric. It was totally untouched.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Your jewelry was all still there too. If this was
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: a crime of opportunity or like a robbery gone wrong,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: that purse would be.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Gone gone one hundred percent. And the physical environment around
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: her was just as perplexing. The ground showed these clear
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: drag marks indicating she was pulled by her feet for
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: over one hundred.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Feet, yet her feet were perfectly side by side in
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: the dirt meeting.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Her pants were pulled down before she was dragged, like
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: locking her ankles together like a physical restraint.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Precisely, the killer used her own clothing to bind her
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: legs before dragging her into the brush.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Wow and then near the act of blood spatter by
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the curb where the initial attack capin crime scene texts
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: isolate a very distinct set.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Of footprints right They belonged to a size eight and
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: a half or nine Toma Can brand dress shoe.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And they also collect a discarded cigarette. But right in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the center of the blood pool. You look at all
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: these details and then you look at Peggy herself, and
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: it is just devastating.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: It's tragic. She wasn't just a case file.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: No, she was this brilliant, vibrant woman. She spoke multiple languages,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: traveled all over the world, she was an aspiring writer.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And the most heartbreaking detail.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: She was about to leave.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, just two days before she was found in that field.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: She called her father so elated because she was finally
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: packing up and moving to Florida to be close to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: her family. They spent the weekend planning her going away party.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: The emotional weight of a case like this on a community,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I mean it cannot be overstated. When a crime is
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: this vicious and bizarre, it sends a shockwave of terror
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: through the entire city.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely. The media descends, the pub demands answers, and
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the police department feels this immense, crushing pressure to establish order.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: And that pressure leads to well, one of the most baffling,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: incompetent decisions I've ever read in a police report.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable decision. So the detectives realize the surgically removed body
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: part is missing from the scene. They need to find it.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: But instead of bringing in train forensic specialists to carefully
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: grid and comb the area.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: They call the local high school. I mean they bring
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: in a troop of teenage explorer scouts to literally walk
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: shoulder to shoulder through a contaminated, bloody crime scene to
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: look for severed human tissue. Teenagers.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: That decision really highlights the severe cognitive overload the department
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: was experiencing. When human beings are faced with extreme chaos
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: and pressure, the brain craves a narrative to restore a
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: sense of control. They just needed a win, They needed
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: that missing piece of evidence to build a coherent story,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: and in their panic, they completely abandon basic forensic protocol.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Desperate need for a narrative just overrides all logic.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Now, when a police department is that desperate for a narrative,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: they don't look for the most logical suspect. They look
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: for the most convenient one, and.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: The most convenient suspect here was a fifteen year old
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: kid named Tim masters right.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Who happened to live in a trailer a few hundred
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: yards from that vacant field.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Proximity bias is incredibly powerful. The police canvassed the area
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: found footprints near the field that belonged to Tim.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: But Tim had a completely mundane explanation. He walked through
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: that exact field every single morning at six fifty five
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: am to catch his school bus.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: He even admitted to the police that he saw a
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: figure lying in the grass that morning, right.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: But he was fifteen years old, looking from a distance
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: in the early morning light. He told them he thought
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it was a prank. He thought someone had dragged one
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of those RUSSICIANI CPR mannequins out of the high school
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and just dumped it.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: In the field, which makes sense given the pale, exsanguinated
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: appearance of a victim in those specific conditions. A teenager
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: mistaking the body for a plastic mannequin is a highly
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: plausible psychological defense.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Mechanism because the brain struggles to process trauma.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly, so it categorizes the horrific site as something familiar
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: and harmless.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: But the police, they don't see a traumatized kid. They
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: pull this fifteen year old out of his high school
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: classes and throw him into a grueling nine hour interrogation.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: But no lawyer in the room, no lawyer, no parent
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: in the room, just seasoned, hardened detectives running psychological warfare
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: on a high school sophomore, and for nine hours, Tim
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: refuses to confess he and sis he knows nothing.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: So the police get a warrant and they toss his bedroom.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And this is the moment where Detective Jim Broderick, the
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: lead investigator, develops a terrifying absolute obsession with Tim. Because
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: they don't find the serrated blade, they don't find the surgical.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Tools, they find his sketch books.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: They found dozens of notebooks filled with dark, violent doodles,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: drawings of knives, skulls, military insignia, gory scenes.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: And to a season detective desperate to close a high
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: profile case, this looked like a smoking gun.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: But wait, how does a teenage doodle equal a murder weapon?
