00:00Suspicion turned to Conley, accused by Factory Foreman, Atlanta, Georgian, Tuesday, May 27,
00:051913. Negro, whose story that he wrote notes at Frank's dictation is generally disbelieved,
00:11was often drunk. Mrs. White cannot identify him. Suspicion in the Fagan case was Tuesday morning
00:18turned full flare upon James Conley, the Negro whose unexpected assertion last week that he
00:24had written the notes found beside the body of Mary Fagan at the dictation of Leo M. Frank
00:28was followed by a speedy indictment of the pencil factory superintendent.
00:33In the opinion of E. F. Holloway, timekeeper and foreman in the factory, Conley is the guilty man.
00:39Careful study of the Negro story has revealed many absurdities in its structure wherein evidences of
00:45childish cunning are rife in an effort to throw the blame onto Frank. It is this which has served to
00:50bring the deed to Conley's door. However, Mrs. Arthur White, wife of a machinist at the factory,
00:56who testified that she saw a Negro lurking in the building between twelve noon and two o'clock on
01:01the afternoon of the murder, denied the published report in an afternoon paper that she had identified
01:07Conley as the one. Mrs. White stated Tuesday morning that she had secured only a glimpse of the man.
01:13It may have been Conley or another Negro. Mrs. White was asked to pick Conley out of a crowd of
01:19twelve
01:19Negroes some time ago, but her identification was a second choice. The police, in spite of bending every
01:25effort to show that Frank is guilty, therefore, have resorted to a dissection of Conley's story.
01:30One of its weakest links, they believe, is the Negro's quotation of Frank's statement to him,
01:36Why should I hang? That the superintendent should place this confidence in the Negro sweeper appears
01:41absurd. Another damaging point against Conley lies in the declaration of Holloway, timekeeper of the
01:47factory, that the Negro had appeared for duty intoxicated on several occasions, that his duties as
01:53sweeper brought him in contact with the girls, who feared him. Where was Conley? According to Conley's
01:59story, he was on Peters Street from nineteen o'clock until two in the afternoon of the murder.
02:04Police investigation of this has failed to prove the statement. Conley admits that he cannot remember
02:09anyone whom he saw during that time to bear up his statement. From two o'clock until six, Conley was
02:14at
02:14his home. This has been proven. Conley declares that from six until eight o'clock that night he was
02:19downtown. This also has not been established. Conley states he stayed there the remainder of the
02:25night. According to the new theory of Conley's implication, the Negro wrote the notes on Saturday
02:29instead of Friday, as he claims, and not on anybody's dictation. It is further argued that,
02:35in order to ingratiate himself with the law, the maid his confession, when he thought that the case
02:40against Frank was clinched, that his story was the product of his own imagination. Conley's delay in
02:46making this confession until Frank's indictment seemed likely is another link against him.
02:51His detailed account of the incident of the note-writing, in which he even went so far as
02:56to attempt a quotation of what Frank said to him, shows premeditation on the Negro's part,
03:00it is argued, and further that the story was conceived by Conley while he was in prison.
03:05However, the Negro's childish brain was not capable of making it strong enough to withstand rigid
03:10investigation. E. F. Holloway, timekeeper and foreman of the National Pencil Factory,
03:15seen today by a Georgian reporter, said he was confident the Negro Jim Conley, under arrest as
03:21a suspect in the Mary Fagan murder mystery, committed the crime. Here is what Holloway told
03:26the reporter. Jim Conley, when he came to work here about one year ago, was a pretty good Negro.
03:31We had no trouble with him for about two months. Then Jim got drunk. He had been running the
03:36elevator and we were afraid to trust him afterward. We then put him to work sweeping in the trimming
03:41department. Here Conley was closely associated with the girls. He used to move their chairs
03:46when he was sweeping. Conley was the only Negro allowed in this department. Jim got so bad he
03:51used to carry whiskey with him in his pocket. Several times he was caught by employees taking
03:55a drink. This was not known by the management until after the murder of Mary Fagan. Drunken Factory.
04:02About one week before the crime was committed, the forelady of the trimming and finishing department,
04:06Miss Eula May Flowers went to the top floor of the building to look over the stock of boxes.
04:12When Conley was not sweeping, he was supposed to fill the box bins with boxes. When Miss Flowers
04:17moved toward the bin to look in, she stumbled over a form. She screamed and fell back. It was Conley.
04:23He was dead drunk. Miss Flowers tried to wake him up but was unable. Caught washing shirt. On the morning
04:29of the coroner's investigation, Thursday after the murder, when the plant was shut down because we all
04:35were called to the investigation, I testified and went back to the factory. As I entered the metal
04:41department, I heard a splashing in the cooling tank. There was Conley washing his shirt. When I
04:46entered, he was very much startled and tried to hide the shirt by trying to drop it through a crack
04:50in the floor. It was a blue shirt and I saw no bloodstains, for he had evidently been washing
04:55it for some time as it was pretty clean. This is the first time in the year that Jim Conley
04:59worked
04:59here that he ever washed his clothes here. Now, I don't say Conley was degenerate enough to commit a crime
05:04so terrible when he was sober, but I am thoroughly convinced that he strangled Mary Fagan when about
05:08half drunk. I'll go further and say that the last three months that Conley was here, I was suspicious
05:13of him and tried to watch him as closely as possible, for I placed no dependence in him. He became
05:18indifferent about his work and shiftless. Mrs. White denies identification. Mrs. J. Arthur White of 59
05:25Bonnie Bray Avenue made positive denial to the Solicitor General's office Tuesday that she ever had made
05:31any identification of James Conley, the Negro sweeper at the National Pencil Factory, as published
05:36in an afternoon paper. I cannot understand why such a story should have been manufactured and published,
05:42she said to reporter. I was just called by the Solicitor General to confirm it, and told him, as I
05:47had told
05:47him before, that I never had identified the Negro. I saw a Negro sitting on a box on the first
05:53floor of the
05:53factory as I left there about one o'clock in the afternoon of the murder. I did not get a
05:58good look at his
05:59face. I got just a general impression of his clothes and of his size. At the police station,
06:04ten Negroes were brought before me. I picked out one with a green derby and said that he looked
06:09considerably like the man I had seen. They told me to look again, and I picked out another man that
06:15I
06:15thought looked a little more like the Negro I had seen, but I never made any positive identification,
06:21and I told the detectives in the first place that I would not be able to. They never told me
06:25the names
06:26of the men I had picked out, so I don't know whether one of them was Conley or not. The
06:30detectives never
06:31have placed much weight on the identification of Mrs. White, as she said that she could not be
06:36positive. Added to this is the fact that she saw a Negro loitering around the factory at one o'clock,
06:42which, it is thought, he would have been very unlikely to do, had he had anything to do with
06:47the disappearance of Mary Fagan, who was in the factory a few minutes after twelve o'clock.
Comments