Lawyer says 'victim' was actual murderer

Killer William Thomas `Tommy' Zeigler claims self-defense in 1975 case.

Pierre Mays sat in the back of an Orange County courtroom Tuesday, staring intently at the man long ago sentenced to death for killing Mays' father and three others on Christmas Eve 1975.

"I was 12 years old when he killed my dad," said Mays, nodding toward William Thomas "Tommy" Zeigler, seated at the defense table in a prison jumpsuit. "I'm 41 now. So it's been a long time."

For Mays, his mother and three brothers, attending Tuesday's hearing was a way of standing up for the memory of father and husband Charlie Mays. That's because Zeigler's latest -- and perhaps final -- chance for a new trial is based on claims that Charlie Mays was not an innocent victim, but a killer who was himself killed by Zeigler in self-defense.

The Mays family sat silently Tuesday as a lawyer for Zeigler accused Charlie Mays of taking part in a violent robbery that ended in the deaths of Zeigler's wife and her parents before Mays was wounded by Zeigler and then finished off by his accomplices, who escaped.

"Charlie Mays was one of a group of perpetrators . . . in a robbery-homicide," defense attorney John Houston Pope told Orange Circuit Judge Reginald Whitehead in closing arguments of the two-day hearing.

Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton countered that Zeigler killed his wife and in-laws and then killed Mays in an attempt to make Mays look like the killer.

Mays, who went to Zeigler's furniture store that night to pick up a color television set that was to be a Christmas present to his family, was not a criminal, Ashton said, and witnesses at Zeigler's 1976 trial testified to Mays' good character.

"Mr. Mays was a good man," Ashtold told Whitehead. "A hard-working man with a large family."

The defense's request for a new trial is based on new DNA tests on samples of blood found on the clothing of Zeigler and the victims. The tests, which can positively identify the person a blood sample came from, weren't developed until years after Zeigler's trial.

The prosecutor in the 1976 trial told jurors that a blood stain on the left side of Zeigler's shirt was caused by Zeigler holding his father-in-law Perry Edwards in a headlock while bashing in his skull with a heavy metal crank.

DNA tests on some of the blood on Zeigler's shirt showed that it came not from Edwards, but from Mays.

Pope said that evidence, and the finding of some blood from Edwards on May's pants, undermine the prosecution's case, and would have persuaded Zeigler's jury to clear him.

"Would this new evidence change the verdict? Yes, it would," Pope told Whitehead.

Ashton said the DNA tests proved nothing except that it was Mays and not Edwards that Zeigler might have been holding in a headlock, and that Mays was killed after Edwards, which the prosecution had always alleged. Both victims had extensive head injuries.

Ashton pointed to the other evidence against Zeigler, including testimony that he bought the guns used in the killings, that he secretly purchased a large life-insurance policy on his wife shortly before the killings, and that he tried to kill and frame an employee that night who escaped and went to the police, taking with him one of the murder weapons.

"There is nothing in this [DNA] blood evidence that refutes this at all," Ashton said.

Whitehead did not say when he would rule in the case, but the evidence he must consider includes extensive trial transcripts thousands of pages long.

Roger Roy can be reached at rroy@orlandosentinel.com or

407-420-5436.