The OCSO uniformed deputy, Frank Hair, discovered that the prong of the back gate latch had been bent in such a way that the gate could be opened in one direction, but the damage was not obvious.  The front prong of the yoke had been bent back, so that the gate could be swung back into the compound.

Yet Edward Williams testified that when he ran out of the dark store after hearing the three clicks, he went to the gate, tried it, and found that it was locked.  If this is true, then the only possible conclusion is that after Williams ran away, Zeigler must have unlocked the gate, bent the front prong, then locked it again.  This is the only possibility that accounts for both Williams's testimony and condition of the gate when Hair found it.

That is improbable, to say the least.  Zeigler surely would have been close to panic at Williams's escape—with Williams and Felton Thomas at large, there would now be two living witnesses to his treachery.  He would have had to expect that Williams, in his terror, would call the police at once—who could have imagined that Williams would give up after a single wrong number at the restaurant?

Zeigler would now have had an overriding concern: to shoot himself and call Don Ficke before Williams got to a telephone.  Yet, according to the state's theory, Zeigler not only took the time to move Williams's pickup truck to the bay door and wipe it clean, but also bent the prong for no apparent reason before he went into the store and performed .38 caliber surgery on his own abdomen.4

Improbable as that seems, another circumstance is even more unlikely under the state's hypothesis.  that is the position of the light switches when Yawn and Thompson and the others first entered the store.

Yawn and Thompson both testified that they found some of the wall switches in the up, or on, position when they first tried to turn on the lights.  The lights did not come on, of course: the main switch had been turned off at the outside breaker box.  When sheriff's deputies pushed that arm up, the lights came on inside.

That is straightforward enough, and it jibes with Zeigler's testimony that several lights had been left on inside the store at closing time.

But consider the testimony of Felton Thomas.  He said that the store was completely dark when he and Mays drove up.  He also said that a few minutes later, following Zeigler's instruction, he went to the breaker box and pulled the arm down.  In other words, when Thomas and Mays arrived at the store after 7:30, the arm was up, the power was on, but the store was dark.

Only one possibility accounts for Thomas's testimony and the position of the inside switches when Yawn and Thompson tried to turn on the lights.  It goes like this:

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4   Williams said that he left the truck beside the small hallway door near the corner of the building, but it was found beside the large bay door at the back of the store room. The implication is that Zeigler must have moved the truck, but no fingerprints were found.