Monday, 20th October 1913 Locked Doors Guard Witness Who Declares Frank Innocent

Reading Time: 15 minutes [2424 words]

DETECTIVES KEEP ALL NIGHT VIGIL IN ORDER TO ARREST HIM

PAGE 1, COLUMN 6

Witness Is Atlanta

Man

Who Says He

Left City

On Account of

Threats

I. W. Fisher, Formerly a Railroad

Employee

Here, Upon His Arrival in Atlanta, Is

Rushed

to the Office of Luther Rosser in

Grant Build-

ing and Has Remained There for

Many Hours

While Detectives and Reporters

Wait Out-

side for Him to Leave.

MAN HE ACCUSES IS STILL IN

ATLANTA;

HAS WIFE AND TWO

CHILDREN IN CITY

Representatives of Pencil Factory

Superinten-

dent Are Now Engaged in Probing

Story Told

by Fisher and in Investigating

Record and

Actions of Man Who, According to

Witness,

Is Guilty of the Atrocious Murder of

Pretty

Little Mary Phagan.

All night long headquarters detective scouted over the Grant

building in an effort to lay hands on I. W. Fisher, now of

Birmingham, formerly of Atlanta, who says Leo Frank did not kill

Mary Phagan and accuses another Atlanta man of the crime, and

who was held securely under lock and key in the offices of Luther

Rosser on the seventh floor.

At 2:30 o'clock this morning the detectives had not been

successful. Every exit to the building was closely guarded, every

possible outlet cared for. Plainclothes men patrolled the entire

structure every thirty minutes. Policemen hovered in the vicinity,

ready to give aid at a moment's notice, it was a strategic battle

between detective and lawyer, with the lawyer running a shade

the better at time of going to press.

The detectives want to take the mysterious witness to

police headquarters where they may investigate him on their own

hook and to their heart's content. Attorneys Rosser and Arnold do

not want such a thing to happen. Thus far, it hasn't.

Fisher arrived in Atlanta Sunday morning. He was taken

immediately to the offices of Messrs. Rosser and Arnold. He hasn't

seen outside the place as yet. He is temporarily, though

voluntarily, under confinement. Just what the outcome will be, no

one seems to know. Even Messrs. Rosser and Arnold say they

dare not speculate.

His story exonerates Leo M. Frank, convicted of the Phagan

murder, and accuses another Atlanta man whose name is being

withheld. Attorneys Rosser and Arnold, they say, are investigating

this man of their own accord. They declare they have asked

headquarters detectives to assist them in the investigation. The

headquarters men told the attorneys that they would use their

own discretion in the matter. NO investigation along that line has

been put forth by the detectives up to date.

Fisher says"through Mr. Rosser and Mr. Arnold"that the

rumor is false that he witnessed the murder. His story is to the

effect that the man he accuses, who is a former acquaintance,

came to him on the morning of the crime and told of an

engagement he was alleged to have had with Mary Phagan at the

pencil factory.

GAVE FISHER MONEY

TO LEAVE ATLANTA

Later in the day, Fisher says, the man came to him, saying

he had played hell in general, and after confiding such secrets,

gave Fisher an amount of money on which to leave the city,

advising Fisher to depart immediately. Fisher says he acted

accordingly, going to Tennessee and later to Birmingham.

He also states that the accused man has sent him liberal

sums of money at intervals, always with the admonition to keep

mum. Fisher's explanation of his confession is that the secret

weighed so heavily on his conscience that he could hold it no

longer, deciding last Friday night to pour it into the willing ears of

Chief of Police Bodeker in Birmingham.

Both Mr. Arnold and Mr. Rosser say the man named in

Fisher's story is still in Atlanta, that he has lived here all his life

and is a man with a wife and two children. He is a man of

moderate means, they say, who lives in a respectable

neighborhood. They would not reveal his occupation or even the

section of the city in which he resides.

Fisher's connection with the famous case has created a clash

between Frank's defense and the detective department that is yet

to be equaled. Late Sunday night Detectives Waggoner, Coker,

Garner and John Starnes, the latter of who is one of the two

prosecutors in the Frank trial, frankly told the two attorneys that

they intended holding the Birmingham man as a material witness

so that they might investigate him thoroughly. That is, if they

could lay hands on him.

Mr. Arnold and Mr. Rosser replied fully as frankly that the

headquarters men had no opportunity to lay hands on Fisher, and

that they intended keeping him locked up in order to keep the

detectives from making him a real prisoner. Both intimated that,

before they would allow Fisher to fall into the hands of the

detectives, they would, of their own accord, issue a warrant

against him and have him jailed on their responsibility.

