account.  But that was still an open question until all the evidence was collected and analyzed.  His story would be badly compromised if a hair from his head, for example, was found at the scene.  But the fact that he had been at the store after the crime—even if confined to a part of the showroom—could muddle what otherwise would be damning evidence.

Ÿ        In their most glaring offense against basic procedure, Frye and  Jenkins apparently failed to obtain from Felton Thomas even the barest description of the stranger who approached him and Charlie Mays when they were parked in the motel lot.  The transcript of their interview of Thomas early Christmas morning shows that the detectives did not challenge his identification of Zeigler, whom Thomas had never met before that night.

Thomas was a key witness in a capital crime.  He should have been required to give a head-to-toes description of the man he was implicating. A proper interrogation might include the following line of questioning: "How  did he wear his hair?  Was it long or short?  What color was it? What was the shade of his skin?  Did he wear glasses?  Were they wire-rimmed or did they have plastic frames?  Did he have a mustache?  Sideburns?  Any scars? What color was his shirt?  Did it have buttons up the front?  Long Sleeves or short?  And so on down to his shoes.  At the very minimum, Frye and Jenkins should have asked Thomas about the stranger's age, height, weight, and general physique.

According to Thomas's account, the stranger in the Cadillac must have been with him and Mays for at least twenty minutes.  During much of that time Thomas sat beside the stranger in the front seat of the car. Thomas observed him standing, walking, jumping fences.  Thomas's story is worthless if he could not describe in detail the man whom he accused of having murdered Charles Mays.

When he did get the chance to describe the man he met, Thomas was wrong on the two most obvious details: what he wore and what he drove. Zeigler's clothes on Christmas Eve were not light-colored, and he did not drive a light-colored Cadillac.  Even allowing for an unlikely misidentification of the make of the automobile, Thomas at least should have known the obvious fact that Dunaway's Oldsmobile was two-toned—distinctly, unmistakably dark and light.  Above all, as we'll see in the next chapter, Thomas failed to note the single most striking detail about Zeigler that night, a detail he  could not have failed to mention if he had seen Zeigler that evening.

Thomas also should have been asked to pick Zeigler out of a photo spread—that is, a collection of several head-and-shoulders photographs, including one of the suspect.  This is a standard test of an eyewitness identification.  (Some detectives also like to test a witness's reliability by using a photo spread that does not include the suspect.)

Frye probably didn't have a photo of Zeigler that night.  But he could have gotten one a few hours later, when he searched 75 Temple Grove. The fact that