One of the great American controversies is the conviction of Leo Frank, a New York Jew living in Atlanta, Georgia for the murder of one of his employees, Mary Anne Phagan, a thirteen-year-old girl. Frank was arrested for suspicion the week after the girl’s lifeless body was found in the basement of the factory where she worked and of which Frank was supervisor. His arrest was prompted by his behavior and inconsistencies in his statements. Detectives uncovered evidence of Frank’s guilt and the case was sent to the grand jury of which five members were Jews. He was unanimously indicted. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang. His lawyers asked immediately for a new trial, then when that failed they filed a series of appeals all the way up to the US Supreme Court – twice – which ruled against him with two objections. The case became a cause célèbres’ for American Jews, particularly those in the North, who mounted a massive letter-writing campaign and prompted hundreds of newspaper articles claiming he hadn’t received a fair trial because he was a Jew. For two years, Jews waged a campaign to have him exonerated. After Georgia Governor John Slaton, whose law firm represented Frank, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, he was broke out of prison and hung. Jews have been trying to exonerate Frank ever since.
Mary Phagan
April 26, 1913, a dreary Saturday, was Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia. It was a holiday for the employees of the National Pencil Company whose facilities were in a four-story facility on Forsyth Street in Atlanta. The building had formerly been the Venable Hotel, then it was named the Granite Hotel for a while before industrialist Sig Montag bought it. Thirteen-year-old Mary Anne Phagan, who had been one of 107 women and girls employed by the factory, left her home near Bellwood north of Atlanta by streetcar to go downtown to watch the parade. She planned to stop at the factory on the way to draw her pay for the time she had worked that week before she was laid off on Monday.[1] Mary had worked in the metal room in the factory at a machine putting metal bands on pencils in preparation for erasers. She had been laid off the previous Monday because a shipment of metal needed for her job didn’t come in. However, according to an article in the Atlanta Constitution and her family, the girl had resigned on Thursday. She was going to the factory one last time to get her final pay. Saturday was the normal payday for the factory, but because of the holiday, it had been changed to the previous evening. Since Mary wasn’t working, one of her friends and neighbors, Helen Ferguson, planned to pick up her pay for her. When she asked for it, she was denied and was told that Mary would have to pick it up herself so she was going by on her way downtown.[2] She sat on the streetcar with George Epps, a neighbor boy.[3] They planned to meet at a drugstore after she got her pay then watch the parade and go to a movie.
A few weeks short of her upcoming fourteenth birthday on June 1, Mary was typical of the company’s employees at a time before child labor laws forbade the employment of children. The South, Atlanta in particular, was left devastated after the Civil War and speculators saw it as a source of cheap labor. There were mouths to feed and children often took jobs in cotton mills and other factories rather than going to school. At thirteen, Mary was technically no longer a child, but she wasn’t an adult either; she was in-between, an adolescent. At 4’11”, she was shorter than many girls her age and was consequently called “Little Mary.” Some said she was stout and she was even called fat – one witness described her as “a low, chunky girl”. Her weight is given variously as 105, 107 and 150. Her mother described her as “heavy” in court and said she was “big for her age.” She was fully developed and attractive. John Gantt, who had worked at the factory and had lived next to the Phagans when Mary was a child, described her as “very pretty.” Her coworkers said she was quiet and didn’t flirt with boys on the factory steps.
Mary Anne Phagan was an Alabama native although her family’s roots were in Georgia. Her parents moved to the Tennessee River town of Florence, Alabama where she was born on June 1, 1899, three months after her father died of measles. A few months later, her mother, Fannie, moved back to Georgia with her five young children and lived with her parents. Her father-in-law’s family, the Phagans, who had moved to Alabama from Acworth (now part of Atlanta), also decided to return to Georgia. W.J. Phagan was, for lack of a better term, a land speculator. He bought run-down farms and built them up then sold them at a substantial profit. After he returned to Georgia, he provided his daughter-in-law a house in Marietta. Fannie wanted to be self-sufficient and sometime after 1910 she moved with four of her children to East Point, a town on the outskirts of Atlanta, where she began taking in boarders; the middle son wanted to farm and moved in with his uncle. The other children sought jobs, initially in a mill. Mary was the youngest; she quit school and went to work for the Pencil Company in 1912 (she possibly went to work for Montag Brothers at the paper company first.) It was common in the early Twentieth Century for children to go to work after a few years in school. In 1912 Fanny remarried. Her new husband, J.M. Coleman, ran a store and worked for the city of Atlanta in the sanitation department. Mary Phagan Keane, Mary’s great-niece, who has done a great deal of research and written a book about the case, says he was a cabinet maker. The family moved into his house near the Bellwood community north of Atlanta. The Coleman/Phagans were NOT impoverished as some writers have asserted. They weren’t wealthy but they got by. Young Mary was working for the National Pencil Company, a subsidiary of Montag Brothers, where she worked for less than ten cents an hour.[4] Her new stepfather wanted her to quit working and go back to school but Mary said she liked her job at the time. That had apparently changed since she had resigned. Founded by Sig Montag, a German immigrant who came to the United States in the 1880s, Montag made notebooks and writing paper for school children – their brand was Blue Horse – and National Pencil made lead pencils, some of which featured popular characters of the day, including some from Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories.[5] One source says her pay was 7 4/11ths (7.364) cents an hour for 55 hours a week.[6] Her last pay was for $1.20 ($31.00 in today’s dollars.) Some sources claim she worked five eleven-hour days but considering that the factory payday was Saturday, she probably worked five ten-hour days followed by five hours on Saturday. That she had a full-time job wasn’t unusual in 1913; teenage and even child employees in factories were not uncommon in the early Twentieth Century before child labor laws were enacted.
National Pencil Company
The National Pencil Company was a venture of Montag Brothers with other investors, most of them Jews, one of whom was Moses Frank, a wealthy Atlantan who had been in the city since right after the War Between the States. Frank got in the cotton industry, an industry favored by many Jews, and made his money speculating in the sale of cottonseed oil.[7] He influenced the Montags to hire his nephew Leo, his brother’s son, to set up and run the new company. The company was located in the upper three floors of the four-story former hotel. The four floors were served by an electric-powered elevator that ran down to the basement. It was used to move materials to and from the basement and first floor and the factory on the upper three floors. The first floor was initially leased to a woodcrafts company but they moved out about the time the girl went to work for the company and the floor was used for storage. The company’s offices were at the front of the second floor of the building. The metal room, where young Mary Phagan worked, was at the back of the floor by the toilets and dressing rooms.
Leo Frank
The Franks and Montags were German Jews who immigrated to the United States, Moses around 1857 and his younger brother, Rudolph, sometime later. Sigmond Montag came to the US at age fourteen around 1878. While Moses and Sigmond settled in Atlanta, Rudolph went first to Brooklyn, New York, which had seen a large influx of mostly German Jews, then to Texas where his son Leo was born.[8] While he was in Brooklyn, Rudolph married Rachel Jacobs, a young Jewess some 15 years his junior. Rachel was commonly called Rae. Sometime after their marriage, the couple moved to Texas. Leo was born in Cuero, a town midway between Houston and San Antonio where Rudolph was appointed postmaster by President Chester A. Arthur. Leo Frank would later claim he was born in Paris. Why he made the claim is unknown. Some claim that Cuero was also called Paris but I can find no evidence of this. Paris is in northeast Texas, Cuero is in the lush South Texas grasslands, not dusty West Texas as some authors have asserted. Three months after the boy’s birth on April 17, 1884, the Franks pulled up their Texas stakes and returned to Brooklyn. Rudolph took a job in sales and made a good enough living to send his son to Cornell, a prestigious school in Ithaca, New York, where he obtained a degree in mechanical engineering. Leo’s yearbook shows that he was active in basketball and tennis. He excelled in debate and was known for being a “gas jet”.[9] While at Cornell, he took a trip to Europe with his Uncle Moses. Frank’s relationship with girls during his college years is unknown.
Lucille Selig Frank
After graduation, Leo worked for a time for companies in Boston and New York, but he was looking for something that offered more opportunity. In 1907 he was offered a position as superintendent of the new company in which his uncle was investing. He traveled south to Atlanta to look the situation over then went to Germany to study pencil making and purchase equipment for the new company. After satisfying himself that he knew the business, he returned to Atlanta in 1908 to set up the company under the supervision of Sig Montag. His prestigious position gave him stature. He may have been a Northerner, but he quickly immersed himself in the community. Frank joined a synagogue and became part of Atlanta Jewish society, but he was also part of the Atlanta business community due to his purchasing of materials and services for the factory. He married Lucille Selig, an Atlanta native whose father Emil was a salesman for a company that dealt in cleaning supplies. The Seligs were well-connected in the Jewish community in Atlanta. Like Rudolph and Moses Frank, Emil Selig was a German immigrant. Lucille’s mother Josephine, however, was not. She was born in Georgia where her parents had immigrated from Germany. The Seligs were Jewish but not exclusively so; Lucille’s sister was married to a Gentile. They were members of The Temple, a Jewish congregation dating back to 1867. Leo was introduced to the then 19-year-old Lucille in August 1908 soon after he moved to Atlanta. They were married two years later. By 1913, Leo had become part of the Atlanta Jewish community and had worked his way up to become president of the 500-member local chapter of B’nai B’rith, a Jewish men’s social group originally founded in New York for German Jewish immigrants. He participated in numerous Jewish charitable events in Atlanta and was thus well-known in the Jewish community. He was also known in the business community due to his position as supervisor of the National Pencil Company. Although Leo had a well-paying job, he and Lucille lived with her parents in a rented house. They didn’t have a car so Leo commuted to and from work on the streetcars that served the city.
As Jews, the Franks, Montags and Seligs were not unique. There were Jews throughout the South from the beginning of the Colonial period. Prior to 1830, the largest number of Jews in the United States was in Charleston, South Carolina where Sephardic Jews from England and the Netherlands settled, some having moved there from Georgia in fear of the Spanish, who controlled Florida. Sephardic Jews were originally from Spain but were driven out during the Spanish Inquisition, with some returning to Palestine where their ancestors came from and some to more tolerant European countries including Holland and England.[10] Large numbers of Germans began immigrating to the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century in the wake of a failed revolution and many of them were Ashkenazi Jews, including the Seligs, Montags and Franks. Atlanta became a popular destination for German immigrants eager to make a fortune. Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn were establishing a garment industry and needed cotton from the South. Along with Memphis, Tennessee, Atlanta was a major cotton market. Atlanta had a sizeable Jewish population by 1913, as evidenced by the 500-member size of the local chapter of B’nai B’rith, of which Leo was president.[11] By 1910 there were some 10,000 Jews in the city.
The Franks, Seligs and Montags were Ashkenazi Jews who had immigrated to the United States from Germany in the mid-late Nineteenth Century. Jews are descendants of Abraham, a descendant of Noah, who lived in Ur of the Chaldees, now believed to have been in what is now Iraq. Abraham had a number of children through his wives and mistresses; Jews claim descent from his incestuous relationship with his half-sister Sarah through their son Issac and his son Jacob, who became Israel and had twelve sons.[12] Specifically, Jews are descendants of Jacob/Israel’s son Judah and are one of the Twelve Tribes. Judah’s tribe populated Judea. Just where the Ashkenazi comes in is unclear. Ashkenaz in the Bible is one of the sons of Noah’s son Japeth, the ancestor of the Caucasians, while his brother Shem is the ancestor of Semites, hence the name. Just what the connection is of Jews to Ashkenaz is unknown. If they are descendants of Ashkenaz as their name implies, then they are not Jews at all. Whatever their ancestry, Ashkenazi account for ninety percent of today’s Jews; in the Middle Ages, they were only some 2-3%. One theory is that they originated in what is now Eastern Europe and Russia among the Khazars, an ancient tribe that populated the region, some of whom converted to Rabbinic Judaism. Jews began leaving Israel at least 400 years before Christ and settling in southern Europe. Other Jews followed, particularly after the dawn of the Christian Era as many Jews in Judea converted to Christianity followed by the destruction of the temple and demolishing of Jerusalem by the Romans some forty years after the time of Christ. Ashkenazi Jews, whose DNA shows them to have both European and Middle Eastern ancestry, eventually settled in Germany. Their descendants began migrating to the United States in the mid-1800s.
