The soles showed no wear at all; a price tag was still stuck  to the instep of one of the boots.

Signs of a robbery.  Tommy Zeigler told Hadley that Eunice wore two diamond rings, but they were not listed among the physical evidence.  Tom Zeigler, Sr., told investigators that he gave Eunice two $20 bills as she was leaving for the store with her parents.  But no money was found on her.  Her purse, and her mother's, had been left at 75 Temple Grove, Perry Edwards's empty wallet was found in his car, in front of the store.3

Eventually Hadley incorporated all of these issues into his defense.  The state's own evidence, along with Zeigler's testimony, would provide the backbone of the defense.

And then there was the bombshell.

Among the April 12 disclosures the defense found a letter from the FBI Lab dated March 10, and received by the sheriff's office five days later, announcing the result of comparisons between Zeigler's shoes and photographs of the bloody footprints.

The letter read, in part (emphasis added):

Due to the absence of sufficient detail in the photographed shoe print marked "A/S-A" for minute comparison purposes, it could not be determined definitely whether this shoe print was or was not made by either the Q52 shoe or the Q53 shoe.  It was determined that the remaining photographed shoe prints were not made by either of the submitted shoes.

The implications of the single paragraph were enormous.  The Q-52 and Q-53 specimens, as the FBI numbered them, were Zeigler's shoes. If the bloody footprints were not made by Zeigler, then they must have been made by a sixth person.  The state's case did not have room to accommodate a second murderer.

Moreover, the "remaining photographed shoe prints" included one that Professor MacDonell had specifically mentioned in his report.  "Most likely this is a shoe print of the perpetrator," MacDonell had written.

According to the nation's greatest crime lab, that print was not made by Tommy Zeigler.

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3   After the police relinquished the store on January 7, Beulah Zeigler claimed that more than $800 in cash was missing from a file cabinet.  She also said that an antique gold watch and several gold coins had disappeared from a large office safe after she opened it for sheriff's officers during their investigation of the store.