Much of Orange County's law enforcement establishment, including Robert Eagan, converged on the store before midnight.  No doubt, most of them believed that the crime had been a single event: a robbery that got out of hand, a shootout. (Who could imagine what a tangled web it would become?) Frye alone, through his training at Professor MacDonell's workshop, understood that it was more complicated.  He was the first to grasp this, and he was absolutely correct.  We know that he told others of his findings. We can imagine his satisfaction when he informed his colleagues and his superiors that this was not the conventional crime they believed it to be.

He had reason to be proud.  He had just uncovered the first essential truth about what had happened in the store that night.

But now he jumped to an unwarranted conclusion: he reasoned that since it was not a conventional crime, not simply a robbery gone bad, Tommy Zeigler must be guilty.

He remembered it in a deposition: "Primary thing was the thing that he was alleged to have been shot when the killing of Mays occurred.  It was at that point I think I said to myself, we don't have what would be total; more or less is what I thought to myself.  So that was, I would say, an hour from my entering the store."

We can also understand Fry's impatience to interview Zeigler, and his confidence of being able to extract a confession: Give me half an hour with him.... As soon as Zeigler described a conventional crime, a simple shootout, then Fry had him, because Frye knew it hadn't happened that way, and he knew how to prove it.

But Zeigler never told that story.  When he was conscious and coherent on Christmas—before he ever could have known about Frye's observations and assumptions—Zeigler told Terry Hadley a story that is compatible with the blood spatter evidence, and that has remained consistent for nearly seventeen years.

All of the observations Frye made that night can be explained within the context of Zeigler's story and the evidence that later developed:

1.     The blood trail to the front door.  That trail was not Zeiglers blood type.

2.     The holster on top of Mays's spattered blood.  Jimmy Yawn testified that the holster had been moved, a suggestion that is easily believed, considering the foot traffic through the crime scene.

3.     The appearance to Mays's blood spatters on top of Perry Edwards's dry blood swipes.  Zeigler's testimony is compatible with the theory that Mays was killed some time after Perry Edwards.  In that sense, the blood spatters actually corroborate Zeigler's testimony.