MURDERED: Peggy Hettrick Part 2

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Hi, crime junkies.

I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

And I'm Brits.

And we are here to bring you part two of Peggy Hetrick's story.

This is the story we took out on tour, thanks to Pluto TV and State Farm.

And when we left off, Tim had just been exonerated.

He won a $10 million judgment after they wrongly not only accused but convicted him.

He spent 10, almost 10 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

But when he gets out, that leaves everyone wondering who really killed Peggy Hetrick.

And in one of Tim's filings, one of the things his lawyer said is that there were other viable suspects, and they were not wrong based on our investigation into the case.

So I want to talk about those today.

All right, when talking about people we should be looking at, viable potential suspects.

The first that comes up is Peggy's on again, off again boyfriend, Matt Zollner, who was 29 in 1987.

And every detective, I think, has their person, right, that they look into the most.

And for Linda Wheeler, it is Matt.

Now, Ray Martinez, one of the detectives we talked about who was like first on the scene for Peggy's case last time, he said a lot of people were quick to write Matt off.

Maybe because of his behavior, like he was acting how they expected, maybe because he had an alibi.

If you remember, Matt said that he had met that woman, maybe Sean, again, just met her, didn't even remember her name, but he was with her till last call.

Then she's at his place till like 3, 3.30 in the morning.

And a lot of what you'll see about Peggy's death is that she died between 1 and 3 a.m.

which, yes, Matt would have an alibi.

Except when we got access to a lot of the investigative files, what we realized is in the report, it's actually a wider range.

I mean, they settle on one to three, but the true range of time is between 1 a.m.

and 5 a.m.

Meaning that there's potentially an hour and a half, two hours that Matt is unaccounted for if she died like in those like later timeframe.

The other thing, which I haven't told anyone yet, I've been saving this up my sleeve, is that when Peggy was found, in her purse was a note that she had written to Matt, seemingly that very evening she died.

And so, Britt, I'm going to have you read the note.

Matt, I need your help.

Sharon has got my keys and isn't home.

No answer.

If I have to knock on your door at two, please don't be a grump.

I don't want to spend the night sleeping in the hall.

Peg.

But this note is in Peggy's bag.

Like Matt doesn't have it.

No, no, this is in her bag.

And so Matt actually lived even closer to the prime minister than Peggy did.

So there are like, you know, two possibilities here.

Either she goes and like puts this on Matt's door and then she goes out.

She ends up getting back into her place and then goes back to Matt's and collects the note because she no longer needs to show up at his place at 2 a.m.

Or she writes the note.

goes out, ends up getting back into her place before she ever drops the note off.

Doesn't need the note at all.

She's in.

It It doesn't even matter anymore.

And it's like a moot point.

It's like living in her person.

Maybe she forgot about it.

I don't know.

And did Matt see the note?

Like, what did he say about it?

Well, that's the thing.

So based on the files that I've seen, it doesn't appear like they ask him about it, which like maybe they're just writing it off.

But to me, it feels like it feels really interesting.

Like, did, did she plan on coming to your place?

Did you know she was planning on coming to you?

Did she mention it to you?

Like something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we know they spoke and that like him, her coming to his house was never a part of the story he told when they spoke.

so just a reminder of his story so matt drove that night because he was kind of bopping around to different places and he said that when he got to the prime minister peggy was arriving at the same time they are like at the bar they're chatting for a little bit like everything's normal and then his date this girl he's supposed to meet up with comes again maybe sean is he thinks is her name they just met that night and he says that he offered Peggy a ride.

She said yes originally, but then like at some point in the evening, he went to the bathroom.

He's coming out.

Peggy's leaving.

So he's like, oh, she must have changed her mind.

Whatever.

He stays till last call with maybe Sean, and then they go back to his place till 3 or 3:30.

Now, he does tell police, though, that even though their conversation was normal, it was great.

She made mention, Peggy did, that she was seeing someone new during this time, which he thought police should know.

You haven't mentioned that at all.

So my question is, like, was she actually seeing someone or

was she seeing her Onagan Afghan boyfriend Matt with someone new?

She's like, oh, I too am newly in love.

He's so hot and so rich.

So tall.

Better looking than you.

Don't even worry about me.

Like, was she bluffing?

I don't know.

I don't know.

So there's like some indications that maybe she was seeing someone, like casually.

I think it's also important to know that like Matt is that guy she would always go back to there in Colorado.

And so much so that I found out that earlier in that week, I mean, they had had dinner together.

Also, apparently, though, as far as I can tell, not something that police asked him about, which is like seems like a miss to me because, like,

they're very much in each other's lives.

And, like, what did you talk about?

What were the days leading up to it?

I don't know.

Well, and the police don't ask about the note.

They don't ask about this dinner within like the week before she died.

Did they even ask about his alibi?

They did.

They did check his alibi.

They found maybe Sean.

And our reporter, Emily, actually found her all these years later and spoke to her.

Turns out maybe Sean, her name is actually Dawn.

Matt, you were so close.

And her story is interesting.

It adds a little bit of context, a little bit of color.

She says that they really did just meet earlier that night.

They had saw each other in another bar and she said they recognized each other because Matt, like a while ago, had sold her a car.

So like they'd been in the same orbit before, but didn't even know each other's names, clearly.

