A: As I was trying to get up off the floor I was shot.

Q: You were getting up and got shot?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Do you know how far away the man was that shot you?

A: Terry, I didn't have any idea.  I know it was further away than any six inches, as the FBI stated.

Q: You feel it was further away than what the FBI indicated?

A: Yes, I do.

Q: How did it feel when you were shot?

A: Like somebody slammed a hot poker all the way through you.

Q: Did it hurt?

A: Yes, it did.

Now events were disjointed, Zeigler said.  He was “disoriented and fuzzy."  As he lay on the floor he heard a voice say, "Mays has been hit.  Kill him."  He thought that the assailants left the store through the storeroom.

He lay on the floor at the back of the showroom—for how long, he couldn't say.  He became conscious, and crawled around, trying to find his glasses.  He crawled over a body, but did not know who it was.  He kept picking up Christmas bows as he tried to find his glasses.  Finally he got his gold-rimmed glasses from his desk in the front office.  He went out to the front counter and used the phone there to call the Van Deventer home.  Then he went to the front of the store and sat, or lay, in a lawn chair near the front door.

He said that when the police arrived, he went to the door and found keys in the lock: they were the keys he had given to Eunice that evening.  He didn't know how they had gotten there.

Hadley asked him to point out certain spots on the state's model of the store.  Zeigler got up and pointed out the light switches, where he was first hit, and his office.

He took his seat.  His voice remained steady and firm as Hadley began a final series of questions:

Q: Tommy, Christmas Eve 1975 how did you feel about your wife, Eunice Zeigler?

A: My wife and I were closer and more compatible then than we were when we got married.

Q: Did you love her?

A: Yes, I did.

Q: Mr. Zeigler, did you shoot to death Mrs. Virginia Edwards?

A: No, sir, I did not.

Q: Did you harm one hair on your wife's head, Mr. Zeigler, on Christmas Eve?