Someone suggested that Eunice and the Edwardses might be hostages inside her home, and the idea seemed to make sense.  Ficke ordered Yawn to Tommy Zeigler's house, with orders to enter the home if necessary.  Yawn got in a car with Fisher, Van Deventer, Phil Cross, and a local photographer named George McClellan.  They headed out to Temple Grove Drive, looking for Eunice Zeigler.

Soon a uniformed sheriff's deputy named James Pearson arrived at the store, followed shortly by Frank Hair, the sheriff's lieutenant in charge of the patrol shift.

Ficke, Hair, and Justice went back into the store.  They went to each of the three bodies.  This time, according to Hair, Ficke looked at the dead woman on the kitchen floor.  But the light was poor, and he did not identify her.

Winter Garden firemen were roping off the parking lot and pushing back the onlookers when Hair and the others came out of the building.  Hair decided to check the back of the building.  He brought James Pearson with him, and they walked up the north drive, to the fenced rear compound.

Pearson saw that the gate was locked, and he climbed up on it.  At about that moment, Hair turned around to look toward Dillard Street, and when he turned back, Pearson had jumped down on the other side of the fence and was looking around the back lot.

Hair walked up to the gate and found it ajar, open five or six inches.  The prong-type latch was still padlocked, but one of the latch's prongs was bent, which allowed the gate to swing back into the compound.

Hair came up behind Pearson and surprised him.

"How the hell did you get in?" Pearson said.

Hair looked around.  On the far side of the fence, in the Winter Garden Inn parking lot, was a shabby blue van.  That was the van of Charlie Mays.  Hair also noticed the pickup truck parked at the loading dock, inside the compound.  The registration of that truck would show that it belonged to Edward Williams.

*

Jimmy Yawn knocked on the front door at 75 Temple Grove, looking for Eunice Zeigler.  He got no answer.  He could see lights inside, but no movement.  Yawn walked around to the back; everything seemed quiet.  He noticed a small tear in the back screen door, just above the latch.

Yawn got on the radio to request backup.  Ficke sent Revels and Robert Thompson, who had returned after finding Curtis Dunaway at home with his family and bringing him to the store.

Yawn covered the front door while Ted Van Deventer tried the keys.  None of them worked.  Thompson used his flashlight to break a pane of glass in the French doors around back, and Yawn and Thompson entered.