The Prosecution Theory - Zeigler As Stupid as Forrest Gump!

   The principles and victims in this complicated scenario:

              Victims:    Tommy Zeigler, shot in the stomach with a .357 magnum. Convicted of killing the others.

                              Eunice Zeigler, wife of Tommy, shot in the head with an RG revolver bought by Frank Smith

                              Perry and Virginia Edwards, parents of Eunice, shot more than once, Perry also beaten to death

                              Charlie Mays, Migrant laborer crew boss, shot by Zeigler and then beaten to death

            Prosecution Witnesses:  Edward Williams, Zeigler part-time employee, had one of the murder weapons in his possession

                                         Felton Thomas, Fruit picker, came to store with Charlie Mays

                                                   Frank Smith, brother-in-law of Edward Williams, purchased two of murder weapons

                                                   Policeman Robert Thompson, his report about Zeigler blood was suppressed

          Defense Witnesses:  J. D. and Madelyn Nolan, saw Edward Williams at KFC after police arrived

                                                 Ken and Linda Roach, testimony suppressed, came forward again after the trial

                                               Jon Jellison, testimony suppressed, tourist staying at hotel in back of furniture store 

         Prosecutor: Robert Eagan, assisted by Lawson Lamar. Lamar has been state attorney since 1988

          Judge: Maurice Paul, has been a federal judge in Tallahassee for many years

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.

Now that was stupid - if Zeigler was the killer. Why would Zeigler ask an employee to get the guns when Zeigler could easily have gotten them himself, in a distant town rather than in Orlando where Smith bought them. The prosecution theory requires that he was planning back in the summer to kill Williams too.

    Now he needs to kill Frank Smith also, but there is no evidence he tried to kill Smith.  Was he too stupid to think it through that far? How many people was Tommy Zeigler planning to kill to cover up the killing of Eunice, his wife? The two cheap guns had been used to kill his wife and to shoot her parents, but then, stupidly, Gump/Zeigler decides to use two of the guns he had owned for a long time and were kept in his store and his truck for protection. His truck gun was used to shoot both his father in law and his mother in law a second time. So let's just think about how stupid this was. Since he failed to kill Eunice's parents with the cheap "untraceable" guns, he gets his truck gun to finish the job. And he leaves all the guns in the store so it will be easy to determine what gun was used to kill each person. Now that was stupid - if Zeigler  was the killer! 
    The prosecution also claims Zeigler took out an insurance policy on his wife. That was the motive for the murder. He didn’t need the money. The furniture store was doing great. But no doubt an extra $250K from his wife’s death wouldn’t hurt. Of course, he already had another $250K policy on Eunice, and she,  as well as the local insurance agent and others,  knew about all the policies. And why would any rational killer think that the insurance policy bought just three months before the murders wouldn’t arouse suspicions? Now that was stupid - if Zeigler was the killer! 
   According to prosecutors, Gump/Zeigler picks Christmas Eve as the time to execute his "carefully thought-out"  plan. Wow! What planning! Now he has to kill Eunice’s parents since they are in town visiting from Georgia. And what better place to kill all three but in his own store! That’s sure to be good for business! Think of the free publicity! And he’ll be the hero that killed the bad guy that killed his wife! But he needs to make it look like a robbery. Most armed  robberies of businesses don’t occur after the store is closed, but a stupid killer wouldn’t think about that. So Gump/Zeigler lures a customer to the store on Christmas Eve to purchase a TV set by offering him a low  price. How Zeigler could be sure the customer, a black guy named Charlie Mays,  would be willing to come back to the store on Christmas Eve (he was in the store earlier that day to pick up some linoleum) is kind of hard to figure out. But then a man as stupid as Gump wouldn’t think of anything that complicated.
     Luckily, Mays agrees to come back to the store at 7:30 well past closing time for the TV set, not realizing he is going to be set up as a killer.  But Gump/Zeigler wants  Mays to park his van in the parking lot of the Winter Garden Inn behind a 6 foot chain link fence in back of the furniture store. Gump-Lucky Zeigler!  That's no problem for Mays who doesn’t mind parking there despite the difficulty of lifting the heavy TV set over the fence. But Mays must have figured it would take two people to lift the TV set over the fence so he brings along Felton Thomas, one of men in Mays' fruit picking crew. Mays is a crew boss for migrant laborers.
    Now that Gump/Zeigler has one of the fall guys lined up, he must also get his wife and her parents into the store so he can kill them before the fall guys arrive.  He obviously doesn’t  want the fall guys there when he is killing the others since it's hard enough just to kill three people by yourself, much less four or more. But the luck of Forrest Gump is with stupid Zeigler once again. He kills the first three before 7:30, even though his father in law puts up a fight and had to be shot a second time with the gun that Zeigler kept in his truck. (After shooting him with the cheap hand gun, and then beating him over the head.)  Just another stupid mistake! And stupidly, Gump/Zeigler got blood all over himself in the process. But not to worry - it's dark so he figures no one will notice!
    With the first part of his plot complete, Gump/Zeigler - covered with blood from having administered the coup de grace to his father in law - leaves the store and drives around to where Mays is waiting behind the Winter Garden Inn, taking the guns with him to get Mays' finger prints on them. Being Gump simple,  Zeigler wasn’t worried  about the possibility that Mays had arrived a little early and might have heard the gun shots from inside the store. Stupid people seldom worry about complications like that and luckily, Mays and Thomas hadn’t heard the shots. Even luckier, they didn’t notice all the blood covering Zeigler’s shirt so they had no reason to object when Zeigler asked them to ride with him to an orange grove to fire the guns. Just a little Christmas Eve recreation before buying a TV set!
    Everything is going according to plan. Zeigler, Mays, and Thomas return to the store so Gump/Zeigler can get them inside and kill them. Three fall guys are better than two! He'll be an even bigger hero! But now a bit of a complication arises. Gump/Zeigler tells Thomas to throw the outside power switch before they enter the store, but Thomas is afraid to go in now that the store is pitch black inside. That doesn’t worry Gump/Zeigler! He just tells Thomas to wait in the car while he goes inside with Mays and kills him. Like his father in law, Mays doesn’t  kill easily, so Tommy again takes the metal bar and beats Mays to death after shooting him. He then goes back to his car, but, oh darn, that guy, Felton Thomas, has flown the coop. But not to worry! Forrest Gump, aka Tommy Zeigler, still has one more part of his plan to carry out. He now must drive back to his house (he was there earlier with Mays and Thomas to get some more ammo for the murder weapons) where his fifth intended victim is waiting for him.
    His handyman, the always broke Edward Williams, is waiting in his drive way when Gump/Zeigler returns to his house. The two ride together back to the store so Gump/Zeigler can kill Williams too. His Gump-luck holding out, Williams doesn’t notice the blood covering Zeigler’s shirt as they sit beside each other in William's truck. 

