Tuesday, 16th December 1913: Seven Managers Of Locker Clubs Arrested In Raid, The Atlanta Constitution

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Police Charge

Violations of City Law

Prohibiting the Sale of Liquor to Non Members of Clubs.

RELEASE IS GIVEN ON BONDS OF $300 EACH

"No War on Locker Clubs," Says Beavers Managers Enter Vigorous Denial.

Will Fight Cases Today.

After ten days of investigation, detectives under the direction of Chief Newport Lanford and Chief of Police Beavers on Monday afternoon raided seven of the better-known "locker clubs" in the downtown district, took the superintendents to police barracks and after making cases against them released the men under bonds of $300 each.

The clubs were not closed.

The charge is the violation of section 1489 of the city code keeping intoxicating liquor on hand for the purpose of illegal sale.

The following are the names of the superintendents of clubs and their establishments which were raided:

C. H. Butts, Central club; C. A. Morris, T. M. A.; A. R. Smith, Metropolitan; H. R. Smith, Theatrical; W. M. Wolpert, Owls'; H. R. Pitts, Beavers' and S. R. Green, Eagles'.

Following the raids, Chief Newport Lanford said:

"The raids are the result of investigation on the part of Detectives Moon and Patrick, which have been in progress for over a week.

These men went to every club in the downtown district and, through outsiders, sought out the law breakers the clubs where whisky was being sold to non-members. The arrests made yesterday are the result of those investigations."

"Not a War on Clubs."

Chief of Police Beavers said that the arrests had nothing to do with any particular "war" on the locker clubs, but were just the outcome of his general orders issued sometime ago to the detective department to look into alleged violations of the prohibition law.

"The detectives got sufficient evidence to warrant the raids and we made them," was his comment.

It was rumored that the police have held the evidence upon which they made the raids for the past several days, but did not act, as they declared that they wished to draw the net tight before taking action.

Chief of County Police George Mathieson declared late Monday that he was not made aware of the action of the police in raiding the locker clubs until after the officers had acted.

"My department stays out of the city as much as possible," declared Chief Mathieson, "as the Atlanta police can take care of that. I did not know raids were to take place until after the men had all been arrested."

The seven superintendents taken into custody late Monday will be given hearings before Recorder Broyles Tuesday.

Managers Enter Denial

When seen last night, officials of the clubs under investigation stated that if persons other than club members had been served with drinks, they did not know of it.

All deny that they have violated any law, and say that they do not know anything about the charges than that they were summoned to appear at police headquarters yesterday afternoon, on the charge of selling liquors to persons who were not club members.

Attorneys have been obtained by all the accused, and the charge will be fought to a finish.

PAGE 1, COLUMN 6

FRANK'S LAWYERS SEEK NEW TRIAL FROM HIGH COURT

Reuben Arnold

Vigorously Attacks What He Terms the Unfair Methods of Solicitor Dorsey.

The most vigorous battle of battles for the life of Leo M. Frank, convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan, is now on within the majesty of the supreme court.

Two guns have already been fired, Attorney Arnold, for the defense, having completed his argument Monday morning, and Solicitor Dorsey having progressed within thirty minutes of the close of his address.

Attorney Rosser, following the finish of the solicitor's argument, will be the next to speak.

He will be followed by Attorney General Thomas Felder, who has come into the case for the state on account of its presence in the supreme court.

The final address is expected to close by adjournment time this afternoon at 1 o'clock.

Both addresses were striking arraignments.

Mr. Arnold attacked the prosecution for its tactics in the trial of Frank, while Dorsey, in the opening sentence of his address, declared that the defense, in its brief, had glaringly made many misstatements of fact.

Other unveiled accusations were made by both speakers.

Attracts Interest.

The supreme court hearing is at Continued on Page Four.

PAGE 4, COLUMN 3

FRANK'S LAWYERS SEEK NEW TRIAL

Continued From Page One.

tracting equally as much interest as the retrial hearing some weeks ago before Judge L. S. Roan,

the trial judge.

The fact that the supreme court is generally conceded to be the final resort in the convicted man's fight for life commands

state-wide attention.

Although some authorities differ slightly in this respect, the consensus of legal opinion is that the supreme court excluding the governor is the final resort.

The next higher tribunal to the state supreme court is the federal court.

The governor has power to commute sentence and pardon.

The determination of counsel for the defense indicates strongly that, in case the fight is lost before the supreme court, another battle will be waged before the state's executive.

As was predicted, a request was made by the defense for an extension of time.

Attorney Arnold, upon filling the brief and records with the clerk, stated to the court that, on account of the great length of the trial and of the heavy bulk of record, it would be necessary to allow more time.

The request was granted, and each speaker was granted two hours.

This will run the hearing no longer than adjournment time at 1 o'clock this afternoon, it is thought.

