It’s nice to see Tim Masters get a payoff. It’d be nicer to see Terry Gilmore, Jolene Blair, and Jim Broderick get prison sentences instead of possibly losing their jobs, but we all know cops and prosecutors don’t get put away for ruining lives. That’s what they’re best at.
From The Denver Post:
A $5.9 million settlement reached Tuesday between the city of Fort Collins and Timothy Masters means his legal fight against those who pushed for his murder conviction is over.
In February, Larimer County agreed to a $4.1 million settlement with Masters, bringing his total settlement package to a tax-free $10 million.
Masters can now financially restart a life that was dramatically detoured during the 10 years he served in prison for the 1987 slaying of Peggy Hettrick.
That murder conviction was overturned in 2008 by DNA evidence, leading to a civil-rights lawsuit in federal court against Larimer County and Fort Collins officials for wrongful imprisonment.
“He can finally get his life back together and be financially secure for the rest of his life,” said Masters lawyer David Lane. “He can decompress and move forward.”
In their case against Masters, prosecutors Terry Gilmore and Jolene Blair, both now Larimer County judges, used a psychological theory in the absence of any physical evidence to persuade a jury to convict Masters.
Masters’ lawsuit sought damages under civil-rights law, saying Gilmore and Blair violated his constitutional rights by using selected and manufactured evidence to falsely accuse him. The two denied the accusations.
Masters was released in 2008 after advanced DNA testing found no trace of his genetic material, but did uncover DNA that may point to another suspect. There has been no new arrest in the case.
Masters’ attorneys also discovered that the prosecutors and then-Detective Jim Broderick concealed evidence that would have aided Masters at his 1998 trial.
And from my favorite locals on the beat, West Denver CopWatch, something you may not know about the case (I sure as hell didn’t):
In 1987 a thirty-seven year old Peggy Hettrick’s sexually mutilated body was found in a field next to fifteen year old Masters’ trailer. What then ensued was such a shit storm that in 1999, twelve years after the sexual homicide occurred, Masters was convicted to first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Lt. Jim Broderick and the County Prosecutors, Blair and Gilmore, conspired to convict Masters on fabricated, falsified, and counterfeit evidence, while at the same time failing to disclose exculpatory evidence that would prove that Mr. Masters had nothing to do with the murder.
Tim Masters only true crime was that he was a poor kid growing up in a city and country that doesn’t give two shits about those who ain’t got. You think Masters would have had to endure this had he lived in a McMansion. No, in fact the most probable suspect, Richard Hammond, who committed suicide after it was discovered that he had been video tapping his wife, daughter, and other females vagina’s through a hidden camera he installed in his house did reside in a McMansion right next to where her body was discovered. Hammond was an eye surgeon and experts believe that precision cutting was required in extracting the labia and nipple of Ms. Hettrick , skills which Hammond clearly had and Masters clearly did not. Upon discovering the voyeuristic and despicable habits of Hammond, the Fort Collins PD and Larimer County DA office destroyed an entire storage units worth of video tapes and pornographic material that may have contained the very footage of Ms. Hettrick’s murder.
