crime scene photos

Solving a murder is like putting together a puzzle―evidence found at the crime scene is analyzed by experts to how they best fit together to explain what happened.

It's easier said than done, especially when there is no physical evidence that points to a suspect, and no one has confessed. Especially in circumstantial cases, analysts have to take into account many possible explanations for the clues found at a crime scene.

Tom Bevel, the crime scene analyst who testified on behalf of the prosecution in Timothy Masters' 1999 trial, summed up the inherent ambiguities of his craft in an April 26, 2007 letter to Masters' new defense team.

"The analyst's opinions are based upon the available evidence and rely upon his experience, education and training," he wrote. "While all events and segments may not be explained, those that are explained reflect the best explanation of event(s) sequence based upon the known facts. Should additional evidence or information become available, the analyst will consider its importance and may revise portions of the event analysis."

The last part of that sentence is an option Bevel decided to take; after looking at all the evidence, he changed his mind and now agrees with the defense's theory.



The Prosecution's Theory

Here is the theory of Peggy Hettrick's murder and mutilation that was presented by prosecutors of the Larimer County District Attorney's Office during Masters' 1999 trial, the one to which Bevel testified:

Angry that her on-again, off-again boyfriend was having drinks with another woman, Hettrick decided shortly before last call to leave a popular local tavern called The Prime Minister―which is today the location of The Olive Garden on South College Avenue―and head for home.

The tavern is about 15 minutes away from her apartment on foot, but she must walk down dark Landings Drive and chooses to walk on the west side of the road rather than the east side, which has a sidewalk.

Despite the darkness and the late hour, she is spotted by Timothy Masters, a 15-year-old who sees her from his bedroom in a single-wide mobile home he shares with his father. It's an unfortunate happenstance for Hettrick; almost four years ago to the day, Masters' mother had died unexpectedly and he had been fantasizing about killing and mutilating a woman who resembles her as a means of venting his feelings of abandonment. An expert witness would call it "displaced matricide" more than a decade later. An avid sketch artist, Masters has reams of drawings and short stories depicting all manner of violent death … until this moment, pencil and paper have been the media through which he lived out his fantasies.

Masters grabs one of his survival knives from a collection of a half dozen, as well as another extremely sharp blade, either a scalpel or an X-Acto knife, and a flashlight. He slips out of the house without waking his father.

He creeps up on Hettrick, knowing that he has to kill her quickly in an ambush-style attack that would give him the advantage of surprise. Masters is slightly built―he weighs only about 125 pounds―but stabs Hettrick with enough force to break her rib and drive the blade through her left lung and into her heart.

Her death is quick but not pretty―blood is filling her lung, and Hettrick is likely spewing the blood from her mouth and nose, yet only a small pool of blood is found by the curb.

Masters then drags Hettrick's dead weight more than 100 feet into the field and positions the body in a place where he can see if from his bedroom. He pushes up her blouse and pulls down her pants and underwear. Holding a flashlight in one hand and his scalpel in the other, he performs a difficult surgical operation with great precision, especially considering that her legs are bound around the knees by her jeans―making the cuts to her vagina all the more difficult―and that he's only seen the female anatomy in pornographic magazines.

Once the crime is complete, he sneaks back into his house without waking his father, and goes to bed. He gets up in the morning, eats breakfast and walks past the body on his way to school, making a slight detour to take a bit of a closer look before hustling off to catch the school bus.

If this theory is true, Masters has managed to murder Hettrick, move her body more than 100 feet from the curb to the field and mutilate her breast and genitals without leaving a single trace of himself on or near her body. And although blood saturates Hettrick's clothing and marks a bright path from the curb to where she was left, Masters gets none on his clothes, weapons or shoes.

When police later search his house―including the plumbing, for evidence that he might have flushed or washed blood, hair or body parts down the drain―they don't find a trace of physical evidence from Hettrick.

The murder is solved after police piece the crime together from Masters' drawings. None depict the murder as it happened―with one figure stabbing another in the back―but there is a picture of one person dragging another by the armpits. The person being dragged is shot full of arrows.



The Defense's Theory

The defense has a different interpretation of the crime scene, and while it differs vastly from the prosecution's version of events, it starts in the same place, on a barstool at the Prime Minister.

There again, in the early morning hours of Feb. 11, 1987, Hettrick is angry that her sometimes boyfriend showed up to have drinks with someone else.