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, I remember the notebooks of half the boys
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: in my middle school. They were filled with the most
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: macarre edge lord stuff you can imagine.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's practically a rite of passage for angry adolescents.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Right, so how do they make that leap?
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Well, you're identifying a crucial distinction between adolescent psychological processing
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: and psychopathy. Teenagers frequently use dark art or writing as
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: a safe external valve to release complex negative emotions.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: But Detective Broderick didn't see an emotional outlet.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: No, he saw a literal blueprint for murder. And this
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: is where confirmation bias physically alters an investigation.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It's like putting on a pair of heavily polarized sunglasses.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. Those lenses are designed to physically
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: block out specific light waves while letting others through. Once
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Broderick put on the Tim is the Killer glasses, his
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: brain automatically filtered out any evidence that contradicted that belief.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And the evidence they filtered out is staggering. I mean,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: they found unknown hairs on Peggy's body, they tested them
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: against Tim, not a match. Broderick ignored it.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: They found a smear of unidentified blood on Tim's pans.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they tested it, hoping it was Peggy's. Turns out
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: it was Kim's own blood ignored and the most glaring
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: omission those size eight and a half or nine Tom
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: McCann footprints perfectly preserved in the blood at the curb.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Kim's feet didn't match that size and he didn't even
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: own those shoes.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And Broderick just ignored it.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Because when the physical reality contradicts the deeply held narrative.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: The polarized lenses demand that the reality be dismissed. The
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: narrative must survive at all costs.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So they spend a decade harassing this kid, ten years
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: of following him, pressuring him, trying to break him, and finally,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: They arrest him with a zero physical evidence.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Still zero, so they bring in a forensic psychologist, doctor
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Reed Molloy, and this doctor gets on the stand and
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: testifies that this murder was a matricide proxy. I literally
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: had to read the transcript three times to believe this.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: It's a highly controversial theory.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: He tells the jury that because Tim's mother had tragically
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: died a few years prior, Tim was secretly harboring subponscious rage,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: so he supposedly saw a random woman in the field,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: substituted her for his dead mother in his mind, and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: killed her.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: The most alarming aspect of that testimony is that doctor
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Moloy had never clinically interviewed Tim.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Masters you never even met him.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: He constructed a highly speculative psychological profile based entirely on
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: the drawings, and the police narrative completely unmoored from any
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime scene.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: It is the equivalent of arresting Stephen King for a
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: real life murder just because he writes terrifying books. It
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: is substituting physical forensics with subjective imagination. And the crazy
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: part it worked.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: A jury convicted Tim and.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: He was sentenced to life in a maximum security prison.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I really want you to imagine the suffocating weight of
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: that reality. You are locked in a concrete cell for
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: a murder you didn't commit, knowing that people who put
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: you there knew the evidence didn't fit.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Tim spent years in that cell teaching himself legal formatting
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: on a typewriter so he could file his own appeals.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Because his legal defense funds had completely dried up. It
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: is a level of despair most of us just cannot fathom.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: And reversing that despair is almost impossible because of institutional inertia.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: The criminal justice system is fundamentally designed to uphold its
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: own verdicts. It values finality over accuracy.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Right once the gavel falls, the whole machine locks in.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Overturning a conviction requires an overwhelming external force to break
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: that inertia.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And that force came from the most unlikely place, a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: civilian CPA named Taylor Marris. Taylor is just a regular guy.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: He's sitting in his living room watching an episodic true
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: crime television.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Show, a show that was basically acting as a PR
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: firm for the Fort Collins Police.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally glorifying their brilliant psychological takedown to Tim Masters.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: But Taylor looks at the screen and his brain snags.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Because Taylor is an auditor, and an auditor's mindset is
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: the exact antidote to confirmation bias. An auditor doesn't listen
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: to the story being told. They look at the ledger
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: to see if the numbers actually balance exactly.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: He looks at this TV show and says, wait, you
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: convicted a man entirely on drawings. Where's the blood? Where's
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the weapon? The ledger didn't.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Balance, So Taylor Marris takes nine hundred dollars out of
