State Attorney Melissa Nelson said a grand jury has indicted Michael Ziegler, 52, in connection to the 1994 murder of Tina Heins.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Authorities in Jacksonville Thursday announced the arrest of a former U.S. Navy sailor in a 31-year-old cold case.
State Attorney Melissa Nelson announced at a press conference that 52-year-old Michael Ziegler has been arrested in relation to the 1994 murder case of Tina Heins.
In 1994, Nelson said Tina was murdered and sexually assaulted. She was 20 years old, four months pregnant and newly married, Nelson said.
At approximately 6 a.m. on April 17, 1994, law enforcement officers arrived at Tina’s residence in Jacksonville’s Mayport area and discovered her fatally stabbed in her bedroom. According to Nelson, she suffered 27 stab wounds.
Multiple areas of her apartment were set on fire afterward.
Nelson explained that during Tina’s murder, her brother-in-law Chad Heins was asleep in the living room of her apartment. He awoke to find a fire, which he put out, before discovering Tina’s lifeless body.
Nelson said Chad then called 911.
“At the time, the investigation and the evidence solely implicated Chad Heins,” Nelson stated. “Tina’s husband, Jeremy Heins, who is Chad’s brother, was serving on a Navy ship stationed at nearby NAS Mayport.”
Nelson stated Chad was convicted of Tina’s murder in 1996, then was sentenced to life in prison.
Nelson further explained that with the advent of new DNA analysis technologies in the early 2000s, authorities were able to analyze preserved evidence from Tina’s body and bed in novel ways that were not possible at the time of the murder.
After testing the evidence with the new advanced DNA technology, Nelson said a DNA profile of an unknown man emerged.
“DNA evidence, including samples from beneath Tina’s nails, hairs from her body, and a semen stain on her sheets, belonged to a man who was neither her husband nor her brother-in-law, Chad,” Nelson revealed.
Nelson said the DNA profile was then uploaded into a national database. The DNA profile ran weekly in the database for years without a hit, Nelson said.
Additionally during this time, Nelson said investigators collected DNA samples from people associated in both “large ways and small ways” to Tina. However, the DNA samples did not match up with the DNA profile.
Then in 2007, based on DNA evidence, Nelson said, the state dismissed the case against Chad Heins. Although investigators continued their efforts, Nelson said the DNA profile remained unidentified for the next 15 years.
“In 2021, after the breakthrough in the Golden State killer case, we sent, at the recommendation of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, what little DNA remained in this case to a lab in Texas, whose work was known to be highly successful in the identification of individual profiles from minute amounts of DNA, which was the case here,” Nelson said. “A profile was developed, and the lab began genetic genealogy searches. Through genetic genealogy, the lab identified a likely match.”
Nelson said detectives and forensic experts then confirmed the match to Ziegler.
According to Nelson, Ziegler was stationed at Naval Station Mayport aboard USS Leyte Gulf in 1994.
“He was not a stranger to Tina Heins,” Nelson said. “Michael Ziegler was her husband Jeremy’s very close friend. In fact, he stood witness at their courthouse wedding just five months before Tina was killed.”
On Aug. 28, Nelson said Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi presented the case to a Duval County grand jury, who then indicted Ziegler on first-degree murder and sexual battery charges.
Nelson said Ziegler was then arrested without incident near his home in Covington, Ga., outside of Atlanta, on Sept. 4. He is now in Duval County Jail with no bond.
