00:00Seek clue in queer words and odd notes. Atlanta, Georgian, Tuesday, April 29, 1913.
00:06Who would be the most interested in saying that the night watchman did not do it?
00:10While the tendency of the police straight through has seemed to be to doubt that Mary Fagan,
00:14the murdered girl, really wrote the small notes found beside her body purporting to give a clue
00:20to her murderer, the girl's stepfather, W.J. Coleman, thinks it possible that she may have
00:25written one of the scrawls. That one is the note written on the little yellow factory slip so
00:30faintly traced it is almost impossible to read it. It is the one that says,
00:34Mama that Negro hired down here did this. I went to get water and he pushed me down this hole
00:39a long,
00:40tall Negro black that has it woke long, lean, tall Negro I write while play with me.
00:45Somehow it looks like her handwriting to me, said Mr. Coleman, but of course I cannot be sure.
00:50Now about the other note I am doubtful. It seems to be written too well for the child to have
00:54done
00:54it in the almost insensible condition she must have been in at the time. Whether she wrote either
00:59of the notes of her own accord, though, or whether she was forced to do it by her murderer to
01:04turn
01:04suspicion from himself, of course is mere speculation. Only time can tell, if anything.
01:10Doubts other notes authorship. The other note whose authority Mr. Coleman doubts is the one scrawled on
01:15a notepad. It reads as it was at first translated. He said he would love me, laid down like the
01:21night
01:21watch did it, but that long, tall black Negro did it by himself. This note, however, brings
01:26up an argument advanced by several people who have studied it carefully. They have found that
01:31in some way one word, play, was omitted in the first translation, and they think that instead
01:37of night witch, the words were meant to mean night watch, which is relative to the subject.
01:42With these changes, the note would read, he said he would love me, laid down play like the night
01:47watch did it, but that long, tall black Negro did it by himself. They ask, if the murderer told the
01:53child he was going to play like the night watch did it, and then the child goes on to explain
01:58that
01:58it wasn't the night watchman at all that did it, but another Negro, wouldn't that appear that the
02:03child was endeavoring to shield the night watchman, argue against watchman? They also ask, would a
02:09child in the predicament Mary Fagan was supposed to be in, insensible and her mind wandering, be thinking
02:14of trying to shield a night watchman in her note, even before she described the man who had treated
02:19her so cruelly? Again, they ask, who would be the most interested person in the world in saving the
02:25hide of the night watchman? Did the child write the notes herself? Was she forced to write them,
02:30or did somebody else write them? The notes are written to throw suspicion off of the night watchman.
02:36Translated in that way, the argument would go to bear out the expressed belief of the girl's
02:40stepfather that the Negro committed the crime. Ollie Fagan, the eighteen-year-old sister of
02:46Mary, said that while she did not know, of course, she did not believe that Mary wrote either of the
02:50notes. She knew her handwriting well, and the rough letters did not look like hers, although they might
02:56possibly be. Real scene of struggle found. Excitement prevailed today among those interested when it was
03:02found that the scene in which the fearful struggle between the dead girl and her assailant took place
03:07was not on the second floor of the pencil factory, as it was thought, where a few strands of her
03:12hair
03:12were found in the cogs of a steel lathe, but in the dressing room of the place. This was made
03:18certain
03:18by drops of blood all over the floor of the room, and a rag of her dress that was picked
03:22up, and which
03:23showed that it had been used to gag her. The strip was of silk, and had been cut with a
03:28knife from the
03:29front of her lavender dress, which was new, and which the child was wearing for the first time.
03:34It was said that the discovery was made by some of the girls employed at the factory, who slipped upon
03:40the
03:40blood which in one place had formed a small pool. They ran out excited by the appearance of the place.
03:46The dead girl's hair had only caught in the steel lathe when her murdered had dragged her by it.
03:51This would go to corroborate the belief of several persons acquainted with the tragedy's various angles that
03:56Mary Fagan never left the building, or at least only for a short while from the time she entered it
04:01to get her
04:02money Saturday, until her lifeless form was picked up and carried from the basement by the authorities.
04:07They say she might have either been accidentally locked in, or purposely taken back in the building
04:12by her murdered, who obtained entrance either by a key, or went in by prying off a staple from an
04:18alley door.
04:19Logic involves negro. In either instance, the assailant had been keeping close tab on her actions,
04:25and either procured a key for himself to go in, or bribed the watchman to pass him.
04:30This would also bear out their insistence that the negro Newt Lee, in jail, knows more than he
04:35pretends to about the tragedy. Certain it is that it seems strange, it is argued, that if a livery
04:41stable man next door to the factory could hear the girl screaming at midnight, anyone in the building
04:46could have heard cries very clearly, unless he was asleep or away from his post, which the watchman
04:52does not claim he was. The livery stable man had paid no attention to the cries, as he thought it
04:57was negroes carousing. The dead girl's sister said that the child's mesh handbag, which was of silver
05:03and which has not yet been found, did not contain any valuables, and she had very little money in it.
05:09When she had started off to town, Mary had told her mother she needed only a dime, that she was
05:13going
05:14to get her pay, and wouldn't want any more. Her hair ribbon and other little belongings, along with
05:19her parasol, the child's sister had also seen and recognized.
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