Tim Masters Back In Ft. Collins

After nearly a decade, Tim Masters returned to Fort Collins this afternoon. He could be a free man within 24 hours.

On Sunday, in his mind's eye, Masters could imagine the moment clearly - a packed courtroom, a judge's ruling, a bang of the gavel and freedom.

It never occurred to him that he'd be sitting in prison on a Friday afternoon, flipping through a book on Chevrolet engines, when he'd get a phone call that would mean he was tantalizingly close to being released from prison.

"It's not completely sunk in yet," he said in a telephone interview Sunday afternoon from the Buena Vista Correctional Complex. "Hopefully, it will feel real really soon."

It had been 48 hours since Masters, 35, had learned that he was on the verge of seeing his murder conviction overturned.

"I never imagined it would go down like this," he said. "I thought it would be in court. The way things were going, I expected this to last into the summer at least."

The Rocky Mountain News