TODAY let us remember together the death of an innocent girl, little Mary Phagan, who met her death more than a century ago this week. Her rapist and her convicted murderer was her sweatshop boss, Leo Frank, president of the Atlanta B’nai B’rith, a fraternal order then central to the Jewish establishment. Ever since the day of his arrest, that same Jewish establishment — working first at a local, then at a national, and then an international, level, worked to get her killer off the hook. There are parallels between sex-exploiter Leo Frank and those who sexually exploit young girls today — and use their ill-gotten billions to escape justice when caught.

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This week marks the 112th anniversary of the sex-murder of a 13-year-old Southern white girl, Mary Phagan, by Jewish B’nai B’rith official Leo Max Frank, on 26 April, 1913. To honor Mary Phagan’s life, and to ensure that the real identity of her killer is never forgotten, despite the massively well-funded campaign to paint him as a “victim of anti-Semitism,” we present a new edition of N. Joseph Potts’ article, originally published in 2021, entitled “Jewish Men Dying in Jail for Ravaging Young Girls: Epstein and Frank.”

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Jewish Men Dying in Jail for Ravaging Young Girls:
Epstein and Frank

THE DEATH in jail of Jeffrey Epstein several years ago recalls a very famous death of another jailed Jewish man charged (and convicted and sentenced) of crimes against a 13-year-old girl in 1913. That case, which involved only one of many rumored similar victims, involved the lethal abuse of a factory worker named Mary Phagan by the manager of the factory, 29-year-old pillar of the Atlanta Jewish community Leo Frank, who, having grown up in Brooklyn, might have seemed rather a “damn Yankee” to at least some of his neighbors. Frank’s victim, unlike any of Epstein’s known victims, was murdered in addition to being raped, and, while Frank was tried and convicted and sentenced to death, his guilt continues to be vigorously contested more than a century later by the successors to the massive and distinctly Jewish campaign to win his exoneration during and after his trial. Indeed, this campaign – to exonerate a Jewish sex killer – has never stopped, even for a moment, for 112 years. Uncounted millions of dollars have been, and are still, being spent to convince you that Leo Frank didn’t do what he did.

The two cases, while they have many and important differences, both involve Jewish men accused of raping underage White girls as well as large and enduring campaigns of national stature to secure their acquittal. In Frank’s 1913 case, America’s (then-smaller, but already powerful) Jewish power structure (which even then included large advertising agencies, public relations firms, and newspapers large and small including the New York Times) mobilized to support his exoneration, stimulated by the notion, perhaps manufactured among the larger and more-influential Jews of the northern United States, that Frank was being discriminated against because he was a Jew in the South, whose Jewish population was then less influential than that of their co-religionists to the north (Frank was, in any case, a “child” of the North, having grown up in Brooklyn). The establishment of the Anti-Defamation League in September 1913 is widely credited to Jewish outrage at Frank’s arrest and conviction for the sex killing of Mary Phagan earlier that year.

Epstein’s case entailed a much-reduced “conviction” and a much-diluted “prison sentence” along with an outrageous “non-prosecution agreement” in what now might be called its first phase, one that might reflect his vastly greater influence (read: wealth) over the juridical apparatus, and no doubt because no one had been found murdered. Frank’s case had only one phase (including appeals that went all the way to the US Supreme Court), but of course did involve a murder, the evidence for which satisfied all the jurors on the case, but has never satisfied the jury of “public opinion” as mediated by the largely Jewish-run mass media.

Jewish moguls of Frank’s day such as Albert Lasker saw to it, through vigorous fund-raising campaigns conducted throughout Jewish communities in the North, that his defense was indeed the best that money could buy. Epstein had no need for any such circling of the financial wagons; he was a billionaire in his own right – Jewish legal luminaries such as Alan Dershowitz (who has also been named in lawsuits as one of the men allegedly receiving sexual “services” from Epstein’s stable of teenage sex slaves) figured large in the phalanx ultimately mustered to defend him in the Florida case that led to the “non-prosecution” deal and his sentence to 13 months’ part-time “confinement” in a minimum-security prison (which he was allowed to leave for many hours every day) near his palatial estate in Palm Beach.

Among those ensnared in Epstein’s fiendishly woven net was the United States Attorney for Southern Florida, Alexander Acosta, who arranged for Epstein’s sweetheart deal and convenient conviction on a lesser Florida state charge. Later appointed as Secretary of Labor by President Donald Trump, he subsequently resigned under fire after Epstein was again arrested in July 2019 by the United States Attorney for Southern New York, the locus of yet more of the crimes with which Epstein was charged – all of them involving underage teenage girls.

Epstein’s guilt is not contested, neither as to the ages of his victims, nor even really as to their numbers (apparently something north of dozens). Neither Epstein nor any of his co-conspirators is implicated in any murder, though, unlike Leo Frank.

Frank’s guilt, at least of the murder of Mary Phagan, continues to be very much contested by, among others, the ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz — yes, the very same Harvard Law School professor who has for many years now led the star-studded legal team defending Jeffrey Epstein, the 21st century’s answer to Leo Frank. Naturally, the metaphorical child of the Frank case, the Anti-Defamation League, continues to beat its very loud drum to advance the cause of Leo Frank’s innocence even to the point, in 1986, of securing a kind of posthumous pardon from the state of Georgia, though rather a weak one – basically an apology for having failed to protect its notorious inmate from lynching in 1915 — as it explicitly does not pardon him for the crime of murder.

Frank’s lynching after spending more than two years in prison was the first — and last — lynching of a Jew recorded in the annals of American history. American Jewry had, over the those two years, made the Frank case a cause célèbre, not least in the media, which, even at that early time, were controlled by Jewish interests not only through ownership, such as Adolph Ochs’s New York Times, but through the massive and pervasive influence of large-scale advertisers such as merchandiser Alfred Lasker, whose tentacles reached into the hearts of virtually every newspaper large and small in the United States. Lasker, having taken the cause very much to heart, became the unofficial leader of the campaign in Frank’s behalf, a campaign that may be said to have continued vigorously today — well into its second century.

The Epstein case, unlike the Frank case, did not become a “Jewish” issue despite the Jewishness of Epstein, Epstein’s “patron” Les Wexner, Dershowitz, and many of Epstein’s other defenders. Indeed, Epstein did not, as Frank did with some distinction, take part in Jewish religious or social affairs beyond hobnobbing with ex-prime ministers of Israel and the like. But the ethnic commonality among Epstein and other Jewish men such as Harvey Weinstein and Leon Wieseltier was the subject of a recent article by maverick Jew Gilad Atzmon, volubly countering this non-ethnic quality of l’affaire Epstein. However, the non-ethnicity of the matter has seemingly left the ADL out of this reprise of the case that brought it into existence.

Leo Frank was not as rich as Jeffrey Epstein was (although his wife did come from a wealthy family), so he could not, as Epstein easily did, fund his own high-powered team of defense lawyers. But Frank did indeed enjoy a powerful defense team easily comparable to the one marshaled around Epstein. It was funded by Alfred Lasker and a nationwide fundraising campaign conducted largely through Jewish auspices, such as synagogues and chapters of the B’nai B’rith — of whose Atlanta chapter Frank was president. Indeed, Frank’s team’s successors have managed within the past year to establish Georgia’s first “Conviction Integrity Unit,” which has taken on the task of “revising” certain verdicts, such as that of convicted murderer Wayne Williams, as a kind of cover to prevent the truth – that its real purpose is to get Frank exonerated – from coming out. Unlike also-pardoned ADL benefactor Marc Rich, Leo Frank’s supporters haven’t made large donations to foundations of American presidents, but smaller donations to the foundations and political campaign funds of Georgia and Fulton County politicians may produce the desired effects quite handily. No relatives of Leo Frank are to be found among the public advocates of this campaign, nor any descendant of anyone who knew him. Relatives of Mary Phagan, however, oppose the initiative – and were not consulted in any way about it.

It is widely assumed that Epstein was murdered in jail á la Lee Harvey Oswald, to keep him from dishing the dirt on many powerful people. Frank’s death at the hands of lynchers who extracted him from jail in August 1915 is claimed to have been motivated by “anti-Semitism,” as continually asserted this past century or so by the ADL, other Frank supporters, and their latter-day successors such as Alan Dershowitz.

But that idea also is contested by many researchers, including those as diverse as National Vanguard and the Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam, publisher and author of record of The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews Vol. 3, the Leo Frank Case. This work (long since banned by amazon.com) speculates (pp. 309-330) that the lynch mob might have been encouraged, or covertly orchestrated, by the same (Jewish) parties who had supported and defended Frank’s innocence in the two years preceding the lynching. Why would these same partisans now wish their beneficiary dead? Because he might confess, of course. He was alive, in keeping with their wishes, but still incarcerated, very much against their wishes. And while in prison he might be subject, á la Rudolf Höss of Holocaust fame, to coercion, or even inducements, to confess to the crimes of which he was accused, and perhaps also there were numerous Jewish connections to the illicit sex scene and the trafficking of young girls then called “White slavery” – connections that they much preferred to remain hidden, but that Frank might decide to talk about. This would certainly never do. In fact, Frank nearly died in his cell, as Epstein did in his, after a fellow inmate cut his jugular vein with a butcher knife about one month after his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Perhaps the would-be murderer was committing a din rodef murder – in the Talmud, the killing of someone who is about to inform on a Jew or group of Jews is required – on behalf of Jewish paymasters, not unlike those said to have commissioned Jeffrey Epstein’s death.

Two months elapsed between Governor Slaton’s commutation of Frank’s sentence and the lynchers’ (they called themselves the Vigilance Committee, and were largely composed of prominent businessmen and political and judicial leaders from the Marietta area) carefully arranged transits by car (in 1913! — these were no poor people) of around 150 miles over unpaved roads from Marietta to Milledgeville, where they picked up their hapless victim, and then back again to Marietta, chosen because it was the home town of poor Mary Phagan. None of the participants in the lynching (most well-known and some highly placed) was even charged with the murder of Frank, much less prosecuted.

One wonders if, a hundred or so years from now, the ADL will secure the exoneration of Jeffrey Epstein.

Sure, they’ll claim, as soon as they think it’s safe — those young girls at Epstein’s camera-rigged place were all party-crashing gold-diggers. Epstein just got the rap because he was Jewish. That’s right — just because he was a Jew. A case of obvious anti-Semitism!

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So, this week, the 108th anniversary of Mary Phagan’s murder, let us remember her, honor her, and never forget the inveterate, malicious liars who are always and ever devoted to protecting Jewish killers and Jewish rapists – and even elevating them to the status of “victim of anti-Semitism” – and thereby enabling the Harvey Weinsteins, the Woody Allens, the Allen Ginsbergs, the Leo Franks, and the Jeffrey Epsteins of this world.

Introduction to Mary Phagan-Kean’s Insights into the Murder of Her Great Aunt

HERE ARE SOME of the key points offered by Mary Phagan-Kean in her latest interview with social media activist Ryan Dawson. (video above)

Mary Phagan-Kean’s journey into the dark and complex narrative surrounding the murder of her great aunt, Mary Phagan, began unexpectedly. Her father first shared the story after her name was recognized by a teacher, sparking a lifelong quest for truth and justice. The tale, as recounted by her father, painted a grim picture of Leo Frank, the man convicted of Mary Phagan’s murder. According to testimony, Frank was a sexual pervert who molested numerous young girls and even boys, earning him the moniker “the B’nai B’rith pedophile” — a reference to the fact that he was president of the Atlanta chapter of the Jewish fraternal order B’nai B’rith, the organization which gave birth to the powerful ADL, or “Anti-Defamation League.” Frank was even re-elected president of the group after his conviction for murdering little Mary.

The Vigilance Committee, which consisted of leading community leaders and which sought “Southern justice” after a corrupt governor (who was a partner in the law firm that defended Frank) commuted Frank’s death sentence, played a pivotal role in the case by executing him themselves after, as they saw it, outside influencers had illegally prevented his lawful hanging. (The New York Times-invented “Knights of Mary Phagan” never existed. That moniker was likely invented to link the Vigilance Committee to similar-sounding “Knights” factions of the Ku Klux Klan, in order to smear the Committee.)

The lynching of Frank was the first done by automobile, quite a feat considering the limited ownership of automobiles in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915 — further proving that prominent citizens, who were outraged by Governor Slaton’s involvement in the law firm that defended Frank, and his commutation of his sentence, were involved, and not a “mob.”

The Anti-Defamation League, an organization with a vested interest in the outcome, has been relentless in its efforts to secure a full pardon for Frank for decades. Their tactics, however, have been marred by deception and misinformation, leading to numerous hoaxes, including false claims about a pardon (the existing “pardon” does not address his guilt at all).

Mary Phagan-Kean’s father never mentioned Frank’s Jewishness but emphasized his perverse behavior. Her grandfather, Mary Phagan’s brother, was deeply emotionally affected by the case, becoming distraught when asked about it, particularly noting the resemblance between Mary Phagan-Kean and little Mary.

The narrative surrounding the case is fraught with controversy. Jews have even attempted to portray Mary Phagan as a seducer, a claim that Mary Phagan-Kean vehemently rejects.

There has been documented collusion between Jewish groups and officials to alter the wording on Mary’s commemorative plaque, with the altered plaque suggesting that Frank was exonerated for the murder — which he was not. This alteration occurred under the cover of night and was set up during secret meetings from which the Phagan family — and the public — were excluded, further obscuring the truth.

Rabbi Steven Lebow, a prominent figure in the area Jewish community, demanded that Mary’s marker be changed because it “offended” the Jewish community to tell the truth about the non-pardon. This defense of a convicted child rapist and murderer is a strange hill for Jewish groups to die on.

During the 1960s, when Jewish authors Leonard Dinnerstein and Harry Golden were writing their books on the case, the trial transcript mysteriously disappeared, making it unavailable for public scrutiny.

The best outcome of the efforts of both sides in this case, Mrs. Phagan-Kean says, has been the creation of a team to digitize and make all relevant documents on the case available and searchable online. And the best way to study the case, she avers, is to examine these newspaper articles in conjunction with the Brief of Evidence (all now available on leofrank.info and leofrank.org). Contrary to popular belief, the newspapers were pro-Frank and had Jewish editors, contradicting the notion of an anti-Frank, anti-Jewish atmosphere. Nevertheless, the firsthand reports of the trial at that time were mostly honest and paint a very different picture from that of the “Leo Frank is an innocent victim of anti-Semitism” narrative being pushed today. (One can learn, for example, that the grand jury that indicted Frank included four Jews out of 21 members, and that all voted to charge Frank with the murder.)

The Jewish community’s claims that Frank did not know Mary Phagan are untenable. Frank walked past her daily for a year, handled her pay packets weekly, and even directed police to investigate James Gannt, claiming he was “close to” Mary. These actions suggest a familiarity that contradicts his claim of ignorance.

The Anti-Defamation League’s never-ending defense of Frank has inadvertently contributed to the cause they claim to oppose: anti-Semitism.

Mary Phagan was brutally raped, as evidenced by the autopsy report, which, though difficult to read, showed no markings on her body except those of strangulation. There was blood in her panties, and family proof confirmed she was not on her menstrual cycle. ADL-linked author Steven Oney referred to Mary as a “voluptuous woman,” a claim that Parade magazine attempted to exploit this by implying she was “flirting” before her death, a particularly odious insinuation.

A 1980s miniseries, inspired by Harry Golden’s book and dubious material from Alonzo Mann, was produced without consultation with Mary Phagan’s family. This miniseries further muddied the waters of the case.

In a more recent development, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, under pressure from Rabbi Lebow and the Jewish power structure, established a “Conviction Integrity Unit” in Atlanta. This unit, ostensibly to exonerate falsely convicted individuals, including Blacks, was really created explicitly to push for the exoneration of Frank. They have even floated the idea of a new trial for Frank, despite the extreme improbability of a proper prosecution more than a century later.

Contrary to ADL claims, the “mass exodus” of Jews from the area after the Frank case never occurred. This is one of the many hoaxes that will be debunked in the forthcoming new edition of Mrs. Phagan-Kean’s book, The Murder of Little Mary Phagan.

Mary Phagan-Kean’s father’s enduring belief was that “the truth will always win,” a sentiment that continues to guide her quest for justice.

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Source: leofrank.info

In this year of 2024, on the 111th anniversary of the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan by Jewish sex killer Leo Frank, we present Lawson Wellborn’s classic article analyzing the 1980s testimony of Alonzo Mann, which is often misused by Jews, and those under Jewish influence, when they attempt to exonerate Frank. It is worth noting that not all scholars and researchers agree with Wellborn in calling the death of Leo Frank a murder — many regard it as simply the carrying out of the lawful sentence of the court in the face of an illegal commutation of the sentence by a corrupt governor.

by Lawson Wellborn

WITH THE recent commemorations of the death by lynching of Leo Max Frank, public attention has been fixed once again on the remarkable dual murders of Mary Phagan and Leo Frank. As is fairly well-known at this point, 13-year-old Mary Phagan was murdered in the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta on April 26, 1913. Leo Frank, her boss and last person to admit seeing her alive, was convicted of the murder.

His appeals went up to the Supreme Court of the United States and his conviction upheld at every level. Frank’s appeals to the administrative agencies of the State of Georgia also brought no change. Only when Governor John Slaton, a law partner of the Frank defense team, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment was Frank’s life apparently spared. But the outrage felt in Georgia over the impropriety of the Governor pardoning a client of his own law firm on his last day in office (and widely suspected of being bribed) resulted in a band of leading Marietta men planning and executing a daring break-in at the State Prison in Milledgeville, abducting Frank and driving over the primitive dirt roads of Georgia all night to hang him in Marietta at sunrise the next day.

The astonishing murder of Leo Frank has tended to soften the public’s view of his guilt in the murder of Mary Phagan.

Was Frank guilty of the murder of Mary Phagan?

His own subsequent murder is not material in establishing his innocence in the matter. It represents what might be called the “Ox-Bow Incident” mentality. We so dislike vigilante justice that we have a tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to the victims of such lynchings. Even in a case like this where Frank’s guilt was upheld at every level of the appellate legal system we recognize his subsequent murder as an assault on the entire legal system.

Francis X. Busch, a renowned trial attorney of a half century ago, pointed out one of the most powerful pieces of evidence against Leo Frank. “As has been argued in support of the jury’s verdict, that in the passage of nearly forty years since Frank’s brutal execution, not a single additional fact pointing to his innocence has come to light.”¹ Busch went on to worry if Frank may have been the victim of “one of the most flagrant miscarriages of justice in American criminal annals.”

The Phagan family conducted a full and complete interview in 1934 with Jim Conley, the star witness of the State against Leo Frank. Conley was also the man the Frank defenders settled on as the most likely murderer instead of Leo Frank. The Phagan relatives’ interview with Conley convinced them that Conley was telling the truth about Mary’s murder. Mary Phagan Kean wrote “[t]here is no way my father would have let Jim Conley live if he believed that he had murdered little Mary.”²

Thus it came as something of a shock to the general public that in 1982 newspaper attention suddenly focused on the elderly Alonzo Mann. Mr. Mann was about the same age as Mary Phagan at the time of her death and had testified as a defense witness for Frank in his capacity as Frank’s office boy at the murder trial. Now Mann emerged from the shadows with the startling revelation that he had actually seen Conley carrying the apparently lifeless body of Mary Phagan down the front staircase when he re-entered the Pencil Factory on April 26, 1913. Jerry Thompson,³ Nashville Tennessean veteran reporter and anti-Klan investigator, worked up Mann’s story and brought before the public.

Mann was given lie detector tests and passed them. “Lie detectors” are not admissible in court in Georgia — unless all parties agree. They are of limited effectiveness because pathological liars and the very best of con artists often pass while persons of a more nervous disposition fail — even when the latter are telling the truth.

The Georgia Courts have mocked “lie detector” tests as follows:

There is simply no “lie detector,” machine or human. The first recorded lie detector test was in ancient India where a suspect was required to enter a darkened room and touch the tail of a donkey. If the donkey brayed when his tail was touched the suspect was declared guilty, otherwise he was released. Modern science has substituted a metal electronic box for the donkey but the results remain just as haphazard and inconclusive.⁴

On the national level the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1998 in United States v. Scheffer,⁵ that courts could bar the admission of the results of polygraph examinations in all cases without violating an accused’s constitutional rights. The Court did so because it noted that there is no consensus in the scientific community on the reliability of the “lie detector.” In short, the highest court in the land holds the “lie detector” to be “junk science.”

Mann’s ability to pass such a questionable test at best implies that he either completely believed his story or was an excellent story teller.

The Nashville Tennessean article was a tremendous hit; it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and picked up by newspapers all over the nation. On television and radio programs commentators gleefully announced that Mann’s testimony erased all doubts — baseless though they might have been — that Frank was actually innocent of the murder of Mary Phagan. As the Tennessean’s headline for the special supplement of March 7, 1982 shouted: “AN INNOCENT MAN WAS LYNCHED.” Books, docudramas and prizes for investigative journalism rained down on the heads of the crusading scribblers.⁶

Mann’s story was significant in that it directly contradicted Conley’s testimony of how Conley got the body of Mary Phagan to the basement of the factory after the killing. As the reader may recall, Conley was definitive in his testimony that he used the elevator to transport the corpse. The elevator had always interested the Frank partisans and Mann emerged as the last living witness to the case to discuss this exact issue.

The affidavit executed by Mann may be summarized as follows:

He was called as a witness for Frank, but he did not then reveal to any lawyer about his knowledge contained in the affidavit. Now, he was coming forward after the lapse of seventy years. “I want the public to understand that Leo Frank did not kill Mary Phagan.” He blamed his parents, his speech impediment and his fear of the crowds outside the trial “yelling things like ‘Kill the Jew!’” for his reluctance to speak up. Mann stated he was too young at the tender age of 14 to have realized that if he told what he saw that Frank would have been found innocent.

Here is what Mann claimed he saw the day Mary Phagan died. When Mann arrived at the factory at 8:00 a.m, Conley was seated under the stairwell of the first floor of the Pencil Factory. Conley had already consumed a lot of beer. Mann ignored Conley’s request for money and went up the stairway to assume his duties as Frank’s office boy. Frank arrived shortly afterwards. Mann worked till before noon when Frank permitted him to leave to join his mother for the Confederate Memorial Day parade. Mann promised Frank he would return after the parade and Frank allowed that he would probably still be at the Pencil Factory.

Leaving shortly before noon, Mann had not seen Mary Phagan come to collect her pay. Conley was still lounging in the stairwell when Mann left the factory. Mann did not pinpoint his departure time. He states he could have left between 11:30 or 11:45.

He stated “[I]t could not have been more [emphasis added] than a half hour before I got back to the pencil factory.” In other words, Mann returned somewhere between 12:00 and 12:15 based on his statement. Mann entered by the front door again, and looking to his right, saw Conley with Mary Phagan’s limp body (although he didn’t know Mary’s name at the time) standing between a trap door that led to the basement and the elevator shaft. He observed no blood or wound on the body of this limp, short white girl dressed in “pretty, clean clothes.” Mann was of the impression that Conley was about to dump the body down the trapdoor. He could not recall if the elevator was on the first floor; if it was not, then the shaft would have been open as well. “…[I]n a voice that was low but threatening and frightening to me he [Conley] said: ‘If you ever mention this I’ll kill you.’”

Mann started up the stairs to the second floor. He thought he heard movements up there, but thought better of it, turned and fled out the front door. Conley reached out for him, but Mann “raced away from the building.” Arriving at home, he told his mother — whom he was to have met at the parade — what he had seen. She immediately advised him never to tell a soul. “She told me that I was never, never to tell anybody else what I had seen that day at the factory. She said that she didn’t want me involved, or the family involved, in any way. She told me to go on about my business as if nothing had happened and that sometime soon I would have to quit working there. From then on, whenever I was at work, I steered clear of Jim Conley. I kept away from him and he did the same.”

“When my father came home my mother explained to him what I had seen and what Conley had said to me. My father told me to forget it and never mention it.”

Later, when questioned by detectives, Mann never told them about his return to the Pencil Factory building. At Leo Frank’s trial, while testifying as a witness for Frank, Mann only answered the questions he was asked. He was following the advice of his mother and father and did not volunteer any further information. Mann offered his opinion that Conley was after Mary’s pay; he was not planning a sexual assault.

“Many times I have thought since all this occurred almost seventy years ago that if I had hollered or yelled for help when I ran into Conley with the girl in his arms that day I might have saved her life. I might have. On the other hand, I might have lost my own life. If I had told what I saw that day I might saved Leo Frank’s life. I didn’t realize it at the time. I was too young to understand.”

Family members continued to tell Mann not to tell anyone his story for years afterwards. An Atlanta newspaperman unnamed by Mann (but said by others to have been Ralph McGill, another crusading, Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal journalist) was disinterested in his story.

Mann also contradicted the testimony of the female factory employees who accused Frank of bringing women into the factory for immoral purposes. Mann never witnessed any such conduct.⁷ (Mann did not mention that he began working for Frank on April 1, 1913 so he had only been at the factory for twenty-six days at the time of murder.)

The Mann affidavit reopened the drive of the Jewish community for a “posthumous pardon” for Leo Frank. At a press conference at the Atlanta Jewish Community Center on April 1, 1982, the drumbeat began again. Jerry Thompson, at the press conference, was asked about the Phagan family’s reactions to all this information. “Jerry Thompson stated that some Phagan family members upheld their belief in the convicted Leo Frank’s guilt while others ‘were trying to be objective.’”⁸ “Sherry Frank (no relation to Leo Frank), area director of the American Jewish Committee, said Jewish leaders would like to make a possible exoneration of Frank an issue in the gubernatorial race this year.”⁹

Alonzo Mann, possibly because of his age and infirm heart, refused to respond to any questions except through his handlers at the Nashville Tennessean. This author contacted the Tennessean and was so informed at the time the news broke. Mary Phagan Kean was given the same answer, but because of her family connections she was finally able to meet Mr. Mann and form some impressions about him. She thought him “a fine gentleman; he believed what he had seen to be evidence of the truth.”¹⁰

Since Mann was never subjected to any cross-examination nor, evidently, even tough questioning about these matters, we are left with three possibilities concerning the worth of his testimony on an historical basis. It has long been held in Anglo-Saxon law that trial by affidavit is worthless and the cross-examination of a witness is essential to establish the truth or falsity of a proposition. So while Alonzo Mann’s affidavit is valueless from a legal standpoint, it does have historical significance and must be so analyzed as we find it.

Mann’s recollections could be (1) completely accurate and factual; or (2) weakened by seventy years of guilt and blurred memories, but basically accurate; or (3) a complete fabrication drawn up either by himself or with the assistance of other parties for a number of plausible reasons.¹¹

Since Mann cannot be examined, having answered to the highest tribunal on March 19, 1985, let us look more closely at the statement itself.

First of all, Mann states that mobs were shouting things like “Kill the Jew” outside the trial. The most careful writers on the subject all agree that this is an urban myth with no basis in fact. Steve Oney, the most recent author on the subject, points out that there is no contemporary evidence for such a statement.¹² Governor Slaton in his commutation order denied that Frank had been tried by a mob. But, like the typical urban myth, the legend persists. It is probably propelled by later events after the Slaton commutation and the assault of the “Knights of Mary Phagan” on the State Prison in Milledgeville.

In the statement Mann put himself as leaving the factory between 11:30 and 11:45. In his trial testimony, as recorded in the brief of evidence, Mann testified twice that he departed at 11:30.¹³ Since his testimony was given closer in time to the event in issue, we may presume that at least he was inaccurate in the later affidavit as to the time of his departure unless he was fudging on that topic when testifying for Frank at trial. So Mann’s affidavit is clearly at variance in this important matter with his own trial testimony given relatively shortly after the event. Given the heavy emphasis the defense attached to the timing of the assault on Mary, this is significant to say the least. It would seem highly unlikely that the skilled interrogation by Frank’s attorneys failed to unearth the later departure time (to say nothing of Mann’s return to the factory) given their theory of the case turned on the time element so heavily.

It is also noteworthy because of the importance attached to the timing of the arrival of Mary at the Pencil Factory. The defense made much of the testimony of streetcar operators that Mary could not have possibly arrived at the factory prior to 12:12 p.m. Although Dorsey seriously damaged this theory in his cross-examination, the defense steadfastly held to this narrative. If Mann’s recollections are correct, then pressing his affidavit times to the furthest, most favorable limit for Frank, the latest Mann could arrive back at the factory on the fatal day is 12:15 p.m. Under Mann’s time constraints, Mary had to be able to ascend the staircase, obtain her pay envelope from Frank, ask about work on Monday and descend the staircase, be attacked by Conley either upstairs or downstairs (without Frank hearing any struggle or screams in the otherwise quiet factory, as it was a holiday) be lifted up and carried by Conley to the point where he was seen by Mann next to the “hole” and elevator shaft. All this had to occur within an absolute maximum of three minutes. If Mann’s statement that he was away from the factory for not more than one-half hour is true, then in order to get Mary to the factory after Monteen Stover testified she arrived, Mann’s departure time had to change.

Stover’s unimpeached testimony is that she was in Frank’s outer office from 12:05 until 12:10 by the clock on the wall in the office. Frank was absent from his office and not a sound was heard by Stover. Consequently, the defense always asserted that Mary arrived two minutes after Monteen left — just enough time for the two of them to miss each other on the staircase and the street outside the factory. If Mann was gone for no more than thirty minutes, then his departure time must be shifted forward from his trial testimony or else he returns before Mary, by Frank’s testimony and the elaborate defense calculations, could have even arrived at the factory. No Frank defender has offered any explanation for the new time problems created for the defense by Mann’s affidavit.

Consider the plausibility of the affidavit statements concerning the response of Mann’s parents to the news that their son had witnessed what was doubtless the most sensational murder of their lifetimes. Conley returned to work on Monday, April 28th after the murder. Mann evidently returned to work as well according to his affidavit. Conley would continue to report to work until his arrest on May 1.

Can we believe that a fourteen year old lad would report to work alongside a black man who he had every reason to believe had committed the murder of Mary Phagan? Mann would have permitted an innocent man, the black night watchman Newt Lee, to languish in the jail while the sweeper Jim Conley, whom he feared — now with better reason than ever before — looked malignantly at him each day. Is that believable — even in present day America?

Gentle reader, life in 1913 Atlanta was considerably rougher. Keep in mind what Mann asked us to believe. Once he eluded Conley’s outstretched hand, he was on the sidewalk outside the factory. The streets of Atlanta were teeming with crowds attending the Confederate Memorial Day parade. If he raised his voice to call for help, a crowd would have quickly responded. The life expectancy for Mr. Jim Conley would have been very short if a crowd of 1913 whites found a black man holding the limp (and possibly dead) body of an adolescent white girl in that time and in that place. Yet Mann didn’t know what to do; he didn’t alert any policeman he may have chanced to meet nor the trolley crewmen on his way home. He didn’t speak to anyone till he got home. He raced straight home where his missing mother had already arrived. His parents, certainly not made of stern stuff, advised silence. Even after Frank was arrested the Mann clan remained mum.

The most amazing part of the affidavit is Mann’s statement that his loving parents, worried about the family getting involved in all this, still advised him to return to work where he would be in close proximity to the purported murderer, Jim Conley. Did it never occur to any of them that Conley could just as easily silenced the only witness to see him with the girl’s body? Why advise their beloved son to return to the zone of danger and yet remain silent?

But suppose all of this was true. The Manns thought Conley so dangerous to Alonzo’s safety that they remained silent and let their son go back to work with a homicidal maniac. Once Conley was in police custody that problem was resolved. What was more, a reward was offered for evidence leading to the conviction of the murderer. Did the Manns have no interest in talking about a murderer now in police custody with the additional attraction of a cash reward?

Conley is thought to have died about 1962. Why didn’t Mann come forward then? Surely he didn’t fear the powers of Conley to do him harm extended beyond the grave.

Finally, we come to Conley, “the Prince of Darktown.” To listen to the Frank defenders recite their narrative, Conley was a criminal mastermind who was able to outwit and frame poor Leo Frank and thereafter to withstand the pounding and intense cross-examination of the finest criminal defense attorneys in Georgia of their day. All the time, the criminal mastermind was well-aware that a white boy of fourteen had seen him with the body! Under these circumstances, would Conley have shown up at the National Pencil factory on the Monday after the murder insouciant and confident? Clearly, Conley appeared because he believed he was safe and protected from whatever role he had in this homicide. If Mann saw him on the first floor landing and Conley knew it, why would he loiter at the plant until he was arrested on May 1? Reason and experience with criminal defendants dictates that had the incident occurred as Mann related, Conley would had caught the first freight train headed out of Atlanta and “rode the rods” to any distant geographical point to escape the accusing finger of Mann and the pursuing lynch mob. If Conley did choose to remain in town, wouldn’t he have taken more effective steps to silence a witness than simply warning Mann to shut up?

Furthermore, why would the Moriarty criminal mastermind of Conley not incorporate the Mann incident into his statement and confession to the police? If Conley’s confession was concocted, why would he go to the trouble of inventing the tale of the elevator knowing that Mann stood able to give him the lie? He could have even used Mann to bolster his story by claiming that he carried Mary’s body down the steps at Frank’s direction and dropped it down the trapdoor. Furthermore, Mann could verify that story! “Bring in the office boy and question him!” Conley could have challenged Mann and turned an uncertainty into supporting evidence.

Conley, though, stuck to his version of how the body was transported to the elevator and never volunteered that Mann was a possible witness.

Conley was bringing Mary down the stairs. Where had they been? Why had Frank heard nothing if the assault took place virtually in his office? Additionally, the condition of Mary Phagan’s body when found was quite different than described by Mann. This can only be accurate if Mary was unconscious and then revived when Conley got her to the basement. When Mary’s body was found it was filthy, her dress was torn and she was so blackened by soot and dirt that some of the police could not tell what race she was. (Which could lead to a third explanation for her death. That explanation, unexamined by all the Frank apologists, is that Frank assaulted Mary in the metal room. She was knocked against a machine and fell unconscious. Frank thought her dead and summoned Conley. Conley then finished the job after she came to in the basement. Before dying, Mary apparently put up a real struggle. This explains some of the irregularities in both Frank’s and Conley’s stories. But the preference is to depict Frank as a martyr, a real mensch. This alternative doesn’t please the Frank community. Frank would still be a murderer under the law of almost every state in the union and in 1913 would have gotten the death penalty.)

One member of the Pardons and Parole Board considering Mann’s affidavit pointed out that Mann dropped out of school to work against his parents’ wishes. “Why would a man who wouldn’t obey his parents about school,” [Michael] Wing wondered, “obey them when it came to potentially letting an innocent man hang?”¹⁴

Furthermore, Mann showed no concern that day about Leo Frank, a man for whom he expressed respect in later years. Frank, after all, should have still been in the building when Mann returned to find Conley toting a dead girl in his arms. Mann stated he thought he heard movement upstairs. He evidently never considered the fact that Frank — whom he believed to be in his office upstairs — or anyone else still in the factory could have been in peril even decades later when reviewing the case.

And we have the issue of the defense attorneys and police investigators. Evidently, none of them were able to pierce the veil Mann and his family cast about his covert knowledge. This young lad was able to fool even trained investigators who were desperately trying to either free their client or uncover the real story. The defense attorneys interviewed him and decided to use Mann as a witness for Leo Frank. Nevertheless, this naive lad of 14, who had no idea that his information could save an innocent man’s life and who quaked in terror of the now incarcerated Conley, never gave his secret away.

Given the huge problems with the 1982 Mann statement on its face, it is impossible to believe that Mann told the truth in that document. All human experience runs directly contrary to the behavior he attributes to almost every participant in his affidavit.

The Phagan case was cursed from the very beginning with people volunteering “tips” and “clues.” It appears most likely that Alonzo Mann was merely the last of many to offer a fanciful solution to the case.

Since his solution was superficially suited to the Frank defenders’ longstanding press campaign to exonerate Frank, it has received fabulous coverage. Many articles and news statements flatly assert that it closes the case entirely.

As helpful as the Mann statement appeared to be at first blush to the Frank defenders, it does have a major defect; it merely disputes Conley’s testimony about how the body was transported to the place it was found. It does not establish whether Conley or Frank was the murderer.¹⁵ After all, Frank was still upstairs when Mann says Conley was carrying the body from that location. What was Frank doing upstairs when Mary Phagan was attacked?

Thus because of these shortcomings and infelicities in Mann’s statement, the document was not of sufficient gravitas or credibility outside of press newsrooms to create the expected popular groundswell which would impel the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to issue a pardon or other exoneration of Frank from culpability in the murder of Mary Phagan.

But the shortcomings outlined above did not give serious pause to the Frank camp.

Because it disputed the Conley testimony, it was immediately ballyhooed, without close consideration, as a complete exoneration of the Leo Frank.

It does no such thing.

References

¹ Busch, Francis X., Notable American Trials: Guilty or Not Guilty (London: Arco Publications, 1957), 74.

² Phagan (Kean), Mary. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan (Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon Press, 1987), 28.

³ Thompson had worked as an informant infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan for the paper and afterwards became an ardent Frank advocate insofar as Leo Frank’s guilt in the Phagan murder was concerned.

⁴ State v. Chambers, 240 Ga. 76, 81, 239 S.E. 2d 324 (1977). While written in dissent, this language has been adopted by the Supreme Court in subsequent cases such as Carr v. State, 267 Ga. 701, 482 S.E. 2d 314 (1997). The author has had personal experience with “lie detectors” as well. He was unable to convince an examiner that while he had been a union member, he was not a labor organizer when required to take a test for employment. The job was denied. Georgia will admit lie detector tests if both sides agree, but the reader can envision the value of testimony that both sides see as helpful. Basically, the “lie detector” seeks to “bolster” the credibility of a witness. It is not admissible in most American courts. More recent concern about national security following the terrorist episodes of September 11, 2001 has further eroded the credibility of “lie detectors.” A CBS News, “Not Close Enough for Government Work,” report dated October 8, 2002 reported the National Research Council as stating “National security is too important to be left to such a blunt instrument.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/not-close-enough-for-government-work/

⁵ 118 S.Ct. 1261 (1998)

https://www.dauberttracker.com/documents/authorities/Scheffer.pdf

⁶ Phagan, The Murder of Little Mary Phagan, 246

⁷ Ibid., 247–261.

⁸ Ibid., 262.

⁹ The East Cobb Neighbor of April 6, 1982 as quoted in Phagan, The Murder of Little Mary Phagan, 264–265. Indeed, it did become an issue. Candidate and eventual victor Joe Frank Harris stated he would pardon Frank — even though the governors of Georgia had no legal or constitutional authority to do so.

¹⁰ Phagan, The Murder of Little Mary Phagan, 311.

¹¹ Neuroscience is pressing forward on the issue of memory function. Suggestibility in interrogation, memory distortion in the aging process and abuse of substances (such as alcohol) are all at issue in Mann’s recollections. Memories of traumatic events have been shown to change with time and it has been convincingly demonstrated that in some cases that physic phenomena in the nature of memories are often created for traumatic events that did not actually happen. These are all problems with honest witnesses, let alone witnesses that may have been influenced by a desire for fame, notoriety or mere lucre.

¹² See Steve Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise (New York: Pantheon, 2003). An example would be at page 343. There were times when the audience would laugh or applaud, but the jury, when out of the courtroom, were not sure for whom the demonstrations were intended. In newspaper interviews and public appearances Oney flatly states there were no “Kill the Jew” chants.

¹³ Brief of Evidence contains the entire direct testimony of Alonzo Mann in 16 sentences, most of which deal with who was in the factory. The cross-examination was but three sentences dealing with the time Mr. Frank was out of the office.

Brief of the Evidence. In the Supreme Court of Georgia, Fall Term, 1913, Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error, 123.

https://www.leofrank.org/presenting-the-leo-frank-trial-brief-of-evidence-1913-and-leo-frank-georgia-supreme-court-records-1913-1914/

¹⁴ Clark J. Freshman, “By the Neck Until Dead: A Look Back At a 70 Year Search for Justice,” American Politics, January, 1988, 31.

¹⁵ Logic would follow that disproving a critical part of Conley’s testimony does and should create doubt about other parts of his testimony: Falsum in unum, falsum in omnibus. But the same maxim applies to Mann’s statement — which was not exposed to days of grueling cross-examination by skilled attorneys.

* * *

Source: Occidental Observer

Why is it that the family of Mary Phagan, the victim of rapist and murderer Leo Frank, are given no voice at all as the Jewish lobby pressures Georgia to exonerate the killer — who was also a high B’nai B’rith official? The following Phagan Family Position Paper was originally published at littlemaryphagan.com.

MY NAME is Mary Phagan-Kean and I am the great-niece and namesake of “Little Mary Phagan,” the thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by Leo Max Frank, the president of Atlanta’s B’nai B’rith Lodge No. 144, on April 26, 1913.

Leo Frank was the manager of the National Pencil Company – a sweatshop factory where over a hundred children labored, and where the Sam Nunn federal building stands today. Little Mary Phagan was 12 years old when she started working there in 1912, and Frank admitted he was the last person to see Mary alive.

In fact, the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming and on August 25, 1913, after a month-long trial in the Fulton County Superior Court, Leo Frank was found guilty by a jury of his peers, and on the next day, he was sentenced to hang for the murder of Mary Phagan.

What followed was an unprecedented effort by Leo Frank and his legal team and supporters to pin this horrific crime on everyone but himself. It is an effort that continues to this very day. The Leo Frank case is no “cold case.” It is obvious to anyone who objectively considers the case evidence that Leo Frank was rightly convicted for this heinous crime.

Today, his supporters have targeted a black man named James Conley who worked as a janitor at the factory. Evidence shows that after Frank beat and strangled Mary he was unable to move the body. He called on Conley and ordered him to help him conceal the crime and swore him to secrecy. After initially concealing Frank’s crime Conley ultimately revealed to authorities the true events of that day. The detail he gave was so shocking and so convincing that he became the state’s star witness against Leo Frank. Frank and his legal team’s response was to accuse Conley of the murder, and that has been their story for a century.

But Mary’s killer was not James Conley, and the state of Georgia proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Leo Frank alone murdered Little Mary Phagan.

The Phagan family has no objection to anyone expressing their opinions about the Leo Frank case, but we do insist that organizations and personal campaigns not distort the truth and facts to use this case for their own political purposes. For over 100 years, each passing decade brought with it dubious revelations of “new historical evidence” falsely claiming to exonerate Leo Frank. The Phagan family has stated since 1982 that if there were clear-cut evidence to clear Leo Frank of this heinous crime, we would be the first to ask for an exoneration. However, such historical evidence has never come to light. Rather, there are considerable data, extensive documentation, revealing archival material, and legal, court, and government records that only support and even strengthen the guilty verdict.

Phagan Family’s Statement on the Latest Attempt to Exonerate Leo Frank

It was reported in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution that on April 26, 2019 [ironically 106 years to the day after Mary Phagan’s murder] that the Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard [defeated by Fani Willis on November 6, 2020] had established a “Conviction Integrity Unit” that he said would review the Leo Frank conviction of 1913. Those named as participants in this move were the following:

• Former Governor Roy Barnes
• Rabbi Steven Lebow
• Attorney Dale Schwartz
• Melissa D. Redmon, director of the University of Georgia Law School
• Former Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears
• Former Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher
• Former Cobb County Superior Court Chief Judge J. Stephen Schuster
• Assistant District Attorney Van Pearlberg

The Family of Mary Phagan believes that these individuals have colluded since August of 2018 to find a way to vacate the murder conviction. ADL attorney Dale Schwartz was quoted thus: “we’re still trying to get a new trial that would, in effect, exonerate him.” [In 1914, several attempts were made to “exonerate” Leo Frank using “new evidence” that included witness affidavits later found to have been forged or obtained by bribery and other illegal means. See the Atlanta Constitution of May 5, 1914, p. 1.]

Clearly, the new agency was a blatantly political scheme that had nothing to do with justice. It was set up, it appears, at the behest of the above-mentioned Frank advocates for one purpose only – to help Leo Frank escape culpability for his crime. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (May 7, 2019), Fulton County D.A. Paul Howard stated, “The Frank Case helped inspire the creation of the new unit” and that former Gov. Roy Barnes “will serve as a consultant.” Barnes admitted that he “had lobbied the district attorney [Howard] to re-examine Frank’s case.”

Let us be clear what that means. Those statements alone convince us that the Conviction Integrity Unit has already determined the outcome of the Leo Frank case. According to the article, “Barnes said he is convinced that this will happen. ‘There is no doubt in my mind, and we’ll [Who is “we?” — Ed.] prove it at the appropriate time, that Frank was not guilty.'”

For years Roy Barnes has been promoting a fraudulent narrative about the Frank case, and in particular that the 1913 trial was illegitimate because it was “mob-dominated.” He said that “there were just mobs of people. And as the jury would go [to] the courthouse every day, the mob would scream, “Hang the Jew or we’ll hang you!”¹

This charge is a blatant lie that has been disproven by the scholars of the case. It was made up long after the trial by an overzealous writer trying to make a name for himself. Only Barnes continues to repeat it.² For this and many other reasons Governor Roy Barnes is simply unfit to participate in any serious inquiry into the Leo Frank case.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard (with former Governor Roy Barnes) announces “Conviction Integrity Unit” to re-open Leo Frank case. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 7, 2019. Once again, most advocates and so-called experts who determine Leo Frank is not guilty have relied on blatantly false information and politically biased propaganda. Frank’s conviction was upheld by thirteen separate courts and judges in his thirteen appeals from Fulton County to the United States Supreme Court. Every court affirmed the trial was fair and the jury was not “mob terrorized.”

What’s more, driven by the need to exonerate a Jewish leader, they intend to convict an innocent African American man, James Conley – Frank’s employee that he ordered to help move the body. They ignore the 20 young girls and women who testified under oath that Frank sexually harassed them at the factory. Frank’s attorneys refused to cross-examine ANY of them, and later admitted that they were all telling the truth.³

Nonetheless, Frank’s advocates spread fabrications, propagandize falsehoods, distort the facts and change headlines of original newspapers to promote the hoax of not guilty. The real miscarriage of justice is that in this time of the #MeToo movement, they seek to override a duly convicted child rapist and murderer’s conviction.

