WHO WAS PEGGY HETTRICK, AND WHY WORRY 30 YEARS LATER WHO KILLED HER?
Why care?
It all happened a long, long time ago, before some of you reading this were even born. It happened in a small Colorado college town, Fort Collins, that is probably best known by a great many people today as the home of New Belgium Brewing Company, producers of Fat Tire among other gems, than for any other reason. It happened to a quirky woman who (at least according to those who knew her best at that particular time in her life) couldn't seem to get herself grounded in life: she was a college dropout who didn't drive, lived in an unremarkable little apartment located close enough to the spots, the bars and lounges, she loved to hang out in, and to the shop where she worked, that she could walk pretty much anywhere she wanted to go, night or day. Not surprisingly, she was an aspiring mystery writer, and left an unfinished manuscript in her apartment.
So, what happened to her? Well, the short story is that she was brutally murdered, mutilated, and dumped in a vacant lot just a few blocks from her apartment, sort of at the epicenter of her little universe, late on the evening of February 10 or the very early hours of the 11th, 1987. She lay there in the frigid weeds, near-naked and dead, exposed to the brutal Colorado winter cold for a half dozen or so hours, until a bicyclist on his way to work spotted what he first took to be a mannequin in the field there on Landings Drive.
He investigated,saw it wasn't a mannequin at all, and hustled to the nearest phone to alert the Fort Collins police.
To this point, you might assume that this would turn out to be just another one of those local killings that would eventually be traced to a drug deal gone bad, a jealous ex-, or some other mundane source, that would sort of resolve itself through the tips and rumors of a small community where there were only a few degrees of separation between anybody and anyone else. Didn't happen that way, though. It was a hell of a mess before it was over, with an innocent man sent to prison for a long, long time; it had a little bit of everything, including what appears to be gross incompetence (and maybe worse) on the part of some in local law enforcement, evidence that was deliberately withheld from folks who had a right to see it, evidence that was lost or destroyed at the direction of some of those same officials, and on on. More on that later; we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.
So, not the usual case at all.
To this day, there hasn't been any justice for Peggy Hettrick. The innocent man, Timothy Masters, who was wrongfully convicted in 1999, 12 years after the murder, based largely on junk science testimony from several expert witnesses who turned out to be less expert than bogus prop-ups of law enforcement, was finally freed after a long campaign by supporters (including some few of the very police who worked the case from the earliest days). Other suspects, some of them far more viable prospects than Tim Masters ever was, were never properly investigated timely, or at all, and the case has more or less floundered during the ensuing years. We'll dig much deeper into all this later, but suffice it to say that justice has not been served.
So why do I care about all this?
It's pretty simple: I knew Peggy Hettrick many years ago, briefly and casually. We were both students at the American dependents' high school on Wheelus AFB in Tripoli, Libya. during the mid-to-late 1960s. She was a year behind me, but our paths crossed on a daily basis and we had a speaking acquaintance. Our student body was a small one, fewer than 300 I would think, all four grades combined, and everyone pretty much knew everyone else to some level of familiarity. I was struck by her red hair and freckles; she was cute, and a little bit different, having just recently arrived from stateside.
My family was, like several hundred others from the US, England, Germany, and a few other countries, in Libya as part of the oil services community, rather than military. I am under the impression that Peggy's family was oil services, as well, although I don't know that for a fact. Tripoli was a paradise for teenagers of whatever national origin; the city hugs the Mediterranean coast, with beautiful coves and beaches for swimming, snorkeling, and sandy lounging. At the time, several beach, golf and tennis clubs were strung along the coastal road to the west of the city, and we kids virtually lived on their sand and other amenities year-round, due to the incredibly mild climate and year-round beauty of the place. The British military maintained a beautifully-kept club for its nationals, and several others were sponsored by oil companies or private investors. For a teenager, life was very, very good there. We were, on the whole, a pretty close-knit community of teenagers, and many of us have remained in touch over the decades; a reunion of former Wheelus and Oil Companies School (1st through 9th grades only, then everyone transferred to the school on base) students is still held on a more or less regular basis even today, and is well-attended even though most of us are beginning to slow down and we're losing a few here and there.
