not.  Rather, they stated unequivocally that they heard shots after a policeman drove up to the back of the store.

This was powerful material, considering that Zeigler had always charged that he had made enemies of local policemen because of his interest in Andrew James and the alleged loan-sharking racket.  Years before the existence of the Jellison tape became known, Zeigler claimed that a Winter Garden patrolman had threatened his life.

The defense deposed every officer who was on the scene during the first half hour after police arrived.  None of them described an action like the one related on the Jellison tape.  No police car should have been in the rear compound at any time on Christmas Eve.  What the Jellisons claimed to see, if accurate, is a corroboration of Tommy Zeigler's long-held theory that he was set up by police.

*

In 1988, the murders were the subject of a syndicated TV documentary.  Researchers for the independent production company interviewed juror Irma Brickle, who told them that on the afternoon of the last day of jury deliberations she was given Valium to calm her nerves; shortly afterward, she said, she gave in to pressure from other jurors and voted to convict.

The documentary left unclear the questions of who gave her the drug, and by what authority.  Zeigler's latest motion for a new trial states that Judge Paul persuaded Mrs. Brickle's physician to prescribe her the drug over the telephone.

Shortly after the documentary was broadcast, Vernon Davids received a letter from a certain John Bulled, whom Davids later verified as one of the prison trusties on the work crew that dug up the grove bullet.

According to Bulled, crews searched the grove for two days and found nothing.  On the afternoon of the second day, Bulled said, a sheriff's deputy told the crew supervisor, "We will just have to produce one anyway."

Bulled said he believed that the evidence had been fabricated, because inmates were told to say that they had found a slug, when actually they had found none.

Two of Zeigler's present attorneys, from the New York City law firm that has represented him since 1986, have sworn that they contacted a second member of the work crew who confirmed Bulled's story and reluctantly agreed to testify.

And in 1982, Ed Rowe, the manager of a West Orange grocery, signed an affidavit regarding conversations that he had had with Charlie Mays's son seven years after the murders.  According to Rowe, he had discussed the crime with Ernie Mays, who was one of his employees.  (Ernie Mays denied that the conversations took place.)