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

Atlanta Journal

Wednesday, April 30^th, 1913

Judge Gober Says His Client Will Be Taken Before Justice of the Peace Powers

J. M. Gantt, held on a warrant charging the murder of Mary Phagan, will given a hearing before Justice F. M. Powers at 3 o’clock Wednesday afternoon. Gantt was Tuesday afternoon transferred from police barracks to the jail on an order issued by Judge Bell.

Justice Powers, who issued the warrant for Gantt’s arrest, had not been notified of the hearing at 8:30 o’clock Wednesday morning, but it was stated at the office of Judge George Gober, attorney for Gantt, that the hearing will be held at 3 o’clock.

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Atlanta Journal, April 30th 1913, “Hearing for Gantt at 3 P.M. Wednesday,” 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

Tuesday, April 29^th, 1913

Believes That Newt Lee Bound and Gagged, Then Murdered Mary Phagan

W. J. Coleman, step-father of Mary Phagan, believes that she was murdered by Newt Lee, the negro night watchman, but that before the murder she lay bound and gagged in the factory of the National Pen [sic] company, 37 South Forsyth street, from shortly after noon on Saturday until past midnight.

As people passed back and forth along the street, as members of the girl’s family waited anxiously for her return, he thinks that she lay helpless within the factory, while the negro waited for an opportune time to attack and then murder her.

His belief is that as soon as she had been paid the wages that she went to the factory to collect, she passed into the dressing room, perhaps for a drink of water. There, in his opinion, the negro seized the girl and bound and gagged her. He says there is plain evidence in the dressing room that the girl was first attacked there.

He does not believe that either Arthur Mullinax or J. M. Gant [sic] had any hand in the murder of Mary Phagan.

“The negro evidently kept the child in the factory all day,” Mr. Coleman said, “and was afraid to attack her until midnight for fear she would scream or somebody would come. He may or may not have knocked her senseless from the first, or he may have tied her. I do not know but when Gantt entered the shop, it is more than likely that he knew nothing of the girl’s presence there and simply went up and got his shoes, as he said, and went out again.

“All this about Mary having seen on the street at midnight or at any other time after 12 o’clock in the day I do not think can be true. I believe she remained all day in the building. After the negro did the work he was afraid to leave or not to notify the police, which would make appearances worse for him. Therefore he called the officers.”

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Atlanta Journal, April 29th 1913, “Stepfather Thinks Negro is Murderer,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

J. M. Gant [sic], who was arrested at Marietta and brough[t] to Atlanta Monday, charged with the death of Mary Phagan. [Gantt was in the factory on the Saturday of the murder to pick up a pair of shoes he had left since leaving the Pencil company. Leo M. Frank was very reluctant to let him inside the building. Originally, Frank’s behavior towards Gantt was assumed to be because of Gantt’s recent firing, even though there were no bad relations between the two — Ed.]

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

Atlanta Journal

Tuesday, April 29^th, 1913

Mayor Woodward Calls Special Meeting of Council So That Reward Can Be Formally Offered—Governor Brown Issued Proclamation Tuesday Morning

Governor Joseph M. Brown Tuesday morning offered a reward of $200 for the apprehension and conviction of the murderer or murderers of Mary Phagan, and the city of Atlanta is expected to offer a $1,000 reward at a special meeting that has been called by Mayor James G. Woodward for Wednesday morning at 10 o’clock.

Mayor Woodward points out that this is one of the most atrocious crimes in Atlanta’s history and that the city cannot afford to let it go unheeded.

Following is the mayor’s message to council:

“Atlanta, Ga., April 29, 1913.

“To the General Council City of Atlanta:

“Gentlemen:

“The general council of the city of Atlanta is hereby called to convene in special session tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock, April 30, 1913, to take cognizance in an official way, of that most brutal crime that was committed in this city on last Saturday night.

“I think it is proper that the city government should take some befitting action as regards this most deplorable matter, which, as it is, is liable to cast unenviable criticism upon the name of our fair city, and I would suggest that your honorable body offer a suitable reward of not less than $1,000 for the capture of the brute or brutes that could so far forget themselves as to commit such an outrageous crime. I feel satisfied that every tax payer of this city will heartily cooperate in indorsing the action of mayor and general council in offering this reward. Respectfully submitted,

“J. G. WOODWARD, Mayor.”

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Atlanta Journal, April 29th 1913, “State Offers $200 Reward; City Will Follow With $1,000 for Mary Phagan’s Murderer,” 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

Tuesday, April 29^th, 1913

Petition Made to Judge George L. Bell and Will Be Heard at 4 o’Clock

J. M. GANT [sic] charged with the murder of Mary Phagan is seeking his release upon a writ of habeas corpus.

Petition for such a writ was made Tuesday morning to Judge Bell of the superior court and he directed that a hearing be had at 4 o’clock Tuesday afternoon.

Judge Gober, attorney for Gant, made the petition, and will argue Tuesday afternoon for the immediate release of the former bookkeeper.

Gant sets forth in his petition to Judge Bell that he is absolutely innocent of the crime of which he is accused, and that his detention by the police is without reason or authority.

Gant was arrested Monday about noon in Marietta, as he was on his way from Atlanta to his mother’s home, who lives in the country a short distance from Marietta.

He was arrested as he stepped from the street car, and was retained Monday afternoon to Atlanta and lodged in police station on the charge of having murdered Mary Phagan.

Upon his arrival, he was reluctant to talk, but at police station he made a vigorous statement in which he denied any knowledge of the murder of the four

Gantt’s Release Asked In Habeas Corpus Writ Witnesses Positive

(Continued From Page 1.)

teen-year-old girl and gave a clear explanation of his visit to Marietta.

DEMANDS IMMEDIATE HEARING.

Judge Gober, who is a relative of his and who came to his assistance as attorney, demanded an immediate hearing for the prisoner. But Chief of Detectives Lanford announced Tuesday morning that neither Gant nor Arthur Mullinax would be given an immediate hearing and that both would continue under arrest.

Immediately after this announcement, Judge Gober presented to Judge Bell the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and the petition was set for an immediate hearing Tuesday afternoon.

At this hearing, the police will be called upon to advance whatever evidence they have to connect Gant with the murder, and he will offer a defense based upon his own statement and that of his sister, Mrs. F. C. Terrell, of 284 East Linden street.

She says that he spent Saturday night, the night of the murder, at her residence, where he made his home, and he insists also that he returned to his sister’s residence at about 10:30 o’clock and remained there during the night. Their statements vary in that she says he came home for supper, while he admits that it was 10:30 o’clock before he returned.

HIS STATEMENT.

“I did not kill Mary Phagan. I haven’t seen her within a month. I am innocent, and I swear it.

WHAT HE DID SATURDAY.

“Now, I’ll tell you exactly what I did Saturday. First, I saw the the [sic] Memorial parade. Then I got with some friends and we walked over town a little, here and there, but to no particular place. I was intending to leave town Monday. A pair of old shoes I had worn a month ago were down at the pencil factory. I used to work there, you know, and they were left on the first floor.

“I wanted to get them and asked Mr. Frank, the president of the plant, if I could get into the building. He said I could, and referred me to the negro night watchman. I got into the building and found the shoes. I didn’t stay but a short while. About 7:30 o’clock I met two friends. We went to a pool room uptown and played pool until 10:30 o’clock. I didn’t play, but sat around and watched the other fellows. When I left the pool room, I went directly to my sister’s home on Linden street. She met me at the door. I went to straight to bed and was asleep almost the moment I hit the mattress.”

HEARD OF MURDER.

“Where were you when told of the murder?” he was asked.

“I got up late Sunday morning. That night, I went to see Miss Annie Chambers, of 18 Warren place, with whom I have been going ever since Christmas. We were sitting in the parlor. Her little brother, Philip, came in with a story about a girl being murdered in the pencil factory.

“I was acquainted with most of the girls that worked there. I asked him what was the girl’s name.

“’I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘They haven’t identified her yet.’ It was about 8 o’clock at night, then. That was the first I knew of the killing. When I left Miss Chambers’ home I went to my sister’s house and to bed.”

KNEW HER AS A CHILD.

In denying the charge that he was infatuated with Mary Phagan, Gant said:

“When she was a little girl, about ten years ago, I knew her in Marietta. They lived close to the home of my family in Cobb county. Then I knew her again when she worked in the pencil factory. I had never paid her any particular attention, and was not in love with her. I don’t guess she was in love with me. She never said anything, if she was, and she didn’t show any signs that would indicate it.”

