Blood Spatter Expert appointed in Zeigler case: The Zeigler Defense Team has told me that this morning, Judge Whitehead has approved state-funding to engage Mr Paul Kish as blood spatter expert in connection with William Thomas Zeigler‘s requests for new DNA testing.
Mr. Kish is a forensic consultant in Corning, New York. He will testify at a future hearing on whether a new round of DNA testing should be conducted in this case.
As you know, I am convinced that Zeigler’s case is a wrongful conviction. I am also convinced that Zeigler never had a fair trial. If you have been following me here on DCC and reading my posts about the Zeigler case, than you know that I have been concentrating on pointing out why I believe that he never had a fair trial.
Some issues I have with the case:
The Jury
Upholding the jury’s findings can only be done if you are sure that nothing has changed. A lot has changed.
The jury was hindered from the start by members who had already made up their minds, before the defense had finished presenting its case. According to some of the other jurors, jury foreman Charles Ashley had made up his mind about two weeks before the defense rested its case!
One juror in particular, Mrs. Irma Brickle, was harassed to make up her mind. When she resisted the pressure, alternate juror James Roberts stepped behind her seat, put one of the evidence revolvers to her head, and pulled the trigger. Other jurors shouted at Mrs. Brickle and called her names. Juror Peggy Dollinger confirmed that other jurors shouted at Mrs. Brickle when she tried to discuss the case. Mrs. Dollinger signed an affidavit in February 2003. It states that, had she been aware of the evidence that we have now, she would have voted “not guilty”, and that would have changed the verdict. She mentioned, among other things, the DNA testing as highlighted in my post “Let’s talk blood” and the police report from Chief Thompson. This report, a.k.a. “the Buried Thompson Report,” has been posted in full on DCC.
Unexplained physical evidence
The state of Florida never explained any of the following:
1: Bloody footprints near the body of Mrs. Eunice Edwards Zeigler did not belong to any of the victims or to Zeigler. Tom Delaney, the FBI specialist who examined the footprints, stated that they could not have been left by Zeigler’s shoes. Delaney testified to this effect in court. If those footprints are not Zeigler’s, it follows that some unknown people were in the store making these bloody footprints. Why are we not looking for them?
2:Property receipts showed that technicians had found a .22 Long Rifle cartridge hull in the back of the store. Of the eight pistols connected to the case, this shell could only have been fired from the .22 automatic that Zeigler carried with him on Christmas Eve. Remember that Zeigler used to carry a weapon since he frequently took large amounts of cash to the bank. The .22 automatic is the jammed gun which Zeigler said he had tried to defend himself with at the back of the showroom. So the .22 pistol had been fired once but by whom? And where was the slug?
In a two-week examination of the store, attorney Vernon Davids and PI Gene Annan found a .38 caliber slug and a .38 caliber exit hole in the north wall, which deputies had missed. They believed that this accounted for all of the .38 caliber shots that were fired in the store. But there were no signs of the .22 slug.
Neither Zeigler nor the four murder victims had been shot by a .22 caliber. If the slug did not exit through the walls, it could only have left the store one way: in the body of one of the unknown perpetrators, as he walked out or was carried out.
3: One of the close-up photographs of Charlie Mays showed a human tooth lying on the sleeve of Mays’s dark sweatshirt. Mays had lost a single tooth when he was beaten, and that tooth was recovered against the north wall of the showroom.
None of the other victims had lost a tooth. It did not belong to Zeigler either. Felton Thomas claimed that he never entered the store so…could it be from Edward Williams? Did the state ever check that it wasn’t Williams’ or Felton’s? Or, does it belong to a person that we still need to identify, who may have played a role in this huge mess of a massacre?
According to police property receipts, the tooth in the photograph was never recovered. Yet, it clearly did exist. So this tooth was never found again but it lives on in crime scene photographs.
4: Who manipulated Mays’ dead body?
The state of Florida has never explained discrepancies between sworn statements of their own law enforcement officers and the crime scene photographs as it was made public.
Somehow between Officer Yawn being in the store and the official crime scene photographs, Mays’ dead body underwent a few changes. We already know that a tooth found on his sweatshirt disappeared but there is more. Below you see the part where Yawn describes seeing Mays’ dead body. Start reading at line 15.
Now compare this with this crime scene picture…
Mays’ right arm is stretched out, the crank is next to his right hand, his zipper is open, and his pants are down.
