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* STRANGLING ARREST The Atlanta Georgian Read For Profit GEORGIAN WANT ADS Use For Results AFTERNOON EDITION VOL. XI. XO. 228. ATLANTA, GA. MONI) AV. APRIL 28, 1012. PR lOK TWO CENTS. 'AY NO POUCE QUESTION FACTORY SUPERINTENDENT Man I'hagan. 1 4- v enrol d GIRL SLAIN IN STRANGLING MYSTERY daughter of Mrs. •!. W. Coleman, 146 Lindsay Street, whose slain body was found in the basmynt of the National Pencil Factory, 27-39 South Forsyth Street. Two men, a white youth and a negro, are held l»\ the jiolie as the crime is investigated. The girl left her home Saturday to go to factory, where she had been employed, to draw wages due her. She was seen on the streets at midnight Sat urday with a strange man. She was not seen alive again. Arthur Mullinax, White Youth Held By the Police, Declares the Only Time He Ever Met Mary Phagan Was in a Church Play. Arthur Mullinax, identified as the man .who was with Mary Phagan at midnight Saturday, a few short hours before her dead body was found, and now a prisoner in solitary confinement at police headquarters, declared to a Georgian reporter that his ar rest was a terrible mistake. He declared that he had never seen the girl except as ’“the sleeping beauty” in a church entertainment in which both took part, last Christmas. Here is his complete story: ‘‘1 had absolutely no connec tion with this affair and have ' been wrongfully accused. Sen- * toll is horribly mistaken when he says he saw me in company with Mary Phagan shortly after midnight Sunday morning in Forsyth Street. 1 did not even ".know the girl- that is, never had been introduced to her— and had never been anywhere With her.in my life. Sleeping Beauty.” “I had seen her one time. Thai was last Christmas at an entertain ment driven 1n the Western Heights Baptist Church. We both took part Jn that entertainment. She played the part of ‘the sleeping beauty,’ and I did a black face act and also sang in a quartet. “But I was not even introduced to the girl. During the entertainment the girl remarked to me that I was a good black face artist, but this was all that passed between us. I have never been with Tier at any time since then, much less at midnight. “As to my movements Saturday night, I can easily explain them. Af ter supper, I called on a girl friend, Miss Pearl Robinson, who lives in Bellwood Avenue, and we came do vn town on the English Avenue car. \Y*» got off of the car at Marietta and Forsyth Streets and walked directly s across to the Bijou Theater We * iaw part of the first show and part £3 the second, leaving before the per formance had concluded. We then boarded a car, and I took Miss Rob inson directly to her home. Slept Soundly. ‘ ' “I talked with her there about fifteen minutes, I should judge, and. bidding her goodnight, returned to my boarding house at 60 Poplar Street, in Bellwood. On arrival there, I gave Mrs. Emma Rutherford, ir landlady, a dollar, for some work done on my clothes. “Mrs. Rutherford slipped the bill under her pillow, and I went on to my room and went to bed. And I slept soundly until late Sunday morn ing. “The only time 1 was on Forsyth Street Saturday night was when Miss Robinson and I left the car at Forsyth and Marietta Streets and Walked across to the Bilou. “Horrible Mistake." “This is absolutely all I know of this affair. I had nothing to do xvfi’i it. knew nothing of it, and, being a stranger to this dead girl, certainlj had no motive for wishing to get her out of the way. It’s all a horrib’c misAftLv I’ll have no irouble prov ing an alibi and showing myself in nocent.” ■ \ When Mullinax was locked in i , cell at 10 o’clock last night, inani tions were given that he not be i - Vowed to communicate with anyone 12-Y ear-OId Girl Sobs Her Love For Slain Child “I’d help lynch the man that killed poor Mary. If they’d let me, I’d like to hold the rope that choked him to death. That’s all he deserves. I was playing with Mary only a few days ago. She was my playmate nearly every day. But when I saw her dead body I wouldn't have known her, her face was so bruised and out and swollen. It was horrible. I hope they catch the man that did it.”