Frye didn't seize any photos from the home indicates that he never intended to subject Felton Thomas's statement to this simple test.2 As it happened, Thomas was not available for photo spreads anyway: immediately after Frye and Jenkins released him, he went missing for four days. But Frye didn't know that until later.

(Since the transcript of the original interrogation probably doesn't record the entire conversation between Thomas and the two detectives,we can't know for certain that Frye and Jenkins didn't ask the right questions. But we can be sure that Thomas didn't accurately describe Zeigler that night.  If he had, that description would have fortified Thomas's credibility and surely would have become a part of Frye's official report. Frye had no reason to withhold an accurate identification.)

Ÿ       The recognition experiment that Frye and Denny Martin conducted in the back of the showroom was poorly conceived, and proved nothing.

Frye was testing whether Edward Williams could have identified a gun wrapped in a towel in Zeigler's hand.  Under actual conditions, Williams would have been coming from relative brightness (exterior lights at the motel shone on the rear compound) into the darkness of the showroom. Also, Williams would not expect to find a gun in Zeigler's hand.

But in Frye's experiment, he and Martin stood inside the store so that their eyes could adjust to the darkness.  (Frye himself admitted this.) Then each took turns walking up the hallway while the other held an unloaded service revolver.  Frye said that Martin went outside and then came in, but Martin denied it.  He said that he simply went to the end of the dark hallway and then walked back into the showroom.

Frye devalued the experiment when he used a known object.  He did not wrap a cloth around the pistol.  Above all, he undercut the premise of the test by allowing his eyes to adjust.  Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that he found that the test confirmed Williams story.

Even so, Martin remembered it with less confidence.  From his deposition of April 29, 1976:

Q (VERNON DAVIDS): What did you see?

A (MARTIN): Well, I could recognize Detective Frye.

Q: You could recognize him?

A: Yes, sir.  But it was very close.  I can't say whether or not  it was part of my imagination, knowing it was Detective Frye there or not.  But I could make out Detective Frye.

Q: What about in his hand?

A: Yes, sir.  I could see something in his hand.

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2      Zeigler and members of his family confirm that the house contained photo albums as well as framed pictures on display.  One of those photos is reproduced in the photo section of this book.