Reading Time: 3 minutes [368 words]

LEO M. FRANK. 370

asked them not, ‘‘has there been a fire,”’ but ‘‘has there been.
a tragedy?’’ But Starnes, the man who first went after
Newt Lee, the negro night watchman, because he pointed his
finger of suspicion at him,—Starnes, the man who went after
Gantt because this defendant pointed the finger of suspicion
at him,—Starnes, the man who has been a detective here on
the police force for years and years, is @ perjurer and a liar;
to do what? Simply to gratify his ambition and place a
noose around the neck of this man Frank, when he could
have gone ont after, if the circumstances had warranted it,
or if he had been @ rascal and wanted to travel along the line
of lest resistance, Newt Lee or Gantt or Conley.

Another thing: Old Newt Leo says that when this defend-
ant called him Saturday night, a thing that he had never
done during the time that he had been there at that pencil
factory serving him as night watchman, Newt Lee tells you,
although the defendant says that he asked about Gantt, Newt
Lee says that Gantt’s name was never mentioned, and that
the inquiry was ‘‘has anything happened at the factory t””

You tell me, gentlemen of the jury, that all these cireum-
stances, with all these incriminating cireumstances piling up
against this man that we have nothing in this case bat pre-
judice and perjury t

Newt says he never mentioned Gantt. Frank in his state-
ment saya ‘I sueceeded in getting Newt Lee, and asked him.
if Mr. Gantt had gone.’? He instructed this man Newt Lee to
go with Gantt, to watch him, to stay with him, and old Newt
Lee wouldn’t even let Gantt in that factory unless Frank said
that he might go up. He had instructed Lee previous there-
to not to let him in for the simple reason he didn’t want
Gantt coming down there. Why? Because he didn't want
him to come down and see and talk with little Mary for some
reason I know not why; and old Newt Lee stopped this man
Gantt on the threshold and refused to let him go up, and
this man Frank says ‘you go up with him and ace that he
geta what he wants and usher him out.’’ And yet, though
he had never done any such thing during the time Newt Lee

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