    At the store, Gump/Zeigler gets out in front and stumbles through the dark store to open the back door and the locked gate to the back compound. After Williams drives his truck in, Gump/Zeigler re-locks the gate and goes back into the store to await Williams. As Williams enters the pitch-dark store, he supposedly hears three clicks and immediately decides his long time employer (the guy who has all that blood all over him which he didn't notice) must be trying to kill him with an empty gun. Williams is no dummy! Stupidly though, Gump/Zeigler has decided to kill Williams with a gun that he had used to shoot his in-laws a second time with and has forgotten to re-load. Oh well, now he’ll just have to go after Williams and give him the gun so he can convince him to come back into the store and let Gump/Zeigler kill him with another gun. Gump-like, Zeigler will figure out which one after he gets back into the dark store and finds one.
   Not being as dumb as Forrest Gump, Williams is having none of Gump/Zeigler’s pleading for him to come back into the store. He takes the empty gun and runs off with it. (Williams claimed he immediately ran across the street to the KFC and tried to call police, but got a wrong numer. The Nolans' testimony that they saw him there after Zeigler called police and the police arrived should have been used by the defense to prove he was lying, but for some reason they did not figure this out until later.) Zeigler’s Gump-luck is running out. Now he knows he’s got a problem.  With both Felton Thomas and Edward Williams alive to point the finger at Zeigler, he quickly comes up with a new plan to deflect suspicion from himself. First, he bends the lock on the gate to make it look like someone forced it open from the outside. That was pretty smart thinking for a change. But then, he makes another stupid mistake.

   He goes back inside, finds the gun he used to shoot Charlie Mays and decides to shoot himself with it after calling the police. He probably planned to shoot himself in the leg since after all, he is smart enough to knows that the insurance money wont do him any good if he’s dead. But, bad luck,  the gun is a big old  .357 magnum, and he misses his leg while stupidly trying to hold the gun in his left hand. (He’s right handed, but it's so damned hard to shoot yourself in the right side when you're holding the gun in your right hand, that he must have held if with his left hand! Right?) As the result of the recoil, he stupidly shoots himself in the stomach. Now that was stupid - if Zeigler is the killer. Despite all that careful planning, Gump/Zeigler almost kills himself, lets two people escape, and leaves all the guns at the crime scene except for the one Williams escapes with. That gun had been used to shoot his in-laws and had been kept in Zeigler’s truck.

     But for stupid Tommy Gump Zeigler, the bad luck just keeps on coming! Who does he get for a trial judge to send him to death row?  Sure enough, the very man he opposed just a few months earlier in the battle over the Andrew James bar. That was back in the summer before the murders when Zeigler was smart enough to help his black friend, Andrew James, keep his bar when the judge's friends wanted to take James' bar away from him.  Even a movie script writer probably wouldn't have thought of that one.  Like Forrest Gump said in the movie, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’ll get.”  But as the prosecution succeeded in making the jury believe, “Stupid is, as stupid does.” 

Click here, for a more logical explanation of what probably happened