The Evidence Points to Leo Frank’s Guilt

Most people are not aware that there was blood and hair evidence at the murder scene, that Frank changed his alibi several times and lied to police, and that he sexually harassed his young girl employees. Most people are unaware that Leo Frank hired private detectives who planted evidence and bribed and intimidated witnesses to change their testimony. They even hatched a plot to murder the African American James Conley who became a key witness against Leo Frank.⁴

Most people are not aware that the two detective firms Leo Frank hired; the Pinkertons’ National Detective Agency and the Burns Detective Agency concluded Leo Frank was guilty of the murder!

At his own trial Leo Frank refused to be sworn on the Bible and be cross-examined. A lot has been covered up about the case, including Leo Frank playing the race card to play to the white jurors’ prejudices about black men.

In 1915 and under intense political pressure Gov. John M. Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment. But even as he signed that commutation order he also wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court “found in the trial no error in law” and had “correctly in my judgment [found] that there was sufficient evidence to sustain the verdict.”

The fact is that Leo M. Frank was found guilty under Georgia law with facts and evidence, not with political bullying. The good people of Georgia can make up their own minds about Leo Frank’s innocence or guilt by delving into the historical records themselves. Having researched the Leo Frank/Mary Phagan murder case, including spending thousands of hours examining court records, newspaper reports, and private and public archives, I ask you to please consider the following facts:

Sexual harassment by Leo Frank: the Harvey Weinstein of his era

On Saturday April 26, 1913, Leo Frank used the opportunity of a deserted factory and his power as the company boss to lure Little Mary Phagan to a back area of the factory and attempt to rape her. Mary resisted and, and in the struggle Frank struck her and knocked her unconscious, and then strangled her to death. He left a trail of clues leading to himself, so within a few days of the murder he was arrested.

Evidence showed that the murder was sexually motivated, and many of Leo Frank’s own female employees testified to Leo Frank’s history of sexual harassment. They testified that he “got too familiar,” “put his hands on” them, tried to corner them, and proposed sexual acts to them for money.

These teenagers bravely took the witness stand and spoke of Leo Frank’s lewd behavior. Sixteen-year-old Nellie Wood told the court how Frank had pushed himself against her and touched her breast. Fourteen-year-old Nellie Pettis–a witness for the defense–recounted how Leo Frank had propositioned her for sex. Twenty girls in all gave similar testimony about Frank’s improprieties. Several male employees described how they had witnessed Leo Frank “rub up against” young female workers “a little too much.” The testimony was so explicit that the judge had to clear the courtroom of women.

The defense attorneys did not even attempt to cross-examine any of the girls who testified at trial about Leo Frank’s lewd behavior. Instead, Leo Frank’s lawyers argued that his improper behavior was not wrong–that it was a sign of more liberal times! One even said in his closing argument, “Deliver me from one of these prudish fellows that never looks at a girl and never puts his hands on her…”

In the South the LOVE of Jews reigned supreme – not anti-Semitism!

“Anti-Semitism is absolutely not the reason for this libel that has been framed against me. It isn’t the source nor the result of this sad story.” – Leo M. Frank, interviewed by Abraham Cahan of the Forward newspaper

Most people are unaware that the prosecutor Hugh Dorsey first brought his case against Leo Frank before a 23-member grand jury that included five prominent members of the Jewish community (including at least two from Frank’s own synagogue), and all the grand jurors signed the bill of indictment against Leo Frank.

The trial judge, Leonard Roan, was once a law partner of one of Frank’s defense attorneys, Luther Rosser and, according to a confidential ADL memo: “In general, the rulings of the trial Judge had been favorable to the defense.” Leo Frank’s defense attorney even declared after the trial: “[W]e do not make the least criticism of Judge Roan, who presided [over the trial]. Judge Roan is one of the best men in Georgia and is an able and conscientious judge.”

The false claims of anti-Semitism before, during, and after the trial of Leo Frank are simply unfounded and untrue. The detailed daily accounts by the three Atlanta newspapers – the Constitution, the Georgian, and the Journal, each of which had Jewish editors – reflected no anti-Jewish bias at all. Leo Frank’s religion is only alluded to when it is reported that he is the president of ‘B’nai B’rith, and he is written of with the utmost respect for his prominence in the community. In fact, a University of Georgia study showed that the reportage by Atlanta’s three dailies was openly pro-Leo Frank and exhibited a pronounced pro-Frank bias.

Author Steve Oney, listed by the Anti-Defamation League as an expert on the Leo Frank case, reported: “To the extent that there was bias in the coverage, it was mostly in Frank’s favor…” He goes on to state that Atlanta’s newspapers, “evincing the prejudices of the time, ridiculed the state’s star witness–a black factory janitor named Jim Conley…”

It has been claimed that “anti-Semitism” and the “hatred of Jews” motivated Leo Frank’s conviction and lynching. And yet, incredibly, there was no anti-Semitism expressed by police, detectives, prosecutors, jurors, judge, or reporters! There was no “prejudicial trial” or “mob rule” or anti-Jewish bigotry of any kind.

Mr. Oney refutes the claim that there were anti-Semitic mobs shouting “Hang the Jew!” He told the Jewish Journal:

“[I]t didn’t happen. It was something that someone wrote a couple [of] years after the crime, and then it got stuck into subsequent recountings of the story….Jews were accepted in the city, and the record does not substantiate subsequent reports that the crowd outside the courtroom shouted at the jurors: ‘Hang the Jew or we’ll hang you.'” Though there is no record of “anti-Semitism” on the part of the crowd, the courtroom audience, the press, or the prosecutors, that doesn’t mean it was non-existent. As the evidence of his guilt became overwhelming, Leo Frank and his lawyers tried desperately to insert “anti-Semitism” into the trial as a diversionary tactic. They actually staged a courtroom confrontation with a prosecution witness over his alleged previous “anti-Semitic” statements. This officially brought “anti-Semitism” into the trial for the first time. Turns out that witness was working for the Leo Frank defense and was planted to promote their “anti-Semitism” agenda. It was yet another trick by the Leo Frank defense to undermine the court proceeding and to neutralize the evidence of his guilt.

The ADL has been promoting a lie for over a century!

“HANG THE JEW, HANG THE JEW” is what the Anti-Defamation League says was chanted during the month-long trial, but its own expert Steve Oney says it NEVER OCCURRED!

According to Steve Oney, at the time of Mary Phagan’s murder, “Atlanta was a philo-Semitic city. Its assimilated, German-Jewish elite were part of the financial and legal power structure…” Gov. John Slaton in his commutation order also addressed the false claim of an “anti-Semitic mob” surrounding the courtroom pressing to lynch Leo Frank: “No such attack was made and…none was contemplated.” Gov. John Slaton countered the false claim of an “anti-Semitic” atmosphere by reminding Leo Frank supporters that Jews were highly respected and appreciated in Georgia because they had been “conspicuous” contributors to the history and development of the state.⁵

Frank’s Jewish defenders believed he was guilty

By the time of his lynching in 1915 many people – including his Jewish supporters – not only were repelled by Leo Frank’s abrasive personality but also believed he was in fact the murderer of Mary Phagan. Chicago icon Albert Lasker, a Jewish philanthropist and the “father of modern advertising,” paid millions (in today’s money) for Leo Frank’s defense, but he privately admitted that he was not even convinced that Leo Frank was innocent.

Lasker financed all of Frank’s post-conviction appeals and orchestrated his international public-relations campaign that involved media outlets across the nation, including the New York Times. Albert Lasker recalled the meeting in Frank’s jail cell:

“It was very hard for us to be fair to him, he impressed us as a sexual pervert. Now, he may not have been–or rather a homosexual or something like that…”

According to Lasker’s biographer, the men with him during that encounter took “a violent dislike to him.” Lasker “hated him,” and said, “I hope he [Leo Frank] gets out…and when he gets out I hope he slips on a banana peel and breaks his neck.”

Leo Frank’s Trial Defense was one of the most RACIST in American History

Though “anti-Semitism” was not a factor in his trial, Leo Frank’s racism certainly was: Frank’s defense attorneys used the word “nigger” and other racist slurs dozens of times in court. His main attorney told the jury: “If you put a nigger in a hopper, he’ll drip lies.”

Leo Frank argued in court that the many black witnesses that testified against him should not be believed – simply because they were black – and that “negro testimony” – as they referred to it – was by definition inferior and unreliable. At trial Leo Frank’s attorney castigated the white jurors for even considering the testimony of the black witnesses:

“They would rather believe the negro’s word….Oh, how times have changed. I hope to God I die before they change any worse than this…”

Leo Frank’s lawyers argued to the jury of twelve white men that murder, rape, and robbery were “negro crimes” and thus Leo Frank, “a white man,” could not have committed the murder of Mary Phagan. One defense attorney said that “the murder was the unreasoning crime of a negro,” that “It isn’t a white man’s crime.”

Leo Frank’s own racist thinking is reflected in an Atlanta Constitution front-page headline on May 31, 1913: “Mary Phagan’s Murder Was Work of a Negro Declares Leo M. Frank.” The newspaper quoted Leo Frank:

“Here is a negro [James Conley], not alone with the shiftless and lying habits of an element of his race, that is common to the South….No white man killed Mary Phagan. It’s a negro’s crime, through and through. No man with common sense would even suspect I did it.”

Leo Frank tried to pin his crime on two innocent black men

Leo Frank’s supporters then and now have played the race card and falsely represent an African-American man as the “real killer.” For over 100 years James “Jim” Conley has been scapegoated in nearly all the literature on the case. He was a sweeper in the factory on the day of the murder who was ordered by his boss Leo Frank to help move the dead body of Mary Phagan. When James Conley confessed to his accessory-after-the-fact role, Frank and his supporters tried to pin his crime on Conley. Leo Frank’s supporters continue to this day to smear James Conley as a devious criminal who got away with murder, but Conley’s very detailed statement–corroborated by the physical evidence at the crime scene – was so convincing that it became central to the prosecution’s case. (At trial, Leo Frank refused to be cross-examined by prosecutors, but James Conley withstood 16 hours of cross-examination–under oath.)

In 1914, Leo Frank supporters tried to hire a black woman named Annie Maude Carter to slip James Conley some poison while he was in jail waiting to testify at Frank’s hearing for a new trial. She identified the would-be assassins in open court as prominent members of the Jewish community. The plot was exposed in the May 6, 1914 edition of the New York Times.

Before he accused James Conley of the crime, Leo Frank worked overtime to pin the murder on another factory employee – the African-American night watchman who found Mary Phagan’s body, Newt Lee.Leo Frank hired private detectives who planted a blood-soaked shirt in the innocent black man’s home, and then Leo Frank’s attorney hinted to the police where they might find that damning “evidence.” When the newspapers reported that a bloody shirt was found at Newt Lee’s home, it almost caused an innocent man to be lynched. Luckily for Newt Lee, Leo Frank’s private detectives did such a sloppy job at planting the shirt that the police were not fooled at all, and it only increased their suspicion of Leo Frank. That is the point when the people of Atlanta came to believe–and rightly so–that Leo Frank was the murderer of Little Mary Phagan.

Alonzo Mann – the man that is supposed to have exonerated Frank in 1982 – would have CONVICTED him in 1913.

I, Mary Phagan-Kean, examined in detail the dubious claims of Alonzo Mann, who came forward in 1982 – after 69 years of silence – to say he saw Conley with the body of Mary Phagan. It turns out that his new statements hurt Leo Frank far more than they help him.

– Alonzo Mann (who died in 1985) was Frank’s “office boy” in 1913 and from the very start he gave many conflicting stories that are irreconcilable with the known facts: In May 1913 as a young teenager, Alonzo Mann told detectives 3 different stories in 3 separate interviews and gave yet another story in his sworn testimony at trial in August. In those interviews and in his trial testimony Alonzo Mann never mentioned seeing James Conley at all on the day of the murder. At age 83, in his 1982 videotaped session before the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, he gave still more conflicting versions that contradict the testimony of Leo Frank himself!

– What motivated Alonzo Mann to break his 69-year silence on the Leo Frank case by pinning the crime on James Conley? The answer was disclosed at the videotaped private hearing in 1982: behind Alonzo Mann’s obviously scripted, wavering “testimony” was a book and movie deal executed by the Tennessean newspaper–the same Tennessean that abandoned the truth and the facts of the case and any trace of journalistic ethics just to exonerate Leo Frank. So Alonzo Mann was induced to come forward for fame and fortune.

Alonzo Mann in 1913: Tells 4 different versions, and 2 more in 1982. The Phagan family was consulted by the Board in the run-up to the 1983 pardon decision, since the surviving members of the family had a great deal of personal knowledge of and documentation about the case and would be directly and profoundly affected by any decision. It was our Little Mary who had been strangled and very likely raped, after all. And the Board denied that pardon application.

The Jewish organizations tried again in 1986, but this time the Phagan family was not consulted. They were told about the upcoming pardon decision after the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL) and its well-heeled allies: Atlanta Jewish Federation and American Jewish Committee had been meeting with and lobbying the Board for six months or more. Why the secrecy? Obviously, the Jewish groups – led by Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith board member and attorney Dale Schwartz – didn’t want the victim’s family to have any say on the matter or any time to alert the public as to what was afoot.

Thus, in 1986 the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a posthumous “pardon” to Leo Frank on the basis of the state’s failure to protect him while in custody, but it did not absolve him of the crime of murdering Mary Phagan and Frank’s conviction remained intact.

The state’s 1986 “pardon” did not overturn the guilty verdict

Believe it or not, there are still documents from the Leo Frank case that are being hidden from the public because they have been classified as “GEORGIA STATE SECRETS”! Our repeated attempts to obtain them from the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles were denied again in December 2020. What could they be hiding? What could be so secret about a case that is 106 years old!? And why aren’t the media pursuing this extraordinary government action?

My book, The Murder of Little Mary Phagan is available free at: http://www.littlemaryphagan.com

Sources Banned and Censored

On the 100th Anniversary (April 26, 2013) of Mary Phagan’s rape and murder, the trial Brief of Evidence and appeals records of the Leo Frank case were digitized as well as the voluminous Atlanta newspaper reports about the crime.

These sources – and many, many more like them – use to be available on the internet until very recently. Indeed, the books, videos, articles, and court documents that provide a balanced view of the case have been systematical­ly removed from the internet SINCE THE Fulton County CONVICTION INTEGRITY UNIT WAS ANNOUNCED!

No Longer Available

• Original articles from the three major dailies covering the day-by-day progress of the case (removed from archive.org)
• Videos from YouTube that challenge the false idea that Leo Frank was “wrongly convicted.
• Official case documents like the Brief of Evidence, the appeals filings, and the pub­lished trial records have been scrubbed from the internet.
• Books that prove Leo Frank’s guilt and provide a serious case analysis have been banned and censored. My 1987 book titled The Murder of Little Mary Phagan has been removed from some websites where it was previ­ously available for years. The Nation of Islam’s recent book Leo Frank: The Lynching of a Guilty Man has been myste­riously banned from sale on Amazon.com.
• Google searches EXCLUDE articles and documents that show evidence of Frank’s guilt.
• When we made an Open Records Request to the Uni­versity of Georgia, they first said 70 records match the request. When we paid to have them mailed to us, all of a sudden, all 70 records vanished with no explanation!

Fortunately for the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit, the public and the media will still be able to ac­cess those critical official documents that the Leo Frank crusaders are trying to hide. We have made them available at LittleMaryPhagan.com where we believe they will be safe from the Leo Frank censors and their internet cleansing campaign.

Fulton County District Attorney, Paul Howard was defeated in the last election but the Conviction Integrity Unit he set up is still operating under the new District Attorney Fani Willis. Ms. Fani Willis might do well to ask why the original documents in the case all of a sud­den have been removed from the internet, and who had the power to remove them and why. How can the case be carefully reviewed without them? Indeed, the books, videos, articles, and court documents that provide a full and balanced view of the case have been systematical­ly removed SINCE THE CONVICTION INTEGRITY UNIT WAS ANNOUNCED!!! Obviously, Truth has become offensive or objectionable and has been deemed “hate speech” in order to impose censorship. But FACTS ARE NOT HATEFUL!

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis inherited this corrupt process, but will she bow to the same pressure that was put on her former boss to exonerate a man who raped and murdered our family member?

As of today, no word from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on whether her office will finally give long overdue justice to the victim, Mary Phagan. Can we expect that she will stand by her own words?: “Cases won’t be for sale under my administration. Not for an endorsement, not for money, not for anything.” “You have my word, during my tenure as district attorney in Fulton County, we will become a beacon for justice and ethics in Georgia and across the nation.” “[D.A.] Willis vowed to bring ‘transparency and accountability’ to the DA’s office,” reported the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

She would be the first to do so. We’ll see.

Notes

1 Watch this video at 1:40 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tgKcqOXyhc

2 See https://littlemaryphagan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FINAL-Barnes.pdf

3 https://littlemaryphagan.com/the-murder-trial-testimony-brief-of-evidence/

4 Atlanta Journal, May 5, 1914, 2. Atlanta Constitution May 6, 1914, 1, 5. New York Times, May 6, 1914, 3.

5 https://littlemaryphagan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Steve-Oney-Says-No-New-Evidence-to-Exonerate-Leo-Frank-for-Murder-of-Little-Mary-Phagan.pdf

* * *

Source: Mary Phagan-Kean

by Scott Aaronson

IT MAY WELL BE the greatest murder mystery of all time. Some assert that the Mary Phagan murder case is solved, but those who so assert are of two different and mutually exclusive camps. And those two camps still stand diametrically opposed to this day, four generations later.

The case aroused the outrage and ire and vengeance of two great communities. One, the Jewish community, feel overwhelmingly today, and felt to a lesser but still substantial extent in 1913, that Leo Frank was tried and condemned simply because he was a Jew. They believe that Leo Frank is so obviously innocent that he never would have been tried had it not been for endemic anti-Semitism in 1913 Atlanta. And they have been remarkably effective in making  Southern anti-Semitism the leitmotif of virtually all drama, documentary, and other remembrance of this case for the last half century. The other, the largely Christian Southern gentile community, believed overwhelmingly in 1913 – and to an unknown but doubtlessly  large degree still believes today – that justice was done when all the jurors, and every appeals court in the land including the Supreme Court of the United States, after a monumental and impressively-funded defense, agreed that Leo Frank was fairly tried and convicted for the murder of Mary Phagan. And it must rankle Southerners almost beyond words to be accused of anti-Semitism, when no Christian community anywhere on earth has so respected and welcomed Jews, has so openly acknowledged its spiritual roots in Judaism, or has so enthusiastically supported the Jewish state of Israel.

It all begins with Mary Phagan, a sweet and lovely 13-year-old girl on the threshold of womanhood. She was loved and treasured by those who knew her well. When her all-too-real tragedy began, she had just played the part of Sleeping Beauty in a church play (and, her family tells us, was unable to stop giggling during the rehearsals of the kissing scene). Barely a teenager, she was nevertheless providing support to her family — at the wage rate of seven and a half cents an hour (see Gannt testimony, coroner’s inquest) — working as a child laborer in the sweatshop of Atlanta’s National Pencil Company.

Late on Saturday morning, April 26, 1913, brightly dressed for the parade and festivities that were to take place that afternoon to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, Mary Phagan went to pick up her pay of $1.20 from factory superintendent and part-owner Leo Frank. Frank was a businessman who was so well-respected in Atlanta’s very successful Jewish community that, at the age of 29, he had become the president of the local chapter of B’nai B’rith.

Mary Phagan never made it to the parade. Her bloody body was found at three o’clock the next morning in the factory basement, brutally used, beaten, and strangled to death. The sudden end of Mary Phagan’s brief life shocked Atlanta, then the entire South, and ultimately the entire nation.

Her death became the center of intense public outrage and interest, and Frank was charged with her murder. Jewish businessmen, publishers, and organizations from all over the country made Frank’s defense a cause célèbre, and the large sums donated enabled Frank to procure the most respected lawyers in the state and even to appeal his case to the highest court in the land. But to little avail — ultimately Leo Frank was found guilty of the unspeakable killing of little Mary, and his appeals were rejected by every court that heard them.

Frank was sentenced to hang, to much public satisfaction. But in 1915 John Slaton, the state’s outgoing governor, under tremendous pressure from both sides, made the decision during the last moments of his administration to commute Frank’s sentence to life in prison — despite the fact the he, Slaton, was a senior partner in the law firm that defended Frank.

Outraged by what they saw as corruption and a miscarriage of justice, a group comprising some of the region’s leading citizens laid careful plans to abduct Frank from his prison cell and carry out the jury’s original sentence of hanging — and they did so, lynching him not far from Mary Phagan’s home.

It is this second horrific death by strangulation — Leo Frank’s — that occupies the public mind today. Frank, not Mary Phagan, is the locus of tragedy, of moral lessons, of outrage and mourning. Mary Phagan’s life, and the horrors she endured in her last moments, are almost forgotten except as a backdrop for Frank’s persecution and death at the hands of alleged anti-Semites. Her tragedy, and her family’s grief and outcry for justice, have been turned into little more than footnotes.

I said there were three strangling deaths. The third is the strangling to death of the truth. Much of the real history of this case, and the actual, primary evidence that was brought to light at the time, is almost unknown today — at least to that vast majority who consume the academic works, popular dramatizations, articles, and books that have addressed the subject of Leo Frank in recent decades. Instead of real history, investigated and recounted with a deep commitment to objectivity, we are given a simplistic, moralistic narrative of an obviously innocent Leo Frank victimized by bigoted anti-Semites who subjected him to a sham trial and an horrific lynching — with the added fillip that the undoubted killer was an African-American, Jim Conley, who was never prosecuted because anti-Semitic fervor demanded Frank’s blood. This narrative is such an imposture that not even the honorable supporters of Leo Frank in 1913, were they alive today, would recognize or endorse it. It is a farrago of emotional blackmail, half-truths, omissions, and outright hoaxes. I write so that the readers and students of today can at long last see that, whatever prejudices there may have been in 1913 Atlanta, those that prevail in the mediasphere of the early 21st century are far worse.

This sham history will collapse, sooner or later, as new generations of investigators rediscover the evidence that has been brushed under the rug in recent years. Young historians, some of them not yet born, will make their reputations and earn their doctorates exposing the hoaxes that now seem to buttress (but will ultimately undermine) the false narrative.

Will this rediscovery of the truth cause a backlash of real anti-Semitism against Southern Jews or Jews in general? I think not. Just because a few soi-disant leaders, cranks, haters, and self-promoters palmed off their paranoiac vision of the Frank case on a generation is no reason for a real vendetta. I intend to show that a middle path that respects truth above ethnic and religious loyalty is needed, and Jewish voices should, I hope, be prominent in leading the way if we are to avoid another swing of the knife-edged pendulum of hate.

One of the most remarkable things I discovered when writing about this case was that many of the original articles about this case — even major ones — and affidavits, sworn statements, and utterances of great import from the central participants in the case, were not available online, not searchable, not findable, not even readable. That is, until a courageous man named Mark Cohen, almost 100 years after the fact, scanned in and uploaded nearly all the relevant contemporary newspapers, magazines, and surviving trial materials to his Web site, leofrank.org. I deeply appreciate Mr. Cohen’s efforts in doing this service for us, for our posterity, and for history. (I do not, however, endorse all of Mr. Cohen’s theories of, or conclusions about, this case.) It was a monumental effort that must have taken years. Even then, though, the material was largely not searchable because most of the fragile, faded papers from which the uploaded PDF files had been made were not of good enough quality to allow them to be turned into text using OCR technology. So, to provide the most important evidence to you, the reader, I found myself retyping — and, as I typed, reliving — the events of 100 years ago exactly as they were reported at the time. In recent years, another independent Leo Frank archive, located at leofrank.info, took on the task of transcribing all the relevant contemporary articles on this case, a monumental project that is still ongoing.

All that was available to the researcher – until very recently – about the Frank case, and to the reader and student, was practically all derivative writing, mostly decades or a century removed from the events, and with minuscule exceptions all slavishly devoted to the received narrative of Frank’s absolute innocence and pervasive Southern anti-Semitism.

For many, the evidence against Leo Frank could not pass the test of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” I am not sure that I could have authorized the opening of the trap door beneath him myself. But, to the jury which tried him, it did pass that test. The judge rightly charged the jury to throw aside all preconceptions and prejudices and judge the case on the evidence alone. We should do the same.

If we cannot open our eyes to see what the people of that time and place saw, if we dare not examine the evidence for ourselves and throw aside the distorting lens of the media’s current depiction of the case, then we are indulging ourselves in feel-good (or, for many, feel-bad) fiction. If we do that in the Frank case — a case in which the received narrative is one of blood libel against the people of the South, against an entire people and culture — we have abandoned responsibility for our children’s future and any shred of honor we might once have possessed.

I have spent most of my life in the South, and learned much from its people. All of us, Jew and Gentile, black and white, deserve better. We should respect the truth above all. Lying to right a perceived wrong is compounding the wrong, prolonging and augmenting the hate we claim to oppose.

* * *

The Crime: Mary Phagan’s Death by Strangling

ON SATURDAY morning at 11:30AM, April 26, 1913 Mary Phagan ate a poor girl’s lunch of bread and boiled cabbage and said goodbye to her mother for the last time. Dressed for parade-watching (for this was Confederate Memorial Day) in a lavender dress, ribbon-bedecked hat, and parasol, she left her home in hardscrabble working-class Bellwood at 11:45, and caught the streetcar for downtown Atlanta.

Before the festivities, though, she stopped to see Superintendent Leo M. Frank at the National Pencil Company and pick up from him her $1.20 pay for the one day she had worked there during the previous week.

She had been laid off for most of that week because the material needed for the tipping department in the metal room, where she worked, had been late in arriving.

She entered the grim and massive four-story Victorian building a few minutes after noon, and proceeded up the stairs to the second floor, where both Leo Frank’s office and — more than a hundred feet further back — her own department were located. By all accounts, she did not know that Jim Conley, the company’s African-American sweeper, was sitting in the shadows on the first floor behind the staircase, near the elevator and the “scuttle hole” ladder that led to the basement. Strangely, even though it was his day off,  and even though the factory superintendent was around, Conley was there, partly hidden by darkness but not stealthily concealed, doing no work — drawing no pay — and apparently doing nothing but watching.

As Conley watched, a few moments later, at 12:05, one of the factory’s other working girls, 14-year-old Monteen Stover, arrived to collect her pay. She also walked up those same steps, also failed to notice Jim Conley, and also entered Leo Frank’s office. Mary had not left. But Monteen found no one there. Frank’s office was in two sections, an outer office and an inner office. Looking for him, Monteen saw that the outer office was empty, so she went into the inner office, and saw that it was empty too.

She looked down the hall toward the rows of factory machinery. There was nothing but motionless silence. So she decided to wait. She waited a full five minutes, according to the office clock. She saw and heard no one. Shortly after 12:10 she left by the same route she came, again encountering not a single person. (The exact timing of Mary Phagan’s visit was disputed later, with some Frank partisans insisting that Monteen arrived before Mary. Frank himself stated on April 28 of Mary that “She came in between 12:05 and 12:10, maybe 12:07, to get her pay envelope, her salary.” Clocks and watches in 1913 could easily be off by several minutes. Nevertheless, it appears clear that Monteen Stover failed to find Frank, or anyone, in his office at around the time that Mary was there. Frank told detectives that he never left his office from noon to 12:45.)

After one o’clock, Leo Frank left to go home for lunch. His wife and mother-in-law were waiting in their best finery, ready to go to Atlanta’s opulent opera house, where New York’s Metropolitan Opera was on tour, presenting a matinee performance of Lucia di Lammermoor. After eating, Frank returned to the factory while not far away the somber, intoxicating strains of Donizetti’s prelude wafted over the wealthy Atlantans in their temple of culture, and while the common folk readied themselves to salute the aging heroes in grey who were marching together, perhaps for the last time in their lives.

Almost no one knew it at the time, but by one o’clock one young life was already over. For her there would never again be parades, or music, or kisses, or flowers, or children, or love. Mary Phagan never left the National Pencil Company alive. Abused, beaten, and strangled by a rough cord pulled so tightly that it had embedded itself deeply in her girlish neck and made her tongue protrude more than an inch from her mouth, Mary Phagan lay dead, dumped in the dirt and shavings of the pencil company basement, her once-bright eyes now sightless and still as she lay before the gaping maw of the furnace where the factory trash was burned.

*  *  *

ON FRIDAY, the day before the murder, Leo Frank had told the factory’s African-American night watchman, Newt Lee, to come to work Saturday afternoon at four, as Frank wanted to leave around four so he could attend a baseball game with his brother-in-law Mr. Ursenbach. But upon arriving at four, Lee said that Frank appeared extremely nervous and insisted that Lee leave the factory and “have a good time” somewhere else and return at six. When Lee suggested he might instead just sleep for a couple of hours on the premises, Frank rejected the suggestion, repeating that Lee should depart for two hours.

Frank again seemed very nervous when Lee returned at six, and even visibly jumped back when he noticed that a former employee named Gantt had arrived about the same time as Lee. Frank was to claim that this was because Gantt was a large man and had in fact been fired by Frank not long before. Frank would also later state, however, that he believed that Gantt was close to Mary Phagan and so his visit might have been interpreted as being to inquire about her whereabouts.

Newt Lee made his rounds as usual that night, but he didn’t go all the way into the basement until around three in the morning. There he discovered the lifeless body of Mary Phagan. He tried and failed to reach Leo Frank by telephone. He then called the police.

Lee described the events of that afternoon and night to detectives, beginning with his first arrival at the factory:

The front door was not locked. I pushed it open, went on in and got to the double door there… The front door had always been unlocked on previous Saturday afternoons. After you go inside and come up about middle ways of the steps, there are some double doors there. It was locked on Saturday when I got there. Have never found it that way before. I took my key and unlocked it. When I went upstairs I had a sack of bananas and I stood to the left of that desk like I do every Saturday. I says like I always do “Alright Mr. Frank” and he come bustling out of his office. He had never done that before. He always called me when he wanted to tell me anything and said, “Step here a minute, Newt.” This time he came up rubbing his hands and says, “Newt, I am sorry that I had you come so soon, you could have been at home sleeping, I tell you what you do, you go out in town and have a good time.” He had never let me off before that. I could have laid down in the shipping room and gone to sleep, and I told him that. He says, “You needs to have a good time. You go downtown, stay an hour and a half, and come back your usual time at six o’clock.” I then went out the door and stayed [out] until about four minutes to six. When I came back the doors were unlocked just as I left them and I went and says, “Alright, Mr. Frank,” and he says, “What time is it?” and I says, “It lacks two minutes of six.” He says, “Don’t punch yet [a reference to the company’s time clock — Ed.], there is a few worked today and I want to change the slip.” It took him twice as long this time than it did the other times I saw him fix it. He fumbled putting it in, while I held the lever for him and I think he made some remark about he was not used to putting it in. When Mr. Frank put the tape in I punched and I went downstairs.

While I was down there Mr. Gantt came from across the street from the beer saloon and says, “Newt, I got a pair of old shoes that I want to get upstairs to have fixed.” I says, “I ain’t allowed to let anybody in here after six o’clock.” About that time Mr. Frank come bustling out of the door and run into Gantt unexpected and he jumped back frightened. Gantt says, “I got a pair of old shoes upstairs, have you any objection to my getting them?” Frank says, “I don’t think they are up there; I think I saw the boy sweep some up in the trash the other day.” Mr. Gantt asked him what sort they were and Mr. Frank says “tans.” Gantt says, “Well, I had a pair of black ones too.” Frank says, “Well, I don’t know,” and he dropped his head down just so. Then he raised his head and says, “Newt, go with him and stay with him and help him find them,” and I went up there with Mr. Gantt and found them in the shipping room, two pair, the tans and the black ones.

Not long after, Frank did something that, according to Lee, he had never done before:

Mr. Frank phoned me that night about an hour after he left, it was sometime after seven o’clock. He says, “How is everything?” and I says, “Everything is all right so far as I know,” and he says “Goodbye.”

…There is a light in the basement down there at the foot of the ladder. He told me to keep that burning all the time. It has two little chains to it to turn on and turn off the gas. When I got there on making my rounds at seven o’clock on the 26th of April, it was burning just as low as you could turn it, like a lightning bug. I left it Saturday morning burning bright. I made my rounds regularly every half hour Saturday night. I punched on the hour and punched on the half and I made all my punches. The elevator doors on the street floor and office floor were closed when I got there on Saturday. They were fastened down just like we fasten them down every other night. When three o’clock came I went down the basement and when I went down and got ready to come back I discovered the body there. I went down to the toilet and when I got through I looked at the dust bin back to the door to see how the door was and it being dark I picked up my lantern and went there and I saw something laying there which I thought some of the boys had put there to scare me, then I got out of there. I got up the ladder and called up the police station. It was after three o’clock… I tried to get Mr. Frank on the telephone and was still trying …I guess I was trying about eight minutes.

Eventually Newt Lee gave up on Frank and called the police. When the officers arrived and were directed down the ladder to the basement by Lee, they discovered the mysterious handwritten “death notes” in the sawdust near the body. These notes purported to be written by Mary Phagan herself, but were later proven not to be so. They seemed the work of someone barely literate, and the language used was similar to Southern African-American dialect. They read:

Mam that negro hire down here did this i went to make water and he push me doun that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it was long sleam tall negro i wright while play with me.

he said he wood love me and land doun play like night witch did it but that long tall black negro did buy his slef.

When the notes were read out loud in the presence of Lee, he exclaimed “that’s me, boss” (or words to that effect; the exact phrase was disputed) when the words “night witch” were reached, Lee obviously assuming that “night watch” — as in “night watchman,” as we would say — was what was really meant. Added to the facts that Lee was a “long slim tall negro” and dark complected (“negro black”), the notes said such a person did the deed “by his self.” It did appear that the writer of the notes was trying to implicate Lee.

Detectives also found a bloody handkerchief ten feet away, one shoe, and some sheets of paper and pencils. Oddly, Mary’s hat and parasol had apparently been tossed in the bottom of the elevator shaft. Along with a quantity of miscellaneous trash, some human excrement was also found in the shaft, which was crushed and caused a stench when the detectives rode the car down later in the day. There were marks indicating Mary’s body had been dragged across the basement floor, and her bloody, bruised face was smeared with dirt and cinders. The dragging marks began at the elevator shaft.

Lee was an obvious suspect and was immediately arrested – but was later shown to be completely innocent – and suspicion of him grew when someone, likely someone associated with Frank, planted a fake bloody shirt at his home, and when Frank himself changed his statement and claimed that punches were missing from Lee’s time card.

* * *

Christianity, Anti-Semitism, and the American South: Background to the Leo Frank Case

GEORGIA, as a part of the South, is a place where, though freethinkers are certainly not unknown, the vast majority of the population is deeply committed to Christianity – largely Protestant, fundamentalist Christianity. One’s personal “walk with Jesus” is taken very seriously here, and the religion informs almost every aspect of private, family, and public life. The fundamentalist worldview is dominant, as it is throughout the South, which, along with a few border states, is not called the “Bible Belt” for nothing. This was doubly true in 1913.

One of the core beliefs of fundamentalism is literalism, a belief that every word of the scriptures was directly inspired by God and is literally true. The position of the average Georgian on the Bible is expressed in the saying, common in the South, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” The history in the Bible is, therefore, accurate, including God’s special preference for the Jews as His people, an especially holy people. The prophetic visions of the Bible are, therefore, infallible, including the centrality of Israel and its people to God’s plan for heaven and earth. The law set down in scripture is, therefore, to be obeyed absolutely, including its commands to honor and bless God’s Chosen. The Old Testament –  the entirety of which is by, about, and for Jews – is not glossed over or minimized by fundamentalists, as it is by some Christian denominations. It is God’s word; it is absolute truth no less than the New Testament. And Jehovah, the Jewish God of the Old Testament, is to fundamentalists the one and only God.

Most important of all to fundamentalist Christians, Jesus was born a Jew, spoke in the synagogues, and was in fact the prophesied Jewish Messiah. The Jewish faith, the Jewish prophets, and the Jewish people themselves were the sources from which Christ came and without which Christ could never have existed.

It is the South that is the center of Christian Zionism. Many a sermon and many a ministry in the South have as their basis Genesis 12:3, in which God says of the Jews: “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.”

In 1909, four years before Mary Phagan’s murder, the first edition of the Scofield Reference Bible was published by Cyrus Scofield. It was innovative in that explanations of, and details about, the Biblical texts were printed in a column alongside the actual verses. Scofield’s Bible was tremendously popular and influential in fundamentalist circles and remains so to this day. Scofield wrote in his note to Genesis 12:3:

It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew — well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.

In subsequent editions Scofield’s followers expanded the note, adding “For a nation to commit the sin of anti-Semitism brings inevitable judgment.”

Harry Golden reported in the American Jewish Committee’s magazine Commentary that, shortly after the establishment of the Jewish state, “Bonds for Israel” salesmen in the South would purposely seek out Christians, since they were almost all enthusiastically pro-Zionist. If asked about their reasons for supporting Zionism, a typical fundamentalist Christian response was “It’s in the book!” – meaning, of course, the Bible. Such was the dominant Southern Christian position, and this attitude toward Jews cannot have materialized suddenly in 1948, nor even in the one generation or so from Leo Frank’s trial to that date. If anything, Christian-Jewish relations were better at the inception of the Frank case than afterward, as the case left scars that are yet to be fully healed.

Those who posit a pervasive anti-Semitism in Georgia a century ago can point to a few obscure pamphlets and some of Tom Watson’s populist diatribes (though Watson himself disclaimed anti-Semitism and a few years later attacked Henry Ford for his racial condemnation of Jews). But it seems quite unlikely that any major Southern publication could match the New York Tribune editorial of 1882, which stated of Jews, “There must be some other cause than their religion which makes these people dreaded as permanent inhabitants by every country to which they come.” One is entitled to doubt that any distinguished Southern journal would have dared to reprint the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette editorial of 1879 which remarked about Jews that “It is strange that a nation which boasts so many good traits should be so obnoxious.” Additionally, as far as is known, Atlanta never had the “honor” of having a branch of the “American Anti-Semitic Association” within its borders, as Brooklyn, New York did in 1896.

In the 1890s, it was not in Marietta, Georgia, but in Saratoga Springs, New York where hoteliers famously posted signs reading “No Jews or Dogs Admitted Here.” In that crucible of Southern identity, the Civil War, Southerners made a Jew their Secretary of the Treasury in the person of Judah P. Benjamin, while the North in the person of Ulysses S. Grant physically expelled all Jews from all areas under his control, which included large parts of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee, cruelly demanding in a time of war and in an age of slow transportation that they be gone from this huge territory “within 24 hours.”

After the prolonged political battle of many New York Jews against Tammany Hall in New York City, in 1901 the city’s corrupt police force retaliated by attacking a Jewish funeral procession, billy clubs flailing. Nothing even remotely similar has been reported about the Atlanta of that era; in fact, knowing what we know about Southern-Jewish relations, it seems utterly inconceivable.

John Higham, in his “Social Discrmination Against Jews 1830 — 1930,” a work commissioned by the American Jewish Committee, called the South “historically the section least inclined to ostracize Jews,” and drew attention to the “striking Southern situation” of almost no discrimination against Jews there. True, Jewish-Gentile relations had somewhat declined there by the mid-twentieth century, and the massive campaign during the Frank appeals to paint his prosecution, and the South generally, as anti-Semitic – and the eventual creation of the Anti-Defamation League in the wake of Frank’s death – played their part in this change. The revived 20th-century Ku Klux Klan, inspired in part by the otherwise invisible and perhaps even nonexistent group that took responsibility for Leo Frank’s lynching, the Knights of Mary Phagan, was quite different from the original Klan: It took an overt and aggressive anti-Jewish position.

But the aftermath of the Frank trial had no part, of course, in the attitudes of the people of Atlanta on the day Mary Phagan was murdered. All things considered, the South in general and Atlanta in particular seem to have been, if anything, safe havens for Jews where they might escape from the anti-Semitism that was rampant around the beginning of the last century.

*  *  *

ATLANTA was not without real prejudices, though. The transformation of the South from an agrarian economy into an industrial one, with all its attendant evils, such as child labor, was the cause of passionate outcries for reform. The businessman, especially the industrialist, was not always looked upon with favor.

With industrialization came Northerners — often rich Northerners — who were commonly perceived as lording it over poor Southerners from illustrious family lines who, it was widely thought, ought to have been their social superiors. And the scars of the Civil War still ran deep. The war, and the sometimes brutal “Reconstruction,” was still within the living memory of the older generation. Many Atlantans of 1913 had personally experienced the killing of loved ones, defeat, exploitation, rape, poverty, hunger, dispossession, disenfranchisement, military dictatorship, and worse. The city itself had even been deliberately set afire by Union forces during the war. Though young Georgians had not experienced such horrors, they all had parents or other loved ones who had.

Southerners in 1861 had enough sense of peoplehood to separate themselves from the Union. The humiliating defeat of 1865 and the decade-long federal occupation had made that sense of peoplehood — of being a people apart, an oppressed nation within a nation — even stronger. And it bred a sense of distrust of authority, of resistance to established power, of direct vengeance on wrongdoers when the System failed to act, that suffused the very air of the South, from the sleepiest hamlet to the vibrant, burgeoning, modern, and industrial Atlanta that was rapidly arising from the ashes.

The African-Americans of the South were yet another nation within a nation. Freed by Lincoln’s decree during the war, and briefly ascendent during Reconstruction when almost the entire Southern white population was disenfranchised, black people were quickly relegated to second class citizenship when self-government was restored to the former Confederacy. Almost all of them poorly educated and in poverty, and viewed as impulsive and potentially violent, they were the first to be suspected  — and, almost universally unable to employ competent counsel — the most likely to be convicted of violent crimes. Even worse for them, if it was popularly perceived among the white community that an African-American was using a lawyer or the “letter of the law” to avoid responsibility for a crime, or if authorities were simply too insistent that a black man or woman had legal rights that ought to be respected when “everybody knew” he or she was guilty, an abduction and an extra-legal hanging — a lynching — was often the result.

“Lynch law,” as it came to be called, often targeted African-Americans, though some “no account” Southern whites were its victims too. The lynching of a Jew, though — and lynching would ultimately be Leo Frank’s fate — was, as far as I have been able to determine, unheard of.

The “color line” in the South (and, in fact, in some parts of the North as well) forbade sexual contact or marriage between the races, and the rule ran far deeper than a mere written law. The violation of a white girl or woman by a black man was viewed as especially heinous and the man even suspected of such an act, to say nothing of one convicted of such an act, especially if the woman was harmed or killed, was probably not long for this earth.

In the race-conscious South of 1913, Jews were considered white. In fact, in the newspapers of Atlanta before, during, and after the trial of Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan, Frank was referred to as a “white man” on innumerable occasions by reporters, witnesses, African-Americans, fellow Jews, pro-Frank partisans, and anti-Frank polemicists. Jews, furthermore, were not known for violent acts or crimes, nor feared as violators of white women. If anything, they were seen as an unusually industrious, intelligent, and law-abiding segment of society, even if they were a bit peculiar in their religious views. Marriage between Jews and Christians might have raised a few eyebrows in both communities — just as did intermarriage between members of widely different Christian denominations — but it was far from unknown, and such couples were not ostracized. In fact, Leo Frank’s own brother-in-law, Mr. Ursenbach, with whom he canceled an appointment to see a baseball game on the day Mary Phagan was killed, was a Christian.

If there was prejudice against Leo Frank in 1913 Atlanta, it was almost certainly not because he was a Jew. He was, however, a capitalist, a business owner, a manager, an employer of child labor, and a Northerner with an Ivy League education. He also came to be known during the course of the trial as sexually profligate. These facts probably did count against him.

* * *

Source: Author

Content retrieved from: https://leofrank.info/three-deaths-by-strangling-mary-phagan-leo-frank-and-truth/.

WAS THERE REALLY an anti-Jewish and anti-Frank “mob atmosphere” at Leo Frank’s trial, as Frank partisans have alleged? If there was, then how did Mrs. Frank get away with calling Prosecutor Dorsey a “Gentile dog” in open court, and then suffer no consequences whatever? Why did such a provocation result in zero retaliation by anyone, much less a “mob,” and zero repercussions for any Jew or the Jewish community as a whole? In fact, Jewish businessmen in Atlanta continued to advertise and sell and prosper just as they had before, and Mrs. Frank was in court the very next day after her outburst, with no reprisals or even threats of reprisals against her. Neither she nor any of her friends or associates in Atlanta’s Jewish community evidently took — or even remarked about the possibility of taking — any special precautions whatsoever. (ILLUSTRATION: This color portrait of Leo Frank — with a depiction of the National Pencil Company building in the background — was commissioned especially for this book, published by the Nation of Islam.)

In this, the fourteenth audio segment of this ground-breaking work originally published by the Nation of Islam, part of their series called The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, we also learn of the almost incredibly corrupt acts of Governor John Marshall Slaton, usually portrayed as a hero in biased “mainstream” accounts of the case. It was Slaton who made a deal to commute Frank’s death sentence to life in prison — and it was also Slaton who was quietly made a partner in the law firm defending Leo Frank, just a few weeks after Frank was indicted for murdering Mary Phagan. Thus Slaton was literally commuting the death sentence of his own client, an egregiously unethical act. And there’s much more to learn in this audio presentation, too.

This new audio book, based on the Nation of Islam’s The Leo Frank Case: The Lynching of a Guilty Man, the best investigative effort made on the Leo Frank case in the last 100 years, will take you on a trip into the past — to the greatest American murder mystery of all time; a mystery that will reveal to you the hidden forces that shape our world even today.

To read all the chapters we’ve published so far, simply click on this link.

We at The American Mercury are now proud to present part 14 of our audio version of this very important book, read by Vanessa Neubauer.

Simply press “play” on the player embedded above — or at the end of this article — to hear part 14 of the book.

* * *

Click here to obtain a print or e-book copy of this important work, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 3; The Leo Frank Case: The Lynching of a Guilty Man.

For further information on the Nation of Islam Historical Research Group, readers are encouraged to visit their Web site, noirg.org.

Here’s an excerpt from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s take on tomorrow’s event:

Friday makes 103 years since 20 men broke into a prison and hanged a Jewish man in Cobb County.

For the past four years, the Georgia Historical Society marker commemorating the lynching of Leo Frank has safely been in a Georgia Department of Transportation warehouse due to construction along the road where it was located, said Rabbi Steve Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth in Marietta.

The marker is already back on the northwest corner of Roswell and Freys Gin roads, said GDOT spokeswoman Natalie Dale. At 10 a.m. on Aug. 23, there will be a ceremony to rededicate the marker, which was first placed there in 2008.

