- The Defense - Page 108

Twenty-two

Tommy Zeigler tells this story.

After his preliminary hearing, the afternoon of Friday, January 16, he was returned to his cell on the sixth floor of the Orange County Courthouse.  He had just been granted bond of $40,000.

But Zeigler had already decided that he would stay in jail until Monday, when his parents could raise a cash bond.  A bail bondsman could have him out in time for dinner.  But the bail fee would be $4,000.  That struck Zeigler as awfully expensive for a weekend of freedom.

The captain in charge of the jail had Zeigler's belongings in a box on a desk, ready to go.  Zeigler told him to put the box away, that he would be staying for the weekend.

"What do you mean?" the captain said.

"I can wait," Zeigler said.

The captain turned to a guard.

"This son of a bitch is crazy," he said.

 *

Zeigler was not crazy, and in a few months he would have a psychiatrist's testimony to prove it.1

But he was in many respects an unusual man, a personality of contradictions, not always easy to know or like.  He could be brusque, he could be gracious.  He was modest, he was full of himself.  He was a rube, he was a canny businessman.  He was the embodiment of a nineteenth-century Southern cavalier and a prototype of the 1980's want-it-all-now hyperachiever.

He was not inclined to self-doubt or deep reflection.  He knew his own way, and until Christmas Eve of 1975 he was that rare lucky man who could afford to follow his own path generally without resistance or upset.

Now he was caught up in a system to which nobody dictated terms.  Criminal justice ground on regardless.

Between the preliminary hearing and the grand jury's indictment, he was free for nine weeks.  It was an awkward period.  He lived with his parents: the house

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1  In May 1976, Dr. Allen Zimmer conducted a four-day longitudinal psychiatric examination of Zeigler in the Orange County Jail, after which he found that Zeigler "is not a psychopath.  My diagnosis was that he has no mental disorder."