Four

Donald Frye’s beeper sounded when he was at the movies. He telephoned the sheriff’s dispatcher and was told that there had been a shooting and robbery attempt at Zeigler Furniture in Winter Garden.  He got to the store just after Blankenship,  Bird, and Churchill discovered the body of Virginia Edwards.

Frye was twenty-nine years old and had nearly five years of police experience, all with the Orange County sheriff’s office.  He had been an OCSO detective since mid-1973, assigned to the Crimes Against Persons Section.  Detectives in that unit usually worked in pairs and were assigned cases by rotation.  In December 1975, Frye was teamed with Detective James Jenkins, and on Christmas Eve their names were at the top of the call list.

Frye took charge almost immediately.  Jenkins was already busy with another case, to which he would be assigned full-time in the next day or two.  From Christmas Eve on, Frye had day-to-day responsibility for the investigation.

No Orange County detective had ever investigated a quadruple homicide.  Few had ever confronted a murder scene so large or complex; the building measured 10,600 square feet, and potential evidence could be found throughout, although the greatest violence seemed to have occurred near the back of the showroom, especially in the northwest corner where Mays’s body was found.  The signs there were obvious: furniture in a jumble, bullet holes in the walls and ceiling, and dried sprays of blood.

That night and early Christmas morning the crime scene technicians collected and impounded items that included:

Ÿ       A pair of glasses and a set of keys on a ring, near the northwest corner of the showroom, not far from Charlie Mays’s body; both were later identified as belonging to Tommy Zeigler.

Ÿ       A tooth found in that same general area, against the north wall.

Ÿ       Receipt slips totaling about $415, and $405 in cash, stuffed in one of Charlie Mays’s trouser pockets.

Ÿ       A footstool with blood smeared on the legs, found at the back of the showroom where much of the carnage had occurred.

Ÿ       A shoulder holster, found between Mays and the west wall of the showroom.

Ÿ       What appeared to be the fingertip from a surgical rubber glove, just west of the kitchen door.