Woman's Handkerchief Brought to Officers Friday, May 9th, 1913

Detectives are investigating a new lead in the Phagan case brought to Atlanta Thursday by W. A. Smith of Jonesboro, an employee of the Central of Georgia railroad.

Smith reported that he had just completed a thirty-hour chase covering more than 100 miles after two men who behaved suspiciously in his presence at the Jonesboro station Tuesday afternoon. The men ultimately escaped. The only tangible evidence Smith brought with him was a lady's bloodstained handkerchief with a hole in the middle of it, apparently chewed through. Mary Phagan's mother was unable to identify it as belonging to her daughter.

Smith arrived in Atlanta accompanied by Constable J. M. Archer of Jonesboro. He told detectives that on Tuesday night he had been standing in the Jonesboro station when he overheard fragments of a conversation between two strangers about the Phagan case. His suspicion aroused, he looked for an officer but found none. As the men boarded a southbound Central train, he decided to follow them himself.

When the train stopped at Barnesville, the two men stepped off and Smith went after them. It was during this stretch of pursuit that he found the bloody handkerchief. The men hired a buggy and drove to Coggins, roughly five miles away. Smith hired a second buggy and followed.

From Coggins the men continued to Constitution, a station on the Southern railroad approximately ten miles south of Atlanta. When Smith arrived there, the men had vanished. He found the buggy they had used, but all trace of the men themselves was gone.

Smith returned his buggy to Barnesville, made his way back to Jonesboro, and reported the entire experience to Constable Archer, who accompanied him to Atlanta the following day.