“I could wring the neck of whoever accuses me of such a thing,” he blazed. “It’s the most atrocious crime I’ve ever heard of. I never could have conceived it, let alone commit it. The man is a murderer who would unjustifiably accuse another of such a deed.”

Gantt was bookkeeper at the National Pencil company until three weeks ago, when he was discharged.

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Atlanta Journal, April 29th 1913, “Gantt’s Release Asked in Habeas Corpus Writ,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Arthur Mullinax, who seems to have established an alibi through statements of friends that he was at home on night of the murder. [Mullinax is the young man said to have been seen with Mary Phagan Saturday night by Edgar Sentell. Sentell was unwavering with his statement on what he had seen. However, Mullinax’s girlfriend came forward and stated that she had been with him that evening and that Mullinax was entirely innocent. — Ed.]

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

Atlanta Journal

Monday, April 28^th, 1913

Gantt Protests His Innocence, Declaring He Knows Nothing of the Crime — Says He Went to Factory Saturday to Get Pair of Shoes Left There—His Statement is Confirmed by Superintendent Frank

DECLARES HE KNEW MARY PHAGAN BUT HAD NOT HARMED HER

It Is Not Known What Was Purpose of His Visit to Marietta Monday —His Whereabouts Sunday Not Yet Explained —Story of His Arrest and What He Says

J. M. Gantt, who was discharged three weeks ago from the position of bookkeeper at the National Pencil company, was arrested shortly before noon Monday at Marietta in connection with the murder of Mary Phagan.

He is the man for whom the police were searching during Monday morning, but whose name they refused to divulge. He was arrested by Bailiff Hicks, of Marietta, just as he stepped from a street car in which he had come from Atlanta.

Gantt protests his innocence, and says that he knows nothing whatever of the murder of Mary Phagan. He admits having gone to the factory of the National Pencil company on Saturday afternoon for shoes that he had left there, but denies that he returned to the factory or was with Mary Phagan at any time during the day.

In a brief statement which he had made at Marietta he said that he knew the murdered girl, but that they were not intimate friends. He explained that after getting the pair of shoes from the factory, he went home and remained there during the night, and that he had no knowledge of the murder until Sunday morning.

It is not known what he did on Sunday, and his visit to Marietta is unexplained. He took the street car from Atlanta, and was arrested as he arrived at Marietta by Bailiff Hicks, who had been notified that Gantt was wanted by the Atlanta police.

The above photograph shows the rear of the building occupied by the plant of the National Pencil factory where fourteen-year-old Mary Phagan was found early Sunday morning cold in death, her head battered and a piece of twine about her neck. In the upper right hand corner is shown the back door leading into the death chamber, a dismal hole reeking with the smell of damp earth that appears never to be dry. It was out of this door that the staple holding the hasp was drawn, apparently from the inside, which indicated, according to the detectives, that the assailant made his escape this way. There is a board runway from the entrance to the ground floor of the basement and it was at the extreme end of this that the body of the murdered girl was found as shown above. Strands of golden hair, sworn by Little Magnolia Kennedy, who worked in the metal room with the slain girl, to belong to her, were found entwined from a projection of the bench lathe shown on the second floor. Across the room, just at the corner of a small closet were found the spots on the floor, later determined to be blood when particles of the board were tested in alcohol by Chief of Police Beavers. Employes [sic] of the factory stated most emphatically that the spots were not there after the room had been swept out Friday afternoon.

Superintendent Frank, of the National Pencil factory, corroborates Gantt’s story about the visit Saturday afternoon to the factory. He says that about 6 o’clock in the evening, Gantt came to the factory and asked permission to get an old pair of shoes that he had left there before his discharge.

PERMISSION GRANTED.

The negro night watchman, Newt Lee, asked the superintendent whether Gantt should be permitted to get the shoes, and the permission was granted. But when the superintendent had reached home about 7:30 o’clock, he grew uneasy. He telephoned to the office to know when Gantt left, and Newt Lee, the watchman, answered that the bookkeeper took his departure immediately after getting the shoes.

This is all that officials or employees of the factory know of Gantt’s movements, and the police gave little further information.

When they learned on Monday morning that Gantt had visited the pencil factory on the day of the murder and that he was an acquaintance of Mary Phagan’s they immediately set out to find him.

Two detectives, accompanied by an employee of the factory who knew Gantt, went to the Terminal station searching for him, and the hunt for the bookkeeper was carried on in other parts of the city. But until he was arrested at Marietta by Bailiff Hicks, nothing had been seen of the bookkeeper who the police believe can throw light on the murder of the fourteen-year-old girl.

Detective Hazelitt has gone to Marietta to bring Gantt to Atlanta.

Following closely upon the arrest of J. M. Gantt, discharged bookkeeper of the National Pencil company, in Marietta, Monday morning, Deputy Sheriff Hazelett, armed with a warrant charging the man with the crime, took him in charge and placed him in the Marietta jail. The warrant was sworn out in Atlanta by Detective Ozburn, of the local police force.

While Gantt is incarcerated, Hazelett is making further investigations, the nature of which he declines to divulge. He intimated, however, that still further developments might be expected. When he has completed his investigation, he will return to Atlanta with the prisoner.

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Atlanta Journal, April 28th 1913, “J. M. Gantt is Arrested on His Arrival in Marietta; He Visited Factory Saturday,” 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.

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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)

Leo M. Frank. Superintendent of the National Pencil company, snapped by a Journal photographer on the way to police headquarters. Mr. Frank is not under arrest, but will be a witness at the coroner’s inquest.

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

Atlanta Journal

Tuesday, April 29^th, 1913

Detectives Building Case on Theory that Frank and Negro Can Clear Mystery

Chief Lanford Believes That Testimony of the Superintendent and Negro Night Watchman May Lead to the Arrest of the Person Guilty of the Atrocious Crime That Has Shocked the Whole City—No Further Arrests Expected Soon

MRS. FRANK IN TEARS AT POLICE STATION WHILE HUSBAND IS UNDER EXAMINATION

Frank Was Confronted by Negro Night Watchman—His Attorney, Luther Z. Rosser, Present at Inquiry, Which Was Conducted by Chief Beavers, Chief Lanford and Detectives Behind Closed Doors—Conference Still in Progress at 2

At 1:35 o’clock Tuesday afternoon Chief of Detectives N. A. Lanford, announced that L. M. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil company’s factory, where Mary Phagan was found murdered early Sunday morning, would be detained by the police until after the coroner’s inquest. The inquest will be resumed Wednesday morning at 9 o’clock.

Chief Lanford made this statement when he emerged from a conference which had been in progress in his office on the third floor of the police station since shortly after 1 o’clock.

Present at this conference were L. M. Frank, Chief of Police James L. Beavers, Chief Lanford, Luther Z. Rosser, Mr. Frank’s attorney; John Black a city detective; Harry Scott, a Pinkerton detective, and W. G. Humphrey, chairman of the city finance committee and former chairman of the police committee.

For an hour or more Newt Lee, the negro night watchman at the factory, had been in the room, when he was returned to his cell at 1:30 o’clock.

THE ONLY WAY TO CLEAR IT UP.

Chief Lanford declared that the police were working on the theory that the murder mystery could be cleared up through evidence which they hoped to obtain from the negro night watchman and from Mr. Frank.

He said that the detectives had been unable to find any credible evidence to the effect that the girl ever had been seen since she entered the factory about noon last Saturday to get her wages.

Chief Lanford returned to the meeting.

Mrs. Frank, with a number of friends, was standing in the hall of headquarters at the foot of the stairs on the floor below that where her husband was being interrogated by the detectives. She was weeping.

MURDERED IN AFTERNOON?

Shortly before 2 o’clock the statement was drawn from Newt Lee, the negro nightwatchman [sic], that he made visits of inspection every half hour during Saturday night to the metal room in which Mary Phagan was murdered.

But he says that he was [5 words illegible] by Inspector Frank, and told not to [1 word illegible] until [1 word illegible].

If his statement is true the girl must have been murdered during his absence—that is, between the hours of 4 and 6 o’clock Saturday afternoon.

Detective Starnes discovered a drop of blood near the elevator, which is taken as further evidence that the body of the girl was dragged from the metal room to the elevator shaft.

Chief Lanford seemed to regard the negro’s statement that he visited the metal room every half hour during the night, as very important.

The police are now entertaining the theory that the murder was committed during the afternoon, and that Newt Lee probably was absent from the factory at the time that it was done.

NO FURTHER ARRESTS SOON.

