By Roger Roy and Anthony Colarossi | Sentinel Staff Writers Posted
December 24, 2004
William Thomas "Tommy" Zeigler believes that whoever
killed his wife, her parents and a customer at Zeigler's Winter
Garden furniture store 29 years ago today deserves to be executed
for the murders.
That might seem a surprising opinion, given
that Zeigler himself stands condemned for the Christmas Eve 1975
murders.
"I can't stand here and tell you that I favor the
death penalty, because I don't," said Zeigler in an interview at the
Orange County Jail. "If you're going to have a death penalty, this
is the perfect case for it. I'm talking about this case right here
-- if you can prove it."
Zeigler, 59, who has spent nearly
half his life on Florida's death row, insisted that prosecutors have
failed to prove his guilt, despite nearly three decades of court
rulings upholding his conviction.
Zeigler was in Orange
County for a two-day hearing into his request for a new trial, based
on new DNA tests that Zeigler and his lawyers say back his claims of
innocence but which prosecutors say simply emphasize his
guilt.
Orange Circuit Judge Reginald Whitehead must decide
whether Zeigler should get a new trial based on the DNA evidence.
The judge did not say when he will rule.
Zeigler, in the most
extensive interview he has given in years, spoke about his case for
more than two hours Wednesday, giving the same account he has given
since the killings.
Whether Whitehead rules for or against
him, Zeigler said, he thinks his case is nearing a conclusion after
nearly 30 years of legal battles, death warrants and temporary
reprieves. Only seven of the 365 inmates on Florida's death row are
there for crimes committed before the Zeigler murders. Zeigler long
ago passed the average life expectancy on death row of 11.8
years.
"I would say probably the next year, it will be one
way or the other," Zeigler said.
The four murders at
Zeigler's furniture store on Dillard Street in Winter Garden
shattered a quiet Christmas Eve in what was then a small town that
seemed much farther from Orlando than it does
today.
Prosecutors say Zeigler, whose family was among the
most prominent in the city, killed his wife, Eunice, and her
parents, Virginia and Perry Edwards, in a scheme to collect $500,000
in life insurance. They said Zeigler killed store customer Charlie
Mays and then wounded himself in an effort to frame Mays and two
other men who were able to escape and testify against
Zeigler.
Zeigler is white; Mays and the two men Zeigler said
escaped are black. Police said Zeigler hoped to convince police the
killings were committed by the Ski Mask Gang, a group of hooded
black men who terrorized Central Florida that year with a string of
shockingly brutal crimes.
Three months before the Zeigler
case, the gang poured drain cleaner into the eyes and mouth of a
robbery victim in Lake County.
Three weeks before the Zeigler
killings, the gang killed a DeLand man, then bound his wife and
threw her, still alive, off the Interstate 4 bridge into the St.
Johns River, where she was rescued by a family fishing
nearby.
On Jan. 20, 1976, just weeks after the Zeigler
murders, police captured four men they said were responsible for the
ski-mask rampage.
Three were sentenced to prison, and in
1986, the gang's leader, Daniel Morris Thomas, was executed at
Florida State Prison.
Zeigler said he still thinks he was the
victim of a gang of robbers.
He said investigators pinned the
killings on him because they didn't want to admit the Ski Mask Gang
had struck again.
"They didn't want the media, you people, on
their back anymore, about not being able to solve it," Zeigler
said.
Despite the years that have passed since his arrest,
Zeigler still would be instantly recognizable to anyone who knew him
30 years ago.
His hair is thinning and graying, and he is as
pale as any longtime prisoner. Over his piercing blue-gray eyes, he
still wears the same sort of heavy-framed glasses he wore in 1975 --
his current pair he has had since 1986.
This week, Zeigler
appeared almost frail while sitting hunched in a courtroom at the
Orange County Courthouse during his hearing.
However, up
close, at 6 feet 2 and 168 pounds, Zeigler seems wiry, not frail,
and his handshake is firm. He said he exercises daily in his cell at
Union Correctional Institution in North Florida.
During the
interview, despite handcuffs that were locked to a chain around his
waist and shackles around his ankles, Zeigler sprang easily from his
chair and knelt on the floor to demonstrate his theory of how Mays
got a bloodstain on his knee during the killings.
Before
agreeing to be photographed, Zeigler insisted on shaving off the
several days of gray stubble on his face, explaining, "I have never
had a beard in my life."
After being escorted from the
interview room to shave, under supervision, he returned dabbing with
a paper towel at bloody spots where he had nicked his
neck.
At his hearing this week, Zeigler's attorneys argued
that new DNA tests on 29-year blood from the crime scene showed that
prosecutors were wrong when they accused Zeigler of holding a
wounded Perry Edwards in a headlock while bashing in his head with a
heavy metal crank.
DNA tests on some blood from that area of
the shirt Zeigler was wearing showed it came from Mays, not Edwards,
an expert testified.
"We believe the DNA clears me and
destroys the state's theory," Zeigler said.
Prosecutors
countered that the new evidence simply means it was Mays, whose
skull also was crushed, apparently with the same crank handle,
rather than Edwards whom Zeigler held in a headlock that
night.
Mays' wife and four sons, who attended part of this
week's hearing, said they are angry that Zeigler continues to accuse
Mays of being a killer.
They said he was a good father and
hard-working husband who was at Zeigler's store that evening to pick
up a color television that would be a Christmas present to his
family.
Asked whether he ever thought about Mays' sons
growing up without a father, Zeigler, who has no children himself,
said, "We've known all along that he [Charlie Mays] was a
perpetrator."
Zeigler acknowledged he was disappointed that,
despite the dozens of blood samples that were DNA tested, none found
blood that came from anyone other than the victims.
If those
tests had found blood from some unidentified person, it would have
helped his claim that others were involved in the killings, he
said.
"We had hoped that it would open up everything,"
Zeigler said.
One of the few questions Zeigler wouldn't
answer was who his friends are among other death-row inmates. What
happens on death row stays on death row, he said.
"The people
that you're with, it's like family," he said. "You get to know them.
You get to know everything there is about them."
Zeigler said
he befriended some of the death-row inmates who have been executed
over the years, including some whom he said he thinks were
innocent.
In 1986, Zeigler himself came within two days of
execution before winning a stay. Some of his belongings already had
been packed up to be shipped to his next of kin. "I thought I was a
dead man," he said.
Nearly 20 years later, he may find
himself in the same spot again if his current appeal
fails.
Zeigler said he hadn't thought about what his last
words might be, but he said he accepts that the matter is out of his
hands.
"I figure whatever the Lord's will is, it's going to
be, and that's how it's going to be," Zeigler said.
"If it
comes down to it, I'll walk into that room [the death chamber] the
same way I walked through that door to see you. I'm not afraid to
die."
