(Click the play button above for our audio book version of Hooper’s closing arguments.)

(Click the play button above for our audio book version of Arnold’s closing arguments, part 1.)

(Click the play button above for our audio book version of Arnold’s closing arguments, part 2.)

(Click the play button above for our audio book version of Rosser’s closing arguments, part 1.)

(Click the play button above for our audio book version of Rosser’s closing arguments, part 2.)

by Bradford L. Huie

IT’S A LONG READ — but an essential one for everyone who wants to consider himself well-informed on the Leo Frank case: the closing arguments from indefatigable Fulton County Prosecutor Hugh Dorsey and his assistant Frank Hooper, and from Leo Frank’s brilliantly skilled defense attorneys Reuben Arnold and Luther Rosser.

Here we present their final arguments in full — practically the length of a sizable novel — because of their great importance (the conventional literature on the subject today hardly even excerpts them) and also because of their general unavailability. Several courageous scholars collaborated recently to scan and use  Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to put the arguments into digital form on archive.org, but not until the Mercury joined the fray have they been presented on a popular Web site in correctly formatted, easy-to-read type with OCR errors removed. Today we will present the arguments of Frank Hooper for the State of Georgia and Reuben Arnold and Luther Rosser for Leo Frank. In our next article we will have the concluding arguments of Solicitor Hugh Dorsey for the state. (For background on this case, read our introductory article, our coverage of Week One,  Week Two, Week Three and Week Four of the trial, and my exclusive summary of the evidence against Frank.)

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State’s Prosecutor Frank Arthur Hooper for the State of Georgia vs. Leo M. Frank

The Final Speech to the Jury by Mr. Frank Arthur Hooper for the State of Georgia delivered on August 21, 1913 in the Fulton County Superior Court.

Mr. Frank Arthur Hooper:

Gentlemen of the Jury, the object of this trial, as well as all other trials, is the ascertainment of truth and the attainment of justice. In the beginning, I want to have it understood that we are not seeking a verdict of guilty against the defendant unless he is guilty. The burden of guilt is upon our shoulders- we confront the undertaking-of putting it upon his. We recognize that it must be done beyond a reasonable doubt, and that it must be done purely by the evidence which we have produced before you. We have cheerfully assumed this burden. We have cheerfully undertaken the task, but, there is not a single man on the prosecution who would harm a hair of the defendant’s head wrongfully. We want him given the same measure of justice that should be meted to all classes of defendants. He is entitled, though, to the same degree of law as any other prisoner. But, he is not entitled to any more because of his wealth or social position. The arm of the law is strong enough to reach to the highest pinnacle of position and drag down the guilty, and strong enough to probe into the gutter and drag up the lowest. There is not a case in the history of Georgia that has been as long and as important as this. With this importance, there arises a great degree of responsibility that rests upon your shoulders. I call your attention to the facts and law as they will be given you in the charge-your only instructions, the orders by which you will be guided in the end. There is one thing I want to say, and that is this: This man should not be convicted purely because the law is seeking a victim. The law doesn’t demand it. It demands only that you seek the truth, the absolute truth, the showing of which is required by us, the prosecution. We are not looking for blood indiscriminately. We are only seeking the slayer of Mary Phagan, and in seeking him, I try as much as possible to feel as though I were one of you twelve. Now, let’s see what was the situation on April 26 in the pencil factory. This factory was being run by Sig Montag as its boss, Frank as its superintendent, assisted by the handsome Mr. Darley and the able Mr. Schiff.

As a citizen of Atlanta, I am not proud of conditions that existed in that factory! What was its moral atmosphere? The character of it appeals wonderfully to us as we seek the truth. The defense has produced numbers of girl workers who told us of his character. They say it is good. That is only negative because he has never harmed them. They do not know him. But, while we are considering their stories, there are the stories of others-girls who left his factory because of his character and his conduct toward them. They say his character is bad. You have from the two your choice of either. Those who still are there-those who have never been harmed-and those who have left because of him and his character.

The law is a peculiar thing.

We named over our plans with the first witnesses put on the stand. We showed at first just exactly what we had in view, exposed our hand, so to speak, and even went so far as to put the stories before you in so far as they were allowed to be told. They could have gone into detail were we permitted to have allowed them. They could have told of incidents that would have been convincing. We have adopted the only legal manner in which the matter could be sifted. It’s on this principle: If fifty men were asked of the character of a certain place or man, and twenty-five or more say it is good, while as few as ten say it’s bad, what is the character of this place or person, considering, of course, that all have an equal opportunity to observe ? Would you say it was good? This question of character was one into which we were not permitted to go. But the defense, on the other hand, were allowed to let down the bars and walk in. That pencil factory was a great place for a man without a conscience. It was a great place for Frank, his handsome assistant, Mr. Darley, and the able Mr. Schiff.

We find that Frank had coupled himself up for nightly meeting with Dalton, who now has, it seems, turned respectable. My friends, no doubt, will argue that it was strange a man of such business and social position should consort with such a character. It will be a good argument, likely, but probe a little deeper and see if Dalton was not the kind of man required by a dual personality such as possessed by Frank! We all have dual personalities. There is not a man so good without evil, and no man so bad without good. But when the evil is predominant the man is bad. Vice versa with the good. A man may mingle with his varnished class by day, but when the shades of night are falling and the evil dominate, he doesn’t go and get good men who can tell of his good character. He goes for his Dalton.

We all are Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes.

There are two sides to each of us. Dalton seems to have overcome this evil. He is apparently making good, as many substantial folks have told us on the witness stand. You can’t blame Dalton so much. This factory was under the control of this man [Leo] Frank. It is a house of bad reputation. You find other acts of this sort committed therein. It is unsavory. [Leo] Frank is its head. He contends he did not know Mary Phagan. Why, every day as he — walked through the floor on which his office was situated, he passed by her at her machine. You find, gentlemen, that he often stopped at her place of duty to show her this or to show her that, to help her in her work. Not only that, but he followed her out of her beaten path-following like some wild animal, telling her of his superiority, coaxing, persuading, all the while she strove to return to her work at her machine. You will notice on this diagram that every time he crossed the floor he passed this beautiful girl, looking upon her with the eye of lust. The first indication of his attitude toward his victim is in the tall, good-natured Jim Gantt, friend of Mary [Phagan]. [Leo] Frank asks Gantt: “You’re pretty thick with Mary, aren’t you?” It shows that he knew her and that he had his eye on her.

What next? He wants to get rid of Gantt. How does he go about it? You have seen that previously he was bragging on Gantt, on Gantt’s ability as a workman. But, just as soon as his eye is set upon the pretty little friend of Gantt, he sets plans to get rid of him. And, it comes up about a dollar. He says it was something about money, hoping to lead you, gentlemen, to believe that Gantt was a thief. He would not let Gantt go into the building because he was a thief. Didn’t he know that this long-legged mountaineer was coming back at him? Sure, he knew it. And, they parted company at once. Gantt was fired. What was he accomplishing by this? He was getting rid of the only man on either floor-in the whole factory-who knew Mary Phagan, and who would raise a hand to protect her. Then he sets about laying plans. And those plans! You will notice that the defense has pitched its every effort entirely on [James] Jim Conley. I don’t blame them. He was like Stone Mountain is to some highways in its vicinity. They couldn’t get by him. We could have left him out and have had an excellent chain of circumstantial evidence.

Without Jim [Conley], though, the defense couldn’t move—they couldn’t budge. You have sat and seen the biggest legal battle ever fought in a court house between skillful intellect and a witness negro. You have seen brainy eloquence pitted against the slow, incomprehensible dialect of a negro. You have seen a trained and speedy mind battling with blunt ignorance. And, what was the result? At the end of three and a half days it came. That negro was asked questions about everything Rosser could conceive. His answers were hurried from the stenographer’s notes and transcribed on typewriter. Then, they were hurled back into Conley’s face. But, it was like water poured onto a mill wheel. They received the same answers, the same story. It was because, gentlemen, the negro was telling the truth. Truth is stronger than all the brains and ingenuity that can be collected in this whole town-this state, the world.

How they did hate to give up the fight.

They lost, and with the loss went the loss of their theory in whole.

When all was through, they were forced to sit and leave Jim’s truth unscathed. How unfortunate!

All they could say was that Jim had been a big liar. That is true. In his first two stories, he lied. But, if I had any comment on Jim Conley, it would be that if they had bored me as they bored him at police headquarters, they could have muddied me even more.

Suppose Frank’s conduct in this case is shown as it has been. He is a smart man. There is no disputing that fact. He needn’t have told you all the details on the stand of the amount of work he did that day. You can tell that he is smart, clever, ingenious.

Now, Jim [Conley], he comes back that Saturday morning by order of the brilliant [Leo] Frank, his boss. There’s no denial of this, so far. Other people tell you they have seen women enter the factory with men at suspicious hours. Jim [Conley] tells you of watching for these folks. And there is this to reckon with: Providence has a way of revealing the truth at the final minute. At the eleventh hour we found two men yesterday who had been to the pencil factory at the noon Mary Phagan was murdered. They saw Jim Conley just as he tells you, sitting on the first floor, near the door where he watched for [Leo] Frank. Mrs. White saw him, although she doesn’t identify him perfectly. One thing true, she saw a negro in the position Jim tells us he was in. Now, for what purpose was he there? Waiting to do the same thing he had done before-to watch for his boss. They say he was drunk. Very well. But, did you notice how clearly he recited incidents and told the names of people he saw at the times they claim he was so drunk? We are brought up to the time of the tragedy. Jim Conley is still there. Everybody has gone, leaving him and Frank in the building. Frank knew that Mary Phagan was coming that day, and he knew the hour. On the previous afternoon little Helen Ferguson, Mary’s chum, had called for Mary’s pay, and Frank had told her that Mary Phagan should come and get her own pay, breaking a rule of the plant in doing so. He arranges with Jim to hang around and make himself convenient. Jim [Conley] takes his accustomed seat in the hallway.

Parties come and go.

Jim observes all that happens, he says nothing.

Finally, Mary Phagan arrives, beautiful, innocent, coming in her blue frock and new hat and a ribbon around her hair. Without any thought of evil or foreboding of tragedy, she tripped into the building and up the stairs, going for $1.20.

No explanation can come from Mary.

The dead have no stories to tell.

She went in a little after 12. She found Frank. He tells us that much from his own lips. He was there from 12:00 to 1:00. It’s his own statement. What a statement!

There was Mary [Phagan].

Then, there was another little girl, Monteen Stover. He [Leo Frank] never knew Monteen [Stover] was there, and he said he stayed in his office from 12:00 until after 1:00 – never left.

Monteen [Stover] waited around for five minutes. Then she left. The result?

(Here Frank Arthur Hooper sums up Leo Frank’s virtual murder confession in one sentence)

There comes for the first time from the lips of [Leo] Frank, the defendant, the admission that he might have gone to some other part of the building during this time-he didn’t remember clearly.

Jim Conley, sitting faithfully downstairs, heard footsteps going toward the metal room. Then there came the sound of other footsteps, footsteps that pursued. There was no return of the first footsteps, and the footsteps that pursued tiptoed back from the metal room.

Then Leo stamped a signal on the office floor.

I will be fair with [Leo] Frank. When he followed the child back into the metal room, he didn’t know that it would necessitate force to accomplish his purpose. I don’t believe he originally had murder in his heart.

There was a scream.

Jim Conley heard it.

Just for the sake of knowing how harrowing it was, I wish you jurymen could hear a similar scream.

It was poorly described by the negro. He said it sounded as if a laugh was broken off into a shriek. He heard it break through the stillness of the hushed building. It was uncanny, but he sat faithfully on. He was under orders. He was to come on signal. That scream was no signal.

Later, Frank would stamp on the the office floor. This negro tells you that the white man killed the little girl. But, no! Frank was in his office, busy with his wonderful financial sheet. I will show you how he could have sat at his desk and heard this negro attack the, little child who had come to draw her pay.

Mr. Frank, I will give you the benefit of all you deserve. ‘When all is summed up, you were sitting only a few feet from the spot ‘where a murder was committed, and you never raised a finger. Let me show you something else. When this thing was over there were two men and a woman upstairs who had to get out the building before the body was moved. It would be dangerous to leave it lying back in the metal room, staring hideously from unseeing eyes.

Frank went upstairs and told the trio up there that if they were going, it was time for them to leave, as he was going to lock up the factory. He [Leo Frank] was in a hurry and told them so. Mrs. Arthur White, perceiving his evident hurry, hastened downstairs. When she reached the office, Frank, the man-in-a-hurry, was in his shirt sleeves, writing at his desk.

Why should I hang? What does that show?

In the first place, his appreciation of a little girl of 14. Did it hurt him to knot the rope of cord around her neck, did it hurt him as he drew it tighter and tighter around the tender throat until the dim spark of life was choked extinct?

To the contrary.

It only excited him enough to ask himself the question “Why should I hang?” There come times when we all speak our true thoughts and sentiments. That was such a time. Now, which is the more probable-that Jim heard this expression, or that he imagined the story?

Did Jim know Frank had relatives in Brooklyn? Did Jim know there was such a thing as Brooklyn? Did he know they were rich? And Jim says, with the typical soul of Africa: “What’s goin’ to become of me?”

Frank says, “I’ll take care of you, for I’ll write my mother a letter, so that she can help you.” He asks Jim if he can write, and Jim tells him a little bit. He wasn’t on his guard. He should have detected Frank’s purpose. Frank was smart, Jim was dull. Frank dictated, Jim wrote.

Now, gentlemen, I suppose most of you are southern men, men who know the characteristics of the negro. Will you please tell me what idea this negro would have had to write these notes accusing a negro, and, just the same as saying, this was done by a negro who is a fool and who cannot write? It was foolish enough for the mighty brain of Frank to put the notes beside the body. The truth of the business is, that this looks like the only time the brainy Frank ever lost his head.

Then, next comes the money. Frank pulls out his roll of bills, and says, “Jim, here’s that $200.” Jim is so overwhelmed that he doesn’t notice the amount, but puts the roll in his pocket. Frank reflects. He need not waste the $200. Jim is as deep in the mire as he is in the mud. He recovers the money.

“Let’s see, Jim, if everything comes out all right, I’ll return this money.”

He tells Jim that Jim has the goods to deliver. The body must be disposed of. That will be left to Jim. He depends on Jim’s lust for the $200 to bring him back to the factory to burn the corpse of little Mary, the victim! Nobody else was expected by him that afternoon but Jim Conley and Newt Lee.

It makes no difference to me about how long it took Frank to go to lunch, the minute he put in here and the minute he put in there, about which there has been such a squabble in the evidence. That is aside from the point.

The fact remains that at or about 3 o’clock he came back to the pencil factory to await the arrival of Jim Conley to burn that body! He was expecting Jim Conley, and he also knew that Newt Lee was coming. Aye, there was the rub! He expected them both, and it depended upon which one arrived first as to how things would go. If Jim got there first and disposed of that body, all right; but suppose Newt Lee got there first! Then was the defendant in the position of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, when he wondered which army would arrive first, and knew that upon this question depended victory or defeat. The wrong army arrived, and Napoleon went down! Newt Lee arrived at the pencil factory that afternoon, but where was Jim Conley? Yes, that’s what the defendant asked himself, “Where is Jim Conley?” Jim Conley was getting that much-needed sleep after the exciting events he had gone through with. That’s where Jim Conley was.

Then was the defendant lost.

He [Leo] sent Newt Lee away, with the last hope that Jim might yet turn up and burn the body as had been agreed upon.

“Go out and have a good time, Newt,”

that’s what the defendant told good old honest Newt Lee. He said, “It is not Newt Lee I want, it is Jim Conley. Go away, Newt, and stay until 6 o’clock. Give me two hours more.” Two hours passed, and Jim Conley did not show up. He was taking that much-needed nap.

Newt came back, and the game was up. He talked to Newt Lee about the night’s work and started home.

Now, gentlemen of the jury, I want to call your attention to a very peculiar thing: As the defendant passed out of the factory door, he met Gantt, old long-legged Gantt, who was looking for his shoes.

Witnesses testified that the defendant jumped back startled.

Why? Think why? He wasn’t afraid of Gantt. Gantt wouldn’t hurt a flee. That wasn’t the reason. He knew that Gantt knew Mary Phagan and had lived close to the family, and Frank thought that Gantt was looking for little Mary, who was missing from home and should have been back long ago. That’s why he jumped back when he saw Gantt. He had called Gantt down about “setting up” to Mary, and had fired him over an argument about who was going to pay a dollar or so. He didn’t think that Gantt stole that paltry dollar. He expected him to ask where Mary Phagan was. That, gentlemen of the jury, is why he jumped back when he saw Gantt. But Gantt spoke to the defendant. He just said, “Howdy,’ Mr. Frank,” The defendant felt relieved then. Gantt told him that he had left a pair of shoes in the factory and wanted to get them. But it won’t do to let him go in that building now, thought the defendant. Suppose he should find out? He must not go in there.

So the defendant said that he thought he had seen a nigger sweeping Gantt’s shoes out of the building. Then Gantt said he had two pairs of shoes in there, and that maybe the other pair -wasn’t swept out. This was the last hope. ‘What could he say to that? He had said that he saw the nigger sweeping out only one pair.

In a few days this murder must be out, anyway. To keep Gantt out would arouse his suspicions. And this is what went on in the defendant’s mind: “I’ll let him in, but I’ll guard him like a thief.” And he said, “Newt, go With him.” Strange to say, Gantt found both pairs of shoes, just where he said he had left them.

Gentlemen, does that look like the defendant had seen a nigger sweeping them out? Does that look like the truth? After he had let Gantt in the factory, what did he do? He called up the factory by phone, a thing that he never had done before. Why? Why did he do that thing? Gantt! Gantt! That’s why! He wanted to know if Gantt had gone, and whether he was any the wiser. He couldn’t rest until he knew this. This Banquo’s ghost of a Gantt was haunting him. But when he knew that Gantt was safely gone and everything was all right, he was in a fine humor then. He could laugh and talk He could sit down in the house with his wife and read baseball in the newspaper. He could laugh and try playfully to break up a card game. He felt fine and relieved. As glad and free as a school boy! Old long-legged Gantt was gone, and everything was all right!

Now, about Newt Lee. I don’t want to thresh out all the details in this respect. You remember the evidence about honest old Newt Lee’s finding the body. That’s all we need to know about him.

No suspicion attaches to Newt. He notified the police, and tried to notify Frank.

The police came and took the body of little Mary Phagan to the undertakers. The police called up Frank then and told him they wanted him. Detective Starnes got mixed up when he told about this on the stand, but he never forgot that when he called Frank up, Frank did not ask him what the trouble was. He didn’t ask him whether anybody had been killed at the factory. He didn’t ask them if everything at the factory was all right. They took Frank to the undertaker’s. He was nervous then. But have you seen a quiver of a muscle since he has been these weeks in the court room’? He is facing the fight now, and his nerves are set. But that morning he was as nervous as a cat.

He said, “I think it’s a girl I paid off yesterday. I’ll have to look at my books and see.” That’s what he said about the body of the girl he saw every day and talked to. He offered no consolation, or anything. He got away from there. Another thing, when they carried him to the basement and brought him back upstairs, what was going on in his mind then’? He thought he must look at that time slip. So he got the key and unlocked the clock and took out the slip. He examined it while others were looking over his shoulder, and said it was correctly punched, that it was all right, and others agreed to it. “Here’s the slip.” He said, “That’s all right. That clears you, Newt.” — What next occurred to him’? He saw he was getting into a fix, and he had better take a shot at Newt. What happens? Another slip turns up. He says he was mistaken at first. There were lapses in the punches on the slip, showing time enough unaccounted for to allow Newt to go home.

Policeman Black had suspicions. He goes to Newt Lee’s home. He unlocks the door with his keys, and looks in the house and on the trash pile, and in the bottom of the barrel, with a lot of things piled on top of it, he found a bloody shirt! How did it get there? Newt Lee accounts for his time Sunday. No suspicion attaches to Newt Lee. He is a free man. How did that bloody shirt get there? It had to be planted. Gentlemen, it was planted!

Here are the two propositions, gentlemen. If Newt Lee was to be made the scapegoat, suspicion had to be directed to him. Somebody had to plant that suspicion. He [Leo Frank] would sacrifice Newt Lee that he might live! The Bible says, “What will not a man give for his life?” He was willing to give the life of Newt Lee that his own life might be spared. He was willing to give the life of Gantt that he might live. Was not Gantt arrested a few days after? But not once at that time did he think of giving the life of Jim Conley. But somebody found Jim Conley washing a shirt to go to the trial, and there was where Jim got into trouble. But Frank didn’t try to fix it on Jim then. He waited until Newt had failed, and all else had failed, except the suspicion which rested upon himself. Then he turned on Jim Conley.

I call your attention, gentlemen of the jury, to another peculiar thing: Weeks after the murder, and after the factory had been searched, a big, bloody stick was found by shrewd Pinkerton detectives, who can find anything-even an elephant, if it gets in the way. They also found a piece of envelope. But, fortunately, they showed this to Mr. Coleman, who said that Mary had received but $1.20 and that the figure “5″ on the envelope had no business there. And so, it was rubbed out. Besides the shirt, then, we find the club and the pay envelope.

Another very peculiar thing is about this man named Mincey. Conley was asked, “Didn’t you confess to Mincey that you were the man that killed the girl?” Conley said, “No.” That question was asked, gentlemen, as a foundation upon which to introduce Mincey. Where is Mincey? He is the man who could clear it all up. He is the man about whom it appeared that the whole fight would center. If he could convince you that Jim confessed the murder to him, that would let Frank out! Yet where is Mincey?

Gentlemen, this has been a long testimony which you have had to sit through, and I do not wish to take up any more of your time than necessary. Gentlemen, the only belief required of you is the same sort of belief that you would have upon the street, at your places of business, or in your homes, and on this belief you are to act.

Simply use your common sense in the jury box.

I thank you.

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MR. ARNOLD, FOR THE PRISONER.

Mr. Arnold:

Gentlemen of the Jury: We are all to be congratulated that this case is drawing to a close. We have all suffered here from trying a long and complicated case at the heated term of the year. It has been a case that has taken so much effort and so much concentration and so much time, and the quarters here are so poor, that it has been particularly hard on you members of the jury who are practically in custody while the case is going on. I know it’s hard on a jury, to be kept confined this way, but it is necessary that they be segregated and set apart where they will get no impression at home nor on the street. The members of the jury are in a sense set apart on a mountain, where, far removed from the. passion and heat of the plain, calmness roles them and they can judge a case on its merits.

My friend Hooper said a funny thing here a while ago. I don’t think he meant what he said, however. Mr. Hooper said that the men in the jury box are not different from the men on the street. Your Honor, I’m learning something every day, and I certainly learned something today, if that’s true.

Mr. Hooper:

Mr. Arnold evidently mistakes my meaning, which I thought I made clear. I stated that the men in the jury box were like they would be on the street in the fact that in making up their minds about the guilt or innocence of the accused they must use the same common sense that they would if they were not part of the court.

Mr. Arnold:

There are fellows like that street car man, Kendley, the one who vilified this defendant here and cried for him to be lynched, and shouted that he was guilty until he made himself a nuisance on the cars he ran. Why, I can hardly realize that a man holding a position as responsible as that of a motorman and a man with certain police powers and the discretion necessary to guide a car through the crowded city streets would give way to passion and prejudice like that. It was a type of man like Kendley who said he did not know for sure whether those negroes hanged in Decatur for the shooting of the street car men were guilty, but he was glad they were hung, as some negroes ought to be hanged for the crime. He’s the same sort of a man who believes that there ought to be a hanging because that innocent little girl was murdered, and who would like to see this Jew here hang because somebody ought to hang for it. I’ll tell you right now, if Frank hadn’t been a Jew there would never have been any prosecution against him.

I’m asking my own people to turn him loose, asking them to do justice to a Jew, and I’m not a Jew, but I would rather die before doing injustice to a Jew. This case has just been built up by degrees; they have a monstrous perjurer here in the form of this Jim Conley against Frank. You know what sort of a man Conley is, and you know that up to the time the murder was committed no one ever heard a word against Frank. Villainy like this charged to him does not crop out in a day. There are long mutterings of it for years before. There are only a few who have ever said anything against Frank. I want to call your attention later to the class of their witnesses and the class of ours.

A few floaters around the factory, out of the hundreds who have worked there in the plant three or four years, have been induced to come up here and swear that Frank has not a good character, but the decent employees down there have sworn to his good character. Look at the jail birds they brought up here, the very dregs of humanity, men and women who have disgraced themselves and who now have come and tried to swear away the life of an innocent man. I know that you members of the jury are impartial. That’s the only reason why you are here, and I’m going to strip the state’s case bare for you, if I have the strength to last to do it. They have got to show Frank guilty of one thing before you can convict him; they’ve got to show that he is guilty of the murder, no matter what else they show about him. You are trying him solely for the murder, and there must be no chance that anyone else could just as likely be guilty.

If the jury sees that there is just as good a chance that Conley can be guilty, then they must turn Frank loose. Now, you can see how in this case the detectives were put to it to lay the crime on somebody. First, it was Lee, and then it was Gantt, and various people came in and declared they had seen the girl alive late Saturday night and at other times, and no one knew what to do. Well, suspicion turned away from Gantt, and in a little while it turned away from Lee.

