232 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

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Reading Time: 4 minutes [580 words]

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X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS

The first floor was cleaned up after the murder.

**W. H. Gheesling:** I am a funeral director and embalmer. I moved the body of Mary Phagan at four o'clock in the morning on April 27th. The cord was around her neck, and the rag was around her hair and over her face. I think she had been dead for ten or fifteen hours, or longer. There were some dry blood splotches on her underclothes. The right leg of the drawers was split with a knife or torn right up the seam. Her right eye looked like it had been hit before death; it was very much swollen. I found a wound two and a quarter inches on the back of the head; it was made before death because it bled a great deal. The hair was matted with blood and very dry. The skull wasn’t crushed, but the scalp was broken. I can’t state whether the defendant ever looked at the body or not.

**Cross-examined:** Mr. Rogers and Mr. Black came with Mr. Frank and asked me to take him back to where the girl was. I took them back there, pulled a light, pulled the sheet back, and moved the revolving table and walked out between them. Mr. Frank was near the right-hand side going in, and Mr. Black was at the left. I prepared the little girl properly for burial; there was no mutilation at all on the body. I judged she died of strangulation because the rope was tight enough to choke her to death, and her tongue being an inch and a quarter out of the mouth showed she died from strangulation.

**Dr. Claude Smith:** I am a physician and City Bacteriologist and Chemist. The detectives brought these chips to my office, and I examined them. They had considerable dirt on them and some coloring stain. On one of them, I found some blood corpuscles; I do not know whether it was human blood. I examined this shirt, and it showed a blood stain. The blood on the chips was only four or five corpuscles.

**Dr. J. W. Hurt:** I am the County Physician. I saw the body of Mary Phagan on April 27th. This cord was embedded into the skin, and in my opinion, she died from strangulation. In my opinion, the cord was put on before death. The wound on the back of the head seemed to have been made with a blunt-edged instrument, and the blow came from downward. The scalp wound was made before death. I think the scratches on the face were made after death. I examined the hymen; it was not intact. I discovered no violence to the parts. The vagina was a little larger than the normal size of a girl of that age; it could have been produced by penetration immediately preceding death. She was not pregnant.

**Cross-examined:** The body looked as if it had been dragged through dirt and cinders; I think she was dragged face downward. When I saw the body on April 27th, I gave it as my opinion that she had been dead from 16 to 20 hours at 9 o'clock Sunday morning. I have formed no opinion whether this little girl was raped or had ever had intercourse with anybody.

**Dr. H. F. Horvis:** I am a practicing physician. I made an examination of the body of Mary Phagan on May 5th. There was no actual break of the skull.

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