The AJC flatly states that Frank was “wrongfully accused,” as if it was an established fact — very close to a complete inversion of the truth. Controlled media “journalism” doesn’t get much sleazier than this:

Frank had been wrongfully accused of killing 13-year-old Mary Phagan, who worked at the pencil factory Frank ran. Gov. John M. Slaton commuted Frank two days before the execution. People rioted.

They ran the governor off, and he didn’t return for a decade.

The state’s main witness was Jim Conley, a janitor at the National Pencil Company. He said he helped Frank dispose of the girl’s body. . . .

Lebow, the Marietta rabbi, said the Anti-Defamation League and other Frank scholars will be at the Aug. 23 event.

Let’s have a few of our own scholars there, too.

It will be interesting to see if the wording on the marker has been in any way altered.

Agents of the crime-linked Jewish group, the ADL (“Anti-Defamation League”), which has been known to corrupt law enforcement officers, and other covert operatives, are expected to be in attendance.

IN 1982, Alonzo Mann dropped what appeared to be the biggest bombshell imaginable into the Leo Frank case — though it was sixty-nine years after the fact. Mann, who’d been Leo Frank’s fourteen-year-old office boy in 1913, stated that he had kept a secret all these years: He had returned–he claimed–to the National Pencil Company office around noon on the day Mary Phagan was murdered and saw the black janitor Jim Conley carrying Mary Phagan’s limp body. According to Mann, Conley had threatened to kill him if he told anyone what he saw, and his own parents advised him to tell no one. So Mann did keep quiet, and his silence resulted in the conviction and death of Leo Frank for the murder — a crime Mann believed Jim Conley committed. (PICTURED: Alonzo Mann in 1982, left, and 1913)

But can Mann’s story be believed? And if it can, does what he saw prove Leo Frank’s innocence? Let’s investigate:

Mann’s signed 1982 affidavit was a media sensation and convinced many readers that Leo Frank was an innocent victim. It was also the basis for two attempts by Jewish groups to obtain a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank, the second of which was successful.

According to Leonard Dinnerstein (“The Fate of Leo Frank,” American Heritage, October 1996, vol. 47, issue 6):

There is no reason to doubt that Alonzo Mann’s affidavit is accurate. Had he ignored his mother’s advice and gone to the police with his information right away, Conley would surely have been arrested, the police and district attorney would not have concentrated their efforts on finding Frank guilty, and the crime would most likely have been quickly solved. But by the time the trial began, in July 1913, Mann’s testimony might hardly have even seemed important.

What really happened in 1913? First, let’s look at Mann’s testimony at trial in 1913, from the Official Brief of Evidence:

Alonzo Mann: I am office boy at the National Pencil Company. I began working there [Tuesday] April 1, 1913. I sit sometimes in the outer office and stand around in the outer hall. I left the factory at half past eleven on April 26th. When I left there, Miss Hall, the stenographer from Montag’s, was in the office with Mr. Frank. Mr. Frank told me to phone to Mr. Schiff and tell him to come down. I telephoned him, but the girl answered the phone and said he hadn’t got up yet. I telephoned once. I worked there two Saturday afternoons of the weeks previous to the murder and stayed there until half past three or four. Frank was always working during that time. I never saw him bring any women into the factory and drink with them. I have never seen Dalton there. On April 26th, I saw Holloway, Irby, McCrary and Darley at the factory. I didn’t see Quinn. I don’t remember seeing Corinthia Hall, Mrs. Freeman, Mrs. White, Graham, Tillander, or Wade Campbell, I left there 11:30 [AM].

CROSS EXAMINATION:

When Mr. Frank came that morning, he went right on into the office, and was at work there and stayed there. He went out once. Don’t know how long he stayed out.

Now, fast forward to the 1980s. Alonzo Mann, one of the last surviving Leo Frank defense witnesses, came forward some sixty-nine years later, in 1982, and provided some sensational testimony.

According to a typical media account of the affidavit, this one from Georgia Public Radio, “Alonzo Mann, Frank’s former office boy, claimed he saw Jim Conley carrying the body of Mary Phagan into the lobby of the National Pencil Company. Mann, who was only fourteen at the time, said Conley threatened to kill him if he revealed what he saw. Terrified, Mann kept the secret for sixty-nine years.” That’s quite a terror, to last sixty-nine years — to continue while Conley was imprisoned as an accessory after the fact to the murder — and even to endure for some twenty years after Conley’s death. Quite a terror indeed. Georgia Public Broadcasting continues: “This new evidence encouraged members of Atlanta’s Jewish community to petition for a posthumous pardon for Frank. Attorneys at the Anti-Defamation League initiated the process which finally ended in a diluted victory in 1986. The Board of Pardons and Paroles did not address the question of guilt or innocence, but rather a pardon was issued based on the State’s failure to protect Frank from the hands of his assailants.”

The ADL and the Highly Political Posthumous Pardon

Charles Wittenstein

Alonzo Mann’s affidavit became the basis of an attempt to obtain a “posthumous pardon with exoneration” for Leo Frank from the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. The effort was led by Charles Wittenstein, southern counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, and Dale Schwartz, an Atlanta lawyer.

What do reason and common sense tell us?

The further away in time a memory is from the original event, the more likely it becomes distorted and easily manipulated. How would a 21st century State Supreme Court or United States Supreme Court weigh testimony that comes sixty-nine years after the fact? An even more salient question is: Could such a revelation as Alonzo Mann’s in 1982, even if true, be sufficient to exonerate Leo Frank? You decide.

Background: On April 1, 1913, thirteen-year-old Alonzo Mann was given a highly coveted job as Leo Frank’s personal office boy at the National Pencil Company. Given Mann only worked at the company for a total of three and a half weeks before the murder was committed, one is not inclined to believe he had known Leo Frank long enough to make an accurate character assessment. Moreover, one may suspect that the young office boy was a bit star struck and naive back then. A tenure of a little over three weeks is hardly enough to give him the right to pontificate on the “extracurricular activities” — or lack thereof — going on in the factory under Leo M. Frank for the previous five years.

Fast forward 69 years from 1913 to 1982, when the story broke.

In 1982 Alonzo Mann was in the twilight of his life, frail, and in terrible physical condition. Mann was perched on a cane and had a pacemaker, was on a cocktail of pharmaceuticals — and truly lonely. The WWI veteran had, sadly, outlived his wife and only son. His virtual “death-bed” revelation in the years before he died had all the flair of a fictionalized Hollywood or Broadway drama — and the markings of another backroom bribery deal, which has been the central strategy of Leo Frank’s defenders for a century. The Georgia Supreme Court records containing Leo Frank’s appeals reveal the birth of this ugly strategy.

Dale Schwartz

In 1982, Alonzo Mann changed his story and alleged that he really left the National Pencil Company factory at noon, instead of 11:30 am (as he had testified in 1913). He then went on to say that at 12:05 — five minutes after he left the factory — he came back and saw the 27-year old  African-American janitor, Jim Conley, carrying the limp body of Mary Phagan on his shoulder, positioned as if getting ready to dump her down the two-foot-by-two-foot scuttle hole next to the elevator. Jim Conley then allegedly reached out for Alonzo Mann and said to the young boy, “if you tell anyone I will kill you.” Alonzo Mann claimed that he ran home and told his family, and alleges that his parents then told him not to tell anyone or get involved.

Does that seem logical? — or does that set off your highly refined nonsense detector?

Alonzo Mann’s 1982 statement does not pass multiple common sense tests, especially for those who know the history and culture of the South.

First: Why would white parents in the white racial separatist Atlanta, Georgia of 1913, tell their son not to tell the police about a murdering and guilty black janitor — especially when the result of not telling the police would ultimately result in an innocent, clean cut, and white boss, Leo Frank — a man who gave their son a highly prized job — going to the gallows? In the Old South, African-Americans were seen as prone to violent outbursts and were regarded as third class citizens with child-like mental and emotional maturity; and they were often not afforded the same legal protections as whites when accused of crime — and were usually easily convicted.

Second: Why would these white parents, in a white separatist South, allow their son to report back to work on Monday morning, April 28, 1913 — two days after that son was threatened with death by a black man carrying a dead white girl on his shoulder, knowing that that same black man would be there too? Jim Conley reported back to work that Monday, April 28, 1913, as did the 170 other employees, who were naturally expected to be back at work after the holiday weekend. Jim Conley was not arrested until Thursday, May 1st, 1913.

Third: If Alonzo Mann admitted to lying under oath at the Leo Frank trial in 1913 — “withholding information” and saying he left at 11:30 am instead of noon as he contended 69 years later — who’s not to say he wasn’t lying again in 1982 and beyond?

Fourth: If Alonzo Mann walked in on Jim Conley at 12:05 PM while Conley was getting ready to throw Mary Phagan’s body down the scuttle hole, why did Monteen Stover — who testified she came down the stairs near the front entrance and scuttle hole at exactly that time — not witness this scene also? Why didn’t Leo Frank — who was just 40 feet away — not hear Mary Phagan scream or any sounds of a struggle at all?

Fifth: If Alonzo Mann or his parents kept quiet because they were afraid of retribution from Jim Conley, why did they not tell the authorities what Alonzo had seen once Jim Conley was arrested? Conley was arrested on May 1, 1913, convicted of being an accessory after the fact in the murder of Mary Phagan, and remained imprisoned throughout the entire year of 1914.

Sixth: If Alonzo Mann was “terrified” into silence by Jim Conley, why did that terror not end in 1962, when Conley is reported to have died?

Jim Conley

Let’s take a closer look

If we are to believe Alonzo Mann that he saw Jim Conley carrying the unconscious body of Mary Phagan, isn’t it rather odd that in the white racial separatist South of 1913 — given the likelihood of unrelenting and possibly prejudiced law enforcement, if not an extremely violent lynching — a Southern black man would assault, rob, and then possibly murder a teenage white girl in the highest traffic area in the factory, almost next to the unlocked glass-paneled front door? — and then, in the aftermath of the crime, carry her body across the same area without even bothering to lock the door?

During the trial, Leo Frank’s defense team changed its theory of how the attack against Mary Phagan transpired. According to one theory, Mary Phagan was crowded back into the empty Clarke Woodenware Company space on the first floor, assaulted, and thrown down a back chute at the rear of the building. But that theory encountered a problem: It was determined well before the trial that the owner of the building had locked the door to that area four months earlier, and the door was still locked when the police came to the premises on Sunday, April 27 — the day after Mary Phagan was killed. Later during the trial, the Leo Frank defense team said that Mary Phagan’s body was thrown 14 feet down into the basement via the two-foot wide scuttle hole near the elevator at the front of the building, which had a ladder diagonally going downward. In other theories, Jim Conley murdered Mary Phagan in the basement. The defense theories kept — and keep — changing.

Wouldn’t there have been forensic evidence on the body of a 4’11” 107-pound girl if she had fallen 14 feet? Mary Phagan had numerous autopsies performed on her by doctors in late April and early May of 1913, and none of the reports mention any broken bones or indications on her body that she had fallen 14 feet to a hard dirt floor. In fact the forensic evidence shows that the scratches on her face caused by her being dragged 150 feet across the basement floor — from the elevator to the rear of the cellar — had no blood coming from them, indicating she was already quite dead when she reached the basement.

Mary Phagan: autopsy photograph

The autopsy reports revealed Mary had died of strangulation and the black eye suggested a left-handed man had punched her in the face. What percentage of people are left-handed? According to Wikipedia.org, “A variety of studies suggest that 70—90% of the world population is right-handed.” (Wikipedia, “Lefthandedness, “2013). Since Leo Frank was left-handed and Jim Conley right-handed, who was more likely to have punched her in the right eye with a left fist?

And none of the defense theories give us any explanation at all of the hair which, along with dried blood, was found on the lathe in the metal room upstairs, nor for the blood stains found nearby on the metal room floor.

Another throwaway detail?

The most interesting piece of evidence Alonzo Mann provided to the public in 1982 was that concerning the location of the “loafing sweeper” Jim Conley. Mann said Conley was idly squatting on a box in the first floor lobby of the National Pencil Company for the entire morning of Saturday, April 26, 1913. That’s a very interesting piece of evidence because, in 1913, Alonzo Mann and several of Leo Frank’s other defense witnesses claimed they didn’t see Jim Conley that day. It would mean that Hattie Hall, Leo Frank’s stenographer, had committed perjury and lied under oath — as well as N.V. Darley, Alonzo Mann himself, and everyone else who was a defense witness for Leo Frank that had claimed to be in the factory that morning.

This “new” evidence provided by Alonzo Mann was not actually new, and did not actually help Leo Frank, but tended to corroborate all the other eyewitness testimony from others who were there at the factory that morning, who said that a black man (some specified him as Conley, some didn’t) was idly loafing about in the lobby. The eyewitness testimony tended to suggest that Jim Conley had indeed spent the morning and afternoon in the factory lobby and Leo Frank not only knew about it, but had indeed requested his African-American assistant to come to work on that infamous day — but it was a very curious kind of work, as we shall see.

Three views of Mary Phagan during her brief life; far right, her aunt Mattie Phagan

Did Jim Conley’s testimony sustain itself?

Jim Conley alleged he was waiting in the lobby all morning long because Leo Frank had asked him to wait there as a watchdog for him during an anticipated afternoon tryst. Is there an unwritten subtext here? Jim Conley claimed to have served as Leo’s watchdog on numerous other Saturdays while Frank “entertained” other girls. Did Leo Frank have a pre-planned tryst arranged with Mary Phagan? If so, it adds a new dimension to the case never before explored. For the purposes of history, if we consider the Konigsberg variation of the murder — that Mary Phagan had a pre-arranged tryst with Leo Frank — then it opens up the possibility that this case is even more bizarre than we might have ever thought. And if the Konigsberg variation is true, why then did Leo Frank murder Mary?

Did Leo Frank lie about not knowing Jim Conley was at the factory that day?

If Alonzo Mann was indeed telling the truth about Jim Conley sitting near the factory entrance all morning long doing nothing on the morning of the murder, it definitely suggests that Leo Frank might have lied to the court when he gave his unsworn statement to the jury: Frank said he did not even know Jim Conley was in the factory at all on the day of the murder. (Leo Frank Trial Statement, Brief of Evidence, August 18, 1913)

How could Leo Frank not know Jim Conley was there, when Leo Frank admitted at the trial that during the morning he left the building and came back after running morning errands, including a brief trip to Sigmund Montag’s office down the block to get the mail? (Leo Frank, Brief of Evidence, August 18, 1913). How could Leo Frank miss seeing someone sitting next to the staircase he would have traversed at least twice, coming and going?

The common sense test

If Leo Frank did not know Jim Conley was there, a logical question follows: What was an employee of the factory, Jim Conley, who was not required to work on this Saturday — a state holiday — doing, sitting on a crate next to the staircase on the first floor lobby all morning long, wasting time watching people come and go? Why would a sweeper like Jim Conley go to work on a Saturday, a state holiday and day off — unless he was required to do so by his boss? This an especially pertinent question in light of the fact Jim Conley had been paid his weekly salary — $6.05 — the evening before, on Friday, April 25, 1913 by Leo M. Frank. At five cents a beer and three cents a whiskey, it’s hard to imagine Jim Conley would have spent all of his salary on liquor the night before and still come to work bright and early the next day. And it certainly doesn’t seem realistic that Jim Conley could have drunk 120 beers the night before and would therefore need to rob, rape, and strangle a White girl for her $1.20 pay — especially at the highest traffic point of the National Pencil Company factory, right next to an unlocked, half-glass, entrance door. Wouldn’t he rather have spent his time drinking five cent pints at any agreeable saloon?

Jim Conley coming to work on his day off just doesn’t fit or make sense, unless he was asked to come to work by his boss, Leo Frank. And, if he was asked to come to work, why wasn’t he working, at least in any visible way? Could it be that by just sitting and watching the comings and goings at the factory entrance, he was doing exactly what Leo Frank had asked him to do?

Concerning Jim Conley’s unheard-of salary

When it was revealed, Jim Conley’s unusually high salary for his menial position left many people asking why this African-American floor sweeper — who’d been demoted from elevator operator — was making 50% more ($6.05 vs $4.05) than the white children day laborers. Perhaps Jim Conley was more than just a floor sweeper. Perhaps this fact sustains all the testimony which confirmed Jim Conley was Leo Frank’s “watchdog,” keeping a careful eye on the entrance when Leo would order call-in prostitutes from Nina Formby on Saturdays or arrange trysts with his quite-possibly-willing girl-child laborers who were living on the edge of poverty. Furthermore, given that one female employee reported at the Frank trial that she told assistant superintendent Herbert George Schiff (Trial Testimony of Herbert George Schiff, Brief of Evidence, August, 1913) that Jim Conley was “sprinkling” (urinating) on the pencils, why was he never fired? Could it be that Jim Conley served a very important purpose for Leo Frank? Could it also be that he knew too much to be fired?

Schiff would claim at the trial that the reason why Jim Conley wasn’t fired was because “he knows the business too well” — a very strange statement indeed to make of a sweeper! (Brief of Evidence, 1913).

According to another Black employee, “Snow Ball” (Gordon Bailey, Brief of Evidence, August, 1913), Jim Conley was — unlike every other worker except executives — not always required to punch the time clock. Why would a sweeper like Jim Conley — who’d been “busted” down to the lowest job in the factory — be extended such unique liberties by Leo M. Frank? Why was Jim Conley the only person out of the 170 hourly factory employees — most of whom were white and some eight of whom were African-Americans — not to have to punch the time clock?

A scream in broad daylight

The defense and Leo Frank partisans contend that Jim Conley was waiting in the lobby all morning until a little after noon in order to rob a fellow employee, Mary Phagan. But they forgot about the scream.

Where Jim Conley sat on the first floor was no more than 30 to 40 feet from where Leo Frank sat in his inner office on the second floor. And the first floor lobby of the National Pencil Company was the highest traffic point in the entire building: It was where people would come and go all day long during the work week, and all morning long on Saturdays.

On Saturday, April 26, 1913, people were coming to collect their pay envelopes and several employees were present in the morning for a half-day’s work. Leo Frank was on the second floor, in his office, on April 26, 1913, as he was on most Saturdays. He surely could have heard a scream from 30 to 40 feet away, had there been one. Jim Conley, in fact, claimed he heard a scream after Leo and Mary went to the metal room, a considerably greater distance than Frank’s office. Leo Frank did not mention a scream at all.

If Jim Conley had attacked Mary Phagan in the lobby, Leo Frank would almost certainly have heard a scream directly below him. He could then have easily called the police, as the telephone was inside Frank’s office on the wall. (See Defense diagrams of the second floor).

The theory of Jim Conley beating, robbing, and “possibly raping” a white girl in the place where Monteen Stover would likely have walked in on him doing it, would almost surely guarantee Monteen’s backing up into a street filled with white men — and then, for Jim Conley, a castration without anesthesia, or worse, would ensue. This is how men of color accused of raping white girls were generally treated in 1913 Atlanta — that is, just before they were lynched from a tree or riddled with bullets. Imagine how it would have fared for one such not merely accused — but caught in the act!

Was Jim Conley telling the truth when he said Leo Frank asked him on the previous evening — Friday, April 25, 1913 — to come to work on the morning of April 26 to act as a watchdog as he had in the past? This was something Leo M. Frank had done many times before on Saturdays, according to Jim. Naturally, given the obvious implications, Leo Frank denied it. What man, guilty or innocent, would not deny callously arranging sexual trysts with women (sometimes even little girls) other than his wife? Which brings us back full circle to the question: Why was Jim Conley sitting on that crate all morning long in the factory lobby on his day off?

Jim Conley’s sitting on that crate next to the stairs was corroborated by Mrs. White at the trial in 1913, and later by Alonzo Mann in 1982 — though not in 1913.

Common sense tells us that usually no one goes to work on a state holiday or day off unless asked to do so, or for some other really compelling reason. So the question is: Who asked Jim Conley to spend the day waiting and sitting on a box on the first floor lobby area of the National Pencil Company? If someone didn’t ask him, what was he doing there all day? Waiting to rob someone at high noon, right by the glass-windowed front door and while the streets were filled with people? Jim Conley says Leo Frank did ask him, as he had many times before, to act as a lookout while he “chatted” with girls in his office — and numerous witnesses other than Alonzo Mann sustained the fact Jim Conley was actually sitting there all morning long.

Alonzo Mann never mentioned seeing Tillander, Corrie, or Emma — thus sustaining his original statement he left the Factory at 11:30 AM on April 26, 1913 — not the supposed noon he claimed 69 years later. Another interesting statement at trial was that of Hattie Hall, Frank’s stenographer: She did not mention seeing Alonzo Mann when she left at noon, supporting therefore the idea that Alonzo Mann did leave the factory at 11:30 and not at noon.

Alonzo Mann claimed he came back to the factory at 12:05 pm — almost immediately after supposedly leaving at noon — because he wanted to speak to Herbert George Schiff. But evidence suggests that Schiff was never expected to be at work on this holiday and, in fact, he never showed up — a fact which no one disputes. This casts further doubt on Alonzo Mann’s story about coming back and seeing Conley in the act of carrying Mary Phagan’s body.

Isn’t it rather odd that Herbert G. Schiff — who prided himself at the trial concerning the fact he never missed a day of work for five years — would have said he supposedly “missed work” on Saturday, April 26, 1913, a state holiday — when he was almost certainly not expected to come to work at all? (see: Trial testimony of Herbert G. Schiff, Brief of Evidence, August, 1913). Alonzo Mann claimed he called Herbert Schiff one time that morning, but the Schiff’s maid alleged Alonzo Mann had called twice. Did he even call at all? What caused the mix-up? The cacophony was even bigger than described here: Others claimed to have called Herbert George Schiff at different times that morning, but there’s no real reason to believe Schiff was expected to come in that day by anyone.

It turns out that Schiff was indeed called during the morning of April 26, 1913 — but not to report to work: He was called to inform him his suit had come from the dry cleaners.

Lemmie Quinn

Lemmie Quinn: The metal room foreman’s story

The other problem Leo Frank had to contend with was the issue of Lemmie Quinn, who allegedly came to the factory at 12:20 PM on April 26, 1913, supposedly for two minutes, looking for Herbert George Schiff in order to talk about a baseball bet with him. Why was Lemmie Quinn looking for an employee at 12:20 PM on Saturday, April 26, 1913, who was never supposed to come to work on a holiday?

Leo Frank said he had forgotten for a full week to mention Lemmie Quinn’s afternoon arrival at the factory at 12:20 PM and Coroner Paul Donehoo, at the Coroner’s Inquest, asked why he didn’t mention this important information to the police once he remembered it a week later. Leo Frank responded by saying he wanted to ask for permission from his lawyers first before revealing it to police. Donehoo was incredulous, as might be expected.

Donehoo and others doubtlessly reasoned that someone accused of murdering a little girl would make every effort to bring forward exonerating evidence and alibi witnesses as soon as humanly possible — and not withhold such evidence for more than a week. The result of Leo Frank waiting more than a week to tell anyone made the new evidence appear as if it was manufactured, especially in light of the fact that an affidavit was made by Lemmie Quinn a week before the Coroner’s inquest, stating he had left the factory at 11:45 AM to go home and then head to a billiards hall on the other side of town.

Lemmie Quinn’s “reappearance” at the factory at 12:20 PM on April 26, 1913, was seen as a physical impossibility given that Lemmie admitted leaving the National Pencil Company at 11:45 AM, going home and then making a 25 minute trip to the billiards hall. This would not have given Lemmie Quinn enough time to get back to the factory at 12:20 PM, even if Lemmie Quinn only played one quick game and then made the 25 minute trip back to the factory.

Lemmie Quinn backfired

Lemmie Quinn got caught in a lie and it was likely that none of the 12 jury members nor Judge Leonard Strickland Roan believed him. Quinn gave testimony that came off as fabricated after the murder for the purpose of shrinking the amount of time available for Leo Frank to kill Mary Phagan — from noon to 12:35, down to the range of noon to 12:19.

Quinn’s claims boxed in Leo Frank

The notable thing about Lemmie Quinn’s supposed appearance at the factory at 12:20 PM is not only that our highly refined fraud detectors tell us that his story might have been a fabrication to help Leo Frank, but more importantly that it makes the defense’s “first floor attack” on Mary Phagan even more difficult to believe. If Alonzo Mann really saw Jim Conley carrying the unconscious body of Mary Phagan in the lobby at 12:05, where was Monteen Stover? And since Leo Frank changed the time he claimed Mary came to his office to 12:12 to 12:17, and further claimed he spoke to her for two or three minutes, why didn’t she bump into Lemmie Quinn upon exiting? Both Stover and Quinn claimed to be at the factory sandwiching the time Leo Frank said Mary Phagan arrived, so wouldn’t have Quinn bumped into at least Mary Phagan or Jim Conley at 12:20?

Leo Frank

Leo Frank’s ever-changing times of Mary Phagan’s arrival

Frank gave several different times for Mary Phagan’s arrival at his office: 1) “12:02 to 12:03” (The time he gave police orally on Sunday, April 27, 1913); “12:05 to 12:10, maybe 12:07” (The time he gave in a deposition to police on Monday, April 28, 1913 known as State’s Exhibit B, 1913); then it became “12:10 to 12:15” (The time he gave at the Coroner’s Inquest, May 5 and 8th, 1913); and finally “12:12 PM to 12:17 PM.” (Leo Frank Trial, August 18, 1913).

These ever-latening time claims damaged Frank’s credibility beyond repair, and, to make matters worse, all of these times were during a time period he could not account for, even with Lemmie Quinn’s “boxing him in” at 12:20. One thing is obvious: If Frank’s later time claims are regarded as true, then Alonzo Mann’s 1982 affidavit is false. They are mutually exclusive.

Nothing significant; nothing new

A most salient point is this — as even pro-Frank researcher Steve Oney admits: Alonzo Mann brought absolutely nothing new to the Leo Frank Case with his 1982 affidavit. Jim Conley had already admitted to being an accomplice and admitted that he participated in bringing the dead body of Mary Phagan to the basement — at Leo Frank’s request. If he was seen carrying Mary Phagan in the lobby, it only invalidates Conley’s claim that he exclusively used the elevator to do so, and the rest of Conley’s testimony remains unchallenged.

A dead man’s affidavit

However, the ADL of B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, the Atlanta Jewish Federation, and numerous other Jewish organizations used the affidavit of Alonzo Mann, even after his death, to push for a posthumous pardon with exoneration for Leo M. Frank.

First  attempt: failure

Attorneys for these three Jewish organizations petitioned the (Georgia) State Board of Pardons and Paroles to pardon Leo Frank, but the petition was denied on December 22, 1983.

Pardon without exoneration: achieved

A Pyrrhic victory for the Jewish Community resulted, after successful pressure from the ADL and other Jewish organizations, on March 11, 1986. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles pardoned Leo M. Frank due to the failure of the state to protect him from lynching — but they would not exonerate him of the crime of murder. It was an odd appeasement.

In a way, this decision was ultimately another victory for the prosecution team: Leo Frank’s murder conviction is still standing today as “black letter” and settled law, with permanent and binding legal precedent. Even after decades of relentless propaganda and behind the scenes wheeling and dealing by Jewish groups, the ultimate result was that the jury had the last word.

The Jewish community — and the media — present the pardon at face value as a vindication of Leo Frank. But consider another view: In order to pardon someone of a crime, that person has to be guilty — you can’t pardon someone unless you first acknowledge his guilt. Therefore, the guilt of the individual has to be affirmed — and in Leo Frank’s case it was affirmed again and again, at every level of the appellate system. All, including the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, preserved his verdict of guilt.

Further appeals?

The pardon was granted, the Board said, because the state failed to protect Leo Frank and because his lynching prevented him from launching further appeals. But there is one little problem with that.

The Board members were patently in error when they alleged that the lynchingprevented Frank from making any further appeals within the appellate court system, because Leo M. Frank had fully and totally exhausted all of his court appeal options at every level of the State, District, and Federal Appellate Courts, with the Supreme Court unanimously overruling any further review of the case, thus closing the door forever at all levels of the appellate court system. When there were no more options left in the court system, the State Board of 100 years ago refused a recommendation of clemency — and even the likely-bribed Governor John M. Slaton, refused to pardon Leo Frank and actually stated in his commutation letter he was not disturbing the guilty verdict. Not a single legal body in the last century has overturned the guilty verdict of Leo Frank, but attempts to spin the truth have endlessly been made.

Conclusion

Far from being the “bombshell” that “broke the Leo Frank case” and “proved Leo Frank to be innocent,” Alonzo Mann’s 1982 affidavit is a very doubtful document that, even if true, provides essentially nothing new to the objective student of the case. What it has provided, though, is an emotion-laden propaganda weapon for those who have been deceiving the public about this case for a century now.

* * *

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

* * *

APPENDIX: Articles and Images

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from the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, March 8, 1982:

Man breaks 69-year silence on sensational murder case

Alonzo Mann, 83, stands outside an Atlanta department store at the site where 14-year-old Mary Phagan was murdered in 1913. After nearly 70 years, Mann now says he is convinced a Jewish factory superintendent, who was imprisoned and later lynched in a wave of anti-Semitism, was innocent of the crime. (UPI photo)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UPI) – For almost 70 years Alonzo Mann kept secret his information that could have saved a Jewish factory superintendent from being lynched for killing a 14-year-old girl in Georgia.

As a 13-year-old boy he was afraid to testify at the trial of Leo Frank because the prosecution’s star witness – who Mann says was the real murderer – threatened to kill him. Mann said he later kept quiet because his mother told him not to get involved.

After he was convicted Frank was taken from prison and lynched in the sensational case that sparked waves of anti-Semitism and led to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and the creation of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
“At last I am able to get this off my heart,” Mann, 83, said in a copyrighted interview in Sunday’s Tennessean newspaper.

There will be some people who will be angry at me because I kept all this silent until it was too late to save Leo Frank’s life,” said Mann, who passed both a lie detector test and a psychological stress evaluation test on the truth of his statement.

“When my time comes, I hope that God understands me better for having told it. That is what matters most.”
Frank was tried and convicted for the murder of Mary Phagan who worked at the pencil factory where he was the superintendent.

Mann’s account, contained in a sworn affidavit, claimed he saw the state’s star witness, Jim Conley, carrying the limp body of the victim on the day of the murder. Conley died in 1962.

Mann, who now lives in Bristol, Va., said he remained silent at first because Conley threatened to kill him and later because his parents told him not get involved.

“I believe in the sight of God that Jim Conley killed Mary Phagan to get her money to buy beer,” said Mann. “Leo Frank was innocent.”

Mann, who has a heart condition and fears his life is drawing to its end, was Frank’s office boy in April 1913 at the National Pencil Co. factory in Atlanta. Mary Phagan was killed at the factory when she went to collect the $1.20 she was owed for 10 hours work.

After the slaying, authorities arrested Frank. Conley, a janitor at the factory, became the star witness.

Mann said when he saw Conley carrying the girl’s body, she was apparently still alive. He told the Tennessean he believes that if he had cried out, he might have saved the girl’s life.

But he did not, and Conley told him, “If you ever mention this, I’ll kill you,” Mann said.

Frightened, Mann ran away and later told his mother what happened, he said. She told him to remain silent.

Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence in 1915 from death to life in prison, an act that touched off a wave of outrage and mob violence. Armed mobs roamed Atlanta streets for days, forcing Jewish businessmen to close their doors.

Later, a group of 75 men calling themselves “Knights of Mary Phagan,” met at the girl’s grave and vowed to avenge her death. A couple of weeks later, they stormed the prison where Frank was being held, held guards at bay with rifles and took Frank away in handcuffs.

He was hanged from an oak tree near the house where Phagan was born. No one was ever charged with lynching Frank.

Two months after the lynching, the Knights of Mary Phagan reorganized and burned a cross on top of Stone Mountain in Georgia – an event that marked the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.

“I wish I had told what I knew,” said Mann “But I never thought Mr. Frank would be convicted. And once he was convicted, I was sure he would eventually get out of it.”

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from the Nashville Tennessean, March 7, 1982 (front page):

AN INNOCENT MAN WAS LYNCHED

“The players” from the front page of the Nashville Tennessean

by Frank Ritter, Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherborne

Leo Frank, convicted in 1913 and lynched in 1915 in one of the most notorious murder cases in American history, was innocent, according to a sworn statement given by a witness in the case.

The testimony used to convict Frank was perjured, and the real killer of 14-year-old Mary Phagan was the man who gave that false testimony, the witness has disclosed to The Tennessean.

ALONZO MANN OF Bristol, Va., is the witness. Now 83 and ailing with a heart condition, he was Frank’s office boy in 1913 at the National Pencil Co. factory in Atlanta. It was there on Confederate Memorial Day in April that little Mary Phagan was slain when she went to collect the $1.20 she was owed for 10 hours of work the previous Monday.
“Leo Frank did not kill Mary Phagan,” Mann said, “She was murdered instead by Jim Conley.”

Mann’s memory is not perfect when he is recalling people, places and events of nearly 70 years ago. But he remembers vividly the confrontation with Jim Conley, who had the limp form of Mary Phagan in his arms.
Mary’s battered body was found face down on a pile of sawdust shavings in the factory basement. A cord was knotted around her neck and there was massive bleeding from a deep wound to her head. Cinders were found under her fingernails, showing she had clawed the ground in her struggles. Her underclothing was ripped but there was no evidence indicating she had been raped.

THE SLAYING shocked Atlanta and, after an investigation, police arrested Frank, the Jewish superintendent of the factory. The prosecution’s star witness was Jim Conley, who worked at the factory as a sweeper. He said Frank committed the murder.

But Mann has told The Tennessean that he saw Conley on the day of the murder with the limp body of Mary Phagan in his arms. He believes he saw this only moments after Mary had been knocked unconscious, but apparently before she was murdered. And he believes that if he had yelled out, he might have saved Mary’s life.

But Mann says he did not yell out, and that Conley told him:

“IF YOU EVER MENTION this, I’ll kill you.”

He was frightened and ran out, Mann says. After riding a trolley home, he told his mother what had happened. She directed him to remain silent and told him not to get involved. He obeyed her.

Mann’s statement puts him in direct conflict with the testimony to which Conley swore during the trial. Conley testified he was ordered by Frank to dispose of Mary Phagan’s body by burning it in the basement’s furnace. He said he and Frank were together the whole time they took the body from the second floor of the factory directly to the basement, using the elevator. He said he was not on the first floor with the body.

MANN, HOWEVER, says he saw Conley alone with Mary Phagan on the first floor of the building, standing near the trapdoor that led to the basement. It later became apparent – after the trial – that the elevator did not go to the basement that day. This fact was cited as crucial by Georgia Gov. John Slaton when he commuted Frank’s sentence in 1915 to life imprisonment.

There is no way that what Mann says today can be reconciled with the version of events which Conley related in court in 1913. Either Conley lied then, or Mann is lying now.

Because of the historical significance of what Mann is saying, The Tennessean asked him to submit to both a lie detector test and a psychological stress evaluation examination – procedures designed to determine if someone is lying. The tests were given by the Ball Investigation Agency here, and investigator Jeffery S. Ball provided the newspaper with a formal statement saying Mann responded truthfully to every question he was asked.

THE TENNESSEAN, after an extensive investigation which included the examination of files and records in several states and interviews with people knowledgeable about the case, concluded that Mann’s story needed to be made public.

This is the first time that Mann has spoken publicly about what he knows of the brutal murder which led to the most blatant display of anti-Semitism in the nation’s history and to a revival of the Ku Klux Klan – an irony because Conley, the chief witness, was a black man.

Mann says he told relatives and friends about what he knew. Once, while in the Army, he got into a fight with another soldier who disputed his statement that it was Conley and not Frank who killed Mary Phagan. And he tried once to tell his story to an Atlanta reporter.

FOR NEARLY 70 years his story has been a secret, and it has preyed on his mind. Now that he perhaps does not have long to live, it is vitally important that the truth come out, he told The Tennessean.

“I want the world to know the truth,” Mann explained in a series of interviews with the newspaper, “The testimony which Conley gave at the trial to convict Frank was a lie from beginning to end.”

That trial, surrounded by mob hysteria and violent anti-Jewish sentiment, was the most sensational in Atlanta’s history. No other trial even comes close, except perhaps that of Wayne Williams, convicted a week ago in the deaths of two young Atlanta blacks and suspected of being the mass murderer who terrorized Atlanta for months.

ALTHOUGH MARY PHAGAN was not raped, Frank was denounced as a sexual pervert; however, Conley was the only witness to suggest that.

The star prosecution witness made four separate statements to police in connection with the case, the first one saying nothing to implicate Frank. However, each of the three statements that followed increasingly involved Frank.

During the trial, it was the fourth and last statement that formed the basis for Conley’s court testimony. On cross-examination he repeatedly acknowledged that he had made numerous mistakes in his earlier statements to police, but efforts by the defense to break down his tale were largely unsuccessful.

FRANK WAS FOUND guilty and sentenced to hang, but appeals delayed the execution. Two years later his sentence was commuted to life in prison after the case had created a furor across the nation.

At that point – August 1915 – a group of vigilantes stormed the prison where Frank was being held, abducted him at gunpoint and lynched him.

Four blacks had been lynched in Georgia the month before.

Although he possessed information in 1913 which he believes would have cleared Frank, Alonzo Mann did not tell authorities what he knew. He says he did not speak out because Conley threatened to kill him if he did and because his mother and father convinced him he should keep silent.

NOW, FINALLY, HE has come forward with his story.

“I wish I had done it differently,” he says, “I wish I had told what I knew. But I never thought Mr. Frank would be convicted. And once he was convicted, I was sure he would eventually get out of it. I knew he was not guilty.
“I never fully realized until I was older that if I had told what I knew Leo Frank would have been acquitted and gone free. Instead he was imprisoned. After he was convicted, my mother told me there was nothing we could do to change the jury’s verdict. My father agreed with her. [front page ends here; no further transcription available at this time — Ed.]

An artist’s interpretation of the confrontation between Alonzo Mann, then 14, and Jim Conley, holding the limp form of Mary Phagan on the first floor of National Pencil Co.

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from the Tuscaloosa News, March 8, 1982:

Was innocent man lynched?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – An 83-year-old man who says he wants to clear the record before he dies claims the wrong person took the blame for the 1913 death of 14-year-old Mary Phagan in a sensational Atlanta murder case, The Nashville Tennessean reported in a copyright story Sunday.

Alonzo Mann of Bristol, Va., told the morning newspaper that he is certain Leo Frank, a Jewish pencil manufacturer, was innocent of Miss Phagan’s murder.

Mann, who worked as an office boy at the National Pencil Co., in Atlanta in 1913, said he believed Jim Conley, a black sweeper at the company and the key prosecution witness in the case, killed the young white girl April 26, 1913, for her $1.20 pay to buy beer.

Conley, who died in 1962, maintained throughout the trial that he and Frank were together the whole time when the body of Mary Phagan was disposed of.

Frank was convicted and was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted by Georgia Gov. John Marshall Slaton, the newspaper said. In August 1915, a group of vigilantes who called themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan stormed the Milledgeville, Ga., jail where Frank was held and dragged him out at gunpoint. Frank was lynched about 175 miles away in an oak grove near Marietta, Ga.

The trial was flamed by anti-Semitism and spurred a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the birth of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League, which opposes anti-Semitism.

Mann told the newspaper that he has thought often in the ensuing decades that he might have saved Mary Phagan’s life or that of Leo Frank.

Mann said he worked April 26, 1913, and left briefly to attend the Confederate Memorial Day parade with his mother. When he was unable to find her, he returned to the job and came across Conley, alone, apparently moments after the murder had been committed.

“I had no idea that I was about to witness an important moment in a famous murder case – a moment that has not been made public until now; that I was about to become a witness to tragic history,” Mann told The Tennessean.

Mann said he saw Conley holding the limp girl near a trap door leading to the factory’s cellar.

The Virginia man said if Miss Phagan was only unconscious when he saw her with Conley and if he had yelled for help, she might have been spared.

“On the other hand, I might have lost my own life,” he said, “If I had told what I saw that day I might have saved Leo Frank’s life. I didn’t realize it at the time. I was too young to understand.”

Mann said Conley had threatened him.

“He wheeled on me and in a voice that was low but threatening and frightening to me, he said:

“If you ever mention this I’ll kill you.”

“I was young and I was frightened, ” he told the newspaper. “I had no doubt Conley would have tried to kill me if I had told that I had seen him with Mary Phagan that day.”

Mann, who told The Tennessean he refused to give Conley a dime for two beers the morning of the murder, said Mary Phagan went to Frank a short time later to get her pay.

“I am convinced that she left the pay window and was coming down the stairs or had reached the first floor when she met Conley … I am confident that I came in just seconds after Conley had taken the girl’s money and grabbed her. I do not think sex was his motive. I believe it was money. Her pay was never found in the building after she died.”

Mann, who told the newspaper that by telling his tory he could at last “get this off my heart,” said he told his late wife about the crime, fought a soldier over the story and tried to tell an Atlanta newspaper reporter about it in the 1950s.
“I believe it will help people to understand that courts and juries can make mistakes. They made a mistake in the Leo Frank case. I think it is good for it all to come out at this date,” Mann said.

“I am making this statement because, finally, I want the record clear. I want the public to understand that Leo Frank did not kill Mary Phagan,” Mann, told The Tennessean in a story written by Frank Ritter, Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherborne, “Jim Conley, the chief witness against Leo Frank, lied under oath … I am convinced that he, not Leo Frank, killed Mary Phagan.”

John Seigenthaler, president and publisher of The Tennessean, said Mann passed two lie detector tests administered by Ball Investigative Agency. He said he insisted Mann be given a psychological voice stress test because he has a pacemaker which Seigenthaler was concerned would interfere with the lie detector tests. He said the agency told him the pacemaker would have no effect on the tests and Mann passed the voice analysis.

Mann said that fateful April day he told his mother what he had seen at the factory, but she told him to forget it in hopes of protecting the family and her son from publicity.

“After he was convicted my mother told me there was nothing we could do to change the jury’s verdict,” Mann said “My father agreed with her. I continued to remain silent.”

Mann, who testified at the trial, told The Tennessean he was nervous and frightened the day the trial started.

“There were crowds in the street who were angry and who were saying that Leo Frank should die,” he said, ” Some were yelling things like, ‘Kill the Jew!'”

“I never fully realized until I was older that if I had told what I knew Leo Frank would have been acquitted and gone free,” Mann told the newspaper. “Instead, he was imprisoned.”

Mann said neither he nor his father believed Frank would be convicted. Frank, who took the witness stand in his own defense, denied he killed the girl.

“Leo Frank was convicted by lies, heaped on lies,” he told the newspaper. “It wasn’t just Conley who lied. Others said that Leo Frank had women in the office for immoral purposes and that he had liquor there. There was a story that he took women in the basement … That was all false.”

Mann told the newspaper he believes people will have different reactions to his story.

“There will be some people who will be angry at me because I kept all this silent until it was too late to save Leo Frank’s life,” he said. “They will say that being young is not an excuse. They will blame my mother. The only thing I can say is that she did what she thought was best for me and the family.

“Other people may hate me for telling it. I hope not, but I am prepared for that, too. I know that I haven’t a long time to live. All that I have said is the truth.

“When my time comes, I hope that God understands me better for having told it. That is what matters most,” Mann said.

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The 1986 pardon of Leo Frank:

by Thomas E. Watson (pictured), Watson’s Magazine, Volume 21 Number 6, October 1915

ABNORMAL CONDITIONS prevail in this country, and the situation grows more complicated, year by year. We have carried the “asylum” idea to such extravagant liberality, that the sewage of the whole world is pouring upon us. The human race was never known to do, before, what it is doing now, to America. History presents no parallel case. From the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and from Cape Hatteras to the Golden Gate, we see the same ominous, portentous phenomena, of peoples distinct from our people–distinct in language, in manners, in standards, in customs, in National observances.

(Listen to this article as an audio book by clicking the play button below:)

Huge sections of our over-grown cities are as foreign to us, as any territory that lies beyond seas. Our laws are powerless in these unassimilated settlements. “Little Italy,” in New York, is, to all practical intents and purposes, a section of Naples transported to our shores.

Chinatowns in America are miniature Cantons. The industrial colonies of West Virginia, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, are just that many small Hungarys, Polands, Germanys and Italys. As for the Jews, they have found our “asylum” a paradise; and from the uttermost ends of the earth, they are rushing through our ports. The Zionist Societies, financed by the Hirsch endowment of $45,000,000, are planning to bring 3,000,000 European Jews here, at the close of the present war.

So wide open have been the doors of our “asylum” that the native stock which made the Republic, is already in the minority. Its relative strength grows less with every shipload of immigrants.

Under these torrents of foreign peoples, whole States have lost their original character.

Massachusetts is not what she was before the Civil War, nor is Colorado.

Puritan New England has been submerged. The hordes from abroad are in possession; they fill the shops, the quarries, the factories, the mills, and the offices.

An Ambassador of a foreign nation coolly proposes to his government to tie up the munitions plants of this country, and leave us without means of self-defense!

How? By bribing the subjects of Austria-Hungary to quit work.

An Ambassador of a foreign Nation coolly informs Germans in this country, that they will be punished for treason under German law, if they accept employment from manufacturers who are selling arms to Germany’s foes.

It is an open secret that our Government hasn’t on hand enough ammunition to supply an army four months, and the Ambassadors of Germany and Austria have demonstrated their ability to lock our wheels, so completely, that we couldn’t get, for ourselves from our own plants, the wherewith to defend ourselves from German attack!

If such recent events do not startle our Statesmen into new views of the immigration question, our future will be tragic, indeed.

Where so many elements enter into National life, unusual combinations take place. Strange conditions make strange bedfellows. We have seen the Irish-American Catholics unite with the German-American Protestants against the English.

We have seen the Irish-American Catholic embrace the opulent Jew, against the Protestant.

The Tageblatt (Jewish Daily News) of Chicago, is published in the Yiddish language. Its editor wrote to the Pope, sending the letter through the Papal ambassador at Washington. Bonzano transmitted the communication to his government, the Italian Papal establishment, and in due course, the Secretary of State for Bonzano’s government sent the Pope’s reply to the Jews, through the Papal Ambassador!

Thus an American citizen, a Jew, placed himself in the position of a government dealing independently with a foreign potentate.

