00:00The Case of Mary Fagan, Atlanta Constitution, Sunday, May 4th, 1913.
00:05At the top is a sketch made by Henderson from the last photograph taken of little Mary Fagan,
00:10the 14-year-old girl of tragedy. Below is a photograph of her mother and stepfather,
00:16Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Coleman, and her sister, Miss Ollie Fagan. The other picture was taken at the
00:21funeral. Could you walk for hours in the heart of Atlanta without seeing a person you know?
00:25What did Atlanta detectives do to keep murderer from planting evidence against suspects?
00:30Are all the men who have been held as suspects marked men for the rest of their lives as the
00:35result of a caprice of circumstance? This not the story of Mary Fagan. It is a story about the story
00:41of Mary Fagan. All of the story of little Mary Fagan that can be learned has been told simply
00:46and without further sensation than the facts themselves afforded in the columns of the
00:50Atlanta Constitution from the time of this paper's exclusive story of the gruesome discovery
00:56of the girl's body last Sunday morning. It is therefore not for this story to shed light on
01:01the case, but merely to point out and discuss a few of the extraordinary phases of the most
01:06extraordinary case that has ever shocked a city. The story of the death of Mary Fagan is the most
01:11improbable chain of events that has ever occurred within the lifetime of Atlanta, and these events
01:17have gripped and stirred the people of Atlanta as nothing that has ever happened before. Aside from
01:22the mystery which shrouded the slier of the girl, the thing which has held the sympathies of a whole
01:27city, as if Mary Fagan were the daughter of each person, is the youth and innocence of the little girl.
01:34She was just a little girl. When that has been said about Mary Fagan, all has been said. All testimony
01:40that has been brought out shows that she was all in simplicity, guilelessness, and purity that is
01:46implied in that simple statement. There have been other cases, recent cases, which have interested
01:51the public and appealed more or less to their sympathies, but the principles in the cases were
01:56as different as the world is wide. In the other cases there was maturity and experience, worldly
02:01wisdom and past that came home to roost. In all the interest and sympathy there was a subcurrent that
02:07ran chill and repellent. In past cases could all the tears blot out one word of the sordid tales of
02:13illicit loves and intrigues. Could the leopard skins change their spots? No, Lady Macbeth,
02:19no spotted hand. But in the story of Mary Fagan there were no words or sentences through which she
02:24or anyone would have cared to have traced a killing line. There were no stains from a spotted past to
02:30shriek their shame to the world. There was no Lady Macbeth in the past of Mary Fagan to wander
02:35through the halls of her conscience and scrub with frenzy at the tiniest speck of wrongdoing upon her
02:40white hands. Mary Fagan's life was one of such beauty and purity that when the world knew of
02:45her, her memory instantly became the fondled child in the heart of every parent and the playmate of
02:51every little girl in the city. There was also the impenetrable mystery of it all, the haunting of
02:56a score of horrible secrets that persecuted and compelled the mind to more than mere idle curiosity.
03:03It seems utterly beyond the bounds of reason that a person with a thousand friends could in the
03:08twinkling of an eye drop from the face of the earth vanish into thin air in the heart of a
03:12city
03:13of two hundred thousand souls. A life vanishes into air. Yet from the moment that a streetcar
03:19motorman saw little Mary Fagan walking down Hunter Street toward the National Pencil Factory at noon
03:24Memorial Day there was nothing to indicate that of all the hosts of friends who knew her a single
03:28one ever laid eyes on her with the blood of life in her veins. There came those scores of them
03:34who said,
03:35I saw Mary Fagan here at such and such a time, and I saw the girl at the other place
03:40at this hour,
03:41but never a man of them all in the final test could prove that it was Mary Fagan whom I
03:46saw.
03:47Do you think that you who are reading this could walk on any street in the heart of the city
03:51under
03:52the light of the sun for any considerable length of time for as much as an hour without meeting and
03:57speaking to some friend or acquaintance? Yet this marvel apparently happened in the heart of Atlanta.
04:02It was as if you yourself had watched Mary Fagan when she stepped off the car and walked for half
04:07a block down Hunter Street, and then maybe you unconsciously blinked your eyes for minutest
04:12fraction of a second, and when you opened them again, Mary Fagan was not there. It was as if some
04:17invisible master of the black art had whispered a magic word, and presto. In the act of taking a step,
04:23Mary Fagan was gone as utterly vanished as the snows of yesteryear. Notes written by a light.
04:28That they were written by a light is beyond all question. Each line of the notes follows
04:33accurately the ruling of the paper upon which they were written. Could this have been accomplished
04:38in the darkness of the remote corner where her body was found? Where then could they have been
04:43written? One note says, he pushed down this hole. At the bottom of this hole is the only light in
04:50the
04:50basement, a single sickly gas jet. Two days after Newtley was arrested, a bloody shirt was found at his
04:56home. Why did the detectives wait two days after Newtley was arrested before they searched his home
05:02for evidence? And who was watching his home in the meantime to see that evidence was not planted?
05:07Three days after the murder, the register of the watchman's time clock showed three discrepancies
05:12of an hour each. Possibly the clock was registered correctly Sunday. Who was watching to see that it was
05:18not changed? Others were in the building on Monday, besides employees. The factory was operated on Tuesday
05:24and Wednesday. Others not connected with the factory were allowed to enter the building.
05:28As a matter of fact, what detective was watching Leo M. Frank's home to see that no one entered it
05:33and stole a monogram handkerchief, say, stained it with blood and placed it in the basement of the
05:38building where the girl's body was found? What did the detectives do to keep the real murderers
05:43from planting evidence against those under suspicion? And do you think it was possible for the letter
05:48which purported to have been dropped by Mary Fagan on the streetcar in which she came into the city
05:52Saturday at noon to have been undiscovered in that streetcar until Wednesday, when it was first
05:58discovered four days after she was last on the car? Who planted the evidence? Is there in your mind,
06:03reader, a question as to whether there was someone at large who was very, very busy, while Newt Lee,
06:08Leo Frank, Arthur Mullinax, and J.M. Gant languished in jail? Again the mystery. Who had been planting the
06:15evidence, and why? And what about Newt Lee, Frank, Mullinax, and Gant? Are these marked men for the
06:21remainder of their lives? Will they go through life always with a finger pointing at them and
06:26someone saying, there is the man was mixed up in that murder? Are they victims of circumstance?
06:31Has a caprice of chance placed a brand upon them for life? At this minute I glance out my window.
06:37Out of the darkness looms the building of the National Pencil Company, and from a window in the
06:42top story shines dimly one wee little light. Except for this there is nothing but darkness, gloom,
06:48great haunting shadows, and mystery. This scene seems somehow to typify for me the case of Mary
06:54Fagan, and that one tiny light is little Mary herself the only bright spot in the whole horrible story.
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