By April 1913, Little Mary Phagan had been employed at the National Pencil Company for a little over a year. She worked on the second floor in the metal department at the back of the floor behind the main office where she operated a machine making bands for erasures.[13] The men’s and women’s restrooms and dressing rooms were just past the metal department some 200 feet from the front. Her machine was one away from the men’s room. Leo Frank had to pass by her every time he went to relieve himself. On April 26, the young girl left home after 11:30 after a lunch of cabbage and bread. She wore a lavender dress with matching bloomers her aunt had made for her. She wore a matching hat and carried a parasol. She was not wearing a raincoat. Her friend, George W. Epps Jr, testified that he sat with her and that they were supposed to meet at a nearby drug store at 2:00 to watch the parade then go to a movie, but she never showed. Epps told the coroner that Mary had told him Leo Frank had been making advances toward her and she was afraid of him. That may be – is probably – why she turned in her resignation on Thursday. According to testimony by plant superintendent Frank, she arrived at the factory immediately after noon. She asked him for her pay then as she was leaving, asked if the metal had come in yet. How Frank responded is unclear. He allegedly told a Pinkerton detective he answered, “I don’t know,” but later claimed he answered “no.” Why would the girl ask if the metal had come in if she had quit her job? She wouldn’t care when or if the metal came in! Frank never mentioned that the girl was no longer employed at the factory.
Frank is the last person known to see her alive. Her mother expected her to return home late that day. When she didn’t return, she thought perhaps she had gone to a movie. Her stepfather went to the theater but when she didn’t appear, he went home. He told his frantic wife she might have gone to Marietta to visit her grandfather. They didn’t have a phone but thought she might have phoned a neighbor; however, none of the neighbors had heard from her.
Early the following morning, the factory night watchman, an older black man named Newt Lee who had only been on the job a few weeks, went down to the basement to use the colored toilet and as he was leaving, he spotted something in the dim light of his lantern at the trash bin by the back door.[14] He first thought it was something someone had put there to scare him, but took a closer look and realized it was a woman’s body. He testified at the coroner’s inquest that he realized it was a white girl and that she was lying on her back. He immediately went upstairs and called the police. He tried calling factory superintendent Leo Frank but didn’t get an answer.[15] Sergeant L.S. Dobbs and Officer J.N. Starnes went to the factory to investigate. The first person down the ladder was actually a reporter who was sitting around police headquarters when the call came in. They found a female body covered with cinder dust from being dragged, apparently face down, across the cinder-covered dirt floor. They testified that the body was lying face down, although the head was turned to one side. [16] The discrepancy with Lee’s recollection may be due to the limited light put out by his lantern and shock when he realized what he’d found. [17] Lee had determined that the girl was white because of her hair (blacks have kinky hair) but the officers couldn’t tell if it was the body of a white or black girl until they turned her over and rubbed some of the dirt off of her face. Even then they weren’t sure until one pulled her stocking down and disclosed white skin. A piece of cord was tied tightly around her neck, so tight that it pressed into her flesh an eighth of an inch. She had obviously been strangled. Part of her petticoat had been ripped off and tied around her neck. There was a cut on the left side of the back of her head with some blood in her hair. Her underpants had been torn up the seam or cut with a knife. There was blood on her underwear. Part of her petticoat had been torn and tied around her neck, possibly to catch blood coming from the gash on the side of her head. Her right eye was blackened. A bloody handkerchief was found nearby. A parasol was found at the bottom of the elevator shaft in a pile of trash people had thrown into the opening. There were drag marks in the cinders leading from the elevator to where the body was found. The drag marks passed by the steps of the ladder leading up to the first floor. Instead of leaving the body where it was for further investigation, they called a mortuary. The mortician removed the body an hour later.
Diagram of Second Floor and Basement of Factory
Police also found two hand-written notes at the girl’s head. They were written in negro dialect. The notes were written as if the girl had written them herself while her attacker was “playing” with her. Whoever wrote them, it was obvious they were trying to throw the blame to a negro, specifically the night watchman, who was identified in one of the notes as “the night witch.” When police read the notes to Newt Lee and got to the “night witch,” he blurted out, “that means me, the night watch.” One of Frank’s attorneys would later claim whoever wrote the note was referring to a (non-existent) legendary character in black folk tales about a witch who would come at night and suck the air out of children having nightmares. According to the attorney, if the child didn’t wake up, they’d die in their sleep. This theory has been repeated by Frank apologists. I have looked for information on this topic and can find no such legend. The only reference on the Internet is in an article written by a Frank apologist who is merely repeating what was advocated in the trial. The closest mention I’ve seen to such a tale is a legend among the Gullah in South Carolina, but it’s not a “night witch.” The Gullah legend is about a “Boo Hag,” an old woman who has the ability to change into animals and insects. The Gullah are descendants of slaves who worked plantations on the Carolina, Georgia and Florida coastal islands. Their beliefs are very close to the Voodoo of Africa, Louisiana and Haiti. The attorney was grasping at straws. He’d probably heard of the Boo Hag and tried to pass it off as night witch. Police had both Newt Lee and Jim Conley write the notes as they dictated them. Conley had told police that he wrote the notes but Frank told him what to say. When police had Jim Conley write the notes, when they told him to write night watch he spelled it witch. There was controversy over how long it took Conley to write the notes. Police claimed it took him seven minutes when they dictated the notes to him but another examiner said it was only two. Conley at first denied that he could write but finally admitted to it after some pawn shop receipts came to light. There was also controversy over the paper. One former employee claimed the notes were on paper that had been sent to the basement due to the 1900 date but another said they were in Frank’s office.
Jim Conley first told police Frank had him write the notes on Friday. The detectives realized that would mean premeditation and finally convinced him it must have been Saturday. Premeditation is not out of the question. He may very well have decided to kill the girl when he learned she had resigned and he would no longer have access to her. He may have decided to assault her, kill her and burn her body in the factory furnace for whatever depraved reason and there was evidence Frank was a depraved man. The police couldn’t conceive of such a plan and convinced Conley to change his story.
Police knew who the victim was by the time they went to Leo Frank’s house to pick him up and take him to the factory. Failing to reach Frank by phone, One of the officers called his sister-in-law, Grace Hicks, who worked at the factory, to come to the mortuary where the body had been taken to identify it. One of the officers picked her up and took her to the mortuary. By coincidence, she worked in the metal room and knew Mary Phagan well. Miss Hicks testified that she became distraught when she saw the body and recognized her friend Mary. She called Helen Ferguson, who she knew was one of Mary’s neighbors, and Helen went to the Coleman house and informed the family that Mary had been found dead. When they went to Frank’s house, the officers didn’t inform him that a body had been found. Frank asked if something had happened at the factory, had the night watchman called them, had there been “a tragedy”? He asked the questions one after another without waiting for answers. The police didn’t respond. After they had him in their car, Detective John Black asked Frank if he knew Mary Phagan. Frank said he didn’t know anyone by that name. It was only then that they informed him that the girl had been found dead in the basement. Testimony by others in the factory and things he himself later said indicated that he did know her. He claimed he didn’t know many of his employees. Considering that Mary had worked in the factory for more than a year and that Frank was near her desk frequently, it boggles the mind to think that he wouldn’t have known her. He told police he would have to look at his pay record to determine if he had an employee by that name.
Now, consider that Mary Phagan had resigned from her job at the factory on Thursday. As the factory supervisor, Frank HAD to know of her resignation. He knew she had been to the factory the day before to pick up her final pay. Yet he denied that he knew the name. The factory manager, N.V. Darley, was responsible for hiring and firing but he surely would have informed Frank that the girl had resigned, especially if he was aware that Frank had an interest in her.
The police took Frank to the mortuary to view the body. One of the officers testified that he didn’t think Frank looked at the girl’s face. They went to his office at the factory and he pulled out his pay ledger and looked down the list of names. He said, yes, Mary Phagan was an employee and he had paid her the day before. He thought he remembered her. Again, he did not mention that she had resigned. Frank called the local Pinkerton Detective Agency office the following day and Detective Harry Scott went to his office and met with him along with Mr. Darley, the factory manager (Frank was plant superintendent), and Mr. Schiff from the company. (Darley denied in his testimony that he knew the factory had an employee by the name of Mary Phagan.) Schiff was a salesman, but he was filling the position of company clerk since Frank had recently fired the previous clerk, John Gantt, because he refused to make up a $2.00 payroll shortage. Sig Montag authorized Frank to hire the Pinkertons to investigate on behalf of the company. Frank also hired the law firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips to represent him.[18] He hired Rosser BEFORE police interviewed him and had him there for the interview first thing Monday morning. John Slaton would assume the office of governor of the state of Georgia a few weeks later in June. Suspicion no doubt arose when police realized Frank had already hired legal representation by the most high-priced lawyers in the state even though he wasn’t a suspect. He was accompanied by Herbert Hass and Luther Rosser when he was called to the police station on the morning of April 27 to give his statement. Frank told Detective Scott that he feared that the police suspected him of the crime. Scott told the coroner that Hass, who identified himself as the company’s lawyer, instructed him to give all evidence to them before turning it over to the police. Scott replied that Pinkerton worked with local police and he’d quit the case before he’d do that.
Frank said at the coroner’s inquest that he had been in his office from noon on Saturday until one when he left to go home for lunch. He said that Mary Phagan came to his office right after noon to get her pay. He claimed he had just heard the noon whistle blow. As she was leaving, she turned and asked if the metal had come in yet. After he said it hadn’t, she left. He said he heard her talking to someone, another girl or woman, then he went back to his work of reconciling shipments and invoices. That is what he said but considering the girl had resigned two days before, it’s doubtful she’d have asked about the metal. Over the course of the next several weeks, he kept giving different times when Mary was in his office, varying from 1203 to as late as 1220. He claimed he was alone in his office the entire time. It was only after Lemmie Quinn, the metal room foreman, visited Frank at jail on Tuesday after he was arrested that he “remembered” that Quinn had popped into the factory for a brief visit at 1220. He said he was looking for Mr. Herbert Schiff the factory chief clerk – who wasn’t there that day – and took a quick look in the office and said hello to Frank. Quinn “reminded” Frank that he had been there. However, Quinn had previously told detectives that he had left the factory before noon on Saturday and didn’t go back. He initially told police he wasn’t there at all. He also told factory workers on Monday that he wasn’t there at all on Saturday. Jim Conley testified that he saw Quinn and that he was there before Mary Phagan came in. Two women, Corinthia Hall and Emma Clarke Freeman, testified that they were at the factory before noon then went to a nearby Greek restaurant and Quinn came in. Police accused Quinn of taking a bribe but he vehemently denied it. His later actions on behalf of Frank are an indication that the police were right.
Police did not zero in initially on Frank, who seems to have been shifting the blame. The first suspect was J.M. Gantt, a young man who had formerly been the shipping and payroll clerk at the factory. Gantt was fired from the job when Frank insisted he pay back a $2.00 shortage in the payroll, and he refused. He showed up at the factory early Saturday evening looking for a pair of shoes he said he’d left in the factory. According to testimony from factory officials, he had been back three or four times previously. Newt Lee, the night watchman, said that Frank “jumped back” when he saw Gantt, who was a big man. Frank was apparently afraid of him. Frank said the sweeper had thrown the shoes out, but when Gantt said he had two pair, he told night watchman Lee to accompany Gantt to shipping where he found two pairs of shoes. After finding the shoes and wrapping them in paper, Gantt left the building. At the inquest, Frank accused Gantt of having “been with” Mary Phagan who he said he knew well. It was true, Gantt had known the girl since she was a toddler and was seen with her around the factory. He knew her when they lived next door in Marietta but the family had since moved and they renewed their acquaintance when they became coworkers. Whether Frank meant that Gantt had been sexually intimate with the girl is unclear. One of the three doctors who examined her body determined that her hymen had been ruptured, an indication that she had been a virgin.[19] Some factory employees claimed that Gantt “was infatuated” with Mary. However, he was cleared. Gantt testified that after seeing him talking to Mary, Frank commented, “you know Mary pretty well.” Gantt said he had not mentioned the girl’s name. Frank later denied saying this.
