Seven Questions And A Verdict: What The Frostproof Massacre Jury Was Told, And The One Theory It Was Held To

Three friends went night fishing outside Frostproof, Florida, on July 17, 2020, and none of them came home. Brandon Rollins, Keven Springfield and Damion Tillman were shot to death near Lake Streety Road. Six years later, one man has stood trial in Polk County for all three killings: Tony "TJ" Wiggins Jr., charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The two people closest to him on that night, his brother William "Robert" Wiggins and his girlfriend Mary Whittemore, were never on trial for murder. Each pleaded to accessory after the fact.

That last sentence has sat underneath this entire trial, and it is worth being precise about it. Neither of those two ever testified in front of this jury. The brother took the stand on Day 6 only with the jury out of the room, and on the record we carried, the State did not call him after that. Mary Whittemore was not called in any part of this trial we carried. What the jury heard about them came secondhand, including the letter the State put at the center of its closing. On Day 10, Tuesday, September 29, 2026, the lawyers were finished. The judge read the jury the law, sent twelve people into a room with every exhibit in the case, and about four hours later those twelve came back.

The verdict is in. I am not going to print it in this piece, and I want to be straight with you about why. You deserve to watch it the way the families in that courtroom heard it: count by count, from the clerk's mouth, with the judge having just told the room there would be no reactions whatsoever. It is on the channel now, in full, and I will point you to it at the moment in this story where it happens. Everything else about this day I am going to walk you through, because the part of Day 10 that most coverage will skip is the part I think matters most for anybody trying to judge whether this process worked.

Before a juror decides anything, a judge tells them how to decide. That set of instructions is called the jury charge, and on Day 10 it ran a little over half an hour. Inside it were the elements of three murders, a ladder of lesser crimes, and seven questions the jury was told to ask about every witness. And there was one instruction that was not in it at all: nothing on principals, the Florida law that lets a jury hold a person responsible for a crime someone else carried out. I think that absence is the most important thing in the charge, and it cut against the side carrying the burden. The defense, for its part, stood on its earlier objections to the charge before deliberations began. That is the spine of this piece: what this jury was told, and the one road to a murder verdict it was left with.

The ground rules first, because they matter. Everything below is the record of one court day and my read of it. A jury instruction is the judge stating the law; it is never a finding about this case. Closing arguments, which ended on Day 9, are not evidence. Where a lawyer said something, I tell you a lawyer said it. No juror is named in this piece, and none ever will be on anything we publish. And when I raise a question about the process, I am raising a question about the process. I am not telling you what the jury should have decided.

A Machine With No Internet

The day opened the way the last day of a long trial often does, on something small. With the jury still out of the room, the judge had both sides look over the playback equipment the jurors would take into deliberations: the computer and monitor they would use to replay the recordings and view the exhibits. The court wanted it clean, neutral and unable to reach the internet, so that nothing could get into that room except what was admitted in this trial. Both sides looked it over. Neither raised anything further.

It is worth pausing on that for a second, because it is the process doing exactly what it is supposed to do. A jury in a triple-murder case is going to sit alone with a machine for hours. If that machine could pull up a news story, a social media post, a search result, the whole trial could be undone by one curious click. So the court checked it, on the record, with both sides watching. The jury was working out of a larger hearing room because of space, and when the panel came in, the judge told them everything in evidence would go back with them, "to include the fancy machine." The court's IT technician walked them through it: it runs like an ordinary computer with no internet connection, a CD plays from the drive, and the document camera can zoom and focus on paper exhibits.

Then the judge picked up the charge and started reading.

"Killing After Consciously Deciding To Do So"

There were three counts, one for each man. Count one is Brandon Rollins. Count two is Keven Springfield. Count three is Damion Tillman. For each one, the judge walked the jury through the same three things the State had to prove: that the man is dead, that his death was caused by the criminal act of Tony Lee Wiggins Jr., and that it was a premeditated killing.

