THE
MURDER
OF LITTLE
MARY
PHAGAN
Mary Phagan
NEW HORIZON PRESS
Far Hills,
Copyright © 1987 by Mary Phagan/Kean
Grateful acknowledgement is made by
the author to the following:
To the Atlanta Historical Society for
excerpts from Atlanta and Its Environs, Volume 2, 1954, by Franklin
Garrett.
To the
To the Augusta Chronicle-Herald for
the statement by Justice Randall Evans, Jr. which appeared in the
To Henry Bowden for use of material
from his paper on Leo Frank, which appeared in 1945.
To Tom Watson Brown for use of
material from Notes on the Case of Leo Max Frank and Its Aftermath, 1982;
from personal letters; and from Watson's Magazine, August 1915 edition
(Jeffersonian Publishing Company).
To the Christian Theological
Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana, successor to the Butler University School of
Religion, publisher of The Shane Quarterly, for the excerpt from the
letter of Dr. Luther Otterbein Bricker which appeared in the April 1943 edition
(IV:2) of The Shane Quarterly.
To the East Cobb Neighbor,
To the Georgia State Board of Pardons
and Paroles for the letter of Silas Moore dated
To George H. Keeler for statements of
O. B. Keeler on the Leo M. Frank case, 1913-1915.
To Stewart Lewengrub, Southeast
Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, for his letter to James Phagan
of
To the Nashville Tennessean for
articles dealing with the Mary Phagan/Leo Frank case, 1982-1986, especially the
Special News Section on the Mary Phagan/Leo Frank case appearing in the
To Sandra Roberts of the Nashville
Tennessean staff, for personal letters dated
To the
All rights reserved. No part of this
work may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy and recording, or by any informational or retrieval system,
except as may be expressly permitted by the 1975 Copyright Act or in writing
from the publisher. New Horizon Press, P.O. 669, Far Hills,
Library of Congress Cataloging in
Publication Data Phagan, Mary
The murder of little Mary Phagan.
1. Murder—
2. Phagan, Mary, d. 1913. 3. Frank,
Leo, 1884-1915. I. Title.
HV6534.A7P46
1987 364.1'523'09758231 87-31263
ISBN 0-88282-099-7
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I gratefully
acknowledge the following individuals for giving me the oral history of my
family: Mary Richards Phagan; Annabelle Phagan Cochran, Lily Phagan Baswell;
John Phagan Durham; and to J. C. Girthrie, childhood friend of my grandfather.
The author gratefully
acknowledges Lisa Sorrels, who helped me research, edit, and rewrite my
manuscript and gave me emotional support. To Tom Watson Brown, great-grandson
of Tom Watson and Bill Kinney, Senior Editor of The Marietta Daily Journal, I
acknowledge their assistance in the preparation of the trial and lynching
material.
I also
gratefully acknowledge these individuals for granting me interviews: Franklin
Garrett, Historian, Atlanta Historical Society; George Keeler, son of O. B.
Keeler, Mariettan who covered the trial for the Atlanta Georgian; Michael H.
Wing, Member of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles; Stuart Lewengrub,
Southeast Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League; Betty Cantor,
Associate Director of Southeast office of the Anti-Defamation League; Charles
Wittenstein; Southern Counsel of the Anti-Defamation League.
And lastly to Bernard and my friends for their love and
encouragement.
To Daddy
and
William Joshua Phagan, Jr. (1898–1973)
Michael Robert Phagan (1959–1982)
CONTENTS
Introduction xi
Chapter 1
"
Chapter 2
THE LEGACY 9
Chapter 3
MY SEARCH BEGINS 44
Chapter 4
THE CASE FOR THE
PROSECUTION 65
Chapter 5
THE CASE FOR THE
DEFENSE 104
ix
x
Contents
Chapter 6
SENTENCING
Chapter 7
THE COMMUTATION 166
Chapter 8
THE LYNCHING 212
Chapter 9
REVERBERATIONS 234
Chapter 10
ALONZO MANN'S
TESTIMONY 240
Chapter 11
THE PHAGANS BREAK THEIR VOW
OF SILENCE 259
Chapter 12
APPLICATION FOR PARDON:
1983 270
AFTERWORD: PARDON 311
INTRODUCTION
I placed a
single red rose on the grave. My finger traced over the name Mary Phagan. The
epitaph was one I knew by heart.
IN THIS DAY OF FADING IDEALS
LITTLE MARY PHAGAN'S HEROISM
IS AN HEIRLOOM
THERE IS NOTHING MORE PRECIOUS
AMONG THE OLD
SLEEP, LITTLE GIRL; SLEEP IN
YOUR HUMBLE GRAVE BUT IF THE
ANGELS
THE REALMS REYOND THE TROU
BEL [sic] SUNSET
STARS, THEY WILL LET YOU
KNOW THAT MANY AN ACHING HEART IN
MANY A TEAR FROM
TO WEEP,
Looking up, I
saw an old couple trudge up the grassy hill towards the grave. I stood up and
turned to meet them. "Can I help you?" I inquired.
xi
xii
Introduction
The lady wore a
light blue dress with a matching striped jacket and white sandals. Her brown
eyes were framed by glasses and her hair was gray. I guess she was in her mid-
to late eighties. Her husband also had brown eyes and gray hair, balding a
little on top. Twin-like, they were almost color-coordinated: he wore a light
gray wool suit and pale blue shirt. He must have been around ninety years old,
and he walked with a cane. He towered over her.
Somehow, from
the way they carried themselves, I knew their questions would be different. Not
the usual, "Do you know where the grave of little Mary Phagan is?"
"Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?" "How do
you feel about the murder of little Mary Phagan?"
They seemed to be lost in
remembering, too.
The lady looked
at me with concern and intensity, and finally spoke: "It was on
She turned her
head slightly, and her eyes swept over Mary Phagan's gravestone. "We
remember different times. Times long ago. Times that don't come back except for
her story."
She paused and
added, "We were there. And little Mary Phagan's story remains with us. All
the sadness and some of the hate—we felt it. Yes, times were different all
right. A lot of murders happen today. But they don't symbolize something like
hers did. We were one of her kind, hard-working and striving to have a decent
life. We made it, but she didn't."
For the first time, she looked
closely at me. "You look a lot like her," she said, her voice
faltering.
xiii
Introduction
I nodded sadly. "My name is Mary
Phagan. Little Mary Phagan was my greataunt."
For a moment the couple stared at me
in disbelief, and then they wrapped their arms around me to comfort me.
"Yes," the old woman said, "I can see the resemblance now."
Breaking the embrace, she patted my shoulder gently. For a while, we were
silent and then, as daylight faded, they politely excused themselves.
Chapter 1
"
BY ANY CHANCE...?"
After they left,
I stood there feeling again all the conflicting emotions which I could not
resolve or forget. My mind spun back fifteen years.
I was thirteen.
We were living in
I told him I
didn't know.
That
conversation disturbed me. I became curious. Was there really another Mary
Phagan?
During recess
some of my classmates taunted me. "Are you that dead girl's
reincarnation?" Another called out, "Are you the little girl who had
been murdered?" and ran away.
I cried all the way home from school. My father happened
to be home. "What's wrong?" he asked when he saw my tear-stained
face.
1
2
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
"I want to
know who the little girl named Mary Phagan that was murdered was," I said,
trembling. "Am I related to her?"
He put his arm
around my shoulders, walked me into the kitchen, and sat me down at the table
in the sunny alcove.
He poured two
glasses of milk, brought them to the table, and sat opposite me. The afternoon
sun played up the reddish tints in his light brown hair, worn in a severe
military crewcut, and glinted off his military-issue glasses.
"Yes, you
are related to little Mary Phagan," he said solemnly. "She was your
grandfather's sister. She would have been my aunt. You are her greatniece and
are named for her."
Gently, he told
me the outline of the story of Mary Phagan. That she had caught the English
Avenue Street Car the morning of
"That day
would change the lives of everyone it touched.
"Tom Watson
would reflect the mood of us Georgians in his magazine and newspaper. He would
be elected to the United States Senate, and his statue placed in front of the
As my father leaned back, the
sunlight turned his hazel eyes to green. "Your grandmother Fannie Phagan
3
"Are You, By Any Chance ...
?"
Coleman remembered that day the rest
of her life," he said. "Little Mary was dressed in a lavender dress
that her Aunt Lizzie had made for her. She carried a parasol and a German
silver mesh bag. She had ribbons in her hair that tied her long reddish hair up.
She was a beautiful young child—" my father paused, "—like you.
"Little
Mary entered the pencil factory about
"Grandmother
Fannie had been expecting Mary back home that evening after the parade. Sundown
came and still no little Mary. My stepgrandfather went downtown to try to
locate anyone that could give him information on little Mary's whereabouts. No
luck. It would be the next day, the twenty-seventh of April, before they were
told that little Mary had been found dead. The family was terrified. Shocked.
She was so young. And she'd been violated.
"Little
Mary's body was taken to Bloomfield's, a local undertaker, which was also used
as
"Leo Frank,
the supervisor of the factory, was charged with the murder. His trial started
on the twenty-eighth day of July that year. The case became famous
4
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
because it was reportedly the first
time in the history of Georgia and the South that a black man's testimony
helped to convict a white man."
Looking closely
at me, my father realized that I did not understand all he was telling me. And
so he simplified the story as much as he could.
As soon as we
got up from the table I went upstairs to my room and examined what I saw in my
mirror: Pretty? Was I?
Satisfied with
my father's explanation, I relaxed a bit. It was just a coincidence that Mr.
Henry, my science teacher, had known the story of little Mary Phagan, I told
myself. I was positive that I would never be asked that question again.
That was in
1968. My father decided to retire from the United States Air Force after
serving some twenty-two years in that same year. Then he went to work for the
United States Post Office as a letter carrier in
During my summer
vacation that year I went to
He was right. We
never really knew any of our family. And I was ready to settle down and live
somewhere for more than a couple of years. I was excited as we arrived at our
new home in
It was a nice
suburb in which to raise a family, and the high school, Shamrock, was the best
the area had to offer.
When school began, I soon learned that making
5
"Are You, By Any Chance ...
?"
friends might be difficult: most of
the cliques had gone to school together since kindergarten. That was hard for
me to imagine. I had never had a friend more than a few years; to have a
lifetime friend seemed impossible.
The first day,
the teachers called out our names, glancing at each student in order to
associate names and faces. To my amazement, most of my teachers asked me that
question: "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan who was
murdered here in
I was horrified.
What was the truth about my great-aunt? Who knew the whole story?
I decided to ask
my grandfather, William Joshua Phagan, Jr. about his little sister. Of all
people in our family, he'd be the one to know about the pretty girl for whom
I'd been named.
But my
grandfather was beginning to show his age then. His light blue eyes reflected
the continual tiredness he felt. His balding head glittered in the sunlight.
He'd had a stroke earlier and his communication skills were hampered, so I
decided to wait until the right moment to ask him my questions.
One day, to
everyone's surprise, my grandfather came out with little Mary's picture and
pointed to me. As he looked at the picture and then me, he sobbed, and as he
tried to find the words, nothing came out but low sobs and wailings. I knew
then I could never ask him any questions about little Mary.
I decided to ask
my father if he could tell why he named me after little Mary.
And he was ready
for the question. "I had determined, almost from the day your mother and I
were married, that we would name our first girl child after your greataunt,
little Mary Phagan. This was my tribute to my father. Little did I realize the
impact this would have on you.
6
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
And, yes, I wonder if I knew then
what I know today if I would have named you after little Mary.
"Your
greataunt had been born on June 1 and you on June 5. As soon as you were big
enough, I would take you with me on Saturday morning when my friends and I went
out for coffee. You were my constant companion when I was not out flying, and I
took a great deal of pleasure in teaching you the things that all young
children have to learn. A wife, a child, flying, what more could a man want?
"Some of my
friends would from time to time make comments about your size. You have always
been petite, and it seemed you were taking after your greataunt, little Mary:
she never was to be over four feet eleven inches. In sheer desperation, I would
ask, 'Well, what do you expect out of Shetland Ponies, stallions?' This method
worked with the adults.
"When you
were about four years old, you bore a striking resemblance to your greataunt,
little Mary. But at that early age, it made no difference or impression on
you."
When I was four
and a half, in January, 1959, my father had asked for reassignment and was
assigned to the 1608 Military Air Transport Wing in
"The
interest your name caused when we signed you up for kindergarten was unreal.
People would come up to us and sing 'The Ballad of Mary Phagan.' They would
tell me stories that I had never heard before. Then the questions would come:
what relationship we were and had our daughter been named for little Mary? They
would exclaim about what a pretty little girl you were and that you looked just
like little Mary."
In January 1960 my father was
presented with an Individual Flying Safety Award and was assigned to the
7
"Are You, By Any Chance ... ?"
1503rd Air Transport Wing in
Tachikawa Air Base,
"Tachikawa
was our home for the next three years," he told me. 'These years we were
flying mostly into
"I extended
my tour for another year in order to go to
"Your life
took a turn then that I had not foreseen. The day you came home from school
crying and asking me about little Mary was a day I would never forget. I had
mixed emotions. I wanted you to know your legacy, but on the other hand, I
became frightened for you. I had hoped that you would never encounter
discourteous people and I feared that your legacy would submit you to t is.
Daddy continued,
"You carry a proud name, one that is instantly recognized not only here in
It was then I
learned that a vow of silence had been kept by our family for close to seventy
years. It had been imposed on us by Fannie Phagan Coleman, Mary Phagan's
mother, at the time of little Mary's death.
The murder, the
trial of Leo Frank, and his lynching has deeply affected the lives of all
involved. All the principals in the trial are dead now—and the obituary of each
of them mentioned their connection to the murder of little Mary Phagan.
My family had hoped that the lynching of Leo
Frank would be the final ending of the horrible tragedy; that
8
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
they could finally continue their lives; that the pain
would ease. It hasn't.
The legacy left to me is a difficult
one but I have had to accept it. Until recently, I discussed little Mary Phagan
only if I was asked: "Are you by any chance related to little Mary
Phagan?" But, to my surprise, I have been asked that question all my
life—both inside and outside of
Chapter 2
THE LEGACY
And, as my
father said, my legacy is a proud one. And if, as he'd exhorted me, I was going
to let the world know that I was Mary Phagan, greatniece of little Mary Phagan,
I wanted to find out everything I could about my namesake—and our family.
By age fifteen,
I was certain of one thing: my life would be shaped by my relationship to
little Mary Phagan. And I was excited about discovering my legacy. I got the
desire to read everything I could on the case.
My mother and I
went to
I told her I was
and she directed us to a smaller room which contained photographs of the
history of
Once I had seen that picture, I attempted to read
everything—books, newspaper articles, even the Brief of Evidence. The
information was difficult and, being only a teenager, I found it hard to
understand and digest. It raised more questions for me. Again I turned to my
father for answers.
9
10
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
This time my questions were more direct. I wanted to know everything about the family, the trial of Leo Frank, and the lynching.
And this time his answers were deeper and more complete.
"My
great-great-grandparents, William Jackson Phagan and Angelina O'Shields Phagan,
made their home in
"These children grew up to be very close to one another. Their father, W.J., believed that that was what the family unit was meant to be: by depending on each other and furthering their education, he was sure, the Phagans would get far ahead in the world.
"The eldest
son, William Joshua, loved the land and farmed with his father. On
"Around
1895, W.J. moved the family to
"The family's new home, purchased from General Coffee, had been a hospital during the War Between the States. The house needed extensive renovation, but posed no financial burden on the family. W.J., Angelina, and their children lived in the main house; the young couple's new home was not far away.
"The years in
11
The Legacy
for William Joshua and Fannie. They had two more children, Charles Bryan and William Joshua, Jr. They continued to farm the land.
"In
February of 1899, William Joshua Phagan died of measles. Fannie, who was then
six months pregnant, was left with their four young children. She was
devastated but kept her courage up: she knew the child she was carrying could
be in danger. On June 1, Mary Anne Phagan was born to Fannie in
"Fannie
remained in
"Why did
she move away from her husband's family, when they'd been so good to her?"
I asked.
"Oh,"
my father smiled, "I don't believe she was so much moving away from
her husband's kin as she was moving back to her own kin. Anyway, hang
on," he grinned at me. "Thing is, it turned out that the families
weren't separated in the end, after all."
He shifted in
his chair. "Well, anyway, Fannie probably also figured there'd be more
opportunities in a densely populated—well, relatively densely populated—area.
Notice I didn't say city. 'Cause
"The square
in
"Then—see what I meant?—W.J. Phagan moved his
12
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
family back to
"About 1907 the last of the
Phagan family left
"Fannie Phagan and her children
appreciated what W.J. was doing for them, but they also felt the desire to
support their family themselves. So sometime after 1910 Fannie Phagan and four
of her five children moved to
"The Phagan family remained
close with relatives in
13
The Legacy
kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, etc. But
usually in the bed-room they would have a babydoll. Dolls were different back
then. Most of them had stuffed bodies but their heads were called '
"Usually,
Aunt Lizzie would make the girls their clothes. How excited they got! They
loved new things, just like everyone else. Sometimes Aunt Lizzie would take
them to
"Even though Mary stayed busy at W.J.'s, she always found time to drop Grandmother Fannie a note."
Here my father
stopped and took a postcard Mary had written to her mother: it was postmarked
Hello Mama,
How are you?
I got here all O.K.
I would have wrote sooner
but I hadn't thought about it.
Willie is up here.
Aunt Lizzie has got my gingham
dress made. I am
going to have my picture made soon.
Your
baby,
Mary
14
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
We were both deeply touched by the way Mary had signed the card.
"On
"They moved to J.W.'s house at
"Well, Coleman didn't have much money, but he wasn't considered poor by any means. After marrying Fannie, he requested that her youngest child, Mary, quit work at the Pencil Company and continue her education. But Mary liked her work at the factory and didn't really want to quit.
"Eventually, Fannie's eldest, Benjamin Franklin, who worked as a delivery boy for a general merchandise store, joined the Navy. 011ie Mae became a saleslady for Rich's Department Store. William Joshua, Jr., continued to work in the mills. They didn't seem to mind working at all, because they were earning money."
"Why did anyone mind?" I asked.
"Oh, mill life was anything but easy then." He looked out the window. "The conditions were awful; mills were filthy and lint was everywhere. Child labor laws weren't enacted 'til years later. Small children were hired as sweepers and were whistled at to keep moving. My mother, Mary Richards Phagan, was eleven years old when she became a spinner at the mills. She was so small, she was one of the first to be run away from the 'officials'—the labor representatives—when they came by. It was hotter than the hinges of Hades, and cotton was always flying through the air. In fact, the flying lint eventually became a term for those who worked in the mills: lint-heads."
"Okay, Daddy," I interrupted. "But life in
15
The Legacy
must have been more exciting than
life in
"
"Telephone service had come in some twenty-five years earlier—about 1890, or so. Water and electricity had only been available for five years.
"Cobb was
considered an agricultural county and had practically no industries. In late
autumn, the square in
"Justice, law, and order were other areas that were vastly different then. After the War Between the States, the antagonism between those upholding the federal judicial system and those who wanted more local control of the courts led to night riders and lynchings. Men settled their differences immediately. It became a way of life.
"
"Oh, there
was light industry, including the National Pencil Company at
"Life in 1913 was casual and slow. Folks got most of their news from local newspapers, which printed 'extra' editions for late-breaking stories.
"Sanitary conditions were terrible. The facilities were few and far between and were located outside. Sanitation workers were called 'honey dippers.' Typhoid fever was all over the place.
"Boys wore knee pants until they completed gram-
16
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
mar school. Women wore high laced high-heeled shoes and bloomers made of the same material as their dresses.
"There were no frozen foods. People had streak of lean and perhaps some beef for stew. Hogs were plentiful. Biscuits and milk gravy were staples. They had apples and oranges occasionally, but raisins had seeds in them.
"Photography was all over—not just in the newspaper. Tintype, most usually.
"For
recreation, most entertained themselves. There was a form of baseball, 'peg,' that
they played in quiet streets or in vacant lots. Movie theaters ran silent films
on weekends, especially around the mill neighborhoods. The Grand Theater, the
Bijou, and the
"The South
hadn't really recovered from the ravages of the War Between the States and
"Mary Phagan was a beautiful little girl with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and dimples. Her hair was long and reddish brown and fell softly about her shoulders. Since she was well developed, she could have passed for eighteen. Her family all called her Mary rather than her full name of Mary Anne.
"Mary was Grandmother Fannie's youngest child. Your grandfather says that she had a bubbly personality and was the life of their home. Mary was jovial, happy, and thoughtful toward others. When she was with her family, she'd show her affection for them by sitting in their laps and hugging them.
"The last Phagan family gathering was a 'welcome home' for Uncle Charlie. There the family had begun to notice how beautiful Mary was. Lily, her cousin, who is still living, tells me that she envied Mary a particular
17
The Legacy
dress she had on. It was called a 'Mary Jane dress'—long, with a gathered skirt and fitted waist. Lily and her sister Willie were 'skinny,' and Mary's dress looked better because she was 'heavier' than them. They both wanted their dresses to look like Mary's did on them.
"Early in April, Mary was rehearsing for a play she was in at the First Christian Church. The play was 'Sleeping Beauty,' and of course Mary played the role of Sleeping Beauty. Your grandfather tells me that he would take Mary to the church and watch her rehearse. The scene where Sleeping Beauty is awakened by a kiss always made him and Mary giggle. She would watch her brother with her eyes half-closed, and then begin to giggle when he cracked a smile. It seemed that that scene took an eternity to rehearse."
I could picture Mary on the stage
playing the little Sleeping Beauty. "April twenty-sixth was Confederate
Memorial Day, a Saturday, and a holiday complete with a parade and picnic. Mary
planned to go up to the National Pencil Company to pick up her pay and then
watch the parade. She told Grandmother Fannie she'd be home later that
afternoon. One of the last things she did was to iron a white dress for
"She was excited about the holiday, though, and wore her special lavender dress, lace-trimmed, which her Aunt Lizzie had made for her, they tell me. Her undergarments included a corset with hose supporters, corset cover, knit underwear, an undershirt, drawers, a pair of silk garters, and a pair of hose. She wore a pair of low-heeled shoes and carried a silver mesh bag made of German silver, a handkerchief, and a new parasol.
"At
18
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
pencil factory. She was to pick up her pay of $1.20, a day's work." My father sighed and looked out the window.
"When Mary had not returned home at dusk, your great-grandmother began to worry. It was late, and she had no idea where Mary could be. Her husband went downtown to search for Mary. He thought perhaps she had used her pay to see the show at the Bijou Theater and waited there for the show to empty, but found no sign of her.
"He returned home and suggested
to Fannie that Mary must have gone to
My father paused, stared into the middle distance. I could see my grandfather pointing to Mary's photograph, then to me, then sobbing almost uncontrollably. My father continued.
"The next day,
"The company, a four-story
granite building plus basement, was located at
"Mary worked in its second floor metal room fixing metal caps on pencils by machine. Her last day of work
19
The Legacy
had been the previous Monday. She was told not to report back until a shipment of metal had arrived.
"Her body was discovered at
He shook his head sadly. "Her undergarments were torn and bloody and a piece of undergarment was around her hair, face, and neck. It appeared that her body had been dragged across the basement floor; there were fragments of soot, ashes, and pencil shavings on the body and drag marks leading from the elevator shaft.
"There didn't seem to be any skin fragments or blood under her fingernails, which indicated she hadn't inflicted any harm on whoever did it.
"Two scribbled notes were found near her body. They were on company carbon paper."
Here, my father got up and walked across the room to the secretary against the far wall, opened the desk flap, reached in and retrieved a sheet of paper, and returned to his chair near the window. He handed me the sheet. It was a photostatic copy of two nearly-illiterate notes:
Mam that negro hire down here did this i went to make water and he push me doun that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it was long sleam tall negro i wright while play with me.
he said he wood love me and land doun play like night witch did it but that long tall black negro did buy his slef.
My father sat silently while I read the notes. When he continued, his voice was almost hoarse. "When they went up to tell William Jackson Phagan—now, that's your
20
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
grandfather's grandfather, he said—my daddy remembered it word for word: 'The living God will see to it that the brute is found and punished according to his sin. I hope the murderer will be dealt with as he dealt with that tender and innocent child. I hope that he suffers anguish and remorse in the same measure that she suffered pain and shame. No punishment is too great for him. Hanging cannot atone for the crime he has committed and the suffering he as caused both too victim and relatives.' "
My father swallowed hard a couple of times. After a while he continued.
"Mary was buried
that following Tuesday," he said. He suddenly began to quote the newspaper
account of little Mary's funeral service. He'd committed it to memory. "
'A thousand persons saw a minister of God raise his hands to heaven today and
heard him call for divine justice. Before his closed eyes was a little casket,
its pure whiteness hidden by the banks and banks of beautiful flowers. Within
the casket lay the bruised and mutilated body of Mary Phagan, the innocent
young victim of one of
" 'L. M.
Spruell, B. Awtrey, Ralph Butler, and W. T. Potts were the pallbearers. They
carried the little white casket on their shoulders into the
"The choir sang 'Rock of Ages,' but what everyone heard was Grandmother Fannie, wailing as if her heart would break.
"And," my father added, "it probably did."
"'The light of my life has been taken,' she cried, 'and her soul was as pure and as white as her body.'
"The whole church wept before the completion of the hymn. The Reverend T.T.G. Linkous, Pastor of Christian
21
The Legacy
Church at
My father continued the words that
must be etched in his heart:
" 'Let us pray. The occasion is so sad to me—when she was but a baby. I taught her to fear God and love Him—that I don't know what to do.'
"'With tears gushing from his
eyes, he found the strength to continue. "We pray for the police and the
detectives of the City of
" 'Fannie Phagan Coleman controlled her crying when he spoke of the criminal and W.J. Phagan, Mary's grandfather, exclaimed: "Amen."
" ' "I believe in the law
of forgiveness. Yet I do not see how it can be applied in this case. I pray
that this wretch, this devil, be caught and punished according to the man-made,
God-sanctioned laws of
"'With hearing this, Mary's Aunt Lizzie let out a piercing scream and collapsed and she was taken home," my father interjected.
"' "Mothers,"' Dr. Linkous declared, "I would speak a word to you. Let this warn you. You cannot watch your children too closely. Even though their hearts be as clean and pure as Mary Phagan's, let them not be forced into dishonor and into the grave by some heartless wretch, like the guilty man in this case.
22
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
"' "Little Mary's purity and the hope of the world above the sky is the only consolation that I can offer you," he said, speaking directly to the bereaved family. "Had she been snatched from our midst in a natural way, by disease, we could bear up more easily. Now, we can only thank God that though she was dishonored, she fought back the fiend with all the strength of her fine young body, even unto death.
" ' "All that I can say is God bless you. You have my heartfelt sympathy. That is all that I can do, for.my heart, too, is full to overflowing."
"'Mary's grandfather, W.J. Phagan, sat motionless as ' the tears streamed down his face while the brothers of Mary—Benjamin, Charlie, and William Joshua—comforted their sister, 011ie.' "
My father continued in his own words. "After the sermon, they opened the little white casket and the crowd viewed the body of the little girl with a mutilated and bruised face. The tears watered the flowers that surrounded her.
"They carried the casket out to
the cemetery. J.W. practically carried Grandmother Fannie out; Dr. Linkous
helped. Mary's sister, 011ie, and her brother Ben, now a sailor on the
The account of the funeral service went on:
"' "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bath given, the Lord bath taken, blessed be the name of the Lord,' but no words expressed by Dr. Linkous could heal the wounds in their hearts, and as the first shovel of earth was thrown down into the grave, Fannie Phagan Coleman broke down completely and wailed: "She was taken away when the spring was coming—the spring that was so like her. Oh, and she wanted to see the spring. She loved it—it loved her. She played with it—it was a
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sister to her almost." She took the preacher's handkerchief and walked to the edge of the grave and waved the hand-kerchief. "Goodbye, Mary, goodbye. It's too big a hole to put you in, though. It's so big—big, and you were so little—my own little Mary." ' "
My father stopped. The papers slid to the floor. His eyes were filling up.
I stopped, too. Bursting as I was with questions about the trial of Leo Frank and its aftermath, I could not bring myself to cause my father further pain that day. I felt guilty for the upset the memories he'd dredged up on my behalf had already caused him.
As if reading my thoughts, he turned to me: "It's all right, Mary. You should know the whole story. But—" he'd blinked back the tears, but his smile was tremulous—"not today."
A few days later, we sat down again. This time I started right off with the questions:
"Daddy, how did Grandmother Fannie stand up while the trial was going on?"
He told me that she was to be the first witness called to the witness stand. She tried to compose herself; her tears were flowing freely down her cheeks and she was sobbing as she gave her statement:
"'I am Mary Phagan's mother. I
last saw her alive on
24
The Murder of Little May Phagan
"When Sergeant Dobbs described the condition of Mary's body when they found her in the basement, when he stated that she had been dragged across the floor, face down, that was full of coal cinders, and this was what had caused the punctures and holes in her face, Grandmother Fannie had to leave the courtroom," my father said.
Now it was I who had to compose myself. I was now starting to feel the pain and agony that all the family had felt for years.
"When the funeral director, W.H.
Gheesling, gave his testimony, he stated that he moved little Mary's body at
"Daddy, was Mary bitten on her breast?"
"Yes, but there was no way to prove it because certain documents have mysteriously disappeared."
"Who besides Grandmother Fannie attended the trial?"
"Other than Grandmother Fannie, all the immediate family, including your grandfather and Mary's stepfather, were present every day. Mary's mother and sister were the only women, along with Leo Frank's wife and mother, who were permitted in the courtroom each day."
"Daddy, why didn't you tell me about Leo Frank's religious faith?"
"His religious faith had nothing to do with his trial." "What does anti-Semitic mean?"
"It means hatred of the Jews."
I was surprised that people could hate each other because of their faith. "How do you become prejudiced?" I asked.
"You have to be taught to be prejudiced, to walk, talk, just about everything in life that is worth anything. Preju-
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dice, I found out, isn't worth a nickel, but can cost you a lifetime of grief and sorrow."
"Daddy, what about the courtroom atmosphere?"
"According to your great-grandmother, Judge Leonard Roan maintained strict discipline in his court at all times and would not tolerate any disturbance. Judge Roan had the authority to make a change of venue if he in any way felt threatened: he made no change of venue. Neither Leo Frank or his lawyers asked for a change of venue.
"The newspapers gave a daily detailed report on the court proceedings, and there were many 'extras' printed each day. Not one newspaper ever reported any of the spectators shouting 'Hang the Jew' nor did I ever hear that any member of our family made that or any similar statement. Judge Roan was considered by all to be more than fair. The Atlanta Bar held him in high esteem for his ability in criminal law. Otherwise he would have never been on the bench."
"Was Leo Frank defended well?"
"Leo
Frank's lawyers were the best that money could buy. He had two of the best
criminal lawyers in the South, Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold. I have been
told that Rosser's fee ran well over fifteen thousand dollars. In those years
that was a small fortune. These lawyers were the most professional and
brilliant lawyers the South had to offer. But the defense these brilliant
lawyers were to offer was not good enough to offset Hugh Dorsey's tactics. If
there was any brilliance at that trial, it was Hugh Dorsey's. The people of
"What was meant by Leo Frank being a Northerner and a capitalist? Did these facts have any bearing on the trial?"
My father reminded me about the War Between the States, what had caused it, and that it had been over for
26
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
only forty-eight years by 1913. He explained how the carpetbaggers had come South to run the country and the awfulness of life under their rule. From that time on, he said, anyone from the North was called a Northerner.
"Leo Frank
was born in
Then I asked, "What is a pervert?"
My father made me get the dictionary and look up the meaning with him. I was not satisfied with the meaning. My father then explained that sexual perversion is something our society does not accept as normal.
Today, this charge will outrage any segment of society. In 1913, anyone who dared to make that charge had better have been prepared to die for it.
"Daddy, why did Governor Slaton commute Leo Frank's sentence?"
"This is one question that our family still asks today. We do not accept Governor Slaton's explanation in his order. There had to be something else. No man will willingly commit political suicide; but he did just that with the commutation order. I've done some research on my own, but I know no more today than my grandmother did back in 1915. I've found certain things about Governor Slaton that are hard to accept but are facts.
