Christmas Eve, 1975. Winter Garden, Florida. Police respond to a call for help at the WT

Ziegler furniture store and find one of the store's owners, Tommy Ziegler, bleeding from a gun

shot wound to the abdomen. Inside, they discover that four people have been murdered. Tommy's wife

Eunice Ziegler, her parents Perry and Virginia Edwards, and a customer named Charlie Mace.

Tommy claims that he was attacked and shot by unknown intruders, but authorities believe

that Tommy committed the murders himself and that his gun shot wound to self-inflicted.

Months later, he is put on trial and sentenced to death. Over the years, evidence has

emerged to cast doubt on the conviction and suggests that an innocent man has been on death row

for the past 40 years. After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode number 15 of the trail went cold. I'm your host

Robin Warder and I can safely say that today's episode is going to be our longest, most convoluted

one to date. You're probably very familiar with the podcast serial, which has played a huge role in

making true crime podcasts so popular in recent years. As you recall, serial examined the 1999

murder of a girl named Time in Leap and cast out on whether Adnan Saed, the young man convicted

of a murder, actually committed the crime. Due to the man with publicity this case has received,

Adnan Saed has recently been awarded a new trial. So I thought it was about time that the trail

went cold that its own serial style episode about a case which is technically solved, but is

fraught with doubt over the resolution. Today, I am going to be examining the case of Tommy Zeegler,

a man who was convicted of four brutal murders and has been on death row for the past 40 years.

If you're wondering why a man would be kept on death row for 40 years without being executed,

that's because this case is very controversial and the state of Florida has always been very worried

about the potential backlash they'd received if they actually went through with Zeegler's execution.

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