William Joshua Phagan died four months before his youngest child, Mary Anne Phagan, was born. She began working in an Atlanta, Georgia pencil factory as a young child. Mary Anne was only 13 years old when she was brutally assaulted and murdered in the same factory where she worked. Local newspapers began publishing details about her very brutal sexual assault and murder. Soon newspapers throughout the country were publishing these stories and continued to closely follow the police investigation. Before long members of the public began making increasing demands for Atlanta officials to solve her murder. The intense amount of public pressure likely led to the arrest and conviction of the wrong man.

After the Georgia governor commuted the execution sentence of the man convicted of the murder of Mary Anne, an angry mob stormed the prison where he was incarcerated and lynched him. Years later, a man known to have been an agitator in that lynch mob, Bunce Napier, was arrested for the brutal rape and murder of a 14 year old Louisiana girl named Maggie Mae Giffin. Napier was quickly tried and convicted of committing her rape and murder, then executed by hanging. Soon afterwards, officials became aware of a number of striking similarities in the rapes and murders of both girls, causing them to believe Napier may have been the actual murderer of Mary Anne Phagan. Newspaper reports about this possibility led to investigators becoming aware of similar unsolved abductions in several other states. Similarities in those abductions made them suspect Napier had also been responsible for the disappearances of several teenage girls who had gone missing while he was known to have been in those areas before leaving soon afterwards.