Thirty-two Steps Continued from Home Page

Step 1: Money lenders were making huge profits  using local businesses to fund short term loans to migrant workers. The practice was known as loan sharking.

Step 2: Some store owners of businesses frequented by migrant workers used migrant crew bosses to distribute loans to migrant workers. 

Step 3: Crew bosses insured that workers cashed their weekly pay checks at these stores. The stores deducted the loan and interest at annual interest rates approaching 500%. 

Step 4: White Winter Garden  furniture store owner, Tommy Zeigler, extended credit to blacks on equal terms with whites.

Step 5: Zeigler also worked to try to stop the loan sharking in West Orange County.  

Step 6: Shorty Reddick, the owner of a Winter Garden store frequented by migrant workers, was shot and killed in a never-solved robbery. Reddick’s gun, kept in the store for protection, was discovered to be loaded with useless spent shell casings. 

Step 7: Zeigler helped a black friend, Andrew James, get a zoning variance to modernize his bar which was on the verge of being closed down if not modernized. 

Step 8: Andrew James  was then accused of allowing the sale of drugs in his new bar. 

Step 9: Zeigler helped Andrew James find a lawyer and served as a character witness at James’ trial. 

Step 10: Circuit court judge, Maurice Paul, opposed Zeigler as a character witness for the man who accused Andrew James of selling drugs. NOTE: The Canon of Judicial Ethics says, “A judge must not testify voluntarily as a character witness because to do so may lend the prestige of the judicial office in support of the party for whom the judge testifies.  Moreover, when a judge testifies as a witness, a lawyer who regularly appears before the judge may be placed in the awkward position of cross-examining the judge.” 

Step 11: While convicted, Andrew James was not adjudicated guilty and kept his bar. The house of James’ accuser was set on fire by an angry mob. 

12: Zeigler was  threatened by a Winter Garden policeman. 

13: Long time Orange County sheriff and known Ku Klux Klan member, Dave Starr, resigned from office. He lived in the tiny town of Oakland next to Winter Garden. 

14: Oakland hired Robert Thompson, a former Claude Kirk security officer, as police chief. 

15: While investigating loan shark activity, undercover Orange County detective, Tom DeMars, heard talk that Charlie Mays was the shooter in the Shorty Reddick homicide 

16: Charlie Mays was a migrant worker crew boss also living in the town of Oakland. He was also a regular customer of the Zeigler furniture store.

 17: Oakland Police Chief, Robert Thompson, delivered a Christmas basket to the Mays family on Christmas Eve day, 1975. 

18: On Christmas Eve, 1975, four months after the Andrew James trial, Tommy Zeigler was shot in the stomach during what appeared to be a robbery in his darkened furniture store. Zeigler’s wife, Eunice, Eunice’s parents from Georgia, and crew boss and store customer, Charlie Mays, were found dead in the store with Tommy.  Mays and Eunices’s father were both shot and bludgeoned. 

19: Oakland Police Chief, Robert Thompson, was the first to arrive on the scene. He took Zeigler to the hospital where he was found to have been shot by a gun he owned, a large caliber .357 magnum. His through and through bullet wound missed his liver by less than an inch.

Step 20: Chief Thompson wrote a 13 page report the next day which stated that the blood from Zeigler’s entrance and exit wounds was dry when he took Zeigler to the hospital. That report was not given to the defense. Instead, the defense was given a one page report that made no mention of this fact.

Step 21: While still in the hospital, Zeigler was charged with  the murders and with inflicting his own stomach wound to cover up his crime.

Step 22: Circuit judge, Maurice Paul, was assigned to try the case. He apparently saw no conflict of interest despite his prior opposition to Zeigler in the Andrew James case a few months earlier. 

Step 23: The trial was held in June 1976. Chief Robert Thompson testified that the blood from  Zeigler’s wound was damp when he took him to the hospital contrary to his written report. Wet blood suggested that Zeigler had shot himself just before being rescued.  Thompson quit his job after the trial.

Step 24: Other testimony favorable to Zeigler was also withheld from the defense, including a witness report that substantiated Zeigler’s claim of possible police involvement in the crime. In addition, the prosecutor ordered the police department not to question Zeigler about the loan sharking. 

Step 25: On Christmas Day, Edward Williams, a black handyman hired by Zeigler to help make Christmas Eve deliveries, turned over a gun used in the murders  claiming that Zeigler gave him the gun after he tried to shoot Williams with it. He claimed Zeigler forgot to reload the gun after killing the other victims. This story was similar to the Shorty Reddick homicide that also included a gun that was loaded with spent shell casing.

 Step 26: The prosecution claimed the blood under the arm of Zeigler’s shirt came from his dead father in law. Zeigler claimed that it must have come from Charlie Mays because he had fought with him in the darkened store before someone else took the gun away from Zeigler and shot him in the stomach.  The prosecution also claimed the blood soaking Charlie Mays’ pants legs was Mays’ own blood. Mays and Zeigler’s father in law both had Type A blood. No other typing was done until recent DNA testing.

Step 27:  During jury deliberation, Judge Paul is reported to have arranged for one juror to take VALIUM apparently to prevent a possible hung jury. The jury convicted Zeigler, but recommended life in prison.

Step 28:  Judge Paul overruled the jury and sentenced Zeigler to death.

Step 29: A few years later,  Judge Paul became a federal district judge in Tallahassee where he is to this day.

Step 30: After years of appeals that never allowed the suppressed evidence to be considered, DNA testing was finally ordered in 2003.

Step 31: The DNA tests proved the prosecution was wrong about the blood on Zeigler’s shirt and the blood on Charlie Mays’ pants legs. The shirt blood belonged to Mays with whom Zeigler had claimed to have had a violent struggle. The blood on Mays came from Zeigler’s father in law whom the prosecution had claimed had been killed well before Mays entered the furniture store.

Step 32: In 2007, the Florida Supreme Court denied Zeigler a new trial based on the DNA. Supreme Court Justice Charles Wells participated in the decision despite the fact that he had been a close personal advisor to Orange County Sheriff Mel Colman at the time of the murders and therefore had independent knowledge of the case.

NOTE: The above steps are not necessarily in chronological order.