Group Demands New Trial for Death Row Inmate

Contact: Ray McEachern, 813-294-6772

Orlando - A grass roots Florida group is demanding that a man who has been on death row for thirty-three years be granted a new trial. Representatives of the group, Citizens for Justice for Tommy Zeigler, will set up a table display in front of the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Florida, from 10 AM to 12 Noon on Thursday, April 30, 2009.  Ray McEachern, group spokesman, said they will hand out an open letter to State Attorney Lawson Lamar listing the exculpatory evidence that was hidden for thirteen years and calling upon him to petition the courts for a new trial. “This evidence was never seen by Mr. Zeigler’s defense lawyers and has never been heard by a jury.” McEachern said. “Common sense and simple justice demand that a jury should decide his guilt or innocence based on all the facts.”

Besides Mr. McEachern, participants will include Vicki Holland, who established a web site entitled Prayersfortommy.com to help bring together people of faith who want to see Tommy Zeigler released from prison, and Connie Crawford, Tommy’s first cousin who grew up with him and who is now his closest living relative. 

Mrs. Crawford has always believed there was a conspiracy behind the four murders on Christmas Eve 1975 in the Zeigler Furniture Store in Winter Garden. Tommy  was found with a gunshot wound through the abdomen from a high caliber revolver after he regained consciousness and called police. “When you look at all the evidence including the DNA which proved the State Attorney’s theory of the crime was completely wrong, common sense tells you there was a conspiracy to frame Tommy Zeigler,” said Ray McEachern. “But for some reason, the State Attorney’s office prefers to foster egregious falsehoods like the absurd theory that Charlie Mays’  blood on Tommy’s shirt came from Tommy performing some kind of depraved sex act on Mays’ body. Without a shred of evidence, they came up with that theory after their first theory about the blood was proved false by the DNA report.”

Charlie Mays was one of the people found dead along with Tommy’s wife, Eunice, and her parents. Zeigler has always maintained that Mays was one of the killers and was killed by his confederates after being wounded during a fight with Zeigler. Zeigler also said that he thought loan sharks  were behind the crime, but then State Attorney Robert Eagan ordered the sheriff  not to investigate the loan shark motive. A recent deposition by a retired Orange County detective provides evidence that Charlie Mays was the killer in another murder of a Winter Garden store owner with similarities to the Zeigler murders. That case, which the deposition suggests may have involved loan sharks, is still unsolved.  Eagan’s first theory of the blood on Tommy’s shirt was that it came from Tommy’s father-in-law as Tommy supposedly beat him over the head with a metal bar. When DNA proved the blood came from Mays, the current State Attorney claimed it  may have come while Zeigler was performing a depraved sex act on Mays’ body. “I don't know why State Attorney Eagan accepted the story of Edward Williams, a man who had the murder weapon in his possession, instead of believing Tommy Zeigler, who was a victim of the crime, but when you make up a story that Tommy performed some depraved act on a dead man, that’s  malicious prosecution in my book.” said McEachern. “It shows the State Attorney apparently will stop at nothing to avoid admitting his mistake.” 

Edward Williams turned over one of the murder weapons to police a day after the crime. He claimed that Zeigler had given him the gun and he had run with it to a KFC across the street from the furniture store. His story was proved false in a 1992 book entitled Fatal Flaw by Phillip Finch.