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The Atlanta Georgian,
Sunday, 17th August 1913,
PAGE 25, COLUMN 1.
Another Tells How Defendant Peered Into Room Where Women Dressed in Factory
LAWYERS FAIL TO HALT PRAISE OF THE ACCUSED
Dramatic Incident Comes When Witness Heaps Encomiums on Superintendent on Trial.
More than one hundred witnesses had been called to testify in defense of Leo M. Frank's character when the third week of the factory superintendent's trial concluded shortly after 1 o'clock Saturday.
Character witnesses occupied most of the time during the four hours of Saturday's session. They displayed a remarkable loyalty to their employer, who is being tried on the charge of being the murderer of little Mary Phagan. Only one of the number, Miss Irene Jackson, gave testimony in any way prejudiced to the case of Frank.
The character testimony, the tale of the finding of Mary Phagan's envelope and other so-called clews on the first floor of the factory by W. D. Mc Worth, Pinkerton operative, and the return of Mrs. Rae Frank, mother of the defendant, formed the important features of the day.
Girl Furnishes Incident.
A spectacular incident, which would have been even more amusing than it proved had it not been for the evident sincerity and profound earnestness of the witness, came in the testimony of Miss Sarah Barnes, one of the pencil factory employees.
"I'd die for Mr. Frank if they'd let me!" she exclaimed almost the instant she had composed herself in the witness chair. Attorney Arnold had only time to ask her the formal question: "Do you know Leo M. Frank, the defendant in this case?" before she launched into an eulogistic description of the young factory superintendent that left her breathless at the end of five minutes.
The attorney sought to interject another of the formal questions prescribed by law, but by this time she had caught her breath and was engaged in telling her willingness to lay down her life, if need be, to prove the guiltlessness of Frank.
Attorney Arnold could not stop her. The court could not dam the flood of words. She had a mind to speak and she was determined to speak without check and without interruption.
"I know Frank couldn't have committed such a terrible deed," she cried, accompanying her declaration with an emphatic brandishing of her folded fan. "I have known him ever since I have been in the pencil factory. He has always been kind to all of the employees and to the girls in particular. He never has done any of these things that have been told about him. He has always been a gentleman.
Willing to Die for Him.
"I've had to fight for him, almost, a number of times since these awful charges have been made against him. I'm willing to fight for him again. I am willing to die in his place." At this point she turned toward the jury and said:
"You can give me any sort of a death you want. I know he is an innocent man. I just wish that I could make everyone believe in his innocence."
Attorney Arnold succeeded in the brief space of one of the moments when she paused for a fresh start to ask the remainder of the questions he desired, and then gave her to Solicitor Dorsey.
Dorsey met with the same trouble. He tried to get her to say with whom she had talked about the testimony to which she was to swear. Disregarding his question as though it never had been asked, she continued in her encomiums of Frank until the courtroom spectators were convulsed with laughter and the Solicitor filed with disgust at his inability to get the sort of answer he wanted from the girl.
Miss Irene Jackson, daughter of County Policeman A. W. Jackson, was called by the defense as a character witness, but gave testimony on her cross-examination in regard to conduct by Frank which the State has construed as highly improper.
Looked in Dressing Room.
Miss Jackson said that so far as she knew the character of Frank was good and that she never had known him to attempt any liberties with the factory girls. To the Solicitor she admitted, however, that she three times had been in the girls' dressing room when Frank had pushed open the door and looked in.
Once Emmeline Mayfield had been in the room with her, she said; once Mamie Kitchen and once her own sister. Her sister had threatened to quit on this last occasion, she testified, but had been persuaded against it.
She said that Frank merely pushed the door open, looked in, one one occasion smiled toward Miss Kitchen, and then turned around and walked away. She testified that the girls never were any further in a condition of undress than lacking their overskirt.
Solicitor Dorsey inquired of her in regard to a reported remark of N. V. Darley, general manager, that "if the girls stay with us through this, they will not lose by it." She said she had overheard Darley say this.
Many Employees Called.
The following pencil company employees were called as character witnesses during the day:
Misses Mollie Blair, Ethel Stewart, Sarah Barnes, Corinthia Hall, Ina Hayes, Eula May Flowers, Elma Hayes, Minnie Foster, Obie Dickerson, Gussie Wallace, Annie Osman, Bessie Thrailkill, Allie Denham, Rebecca Carson, Maude Wright, Irene Jackson, and Mesdames Emma Freeman and Ella Thomas.
Frank Ordered Flirting Stopped.
Attorney Arnold in his redirect examination of Miss Jackson asked if it were not true that girls had been caught flirting from the dressing room windows, which front on Forsyth street, and that Frank had given orders that this should be stopped. She said that this had occurred.
Three of the great army of witnesses called to testify in the trial of Leo M. Frank, snapped by The Sunday American photographer at the courthouse. They are, left to right, Mrs. Ida Miller, Rosser Shields and Miss Ara Fagan.