At nightfall Sunday, Mr. Rosser called representatives of

each Atlanta newspaper into his office for a statement of the

situation. It was then that the Birmingham man's identity was first

made known. Fisher was not permitted din the room during the

statement. Neither were reporters allowed to see him.

NO ONE IS ALLOWED

GLIMPSE OF WITNESS

He was kept closely hidden and even pleas from newspaper

men to just get one curious glimpse at his features were turned

down. Both attorneys admitted practically that they did not pin

much faith to the man, and impressed upon the reporters that

they did not stand sponsor for him or his story.

We are merely investigating him, were their words.

Beyond that, we cannot speak our attitude, except to say that

we have been afflicted by many, many cranks during the Frank

case.

Each stated emphatically that the first they had known of

Fisher was when newspaper men telephoned them of his

detention in Birmingham at midnight Saturday. The first interest

they took in his case, they stated, was Sunday when they were

called to their office to interview the man. Neither, they declared,

had spoken more than a dozen words to him.

A stenographic statement was taken down from the

witness by an attache of the office. Then he was put in his

skyscraper confinement. Just how long he will stay there depends

entirely upon the endurance of the shits of detectives who are

keeping watch downstairs, and the legal procedure which Messrs.

Arnold and Rosser might employ.

Fisher is a man about 43 years old, who has a wife and three

children living in Atlanta, it is said. He has the appearance of a

day laborer and wears no collar. He needed a shave upon arriving

in Atlanta, and he seemed nervous and irritable. A reporter who

boarded his train at Austell suspected that he was addicted to

drugs, and asked his escort if this was so. The answer was:

No! He's been drinking, that's why he acts and looks that

way.

His former Atlanta address will not be revealed by the

attorneys, because, they explain, he lived near the man whom he

accuses. They were old companions, the lawyers say, and to

divulge his Atlanta residence would put the newspaper men on a

trail entirely too warm.

Fisher was found, say the attorneys, through rumors that

had come from Birmingham to C. W. Burke, an ex-detective, who

is now connected with the Rosser and Arnold firm. The reports

had it that Fisher had been telling of his self-acclaimed connection

with the Phagan mystery. Burke, of his own accord, it is said,

made several visits to Birmingham, finally locating the man. Just

how Fisher was impelled to make the statement to Chief Bodeker

is not known.

WITNESS CAME

WITH BURKE

The report was erroneous that an Atlanta detective or

attache of the sheriff's staff had been sent to Birmingham to bring

Fisher to this city. He came voluntarily with Burke. They left

Birmingham Sunday morning a little after midnight. An effort was

made to throw newspaper men off their trail.

Atlanta, however, learned of the route. What followed was a

merry comedy staged by newspaper reporters, a fair-sized army

of them. When the Southern train in which Burke and the

Birmingham man thought themselves safe from reporters, rolled

into Austell, a squad of newspaper men who had travelled at

midnight from Atlanta in automobiles boarded the cars.

Burke was astonished. His companion looked up with mild

curiosity. Burke would not allow him to talk, and had but very

little to say for himself. The newspaper men thronged around him

the day coach, where Fisher was smoking cigarettes.

You fellows are going to queer the whole game, said

Burke. Leave us alone until it is time to give you the story. Then

we'll do it without favor or partisanship.

The newspaper men continued to bombard Burke with

questions. As the train passed through the Miller Union stock

yards, it slowed down to yard speed. Suddenly Burke, glancing

through the window, exclaimed:

Well, bo, this is Mount Zion. We leave.

Picking up his suit-case, the ex-detective led a hurried way

toward the ear platform. A number of reporters fled toward the

opposite platform, seeking to quit the train at the same time with

Burke and his charge. Reporters scrambled from the running

train, dropping from the car steps every ten feet or so.

As the train sped around the bend, the reporters, picking

themselves up from cinders, looked around for Burke and the

mysterious witness. No Burke. No witness. Instead, they were

aboard the train, chuckling over the clever ruse that had

outwitted a number of newspaper men, and also rid themselves of

their presence.

FISHER'S STORY

OF CRIME

Dispatches from Birmingham last night give Fisher the name

of Robert W. Fisher, while his name is given out locally as I. W.

Fisher. Chief Bodeker has stated to the Constitution

correspondent in the Alabama city that Fisher told him he

witnessed the murder.

Fisher's story, according to Bodeker's statement to the

Constitution representative, was that he had seen the crime, and

was offered a large sum of money to keep the secret and leave

Atlanta. He refused, so the story goes, and was threatened, after

which he decided it was best to leave.

According to the Birmingham story, Fisher kept the crime

ridden because he thought Leo Frank would be acquitted. Upon

hearing of Frank's conviction, he went to the Birmingham chief

with his startling narrative. Bodeker, ti is said in news dispatches,

believes the man's story.

