Seven

Around 7:00 on Christmas morning, Frye and James Jenkins left the store and met Don Ficke at West Orange Memorial  The three of them went up to the nurse's station of the intensive care unit on the second floor.

They wanted to interview Tommy Zeigler.  Kathleen Clark, the head ICU nurse, told them that Zeigler could have no visitors.  She had just come on duty and wasn't sure that he was in condition to be interviewed.  And she didn't know whether Zeigler had been told of the four deaths; she didn't think he ought to hear it from the police.

Ficke wrote out a consent—in essence, a waiver of Zeigler's Fourth Amendment rights—on a piece of paper.  Ficke later testified that Frye dictated it; Frye said that it was a mutual effort.  The document read:

December 25, 1975

I Thomas Zeigler of Temple Grove Winter Garden Florida due [sic] knowingly and willingly give Donald G. Ficke and Det Frye permission to search my home in an attempt to aid there [sic] investigation into the shooting that took  place at 1010 Dillard St. Winter Garden Florida on December 24, 1975.

Frye gave the document to Kathleen Clark and asked her to take it to Zeigler; she was to read it to him, make sure that he was alert, and asked him to sign it.

Zeigler within the past hour and a half had been given a one-eight-gram dose of morphine sulfate for pain; he was sleeping when Clark went in with Doris Thompson, another nurse.  Clark woke him and told him that the police were outside.  He asked her to send them in, and she refused.

She read the document to Zeigler and told him that the police wanted him to sign it.

Zeigler said that he would.  Clark gave him a pen, and he scrawled his signature at the bottom, witnessed by the two nurses.

Sheriff's officers had already decided that they were entitled to search throughout the furniture store and to impound any evidence they wished.  Zeigler, after all, had invited police to the store when he called for help, and in any case they were empowered to investigate a crime scene.  Now Zeigler's signature on the consent form gave them unrestricted access to all the business records, files personal papers, and belongings in both the store and the Zeigler home, without ever applying for a search warrant.