State Attorney Monique Worrell said in a court document that recent DNA results are not enough
to overturn Tommy Zeigler’s murder convictions
and release him from Florida’s death row, where he has resided for nearly five decades.
“Nothing from this new round of testing changes the fact the jury got it right the first time around: Zeigler is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Assistant State Attorney Jacqueline Nicole Brown said in Monday’s court filing on behalf of Worrell’s office.
Zeigler’s story about what happened on Christmas Eve in 1975 that ended with his wife, in-laws and a customer killed at his Winter Garden furniture store on Dillard Street “makes little sense,” Brown wrote.
Worrell’s court filing came after
Zeigler’s attorneys last March asked an Orange County judge
to annul his four 1976 murder convictions. They argued that recent DNA testing of blood taken from the scene exonerates Zeigler.
That DNA evidence shows, according to defense attorneys, Zeigler did not have any of his family members’ blood on his clothing. Though the victims were shot in the head, there were no exit wounds, therefore any blood would’ve splattered on to the shooter, they said.
Winter Park attorney Terry Hadley, who has represented Zeigler since his trial, said Tuesday he was “very disappointed” in the State Attorney’s Office position.
“We believe the evidence does establish that Tommy Zeigler is innocent,” he said.
Circuit Judge Leticia Marques must now decide whether to hold an evidentiary hearing on the DNA evidence, as Ziegler requested. He wants the judge to rule that the evidence exonerates him and that he can finally leave prison. He has been on death row longer than any prisoner in Florida.
“We look forward to the hearing,” Hadley said.
In 2021, when Worrell first became the state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, serving Osceola and Orange counties, she said the state had a moral obligation to be certain that it had convicted the right person in the Zeigler case. At that time, she agreed to a request by Zeigler’s lawyers to release evidence for testing.
In July 1976, Zeigler was found guilty in the killings of his wife, Eunice; her parents, Perry and Virginia Edwards; and customer Charlie Mays, at his family’s furniture store in Winter Garden. The Edwards were looking to buy a new recliner at the store after it had closed for the day on Christmas Eve.
Zeigler has always maintained his innocence and claimed the murders were the result of a botched robbery by Mays, who owed money to the store.
According to Zeigler, Mays shot him in the stomach when he walked in on the burglary. Mays was then gunned down and beaten to death with a steel crank.
At the trial, prosecutors told the jury that Zeigler meticulously planned the murders before his in-laws arrived in town for a holiday visit. They said Zeigler took out two $250,000 life insurance policies in his 32-year-old wife’s name days before the killing. He then recruited Mays, along with two other men, to help carry out the crime.
Prosecutors also showed that an employee’s raincoat left at an office in the store had disappeared. They said Zeigler put on the raincoat before carrying out the killings to prevent blood from splattering on his clothes, then ditched the raincoat. However, specks of his father-in-law’s blood was found on his shoes, prosecutors said.
“If Zeigler was wearing a raincoat to shield him from his family’s blood spatter, the raincoat would not have covered his shoes,” Brown wrote in the filing.
But defense attorneys argued that Zeigler, then 30, was close to his in-laws and already wealthy and there was no motive for him to carry out the murders. They’ve long said the evidence against Zeigler is circumstantial.
They presented evidence that blood from Zeigler’s father-in-law was on Mays’ pants and shoes. And Mays’ pockets were stuffed with cash from the store’s register. Also, Mays’ DNA was found on Zeigler’s wife’s jacket.
Defense lawyers argued the blood on Zeigler’s shoes was from when he walked across the bodies to call police.
The jury recommended life in prison, but the judge overruled the decision and imposed two death sentences.
Zeigler has been on death row for 48 years. He will turn 80 years old on July 25.