—VERA EPPS, twelve- year-old chum of Mary Phagan. Vera Epps clenched her little hands and angei blazed through the tears in her eyes when she told tj- day in her childish fury of the ven geance she wi-uld like to wreak upon the human beast that slew her play mate and chum, the murdered Mary Phagan. She was at her home, 246 Fox Street, which is only a short distance from thA Phagan home, the back yards of the two houses adjoining. Her eyes wore still wet with weeping over the fate of her little chum and she was a-tremble with the horror of it. Her youthful knowledge could hardly comprehend il all. She onlv knew that a fearful crime had been committed; that her innocent play mate had been beaten and killed and that some man had been guilty of the deed. And her young heart eric I J for retribution. “Oh. I just wish I might help ] lynch him," siie exclaimed. "I would j be glad if I might only hold the rope. ; It's all that he deserves.” Then her youthful philosophy was I evident when she said: “It's a heap worse for a white man to be guilty of such a terrible deed.” It was difficult to get the little girl to talk at first. She had been cry ing for hours over the loss of her playmate and was almost in hys terics from the recollection of th * gruesome spectacle which had me; her < yes when she gazed upon the mutilated corpse. She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously and was unable to | utter a word when the first ques tions were asked her. * “On*- thing I know." she finally was able to say. "Mary was a good j girl. She was just as nice as she <‘oii!d b*-. We all knew that. I ' know be. ause Iplaxecl with her eve: , j day. She played around with us girls ami boys, but she never would talk to a man. “She was a pretty girl, and just as! sweet and good as siie was j>r*»tt' . | i couldn’t believe it when Mrs. Re“ I. I who lives next door, came over to I our house and told us that Mary h i j been found murdered. “It was only last Thursday that Marx and Lilian Waignel, who lives at 249 Fox Street, and I were play ing over there on the embankment. We all rut our initials in the hard rii't on the 1 embankment and we're going to leave he s there. M. f\* »f the rain washes o letters axv iy were- going to dig them again. 3 FLASHILY DRESSED YOUTHS SEEN URGING A REELING GIRL ALONG The story of three men leading a xveeping, unxx filing girl on Forsyth Street Saturday night is being sounded to its depths to-day by Atlanta policemen in their efforts to unravol the mystery of Marx Phagan’s death. The story is told by E. S. Skipper, of 224L. Peters Street. He de clared that on Saturday night about 10 o’clock he saw a girl whose appear ance fitted the description'of the girl-victim. Three men xverr with her, all of them young and flashily dressed. The girl xvas reeling slightly. Skipper declares, as if rendered dizzy by drugs. She was crying, and time and again lagged behind h« r compan ions as if she feared to go further. Each time they insisted and she seemed powerless to resist them. Skipper declared that he can identify the three men. H, followed in their wake xx hen first ho saxx the party on Pryor Street near Trinity Avenue. At Trinity they turned toward Whitehall, he said, tile men urg ing the girl t<» accompany them. Down Whitehall to Forsyth he accom panied them, and saxx them turn north toward Mitchell Street. There he left them, going toward th*- Terminal Station, his original destination. Skipper said that tin girl did not appear intoxicated, but merely sick and pitifully weak. Folloxving closely on the heels of his story came to the police to-day the statement of Adam Woodxvard, night watchman tn the Williams Liv ery Stable. 35 Forsyth Street, three doors from the facory building. H- told the detectives that about 11 o'clock lie heard a woman scream sev eral times, but considering it the cry of a merrymaker paid no attention to it. The time specified in the statement of the night watchman links closely xvith that of flu occurrences in Skipper's story and. according to policemen, lends color to tin theory that the tine* men he saw were the nn-n who lured littb Marx Phagan to her death. Priests Forbidden To Use Automobiles Bishop of Treves Says Cars Are Inconsistent With H umi I ity. Special Cable to The Georgian. BERLIN. April 28. Tin- Bishop of Treves has issued an edict forbidding Roman Catholic priests to either ride in or own automobiles The use of antomobfies. the Bishop declares, is inconsistent with tre hu mility which «hou’d adorn the -•!