410 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

378 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

though I didn’t look at her and couldn’t have resognized her
if she was in the dirty, distorted condition,’’ he tells you in
this statement, she really was, “‘but I know it was Mary
Phagan.’” ,

And he corroborates in his statement these detectives, he
says down at the undertaking establishment, ‘‘went down a
long dark passageway with Mr. Rogers following, then I
came and Black brought up the rear, Gheesling waa on the
opposite side of the little cooling table, the table between
him and me; he took the head in his hands, put his finger
exactly where the wound in the left side back of the head was
located ;”” and he seeks to have you believe that he ‘‘noticed
the hands and arms of the little girl were very dirty, blue
and ground with dirt and cinders, nostrils and mouth,—the
mouth being open,—nostrils and mouth just full of saw-dust,
the face was all puffed out, the right eye waa blackened and
swollen and there was a deep scratch over the left eye on the
forehead.’ He tells in his statement that in that brief
glance, if he ever took any glance at all, he saw that. The
only way in the world to believe him is to say that these men,
John Black and Boots Rogers, who have got no interest in
this care in God’s world but to tell the truth, perjured them-
selves to put the rope around the neck of this man. Do you
believe itt Starnes is a perjurer, too? Starnes says ‘“‘when
I called this man up over the telephone I was careful not to
mention what had happened;’’ and unless Stames on that
Sunday morning in April was very different from what you
would jadge him to be by his deportment on the stand here
the other day, he did exactly what he said he did. And yet
this defendant in his statement said he says ‘‘what’s the
trouble, has there been a firet’’ He says ‘‘No, a tragedy, I
want you to come down right away ;’’ ‘I says all right;’? “‘T'2l
send an automobile after you,’’ and Starnes says that he never
mentioned the word tragedy, and yet, so conscions, 0 con-
scious was this man Frank when Rogers and Black went out
there and he nervously twitching at his collar, ‘‘What’s
the trouble, has the night watchman reported anything,’’