The transaction is so unprecedented that I present the correspondence, as it appears in the Tageblatt of August 25^th, 1915:

“The Jewish Daily News is in receipt of a striking communication from Pope Benedict XV, in reply to a request made by us for an expression of opinion on the Jewish question.

The Jewish Daily News Letter to the Pope

June twenty-third, Nineteen Fifteen.

His Holiness, the Pope, Benedict XV.

The Vatican, Rome, Italy.

Your Holiness:–

The denial of justice, aye the deprivation of the very elementary rights inalienable to the welfare of all human beings, has characterized the attitude of the world towards the Jews since the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. Your heart has been stirred to its very depths by the outrages and excesses committed upon Jewish men, women and children, and we are most sincerely grateful for this expression of horror on the part of your holiness.

Encouraged by the sympathy of the Head of the Church of Christ, we humbly appeal to you to arouse Christendom to a realization of the sufferings of millions of human beings–the Jews–so that they may be accorded–wherever they now lack these–full equal rights and treatment.

Such a call, coming from Your Holiness, will be heeded throughout the world and will meet with the recognition desired.

The Jewish Daily News, the oldest and leading Jewish paper in America, speaking in behalf of the three million Jews in the United States of America, and voicing not only their innermost sentiments, but the views of the Jews the world over, prays that Your Holiness may send through its columns the message that will awaken the conscience of mankind.

Most respectfully and humbly yours,

(signed) S. MASON,

Managing Editor.

This letter was sent to Monsignor Giovanni Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate at Washington, with the request that it be forwarded to the Vatican.

Monsignor Bonzano has now received a reply, which he has transmitted to us.

Monsignor Giovanni Bonzano,

Delegate Apostolico,

Washington,

TRANSLATION.

The Vatican,

22, July, 1915.

Sir:–I hasten to present to the Holy Father the letter transmitted to me by you No. 18051 D, of the 25^th of June, in which Mr. S. Mason, Editor of the New York Jewish Daily News, asked the aid of His Holiness in favor of the Jews who are persecuted and still deprived, in some nations, of full civil rights.

The August Pontiff has graciously taken note of this document and has desired me to request you to write to Mr. Mason that the Holy See, as it has always in the past acted according to the dictates of justice in favor of the Jews, intends now also to follow the same path on every propitious occasion that may present itself.

Yours, etc., etc.,

P. CARD. GASPARRI.

Monsignor Giovanni Bonzano,

Apostolical Delegate,

Washington.

What view will Congress and the President and Secretary Lansing take of the flagrant breach of propriety? What would be thought of a German Society–the Central Verein, for example–if it should open a correspondence through Ambassador Bernsdorff, directly with the German Emperor? What better cloak for a system of espionage and secret treason could be devised, than private correspondence carried on by Austrian and German and Jewish spies, through the Papal Ambassador?

As everybody knows, the President himself would not have written to the Pope, except through Secretary Lansing. But the Jewish organization, which publishes its purpose to carve out a Jewish State in this Union, and its intention to submit certain “propositions” to our Government, has already anticipated its independent existence, by ignoring our diplomatic representatives. It goes over their heads, and deals directly with the Pope, through the Papal Ambassador, just as though the Jewish organization at Chicago were an independent State!

These Jews might be pardoned, for their outrageous breach of loyalty and decorum, on the ground that they do not know any better–but what about Bonzano, the Papal secretary, and the Pope?

They knew better; and they knew they were insulting the Government and people of the United States, when they set the precedent of dealing directly with citizens of this Republic. NO SUCH THING WAS EVER DONE BEFORE!

These insolent Jews take it upon themselves to acknowledge the Italian Pope as the true and only “Head of the Church of Christ.”

All Protestant churches are mentally obliterated. There are no Christians save the Romanists. Waldensians, Greek Catholics, and Armenians–all more ancient than Romanists–are left with the heathen. Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Adventists, etc., are mere trash–ephemeral and negligible–in the eyes of the leaders of the three million Jews. The Pope is the earthly embodiment of Christ, the Head of the Church, the one potentate empowered “to arouse Christendom” in behalf of the poor, down-trodden Rothschilds, Belmonts, Guggenheims, Warburgs, Strauses, Ochses, Pulitzers, Abells, Schiffs, Kuhns, Loebs, Montags, Seligs, Dannenbergs, Waxelbaums, and Haases.

With a fine display of scorn for our President and Secretary of State the Three Million Jews slap the face of Diplomatic Etiquette; and with a noble exhibition of contempt for non-Catholic churches, they spit upon the creed of Christianity.

Two years ago, I thought that there were evidences of a league between American priests and the rich Jews of our large cities, and our readers may remember my comments.

There is no longer any doubt that the Roman priests and the opulent Jews are allies.

“The Holy See, as it has always in the past acted according to the dictates of justice, IN FAVOR OF THE JEWS, intends now to follow the same path.”

What marvelous liars these priests are! How boldly they presume upon short memories, selfish opportunism, and ignorance of history! They can rely upon the Catholic to believe everything they say, for they know that the Catholic will not read after a “heretic.” They are not much afraid of the “heretic,” for they know that his readers are indifferent, his churches decadent, his daily papers choked with gold, and his political leaders afraid of the Catholic vote.

Therefore James Church, the Pope, never bats an eye, when he tells the Jews that he means to follow in that path of justice to the Jews, which his predecessors have always trod.

We’ll be learning next, that Nero was a great friend to the Christians, that the Duke of Alva protected the Dutch, that Claverhouse cherished an ardent affection for Scotch Presbyterians, that Catherine de Medici flung her queenly mantle over the Huguenots, and that the Hapsburgs of Austria were indomitable defenders of the Reformation.

“The Holy See has always acted according to the dictates of justice, in favor of the Jews!”

Well, well, WELL!

So it is not a Papal Poland that grinds the Israelites to the ground.

It was not a Papal England that outlawed the Jew, nor a Protestant England that enfranchised him!

It was not a Papal France, that degraded the Jew, nor a Revolutionary and Napoleonic France which rehabilitated him!

How long has it been since Pope Pius IX kidnapped the son of the Mortaras to make a priest out of him? All Europe rang with the scandal, and the Emperor of the French implored the Holy Father to restore the boy to his distracted parents. But the Pope was unrelenting, and those Jews never saw their son, again.

How long has it been since modern liberalism compelled the Popes to discontinue their annual custom, at Rome, of publicly cursing the Jews?

How long has it been since the 29^th canon of the Aurelian Council was rigidly enforced–the Papal law which made it death for a Jew to even speak to a Catholic during Holy Week?

(See Roba di Roma, by W.W. Story, page 423.)

Who was it that destroyed Jewish libraries, forced Jews to wear badges, forbade them to eat and drink with Catholics, closed all the professions to them, and taxed faithful Jews, to support Jews who consented to change their religion?

Pope Eugenius IV did it.

Who expelled the Jews from all Italy, except Rome and Ancona?

Pope Pius V did it.

Who sent the murderous, devilish Inquisition into Portugal, to first torture and then burn, the Jews?

Pope Clement VII did it.

Who ordered the general destruction of the Talmud, and sanctioned the wholesale massacres of Jews in France?

Pope John XXII did it.

Who ordered the punishment of Jewish physicians for entering Catholic houses, and denied Christian burial to Catholics who employed Jewish physicians?

Pope Gregory XIII did it.

Who controlled Europe during the dismal ages when Jews were hounded like wild beasts, denied human rights, and grudgingly permitted to dwell in pestilential ghettos?

The Popes did.

Who ruled the nations and directed the consciences of monarchs and ministers, during the fearful centuries when a Jew could not own a home, could not hold an office, could not hold up his head among men, and was forced to eke out a squalid existence, on such ignominious terms, and amid such dwarfing conditions, that the Jewish race, even now, shows the physical and moral effects of that long night of slavery?

The Popes did.

Who liberated the Jews from these horrible conditions?

Modern democracy did it.

When Great Britain, less than 100 years ago, removed the Civil Disabilities of the Jews, it was Protestant statesmanship repealing Catholic laws.

Who was the Papal theologian who taught, that “Jews are slaves?”

It was Saint Thomas Aquinas, the chiefest of all Roman Catholic theologians.

For hundreds of years the legislation of Europe was based upon this infernal teaching–the teaching of a theologian who was such a favorite of the recent Popes, Leo XIII, and Pius X, that they ordered all Catholic teachers to again instruct their students in the Papal theology which forfeits the life of the “heretic,” and imposes serfdom on the Jew.

(See Barnard Lazare’s Anti-Semitism, page 125.)

But how could you expect these historical facts to be known to a Chicago editor, who informs the Pope and the world, that the Jews lost their rights–the natural rights of man–when Titus stormed Jerusalem?

According to the Tageblatt, the Jews have been the pariahs of the human race, ever since the year 70, after Christ! Mason, of the Tageblatt, ought to at least consult some simple authority on Roman history, Merivales’s book, for example. It won’t take him but a few minutes to learn what an ass he made of himself, when he told the Pope that the Jews had never had a square deal in the world, after Jerusalem fell. If the Tageblatt Solomon will study the subject, he will discover that the real persecution of the Jews began after Constantine the Great had made his famous alliance with the Christian bishops. Solomon may also learn that when the Emperor Julian, “the Apostate,” undertook to re-establish paganism, he emancipated the Jews, and attempted to rebuild their temple at Jerusalem. Solomon will learn that so long as Popery was supreme, the Jew was the vassal of the bishops and the kings, and that it was the Reformation which brightened the skies for the outlawed race.

Bernard Lazare, the scholarly Jew, says in his Anti-Semitism, page 131:

“But new times were approaching; the storm foreseen by everybody broke over the church.

“Luther issued his 95 theses * * * For a moment the theologians forgot the Jews; they even forgot that the spreading movement took its roots in Hebrew sources * * * *

“THE JEWISH SPIRIT TRIUMPHED WITH PROTESTANTISM. In certain respects, the Reformation was a return to the ancient Ebionism of the evangelic ages.”

Lazare proceeds to prove that although Luther was provoked into violent language against the Jews, because they refused to become his converts, the Protestants of Germany never ill-treated the Jews.

(See page 133.)

In the United States, the priest and the Jew have need of each other and the Pope has blessed the alliance.

That the Hearst papers are leagued with this queer combination of Jew financier and Roman priest, is an interesting detail; whether important as well as interesting, remains to be seen.

In the case of the Russian Jews, the new combination worked so well that our Congress, in 1913, abrogated a time-honored treaty, as a protest against Russia’s alleged mistreatment of her own subjects.

Descending to particulars, the new combination was able to save the Russian Jew, Beiliss, who was accused of taking all the blood out of a Gentile boy, through forty-odd incisions in his veins.

In the Leo Frank case, the new combination almost won, but not quite. And, of course, the unexpected defeat it sustained, profoundly enraged the new combination.

The Roman Catholic papers are as bitter against the State of Georgia, as are the papers of Hearst and the Jews.

The same Romanist journals that condoned and defended the deliberate assassination of the Protestant lecturer, William Black, by the Knights of Columbus, at Marshall, Texas, are unmeasured in their denunciation of the State wherein a convicted and thrice-sentenced Jew was hanged by the Vigilantes.

These Romanist papers indecently exulted in the military murder of Francisco Ferrer, whose crime consisted of teaching progressive ideas in a modern school, but they are rabidly attacking a People who were determined that one of Leo Frank’s lawyers should not annihilate our judicial system.

The same Romanist papers that gloried in the burning of eight Mexican “heretics” in 1895, at Texacapa, by the fanatical Catholic priests, can find no words too severe to condemn the legal conviction of as vile a sodomite as ever awoke the wrath of God.

This new combination of rich Jew, Roman priest and Hearst newspaper, has arraigned the State of Georgia, at the bar of public opinion; and so artfully persistent has been the propaganda of misrepresentation, that hundreds of editors and preachers, totally disinterested, have been swept off their feet. These honest, but deluded, defamers of Georgia, have broken the bounds of temperate discussion; and their abuse has become so indiscriminate, that it spares no State in the South, and it calumniates both the living and the dead.

We Georgians, particularly, are a mean, low-down lot, and always were, because our forbears were the sweepings of London jails. Since our ancestors were criminals–a sort of Botany Bay and Devil’s Island settlement–it is natural that we should be a disgrace to the Union, and a reproach to the human race.

Even a Virginia paper can bring itself to publish the following:

The guilt or innocence of Leo M. Frank in the matter of the murder of Mary Phagan has absolutely no bearing on the crime committed by these savages in Georgia. Frank had been confined in this prison for life because a fearless Governor preferred to commit political suicide and endure social boycott in the state of his nativity rather than permit the hanging of a man who had been convicted on the questionable evidence of a criminal negro and regarding whose guilt there certainly existed a most reasonable doubt.

Is this in any way surprising? Not in the least bit when we review the history of Georgia. It was originally a penal colony and was settled by the worst felons and perverts that England could export to her blistering shores. Succeeding generations grew up with criminal instincts just as marked and with ignorance, superstition and physical unfitness far more marked. These are the Georgia crackers, the clay eaters among whom hookworm and pellagra and other disgusting diseases run rampant. Not in the entire history of the state has pure Georgia blood produced a really great man. They were cowards and skulkers and camp followers in our Civil War, and that Gen. Sherman should have cut himself off from his base of supplies and marched entirely across the state unopposed is not in the least bit surprising when we consider the caliber of the male citizens of that commonwealth. Its first families have now established what they are pleased to call “society” in their capital city of Atlanta, where they spend their ill-gotten gains acquired through manufacturing nostrums and other quack devices guaranteed to do everything from taking the kink out of a negro’s hair to turning the darkest Ethiopians into a pure-blooded Anglo Saxon.–The Virginian.

The Milwaukee Free Press of August 18, 1915, said:

THE SOUTH AT THE BAR.

“The spirit and method of the Ku Klux Klan has once more triumphed in Georgia.

“Once more Southern ‘gentility’ and ‘chivalry’ have revealed their true character in murder, secession and anarchy.

“For the same bestial spirit that sought to disrupt this Union, the same spirit that lashed and ravished the helpless slave, the same Southern spirit that even today is celebrating the blood-lust of the Ku Klux Klan as a virtue, is living in the persecution and murder of Leo Frank.

“The trial and conviction of this unfortunate Jew, as accomplished by the courts of Georgia, was enough to damn the people of that state as unfit for citizenship. The horrible sequel of his assassination proves them to be something worse than barbarians.

“Americans have gazed askance at the bloody immorality of Serbia. But Serbia is a paradise of civilization compared with the state of Georgia.

“And this is not the worst. The worst is that the spirit that prevails throughout a large portion of the old South. Every Southern state that tolerates lynch law, whose people revel in the writhings of tortured blacks, is capable of Georgia’s monstrous outrage. Every community that burns negroes at the stake or hangs them for unproven or petty crimes, would act as Georgia did in the case of Frank.

How can the nation–the civilized, responsible and self-governing part of it–longer tolerate this anarchy, this blood-lust on the part of a section that once defied humanity and government till it had to be broken with swords and bullets?

“And then this rot about the dangers of miscegenation! Who is responsible for the mixture of Caucasian and Ethiopian blood in the country, the negro or the Southern white? Not one light-colored black in 5,000 is the result of a negro’s design on a white woman. The light-colored black, with scarcely an exception, dates his ancestry to the lust of some Southern white master, who did not hesitate to make the creature he bought and sold as an animal the mother of his children.

“So much for the Southern hypocrisy that prates of miscegenation to justify its crimes.

“If the cries of the burning black victims of a hundred Southern stakes have not been able to rouse the conscience of the North, can it remain deaf to the last agonized prayer of Leo Frank as his tortured body was swung by ‘Southern gentlemen’ from a Southern pine?

“If Georgia cannot be scourged from out the sister-hood of states, if she cannot be reduced to a condition of dependence lower than that of the Philippines, she can at least be visited with a commercial, social and political ostracism which will convince its gentry that true Americans still enthrone justice and humanity as the chief bulwarks of the nation.”

The Wine and Spirit Bulletin is mighty hard on us; it says:

LOOK AT GEORGIA.

As a spectacle fit to make the gods weep we commend to the people of the other States in the Union and especially those inclined to try the experiment of prohibition the prohibition State of Georgia. Georgia stands today pre-eminent in disgrace before her sister States in the Union.

“The professional prohibitionists have a way of tracing to the licensed liquor traffic the blame for nearly all crime in general and for every startling crime or terrible disaster in particular, it remaining for them to even connect the slaughter of the innocents, women and children, as well as men, in the Eastland disaster, with drinking. What then can they say for Georgia, one of their banner prohibition States? And in view of their habit are we not justified in reversing the situation?

“Yet the shameful acts of citizens of the prohibition State of Georgia, in intimidating the court of justice and the jury in the Frank case, in threatening the Governor who had the courage to defy the mob, and their subsequent acts in murdering their helpless victim and making a morbid show of his corpse, are but logical and natural results following the teachings of the prohibitionists and of prohibition.

“Yes, Georgia is disgraced today as the natural consequence of adopting prohibition doctrine, which in its very nature is anarchistic and puts the rule of the mob above the rights of individuals, above courts and law, above constitutions, above human life, even, when they stand in the way of accomplishing its mad purposes.

“Look at Georgia, oh ye citizens of the United States, and then decide whether you want prohibition and its consequences!”

The Chicago Tribune said:

“The South is backward. It shames the United States by illiteracy and incompetence. Its hill men and poor whites, its masses of feared and bullied blacks, its ignorant and violent politicians, its rotten industrial conditions and its rotten social ideas exist in circumstances which disgrace the United States in the thought of Americans and in the opinion of foreigners.

“When the North exhibits a demonstration of violence against law by gutter rats of society, there is shame in the locality which was the scene of the exhibition. When the South exhibits it there is defiance of opinion.

“The South is barely half educated. Whatever there is explicable in the murder of Leo M. Frank is thus explainable. Leo Frank was an atom in the American structure. He might have died, unknown or ignored, a thousand deaths more agonizing in preliminary torture and more cruel in final execution, and have had no effect, but the spectacle of a struggling human being, helpless before fate as a mouse in the care of a cat, will stagger American complacency.

“The South is half educated. It is a region of illiteracy, blatant self-righteousness, cruelty and violence. Until it is improved by the invasion of better blood and better ideas it will remain a reproach and a danger to the American Republic.”

The Pueblo, Colorado, Star-Journal said:

“Georgia has added another chapter to its disgraceful story of the Frank case, the climax coming in the cowardly lynching of Leo Frank by an armed mob that forcibly removed him from the state prison farm and deprived him of life near the home of the young girl for whose murder he was convicted by a jury. The lynching of Frank is the logical outcome of the lawless scenes attending his trial and following the change of his death sentence to life imprisonment by a courageous governor who felt that Frank had not been given a square deal. After the attack on Frank by a fellow prisoner it was evident that further attempts would be made to kill him, and the lynching therefore is no great surprise. It was what could be expected from blood-hungry, law-defying demons.

“The lynching of Frank is inexcusable and those responsible for the horrible affair deserve the punishment that should be given to the perpetrator of any deliberate murder. Georgia will merit the contempt of every other state if the murderers of Leo Frank are not captured and convicted by due process of law. This crime against justice ought to arouse every decent citizen of Georgia in an effort to partially blot out the shame of their state.

“Those who doubted the charges that Frank had been unfairly tried will change their opinion as a result of the mob vengeance visited upon him. The same spirit that caused his hanging undoubtedly was present during his trial and resulted in his conviction by jurors who feared for their own safety if they cleared him of the charge of murdering a young girl in the pencil factory of which he was superintendent. The general opinion is that Frank was innocent of murder and should not have been convicted on the unsupported testimony of a worthless negro.”

The Denver, Colorado, Express said:

“The assassination of Leo Frank by citizens of the sovereign state of Georgia brought disgrace, not only upon that commonwealth, but upon the entire nation. The arrest, conviction and the final murder of the unfortunate victim of brutal blood-lust will go down in history as the vilest miscarriage of justice ever recorded.

“Taken nearly a hundred miles, the exhausted invalid, handcuffed, was hanged and then, lest Georgia savages should mutilate his mangled body, it was spirited away.

“The wars with the early Indians were marked by scalping and sometimes by burning at the stake. The story of the torture of explorers by savage tribes of cannibals has been written. The perpetrators of this cruelty were savages.

And yet, in this Year of our Lord, 1915, in the Twentieth Century of civilization to the Nth power, a stricken man under the protection of what we are pleased to term the Law, is cruelly assassinated in an organized State. Savages is too mild a term for the Georgia outlaws.

“The stain which the assassination has brought upon the nation can never be washed out. Georgia today is an outcast among the States.”

The Chicago Post said:

“If there is self-respect in Georgia, if there is courage in its governor, the men who have dragged its name in the mire of infamy will be found and punished as they deserve–and they deserve hanging. Georgia may resent outside interference, as some local Mississippian suggests, but Georgia cannot be law and license to herself in this matter. Her shame is the shame of the nation. Nor will the old excuse that it was the deed of an impulsive and ignorant mob satisfy. It was the deed of deliberation, not of impulse, and ignorant mobs do not travel in automobiles.”

The Boston Traveler said:

“In this crowning demonstration of her inherent savagery Georgia stands revealed before the world in her naked, barbarian brutality. She is a shame and a disgrace to the other states of the Union, who are powerless in the matter of humane justice to put upon her the corrective punishment her crimes deserve. But the consciences of the American people are not so callous as those of the Georgians, who sanction by silence or take part in such crimes against fellow-beings, black and white. And to the degree that a humane public can rebuke the state of Georgia by refusing to have any part of her unholy peoples’ products they will do so. Anything made or grown in Georgia will bear a sinister band and be suggestive of lynchings and burnings and especially of this brutal murder of Frank, and it ought to be and doubtless will be left untouched. The only way in which Georgia can be made to feel the shudder of horror which is sweeping the country and the utter contempt in which she is held by the rest of the nation, is by a deliberate boycott of Georgia-grown and Georgia-made goods–peaches, cotton, or whatever else bears the stamp of the so-called ‘Empire State of the South.'”

The Louisville, Kentucky, Herald (owned by a Chicago Jew), said:

“Surely such a state of affairs is the South’s shame and Georgia’s shame!

“Georgia’s shame lies in the city government of Atlanta, which railroaded Leo Frank to an unmerited conviction, in her police force which made him a victim of the demand of an inefficient constabulary to convict someone at all hazards, which turned loose the degenerate Conley because it had made up its mind too soon that it could and would convict Frank.

“The shame of the State is no greater on account of the lynching of Frank than because of any of the other almost innumerable lynchings which have preceded it in that State and others.

“But because of these other things which preceded his conviction, her shame is black and continuing.

“It will continue until it may be said in Georgia that a man may be prosecuted, no matter what his crime or how clear his guilt, without the presence of the police in the prisoner’s dock asking for the vindication of a detective theory, and without a press which panders to the lowest passions of the mob by such methods as makes a fair trial and a just sentence beyond the power of ordinary men in the jury box or on the bench to render.”

The Investment Magazine, Canton, Ohio, said:

“Thousands of impartial investigators are convinced that Frank was not guilty. Millions have read the evidence and know that he was convicted on “framed up” testimony–and that he did not have a fair trial. But Georgia was determined to “Hang the Jew” and has done so; in spite of law and police protection and all the other apparatus of government.

“The lynching was participated in by the entire commonwealth of Georgia. All right minded men familiar with state prisons know that Frank could not have been taken from his cell without connivance on the part of state officials. If this is not sufficient proof, take that speech in which the Mayor of Atlanta openly gloated over the affair. The meeting was not one of criminals, nor of light minded people in the street. It was a solemn gathering of the Chamber of Commerce. Listen also to the Sheriff of the county, who asserted that he would make no effort to arrest the lynchers because a jury could not be found that would indict them.

“Compared to such a crime, the murder which led Austria to undertake the punishment of Servia was insignificant. Georgia should be punished.”

In pious Boston, Massachusetts, the Jews and the Knights of Columbus held a mass-meeting in Faneuil hall, to express their mixed emotions.

As reported in The Globe, the Jews and the Knights said some violent things. For instance:

“The next speaker, Dr. Coughlin, ex-Mayor of Fall River, who was a member of the committee that visited Atlanta and met Gov. Slaton, received a warm reception. During his stirring address Dr. Coughlin was continually interrupted by applause.

“Dr. Coughlin said that he had told the other members of the committee who were with him in Georgia that the spirit of the people and the press showed him that if Frank was freed by Gov. Slaton he would be killed by a mob. The speaker lauded ex-Gov. Slaton for his action. He attacked Thomas Watson, the editor of the Jeffersonian, and said it was a disgrace to have the American flag float over him, as he was a disgrace to American citizenship.

“Dr. Coughlin said that he knew that Leo M. Frank died because he was a Jew. He also said that it was not true that race prejudice showed itself on account of outside interference, as is claimed in Georgia. The speaker stated that the stories circulated about the behavior of Frank are not true and are used to cover over the crime of the ones that killed him.

“In closing he said that he did not believe it was going too far when he said that the present Governor and every official in Georgia knew the ones that took part in the lynching of Frank. He pleaded with his audience when they left the hall not to forget to work in aiding in vindicating the name of Leo M. Frank.

“Rabbi M.M. Eichler of Temple Ohabei Shalom, stated that he firmly believed in the innocence of Frank and said that the meeting was both one of protest on account of the lynching and memorial meeting for the martyrdom of Frank. He claimed that Frank never had a chance and received a mistrial because he was Jew and a Northerner. In closing he said that Georgia is not fit to be a sister State of Massachusetts.

“Rev. Charles Fleisher created some enthusiasm when he spoke of boycotting the State of Georgia. He said that it might have some effect to refuse to travel there, to trade there, to loan money there or to spend money there, for he said that if the pocket nerve is touched it will make the State squirm. He also said that, if Germany is wrong regarding the Arabic matter, America should boycott Germany for at least five years and such action would bring results.

“After the addresses Secretary Silverman read the resolutions which were unanimously accepted:

“One of the resolutions declares that the Jeffersonian has ‘aroused hatred among the citizens of the United States and incited the mob spirit among the people of Georgia,’ and demands that ‘the United States post office authorities exclude this paper from the United States mail.’

The second resolution was as follows:

“‘Resolved, that citizens of Massachusetts, in Faneuil Hall assembled, denounce the lynching of Leo Frank by a Georgia mob as a deliberate and cowardly murder a high crime against civilization, and a disgrace to the United States, and urge upon their fellow citizens of Georgia, both those who know the perpetrators and those whose duty it is to enforce the laws to redeem the honor of their state and nation and their own past reputation for high-minded citizenship, by bringing those who are responsible for the outrage to prompt and adequate justice.'”

One point stressed in most of these attacks on the South is, that Leo Frank was serving a life term in the penitentiary, and in good faith meant to take his medicine.

The Hearst papers argue it from that point of view, and so do most of the other traducers of Georgia.

Yet every one of these editors know that the Burns agency, the Jew papers, and the Hearst writers had declared that the State “must redeem herself” by granting Frank a full pardon.

The Burns agency blatantly announced that “the fight” was to be immediately renewed; and, since Frank’s execution, Burns seems almost beside himself because of the loss of so lucrative a case. Are the editors at all chagrined for the same reasons? Are these virtuous publishers feeling sadly the loss of the Jewish ducats that paid for so much front-page space? During a whole year, Burns, Lehon, and a battalion of lawyers–some in New York and some in Georgia, luxuriated in the Frank case.

The Kansas City Star, the New Orleans Item, the Chicago Tribune, and various other righteous dailies, to say nothing of “farm” papers, have banqueted on the Frank case. When he was put to death according to Law, they had lost a gold mine. Of course, they deplore it. Othello’s occupation’s gone, unless Slaton’s attempt at a “come back” in Georgia reopens the golden vein.

As to that, we will soon know.

Did Leo Frank take the commuted sentence in good faith, intending to serve a life sentence? Did his partisans regard the Slaton commutation as anything more than a prelude to a pardon, or an escape?

Let us see.

The Straus Magazine, Puck, said:

“All credit to Governor Slaton, of Georgia. His was a noble stand by his conscience and by his convictions against the clamor of prejudice and public opinion.

“Close upon the news of the commuting of Frank’s sentence came news of rioting in the streets of Atlanta, of the same mob spirit that has so often resulted in crimes that are a stain upon Georgia’s record.

“The fight for the vindication of Leo M. Frank has not ended; and even with his acquittal–and his ultimate acquittal is only a matter of time–the fight for decency in Georgia will only have begun. This fight for decency will not end until low-lived slanderers without moral character, without public spirit, are run out of the state of Georgia. The fight will not be won until men like Thomas Watson, the very embodiment of the beast in looks, manners and conduct, are removed from any influence upon the public sentiment of the community. This creature, whose private conduct is such that we cannot describe it in our pages, will be further exposed as our probe goes deeper.”

Burns said:

Ultimately, perhaps in the very near future, Leo Frank will be freed. He will come from the Georgia prison, where he has been since Governor Slaton commuted his sentence of death to life imprisonment, vindicated of the murder of Mary Phagan, and the crime laid on the shoulders of the principal state’s witness in the famous trial. Governor Slaton, hissed by mobs in Georgia, will be hailed a hero.

In the New York Evening Journal (Hearst-Jew-Catholic), the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst said:

At the time of this writing this young hero is hovering between life and death. The situation is pathetic. We want him to live. The country wants him to live, with the exception of some portions of dishonored Georgia. Our ambition for him goes farther than that. We want to have him restored to the enjoyment of that liberty of which it is the almost universal sentiment he has been unjustly deprived.

It is entirely safe to claim that in the judgment of ex-Governor Slaton, the man is either innocent or unfairly convicted. In either alternative a life sentence or any other penalty is an injustice. Under the circumstances the only course open to the ex-Governor was to commute. Frank’s safety lay not in freedom, but in imprisonment. Jail was supposed to be at least a place of security. It was assumed that convicts already immured there, especially if they were convicted murderers, would not be allowed to roam around the jail yard with concealed butcher knives.

If poor Leo lives he will have to possess his soul in patience till the unaccountable bitterness of his persecutors has worn itself out, which it will do in time. Passion cannot maintain itself indefinitely. It is like fire which goes out unless fed with fresh combustibles. We may safely believe that unless he is set free by the liberating mandate of death, he will eventually have freedom given him by the order of the court.

When the New York preachers–Parkhurst, Hillis and others–first butted into the Georgia situation, I wrote each of them a courteous letter, asking them to allow me to put before them the evidence on which Frank was convicted.

Neither of the ministers of the gospel condescended to give me an answer.

The New York Evening Mail published the following:

If Georgia would invite the respect of law-abiding citizens the governor would proceed to pardon without any further delay the man who stands before the whole world as an innocent man, except in the estimation of some Georgians.

Blin, the Boston Jew who had been syndicating articles in Frank’s behalf, followed the commuting of his sentence, by publishing a philippic against The Jeffersonian, in which he declared that before any effective move could be made to release Frank from the State Farm, Watson and his publications must be outlawed. Blin stated that certain “gentlemen” were at work on a plan to have the Post-office department issue an order against me.

The son of William J. Burns, in charge of the New York office of that notorious crook, gave out a statement to the papers immediately after the commutation, that “the fight” to secure freedom for Frank was to be renewed at once.

Therefore, the evidence is overwhelming; Frank and his partisans did not take the commutation in good faith. They regarded it as a necessary step to a full pardon, or to an arranged escape.

When Frank reached the State Farm, he was received as a guest of honor. He was given a separate room and his own furniture; his floor was carpeted, and an electric fan was installed. He even had his electric cigarette lighter. A negro convict was assigned to wait on him. His roller-top desk was moved in, and he went to work on his correspondence, preparatory to shaping public sentiment again. Only one day, and not all of that, did he wear stripes, and that was the day the Farm was under inspection. The other convicts were so maddened at the favoritism shown this vilest of criminals, that Creen tried to kill him. Of course, a great uproar followed, and the attempt was credited to The Jeffersonian. It transpired that Creen had never seen a copy of my paper; and, of course, the paper never contained anything inciting to murder.

All the outside papers were astounded that no effort was made to resist the few men who took Frank away from the guards. Is it possible that the editors have not guessed the reason?

There are but two possible solutions: One is that the guards were infuriated at him, and at the double duty they were made to do for him, alone; the other is, the guards believed that Frank’s friends were taking him out.

On his night ride to Cobb county, Frank told the Vigilantes that, at first he did not know whether they were his friends, or his enemies.

I may as well state it here, as elsewhere, that Frank did not at any time protest his innocence; but, on the contrary, he said just before he was executed: “The negro told the story.”

Then, he added the remark about his wife and mother, a remark which meant he would rather die silent than to bring shame upon his people.

The Vigilantes said to Frank, just before he was executed:

“Tell us if the negro is guilty. We know where he is, and if you say he, too, is guilty, we will give him the same that you are to get.”

Frank remained silent. He did ask the Vigilantes to shoot him.

They answered, “No, you were not sentenced to be shot; you were sentenced to be hanged, and that’s what we are going to do.”

He seemed about to make a full confession, but a nervous Vigilante said something about the soldiers coming to rescue him, and he closed up.

He asked for a box, that he might jump off, and break his neck. He was told that there was no box at hand, and no time to get one.

His last words were:

“God, forgive me!”

Not once did he say that the negro had lied on him; not once did he claim that the other witnesses had sworn falsely; not once did he claim that the trial was unfair and the verdict unjust.

He made one very significant statement which seems to prove that the negro held back some sort part of the truth. He said, “The negro did not tell it all.”

Once or twice, he appeared to be on the point of telling what it was the negro left out, but he checked himself.

Strange to say, he slept most of the way, on that long night-ride; his wound had practically healed, and all talk upon the “tortures” he suffered on the road, or at the tree is utterly unfounded.

He was treated just as though the Sheriff and Bailiffs were taking him to the gallows, under the sentence of the courts.

My information as to Frank’s confession (“The negro told the story”) came to me September 12^th, from gentleman who got it from one of the Vigilantes.

The negro did tell the story, and he was corroborated, not only by the testimony of more than forty white witnesses, but by the physical condition of the second floor of the factory, by the physical conditions in the basement, by the physical condition of Mary Phagan’s body, and by the physical condition of Leo Frank, on the morning after the crime.

Celebrated crimes have their uncanny fascination, else so many books would not have been written about them. I fear that wicked people interest us more than the good ones do; and I feel certain that most boys would rather read about robbers, highwaymen and pirates, than about Moses, Job, and the other Saints. Give us the biography of a truly virtuous man, like Archbishop Whatley, and we are apt to doze over it; but place in our hands the memoirs of some grand rascal–like Benvenuto Cellini–and we will get wide awake at once.

Now, this Frank case has been made one of the celebrated cases; and, for many years to come, its baleful consequences will be felt. Let us, therefore, try to understand it.

In the August and September numbers of this magazine, the official evidence was discussed and a digest of it published. I will not repeat anything contained in those issues, but will give you a view of the case from altogether another standpoint.

1. The negro’s story was corroborated by more than forty white witnesses, in that Frank was proven to have been just the kind of man the negro said he was; in that the elevator was found unlocked, as the negro said it had been left, after the carrying of the corpse to the basement; in that the signs of dragging over the gritty dirt floor came straight and continuous, from the elevator to where the corpse lay; in that there were absolutely no signs of any struggle on any floor except Frank’s; in that the girl’s face showed she had been dragged on it; in that her drawers showed a rip-up, to the vagina, which had been penetrated but which contained no seminal emission; in that white girls swore to Frank’s lewd doings with one of the girls in the factory in the daytime; and in that one white girl swore that Frank had proposed sodomy to her, in his office, on the second day she went to work for him.

A stubborn contest was made by the defense in the effort to show that Frank was not aware of Jim Conley’s whereabouts, on the day of the crime, the same being a legal holiday, and there being no apparent cause for Jim’s presence at the factory.

If Frank was in touch with the negro that morning, and kept him at the closed-down factory, there would be something to explain. Besides, it would powerfully corroborate Jim.

It so happened that Mrs. Hattie Waites and her husband were returning by rail from Savannah, where he had been attending an Odd Fellow convention. At Jesup they saw the Atlanta paper which told of the arrest of Leo Frank and the supposed complicity of Jim Conley.

On seeing the picture of Frank in the paper, the lady exclaimed, “Why, that’s the man I saw in close conversation with a negro, last Saturday morning.”

Mrs. Waites had taken Frank to be a friend of hers and had approached him to speak to him, when, on getting close to him and looking into his face, she saw her mistake.

Therefore, when she saw the face in the paper she recognized it, for it was a face not easy to forget.

When the solicitor heard of this piece of evidence, he ran it down, by having Mrs. Waites taken to see both Frank and Conley. She unhesitatingly identified them as the two men she had seen talking together, between 10 and 11 o’clock, on the day of the crime, near Sig Montag’s place, where Frank admitted he had gone, at that time.

Three other white witnesses placed the negro in the factory, that morning, sitting at the foot of the stairs, near the front door.

What business had he, loitering there, on that legal holiday?

What did Frank talk to him about, on the street, so near the time of the crime?

Obviously, these questions could not be answered to the satisfaction of the jury; and therefore Frank had to brazen it out that he had not seen the negro that day, at all.

Which would you have believed–the four disinterested white witnesses, or the man on trial for his life?

You would have believed the four white witnesses, two of them honest men–Tillander and Graham–and two of them ladies of unimpeachable characters, Mrs. Arthur White and Mrs. Hattie Waites.

Believing these witnesses, you might have felt constrained to place credit on the explanation of the negro, as to why he came to the factory, that closed down that morning, and remained until Frank got through with him.

There had to be a reason for the negro’s giving up his holiday, and staying at the factory. Isn’t it so?

Well, then, what was the reason?

Frank gave none; the negro did. The negro said it was to keep a watch out while Frank was with a girl whom he expected to come. Conley did not even know what girl Frank expected.

2. The negro’s story was corroborated by the physical condition of the second floor, Frank’s office floor.

Sworn to as Mary’s, the hair found on the handle of the lathe machine could never be shown to have possibly been the hair of another girl. Those few strands of the dead child’s golden crown, literally dragged Leo Frank to inevitable conviction. They had to be accounted for, because they had come upon that projecting crank-handle, after Friday evening and before Monday.

Whose hair? and how came it there at that time?

Nobody could answer. Even the negro did not know what it was that Mary fell against when Frank struck her; but his evidence cleared up the mystery, and without his story, it would still be a mystery.

The blood on the second floor, and the absence of blood anywhere else, corroborated the negro; and the fact that neither Frank nor Mary could be seen by Miss Monteen Stover, when she searched for Frank and waited for him from 12:05 to 12:10, most powerfully supported the negro’s story of Mary’s previous coming, and of the steps of two persons that he heard walking back to the metal room, where the identified hair of the murdered girl was found, the next time the workman came to put his hand on his lathe machine.

3. The negro’s story was corroborated by the physical condition of the basement.

There were no signs of any struggle in it; no blood, no torn-out hair, no unusual appearance on the dirt floor.

There was a trail leading from the elevator shaft to the corpse, showing that she had been dragged from the one place to the other, and her face showed that she had been dragged by the heels.

This indicated the work of one man, and a man not strong enough to lift and carry the body. Conley had done it, but Frank was not strong enough. Therefore, when Frank returned to the factory, that holiday afternoon, and locked himself in, he had to get the girl’s body away from the elevator, where he and Conley had left it, and he had to drag it. He wanted to place it as far as possible from the elevator, and in the darkest part of the basement to prevent the night-watch from discovering it.

(I may here state that there was no bank of cinders in the basement, nothing in which the girl could have been smothered; and there were no cinders, or ashes, or sawdust in her mouth, in her nostrils, or in her lungs, as some of the recklessly mendacious writers have alleged.)

4. The negro’s story was corroborated by the physical condition of the girl’s body.

One leg of her drawers had either been carefully torn all the way up the seam, or a knife had cut it in a straight, even line.

The drawers were stained with her blood. Her uterus was virginal, but her hymen had been ruptured, and violence done to the parts a few minutes before she died, according to Dr. H.F. Harris. The inner walls of the member showed rough use, by finger or tongue, or male organ. But there was no seminal fluid.

“You know I ain’t built like other men,” was the negro’s statement of what Frank said to him, at the time.

Powerfully corroborative, was the affidavit of Miss Nellie Wood that Frank made the same remark to her, in the privacy of his office, when he moved his chair close up to hers, tried to insinuate his hands under clothes, and proposed unnatural connexion.

That the cord had been around Mary Phagan’s neck a long time, was proved by the purple-black color of her face, and the deep impression in her flesh.

The strip torn by Frank from her underskirt, and folded under her head to catch the blood, was there to show for itself; and it had served the purpose of keeping the blood off the floor in the metal room. If Jim hadn’t let the body fall, no blood would have been found anywhere, except in her hair, and on that cloth!

Her hands were folded across her bosom; so stiffly fixed in position that they did not come apart when she was being dragged sidewise, and partly on her face. Jim’s story is that he put them down, easy, on the second floor, when he went to where she was lying on her back, dead.

Reject his statement, and you can’t explain the position of those little hands.

(There is a detail here, that has baffled me; The girl had evidently been carrying her handkerchief either in her mesh bag, or in her hand; how came it to be bloody?

Jim nowhere mentions that it was bloody, when he picked it up from the floor in the metal room. But it was found near the body in the basement, and it was bloody; how came it so?

Either Frank, or Conley must have wiped his hands on it.)

5. The negro’s story was corroborated by Frank’s physical condition, the morning after the murder.

The two officers who went out to his house, not to arrest him, but to invoke his assistance in starting clues to the criminal, found him in a rickety state of nerves, and calling for coffee to drink. They describe him as a man who had been drunk the night before.

They knew nothing on that line, and were not looking for evidences of a debauch, but that is what they describe. “The morning after,” was there. So much so that John Black advised Mrs. Frank to give her husband a drink of whiskey.

Now listen: The answer given was that Frank’s father-in-law had used it all up during the night.

His father-in-law, Mr. Emil Selig, had had acute indigestion, it was said, and had used all the whiskey in the house that night, on this sudden and always alarming, illness.

I’m not doctor enough to say whether whiskey is the usual remedy for acute indigestion, but I am lawyer enough to see in Selig’s sudden use for it on that particular night, a most suspicious corroboration of that cook who swore that Frank got wildly drunk on the same night Selig got his acute indigestion.

Strange to say, Selig went on the stand at the trial of Frank, swore to eating breakfast, as usual; swore to eating dinner, as usual; and never said one word about that night attack of acute indigestion, which had caused him to exhaust the whiskey supply, the night after the crime.

Selig, on Sunday morning, had not only made a full recovery from his alarming illness, but showed no bad effects from the liquor.

It was his son-in-law that looked and acted like the man who had been attacked by indigestion, and who had used up all the whiskey.

As you know, the murder of Mary Phagan was committed on the Southern Memorial day, April 26^th, 1913. At that time Leo Frank was entering the 32^nd year of his age, and Mary lacked a few days of being fourteen. For sentimental reasons, Nathan Straus, William J. Burns, and the Jewish press generally, have referred to Frank as a “boy;” and Governor Slaton went so far as to say in defense of his virtual pardon of his client, that Frank was “too delicate” to have struck Mary the blow which knocked her down.

This delicate middle-aged Jew weighed 127 pounds, and was so full of vitality that no ordinary amount of venery could satisfy him. His eyes, mouth, chin, nose, ears and neck typed him as a sexual pervert.

His lawyers announced ready for trial, when his case was called in court, and they did not suggest a change of venue. They had had months to prepare; they were intimate with local conditions; and, while their management of themselves, their client and their witnesses, showed the grossest lack of discretion and preparedness, they never at any time moved for a mistrial.

Let me explain to the layman, that a presiding judge will stop a trial, discharge the jury, and set another time for the case to be tried, before another jury, if anything occurs in the court room to prejudice defendant’s right to a fair trial.

Had any “mob spirit,” any “jungle fury,” any “psychic drunk,” any “blood lust” manifested itself in the sight or hearing of the jury, it would have been the duty of Frank’s lawyers to have put an end to the proceedings, then and there, by moving that a mistrial be declared.

No such motion could be made, because no such facts existed. Frank’s lawyers filed a lengthy affidavit, as a part of their extraordinary motion for a new trial, and nowhere do they state that anything occurred in the courtroom, outside those inevitable peals of laughter when one lawyer “chaws” another. I went over this affidavit, of Frank’s lawyers, reading it carefully, and was amazed to see that they did not even accuse the court of tolerating misbehavior. These lawyers explicitly say that the jury was not present at all, when the audience in the courtroom applauded a ruling, by Judge Roan, in favor of Solicitor Dorsey.

It seems that Dorsey was hailed, in the streets, with cheers, and these cheers were all that the lawyers of Frank could allege in support of the charge of mob violence, mob spirit, jungle fury, psychic drunk and blood lust.

On the contrary, it was shown by the affidavits of the Sheriff, and all his deputies and the court bailiffs, that no disorders took place during the trial.

Col E.E. Pomeroy, of the Fifth Georgia regiment, swore to the same thing, and so did the newspaper reporters. Every member of the jury made affidavit to the good order maintained, and to their freedom from any disturbance, interruption or attempted influence.

But it is the Sunday American (Mr. Hearst’s Atlanta paper), that furnishes the most remarkable evidence as to what was thought, at the time, of the fairness of Frank’s trial.

On Sunday, August 24, 1913, “Hearst’s Sunday American” published a story of the four weeks’ trial, “By an old Police Reporter,” which concludes as follows:

“Regardless of all things else, the public is unstinting in its praise and approval of the brilliant young Solicitor General of the Atlanta Circuit, Hugh Dorsey, for the superb manner in which he has handled the State’s side of the case.

“It all along has been freely admitted that those two veterans of criminal practice, Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold, would take ample care of the defendant.

“Two more experienced, able and aggressive attorneys it would impossible to secure in any cause.

“When it was first learned that Rosser and Arnold were to defend Frank, the public realized that the defendant had determined to take no chances. He selected from among the cream of the Georgia bar.

“That the State’s interests, quite as sacred as the defendant’s, would be looked after so jealously, so adroitly, and so shrewdly in the hands of the youthful Dorsey, however–that was a matter not so immediately settled!

Dorsey an Unknown Quantity.

“Dorsey was known as a ‘bright young chap,’ not widely experienced, willing and aggressive enough, but–

“He had been but lately named Solicitor General, and he hadn’t been tried out exhaustively.

“Maybe he could measure up to the standard of Rosser and Arnold, but it was a long way to measure up, nevertheless!