To be honest, I didn't even know Peggy Hettrick had died, much lesss been murdered until a few years ago, when an old friend from those Wheelus days and I were discussing the alarming rate at which the "Memorial Page" of our school's online website was expanding. Looking at the names was one of those depressing, not to mention thought-provoking, experiences that we all go through as the years continue to pass us by. Faces that were almost forgotten or haven't seen in decades materialize in our imaginations; usually we see them as they were, young and beautiful (at least in our hearts), which is the way it should be, and that is how they will always remain, regardless of what life may have visited on them during the years we didn't see. And usually, at least for me, that is just fine; that's how I want them to be.
This time, though, as my friend read through the list, for whatever reason, perhaps because she had only recently been diagnosed with a particularly virulent cancer, she began musing about the circumstances under which some of them had met their end. This was sobering to me; I had never really been particularly curious about such things, and now I was knocked off balance by the sudden knowledge that more than a few of our old friends had met death in unusual ways, some of which were so extraordinary that they kept creeping back into my head.
One of those was Peggy Hettrick. It wasn't the fact that she was gone that I couldn't accept; we all live out our allotted time, and then we're done with this life. No, it was the way that she was taken that I couldn't accept, much less understand. Why the hell would anybody feel a need to kill a young woman like Peggy? I knew nothing about the case at the time, but I resolved to learn more about it. Then I got caught up in a major project, went back to my day-to-day life, and forgot about the whole thing for a while.
Somehow, though, the thing kept popping up; every time I took a minute or so to browse the Wheelus website it came back to me. Finally, I resolved to get off my butt and do some research. I spent several hours each week for the next month or so reading everything I could find on Peggy's murder, and I was stunned and outraged by what I was seeing. The case was a hell of a mess, a swamp of police incompetence (and maybe worse), expert witnesses who really weren't, prime suspects who were never even interviewed or halfheartedly at best, and nasty work on the part of the prosecutors. An innocent man was rotting in prison, DNA and other physical evidence that would possibly have exonerated him had been destroyed, and too much other nonsense to cover in this first post.
That's the point that I decided I had to to spend some time on this, if for no other reason, so that I could try to see how the hell such a blatant travesty could have occurred in the first place. Others were already working the case, and had been for quite some time; almost from the outset, in fact, a number of interested parties had been following the case closely, and there was a gold mine of material available to me because of their work and dedication to the pursuit of the truth of the thing.
That was a half dozen or so years ago, and a lot has changed. Tim Masters, the innocent man who was hounded by Fort Collins law enforcement from the time he was 15 years old until they finally found a way to send him to prison 12 years later, was finally exonerated in 2008, and has since settled lawsuits against Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins for a substantial sun ($10 million in total) relating to his false conviction and imprisonment, and is moving on with his life.
However, and equally as important in my judgment, there remains the fact that Peggy Hettrick's murderer is still out there, somewhere, enjoying life. No one has ever been brought to justice for this crime, and may never be if it's left to Colorado law enforcement to solve.
Which brings us to my reason for sitting down to write this: it is my hope that we can, perhaps, working together with those out there who still spend their time trying to sort out the truth of this matter, contribute to the effort, and maybe help find the truth before Peggy Hettrick vanishes completely from memory.
My next post will begin at the beginning: the murder. We'll look at what is known about Peggy's final day: where she went, who she saw, when she saw them, and what happened to her in her final minutes. We'll look at each and every element of the crime and all that came afterward.
I hope that those of you who care about this case, or who are now curious to know more about it, will feel free to communicate with us here. Every new set of eyes and each new intellect to consider the puzzle will be welcome to participate and contribute. There is a great deal of information out there, much of it, if not necessarily all, from good, solid sources. I urge you to get involved.
