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Indictment of Atlanta B'nai B'rith President Leo Max Frank: State Witnesses Before the Atlanta Georgia Grand Jury on Saturday, May 24, 1913, and Their Later Trial Testimony at the Leo Frank Trial
 
The May 1913 Fulton County grand jury proceeding in the Mary Phagan murder case was sealed and therefore closed to the public, so no verbatim transcript of the witnesses' testimony survives to the 21st century. What does survive are the contemporary legal documents and newspaper records identifying the witnesses called before the grand jury on Saturday, May 24, 1913, together with the sworn testimony those same people later gave under oath in open court at the trial of Leo M. Frank, conducted in Fulton County Superior Court between Monday, July 28, 1913 and Tuesday, August 26, 1913. That trial testimony, preserved in the Brief of Evidence ratified by Judge Leonard Strickland Roan, by the defense, and by Solicitor General Hugh Manson Dorsey, allows the substance of the state's grand jury presentation to be reconstructed with confidence.
 
That later trial record shows why the evidence was sufficient to indict Frank on May 24th, 1913. The State did not have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before the grand jury. It had to show probable cause. The evidence presented through these early witnesses gave the grand jury more than suspicion. It gave them a structured murder case: medical evidence of strangulation, police evidence from the basement, investigative evidence inside the factory, and second-floor shop evidence pointing toward the metal room. Leo Frank’s office was located at the front of the National Pencil Company building, with its window facing South Forsyth Street. The second-floor machine department, by contrast, was situated farther down the hall toward the rear of the building, at the opposite end of that floor.
 
July-August 1913 Trial in the Fulton County Superior Courthouse of Atlanta Georgia
 
Frank was later tried in Fulton County Superior Court, convicted on Monday, August 25, 1913, and his conviction was upheld through the Georgia appellate process. The United States Supreme Court later rejected Frank’s federal habeas effort in Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309 (1915). Governor John M. Slaton commuted his law firm's death sentence on June 21, 1915, but commutation was not exoneration. The conviction remained standing. Leo Frank's death sentence was reduced to life in prison.
 
The four men below were not the entire case. They were part of the framework on which the State built the case.
 
Dr. John Wesley Hurt, Fulton County Physician
 
Dr. John Wesley Hurt, almost always printed in the 1913 trial record as Dr. J. W. Hurt, was Fulton County physician when Mary Phagan was murdered. His office placed him at the border of medicine and law. He was the public physician called to attend inquests, examine bodies, and give medical opinions when a suspicious death required official explanation.
 
Hurt had practiced medicine since 1884. In his trial testimony, he said he had graduated from the old Atlanta school of regular medicine and had taken postgraduate work at the Polyclinic in New York. He had held the county physician’s office before and had returned to it at the beginning of January 1913.
 
Hurt was the first witness called before the grand jury.
 
He was summoned to P. J. Bloomfield’s undertaking establishment on South Pryor Street at about 9 o’clock on Sunday morning, April 27, 1913, only hours after Mary Phagan’s body had been found in the basement of the National Pencil Company. His examination was an external and observational only. He did not perform the later autopsy. He did not take internal tissue samples and examine them with a microscope. He did not examine the lungs, or stomach contents. That deeper work would later be associated chiefly with Dr. Henry F. Harris, who conducted the autopsy and examined internal tissues with a microscope. Harris testified at the trial of Leo Frank that he found evidence of sexual assault prior to the strangulation murder, but he did not testify at the grand jury hearing. Dr. Hurt was also purportedly present on May 5, 1913 when Dr. Henry Frederick Harris exhumed the body at Marietta City Cemetery for another autopsy (an unfounded rumor arose that illegal drugs might have been consumed prior to death).
 
Dr. J. W. Hurt served a dual official role at the coroner’s inquest. He gave the coroner’s jury its medical statement on Mary Phagan’s injuries and cause of death, and he also signed the May 8, 1913 verdict in his capacity as Fulton County physician. He was not a member of the 6-man jury of the inquest. The verdict, signed by Foreman Homer C. Ashford and Dr. Hurt, found that Mary Phagan “came to her death from strangulation” and recommended that Leo M. Frank and Newt Lee be held under charges of murder for further investigation by the Fulton County grand jury. The finding was unanimously approved by Coroner Paul Donehoo and the six-man coroner’s jury, making the vote seven to zero.
 
Descriptions of the Assault
 
At trial, Hurt became the 30th State witness. He described a scalp wound on the rear left side of Mary Phagan’s head, about two and one-quarter to two and one-half inches long, penetrating through the scalp to the skull. He described a blackened and contused right eye, scratches and bruises on the face, wounds on the elbows and leg, and a cord drawn tightly into the skin of the neck. He said the cord had made a marked indentation and that, in his opinion, Mary Phagan died by strangulation.
 
Hurt also testified that the head wound had been made before death by a blunt-edged or sharp-edged right-angle instrument, with the blow coming upward. He believed the wound could have produced unconsciousness, but under Reuben Arnold’s cross-examination he softened that point, admitting that he would not swear the blow had actually done so. That mattered because the defense wanted to weaken the State’s medical sequence. The prosecution presented evidence suggesting that Mary Phagan’s head struck the lathe handle with enough force to render her unconscious, after which she was likely dragged toward the corridor near the men’s toilet, where the State contended she was sexually violated and strangled.
 
