Thirty-eight

The rapid succession of defense witnesses continued the next morning, Friday the 25th.

Among them were:

Ÿ   Cleo Anderson, who verified that Felton Thomas had come to his home late Christmas Eve while he cooked wild game for Christmas dinner but—in a direct contradiction to Thomas's testimony—stated that Thomas never mentioned anything strange occurring at the furniture store.

Ÿ   Powell Walker, the superintendent of three citrus harvesting crews, including Charlie Mays's, who testified that he gave Mays $453 in salary and a loan on December 23, paid by check.

Ÿ   Beulah Zeigler, who testified that at least $1,000, plus undetermined amounts of cash from the cigar box and the top of her son's desk, were unaccounted for after the crime.

Ÿ   Rogenia Thomas, who repeated her testimony that Edward Williams never mentioned Tommy Zeigler by name after she met him in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken and drove him to his car.

Ÿ   Curtis Dunaway, who testified that he and Tommy Zeigler twice went to Mary Ellen Stewart's home in 1975, attempting to repossess furniture that was never paid for; also, that the roll-up cargo door at the back of the storeroom was usually left open during the day.  (The defense theorized that someone might have entered the storeroom before closing, hidden, then opened the back door to let in other assailants.) Dunaway also said that he had bolted the swinging rear door at the back when he locked up on Christmas Eve.  Under cross-examination, Dunaway told Eagan that on Christmas Eve Zeigler had not turned on the large display lights that usually burned all night in the front windows.

Ÿ   Felton Jones, an eyewitness who claimed that he saw only one car—the Edwardses' Ford—in front of the store when he left the Tri-City shopping center around 8:05.  When Eagan cross-examined him, though, he said that no stores were open in the shopping center when he left, which would have meant that the time was after 9:00.

Ÿ   Gene Annan, the defense investigator, who testified that he inspected the metal garage door at Zeigler's home around January and found that the door appeared to have been forced at the top.

Ÿ   Claude Truby, the Sanford Crime Lab fingerprint expert, who had previously identified Ziegler's fingerprint on the tissue paper from Curtis