Beginning in Chapter 7 is the Inquest: Following a lengthy interview between Frank and Newt Lee at the police station on Tuesday night, the coroner's inquest got under way on Wednesday morning. Detectives claim that the two suspects were brough…
Beginning in Chapter 7 is the Inquest: Following a lengthy interview between Frank and Newt Lee at the police station on Tuesday night, the coroner's inquest got under way on Wednesday morning. Detectives claim that the two suspects were brought together with the hope that Frank would induce the black man to confess to the crime. To testify before the inquest, hundreds of witnesses—including factory girls and others—arrived at the police station on Wednesday morning. At 9:10 am, the investigation started. within the conference room of the board of commissioners' closed doors. The officers W. F. Anderson and Brown were the initial witnesses to the tragedy.
They went into great detail about how the murder was reported to them and how they found the body that terrible Saturday night. The description of how the corpse was torn and mutilated in the faint cellar light was presented in Officer Anderson's evidence in a graphic and horrific manner. The body couldn't have been a white girl unless witnesses were standing within 15 feet of it.
The witness said that when someone picked up a letter next to the corpse, he identified it as the letter written on a slip of yellow paper. Later, another communication that he was unfamiliar with was found by someone. A pencil was found around five feet away from the girl's corpse.
The slip had obviously been torn from a pad that was nearby. The basement was described by him as a long, narrow enclosure between rock walls, with the elevator shaft in the front, a boiler toward the back on the right, and a barrier on the left enclosing what looked to be a waste area. The girl's corpse was on the left after the boiler, and there was an open toilet and a door at the rear. The left slipper of the girl was found next to the elevator. She had no headgear that he could see. He couldn't remember how she was dressed, but he guessed it was all in black.
He said that they attempted to phone Frank early in the morning but were unable to do so until many hours later. Brown's testimony included an unexpected occurrence. The jury was shown the child's clothing, which consisted of a one-piece purple outfit with white frills and one shoe, a black gunmetal slipper. The brother of Mary Phagan rose up from a chair in the corner, looked in horror at the little, miserable mound, and then hurriedly left the room with his fists clamped to his head.
At 11:45 a.m., Newt Lee stepped onto the stage. He claimed to have arrived at the facility at 4 AM, left as directed by Frank, and then returned at 6 AM. He talked of Frank's worry about Gantt visiting the plant, Frank calling him early in the evening to see how he was doing, and the finding of the dead. Despite the fact that investigators and police confirmed the body was face down, Newt insisted that he found it face up. On the other side, Newt insisted he didn't touch the body. notwithstanding the police's claims that he was unable to identify the white female.