Yeah.

She said Matt came over to her and was like, hey, you know, when when you're done with your friend, you should come to Prime Minister and hang out with me, which is what she did.

She said she shows up later in the evening.

And when she walks in, Matt is talking to this other woman, who she figures out later is Peggy, didn't know Peggy at the time.

And she says she kind of hangs back for a little while and waits, but a couple minutes go by.

He's still talking.

So she decides to approach him.

As soon as she approaches, Peggy like turns at the bar and starts talking to the guy next to her.

And so Dawn just made the assumption that Peggy was with that other guy.

And Matt doesn't introduce Dawn or anything.

He just is like, hey, go get a table.

So Dawn goes to get a table for four, thinking that maybe the other couple is going to join them, but just Matt comes back.

And she says she didn't ask him about it.

She didn't even ask him about the woman when she realized Matt's like kind of keeping an eye on her all night.

Like they just met.

She doesn't know the history, but like she's not going to dig too deep.

They're like having a decent time.

And they do.

They stay till last call.

She goes home with Matt.

They talk, they kiss a little.

She says the night ends for like a combination of reasons.

Like, you know, he's doing the like, oh, like, I got to work in the morning.

And then he also makes this comment about how he hates kids, like, not like dislikes kids, like hates them.

And Dawn is like, well, I have one of those.

So this probably isn't going to work out.

And so she ends up leaving.

But when she talked to us, there was something else that she told us that really stood out to her.

She said that when she was in his apartment that night, it felt strange because she said it was so clean, like not just clean for a boy kind of apartment, but like, she's like, I couldn't find, you know, a piece of clothing on the closet floor.

I, there was not a fork to be found in the sink.

Like, it felt like no one lived there, which was weird at the time, whatever.

But she said, what was really strange for her was that police brought her back at some point years later and they were asking her questions about Matt's apartment specifically.

And they were asking her, her, like, had you seen a broken coffee table?

Had you seen some spots on the floor?

And they're like showing her pictures of the apartment.

And we're going to have one of these pictures up.

I, I think like you, we talked about this.

We're like originally imagining like a shattered coffee table.

When I hear broken table, it is a broken table, very obviously.

It's like this like piece of wood propping up one of the legs.

Like one of the legs is broken and now it has a piece of wood.

Fully something my husband would like do and then be like, it's fine for years if it was his apartment.

Yes.

So, and then the spots, like, they're not like overtly blood or anything.

There's just a couple of them.

I don't know if they ever get those tested.

And again, Dawn is saying, no, I never saw any of that because again, it's so clean.

But she said that wasn't even really the takeaway for her.

As they're showing her these pictures, the takeaway for her is like, that's not the apartment I was in.

Which it was like full body chills when she was telling us that.

And it's not like it was a completely different.

She said it looked the same.

The layout was the same.

But this one looked lived in.

So lived in.

I mean, if you see the pictures, there's like laundry everywhere.

There's like stuff on the counters.

Like, make no mistake, this dude lives here.

Which I don't want to discredit Don's memory at all, but like we know human memory is incredibly flawed.

There's a million statistics on it.

I won't go through all of them, but there's one from the Innocence Project that's something like 70% of wrongful convictions come down to witness misidentification or misremembering.

And that's like in the most perfect of circumstances, right?

Like in this case, like it's in the middle of the night, it's dark.

They'd been drinking like this.

And when they're showing her these pictures, I mean, this is like years later.

Right.

So yes, I mean, there could be like, and I don't even know what to like make of this memory other than it's just so strange.

But there were other strange things about Matt as well.

Like when they went to talk to him the first like day or two after they found Peggy.

They did search his car in his place.

And apparently they seized some wet clothes and shoes from his car and wet wet clothes from his apartment.

And not like damn.

I mean, they said it looked like he'd gone swimming in these things.

But strangely, like a couple of days later, Matt comes asking for those things back and they just give them back.

Like, sorry, we didn't like wash and fold them for you.

I mean, you say strangely, but a couple of days later, they were all in on Tim.

I know, I know.

But when you think about like at some point, I don't know what was happening years later.

I think it was like the, probably the grand jury.

They're looking at these pictures.

They're asking Dawn about them.

I think the implication was, did something happen in Matt's apartment after Dawn left, right?

Like we've got this maybe one and a half to two hours.

Did a table break?

Did these spots come after you left the house?

And I point that out specifically because there's one other thing that they collected early on that I think is important.

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Outside of Matt's apartment, they also found some footprints that matched the shoes Peggy was found in when she was killed and a pile of like 11 cigarette butts in the brand that Peggy was known to smoke outside of his place.

Which the shoe prints, I can kind of like excuse, right?

Like she has this note, she might have been there to drop it off, then pick it up, such as it was in her purse.

Like, okay, but the cigarette butts, like that is a stakeout amount of cigarette butts.

I know.

I know.

And when they talked to her friends, and this is like the little piece that comes out in that, like, when I talk about the 2D image of her in the newspaper, when they talk to her friends, her friends did say, you know, it wouldn't have been that unusual.

She gets jealous of like when it comes to Matt.

It wouldn't have been weird if she saw him with another woman that night and then she went to his place to, we know she left ahead of them.

Did she stake it out to see if he brought Dawn home?

Did she stay and see if Dawn stayed or if Dawn left?