Shortly after 2 o’clock Chief Beavers came from the meeting in Chief Lanford’s office. He confirmed the statement of Chief Lanford that the police would detain Mr. Frank until after the coroner’s inquest. He also said that no further arrests in the case were contemplated in the immediate future, indicating that he thought the detectives were now working on the theory that they hoped would clear up the mystery.

Attorney Luther Z. Rosser left the room. He made light of the evidence against his client, Mr. Frank and declared that the police could not hold him any longer than he, Mr. Rosser, was willing for them to hold him. By this it was believed Mr. Rosser meant he could obtain his client’s release on a habeas corpus if he chose to take this procedure.

It was stated by the chief of detectives that Mr. Frank would not be confined to a cell at headquarters. He had employed a supernumerary policeman, said the chief, and would be allowed the freedom of headquarters under charge of that policeman.

Attorney Rosser declared that “all this talk about fear of violence to Mr. Frank is pure bosh.”

At the request of the detectives, Mr. Frank copied the notes found by the dead girl’s body, in his own handwriting.

Angry protest that emanated occasionally from behind the doors of the conference was not distinguishable as to the words, but the tones indicated unmistakably that the questions being plied by the detectives to Mr. Frank and the negro were arousing the opposition of his attorney.

Mr. Frank, emerging from the conference for a moment, unaccompanied, was as perturbed as a man might be under the circumstances. He seemed to be indignant. A Journal representative questioned him.

“They are asking me about things this negro has said,” was Mr. Frank’s answer. “And about statements other people have made.”

“What has the negro said?” The Journal man asked.

“What he’s said all along,” returned Mr. Frank. “He hasn’t said a thing that’s new.”

He returned to the conference then.

Mr. Frank returned to police headquarters in company with detectives from the pencil plant Tuesday morning shortly after 11 o’clock. He and the detectives stated that he was not under arrest.

Newt Lee, the negro night watchman who had been awakened at 4 o’clock Tuesday morning by detectives and put on the griddle of questions once more, was taken into the room and confronted Mr. Frank shortly after the latter arrived at headquarters.

Conviction grows that the negro knows more than he has told. His own admission that the elevator could not have been moved Saturday night without his hearing it, is made absolute by the observation of detectives at the plant itself, it is reported. And the theory that the elevator must have been used to carry Mary Phagan’s body from the second floor, where other evidence has shown that she was attacked, to the basement, where it was found, is said to have been better established by stains found along the floor leading from the machine room to the elevator shaft.

These appear to be blood soaked into the dirty wood of the floor. One of them was found Tuesday to have fallen upon a nail head, and the nail was pulled by Detectives Starnes and Campbell, the metal not having absorbed whatever was upon it. The analysis of that stain will be practically absolute. Yet nowhere upon the floor of the elevator, or upon the shaft, was a blood stain distinguishable.

L. M. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil company’s factory, where Mary Phagan was found murdered early Sunday morning, was taken to police headquarters again Tuesday morning shortly after 11 o’clock. Detective Harry Scott, of the Pinkertons, who are employed by Mr. Frank, and Detective John Black, of the city department, went to the factory in an automobile and Mr. Frank accompanied them to headquarters without any protest.

CONFRONTED BY NEGRO.

At 12:30 o’clock, after Frank had undergone an hour and a half of questioning behind closed doors, detectives sent for Newt Lee, the negro night watchman, and confronted him with Frank, the superintendent.

This meeting, like the first interrogation of the factory superintendent, was in the private office of Chief Lanford, from which all but the police, Frank and the negro night watchman were excluded.

The negro, wearing the same stone expression which has remained unchanged since the hour of his arrest,

Detectives Building Case on Theory That Frank and Negro Can Clear Mystery

(Continued from page one)

entered the office with detectives on both sides, the door shut and the police began the most important effort that they have yet made to force from him the secret of Mary Phagan’s murder.

While the meeting between the negro and Mr. Frank was still in progress Attorney Luther Z. Rosser arrived and entered the room. Excited conversation could be heard through the closed door, but just what was said is not known. Mr. Rosser, it is understood, was present as the attorney of Mr. Frank.

As Superintendent Frank left the National Pencil factory in company with detectives, girls who were employed as operatives gathered at the windows and sobbed hysterically.

The working force at the plant is entirely demoralized; and, while an effort is being made to continue the daily routine of business, the one thought and topic of employes [sic] is the murder of Mary Phagan.

The girls employed as operatives are overwrought, and at the time when the superintendent was returned to [the] police station, they reached a state of hysteria.

In an effort to quiet their fears the factory has posted an order excluding newspaper reporters and visitors.

WAS QUESTIONED MONDAY.

Mr. Frank spent the greater part of Monday morning at [the] police station answering questions of the police. But about noon he was allowed to return home.

The police considered his questions of such importance that they made a stenographic record of them.

Mr. Frank employed Luther Rosser and Albert Haas as attorneys to represent him at this inquisition by the police.

Detective Chief Lanford announced at 10 o’clock that he will hold both Arthur Mullinax and J. M. Gantt without a preliminary hearing.

The statement was made to him by John R. Phillips, manager of the Forsyth hotel, at 67 1-2 South Forsyth street, that a man who seemed to resemble Gantt, and a girl who answers the description of Mary Phagan, came to his hotel at 11 o’clock Saturday night and asked for a room.

He inquired whether they were married and, upon the man’s giving an indefinite answer, he refused to admit them to a room.

BEGAN BEFORE DAYLIGHT.

At 4 o’clock Tuesday morning Newt Lee, the negro, was waked by detectives, and the grilling was resumed which had continued through the day Monday.

In the early dawn detectives began taking turns in questioning the negro. As soon as one would exhaust a series of questions another would begin.

“I don’t know,” was the negro’s only answer.

But now and then he seemed to hesitate, the detectives reported. It appeared that he was on the verge of varying that stolid answer with the information that the police seek. They believe that finally he will break down and tell the whole story.

CLEANED HIS NAILS.

The dirt has been scraped from under his finger nails, and will be examined for traces of blood. Meantime the most unrelenting “third degree” through which the police have ever put a prisoner is continuing.

Leo M. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil factory, who was questioned during the greater part of Monday morning by the police, has employed Pinkerton detectives to aid the police.

Police are making two random investigations: One is that Mary Phagan was the victim of a white slave plot. The other is that she was taken for an automobile ride before her murder, and was either drugged or made drunk.

They have been informed of a girl, accompanied by a woman and two men, who was seen Saturday night near the National Pencil factory. The girl was sobbing and reluctant, and was being coaxed along by the woman and the two men.

The woman was heard to say:

“Come along dearie. Don’t create a scene. You’ll attract the cops.”

The girl who was crying answered:

“I don’t care. I don’t care.”

The four disappeared down Forsyth street.

ANOTHER IN DISTRESS.

Detectives Black and Rosser secured evidence Monday afternoon from R. B. Pyron a telegraph operator of a young girl, who was crying and in distress, whom he saw in an automobile with three men.

Pyron is a telegraph operator at the signal tower on the Central of Georgia railroad at the Whitehall street crossing. He says that the automobile came from the direction of West End, and stopped on Whitehall street, just after passing the railroad. The girl was sobbing and pleading with the man sitting beside her, and another man standing on the running board was talking to her earnestly and trying to quiet her.

When the men saw Pyron approaching they made off with the car toward the city. Pyron says that the girl was hysterical, and seemed to be either drunk or drugged, but that he would be unable to identify either her or any of the men.

CATCHING AT STRAWS.

Miss Pearl Robinson, of Bellwood avenue, who swears that she went to the Bijon theater with Arthur Mullinax on Saturday night and that he left her at her front door at about 10:30 o’clock, when they returned from the performance. Miss Robinson went to police headquarters in the hopes of establishing an alibi for her friend. Her testimony with that of Jim Rutherford and his mother, with whom the accused man lives, is expected to convince detectives that he has no connection with the horrible crime.

Investigations of such instances as this, however, are straws at which the police are catching in an effort to trace Mary Phagan’s movements from the time she visited the National Pencil factory at 12 o’clock on Saturday, until she was murdered.

Only one individual has been found who says that he saw Mary Phagan after she entered the factory. This is E. L. Sentell, who insists that she was upon the street at midnight with a man whom he at first took to be Arthur Mullinax, one of the four men now under arrest.

He was brought face to face with Gant [sic] at [the] police station Monday afternoon, and said that Gant seemed to be this man. But he was not sure, and the police are not convinced that the girl he saw was Mary.

DID GIRL LEAVE FACTORY?

They are still doubtful whether Mary Phagan ever left the factory after going there at 12 o’clock on Saturday to collect wages for two days’ work.

