Letter to Internationally Known Blood Expert, Herbert L. MacDonellCommittee for Justice
7810 Land O Lakes Blvd., #101
Land O Lakes, Florida 34638
January 10, 2008
Dr. Herbert Leon MacDonell, Director
Laboratory of Forensic Science
Post Office Box 1111
Corning, New York 14830
Dear Professor MacDonell:
This letter is in response to your letter of January 2, 2008. It will be a long and impassioned attempt to convince you that it is you rather than I who are trying to fit a mistaken theory of what happened in the Zeigler furniture store to facts that do not support it. In doing so, you have allowed yourself to be co-opted by the vile murderers and their lackeys in law enforcement who callously planned the murders and framed Tommy Zeigler. If I fail to convince you, Professor MacDonell, it will be you who will carry to your grave the burden of your unwillingness to consider objectively the facts of this case.
First, please consider the setting. Winter Garden in the seventies was in the heart of citrus country and still steeped in Jim Crow policies and politics. Situated between Ocoee immediately to the east and Groveland only a few miles to the west, it is in the northern part of Orange County where FBI documented klansman, Sheriff Dave Starr, reigned supreme in law enforcement for more than twenty years before being forced to retire while still in full command in the early seventies. The county just to the north, Lake County, was the fiefdom of the even more notorious Sheriff Willis McCall, who dominated for almost 30 years, before also being forced to retire in full command in the early seventies. If you will study the history of this area and these two commanding figures, you will find that Ocoee was the scene of the slaughter and burning of African-Americans in the twenties and Groveland became famous in the fifties after four young blacks were accused of raping a white woman. Willis McCall personally executed one of those men and shot another three times one night along a lonely road after the US Supreme Court granted them a new trial. As late as 2004, an investigation by then attorney general and now Governor Charles Crist, of the bombing of civil rights leader Harry Moore and his wife, found that the slayings were carried out by an Orlando Klansman in retaliation for Moore’s efforts to help the Groveland Four as they became known internationally. His report, which is available on line, states in the executive summary: "It is also sadly evident that some members of area law enforcement were Klan members and/or sympathizers and may not have supported the FBI’s investigation. The damage caused by that regrettable state of affairs is still evident today, as this investigation concluded that a number of witnesses were reluctant to be completely candid with this investigation for fear of retribution."
If that kind of atmosphere still prevailed in 2004, one can only imagine the reaction of the Klan and Klan sympathizers to a “ni--er lover” white guy who stood up for a black friend at a trial that was supposed to have relieved the black bar owner of his 4COP license so that the white loan sharks could use it for themselves. That dastardly deed by young Tommy Zeigler, just four months before the murders in his store as well as Tommy’s successful efforts to close down the once elegant Edgewater Hotel - then being used for prostitution - was tantamount to waving a red cape in the face of the bulls of the Klan.
By his actions to befriend the black race, Tommy was asking to be taken out, and I am convinced that the lawlessness and hatred of blacks that had prevailed in the area for generations is the motive behind this crime. Now let me offer you some facts that fit this theory much more accurately than your conjecture about blood stains proves that he is a killer.
The first fact is that Oakland Police Chief Robert Thompson took the job of police chief in this town of fewer than 1000 people a couple of years before the Zeigler hit and left that job as soon as Zeigler was convicted. Why would this man, the former head of security for Gov. Claude Kirk, have taken such a job, and why did he leave when he did? But perhaps more importantly, why would he lie in his testimony in court about the fact that the blood from the wound to Zeigler’s abdomen was wet when he arrived on the crime scene when in fact his report, written the night of the murders, says it was dry. And why would State Attorney Eagan have hidden that written report for years instead of making it available to the defense as he should have. Thompson was the alleged source of the rumors about Zeigler being homosexual, which you apparently have accepted. This was a classic klan ploy and perhaps not by coincidence, klansman and former sheriff Dave Starr was also a resident of the tiny town of Oakland where Thompson “served” as police chief.
Fact number two concerns the trial judge himself, Maurice Paul. This man had been a character witness for the prosecution at the aforementioned trial in which Zeigler was a character witness for the defense. It doesn’t take a legal scholar to realize that this fact would compromise anyone’s ability to be objective. In fact, the cannons of judicial conduct today prohibit a judge from serving as a character witness, and I would imagine they prohibited it then as well. But for Paul then to have presided at Zeigler’s murder trial, sentencing him to death against the recommendation of the jury, is a fact that even the least educated of us can comprehend as a stain on justice of deeper hue than your storied blood in the armpit. How any fair-minded person can look at this fact alone and not believe that Zeigler should have a new trial is beyond comprehension to my simple mind.
