Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

Atlanta Journal

Thursday, May 8^th, 1913

Miss Hattie Hall, a stenographer, was called to the stand after Quinn was excused.

When Miss Hall was excused, shortly before 12:30 o’clock, she was told to return at 2:30 o’clock, as she probably would be recalled then. Miss Hall’s testimony revealed nothing not already known, and was vague upon a number of points already testified to by others. It bore mainly upon the period when she was in the office of the National Pencil company on the morning of Saturday, April 26. According to her, she was there from about 11 o’clock until noon. She saw nothing of Mary Phagan and could throw no light upon the mystery. The coroner questioned her minutely as to hours and minutes and details of her own actions.

She lives at 69 Luckle street, she said, and is a stenographer employed at the office of Big Montag, of Montag Brothers, 10 and 12 Nelson street, to attend to the correspondence of the National Pencil company, of which she said Mr. Montag is treasurer. The books of the pencil company are kept there, she said.

ARRIVED AT 8 O’CLOCK.

She arrived at work about 8 o’clock Saturday morning, April 26, she said. After telephoning to Mr. Frank at the pencil factory and learning that he needed help over there, and after Mr. Frank had come to the office of Mr. Montag for some purpose, she went to the pencil factory, leaving the Montag office between 10:30 and 11 o’clock, she said, walking over to the factory. She worked in the outer office after taking some dictation from Mr. Frank in the inner office. She acknowledged to a number of orders, using postcard blanks which she stamped with dates, etc. She didn’t remember a man near the clock, didn’t remember seeing the day watchman, Mr. Holloway, didn’t remember whether he was there or not. She wrote about ten or twelve letters, couldn’t remember anything about any of them except that one related somehow to a die for stamping pencils; made carbon copies of them, and put her initials on the typewriter in one corner of each. She described vaguely several people who called—the father and stepfather of two of the factory boys, who talked with Mr. Frank, he telling her later that the boys had gotten into trouble about breaking up an automobile or something like that; a “Mrs. Somebody,” whose husband worked in the factory; two young women, one of whom got a pay envelope. She was writing the letters when the two young women called. She has been a stenographer since December 4, she said.

LEFT ABOUT NOON.

When she finished her work she went straight home, she said. She left the office almost exactly at 12 o’clock, for she noticed the whistles blowing. She found she had forgotten her umbrella, and went back upstairs after it, looking at the clock and noticing that it pointed at about 12:02. She told minutely what she did that morning, and what she was accustomed to do at the factory office.

No important discrepancy was noticeable between her story and that of Mr. Frank, who already had testified about her being there.

* * *

Atlanta Journal, May 8th 1913, “Miss Hattie Hall, Stenographer, Left Factory at Noon,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

Atlanta Journal

Thursday, May 8^th, 1913

L. A. Quinn was called to the stand. He lives at 31B Julliam street, he said, and is foreman of the metal department at the National Pencil factory. Mary Phagan worked in his department, he said. The last time he saw her was on the Monday preceding the murder, he said. She left the plant about 2 o’clock that Monday, said he. That was earlier than usual, but she left because the metal with which she worked had run out and she wanted to hurry to the matinee. He didn’t know any of her intimate friends, said he. She worked with Helen Ferguson and Grace Hix and Magnolia Kennedy, said he, and Henry Smith and John Ramey also worked in that department.

He worked on Friday, April 25, until 5:30 o’clock, said Quinn. He got his pay and left with the understanding that he would come to work on Monday.

The next morning, Saturday, he got up about 7 o’clock. Later he went uptown with his wife to get a picture made of their baby. Then they went back home. He came up town again, said he. He was stopped there, and questioned closely about hours and minutes.

He left home about 9:30 o’clock, he said. He and his wife and baby went straight to Kuhn’s photograph studio. They were there about ten minutes, he said.

They stopped next at the Globe Clothing company’s store on Whitehall street, said he, and talked for a while with some friends of his in there. He named them. He and his wife were there about five or ten minutes. They went from there down to a meat market in the next block south and bought some meat, staying there about five minutes. Farther down the street they stopped in at a soda water stand and bought some soft drinks. They arrived home about 11:15 o’clock. He remained in the house about thirty minutes. He left there about 11:45 o’clock, for town again, to get to the market before it closed, so he could buy some supplies for Sunday. He bought some meat and vegetables on that trip, said he. He could not describe the man he bought the meat from. He bought the vegetables first, from a man about five feet eleven inches tall, 165-170 pounds in weight, clean shaved. The man seemed to be a foreigner. He looked like an Italian.

HE WENT TO THE FACTORY.

From the meat market he went to Benjamin’s pharmacy and bought some cigars from a man named Pounds. He arrived there at a few minutes after 12 o’clock. He went on up Whitehall, left on Hunter street, to Forsyth, and then to the pencil factory. There was nothing unusual about him going to the factory on holidays, said the witness. He did so often. He wanted to speak to “Mr. Schiff” on this occasion, said he. He found the front door unlocked. He did not see Mary Phagan. He got there some time between 12:20 and 12:25, said he.

He was asked how he observed the time so minutely.

He figured it on the time he left home, said he.  He knew he left there about 11:45 o’clock, because he looked at his watch several times while he was at home. He walked to town, up Pulliam to Garnett, to Whitehall, and so to the market. It took him about 10 or 15 minutes to make the walk. It was pretty close to 12 o’clock when he got to the market, said he. He did not remember looking at his watch after he left home. It didn’t take him long to buy the meat and vegetables. He bought 40 cents worth of steak. He was waited on immediately. It took him about ten minutes, however, he said, to buy the vegetables. He wasn’t around the market longer than ten or twelve minutes. He stopped two or three minutes in Benjamin’s on the corner. The walk from there to the factory took about five minutes. He went straight to the office. He didn’t go anywhere else. He didn’t remember hearing the noon whistles blow.

WHEN HE SAW MR. FRANK.

He found Mr. Frank in the latter’s private office. They exchanged “good mornings,” he said. “Is Mr. Schiff in?” Quinn said he inquired. “No, I don’t suppose he will be down today,” Quinn said Mr. Frank replied. “You see you can’t keep me away even on holidays,” Quinn said he remarked to Mr. Frank. He said that Mr. Frank answered, “Yes,” and laughed, and nothing else was said. He was there in the office about two minutes, said he. He wasn’t positive about the exact time. He didn’t think it could be as early as 12:15 when he arrived there. It could have been between 12:20 and 12:35, he admitted.

“Could it have been as late as 12:30 o’clock?” he was asked.

“It could have been, but it wasn’t.”

“Why are you so positive?”

“Because I was somewhere else at 12:30,” the witness answered.

He continued that when he left the factory he stopped to talk with “Mr. Maulsby” at Mr. Maulsby’s place of business two doors from the factory. He offered Mr. Maulsby a cigar. Maulsby told him “those girls are in the restaurant,” and he answered “I know it; I saw them when I came up.” He told the names of two young women, one of whom was then a bride and the other of whom still worked in the factory.

IS AT FACTORY NOW.

Mr. Quinn said that he thought Miss Corinthia Hall is at the pencil factory this Thursday. The Miss Hall he saw at the undertaker’s establishment was a stenographer at Montag Brothers, and not Miss Corinthia Hall, he said.

The witness said that his purpose in going to the factory Saturday was to see Mr. Schiff and talk baseball with him. He had been accustomed to drop by the factory often on Saturdays and holidays, he said.

Mr. Quinn said that after leaving the factory he met the young ladies—Miss Hall and Mrs. Freeman—at the Busy Bee café, at the corner of Forsyth and Hunter streets.

In reply to a question from the coroner, he said that he thinks Mrs. Freeman is at the factory this Thursday.

Mrs. Freeman, who is about seventeen years old, had been married the day before—Friday—he said. Mr. Quinn said that he wanted to chat with her about the wedding. They remained in the café only a few minutes, he said, all three leaving together. Mr. Quinn said that he went to DeFoor Brothers pool parlor, getting there about 12:30, and chatted with the proprietors until about 1:15.

The coroner at this point asked Mr. Quinn if he knew May Barrett.

He replied, “Yes, she is employed in the varnishing department of the pencil factory.”

A FIFTEEN-MINUTE WALK.

In response to a question, Mr. Quinn said that it takes him about fifteen minutes to walk from his home to the pencil factory.

Going back to his visit to the pool room, Mr. Quinn said that after chatting baseball with the proprietors, he went to the Atlanta theater to buy a ticket.

Here Mr. Quinn said in response to a question that he knows John Rainey.

Just after he had bought his ticket at the theater, Mr. Quinn said, he saw Cliff Dodgen, an employee of the theater. The witness said that he didn’t remember exactly where his seat in the theater was, but thought it was on the ninth row, in the center aisle. No one that he knew sat near him that he remembered, he said.

The witness said in reply to the coroner’s question that Mr. Frank wore a brown suit Saturday.

Mr. Quinn said that he went to the factory about 9:30 o’clock Sunday morning. He met Mr. Darley and Ed Montag, an officer of the factory there, he said, and they went in the basement together.

The witness said that he heard of the murder about 9 o’clock Sunday morning when he went to a soda water stand near his home. Officer Payne and the men in charge of the stand were discussing it, he said, and told him. Mr. Quinn said that he gathered from the description given him then that the victim must have been Helen Ferguson. He was told that her first name was Mary, he said, and asked if the last was Phagan. The soda water man recalled it then.

The witness said that he then went to the undertaker’s establishment and looked at the body.

DENIED STATEMENT TO OFFICER.

He said that on Sunday afternoon he saw Mr. Frank at the undertaker’s. Mr. Frank wore a blue or a black suit then, he said.

Mr. Quinn denied that he had told Officer Payne or Detective Starnes that he hadn’t been to the factory since Friday.

He declared that when he had talked with Detective Starnes and Campbell at the rear door of the factory he had not stated that he hadn’t ben to the factory since Friday.

Mr. Quinn was asked about the white material used in his department. It was known as “hascolene,” he said, and was used as a lubricant for the machines. It came shipped in barrels, he said.

The witness said that on Tuesday or Wendesday in the detectives office, he recalled his visit to Mr. Frank on Saturday and that Mr. Frank remembered it readily. He told Mr. Frank, he said, that if it would do any good to mention his visit he would tell of it. Mr. Frank suggested that he mention it to his lawyer first, the witness said.

At this point Mr. Quinn, in response to a question, again denied that he had told Officer Payne or Detective Starnes or Campbell that he hadn’t been to the factory since Friday.

