Who Really Solved the Mary Phagan Murder Case?

a review by Mark Cohen of Steve Oney’s And the Dead Shall Rise

IN HIS 742-page magnum opus about the Leo Frank case, author Steve Oney shamelessly fails to inform the reader of who ultimately solved the Mary Phagan murder mystery in 1913.

On Monday morning, April 28, 1913, Leo Frank was taken to the Atlanta Police Station for routine questioning during the critical first 48 hours of the Mary Phagan murder investigation. In an interrogation room, Leo Frank was flanked by his two elite lawyers, Luther Z. Rosser and Herbert Haas, and surrounded by a team of police, staff, and detectives. Leo Frank made a deposition concerning his whereabouts during Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913, and about his “brief” encounter with Mary Phagan minutes after high noon.

Leo Frank’s statement was stenographed by a government magistrate named Mr. February, and the statement became part of the official record at the Leo Frank trial, registered as State’s Exhibit B (Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913). Leo Frank specifically stated that Mary Phagan entered his second floor office on Saturday, April 26, 1913 between “12:05 pm and 12:10 pm, maybe 12:07 pm.” Leo Frank also repeatedly told the police and detectives that he never left his office on April 26, 1913 between twelve noon and 12:45 pm. However, Leo Frank’s timeline alibi would dramatically change at his trial (which took place from July 28 to August 21, 1913) on August 18, 1913, when he mounted the witness stand.

At the trial of Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan, a 14-year-old girl named Monteen Stover who formerly worked at the National Pencil Company testified she went there to collect her pay envelope inside Leo Frank’s office on Saturday, April 26, 1913, at 12:05 p.m. and found Leo Frank’s office completely empty. Monteen Stover described waiting inside the office for five minutes, until 12:10 pm when she left because she thought the factory might have been deserted. If Monteen Stover was telling the truth, she had inadvertently broken Leo Frank’s alibi concerning his whereabouts on that fateful day. What was ironic about Monteen Stover’s testimony is that she was a positive character defense witness for Leo Frank, unlike 19 of his other employees and associates whose testimony suggested Leo Frank was a lecherous, licentious, lascivious, and libertine boss.

Leo Frank specifically mentioned, on August 18, 1913, the issue of Monteen Stover finding his office empty on Saturday, April 26, 1913 between 12:05pm and 12:10pm — and in doing so, Leo Frank himself solved the Mary Phagan murder mystery.

Leo Frank mounted the witness stand at 2:15 pm to make an unsworn courtroom speech to the judge and jury on the record. During Leo Frank’s four-hour trial statement, he refused to be examined or cross examined by defense and prosecution counselors, but he answered the question everyone wanted to know by directly responding to the testimony of Monteen Stover about why his office was empty on April 26, 1913 between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm. Leo Frank contradicted his earlier statement to the police and explained this five minute absence with a never before heard admission that, during those crucial moments, he might have “unconsciously” gone to the bathroom in the Metal Room.

It was an astonishing, jaw dropping, and spine-tingling admission by Leo M. Frank that left everyone in the courtroom perplexed, because there was only one bathroom on the second floor and it was located inside the Metal Room — the real scene of the crime. Leo Frank not only put himself in the Metal Room where all the forensic evidence suggested Mary Phagan had been murdered, but he put himself in the specific location at which Jim Conley testified he found the dead body of Mary Phagan.

The newfangled explanation delivered by Leo Frank on August 18, 1913 at 2:45 pm to the judge and jury was considered the equivalent of a murder confession, because the state’s prosecution team spent the entire duration of the four-week-long trial proving Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan in the Metal Room on April 26, 1913 between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm.

The Metal Room was down the hall from Leo Frank’s office, and was the place Mary Phagan had toiled for more than a year at a wage of 7 and 4/11th cents an hour. The Metal Room was where Leo Frank went to use the bathroom each and every day, as he worked down the hall in his second floor office at the front section of the National Pencil Company. When Leo Frank went to the bathroom each day between the year’s time between the Springs of 1912 and 1913 that Mary Phagan was employed, he had to immediately pass by her work station within a matter of feet — but Leo Frank denied even knowing Mary Phagan at the trial, and it became an incriminating point of contention against him.

