Sunday, 22nd March 1914: Burns To Quiz Who Have Had Part In Murder’s Probe, The Atlanta Journal

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Newspaper Men and Others to Be Questioned by Detective Burns he Expects to Satisfy All With Report

ATTORNEY ARNOLD BACK;

NEW DISCLOSURES SOON

Solicitor Dorsey Gets Paper From Former Pencil Factory Employee Combating Becker's Evidence, It Is Said Thorough satisfaction with the results so far obtained in his investigation of the Phagan murder case was expressed by Detective William J. Burns Saturday evening.

The detective reiterated his assertion of last Monday that he was confident of his ability to clear up the case to the entire satisfaction of the public.

Mr. Burns indicated that he was fully cognizant of the fact that the public would expect indisputable proof to back up his final conclusions, and he seemed willing to accept such a burden.

His remarks and attitude carried the inference that the public would not be disappointed.

No intimation as to when he expected to finish his investigation was given by the detective.

He said he was progressing nicely but that there was still a great deal of work to be done.

"I have brought the investigation to a point where I require the services of two more experienced assistants," said Mr. Burns, "and I have wired for Dan Lehon, superintendent of my New Orleans branch, and Guy W. Biddinger, head of my New York agency.

Lehon will arrive here Sunday and Biddinger will come on Monday or Tuesday.

These men are experts of the highest type."

LEAVE CITY MONDAY.

Mr. Burns will leave Atlanta Monday for a trip of several days.

He says he will probably go to New York before he returns.

He would not say whether his trip had anything to do with the Phagan murder case.

There was a rumor Saturday afternoon that he and Leonard Haas, of Frank's counsel, were going to New York together to interview a witness.

Mr. Haas stated that this was not correct.

He said that he was going to New York on business and would leave Atlanta Sunday morning, but that his trip had nothing to do with that of Mr. Burns.

During his conversation with a Journal man Saturday evening Mr. Burns stated that he had received numerous letters bearing on the Phagan murder case.

Some of these, he said, offered him what the writers thought was information, while others were anonymous and vilifying.

"These anonymous and vicious letters do not worry me in the least," said the detective, who laughingly remarked that he gets similar letters on every big case, which he undertakes.

TO QUIZ REPORTERS.

That it was his intention before he gets through to talk at length with everyone who has had even the remotest connection with the murder case was stated by Mr. Burns.

"I expect to even question all the newspaper men who have been intimately connected with the case," said Mr. Burns, "and on these occasions I will do the interviewing.

This will be turning the tables on the newspaper boys, but I am sure they will willingly give me whatever information they may have gathered in their work.

And newspaper men never fail to garner important facts they are semi-detectives, as it were."

Mr. Burns declared that he was striving to get the public mind in normal and dispassionate condition about the Phagan murder case.

He said that all he wished was for the public to keep an open mind so that it could weigh facts without bias or prejudice.

Such an atmosphere, he said, would greatly aid an impartial investigation.

Asked when he expected to interview Jim Conley Mr. Burns said that he did not know but that it would, of course, be necessary for him to talk with the negro, which he said he would do at the proper time.

"And I will also confer with Solicitor Dorsey, Police Chief Beavers, Detective Lanford and others who have worked on this case," he added.

NOT WORRIED BY SMITH.

The apparent determination of W. M. Smith, Conley's attorney, to keep Mr. Burns from talking with the negro, except under conditions to be prescribed (Continued on Page 2, Col. 2.)

PAGE 2, COLUMN 2

BURNS TO QUIZ ALL WHO HAVE HAD PART IN MURDER'S PROBE (Continued from Page One.)

by the attorney does not seem to be giving the detective any concern.

"Just why Mr. Smith should be so apprehensive about what I may ask Conley and what Conley may answer me is rather puzzling," said Mr. Burns.

"The truth is all I want from Conley, and the truth will suffice."

ARNOLD RETURNS.

Attorney Reuben R. Arnold, of the Frank defense, returned to Atlanta on Saturday afternoon after a week's trip to Washington and New York, and important developments in the Frank case are expected to follow his return.

While Mr. Arnold did not make the eastern trip on matters connected with the case of Leo M. Frank, it is known that the other attorneys for the defense have awaited his return to make certain important moves in the case.

New and sensational affidavits from witnesses at the trial and people, who might have been witnesses had they been found before the factory superintendent faced the jury, are said to be in the hands of the defense, and it is considered probable that Mr. Arnold will make them public.

Frank, although seen daily by many newspapermen, has not authorized an interview during the week, preferring to keep silent while the great detective is at work on the case.