The witness said that he knew Miss Grace Jones and that he thinks she has been at the factory since the tragedy. He hadn’t accompanied Miss Jones from the factory; he said, and had not seen her since the tragedy, except on the fourth floor of the factory. He had talked to her there, he said, to see if she would not come to work in his department in case there were a number of vacancies that were anticipated. Mr. Quinn said that he didn’t remember discussing the Phagan case with Miss Jones.

Mr. Quinn said that he paid the Colemans a visit of consolation on Thursday. He went, he said, at the suggestion of Mr. Darley and Miss Magnolia Kennedy and because he thought he should go. His visit was purely one of consolation, he said.

Coroner Donehoo then asked Quinn:

“Did you ever tell Mr. Coleman (Mary Phagan’s stepfather) how Frank acted toward the girls in your department?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you ever tell Mr. Coleman how you treated the girls?”

“Yes, I told him I had always tried to make the girls feel at home. Frequently in fixing their machines, I would tell them to ‘Get out of the way and let papa fix it.’ I told Mr. Coleman how jolly Mary was—about a remark she made once: ‘Yes, you look like papa!”

“Do you know a man named Barrett?”

“Yes.”

“You never mentioned to him that you went to the pencil factory that Saturday?”

“No, sir.”

“When was the first time that you told anybody that you had been up there Saturday?”

“I told my father the next day, on Sunday. I didn’t tell Chief Lanford or any of the detectives until last Monday.”

“Why did you withhold that information?”

“I wasn’t asked about it.”

“You didn’t consider it your duty to tell unless you were asked?”

“No, I didn’t want to be dragged into it any sooner than necessary.”

“State what else you know, that you have retained.”

“Nothing.”

“You are not withholding anything then?”

“No, sir, nothing.”

“You say it was your duty to come down and see Mr. Frank after his arrest?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you consider it your duty to protect Mr. Frank?”

“No, sir.”

HIS PAY WENT ON.

He was asked if his pay went on while he called upon Mr. Frank at the jail, and said yes. Answering further questions, he said that now and then he got away for matinees, etc., but that his pay went on, that he wasn’t docked for absences. He was asked about his call at the jail.

“You came down and recalled your visit to Mr. Frank. Did he tell you to keep quiet about it until he had told his lawyers?”

“No. He remarked that he was going to tell his lawyers.” He said that Mr. Frank remembered his having been there, but did not remember the time of the visit until his attention was called to it.

“Why did you volunteer this information to Mr. Frank and not to the detectives?”

“I knew he couldn’t question me for three or four hours and the detectives could.”

“Did Mr. Frank consider it advisable that nothing be known about this?”

“No, sir. Mr. Frank didn’t ask me not to tell about it. I didn’t volunteer to tell it, because I expected to be asked every day.”

“Why didn’t you want to be questioned?”

“I knew they had three or four men holding them here, and they could hold me if they wanted to, as I had been in the building on Saturday.”

Other questions intervened, and then the coroner asked:

“Did you go out to Mrs. White’s yesterday?”

“No, sir; I don’t know Mrs. White.”

“Arthur White’s wife—you know Arthur White?”

“Yes, but I never have been out to his house.”

Quinn was excused from the stand at this juncture.

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Atlanta Journal, May 8th 1913, “Lemmie Quinn Grilled by Coroner But He Sticks to His Statement,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Lemmie Quinn, foreman, who testified that he visited the factory and talked to Mr. Frank just after Mary Phagan is supposed to have left with her pay envelope. He was given a searching examination by the coroner Thursday, but stuck to his statement.

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

Atlanta Journal

Thursday, May 8^th, 1913

Lemmie Quinn, the Factory Foreman, Was Put Through a Grilling Examination, but He Steadily Maintained That He Visited the Factory Shortly After the Time Mary Phagan is Supposed to Have Left With Her Pay Envelope

FRANK’S TREATMENT OF GIRLS IN FACTORY DESCRIBED AS UNIMPEACHABLE BY ONE YOUNG LADY EMPLOYEE

Mr. Frank’s Manner at the Time He Was Informed of the Tragedy by Officers at His Home on Sunday Morning is Told of by Former Policeman — Both Frank and the Negro Night Watchman Are Expected to Testify During Afternoon, When Inquest Will Be Concluded

The coroner’s inquest into the mysterious murder of Mary Phagan adjourned at 12:55 o’clock Thursday to meet again at 2:30. At the hour of adjournment, six witnesses had testified. They were “Boots” Rogers, former county policeman; Lemmie Quinn, foreman of the pencil factory; Miss Corinthia Hall, an employee of the factory; Miss Hattie Hall, stenographer; J. L. Watkins and Miss Daisy Jones. L. M. Frank and Newt Lee, the negro night watchman, were both present at headquarters during the morning session, but neither had been recalled to the stand when recess was ordered. Both are expected to testify during the afternoon, when an effort will be made to conclude the inquest and return a verdict.

Though put through a searching examination by the coroner in an effort to break down his statement that he had visited the factory on the day of the tragedy shortly after noon just after Mary Phagan is supposed to have received her pay envelope and left, Quinn stuck to his story. He declared that he had recalled his visit to Mr. Frank, and that Mr. Frank told him he was going to communicate the fact to his lawyers.

“Boots” Rogers testified that Mr. Frank had changed the tape in the time clock while the officers were in the factory Sunday morning after the body of Mary Phagan had been found, and that he stated at the time that the sheet he took from the clock seemed to be correct. Rogers also described Mr. Frank’s manner when the officers went to his home in an automobile to take him to the factory Sunday morning.

Miss Daisy Jones, who was mistaken for Mary Phagan by J. L. Watkins. She was a witness before the coroner Thursday. G. W. Epps, the boy who came to town with Mary Phagan on the day of the tragedy and left her on her way to the factory [right].

Miss Corinthia Hall, an employee in the factory, testified that Mr. Frank’s treatment of the girls in the factory was unimpeachable. She also testified that she had met Lemmie Quinn at a restaurant near the factory near the noon hour Saturday, her statement being confirmatory of his visit to the factory on the fatal day. J. L. Watkins testified that he had mistaken Miss Daisy Jones for Mary Phagan when he thought he saw Mary on the street near her home on Saturday afternoon about 5 o’clock. Miss Jones testimony was also in this connection.

NEW WITNESSES CALLED.

Following a conference between Solicitor General Dorsey, Assistant Solicitor General Stephens and Chief of Detectives Lanford, just after the inquest recessed for lunch, it was learned that Leo M. Frank and Newt Lee would be recalled at the afternoon session and that there would be the following new witnesses: Miss Alice Wood, of 8 Corput street; Miss Nellie Pitts, of 9 Oliver street, and Mrs. C. D. Dunnegan [sic], of 165 West Fourteenth street.

Rogers Describes Mr. Frank’s Manner When Told of Tragedy

“Boots” Rogers, formerly a county policeman, was the first witness. Mr. Rogers said that he lived at 100 McDonough road. He was at the police station at 3 o’clock on the morning of April 27, he said, when a call came from the factory of the National Pencil company. The officers responded to the call in his automobile, he declared. Those who went with him were Police Sergeants Brown and Dobbs, Call Officer Anderson and Britt Craig, a newspaper reporter.

Mr. Craig was the first person to enter the basement, the witness said. He (Mr. Rogers) entered second; Dobbs and Newt Lee, the negro night watchman, bringing up the rear. All saw the body about the same time, Mr. Rogers said.

George W. Epps

The witness said that the girl’s body was lying face down, with the hands folded beneath the body. The body was turned over by Police Sergeant Dobbs, he said.

Rogers continued that they found two notes near the body. The first note, found by Sergeant Dobbs, was on white scratch paper and on a tablet lying face down. The sheet with the note on it was detached and fell off when the tablet was picked up. It was lying about a foot from the body’s right shoulder. Another note was found later, written on a yellow order blank of the factory, lying about a foot from the feet of the body. Rogers wasn’t sure whether he or Sergeant Dobbs noticed that first. He didn’t notice a sharpened pencil nearby. There were a number of stubs, but none sharpened that he saw.

Asked “Who telephoned Mr. Frank that the girl was dead?” he said no one did as nearly as he remembered—that Detective Starnes telephoned Mr. Frank later in the morning to come down to the factory.

About two or three minutes after the first officers arrived with him, said Rogers, they were admitted to the factory. They saw the negro night watchman, Newt Leet, through the glass door, coming down the stairs with his lantern.

“She’s down in the basement—she’s down in the basement,” Rogers aid the negro told them first. He showed them the way down, indicating the trap door and the ladder. Britt Craig, a newspaper man, went first, and was followed by the witness, then by Sergeant Dobbs of the police, and last by the negro.

Everything was in gloom, though a gas jet was burning dimly at the foot of the ladder.

NEGRO WASN’T EXCITED.

“Look out, white folks, you’ll step on her,” the witness said the negro exclaimed when they started toward the rear of the basement. The negro took the lead then, with his lantern, and led them to the body. The negro’s manner was as cool as that of a man would be under the circumstances, said the witness. The negro wasn’t excited. “He was being questioned by all of us,” said the witness. He answered questions promptly.

“How did you happen to find the body?” the witness said was one of the questions put to the negro. He repeated the negro’s answer—of how he was making his rounds, and entered the basement, and by the dim rays of his lantern noticed a suspicious looking object on the ground near the back. “Somebody’s put that there to try to scare me,” the negro said he remarked to himself, going over to see closer. The body was revealed and he hurried back upstairs to telephone the police.

BODY FOUND FACE DOWN.

The witness said that Sergeant Dobbs asked the negro how the body was lying when he found it. The negro’s answer was “on its face.” “Did you turn it over?” the negro was asked; and answered “no sir, I didn’t touch it.”

This point of the evidence was in conflict with previous testimony by the negro himself, who swore at the inquest that when he found the body it was lying on its back face up, with its head toward the back door—exactly the reverse of the position in which the officers found it.

Rogers, the witness, said that the body was lying on its face, hand folded beneath it, when he and the officers first saw it. The negro stuck to the same story while answering all the questions, said the witness. After about ten minutes Sergeant Dobbs ordered that the negro be held under arrest. The negro was taken upstairs by Call Officer Anderson. The rest of them looked around for the girl’s left shoe, which was missing from the body.

Officer Anderson and the negro went upstairs first alone. Twenty or thirty minutes later the witness went up and found the officer and the negro sitting in the office. Anderson was trying to telephone to some of “the factory folks,” said the witness. The negro was sitting nearby in silence. Some one suggested that the officer telephoned to Mr. Frank, the superintendent, at his home. Anderson tried to get Mr. Frank’s number. There was no answer. Anderson talked to the operator, and told her something very serious had happened and that the call was urgent; and Anderson said he heard the persistent ringing that followed.