"The Atlanta newspapers of 1913 show the law firm of Rosser & Brandon, 708 Empire, and the law firm of Slaton & Phillips, 723 Grant Building, as merging. Then the 1914 Atlanta Directory shows the law firm of Rosser,
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Brandon, Slaton & Phillips, 719—723 Grant Building. They were also listed in the Atlanta Directory in 1915 and 1916. Slaton was a member of the law firm that defended Leo Frank.
"Governor
Slaton was a man that
"Governor
Slaton had Leo Frank moved from
"Remember,
there were no paved roads in those days. This trip was made at night. Not one
guard was hurt, not one shot was fired, not one door was forced. The prison
'was opened to them. Many in
Shaken, I asked, "Daddy, were there any Phagans at the lynching?"
He gave me a simple answer. "No! And, everyone knew the identity of the lynchers. But not one man was charged with the death of Leo Frank, not one man was ever brought to trial."
The next question I asked upset him tremendously: "How do you feel about the lynching, Daddy?"
He related to me what his father had felt when he
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
had talked about the lynching. Grandfather felt that justice had been served—and so did the rest of the family.
But I would not let up. "But how
do you feel, Daddy?"
"I feel the
same way my family did, justice prevailed." To understand the actions that
these men took on
"Daddy, how about Jim Conley? What part did he have in the death of little Mary Phagan?"
My father said that, reportedly, for the first time in the history of the South, a black man's testimony helped to convict a white man. The best criminal lawyers in the South could not break this semi-literate black man's story. The circumstantial evidence and Jim Conley's testimony caused Leo Frank's conviction for the murder of little Mary Phagan.
"Your grandfather told me—and this can be confirmed by my sister Annabelle—that he had met with Jim Conley in 1934, in our home, to discuss the trial and the part Conley had played in helping Leo Frank dispose of the body of little Mary." My father became adamant: "There is no way my father would have let Jim Conley live if he believed that he had murdered little Mary."
My father then related the conversation that my grandfather told him had taken place. He said to Jim Conley, "Let's sit down and talk awhile, Jim."
And Jim said, "OK."
My grandfather then said, "I want to know how you helped Mr. Frank."
Jim said, "Well, I watched for Mr. Frank like before and then he stomped and whistled which meant for me to unlock the door and then I went up the steps. Mr. Frank
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looked funny. He told me that he wanted to be with the little girl, she refused and he struck her and she fell. When I saw her, she was dead."
Grandfather asked, "But why did you help him if you knew it was wrong?"
And Jim said, "I only helped Mr. Frank because he was white and my boss."
"Were you afraid of Mr. Frank?" my grandfather asked.
Jim answered, "I was afraid if I didn't do what he told me—him being white and my boss, that I might get hanged. [At that time, it was common for blacks to be hanged.] So, I did as he told me." Grandfather then asked, "What did you do after you saw that little Mary was dead?"
There are, my father grinned, two versions of that meeting: his sister Annabelle's and his father's—my grandfather's.
The version my Aunt Annabelle told him was that she was coming out of a grocery store and saw their father, William Joshua Phagan, Jr., and a black man walking (she said "nigger") down Jefferson Street towards the house.
She said to her father:
"Daddy, what are you doing with that nigger man?" Grandfather said, "Now, don't you know who this is?"
"No, I don't," Annabelle said.
And Grandfather said, "This is Jim Conley."
"Oh, this is the man who helped kill Aunt Mary," she exclaimed.
Then Jim Conley said, "No, I didn't kill her but I helped Mr. Frank. I was to burn the body in the furnace but didn't."
They went inside the house and talked about an hour in the kitchen.
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Annabelle was in the other room watching her brothers (Jack and my father) and her sister Betty.
My father also remembers that his father continually questioned Jim Conley about why he helped Mr. Frank. He recalled that his father got emotional and at times had to hold back the tears.
Jim said, "I got scared. Like I said before, I had to help Mr. Frank—him being white and my boss. Mr. Frank told me to roll her in a cloth and put her on my shoulder, but she was heavy and she fell. Mr. Frank and I picked her up and went to the elevator to the basement. I rolled her out on the floor. Then Mr. Frank went up the ladder and I went on the elevator."
"Did Mr. Frank tell you to burn little Mary in the furnace?" my grandfather asked.
"Yes, I was to come back later but I drank some and fell asleep," Jim said.
Then Grandfather said, "Jim, I believe you because if I didn't I'd kill you myself." Then, my father recalls clearly, Grandfather and Jim Conley went out together for a drink.
That was all my father could remember.
"How is it, Daddy, that a black man would help someone dispose of a body?"
"Remember
the times," my father said. "In those years, a black would do almost
anything his boss told him to do. His life depended on whatever the white man
decided. Lynchings were taking place almost daily in the South. Jim Conley was
a black man in
"Here was a man that knew he was walking on a red-
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hot bed of cinders. He knew that no
matter which way he turned he would be burned. Conley returned to the pencil
factory with the
Here I asked, "Does this explain why little Mary was dragged face down across the basement?"
"Yes," he said. "It seems logical in that one man could not carry her body without help. So she was dragged."
"But, Daddy, why would Jim Conley do this knowing full well that he was now mixed up in the murder of little Mary? He must have felt that his actions could cost him his life."
"Jim Conley did know what he was doing, but there were two factors that outweighed his sense of righteousness: fear and money! Fear of the white man and greed for money. And this is what he later told my father when they met."
The last thing I wanted to know was a question that my father had asked his father over twenty years ago. "Why has the Phagan family taken a vow of silence?"
"Grandmother Fannie made a request that everyone not talk to the newspapers. Her request was honored. It's that simple."
I thought over my father's words for quite some time. His was the Phagan family's story of little Mary Phagan.
It was some time before we sat down again to talk about the shadow of Mary Phagan and how her legacy had affected his life. But one summer morning my father sat down beside me wanting to talk about his grandmother—little Mary's mother.
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
"I recollect that many times I woke up in Grand-mother Fannie's bed trying to figure out how I got there beside her. My grandmother and step-grandfather, I've been told, loved me very much, and they would come to our house and while I was asleep, would take me in their loving arms, and take me home with them.
"Their daughter, Billie, my aunt, would have been little Mary's half-sister. Billie was a teenager whom I remember as a beautiful girl, who showed me a lot of love and care. It was Billie's job to take care of me while I was staying with my grandparents. She was as firm as she was beautiful. To her I was a small brother. At lunch time, I was given the choice of a sandwich or soup. Billie would allow me to have mustard on my sandwich and to this day each time I eat a sandwich with mustard on it, I think of Billie.
"Grandfather Coleman had a small country store with a gas pump, and one of my greatest pleasures was when I was turned loose in that treasure house and was allowed to have anything that I wanted. What treasures I saw in that country store! It can only be appreciated by another child. What to choose was the biggest problem I had to face in those early years, and sometimes I would spend a whole minute, which to me was a lifetime. Grand-father Coleman was always there to guide me and help me in making my choice. Over fifty years have passed but those days are vivid to me now as they were then.
"Grandmother Fannie was a very special person to me. I remember her talking to me about her daughter, little Mary. I could never understand why there were tears in her eyes when she talked about little Mary.
"It's very hard on a small child to watch one's grand-mother cry and not being able to understand what's really going on. I took what I felt was the only course open to me: I put my arms around her and told her that I loved
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her. Then, more tears flowed and she hugged me even harder."
My father stopped and sat, his chin in his hand, looking out the window. I could hear the calls of the birds clearly.
"Daddy," I said, "if you want to stop—"
"No," he said, "I don't want to stop." He went on.
"In 1937 my
parents bought their first home in
"Grandmother Fannie meant more and more to me as I was starting to understand what life is about. After all," his eyes twinkled, "it had to happen sometime! And the question was starting to come up, no matter where I was: 'Are you, by any chance, kin to little Mary Phagan?'
"'Of course,' I replied everytime, 'she was my aunt.' This generally resulted in more questions about little Mary. I would answer those questions the best I could from what I could remember from stories that I'd heard from members of my family. People would then relate them to me on what they had heard from their pasts. The one question they always asked was 'How did little Mary's mother take her daughter's death?' And this invariably brought a silence in the group of people around me. I came to understand that this question would cause adults to hang onto every word I said. And just as invariably I'd feel humongously sad as I tried to put into words how my
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
grandmother felt. Time had not healed the loss of her daughter. And maybe it never would.
"Little Mary, you understand, was the youngest of five and because she was the last child, she was doted on by all, even her grandfather, W. J.
"Grandmother Fannie would
describe to me how she would comb little Mary's hair and put it up in pigtails,
dress her up in her finest clothes to go to church. A small child is always
beautiful to its parents, but little Mary was really beautiful—and she
was going to be a real beauty when she grew up. As she approached her teenage
years, there was no doubt that she was going to be a beautiful young
woman."
My father looked at me intently.
"As I've said—and others have said—lots of times before: just like
you."
A strange feeling began to rise inside me: a mixture of gratification—I'm as lovely as she was—pride—this is my inheritance—and apprehension. Not that I thought I'd meet the same fate as my namesake, of course, but I did wonder what reverberations there would be from our bond. The vow of silence notwithstanding, my name—and appearance—were already causing these reverberations.
I smiled at my father. "Whatever it is, I believe I can deal with it." He patted my shoulder and continued his memories.
"School was not mandatory back then, and all members of a family that were old enough to work in factories would do so. Money was not easy to come by. Little Mary did attend school and was a good student, according to my grandmother. She had a lively imagination and wanted all the things that any young girl wanted in those days: ribbons or a special comb for her hair. And while all monies went to help the family, her being the youngest allowed special favors.
"By the time I was eleven, I began to ask questions about my aunt. My best source of information was my
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father, William Joshua Phagan, Jr., who was known to the family as 'Little Josh.' " My father broke into a grin. "No one ever accused the Phagans of being too tall. Anyway, I questioned him—as you're questioning me—about everything that had happened in those days. Tears would come to his eyes, too, and he would talk about his sister very slowly. They were only one year apart: he was born in January 1898, and little Mary was born in June 1899. He felt a lot of pride about being the older brother to his sister to whom he was a shining white knight. There were slow pauses. He took time to hold back his tears. I could feel the pain that he was experiencing—even though I didn't understand it then.
"Dad told me how Grandmother Fannie had everyone put on his or her best clothes for church on Sundays and how everyone had a hand in helping little Mary to dress up. How pretty she was and the pleasure it brought to see her dressed in her best clothes.
"I don't remember Ollie too well; we didn't visit too much in those days that Dad worked for the cotton mills. However, when we visited it was usually for the whole weekend. What times those were! When the Phagan family got together it was like a picnic, with all the food and stuff that was on hand to eat."
I tried to picture the family gathering in my mind. I concentrated very hard. I wanted to visualize the Phagans in a happy, relaxed atmosphere—playing, joking around, eating to their heart's content, and telling stories.
My father broke into my thoughts: "Before the first day was over, everyone would turn to the subject of little Mary. I would sit quietly and listen to the stories. Fascinated as I was, I could still feel the tension in the air as each would tell some small detail about little Mary. I came to know her not as an aunt but as a special person who had lost her life in a brutal attack by Leo Frank, who
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
was convicted of that crime by a jury
of his peers in a court of law in
"Grandmother Fannie often told us about the death of her husband, William Joshua Phagan, who had fathered her five children. He had died in February, 1899. Life in those days was real rough on a widow with children. Then she would talk about J.W. Coleman, whom she married in 1912. This was the man I was to know as my grandfather. Then the stories would turn back to little Mary. And the tension would start to build up again.
"Grandmother
would usually start her story about that Saturday, Confederate Memorial Day,
when little Mary had left home to go to town for her wages and to see the
parade. She would tell about her new lavender dress and silver mesh bag that
she carried, the ribbons in her hair and her parasol. The area they lived in
then—the
"By the time Grandmother got to where little Mary took the English Avenue streetcar that was to take her downtown to the National Pencil Company, her tears were usually too much for her, and her story would come to a close, since she could no longer continue. Members of the family would quietly take grandmother into the house so that she could compose herself. This always left me in a state of confusion.
"Later, the war came. Greatuncle Ben was in the Navy." My father sighed. "The Phagan family, like the rest of the country, began to drift apart. The war began to push everything else to the rear of our minds. People were starting to work as many as six days a week. Family gathering was to become a thing of the past. But my family still spoke about little Mary, about how pretty she had been, and all. I felt for the first time in my life that I
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too had lost someone that was very real to me. For the first time I also came to feel what grief felt like.
"But gradually, there was less time for story-telling. My only source of information about little Mary then was my Dad. He would still talk about his sister to me, but these talks got fewer and farther between—although his grief never diminished and it was still hard for him to talk about little Mary.
"At the same time, my curiosity increased, since people would still ask me questions about little Mary. And there was still Fannie, too. Now more than ever, Grand-mother would tell me stories about little Mary, how pretty she was and the hopes she had for her. Even today when I look at little Mary's picture, I can see that my grand-mother was right about how pretty she was. I do believe that she would have grown into the beautiful woman that my grandmother expected her to be. The years had not stopped the pain and grief she felt, but perhaps they made them a little more bearable.
"In 1943, when I started junior
high school, the old question was asked again: 'Are you, by any chance, kin to
little Mary Phagan?' As I recall, the teacher was the first to ask, and then,
as the week went on, children of my age would start to ask me questions that
their families had asked them to ask me. Some even brought articles to school
to show me. One kid brought a record, a 78
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
it—just in case I should find that record again of little Mary Phagan.
"During the
war years women had to work in the plants and shipyards and they became a vital
part of the work force. My older sister, Annabelle, went to work in the
shipyards in
"In 1944,
"I had
learned to play golf at
"Later, when my shipmates on the U.S.S. Major DE796 began to ask me questions about little Mary, I turned out to be a storehouse of information on that subject, but again stayed noncommittal as to the family's feelings. I was to serve aboard another DE, the U.S.S.
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Fieberling, for about two years,
until she was decommissioned.
"Grandmother Fannie passed away in 1947, while I was in the Navy. I made the trip home for her funeral. But when I arrived home, she had already been buried. She was laid to rest beside her daughter, little Mary Phagan. The peace she couldn't find in life she found, I hope, in death.
"Sometime
later I met your mother in
He leaned back in his chair, and his face was suffused in light. His smile was happy and tender. Things hadn't changed much as far as my parents' feelings for each other went.
"Anyway,"
he smiled, "at the time I was flying to
"Little Mary had slipped to the back of my mind over the years. When the flight line mechanics learned my name, they began to question me about little Mary. Again, I was reminded of her. All the mechanics and other personnel made sure that I shared lunch with them. They all wanted to hear about little Mary Phagan. Most of them had stories that they had heard from their parents and grandparents to tell about little Mary. It was beginning to dawn on me that little Mary was more than just a passing fancy to Georgians of all walks of life. It was part of their history, like it or not, and they wanted to hear firsthand what the Phagans felt and how they responded to their questions. Unknown to me at that time, this renewed interest in little Mary was to play a major role in the life of another little girl who would be born in June of 1954, but that was almost two years in the future.
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
"Well, the
wedding—and it was a huge one—was in 1953, and we spent our honeymoon in
"When I
arrived back at Larson Air Force Base, I was informed that I had been selected
to attend Flight Engineer School at Chanute Air Force Base in
"We found
an apartment near the
"It was about this time that the question was asked again about my name by other student Flight Engineers: 'Are you, by any chance, kin to little Mary Phagan?' I had not told your mother the story of little Mary.
"I was transferred back to the past again. How did my family feel, especially my grandmother? I had become used to these questions and without breaking stride, I would answer them and continue on with the story that had become a part of my life. I could never understand this interest in a murder that had happened way back in 1913, but of course, tragedy has a way of capturing the interest of its audience as the story teller retells the story from firsthand information.
"As you
well know," my father twinkled, "you were born in June of 1954. Phyllis,
your sister, came along in 1956.
"By this
time, I had accumulated over two thousand hours of flying in
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weather expert. Personally, I've
always felt that anyone who had flown in the
"We were now flying all over the world, in all kinds of trouble spots where there was dire need for airlift. And once again, I found that my name rang bells with those people who were familiar with little Mary Phagan. I got all kinds of messages asking about her past and what relationship I was to her. They followed me wherever I flew, but more so when I was to fly in the South, where my family's history was well known.
"Your brother James was born in November 1957, during the Lebanon-Beirut troubles which our Wing was flying into.
"By the time you were about four years old, you bore a striking resemblance to your greataunt, little Mary.
"In January 1959 I asked for
reassignment and was assigned to the 1608 Military Air Transport Wing in
"The interest your name caused when we signed you up for kindergarten was unreal. People would come up to us and sing 'The Ballad of Mary Phagan.' They told me stories that I had never heard before. Then the questions would come: what relationship we were and how had our daughter been named for little Mary? They would say, 'My, what a pretty girl!' and 'She looks just like little Mary.'
"Your brother Michael was born
in September 1959, in
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
I nodded, unable to speak.
"But I'm proud that you want to understand your heritage."
There are always two—or more—sides to everything. Clearly, the Phagan family believed in Leo Frank's guilt. But my father again encouraged me to research and investigate the facts for myself. He told me that the trial record spoke for itself. He also pointed out that for my own peace of mind I would have to interpret the facts myself to the best of my ability and to draw my own conclusions.
What was
These unanswered
questions remained with me throughout my high school years. At the same time
that my resolve to learn all I could about my greataunt intensified, my
aspirations as to a future career became both evident and important to me. I wanted
to teach blind and visually impaired children. I began exploring opportunities.
And my senior year was especially gratifying. Since I finished classes early in
the day, I was allowed to leave campus for joint-enrollment at a college or for
employment, and my counselor, Mrs. Drury, had discovered that
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I spent ten hours a week at McLendon, and it made my mind up definitely: I was going to teach the blind and visually impaired.
The star in my crown that year was the award I received from the DeKalb County Rotary Clubs: the Youth Achievement Award. I was the very first recipient of this award, and the only disappointment was that my blind students couldn't read it. But I read it to them.
I'd applied to
and been accepted at
And, yes, at that moment I hoped that the story of little Mary Phagan would be left behind.
So I consciously
left the unanswered questions in
Chapter 3
MY SEARCH
BEGINS
The dream was always the same. The funnel-shaped cloud was the largest I had seen, and it was heading directly for me and those I love. Miraculously, my brother Michael found a cave in which we could be safe. The cloud destroyed everything in its path, but those in the cave remained safe. Screaming and sweating, I would awaken with my heart palpitating—and then realize that it was only a dream. But I became afraid to sleep for fear that the dream would come back. And it did. Again and again.
The story of little Mary Phagan had
indeed followed me to
A history professor asked me, "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?" Then several classmates quizzed me about the story.
I decided that I had to know the answers to the questions that haunted me. I just had to know. I couldn't be Mary Phagan without this shadow of my past. It was my history, my legacy. And I had to answer those questions.
I became friends with Amy. Amy was Jewish, and, as with all friends, religion came up between us. Amy and I exchanged our beliefs and answered the "why's" of our faiths. There were no barriers between us. Once a group
44
45
My Search Begins
of us were talking, and someone asked me in front of Amy that question: "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Wasn't Leo Frank a Jewish man?" she persisted.
I told her "yes," again. But Amy never mentioned the story of little Mary Phagan, and I never told her. I never felt obliged to tell her more; it didn't have anything to do with our friendship. We were best friends and that was that.
My family delighted in my friendship with Amy and her family. During one Christmas vacation my Dad related to me how he had become part of a Jewish family. For the first time I realized why I had always called this particular couple Grandma and Grandpa—and still do.
It happened
around Christmastime in 1952. My Dad had just been promoted to Staff Sergeant
and was flying out of the Warner Robbins Air Force Base in
"As Christmas
approached, we geared up to make flights back east to provide transportation
for all the Military Services," he explained. "Plans were made that
each flight would make certain strategic stops to drop off troops and pick them
up after Christmas and bring them back to Larson Air Force Base. On
"Airplane crashes are terrible in more ways than one: they create havoc in the loss of lives and materials, and they put men to a test that they cannot survive. The dead men must be escorted home for burial. The escorts are called Color Guards. They are hand picked as a rule, versed in the nature of life at its worst. Each family that has lost a loved one will have a thousand questions to ask the Color Guard. He will have no answers and must rely
46
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
on his own ability to handle the situation. And no two will be the same. Some Color Guards will break under the pressure, particularly if they were friends. One of the crew members on the flight was my close friend, Robert Jacobs. He was a radio operator whose position was on the flight deck with the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and flight engineer. All of these crew members perished in that crash. I knew them all. Tears still come to my eyes when I think about it and how many lives it claimed.
"Brigadier General H.W. Bowman, commander of the 62nd Troop Carrier Wing (H), and Lt. Colonel Roland K. McCoskrie, commander of 7th Troop Carrier Squadron, suffered only as commanders can suffer when they lose men in a tragic accident.
"As in any accident, the clean up crew was mostly volunteers; these men are true heroes. At times some even risk their lives in trying to save others. It took over three days just to recover all the bodies. And then there was the horrible task of identifying some of the bodies. Preparations and transportation arrangements were made, and then came the selection of the Color Guards. There was no Jewish man to escort our radio operator. One would have to be selected from another squadron, someone who did not even know his name, unless someone in our squadron would step forward to be his Color Guard. With head held high, tears in my eyes, my heart about to burst, I took that step forward. I could not allow a stranger to escort my friend and fellow crew member home to his parents. In my mind, that would hurt them even more.
"I felt that I would break under that pressure when I presented the American flag to Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs at the gravesite. I did! When I presented the flag to them, I could hardly talk for the tears rolling down my cheeks: 'This flag is presented to you by a grateful nation in remembrance of your loved one.' For one moment, time stood still for three broken hearts, the parents and mine became
47
My Search Begins
one in grief. They invited me home to say the Kaddish, a memorial prayer, for their son. I became an adopted 'son,' and to this day I call them Mom and Dad and you children call them Grandma and Grandpa. Every Mother's Day, I send flowers to my friend's mother. She's a very special person.
"They asked
me questions I had no answers for, except the simple truths and personal
knowledge that I had of their son. Of course they wanted to know 'why.' I
explained that their son was one of the best and the best always are selected
for the tough flights. I don't think that I would have the guts to do that job
again. I was to receive four letters of appreciation and commendation: one from
the Jewish War Veterans of the
"Life takes a pause and then continues on!"
After two years
at Flagler, both Amy and I felt that it wasn't offering the programs that we
needed for our careers. We both transferred to
I worked hard,
and in August of 1977, I received my Master of Science in the
I began at the agency the first week of September. I was introduced to the various superintendents of the sys-
48
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
tems in which I would be responsible
for setting up the vision program. Several of the superintendents asked me that
question: "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?"
One of them privately called me in his office and sang me "The Ballad of
Mary Phagan" by Fiddling John Carson of
Little Mary Phagan went to town one day,
And went to the pencil factory
to see the big parade.
She left her home at eleven,
And kissed her mother goodbye,
Not one time did the poor child think
that she was going to die.
Leo Frank met her, with a brutal heart we know,
He smiled and said, "Little Mary,
Now you will go home no more."
He sneaked along behind her,
Till she reached the metal room,
He laughed and said, "Little Mary,
you have met
your fatal doom."
She fell upon her knees, and to
Leo Frank she pled,
He took his stick from the trash pile
And hit her across the head.
The tears rolled down her rosy cheeks,
While the blood flowed down her back,
But still she remembered telling her mother
What time she would be back.
He killed little Mary Phagan--
it was on a holiday--
And he called on Jim Conley to take her body away.
He took her to the basement,
She was bound hand and feet,
And down in the basement little Mary
lay asleep.
Angelina Phagan with her daughters and
grandchildren.
Mary Phagan is at right on her lap.
Ollie Mae and Mary Phagan (Mary is on right).
The farm
Fannie Phagan moved to after the death of William Joshua.
William Joshua and Fannie Phagan.
The Marietta-Atlanta trolley in 1913.
A postcard Mary
Phagan sent to her mother in 1911.
49
My Search Begins
Newt Lee was the watchmen—
when he went to wind his key,
Down in the basement,
little Mary he could see.
He called for the officers—their
names I do not know.
They came to the pencil factory
Says "Newt Lee, you must go."
They took him to the jailhouse,
They locked him in a cell,
But the poor innocent negro
Knew nothing for to tell.
I have a notion in my head that
when Frank comes to die,
And stands the examination in
the courthouse in the skies,
He will be astonished at the questions
The angels are going to say
of how he killed little Mary on one holiday.
Come all you good people
wherever you may be,
And supposing little Mary
belonged to you or me.
Her mother sat a weeping—she
weeps and mourns all day—
She prays to meet her darling in a
better world some day.
Little Mary is in Heaven, while
Leo Frank is in jail,
Waiting for the day to come when
he can tell his tale.
Judge Roan passed the sentence
And you bet he passed it well;
50
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Solicitor Hugh M. Dorsey
sent Leo Frank to hell.
Now, God Bless her mother.
He told me that his mother had sung the ballad throughout his childhood. He had never forgotten a word. While he was singing the ballad, I realized that little Mary Phagan was me too—not a separate entity—and I could not evade our relationship. Nor did I want to.
I was ready to search for answers to those haunting questions. Now I had to know if what my father taught me was accurate and factual. I began extensive research. I looked again at the Brief of Evidence, reference books, and the newspaper accounts in a different way, a critical way. I read everything I could find on the economic, political, social and psychological climate of the South in 1913.
By the time little Mary Phagan was murdered, the Civil War had been over only forty-eight years. Today, other parts of the country accuse Southerners of "still fighting the Civil War." To an extent that is true. It was true to an even greater extent in 1913.
The focus of Southern society was tradition—which also meant opposition to change. And the commitment to tradition was often manifested in a loyalty on the part of Southerners to "their own kind" which usually resulted in a paranoid suspicion of outsiders.
Another strong part of this tradition is the esteem in which white women, and particularly young white girls, are held. Southerners have always had a fear—whatever its origins—of assaults upon women.
The industrialization which began in the last part of the nineteenth century centered on the cities, and it was in the rural areas that the commitment to tradition held most strongly. But life in rural areas was difficult—very difficult for most of the poorer people. So they emigrated to urban areas.
51
My Search Begins
Apparently, life
wasn't much better in the cities, although the opportunities to make money were
far greater, and it was especially dreary in
Wages were low
in the mills and factories and the normal workday began at
I thought of my father's description of his grand-mother Mary Richards Phagan, whom the factory bosses would hide from the labor inspectors.
It was probably inevitable that family and community ties, another bulwark of tradition, began to weaken, despite people's struggles to hold onto them, and they grew increasingly resentful of those whom they considered to be their exploiters.
I realized, as my research began to clarify a lot of things for me, that little Mary Phagan, white, pretty, well-liked, just short of fourteen, a laborer in a factory or "sweat shop," came to stand for what was good, pure,
52
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
sweet and exploited about the South. And that Leo Frank, a Northerner, a Jew, superintendent, part owner of the factory, and well-to-do, would have fit perfectly the idea of the outsider which Southerners traditionally held in such suspicion and the exploiter of whom they were growing increasingly resentful. The entire family believed that he killed Mary Phagan. So did I.
On
Mr. Adolph Montag,
c/o
You may have read in
Leo M. Frank
On
These men were:
1. A black night watchman, who is thought to know much more about the crime than he has told, but who has not been regarded as the perpetrator.
2. A former street car conductor for whom a strong alibi has never been established, and from whom suspicion is shifting.
3. A black elevator boy, who has never been held as a material witness, but against whom no evidence has been obtained.
53
My Search Begins
4. A former employee of the National Pencil Company was located at the Plant Saturday and identified as being the "man with a little girl on Saturday night." In neither the conductor's nor the elevator boy's case do police place much dependence on the so-called identifications.
All of these men were cleared. At that time, neither Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, nor Jim Conley, the pencil factory janitor, appeared on the list. Leo Frank was at police headquarters that day but police were quoted as saying, "Frank is not under arrest," but that "he was under police guard for his own personal safety," and that "there are no charges against him."
What led to the eventual arrest of Leo Frank, the factory superintendent?
When Newt Lee,
the night watchman who discovered the body of little Mary Phagan, was
questioned by the police, he stated that he had been at the factory on
The front door was not locked. I
pushed it open, went on in and got to the double door there. I was paid off
Friday night at
54
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
morning I return the keys to him. The
front door had always been unlocked on previous Saturday afternoons. After you
go inside and come up about middle ways of the steps, there are some double
doors there. It was locked on Saturday when I got there. Have never found it
that way before. I took my key and unlocked it. When I went upstairs I had a
sack of bananas and I stood to the left of that desk like I do every Saturday.
I says like I always do "Alright Mr. Frank" and he come bustling out
of his office. He had never done that before. He always called me when he
wanted to tell me anything and said, "Step here a minute, Newt." This
time he came up rubbing his hands and says, "Newt, I am sorry that I had
you come so soon, you could have been at home sleeping, I tell you what you do,
you go out in town and have a good time." He had never let me off before
that. I could have laid down in the shipping room and gone to sleep, and I told
him that. He says, "You needs to have a good time. You go downtown, stay an hour
and a half, and come back your usual time at
55
My Search Begins
says, "I ain't allowed to let
anybody in here after
There is a light on the street floor just after you get
in the entrance to the building. The light is right up here where that
partition comes across. Mr. Frank told me when I first went there, "Keep
that light burning bright, so the officers can see in when they pass by."
It wasn't burning that day at all. I lit it at
56
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
ing bright. I made my rounds
regularly every half hour Saturday night. I punched on the hour and punched on
the half and I made all my punches. The elevator doors on the street floor and
office floor were closed when I got there on Saturday. They were fastened down
just like we fasten them down every other night. When
L. S. Dobbs, Sergeant of Police, and J. N. Starnes, City Officer, went to the National Pencil Factory after receiving the call from Newt Lee. They discovered the notes under the sawdust, a hat without ribbons on it, paper and pencils, and a shoe near the boiler; a bloody handkerchief about ten feet further from the body towards the rear on a sawdust pile.
While Dobbs was reading the notes—"and land down play like night"—when he said the word "night," Lee said, "That means the night watchman."
J. N. Starnes finally reached Frank
by telephone around
Boots Rogers and Mr. Black said they found Frank extremely nervous and that he asked to eat his breakfast before leaving—a request the police denied him. Frank also denied knowledge of a little girl named Mary Phagan.
57
My Search Begins
They then took Frank to the morgue. They stated that he scarcely looked at the body and would not enter the room where it lay. He continued to be agitated and nervous. Upon arriving at the factory, he consulted his time book and reported, "Yes, Mary Phagan worked here, and she was here yesterday to get her pay."
He then told the police, "I will tell you about the exact time she left here. My stenographer left about twelve o'clock, and a few minutes after she left, the office boy left, and Mary came in and got her money and left."
Further
questioning revealed that Frank maintained he was inside his office "every
minute" from
Frank appeared at police headquarters on Monday morning with his attorneys Luther Z. Rosser and Herbert Haas, who evidently had been contacted on Sunday.
Frank advised police that Newt Lee and J. M. Gantt had been at the factory and that Gantt "knew Mary Phagan very well." This led to their arrests.
On Monday morning, April 28, when the factory opened, R. P. Barrett, a machinist, reported that he found blood spots near a machine at the west end of the dressing room on the second floor which had not been there Friday. Hair was also found on the handle of a bench lathe and strands of cords of the type that were used to strangle Mary Phagan were hung near the dressing room.
Leo Frank was
arrested on Tuesday, April 29, and incarcerated
in the
Later that evening Frank had a conversation with Newt Lee, who was handcuffed to a chair. Newt Lee
58
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
reported that when Frank came in, he dropped his head and looked down. They were all alone and Lee said, "Mr. Frank, it's mighty hard for me to be handcuffed here for something I don't know anything about."
Frank said, "That's the difference, they have got me locked up and a man guarding me."
Lee then asked, "Mr. Frank, do you believe I committed that crime," and he said, "No, Newt, I know you didn't, but I believe you know something about it."
Lee then said, "Mr. Frank, I don't know a thing about it, no more than finding the body."
Frank said, "We are not talking about that now, we will let that go. If you keep that up we will both go to hell."