Now, I don’t believe that Lee is guilty of the crime, but I do believe that he knows a lot more about the crime than he told. He knows about those letters and he found that body a lot sooner than he said he did. Oh, well, the whole case is a mystery, a deep mystery, but there is one thing pretty plain, and that is that whoever wrote those notes committed the crime. Those notes certainly had some connection with the murder, and whoever wrote those notes committed the crime. Well, they put Newt Lee through the third degree and the fourth degree, and maybe a few others. That’s the way, you know, they got this affidavit from the poor negro woman, Minola McKnight.

Why, just the other day the supreme court handed down a decision in which it referred to the third degree methods of the police and detectives in words that burned. Well, they used those methods with Jim Conley. My friend, Hooper, said nothing held Conley to the witness chair here but the truth, but I tell you that the fear of a broken neck held him there. I think this decision about the third degree was handed down with Conley ‘s case in mind. I’m going to show this Conley business up before I get through. I’m going to show that this entire case is the greatest frameup in the history of the state.

My friend Hooper remarked something about circumstantial evidence, and how powerful it frequently was. He forgot to say that the circumstances, in every case, must invariably be proved by witnesses. History contains a long record of circumstantial evidence, and I once had a book on the subject which dwelt on such cases, most all of which sickens the man who reads them. Horrible mistakes have been made by circumstantial evidence–more so than by any other kind.

Hooper says, “Suppose Frank didn’t kill the girl, and Jim Conley did, wasn’t it Frank’s duty to protect her.” He was taking the position that if Jim went back there and killed her, Frank could not help but know about the murder. Which position, I think, is quite absurd. Take this hypothesis, then, of Mr. Hooper’s. If Jim saw the girl go up and went back and killed her, would he have taken the body down the elevator at that time? Wouldn’t he have waited until Frank and White and Denham, and Mrs. White and all others were out of the building? I think so. But there’s not a possibility of the girl having been killed on the second floor. Hooper smells a plot, and says Frank has his eye on the little girl who was killed.

The crime isn’t an act of a civilized man–it’s the crime of a cannibal, a man-eater. Hooper is hard-pressed and wants to get up a plot–he sees he has to get up something. He forms his plot from Jim Conley’s story. They say that on Friday, Frank knew he was going to make an attack of some sort on Mary Phagan. The plot thickens. Of all the wild things I have ever heard, that is the wildest. It is ridiculous. Mary Phagan worked in the pencil factory for months, and all the evidence they have produced that Frank ever associated with her–ever knew her–is the story of weasley little Willie Turner, who can’t even describe the little girl who was killed. A little further on in his story, Jim is beginning the plot. They used him to corroborate everything as they advised. Jim is laying the foundation for the plot. What is it–this plot? Only that on Friday Frank was planning to commit some kind of assault upon Mary Phagan.

Jim was their tool. Even Scott swears that when he told Jim that Jim’s story didn’t fit, Jim very obligingly adapted it to suit his defense. He was scrupulous about things like that. He was quite considerate. Certainly. He had his own neck to save. Jim undertook to show that Frank had an engagement with some woman at the pencil factory that Saturday morning. There is no pretense that another woman is mixed up in the case. No one would argue that he planned to meet and assault this innocent little girl who was killed. Who but God would know whether she was coming for her pay that Friday afternoon or the next Saturday? Are we stark idiots? Can’t we divine some things?

They’ve got a girl named Ferguson, who says she went for Mary Phagan’s pay on the Friday before she was killed, and that Frank wouldn’t give it to her. It is the wildest theory on earth, and it fits nothing. It is a strained conspiracy. Frank, to show you I am correct, had nothing whatever to do with paying off on Friday. Schiff did it all. And little Magnolia Kennedy, Helen Ferguson’s best friend, says she was with Helen when Helen went to draw her pay, and that Helen never said a word about Mary’s envelope. There’s your conspiracy, with Jim Conley’s story as its foundation. It’s too thin. It ‘s preposterous.

Then my friend Hooper says Frank discharged Gantt because he saw Gantt talking to Mary Phagan. If you convict men on such distorted evidence as this, why you’d be hanging men perpetually. Gantt, in the first place, doesn’t come into this case in any good light. It is ridiculously absurd to bring his discharge into this plot of the defense. Why, even Grace Hicks, who worked with Mary Phagan, and who is a sister-in-law of Boots Rogers, says that Frank did not know the little girl. Hooper also says that bad things are going on in the pencil factory, and that it is natural for men to cast about for girls in such environments. We are not trying this case on whether you or I or Frank had been perfect in the past. This is a case of murder. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

I say this much, and that is that there has been as little evidence of such conditions in this plant as any other of its kind you can find in the city. They have produced some, of course, but it is an easy matter to locate some ten or twelve disgruntled ex-employees who are vengeful enough to swear against their former superintendent, even though they don’t know him except by sight. I want to ask this much : Could Frank have remained at the head of this concern if he had been as loose morally as the state has striven to show? If he had carried on with the girls of the place as my friend alleged, wouldn’t the entire working force have been demoralized, ruined? He may have looked into this dressing room, as the little Jackson girl says, but, if he did, it was done to see that the girls weren’t loitering. There were no lavatories, no toilets, no baths in these dressing rooms. The girls only changed their top garments. He wouldn’t have seen much if he had peered into the place. You can go to Piedmont park any day and see girls and women with a whole lot less on their persons. And to the shows any night you can see the actresses with almost nothing on.

Everything brought against Frank was some act he did openly and in broad daylight, and an act against which no kick was made. The trouble with Hooper is that he sees a bear in every bush. He sees a plot in this because Frank told Jim Conley to come back Saturday morning. The office that day was filled with persons throughout the day. How could he know when Mary Phagan was coming or how many persons would be in the place when she arrived?

This crime is the hideous act of a negro who would ravish a ten-year-old girl the same as he would ravish a woman of years. It isn’t a white man’s crime. It’s the crime of a beast–a low, savage beast!

Now, back to the case. There is an explorer in the pencil factory by the name of Barrett–I call him Christopher Columbus Barrett purely for his penchant for finding things. Mr. Barrett discovered the blood spots in the place where Chief Beavers, Chief Lanford and Mr. Black and Mr. Starnes had searched on the Sunday of the discovery. They found nothing of the sort. Barrett discovered the stains after he had proclaimed to the whole second floor that he was going to get the $4,000 reward if Mr. Frank was convicted. Now, you talk about plants! If this doesn’t look mighty funny that a man expecting a reward would find blood spots in a place that has been scoured by detectives, I don’t know what does. Four chips of this flooring were chiseled from this flooring where these spots were found. The floor was an inch deep in dirt and grease. Victims of accidents had passed by the spot with bleeding fingers and hands. If a drop of blood had ever fallen there, a chemist could find it four years later. Their contention is that all the big spots were undiluted blood. Yet, let’s see how much blood Dr. Claude Smith found on the chips. Probably five corpuscles, that’s all, and that’s what he testified here at the trial. My recollection is that one single drop of blood contains 8,000 corpuscles. And, he found these corpuscles on only one chip. I say that half of the blood had been on the floor two or three years.

The stain on all chips but one were not blood. Dorsey’s own doctors have put him where he can’t wriggle–his own evidence hampers him! They found blood spots on a certain spot and then had Jim adapt his story accordingly. They had him put the finding of the body near the blood spots, and had him drop it right where the spots were found. It stands to reason that if a girl had been wounded on the lathing machine, there would have been blood in the vicinity of the machine. Yet, there was no blood in that place, and neither was there any where the body was said to have been found by Conley. The case doesn’t fit. It’s flimsy. And, this white machine oil that they’ve raised such a rumpus over. It was put on the floor as a cheap, common plant to make it appear as though someone had put it there in an effort to hide the blood spots. The two spots of blood and the strands of hair are the only evidence that the prosecution has that the girl was killed on the second floor.

Now, about these strands of hair. Barrett, the explorer, says he found four or five strands on the lathing machine. I don’t know whether he did or not. They’ve never been produced. I’ve never seen them. But, it’s probable, for just beyond the lathing machine, right in the path of a draft that blows in from the window, is a gas jet used by the girls in curling and primping their hair. It’s very probable that strands of hair have been blown from this jet to the lathing machine.

The detectives say that Frank is a crafty, cunning criminal, when deep down in their heart of hearts they know good and well that their case is built against him purely because he was honest enough to admit having seen her that day. Had he been a criminal, he never would have told about seeing her and would have replaced her envelope in the desk, saying she had never called for her pay.

I believe that a majority of women are good. The state jumped on poor Daisy Hopkins. I don’t contend, now, mind you, that she is a paragon of virtue. But there are men who were put up by the state who are no better than she. For instance, this Dalton, who says openly that he went into the basement with Daisy. I don’t believe he ever did, but, in such a case, he slipped in. There are some fallen women who can tell the truth. They have characteristics like all other types. We put her on the stand to prove Dalton a liar, and she did it.

Now, gentlemen, don’t you think the prosecution is hard pressed when they put up such a character as Dalton? They say he has reformed. A man with thievery in his soul never reforms. Drunkards do, and men with bad habits, but thieves! No. Would you convict a man like Frank on the word of a perjurer like Dalton?

Now, I’m coming back to Jim Conley. The whole case centers around him. Mr. Hooper argues well on that part. At the outset of the case, the suspicion pointed to Frank merely because he was the only man in the building. It never cropped out for weeks that anyone else was on the first floor. The detectives put their efforts on Frank because he admitted having seen the girl. They have let their zeal run away with them in this case, and it is tragic. They are proud whenever they get a prisoner who will tell something. The humbler the victim the worse is the case. Such evidence comes with the stamp of untruth on its face.

Jim Conley was telling his story to save his neck, and the detectives were happy listeners. If there is one thing for which a negro is capable it is for telling a story in detail. It is the same with children. Both have vivid imaginations. And a negro is also the best mimic in the world. He can imitate anybody. Jim Conley, as he lay in his cell and read the papers and talked with the detectives, conjured up his wonderful story, and laid the crime on Frank, because the detectives had laid it there and were helping him do the same.

Now, Brother Hooper waves the bloody shirt in our face. It was found, Monday or Tuesday, in Newt Lee’s house, while Detectives Black and Scott were giving Cain to poor old man Newt Lee. I don’t doubt for a minute that they knew it was out there when they started out after it. I can’t say they planted it, but it does look suspicious. Don’t ask us about a planted shirt. Ask Scott and Black.

The first thing that points to Conley ‘s guilt is his original denial that he could write. Why did he deny it? Why? I don’t suppose much was thought of it when Jim said he couldn’t write, because there are plenty of negroes who are in the same fix. But later, when they found he could, and found that his script compared perfectly with the murder notes, they went right on accusing Frank. Not in criminal annals was there a better chance to lay at the door of another man a crime than Jim Conley had. You see, there is a reason to all things. The detective department had many reasons to push the case against Frank. He was a man of position and culture. They were afraid that someone, unless they pushed the case to the jumping off place, would accuse them of trying to shield him. They are afraid of public and sentiment, and do not want to combat it, so, in such cases, they invariably follow the line of least resistance.

Look at the notes. He was treed about those notes, and he had to tell a lie and put upon someone the burden of instructing him to write them. The first statement about them was a blunt lie–a lie in its incipiency. He said he wrote the notes on Friday. This was untrue, and unreasonable and he saw it. Frank could not have known anything of an intended murder on Friday from any viewpoint you might take, and therefore he could not have made Conley write them on Friday.

Ah, gentlemen of the jury, I tell you these people had a great find when they got this admission from Conley ! If Conley had stayed over there in the Tower with Uncle Wheeler Mangum he would have told the truth long ago. There’s where he should have stayed, with Wheeler Mangum. My good friend, Dorsey, is all right. I like him. But he should not have walked hand in glove with the detectives. There’s where he went wrong. My good old friend, Charlie Hill would not have done that. He would have let the nigger stay in the jail with Uncle Wheeler.

I like Dorsey. He simply made a mistake by joining in the hunt, in becoming a part of the chase. The solicitor should be little short of as fair as the judge himself. But he’s young and lacks the experience. He will probably know better in the future. Dorsey did this : He went to the judge and got the nigger moved from the jail to the police station. The judge simply said, “Whatever you say is all right.”

Now, I’m going to show you how John Black got the statement of Conley changed. I am going to give you a demonstration. I have learned some things in this case about getting evidence . They say that Frank cut Conley loose and he decided to tell the truth. Conley is a wretch with a long criminal record. Gentlemen, how can they expect what he says to be believed against the statement of Leo M. Frank? They say Conley can’t lie about detail. Here are four pages, all of which he himself admits are lies. They are about every saloon on Peters Street, saloons to which he went, his shooting craps, his buying beer and all the ways in which he spent a morning. There is detail enough, and he admits that they are lies. Now, in his third statement, that of May 28, he changes the time of writing the letters from Friday to Saturday. Here are two pages of what he said, all of which he afterwards said were lies. He says that he made the statement that he wrote the notes on Friday in order to divert suspicion from his being connected with the murder which happened on Saturday. He also says that this is his final and true statement. God only knows how many statements he will make. He said he made the statement voluntarily and truthfully without promise of reward, and that he is telling the truth and the whole truth. He said in his statement that he never went to the building on Saturday. Yet we know that he was lurking in the building all the morning on the day of the murder. We know that he watched every girl that walked into that building so closely that he could tell you the spots on their dresses. We know that he was drunk, or had enough liquor in him to fire his blood. I know why he wouldn’t admit being in that building on Saturday. He had guilt on his soul, and he didn’t want it to be known that he was here on Saturday.

That’s why when they pinned him down, what did he do? He says that he was watching for Frank. My God, wasn’t he a watchman! He said that he heard Frank and Mary Phagan walking upstairs, and that he heard Mary Phagan scream, and that immediately after hearing the scream he let Monteen Stover into the building. Why, they even have him saying that he watched for Frank, when another concern was using the very floor space in which Frank’s office was located, and you know they wouldn’t submit to anything like that.

Look again! He says that Mr. Frank said, “Jim, can you write?” What a lie ! He admitted that he had been writing for Frank for two years. It’s awful to have to argue about a thing like this, gentlemen ! You will remember Hooper said, “How foolish of Conley to write these notes ! ” How much more foolish, I say, of Frank to do it!

I don’t think that Newt killed the girl, but I believe he discovered the body some time before he notified the police. Newt’s a good nigger. Scott said that it took Conley six minutes to write a part of one note. Conley said that he wrote the notes three times.

They say that nigger couldn’t lie. Gentlemen, if there is any one thing that nigger can do, it is to lie. As my good old friend, Charlie Hill, would say, “Put him in a hopper and hell drip lye!”

He was trying to prove an alibi for himself when he said that he was not in the factory on Saturday and told all the things that he did elsewhere on that day. But we know that the wretch was lurking in the factory all of Saturday morning. Further, he swore that while he was in Frank’s office he heard someone approaching, and Mr. Frank cried out, “Gee! Here come Corinthia Hall and Emma Clarke!” and that Frank shut him up in a wardrobe until they left. According to Conley, they came into the factory between 12 and 1 o’clock, when as a matter of fact, we know that they came between 11 and 12.

And as for his being able to fabricate the details of his statement–why, he knew every inch of that building from top to bottom! Hadn’t he been sweeping and cleaning it for a long time? With this knowledge of the building, he naturally had no trouble in his pantomime after he had formed his story. The miserable wretch has Frank hiding him in the wardrobe when Emma Clarke came in after the murder, when it has been proved that she came there and left before Mary Phagan ever entered the building on that day. They saw where they were wrong in that statement, and they made Conley change it on the stand. They made him say, “I thought it was them.” They knew that that story wouldn’t fit.

Do you remember, how eagerly Conley took the papers from the girls at the factory? And do you remember how for four or five days the papers were full of the fact that Frank’s home was in Brooklyn, and that his relatives were reported to be wealthy? Conley didn’t have to go far to get material for that statement he put in Frank’s mouth. It so happened, though, that Frank really did not have rich relatives in Brooklyn. His mother testified that his father was in ill health, and had but moderate means and that his sister worked in New York for her living.

Gentlemen, am I living or dreaming, that I have to argue such points as these? This is what you’ve got to do: You’ve got to swallow every word that Conley has said–feathers and all, or you’ve got to believe none of it. How are you going to pick out of such a pack of lies as these what you will believe and what you will not? Yet, this is what the prosecution has based the case upon. If this fails, all fails. And do you remember about the watch, where Conley said that Frank asked him, “Why do you want to buy a watch for your wife? My big, fat wife wanted me to buy her an automobile, but I wouldn’t do it!” Do you believe that, gentlemen of the jury? I tell you that they have mistreated this poor woman terribly. They have insinuated that she would not come to the tower to see Frank–had deserted him. When we know that she stayed away from the jail at Frank’s own request because he did not want to submit her to the humiliation of seeing him locked up and to the vulgar gaze of the morbid and to the cameras of the newspaper men. The most awful thing in the whole case is the way this family has been mistreated!

The way they invaded Frank’s home and manipulated his servants. I deny that the people who did this are representative of the 175,000 people of Fulton county. We are a fair people, and we are a chivalrous people. Such acts as these are not in our natures.

Conley next changes the time of the writing of the notes to Saturday, but denies knowledge of the murder. That, of course, did not satisfy these gentlemen, and they went back to him. They knew he was dodging incrimination. So they had him to change the statement again. Scott and other detectives spent six hours at the time with Conley on occasions and used profanity and worried him to get a confession. Hooper thinks that we have to break down Conley’s testimony on the stand, but there is no such ruling. You can’t tell when to believe him, he has lied so much. Scott says the detectives went over the testimony with Dorsey. There is where my friend got into it. They grilled Conley for six hours, trying to impress on him the fact that Frank would not have written the notes on Friday. They wanted another statement. He insisted that he had no other statement to make, but he did change the time of the writing of the notes from Friday to Saturday. This shows, gentlemen, as clearly as anything can show, how they got Conley ‘s statements.

In the statement of May 29, they had nothing from Jim Conley about his knowledge of the killing of the little girl, and the negro merely said that Frank had told him something about the girl having received a fall and about his helping Frank to hide the body. Oh, Conley, we are going to have you tell enough to have you convict Frank and yet keep yourself clear. That’s a smart negro, that Conley. And you notice how the state bragged on him because he stood up under the cross-examination of Colonel Rosser. Well, that negro’s been well versed in law. Scott and Black and Starnes drilled him; they gave him the broad hints.

We came here to go to trial, and knew nothing of the negro’s claim to seeing the cord around the little girl’s neck, or of his claim of seeing Lemmie Quinn go into the factory, or of a score of other things. Yet, Conley was then telling the truth, he said, and he had thrown Frank aside. Oh, he was no longer shielding Frank, and yet he didn’t tell it all when he said he was telling the whole truth. Well, Conley had a revelation, you know. My friend Dorsey visited with him seven times. And my friend, Jim Starnes, and my Irish friend, Patrick Campbell, they visited him, and on each visit Conley saw new light. Well, I guess they showed him things and other things. Does Jim tell a thing because it’s the truth, gentlemen of the jury, or because it fits into something that another witness has told?

Scott says they told him thing that fitted. And Conley changed things every time he had a visit from Dorsey and the detectives. Are you going to hang a man on that?

Gentlemen, it’s foolish for me to have to argue such a thing. The man that wrote those murder notes is the man who killed that girl. Prove that man was there and that he wrote the notes and you know who killed the girl. Well, Conley acknowledges he wrote the notes and witnesses have proved he was there and he admits that, too. That negro was in the building near the elevator shaft; it took but two steps for him to grab that little girl’s mesh bag. She probably held on to it and struggled with him. A moment later he had struck her in the eye and she had fallen. It is the work of a moment for Conley to throw her down the elevator shaft. Isn’t it more probable that the story I have outlined is true than the one that Conley tells on Frank?

Suppose Conley were now under indictment and Frank out, how long would such a story against Frank stand the pressure? In the statement of May 29 there are any number of things that are not told of which later were told on the stand. In the May 29 statement Conley never told of seeing Mary Phagan enter; he never told of seeing Monteen Stover enter, nor of seeing Lemmie Quinn enter; now he tells of having seen all of them enter. Don’t you see how they just made it to fit witnesses and what the witnesses would swear? It was, “Here, Conley, swear that Quinn came up, swear that the dead girl came up, and swear that Miss Stover came up ; they all did, and it’s true, swear to it !” And Conley would say, “All right, boss, Ah reckon they did.” And it was “Conley, how did you fail to hear that girl go into the metal room? We know she went there, because by our blood and hair we have proved she was killed there,” and the poor negro thought a minute, and then he said, “Yes, boss, I heard her go in.” The state’s representatives had put it into the negro’s head to swear he heard Frank go in with her, and that he heard Frank come tiptoeing out later, and that by that method they made Conley swear that Frank was a moral pervert.

Now, I don’t know that they told Conley to swear to this and to swear to that, but they made the suggestions, and Conley knew whom he had to please. He knew that when he pleased the detectives that the rope knot around his neck grew looser. In the same way they made Conley swear about Dalton, and in the same way about Daisy Hopkins. They didn’t ask him about the mesh bag. They forgot that until Conley got on the stand. That mesh bag and that pay envelope furnish the true motive for this crime, too, and if the girl was ravished, Conley did it after he had robbed her and thrown her body into the basement.

Well, they got Conley on the stand, and my friend Dorsey here asked Conley about the mesh bag, and he said, yes, Frank had put it in his safe. That was the crowning lie of all! Well, they’ve gone on this way, adding one thing and another, thing. They wouldn’t let Conley out of jail; they had their own reasons for that, and yet I never heard that old man over there (pointing to the sheriff) called dishonest. He runs his jail in a way to protect the innocent and not to convict them in this jail.

Gentlemen, right here a little girl was murdered, and it’s a terrible crime. The Phagan tragedy, the crime that stirred Atlanta as none other ever did. We have already got in court the man who wrote those notes, and the man who by his own confession was there; the man who robbed her, and, gentlemen, why go further in seeking the murderer than the black brute who sat there by the elevator shaft?

The man who sat by that elevator shaft is the man who committed the crime. He was full of passion and lust ; he had drunk of mean whiskey, and he wanted money at first to buy more whiskey. [Mr. Arnold asked the sheriff to unwrap a chart which had previously been brought into court. It proved to be a chronological chart of Frank’s alleged movements on Saturday, April 26, the day of the crime, and Mr. Arnold announced to the jury that he would prove by the chart that it was a physical impossibility for Frank to have committed the crime.]

Every word on that chart is taken from the evidence, and it will show you that Frank did not have time to commit the crime charged to him. The state has wriggled a lot in this affair; they put up little George Epps, and he swore that he and Mary Phagan got to town about seven after twelve, and then they used other witnesses, and my friend Dorsey tried to boot the Epps boy’s evidence aside as though it were nothing. The two street car men, Hollis and Mathews, say that Mary Phagan got to Forsyth and Marietta at five or six minutes after twelve, and they stuck to it, despite every attempt to bulldoze them, and then Mathews, who rode on the car to Whitehall and Mitchell, says that Mary Phagan rode around with him to Broad and Hunter streets before she got off.

Well, the state put up McCoy, the man who never got his watch out of soak until about the time he was called as a witness, and they had him swear that he looked at his watch at Walton and Forsyth (and he never had any watch), and it was 12 o’clock exactly, and then he walked down the street and saw Mary Phagan on her way to the factory. Now, I don’t believe McCoy ever saw Mary Phagan. Epps may have seen her, but the State apparently calls him a liar, when they introduce other testimony to show a change of time to what he swore to. It’s certain those two street car men who knew the girl, saw her, but the state comes in with the watchless McCoy and Kendley, the Jew-hater, and try to advance new theories about the time and different ones from what their own witness had sworn to. Well, we have enough to prove the time, all right; we have the street car schedule, the statement of Hollis and Mathews and of George Epps, the state’s own witness.

The next thing is, how long did it take Conley to go through with what he claims happened from the time he went into Frank’s office and was told to get the body until he left the factory. According to Conley’s own statement, he started at four minutes to 1 o’clock and got through at 1:30 o’clock, making 34 minutes in all Harlee Branch says that he was there when the detectives made Conley go through with what he claimed took place, and that he started then at 12 :17, and by Mr. Branch’s figures, it took Conley 50 minutes to complete the motions. Well, the state has attacked nearly everybody we have brought into this case, but they didn’t attack Dr. William Owen, and he showed by his experiments that Conley could not have gone through those motions in 34 minutes. Jim Conley declared that he started at 4 minutes to 1 o’clock to get the body, and that he and Frank left at 1 :30. If we ever pinned the negro down to anything, we did to that, and we have shown that he could not have done all that in 34 minutes.

Away with your filth and your dirty, shameful evidence of perversion; your low street gossip, and come back to the time–the time-element in the case. Now, I don’t believe the little Stover girl ever went into the inner office. She was a sweet, innocent, timid little girl, and she just peeped into the office from the outer one, and if Frank was in there, the safe door hid him from her view, or if he was not there, he might have stepped out for just a moment. Oh, my friend, Dorsey, he stops clocks and he changes schedules, and he even changes a man’s whole physical make-up, and he’s almost changed the course of time in an effort to get Frank convicted. Oh, I hate to think of little Mary Phagan in this. I hate to think that such a sweet, pure, good little girl as she was, with never a breath of anything wrong whispered against her, should have her memory polluted with such rotten evidence against an innocent man.

