WINTER GARDEN, Fla. —

Attorneys for convicted murderer Tommy Zeigler have filed a new motion to vacate the 1975 conviction, based on DNA evidence. This legal move comes after a California lab’s DNA test showed results that were, according to Zeigler’s representation, “wholly inconsistent with guilt.”

The 79-year-old Zeigler has been on death row for nearly fifty years, making him the longest-serving death row inmate in the state of Florida.

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On Christmas Eve, 1975, Zeigler was charged with the quadruple murder of his wife, Eunice; her parents Perry and Virginia Edwards; and furniture store customer Charlie Mays. The original conviction alleged that Zeigler had shot the four to death at Zeigler’s family furniture store in Winter Garden; first Eunice and her parents, then Mays, after Zeigler attempted to lure him and two other men into the store as a cover-up for the crime.

For half a century, Zeigler has maintained his innocence, claiming that he walked in on a robbery and was attacked by Mays. He was shot in the abdomen, an injury prosecutors theorized had been inflicted by Zeigler upon himself as a way to divert suspicion. The state alleged that Zeigler’s motive for the murders was to cash in two life insurance policies held by his wife, Eunice, that totaled $500,000. He was convicted and sentenced to death in July 1976, seven months after the killings.

READ: DNA testing could give new insight into Tommy Zeigler case

Zeigler and his team have previously been denied modern DNA testing, most notably in 2021 when Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a motion to block Zeigler’s lawyers from pursuing a DNA test that sought to exonerate Zeigler for the killings. Moody argued that State Attorney Monique H. Worrell did not have the authority to consent to the testing, and that Zeigler’s request for testing did not “meet the requirements of Florida state post-conviction law.”

But in October 2022, Circuit Court Judge Patricia L. Strowbridge approved the motion, allowing for the production of “physical evidence, including guns, fingernail clippings from the victims, and clothes worn by both Zeigler and the murder victims” for DNA testing. Just after Stowbridge’s decision, more than 100 pieces of untested evidence were sent to a California lab, with all expenses being paid by Zeigler’s representatives.

READ: DNA evidence could exonerate man on death row for 40 years, defense attorneys say

The results of that testing were consolidated into a 64-page affidavit that claims the evidence shows “Zeigler could not possibly have murdered Eunice, Perry, or Virginia.”

According to the test results, Zeigler’s clothing contained blood from only two victims, Charlie Mays and Perry Edwards. “The fact that Perry’s blood appears in large quantities on the other victims but only as specks on Zeigler’s proves that Zeigler could not have shot Perry at close range in the head and body and beaten him for several minutes,” the filing says. “The fact that Zeigler does not have any of his other family members’ blood on him similarly proves that Zeigler could not have killed them, either.”

Additional findings state that Perry’s blood was discovered on both Mays’ and Eunice’s clothing, allegedly proving “that the killer must have been covered in Perry’s blood,” which, according to the affidavit, Zeigler was not. It also states that “DNA ‘touch’ testing” revealed that Mays’ skin cells appeared on Eunice’s clothing “on the very locations ... that her killer would have needed to grab her to rearrange her clothing after death.”

Armed with the new evidence, Zeigler’s defense seeks a new trial that, utilizing the new DNA evidence, may exonerate Zeigler after 48 years. “Both new forensic and testimonial evidence tend to exculpate Zeigler and prove his innocence,” the filing reads. “When these new facts ... are weighed against the State’s circumstantial-evidence case, the ‘total picture’ is so different that there is reasonable doubt as to Zeigler’s guilt.”

The office of Ninth Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell has yet to respond to the motion, and a hearing date has not been set.

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