The police had also learned that Frank refused to send Mary Phagan's pay home with Helen Ferguson, a friend. Then, not too long after Leo Frank's indictment and Jim Conley's statements, the police also obtained a statement from Minola McKnight, the black cook in the Frank home. She reported that when Frank came home that Saturday, he was drunk, talked wildly, and threatened to kill himself, thus forcing his wife to sleep on the floor. Minola's sworn statement was witnessed by her lawyer, George Gordon.
Yet, three days later Mrs. McKnight publicly repudiated her affidavit, claiming that she had signed it to obtain release from the police. It seems that while her original statement made the front page of the newspapers, her repudiation was printed unobtrusively on an inside page.
Other questions nagged at me. My family maintained that Mary Phagan had been violated. What did the medical evidence disclose? Was the blood found on her legs and underwear the result of rape or menstrual blood? Was undisputable evidence of rape found?
Had she been bitten on the breasts? X-rays of her body had apparently shown teeth indentations on her
59
My Search Begins
neck and shoulder. Where were the X-ray records? Were the marks made by Leo Frank's teeth? Did Solicitor Dorsey have Mary's body exhumed a second time to check the marks against X-rays of Leo Frank's teeth?
Was Leo Frank a "pervert," as the state attempted to establish? The state had certainly enough people to state on the witness stand that he'd made sexual overtures to the female employees at the factory.
But does that mean—did the answers to any of my questions mean—that Leo Frank killed Mary Phagan?
On the Saturday following the murder, Monteen Stover, a fellow worker at the factory with Mary Phagan, came forward to tell the police that she had come for her pay on April 26 but was unable to collect it because Frank was absent from his office.
Monteen informed the police that "it was five minutes after twelve. I was sure that Mr. Frank would be in his office, so I stepped in. He wasn't in the outer office, so I stepped into the inner one. He wasn't there either. I thought he might have been somewhere around the building so I waited. I went to the door and peered further down the floor among the machinery. I couldn't see him there. I stayed until the clock hand was pointing to ten minutes after twelve. Then I went downstairs. The building was quiet, and I couldn't hear a sound. I didn't see anybody."
On
60
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Monteen Stover
repeated the testimony which she had reported to the police at the coroner's
inquest. On
Why did people feel it was Leo Frank, rather than Newt Lee, who was responsible for the murder?
Some who have studied the Mary Phagan case seem to feel that many people in Atlanta—including the police and the Fulton County Solicitor-General, Hugh Dorsey—demanded Leo Frank's indictment and conviction because of his status as an outsider.
Moreover, the Atlanta Police Department had a series of unsolved murders on their hands and were desperate for a conviction. They were also pressured by the public, who vociferously demanded that Mary Phagan's assailant be discovered.
Then there was Jim Conley. On rounding up witnesses from the National Pencil Company, they apparently paid special attention to Jim Conley, who had been seen washing a shirt at a faucet in the factory, thereby causing an anonymous informer to suggest to the police that there could have been blood on the shirt.
Conley apparently began by lying: he told the police he could neither read nor write, but he could do both. Over the next few weeks he gave four affidavits—the last of which helped convict Leo Frank—each of which told a different version than the previous one. Yet it was largely on his testimony that Leo Frank was found guilty of murder. Could Jim Conley have been the culprit?
It would have been easy to convict Jim Conley, a semi-literate, poor, friendless Negro with a chain gang record. Leo Frank, on the other hand, a white man with allegedly rich relatives, would be another story: he could raise sufficient funds to defend himself vigorously and effectively. Why did they home in on Leo Frank?
61
My Search Begins
Some writers, such as Harry Golden in his book A Little Girl Is Dead, feel that many Atlantans were grossly anti-Semitic and accused Frank of the murder because he was Jewish.
Luther Otterbein
Bricker, who was the pastor of the First Christian Church in
The letter states his impression upon hearing of the murder:
But, when the police arrested a Jew, and a Yankee Jew at that, all of the inborn prejudice against the Jews rose up in a feeling of satisfaction, that here would be a victim worthy to pay for the crime.
From that day on the newspapers were filled with the most awful stories, affidavits and testimonies, which proved the guilt of Leo M. Frank beyond the shadow of a doubt. The police got prostitutes and criminals, on whom they had something, to swear anything and everything they wanted them to swear to. And reading these stories in the paper day by day, there was no doubt left in the mind of the general public but that Frank was guilty. And the whole city was in a frenzy. We were all mad crazy, and in a blood frenzy. Frank was brought to trial in mob spirit. One could feel the waves of madness which swept us all.
Had I been a member of the jury that tried Frank I would have assented to the verdict of guilty, for the jury did exactly as I wanted it to and I applauded the verdict.
It has also been said that Solicitor-General Hugh Dorsey had strong feelings about Leo Frank's guilt, and through the years there has been much speculation on
62
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
what brought about Dorsey's certainty that Frank was guilty.
In a 1948 study of the Mary Phagan-Leo Frank case, Henry L. Bowden reported a discussion with Hugh Dorsey that seems to shed light on the prosecutor's feelings about Leo Frank. Bowden had, in conversation with Dorsey, asked him just what it was that had made him suspicious of Frank, and Dorsey reportedly replied that someone had planted a bloody shirt in a well on the property where Newt Lee lived, and that as he and several of the force, including Boots Rogers, the local detective who according to Dorsey was the best detective around, were riding out to the property to check on the shirt, Rogers described to Dorsey Leo Frank's "extreme" uneasiness and nervousness when confronted with the murder at the factory. This, Dorsey related, had led him to be suspicious of Frank.
Dorsey stated further to Bowden that he had arranged that all the detectives and operatives on the case reported to him directly rather than to the police force, and that the two advantages of this were that the papers were not informed of every little thing that the investigation disclosed and, moreover, that defense counsel were kept in complete ignorance as to what Dorsey's evidence consisted of and were therefore unable to prepare defenses in advance to such evidence.
Dorsey sought Frank's indictment for
the following reasons: Frank had sent Newt Lee away at
63
My Search Begins
tell the exact time Mary had come for her pay on Saturday). Frank had then accused J. M. Gantt of being intimate with Mary Phagan, although earlier Frank had said he hadn't known her. The police officers who had taken Frank to the mortuary recalled his extreme nervousness. They now considered this emotional agitation important, as well as the fact that Frank had inquired about their finding Mary Phagan's pay envelope.
At the inquest, J. W. Coleman stated: "Mary often said things went on at the factory that were not nice and that some of the people there tried to get fresh. She told most of those stories to her mother." Yet the defense for Frank never asked Fannie Phagan Coleman any direct questions about this. Of course, the state had other witnesses and perhaps chose not to upset the mother any more than was necessary.
Additional information which seemed to point to Leo Frank's guilt was his failure to throw suspicion on Conley who testified that he helped Frank dispose of the body and his concealment of his ballgame date.
Most importantly, Dorsey felt that Frank's cook, Minola McKnight's, first statement was true:
Sunday, Miss Lucile said to Mrs. Selig that Mr. Frank didn't rest so good Saturday night; she said he was drunk and wouldn't let her sleep with him, and she said she slept on the floor on the rug by the bed because Mr. Frank was drinking. Miss Lucile said Sunday that Mr. Frank told her Saturday night that he was in trouble, and that he didn't know the reason why he would murder, and he told his wife to get his pistol and let him kill himself. I heard Miss Lucile say that to Mrs. Selig, and it got away with Mrs. Selig mighty bad, she didn't know what to think. I haven't heard Miss Lucile say whether she believed it or not. I don't know why Mrs. Frank didn't come to see her husband, but it was a pretty good while before she
64
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
would come to see him, maybe two weeks. She would tell me "Wasn't it mighty bad that he was locked up." She would say: "Minola, I don't know what I am going to do."
The affidavit of Monteen Stover
following the coroner's verdict added credence to Dorsey's suspicions that
Frank was the murderer, since Miss Stover reported that she got to the office
at 12:05 p.m. to get her pay, and Frank wasn't there. This contradicted Frank,
who had said he was continuously in his office from
Dorsey also weighed heavily the record and comments of the jury which pointed to their theory that the murder took place on an upper floor of the factory and that the body was taken to the basement with the intention of burning it. There were other comments by jury members on the factory being used by Frank for immoral purposes and his relations with some of the female employees.
Not yet sure of
whom the actual murderer was, Dorsey had indictment forms drawn up for both Leo
Frank and Newt Lee. On May 24, however, after the last testimony was heard, he
asked for a true bill against Frank. The jury complied and returned an
indictment charging Leo Frank with first degree murder.
Chapter 4
THE CASE FOR
THE PROSECUTION
Because the
ninety-degree heat had already begun to take its toll, the Honorable Leonard
Strickland Roan ordered the windows and doors thrown open when he convened the
Leo Frank case in the temporary
Twenty officers guarded the courtroom. Judge Roan, an experienced and able jurist, who had served as the presiding judge in almost all of the murder trials in the Stone Mountain area, was determined that strict decorum would be observed inside his courtroom. Although various accounts tell that the words "Hang the Jew" were shouted by the crowd outside, jurors, bailiffs, clerks, and court officials claimed that there were no disturbances or crowd noises until the verdict was announced.
The jurors, all white men and
65
66
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
defense used eighteen of its twenty strikes without a cause while the prosecution used seven of the ten it was allowed. The twelve men chosen were: C.J. Basshart (Pressman), A.H. Henslee (Head Salesman, Buggy Co.), J.F. Higdon (Building Contractor), W.N. Jeffries (Real Estate), M. Johenning (Shipping Clerk), W.F. Medcalf (Mailer), J.T. Ozburn (Optician), Frederic V.L. Smith (Paying Teller), D. Townsend (Paying Teller), F.E. Windburn (Railroad Claims Agent), A.L. Wiseby (Cashier), M.S. Woodward (Cashier, King Hardware). They were lodged at the Old Kimball House and not allowed to read the newspapers or talk with their families concerning the trial.
The chief prosecutor,
Solicitor-General Hugh A. Dorsey, according to the newspapers, was handsome and
forceful. At forty-two, he was Solicitor General for the
Leo Frank was defended by Atlanta's two well-known trial lawyers, Luther Z. Rosser who, according to the Atlanta Constitution, was the "most persuasive and most domineering lawyer in Atlanta in the art of examining witnesses" and Reuben Arnold, "best known attorney in Georgia," and "one of the ablest criminal lawyers in the South," according to the Atlanta Journal. They were assisted by Stiles Hopkins and Herbert Haas.
In his opening argument for the prosecution, Special Assistant Solicitor Hooper described the state's case against Frank. According to his outline, Mary Phagan had died as a result of a premeditated rape by the defendant, Leo Frank. It was alleged that Frank had seduced and taken liberties with other young factory girls and had made unsuccessful advances to Mary Phagan. Several surviving family members have said that Frank harassed Mary Phagan and that she went home and told her
67
The Case for the Prosecution
mother. Several former National Pencil Company employees who are still living, but wish that their names not be disclosed, have also alleged that they heard Frank sexually harass Mary Phagan.
According to the state, Frank expected Mary Phagan to come to the factory on the Saturday she died, because a fellow employee had asked Frank for Mary's pay envelope earlier and he refused to give it to her. The state contended that Jim Conley had previously acted as a lookout for Frank, so Frank's immoral activities would not be discovered, and Frank had told Conley to work on April 26. Assistant Solicitor Hooper then sketched in the state's contention that Frank was alone in the office, gave Mary Phagan her pay envelope, whereupon she asked him if the metal for her work had come. Saying he didn't know, Frank followed Mary to the metal room and made sexual overtures to her. She repulsed him and he knocked her down and, while she was unconscious, raped her. Then, fearful of the consequences, he strangled her. Thereafter, he went up to the fourth floor to get the workers out of the building and called Conley, confessing "that he guessed he had struck her too hard." With Conley, Frank dragged the body to the basement and made plans for Conley to burn it later. He gave Conley two dollars and fifty cents and then two hundred dollars, but later had Conley return the money, promising he would give it back to Conley after Conley disposed of the body.
As Hooper went over
the outline of the rest of the state's case, he singled out the expected
testimony of Monteen Stover, who he claimed would contradict Frank's contention
that he had been in his office continuously from
Testimony began that Monday afternoon as Mrs. J.W. Coleman (Fannie Phagan Coleman), the mother of little Mary Phagan, testified. Dressed in a black mourning dress and heavy veil which she threw back, she spoke in a low
68
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
voice, telling that she last saw her
daughter alive on
A court officer drew forth a suitcase which had been hidden behind several chairs.
Standing in front of the mother, he undid the satchel and lifted out the dress and shoes that Mary Phagan had worn when her mother last saw her. The officer first laid the dress upon the witness stand, almost under the mother's feet and placed the shoes beside it. Everyone had leaned forward when the satchel had been brought from behind the chairs; everyone, the lawyers, the audience, the jury, waited as the torn clothing and shoes were placed close to Mary's mother for her identification.
After the most hurried glance at the clothing, which almost touched the hem of her dress, Mrs. Coleman covered her eyes with a palm fan and began to sob. This was how Fannie Phagan Coleman, without speaking, identified the clothing of her murdered daughter.
At that time, few women attended a court trial except for those who were related either to the victim or to the defendant. Fannie Phagan Coleman and Ollie Mae Phagan, little Mary's sister, as well as her brothers, all attended the trial, as did Lucille Selig Frank, Frank's wife, and Mrs. Rae Frank, his mother. When asked for her thoughts by a reporter for the Atlanta Journal on the first day's proceedings of the trial, Fannie Phagan Coleman said: "I would rather not talk about it . . . I don't want to express an opinion." It was this profession of silence which caused the rest of the Phagan family not to speak of the trial for the next seventy years.
On that day, 011ie Mae Phagan agreed: "I'm like my mother in not wanting to talk about the trial. The trial is almost more than my mother can bear. She was the
69
The Case for the Prosecution
youngest of us—Mary, I mean—she was the life of our home. Now everything is different."
Among the testimonies that proved
especially damaging to Frank was that of Newt Lee, the night watchman who
usually worked weekdays from 6:00 p.m. to
On the 26th day of April, 1913, I was
night watchman at the National Pencil Factory. I had been night watchman there
for about three weeks. When I began working there, Mr. Frank carried me around
and showed me everything that I would have to do. I would have to get there at
70
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
I says like I always do "Alright
Mr. Frank," and he come bustling out of his office. He had never done that
before. He always called me when he wanted to tell me anything and said
"Step here a minute, Newt." This time he came up rubbing his hands
and says, "Newt, I am sorry that I had you come so soon, you could have
been at home sleeping. I tell you what you do, you go out in town and have a
good time." He had never let me off before that. I could have laid down
there in the shipping room and gone to sleep, and I told him that. He says,
"You need to have a good time. You go down town, stay an hour and a half
and come back your usual time at
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The Case for the Prosecution
asked him what sort they were and Mr.
Frank says "tans." Gantt says, "Well, I had a pair of black ones
too." Frank says, "Well, I don't know," and he dropped his head
down just so. Then he raised his head and says, "Newt, go with him and
stay with him and help him find them," and I went up there with Mr. Gantt
and found them in the shipping room, two pair, the tans and the black ones. Mr.
Frank phoned me that night about an hour after he left, it was sometime after
There is a light on the street floor
just after you get in the entrance to the building. The light is right up here
where that partition comes across. Mr. Frank told me when I first went there,
"keep that light burning bright, so the officers can see in when they pass
by." It wasn't burning that day at all. I lit it at
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
tened down just like we fasten them
down every other night. When
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The Case for the Prosecution
and a man guarding me." I said, "Mr. Frank, do you believe I committed that crime," and he said, "No, Newt, I know you didn't, but I believe you know something about it." I said, "Mr. Frank, I don't know a thing about it, no more than finding the body." He said, "We are not talking about that now, we will let that go. If you keep that up we will both go to hell." Then the officers both came in. When Mr. Frank came out of his office that Saturday he was looking down and rubbing his hands. I have never seen him rubbing his hands that way before.
When Defense Attorney Rosser cross-examined Lee, the witness said that the locked double doors inside the entrance to the building were unlocked when he came back.
Next the prosecution called to the stand Sergeant L.S. Dobbs. He testified:
On the morning
of April 27, about
The girl was lying on her face, not directly lying on her stomach, with the left side up just a little. We couldn't tell by looking at her whether she was white or black, only by her golden hair. They turned her over, and her face was full of dirt and dust. They took a piece of paper and rubbed the dirt off her face, and we could tell then that it was a white girl. I pulled up her clothes, and could tell by the skin of the knee that it was a white girl. Her face was punctured, full of
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
holes, and swollen and black. She had a cut on the left side of her head as if she had been struck, and there was a little blood there. The cord was around her neck, sunk into the flesh. She also had a piece of her underclothing around her neck. The tongue was protruding just the least bit. The cord was pulled tight, and had cut into the flesh, and tied just as tight as it could be. The underclothing around the neck was not tight.
There wasn't much blood on her head. It was dry on the outside. I stuck my finger under the hair, and it was a little moist.
This scratch pad was lying on the ground, close to the body. I found the notes under the sawdust, lying near the head. The pad was lying near the notes. They were all right close together.
On cross-examination, Dobbs
testified:
Newt Lee told us it was a white woman.
There was a trash pile near the boiler, where this hat was found, and paper and pencils down there, too. The hat and shoe were on the trash pile. Every-thing was gone off it, ribbons and all.
The place where I thought I saw someone dragged was right in front of the elevator, directly back. The little trail where I thought showed the body was dragged, went straight on down where the girl was found. It was a continuous trail.
It looked like she had been dragged on her face by her feet. I thought the places on her face had been made by dragging. That was a dirt floor, with cinders on it, scattered over the dirt.
Back door was shut, staple had been pulled. The lock was locked still. It was a sliding door, with a bar across the door, but the bar had been taken down. It looked like the staple had been recently drawn.
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The Case for the Prosecution
I was reading one of the notes to Lee, with the following words, "A tall, black negro did this; he will try to lay it on the night," and when I got to the word "night," Lee says, "That means the night watchman."
On Dorsey's re-direct examination, Dobbs testified that "A man couldn't get down that ladder with another person. It is difficult for one person to get through that scuttle hole. The back door was shut; staple had been pulled.
"The sign of dragging . . . started east of the ladder. A man going down the ladder to the ear of the basement, would not go in front of the elevator where the dragging was.
"The body was cold and stiff. Hands folded across the breast.
"I didn't find any blood on the ground, or on the sawdust, around where we found the body."
Further re-direct examination revealed that Dobbs had found the handkerchief on a sawdust pile, about ten feet from the body. When he was shown the handkerchief on re-cross examination, he stated: "It was bloody, just as it is now." Later recalled for the state, Dobbs revealed that "The trap-door leading up from the basement was closed when we got up there."
City Officer John N. Starnes was the next important state's witness. He testified,
I reached the
factory between five and
I didn't tell him what had happened, and he didn't ask me.
When Frank arrived at the factory, a few minutes
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
later, he appeared to be nervous, he was in a trembling condition. Lee was composed at the factory, he never tried to get away.
That first morning of the trial, Starnes stated that "I saw splotches that looked like blood about a foot and a half, or two feet, from the end of the dressing room, some of which I chipped up. It looked like splotches of blood and something had been thrown there and in throwing it had spread out and splattered.
"I chipped two places off the back door, which looked like they had bloody fingerprints.
"It takes not over three minutes
to walk from
Starnes further testified, "I could not give the words of the telephone conversation between me and Frank be-cause I could be mistaken as to the words he used."
Concerning the splotches, he said, "I don't know if they were blood."
Another witness, W. W.
("Boots")
After Starnes's telephone conversation, John Black and I went to Frank's residence where Mrs. Frank answered the door. Mr. Black asked, 'Is Frank in?' Mr. Frank stepped into the hall through the curtain partly dressed and asked if anything happened at the factory. When Mr. Black didn't answer, Mr. Frank said, 'Did the night watchman call up and report anything to you?'
Mr. Black then asked him to finish dressing and go to the factory to see what had happened.
Frank said that he thought he dreamt
in the morning, about
Frank seemed to be extremely nervous and was rubbing his hands and asked for a cup of coffee. After
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The Case for the Prosecution
we got in the automobile, one of the officers asked Frank if he knew a little girl named Mary Phagan.
Frank asked, "Does she work at the factory?"
Then I said, "I think she does," and Frank stated, "I cannot tell whether she works there or not, until I look at my payroll book. I know very few of the girls that work there. I pay them off, but I very seldom go back in the factory."
Frank's references to not knowing Mary Phagan were later to take on added significance.
We went to the undertaking establishment but I did not see Frank look at the corpse, I did see him step away into a side room. After the morgue, we went to the pencil factory where Frank opened the safe, consulted his time book and said: "Yes, Mary Phagan worked here. She was here yesterday to get her pay. I will tell you about the exact time she left here. My stenographer left about twelve o'clock, and a few minutes after she left, the office boy left, and Mary came in and got her pay and left."
He then wanted to see where the girl was found. Mr. Frank went around to the elevator, where there was a switch box on the wall, and put the switch in. The box was not locked. As to what Mr. Frank said about the murder, I don't know that I heard him express himself, except down in the basement.
The officers showed him where the body was found, and he made the remark that it was too bad, or something like that.
On re-cross
examination,
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
rued toward me, Mr. Frank stepped out of my vision in e direction of Mr. Gheesling's sleeping room." John Black was sworn and stated:
We didn't know it was a white girl or not until we rubbed the dirt from the child's face, and pulled down her stocking a little piece. The tongue was not sticking out; it was wedged between her teeth. She had dirt in her eye and mouth. The cord around her neck was drawn so tight it was sunk in her flesh, and the piece of undershirt was loose over her hair.
She was lying on her face with her hands folded up. One of her eyes was blackened. There were several little scratches on her face. A bruise on the left side of her head, some dry blood in her hair.
There was some excrement in the elevator shaft. When we went down on the elevator, the elevator mashed it. You could smell it all around.
He had come with Boots Rogers to
Frank's residence:
Mrs. Frank came to the door; she had on a bathrobe. I stated that I would like to see Mr. Frank and about that time Mr. Frank stepped out from behind a curtain. Frank's voice was hoarse and trembling and nervous and excited. He looked to me like he was pale. He seemed nervous in handling his collar; he could not get his tie tied, and talked very rapid in asking what had happened. He kept insisting on a cup of coffee.
When we got into the automobile, Mr. Frank wanted to know what had happened at the factory, and I asked him if he knew Mary Phagan, and told him she had been found dead in the basement. Mr. Frank said he did not know any girl by the name of Mary Phagan, that he knew very few of the employees. [This was the second time, according to testimony at
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The Case for the Prosecution
the trial, that Frank had denied knowing Mary Phagan].
In the undertaking establishment, Mr. Frank looked at her; he gave a casual glance at her, and stepped aside; I couldn't say whether he saw the face of the girl or not. There was a curtain hanging near the room, and Mr. Frank stepped behind the curtain.
Mr. Frank stated, as we left the undertaker's that he didn't know the girl, but he believed he had paid her off on Saturday. He thought he recognized her being at the factory Saturday by the dress that she wore.
At the factory, Mr. Frank took the slip out, looked over it, and said it had been punched correctly.
On Monday and Tuesday following, Mr. Frank stated that the clock had been mispunched three times.
I saw Frank take it out of the clock and went with it back toward his office.
When Mr. Frank was down at the police
station, on Monday morning Mr. Rosser and Mr. Haas were there. Mr. Haas stated,
in Frank's presence, that he was Frank's attorney. This was about eight, or
On Tuesday night, Mr. Scott and myself suggested to Mr. Frank to talk to Newt Lee. They went into a room, and stayed about five or ten minutes, alone. I couldn't hear enough to swear that I under-stood what was said. Mr. Frank said that Newt Lee stuck to the story that he knew nothing about it.
Mr. Frank stated that Mr. Gantt was there on Saturday evening, and that he told Lee to let him get the shoes, but to watch him, as he knew the surroundings of the office.
[After this conversation Gantt was arrested.]
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Mr. Frank was nervous Monday; after his release, he seemed very jovial.
On Tuesday night, Frank said at the
station house, that there was nobody at the factory at
On cross-examination, Black said, "After the visit to the morgue, the party went to the factory, where Frank got the book, ran his finger down until he came to the name of Mary Phagan, and said: 'Yes, this little girl worked here and I paid her $1.20 yesterday.'
"We went
all over the factory. Nobody saw that blood spot that morning."
Frank's attorney, Mr. Haas, told Black to go out to Frank's house, and search for the clothes he had worn the week before and his laundry as well. Frank went with them and showed them the dirty laundry.
Black went on:
"I examined Newt Lee's house. I found a bloody shirt at the bottom of a
clothes barrel there, on Tuesday morning, about
On re-direct examination by Dorsey, Black stated that Frank said, "After looking over the time sheet, and seeing that it had not been punched correctly, that it would have given Lee an hour to have gone out to his house and back."
The next person to take the stand had been arrested by the police in their preliminary investigation of the murder. J. M. Gantt testified that he was shipping clerk at the pencil factory and that Frank discharged him on April 7 for an alleged shortage in the payroll.
"I have known Mary Phagan since she was a little girl, and Mr. Frank knew her too.
"One Saturday afternoon, she came in the office to have her time corrected, by me, and after I had gotten
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The Case for the Prosecution
through with her, Mr. Frank came in and said: 'You seem to know Mary pretty well.' "
On two occasions after Gantt was discharged, he went back to the factory where, he said, "Mr. Frank saw me both times. He made no objections to my going there.
"One girl used to get the pay envelope for another, with Frank's knowledge."
Gantt swore that Mr. Frank discharged him because he refused to make good the $2.00 shortage in the payroll which he said he knew nothing about. He then described Frank's behavior Saturday when he went for his shoes:
I stood at the front door and when Frank saw me he kind of stepped back, like he was going to go back, but when he looked up and saw I was looking at him, he came on out, and I said, "Howdy, Mr. Frank," and he sorter jumped again.
I asked permission to get my shoes. Frank hesitated, inquired the kind of shoes, was told they were tans, and stated that he thought he had a Negro sweep them out. I said I left a black pair as well and Frank studied a little bit and told Newt to go with me, and stay with me till I got my shoes. Mr. Frank looked pale, hung his head, and kind of hesitated and stuttered, like he didn't like me in there, somehow or another.
On cross-examination Gantt revealed that when he testified at the coroner's inquest he did not testify about Frank having known Mary Phagan very well.
Mrs. J. R.
White, whose husband worked at the factory, testified that she went to the
factory at
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
White. At about one o'clock, Frank came up to the fourth floor and told me that if I wanted to get out by three o'clock, I had better come down as he was going to leave the factory and that I had better be ready to leave as soon as he got his coat and hat.
"As I was going down the steps, I saw a Negro sitting on a box, close to the stairway on the first floor.
"Mr. Frank did not have his coat or hat on when I passed out."
In a later statement about which there was much conjecture, Mrs. White swore "I saw a Negro sitting between the stairway and the door, about five or six feet from the foot of the stairway. I wouldn't be able to identify him."
Harry Scott was sworn in. "I am the superintendent of the local branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency and work with John Black, city detective. I was employed by Frank for the National Pencil Company. On Monday, April 28th, I witnessed, along with Mr. Darley and a third party, Frank telling his detailed accounts of his movements the Saturday before. He told of going to Montag and the coming of Mrs. White to the factory."
Scott related
that Frank said that Mary Phagan came into the factory at
Harry Scott's next words about Leo Frank created a stir in the courtroom.
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The Case for the Prosecution
He (Frank) stated during our conversation with him that Gantt knew Mary Phagan very well, that he was familiar and intimate with her. He seemed to lay special stress on it at the time. He said that Gantt paid a good deal of attention to her. As to whether anything was said by any attorney of Frank's as to our suppressing any evidence as to this murder, it was the first week in May when Mr. Pierce and I went to Mr. Herbert J. Haas's office in the Fourth National Bank Building and had a conference with him as to the Pinkerton Agency's position in the matter. Mr. Haas stated that he would rather we would submit our reports to him first before we turned it over to the police and let them know what evidence we had gathered. We told him we would withdraw before we would adopt any practice of that sort, that it was our intention to work in hearty co-operation with the police.
I saw the place near the girls' dressing room on the office floor, fresh chips had already been cut out of the floor.
After Frank was arrested Scott asked Frank to see if he could use his influence with Newt Lee since he was his employer and try to get Lee to tell what he knew. Lee and Frank were put in a private room and:
When about ten minutes was up, Mr. Black and I entered the room and Lee hadn't finished his conversation with Frank; and was saying: "Mr. Frank, it is awful hard for me to remain handcuffed to this chair," and Frank hung his head the entire time the Negro was talking to him, and finally, after about thirty seconds, he said, "Well, they have got me, too." After that, we asked Mr. Frank if he had gotten any-thing out of the Negro and he said, 'No, Lee still sticks to his original story.'
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Mr. Frank was extremely nervous at that time. He was very squirmy in his chair, crossing one leg after the other, and didn't know where to put his hands; he was moving them up and down his face, and he hung his head a great deal of the time while the Negro was talking to him. He breathed very heavily, and took deep swallows, and hesitated somewhat. His eyes were about the same as they are now.
That interview between Lee and Frank
took place shortly after
His hands were quivering very much,
he was very pale. On Sunday, May 3rd, I went to Frank's cell at the jail with
Black, and I asked Mr. Frank if, from the time he arrived at the factory from
Montag Bros., up until
Then I asked him if he was inside his
office every minute from
I made a very thorough search of the area around the elevator and radiator, and back in there. I made a surface search; I found nothing at all. I found no ribbons or purse, or pay envelope, or bludgeon or stick. I spent a great deal of time around the trap door, and I remember running the light around the doorway, right close to the elevator, looking for splotches of blood, but I found nothing.
When Luther Rosser questioned him, Scott admitted that he did not give the defense attorney the details in his reports of Mr. Frank's movements, about his statement
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The Case for the Prosecution
about Gantt being familiar with Mary Phagan, and told the attorney that he did not hear Lee but stated now that he did hear the last words of Lee, and the description of Frank's extreme nervousness.
After Lee, the next damaging testimony was given by Monteen Stover, a pretty girl with dark hair who was about the same age as Mary Phagan. Her allegations contradicted Frank's claim about being in his office continually Mrs. Stover swore:
I worked at the
National Pencil Company prior to
On cross-examination she revealed:
I didn't look at the clock to see what time it was when I left home or when I got back home. I didn't notice the safe in Mr. Frank's office. I walked right in and walked right out. I went right through into the office and turned around and came out. I didn't notice how many desks were in the outer office. I didn't notice any wardrobe to put clothes in. I don't know how many windows are in the front office. I went through the first office into the second office. The factory was still and quiet when I was there. I am fourteen years old and I worked on the fourth floor of
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
the factory. I knew the paying-off
time was
Albert McKnight,
the husband of Frank's cook, Minola McKnight (whose statement to the police
concerning Frank's condition the night of the murder had further aroused police
suspicions of Frank), testified that "Between one and two o'clock on
Memorial Day I was at the home of Mr. Frank to see my wife. He came in close to
On cross-examination, McKnight stated that he saw Frank in the mirror in the corner and that you could look through the mirror and see in the sitting room and in the dining room. He did not see the Seligs, but heard Mr. Selig talking and he did not see Mrs. Frank or Mrs. Selig through the mirror. He couldn't tell who was in the dining room without looking through the mirror.
Miss Helen
Ferguson, a friend of the murdered girl, testified that she saw "Mr. Frank
Friday, April 25, about
On cross-examination, Miss Ferguson stated that she had gotten Mary's money before and she did not remember if Mr. Schiff was in the office or not when she asked Frank for Mary's money and that it had been some time since she asked for Mary's pay by number.
Three medical experts were sworn in. Doctors Claude Smith, J. W. Hurt, and F. H. Harris, had very different
87
The Case for the Prosecution
contentions about the question of Mary Phagan's rape. All agreed there had been a savage struggle after which the girl was strangled.
According to the undertaker, W. H. Gheesling, "There was a two and one-half inch wound on the back of the victim's head exposing part of the skull. Her hair was clotted with blood, and a tight cord indenting the flesh was drawn around the neck. Blood, urine, and some discharge stained her panties which had been cut or torn at the seam."
The county physician, Dr. J. W. Hurt, testified, "The head wound was induced by a blunt-edged instrument and occurred before death. She died of strangulation."
Although Dr. Hurt said he found blood on her genitals, he contended there was no evidence of violence to the vagina.