“It soon became evident that Dorsey was not to be safely underrated. He could not be sneered down, laughed down, ridiculed down, or smashed down.

“He took a lot of lofty gibing, and was called ‘bud’ and ‘son’ right along–but every time they pushed him down, he arose again, and generally stronger than ever!

“Time and again he outgeneraled his more experienced opponents.

“He forced them to make Frank’s character an issue, despite themselves.

“He got in vital and far-reaching evidence, over protest long and loud.

“Whenever the Solicitor was called upon for an authority, he was right there with the goods. They never once caught him napping. He had prepared himself for the Frank case, in every phase of it.

“The case had not progressed very far before the defense discovered unmistakably that it had in Dorsey a foeman worthy of its most trustworthy and best-tempered steel!

“And the young Solicitor climaxed his long sustained effort with a masterful speech, that will long be remembered in Fulton county!

“In places he literally tore to pieces the efforts of the defense. He overlooked no detail–at times he was crushing in his reply to the arguments of Rosser and Arnold, and never was he commonplace!

Fixed His Fame by Work.

“Whatever the verdict, when Hugh Dorsey sat down, the Solicitor General had fixed his fame and reputation as an able and altogether capable prosecuting attorney–and never again will that reputation be challenged lightly, perhaps!

“Much credit for hard work and intelligent effort will be accorded Frank Hooper, too, for the part he played in the Frank trial. He was at all times the repressed and pains-taking first lieutenant of the Solicitor, and his work, while not so spectacular, formed a very vital part of the whole case made out and argued by the State. He was for fourteen years the Solicitor General of one of the most important South Georgia circuits, and his advice and suggestions to Dorsey were invaluable.”

“A noteworthy fact in connection with the Frank trial is that it generally is accepted as having been as fair and square as human forethought and effort could make it.

It may be true that a good deal of the irrelevant and not particularly pertinent crept into it, but one side has been to blame for that quite as much as the other side.

Ruling Cut Both Ways.

The judge’s rulings have cut impartially both ways–sometimes favorable to the State, but quite as frequently in favor of the defense.

Even the big charge of degeneracy, which many people hold had no proper place in the present trial, went in without protest from the defense, and cross-examination upon it even was indulged in.

Unlimited time was given both the state and the defense to make out their cases; expense was not considered. This trial has lasted longer than any other in the criminal history of Georgia. Nothing was done or left undone that could give either side the right to complain of unfairness after the conclusion of the hearing.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO CONCEIVE HOW HUMAN MINDS AND HUMAN EFFORTS COULD PROVIDE MORE FOR FAIR PLAY THAN WAS PROVIDED IN THE FRANK CASE.

Mark it! This was published after the evidence was all in, and while Dorsey was closing the argument for the State.

Nobody knew what the verdict would be. But Hearst’s Atlanta paper told the world, that it is difficult to conceive how human minds and human efforts could provide more, FOR FAIR PLAY, than was provided in the Frank case.

The trial had been generally regarded “as fair and square, as human forethought and human effort could make it.”

So said the Hearst papers on Sunday before the verdict had been rendered.

After the verdict of “Guilty” was Hearst one of the men who bitterly denounced the jury, and the courts? He was.

When the officers told Frank that a girl named Mary Phagan had been found in his basement, he did not make any exclamation of surprise and horror! He took the news as a matter of course. He did not ask anything about the condition of her body, the physical evidences of the crime, or the probable time, place, manner and motive of the act. He did not offer any surmise as to who did it. He expressed no concern whatever. His demeanor was exactly that of a man who knew all about it and who had no questions to ask, after being told of the murder.

Was that the conduct of an innocent employer, whose little employee had been found dead in his house? If Mary Phagan had been a cow that had been choked to death in Frank’s enclosure, his conduct could not have been more unfeeling, more stoical.

He did say that he did not know any girl of her name, and couldn’t tell, until he consulted his pay-roll whether Mary Phagan had worked for him, or not.

In passing to the toilet daily for a year, he had almost brushed Mary on his way; and four disinterested white witnesses swore that he knew her well, and familiarly called her “Mary.”

Not only that, he seemed jealous of J.M. Gantt because of his apparent intimacy with the girl, and he spoke to Gantt about it. An unexplained shortage in the cash account was soon afterwards discovered, and when Gantt denied responsibility, and refused to make it good, Frank discharged him.

So recently had Frank got rid of Gantt, that the man came back to the factory to get two pairs of shoes which he had left there, and this was on the same day that the Jew killed the girl.

To fasten the crime upon some one else, and to hang an innocent man, Leo Frank accused the night-watch in the two notes, describing him twice–which Jim Conley could not have done, for he had never seen the night-watch and did not know he was tall, slim and black. Frank also secreted the true time-slip that was in the clock, the night after the murder, and substituted another, which left one hour of the watchman’s time unaccounted for. This hour was to be filled with a supposed return of the watchman to his house, the purpose of the return being to change his shirt. Accordingly, a bloody shirt was found in the watch-man’s clothes-barrel! Had not Jim Conley broken down and confessed, it is practically certain that the Burns agency would have hired Ragsdale and Barber to swear that it was the night-watchman whom they heard confess the crime, instead of Jim Conley.

This deliberately planned scheme to lay the crime on the night-watch reveals itself in the notes, in the forged time-slip, in the “planted” shirt, and in Frank’s sinister suggestions to the detectives that the night-watch ought to know more about it.

If a black case could be made blacker, this diabolical attempt to hang the innocent negro, while shielding the guilty one, would deepen the darkness of this terrible crime.

During the days of excitement, suspense, eager inquiry, tireless research that followed the crime, Leo Frank never uttered a syllable which would implicate Jim Conley. Yet he was familiar with Conley’s crude “hand-write,” had seen the notes when they were first found, and saw that in those notes Jim Conley was describing and accusing the night-watch, who had only been three weeks and whom Conley had never seen!

Standing out in the turbid waters of this case are three peaks upon which the Ark of Life would have rested, had the Jew been innocent:

1. He would have explained, and had his parents-in-law to explain, why their daughter, Frank’s wife, shunned the imprisoned husband for three whole weeks, after he was committed to jail.

His father-in-law and his mother-in-law both went on the stand to testify to Frank’s natural conduct on the Saturday night of the crime, and the Sunday following.

Why didn’t they explain the unnatural conduct of their daughter?

The Solicitor could not have gone into this, for it would have been using wife against husband, which our law will not allow. But the defendant could have gone into it fully, to explain an extraordinary fact that was already in evidence.

Why didn’t Frank’s lawyers call upon the Seligs to tell the jury why their daughter shrank away from her husband for three whole weeks, when he was in jail, accused of rape and murder?

2. When eleven white girls swore to Frank’s vicious character, the indignation of an innocent man, would have prompted him to a rigid cross-examination of those witnesses.

The innocent man would have faced those perjured women, and fired at them questions like these:

What did you ever see me do, or attempt to do, that was immoral?

What did you ever hear me say, that was lewd?

Did I ever attempt to mislead you?

If so, where and when?

What did I say, and what did you say?

Did you ever notice any lascivious conduct of mine in the factory?

If so, with whom?

Were you ever in my employ, and did you quit, or were you discharged?

If you voluntarily quit, what was your reason?

If you were discharged, what was the cause?

To whom, before now, have you ever stated that my character was lascivious?

In other words, if these women were perjurers, defendant knew it, and his lawyers should have riddled them on cross-examination.

On the contrary, if they were telling the truth, defendant knew it, and it was better not to make matters worse by cross-examination.

Which course did Frank and his lawyers adopt?

The latter!

3. Beleaguered by false witnesses and suspicious circumstances, the innocent man invites investigation, courts inquiry, offers to explain away what is otherwise inexplicable.

The guilty man fears investigation, and shuns inquiry. It told heavily against Police Lieutenant, Charles Becker, of New York, that he did not go to the witness stand. His seeming fear of cross-examination hurt him badly in public opinion.

But Leo Frank went to the stand, and occupied many, many hours talking to the jury, and then refused to allow the Solicitor to ask him one solitary question!

Our Georgia law gives that privilege to every defendant, and this most lenient of codes gives the jury the right to believe the unsworn, unsifted statement of the defendant in preference to all the sworn and sifted testimony!

Accused by a “low-down, drunken, shiftless negro!”

Accused of indescribable practices in his place of business!

Accused of proposing the obscene thing to a girl on the second day of her employment!

Accused of bringing a most dissolute woman of the town into his office, and acting lower than any beast with her!

Accused of taking Rebecca Carson into the ladies’ private room, and shutting himself in there with her alone for 15 to 30 minutes–the girl’s mother being a worker on the same floor!

Accused of lusting after Mary Phagan, pushing his attentions on her, laying a trap for her by refusing to send her pittance by her chum.

Accused of giving Jim Conley his instructions the morning of the crime, and causing him to come and be ready to watch the front door, when the doomed child should arrive.

Accused of decoying the little one to the metal room on the pretense of looking to see whether there would be material for her to work with, the next work day!

Accused of shutting the door on this employee of his, and attempting to get her to let him do, with her, what Miss Nellie Woods swore he wanted to do, with herself, and what Dewey Hollis told Judge Roan, to Frank’s face, he did do with her!

Accused of resenting the girl’s horrified refusal, and of knocking her down, committing the act with her, after she was down, and then, to prevent exposure and punishment, tieing a hemp cord around her throat and choking her to death!

Accused of dragging the dead girl by the heels over the basement floor, until she was lying prone upon her purpled face, in the obscurest nook of that dark room, and of then turning down the gas-jet, until it was no bigger and brighter than a “lightning-bug,” so that the night-watch would never see that gruesome figure lying–all rumpled, and bruised, and bloody–away off there by the back door.

Accused of all this, menaced by the coinciding testimony of more than forty white witnesses, encircled by a chain of physical facts which no human power could annihilate, ignore, confuse, or elucidate–compassed around about in this way, and then stand upon the privilege of not allowing a single question to be asked him?

Never in God’s world did innocence so act, never!

After the verdict of guilty, the defendant made a motion for a new trial, alleging many errors committed by Judge Roan, and, also, that there was not sufficient evidence to support the verdict.

After a long, careful, conscientious consideration of the motion, Judge Roan overruled it. In doing so he said that he himself did not know whether Frank were guilty, but that the law placed the responsibility for that issue upon the jury. Of course it does. For hundreds of years, juries have been the judges of the facts. Governor Slaton stated the legal principle, in almost the same words, when in 1914, he denied the application for clemency in the Nick Wilburn case. He did the same thing, last year, in the Umphrey and Cantrell cases.

Frank’s lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court, where the alleged errors were elaborately argued. The majority Justices held that the evidence was sufficient to support the verdict, and that Judge Roan had not committed any substantial errors of law.

The minority Justices held that Judge Roan had committed one error, to-wit: He had allowed the evidence of Dalton and Conley to establish independent acts of licentiousness on the part of Frank. This evidence, however, was merely cumulative, there being enough unquestioned testimony before the jury to convince them of Frank’s vices.

The majority Justices reasoned that the evidence in question was properly admitted, because it tended to prove Frank’s character and conduct in the place where the crime was committed; and, therefore, tended to establish the identity of the criminal.

The State’s theory being that the murder was incidental to a sexual act, and there being evidence to support this theory, it was competent to introduce testimony to prove that it was Frank who used the factory for sexual acts.

The minority Justices never said that the evidence was not sufficient to support the verdict.

After the Supreme Court decided the case, the trial recommenced, in the newspapers. According to all precedent and practice, the question of Frank’s guilt had been settled. His guilt had been judicially ascertained. The Law had done its do. The Law said “It is finished.”

Not so the newspapers. The Atlanta Journal (whose managing editor is a Jew), published an inflammatory editorial, demanding that the decision of the Supreme Court be defied!

The Journal announced a new doctrine as to the responsibilities of a State for the administration of justice. It said:

Responsibility for the enforcement of the law and the punishment of crime rests largely but not exclusively upon the courts. The press also has its share of responsibility, and it seems to the Journal that the time has come for the press to speak. The Journal will do so now even though every other newspaper in Georgia remains silent.

Here was a novelty. Never before had any Southern man announced that a portion of the judicial power is vested in the publishers of newspapers.

The Constitution of Georgia puts the responsibility on judges and juries; but the Journal declared that “a share” of this responsibility is on the press.

What share? Half, or less than half? Where is the “share” to be allotted, when, and by whom?

Did the press tote its “share” in the year 1914, when four Gentiles were hanged for murdering men? What did the Atlanta Journal do with its “share,” when Lep Myers got off at manslaughter, after going to a Gentile woman’s room, in Macon, and atrociously shooting her to death.

The Journal further said:

The courts have their greatest responsibilities and their arduous duties to perform, and be it said to their everlasting credit, they discharge those duties to the best of human ability. But even juries are sometimes swayed by environment and the judicial ermine is not infallible. Infallibility is an attribute of omnipotence.

The Journal further said:

“Leo Frank has not had a fair trial. He has not been fairly convicted and his death without a fair trial and legal conviction will amount to judicial murder.”

The Journal further said:

“Unless the courts interfere we are going to murder an innocent man by refusing to give him an impartial trial.”

The Jew Editor of the Atlanta Journal further said:

“It was not within the power of human judges, human lawyers and human jurymen to decide impartially and without fear the guilt or innocence of an accused man under the circumstances that surrounded the trial. The very atmosphere of the courtroom was charged with an electric current of indignation which flashed and scintillated before the eyes of the jury. The courtroom and streets were filled with an angry, determined crowd, ready to seize the defendant if the jury had found him not guilty.

“A verdict of acquittal would have caused a riot.”

When John Cohen published this infamous libel in his Atlanta Journal, he fired the signal for every Jewish editor in America. From that day to this, the scurrility of outside writers has been fed on John Cohen’s lying editorial in the Journal.

The only evidence these hack writers and their honest dupes have had as to mob spirit, mob atmosphere and the rest of it, has been the unsworn, unsupported, and utterly false statements of this Atlanta Jew.

Judge Roan had seen no mob “scintillation” in the court-room; the other officers of the court swore there was none; the Colonel of the Fifth regiment testified, on oath, there was none; the reporters of the papers made affidavit there was none; and the Hearst paper emphatically stated before the verdict was known, but after the trial was closed, that there never had been a fairer trial.

Not until the Supreme Court decided against Frank, did John Cohen himself allege that the trial had been unfair. If he knew it to have been unfair, why didn’t he contradict Hearst’s paper the year before, when it paid so high a tribute to Judge Roan and the State? Why wait until another year, and then discover that the trial was a mob-controlled affair, and that Frank’s death under Judge Roan’s sentence would be “judicial murder?”

Not long after John Cohen opened his cannonade on our Courts, Collier’s sent C.P. Connolly to Atlanta to write up the case. Connolly took his cue and his tone from Cohen, and other writers followed the lead of Connolly. Concerning the story of our Montana patriot, Collier’s has recently said:

“We cannot find it in us to cry out for vengeance upon the men who lynched Frank. We know as well as anyone else that Frank was innocent–we know it better than some folks, for we think the painstaking investigation made by Mr. Connolly in Collier’s was not excelled in thoroughness or conscientiousness by any other review. Nevertheless we find it impossible to get up any blood lust of our own. The feeling that the whole thing inspires in us is a good deal nearer to sadness than to anger. Consider the men who did this act. Consider their motive. It could by no possibility be selfish. They did not expect to make any money out of it. They had no personal feeling against Frank–they had never seen him. For them there was neither gain nor satisfaction in what they did. On the other hand, they took grave risks–risks in the shadow of which they will continue to walk until they die. It is impossible to conceive that their motives were other than patriotic. By all accounts they were the best men in the community–they carefully excluded the violent element from their counsels and their action. These men were inspired by the kind of high devotion that has frequently made heroes. Of course they were utterly wrong, but the place for the blame, as we see it, is not on the individuals who did the act, but the state of ignorance which made it possible for these individuals to think their act was good. It is not a time for self-righteousness. It is not a time to cry out against anyone. Georgia is not a neighbor; she is a part of us. It is time for searching of hearts. It is a time for all of us to enlarge our hearts by being charitable.”

Collier’s may very well feel like “forgiving” us; whether we can forgive Collier’s, is another question. It lent itself–if lent is the right word–to a most unscrupulous falsification of the official record, and is largely responsible for the tragedy of a fugitive governor, an informal enforcement of a formal death-sentence on Leo Frank, and such other tragedies as may attend John M. Slaton’s return to Georgia.

Let me take up the Connolly story, and prove to you how untruthful it was, and how shamefully it traduced us.

The first statement of Connolly is:

“Saturday, April 26, 1913, a holiday, Mary Phagan went from her home in Atlanta to the National Pencil Factory at which she worked, to get some pay still owing her. She did not return to her home. A search was instituted, without success. At 3:30 o’clock the following morning her dead body was accidentally discovered in the basement of the pencil factory by the night watchman, whose duty it was to make the rounds of the building. Two men were immediately arrested. One was Leo M. Frank, the superintendent of the factory, who admitted having paid the girl her wages in his office at noon on Saturday. The other was Newt Lee, the night watchman, who had discovered the body.”

How very superficial must have been Connolly’s study of the facts! Leo Frank was not “immediately arrested.” Newt Lee was immediately arrested at Frank’s instigation, and Jim Gantt was next jailed, because of what Frank insinuated as to his intimacy with the dead girl. Frank was not arrested until Tuesday.

Frank did not “pay the girl her wages at noon.” His stenographer did not leave until 12:02, and Mary then came, next.

Connolly’s next statement is:

“Then a third man, a negro named Jim Conley, who also worked in the factory, but who was not known to have been in the factory at the time of the murder, was accidentally discovered washing a stained shirt. He was arrested and held as a suspect, but suspicion was not seriously directed toward him. The stained shirt was returned to him by the police, and his name was practically eliminated until three weeks later, when it was discovered that he could write. He had previously denied that he could write.”

Connolly says “stained shirt;” those who trod in his tracks improved on this and called it “a blood-stained shirt!”

The official record, page 79, shows that E.F. Holloway, the day watchman–the man who twice swore he left the elevator locked Saturday morning, and then changed his story–swore:

“I saw Conley * * * down in the shipping room watching the detectives, officers and reporters. I caught him washing his shirt. Looked like he tried to hide it from me. I picked it up and looked at it carefully.”

Any stains? None. Any blood stains? None. Just dirt, that was all, and the negro was washing it, not in secret at home, but in public, at the factory. He washed that shirt to clean it up for court the next day, and he wore it next day, just as he had been wearing it Monday morning. The police never took it away from him.

Yes, he denied that he could write, and Frank did not tell the police any better. The two men were then protecting one another, and Frank was framing a case on the night watch.

Connolly states that:

“No defendant in a criminal case in Georgia may give testimony under oath in his own behalf, nor is his wife allowed to testify either for or against him; but he may make a statement not under oath to the jury. His own lawyers are not allowed to ask him any questions, and the prosecutor never asks any, for he fears the answers of a witness not subject to the penalties of perjury.”

The prosecutor always asks questions, provided the defendant will allow it. Frank would not allow it.

Connolly again says:

“Frank was convicted solely on Conley’s testimony. Without it there was no case. Not one person ever came forward on the trial who saw Frank and Conley together on the day of the murder, although Conley swore they walked the streets of Atlanta for blocks.”

I have already shown from the official record how the chain of circumstantial evidence was formed by many white witnesses, most of whom were the employees of Frank, and not unfriendly.

Conley did not swear that he and Frank “walked the streets of Atlanta for blocks.” What he swore was, that Frank and he met near Sig Montag’s, and that Frank told him there what to do for Frank at the factory, after the girl should arrive. On this vital point Conley was corroborated by Mrs. Hattie Waites, a lady of unblemished character, and of absolute disinterestedness in the case.

Connolly says:

“The State insisted that Mary Phagan was attacked before Monteen Stover came to the factory at 12:05. But Mary Phagan, according to three of the State’s witnesses, was on the street car several blocks away as late as seven minutes after twelve.”

That no two watches or clocks tally, is known to everybody, and the effort to confuse the facts by time-tables, outside the factory, was one of the numerous devices of Frank’s lawyers. What’s the use of street-car watches when we have Frank’s own clock to go by? His stenographer punched his clock as she went away at 12:02, and Frank repeatedly said that Mary Phagan came in a few minutes afterwards. Not until he discovered that Miss Monteen Stover had been in his office looking for him, at from 12:05 to 12:10 did he place Mary Phagan’s visit later than that.

Connolly then says that “tell-tale cinders” proved that the crime was committed in the basement. He puts cinders in her mouth, in her nose, in her lungs, and under her finger-nails!

The evidence does not.

The undertaker, W.H. Gheesling, took possession of the body soon after it was found, and he washed it, washed the hair in tar-soap water, opened her veins to relieve the congested condition of her face, etc.

With the exception of some dirt under the finger nails, and the dirt soilure of the face and hair, he found nothing unusual. There were no cinders in her mouth, none in her nose, none in her nostrils, none anywhere.

Sergeant Dobbs, who first examined the body, swore to the same thing. W.W. Rogers, who was with Dobbs, swore to the same thing.

Where did Connolly, and those who followed his lead, get all of these cinders that were in the girl’s mouth and nose?

They got them from Leo Frank’s statement to the jury, and Frank, of course, got them from his lawyers. Frank told the jury he saw the cinders when he examined the corpse at the morgue, whereas, the witnesses all swore that he shrank away from the sight of the girl, and never looked at her face at all.

Frank’s words were:

“Mr. Gheesling * * * took the head in his hands, turned it over, put his finger exactly on the wound on the left side of the head; I noticed the hands and arms of the little girl were very dirty–blue and ground with dirt and cinders, the nostrils and mouth–the mouth being open–nostrils and mouth just full, full of sawdust and swollen.

“After looking at the girl, I identified her as the one that had been up after noon the previous day and got her money from me.” (Pages 202 and 203, Official Brief)

Here was the corpse of a girl whom he had claimed not to know; it had undergone a frightful change since the noon before; the face was swollen out of its natural proportions; it was discolored with dirt and congested blood; the mouth was wide open in ghastly disfiguration–and yet he told the jury that he identified this corpse as that of the girl who had come to him the day before.

Even her chums had some difficulty in recognizing her, and it was her hair that enabled them to do it!

“I knew her by her hair,” swore her work-companion, Miss Grace Hicks. (Page 15)

W.H. Gheesling, who turned the girl’s face so that Frank could see it, testified that he did not know whether Frank looked at it! The officers swore that he did not. No witness said that her mouth was open, but everyone said the tongue protruded through the teeth. Not a single witness said that there were any cinders on her tongue, on her nose, in her nose, in her mouth, or under her nails. “Some dirt” was found under her nails, just as some can be found under those of all persons who are not very careful of their hands.

Mr. I.U. Kauffman was put up by Frank’s lawyers to prove the condition of the basement at the time of the crime. He said, “The floor of the basement is dirt and ashes. The trash-pile is 57 feet from where the body was found. There are ashes and cinders along the walk in the basement.”

No witness swore to any pile of cinders, pile of ashes, pile of sawdust, bank of cinders or anything else in which a person could held face downward and smothered. Absolutely no evidence of that sort is in the record.

How could anybody crush a girl’s face into cinders, or ashes, or trash, and not leave evidences of such a crime in the cinders, in the ashes, in the trash and in the girl’s face?

All the witnesses said there were no bruises or even scratches on the child’s nose, but were on the eye, where she had been struck, and on her side-face, where she had been dragged over the dirt floor.

And why would anybody need a cinder pile, when they had the horrible cord tied fast and tight around her neck?

No! Frank’s lawyers invented the banks and piles of cinders; and Frank merely repeated what he told them; but the jury could not disregard the sworn testimony of Gheesling, Doctors Harris and Hurt, Sergeant Dobbs, I.U. Kauffman and other disinterested witnesses.

Connolly proceeds:

“There was not an ounce of cinders on the second floor, where Conley said he found her dead. The upper floors were swept clean every day. There were some strands of loose hair found on a machine on the second floor where Frank is supposed to have struck Mary Phagan. They were not discovered by the officers on Sunday in a complete search of the factory. The expert who microscopically examined this hair and compared it with Mary Phagan’s informed the prosecutor before the trial that the hair was not that of Mary Phagan’s; but this information was withheld from the defense, and was not brought out by the prosecutor on the trial who afterward said the matter was not important, and that he had proved by other witnesses that the hair “resembled” Mary Phagan’s. On the trial the prosecutor claimed to have lost these strands of hair.”

Whose hair was it, Mr. Connolly?

You say the officers failed to find it, Sunday. What of that? They also failed to find the blood-spots on the floor. What difference does it make, if they were not found Sunday and were found, early Monday morning?

The unanswerable question remains, How came the hair and the spots to be there?

You say the floor was swept every day. So it was; and the man who swept it Friday, to clean up before closing for the week, swore that no blood-spots were on the floor, then.

And Frank’s machinist, whose hands had left that lathe handle Friday evening at 6:30, swore there was no hair on it, then, but he discovered it immediately, when he went to use his machine Monday morning.

At that time, nobody suspected Leo Frank, except the rich Jews who had pussy-footed to Rosser and employed him to defend Frank.

They knew what was coming, for they had learned of Frank’s wild drinking and confession, the Saturday night of the murder!

As an illustration of Connolly’s “thoroughness” and “conscientiousness,” I respectfully beg the editor of Collier’s to consider the following:

“Monteen Stover’s testimony contradicted Frank, who swore he had not been out of his office between 12 and 12:30 noon. Frank said it was possible that he had stepped out of his office for a moment in the performance of some routine which would not ordinarily have impressed itself on his mind.”

It’s a small matter, yet tremendously important, for that was one of the fatalities against Leo Frank. He had said so positively and so often that he did not leave his office between 12 and 12:30 o’clock, there was no way for him to deny saying it. But there was Miss Stover who, most unexpectedly to him, proved that he had lied about it. This created a fearful dilemma, the existence of which had not been expected until after Frank for a whole week, had stuck to the story that he had not left his office, and that Mary came to him there at “from 12:05 to 12:10, maybe 12:07.”

Nobody at the factory knew that Monteen had come at that time, had waited 5 minutes, and had gone away.

Jim Conley told Frank he had seen another girl go up stairs, but Jim did not know her name, and Frank was so excited by the crime in which he had involved himself, that he either paid no attention to Jim, or he supposed the other girl to have been Mrs. White.

Monteen, not seeing anyone in the office, or anywhere about, went home and reported to her mother her failure to get her pay envelope. They were poor people, and the girl’s wages were a Saturday evening necessity.

She told her mother that there did not seem to be anybody there, at the factory, and she had come away after waiting five minutes. Her mother went to the factory, the next Saturday, to apply for Monteen’s pay-envelope, and the detective stopped her to inquire who she was and what she wanted. Then, for the first time, the terrible fact was made clear, that Frank and Mary were both missing, at the very time he had been saying they were together in his office!

It was a crushing blow to the defense.

Now, when Frank took the stand to make his four-hour statement, he used these extraordinary words: “To the best of my recollection, I did not stir out of my office, but it is possible, that to answer a call of nature, or to urinate, I may have gone to the toilet. Those are things that a man does unconsciously, and cannot tell how many times nor when he does it.”

This is what Connolly calls “the performance of some routine which would not ordinarily have impressed itself on his mind.”

If Connolly were a student of human nature, he’d know that there never was a jury who would believe that a man is unconscious, when, in the day time, he answers a call of nature.

If Connolly were a man of thoroughness in analyzing evidence, he’d know that when Frank stepped out of the frying pan, made for him by Monteen’s evidence, he fell into the fire, made for him by the blood-spots and the hair, near the toilet to which he would have had to go, in response to that call of nature!

If Connolly were a lawyer, he’d see the similarity between Frank’s explanation of his call of nature, and that which the notes attribute to Mary Phagan. Frank told the jury that he might have gone to the toilet, and the notes say that Mary Phagan did go there!

It is a most peculiar feature of the case, equaled only by the suggestion, in the notes that the tall, slim, black negro had had unnatural connection with the girl–a vice not of robust negroes, but of decadent white men.

Sodomy is not the crime of nature, barbarism or of lustful black brutes; it is the over-ripe fruit of civilization, and is always indicative of a decaying society. A plowman-poet, like Robert Burns, would never dream of such a vice, and it is well known that he wrecked his life by sensuality; but an effeminate dude, like Oscar Wilde, was convicted of it, and served his time at Reading Goal–and his mentality was perhaps greater than that of any Englishman since the days of Browning.

Mr. Connolly, of course, mentions the unmashed excrement at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and adds:

“If the elevator cage had gone into the basement that Saturday noon, it would have been crushed. It was crushed when the elevator was operated on Sunday. This is a physical fact which cannot be argued away, and which unimpeachably disproves Conley’s story. The two silent workmen on the fourth floor never heard the elevator run that day. The gearing of the elevator was on the fourth floor, unenclosed, and they could not have avoided hearing the noise and feeling the vibration.

The two silent workmen on the fourth floor were noiselessly tearing down a planked partition and building a new one–a process that never makes any fuss. These carpenters knew that Connolly required silence; and they, therefore, persuaded the old planks to pull the old nails out, easy, and they sawed and fitted and nailed the new partition into place, so deftly, that Connolly never heard a single hammer.

As silently as the Czarina reared the famous ice palace, whose building is so beautifully described by Cowper, these two Atlanta carpenters, Harry Denham and Arthur White, slipped a new partition in the place of the old one.

If Connolly had studied this record with thoroughness, he would have learned that Conley described Frank as being so excited that he jumped in and out of the elevator before it reached its proper place, and came near causing an accident. He fell up against Jim twice, and nothing would have been more natural for the cage not to strike, evenly, the dirt floor of the shaft. In fact, it was uneven; and, therefore, the cage might very well miss the excrement, if it were not carefully stopped at the very bottom.

It was a freight elevator, and they seldom stop on a level with the landings.

But in any event, the girl’s dead body was in the basement, with the limbs rigid, the arms folded, the hair caked with dried blood, and her privates in the same condition. Her face showed signs of having been dragged over the grit, and the dirt floor showed the trail, leading back to the elevator. That trail of death was 136 feet long, by Kauffman’s evidence; and nobody ever found on the ladder, at the foot of the same, or anywhere in the basement, a single sign of blood, or a struggle.

How unreasonable it is to contend that, because the cage of the elevator did not do what it might or might not have done, we must obliterate all the damning evidence on the second floor, and forget the absence of evidence on any other floor!

Connolly concludes:

“All this trouble has come upon Frank because of a bottle of cheap whisky purchased by one worthless negro from another negro in a Southern city which prohibits the sale of whisky.

“The verdict of the jury was but the echo of the clamor of the crowd.”

So, you see, this writer who was the ally of Burns, misrepresented the record, every time he touched it, and failed to tell Collier’s that Frank’s lawyers proved Conley’s inability to have described the night-watch at the time the notes were written; failed to tell Collier’s that Frank’s lascivious character had been proved by a dozen unimpeachable white women; failed to tell Collier’s that the hair found on the machine handle had been identified as Mary’s, and that Frank’s lawyers never even tried to prove that it was another girl’s hair; failed to point out that Frank refused to question the women who swore away his character, and refused to let questions be put to him; and told Collier’s a most arrant, inexcusable falsehood when he said that our Supreme Court did not posses legal jurisdiction over the evidence in a criminal case!

And this writer whose thoroughness and conscientiousness are still believed in by Collier’s, declared that one bottle of mean liquor, in a prohibition town, caused Leo Frank to be arrested, tried and condemned for the murder of a Southern girl.

“The verdict of the jury was but the echo of the clamor of the crowd,” and the Supreme Court was powerless to right the wrong, because it had no legal authority to review the evidence!

On that kind of stuff which Connolly knew was untrue, he followed the lead of the Atlanta Journal, and others followed his lead, until the continent vibrated with the tread of the disciplined Hessians of vilification.

Not one of those hired writers, or their honest dupes, have ever been to Solicitor Dorsey, to go over the record with him, and to learn the real evidence upon which he relied to convince the jury, satisfy Judge Roan, and satisfy our Supreme Court twice—the last time, unanimously.

The editor of Collier’s has himself been so warped, blinded and embittered by Connolly, Burns, Hearst, Straus, Ochs & Co., that he publishes the following:

“Our own emotions about the Frank case are expressed by the words of a Pittsburgh reader, Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary:

“‘There was not only no reason to convict Frank, but there was no reason to suspect him. His persecution outdoes anything I have ever read in Russian history. The wanton cruelty of his murderers is the most heartbreaking glimpse into hell that I have ever known. I am not a Jewess, I am only a human being, the mother of a little boy. For three days and nights the consciousness of that cruelty has suffocated me. Is this humanity?

“‘I beg of you not to let the matter rest. It must not rest. I feel that Leo Frank was a little comforted in his last agony by the thought of all the people who believed in him and had tried to help him. It might have been your son or your young brother caught in the hellish trap–it might sometime be my son.’

“That’s just it. It might have happened to any of us and it may happen any of us in the future unless we stop it. And our idea of stopping it is not by piling vengeance on top of vengeance in an increasing mass. Let us look very closely into it. Let us admit the very obvious fact that the men who lynched Frank thought they were doing the right thing. Now let us try to find the thing that made them think wrong. That is ignorance, and let us deal with ignorance as ignorance ought always to be dealt with–not with a club, but with light and sympathy. What is here said in charity is said for the benefit of the men who lynched Frank. They thought he was guilty. They thought they were doing a right thing. But are there men in Georgia among those who helped prosecute Frank who knew he was innocent, but, notwithstanding, pushed the prosecution from motives of their own? If there are any such, for them there need be no charity. If any vials of vengeance are to be poured, let it be on these individuals. But for the lynchers and Georgia generally let us seek the only things that will cure, that is, sympathetic understanding–and education.

Such an editor as this, gives one new conceptions of the self-complacent imbecile. He probably has a college-diploma, framed in his study, and he believes he is educated, for hasn’t he a written certificate, signed by the President of the College?

He says that Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary has expressed his emotions.

Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary says that Frank might have been her son. Might not Mary Phagan also have been her daughter?

Is Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary ignorant of the fact that Jewish employers use the duress of employment to coerce Gentile girls into compliance with the wishes of Jew libertines?

Are the Mary Phagans to have no sympathy, and no protection from lustful Jews that never run after Jewish girls?

In the Oregon Daily Journal (Portland), I find the following news item, August 25, 1915:

“Carl A. Loeb, floorwalker in a local department store, was convicted of disorderly conduct in the municipal court yesterday for making improper proposals to young women who came to him for employment, and was sentenced to thirty days in jail. Loeb was represented by Attorney Bert E. Haney, and notice of appeal to the circuit court was given. Bail was set at $500. Miss Lillian Murdoch was the complaining witness. Mrs. Lola G. Baldwin, superintendent of the department of public safety for women, said today that similar complaints against Loeb had been made by four other girls. Evidence was introduced showing that Loeb had no authority to hire employees for the store.”

Here was a wretch engaged in exactly the same vile practices that Leo Frank used on girls who were in his employ.

This floorwalker struck the wrong girls at last, just as Frank did, but how many girls had yielded to Loeb, to keep their jobs? He gets off at 30 days, when the hungry boy who steals bread, gets months, and even years.

Would it not be more to the credit of Collier’s and Mrs. Iva Jewel Geary, if they bestowed a moiety of their tears and lamentations upon the girls?

Collier’s says that what we need is “education.” What do the Franks and the Loebs need?

We have been so often reminded that Frank was a college graduate, that we may soon forget how the eminent negro educator, who is so popular at the North, got chased through the streets of New York, and scandalously beaten, because he happened to make a little mistake in the street address of a strange and scarlet woman?

What is mere education worth, when Doctor Booker Washington has to flee from the bludgeon of an infuriated but not educated carpenter, named Ulrich?

Alas! Education is a good thing, but it isn’t everything; else some of our greatest scholars would not have been some of our greatest criminals!

Judge Roan had officially declared that Leo Frank had had a fair trial.

The Supreme Court had officially declared that he had been legally convicted upon sufficient evidence.

The verdict of the jury was six months old; and before it had been announced, Hearst’s Sunday American had declared that the long trial of Leo Frank, stretching over a period of four weeks, had been as fair, as it was possible for human minds and human efforts to make it.

Nobody contradicted this deliberate statement of the Hearst Atlanta paper.

Frank’s lawyers did not; the correspondents of Northern papers did not.

But when the Haas brothers, months afterwards, followed up on the Cohen attack on the witnesses, the jurors, the judges, and the people of Atlanta, there arose a clamor about the mob, the frenzied mob, the jungle fury of the mob, the blood lust of the mob, and the psychic drunk of the mob.

That clamor grew louder and louder, spread farther and farther, became bolder and bolder, until millions of honest outsiders actually believed that the mob stood up in the courtroom during the month of the trial, and yelled at the jury.

“Hang the damned Jew, or we will hang you.”

It was not until John Cohen and James R. Gray, of the Atlanta Journal, had started this flood of libel against the State, that The Jeffersonian said one word about the case.

Then the Jeffersonian did what no other editor with a general circulation seemed willing to do: I came out in defense of the Law, the Courts and the People.

Are the Laws not entitled to support? Are the Courts not worthy of respect? Are the People not deserving of fair treatment?

The Jeffersonian did not stoop to any personalities, or mean abuse, or malignant misrepresentation.

We had given to Leo Frank as much as we had to give to anybody. We had measured him by the same yardstick that measures Gentiles before they are condemned.

We could not kill poor old Umphrey, of Whitfield County, on circumstantial evidence, and then refuse to execute a Jew.

The one was an aged tenant, aggravated by a dispute with his landlord, about his share of a bale of cotton; the other was a middle-age Superintendent of a factory, presuming on his power over the girls hired to him.

We could not kill Bart Cantrell and Nick Wilburn–led astray by evil women–and then find a different law for the 31-year-old married man, led astray by his own lusts.

No! By the Splendor of God! We couldn’t have two Codes in Georgia, one for the Rich and the other for Poor.

At the time the Atlanta Journal and other papers jumped on the witnesses, the jurors, the judges and the people, Governor John M. Slaton was a member of the firm of Frank’s leading lawyer.

He had been so for nearly a year.

Mary Phagan’s body was found Sunday morning, and on Monday morning, early, Rosser showed up with Haas, as Frank’s lawyer.

Who hired him, and when?

Not a Gentile tongue had wagged against Leo Frank!

No detective, no police-officer, no civilian had accused this man.

Why did his rich connections employ the supposedly best lawyers for him, before he had been accused?

Do Atlanta lawyers go to their offices before 8 o’clock of Monday mornings?

Rosser and Haas were at Frank’s side, as his lawyers, at 8 o’clock Monday morning.

Had the Seligs tipped it off to Montag and Haas, that Frank had drunk heavily the Saturday night of the crime, and had raved about the murder?

At any rate, Frank’s lawyers were on deck, bright and early the next morning, at a time when nobody was working up a case on him, and when he was industriously working up a case against the night-watch whom he had accused in the notes that he placed near the dead girl.

Mark the date: it was April 28, 1913, when Rosser publicly appeared as Frank’s leading lawyer.

On June 22, the papers announced that Slaton had become Rosser’s partner.

Slaton had been elected governor at the October elections of 1912; and was to be inaugurated in June, 1913. Why did he need a new partnership?

And why did Rosser need a new one?

Ah, there’s where the shoe pinches!

There’s where the lash hits the raw place on Slaton.

There are some of the commuters who say that the Law does not forbid a governor to take law cases.

Doesn’t it?

When the Law carves out an Executive Department, separating it jealously from the Judicial and Legislative, and constituting in the Governor, the embodiment of the Executive power, with chief command of the Army and Navy, to enforce the Laws, does anybody, claiming to be a lawyer, deny that the very nature of the office debars a governor from practicing law?

I am not aware of any law which prevents President Wilson from teaching school, but the very character of his office does. Suppose President Taft had taken law cases! Suppose President Cleveland, or President Harrison had done so!

You can’t suppose anything of the kind. You know that a holder of a chief Executive office cannot be dabbling in the judiciary, where cases are always likely to come to him on some final appeal.

Governor Herschel V. Johnson quit the practice when he became governor. So did Gov. Henry D. McDaniel. So did Gov. Nat Harris.

There has been a dispute as to the date when Slaton became Rosser’s partner. Some say it was in July, 1913.

Does that date make it any better for Slaton?

Are we to be told that after Slaton became our Chief Magistrate and Commander of our Army, he needed Rosser?

What for?

Are we to be told that Rosser waited until Slaton was sworn in as governor before he took him in as partner?

What for?

The new firm was announced in the Atlanta Constitution of June 22, 1913; hence it was formed before Slaton’s inauguration. I see the advertisement of the new firm, soon afterwards, in “The Fulton County Daily Record.”

I see the same firm advertised in the Record for May 14, 1915.

Therefore, Slaton and Morris Brandon had continued to be the partners of Rosser & Philips during the entire gubernatorial term of John M. Slaton.

In the Record for August 1915, I find that Morris Brandon has left Rosser and Slaton. Why did he leave?

It is reported that he withdrew from the firm because he believed in Frank’s guilt, and could not endorse the course which Rosser and Slaton had decided to adopt.

Is it true?

Anyway, he left the firm. Who took his place?

Stiles Hopkins. And who is he?

Why, Stiles is the hanger-on of the Slaton-Rosser firm who did some of the mole-work on that very Extraordinary Motion for New Trial.

His affidavit is in the record, and in it he swears he was doing this mole-work for the firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Philips–a firm with which he was “connected.”

After Morris Brandon quit the firm, Stiles was taken in–his intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Frank case being perhaps too valuable to take any chances on.

We are blandly asked to believe that, although this new firm of Rosser and Slaton was formed soon after Rosser was employed to defend Leo Frank, there was a written agreement to the effect that partners should not be partners.

They waived the Code; and, with suave smiles at each other, obliterated the encyclopedic accumulation of legal lore on the subject of Partnerships.

In The Jeffersonian, I have stated, again and again, that just before ex-Congressman Howard was employed, Luther Rosser went on to Senator Ollie James of Kentucky, and made him a proposition of a discreditable kind.

That proposition had no other meaning than that Rosser knew the sentence of Frank was to be commuted by his partner, Slaton; but, for the sake of appearances, Rosser and Slaton wanted to make the case for Frank as imposing as possible.

Rosser offered Senator James a fee out of all proportion to the service, and told him that his argument would be prepared for him, and that he could not possibly lose the case.

The accusation has been standing more than a month, and all of Slaton’s commuters dodge it. They plough round it. THEY DON’T DARE GO TO IT.

Do you need any better proof of the complete understanding between Partner Rosser and Partner Slaton?

Can you ask any clearer evidence of the fact that Slaton wasn’t caring two straws about the Judge Roan letter, the Chicago delegations, the Texas legislature, the telegram from vice-President Marshall, and the petitions from “all parts of the world.”

Rosser and Slaton realized the need of all the strength they could muster, on the side of their client, and every possible resource was exhausted.

They drummed up commuters wherever there was political, financial, or professional influence which could be brought to bear.

It was a case where every little helped; and they got together as many mickles as they could, in the effort to make a muckle.

BUT THEY FAILED ON SENATOR JAMES!

If Rosser’s assurance to the Senator did not mean that he knew in advance what his partner would do, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

In effect, Rosser said to Senator James:

“We want to use you! We want to buy your name and prestige. We want you to act a part in the drama of Treason, that we are staging in Atlanta.

“The Jews have brought the opera house; our troupe of players is already large and well practiced; but we need a first-class orator to make a first-class appearance in the Final Act of the play.

“Here’s a large pile of Jew money! Will you take it? Everybody else is doing it.

“You can’t possibly lose the case.”

But the Kentucky Senator remembered there was something else he might lose, and he spurned the offer which the circumstances justify us in believing was as much the offer of Slaton as it was of Rosser.

Add to the shame of this rejected proposition, the clandestine meeting between the two crooks, Rosser and Slaton, a few hours after the Prison Commission startled them by its adverse decision.

Why did Rosser slink up a side street, and take it afoot to hold a midnight meeting wit his partner, Slaton?

Why talk to us about alleged agreements which exempted this partnership from the Law of Partnerships?

Why ask us to believe the unbelievable?

Tell us what Rosser meant by his statement to Senator James, and what he meant by his stealthy, thief-like visit to John M. Slaton.

No legitimate errand demanded this cover of darkness.

It is said that nobody raised the point with Slaton that he ought not to pass on the Frank case–being Rosser’s partner.

Wrong again! The point was raised, by a member of the Atlanta bar, and it was done in writing, and in a most delicate, respectful way. I published the letter in The Jeffersonian.

The point was also raised, in a Cobb county mass-meeting, held at Marietta, last year.

The question was put squarely up to Slaton, while he was in the race for the Senate, and he evaded it!

What a reckless thing it is, therefore to say the point came too late! Dorsey knew of the letter, and knew of the Cobb county action; consequently, he knew it was useless to again endeavor to reach the “honor” of a man who has none, or to arouse a “conscience” that doesn’t exist.

It has been said that it would have been “cowardly” for Slaton to have reprieved Frank and left him for Governor Harris to dispose of.

Why, then, did he reprieve two negroes who were under death sentences, and leave them to Governor Harris?

And if he is such a brave man, why didn’t he pardon the Jew whom he says was innocent?

I am very credibly informed that Leo Frank, on his way to Cobb county, denounced Slaton as a crook.

This must mean that Frank had been promised a pardon.

If innocent, he was entitled to one; and if Slaton believed him innocent, he acted pusillanimously, in not setting him free.

There is no middle ground.

Those who admit that they believed Frank to be guilty, but favored commutation can only excuse themselves by saying they oppose capital punishment.

If married men of middle age are not to be hanged when they deliberately leave young and healthy wives, and pursue young girls to such a horrible death as fell to the hard lot of Mary Phagan, then we’ve got no use for the law of capital punishment.

Slaton saw lots of use for it, last year, as a protection to homes, and human lives; the commuters saw it, too; it was not until this year, AND THIS CASE, that the railroad lawyers and some Doctors of Divinity became such rampant commuters.

It is said that Slaton made no money by the commutation.

That is an assertion which settles the question without debate. It is perfectly clear to every lawyer that, as Rosser’s partner, he was legally entitled to share whatever Rosser got.

It is said that Slaton knew that the commutation would kill him politically.

He doesn’t talk that way. He expresses the most buoyant confidence in his future popularity.