Well, Mary Phagan entered the factory at approximately 12 minutes after 12, and did you ever stop to think that it was Frank who told them that the girl entered the office when she entered it? If he had killed her he would have just slipped her pay envelope back in the safe and declared that he never saw her that day at all, and then no one could have ever explained how she got into that basement. But Frank couldn’t know that there was hatred enough left in this country against his race to bring such a hideous charge against him.

Well, the little girl entered, and she got her pay and asked about the metal and then she left, but, there was a black spider waiting down there near the elevator shaft, a great passionate, lustful animal, full of mean whiskey and wanting money with which to buy more whiskey. He was as full of vile lust as he was of the passion for more whiskey, and the negro (and there are a thousand of them in Atlanta who would assault a white woman if they had the chance and knew they wouldn’t get caught) robbed her and struck her and threw her body down the shaft, and later he carried it back, and maybe, if she was alive, when he came back, he committed a worse crime, and then he put the cord around her neck and left the body there.

Do you suppose Frank would have gone out at 1 :20 o’clock and left that body in the basement and those two men, White and Denham, at work upstairs? Do you suppose an intelligent man like Frank would have risked running that elevator, like Conley says he did, with the rest of the machinery of the factory shut off and nothing to prevent those men up there hearing him? Well, Frank says he left the factory at 1 o’clock, and Conley says he left there at 1 :30. Now, there’s a little girl, who tried the week before to get a job as stenographer in Frank’s office, who was standing at Whitehall and Alabama streets, and saw Frank at ten minutes after 1. Did she lie? Well, Dorsey didn’t try to show it, and according to Dorsey, everybody lied except Conley and Dalton and Albert McKnight. This little girl says she knows it was Frank, because Professor Briscoe had introduced her to him the week before, and she knows the time of day because she had looked at a clock, as she had an engagement to meet another little girl. That stamps your Conley story a lie blacker than hell!

Then, Mrs. Levy, she’s a Jew, but she’s telling the truth; she was looking for her son to come home, and she saw Frank get off the car at his home corner, and she looked at her clock and saw it was 1 :20. Then, Mrs. Selig and Mr. Selig swore on the stand that they knew he came in at 1 :20. Oh, of course, Dorsey says they are Frank’s parents and wretched liars when they say they saw him come in at 1 :20. There’s no one in this case that can tell the truth but Conley, Dalton and Albert McKnight. They are the lowest dregs and jail-birds, and all that, but they are the only ones who know how to tell the truth! Well, now Albert says he was there at the Selig home when Frank came in; of course he is lying, for his wife and the Seligs prove that, but he’s the state’s witness and he says Frank got there at 1 :30, and thus he brands Conley’s story about Frank’s leaving the factory at 1:30 a lie. Well, along the same lines, Albert says Frank didn’t eat and that he was nervous, and Albert says he learned all this by looking into a mirror in the dining room, and seeing Frank’s reflection. Then Albert caps the climax to his series of lies by having Frank board the car for town at Pulliam street and Glenn.

Now as to the affidavit signed by Minola McKnight, the cook for Mr. and Mrs. Emil Selig. How would you feel, gentlemen of the jury, if your cook, who had done no wrong and for whom no warrant had been issued, and from whom the solicitor had already got a statement, was to be locked up? Well, they got that wretched husband of Minola ‘s by means of Graven and Pickett, two men seeking a reward, and then they got Minola, and they said to her, “Oh, Minola, why don’t you tell the truth like Albert’s telling it?” They had no warrant when they locked this woman up. Starnes was guilty of a crime when he locked that woman up without a warrant, and Dorsey was, too, if he had anything to do with it. Now, George Gordon, Minola’s lawyer, says that he asked Dorsey about getting the woman out, and Dorsey replied, “I’m afraid to give my consent to turning her loose; I might get in bad with the detective department.” That’s the way you men got evidence, was it?

Miss Rebecca Carson, a forewoman of the National Pencil factory, swore Frank had a good character. The state had introduced witnesses who swore that the woman and Frank had gone into the woman’s dressing room when no one was around. I brand it a culmination of all lies when this woman was attacked. Frank had declared her to be a perfect lady with no shadow of suspicion against her. Well, Frank went on back to the factory that afternoon when he had eaten his lunch, and he started in and made out the financial sheet. I don’t reckon he could have done that if he had just committed a murder, particularly when the state says he was so nervous the next morning that he shook and trembled. Then, the state says Frank wouldn’t look at the corpse. But who said he didn’t t Nobody. Why, Gheesling and Black didn’t swear to that. Now, gentlemen, I’ve about finished this chapter, and I know it’s been long and hard on you and I know it’s been hard on me, too; I’m almost broken down, but it means a lot to that man over there. It means a lot to him, and don’t forget that.

This case has been made up of just two things – prejudice and perjury. I’ve never seen such malice, such personal hatred in all my life, and I don’t think anyone ever has. The crime itself is dreadful, too horrible to talk about, and God grant that the murderer may be found out, and I think he has. I think we can point to Jim Conley and say there is the man. But, above all, gentlemen, let’s follow the law in this matter. In circumstantial cases you can’t convict a man as long as there’s any other possible theory for the crime of which he is accused, and you can’t find Frank guilty if there’s a chance that Conley is the murderer. The state has nothing on which to base their case but Conley, and we’ve shown Conley a liar. Write your verdict of not guilty and your consciences will give your approval.

_____

MR. ROSSER, FOR THE PRISONER.

Mr. Rosser:

Gentlemen of the jury. All things come to an end. With the end of this case has almost come the end of the speakers, and but for the masterly effort of my brother, Arnold, I almost wish it had ended with no speaking. My condition is such that I can say but little ; my voice is husky and my throat almost gone. But for my interest in this case and my profound conviction of the innocence of this man, I would not undertake to speak at all. I want to repeat what my friend, Arnold, said so simply. He said this jury is no mob. The attitude of the juror’s mind is not that of the mind of the man who carelessly walks the streets. My friend, Hooper, must have brought that doctrine with.him when he came to Atlanta. We walk the street carelessly and we meet our friends and do not recognize them; we are too much absorbed in our own interests. Our minds wander in flights of fancy or in fits of reverence ; we may mean no harm to ourselves, nor to our friends, but we are careless. No oath binds us when we walk the streets.

Men, you are different; you are set aside; you ceased when you took your juror’s oath to be one of the rollicking men of the streets; you were purged by your oath. In old pagan Rome the women laughed and chattered on the streets as they went to and fro, but there were a few – the Vestal Virgins – they cared not for the gladiatorial games, nor the strife of the day. So it is with you men, set apart; you care not for the chatter and laughter of the rabble; you are unprejudiced and it is your duty to pass on a man’s life with no passion and no cruelty, but as men purged by an oath from the careless people of the streets. You are to decide from the evidence, with no fear of a hostile mob and no thought of favor to anyone.

What suggestion comes into a man’s mind when he thinks of a crime like this? And what crime could be more horrible than this one? What punishment too great for the brute in human form who committed it and who excited this community to a high pitch? Since 1908 the National Pencil factory has employed hundreds of girls and women, and also men, and not all of the girls and women, not all of the men have been perfect, but you can find good men and women in all strata of life, and yet the detectives, working with microscopes and with the aid of my friend, Dorsey, excited almost beyond peradventure, found only two to swear against Frank. They found Dalton and they found Conley.

Well, I’ll take up Conley at a more fitting time, but Dalton, who is Dalton? God Almighty writes on a man’s face and he don’t always write a pretty hand, but he writes a legible one. When you see Dalton you put your hand on your pocketbook. When Dalton took the stand Mr. Arnold and I had never had the pleasure of seeing his sweet countenance before, but Mr. Arnold leaned over and whispered in my ear, “There’s a thief if there ever was one.” I smelt about him the odor of the chain gang, and I began to feel him out. I asked him if he had ever been away from home for any length of time, and he knew at once what I meant and he began to dodge and to wriggle, and before he left the stand I was sure he was a thief. Dalton was on, three times in Walton county and then in another county where he probably went to escape further trouble in Walton, he got into trouble again. It wasn’t just the going wrong of a young man who falls once and tries to get over it, but it was the steady thievery of a man at heart a thief. Of course, Dalton comes here to Atlanta and reforms. Yes, he joined a Godly congregation and persuaded them that he had quit his evil ways. That’s an old trick of thieves and they use it to help their trade along. I believe in the divine power of regeneration; I believe that you can reform, that there’s always time to turn back and do right, but there’s one kind of man whom I don’t believe can ever reform. Once a thief, always a thief.

Our Master knew it. He recognized the qualities of a thief. You remember when they crucified Him and He hung on the cross there on the hill. Well, He had a thief hanging beside Him, and He said to that thief, “This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” He didn’t dare say tomorrow. He knew He’d better say today, because by tomorrow that thief would be stealing again in Jerusalem.

Dalton disgraced the name of his race, and he was a thief and worse, if there can be, and yet he joined the church. He joined the church and he’s now a decent, believable man. Well, you remember how brazenly he sat here on the stand and bragged of his “peach,” how indecently he bragged of his fall; how he gloated over his vice. He was asked if he ever went to that miserable, dirty factory basement with a woman for immoral purposes, and he was proud to say that he had. Gentlemen, it was the first time Dalton had ever been in the limelight; it was the first time decent, respectable white men and women had ever listened to him with respect, let alone attention. When he was asked about that, if he was guilty, if he had fallen, he might have declined to answer, he might have hung his head in shame, as any decent, respectable man would have done, but instead, he bragged and boasted of it.

When Dalton was asked what sort of a woman Frank had, he brazenly and braggingly said he did not know, that he himself had such a peach there that he could not take his eyes off her to look at Frank’s woman. Well, you have seen Dalton ‘s peach; you all have seen Daisy. Conley tells a different story. He says Frank took the peach (that lemon) for himself and that Dalton had to get him another woman. I’m not saying that we are all free of passion, that we are all moral and perfect, but at least the decent man don’t brag of having a peach.

Well, if you believe Dalton ‘s story, and let’s presume it true now. If you believe it he went into that scuttle hole there at the factory with Daisy. Dalton took that woman into the factory, into a dirty, nasty, fetid hole where the slime oozed and where no decent dog or cat would go, and there he satisfied his passion. That’s what he told us. Well, Dalton told us he went there about 2 o’clock one Saturday afternoon last year, and of course, at that time the Clarke Wooden Ware company occupied the lower floor and used the same entrance that the National Pencil Company did, and Frank was at lunch and knew nothing of Dalton’s visit Of course, Dalton left an oozy trail behind him; wherever he went he did that. You can still feel it in this court room. Of course, too, Dalton may have gone into the pencil factory that day and left his oozy, slimy trail there, but otherwise there’s nothing against the factory, and you know there’s not, for our great quartet – Starnes and Campbell and Black (oh, how I love Black ; I always want to put my arms around him whenever I think of him), and Scott, for he was with that crowd; they tried their very best to find something that would show that factory up as a vile hole.

Well, there’s another reason that proves conclusively that it was not the assignation place Dalton and Conley name it. It has always been wrong for men and women to commit fornication and adultery, but it’s always been done and the world, as long as it was done decently and quietly and not bragged about and blazoned forth in public places, has rather allowed it to go unchecked, but it’s not so now. You know, I know the working people of this state and this city. I’ve always worked with my head and it’s never been my good fortune to be one of the working people, but there are no silken ladies in my ancestry, nor are there any dudish men. I know the working men and the working women, because that blood runs in my veins, and if any man in Atlanta knows them I do, and I tell you that there are no 100 working girls and women in Atlanta who could be got together by raking with a fine-tooth comb who’d stay there at that factory with conditions as bad as they have been painted, and there are no 100 working men here so thin blooded as to allow such conditions there.

Frank’s statement to the jury, it was Frank’s handiwork only, and neither he nor Mr. Arnold knew what Frank was going to say when he got on the stand. Look at the statement this man made to you, and it was his statement, not mine. I can prove that by the simple reason that I haven’t got brains enough to have made it up, and Mr. Arnold (though he’s got far more brains than I), he could not have made it. Mr. Arnold might have given it the same weight and thickness, but not the living ring of truth. Now, another thing. We didn’t have to put Frank’s character up. If we hadn’t the judge would have told yon Frank must be presumed to have a good character, and that you did not have the right to ask that question about him, but we thought you were, and we put it up and see what a character the man has. There’s not a man in the sound of my voice who could prove a better character. Of course, I mean from the credible evidence, not that stuff of Conley’s and Dalton’s.

But you say, some people, some former employes swore he had a bad character. You know that when you want to, you can always get someone to swear against anybody’s character. Put me in his place and let my friend, Arnold, be foolish enough to put my character up and there ‘d be plenty of those I have maybe hurt or offended as I have gone through life, would swear it was wrong, and I believe I’ve got an ordinarily good character. Why, you could bring twenty men here in Fulton county to swear that Judge Roan, there on the bench, has a bad character. You know that he’s had to judge men and sometimes to be what they thought was severe on them, and he’s naturally made men hate him and they’d gladly come and swear his character away. But if the men and women who live near him, the good and decent men and women, who lived near him and knew, came up and said his character was good, you’d believe them, wouldn’t you?

Well, gentlemen, the older I get the gentler I get and I wouldn’t think or say anything wrong about those misleading little girls who swore Frank was a bad man. I guess they thought they were telling the truth. Well, did Miss Maggie Griffin really think Frank was a vicious man and yet work there three years with him! Don’t you think she heard things against him after the crime was committed and that when she got up here and looked through the heated atmosphere of this trial, she did not see the real truth! And Miss Maggie Griffin, she was there two months. I wonder what she could know about Frank in that time. There was Mrs. Donegan and Miss Johnson and another girl there about two months, and Nellie Potts, who never worked there at all, and Mary Wallace, there three days, and Estelle Wallace, there a week and Carrie Smith, who like Miss Cato, worked there three years. These are the only ones in the hundreds who have worked there since 1908 who will say that Frank has a had character. Why, you could find more people to say that the Bishop of Atlanta, I believe, had a bad character, than have been brought against Frank.

You noticed they were not able to get any men to come from the factory and swear against Frank. Men are harder to wheedle than are little girls. Does anybody doubt that if that factory had been the bed of vice that they call it, that the long-legged Gantt would have know of it? They had Gantt on the stand twice, and, well, you know Gantt was discharged from the factory, of course you weren’t told why in plain words, but you all know why. Well, Frank is not liked by Gantt and Gantt would have loved to tell something against his former employer, but he couldn’t. If they have any further suspicions against this man, they haven’t given them, either because they are afraid or are unable to prove their suspicions, if they have such suspicions, though, and are doing you a worse injustice.

What are these suspicions that they have advanced thus far? First, Miss Robinson is said to have said that she saw Frank teaching Mary Phagan how to work. Dorsey reached for it on the instant, scenting something improper as is quite characteristic of him. But Miss Robinson denies it. There’s nothing in it, absolutely nothing. Then they say he called her Mary. Well, what about it? What if he did! We all have bad memories. If you met me on the street six months ago, can you recall right now whether you called me Luther or Rosser?

The next is Willie Turner – poor little Willie! I have nothing against Willie. He seems to be a right clever sort of a boy. But just think of the methods the detectives used against him – think of the way they handled him, and think of the way Dorsey treated him on the witness stand. He says – Willie does – that he saw Frank talking to Mary Phagan in the metal room. What does it show if he did see such a scene? I can’t see for the life of me where it indicates any sign of lascivious lust. Does what Willie Turner saw, taking for granted he saw it, show that Frank was planning to ruin little Mary Phagan? Does it uphold this plot my friend Hooper had so much to say about? Even with that, considering Willie Turner did see such a thing, there’s one fact that takes the sting out of it. He saw it in broad daylight. Frank was with the little girl right in front of Lemmie Quinn’s office in an open factory where there were a lot of people and where the girls were quitting their work and getting ready to go home to dinner. It wasn’t so, though, and Frank never made any improper advances to this little girl. Let me tell you why. Mary Phagan was a good girl, as pure as God makes them and as innocent. She was all that, and more. But, she would have known a lascivious advance or an ogling eye the minute she saw it, and the minute this man made any sort of a move to her, she would have fled instantly to home to tell this good father and mother of hers.

Then next, they bring Dewey Hewell, who says she saw Frank with his hand on Mary’s shoulder. That’s all right, but there is Grace Hix and Helen Ferguson and Magnolia Kennedy who contradict her and say Frank never knew Mary Phagan. You can say all you please about such as that, but there is one fact that stands out indisputable. If that little girl had ever received mistreatment at the pencil factory, no deer would have bounded more quickly from the brush at the bay of dogs than she would have fled home to tell her father and mother.

Now, my friend from the Wiregrass says Gantt was a victim of his “plot” by Frank against Mary Phagan. I don’t doubt that this “plot” has been framed in the hearing of every detective in the sound of my voice. Hooper says Frank plotted to get the girl there on the Saturday she was killed – says he plotted with Jim Conley. Jim says Frank told him at four o’clock Friday afternoon to return on the next morning. How could Frank have known she was coming back Saturday? He couldn’t have known. He’s no seer, no mind-reader, although he’s a mighty bright man. It is true that some of the pay envelopes were left over on Friday, but he didn’t know whose they were.

Helen Ferguson says that on Friday she asked for Mary Phagan’s pay and that Frank refused to give it to her, saying Mary would come next day and get it herself. Magnolia Kennedy swears to the contrary. You have one or the other to believe. Consider, though, that this be true! How would Frank know who would be in the factory when Mary Phagan came? How did he know she was coming Saturday! Some envelopes went over to Monday and Tuesday. How would he know whether she would come on Saturday or either of these latter days?

Now, what else have they put up against this man! They say he was nervous. We admit he was. Black says it, Darley says it, Sig. Montag says it – others say it! The handsome Mr. Darley was nervous and our friend Schiff was nervous. Why not hang them if you’re hanging men for nervousness! Isaac Haas – old man Isaac – openly admits he was nervous. The girls – why don’t you hang them, these sweet little girls in the factory – all of whom were so nervous they couldn’t work on the following day! If you had seen this little child, crushed, mangled, mutilated, with the sawdust crumbled in her eyes and her tongue protruding; staring up from that stinking, smelling basement, you’d have been nervous, too, every mother’s son of you. Gentlemen, I don’t profess to be chicken-hearted. I can see grown men hurt and suffering and I can stand a lot of things without growing hysterical, but I never walked along the street and heard the pitiful cry of a girl or woman without becoming nervous. God grant I will always be so. Frank looked at the mangled form and crushed virginity of Mary Phagan and his nerves fluttered. Hang him! Hang him!

Another suspicious circumstance. He didn’t wake up when they telephoned him that morning the body was found. That might depend on what he ate that night; it might depend on a lot of other things. Some of us wake with the birds, while others slumber even through the tempting call of the breakfast bell. Would you hang us for that!

Then, they say he hired a lawyer, and they call it suspicious – mighty suspicious. They wouldn’t have kicked if he had hired Rube Arnold, because Rube has a good character. But they hired me and they kicked and yelled “suspicious” so loudly you could hear it all the way from here to Jesup’s cut. I don’t know that I had ever met Frank before that morning, but I had represented the pencil factory previously. And as to their employing me, it’s this way: There’s no telling what was floating around in John Black’s head that morning. They sent men after Frank and there was no telling what was likely to happen to him. They were forced to do something in his own defense. And, as a result, the state’s worst suspicion is the fact that they employed me and Herbert Haas. Now, gentlemen, let’s see what there is in it; I have told you that twice on that Sunday he had been to police headquarters without counsel, without friends. The next day they adopted new methods of getting him there and sent two detectives for him. Black had said he had been watching Frank, and woe to him who is haunted by the eagle eye of dear old John. They took him to police station Monday – took him I say. The police idea was to show their fangs. He was under arrest, that’s an undisputed fact. They had him at police station, Lanford, in his wonted dignity, sitting around doing nothing, letting Frank soak. Beavers, the handsome one, was doing the same. Frank didn’t call for friends or lawyer. He didn’t call for anything. If he had known what he was up against, though, in this police department of ours, he’d probably have called for two lawyers – or even more. But old man Sig Montag, who has been here a long time, knew this old police crowd and he knew their tactics. He was well on to their curves. He knew what danger there was to Frank. He called up Haas. Haas didn’t want to come to the police station – he had a good reason. Sig went to the police station and was refused permission to see Frank.

Now, I want you to get that in your mind. A citizen – not under arrest, as they say – held without the privilege of seeing friends, relatives or counsel. It was a deplorable state of affairs. What happened? Haas went to the phone and called an older and more experienced head to battle with this police iniquity; Why shouldn’t he? Dorsey sees in this harmless message a chance. He snaps at it like a snake. Dorsey is a good man – in his way. He’ll he a better man, though, when he gets older and loses some of his present spirit and venom. There are things he has done in this trial that will never be done again. Gentlemen, I assure you of that.

Did Frank do anything else suspicious? Just two others, according to Hooper from the Wiregrass. One of which was the employment of a detective agency to ferret out this horrible murder that had been committed in his factory building. Why? Under what circumstances? I’ll tell you. Frank had been to the police station and had given his statement. Haas was the man who telephoned me and who employed me – not Frank. I went to police headquarters and was very much unwelcomed. There was a frigid atmosphere as I walked in. I saw Frank for the first time in my life. I said: “What’s the matter, boys?” Somebody answered that Mr. Frank was under arrest. Black was there, Lanford was there. Neither took the pains to deny that he was under arrest. Somebody said they wanted Mr. Frank to make a statement, and I advised him to go ahead and make it. When he went into the office, I followed. They said: “We don’t want you.” I replied that whether they wanted me or not, I was coming, anyhow. I had a good reason, too, for coming. I wanted to hear what he said so they couldn’t distort his words.

While we were in the room a peculiar thing happened. Frank exposed his person. There were no marks. I said that it was preposterous to think that a man could commit such a crime and not bear some marks. Lanford’s face fell. Why didn’t Lanford get on the stand and deny it? Was it because he didn’t want to get into a loving conflict with me? Or did he want to keep from reopening the dark and nasty history of the Conley story and the Minola McKnight story that are hidden in the still darker recesses of police headquarters? Frank makes his statement and is released. He goes back to the pencil factory, assuming that suspicion has been diverted from him. He thinks of the horrible murder that has been committed in his plant. He telephones Sig Montag about hiring a detective agency to solve the crime. Sig advises him to do it. I don’t believe there is any detective living who can consort with crooks and criminals and felons, scheme with them, mingle with them and spy on the homes of good people and bad who can then exalt his character as a result. He absorbs some of the atmosphere and the traits. It is logical that he should. But, even at that they’ve got some good men in the detective and police department.

Old man Sig Montag said hire a detective and Frank hired the Pinkertons. Scott came and took Frank’s statement and said: “We work in co-operation with the city police department.” Now, isn’t that a horrible situation – going hand in glove with the police department? But, it’s a fact. Just as soon as Scott left Frank, he walked down, arm in arm with John Black, to the nasty, smelly basement of the pencil factory. What did that mean? It meant a complete line-up with the police. It meant if the police turn you loose, I turn you loose. If the police hang you, I hang you! Gentlemen, take a look at this spectacle, if you can. Here is a Jewish boy from the north. He is unacquainted with the south. He came here alone and without friends and he stood alone. This murder happened in his place of business. He told the Pinkertons to find the man, trusting to them entirely, no matter where or what they found might strike. He is defenseless and helpless. He knows his innocence and is willing to find the murderer. They try to place the murder on him. God, all merciful and all powerful, look upon a scene like this!

Anything else? Yes. Look at this. I do not believe my friend who preceded me intended to do this. I refer to the incident about the time slip. I have to use harsh words here, but I don’t want to. This seems to me the most unkindest exit of all. They say that that time slip was planted. They say the shirt was planted. Gentlemen, is there any evidence of this? Let’s see about this statement. Black and somebody else, I believe, went out to Newt’s house on Tuesday morning and found the shirt in the bottom of a barrel. They brought the shirt back to the police station and Newt said the shirt was his – or it looked like his shirt. Newt Lee had been hired at the factory but three weeks, yet they want you to believe that they found a shirt like the old man had and went out to his house and put it in a barrel.

One thing is wrong. The newspapers and others, I am afraid, think this is a contest between lawyers. It is not. God forbid that I should let any such thing enter into this case when this boy’s life is at stake.

There are several things I don’t understand about this case, and never will. Why old man Lee didn’t find the body sooner; why he found it lying on its face ; how he saw it from a place he could not have seen it from.

I was raised with niggers and know something about them. I do not know them as well as the police, perhaps, for they know them like no one else. But I know something about them. There must have been a nigger in the crime who knew about it before Newt or anyone else. I am afraid Newt knew.

Yet, if he did, he is one of the most remarkable niggers I ever saw and I wish I had his nerve. There were things you detectives did to him for which you will never be forgiven. You persecuted the old nigger, and all you got was “Fo’ God I don’t know.” I don’t believe he killed her, but I believe he knows more than he told.