On the question of sexual assault, Hurt was cautious. He found blood on the underclothing and made observations that could be argued by the State, but he would not state positively that a criminal assault had occurred. He admitted he had found no outward signs of rape. This gave the defense material for cross-examination, but it did not erase the force of his central testimony: Mary Phagan had been struck, strangled, and dragged before her body was found in the rear of the basement.
 
Hurt’s value to the prosecution was not dramatic or sweeping. He served as the medical starting point, offering an official external examination of Mary Phagan’s body rather than a full autopsy or microscopic analysis. The State used his testimony to establish specifics of the violent death by strangulation, visible injuries inflicted before death, and the condition of the body before later testimony placed the original scene of the killing on the second floor and described the body’s removal to the basement.
 
Police Sergeant Levi S. Dobbs, Atlanta Police Department
 
A 1920 Atlanta Georgian notice later identified him as Levi S. Dobbs and described him as a 23-year veteran of the Atlanta police force. He had entered the department as a patrolman in 1897, became a sergeant in 1910, and later held a captaincy. By the time of his death, he was remembered by many Atlantans as “Captain Dobbs.”
 
In the Mary Phagan case, Dobbs was the second of these four men called before the grand jury on Saturday, May 24, 1913, and the fourth state witness at the trial of Leo M. Frank, taking the stand on Tuesday, July 29, 1913.
 
He was a first responder, one of the earliest Atlanta officers to arrive at the National Pencil Company in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 27, 1913, after Newt Lee's telephone call to police headquarters. The Atlanta Journal of July 3, 1913 reports him working internal vice-protection investigations under Chief James Litchfield Beavers, a discreet assignment rarely given to a routine patrolman.
 
Dobbs was not a medical expert and did not pretend to be one. His importance was that he saw the basement scene firsthand, before the courtroom theories consolidated around it. The police initially treated the basement as the primary crime scene. Only later, after Barrett's discoveries on the second floor on Monday morning, April 28, 1913, did the investigation reframe the basement as the secondary scene where the body had been deposited, with the metal department on the second floor as the primary scene where the fatal encounter began.
 
Dobbs testified that at about 3:25 on the morning of Sunday, April 27, 1913, a call came to police headquarters reporting a murder at the pencil factory. He went there in W. W. “Boots” Rogers’s automobile. When the officers arrived, the door was locked. Newt Lee came down the stairs, opened it, and told them there was someone murdered in the basement. The officers descended through a small trapdoor opening (scuttle hole) into the basement, with Lee leading the way. The trap door/scuttle hole was reportedly 2 feet by 2 feet wide.
 
Dobbs followed Lee through the dark basement. He described Mary Phagan’s body lying on her face and side, with the left side against the ground and the right side turned slightly upward. The officers at first could not tell whether she was white or Black because her face was covered with dirt and dust. After they wiped the dirt from her face and looked at the skin near her knee, they identified her as a white girl.
 
His description was stark: her face was swollen and darkened, her head showed a wound, the cord was sunk tightly into the flesh of her neck, and her tongue protruded slightly. There was also a strip of underclothing around the neck, but Dobbs said the cord itself was the tight ligature. He found two notes near the head and a scratch pad close to the body. While reading one of the notes aloud and reaching the word "night," Newt Lee interjected that this meant the night watchman. After about ten minutes at the scene, Dobbs ordered Lee held under arrest.
 
These notes later became central to the State’s claim that the crime scene had been staged to shift suspicion toward the night watchman, Newt Lee.
 
Dobbs also testified about dragging marks in the basement. He believed the body had been dragged, with signs running in the direction from the elevator shaft. He was careful enough to admit he could not be positive about every mark, but his testimony gave the jury the basement map: body, cord, notes, scratch pad, hat, shoe, handkerchief, elevator area, dragmarks from the elevator and the place where Lee claimed he had first seen the body.
 
On cross-examination, the defense pressed Dobbs on the hat, shoe, ribbons, and other personal effects. They tried to use these details to suggest that the body and objects might fit a basement-centered theory rather than the State’s primary metal-room theory. Still, Dobbs remained the foundational scene witness. He fixed what the officers found in the basement before later witnesses argued how the body got there.
 
Detective John N. Starnes, Atlanta Police Department
 
Detective John N. Starnes was an Atlanta city detective who worked under Chief of Detectives Newport Alonzo Lanford during the first phase of the case. His name appeared on the indictment papers as prosecutor. He continued working the case when fingerprint-bearing wood chips were taken from the rear basement door for forensic comparison, but the results were inconclusive. The finger print smudges had likely been staged. Starnes accompanied Chief Beavers and Chief Lanford on the May 5, 1913 removal of Frank and Newt Lee from the Fulton County Jail to police headquarters for the coroner's inquest.
 
Starnes was the third of these four men called before the grand jury on Saturday, May 24, 1913 and the fifth state witness at trial, taking the stand on Tuesday, July 29, 1913. The Atlanta Constitution reported that he was kept in the grand jury room longer than any other witness, probably about half an hour, consistent with the breadth of his case knowledge.
 
Starnes testified that he reached the National Pencil Company between five and six o'clock on Sunday morning, April 27, 1913. He noticed that the staple or hasp on the back basement door looked as though it had been pried out with a pipe, and a pipe found nearby fit the indentation in the wood. This raised a basic investigative question: was the rear-door damage genuine evidence of entry or exit, or was it part of a staged scene? The prosecution would contend that the service ramp door was staged to make it appear an assailant had fled the factory from the rear of the building out into the alley. A food-cart vendor stationed in that blind alley behind the factory would later report that no one exited from there at the noon hour.
 