This is a question of great importance in the search for her murderer, and is one that the police are using every effort to answer.

They are endeavoring to settle this uncertainty, and to discover whether she was murdered in the afternoon, the evening, or late at night on Saturday.

The chief hope for solving all details of the mystery seems to be through a statement by Newt Lee or by J. M. Gant.

But the police are using also all material evidence in their search for the murderer.

BODY EXAMINED.

Dr. J. W. Hurt, county physician, made an examination Monday night of the body to determine the nature of the injuries, but he is reserving his report for the coroner’s jury. The jury will meet at 10 o’clock on Wednesday to assume the inquest, which was begun on Monday with an examination of the cellar in which the body of Mary Phagan was found and of the second story room where she was murdered.

After all, however, the chief hope of discovering the murderer returns to Newt Lee, the negro.

GANT’S VIGOROUS DENIAL.

Gant, who was arrested on Monday afternoon in Marietta and brought to Atlanta at 4 o’clock, was at first reluctant to talk. He first made a brief, non-committal statement in which he left the impression that he returned late Saturday night to the residence of his sister, Mrs. F. C. Terrell, of 284 East Linden street, with whom he made his home. In this detail his statement seemed to conflict with one made earlier in the day by his sister.

At police station, however, he made a vigorous defense of his innocence.

If Mary Phagan was murdered Saturday night, the statement by Mrs. Terrell, Gant’s sister, would tend to furnish him with an alibi. The force of this statement, however, is lessened by the contradiction that he himself made.

SISTER GIVES ALIBI.

She says that Gant returned to her house early Saturday evening, ate supper there, and remained there throughout the night. But detectives may seek to offset this statement with Gant’s own words that “he played pool until 10:30 o’clock.” The inference drawn from his words is that it was some time after supper when he returned.

According to her statement the spent Saturday afternoon up town watching the Memorial day parade. But he returned to her house early in the evening and remained there until Sunday morning.

PLANS MADE EARLIER.

On Monday mornings, she says, he went to Marietta in pursuance of plans that had been decided upon several weeks ago. He had determined to return to the home of his parents in Marietta and to work there on the farm. A week ago his plans had been laid to go to Marietta, and he was following them out when he left Atlanta Monday morning. She insists that his departure for Marietta was not at all hurried, but was a step that had been prepared for well in advance.

On Sunday morning she discovered from the newspapers that a girl had been murdered, but the name of the girl was not known at that time. She says that she and her brother discussed the crime, and that afterward he left the house to go to Sunday school. Later in the morning he called up to tell her that the girl who had been murdered was Mary Phagan, whom both knew and whose relatives live near the Gant family in Marietta. She says that he had heard the murdered girl’s name mentioned uptown.

DECEIVED DETECTIVES.

Mrs. Terrell agrees with her brother in the statement that he had planned several weeks ago to return to his mother’s home near Marietta, and that his trip to Marietta on Monday had been prepared for days in advance.

She admitted that detectives had questioned her on Monday about her brother and that she had pretended not to have seen him for three weeks. But she explained this deception by saying that she merely thought it was better to mislead them. She had a vague feeling that something was wrong, and that the answer she gave was the better course.

She insists that her brother was at her house through Saturday night, and could not have committed the murder.

BODY TAKEN TO MARIETTA.

The body of Mary Phagan was taken at 8:35 o’clock Tuesday morning from the undertaking shop of the P. J. Bloomfield company to Marietta for funeral and interment. The funeral services were held at about 9 o’clock.

At the time that the body was removed from the undertaking establishment, 200 to 300 curious people had collected in the street to stare at the white coffin. A few followed the funeral procession to the station.

* * *

Atlanta Journal, April 29th 1913, “L. M. Frank, Factory Superintendent, Detained by Police,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Constitution
August 3^rd, 1913

Place and Time of the Murder Only Big Facts Brought Out in the Mass of Evidence.

One week of the battle Leo M. Frank, accused of the murder of Mary Phagan in the factory of the National Pencil company, for his life has elapsed, and his fate is yet a question for future developments to decide.

The first week of the trial has been markedly free from sensations.

The two big facts that the week’s evidence would seem to show are that Mary Phagan was murdered in the second floor of the pencil factory, and that she was murdered within one hour after she ate her breakfast at home shortly after 11 o’clock.

The principal features of the week’s evidence are as follows:

Mary’s Mother Testifies.

The examination of witnesses began with the most pathetic scene in the whole week, when Mrs. J. W. Coleman, mother of the murdered girl, took the stand.

With appealing simplicity the mother told of how her little daughter had arisen on the fatal Saturday morning about 11 o’clock bright and joyous in her childish excitement over going to see the Memorial day parade; of the frugal breakfast of bread and cabbage she had eaten, and of how the little girl had happily busied herself helping her mother by doing this or the other small turn in the housework. At about 12 o’clock little Mary had finished with her chores, and dressed in a light summer frock, as fresh and sweet as a wild rose, sallied forth to meet her fate.

The mother went gently as she was compelled to recall her little girl’s fourteenth birthday, which would have been June 1, and to which she and Mary had looked forward to celebrating with so much pleasure, and as Mrs. Coleman told of the child’s beauty, she dwelt tenderly on each feature as if her very heart were breaking once more to caress them.

Identifies Daughter’s Dress.

Bearing up wonderfully under the ordeal of beholding once more the frock which she had helped little Mary to adjust before she left home for the last time, Mrs. Coleman identified the dress and the hat with the pale blue ribbon and the tiny bunch of flowers.

Mrs. Coleman was followed on the stand by George Epps, a little “newsy” and a companion of Mary, who had been with her on the street car as she came into the city, and had talked with her about the fun they would have that afternoon when they had promised each other to watch the big parade together.

With his head shaven as smooth and slick as a billiard-ball, George mounted the stand and told his story, boy-wise, in minute detail even to the point of explaining how he could squint one eye at the sun and tell the time of day.

Were Going to Parade.

He testified that Mary Phagan got on the English avenue incoming trolley car with him about 10 minutes before 12 o’clock and that they had ridden together to Forsyth and Marietta streets when Mary had left him to go to the pencil factory to get her wages and that they had agreed to meet again at 2 o’clock at Elkin’s drug store to see the parade. George said that he waited until 4 o’clock that afternoon to meet Mary, and when she did not meet him as she had promised, he had grown tired of waiting and went to the ball game.

George Epps left the stand and Newt Lee, the nightwatchman at the National Pencil company’s factory, who discovered the body of Mary Phagan in the basement and reported his grewsome find to the police, followed him. Stolid and stubborn, all negro, and without any refined sensibilities to be hurt, Newt Lee stood the punishment of Attorney Rosser’s gruelling cross-examination without a shadow of a qualm, never once departing in any particular from the story he had repeated innumerable times since that gray Sunday dawn when he found the body.

Sent Away From Factory.

Lee testified that, in view of the fact that Saturday, April 26, was a holiday, he had been ordered to report for duty at the pencil factory at 4 o’clock, instead of 5 o’clock which was the time when he was accustomed to report on Saturdays, and accordingly had arrived at the factory a few minutes before 4 o’clock. He found the front door unlocked as usual, but found the door on the stairway leading to the second floor locked.

Lee testified that when he arrived at Mr. Frank’s office, Frank met him at the door rubbing his hands saying that he was sorry that he (Lee) had come so early. Frank insisted that Lee go up town and “have a good time,” and Lee says that he told Frank that he needed sleep. Frank, according to Lee, continued to insist that he leave the factory, and said that Lee needed a good time. Lee said he could have slept in the packing room of the factory.

When Frank insisted, however, Lee says he left the factory and did not return until 5 o’clock, at which time he found the doors just as he had left them.

Gantt Scared Frank.

Lee said that Frank told him then not to punch the clock as there were some workmen in the building. Immediately afterwards Frank put a punch slip in the clock.

Lee was questioned about the relations between Frank and Gantt on that afternoon, and said that he saw Gantt downstairs about 6 o’clock, when he claimed to be looking for a pair of shoes he had left there when discharged from the factory. About that time Frank came downstairs unexpectedly and when he saw Gantt jumped back a little frightened. Gantt explained to Frank that he came for his shoes. Frank intimated that the shoes had been swept out, but at length allowed Gantt to enter the factory with Lee, at which time Gantt got two pairs of shoes and left. By this time Frank had also left.

About 7 o’clock, Lee said, Frank telephone to him to know if “everything was all right,” which action on the part of Frank had not been done before during Lee’s service.

