A reading of The Atlanta Georgian and News account of Newt Lee's recall to the coroner's inquest, published Thursday, May 8, 1913, Final edition. The title card uses the headline "Leo Frank Is Again Quizzed by Coroner" and the line "Newt Lee Recalled."
Leo M. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil Factory, and night watchman Newt Lee were being held in the inquiry into Mary Phagan's death and were recalled late Thursday afternoon. Lee testified before Frank about a private conversation after Lee was first arrested. Lee said he told Frank it was hard to sit there handcuffed, that Frank thought he was innocent, and that he knew nothing except finding the body. He quoted Frank: "Yes, and you keep that up we will both go to hell!" Lee said that if she had been killed in the basement he would have known it, and Frank answered, "Don't let's talk about that—let that go!" The paper says Frank had already claimed that detectives suggested that remark, or one like it, to draw information from the night watchman, and that this largely nullified Lee's account.
Lee said the furnace was fired up Saturday night. Frank came out, rubbed his hands, and was sorry to have called him so early, when he might have been sleeping. Lee said he needed sleep and that Frank had not come out to meet him before. The trap door was open every evening. He noticed nothing on the machinery-room floor. At 6 o'clock Frank asked the time and told him not to punch the clock while a new tape was put on. Lee held the lever. Frank opened the clock door without unlocking it, and Lee said he punched every half hour. A shirt found at his house looked like one of his. Mrs. John Bowen made it. His clothes were in a barrel, and the lady there might have had some of hers there too.
Coroner Donehoo called Lee after Detective John Black, following Harry Scott of the Pinkertons. Miss Hattie Hall and Herbert Schiff, chief clerk at the factory, were the first afternoon witnesses. The morning session, the paper says, developed nothing of consequence. A bulletin above the page 1 story, which is not read aloud, says the coroner's jury found that Mary Phagan came to her death by strangulation and ordered Lee and Frank held for the grand jury.
Newspaper: The Atlanta Georgian and News, Thursday, May 8, 1913. That is the inquest date, not the day Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old pencil factory worker, was found dead in the National Pencil Company basement in the early hours of Sunday, April 27, 1913. The narrator is identified on screen as Foster Coates, editor of The Atlanta Georgian. The seated portraits are labeled AI reconstructions. They are not archival photographs. Credited pictures on screen are from The Atlanta Journal, July 29, 1913, page 5, and Watson's Magazine, August 1915, page 191.
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