Frank then tried to hang the crime on Newt Lee, the negro night watchman (which didn’t make sense because Lee didn’t arrive at the factory until four hours after Mary was last seen; for that matter Gantt wasn’t there until after 6:00 either). Lee testified that Frank’s actions on Saturday were unusual. Frank had instructed him to come in at 4 PM, an hour before his normal time – Lee reported at 6PM during the week and 5PM on weekends. When he got there, he told him to go home or somewhere for two hours, which Lee found odd. He said he’d just find a place and take a nap, but Frank insisted he leave the building. The implication is that Frank didn’t want Lee around because he was expecting Jim Conley, who would later be accused as his accomplice, to come back and burn the body in the furnace. Frank had previously made plans to go to a ballgame with his brother-in-law, which is why he wanted Lee to come in early but called him Saturday afternoon and said he couldn’t make it. He claimed he cancelled his plans because he had too much work to do at the factory (even though it was a state holiday, and the factory was closed.) When police were with Frank in the factory after the discovery of the girl’s body, he pulled the tape out of the time clock and said it was correctly marked, but he later produced a tape showing gaps in Lee’s punches, gaps that would have allowed him time to go home to change clothes and come back. The appearance of the second tape was suspicious. Police went to Lee’s home and searched the property. A bloody shirt was found at the bottom of a rag barrel. The night watchman identified the shirt as one he owned but said he hadn’t worn it in two years. The shirt didn’t appear to have been worn recently. There was blood on both sides of the fabric rather than only on the outside and there was no underarm odor, indicating it hadn’t been worn since it was washed. Police suspected it had been planted. They began to suspect there was a conspiracy to divert attention away from Frank. The negro elevator operator was also arrested along with a streetcar conductor someone claimed to have seen with Mary Phagan on Saturday night. They were cleared. Lee, however, was held and his name was sent to the grand jury, but he was not indicted.
The police began to suspect that Frank knew something. They had noticed that he seemed unusually nervous, and were surprised that he claimed not to know Mary Phagan since the girl had worked on the same floor as his office for more than a year, especially considering that he had to pass her workstation in the metal room every time he went to the toilet. The metal room and Frank’s office were on the second floor of the four-story building. Yet when police asked Frank if he knew Mary Phagan, he claimed he didn’t and asked if she was one of the factory girls. He claimed he didn’t know many of his employees. He told the officers he’d have to consult his pay records. After consulting the record, he told officers that she did work at the factory and that he’d paid her the day before. He thought he remembered her. Police were also suspicious because Frank didn’t appear to actually look at the dead girl’s face when he was taken to the mortuary to view the body.
When factory workers came back to work on Monday, blood splatters were discovered in the metal room that hadn’t been there before. Machine operator R.B. Barrett noticed several strands of bloody hair in the handle of his lathing machine. They weren’t there Friday. Some of the girls said it looked like Mary Phagan’s hair. The blood splatters had been covered with a white substance called haskoline the factory used to lubricate the machines. The substance looked like it had been smeared around with a broom. A broom was propped against the wall nearby. One of the police officers chipped up the wood with the substance that looked like blood and took it for evidence – it was blood. Part of a pay envelope was found under the machine where the hairs were found.[20] Lemmie Quinn would testify that the blood splatter was already there, but he was contradicted by other witnesses who said it wasn’t there on Friday. Quinn claimed they were from when one of the male employees cut his finger. The employee said they weren’t, he said he grabbed some cotton batting as soon as he cut himself and very little blood dripped on the floor, none in the spot Barrett pointed out. Several factory officials downplayed the blood spot during their testimony.
George Epps told the coroner’s jury that Mary Phagan said that Frank harassed her. Frank waited for her by the door when she was leaving and tried flirting with her.[21] She told the boy she wanted him to wait for her at the factory each evening because she was afraid of Frank. She had also told her mother that people at the factory tried to “get fresh”. Family members would later say she was talking about Frank. The cut or torn underpants and presence of blood indicated she had been sexually assaulted. Three doctors examined the body – it was exhumed twice – and there were conflicting opinions. While they agreed she had been violently attacked, they disagreed as to whether it had been sexual. The county physician said the blood was menstrual blood and there was no evidence of sexual trauma. (Mary Phagan Kean, Mary Phagan’s grandniece, says that the family says she hadn’t started menstruating yet.) The medical examiner said there was. He also said her hymen had been broken, an indication she was a virgin. There was no semen present, although doctors found an unidentified “discharge.” The medical examiner examined the contents of the girl’s stomach and determined that she’d died within an hour after eating her last meal of bread and cabbage at 1130, placing her time of death at around 12:30. Frank initially told police that Mary Phagan had come to his office at 12:03. He kept slipping the time back to 12:20. The medical examiner determined that she had been assaulted then after a period of time had been murdered by strangulation. There was urine on the body.
The police developed a theory that whoever killed Mary had propositioned her, then when she refused, had slugged her and she fell and hit her head. They then assaulted her and, in order to shut her up, strangled her with a piece of cord. There was cord all over the factory; it was used to tie bundles of wood and pencils.[22] They believed the assault had taken place on the second floor, as did Detective Scott, then someone took the body to the basement in the elevator. A Burns Detective Agency detective hired by an outside group came to the same conclusion. On Tuesday, Leo Frank was arrested and held for questioning.[23]
Suspicion on Frank increased in part because of the assertion of 14-year-old Monteen Stover that when she went to the factory shortly after noon on Saturday to get her pay, Frank was not in his office. Her account came about more or less by accident when she came in the following Saturday to draw the pay she had missed. She had left the factory the day before Mary’s murder. She testified that she had worked at the factory prior to April 25th. By the time of the trial, she was working elsewhere. Regardless, just like Mary Phagan, she was owed money and went in to collect it and talked to police who were at the factory interviewing potential witnesses when she and her mother walked in. Miss Stover claimed she arrived at his office at 1205 – she said she looked at the clock – and remained for five minutes. She said she went back and looked in the inner office and Frank was not there. This contradicted Frank’s claim that he hadn’t left his office from noon until he left to go home for lunch at one. Factory officials testified that she couldn’t have seen into Frank’s office from the outer office if the safe was open. Miss Stover testified that she went into Frank’s office looking for him and he was not there. She also looked in the factory behind the office, but could not see in the metal room because the door was closed. Frank would later claim in a four-hour unsworn statement he read to the jury that he “might” have gone to the men’s room – which would have put him at the very place police had come to believe was where the murder had occurred! Police were also disturbed by his claims not to have known Mary Phagan even though she had worked on the same floor as his office only a few feet from the men’s room FOR MORE THAN A YEAR! Witnesses would later testify that Frank had been seen talking to Mary Phagan and Frank himself would make claims indicating that he knew her, such as when he claimed John Gantt “had been with her.” Gantt would later testify that Frank had once commented to him after seeing him talking to Mary, “You know Mary pretty well.” He said he did not tell Frank the girl’s name. Frank denied it. The police suspected Frank knew more than he was telling.
The time Mary Phagan arrived at Frank’s office became an issue in the trial. Frank himself told police she arrived right at noon, which is likely since pay envelopes were normally handed out at noon. Monteen Stover said she arrived at 12:05. There was conflicting testimony by street car motormen, with one claiming Mary was on his car and sat by herself and that she got off several minutes from the factory at 12:07 while another said he saw her walking toward the factory just before noon. Mrs. Fannie Coleman testified that Mary left the house around a quarter to twelve which would have put her downtown around 12:05, but her time was not definite. George Epps said they got off the car at 12:07 but he based his timing on the sun. He said he was a country boy and could tell time by the sun. Well, I am a country boy and can tell time by the sun but it’s not accurate to the minute! There is also the matter of the factory time clock, which was supposed to be accurate to three minutes, not to the minute. Factory officials claimed they set it by the noon whistle, but they didn’t set it every day. Frank initially said she reached his office at 12:03. Monteen Stover based her time on the clock as 12:05 but it could have actually been as late as 12:08 or as early as 12:02. There could have been considerable variance in the settings of clocks and pocket watches because there was no standard clock on which to set time. Lemmie Quinn claimed he was there at 12:20 but his claim is extremely questionable. He’d previously told police he was there before noon – after first telling them he wasn’t there at all. Jim Conley would say he saw him before Mary Phagan, which would have been before noon based on Frank’s testimony. Two women who were at the factory before noon said Lemmie Quinn joined them at a nearby Greek restaurant. Police accused him of taking a bribe, which is quite possibly true considering some of his claims during the trial and actions afterward. Considering that Frank gave his 12:03 time in his initial statement, it is probably accurate as far as factory time goes. Neither he nor anyone else was aware at that time that Monteen Stover had been to the office.[24]
Another factor in Frank’s case being sent to the grand jury was that he had allegedly confessed to the murder to his wife on Saturday night and she told her mother in the presence of the housekeeper. Mineola McKnight, the 20-year-old Selig housekeeper, later told her husband, who said something to his employer who took him to the police. Mineola told her husband Albert that Lucille had told her that her husband “had been caught with a girl at the factory”, that he got drunk that night and made her sleep on the floor. He had also lamented that he didn’t know how he could murder and told Lucille to bring his pistol so he could kill himself. Albert told the story at the hardware store where he worked and his coworkers convinced him to go with them to the police. After taking his affidavit, they brought Mineola in for questioning and she signed an affidavit in which she stated that Frank had told his wife that he had murdered the girl and that he told his wife to get his pistol so he could kill himself. She also said the Seligs had boosted her pay and Lucille had given her a hat, which were construed by police as bribes. The housekeeper denied the statement in court, claiming police had threatened her with jail if she did not sign the statement, which was witnessed by her attorney. However, the prosecution was able to present her original affidavit to the jury.[25]
The Atlanta papers saw the case as the goose that laid the golden egg and fell all over themselves running stories, often printing accounts about developments that the police hadn’t publicly revealed. Sentiments in the city ran high. Fulton County Solicitor Hugh Dorsey decided to take over the case for the state and to have all developments reported directly to him rather than to police headquarters. There was speculation that former Congressman Tom Watson, who was considered perhaps the best criminal attorney in Georgia, would join either the prosecution or the defense but he declined. Watson would play a role later on.
One of the defense’s points was that Frank couldn’t have known that Mary Phagan was coming in that day. They countered Helen Ferguson’s claim that she had asked Frank personally for Mary’s pay and he told her she couldn’t have it, that Mary would have to come in for it herself by having Herbert Schiff testify that he had paid Miss Ferguson, not Frank, and that she hadn’t asked for Mary’s pay. Magnolia Kennedy, who worked with Mary Phagan in the metal room, testified that she was behind Helen Ferguson and had her hand on her shoulder in the pay line, that Schiff paid them, and that she didn’t hear her ask Frank for Mary’s pay envelope. There is reason to believe there was a conspiracy by Pencil Company and Montag supervisory personnel to control the testimony of employees, whose jobs depended on them. The defense tried in vain to get Monteen Stover and Helen Ferguson to repudiate their testimony after the trial, even going to the extent of having one of their operatives introduced to Helen as someone who was interested in her romantically. More about that later.
However, Frank knew she was coming. Since Mary Phagan had RESIGNED on Thursday, she would have to come in to pick up her final pay. She wasn’t at the factory the previous week except for Monday or possibly Tuesday – and probably for a brief time on Thursday to resign – and may not have known that the factory was paying on Friday evening rather than Saturday. Perhaps Helen Ferguson told her and said she’d get her pay for her. All we know is that Helen testified that she asked for Mary’s pay and was denied and that after Frank was convicted, the defense tried to repudiate her testimony, and Lucille Frank, accompanied by Rabbi Marx, paid her a visit and tried to get her to recant.
