The coroner's inquest began Wednesday morning after lengthy interviews with Frank and Newt Lee at the police station Tuesday night. A large number of witnesses, including factory girls and many others, arrived at the police station to testify …
The coroner's inquest began Wednesday morning after lengthy interviews with Frank and Newt Lee at the police station Tuesday night. A large number of witnesses, including factory girls and many others, arrived at the police station to testify at the inquest. The first to testify were Constables W.F. Anderson and Brown, who detailed how they were informed of the murder and how they found the body on that harrowing Saturday night. Mr. Anderson said the basement was a long narrow enclosure between rock walls, with an elevator shaft near the front, a boiler in the middle on the right, and a partition enclosed in a junk-room-like enclosure on the left that opened. I explained that there was a restroom. The right side is behind the cauldron, the left side is behind the girl's body and behind the door. Brown followed Anderson to the witness stand and made a very damaging testimony against Newt Lee. He said it was impossible to tell that the body belonged to a white girl unless you were within a few feet of it.
Brown testified that Mary Phagan's body was found in a pile on her chair, along with her clothes, a purple dress with white trimmings, shoes, and gunmetal-black slippers around 11 o'clock. At 4:45 a.m. Newt Lee took the stand and testified that he had arrived at the factory at 4:00 a.m. He then left as Frank told him to. Detectives and police say it was face down, but he testified that he found it face up. J.Q. Spear of Cartersville saw a girl and a man outside a pencil factory on Saturday afternoon, they were excited and nervous, and the girl was seen at P.'s on Sunday. Newt Lee testified that it was the same as Chapel of J. Bloomfield. George Epps, a young newsboy who had driven into town with Mary Phagan, testified that Mary told her that Mr. Frank gave her a look and that he was suspicious. E.L. Sentell testified that he saw Mullinax with a girl he believed to be Mary Phagan late Saturday night. R. P. Barrett testified that he found bloodstains near Mary's machine on the second floor. Gant took the stand and told the same story he had already told the detectives. J.W. Coleman testified about the horror she and her mother felt on the night of the murder by Leo M. Frank. Fourth National Bank assistant teller Barry said the note found on the girl's body was written in the same hand-writing as several other notes written by black nightguard Newt Lee, detectives at police headquarters. said.
The inquest was postponed until Thursday as investigators took steps toward solving the mystery of the death of infant Mary Phagan. They concluded that Mary had only briefly gone to the factory on Saturday afternoons to collect her wages, and that she had never left the factory. Claims that Mary was seen in the middle of the night with Mullinax and girls matching her description were scrutinized but found to be unfounded. Elle Center confirmed that she saw Pearl Robinson, not Mary Phagan with Mullinax.
Archive Link to E-Book of Leo Frank Case - Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery:
https://archive.org/details/TheFrankCaseThe1913LeoFrankMurderTrialForMaryPhagan
