- February 16, 2025
Photos courtesy of Winter Garden Heritage Foundation
Newspapers covered the trial and conviction of Tommy Zeigler.
Photos courtesy of Winter Garden Heritage Foundation
Tommy Zeigler, right, and Curtis Dunaway at work at the Zeigler Furniture store, then on South Dillard Street, in Winter Garden. Photos courtesy of Winter Garden Heritage Foundation
Photos courtesy of Winter Garden Heritage Foundation
Photos courtesy of Winter Garden Heritage Foundation
The 1975 Christmas Eve murders still are talked about today. After the blood had dried, the evidence had been collected and the testimonies had been presented in the trial, Winter Garden furniture store owner William Thomas “Tommy” Zeigler Jr. was convicted of killing his wife, Eunice; her parents, Perry and Virginia Edwards; and a longtime customer, Charlie Mays — and he was sentenced to Florida’s death row.
He sits there to this day, still claiming his innocence, and his name appears in the news occasionally when he files motions and requests appeals from the prison cell he has long called home.
But this time it could be different.
Zeigler’s attorneys filed a 64-page ruling Friday, Jan. 26, to request a new trial — and hoping to prove, once and for all, their client is innocent.
Their best chance has come in the way of a request for a new trial based on recent DNA testing. Zeigler may finally have his chance to prove his innocence.
According to the Tampa Bay Times article, a blood trail, rug fibers and cat fur “show it is impossible for … Zeigler to have killed his wife and in-laws … his lawyers assert in a new court filing.
“Fresh DNA analysis of dozens of pieces of evidence instead supports Zeigler’s story of walking in on a burglary at his family’s furniture store in Winter Garden, his lawyers say, and provides enough reasonable doubt to overturn his convictions,” the article stated. “The tests also point to another man as the killer.”
It’s not the first time DNA testing has been done in Zeigler’s case. In 2005, DNA tests failed to conclude Mays was the perpetrator. Zeigler’s case has been denied DNA analyses in 2013, 2016 and 2017.
Motions for additional DNA testing on the bloodstained clothes in evidence have been filed, and denied, through the years.
A lengthy investigative report by journalist Gail Hollenbeck in 1991 concluded “evidence gathered for the prosecution was not only incomplete, but some experts say it was not handled properly or thoroughly processed.”
Zeigler was the subject of a book, “Fatal Flaw,” by Phillip Finch in 1992 that asserts Zeigler’s innocence. After studying the murder case, Finch concluded “the investigation of the crime was a sham and the trial a travesty.”
The Medill Justice Project, founded at Northwestern University in 1999, is an award-winning national investigative journalism center that examines potentially wrongful convictions, probes national systemic criminal justice issues and conducts groundbreaking research.
Among Medill’s findings:
• Witnesses Ken and Linda Roach question Zeigler’s guilt, but their accounts were never heard at trial. The Roaches said they heard 12 to 15 gunshots within four seconds while driving by the furniture store, but authorities were not interested in hearing their story and wouldn’t help them contact the defense attorneys. It would be virtually impossible for a single person to fire a non-automatic weapon so quickly, according to ballistics experts.
• Zeigler, who has maintained his innocence, was discovered at the crime scene with a gunshot wound in his lower torso. The prosecution argued the wound was self-inflicted to make Zeigler look like a robbery victim. But people rarely shoot themselves in such a vulnerable spot to cover up a crime, experts told The Medill Justice Project. Moreover, based on the angle of the bullet as it passed through his body, Zeigler would likely have had to use his non-dominant left hand to fire the weapon. Ballistics evidence suggests Zeigler would have had to shoot himself with the gun positioned away from his body, depriving him of the ability to stabilize the gun’s muzzle against his torso.
• The two key witnesses against Zeigler have changed their accounts over the years while details have disappeared, according to interviews with sources, police records, trial transcripts and other court documents, as well as investigative reports.
Zeigler’s attorney, Ralph V. "Terry" Hadley III, said in an earlier interview: “If the evidence does what I think it will do — and that is prove him innocent — then they’re not going to execute an innocent man. … If, on the other hand, I’m wrong ... and it proves him guilty, then they can go to bed at night knowing they did their job. ... Why would they not be willing to seek the truth?”
COULD ZEIGLER SEE FREEDOM?
Zeigler’s defense team consists of Hadley, a lawyer with the Maynard Nexsen team in Winter Park; Dennis H. Tracey III and David R. Michaeli, of New York; and John Houston Pope, of St. Petersburg.
In their 64-page filing, the lawyers explained the procedural history of the case:
“Zeigler has been imprisoned for nearly 50 years for murders that he did not commit. As required by Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure, Zeigler informs this court that he has filed approximately 31 motions seeking various forms post-conviction relief, inclusive of appeals thereof.”