Starnes then telephoned Leo Frank at his residence at 68 East Georgia Avenue and told him to come to the factory at once. He said he did not tell Frank what had happened. According to Starnes, Frank replied that he had not had breakfast and asked where the night watchman was. When Frank arrived, Starnes described him as nervous and in a trembling condition. Newt Lee, by contrast, was composed at the factory and never tried to get away. That demeanor account was corroborated by W. W. "Boots" Rogers and Detective John R. Black, who had gone to Frank's home that morning to bring him to the factory.
 
That testimony became part of the state's consciousness-of-guilt argument. Nervousness alone does not prove murder; a man summoned unexpectedly to a factory where a dead girl had been found might naturally be shaken. But the prosecution did not rest on Starnes alone. His account was set alongside Mary Phagan's trip to collect her wages, Frank's control of the office, the factory layout, the disputed timeline, the second-floor physical evidence, and later testimony by Jim Conley. Though Conley did not appear before the grand jury, an officer had secured his incriminating statement earlier that morning of May 24, 1913, and the grand jurors almost certainly heard an account of it during their proceedings later that day.
 
Detective John N. Starnes also testified to physical evidence on the second floor. He saw splotches near the northwest corner of the women’s dressing room, about one and a half to two feet from the end of the dressing room, which looked like blood. He said the area looked as though something had been swept over it with a white substance, and he noted that there was a good deal of white material in the metal department. He described cord found on the second floor with knots similar to the cord around Mary Phagan’s neck. He also testified that he found a nail on the second floor, between the office and the double doors, about fifty feet from the metal room toward the elevator, which looked as though it had blood on top of it. In addition, he chipped two pieces of wood from the back door of the basement that appeared to bear bloody fingerprints. Early newspaper reporting also stated that Starnes discovered a drop of blood near the elevator on the second floor, which investigators treated as supporting the theory that the body had been dragged from the metal room toward the elevator shaft.
 
About a week after the murder, Starnes tested the time-clock mechanism on the second floor. He had a watchman insert a fresh slip and punch the entire round in less than five minutes. This mattered because the time clock and the night watchman's rounds became a major point in the arguments over Newt Lee, the condition of the time slip, and the factory movements after dark (Defendant Exhibit 1, Forged Time Slip).
 
On cross-examination, Luther Zeigler Rosser took up the missing ribbon and flowers from Mary Phagan's hat, and Starnes conceded he had not seen the trimmings at the factory on Sunday. The defense also probed the precise time of the Sunday morning telephone call to Frank, the chronology of the morning's communications, and the characterization of Frank as nervous and trembling, seeking to attribute the demeanor to the shock of being summoned to a body in the basement rather than to consciousness of guilt.
 
Starnes acknowledged that some of his observations were estimates, that he could not say with absolute certainty that all of the second-floor spots were blood, and that cords similar to the death cord could be found in several places inside the factory. His testimony nevertheless moved the state's case beyond the basement. Starnes connected Frank's Sunday morning conduct, the rear basement door, the time clock, the second-floor spots, the cord, the elevator-shaft trace, and the theory that the crime had begun upstairs before the body was carried below.
 
Robert P. Barrett, Machinist, National Pencil Company
 
Robert P. Barrett was a machinist in the metal department of the National Pencil Company. At the coroner’s inquest, he gave his address as 180 Griffin Street, Atlanta. He had been employed at the factory for about seven weeks in his current stint and had worked there previously about two years earlier. At trial, he said he had been there about eight weeks.
 
Barrett was not a doctor, detective, or lawyer. His value was local knowledge. He knew the metal room. He knew his own bench lathe. He knew what the floor looked like when he left work Friday afternoon, April 25, 1913, and what he found when he returned Monday morning, April 28, 1913.
 
The metal department was on the second floor of the building at 37 to 41 South Forsyth Street. That floor also contained Leo Frank’s office area, the women’s dressing room, the water cooler, and the machines used by the girls in the department. Mary Phagan had worked at a metal-tipping machine there before her layoff, and she returned to the factory on Saturday, April 26, 1913, to collect her pay of $1.20.
 
Barrett was the fourth of these four men called before the grand jury and the 13th State witness at trial. His testimony became one of the prosecution’s strongest early efforts to place the beginning of the crime on the second floor rather than in the basement.
 
On Monday morning, April 28, between 6:30 and 7 o’clock, Barrett found an unusual spot near the west end of the women’s dressing room on the second floor. He said the spot had not been there Friday. It was about four or five inches across, with six or eight smaller spots behind it. Likely blood spatter droplets. Barrett testified directly that it was blood. He also said a white substance had been smeared over the spot, as though someone had tried to cover it with a coarse broom. The factory kept white substances on that floor, including haskoline and potash.
 
His second discovery was the hair on his bench lathe, machine No. 10. This point should be stated carefully. He testified that he found hair hanging on the L-shaped handle of his bench lathe. On cross-examination, he described it as about six or eight long strands. At the coroner’s inquest, he described the hair as tangled and torn. The claim that blood was found on the hair from Robert P. Barrett’s lathe comes from early press coverage of the coroner’s inquest, not from Barrett’s later trial testimony. The Atlanta Georgian reported the discovery under the pointed subheading “Bloody Hairs Are Found,” stating that Barrett found strands of bloody hair on the lathing machine in the metal room. At trial, however, the testimony was more restrained: Barrett described blood spots near the women’s dressing room and, separately, hair hanging on the L-shaped handle of his bench lathe. The press reported bloody hair; the sworn trial record preserved hair on the lathe and blood nearby as distinct pieces of second-floor evidence.
 
