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The Teenager Convicted by High School Doodles · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine waking up every single morning in a maximum security
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: prison cell. Right, You spend your days just hunched over
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: a typewriter trying to decode complex legal jargon. You are
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: desperately trying to learn the law from scratch, just so
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: you can file your own.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Appeals, because no one else is going to do it
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Exactly, And the reason you have been locked in this
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: cage for a decade, it's all because of a few
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: violent doodles found in your high school algebra notebook.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It sounds like you know a plot from a dystopian novel.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It really does, but that is in fiction. That is
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the very real nightmare that swallowed a teenager named Tim Masters.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's deep dive.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering premise. We are going through comprehensive
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: investigative transcripts today detailing the nineteen eighty seven murder of
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins, Colorado. But I mean this
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: isn't just a deep dive into a homicide case. This
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: is an autopsy of the justice system itself. We are
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: looking at the anatomy of tunnel vision, the mechanics of
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: a wrongful con and the terrifying length that authorities will
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: go to just to protect their own narrative.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Our mission today for you listening is to basically separate
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the facts from the police fiction. We are going to
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: unpack the horrifying alternate suspects that investigators deliberately.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Ignored, suspects they had dead to rights.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Right. We will detail a massive cover up involving destroyed DNA,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a highly sinister local doctor, and we're going to amplify
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a dying brother's final plea for answers.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: We are going to show you exactly how a cold
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: case freezes over when the people in charge are the
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: ones holding the ice water.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Well said, So let's transport you to Fort Collins. It
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: is February eleventh, nineteen eighty seven, round seven am.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: It's a freezing morning, right, but no snow on the ground.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, freezing snow this morning. There is a man named
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Woody who is bicycling to work. He's got his head
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: down against the biting wind, and he spots a splash
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: of red by the curb of an empty field.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: And that splash of red it was the starting point
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: of a really gruesome trail flood, and it led to
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: a drag mark like a continuous one hundred foot trail
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: extending from the pavement deep into the frost covered grass
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: of this vacant lot.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Just a horrific thing to stumble onto.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, at the end of that trail, police found the
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: body of thirty seven year old Peggy Hetrick, and almost
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: immediately the investigators were confronted with a crime scene that
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: just completely broke all conventional rules of criminal profiling.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I kept looking at the crime scene details in this transcript,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and it genuinely feels like, I don't know, two completely
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: different murders superimposed on one another.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: On one hand, Peggy suffered a fatal stab wound into
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: her upper back, and this was inflicted by a five
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: inch serrated blade.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Right, which points to a chaotic heat of the moment
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: blitz attack like a brawler exactly.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: But then the medical examiner found something else that completely
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: contradicts that frantic energy.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Right. The examiner discovered severe genital mutilation and noted that
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: one of Peggy's nipples had been removed post mortem.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Which is horrific on its own it.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Is, but the crucial detail, the piece that changes the
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: entire forensic landscape of this case, is the how.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: The tool they used.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, the removal wasn't done with that five inch serrated
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: hunting knife. The medical examiner concluded it was executed with
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: surgical precision. They utilized a very small, incredibly sharp instrument,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: most likely a medical scalpel.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: It's a brawler's crime layered with a surgeon's signature. That's
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the only analogy I can think of for this. It's
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: like walking into a room and finding a jigsaw puzzle,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: but half the pieces clearly belonged to a completely different box.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect way to put it.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Because how do you reconcile a messy, bleeding stab wound
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: in a dirty field with the cold clinical removal of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: a body part after the victim is already dead.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And we should mention the missing tissue was nowhere to
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: be found at.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: The scene, which means they took it as a trophy.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Right, And from a behavioral analysis standpoint, a scene like
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: this implies one of two things. Either you are dealing
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: with a highly unusual offender who possesses two radically different
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: and operational modes you know, a sudden rage followed by
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: clinical detachment, or you were looking at a two part
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: sequence of events.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Like potentially involving different locations or even different individuals.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It demands a highly sophisticated investigation, which brings.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Me to the physical clues actually left at the scene.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Near that initial pool of blood at the curb, investigators
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: found a pair of distinct.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Footprints, specific shoes.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, specifically from men's size eight and a half or
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: nine Tomic Ann dress shoes. They also found a cigarette
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: butt in the blood, and the transcript notes Peggy was
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: a known smoker.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Before we go any further into the investigation, though, I
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: think it is really vital to establish who Peggy Hettrick
