Credibility of the State's So-Called Eyewitnesses.
Shortly after Williams turned over the primary murder weapon to the police, Felton Thomas, an itinerant fruit picker, showed up to provide a bizarre tale of events. The point Thomas' story was to establish that Zeigler had lured Mays into the store to kill him and make it look like a robbery to cover up Zeigler's murder of his wife and her parents. Thomas claimed that Mays had picked him up to help with a TV and that they then met a "white man" called Zeigler at the store. Thomas acknowledged that before that night he had never met Zeigler. There are serious problems with Thomas' testimony:
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Thomas claimed that Mays was picking up a TV, yet Mays parked his van in a location hidden from the street and from which it was impossible to pick up a console TV. They would have to have lifted the console television over a six-foot fence.
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The route Thomas testified he and Mays took going to the Zeigler store on Christmas Eve night would have required the vehicle to go over a 3 foot high concrete wall.
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Thomas said a white man drove up in a car that looked like a Cadillac. Christmas Eve night, Zeigler was driving a dark Oldsmobile.
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Thomas said that the white man who met him and Mays at the store told Mays that the owner of the store was coming with the keys. He also testified that the same white man attempted to break a window with a metal bar in order to get into the Zeigler furniture store. Mays knew Zeigler, who was from Winter Garden, was the owner of the store and had the keys for it.
Clearly, the white man who met Mays and Thomas at the Zeigler furniture store could not have been Zeigler. The first time Thomas came to court the prosecutors had to point to Zeigler so that Thomas would know who Zeigler was.
The one remaining witness against Zeigler was Edward Williams, "the man whose truck was found at the murder scene, who was in possession of the principal murder weapon and whose friend admitted to buying the others, and whose movements before and after the crime are unverifiable and highly suspect."
The DNA test results establish that Williams is lying. The blood of Edwards is on Mays. That means Mays was involved in the murder of Edwards. If Williams wasn't at the Zeigler store when Edwards was murdered by Mays, how did Williams get possession of the gun that killed Edwards?
Before the DNA tests, a reasonable jury could have accepted the State's circumstantial evidence case against Zeigler because they accepted Prosecutor Eagan's characterization of Zeigler as so craven as to have beaten his father-in-law, Edwards to death and to have killed his longtime customer, Mays, to hide the crime. From this perspective, Williams appeared to be just another loyal, duped black man, like Mays and Thomas, who was used by Zeigler.
That premise is fatally shattered by the DNA test results, which establish that (1) Mays is the probable murderer of Edwards, (2) Thomas is a liar and probable co- perpetrator, and (3) Williams is in possession of the very gun that was used to kill the person murdered by Mays.
Williams said he put the gun that Zeigler gave him (the gun which killed Zeigler's in-laws and Virginia Edwards) into his pocket. In fact, there was no evidence of gun residue on the pants Williams claims to have been wearing the night of the murders. Williams' shoes were brand new and still had a price tag on the sole. The jury never knew this fact because the State delayed turning over the pants to the defense until it was too late to obtain the results for trial.
Finally, when one murder victim is shot several times, then bloodily beaten on the head while allegedly being held, and then shot to death, (Edwards), and another is shot twice and beaten to death in a blood bath, (Mays), those involved should be covered in blood. The State contended, and proved, that Zeigler was covered in blood when he ultimately emerged from the furniture store after calling for help.
If the State's theory were correct, Zeigler's clothes would have been virtually dripping with blood at the times Thomas and Williams claim to have seen him. Yet, Thomas never saw and never reported seeing any blood on Zeigler, and Williams only reported seeing a few "spots of blood on Zeigler's face and clothes." The fact that Williams did not report large amounts of blood on Zeigler destroys any credibility for his story about the events of that evening.
There is no indication from any of the witnesses that Zeigler, at critical points, ever appeared to be covered with blood until he emerges from the store at 9:20 p.m. covered with blood, "almost as if it were uniformly painted on", as reported by Chief Robert Thompson. These facts are totally consistent with Zeigler's explanation of what happened and totally inconsistent with the State's explanation of how the crime took place.
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