That distinction matters. The newspaper language sometimes ran hotter than the sworn testimony. The evidence was serious enough without exaggerating it. Blood was described near the dressing room. Hair was found on the lathe. The lathe itself was 20 or 30 feet from Mary Phagan’s machine, and Barrett said the hair had not been there when he used the machine up to quitting time around 5:30 Friday afternoon, April 25, 1913. He also said the piece of work he had left in the machine was still there Monday, April 28, 1913, and had not been disturbed.
 
Later that same week, Barrett found part of a pay envelope under or near Mary Phagan’s machine. On cross-examination, he admitted there was no name, number, or amount on the fragment, only part of a letter or loop. Standing alone, it could not prove it was Mary’s pay envelope. But in the State’s theory, it fit the setting: Mary had come to the factory for her pay, had gone to the second-floor office, and a torn envelope fragment was later found near the machine where she had worked.
 
Barrett’s testimony was the spatial pivot. If the murder had begun in the basement, his findings were coincidence, mistake, or unrelated factory debris. If the murder began in the metal department, his discoveries fit the prosecution’s theory: blood near the dressing room, white powder smeared over it, hair on the lathe handle, and a pay-envelope fragment near Mary Phagan’s machine.
 
Taken together, these four witnesses gave the State a coherent foundation for indictment. Dr. Hurt supplied the medical evidence of strangulation and bodily injury. Sergeant Dobbs fixed the basement scene, the cord, the notes, the scratch pad, and the position of the body. Detective Starnes tied Frank’s conduct to the first police response and described suspicious evidence inside the building. Barrett supplied the shop-floor evidence that pushed the case toward the second-floor metal room.
 
The grand jury did not need the entire trial record to indict Leo Frank. It needed probable cause. These witnesses helped provide it. The State had not shown its whole hand, and contemporary reporting even noted that key documentary evidence and James Conley’s later role were not fully placed before the grand jury. Even so, the chain was already strong enough for a true bill.
 

The indictment was not a conviction, but it was not empty paper either. It rested on a body examined by a county physician, a basement scene observed by police, a superintendent summoned under suspicious circumstances, physical clues in the factory, and a machinist’s second-floor discoveries. That is why the case moved forward. That is why Frank stood trial. And that is why, after the evidence was presented in open court, the jury convicted him and the higher courts left the conviction standing.

 

Witnesses Five Through Eight Before the Fulton County Grand Jury in the Leo Frank Case
 
Fulton County Grand Jury Hearing Saturday, May 24, 1913, Atlanta, Georgia
 
The May 1913 Fulton County grand jury proceeding in the Mary Phagan murder case was closed to the public, thus no transcript survives of what each witness said inside the grand jury room. What does survive is the State’s indictment witness list, together with the sworn testimony those same witnesses later gave in open court during the trial of Leo M. Frank in Fulton County Superior Court.
 
This installment covers witnesses five through eight in the State’s grand-jury sequence:
 
5. W. W. “Boots” Rogers
 
6. Harry Scott
 
7. Detective B. B. Haslett
 
8. Grace Hicks
 
These four witnesses widened the State’s case beyond the first physical discoveries. Rogers supplied Frank’s Sunday morning conduct and time-slip observations. Scott supplied Frank’s Monday account, the Pinkerton investigation, and the Conley trail. Haslett supplied the Monday morning police escort to headquarters. Hicks supplied the body identification and the second-floor metal-room layout.
 
5. W. W. “Boots” Rogers
 
Former County Policeman, Court Officer, and Early Scene Witness
 
The contemporary record identifies this witness as Woods White “Boots” Rogers.
 
Rogers was a former county policeman and, by trial time, was connected with Judge Girardeau’s court. He was not a doctor, factory worker, or city detective. His importance came from his presence in the first hours of the case discovery. He had an automobile, was at the station house when the Newt Lee call came in at 3:24 a.m., and drove the first responding party to the National Pencil Company building at 37 to 41 South Forsyth Street in downtown Atlanta.
 
Rogers was the fifth witness called before the grand jury on May 24, 1913. He later became the sixth State witness at trial, taking the stand on Wednesday, July 30, 1913.
 
First Responder
 
At the factory, Rogers saw the early basement scene after Newt Lee led the party down. He confirmed that the body lay face downward, that notes were found nearby, and that Sergeant Dobbs turned the body over. Rogers was not interpreting medical evidence. He was fixing the first movement of the first responding party into the building on Sunday morning, April 27, 1913, after the Newt Lee call at 3:24 a.m.
 
Rogers then became important in the summoning of Leo Frank. Detective J. N. Starnes telephoned Frank and asked him to come to the factory. Rogers drove with city Detective John R. Black to Frank’s residence at 68 East Georgia Avenue. Mrs. Frank answered the door in a heavy White cotton bathrobe, and Frank came into the hall partly dressed for the street.
 
The most damaging part of Rogers’s testimony concerned Frank’s demeanor. Rogers said Frank asked whether anything had happened at the factory and whether the night watchman had called in a report, before the full facts had been laid out for him. Rogers described Frank as extremely nervous, jumpy in his questions, brisk in movement, and repeatedly asking for coffee. The State used this as part of its consciousness-of-guilt argument. Other witnesses stated that Leo Frank was firing off questions before the police officers had a chance to answer them.
 