Premeditation is the word that separates first-degree murder from everything below it, and the judge defined it in one line: "Killing with premeditation is killing after consciously deciding to do so." In plain English, the State had to prove more than a killing. It had to prove a decision. The law, the judge read, "does not fix the exact period of time" between forming that intent and the killing, but "the period of time must be long enough to allow reflection by the defendant." And it can be proved from the circumstances of the killing itself and the conduct of the accused. On a case where three men were shot at a remote fishing spot, what those circumstances say about a decision was always going to be the State's argument.

Then came the part of the charge that gives a jury choices. Under each count sat two lesser crimes. Second-degree murder, which the judge defined as an unlawful killing "by an act imminently dangerous to another and demonstrating a depraved mind," does not require any intent to kill. It covers a killing done with ill will, hatred or spite, by an act a person of ordinary judgment would know is reasonably certain to kill or do serious harm. Below that sat manslaughter. The verdict form laid each count out as a ladder: first-degree murder as charged, second-degree murder, manslaughter, or a verdict clearing him on that count entirely. The judge also read the law on when a killing is lawful, an excusable homicide or a justifiable use of deadly force, which a jury has to rule out before it gets to any of the rest.

Why does that ladder matter? Because it is how the law lets a jury say, in effect, "we believe he did something, but not everything the State charged." A jury that doubts premeditation has somewhere to go. A jury that doubts identity has one answer. Our Part 39 title called it out plainly when it posted: this jury got the case with manslaughter on the verdict form, and that is a real feature of this charge.

WATCH: DAY 10, PART 39 (THE FULL JURY CHARGE) Frostproof Massacre Jury Gets The Case With Manslaughter On The Verdict Form | Pt 39

After the elements came the firearm questions, count by count. If the jury reached a verdict on any of the three crimes, the form asked them to answer separately: did the defendant personally use a firearm during the offense? Did he actually possess one? Did he personally discharge it? And did that discharge cause the death? Those answers matter in Florida sentencing law, and the word "personally" in them matters to this case in a particular way, which I will come back to.

The judge also told the jury that although the three counts were tried together, "each crime and the evidence applicable to it must be considered separately." Three men, three counts, three separate decisions. On a case built around one night and one scene, that instruction is the law reminding the jury that each of those men is owed his own verdict.

"The Lack Of Evidence"

Next came the protections, and this is the stretch of the charge I would ask anybody who follows this case to watch in full, because every viewer who has spent nine days with us has an opinion about the evidence. This is the test the law says that opinion has to pass.

The burden is on the State and only the State. To overcome the presumption of innocence, the judge told them, the State has to prove that the crime was committed and that "the defendant is the person who committed the crime." Read that last part again. Identity is written into the burden itself. It is one thing to prove three men were murdered on Lake Streety Road. Nobody in that courtroom disputed that. It is another to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the man at the defense table is the person who did it. That second half is where this entire trial was fought.

"The defendant is not required to present evidence or prove anything." The judge said it plainly, and he said versions of it more than once. Then he defined the standard the whole case turns on. "Reasonable doubt is not proved beyond all doubt," he told them, and "a mere possible, speculative, imaginary or forced doubt is not a reasonable doubt." But then came the line I think the defense would most want every juror to carry into that room: "A reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant may arise from the evidence, conflict in the evidence or the lack of evidence."

The lack of evidence. That phrase is Florida's standard instruction, and it is not a technicality. It means a juror is allowed to look at what the State did not bring and ask why. Over nine days, the defense fought this case on how the DNA evidence was handled, on uncertainty in the firearm evidence, and on the credibility of the State's witnesses. The State argued in closing that what it did bring fits together, from the letter to the missing ten to twelve minutes. The instruction gives both of those arguments their place. What it does not do is let a juror fill a gap with a guess. That is the balance the law asks a jury to strike, and the judge read both halves of it.

He also told them their verdict "should not be influenced by a feeling of prejudice, bias, or sympathy." On Day 10 of this trial, after what happened in that courtroom on Day 9, that sentence carried weight it does not usually carry. I will get to that.