Lee then explained how he had gone to the basement to the toilet about 3 o’clock, and while there saw an unusual object lying on the ground, which he investigated with a smoky lantern and found to be the dead body, which was later identified as that of Mary Phagan. Lee says he then notified the police and tried to notify Frank.

Frank Dropped His Head.

When the police arrived Lee was taken to police headquarters and did not see Frank until he was carried back to the factory about 7 or 8 o’clock.

Lee said when he saw Frank then it was in the factory office and that Frank looked at him and then at the door and dropped his head without saying anything. He testified that N. V. Darley, an official at the factory, examined the time clock and stated that it was correctly punched.

Lee and Frank were then carried to the police station and Lee said that he did not see Frank any more until a night soon after then, when Lee was handcuffed to a chair in a room at the police station and Frank was shut in the room alone with him.

On this occasion, said Lee, Frank looked at him and dropped his head. Lee testified that he (Lee) said:

“Mr. Frank, it’s mighty hard for me to be handcuffed to this chair for something I didn’t do.”
To this Lee said Frank replied:

“We’ll Both Go to Hell.”

“What’s the difference, they’ve got a man guarding me.” Frank then told Lee that he didn’t believe that Lee killed the girl, but knew something about it. Lee told Frank that he only discovered the body, whereupon Frank, according to Lee, replied:

“Yes, and if you keep that up, we’ll both go to hell.” The detectives came in at that time.

Upon cross-examination by the defense, Lee testified that if he had inspected the basement of the building with the regularity required by his instructions, he would have found the body earlier.

Thus, without sensation or the disclosure of a single fact that had not been public property for many weeks, ended the first day of the most famous murder trial in the history of Atlanta.

At the opening of Tuesday’s session Newt Lee was again placed on the stand and Attorney Rosser continued his cross-questioning without bringing out further material facts from the watchman.

Girl’s Body Found.

Sergeant L. S. Dobbs, the officer who headed the squad which responded to Newt Lee’s alarm, went on the stand and stated that when he arrived at the factory Lee was apparently not laboring under excitement, but that he took him in charge and had him direct the officers to the body in the basement. He stated that he found the girl’s body lying there face down with blood on the back of her head and with a cord tied so tightly around her neck that it cut into the flesh. There was also, he stated, a piece of underclothing tied loosely around the neck.

The finding of the murder notes was next related as well as of the discovery of the missing shoe and hat and traces of where a body had apparently been dragged along the ground in the basement from the elevator shaft to where the body was lying.

Tuesday afternoon Detective J. N. Starnes was placed upon the stand and testified corroboratory to Sergeant Dobbs’ story of finding the body.

Says Frank Was Nervous.

Detective Starnes brought upon his head the gruelling fire of the defense when he stated in regard to telephoning Frank that the superintendent was nervous. A sharp lilt between Solicitor Dorsey and Attorney Rosser ensued, in which the former accused the defense of trying to impeach the testimony of the witness.

This closed Tuesday’s hearing of the trial with no material advantage one way or the other since the beginning of the trial.

Affairs took a turn on Wednesday morning, however, which aroused great hopes of acquittal among the friends of the defense when the memory of John Black, who was the first witness of the morning, proved treacherous and his testimony did not pan out as the state had evidently expected.

Black Gets “Mixed Up.”

Black admitted that he was “mixed up” and could not recall to mind what he had testified a few moments before. He failed particularly in recalling dates and details in regard to the finding of the bloody shirt at Newt Lee’s house.

The solicitor had hoped to prove by Black that he went to Lee’s home and found the shirt after Frank had informed him that there were irregular punches on the slip in the time clock, showing that Newt Lee would have had time to go home; that after Frank’s house had been searched for incriminating evidence at the suggestion of Herbert Haas, that Frank sought to have Lee’s house also searched and that the bloody shirt was a “plant.”
Black’s answers, however, failed to bear these points out.

Black also failed in recalling the exact time within a few hours when he and Detective Haslett took Frank to the police station on Monday morning following the discovery of the murder.

“Frank Didn’t See Body.”

W. W. (Boots) Rogers, who went with the officers to the factory at the time the body was discovered and who was subsequently active in the investigation of the case, testified that to the best of his knowledge Frand [sic] did not look at the body of Mary Phagan when he was taken to the undertaking establishment where the body was lying, and that he could not, therefore, have known who the dead girl was. Frank had previously testified at the coroner’s inquest that he saw the body.

Attorney Rosser resorted to the grilling tactics which had played havoc with the faculties of Detective Black, but was unable to confuse Rogers.

Grace Hicks Identifies Body.

Grace Hicks, who worked at the pencil factory, testified that she had identified the body as that of Mary Phagan on the morning of its discovery. She stated that during the five years she had been employed at the pencil factory she had spoken to Leo Frank but three times. She did not know whether Frank was personally acquainted with Mary Phagan or not.

J. M. Gantt, a former employee at the factory, stated that he had known Mary Phagan for years, his and her family having been neighbors in Cobb county. He recalled that Frank had once asked him:

“You know Mary pretty well, don’t you?”
Gantt said that Frank appeared nervous when he went to the factory on Memorial day to get his shoes which he had left there when discharged for alleged shortage in the pay roll.

The feature of Thursday’s proceedings was the failure of other witnesses to testify as the prosecution had expected, and introduction of the first new testimony since the trial began.

Mary’s Pay Envelope Found.

R. B. Barrett, a machinist at the pencil factory, disclosed the fact that he had found the supposed pay envelope of Mary Phagan near her machine on the second floor. Until Barrett’s testimony the question of the pay envelope had been a mystery. Barrett also stated that he had discovered blood stains on the floor near the girl’s machine and had found strands of hair on the machine. The blood stains, he said, had been smeared over with some sort of a white preparation. Barrett’s testimony, as did the testimony of other witnesses, seemed to bear out the contention of the solicitor that the murder was committed on the second floor.

A surprise was in store for the prosecution when Harry Scott, a Pinkerton detective who had been employed by the defense was placed upon the stand. Solicitor Dorsey sought to prove by Scott that Frank was nervous the first time he saw him, but contrary to the solicitor’s expectations Scott testified that such was not the case. Solicitor Dorsey became somewhat excited at this turn in the detective’s testimony and intimated that he had been “trapped.” Scott did, however, testify that Frank was nervous at police station. He also stated that either Frank or Darley had told him that Gantt had been very familiar with Mary Phagan.

Defense Wanted Evidence First.

Scott declared that Herbert Haas, one of Frank’s attorneys, had suggested to him that the Pinkertons turn over to him all evidence found before turning it over to the police department. Scott said he declined to do this, declaring that he would give up the case first.

Monteen Stover, a former employee at the pencil factory, declared that she was in Frank’s office on the Saturday of the murder from 12:05 until 12:10, but that she did not see Frank. Frank has claimed that he was in his office at that time.

Dr. Claude Smith testified that he had examined the bloodstains of the shirt found at Newt Lee’s home and the blood found on the pencil factory floor, but was unable to decide whether or not it was human blood.

Elevator Power Box Unlocked.

When E. L. Holloway, an employee of the pencil factory, and the last witness of the day, was placed upon the stand, his testimony also turned out to be not all that was expected of him.

Holloway had previously made an affidavit to the effect that the power box to the elevator at the factory was locked on the day of the murder. But when he testified on the stand he stated that he was mistaken, and that, after all, the power box was not locked at all, but was unlocked.

With the attorneys for both sides greatly ruffled on account of the failure of the witnesses to testify as they had been led to believe they would, Thursday’s hearing was closed. If there was an advantage either way in the day’s testimony it was not so favorable to the defense.

The most startling fact brought out on Friday, and probably the most startling fact in the whole testimony given in the trial so far, was that within three-quarters of an hour after Mary Phagan had eaten her frugal breakfast of bread and cabbage she was dead, as shown by the testimony of Dr. Roy Harris, secretary of the state board of health, who made an examination of the dead girl’s stomach.

Murdered Hour After Breakfast.

The evidence throws considerable light on the much mooted question of the exact time of the murder.

Dr. Harris exhibited on the stand a small bottle in which were particles of undigested cabbage, which he declared he had removed from the girl’s stomach. He declared that the cabbage could not have remained in that state of preservation longer than one hour at the outside while the girl was alive.

Dr. Harris stated that the nature of the wound on the back of Mary Phagan’s head seemed to indicate that she had been struck an upward blow. The blow on the eye, he said, looked as if it had been inflicted by a person’s fist.

Dr. Harris was unable to testify positively as to whether Mary Phagan had been outraged or not, although he said there were indications that such was the case.