At the trial Jim Conley reported that he discovered the dead body of Phagan in the metal department (Metal Room) bathroom at the behest of Leo Frank. Conley stated that Leo Frank asked him to move her body to the basement furnace where garbage was normally placed before being incinerated. In the aftermath of Jim Conley’s refusing to complete the job of stuffing Mary Phagan into the furnace for $200 (and thereby destroying the evidence), Conley instead agreed to write the “death notes” pinning the bludgeoning, rape and strangulation of Mary Phagan on a tall, dark, and slim black man named Newt Lee, the factory night watchman and security guard who had worked at the factory for less than three weeks. The “death notes” were found next to the body of Mary Phagan, and they describe her going to “make water” in the only place she could “make water,” which was the bathroom in the Metal Room on the second floor. There was no bathroom accessible on the first floor and the one in the dark, dingy basement was for “Negroes Only.”

On Monday morning, April 28, 1913, a factory employee named Robert P. Barret discovered a bloody tress of hair tangled on the steel handle of his lathe in the Metal Room, and moments later a 5-inch-wide fan-shaped blood stain on the floor of the Metal Room in front of the girls’ dressing room next to the bathroom. Barret testified about the forensic evidence he found, and it pointed to the same conclusion: the Metal Room had been the scene of a heinous crime of violence followed by a very poor clean-up job. All of the evidence presented at the trial pointed to the Metal Room as the real scene of the crime.

Jim Conley saying he found Mary Phagan dead in the Metal Room bathroom at the behest of Leo Frank and Leo Frank saying he might have “unconsciously” gone to the bathroom in the Metal Room at the same time he originally told the police that Mary Phagan was in his office (State’s Exhibit B), and at the same time Monteen Stover said Leo Frank’s office was empty, resulted in the case coming together at the murder trial with absolute precision.

Leo Frank entrapped himself beyond escape at his trial on August 18, 1913, at 2:45 pm.

Many have asked how many times in the annals of United States legal history has the accused made an admission that amounted to an unmistakable murder confession at his or her own trial?

If there are any doubts about Leo Frank’s August 18, 1913 murder trial confession, consider reading the March 9, 1914, Atlanta Constitution jailhouse interview of Leo Frank, in which he reconfirms his trial testimony about a Metal Room bathroom visit, specifically responding to Monteen Stover’s testimony about his office being empty between 12:05 p.m. and 12:10 p.m. on Saturday, April 26, 1913.

The solving of the Mary Phagan murder mystery is found in the fact that Leo Frank made the equivalent of a public murder confession at his trial. This is documented in the official Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913, and the Georgia Supreme Court Case File on Leo Frank, 1913, 1914. No appellate tribunal called to review the Leo Frank trial brief of evidence from 1913 to 1915, and from 1982 to 1986 disturbed the unanimous verdict of the judge and jury originally made in August of 1913. One may also read between the lines of appeasement concerning the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sponsored Leo M. Frank posthumous pardon — without exoneration — issued on March 11, 1986.

Steve Oney weaves together a fantastic collage of unsubstantiated Leo Frank hoaxes throughout his entire book And the Dead Shall Rise (2003), as part of his shameless efforts to rewrite history, exonerate Leo Frank of the Mary Phagan murder, and ultimately rehabilitate the image of Leo Frank from that of a perverted and violent pedophile, rapist, and strangler — toward that of a kind, gentle, almost mythic stoic-martyr who was unjustly scapegoated in a vast conspiracy.

By cherry-picking and misrepresenting large parts of the case, a subtext is inserted in Oney’s book — that an innocent and well-educated Ivy League Jew named Leo Frank was ensnared by the real culprit, a semi-literate and drunken stumble-bum, the African-American factory sweeper Jim Conley.

Oney downplays the fact that Leo Frank and Jim Conley had a personal relationship that was a bit too close for comfort. Leo Frank would often goose and jolly with James “Jim” Conley at the factory. Leo Frank also managed Jim’s contracts as Conley had a side business selling watches at the factory and even ripped off Mr. Arthur Pride who testified about it at the trial. In 1912, even though Jim Conley had just served a one month sentence for drunk and disorderly behavior, Leo Frank took him back at the National Pencil Company in mid-October.

Leo Frank knew for a fact Jim Conley could write, but kept this information in confidence until it was too late. Leo Frank never said a single word about Conley to the police during the early days of the Mary Phagan murder investigation, even though the “death notes” were clearly written in Ebonics, and there were only eight African-American employees, out of 170 employees in total, working at the National Pencil Company factory. Jim Conley worked at the National Pencil Company in various capacities for two years and had even done some written inventory work for Leo Frank.

Steve Oney never addresses why Leo Frank knowingly refused to tell the police Jim Conley could write.