The defense had a fair reply. Rogers admitted he had never seen Frank before that morning. That meant he could not know whether Frank’s quick speech, restless movement, or nervous manner was unusual for him.
 
Rogers also testified about the stop at P. J. Bloomfield’s undertaking establishment on South Pryor Street. He said Frank went with the party, but did not clearly step in close and look at Mary Phagan’s face, after the undertaker turned it toward view. The State used this episode to suggest avoidance. The defense answered that Rogers’s view was limited and that he could not swear exactly what Frank saw.
 
At the factory, Rogers testified that Frank opened the safe, took out the payroll book, ran his finger down to Mary Phagan’s name, and said she had worked there and had come in the previous day to receive $1.20.
 
Rogers quoted Frank as saying: “My stenographer left about twelve o’clock, and a few minutes after she left the office boy left and Mary came in and got her money and left.” This didn't provide an exact time for Mary's arrival but many interpreted it as she arrived at his office almost immediately after Alonzo Mann purportedly left at 12:03 pm. Though Mann stated he left at 11:30 a.m.
 
Rogers also said Frank opened the time clock, removed the slip, said the punches had been made correctly, inserted a fresh slip, and dated the removed slip “April 26, 1913.” Rogers said he glanced down the old slip and saw a punch for every number. That time-slip evidence later became important in the dispute over Newt Lee’s rounds and whether suspicion had been steered toward the night watchman (Defendant's Exhibit 1, Forged Time Card, Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913).
 
Rogers was a movement-and-demeanor witness. He connected the first police response to Frank’s conduct during the first hours after Mary Phagan’s body was found.
 
6. Harry Scott
 
Pinkerton Detective and Private Investigator
 
Harry Scott was the Pinkerton detective most closely tied to the investigation for the pencil factory. The trial record identifies him as superintendent of the local Pinkerton branch, while some newspaper accounts before the trial call him assistant superintendent. Either way, his role was clear: he directed Pinkerton’s work in the Mary Phagan murder investigation.
 
Scott was the sixth witness in this grand-jury sequence and later became the eleventh State witness at trial. His position was unusual and ironic, because he had been hired through the National Pencil Company connected to Leo Frank, yet his testimony ultimately helped the prosecution rather than clearing Frank.
 
Scott testified that he first saw Frank on Monday afternoon, April 28, 1913, at the pencil factory. According to Scott, Frank said the company wanted an investigation made so the public would know the company was interested in clearing up the crime. Frank also said he had just come from the police barracks and that Detective John R. Black seemed to suspect him.
 
Scott then received Frank’s account of his movements on Saturday, April 26, 1913. According to Scott, Frank said he arrived at the factory about 8 o’clock in the morning, left between 9:30 and 10 o’clock with N. V. Darley on the Montag Brothers mail errand, remained at Montag Brothers about an hour, returned to the factory around 11 o’clock, saw Mrs. Arthur White come in before noon to visit her husband upstairs, paid Mary Phagan $1.20 at about 12:10 pm, heard voices after she left, went upstairs around 12:50 pm, left for home around 1:10 pm, returned around 3 o’clock, worked on financial matters, and left at 6:04 pm in the evening. Frank’s own later statement narrowed the Montag errand by saying he and Darley left the factory together, stopped at Hunter and Forsyth, and then Frank went on alone to Montag Brothers.
 
That testimony mattered because Scott preserved Frank’s early version of his own movements. The account touched Mary Phagan’s pay visit, the timing of her arrival, her alleged question about whether the metal had come, Mrs. White’s report of seeing a Black man on the street floor, Frank’s comments about Newt Lee, and Frank’s remarks about John M. Gantt.
 
The significance of Mary Phagan’s reported question about whether the sheet metal had arrived is that it could have supplied the immediate reason, or at least a plausible pretext, for movement toward the machine department.
 
Whether Leo Frank answered “No” or “I don’t know,” either response naturally invited a follow-up: “When is it supposed to come?” or possibly “Let’s go check," or "Let's find out.” In that sense, the exchange was not a meaningless bit of factory talk. It could be read as the verbal hinge between Mary’s arrival at Frank’s office to collect her pay and a possible movement down the hall toward the second-floor metal department, where the State later pointed to blood spots, white smearing, hair on Barrett’s lathe, and the disputed signs of violence.
 
The prosecution could therefore argue that Mary’s question about the metal was more than incidental. It potentially gave a practical workplace reason for her to be directed, accompanied, or drawn toward the very part of the factory where the State claimed the fatal encounter began, because the sheet metal was stored in the machine department.
 
Frank Directed Suspicion Toward Gantt
 
Scott testified that Frank said Gantt knew Mary Phagan very well, that he was familiar and intimate with her, and that Frank seemed to lay special stress on it. The State could use that testimony to argue that Frank knew more about Mary Phagan than he later admitted. Frank’s trial statement insisted that he did not know Mary Phagan personally. The Gantt remark therefore became a point of tension. How could Leo Frank claim to not know Mary Phagan, but know that she was allegedly intimate with James Gantt? Gantt was a family friend of the Phagans and he had a good reputation as someone who could be trusted.
 
The defense pushed back by showing that Scott had not put every detail into his reports and had not testified to every detail at the coroner’s inquest. Scott was also not fully certain whether the Gantt familiarity statement came directly from Frank or Darley, though Frank was present. That gave the defense room to challenge memory and emphasis.
 