But they say now that he jumped back. Suppose he did jump back. Look at the boy (Frank). If you put a girl the size of Mary Phagan in a room with him she could make him jump out of the window. Suddenly this boy stepped out in front of this giant of a Gantt, and he jumped back. Dorsey would have done the same thing; Newt Lee would; Jim Conley would, and I would, as big as I am.

Here is another suspicious thing. Newt Lee came to the factory at four o’clock and Frank sent the old man away. It was suggested that he was afraid the nigger would find the body, yet when he came back at six, Frank let him stay at the factory when he knew that in 30 minutes Newt was on the job he must go into the basement where they say Frank knew the body was.

They say he was laughing at his home. If he had known of the crime of which he would be accused, that laugh would have been the laugh of a maniac to be ended by the discovery of the body.

Another suspicious thing. You know that he was in the factory, but it turns out that he was not the only one. If the corpse was found in the basement and he was the only one in the building, then there might be some basis. But he was in an open room and there were workmen upstairs. My friend tried to dispute that. That wasn’t all. Conley was also there, and it came out yesterday that there was also another nigger – a lighter nigger than Conley – there. What scoundrels in white skin were in the building and had opportunity to commit the crime, God only knows.

The thing that arises in this case to fatigue my indignation is that men born of such parents should believe the statement of Conley against the statement of Frank. Who is Conley? Who was Conley as he used to be and as you have seen him? He was a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger. Black knows that. Starnes knows that. Chief Beavers knows it.

Who was it that made this dirty nigger come up here looking so slick? Why didn’t they let you see him as he was? They shaved him, washed him and dressed him up.

Gentlemen of the jury, the charge of moral perversion against a man is a terrible thing for him, but it is even more so when that man has a wife and mother to be affected by it. Dalton, even Dalton did not say this against Frank. It was just Conley. Dalton, you remember, did not even say that Frank was guilty of wrong-doing as far as he knew. There never was any proof of Frank’s alleged moral perversion, unless you call Jim Conley proof.

None of these niggers ever came up and said Conley was there and that they were with him. Starnes – and Starnes could find a needle in a haystack, but the Lord only knows what he’d do in an acre – he could not find any of these niggers.

Then there was that old negro drayman, old McCrary, the old peg-leg negro drayman, and thank God he was an oldtimer, ‘fo de war nigger.

You know Conley, wishing to add a few finishing trimmings to his lines, said that old McCrary sent him down in the basement that Saturday morning and when the old darkey was put on the stand he said simply, “No, boss, I never sent him down thar.” Everywhere you go you find that Conley lied. He says he watched there one Saturday last year between 2 and 3 o’clock. Well, Schiff says he didn’t and so does Darley and Holloway, the latter guaranteed by the state, and the little office boys, nice looking little chaps from nice families, they all say he didn’t. Cut out Conley and you strip the case to nothing. Did you hear the way Conley told his story? Have you ever heard an actor, who knew his Shakespearean plays, his “Merchant of Venice” or his “Hamlet”? He can wake up at any time of the night and say those lines, but he can’t say any lines of a play he has never learned. So it was with Conley. He could tell the story of the disposition of the girl’s body, and he knew it so well he could reel it off backward or forward, any old way, but when you got to asking him about other things, he always had one phrase, “Boss, ah can’t ‘member dat.”

They say Conley could not have made up that story. Well, I don’t know about that. There is something queer in the whole thing, you know. I conldn’t climb that post over there, gentlemen. I mean I couldn’t go very far up it, but if I had Professor Starnes, and Professor Black, and Professor Campbell, and Professor Rosser, and then Dean Lanford to help me, I’d go quite a way up. Well, they took a notion Mrs. White had seen the negro, and they carried Mrs. White there to see him, and he twisted up his features so that she couldn’t recognize him. Next, they learned Conley could write. Frank told them that, you know. Well, I don’t mean to be severe, but they took that negro and they gave him the third degree. Black and Scott cursed him. “You black scoundrel,” they yelled at him. “You know that man never had you come there and write those notes on Friday!” And the poor negro, understanding and trying to please, said, “Yes, boss, zat’s right, ah was dere on Saturday.”

And so they went on and got first one affidavit and then another out of him. Well, Scott and Black had him there, and Conley was only in high school. I don’t know whether to call Scott and Black “professors” or not. Scott says, “We told him what would fit and what would not.” And it was “stand up, James Conley and recite, when did you fix those notes, James?” and James would answer that he fixed them on Friday, and then the teachers would tell James it was surely wrong, that he must have fixed them on Saturday, and James would know what was wanted and would acknowledge his error. Then it would be, “That’s a good lesson, James, you are excused, James.” I’m not guessing in this thing. Scott told it on the stand, only in not so plain words. So it was that when this negro had told the whole truth they had another recitation.

Was it fair for two skilled white men to train that negro by the hour and by the day and to teach him and then get a statement from him and call it the truth? Well, Professors Black and Scott finished with him, and they thought Conley’s education was through, but that nigger had to have a university course!

Scott, you and Black milked him dry; you thought you did, anyhow, but you got no moral perversion and no watching. In the university they gave a slightly different course. It was given by Professors Starnes and Campbell. Oh, I wish I could look as pious as Starnes does. And Professor Dorsey helped out, I suppose. I don’t know what Professor Dorsey did, only he gave him several lessons, and they must have been just sort of finishing touches before he got his degree. Well, in the university course they didn’t dare put the steps in writing, as they had done in the high school; it would have been too easy to trace from step to step, the suggestions made, the additions and subtractions here and there. Professor Dorsey had him seven times, I know that, but God alone knows how many times the detectives had him.

Was it fair to take this weak, pliable negro and have these white men teach him, one after another? Who knows what is the final story that Conley will tell? He added the mesh bag when he was on the stand.

Mary Phagan had reached the factory at approximately twelve minutes after 12, and it must have been after Monteen Stover had gone. See the statements of W. M. Mathews and W. T. Hollis, street car men called by the defense, and George Epps, the little newsie, called by the state, and also the street car schedule. But, supposing that she was there at 12:05, as I believe the state claims, then Monteen Stover must have seen her. I don’t see how they could have helped meeting. But suppose she got there a moment after Monteen Stover left, then Lemmie Quinn was there at 12:20, and he found Frank at work. Could Frank have murdered a girl and hid her body and then got back to work with no blood stains on him in less than fifteen minutes? If Frank is guilty, he must have, according to Conley, disposed of the body in the time between four minutes to 1 and 1 :30. There can be no dispute about this; it’s Conley ‘s last revelation. If Frank is guilty, he was at his office between four minutes to 1 and 1:30, but who believes that story? Little Miss Kerns saw him at Alabama and Whitehall at 1 :10, and at 1 :20 Mrs. Levy, honest woman that she is, saw him get off the car at his home corner, and his wife’s parents saw, and they all swear he was there at 1 :20, and then, if you are going to call them all perjurers and believe Jim Conley, think what you must do; think what a horrible thing you must do–you must make Minola’s husband a perjurer, and that would be terrible.

You know about that Minola McKnight affair. It is the blackest of all. A negro woman locked up from the solicitor’s office, not because she wouldn’t talk – she’s given a statement – but because she would not talk to suit Starnes and Campbell, and two white men, and shame to them, got her into it. Where was Chief Beavers? What was he doing that he became a party to this crime? Beavers, who would enforce the law; Beavers, the immaculate!

Believe Frank was in the factory if you can at 1 :30 ; throw aside all the respectable people and swear by Conley. Well, I know the American jury is supreme, that it is the sovereign over lives; that sometimes you can sway it by passion and prejudice, but you can’t make it believe anything like this. Neither prejudice, nor passion, wrought by monsters so vile they ought not to be in the court room, could make them believe it. They said that there was a certain man, named Mincey, whom we called as a witness but did not use. Well, the only use we would have had for Mincey was to contradict Conley, and as soon as Conley got on the stand he contradicted himself enough without our having to go to the trouble of calling on witnesses to do it. If we had put Mincey up there would have been a day’s row about his probity, and what would have been the use – Conley said time and again that he had lied time and again.

Gentlemen, I want only the straight truth here, and I have yet to believe that the truth has to be watched and cultivated by these detectives and by seven visits of the solicitor general I don’t believe any man, no matter what his rate, ought to be tried under such testimony. If I was raising sheep and feared for my lambs, I might hang a yellow dog on it. I might do it in the daytime, but when things got quiet at night and I got to thinking, I’d be ashamed of myself. You have been overly kind to me, gentlemen. True, you have been up against a situation like that old Sol Russell used to describe when he would say, “Well, I’ve lectured off and on for forty years, and the benches always stuck it out, but they was screwed to the floor.” You gentlemen have been practically in that fix, but I feel, nevertheless, that you have been peculiarly kind, and I thank you.

* * *

In our next article in this series, we will present the closing argument of Solicitor Hugh Dorsey, for the prosecution. As always, paragraph divisions and emphasis are mine.

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

For further study we recommend the following resources:

_________

Full archive of Atlanta Georgian newspapers relating to the murder and subsequent trial

The Leo Frank case as reported in the Atlanta Constitution

The Leo Frank Case (Mary Phagan) Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery 1913

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean

American State Trials, volume X (1918) by John Lawson

Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Trial of Leo Frank

Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913, Brief of Evidence

The American Mercury is following these events of 100 years ago, the month-long trial of Leo M. Frank for the brutal murder of Miss Mary Phagan, in capsule form on a regular basis on this, the 100th anniversary of the case. Follow along with us and experience the trial as Atlantans of a century ago did, and come to your own conclusions.

Read also the Mercury’s coverage of Week One of the Leo Frank trial, Week Two,  Week Three and Week Four and my exclusive summary of the evidence against Frank.

A fearless scholar, dedicated to the truth about this case, has obtained, scanned, and uploaded every single relevant issue of the major Atlanta daily newspapers and they now can be accessed through archive.org as follows:

Atlanta Constitution Newspaper:
http://www.leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-constitution/

Atlanta Georgian Newspaper:
http://www.leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-georgian/

Atlanta Journal Newspaper:
http://www.leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-journal/

More background on the case may be found in my article here at the Mercury, 100 Reasons Leo Frank Is Guilty.

(Click the play button for our audio book version of this article.)

by Bradford L. Huie

ON THE HEELS of Leo Frank’s astounding unsworn statement to the court, the defense called a number of women who stated that they had never experienced any improper sexual advances on the part of Frank. But the prosecution rebutted that testimony with several rather persuasive female witnesses of its own. These rebuttal witnesses also addressed Frank’s claims that he was so unfamiliar with Mary Phagan that he did not even know her by name. (For background on this case, read our introductory article, our coverage of Week One,  Week Two, and Week Three of the trial, and my exclusive summary of the evidence against Frank.)

Here are the witnesses’ statements, direct from the Brief of Evidence, interspersed with my commentary. The emphasis and paragraphing (for clarity) is mine. The defense recommenced with a large contingent of Frank’s friends, business associates, and employees who would say that Leo Frank was of good character and had not, to their knowledge, made any improper sexual approaches to the girls and women who worked under him:

MISS EMILY MAYFIELD, sworn for the Defendant.

I worked at the pencil factory last year during the summer of 1912. I have never been in the dressing room when Mr. Frank would come in and look at anybody that was undressing.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I work at Jacobs’ Pharmacy. My sister used to work at the pencil factory. I don’t remember any occasion when Mr. Frank came in the dressing room door while Miss Irene Jackson and her sister were there.

MISSES ANNIE OSBORNE, REBECCA CARSON, MAUDE WRIGHT, and MRS. ELLA THOMAS, all sworn for the Defendant, testified that they were employees of the National Pencil Company; that Mr. Frank’s general character was good; that Conley’s general character for truth and veracity was bad and that they would not believe him on oath.

Mrs. B.D. Smith

MISSES MOLLIE BLAIR, ETHEL STEWART, CORA COWAN, B. D. SMITH, LIZZIE WORD, BESSIE WHITE, GRACE ATHERTON, and MRS. BARNES, all sworn for the Defendant, testified that they were employees of the National Pencil Company, and work on the fourth floor of the factory; that the general character of Leo. M. Frank was good; that they have never gone with him at any time or place for any immoral purpose, and that they have never heard of his doing anything wrong.

MISSES CORINTHIA HALL, ANNIE HOWELL, LILLIE M. GOODMAN, VELMA HAYES, JENNIE MAYFIELD, IDA HOLMES, WILLIE HATCHETT, MARY HATCHETT, MINNIE SMITH, MARJORIE McCORD, LENA McMURTY, MRS. W. R. JOHNSON, MRS. S. A. WILSON, MRS. GEORGIA DENHAM, MRS. O. JONES, MISS ZILLA SPIVEY, CHARLES LEE, N. V. DARLEY, F. ZIGANKI, and A. C. HOLLOWAY, MINNIE FOSTER, all sworn for the Defendant, testified that they were employees of the National Pencil Company and knew Leo M. Frank, and that his general character was good.

Numerous current employees of the National Pencil Company testified that Leo Frank had never made any sexual overtures to them.

D. I. MacINTYRE, B. WILDAUER, MRS. DAN KLEIN, ALEX DITTLER, DR. J.E. SOMMERFIELD, F. G. SCHIFF, AL. GUTHMAN, JOSEPH GERSHON, P.D. McCARLEY, MRS. M. W. MEYER, MRS. DAVID MARX, MRS. A. I. HARRIS, M. S. RICE, L. H. MOSS, MRS. L.H. MOSS, MRS. JOSEPH BROWN, E.E. FITZPATRICK, EMIL DITTLER, WM. BAUER, MISS HELEN LOEB, AL. FOX, MRS. MARTIN MAY, JULIAN V. BOEHM, MRS. MOLLIE ROSENBERG, M.H. SILVERMAN, MRS. L. STERNE, CHAS. ADLER, MRS. R.A. SONN, MISS RAY KLEIN, A.J. JONES, L. EINSTEIN, J. BERNARD, J. FOX, MARCUS LOEB, FRED HEILBRON, MILTON KLEIN, NATHAN COPLAN, MRS. J. E. SOMMERFIELD, all sworn for the Defendant, testified that they were residents of the city of Atlanta, and have known Leo M. Frank ever since he has lived in Atlanta; that his general character is good.

MRS. M. W. CARSON, MARY PIRK, MRS. DORA SMALL, MISS JULIA FUSS, R.P. BUTLER, JOE STELKER, all sworn for the Defendant, testified that they were employees of the National Pencil Com- pany; that they knew Leo M. Frank and that his general character is good.

The character issue having been broached by the defense, the door was opened to the prosecution to bring forth witnesses on the same subject:

MISS MYRTIE CATO, MAGGIE GRIFFIN, MRS. C.D. DONEGAN, MRS. H. R. JOHNSON, MISS MARIE CARST, MISS NELLIE PETTIS, MARY DAVIS, MRS. MARY E. WALLACE, ESTELLE WINKLE, CARRIE SMITH, all sworn for the Defendant [sic — This is a typographical error; these witnesses were sworn for the State. — Ed.], testified that they were formerly employed at the National Pencil Company and worked at the factory for a period varying from three days to three and a half years; that Leo M. Frank’s character for lasciviousness was bad.

Misses Myrtice Cato and Maggie Griffin

The defense — ominously — chose not to cross-examine any of these witnesses. This restricted the prosecution to the mere statements that Frank had a “bad character for lasciviousness”: Under the rules of the court, Dorsey could only ask for particulars — could only inquire into why Frank had such a bad character — if the defense opened the door with cross-examination. This the defense refused to do — with any of the ten women who said that Frank was badly lascivious. The jury was thus left with the impression that the defense dared not do so — a point that would be hammered home in the prosecution’s closing statement.

Two of these witnesses had made far more extensive statements at the Coroner’s Inquest, where the rules of evidence permit wider latitude in questioning. As I reported in an earlier article:

Several young women and girls testified at the inquest that Frank had made improper advances toward them, in one instance touching a girl’s breast and in another appearing to offer money for compliance with his desires.

The Atlanta Georgian reported: “Girls and women were called to the stand to testify that they had been employed at the factory or had had occasion to go there, and that Frank had attempted familiarities with them. Nellie Pettis, of 9 Oliver Street, declared that Frank had made improper advances to her.

Miss Nellie Pettis

“She was asked if she had ever been employed at the pencil factory. No, she answered.

“Q: Do you know Leo Frank? A: I have seen him once or twice.

“Q: When and where did you see him? A: In his office at the factory whenever I went to draw my sister-in-law’s pay.

“Q: What did he say to you that might have been improper on any of these visits? A: He didn’t exactly say – he made gestures. I went to get sister’s pay about four weeks ago and when I went into the office of Mr. Frank I asked for her. He told me I couldn’t see her unless ‘I saw him first.’ I told him I didn’t want to ‘see him.’ He pulled a box from his desk. It had a lot of money in it. He looked at it significantly and then looked at me. When he looked at me, he winked. As he winked he said: ‘How about it?’ I instantly told him I was a nice girl.

“Here the witness stopped her statement. Coroner Donehoo asked her sharply: ‘Didn’t you say anything else?’ ‘Yes, I did! I told him to go to h—l! and walked out of his office.'” (Atlanta Georgian, May 9, 1913, “Phagan Case to be Rushed to Grand Jury by Dorsey”)

If true, this was shocking behavior on Frank’s part. Not only was he importuning a young woman for illicit relations in exchange for money, but it was a woman he’d only seen once or twice. If he would act in such a way with an absolute stranger, what wouldn’t he do? In the same article, another young girl testified to Frank’s pattern of improper familiarities:

“Nellie Wood, a young girl, testified as follows:

“Q: Do you know Leo Frank? A: I worked for him two days.

“Q: Did you observe any misconduct on his part?

“A: Well, his actions didn’t suit me. He’d come around and put his hands on me when such conduct was entirely uncalled for.

“Q: Is that all he did? A: No. He asked me one day to come into his office, saying that he wanted to talk to me. He tried to close the door but I wouldn’t let him. He got too familiar by getting so close to me. He also put his hands on me.

“Q: Where did he put his hands? He barely touched my breast. He was subtle in his approaches, and tried to pretend that he was joking. But I was too wary for such as that.

“Q: Did he try further familiarities? A: Yes.”

The trial testimony continued:

MISS MAMIE KITCHENS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I have worked at the National Pencil Company two years. I am on the fourth floor. I have not been called by the defense. Miss Jones and Miss Howard have also not been called by the defense to testify. I was in the dressing room with Miss Irene Jackson when she was undressed. Mr. Frank opened the door, stuck his head inside. He did not knock. He just stood there and laughed. Miss Jackson said, “Well, we are dressing, blame it,” and then he shut the door.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

Yes, he asked us if we didn’t have any work to do. It was during business hours. We didn’t have any work to do. We were going to leave. I have never met Mr. Frank anywhere, or any time for any immoral purposes.

MISS RUTH ROBINSON, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I have seen Leo M. Frank talking to Mary Phagan. He was talking to her about her work, not very often. He would just tell her, while she was at work, about her work. He would stand just close enough to her to tell her about her work. He would show her how to put rubbers in the pencils. He would just take up the pencil and show her how to do it. That’s all I saw him do. I heard him speak to her; he called her Mary. That was last summer.

MISS DEWEY HEWELL, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I stay in the Home of the Good Shepherd in Cincinnati. I worked at the pencil factory four months. I quit in March, 1913. I have seen Mr. Frank talk to Mary Phagan two or three times a day in the metal department. I have seen him hold his hand on her shoulder. He called her Mary. He would stand pretty close to her. He would lean over in her face.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

All the rest of the girls were there when he talked to her. I don’t know what he was talking to her about.

MISS REBECCA CARSON, re-called by the State in rebuttal.

I have never gone into the dressing room on the fourth floor with Leo M. Frank.

MISS MYRTICE CATO, MISS MAGGIE GRIFFIN, both sworn for the State, testified that they had seen Miss Rebecca Carson go into the ladies’ dressing room on the fourth floor with Leo M. Frank two or three times during working hours; that there were other ladies working on the fourth floor at the time this happened.

Myrtice Cato and Marie Carst

J. E. DUFFY, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I worked at the National Pencil Company. I was hurt there in the metal department. I was cut on my forefingers on the left hand. That is the cut right around there (indicating). It never cut off any of my fingers. I went to the office to have it dressed. It was bleeding pretty freely. A few drops of blood dropped on the floor at the machine where I was hurt. The blood did not drop anywhere else except at that machine. None of it dropped near the ladies’ dressing room, or the water cooler. I had a large piece of cotton wrapped around my finger. When I was first cut I just slapped a piece of cotton waste on my hand.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I never saw any blood anywhere except at the machine. I went from the office to the Atlanta Hospital to have my finger attended to.

W. E. TURNER, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I worked at the National Pencil Company during March of this year. I saw Leo Frank talking to Mary Phagan on the second floor, about the middle of March. It was just before dinner. There was nobody else in the room then. She was going to work and he stopped to talk to her. She told him she had to go to work. He told her that he was the superintendent of the factory, and that he wanted to talk to her, and she said she had to go to work. She backed off and he went on towards her talking to her. The last thing I heard him say was he wanted to talk to her. That is all I saw or heard.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

That was just before dinner. The girls were up there getting ready for dinner. Mary was going in the direction where she worked, and Mr. Frank was going the other way. I don’t know whether any of the girls were still at work or not. I didn’t look for them. Some of the girls came in there while this was going on and told me where to put the pencils. Lemmie Quinn’s office is right there. I don’t know whether the girls saw him talking to Mary or not, they were in there. It was just before the whistle blew at noon. Mr. Frank told her he wanted to speak to her and she said she had to go to work, and the girls came in there while this conversation was going on. I can’t describe Mary Phagan. I don’t know any of the other little girls in there. I don’t remember who called her Mary Phagan, a young man on the fourth floor told me her name was Mary Phagan. I don’t know who he was. I didn’t know anybody in the factory. I can’t describe any of the girls. I don’t know a single one in the factory.

The defense had made an impression with their parade of young female pencil factory workers who not only had never been on the receiving end of any importunities by Leo Frank, but who had never seen Frank speaking to Mary Phagan. Almost all of these were still employed by the firm, which was supporting Frank — and had motive to protect their source of income, of course. But, financial motives aside, it still would be quite surprising for even the most lecherous boss imaginable, in charge of dozens and dozens of young women and girls, to have attempted to seduce every single one! So finding a large number who had never been approached sexually by Frank could hardly be seen as definitive proof that he had never done so. Nor would it seem likely, assuming that Leo Frank had talked to Mary Phagan on a number of occasions, that every single employee, or even a majority of them, would have seen such conversations. So finding quite a number who had never witnessed such conversations meant little.

But finding some who had witnessed questionable forays by Frank into the ladies’ dressing room — and who had been sexually approached by Frank or witnessed his approaches to others — and who had seen Frank talk to Mary Phagan, addressing her by name — was enough to almost entirely destroy the character edifice built up by the  defense of a Leo Frank who didn’t know Mary Phagan and whose behavior toward his female employees was above reproach. Most damaging of all was what it did to Leo Frank’s reputation for truthfulness.

After a motorman named Merk testified that defense witness Daisy Hopkins had a reputation as a liar, George Gordon, Minola McKnight’s attorney, testified as to the events of the night that Minola McKnight made her sensational affidavit claiming that Leo Frank had admitted to his wife that he wanted to die because he had killed a girl that day. McKnight, who worked for the Franks as a cook, had since repudiated the affidavit and was claiming it was obtained from her by force.

GEORGE GORDON, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am a practicing lawyer. I was at police station part of the time when Minola McKnight was making her statement. I was outside of the door most of the time. I went down there with habeas corpus proceedings to have her sign the affidavit and when I got there the detectives informed me that she was in the room, and I sat down and waited outside for her two hours, and people went in and out of the door, and after I had waited there I saw the stenographer of the recorder’s court going into the room and I decided I had better make a demand to go into the room, which I did, and I was then allowed to go into the room and I found Mr. Febuary reading over to her some stenographic statement he had taken.

There were two other men from Beck & Gregg Hardware store and Pat Campbell and Mr. Starnes and Albert McKnight. After that was read Mr. Febuary went out to write it off on the typewriter and while he was out Mr. Starnes said, “Now this must be kept very quiet and nobody be told anything about this.” I thought it was agreed that we would say nothing about it. I was surprised when I saw it in the newspapers two or three days afterwards.

I said to Starnes: “There is no reason why you should hold this woman, you should let her go.” He said he would do nothing without consulting Mr. Dorsey and he suggested that I had better go to Mr. Dorsey’s office. I went to his office and he called up Mr. Starnes and then I went back to the police station and told Starnes to call Mr. Dorsey and I presume that Mr. Dorsey told him to let her go. Anyway he said she could go. You (Mr. Dorsey) said you would let her go also. That morning you had said you would not unless I took out a habeas corpus. In the morning after Chief Beavers told me he would not let her go on bond and unless you (Mr. Dorsey) would let her go, I went to your office and told you that she was being held illegally and you admitted it to me and I said we would give bond in any sum that you might ask. You said you would not let her go because you would get in bad with the detectives, and you advised me to take out a habeas corpus, which I did. The detectives said they couldn’t let her got without your consent. You said you didn’t have anything to do with locking her up.