What Steve Oney fails to elaborate fully for the reader is the most grotesque subplot of the bludgeoning, rape and strangulation of Mary Phagan: its pinning on the African-American night watchman Newton “Newt” Lee. Lee was ordered by Leo Frank on Friday, April 25 to arrive at work an hour early, 4:00 pm, on the infamous day of April 26, 1913 — so Leo Frank could go to a ball game with his brother-in-law, Mr. Ursenbach.

Oney points out in his book that weeks after Leo Frank and Jim Conley were arrested, the police arranged for them to confront each other face-to-face over the murder. Jim agreed, but Leo refused. Oney never answers the question why an “innocent White man” would refuse to confront an African-American man, accusing him of strangling a 13-year old White girl in the context of the White racial separatist south of 1913, where the word of a Black man would almost never be taken over the word of a White man.

Though Steve Oney claims he spent 17 years of his life traveling the country to research and write this colorful and thesaurus-enriched book, his analysis is shallow and myopic at best. Oney tends to wear blinders and drives with the emergency brakes on during his epic 700+ page journey, and, as a result, he does not plumb the depths of the case, leaving the reader truly frustrated, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled. No real modern forensic analysis is applied to this case by Oney despite the hundreds of documents surviving into the 21st century, including crime scene and autopsy descriptions by police, detectives, undertakers, and physicians. Oney does, however, fill his book with every crackpot theory ever advanced on behalf of Leo Frank’s defense, regardless of whether or not the inclusions stand up to even minimal scrutiny.

Pierre van Paassen, who, in addition to penning some rather incredible tales about the Leo Frank case, also claimed to have seen ghostly black dogs which could appear and disappear at will

One of the biggest frauds Oney perpetuates was originally fabricated by the tabloid-style journalist Pierre van Paassen in his book To Number Our Days, published in 1964. In this 404-page work, van Paassen spends less than two pages (pp. 237-8) recalling an incident that happened in 1922, at a time when he was in Atlanta, Georgia, working as a journalist for the Atlanta Constitution, and investigating the then almost decade-old Leo Frank Case.

To Number Our Days, by Pierre van Paassen, chapter: “Short Stand in Dixieland,” page 237, line 27:

“The Jewish community of Atlanta at that time seemed to live under a cloud. Several years previously one of its members, Leo Frank, had been lynched as he was being transferred from the Fulton Tower Prison in Atlanta to Milledgeville for trial on a charge of having raped and murdered a little girl in his warehouse which stood right opposite the Constitution building. Many Jewish citizens who recalled the lynching were unanimous in assuring me that Frank was innocent of the crime.

“I took to reading all the evidence pro and con in the record department at the courthouse. Before long I came upon an envelope containing a sheaf of papers and a number of X-ray photographs showing teeth indentures. The murdered girl had been bitten on the left shoulder and neck before being strangled. But the X-ray photos of the teeth marks on her body did not correspond with Leo Frank’s set of teeth of which several photos were included. If those photos had been published at the time of the murder, as they should have been, the lynching would probably not have taken place.

“Though, as I said, the man died several years before, it was too late, I thought, to rehabilitate his memory and perhaps restore the good name of his family. I showed Clark Howell the evidence establishing Frank’s innocence and asked permission to run a series of articles dealing with the case and especially with the evidence just uncovered. Mr. Howell immediately concurred, but the most prominent Jewish lawyer in the city, Mr. Harry Alexander, whom I consulted with a view to have him present the evidence to the grand jury, demurred. He said Frank had not even been tried. Hence no new trial could be requested. Moreover, the Jewish community in its entirety still felt nervous about the incident. If I wrote the articles, old resentments might be stirred up and, who knows some of the unknown lynchers might recognize themselves as participants in my description of the lynching. It was better, Mr. Alexander thought, to leave sleeping lions alone. Some local rabbis were drawn into the discussion and they actually pleaded with Clark Howell to stop me from reviving interest in the Frank case as this was bound to have evil repercussions on the Jewish community.

