There are at least 250 people who believe that the facts proclaim Mr. Zeigler's innocence. That is the number who have signed a petition for Mr. Zeigler’s release that was sent to Florida Gov. Crist in December. The courts, other than the original trial court, do not consider all the facts together. Tradition and precedent preclude that unless a new trial is ordered. That is why the Florida Supreme Court denied Zeigler’s last appeal in June 2007 based on DNA evidence. The DNA supported  what Mr. Zeigler has always claimed: That one of the two dead men in the store, a man named Charlie Mays, was one of the perpetrators who jumped Zeigler as he entered his furniture store, and then fought with him before being shot by Zeigler.  Zeigler himself was then shot with his own gun after someone else took it away. It did not prove that Zeigler was innocent. Only a jury could do that since Mr. Zeigler was in the store when one of the four victims was killed.
    But, of course, that is just Zeigler’s story. Why should anyone believe his story when the two principle witnesses against Zeigler both had supporting stories that claimed Zeigler had tried to lure them into the store to kill them along with Mays and Zeigler’s in-laws, Perry and Virginia Edwards, and Zeigler’s wife, Eunice. Incredible as it may seem, the prosecution wants us to believe that Zeigler planned to kill not four, but six people that Christmas Eve. All of them would be killed in his own very successful furniture store, and he would be the hero who killed the three bad guys, unfortunately, after his own family were all dead.
    The FSC heard only the evidence that the DNA proved that the blood soaking the pants of Charlie Mays came from Perry Edwards. But trial testimony from blood experts established that Edwards’ blood had dried before Mays was killed. The prosecution had claimed that this blood was Mays’ own blood, but the DNA proved that Mays was in the store when Edwards was killed. There is no innocent explanation for that fact.  Zeigler also claimed that the blood on his shirt could only have come from Mays with whom he had fought.  The prosecution convinced the jury it was Perry Edwards’ blood. Again, the DNA proved Zeigler was telling the truth.
   The DNA could only prove Zeigler was innocent when combined with the other evidence. Three very important pieces of evidence were deliberately hidden from the trial jury. That evidence, in combination with the DNA, would certainly convince a new jury. That is why the prosecution argued against DNA testing for many years and were so adamantly against granting a new trial.
    So what is all this evidence that proves William Thomas Zeigler is an innocent man. First, please consider the setting in which the murders occurred. 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 northwestern 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 and west, 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. 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 partly 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 loving”  white guy named Tommy Zeigler  who stood up for a black friend, Andrew James, at a trial that was supposed to have relieved Mr. James of his liquor license so that the white loan sharks could use it for themselves.  That trial occurred  just four months before the murders in Zeigler’s  store. Before that, Zeigler was successful in his efforts to close down the once elegant Edgewater Hotel - by the seventies being used as a house of  prostitution. He was also one of the few white business owners in the area who extended credit on reasonable terms to black customers - a fact that made him very well liked among the local black community.  That kind of activism was a very strange prelude to a murder plan by Mr. Zeigler, but as a motive for a Zeigler hit by the Klan, it explains what otherwise is almost unbelieveable.  
    The trial of Andrew James four months before the murders in the Zeigler Furniture Store is the key to what happened that Christmas Eve. And it is the first incredible fact that strongly suggests that Zeigler is innocent. Why? Because the judge who presided at Zeigler’s trial and who sentenced Zeigler to death in July 1976 against the recommendation of the jury  was the character witness who opposed Zeigler in the Andrew James trial in August 1975!  Who can believe in Zeigler’s guilt when the trial judge  refused to step aside even though the James trial had caused so much resentment that the house of the man the Judge stood up for was burned after the trial! Not only did he refuse to recuse himself, the judge denied defense motions for extra time to prepare for trial, and today - as incredible as it may seem - that circuit court judge is now a senior federal judge in northern Florida where he has been for many, many years.
    As stated earlier, there were two principle witnesses who directly implicated Zeigler in the murders. Both of those men, Felton Thomas and Edward Williams,  were themselves suspects whose stories were likely fabricated. The prosecution claimed that they were intended victims of Zeigler’s plot who escaped unharmed, one because Zeigler merely allowed him to walk away while he was in the process of murdering Mays; the other, a man named Edward Williams, who was directly linked to three of the guns used in the murders, one of which he actually had in his possession. Williams explanation for having the gun was that Zeigler had given it to him after he had tried to kill him with it, but the gun was empty because Zeigler had forgotten to reload it after all the other murders! Williams also claimed that Zeigler had asked him to get Zeigler two “hot” guns that would not be traceable that were also used in some of the murders. Williams story was that he had turned the guns over to Zeigler the previous summer after Williams’ friend purchased them from a gun dealer. Who would believe that a man planning a murder would allow two or more other people to purchase guns for him - especially since one, Williams’ friend, was not one of Zeigler’s “intended victims.”