This finding was in direct contradiction to that of Dr. H. F. Harris, the medical examiner. He stated, "Besides a ruptured hymen, Mary Phagan's vagina showed evidence of violence before death due to the internal bleeding. The epithelium was pulled loose from the inner walls and detached in some places."
Dr. Harris stated that this violence occurred before death. Nowhere in the testimony can it be found that Mary Phagan was bitten on her breast, although the report of such a bite surfaced many years later when in 1964, Pierre Van Passen, who had studied the evidence and
X-rays of the Frank case in 1922, reported that he found X-ray pictures showing the girl had been bitten on the left shoulder and neck before strangulation, and that, moreover, those indentations did not correspond to the X-rays of Leo Frank's teeth.
Having examined Mary's stomach contents, Dr. Harris asserted that she had eaten her last meal of bread and cabbage approximately one half to three quarters of an hour before she died.
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
C.B. Dalton, the man whom Jim Conley alleged brought women, with Leo Frank, to the factory for immoral purposes, took the stand:
I know Leo M. Frank, Daisy Hopkins, and Jim Conley. I have visited the National Pencil Company three, four, or five times. I have been in the office of Leo M. Frank two or three times. I have been down in the basement. I don't know whether Mr. Frank knew I was in the basement or not, but he knew I was there. I saw Conley there and the night watchman, and he was not Conley. There would be some ladies in Mr. Frank's office. Sometimes there would be two, and sometimes one. May be they didn't work in the mornings and they would be there in the evenings.
Later, on cross-examination, he mentioned Daisy Hopkins again:
I don't recollect the first time I was in Mr. Frank's office. It was last fall. I have been down there one time this year but Mr. Frank wasn't there. It was Saturday evening. I went in there with Miss Daisy Hopkins. I saw some parties in the office but I don't know them. They were ladies. Sometimes there would be two and sometimes more. I don't know whether it was the stenographer or not. I don't recollect the next time I saw him in his office. I never saw any gentle-men but Mr. Frank in there. Every time I was in Mr. Frank's office was before Christmas. Miss Daisy Hopkins introduced me to him. I saw Conley there one time this year and several times on Saturday evenings. Mr. Frank wasn't there the last time. Conley was sitting there at the front door. When I went down the ladder Miss Daisy went with me. We went back by the trash pile in the basement. I saw an old cot and a stretcher.
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The Case for the Prosecution
On re-direct
examination,
Mell Stanford, who had worked for Frank for two years, testified that he swept the whole floor in the metal room on Friday, April 25. "On Monday thereafter, I found a spot that had some white haskoline over it, on the second floor, near the dressing room that wasn't there Friday when I swept. The spot looked to me like it was blood with dark spots scattered around."
On cross-examination, Stanford said that he "moved everything and swept everything. I swept under Mary's and Barrett's machine."
Finally, it was the testimony of the state's star witness, Jim Conley, a short, stocky black man who was a sweeper at the factory, that stunned the jury with his findings. He testified:
I had a little conversation with Mr. Frank on Friday, the 25th of April. He wanted me to come to the pencil factory that Friday morning, that he had some work on the third floor he wanted me to do . . . Friday evening about three o'clock Mr. Frank came to the fourth floor where I was working and said he wanted me to come to the pencil factory on Saturday morning at eight thirty; that he had some work for me to do on the second floor. I had been working for the pencil company a little over two years . . . I got to the pencil factory about eight-thirty on April 26th. Mr. Frank and me got to the door at the same time. Mr. Frank walked to the inside and I walked behind him and he says to me, "Good morning," and I says, "Good morning, Mr. Frank." He says, "You are a little early
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
this morning," and I says, "No sir, I am not early." He says, "Well, you are a little early to do what I wanted you to do for me, and I want you to watch for me like you have been doing the rest of the Saturdays." I always stayed on the first floor like I stayed the 26th of April and watched for Mr. Frank, while he and a young lady would be up on the second floor chatting. I don't know what they were doing. He only told me they wanted to chat. When young ladies would come there, I would sit down at the first floor and watch the door for him. I couldn't exactly tell how many times I have watched the floor for him previous to April 26th, it has been several times that I watched for him, but there would be another young man, another young lady during the time I was at the door. A lady for him and one for Mr. Frank. Mr. Frank was alone there once, that was Thanksgiving Day. I watched for him. Yes, a woman came there Thanks-giving Day, she was a tall, heavy-built lady. I stayed down there and watched the door just as he told me the last time, April 26th. He told me when the lady came he would stomp and let me know that was the one and for me to lock the door. Well, after the lady came and he stomped for me I went and locked the door as he said. He told me when he got through with the lady he would whistle and for me then to go and unlock the door. That was last Thanksgiving Day, 1912. On April 26th, me and Mr. Frank met at the door. He says, "What I want you to do is to watch for me today as you did other Saturdays," and I says, "All right." I said, "Mr. Frank, I want to go to the Capital City Laundry to see my mother," and he said, "By the time you go to the laundry and come back to Trinity Avenue stop at the corner of Nelson and Forsyth Street until I go to Montag's." I don't know exactly what time I got to the corner of Nelson and
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The Case for the Prosecution
Forsyth Streets but I came there
sometime between
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
against the trash barrel and sit on
it, and he says, "Now there will be a young lady up here after awhile, and
me and her are going to chat a little," and he says, "Now, when the
lady comes, I will stomp like I did before," and he says, "That will
be the lady, and you go and shut the door," and I says, "All right,
sir." And he says, "Now, when I whistle I will be through, so you can
go and unlock the door and you come upstairs to my office then like you were
going to borrow some money from me and that will give the young lady time to
get out." I says, "All right, I will do just as you say," and I
did as he said. Mr. Frank hit me a little blow on my chest and says, "Now,
whatever you do, don't let Mr. Darley see you." I says, "All right, I
won't let him see me." Then Mr. Frank went upstairs and he said,
"Remember to keep your eyes open," and I says, "All right, I
will Mr. Frank." And I sat there on the box and that was the last I seen
of Mr. Frank until up in the day sometime. The first person I saw that morning
after I got in there was Mr. Darley, he went upstairs. The next person was Miss
Mattie Smith, she went on upstairs, then I saw her come down from upstairs.
Miss Mattie walked to the door and stopped, and Mr. Darley comes on down to the
door where Miss Mattie was, and he says, "Don't you worry, I will see that
you get that next Saturday." And Miss Mattie came on out and went up
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The Case for the Prosecution
dark. The next I saw this Negro and Mr. Holloway coming back down the steps. Mr. Holloway was putting on his glasses and had a bill in his hands, and he went out towards the wagon on the sidewalk, then Mr. Holloway came back up the steps, then after Mr. Darley came down and left, Mr. Holloway came down and left. Then this lady that worked on the fourth floor came down and left. The next person I saw coming there was Mr. Quinn. He went upstairs, stayed a little while, and then came down. The next person that I saw was Miss Mary Perkins, that's what I call her, this lady that is dead, I don't know her name. After she went upstairs I heard footsteps going towards the office and after she went in the office, I heard two people walking out of the office and going like they were coming down the steps, but they didn't come down the steps, they went towards the metal department. After they went back there, I heard the lady scream, then I didn't hear no more, and the next person I saw coming in there was Miss Monteen Stover. She had on a pair of tennis shoes and a rain coat. She stayed there a pretty good while, it wasn't so very long either. She came back down the steps and left. After she came back down the steps and left, I heard somebody from the metal department come running back there upstairs, on their tiptoes, then I heard somebody tiptoeing back towards the metal department. After that I dozed off and went to sleep. Next thing I knew Mr. Frank was up over my head stamping and then I went and locked the door, and sat on the box a little while, and the next thing I heard was Mr. Frank whistling. I don't know how many minutes it was after that I heard him whistle. When I heard him whistling I went and unlocked the door just like he said, and went up the steps. Mr. Frank was standing up there at the top of the steps
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
and shivering and trembling and rubbing his hands like this. He had a little rope in his hands and a long wide piece of cord. His eyes were large and they looked right funny. He looked funny out of his eyes. His face was red. Yes, he had a cord in his hands just like this here cord. After I got up to the top of the steps, he asked me, "Did you see that little girl who passed here just a while ago?" and I told him I saw one come along there and she come back again, and then I saw another one come along there and she hasn't come back down, and he says, "Well, that one you say didn't come back down, she come into my office awhile ago and wanted to know something about her work in my office and I went back there to see if the little girl's work had come, and I wanted to be with the little girl, and she refused me, and I struck her and I guess I struck her too hard and she fell and hit her head against something, and I don't know how bad she got hurt. Of course you know I ain't built like other men." The reason he said that was, I had seen him in a position I haven't seen any other man that has got children. I have seen him in the office two or three times before Thanksgiving and a lady was in his office, and she was sitting down in a chair, and she had her clothes up to here, and he was down on his knees, and she had her hands on Mr. Frank. I have seen him another time there in the packing room with a young lady lying on the table, she was on the edge of the table when I saw her. He asked me if I wouldn't go back there and bring her up so that he could put her somewhere, and he said to hurry that there would be money in it for me. When I came back there, I found the lady lying back flat on her back with a rope around her neck. The cloth was also tied around her neck and part of it was under her head like to catch blood. I noticed the clock after
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The Case for the Prosecution
I went back there and found the lady was dead and came back and told him. The clock was four minutes to one. She was dead when I went back there, and I came back and told Mr. Frank the girl was dead and he said, "Sh, sh." He told me to go back there by the cotton box, get a piece of cloth, put it around her, and bring her up. I didn't hear what Mr. Frank said and I came on up there to hear what he said. He was standing on the top of the steps, like he was going down the steps, and while I was back in the metal department I didn't understand what he said, and I came back there to understand what he did say, and he said to go and get a piece of cloth to put around her, and I went and looked around the cotton box and got a piece of cloth and went back there. The girl was lying flat on her back and her hands were out this way. I put both of her hands down, they went down easily, and rolled her up in the cloth and taken the cloth and tied her up, and started to pick her up, and I looked back a little distance and saw her hat and piece of ribbon laying down and her slippers and I taken them and put them all in the cloth and I ran my right arm through the cloth and tried to bring it up on my shoulder. The cloth was tied just like a person that was going to give out clothes on Monday, they get the clothes and put them on the inside of a sheet and take each corner and tie the four corners together, and I run my right arm through the cloth after I tied it that way and went to put it on my shoulder, and I found I couldn't get it on my shoulder, it was heavy and I carried it on my arm the best I could, and when I got away from the little dressing room that was in the metal department, I let her fall, and I was scared and I kind of jumped, and I said, "Mr. Frank, you will have to help me with this girl, she is heavy," and he came and caught her by the feet
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
and I laid hold of her by the shoulders, and when we got her that way I was backing and Mr. Frank had her by the feet, and Mr. Frank kind of put her on me, he was nervous and trembling, and after we got her a piece from where we got her at, he let her feet drop and then he picked her up and we went on the elevator, and he pulled down on one of the cords and the elevator wouldn't go, and he said, "Wait, let me go in the office and get the key," and he went in the office and got the key and come back and unlocked the switch box and the elevator went down the basement, and we carried her out and I opened the cloth and rolled her out there on the floor, and Mr. Frank turned around and went on up the ladder, and I noticed her hat and slipper and piece of ribbon and I said, "Mr. Frank, what am I going to do with these things?" and he said, "Just leave them right there," and I taken the things and pitches them over in front of the boiler, and after Mr. Frank had left I goes on over to the elevator and he said, "Come on up and I will catch you on the first floor," and I got on the elevator and started it on to the first floor, and Mr. Frank was running up there. He didn't give me time to stop the elevator, he was so nervous and trembly, and before the elevator got to the top of the first floor Mr. Frank made the first step on to the elevator and by the elevator being a little down like that, he stepped down on it and hit me quite a blow right over about my chest and that jammed me up against the elevator and when we got near the second floor he tried to step off before it got to the floor and his foot caught on the second floor as he was stepping off and that made him stumble and he fell back sort of against me, and he goes on and takes the keys back to his office and leaves the box unlocked. I followed him into his private office and I sat down and he corn-
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The Case for the Prosecution
menced to rubbing his hands and began to rub back his hair and after a while he got up and said, "Jim," and I didn't say nothing, and all at once he happened to look out of the door and there was somebody coming, and he said, "My God, here is Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall," and he said, "Come over here, Jim, I have got to put you in this wardrobe," and he put me in this wardrobe, and I stayed there a good while and they come in there and I heard them go out, and Mr. Frank come there and said, "You are in a tight place," and I said, "Yes," and he said, "You done very well." So after they went out and he had stepped in the hall and had come back he let me out of the wardrobe, and he said, "You sit down," and I went and sat down, and Mr. Frank sat down. But the chair he has was too little for him, or too big or it wasn't far enough back or something. He reached on the table to get a box of cigarettes and a box of matches, and he takes a cigarette and a match and hands me the box of cigarettes and I lit one and went to smoking and I handed him back the box of cigarettes, and he put it back in his pocket and then he took them out again and said, "You can have these," and I put them in my pocket, and then he said, "Can you write," and I said, "Yes, sir, a little bit," and he taken his pencil to fix up some notes. I was willing to do anything to help Mr. Frank because he was a white man and my superintendent, and he sat down and I sat down at the table and Mr. Frank dictated the notes to me. Whatever it was it didn't seem to suit him, and he told me to turn over and write again, and I turned the paper and wrote again, and when I done that he told me to turn over again and I wrote on the next page there, and he looked at that and kind of liked it and he said that was all right. Then he reached over and got another piece of paper, a green
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
piece, and told me what to write. He took it and laid it on his desk and looked at me smiling and rubbing his hands, and then he pulled out a nice little roll of greenbacks, and he said, "Here is two hundred dollars," and I taken the money and looked at it a little bit and I said, "Mr. Frank, don't you pay another dollar for that watchman, because I will pay him myself," and he said, "All right, I don't see what you want to buy a watch for either, that big fat wife of mine wanted me to buy an automobile and I wouldn't do it." And after awhile Mr. Frank looked at me and said, "You go down there in the basement and you take a lot of trash and burn that package that's in front of the furnace," and I told him all right. But I was afraid to go down there by myself, and Mr. Frank wouldn't go down there with me. He said, "There's no need of my going down there," and I said, "Mr. Frank, you are a white man and you done it, and I am not going down there and burn that myself." He looked at me then kind of frightened and he said "Let me see that money" and he took the money back and put it back in his pocket, and I said "Is this the way you do things?" and he said, "You keep your mouth shut, that is all right." And Mr. Frank turned around in his chair and looked at the money and he looked back at me and folded his hands and looked up and said, "Why should I hang, I have wealthy people in Brooklyn," and he looked down when he said that and I looked up at him, and he was looking up at the ceiling, and I said, "Mr. Frank what about me?" and he said, "That's all right, don't you worry about this thing, you just come back to work Monday like you don't know anything, and keep your mouth shut, if you get caught I will get you out on bond and send you away," and he said, "Can you come back this evening and do it?" and I said, "Yes, I was coming to
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The Case for the Prosecution
get my money." He said,
"Well, I am going home to get dinner and you come back here in about forty
minutes and I will fix the money," and I said, "How will I get
in?" and he said, "There will be a place for you to get in all right,
but if you are not coming back let me know, and I will take those things and
put them down with the body," and I said, "All right, I will be back
in about forty minutes." Then I went down over to the beer saloon across
the street and I took the cigarettes out of the box and there was some money in
there and I took that out and there was two paper dollar bills in there and two
silver quarters and I took a drink, and then I bought me a double header and
drank it and I looked around at another colored fellow standing there and I
asked him did he want a glass of beer and he said "No," and I looked
at the clock and it said twenty minutes to two and the man in there asked me
was I going home, and I said "Yes," and I walked south on Forsyth
Street to Mitchell and Mitchell to Davis, and I said to the fellow that was
with me, "I am going back to Peters Street," and a Jew across the
street that I owed a dime to called me and asked me about it, and I paid him
that dime. Then I went on over to
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
right," and he said, "If
you'd come back on Saturday and done what I told you to do with it down there,
there wouldn't have been no trouble." This conversation took place between
ten and
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The Case for the Prosecution
looking coat with kind of tails to it. The coat was open like that and she had on white slippers and stockings. On Thanksgiving Day Mr. Frank told me to come to his office. I have never seen any cot or bed down in the basement. I refused to write for the police the first time. I told them I couldn't write.
Defense Attorney Rosser spent three days attacking Conley's testimony. Conley never changed his story and cheerfully admitted to having lied on numerous occasions, including those statements submitted to police prior to his full confession in late May. Conley also admitted to a number of arrests that had resulted in fines of nominal amounts for drunkenness or disorderly conduct and one sentence of thirty days for an altercation with a white man. Rosser was able to show that Conley had a poor memory about everything except the murder and was repeatedly denounced by those who knew him as a "dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger."
Those who believe Leo Frank guilty of the murder of little Mary Phagan are convinced that Jim Conley could not have possibly fabricated the involved, detailed account of what had happened, as well as withstood the hours of cross-examination.
O.B. Keeler, a native Mariettan, reporter, and journalist who covered the trial for the Atlanta Georgian, claimed it would have been impossible for Conley to invent such testimony, and the Atlanta Constitution reported: "No such record has ever been made in a criminal court case in this country. Conley may be telling the truth in the main, or he may be lying altogether. He may be the real murderer or he may have been an accomplice after the fact.
"Be these things as they may, he is one of the most remarkable Negroes that has ever been seen in this section of the country. His nerve seems unshakable. His wit is
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
ever ready. As hour by hour the attorneys for the defense hammered away and failed to entrap the Negro, the enormity of the evidence became apparent.
"Finally came the virtual confession of the defense that they had failed to entrap the Negro and they asked that the evidence be stricken from the records. The Negro withstood the fire and Frank's attorneys are seeking to have the evidence expunged from the records."
As I continued to read the evidence,
I realized that the long litany of witnesses called by the state was to be
superseded only by the long litany of witnesses called by the defense. Indeed,
some witnesses seemed to be called by the wrong side. One state witness,
Holloway, gave testimony which supported defense contentions. Holloway
testified, "I am the day watchman for the factory and I forgot to lock the
elevator on Saturday when I left at
On cross-examination, he stated
"Frank got back from Montag's at about
"I had seen blood spots on the floor but I did not remember having seen the blood spots Barrett found."
Holloway went on, "I have never seen Frank speak to Mary Phagan." Further, he said, "The cords like that used to strangle Mary Phagan could be found all over the place. They came on the bundles of slats that are tied around the pencils. It was Barrett who discovered the blood, hair, and pay envelope."
His explanation of the difference between his former testimony about the elevator and that at the trial was: "I sawed a plank for Mr. Denham and Mr. White on the
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The Case for the Prosecution
fourth floor and forgot about it. When I remembered that I sawed the plank, I recollected I had forgotten to lock the elevator."
Despite these few contradictions at this point, I could not help feeling that my family's assessment of Leo Frank's guilt was true. But I turned my attention to the defense's case and promised myself I would be fair in assessing the evidence.
Chapter 5
THE CASE FOR
THE DEFENSE
Perhaps the most
important element of Leo Frank's defense concerned time. If, as Jim Conley
testified, Mary Phagan had come to the pencil factory before Monteen Stover,
she had to arrive there before
Had Frank enough time to commit the murder and move the body? It was a question that many people, including me, asked themselves over and over again.
Thinking over that anomaly, I felt weary. How difficult it was seventy years later to understand the meaning of these inconsistencies. Yet, difficult as it was, I was determined to go on to try to piece together from the newspapers' accounts, the trial transcript, and the evidence my family had gathered the real truth about my greataunt's death.
104
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The Case for the Defense
Making that
resolution once again, I returned to the transcript and Leo Frank's
contentions.
According to his
pre-trial statements, Frank had gotten to the factory on the day of the murder
at
The defense
called more than twenty witnesses to corroborate Frank's version of when the
murder happened, where Frank had been, and at what time.
The first two witnesses,
W. H. Matthews, motorman, and W. T. Hollis, conductor of the
On
cross-examination, Hollis admitted that the
Then Herbert
Schiff, assistant superintendent of the pencil factory, testified to the system
of business, the preparation of the financial sheet, the procedure for paying
off employees, and how the pencils are made. He remembered paying off Helen
Ferguson and said he was the one, not Frank, who paid off on Friday, April 25.
"Helen Ferguson did not ask for Mary Phagan's pay Friday, April 25."
He also stated, "There was no bed, cot, lounge, or sofa anywhere in the
building." And later said, "I have never seen Mr. Frank talk to Mary
Phagan." On cross-examination, Schiff said that "On Monday, Mrs.
White claimed she saw a Negro man."
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Among the witnesses to testify about Frank's action on that Saturday were:
Miss Mattie Hall, stenographer for
Montag, the company Frank alleged he visited on Saturday morning, who testified
that "I finished my work, left around
Although she admitted she testified differently at the inquest, she testified that Frank did not make up the financial sheet that Saturday morning.
Miss Corinthia Hall swore that she
was the forelady for the factory and got there Saturday around
Mrs. Freeman's testimony gave evidence to the same effect.
Miss Magnolia Kennedy swore that she was behind Helen Ferguson and Helen Ferguson did not ask for Mary Phagan's pay envelope.
On cross-examination, she stated: "Barrett called my attention to the hair. It looked like Mary's. My machine was right next to Mary's. Mary's hair was a light brown, kind of sandy color." She did not see the blood spots on the floor, but, she said, "You could plainly see the dark spots and white spot over it ten or twelve feet away."
Wade Campbell, another employee, was the brother of Mrs. White, who told him about seeing the Negro on Saturday. "I saw the spots they claim was blood. I couldn't say whether it was blood or not."
On cross-examination, he said, "It is not unusual to see spots all over the metal room floor." Further, he stated, "I have never seen Frank talk to Mary Phagan."
Lemmie Quinn, foreman of the factory, testified that one hundred women worked at the factory: "We have some
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The Case for the Defense
blood spots quite frequently when
people get their hands cut." However, he said, "I noticed the blood
spots at the ladies' dressing room on Monday." Further, he declared,
"I was in the office and saw Mr. Frank between
Several witnesses later testified
that Quinn advised them he had visited Frank prior to
Harry Denham, one of the carpenters
on the fourth floor, testified that he was hammering about forty feet from the
elevator. "I am sure that the elevator did not run that day, as I could
have seen the wheels moving and heard the noise." He completed his work
about
A testimony that caused further speculation was that of Minola McKnight, the cook for the Seligs, who testified:
I work for Mrs. Selig. I cook for
her. Mr. and Mrs. Frank live with Mr. and Mrs. Selig. His wife is Mrs. Selig's
daughter. I cooked breakfast for the family on April 26th. Mr. Frank finished
breakfast a little after
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
came out and arrested me and took me
to Mr. Dorsey's office, where Mr. Dorsey, my husband, and an-other man were
there. I was working at the Seligs when they come and got me. They tried to get
me to say that Mr. Frank would not allow his wife to sleep that night and that
he told her to get up and get his gun and let him kill himself, and that he
made her get out of bed. They had my husband there to bull-doze me, claiming
that I had told him that. I had never told him anything of the kind. I told
them right there in Mr, Dorsey's office that it was a lie. Then they carried me
down to the stationhouse in the patrol wagon. They came to me for another
statement about
On cross-examination she was shown a copy of her original statement and said:
I signed that statement, but I didn't
tell you some of the things you got in there. I didn't say he left home about
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The Case for the Defense
saying. My husband tried to get me to tell lies. They made me sign that statement, but it was a lie. If Mr. Frank didn't eat any dinner that day I ain't sitting in this chair. Mrs. Selig never gave me no money. The statement that I signed is not the truth. They told me if I didn't sign it they were going to keep me locked up. That man there [indicating] and that man made me sign it. Mr. Graves and Mr. Pickett made me sign it. They did not give me any more money after this thing happened. One week I was paid two week's wages.
Finally, when the defense requestioned her she declared:
None of the things in that statement is true. It's all a lie. My wages never have been raised since this thing happened. They did not tell me to keep quiet. They [the Seligs] always told me to tell the truth and it couldn't hurt.
Mrs. A. P. Levy
testified that she saw Frank get off the trolley car on Memorial Day between
one and two o'clock. Her cross-examination stated that it was definitely
Mrs. M. G. Michael of
Mrs. Hennie Wolfsheimer swore to the same thing. She was Frank's aunt and was corroborated by Julian Loeb, a cousin to Mrs. Frank, as well as by Cohen Loeb and H. J. Hinchey.
Emil Selig, Frank's father-in-law, testified to Leo Frank's natural conduct:
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
My wife and I live with Mr. Frank and
his wife. The kitchen in our house is next to the dining room. There is a small
passage way between them. The sideboard in the dining room is in the same
position now as it has always been. Mr. Frank took breakfast before I did on
April 26th and left the house before I breakfasted. I got back home to dinner
at about
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The Case for the Defense
Mrs. Rhea Frank,
Frank's mother, took the stand. On cross-examination, she stated, "Leo
does not have any rich relatives in
As to what my means of support are,
we have about $20,000, out at interest, my husband and I, at six per cent. We
own the house we live in. We have a $6,000 mortgage on it. The house is worth
about $10,000. My husband is doing nothing. He is not in good health. Up to a
year ago he was a traveling salesman. These are the only relatives my son has
in
C. F. Urssenbach, Frank's brother-in-law, said he had an engagement with Frank to go to the ballgame on Saturday, but Frank called and cancelled it.
L. Strauss testified that he was at the Selig home Saturday night playing cards and that Frank sat in the hall reading.
Sig Montag, the treasurer of the factory, testified to Frank's coming to him Sunday morning after the murder and he looked all right. He went to the pencil factory that morning, and he called Mr. Haas, his personal counsel.
In total, the
defense produced nearly two hundred witnesses, all white and principally from
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
alleged misconduct with female employees, the defense was determined to establish Frank's good character, which, of course, carried with it the opportunity for the prosecution to introduce subsequent evidence as to Frank's alleged bad reputation and character.
Jim Conley's reputation and past experiences, including his drinking habits, problems with the law, and history of petty theft and disorderly conduct, were heavily attacked by the defense lawyers and witnesses. The core of this focus was the question: could Jim Conley be believed?
Mrs. Rebecca Carson, a forelady at the pencil factory, testified that the elevator was noisy when it ran and that Jim Conley told her on Monday he was so drunk the previous Saturday he did not know where he was or what he did. She also stated that she overheard Jim say that "Frank is innocent as an angel; and when my mother said 'The murderer will be the Negro Mrs. White saw sitting on a box at the foot of the stairs,' Jim dropped his broom quick and didn't finish sweeping."
Mrs. E. M. Carson testified that she saw blood spots around the ladies dressing room three or four times later she recalled that Conley said, "Mr. Frank is as innocent as you is, and I know you is." She told Conley that "Whenever they find the murderer of Mary Phagan it's going to be the 'nigger' that was sitting near the elevator when Mrs. White went upstairs." "Further," she said, "I would not believe Conley on oath."
Miss Mary Pirk, another forelady at the factory, testified "I talked with Jim Conley the Monday after the murder. I accused him of the murder and he took his broom and walked right out of the office." She swore that she wouldn't believe Jim on oath.
On
cross-examination, Miss Pirk stated that she did not tell Frank of her
suspicions and that she suspected Jim "because he looked and acted so
differently."
JIM CONLEY
Luther Z.
Rosser, Jr.
Solicitor General Hugh Dorsey
Alonzo Mann
Judge
Leonard Strickland Roan
Tom Watson
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The Case for the Defense
I accused Jim before I saw the blood at the ladies' dressing room. It was all smeared over with some kind of white stuff. It covered about two feet in area. I mentioned it to the girls before Jim was arrested. I am not sure whether it was before or after. It was after the Coroner's inquest. I have seen several spots in the factory that looked like that spot many times. All kinds of spots. I have seen spots before that looked like that. I don't know exactly when. My opinion is that Mr. Frank is a perfect gentleman. I always found him to be one in my dealings with him. I have never heard any of the girls say anything about him.
Another important defense witness was
Daisy Hopkins. She had been named by Jim Conley as one of the girls
I am a married woman. I worked in the
factory from October 1911 to
It was brought out under cross-examination by Dorsey that Mrs. Hopkins had been arrested but not tried for fornication. She said:
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
I have never been in jail. Mr. W.W. Smith got me out of jail. Somebody told a tale on me, that's why I was put in jail. I don't know what they charged me with, they accused me of fornication.
On redirect examination, she stated:
I never was tried. I never had to pay anything except my lawyer's fee, which I paid to Mr. William Smith. I never was taken to court.
Miss Dora Small testified that she worked at the factory and saw Jim Conley on the fourth floor Tuesday. "I did not see Frank talk to Conley," she said. Later, she said, "Jim worried me with money so he could buy a newspaper, and every time he heard a newsboy yell 'Extra!' Jim would go to me and beg to see the paper before I finished reading." She continued by stating that Conley's reputation for truth and veracity was bad.
Miss Julia Fuss said, after being sworn in, "I work on the fourth floor of the factory and I talked to him (Conley) Wednesday morning after the murder. He told me he believed Mr. Frank was just as innocent as the angels from heaven." Further she said, "Jim was never known to tell the truth."
On cross-examination, she testified that Frank came up the stairs Tuesday where Conley was but she did not see them talking.
In all, forty-nine women employees at the pencil factory testified that Leo Frank's general reputation and his reputation for moral rectitude was good.
No one realized when Alonzo Mann, Frank's office boy, testified that it would be his revelations sixty-nine years later which brought the Leo Frank-Mary Phagan murder case once again into national prominence.
I am office boy at the National
Pencil Company. I began working there
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The Case for the Defense
left the factory at
Despite Jim Conley's allegations that Leo Frank had said, "You know I ain't built like other men;" several physicians who examined Frank during his incarceration testified that he was anatomically normal. Other physicians tried to ascertain more precisely the exact time of Mary Phagan's death by giving their opinions on the digestive processes entailed after Mary's last meal, but they were largely unsuccessful as there was much difference of opinion.
Fifty-six
associates of Frank at
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
preference to sworn testimony. The prisoner shall not be compelled to answer any questions on cross-examination. He should feel free to decline to answer. Now you can make such statements as you see fit." Concluding the defense's case, Frank submitted a lengthy statement on the stand and he refused to be cross-examined. He spoke for four hours:
Gentlemen of the Jury: In the year
1884, on the 17th day of April, I was born in
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The Case for the Defense
ately came South to
On my arrival at the factory, I found Mr. Holloway, the day watchman, at his usual place, and I greeted him in my usual way; I found Alonzo Mann, the office boy, in the outer office. I took off my coat and hat and opened my desk and opened the safe, and assorted the various books and files and wire trays containing the various papers that were placed there the evening before, and distributed them in their proper places about the office. I then went out to the shipping room and conversed a few minutes with Mr. Irby, who at that time was shipping clerk, concerning the work which he was going to do that morning, though, to the best of my recollection, we did no shipping that day, due to the fact that the freight offices were not receiving any shipments, due to its being a holiday. I returned to my office and looked through the papers, and assorted out those which I was going to take over on my usual trip to the General Manager's office that morning. . . . Of all the mathematical work in the office of the pencil factory, this very operation, this very piece of work that I have now before me, is the most important, it is the invoices covering shipments that are sent to customers, and it is very important that the prices be correct, that the amount of goods shipped agrees with the amount which is on the invoice, and that the terms are correct, and that the address is correct, and also in some cases, I don't know whether there is one like that here, there are freight deductions, all of
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
which have to be very carefully checked over and looked into, because I know of nothing else that exasperates a customer more than to receive invoices that are incorrect; moreover, on this morning, this operation of this work took me longer than it usually takes an ordinary person to complete the checking of the invoices, because usually one calls out and the other checks, but I did this work all by myself that morning, and as I went over these invoices, I noticed that Miss Eubanks, the day before, had evidently sacrificed ac-curacy to speed, and every one of them was wrong, so I had to go alone over the whole invoice, and I had to make the corrections as I went along, figure them out, extend them, make deductions for freight, if there were any to be made, and then get the total shipments, because, when these shipments were made on April 24th, which was Thursday, this was the last day of our fiscal week, it was on this that I made that financial sheet which I make out every Saturday after-noon, as has been my custom, it is on this figure of total shipments I make that out, so necessarily it would be the total shipments for the week that had to be figured out, and I had to figure every invoice and arrange it in its entirety so I could get a figure that I would be able to use. . . .