IDENTIFIED AS MARY PHAGAN.

While he and Sergeant Dobbs had been moving about downstairs, looking for the girl’s shoes, said Rogers, they found the staple on the back door pulled, and pushed the door back and went out into the alley, searching it to Hunter street for some clue. Rogers then went away to find some one to identify the body, said he. The shoe was found by somebody else later. He went to 100 McDonough road, said he, to get Miss Grace Hix, a relative of his own, whom he knew to be employed in the factory. He brought Miss Hix back with him in the automobile, and she identified the body as that of Mary Phagan. Miss Hix sought first to telephone to Mary’s mother, Mrs. J. W. Coleman, but there was no phone in the Coleman home, so she telephoned instead to the home of another girl, Miss Ferguson, and got Mrs. Ferguson, and asked her to go over and break the news to Mrs. Coleman.

MR. FRANK NOTIFIED.

Mr. Rogers said that Detective Starnes, who had been summoned to the factory, called Mr. Frank over the telephone shortly after 6 o’clock. The witness said that he drove Detective Black to Mr. Frank’s home, and that Mrs. Frank, wearing a heavy bathrobe, came to the door. He said that Mr. Frank stood in the hall, fully dressed except his collar and tie.

The witness said that Mr. Frank appeared nervous and excited and asked whether the night watchman had reported to the police that something had happened at the factory. Mr. Rogers said that neither he nor Mr. Black answered.

The witness said that Mr. Frank remarked that a drink of whiskey would do him good and that Mrs. Frank said there was none in the house, but insisted that Mr. Frank get some breakfast before going out. However, they hurried to the undertaking establishment, the witness said.

Mr. Rogers said that on the way to the undertaker’s establishment, Mr. Frank remarked that he had dreamed he had heard his telephone ring about daybreak. Detective Black asked Mr. Frank whether he knew Mary Phagan, the witness said, Mr. Frank replying that he didn’t know whether he did or not.

The witness said that Mr. Frank did not go into the room in which the Phagan child’s body lay.

Mr. Frank remarked, the witness said, that he could refer to his payroll and see whether Mary Phagan worked at the pencil factory.

“Was Mr. Frank steady or trembling at the undertaking establishment?” was asked Mr. Rogers.

“I couldn’t say,” he answered.

Mr. Frank suggested that they go to the factory, the witness said. At the factory, the witness said, they found a number of detectives and policemen and Mr. Darley, an official of the factory, who had been summoned. They went upstairs, the witness aid, to the office and Mr. Frank referred to the payroll, saying that Mary Phagan worked there and that she had been paid $1.20 the day before, shortly after 12 o’clock.

ELEVATOR AT SECOND FLOOR.

The witness said that Mr. Frank then asked if the pay envelope had been found, remarking that it must be around somewhere. They went to the basement in the elevator, which stood at the second floor, the witness said. Mr. Frank switched the current and there was some delay in getting the elevator to work. The fire doors of the elevator were open at this time, Mr. Rogers said, but he didn’t remember whether they were open or closed when he went to the factory the first time.

The elevator was run to the basement, the witness said and Mr. Frank was shown where the body had been found.

CHANGED TAPE IN CLOCK.

When he returned from the basement, said the witness, he sat in Mr. Frank’s inner office with the negro , Lee. Mr. Frank stayed in outer office, but came in twice where he and negro were, and, on the second trip, Mr. Frank looked at the negro and shook his head and said, “Too bad!”

Mr. Frank asked repeatedly if the officers were through with him, saying he wanted to go out and get a cup of coffee, but no opportunity to get the coffee arose. After a while, said the witness, after Mr. Frank had been through the building with Chief of Detectives Lanford, Mr. Frank suggested that they change the tape in the time clock. Mr. Frank took a key to the clock, which he wore on a ring at his belt, and opened the clock with it and removed the time slip and laid it down by the clock. He then went back into his office and got a blank slip. He asked one of the officers standing near to hold back a little lever while he inserted this slip. The lever knocked against a little pencil in the clock. Newt Lee, the negro, was standing near. Mr. Frank turned to the negro and asked, “What is this pencil doing in the hole?” Lee said he had put it there so his number would be sure to register every time he rang. Mr. Frank put the key back at his belt and dated the slip which he had taken from the clock with a pencil which he took from his pocket. The witness though Mr. Frank wrote the date “April 26, 1913,” on it, but he wouldn’t be sure about that, he said.

Mr. Frank, after examining the slip, stated that it was punched correctly, said the witness. He also looked at the slip. The first punch started at 6 p. m., and it was punched every half hour, the witness thought, up to 2:30 o’clock. At 2:30 was the last punch. Mr. Frank took the slip into his own office, said the witness, and the witness said he did not know what became of it after that. A little later they all got into his automobile, said Rogers, Mr. Frank sitting in Mr. Darley’s lap in front beside him (the witness) at the wheel, and some of the officers sitting with Frank in the back.

At this point the coroner asked where Mr. Darley was when the clock slip was being removed. He was standing near by, said the witness.

After delivering his passengers at police headquarters, said Rogers, he went with Miss Hix to take her back to her own home.

On the trip to headquarters, said he, Mr. Frank did not seem to be as nervous as he had been. When he returned to headquarters, said the witness, the detectives were getting Newt Lee, the negro, to write. Lee then seemed very nervous.

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Atlanta Journal, May 8th 1913, “Phagan Inquest in Session; Six Witnesses are Examined Before Adjournment to 2:30,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

Atlanta Journal

Wednesday, May 7^th, 1913

Detectives Said to Attach Much Importance to Testimony That Two Girls Will Give When Inquest Resumes

INQUEST WILL BE ENDED THURSDAY, SAYS DONEHOO

Paul P. Bowen Has Been Released by Houston Officials—Chief Detective and 14 Policemen Are Discharged

Two new witnesses, whom the detectives have recently located, are expected to give testimony of importance at the final session of the Phagan inquest Thursday.

One of the witnesses is Miss Grace Hix, of 100 McDonough road, daughter of James E. Hix. Miss Hix worked at the same machine with Mary Phagan, but has not been to the factory since the latter was slain. Miss Hix was closeted for two hours with the detectives Tuesday evening, but it is not known just what her testimony will be. [Appears to be missing words in the printing—Ed.] day Mary Phagan was killed, but did not see her, according to a statement she made to a Journal reporter Wednesday afternoon at 2:45 o’clock.

“The last time I saw Mary Phagan was on the Monday before she was killed,” said Miss Hix. “That was the day she got layed off. I was uptown Saturday, the day she was killed, but I did not see her.”

The name of the other witness has not been learned. That witness, a young woman, who works at the factory will testify according to the same report, that on the Saturday that Mary Phagan met her death, she (the witness) went to the factory to get her own envelope. According to the report the young woman will testify that she went to Superintendent Frank’s office between 12:10 and 12:20 o’clock (the time Mary Phagan is supposed to have gone for her pay) and waited about five minutes.

TO FINISH INQUEST.

The coroner’s inquest will be concluded Thursday, according to Coroner Paul Donehoo. The inquest has been probably the most thorough and exhaustive ever conducted in Georgia, the jurors having spent many hours in listening to testimony in the case and now the coroner is determined that the inquest itself shall be concluded at Thursday’s session and the jurors relieved from further duty in the case.

It is probable that the body of little Mary Phagan interred at Marietta a week ago will be again exhumed before the final session of the jury. It is said that one important point has now not been fully covered by the examination and this will necessitate the lifting of Mary Phagan’s body from the grave a second time. Before any action is taken, however, the parents of the slain girl will be consulted. It is probable that Dr. J. W. Hurt, the country physician, and Dr. H. F. Harris, of the state board of health, will make the second examination.

It was reported that the principal reason for exhuming the body again is to get some of the hair from the murdered child’s head in order that it might be compared with the hair found in the metal room at the pencil factory. It is understood that the hair which was in possession of the detectives has been lost.

Officials will make no definite statement relative to the second examination of the girl’s body, but it was learned from the coroner that at noon Wednesday the physicians, who are to make the examination, had not started for Marietta. It is said to be practically certain, however, that the body will be exhumed before the convening of the final session of the inquest.

NO EVIDENCE AGAINST BOWEN.

A development of interest in the case as the release of Paul Peniston Bowen, the former Atlantian [sic], who was arrested in Houston, Tex., as a suspect in the Phagan case. The release of Bowen carries out the prediction made Tuesday afternoon by The Journal, when after a vigorous investigation The Journal was able to show that it was practically impossible for Bowen, who left here about nine months ago, to have been in Atlanta or Georgia at the time of the murder.

Young Bowen is well and favorably known in Atlanta, where he worked for several years and has many friends here, who have received letters from him recently. He comes originally from Newnan, where his family is prominent. Interesting in connection with Bowen’s release is the announcement of the summary removal from office of Chief of Detectives George Peyton, of Houston, who made the arrest. Chief of Police Ben S. Davison declares that Peyton exceeded his authority in taking young Bowen into custody. Chief Beavers has wired Houston that Bowen is not wanted by the Atlanta police.

INQUEST AT 9:30.

Interest in the Phagan investigation is again centered in the coroner’s inquest, which is scheduled to resume its probe into the mystery on Thursday morning at 9:30 o’clock.

Just what witnesses will go before the coroner’s jury is not known, as the actions of the officials have been shrouded in mystery since the active entrance of Solicitor Dorsey in the case. It is probable, however, that in addition to recalling Newt Lee to the stand, the jurors will hear the testimony of Dr. Hurt, of Dr. Harris, and of Dr. Claude Smith, the city bacteriologist, who has examined the bloodstains on the shirt found at Lee’s home, on the floor of the factory and on the garments of the murdered girl.

NEWT LEE TO TESTIFY.

The examination of Newt Lee before the jurors will be a vigorous probe, similar to the questioning Monday afternoon of L. M. Frank, and especial emphasis will be laid on the conversation the two men had some days ago in the negro’s cell.

It is not improbable that Mr. Frank himself will be recalled to the stand. Despite the fact that he gave testimony for three hours and a half, the stenographic record of his statement is being examined by the officials in order that they may bring him back if they are able to find any pertinent question that was not put to him during the three and one-half hours examination Monday.

Lemmie Quinn, foreman of the tipping department in which Mary Phagan worked, may be another witness before the inquest. Quinn’s corroboration of Frank’s statement that he (Quinn) came to the factory a few minutes after Mary Phagan got her pay envelope will, it is said, be attacked by the detectives.