    Then, there are the three pieces of evidence, besides the DNA, that no jury has ever heard. Some of this evidence appears to have been deliberately withheld by the prosecution because it would very likely have led to an acquittal. One of those pieces of evidence was a long report written the night of the murders by the policeman who took Zeigler to the hospital after he was one of the first to arrive on the scene. This policeman, Robert Thompson, wrote a report that clearly stated that the blood around Zeigler’s stomach wound was dry when he arrived a few minutes after Zeigler called for help. If the through and through gunshot wound made by a .357 magnum pistol firing a .38 cal. round had been self-inflicted as the prosecution claimed, the blood would have been wet. Thompson testified at trial that the blood was still wet! The written report was never found until years after the trial! This fact suggests that Thompson lied as part of a plot to frame Zeigler for murder.
    The second piece of evidence never heard by a jury is the sworn statements of Ken and Linda Roach, people who did not know any of the Zeiglers, who were driving by the store on Christmas Eve just before 7:30 PM. They heard a barrage of shots- too many to come from one gun -  coming from the direction of the store. They looked over at the store and saw four cars parked in front and a dark skinned man walking toward a pick-up truck parked on the side. The store was in total darkness. This testimony would have established that there were several people involved in the crime. It would also have been consistent with Zeigler’s statement that Edward Williams was late in arriving at Zeigler’s house so that the two of them could make deliveries of Christmas presents in Williams truck. One of the neat, but improbable facts was that the electric wall clock that illuminated the entire store was hit by a “random” bullet at 7:24 PM. This presumably established that the electricity was on at the time of the killing of Zeigler’s wife and in-laws. More likely, the clock stopped when the killers pulled the breaker on the side of the building, just before they forced their way into the store where Eunice and her parents were selecting a chair for a Christmas present. The shot clock was likely a deliberate act that may well have come much later.
    The final piece of suppressed evidence came from a young man staying at the motel behind the furniture store on that Christmas Eve. A tape recording of a phone conversation between Jack Bachman, an investigator for the state attorney and Jon Jellison was found as the result of a freedom of information act request years after the trial. On the tape recording made before the trial but several weeks after the murders, Jellison describes how he saw a policeman with gun drawn and a police car behind the furniture store at around 9PM. He then heard shots coming from the direction of the store. This supported Zeigler’s statement that he had been threatened by members of the police department to cease his efforts to stop the loan sharking. Bachman then tells Jellison that his testimony would not be needed unless he could testify that he heard the shots before he saw a policeman! The testimony is even more significant because Edward Williams ran to the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant across from the furniture store after  Zeigler called the police at 9:21PM. It suggests that the killers were in the store until around 9PM planning the stories that Williams and Thomas would have tell police. The shots Jellison heard may well have been fired by the conspirators into the bodies of Perry and Virginia Edwards to make it appear that they had been killed by one of the guns owned by Zeigler and into the wall clock to establish an exact time for the murders.
    The conspiracy to frame Zeigler could only have been successful with the cooperation of some  members of the police and with the determination to get a quick conviction by the state attorney. Robert Thompson, the policeman who took Zeigler to the hospital, was a police chief of the adjoining small town of Oakland. He had been in charge of security for Gov. Claude Kirk prior to taking the job in Oakland and he left the job during Zeigler’s trial. He was personally acquainted with Charlie Mays and in fact delivered a “Christmas Basket” to him just before the murders. No one knows the contents of the basket, but the mere fact of the delivery arouses suspicion as does the fact that he was off duty at the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant with Winter Garden patrolman  Jimmy Yawn approximately a half hour before Zeigler called police for help. He was at the house that Zeigler called and raced to the scene in his patrol car. Coincidentally, Jimmy Yawn heard the call Thompson made to his dispatcher and arrived at the furniture store at the same time as Thompson since he was apparently parked at the motel where Jon Jellison was staying when he saw a police car behind the furniture store. Yawn, however, was not driving a marked police car. He was also thought to have been the source of some of the rumors and innuendo concerning Zeigler being a homosexual, and possibly other negative rumors that were reported as fact to the grand jury but were excluded from the trial.   
    That these rumors were so prevalent and widely accepted is evidenced by the fact that they were used by the state during the oral arguments before the FSC in April 2007 to try to explain why Zeigler would want to kill his in-laws as well as his wife. Zeigler’s lawyer, of course, corrected the record but by then the harm was already done. That in itself should have been grounds for a rehearing.