“In 2001, Zeigler obtained limited authorization to use DNA testing technologies on portions of his clothing the state presented to the jury at trial.
“The testing results showed that the bloodstain sample taken from spots on Zeigler’s shirt’s underarm — the same bloodstain the state relied on to show Zeigler had allegedly held (Perry) Edwards in a headlock and brutally beaten him, and the same bloodstain the state argued showed by inference that Zeigler had also killed his wife and mother-in-law — was not Perry’s blood.
“Further, the testing showed that Perry’s blood was found in the deep, saturated blood stains found on the upper calf and lower thigh of Mays’ pants, which was consistent with Mays, not Zeigler, having knelt on Perry’s chest while Perry was bleeding profusely. The testing results also discredited the state’s claim that Mays arrived more than an hour after Perry was killed at Zeigler’s command. Rather, the results supported Zeigler’s testimony that the stain on the underarm of his shirt, which the state argued arose from a savage beating of Perry Edwards while Perry was held in a headlock, was created when Zeigler crawled over Mays’ body to call the police.”
According to the state, the sample was “too small, mixed or deteriorated to be reliable, despite presenting no evidence to support that contention.”
In 2009 and 2012, Zeigler filed motions seeking to test the additional stains; again, his requests were denied.
Zeigler’s lawyers argued in the filing:
“Because it is clear that the DNA evidence presented here, a technology not available at the time of Zeigler’s trial and received by Zeigler in 2024, is newly discovered evidence within the meaning of the first prong, ‘the only question is whether this evidence satisfies the second prong.’
“Accordingly, the court need only assess whether the new DNA evidence — along with all the other evidence since Zeigler’s conviction — ‘(puts) the whole case in such a different light’ that a juror would not be convinced of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“As noted by then-Florida Supreme Court Justice Barkett in her dissent in this very case, ‘(In) light of an initial vote by the jury in this circumstantial evidence case of six jurors to acquit and six to convict, the allegation of newly discovered evidence warrants a careful review.’”
Zeigler’s lawyers argue the new DNA evidence creates reasonable doubt about their client’s guilt and is particularly compelling because “the state’s case against Zeigler was purely circumstantial.”
“The state’s contention at trial that Perry’s blood was all over Zeigler’s clothes has now been definitively proved to be false, completely undermining the very ‘linchpin’ of the state’s circumstantial case,” the lawyers’ filing stated.
They concluded the filing with the statement that “Zeigler’s convictions should be vacated and the court should grant him a new trial.”
Perhaps Zeigler’s biggest advocate has been his cousin, Winter Garden resident Connie Crawford, who always has maintained his innocence. She was elated to hear the latest news and shared it on Facebook:
“Friends, months ago I told you about DNA testing in the Zeigler murder case. Friday night, the defense filed a brief asking for a new trial based on findings of the DNA results.
“Now the world will know what the family and supporters have known for the past 49 years. It is my opinion Tommy Zeigler is an innocent man whose life was stolen by evil men with a grudge in a position of power.
“I have walked with him these 49 years because I believed in his innocence, not because he was my cousin, but because I could see the evidence against him was bogus. The state told the jury Tommy knew, when he shot himself, how to stand and position his vital organs so as not to hit them and fatally wound himself. He had this vast knowledge because ‘he was a medic in the Army Reserve.’ Tommy was a supply sergeant for a medical unit. The scar is still with him. The bullet entered the front and exited the back. Just an example of the evidence used to convict. The DNA will tell a much different story than the web of lies spun by the state.’”
Hadley said of Zeigler’s law team: “We believe the testing and everything that has been done on the DNA conclusively proves that Tommy Zeigler is innocent. The DNA simply refutes every theory the state had in trying to show his guilt. … The state said in the closing arguments that Tommy Zeigler held Perry Edwards by the head and beat him over the head, and there’s not a drop of Perry Edwards’ blood on Tommy Zeigler. The only blood on Tommy Zeigler is either (his) blood or Charlie Mays’.
“It would have been Perry’s blood all over,” Hadley said. “It’s not on his clothing at all. One really fascinating piece is that Eunice Zeigler, who was in a separate part of the store, also had Perry Edwards’ blood on her coat, and the only way Perry Edwards’ blood could be on her coat would be if it dripped off the person who killed her father. That’s the crux of what the DNA has found.”
Hadley, who is semi-retired, said his colleagues in New York have spent more than $100,000 of their own money to test the DNA. The team has held weekly conferences with the testing company in California and several members of the state attorney’s staff.
The next step, Hadley said, is for a court hearing to be scheduled, which likely will take about three months; the judge will decide if Zeigler will get a new trial based on the new evidence.