Audio Book: The Frank Case, part 3

WE ARE proud to present today, on the 107th anniversary of the foul murder of Mary Phagan, the third and concluding part of our audio version of an extremely rare contemporary book on the murder and the trial of Leo Frank, her killer, entitled The Frank Case — read by Vanessa Neubauer.

It becomes obvious in this concluding segment that this is a pro-Leo Frank book. Not only is Frank’s very odd unsworn statement (in which he literally spent hours going over every irrelevant detail of his company’s financial statement, and which obviously did not make a good impression on the jury) praised to the skies, but long extracts from it are quoted — some of them twice!

Nevertheless, despite its partisan bias, this is a valuable book. It is valuable for what it does not contain. Despite being rather pro-Frank, and being written in 1913, literally weeks after the events it describes took place, it does not allege, as modern pro-Frank propaganda-pieces do, that “anti-Semitic mobs” shouted threats including “hang the Jew or we’ll hang you” at the judge and jury. It does include the acknowledged episode of Frank’s attorneys asking for a mistrial after prosecutor Dorsey received some mere applause from the courtroom audience during the trial — but not a single mention of the much worse “hang the Jew” threat allegation, nor of any defense references to it or to anything similar. It’s safe to conclude, I think, that such threats simply never took place and are a later invention — for surely the defense, if not the judge, would have taken notice of them.

There is also no mention of “bite marks” on Mary Phagan’s body, another decades-later hoax conjured up by pro-Frank partisans. Such a sensational development could hardly have been ignored by the defense, prosecution, or a lurid-headline-loving press.

We at the Mercury are offering this audio book in three parts in April of the year 2020, in commemoration of the life of young Mary Phagan, who died at the hands of Leo Frank on 26 April, 1913 — 107 years ago this month.

To hear part 3, the concluding part, of The Frank Case, simply press the play button on your screen.