"Might not Frank have been looking in to see if his orders were being carried out?" asked his attorney, but his interrogation was ruled out as leading to a conclusion on the part of the witness.
Miss Opie Dickerson, another of the character witnesses, appeared somewhat perturbed when asked by the Solicitor in regard to her movements on the Saturday night of the murder. She was requested to tell if she was not in the company of N. V. Darley, Wade Campbell and Miss Louise Gresham at the Bijou that evening. She replied that she could not remember, and the question later was ruled out as irrelevant and immaterial, on the objections of Attorneys Rosser and Arnold.
The testimony of W. D. Mc Worth, a Pinkerton operative, provided one of the sensations of the day, and at the same time provoked a lively wrangle among the attorneys over the manner in which the Solicitor persisted in questioning him.
Mc Worth testified that he found on May 15, on the first floor near a radiator, a piece of a pay envelope bearing the name of Mary Phagan, her number, 186, and the amount due her, $1.20. He said that he found it the same time several pieces of cord similar to that found around the neck of the slain girl, a club and part of a buggy whip. He described splotches near the trapdoor leading into the basement which he thought at the time might be bloodstains.
Neither side brought out what the real value of Mc Worth's testimony might be. The defense submitted it without asking whether the spots had proved to be blood, and the Solicitor also failed to question him on this point.
Dorsey's main attack was contained in his charge that the Pinkerton operatives had "played double" with the city detectives and, while professing to "go down the road with the road" with the city department, in reality branched off, discovered clews very material if they were genuine and kept their discovery a secret from the city detectives in spite of the agreement to work hand in hand.
Dorsey tried to find out from the witness under whose instructions he had withheld this information from the police while pretending to work with them. Rosser objected on the ground that Frank should not be bound by anything a detective did. While the point was being debated with some acrimony, Rosser shouted, referring to Dorsey:
"The State of Georgia ought to be represented in this case with decency, your honor, and not in the manner in which the Solicitor General is conducting the prosecution."
Dorsey charged that the Pinkertons, when Detective John Black had come to inspect the new evidence, showed him the buggy whip found behind the front door of the factory and did not show him the club which was produced in evidence at the trial. The Solicitor failed in his effort to show that Mc Worth and his fellow operative, L. P. Whitfield, did all this at the direction of Superintendent H. B. Pierce.
Time Element Again.
Interesting testimony, which may prove of considerable importance in the development of the time element in the case, was given by Knox Thomas, a civil engineer.
From the intersection of Marietta and Forsyth streets to the pencil factory, Thomas testified the distance was 1,016 feet, and that it required him 4 1-2 minutes to walk it at a fairly brisk pace. This is the walk which the State contends Mary Phagan made Saturday, April 26, to get to the factory from her car. The car was due at this corner about 12:07. This would have brought her to the factory at about 12:11 1-2. A conflict is found here in the State's own theory, as the Solicitor believes Mary Phagan entered the factory before Monteen Stover, who glanced at the clock and saw that it was 12:05 o'clock.
This obstacle is overcome by accepting as the truth the possibility that the car may have been running about five minutes ahead of time and that the clock at the factory was several minutes slow.
Thomas said that the distance from the pencil factory to Whitehall and Alabama streets, where Miss Helen Curran declared she saw Frank awaiting a car, was 831 feet, and that it required him 3 1-2 minutes to walk it.
The distance from Broad and Hunter streets to the pencil factory, the route the defense contends the Phagan girl took to the factory the day she went after her pay, the witness said was 333 feet, and that it took him 1 3-4 minutes to walk it.
Frank's Mother Recalled.
Mrs. Rae Frank, mother of the defendant, who testified briefly at Friday's session of court, was recalled to the stand when the trial resumed Saturday. The defense sought to show that Frank would have been most unlikely to make any remark to Jim Conley about having "wealthy folks in Brooklyn" by proving that, as a matter of fact, his Brooklyn relatives were of only ordinary means.
The witness became somewhat exasperated on cross-examination when the Solicitor insisted on going into every source of income, as well as the financial resources of her husband. She said that she and her husband were living on the interest of $20,000 which was lent to different persons at an average of 6 per cent interest. She said that this constituted all of the wealth of her husband and herself, except for the home in which they lived. On this she said there was a $6,000 mortgage.
Lanford Takes Day Off To Go to Camp Meeting.
Chief of Detectives Newport A. Lanford, under whose guidance the State's evidence was secured against Leo M. Frank, wants a day's complete respite and will spend Sunday at Sandy Springs, Ga., where a Methodist camp meeting is in progress.
Chief Lanford's activities in the case ended when the trial began, but he has been daily in the courtroom sitting close to Solicitor Dorsey whispering information about the various witnesses. The Chief will return to Atlanta Monday morning in time for the opening of Monday's session of the trial.