Few other witnesses will be examined Thursday, it is said, although it is probable that the two girls who are said to have been paid shortly before Mary Phagan arrived at the factory, may be put on the stand.

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Atlanta Journal, May 7th 1913, “Two New Witnesses in Phagan Mystery to Testify Thursday,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

Atlanta Journal

Monday April 28^th, 1913

Will Meet Again Wednesday Morning When Witnesses Will Be Examined—Five Hundred People Present When Inquest Was Begun

For an hour Monday morning a jury empaneled by Coroner Paul Donahue [sic] groped through dark basement passageways and first floor rooms in the factory of the National Pencil company hunting for evidence that would aid them in reaching a verdict as to who murdered pretty Mary Phagan. At the end of their hunt the body adjourned. They will meet again Wednesday morning at 9 o’clock to continue their investigation.

Many witnesses who can throw a light on the actual crime, the actions of the dead girl or of the suspects under arrest will be examined then. It is probable, also, that the prisoners now held in jail also will testify.

The jury met at P. J. Bloomfield’s undertaking chapel, 84 South Pryor street, shortly after 10 o’clock. It was composed of these: J. C. Hood, Clarence Langford, Glenn Dewberry, Homer C. Ashford, John Miller and C. Y. Sheets. Mr. Ashford was foreman.

The first official act of the jury was to view the remains of the 14-year-old girl. Behind closed doors the coroner’s talesmen inspected the fatal wounds and bruises on the girl’s body.

No witnesses were called. One or two who had been told by the police to be present when excused and told to report again Wednesday morning. They and many others probably will be heard at that time.

A throng of 500 persons had gathered at the undertaking parlors to hear the inquest. They were excluded by the police and when the jury, headed by Coroner Donahue [sic], finally left the funeral parlors for the scene of the murder, the investigators had to elbow and shoulder their way across a crowdbanked sidewalk.

Every inch of ground, every thing that has been mentioned in connection with the case were examined by the jurors in the pencil factory.

They were accompanied by three or four policemen on their tour, and the many details of the mystery given them to unravel, if possible. Once in their investigation a lantern was placed on the spot on the basement floor where Newt Lee, negro night watchman, says another lantern was sitting when he discovered the body. Apparently there was doubt in the minds of some of the jurors as to whether or not it would be possible for one standing where the negro said he stood to see a body. What the consensus of opinion among the investigators was is not known, however.

Shovels, tools, pieces of wood and other objects lying in the basement were examined for evidence that there had been possible weapons in the attack upon the girl. The search along this line was fruitless.

The jury viewed the machine room in the second story, upon the floor of which blood stains were found Monday morning. They saw the lathe to which a few strands of hair were found clinging by a workman. They visited the lavatory and several other rooms in the building. At the conclusion of the search no juror expressed an opinion. They will reserve their judgment until the conclusion of the inquest. This probably will be on Wednesday.

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Atlanta Journal, April 28th 1913, “Coroner’s Jury Visits Scene of Murder and Adjourns Without Rendering Verdict,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

A sketch of pretty Mary Phagan from her latest photograph by Brewerton.

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

Atlanta Journal

Wednesday April 30^th, 1913

Newt Lee, Negro Who Notified Police of Mary Phagan Murder, Tells Coroner Girl’s Body Was Lying Face Up With Head Toward West When He Found It — But Officers Declare They Found It Lying Face Down, Head Toward East, Knew She Was White, Said He, by Her Hair

SAYS MR. FRANK DID UNUSUAL THINGS, BUT DOES NOT DIRECTLY IMPLICATE ANYONE

Mr. Frank Met Him Outside Office Saturday Afternoon and Let Him Off for Two Hours, After Having Insisted That He Be There at 4 o’Clock—Mr. Frank Was Scared When He Saw Gantt, Says Negro—Telephoned Him That Night for First Time—Inquest Resumed at 2:15

That he found the body of Mary Phagan face up with its head toward the back of the building, was the startling evidence given at the coroner’s inquest Wednesday morning by Newt Lee, the negro night watchman at the National Pencil factory in which the child was murdered.

This evidence, by which the negro has stuck without wavering is in direct conflict with the evidence of all the police officers and others who answered the negro’s alarm.

They found the body lying face down with its head toward the front of the building, they all swear.

The negro swore to the coroner Wednesday, that when he scurried away from the body to the telephone, he stayed away until the officers came. He went with them—and they found the body exactly reversed from the position in which he says he found it.

Thus is mystery added to mystery in the crime.

If the negro tells the truth (and the police have been unable to shake him from his first story, however much they doubt some of its particulars), who turned the child’s body over upon its face with its head in the opposite direction after he left it go to the telephone?

WAS MURDERER STILL THERE?

Was the murderer lurking there in the gloom at the back of the basement when the negro came down the ladder?

Was it the purpose to burn the body in the furnace—which was not burning then, but which might have been lighted easily from the clutter and trash? Did the negro’s descent into the basement frustrate that? And then did the murderer pull the hasp on the rear door of the basement and flee before the officers got there?

Patience and perseverance upon the part of the police, and the incessant putting together of two and two, will reveal the story.

The negro did not attempt to implicate any one, in his evidence before the coroner’s jury. His evidence was damaging slightly to Mr. Frank, the superintendent, in that he said Mr. Frank sent him away from the factory from 4 to 6 after having insisted that he be there at 4; that Mr. Frank looked frightened when he came down the stairs as the negro, after his return, met Mr. Gantt at the street door; and that Mr. Frank never had called him before, as he did over the telephone between 7 and 8 o’clock  that evening, to ask if everything was all right. The obvious conflict, between the officers inability to distinguish at first whether the girl was white or black may be dismissed, perhaps, by the negro’s stout assertion that he knew by her hair, which was long and brown and wavy, totally unlike that of a negro woman.

At 12:40 o’clock the coroner’s inquest adjourned until 2:15 o’clock.

THINKS HE SAW HER.

J. G. Spier, of Cartersville, testified that he saw a man and a girl, the latter of whom he declared positively after seeing the body at the undertaking establishment was Mary Phagan, on Forsyth street, near the pencil factory Saturday afternoon about 3:50 o’clock. He was positive the girl was the same whose body was pointed out to him as Mary Phagan’s, he said, but was not sure of the man. The general “outline,” he said was the same as the pointed out to him as Frank. He saw this couple again about 5 o’clock, he said.

The first official and public probe into the deep mystery hiding the slayer of fourteen-year-old Mary Phagan, brutally murdered and mistreated last Saturday night in the National Pencil factory, was begun in earnest Wednesday morning at 9:10 o’clock, when the coroner’s jury began its examination of witnesses.

The inquest was held at police headquarters, behind the closed doors of the station, in the office of the board of commissioners. Coroner Donehoo assembled his jury again (following a recess since it was empaneled last Monday morning) at the undertaking establishment of P. J. Bloomfield on Pryor street, and marched at the head of it from there through the streets to police headquarters, preferring to go to the witnesses who were incarcerated rather than bring those witnesses to the jury.

The following witnesses were called and sworn by the coroner:

E. E. Shank.

W. J. Coleman, step-father of the murdered child.

Adam Woodward, negro nightwatchman in an adjoining livery stable, who believes he heard a woman’s screams about 11 o’clock Saturday night.

Newt Lee, negro nightwatchman in the pencil factory, who first reported the finding of the body.

W. W. Rogers, former county policeman, who carried the officers to the scene of the crime.

W. F. Anderson, call officer, city police.

Sergeants Brown and Dobbs, of the city police.

Miss Pearl Robertson, friend of Arthur Mullinax, the trolley car conductor who has been held upon suspicion.

J. M. Gantt, formerly bookkeeper at the National Pencil factory.

E. L. Sentell, who believes he saw the girl on the street with some man Saturday night.

It was a noticeable fact that L. M. Frank, superintendent of the factory, was not among the witnesses called at first. His attorney, Luther Z. Rosser, was present when the inquest began its work.

Coroner Donehoo resumed his inquest upon the mysterious murder of Mary Phagan Wednesday morning, reimpaneling shortly before 9 o’clock the same jury which met Monday and recessed for two days. The members of that jury are H. C. Ashford, L. Glenn Dewberry, of 352 Cooper street; J. C. Hood, of 185 Windsor street; C. A. Langford, of 144 Highland avenue; John Miller and C. Y. Sheats, of Cascade road.

Immediately after impanelling the jury at the undertaking shop of P. J. Bloomfield on Pryor street, where the murdered girl’s body had rested until it was removed for burial Tuesday. Coroner Donehoo led it away from the crowd congregated in the street in front of the establishment, marching to police headquarters. There the negro night watchman, Newt Lee, and the superintendent, L. M. Frank, of the National Pencil company, were in detention behind stout bars.

CALL OFFICER TESTIFIES.

W. F. Anderson, call officer, city police, was the first witness to be examined. He told of receiving a telephone call at police headquarters shortly after 3 o’clock Sunday morning a man’s voice informed him that the speaker was the negro night watchman at the National Pencil company factory and that he, the watchman, had found the body of a young woman who evidently had been murdered. She was a white girl, the negro said.

The witness went to the factory on Forsyth street with other officers, and was met there by the negro, Newt Lee, and was led by the negro through a trapdoor down a ladder into the basement, where after some moments he distinguished the body of the murdered girl later identified as Mary Phagan. He could not see it at first until he was almost upon it, said the officer. The body was lying in a corner beyond the end of a compartment partitioned off at the left from the main basement. It was lying upon its face. The left stocking was torn. The left shoe was missing. The left knee was bruised. The band around the bottom of the underskirt was torn off.

GRUESOME DETAILS GIVEN.

The head was very bloody, and the eyes were bloodshot. A cord, he said, which was a sort of small rope, was tied so tightly around the neck that it cut into the flesh. This cord was about six or seven feet long. In addition to it, the band which had been torn from the dead girl’s underskirt, was wrapped round the neck.

He also found a bruise just above and back of the ear. He testified that the mouth and eyes of the dead child were filled with dirt and sawdust, and that the whole face was so discolored with grime that he was not sure at first whether the girl was white.

In reply to questions he said that he hadn’t noticed whether the body had been dragged across the floor of the cellar.

After examining the body he had gone to the door which offered an exit from the cellar, and there he found that the staple on the inside had been drawn, and that the door had been opened by this means.

LANTERN LIGHT DIM.

At this point, Dr. J. W. Hurt took up the questioning and brought out an important fact from the witness.