The fragile remains of Albert McKnight’s 1913 affidavit. It ends “‘I can tell Mr. Frank has done something as they act strange. Mrs. Frank tells Magnolia [ = Minola] every day not to forget what to say if they come for her to go to court again. Mrs. Frank had a quarrel with Mr. Frank on the morning of the murder. She asked Mr. Frank to kiss her but then she said he was saving his kisses for ____ and would not kiss her. Magnolia said she heard Mrs. Frank say she would never live with him again, for she knew he had killed that girl, and they had the right man and ought to break his neck.’ Signed: Albert McKnight & witnessed by R.L. Craven & A. Morrison”

As to whether Minola McKnight did not sign this paper freely and voluntarily (State’s Exhibit J), it was signed in my absence while I was at [the] police station. When I came back this paper was lying on the table signed. That paper is substantially the notes that Mr. Febuary read over to her. As they read it over to her, she said it was about that way.

Minola McKnight’s affidavit

Yes, you agreed with me that you had no right to lock her up. I don’t know that you said you didn’t do it. I don’t remember that we discussed that. You told me that you would not direct her to be let loose, because you would get in bad with the detectives. I had told you that the detectives told me they would not release her unless you said so. I took out a habeas corpus immediately afterwards and went down there to get her released, and she was released.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I heard that they had had her in Mr. Dorsey ‘s office and she went away screaming and was locked up. I knew that Mr. Dorsey was letting this be done. She was locked in a cell at the police station when I saw her. They admitted that they did not have any warrant for her arrest. Beavers said he would not let her out on bond unless Mr. Dorsey said so. He said the charge against her was suspicion. They put her in a cell and kept her until four o’clock the next day before they let her go. When I went down to see her in the cell, she was crying and going on and almost hysterical. When I asked Mr. Dorsey to let her go out on bond, he said he wouldn’t do it because he would get in bad with the detectives, but that if I would let her stay down there with Starnes and Campbell for a day, he would let her loose without any bond, and I said I wouldn’t do it. I said that I considered it a very reprehensible thing to lock up somebody because they knew something, and he said, “Well, it is sometimes necessary to get information,” and I said, “Certainly our liberty is more necessary than any information, and I consider it a trampling on our Anglo-Saxon liberties.” They did not tell me that they already had a statement that she had made, and which she declared to be the truth.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION.

You (Mr. Dorsey) did not tell me that you had no right to lock anybody up. I told you that, and you agreed to it, but you would not let her go. I told you that Chief Beavers said he would do what you said and then I asked you to give me an order. You said you wouldn’t give me an order. When I told Starnes that I thought I ought to be in that room while Minola was making the statement, he knocked on the door, and it was unlocked on the inside and they let me in. They let me into the room at once after I had been sitting there two hours. I was present when she made the statement about the payment of the cook. I don’t remember what questions I asked her at that time. I was her attorney. I didn’t go down there to examine her; I went there to get her out. Starnes and Campbell were in and out of the room during the time. Mr. Starnes stayed on the outside of the door part of the time. I don’t know who was in the room and who was not while I was outside.

Next on the stand was Albert McKnight, Minola’s husband, whose testimony about the lunch hour at the Franks on the day of the murder had been attacked by the defense. Frank’s lawyers had used a diagram of the household to show that he could not have seen what he claimed to have seen. McKnight testified that the diagram was inaccurate and did not show the furniture in its true positions on April 26.

Following Albert McKnight were his employers, who also shed some light on Minola’s statement. They had been present while she was being held, and had even gotten her to make statements to them while detectives were not present. These statements were consistent with her affidavit, and not consistent with her later denial of it:

R. L. CRAVEN, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am connected with the Beck and Gregg Hardware Co. Albert McKnight also works for the same company. He asked me to go down and see if I could get Minola McKnight out when she was arrested. I went there for that purpose. I was present when she signed that affidavit (State’s Exhibit J).

I went out with Mr. Pickett to Minola McKnight ‘s home the latter part of May. Albert McKnight was there. On the 3rd day of June, we were down at the station house and they brought Minola McKnight in and we questioned her first as to the statements Albert had given me; at first she would not talk, she said she didn’t know anything about it.

I told her that Albert made the statement that he was there Saturday when Mr. Frank came home, and he said Mr. Frank came in the dining room and stayed about ten minutes and went to the sideboard and caught a car in about ten minutes after he first arrived there, and I went on and told her that Albert had said that Minola had overheard Mrs. Frank tell Mrs. Selig that Mr. Frank didn’t rest well and he came home drinking and made Mrs. Frank get out of bed and sleep on a rug by the side of the bed and wanted her to give him his pistol to shoot his head off and that he had murdered somebody, or something like that. Minola at first hesitated, but finally she told everything that was in that affidavit. When she did that Mr. Starnes, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Febuary, Albert McKnight, Mr. Pickett, and Mr. Gordon were there. When we were questioning her, I don’t remember whether anybody but Mr. Pickett and myself and Albert McKnight were there.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

We went down there about 11:30 o’clock. I didn’t know that she had been in jail twelve hours then. I suppose she was in jail because they needed her as a witness. I was in Mr. Dorsey’s office only one time about this matter, the same morning I started out to see if I could get her and I went to see Mr. Dorsey about getting her out. Her husband wanted her out of jail and I went to see Mr. Dorsey about getting her out.

At first she denied it. I questioned her for something like two hours. I didn’t know she had already made a statement about the truth of the transaction. Mr. Dorsey didn’t read it to me. He said she was hysterical and wouldn’t talk at all. I went down to get her to make some kind of a statement; I wanted her to tell the truth in the matter. I wanted to see whether her husband was telling the truth or whether she was telling a falsehood.

Yes, she finally made a statement that agreed with her husband, and I left after awhile.

As to why I didn’t stay and get her out, because I didn’t want to. I went after we got her statement. No, I didn’t get her out of jail. I did not look after her any further than that. I don’t think Mr. Dorsey told me to question her. He wanted me to go out to see her. He said Mr. Starnes and Mr. Campbell would be up there and they would let us know about it, and we went up there and Mr. Starnes and Mr. Campbell brought her in. They let us see her all right. I did not ask Campbell or Starnes to turn her out. I didn’t ask anybody to turn her out. I never made any suggestion to anybody about turning her out. Nobody cursed, mistreated or threatened this woman while I was there. I don’t know what took place before I got there.

E. H. PICKETT, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I work at Beck & Gregg Hdw. Co. I was present when that paper was signed (State’s Exhibit J) by Minola McKnight. Albert McKnight, Starnes, Campbell, Mr. Craven, Mr. Gordon was present when she made that statement.

We questioned her about the statement Albert had made and she denied it all at first. She said she had been cautioned not to talk about this affair by Mrs. Frank or Mrs. Selig. She stated that Albert had lied in what he told us. She finally began to weaken on one or two points and admitted that she had been paid a little more money than was ordinarily due her.

There was a good many things in that statement that she did not tell us, though, at first. She didn’t tell us all of that when she went at it. She seemed hysterical at the beginning. We told her that we weren’t there to get her into trouble, but came down there to get her out, and then she agreed to talk to us but would not talk to the detectives. The detectives then retired from the room.

Albert told her that she knew she told him those things. She denied it, but finally acknowledged that she said a few of those things, and among the things I remember is that she was cautioned not to repeat anything that she heard. We asked her a thousand questions perhaps. I don’t know how many. I called the detectives and told them we had gotten all the admissions we could. We didn’t have any stenographer and Mr. Craven began writing it out, and Mr. Craven had written only a small portion when the stenographer came.

She did not make all of that statement in the first talk she had with us. She didn’t say anything with reference to Mrs. Frank having stated anything to her mother on Sunday morning.

The affidavit does not contain anything that she did not state there that day. Before she made that affidavit, she said he did eat dinner that day. She finally said he didn’t eat any. At first she said he remained at home at dinner time about half an hour or more. She finally said he only remained about ten minutes. At first she said Albert McKnight was not there that day. She finally said he was there. She said she was instructed not to talk at first. At first she said her wages hadn’t been changed, finally said her wages had been raised by the Seligs. As to what, if anything, she said about a hat being given her by Mrs. Selig, the only statement she made about the hat at all was when she made the affidavit. We didn’t know anything about the hat before. Nobody threatened her when she was there. When the first questioning was going on Campbell and Starnes were not in there. They came in when we called them and told them we were ready. Her attorney, Mr. Gordon, came in with the detectives.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

As to why we didn’t take her statement when she denied saying all those things, because we didn’t believe them. We were down there about three hours. We went down there to try and get Minola McKnight out, if we could. We asked Mr. Dorsey to get her out. He said he would let us stand her bond, and he referred us to the detectives to make arrangements. As to why we didn’t get her out then, we wanted a statement from her if we could get it. No, I didn’t know that whenever the detectives got the story they wanted, they would let her out. As to my going to get her out and then grilling her for three hours, I didn’t tell her I was going to get her out; I went down there to get her out, but she left there before I did. She went out of the room. The detectives treated her very nice. They let her go after she made the statement. I knew they were holding her because she did not make a statement confirming her husband. It was not my object to make her statement agree with her husband’s statement, but it was my duty as a good citizen to make her tell the truth.

Dr. S.C. Benedict testified that one of the defense medical experts had a grudge against Dr. Harris, the prosecution’s main medical expert. This was followed by several streetcar motormen who stated that the streetcars often arrived ahead of schedule, which tended to minimize the effect of the testimony of the motormen called by the defense, who had claimed that since the streetcar schedule  was rigorously adhered to, Mary Phagan must have arrived later than Leo Frank’s original estimate of five to ten minutes after noon. There was a great deal of testimony later regarding the timing of Mary Phagan’s arrival — and the amount of time which had passed since her late breakfast.

Ultimately, no one really doubted that Mary Phagan had arrived at Leo Frank’s office  just a few minutes after noon on April 26 — and had met her death a very few minutes after that.

J. H. HENDRICKS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am a motorman for the Georgia Railway & Electric Company. On April 26th I was running a street car on the Marietta line to the Stock Yards on Decatur Street. I couldn’t say what time we got to town on April 26th, about noon. I have no cause to remember that day. The English Avenue car, with Matthews and Hollis has gotten to town prior to April 26th, ahead of time. I couldn’t say how much ahead of time. I have seen them come in two or three minutes ahead of time; that day they came about 12:06. Hollis would usually leave Broad and Marietta Streets on my car. I couldn’t swear positively what time I got to Broad and Marietta Streets on April 26th. I couldn’t swear what time Hollis and Matthews got there that day. I don’t know anything about that. Often they get there ahead of time. Sometimes they are punished for it.

J. C. McEWING, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am a street car motorman. I ran on Marietta and Decatur Street April 26th. My car was due in town at ten minutes after the hour on April 26th. Hollis’ and Matthews ‘ car was due there 7 minutes after the hour. Hendricks car was due there 5 minutes after the hour. The English Avenue frequently cut off the White City car due in town at 12:05. The White City car is due there before the English Avenue. It is due 5 minutes after the hour and the Cooper Street is due 7 minutes after. The English Avenue would have to be ahead of time to cut off the Cooper Street car. That happens quite often. I have come in ahead of time very often. I have known the English Avenue car to be 4 or 5 minutes ahead of time.

A portion of Leo Frank’s original statement to the police is shown here. Note that he flatly states that Mary Phagan arrived between 12:05 and 12;10. Ironically, a huge amount of his defense team’s efforts went into challenging Frank’s own statement as to the time Mary Phagan had appeared in his office. They were trying to edge Frank’s meeting with the murdered girl later and later, and therefore further from the time that Monteeen Stover had found Frank’s office empty. Frank himself changed the time of her arrival several times during the course of the investigation.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I don’t know when that happened or who ran the car. I don’t know whether they ran on schedule time on April 26th, or not. When one car is cut off, one might be ahead of time, and one might be behind time. It’s reasonable to suppose that the five minutes after car ought to come in ahead of the one due seven minutes after. If it was behind it would be cut off, just as easy as the other one would be cut off by being ahead.

M. E. McCOY, sworn for the State, in rebuttal.

I knew Mary Phagan. I saw her on April 26th, in front of Cooledge’s place at 12 Forsyth Street. She was going towards pencil company, south on Forsyth Street on right hand side. It was near twelve o’clock. I left the corner of Walton and Forsyth Street exactly twelve o’clock and came straight on down there. It took me three or four minutes to go there.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I know what time it was because I looked at my watch. First time I told it was a week ago last Saturday, when I told an officer. I didn’t tell it because I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I didn’t consider it as a matter of importance until I saw the statement of the motorman of the car she came in on, and I knew that was wrong. She was dressed in blue, a low, chunky girl. Her hair was not very dark. She had on a blue hat.

GEORGE KENDLEY, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am with the Georgia Railway & Power Co. I saw Mary Phagan about noon on April 26th. She was going to the pencil factory from Marietta Street. When I saw her she stepped off of the viaduct.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I was on the front end of the Hapeville car when I saw her. It is due in town at 12 o’clock. I don’t know if it was on time that day. I told several people about seeing her the next day. If Mary Phagan left home at 10 minutes to 12, she ought to have got to town about 10 minutes after 12, somewhere in that neighborhood. She could not have gotten in much earlier. The time that I saw her is simply an estimate. That was the time my car was due in town. I remember seeing her by reading of the tragedy the next day. I didn’t testify at the Coroner’s inquest because nobody came to ask me. No, I have not abused and villified Frank since this tragedy. No, I have not made myself a nuisance on the cars by talking of him. I know Mr. Brent. I didn’t tell him that Mr. Frank’s children said he was guilty. Mr. Brent asked me what I thought about it several times on the car. He has always been the aggressor. As to whether I abused and villified him in the presence of Miss Haas and other passengers, there has been so much talk that I don’t know what has been said. I don’t think I said if he was released I would join a party to lynch him. Somebody said if he got out there might be some trouble. I don’t remem- ber saying that I would join a party to help lynch him if he got out. I talked to Mr. Leach about it. I don’t remember what I told him. I told him I saw her over there about 12 o’clock. That was the time the car was due in town. I know I saw her before 12:05. My car was on schedule time. I couldn’t swear it was exactly on the minute.

HENRY HOFFMAN, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am inspector of the street car company. Matthews is under me a certain part of the day. On April 26th he was under me from 11:30 to 12:07. His car was due at Broad and Marietta at 12:07. There is no such schedule as 12:07 and half. I have been on his car when we cut off the Fair Street car. Fair Street car is due at 12:05. I have compared watches with him. They vary from 20 to 40 seconds. We are supposed to carry the right time. I have called Matthews attention to running ahead of schedule once or twice. They come in ahead of time on relief time for supper and dinner.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I don’t know anything about his coming on April 26th. We found out he was ahead of time way along last March. He was a minute and a half ahead. I have caught him as much as three minutes ahead of time last spring, on the trip due in town 12:07. I didn’t report him, I just talked to him. I have known him to be ahead of time twice in five years while he was under my supervision.

N. KELLY, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am a motorman of the Georgia Railway & Power Co. On April 26th, I was standing at the corner of Forsyth and Marietta Street about three minutes after 12. I was going to catch the College Park car home about 12:10. I saw the English Avenue car of Matthews and Mr. Hollis arrive at Forsyth and Marietta about 12:03. I knew Mary Phagan. She was not on that car. She might have gotten off there, but she didn’t come around. I got on that car at Broad and Marietta and went around Hunter Street. She was not on there.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I didn’t say anything about this because I didn’t want to get mixed up in it. I told Mr. Starnes about it this morning. I have never said anything about it before. That car was due in town at 12:07. The Fair Street car was behind it.

W. B. OWENS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I rode on the White City line of the Georgia Railway & Electric Co. It is due at 12:05. Two minutes ahead of the English Avenue car. We got to town on April 26th, at 12:05. I don’t remember seeing the English Avenue car that day. I have known that car to come in a minute ahead of us, sometimes two minutes ahead. That was after April 26th. I don’t recall whether it occurred before April 26th.

LOUIS INGRAM, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am a conductor on the English Avenue line. I came to town on that car on April 26th. I don’t know what time we came to town. I have seen that car come in ahead of time several times, sometimes as much as four minutes ahead. I know Matthews, the motorman. I have ridden in with him when he was ahead of time several times.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

It is against the rules to come in ahead of time, and also to come in behind time. They punish you for either one.

W. M. MATTHEWS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I have talked with this man Dobbs (W. C.) but I don’t know what I talked about. I have never told him or anybody that I saw Mary Phagan get off the car with George Epps at the corner of Marietta and Broad. It has been two years since I have been tried for an offense in this court.

Defense witness W.M. Matthews at center

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I was acquitted by the jury. I had to kill a man on my car who assaulted me.

W. C. DOBBS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

Motorman Matthews told me two or three days after the murder that Mary Phagan and George Epps got on his car together and left at Marietta and Broad Streets.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

Sergeant Dobbs is my father.

W. W. ROGERS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

On Sunday morning after the murder, I tried to go up the stairs leading from the basement up to the next floor. The door was fastened down. The staircase was very dusty, like it had been some little time since it had been swept. There was a little mound of shavings right where the chute came down on the basement floor. The bin was about a foot and a half from the chute.

W.W. “Boots” Rogers

SERGEANT L. S. DOBBS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I saw Mr. Rogers on Sunday try to get in that back door leading up from basement in rear of factory. There were cobwebs and dust there. The door was closed.

O. TILLANDER, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

Mr. Graham and I went to the pencil factory on April 26th, about 20 minutes to 12. We went in from the street and looked around and I found a negro coming from a dark alley way, and I asked him for the office and he told me to go to the second floor and turn to the right. I saw Conley this morning. I am not positive that he is the man. He looked to be about the same size. When I went to the office the stenographer was in the outer office. Mr. Frank was in the inner office sitting at his desk. I went there to get my step-son’s money.

E. K. GRAHAM, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I was at the pencil factory April 26th, with Mr. Tillander, about 20 minutes to 12. We met a negro on the ground floor. Mr. Tillander asked him where the office was, and he told him to go up the steps. I don’t know whether it was Jim Conley or not. He was about the same size, but he was a little brighter than Conley. If he was drunk I couldn’t notice it, I wouldn’t have noticed it anyway.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

Mr. Frank and his stenographer were upstairs. He was at his desk. I didn’t see any lady when I came out.

J. W. COLEMAN, sworn for the State in rebuttal. [Mary Phagan’s stepfather. — Ed.]

I remember a conversation I had with detective McWorth. [McWorth was the Pinkerton man, later dismissed, who claimed to have discovered a “bloody club” and part of Mary Phagan’s pay envelope on the first floor, long after other detectives had thoroughly searched the area. –Ed.] He exhibited an envelope to me with a figure “5” on the right of it.

Mary Phagan’s stepfather, J.W. Coleman

CROSS EXAMINATION.

This does not seem to be the envelope he showed me. (Defendant’s Exhibit 47). The figure “5” was on it. I don’t see it now. I told him at the time that Mary was due $1.20, and that “5” on the right would not suit for that.

J. M. GANTT, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I have seen Leo Frank make up the financial sheet. It would take him an hour and a half after I gave him the data. [This in contrast to the repeated claim by Frank that he needed all afternoon. — Ed.]

J.M. Gantt

IVY JONES (c[olered]), sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I saw Jim Conley at the corner of Hunter and Forsyth Streets on April 26th. He came in the saloon while I was there, between one and two o’clock. He was not drunk when I saw him. The saloon is on the opposite corner from the factory. We went on towards Conley’s home. I left him at the corner of Hunter and Davis Street a little after two o’clock.

HARRY SCOTT, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I picked up cord in the basement when I went through there with Mr. Frank. Lee’s shirt had no color on it, excepting that of blood. I got the information as to Conley’s being able to write from McWorth when I returned to Atlanta. As to the conversation Black and I had, with Mr. Frank about Darley, Mr. Frank said Darley was the soul of honor and that we had the wrong man; that there was no use in inquiring about Darley and he knew Darley could not be responsible for such an act. I told him that we had good information to the effect that Darley had been associating with other girls in the factory; that he was a married man and had a family. Mr. Frank didn’t seem to know anything about that. He said it was a peculiar thing for a man in Mr. Darley’s position to be associating with factory employees, if he was doing it.

Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott

CROSS EXAMINATION.

We left after about two hours interview.

L. T. KENDRICK, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I was night watchman at the pencil factory for something like two years. I punched the clocks for a whole night’s work in two or three minutes. The clock at the factory needed setting about every 24 hours. It varied from three to five minutes. That is the clock slip I punched (State’s Exhibit P). I don’t think you could have heard the elevator on the top floor if the machinery was running or anyone was knocking on any of the floors. The back stairway was very dusty and showed that they had not been used lately after the murder. I have seen Jim Conley at the factory Saturday afternoons when I went there to get my money.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I generally got to the factory about a quarter of two to two-thirty. The clock was usually corrected every morning. The clock would run slow sometimes and sometimes fast.

VERA EPPS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

My brother George was in the house when Mr. Minar was asking us about the last time we saw Mary Phagan. I don’t know if he heard the questions asked. George didn’t tell him that he didn’t see Mary that Saturday. I told him I had seen Mary Phagan Thursday.

C. J. MAYNARD, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I have seen Brutus Dalton go in the factory with a woman in June or July, 1912. She weighed about 125 pounds. It was between 1:30 and 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I was ten feet from the woman. I didn’t notice her very particularly. I did not speak to them.

W. T. HOLLIS, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

Mr. Reed rides out with me every morning. I don’t remember talking to J. D. Reed on Monday, April 29th, and telling him that George Epps and Mary Phagan were on my car together. I didn’t tell that to anybody. I say like I have always said, that if he was on the car I did not see him.

J. D. REED, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

Mr. Hollis told me on Monday, April 28th, that Epps had gotten on the car and taken his seat next to Mary, and that the two talked to each other all the way as though they were little sweethearts.

J. N. STARNES, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

There were no spots around the scuttle hole where the ladder is immediately after the murder. Campbell and I arrested Minola McKnight, to get a statement from her. We turned her over to the patrol wagon and we never saw her any more until the following day, when we called Mr. Craven and Mr. Pickett to come down and interview her. We stayed on the outside while she was on the inside with Craven and Pickett. They called us back and I said to her, “Minola, the truth is all we want, and if this is not the truth, don’t you state it.” And she started to put the statement down. Mr. Gordon, her attorney, was on the outside, and I told him we could go inside without his making any demand on me, and he went in with me, and Mr. Febuary had already taken down part of the statement and I stopped him and made him read over what he had already taken down, and after she had finished the statement, Attorney Gordon went to Mr. Dorsey’s office and then he came back to the police station. After he returned the affidavit was read over in the presence of Mr. Pickett, Craven, Campbell, Albert McKnight and Attorney Gordon and she signed it in our presence. You (Mr. Dorsey) had nothing to do with holding her. You told me over the phone that you couldn’t say what I could do, but that I could do what I pleased about it.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

No, I did not lock her up because she didn’t give us the right kind of statement; as to the authority I had to lock her up, it was reasonable and right that she should be locked up. I did that for the best interest of the case I was working on. No, I didn’t have any warrant for her arrest. She was brought to Mr. Dorsey’s office by a bailiff by a subpoena. I took her away from Dorsey’s office and put her in a patrol wagon. I expect Mr. Dorsey knew we were going to lock her up, but he did not tell us to do it. No, he didn’t disapprove of it. I didn’t know anything about her having made a previous statement to Mr. Dorsey. I think Mr. Dorsey said she had made such a statement. I saw her the next day in the station house. She didn’t scream after leaving Dorsey’s office until she reached the sidewalk. And then she commenced hollering and carrying on that she was going to jail; that she didn’t know anything about it, or something like that. No, I had no warrant for her arrest. She had committed no crime. I held her to get the truth. Mr. Dorsey told me I could turn her loose as I pleased. That was after she made the statement. I told him as to what had occurred and that her attorney, Gordon, was coming up there to see him. I told Col. Gordon that if it was agreeable with Col. Dorsey, that Minola could go as far as we were concerned. Well, Mr. Dorsey had more or less to do with the case that I was working on and I wanted to act on his advice and consent. He called me on the telephone and told me that if the chief thought it best or if we thought it best after conferring, to just let her go.

DR. CLARENCE JOHNSON, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am a specialist on diseases of the stomach and intestines. I am a physiologist. A physiologist makes his searches on the living body; the pathologist makes his on a dead body.

If you give any one who has drunk a chocolate milk at about eight o’clock in the morning, cabbage at 12 o’clock and 30 or 40 minutes thereafter you take the cabbage out and it is shown to be dark like chocolate and milk, that much contents of any kind vomited up three and a half hours afterwards would show an abnormal stomach. It doesn’t show a normal digestion.