Fact number three that you have apparently overlooked is the hidden testimony of three eye witnesses that came to light several years after the crime. These witnesses had evidence that clearly supports Zeigler’s innocence yet Eagan again deliberately withheld this information from the defense. I won’t recount the evidence provided by Jon Jellison and Ken and Linda Roach which a jury never has heard, but it is available on line (http://phillipfinch.com/fatalflaw) if you should care to know the facts. But I ask you, sir, in all seriousness, why do you want to be associated with a prosecution team that clearly had only one objective: to convict Zeigler without regard to the facts.
The fourth fact upon which I base my belief in Zeigler’s innocence concerns the testimony of Edward Williams whose incredible story you obviously did not question. In a serious quest for the truth, a man in possession of one of the murder weapons would become an immediate suspect. Instead, Eagan arranged to have his story accepted as truth without ever testing the one element of his story that could have been easily verified: the question of whether there was gun shot residue in his pants pocket. When the defense was finally allowed to make that test after Zeigler’s conviction (It was Judge Paul’s responsibility to ensure there was adequate time for the defense to prepare. Were Paul and Eagan working together?) it was found that there was none. Either Williams was lying or those were not the pants he wore that night. Williams’ story that Zeigler tried to shoot him with an empty gun and then gave him the gun and allowed him to escape (after earlier allowing another witness who was supposedly marked for death by Mr. Zeigler to walk away unharmed according to that man’s story) is so absurd that it would be ludicrous except for the fact that Eagan allowed the testimony to stand as truth. Further evidence of Williams untruthfulness is the fact that county property tax records show that Williams and another witness who corroborated his story were in fact married - or had been recently - a fact that was never revealed. Finally, his story about running to the KFC after Tommy gave him the gun was shown to be false because he was seen at the KFC after the police arrived at the crime scene. Given the timing of these events, it is impossible for his story to have been true as shown in the book by Philip Finch referenced earlier.
It is worthwhile to note here that a similar empty gun scenario was used in another unsolved murder in Winter Garden a few years before Zeigler. In the murder of Shorty Reddick none other than Charlie Mays was alleged to have been the shooter in a robbery during which store owner Reddick tried to defend himself with a gun that was loaded with empty shell casings. I cannot help but believe that the similarity between these two stories is not coincidence.
I have to question the validity of your claim that the blood of Perry Edwards that was saturating Mays’ pants leg was transferred there by contact with Zeigler. I certainly am not an expert at blood analysis as you are, but I fail to see how such a transfer as you contend occurred was possible given the time your theory requires between the two murders. You testified that the blood splatter from Mays' beating did not dissolve into the Perry Edwards’ blood because the Edwards blood was dry when Mays was killed. Are we to assume that Zeigler was dripping Perry Edwards blood the whole time he supposedly drove with Mays to the orange grove and then drove home before luring Mays into the store to kill him? And why didn’t Williams who drove Tommy to the store see all this blood? But even granting that, why was there no blood from Perry Edwards found anywhere on Zeigler? I may be dense, sir, but I can’t think of any way that a transfer stain would absorb all the blood on the garment it was transferred from - but correct me if I’m wrong.
As for the issue you raise about how Tommy would explain the blood on the inside of Mays' under shorts and his unzipped fly, I am not aware that any DNA tests were done on this blood nor am I sure that the unzipped fly was a matter of trial testimony. As for a logical explanation, I would think that a man wounded in the abdomen as Mays was, would be highly likely to unzip his own pants to try to stop the flow of blood or to inspect the wound.
Professor MacDonell, you have the prestige and the influence to literally save Tommy Zeigler’s life by an admission that your analysis could have been wrong. I pray that you will consider the facts I have related in this letter which fit a verdict of not guilty so much better than the theory to which you adhere. Your theory requires that a methodical killer, after months of planning, coldly kills his victims over a two hour period, using his own guns in addition to the ones he allegedly asked Williams’ son-in-law (another relationship not revealed at trial) to buy for the murders, driving around covered with blood, allowing two intended victims to escape - one because he forgets to reload a weapon - and then using the biggest gun he owned to shoot himself in the right side (although it would be much easier for a right handed person to shoot himself in the left side), tossing the weapon to the back of the store, and calling the police for help. I find it very hard to reconcile that kind of man with the Tommy Zeigler who four months earlier was fighting for justice for the poor black population of west Orange County.
I can only say, professor, that if you fail to act to try to save an innocent man whose life has been destroyed partly by your mistaken conclusions, may God have mercy on your soul.
Sincerely yours,
Raymond T. McEachern
|
