also had to kill the Edwardses.  Knowing what they knew, they would have instantly accused him of Eunice's murder.

This idea has a number of drawbacks, not the least of which is that by all the evidence, the Edwardses' visit was cordial and normal. Perry Edwards, Jr., who lived near his parents in Moultrie, gave no indication that they had planned anything but a routine visit.  Rita Ficke spent some time with Eunice on Christmas Eve, and saw nothing amiss.  Also, Tommy invited Curtis Dunaway into his home a little before 7:00 P.M. on Christmas Eve—an odd gesture for someone who knows that within half an hour he is going to kill everyone in the house—and the scene Dunaway later described was peaceful, domestic, ordinary.

Furthermore, if Eunice truly feared for her life and wanted leave Winter Garden, as Cheryl Clafler claimed, she had had opportunity to do so.  She had gone alone to Moultrie in October, when her father took ill, and could have stayed. (This forced her to postpone one of the medical exams for her insurance.)

If Eunice really did know some awful secret that threatened Tommy's reputation in Winter Garden, then his interests would be best served by getting her out of town, out of the state, as quickly as possible—thereby, incidentally, clearing the field for him to continue his homosexual affair without interference.

But let's assume that this wasn't good enough for him, that for reasons of greed and depravity he couldn't allow Eunice to leave. Let's assume, against all evidence, that Cheryl Clafler's accusations are actually true, that his wife had caught him in flagrante with another man, that she had told her parents, that Zeigler knew she had told her parents, and that he decided to kill all three in order to preserve his secret.

Unlikely as it may be, this is the only scenario that addresses Zeigler's motives for killing Perry and Virginia Edwards.  It answers all the questions but one: if all this is actually true, what were Eunice and the Edwardses doing in the furniture store with Tommy, whom they must have despised?  The state's theory depends on the proposition that Zeigler was able to manipulate his wife and his in-laws into leaving the house almost to the minute on Christmas Eve; and not only that he was able to do so, but that he knew he could do so.  Otherwise his elaborate preparations with Edward Williams and Charlie Mays would be useless.

Under the circumstances, Tommy would have no influence on Eunice and the Edwardses.  If the state's theory is to be believed, Eunice willingly went to the store, alone, with the husband whom she was going to leave in less than a day, and who she feared was planning to kill her.  And the Edwardses willingly, compliantly, gave them a head start of five to ten minutes before they, too, drove to the store to pick out this La-Z-Boy chair, which they must have desperately desired.