I started on this work, as I said, and had gone into it in some detail, to show you the carefulness with which the work must be carried out. I was at work on this one at about nine o'clock, as near as I remember, Mr. Darley and Mr. Wade Campbell, the inspector of the factory, came into the outer office, and I stopped what work I was doing that day on this work, and went to the outer office and chatted with Mr. Darley and Mr. Campbell for ten or fifteen minutes, and conversed with them, and joked with them, and while I was talking to them, I should figure about
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The Case for the Defense
nine fifteen, a quarter after nine,
Miss Mattie Smith came in and asked me for her pay envelope, and for that of
her sister-in-law and I went to the safe and unlocked it and got out the
package of envelopes that Mr. Schiff had given me the evening before, and gave
her the required two envelopes, and placed the remaining envelopes that I got
out, that were left over from the day previous, in my cash box, where I would
have them handy in case others might come in, and I wanted to have them near at
hand without having to jump up and go to the safe every time in order to get
them; I keep my cash box in the lower drawer on the left hand side of my desk.
After Miss Smith had gone away with the envelopes, a few minutes, Mr. Darley
came back with the envelopes, and pointed out to me an error in one of them,
either the sister-in-law of Miss Mattie Smith, she had gotten too much money,
and when I had deducted the amount that was too much, that amount balanced the
payroll, the error in the payroll that I had noticed the night before, and left
about five or ten cents over; those things usually right themselves anyhow. I
continued to work on those invoices, when I was interrupted by Mr. Lyons,
Superintendent of Montag Brothers, coming in, he brought me a pencil display
box that we call the Panama assortment box, and he left it with me, he seemed
to be in a hurry, and I told him if he would wait for a minute I would go over
to Montag Brothers with him, as I was going over there; and he stepped out to
the outer office, and as soon as I come to a convenient stopping place in the
work, I put the papers I had made out to take with me in a folder, and put on
my hat and coat and went to the outer office, when I found that Mr. Lyons had
already left. Mr. Darley left with me, about
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at the corner of Hunter and Forsyth Streets, where we each had a drink at Cruickshank's soda fount, where I bought a package of favorite cigarettes, and after we had our drink, we conversed together there for some time, and I lighted a cigarette and told him good-bye, as he went in one direction, and I went on my way then to Montag Brothers where I arrived, as nearly as may be, at ten o'clock, or a little after; on entering Montag Brothers, I spoke to Mr. Sig Montag, the General Manager of the business, and then the papers which I collected, which lay on his desk, I took the papers out and transferred them into the folder, and distributed them at the proper places at Montag Brothers. I don't know just what papers they were, but I know there were several of them, and I went on chatting with Mr. Montag, and I spoke to Mr. Matthews, and Mr. Cross, of the Montag Brothers, and after that I spoke to Miss Hattie Hall, the pencil company's stenographer, who stays at Montag Brothers, and asked her to come over and help me that morning; as I have already told you, practically every one of these invoices was wrong, and I wanted her to help me on that work, and in dictating the mail; in fact, I told her I had enough work to keep her busy that whole afternoon if she would agree to stay, but she said she didn't want to do that, she wanted to have at least half a holiday on Memorial Day. I then spoke to several of the Montag Brothers' force on business matters and other matters, and after that I saw Harry Gottheimer, the sales manager of the National Pencil Company, and I spoke at some length with him in reference to several of his orders that were in work at the factory, there were two of his orders especially that he laid special stress on, as he said he desired to ship them right away, and I told him I didn't know how far along in process of manu-
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facture the orders had proceeded, but
if he would go back with me then I would be very glad to look for it, and then
tell him when we could ship them, and he said he couldn't go right away, he was
busy, but he would come a little later, and I told him I would be glad for him
to come over later that morning or in the afternoon, as I would be there until
about one o'clock, and after three. I then took my folder and returned to
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afternoon, and to my surprise I found
that the sheet which contains the record of pencils packed for the week didn't
include the report for Thursday, the day the fiscal week ends; Mr. Schiff
evidently, in the stress of getting up, figuring out, and filling the envelopes
for the payroll on Friday, instead of, as usual, on Friday and half the day
Saturday, had evidently not had enough time. I told Alonzo Mann, the office
boy, to call up Mr. Schiff, and find out when he was coming down, and Alonzo
told me the answer came back over the telephone that Mr. Schiff would be right
down, so I didn't pay any more attention to that part of the work, because I
expected Mr. Schiff to come down any minute. It was about this time that Mrs.
Emma Clark Freeman and Miss Corinthia Hall, two of the girls who worked on the
fourth floor, came in, and asked permission to go upstairs and get Mrs.
Freeman's coat, which I readily gave, and I told them at the same time to tell
Arthur White that his wife was downstairs. A short time after they left my
office, two gentlemen came in, one of them a Mr. Graham, and the other the
father of a boy by the name of Earle Burdette; these two boys had gotten into
some sort of trouble during the
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give her, and she went out and was
typewriting the mail; before these girls finished the typewriting of these
letters and brought them to my desk to read over and sign, which work I
started. Miss Clark and Miss Hall left the office, as near as may be, at a
Miss Hall left my office on her way home at this time, and to the best of my information there were in the building Arthur White and Harry Denham and Arthur White's wife on the top floor. To the best of my knowledge, it must have been from ten to fifteen minutes after Miss Hall left my office, when this little girl, whom I afterwards found to be Mary Phagan, entered my office and asked for her pay envelope. I asked for her number and she told me; I went to the cash box and took her envelope out and handed it to her identifying the envelope by the number. She left my office and apparently had gotten as far as the door from my office leading to the outer office, when she evidently stopped and asked me if the metal had arrived, and I told her, no. She continued on her way out and I heard the sound of her footsteps as she went away. It was a few moments after she asked me this question that I had an impression of a female voice saying something; I don't know which way it came from; just passed away and I had that impression. This little girl had evidently worked in the metal department by her question and had been laid off owing to the fact that some metal that had been ordered had not arrived at the factory; hence, her question. I only recognized this little girl from having seen her around the plant and did not know her name, simply identifying her envelope from her having called her number to me.
She had left the plant hardly five minutes when
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Lemmie Quinn, the foreman of the
plant, came in and told me that I could not keep him away from the factory,
even though it was a holiday; at which I smiled and kept on working. He first
asked me if Mr. Schiff had come down and I told him he had not and he turned
around and left. I continued work until I finished this work and these
requisitions and I looked at my watch and noticed that it was a quarter to one.
I called my home up on the telephone, for I knew that my wife and my
mother-in-law were going to the matinee and I wanted to know when they would have
lunch. I got my house and Minola answered the phone and she answered me back
that they would have lunch immediately and for me to come right on home. I then
gathered my papers together and went upstairs to see the boys on the top floor.
This must have been, since I had just looked at my watch, ten minutes to one. I
noticed in the evidence of one of the witnesses, Mrs. Arthur White, she states
it was
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office and locked the doors to the street and started to go home.
Now, gentlemen, to the best of my recollection from the time the whistle blew for twelve o'clock until a quarter to one when I went upstairs and spoke to Arthur White and Harry Denham, to the best of my recollection, I did not stir out of the inner office; but it is possible that in order to answer a call of nature or to urinate I may have gone to the toilet. Those are things that a man does unconsciously and can not tell how many times not when he does it. Now, sitting in my office at my desk, it is impossible for me to see out into the outer hall when the safe door is open, as it was that morning, and not only is it impossible for me to see out, but it is impossible for people to see in and see me there.
I continued on up Forsyth to Alabama and down Alabama to Whitehall where I waited a few minutes for a car, and after a few minutes a Georgia Avenue car came along; I took it and arrived home at about one twenty. When I arrived at home, I found that my wife and my mother-in-law were eating their dinner, and my father-in-law had just sat down and started his dinner. I sat down to dinner and before I had taken anything, I turned in my chair to the telephone, which is right behind me and called up my brother-in-law to tell him that on account of some work I had to do at the factory, I would be unable to go with him, he having invited me to go with him out to the ballgame. I succeeded in getting his residence and his cook answered the phone and told me that Mr. Ursenbach had not come back home. I told her to give him a message for me, that I would be unable to go with him. I turned around and continued eating my lunch, and after a few minutes my wife and mother-in-law
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
finished their dinner and left and
told me goodbye. My father-in-law and myself continued eating our dinner,
Minola McKnight serving us. After finishing dinner, my father-in-law said he
would go out in the back yard to look after his chickens and I lighted a
cigarette and laid down. After a few minutes I got up and walked up
Then I walked on down Whitehall on
the side of Mr. M. Rich & Bros. Store towards Brown and Allens; when I got
in front of M. Rich & Bros. store, I stood there between half past two and
a few minutes to three o'clock until the parade passed entirely; then I crossed
the street and went on down to Jacobs and went in and purchased twenty five
cents worth of cigars. I then left the store and went on down
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Street to the factory. I unlocked the street door and then unlocked the inner door and left it open and went on upstairs to tell the boys that I had come back and wanted to know if they were ready to go, and at that time they were preparing to leave. I went immediately down to my office and opened the safe and my desk and hung up my coat and hat and started to work on the financial report, which I will explain. Mr. Schiff had not come down and there was additional work for me to do.
In a few minutes after I started to
work on the financial sheet, which I am going to take up in a few minutes, I
heard the bell ring on the time clock outside and Arthur White and Harry Denham
came into the office and Arthur White borrowed $2.00 from me in advance on his
wages. I had gotten to work on the financial sheet, figuring it out, when I
happened to go out to the lavatory and on returning to the office, the door
pointed out directly in front, I noticed Newt Lee, the watchman, coming from
towards the head of the stairs, coming towards me. I looked at the clock and
told him the night before to come back at
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the plant, first, second, and third floors and into the basement, and told him that he would be required, that it was his duty, to go over that entire building every half hour; not only to completely tour the upper four floors but to go down to the basement; and I specially stressed the point that that dust bin along here was one of the most dangerous places for a fire and I wanted him to be sure and go back there every half hour and to be careful how he held his lantern. I told him it was a part of his duty to look after and lock that back door and he fully understood it, and I showed him the cut-off for the electric current and told him in case of fire that ought to be pulled so no fireman coming in would be electrocuted. I explained everything to him in detail and told him he was to make that tour every half hour and stamp it on the time card and that that included the basement of the building. . . . Now, on one of these slips, Newt Lee would register his punches Saturday night, and on Sunday night he would register his punches on the other. His punches on Monday night would be registered on two new slips that would be put into the clock on Monday night. As I was putting these time slips into the clock, as mentioned, I saw Newt Lee coming up the stairs, and looking at the clock, it was as near as may be six o'clock—looking straight at the clock; I finished putting the slip in and went back to wash up, and as I was washing, I heard Newt Lee ring the bell on the clock when he registered his first punch for the night, and he went downstairs to the front door to await my departure; after washing, I went downstairs—I put on my hat and coat—got my hat and top coat and went downstairs to the front door. As I opened the front door, I saw outside on the street, on the street side of the door, Newt Lee in conversation with Mr. J. M. Gantt, a man that I had
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let go from the office two weeks
previous. They seemed to be in discussion, and Newt Lee told me that Mr. Gantt
wanted to go back up into the factory, and he had refused his admission,
because his instructions were for no one to go back into the factory after he
went out, unless he got contrary instructions from Mr. Darley or myself. I
spoke to Mr. Gantt, and asked him what he wanted, he said he had a couple of
pairs of shoes, black pair and tan pair, in the shipping room. I told Newt Lee
it would be all right to pass Gantt in and Gantt went in, Newt Lee closed the
door, locking it after him—I heard the bolt turn in the door. I then walked up
Forsyth Street to Alabama, down Alabama to Broad Street, where I posted the two
letters, one to my uncle, Mr. M. Frank, and one to Mr. Pappenheimer, a few
minutes after six, and continued on my way down to Jacobs Whitehall and Alabama
Street store, where I went in and got a drink at the soda fount, and bought my
wife a box of candy. I then caught the
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went down to answer the telephone, and a man's voice spoke to me over the phone and said—I after-wards found out this man that spoke to me was City Detective Starnes—said "Is this Mr. Frank, Superintendent of the National Pencil Company?" I said, "Yes, sir," he says, "I want you to come down to the factory right away," I says, "What's the trouble, has there been a fire?" He says, "No, a tragedy, I want you to come down right away," I says, "All right," he says, "I'll send an automobile for you," I says, "All right," and hung up and went upstairs to dress. I was in the midst of dressing to go with the people who should come for me in the automobile, when the automobile drove up, the bell rang, and my wife went downstairs to answer the door. She had on—just had a night dress with a robe over it. I followed my wife—I wasn't completely dressed at that time—didn't have any trousers and shirt on—I went downstairs—followed my wife in a minute or two. I asked them what the trouble was, and the man who I afterwards found out was Detective Black, hung his head and didn't say anything. Now, at this point, these two witnesses, Mr. Rogers and Mr. Black, differ with me on the place where the conversation occurred—I say, to the best of my recollection, it occurred right there in the house in front of my wife; they say it occurred just as I left the house, in the automobile; but be that as it may, this is the conversation: They asked me did I know Mary Phagan, I told them I didn't, they said to me, "Didn't a little girl with long hair hanging down her back come up to your office yesterday sometime for her money—a little girl who works in the tipping plant?" I says, "Yes, I do remember such a girl coming up to my office, that worked in the tipping room, but I didn't know her name was Mary Phagan." "Well, we want you to come down right away with us to the
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factory," and I finished dressing; and as they had said they would bring me right away back, I didn't have breakfast, but went right on with them in the automobile, made the trip to the undertaking establishment very quickly—I mean, they made the trip downtown very quickly, and stopped at the corner of Mitchell and Pryor Streets, told me they were going to take me to the undertaker's first, that they wanted me to see the body and see if I could identify the little girl. I went with them to the undertaking establishment and one of the two men asked the attendant to show us the way into where the body was, and the attendant went down a long dark passageway with Mr. Rogers following, then I came, and Black brought up the rear; we walked down this long passageway until we got to a place that was apparently the door to a small room—very dark in there, the attendant went on and suddenly switched on the electric light, and I saw the body of the little girl. Mr. Rogers walked in the room and stood to my right, inside of the room. I stood right in the door, leaning up against the right facing the door, and Mr. Black was to the left, leaning on the left facing, but a little to my rear, and the attendant, whose name I have since learned was Mr. Chessling, [sic] was on the opposite side of the little cooling table to where I stood—in other words, the table was between him and me; he re-moved the sheet which was covering the body, and took the head in his hands, turned it over, put his finger exactly where the wound in the left side back of the head was located—put his finger right on it; I noticed the hands and arms of the little girl were very dirty—blue and ground with dirt and cinders, the nostrils and mouth—the mouth being open—nostrils and mouth just full of sawdust and swollen, and there was a deep scratch over the left eye on the forehead;
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about the neck, there was twine—a
piece of cord similar to that which is used at the pencil factory and also a
piece of white rag. After looking at the body, I identified that little girl as
the one that had been up shortly after
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try his hand—he's a great deal larger man and a great deal stronger man than I was—so he was successful in getting it loose—it seemed like the chain which runs down in the basement had slipped a cog and gotten out of gear and needed somebody to force it back; however, Mr. Darley was successful in getting it loose, and it started up, and I got on and the detectives got on and I caught hold of the rope and it worked all right.
In the basement, the officers showed us just about where the body was found, just beyond the partition of the Clark Woodenware Company, and in behind the door to the dust bin, they showed us where they found the hat and slipper on the trash pile, and they showed us where the back door, where the door to the rear was opened about eighteen inches. After looking about the basement, we all went upstairs and Mr. Darley and myself got some cords and some nails and hammer and went down the basement again to lock up the back door, so that we could seal the factory from the back, and nobody would enter. After returning upstairs, Mr. Darley and myself accompanied Chief Lanford on a tour of inspection through the three upper floors of the factory, to the second floor, to the third floor and to the fourth floor, we looked into each bin, and each partition, and each dressing room and looked into that very dressing room that has figured so prominently in this trial, and neither Mr. Darley nor myself noticed anything peculiar on that floor, nor did Sergeant Lanford, Chief of the Atlanta detectives, notice anything peculiar. . . .
Now, gentlemen, I have heard a great deal, and have you, in this trial, about nervousness, about how nervous I was that morning. Gentlemen, I was nervous, I was completely unstrung, I will admit it; imag-
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ine, awakened out of my sound sleep, and a morning run down in the cool of the morning in an automobile driven at top speed, without any food or breakfast, rushing into a dark passageway, coming into a darkened room, and then suddenly an electric light flashed on, and to see that sight that was presented by that poor little child; why, it was a sight that was enough to drive a man to distraction; that was a sight that would have made a stone melt; and then it is suspicious, because a man who is ordinary flesh and blood should show signs of nervousness. Just imagine that little girl, in the first blush of young womanhood, had had her life so cruelly snuffed out, might a man not be nervous who looked at such a sight? Of course I was nervous; any man would be nervous if he was a man. We went with the officers in the automobile, Mr. Rogers was at the driving wheel, and Mr. Darley sat next to him, I sat on Mr. Darley's lap, and in the back was Newt Lee and two officers. We rode to headquarters very quickly and on arrival there Mr. Darley and I went up to Chief Lanford's office where I sat and talked and answered every one of their questions freely and frankly, and discussed the matter in general with them, trying to aid and to help them in any way that I could. It seemed that, that morning the notes were not readily accessible, or for some other reason I didn't get to see them, so I told them on leaving there that I would come back that afternoon, which I ultimately did; after staying there a few minutes, Mr. Darley and myself left, and inasmuch as Mr. Darley hadn't seen the body of the little girl, we went over to Bloomfield's on Pryor Street and Mitchell, and when we went into the establishment, they told us somebody was busy with the body at that time and we couldn't see it, and we started to leave, when we met a certain person with whom we made
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arrangements to watch the building, because Newt Lee was in custody at that time... .
I was working
along in the regular routine of my work, in the factory and about the office,
and a little later Detectives Scott and Black came up to the factory and said:
"Mr. Frank, we want you to go down to headquarters with us," and I
went with them. We went down to headquarters and I have been incarcerated every
since. We went down to headquarters in an automobile and they took me up to Chief
Lanford's office. I sat up there and answered any questions that he desired,
and I had been sitting there sometime when Detective Scott and Detective Black
came back with a bundle under their arm. They showed me a little piece of
material of some shirt, and asked me if I had a shirt of that material. I
looked at it and told them I didn't think I ever had a shirt of that
description. In the meantime they brought in Newt Lee, the night watchman,
brought him up from a cell and showed him the same sample. He looked at it and
immediately recognized it; he said he had a shirt like that, but he didn't
remember having worn it for two years, if I remember correctly, that is what he
said. Detectives Scott and Black then opened the package they had and disclosed
the full shirt [State's Ex. F] of that material that had all the appearance of
being freshly stained with blood, and had a very distinct odor. Newt Lee was
taken back to the cell. After a time Chief Lanford came over to me and began an
examination of my face and of my head and my hands and my arms. I suppose he
was trying to hunt to see if he could find any scratches. I stayed in there
until about
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said to me that Chief Beavers thought it better that I should stay down there. He says: "He thinks it better that you be detained at headquarters, but if you desire, you don't need to be locked up in a cell, you can engage a supernumerary policeman who will guard you and give you the freedom of the building." I immediately acquiesced, supposing that I couldn't do anything else, and Mr. Rosser left. Now, after this time, it was about this time they took me from up-stairs down to the District Sergeant's desk and detective Starnes—John N. Starnes, I think his name is—came in and dictated from the original notes that were found near the body, dictated to me to get a sample of my handwriting. I wrote this note at the dictation of Mr. Starnes [State's Ex. K], which was given to me word by word, and of course I wrote it slowly. When a word was spelled differently they usually stopped—take this word "buy" for instance, the detective told me how that was spelled so they could see my exact letters, and compare with the original note. Now I had no hesitation in giving him a specimen of my handwriting. Now, this photograph is a reproduction of the note. You see, J. N. Starnes in the corner here, that is detective Starnes, and then is dated here. I put that there myself so I would be able to recognize it again, in case they tried any erasures or anything like that. It is a photographic reproduction of something that was written in pencil, as near as one can judge, a photographic reproduction of the note that I wrote. Detective Starnes then took me down to the desk sergeant where they searched me and entered my name on the book under a charge of suspicion. Then they took me back into a small room and I sat there for awhile while my father-in-law was arranging for a supernumerary police to guard me for the night. They took me then to a room on the top
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The Case for the Defense
of the building and I sat in the room
there and either read magazines or newspapers and talked to my friends who came
to see me until—I was about to retire at
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
here and I am here, and you had
better open up and tell all you know, and tell the truth and tell the full
truth, because you will get us both into lots of trouble if you don't tell all
you know," and he answered me like an old Negro: "Before God, Mr.
Frank, I am telling you the truth and I have told you all I know." And the
conversation ended right there. Within a minute or two afterwards the
detectives came back into the room, that is, Detective Scott and Detective
Black, and then began questioning Newt Lee, and then it was that I had my first
initiation into the third degree in
Gentlemen, I know nothing whatever of
the death of little Mary Phagan. I had no part in causing her death nor do I
know how she came to her death after she took her money and left my office. I
never even saw Conley in the factory or anywhere else on that date,
The statement of the witness
The statement of the Negro Conley is a tissue of lies from first to last. I know nothing whatever of the cause of the death of Mary Phagan and Conley's statement as to his coming up and helping me dispose of the body, or that I had anything to do with her or to do with him that day, is a monstrous lie.
The story as to women coming into the factory
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for the Defense
with me for immoral purposes is a base lie and the few occasions that he claims to have seen me in indecent positions with women is a lie so vile that I have no language with which to fitly denounce it.
I have no rich relatives in
Nobody has raised a fund to pay the fees of my attorneys. These fees have been paid by the sacrifice in part of the small property which my parents possess.
Gentlemen, some newspaper men have called me "the silent man in the tower," and I kept my silence and my counsel advisedly, until the proper time and place. The time is now, the place is here, and I have told you the truth, the whole truth.
On rebuttal, the state called more than seventy witnesses. A friend of Minola McKnight's husband and the maid's attorney, George Gordon, testified that Minola said she made a complete and true statement to the police of everything she knew. Her damaging affidavit referred to Frank's drinking on the night of the murder, sleeping restlessly, and threatening to kill himself with a pistol.
Two witnesses, O. Tillander and E. K. Graham, who had come to the factory to obtain their sons' money, testified they saw a Negro about the same size as Conley at the stairs on the first floor but swore they could not positively identify him.
Fourteen
witnesses testified that
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
witnesses testified that the woman's reputation for truth and veracity was bad.
Three witnesses testified that they had seen Frank talk to Mary Phagan frequently and call her by her first name. Others testified to seeing him touch her and attempt to intercept her for conversation. Testimony was introduced that her machine was just a few feet from the men's second floor restroom on the same floor as Frank's office.
At the climax of the prosecution's rebuttal, twenty women, former employees of the pencil company, testified that Frank's reputation for lascivious conduct was bad. None were cross-examined so their testimony went unchallenged. Since they were not cross-examined, Dorsey was unable to examine them as to the details on which they based their conclusions as to Frank's bad character. Three residents of homes for unwed mothers, formerly employees of the factory, had been called by the state to testify as to Frank's bad character, but Judge Roan did not permit the jury to hear their testimony.
An example of the testimony by Nellie Wood:
Q. Do you know Mr. Frank?
A. I worked for him two days.
Q. Did you observe his conduct toward the girls?
A. His conduct didn't suit me very much.
Q. You say he put his hands on you; is that all he ever did?
A. Well, he asked me, one evening—I went into his office, and he got too familiar and too close.
Q. Did he put his hands on you?
A. Well, I did not let him complete what he started. I resisted him.
Q. Did he put his hands on your breast?
A. No, but he tried to.
Q. Well, did he make any attempts on your lower limbs?
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The Case for the Defense
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And on your dress?
A. Yes, sir.
Defense Attorney Arnold argued to the jury: "We are not trying this case on whether you or I or Frank have been perfect in the past. This is a case of murder. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." But this evidence provided the motive for the crime.
In their closing arguments, Frank's counsel asserted that Frank could not have committed the murder, moved the body, and dealt with Jim Conley as the sweeper alleged in the thirty to forty-five minutes Frank was unable to account for. For three and one-half hours, defense attorney Luther Rosser pleaded for Frank's life:
Gentlemen, take a look at this spectacle, if you can. Here is a Jewish boy from the North. He is unacquainted with the South. He came here alone and without friends and he stood alone.
This murder happened in his place of business. He told the Pinkertons to find the man, trusting to them entirely, no matter where or what they found might strike. He is defenseless and helpless. He knows his innocence and is willing to find the murderer. They try to place the murder on him. God, all merciful and all powerful, look upon a scene like this.
The thing that arises in this case to fatigue my imagination is that men born of such parents should believe the statement of Conley against the statement of Frank. Who is Conley? Who was Conley as he used to be and as you have seen him? He was a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger. Who was it that made this dirty nigger come up here looking so slick? Why didn't they let you see him as he was? They shaved him, washed him, and dressed him up. Gentlemen of the jury, the charge of moral perversion against a
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
man is a
terrible thing for him, but it is even more so when that man has a wife and
mother to be affected by it.
Gentlemen, I want only the straight truth here, and I have yet to believe that the truth has to be watched and cultivated by these detectives and by seven visits of the Solicitor General. I don't believe any man, no matter what his race, ought to be tried under such testimony. If I was raising sheep and feared for my lambs, I might hand a yellow dog on it. I might do it in the daytime, but when things got quiet at night and I got to thinking, I'd be ashamed of myself. You have been overly kind to me, gentlemen. True, you have been up against a situation like that old Sol Russell used to describe when he would say, "Well, I've lectured off and on for forty years, and the benches always stuck it out, but they was screwed to the floor." You gentlemen have been practically in that fix, but I feel, nevertheless, that you have been peculiarly kind, and I thank you.
Reuben Arnold then addressed the
jurors: "If Frank hadn't been a Jew, there never would have been any
prosecution against him," he said, and called the case against Frank
"the greatest frame-up in the history of the state." He then compared
the case with the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the French soldier and Jewish
descendant who had been condemned to
There were two
witnesses who quoted anti-Semitic remarks of others. T.Y. Brent, sworn for the
defendant in sur-rebuttal, said: "I have heard George Kendley on several
occasions express himself very bitterly towards Leo Frank. He said he felt in
this case just as he did about a couple of 'niggers' hung down in
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The Case for the Defense
know whether they had been guilty or not but somebody had to be hung for killing those street car men and it was just as good to hang one nigger as another, and that Frank was nothing but an old Jew and they ought to take him out and hang anyhow." S.L. Asher, sworn for the defendant in sur-rebuttal, said: "About two weeks ago I was coming to town between five and ten minutes to one on the car and there was a man who was talking very loud about the Frank case and all of a sudden he said, 'They ought to take that damn Jew out and hang him anyway.' I took his number down to report him."
Solicitor-General Hugh Dorsey's summation was much longer. He spoke until court adjourned, six more hours on Saturday and three Monday morning. Dorsey said:
I say to you here and now that the race from which that man comes in as good as our race. His ancestors were civilized when ours were cutting each other up and eating human flesh; his race is just as good as ours—just as good but no better.
I honor the race that produced a
Disraeli—the greatest prime minister that
I honor the Strauss brothers—Oscar,
the diplomat, and the man who went down with his wife by his side on the
Titanic. I roomed with one of his race at college; one of his race is my law
partner. I served with old man Joe Hirsch on the Board of Trustees of the
But, on the other hand [he then related crimes
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
that had been committed by Jews] these great people are amenable to the same laws as you and I and the black race. They rise to heights sublime, but they sink to depths of degradation.
Gentlemen, every act of that defendant proclaims him guilty. Gentlemen, every word of that defendant proclaims him responsible for the death of this little factory girl. Gentlemen, every circumstance in this case proves him guilty of this crime. Extraordinary? Yes, but nevertheless true, just as true as Mary Phagan is dead.
She died a noble death, not a blot on her name. She died because she wouldn't yield her virtue to the demands of her superintendent. I have no purpose and have never had from the beginning in this case that you oughtn't to have, as a honest, upright citizen.
In the language of Daniel Webster, I desire to remind you "that when a jury, through whimsical and unfounded scruples, suffers the guilt of escape, they make themselves answerable for the augmented danger to the innocent."
Your honor, I have done my duty. I have no apology to make. There can be but one verdict, and that is: We the jury find the defendant, Leo M. Frank, guilty, GUILTY! GUILTY!
As Dorsey
uttered these words, the
Before Fulton Superior Court Judge
L.S. Roan charged the jury, he asked to see all counsel in his chambers where
he showed them letters from the editors of three of
Impatient Crowd Waiting for Doors
to Open for Frank
Crowds outside the
Lucille and Leo Frank during the
trial.
Left to right: Chief of
Detectives Newport Lanford, Jim Conley and Chief of Police James L. Beavers.
The
trial. Leo Frank, seated between his wife and mother, is in front of
the judge's bench. Attorney's Reuben Arnold and Luther Rosser, Jr., are seated
at the adjacent table. Solicitor-General Hugh Dorsey, standing to the rear of
the table, addresses the court.
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The Case for the Defense
that both counsel agree that the
defendant not be present in the courtroom when the jury told their verdict in
case of acquittal. The state militia was alerted. The defense counsel agreed to
Frank's absence a well as their own. Solicitor-General Dorsey gave his consent
only after Rosser and
Within four hours, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Dorsey wept as he polled the jury. A wild demonstration was begun by the large crowd outside the courtroom, but inside there was little demonstration. J. W. Coleman, little Mary's stepfather, walked over to the jury box with tears streaming down his face, and silently thanked each man on the jury with a grip of his hand. He then turned to Judge Roan, and shaking his hand, thanked him for the pains he had taken with the trial and for his fair dealing with all parties concerned.
He made the following statement to a Constitution reporter:
I want to say that I am entirely satisfied with the manner in which the trial has been conducted and also with the verdict returned.
I knew by looking at the faces of the jurors as they were chosen that they were all men who could be relied upon to give fair and careful consideration to each point and that they were of the high type of character who would give their best efforts as citizens of this commonwealth without thought of themselves to determine the guilt or innocence of Leo Frank.
I would not, for any consideration, like to see an innocent man pay the death penalty, but I feel sure that anyone in the world who has kept up with the trial in all its phases and with every scrap of evidence submitted, would have found Frank guilty as these honorable gentlemen have done. I am deeply grateful to them and to Judge Roan.
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Hugh Dorsey, upon emerging from the courtroom building, was seized by the laughing, cheering, rejoicing crowd and passed bodily over the heads of the crowd to his office across the street.
Later, Fannie Phagan Coleman, who had been unable to attend court that day, told another Constitution reporter,
I could not begin to tell you how glad and relieved I feel now that it is all over.
For weeks I have felt that I just could not sleep another wink for thinking of that man Frank, and the possibility that he might escape the consequences of his crime. I have felt satisfied all the time that he was guilty, and the verdict of the jury is no surprise to me. They are good, noble men, and should be commended by all for doing their duty as they have done. I do not see how anyone who has read all the evidence could possibly think there is the smallest doubt as to Frank's guilt.
I have not been well for the last week, and my mother also has been sick, so you see I could not attend all the sessions of the court, but I have gone as often as possible, and I have read every line regarding the progress of the trial published in the papers. I hope that they will not be hard on that Conley Negro. Although he lied a great deal at first, he did turn round and tell the whole truth at last, and in my opinion, he should be let off with a light sentence.
The only real regret I feel about the entire trial is that I was unable to attend court this afternoon, and shake hands with each member of the jury and with Judge Roan. I will take the first opportunity of seeing every one of them and thanking them for the patient, careful consideration they have shown to everything connected with the trial any way.
The Case for the Defense
Rabbi Marx sat with Frank and his
wife at the
Chapter 6
SENTENCING
Because Judge Roan feared a public uprising against Leo Frank, he secretly brought Frank and the other principals together in the courtroom for the formal sentencing. The sentence read:
Whereupon, it is considered, ordered and adjudged by the Court that the defendant, Leo M. Frank, be taken from the bar of this court to the common jail of the county of Fulton, and that he be safely there kept until his final execution in the manner fixed by law.