Dr. Harris’ testimony had to be discontinued within a few minutes after he took the stand, when he was attacked by a fainting spell as the result of recent illness. His testimony will be resumed as soon as his physical condition will permit.

Says Frank Didn’t Eat.

The testimony of N. V. Darley, assistant superintendent of the pencil factory, who followed on the stand, was to the effect that Frank was very nervous on the morning following the murder, but on cross-examination Darley also testified that he had on two other occasions seen Frank equally as nervous.

Albert McKnight, husband of Frank’s cook, stated that he had seen Frank in the dining room of his home when he came home for lunch on the day of the murder, but that he did not see him eat anything.

There were several other witnesses who testified to minor details.

* * *

Atlanta Constitution, August 3rd 1913, “Resume of Week’s Evidence Shows Little Progress Made,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Constitution
July 31^st, 1913

J. W. Gantt, who once was a suspect in the famous case, followed Mrs. Coleman to the stand at the afternoon session.

“Have you ever been connected with the pencil company?”

“From January 1^st, 1918, until April 7, I was employed with that concern as shipping clerk. I was discharged by Mr. Frank for an alleged shortage.”

“Did you know Mary Phagan?”

“Yes—I knew her as a little girl.”

“Did Leo Frank know her?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know this?”

Knew Mary Pretty Well.

“On Saturday she came into the office for a time record. Frank came in and said, ‘You seem to know Mary pretty well?’”

“When was that?”

“Some time since Christmas.”

“How intimate were you with Mary?”

“I knew her when she was a child.”

“How far did you work from her?”

“I worked in the office and she worked in the rear.”

“In reference to Frank how were you located?”

“We were in the same office.”

“How many girls worked in Mary’s department?”

“Three others beside herself.”

“Did Frank see you when you’re turned to the factory after you discharge?”

“Yes.”

“What about one girl getting another’s pay envelope at the girls’ request?”

“It was frequently done.”

“Explain everything with reference to your alleged shortage.”

The Alleged Shortage.

“A boy came back from my department with a $3 shortage. He went to Mr. Frank. Mr. Frank came and asked me about it. I told him I knew turned to the factory after your discharged.”

“How about the punch clock near Frank’s office? Would it take much time to read the slip—and to learn to read it?”

“Only about five minutes.”

“Previously, who took your place at the factory?”

“I don’t know.”

“Previous to your discharge had Frank ever commended you?”

“He said I was as good a workman as he had ever had.”

“Do you know the exact location of clock? Could Frank, from his desk, see the employees register upon it?”

“If the safe door was closed.”

“Did you know how to fix the clock?”

“Yes, Mr. Frank taught me.”

Wanted to Get Shoes.

“On April 26, when did you first see Frank?”

“At 6 o’clock that afternoon at the factory entrance. He saw me at the door talking to Newt Lee. He came down to within fifteen feet from door and stopped. He saw I was looking at him and advanced toward me. I told him I had two pair of shoes in the factory and wanted to get them. He told me he had seen a negro sweeping a pair out of the place. I went in and found both pair after he had given me consent to enter the factory.”

“Did you look at Frank? If so, describe his appearance.”

“He was nervous and pale. He hung his head and hesitated.”

“Did he jump?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“He just stepped back kinder startled.”

“Did he look at you?”

“No. He hung his head.”

Rosser began cross-examination by reading extracts of Gantt’s statement before the coroner’s jury.”

“You’ll admit to this,” he said reading from his notes, “I never saw Mary Phagan in Frank’s company. Never knew he was acquainted with her?”

“Yes.”

“You may come down.”

Court then adjourned until Thursday morning.

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

Atlanta Journal
July 31^st, 1913

Detective John Black “Goes to Pieces” Under Rapid-Fire Cross-Questioning of Frank’s Attorney at Afternoon Session

Action characterized the Wednesday afternoon session of the Frank trial, and it was the first time the tedious proceedings had taken on life enough to attract more than passing interest.

This action came in the fierce and merciless cross-examination of Detective John Black by Attorney Rosser, leading counsel for the defense. Black has taken a prominent part in the investigation of the Phagan murder, and it was expected that he would prove one of the state’s principal witnesses, but before Mr. Rosser had finished with him he went all to pieces and admitted that he was hopelessly confused.

There were only two witnesses at the afternoon session—Detective Black and J. M. Gantt, the former shipping clerk at the pencil factory. Gantt was on the stand but about twenty minutes and the only two important points in his testimony were assertions that Frank knew Mary Phagan and that Frank seemed to be frightened and very nervous when the witness saw him at the pencil factory door on the evening of the murder.

DORSEY’S CHARGE.

There was a considerable colloquy between Solicitor Dorsey and Attorney Rosser as to the propriety of the questions framed by the solicitor. During this colloquy Mr. Dorsey addressing the judge, declared, “I propose to show, your honor, that this bloody shirt was a plant, and that it was through suggestions made by the defendant that the detectives were induced to search Newt Lee’s house.”

The question was finally put and the witness rather hesitatingly replied that it was on Tuesday that the shirt had been found and that it was on Monday morning that Frank had suggested that the officers search his own house, and that it was also on Monday that the defendant had announced that there were skips in the time clock slips.

Court re-convened at 2 o’clock.

SECOND VISIT TO FRANK’S.

Detective Black also told of going to Frank’s home again Monday morning at 7 o’clock with Detective Haslett to ask him to come down to the police station to talk the murder over. Black said that he and Haslett had to wait on the porch while Frank ate breakfast, and when Frank finished his meal they accompanied him to headquarters. They arrived about 8 o’clock or 8:30.

Shortly after they got there he noticed Attorney Rosser and Herbert Haas. At 11:30 o’clock Monday morning Haas insisted to Chief Lanford that a search he made of Frank’s house by officers, Frank accompanying them.

Solicitor Dorsey asked the witness just what Haas said to Lanford. Black replied that Haas stated he was Frank’s lawyer and that in that capacity he would insist that nothing should be left undone to clear up the matter so far as Frank was concerned.

Solicitor Dorsey then asked the witness if on that morning Frank had consulted with Rosser and Arnold. He said he didn’t know about Mr. Arnold, but that Frank had consulted with Rosser and Haas at police headquarters.

The witness was asked what conversation he had had with Newt Lee. He and Pinkerton Detective Scott suggested to Frank, replied the witness, that he take Newt Lee into a room and see if he could get anything out of him that would throw light on the murder.

The witness said that Frank had spoken very highly of the negro night watchman. The two were left in a room alone together for five or ten minutes, said the witness. Black was not able to overhear very well what was said in the room. Detective Scott and Black went into the room and Frank told them Newt Lee stuck to his first story of not knowing anything about the murder.

Black said that Frank told them he insisted to Lee that he, the negro, must know something about the murder as no one else was in the factory on that Saturday night. Black said that he talked with Frank about getting suggestions from him, and that Frank seemed to suspect Gantt and to believe that Lee might know something about it, inasmuch as Lee was the nightwatchman and as such it was his duty to go through the factory every thirty minutes.

“He told me,” said the witness, “that Gantt came to the factory about 6 o’clock Saturday afternoon and that he left him there, that he had had some previous trouble with Gantt and at first had refused to let him go in and and look for his shoes, but that he later told Lee to let him in and watch him while he was in the factory, that he had given this direction because Gantt knew the surroundings of the office.”

Subsequent to this conversation, Gantt was arrested, said Black. Frank did not talk with Gantt. Frank did not refuse to talk with Lee.

The first mention was made of Jim Conley’s name.

Solicitor Dorsey asked the witness if there had not been other suspects. Black said yes.

“Who were they?”

“Jim Conley was one,” replied Black.

“Did Gantt talk to Conley?”

“No.”

“Did you talk to Frank on several occasions after he was arrested?”

“Yes. He seemed to be nervous, as any man under arrest would be, and was willing to answer questions.”

Solicitor Dorsey asked that the statement be stricken, saying it was not an answer to his question. Judge Roan refused to rule it out.

Solicitor Dorsey asked this question:

“Was Newt Lee nervous after he was arrested?”

Attorney Rosser objected.

“Well,” said Solicitor Dorsey, “if you let him give this gratuitous opinion about Frank, isn’t it fair to let me compart it with the demeanor of another man accused of the same crime?”

Attorney Rosser still objected. Judge Roan agreed to sustain Rosser, but told the solicitor that he would rule out Black’s opinion if the solicitor would withdraw his question. This was done.

The solicitor then put his question in another form.

The solicitor then put his question in another form.

“After Frank was arrested, did you observe his deportment, conduct and appearance?”

“Yes, he was excited and sullen and didn’t have much to say. Previously he had talked willingly.”