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: actually was. I completely agree, because the media coverage at
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the time did something incredibly insidious. They flattened her identity.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: They made her a caricature, right.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: They labeled her a college dropout, a bar hopper, just
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: a woman who took ill advised the late night walks.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: It's a very subtle structural way of victim blaming.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: It subtenly suggests her lifestyle invited.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: The violence exactly.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: It is so infuriating when investigations start with a two
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: dimensional cutout of the victim instead of the human being.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: The real Peggy spoke four languages fluently.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Four languages. She was brilliant, she had.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Traveled extensively around the world, and fundamentally, she was a
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: woman in deep grief. Her fiance had recently died suddenly,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and that was followed very shortly by the death of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: her mother.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Back to back tragedies, right, But.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: She wasn't giving up. Just two days before someone murdered
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: her in that field, she had called her dad. She
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: was overjoyed, asking if she could move down to Florida
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: to live with him and her brother Tom.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: She was actively plotting a fresh start.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: She was she wasn't aimless, which adds just a profound
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: layer of tragedy to this. She was on the precipice
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of reclaiming her.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Life, but instead of honoring that by conducting a meticulous investigation,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: the local police found themselves staring at a wildly contradictory
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: crime scene. They were feeling the intense pressure of the
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: public eye. They needed a win, They needed a suspect,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: and they needed one fast. So they looked roughly two
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: hundred yards away from the body, and they found a
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: target they knew they could break.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Enter Fifteen year old Tim Masters, just a kid, Just
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: a kid. Tim lived in a trailer near the edge
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: of that field. On the morning of February eleventh, he
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: walked his usual route through the lot to catch his
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: high school bus, and he actually saw Peggy's body, but.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: He didn't report it.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: He didn't call the police, he didn't tell anyone.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Now, on paper, to a detective who is already experiencing
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: tunnel vision, a teenager walking past a dead body and
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: not reporting it sounds like a confession of guilt.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Sure, if you have zero understanding of psychology, right, you have.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: To look at the psychology of a fifteen year old brain.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Tim told the police he thought it was a mannequin. Specifically,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: he thought it was a russosi Ani CPR training doll.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And this is where the transcript gave me absolute chills. Yeah,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: because if you look at the crime scene photos, the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: pallor Peggy's skin, the specific way her hair was splayed
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: out the open mountain looks identical to one of those
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: vintage CPR dolls.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: It is uncanny.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I really don't think this was teenage apathy. I think
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: this was a kid's brain protecting him from trauma.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: That is precisely what it was. It's a phenomenon rooted
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: in cognitive dissonance and psychological preservation. When the brain encounters
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: a visual stimulus that is so overwhelmingly horrific, like a
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: child stumbling upon a mutilated corpse, the visual cortex can
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: essentially short circuit. It desperately searches its memory banks for
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: something familiar and safe to overwrite the trauma in real time.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So his brain literally forced him to see a plastic.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Doll exactly so he wouldn't completely psychologically collapse on his
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: way to school.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But of course, the police weren't interested in the nuances
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: of a teenager's dissociative coping mechanisms. They pull this child
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: out of his high school class, They bring him to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the station, and they subject him to a grueling nine
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: hour interrogation nine hours, nine hours out a parent in
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the room, without a lawyer present. The legal vacuum in
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: which this was allowed to happen is terrifying. But despite
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the pressure, Tim never.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Confessed because he had nothing to confess to. So the
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: investigator searched his bedroom desperate for a smoking gun, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: what they find becomes the bedrock of their entire prosecution.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: A collection of knives and some doodles.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Yep, knives, Because he was a teenager who liked the
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: outdoors and a spiral notebook filled with violent drawings, decapitations, knives,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: typical dark adolescent heavy metal inspired imagery.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I kept waiting for the forensic shoe to drop while
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: reading this section of the transcript. I was waiting for,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: like a bloody fingerprint on one of his knives, or
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: a match to the footprints at the scene.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: But it never comes.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Crucially, not a single blade in his room matched the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: murder weapon. He didn't own Tom mccanndress shoes. There was
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: literally zero physical evidence tying this kid to the field.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So local police box all this up. The doodles the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: timeline and they send it to the FBI for a behavioral.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Profile, and this is where the system completely breaks down.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: The top behavioral analysts at the FBI review the file
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: and explicitly tell the Fort Collins police, no, this teenager
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: is not your killer.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: They literally said, you cannot build a homicide case on
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: high school artwork.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly when the highest federal investigative body in the country
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: tells you you're wrong, the standard procedure is to pivot.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: But they didn't pivot, and this is where the investigation