It is further ordered and adjudged by the Court that on the 10th day of October, 1913, the defendant, Leo M. Frank, shall be executed by the Sheriff of Fulton County in private, witnessed only by the executing officer, a sufficient guard, the relatives of such defendant and such clergymen and friends as he may desire, such execution to take place in the common jail of Fulton County and that said defendant, on that day, between the hours of ten o'clock a.m. and two o'clock p.m., be by the Sheriff of Fulton County hanged by the neck until he shall be dead, and may God have mercy on his soul.
In Open Court, this 26th day of April, 1913.
148
149
Sentencing and Aftermath
Frank addressed the Court: "Your Honor, I say now as I have always said, I am innocent. Further than this, my case is in the hands of my counsel."
The trial of Leo
Frank had been the longest and most expensive trial in
Upon its conclusion Rosser and Arnold said: "We deem it not amiss to make a short statement, as the attorneys of Leo M. Frank to the public.
"The trial
which has just occurred and which has resulted in Mr. Frank's conviction, was a
farce and not in any way a trial. In saying this, we do not make the least
criticism of Judge Roan, who presided. Judge Roan is one of the best men in
"The temper of the public mind was such that it invaded the courtroom and invaded the streets and made itself manifest at every turn the jury made; and it was as impossible for this jury to escape the effects of this public feeling as if they had been turned loose and had been permitted to mingle with the people.
"In doing this we are making no criticism of the jury. They were only men and unconsciously this prejudice rendered any other verdict impossible.
"It would have required a jury of stoics, a jury of Spartans, to have withstood this situation.
"The time ought to come when this man will get a fair trial, and we profoundly believe that it will.
"The final judgment of the American people is a fair one. It is sometimes delayed in coming, but it comes. "We entered into this case with the profound convic-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
tion of Mr. Frank's innocence. The result has not changed our opinion. Every step of the trial has intensified and fortified our profound conviction of his innocence."
A series of appellate moves followed.
Frank's lawyers began to prepare their appeal immediately after the sentencing. One hundred and three points were covered in this appeal, including affidavits about the alleged prejudice toward Leo Frank of two members of the jury, A. H. Henslee and M. Johenning. "They are going to break that Jew's neck," Henslee was quoted as saying to Dr. W. L. Ricker, who later swore an affidavit filed with Judge Roan prior to the trial. "He stated that Frank was guilty of murder," Ricker's testimony continued. The family of H. C. Lovenhard swore that on meeting Marcellus Johenning on the street before the trial he had told them "I know he is guilty."
Other points raised included the jurors being influenced by the crowd's demonstrations outside the court-room, that Conley's allegation of Frank's immoral activities should not have been allowed into evidence, and that the evidence did not support the verdict.
Solicitor-General Dorsey argued that the trial had been fair and countered with affidavits from eleven jurors who swore they did not hear or see demonstrations from crowds outside the courtroom and had reached their decisions solely because of the weight of the evidence. Both jurors who had been deemed prejudiced by the defense denied the charges.
Rosser and
Arnold made a final plea to Judge Roan.
On
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Sentencing and Aftermath
The ruling was
affirmed by the Georgia Supreme Court on
Not long after
the Georgia Supreme Court decision, the
Several prosecution witnesses retracted their original testimony. The first was Albert McKnight, who now said he hadn't seen Frank the day of the murder; Mrs. Nina Formby related that the police had filled her with liquor and unduly influenced her to invent the story that Frank had phoned her on the murder night asking for a room for himself and a girl. A third, George Epps, Jr., a friend of Mary Phagan's, now said he and Mary had not had a conversation aboard the trolley she rode to the factory on the day of her murder. Other witnesses conveyed that they had invented or lied about evidence because of the pressure brought by police detectives and/or Solicitor Dorsey. Later many of these same people repudiated their retractions.
In addition to repudiated testimony, the defense lawyers restudied every aspect of the Frank case. Henry Alexander, one of the defense team, made a study of the murder notes allegedly written by Conley at Frank's direction. Since these were written on old carbon pads, Alex-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
ander studied the dateline which read 190-. He concluded that the pads were at least four years old. They had been placed in the basement in 1912 along with the records of H.F. Becker, the master of machinery who signed them and was no longer employed by the company.
Mr. Alexander also alleged in a pamphlet that the words "night witch" in the note beside Mary Phagan's body, which had been interpreted to mean night watch or watchman by those who believed the notes had been written under the direction of a white man, actually referred to a Negro folk tale "when the children cry out in their sleep at night, it means that the night witches are riding them and if you don't go and wake them up, they will be found next morning strangled to death with a cord around their necks."
However, at the time the notes were discovered and read in the factory basement early in the morning of April 27, when the detectives read the words "nigt witch" on two separate occasions, Newt Lee brightly volunteered "that's me." In addition, when Conley was directed to write "night watchman" by police during his interrogation, he promptly wrote down "nigt witch," reciting that that was his nickname for the night watchman whom Conley had never met, and thus could not know that he was in fact a tall, slim black Negro.
On
Three witnesses said the state's star witness, Jim Conley, the black floor sweeper, was the killer. They were Conley's ex-girlfriend, a federal prisoner, and Conley's own lawyer.
The celebrated private detective,
William Burns, got an affidavit from Annie Maud Carter in
153
Sentencing and Aftermath
affidavit stated that Jim Conley told her he had called Mary Phagan over as she left Frank's office with her pay envelope, hit her over the head, and pushed her over a scuttle hole in the back of the building.
Annie Maud Carter also said Conley told her he wrote the notes found by the body of Mary Phagan to put the suspicion on Newt Lee, the night watchman. She gave the Burns agency some love letters from Conley which the Constitution said were "so vile and vulgar" that they couldn't be published in the newspaper. The defense contended these love letters showed that Conley had "perverted passion and lust." Among the lines pointed to by the defense as evidence of Conley's perversion were:
Give your heart to God and your ass
to me.
Now baby if you don't get out on no bond or if you do get out on bond you have that right hip for me cause if you hold your fat ass on the bottom and make papa go like a kittycat then you have won a good man, that's me. I will try to give you this world, but if you let papa put his long ugly dick up your fat ass and play on your right and left hip, just like a monkey playing on a trapeze, then Honey papa will be done played hell with you.
Solicitor-General Dorsey returned
Annie Maud Carter to
A black prisoner named Freeman told his story to the prison doctor who reported that Conley was the killer. Freeman said he and Conley were playing cards in the basement of the pencil factory and that Conley left to go up the ladder to the main floor.
Freeman said he had heard some muffled screams,
154
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
saw Conley wrestling with someone, and became so scared that he fled. He later claimed that he saw Conley with a mesh bag containing the amount of Mary Phagan's pay, $1.20.
Conley's
court-appointed attorney, William Smith, thought Frank was innocent and made a
public statement on
It has been said that Jim Conley confessed to William Smith, and a confession statement, allegedly by Conley, has been published, in, for one, Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer by Allen Lumpkin Henson, who worked in the Georgia Attorney General's office at the time of the Leo Frank trial.
The chapter of Henson's book dedicated to the Frank case contains a third-hand, or perhaps fourth-hand, account of Conley's supposed confession.
However, Walter
Smith, William Smith's son, in an article by Bob Montgomery for the
William Smith was reputed to be a very conscientious and ethical lawyer. His prime obligation was to his client. If he was charged to defend a man, he did his best to do so. And he did so in the case of Jim Conley. Smith had been appointed to defend Conley by the court and he
155
Sentencing and Aftermath
worked very closely with the prosecutor, Hugh Dorsey. From the beginning, Smith believed in Frank's guilt, as did just about everyone else. Before Jim Conley went on trial, Smith visited him in his cell and coached him in how to react in the courtroom when he was cross-examined by Frank's defense. Smith acted out the style and gyrations of Luther Rosser to Conley so well, that when the actual trial was in session and Rosser began yelling at Conley and shaking his fist in Conley's face, Conley was not rattled in the least, but, on the contrary, seemed amused. Smith went to great lengths to defend Conley and to dig up facts against Frank.
At some point in the course of the trial, Smith began to doubt that his client had been telling the truth. Because he had an obligation to defend Conley, Smith tried to get him the lightest sentence possible. Conley was convicted as an accessory to the fact and sentenced to one year on the chain gang. Smith, having fulfilled his obligation to his client, and remembering the double jeopardy clause, which assured him that Conley could never be tried for the same crime again, felt morally and legally free to do some investigating and probing on his own. He increasingly felt that Frank was innocent, and that he himself was much responsible for Frank's conviction. And he tried to convince others of Frank's innocence. He felt that he had the blood of an innocent man on his hands.
He launched a thorough investigation
which totally convinced him that Frank was innocent and that Conley was guilty.
Smith went to Governor Slaton with his conclusions, and it is quite probable
that Smith's story was important in helping Slaton reach the decision to
commute Frank's sentence. Smith's conclusions were not made public for some
time, but, when they were, he was not very popular. Public opinion went against
Smith and his family. William Smith carried a gun for protection when he walked
the streets of
156
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
threatened in so many ways that he
and his family were forced to leave
In the last years of his life, Smith's vocal cords were paralyzed and he could not speak. He carried a pad of paper on which to write messages. In the hospital room just before he died, William Smith was very weak, but he picked up a pad and scrawled the following letters: "In articles of death, I believe in the innocence and good character of Leo M. Frank."
None of this evidence was considered
by the Superior Court because in 1906 a constitutional amendment had been
passed that the only grounds for reversal of verdicts in the higher court of
Georgia were errors of law. Ruling that new evidence was not an indication of
procedural errors, on
Even before Leo Frank's trial had
ended, certain Jewish organizations and groups raised the issue of religious
prejudice. Appeals for funds for Frank's defense were made through mailing
circulars and newspaper advertisements throughout the country and particularly
in the North. This aggravated the already strong feelings against Frank in
At Frank's conviction and death
sentence, virtually every Northern newspaper proclaimed a travesty of justice.
Detectives and well-known attorneys were sent to
157
Sentencing and Aftermath
The New York
Times became
interested in the case, but they were admonished to print nothing "which
would arouse the sensitiveness of the Southern people and cause the feeling
that the North is criticizing the courts of the people of
Mass rallies
were held in
However, the
vitriolic exchanges between the Northern and Southern press helped to make the
conviction of Frank an article of faith for Southerners. At the same time, the
belief in Frank's innocence became the litmus test in the Jewish community of
On
. . . The Journal cares absolutely nothing for Frank, or for those who were engaged in his defense or prosecution. If Frank is found guilty after a fair trial, he ought to be hanged and his case should be made a horrible example to those who would destroy human life, for generations to come. . . .
Leo Frank has not had a fair trial. He has not been fairly convicted and his death without a fair trial and legal conviction will amount to judicial murder.
We say this with a full understanding of the import of our words and the responsibility that rests upon us in making this appeal. We do so, not in disrespect for the court or the lawyers or the jury. They did the best they could with the lights before them. We honor them for faithfully performing a most unpleasant duty as they saw it.
158
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
But this we do say without qualification: it was not within the power of human judges and human lawyers and human jurymen to decide impartially and without fear the guilt or innocence of an accused man under the circumstances that surrounded this trial.
The very atmosphere of the courtroom
was charged with an electric current of indignation which flashed and
scintillated before the very eyes of the jury. The courtroom and streets were
filled with an angry, determined crowd, ready to seize the defendant if the
jury had found him not guilty. (When the jury returned the guilty verdict,
Frank was not in the courtroom. He was at the
So great was the danger that the
Fifth Regiment of the National Guard was kept under arms throughout a great
part of the night, ready to rush on a moment's warning to the protection of the
defendant. The press of the city united in an earnest request to the presiding
judge to not permit the verdict of the jury to be received on Saturday as it
was known that a verdict of acquittal would cause a riot such as would shock
the country and cause Atlanta's streets to run with innocent blood. Under such
indescribable conditions as these, Frank was tried and convicted. Was a fair
trial, under these circumstances, possible?
The evidence on which he was
convicted is not clear (the evidence was circumstantial, but on the strong
side). Suppose he is hanged and it should
159
Sentencing and Aftermath
develop that the man was innocent as he claims? The people of this state would stand before the world convicted of murdering an innocent man by refusing to give him an impartial trial. Such a horrible thing is unthinkable. And yet it is possible; yea, an absolute certainty, that we are going to do that very thing unless the courts interfere.
Ought Frank to have a new trial? The question carries its own answer: Let Justice be done, though the Heavens fall.
The outbursts in the courtroom and that the police were unable to control the crowds outside were events that all three newspapers had not printed during the trial. The Journal remained quiet about these events for a year. The Atlanta Georgian, which also was silent during the trial, later called for a new trial.
This sudden announcement by the Journal brought Tom Watson into the controversy. Watson had been
defeated for Vice President of the
The fact that the Atlanta Journal was edited by Watson's political enemy, Hoke Smith, did not endear its editorial opinions to Watson, and he claimed the paper's demand for a new trial was an effort by Smith to drag the
160
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
case into politics. Repeatedly, Watson asked the questions, "Does a Jew expect extraordinary favors or immunities because of his race?" and "Who is paying for all this?" Watson described Mary Phagan as "a daughter of the people, of the common clay, of the blouse and overall, of those who earn bread in the sweat of the face and who, in so many instances, are the chattel slaves of a sordid commercialism that has no milk of human kindness in its heart of stone."
Employment of
Burns Detective Agency by Frank supporters after the trial further inflamed
Georgians. Burns offered a thousand-dollar reward to anyone who could provide
evidence that Frank was a sexual pervert. No one came forward. The reward was
increased to five thousand dollars. No one came forward. Burns also brought
forth evidence given to him by the Reverend C.B. Ragsdale, pastor of the
A Burns' operative, Mr. Tobie, had earlier been retained by members of the Phagan family and their neighbors to investigate the murder and discover the murderer. After several weeks of investigating, Tobie at length re-signed from the matter, but announced that he, like Scott of the Pinkerton Agency, the detectives of the Atlanta Police Department, and Dorsey's staff, had concluded that Frank was the guilty party.
Dorsey alleged in court that Burns tried to bribe witnesses to give false testimony and finally Burns's connection was dropped.
The hearing on
extraordinary motion for a new trial was based on the absence of Frank at the
reception of the verdict. This absence was agreed on by the defense,
prosecutors, and Frank. This motion was denied on
161
Sentencing and Aftermath
On
"Of course we are speaking only of the case made by the petition, and whether it ought to be heard. Upon allegations of this gravity in our opinion it ought to be heard, whatever the decision of the state court may have been. . . . It may be that on a hearing a different complex-ion would be given to the judge's alleged request and expression of fear. But supposing the alleged facts to be true, we are of opinion that if they were before the Supreme Court [of Georgia] it sanctioned a situation upon which the Courts of the United States should act, and if for any reason they were not before the Supreme Court, it is our duty to act upon them now and to declare lynch law as little valid when practiced by a regularly drawn jury as when administered by one elected by a mob intent on death."
162
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
The only hope
left for Frank was Governor John Slaton. Frank's attorneys appealed to Slaton
for a commutation of his sentence from hanging to life imprisonment. Slaton
referred this request to the State Prison Commission and asked them to pass
their recommendation to the governor. Meanwhile, Frank's attorneys filed an
appeal for a clemency hearing before the three-man Georgia Prison Commission.
The hearing date was scheduled for
On
Tom Watson commented that Roan was "out of his mind." Some members of Roan's family doubted the authenticity of the letter for years. They indicate that at the time the letter was written, Judge Roan's physical and mental state were critical. They also stated that one of Frank's lawyers went to the sanitorium and it was at this time that the letter was written and signed by Roan. The family also felt that since Judge Roan refused Frank a new trial, the letter causes some questions. However, Roan's rational mental state was attested to by Dr. Wallace E. Brown, owner of the Berkshire Hills Sanitorium:
Personally appeared before the
undersigned authority, Wallace E. Brown, who being duly sworn, deposes and says
on oath, that he is owner and proprietor of the Berkshire Hills Sanitorium,
that he has been a resident of
163
Sentencing and Aftermath
tically all his entire life; that he
is now serving his third term as mayor of the city of
Deponent says that on
December, 1914
Rosser & Brandon & R.R.
Arnold,
Attys. for Leo M. Frank.
Gentlemen:—
After considering your communication, asking that I recommend executive clemency in the punishment of Leo M. Frank I wish to say, that at the proper time, I shall ask the Prison Commission to recommend, and the Governor to commute Frank's sentence to life imprisonment. This, however, I will not do until the defendant's application shall have been filed and the Governor and Prison Commission shall have had opportunity to study the record in the case.
It is possible that I showed undue deference to the opinion of the jury in this case, when I allowed their verdict to stand. They said by their verdict that they had found the truth. I was still in a state of uncertainty, and so expressed myself. My search for the truth, though diligent and earnest, had not been so successful. In the exercise of judicial discretion, restricted and limited, according to my interpretation of the decisions of the reviewing courts, I allowed the jury's verdict to remain undisturbed. I had no way of knowing it was erroneous.
After many months of continued deliberation I am still uncertain of Frank's guilt. This state of uncertainty is largely due to the character of the Negro
164
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Conley's testimony, by which the verdict was evidently reached.
Therefore I consider this a case in which the chief magistrate of the state should exert every effort in ascertaining the truth. The execution of any person, whose guilt has not been satisfactorily proven to the constituted authorities, is too horrible to contemplate. I do not believe that a person should meet with the extreme penalty of the law until the Court, Jury, and Governor shall all have been satisfied of that person's guilt. Hence, at the proper time, I shall express and enlarge upon these views directly to the Governor and Prison Commission.
However, if for any cause, I am prevented from doing this, you are at liberty to use this letter at the hearing.
Very truly yours,
:SEAL L.S. Roan
Deponent heard Judge Roan dictate the letter hereinbefore copied and saw him read and sign the same. Prior to the time Judge Roan dictated and signed said letter he had stated to deponent that he was not convinced of Frank's guilt, and that if executive clemency should ever be asked for Frank that he intended to recommend commutation.
Deponent says that Judge Roan became a patient in his sanatorium on the tenth day of July, 1914, and remained there as such until the twenty-first day of February, 1915.
During the entire time Judge Roan was a patient in said Sanatorium, there was positively no doubt that Judge Roan was mentally responsible in every respect.
Deponent is a practising physician of
twenty-five years, having graduated from
165
Sentencing and Aftermath
ical College,
(Signed) Wallace E.
Brown
Subscribed and sworn to before me,
this fourth day of August, 1915, at
(Signed) C.T. Phelps
:SEAL Notary Public
No one had spoken against commutation
of Frank's sentence. Finally, the defense's long, hard fight seemed won. But
the next morning, some fifty determined-looking men from
Included in the
group were former Governor Joseph M. Brown and Herbert Clay, solicitor of the
Blue Ridge Circuit. Clay spoke for hours against commutation, arguing that
The commissioners listened intently and said nothing. At the end of the re-opening, they issued a statement that they would offer their recommendation to Governor Slaton in a week.
By a two-to-one vote, on
Chapter 7
THE
COMMUTATION
John Marshall Slaton had begun
wrestling with the idea of commutation of Leo Frank's sentence long before June
1915. "Excepting in a general way," he wrote to a
He received over one hundred thousand
letters favoring commutation or pardon for Frank, and the Georgia as well as
the national press reminded him—and the public—of his power of pardon and his
responsibility to use it.
Several governors and senators supported the request for Frank's pardon, but the support of prominent persons for pardons was—and is—far from unusual. Perhaps more
166
167
The Commutation
unusual was that the effort on behalf of Leo Frank came from leaders in every part of the country.
The North-South
resentments and hostility revived with a vengeance. Newspapers throughout the
country picked up on this development. Most outside
Georgians, and Atlantans particularly, resented this renewed intrusion into an affair in which they felt justice had been done. They became adamant against reexamining the conclusions of the trial.
When the Supreme Court rejected Frank's plea in April, 1915, his lawyers began working for executive clemency. They of course wanted a complete pardon, but in view of the series of court decisions, probably felt it wise to seek a commutation to life imprisonment.
And they undoubtedly felt that if and when Frank's innocence was established, sometime in the future, a complete pardon might be feasible.
They were
advised that Frank's chances for commutation were better with the incumbent,
Governor John Marshall Slaton, than with his successor, who would take over on
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Judge Morris, through the Cobb Democratic Executive Committee, alleged that Slaton was a member of the law firm defending Frank. Slaton had been a name partner of the Rosser, Brandon, Slaton & Phillips law firm since May of 1913 and is so listed in the newspaper announcements of the day. This law partnership name was also listed in the Atlanta City Directories of 1914, 1915, and 1916, even though Slaton was then serving as governor. This conflict was readily seized upon by Tom Watson who said:
You must keep in your mind the astounding fact that he [Slaton] joined Rosser's firm, after that firm had been employed to defend Frank, and had publicly taken part in this case.
A Governor cannot practise law openly and in June, 1913, John M. Slaton was to be inaugurated for a term of two years.
Why, then, did he, in May, join a firm in which he could not openly act, until after June, 1915?
And why did Rosser, in May, 1913, take a partner whom he could not openly use, during the next two years?
The Cobb Democratic Executive Committee publicly called on Slaton to resign as governor or assure Georgians he would not commute Frank's sentence.
Slaton declined to do either, and his statement made state headlines.
Frank was now
scheduled to hang on
While
speculations raged in
169
The Commutation
of the trial with him. He requested
the Supreme Court ruling on the question of mob influence at the trial along
with Justice Holmes's dissent. He requested specific citations to the trial
record. He researched the official judgments of other appellate courts while
trying to reach a balance between
In visiting the pencil factory, Slaton determined that Conley must have lied about using the elevator to carry Mary Phagan's body from the second floor to the basement: though Conley testified that he had defecated at the bottom of the shaft on Saturday morning, the detectives, while at the factory, found the excrement (along with an umbrella) uncrushed at the bottom of the shaft. Though this could have been used at the trial to show Conley's perjury, it was not until Slaton personally rode the elevator, determining that it indeed hit the bottom, that this evidence was brought to light. Slaton spent a great deal of time and attention studying the elevator. Much of the best evidence for Frank, Slaton later stated in his official commutation order, came out after the trial, including that uncovered by himself.
Slaton shut
himself in his library for the entire day on
It is said that
he worked until
"Yes," he is said to have replied, "and it may mean my death or worse, but I have ordered the sentence commuted."
Mrs. Slaton is said to have responded, "I would rather
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
be the widow of a brave and honorable man than the wife of a coward."
He had taken the
precaution of having Leo Frank removed from the
Partly through his own detective work, and partly through his readings of the extensive documentation of the crime, John Slaton came to believe that Leo Frank was innocent. However, in public John Slaton made no declarations about Frank's innocence; he expressed his "doubts."
Slaton had in mind, also, that Judge Roan had publicly written to him: "It is possible that I showed undue deference to the jury in this case, when I allowed the verdict to stand," and that Roan asked Slaton to commute the sentence.
Later that day Slaton gave his statement to the press, announcing he was commuting Frank's sentence to life imprisonment.
The statement was very carefully worded to stand as nothing more substantial than the correction of a trial judge's error, to deny any extra-legal issues surrounding the case, and to assure the public that there was no mob influence on the trial, but that the atmosphere merely reflected the "disclosing of a horrible crime."
Executive Minutes
In Re Leo M. Frank, Fulton Superior Court, Sentenced to
be Executed,
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located near the corner of Forsyth
and Hunter Streets in the City of
Frank was tried for the offense and found guilty the succeeding August. Application is now made to me for clemency.
This case has been the subject of
extensive comments through the newspapers of the
I desire to say in this connection
that the people of the State of
Many newspapers and multitudes of
people have attacked the State of
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
read the evidence and who are unacquainted with the judicial procedure in our state.
I have been unable to even open a large proportion of the letters sent me, because of their number and because I could not through them gain any assistance in determining my duty.
The murder committed was a most heinous one. A young girl was strangled to death by a cord tied around her throat and the offender deserves the punishment of death. The only question is to the identity of the criminal.
The responsibility is upon the people
of
MOBS
It is charged that the court and jury were terrorized by a mob and the jury were coerced into their verdict.
I expect to present the facts in this case with absolute fairness and to state conditions with regard only to the truth.
When Frank was indicted and the air was filled with rumors as to the murder and mutilation of the dead girl, there was intense feeling and to such extent that my predecessor, Governor Brown, stated in argument before me that he had the military ready to protect the defendant in the event any attack was made. No such attack was made and from the evidence that he obtained none was contemplated.
Some weeks after this, the defendant
was put on trial.
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for change of venue in criminal cases that exist in any state. Our law permits the judge to change the venue on his own motion, in the event he thinks a fair trial cannot be given in any county. The defendant can move for a change of venue on the same ground, and if it be refused, the refusal of the judge is subject to an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court, and in fact, the entire genius of our law demands a fair trial absolutely free from external influence.
Frank went to trial without asking a change of venue and submitted his case to a jury that was acceptable to him. He was ably represented by counsel of conspicuous ability and experience.
During the progress of the case, after evidence had been introduced laying the crime with many offensive details upon Frank, the feeling against him became intense. He was the general superintendent of the factory and Mary Phagan was a poor working girl. He was a Cornell graduate and she dependent for her livelihood upon her labor. According to a witness, whose testimony will subsequently be related more completely, when this girl came to get her small pay, since she only worked one day in the week, because of lack of material, this general superintendent solicited her to yield to his importunities and on her refusal slew her.
The relation of these facts anywhere and in any community would excite unbounded condemnation.
If the audience in the courtroom manifested their deep resentment to Frank, it was largely by this evidence of feeling beyond the power of a court to correct. It would be difficult anywhere for an appellate court, or even a trial court, to grant a new case which occupied thirty days, because the audience in the courtroom upon a few occasions indicated their sympathies. However, the deep feeling against Frank
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
which developed in the progress of the evidence was in the atmosphere and regardless of the commission of those acts of which the court would take cognizance, the feeling of the public was strong.
Since Governor Brown has related secret history in his public argument before me, I may state that Friday night before the verdict was expected Saturday, I had the sheriff call at the Mansion and inquire whether he anticipated trouble. This was after many people had told me of possible danger and an editor of a leading newspaper indicated his anticipation of trouble. The sheriff stated he thought his deputies could avert any difficulty. Judge Roan telephoned me that he had arranged for the defendant to be absent when the verdict was rendered. Like Governor Brown, I entered into communication with the Colonel of the Fifth Regiment, who stated he would be ready if there were necessity.
I was leaving on Saturday, the day
the verdict was expected, for
Judge Roan, in the exercise of precaution, re-quested that both counsel and defendant be absent when the verdict was rendered, in order to avoid any possible demonstration in the event of acquittal.
The jury found the defendant guilty and, with the exception of demonstration outside the court room, there was no disorder.
Hence, it will be seen that nothing was done which courts of any state could correct through legal machinery. A court must have something more than
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an atmosphere with which to deal, and especially when that atmosphere has been created through the process of evidence in disclosing a horrible crime.
Our Supreme Court, after carefully considering the evidence as to demonstrations made by spectators, declared them without merit, and in this regard the orderly process of our tribunal are not subject to criticism.
RACIAL PREJUDICE
The charge against the State of
THE FACTS IN THE CASE
Many newspapers and nonresidents have declared that Frank was convicted without any evidence to sustain the verdict. In large measure, those giving expression to this utterance have not read the evidence and are not acquainted with the facts. The same may be said regarding many of those who are demanding his execution.
In my judgment, no one has a right to an opinion who is not acquainted with the evidence in the case, and it must be conceded that the jury who saw the witnesses and beheld their demeanor upon the stand are in the best position as a general rule to reach the truth.
I cannot, within the short time given me to decide the case, enter into the details outlined in thou-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
sands of pages of testimony. I will present the more salient features, and have a right to ask that all persons who are interested in the determination of the matter, shall read calmly and dispassionately the facts.
THE STATE'S CASE
The state proved that Leo M. Frank,
the general superintendent of the factory, was in his office a little after
The State showed that Mary Phagan had
eaten her dinner of bread and cabbage at
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The Commutation
caught the car to go to the pencil factory which would enable her to arrive at the factory within the neighborhood of about thirty minutes. The element of exact time will be discussed later.
Dr. Harris, the Secretary of the State Board of Health, and an expert in this line, examined the contents of Mary Phagan's stomach ten days after her burial and found, from the state of digestion of the cabbage and bread, that she must have been killed within about thirty minutes after she had eaten the meal.
Newt Lee, the Negro night watchman, testified that Frank had "told me to be back at the factory at four o'clock Saturday afternoon," and when he "came upstairs to report, Frank, rubbing his hands," met Newt Lee and told him to "go out and have a good time until six o'clock," although Lee said he would prefer to lie down and sleep. When Lee returned, Frank changed the slip in the time clock, manifesting nervousness and taking a longer time than usual.
When Frank walked out of the front door of the factory, he met a man named Gantt, whom he had discharged a short time before. Frank looked frightened, his explanation that he anticipated harm. Gantt declared he wished to go upstairs and get two pairs of shoes, which permission Frank finally granted, stating that he thought they had been swept out.
About an hour after this occurrence, Frank called up Lee over the telephone, a thing he had never done before, and asked him if everything was all right at the factory. Lee found the double inner doors locked, which he had never found that way before. Subsequently, when Lee was arrested and Frank was re-quested by the detectives to go in and talk to him in order to find what he knew, Lee says that Frank
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
dropped his head and stated, "If you keep that up, we will both go to hell."
On Sunday morning at about three
o'clock, after Newt Lee, the night watchman, had telephoned the police station
of the discovery of the dead body and the officers had come up to the factory,
they endeavored to reach Frank by telephone, but could not get a response. They
telephoned at
Frank had made an engagement on Friday to go to the baseball game on Saturday afternoon with his brother-in-law, but broke the engagement, as he said in his statement, because of the financial statement he had to make up, while before the Coroner's Jury, he said he broke the engagement because of threatening weather.
The contention of the State, as will hereafter be disclosed, was that Frank remained at the factory Saturday afternoon to dispose of the body of Mary Phagan, and that that was the reason he gave Newt Lee his unusual leave of absence.
The cook's husband testified that on Saturday, the day of the murder, he visited his wife at the home of Mr. Selig, the defendant's father-in-law, where Frank and his wife were living, and that Frank came in to dinner and ate nothing. The Negro cook of the Seligs was placed upon the stand and denied that her husband was in the kitchen at all on that day. For
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purposes of impeachment, therefore, the State introduced an affidavit from this cook taken by the detectives, and, as she claimed, under duress, which tended to substantiate the story of her husband and which affidavit declared that on Sunday morning after the murder, she heard Mrs. Frank tell her mother that Mr. Frank was drinking the night before and made her sleep on a rug and called for a pistol to shoot himself, because he (Frank) had murdered a girl. This affidavit was relevant for purposes of impeachment, although, of course, it had no legal probative value as to the facts contained therein. On the stand, the cook declared that she was coerced by her husband and detectives under threat of being locked up unless she gave it, and it was made at the Station House. The State proved it was given in the presence of her lawyer and said that her denial of the truth of the affidavit was because her wages had been increased by the parents of Mrs. Frank. No details are given as to where the conversation occurred between Mrs. Frank and her mother, nor is there any explanation as to how she happened to hear the conversation. It will be easily seen that the effect of the affidavit upon the jury might be great.
It is hard to conceive that any man's power of fabrication of minute details could reach that which [Jim] Conley showed, unless it be the truth.
The evidence introduced tended to show that on Sunday morning Frank took out of the time clock the slip which he had admitted at that time was punched for each half hour, and subsequently Frank claimed that some punches had been missed. The suggestion was that he had either manipulated the slip to place the burden on Lee, or was so excited as to be unable to read the slip correctly.
The State introduced a witness, Monteen Stover,
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
to prove at the time when Mary Phagan and Frank were in the Metal Room, she was in Frank's office and he was absent, although he had declared he had not left his office. The State showed that the hair of Mary Phagan had been washed by the undertaker with pine tar soap, which would change its color and thereby interfere with the ability of the doctor to tell the similarity between the hair on the lathe and Mary Phagan's hair.
