Zeigler still had the gun.  He insisted that he meant Williams no harm.  Williams asked Zeigler to unlock the gate so he could leave, and Zeigler asked Williams to follow him inside so he could get the key.

Williams refused.  He was sure that Zeigler meant to kill him.

Zeigler told Williams to calm down and be quiet.  He gave Williams the pistol, and he put an arm around Williams, trying to hold him. Williams noticed spots of blood on Zeigler's face and clothes, and he pushed Zeigler off.

Zeigler pleaded for Williams to come into the store with him: "Edward, if you don't go, you're gonna frame me."

Williams decided to lie his way to safety.  He told Zeigler that he would follow him into the store if Zeigler would first open the gate.

Zeigler agreed.  Instead, though, he got in Williams's truck. Williams ran in the opposite direction, to the southwest corner of the compound.  He climbed the fence and jumped down into the back lot of the Winter Garden Inn.

Williams put the pistol in his pocket, went across Dillard Street to the Kentucky Fried Chicken, and asked to use the telephone.  He also asked the number of the police.

A clerk gave him a telephone number and showed him to a phone in the office.  Williams tried the number he had been given, and had a confused conversation with someone who told him, "There ain't no police here." Frustrated, he left the restaurant.  Outside he met two girls whom he knew; he asked them for a ride.

"They said they was on their way to Orlando.  I said could you drop me in Orlando.  She said yeah.  I said will you hurry because it's urgent.  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in a bad fix."

Williams was in their car when he remembered that his Camaro was supposed to have been repaired that day.  He found it outside the service station where he had brought it, with the key inside.  He drove to Orlando, to the home of Mary Stewart, whom he had known for years. He told her what had happened; she called her attorney, and on his advice they went to the sheriff's substation.

Williams concluded his statement:  "This is Edward Williams speaking, concerning what happened to him on Christmas Eve....[T]he only thing I was wondering was, what worries me why, it worries me wondering why Mr. Tommy being so nice to me, why he would try to take my life."

*

One of the crime scene technicians removed a chrome-plated Securities Industries .38 snub-nose revolver from between the front seats of the Camaro.  All six cylinders were empty.  According to Williams, this was the pistol that Zeigler gave him when he tried to coax him back into the store.