The chatter was not confined to Winter Garden and the OCSO.  The defense attorneys began hearing it from friends and contacts within central Florida's legal community: that Zeigler mutilated dogs, that he had tried to kill his father, that he was a closet homosexual.  These were the same unfounded rumors that eventually became the keystone of Don Frye's grand jury testimony.  Hadley and Davids believed that sheriff's officers and members of the prosecution team were leaking the information.  There would inevitably be intramural gossip about one of the biggest and most sensational criminal cases that state had ever seen, but this was especially direct and damaging.  Even among those for whom the presumption of innocence is supposed to be a byword, Tommy Zeigler had been summarily convicted.

Even more troubling to Hadley and Davids was the outrage that the death of Charlie Mays provoked in local black neighborhoods.  Defense investigators found themselves shut out when they tried to question blacks in Oakland and Winter Garden.  One of Hadley's investigators got into a shoving match with Brian Nedd, the sixteen-year-old fruit picker who had gone shopping with Charlie and Mattie Mays on Christmas Eve.

Feelings ran hot.  It wasn't just that a white man was accused of killing a black—that was no novelty.  What set this incident apart was the Zeigler was said to have brought Mays to the store on the pretext of a kindness and killed him solely to cover up his own guilt.

This tapped a wellspring of racial mistrust and resentment.  As most blacks saw it, Zeigler had not just slain one of their own, he had betrayed their trust and showed contempt for their judgment.  Most troubling of all, they were ready to believe his guilt before a single piece of evidence had been introduced, before a single witness had testified: it simply rang true to what they knew about white attitudes.  If even those who knew and liked him felt this strongly—and many

Q (Hadley): Are you familiar with the rumors concerning the alleged homosexual of Tommy Zeigler that have been circulating, both in the city of Winter Garden in general and in your department in particular?

A (Ficke): Yes sir, I am.

Q: Who started the rumors within the Winter Garden Police Department?

 A: The night of the alleged motive of Mr. Thompson, we were discussing it and I guess it was Officer Yawn was in the store; and I asked Thompson to get him out of there because if this was the motive, I didn't think it would be good to get it around. And I'm led to believe that Chief Thompson has told another officer in our department at our headquarters that night of alleged homosexuality.. ..Officer Barry Smith....He, in turn, told ten other people.

Q: Who else was present besides yourself and Don Frye when Chief Thompson related this possible motive?

A: I would say the entire investigative staff that was there.