The court is being presided over by Justices Beverly D. Evans, S. C. Atkinson and H. W. Hill, headed by justice Evans.

"Misstatements of Facts."

Solicitor Dorsey's address began at 11:41 a. m., immediately following the close of Mr. Arnold's argument.

"In Mr. Arnold's brief there are most glaring misstatements of facts," he declared.

"If necessary, we can quote the records and sustain my assertion.

In saying this, I do not speak of the record they have presented, but the brief and copy of their argument."

"Leo M. Frank is about 29 years old. He has studied in big universities and has travelled considerably.

We showed by his own statement that he was a highly intellectual man and of nervous temperament. We also showed by twenty young ladies that he was a man of general bad character."

"We submitted by the very best witnesses obtainable that he was a man of very bad general character, and that he was noted for lasciviousness. They tendered character witnesses who lived out in town and who knew nothing of his actions in the pencil factory, and girls who were then employed at the plant and under his influence.

We put up girls who had worked at the factory where his lasciviousness was made manifest, but who were no longer under his influence."

"We showed that on one Saturday afternoon, a very disreputable woman went to the plant for immoral purposes, and that Conley, on numerous occasions, chiefly holidays, had watched for Frank. We showed all these to the satisfaction of the trial court and jury."

"Frank denied he knew Mary Phagan.

The state showed by Ruth Robinson that she had seen Frank talking with Mary Phagan, and that he was very close to her, and that he had called her 'Mary,' Dewey Howell, a girl in the reformatory in Cincinnati ruined by whom we don't know; she once worked in the pencil factory says she had seen Frank talking to Mary Phagan two or three times a day, and that he would put his hand on her shoulder and call her Mary."

"Frank Intruded on Girl."

"The Truner boy says he saw Frank even intruding his attentions upon the girl.

And, then, you must consider the relation of this fellow Gantt to Frank's case.

Gantt was a boyhood acquaintance of Mary Phagan.

He met and talked with Mary often in the pencil factory.

Frank noticed this familiarity and once asked Gantt if he didn't know Mary pretty well.

Gantt answered that he did."

"He coveted Mary Phagan."

"On the day before Frank's arrest he told the detectives in an effort to divert suspicion from himself that Gantt knew Mary Phagan and had been at the factory on the afternoon of the murder."

"Helen Ferguson, Mary Phagan's best friend, went to Frank and asked him to let her have Mary's pay, Frank refused. He wanted Mary to come, because he had plans."

"We have established beyond a doubt the fact that Mary arrived at the factory between 12:03 and 12:07 o'clock.

We showed by Dr. Harris that the cabbage she ate hurriedly had not progressed in digestion more than thirty minutes when the function of the digestive organs was stopped.

Dr. Hurt, Dr. Harris and Dr. Funke showed that the girl had suffered some sort of violence, evidently unnatural."

"Frank said at the inquest that he had left the building at 1:10 o'clock.

Later, however, when he realized the utter importance of the time element, he changed his statement to some time shortly before 1 o'clock."

Following this, the solicitor launched into a new hitherto unadvanced theory of the pay envelope which has never been discovered.

He stated that Mrs. Mattie White, upon coming into the Frank's office some time after Mary Phagan had entered the building, found Frank at the safe.

When she crossed the threshold, stated Dorsey, Frank jumped violently, as though shocked.

"This," he declared, "accounts for the envelope.

Frank, finding he had slain the girl, had gone to get the envelope and destroy it, and whatever suspicion might thereby be directed toward him."

Says Frank Established Alibi.

Mr. Arnold argued chiefly the protested circumstances of the trial, namely the prosecution's tactics and the evidence presented in effort to convict.

He also laid great stress upon the time element, in which, he averred, Frank had established an insurmountable alibi.

"Dorsey strove to twist into a suspicious circumstance Frank's writing a letter to his uncle in New York on the day of the tragedy.

The letter stands for itself, however, an argument of indisputable fact.

Then, there is a telephone call on which the prosecution dwells greatly, because Frank, upon leaving the factory late in the afternoon, left the night watchman with a man who had been discharged for stealing, and that night had been called up to ascertain if this man had left the premises."

"The state relies much upon the part played by Newt Lee, when their own star witness, Jim Conley, says the body was disposed of by 1:30 o'clock.

Newt didn't arrive at the building until 4 p. m."

"Another claim of the state is that Frank employed counsel on the day the body was found, and that his action was clear indication of guilt."

"When Haslett, the policeman, went to Frank's home that day and virtually placed Frank under arrest, Sig Montag, president of the factory, knowing that Frank was not acquainted in police circles and that he was a northerner, practically a stranger in the city, telephoned Herbert Haas and had Haas go to police headquarters to look into the matter and see that Frank had the proper advice and attention. That is how he happened to have an attorney."

