Here is an interesting article I've found concerning him that a little over a year old. He has now spent 30 years in prison and his lawyers are pushing for dna testing in the blood collected during the crime.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1228-23.htm

Here is an interesting article I've found concerning him that a little over a year old. He has now spent 30 years in prison and his lawyers are pushing for dna testing in the blood collected during the crime.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1228-23.htm

Thanks for that link, crystaldawn. It's more of an editorial and with a very interesting author, Bianca Jagger. She raised some points I've never heard before.

I always thought this was a very tough case to analyze and evaluate guilt/innocence with all the moving parts. But I definitely agree the judge had potential bias and should have excused himself. Plus I'm always in favor of DNA testing. Ridiculous hypocrisy that law enforcement and prosecutors search relentlessly for DNA matches to prove guilt long after the crime, but feverishly resist and delay attempts of already convicted individuals to get DNA testing to potentially clear themselves. IMO, it should be automatic, and nothing with DNA evidence thrown away regardless of time lag.

I used some info in that link to find this article, indicating the judge denied Zeigler's request. He decided the DNA evidence in this case would not be sufficient to exonerate. Again, shouldn't a jury be allowed to decide that aspect? It took four months to make the ruling so obviously it wasn't clear cut: http://www.fadp.org/news/TBO-20050419.htm

Interesting case. I just watched it again for the first time in awhile (thanks to the one of DarkDante's tapes that I have).

First, the basic facts: On December 24, 1975, Eunice Ziegler, her parents, Perry and Virginia Edwards, and a man named Charlie Mays were all shot and killed inside the Ziegler furniture store. Moreover, Ziegler himself was shot once in the side. Mays was found with money and store receipts stuffed in his pockets. Ziegler called the police chief at a private party to report the crime and that he had been shot at about 9:20PM that evening. Police arrived on the scene at 9:25PM to find Ziegler stumbling out of the store.

Here are my thoughts, going through the evidence as presented one by one:

Ziegler's wife's (Eunice) body: The prosecution tries to make hey with the idea that because she was found dead with her hand in her coat pocket, she must not have been surprised before she was shot, and thus must have been shot by someone she knew, namely her husband. That to me is a non-starter: there are plenty of ways to suggest how she ended up in the position she did that don't require her knowing her assailant, so I can't see how they can offer that as any kind of proof he shot her.

Ziegler's father-in-law had type A blood, and there was type A blood on Ziegler's shirt. Since his story doesn't account for how Tommy got anyone else's blood on his shirt, it suggests his guilt: DNA evidence would settle this, of course, but back then there wasn't any. Tommy says he fought a couple of people because he was jumped as he came into the store, and claims the blood must have belonged to one of them. Could be, no real way to tell without DNA evidence.

Five guns were found, with four wiped clean of finger prints. Two of the five were inexpensive models made by a company named RG; the other three were more expensive guns, evidently all registered to Tommy Ziegler. The two cheap guns were not registered to him, but the prosecution had a witness named Felton Thomas who claimed he was a friend of one of the victims, Charlie Mays, and who further claimed that Ziegler showed two cheap guns to both he and his friend Charlie, and even allowed each of them to fire the guns off in the woods somewhere (this was actually on the night of the murders). The prosecution argued that this was done to get the fingerprints of these two on the guns, and to make sure they had gunshot residue on their hands as well: The defense points out that if this was in fact Ziegler's plan, he evidently went to an awful lot of trouble only to undermine it later by wiping the prints off the two guns. In general, this sounds like an awfully strange story. Suppose you went to Sears to pick up a washing machine you bought at 8:30PM on Christmas Eve, even though the store is closed, because the salesman has been a swell guy and agreed to meet you at the store to give you your merchandise in time for Christmas. The salesman meets you there, claims he doesn't have the key but the person who does is on the way, and in the mean time would you like to see two guns he just bought and maybe go shoot them? Wouldn't one be automatically and irrevocably suspiscious of this salesman? Doesn't it seem like an odd suggestion? If Tommy Ziegler planned it this way, he must have been counting on Felton Thomas and Charlie Mays to be completely unfazed by his actions, and I can't see how they wouldn't have been a little put off by all of this, especially on Christmas Eve. This story, in short, makes no sense to me, and relies too much on one witness's testimony. Something fishy about the whole thing.

