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SALISBURY JURY
OPENS PROBE OF LYNCHING CASE
t'ourt Asks Sweeping Inquiry to Include Outside Influences
ATTORNEY GENERAL TO ASSIST STATE
Total of 102 Witnesses
Summoned in the
Investigation
Salisbury, Md., March 14 (fi>) —A sweeping- inquiry to include study of all outside influences and contributing events was asked today by Judge Joseph L. Bailey in his charge to the Wicomico County Grand Jury shortly after it assembled to begin an investigation into the lynching of Matthew Williams, negro.
Not only did the jurist ask for a probe into the lynching o[ the negro who had shot and killed Daniel J. Elliott, prominent lumberman, but also he charged the jury to go into the events which preceded the hanging and the activities ot an "outside organization" on the Eastern Shore.
Many Witnesses
The investigation by the grand jury will start tomorrow with the summoning ot the first of 102 witnesses called by state's attorney Levin C. Bailey to testify.
City, county and state police, prominent residents of Wicomico, Worcester and Somerset counties, nurses and attaches at the Peninsula General Hospital are on the list of witnesses.
Attorney General William Preston Lane, Jr., will come here tomorrow to assist the state's attorney in presenting the evidence to the grand jury. They also will be assisted by Deputy Attorney General Anderson, who with detectives from Baltimore have conducted a quiet investigation for several weeks during which they made stenographic reports of statements made by scores of persons who were questioned.
In his charge to the jury, Judge Bailey did not say the "outside organization" was the international labor defense league, but remarks were so pointed that his designation of the Communistic organization was not necessary.
Frequently during his discourse, the jurist referred to "outside interference" in court procedure and "false accusations" made against officials and residents of the Eastern Shore preceding he Elliott murder and lynching. He, tacitly laid the blame for the murder and the subsequent lynching on the activities of Communist organizations throughout the Eastern Shore.
The jurist referred to the international labor defense league without naming it in connection with "another care" on the Eastern Shore. He meant by "another case" tho slaying of Green K. Davis and his family by Euel Lee, a negro, who since has been convicted of one of the slayings and sentenced to death. The conviction has been appealed.
Williams, an employe ot Elliott, went into the office of the lumberman on December 4, while the later was talking over the telephone. The negro fired his pistol into his employer's body and tried to flee.
Elliott's son saw Williams running away from the scene of the crime and fired at him. One of the bullets hit the negro who with his own gun inflicted a less serious wound on himself.
Williams was taken to the Peninsula General Hospital where a mob of more than 2.000 gathered that night. Police authorities stopped the mob at the main entrance but nineteen of the mobsmen entered a side door, dragged the negro from his bed and took him to the court house where they hanged him to a tree.
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