Scott also described the factory inspection. He was shown the second-floor metal-room area where supposed blood spots had been chipped up, the machine where Mary's hair was said to have been found, and the dark spots with white smearing near the girls’ dressing room. Scott did not originally discover those items himself, but he became part of the investigative chain describing what police and private detectives were shown.
 
One of Scott’s most dramatic statements concerned the private-room confrontation between Frank and Newt Lee. Scott said he and Detective Black believed Lee knew more than he had told. They asked Frank, as Lee’s employer, to speak with him. Frank agreed, and the two were placed together in a room. Frank and Lee did not know that the police were listening intently immediately outside the room.
 
When Scott and Black returned, Lee was complaining about being handcuffed to the chair. Scott testified that Frank hung his head and said, “Well, they have got me too.” Scott described Frank as extremely nervous, squirming, crossing his legs, moving his hands over his face, breathing heavily, sighing, and hesitating. The defense pressed Scott hard because his written report did not preserve every detail in the same form he gave at trial.
 
While Leo Frank and Newt Lee were left alone together in a room, Lee later stated that Frank rebuked him for asking questions about the murder. According to Lee, Frank warned him to stop talking about it, saying that if he did not, they would both “go straight to hell.” The statement mattered because it turned what was supposed to be a private employer-to-watchman conversation into something more ominous: Lee portrayed Frank not as a man trying to help police get the truth, but as a man trying to silence the night watchman when the murder became the subject of discussion.
 
Scott also became central to the Jim Conley line. He testified at the trial about Conley’s statements of May 18, May 24, May 28, and May 29. He acknowledged that investigators told Conley when parts of his story did not fit. The defense used that to argue Conley’s story had been shaped under pressure. The State used it to argue investigators had exposed Conley’s lies and pushed him toward a fuller account. It is unknown if Scott testified at the grand jury hearing about Conley's May 24, 1913, morning admission about writing the death notes for Leo Frank.
 
Scott’s testimony also exposed a serious point of friction between the Pinkerton investigation and Frank’s legal circle. According to Scott, Herbert Haas wanted the Pinkerton reports submitted to the defense before they were turned over to the police. Scott said the agency would withdraw from the case before agreeing to withhold information from the authorities. This episode may be read alongside the broader Felder scandal, in which Thomas B. Felder was accused of trying to obtain evidence for purposes favorable to the defense. In both controversies, the underlying issue was control of evidence: who would see it first, who could shape its use, and whether unfavorable material would reach the police and prosecution unfiltered or at all. Scott’s testimony therefore mattered not only because of what he said about Frank, but because it suggested that the Pinkertons resisted becoming a private evidence-screening arm for Frank’s defense.
 
Scott’s later role did not end with the murder trial.
 
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency later sued the National Pencil Company for an unpaid bill connected with the Phagan investigation and prevailed. That civil case showed the collapse of the relationship between the National Pencil Company and the detective agency it had hired after the murder.
 
Scott was a bridge witness at the trial. He connected Frank’s Monday account, the company’s private investigation, the second-floor evidence as shown to investigators, the Lee confrontation, and later the Conley trail.
 
7. Detective B. B. Haslett
 
Atlanta Police Detective and Escort Witness
 
Detective B. B. Haslett was an Atlanta Police Department detective working during the early phase of the Mary Phagan investigation.
 
Haslett was the seventh witness in this grand-jury sequence and later became the sixteenth State witness at trial. His testimony was short but important. He established the Monday morning police contact with Frank and the moment when Frank was brought directly into the police investigation.
 
Haslett testified that he went to Frank’s house on Monday morning after the murder, about 7 o’clock. He said he got Frank and took him to the station house because Chief of Detectives Newport Lanford wanted to see him. Frank remained at police headquarters for two or three hours.
 
On cross-examination, Haslett’s testimony clarified that Frank’s trip to police headquarters was not treated as a casual request. Haslett said that he and Detective John R. Black both went to Frank’s house that Monday morning and brought him to the station, where Luther Rosser and Herbert Haas appeared around 8:30 or 9 o’clock. When pressed on whether Frank was free to refuse, Haslett made the point plainly: if Frank had resisted, the officers would have taken him anyway. In ordinary practice, he explained, two officers went after a person because voluntary cooperation was preferred, but refusal did not end the matter. That exchange made Haslett’s testimony more significant. It showed that, by Monday morning, Frank was no longer being handled as a distant employer assisting the investigation. He was being brought into police headquarters as a central figure whose movements and statements demanded closer scrutiny.
 
That detail matters. On Sunday morning, Frank had been summoned to the factory. By Monday morning, detectives were going to his home and taking him to headquarters. Haslett fixed the transition between cooperation and compulsion.
 
Haslett did not describe the body, the cord, the notes, the blood spots, the hair on the lathe, or the factory layout. His value was procedural and investigative. He showed when Frank was brought into police headquarters, under what circumstances, and how the inquiry was shifting toward a closer examination of Frank’s statements and conduct.
 
8. Grace Hicks, Mixed-Value Witness for the Prosecution
 
Metal-Room Worker and Identification Witness
 
Grace Hicks was a young employee of the National Pencil Company and a co-worker of Mary Phagan in the metal department. She had worked at the factory for five years and had known Mary nearly a year. She was also connected with W. W. “Boots” Rogers, who helped bring her into the early identification process.
 
