Colorado county agrees to pay $4.1 million to wrongly accused man

County agrees to pay $4.1 million to Masters

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Colorado’s Larimer County has agreed to pay $4.1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was wrongly imprisoned for nearly 10 years for a slaying that remains unsolved.

Timothy Masters was convicted in 1999 in the murder of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins, but a judge overturned the conviction in 2008 after DNA evidence pointed toward another suspect. Masters, a former aircraft mechanic, was the first person freed from prison in Colorado because of DNA evidence.

Masters filed a lawsuit that claims detectives and prosecutors maliciously targeted him and destroyed or withheld evidence that could have cleared him.

Larimer County’s board of commissioners unanimously approved the settlement Tuesday morning.