WATCH: DAY 10 CLIP, LIVE 11:00 AM ET WEDNESDAY, SEPT 30 Frostproof Massacre Judge Gives Tony Wiggins' Jury 7 Questions To Test Every Witness

Seven Questions

Now to the heart of it. Every jury charge in Florida includes an instruction on weighing the evidence, and inside it is a list of questions jurors are told to ask about each witness. This is where the law tells twelve ordinary people how to decide who to believe. On a case like this one, where so much depended on who the jury believed, I would argue it is the most important page of the charge.

Here is the list the judge read, in his words, numbered the way he numbered it:

"One, did the witness seem to have an opportunity to see and know the things about which the witness testified?"

"Two, did the witness seem to have an accurate memory?"

"Three, was the witness honest and straightforward in answering the attorney's questions?"

"Four, did the witness have some interest in how the case should be decided?"

"Five, does the witness's testimony agree with other testimony and other evidence in the case?"

"Six, had any pressure or threat been used against the witness that affected the truth of the witness's testimony."

"Seven, did the witness at some other time make a statement that is inconsistent with the testimony he or she gave in court."

That was the list. Seven questions, one through seven, with pressure or threat as number six.

Every one of those questions is an invitation to doubt a witness, and the law hands them to the jury on purpose. On this record they had plenty to work on: a lead detective who spent Day 8 conceding things about his own investigation, fingerprint work the defense attacked as subjective, phone extractions the defense said were never properly shielded, and firearm evidence the defense said could not carry the weight the State put on it. The list does not tell a juror which way to come out on any of that. It tells them how to think about it.

There is another line in this stretch of the charge that I think a viewer should know about. Right after the seven questions, the judge told the jury that "the fact that a witness is employed in law enforcement does not mean that his or her testimony deserves more or less consideration than that of any other witness." That is standard, and on this record it matters. The lead detective, Sgt. Alexander Tan, spent Day 8 on the stand conceding things about his own investigation, including photo showings that were not done blind. The law told this jury to weigh his words like anyone else's. No badge bonus.

And then one more line, which I suspect a lot of viewers will not have known is part of a jury charge: "It is entirely proper for a lawyer to talk to a witness about what testimony the witness would give if called to the courtroom." In a trial where a letter about a witness's testimony became the centerpiece of the State's closing, the jury was told that lawyers preparing witnesses is normal. What is not normal, and what the State argued the letter showed, is someone trying to change what a witness says. The law draws that line. The jury had to decide which side of it the evidence fell on.

"A Fundamental Right"

Tony Wiggins did not testify. That was settled before Day 10, and on Day 10 the jury heard the instruction that governs it. The judge told them the defendant exercised "a fundamental right by choosing not to be a witness in this case," and that they "must not view this as an admission of guilt."

This is the Fifth Amendment in its simplest form. A person accused of a crime does not have to take the stand, and a jury cannot hold his silence against him. It is one of the hardest instructions in the law for a juror to follow, because every person on a jury wants to hear the accused say "I didn't do it." The law says that wish cannot become evidence. What the jury had of Tony Wiggins' own account was what he told police, and the judge told them how to handle that too: any statement he made out of court "should always be considered with caution and be weighed with great care," and only if they found it was freely and voluntarily made. If they found it was not, they were to disregard it.

That instruction runs in an interesting direction on this record. There was no claim in front of this jury that his statements were forced out of him. The defense's use of them was the opposite: that he told the same story and stuck to it. The State's use was what the story left out. The instruction did not choose between those readings. It told the jury to be careful with all of it.

Then came a line that made me smile, because it is the kind of plain truth a jury charge rarely says out loud: "For remember, the lawyers are not on trial." A juror who liked one lawyer and could not stand the other is told to put that down. The case is about the evidence, not the performances. After a day of closing arguments that a victim's father interrupted, that reminder was well timed.

Finally the judge told them the verdict "must be unanimous, that is, all of you must agree to the same verdict," that he himself "cannot participate in that decision in any way," and that even if they did not like the laws he had given them, "you must use them." That last one is a line every juror in Florida hears, and it is the whole system in miniature. The jury decides the facts. The law is not up for a vote.

