- The Defense - Page 107

door of the restaurant.  J.D. crossed Dillard Street, and the two brothers spoke. Then a middle-aged black man came up and asked to use the telephone inside the restaurant.

Madelyn Nolan corroborated the two brothers' account.  She remembered seeing Thompson help Zeigler out of the store and into his patrol car.  Minutes after that, she saw Williams at the restaurant.

Five witnesses now placed Edward Williams at the Kentucky Fried Chicken after 9:00 P.M.  Three of those witnesses would swear that Williams appeared at the restaurant after the police arrived across the street, nearly as late as 9:30.

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Gene Annan interviewed Thomas Hale, the young man who claimed to have seen Tommy and Eunice driving together near the furniture store around 7:10 on Christmas Eve.

As Annan described it later, he stood beside Hale at a counter where Hale worked, at the McCoy Jetport on the south side of Orlando. Annan carried a notebook with the photograph of an automobile clipped inside the front cover.  They chatted for a few minutes, and Annan opened the notebook.  This gave Hale a glimpse of the photograph.

Hale remarked at the photo: that was it, he said, that was the car Eunice and Tommy had been driving on Christmas Eve.

Annan asked him if he was sure.  Hale said yes, he recognized the car from the style of the rear-wheel fender skirts.  Annan suggested that Hale sign and date the back of the photograph, and Hale complied.

Hale was an acquaintance of the Zeiglers.  The photo he signed was of the 1968 Oldsmobile that the Zeiglers had sold three months before the murders. 

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3   Hale is the only witness who ever claimed to see Tommy and Eunice together immediately before the murders.  His identification of the car was controversial, as was the method that Annan used to obtain it. Zeigler's 1968 Oldsmobile, which Hale identified in the photo, and Curtis Dunaway's 1972 Olds 98, which Zeigler was driving on Christmas Eve, shared the same basic body style.  Hale said that the Zeiglers were riding in a "light car."  Dunaway's two-door automobile was beige over a darker brown; Zeigler's four-door 1968 Olds was a special Holiday model with a brown vinyl top over a body of "Palomino gold." The style of its fender skirts was somewhat different from the '72 model.  Annan testified that he did not bring Hale's attention to the photo, but that it was in view, and Hale pointed to it without prompting.