Douglas Daily Dispatch

MAN CONVICTED OF LIVE GIRL'S DEATH PROBED

HARLAN, Ky., March 21 (AP)—Harlan county's "travesty of justice" in which a woman is alleged to have by perjured testimony conceived in jealousy, sent a man to prison under life sentence, came back before a grand jury today.

A petition for a pardon for Conley Dabney, 26 years old, under life sentence for the "murder of Mary Vickery, 16, was being circulated today. Judge J. C. Forester ordered the grand jury to "sift the case to the bottom."

"A frightful travesty has recently been committed in Harlan county," Judge Forester said. "A man was indicted in this court on a charge of brutal murder and assault of a 16 year old girl. This man is serving time in the penitentiary under a life sentence for the murder of a girl who is alive and at the present moment is here in Harlan.

"The jury decided the case upon the evidence of witnesses. One of these witnesses detailed the murder of that girl as an eye witness. A more dastardly deed is inconceivable."

Miss Vickery who came back Saturday with a story of having left home because she was dissatisfied and Marie Jackson, 27, the state's principal witness at Dabney's trial, were among those expected to be called before the grand jury. Both are being held pending an investigation. Dabney, in a statement made at the reformatory, the day Miss Vickery showed up said the Jackson woman testified against him because he would not leave his wife and two children and go with her.

Miss Jackson stubbornly clings to her story—that she saw Dabney kill a girl known to her as Vickery.

County officials today sought to identify the body found in an abandoned mine after the Vickery girl had disappeared. Charles Vickery identified a coat and ring found on the body as articles resembling those belonging to his daughter. Positive identification of the body itself was impossible, Sheriff George S. Ward said today.