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: transitions from just being sloppy to being genuinely malicious. If
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: the literal FBI tells you that you have the wrong guy,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: how is it legally permissible to just start profiler shopping.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It shouldn't be, because that's exactly what they did. They
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: kept knocking on doors until they found a psychologist named
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Reed malloy, and he was willing to spend a completely
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: fabricated junk science theory to validate their tunnel vision.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Molloy introduced a theory he called displaced matricide.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Which sounds completely made up.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: It basically is he testified that Tim killed Pe because
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: her red hair triggered a repressed homicidal rage over the
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: sudden death of Tim's own mother four years earlier.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It sounds incredibly sophisticated to a jury, though.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: It does it ties up all the loose ends into
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: a neat psychological.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Bow, except for one glaring factual error that completely dismantles
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the entire theory. Tim's mother had brown hair, not red,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: not red. The very foundation of the expert testimony was
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: entirely fabricated. But armed with this pseudopsychology and a stack
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: of algebra homework, the police got their conviction Tim Masters
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: was sentenced to life in prison.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: The fallout of that conviction is profound. You have a
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: young man spending nearly ten years in a maximum security cage,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: completely abandoned by the system, forced to teach himself the
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: mechanics of the law just to file appeals.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: It's heartbreaking.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: But while he is fighting from the inside, a really
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: strange sequence of events begins on the outside.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Right enter Taylor Marris. He's just a random CPA who
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: happens to be watching a true crime television show about
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the case. Maris looks at the TV, sees the drawings
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: being touted as evidence and thinks, wait a minute, I
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: drew stuff exactly like that in high school, and I'm
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: not a murderer.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: He realizes how absurd it is.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he says, where's the actual physical evidence? So Maris
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: starts writing to Tim, and eventually he convinces a former detective,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Linda Wheeler, who actually worked the original case and always
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: believed Tim was innocent, to come out of retirement and help.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: And this is the turning point. This is where the
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: defense team realizes they aren't just fighting a mistake and conviction,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: they are fighting an active cover up. Tim's new legal
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: team manages to get a new district attorney to agree
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: to test the physical evidence using modern DNA technology.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I need to clarify the mechanics of this for everyone listening,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: because it's so important. Yeah, how does DNA testing in
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the late two thousands differ from what they could do
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven?
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, forensic science generally relied on large
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: biological samples blood typing, seamen. It was broad, but by
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: the lead two thousands, forensic scientists developed touch DNA analysis.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It relies on microscopic epithelial cells. If an assailant forcefully
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: grabs a piece of clothing, the friction of that grip
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: leaves behind trace amounts of dead stin cells. You don't
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: need a visible fluid stain, you just need the microscopic
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: residue of human contact.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Which was the golden ticket for Tim exactly.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: So, the defense gets permission to test Peggy's clothing for
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: this touch DNA, But before they can, they discovered the
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Fort Collins police deliberately destroy the evidence.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I couldn't believe this part.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: They didn't just misplace it in an evidence locker. Once
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: the appeals were ramping up, someone in the department used
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: an administrative technicality claiming the case was closed with Tim's
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: conviction to authorize the destruction of the evidence.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: It was a blatant attempt to slam the door on
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: his exoneration, and it wasn't an isolated incident of malice either.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: During the discovery process, Tim's lawyers uncovered that during the
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: original nineteen eighty seven investigation, the police had waged deliberate
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: psychological warfare on this teenager.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: It is genuinely sick what they did.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I liken this to a read casino. The police are
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: supposed to be impartial referees seeking the truth, right, Yeah,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: but here they were acting as the house and they
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: were rigging the roulette wheel to protect the bet they
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: had already placed on Tip.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly how they rigged it as terrifying. The files revealed
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: detectives printed out fake newspaper front pages, unbelievable with headlines
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: claiming they had conclusive proof Tim was the killer, and
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: they left them on his doorstep. Even worse, they took
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: copies of his deceased mother's obituary and planted them in
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: places he would find them. They were actively trying to
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: induce a mental breakdown to force a false confession.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Thankfully, Tim's family had saved a few pieces of evidence
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: that the police had returned to them years prior before
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: that destruction order went out. This included Peggy's clothing, a miracle, really, truly.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So they test the touch DNA on Peggy's underwear and
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the results definitively exclude Tim Masters. After a decade in prison,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Tim was finally exonerated in twenty eleven and awarded a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: ten million dollar settlement. The lead detective, Jim Broderick, was
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: even indicted for perjury for his role in the cover up,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: though the charges were quietly.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Dropped later, which is its own kind of injustice. But
