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236 X, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

negro Conley was arrested, I didn't know anybody had any gue
picions about him, His name was not in the papers; I had no ink-
Jing that he ever said he couldn’t write, I was sifting in that cell
in the Fulton County jail, about April 12th or 14th, Mr. Leo Gott-
heimer, 9 salesman for the National Peneil Company, eame ran-
ning over, and says, “Leo, the Pinkerton detectives have suspicions
of Conley. He keeps saying the can't write; these fellows over at
the factory know well enough that he can write, can’t he?” I said:
“Sare he can write” “We can prove it; the nigger says he can't
write and wo fecl that he can write.” I said: “I know ho can
write, I have received many notes from him asking me to loan
him money. In other words, I have received notes signed with his
name, purporting to have been written by him, though I have never
seen to this date use a pencil. If you will look into a drawer
in the safe you will find the card of a jeweler from whom Conley
bought a watch on the installment. If you go to that jeweler you
may find some sort of a receipt that Conley had to give.” Gott-
heimer took that information to the Pinkertons; they did just as I
said; they got the contract with Conley’s name on it; Seott then
told the negro to write. The man who found out or paved the way
to find out that Jim Conley could write is sitting right here in this
chair, That is the truth about it.

‘Then that other insinuation, so dastardly that it is beyond the ap-
presiation of a human being, that my wife didn’t visit me; the
trath is, that on April 29th, when I was taken in onstody at bead-

jnarters, my wife was there to seo me; was downstairs on the first
door; Iwas up on the top floor. She was there almost in hysterics,
having been brought there by her two brothers-in-law, and her
father, Rabbi Marx was with me at the time. I consulted with
him as to the advisability of allowing my dear wife to come up to
the top Hloor to see me in those surroundings with eity detectives,
reporters and snapshooters; I thought I would save her that humili-
ation, because I expected any day to be returned once more to her
side at home. Gentlemen, we did all we sould do to restrain ber in
the fret daya when I was down at the jail from coming on alone
down to the jail, but she was perfectly willing to even be locked up
with me and share my incarceration.

Gentlemen, I know nothing whatever of the death of little Mary
Phagan. I hed no part in eausing her death nor do I know how
she came to her death after she took her money and left my office.
Ueveroven saw Conley in the factory or anywhere else on April

The statement of the witness Dalton is utterly false as to com-
ing to my office and being introduced: to me by the woman Daisy
Hopkins, If Dalton was ever in the factory building with any
woman, I didn’t know it, I never say Dalton in my life to know
him until this erime.

Misa Irene Jackson is wholly mistaken in supposing that I ever
went to a ladies’ dressing room for the purpose of making improper
gaze into the girls’ room. J have no recollection of occasions of
which she epeaks, There was no bath or toilet in that room, and it

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