But as the defense theorizes, she doesn't leave alone―she leaves with someone else and is dead within an hour.

Shortly after she is last seen leaving the Prime Minister not long after 1 a.m., Hettrick is in the passenger seat of a car being held at knifepoint. The knife is not one with a jagged saw-blade top edge like those Masters owns, but rather a blade with a single sharp edge and an opposite blunt edge. Her assailant is either driving or is a passenger in the back seat, and to control her, he has his right arm circled around her, the blade of the knife held to her right cheek.

Hettrick doesn't go along with her abduction quietly. The knife cuts into her face, breaking the skin; she opens the car door and sticks her right booted foot onto the pavement from the moving car, preparing to jump.

But before she can leap, the assailant plunges the knife into her back. Again, it is a fast but spasmodic death; her lung fills with blood and she aspirates it through her mouth and nostrils trying to breathe before bleeding to death.

The assault isn't over; in fact, it is just beginning. No one has guessed exactly where, but she is taken to a place where she is disrobed and surgically mutilated. Her left nipple and skin around her vagina are removed with skillful precision, the cuts showing a textbook knowledge of anatomy and requiring the assistance of at least one other person. An OB/GYN who later reviewed the autopsy photos wrote in an affidavit that most surgeons wouldn't have been able to make the cuts to Hettrick with such precision, even in a clinical setting. The front of her body and her face, now pale with blood loss, are cleaned of blood. Whoever wiped her down left a long line on either side of her buttocks and thighs, a clear delineation between the blood that had settled under her as she lay face up and the area that had been washed clean.

The assailants―at least two people―put Hettrick's body into a car and drive to a somewhat deserted street in south Fort Collins, part of a neighborhood still under some development. On one side of Landings Drive are spacious newer homes, owned by doctors and lawyers. On the other are a scattering of mobile homes and lumber piles. The area is new enough that not even streetlamps have been installed yet.

The car stops on the west side the street across from a flat dirt field. Hettrick's body, which had been re-clothed, is placed on the curb in an upright position, her large pink purse positioned on her left arm. Blood flows freely down her back from the stab wound, dripping off her wool-lined coat. It pools in the gutter and flows a short distance down the street.

One person grabs Hettrick's wrists and the other her ankles. They carry her into the field, her coat brushing the ground, marking their course with a broad stroke of bright red blood. When the two people reach a steep embankment leading to the field from the road bed, the person holding her ankles drops them to the ground; the person holding her hands grabs her around the waist from behind and drags her down the embankment. Her boots leave long furrows in the soft dirt; in that position, with the body being more upright than horizontal, no blood flows from her wound. Once on flat ground, they pick her up again and carry her another 80 or so feet into the field, her coat again painting the route red. She is left facing the sky, her blouse pushed up over her breasts, her jeans and underwear bunched around her knees.

The people who carried her walk back to the curb where the blood has pooled, back to where the car waits.

To this day, they have never been identified. The best clue is that one of them wore men's Thom McCann dress shoes; footprints were found straddling the blood trail near the curb, and returning to the street from the direction of where the body was left.



***

As mentioned, both of these scenarios are theories. The first resulted in Masters being convicted of murder; the second, his lawyers hope, will result in a new trial on the charge.

His defense team says theirs is a more logical course of events than the one argued by the prosecution. It explains the cut on her right cheek, and it explains the fact that what has been described as a "drag trail" is actually mostly a blood trail. Crime scene photos show heel drag marks only down the embankment leading from the road―the rest is only a blood trail from the bottom of the embankment to the body.

There is at least one important person who agrees: Tom Bevel, the prosecution's original crime scene analyst. Masters' lawyers sent him all of the crime scene photos and asked him to reassess the likely course of events.

Bevel wrote in his April 26, 2007 letter that he's now more in agreement with the defense's version of events. He agreed that the stab wound was more consistent with a blade that has a blunt top edge rather than a saw-toothed edge; he agrees that there are no drag marks along much of the blood trail ("This indicates that the victim was dragged part of the way and carried part of the way from the curb to her resting position as found," Bevel wrote. "This can be accomplished by one person, but would be easier if accomplished by more than one person") and that the autopsy photos showed aspirated blood in Hettrick's nose and mouth, but that no mention is made of it in the police reports.

"Based upon the additional information and re-analysis," Bevel concluded, "the possibility of the victim having been attacked in another location and then transported to this location is the best explanation to comport with all of the physical evidence and information available for this analysis