Thursday, May 8th, 1913 Another Clue in Phagan Case is Worthless

Pinkerton detective says tip about missing restaurant worker leads nowhere; café owner denies any basis for the rumor

Harry Scott of the Pinkerton Agency said Thursday that information obtained by his agency regarding a Greek restaurant helper who had allegedly disappeared following the killing of Mary Phagan had proved to have no foundation.

"It was a blind clue," he said. "We were unable to find that anyone was missing from the restaurant. Neither were we able to locate the supposedly missing person in Anniston, Alabama, where our information said he was."

George Pappas, proprietor of the Busy Bee Café at the corner of Hunter and Forsyth Streets, addressed the rumor directly Thursday morning, saying there was no basis for any story involving anyone at his establishment.

"There was no one working in the restaurant at the time of the murder except my brother, Stamates Pappas, and myself, and as you can see, we are both still here," he said.

Girl Not Known There

"Furthermore, instead of anyone going away, we have just hired another man to wait in the café. He came here last Saturday and is still here.

"So far as the pencil factory and the murder of the girl is concerned, I do not know anything about it at all. I did not even know the girl by sight. Once in a while some of the girls came in here to get a little lunch, but I did not know any of them by name and could not say positively that they worked over there at all.

"I have never been in the pencil factory but twice in my life: once on the Sunday the girl was found dead, and once before that to retrieve some dishes that had been sent over with a lunch order for one of the factory's men."

Asked about the practice of sending food into the factory and whether anyone in his employ might have become familiar with the interior of the building, Pappas said they very seldom sent orders over, as they had only two men working and orders typically came in around noon when the café was too busy to send anything out.

Frank There for Cup of Coffee

Describing the movements of himself and his brother around the time of the murder, Pappas said his brother left the café around 7:30 in the evening to rest before their Easter observance, as they were expected at church that night and would be up for most of it. Pappas himself closed the café around 11:30, went out briefly, returned to bathe and dress, and at about 1 o'clock in the morning his brother came by and the two went together to the Easter service.

His brother returned to the café before him and had the place open when Pappas arrived shortly before 8 o'clock Sunday morning. Not long after, someone came in and said something had happened at the pencil factory. Pappas stepped outside and asked a policeman standing nearby, who told him there had been some kind of trouble at the factory involving a robbery and a killing.