Frank is being flooded with letters from people all over the country whom he has never known.

Many of them sympathize with him, and the majority ask him some question about the case.

Practically all of the questions asked him are the same as the ones he has repeatedly answered in the newspapers.

ANSWERS LETTERS.

Despite this fact, however, Frank is trying to answer every letter and every question.

As a result, he is quite busy with his bulky correspondence.

He is now about 50 letters behind, but expects to answer them all.

Despite the fact that by the court's decree he has less than a month to live, Frank continues to be quite cheerful.

The gloom of the death sentence has not driven away hunger or sleep.

He eats three hearty meals a day, according to the jailers, and averages more than nine hours sleep each night.

Friends calling at night often keep him awake until after 11 o'clock, but then he always sleeps until 8:30 or 9 in the morning.

Dorsey Prepares to Attack Becker's Evidence

Documentary evidence which is said to combat in some way the evidence favorable to Leo M. Frank offered by H. F. Becker, formerly employed in the National Pencil factory, has been delivered to the solicitor and is being held for the state's further resistance of the attacks by Frank's lawyers on the murder verdict.

The nature of the document is not disclosed.

It was turned over to the solicitor Friday afternoon by Sam Henley of 368 Whitehall street, formerly an employee of the pencil factory.

Later the solicitor admitted having received an important paper from Henley.

Henley worked in the pencil factory while Becker was there, it is said, and left it about the same time Becker left.

He was a nickel-plater and worked in the metal room near Mary Phagan.

He is said to have known well both the murdered girl and Becker.

Henley's statement is that the document he gave the solicitor contradicts Becker's testimony in important particulars.

PAGE 23, COLUMN 1

"HOW WILL I SOLVE THE PHAGAN MURDER MYSTERY?"

"BY COMMON SENSE"

SAYS BURNS.

William J. Burns

By Angus Perkerson

"WILL I solve this mystery?" asked William J. Burns last week, as he cracked a soft-boiled egg, which he has every morning along with reporters in the pink and white breakfast room at the Georgian Terrace.

"Absolutely."

"You'll prove who is the murderer?"

"Exactly."

"How?"

Mr. Burns stirred his coffee and added another lump of sugar.

"I'll use common sense. I'll see everything and everybody having anything to do with the case. I'll use experience the years have brought me. And I'll stick to it until I have the answer."

"By that I mean, proof enough of the murderer to satisfy every right-minded individual."

He sipped his coffee, found it sweetened to the exact lump, and asked the waiter for a napkin.

"It was a pleasant dinner the newspaper publishers had the other night, wasn't it?" observed Mr. Burns.

"One man there reminded me of a chap I knew in the weights and measures bureau in Washington.

Tremendously interesting fellow.

I remember coming over with him from Europe on the Imperator "

Unmysterious Mysteries.

"Mr. Burns?" asked the reporter on the right, "Can you take the evidence the police have and sift and arrange it so it will spell the name of the murderer?"

"You're too indirect," he protested.

He turned to the soft-boiled egg, and conversation lagged.

He laid down his spoon, and everyone leaned forward.

"This man I was telling you about "

"What makes you sure you can solve this mystery?" asked the reporter on the left hastily.

"Because," answered Mr. Burns seriously, "There never was the criminal who didn't leave evidence behind him.

He's like a man walking in the sand. No matter how careful he may be the trackers are there."

"Circumstances sometimes muddle the facts and make them hard to discover and arrange. But, after all, mysteries seldom are very mysterious."

"The trouble with most detectors of crime is their faithfulness to their first theory.

The thing happened this way, they decide.

And from then on they are blind to any other possible explanation of the affair.

They see everything from the angle that suits their theory. They are blind to anything that's opposed to their first belief."

"One thing that's helped me is avoiding that fault. I'm willing to change my theory a thousand times if there's reason. And in this case as in every other I'm here to stay until I've found the answer."

Truth Is the Answer.

"And the answer you're looking for "

"Is the truth. If I found proof that Frank was the murderer, I'd publish it as quick as I could get it. That's what I said when I came here, and I must say it didn't make the people who employed me hesitate."

"You see," continued Mr. Burns, 'when you're searching out crimes, you strike a clew every now and then that leads you into a blind alley. You find something that looks good, and you think it's going to take you where you want to go, then you find all of a sudden, it's brought you up against a brick wall.

You can't go another step that way. All that's to be done is to turn around, and try another route."

"I've known good fellows who'd find themselves brought up short this way two or three times, and then quit the case. I think the reason I've had such success is because I don't quit. If one effort fails, I start over again. If one clew proves no good, I try another."

