A Whole Life Later · Wrongful Convictions Collective

2 - Tim Masters

September 20, 2024·48 min·20 clips

The episode opens with a content warning. It then turns to the February 11, 1987 murder of Peggy Hetrick, when a cyclist out on a sunrise ride in Fort Collins mistakes a body in a field for a mannequin and the police quickly move toward a suspect. Peggy stays at the center. She is described as a 37-year-old aspiring writer who worked at a nearby clothing store, had a half-written novel about diamond smugglers, and was remembered as creative, fun-loving, and close to her family. The scene is brutal. A blood trail stretches 103 feet from the body to a small pool by the curb, and the narration stays close to the official steps that follow as investigators try to make sense of what they think they already know. Tim comes into view as the wrongful-conviction thread. He is shown as a teenager who ends up labeled a murderer, loses the ease of moving through high school life, and eventually joins the Navy to get out from under the shadow of the case. The label follows him. Even after he does well in the Navy and gets a promotion, the case comes back when Detective Wheeler is put back on the cold case and starts working it again. The key break is strangely specific. Wheeler hears from one of Tim's friends that Tim had mentioned Peggy Hetrick's missing nipple, a detail police had not disclosed publicly, and the story uses that revelation to show how rumor, secrecy, and police knowledge can blur together. The show pushes back on that logic. A co-host steps in with incredulous reactions as the episode explains that police had asked explorer scouts to search the field for body parts when the murder originally happened, which was common in the 1980s and is no longer done. That contrast matters. The storytelling keeps returning to chronology, from the original murder scene to the July 1992 arrest warrant and Wheeler's day-and-a-half questioning of Tim in Philadelphia, so the pressure on him never feels abstract. The tone stays grave. There are flashes of dry disbelief, but the episode never loses sight of the damage done by a case that keeps circling back on the same young man. The narration also stays practical. It moves through dates, police decisions, and family context without getting lost, which makes the unfairness easier to follow and harder to dismiss. The episode leaves room for procedure. It does not treat the old investigation as neutral, and the repeated emphasis on what the police knew, what they disclosed, and what people around Tim repeated gives the case its shape. The emotional weight builds slowly. By the time the episode reaches Tim's later reflections, the story has already made clear how long the accusation followed him. The ending is plainspoken. Tim's comments about never having a normal life and trying to make up for the lost years bring the focus back to what being labeled a murderer does to an ordinary future. The episode does not rush that feeling. It lets the case remain a record of suspicion, procedure, and damage, rather than a neat puzzle with a clean moral.

As heard by us

A methodical wrongful-conviction story that treats police certainty as something to test, not trust.

The episode frames Peggy Hetrick's murder in Fort Collins as a tightly controlled wrongful-conviction story: a cyclist spots what looks like a mannequin at sunrise, the body is dragged across a field, a blood trail stretches 103 feet, and police move fast toward a suspect.

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Why you'd press play

You want a wrongful-conviction case that opens with a body in a Fort Collins neighborhood field.

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