Probably Will Not Reveal Presence in City as He Investigates Phagan Case
Colonel Thomas B. Felder said Wednesday that Detective William J. Burns had not yet arrived in New York from his European trip, but that upon doing so he would almost certainly set out immediately for Atlanta to work on the Mary Phagan strangling case.
Felder knows precisely when Burns is expected to reach the city but is deliberately withholding that information for the purposes of the investigation.
"There was no authority for the statement that Detective Burns would be in New York on Tuesday," Felder said. "The date of his arrival has been known in my office, but it had not been made public."
He added that Burns would very likely slip quietly into Atlanta without announcement, conduct his investigation, and depart before most people were aware from their own knowledge that he had ever been on the case.
In Touch With Burns Agency
Felder has remained in constant contact with Raymond Burns, son of the detective and secretary and treasurer of the Burns Agency, who operates out of the New York office. The agency is being kept current on all significant developments in the mystery as they emerge. A full outline of the case will be placed before Burns the moment he arrives at his New York offices.
Handwriting Evidence Grows in Importance
The significance of the two notes found beside Mary Phagan's body continued to grow Wednesday, when several handwriting experts were summoned before Solicitor General Dorsey.
At the Coroner's inquest, one expert had testified that in his opinion the notes were written by Newt Lee, the night watchman at the National Pencil Factory, and two other experts had offered unofficial corroboration of that view. Dorsey, however, has not been satisfied with that conclusion, and has since located experts who reach a different finding entirely.
The handwriting in the notes, these newer experts contend, shows a level of education and training that Lee does not possess. Lee would have required two or three months of instruction before he could produce writing of the quality found in the notes. His own natural handwriting displays a pronounced slant, while the writing in the notes approaches the vertical. The final letters of words in Lee's specimens end abruptly, while the same letters in the notes are carefully rounded, a characteristic associated with deliberate penmanship training.
Mary Phagan's Own Handwriting
A poem said to have been composed by Mary Phagan herself will be among the handwriting specimens compared against the notes found in the factory basement. The poem is titled "My Pa," and her stepfather, J. W. Coleman, says Mary was its author. It reads as follows:
My pa ain't no millyunaire, but, Gee! He's offul smart! He ain't no carpenter, but he can fix a feller's cart;