"The blind alleys simply turn me round and set me on another course."

"Now, as in every other instance, I'll stay on the ground till the case is finished. I may have to leave Atlanta on other business once or twice before I make my report, but with these exceptions, I'll remain right here until I have the whole thing cleared."

His Method Is No Method.

"I don't think my task is particularly difficult. The explanation of how the murder was done will not be hard to arrive at. I will find the solution to the mystery, and I will do so by collecting every bit of evidence that has anything to do with the case and by treating every bit of evidence that has anything to do with the case and by treating this material in a common-sense way."

"I have no method. No one can have a cut and dried process to apply to every case as you would a set formula to a mathematical problem. Every crime is different and must be treated in a different way."

"My rules are to work hard, show whatever good judgment I have, and then to use my experience in eliminating and arranging the evidence I have collected. Knowing what facts to put aside as unimportant, and what to recognize as significant, is as important or more so than finding clews."

"You may say from me," added Mr. Burns, "that when my report is made, I will explain fully how and by whom the Phagan murder was committed."

"And when will you make your report?"

"That I can't tell."

He finished the soft-boiled egg and the third reporter leaned over.

Mr. Burns sipped his coffee and looked up, prepared for the questions.

Why He Took Up the Case.

"Why did you take up a case that's puzzled everybody else, and say for sure you'll solve it?"

"Because I will," answered Mr. Burns.

"But aren't you taking a big chance?"

"I'm not afraid of chances."

He leaned forward, speaking with emphasis.

"A fellow that's always careful of his reputation for success usually doesn't have any success that's really earned.

The only thing I'm ever anxious about is being drawn into anything questionable. I take every case to find out the truth, no matter whom it may hit. As for failure to explain a case, that never bothers me."

"As I said before, a criminal always leaves a pretty good clew. If you work hard enough and keep your eyes open, you'll catch him. I've never failed yet on any case, and I won't fail on this one."

"It's my business to solve knotty problems. That's why I took this case."

"And now, as at all other times, I'm searching for the truth when I find that I'll publish it."

Mr. Burns pushed back his chair, and smiled at his inquisitors.

"You'd like to know just how I'm working, and I guess everyone else would. But of course I can't tell you that. I'm making the investigation William J. Burns myself, and depending on others only when there are too many facts for one man to look up.

The Main Thing.

"The main thing is that I'm overlooking nothing, and that I expect to prove absolutely who did the murder by arranging this evidence and looking at it from the right angle."

Here he dropped a significant remark printed widely last week.

"Your attorney general has been absolutely honest " he began.

"Solicitor general," corrected one of the three reporters.

"Yes, your prosecuting officer. But, you know, one's vision may be distorted, now and then.

Once we get the idea into our heads that a fellow's guilty, we may not be able to get away from that notion. We're obsessed with the thought, you might say."

"As I told you a while ago, a great many detectors of crime are handicapped by the way they cling to a pet theory. They become so drawn to it that they try to make the facts fit the theory. Change your theory as the facts demand."

"I am glad," added Mr. Burns, casually, "that your chief of detectives will co-operate with me, and will help me and let me help him, if I can."

The Innocent Cashier.

"Do you like our weather?" ventured the reporter on the right, seeking for time.

"Delightful," agreed Mr. Burns.

"Who do you think is guil " began another.

"I'll tell you of a case," interrupted Mr. Burns briskly, "which shows how outward facts may be misleading, but at the same time how plain the real clew is.

A mint was robbed out in San Francisco, and $30,000 was stolen.

The cashier was the man who knew the combination and he was the man that had access to the money."

"When the shortage was discovered, guilt pointed toward him and nobody else.

But when I made an investigation, I found that the significant fat had been overlooked.

Figures had been juggled at the mint so that, after the discovery of the shortage, the people who counted the money were confused. I discovered the man who caused this confusion and I had the real criminal."

"Evidence must be taken at its real value. The spurious and unimportant must be eliminated, the significant must be recognized."

"After all, it's just a question of common sense and hard work. Some times a fellow who's trying to work up a mystery effect talks about my sixth sense. That's all rot. I've known a good many newspaper reporters that would have made better detectives than the best men in the business. And they have a lot more interesting experiences."

Wilkie's Best Story.

"The best story Wilkie of the secret service tells is about the time when he was a reporter in Chicago. He and another fellow who worked together at police station had a box where they'd leave notes for each other."

"A third fellow who was a sort of outcast, a kind of newspaper pariah, used to snoop around the station for news, and he got into the habit of peeping into this box and having a look at the notes."