And if she was still there when Dawn left, then did something happen?

Was there a confrontation at Matt's apartment?

The problem with that is it doesn't fit the theory that the attack happens in the field.

I know.

Like there's pieces that are missing because in my mind, like if something happens with Matt, like it is a heat of the moment, like passion thing.

It's hard for me to imagine a world where either something happens in his apartment or even he like gets her in the car and then takes her to this place where someone could see something takes her out of the car stabs her drags her like it like i can't i can't make it up it doesn't make sense and i guess my question too is was matt a violent person was their relationship volatile because they've been on and off for a while like was there a history of that there's nothing like reported that i can find in matt's like criminal history he doesn't have anything violent i mean there's like some duis and stuff like that but no like domestic charges nothing nothing like that, which is why I go back to, I think if something happened between them, it was heat of the moment.

But like, it's hard for me to imagine it happening at Matt's.

And then if not, it's hard for me to imagine how Matt gets her in the middle of that field.

I mean, the biggest question, does Matt have Tom McCann shoes?

No.

So they didn't find any Tom McCann dress shoes.

They did take note of like a pair of boots that were like propped up against his couch, but Don says those were the boots he was wearing the night Peggy died.

They're not the prints that match anything in the field.

And I get the sense that, like, those were his nice shoes.

Like, he didn't have a lot of dress shoe guy.

Right.

And so, maybe for all of those reasons, he didn't have Tom McCanns.

He maybe had an alibi.

He was acting how they expected him to act.

Early on, people wrote him off, even though he too, like Tim, failed a polygraph.

And he failed the question: do you know who killed Peggy Hetrick?

Like the question.

Yeah.

but the polygrapher decided that he was probably telling the truth.

And so that's Matt.

Now, the other person we came across in the case file was a guy named Donnie Long.

So the same year that Peggy was murdered, there were two more murders.

39-year-old Linda Holt was stabbed nine times, bound, gagged, tied to a tree.

Now, like Peggy's case, there was no sexual assault, but unlike Peggy's case, there was no mutilation to Linda.

Then a couple of months after her, 30-year-old Mana Hughes is murdered.

She's stabbed 14 times.

No sexual assault.

Again, though, no mutilation.

Now, pretty quickly, police kind of pull Peggy out of this, even though you've got three cases that happen within nine months of each other, within 30 miles in an area that doesn't really see violent crime.

Well, and all the victims are like kind of in the same age range, 37, 39, 30.

My crime junkie brain goes, their last names all start with H, Hedge, Hughes, Holt.

That's deck investigates frame.

I know, but like, I think it's about the mutilation.

I think that's the why very early on they were like, Peggy doesn't fit in this pattern.

And they end up finding the guy responsible for Linda and Mona.

They end up getting this Donnie Long guy.

Donnie ends up confessing to Linda and Mona's murders.

So they at least do the bare minimum though.

And like when he confesses to these, they like circle circle back and they're like, hey, you're saying you did these two things.

Did you do this other thing?

He's like, no, I didn't.

And they're like, okay, thank you guys.

Like truly the bare minimum.

And we're just out here like believing serial killers.

Like, this is not the first time we've seen this happen.

No.

It always confuses me.

Shocks me.

This happened recently where I'm like working on this case out of Washington that I've been working on for like two years.

And me and one of our reporters, Emily, we had a call with the FBI because we're like, listen, we're not saying it's Israel Keys, but here's like 20 things we find very odd that we like feel like someone other than us should know.

And

the agent was like, yeah, like, okay, we'll talk to you, but like, we don't need to hear it.

He only killed four people in the state.

And I'm like, wait, how do you know he only killed four people in Washington?

I feel like that's like news.

Yeah.

And he's like, but he told us that.

And I was like, Israel Keys told?

So of all the bad guys to believe, we're believing Israel Keys.

Israel Keys.

Okay.

So he said he didn't do it.

So they think he didn't do it.

We tried tried to write to him when he was in prison just to see if he would talk to us.

We haven't heard back from him.

Which brings me to the third person I want to go deep into.

And I told you, everyone has like their person, like detectives.

And for Ray Martinez, this next one is his.

And for me, he's the person, whether or not he had anything to do with Peggy's case, I am very interested in because I think there is a much bigger story behind him.

And that is local ophthalmologist, Dr.

Richard Hammond.

Now, in 1987, this dude is raising no red flags.

He has a thriving practice.

He has a wife, two teenage kids, like live in the American dream.

Except for, you know, the one red flag they raised about Tim in that he lived really close to the crime scene.

In fact, you could see the crime scene from his primary bedroom window.

But he wasn't doodling.

No, God forbid.

So, I I mean, he was a part of the initial canvas where they like came around.

Did you see anything, hear anything?

Him and his wife were home that night, but they didn't see or hear anything.

And so they moved on.

Again, no red flags.

Plenty of red flags, though, come March of 1995.

That's when a young woman at Colorado State University found this note card on their like job board for someone who needed a house sitter.

The Hammonds were going out of town.

She was going to come house sit.

She brought her friend with her and, you know, she's getting the tour of the house.

Your room will be in the basement.

You can use this bathroom, but you know, make yourself at home.

Use the house, whatever.

So her and her friend are there.

They're hanging out.

There's something weird about the basement bathroom.

