Timothy Masters Relishes Freedom

Jan 26, 09:07 AM

Jan. 26--Sitting in his attorney's offices Wednesday in downtown Greeley, Timothy Masters still grappled with his newfound freedom.

"It's fantastic. It's great just not to be in a cage," said Masters in an interview with the Tribune's partners at Fox news. "I'm doing a hell of a lot better than I was a week ago."

A week ago, Masters was still serving a life sentence for the 1987 murder of Peggy Hettrick.

From the time of his 1999 conviction until Tuesday, when his conviction was overturned because of new DNA evidence, Masters had been in prison.

Friday, just three full days after his release, Masters went to the Greeley Department of Motor Vehicles to apply for a drivers license.

Afterward, he walked across the street to the Coleman, Liu, Lyons & Collins law firm, 812 8th St., where he recounted what it was like to be an innocent man in prison.

"I'm going to be angry and bitter about the things I can't get back," Masters said. "But I can't let that dominate my life."

Masters could only describe his time in prison as a "nightmare," and said while he has no idea how he survived, he never gave up.

"I was pessimistic, but I never lost hope," said Masters, who passed the nearly 10 years behind bars by reading a lot. "All you have is time to think."

Masters thought a lot about the day he came across Hettrick's body in a south Fort Collins field on the way to school, thinking it was just a mannequin.

"It was three hours before (police) showed up at school, and I realized it was a real body," said Masters who was 15 at the time. "It was out of the blue. I didn't expect it at all."

No physical evidence ever connected Masters to the murder. Instead, he was convicted on circumstantial evidence, largely due to the testimony of Dr. Reid Meloy, who said Masters' boyhood drawings implicated him.

Masters said he never imagined those drawings would someday implicate him as a killer.

"There were tons of us kids at school drawing pictures like that," he said.

As for the future, Masters said he has no idea what he will do.

Prior to being arrested, he worked as an aircraft mechanic, but with new FAA regulations since Sept. 11, 2001, Masters isn't sure he can go back to that profession.

Masters still has a hearing on Feb. 5, which he is required to attend as a condition of his $200,000 personal recognizance bond, although Larimer District Attorney Larry Abrahamson filed a motion Friday to dismiss charges against Masters.

"I hope they dismiss it, but I'm ready to go to trial," he said.

For now, Masters finds himself living a story book life.

"This is the type of stuff you read about, it's not real life," Masters said. "Right now, it's a happy ending."

Just the facts

Tim Masters was convicted in 1999 of murdering and sexually mutilating Peggy Hettrick in 1987, when he was 15 years old.

No physical evidence tied Masters to the murder, and he was convicted on circumstantial evidence.

The conviction was upheld as far as the state Supreme Court, but Masters has been in hearings since 2005 trying to get a new trial. He argued that prosecutors and police withheld information from his defense lawyers that would have resulted in an acquittal.

Late last year, special prosecutors assigned to the case from Adams County agreed that the original trial prosecutors, who are now Eighth Judicial District judges, violated pretrial discovery laws by not giving voluminous relevant information to Masters' trial lawyers.

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