He says that none of the best people are against him. He says that those who made the outcry against him are mere scum, riff-raff, rag-tag and bobtail; men whose wives take in boarders and washing.

He says that these low-down creatures have always been against him, and he hopes they always will be.

Unless your political eye-sight is failing, you can see a formidable line-up in favor of Slaton for the Senate.

The Jews will be solidly for him. So will the Chambers of Commerce, of Atlanta and Savannah.

So will the L. & N. Railroad system. So will the Hearst papers. So will the Atlanta dailies.

The Roman Catholics will support him almost to a man, on account of The Jeffersonian being against him.

You need not doubt that Slaton made himself reasonably certain of a powerful combination, before he took the bit in his teeth.

He is crafty, and he doesn’t act upon impulse.

It will be remembered that while the Frank case was on its way to him, Nathan Straus, of New York, came to see him.

It will be remembered that while the Frank case was on its way to him, William Randolph Hearst came to see him.

It will be remembered that immediately after the commutation, and the flight from Georgia, he was banqueted by Mr. Hearst in New York.

It will be remembered that Mr. Hearst’s personal representative, John Temple Graves, in his address to a Northern press-club, proclaimed the intention of Mr. Hearst to put Slaton in the race for the Senate or Vice Presidency.

Slaton himself has repeatedly told the Northern people that he would re-enter politics in Georgia, and make his action in the Frank case an issue before the people.

Those who defend Slaton say that his previous character had been good.

If the character of Judas Iscariot had not been good, Christ would not have made him one of the Twelve, and Keeper of the Treasury.

If the character of Benedict Arnold had not been good, Washington would not have made him Commander at West Point.

Lots of folks enjoy the reputation of being straight, when in fact, they are crooks who have not been found out.

WHAT WERE THE REASONS FOR THIS COMMUTATION?

In one place, Slaton says that he was guided by the advice of Sally, his wife. In another place he says he was influenced by the dissenting opinions of the minority Justices of the Supreme Courts.

In another place he says that important new evidence, never produced before any other tribunal, was produced before him.

In another place, he says that the hair found in the metal room, and proved at the trial, to have been Mary Phagan’s, was afterwards shown to be the hair of somebody else.

Who this somebody is, he provokingly keeps to himself. What that new evidence was, he mysteriously declines to state.

In still another place, he leans heavily upon the tomb of Judge Roan, and says that he commuted because of the dead judge, when the official record shows that Slaton paid no attention to the pleas of living judges, last year, and that he can’t assign any reason why L.S. Roan’s alleged change of mind should have out weighed Judges Evans, Lumpkin, Hill and Atkinson, who had not changed their minds.

Like many other mortals, L.S. Roan’s value was not appreciated until after he died. To his pastor he confided his worries about the Frank case, and said that, according to the evidence, Frank “was unquestionably guilty.”

On his farewell visit to his daughter, at Tampa, Florida, he said the same thing.

I have said, and repeat, that entirely too much has been made of L.S. Roan. When he ended his official connection with the case, his opinion was not worth a bit more than that of any juror, or of any spectator who heard the evidence.

L.S. Roan in Massachusetts, had no more to do with the case than you or I did.

Every lawyer knows that our Supreme Court had exactly the same power over the evidence, in this case, that Judge Roan had.

He had the right to say the verdict was not sufficiently supported by the evidence, and the Supreme Court had the right to overrule him on that very point, if the Justices believed the evidence insufficient.

How dishonest, then, is the continued effort to fool the people about Judge Roan!

What possible weight could be given to a tardy, unofficial, and doubtful letter of a disabled, suffering, enfeebled judge, when the Justices of the Supreme Court were all in life, all in full vigor, and all firm in their conviction that the evidence against Frank was sufficient?

The effort to use a dead man to shield John Slaton is the most cowardly and reprehensible feature of the campaign of the commuters.

The Atlanta Journal, the New York Times and the Western papers are saying that “WATSON ATTEMPTED TO BRIBE SLATON!”

They allege that Watson sent a message to Slaton demanding that he “hang the Jew,” and that, in return for this personal favor, Watson would send Slaton to the Senate.

It is a characteristic Slaton falsehood.

During the campaign, last year, Slaton did his utmost to secure my support for the Senate. He sent several gentlemen to Thomson to see me about it. The final desperate proposition that he made me, I will reserve for the present. He knows what I mean.

But since he and his brother-in-law, and their hired writer, and the Rabbi have endeavored to besmirch the character of Dr. J.C. Jarnagin, of Warrenton, I will tell exactly what happened.

Last year, my friend Jarnagin came to my home several times to bring messages from Slaton.

One message Dr. Jarnagin was reluctant to deliver to me, for he felt that it put Slaton in a bad light.

Slaton had explained his failure to run against Hoke Smith, for the Senate, on the ground that he, Slaton, was a poor man, and that his brother-in-law, John Grant, would not let him have the money for a campaign against Smith!

On each of his visits to my home, my friend Jarnagin was told that I could not go back on Rufe Hutchins, to whose support I was committed.

In May of this year, Governor Slaton made an address, on a Warren County Fair Educational Day.

While in Warrenton, he stopped with Maj. McGregor, and he discussed the Frank case with particular reference to what Judge Roan had told his pastor.

Slaton also talked with Dr. Jarnagin, and asked him if there was no way for him, Slaton, and myself “to get together.” He asked Dr. Jarnagin, if there was not something that he, the Governor, could do for my son, or for my son-in-law, Mr. Lee.

In reporting the conversation to me, Dr. Jarnagin said, “Jack says we must get together.” I considered that the Governor was making overtures to me, as he had done last year, and, of course, some sort of answer to his message was necessary.

I therefore said in substance to Dr. Jarnagin:

“You tell Jack Slaton to stand like a man against all this outside pressure in the Frank case, and to uphold the Courts and the Law, and I will stand by him.

“Tell him that I have never allowed my personal feelings to keep me from supporting any man, when the good of the State seemed to require it, and that I have no feeling against him in doing what is right in the Frank case.

“Tell him to do what is right, regardless of these newspaper libels and these foreign petitions.

“Tell him that I want nothing for myself, nor for any member of my family, but I do want to see the law vindicated in this Frank case.”

That was my answer to his message–the answer which the jurors, and the Supreme Court would have given him; the answer which 90 per cent of the people of Georgia would have given him.

That message was, in substance, the very same that I was sending to him, from week to week, in the editorial columns of The Jeffersonian.

That message was in effect the same that the mass meetings, in various counties, were sending to him.

That message was given to him in thousands of letters, telegrams and petitions from all over Georgia.

That message was the same in spirit and meaning, that the Cobb county delegation carried to him.

Out of every hundred men in Georgia, ninety would have been willing to have gone upon the house-tops and shouted a similar message.

All that we ever wanted Governor Slaton to do, was, to enforce the Law against rich people, as he had enforced it against the poor.

Had he proved himself a man, he would have rallied to his enthusiastic support thousands of voter who had never supported him before–men who believe that it is nothing but right to reward a public servant, of whom they can say, WELL DONE!

God in Heaven knows how passionately the people yearn for public servants of whom they can say that.

If John Slaton had just withstood temptation and proved true, he would today have been wearing the crown of Georgia’s admiring approval, a crown more precious than that of any King.

In 1914, John Slaton told Dr. Jarnagin to explain to me that the reason why he did not run against Hoke Smith for the Senate instead of against Hardwick and Felder, was that he, Slaton, was a poor man, and that John Grant wouldn’t let him have the money to run against Smith.

John Slaton explained that it was his wife who was rich, and that John Grant was the manager of the property, and therefore Slaton had to go to Grant for cash.

In Los Angeles a few weeks ago, he told the newspapers quite a different story. He said:

“I am a man of wealth.”

His exact language as reported in the Los Angeles paper is this:

Spends His Own Money.

“I have been accused of capitulating to the overwhelming influence of public sentiment,” he said, “of reversing the judgment of the courts, and many other violations of my oath, but no one in Georgia who knows John Slaton believes the charges, and I am proud to say that, amid all of the censure I have received, there has not been even an insinuation that I profited financially as a result of my action.

“My record of seventeen years in public life, Speaker of the House, President of the Senate, and Governor for two terms, precluded the possibility of such a taint. I am a wealthy man, my family is rich, and I am one of the few men of the country who has been elected to office without accepting funds from any outside source for my campaigns. Every penny spent in the interest of my candidacy came from either my own pocket or from members of my own family. As a result I have never been under obligations to anyone. No corporation or clique has ever been able to control me.”

If Slaton told Dr. Jarnagin the truth in the Spring of last year, and told the California reporters the truth in the Fall of this year, the question arises,

Where did this sudden wealth come from?

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.

Rosser, Grant and Slaton are well aware of the animosity that I have aroused among Roman Catholics by that attacks made upon their hierarchy and secret organizations. They also know that an alliance has been formed in this country between the Jewish organizations and the Papal secret orders.

They, of course, know that the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus were able to use the Federal Government against me, and that I am under indictment for having copied into one of my books a portion of the Moral Theology of Saint Alphonsus Lignori.

They know that the case is to come up at the approaching November term in a city where Jews and Catholics, combined, are predominant, and where old political enemies of mine, are implacable and revengeful.

Therefore, Rosser had a purpose in lugging the Catholic question to the front, just as he had in alluding to Foreign Missions.

I have never insulted any man on the subject of his religion, and, in all my articles, it has been my endeavor to show that it was the system, the hierarchy, the law and the real purpose, of the Italian Papacy, that I antagonized.

As a Jeffersonian democrat and American citizen, I detest the foreign church which has always been the bitterest foe to democracy, and whose fundamental laws are irreconcilable with ours.

I detest a Papacy which tells me that I must take my religion and my politics from a lot of Italian priests.

I detest a church which stigmatizes the memory of my mother by saying that she was not my father’s wife, but that they were living together “in filthy concubinage”–as Pope Pius IX did say while my parents were both alive.

I detest a church which says by its fundamental law, that your wife and mine, your married daughter and mine, your married sister and mine–is a concubine, not a lawful wife, and that the children of our Protestant marriages are nothing but bastards.

I detest a church which comes into my state with its foreign law, and breaks up the homes of lawfully married people, as the priests broke up those in Macon and at Arlington.

I detest a church which sends a foreign ambassador here to tell our people to vote for the Roman Church, rather than for our Country, and who is now trying to plunge this country into a war with Mexico, in order that 300 years of oppression by Spanish priests may be the doom of the native Mexicans.

I detest a church which creates an imaginary near-hell, fills it with suffering souls, and sells releases from it.

I detest a church which puts a bachelor priest between a man and his wife, and orders the bachelor to use filthy language to her in secret, such as no decent husband would ever use, even at night and in the marriage bed.

I detest a church which has to have so many secret organizations, the oaths and secret purposes of which make those secret societies a deadly menace to Protestants and Democrats, to true religion and real civic liberty.

I detest a church whose fundamental law condemns “heretics” to death, and whose records reek with the blood of Christian martyrs.

I detest a church which declared that “Ignorance is the mother of devotion,” and which destroyed libraries, closed the schools, penalized mental research, outlawed science, and plunged Europe into darkness and horror and carnage for a thousand years.

No Roman Catholic who knows the law of his foreign church, and obeys it, can be a loyal American citizen; for the one master is the enemy of the other, and a Catholic cannot serve both.

In public opinion throughout the Union, Georgia has been condemned for an unjust verdict, an unfair trial, and a technical judgment of our Supreme Court, when the facts clearly demonstrate the sole guilt of the drunkest nigger that ever swilled rotgut.

They say the “mob” stood up in the courtroom, and threatened the jury; that the judge was as much terrified by our “blood lust” as the jury was, and that our Supreme Court passed on nothing save the dry points of law, not reviewing the evidence and not expressing any opinion as to its sufficiency.

This is the indictment against us, first made in Collier’s, by the Hessian from Montana, C.P. Connolly.

In the wake of this mendacious hireling, came Macdonald, of the Western press; and after these, came trooping scores of scribblers who took their facts, from the arrant and abominable lies of Connolly and Macdonald.

Use your Reason! Call upon your Common Sense!

Don’t you know that Frank’s lawyers could not have lost their case at every turn, in all the Courts, if it had not been a desperately bad case?

Don’t you know that the evidence on which Connolly, Burns, Hearst and Straus have acquitted Frank, at the bar of public opinion, is different from the evidence upon which the jury acted?

Where did that hired cohort of Hessians get the evidence which they have used in fooling the public?

They made it up! They took the various lies of Burns, of W.E. Thomson, of Luther Rosser, and of the excited Jews of Atlanta; and out of the medley of falsehood, they have made the abhorrent noise which caused other States to turn against Georgia.

Are you willing to be governed by the official Brief of Evidence? The lawyers on both sides agreed to it, and Judge Roan officially approved it.

Oughtn’t that to settle the question as to what is the real truth of the case?

Unless we go by the record, we are at sea, and resemble angry boys, quarreling.

Unless we go by the record, we are left to the folly of saying week after week, “You’re a liar!” and “you’re another!”

To deal fairly with the jury, the Supreme Court and the people of Georgia, you must put yourself in their place.

You must see what they saw, hear what they heard, and learn what they learned.

After doing this, judge us as you would have yourselves be judged.

BE FAIR TO US! DEAL JUSTLY WITH US!

Would you outsiders want your Courts and people condemned on the unsworn statements of such hirelings as Burns, Lehon, Connolly and Macdonald?

Wouldn’t you think that your Courts had the right to be judged by the evidence of sworn witnesses, all of whom were put through the ordeal of cross-examination?

Be fair to us, and JUDGE US BY THE SWORN TESTIMONY; that’s all we ask of you.

Is it asking too much?

ARE YOU UNWILLING TO GIVE US A HEARING?

Are we to be hounded and harassed forever, on the unsworn statements of interested parties?

Let us go to the record and see what the witnesses said under oath.

That’s the only way to try a law case.

We did not carry this Frank case into the newspapers; the other side did it.

Gentlemen, it is high time these rich Jews, and Slatons and Railroad Lawyers quit misrepresenting this case.

THE PEOPLE are not going to allow a convicted criminal’s own lawyer to lynch the courts and save his client.

THE PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO ALLOW IT!

The People would deserve the contempt of mankind, if they did allow it.

Leo Frank was under sentence of death, when the Vigilantes executed him.

The commutation, signed by his lawyer, was not only a nullity, but was a most flagrant, intolerable insult to the State, and a most unparalleled attack upon our judiciary.

Time cannot cover that unpardonable sin of John M. Slaton, and he will do well to remember that Treason is not protected by any Statute of Limitations.

He betrayed us; he did it deliberately! He made his bed; now let him lie on it!

* * *

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

Transcribed by Penelope Lee. Exclusive to the American Mercury.

Introduction

Tom Watson: The Leo Frank Case

Tom Watson: A Full Review of the Leo Frank Case

Tom Watson: The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank

Tom Watson: The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, a Jew Pervert

Tom Watson: The Rich Jews Indict a State!

IN NEW YORK, there lived a fashionable architect, whose work commanded high prices. He was robust, full of manly vigor, and so erotic that he neglected a handsome and refined young wife to run after little girls.

As reported in the papers of William R. Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and Adolph Ochs, the libertine architect had three luxurious suites of rooms fitted up for the use of himself, a congenial company of young rakes, and the young women whom they lured into these elegant dens of vice.

(Listen to this article as an audio book by clicking the play button below:)

Stanford White’s principal place, however, was in the tower-apartments of Madison Square Garden. In this building, his preparations for sensual and sexual enjoyment were as carefully elaborated and as expensively perfected, as though wine, women and song were the chief end of man’s existence. The excavations at Pompeii have revealed no Rose-door voluptuousness more Oriental than that of Stanford White. Like the Roman sensualist who stimulated his amorous passions by surroundings that promoted desire and prolonged the pleasure, White was artistic in his vices; and it was the nude girl, of perfect symmetry and beautiful face, that he bore into his seraglio, where rich and splendid appointments, soft lights, hidden musical instruments, fragrant flowers, and choice wines intoxicated every sense to the highest pitch of epicurean ecstasy.

Into this golden harem, he took the young, lovely and unmoral Evelyn Nesbit; and, according to her statement, she was brutally used. A shocking fact in the case is, that White seems to have given money to the girl’s mother, and that the mother had, in effect, surrendered the maid to the man–knowing why he wanted her.

Whatever the girl felt as to the manner in which White had accomplished his purpose, she soon afterwards returned to him, and their relations continued for some months. Then Harry Thaw happened to see her, fell in love with her, and desired so ardently to possess her, that he married her.

They went to Europe, and during the tour, the wife told the young husband her terrible story. On their return to New York, the architect had the insane folly to again enter into correspondence with Evelyn–this time knowing that he had an excitable young man to encounter–a husband who might be supposed to have learned his wife’s secret. All the world knows how Thaw was inflamed beyond bounds, by seeing White sitting in the eating-room, at the Garden; and how the young husband immediately shot the satyr who had doped and ruined his wife.

The great legal battle that Thaw’s devoted mother has waged in her boy’s behalf, is a part of the history of the times. For nine long years, that fine old woman has borne her cross, and made her fight, her son behind the bars, all those bitter years.

At last, after nine years of imprisonment, Harry Thaw is a free man–for the court which tried him for murder, pronounced him insane; and the jury which recently tried him for insanity, said that he is sane.

At least one of these verdicts was correct, and both may have been; but the jurors in the last trial have since declared that Thaw ought to have killed White, anyway; and about three-fourths of the red-blooded men and women of the country are of the same opinion.

But the Jew-owned papers, and the Jew-hired papers, and the Hearst papers take a different view. They are outraged. Their feelings are deeply hurt. They lament the failure of the Law to hang this hot-tempered boy who shot the man that had virtually bought Evelyn from her monstrous mother, and had then drugged and forced her. In their wrathful eyes, nine years’ imprisonment is no punishment at all. They rail at the influence of Money, and deplore the disgrace which has fallen upon New York–the righteous town where Jacob Schiff, the banker, could give a forty-year sentence to an humble Jew, for entering clandestinely the dwelling of a Jewish millionaire; the righteous town wherein the Roman priests could have the Mayor assassinated without provoking hostile comment from the Hearst papers, the Jew-owned papers, or the Jew-hired papers; the righteous town where the priest, Hans Schmidt, can cut his concubine’s throat, dismember her body, fling the pieces in the river, and still escape punishment!

Let us regale our minds by reading what the Hearst papers say about the case of Harry Thaw:

It is quite true that but for the lavish outpouring of the family fortune, Thaw might have been electrocuted, or would still be confined in a madhouse. It is equally true that but for the contributions of other rich young men, whose money cursed them, his fight for liberty would not have been so prolonged or so costly.

Many will moralize over the power of money as manifested in the escape of Thaw from paying the extreme penalty for the murder of Stanford White.

Fewer will stop to think of the malign power of money that pressed this rich young man along the primrose path that ended in the murder on the roof garden, his prolonged imprisonment, and the ineradicable disgrace which rests upon his name.

As it is, about the most the public can say of him is to express the hope that the public mind shall not longer be assailed by the fulminations of spectacular lawyers, the imaginings of alienists, and the bathos of hired pamphleteers. The world is weary of Thaw.

The world is not weary of Hearst, fortunately; and if he can explain his prolonged hostility to Thaw, and reconcile it with his determined championship of Frank, the world will peruse his statement with interest.

Let us now read what another New York paper–Jew-owned or Jew-hired–published about the two cases, Frank’s and Thaw’s. Concerning Thaw, the New Republic says:

In the case of Harry K. Thaw, it looks as if the State of New York had thoroughly well got its leg pulled. The State deserved it richly, for it asked a judge and a jury to decide a question which they are simply incapable of deciding. Those laymen could no more pass on Thaw’s sanity than upon the condition of his liver. Thus a man may be highly educated, courteous, genial in every relation of life, and still bear within him a murderous disposition, which breaks out only on special occasions. The voluble juryman who has been so much interviewed came pretty close to the truth when he said that Thaw would never kill except when a woman was involved.

What freed Thaw was in reality a combination of prejudices. He behaved well in court. The State’s alienists behaved badly in court. Thaw fought a long fight, and men admire persistence. He had murdered Stanford White, a man who happened to be a genius, but whose genius was forgotten in the deep moral prejudice against him. The brutal fact is that an American jury is very ready to flirt with the idea that there are unwritten laws to justify the killing of men who seduce young girls.

Concerning the Frank case, the same New York paper says:

It is often too foolish to indict a whole people. But in this instance the guilt of the people is clear. They wrecked the only trial Frank has had, they believed every lie about him, they terrorized their public officials. They have made democracy hideous–they, the men and women of the State. There was a minority that knew better, a minority that did not wish to make the courts of the State a vile spectacle to the whole nation. But of that minority many were too cowardly to speak out. They allowed the mob to stamp its own imprint upon the public character of the State. The Governor who acted, and the opinion which supported him, were not enough to save Georgia from its degradation.

A people which cannot preserve its legal fabric from violence is unfit for self-government. It belongs in the category of communities like Haiti, communities which have to be supervised and protected by more civilized powers. Georgia is in that humiliating position today. If the Frank case is evidence of Georgia’s political development, then Georgia deserves to be known as the black sheep of the American Union.

It is a disagreeable discovery of the New Republic, that American juries harbor a perverse sympathy for fathers and brothers who kill the seducers of young girls, and thus rid the earth of the most dangerous vipers that crawl. The New Republic says that it is not only a fact that juries do sympathize with the men who give shot-gun protection to womanhood, but that this fact is brutal.

When the human race ceases to be capable of brutality of that sort, civilization will be the soup-kettle of molly-coddles; and literature will degenerate into a milk-sop effeminacy that won’t be worth hell’s room.

Coming to the Frank case, the New Republic condemns, not only the jury and the judges, but the whole State in which the horrible crime was committed. “It is often foolish to indict a whole people,” says this magazine. Edmund Burke said it was always foolish to do so.

The State of Georgia, as a whole, is pronounced guilty. It has had no evidence against Frank; it has been possessed of a Devil of blind hatred; it has relentlessly persecuted; it has tried to lynch an innocent man, under legal forms. Its mobs terrified the witnesses; terrified the jurors; terrified the trial judge; terrified the Supreme Court of Georgia in both of its decisions, the last of which was unanimous. Finally, the Georgia mobs terrified the Supreme Court of the United States, which, under duress, decided that Frank’s lawyers–after having had all the time, money and opportunity needed–had utterly failed to show that Georgia had not given to Leo Frank every right to which he was entitled.

What do such editors care for the calm decision of the highest court on earth? Nothing.

“The guilt of the people is clear.”

“They have made democracy hideous.” Where? When? And how?

When justice was mocked in San Francisco, some years ago, and William T. Sherman (afterwards the great General) led the “mob,” did the riotous tumults of an indignant democracy make it hideous? When justice was derided and defied in New Orleans, and the outraged democracy flamed into a vengeful conflagration, did it become hideous?

When our Revolutionary Fathers lynched Tories, and drove traitors into hasty flight, did they make democracy hideous?

When the Commons of old England rose in bloody riots against the Lords of Church and State, during the Epoch of Reform, did these insurrectionary Englishmen, battling for human rights, make democracy hideous?

When the Athenians of old furiously fell upon and killed the Greek who advised that Grecian freedom be surrendered to the Persian King, did those rioters make democracy hideous?

Away with milk-sops and molly-coddles! Whenever the human race degenerates to the point where intense indignation is not aroused by enormities of crime, then mankind will be ready for the last Fire; and the sooner this scroll is given to the Flames, as the trump of doom sounds the requiem of a dying world, the less will be the sum total of human depravity.

In Georgia, there was never a mob collected while the Frank case was on trial; never a scene of tumult, never a disorder in the court room. It was not until after the State had patiently waited for two years, while the unlimited Money back of Frank was interposing every obstacle to the Law, travelling from court to court, on first one pretext and then another; offering new affidavits which soon appeared, confessedly, to have been falsehoods, paid for with money; resorting to every criminal method to corrupt some of the State’s witnesses, and to frighten others into changing their testimony; it was not until the people of Georgia had waited so long, and seen Frank’s lawyers defeated at every point, by the sheer strength of the State’s case against a most abominable criminal; it was not until, after all this, when one of Leo Frank’s own lawyers basely betrayed the State, upset all the courts, and violated our highest law; it was not until John M. Slaton, the partner of Leo Frank’s leading lawyers, corruptly used the pardoning power to save his own guilty client–it was not until then that the people broke into a tumult of righteous wrath against the infamous Governor who had put upon our State this indelible stain.

And because our indignation took the same direction as that of our Fathers, in the days of ’76; the same direction as that of the Frenchmen who stormed the Bastille; the same as that of the Englishmen who sacked the Bishop’s palace, and the nobleman’s castle; the same as that of the Viennese who rose in fury against the Emperor and his Metternich, forcing that crafty and coldly ferocious old democracy-hater to flee for his life–because of the fact that we Georgians are just human, we must be relegated to a San Domingo basis, and treated by other States as though we were woolly-headed worshippers of Vaudoux!

HOW ABOUT BECKER AND NEW YORK?

The Becker case created a profound and painful impression everywhere, because of its contrast to the case of Leo Frank. The Hearst papers, the Jew-owned, and Jew-hired papers, have found this contrast embarrassing to them, and they are endeavoring to “distinguish the cases.”

For example, the New Orleans Daily States says:

A patient perusal of all the mass of evidence, considered in the light of the clashing interests of those involved, directly and indirectly, in the Rosenthal tragedy, has left us unconvinced that the law’s reasonable doubt of Becker’s guilt was removed. That Becker was a police tyrant and grafter, was amply proved. The fact that he was more or less endangered by Rosenthal’s promised revelations of police corruption furnished a motive which made it easy for others who confessed they were in the murder plot to fasten the crime on him. But there will always be ground for the suspicion that the Rose-Webber crowd “framed” Becker to insure their own immunity.

But whereas Frank was denied the safeguards and privileges which the State pledges any person accused of a capital crime, and was convicted in a community rank with prejudice and mob spirit, on the testimony of a vicious negro criminal, Becker was robbed of no technical right the law guaranteed him.

Few more deliberate and cold-blooded murderers have been committed in New York than the assassination of Rosenthal, and public sentiment was powerfully exercised against Becker in the face of clear evidence that he was a grafter with a motive for sealing Rosenthal’s lips. But it would be absurd to liken the atmosphere in New York during the Becker trial to that in Atlanta during the Frank trial, or to find any points of resemblance between the orderly conviction of Becker and the utterly disorderly trial of Frank.

So! Another case of my bull and your ox. Do we not all remember that when Bourke Cockran moved for a continuance in the Becker case, and Judge Samuel Seabury refused it, the great lawyer threw up his brief, and passionately exclaimed, “This is not a trial; it is an assassination?”

No lawyer said that to Judge Roan, trying Frank; and there never was the slightest evidence that Frank’s trial was “disorderly.”

The Daily States asserts that “Becker was robbed of no technical right the law guaranteed him.”

Does the States know that the U.S. Supreme Court used those very words in the case of Frank–used them in a well-considered decision, which is the amplest vindication of the Georgia courts?

When the highest court in the world judicially affirms that the State which tried and convicted Frank accorded him every right guaranteed to him under the highest law, ought not the decision to be respected?

Before the United States Supreme Court vindicated Georgia, the agencies working for Frank expressed the most exultant confidence in the outcome of the appeal; and declared that, at last, the case had reached a tribunal which would not be influenced by “mob frenzy, psychic intoxication, jungle fury,” and the rest of it.

After the United States Supreme Court patiently heard Frank’s lawyers, and solemnly assured “mankind” that the State of Georgia had not been shown to have denied Frank any legal right, was “mankind” satisfied? By no means. “Mankind” gasped in silence a few days, and then broke out into a more furious roar than ever, just as though the highest of courts had not decided the case in our favor.

It must have cost “mankind” millions of dollars to lynch the Georgia courts, with outside mobs.

Frank “was convicted on the evidence of a vicious negro criminal.” So says the Daily States, saying it, not because it is true, but because all the other Frankites say it. Without the negro, James Marshall, Becker could not have been convicted, and the highest New York court so held. Whether James Marshall is a criminal, I do not know; but the official record in the Frank case shows that Jim Conley was never a criminal until he became the accomplice of his master, Leo Frank.

May I ask the Daily States to take my word for it, that the law of Georgia does not allow any man to be convicted on the testimony of an accomplice?

The so-called vicious negro criminal was confessedly the accomplice of Leo Frank; and therefore the law made it necessary for Solicitor Dorsey to practically make out the whole case against Frank, without relying at all upon the negro’s evidence.

When that miserable little Jew jackass, Clarence Shearn, of the New York Supreme Court, was sent by his owner, Mr. Hearst, to review the record in the Frank case; and when he wrote an opinion in which he stated that there was no evidence against Frank, save that of the accomplice, he virtually charged our Supreme Court–as well as Judge Roan–with having violated their oaths of office.

Little Shearn does not know enough of Georgia law to be aware of the fact that nobody can be convicted on the evidence of an accomplice; and that, under our Supreme Court decisions, such evidence is almost valueless. The case must be made out independently of the accomplice, to well-nigh the same extent as though he had not testified.

This being the law in Georgia, how can editors who wish to tell the truth, continue to say that Frank was convicted by his accomplice?

Assuming that the great majority of the American people want to know the truth, and want the law enforced wherever crime is proved, I invited every fair-minded reader to come with me as I go into the official record–a summary of the sworn testimony, agreed on by the lawyers for both sides, and sanctioned by the trial judge.

But before turning to the dry leaves of the Brief of Evidence, let me ask you to look upon the girl herself, as she appeared in life to one who seems to have known her well. Writing to The Christian Standard, in protest against an editorial in the Christian-Evangelist, A.M. Beatty says:

Mary Phagan was a member of the Adrial class of the First Christian Bible School, and the last act she did on earth was to iron with her own hands her white dress that she might present the next day and help in winning a contest. The Sunday she expected to be at Bible School she was lying on a slab in an undertaker’s in the same block as the First Church is located, having met death in a horrible manner.

It is very complete–that little picture, drawn in two sentences. Mary Phagan, not quite 14 years old, ironing the white dress she meant to wear to the Bible school, the next day. The First Christian Church stands near the morgue, and as she day-dreamed of the morrow, and the contest in her class, she saw the temple, and the white-dressed girls who would be her companions: she did not see the morgue.

The pity of it! The garment which she washed and ironed became her shroud, after she had been to the morgue, instead of to the church! Surely, fate has seldom been more cruel to a perfectly innocent child.

Mrs. J.W. Coleman was the first witness for the State. She testified:

“I am Mary Phagan’s mother. I last saw her alive, on April 26^th, 1913. She was getting ready to go to the pencil factory to get her pay envelope. About 11:30 she ate some cabbage and bread. She left home at a quarter to twelve. She would have been fourteen years old on the first day of June. Was fair complected, heavy set, very pretty, and was extra large for her age. She had dimples on her cheeks.”

(Witness described how her daughter was dressed, and identified as Mary’s, the articles of clothing shown her–clothing taken from the corpse.)

George Epps, a white boy, was the next witness. He was fourteen years old, and was neighbor to Mary’s family. He rode on the street car with Mary as she came into the city. She told him she was going to the pencil factory to get her money, and would then go to the Elkin-Watson place to see the Veterans’ parade at 2 o’clock. “She never showed up. I stayed around there until 4 o’clock, and then went to the ball game.

“When I left her at the corner of Forsyth and Marietta Streets…she went over the bridge to the pencil factory, about two blocks down Forsyth Street.”

The boy put the time of his separation from the girl at 12:07, but on cross-examination, he said, first, that he knew it by Bryant Kehelye’s clock, and then, by the sun.

(The immateriality of the variations in time, except on Leo Frank’s own clock, will be shown directly.)

The next witness for the State was Newt Lee, the negro night-watch at the factory. He had been working there only about three weeks. Leo Frank had taken him over the building, and instructed him in his duties. On every day, except Saturdays, he was to go on duty at 6 o’clock p.m. On Saturdays, at 5 o’clock.

On Friday, the 25^th of April, Frank said to Newt, “Tomorrow is holiday, and I want you to come back at 4 o’clock, I want to get off a little earlier than usual.”

Newt then went on to say that he got to the factory on Saturday about three or four minutes before four. The front door was not locked; he had never found it locked on Saturday evenings. But there are double doors half way up the steps, which he had always found unlocked before, but which, this Saturday evening, he found locked.

He took his keys and unlocked this stair-way door, and went on up-stairs to the second floor, where Frank’s office was.

Newt announced his arrival, as he had always done, by calling out, “All right, Mr. Frank!”

“And he come bustling out of his office,…and says, ‘Newt, I am sorry I had you come so soon; you could have been at home sleeping. I tell you what you do; you go out in town and have a good time.'”

Newt stated that always before when Frank had anything to say to him, he would say, “Step here a minute, Newt.”

This time, Frank came bustling toward the negro, rubbing his hands; and when Newt asked to be allowed to go into the shipping room to get some sleep, Frank answered, “You need to have a good time. You go downtown, stay an hour and a half, and come back your usual time at 6 o’clock. Be sure to come back at 6 o’clock.”

Newt did as he was told, returned to the factory at two minutes before six, and found the stair doors unlocked. Frank took the slip out of the time-clock and put in a new one.

“It took him twice as long this time as it did the other times I saw him fix it. He fumbled, putting it in.” After the slip had been put in, Newt punched his time, and went on down stairs.

Mr. J.M. Gantt came to the front door and asked Newt for permission to go up stairs after an old pair of shoes he had left there, some time before when he was employed at the factory. Newt answered that he was not allowed to let anyone inside after six o’clock.

“About that time Mr. Frank came bustling out of the door, and ran into Gantt unexpected, and he jumped back frightened.”

Gantt asked Frank if he had any objection to his going up stairs after his old shoes.

Frank answered, “I don’t think they are up there. I think I saw a boy sweep some up in the trash the other day.”

Gantt asked what sort of shoes he saw the boy sweep out, and Frank said they were “tans.”

Gantt replied, “Well, I had a pair of black ones, too.”

“Frank says, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ and dropped his head down, just so”–illustrating.

“Then, he raised his head, and says, ‘Newt, go with him and stay with him, and help him find them.” And I went up there with Mr. Gantt, and found them in the shipping room, two pair, the tans and black ones, too.”

That night, after seven o’clock, Frank telephone to Newt, and asked, “How’s everything?”

That was the first time he had ever phoned the night watch on a Saturday night. He did not ask about Gantt.

There is a gas jet in the basement at the foot of the ladder, and Frank had told Newt to keep it burning all the time.

“I left it Saturday morning burning bright. When I got there, on making my rounds at 7 o’clock p.m. on the 26^th of April, it was burning just as low as you could turn it, like a lightning bug. When 3 o’clock came” (after midnight, of course,) “I went down to the basement….I went down to the toilet, and when I got through I looked at the dust bin back to the door” (the back door opening on the alley) “to see how the door was, and it being dark, I picked up my lantern and went there, and I saw something laying there, which I thought some of the boys had put there to scare me; then I walked a little piece towards it, and I saw what it was, and I got out of there.

“I got up the ladder, and called the police station; it was after 3 o’clock.

“I tried to get Mr. Frank, and was still trying when the (police) officers came. I guess I was trying (to get Frank to answer the telephone) about eight minutes.

“I saw Mr. Frank Sunday morning (the same morning), at about 7 or 8 o’clock. He was coming in the office. He looked down on the floor, and never spoke to me. He dropped his head down, right this way”–illustrating.

“Boots Rogers, Chief Lanford, Darley, Frank and I were there when they opened the clock. Mr. Frank opened the clock, and saw the punches were all right. I punched every half hour from 6 o’clock p.m. to 3 o’clock a.m.

“On Tuesday night, April 29^th, at about 10 o’clock, I had a conversation at the station house with Mr. Frank. They handcuffed me to a chair.

“The went and got Mr. Frank and brought him in, and he sat down next to the door. He dropped his head and looked down. We were all alone. I said, ‘Mr. Frank, it’s mighty hard on me to handcuffed here for something that I don’t know anything about.’

“He said, ‘What’s the difference? They have got me locked up, and a man guarding me.’

“I said, ‘Mr. Frank, do you believe I committed this crime?’

“He said, ‘No, Newt, I know you didn’t; but I believe you know something about it.’

“I said, ‘Mr. Frank, I don’t know a thing about it, more than finding the body.’

“He said, ‘We are not talking about that now; we will let that go. If you keep that up, we will both go to hell.’

“Then the officers came in. When Mr. Frank came out of his office that Saturday (evening) he was looking down, and rubbing his hands. I had never seen him rub his hands that way before.”

Newt stated, on cross-examination, that he would not have gone so far back in the basement, and would not have seen the body, if a call of nature down there had not caused him to use the toilet which was near the corpse.

“When I got through, I picked up my lantern; I walked a few steps that way; I seed something over there, about that much of the lady’s leg and dress”–illustrating.

“I think I reported to the police that it was a white woman. When I first got there, I didn’t think it was a white woman, because her face was so dirty, and her hair crinkled.

“When I was in the basement (the morning the body was found), one of the policemen read the note that they found. They read these words, ‘The tall, black, slim negro did this, he will try to lay it on the night’ and when they go to the word ‘night,’ I said, ‘They must be trying to put it off on me.'”

(Note that the negro is corroborated on this point by Sergeant Dobbs, the next witness; and bear it in mind because of its extreme importance–as you will soon see.)

Sergeant L.S. Dobbs testified that a call came to the police headquarters at about 3:25, on the morning of April 27^th, and he went to the pencil factory, descended to the basement by means of the trap-door and ladder. The negro led the officers back to the body, about 150 feet.

“The girl was lying on her face, not directly lying on her stomach, with the left side up just a little. We couldn’t tell by looking at her whether she was white or black, only by her golden hair. They turned her over, and her face was full of dirt and dust. They took a piece of paper and rubbed the dirt off her face, and we could tell then that it was a white girl. I pulled up her clothes, and could tell by the skin of the knee that it was white girl. Her face was punctured, full of holes, and swollen and black. She had a cut on the left side of her head, as if she had been struck, and there was a little blood there. The cord was around her neck, sunk into the flesh. She also had a piece of her underclothing around her neck. The cord was still tight around her neck. The tongue was protruding just the least bit. The cord was pulled tight, and had cut into the flesh, and tied just as tight as it could be. The underclothing around the neck was not tight.

“There wasn’t much blood on her head. It was dry on the outside. I stuck my finger under the hair and it was a little moist.

“This scratch pad was lying on the ground, close to the body. I found the notes under the sawdust, lying near the head. The pad was lying near the notes. They were all right close together.

“Newt Lee told us it was a white woman.

“There was a trash pile near the boiler, where this hat was found, and paper and pencils down there, too. The hat and shoe were on the trash pile. Everything was gone off it, ribbons and all.

“It looked like she had been dragged on her face by her feet. I thought the places on her face had been made by dragging. That was a dirt floor, with cinders on it, scattered over the dirt.

“The place where I thought I saw some one dragged was right in front of the elevator, directly back. The little trail where I thought showed the body was dragged, went straight on down (from in front of the elevator) where the girl was found. It was a continuous trail.

“The body was cold and stiff. Hands folded across the breast.

“I didn’t find any blood on the ground, or on the saw dust, around where we found the body.

“The sign of dragging…started east of the ladder. A man going down the ladder to the rear of the basement, would not go in front of the elevator where the dragging was.

“A man couldn’t get down that ladder with another person. It is difficult for one person to get through that scuttle hole. The back door was shut; staple had been pulled.”

“The lock was locked still. It was a sliding door, with a bar across the door, but the bar had been taken down. It looked like the staple had been recently drawn.

“I was reading one of the notes to Lee, with the following words, ‘A tall, black negro did this; he will try to lay it on the night,’ and when I got to the word ‘night,’ Lee says, ‘That means the night watchman.’

“I found the handkerchief on a sawdust pile, about ten feet from the body. It was bloody, just as it is now.

“The trap-door leading up from the basement was closed when we got there.”

City Officer John N. Starnes was the State’s next witness. He testified to reaching the factory between 5 and 6 o’clock that Sunday morning. He called up Leo Frank, and asked him to come, right away.

“He said he hadn’t had any breakfast. He asked where the night watchman was. I told him it was very necessary for him to come, and if he would come, I would send an automobile for him.
I didn’t tell him what had happened, and he didn’t ask me.

“When Frank arrived at the factory, a few minutes later, he appeared to be nervous; he was in a trembling condition. Lee was composed.

“It takes not over three minutes to walk from Marietta Street, at the corner of Forsyth Street, down to the factory.

“I chipped two places off the back door, which looked like they had bloody finger prints.”

(Let me here remind the reader, that Jim Conley, a State’s witness, could have been required by Leo Frank’s lawyers to make the imprint of his fingers while he was on the stand, and if these finger marks had resembled those made on the back door, Frank would have gone free, and the negro would have swung. The State, however, could not ask Leo Frank to make his finger-prints, for to have done so, would have been requiring him to furnish evidence against himself.

My information is that Conley’s lawyer, W.M. Smith, after he had agreed with the Burns Agency to help them fix the crime on his client, went to the convict camp, where Conley was working out his sentence, and got his finger-prints, twice.

Be that as it may, Frank’s attorneys dared not ask the negro to make the prints, when they had him on the stand.

You can draw your own conclusions.

Burns and Lehon do not amount to anything much as detectives; but even these amateurs know something of the Bertillon system; and if those finger-prints on the back door had not been Leo Frank’s, Burns and Lehon would most certainly have proven that much, by actual demonstration, and thus put the crime on Jim Conley, or upon some other person than their client, Frank.)

The next witness was W.W. Rogers. He and John Black went after Frank, following Starne’s telephone communication. Mrs. Frank opened the door, and was asked if Frank was in. He came forward, partly dressed, and asked if anything had happened at the factory. No answer being returned, he inquired, “Did the night-watchman call up and report anything to you?”

Mr. Black asked him to finish dressing, and accompany them to the factory, and see what had happened.

“Frank said that he thought he dreamt in the morning, about 3 o’clock, about hearing the telephone ring.”

Witness said Frank appeared extremely nervous, and called for a cup of coffee. He was rubbing his hands. When they had taken their seats in the automobile, one of the officers asked him if he knew a little girl named Mary Phagan.

Frank answered, “Does she work at the factory?”

Rogers said, “I think she does”; and Frank added, “I cannot tell whether she works there or not, until I look at my pay-roll book. I know very few of the girls that work there. I pay them off but I very seldom go back in the factory.”

The witness spoke of Frank’s conduct at the morgue, and although the purpose of taking him there was to have him view the corpse, the witness never saw Frank look at it, but did see him step away into a side room.

From the morgue, the party went to the pencil factory, where Frank opened the safe, took out his time-book, consulted it, and said: “Yes, Mary Phagan worked here. She was here yesterday to get her pay.”

He said: “I will tell you about the exact time she left here. My stenographer left about 12 o’clock, and a few minutes after she left, the office boy left, and Mary came in and got her pay and left.”

(Note, later on, that other girls were at Frank’s office, the same Saturday morning, and that he nevertheless fixed the exact time of the arrival of the girl he did not know. And he fixed it right.)

“He then wanted to see where the girl was found. Mr. Frank went around to the elevator, where there was a switch box on the wall, and put the switch in. The box was not locked. As to what Mr. Frank said about the murder, I don’t know that I heard him express himself, except down in the basement.

The officers showed him where the body was found, and he made the remark that it was too bad, or something like that.”

(Frank was not under arrest at this time, and Newt Lee was. Nothing, as yet, had been said about Conley.)

On cross-examination, the witness stated that “we didn’t know it was a white girl or not until we rubbed the dirt from the child’s face, and pulled down her stocking a little piece. The tongue was not sticking out; it was wedged between her teeth. She had dirt in her eye and mouth. The cord around her neck was drawn so tight it was sunk in her flesh, and the piece of underskirt was loose over her hair.

“She was lying on her face, with her hands folded up. One of her eyes was blackened. There were several little scratches on her face. A bruise on the left side of her head, some dry blood in her hair.

“There was some excrement in the elevator shaft. When we went down on the elevator, the elevator mashed it. You could smell it all around.

“No one could have seen the body at the morgue unless he was somewhere near me. I was inside, and Mr. Frank never came into that little room, where the corpse lay. When the face was turned toward me, Mr. Frank stepped out of my vision in the direction of Mr. Gheesling’s (the undertaker’s) sleeping room.”

Miss Grace Hicks testified that she worked on the second floor at the factory. Mary Phagan’s machine was right next to the dressing room, and in going to the closet, the men who worked on that floor passed within two or three feet of Mary. Between the closet of the men and of the women, there was “just a partition.”

The witness had identified the body at the morgue early Sunday morning, April 27^th. “I knew her by her hair. She was fair-skinned, had light hair, blue eyes, and was heavy built, well developed for her age. She weighed about 115 pounds. Magnolia Kennedy’s hair is nearly the color of Mary Phagan’s’.”

John R. Black, the next witness for the State, testified that he went with Rogers to Frank’s house. “Mrs. Frank came to the door; she had on a bathrobe. I started that I would like to see Mr. Frank, and about that time Mr. Frank stepped out from behind a curtain. His voice was hoarse and trembling and nervous and excited. He looked to me like he was pale. He seemed nervous in handling his collar; he could not get his tie tied, and talked very rapid in asking what had happened. He kept on insisting for a cup of coffee.

“When we got into the automobile, Mr. Frank wanted to know what had happened at the factory, and I asked him if he knew Mary Phagan, and told him she had been found dead in the basement. Mr. Frank said he did not know any girl by the name of Mary Phagan, that he knew very few of the employees.

“In the undertaking establishment, Mr. Frank looked at her; he gave a casual glance at her, and stepped aside; I couldn’t say whether he saw the face of the girl or not. There was a curtain hanging near the room, and Mr. Frank stepped behind the curtain.

“Mr. Frank stated, as we left the undertaker’s, that he didn’t know the girl, but he believed he had paid her off on Saturday. He thought he recognized her being at the factory Saturday by the dress that she wore.

At the factory, Mr. Frank took the slip out (of the time clock), looked over it, and said it had been punched correctly. (That is, the slip showed that Newt Lee had punched every half-hour during the night before.)

“On Monday and Tuesday following, Mr. Frank stated that the clock had been mispunched three times.

“I saw Frank take it out of the clock, and went with it back toward his office.