Hicks was the eighth witness in this grand-jury sequence and later became the seventh State witness at trial. She was one of the most practical witnesses in the case because she knew the second-floor metal room as a worker. She knew where Mary worked, where the dressing room was, where the closets were, where the machines stood, and how the girls moved through that part of the factory.
 
Her first major function was identification. Mary Phagan’s body had been found dirty, disfigured, and difficult for the first officers to identify immediately. Hicks identified the body at the undertaker’s establishment on Sunday morning, April 27, 1913. She said she knew Mary by her hair. She described Mary as fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed, heavy built, and well developed for her age.
 
Hicks also gave important testimony about the second-floor layout. She testified that Mary worked on the second floor in the metal room, the same room where Hicks worked. Mary’s machine was right next to the dressing room, the first machine there. Hicks described separate closets for men and women on that floor, divided by a partition. In going to the office from the closets, she said, a person would pass the dressing room and Mary’s machine within two or three feet.
 
This mattered because the State’s theory placed the beginning of the crime near the second-floor metal department, close to the women’s dressing room and the area where Barrett later described a blood-like stain, white smearing, and a broom. Hicks gave the jury a worker’s map of that space.
 
Hicks also testified about Frank’s regular presence in the metal department. She said that during the previous twelve months, Frank passed through the metal department looking around every day. Sometimes she saw him talking to men near the clocks, and he came back to the metal room to see how the work was getting on. This testimony undercut any picture of Frank as a superintendent wholly detached from the second-floor department where Mary had worked.
 
Her testimony cut both ways. The State used Hicks to place Frank in regular contact with the department and to locate Mary’s machine beside the disputed area. The defense used Hicks to show that Frank rarely spoke to the girls. Hicks said that during five years at the factory, Frank had spoken to her only three times. She had never seen Frank speak to Mary Phagan, and she had never seen Mary speak to Frank.
 
Hicks remembered the three times Frank spoke to her. Once, while showing a man around the factory, he saw her leaning on her arm, nearly asleep at her machine, and said, “You can run this machine asleep, can’t you?” Another time she asked him for a quarter and he loaned it to her. The third time was on the street, when he tipped his hat. The defense used these details to argue that Frank’s limited contact with female employees was normal.
 
Hicks also gave the defense useful testimony about factory conditions. She said the metal-room floor was awfully dirty, that white material used in the department got all over the floors, and that after two or three days it could be hard to tell what was on the floor once dust and dirt mixed together. She also said girls sometimes sat at the machines and combed their hair. When she wanted to curl her hair, she sometimes went to a table near the window, lit the gas, and used a poker. She also said Magnolia Kennedy’s hair was nearly the color of Mary Phagan’s.
 
The defense used those admissions to challenge the certainty of the lathe-hair evidence. The State answered with timing and location: Barrett said the hair was not on his lathe Friday when he last used the machine and appeared after the murder weekend.
 
Hicks also testified that paint was kept in the polishing room across from the dressing room and that she had seen drops of paint on the floor leading from the polishing-room door toward the cooler. The defense could use that to argue alternative explanations for some floor markings. The State still had Barrett, Starnes, Scott, and others describing the second-floor stains and white smearing as suspicious.
 
Grace Hicks was important because she identified Mary Phagan, placed Mary’s machine beside the dressing room, described the second-floor metal department, confirmed Frank’s daily passage through that department, and supplied workplace facts both sides tried to use.
 
How These Four Witnesses Fit the Indictment Theory
 
Rogers, Scott, Haslett, and Hicks extended the evidentiary structure already begun by Hurt, Dobbs, Starnes, and Barrett.
 
Rogers supplied the Sunday morning sequence: the drive to the factory, the trip to Frank’s home, Frank’s nervous demeanor, the stop at the undertaker’s, the payroll-book identification of Mary Phagan, and the first observations about the time slip. Scott added Frank’s Monday account, including the timing of Mary Phagan’s pay visit, the statement about John M. Gantt, the second-floor evidence shown to investigators, the private-room confrontation with Newt Lee, and the developing Jim Conley investigation. Haslett fixed the Monday morning police escort to headquarters, marking the point when Frank became a central figure in the inquiry rather than an outside employer assisting officers. Hicks identified Mary Phagan, placed her machine next to the women’s dressing room, described the second-floor metal department, confirmed Frank’s regular passage through that area, and supplied workplace details both sides tried to use.
 
By the time these witnesses appeared before the grand jury on Saturday, May 24, 1913, the State had a coherent case: a medical foundation, a basement discovery scene, an investigative response, second-floor physical evidence, Frank’s conduct, Frank’s own statements, police questioning, body identification, and metal-room geography.
 
The grand jury did not have to decide final guilt. It needed probable cause, and these witnesses helped provide it. Their testimony showed why the case moved beyond suspicion, into indictment, and then into open court.
 
The trial jury convicted Leo M. Frank on Monday, August 25, 1913. Judge Leonard Strickland Roan sentenced him to death by hanging on Tuesday, August 26. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, and the United States Supreme Court rejected Frank’s federal habeas effort in Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309 (1915). Governor John M. Slaton commuted the death sentence of his lawfirm's client, Leo Frank, to life imprisonment on June 21, 1915, but the commutation did not vacate the conviction. The 1986 pardon addressed the State’s failure to protect Frank while in custody; it did not declare him innocent.
 