After Monteen Stover, the key prosecution witness turned out to be Jim Conley, Connally or Connelly, a negro laborer in his late twenties who had worked at the factory for more than two years. Conley was one of less than a dozen (8) colored employees of the factory and he was held in low regard by his fellow blacks as well as the white employees, to some of whom he was indebted for small amounts he borrowed and failed to pay back. He reportedly drank at work and was accused of having pissed on some pencils. (The accuser was Rebecca Carson, who was reported by some factory employees to be spending time in the women’s dressing room with Frank.) Conley had been in charge of the elevator but had been demoted to sweeper, yet his pay was half again that of the machine operators who made the pencils upon which the company depended. He had a reputation for drunkenness and liked his beer. One of the other blacks would testify that Conley was “a low nigger.” He had been arrested for petty crimes, mainly drunkenness and fighting.[26] However, even though he was sentenced to time on the chain gang and was gone three weeks, he was brought back to work. Conley testified that Frank and other plant officials joshed with him and poked at him.
Herbert Schiff, who identified himself as the assistant plant superintendent, claimed he could tell from the first time that he met him that Conley was unreliable. He said he and Darley took him off the elevator because they couldn’t trust him. Then, inexplicably, he testified that the reason they didn’t fire him was because “in a factory like that, it was hard to get a negro who knew something about it.” Like other management personnel, Schiff went out of his way to downplay the blood spot and to distance Frank from Mary Phagan.
After making three “confessions” designed to draw attention away from Frank, Conley finally confessed that Frank had killed the girl then had him remove the body from the metal room and take it to the basement using the elevator to which he had formerly been assigned as operator. Frank wanted him to burn the body in the furnace but Conley said no, it was his mess to clean up. He said that he finally confessed after he got word that people at the factory were trying to pin the murder on him. Someone at the factory, possibly Lemmie Quinn who had stated he had a suspect in mind, theorized that Mary had been attacked on the first floor in a robbery then the attacker threw or carried her down the ladder to the basement.[27] The theory was advocated by Herbert Haas, the factory attorney. This was the theory the defense used to argue Frank’s innocence and the theory advocated in Northern newspapers, spawned by Adolph Och’s New York Times, once word of the outcome of the trial reached the North. A witness testified that she’d seen a negro sitting on a crate by the stairs and took it from there, although the witness saw the man around 1:00, nearly an hour after Frank said the girl came for her pay. The woodworking company had moved out of the building and the first floor was vacant and was being used for storage. The defense theory was that he was lying in wait to attack an unsuspecting girl for her pay envelope. Bear in mind that the factory’s employees had been paid the night before. Mary Phagan and Monteen Stover are the only people known to have come in for their pay around noon on Saturday, which was a factory holiday. Why would Conley be lurking around waiting for a victim when he KNEW it wasn’t payday? Frank testified that he paid some male employees and a girl named Mattie Smith earlier that morning. Conley said he saw Miss Smith before he left the building for a time. He said she appeared to be crying. Darley walked her out. Conley heard him tell her they’d straighten it out next Saturday. Frank said there was some kind of dispute with her pay.
According to the theory, the murderer (Conley), hit the girl in the head with a club then threw or carried her down the ladder to the basement where he assaulted and killed her. A pay envelope alleged to be Mary’s and a bloody club mysteriously appeared behind a radiator near the ladder along with part of a buggy whip near the door several weeks after the murder. The items were found by Pinkerton detectives working for Frank while Detective Scott was out of town. The find was extremely suspicious, the area had been previously searched and there was nothing there. The medical examiner determined the wound on the girl’s head had not been done with a club. Mary’s stepfather insisted that the envelope he was shown had a 5 on it. The Pinkerton men denied that there was such a number on the envelope. (It would have been very easy to fake a pay envelope. Schiff, in particular, knew her employee number.)
Conley stated that Frank told him that he tried “to be with” Mary Phagan but she resisted. Frank said he hit her when she resisted, but must have hit her too hard because she fell. Police and the medical examiner surmised she hit her head on a machine when she fell. The gash indicated she was falling when it was made. One of the metal room workers, R.P. Barrett, who ran a lathe next to Mary’s machine, found “bloody hair” in the handle of his lathe Monday morning. Magnolia Kennedy, who worked in the metal room, said it looked like Mary’s hair. The defense attempted to explain it away by ignoring that the hair was bloody and claiming the hair came from girls combing their hair over a nearby gas jet. He also spotted a large fan-shaped spot that looked like blood. Police took chips which the city bacteriologist found contained blood. The defense claimed it was from an earlier accident. Police claimed to have searched the entire building on Sunday after the girl’s body was found and did not see the blood but their search was probably perfunctory since the body was in the basement of the four-story building and that was where they initially thought the murder had occurred. The door from the basement to the outside was found to be unlatched and they theorized the murderer used it for his escape. Company management claimed Conley used this door to escape his creditors. The defense would seize on this theory and make it their own.
Conley testified that Frank used him to keep watch when he was “chatting” with women in his office. He testified that he had walked in on Frank twice in compromising positions (he was apparently engaged in oral sex.) He named several women and girls Frank had been with. Whenever he was planning an assignation, Frank would have Conley keep watch on the first floor to warn him whenever someone came in the building. He would sit on a crate by the stairway and keep watch. Frank had prearranged signals for Conley to lock the doors when he didn’t want to be disturbed, to unlock them, or when he wanted him to come upstairs. Mrs. White, the wife of one of two men working on the fourth floor, picked Conley out of a lineup and identified him as the negro she saw sitting on a crate by the stairs when she came down sometime before 1:00PM – she was several blocks away in a department store at 1:00. If Conley had killed Mary Phagan, as the defense and Pencil Company employees theorized, he would have been long gone by that time.
Conley said he saw Mary Phagan, although he didn’t know her name (he called her Mary Perkins) go upstairs. He heard footsteps going from Frank’s office back toward the metal room followed by a woman’s scream, then he heard steps coming back. He saw Monteen Stover go up and come down again. His description matched the clothes she testified she was wearing. She went up and down again after Mary Phagan went up. Sometime later, Frank signaled for him to come up. When he got upstairs, Conley found Frank standing with a length of cord in his hands. He asked him if he wanted to make some money. Frank told him he had hit the girl when she refused his advances and she fell and hit her head. Conley went to the back of the metal room to the women’s restroom/dressing room and found the girl on the floor. He checked and realized she was dead. He went back up front and told Frank. Frank told him to get some cloth and wrap her up and take her to the elevator. Conley found some cloth and wrapped it around her. He picked the girl up but wasn’t able to carry her the nearly 200 feet to the elevator; she was too heavy. He dropped her and got Frank to take her feet. They carried her to the elevator. Frank had to get the key from the office to unlock it. The elevator went from the basement to the upper floors and was used to move materials to and from the shops. The elevator shaft was open and people often threw trash in it; the bottom of the shaft was covered with trash. They took her to the basement then Frank went back upstairs to keep watch. Conley drug her past the furnace where Frank intended to burn her and left the body behind a partition near the basement door. After taking the body to the back of the basement, Conley went back upstairs where Frank had him write out the notes as he dictated. Conley testified that Frank gave him $200 to burn the body but he refused, telling Frank it was his mess to clean up. Frank took the money back and told him he’d get it back after the body was burned. Frank gave the negro a pack of cigarettes that had two dollars and some change in it. Conley agreed to come back to the factory later that afternoon to help Frank perform the grisly task, but he went home and fell asleep and didn’t go back.
There was one problem with Conley’s account. He testified that after he and Frank took the body to the basement, they were in his office when they heard voices and Frank blurted out, “It’s Corinthia Hall and Emma Clarke!” and had him hide in a large wardrobe in the office. The problem was that Conley testified that he saw them go up BEFORE Mary Phagan and the two women testified that they were there before noon.[28] They testified that they were at the factory to pick up Emma Clarke’s coat. She had left the factory the day before to get married and in her haste forgot her coat. They went upstairs and got it then they went in the office for the new Mrs. Freeman to phone her husband. They said they left the factory before noon and went to a nearby Greek Restaurant where Lemmie Quinn came in. Conley claimed they were there more than an hour later. Some theorize that the incident was before lunch, which doesn’t fit the narrative. There is a simple explanation – the women went back to the factory! Emma Clarke called her new husband AFTER they ate lunch. In fact, defense attorney Rueben Arnold tripped up in an address he made to the court in an attempt to get Frank a new trial when he said the two women went back to the factory at 12:30. They were defense witnesses and no doubt had been coached. If they said they went back, it would boost Conley’s credibility. There’s reason to believe the jury simply didn’t believe defense witnesses. The police believed somebody was bribing witnesses but couldn’t prove it.
Detectives found a pile of human excrement in the elevator shaft. Conley said he put it there Saturday morning rather than going all the way back to the colored toilet toward the back of the basement. The shit in the shaft became an object of conjecture. Frank’s defense claimed it wasn’t smashed until Frank took detectives to the basement in the elevator therefore the elevator hadn’t been used the day before. There was a question as to whether the elevator went all the way to the dirt floor or stopped before it bottomed out. The defense theory was that the shit hadn’t been smashed therefore Conley was lying about using the elevator. They do not take into consideration that the bottom of the shaft was full of refuse which would have affected the elevator’s travel. It appears that the elevator was operated by cords attached to levers. Pulling the lever activated the electric motor. As long as the lever was pulled, the motor kept running. The operator could stop it by simply releasing the lever. Frank or Conley could have stopped it before it bottomed out. Conley was familiar with the elevator, he had been the elevator operator before he was demoted to floor sweeper.
Another issue is that the police hadn’t found the cloth Conley claimed to have wrapped her in. There is a simple explanation for this – they weren’t looking for it! It appears that the body was found near a pile of refuse that had been sent down from upstairs for burning, refuse that included cut cording and cloth. She had been dragged across the cinder-covered floor from the elevator. Unlike today, when police will leave a body in place for hours while conducting an investigation, they called a mortuary immediately and had the body removed within a little over an hour. Jim Conley was arrested on Thursday, May 1, a week and two days after Leo Frank was locked up, because the day watchman, E.F. Holloway, told police he had seen him washing a shirt to remove stains that looked like blood. Police determined the stains were actually rust from the pipe employees used to dry clothes, not blood. Conley didn’t make his confession of having helped Frank with the body until more than a month after the murder took place. By that time tons of refuse had no doubt been burned in the furnace or carried away by trash collectors. In fact, the fire marshal submitted an affidavit affirming that he had told the factory to keep the basement clean. Initially, police operated under the theory that the murder took place in the basement. The discovery of blood spots by the dressing room and hair on Barrett’s lathe in the metal room on Monday led them to start thinking that was where the actual murder took place.
The defense cross-examined Conley for THREE DAYS but could not get him to contradict his story. Finally, they moved that his testimony be stricken from the record, possibly on the grounds of the sexual content. The defense had got the judge to disallow testimony pertaining to Frank’s sexual conduct on the basis that it would prejudice the jury. The judge initially agreed but changed his mind and let it stand.
Although Frank had a stellar reputation in the community and in his synagogue, Solicitor Dorsey had uncovered evidence that Leo Frank was a sexual predator, if not a pervert. The information came from girls who had worked at or visited the factory and had encounters with Frank. Girls came forward with derogatory information against Frank within a week after the murder. Robert House, a former Atlanta policeman, reported that he had caught Frank and a young girl engaged in immoral acts in Druid Hills Park and Frank pleaded that he not report it. Testimony from some of his employees and former employees revealed a dark side; he had a reputation within the factory as a libertine. Some testified that the girls tried to avoid him. Twenty female employees and former employees testified at his trial that he had taken liberties with them, that he would frequently burst into the women’s dressing room unannounced. He was alleged to have spent lengthy periods in the fourth floor dressing room alone with Rebecca Carson, one of the female factory forewomen. The defense did not cross-examine any of the women knowing that to do so would open the door for more damaging testimony. Conley said Frank referred to his wife Lucille as a “fat cow” and that he hated to climb on her. There is reason to believe that he impregnated at least one and possibly other girls from the factory. Sixteen-year-old Dewey Hewell was brought to Atlanta from a home for unwed mothers in Cincinnati to testify. One girl, probably Dewey Hewell, told prosecutors that after he inseminated her, he went down on her and bit her privates. She was not allowed to testify in court to his sexual improprieties although she was allowed to testify that she had seen him talking to Mary Phagan and taking liberties with her. She also said that she had seen Frank in an embrace with a girl in the stairwell. Three other girls from homes for unwed mothers weren’t allowed to testify. The prosecution had evidence against Frank they were not allowed to introduce because it didn’t pertain directly to the murder. However, it is alleged that Solicitor Dorsey planned to immediately arrest Frank and charge him with rape and other sexual improprieties if he was acquitted of the murder.
