The Leo Frank Case: Chapter 8 Of 22 - Inside Story Of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery

⁣A new Fulton County grand jury was sworn in Monday morning by Judge W.D. Ellis, underscoring the need for immediate and vigorous attention to the Mary Phagan case. Leo M. Frank was the first witness called to recount where he was and what he was doing on the day of the murder. The only other witnesses questioned that afternoon were Mr. and Mrs. Emile Selig, where the Franks lived. Frank testified that he had previously lived in Brooklyn, New York, and that he left Brooklyn in October 1907, went abroad and returned to the United States, where he worked for the National Pencil Company, where he became Superintendent General. He described how he came to the factory as usual on Saturday morning and how business as usual continued until noon at the factory.

It was a public holiday and there were only 11 people in the factory, which made his job somewhat easier. An important detail in this document is that the stenographer, Dr. Hall, and the clerk, Alonzo Mann, left the building shortly after 12:00 when Frank began copying the order into the shipping request. When the murdered girl appeared and took the envelope, Mr. Frank handed it to her knowing that an employee would come for it. Frank admits he looked up Mary Phagan's phone number since the murder, but forgot it again. He didn't record the payment on his payslip or other records because he didn't need to.

The girl went and asked if the metal came. He said the Phagan child has not been operational since Monday due to metal supply shortages. There was $20 in the child's pay sack, part of which was from work the previous Friday and Saturday. He didn't know what her salary was because he didn't open her seal when she left. Hearing her footsteps fade into her corridor, he thoughtlessly went back to her work.

The document's most important detail is the events leading up to Mary Phagan's assassination. Witness Frank identified the girl by her number and did not fill in her payslip after handing over her envelope. He then made the startling remark that, five or ten minutes after Mary Phagan left, Leme Quinn, the head of the chip department, walked into his office and had a little chat with him. Frank then went to the fourth floor and found two boys who had worked in the factory, Harry Denham, Arthur White and Mrs. White. Then he went home and spent the rest of the afternoon at work.

He explained on his financial papers that Lee had arrived in the early afternoon and told him to come back.
After Negro returned, Gant came to pick up the shoes. Then he went home and called Lee at the factory. Then he went to bed at eleven o'clock. And he continued to talk about what happened the following Sunday. When investigators ordered him to interrogate the black man and extract a confession, Frank said he told security he knew you knew something.

⁣Frank testified that he was unruffled by the grilling and bombardment of questions he had received. Emile Salig and his wife, Mrs. Josephine Salig, followed Frank on the witness stand. The inquest adjourned until 930 Thursday morning. Six witnesses testified, including Boots Rogers, Lemmie Quinn, Miss Corinthia Hall, Miss Hattie Hall, and J. L. Watkins and Miss Daisy Jones.

Boots Rogers testified that Mr. Frank had changed the tape in the time clock while the officers were in the factory Sunday morning after the body of Mary Phagan had been found, and that he stated at the time as the sheet he took from the clock seemed to be correct. J. L. Watkins and Miss Daisy Jones put through a searching examination by the coroner in an effort to break down Frank's statement that he had visited the factory on the day of the tragedy. The most important details in this text are that Miss Corinthia Hall, an employee in the factory, testified that Mr. Frank's treatment of the girls in the factory was unimpeachable and that she had met Lemme Quinn at a restaurant near the factory near the noon hour Saturday. J. L. Wattkins testified that he had mistaken Miss Daisy Jones for Mary Phagan when he thought he saw her on the street near her home on Saturday afternoon at about 5:00 p.m Eastern Standard Time.

Detective Harry Scott of the Pinkerton Agency was one of the first witnesses called, and he testified that Herbert Haas, one of Frank's attorneys, had requested him to withhold all evidence from the police until Haas himself had considered it. Detective John Black followed Scott on the stand and told of finding a bloody shirt at Lee's home on the Tuesday afternoon following the murder. Newt Lee was recalled to the stand and said that when he and Frank conversed together at the police station that Frank told him if you keep that up, your story, Newt will both go to hell. Frank was recalled to the stand and testified in The most important details in this text are the character witnesses who testified in the Phagan case. Miss Nellie Wood of Eight Corporate Street and Mrs. C. D. Donaghan of 165 West 14th Street testified that Frank had come to her and put his hands on her when it was not called for, that he was too familiar and she didn't like it, and that Frank had tried to pass it off as a joke.

Coroner Donohue began to deliver his charge to the jury, saying that they had heard the statement of the county physicians, seen what caused death, seen the body and heard the evidence in the case. The coroner's jury in the case of Mary Phagan's death was tasked with investigating the cause of death and determining who is guilty of the murder. The jury was also responsible for holding witnesses who were essential in trying the case, and for committing anyone who was concealing information. The six men forming the jury filed one by one out of the door, and the crowd waited for 20 minutes before the foreman stood up and announced the verdict. The coroner's jury had a duty to inquire diligently as to how Mary Phagan came to her death and to determine at whose hands death came.

The coroner's jury ruled that Mary Phagan had been strangled and recommended that pencil factory manager Leo M. Frank and her night watchman Newt Lee be detained for a grand jury autopsy. Frank was reading the afternoon newspaper in Tower Hall when the news broke. He declined to comment further, but Newt Lee was clearly shocked when the news broke. When the news came in, he looked defeated and very depressed.