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: his own checking account and buys the raw court transcripts.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: He reads them, realizes how horrifyingly thin the case is,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: and he tracks down a woman named Linda Wheeler. Linda
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: was a former detective who had actually worked the original
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven case.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: She was so morally disgusted by how Jim Broderick actively
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: railroaded Tim that she quit the police force.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: You are talking about a profound moral injury.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: She witnessed the system corrupt itself from the inside.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: But when Taylor brings her the trial transcripts, Linda realizes
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: that juror was never even allowed to hear about all
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the exculpatory evidence. The polarized lenses hid it from them too.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: So Linda puts her badge back on.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: She takes a part time job with a different district
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: attorney's office, specifically so she can use her credentials to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: fight from the inside. She and Tailor wage war to
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: get the original evidence released for independent.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Testing, and this introduces the scientific mechanism that finally shatters
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: the illusion. They sent the evidence to an advanced independent
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: lab in Holland.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: To utilize a technique called touch DNA analysis.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Right Unlike traditional DNA testing that requires large amounts of
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: blood or semen, touch DNA looks for microscopic epithelial cells
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: skin cells transferred through.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Friction, and the lab specifically targeted the waistband of Peggy's underwear.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: The scientific logic was undeniable whoever dragged Peggy and pulled
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: her pants down by the waistband had to exert significant
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: friction thereby leaving their own skin cells embedded deep in
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: the fabric fibers.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: The DNA results come back, and they are explosive. They
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: definitively one hundred percent rule out Tim Masters. After a
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: decade in a cage, Tim is released in two thousand
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: and eight.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Fully exonerated in twenty eleven.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: And he rightfully wins a ten million dollars settlement for
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: the malicious prosecution. But that touch DNA didn't just clear Tim.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: It pulled a profile the skin cells embedded in the
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: waistband of a murdered woman belonged to her on again,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: off again boyfriend, Matt Zolmer.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Which forces a truly disturbing reevaluation of the entire investigation.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: If the physical evidence pointed to Zolmer, how did a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: team of seasoned detectives completely miss him in eighty seven?
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, I struggle to comprehend the sheer level of
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: blindness here.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Because when you look at the unsealed records, Zolmer wasn't
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: hiding in the shadows. He was a walking parade of
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: red flags. Let's just look at his timeline.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Zomer claimed he was with another woman on the night
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: of the murder.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Giving him a solid alibi from roughly one am to
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: three am, but the coroner's report explicitly stated the window
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: for the murder stretched all the way to five am.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: He had two completely unaccounted for hours in the middle
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of the night.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, consider the physical evidence gathered and then inexplicably abandoned.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: A day or two after the murder, detective searched Zelmer's vehicle.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: The official reports document that they found clothing and shoes
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: in the trunk that were soaking wet.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: The officers noted it looked as though someone had recently
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: swam in them. They also found damp clothes inside his apartment.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Finding soaking wet clothes in a suspect's trunk in February
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: after a bloody murder is forensic science one to one
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: for someone tried to wash away evidence. They actually bag
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: these clothes.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: But then Matt Zilmer called the police station and asked
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: for his clothes back, and the police they just gave.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Him back without running a single chemical test on them.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: How does the detective.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Justify that because of the polarized sunglasses. Broaderck had already
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: decided Tim was the killer. Therefore, Zolmer's wet clothes were
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: categorized in Broaderick's brain as irrelevant noise.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: If you test the clothes, you risk finding blood.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: And if you find blood, rative about Tim collapses. So
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: subconsciously or consciously, you remove the risk by returning.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: The evidence, and the blind spots just keep getting worse.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: The woman who provided Zulmer's partial alibi she told, believes
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that when she was at his apartment that night, it
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: was pristine, spotless.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: But years later, when defense investigator showed her the police
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: photos taken of Matt's apartment shortly after the murder, she
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: got chills.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Because the photos showed a bizarre, messy scene. There were
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: weird stains on the carpet, and one of the table
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: legs was completely snapped off. She explicitly stated that is