The defense made the mistake of making character an issue. They paraded dozens of witnesses from New York and his former college classmates as well as local people who knew him, including National Pencil Company and Montag employees, to testify how fine and upstanding a fellow Frank was and how he was incapable of such a crime. They also made race an issue. The defense and Frank himself claimed it was the crime of a negro, and wasn’t “a white man’s crime”. A number of girls testified that Frank’s character was good. The defense tactic opened the door for Dorsey to bring in character witnesses to testify otherwise. Twenty women and girls testified adversely as did some male witnesses. Nellie Pettis, who had visited the factory, she didn’t work there but her sister did, testified that Frank had called her into his office where he propositioned her and opened a cash box and said, “How about it?” She said she wasn’t that kind of girl, told him to go to Hell, and left. Nellie Wood said that she worked there four days then left because of Frank’s behavior. After Rebecca Carson, a supervisor on the fourth floor, testified that Frank’s character was impeccable, several witnesses testified that she had been seen going in the women’s dressing room with Frank and spending from 15 minutes to half an hour. Miss Carson denied that she had ever been in the dressing room with him but there’s reason to believe she and other Pencil Company employees lied. In fact, the defense more or less acknowledged that she HAD been in the dressing room with Frank by attempting to explain it as part of their duties. Some of the girls testified that there had been miscarriages in the factory. One girl said Frank didn’t seem concerned about the first one but seemed overly concerned about the second. There was a rumor that a girl had given birth in the factory.
In discussions of the case, little attention is paid to the character of the factory girls. Most of them seem to have been teenagers, with some as young as eleven. They were of an age when girls are particularly hormonal and interested in men. No doubt some of them wanted to party and have a good time. Drunk girls, some of them very young, in the company of men were a common sight on the streets of Atlanta on Saturday night. The partying most likely took place on Saturday afternoon and evening after they were paid – Saturday was the normal payday. There were men and boys at the factory and some of them no doubt took advantage of the girls.
Mary Phagan doesn’t seem to have been one of those girls. She was active in the First Christian Church. In fact, her last act before leaving home to get her pay and watch the parade was to iron her frock for Sunday School the next morning. There were some who speculated that Mary was involved with Frank in some way. One Atlanta reporter, who wrote anonymously as “An Old Police Reporter,” and who was at the trial every day, wrote a letter to a northern newspaper that had condemned the city of Atlanta and Georgians for “convicting an innocent man because he was a Jew” in which he stated that he was at the trial every day and he believed that Frank was guilty. He also stated his belief that Frank had perhaps arranged a liaison with Mary Phagan but she had balked or became remorseful and he struck her. That is his opinion. George Epps testified that she was afraid of Frank and the Phagan family believed he had made advances toward her. No one will ever know what actually took place.
Rabbi Marx, the rabbi at the synagogue of which Frank was a member, took up his cause. He and other B’nai B’rith members gave newspaper interviews or testified on his behalf, advocating that he was of such good character he was incapable of such an act. That and lying witnesses against him was the defense strategy along with the claim that Jim Conley was the murderer, not Frank. After the trial, Marx and Lucille Frank visited witnesses and attempted to get them to change their testimony. The defense brought in a number of witnesses from the factory who testified that Frank’s character was good and Jim Conley’s was bad. Conley’s race was a factor. One girl said on the stand that she “wouldn’t believe any nigger.” One of the other colored employees referred to Conley as a “low nigger.” None of the witnesses could attribute anything to Conley other than he didn’t repay small debts of money he had borrowed and that he drank. One particularly vehement witness against Conley was Alonzo Mann, the teenage office boy who had only been employed at the factory for a few weeks and had only been present two previous Saturdays. Mann would rear up seventy years later and claim he had seen Conley carrying Mary Phagan’s body.
The defense also brought up Frank’s status as a Northerner who had recently arrived in the South (he’d been there five years.) They also brought up his Jewishness, claiming that he was being prosecuted because he was a Jew. In fact, it was Rae Frank, Leo’s mother, who brought up religion. She went off on Solicitor Dorsey one day when he was presenting evidence of her son’s lecherousness and had to be removed from the courtroom. She called Dorsey a “Christian dog.” The defense compared Frank’s case to that of a case in Russia where a Jew had been charged with murdering a young boy in order to drain his blood for a ceremony. Frank was being tried for killing a girl, not for some kind of mystical sacrifice. His case was no different from dozens of others around the country each year for the same thing – except he was a Jew and Jews were becoming incensed that Gentiles were prosecuting a member of their tribe for killing a mere Gentile factory girl. The prosecution never mentioned that Frank was a Jew until their closing remarks when Dorsey denied that Frank’s being a Jew had anything to do with the prosecution. As a matter of fact, Frank himself denied to a reporter that his race had anything to do with his prosecution. He claimed he was prosecuted because there had been a number of recent unsolved murders in the city and the police and the prosecution were anxious for a conviction. There were five Jews on the grand jury although only four of them were present when the vote was taken to convict Frank – the vote was unanimous. Newt Lee, who had also been presented to the grand jury, was not indicted. Frank’s mentioning of unsolved murders is somewhat curious. Was Frank a serial killer? Was Mary Phagan his only victim or had there been others? There had been a spate of unsolved murders of young women in Atlanta going back to 1911, but the victims were black and mixed race, not white.
Georgia law allowed a defendant to make an unsworn statement without cross-examination and Frank took advantage of it. He got up and gave a long-winded four-hour speech in which he called everyone who testified against him a liar. He continued to deny that he had known Mary Phagan and that he had ever spoken to her. Frank had been a champion debater at Cornell and he evidently thought he would be able to debate his way out of a conviction. He was wrong.
Only one person knew what really happened that Saturday noon, and Leo Frank wasn’t telling. He told his story about how Mary Phagan came to the office immediately after noon that Saturday and he paid her, then she left. Neither Frank nor anyone else mentioned that the girl had resigned her position two days earlier, even though it was published in the Atlanta Constitution two days after the body was found. That is very suspicious. I have my own theory about what happened. Mary Phagan went to Frank’s office and asked for her final pay. Maybe he gave it to her, maybe he didn’t. She may have left a belonging in the factory, probably in the dressing room. It may have been a coat or sweater. Even though it was a dreary, somewhat chilly spring day, she was not wearing a raincoat. Perhaps she had left it in the dressing room. She probably told Frank she wanted to go back to the dressing room and get her belongings. Jim Conley testified that he heard two sets of footsteps going from the office toward the metal room. After she got there, she realized he had followed her, at which point she screamed and Frank hit her, and she fell and hit her head on the handle of Barrett’s lathe. Based on the medical evidence, Frank then assaulted her while she was unconscious then, realizing he would be in big trouble if she walked out of the building, he got a piece of cord and strangled her. Then he called Jim Conley to dispose of the body by burning it in the furnace, which was stoked and ready to go. Conley refused to do the dirty work and Frank didn’t want to do it himself. Frank finally got Conley to agree to come back after lunch and help him, but Conley went home and fell asleep and didn’t come back.
Jews in the North were infuriated when word reached them that one of their tribe had been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. In their minds, he had been convicted solely because he was a Jew. They either weren’t aware or ignored the fact that there was evidence that Frank had murdered the girl. They claimed that the Frank case was a repeat of the Dreyfus Affair. A Jewish French army officer was court-martialed and convicted of spying for the Germans. Jews around the world rose up in Dreyfus’ defense. There was another case in Russia of a Jew having been accused of murdering a gentile boy in order to obtain his blood for a sacrificial ceremony. Jews were incensed. Jews rose up in Frank’s defense. One Jewish leader said it was a Jew’s duty to defend fellow Jews who were accused anywhere in the world. American Jews saw the case against Leo Frank as another example of “antisemitism.”
Antisemitism is a term invented by an Austrian academic named Moritz Steinschneider. Steinschneider was opposed to views of French academic Ernest Renan. Steinschneider and Renan were both Orientalists studying Semites, those who spoke a set of languages spoken by peoples with origins in the Middle East who were believed to be the descendants of Shem, one of Noah’s three sons. (Semites include other Middle Eastern groups than just Jews but Jews appropriated the term.) Steinschneider accused Renan of believing Semites were inferior to Aryans, a race associated with Iran and India who were believed to have spread into Europe, with both being Caucasians.[29] Steinschneider advocated that Renan’s views were anti-Semitic, and the term caught on among Jews who started referring to anyone who ever criticized (defamed) a Jew as antisemitic. It has become a verbal weapon used by Jews against their critics. Anyone making a critical remark about a Jew or Jews is an antisemite, including other Jews!
It is true that Jews have been unfairly persecuted around the world at times, particularly by Catholics. Because so many Jews were involved in usury, the lending of money, they weren’t trusted by non-Jews. The Catholic kings and queens of Spain expelled Jews during the Inquisition. King Edward I expelled Jews from England in 1290, primarily over Jewish practices of usury, which were forbidden to Christians. Jews were expelled from cities and countries throughout Europe and the Middle East. However, the Protestant Reformation brought more favorable attitudes toward Jews. This was particularly true in the American South where Jews assimilated and were only distinct because of their religion. There was a massive influx of Russian Jews into the United States around the turn of the Twentieth Century due to violent anti-Jewish rioting in Eastern Europe in lands that had become part of the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great. Jews referred to the riots as “pogroms,” a term that now seems to be used for any kind of opposition to Jews. Some 2.5 million Eastern European Jews immigrated to the United States, with most of them going to New York although some were brought in through the Port of Galveston as a means of reducing the number of Jewish immigrants in East Coast cities. Some settled in Atlanta, where they were not well-received by the German Jews who were already there. However, Jews have never been persecuted in the United States. Granted, there are people who just flat don’t like them and there is resentment of their dominance in certain fields – media, entertainment, banking, government – but there have been no laws passed against Jews and no expulsions. And, regardless of what Frank supporters say, there have been no Jews prosecuted because they were Jews.
Frank’s lawyers claimed that Frank hadn’t had a fair trial and immediately filed a request for a new one. Rabbi Marx made a trip north to talk to other Jewish leaders about the Frank case. He pushed the theories advocated by Frank’s defense. They attracted the attention of Adolph Ochs, a Southern Jew who had grown up in East Tennessee and owned several newspapers before purchasing the New York Times.[30] Ochs joined with other Jews in the B’nai B’rith to form the Antidefamation League immediately after Leo Franks was convicted. Ochs used his influence to convince other newspapers to refrain from criticizing Jews and to publicize the Frank case using defense theories. The New York Times ran a photo piece illustrating how Conley had attacked Mary Phagan and threw her down the ladder into the basement. Albert Lasker, a Texas Jew who moved to Chicago and became an advertising magnate, used his power to promote articles proclaiming the innocence of Leo Frank. Ironically, Lasker said of his first meeting with Frank, “It was very hard for us to be fair to him, he [Leo Frank] impressed us a sexual pervert. Now, he may not have been—or rather a homeosexual [sic] or something like that…. “Well, I hope he [Frank] gets out…and when he gets out I hope he slips on a banana peel and breaks his neck.” Nevertheless, Lasker pressed for Frank’s freedom.