“That someone had blabbed out of school became quite evident when I received a printed warning saying: ‘Lay off the Frank case if you want to keep healthy.’ The unsigned warning was reinforced one night, or rather, early one morning when I was driving home. A large automobile drove up alongside of me and forced me into the track of a fast-moving streetcar coming from the opposite direction. My car was demolished, but I escaped without a scratch…. ”

Van Paassen’s account of these events that allegedly happened more than four decades before is faulty in several particulars. Dental X-ray forensics were in their infancy in 1913, and never used in Georgia for any murder case until countless years after Leo Frank was hanged. Is it “Mr. Harry Alexander” or Henry Alexander? And why would the attorney who represented Leo Frank during his numerous appeals say Leo Frank didn’t have his murder trial yet? Leo Frank was not lynched on his way to trial or prison in late June 1915; he was lynched 170 miles away in Marietta on August 17, 1915. Bite marks on Mary Phagan’s left shoulder and neck? None of the numerous examinations or autopsies of Mary Phagan conducted by the undertaker, police, detectives, and physicians reported in the official record and newspapers mention any bite marks on Mary Phagan’s shoulder, neck or anywhere else on her body. Van Paassen also claims an attempt was made on his life by forcing him into a head-on collision with a streetcar in which his car was demolished, but he escaped without a scratch — all this in 1922 when there were virtually no safety features to speak of in automobiles.

The definitive book on the Leo Frank case has yet to be written. Perhaps it’s time for Steve Oney to re-read and carefully study the 1,800-page Georgia Supreme Court file on Leo M. Frank, and put out a new edition of his book without all the easily-verified misrepresentations, fabrications, half-truths, omissions, and sloppy research.

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MAKE SURE to check out the FULL American Mercury series on the Leo Frank case by clicking here.

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13 Replies to “Who Really Solved the Mary Phagan Murder Case?”

  1. JeffB

    The Leo Frank case has been used as a bludgeon by such groups as the SPLC and the ADL to demonize White Southerners based on two fallacies: that Leo Frank was innocent of the crime of murdering Mary Phagan and that the investigation and trial were both marked by pervasive anti-Semitism. The evidnece clearly show otherwise in both cases.

    What is puzzling to me, when so much was and is at stake for Southern people, is why a thorough, credible, well documented effort has not been made to show that the jury finding is strongly supported by the evidence and that in fact anti-Semitism was not a factor.

    This series in The American Mercury is hopefully at least a start.

    Reply
  2. Beth McGarry

    Just finished reading Steve Oney’s book; at some point I noticed that I was getting more and more angry due in part to the over emphasis and concern about the perpetrator and less so on the victims of the murder of Mary Phagan as well as all the smoke screens! Yes, all the points you made about Frank’s initial & conflicting statements to police, Frank’s complicated relationship with Conley, the Stover testimony, etc. are on target. The
    socioeconomic/political factors that allowed for this aborted conviction were disturbing to say the least. I can certainly understand the fury of the folks who lived thru this horrible crime. And no, this is not about anti-Semitism, it is about how the rich and powerful can get away with such an atrocity and in this case vigilantism won out over a “a well documented effort….”

    Reply
  3. Leo Frank

    What Really Happened?

    100 Years Ago Today: The Trial of Leo Frank Begins
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/07/100-years-ago-today-the-trial-of-leo-frank-begins/

    Leo Frank Trial Week One
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/the-leo-frank-trial-week-one/

    Leo Frank Trial Week Two
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/the-leo-frank-trial-week-two/

    One Hundred Years Ago Leo Frank Mounts the Witness Stand
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/100-years-ago-today-leo-frank-takes-the-stand

    Leo Frank Trial Week Three
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/08/the-leo-frank-trial-week-three/

    Leo Frank Trial Week Four
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/09/the-leo-frank-trial-week-four/

    Leo Frank Trial Closing Arguments: Luther Rosser, Reuben Arnold and Frank Hooper
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/10/the-leo-frank-trial-closing-arguments-of-hooper-arnold-and-rosser/

    Closing Arguments of Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey at the Leo Frank Trial
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/12/the-leo-frank-trial-closing-arguments-solicitor-dorsey/

    Reviews of the Leo Frank Case History:

    One Hundred Reasons Leo Frank is Guilty
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/04/100-reasons-proving-leo-frank-is-guilty/

    Anti-Defamation League: One Hundred Years of Jewish Hate, October 1913 — 2013
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/10/adl-100-years-of-hate/

    Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies: Leonard Dinnerstein’s Pseudo-history About the Leo Frank Case
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2012/10/the-leo-frank-case-a-pseudo-history/

    Review of Tabloid Style Journalist Steve Oney’s the Dead Shall Rise: Who Really Solved the Mary Phagan Murder Case?
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2012/10/who-really-solved-the-mary-phagan-murder-case/

    Did Leo Frank Confess to the Murder of Mary Phagan?
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2012/09/did-leo-frank-confess/

    Reply
  4. Shelley

    Hello. My name is Shelley. (full contact information attached) My grandmother worked at the pencil factory, right next to Mary Phagan. I grew up with her stories of Leo Frank, and her version of what happened. She would roll over in her grave if she knew that Leo Frank had been exonerated. She said that they (all the young girls that worked at the factory) knew immediately that he was guilty, she said that he was a pervert, and would constantly say “ugly things” to all of them and try to “touch” them.

