Posted on 10/04/2025 6:22:14 AM PDT by TheDon
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The murder of Tina Heins has been solved after more than three decades, State Attorney Melissa Nelson announced Thursday.
Michael Shane Ziegler, a close friend of Heins’ Navy sailor husband, is now charged with the sexual assault and murder of the 20-year-old, who was four months pregnant when she was stabbed 27 times in her Mayport apartment in 1994.
Nelson said Ziegler evaded justice for more than three decades -- allowing another man to be wrongfully imprisoned for the crime for nearly 14 years.
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(Excerpt) Read more at news4jax.com ...
The only thing they had was “Jail snitches” and never used the bloody print. They just wanted to say they caught the guy so they looked good. They now have laws about using Jail snitches since that case. But to answer your question, They never helped, and still have not helped him to this day, they considered him a suspect even after his release. Had it not been for him never giving up on his innocence and writing to the innocence project they would have never caught the real killer. Even funnier part is they NEVER looked into this guy back in the day and him of all people being she was stabbed and throat cut points obviously to a knife, and someone trained for survival would know how to use one, do military personnel not have knives?
Florida for years watched him like a hawk and did everything they could to make him look like a bad guy because they didn’t want to look like they had been wrong or want to find the true killer.
He said the day he got out that he hopes the same DNA that freed him would catch the real killer, and it did.
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