Like they keep hearing something.

Now,

I imagine if it were me and I was by myself,

I would be like, I'll just use the upstairs bathroom.

But she's not alone.

She has a friend with her.

Right.

You got your crime junkie BFF with you, and you're like, today's the day we're going to solve the mystery.

Absolutely.

So they start snooping around, right?

Like they get a flashlight, they're going all around the bathroom,

and it's like they turn the light on, they hear the sound, they turn the light off, there's no sound on, off, on, off.

And I imagine that like one of them is like at the light, and the other one's like, okay, shh, and like kind of darting around the room trying to hear the sound from like where it's coming from.

Well, they end up getting a flashlight and they realize that there are cameras in the vents.

Plural cameras.

Cameras.

But the cameras aren't set up like in the bathroom.

They're set up from the room next door.

So they go out the hall and go to that room, but the door, the knob is like, won't turn.

It's locked.

And again, if I were alone, I'd be like, is this where I stop?

But you have your BFF with you.

I don't know how to pick a lock, but I'm about to find out.

So they get their paperclips, whatever.

And as they're like getting ready to pick this lock, what they realize is that even though it was locked, the knob wouldn't turn.

When it was pulled shut, it didn't latch all the way.

So all they have to do is push it open.

And when they go inside, they see cameras.

They see recording equipment.

They see filing cabinets and a quote, uncountable amount of videotapes.

And that's when the one girl freezes and she's like, I think we need to phone a friend.

Yeah.

Like, I think they're hoping that this isn't as bad as they think it is.

But when they phone this friend and they call somebody who used to be a cop, he, quote, knows a lot about videotapes, very 1995.

But he gets here and he's like, no, this is worse.

We need to call the real police.

Quickly, the real police descend on this place and it's just

worse than you could have imagined.

I mean, they even find this index on top one of the filing cabinets and it's like, got ages, names, dates.

Is it a shower shot?

Is it a toilet shot?

Is it a close-up shot?

And when I say close-up, this isn't just someone sitting on the toilet.

I mean, this is zoomed into their genitals.

And many of these names on the list are minors, like kids his kids go to school with.

Well, and with the close-ups, it makes me think of like Peggy.

I mean, she was, she had genital mutilation.

I know.

And that's not the only like thing they're piecing together.

So, like, because this is happening in the same place, it's a lot of the same people who were called for Peggy's case, one of them being Sergeant Ray Martinez.

And he says when he first gets this call to respond, he's like, Hammond, like, why do I know the name Hammond?

And then it hits him.

He's like, during our canvassing, we went to his house.

And then all of a sudden, he's like, putting the pieces together.

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So I'm tying this together.

Weird cameras,

crime scene near the crime scene back then, and he's a doctor.

And guess what we find in his closet?

We start looking through his closet and we find Tom McCann's shoes.

Boy, does that ever ring a bell?

And so we called up.

Broderick, this other detective did,

and he refused to come out.

He wouldn't come to the scene.

He said, no, we already know who done it.

It's a moot point, basically.

When Jim Roderick said that and the officer told me about it,

I was angry about it because me as a past detective, you don't overlook anything.

You flip over every stone that you can.

You might be wrong where your lead was.

Maybe this is something different.

Why not look at what's it going to hurt?

Right?

But he refused to come out.

So I told the officer that I said, let's just seize everything.

Let's seize the tapes, seize the camera, seize those tomato shoes.

You know?

So we did.

We collected our own evidence and turned everything in.

And it never went anywhere.

And I think a day or two days later, he's found dead in a hotel in Denver.

They said, from what I've learned, that when they found him, his whole body was shaved.

He shaved all the hair off his head and his body, complete body, and disposed of it.

So that to me is weird other than he didn't want any trace evidence linked to him.

Why would you do that if he didn't think you might have left something behind at a scene?

That to me is

also weird.

Full-on naked mole rat in a hotel room?

Dude, I don't know what to think of this.

I, if you like, look at what the people around him said who were like supportive of him in a way of saying like he couldn't do anything violent.

They would say that he was very into bodybuilding.

I, you know, I still try and find like old archives of like, were there competitions?

Like, was this something he was actively doing for how long?

Cause like, I want to know, is this guy near smooth all the time or just on this day that he died?

Feels important.

I don't know.

But the people who supported him and supports the wrong word because nobody was like, well, we'll get there.

But his wife basically was like, I didn't know like any of the videotape stuff was happening, but he's not capable of something violent.

But how would she even know?

Like she didn't know about the tapes.

Like, how would she even have any idea of what he's capable of?

And that's the thing I like, I have such a hard time understanding.

Like we tried reaching out to her.

We weren't able to get in touch.

But I.

I don't know how like she was because she said she was totally blindsided.

She like didn't have any idea what was happening in her home, which is just like quick psa to people like if your husband has a locked room in the basement maybe go in it of yeah of you're the home you share you're allowed to ask questions but i don't know what their dynamic was like you know when they gave her immunity deal to talk she paints like a very vanilla picture of their life she says that like she would make dinner from scratch he'd come home at 7 p.m they'd eat dinner together as a family their kids would do homework and then like they wouldn't even watch tv like they were you know all-american family i don't think pbs was showing what hammond was into i don't think so either but anyways, it seemed like, again, she didn't, at least from what I've seen, didn't give any indication that there was like dark parts of her marriage.

