Way back on February 11, 1987, Peggy Hettrick was found stabbed to death on Landings Drive in Fort Collins. A series of events ultimately led to the arrest of then 15-year old Timothy Masters – a decade later in 1997 – when he was 25.
Problem was: there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. After appealing his conviction over and over again in the years that he served in prison, his break came in 2008, when it was determined that DNA taken from the body did not match his.
A judge granted his release on January 22, 2008, and though it did take a full three years for the state to officially remove him as a suspect from the case, they did just that and announced his full exoneration from the murder in June of 2011…