“When Mr. Frank was down at the police station, on Monday morning (the next after the corpse was found), Mr. Rosser and Mr. Haas were there. Mr. Haas stated, in Frank’s presence, that he was Frank’s attorney. This was about 8, or 8:30 Monday morning. That’s the first time he had counsel with him.”

(Observe that the Jews employed the best legal talent, before the Gentiles had even suspected Frank’s guilt.

Why did his rich Jewish connections feel so sure of his need of eminent lawyers, that they employed Rosser, evidently on Sunday, since city lawyers do not open their offices before 8 o’clock.)

“Mr. Frank was nervous Monday; after his release, he seemed very jovial.

“On Tuesday night, Frank said, at the station house, that there was nobody at the factory at 6 o’clock but Newt Lee, and that Newt Lee ought to know more about it, as it was his duty to look over the factory every thirty minutes.”

(Note Frank’s deliberate direction of suspicion to the “tall, slim night-watch,” upon whom the notes place the crime. Frank was virtually telling the police the same thing that the notes told, viz., that Newt Lee committed the crime.)

“On Tuesday night, Mr. Scott and myself suggested to Mr. Frank to talk to Newt Lee. They went in a room, and stayed about five or ten minutes, alone. I couldn’t hear enough to swear that I understood what was said. Mr. Frank said that Newt stuck to the story that he knew nothing about it.

“Mr. Frank stated that Mr. Gantt was there on Saturday evening, and that he told Lee to let him get the shoes, but to watch him, as he knew the surroundings of the office.

“After this conversation Gantt was arrested.”

(Observe that Frank’s allusion to Gantt could have had no other purpose than to direct suspicion toward him; and that, while Frank was seeking to involve two innocent men, he did not breathe a suspicion of Jim Conley, whom he knew to have been in the factory when Mary Phagan came for her pay.)

After the visit to the morgue, the party went to the factory, where Frank got the book, ran his finger down until he came to the name of Mary Phagan, and said: “Yes, this little girl worked here, and I paid her $1.20 yesterday.”

“We went all over the factory. Nobody saw that blood spot that morning.”

Mr. Haas, as Frank’s attorney, had told witness to go out to Frank’s house, and search for the clothes he had worn the week before, and the laundry, too.

Frank went with them, and showed them the dirty linen.

“I examined Newt Lee’s house. I found a bloody shirt at the bottom of a clothes barrel there, on Tuesday morning, about 9 o’clock.”

On re-direct examination, the witness stated that Frank said, after looking over the time sheet, and seeing that it had not been punched correctly, that it would have given Lee an hour to have gone out to his house and back.”

(Evidently, Frank knew where this negro lived, and how long it required for him to go home that Saturday night, and return to the factory where the girl’s body lay. This new time-slip gave Newt an hour unaccounted for; and, in connection with the bloody shirt, the new time-slip began to make the case look ugly for Newt, “the tall, slim night-watch,” whom the writer of the notes accused.)

J.M. Gantt was next put up by the State, and his evidence, in substance, was:

That he had been shipping clerk and time-keeper at the pencil factory, and that Frank had discharged him on April 7^th, for an alleged shortage of $2 in the pay-roll.

He had known Mary Phagan since she was a little girl, and that Frank knew her, too.

One Saturday afternoon, she came in the office to have her time corrected, by Gantt, and after Gantt had gotten through with her, Mr. Frank came in and said: “You seem to know Mary pretty well.”

After Gantt was discharged, he went back to the factory on two occasions. “Mr. Frank saw me both times. He made no objections to my going there.”

One girl used to get the pay envelope for another, with Frank’s knowledge. Gantt swore he knew nothing of how the $2 shortage in the pay roll occurred. Frank discharged him because Gantt refused to make it good.

Gantt described how Frank had behaved at 6 o’clock Saturday evening when he, Gantt, went for his shoes. Standing at the front door, Gantt saw Frank coming down the stairs, and when Frank saw Gantt, “he kind of stepped back, like he was going to go back, but when he looked up and saw I was looking at him, he came on out, and I said, ‘Howdy, Mr. Frank,’ and he sorter jumped again.”

Then Gantt asked permission to go up for his shoes, and Frank hesitated, studied a little, inquired the kind of shoes, was told they were tans, and stated that he thought he had seen a negro sweep them out. But when Gantt said he left a black pair, also, Frank “studied” a little bit, and told Newt to go with Gantt, and stay with him till he got his shoes. Gantt went up, and found both pair, right where he had left them.

“Mr. Frank looked pale, hung his head, and kind of hesitated and stuttered, like he didn’t like me in there, somehow or other.”

(On the strength of what Frank insinuated against Gantt, he was arrested before Frank was, and not released until Thursday night.)

Mrs. J.A. White, sworn for the State, said that she went to the factory to see her husband, who was at work there, on April 26^th. She went at 11:30, and stayed till 11:50, when she left. She returned about 12:30, and saw Frank standing before the safe, in his outer office. “I asked him if Mr. White had gone back to work; he jumped, like I surprised him, and turned and said, ‘Yes.'”

She went up stairs to see her husband, and while she was up there, about 1 o’clock, Frank came up and told Mr. White that if she wanted to get out before 3 o’clock, she had better come down, as he was going to leave, and lock the door, and that she had better be ready by the time he could get his coat and hat.

Mrs. White testified to this tremendously important fact:

“As I was going on down the steps, I saw a negro sitting on a box, close to the stairway on the first floor.

“Mr. Frank did not have his coat or hat on when I passed out.”

On cross-examination, this lady swore: “I saw a negro sitting between the stairway and the door, about five or six feet from the foot of the stairway.”

While Mrs. White was talking to her husband, between 11:30 and 11:50, she saw Miss Corinthia Hall and Mrs. Emma Freeman there, and they left before she did.

(Mrs. White did not work at the factory, and did not know Jim Conley. The place where she saw a negro sitting, was where Jim sat when he had nothing else to do. Picture to yourself the interior of the factory, as Mrs. White departs at about 1 o’clock that fatal Saturday.

Two carpenters are at work on the fourth floor, tearing out a partition and putting up a new one, and they are 40 feet back from the elevator.

Frank is sitting on the second floor, near the head of the stairs; and Jim Conley is seated at the foot of the same stairs, on the floor below, not more than thirty feet from his white boss.

The lady passes on out, leaving these two men practically together. According to his own statement to the police officers, Frank has already had Mary Phagan, in his office, in his possession, between the first departure of Mrs. White at 11:50 and her second coming at 12:30!

Frank’s own admission put the girl alone with him in his private office, shortly after the noon hour; and when Mrs. White returns at 30 minutes after the noon hour, the girl is nowhere to be seen.

Who can account for Mary between these times? And who can account for Frank?

Here is the tragedy, hemmed within the first departure and the second arrival of Mrs. White–a space which could not be filled by any two human beings, excepting Jim Conley and Leo Frank.

(We will see, later, how each of the two filled it.)

Harry Scott, the State’s next witness, was Superintendent of the local branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was employed by Frank for the pencil factory.

In Frank’s private office, Monday afternoon, April 28^th, the detective heard Frank’s detailed account of his movements the Saturday before. Frank told of his going to Montag’s, and of the coming of Mrs. White.

“He then stated that Mary Phagan came into the factory at 12:10 p.m., to draw her pay; that she had been laid off the Monday previous, and she was paid $1.20, and that he paid her off in his inside office, where he was at his desk, and when she left his office and went into the outer office she had reached the outer office door, leading into the hall, and turned around to Mr. Frank and asked if the metal had come yet. Mr. Frank replied that he didn’t know, and that Mary Phagan, he thought, reached the stairway, and he heard voices, but he couldn’t distinguish whether they were men or girls talking.”

Later, a witness stated that it was before Mary came that Frank said he heard voices–before 12 o’clock.

(Let me explain that Mary worked on Frank’s floor, some distance back of his office, and that she placed metal tips on the pencils. The supply of this metal gave out, and more was ordered, but in the meantime Mary was unemployed. Her question, “Has the metal come?” was therefore equivalent to, “Will there be work for me next Monday?”

Note particularly that in his private conference with his own detective, he did not pretend that he had not known Mary Phagan. On the contrary, see what Scott says further on.)

“He (Frank) also stated, during our conversation, that Gantt knew Mary Phagan very well, and that he was familiar and intimate with her. He seemed to lay special stress on it, at the time. He said that Gantt paid a good deal of attention to her.”

(The morning before, he did not know her, and had to consult his book! Although he had passed within three feet of her, every day when he went to the toilet, and had paid her off every week, for about a year, he did not know any girl of that name!)

Mr. Herbert J. Haas (later the Chairman of the Frank Finance Committee) told the detective to report to him, first, before letting the public know “what evidence we had gathered. We told him we would withdraw from the case before we would adopt any practice of that sort.”

Scott asked Frank to use his influence as employer with Newt Lee, and to try to get him to tell what he knew. Frank consented, and the two were put in a private room, in order that Frank might get something out of the “tall, slim night-watch.”

“When about ten minutes was up, Mr. Black and I entered the room, and Lee hadn’t finished his conversation with Frank, and was saying: ‘Mr. Frank, it is awful hard for me to remain handcuffed to this chair, and Frank hung his head the entire time the negro was talking to him, and finally, in about thirty seconds, he said, ‘Well, they have got me, too,’ After that, we asked Mr. Frank if he had gotten anything out of the negro, and he said, ‘No, Lee still sticks to his original story.’

“Mr. Frank was extremely nervous at that time. He was very squirmy in his chair, crossing one leg after the other, and didn’t know where to put his hands; he was moving them up and down his face, and he hung his head a great deal of the time while the negro was talking to him. He breathed very heavily, and took deep swallows, and hesitated somewhat. His eyes were about the same as they are now.

“That interview between Lee and Frank took place shortly after midnight, Wednesday, April 30. On Monday afternoon, Frank said to me that the first punch on Newt Lee’s slip was 6:33 p.m., and his last punch was 3 a.m. Sunday. He didn’t say anything at that time about there being any error in Lee’s punches. Mr. Black and I took Mr. Frank into custody about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 29^th.

“His hands were quivering very much, he was very pale. On Sunday, May 3, I went to Frank’s cell at the jail with Black, and I asked Mr. Frank if, from the time he arrived at the factory from Montag Bros.’, up until 12:50 p.m., the time he went upstairs to the fourth floor, was he inside of his office the entire time, and he stated, ‘Yes.’

“Then I asked him if he was inside his office every minute from 12 o’clock until 12:30, and he said, ‘Yes.’

“I made a very thorough search of the area around the elevator and radiator, and back in there. I made a surface search; I found nothing at all. I found no ribbon or purse, or pay envelope, or bludgeon or stick. I spent a great deal of time around the trap door, and I remember running the light around the doorway, right close to the elevator, looking for splotches of blood, but I found nothing.”

(No effort was made to impeach Harry Scott, and the whole brunt of Rosser’s cross-examination was to compel the witness to admit that Frank answered the girl’s question about the metal, by saying, “No,” instead of, “I don’t know.”

If Frank answered, “No,” her inquiry ended right there, and there was nothing for the girl to linger for; she would go on down stairs. But if her question, “Has the metal come?” was answered by, “I don’t know,” the girl herself would want to learn, for certain, whether there would be any need for her to return Monday morning. As the next day was Sunday, there would be no work for her on Monday, unless the metal were already on hand, because, if it reached Atlanta Sunday, it would not be delivered at the factory until some time after the work hours began on Monday.

Therefore, when Frank told his own detective, in their first confidential talk, that he gave the girl’s question a reply which necessarily left her in doubt, he stated a fact that leads to the reasonable, if not inevitable conclusion, that either he or she proposed that one or the other–or both–go to the metal room, and see!

To make certain whether the new metal had come, she would go to the room where she worked, and look. If the metal had come, and was ready for use next week, it was there!

Now, when you examine page 25 of the official Brief of Evidence, and find that Rosser’s assault on the witness was directed chiefly to this point, you naturally ask, Why did it make such a difference? Why did Frank’s lawyer so strenuously endeavor to make it appear that the girl’s inquiry was answered, “No,” instead of, “I don’t know?”

If she was murdered below, on the first floor, or in the basement, what did it matter, whether or not she went to the metal room, on the second floor?

If Jim Conley, sitting at the foot of the stairway, assaulted the girl as she was passing out, and either killed her there, or threw her down into the basement, where he afterwards killed her, what difference did it make, if the white man, at the head of the stairway, told the girl he didn’t know whether the metal had come?

If the evidence places the crime on any other floor than Frank’s own, why battle with the witness as to what was said and done on Frank’s floor?

There is but one answer: the physical indications were on Frank’s floor, partly in the metal room, and partly in the next, on the way to the elevator. Rosser wanted to keep Frank and Mary away from that metal room, where a tress of her hair hung on the projecting crank of a bench-lathe, and where some of her blood had stained the floor.

Rosser dared not leave unassailed the answer of Frank to Mary, which opened the way naturally for a visit to the metal room, at the back end of the building, where he could close the door, and have her securely entrapped.

Let us now take the next witness, Monteen Stover–a girl of about the same age as Mary–and who also worked at the factory. She, too, came for her wages on Memorial Day, April 26^th. She testified:

“I was at the factory at 5 minutes after 12 o’clock that day. I stayed there 5 minutes and left at 10 minutes after 12. I went there to get my money.

“I went in Mr. Frank’s office; he was not there. I didn’t see or hear anybody in the building.

“The door to the metal room was closed.

“I looked at the clock on my way up.

“I went through the first office into the second office.”

Pray note that the crucial minutes in this terrible case are fixed by Frank’s own clock. The witnesses are in full view of it, as they go up and down the stairs. Newt Lee, Mrs. J.A. White, Miss Monteen Stover, and all the others who testify as to what happens in the factory, that Saturday, go by this clock. Presumably, Frank himself does so, in telling his detective about his movements that morning.

The gubernatorial Benedict Arnold who betrayed his people and became the national hero of rich Jews, declared to the world that Leo Frank must have been in his inner office when Monteen Stover called. I mention the fact, because it proves that John M. Slaton must be morally certain where his client and his client’s victim were, while Monteen was waiting in the vacant offices. Nothing but the closed door of that metal room kept Monteen from catching Slaton’s guilty client in the very act!

While the one girl was waiting in the empty and silent offices, the other was in the metal room, unconscious, and soon to be dead.

Slaton ravished the official record, by telling an easily duped public that Leo Frank was in his second office at from 12:05 to 12:10. This corrupt traitor knows that unless Frank can be stationed in his office, at that identical time, he assaulted and murdered the girl. Consequently, Slaton rapes the record, and puts his client where he was not, in order that the world may not know where he was; namely, behind the closed door of the metal room, where the crime was being committed, as Monteen Stover waited for the missing Frank.

On page 243 of the official record appears a statement made by Frank to N.A. Lanford, Chief of Detectives, on Monday morning, April 28^th, 1913:

“The office boy and stenographer were with me in the office until noon. They left about 12, or a little after.”

(This was true.) After they left, “this little girl, Mary Phagan, came in, but at the time I did not know that was her name.

“She came in between 12:05 and 12:10, maybe 12:07, to get her pay envelope, her salary. I paid her, and she went out of the office….It was my impression that she just walked away.”

This statement, which Frank knew was being reduced to writing, accords with what he told the officers who went to his house Sunday morning. He was accurate in fixing the time when his stenographer left (as you will see later), and he was also accurate in fixing the time of Mary Phagan’s arrival.

He did not then know that Monteen Stover had followed so closely upon the heels of Mary, and was in his office at the very time when an innocent Leo Frank would have been there.

Slaton knew that Frank had to be in his office from 12:05 to 12:10, else he killed the girl; and of course Frank knew it, too.

Therefore, the murderer tells his detective, and the city officers, that he was in his office, at the crucial time; and when an unexpected, and unimpeachable, witness turns up, and swears that he was not in his office, at the crucial time, one of his attorneys issues a gubernatorial proclamation which obliterates Monteen Stover’s testimony, and restores his guilty client to the place of innocence which the murderer took for himself, before he knew of Monteen’s being in his office while he was committing the crime in the metal room.

After an intelligent white girl–of flawless character, and with no conceivable motive for perjury–swears positively that she went to Frank’s office to get her money, and that she looked for him in both rooms–the outer and the inner offices–Governor John M. Slaton argued to the public that his client was in the second office, during the whole five minutes that the girl was looking and waiting for him!

Could there be moral turpitude blacker than that of a Governor who prostitutes his office to protect blood-guilt, and who endeavors to hide his own baseness by falsifying the official records of his State?

Slaton did, with a spurt of his pen, that which Burns, Rabbi Marx, Frank’s wife, and Samuel Boornstein were unable to do by persuasion or by threat–he got rid of the evidence which convicts Leo Frank of the murder of Mary Phagan. The most persistent, unprecedented, and illegal methods were used by the Burns Detective Agency, and by Rabbi Marx to induce this honest young woman, Monteen Stover, to perjure herself; but these outrageous efforts were foiled by the old-fashioned honesty of this poor daughter of the working class.

It was the snob Governor, of high society, gilded club-life, and palatial environment, that proved to be the rotten pippin in our barrel. Rich Jews could not buy the work-people whose daily bread is earned by the toil of their hands. Rich Jews were never able to move a single member of the jury which listened for weeks to this damning testimony. Neither could Judge Roan, or our Supreme Court be moved. With splendid integrity, our whole system withstood the attacks of Big Money, until, at length, nothing was left but the perfidy of a Governor who, in the interest of his client, betrayed a high office, and a great people.

R.P. Barrett was the next witness for the State.

He testified that he was the machinist at the pencil factory, and that on Monday morning, April 28^th, he “found an unusual spot that I had never seen before, at the west end of the dressing room, on the second floor. That spot was not there Friday. It was blood. The spot was four or five inches in diameter, and little spots behind these from the rear–six or eight in number. I discovered these between 6:30 and 7 o’clock. White stuff (potash or haskoline) was smeared over the spots.

“I found some hair on the handle of a bench lathe. The handle was in the shape of an L. The hair was hanging on the handle, swinging down. The hair was not there Friday. It was my machine. I know the hair was not there Friday, because I had used that machine up to quitting time, Friday, 5:30.

“I could tell it was blood by looking at it. I found the hair some few minutes afterward–about six or eight strands, pretty long. When I left my machine Friday, I left a piece of work in it. When I got back, the piece of work was still there. It had not been disturbed.”

(Bear in mind, that all of this was early Monday morning, when no Gentile had accused Leo Frank, for whom rich Jews had already, in secret, employed the best lawyers. When the rascally Burns got into the case, an effort was made to bribe this machinist, but he refused to sell out.)

The State’s next witness, Mell Stanford, had been working for Frank two years. He testified that he swept up the whole floor in the metal room Friday, April 25^th. “I moved everything, and swept everything. I swept under Mary’s and Barrett’s machines. On Monday thereafter, I found a spot that had some white haskoline over it, on second floor, near dressing room, that wasn’t there Friday when I swept. The spot looked to me like it was blood, with dark spots scattered around.”

The extreme importance of the evidence of Barrett and Stanford is, that the hair and the spots were not there on Friday. As Barrett’s hands had been turning his machine handle, at 5:30 Friday evening, the tress of woman’s hair could not have been on it then. How came it there after the men and girls quit work Friday? And whose was it, if not Mary Phagan’s?

As Stanford swept the floor Friday, the blood spots could not have been there then, for his small broom would certainly have swept the white powder. Whether paint or blood, how came the spots, and the white powder on the floor, after Stanford swept up, Friday?

Mrs. George W. Jefferson testified that she worked at the pencil factory, and that on Monday, “we saw blood on the second floor, in front of the girls’ dressing room. It was about as big as a fan, and something white was over it. I didn’t see it there Friday. I have been working there five years. The spot I saw was not one of the paints. The white stuff did not hide the red. You could see it plainly.”

R.B. Haslett testified that on Monday morning he and Mr. Black went out to Frank’s house, to request him to appear at the station-house about 8:30 or 9 o’clock. Mr. Frank was at the station-house two or three hours.”

E.F. Holloway, sworn for the State: Was day watchman at factory. Forgot to lock the elevator on Saturday, when he left the factory at 11:45. Witness admitted that he had been previously sworn twice that he left the elevator locked; once, in the affidavit he gave to Solicitor Dorsey and, again, at the coroner’s inquest.

(In other words, Holloway entrapped the State, which had his sworn testimony, twice given, that he had left the elevator locked at 11:45 Saturday morning. He had not noticed them of his change, otherwise the State would not have put him up.)

On cross-examination, Holloway stated that Frank got back from Montag’s at about 11 o’clock. That Frank was working on his books in the office. That Corinthia Hall, and Emma Clark were coming toward the factory (at 11:45), when he, Holloway, was leaving.

(Remember this: its importance was not apparent to the witness when he swore it, and he was doing what he could to help his employer.)

He had often seen blood spots on the floor, but didn’t remember having seen those Barrett found.

Witness had never seen Frank speak to Mary Phagan. Cords like that found on Mary’s neck are all over the place. They come on the bundles of slats that are tied around the pencils. Barrett found the blood, hair, and pay-envelope.

Witness’ explanation of the difference between his former testimony about the elevator, and that which he was giving at the trial, is quite simple and satisfactory: he says that he sawed a plank for the two carpenters on the fourth floor, and forgot about it; and, as soon as he remembered that he had sawed the plank, he recollected that he had forgotten to lock the elevator. Thus doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour; and, by association of ideas, remember that forgetfulness as to sawing one plank, revives the memory to the extent that one can recall what it was he forgot.

N.V. Darley was Manager of a branch of the pencil factory. He testified:

“Mr. Sig Montag is my superior. Mr. Frank and I are of equal dignity in the factory.

“I was there Sunday morning (April 27), about 8:20. I saw Mr. Frank that morning. When I first saw him, I observed nothing unusual. When we started to the basement, I noticed that his hands were trembling. I observed that he seemed still nervous when he went to nail up the back door. Frank explained why he was nervous by saying he hadn’t had breakfast, and that the sight at the morgue had unnerved him.

“The elevator was unlocked.

“Mr. Frank told me in the basement that he believed the murder had been committed in the basement.

“When we started down the elevator, he was shaking all over. He looked pale. When riding down to the police station, Mr. Frank was on my knee: he was trembling. When my attention was called to it, I noticed something that looked like blood, with something white over it, at the ladies’ dressing room, Monday morning.

“Barrett showed me some hair on the lever of a lathe: six or eight strands, at the outside.

“Pay-envelopes are found scattered all around.

“The factory is supposed to be locked and unoccupied by any person on Sundays.

“Frank usually started on his balance sheet in the afternoon.

“Frank is a small, thin man, about 125, or 130 pounds. Is easily upset, and nervous. Rubs his hands. Sig Montag had a fuss with Frank on fourth floor, and Montag hollered at him considerably, and he was very nervous the balance of the evening; he shook and trembled. He says, ‘Mr. Darley, I just can’t work,’ and some of the boys told me he took spirits of ammonia for his nerves.

“Scratch pads are scattered all over the building.

“Mr. Frank told me that the slip he took out of the clock Sunday morning had been punched regularly. I made the same mistake.”

(Darley, like Frank, wanted to give an innocent negro an hour of the night, so that he might have time to go home and back.)

W.F. Anderson, sworn for the State, said that when the call came from the night-watchman at the factory, Lee phoned that a woman was dead at the factory.

“I asked him if it was a white woman or a negro woman. He said it was a white woman.”

Anderson went to the factory, used the ladder to reach the basement, and at about 3:30 he began to use the telephone trying to get Leo Frank. “I heard the telephone rattling and buzzing; I continued to call for five minutes; got no answer.

“I called Mr. Haas, and Mr. Montag, too; I got a response from both. I tried to get Frank again at 4 o’clock. Central said she rang, and couldn’t get him.

“There are plenty of pencils and trash in the basement. The trash was all up next to the boiler.”

H.L. Parry, and G.C. Febuary, stenographers, swore to their reports of Frank’s statements to Chief Lanford, and to the coroner’s jury.

Albert McKnight, a negro, testified that his wife, Minola, cooks for Mrs. Selig, with whom Frank and wife lived; on Saturday, April 26^th, he was at the home of Frank to see Minola. He saw Frank when came home, “close to 1:30. He did not eat any dinner. He came in, went to the sideboard of the dining room, stayed there a few minutes, and then he goes out, and catches a car. Stayed there about five or ten minutes.

“I certainly saw Mr. Frank that day, from the kitchen, where I was sitting.”

Cross-examination failed to shake the negro, and he was corroborated later by white men who said he had made the same statements to them, soon after the murder.

Miss Helen Ferguson testified that she worked at the pencil factory.

“I saw Mr. Frank on Friday, April 25, about 7 o’clock in the evening, and asked for Mary Phagan’s money. Mr. Frank said, ‘I can’t let you have it.'”

Witness had got Mary’s money before, but not from Frank.

R.L. Waggoner swore to seeing Frank on Tuesday morning, walk to the window of the pencil factory, a dozen times in half an hour, look down on the sidewalk, and twist his hands. In the automobile, after his arrest, Frank’s leg was shaking.

J.L. Beavers, Chief of Police, swore: “Saw what I took to be a splotch of blood on the floor, near the dressing room door. It looked like blood.”

R.M. Lassiter swore that he found a parasol in the bottom of the elevator shaft, Sunday morning; also a ball of small wrapping twine; also a person’s stool.

“I noticed evidence of dragging from the elevator in the basement. The umbrella was not crushed. There is a whole lot of trash at the bottom” of the elevator shaft.

W.H. Gheesling, funeral director and embalmer, testified:

“I moved the body of Mary Phagan (from the factory) at 10 minutes to 4 o’clock, in the morning, April 27^th. This cord was around her neck. There was an impress of an eighth of an inch on her neck. The rag was around her head, and over her face. The tongue was an inch and a quarter out of her mouth, sticking out. The body was rigid…in my opinion, she had been dead ten or fifteen hours, probably longer. The blood was very much congested. The blood had settled in her face, because she was lying on her face.

“I found some dirt and dust under the nails. Some urine and dry blood splotches on the underclothes. The right leg of the drawers was split with a knife, or ripped right up the seam.

“Her right eye was very dark, and very much swollen, like it was hit before death. If it had been after death, there wouldn’t have been any swelling.
“I found a wound 2 ¼ inches on the back of the head. It was made before death, because it bled a great deal. The hair was matted with blood, and very dry. There is no circulation after death. I didn’t notice any scratches on her nose. I don’t think the little girl lost much blood.”

Dr. Claude Smith testified that on one of the chips brought him, he found three, four, or five corpuscles of blood. Couldn’t say it was human blood. A drop, or half a drop, or even less, would have caused it. Examined the bloody shirt found at Newt Lee’s. It was smeared inside and out. “I got no odor from the armpits that it had been worn. The blood was high up about the waistline.”

Dr. J.W. Hurt, County Physician, testified to the wounds, one back of the head, and the other on the eye. “Black, contused eye. A number of small minor scratches on the face. Tongue protruding. Cord around the neck. She died of strangulation. There was swelling on the neck. The wound on back of head, made by blunt instrument, and the blow from down upward. It was calculated to produce unconsciousness. Scratches on face made after death. Hymen not intact. Blood on the parts. Vagina a little large for her age; enlargement could have been made by penetration before death. Normal virgin uterus. She was not pregnant.

“The body looked as if it had been dragged through the dirt and cinders. It was my impression that she was dragged face forward.”

Dr. H.F. Harris, a practicing physician, testified:

“I made an examination of the body of Mary Phagan on May 5^th. On removing the skull, found a little hemorrhage under the skull, corresponding with point where blow was received. Blow hard enough to render person unconscious. Injury to eye and scalp made before death. Strangulation by cord, the cause of death. Examined vagina. No spermatozoa. On walls of vagina, evidence of violence of some kind. Epithelium pulled loose, completely detached in some places, blood vessels dilated immediately beneath surface, and a great deal of hemorrhage in surrounding tissues.

“Indications were that violence had been done to vagina some little time before death. Perhaps ten or fifteen minutes.

“There was evidence of violence in the neighborhood of the hymen. This violence to the hymen had evidently been done just before death.

“Menses could not have caused any dilation of blood vessels, and discoloration of walls.

“Contents of stomach showed that very little alteration, if any, had taken place in the cabbage and biscuit eaten for dinner. She died in half-an-hour, or three-quarters afterwards.

“The violence to the private parts might have been produced by the finger or other means, but I found evidence of violence.”

C.B. Dalton, sworn for the State, said that he knew Leo Frank, Daisy Hopkins, and Jim Conley. He had been to the pencil factory several times. Had been in the basement.

“Daisy Hopkins introduced me to Frank. When I went down the ladder (into the basement) Daisy Hopkins went with me. We went back to a trash pile in the basement. I saw an old cot, and a stretcher.

“Frank had Coca-Cola, lemon and lime, and beer, in his office. I never saw the women in his office doing any writing. The first time I went to Frank’s office, it was Saturday evening. I went in there with Daisy Hopkins. There were women in the office. I have been in there several times. Conley was sitting at the front door.”

S.L. Rosser: “I am city policeman. On May 6^th or 7^th, I knew that Mrs. White claimed she saw a negro at the factory on Saturday morning, April 26^th.

“Mrs. White volunteered the information about seeing the negro.”

Harry Scott, recalled:

“I knew on Monday (April 28), that Mrs. White claimed she saw a darkey at the pencil factory. I gave the information to the police department.

“Mr. Frank gave me the information when I first talked to him.”

(Pray observe that Frank not only told the detective whom he employed, that he knew Mary Phagan, and that he knew J.M. Gantt was paying considerable attention to her, but that he knew Jim Conley was in the factory on the day of the crime.

Yet he was directing the police to a negro who was not there until night-fall, and to a white man who merely went in to get some old shoes!)

“I got information as to Conley writing, through my operations while I was out of town. Personally, I did not get the information from the pencil factory, I got it from outside sources, wholly disconnected with the pencil company.”

Misses Myrtice Cato and Maggie Griffin, both swore that they had seen Frank and Rebecca Carson repeatedly go into the ladies’ private room, on the fourth floor, and remain fifteen or twenty minutes. This was during work hours. Rebecca Carson carried the key to this room.

Let us now give the gist of the evidence of Jim Conley, the accomplice, whose confession blocked Leo Frank’s deliberate scheme to hang the innocent negro, Newt Lee.

Jim told how Frank would have private meetings with women in the factory, while he, Jim, kept a watch-out. He told of how another young man (Dalton) visited the factory, and how there would be “a lady for him, and one for Mr. Frank.”

He told of how Frank would signal to him, by “stomping” on the floor, when a woman was alone with Frank, and how he, Jim, was then to lock the door. When Frank got through with his woman, he would whistle, and Jim would unlock the door.

Conley told of meeting Frank near Montag’s, that Saturday morning, and of their talk; on this point of the meeting, and an apparently confidential talk, the negro was corroborated by Mrs. Hattie Waites.

The negro told of how the Jew instructed him where to sit, and what to do, when they reached the factory after Frank got back from Montag’s. Mary Phagan was expected; and Frank was planning to prevent interruption, while he was alone with her.

The negro then told of how he sat where Frank told him to, and he named the several visitors that came to the factory during the morning.

At length, he reaches the doomed girl, and he said–

“The next person I saw, was the lady that is dead.

“After she went upstairs, I heard her footsteps going towards the office; and after she went in the office, I heard two people walking out of the office, and going like they were coming down the steps; but they didn’t come down the steps; they went back toward the metal department.”

(“Has the metal come? Will there be work for me, next week?”

No more work for you, Mary Phagan!

You can die in defense of your virtue, but never more will you turn the dull wheel of Labor!)

“After they went back there, I heard the lady scream, but I didn’t hear no more; and the next person that came was Miss Monteen Stover. She stayed there a pretty good while–it wasn’t so very long, either–she came back down the steps, and left.

“After she came back down the steps, and left, I heard somebody from the metal department come running back there upstairs, on their tip-toes; then I heard somebody tip-toeing back to the metal department.”

Next, he heard the “stomp,” and the whistle, and went upstairs.

“Mr. Frank was standing there at the top of the stairs, shivering and trembling, and rubbing his hands, like this”–illustrating.

“He had a little rope in his hands–a long, wide piece of cord.

“His eyes looked funny. His face was red.

“After I got to the top of the stairs, he asked me:

“‘Did you see that little girl that passed here just a while ago?’

“I told him I saw one come along there, and she come back again, and then I saw another one come along there, and she hasn’t come back down.

“And he says, ‘Well, the one you say didn’t come back down, she came into my office, and I went back there to see if her work had come, and I wanted to be with the little girl, and she refused me, and I struck her, and I guess I struck her too hard, and she fell and hit her head against something, and I don’t know how bad she got hurt.”

At the time Jim made this statement first to the officers, he did not know that there was a wound in the back of the girl’s head; and, of course, he did not know it ranged “from down upward.”

He did not know that her eye was black and swollen, and that scientific testimony would prove the two wounds to have been given at practically the same time.

Without Jim’s story of the blow in her face, and her fall against something, it would be impossible to take the official record and explain those two wounds–front and rear.

One man could not have made the two wounds, simultaneously; the fall against the handle of the machine made the rear wound, and explains its peculiar range.

Had Jim been making up a story, he would have said that she fell against the crank, against some sharp corner, naming it.

In the excitement of the moment, Frank himself did not know what it was that the girl had struck in falling, else he would have removed her tress of hair from the crank.

Is it not an evidence of the veracity of the negro’s story, that he represents Frank as saying he had hit the girl too hard, and in falling she had hit something, and he did not know how bad she was hurt?

The fact is, Frank expected to overcome the girl’s resistance without any more violence than rakes usually exert on modest girls who stoutly resist, and even cry out, at first.

Her determined fight enraged him; and knowing that he had but a few minutes in which to accomplish his purpose, he struck her, believing she would then yield, through fear.

When she fell on the floor, he may have thought she was shamming unconsciousness; and he therefore ripped her drawer-leg, clear up, and did the violence to the vagina. HOW? Not in the natural way.

Then, his passion cooled, he saw that the girl was badly hurt; and that if he allowed her to leave, in her pitiable condition, she would go out into the streets, and make the city ring with what she could tell, and what she could show.

Having gone that far–it was death anyway–he ran for the cord, tied it around her neck, as tight as he could tie it; and left her, to call for help from Jim, his confidential man, in such matters.

The strip from her underskirt was probably torn off, and wadded under the girl’s head, when he pushed up her clothes, and ripped the leg of her drawers.

Conley continued his testimony, as to what Frank said to him:

“‘Of course you know I ain’t built like other men.‘”

Note, farther on, that Miss Nellie Woods swore that Frank used these identical words to her, when he had her in his office, and was trying to get his hands under her clothes.

Of course, Jim Conley did not know that Frank had ever used those words to a white girl, and the corroboration is powerful.

The negro continued:

“The reason he said that was, I had seen him in a position I haven’t seen any other man,” etc.

The language is set forth in the opinion of the two Justices of the Georgia Supreme Court, who dissented from the majority. They considered the evidence improper, and their dissent was based upon this, and upon other evidence of Frank’s vices.

What Jim described, was the crime of Sodom.

“He asked me if I wouldn’t go back there, and bring her up, so that he could put her somewhere; and he said to hurry! that there would be money in it for me.

“When I came back there, I found the lady lying flat of her back, with a rope around her neck. The cloth was also tied around her neck, and part of it was under her head, like to catch blood. She was dead when I went back there, and I came back and told Mr. Frank the girl was dead, and he said, ‘Sh, sh.’ He told me to go back there by the cotton box, get a piece of cloth, put it around her, and bring her up. I didn’t hear what Mr. Frank said , and I came on up there to hear what he said. He was standing on the top of the steps, like he was going down the steps, and while I was back in the metal department. I didn’t understand what he said, and I came on back there to understand what he did say, and he said to go and get a piece of cloth to put around her, and I went and looked around the cotton box, and got a piece of cloth and went back there.

“The girl was lying flat on her back, and her hands were out this way. I put both of her hands down easily, and rolled her up in the cloth, and taken the cloth and tied her up, and started to pick her up, and I looked back a little distance and saw her hat and piece of ribbon laying down, and her slippers, and I taken them and put them all in the cloth, and I ran my right arm through the cloth and tried to bring it up on my shoulder. The cloth was tied just like a person that was going to give out clothes on Monday; they get the clothes and put them on the inside of a sheet and take each corner and tie the four corners, and I run my right arm through the cloth after I tied it that way and went to put it on my shoulder and I found I couldn’t get it on my shoulder; it was heavy, and I carried it on my arm the best I could and when I got away from the little dressing room that was in the metal department, I let her fall, and I was scared and kind of jumped, and I said, ‘Mr. Frank, you will have to help me with this girl, she is heavy,’ and he come and caught her by the feet, and I laid hold of her by the shoulders, and when we got her that way I was backing and Mr. Frank had her by the feet, and Mr. Frank kind of put her on me; he was nervous and trembling, and after we got up a piece from where we got her at, he let her feet drop, and then he picked her up, and we went on to the elevator, and he pulled down on one of the cords and the elevator wouldn’t go, and he said, ‘Wait, let me go in the office, and get the key; and he went in the office and got the key and come back and unlocked the switchboard, and the elevator went down to the basement, and we carried her out, and I opened the cloth and rolled her out there on the floor, and Mr. Frank turned around and went on up the ladder, and I noticed her hat and slipper and piece of ribbon, and I said, ‘Mr. Frank, what am I going to do with these things?’ and he said, ‘Just leave them right there,’ and I taken the things and pitched them over in front of the boiler, and after Mr. Frank had left, I goes over to the elevator, and he said, ‘Come on up and I will catch you on the first floor,’ and I got on the elevator and started it to the first floor, and Mr. Frank was running up there. He didn’t give me time to stop the elevator, he was so nervous and trembly, and before the elevator got to the top of the first floor, Mr. Frank made the first step onto the elevator, and by the elevator being a little down, like that, he stepped down on it and hit me quite a blow right over my chest, and that jammed me up against the elevator, and when we got near the second floor he tried to step off it before it got to the floor, and his foot caught on the second floor as he was stepping off, and that made him stumble and he fell back sort of against me, and he goes on and takes the key back to his office and leaves the box unlocked.

“I was willing to do anything to help Mr. Frank because he was a white man and my superintendent, and he sat down and I sat down at the table, and Mr. Frank dictated the notes to me. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to suit him, and he told me to turn over and write again, and I turned the paper and wrote again, and when I done that he told me turn over again, and I turned over again and I wrote out the next page there, and he looked at that and kind of liked it, and he said that was all right. Then he reached over and got another piece of paper, a green piece, and told me what to write. He took it and laid it on his desk, and looked at me smiling and rubbing his hands, and then he pulled out a nice little roll of greenbacks, and he said, ‘Here is $200,’ and I taken the money and looked at it a little bit, and I said, ‘Mr. Frank, don’t you pay another dollar for that watchman, because I will pay him myself,’ and he said, ‘All right, I don’t see what you want to buy a watch for, either; that big, fat wife of mine wanted me to buy an automobile, and I wouldn’t do it.’ And after awhile Mr. Frank looked at me and said, ‘You go down there in the basement and you take a lot of trash and burn that package that’s in front of the furnace,’ and I told him all right. But I was afraid to go down there by myself, and Mr. Frank wouldn’t go down there with me. He said, ‘There’s no need of my going down there,’ and I said, ‘Mr. Frank, you are a white man, and you done it, and I am not going down there and burn that myself,’ He looked at me then kind of frightened, and he said, ‘Let me see that money,’ and he took the money back and put it back in his pocket, and I said, ‘Is this the way you do things?’ And he said, ‘You keep your mouth shut, that is all right.’ And Mr. Frank turned round in his chair and looked at the money, and he looked back at me and folded his hands and looked up and said, ‘Why should I hang? I have wealthy people in Brooklyn,’ and he looked down when he said that, and I looked up at him, and he was looking up at the ceiling, and I said, ‘Mr. Frank, what about me?’ And he said, ‘That’s all right, don’t you worry about this thing; you just come back to work Monday, like you don’t know anything, and keep your mouth shut; if you get caught, I will get you out on bond and send you away,’ and he said, ‘Can you come back this evening and do it?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ that I was coming to get my money. He said, ‘Well, I am going home to get dinner, and you come back here in about forty minutes and I will fix the money, and I said, ‘How will I get in?’ And he said, ‘There will be a place for you to get in all right, but if you are not coming back, let me know, and I will take those things and put them down with the body,’ and I said, ‘All right, I will be back in about forty minutes,’ Then I went down over to the beer saloon across the street, and I took the cigarettes out of the box and there was some money in there and I took that out, and there was two paper dollars in there and two silver quarters, and I took a drink, and then I bought me a double-header and drank it, and I looked around at another colored fellow standing there, and I asked him did he want a glass of beer, and he said no, and I looked at the clock and it said twenty minutes to two, and the man in there asked me was I going home, and I said, ‘Yes,’ and I walked south on Forsyth Street to Mitchell and Mitchell to Davis, and I said to the fellow that was with me, ‘I am going back to Peters Street,’ and a Jew across the street that I owed a dime to called me and asked me about it and I paid him that dime. Then I went on over to Peters Street and staid there a while. Then I went home and I taken fifteen cents out of my pocket and gave it to a little girl to go and get some sausage, and then I gave her a dime to go and get some wood, and she staid so long that when she came back I said, ‘I will cook this sausage and eat it and go back to Mr. Frank,’ and I laid down across the bed and went to sleep, and I didn’t get up any more until half past six o’clock that night.

“That’s the last I saw of Mr. Frank that Saturday, I saw him next time on Tuesday, on the 4^th floor, when I was sweeping. He walked up and he said, ‘Now, remember, keep your mouth shut,’ and I said, ‘All right,’ and he said, ‘If you’d come back on Saturday and done what I told you to do with it down there, there would have been no trouble.’ This conversation took place between ten and eleven o’clock Tuesday. Mr. Frank knew I could write a little bit, because he always gave me tablets up there at the office so I could write down what kind of boxes we had, and I would give that to Mr. Frank down at his office, and that’s the way he knew I could write.”

On cross-examination–it lasted 8 hours–the negro stated that he was 27 years old; that before he went to the pencil factory, he worked a year and a half for Dr. Palmer; that he had worked for the Orr Stationery Company, and for S.S. Gordon. Before that, for Adams Woodword and Dr. Howell. Got his first job with S.M. Truitt. Next with W.S. Coates. Went to school one year. Can write a little. Worked for Truitt two years. For Coates, five years.

He admitted he had stooled in the elevator shaft, Friday evening.

“I have never seen the night watch-man, Newt Lee.”

(Notice that Lee had only been there three weeks, and that Conley had never seen him; and therefore it was Frank, not Conley, who knew that the night-watch was a “tall, slim, black negro.”

Therefore, it was Frank, not Conley, who was able to accurately describe Lee, in the notes where he is twice described!

This immensely important detail has heretofore been overlooked.)

“I heard them say there was a negro watchman, but I did not know he was a negro.

“The lady that I saw with Mr. Frank was Miss Daisy Hopkins. It would always be between 3 and 3:30 (o’clock p.m.). I was sweeping the second floor; (Frank’s office floor). Mr. Frank called me into his office. Miss Daisy was with him.”

Then Jim told of how Dalton and another woman came; how Dalton and his went down into the basement, and how Frank and his remained together; and how, after the two men got through, each paid him 25 cents for watching while they were with the women.

Then Jim told of the woman who came down from the fourth floor, to be with Frank in his office, while the negro watched.

(The manner of Frank with these women is set forth in Volume 141 of Georgia Reports, page 287. Anyone can obtain a copy by writing to the State Librarian, Atlanta.)

“I never was drunk at the factory. Yes, I sometimes drank beer in the basement with Snowball”–another negro employee.

Jim admitted that he had told lies about the case, until he decided to confess.

“Mr. Quinn came in, and then went away before Mary Phagan came. Mr. Quinn had already gone out of the factory when Mary Phagan came in. I didn’t see Mr. Barrett, nor Miss Corinthia Hall, or Hattie Hall, or Alonzo Mann, or Emma Clark.

“I never was in jail until April, 1913. I have been down at police barracks several times. I was arrested for fighting black boys. I have never fought a white man, or woman.

“While I was writing the notes, Mr. Frank took the pencil out of my hand, and told me to rub out that ‘a’ in ‘negro.’

“I saw Mary Phagan’s mesh-bag, or pocketbook, in Mr. Frank’s office, after he got back from the basement. It was lying on his desk. He taken it and put it in the safe.”

“Mr. Frank told me he would send me away from here if they caught me. He would get me out on bond, and send me away.

“I had orders from Mr. Frank to write down how many boxes we needed.

“Mr. Frank knew for a whole year that I could write. I used to write for him, the name of the pencils we made, ‘Luxury,’ ‘George Washington,’ ‘Thomas Jefferson,’ ‘Magnolia,’ and ‘Uncle Remus.’

“Yes, I wrote him orders to take money out of my wages.”

(See the importance of this–unknown to the negro; Frank, familiar with his writing, sees two specimens of it in the basement. Sunday morning, soon after the corpse is found, and yet never says a word about the “hand-write” being Conley’s, nor about his, Frank’s, knowing that Conley could write.)

“The pocket-book was a white-looking pocket-book, with a chain to it. You could take it and fold it up and hold it in one hand.”

(Mary’s mother referred to it as a silver mesh-bag.)

Ivie Jones testified that he met Jim Conley on the street, between 1 and 2 o’clock, Saturday afternoon, of April 26^th; and that they walked on together toward Conley’s home.

The State here “rested” its case. It had traced Mary into Frank’s possession, and had thrown upon him the burden of explaining what became of her, for she was found dead, in his possession (in law), and the condition of her stomach and limbs proved that she was murdered at about the time he got possession of her.

In the effort to save his life, he pretended that she had gone into Newt Lee’s possession, after nightfall; but he was foiled in his purpose to hang the innocent negro, by unforeseen circumstances:

1) The inability of his friends to prove that anybody Mary alive, after she had been traced almost to the factory door;

2) The providential visit of Monteen Stover to Frank’s office, at the time when he told Harry Scott–and swore at the inquest–that Mary was in his office, and that he himself never left it;

3) The call of nature, 3 o’clock after midnight, that same night, which providentially caused the endangered Newt Lee to discover the corpse–which Frank had intended to either drag out into the alley behind, or bury in the dirt floor, or burn in the furnace, when the fires were started again, Monday.

4) The break-down and confession of Jim Conley.

Thus the circumstances forged a perfect chain around Frank.