Felton Thomas further testified that once they returned to the store, Tommy Ziegler asked one of them to cut the power to the store, which was done, and then suggested that they break into the store together. After unsuccessfully attempting to do this, they returned to Ziegler's house and got the key to the store. They then all came back to the store, at which point only Charlie, and not Felton, accompanied Ziegler inside to pick up the television they were evidently both picking up. Thomas claimed he left at this point. Once inside, Ziegler killed Mays, the prosecution claimed: The defense replies by claiming that Felton Thomas' story is a total fabrication, and that Ziegler had not so much as met Thomas before the trial. They also claim that Thomas' scenario was impossible, because it had only 21 minutes in which to unfold (this assertion is never exactly explained).

This is where the prosecution's whole story really gets hairy and unclear. From what is presented in the UM segment, their narrative goes something like this: Ziegler went into the store at some point, and killed his wife and presumably her parents. Then, he waited for Charlie Mays to arrive and pick up his television set, as had been prearranged. When Charlie arrives, he's waiting outside, but claims he has no key and is waiting for the person who does have one to show up. In the mean time, he suggests that Charlie, Fenton, and he go shoot some guns that he just bought, which they agree to do. Then, they return to the store, where Tommy asks Charlie to cut the power, which he does (I guess to get his fingerprints on the mechanism?), and then attempt to break into the store (Tommy does this so that there will be evidence of a break-in) when the police finally arrive. Next, Tommy says that the three of them will go back to his place, where they will retrieve a key, which they do, and then they all return. Charlie goes into the store with Tommy while Felton "leaves." Once inside, Tommy finally kills Charlie, wipes down all the guns except the one he uses to shoot himself. At some point in here, Ed Williams (see below) must stop by, and Ziegler must hand him one of the guns (the UM segment depicts this as happening outside the store). Finally, Tommy re-enters the store, shoots himself in the side, and calls the police.

There are so many things here that don't make sense. For the prosecution's story to work at all, Ziegler must kill his wife and her parents before Charlie Mays and Felton Thomas ever show up. This is because, when attempting to break into the store, the prosecution claims he had Charlie Mays cut the power to the store before leaving to go get his key. If Tommy's wife and parents had been inside, wouldn't they have made it outside to turn the power back on by the time Ziegler arrived back with the key? The only way that hasn't happened is if they are dead already, and the UM segment implies that this was in fact the case. However, if Ziegler shot his wife and her parents and then went through this whole elaborate scheme before finally returning to the store to shoot Mays, and then going outside at least one more time to give one gun to Ed Williams, wouldn't all of this have taken long enough that forensics would have been able to show that the murder of Ziegler's wife and her parents was some time before Charlie Mays'? This doesn't add up.

The next piece of this story that makes no sense is where Felton James went when he "left" the store, leaving Tommy and Charlie alone. Where did he go, and how? The UM segment depicts Felton and Charlie arriving in one car --- if that was the prosecution's claim, did Felton leave by taking the car? If so, how did Charlie plan on getting the TV back home? None of this makes any sense either.

The last part of the prosecution's story, that Ziegler gave a gun to Ed Williams, has real problems, which I'll present right after I summarize it, immediately below...

Ed Williams, another witness for the prosecution, testified that Ziegler gave him a hand gun the night of the murder, which he turned over to the authorities. That gun turned out to be the one that killed both his mother and father in law: Ziegler testified that this gun was stolen from his truck two weeks before the murders, and that Williams had access to Ziegler's truck. The prosecution retorts that Williams had no past criminal history, and there is "no reason" not to believe Williams.

Leaving Williams out of it for a minute, why on earth would Tommy Ziegler leave a store with four dead bodies in it to meet Ed Williams outside somewhere on Christmas Eve to hand him a gun used in those murders? Surely he must have realized that doing so would be fatal to any attempt to spin the story as a robbery --- because all that had to happen is what did happen. Ed Williams turned the gun over to authorities and testified that it was given to him by Ziegler the night of the murders. How could Ziegler have been in possession of a murder weapon and not injured, hand it to Williams, and then end up "shot" himself inside the store unless he was directly involved? Surely Ziegler would have realized that this attempt to plant the murder weapon on someone else could only backfire, right? He would have had to been absolutely out of his mind to try this, but the whole point of the prosecution's case is that Ziegler was anything but crazy; he was cold, exacting, calculating. How could the man they want to paint Ziegler as make such a glaringly stupid mistake? Answer: I don't think he would have, which means Williams is lying.

