Chapter 7 The Mary Phagan Inquest Starts In Atlanta Georgia Part XII

The Inquest Begins in Chapter 7: The coroner's inquest began on Wednesday morning, following a lengthy interview between Frank and Newt Lee at the police station on Tuesday night. According to detectives, the two suspects were brought face to face in the expectation that Frank might elicit a confession of guilt from the negro. Hundreds of witnesses, including factory girls and others, came at the police station Wednesday morning to speak at the inquest. The inquiry began at 9:10 a.m. Between the closed doors of the board of commissioners' meeting chamber. The first witnesses were Officers W. F. Anderson and Brown.Show more

They went into great detail about how they were informed of the murder and how they discovered the body on that dreadful Saturday night. Officer Anderson's evidence included a detailed and disgusting depiction of how the body was mangled and ripped in the dim light of the cellar. Unless witnesses were within 15 feet of the body, it could not be identified as that of a white girl.

When someone picked up a letter near the deceased, he recognized it as the one written on a slip of yellow paper, according to the witness. Someone afterwards discovered another message that he did not recognize. A pencil was discovered around 5 feet from the girl's body.

There was a pad nearby from which the slip had clearly been ripped. He described the basement as a long, narrow enclosure between rock walls, with the elevator shaft towards the front, a boiler on the right about halfway back, and a partition on the left closing in an enclosure that appeared to be a waste area. An open toilet on the right past the boiler, the girl's body on the left beyond that, and a door at the back end. The girl's left slipper was discovered near the elevator. He couldn't locate any headgear on her. He couldn't recall how she was clothed, but he assumed it was in some black material.

He also described how they tried to call Frank in the early morning hours but were unable to do so until many hours later. During Brown's testimony, a startling incident occurred. The little girl's garments, a one-piece purple dress with white frills, and one shoe, a black gunmetal slipper, were displayed before the jury as they were piled on a chair. Mary Phagan's brother stood from a seat in the corner, peered in terror at the pitiful little mound, and hurried from the room, hands clenched to his head.

Newt Lee entered the stand at 11:45 a.m. He testified to arriving at the plant at 4 AM, leaving when instructed to do so by Frank, and returning at six o'clock. He described Frank's anxiety over Gantt's visit to the plant, Frank phoning him on the phone early in the evening to check on him, and the discovery of the dead. Newt claimed that he discovered the body face up, despite the fact that detectives and cops said it was face down. Newt, on the other hand, maintained he never touched the body. In response to the police assertions that he couldn't tell it was a white girl.

He claimed he could tell by the hair, which he claimed was always different between white and black ladies. J. G. Spier of Cartersville, who swore that he saw a girl and a man Saturday afternoon in front of the pencil factory, that they were excited and nervous, and that the girl was the same one he saw Sunday at P. J. Bloomfields Chapel the dead Mary Phagan Wednesday afternoon, was the last witness to testify before the jury adjourned Wednesday morning. George Epps, the young newsboy who arrived to town in the automobile with Mary Phagan, was the first witness to testify.

His allegation that Mary had told him that Mr. Frank had smiled at her and looked suspicious was an intriguing part of his evidence. E. L. Sentel testified about seeing Mullinax with a girl he mistook for Mary Phagan late Saturday night. Another witness, a neighbor, stated he saw her about 5 o'clock near her house, while a third witness, who had informed investigators that he had seen Mary Phagan that afternoon, arrived at the inquest to declare he was wrong. Officers persuaded Sentel that the female he saw wasn't Mary Phagan.

R. P. Barrett, a factory worker, said that he discovered the blood marks near Mary's machine on the second level, indicating that she may have began her struggle for life there rather than in the dark basement. Gantt entered the stand and repeated his statement to the police. J. W. Coleman, Mary Phagan's stepfather, testified of his and her mother's fear on the night of the murder. One of the key witnesses at the hearing was Frank M. Barry, assistant cashier at the Fourth National Bank, who stated that the notes discovered near the girl's body were written in the same hand as several other notes written at police headquarters for the detectives by the Negro watchman Newt Lee.

The hearing was subsequently postponed until Thursday. The inquest was adjourned at 06:00 Wednesday afternoon, taking the police one step closer to unravelling the mystery of tiny Mary Phagan's strange death.