Thanks to Ochs and Lasker, among others, false stories that Frank was prosecuted because he was a Jew and that large crowds gathered outside the courtroom shouting antisemitic epitaphs circulated in Northern newspapers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, most of it contributed by Northern Jews, poured into funds for Frank’s defense. In fact, there were no antisemitic epitaphs during the trial and while crowds did gather around the courthouse, they were orderly and caused no disruption. The claims that the jury was influenced by the crowds were false. Jury members affirmed that they had not been influenced by the crowd after the trial. Regardless, after Frank’s conviction, Northern newspapers published articles claiming there were large disorderly crowds and that Frank was prosecuted because he was a Jew. Why Ochs and Lasker pushed stories about antisemitism in the South is mystifying. They were both Southerners, Ochs from Chattanooga, Tennessee, less than 100 miles from Atlanta, and Lasker from Galveston, Texas. They KNEW that Jews were more readily accepted in the South than anywhere else in the United States. Perhaps they had lived in the North too long, Ochs in New York and Lasker in Chicago. The antisemitism Jews experienced in the United States was in the North and Midwest where large numbers of Germans had settled and brought with them their prejudices against Jews that went back to the Middle Ages. Most Southerners were of English, Scottish, and Irish stock and at least lukewarm to Jews. Although Jews were expelled from England, they were allowed back during the Commonwealth Period under Cromwell. Jews were among the early settlers in the South, particularly in Georgia and Carolina. (Dutch Jews settled in New Amsterdam and Pennsylvania.) Southerners were primarily Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian and friendly to and accepting of Jews.
Using the funds that poured in, there are estimates there were close to half a million dollars ($14 million in today’s dollars), Frank’s defense hired the Burns Detective Agency to find evidence to exonerate Frank. When they couldn’t find it, they manufactured it. Frank’s defense recruited Marie Karst (or Carst), who had been called by the defense but testified that Frank had a reputation for lasciviousness, to talk to the girls who had testified against Frank and encourage them to change their stories. The girls were brought to the law firm’s office and taken into GOVERNOR SLATON’S OFFICE for their interrogation by Burns detectives and the defense’s own investigators. They got some of the ignorant girls to sign affidavits containing information they hadn’t given and which they later repudiated. The spurious affidavits were witnessed by C.W. Burke, one of the defense’s investigators. They got Albert McKnight to sign a false affidavit in which he repudiated his testimony. When he found out what it said, he recanted. One of their targets was Monteen Stover, who steadfastly refused to recant. Burns claimed he had evidence proving that she never went to the factory that Saturday. Monteen refused to talk to him. One of the defense investigators seduced Helen Ferguson and even tried to get her to marry him to get her to change her testimony. Burns found letters Jim Conley had written to Annie Maude Carter, a female trustee at the jail when he was held there. Defense operatives had tried to get Carter to induce Conley to confess that he was the murderer. Both Conley and Carter claimed that Burns altered the letters. Annie Maude swore in an affidavit that Jim Conley told her that Leo Frank killed the girl. Burns took the Carter woman to New Orleans where she’d be out of reach of Frank prosecutors. She recanted nevertheless and claimed that Jim Conley HAD NOT confessed to killing Mary Phagan but had told her that Frank did it. Lemmie Quinn was in the middle of the Burns and Frank defense attempts to get people to change their testimonies and was impeached for it. Quinn’s actions lead me to believe he was working on Frank’s behalf all along. His “reminding” Frank when he saw him in jail that he had seen him Saturday afternoon is suspicious. He gave testimony questioning the motives of R.P. Barrett, who found the bloody hair in the handle of his lathe and the blood spot by the dressing room. Quinn insinuated that Barrett had been out for the reward (which had yet to be offered when Barrett found the hair and pointed out the blood spots.) Police accused him of taking a bribe after he changed his testimony in the coroner’s hearings but he vehemently denied it.
Marie Karst (Carst) made an affidavit in which she said that Lemmie Quinn had called her soon after the trial and told her to meet him at a place called Nunnally’s. He told her that “Frank’s side” had got hold of an incident that had occurred a year or so before when she and some other girls took a flask out of one of the boys’ coat and passed it around. Quinn claimed Frank’s people were going to make it public unless she made a statement favoring Frank. Marie was fifteen at the time of the incident. She and the other girls hadn’t heard anything about it and considered it a joke. None of the girls were intoxicated, they merely took a sip. Quinn told her she should go see C.W. Burke. Quinn made a phone call and a few minutes later Burke showed up. Burke wanted her to go to the Frank defense law office but she didn’t go. Burke then wanted her to go to work for him on another case he was pursuing, which she found surprising since she wasn’t a stenographer and didn’t type. Burke told her he only wanted her to work in the afternoons and he’d pay her $2.00 a day. She had her meetings with Burke in Governor Slaton’s office at the firm. Burke got her to talk to several of the girls and attempt to get them to change their testimony. He wanted her to talk to Monteen Stover but she didn’t go. Then Burke tried to get her to move in with Monteen Stover and “pick her”. Burke told Miss Karst that he “had Carrie Smith where I want her.” He claimed that he knew someone who had an assignation house and that Carrie often went there.[31] Carrie told Marie, who she had known all her life, she had never heard of such a place.
One of the girls who recanted her testimony was Dewey Hewell. The affidavit was drawn up by a notary in Cincinnati and “witnessed” by C.W. Burke, Burns or both. Because she was out of state, the state did not interview her to determine if her affidavit was legitimate. The affidavit claimed that other girls had told her what to say, that she hadn’t seen Frank talking to Mary Phagan and that a man she saw in a stairway with a girl was not Frank. The girls she claimed told her what to say denied that they did so. Miss Hewell’s motives, if she did make the affidavit, are suspect. She had told Solicitor Dorsey and Mr. Roan, one of his assistants in the case, that Frank had impregnated her and that his sexual practices were perverse. Dewey Hewell was one of eight witnesses who “recanted” their testimony in affidavits drawn up by the defense. Some recanted their recantation.
One of Burns’ targets was George Epps. One of Burns’ operatives approached the boy about going to New Orleans, telling him that it would “get him away from this Frank mess.” When he got to the train, he learned they were going to Birmingham. He was accused of having stolen $10.00 from the messenger service where he worked. He was also told that he had perjured himself in the Frank case. Someone claiming to be “the chief of detectives” came in and told him he had lied, and wanted him to swear that he hadn’t been on the train with Mary Phagan and she hadn’t told him she was afraid of Frank. They said, “You know that (Police Detective John) Black put you up to this and we are going to make it hot for him.” The man wrote out three pages and read them back to the boy and told him if he didn’t sign it, they’d bring him back to Birmingham to serve a sentence. They coerced him into signing the affidavit then took him back to Atlanta. They told him that if he recanted, they’d take him back to Birmingham. Somebody filed a complaint against him in children’s court. The judge told him he’d give him probation but Epps asked to be sent to the reformatory in Milledgeville out of fear they’d make him go back to Birmingham. Someone came to the reformatory with the affidavit and wanted him to sign it but change it to Atlanta. He was brought back to Atlanta. After he got home, he recanted the false affidavit. He identified the man who posed as “chief of detectives” as C.W. Burke. In his affidavit, he reaffirmed that the testimony he had given at the coroner’s inquest and trial was true.
There is no doubt that a lot of lies were told in the Frank trial. The question is who told them? There can be no doubt that the one person who would benefit most from lies was Leo Frank. He was on trial for his life. Did his family lie for him? Did his friends in the factory lie? Did the police get people to lie? Did prosecutor Hugh Dorsey get people to lie? In the end, the jury believed those who testified against Frank.
Frank was sentenced to hang two months after the trial. His execution kept being postponed as his defense team kept appealing, first to the trial judge for a retrial, then to the Georgia Supreme Court then all the way up to the US Supreme Court – twice. All of his appeals were denied. His execution was finally set for June 22, 1915. Tom Watson, the famed criminal attorney and former US Congressman, hadn’t commented on the case during the trial but when the defense began its appeals, he came out strongly against them and Frank, who he believed was guilty. Watson was suspicious of the motives of the Jews who had rushed to Frank’s defense. He published numerous articles in his magazine and newspaper about the case. Frank supporters accuse him of inflaming passions against the convicted man. While this may be true, it is important to remember that Watson did not come out against Frank until AFTER his conviction. Many Georgians, probably most, were already convinced of Frank’s guilt and were glad he was going to hang. They didn’t need Tom Watson to convince them of Frank’s guilt nor did they need him to make them realize that an army of mostly Northern Jews had taken up the banner to get him released.
Frank supporters from all around the country pressured Governor John Slaton, a partner in the law firm defending Frank, to commute his sentence to life in prison. Although Slaton was accused of conflict of interest due to being a partner in the law firm defending Frank, he refused to recuse himself. The state prison commission, which was responsible for recommending or denying commutations, denied the application but Slaton went against their recommendation and commuted Frank’s sentence the night before he was scheduled to hang, and just before the governor’s term in office expired. Slaton immediately left the state and didn’t return for several years. (Who paid for Slaton’s excursion?) Slaton made arrangements to have Frank moved from the Atlanta jail to the state prison at Milledgeville, a town south of Macon, before he announced the commutation.
Frank’s supporters were thrilled that their man wouldn’t be hung. Their expectation was that new evidence would be uncovered to exonerate him (none has.) Most of Georgia was not thrilled, however, particularly not residents around the Marietta area where Mary Phagan lived most of her short life. Frank had been tried, a jury had convicted him, he was sentenced to be hung and all of his appeals were exhausted. That was the last word as far as they were concerned. Many were incensed that Governor Slaton hadn’t recused himself, or passed the case on to the incoming governor to decide since he was at least peripherally involved in the defense. (Slaton knew the new governor, Nathaniel E. Harris, was unlikely to commute Frank’s sentence.) Some men around Marietta decided to do something about it.
Although Frank supporters refer to them as “a mob,” the group of men who broke Leo Frank out of prison were highly organized. They are referred to or referred to themselves as a vigilance committee. Their identities were kept secret and have never been revealed (although some writers have published names they thought were involved) but their numbers are believed to have included some of the most prominent men in the area. Their plans were delayed when another inmate slit Frank’s throat. The perp said he did it because the inmates didn’t want Frank there because of the attention he brought to the prison. He actually thought he’d be pardoned for the deed! Frank recovered from the wound. The twenty-eight men were divided into sections, with each section and man given a specific task. Some were electricians, some were mechanics, some were drivers, some were telephone specialists. They left Marietta singly on the night of August 16, 1915, for the drive to Milledgeville. They broke into the prison (possibly with the help of the staff) and took Frank out of his cell then departed for the return trip to Marietta, where they allegedly planned to hang him over Mary Phagan’s grave. Their progress was reported by sheriffs in counties they passed through on the way. They encountered a couple of unforeseen delays. They forgot to pick up the man who was with the warden and had to go back for him then they had a couple of blowouts on the back roads they were taking. They also failed to cut a telephone wire coming out of the prison and sheriffs along the way knew they were coming – and probably bid them Godspeed. By the time they reached Marietta, it was getting too close to daylight so they hung him from a prominent tree rather than over Mary Phagan’s grave as they had allegedly planned. It is reported that when the party asked Frank if he wanted to confess that he had murdered Mary Phagan, he replied, “I think more of my wife and mother than I do of my life.” Frank’s last request was that they give his wedding ring to Lucille. They conveyed the ring to a local reporter who took the ring to the Selig house.
Frank’s last words are puzzling. Was he confessing that he had murdered Mary Phagan? One would think a truly innocent person who was about to be hung would protest their innocence. Frank said he thought more of his wife and mother than of his life, which indicates that he wanted to die without his mother and wife knowing he was a murderer. If he confessed, they would know he died a murderer. As long as he didn’t, they could continue to believe in his innocence.