"The next contention of the state to which strong objection is made is that for the week or so during Frank's arrest that his wife did not visit him, which showed, according to the state's claim, that she was conscious of his guilt.

As a matter of fact, and as was shown at the trial, Mrs. Frank was asked by Frank not to call at the jail, because of the surroundings and atmosphere of the place."

The next is the Minola Mc Knight affidavit.

She was taken to Dorsey's office and confronted with her husband, who had concocted a story.

Then, she was carried, screaming and hysterical, to police headquarters, where she was kept all night in prison.

The following morning, they made a statement and got her signature to it.

Repudiated Affidavit.

"She repudiated this on the stand and said she signed the statement merely in order to get out of jail, and I am convinced she was telling the truth."

"The next is that Frank tried to mislead the detectives in regard to the time slip taken from the clock in the investigation of Newt Lee.

The slip was positively identified as the original punched that night by Lee."

"The state put up ten factory girls who swore that Frank's character for lasciviousness was bad.

On the other hand, Frank's good character was certified to by 103 unimpeachable witnesses."

"Two girls stated that they had seen Frank go into a dressing room frequently with Rebecca Carson, a forelady in the plant.

There was no lock on the door of this dressing room, the two went into it openly, and this surely is no proof that he killed the girl.

A man named Dalton was their next best star witness.

He is a man with a larceny and chain gang record.

He told on the stand of having carried a girl named Daisy Hopkins into the pencil factory basement, and that he had seen Frank consorting with women in his office.

Even Daisy Hopkins denied this."

"Then, they put up a boy named Turner at the eleventh hour.

He said he had seen Frank talking to Mary Phagan, and that Frank appeared intimate with her.

He was unable, however, to describe Mary Phagan and did not know any other girls in the factory. That shows the boy was palpably in error."

"Next they show some purported blood spots form the metal room and alleged attempts to conceal them.

Evidence in plenty was produced showing that workmen often cut their hands and fingers where the spots were found.

Even the doctors, however, could not tell definitely whether the spots were human or animal blood."

"The ground floor of the factory building was an ideal place for an assassin to rob the girl, slay her and dispose of the body.

Mrs. Mattie White stated she saw a negro resembling Conley sitting in the shadows of the first floor shortly, after Mary Phagan came in.

Conley was a negro always short of money, always borrowing and pawning a criminal with a record.

He was always reading the newspapers after the murder, absorbing them with avid interest."

"Upon his arrest, however, he denied he could write or read.

When the detectives, however, confronted him with a sample of his own handwriting, he admitted having written the murder notes.

Later, they obtained various and sundry confessions, each in conflict with each other."

"The time element is the most important factor in the Frank case," said Mr. Arnold.

"George Epps, the newsboy, testified that he accompanied Mary Phagan to town on the day of her death and that the car on which they came arrived at Marietta and Forsyth streets at 12:07 o'clock."

"Other witnesses swore that the walk from that point to the pencil factory would consume at least 3 minutes.

Mary Phagan couldn't possibly have been in the factory before 12:05 o'clock.

That is the state's allegation.

In truth, it would have been impossible for her to have arrived there before 12:10 or 12:12 o'clock."

"Story Completely Changed."

"After Conley's statement of May 29, his case was taken out of the capable hands of Messrs.

Harry Scott and John Black, who had handled it mighty well, and was put in the hands of Detectives Starnes and Campbell, who were working in co-operation with the office of solicitor general.

And, lo and behold!

When Conley goes on the stand, there is hardly a resemblance to his story to either of his previous statements."

"We showed by scores of witnesses that Frank was at home at the time Conley says the body of Mary Phagan was put in the basement.

Dr. Harris a state witness showed by his cabbage tests that she had met death at a specific hour.

It is all plausible proof that Conley slew the girl.

Then, again, nobody heard the elevator run at the time Conley says he carried the corpse down on it."

"Now, your honors, this jury was frightened entirely out of its wits. We were confronted at every turn by outbreaks and manifestations of the mob. We asked, at the outset, that the public be excluded from the trial.

(Mr. Arnold here cited a number of instances wherein the mob spirit had been exhibited.

He also told of Judge Roan's conference during the last day of the trial with police and military officials in regard to handling the situation.)"

"Now, I want to deal lastly with Dorsey's unfair and unwarranted argument, and will show you some points in which he was unfair."

"First, his argument that our failure to cross-examine character witnesses refuted the evidence of good character which we had produced."

"His argument that Mrs. Frank's failure to visit Frank in police headquarters, which argument was inflammatory and damaging to the mind of an untrained jury."

"His argument that our expert testimony was from family physicians."

Mr. Arnold also recited a number of other protested arguments, closing his speech at 11:40 a. m.

This morning's session will be opened at 9 o'clock by resumption of the solicitor's argument.