Fisher is a pipeman with the Lousiville and Nashville railroad.

He has been employed in that work since living in Birmingham.

He has been away from Atlanta only three weeks, it is said. Much

of his time was spent in Tennessee, mostly Chattanooga.

The Grant building all day Sunday was one busy little

building. Reporters flocked over it like a convention of newspaper

men. Headquarters detectives scouted here and there, watching

every move in the expectation of finding Fisher so that they might

carry him to headquarters.

No one was permitted to see him. Shortly after 6 o'clock, the

night watchman, J. H> Cook, took his stand in the center of the

lobby, clapped his hands for order and was immediately

surrounded by a crowd of reporters and detectives.

Gentlemen, he said with official dignity, we have stopped

the elevators, it being stopping time, and wea re going to closet

the building. The man whom you want to see is locked up on the

seventh floor and there isn't a chance to get to him. The best

thing for everybody to do is to go home.

With which he cut out the lights, leaving the lobby

illuminated only by the glow of cigars and cigarettes and the

frequent flare of matches. But nobody left. The crowd thinned out

later in the night, but still many detectives and newspaper men

remained to keep the vigil until dawn.

Fisher was furnished with food carried to him by Burke.

Whether he slept or not is unknown.

Mr. Arnold and Mr. Rosser left the building shortly after 6

o'clock, leaving the office in charge of two young men connected

with the firm, who did not even venture forth during the night,

according to the report of reporters and detectives who kept their

faithful watch on the seventh floor.

When asked why he did not obtain a warrant to arrest Fisher

as a material witness, Detective John Starnes, who was in charge

of the headquarters men at the Grant building, stated that he did

not wish to be put in the attitude of trying to take a hand in the

affairs of Frank's defense.

We will get him, however, he said, whenever he comes

out of that office. We are not going to be unpleasant about it, and

we do not want to create trouble. But we'll get him some way or

other.

According to Detective Bog Waggoner, of headquarters, who

was called into Mr. Rosser's office during the afternoon, the

attorney requested Waggoner to investigate the man whom

Fisher accuses. The detective says Rosser offered to put in his

hands certain information and evidence on which he would work.

I told him I would use my own discretion about the matter,

Wagoner stated, which resulted in Mr. Rosser failing to give me

the evidence or names.

It is understood that Detective Starnes, however, has been

given the name of the man charged with the crime. Starnes will

not talk on the subject, however. He says he intends to

investigate all Fisher says.

One thing made particularly clear in Fisher's statement,

which was delivered to reporters by Mr. Arnold and Mr. Rosser, is

that the man accused by the new witness has never been

attached to the National Pencil factory, in which the murder

occurred.

Family Has moved.

In a search last night to locate the family of Fisher, which he

declares lives in Atlanta, a Constitution reporter developed the

fact that the family of an I. W. Fisher once lived at 797 Marietta

street had moved to 734 Marietta street with her two children

shortly after Fisher had left for Tennessee to obtain

employment.

Inquiry at 734 Marietta street bought to light that a family by

the name of Fisher lived at that address but none of the members

of the family were in. A boarder declared that the husband was

somewhere in Tennessee at the present time.

PAGE 2, COLUMN 3

BODEKER KEEPS

COUNSEL.

By Leon Friedman.

Birmingham, Ala. October 19"(Special.)"If the story told in

Birmingham by I. W. Fisher, who has been taken back to Atlanta is

true, there is but little doubt of the innocence of Leo M. Frank,

convicted for the murder of Mary Phagan.

Chief of Police George H. Bodeker, deems it best not to give

out a statement now that Fisher is in Atlanta, but says that Sheriff

Mangum, has been advised as to what Fisher knows and all action

is now transferred to the Georgia capital. Ben M. Jacobs, member

of the Birmingham lodge of B'nai B'rith, was not a party to the

conference at which Fisher is said to have made his statement.

Bert Jacobs was out of the city at the time of the conference with

Chief Bodeker. Neither of the Messrs. Jacobs are in position to talk

of new evidence in the case which has just come out.

Chief Bodeker asserts that an injustice has been done in

mentioning Rabbi Marx in the new development all of which has

come out since Friday night.

While the chief refuses to talk it is learned he was

approached as he was about to go to the fair grounds and told

that the man before him had an important message to give him.

Fisher, the man with him, and Chief Bodeker then repaired to the

private office at police station, where, it is said, Fisher made a

clear statement implicating a business man in Atlanta. No one

connected with the pencil factory was named.

Since leaving Atlanta Fisher is said to have been receiving

twenty-five dollars each week but his conscience hurt him since

Frank's conviction and he sought Chief Bodeker.