"'We'll frame up on him,' decided Wilkie."

"And the next evening he wrote a note and left it in the box:

'See So-and-So (giving the name of a prominent manufacturer) on street (giving a number about fifteen miles out in the suburbs). His cashier's absconded. Big Story."

"Then he got off in one corner and watched the outcast slip up and open the box, read the note and rush out of the door.

After that, Wilkie went off and laughed all to himself.

Here was this poor fellow rushing out into a winter's night, through snow and cold, after s tory that didn't exist."

"Wilkie must have been still laughing when the poor fellow finished his fifteen-mile ride and waked up the manufacturer."

"I got the facts," insisted the poor outcast newspaper man.

"you might as well come across with the details."

"Well, we didn't want the story to get out," grumbled the manufacturer."

"I guess it is a big item for you. Since you got the start, I'll tell you the rest. And he did.

The cashier really had absconded."

The Walk to Town.

"Suppose," suggested Mr. Burns as he pushed back his chair, "suppose we all walk to town."

Since the March day was "airish" he sent for his overcoat and drew on chamois gloves.

With interviewers on both sides, something like Mayor Gaynor, who used to be cross-examined every morning as he walked to his office, Mr. Burns started down town.

"I understand your golf links are good," he smiled, "but I have very little time for recreation. I keep pretty busy."

"My agency extends all over the world, I'm giving a series of lectures, I have collaborated in a number of magazine articles, and also a play. And when we take up big cases I work on them myself."

Everyone held on his hat for the next block, and on the next conversation turned to experts.

"I don't decry the man who knows his business," explained Mr. Burns.

"But you're just as an expert as I am or anybody else. Work, common sense, and experience those are the things. And I guess the biggest of all these is sticking at it."

Books were touched on in the next block, at the Candler building the subject of travel had been reached, and as Mr. Burns paused in front of the Empire Life building where he has his office, he was speaking of the time he met Conan Doyle, author of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories.

Burns and Conan Doyle.

S. S. Mc Clure, the publisher, was along then to see how far the real-life detective and the fiction-writer detective differed.

"But we didn't differ at all," exclaimed Mr. Burns.

"We agreed that that when you map out your crime, you can solve it very easily by elaborate deduction. But when you are brought suddenly face to face with real police court murder you've got to be practical."

"And, yet, I believe Conan Doyle would have made a great detective because one can be practical, deductive, and imaginative, all at the same time."

Here Mr. Burns added something which gave a new glimpse of himself.

Newspaper men know him as the most affable detector of crime from whom they have ever sought to deduct information.

But not often has he been spoken of as a man of quick sentiment.

Investigation of crime doesn't seem to add to this quality.

"Two years ago," said Mr. Burns, "I lost a boy who would have done better work than I have. I tried to keep him out of the business. But he was meant for it. He had the analytical mind that searches out crime. He would have been the greatest of us all.

But "

"Good-bye. Glad to have seen you."

And he disappeared into the entrance of the office building, after a few moment's perplexity on every body's part as to what was the entrance.

PAGE 50, COLUMN 4

Press Comment on the Frank Trial Albany Herald.

Contending that Leo Frank did not have a fair trial, and without entering into a discussion of facts bearing on the condemned man's guilt or innocence,

The Atlanta Journal, in a leading editorial, demands, in the name of public opinion, a new trial for the man convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan.

The Journal treats the Frank case as "a finished case," so far as the courts are concerned, and one which a newspaper may therefore discuss with entire propriety.

The conviction of the accused man has been affirmed by the State Supreme Court and Frank will be hanged April 17, unless the extraordinary motion to be made by his attorneys for a new trial should be granted, or executive clemency in his behalf should be exercised.

We believe The Atlanta Journal's position is correct.

The Herald has given expression to similar views since the supreme court handed down its decision in the celebrated case, and subsequent developments have but strengthened our conviction.

We do not believe any twelve men in Georgia are so immune to the influence of passions, prejudice and the spirit of mob law, as manifested in Atlanta at the time of Frank's trial, that they could fail to be so swayed by them as to be incapable of fairness to the accused.

There was never a trial in Georgia like the Frank trial, and the sober second thought of a people who are above all things fair-minded now demands that the injustice hastily done be undone while there is yet time.

It is not within the province of a newspaper to tell the courts what they should or should not do, but it is their right and privilege to speak for fairness and justice when both are being forgotten or ignored.

Rockmart News:

The Atlanta Journal did a nervy thing in demanding a new trial for Leo Frank.

Doubt the advisability all you want to, you simply have to admire The Journal for its bravery.