- The Defense - Page 119

Frye had never mentioned these heavily stained shoes; neither did MacDonell's report note them.

Frye believed that Mays had been killed almost immediately after entering the store; as MacDonell put it, "To conclude other-wise would be to suggest that he was present while the other victims were being killed and did nothing to prevent it."

Blood in this quantity was inconsistent with any theory of Mays's innocence.2  Only two deposits of blood were large enough to account for the stains around Mays's feet and cuffs.  One of these was the pool that flowed from Eunice Zeigler, completely out of sight in the kitchen.  The other was the pool around Perry Edwards, at the far rear of the showroom.  If Mays were innocent, being coaxed into the store by Zeigler, he would have run away or begun to struggle long before he reached either of these locations.

Mays's shoe prints were nowhere in the store.  Yet the blood on his soles had come from somewhere.  The defense theorized that he had picked it up from the Perry Edwards pool, and that the trail of swipe marks that ran beside the showroom's rear wall—a pattern that Frye and MacDonell ascribed to a running battle between Edwards and Zeigler—actually showed where Mays's bloody tracks had been wiped up.

And, in fact, the regular spacing of those swipe marks, tracking straight along the edge of the terrazzo, was consistent with footsteps.

On Christmas Eve, Curtis Dunaway had left a London Fog raincoat in the office closet.  When he returned to the store in January, the coat was missing.  Some members of the defense speculated that the raincoat may have been used to wipe up bloody footprints, and perhaps to move one or more of the bodies.

The black cardigan and the boots.  On Christmas morning, detective Denny Martin went to Williams's apartment, and Williams gave Martin the clothes he was wearing.  According to Williams, he had last changed clothes at about 6:00 P.M. on Christmas Eve, before he drove to meet Zeigler.  Those clothes, except for the trousers, were in the sheriff's evidence lockers.  They included a black cardigan sweater. According to the prosecution, the pants were at the FBI Lab and were not available for inspection.  But they were dark green.

Several witnesses claimed that Williams was wearing a brown jacket and light brown pants that evening.

Williams's black ankle-high boots were remarkable.  Supposedly he had worn them throughout the evening and night of Christmas Eve, had climbed a chain-link fence in them, and had run across the asphalt parking lot of the Winter Garden Inn when he escaped from Zeigler.  Yet the boots were completely new.

__________________________________________

2   One of the items found in Mays's pockets was a business card for an Orlando bail-bonding service.