She was surprised by this.

So he gets arrested.

He gets released on a $5,000 bond.

And it's when he's released that he goes to that Denver hotel and he dies by suicide.

He has a cyanide drip to his leg that, I mean, is so corrosive, it gets like down to the bone.

And it's interesting the way that things play out after he dies, because when I say like people supported him, there were people who kind of came out of the woodwork and there was like this battle when you look at the newspapers of like reporters reporting on what happened and then people saying that they shouldn't because it's just making things worse.

And it kind of all starts with Richard's suicide notes.

I'm gonna have you read that.

The media frenzy surrounding my arrest has caused immeasurable harm to many people, especially my family.

I've lost everything, but I cannot survive the loss of my wife and son and daughter.

My death should satisfy the media's thirst for blood so that hopefully everyone else who has been affected by this case can truly begin the process of healing.

I love redacted family names very much.

I am truly sorry for hurting you so deeply.

Rich Hammond.

So he puts it on the media that, yes, I did this thing, but like I have to die because they're so bloodthirsty.

They like they're making this bigger than it has to be and they're hurting people and like, I'm just going to go away because of what they're doing.

Well, and not even what he did.

He says like, who has been affected by this case?

Not by what

he did.

That's true.

So then this is when the back and forth comes.

And there are people who come out in support of what he said.

And like, the media should just stop.

We should drop it.

Like, there's this active campaign to just make this go away.

And just to prove the point, I want you to read something.

Not the whole thing, but part of what was written by a woman named Pam Hurley Nagel in the paper.

It saddens me that the Colorado and other media flits chose to feast on Richard Hammond's tragic plight.

I don't condone his alleged behavior, which was limited to the privacy of his own home.

Collective gasped.

That's like the craziest part to me.

Yeah.

But the media exploited a man and his family's vulnerability.

Don't think anybody else's vulnerability was.

Okay, okay.

Rich Hammond was a man and doctor who took time to replenish his society with quality medical care.

What he allegedly did was wrong, but in the scheme of things, the hurt he caused was exaggerated after the media got its predatory claws in it.

Was it?

Here's the thing.

I don't think that's a question we can answer because of how things unfold next.

So

after his arrest and his death, they continue to find more things.

They find a secret storage unit no one knew about with rubber-made tub after rubber-made tub of more videotapes, pornographic materials, receipts, sex toys.

They find out he had a secret bank account that people didn't know about.

They find this like waistbelt contraption that like hooked onto his belt and had all these little like sharp instruments that came out of it.

Like, what do you need that for?

But the reason I say we don't know the extent is because after all this is collected, everything from his home, from this storage unit, it is all taken and over the course of like eight hours,

burned, like completely destroyed.

And Jim Broderick, like some people were at least asking questions about this.

And our guy, Jim Broderick, is back to give a quote to the Denver Post about why they destroyed all of this evidence in this case.

And he said, quote, should we re-victimize all these women by telling them they are victims?

So really, it's an effort to protect them, to preserve these victims' rights.

Oh, Ashley, words are important to me.

They're important to you.

They're important to our crime junkies.

What he's saying here,

like, I cannot make sense of it.

Like, re-victimizing them by telling them

they're vict that's not how that works.

No, the math isn't mathing.

And the thing I have the biggest problem with is this idea, the last line, to preserve these victims' rights.

That's why we destroyed this.

By destroying it, and not like with their permission or anything.

I say, like, I get as a victim, like wanting those tapes to be destroyed.

If that existed of me, I wouldn't feel safe even with a tape like that locked in an evidence locker, but I'd want the choice.

Yeah, they didn't have it.

They made the choice for them to preserve their rights.

But by destroying it, what they did was actually take away any future right they might have for repercussions.

They can no longer go after Hammond's estate.

Were there other people on those tapes that they could go after?

We'll never know because by the way, when they destroyed everything,

they had not viewed most of it.

Like they just took it all away without knowing what was on the majority of those tapes, which is bananas to me.

And the whole way that these were destroyed, When they looked into this, this went against every policy and procedure they had in place about how to deal with evidence.

It just all goes up in smoke, literally, burned it.

Yes.

And listen, Jim Broderick would have you believe that they did this for a noble reason.

And I do think there are people out there doing noble things for noble reasons.

I haven't seen a whole lot of them.

I'd love to meet more.

Yes.

But in the theme of always going a layer deeper, which is our new crime junkie life rule, I'd like to ask not just what happened, but why do we think it happened?

Well, here's a fun fact.

In the couple of of days between when Hammond was arrested, but before he died, they were having to think about like taking this to a trial, like there could be a case around this.

And they were going to have to appoint a special prosecutor because they quickly found out that members of the DA's office, quote, had been guests at Hammond's home and may have been videotaped.

Oh, I think we have our reason for why all of that evidence was destroyed.

But they are quick to write this off.

Like, it's the same way when, like, when Tim, right, when he gets exonerated, they're like, let's just make this go away.

And when this happened, they wanted this to go away so much so that they were even writing off stories that made no sense.

Like, people were like, oh, he wouldn't have hurt Peggy because he didn't even use a scalpel.

Yes, he was a doctor in surgical precision, all that, but he didn't even use scalpels.