If a little girl who eats a dinner of cabbage and bread at 11:30 is found the next morning dead at 3 a. m., with a rope around her neck, indented and the flesh sticking up, bruised on the eye, blood on the back of her head, the tongue sticking out, blue skin, every indication that she came to her death from strangulation, her head down, rigor mortis had been on her twenty hours, the blood had settled in her where the gravity would naturally take it in the face, she is embalmed, formaldehyde is used and injected in the various cavities of the body, including the stomach, a pathologist takes her stomach a week or ten days after, finds cabbage of that size (State’s Ex- hibit G) in the stomach, finds starch granules undigested, and finds in the stomach that the pyloris is still closed, that there is nothing in the first six feet of the small intestines; that there is every indication that digestion had been progressing favorably, and finds thirty-two degrees hydrochloric acid, and if the pathologist is capable and finds that there was only combined hydrochloric acid and that there was no abnormal condition of the stomach, the six feet of the intestines was empty, I would say that the digestion of bread and cabbage was stopped within an hour after they were eaten. That would not be a wild guess in my opinion.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

The bruises on the head, the evidence of strangulation and other injuries about the head are other possible factors which must be taken into consideration. Anything which disturbs the circulation of the blood, or hinders the action of the nerves controlling the stomach, especially the secretion, prevents the development of the characteristics found in normal digestion one hour after a meal. I mean by mechanical condition of the stomach, no change in the size or thickness, or opening into the intestines, or size or thickness of intestines. The test should be made with absolute accuracy with these acids. The color test is generally accepted. A man’s eye has to be absolutely correct to make the color test.

The degree of acidity in a normal stomach varies from 30 to 45 degrees, according to the stomach and what is in it. The formaldehyde would make no change on the physical property on the pancreatic juice found in the small intestine after death. There would be hardly any change on its chemical property. When it comes in contact with the formaldehyde it is supposed to be preserved. It has some neutralizing effect on the alkali present. That decomposes in time after death, unless hindered by some preservative. The hydrochloric acids in the stomach also disappear if the stomach has disintegrated and the preservative has disappeared. It disappears like the other fluids and tissues of the body unless hindered by some preservative agent. Sometimes digestion is delayed a good deal even in a normal stomach by insufficient mastication, too much diluting of the juices, or anything that hinders the operation of the mechanical effect. Insufficient mastication is one of the commonest causes, also the taking of too much liquid. Fatigue occasioned by extensive walking would hinder it. If the walking was not too extensive to produce fatigue, it would help digestion in a normal stomach. Insufficient mastication is the worst cause of delayed digestion. My estimate was that the cabbage was found an hour after the process of digestion had begun. I did not undertake to say when the digestion began. You can’t tell by looking at food in a bottle how much the failure to masticate it delayed digestion in hours and minutes. It would be just an estimate.

The physical appearance of that cabbage (Defendant’s Exhibit 88) shows indigestion by the layer, character and size, and area of separation between, and the character and arrangement of the layers below. The mere fact that it was vomited up would be proof positive that no scientific opinion could be made about it. To make a scientific test I would have to test the mechanism of the stomach, the time it was in there and the degree and presence of the different acids. The chocolate milk would not naturally stay in a normal stomach five or six hours. The cabbage would stay in a normal empty stomach where there was a tomato also three or four hours. I never made any test of Mary Phagan’s stomach and examined the contents of it.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION.

160 cubic cc. of liquid in the stomach taken out nine days afterwards would be a little in excess of what I would consider normal under the conditions already named.

DR. GEORGE M. NILES, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I confine my work to diseases of digestion. Every healthy stomach has a certain definite and orderly relation to every other healthy stomach. Assuming a young lady between thirteen and fourteen years of age at 11:30 April 26, 1913, eats a meal of cabbage and bread, that the next morning about three o’clock her dead body is found. That there are indentations in her neck where a cord had been around her throat, indicating that she died of strangulation, her nails blue, her face blue, a slight injury on the back of the head, a contused bruise on one of her eyes, the body is found with the face down, rigor mortis had been on from sixteen to twenty hours, that the blood in the body has settled in the part where gravity would naturally carry it, that the body is embalmed immediately with a fluid consisting chiefly of formaldehyde, which is injected in the veins and cavities of the body; that she is disinterred nine days thereafter; that cabbage of this texture (State’s Exhibit G) is found in her stomach; that the position of the stomach is normal; that no inflammation of the stomach is found by microscopic investigation; that no mucous is found, and that the glands found under this microscope are found to be normal, that there is no obstruction to the flow of the contents of the stomach to the small intestine; that the pyloris is closed; that there is every indication that digestion was progressing favorably; that in the gastric juices there is found starch granules that are shown by the color test to have been undigested, and that in that stomach you also find thirty-two degrees of hydrochloric acid, no maltose, no dextrin, no free hydrochloric acid (there would be more or less free hydrochloric acid in the course of an hour or more in the orderly progress of digestion of a healthy stomach where the contents are carbohydrates), I would say that indicated that digestion had been progressing less than an hour.

The starch digestion should have progressed beyond the state erythrodextrin in course of an hour. There should have been enough free acid to have stimulated the pyloris to relax to a certain extent, and there should have been some contents in the duodenum. I am assuming, of course, that it is a healthy stomach and that the digestion was not disturbed by any psychic cause which would disturb the mind or any severe physical exercise. I am not going so much on the physical appearance of the cabbage. Any severe physical exercise or mental stress has quite an influence on digestion. Death does not change the composition of the gastric juices when combined with hydrochloric acid for quite awhile. The gastric juices combined with the hydrochloric acid are an antiseptic or preservative. There is a wide variation in diseased stomachs as to digestion.

CROSS EXAMINATION

There are idiosyncracies in a normal stomach, but where they are too marked I would not consider that a normal stomach. I wouldn’t say that there is a mechanical rule where you can measure the digestive power of every stomach for every kind of food. There is a set time for every stomach to digest every kind of food within fairly regular limits, that is, a healthy stomach. There is a fairly mixed standard. There is no great amount of variation between healthy stomachs. I can’t answer for how long it takes cabbage to digest. I have taken cabbage out of a cancerous stomach that had been in there twenty-four hours, but there was no obstruction. The longest time that I have taken cabbage out of a fairly normal stomach was between four and five hours. That was where it was in the stomach along with another meal. I found the cabbage among the remains of the meal four or five hours after it had been eaten.

Mastication is a very important function of digestion. Failure to masticate delays the starch digestion. Starch and cabbage are both carbohydrates. I would say that if cabbage went into a healthy stomach not well masticated, the starch digestion would not get on so well, but the stomach would get busy at once. Of course, it would not be prepared as well. The digestion would be delayed, of course. That cabbage is not as well digested as it should have been (State’s exhibit G), but the very fact of your anticipating a good meal, smelling it, starts your saliva going and forms the first stage of digestion, and digestion is begun right there in the mouth, even if you haven’t chewed it a single time. Any deviation from good mastication retards digestion.

I couldn’t presume to say how long that cabbage lay in Mary Phagan’s stomach. I believe if it had been a live, healthy stomach and the process of digestion was going on orderly, it would be pulverized in four or five hours. It would be more broken up and tricturated than it is. I wouldn’t consider that a wild guess. I think it would have been fairly well pulverized in three hours. Chewing amounts to a great deal, but there should be an amount of saliva in her stomach even if she hadn’t masticated it thoroughly. Chewing is a temperamental matter to a great extent. One man chews his meal quicker than another. If it isn’t chewed at all, the stomach gets busy and helps out all it can and digests it after awhile. It takes more effort, of course, but not necessarily more time. What the teeth fail to do the stomach does to a great extent. The stomach has an extra amount of work if it is not masticated. You can’t tell by looking at the cabbage how long it had been undergoing the process of digestion. If that was a healthy stomach with combined acid of 32 degrees, and nothing happened either physical or mental to interfere with digestion, those laboratory findings indicated that digestion had been progressing less than an hour. I never made an autopsy or examination of the contents of Mary Phagan’s stomach.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION.

The first stage of digestion is starch digestion. This progresses in the stomach until the contents become acid in all its parts. Then the starch digestion stops until the contents get out in the intestines and become alkaline in reaction; then the starch digestion is continued on beyond. The olfactories act as a stimulant to the salivary glands.

DR. JOHN FUNK, sworn for the State in rebuttal.

I am professor of pathology and bacteriologist. I was shown by Dr. Harris sections from the vaginal wall of Mary Phagan, sections taken near the skin surface. I didn’t see sections from the stomach or the contents. These sections showed that the epithelium wall was torn off at points immediately beneath that covering in the tissues below, and there was infiltrated pressure of blood. They were, you might say, engorged, and the white blood cells in those blood vessels were more numerous than you will find in a normal blood vessel. The blood vessels at some distance from the torn point were not so engorged to the same extent as those blood vessels immediately in the vicinity of the hemorrhage. Those blood vessels were larger than they should be under normal circumstances, as compared with the blood vessels in the vicinity of the tear. You couldn’t tell about any discoloration, but there was blood there. It is reasonable to suppose that there was swelling there because of the infiltrated pressure of the blood in the tissues. Those conditions must have been produced prior to death, because the blood could not invade the tissues after death.

If a young lady, between thirteen and fourteen years old eats at eleven thirty a. m. a normal meal of bread and cabbage on a Saturday and at three a. m. Sunday morning she is found with a cord around her neck, the skin indented, the nails and flesh cyanotic, the tongue out and swollen, blue nails, everything indicating that she had been strangled to death, that rigor mortis had set in, and according to the best authorities had probably progressed from sixteen to twenty hours, and she was laying face down when found, and gravity had forced the blood into that part of the body next to the ground, that it had discolored her features, that immediately thereafter, between ten and two o’clock she was embalmed with a fluid containing usual amount of formaldehyde, this being injected into the veins in the large cavities, she is interred thereafter and in about a week or ten days she is disinterred, and you find in her stomach cabbage like that (State’s Exhibit G) and you find granules of starch undigested, and those starch granules are developed by the usual color tests, and you also find in that stomach thirty-two degrees of combined hydrochloric acid, the pyloris closed, and the duodenum, and six feet of the small intestines empty, no free hydrochloric acid being present at all, nor dextrin, or erythrodextrin being found in any degree, and the uterus was somewhat enlarged, and the walls of the vagina show dilation and swelling, I would say that under those conditions that the epithelium was torn off before death, because of the changes in the blood vessels and tissues below the epithelium covering, and because of the presence of blood.

I would not express an opinion as to how long cabbage had been in the stomach, from the appearance of the cabbage itself, taking into consideration the combined hydrochloric acid of thirty-two degrees, the emptiness of the small intestine, the presence of starch granules, and the absence of free hydrochloric acid, one can’t say positively, but it is reasonable to assume that the digestion had pro- gressed probably an hour, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

Dr. Dorsey asked me to examine the sections of the vaginal wall last Saturday. The sections I examined were about a quarter of an inch wide and three-quarters of an inch long. It was about nine twenty-five thousandths of an inch thick, that is, much thinner than tissue paper. I examined thirty or forty little strips. That was after this trial began. I was not present at the autopsy. As soon as a tissue receives an injury, it reacts in a very short time. The reaction shows up in the changes of the blood vessels. You can tell by the appearance of the blood vessels whether the injury was before death or not, and you can give an approximate idea as to the length of time before death. I do not know from what body the sections were taken. I know that it was from a human vagina.

THE STATE CLOSES.

EVIDENCE FOR DEFENDANT IN SUR-REBUTTAL.

T. Y. BRENT, sworn for the Defendant in sur-rebuttal.

I have heard George Kendley on several occasions express himself very bitterly towards Leo Frank. He said he felt in this case just as he did about a couple of negroes hung down in Decatur; that he didn’t know whether they had been guilty or not, but somebody had to be hung for killing those street car men and it was just as good to hang one nigger as another, and that Frank was nothing but an old Jew and they ought to take him out and hang him anyhow.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I have been employed by the defense to assist in subpoenaing witnesses. I took the part of Jim Conley in the experiment conducted by Dr. Win. Owens at the factory on Sunday.

M. E. STAHL, sworn for the Defendant, in sur-rebuttal.

I have heard George Kendley, the conductor, express his feelings toward Leo Frank. I was standing on the rear platform, and he said that Frank was as guilty as a snake, and should be hung, and that if the court didn’t convict him that he would be one of five or seven that would get him.

MISS C. S. HAAS, sworn for the Defendant, in sur-rebuttal.

I heard Kendley two weeks ago talk about the Frank case so loud that the entire street car heard it. He said that circumstantial evidence was the best kind of evidence to convict a man on and if there was any doubt, the State should be given the benefit of it, and that 90 per cent. of the best people in the city, including himself, thought that Frank was guilty and ought to hang.

N. SINKOVITZ, sworn for the Defendant, in sur-rebuttal.

I am a pawnbroker. I know M.E. McCoy. He has pawned his watch to me lately. The last time was January 11, 1913. It was in my place of business on the 26th of April, 1913. He paid up his loan on August 16th, last Saturday, during this trial. This is the same watch I have been handling for him during the last two years.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

My records here show that he took it out Saturday.

S. L. ASHER, sworn for the Defendant in sur-rebuttal.

About two weeks ago I was coming to town between 5 and 10 minutes to 1 on the car and there was a man who was talking very loud about the Frank case, and all of a sudden he said: “They ought to take that damn Jew out and hang him anyway.” I took his number down to report him.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I have not had a chance to report since it happened.

It is most interesting that a single man, expressing his opinion that Leo Frank was a “damn Jew” and ought to hang, was something that a public-spirited citizen in 1913 Atlanta thought he ought to report to the authorities. This hardly corresponds with the atmosphere of “pervasive Southern anti-Semitism” that modern Frank supporters say existed. On the contrary, it speaks of an atmosphere in which such sentiments were strongly deplored, and even considered beyond the pale of socially acceptable behavior and expression.

In this rare photograph from his days at Cornell University, Leo Frank stares wide-eyed at the camera, a characteristic expression for him.

During the final moments of the trial itself, and before closing arguments were made, Leo Max Frank asked to address the court once again. He was permitted to do so. As before, he was unsworn and not under oath and not subject to cross-examination, just as in his initial statement. No matter what Frank told the jury, Dorsey was forbidden to question him about it, or make it the basis for questioning anyone else.

ADDITIONAL STATEMENT MADE BY DEFENDANT, LEO M. FRANK.

In reply to the statement of the boy that he saw me talking to Mary Phagan when she backed away from me, that is absolutely false, that never occurred. In reply to the two girls, Robinson and Hewel, that they saw me talking to Mary Phagan and that I called her” Mary,” I wish to say that they are mistaken. It is very possible that I have talked to the little girl in going through the factory and examining the work, but I never knew her name, either to call her “Mary Phagan,” “Miss Phagan,” or “Mary.”

In reference to the statements of the two women who say that they saw me going into the dressing room with Miss Rebecca Carson, I wish to state that that is utterly false. It is a slander on the young lady, and I wish to state that as far as my knowledge of Miss Rebecca Carson goes, she is a lady of unblemished character.

DEFENDANT CLOSES.

So to the very end, Leo Frank maintained that all the witnesses who heard him calling Mary Phagan by name were liars — or mistaken. Interestingly, he did not take even a moment at the end of the trial to repeat his claim that he never made lascivious advances toward the young ladies under his supervision — as several of them had so recently testified. Most likely he was warned off the topic by his counsel.

In our next article, we will present the powerful, yet completely contradictory, closing arguments of both the prosecution and defense in the trial of Leo M. Frank.

* * *

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

For further study we recommend the following resources:

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Full archive of Atlanta Georgian newspapers relating to the murder and subsequent trial

The Leo Frank case as reported in the Atlanta Constitution

The Leo Frank Case (Mary Phagan) Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery 1913

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean

American State Trials, volume X (1918) by John Lawson

Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Trial of Leo Frank

Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913, Brief of Evidence

The American Mercury is following these events of 100 years ago, the month-long trial of Leo M. Frank for the brutal murder of Miss Mary Phagan, in capsule form on a regular basis through August 26, the 100th anniversary of the reading of the verdict. Follow along with us and experience the trial as Atlantans of a century ago did, and come to your own conclusions.

Read also the Mercury’s coverage of Week One of the Leo Frank trial, Week Two, and Week Three and my exclusive summary of the evidence against Frank.

A fearless scholar, dedicated to the truth about this case, has obtained, scanned, and uploaded every single relevant issue of the major Atlanta daily newspapers and they now can be accessed through archive.org as follows:

Atlanta Constitution Newspaper:
http://www.leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-constitution/

Atlanta Georgian Newspaper:
http://www.leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-georgian/

Atlanta Journal Newspaper:
http://www.leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-journal/

More background on the case may be found in my article here at the Mercury, 100 Reasons Leo Frank Is Guilty.

Proving That Anti-Semitism Had Nothing to Do With His Conviction — and Proving That His Defenders Have Used Frauds and Hoaxes for 100 Years

by Bradford L. Huie
exclusive to The American Mercury

MARY PHAGAN was just thirteen years old. She was a sweatshop laborer for Atlanta, Georgia’s National Pencil Company. Exactly 100 years ago today — Saturday, April 26, 1913 — little Mary (pictured, artist’s depiction) was looking forward to the festivities of Confederate Memorial Day. She dressed gaily and planned to attend the parade. She had just come to collect her $1.20 pay from National Pencil Company superintendent Leo M. Frank at his office when she was attacked by an assailant who struck her down, ripped her undergarments, likely attempted to sexually abuse her, and then strangled her to death. Her body was dumped in the factory basement.

Leo M. Frank

(Listen to the audio book version of this article by pressing the play button below:)

Leo Frank, who was the head of Atlanta’s B’nai B’rith, a Jewish fraternal order, was eventually convicted of the murder and sentenced to hang. After a concerted and lavishly financed campaign by the American Jewish community, Frank’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison by an outgoing governor. But he was snatched from his prison cell and hung by a lynching party consisting, in large part, of leading citizens outraged by the commutation order – and none of the lynchers were ever prosecuted or even indicted for their crime. One result of Frank’s trial and death was the founding of the still-powerful Anti-Defamation League.

Video version of this article:

Today Leo Frank’s innocence, and his status as a victim of anti-Semitism, are almost taken for granted. But are these current attitudes based on the facts of the case, or are they based on a propaganda campaign that began 100 years ago? Let’s look at the facts.

It has been proved beyond any shadow of doubt that either Leo Frank or National Pencil Company sweeper Jim Conley was the killer of Mary Phagan. Every other person who was in the building at the time has been fully accounted for. Those who believe Frank to be innocent say, without exception, that Jim Conley must have been the killer.

Jim Conley

On the 100th anniversary of the inexpressibly tragic death of this sweet and lovely girl, let us examine 100 reasons why the jury that tried him believed (and why we ought to believe, once we see the evidence) that Leo Max Frank strangled Mary Phagan to death — 100 reasons proving that Frank’s supporters have used multiple frauds and hoaxes and have tampered with the evidence on a massive scale — 100 reasons proving that the main idea that Frank’s modern defenders put forth, that Leo Frank was a victim of anti-Semitism, is the greatest hoax of all.

1. Only Leo Frank had the opportunity to be alone with Mary Phagan, and he admits he was alone with her in his office when she came to get her pay — and in fact he was completely alone with her on the second floor. Had Jim Conley been the killer, he would have had to attack her practically right at the entrance to the building where he sat almost all day, where people were constantly coming and going and where several witnesses noticed Conley, with no assurance of even a moment of privacy.

2. Leo Frank had told Newt Lee, the pencil factory’s night watchman, to come earlier than usual, at 4 PM, on the day of the murder. But Frank was extremely nervous when Lee arrived (the killing of Mary Phagan had occurred between three and four hours before and her body was still in the building) and insisted that Lee leave and come back in two hours.

3. When Lee then suggested he could sleep for a couple of hours on the premises — and there was a cot in the basement near the place where Lee would ultimately find the body — Frank refused to let him. Lee could also have slept in the packing room adjacent to Leo Frank’s office. But Frank insisted that Lee had to leave and “have a good time” instead. This violated the corporate rule that once the night watchman entered the building, he could not leave until he handed over the keys to the day watchman. Newt Lee, though strongly suspected at first, was manifestly innocent and had no reason to lie, and had had good relations with Frank and no motive to hurt him.

4. When Lee returned at six, Frank was even more nervous and agitated than two hours earlier, according to Lee. He was so nervous, he could not operate the time clock properly, something he had done hundreds of times before. (Leo Frank officially started to work at the National Pencil Company on Monday morning, August 10, 1908. Twenty-two days later, on September 1, 1908, he was elevated to the position of superintendent of the company, and served in this capacity until he was arrested on Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913.)

Newt Lee

5. When Leo Frank came out of the building around six, he met not only Lee but John Milton Gantt, a former employee who was a friend of Mary Phagan. Lee says that when Frank saw Gantt, he visibly “jumped back” and appeared very nervous when Gantt asked to go into the building to retrieve some shoes that he had left there. According to E.F. Holloway, J.M. Gantt had known Mary for a long time and was one of the only employees Mary Phagan spoke with at the factory. Gantt was the former paymaster of the firm. Frank had fired him three weeks earlier, allegedly because the payroll was short about $1. Was Gantt’s firing a case of the dragon getting rid of the prince to get the princess? Was Frank jealous of Gantt’s closeness with Mary Phagan? Unlike Frank, Gantt was tall with bright blue eyes and handsome features.

J.M. Gantt

6. After Frank returned home in the evening after the murder, he called Newt Lee on the telephone and asked him if everything was “all right” at the factory, something he had never done before. A few hours later Lee would discover the mutilated body of Mary Phagan in the pencil factory basement.

7. When police finally reached Frank after the body of Mary Phagan had been found, Frank emphatically denied knowing the murdered girl by name, even though he had seen her probably hundreds of times — he had to pass by her work station, where she had worked for a year, every time he inspected the workers’ area on the second floor and every time he went to the bathroom — and he had filled out her pay slip personally on approximately 52 occasions, marking it with her initials “M. P.” Witnesses also testified that Frank had spoken to Mary Phagan on multiple occasions, even getting a little too close for comfort at times, putting his hand on her shoulder and calling her “Mary.”

8. When police accompanied Frank to the factory on the morning after the murder, Frank was so nervous and shaking so badly he could not even perform simple tasks like unlocking a door.

9. Early in the investigation, Leo Frank told police that he knew that J.M. Gantt had been “intimate” with Mary Phagan, immediately making Gantt a suspect. Gantt was arrested and interrogated. But how could Frank have known such a thing about a girl he didn’t even know by name?

10. Also early in the investigation, while both Leo Frank and Newt Lee were being held and some suspicion was still directed at Lee, a bloody shirt was “discovered” in a barrel at Lee’s home. Investigators became suspicious when it was proved that the blood marks on the shirt had been made by wiping it, unworn, in the liquid. The shirt had no trace of body odor and the blood had fully soaked even the armpit area, even though only a small quantity of blood was found at the crime scene. This was the first sign that money was being used to procure illegal acts and interfere in the case in such a way as to direct suspicion away from Leo M. Frank. This became a virtual certainty when Lee was definitely cleared.

A few members of Mary Phagan’s family; originally published in the Atlanta Georgian

Mary Phagan and her aunt, Mattie Phagan

11. Leo Frank claimed that he was in his office continuously from noon to 12:35 on the day of the murder, but a witness friendly to Frank, 14-year-old Monteen Stover, said Frank’s office was totally empty from 12:05 to 12:10 while she waited for him there before giving up and leaving. This was approximately the same time as Mary Phagan’s visit to Frank’s office and the time she was murdered. On Sunday, April 27, 1913, Leo Frank told police that Mary Phagan came into his office at 12:03 PM. The next day, Frank made a deposition to the police, with his lawyers present, in which he said he was alone with Mary Phagan in his office between 12:05 and 12:10. Frank would later change his story again, stating on the stand that Mary Phagan came into his office a full five minutes later than that.

12. Leo Frank contradicted his own testimony when he finally admitted on the stand that he had possibly “unconsciously” gone to the Metal Room bathroom between 12:05 and 12:10 PM on the day of the murder.

Floor plan of the National Pencil Company – click for high resolution

13. The Metal Room, which Frank finally admitted at trial he might have “unconsciously” visited at the approximate time of the killing (and where no one else except Mary Phagan could be placed by investigators), was the room in which the prosecution said the murder occurred. It was also where investigators had found spots of blood, and some blondish hair twisted on a lathe handle — where there had definitely been no hair the day before. (When R.P. Barret left work on Friday evening at 6:00 PM, he had left a piece of work in his machine that he intended to finish on Monday morning at 6:30 AM. It was then he found the hair — with dried blood on it — on his lathe. How did it get there over the weekend, if the factory was closed for the holiday? Several co-workers testified the hair resembled Mary Phagan’s. Nearby, on the floor adjacent to the Metal Room’s bathroom door, was a five-inch-wide fan-shaped blood stain.)