He asked the witness what sort of light he had used in the cellar. The officer said that it was the usual police flashlight light. Then he inquired the sort of light used by Newt Lee, the negro night watchman. The officer answered that it was a lantern, very much smoked, which gave only a dim light.

Lee has told the police that he noticed the body as he stood twenty or thirty feet away.

“Could he have seen twenty or thirty feet with his lantern?” asked Dr. Hurt.

“He could not,” answered Officer Anderson, “He couldn’t have seen more than twelve or fifteen feet. And I also think that the place where he says he was standing is in such a position that rays from the lantern would not have even fallen in the direction of the body.

He also testified that the reason which the negro gave for going to the cellar was not convincing.

BASEMENT DESCRIBED.

He was present, said the witness, when somebody picked up a note near the body. He identified it as the one written on a slip of yellow paper. Later somebody found another note. He didn’t identify that. About five feet from the girl’s body a pencil was found. Near it was a pad from which the slip evidently had been torn. He described the basement—a long, narrow enclosure between rock walls, with the elevator shaft near the front, a boiler on the right about half way back, a partition on the left shutting in an enclosure which seemed to be waste space, an open toilet on the right beyond the boiler, the girl’s body on the left beyond that, and a door at the back end. The girl’s left slipper was found near the elevator. She wore no hat that the couldn’t find. He didn’t remember distinctly how she was dressed, but believed it was in some dark material.

SERGEANT BROWN TESTIFIES.

Sergeant R. J. Brown gave evidence putting heavy suspicion upon the negro night watchman, Newt Lee. Call Officer Anderson has testified that the negro told him over the telephone that the body was that of a young white woman.

Sergeant Brown declared that he and his brother officers found it impossible to tell whether it was the body of a white or a colored girl until they made a minute examination.

He described revolting details. He said that the negro’s story that he (the negro) first saw the body when he was standing some twenty-five feet away from it, seemed improbable to the officers, for they stood there and could not see it by the light of the negro’s lantern, nor could they make it out until they were within just a few feet of it.

It was only after a minute examination, said the sergeant, that he and the other officers concluded that the negro’s statement was right, that the body was that of a white person.

BODY WAS COLD.

“This is nothing but a child!” the officer said he exclaimed, when he first saw the body closely. The body was cold then and was somewhat still, said he.

“I couldn’t tell whether it was a white girl or a colored girl. I took some shavings from around there and rubbed her face with them. Still I couldn’t tell whether her skin was white or dark. Finally I had to roll the stocking down from the right knee—the other being torn and dirty; and then I saw her white skin.”

The officer said the body was fearfully dirty—particularly the face. There was a place on the dirt floor of the basement that looked as if something might have been dragged there. He did not believe that all of the dirt that was on the child’s face could have gotten there simply from the body’s lying upon the dirt floor. Dirt was inside the child’s mouth, even. Her tongue was swollen, and protruded almost to the point of her chin, showing she had choked to death. A piece of heavy twine was tied tightly around her neck. A strip from around the bottom of her underskirt was tied around her neck, too. He knew it was from her underskirt, because the lace on it matched the lace on her skirt, and a strip was missing there. The hands were folded beneath the body, but were not tied. He described the surrounding circumstances that he found—a lock on a staple near the back door, the staple having been pulled out. The negro night watchman’s lantern was of an ordinary type, said he, and had not been cleaned in some time, its globe being dirty and its light dim. Lee, the negro, told him that he (the negro) rarely went into the basement, but gave a reasonable excuse for his presence there when he found the body.

GAVE LITTLE INFORMATION.

Sergeant Brown testified that Newt Lee gave them little information upon their arrival at the pencil factory. He said that the negro did not tell them whether he had touched the corpse.

He was questioned as to who had telephoned to Frank, and he said that Officer Anderson endeavored to reach Frank over the phone. The officer told central that a girl had been murdered and that it was of utmost importance that he be given the number that he asked. But although this number was rung repeatedly, he got no answer. It was not until much later Sunday morning that the police were able to get into communication with Frank.

He testified that the negro would have found it almost impossible to see the body from the position in which Newt Lee said that he was standing at the time he made his grewsome discovery.

He continued his testimony by saying that the girl’s clothing was badly disordered and torn, and that the cord around her neck looped in the back. The band which was also bound round the neck was in two pieces which had been tied together. The tongue, he said, protruded an inch, and the blood upon the face was cold.

In his opinion the band from the underskirt had been tied about the neck before the rope, and that Mary Phagan was strangled to death.

CLOTHES ARE EXHIBITED.

When his testimony had been concluded a dramatic incident took place. The clothes that the girl had worn were brought forward for the jury to see, and were placed in a heap on a chair. There was a commotion at the side of the room. The brother of Mary Phagan rose, and for a moment remained staring at the heap in the chair. Without speaking, he clasped his hands to his head and pushed his way from the room.

Officer Anderson was recalled and testified that he found the body lying face downward, although Newt Lee had said that the body lay face upward.

He said that the legs of the body were not stiff, and that blood in the hair was still moist. Blood, he said, was still flowing from the body. According to his testimony, the head of the body lay toward Forsyth street, and there were signs in the cellar of a struggle.

The clothes which were shown to the jury consisted in a one-piece purple dress, with white trimmings. Only one shoe, a black gun-metal slipper, was displayed.

HE FOUND THE NOTES.

Sergeant L. S. Dobbs identified the two notes as having been found by himself near the body. One was written on yellow paper, the other on rough scratch pad paper. The elevator shaft, said he, is distant about 150 feet from where the body was found. He told of the minute examination that had to be made to determine whether or not the body was that of a white girl. Her hands looked as if she had been dragged face downward.

On the back of her head at the left was a wound. Cuts were on her face and forehead. The sergeant said he called Newt Lee, the negro, to him and said: “You did this or you know who did it.” The negro denied any guilt, said the sergeant.

The sergeant said that then he read one of the notes to the negro, with a sentence like this:

“Mommer: Tall black thin negro did this. He will try to lay it on night—“

The sentence came to the end of a line there, said the sergeant.

“That means me,” the sergeant said the negro night watchman said immediately. “The night watchman.”

Later, said the sergeant, he stood where the negro said he was standing when he saw the body and tried to see it. He even went so far as to have a fellow officer lie down where the body had been. But though it was daylight, he barely could discern the officer there, said the sergeant; nor would he have seen him at all had not been looking particularly toward that spot with a definite purpose. By the light of a dim lantern, it would have been practically impossible for the negro to have stood where he claimed, said he, and seen the body in the gloom partially behind the corner of the partition and slightly below floor level.

The staple taken from the rear door could not have been pulled off save from the inside, said he. A piece of iron nearby might have been used to prize it out, said he.

Sergeant Dobbs, in reply to a question as to whether he thought the body had been dragged, said that after daylight had come he noticed a trail leading from the elevator shaft to where the body had been found.

COULDN’T HAVE CARRIED BODY.

In his opinion an ordinary man could not have carried the body down the ladder to the basement. The elevator, Sergeant Dobbs said, was on the first floor, on the Forsyth street level.

The girl’s left shoe, Sergeant Dobbs said, was found alongside her hat on a garbage pile about 100 feet from the elevator and about 50 feet from the body. The boiler, in which there was no fire, was also about 100 feet from the elevator and 50 feet from the body, alongside the trail.

The notes, the witness said, were found almost together near the head, about two feet from the partition. There was no opening in the partition that he saw.

Sergeant Dobbs said that when he entered the basement he was three or four feet from the body before he saw it. The negro was leading the way, he said.

Sergeant Dobbs said the body was cold when he first saw it. He felt of the face and hands and knees. The finger joints were not stiff and could be worked back and forth easily, he said. Having had no experience with dead bodies, the witness said he could not estimate how long the girl had been dead when he found her.

NO ONE IN BUILDING, HE SAID.

Sergeant Dobbs said the negro told him no one had been in the building since he started to work at 6 o’clock Saturday night.

The girl’s body was taken from the basement out the back way by the undertaker’s. Sergeant Dobbs said, some time after daylight—about 6 o’clock Sunday morning, he thought.

Britt Craig, a newspaper reporter, was then called.

At 11:45 o’clock the negro night watchman, Newt Lee, was called to the stand by the coroner.

He said that he lives at 40 Henry street. Usually he went to his work about 6 o’clock as night watchman at the pencil factory, he said. Last Friday Mr. Frank, the superintendent, told him to come earlier, at 4, on Saturday, saying it would be a half holiday. Mr. Frank spoke to him two or three times about it during the day, said he. He appeared at the factory at 4 o’clock, accordingly, and found the street door unlocked but the double doors leading to the plant were locked. He has keys to the front and back of the factory, said the negro.

FRANK LETS LEE GO.

He went into the office and Mr. Frank came into the outer office from the inner office, rubbing his hands.

“I’m here, sir,” the negro said he remarked to his employer.

“I’m sorry, Newt, that I had you come here so soon,” the negro said Mr. Frank told him. “Go out and have some fun. Come back in about an hour and a half, but don’t stay later than the usual time”—6 o’clock.

The negro said he left and returned at 6 o’clock.

The negro said that after coming to work each evening at 6 o’clock he punched the time clock, and started on his rounds of the four floors of the factory. Those rounds usually took him half an hour, he said, exclusive of the basement. If the half hour had not quite expired when he reached the clock, sometimes he went to the basement, too, said he; otherwise he omitted the basement and resumed his round.

COULDN’T SEE INTO OFFICE.

The negro said that usually Mr. Frank called him into the office, and that it was contrary to the usual custom when Mr. Frank came out into the outer office and met him. He couldn’t see into the office, said the negro, or tell whether there was anybody else inside.

The negro said he left, going up Forsyth street to Alabama, east on Alabama to Broad, across the bridge, along Viaduct way to that Whitehall viaduct and down the street into Wall street and along that street to Central avenue, where he found a big fat man selling some sort of medicine. The man had some negroes there, eating [1 word illegible] and dancing, said Newt Lee. He stayed there until time to go back to work, and got back to the factory two or three minutes, or perhaps four minutes, before 6 o’clock. Mr. Frank was still there. He started to punch the clock. Mr. Frank told him to wait, that there had been only two or three there that day and the slip had been taken from the clock. Mr. Frank came out and the two of them put the slip back on, said the negro, and he punched the clock at 6. Mr. Frank went back into the office, said the negro, and he himself went back downstairs to close the doors. At the street door he met Mr. Gantt, formerly a bookkeeper in the office, said the negro. Mr. Gantt wanted to get in and get some old shoes that he had left there. The negro told him it was against the rules, but that if Mr. Frank, who was upstairs, said no, he would let Mr. Gantt in.