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: not what the apartment looked like when I left.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Which strongly implies a violent struggle happened after three am.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Oh In the cherry on top, when police process Peggy's purse,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the one left untouched as the crime scene, they found
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: an unsent note inside written by Peggy specifically asking Matt
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Zolmer if she could crash at his place that night
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: because she was locked out of her own apartment.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: The victim had documented intent to intercept the suspect on
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: the night of her murder, and yet the investigative file
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: shows almost zero pressure applied to Zolmer.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: But if you think the blind spot for Zolmer is enraging,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: we really have to talk about the other viable suspect
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: they actively intentionally protected, Doctor Richard Hammond right.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Hammond presents an entirely different, highly organized psychological profile that
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: aligns terrifyingly well with the more methodical elements of the
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: crime scene.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Doctor Hammond was a wealthy, prominent local ophtalmologist. During the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: initial neighborhood canvass in nineteen eighty seven, police actually knocked
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: on his door.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Why because the primary bedroom window of his house offered
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a direct, unobstructed line of sight into the exact vacant
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: field where Peggy's body was found.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: But he was a doctor, a family man, so they
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: checked the box and walked away. Let's fast forward eight
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: years to nineteen ninety five. Hammond goes out of town
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and hires two local college students to house it.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: The students are hanging out in a basement bathroom and
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: they keep hearing this strange, mechanical, worrying noise coming from
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: the air vent.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: They get a screwdriver pop the vent cover off, and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: they find a hidden camera wired and pointed directly at
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the toilet.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: The students trace the wiring, force their way into a
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: locked adjoining room and discover a breath takingly sophisticated covert
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: surveillance nerve center.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: We are talking about walls of filing cabinets filled with
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: thousands of meticulously labeled and indexed videotapes.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And the content of these tapes was not standard voyeurism.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: They were extreme surgical close ups of female genitalia.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Remember the bizarre paradox of the crime scene, the frenzied
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: stabbing juxtaposed with the surgical precision excision of Peggy's nipple
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: using a tiny razor sharp medical instrument.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Suddenly you have a local surgeon with a direct view
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: of the murder scene who possesses a pathological, documented obsession
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: with female anatomy.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And the detective who responds to the housetter's nine to
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: one one call it is Ray Martinez, the exact same
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: detective who processed the Peggy Hetric crime scene eight years prior.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: He immediately connects the dots.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: He searches Hammond's bedroom closet, and what does he find
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: sitting on the floor a pair.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Of size eight and a half Tomic cann dress shoes.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: The exact brand and the exact size of the footprints
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: left in the blood next to Peggy's body.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: The statistical probability of a suspect possessing the surgical skill,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: the geographic proximity, the specific paraphilia, and the exact anomalous
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: footwear is astronomical.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Martinez recognizes this and immediately calls Detective Broderick.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: And Broderick flat out refuses to drive to the scene.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: He tells Martinez over the phone that they already have their.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Guy, meaning Tim Masters, who is still just drawing in notebooks.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: So Hammi gets arrested for the hidden cameras. He easily
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: bonds out for five thousand dollars, checks himself into a
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: hotel room in Denver, and commits suicide by hooking up
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: an ivy drip of lethal cyanide to his own leg.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: But before he administers the poison, he does something incredibly calculated.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: He chase his entire body. He removes every single hair
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: on his head, his arms, his chest, completely smooth.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: That is not a standard suicidal ideation. That is the
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: behavior of a highly forensically aware individual actively destroying trace evidence.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Right because without hair, investigators cannot run DNA or microscopic
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: comparisons to unknown hairs found at a crime scene. It
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: is a final act of evasion.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: And this is where the incompetence shifts into something deeply,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: deeply sinister.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Because a couple of months after Hammond kills himself, a
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: local judge signs a motion and the police take all
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: of doctor Hammond's evidence, the hundreds of tapes, the covert cameras,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the detailed indexes, and the Tom McCann dress shoes, and
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: they burn it.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: They destroy all of it in an incinerator, which.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Violates the core tenets of evidence preservation, especially when those
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: items directly link to an unsolved homicide. I mean, how's
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: that even legal.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: They claim they burn the tapes to protect the privacy
