one policeman using another as a c.i., and in effect shielding him from questioning while making his information the basis of an indictment.

Duane came to suspect that at least one major evidence find—the bags with cartridges, a blue towel, and the two empty gun boxes. said to have been discovered in a cabinet in the storage area—had been planted by police, either by the investigative crews themselves or by a local policeman directly involved in the actual crime, with access to the store. This cache of evidence was logged into evidence on January 2, nine days after the investigation began, and fully a week after the last item of evidence was seized from the store. Zeigler had already been arrested four days earlier, and Duane believed that by then the OCSO had begun to realize how tenuous was the evidence against Zeigler.1

After several years of internal debate about the question of Zeigler's guilt, Duane took a new tack. It occurred to him that a gunshot wound in the abdomen was potentially lethal, even if self-inflicted with great care.2

Duane hypothesized how police would have investigated the case if Zeigler had died from his wound.

By living, Zeigler had offered only the sketchy story of an assault in the back of the store, plus the testimony that he loved his wife and had lived an upstanding life. The rest of the evidence would have been virtually the same, Duane thought. It would show that Charlie Mays had been found after hours in the furniture store, with cash and receipts in his pocket, his van parked in a position that suggested surreptitious purposes. It would show that Edward Williams was in possession of the principal murder weapon, that ownership of the other two major weapons had been traced to Williams's friend, Frank Smith, and that Williams's truck had been found at the murder scene. The only difference would have been one more body. Would the police still have attempted to blame the murder on one of the apparent victims?

__________________________________________

1  Don Frye has testified at least twice that the cache actually was found on Dec. 27. But the evidence receipts are dated Jan. 2, 1976. Alton Evans, who found the bags, testified that he made the discovery on Jan. 2, and this is borne out by his official report. Evans was not even in the store on Dec. 27: he was busy preparing the first shipment of evidence for the FBI Lab, which he brought to Washington on the 28th. If the evidence in the bags had been found earlier than the 27th, it would have been included in that original shipment. In fact, it became part of a later submission.

2   In May, 1976, the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice published a study on the effectiveness of soft body armor. As part of the research, the authors canvassed surgeons to determine possible mortality rates from gunshots in unprotected torsos. The study quoted a mortality rate ranging from five per cent to 20 per cent for a shot from a .38 Special which does not strike any vital organs. A shot striking the liver would have a mortality rate of 15 to 60 per cent, while one which passed through the spleen would have a potential mortality of 15 to 30 per cent.