Only If All Twelve Are Convinced He Did It

There is something about this charge I want to point out because it runs against the State, and I think a fair reading of the day has to include it. When the judge finished, the jury had not been given any instruction on principals, the Florida law that lets a jury hold someone responsible for a crime he helped another person commit, even if he was not the one who pulled the trigger. None was read in Part 39.

What that means is simple and it is significant. On this charge, the jury could not return a murder verdict on the theory that Tony Wiggins helped someone else do it. The only route to any of the crimes on that ladder ran through the finding that he himself did it. Put that next to the firearm questions, which ask whether the defendant "personally" used and discharged a firearm, and the picture is consistent: the State's case, as charged, was that he was the shooter.

That was the State's theory throughout, and the charge matched it. But it came with a cost for the State. Any juror who believed he was part of it but was not convinced he committed the killings himself had no instruction that would let them hold him responsible for what someone else did. The firearm questions sat separately on top of that: the judge told the jury that if it found he committed a crime but was not convinced he personally used the firearm, it should return the crime without the firearm finding. The prosecution chose a clean theory. The instructions held it to that theory. That is the process working as designed, and it is worth saying so when it cuts against the side carrying the burden.

One Alternate Left

When the charge ended, the judge turned to a problem Day 9 had created. This trial started with three alternate jurors, extra people who sit through every day of evidence so that if a juror gets sick or has to leave, the trial does not collapse. By Day 10 there was one. Two panel members were excused for cause on Day 9, after the judge questioned the jurors one at a time about the outburst in that courtroom.

The judge was candid with the jury about why that mattered. If only twelve are left and something happens to one or two of them, he explained, a mistrial has to be declared and the whole process starts over on another day. So the last alternate was not sent in to deliberate. He was told he would not be deliberating, that he remained bound by every instruction the court had given, and that he was to stay available.

Think about what that says about where this trial stood. A triple-murder trial that ran ten court days went to the jury with a single alternate standing between it and a do-over. Nobody in the room on Day 10 caused that. Day 9 did, and it is the kind of fragility a trial carries into deliberations that the verdict form does not show.

The jury retired at about 10:05 in the morning. With the jurors gone, the judge asked both sides whether they had any objection to the instructions or the verdict form as read. The State had none. The defense stood, in its words, on its "previously made" objections.

That sentence is easy to miss and it is important. It is how a lawyer preserves an issue for appeal in Florida: object at the charge conference, then renew the objection after the charge is read, before the jury deliberates. We do not know from Day 10's record exactly what those objections were. We do know one of them from Day 9: the defense asked for heat-of-passion and adequate-provocation language, which would have let the jury consider whether a killing happened in a sudden rage the law treats as less culpable, and the judge refused it. Whatever else is in that preserved list, the defense made sure it is on the record.

WATCH: DAY 10 CLIP, LIVE 4:00 PM ET WEDNESDAY, SEPT 30 Frostproof Massacre Jury Goes Out As Tony Wiggins' Defense Keeps Its Objections On The Record

"None Of Your Fault"

Before the judge left the bench, he did something I did not expect, and it tells you a lot about what Day 9 did to that courtroom.

He spoke to the gallery. He told the families and friends that he appreciated "everybody's patience, with the exception of what happened yesterday." He told them that what happened was not their fault. He thanked the people in the gallery who came to help when it happened. And he told both sides' lawyers that they had been "nothing but professional."

What happened yesterday was this. On Day 9, in the middle of the defense's closing argument, Cyril Rollins, Brandon Rollins' father, stood up in the gallery and spoke to the room while the jury was there. The court barred him from the courtroom for the rest of the trial. By the court reporter's account, read into the record after the jury was out, he said his son "told me he done it." That is his claim, and only his. The State itself told the judge on Day 9 that "there is no evidence whatsoever that Brandon Rollins, the deceased, as he was passing away, made any comments whatsoever that anyone understood as anything."

