Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1914-03-09
DEATH NOTE
| PAD DA TE
IS PIVOT
Defense to Contend That CoHIey
Found Old Paper in Basement
and Did Writing There.

Leo NJ. Franks lawyers were busy
Monday putting into shape the new
evidence to be presented to Judge
Ben Hill in the extraordinary motion
for new trial.
While the motion will contain a
great mass of evidence set forth as
newly discovered" it is more than
likely that the principal point-the
handspring OF the new battle-will be
the date on which certain pad Of
paper, used by Conley to write the
murder notes" on, was used previ-
ously for its more regular Office of
transcribing factory orders.
Old Pad Was Used.
The defense will try to show, that
the pad on which Conley wrote the
murder notes could not'7haye been
taken by Frank (as Conley stated
from his DESK" because it was an
old pad, used up not later than 1909,
while H. f. Becker was master me.
chanic, and, containing merely the
carbon duplicates of old acquisitions.
would not have been in Franks of
fee, but down in the basement, with
other waste paper.
In fact, the discovery has been made
that just below the second line Of
Conleys straggly writing there ap-
pears the faint imprint in carbon Of
a bold and characteristic hand-the
traces of the signature Of H. f. Beck
er, who left the factory months before
the murder of Mary Phagan, but who
was there in 1909, at the time the de-
tense will contend the order blanks
were used.
The blanks themselves, in fact, were
dated for some year previous to 1910.
as the blank date was 1870" instead
of Isl" as it would have been for
the later issue.
Old Copies in Waste Paper.
The defense contends that the old
carbon copies of Becker's order blanks
had been carried to the basement as
waste paper, and will attempt TO
show, in the plea for a new trial
and in the trial itself, II granted
that it was in the basement, near the
body of his victim, that Jim Conley
hurriedly procured the old order
blanks, and after a slovenly attempt
10 erase the carbon traces, inscribed
the struggling characters that placed
the blame on some long, tall, black
negro"-the antithesis of short,
stocky, ginger cake" Jim Conley.
For the rest of the new evidence"
there is the reputation of Albert
Mcknight, that Of Nina Formby and
Georges Epps, and the statement Of
Mrs. Ethel Harris Miller that she saw
Frank at the corner of Whitehall and
Alabama streets at the time he was
supposed by the State to have been
helping Conley to dispose of Mary
Phagan's body.
Then there is an affidavit by Helen
ferguson, a friend of Mary Phagan,
who says she was frightened by Jim
Conley, drunk and insulting, the
week before Mary Phagan was killed.
Frank, in a statement composed by
himself at the Tower, has gone fully
into the points on which the State
based its case against him, and, in
list Of seventeen replies made to sug-
gested queries, has made a careful
effort to show injustice and preju-
dice in connecting him with the muir
Ger of Mary Phagan.
Frank begins with the fact that he
let Newt Lee, the Waterman. have
that Saturday afternoon off from his
work, follows with the writing Of the
mysterious notes, comments on his
refusal to see Jim Conley after his
arrest, and finishes by explaining what
he means by the terms prejudice and
persecution"
1T is nothing to say that Newt Lee
vas let off for the first time since he
Continued on Page 2, Column 4.