But like, a guy who he ran the practice with is like, yeah, we absolutely do.

And there's an affidavit from a woman who's like, he literally used a scalpel on me.

And just to show you how far under the rug they were pushing this thing, everything in the paper, like at the time, was about the videotapes or whatever.

Nobody publicly was connecting this guy to Peggy Hetrick in 1995.

And nobody was telling Peggy's family about him, even behind the scenes.

Tom didn't find out about Dr.

Hammond until years later.

And the way he found out was bananas.

I remember a few years ago, they talked about a doctor.

I was coming out of the village inn with my friend, and he looked at the newsbox, Rocky Mountain News, and had Peggy's picture on the front cover of the newspaper.

And he said, hey, Tom, that's your sister.

And so he got the newspaper.

We went back into the village inn.

I read it.

I skimmed over it.

I went, what?

Who is this doctor?

You know, nobody's ever told me about this guy.

So the defense never knew about

any of that.

Not just the Hammond stuff, but like so much of what we've talked about.

And in looking at the file, when I say there's more to be done, I mean, I also was coming across names of people it doesn't seem like they really dug into.

A guy named Craig Case, who she was like dating at the time.

Derek Cordova, who she had gone out with in the past, a guy named Tim Matthews, who apparently liked Peggy and was jealous of Matt.

And I'm not saying those guys had anything to do with anything, but to me, those are people who were clearly close to her, who hung out with her, who maybe were with her in like times leading up to her death.

They were in her circle.

I know.

And so when I say that more can be done, like I don't think we can just rely on DNA and like call it quits.

I think there's going to have to be legwork.

And I think there's still a lot of legwork that can be done even decades later.

Right.

But we know that Tim was exonerated in part by the DNA evidence.

So like, whatever happened to those partial matches.

So we did get some partial profiles and none of those matched Tim.

So there were some important ones.

There was one on the front waistband of Peggy's underwear and everything we have comes from touch DNA, right?

There was no like semen or bodily fluids.

And I think their thinking was that the killer likely was the one who pulled her pants down.

So maybe they'd get touch DNA.

Then they got some samples from under her arms, coats, boots, pants.

There was a single full profile on her sleeve, but like, guess what?

It turned out to be the police who weren't wearing gloves.

So cross that one out.

And while it hasn't been on record that they've gotten DNA from like all three of the people I've talked about, right?

Matt Zolner, Donnie Long, Richard Hammond.

I do know that they got one person's DNA for comparison.

And it is comparison, right?

There's no full profile to put into CODIS.

And one of those three people did match the touch DNA on the underwear.

Not all the places, but the touch DNA on the underwear.

And that was Matt Zollner.

So we have this partial match on one of the samples.

Why isn't that DNA alone enough to charge him?

Right, like if it was Tim's, right, it totally would have been.

Yeah.

That's the question a lot of people are asking.

And for Linda, she thinks it should be enough.

I want Matt Zollner to know that I'm still after him.

I want him to know that makeup, some little hiccup or something in his life, that he'll make a mistake that we can catch him on.

But it's like, I just,

when I know who did it and he's not held accountable and he's been free for 30 some years, that

the Attorney General did all they could and I really felt that they did.

But it's like, but I'm not done and I don't.

I don't want to be silenced.

There's still a wrong that was done.

And I still feel like something might good might come out of this case getting reopened and refocused on, that there's somebody might come up with something that's said or done that we didn't know about that allows us to take this case further and keep it opened.

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Now, I think it's important to note, I don't think that at this point you can take a case to trial just based on that one piece of DNA.

There's a lot that has to be explained at this point.

I mean, and again, it's touch DNA.

You don't know how it got there, when it got there.

And it's only one of the profiles that was found on her.

Yes.

And we know that they had contact, right?

Like they're going to dinner.

They like, they saw each other that night.

I think it is important.

I think it is meaningful.

And I think that is like, when you talk about a lead that tells you where to focus, I think that's telling you where to focus.

However, there is other DNA that's going to have to be explained away.

There is, you're going to have to prove it.

in a court of law.

And there's legwork that can be done.

You also have, when you, when I think about DNA, the Missy Woods of it all, if anyone remembers our John Bennett Ramsey episode, there is a DNA tech in Colorado who from like was there from 90s to 2023.

Her name's Missy Woods, and she was like, not following protocol, mishandling evidence, not storing things correctly.

Like, not necessarily falsifying things, but really mucking up the system.

So all of her cases are getting called into question.

I don't know if she touched this.

And I know we sent some stuff to Holland, but stuff was stored in Colorado.

Some of it was tested in Colorado.

Again, I'm only saying all of this because while I think this DNA is important, you are going to have to back it up with legwork.

Well, and for me, like Matt doesn't have this history of violence.

Even if it was something that happened in the heat of the moment, she was mutilated with surgical precision.

I know.

Matt doesn't.

Like, you don't learn that in like a heat of the moment situation.

We asked about that and people who believe that Matt did this, they think that maybe he was trying to like throw people off his trail by doing that but the precision of it i know i know and listen who's to say there isn't a world where someone killed peggy and then someone else came along and did something right like richard hammond had insomnia and could see that feel from his bedroom window i don't think he wants to call police and alert them to what he's like doing in his place you know what i mean and i'm not saying i don't know i don't know The reason that a lot of things might not fit is because maybe there isn't just one answer.