The State further showed that a cord of the character which strangled Mary Phagan was found in quantities on the Metal Room floor, and was found in less quantities and then cut up in the basement. As to this, Detective Starnes testified: "I saw a cord like that in the basement, but it was cut up in pieces. I saw a good many cords like that all over the factory."
Holloway testified: "These cords are all over the building and in the basement."
Darley testified to the same effect.
However, this contradicts the testimony that was presented to the jury for the solution.
The State claimed to the jury that witnesses for the defendant, under the suggestion of counsel in open court, would change their testimony so that it might not operate against the defendant.
I have not enumerated all the suspicious circumstances urged by the State, but have mentioned what have appeared to me the most prominent ones. Where I have not mentioned the more prominent ones, an inspection of record fails to maintain the contention.
It is contended that a lawyer was engaged for Frank at the Station House before he was arrested. This is replied to by the defense that a friend had engaged counsel without Frank's knowledge, and the lawyer advised Frank to make a full statement to the detectives.
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JIM CONLEY
The most startling and spectacular evidence in the case was that given by a Negro, Jim Conley, a man of twenty-seven years of age, and one who frequently had been in the chain gang. Conley had worked at the factory for about two years and was thoroughly acquainted with it. He had worked in the basement about two months and had run the elevator about a year and a half.
On May 1st [1913] he was arrested by the detectives.
Near the body in the basement had been found two notes, one written on brown paper and the other on a leaf of a scratch pad. That written on white paper in a Negro's handwriting showed the following:
"He said he wood love me and land doun play like night witch did it but that long tall black negro did buy hisslef."
On the brown paper, which was the
carbon sheet of an order headed "
"Mam that negro hire doun here did this i went to make water and he push me doun that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it was long sleam tall negro i wright while play with me."
The detectives learned about the middle of May that Conley could write, although at first he denied it. He made one statement and three affidavits which are more fully referred to in stating the defendant's case. The affidavits were introduced by the defendant under notice to produce.
By these affidavits there was admitted the substance of the evidence that he delivered on the stand, which in brief was as follows:
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Conley claimed that he was asked by Frank to come to the factory on Saturday and watch for him, as he previously had done, which he explained meant that Frank expected to meet some woman and when Frank stamped his foot Conley was to lock the door leading into the factory and when he whistled, he was to open it.
Conley occupied a dark place to the side of the elevator behind some boxes, where he would be invisible.
Conley mentioned several people, including male and female employees, who went up the steps to the second floor where Frank's office was located. He said that Mary Phagan went up the stairs and he heard a scream and then he dozed off. In a few minutes Frank stamped and then Conley unlocked the door and went up the steps. Frank was shivering and trembling and told Conley "I wanted to be with the little girl and she refused me and I struck her and I guess I struck her too hard and she fell and hit her head against something, and I do not know how bad she got hurt. Of course, you know I ain't built like other men."
Conley described Frank as having been in a position which Conley thought indicated perversion, but the facts set out by Conley do not demand such conclusion.
Conley says that he found Mary Phagan lying in the Metal Room some two hundred feet from the office, with a cloth tied about her neck and under the head as though to catch blood, although there was no blood at the place.
Frank told Conley to get a piece of cloth and put the body in it and Conley got a piece of striped bed tick and tied up the body in it and brought it to a place a little way from the dressing room and dropped it and then called on Frank for assistance in
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carrying it. Frank went to his office and got a key and unlocked the switchboard in order to operate the elevator, and he and Conley rolled the body off the cloth. Frank returned to the first floor by the ladder, while Conley went by the elevator and Frank on the first floor got into the elevator and went to the second floor on which the office is located. They went back into Frank's private office and just at that time Frank said, "My God, here is Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall," and Frank then put Conley into the wardrobe. After they left Frank let Conley out and asked Conley if he could write, to which Conley gave an affirmative reply. Frank then dictated the letters heretofore referred to. Frank took out of his desk a roll of green-backs and told him, "Here is two hundred dollars," but after a while requested the money back and got it.
One witness testified she saw some Negro, whom she did not recognize, sitting at the side of the elevator in the gloom. On the extraordinary motion for new trial, a woman, who was unimpeached, made affidavit that on the 31st of May, through the newspaper report, she saw that Conley claimed he met Frank by agreement at the corner of Forsyth and Nelson Streets on the 26th of April, 1913, and she became satisfied that she saw the two in close conversation at that place on that date between ten o'clock and eleven o'clock.
Frank put his character in issue and the State introduced ten witnesses attacking Frank's character, some of whom were factory employees, who testified that Frank's reputation for lasciviousness was bad and some told that he had been seen making advances to Mary Phagan, whom Frank had professed to the detectives either not to have known, or to have been slightly acquainted with. Other witnesses testified
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
that Frank had improperly gone into the dressing room of the girls. Some witnesses who answered on direct examination that Frank's reputation for lasciviousness was bad, were not cross-examined as to details, and this was made the subject of comment before the jury.
The above states very briefly the gist of the State's case, omitting many incidents which the State claims would confirm Frank's guilt when taken in their entirety.
DEFENSE
The defendant introduced
approximately one hundred witnesses as to his good character. They included
citizens of
The defendant was born in
The admission of Conley that he wrote the notes found at the body of the dead girl, together with the parts he admitted he played in the transaction, combined with his history and his explanation as to both the writing of the notes and the removal of the body to the basement, make the entire case revolve around him. Did Conley speak the truth?
Before going into the varying and conflicting affidavits made by Conley, it is advisable to refer to some incidents which cannot be reconciled to Conley's story. Wherever a physical fact is stated by Conley, which is admitted, this can be accepted, but under both rules of law and of common sense, his statements cannot be received, excepting where clearly corroborated. He admits not only his participation as an accessory, but also glibly confesses his own infamy.
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One fact in the case, and that of most important force in arriving at the truth, contradicts Conley's testimony. It is disagreeable to refer to it, but delicacy must yield to necessity when human life is at stake.
The mystery in the case is the
question as to how Mary Phagan's body got into the basement. It was found one
hundred and thirty-six feet away from the elevator and the face gave evidence
of being dragged through dirt and cinders. She had dirt in her eyes and mouth.
Conley testified that he and Frank took the body down to the basement in the
elevator on the afternoon of
Conley testified that on the morning of April 26th, he went down into the basement to relieve his bowels and utilized the elevator shaft for the purpose.
On the morning of April 27th at
Subsequently, when they used the elevator, which everybody, including Conley, who had run the elevator for one and one-half years, admits only stops by hitting the ground in the basement, the elevator struck the excrement and mashed it, thus demonstrating that the elevator had not been used since
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Conley had been there. Solicitor-General Dorsey, Mr. Howard, and myself visited the pencil factory and went down on this elevator and we found it hit the bottom. I went again with my secretary with the same result.
Frank is delicate in physique, while Conley is strong and powerful. Conley's place for watching, as described by himself, was in the gloom a few feet from the hatchway, leading by way of ladder to the basement. Also he was [with]in a few feet of the elevator shaft on the first floor. Conley's action in the elevator shaft was in accordance with his testimony that he made water twice against the door of the elevator shaft on the morning of the 26th, instead of doing so in the gloom of his corner behind the boxes where he kept watch.
Mary Phagan in coming downstairs was compelled to pass within a few feet of Conley, who was invisible to her and [with]in a few feet of the hatch-way. Frank could not have carried her down the hatchway. Conley might have done so with difficulty. If the elevator shaft was not used by Conley and Frank in taking the body to the basement, then the explanation of Conley, who admittedly wrote the notes found by the body, cannot be accepted.
In addition there was found in the
elevator shaft at
Conley in his affidavits before the detectives testified he wrapped up the body in a crocus sack at the suggestion of Frank, but in the trial he testified he wrapped up the body in a piece of bed-tick "like the shirt of the Solicitor General." The only reason for such a change of testimony, unless it be the truth, was that a crocus sack, unless split open, would be
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The Commutation
too small for that purpose. If he split open the crocus sack with a knife, this would suggest the use of a knife in cutting the drawers of the girl.
So the question arises, whether there was any bed-tick in the pencil factory, and no reason can be offered why bed-tick should be in the pencil factory. It has no function there. Had such unusual cloth been in the factory, it certainly must have been known, but nobody has ever found it.
Conley says that after the deed was
committed, which everybody admits could not have been before
The uncontradicted evidence of these
two witnesses, and they are unimpeached, was they reached the factory at
Conley says that when they got the body to the bottom of the elevator in the basement, Frank told him to leave the hat, slipper, and piece of ribbon right there but he'd "taken the things and pitched them over in front of the boiler" which was fifty-seven feet away.
Conley says that Frank told him when he watched for him to lock the door when he (Frank) stamped and to open the door when he whistled. In other words, Frank had made the approach to the girl and had killed her before he had signaled Conley to lock the door.
Conley says, "I was upstairs between the time I locked the door and the time I unlocked it. I unlocked the door before I went upstairs." This explanation is not clear, nor is it easy to comprehend the use of the signals which totally failed their purpose.
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
It is curious during the course of the story that while Frank explained to Conley about striking the girl when she refused him and Conley found the girl strangled with a cord, he did not ask Frank anything about the use of the cord, and that subject was not mentioned.
The wound on Mary Phagan was near the top of the head and reached the skull. Wounds of that character bleed freely. At the place Conley says he found blood, there was no blood. Conley says there was a cloth tied around the head as though to catch the blood, but none was found there.
One Barrett says that on Monday morning he found six or seven strands of hair on the lathe with which he worked and which were not there on Friday. The implication is that it was Mary Phagan's hair and that she received a cut by having her head struck at this place. It is admitted that no blood was found there. The lathe is about three and one-half feet high and Mary Phagan is described as being chunky in build. A blow which would have forced her with sufficient violence against the smooth handle of the lathe to have produced the wound must have been a powerful one since the difference between her height and that of the lathe could not have accounted for it. It was strange, therefore, that there was a total absence of blood and that Frank, who was delicate could have hit a blow of such violence.
Some of the witnesses for the State testified the hair was like that of Mary Phagan, although Dr. Harris compared Mary Phagan's hair with that on the lathe under a microscope and was under the impression it was not Mary Phagan's hair. This will be the subject of further comment.
Barrett and others said they thought they saw
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blood near the dressing room, at which place Conley said he dragged the body.
Chief of Police Beavers said he did not know whether it was blood.
Detective Starnes said, "I do not know that the splotches I saw were blood."
Detective Scott says: "We went to the Metal Room where I was shown some spots supposed to be blood spots."
A part of what they thought to be blood was chipped up in four or five chips and Dr. Claude Smith testified that on one of the chips he found, under a microscope, from three to five blood corpuscles, a half drop would have caused it.
Frank says that the part of the splotch that was left after the chips were taken up was examined by him with an electric flash lamp, and it was not blood.
Barrett, who worked on the Metal floor, and who several witnesses declare claimed a reward because he discovered the hair and blood, said the splotch was not there on Friday, and some witnesses sustained him.
There was testimony that there were frequent injuries at the factory and blood was not infrequent in the neighborhood of the ladies' dressing room. There was no blood in the elevator.
Dr. Smith, the City Bacteriologist, said that the presence of blood corpuscles could be told for months after the blood had dried. All of this bore upon the question as to whether the murder took place in the Metal Room, which is on the same floor of Frank's office. Excepting near the Metal Room at the place mentioned where the splotches varied, according to Chief Beavers' testimony, from the size of a quarter to the size of a palm leaf fan, there was no blood whatever. It is to be remarked that a white substance
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
called haskoline used about the factory was found spread over the splotches.
CONLEY'S AFFIDAVITS
The defense procured under notice one statement and three affidavits taken by the detectives from Conley and introduced them in evidence.
The first statement, dated
On
This would have made Frank guilty of the contemplated murder on Friday which was consummated Saturday and which was so unreasonable, it could not be accepted.
On
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day morning after leaving home he bought two beers for himself and then went to a saloon and won ninety cents with dice, where he bought two more beers and a half pint of whiskey, some of which he drank, and he met Frank at the corner of Forsyth and Nelson Streets and Frank asked him to wait until he returned.
Conley went over to the factory and mentioned various people whom he saw from his place of espionage going up the stairs to Mr. Frank's office. Then Frank whistled to him and he came upstairs and Frank was trembling and he and Frank went into the private office when Frank exclaimed that Miss Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall were coming and concealed Conley in the wardrobe. Conley said that he stayed in the wardrobe a pretty good while, for the whiskey and beer had gotten him to sweating. Then Frank asked him if he could write and Frank made him write at his dictation three times and Frank told him he was going to take the note and send it in a letter to his people and recommend Conley to them. Frank said, "Why should I hang?"
Frank took a cigarette from a box and
gave the box to Conley, and when Conley got across the street, he found it had
two paper dollars and two silver quarters in it, and Conley said, "Good
luck has done struck me." At the Beer Saloon he bought one-half pint of
whiskey and then got a bucket and bought fifteen cents' worth of beer, ten
cents' worth of stove wood, and a nickel's worth of pan sausage and gave his
old woman $3.50. He did not leave home until about
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
little rust to get on it. The detectives took the shirt and, finding no blood on it, returned it.
On the 29th of May, 1913, Conley made another affidavit, in which he said that Frank told him that he had picked up a girl and let her fall and Conley hollered to him that the girl was dead, and Frank told him to go to the cotton bag and get a piece of cloth, and he got a big wide piece of cloth and took her on his right shoulder, when she got too heavy for him and she slipped off when he got to the dressing room. He called Frank to help and Frank got a key to the elevator and the two carried the body downstairs and Frank told him to take the body back to the sawdust pile, and Conley says he picked the girl up and put her on his shoulder, while Frank went back up the ladder.
It will be observed that the testimony and the appearance of the girl indicated that she was dragged through the cinders and debris on the floor of the basement, yet Conley says he took her on his shoulder.
The affidavit further states that Conley took the cloth from around her and took her hat and slipper, which he had picked up upstairs, right where her body was lying, and brought them down and untied the cloth and brought them back and "throwed them on the trash pile in front of the furnace." This was the time that Conley says Frank made the exclamation about Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall.
An important feature in this affidavit is as follows:
Conley states in it that Mr. Frank said: "Here is two hundred dollars," and Frank handed the money to him.
All of the affidavit down to this
point is in typewriting; the original was exhibited to me. At the end
Governor John
Marshall Slaton
The lynching of Leo Frank
The lynching site today
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of the affidavit
in handwriting is written the following: "While I was looking at the money
in my hands, Mr. Frank said, 'Let me have that and I will make it all right
with you Monday, if I live and nothing happens,' and he took the money back and
I asked him if that was the way he done, and he said he would give it back
Monday."
It will be
noticed that the first question which would arise would be, what became of the
two hundred dollars? This could not be accounted for. Therefore, when that
query presumably was propounded to Conley, the only explanation was that Frank
demanded it back.
The detectives
had Conley for two or three hours on May 18th trying to obtain a confession;
and he denied he had seen the girl on the day of the murder. The detectives
questioned him closely for three hours on May 25th, when he repeated this
story. On May 27th, they talked to him about five or six hours in Chief
Lanford's office.
Detective Scott,
who was introduced by the State, testified regarding Conley's statement and
affidavits as follows:
"We tried
to impress him with the fact that Frank would not have written those notes on
Friday, that that was not a reasonable story. That it showed premeditation and
that would not do. We pointed out to him why the first statement would not fit.
We told him we wanted another statement. He declined to make another statement.
He said he told the truth.
"On May
28th, Chief Lanford and I grilled him for five or six hours again, endeavoring
to make clear several points which were farfetched in his statement. We pointed
out to him that his statement would not do and would not fit, and he then made
the statement of May 28th, after he had been told that his previous
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
statement showed deliberation and could not be accepted. He told us nothing about Frank making an engagement to stamp and for him to lock the door, and told nothing about Monteen Stover. He did not tell us about seeing Mary Phagan. He said he did not see her. He did not say he saw Quinn. Conley was a rather dirty Negro when I first saw him. He looked pretty good when he testified here.
"On May 29th, we talked with Conley almost all day. We pointed out things in his story that were improbable and told him he must do better than that. Anything in his story that looked to be out of place, we told him would not do. We tried to get him to tell about the little mesh bag. We tried pretty strong. He always denied ever having seen it. He denied knowing anything about the matter down in the basement in the elevator shaft. He never said he went down there himself between the time he came to the factory and went to Montag's. He never said anything about Mr. Frank having hit her, or having hit her too hard, or about tiptoes from the Metal Department. He said there was no thought of burning the body.
"On May 18th we undertook in Chief Lanford's office to convince him he could write, and we under-stood he said he could not write and we knew he could. We convinced him that we knew he could write and then he wrote."
In his evidence before the jury in the redirect examination, Conley thought it necessary to account for the mesh bag, and for the first time, said that "Mary Phagan's mesh bag was lying on Mr. Frank's desk and Mr. Frank put it in the safe." This is the first mention of the bag.
The first suggestion that was made of Frank being a pervert was in Conley's testimony. On the
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stand, he declared Frank said, "He was not built like other men."
There is no proof in the record of Frank being a pervert. The situation in which Conley places him and upon Conley's testimony must that charge rest, does not prove the charge of perversion if Conley's testimony be true.
On argument before me, asked what motive Conley would have to make such a suggestion and the only reason given was that someone may have made him the suggestion because Jews were circumcised.
Conley in his evidence shows himself amenable to a suggestion. He says, "If you tell a story, you know you have got to change it. A lie won't work and you know you have got to tell the whole truth."
Conley, in explaining why his affidavits varied, said: "The reason why I told that story was I do not want to know that these other people passed by me for they might accuse me. I do not want people to think that I was the one that done the murder."
AUTHOR OF THE NOTES
Conley admits he wrote the notes found by the body of Mary Phagan. Did Frank dictate them? Conley swears he did. The State says that the use of the word "did" instead of "done" indicates a white man's dictation. Conley admits the spelling was his. The words are repeated and are simple, which characterizes Conley's letters. In Conley's testimony, you will find frequently that he uses the word "did" and according to calculation submitted to me, he used the word "did" over fifty times during the trial.
While Conley was in jail charged with being an accessory, there was also incarcerated in the jail a woman named Annie Maud Carter, whom Conley had
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
met at the court house. She did work in the jail and formed an acquaintance of Conley, who wrote to her many lengthy letters. These letters are the most obscene and lecherous I have ever read. In these letters, the word "did" is frequently employed. It will be observed that in Conley's testimony, he uses frequently the word "Negro," and in the Annie Maude Carter notes, he says: "I have a Negro watching you."
The Annie Maud Carter notes, which were powerful evidence in behalf of the defendant, and which tended strongly to show that Conley was the real author of the murder notes, were not before the jury.
The word "like" is used in the Mary Phagan notes, and one will find it frequently employed in Conley's testimony. The word "play" in the Mary Phagan notes, with an obscene significance, is similarly employed in the Annie Maud Carter notes. The same is true as to the words "lay" and "love."
In Conley's testimony, he used the words "make water" just as they are used in the Mary Phagan notes.
In Conley's testimony he says the word "hisself" constantly.
It is urged by the lawyers for the defense that Conley's characteristic was to use double adjectives.
In the Mary Phagan notes, he said "long tall negro, black," "long slim, tall negro."
In his testimony Conley used expressions of this sort. "He was a tall, slim build heavy man." "A good long side piece of cord in his hands."
Conley says that he wrote four notes, although only two were found. These notes have in them one hundred twenty-eight words, and Conley swears he wrote them in two and one-half minutes. Detective Scott swore he dictated eight words to Conley and it took him about six minutes to write them.
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The statement is made by Frank, and that statement is consistent with the evidence in the record, that the information that Conley could write came from Frank when he was informed that Conley claimed he could not write. Frank says he did not disclose this before, because he was not aware Conley had been at the factory on the 26th of April, and therefore the materiality of ether Conley could write any more than any other Negro employee, had not been suggested to him. Frank says that he gave the information that Conley had signed receipts with certain jewelers, with whom Conley had dealings.
WHERE WERE THE NOTES WRITTEN
At the time of the trial, it was not
observed that the Death Note written on brown paper was an order blank, with
the date line "
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
In reply to this evidence, the State introduced on the extraordinary motion, the testimony of Philip Chambers, who swears that unused order blanks en-titled "Atlanta, Ga. ——, 191——," were in the office next to Frank's office and that he had been in the basement of the factory and found no books or papers left down there for any length of time, but some were always burned up.
This evidence was never passed upon by the jury and developed since the trial. It was strongly corroborative of the theory of the defense that the Death Notes were written, not in Frank's office, but in the basement, and especially in view of the evidence of Police Sergeant Dobbs, who visited the scene of the crime on Sunday morning, as follows:
"This scratch pad was also lying on the ground close to the body. The scratch pad was lying near the notes. They were all right close together. There was a pile of trash near the boiler where this hat was found, and paper and pencils were down there, too."
Police Officer
Darley testified: "I have seen all kinds of paper down in the basement. The paper that note is written on is a blank order pad. That kind of paper is likely to be found all over the building for this reason, they write an order and sometimes fail to get a carbon under it, and at other times, they change the order and it gets into the trash. That kind of pad is used all over the factory."
Over the boiler is a gas jet.
Another feature which was not known at the trial and which was not presented to the jury, but came up by extraordinary motion, was regarding the hair alleged to have been found by Barrett on the lathe. The evidence on the trial of some of the witnesses was
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that the hair looked like that of Mary Phagan. It was not brought out at the trial that Dr. Harris had examined the hair under the microscope and by taking sections of it and comparing it with Mary Phagan's hair, thought that on the lathe was not Mary Phagan's hair, although he said he could not be certain of it.
This, however, would have been the highest and best evidence.
The evidence as to the probability of the blank on which the death note was written being in the basement, and the evidence as to the hair, would have tended to show that the murder was not committed on the floor on which Frank's office was located.
THE TIME QUESTION
The State contended that Mary Phagan
came to the office of Leo M. Frank to get her pay at some time between
It is true that at the coroner's
inquest held on Thursday after the murder, he said he might have gone back to
the toilet, but did not remember it. However, in some of his testimony, Frank
said he had remained the whole time in his office. Monteen Stover swears that
she came into Frank's office at
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
However, the pertinency of Monteen Stover's testimony is that Mary Phagan had to come to get her pay and Frank had gone with her back to the Metal Room and was in process of killing her while Monteen Stover was in his office, and this was at a time when he had declared he was in his office.
The evidence loses its pertinency if Mary Phagan had not arrived at the time Monteen Stover came. What is the evidence?
The evidence, uncontradicted,
discloses that Mary Phagan ate her dinner at
While the streetcar men swear the car
was on time, and while George Epps, a witness for the State, who rode with Mary
Phagan, swears he left her about 12:07 at the corner of Forsyth and Marietta
Streets, there is some evidence to the effect that the car arrived according to
custom, but might have arrived two to three minutes before schedule time. If
so, the distance would have placed Mary Phagan at the pencil factory sometime
between
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The Commutation
Stover must have arrived before Mary Phagan, and while Monteen Stover was in the room, it hardly seems possible under the evidence, that Mary Phagan was at that time being murdered.
Lemmie Quinn testifies that he
reached Frank's office about
At
Another feature of the evidence is that the back door in the basement was the former means of egress for Conley, when he desired to escape his creditors among the employees. On Sunday morning, April 27th, the staple of this door had been drawn. Detective Starnes found on the door the marks of what he thought were bloody fingerprints, and he chipped off two pieces from the door, which looked like "bloody fingerprints." The evidence does not disclose further investigation as to whether it was blood or not.
The motive of this murder may be either robbery, or robbery and assault, or assault.
There is no suggestion that the motive of Frank would be robbery. The mesh bag was in Mary Phagan's hands and was described by Conley, in his redirect examination, at the trial for the first time. The size of this mesh bag I cannot tell, but since a bloody handkerchief of Mary Phagan's was found by her side, it was urged before me by counsel for the
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
defense, that ladies usually carried their handkerchiefs in their mesh bags.
If the motive was assault, either by
natural or perverted means, the physician's evidence, who made the examination,
does not disclose its accomplishment. Perversion by none of the suggested means
could have occasioned the flood of blood. The doctors testified that excitement
might have occasioned it under certain conditions. Under the evidence, which is
not set forth in detail, there is every probability that the virtue of Mary
Phagan was not lost on the 26th of April. Her mesh bag was lost, and there can
be no doubt of this. The evidence shows that Conley was as depraved and
lecherous a Negro as ever lived in
His story necessarily bears the construction that Frank had an engagement with Mary Phagan, which no evidence in the case would justify. If Frank had engaged Conley to watch for him, it could only have been for Mary Phagan, since he had made no improper suggestion to any other female on that day, and it was undisputed that many did come up prior to twelve o'clock, and whom could Frank have been expecting except Mary Phagan under Conley's story? This view cannot be entertained, as an unjustifiable reflection on the young girl.
Why the Negro wrote the notes is a matter open to conjecture. He had been drinking heavily that morning, and it is possible that he undertook to describe the other Negro in the building so that it would avert suspicions.
It may be possible that his version is correct.
The testimony discloses that he was in the habit of allowing men to go into the basement for immoral purposes for a consideration, and when Mary Phagan
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passed by him close to the hatchway leading into the basement and in the gloom and darkness of the en-trance, he may have attacked her. What is the truth we may never know.
JURY'S VERDICT
The jury which heard-tie evidence and saw the witnesses found the defendant, Leo M. Frank, guilty of murder. They are the ones, under our laws, who are chosen to weigh evidence and to determine its probative value. They may consider the demeanor of the witness upon the stand and in the exercise of common sense will arrive with wonderful accuracy at the truth of the contest.
JUDICIARY
Under our law, the only authority who can review the merits of the case and question the justice of a verdict which has any evidence to support it, is the trial judge. The Supreme Court is limited by the Constitution and the correction of errors of law. The Supreme Court found in the trial no error of law and determined as a matter of law, and correctly in my judgment, that there was sufficient evidence to sustain the verdict.
But under our judicial system, the trial judge is called upon to exercise his wise discretion, and he cannot permit a verdict to stand which he believes to be unjust. A suggestion in the order overruling a motion for a new trial, that the judge was not satisfied with the verdict, would demand a reversal by the Supreme Court.
In this connection Judge Roan declared orally from the bench that he was not certain of the defen-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
dant's guilt—that with all the thought he had put on this case, he was not thoroughly convinced whether Frank was guilty, or innocent—but that he did not have to be convinced—that the jury was convinced and that there was no room to doubt that—that he felt it his duty to order that the motion for a new trial be overruled.
This statement was not embodied in the motion overruling new trial.
Under our statute, in cases of conviction of murder on circumstantial evidence, it is within the discretion of the trial judge to sentence the defendant to life imprisonment (Code Section 63).
The conviction of Frank was on circumstantial evidence, as the Solicitor General admits in his writ-ten argument.
Judge Roan, however, misconstrued his power, as evidenced by the following charge to the jury in the case of the State against Frank:
"If you believe beyond a reasonable doubt from the evidence in this case that the defendant is guilty of murder, then, you would be authorized in that event to say, 'We, the jury, find the defendant guilty.' Should you go further, gentlemen, and say nothing else in your verdict, the court would have to sentence the defendant to the extreme penalty of murder, to wit: 'To be hanged by the neck until he is dead.' "
Surely if Judge Roan entertained the extreme doubt indicated by his statement and had remembered the power granted him by the Code, he would have sentenced the defendant to life imprisonment.
In a letter written to counsel he says: "I shall ask the Prison Commission to recommend to the Governor to commute Frank's sentence to life imprisonment. It is possible that I showed undue deference to the jury in this case, when I allowed the verdict to
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stand. They said
by their verdict that they had found the truth. I was in a state of
uncertainty, and so expressed myself. After many months of continued
deliberation, I am still uncertain of Frank's guilt. This state of uncertainty
is largely due by the character of the Conley testimony, by which the verdict
was largely reached.
"Therefore,
I consider this a case in which the Chief Magistrate of the State should exert
every effort in ascertaining the truth. The execution of any person, whose
guilt has not been satisfactorily proven, is too horrible to contemplate. I do
not believe that a person should meet with the extreme penalty of the law,
until the court, jury, and Governor shall have all been satisfied of that
person's guilt. Hence, at the present time, I shall express and enlarge upon
these views, directly to the Prison Commission and Governor.
"However,
if for any cause I am prevented from doing this, you are at liberty to use this
letter at the hearing."
It will thus be
observed that if commutation is granted, the verdict of the jury is not
attacked, but the penalty is imposed for murder, which is provided by the state
and which the judge, except for his misconception, would have imposed. Without
attacking the jury, or any of the courts, I would be carrying out the will of
the judge himself in making the penalty that which he would have made it and
which he desires it shall be made.
In the case of
Hunter, a white man, charged with assassinating two white women in the City of
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Negro was acquitted. It was brought out by the statement of the Negro that another Negro who was half-witted committed the crime, but no credence was given to the story, and he was not indicted.
The Judge and Solicitor General
refused to recommend clemency, but upon a review of the evidence, and because
of the facts and at the instance of the leading citizens of
In the case of John Wright in
I refused to interfere unless the Judge, or Solicitor, would recommend interference, which they declined to do. Finally, when on the gallows the Solicitor General recommended a reprieve, which I granted, and finally, on recommendation of the Judge and Solicitor General, as expressed in my Order, I reluctantly commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. The doubt was suggested as to the identity of the criminal and as to the credibility of the testimony of a prejudiced witness. The crime was as heinous as this one and more so.
In the Frank case three matters have developed
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since the trial which did not come before the jury, to
wit: the Carter notes, the testimony of Becker, indicating that the death notes
were written in the basement, and the testimony of Dr. Harris, that he was
under the impression that the hair on the lathe was not that of Mary Phagan,
and thus tending to show that the crime was not committed on the floor of
Frank's office.
While defense made the subject an extraordinary motion for a new trial, it is well known that it is almost a practical impossibility to have a verdict set aside by this procedure.
The evidence might not have changed the verdict, but it might have caused the jury to render a verdict with the recommendation to mercy.
In any event, the performance of my
duty under the Constitution is a matter of my conscience. The responsibility
rests where the power is reposed. Judge Roan, with that awful sense of
responsibility, which probably came over him as he thought of that Judge before
whom he would shortly appear, calls to me from another world to request that I
do that which he should have done. I can endure misconstruction, abuse, and
condemnation, but I cannot stand the constant companionship of an accusing
conscience, which would remind me in every thought that I, as Governor of
Georgia, failed to do what I thought to be right. There is a territory "beyond
A REASONABLE DOUBT and absolute certainty," for which the law provides in
allowing life imprisonment instead of execution. This case has been marked by
doubt. The trial judge doubted. Two judges of the Court of Georgia doubted. Two
judges of the Supreme Court of the
In my judgment, by granting a commutation in
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
this case, I am sustaining the jury, the judge, and the appellate tribunals, and at the same time am discharging that duty which is placed on me by the Constitution of the State.
Acting, therefore, in accordance with what I believe to be my duty under the circumstances of this case, it is ORDERED: That the sentence in the case of Leo M. Frank is commuted from the death penalty to imprisonment for life. This 21st day of June, 1915.
/s/John M. Slaton
Governor
The reaction to the commutation was immediate and vociferous. Mass meetings of indignation were held in Cobb, Fulton, and other counties.
In
The first issue
of Tom Watson's Jeffersonian
proclaimed:
"Our grand old Empire State
According to Henry Bowden:
Soon after the governor had commuted the sentence a mob formed and marched to the State Capitol seeking the governor ostensibly to do him bodily harm. When they reached the Capitol they gathered in the house of representatives. Judge John J. Hart, brother-in-law of our own Federal Judge Samuel Sibley, tried to talk to them as a pacifist, but they howled him down. It so happened that Slaton was not in his office at the time and the crowd soon broke up and departed.
Still later a mob formed in
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of marching on the Governor at his
home. Governor Slaton did not occupy the Governor's mansion which was then
located on the site of the present Henry Grady Hotel, but being a native
Atlantan he resided in his own home in which he now lives located at 2962
Peachtree Road, NW. Fearing violence, the governor called out the Governor's
guards, part of the state militia. Capt. Stokes was the officer in charge while
one of the Lts. in the outfit was Walter W. Foote who is a kinsman of Pollard
Turman's wife Laura Troutman and who now lives in
During that week, there were fierce
outbursts of anti-Semitism. Jewish businessmen in
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Slaton insisted on attending Nat E. Harris's inauguration, despite threats on his life. The state floor house booed, hissed, and gave loud catcalls as Slaton handed over the seal of Georgia and commented, "Governor Harris, I know that during my term of Governor this great seal of our state has not been dishonored."