At Mr. Gantt’s request that he ask Mr. Frank, he turned from the door, and saw Mr. Frank just coming down the stairs from the office and machine room floor. Mr. Frank looked scared, said the negro, but he thought it was because he was afraid Mr. Gantt might have come there “to do him dirt,” because Frank and Gantt had quarreled and the former had discharged the bookkeeper some weeks before. Mr. Gantt stated his case to Mr. Frank. “What kind of shoes were they?” Mr. Frank asked. “Tan,” Mr. Gantt replied. “I think I saw the negroes sweeping them out this morning,” said Mr. Frank, “But I had some black ones, too,” said Gantt. “All right, Newt,” said Mr. Frank. “Take him up there and stay with him.” Mr. Frank went on out, said the negro, and he went up into the office with Mr. Gantt and got the shoes. The negro gave him some little red twine and some paper to wrap the shoes up. Mr. Gantt wanted to use the telephone, and the negro told him to go ahead. Mr. Gantt called some lady. “I know it was a lady because I heard him call her name,” said the negro. He couldn’t remember the name. Mr. Gantt told her he would be home about 9 o’clock or a little later. He talked some time, then hung up the receiver and left. The negro locked the street doors behind him, and then because Mr. Frank had told him to watch Mr. Gantt, he stood there at the glass door and watched him leave. Mr. Gantt crossed the street, passed in front of the saloon there, and went on off up the street, said the negro.

The negro said that he did not see Gantt at 4 o’clock when he first came to work. He did not watch Mr. Frank when he left, said the negro. Frank had a key to the building and could have returned while the negro and Gantt were upstairs. The negro said he did not go to the basement when he first came at 4 o’clock. He was asked if there was a rug carpet in Mr. Frank’s office, and replied no. He knew because he cleaned it every night.

Mr. Frank offered him some bananas when he was there the first time, said the negro, but he declined the fruit.

GANTT THERE HALF AN HOUR.

It took Gantt “no time at all” to find the shoes, said the negro. Gantt was in the building about half an hour. He did not know where Mr. Frank was during this time. He thought Mr. Frank walked away from the building toward Alabama. The first time he ever saw Mr. Frank, said the negro, was when he came to work there about three weeks before the crime.

After making the rounds of the building, or about 7 o’clock, he went to the basement, said the negro.

Machinery is on the second floor and on the top floor. Gantt got the shoes out of the shipping department near the clock on the second floor.

Lee said he went to the basement by way of the ladder through the trap door. A gas light always burned near the foot of the ladder. The gas was not as high as he had left it at 7 o’clock that morning. It had been turned down to about the size of the lightning bug. He received a phone message from Mr. Frank between 7 and 8 o’clock. Other members of the force had called him on previous nights occasionally, but this was the first that Mr. Frank had called him. Mr. Frank asked if everything was “all right,” and the negro replied, “So far as I know.”

BODY WAS FACE UP.

The negro said that the body was lying face up when he discovered it.

Other witnesses who came later swore it lay face down when they found it.

This contradicted the evidence of all the policemen.

He was asked the point blank question by the coroner:

“Why did you turn it over?”

“I didn’t turn it over,” said the negro.

He said he punched the clock every half hour during Saturday night.

“What did Mr. Frank say on Sunday about that clock not being right?” he was asked.

“He said it was all right,” replied the negro.

He was asked to repeat his story of how he found the body. He went down the ladder to go to the basement, and went into the toilet, leaving his lantern in front of it upon the ground.

On coming out, he saw the body of the girl lying on the ground around the corner of the partition. It looked very vague, and he thought somebody had put something there to frighten him. He found the body lying on its back with the head turned toward Madison avenue (exactly the reverse of the position the officers found it in). He saw blood on the face and knew by the straight hair that it was the body of a white woman.

“It scared me, that body there,” said the negro, “and I called up the station house.”

“How did you know the number?” asked the coroner.

Mr. Frank had given it to him, said the negro, for use in case of fire or anything unusual. “He gave me his own number, too, to call him up in case I wanted him.”

The coroner asked him if he touched the body when he found it.

He said, “No, sir, I did not.”

He did not go back to the basement until the police came.

He went through the machine room in which the girl was supposed to have been attacked, every 15 minutes, in making his rounds of the building. He had to pass through it, he said, on his rounds.

PUNCHED CLOCK REGULARLY.

In answer to a question, the negro said that Mr. Frank and Mr. Darley told him that he had punched the clock regularly. He thought that was on Sunday after he had been arrested, said the negro.

Answering another question, the negro said that he did not know when it was that he told the police of Mr. Frank having let him off, Saturday afternoon, or of Mr. Frank having telephoned to him later.

Answering another direct question, the negro said that when he returned with the police the body was “just the same” as when he first saw it.

The negro admitted that he said over the telephone that the body was that of a white woman. His lantern had been cleaned Friday, he said, and was in fairly good condition. He had never seen the dead girl before he found her body. The girls employed in the factory always left before he came to work, and he left before they came back. The factory work stopped each day at 5:30 o’clock, and he came on duty at 6 o’clock. He had seen the back door open in the daytime, he said, and he thought the fireman—a negro named Knollys—had a key to it.

Policeman Anderson corroborated the negro’s statement about the gas jet being a very dim light.

GIRL AND MAN NEAR FACTORY.

J. G. Spier, of Cartersville, in Atlanta Saturday, testified that he walked from the Kimball house down Forsyth street to the Terminal station with a friend Saturday afternoon and reached the Terminal station at exactly 3:50 o’clock. When he went by the National Pencil company’s place, on his way back from the station, he saw a girl apparently about seventeen years of age and a white man apparently about twenty-five years of age, and both seemed slightly excited. The girl was nervous, and was twisting her hands, and he thought the man had been drinking. They were standing near the street door of the factory. He went on down to Five Points, he said, and later went back by the Western Union office on Forsyth street, and at about twenty minutes to 5 o’clock he passed the man and the girl again. The girl was standing right by the door of the pencil factory. He saw the same girl Sunday morning at Bloomfield’s undertaking establishment. There was no doubt in his mind that it was the same girl, despite the disfigured and swollen features of the corpse. He couldn’t be sure about the man. A man pointed out to him by an officer as “Mr. Frank” had the same “outline” as the man he saw on Forsyth street. This man was pointed out to him on Sunday morning. About 8:30 o’clock he went to the factory where the detectives were making their investigation. We went there with a policeman, to whom he had told the story of the excited couple he had seen. He was on a Fair street car reading a newspaper extra, and got off the car and talked to an officer. He could not describe the complexion of the man whom he saw with the girl. He, Spier, is five feet and eleven inches in height, he said, and he thought the man with the girl would come about to his shoulder. He could not identify the clothing which had been worn by Mary Phagan, on the table. As well as he remembered, the girl had on a light cloak. He did not notice whether she wore a hat or not. He thought her hair was dark. He was in Atlanta on personal business, he said.

The Inquest adjourned at the conclusion of Mr. Spier’s testimony, until 2:15 o’clock.

* * *

Atlanta Journal, April 30th 1913, “Negro Watchman Tells Story of Finding Girl’s Body and Questions Fail to Shake Him,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

The Atlanta Constitution

Monday, March 9, 1914

Stated That He Was Willing to Reply to Any Questions That Might Be in the Mind of the Public, and Asked to Answer Any Such That Might Be Propounded to Him.

TELLS HOW JIM CONLEY COULD HAVE SLAIN GIRL AND ESCAPED DETECTION

Asserts That Very Fact That He Admitted He Had Seen Mary Phagan on the Day of the Murder, Thus Placing Himself Under Suspicion, Was Proof in Itself That He Was Innocent of Crime.

Probably the most interesting statement yet issued by Leo M. Frank in connection with the murder for which he has been sentenced to hang, is one that he has furnished to The Constitution in the form of a series of answers to questions which were propounded to him bearing on the case.

These questions were prepared by a representative of The Constitution who visited Frank at the Tower last week.

“Ask me any questions you wish,” Frank told the reporter.

In accordance with that, the reporter wrote out a list of questions which, he asserted, comprised the most salient points the prosecution had brought out against him, and to each of these Frank has given an answer.

Here Are Questions.

Following are the questions which were asked:

Question 1. Why did you let Newt Lee off that afternoon, the first time he was ever off, as Lee testified?

Question 2. The last thing known about Mary Phagan’s movements being her visit to your office, and the body being found in the basement of the factory in the same building as your office, what is your explanation of how she could have been murdered without your knowing anything about it?

Question 3. You say the wording of the notes is plainly that of the negro. Isn’t it possible that the negro could have written only the substance, in his own way, of the notes dictated by you?

Question 4. Evidence was offered to show that on previous occasions you had given Mary Phagan’s pay to Helen Ferguson when the latter called for it. Is it true that you told Helen Ferguson on the day preceding the tragedy that Mary Phagan would come for her pay the following day?

Question 5. You said you did not know Mary Phagan. Gantt says you had talked to him about her. How do you explain this?

Question 6. You said you examined the alleged blood spots on the second floor on Monday following the murder. Evidence was offered to show that the blood spots had been chipped up before you could have come to the factory. How do you explain this? Was anyone with you when you examined these alleged blood spots?

Question 7. Wouldn’t it have been the natural thing to telephone Montag about getting a detective, instead of Schiff? Why did you telephone Schiff, and not Montag?

Question 8. Is it true that at the coroner’s inquest you gave one time for the arrival of Mary Phagan at your office, at the trial you gave another time? If true, how do you explain this conflicting testimony?

Question 9. Did you not at one time say you were not out of your office at 12:05 o’clock? Did not Monteen Stover say she was there at that time and you were not in? Did you not then change your statement? If so, what is your explanation?

Question 10. At first, you said the time clock slip punched by Newt Lee was correct, did you not? Later, you said there were discrepancies. Is this not true? If true, how do you explain the contradiction?

Question 11. Did you not tell Mrs. White to hurry from the factory, that you were in haste to leave? Did you not, when she had gone, resume your seat, and begin writing? If so, how do you explain what you said to Mrs. White?

Question 12. Why did you refuse to see Jim Conley before the trial, when he offered to face you?

Question 13. When you made your statement before the police, didn’t you fail to mention the visit of Lemmie Quinn? If so, why?

Question 14. Did you ask him not to say anything about his visit until you had consulted your lawyers? If so, why?

Question 15. When your character was put in issue, why did you not insist upon your attorneys cross-questioning the witnesses who testified against your character?

Question 16. If a girl were never seen[…]

LEO FRANK ANSWERS LIST OF QUESTIONS

Continued From Page One.

