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The Winter Garden Police chief was at a party on Christmas Eve 1975 when he received a phone call from his friend Tommy Zeigler, the owner of a furniture store on Dillard Street.

“I’ve been shot, please hurry,” Zeigler told the chief as he struggled for breath.

When police arrived at the store, Zeigler, 30, managed to unlock the door and then collapsed “with a gaping bullet hole through his lower abdomen,” court records show.

In the store, detectives found a gruesome, bloody crime scene and several guns. Four other people — Zeigler’s wife, his in-laws and a laborer — lay dead.

Zeigler claimed he was attacked when he entered the store — he, his wife and her parents were to meet there so the older couple could pick out a recliner for Christma

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