Moreover, why was Ed Williams even at the store on Christmas Eve? According to the segment, Williams "used to work" for the Zieglers, meaning he was no longer in their employ in 1975, when the murders were committed. So why would a former employee just happen by the store where he used to work at 8:30-9:00 on Christmas Eve? And why would Tommy Ziegler hand him a gun? Did Tommy Ziegler arrange to meet Williams there? If so, he had to get this just right --- he needed to meet Williams after he shot his wife and her parents and then Mays, but before he shot himself and called the police. At the same time, there couldn't be too much of a time lapse here, because every passing minute would have made it more and more obvious that all the people in the store were shot at different times. This account is just totally, completely absurd.

Williams was also connected to the two cheap guns found at the scene, one of which had killed Eunice Ziegler, Tommy's wife. The witness testified he had sold them to Tommy Ziegler, but that he had never actually dealt with Tommy Ziegler, or met him. The deal was done through Ed Williams: The defense points out that this meant that Williams was the only one physically connected to two murder weapons; Ziegler cannot be directly linked to either, since one was actually turned over by Williams and the other was found inside the store, with only this piece of testimony to connect it to anyone involved with the store. This, to me, only furthers the notion that Williams was lying.

The defense further claimed that there were two witnesses whose account tended to corroborate Tommy Ziegler's story, but not the state's. A husband and wife had reported to the sheriff that on the night of the murder they had seen 4 cars outside of the Ziegler furniture store, one of which was a white Cadillac. If the state's story is true, the defense claims, there should have only been two cars (though the defense doesn't make it clear whose cars should have been out there if the prosecution's story is true: Ziegler's and Mays'? Ziegler's and his in-laws'?). These same two witnesses also reported that they saw "unidentified individuals" outside the store, and in particular someone who the defense claims "fit the general description of Charlie Mays" (whatever the hell that means --- black male?): I like this type of eyewtiness evidence: no incredibly specific claims being made ("I know for sure that this one particular person out of all the poeple on the planet did this, even though I'd never seen this person before that day, and didn't see them after until I identified them, and wasn't directly involved in the crime myself" --- those types, I think, are wrong more often than they are right), just that there was an unusual (read: eye-catching) amount of activity going on outside a retail store given that it was Christmas Eve (and this was 1975, when things were less likely to be open until 8:00PM or later on such occasions), enough that the people noticed the number of cars outside, one of which was a particularly striking model and color, and that they saw at least one man outside. All suggestive, all quite believable. The problem is, it doesn't prove much of anything. The defense claims that the prosecution claims that there were only 2 cars outside the store that night (we never hear the prosecution directly say how many cars they think were outside the store that night), so if witnesses saw 4 cars, it's indicative that there was something else going on. I think this story is very credible, but unfortunately, without an inventory of what cars were indisputably there (i.e., which ones were outside when the police arrived), I'm not sure what can be done with it.

The defense also claims that the judge during his trial, Maurice Paul, was biased against him owing to the fact that they had each testified on opposite sides during a "bitter legal dispute" just months prior to the murder trial: From reading Bianca Jagger's article, it sounds like this was a bitter law suit: all about race and business ownership in what I'm sure was still a largely segregated county at that time. Turns out, Ziegler was on the side of letting a black man keeping his business in a particular location, and, moreover, was making trouble for white business owners who attempted to exploit poor black laborers (in a different matter). Tommy's looking better all the time here.