Officer Yawn was also questioned about Mays’ pants. Check from line 5 onwards.
Between Yawn being on the crime scene and the photographs that were used in the media and during trial, someone moved Mays’ right arm, took the crank away, placed arm and crank in a different position, took the tooth away, opened Mays’ fly and pulled down his pants…
Either this is a very sloppy handling of a crime scene or someone deliberately manipulated it to hide traces that would point to the real perpetrators. Sloppy is possible. Manipulated is far more likely. Since Mays’ dead body was later photographed with the fly open and pants partially pulled down, we should check the pants and the zipper for any biological material that we can test for DNA.
Any loose ends like these are unacceptable in a capital case.
The timely call
The state contended that Zeigler called for help after he had killed everyone. Then, knowing that he would get help soon from Mr. Van Deventer and Chief Ficke, he took a gun and shot himself in the abdomen to make it look like he was a victim as well. Then, he waited quietly for the cops to come to his rescue.
The problem with this theory is of course, that as soon as Van Deventer received Zeigler’s call, he and his guest Chief Ficke ran out the door, met outside with Chief Thompson, and sped towards the furniture store. Van Deventer, Ficke, and Thompson arrived within minutes at the store. During that time, it would have been impossible for an abdominal wound to have stopped bleeding and for all that blood to have dried up. When Chief Thompson took Zeigler to the ER and carried him to his squad car while wearing a white police uniform shirt, he did not get any of Zeigler’s blood on himself. Why? Because all the blood on Zeigler was dry. Zeigler told the truth about passing out before calling for help. Chief Thompson wrote down his observations in his police report that has been published in full here on DCC (see link above). This report was not given to the defense before trial or during discovery.
One killer
The state of Florida carefully put together the theory that Zeigler killed all four people without the help or assistance from others.
The State contended that Zeigler fired all 28 shots with 8 guns. However, there was no gunshot residue found on Zeigler’s pants.
It is highly unlikely that Zeigler could have fired 28 shots from 8 guns in different parts of the store in what the Roaches labeled “two fire cracker like bursts.” The Roaches, witnesses who heard the shooting, stated that they heard rapid firing at different loudness levels, suggesting more than one person firing shots from different angles. They signed an affidavit in 1979.
I’d like to see a reconstruction with one person shooting 28 shots with eight different guns from different places within the store and making it sound like “two fire cracker like bursts.”
The Suppressed Jellison Tape
The state claimed that the shootings took place between 7:00-8:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, 1975. Four eyewitnesses, whose testimony the state suppressed and hid from the defense for more than a decade, said that the shootings took place after 9:00 p.m. AND after the police arrived at the store.
In April of 1987, when Zeigler’s lawyers made a Florida Public Records Act request for the files of the State Attorney in Orlando, they discovered (aside from the “Buried Thompson report”) a tape-recorded telephone interview with Mr. John Jellison. The interview had been conducted on April 30, 1976, by a state investigator named Mr. Jack Bachman. The tape had been hidden by the State Attorney’s Office, which failed to disclose anything about this tape before the trial and even in answering requests for disclosure in conjunction with Zeigler’s appeals.
Mr. John Jellison, his parents, and his sister, were staying at a motel next to and behind the Zeigler furniture store on Christmas Eve, 1975. They witnessed some of the happenings outside the store. Mr. Jellison told the investigator that at about 9:00 p.m., he and the rest of his family saw a police car at the back of the store. A police officer was aiming his gun towards the store over the top of the squad car. Then, they heard shots as they were watching. Then they saw that other police cars had arrived on the scene.
The state’s investigator made his disappointment with Mr. Jellison’s recollection plain: “[A]s long as you heard the gunshots after, you know; you saw the police car, that wouldn’t help us a bit.” When Mr. Jellison asked if Mr. Bachman wanted to interview his mother as well, Mr. Bachman replied: “Not unless, you know, you all get together and decide you heard those gunshots before you saw the police car. In that case, we’d give you a free trip back to Florida.”
The significance of the Jellison Tape is explained in a separate post and clearly shows that alternative explanations for the facts were possible.
These just are a few examples of what is wrong in this case. Many more are listed here on DCC. Ask yourself, when so many questions remain unanswered, how do you justify keeping a man on death row?
To be continued.