Newspaper reports referred to members of the party as The Knights of Mary Phagan, but this may be a media invention. The New York Times carried an article claiming there was an organization by that name almost two months before Frank was hung. Tom Watson also referred to the men by that name. When news of Frank’s hanging was reported, it was attributed to the Knights of Mary Phagan. Frank’s death is often called a “lynching” but, technically, it was not. Lynching refers to extrajudicial punishment, meaning the victim was never convicted of a crime.[32] Leo Frank was indicted by a grand jury that included four Jewish members and was tried and convicted by a 12-man jury and the death sentence was imposed by the judge. His lawyers appealed his case to the highest levels of the US court system and was denied each time. The Georgia Board of Prisons, the agency responsible for recommending commutation of sentences, recommended that Frank’s sentence NOT be commuted, but the governor, who was part of the firm representing him, took it upon himself to commute Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment only four days before the end of his term – then fled the state as soon as his successor was sworn in.
Slaton claimed he was correcting Judge Roan’s mistake. The judge had recently passed away but he had allegedly written a letter just before his death in which he said he wasn’t convinced of Frank’s guilt and recommended that Frank’s sentence be commuted to life.[33] Yet he had pronounced the death sentence on Frank rather than taking a position of clemency and sentencing him to life and had several chances to amend the sentence or grant Frank’s request for a new trial. Allegedly, Jim Conley’s attorney went to Slaton and claimed that Conley had committed the crime. The young court-appointed attorney had allegedly been convinced by his wife of his client’s guilt. However, Conley had NOT confessed to the crime and, as far as is known, maintained until his dying day that Frank was the murderer. (There have been several claims that Conley confessed but there’s no proof that he did.) Some claim the attorney thought he was free to report his belief because Conley couldn’t be tried. However, he had never been accused – except by Frank’s defense team – and never tried for Mary Phagan’s murder so double jeopardy would not have applied. Like Slaton, the attorney left Georgia and moved to New York. Conley served a short sentence as an accomplice. He was later sentenced to prison after he was shot in a botched robbery. He served 15 years of a 20-year sentence. Conley actually met with members of the Phagan family many years later and insisted that Frank did it.
It was Slaton who made a big deal about the shit in the shaft. He claimed he visited the factory and tested the elevator but when he did is unclear. The basement had been cleaned up immediately after the girl’s death. At the time of the murder, witnesses testified that it was full of trash, which would have affected the elevator’s travel. Slaton also wrote in his commutation that the autopsy hadn’t found the girl to be a virgin, which wasn’t true. Slaton continued to maintain that he was convinced of Frank’s innocence. He and his wife fled the state immediately after his term ended out of fear for his life.[34] His actions had incensed most Georgians although there had been newspaper editorials advocating that Frank’s trial was rigged and he should be retried.
One who was convinced of Frank’s guilt and also that Jews had stepped in when they shouldn’t have and were influencing the case was Tom Watson. Tom Watson had a long career as a criminal attorney and was considered one of the finest legal minds in the state. He had served in Congress then started a news magazine and newsletter. He did not take up the Frank case until AFTER the trial and Frank’s conviction when he became incensed at the role Northern Jews had decided to play. He wrote scathing editorials and revealed things about Frank that had been kept out of the trial. Jews today claim Watson influenced the trial but in reality he didn’t publish anything about it until AFTER Frank was convicted and started his appeals.
In the decades since Frank died, a number of authors, nearly all Jews, have written books and articles about the case and in nearly every case they’ve proclaimed that Frank was an innocent man who was unfairly accused and convicted solely because he was a Jew – even though Frank himself said that wasn’t the case. Jews, mostly in the North, claimed Frank was accused because of (nonexistent) antisemitism. It is an established fact that hostility toward Jews was nonexistent in the South. Hugh Dorsey pointed out in his closing argument that one of the highest-ranking officials in the Confederate government was Judah P. Benjamin, a Sephardic Jew who had been born in St. Croix to English parents who later moved to Charleston, SC. After two years at Yale, he was expelled, allegedly for gambling although that wasn’t revealed until 1901 by his last surviving classmate. He went to New Orleans where he became a law clerk then passed the bar. He became a successful lawyer and politician. He was serving as a US Senator from Louisiana when his home state seceded. He rose to high levels in the new Confederacy. In fact, Benjamin was Secretary of State of the Confederacy and temporary Secretary of War. After the war, he made his way to England and became a barrister. This was before any Jew had held any important office in the United States government. Since then, Jews had been elected to office in the South, including as mayor of Atlanta, and owned popular businesses. Actions of mostly Northern Jews AFTER Frank was convicted actually spawned resentment toward Jews in Atlanta and throughout Georgia that hadn’t existed before. Albert Lasker even admitted as much. Georgians were incensed at the newspaper articles in Northern newspapers and the role Jews were playing in Frank’s appeals. Consequently, their attitude toward Jews changed. They stopped doing business with Jewish merchants. Some Jews left Atlanta but they didn’t leave the South. Just how many Jews left the city is unknown and the Jewish population of the city continued to multiply. By 1937, the Jewish population of 1910 had tripled.
Various authors, often referred to as “historians” and mostly Jewish, have attempted to exonerate Frank but did so by ignoring or not being aware of evidence that he was a sexual harasser at best and a pervert at worst. Albert Lasker felt upon first meeting him that he was a pervert or possibly a homosexual. There were allegations that Frank hadn’t focused his attentions solely on the girls in the factory. As a result of the misreporting, the commonly held view today is that Leo Frank was an innocent man who was unjustly prosecuted and subsequently lynched solely because he was a Jew. NO HE WASN’T!! Frank was prosecuted because evidence pointed to him as the murderer!
Wikipedia articles claim that William J. Burns, the head of the Burns Detective Agency, “cleared” Leo Frank. No, he did not. Burns merely formed an opinion, a hunch, that Frank was innocent and Conley was the actual murderer, but he had no evidence for such an opinion other than Frank’s word and theories offered by his defense during the trial. He never talked to Conley. In at least some respects, Burns was a quack and probably delusional. He claimed that he could tell by looking if a person was a pervert and that Frank wasn’t (Lasker said his impression of him was that he was.) Burns had no psychological training. Although he was appointed head of the Bureau of Investigations, the forerunner of the FBI, he was actually more of a media invention than a skilled investigator. He was part of the Secret Service before going out on his own as a detective at a time when Sherlock Holmes was popular in literature. After his retirement, he wrote detective stories. Along with Allan Pinkerton, who founded the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Burn’s agency mostly engaged in strike-breaking.
Some internet articles claim that Frank was convicted based on “flimsy evidence.” This is not true. First, Frank was the last person to see Mary Phagan alive. That placed him at the scene of the crime. Her body was found in the basement of the factory where he spent most of the day that Saturday. Frank claimed he was in the office by himself from noon until he decided to go home. His claim was contested by Monteen Stover’s testimony that she went to the office to get her pay at 12:05 and was there for five minutes and never saw Frank even though she looked in his office. Then there was Jim Conley, who was almost an eyewitness. The defense attempted to discount Conley’s testimony on the basis that he was black, a slovenly black at that, and could not be trusted. In other words, their protest was racial. Leo Frank claimed in his four-hour dissertation that the word of a negro should not be taken over that of a white man, which he considered himself to be. The kind of evidence Conley gave was not flimsy, but Frank defenders claim it was solely because Conley was a poor negro who liked to drink and welshed on his debts. As a matter of fact, the only violent crime Conley had ever been accused of was getting into fights. He did go to prison after he was shot while breaking into a store and served fifteen years of a twenty-year sentence after the Frank episode but was never accused of any kind of sexual crime or murder as some Frank defenders have tried to lay on him.
Frank defenders thought they finally had the evidence they needed to exonerate Frank in 1982, sixty-nine years after Mary Phagan was killed, when Alonzo Mann, the office boy at the time of Mary Phagan’s murder (or one of them), told reporters from the Nashville Tennessean that he had seen Jim Conley carrying the body of a girl and that it was on the first floor, not the second. Mann claimed that this proved that Conley had lied. However, it didn’t prove anything and the Georgia Board of Pardons said as much when the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, which was founded by Frank supporters, attempted to have him pardoned. Mann had testified at the trial and said that he had left before noon and hadn’t come back. His “new evidence” was that he had gone back to the factory and had encountered Conley carrying a girl on the first floor, then had fled when Conley threatened to kill him. He claimed he told his parents and they told him to keep his mouth shut. Mann also claimed he had worked at the factory for “several months” when he had actually only worked there for a few weeks when Mary Phagan was killed. In fact, he had only been there two Saturdays.
A number of explanations have been offered for Mann’s claim. In my opinion, I believe he inserted himself into a tragedy even though he wasn’t a part. I know of two instance of which I have personal knowledge where this happened. In both instances, the subjects were men who were assigned as ground crew chiefs on C-130 transports that were shot down in South Vietnam. Crew chiefs took care of the airplane on the ground, they did not fly on combat missions. Both men told me, one on the telephone and one by email, that they believed they had been on the airplane but somehow escaped. The one I talked to on the telephone told me he and a buddy went along on the mission and they somehow escaped when the airplane crashed and “were rescued by Marines.” Their presence was hushed up because they weren’t supposed to be there. The problem was that there were no Marines at the remote airfield where the airplane was shot down, the crew was part of an airdrop operation supplying Army troops, and everyone on the airplane died. There were actually eight men on the airplane, the six-man crew and two photographers who had gone along to film the airdrop. All were killed. The crew chief wasn’t even in Vietnam at the time; he had recently rotated back to the States. The other man was honest, he said he had come to somehow believe he had been on his airplane when it was shot down. He had come to believe that the pilot had asked him to go along and he had somehow survived the crash that killed everyone on board. I had my own experience. A buddy told me about having the aft cargo ramp come open on his airplane in flight. I later believed that it happened to me, until one day I realized that what I saw in my mind was actually what I had imagined when my buddy was telling me about his experience. I am convinced this is what Mann did; he put himself into the incident when he wasn’t involved. Perhaps he dreamed it. He had read the newspaper accounts and knew about the defense’s theory that Conley was the real killer. Frank supporters and journalists reported that Mann had exonerated Frank of the murder – he hadn’t.
The death of Mary Phagan and the resulting conviction of Leo Frank, a Jew, is often represented as the cause of the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. I believed this myself. The Frank trial WAS the reason for the founding of the Anti-Defamation League, but the KKK was actually formed as a result of D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation, which was released in February 1915, four months before Governor Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence and six months before he was hung. The movie, the first feature-length movie ever shown in theaters, was the adaptation of Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel The Clansmen. There was nothing about Jews, who were considered white, in either the novel or the movie. The Klan was founded in November 1915 by William Joseph Simmons, a Methodist minister who had been inspired by the movie to found a new organization to commemorate the original post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan, which was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee by several former Confederate officers as a social organization in 1866. The original members came up with a bunch of “silly” names and oaths and wore disguises of their own design to hide their identity and that of their horses. They did not wear sheets and cone-shaped hats and they didn’t burn crosses! They discovered that local freedmen, who had been “disorderly” since they were freed, were afraid of the ghostly figures they encountered on the road by the partially destroyed mansion outside Pulaski where they were meeting. They realized they could use their new organization to oppose the Radical Republican Tennessee Governor William “Parson” Brownlow and the Republican Loyal Leagues which were causing problems for Confederate veterans across the state.[35] Klan members became violent, but their violence was focused mostly on the Loyal Leagues, who were engaging in violence of their own. The original Klan was only in existence for three years. It was disbanded in 1869 when Brownlow had himself elected to the US Senate. Brownlow’s successor was more lenient toward Confederate veterans and the perceived need for the Klan no longer existed.
After the ADL attempt to have Frank pardoned due to Mann’s claims failed, the Georgia ADL decided to take a new tack. They managed to convince the state board of pardons to pardon Frank on the basis that the state had failed to protect him and he had been lynched, thus preventing him from continuing his efforts to prove his “innocence.” Without informing the Phagan family that such an effort was underway, the board of pardons issued a pardon of Leo Frank on the basis of him having been deprived of the ability to establish his innocence without establishing that he was innocent of the crime. That seems to be where things stand now, although the ADL and other Jewish leaders with the support of certain Georgia politicians and others continue to press for exoneration of the killer. Former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes has been pressing to have a new trial, although no new evidence has emerged to warrant one. It’s all based on defense claims without a shred of new evidence to prove that Frank did not kill little Mary Phagan.
