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This Day in History of Little Mary Phagan's Case: April 15, 1914: The Atlanta Journal Ally of the Defense?

Day 354 Since April 26, 1913.

By Marie Townsend, Edited by Leanne Edwards

Forensic-Historian Contextualization of the Hangman's Shadow

This is another surviving press report from Wednesday, April 15, 1914, day 354 of the Mary Phagan case, and the most substantively detailed of the day. Published on 'Page Twenty, Column Three' of The Atlanta Evening Journal, it sits alongside the companion Atlanta Constitution dispatch from the same morning and the previous day's Journal coverage of Dan Lehon's statements. Together these articles form a near-complete picture of the legal and evidentiary landscape forty-eight hours before Leo Frank's scheduled execution at the gallows.

The Dr. Harris Subpoena and the Hair on the Lathe

The article's most substantive revelation is the subpoena served on Dr. H.F. Harris, secretary of the Georgia State Board of Health. Dr. Harris had examined, post-exhumation, hair taken from Mary Phagan's head and compared it against hair found on the lathe handle in the second floor metal room of the National Pencil Company. His conclusion, reported first in an exclusive Atlanta Journal interview some time earlier in that segment of time, was that the blood soaked lathe hair was not Mary Phagan's. Harris would only make this assertion verbally, hinting at a possible nefarious undercurrent: gold and silver coins.

The defense had prepared an affidavit for Harris to sign formalizing that finding. Harris refused, insisting on adding points the defense considered immaterial to their argument. Rather than accept Harris's qualified version of the statement, the defense subpoenaed him to appear in Judge Benjamin Harvey Hill Jr.'s chambers within the Thrower Building at ten o'clock Thursday morning, where they planned to extract the testimony through direct examination and incorporate the questions and answers verbatim into the extraordinary motion. The defense was hoping to pin him down with sworn statements since he wouldn't sign an affidavit concerning the hair evidence.

This sequence is worth examining carefully with new 21st century eyes. A witness willing to give testimony favorable to the defense, but unwilling to sign the defense's prepared version of that testimony, is a witness whose credibility on the specific point that the defense needed, remained intact on his own terms, not theirs. The distinction between what Harris was willing to say under oath and what the defense wanted him to sign tells the reader something about the precision with which the defense was trying to shape the evidentiary record.

Was Dr. Harris Bribed?

The Harris hair finding did not emerge in a vacuum. By the spring of 1914, a documented pattern of financial inducement directed at witnesses connected to the Frank case had become impossible to ignore. William J. Burns was the architect of this operation. Burns operatives working under his direct authority were canvassing Atlanta, approaching witnesses, some directly connected to the case, and some peripheral to it, with offers of money in exchange for contrived affidavits, revised statements, or testimony favorable to the defense. As a result, a scandal emerged when this information about alleged subornation of perjury and false affidavits made its way to the public. Some of these incidents became documented in the Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Records of 1914.

Against that backdrop, Harris's post-exhumation hair comparison finding, which conveniently undermined one of the prosecution's key pieces of physical evidence, and which emerged not through the original trial record but through a newspaper interview months after the verdict, warrants scrutiny the contemporary press did not apply to it. His willingness to make the initial public finding through a Journal interview, at a moment when Burns was actively paying for favorable statements, raises a question the trial record alone cannot resolve: whether monetary promises played any role in shaping the scope or framing of his later examination conclusions.

Harris's finding, whatever its provenance, addressed only one thread of the metal room physical evidence. The five-inch blood stain found on the metal room floor adjacent to the bathroom entryway, discovered by Magnolia Kennedy, and the bloody hair found on the lathe handle by Robert P. Barrett on Monday morning, April 28, 1913, were separate physical findings establishing the second floor as the likely primary site of the assault. Harris's post-exhumation hair comparison did not speak to the blood stain on the floor boards. The defense was presenting one piece of physical evidence in isolation while leaving the surrounding forensic context entirely unaddressed.

The Mrs. Simmons Scream and the Timeline Battle

The article introduces a second evidentiary thread: testimony from a Mrs. J.B. Simmons that a woman in the factory basement screamed very loudly between 2:30 pm and 3 o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, April 26, 1913. The defense was said to have recently secured corroborating evidence for this account, and planned to argue that the crime was committed after 2 o'clock, not before 1 o'clock as the State had argued at trial.

This is a direct attack on the prosecution's timeline. The State had established in the 1913 summer trial of Leo Frank that Mary Phagan arrived at the National Pencil Company at approximately noon on April 26, 1913, to collect her pay envelope of one dollar and twenty cents from the factory superintendent in his second floor window front business office. She was killed shortly after that meeting based on stomach digestion forensics, collected during autopsy. Monteen Stover had testified that she arrived at Frank's office between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm and found it empty, directly contradicting Frank's claim that he had not left his office during that window and was with Mary Phagan during that approximate time (State's exhibit B).

