was that Tommy's father supposedly opposed spending any more money on his son's behalf. According to the Sentinel, the state attorney's office also had a witness who would testify that Zeigler tortured small animals when he was a teenager.

But Odom never testified about the supposed murder plot.  And the witness to Zeigler's alleged brutality toward animals never took the stand; according to the prosecutor, he had gone to Costa Rica.

Two psychiatrists and a psychologist did testify that Zeigler was unlikely to be violent.

"Had I not met Mr. Zeigler at Florida State Prison, I would have come away having met just another man," said Orlando psychiatrist J. Lloyd Wilder.

Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton cross-examined psychologist Brad Fisher, who said that Zeigler was unlikely to be violent:

ASHTON: In early December 1975, could you have predicted he would murder four people?

FISHER: My best prediction would have been that he wasn't likely to become violent.

ASHTON: Wouldn't you have been less likely then than now to predict that he would commit murder?

FISHER: That's correct.

Ashton intended to discredit the psychologist's ability to predict Zeigler's future behavior, since Zeigler had been convicted of a violent crime.  However, another conclusion was possible.  In 1976, virtually the same testimony—that he was unlikely to be a murderer—could have been used to defend Zeigler.

Nevertheless, Circuit Judge Gary Formet did find that Zeigler deserved the death penalty, and restored the sentences.  In 1991 the Florida supreme court again affirmed the sentences, and Zeigler's attorneys began the appeal process once more, basing their latest habeas petition on new evidence that had been revealed during the past fifteen years.

Zeigler admits that in 1979 he tried to persuade a Death Row inmate who had run out of appeals­—a onetime member of the so-called Ski Mask Bandits­—to confess to the Christmas Eve killings.  As for the alleged murder plot, he and his mother claim that she was a victim of extortion, that she and Tom were pressured into paying protection money to save their son's life.  Apparently the Zeiglers were sent prison photographs showing a murdered inmate: the implication was that this could  happen to Tommy.

The sole source of the information about the murder plot was Eddie Odom and his wife.  In 1991, two FSP inmates wrote remarkable letters denying that