00:00Guilt will be fixed. Detectives declare. Atlanta, Georgian, Tuesday, April 29th, 1913.
00:07Has the murderer of pretty little Mary Fagan slipped the net that the police most carefully
00:12spread for him? Is the author of the crime that shocked the city and state with its terrible
00:16brutality still at large? Is the mystery as baffling in its myriad conflicting elements
00:22as it is revolting in its details still as far from solution as it was when the beaten and
00:28bruised little body of Mary Fagan was found lifeless in a pile of trash and litter in a
00:32Forsyth Street basement? When the city detectives and Pinkertons picked up the twisted skelna of
00:38evidence this morning, they admitted that they were as badly tangled as when they laid them down
00:42after working incessantly upon them until long after midnight. They are positive, however, that
00:48the guilt will be almost certainly fixed before nightfall. It only remains to follow each thread
00:53of evidence out to, to what person will the damning thread lead, is the question that is
00:59holding the entire city in suspense. No other tragedy in years has so gripped the people as
01:04this one of the laughing, innocent girl lured to her death. When the final truth is known,
01:09will the accusing finger-point of guilt be levelled at Newt Lee, the negro night-watchman against whom
01:14suspicion was strongly directed today, although he at first was held only as an important witness?
01:20Or Arthur Mullinax of 60 Poplar Street, formerly a streetcar conductor who was the first man arrested
01:26and seriously regarded as the possible murderer? The evidence against him is slight. Or J.M. Gantt,
01:32an employee of the National Pencil Company until three weeks ago, arrested as he got off a car in
01:36Marietta yesterday? The evidence against him is far from convincing. Or Jerron Bailey, negro elevator man
01:42in the pencil factory, who was arrested at about the same time as Mullinax and held as a material witness?
01:47Or some man whose name has not been previously mentioned in connection with the case? Police
01:52expect results. The police are confident that they will know in a few hours the identity of the
01:57Slayer. Chief Beavers, Chief of Detectives Lanford, Detectives Black, Starnes, Harriet, Rosser and
02:04Bullard and Pinkerton operatives were on the case again early this morning. Out of the many clues
02:09obtained yesterday, they expected to get a definite lead and bring order out of the confusion that
02:14hampered the first two days' work. They have everybody in custody against whom suspicion has
02:19been strongly directed. They have a mass of information and a mass of testimony, much of
02:23which is conflicting. From this, they will eliminate the inaccurate and improbable and proceed carefully
02:29to weave the net of evidence. No mystery in recent years has served to excite the public mind as the
02:34Fagan murder. Detective headquarters have been thronged with persons who have believed that they had
02:39clues to the perpetrator of the crime. All day yesterday was a ceaseless procession going into
02:45the detectives' offices and another procession coming out. The officers were harassed as much as
02:50they were aided. Many worthless clues. Countless persons came to give general information about
02:56Mullinax or Gant or Lee or Bailey. Others came to identify Mullinax as the man they had seen with a
03:02girl on a certain street at a certain time Saturday night. Others were sure that it was Gant they had
03:07seen. Some of the information was absolutely worthless, and some was regarded as furnishing
03:12possible clues. While some of the officers were hearing the various tales of these people,
03:17other detectives were putting the prisoners through a grilling examination of their whereabouts at every
03:22minute of Saturday night. Third degree for Lee. Newt Lee, the Black Knight watchman, was given the
03:28third degree in the belief that he knew much more about the crime than he professed. He showed signs of
03:34weakening several times, but each time recovered before he had made any admissions seriously damaging
03:39either to himself or any of the other prisoners. The shifting of suspicion to Lee was the most
03:45startling development of this forenoon, although what basis it had in actual evidence is hard to
03:50determine. It is known that the Coleman family are inclined to believe that he knows a great deal more
03:55about the crime than he has been pleased to tell. Screams in the building were heard by persons in the
04:01livery stable nearby, according to stories current today. How could Lee have made his rounds every
04:07half hour and not have heard them? Members of the Coleman family ask. O. I. Bagley, shipping clerk for
04:13the Atlanta Milling Company, was with Gant Saturday night and left him a few minutes after ten o'clock,
04:18according to a statement to a Georgian reporter. Bagley declared,
04:22Gant is but a casual acquaintance of mine, though I have known him for about a year. I do not
04:27believe he is
04:27the kind of man who would have committed the crime. I met him early Saturday night in the Globe pool
04:32room and talked to him sometime. My brother and a friend of Gant's, named White, were playing a game
04:37of pool. Gant does not play, and we sat down and watched my brother and White. About ten o'clock,
04:42Gant and myself strolled out of the pool room and walked around. We went a block or two out Whitehall
04:48Street, then turned and came back, walking back to Alabama Street and up Alabama to Broad Street.
04:53I told Gant that I was going to catch a car, and he said he would go back to the
04:57pool room,
04:57I noticed that he walked up Broad Street, my car came along and I went home.
05:01I caught the ten thirty o'clock car, had started west. In the course of our conversation, Gant told
05:07me that he had left Atlanta to go to San Francisco, and had gotten as far as St. Louis, but
05:13had been
05:13held up there several days on account of high water. He said he then changed his mind and came back
05:18to
05:18Atlanta. He also told me that he probably would go to farming, that his mother had offered to give him
05:24a five-hundred-acre farm near Marietta. That Gant could have met the Fagan girl later in the night
05:29and committed the crime appears improbable to me, as most of his conversation was about him preparing
05:34to get married in August. He seemed to be very much in love with the young lady. Our meeting Saturday
05:39night was accidental. I had not seen him for three or four weeks and asked him where he had been.
05:44He then told me of going to St. Louis.
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