Frank's own August 18, 1913 trial statement acknowledged he might have "unconsciously" visited the men's bathroom adjacent to the metal room at that time, a statement some have contextualized as a de facto admission, placing him at the location where the physical evidence of the assault was found, when the murder likely took place.

If the defense could push the time of death past 2 o'clock, the Stover testimony and Frank's own admission lost their force. The Simmons scream argument was not new evidence of who committed the crime. It was an attempt to displace the established timeline entirely. And the question is who screamed if the witness didn't see the person. Given Burns's documented pattern of paying witnesses at this period, the question of how the defense had "recently secured" this corroborating evidence, and under what financial circumstances those witnesses came forward, was one the press did not pursue.

The Journal's Own Role in the Defense Narrative

One detail in this article deserves particular attention. The article notes that Dr. Harris's hair comparison finding "did not become known until a few months ago when The Journal published an exclusive interview with the physician." The Atlanta Journal was thus not merely reporting on the defense's evidentiary strategy. It had actively published the interview that made Harris's finding a public matter and, by extension, made it available as the basis for the defense's extraordinary motion. The paper now covering the motion's filing had contributed to creating the evidentiary record the motion was built on. This relationship between the Atlanta press and the Burns-directed Frank defense operation was not incidental. It was structural, and it repeated a pattern visible throughout the post-conviction period.

This longer Journal piece provided the substantive evidentiary context and questions that had been developing to a focal point: the Harris hair subpoena, the question of Burns's financial inducement hanging over that finding, and the Simmons scream timeline argument which was likely bogus, all forty-eight hours before a scheduled execution.

Conclusion: After a Century of Leo Frank Advocacy, the Forensic Record Tells a Different Story Looking Back in Time

The extraordinary motion, the Harris subpoena, the Simmons scream evidence, and Burns's broader investigation were all instruments in a post-conviction campaign built substantially on purchased testimony, selectively framed physical evidence, and press relationships that blurred the line between reporting and advocacy. State and Federal courts would ultimately review the conviction. None would vacate it. These courts could read between the lies, and we can see clearly why looking back with deep time eyes.

Appendix: Article Transcription

Summon Physician In Hearing For New Trial

The Atlanta Journal,

Wednesday, 15th April 1914,

PAGE 20, COLUMN 3.

Counsel for Leo M. Frank has subpoenaed Dr. H. F. Harris, secretary of the state board of health, to appear in the criminal division of the superior court on Thursday morning at 10 o'clock. This is in connection with Frank's extraordinary motion for a new trial, which will be filed at that time. Dr. Harris, who examined hair found on lathes in the factory, has refused to sign an affidavit prepared by the defense regarding the now famous hair incident. As a result, the defense has subpoenaed him, and they plan to ask him a series of questions. The questions and answers will be included in the extraordinary motion, along with many other affidavits on which the defense bases its plea for another trial.

Dr. Harris compared hair taken from the head of Mary Phagan, when her body was exhumed, with the hair found on the lathe in the metal room of the factory. After his examination, the physician declared that the hair found on the lathe was not Mary Phagan's. This fact was not developed at the trial of Frank and did not become known until a few months ago when The Journal published an exclusive interview with the physician. Dr. Harris refused to sign an affidavit as prepared by the defense, insisting on adding points considered immaterial by the attorneys. As a result, he has been subpoenaed before the court and will be asked various questions relating to the incident.

Judge Ben H. Hill will be in his chambers at the Thrower building at 10 o'clock Thursday morning, and it is expected that the extraordinary motion will be filed at that hour. Attorneys for Frank will ask for a rule nisi, setting a date for the hearing and staying the execution of Frank, which has been set for Friday. The extraordinary motion of the defense will be amended before it is argued, but whether or not the amendments will be attached on Thursday is uncertain.

It is said that the defense has recently secured much important evidence, which will corroborate the statement of Mrs. J. B. Simmons that a woman in the basement of the factory screamed very loudly between 2:30 and 3 o'clock on the day of the tragedy. This will be one of the important points of the defense, which will argue that the crime was committed after 2 o'clock, not before 1 o'clock as the state claimed at the trial of Frank.

William J. Burns, who is said to have discovered much new evidence favorable to Frank, did not return to the city on Thursday. Dan S. Lehon, his lieutenant, who is now in charge, states that it may be several days before Burns appears on the scene again. However, he is constantly in touch with developments in the case, according to Mr. Lehon.