Bibliography
 
Atlanta Georgian. (1920, February 23). L. S. Dobbs, veteran of police force, is dead. Georgia Historic Newspapers. https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn89053729/1920-02-23/ed-3/seq-10/
 
Atlanta Journal. (1913, May 25). State didn’t show its case to secure indictment against Superintendent Leo M. Frank. Reprinted by Leo Frank Case Archive. https://www.leofrank.org/state-didnt-show-its-case-to-secure-indictment-against-superintendent-leo-m-frank/
 
Court stenographers. (1913). Leo M. Frank, plaintiff in error vs. State of Georgia: Brief of evidence, July term, 1913. Fulton County Superior Court. https://archive.org/details/01-part-one-boe-1-leo-m-frank-plaintiff-in-error-brief-of-evidence-i
 
Court stenographers. (1913). Dr. J. W. Hurt, sworn in for the State, 30th to testify. Reprinted by Leo Frank Papers. https://www.leofrank.com/leo-frank-trial-brief-of-evidence-1913-fulton-county-superior-court-atlanta-georgia/030-dr-j-w-hurt-sworn-in-for-the-state-30th-to-testify/
 
Court stenographers. (1913). L. S. Dobbs, sworn in for the State, 4th to testify. Reprinted by Leo Frank Papers. https://www.leofrank.com/leo-frank-trial-brief-of-evidence-1913-fulton-county-superior-court-atlanta-georgia/004-l-s-dobbs-sworn-in-for-the-state-4th-to-testify/
 
Court stenographers. (1913). J. N. Starnes, sworn in for the State, 5th to testify. Reprinted by Leo Frank Papers. https://www.leofrank.com/leo-frank-trial-brief-of-evidence-1913-fulton-county-superior-court-atlanta-georgia/005-j-n-starnes-sworn-in-for-the-state-5th-to-testify/
 
Court stenographers. (1913). Robert P. Barrett, sworn in for the State, 13th to testify. Reprinted by Leo Frank Papers. https://www.leofrank.com/leo-frank-trial-brief-of-evidence-1913-fulton-county-superior-court-atlanta-georgia/013-robert-p-barrett-sworn-in-for-the-state-13th-to-testify/
 
Court stenographers. (1913). Mell Stanford, sworn in for the State, 14th to testify. Reprinted by Leo Frank Papers. https://www.leofrank.com/leo-frank-trial-brief-of-evidence-1913-fulton-county-superior-court-atlanta-georgia/014-mell-stanford-sworn-in-for-the-state-14th-to-testify/
 
Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309. (1915). Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/237/309/
 
Leo Frank Case Research Library. (n.d.). The coroner’s inquest of the Mary Phagan murder mystery. https://leofrank.info/trial-and-evidence/coroners-inquest/
 
Leo Frank Case Research Library. (2020, April 17). Dr. J. W. Hurt, coroner’s physician, gives expert testimony. https://leofrank.info/dr-j-w-hurt-coroners-physician-gives-expert-testimony/
 
Leo Frank Case Research Library. (2020, February 29). Machinist tells of finding blood, hair and pay envelope on second floor, where State claims girl was murdered. https://leofrank.info/tag/r-p-barrett/
 

Slaton, J. M. (1915, June 21). Commutation order in the matter of Leo M. Frank. Famous Trials. https://www.famous-trials.com/leo-frank/35-clemencydecision

 

Atlanta Constitution. (1913, July 31). Trial coverage including W. W. “Boots” Rogers testimony.

Atlanta Constitution. (1913, August 1). Attorneys for both sides riled by Scott’s testimony; replies cause lively tilts.

Atlanta Constitution. (1913, August 1). Haslett describes visit to home of Leo Frank.

Atlanta Constitution. (1913, August 9). Harry Scott and “Boots” Rogers recalled to stand by the State.

Atlanta Georgian. (1913, May 8). “Boots” Rogers tells how body was found.

Atlanta Georgian. (1913, July 30). Trial coverage of W. W. “Boots” Rogers.

Atlanta Journal. (1913, May 8). Phagan inquest in session; six witnesses are examined before adjournment to 2:30.

Court stenographers. (1913). B. B. Haslett, sworn in for the State, 16th to testify. In Leo M. Frank, plaintiff in error vs. State of Georgia: Brief of evidence, July term, 1913. Fulton County Superior Court.

Court stenographers. (1913). Harry Scott, sworn in for the State, 11th to testify. In Leo M. Frank, plaintiff in error vs. State of Georgia: Brief of evidence, July term, 1913. Fulton County Superior Court.

Court stenographers. (1913). Leo M. Frank, plaintiff in error vs. State of Georgia: Brief of evidence, July term, 1913. Fulton County Superior Court.

Court stenographers. (1913). Miss Grace Hicks, sworn in for the State, 7th to testify. In Leo M. Frank, plaintiff in error vs. State of Georgia: Brief of evidence, July term, 1913. Fulton County Superior Court.

Court stenographers. (1913). W. W. Rogers, sworn in for the State, 6th to testify. In Leo M. Frank, plaintiff in error vs. State of Georgia: Brief of evidence, July term, 1913. Fulton County Superior Court.

Famous Trials. (n.d.). Appellate decisions in the Leo Frank case. University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309. (1915).

Leo Frank Case Archive. (n.d.). Detective Harry Scott’s testimony as given before coroner’s jury.

Leo Frank Case Archive. (n.d.). Leo Frank murder trial testimony, July 28, 1913 to August 25, 1913.

Leo Frank TV. (1913, April 29). Pinkertons hired to assist police probe the murder of Mary Phagan.

Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency v. National Pencil Company. (1915). Judgment.

Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency v. National Pencil Company. (1915). Summary.