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: while the exoneration is a massive victory, it leaves a huge,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: terrifying void at the center of this case. The real killer, right,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: if it wasn't Tim Masters standing in that freezing field,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: who was. The tragedy of tunnel vision is that while
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: you are staring at an innocent person, the real perpetrator
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: is actively slipping away. So let's look at who the
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: police deliberately ignored.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: We have to talk about Matt Asnery. This was Peggy's
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: on again, off again boyfriend, Peggy was actually seen at
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: a bar with him just hours before she was murdered.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: The behavioral and physical indicators pointing to Zooer are highly suspect.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: When police processed Peggy's purse, they found a note written
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: to Matt asking if she could sleep in his hallway
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: at two am because she was locked out of her
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: own apartment.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: So that places him directly in her orbit at the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: critical time exactly.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, when investigators interviewed a witness who had gone home
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: with Matt that night, she noted his apartment was immaculately
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: bizarrely clean.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Not just tidy, steryll, yes, steryll. No dishes, no clothes,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: no clutter anywhere. It's the exact environment you would expect
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: if someone had frantically scrubbed a crime scene. But here
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: is the most damning part. When that touch DNA was
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: finally tested on Peggy's underwear, the test that cleared Tim,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: it yielded a partial profile match for Matt Zinner.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: And yet back in nineteen eighty seven, police barely pressed
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: his alibi.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: They suffered from profound confirmation bias because Matt didn't fit
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the narrative they had already constructed around Tim they dismissed
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a primary suspect with direct physical ties to the victim.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: And if you think ignoring the boyfriend is egregious, how
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: about ignoring a literal.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Serial killer, oh Man, Donnie Long.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Donnie Long was operating in the exact same zip code.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: He murdered two other women in the exact same age
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: range as Peggy within months of her death.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: You have a geographical cluster, a demographic match, and a
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: known violent offender. But the police logic here is astounding.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Because Peggy's murder involves surgical mutilation and Long's other victims didn't,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: investigators decided the crimes couldn't be linked.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: They literally sat down with a confessed serial killer asked
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: him if he killed Peggy, and when he said no,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: they simply took him at his word.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Think about the sheer cognitive dissonance required by these detectives.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: You have an ex boyfriend with a sterile apartment and
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: a partial DNA match. You have a serial killer leaving
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: bodies in the same neighborhood, but instead of pursuing them,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: you are spending thousands of man hours analyzing of fifteen
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: year old's heavy metal doodles.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: It defies all logic it.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Does until you introduce the third alternate suspect, because his
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: story explains the illogical behavior of the police. It suggests
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the tunnel vision wasn't just incompetence.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: It was a desperately constructed smoke screen.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We need to talk about doctor Richard Hammont. He
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: was a local ophthalmologist and he lived right in the neighborhood.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: In fact, his bedroom window had a direct line of
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: sight to the exact spot in the vacant field where
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Peggy died.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: But the connection to doctor Hammond doesn't fully surface until
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five. So eight years after the murder, Hammond
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: and his wife go out of town and hire some
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: college students to house sit right and these students keep
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: hearing a strange mechanical whirring noise coming from the basement
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: backroom fence. So they investigate and they discover hidden cameras
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: wired inside the ventilation system.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: They picked the lock to an adjacent locked room in
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the basement and uncover a fully equipped secret surveillance hub.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: It's filled with video monitors, filing cabinets, and thousands of
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: meticulously cataloged videotapes.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Thousands of them.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: And these cameras weren't capturing wide shots of the room.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: They were focused entirely on extreme zoomed in close ups
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: of genitals, including those of miners who use the bathroom.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: The police are called to the house and one of
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: the responding officer is Sergeant Ray Martinez. Crucially, Martinez was
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: one of the original officers who worched the Peggy hetrick
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: neighborhood canvass back in nineteen eighty seven.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: He remember the name.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: He immediately recognizes Hammond's name. As they search the house,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Martinez looks in Hammond's closet and finds a pair of
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: men's size eight and a half to nine Tom McCann
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: dress shoes.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: The exact obscure brand in size that left footprints in
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the blood at the crime scene.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You now have a suspect who lives adjacent to
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: the crime scene, possesses the precise footwear, has a documented
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: extreme obsession with genitals, and as an eye surgeon, has
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: daily access to and profound expertise with surgical scalpels.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: He is the missing puzzle piece. He perfectly explains the
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: surgical mutilation that the police couldn't reconcile in nineteen eighty seven.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: So Sergeant Martinez does the right thing. He immediately calls
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: the lead detective on the Hettrick case, Jim Broderick. He says,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: you need to get down here right now. I think
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: we found the guy.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And what does Broderick do?