The Metal Room, where the blood spots and hair were found; and the basement of the National Pencil Company, where Mary Phagan’s strangled and dragged body was found

Closeup of the artist’s representation of the hair found on the lathe handle

14. In his initial statement to authorities, Leo Frank stated that after Mary Phagan picked up her pay in his office, “She went out through the outer office and I heard her talking with another girl.” This “other girl” never existed. Every person known to be in the building was extensively investigated and interviewed, and no girl spoke to Mary Phagan nor met her at that time. Monteen Stover was the only other girl there, and she saw only an empty office. Stover was friendly with Leo Frank, and in fact was a positive character witness for him. She had no reason to lie. But Leo Frank evidently did. (Atlanta Georgian, April 28, 1913)

15. In an interview shortly after the discovery of the murder, Leo Frank stated “I have been in the habit of calling up the night watchman to keep a check on him, and at 7 o’clock called Newt.” But Newt Lee, who had no motive to hurt his boss (in fact quite the opposite) firmly maintained that in his three weeks of working as the factory’s night watchman, Frank had never before made such a call. (Atlanta Georgian, April 28, 1913)

Three-dimensional diagram of the National Pencil Company headquarters in the Venable building

16. A few days later, Frank told the press, referring to the National Pencil Company factory where the murder took place, “I deeply regret the carelessness shown by the police department in not making a complete investigation as to finger prints and other evidence before a great throng of people were allowed to enter the place.” But it was Frank himself, as factory superintendent, who had total control over access to the factory and crime scene — who was fully aware that evidence might thereby be destroyed — and who allowed it to happen. (Atlanta Georgian, April 29, 1913)

17. Although Leo Frank made a public show of support for Newt Lee, stating Lee was not guilty of the murder, behind the scenes he was saying quite different things. In its issue of April 29, 1913, the Atlanta Georgian published an article titled “Suspicion Lifts from Frank,” in which it was stated that the police were increasingly of the opinion that Newt Lee was the murderer, and that “additional clews furnished by the head of the pencil factory [Frank] were responsible for closing the net around the negro watchman.” The discovery that the bloody shirt found at Lee’s home was planted, along with other factors such as Lee’s unshakable testimony, would soon change their views, however.

18. One of the “clews” provided by Frank was his claim that Newt Lee had not punched the company’s time clock properly, evidently missing several of his rounds and giving him time to kill Mary Phagan and return home to hide the bloody shirt. But that directly contradicted Frank’s initial statement the morning after the murder that Lee’s time slip was complete and proper in every way. Why the change? The attempt to frame Lee would eventually crumble, especially after it was discovered that Mary Phagan died shortly after noon, four hours before Newt Lee’s first arrival at the factory.

19. Almost immediately after the murder, pro-Frank partisans with the National Pencil Company hired the Pinkerton detective agency to investigate the crime. But even the Pinkertons, being paid by Frank’s supporters, eventually were forced to come to the conclusion that Frank was the guilty man. (The Pinkertons were hired by Sigmund Montag of the National Company at the behest of Leo Frank, with the understanding that they were to “ferret out the murderer, no matter who he was.”  After Leo Frank was convicted, Harry Scott and the Pinkertons were stiffed out of an investigation bill totaling some $1300 for their investigative work that had indeed helped to “ferret out the murderer, no matter who he was.” The Pinkertons had to sue to win their wages and expenses in court, but were never able to fully collect. Mary Phagan’s mother also took the National Pencil Company to court for wrongful death, and the case settled out of court. She also was never able to fully collect the settlement. These are some of the unwritten injustices of the Leo Frank case, in which hard-working and incorruptible detectives were stiffed out of their money for being incorruptible, and a mother was cheated of her daughter’s life and then cheated out of her rightful settlement as well.) (Atlanta Georgian, May 26, 1913, “Pinkerton Man says Frank Is Guilty – Pencil Factory Owners Told Him Not to Shield Superintendent, Scott Declares”)

20. That is not to say that were not factions within the Pinkertons, though. One faction was not averse to planting false evidence. A Pinkerton agent named W.D. McWorth — three weeks after the entire factory had been meticulously examined by police and Pinkerton men — miraculously “discovered” a bloody club, a piece of cord like that used to strangle Mary Phagan, and an alleged piece of Mary Phagan’s pay envelope on the first floor of the factory, near where the factory’s Black sweeper, Jim Conley, had been sitting on the fatal day. This was the beginning of the attempt to place guilt for the killing on Conley, an effort which still continues 100 years later. The “discovery” was so obviously and patently false that it was greeted with disbelief by almost everyone, and McWorth was pulled off the investigation and eventually discharged by the Pinkerton agency.

W.D. McWorth

21. It also came out that McWorth had made his “finds” while chief Pinkerton investigator Harry Scott was out of town. Most interestingly, and contrary to Scott’s direct orders, McWorth’s “discoveries” were reported immediately to Frank’s defense team, but not at all to the police. A year later, McWorth surfaced once more, now as a Burns agency operative, a firm which was by then openly working in the interests of Frank. One must ask: Who would pay for such obstruction of justice? — and why? (Frey, The Silent and the Damned, page 46; Indianapolis Star, May 28, 1914; The Frank Case, Atlanta Publishing Co., p. 65)

City Detective Black, left; and Pinkerton investigator Harry Scott, right

22. Jim Conley told police two obviously false narratives before finally breaking down and admitting that he was an accessory to Leo Frank in moving of the body of Mary Phagan and in authoring, at Frank’s direction, the “death notes” found near the body in the basement. These notes, ostensibly from Mary Phagan but written in semi-literate Southern black dialect, seemed to point to the night watchman as the killer. To a rapt audience of investigators and factory officials, Conley re-enacted his and Frank’s conversations and movements on the day of the killing. Investigators, and even some observers who were very skeptical at first, felt that Conley’s detailed narrative had the ring of truth.

23. At trial, the leading — and most expensive — criminal defense lawyers in the state of Georgia could not trip up Jim Conley or shake him from his story.

24. Conley stated that Leo Frank sometimes employed him to watch the entrance to the factory while Frank “chatted” with teenage girl employees upstairs. Conley said that Frank admitted that he had accidentally killed Mary Phagan when she resisted his advances, and sought his help in the hiding of the body and in writing the black-dialect “death notes” that attempted to throw suspicion on the night watchman. Conley said he was supposed to come back later to burn Mary Phagan’s body in return for $200, but fell asleep and did not return.

25. Blood spots were found exactly where Conley said that Mary Phagan’s lifeless body was found by him in the second floor metal room.

26. Hair that looked like Mary Phagan’s was found on a Metal Room lathe immediately next to where Conley said he found her body, where she had apparently fallen after her altercation with Leo Frank.

Rare diagram/photograph showing rear of the National Pencil Company building and insets detailing where blood, hair, and body of Mary Phagan were found (click for a large, high-resolution version)

27. Blood spots were found exactly where Conley says he dropped Mary Phagan’s body while trying to move it. Conley could not have known this. If he was making up his story, this is a coincidence too fantastic to be accepted.

28. A piece of Mary Phagan’s lacy underwear was looped around her neck, apparently in a clumsy attempt to hide the deeply indented marks of the rope which was used to strangle her. No murderer could possibly believe that detectives would be fooled for an instant by such a deception. But a murderer who needed another man’s help for a few minutes in disposing of a body might indeed believe it would serve to briefly conceal the real nature of the crime from his assistant, perhaps being mistaken for a lace collar.

Mary Phagan autopsy photograph

29. If Conley was the killer — and it had to be Conley or Frank — he moved the body of Mary Phagan by himself. The lacy loop around Mary Phagan’s neck would serve absolutely no purpose in such a scenario.

30. The dragging marks on the basement floor, leading to where Mary Phagan’s body was dumped near the furnace, began at the elevator — exactly matching Jim Conley’s version of events.

31. Much has been made of Conley’s admission that he defecated in the elevator shaft on Saturday morning, and the idea that, because the detectives crushed the feces for the first time when they rode down in the elevator the next day, Conley’s story that he and Frank used the elevator to bring Mary Phagan’s body to the basement on Saturday afternoon could not be true — thus bringing Conley’s entire story into question. But how could anyone determine with certainty that the “crushing” was the “first crushing”? And nowhere in the voluminous records of the case — including Governor Slaton’s commutation order in which he details his supposed tests of the elevator — can we find evidence that anyone made even the most elementary inquiry into whether or not the bottom surface of the elevator car was uniformly flat.

32. Furthermore, the so-called “shit in the shaft” theory of Frank’s innocence also breaks down when we consider the fact that detectives inspected the floor of the elevator shaft before riding down in the elevator, and found in it Mary Phagan’s parasol and a large quantity of trash and debris. Detective R.M. Lassiter stated at the inquest into Mary Phagan’s death, in answer to the question “Is the bottom of the elevator shaft of concrete or wood, or what?” that “I don’t know. It was full of trash and I couldn’t see.” There was so much trash there, the investigator couldn’t even tell what the floor of the shaft was made of! There may well have been enough trash, and arranged in such a way, to have prevented the crushing of the waste material when Frank and Conley used the elevator to transport Mary Phagan’s body to the basement. In digging through this trash, detectives could easily have moved it enough to permit the crushing of the feces the next time the elevator was run down.

33. The defense’s theory of Conley’s guilt involves Conley alone bringing Mary Phagan’s body to the basement down the scuttle hole ladder, not the elevator. But Lassiter was insistent that the dragging marks did not begin at the ladder, stating at the inquest: “No, sir; the dragging signs went past the foot of the ladder. I saw them between the elevator and the ladder.” Why would Conley pointlessly drag the body backwards toward the elevator, when his goal was the furnace? Why were there no signs of his turning around if he had done so? If Mary Phagan’s body could leave dragging marks on the irregular and dirty surface of the basement, why were there no marks of a heavy body being dumped down the scuttle hole as the defense alleged Conley to have done? Why did Mary Phagan’s body not have the multiple bruises it would have to have incurred from being hurled 14 feet down the scuttle hole to the basement floor below?

34. Leo Frank changed the time at which he said Mary Phagan came to collect her pay. He initially said that it was 12:03, then said that it might have been “12:05 to 12:10, maybe 12:07.” But at the inquest he moved his estimates a full five minutes later: “Q: What time did she come in? A: I don’t know exactly; it was 12:10 or 12:15. Q: How do you fix the time that she came in as 12:10 or 12:15? A: Because the other people left at 12 and I judged it to be ten or fifteen minutes later when she came in.” He seems to have no solid basis for his new estimate, so why change it by five minutes, or at all?

35. Pinkerton detective Harry Scott, who was employed by Leo Frank to investigate the murder, testified that he was asked by Frank’s defense team to withhold from the police any evidence his agency might find until after giving it to Frank’s lawyers. Scott refused.

36. Newt Lee, who was proved absolutely innocent, and who never tried to implicate anyone including Leo Frank, says Frank reacted with horror when Lee suggested that Mary Phagan might have been killed during the day, and not at night as was commonly believed early in the investigation. The daytime was exactly when Frank was at the factory, and Lee wasn’t. Here Detective Harry Scott testifies as to part of the conversation that ensued when Leo Frank and Newt Lee were purposely brought together: “Q: What did Lee say? A: Lee says that Frank didn’t want to talk about the murder. Lee says he told Frank he knew the murder was committed in daytime, and Frank hung his head and said ‘Let’s don’t talk about that!'” (Atlanta Georgian, May 8, 1913, “Lee Repeats His Private Conversation With Frank”)

37. When Newt Lee was questioned at the inquest about this arranged conversation, he confirms that Frank didn’t want to continue the conversation when Lee stated that the killing couldn’t possibly have happened during his evening and nighttime watch: “Q: Tell the jury of your conversation with Frank in private. A: I was in the room and he came in. I said, Mr. Frank, it is mighty hard to be sitting here handcuffed. He said he thought I was innocent, and I said I didn’t know anything except finding the body. ‘Yes,’ Mr. Frank said, ‘and you keep that up we will both go to hell!’ I told him that if she had been killed in the basement I would have known it, and he said, ‘Don’t let’s talk about that — let that go!'” (Atlanta Georgian, May 8, 1913, “Lee Repeats His Private Conversation With Frank”)

38. Former County Policeman Boots Rogers, who drove the officers to Frank’s home and then took them all, including Frank, back to the factory on the morning of April 27, said Frank was so nervous that he was hoarse — even before being told of the murder. (Atlanta Georgian, May 8, 1913, “Rogers Tells What Police Found at the Factory”)

Boots Rogers

39. Rogers also states that he personally inspected Newt Lee’s time slip — the one that Leo Frank at first said had no misses, but later claimed the reverse. The Atlanta Georgian on May 8 reported what Rogers saw: “Rogers said he looked at the slip and the first punch was at 6:30 and last at 2:30. There were no misses, he said.” Frank, unfortunately, was allowed to take the slip and put it in his desk. Later a slip with several punches missing would turn up. How can this be reconciled with the behavior of an innocent man?

40. The curious series of events surrounding Lee’s time slip is totally inconsistent with theory of a police “frame-up” of Leo Frank. At the time these events occurred, suspicion was strongly directed at Lee, and not at Frank.

41. When Leo Frank accompanied the officers to the police station later on during the day after the murder, Rogers stated that Leo Frank was literally so nervous that his hands were visibly shaking.

42. Factory Foreman Lemmie Quinn would eventually testify for the defense that Leo Frank was calmly sitting in his office at 12:20, a few minutes after the murder probably occurred. As to whether this visit really happened, there is some question. Quinn says he came to visit Schiff, Frank’s personal assistant, who wasn’t there — was he even expected to be there on a Saturday and holiday? — and stayed only two minutes or so talking to Frank in the office. Frank at first said there was no such visit, and only remembered it days later when Quinn “refreshed his memory.”

43. As reported by the Atlanta Georgian, City detective John Black said even Quinn initially denied that there was such a visit! “Q: What did Mr. Quinn say to you about his trip to the factory Saturday? A: Mr. Quinn said he was not at the factory on the day of the murder. Q: How many times did he say it? A: Two or three times. I heard him tell Detective Starnes that he had not been there.” (Atlanta Georgian, May 8, 1913, “Black Testifies Quinn Denied Visiting Factory”)

44. Several young women and girls testified at the inquest that Frank had made improper advances toward them, in one instance touching a girl’s breast and in another appearing to offer money for compliance with his desires. The Atlanta Georgian reported: “Girls and women were called to the stand to testify that they had been employed at the factory or had had occasion to go there, and that Frank had attempted familiarities with them. Nellie Pettis, of 9 Oliver Street, declared that Frank had made improper advances to her. She was asked if she had ever been employed at the pencil factory. No, she answered. Q: Do you know Leo Frank? A: I have seen him once or twice. Q: When and where did you see him? A: In his office at the factory whenever I went to draw my sister-in-law’s pay. Q: What did he say to you that might have been improper on any of these visits? A: He didn’t exactly say — he made gestures. I went to get sister’s pay about four weeks ago and when I went into the office of Mr. Frank I asked for her. He told me I couldn’t see her unless ‘I saw him first.’ I told him I didn’t want to ‘see him.’ He pulled a box from his desk. It had a lot of money in it. He looked at it significantly and then looked at me. When he looked at me, he winked. As he winked he said: ‘How about it?’ I instantly told him I was a nice girl. Here the witness stopped her statement. Coroner Donehoo asked her sharply: ‘Didn’t you say anything else?’ ‘Yes, I did! I told him to go to h–l! and walked out of his office.'” (Atlanta Georgian, May 9, 1913, “Phagan Case to be Rushed to Grand Jury by Dorsey”)

45. In the same article, another young girl testified to Frank’s pattern of improper familiarities: “Nellie Wood, a young girl, testified as follows: Q: Do you know Leo Frank? A: I worked for him two days. Q: Did you observe any misconduct on his part? A: Well, his actions didn’t suit me. He’d come around and put his hands on me when such conduct was entirely uncalled for. Q: Is that all he did? A: No. He asked me one day to come into his office, saying that he wanted to talk to me. He tried to close the door but I wouldn’t let him. He got too familiar by getting so close to me. He also put his hands on me. Q: Where did he put his hands? He barely touched my breast. He was subtle in his approaches, and tried to pretend that he was joking. But I was too wary for such as that. Q: Did he try further familiarities? A: Yes.”

46. In May, around the time of disgraced Pinkerton detective McWorth’s attempt to plant fake evidence — which caused McWorth’s dismissal from the Pinkerton agency — attorney Thomas Felder made his loud but mysterious appearance. “Colonel” Felder, as he was known, was soliciting donations to bring yet another private detective agency into the case — Pinkerton’s great rival, the William Burns agency. Felder claimed to be representing neighbors, friends, and family members of Mary Phagan. But Mary Phagan’s stepfather, J.W. Coleman, was so angered by this misrepresentation that he made an affidavit denying there was any connection between him and Felder. It was widely believed that Felder and Burns were secretly retained by Frank supporters. The most logical interpretation of these events is that, having largely failed in getting the Pinkerton agency to perform corrupt acts on behalf of Frank, Frank’s supporters decided to covertly bring another, and hopefully more “cooperative,” agency into the case. Felder and his “unselfish” efforts were their cover. Felder’s representations were seen as deception by many, which led more and more people to question Frank’s innocence. (Atlanta Georgian, May 15, 1913, “Burns Investigator Will Probe Slaying”)

“Colonel” Thomas Felder

47. Felder’s efforts collapsed when A.S. Colyar, a secret agent of the police, used a dictograph to secretly record Felder offering to pay $1,000 for the original Coleman affidavit and for copies of the confidential police files on the Mary Phagan case. C.W. Tobie, the Burns detective brought into the case by Felder, was reportedly present. Colyar stated that after this meeting “I left the Piedmont Hotel at 10:55 a.m. and Tobie went from thence to Felder’s office, as he informed me, to meet a committee of citizens, among whom were Mr. Hirsch, Mr. Myers, Mr. Greenstein and several other prominent Jews in this city.” (Atlanta Georgian, May 21, 1913, “T.B. Felder Repudiates Report of Activity for Frank”)

48. Felder then lashed out wildly, vehemently denied working for Frank’s friends, and declared that he thought Frank guilty. He even made the bizarre claim, impossible for anyone to believe, that the police were shielding Frank. It was observed of Felder that “when one’s reputation is near zero, one might want to attach oneself to the side one wants to harm in an effort to drag them down as you fall.” (Atlanta Georgian, May 21, 1913, “T.B. Felder Repudiates Report of Activity for Frank”)

49. Interestingly, C.W. Tobie, the Burns man, also made a statement shortly afterward — when his firm initially withdrew from the case — that he had come to believe in Frank’s guilt also: “It is being insinuated by certain forces that we are striving to shield Frank. That is absurd. From what I developed in my investigation I am convinced that Frank is the guilty man.” (Atlanta Constitution, May 27, 1913, “Burns Agency Quits the Phagan case”)

50. As his efforts crashed to Earth, Felder made this statement to an Atlanta Constitution reporter: “Is it not passing strange that the city detective department, whose wages are paid by the taxpayers of this city, should ‘hob-nob’ daily with the Pinkerton Detective Agency, an agency confessedly employed in this investigation to work in behalf of Leo Frank; that they would take this agency into their daily and hourly conference and repose in it their confidence, and co-operate with it in every way possible, and withhold their co-operation from W.J. Burns and his able assistants, who are engaged by the public and for the public in ferreting out this crime.” But what Felder failed to mention was that the Pinkertons’ main agent in Atlanta, Harry Scott, had proved that he could not be corrupted by the National Pencil Company’s money, so it is reasonable to conclude that the well-heeled pro-Frank forces would search elsewhere for help. The famous William Burns agency was really the only logical choice. To think that Felder and “Mary Phagan’s neighbors” were selflessly employing Burns is naive in the extreme: It means that Frank’s wealthy friends would just sit on their money and stick with the not at all helpful Pinkertons, who had just fired the only agent who tried to “help” Frank. (Atlanta Constitution, May 25, 1913, “Thomas Felder Brands the Charges of Bribery Diabolical Conspiracy”)

51. Colyar, the man who exposed Felder, also stated that Frank’s friends were spreading money around to get witnesses to leave town or make false affidavits. The Atlanta Georgian commented on Felder’s antics as he exited the stage: “It is regarded as certain that Felder is eliminated entirely from the Phagan case. It had been believed that he really was in the employ of the Frank defense up to the time that he began to bombard the public with statements against Frank and went on record in saying he believed in the guilt of Frank.” (Atlanta Georgian, May 26, 1913, “Lay Bribery Effort to Frank’s Friends”)

52. When Jim Conley finally admitted he wrote the death notes found near Mary Phagan’s body, Leo Frank’s reaction was powerful: “Leo M. Frank was confronted in his cell by the startling confession of the negro sweeper, James Connally [sic]. ‘What have you to say to this?’ demanded a Georgian reporter. Frank, as soon as he had gained the import of what the negro had told, jumped back in his cell and refused to say a word. His hands moved nervously and his face twitched as though he were on the verge of a breakdown, but he absolutely declined to deny the truth of the negro’s statement or make any sort of comment upon it. His only answer to the repeated questions that were shot at him was a negative shaking of the head, or the simple, ‘I have nothing to say.'”  (Atlanta Georgian, May 26, 1913, “Negro Sweeper Says He Wrote Phagan Notes”)

The mysterious death notes – click for high resolution

53. When Jim Conley re-enacted, step by step, the sequence of events as he experienced them on the day of the murder, including the exact positions in which the body was found and detailing his assisting Leo Frank in moving Mary Phagan’s body and writing the death notes, Harry Scott of the Pinkerton Detective Agency stated: “‘There is not a doubt but that the negro is telling the truth and it would be foolish to doubt it. The negro couldn’t go through the actions like he did unless he had done this just like he said,’ said Harry Scott. ‘We believe that we have at last gotten to the bottom of the Phagan mystery.’ (Atlanta Georgian, May 29, 1913 Extra, “Conley Re-enacts in Plant Part He Says He Took in Slaying”)

The last section of Jim Conley’s startling affidavit

Conley’s story diagrammed in the Atlanta Georgian – click for high resolution

54. In early June, Felder’s name popped up in the press again. This time he was claiming that his nemesis A.S. Colyar had in his possession an affidavit from Jim Conley confessing to the murder of Mary Phagan, and that Colyar was withholding it from the police. The police immediately “sweated” Conley to see if there was any truth in this, but Conley vigorously denied the entire story, and stated that he had never even met Colyar. Chief of Police Lanford said this confirmed his belief that Felder had been secretly working for Frank all along: “‘I attribute this report to Colonel Felder’s work,’ said the chief. ‘It merely shows again that Felder is in league with the defense of Frank; that the attorney is trying to muddy the waters of this investigation to shield Frank and throw the blame on another. This first became noticeable when Felder endeavored to secure the release of Conley. His ulterior motive, I am sure, was the protection of Frank. He had been informed that the negro had this damaging evidence against Frank, and Felder did all in his power to secure the negro’s release. He declared that it was a shame that the police should hold Conley, an innocent negro. He protested strenuously against it. Yet not one time did Felder attempt to secure the release of Newt Lee or Gordon Bailey on the same grounds, even though both of these negroes had been held longer than Conley. This to me is significant of Felder’s ulterior motive in getting Conley away from the police.'” Are such underhanded shenanigans on the part of Frank’s team the actions of a truly innocent man? (Atlanta Georgian, June 6, 1913, “Conley, Grilled by Police Again, Denies Confessing Killing”)

55. Much is made by Frank partisans of Georgia Governor Slaton’s 1915 decision to commute Frank’s sentence from death by hanging to life imprisonment. But when Slaton issued his commutation order, he specifically stated that he was sustaining Frank’s conviction and the guilty verdict of the judge and jury: “In my judgement, by granting a commutation in this case, I am sustaining the jury, the judge, and the appellate tribunals, and at the same time am discharging that duty which is placed on me by the Constitution of the State.” He also added, of Jim Conley’s testimony that Frank had admitted to killing Mary Phagan and enlisted Conley’s help in moving the body: “It is hard to conceive that any man’s power of fabrication of minute details could reach that which Conley showed, unless it be the truth.”

56.  On May 8, 1913. the Coroner’s Inquest jury, a panel of six sworn men, voted with the Coroner seven to zero to bind Leo Frank over to the grand jury on the charge of murder after hearing the testimony of 160 witnesses.

57. On May 24, 1913, after hearing evidence from prosecutor Hugh Dorsey and his witnesses, the grand jury charged Leo M. Frank with the murder of Mary Phagan. Four Jews were on the grand jury of 21 persons. Although only twelve votes were needed, the vote was unanimous against Frank. An historian specializing in the history of anti-Semitism, Albert Lindemann, denies that prejudice against Jews was a factor and states that the jurors “were persuaded by the concrete evidence that Dorsey presented.” And this indictment was handed down even without hearing any of Jim Conley’s testimony, which had not yet come out. (Lindemann, The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs, Cambridge, 1993, p. 251)

58. On August 25, 1913, after more than 29 days of the longest and most costly trial in Southern history up to that time, and after two of South’s most talented and expensive attorneys and a veritable army of detectives and agents in their employ gave their all in defense of Leo M. Frank, and after four hours of jury deliberation, Frank was unanimously convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan by a vote of twelve to zero.

The jurors in the Leo Frank case

Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold headed Frank’s defense team.

59. The trial judge, Leonard Strickland Roan, had the power to set aside the guilty verdict of Leo Frank if he believed that the defendant had not received a fair trial. He did not do so, effectively making the vote 13 to zero.

60. Judge Roan also had the power to sentence Frank to the lesser sentence of life imprisonment, even though the jury had not recommended mercy. On August 26, 1913, Judge Roan affirmed the verdict of guilt, and sentenced Leo Frank to death by hanging.

Judge Leonard Strickland Roan

61. On October 31, 1913, the court rejected a request for a new trial by the Leo Frank defense team, and re-sentenced Frank to die. The sentence handed down by Judge Benjamin H Hill was set to be carried out on Frank’s 30th birthday, April 17, 1914.