And another problem that we're going to face when it comes to like making a case is that like, you will have this Richard Hammond thing that is like very open-ended.

And it can never be buttoned up.

Right.

We don't know if Peggy was on one of those tapes because some powerful people made sure we would never know what was on those tapes, who was on those tapes.

And if you came to the live show, this is where we started to wrap things up.

But I mean, as a lot of people might have noticed by now, like the theme of these stories is going a layer deeper.

So while Britt and I were on tour, I sent some of our reporters back to Colorado to do some more digging, some more door knocking and like boots on the ground work, mostly because I couldn't shake the feeling that there is more to this Dr.

Hammond story.

Like as it relates to Peggy or like something else?

I don't know.

The way that everyone made it go away so fast and like the operation we learned he had set up feels so much bigger.

So Britt, we got our hands on some investigative reports from Hammond's case, and I was disappointed to see that police just straight up stopped investigating after he died.

I mean, not surprised, but I'm disappointed.

Again, at the time, they said it was all to protect the victims, blah, blah, blah.

But the question I have is like, no one can say for sure that Hammond didn't sell or share the tapes.

What we learned is that his video setup was professional, it was elaborate, and his tape catalogs were organized like a library.

And Hammond would even label the tapes by like date, by victims' initials.

But some of the tapes were also labeled ready.

Ready for

what?

I don't know.

Distribution to go somewhere?

Our reporting team tracked down one of Hammond's victims and she filled in some blanks for us.

And prepare to be disappointed yet again because she told us that not only did police never ask their opinions on destroying the evidence, which we assumed but when detectives were interviewing the victims they were asking these victims if they were in on it like in on it

how exactly the cops were asking these teenage girls if they were performing for the cameras like did anyone tell you where to stand and like what to do and on top of that she said that fort collins pd never once offered to let these teen girls have a parent or trusted adult in the room with them during their interviews.

So it just feels like the victims have never once had a voice in that case.

Like every decision was made for them, even after the cops basically treated them like suspects.

Oh, and remember how I told you, like we found out that like there was a file that said some of the DA's office had socialized at Hammond's, might be on the tapes, whatever.

Well, when we finally got to track down Judge Terry Gilmore, that was obviously one of the things we asked him specifically about.

We weren't able to talk to anyone else.

And he confirmed that the destruction of the tapes did go against regular policy.

And he admitted to knowing Dr.

Hammond personally before his arrest, but he says that he only socialized with him one time and that he was never at the doctor's home.

And that's kind of where that ended.

Okay.

And then there's one more thing that I want to mention before we wrap things up on Hammond.

So we got a hold of a woman who in 1988-ish went to the eye clinic where Hammond worked for an emergency.

Like her son got like Sandy Snowball lodged inside or whatever.

Now, Hammond is not not the regular doctor, but he was the one on call that weekend.

So they're alone in the eye clinic with him.

And Dr.

Hammond was treating the boy.

He's like nine or 10.

And his mom had to use the restroom.

So she went to the closest one that she could find, which was the men's stall.

But Dr.

Hammond came and like physically blocked her from using the men's restroom.

And he insisted that she had to use the women's restroom.

And she's like, okay, like whatever, dude.

And when she got inside and flipped the light switch on, she heard this like whirring so this is in 88 no one knows and won't know for years about hammond's secret taping hobby and what they ended up determining at his house is like it's the light switch so like when you turn it on that triggered it to start recording so he didn't even have to be there and she's hearing this at his office now she says in the moment She was certain it was a camera.

Not even like years later, but in that moment.

Like specifically one of those big cameras from the 80s that had that distinct sound when it turned on specifically when it focused and she even flipped the light switch off because she was like so freaked out she was like looking for a red light or any sign that she was being recorded wait did police find cameras at his practice or i mean did they even search it so it depends on who you ask ray martinez told us that they didn't But our reporters found an old article at the CSU archives that said they did search the doctor's office, but that article also had some other wrong information in it.

So I don't really know for sure.

If we even know, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, Ray Martinez worked the case.

So like I want to trust him, but like it's also been so many years, you never know.

So anyways, fast forward seven years, and this woman is like seeing the headlines about Dr.

Hammond's cameras in his basement.

And she's like, she has this like, oh my God, moment.

Like what I thought was real.

Did she tell the police about her encounter?

No, not right away.

She said that once she realized Dr.

Hammond had died, she wasn't sure what could even be done.

But as years went by, she kind of got curious as to whether she was on any of the tapes.

Then obviously she found out four comms PD had destroyed them.

And then there was no way of knowing, which tells me, again, that they burned all those tapes.

Like it's more proof to me that they did that before identifying all of the victims, that they didn't want to re-victimize by telling them they were victims.

Now, the only thing she was told by police was that there was some tapes that looked to be in a different room than the bathroom.

So clearly somewhere else was being filmed.

They never followed up with her after that.

So who knows how many victims there were?

And when Dr.

Hammond died, the case just got tossed.

And even though he had been arrested and charged, when you go to the Justice Center in Fort Collins in district court, it basically looks like Richard Hammond never even committed a crime, which is like one of the most bananas part, I think, about the whole thing.

Yeah.

It just went away.

Literally disappeared.