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Broderick flat out refuses to come. He tells Martinez, we
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: already know who did it. He wouldn't even walk across
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: town to look at the physical evidence.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: But the ham In situation spirals out of control rapidly
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: after that. Hammond is arrested for the surveillance operation, posts bail,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and checks into a hotel in Denver. Right once inside,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: he commits suicide in an incredibly specific, bizarre manner. He
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: shaves every single hair off his entire body and then
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: utilizes a corrosive cyanide drip straight into his leg.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: When I read that he shaved his body, my stomach
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: just dropped. That isn't a random act of a desperate man. No,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: that is extreme forensic awareness. You shave your body when
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: you are terrified of leaving trace DNA or hair evidence
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: behind that could link you to other crimes after your death.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: He also leaves a suicide note blaming the media for
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: ruining his life. So the police now have a dead
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: doctor who fits the murder profile flawlessly, and a massive
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: vault of thousands of hidden surveillance tapes. What is the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: standard protocol here?
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: The protocol is to log every single tape into evidence
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: and view them meticulously to identify victims and establish timelines.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Right. But that's not what happened, not at all.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Instead, the local authorities gather up all the tapes, the
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: filing cabinets, the ledgers, thousands of hours of potential physical evidence,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: and they burn it all in an incinerator. They destroy
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: it without watching the vast majority of it.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: I was absolutely screaming at my notes when I read this.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: The police justified this bonfire by claiming they were quote
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: unquote protecting the victims from the psychological trauma of knowing
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: they were filmed.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Which is such a transparent line.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: That is not protection. That is the equivalent of throwing
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: a murder weapon into a volcano because a judge's fingerprints
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: might be on the handle. By burning those tapes, they
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: destroyed the only avenue those victims had for justice, for
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: civil suits, or for discovering if someone was actually physically
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: assaulted on camera.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: The mechanism of this cover up points directly to systemic
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: self preservation. Investigative files later revealed that several prominent members
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: of the District Attorney's office and other local officials have
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: previously socialized at doctor hammond couse.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, so they were terrified exactly.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: There was a palpable fear running through the local government
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: that highly powerful people in Fort Collins might be caught
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: on those tapes, even inadvertently.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: So rather than risk a political scandal or personal ruin,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: they literally set the truth on fire. They protected themselves,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: and in doing so, they almost certainly protected.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Peggy's killer, and doctor Hammond's criminal record was essentially scrubbed.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: If you try to look him up today, it's as
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: if his crimes never even existed.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: It is one of the most devastating betrayals of public
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: trust you will ever see in a case file. And
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: the tragedy is that this isn't just a historical footnote.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: The ripples of these decisions are actively hurting people right now.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Which brings us back to the present day and the
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: very real stakes of unpacking this source material. Peggy's brother,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Tom Hetrick, has been fighting to find out who really
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: killed his sister for over thirty five years. Yeah, but
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: recently Tom was diagnosed with stage for colon cancer. His
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: time is running out.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Tom's final plea is as simple as it is monumental.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: He is begging the Colorado Attorney General to step in,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: strip the jurisdiction from the local authorities, reopen the case
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: with entirely new, impartial investigators, and finally look at the evidence.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: He wants them to look at mad Zner, look at
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Donnie Long, look at the Hammond connections, the very things
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: the local police actively burn and buried for decades.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: He just wants to justice system to function the way
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: it was designed to before he passes away.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: It is the absolute bare minimum that he deserves after
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: thirty five years of being lied to.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you listening to
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: this today? We have this collective assumption that cold cases
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: remain unsolved simply because of time. We imagine a trail
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: naturally fading away, rainwashing footprints from the pavement, witnesses moving away,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: memories slowly dissolving into the fog.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: We operate under the comforting illusion that a lack of
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: resolution is simply a lack of evidence. A passive tragedy, but.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: The murder of Peggy had forces us to look into
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the dark and ask a truly terrifying question. How many
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: cold cases out there aren't unsolved because the trail naturally
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: faded away. How many cases are sitting in a box
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: right now, unsolved because the evidence was deliberately burned to
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: ashes by the very people who took an oath to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: protect it. Something to think about the next time you
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: hear a case has simply gone cold.