Edgar L Sentell, a 21 year old clerk at C J Kamper’s store who lived at 82 Davis Street, was one of the first witnesses to give detectives a clear and important clue in the Mary Phagan case. Sentell had known Mary almost all his life and remembered her as a cheerful little girl from the days when her family lived in East Point. He said that years of hard work at the factory had not taken away the bright smile that still showed in her blue eyes, and that she carried a quiet, steady spirit into the city each day.
Around twelve thirty in the morning, while walking home from work on Forsyth Street near Hunter, Sentell saw Mary coming toward him. She walked on the inside of the sidewalk, and beside her, keeping pace but saying nothing, was a tall, slender man. Sentell greeted Mary, she greeted him back, and then he continued on while the pair moved off into the darkness behind him. He said that Mary looked tired, almost angry, and he had no doubt that the man was with her that night, not just a passing stranger.
Sentell later described the man in careful detail. He said the man was about six feet tall, with black curly hair, a dark complexion, and a slender build. He wore tan shoes, a blue suit, and a straw hat, and appeared to be about 25 years old. That description gave detectives their first clear image of a possible suspect walking with Mary in the final hours before her body was found in the dark basement of the National Pencil Company.
The next morning, after hearing that Mary Phagan had been found murdered, Sentell quickly went to her home and then accompanied a friend of the victim’s sister to Chief Lanford’s office. There he gave a full statement, and his account helped push detectives to act at once, focusing on the man Sentell had seen and the path Mary had taken that night.
Other witnesses helped fill in Mary’s movements earlier in the day. Motorman W M Matthews said that she left an English Avenue car at Broad and Hunter Streets around noon on Saturday and walked up Hunter Street toward Forsyth, placing her in the central part of the city at a key moment. Conductor W T Hollis said that Mary had been on his car at twelve o seven in the afternoon and was still aboard when it left Marietta and Broad, showing that she had returned to the downtown area that afternoon.
Another witness, Conductor Guy Kennedy of the English Avenue trolley line, was reported to have brought a girl matching Mary’s description into the city around six forty five in the evening on Saturday and later seen her with a man on the street. At first, Kennedy declined to make a full statement, saying that Chief Beavers had asked him not to speak about it. Yet he admitted that he had seen the same man again on Sunday afternoon and had heard him say that he had been out with another girl on Saturday night, adding another troubling piece to the growing picture of Mary’s last hours.
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