And I think it might take friends in high places to make that happen.

So

still looking into Hammond, I will forever be looking into Hammond.

But there was one other thing that came up as we were touring.

So another man named Randy Anglin, his name popped up because there was a note on one of Tim's lawyers, like papers or something that just said, Anglin cut off nipples too.

Which feels like an important note in this case.

Especially is what we're looking for, right?

So we're looking into him still kind of actively.

We found out that he was on this crime spree from 77 to 87 in northern Colorado, specifically really active in 87 for burglaries, sexual assaults.

I haven't found any cases where a nipple was removed yet, but we did get some records.

And those, he's like clearly escalating.

And there is a tip in Peggy's case about a car with Wyoming license plates like near the area at the time she died.

And he had a car with Wyoming license plates.

So again, more to be done on him, more to be done on everything, which is the whole point of this story is to tell people that I think it'd be really easy for police to say like, oh, or the DA's office, whatever, like it's, we've tried everything we can, it's a closed case.

There's still more that can be done and it's so obvious.

But for some reason, After Tim was released, after he won his like settlement, it just stopped.

Now, Tim did go on to write a book about his case that he self-published.

And I mean, in all these years, he's been trying to make up for lost time.

He likes to work on cars.

He works with horses.

He's spending time with people he loves.

He's making up for lost time with them.

And he even has an unexpected confidant these days.

I think it is really ironic that the

The former lead investigator in the case who came to arrest me in 1992 is actually one of my dearest friends now, Linda Holloway.

Turns out she's a really good person.

She put herself out there so much.

Linda Holloway put herself out there so much to do the right thing.

It just,

for one,

it greatly endears me to her.

I'm not good at words, but it's very endearing that she did that.

She put herself out there for me.

And it just speaks volumes to her integrity.

She's just one of those people that

she'll do the right thing thing regardless.

She does the right thing.

That's a rare person in this world.

I mean, a lot of people wouldn't go out on a limb like she did.

They would just go with the grain.

Life would have been a lot easier for her if she'd had just gone with the grain and not gone against everybody else.

As for Peggy's brother, Tom, he was diagnosed two and a half years ago with stage four colon cancer, which he said is what has made him so vocal.

He is one of Peggy's only remaining family members fighting for her.

And now he needs us to like take up that torch and fight for her.

I said, you guys have had 30 some years to do your job.

And I said, obviously, at this point, you're telling me the case is closed.

And I said, but the fella upstairs is going to, They're not getting by him.

He already knows who it is and he'll take care of this problem.

And they just all,

all their faces just turned white.

And I said,

he will get the final say.

You've had your chance.

And

I said, what's it going to take to reopen this?

Because they told me it was closed.

And they said, short of a full confession, nothing.

I said,

what?

And they said, unless somebody actually comes forward and admits to it it completely and fully, we can't reopen this case.

And I just,

I was, as far as I was concerned with that meeting, I was done.

I wanted to get out of there.

Because for over 30 some years,

I waited around.

for something

to take place for this.

And then they take somebody and they put him in prison for nine years.

And he's innocent as the driven white snow and they ruin his life to a certain extent

and then

he gets out and rightfully so and and here we are here we are today right now doing this interview and still nothing has been done about it and it's like everybody just wants to turn a blind eye to it and move on

what move on

well

you're I don't have much longer to go because I have a disease.

It'll take my life soon.

And I want something done about it.

I want the people that have the ability to do their job to get busy and do their job.

That's what they need to do.

Instead of just turning a blind eye, well, you know, it is what it is.

Case closed.

There have been a lot of mistakes in this case that I've learned through media, through the newspaper, from Linda, quite a bit from Linda.

And I'm not happy, very upset about this.

So I don't have longer to go.

So I want something done about it immediately.

So crime junkies, this is where you come in.

Our team has spent months reporting on this case, producing this live show.

We've taken it to 17 different cities with a shared goal in mind.

justice for Peggy Hedrick.

So we're asking you to join us in asking the Colorado Attorney General's office to reopen Peggy's case, assign a new investigator, and explore new DNA testing.

And we've made it super easy for you.

All you have to do is click the link below, fill out your information, and we're going to send an email on your behalf.

Literally, it could not be more simple.

This is why we do this show, and we know this is why you guys listen.

So please take a moment.

I know a lot of you who went to the show were experiencing technical difficulties.

We have crashed the attorney general's website more than once.

So this is your reminder.

If you were at the show and didn't get an email through, please do that now.

And if you're listening, please either stop what you're doing and do it now, set a reminder.

This is so important.

And Tom is really looking for your help.

And then after your email is sent, we have a special surprise for you.

For those of you who weren't able to make it to a Crime Junkie Life Rule Number 10 tour stop, or if you did join us and you just want to relive the experience as much as we do, we are actually sharing a video version of our very first stop here in Indianapolis, the hometown show.

It's in the Crime Junkie Fan Club.

You can see us present this case on stage, watch the interviews with Tim, Tom, and others involved, see maps and portions of Tim's interrogation, and so much more.

So to watch the Crime Junkie Life Rule number 10 tour and learn more about the Crime Junkie Fan Club, visit crimejunkiepodcast.com.

You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

Britt and I are actually off next week, but we will be back the following week with a brand new episode.

Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production.

So, what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?

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