Solicitor Dorsey announced he was through with the witness and Attorney Rosser took up the cross-examination.

“You said Frank was ‘released’ Monday evening,” began Attorney Rosser. “You mean then that he had been detained there against his will?”

Detective Black said that he had used the word ‘released’ inadvertently, and that Frank had not been under arrest that day.

Attorney Rosser attacked the statement that Frank had retained counsel Monday (?) about 8 or 8:30 o’clock.

“As a matter of fact, don’t you know that it was 10 o’clock in the morning when I came to police station?”

Black answered, “No, I don’t know it.”

“What? You don’t know it was 10 o’clock when I came?”

Black answered, “No, sir. I still think you were there at 8:30 o’clock.”

“Were you in the room when I got there?”

“I was in the hall.”

“Didn’t you hear me go up and introduce myself to Mr. Frank? Didn’t you know that I never had seen him before? Didn’t you hear me ask him what they wanted with him? Didn’t you hear him say that they wanted a statement from him? And didn’t you hear me tell him to give it voluntarily?”

ROSSER RAPS LANFORD.

Detective Black answered in the negative. “I wasn’t in the doom,” said he.

“Didn’t you hear Chief Lanford call Frank into his private office with a snarl, like he was talking to a negro, and say, ‘Come in here.’”

“No, Chief Lanford doesn’t talk that way.”

“You and Chief Lanford didn’t want me in there, did you, Mr. Black? You didn’t want me to hear what you had to say to him?”

“No, sir.”

In answer to other questions, Black testified that Frank during his detention at the station house and in his examination by the coroner’s pury [sic], answered all questions readily.

Attorney [R]osser reverted to the previous conversation which Black testified he had with Frank regarding another matter, before the murder of Mary Phagan occurred.

“Can you remember who was with you on that occasion?” he asked the witness.

“No—Bullard.”

“What refreshed your memory so suddenly? As a matter of fact, aren’t you figuring that your partner should have been there?”

“No, it just occurred to me.”

Where were you when this conversation took place?”

“In the pencil factory.”

“What part of the pencil factory?”

“Around the office.”

“As a matter of fact, you can’t swear truthfully that you spoke to him at all, can you?”

“Not positively.”

THE PHONE CONVERSATION.

Regarding the telephone conversation when Detective Starnes called Frank on the morning after the murder, Attorney Rosser asked Black if he could remember what Starnes said.

“No, sir,” replied Black.

“Did you have Newt Lee in your custody at that time?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What time did you get to the undertaking establishment?”

“About 6:30 o’clock, to the best of my recollection.”

“As a matter of fact, wasn’t the sun high and hot when you got back?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you tell Frank, until after you got in the automobile, that a girl had been killed at the factory?”

“I wanted to see the effect of the news on Frank.”

“When you really want to remember anything, you write it down, don’t you, Mr. Black?”

“Well—yes.”

“Didn’t Frank go upstairs and put his collar and tie on?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t see things like other men, do you, Mr. Black?”

“I suppose I do.”

“How long did it take Frank to put on his collar and tie?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did he tie his tie, or was it a hang-me-on?”

“It was a cravat.”

ROSSER GRIL[L]S BLACK.

“How long did you stay out there?”

“Maybe not ten minutes.”

“And Frank talked freely to you in the automobile, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“You took him to the undertaking establishment?”
“Yes.”

“How did you say you went into the undertaking place—in what order; the undertaker first, Rogers, Frank and then yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Frank was between you and the body?”

“Yes.”

“You saw the girl’s face?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, Frank had an opportunity to see her face. He was closer to her than you?”

“Yes.”

“Now about that curtain. It opened into a sleeping apartment, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“As a matter of fact, you and Frank stood just inside the door, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You on the left and Frank on the right?”

“I think so.”

CURTAIN AT UNDERTAKER’S.

“Mr. Black, that curtain was about 10 feet from the little opening, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“To have gone behind that curtain, Frank would have had to walk several feet out of his way from the opening where he stood?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You wont’ swear, Mr. Black, will you, that Frank went behind that curtain?”

“I think he did.”

“You were standing in the same relation to the curtain as Frank, were you not?”

“No.”

“This slepeing [sic] room was about six feet off, was it not?”

“No.”

“Frank didn’t go behind the curtain, did he?”

Black didn’t reply.

“You know what ain’t so, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You went upstairs into the factory with Frank?”

“Yes.”

“He unlocked the safe without trouble at the first effort?”

Black nodded.

“And he took the book out at the first reach?”

“Yes.”

“And he carried it and put it on the table?”

“Yes.”

“And he opened it at the right place?”

“Yes.”

“He ran his finger down the column of figures until he reached Mary Phagan’s name?”

“Yes.”

“And immediately he informed you that he had paid Mary Phagan $1.20.?”

“Yes.”

“You went through the factory with Frank?”

“Yes.”

“Who else went?”

“I don’t know—several people.”

“A whole horde of ’em, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know. There were several.”

“And none of you saw the splotch said to be blood?”

“No, sir.”

“None of you saw the spots in the hallway, close to the dres[s]er?”

“No.”

“How many of you went over the building?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Perhaps thirty people?”

“I don’t know.”

“This large horde, made up of officers and curiosity seekers, went over the factory and nobody saw these alleged blood spots?”

“No, sir.”

“How long was the factory open on Sunday morning—till about 12 o’clock was it not?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many times did you go to the factory that morning?”

“Twice.”

“You were there quite a while the first time, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“Detective Starnes went over the factory with you, did he not?”

“Yes.”

“Campbell and Beavers, too?”

“I don’t know about Beavers, but Chief Lanford did.”

“And no blood spots were discovered that day?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“You saw Frank at the clock?”

“Yes.”

“He opened the clock and took out a slip?”

“Yes.”

“Darley was there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember being there.”

“Who held down the lever?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t have to hold the lever down.”

“Boots Rogers held it down, didn’t he?”

“I don’t recollect.”

Black then stated that he believed Rogers held the lever while Frank put a new slip in. He didn’t think anyone held it down when Frank took the old slip out.

“A moment ago, you didn’t have any recollection, did you? You’ve got it now, though, haven’t you?”

Black smiled feebly.

“How long did you keep Frank at the station house that morning? From about 8:30 until 11:30, didn’t you?”

“He stayed there,” answered the witness.

“Well, that’s what you meant. You meant you kept him there, didn’t you?”

“I could say, we kep you there, but we didn’t,” responded the witness.

FRANK’S SURRENDER OF SLIP.

“When did Frank turn over this slip that he took out of the clock?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sunday morning?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Didn’t you tell Mr. Dorsey a few minutes ago that he turned over the slip on Monday morning?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Look here, Black. Is your memory so bad you can’t remember what you told Dorsey twenty or thirty minutes ago? And yet you attempt here to state the words of conversations that occurred more than three months ago?”

Witness did not answer.

“You heard Frank say he was mistaken about the way the time slips were punched—that at first he examined them only in a casual way?”

“I don’t recollect.”

Mr. Rosser referred to conversations which Black had had with J. M. Gantt, and brought forth the statement that Frank had charged a shortage against Gantt before Gantt was discharged, and that he had given orders that Gantt not be admitted to the factory.

“I wiesh [sic] to examine this witness no further now, your honor, but I want to call your honor’s attention to the rule that if we want to use him to impeach another witness who follows him, we may call him back to the stand.”

The statement of Attorney Rosser was taken to indicate that there is a possibility that the defense may use no witnesses.

NEWT LEE’S SHIRT.

Mr. Rosser asked Black if he had searched Newt Lee’s house. Black answered that he had, and that he found a bloody shirt. The shirt, which had been in the possession of the solicitor general, was exhibited to the witness by Mr. Rosser and was identified by him. He found the shirt at the bottom of a barrel at Lee’s residence, said the detective. He brought the shirt to police headquarters and showed it to Lee. Solicitor Dorsey objected, and Judge Roan held that Newt Lee’s admission that the shirt belonged to him could not be introduced in evidence.

Solicitor Dorsey took up the redirect examination.

The solicitor made the statement that he would try to show that the shirt found at Newt Lee’s house was a plant of the defense. This statement came during an argument between the lawyers, and was precipitated by this question of the solicitor: “What did Frank say about Lee telling or not telling all that he knew about the crime?”

Attorney Rosser objected to Black answering that question.

The solicitor explaining his motive in asking it said, “I want to show that Frank was trying to point suspicion at Newt Lee. I want to show that he wanted his own house searched so that when the officers had gone through it and nothing had been found there, he could tell them to go and search Newt Lee’s house. Our contention is that this shirt was a plant and Frank’s request was a ruse to get the police to search his house and then Newt Lee’s house and thus throw suspicion on the negro. The shirt was part of the scheme.”

