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This case is about much more than one wrongfully convicted man. It is about a judicial system that allows prosecutors to suborn perjury and hide exculpatory evidence, that allows judges to condemn people against whom they have a grudge. It is about states attorneys who become so powerful that no one dares to go against them for fear of retaliation. It is about any law abiding citizen who stands up for what is right when those in power will do whatever it takes to stay in power. It is about a judiciary that needs reform and is too arrogant to reform itself. |
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Is This Justice...Or Was It Something Else? |
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Click to Read Attorney's Memorandum  It has been 34 years since the shooting in Tommy Zeigler's furniture store that left his wife, her parents, and another man dead. Zeigler was shot in the stomach. Zeigler was a business owner and civil rights activist who had recently served as a character witness in the trial of a black friend who owned a bar. The judge (shown here) who sentenced Zeigler to death was a character witness for the man who accused Zeigler's friend of selling drugs. Zeigler believes the accusation against his friend was made by the loan sharks who wanted to take over the bar. Did the prosecutor want to stop the investigation of the loan shark motive for the murders? (Click to read.) Did the judge and the prosecutor have a meeting before the trial during which the judge told the prosecutor that he "would fry the son of a bitch" Were the murders retaliation for Zeigler's activism? Was the Ku Klux Klan involved? Why didn't the judge recuse himself? Has he been in a position to influence Zeigler's case as a federal judge? Send a letter to government officials and the FBI to urge them to investigate why Zeigler was framed for the murders. Click here to read about the Ku Klux Klan in Orange County
Sign the petition to Governor Christ
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DNA Confirms Zeigler Innocent
The prosecution claimed the blood on this tee shirt came from Zeigler's father-in-law. DNA proved that they were wrong. They said the blood on Charlie Mays' pants was his own. DNA proved that they were wrong. The murderers are still at large. Read the DNA report. DNA Doesn't Lie. People do.
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Prosecution Wants You to Believe that Zeigler is as Dumb as Forrest Gump! |
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Prosecutor Rushed to Judgment and Hid Evidence Read his 1976 Letter 
State Attorney Robert Eagan, shown here in 2001, never subtyped the blood found on Zeigler's shirt or on Charlie Mays' pants, hid a police report from the defense that proved Zeigler did not shoot himself, stopped the investigation of loan sharking, and falsely told the jury that the blood on Zeigler's shirt was his father-in-laws. The DNA tests finally proved Eagan to be completely wrong. It showed that the blood on Zeigler's shirt came from Charlie Mays whom Zeigler had fought off after Mays jumped him, and the blood of his father-in-law was saturating May's pants. Since Mays was killed after Perry Edwards' blood had dried, Mays must have been one of the killers as Zeigler always claimed. Click here to read why Zeigler should get a new trial |
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The prosecution wants you to believe that Tommy Zeigler planned the murder of his wife carefully over a period of at least six months. But he must have been another Forrest Gump to have made all the stupid decisions that he would have to have made if their theory is right. First, they say he acquired two cheap hand guns for the murders so they couldn’t be traced to him. That was in the summer of 1975. But the two guns were bought by Frank Smith, the son in law of Zeigler’s part time employee, Edward Williams, who was usually out of work and always in need of money. Click here to continue reading. |
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A Rusty Lock and a Broken Yoke Proclaim that Tommy Zeigler is an Innocent Man
This is a recent picture of the gate into the back compound of the Zeigler Furniture Store. The building is now a used goods store. The gate is in the open position and the picture shows that the outside prong of the yoke that would hold the gate shut is missing and the inside prong is bent down. An old rusty lock is still attached along with a new lock used to chain the gate shut today. To be guilty, Tommy Zeigler would have had to bend the outside prong down to make it look like someone else did it, relock the gate, go back inside the store, call police, shoot himself and the police arrive all in the same amount of time that Ed Williams took to run across the treet, no more than two minutes at most. Edward Williams had one of the murder weapons in his possession. If he is lying Tommy Zeigler is innocent! |
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History of the Tommy Zeigler Case In the 1970's, the Orange County, Florida (Orlando) citrus belt attracted large numbers of mostly black migrant fruit pickers. Winter Garden, a town on the banks of Lake Apopka, contiguous to the town of Ocoee on the east was in the heart of citrus country. Ocoee had been the scene of a race riot in 1920. Many blacks were killed and their homes destroyed. No blacks lived in the city limits of Ocoee until the eighties and it is reported that, as late as the seventies, a sign at the town’s entrance read, “N----r, don’t let the sun set on you inside city limits.” The area was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity. Orange County Sheriff, Dave Starr, was known to be a member of the Klan and some officials of Winter Garden were also reported to be members. Dave Starr lived in the tiny town of Oakland, also contiguous to Winter Garden on the opposite side from Ocoee. Sheriff Starr resigned before the end of his term in the early seventies after more than twenty years as sheriff.
(Click here for a recent article about local police being involved with the Klan) Even as late as 2004, then Attorney General Charles Crist (now governor) found that police were reluctant to talk about the death of civil rights worker, Harry Moore, because of a fear of retribution. (See the executive summary of his report, page 8.) Click here to read further |
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Tommy Zeigler is shown with Ray McEachern in a photo taken in the death row cafe at Florida's Union Correctional Institute. Ray is a doting grandfather of two toddlers and retired former business owner from Tampa. He is not a lawyer, but decided in 2008 to become Mr. Zeigler's citizen advocate when he realized that the judicial system was not going to give Tommy a new trial despite the overwhelming evi- dence of his innocence. Ray has known about the Zeigler case since the beginning through his brother, Leigh, who was then the undersheriff of Orange County. Click Here to read a poem The Ballad of the Death Row Cafe |
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