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: of the victims who were secretly.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Filmed, but they admitted they didn't even watch all the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: tapes before throwing them in the fire. You have Matt
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: zomber whose skin cells are physically embedded in the victim's underwear.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: You have doctor Hammond with the murder shoes, the surgical tools,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: the view of the body, and a shaved body to hide.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: His DNA, and the authorities completely ignore both of these men,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: so they can spend a decade destroying a teenager whose
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: only crime was drawing scary pictures. We have to ask
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the horrible question, is this just mind boggling incompetence or
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: are we looking at an active, coordinated cover up.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: You have to look at the mechanism of institutional self preservation.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, rumors were heavily circulating that doctor Hammond,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: through lavish parties, and that prominent local officials, potentially including
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: members of law enforcement or the district attorney's office, had
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: been guests in his home.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, it is.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Highly probable that some of those influential individuals were unknowingly
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: captured on those hidden bathroom tapes.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: So by rushing to the incinerator under the guise of
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: victim protection, they weren't protecting the women on the tapes.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: They were protecting themselves from a massive career ending scammer.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Precisely and by destroying that evidence, they intentionally robbed Tim
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Master's defense team of the ability to point to a
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: viable alternate suspect in a court of law. They sacrificed
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: a fifteen year old boy to shield their own reputations.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: It is utterly enraging, and it is exactly why we
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: are doing this deep dive for you today. In a
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: world where we are constantly drowning in information, we're like
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: socially conditioned to defer to institutional authority.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: We trust the doctor reading the X ray, and we
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: trust the detective wearing the badge, assuming they are acting
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: in good faith.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: But this case proves that independent critical thinking is literally
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the only safeguard you have against a system that prioritizes
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: its own survival over the truth. Taylor Marris refusing to
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: blindly accept a television narrative save Demand from dying in
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a concrete box.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: When you unquestionably accept the diagnosis you are handed, you
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: completely missed the glaring reality that the machine taking the
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: picture is fundamentally broken, and.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: We really cannot forget the very real, ongoing human cost
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: of that broken machine. Peggy's brother, Tom Hetrick, is currently
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: battling Stage four colon cancer.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: He is spending his final days on earth fully where
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: his time is running out, actively begging the justice system
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: to just do its job.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: The state ruined Tim Master's life. They allowed the actual killer,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: whether it was Zolmer or Hammond, to walk free for decades,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and now they were looking at dying man in the
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: eye and telling him the case is closed.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: It is a profound moral failure. It is the ultimate
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: devastating cost of unchecked confirmation bias.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with one final, deeply unsettling
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: thought to Mulover. When investigators finally dug into doctor Hammond's
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: secret life after his suicide, the rabbit hole went much
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: deeper than the house.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: They found a secret off site storage locker.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Inside there were rubber made tubs filled to the brim
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: with even more surveillance tapes. They uncovered a hidden bank account,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and most chillingly, they found a custom made, leather built
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Hammond head fashioned for himself.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: It was designed to hold an entire arsenal of tiny
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: razor shit sharp surgical instruments, easily concealed under a coat.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: You combine that with a man who possesses the cold,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: calculated foresight to shave his entire body to eliminate DNA
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: before committing suicide.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: That level of preparation and forensic countermeasure suggests an individual
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: who has successfully operated in the shadows for a very
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: long time. It is the footprint of an organized, prolific predator.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So ask yourself, what if the police's desperate, panicked rush
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to burn all of those tapes didn't just deny justice
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: for Peggy Heetric.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: What if, in their blinding arrogance to protect their own
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: reputations and preserve their flimsy narrative against a teenager, they
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: actively destroyed the evidence of a highly organized serial killer
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: hiding right and plain sight behind a medical degree.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: It really makes you realize that when you are drowning
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: in diagnostic muddy waters, sometimes the authorities aren't trying to
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: pull you out. Sometimes they're the ones stirring up the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: mud to hide what's at the bottom. Think about that
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: next time someone hands you a narrative wrapped in authority.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: We will see you on the next deep dive.