- The Defense - Page 125

Then, according to Thomas, Mays pulled around to the back parking area of the Winter Garden Inn.

Q: Well, did he run right along beside the store to get to the hotel parking lot?

A: No, he went through—he went between these buildings. You couldn't go through the first part.  He went through the buildings.  He went between the two buildings down, so he went between the last two buildings.

Hadley asked Thomas to draw the store and the nearby buildings and to trace the route that Mays followed into the back lot of the motel.

Immediately south of the store on Dillard Street, and directly across the street from Kentucky Fried Chicken, were twin single-story office/commercial structures known as the Tucker Buildings, separated by a common parking area.

Felton Thomas drew a route straight from the front of the store to the Tucker Buildings, then between the twin buildings and into the rear of the Winter Garden Inn, then finally up to the high fence that enclosed the back compound of the furniture store.

Hadley asked Thomas to sign the diagram, and Thomas complied.

Thomas said that they had parked on the west side of a truck, which was between the van and Dillard Street.  They waited there for about five or six minutes, until a car pulled in beside them and a man got out.  There is no record that, until this moment, Thomas had ever been asked to describe the man who met him and Mays in the motel parking lot.  According to the transcript of his Christmas-morning statement.  Thomas had simply identified him as Zeigler—whom he had never before met—and the Orange County detectives had accepted that identification.

Now any description would potentially have lost some value: Thomas had already seen Zeigler at the preliminary hearing.  But Hadley pursued it.

Q: Okay.  Now, you tell me what this man looked like, Mr. Thomas.  Just describe him.

 A: Well, he was tall and wearing glasses; and his hair kind of thin.

Q: His hair was kind of thin?

A: Yeah.

Q: Was he going bald?

A: Nope.  I don't think so, I wasn't paying that much attention.

Q: How about his clothes?  Did you notice what kind of clothes he had on?

A: Not too good, but I know he had on kind of light clothes.

Q: Kind of light clothes?