*•■: e\-. and on ih* the” hand the use of axi- tmnob'Ue* has often been the raust of financial embarrassment of priests “Playful Girl With Not a Bad Thought" Siie was jusi a little, playful girl, without a had thought in her mind, and siie has been made the victim of the blackest crime that can be perpetuated.” xvas the bitter denun elation of the assailant of Mary Pha gan by her uncle, D. R Renton, yes terday. Mary and her mother lived with Mr. Benton at his home near Mari etta for several rears following the death of Mr. Phagan. Then Mary's mother married J W. Poleman and the family movod from Marietta to East Point about 1907. Twelve months ago they moved to their little home in Atlanta. Lane Too Busy to Accept High Honor Secretary of the Interior Cannot Go to California to Receive Degree of LL. D. WASHINGTON. April 2X. Secre tary .if the Ini* ior Franklin K Lane lias been forced by pressure of public business to decline an invitation from Dr. Benjamin hie Wheeler, president of the Pniversify of Gaii- fotnia, to receive ih<- highest hon > I within the gin of the university, i f» 1 degree of LL. D. Dreams Parents Are Dying, Finds It True Woman Rushes to Home to Find Father and Mother Unconscious From Gas. NEW YORK. Anril 2> In ans^.-r to the summons of her parents xx horn she dreamed siie saxx beckoning to her as t’ru-x were sinking in a marsh, Mrs. May Alym and her husband, <*har * v .1. Allen, of Newark, called ;*t the home of her parents. Mr and Mr* Donald Dorley. and found the aged couple in an unconscious cortdithvn. Gne iet of tn« gas rang* was open Both are expected to die. Body of Mary Phagan Is Found in Basement of Old Granite Hotel in Forsyth Street—Mute Evidence of T errible Battle Victim Made for Life WHITE YOUTH AND NEGRO ARE HELD BY THE POLICE After Being Beaten Into Insensibility Child Was Strangled and Dragged With Cord Back and Forth Axross Floor-—Incoherent Notes a Clew. Leo M. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil Com pany plant, in which Mary Phagan was employed, was taken to police court this morning by Detective Black to tell what he know* in connection with the girl s death. The police say he is not un der arrest. At the same time Geron Bailey, the negro elevator boy em ployed in the factory, was arrested. One theory names Bailey as the man to whom the incoherent letters apply that we re found by the side of the dead girl, and that evidently were written in an ef fort to describe her assailant. Policemen Mack, Philips and Starnes went to the factory this morning upon the statement that blood and matted hair, evidence of a terrible struggle had been found on the third floor of the fac tory. It was on this visit that they summoned Frank and arrested Bailey. They conducted a minute investigation of the signs of the struggle of the third floor, going so far as to tear up several sec tions of the plank flooring in their inspection. —— % A new and terrifying turn was given the gruesome Mary Plm- gan strangling mystery to-day when strands of blood-matted hair were found in a lathing machine on the third floor of the National Pencil Company's factory. 37-39 South Forsyth Street. The discovery made it certain that the dreadful crime was committed in the factory by some one who had access to the build ing, a theory which had been without conclusive support pre viously. Blood stains leading from the lathe to the door showed the manner in which the fiend had dragged the body of his victim had taken her to the basement. Appearances indicated that the murderer had sought to cover up the trail of his crime by endeavoring to efface the bloody stains. Another name was brought into the case to-aay by the testi mony of pencil company employees. Detectives were hurried to ' the building and an arrest is expected momentarily. The new sus pect is said to be a former employee who was seen about the build ing Friday and Saturday. The blood-matted strands of reddish-brown hair were discov ered this forenoon when L. A. Quinn, foreman in the top plant on the third floor, sent R. P. Barrett, a workman, over to the lathe. Barrett gave a cry of alarm when he saw the evidences of the shocking crime and of the struggle the little girl apparently had made against the superior strength of her assailant. The hair was twisted about the turn-up screw on the lathe, a j crank like device which is used to move the pencils forward and, | backward on the machine. Blood was on the sharp end of the crank, leading to the belief that it had been used as a weapon and was responsible for the, bloody gash in the back of the Phagan girl's head. The alterna tive theory is that she fell back against it in her struggles. Evidence of Terrible Struggle Tin' mutilated body of Mary I’lmgait was found in a dark, dis mal earner of the pencil factory basement shortly after 3 o'clock yesterday morning by Newt Lee, the negro night watchman. The negro said he almost stumbled against the body before be gap-It, MOHR