Frank’s defenders seem to base their belief on Frank having been a Jew and thus incapable of such a crime. They ignore the fact that Jews have been getting in trouble with Gentile women almost since Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the table of commandments God had given him. The children of Israel were repeatedly warned against taking wives from the Gentile tribes around them. Samson, the last of the Judges, got involved with a woman of Sorek, a region between Israel and Gaza, the land of the Philistines. Although the Bible doesn’t give her nationality, she is believed to have been a Philistine, people descended from Europeans who had crossed the Mediterranean from the vicinity of the Aegean Sea around 1100 BC and occupied what is now known as the Gaza Strip. Samson fell in love with Delilah but she betrayed him to the Philistines. More recently, there are the cases of Jews Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer who was accused of raping numerous Hollywood starlets, and Jefferey Epstein, who had a fondness for young girls (as did Frank.) Epstein was not a rapist nor was he a pedophile, as some claim. Epstein’s original crimes were that he was luring teenage girls, most of them from troubled backgrounds, to his Florida mansion to give him massages for which he paid each girl $300. The girls recruited other girls to service Epstein. Some girls said he masturbated in front of them and a few claimed he had sex with them. He was accused by one New York woman of flying her to New Mexico to his ranch when she was a teenager and having sex with her. He is most infamous for inviting the rich and famous to his Caribbean island where they were entertained by beautiful girls, most of them models and aspiring models, who were actually adults in their late teens and early twenties.
Other Jews have become notorious for other crimes, such as Bernie Madoff, who bilked rich Jews out of an estimated $65 million before his Ponzi scheme fell apart. There is a long list of Jewish mobsters and figures in organized crime, figures such as Mickey Cohen, Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, I suppose that organized crime and Ponzi schemes are “white men’s crimes” in the eyes of Leo Frank and his defenders. Jedidiah Murphy, a Texas Jew, was just put to death for murdering an 80-year-old man in a carjacking in 2000. As their ancestors did with Leo Frank, Jews tried to save him. David Berkowitz, the infamous “Son of Sam” murderer, is a serial killer who killed at least six people, most of them women, and wounded seven others. (Berkowitz left Judaism in prison and converted to Christianity.) Leo Frank didn’t kill Mary Phagan because he was a Jew, nor was he convicted because he was a Jew, he killed her because he’s a human and just like every other human, Gentile and Jew, he had a sex drive. In his case, he was driven to have sex outside his marriage and he had over a hundred girls and very young women in his employ over whom he had power. He most likely wasn’t the only member of factory management who was taking advantage of the young girls, many of whom were barely out of childhood. Take a look at a 13-year-old girl and see what she looks like. Frank was an adult man in his late twenties.
And what of the ADL? The organization drifted along through the twenties and thirties, mainly attempting to get newspapers to only publish articles favorable to Jews. Then along came Adolph Hitler and his “racial” policies in Germany (which were actually ethnic, not necessarily racial) and the organization received new life. It, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, has become the go-to organization for the media to get opinions on various organizations and individuals the ADL and SPLC have identified as “antisemitic.” Both organizations are heavily left-wing and are essentially arms of the Democratic Party.
The Frank case doomed the National Pencil Company. The bad publicity from the trial and its aftermath caused the company’s profits to decrease and Sig Montag took it into bankruptcy (which meant all those employees who remained loyal to Leo Frank lost their jobs.) Montag’s son-in-law, Monie Ferst, thought the building was still valuable and bought the company from his father-in-law and renamed it Atlantic Pen. Ferst was already in the lead business, his company, M.A. Ferst and Company, was the only manufacturer of pencil lead in the United States. The new company began manufacturing mechanical pencils. Ferst changed the name to Scripto in 1920.
For eighty years, the Phagan family kept silent about the case, keeping their opinions to themselves. It was only after Alonzo Mann came forward with his sensational claim that Jim Conley killed Mary Phagan (because he claimed he saw him carrying the body) that Mary Phagan Kean, Mary Phagan’s grand-niece, decided to go public. Frank supporters claim, without evidence, that the Phagan family are the only people who still believe Frank is guilty of the crime. The Phagans fear that Fulton County district attorney, Fanni Willis, who is involved in prosecuting Donald Trump for alleged election fraud racketeering, will call for a new trial for Leo Frank in an attempt to exonerate him.
Atlanta Constitution Article reporting that Mary Phagan had resigned – girl-is-assaulted-and-then-murdered-in-heart-of-town-apr-28-1913.pdf (leofrank.org)
Flickr Files and Photos – Leo Frank | Flickr
Brief of Evidence Part One – leo-m-frank-plaintiff-in-error-brief-of-evidence-i.pdf (leofrank.org)
Brief of Evidence Part Two – leo-m-frank-plaintiff-in-error-brief-of-evidence-149.pdf (leofrank.org)
Coroner’s Inquest – The Coroner’s Inquest of the Mary Phagan Murder Mystery – Leo Frank Case Archive
Senator Tom Watson on the Frank trial – Watson’s magazine [serial] (leofrank.org)
Hugh Dorsey, prosecuting attorney, closing remarks – Full page fax print (leofrank.org)
Conley Testimony – Testimony of Jim Conley (famous-trials.com)
Annie Maude Carter Affidavit – Annie Maud Carter Affidavit in Response to Leo Frank’s Appeals : Georgia Supreme Court : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Mary Phagan Kean (Mary’s grandniece) – Little Mary Phagan, Leo Frank, Jim Conley, 1913 Murder
The Original Ku Klux Klan – The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ku Klux Klan, by J.C. Lester and D.L. Wilson.
Monteen Stover Affidavit – Monteen Stover’s Response to Leo Frank’s Appeals : Georgia Supreme Court : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Helen Ferguson Affidavit – Helen Ferguson Affidavit in Response to Leo Frank’s Appeals : Georgia Supreme Court : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Georgia Supreme Court 1914 – Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
Transcripts related to Frank’s Appeal, including rebuttals of bogus affidavits – Affidavits in Response to Leo Frank’s Appeals in Georgia Supreme Court Record : Georgia Supreme Court : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
George W Epps affidavit – George Epps Affidavit in Response to Leo Frank’s Appeals : Georgia Supreme Court : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
[1] One witness said she had worked part of the previous Friday and Saturday and part of Monday.
[2] Helen said she asked Leo Frank for the pay but Herbert Schiff, Leo Frank’s assistant, testified that he passed out the pay and that she did not ask for Mary Phagan’s pay. Another girl claimed she didn’t hear Helen ask for Mary’s pay.
[3] Mary’s mother maintained that she went to the factory alone, which she did. George Epps said she was already on the car when he got on and she motioned for him to come sit with her. The family acknowledges that she had made plans to meet friends and watch the parade.
[4] Some sources claim that she first went to work for Montag Brothers. She had been working at the Pencil Company for 13 months.
[5] Montag’s Blue Horse paper and notebooks were popular in the author’s school in the 1950s.
[6] Some have speculated that pay was calculated in fractions so management could pocket part of their employee’s pay.
[7] After Union troops occupied West Tennessee, General U.S. Grant issued an order banishing Jews from the region because they were engaged in “illegal” cotton trading. Jews complained to Lincoln, who forced Grant to rescind the order.
[8] Moses Frank may have been a carpetbagger, a Northerner who went south after the war to make his fortune. Just when he arrived in Atlanta is uncertain but he was there by November 1866 when he married a woman named Kelley.
[9] Just what this term means is unclear, but it evidently meant he was full of hot air, a common expression for people who liked to hear themselves talk.
[10] Jews were expelled from England in the thirteenth century but more lenient policies under Cromwell led to their return.
[11] There were some 10,000 Jews in Atlanta in 1910.
[12] Some scholars attempt to explain Abraham’s relationship to Sarah away, claiming she was his niece or cousin, not his sister.
[13] The second floor was the first floor of the National Pencil factory. When they moved into the building, the first floor was occupied by a woodcraft company. It left the building about a year before Mary Phagan was murdered, and the first floor was used for storage.
[14] Lee had checked the basement for sign of fire on his rounds but had not left the immediate vicinity of the ladder from the first floor to the basement. The body was at the back of the basement near the furnace. There was some kind of partition at the rear. Police would later claim Lee’s lantern didn’t give off enough light for him to have seen the body from where he said he did.
[15] That Frank didn’t answer the phone although the operator let it ring for several minutes is taken by some as an indication that he was passed out drunk.
[16] She was evidently lying on her side with her face turned to one side. The frightened night watchman didn’t make a thorough inspection. Jim Conley, who claimed he took the body to where it was found, testified that he laid her on her side.
[17] Lee testified that he knew it was a white girl because of her hair. Negro women had kinky hair. The knowledge that it was a white woman would have frightened him. Every black man in the South knew what they would do to them if suspected of foul play with a white girl.
[18] Rosser and Slaton’s firms were in the process of merging.
[19] Governor Slaton would later claim in his commutation order that the autopsy showed that she wasn’t.
[20] The presence of a pay envelope was evidence because the girls had been paid Friday evening after work and presumably left the factory after receiving their envelopes. They were normally paid at noon Saturday but Frank had sent out a notice that they would be paid Friday evening since the following day was a state holiday.
[21] She probably meant the metal room door, which was across from the factory offices.
[22] There was conflicting testimony regarding the cord. One witness said the cord was only on one floor while others said there was a rack of it on the second floor.
[23] A Wikipedia article on Jews in Atlanta claims it was several weeks before Frank was suspected. No it wasn’t, he was arrested within two days after the body was found.
[24] The defense and Governor Slaton, whose law firm represented Frank, attempted to get around her testimony by claiming she couldn’t see into Frank’s office because of the safe door. Monteen said she went in and looked and he wasn’t there.
[25] The Seligs dismissed the girl after Frank was convicted.
[26] Frank apologists claim Conley was arrested for sexual crimes.
[27] The autopsy didn’t reveal any injuries of a sort the body would have received after a fourteen-foot drop and the opening was too small for a person to have gone down the ladder carrying a body.
[28] Corinthia Hall testified that Emma Clarke Freeman had spent the night with her, which is odd since it was her wedding night!
[29] Sociologists had identified three distinct races, Caucasian (whites), Negroid and Asian. They considered Jews to be Caucasians.
[30] Born in Cincinnati, Ochs grew up in Knoxville. He got involved in the newspaper business at age 11. While still in his teens, he bought the Chattanooga Times then went on to found other papers and the Southern Associated Press. He bought the New York Times in 1896 when he found out that the paper was suffering losses. His name and family has since been associated with the New York Times.
[31] An assignation house is what today would be called a “hot bed hotel.”
[32] Some sources claim a lynching is any killing carried out by someone other than law enforcement but this goes against the original meaning of the word, which is that it is punishment without a trial. The word comes from actions carried out during the Revolutionary War when two Virginia brothers named Lynch imprisoned suspected Torys without a trial.
[33] Judge Roan’s family believed the letter was a forgery. The doctor who ran the New York sanitorium where he was being treated swore in an affidavit that he had been of sound mind when he dictated the letter to a staff member.
[34] Who paid for Slaton’s odyssey? He and wife left Georgia immediately after his successor was sworn in and went first to the Adirondacks. They toured the Northeast, Midwest and Far West and were gone from Georgia for several years. Luther Rosser, Frank’s attorney, reportedly paid a visit to Slaton the night before he issued the notice of commutation. Almost half a million dollars, more than $14 million in today’s dollars, had been contributed to Frank’s defense fund, mostly by Northern Jews. Did Slaton take a bribe?
[35] Loyal Leagues were founded in the North to support the Republican Party during the Civil War. After the war, League members went south to organize freed slaves and get them to support the Republican Party. They held regular meetings at which they encouraged black to carry out acts of violence against former Confederates, even to the extent of killing them although the former slaves refused to go that far. The more radical black members did carry on acts such as destroying crops and burning barns. The Klan retaliated by burning barns belonging to League members and “scalawags,” Southern whites who had supported the Union, and driving carpetbaggers out of the country, and sometimes killing them.
tennesseeflyboy 