I want to be careful here and I want to be human. A father lost his son. He sat through nine days of that son's death being taken apart piece by piece in front of strangers. His grief is not something I will ever sit in judgment of. But a courtroom has one job in a trial like this, which is to make sure twelve people decide on the evidence and nothing else. What he said is not evidence. Some of it was said in front of the people deciding.

The defense moved for a mistrial on Day 9. The judge questioned every juror individually about what they had seen and heard, excused two, and denied the motion. The rest stayed on the jury. That is the standard remedy the law gives a judge, and appeals courts give trial judges wide room when they use it. It is also the standard remedy for a bell that the law pretends can be unrung. On Day 10 the jury heard the judge tell them their verdict could not be influenced by sympathy. The same morning, he thanked the gallery for helping remove a victim's father from the room. Both things were true at once. Whether that instruction could do what it asked is the question I put to you in my reflection on Day 9, and it is still the question.

WATCH: MY DAY 9 REFLECTION (RELEASED SEPT 29) Can The Frostproof Massacre Jury Unring The Bell After A Father's Courtroom Outburst? | Pt 38

The court recessed "until we hear from the jury."

Four Hours

And then nothing, for a long time, which is what a deliberation looks like from the outside. The courtroom empties. The families wait in hallways. The lawyers wait near their phones. Everybody watching reads meaning into the clock, and the clock does not mean anything. A fast verdict can go either way. So can a slow one. I do not guess.

What I will say is that these twelve had a lot to work with. Every exhibit went into that room: the recordings, the physical evidence, the paper, played back on the machine the court checked that morning. They had three counts, three separate decisions per count on the crime, and four firearm questions each on top of that. They had an instruction telling them each crime had to be considered on its own. Whatever they decided, the form made them decide it one man at a time.

It was a little under four hours. Around 2:00 in the afternoon, the judge came back on the record with everyone present and said the sentence that changes the air in any courtroom. He told the courtroom deputy he understood there was a verdict. The deputy confirmed it.

"No Reactions Whatsoever"

The jury did not come in right away. First, the judge turned to the gallery, and after Day 9 there was no mistaking why.

He reminded them that most of them had been there for the instructions and knew what the jury's options were. "If you think you cannot handle the verdict," he told them, it would be "a good time to step out." And then: "If you hear something that you approve of or disapprove of, there'll be no reactions whatsoever." If anyone thought they were about to become emotional, he asked them to excuse themselves, quietly, out of respect for everyone who had worked on the case, the jury included. And he told them something I thought was well chosen: "This is your courtroom." Nobody was being thrown out. They were being asked to receive the verdict by the rules of the room, whatever it was.

Judges give that warning often. This one landed differently, because everyone in that room knew what had happened the day before, and everyone knew one more disruption in front of this jury was the last thing this trial could absorb. You can watch the room while he says it. You can watch the defendant brought back in. It is all in Part 40.

The jury was seated. The judge confirmed who the foreperson was, and asked whether the jury had reached a unanimous verdict. "Yes, we have, Your Honor." The forms went to the deputy and up to the bench, and the judge checked every field that needed an answer. None was missing. Then the verdict was read aloud, beginning with count one, Brandon Rollins, then count two, Keven Springfield, then count three, Damion Tillman, and then the firearm findings, count by count, question by question. The form closed the way Florida verdict forms close: "So say we all this 29th day of September, 2026."

That is where I stop. I am not going to write the words the clerk read, because you should hear them read. It takes a few minutes. It is the moment nine days of this trial were building toward, and it belongs to the families of three men, and to a defendant, before it belongs to anybody's summary.

WATCH: DAY 10, PART 40 (THE VERDICT READ, COUNT BY COUNT) Frostproof Massacre Verdict Read Count By Count As Families Are Warned Not To React | Pt 40 WATCH: THE VERDICT IS IN (CLIP) The Frostproof Massacre Jury Reaches A Verdict As Tony Wiggins Learns His Fate

The Part Of The Poll Nobody Heard

After a verdict is read, either side can ask that the jury be polled: each juror asked, one at a time, whether this is their verdict. It is the last check a jury gets, a way to make sure no juror was carried along to a result they do not actually hold. The judge polled this jury juror by juror.