    Reply
  5. Anabel Barnett

    We are studying the Leo Frank case in our Peace and Justice class, and to be honest, I am appalled at all of these comments. It seems to me that Leo Frank was innocent. There was no proof that Frank actually did it. Scared people testified forced their children to testify something that wasn’t true, or straight out lied because of their prejudice and Anti-Semitism. The prosecutor was a liar and a fraud, desperate to make money. Because of that, he lied under oath, and sentenced an innocent human to death. We are studying from a book called Us and Them, in which states that Conley took Dorsey (the prosecutor attorney) on a walk through the factory, showing him how he found the dead body. Conley stated that Frank asked him to help him move the dead body down to a lower floor using the elevator. When they tried to use the elevator, there was a groaning and creaking noise. It was discovered that the elevator had crushed a girl’s umbrella. Since the umbrella had been sitting in the shaft undisturbed until then, that proved that Conley was lying. On October 2, 1914, more than one year after Frank’s conviction, Conley’s lawyer made the announcement that his own client had committed the murder, since Conley had already be convicted of a lesser charge, he couldn’t hang, but he thought they might as well spare an innocent man. In July 1915, 25 important figures in the town of Marietta kidnapped Frank, took him to a huge oak tree, and hanged him until he was dead. It would be great if people would get their facts straight before saying offense things all over the internet.

    Reply
  6. Dean Hallworth, PhD

    Anabel Barnett, did you even read the article upon which you just commented?

    The evidence is overwhelming that Leo Frank was guilty, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to The American Mercury for all of their publishing efforts in the last two years getting the truth out.

    I suggest you read some of the documentation — from original sources — that the Mercury has compiled here about this case. Start with “100 Reasons Leo Frank is Guilty,” and follow the links from there.

    https://theamericanmercury.org/2013/04/100-reasons-proving-leo-frank-is-guilty/

    Reply
  7. Leo Frank trial

    Anabel Barnett,

    Where you aware that Leo Frank made an admission at his own trial that amounted to a murder confession? Leo Frank changed his alibi and placed himself at the very time and location that the prosecution team built its case that he murdered Mary Phagan.

    If you want to learn why Leo Frank was bound over for suspicion of murder to the Atlanta grandjury, you should start reading the evidence that was revealed about him early in Mary Phagan murder investigation.

    Start with Background:

    The Coroner’s Inquest into the Mary Phagan Murder
    https://theamericanmercury.org/2015/09/the-astounding-alonzo-mann-hoax/

    After reading the Coroner’s Inquest article, read the multipart Leo Frank trial series and closing arguments by defense and prosecution counselors.

    Then Learn about the Amazing Story of Leo Frank’s wife Lucille Selig.

    https://theamericanmercury.org/2015/09/the-amazing-story-of-mrs-leo-frank/

    Finally learn about the ADL’s Alonzo Mann Hoax

    https://theamericanmercury.org/2015/09/the-astounding-alonzo-mann-hoax/

    If you read the articles: Coroner’s Inquest, Trial Brief of Evidence (multipart), Closing Arguments, Biography of Lucille Selig (Leo Frank’s wife) and ADL’s Alonzo Mann Hoax, you will learn why during the years 1913-1915, every level of the United States legal system ruled Leo Frank had a fair trial and why the evidence of his guilt was determined with absolute mathematical certainty.

    If you want to learn more about the Leo Frank case, I encourage you to visit: http://www.leofrank.org

