Chapter 7 opens with the Inquest Following a protracted interview between Frank and Newt Lee at the police station on Tuesday night, the coroner's inquest got under way on Wednesday morning. The two suspects were brought together, according to the cops, in the hope that Frank would get the black man to confess. At the police station on Wednesday morning, hundreds of witnesses—including factory girls and others—came to give testimony at the inquest. At 9:10 a.m., the investigation got under way. In the board of commissioners meeting room's closed doors. Officers W. F. Anderson and Brown were the initial eyewitnesses.

They described in great detail how they learned about the murder and how they found the body on that terrible Saturday night. A graphic description of how the corpse was torn and mutilated in the weak cellar light was included in Officer Anderson's testimony. The body could not have belonged to a white girl unless witnesses were within 15 feet of it.

The witness said that when someone picked up a letter next to the corpse, he identified it as the letter written on a slip of yellow paper. Later, another communication that he was unfamiliar with was found by someone. A pencil was found around five feet away from the girl's corpse.

Nearby, there was a pad from which the slip had obviously been torn. He described the basement as being a long, narrow enclosure between rock walls, with the elevator shaft nearer the front, a boiler on the right about halfway back, and a barrier on the left enclosing what looked to be a waste area. The girl's corpse was on the left after the boiler, an open bathroom was on the right, and there was a door at the rear. Near the elevator, someone found the girl's left slipper. There was no headgear on her that he could see. Although he couldn't remember how she was dressed, he thought it was in some form of black material.

At 11:45 a.m., Newt Lee entered the ring. He testified to arriving at the facility at 0400, leaving when Frank told him to, and returning at 6:00 p.m. He talked of Frank's worry over Gantt's visit to the factory, Frank calling him early in the evening to check on him, and the finding of the dead. Despite the fact that investigators and officers indicated the body was face down, Newt said he discovered it face up. Newt, on the other hand, insisted that he had never touched the body. In response to the cops' claims that he couldn't tell it was a white female.

He stated he could tell by the hair, which he claimed differed between white and black women. J. G. Spier of Cartersville was the last witness to testify before the jury adjourned Wednesday morning. He swore that he saw a girl and a man Saturday afternoon in front of the pencil factory, that they were excited and nervous, and that the girl was the same one he saw Sunday at P. J. Bloomfields Chapel the dead Mary Phagan Wednesday afternoon. The first witness to testify was George Epps, the young newsboy who arrived in town in the vehicle with Mary Phagan.

An intriguing aspect of his evidence was his claim that Mary had informed him that Mr. Frank had smiled at her and appeared suspicious. In his testimony, E. L. Sentel mentioned seeing Mullinax out late on Saturday night with a woman he thought was Mary Phagan. While a third witness, who had previously told detectives he had seen Mary Phagan that afternoon, showed up at the inquest to admit he was mistaken, another witness, a neighbor, claimed to have seen her at 5 o'clock near her home. Sentel was convinced by the officers that the woman he saw wasn't Mary Phagan.

A factory worker named R. P. Barrett said that he saw bloodstains next to Mary's machine on the second floor, suggesting that she may have started her fight for survival there rather than in the dim basement. Gantt went on to the witness stand and reiterated what he had told the police. Mary Phagan's stepfather, J. W. Coleman, described how he and her mother were terrified the night of the murder in his testimony.
One of the most important witnesses at the hearing was Frank M. Barry, an assistant cashier at the Fourth National Bank, who said that the notes found close to the girl's body were written in the same hand as numerous previous notes that the Negro watchman Newt Lee had written for the investigators at police headquarters.

Following then, the hearing was moved until Thursday. By adjourning the inquest at 6:00 on Wednesday afternoon, the police were one step closer to solving the riddle surrounding the odd death of little Mary Phagan.