Comments on: Who Really Solved the Mary Phagan Murder Case?

By: Damian Andrews

Damian Andrews — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 15:31:04 +0000

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?

By: Damian Andrews

Damian Andrews — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 12:49:05 +0000

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.

By: Damian Andrews

Damian Andrews — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 12:29:13 +0000

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.

By: Damian Andrews

Damian Andrews — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 11:39:36 +0000

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.

By: Leo Frank trial

Leo Frank trial — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 17:14:42 +0000

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

By: Dean Hallworth, PhD

Dean Hallworth, PhD — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 01:11:40 +0000

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/

By: Anabel Barnett

Anabel Barnett — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:13:47 +0000

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.

By: Shelley

Shelley — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 18:20:25 +0000

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.

By: Leo Frank

Leo Frank — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 01:41:32 +0000

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/

By: Beth McGarry

Beth McGarry — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 23:50:31 +0000

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….”