Like a shuttle in a weaver’s loom, the girl was on the stairs, between Conley and Frank; both knew she was there; each man knew the other was there; and each man knew that if he did not kill the child, the other did!

If she had left the hands of Frank, she was flung towards the hands of Conley, at the foot of the stairs; and, as Frank knew Conley was there, he knew the negro assaulted and murdered the girl, if he himself did not do so.

There isn’t a lawyer living who can get over this point, and explain Frank’s screening of Conley, save upon the idea of their joint guilt.

The Jew never hinted a suspicion of the negro, until after the negro exonerated Newt Lee, and put the awful crime where it belonged.

And, without the negro’s evidence, no man can possibly explain that hair and blood on Frank’s floor; the absence of blood or signs of struggle, elsewhere; the loose cloth around the head, which soaked up the blood; the hands folded across the breast, and so frozen into position that, when the fiendish Jew dragged her by the heels, over a cinder-strewn and gritty dirt floor, those little fingers remained in position across the bosom, which was never to pillow a husband’s head, or nourish an honest man’s babe.

“I put both of her hands down, easy;” and, as the negro had seen people cross the hands of the dead, he crossed hers upon her breast; and so they found them, next morning.

Everlasting honor to the race which produces girls of this heroic mold–girls who will not live, unless they can live purely!

Everlasting honor to the work people, and the common people, who have fought so grandly, for two long years, to avenge that innocent blood!

And honor forever to the brave men of Cobb County who carried out the legal sentence of the courts, after one of Frank’s own lawyers had contemptuously upset the legal machinery which had judicially ascertained Leo Frank’s terrible guilt.

THE CASE OF THE DEFENSE.

The first two witnesses, Matthews and Hollis, merely swore to street-car schedules, and the time Mary Phagan rode into the city.

Herbert Schiff, Assistant Superintendent of the factory, testified to the system of business, manner of paying off, how pencils are made, etc.

He saw the blood spots, and the hair. His most important statement was made on cross-examination:

“I knew on Monday that Mrs. White claimed she saw a negro there.”

Then, Mr. Schiff, why didn’t you go after that negro, instead of Newt Lee, who was at home, asleep?

Answer the question, NOW, Mr. Herbert Schiff!

You knew, on Monday, that the negro whom Mrs. White saw, must have been Jim Conley; and you swore that you saw Conley in the shipping room of the factory on Monday, and on Tuesday, following: you did not ask Conley a single question about the crime; and yet you knew he must be the guilty man, if Frank wasn’t.

How do you explain your failure to catechize Jim Conley?

Explain it NOW, Mr. Schiff!

A detail of Mr. Schiff’s evidence was, that “empty sacks are usually moved a few hours after they are taken off the cotton.”

Frank’s gubernatorial attorney argued that there was no use for cloth, or sacks, at a pencil factory.

Miss Hattie Hall, stenographer, swore she finished her work, carried it to Frank, and left at 12:02, Saturday, punching the clock as she went away.

She said Frank did not make up his financial sheet that morning, but admitted she had testified differently at the inquest.

Miss Corinthia Hall, sworn for the defense, stated she was forelady at the factory. Got there Saturday about 25 minutes to 12 o’clock. Mrs. Emma Clark Freeman was with her. They left at about 15 minutes to 12. Frank was in his office.

On cross-examination, witness stated that she and Mrs. Freeman met Lemmie Quinn a few minutes later at the Greek Café, and Quinn told them he had just been up to see Mr. Frank.

Mrs. Freeman’s evidence was to the same effect.

Miss Eula May Flowers merely testified that she gave Schiff the data for financial reports.

Miss Magnolia Kennedy swore that Helen Ferguson did not ask for Mary Phagan’s pay envelope.

On cross-examination, she said:

“Barrett called my attention to the hair. It looked like Mary’s. My machine was right next to Mary’s.”

She had never before seen the spots on the floor, but on Monday could see them ten or twelve feet away.

Wade Campbell, another employee:

His sister, Mrs. White, told him, Monday, that she had seen the negro Saturday. “I saw the spots they claim was blood. Have never seen Frank talk to Mary Phagan. I knew that Conley could write.”

(Then, Mr. Campbell, why didn’t you suspect Conley, whom you knew to be the negro your sister saw there, and whom you knew could write?)

Lemmie Quinn came next:

He is foreman of the metal department. About 100 women work at factory. Couldn’t tell color of hair Barrett found. Noticed the blood spots. “I was in the office, and saw Frank between 12:20 and 12:25.”

He “reckoned” the time, and did not go by any clock or watch. He admitted that he met Miss Hall, and Mrs. Freeman after he had been to see Frank.

(This was the only attempt at alibi; and two of Frank’s own witnesses smashed it, by Frank’s own clock.

Note how they were corroborated by Mrs. White and Holloway, both of whom swore that the ladies, Miss Hall and Mrs. Freeman, were at the factory some 10 to 20 minutes before noon.

The attempt to place Quinn in Frank’s office at 12:20, shows how they needed help, there and then; its break-down, left them without a leg to stand on.)

Harry Denham, one of the carpenters at work on the fourth floor, testified to the hammering, forty feet from the elevator. Was pretty sure elevator did not run that day. He could have seen wheels moving, and heard the noise. Finished and left about 3 p.m. Frank was there.

Minola McKnight:

Testified to Frank’s natural and regular conduct on Saturday and Sunday. Swore her husband bulldozed her into making that affidavit about Frank getting drunk Saturday night, confessing to murder, and wanting to kill himself.

“My husband tried to get me to tell lies,” she said. “All that affidavit is a lie.”

Emil Selig, father-in-law to Frank, testified to his natural conduct, and conversation on Saturday. Flatly contradicted Albert McKnight.

Miss Helen Kerns swore she saw Frank on the street, that Saturday, 10 minutes after 1 p.m., on Alabama Street.

Mrs. A.P. Levy: Saw Frank get off car near his home, between 1 and 2 p.m., that Saturday. Was looking at the clock, and knows it was 1:20.

Mrs. M.G. Michael, of Athens, testified that Mrs. Frank is her niece. She saw Frank at about 2 o’clock Saturday. He greeted her. She saw nothing unusual about him.

Jerome Michael, of Athens, swore that he had his watch in his hand Saturday, and saw Frank that day between 1 and 2 o’clock. Saw nothing unusual about him.

“I practice law. I had my watch in my hand when I saw Frank.”

Mrs. Hennie Wolfsheimer swore to about the same thing. She was Frank’s aunt. She was corroborated by Julien Loeb, and H.J. Hinchey.

Miss Rebecca Carson testified that she was forelady at the pencil factory; that the elevator is noisy when running, and that Jim Conley told her, on Monday, he was so drunk the previous Saturday he did not know where he was or what he did. She also heard Jim say that Frank was as innocent as an angel.

Mrs. E.M. Carson testified that Conley said that Frank was innocent. She has seen blood spots on floor. Girls would hurt their fingers.

On cross-examination, she admitted she had seen Frank and Conley, on fourth floor, at the same time, the Tuesday after the murder.

(This was an important corroboration of Conley’s evidence.)

Miss Mary Pirk, another forelady at the factory, swore that on Monday she accused Jim of the murder, and that “he took his broom and walked right out of the office.” Miss Mary swore she wouldn’t believe Jim on oath. She did not report to Frank that she suspected Jim. “I accused Jim before I saw the blood at the ladies’ dressing room.”

Miss Dora Small testified that she worked at the factory: saw Jim Conley on fourth floor Tuesday. Didn’t see Frank talk to Jim. “I have never seen him talk to that nigger in my life.” Miss Dora said that Jim worried her for money to buy newspapers, and that she wouldn’t believe him on oath. Every time he heard a newsboy yell “Extra!” Jim would go to Miss Dora and beg to see it, before she had finished with it.

Miss Julia Fuss, who also worked there, testified that Jim said, on Wednesday, after the murder, that Frank was as innocent as the angels in heaven; she added that Jim “was never known to tell the truth.”

She testified that Frank came up stairs where Conley was, that Tuesday morning, but she did not see them in conversation.

Annie Hixon, a lady of color, testified that Frank called up the Ursenbach home, about half-past one, April 26^th, and told them he would not be able to keep his engagement to go to the ball game.

Alonzo Mann, office boy at the factory, swore he left at about 11:30 on Saturday. Had never seen Frank have any women there. Had never seen Dalton there.

Mr. M.O. Nix identified the financial sheets as being in Frank’s handwriting.

Harry Gottheimer travels for the pencil factory. Saw Frank at Montag’s that Saturday morning. Said Frank invited him to call at the factory that afternoon.

Mrs. Rae Frank, mother of defendant, identified some writing, especially a letter written by him to his uncle, Moses Frank, who is “supposed to be very wealthy.”

Oscar Pappenheimer, stockholder in the pencil factory, swore to receiving report Monday, April 28^th.

C.F. Ursenbach, brother-in-law of Frank, said he had an engagement for the ball game with Frank, for Saturday afternoon, and Frank called it off; saw Frank, Sunday; seemed all right.

I. Straus swore he was at Frank’s home, Saturday night, and while others played cards, Frank sat in the hall, reading.

Mrs. Emil Selig testified that the contents of the Minola McKnight affidavit were false.

Sig. Montag, Treasurer of the factory, testified to Frank’s coming to his house, Sunday morning, after the crime; looked all right; witness went to the factory that morning; sent for Haas and Rosser, Monday; made no trade about fees. Don’t know who is paying Frank’s lawyers.

Many witnesses for the defense either confined themselves to the good character of Frank, or to the bad character of Conley, and to contradictory statements made by him; and not one of these witnesses swore to any fact of real importance.

The defendant’s lawyers carried the character business too far, by putting up Miss Irene Jackson, who, after saying that Frank’s “character was very well,” swore that he had a habit of leering at the girls in their private room, while they were partially undressed.

Miss Bessie Fleming testified that Frank made out his financial sheets on Saturday mornings.

Then came defendant’s statement:

It covers forty-five pages of printed matter, and less than five of these touch the merits of the case.

He stated that after Hattie Hall left (12:02), Mary Phagan (he did not know her name, he said) came into his office, ten or fifteen minutes later, and that he did not know where she went after he gave her the pay envelope.

He stated that Quinn came in, afterwards, and that if he (Frank) left his office, after 12 o’clock, before he went upstairs at 12:45, he must have “unconsciously” gone back to the toilet!

(This toilet is back of the metal room, and he had to go to the metal room, and, if he went to it, then, he had to go to the metal room where Mary Phagan’s hair was, and over the very spot where her blood stained the floor!)

Almost the entire statement of the defendant, as shown in the record, was taken up with a tedious and prolonged explanation of his manner of doing his work at the factory.

One thing Frank did try to do: he attempted to explain why his wife would not come to see him at the jail. He said he did not want her in that crowd of reporters, detectives, and snap-shotters!

Three of Frank’s male relatives had virtually dragged her to the police headquarters; but she would go no further; and when she went away, she stayed away three weeks.

In the Atlanta papers, Rabbi Marx explained this by saying, she was expecting every day that Frank would be released, although the fact was universally known that he had been bound over for trial, and could not be bailed out.

In rebuttal, the State proved that Frank’s character for lasciviousness was bad. The witnesses who swore it, were Myrtie Cato, Maggie Griffin, Mrs. C.D. Donegan, Mrs. H.R. Johnson, Marie Karst, Nellie Pettis, Mary Davis, Mrs. Mary E. Wallace, Estelle Winkle, and Carrie Smith. These white ladies had worked for Frank, and not one of them was impeached, or cross-examined, by his lawyers.

By Ruth Robinson, Dewey Hewell, and W.E. Turner (white), it was proved that Frank not only knew Mary Phagan, but talked to her by name, had his hand on her shoulder, tried to push his attentions on her; and that she was holding him off, repulsing his advances.

George Eppes made affidavit that Mary told him, the Saturday morning he saw her last, alive, that Frank had been trying to flirt with her.

One of the notes found near the corpse read:

“He said he would love me, laid down play like night witch did it but that long tall black negro did boy hisself.”

The other read:

“Mam that negro fire down here did this i went to make water and he push me down a hole a long tall negro black that had it wase long sleam tall negro i wright while play with me.”

Note, that unnatural sexual intercourse seems to be suggested; and that Newt Lee is designated by occupation once, and by personal description, twice; and that the place of the crime is placed on the floor above–not in the basement itself.

Excepting a mass of immaterial evidence, as to how long cabbage lies in the stomach undigested, and as to whether the girl’s privates had been violated, the defendant had nothing except what I have stated.

How could he have?

The case hinged on the few minutes after Hattie Hall left at 12:02, and before Mrs. White’s return at 12:30; and the disappearance of Frank and his victim, during the time that Monteen Stover waited for him in his office, could never be explained.

His conviction rested upon undeniable physical facts, and his own statements, made before he learned how Monteen could disprove them.

The lawyers for the defense took three lines, and three only–each of them leading into what the French call a cul de sac; we Americans call it, a blind alley.

A number of witnesses, following one of these paths that didn’t go anywhere, testified to a time or times when they had seen varnish and paint spilled, or when they had seen somebody hurt at a machine, and bleeding on the floor. None of these witnesses made the slightest effort to explain away the spots of red, with white powder over them, which were not on the floor when it was swept Friday, but was seen there the first thing Monday morning.

Consequently, this line of evidence stopped in a cul de sac.

Another lot of witnesses were put up, to prove that Frank had never been seen by them to have had a woman, or women, in the factory on Saturday afternoons.

Even a layman will perceive, that no matter how strong this point was made, it did nothing more than contradict Conley, as to one detail of his testimony. The evidence of these witnesses was consistent with the idea, that Frank was too sly in his secret vices to be caught up with by the ordinary employees of the place. Jim was his confidential man, and Jim was just the sort of negro to keep the secret, and to care nothing about the sexual practices of his white boss.

So you see that this path of the defense also led to nothing; it did not tend to clear up the mystery of Mary Phagan’s death, in Frank’s house, shortly after she went into his possession.

The third line of defense consisted of scientific testimony as to the cabbage in the girl’s stomach, and the blood on her person.

An incredible amount of time was devoted to this point; and the lawyers of Frank really appeared to attach tremendous importance to it.

Doctor after doctor gave the most learned and exhaustive dissertations on the digestibility of cabbage; and doctor after doctor uttered wisdom, on the possibility of ascertaining, from the examination of a woman’s corpse, whether she had suffered sexual violence before she died.

Can you not see at a glance how futile all this sort of thing was? There was no dispute about the girl’s going into Frank’s possession, soon after she ate dinner; there was no dispute that somebody murdered her, in Frank’s own house, almost immediately after she entered it; and nobody was being prosecuted for any other crime than murder!

Frank was not being tried for rape, nor sodomy, nor adultery. He was being tried for THE MURDER OF MARY PHAGAN, who was found dead, by violence, IN HIS HOUSE, shortly following her coming into his possession.

He admitted the possession; fixed the time by his own clock; and made false statements as to his then whereabouts; consequently the scientific testimony concerning the contents of the girl’s stomach, and the condition of her vagina, was almost ludicrously unimportant.

That laborious path led nowhere, for the simple reason that it threw no light on the question in the case–that question being, “Who fastened the cruel cord around the child’s neck, and choked her to death?”

The astounding fact to be learned from this official Brief of Evidence is, it fails to show that defendant’s lawyers had any consistent theory as to who committed the crime, AND WHERE. I never saw such an instance of water-muddying, and beating about the bush. At no pivotal point did Frank’s attorneys grapple with the facts. You search in vain to find how they expected to show the jury that Mary Phagan came out of Frank’s possession safely, after she came in, next to Hattie Hall, and was followed so closely by Monteen Stover. The jury could see–as you do–that, had she gone on down stairs, as Frank said she did, “at 12:05, or 12:10, or maybe 12:07,” she would have met Monteen; and that the negro, at the foot of the stairs, could not have done what was done to her, without being taken in the act, by the other white girl.

When Frank told the jury he must have been at the toilet during the five minutes that Monteen waited, the jury must have felt the cold chills run up their spines, for the jury knew that Mary had not “unconsciously” gone to the toilet, at the same time Frank did!

What the doomed man, and his bewildered lawyers failed to see was this:

It was just as necessary for him to explain WHERE MARY WAS, while Monteen waited, as to explain HIS OWN DISAPPEARNCE, at that fatal time.

Frank’s repeated statements entrapped him beyond escape. He said, again and again, that Mary came next to Hattie Hall, and he did not mention Monteen’s coming at all. This proved to the jury that he did not know of Monteen’s coming. And he would have known it had he been in his office, when he said he was. Now, as he had (in ignorance of Monteen’s visit) placed both Mary and himself in his office–while Monteen waited–he had deliberately and repeatedly lied as to Mary’s whereabouts, as well as his own. He might have “unconsciously” gone to the toilet. Very well; but where did Mary go?

Her hair, and her blood, and the only possible explanation of the wounds–the swollen eye in front, and the scalp cut on the back of the head, ranging from down upward–were all back there at the metal department, where the toilet was.

Infatuated young degenerate! To escape Monteen’s evidence, and to explain his absence from his office, he supposed himself to have gone, “unconsciously,” to the only place in his house where there were damning evidences of the crime.

Ask the finest criminal lawyer of your acquaintance, if he ever knew of a great case of circumstantial evidence, where the defendant was not convicted by something which HE said, or did. It happens so, almost invariably. Guilt cannot talk, or be mute; move, or stand still, without revealing the difference between the slush and the snow; the crystal fount, and the turbid stream. God so made the world that truths fit; lies never do.

No innocent man ever pretended not to know a murdered person with whom he had been in daily contact, for a year; with whom he had familiarly conversed, and upon whom he had put his hands; and no guilty man ever took hold of the upraised arms of his victim, crossed them decently over her bosom, and then bore her way from the scene of the crime.

When the defendant made his extraordinary motion for a new trial (the Supreme Court having unanimously refused to grant a re-hearing on his regular motion for a new trial) there was developed the most amazing series of operations, conducted by the W.J. Burns Agency, and by C.W. Burke, private detective of Governor Slaton’s law-firm.

Practically all of the employees of the pencil factory, whose testimony had made out the State’s case, were either threatened, or offered money, to change their evidence.

Much of this foul work was done in the private office of Governor Slaton. His detective, Burke, using the assumed name of Kelly, tampered with George Eppes, and took him to Birmingham. Albert McKnight was tempted with money, and with offers of employment at high wages. Burns tried to get him to swear, that some injuries he had received in a railroad accident were caused by a beating given Albert by the Atlanta detectives.

The work-girls were offered money to make affidavits contradicting the evidence given at the trial.

Carrie Smith was threatened by Burke with the exposure of alleged misconduct, if she did not come across, and make the statement Burke desired. The girl, being innocent, defied Governor Slaton’s detective!

Burns kept an Atlanta negro, Aaron Allen, several days in Chicago, talking to him daily, and having Burns’ underlings talk to him; and they were assisted by Jacob Jacobs. They wanted the negro to swear that Conley had confessed that he alone committed the murder. One day, in Chicago, Allen was ushered into a room of the Burns suite of offices; where somebody had left on the table a large pile of money, gold, silver, and greenbacks. The negro was too wary to touch it.

Marie Karst testified that Burke and Lemmie Quinn came out to her home, and “Lemmie set up to drinks,” and Burke talked to her. Wanted her to come to the office of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton & Philips. “I didn’t go.” Then Burke met her on the street, and offered to employ her to work for him. Gave her $2 a day for working in the afternoons. “Burke wanted me to go around and see the girls who had sworn for the State in the Frank trial…and see if they would not change their evidence.

“He told me that what I swore to did not bind me, because I was not cross-examined, and said it was not recorded.

“I saw several of the girls, and they told me they would not change their evidence, because what they swore to was true.

“Burke wanted me to see Monteen Stover, and talk with her, and see if I couldn’t get her to change her evidence.

“He wanted me to go down and live with Monteen, and ‘pick’ her. My mother refused to let me do it, and would not let me work for Burke any more.

“I met Burke, and talked with him, in THE PRIVATE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR JOHN M. SLATON.”

Mrs. Cora Falta testified that she had been working at the factory five years.

“On Monday, April 26, 1913, we were all at work, and Magnolia Kennedy came running into the room, and said: ‘We have found some of Mary’s hair on the lathe machine!’ We all quit work, and went there and looked at it.”

(Remember, that no one, at this time, suspected Leo Frank.)

R.L. Craven swore that he heard J.N. Starnes urge Minola McKnight to tell something favorable to Frank, if she could, because they would rather learn something in his favor than something against him; and, in the presence of Minola’s husband, and her lawyer, Starnes told the woman not to swear to her statement unless it was true.

This statement of Minola was in reference to Frank’s being drunk during the night after the crime; his wife sleeping on the rug on the floor; and his calling for his pistol to kill himself. After these exhortations, the woman swore to the statement, and signed it.

Mrs. Carrie Smith swore that she was offered $20 to sign an affidavit favorable to Frank. She had worked three years at the factory, and knew Frank’s character was bad. The man, Maddox, who wanted her to change her evidence, was in Governor Slaton’s private office, in the Grant building, when she went there to see Marie Karst.

Mrs. Maggie Nash (formerly Griffin) swore to the efforts of Burns to get her to change her evidence as to Frank’s bad character, and Frank’s going into the private room, on the fourth floor, with a forelady. She told Burns he might try one hundred years to change her evidence, but she would never do it, because it was the truth.

Ruth Robinson swore that she had known Mary Phagan as a little girl, in Cobb County; and that she had seen Frank at Mary’s machine, several times a day, talking to her, and calling her “Mary,” when it was not necessary from any business reason.

“Mary had worked there a good, long time, and understood her business.”

“Sometimes Frank would remain at Mary’s machine fifteen or twenty minutes. I never saw him show that much attention to the work of the other girls on that floor. I have seen Frank, in showing Mary about her work, take hold of her hands, and hold them. Frank’s visit to Mary, and talks with her, and assistance given her, became more and more frequent.

“The very last day I worked there, I saw Frank talking to Mary. I heard him call her ‘Mary.’

“The said Leo Frank undertook to give me seven dollars, when he knew I was not entitled to the money, and he endeavored to have an assignation with me, some time the next week. This occurred in his office.”

Miss Nellie Pettis made affidavit to the efforts of Frank’s detectives, and lawyers, to change her evidence; but she reiterated with emphasis that Frank had insulted her in his office, by making an indecent proposition which she indignantly rejected–following which she left his office and employment.

Mrs. Mamie Edmunds (formerly Kitchens) swore that when Frank, without knocking, would open the door of the ladies’ private dressing room, and see girls in there partly dressed, she thought it would have been as little he could have done to say, “Excuse me, ladies,” and go away. But instead of doing so, “he would stand in the door, and laughed or grinned. I don’t know when a Jew is laughing, or when he is grinning; but he stood there, and made no effort to move.”

“Miss Jackson exclaimed, ‘We are dressing, blame it!’ and then he shut the door and disappeared.”

C.W. Burke tried to persuade witnesses that Frank’s conduct was all right, and urged her to sign a paper to that effect.

“I took Burke’s word for what the papers contained. I did not tell Burke anything different from what I have sworn before.”

C.B. Dalton swore that Burke offered him $100 to sign a paper, “to be used before the Pardon Board, to keep Frank from hanging.” He said he went to Dublin, Ga., to do some work for a bank, and two Jews came to him and offered him $400 to leave the State. They came to him several times, and renewed the offer, stating that they meant to get Frank a new trial.

“I have, on several visits to Frank’s office, seen girls there. Have seen him play with them, hug them, kiss them, and pinch them. I saw him, on several occasions, take a girl and go back of the room where the dressing room is. On one occasion, Frank had six bottles of beer, and I carried three more to his office. Frank told Dalton he needn’t rent a room; to take Daisy Hopkins to the basement, where there was a cot. “I used this cot with Daisy Hopkins half a dozen times.”

Helen Ferguson swore that Jimmie Wrenn, who worked for C.W. Burke, offered her $100, if she would leave Atlanta. Frank was going to get a new trial, and her board and all expenses would be paid while she was out of the State. She said that Wrenn made violent love to her, and tried to persuade her to marry him! He took her up to the Grant building, and introduced her to his “father.”

“Jimmie made love to me, and said he wanted to marry me, but wanted me to sign an affidavit first.”

They were working on the girl to get her to repudiate her statement, that Frank had refused to give her Mary’s pay envelope.

It was this refusal, on Friday evening, to give Helen the $1.20 due to Mary, that compelled the girl to go to Frank herself for it, next day.

Burns, Burke, and Wrenn were working desperately, using John M. Slaton’s private office, to get out of their way the evidence which tended to show that Frank deliberately laid a trap for Mary Phagan.

It was not until several weeks after Jimmy Wrenn introduced Helen Ferguson to his “father,” in Governor Slaton’s private office, that she discovered that Jimmy’s “father” was the unscrupulous scoundrel, C.W. Burke, who was working for the firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton & Philips, and trying, in the interest of this law-firm, to criminally defeat Law and Justice.

Miss Nellie Wood gave testimony which corroborated Conley in a most remarkable manner. She said:

“I told the Solicitor before he put me on the stand, that I was in the office of Leo Frank on one occasion, when the said Frank made an indecent proposal to me. My experience as a trained nurse enabled me to fully understand and know what Frank intended.

“He said, ‘You know, I am not like other people,’ and, drawing his chair closer up to me, says, ‘I don’t think you understand me,’ and put his hands on me; I resisted, and got up and opened the door,” etc.

Frank’s detectives endeavored to secure from this witness a statement that would negative her former evidence; but, as in every other instance, they fell short of success.

Two white men–Graham and Tillander–made affidavit that they went to the pencil factory, Saturday, April 26^th, between 11 and 12 o’clock; and that they saw a negro seated near the foot of the stairs. Being unacquainted with the interior of the building, each of these men asked the negro where the office was located and he directed them to it. If the negro was drunk, these men didn’t notice it.

Mrs. Hattie Waites made an affidavit to the fact that, on Saturday morning, April 26^th, between 10 and 11 o’clock, she saw a white man and a negro talking together on the street, near Montag’s place of business. She afterwards recognized Frank as the white man, and Conley as the negro.

The most abominable attempt to manufacture evidence was made while Conley was in jail, awaiting trial. A white convict, George Wrenn–who had stolen $30,000 worth of diamonds, but who was nevertheless a “trusty” in the prison–was the instrument used by the Frank detectives.

He, in turn, employed a negro woman, Annie Maud Carter, a notoriously low character. Wrenn coached this black strumpet, and put her into Conley’s cell, to entice him into committing the unnatural act with her.

They wanted to show that it was Conley who was the sodomist.

“Mr. Gillem (a prison official) told me he would give me $2.00 if I would go in there and see Jim Conley. George Wrenn wrote a letter, and gave it to me, and he said, ‘You give it to Jim Conley, and tell him it just came in through the mail.’

“Gillem said to me, that Conley was a ——– (a most nasty term for sodomite) and said, ‘I just want to see if he will fool with you with his–(the rest is too obscene to print). I have asked Conley, and he said he would never do a thing like that; said he had never done ——– except in the natural way.

“The first Sunday in December, a Jew came up–Mr. Pappenheim was there, too”–and the woman went on to tell how the Jew told her she could make a pot of money, and get rich quick, if she would put something in Jim Conley’s victuals!

The Jew said to the negress–

“I want you to take this little vial, and put a drop in his food, and give it to him.”

When the negress recoiled from the Jew’s offer, he said to her, “You’re a d–d fool,” and walked off.

“I don’t know his name, but he comes up here” (where Frank and Conley were imprisoned) “with the Klein boys. He has black hair, and his hair stands up, and his hat is pulled to one side.”

The detectives not only tried to get the Carter woman to inveigle Conley into the unnatural vice of which Frank was accused, but endeavored to get up a marriage between the two!

Conley and the woman both swore that their letters had been changed, and that the unprintable filth put in them, had been forged.

Forged time-slips against Newt Lee! Forged bloody shirt against Lee! Forged affidavits against the girls! Forged letter of the dead Judge Roan! Forged letters of a couple of negroes!

The whole case of the defense reeked with fraud, bribery, perjury, and forgery.

Never in the world was there a more infamous episode than which followed the organization of the Haas Finance Committee, after the legitimate litigation in this case had ended.

Having lost at every point in the legal contest, the Haas Finance Committee was appointed for no other purpose than to defeat Law and Justice, by unparalleled and illegitimate means.

It is almost miraculous that the indomitable Solicitor, Hugh Dorsey, was able to defeat the Haas Committee, defeat the detectives of Governor Slaton’s firm, and defeat the criminals of the Burns “Detective” Agency–a villainous gang whose work consists of just such attempts to bribe witnesses, as was seen in their manipulations of the Frank case.

With the following, clipped from current news reports in Atlanta, I close the review of the corrupt practices used in the extraordinary motion for new trial:

Atlanta, Ga., Jan. 28.–The Rev. C.B. Ragsdale, formerly pastor of a local church, today testified he was paid $200 for signing a false affidavit in connection with the Leo M. Frank case. Mr. Ragsdale was the first witness in the trial of Dan S. Lehon, southern manager of the William J. Burns National Detective Agency; Arthur Thurman, a lawyer, and C.C. Tedder, a former policeman, who are charged with subordination of perjury. It is alleged they procured false affidavits from Ragsdale and R.L. Barber shortly after Frank’s extraordinary motion for a new trial was filed.

In the affidavits Ragsdale and Barber declared they overheard James Conley, a negro, tell another negro that he had killed a girl in the factory where Mary Phagan was murdered.

The former pastor still was on the witness stand when court adjourned for the day. He testified to alleged meetings with the defendants when he said the affidavit was discussed, describing the signing of the document in the office of Luther Z. Rosser, who was one of Frank’s principal counsel, and told of the alleged payment of the money later. He added that the night he received the money “a man rode up to my house on a motorcycle and told my sons to tell their father not to say anything to anybody unless it was a Burns man.”

By the skin of his teeth, Lehon escaped conviction, because the State was not able to trace the payment of the $200 directly to him, beyond a reasonable doubt. At least, that is the most charitable view to take of the verdict. Some man, or men, on the panel may have suspected that the $200 fell out of the moon, and just accidentally dropped into Ragsdale’s pocket.

But you will have no doubts as to who hired, and paid, Ragsdale to swear that he had overheard Conley confess, because you have already seen how Burns had vainly tried to bribe Aaron Allen, in Chicago; and how they had tried to bribe the white girls, and how they tried to bribe R.P. Barrett, and Albert McKnight; and how they tried to use Annie Maud Carter.

Decidedly, it is the blackest record of systematic effort to save the guilty, destroy the innocent, debauch witnesses, manufacture evidence, and create a public sentiment in favor of a fictitious case, AGAINST THE REAL ONE, that ever has been known in the New World.

The Appellate Court of New York–the highest tribunal in that State–said, in the Becker case:

Extensive as is the power of review vested in this court on a judgment of death, the law does not intend to substitute the conclusions of fact, which may be drawn by seven judges, for the conclusions of the fact which have been drawn from the evidence by twelve jurors, unless we are clear that the view of the facts taken by the jury is wrong. It is our duty to affirm, if the trial was fair and without legal error, and the verdict was not against the weight of evidence. We are to see to it that the trial was fair and that there was sufficient evidence with recognized rules of law to support the verdict. This done, the responsibility for the result rests with the jurors.

That is good law–good wherever the system of jury-trial prevails.

Our Supreme Court reviewed the evidence in the Frank case, and found it “sufficient to support the verdict.” (See page 284, 141 Georgia Reports.)

The Court held unanimously that the new evidence, pretended to have been discovered after the verdict had been affirmed, was not of such a character as to warrant another trial.

The United States Supreme Court decided that Frank’s lawyers had not been able to show that he had been denied a fair trial, or deprived of any legal right.

Surely, a case should come to an end, some time. Surely, Frank’s case ought to have eluded when the highest court on earth said the verdict must stand. Surely, his own lawyer, Governor John M. Slaton, had no legal right to annul the solemn adjudications of the supreme heads of our judicial system. Surely, the Law never meant that a defendant’s own attorney should become his jury, his trial judge, and his reviewing court.

When Slaton commuted the sentence of his client, his act was null and void. Time could not validate it.

Frank was legally under sentence of death when the Vigilance Committee took him out, and hanged him by the neck until he was dead.

All power is in the people. Courts, juries, sheriffs, governors draw their authority from this original source; when the constituted authorities are unable, or unwilling to protect life, liberty, and property, the People must assert their inherent right to do so.

Womanhood must not be left at the mercy of the libertine; the Rich must not trample upon the children of the Poor; the Jew must learn to distinguish between the Midianite and the American.

Prison Commissions and Governors must learn that it is dangerous to usurp power, and to undo the official work, done legally by the Judicial Department.

In Frank’s case, all legal tribunals were appealed to, by the best of lawyers; and every decision was against him. They had to be; there was no escape from it.

His own lawyer then commuted his sentence, and fled the State.

The Vigilance Committee took the condemned man out of the State Farm, carried him almost to the grave of his little victim, and hanged him, in accordance with the sentence which had three times been pronounced from the bench.

It was a long, hard fight, and the Law won, over Big Money.

There are some legal trials that are more than mere law cases.

There are some that involve a dynasty, test a system, and throw light upon national conditions.

There are some that change the course of events, and leave their effect, for weal or woe, upon the era in which they are tried.

A court-house case, in France, dragging into it a king’s wife, a pope’s cardinal, and a corrupt judicial system, led the way to the overthrow of an ancient monarchy.

A court-house case, in Virginia, followed by another, in Massachusetts, set in motion the ball which never ceased to roll until Thirteen Colonies had become Thirteen Independent States–the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and of James Otis, rather than the musket in the Ohio wilderness, being the shot that was heard around the world.

A law-case in England, rocked the throne, and tested, with a supreme severity, the strength of England’s judicial fabric.

The fabric stood the test; and the vindicated system, which would not bend, even though the king sought to bend it, filled Englishmen with honest pride.

It was the great case where George IV brought to bear all the powers of a monarch and a bad man, to crush one friendless woman–AND FAILED!

Not all the patronage of the crown, not all the money of the Secret Service, not all the clamor of placeholders, place-seekers, time-servers, court sycophants, and unscrupulous politicians, could bend the Law of Great Britain.

Personally weak and without friends, the foreign princess who had married the king, saw a host of determined supporters come to her relief, when English ministers sought to use the Law, as the instrument of a bad man.

When the long legal combat drew toward its close, and Lord Brougham had brought to shame and defeat the crowned libertine, we are told that a scene of indescribable excitement took place in the House of Lords–the high court which had tried the case.

The Prime Minister rose to “withdraw the bill,” equivalent to quashing the indictment against the persecuted woman.

“Cheers loud and long rose from the opposition benches”–where sat the champions of the Law.

“But the House hushed to silence, when the venerable Erskine arose, with eyes aflame”–Erskine, the indomitable lawyer who had fought so hard, so long, and so triumphantly, to vindicate the jury system.

“My lords,” he said, and his voice rang out with the clear tone that had entranced the tribunals of thirty years before–

“My lords, I am an old man, and my life, for good or evil, has been passed under the sacred rule of the law.

“In this moment, I feel my strength renovated and repaired by that rule being restored–the accursed change wherewithal we have been menaced, has passed over our heads–there is an end of that horrid and portentous excrescence of a new law, retrospective, and iniquitous–and the constitution and scheme of our policy is once more safe.

“My heart is too full of the escape we have just had, to let me do more than praise the blessings of the system we have regained,” a system of which Hooker, in his great work on Ecclesiastical Polity, said–

“Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God; her voice is the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and on earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempt from her power.

“Both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever…admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.”

“There was silence as the silvery voice ceased. It was as if men wished to hear the last echo of those wondrous accents. Then broke out a cheer, such as was never before heard in that august assembly.”

The Law had won! against the licentious king; against the truckling minsters; against the servile aristocrats; against the detectives of the secret service, and the hirelings of the reptile press:

Yea, by the living God! the Law had won! and all men in England, all women in England, all children in England, WERE SAFER FROM THAT HOUR, when the grand old lawyer rose, with full heart and flashing eyes, to quote the words of the grand old preacher, whose tribute to Law, is a tribute to the God that inspired the Law.

Have the children of Moses the right to break the Sinai tables?

Do they deserve death when they slay Hebrews, only?

Is there some unwritten law, which absolves them, when their victim is a Gentile?

They are taught in their Talmud that, “As man is superior to other animals, so are the Jews superior to all other men.”

Do the Hebrews of today hold to that, in their heart of hearts?

They are taught by their great teacher, Rabbana Ashi, that “Those who are not Jews, are dogs and asses.”

Are the Hebrews true to Talmud, and to their learned Rabbana?

Was Mary Phagan–the Irish girl–legitimate spoil for the descendant of those who divided among themselves the daughters of the Midianite?

Is there a secret tenet of their religion, which compels the entire race to combine to save the neck of such a loathsome degenerate as Leo Frank?

They did not waste a dollar, nor a day, on the Jews who were electrocuted for shooting Rosenthal; was it because Rosenthal was a Jew?

If the victim in that case had been an Irishman, would there have been a Haas Finance Committee? a nation-wide distribution of lying circulars? a flying column of mendacious detectives? a constantly increasing supply of political lawyers? the muzzling of daily papers? an attempt to enlist the Northern school-children, Peace Societies, and Anti-Capital-Punishment leagues?

Money talks; and in this Frank case, money talked as loudly, and as resourcefully, as though Baron Hirsch’s $45,000,000 Hebrew Fund had been copiously poured into the campaign.

Like Thomas Erskine, I am nothing but an old lawyer, no longer inclined to the hot combat of the arena where I once loved to fight; but I’m not too old to make a stand for the Law; for the integrity of the system which our fathers handed down to us; and for the inflexible Justice, in whose scales the murder of one little factory girl weighs as heavily, as though she had been the daughter of Rothschild.

Let the Jews of Georgia, and elsewhere, look to it.

They are putting themselves on trial; and, if they continue the malignant crusade which they have been waging, by libels and cartoons, against a State which has never done injustice to a single Jew, they will reap the whirlwind.

If Mary Phagan had been a rich man’s daughter, and Frank, a poor man’s son, his neck would have been cracked, a year ago!

This case is more than a law case. This case involves the honor of a State! This case drags the judicial ermine into the ditch. This case is in indictment against jury trial. This case is an attack upon the fortress of the Law. This case pollutes the holy temple of Justice.

There never were such foul methods used to besmirch honest men, mock the truthful evidence, gull a generous public, and defeat the very purposes of the criminal code.

There never were such prodigious energies put forth to conceal the Truth, and to put Falsehood in its place.

In the whole scope of American history, no such campaign of abuse, of misrepresentation, of deliberate fabrications, and systematic efforts to humbug outsiders, to close the mouths of editors, to corrupt or intimidate officials; and to “get away with it,” in defiance of the record, the verdict, and the decisions of the courts.

They have never dared TO PUBLISH THE EVIDENCE!

It is a peculiar and portentous thing, that one race of men–and one, only–should be able to convulse the world, by a system of newspaper agitation and suppression, when a member of that race is convicted of a capital crime against another race.

Does anybody in this country know what was the truth about Dreyfus, the French officer who was convicted of treason, and, at first, sentenced to death?

Nobody does. All we know is, what the newspapers told us; and it leaked out afterwards, that the wife of Dreyfus abandoned him, as soon as he was turned loose.

Presumably, she was a Jewess; but, like the other Hebrew champions of Dreyfus, she dropped him, as soon as she had accomplished her purpose.

One of the Rothschild banking houses exerts a powerful influence over French finances; another in Frankfort, another in Vienna, and another in London, have often stood together to control the policies of European governments; if they insisted upon the liberation of Dreyfus, the French Republic–beset by royalists, socialists, and clericals–was in no condition to resist the demand.

The peculiar thing, and the sinister thing, is, that some secret organization existed which could permeate the whole European world, and the United States, also, with the literature which clamored for Dreyfus.

The father of Dreyfus was an Alsatian banker–a Jew, of course–and a subject of the Kaiser. He was a cog in the wheel of the German spy-system; and he used his son, the French officer, to secure for the Berlin Government, the military secrets of the French War Office.

France had not then formed her defensive alliance with Great Britain, and was not strong enough to fully expose Dreyfus, and the Kaiser–thus precipitating a war. The French officer, Ricard, who was the stanch champion of Dreyfus in every one of the investigations, turned against the Jew, after he himself was given a position in the War Office and learned the truth, from indubitable documentary evidence.

The Beiliss case, in Russia, was equally remarkable, in its progress and its end.

A Gentile boy was found dead, with more than forty small incisions in his veins and arteries, from which practically every drop of his blood had been drawn–and the blood had left no marks, anywhere.

That much trickled through the newspapers to the American people, and they realized, of course, that here was a novelty in deliberate and atrocious crime.

Beiliss, a Russian Jew, was accused of kidnapping the little boy, and emptying his blood-vessels of their contents, in order that it might be used in “a religious sacrifice.”

The Russian court found Beiliss guilty; but, apparently, the same mighty engine of agitation, and suppression, that had worked for Dreyfus, was put in motion for Beiliss.

Mankind was told, that there was no such thing as “blood sacrifice” among Russian Jews; and that Beiliss was the victim of jungle fury, race hatred, lynch law, &c., &c.

In the meanwhile, the hysterical public lost sight of the pallid corpse of the Gentile boy, whose veins presented the pale lips of forty-five cuts, made by a sharp instrument.

Somebody had killed the lad–most deliberately, most cruelly–and the Russian courts, in full possession of the facts, declared that Beiliss had done it.

But the American people–not knowing the facts, and totally in the dark as to who did get the blood out of the boy’s veins–were excitedly certain that Beiliss didn’t.

Consequently, a pressure of the same peculiar and irresistible sort that had saved Dreyfus, caused Russia to stay her uplifted hand, and spare Beiliss.

To this day, the Americans who blindly, hysterically helped to put the pressure on the Czar’s Government, have no idea who made the forty-five slits in the blood-vessesl of the little boy; and, what’s more, they don’t care.

They accomplished their emotional purpose, blew off their psychological steam, and then forgot all about Beiliss, and the boy.

Is there such a thing as “blood sacrifice” in Russia? We don’t know. Nobody can dogmatize on such a subject.

Even in our own country, there is a blood sacrifice, practiced in the remoter wilds of Arizona. The Indians who practiced it, welded Christianity to some ancient tribal rite, and adopted the custom of crucifying an Indian, as Christ was crucified.

When I see Abraham with his knife uplifted over the breast of his boy; and when I see Agamemnon covering his face to shut out the sight of the priest and his knife–about to slay the Greek king’s daughter; and when I see the sacrifice of the idolized girl who ran out, radiant with joy, to greet Jeptha on his return from battle–I feel myself lost in doubt as to what a Russian fanatic might do.

Let all this be as it may, the other races of men must “sit up and take notice,” if the repeated campaigns of this Invisible Power seem to mean, that Jews are to be exempt from punishment for capital crimes, when the victim is a Gentile.

If the work of this Invisible Power has been substantially the same in a third case, as in the other two; and this third case is that of Leo Frank, then the Frank case assumes a new aspect, of new importance, and of formidable portent.

America is big enough to be “the melting pot” of the Old World, provided the metals melt–otherwise, it isn’t.

If the Jew is not to amalgamate and be assimilated; if all the very numerous foreign nationalities that are being moved over into this country are to retain their several languages, customs, flags, holidays, ideas of law, education, government, etc., then the melting pot will fail to fuse into one another, these conflicting elements.

In such a case, the melting pot becomes a huge bomb, loaded with deadly explosives.

Has the menace of secret organization, of an Invisible Power, and of cynical defiance of law, revealed itself, in the Frank case?

Reflect upon it!

Reflect upon it, with especial reference to recent announcements, in metropolitan dailies, that the Jews mean to use the Baron Hirsch Fund of $45,000,000 to carve out a new Zion in this country. From all over the world, the Children of Israel are flocking to this country, and plans are on foot to move them from Europe en masse. Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Germany are to empty upon our shores the very scum and dregs of the Parasite Race.

The papers state that the heads of the vast Hebrew societies of this Union will soon “submit a proposition to the United States Government.”

What? The subject treat with the Sovereign?

This is what comes of unrestricted Immigration, just as 90 per cent of our crimes come from it.

What a fine illustration of Jewish arrogance it will be, if such American citizens as Rabbi Wise, Nathan Straus, Adolph Ochs, Joseph Pulitzer, et al., make a proposition to our Government, for an American Zion, the Jew millionaires negotiating with the Government as its equals!

In 1913, the rich Jews compelled Congress to abrogate the Russian treaty, as a rebuke to Russia, for her treatment of her own subjects.

They naturalized a German Jew, Paul Warburg, and placed him at the head of our new Jew-made financial system.

Meditate upon these points:

(1.) Never before was a Jewish or Gentile Finance Committee organized, and funds raised, to fight a case which had already been thrice adjudged by a State Supreme Court;

(2.) Never before, was unlimited money spent in publishing lies about an official record which was accessible to everybody, and which itself could have been laid before the public for less money than the lies cost;

(3.) Never before, did a murder case, tried in Georgia, secure an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States;

(4.) Never before, did any defendant employ so many lawyers, in so many different cities, as were employed for this degenerate Jew;

(5.) Never before, were the Atlanta papers, the Hearst papers, and the Jew papers so doggedly determined that the public should not have a chance to learn what was the evidence, upon which the Jew had been legally convicted.

(6.) Never before did a criminal’s own lawyer, holding the office of Governor, defy and reverse all the courts, and virtually pardon his own client.

(7.) Never before did the Jew papers, and the Hearst papers, so provoke a State, as to insolently demand, from day to day, that the legal sentence on Frank be annulled, and that he be set at liberty;

(8.) Never before did a Vigilance Committee execute a criminal whom a jury had convicted, whom the Supreme Court of Georgia had declared was properly found guilty, whom the Supreme Court of the Union said must die, and whom the Superior Court judges had, three times, sentenced to be hanged.

When the Jews, and Hearst papers, are especially and peculiarly wrought up over this kind of a “lynching,” you may feel quite sure that their unwritten law exempts a Jew, when his victim is a Gentile.

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

Transcribed by Penelope Lee. Exclusive to the American Mercury.

Introduction

Tom Watson: The Leo Frank Case

Tom Watson: A Full Review of the Leo Frank Case

Tom Watson: The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank

Tom Watson: The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, a Jew Pervert

Tom Watson: The Rich Jews Indict a State!