Most of that poll is not in our record. The court's feed went quiet through most of it, and neither of the two transcription passes we run on every day captured the individual answers. I think I understand why. A poll calls each juror by name, and courts are protective of juror identities, especially in a case this heavy with emotion and this closely watched. We do not name jurors either, on any surface, for the same reason. So I am not criticizing the court for protecting them.

But I do want viewers to know that this stretch exists and that the public did not hear it. The poll is part of the open record of a verdict. It is the jurors, individually and out loud, standing behind what the form says. When that part of a public trial goes silent, the public is asked to take it on faith. In this case there is no sign anything in it was out of the ordinary; the foreperson had already told the court the verdict was unanimous. The point is narrower than that: an audience that watched ten days of this trial in the open did not get to watch its last check.

The rest of the afternoon is in the videos.

What The Record Leaves Standing

Here is where I come down on Day 10, without telling you anything the videos should tell you first.

The process, on its face, ran the way it is supposed to. The judge read a thorough charge. He gave the jury lesser crimes on every count. He stated the burden plainly and more than once, told the jury that doubt can come from what is missing, protected the defendant's choice not to testify, and warned against sympathy and prejudice. He checked the machine. He managed a fragile jury carefully. He handled the gallery with a firm hand and, I think, with real decency. The lawyers on both sides were, in his word, professional. If you want a picture of a courtroom trying hard to get the procedure right in a case where emotion was running this hot, Day 10 is a good one.

And there are questions this record leaves standing, whatever the verdict was:

A jury that got no instruction on principals, so the only road to a murder verdict on any count ran through a finding that Tony Wiggins himself did it. The defense preserved its earlier objections to the charge before deliberations began.

A jury that decided this case heard a victim's father speak to the room during the defense's closing, and the court's cure was to ask each juror whether they could set it aside. Two were excused for cause. The rest said they could. The mistrial motion was denied.

That same jury went into deliberations with one alternate left, the last cushion between this trial and starting over.

And the individual poll of that jury, the last public check on a verdict, is not in the public record we have.

None of those is a claim that the jury got it wrong. They are the rulings and the conditions this verdict was reached under, and they belong on the record beside it, whatever it says. A jury's view of a trial is limited to what a judge allows in and how the judge tells them to weigh it. That limit is part of the story. Our job is to show you what the jury saw, and to ask about what it was and was not told.

Where Day 10 Leaves The Case

Three men went fishing on a July night in 2020. On September 29, 2026, twelve of their fellow citizens in Polk County gave their answer on what happened to them, and whether the man on trial is the man responsible. That answer is in, and it was reached unanimously. What it means for Tony Wiggins, for the families of Brandon Rollins, Keven Springfield and Damion Tillman, and for the brother and the girlfriend who each pleaded to accessory after the fact, starts with hearing it read.

If you have followed this trial with us from the start, watch Part 39 before Part 40. The charge is the frame, and the verdict makes more sense once you have heard the questions the jury was told to ask. If you want the whole day without the waiting, the No Breaks Edition has it, every word from the device check to the last word on the record. And the Day 10 Top Moments premieres Wednesday, September 30, at 7:30 PM ET.

WATCH: DAY 10, NO BREAKS EDITION (THE WHOLE DAY) THE FROSTPROOF MASSACRE Day 10, No Breaks Edition: The Jury Gets The Case, And The Verdict Is In WATCH: DAY 10 TOP MOMENTS, PREMIERES 7:30 PM ET WEDNESDAY, SEPT 30 THE FROSTPROOF MASSACRE - FL v. Tony Wiggins - Day 10 Top Moments: Four Hours Out, The Verdict Is In

Follow every Part of this trial in order in the Frostproof Massacre Trial Analysis Podcast playlist, and tell me in the comments what you would have wanted this jury to be told. We are staying with this case.