[…]alive after she had been known to visit a certain man’s office, and if that girl was found the next day in the same building as that office—dead, murdered—would you call it persecution for that man to be arrested and vigorously prosecuted?

Question 17. Would you call it prejudice for that man to be suspected?

Frank’s Answers.

Question 1—Why did you let Newt Lee off that afternoon, the first time he was ever off, as Lee testified?

Answer—Lee had been employed at the factory for but two weeks. Almost any experience, therefore, he would have had at the factory would be for the “first time.” I had on Friday, April 25, received and accepted an invitation from my brother-in-law, Mr. Ursenbach, to go to the ball game on Saturday afternoon. Accordingly, on Friday night I had directed Lee to report early on Saturday, because I thought I would be absent from the factory Saturday afternoon at the ball game. But on account of the bad weather and the accumulation of work, I called off this engagement at about 1:25 p. m. Saturday when I was home to lunch. Lee, however, reported early, as directed, but as I had changed my plans and was to remain at the factory, there was no need for Lee to remain there unless he so desired. I didn’t insist on his leaving. I told him he could go if he chose, and he availed himself of this permission. It was a matter of perfect indifference whether he stayed or went; but I did insist on his returning not later than 6 o’clock to the factory.

Question 2—The last thing known about Mary Phagan’s movements being her visit to your office, and the body being found in the basement of the factory in the same building as your office, what is your explanation of how she could have been murdered without your knowing anything about it?

Answer—Mary Phagan may have been attacked as she went down, at the foot of the steps, in such a way that she was unable to make any outcry at all. In fact, that is my theory.

On the other hand, if she did make an outcry there were many things that would have prevented my hearing it. The head of the stairway leading from the second to the street floor was about 70 feet from where I was sitting at my desk. Half way down the stairway was a pair of heavy doors, which were kept closed. There was a thick flooring, plastered underneath, between me and the floor below. Also the elevator stood at the level of the second floor. Then the two windows in my outer office were open, allowing the noise from the street to come in. Moreover, I was immersed in my work, and, of course, was not anticipating anything out of the ordinary. Please note that Lemmie Quinn was in my office talking to me within three to five minutes after Mary Phagan left my office after receiving her pay envelope from me.

Question 3—You say the wording of the notes is plainly that of a negro. Isn’t it possible that the negro could have written only the substance, in his own way, of the notes dictated by you?

Answer—The very idea of writing notes and putting them by the dead body to divert suspicion is even more characteristic of a drunken, ignorant negro than the language itself. Emphatically no. The whole dictation theory is silly. In the first place, no intelligent white man would do such a thing, either by writing himself or having another write for him. He knows that handwriting is a sure clue. It is inconceivable that any white man could have dictated those notes and it is equally as unbelievable that he could be so foolish as to leave them on the body. In the second place, please remember that it was I and none other who gave the detectives the information by which they were able to disprove Conley’s assertion that he could not write. It was I who, as soon as I heard that Conley was denying that he could write, gave the information where they could find a contract signed by him for the purchase of a watch on the installment plan. The detectives followed this clue, secured the contract, and forced Conley to admit that he could write.

Question 4—Evidence was offered to show that on previous occasions you had given Mary Phagan’s pay to Helen Ferguson when the latter called for it. Is it true that you told Helen Ferguson on the day preceding the tragedy that Mary Phagan would come for her pay the following day?

Answer—I told Helen Ferguson no such thing. She did not testify that I so told her. Even the state has never contended that she so testified. There is no basis for such an idea.

Helen Ferguson never got even her own pay, much less that of another, from me. I was not the paymaster. No evidence was presented at the trial to show that I was. In fact, Helen Ferguson herself testified that previous to Friday, April 25, she never asked for or received an envelope from me. She said April 25 was the first time, and she is mistaken about this. Please note that the two girls who worked in her department with her testified at the trial that they were with Miss Ferguson when she drew her money from Mr. Schiff, and that in their company she left the factory immediately and started for home. There was no mention of asking Schiff, who was paying off, or Frank, who was not at the cashier’s window, for another person’s envelope. The two girls who so testified were Miss Hicks and Miss Kennedy. Schiff, who actually paid off Helen Ferguson, swore to this fact at the trial.

Calls Gantt A Liar.

Question 5—You said you did not know Mary Phagan. Gantt says you had talked to him about her. How do you explain this?

Answer—What Gantt said was an unqualified falsehood. I never knew that Gantt knew Mary Phagan intimately until Halloway told me after the murder of Monday, April 28, 1913, when I went to the factory in the afternoon at about 3 o’clock.

Question 6—You said you examined the alleged blood spots on the second floor on Monday following the murder. Evidence was offered to show that the blood spots had been chipped up before you could have come to the factory. How do you explain this? Was anyone with you when you examined these alleged blood spots?

Answer—Messrs. Schiff, Stelker, Sigancke, Quinn, Darley, Campbell and Halloway were with me when I examined the alleged “blood spots.” The police had taken up only a few chips from the spot, and left the remainder of the spot, which I examined. They didn’t take away the whole spot, nor did they take up the floor.

Question 7—Wouldn’t it have been the natural thing to telephone Montag about getting a detective, instead of Schiff? Why did you telephone Schiff, and not Montag?

Answer—When I first phoned Mr. Schiff it was Mr. Montag’s lunch hour, and I couldn’t get Mr. Montag on the phone. Mr. Schiff was at the factory office, and, so, when Mr. Montag gave his permission to Mr. Schiff to hire detectives, he could more readily arrange an interview and receive detectives than I, who was at my residence, could. Mr. Schiff was my assistant, and naturally I had him do this work for me. I don’t see the materiality of this question. The material point is that as soon as I could I had a detective employed and put upon the case to ferret out the crime.

Question 8—Is it true that at the coroner’s inquest you gave one time for the arrival of Mary Phagan at your office, at the trial you gave another time? If true, how do you explain this conflicting testimony?

Answer—This is not true. At the coroner’s inquest I said: “She got there—of course, it is pretty hard to give the exact time—but I venture to say it as near as possible, between 12:10 and 12:15.” At the trial I said: “Miss Hattie Hall finished the work and started to leave when the 12 o’clock whistle blew, she left the office and returned, it looked to me, almost immediately, calling into my office that she had forgotten something, and then she left for good. . . . To the best of my knowledge, it must have been from 10 to 15 minutes after Miss (Hattie) Hall left my office, when this little girl, whom I afterwards found to be Mary Phagan, entered by office and asked for her pay envelope.”

Let me call attention, at this point, to the fact that if I had been guilty, nothing on earth would have induced me to have revealed the fact that I had seen and talked with Mary Phagan in my office a few seconds before the prosecution claims I killed her. Would the man who killed Mary Phagan have freely and voluntarily stated that he saw her and talked with her just a few moments before she was supposed to have been killed? Would not every instinct of self-preservation have caused him to conceal the fact that he had seen her at all? Why, if he were guilty should he disclose the fact that he had seen her, especially when no one had seen him talking with her, and it could not be proved that he had seen her? If I had a guilty conscience would I have freely and voluntarily stated, as I did, that I had seen and talked with Mary Phagan? And if I did not hesitate to declare that I had seen and talked with Mary Phagan (which was the big, important fact), what object could I have had in misstating the time that I saw her?

I stated simply the truth, and the whole truth. I gave the time to the best of my recollection.

Proof I Am Innocent.

Question 9—Did you not at one time say you were not out of your office at 12:05 o’clock? Did not Monteen Stover say she was there at that time and you were not in? Did you not then change your statement? If so, what is your explanation?

Answer—I said I was not out of my office at 12:05. I always contended that, and I still assert it. I never changed. I may have stepped to the toilet for a minute or two, but one couldn’t remember such an occurrence. I am not fully satisfied as to the accuracy of Miss Stover’s testimony. She is but a child, and may not be accurate.

Let me say, as I did in answer to the preceding question, that I always stated freely and voluntarily that I saw and talked with Mary Phagan in my office. I gave her her pay envelope. She asked me if the metal had come, and when I told her no, she departed. I did not see her alive again. Now, if I had anything to conceal about the meeting between Mary Phagan and myself, if I had been the guilty man, would I not have denied from the first that I had ever seen her at all? Would I ever have come forward freely and voluntarily and stated that I had seen and talked with her? Would I not have tried to conceal that fact? Let me say that if some other man were accused of a murder, and he were to come forward voluntarily and state, without any compulsion, that he had seen and talked with the dead person just a few moments before the killing was supposed to have occurred, I would say that the man had a clear conscience and was not guilty. For, if he had been guilty, common sense would have made him hide and conceal the fact of seeing the dead person just before the killing.

Question 10—At first, you said the time clock slip punched by Newt Lee was correct, did you not? Later, you said there were discrepancies. Is this not true? If true, how do you explain the contradiction?

Answer—At first, I said the slip was all right, as no successive numbers were skipped. Mr. N. V. Darley looked at the slip, also, and corroborated this. Later, when I studied carefully the time at which the punches occurred, I noted three lapses of one hour instead of a half hour, as they should have been. The whole matter of Lee’s punching the time clock, while a physical fact, is immaterial. There is one thing, however, that is material in this matter. When I took out of the clock the time slip that Lee punched, I wrote on it, ‘Taken out at 8:26 a. m.’ to identify it. Several of those about me at the time saw me write on the slip. This was a complete identification of this slip. Mr. Dorsey admitted, in open court, that he rubbed it out. He says he thought a detective wrote those words on it to identify it.

Question 11—Did you not tell Mrs. White to hurry from the factory, that you were in haste to leave? Did you not, when she had gone, resume your seat, and begin writing? If so, how do you explain what you said to Mrs. White?

Answer—I did not tell Mrs. White to hurry from the factory. I told her that if she did not wish to be locked in with the two boys at work on the fourth floor, that she would have to leave then, as I was going home to lunch, and was going to lock up the factory. I did not mention haste. As I followed her down the stairs at an interval of less than a minute, I could not have been writing as she passed, and was not writing. I may have been placing papers together preparatory to leaving, but I had nothing to wrtie [sic]. The record of the case bears me out in this.

Question 12—Why did you refuse to see Jim Conley before the trial, when he offered to face you?

Answer—Conley came to my cell surrounded by detectives who had put themselves on record as being antagonistic to me. They were not hunting the truth; they were trying to fasten the crime on me. No matter what I would have done, if I consented to the interview, they would have used it against me. At the trial the negro never looked at me once, though my eyes were glued on him the whole time.

