Zeigler was involved in any such plot.  The letters were remarkable, in part, because they violated the unwritten prison rule against snitching.

One was from Robert Lewis, who participated with Odom in several violent armed robberies during the 1970s and who in 1979 escaped from Death Row by walking out, wearing a guard's uniform.  (He was arrested three weeks later.)

Lewis sent an affidavit that alleged, among other things, that "most stories about [Zeigler] were created by my crime partner Eddie Odom for personal gain."

Convicted murderer Jimmy Lee Smith said that he met Odom in 1979, shortly after arriving on Death Row, and that Odom offered to have him moved to a more desirable cell on the ground floor of the wing.2

Smith was one of several inmates willing to repudiate Odom at Zeigler's re-sentencing hearing.  He write: "Eddie welded [sic] a little power around death row because he had money and he was the biggest dope connection in the prison.  He tells me that he can get me moved to One-North, but, for doing so, he wants me to keep tabs on someone for him.... He says that someone on that floor has information he needs and if I would help him get it he would have me moved....It turns out that Eddie wants me to spy on William Thomas Zeigler Jr.—everybody calls him Tommy.  I was moved into the cell right next to him....Eddie wanted any sort of information about Tommy, especially about his Mother and Father."

According to Smith, Odom told him that he had arranged to have photos of a murdered inmate sent to Zeigler's parents, and that Odom boasted of having repeated the threat to Tom senior in the visiting room.  According to Smith, Robert Lewis's escape was part of a larger escape plan that would be financed by the money extorted from the Zeiglers.  But the plan failed when Lewis was caught three weeks later.

"I asked Eddie what he did with all that money since the grand escape attempt failed," Smith wrote. "He says that he paid for a boob job and a new Cadillac for his old lady.  I laughed as tho I tho't that was the slickest con in the world.

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2              The upper floors at FSP are said to be stifling hot in the summer.