More to come.
It all happened a long, long time ago, before some of you reading this were even born. It happened in a small Colorado college town, Fort Collins, that is probably best known by a great many people today as the home of New Belgium Brewing Company, producers of Fat Tire among other gems, than for any other reason. It happened to a quirky woman who (at least according to those who knew her best at that particular time in her life) couldn't seem to get herself grounded in life: she was a college dropout who didn't drive, lived in an unremarkable little apartment located close enough to the spots, the bars and lounges, she loved to hang out in, and to the shop where she worked, that she could walk pretty much anywhere she wanted to go, night or day. Not surprisingly, she was an aspiring mystery writer, and left an unfinished manuscript in her apartment.
So, what happened to her? Well, the short story is that she was brutally murdered, mutilated, and dumped in a vacant lot just a few blocks from her apartment, sort of at the epicenter of her little universe, late on the evening of February 10 or the very early hours of the 11th, 1987. She lay there in the frigid weeds, near-naked and dead, exposed to the brutal Colorado winter cold for a half dozen or so hours, until a bicyclist on his way to work spotted what he first took to be a mannequin in the field there on Landings Drive.
He investigated,saw it wasn't a mannequin at all, and hustled to the nearest phone to alert the Fort Collins police.
To this point, you might assume that this would turn out to be just another one of those local killings that would eventually be traced to a drug deal gone bad, a jealous ex-, or some other mundane source, that would sort of resolve itself through the tips and rumors of a small community where there were only a few degrees of separation between anybody and anyone else. Didn't happen that way, though. It was a hell of a mess before it was over, with an innocent man sent to prison for a long, long time; it had a little bit of everything, including what appears to be gross incompetence (and maybe worse) on the part of some in local law enforcement, evidence that was deliberately withheld from folks who had a right to see it, evidence that was lost or destroyed at the direction of some of those same officials, and on on. More on that later; we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.
So, not the usual case at all.
To this day, there hasn't been any justice for Peggy Hettrick. The innocent man, Timothy Masters, who was wrongfully convicted in 1999, 12 years after the murder, based largely on junk science testimony from several expert witnesses who turned out to be less expert than bogus prop-ups of law enforcement, was finally freed after a long campaign by supporters (including some few of the very police who worked the case from the earliest days). Other suspects, some of them far more viable prospects than Tim Masters ever was, were never properly investigated timely, or at all, and the case has more or less floundered during the ensuing years. We'll dig much deeper into all this later, but suffice it to say that justice has not been served.
So why do I care about all this?
It's pretty simple: I knew Peggy Hettrick many years ago, briefly and casually. We were both students at the American dependents' high school on Wheelus AFB in Tripoli, Libya. during the mid-to-late 1960s. She was a year behind me, but our paths crossed on a daily basis and we had a speaking acquaintance. Our student body was a small one, fewer than 300 I would think, all four grades combined, and everyone pretty much knew everyone else to some level of familiarity. I was struck by her red hair and freckles; she was cute, and a little bit different, having just recently arrived from stateside.
My family was, like several hundred others from the US, England, Germany, and a few other countries, in Libya as part of the oil services community, rather than military. I am under the impression that Peggy's family was oil services, as well, although I don't know that for a fact. Tripoli was a paradise for teenagers of whatever national origin; the city hugs the Mediterranean coast, with beautiful coves and beaches for swimming, snorkeling, and sandy lounging. At the time, several beach, golf and tennis clubs were strung along the coastal road to the west of the city, and we kids virtually lived on their sand and other amenities year-round, due to the incredibly mild climate and year-round beauty of the place. The British military maintained a beautifully-kept club for its nationals, and several others were sponsored by oil companies or private investors. For a teenager, life was very, very good there. We were, on the whole, a pretty close-knit community of teenagers, and many of us have remained in touch over the decades; a reunion of former Wheelus and Oil Companies School (1st through 9th grades only, then everyone transferred to the school on base) students is still held on a more or less regular basis even today, and is well-attended even though most of us are beginning to slow down and we're losing a few here and there.
