On Monday, April 28, 1913, police followed a new lead in the Mary Phagan case after E S Skipper of 224 and 1 half Peters Street reported seeing a girl who closely matched Mary’s description being led along Forsyth Street by three young men dressed in flashy, showy clothes. Skipper said the girl looked weak and frightened, was crying, and kept falling behind, as if she did not want to go with them. He believed she was not drunk, but that she might have been drugged or forced to move forward.
Skipper said he first noticed the group on Pryor Street, near Trinity Avenue, and then followed them as they turned onto Whitehall Street and continued down Whitehall until they reached Forsyth Street, where they headed north toward Mitchell Street. He told officers that he could identify the three men and was ready to help point them out if they were brought in for questioning.
At the same time, police received a statement from Adam Woodward, the night watchman at the Williams Livery Stable on Forsyth Street, who said he had heard a woman scream several times around eleven o’clock on Saturday night. Investigators found that Woodward’s account and the time and route described by Skipper lined up closely. They treated both statements as potentially important clues in the search for the men who may have lured or led Mary Phagan toward the violence that ended her life.
Comments