Question 13—When you made your statement before the police, didn’t you fail to mention the visit of Lemmie Quinn? If so, why?

Answer—To the police I did fail to mention Lemmie Quinn’s visit. It slipped my mind, though it was a circumstance favorable to me. But his statement, and my own, that he called and saw me in my office that day, has never been questioned. As soon as Quinn mentioned to me the fact of his visit to me the day of the murder, it refreshed my memory, and I at once remembered it.

Question 14—Did you ask him not to say anything about his visit until you had consulted your lawyers? If so, why?

Answer—No. I told him to tell the truth. Not knowing exactly what the police were claiming (at that time), and not being a lawyer, I did not know what value Quinn’s visit could have as evidence, and I told Quinn I would report the fact to my lawyers.

Character Witnesses.

Question 15—When your character was put in issue, why did you not insist upon your attorneys cross-questioning the witnesses who testified against your character?

Answer—My experience with Dalton, the first character witness against me, had given me and my attorneys fair warning what to expect from the so-called character witnesses. Here was a man upon whom I had never laid my eyes before he took his seat in the witness chair, and of whom I had never heard, and yet he swore solemnly to acts and doings with me that were utterly and absolutely untrue and without the slightest foundation. Was not this fair warning to me and my attorneys of what they might expect from the other so-called character witnesses? There was nothing that they could truthfully testify against my character, but I had been duly warned that I could not rely upon their speaking the truth.

My lawyers decided that if they cross-examined those character witnesses, it would allow these hostile people to tell all they heard about me in the way of vile slander—not what they knew. They felt that these witnesses had been loaded with slanders about me just for the purpose of telling them on cross-examination. They did not want to give them the chance to repeat malicious tales against me which they had no opportunity to investigate or answer.

Question 16—If a girl were never seen alive after she had been known to visit a certain man’s office, and if that girl was found the next day in the same building as that office—dead, murdered—would you call it persecution for that man to be arrested and vigorously prosecuted?

Answer—If the only facts known were what you state, then it would not be surprising that such a man should be arrested, and if subsequent developments indubitably pointed to him as the perpetrator of the crime, that he should be vigorously prosecuted. But if, after this man’s arrest, a negro brute is discovered, who admits a knowledge of the crime, who admits writing the very notes found by the body, though, at first, steadfastly denying he could write at all, and who, after repeated visits and promptings from the detectives and the solicitor, finally invents a preposterous and unbelievable tale, putting the crime on the man arrested in order to save his own neck—then I would say that the further prosecution of this man is persecution, indeed!

Question 17—Would you call it prejudice for that man to be suspected?

Answer—Not prior to the time that another was shown to have had the opportunity to commit the crime.

* * *

The Atlanta Constitution, March 9th 1914, “Leo Frank Answers List of Questions Bearing On Points Made Against Him,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

The Atlanta Georgian

Tuesday, July 1, 1913

Grand Jury Reported as Seriously Considering Connection of Negro With the Crime.

A well founded rumor Tuesday was to the effect that the Grand Jury had Jim Conley’s connection with the Mary Phagan murder mystery under serious consideration with a view of finding an indictment against the negro on the charge of causing the death of the little factory girl.

Announcement was made after the close of Tuesday’s session that the present Grand Jury would hold its last session Wednesday, and it was reported that if action were not taken on Conley’s case before adjournment, recommendations would be left with the next Grand Jury suggesting that the negro’s connection with the crime be rigidly investigated.

If the indictment is returned against the negro it will mean that he will be taken from the custody of the detectives and placed in the Tower. He also will bear a different relation to the case in the future, being a defendant instead of a material witness. Attorneys interested in the case said they had heard nothing of the proposed action by the Grand Jury.

Rumors that Newt Lee, negro night watchman at the National Pencil factory, had made sensational disclosures to his attorney, Bernard L. Chappell, and would be one of the State’s most important witnesses in the trial of Leo M. Frank, were set at rest Tuesday by Mr. Chappell.

The negro’s attorney said after the inquest that he would make no effort to procure the release of Lee, as he believed his client was a vital witness and it would be the wisest plan for him to remain in the protection of the State.

His statements at this time and up to the date of the indictment found against Frank led to the impression that Lee had confided in his lawyer significant circumstances, which he has told neither to the detectives nor to the members of the Coroner’s jury.

Denies Confession Reports.

Mr. Chappell said Tuesday, however, that Lee had told nothing which had not already been published in the newspapers and that he was absolutely certain that the negro had been holding back nothing. The attorney said that until Conley had made his string of affidavits for the detectives he had regarded Lee as one of the most important witnesses the State could produce.

Conley’s entrance into the case, he thought, changed the whole aspect of the mystery and largely eliminated the importance of Lee’s testimony for the reason that its significance on the assumption that Frank was the only person having the opportunity to commit the crime was lost when it became known that Conley also was in the factory and acting suspiciously near the time it is thought the girl was murdered.

Lee’s testimony still remains valuable in the eyes of the attorneys for the prosecution, and the night watchman will be called to add to the long string of circumstantial evidence that will be produced by the State. Solicitor Dorsey regards as highly significant the negro’s story of what happened the Saturday afternoon of the murder.

Two Sides of Phone Incident.

One of the circumstances that the State considers suspicious is that Newt Lee found the door leading from the second floor down to the first closed and locked. It had been his experience, he has testified, that Frank, when in the ebuilding [sic] alone, would lock the street door, but leave the door between the two floors wide open.

Lee said that he went to Frank’s office and that the factory superintendent was rubbing his hands in a nervous manner. Another feature of his testimony was that Frank called him up in the evening, something he[…]

LEE’S EVIDENCE IN FRANK CASE DISCOUNTED

Attorney Denies Confession—Asserts Conley Affidavits Put the Watchman in Background.

Continued From Page 1.

[…]never had done before. While the prosecution will lay great weight on this testimony, the defense will seek to show that it is entirely without significance.

Admitting that Frank never called Lee before in the evening, Frank’s attorneys will present evidence to show that he had called repeatedly when the former night watchman was employed at the factory, and that he was led to call the night of April 26 because a discharged employee, J. M. Gantt, had been in the factory and he wished to make certain that Gantt had left.

Those concerned in the trial of Frank are awaiting with interest the outcome of the fight over the subpenas duces tecum issued by the defense. The State has announced that it will combat the enforcement of these subpenas and has branded them as a subterfuge of Frank’s lawyers to discredit the witnesses introduced by the prosecution.

If the State fails, it will have to produce in court all of the affidavits and statements made by its principal witnesses. The defense will be able to use these to make a close comparison of the oral testimony with that which was sworn to weeks before.

In the event that any of the witnesses give testimony in any respect contradictory to the statements in their affidavits the deefnse [sic] will be in a position to impeach and discredit their testimony. Solicitor Dorsey and Attorney Frank A. Hooper have characterized this as trickery on the part of the defense and have announced that they do not propose to submit their mass of affidavits for the use of the defense if the law will protect them in the matter.

* * *

The Atlanta Georgian, July 1st 1913, “May Indict Conley as Slayer,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

The Atlanta Georgian

Tuesday, July 1, 1913

Accused Man Declares He’s Anxious Even for Prosecution to Cross-Examine.

Surpassing in interest any of the other testimony at the trial of Leo M. Frank will be the story related on the stand by the accused man himself. That Frank will make a detailed statement of his movements on the day that Mary Phagan was murdered is regarded as one of the certainties of the trial.

It was learned Wednesday that Frank was desirous of going even further than this by being sworn and submitting to a cross-examination by the attorneys for the prosecution. He will request his lawyers, Luther Z. Rosser and Reuben R. Arnold, that the privilege of cross-examination be extended the State.

The defense consistently has refused to divulge any of the details of its plans for the trial and for this reason it is impossible to say positively that Frank will be cross-examined. That it is not at all improbable, however, is indicated by the readiness with which Mr. Rosser permitted Frank to go before the Coroner’s Inquest and answer every question that was propounded to him.

“I was so convinced of his innocence,” said Mr. Rosser at that time, “that I didn’t hesitate an instant in giving consent to any sort of an examination that they might give him.”

As grueling and searching as was the inquisition before the Coroner’s jury, the ordeal at the trial will be much more severe. At the inquest Frank was interrogated by a Coroner who was merely seeking enough evidence to warrant the holding of Frank, along with Newt Lee, to the Grand Jury.

At the trial Frank will be confronted by two trained and hostile lawyers who have announced their conviction that he is the man guilty of the murder of Mary Phagan.

* * *

The Atlanta Georgian, July 1st 1913, “Frank Is Willing for State to Grill Him,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

The Atlanta Georgian

Friday, June 20, 1913

Few Witnesses of the Scores Examined Will Be Called When Case Is Heard.

That the trial of Leo M. Frank will take a much shorter time that is generally thought was indicated in a statement by Judge L. S. Roan. The judge said the greatest difficulty and almost as great a length of time would be consumed in drawing a jury as in the hearing of the case. He said the actual taking of evidence might not consume more than a day.

Judge Roan intimated that he expected neither side to introduce the scores of witnesses who had been examined and made affidavits, but that from these witnesses the State and the defense would select the most material evidence, or salient points, and then introduce the most reliable witness who could cover the ground.

For instance, eight or ten different persons might be able to testify on some different minor points, while there would be one witness who could testify to the same thing the different witnesses could. This witness, he thought, would be the one to go on the stand, and the others would not be summoned.

Affidavits Are Plentiful.

As a matter of fact, it is known that only a comparatively small number of the witnesses examined by the Solicitor will be introduced at the trial. In the course of his investigation he secured an affidavit from almost every employee of the pencil factory. While he questioned them closely and had each sign an affidavit, he found little that threw any new light on the case. He examined them, he said, to be sure that he would overlook nothing that might have been missed at the Coroner’s inquest or by the police.

Only a very few of these witnesses knew anything that could be used at the trial, he said, and it was very doubtful whether they would be called.

Scores Were Questioned.

Other witnesses by the score were brought to the Solicitor’s office as a result of the wild rumors connecting with the crime women who had seen Mary Phagan at various times during the day. The result of these affidavits was only to establish the fact that they knew nothing of the crime, and in the greater number of instances they did not know Mary Phagan.

When the Solicitor returns to the city Saturday or Sunday, he will announce definitely whether he will go to trial June 30, and if it is decided to do so, a jury will be drawn and subpenaes [sic] will be issued for witnesses. The defense will in all probability summon its own witnesses, although each side will have to acquaint the other with the names before the case goes to trial.

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The Atlanta Georgian, June 20th 1913, “Frank Trial Will Not Be Long One,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)