    Reply
  8. Damian Andrews

    I have studied this case extensively and watched all the documentaries and the TV movie made about it. I have never seen a case that two opposing groups have been competing with each other to include scenarios that weren’t consistent with the historical records. There is much more to this story than what the investigations have uncovered during the time of this murder & a century after the incident. Not even once I’ve read from anybody from anywhere or in any records about the bizarreness of Jim Conley defecating in the elevator shaft and the reasons behind it. I have no doubts Jim Conley is a strange character comparing to typical struggling negros of the south of that time.
    On the other hand, it is an outright false to suggest anti-Semitism and the strong dislike of Yankees at that time had not played a part in this saga. It is not clear whether Leo Frank was guilty of the crime or whether he played a part in that crime, or whether both Jim Conley & Leo Frank was involved in the crime. What was clear is that Leo Frank was guilty of something. He was a Jewish industrialist that was exploiting poor struggling children of that time in South. The wages those girls were getting were not too far from slave labor. There is no doubt the people resented that at the time. There is no question Leo Frank and “his kind”(Jewish & Yankee) were hated during that time.
    How much of that hatred played a part in the trial was debatable, but what can’t be debated is that it did play a part.
    Jim Conley defecated in the elevator shaft for a reason. He lied over and over for a reason.
    Leo Frank incriminating himself by making confessions about his whereabouts to be consistent with the prosecution’s evidence also makes no sense. There is no doubt Leo Frank was not a typical Jew or a typical man of his level of status. He was a nervous person according to records about him.
    This whole case stinks inside out. People are heavily divided about this case, even where it happened back then as well as now. The departing governor who commuted Leo Frank’s sentence to a life in prison also went out of his way, indicating there were grounds to do that. Him having stakes at the law firm that defended Leo Frank was a conflict of interest from today’s standards, but it is unclear how conflicting it was back then. The prosecutor himself was politically ambitious and desperate to win a case(particularly against a Yankee Jew) where he would’ve elevated into a local hero status, and which it did, as it super boosted his political career.
    Again, the whole case stinks as both sides are fabricating stories that aren’t consistent with historical records about the case.
    Leo Frank’s sentence commutation was the right thing from what I can gather as it would allow the case to be reinvestigated through the legal system and find out exactly what happened to Mary Phagen. She was bashed and strangled, yet there was no conclusive evidence she was raped. The truth behind the poor girl’s murder appeared to have gotten buried behind the circus of politics and social circumstances of the American South at that time.
    There is much more to Leo Frank & Jim Conley than the records have shown us. It doesn’t look like Mary Phagen received any justice for the brutal and untimely taking of her life.
    If Leo Frank actually committed the crime and he was a lowlife pedophile as some people tend to believe, then he must go into the history books as a dumbest educated pedophile murderer in the annals of mankind because of the way he “gave up” himself during the trial. Otherwise we have to conclude Leo Frank as a severely mentally unstable and nervous person, regardless of whether he was the actual murderer or not.

    Either way, I seriously doubt Mary Phegan received any justice.

    Reply
  9. Damian Andrews

    Also, lets not forget that the only reason this case has received the status of “murder trial of the millennium” is because Leo Frank was a man of status among his native Jewish community. If he was a poor Jew, Negro or anything else, he wouldn’t have had any chance of the support he had received. There were thousand and thousands of negros were slaughtered in American south before that which nobody cares about. It is always tragedy when a single person suffers a horrific death, whether it’s Leo Frank or Mary Phagan, but it’s a statistic when it comes to all the lynchings and slaughter of the slave negros.

    Reply
  10. Damian Andrews

    Another thing I should mention about regarding the resentment or hatred toward Leo Frank is that there are clear records about his behaviour that might have fuelled the ‘natural’ hatred or northerners and Jews at that time of the southern history. Leo Frank fired his bookkeeper for a one dollar discrepancy in the books. This would indicate some deviousness in Leo Frank’s part when it came to financial matters. There is abundance of information to support Leo Frank was generally resented by everybody for what he represented and perhaps his personality and demeanour did not help, as in the above case of firing somebody for a measly amount of money discrepancy. There is no doubt his lynching was a horrible crime by the typical criminal and hateful behaviour of a good portion of white southerners of that time, but is not unlikely Leo Frank himself helped fuelling their hatred of him and his kind. In other words, Leo Frank should’ve had known what he got himself into when getting into the business of exploiting the cheap labor of poor southerners, including child labor. To a certain degree, he contributed toward his demise, consciously or unconsciously.
    All the rest needed was being at the wrong place and the wrong time, which he ‘succeeded’ when he got into the business of working at that factory.

    Reply
  11. Damian Andrews

    Why did Jim Conley defecated in the basement of the elevator shaft when there was a toilet for him(negro segregated toilet of that time) in the basement????!!
    Anybody want to have a crack at answering that???!!!
    Considering the evidence I’ve gathered from what’s available on the internet can only lead to a conclusion of Jim Conley being mentally unstable.
    Anybody want to shed a better light on that than that?

    Reply

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