To be honest, I didn't even know Peggy Hettrick had died, much lesss been murdered until a few years ago, when an old friend from those Wheelus days and I were discussing the alarming rate at which the "Memorial Page" of our school's online website was expanding. Looking at the names was one of those depressing, not to mention thought-provoking, experiences that we all go through as the years continue to pass us by. Faces that were almost forgotten or haven't seen in decades materialize in our imaginations; usually we see them as they were, young and beautiful (at least in our hearts), which is the way it should be, and that is how they will always remain, regardless of what life may have visited on them during the years we didn't see. And usually, at least for me, that is just fine; that's how I want them to be.
This time, though, as my friend read through the list, for whatever reason, perhaps because she had only recently been diagnosed with a particularly virulent cancer, she began musing about the circumstances under which some of them had met their end. This was sobering to me; I had never really been particularly curious about such things, and now I was knocked off balance by the sudden knowledge that more than a few of our old friends had met death in unusual ways, some of which were so extraordinary that they kept creeping back into my head.
One of those was Peggy Hettrick. It wasn't the fact that she was gone that I couldn't accept; we all live out our allotted time, and then we're done with this life. No, it was the way that she was taken that I couldn't accept, much less understand. Why the hell would anybody feel a need to kill a young woman like Peggy? I knew nothing about the case at the time, but I resolved to learn more about it. Then I got caught up in a major project, went back to my day-to-day life, and forgot about the whole thing for a while.
Somehow, though, the thing kept popping up; every time I took a minute or so to browse the Wheelus website it came back to me. Finally, I resolved to get off my butt and do some research. I spent several hours each week for the next month or so reading everything I could find on Peggy's murder, and I was stunned and outraged by what I was seeing. The case was a hell of a mess, a swamp of police incompetence (and maybe worse), expert witnesses who really weren't, prime suspects who were never even interviewed or halfheartedly at best, and nasty work on the part of the prosecutors. An innocent man was rotting in prison, DNA and other physical evidence that would possibly have exonerated him had been destroyed, and too much other nonsense to cover in this first post.
That's the point that I decided I had to to spend some time on this, if for no other reason, so that I could try to see how the hell such a blatant travesty could have occurred in the first place. Others were already working the case, and had been for quite some time; almost from the outset, in fact, a number of interested parties had been following the case closely, and there was a gold mine of material available to me because of their work and dedication to the pursuit of the truth of the thing.
That was a half dozen or so years ago, and a lot has changed. Tim Masters, the innocent man who was hounded by Fort Collins law enforcement from the time he was 15 years old until they finally found a way to send him to prison 12 years later, was finally exonerated in 2008, and has since settled lawsuits against Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins for a substantial sun ($10 million in total) relating to his false conviction and imprisonment, and is moving on with his life.
However, and equally as important in my judgment, there remains the fact that Peggy Hettrick's murderer is still out there, somewhere, enjoying life. No one has ever been brought to justice for this crime, and may never be if it's left to Colorado law enforcement to solve.
Which brings us to my reason for sitting down to write this: it is my hope that we can, perhaps, working together with those out there who still spend their time trying to sort out the truth of this matter, contribute to the effort, and maybe help find the truth before Peggy Hettrick vanishes completely from memory.
My next post will begin at the beginning: the murder. We'll look at what is known about Peggy's final day: where she went, who she saw, when she saw them, and what happened to her in her final minutes. We'll look at each and every element of the crime and all that came afterward.
I hope that those of you who care about this case, or who are now curious to know more about it, will feel free to communicate with us here. Every new set of eyes and each new intellect to consider the puzzle will be welcome to participate and contribute. There is a great deal of information out there, much of it, if not necessarily all, from good, solid sources. I urge you to get involved.
More to come.
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