62. Supported by a huge fundraising campaign launched by the American Jewish community, and supported by a public relations campaign carried out by innumerable newspapers and publishing companies nationwide, Leo Frank continued to mount a prodigious defense even after his conviction, employing some of the most prominent lawyers in the United States. From August 27, 1913, to April 22, 1915 they filed a long series of appeals to every possible level of the United States court system, beginning with an application to the Georgia Superior Court. That court rejected Frank’s appeal as groundless.

63. The next appeal by Frank’s “dream team” of world-renowned attorneys was to the Georgia Supreme Court. It was rejected.

64. A second appeal was then made by Frank’s lawyers to the Georgia Supreme Court, which was also rejected as groundless.

65. The next appeal by Frank’s phalanx of attorneys was to the United States Federal District Court, which also found Frank’s arguments unpersuasive and turned down the appeal, affirming that the guilty verdict of the jury should stand.

66. Next, the Frank legal team appealed to the highest court in the land, the United States Supreme Court, which rejected Frank’s arguments and turned down his appeal.

67. Finally, Frank’s army of counselors made a second appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court — which was also rejected, allowing Leo Frank’s original guilty verdict and sentence of death for the murder by strangulation of Mary Phagan to stand. Every single level of the United States legal system — after carefully and meticulously reviewing the trial testimony and evidence — voted in majority decisions to reject all of Leo Frank’s appeals, and to preserve the unanimous verdict of guilt given to Frank by Judge Leonard Strickland Roan and by the twelve-man jury at his trial, and to affirm the fairness of the legal process which began with Frank’s binding over and indictment by the seven-man coroner’s jury and 21-man grand jury.

68. It is preposterous to claim that these men, and all these institutions, North and South — the coroner’s jury, the grand jury, the trial jury, and the judges of the trial court, the Georgia Superior Court, the Georgia Supreme Court, the U.S. Federal District Court, and the United States Supreme Court — were motivated by anti-Semitism in reaching their conclusions.

69. Even in deciding to commute Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment, Governor John Slaton explicitly affirmed Frank’s guilty verdict. He explained that only the jury was the proper judge of the meaning of the evidence and the veracity of the witnesses placed before it. He said in the commutation order itself: “Many newspapers and non-residents have declared that Frank was convicted without any evidence to sustain the verdict. In large measure, those giving expression to this utterance have not read the evidence and are not acquainted with the facts. The same may be said regarding many of those who are demanding his execution. In my judgement, no one has a right to an opinion who is not acquainted with the evidence in the case, and it must be conceded that those who saw the witnesses and beheld their demeanor upon the stand are in the best position as a general rule to reach the truth.”

70. In May of 1915, the Georgia State Prison Board voted two to one against a clemency petition — which, even if successful, would not have changed the guilty verdict of Leo M. Frank.

71. In 1982 Alonzo Mann, who in 1913 at 13 years old had been the office boy for the National Pencil Company, made a sensation in the press by denying the sworn testimony he had made at the Leo Frank trial, and stating his belief that Jim Conley was the real killer of Mary Phagan. In 1913, Mann had testified that he left the office on the day of the murder at 11:30 AM. In 1982, he changed the time and told a quite different story, as follows:

Mann said that he left the factory at noon, half an hour later than in his testimony. It was Confederate Memorial Day and a parade and other festivities were scheduled. Mann was to meet his mother, he says, but could not find her and “returned to work” shortly after noon. When he entered the building, he says, he saw Jim Conley carrying the limp body of a girl on the first floor: “He wheeled on me and in a voice that was low but threatening he said ‘If you ever mention this I’ll kill you.'”

Mann claims he then left the building and ran home, telling his mother what he’d seen. Mann says that his parents advised him to keep silent to avoid publicity. And he did keep silent for many, many years. (Jim Conley is reported to have died in 1957 — another report says 1962 — and presumably his death threat did not survive his demise.)

There are several problems with Mann’s story. First, if true, it proves only that at some point Conley was carrying Phagan’s body by himself, without Frank’s help. Conley already admits this — though he says that he found the body too heavy for himself alone while still on the second floor, and that the elevator brought them directly to the basement. So Mann’s story really doesn’t address anything except two minor details of Conley’s testimony, neither of which are determinative of guilt. (Mann was poor, suffering with a heart condition, and facing considerable medical expenses when he “went public” with his claims.)

72. Why would a 13-year-old Alonzo Mann “return to work” on a holiday if he didn’t have to? And why “return to work” if he apparently wasn’t even scheduled to do so? Were office boys permitted to make their own hours in 1913? When other workers — such as Mary Phagan, for example — hadn’t sufficient supplies in their department, they were immediately laid off until the supplies came in. Surely such economy would dictate that office boys would only come in when authorized and asked to do so.

Alonzo Mann in 1913

73. If Alonzo Mann had such a definite appointment to meet his mother in town — so definite as to cause him to return to work after just a few minutes when he failed to immediately find her — why, then, was she waiting at home just a few minutes after that?

74. Why would white parents, like Alonzo Mann’s, in the racially conscious and segregated Atlanta, Georgia of 1913, tell their white son not to tell the police about a guilty black murderer, when the result of not telling the police would ultimately result in an innocent, clean cut, white man, Leo Frank — the man who gave their son a highly prized job — going to gallows as an innocent man?

75. And why would Alonzo Mann’s parents then allow their 13-year-old son to report to work at the huge and cavernous National Pencil Company factory on Monday morning, April 28, 1913 — two days after he was threatened with death by a murderer carrying a dead or dying white girl on his shoulder — knowing that the murderer would still be there, and knowing that there were many dark and secluded places in said factory where their son might come to harm? Jim Conley reported back to work that Monday, as did Alonzo Mann and the approximately 170 other employees, who were naturally expected to be back at work after the holiday weekend. Jim Conley was not arrested until the first day of May.

76. If Alonzo Mann really walked in on Jim Conley carrying Mary Phagan’s body a few minutes after noon, and then turned around and left the building, why didn’t he see Monteen Stover?

77. If Jim Conley really attacked Mary Phagan at the foot of the stairs as Alonzo Mann suggests, why didn’t Leo Frank hear her scream or any sounds of a struggle? He was only 40 feet away.

78. Several witnesses — for both the prosecution and the defense — testified that they saw Jim Conley sitting, doing nothing, in the dark recesses of the lobby of the National Pencil Company on the morning of the murder. Does this fit the contention of the prosecution that Frank requested Conley’s presence on that day, as he had on others, so Conley could be a lookout while Frank was “chatting” with a teenage girl? Or does it make more sense to believe that Conley really believed he could get away with loafing on company property without permission all morning? Did black janitors in 1913 also have the right to make their own working hours, even on a holiday when there would have been little call for their services — and then, after showing up for “work,” not work at all?

79. Does it really make sense that the somewhat literate and fairly intelligent Jim Conley, a black man in the extremely race-conscious and white-dominated Atlanta of 1913, where lynch law often reigned supreme, actually thought he could get away with attacking and killing a white girl just a few feet away from the unlocked front door of the factory where he worked, in the highest-traffic area of the building? And does it make sense that he would do so for $1.20 — Mary Phagan’s entire pay — as the defense alleged? If Conley was plotting to rob someone, does it make sense that he would choose such a place to do so — or choose from a pool of potential victims considerably poorer than he was?

80. The fatal Saturday was a holiday. Jim Conley had been paid his $6.05 salary the evening before. By his standards, he had plenty of money — and it would have been very hard to drink it down very much on Friday, at a nickel a pint in those days. Conley was a man who liked his beer and billiards, and the town was wide open for that kind of fun all day. Why was he there at the factory, then? He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be there, doing apparently nothing for hours on end. He also ran the risk of being disciplined if he was loafing there without permission. He was manifestly not sweeping, his ostensible job, on that day — he was just sitting, watching. The only reasonable explanation is that his boss, Leo Frank, had asked him to be there for that very purpose.

81. The relationship of Leo Frank and the National Pencil Company to Jim Conley was a strange one. Why was Jim Conley’s sweeper’s salary much higher — $6.05 versus $4.05 — than the average of the white employees, many of whom were skilled machine operators? Could it be that Conley served a very important but secret purpose for Leo Frank, exactly as the prosecution alleged? Could he have had knowledge that could potentially hurt Leo Frank, justifying Frank granting him special privileges?

82. According to a female National Pencil Company employee, Jim Conley was once caught “sprinkling” (urinating) on the pencils, surely a very serious offense. But Conley was never fired. (Trial Testimony of Herbert George Schiff, Brief of Evidence, Leo Frank Trial, August, 1913) Again, could it be that James Conley served a very important but secret purpose for Leo Frank, and could he have possessed knowledge that could damage Frank?

83. According to fellow employee Gordon Bailey (Leo Frank trial, Brief of Evidence, August, 1913) Jim Conley was not always required to punch the time clock. Why would the “Negro sweeper,” as they called him, surely the lowest-ranking employee in the pencil factory hierarchy, be given such an unprecedented privilege by Leo M. Frank? Why was Jim Conley the only person out of the 170 factory employees who didn’t have to punch the time clock — unless Jim Conley was more than meets the eye?

84. In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL), along with other Jewish groups, spearheaded a campaign to get the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to issue a posthumous pardon to Leo Frank, basing their case largely on the 1982 statement of Alonzo Mann. The Board found that Mann’s statement added no new evidence to the case. They also noted that Governor Slaton in his 1915 commutation decision had already considered that the elevator may not have been used to move Mary Phagan’s body, but nevertheless he upheld Frank’s conviction. The ADL’s petition was denied and Leo Frank’s guilty verdict was affirmed.

85. The ADL and other Jewish groups filed again in 1986 for Leo Frank to be pardoned by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. This time the Jewish groups claimed that, because the state of Georgia had failed to prevent the lynching of Leo Frank after his sentence was commuted by Governor Slaton, Leo Frank’s rights had been violated and he should be pardoned on that basis alone. A great deal of pressure was applied to the Board via sensational stories, editorials, and even fictionalized accounts in the media. With this far more limited claim — that Frank was not protected from lynching as he ought to have been — the Board was compelled to agree. But the Board would not and did not exonerate Leo Frank of his guilt for the strangulation death of Mary Anne Phagan on April 26, 1913. His conviction for her murder still stands.

86. Lucille Selig Frank, Leo Frank’s wife, is known as a fiercely loyal spouse who passionately defended her husband against charges both criminal and moral, and stood by his side during his trial and appeals. There are some indications, however, that she may have early on during the Mary Phagan case believed that her husband had not been entirely faithful and had in fact killed Mary Phagan, probably believing it to be accidental. Long after her husband’s death, she may have returned to those views.

Mrs. Leo Frank in 1913: Is it conceivable that her 29-year-old husband, surrounded every working day by over 150 young women and teenage girls over which he had absolute authority, was unfaithful?

State’s Exhibit J at Leo Frank’s trial consisted of an affidavit by Minola McKnight, the Frank’s black cook. Mrs. McKnight first came to the attention of the authorities when her husband told police that his wife had heard some startling revelations while working at the Frank residence the evening of the murder — namely, that Leo Frank had drunkenly and remorsefully admitted to his wife that he and a girl “had been caught” at the factory, that he “didn’t know why he would murder” her, and that he asked his wife Lucille to get him a pistol so he could kill himself.

These are Minola McKnight’s own words from the affidavit: “Sunday, Miss Lucille said to Mrs. Selig that Mr. Frank didn’t rest so good Saturday night; she said he was drunk and wouldn’t let her sleep with him… Miss Lucille  said Sunday that Mr. Frank told her Saturday night that he was in trouble, and that he didn’t know the reason why he would murder, and he told his wife to get his pistol and let him kill himself… When I left home to go to the solicitor general’s office, they told me to mind how I talked. They pay me $3.50 a week, but last week they paid me $4.00, and one week she paid me $6.50. Up to the time of the murder I was getting $3.50 a week and the week right after the murder I don’t remember how much she paid me, and the next week they paid me $3.50, and the next week they paid me $6.50, and the next week they paid me $4.00 and the next week they paid me $4.00. One week, I don’t remember which one, Mrs. Selig gave me $5, but it wasn’t for my work, and they didn’t tell me what it was for, she just said, ‘Here is $5, Minola.’ I understood that it was a tip for me to keep quiet. They would tell me to mind how I talked and Miss Lucille gave me a hat.”

(Leo Frank admitted that he bought a box of chocolates for his wife on the way home on the evening of the day of the murder.) Minola McKnight would tell a different story after she was back in the Frank household, however. She then repudiated her affidavit and said police had coerced it from her. But neither she nor anyone else has given a credible motive for Minola’s husband to have lied.

After Leo Frank’s arrest, Lucille did not visit her husband for some thirteen days, after which she began her loyal and indomitable defense of him. What made her wait? Leo Frank’s explanation was that Lucille had to be “physically restrained” because she wanted so badly to be locked up with him in jail. Judge for yourself the credibility of this explanation against that offered in State’s Exhibit J.

Lucille Frank died in 1957, and in her will she specifically directed that she be cremated and thus not buried next to, or with, her first and only husband, Leo Frank — even though a plot had already been provided for her next to him.

87. Leonard Dinnerstein is an author who has made almost his entire career writing about anti-Semitism, with a special concentration on proving that Leo Frank was a victim of anti-Semitism. His book, The Leo Frank Case, is promoted as a canonical work — and is one of the main sources for the claims that 2) anti-Semitism was pervasive in 1913 Georgia and 2) that anti-Semitism was the major factor in the prosecution and conviction of Frank.

Both of these claims are hoaxes, as shown by Elliot Dashfield writing in The American Mercury: “Dinnerstein makes his now-famous claim that mobs of anti-Semitic Southerners, outside the courtroom where Frank was on trial, were shouting into the open windows ‘Crack the Jew’s neck!’ and ‘Lynch him!’ and that members of the crowd were making open death threats against the jury, saying that the jurors would be lynched if they didn’t vote to hang ‘the damn sheeny.’

“But not one of the three major Atlanta newspapers, who had teams of journalists documenting feint-by-feint all the events in the courtroom, large and small, and who also had teams of reporters with the crowds outside, ever reported these alleged vociferous death threats. And certainly such a newsworthy event could not be ignored by highly competitive newsmen eager to sell papers and advance their careers. Do you actually believe that the reporters who gave us such meticulously detailed accounts of this Trial of the Century, even writing about the seating arrangements in the courtroom, the songs sung outside the building by folk singers, and the changeover of court stenographers in relays, would leave out all mention or notice of a murderous mob making death threats to the jury?

“During the two years of Leo Frank’s appeals, none of these alleged anti-Semitic death threats were ever reported by Frank’s own defense team. There is not a word of them in the 3,000 pages of official Leo Frank trial and appeal records — and all this despite the fact that Reuben Arnold [Frank’s attorney] made the claim during his closing arguments that Leo Frank was tried only because he was a Jew… Yet, thanks to Leonard Dinnerstein, this fictional episode has entered the consciousness of Americans of all stations as ‘history’ — as one of the pivotal facts of the Frank case.”

88. In his book attempting to exonerate Frank, Leonard Dinnerstein knowingly repeats the preposterous 1964 hoax perpetrated by “hack writer and self-promoter Pierre van Paassen” (Dashfield, The American Mercury, October 2012):

“Van Paassen claimed that there were in existence in 1922 X-ray photographs at the Fulton County Courthouse, taken in 1913, of Leo Frank’s teeth, and also X-ray photographs of bite marks on Mary Phagan’s neck and shoulder — and that anti-Semites had suppressed this evidence. Van Paassen further alleged — and Dinnerstein repeated — that the dimensions of Frank’s teeth did not match the ‘bite marks,’ thereby exonerating Frank… Since Dinnerstein is such a lofty academic scholar and professor, perhaps he simply forgot to ask a current freshman in medical school if it was even possible to X-ray bite marks on skin in 1913 — or necessary in 2012, for that matter — because it’s not. In 1913, X-ray technology was in its infancy and never used in any criminal case until many years after Leo Frank was hanged.” Furthermore, there is no hint anywhere in the massive official records of the Leo Frank trial and appeals of any “bite marks.” If Leo Frank is manifestly and truly innocent, why do his supporters have to engage in such outrages against truth?

89. Far from being a region rife with hatred for Jews, the South in general and Atlanta in particular were regarded by Jews as a haven and as a place nearly free from the anti-Semitism they suffered in other parts of the nation and the world. Even today, and even after Jewish-gentile relations there were strained by the Frank case and by Jewish support for the civil rights revolution, the Christians who form most of the population of the South are stoutly pro-Jewish. The South is the center of Christian Zionism and American support for the Jewish state of Israel.

90. Harry Golden wrote in the American Jewish Committee’s magazine Commentary that early “Bonds for Israel” salesmen would purposely seek out Southern Christians, since they were almost all passionately pro-Jewish and pro-Israel. When Southerners were asked about their reasons for supporting Zionism, Golden said that a typical Southerner’s response was “It’s in the book!” – meaning, of course, the Bible. This attitude had deep roots and certainly did not materialize in 1948.

91. The writer Scott Aaron gives insight into Southern attitudes toward Jews when he says: “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.”

92. Aaron also cites a study funded and published by a Jewish group: “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…

“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.”

93. Southern attitudes toward Jews can be further gauged by the fact that, during the Civil War, Southerners made a Jew their Secretary of the Treasury: Judah P. Benjamin was the first Jewish appointee to any Cabinet position in any North American government. Benjamin also served as Attorney General, Secretary of State, and Secretary of War for the Confederate States of America. He was so highly regarded that his portrait graced the paper money of the South. Meanwhile, around the same time, Northern general Ulysses S. Grant issued an order physically expelling all Jews from the parts of the South under his control, even demanding that they leave a huge multi-state area “within 24 hours.”

The claim that a pervasive and vicious anti-Semitism was the real reason for the prosecution and conviction of Leo Frank is an absurd lie and a fantastic misrepresentation of history. Nevertheless, it is now the stuff of innumerable works of alleged scholarship, drama, and fiction, and is viewed by naive students who are exposed to such works as the central “truth” of the case. If Leo Frank were innocent, why would his supporters have to fabricate such blatant impostures and engage in emotional blackmail on a colossal scale?

94. Researcher Allen Koenigsberg states that some of the most intriguing and important parts of Minola McKnight’s sworn affidavits have, for some reason or other, been completely omitted from the current literature on the Frank case:

“One of the most intriguing circumstances in the pre-trial development of this case involved a document signed by the black cook in the Frank/Selig household (Minola McKnight). Frank’s attorneys would long argue that it was coerced by the police as a result of ‘third degree methods.’ Since 1913, it has never been shown in its entirety, and we are glad to present it here [ http://www.leofrankcase.com/ ]. Also unmentioned in the last nine decades is the sequence of events that led up to its appearance. Minola would make three affidavits in all (May 3rd, June 2nd and 3rd), but her overnight incarceration was specifically caused by her husband Albert’s statement made on May 26, and notarized on June 2nd [ also at http://www.leofrankcase.com/ ]. This description of events has never been cited, with only an oblique reference in the Samuels’ Night Fell on Georgia (1956).

The Albert McKnight affidavit

“The most striking sentence (and odd omission) is shown here for the first time: ‘Mrs. Frank had a quarrel with Mr. Frank the Saturday morning of the murder she asked Mr. Frank to kiss her good bye and she said he was saving his kisses for _______ and would not kiss her.‘ Readers may wish to consider its authenticity, as new light is shed on why Leo Frank ‘so thoughtfully’ bought his wife a box of chocolates from Jacobs’ Pharmacy just before returning home at 6:30 PM on April 26th.” (LeoFrankCase.Com, Retrieved 2012).

95. Much has been made of the fact that Jim Conley’s attorney, William M. Smith, eventually believing his own client to be guilty, made an analysis of the language used by Conley on the stand and, comparing it to the language used in the death notes, concluded that the real author of the notes was Conley. Therefore, Smith’s theory went, the notes had not been dictated by Leo Frank as Conley had testified. Many greeted this “revelation” with well-deserved derision. Few believed that Frank would have insisted that Conley copy his language exactly, word for word (though Hugh Dorsey made the mistake of suggesting this was so in his closing arguments). In fact, the death notes would serve their intended purpose — to place blame for the murder on a black man — much more effectively by being written in the natural language of an authentic speaker of Southern black dialect, and surely that is a fact that no intelligent murderer would fail to see and act upon.

96. In his book, A Little Girl Is Dead, writer Harry Golden, though not incapable of objective journalism (for example, he once reported that Southerners had unusually favorable attitudes to Jews), may have perpetrated the most outrageous hoax in the Frank case. Golden claimed that Jim Conley had made a deathbed confession to the murder of Mary Phagan. But famed pro-Frank researcher and author Steve Oney (very charitably) says of Golden that this was “wishful thinking.”

Harry Golden

Oney went to great lengths to follow up on Golden’s claim: “Over the last few years legal aides have rifled through microfilm files in libraries across the South searching for news of Conley’s confession. They have found nothing.” (Oney, “The Lynching of Leo Frank,” Esquire, September 1985)

97. It seems unlikely that Hugh Dorsey was motivated by anti-Semitism in his prosecution of Leo Frank, considering that a partner in his law firm was Jewish. It’s preposterous to even have to ask the question, but if Dorsey hated Jews enough to send one to the gallows as an innocent man, why would he tolerate — and proudly claim, as he did at trial — such a close association with a Jewish man? And, if Dorsey was guilty of such vicious malice against Jews, why would his partner continue the association himself? (Closing arguments of Hugh Dorsey, Leo Frank trial)

98. Why did the Leo Frank defense team, consisting of some of the most skilled attorneys in the state, refuse to cross-examine 20 young women and girls who testified that Frank had a bad moral character? Under Georgia law, the prosecution was only allowed to use these witnesses’ testimony to enter the general fact that Frank’s character was bad. Under cross-examination, though, the defense could have forced the girls and women to give specific reasons and relate specific incidents that supported their opinion, and trip them up if they could. Why, then, did they not do so? The only reasonable answer: They knew Leo Frank’s character, and they did not dare allow any specifics to go before the jury.

99. One of the most bizarre hoaxes in the Phagan case was that surrounding insurance salesman W.H. Mincey. On the afternoon of the murder, Mincey claimed that Jim Conley, on the public streets of Atlanta and with no prompting — and for no apparent reason whatever — confessed to murdering a girl that very day.

According to the contemporary book The Frank Case, p. 66: “Mincey asserted that late in the afternoon he was at the corner of Electric avenue and Carter streets, near the home of Conley, when he approached the black, asking that he take an insurance policy. The negro told him, he said, to go along, that he was in trouble. Asked what his trouble was, Mincey swore that Conley replied he had killed a girl. ‘You are Jack the ripper, are you?’ said Mincey. ‘No,’ he says Conley replied, ‘I killed a white girl and you better go along or I will kill you.'”

That this tale could be accepted by any man in possession of his reason is doubtful, but nevertheless the Frank defense team seriously asserted in court their intention to call Mincey as a witness. They withdrew him, however, after the prosecution was said to have discovered Mincey’s problematic relationship with the truth and had 25 witnesses prepared to impeach him — and furthermore intended to produce copies of several books Mincey had written on the subject of “mind reading.”

100. Mary Phagan’s grand-niece, Mary Phagan Kean, relates in her book The Murder of Little Mary Phagan that her grandfather William Joshua Phagan, Jr. (Mary Phagan’s brother) confronted Jim Conley in private in 1934, and was ultimately convinced that the former factory sweeper was telling the truth. At times so emotionally moved that he could barely hold back tears, William Phagan finally told Conley that he believed him — and said that, if he had thought he was lying, “I’d kill you myself.” After the intense meeting was over, Jim Conley and Mary Phagan’s brother went out for a drink.

Mary Phagan

In truth, there are more — far more — than 100 reasons to believe that Leo Frank was guilty of murdering Mary Phagan. There are far more than 100 reasons to believe that the claim of widespread “Southern anti-Semitism,” virtually promoted as gospel today, is a complete and malicious fraud. There are far more than 100 reasons to believe that Frank’s defenders have used perjury, fraud, and outright hoaxes to impose their view of the case on an unsuspecting public.

I urge each and every one of you to read the original source materials I have catalogued in the Appendix which follows this article. Only by seeing what the jury saw — by reading what the people of Atlanta read as events unfolded — uncensored and without the nuance and spin of modern authors who are, with but a very few exceptions, uniformly dedicated to one side — can you truly understand the tragedy of little Mary Phagan and the whirlwind her death unleashed.

In my opinion, the most horrible imposture, the real injustice, in the Frank case as it stands today is that millions of trusting men and women, children and students, all across the world have been forcefully imprinted, by a relentless multimillion-dollar media campaign, with the idea that Leo Frank  — the monster who almost certainly abused and strangled bright and beautiful Mary Anne Phagan to death — is the “real victim” in this case.

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

APPENDIX

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Full archive of Atlanta Georgian newspapers relating to the murder and subsequent trial

The Leo Frank case as reported in the Atlanta Constitution

The Leo Frank Case (Mary Phagan) Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery 1913

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean

American State Trials, volume X (1918) by John Lawson

Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Trial of Leo Frank

Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913, Brief of Evidence