THE QUESTION ALLOWED.

Judge Roan allowed the question.

Detective Black, answering it, said that Frank declared Lee hadn’t told all he knew.

Solicitor Dorsey asked: “Did Frank at any time tell you that Lee had time to go home and get back to the factory during the night?”

Black replied that after Frank was supposed to have looked at the tape the second time, he (Frank) had made that remark to him (the witness.)

“Did you search Newt Lee’s home?”

“Yes.”

“Was it before or after Frank called your attention to these discrepancies in the time slip?”

“Afterward.”

Solicitor Dorsey took the shirt and handed it to the detective.

“Which side of the shirt is the blood on?”

“On both sides.”

“Does it look like it had been put on one side and then had soaked through?”

“I can’t tell,” answered the detective.

“Now, Mr. Black, I want to get this one point clear. You told me that you had one conversation with Mr. Frank on the Monday morning after the murder, and I understood you to tell Mr. Rosser that you didn’t have any. What about that?”

“To the best of my recollection I had one conversation with Frank on that day.”

ROSSER GROWS ANGRY.

Jumping to his feet and advancing towards the witness in a threatening manner, Attorney Rosser shook his finger at him and demanded:

“Didn’t you say that personally you had no conversation with Frank about these slips?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, what time Monday did you have this conversation with Frank?”

After hesitating for a moment or two, the witness replied that he could not remember.

Glowering at the witness, Mr. Rosser demanded:

“Black, didn’t you say time and time again that you couldn’t say whether it was before or after you talked about the slips that you went to Lee’s house?”

“I said it was after I talked about the slips.”

“Look here, Black, isn’t it in the record—right here in the record—that several times over you admitted that you couldn’t tell whether you went to Newt Lee’s house after the conversation about the slips or before?”

“I wont’ say.”

“Isn’t it true that you never did discuss these slips with Frank?”

“I remember on one occasion Frank said the slips were mispunched, and that was what caused me to go to Lee’s house.”

Before the witness had finished his answer, Mr. Rosser was shaking his finger at him and putting his question:

“What I want is for you to tell me if you haven’t sworn already that you couldn’t say whether this talk about the slips occurred on Monday.”

“I said I didn’t remember, but I had gone out after Frank suggested there were mispunches.”

Mr. Rosser started to fire another question at the witness, when the latter interrupted him to say:

BLACK ADMITS HE’S CONFUSED.

“Look here, Mr. Rosser, I don’t like to admit that I’m balled up, but you’ve got me cros[s]ed up and I don’t know where I’m at. I want to tell the truth—“

“Come down, Black,” said Mr. Rosser. But before the witness could leave the stand, Solicitor Dorsey proposed this question:

“When was it, Mr. Black, that you first heard Mr. Frank discuss these punch slips?”

“Sunday morning.”

“When was it Frank told you that what he had said on Sunday about the slips was wrong and that there had been skips?”

Attorney Rosser objected, insisting that this ground had been gone over with the witness. Judge Roan sustained the objection.

Solicitor Dorsey asked:

“What day was it you knew that Frank changed his statement?”

Attorney Rosser objected to this declaring it was immaterial.

“Well, what day did Frank tell you these slips were not correct?” amended the solicitor.

“To the best of my knowledge, it was on Monday.”

“Come down, Mr. Black.”

“Yes, come down, Mr. Black,” echoed Mr. Rosser, with a sneer.

As the witness was leaving the stand, it was announced that Mrs. J. W. Coleman, the mother of Mary Phagan, would be recalled. Some of the bailiffs misunderstood and thought that Mr. Rosser desired that Black resume the witness chair. To this mistake, Mr. Rosser shouted, “Not on your life.”

MRS. COLEMAN RECALLED.

Mrs. Coleman was recalled by Attorney Rosser.

“Did Mary, on the day she left home the last time, carry a little mesh bag?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all,” said Mr. Rosser.

“Describe that bag,” asked Solicitor Dorsey.

“It was just a plain silver mesh bag,” said Mrs. Coleman.

Mr. Dorsey produced the bloody handkerchief and the parasol. The latter was identified positively by Mrs. Coleman as having belonged to Mary. She said she was almost certain that the handkerchief belonged to Mary.

Mrs. Coleman left the witness stand and was given a seat in the court room beside her husband, J. W. Coleman, who has watched every step of the trial.

J. M. Gantt was called to the stand.

“Were you ever employed at the National Pencil factory?” asked Solicitor Dorsey.

“Yes, from January 1 to about April 7, when I was discharged by Mr. Frank.”

“Why were you discharged?”

“For an alleged shortage.”

“Did you know Mary Phagan?”

“Yes, I knew her when she was a little girl. She was born on a farm near where I lived. But I hadn’t seen her for years until I met her in the pencil factory.”

“Did Leo M. Frank know Mary Phagan?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that he did?”

“One day she had been in the office talking to me about a mistake in her time. When she left, Mr. Frank turned to me and said, ‘You seem to know Mary pretty well.’”

“When was that occurrence?”

“How intimate were you and Mary?”

“I knew her very well when she was a child. And I saw her frequently at the factory.”

On questions from Solicitor Dorsey, Gantt said that he worked in the office on the second floor and in the shipping department there. Mary Phagan worked in the rear of the second floor.

Frank worked in the office near him, said Gantt.

RETURNED TO FACTORY.

“From April 7, when you were discharged, to April 26, had you been back to the factory?”

“Yes, twice.”

“Did you see Frank?”

“Yes, both times.”

“Did he offer any objection to your presence?”

“No.”

“What do you know about one girl getting her pay for another girl with Frank’s knowledge and consent?”

Attorney Rosser objected to this question as irrelevant, but Solicitor Dorsey declared he later would show its relevancy, and was allowed to proceed.

“Mr. Frank had no objection to one girl getting the pay envelope for another if I knew the parties.”

“Were you in the habit of helping Mary?”

“No.”

“Explain everything in connection with the alleged shortage.”

“One Saturday after we had gotten the money for the payroll and it had been checked up and found to be correct, and after it had been put in the envelopes and distributed, one of the men came back and said he was more than $2 short. I didn’t know anything about it, and told him to see Frank. After he had talked with Frank, Frank came out and asked me if I knew anything about it. I said I didn’t. Then Frank said he was not going to make it good. I said that neither was I. A little bit later he called me in and discharged me.”

TIME CLOCK AGAIN.

“Do you know anything about the time clock?”

“Yes.”

“How long would it take a man to make punches for twelve hours?”

“About five minutes.”

Solicitor Dorsey asked Gantt if he had known of Newt Lee failing to make a complete register of the time clock. Attorney Rosser objected, and Judge Roan sustained the objection.

The solicitor asked Gantt who took his place in the pencil factory. Gantt replied that he didn’t know. Solicitor Dorsey asked if previous to Gantt’s discharge, Frank had said anything about Gantt’s work.

“He said he had the best office force that he ever had.”

“Was it possible for Frank to sit at his desk and see the register clock?”

It was possible, said Gantt, if the safe door was closed.

Solicitor Dorsey asked if Frank frequently fixed the tape in the clock.

“Not while I was there,” said Gantt.

He was questioned about the evening of April 26, when he met Frank came down the stairs. He first saw Frank just after he left the stairway and was walking toward the front door. Frank, he said, looked up and saw him through the door glass and then recoiled and hesitated, as if in doubt, and then came on out. As he came up the little depression in the sidewalk toward the street level, he jumped back a step. Frank was nervous and pale, said Gantt. He hung his head, hesitated and stuttered, said the witness.

ON CROSS-EXAMINATION.

On cross-examination, Attorney Rosser questioned Gantt upon his testimony before the coroner’s jury, reading a portion of it in which was included this question, supposed to haove [sic] been asked of him by the coroner: “Did Frank know Mary Phagan?” And the reply to it on the transcript was, “I suppose so. She was right there in the factory all the time.”

Mr. Rosser asked him about that.

Gantt admitted that the record was correct as far as it went.

Both sides told Gantt to step down.

Attorney Rosser arose. “Your honor,” said he, “we have an insurance policy here for one of the jurors to sign.” The lawyers for both sides examined it and turned it over to Deputy Sheriff Minor for the juror, Monroe S.n Woodward, to sign. It was a life insurance policy.

Court adjourned at 4:40 o’clock.

Frank was taken out ahead of the jury and whisked back to the county jail in an automobile. The jury followed.