After Ziegler was granted a stay of execution in 1987, the defense filed an appeal and, under the freedom of information act, were granted to access to previously closed files, which in turn led to previously undisclosed evidence. One key piece was a tape recording of an interview allegedly conducted by an investigator for the prosecutor's office of a witness who was staying at a motel located across from the back of the store. This witness claimed he saw a police officer with a revolver drawn hunkered down behind the store at around 8:30PM the night of the murders, and that half an hour later, at 9:00PM, he heard shots fired: The prosecutor who is interviewed makes reference to the idea that the shots this witness claims to have heard occurred "after the cops had arrived." I guess he is implying that this witness got his times wrong --- that when he saw the cop, it was actually 9:25 or so (when they arrived on the scene), not 8:30 as he claimed. He goes on to suggest that the shots the witness says he heard could not have been shots after all, because none were fired afte the cops arrived.

But if the witness' story is taken as accurate, then this claim about shots after the cops arrived maked no sense. If he heard shots at 9:00PM, that corresponds to when the killings would have actually taken place, and the cops did not arrive (officially) for another 25 minutes. If the witness is sure about the times he saw and heard the shots (and we are not allowed to hear how the witness sounds or exaclty what he says when he makes these claims --- does he say "I guess it was about 9 when I heard the shots" or does he say "I heard the shots, and then for some reason I looked at my clock and the time was 9:00PM" --- we just don't know), then this material is definitely exculpatory, and Ziegler should be awarded a new trial simply on the basis that it was withheld, and if the prosecutor is still alive he should be served his "disbarment" papers.

This particular UM segment is not as good as others in organizing and presenting the prosecution and defendant's versions of events as other segments have been (this segment is from later in the show's run, so that might explain it). I'm constructing the details here based on what is presented, and in light of my construction, I have to say Ziegler seems to be very likely to be innocent to me --- the prosecution's story, from the best that I can reconstruct it sequentially (and this is where the UM segment could have done a much better job), is far too absurd to be believed.

Oops --- looks like I should have posted this in the "other" Tommy Ziegler thread, which has 14 replies, to only 4 for this one. Sorry DarkDante et. al., I didn't mean to ignore your thoughts on this case!

I think the Ed Williams led conspiracy is a good suggestion, DarkDante, and very likely to be the explanation. Although the cop that was seen by the witness at what he claimed was 8:30 is disturbing, it starts to get a little unwieldy in terms of reconstructing the conspiracy if the cops, the judge, and the local prosecutor's office are all, perhaps, involved. At some point, you have to go back to Ben Franklin's old adage: the only way 3 people can keep a secret is if 2 of them are dead. Conspiracy theories work best for me when there are a minimum of people involved directly: if Ed Williams, Felton Thomas, and Charlie Mays conspired to rob the store and perhaps murder Tommy Ziegler and/or his family, that accounts for the facts at hand. While the police, the judge, and other officials in the town may have been very happy to have an opportunity to get Ziegler out of their hair forever, and so were overzealous in prosecuting him instead of pursuing alternate theories of the crime, I doubt all those people were also involved directly with the murder.

Like I said, at some point, somebody would have talked, with that many people involved.

Mozart, I think you did a very good job of breaking down the case and you did a very good analysis. I of course have the opinion that Ziegler is innocent and was railroaded however I could either be proven right or proven wrong if the state would just run the DNA.

If it came back and benefited Ziegler than he would be released. If not well then that would basically finish his appeals and he would be executed. The only reason he has been on the row nearly 31 years is because the feds are blocking the state from executing him because there is simply too much doubt to execute him and be sure he did it. If the state had their way they would have executed him back in 1986.

I dont know that it is necessarily true that if there was so many people involved one of them would have talked. Mays is dead and Ed Williams and Felton Thomas certainly wouldnt want to go to prison and so I can understand it how they wouldnt talk. It is also obvious to me that regardless if Ziegler is innocent or guilty there was an overzealous prosecution and the judge had a personal bias because of his dislike of Ziegler before the murders even happened.

There was also a cover up of sorts by the Orange county sheriff's department like how they told the kid that saw the cop with his gun pointed at the furniture store before shots were fired that they didnt need his testimony or that they would give him and his family a free trip to Florida if he kept what he saw to himself. Also what was the police chief of the nearby town of Oakland doing on duty in a cafe near the furniture store in Winter Garden?

This is a case where there is certainly more questions than answerrs. However I dont understand why the state wont do the DNA testing unless they are afraid Ziegler will be proven innocent and then they will have to not only admit they screwed up but pay him around 15 million dollars for his over 30 years of wrongful imprisonment.