Slaton slipped
out of
Thirty years later, when his wife died, John Slaton again expressed his belief in Frank's innocence in a letter to his cousin:
Dear Cousin Lamar:
I am deeply appreciative of your letter of condolence. Few people could have written such a letter. It was so descriptive of Sallie.
After forty-seven years I can say to you she never thought an evil thought or did an evil thing.
When the mob threatened my home and my life, on account of the Frank case, she was my strength and my fortress. If I heard a light step back of me, it was hers. She wished to be by my side.
She received multitudes of letters and anonymous telephone communications that if I prevented the execution of Frank I would be killed, and she said to me: "I would rather be the widow of an honorable man than the wife of a dishonorable one."
In my judgment Frank was as innocent as I, and it was a question whether through political ambition
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The Commutation
I should shirk my duty as Governor and allow the State to commit a murder.
Sallie went with me to all the meetings of the American Bar Association, and Judge Arthur Powell said of her that she was the Queen of that Body.
I received telegrams and letters from
all over the
She made her debut at Greenbriar, White Sulphur Springs, and her sponsor and chaperon with Miss Mildred Lee, the daughter of Robert E. Lee.
My wife represented the tender grace of a day which I fear is fast fading.
I have that faith that makes me believe we shall meet in a reunion where there is no separation.
I have written you this letter because of the remarkable sweetness and tenderness of yours. It would have made Sallie so happy to have read it in life.
Affectionately,
(signed) John M. Slaton
Give my love to Cousin Bessie.
(signed) J.M.S.
Chapter 8
THE
LYNCHING
Leo Frank's
removal from
A car pulled up
in front of the main doors of the prison and kept its motor running. Reporters
kept watch over it; they could not get information in any other way: the
telephone lines into the prison had been disconnected. Meanwhile, Frank was
removed from his cell, taken to the basement, and from there to a back alley
where another car waited. That car took Frank and the sheriff and deputies
escorting him to
Frank had lost a
substantial amount of weight during his two years in
The warden at Milledgeville, James T. Smith, informed newsmen that he did not need the assistance of troops: he would be able to defend his prison against attack.
Within two weeks of Frank's arrival at Milledgeville,
212
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The Lynching
Shortly afterwards, the Knights of Mary Phagan met near her grave. They vowed to avenge little Mary's death. A few days later, there were rumors of a plan to kidnap and lynch Leo Frank. Governor Harris put the state police on alert. The plan was, for the moment, thwarted.
Compared to the previous two years, life in Milledgeville was comfortable for Leo Frank. His daily chores, which took place outside, usually took up only four or five hours; the rest of the day he spent in voluminous correspondence. Among those with whom he corresponded was Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and to him, as to others, Frank expressed his expectation that "right and justice would hold complete sway," and that he would be completely exonerated.
The idyll didn't last. On the night of July 17, approximately four weeks after Frank's sentence had been commuted to life, William Creen, a twice-convicted murderer, slashed Frank's throat with a butcher knife, nearly severing the jugular vein. Frank probably would have died, had not Warden Smith summoned J. W. McNaughton, a physician who was also serving a life sentence at Milledgeville. Creen told the authorities he meant to kill Frank because he wanted to keep the other inmates safe from mob violence, that Frank's presence was a disgrace to the prison, and that he felt he would be pardoned if he killed Frank.
Frank hovered near death for about two weeks. Two letters, one to his mother on August 4, and one to his brother, written the day before, give some idea of Leo Frank's state of mind:
Dear Mother:
Just a few words to let you know that I am improving daily and that my dear Lucille is well and on the job. We let the night nurse go, and the day
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
nurse will take her place, dear Lucille holding the fort in the daytime.
I hope you did not yesterday or today hear the rumor I heard — viz: that I was dead. I want to firmly and decisively deny that rumor. I am alive by a big majority. You know by my yesterday's letter that the head surgical brace story is also another fabrication.
I had a short nice letter today from Simon Wolf. He has taken a great interest in me since I am here.
With much love to you and all the folks, I am devotedly your son,
Leo
Dear Lucille joins me in fond greetings to all.
Dear Chas:
Lucille got the package OK and I thank you for the cigars. Lucille wants to know the price of the whole wheat crackers as they will be paid for by the man for whom they were bought.
I trust that this finds you and all at home well. Dear Lucille is OK and I am continually progressing to the goal of health. The wound continues to heal rapidly.
Tomorrow we let one of the nurses go and by the end of the week, the other will be unnecessary.
My appetite continues fine. We get the fresh Elberta peaches and watermelons here, grown on the Farm. The apples are stewed for me, I also sleep well. It is now just a matter of fully regaining my strength. I sit up in bed, but it will be some time before I can walk about. You know I lost a large quantity of blood which must be regenerated and made up.
The piece that I understand was in the Constitu-
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The Lynching
tion about my having my head in a surgical brace is a lie out of the whole . . . In fact, I haven't now even adhesive plaster on my neck or head. Just a bandage of gauze about my neck (Please phone about this to Herbert Haas). I can move my head reasonable well now, and in time will have use of neck as before. The wound will heal up well and leave only a reasonable scar which will not show much.
I look forward to seeing you the end of the week. Lucille joins me in much love to you and all the folks.
Devotedly your brother
Leo M. Frank
The incident put the carefully-laid plans of the Knights of Mary Phagan to abduct Frank on hold.
Also during August, Tom Watson thoroughly and completely "reviewed" the governor's commutation order in Watson's Magazine. Watson's words undoubtedly further inflamed the feelings against the order—and against Slaton himself. Watson said:
It was the snob governor of high society, gilded club life, and palatial environment that proved to be the rotten pippin in our barrel. With splendid integrity our whole legal system withstood the attacks of Big Money until at length nothing was left but the perfidy of a governor who, in the interest of his client, betrayed a high office and great people.
Our grand old Empire has been raped. We have been violated, and we are ashamed . . . The Great Seal of State was gone, like a thief in the night, to do
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
for an unscrupulous law firm, a deed of darkness which dared not bask in the light of the sun.
Watson reminded
the public that Slaton had been a partner in Luther Rosser's law firm since May
1913, and that the governor had had a secret
"Rosser
went into the home of Slaton, and remained for hours, and until after
According to Henry Bowden, everyday citizens were more than willing to act as informers in the case. Telephone operators, switchboard girls, elevator operators, telegraph clerks, and many others kept the phones to Dorsey's home and office busy with little facts they picked up through their jobs. One morning at 6:00 a.m. Dorsey found a street car motorman sitting on his doorstep with full information as to the time that Luther Rosser arrived it Governor Slaton's home the night before he issued his commutation order, how long he stayed, and who was with him.
Watson stated that Governor Slaton did not cross-examine Leo Frank or Jim Conley. Watson argued the following points, quoting from the official record at some times in his arguments and at others giving his own views:
THE UNMASHED EXCREMENT IN THE ELEVATOR SHAFT
There were only two ways of getting into the basement, the elevator and a ladder. The ladder rested on the dirt floor and it ran up to a hole which
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The Lynching
was covered by a trap door. The hole was two feet square and witnesses said that it was difficult for one person to pass through the hole and descend the ladder.
Governor Slaton went to the factory and travelled up and down the elevator. He claimed that the body of Mary Phagan could not have been transported to the basement because there was excrement in the elevator shaft which was unmashed.
The bottom of the shaft was uneven so the elevator could rest upon the dirt on one part and not touch it at others; elevators at that time did not always stop exactly at the bottom.
NO
Even though
Governor Slaton argued there was no use for cloth or sacks at a pencil factory,
Herbert Schiff, Assistant Superintendent and sworn for the defendant, indicated
in his evidence that "empty sacks are usually moved a few hours after
they are taken off the cotton."
HAIR ON SECOND FLOOR
Barrett discovered hair on the handle of his bench lathe early Monday morning and the hair was almost immediately recognized as Mary Phagan's, as there was only one other girl who had hair like Mary's, Magnolia Kennedy. Magnolia Kennedy had not been in the factory after Friday and she testified that the hair "was not hers and looked like Mary's."
Governor Slaton gave the public the understanding that Dr. Harris destroyed the value of that part of the State's case.
Ten days after her death, the grave of Mary Pha-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
gan was opened and hair was taken from her head. Gheesling, the undertaker, in preparation of the body, cleansed her hair by washing it with tar soap.
Dr. Harris did make a microscopic examination of the hair — one found on the handle of the bench lathe and the other from Mary Phagan's exhumed body. He said: "Affiant further says that the two specimens were so much alike that it was impossible for him to form any definite and absolute opinion as to whether they were from the head of the same person or not." His examination failed to reveal any decided difference in color, size, and texture between the two stands. The conclusion had to be made that it was Mary's hair because the defense could not prove it to be anybody else's.
BLOOD ON SECOND FLOOR
Mell Stanford, who had worked for Frank for two years, testified that he swept up the whole floor in the Metal Room on Friday, April 25th. "I moved every-thing, and swept everything; I swept under Mary's and Barrett's machines. On Monday thereafter, I found a spot that had some white haskoline over it, on the second floor, near the dressing room, that wasn't there Friday when I swept. The spot looked to me like it was blood, with dark spots scattered around." Herbert Schiff, Assistant Superintendent and sworn for the defendant, testified that he had seen the spots as well as other witnesses.
Governor Slaton admitted that the white sub-stance, haskoline, was found spread over the splotches.
CONLEY'S AFFIDAVITS
Conley was reluctant to betray his boss, a white man, and denied all knowledge of the crime. He
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The Lynching
admitted that he did not tell the truth when he finally confessed, he asked to be taken to see Frank. Frank refused to face Conley because his lawyer was out of town.
BLOOD ON MARY'S DRAWERS
The Testimony set forth by Doctors Harris and Hurt said that there was blood caked in Mary Phagan's thick hair; she had blood on her drawers, and blood on her vagina. Evidence indicated some sort of violence and penetration in the vagina which appeared to have been made prior to death.
Governor Slaton's contention was that the blood stains came from her "monthly sickness." Mary Phagan was not filthy in her personal hygience habits and there was no evidence such as a "bandage" which would have indicated that she had "monthly sickness."
ANNIE MAUD CARTER NOTES
William Burns, the celebrated private detective, obtained an affidavit from Annie Maud Carter in which she claimed that Jim Conley wrote her notes. She later refuted her affidavit and both Conley and Carter swore that "their letters had been changed and that the unprintable filth put in them had been forged."
WHERE THE NOTES WERE WRITTEN
Not only did Philip Chambers swear that the order blanks were "in the office next to Frank's office" but Herbert Schiff, the Assistant Superintendent and sworn for the defendant, testified that the paper the
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
notes were written on "can be found all over the plant," not just in the basement.
MONTEEN STOVER'S TESTIMONY, THE TIME QUESTION
Frank was
accurate in fixing the time his stenographer left "about
Governor Slaton argued that Frank
must have been in the second office while Monteen Stover waited five minutes
for him even though she swore that she looked for Frank in both the outer and
inner offices and that "the door to the metal room was closed." Where
was Mary, that "Monteen Stover could not see her, when Monteen was in the
office, from
BLOODY FINGERPRINTS ON DOOR
Why did Frank's lawyers not require Jim Conley, the State's star witness, to make an imprint of his fingers?
JUDGE ROAN'S STATEMENT
Governor Slaton said that Judge Roan requested a commutation. This statement is false, Judge Roan continued to say, notably to his pastor and daughter, that the evidence unquestionably demonstrated
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The Lynching
Frank's guilt; and not until Judge Roan had been dead more than two months was a forged letter presented which stultified Judge Roan's record, and contradicted his judicial declarations of record in this case.
DOUBTS OF THE JUDGES
The twenty-three grand jurors, four of whom were Jews, thought Frank guilty, the twelve trial jurors thought so, Judge Roan at least thought the jury was satisfied in its opinion, for he refused to disturb the verdict, and none of the four appellate judges had expressed doubt, simply dissents, as to legal procedure. The Prison Commissioner was not satisfied with the sentence.
Watson's
frenzied views on the facts and conjectures about the case further fanned the
fears, prejudices, and anger of those in
In a July editorial of the Jeffersonian, Tom Watson mentioned the name, Knights of Mary Phagan, and in each subsequent issue of the newspaper, declared the great "Invisible Power" of these Knights.
He wrote that
lynch mobs were a necessary tool in a democracy and were acceptable as
"guardians of liberty." In the
By then a group of about two dozen men from the Knights of Mary Phagan had been selected to reactivate the mission to abduct Leo Frank. Each was a husband and father, a wage-earner, and a church-goer. They all bore
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
well-known
There is an individual alive today who knows all the vigilante group members names and has told them to me. No Phagan was involved in the lynching.
The mission was prepared like a military operation. An experienced electrician was selected to cut the prison wires; auto mechanics were selected to keep the cars running. The group also included a locksmith, a telephone man, a medic, a hangman, a lay preacher: each was chosen for a reason.
The route the abductors would take
had been travelled, measured, and timed. Alternate routes were selected and a
timetable set. D-Day was
Lucille Frank had visited her husband
the day before, Sunday, August 15. She started back to
"Damned if I go any place with you," Smith answered.
Another group went to Superintendent Burke's house and handcuffed him, and then forced him to lead them to the administrative office, where they overpowered the guard.
The fourth group rushed to Frank's cell to awaken
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him, shackle his hands behind him, and remove him to the back seat of one of the cars.
Within the prison, only the leader of the abductors spoke, and he did so briefly. The men who entered the prison said not a word and neither did the frightened Frank, clad in a monogrammed nightshirt.
It all took eighteen minutes. Frank's captors had a blueprint of the prison, and where his cell was located as well as where guard stations, phones, and electric wires were. No effort was made to resist the group that whisked Frank away. Actually, many guards were sympathetic to the abductors.
Everything went as planned except for two incidents. The man assigned to guard the warden was left behind. There was a delay while some abductors returned to the warden's residence to bring out their companion.
The other
incident involved the failure to cut a long distance line to
From several of these places, the local sheriff replied: "The parties have just passed through on their way north in automobiles."
The motorcade on
the seven-hour, one hundred fifty-mile trip travelled through small towns and
back roads as they returned to
Along the way, the group experienced tire trouble as the rough roads took their toll. One car had to be abandoned, but the others were repaired. By then the group was aware that they had missed a telephone wire—and that officials probably knew what they were up to.
The original
plan was to hang Frank either from a tree in the
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
much time had been lost, and knowing they would be seen, they wen+ to a more remote side of town.
Frank, frightened but apparently reconciled to his fate, said little. When asked if he wished to confess to the murder of Mary Phagan before being hanged, he is re-ported to have said "I think more of my wife and mother than I do of my life."
"Mr. Frank, we are going to do what the law said to do, hand you by the neck until you are dead," the leader said to Frank, asking if he had any last request. Frank asked that his gold wedding band be removed and re-turned to his widow.
In the grove hidden from Roswell Road at Frey's Gin Mill (where developer Roy Varner's Professional Building now stands), they prepared Leo Frank to be hanged. A piece of brown khaki cloth was tied around Frank's waist, since he had been taken from prison wearing only a nightshirt. A white handkerchief was fastened over his eyes. He was placed on a table. A three-quarter-inch rope tied by the hangman was lowered over a tree branch and around his neck.
The table was
kicked from under his feet. Frank was lifted high in the air. The drop from the
makeshift gallows opened the wound on his neck. The time was about
The word spread fast that Leo Frank had been hanged. Scores of people raced to the hanging site on foot, via bicycles, by horseback, and in what few autos then were available.
One of the first to arrive was a prominent young Mariettan who had been rejected as a lyncher because of his high temper and drinking habits. "We thank you, God, for allowing these men to do this grand and glorious deed," the rejected lyncher shouted, "but damn their souls for not letting me help. They won't put any monument
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The Lynching
over you (Frank). They are not going to get a piece of
you as big as a cigar."
People with cameras snapped Frank's
picture as his body swayed in the breeze. Picture post cards of the lynching
were sold for years as souvenir items in
When Frank's body was cut down, a
citizen tried to grind his shoe into Frank's face. Newt A. Morris, a former
judge of the Blue Ridge Circuit, stepped forward to stop him and to quiet the
crowd.
"Whoever did this thing left
nothing more for us to do," Morris told the crowd. "Little Mary is vindicated;
her foul murder is avenged. Now I ask you, I appeal to you as citizens of
Morris soon was joined by
At Ashby and Marietta Streets, an
ambulance from Greenberg & Bond met Wood's wagon and took the body.
A crowd gathered around the funeral
home, demanding to see the dead man's body. Fearing violence, police persuaded
Mrs. Frank to consent. The crowds were allowed to view the body.
Later, Leo Frank's body was shipped
to his parents'
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
phrase Semper Idem—which means "always the same, nothing changes."
Before the day's end, Fiddling John Carson was wailing on the courthouse steps:
Little Mary Phagan went to town one day,
And went to the pencil factory
to see the big parade.
She left her home at eleven,
And kissed her mother good-bye,
Not one time did that poor child think
That she was going to die.
Leo Frank met her, with a brutely heart we know,
He smiled and said, "Little Mary,
Now you will go home no more."
He sneaked along behind her,
Till she reached the metal room,
He laughed and said, "Little Mary
you have met your fatal doom."
Ex-Governor Slaton and Mayor
Woodward, of
On August 18 Slaton addressed the California Civic League and declared he preferred to have Frank lynched by a mob rather than by judicial mistake because "one reached the soul of civilization, the other merely reached the body."
Mayor Woodward addressed the California State Assessors' Association and declared that Frank had suffered a "just penalty for an unspeakable crime."
A
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The Lynching
Tom Watson sent
the following telegram to Mariettan Robert E. Lee Howell: "There's life in
the old land yet." He applauded the hanging: "In putting the sodomite
murderer to death, the viligance committee has done what the sheriff would have
done, if Slaton had not been of the same mould as Benedict Arnold . . .
In the Jeffersonian, he raged:
The ominous triune combination which
has so rapidly given our country a foreign complexion, is made up of Priest,
Capitalist, and Jew. The Priest wants the illiterate papal slave of
As yet, the South has not been
deluged by the foreign flood; as yet, our native stock predominates, and the
old ideals persist. With us, it is, as yet, dangerous for an employer of young
girls to assume that he buys the girl, when he hires her. A Jew from the North,
coming South to act as boss over one hundred girls, may fall into a fatal
mistake by forgetting that he is no longer in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, or
New York. When such a Jew comes to
That was the mistake made by Leo Frank, and it cost him his life.
And the mistake made by Jews
throughout the
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
They tried to "run over"
the people and the courts of
Leo Frank's
wedding ring was delivered to O. B. Keeler,
On Thursday, August 19, Keeler's
account of the incident was published in the
The banner headline read "FRANK'S WEDDING RING RETURNED" across the top of page one. A two-column, three-line readout said "DYING WISH OF MOB'S VICTIM CARRIED OUT BY UNKNOWN MESSENGER," beneath the banner headline. The story was in twelve-point type; it occupied the two right-hand columns of page one and continued on page two, where it filled two more columns.
Keeler's first-person account read:
Old Books say if you put beneath your pillow an object that has been associated with tragedy, or any scene of great stress and profound emotional excitement—if such an object be placed near you while you sleep—you will dream the thing that gave the object its most terrible significance; the scene will be reconstructed for you, and the act reenacted.
This is not true. Not always true, at least. For in my pillow last night was the wedding ring of Leo M. Frank. And I dreamed of nothing that could concern him in any way.
And if any object in this world today has been close to tragedy and aligned with horror, it is the wedding ring of Leo M. Frank.
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The Lynching
Keeler, who had
covered every session of the trial for the Atlanta Georgian, then told of the many times he had
seen the ring on Frank's finger during the trial and during Frank's stay of
nearly two years in the
Whatever is the truth of
If ever an object was charged with tragedy, it is the wedding ring of Leo M. Frank. And it was in my pillow Wednesday night. And I dreamed a ridiculous little dream of being a kid again, at dancing school, and the waltz they were playing was "Beaming Eyes." So I should say there is not much to the old idea of psychic dream-influences.
Keeler related how the ring came into his possession:
It was a little later than
I had just started the Victrola on a selection passionately adored by the two very young members of my family—"The Robert E. Lee Medley," by a lively band. It is very lively and ragged.
The band had just got into full swing when there was a step on the veranda outside the open door, then a knock. I went to the door, opened the screen, and stepped out.
There was a man on the veranda. He had something white in his hand. The following dialogue took place:
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
"Is this Mr. O. B. Keeler?"
"It is."
"I have a note for you."
That was all. He spoke clearly and deliberately. He handed me an envelope. He turned and walked down the steps and away in the dark. He wasted no time, but he was not in a hurry.
Keeler opened the envelope, which contained the ring and a typewritten note. He took the note to the dining room where there was a light on the table. The note read:
Frank's dying request was that his wedding ring be given to his wife. Will you see that this request is carried out?
This note will be delivered to you by a man who you do not know and who does not know you. Make no effort to find out his identity.
Keeler wrote, "I am making no effort to find out his identity. And I am undertaking to deliver the ring to Mrs. Leo M. Frank. It is a trust."
On the following
day, Keeler delivered the ring to Mrs. Frank in
Keeler said that he had accepted the trust with mingled emotions. "It was because of something else—another circumstance, which I will tell too, because the outside world may find it of interest and perhaps of information concerning the county and town in which I live—Cobb County and Marietta—in which county and near which place Leo M. Frank was hanged at 7:05 o'clock the morning of Tuesday, August 17."
Keeler said he knew what bad things were being said by the newspapers of the state and he had an idea of what would be said by newspapers outside of it.
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The Lynching
He related:
I am a newspaper man. But I am not
writing this as a newspaper man. I am writing this as a man who has lived in
In our home when the ring came was a
guest—a young woman from
This guest, you might say, was a "stranger within our gates." And the experience of the ring, following so closely the tragedy of the day before, had a tremendous effect on her. I sought an unbiased view. I found it—and the intelligent one.
She was saying:
"Why it is something out of a book—I can't believe such things happen, really. But . . . why—I SAW the man, myself . . . and the ring. I can't believe it, but I know it is so."
I said: "What do you think about it now?"
And she told me: "I read about
the Frank lynching coming down on the train from
I said: "You reached this town exactly twelve hours after the hanging. Did it look like that kind of a town to you then?"
She said: "It did not. I thought it was the quietest, most peaceful-looking little place I ever was in. I never met more kindly or hospitable or friendly peo-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
ple than at the party this afternoon. Why, I just know they are good people."
Of course, she hadn't met them all,
having been in
Explaining what he meant by "agreeing exactly," Keeler said:
I know what was done to Leo M. Frank,
in that oak grove, the morning of August 17. It is said that men of
Also I know what the people of
And then you see, I have lived among these people for twenty-five years.
And I know they are good people.
One of the "young members" Keeler referred to was his son, George Keeler. George Keeler related to me the events that occurred. He told me: "My father, the late O. B. Keeler, was on the staff of the Atlanta Georgian in 1913 and reported every session of the Frank trial for that newspaper, and he said many times there was never any doubt in his mind as to Frank's guilt. He said the defense did everything it could to lay the blame on the Negro janitor, Jim Conley.
"He said, 'Conley, an illiterate Negro, could not possibley have made up the complicated story he told of Frank's sexual adventures, a story the defense lawyers could not shake after days of hammering on him.' And, my father pointed out, Frank had the best lawyers in the state that money could buy.
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The Lynching
"Two years
later, and well into the night of
"My father
went to the cemetery, and when nothing happened by dawn, he proceeded to the
Cobb County Courthouse on the
"The next
evening, about dusk, a stranger appeared at the Keeler home on
"The next day,
Chapter 9
REVERBERATIONS
The Knights of Mary Phagan stood guard for at least one day and one night at the tree from which they had hung Leo Frank, apparently expecting that someone—perhaps souvenir hunters or someone on the orders of Governor Harris, who had offered a reward for the conviction of any of the lynch party—might cut it down.
Two months after
the lynching, the group climbed to the top of
On
On November 25,
Thanksgiving Day, Simmons again convened this group and they again ascended
The original Ku Klux Klan, founded in
234
235
Reverberations
known Confederate cavalry leader, was the first Grand Wizard of the Empire. The Empire immediately began a campaign of terror against ex-slaves and whites who involved themselves in black causes. They operated at night, their identities obliterated under white sheets. Their methods were flogging, torture, and lynching. They usually planted a burning cross on the property of someone whom they felt they had to threaten. It was their calling card.
It has been said that the Mary Phagan-Leo Frank case was the spark that rekindled the Ku Klux Klan.
As whites regained control of state governments in the South the Klan's power faded. In 1869 General Forrest ordered the abandonment of the Klan and resigned as Grand Wizard. But local organizations continued, some for many years.
The release, in 1915, of D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" further fueled the fires of the new Invisible Empire, which added to its motto of "white supremacy" anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. Its appeal, therefore, was wider than that of the original Klan. In the early 1920s, with the help of experienced promoters and fundraisers Edward Y. Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler, the Klan began exercising strong control over local politics throughout the South and spread rapidly into the North, especially Oregon, Oklahoma, Indiana, Maine, and Illinois. In 1922, 1924, and 1926, it elected many state officials and a number of Congressmen. At one point the Invisible Empire claimed a million members.
For ten years after its inauguration—or re-inauguration—the Klan exercised a career of terror. Then the death of another girl destroyed its power. In 1926, David C. Stephenson, who had ousted William Simmons from the leadership of the Klan and was at that time Imperial Wizard, was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Madge Oberholtzer, whom, in consort with other Klansmen, he had kidnapped, raped, and abducted to
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Five years later, however, groups from six Southern states met to attempt to reform a national organization. During the Civil Rights era, the Klan again raised its head. It has never really died. It is recruiting members today. It recently attempted to involve my family.
In the months
following the lynching about three thousand Jews left the State of
The Jewish community, or at least some of its more prominent members, had felt, in fact, an increasing anti-Semitism for the previous three decades or so. This feeling mounted as resentment of the monies which poured in from Jewish organizations around the country—particularly in the North—to aid in Leo Frank's defense and subsequent appeals soared.
If Mary Phagan's death and Leo Frank's lynching gave impetus to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, they also gave impetus to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
At the time of his
arrest, Leo Frank was president of the
237
Reverberations
struck the
American Jewish community like nothing be-fore in its experience. It was
Frank's destiny to give the League a sense of urgency that characterizes its
operations to this day."
At the founding
ceremonies of the League, Adolph Kraus, then national president of B'nai
B'rith, commenting on the widespread prejudice and discrimination, said:
Remarkable as it
is, this condition has gone so far as to manifest itself recently in an attempt
to influence courts of law where a Jew happened to be a party to the
litigation. This symptom, standing by itself, while contemptible, would not
constitute a menace, but forming as it does but one incident in a continuing
chain of occasions of discrimination, it demands organized and systematic
effort on behalf of all right-thinking Americans to put a stop to this most
pernicious and un-American tendency.
The Anti-Defamation
League practically from its inception vigorously opposed all lynchings. It,
along with the NAACP, works to correct falsehoods in all forms of media and to
distribute information correcting misconceptions about Judaism. It owes its
genesis to Leo Frank. And to Mary Phagan.
After Leo
Frank's death, Lucile Frank became a pillar of the
In March 1916
Fannie Phagan Coleman sued the National Pencil Company for damages. It was
settled out of court and she was awarded several thousand dollars. She died in
August 1947 at age seventy-five. She was buried beside Mary.
Tom Watson was
indicted and tried in the United States District Court for sending obscene
matter through
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
the mail and was acquitted in 1916.
Initially he supported Hugh Dorsey in the gubernatorial race. Dorsey won, and
remained governor of
Jim Conley served less than a year of his sentence on a chain gang.
Some months after that, he was convicted of breaking and entering a business establishment in the vicinity of the Fulton County court house, and was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment, which he served. It was after that that he and my grandfather and my aunt had the famous (in our family) conversation about little Mary Phagan. Then he apparently disappeared.
In 1941 he was among a group picked
up for gambling by the
He died in 1962. Rumors of a deathbed
confession of his having killed Mary Phagan have grown increasingly more
persistent. On
Publications, films and plays concerning the Mary Phagan-Leo Frank case began even before Leo Frank was lynched:
1914—The
Frank Case: Inside Story of Georgia's Murder, published by Atlanta
Publishing Company. Argument of Hugh Dorsey, Solicitor for
239
Reverberations
1915—C. P.
Connolly reported the trial in Collier's Weekly and then
published a book, The Truth About the Frank Case.
1922—The French
journalist, Van Paassen, claims that the teeth marks on Mary Phagan's head and
shoulders do not match the X-rays of Leo Frank's teeth. He publishes his
findings in the book, To Number Our Days, in 1964.
1936—Death in the Deep South by
Ward Greene published.
1937—"They
Won't Forget," a movie based on Ward Greene's novel and starring Lana
Turner as little Mary Clay appears.
1938—Tom Watson:
Agrarian Rebel by C. Vann Woodward published.
1943—I Can Go
Home Again by Arthur Powell published.
1952—Guilty
or Not Guilty by Francis X. Busch published.
1956—Night
Fell on
1959—Confessions
of a Criminal Lawyer by Allen Lumpkin Henson published.
1962—"Profile
in Courage" series is aired by NBC. One deals with John M. Slaton.
1965—A Little
Girl is Dead by Harry Golden published.
1967—A five-part
series on the trial appears in the Atlanta Constitution, and the play,
"Night Witch" has a short run.
1968—The Leo
Frank Case by Leonard Dinnerstein published, reissued in 1987.
There have been
innumerable murders in
Chapter 10
ALONZO MANN'S
TESTIMONY
At the end of February 1978, my coworkers at Griffin CESA jokingly told me I was on the front page! Silence fell over the room. The look in my face must have told them something: it couldn't be. Why was it on the front page now? It seemed I could never escape.
I picked up the
newspaper. It was the
My father and I found several inaccuracies in the articles on Mary Phagan and felt we had to voice our opinion to the author. My father called Celestine Sibley, but the call was never returned. He was surprised.
Several other Phagans were quite upset by the articles. John Phagan Durham, son of Lizzie Mary Etta Phagan, who made little Mary's dress, and first cousin of little Mary Phagan, went to Mr. Sears, the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Constitution and asked that the articles be stopped. He said that Mr. Sears replied: "We cannot stop the articles, and if we have caused hard feelings with the Phagan family we apologize. And if you would correct the factual inaccuracies, we would correct them." Phagan
240
241
Alonzo Mann's Testimony
The series rekindled interest concerning the murder of little Mary Phagan and its aftermath. Principals, teachers, students, optometrists, and ophthamologists in the eight counties my work covered asked me that question: "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?"
The questions became more intense: people wanted details on the trial and the lynching and wanted to know if any of the Phagans were involved with the lynching.
I wanted the truth to be known. I wanted the inaccuracies corrected. I became more articulate in discussing the case, and I felt a sense of confidence since I knew the story well and could answer most of the questions.
I had plans to marry in June of that year. Bernard knew nothing of the story of little Mary Phagan. I had never told him. He, like most, had read the series in the newspapers, and one night he mentioned that a girl was murdered who had my name; then he, too, wanted to know: "Are you, by any chance, related to her?"
"Yes," I said, "I am."
Why, he wanted to know, had I never told him? "You never asked," I said.
Then I told him: I told him the story and why the Phagan family had remained silent. But, I told him, we had something to say now, and my father agreed and was beginning to let it be known that there were close relatives of little Mary Phagan who were still living.
Daddy hadn't gone so far as to publicly acknowledge our existence, but had let certain individuals know in nonchalant ways.
Bernard asked if I had ever been to the grave. I hadn't.
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
I was bothered that my name was on a tombstone. Right then we determined to go.
We drove to
It was a beautiful day—sunny, with a light breeze. As we neared the cemetery, I began to feel sick to my stomach. Now I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to see the grave.
"We're here," Bernard said suddenly.
I hesitated. "Are you all right?" he asked. Somehow, I felt inner strength. "I'm ready," I told him softly.
The plot was located in the wealthy section of the cemetery. There, beside little Mary, were other Phagan family members, including William Jackson Phagan and Angelina O'Shields Phagan.
Little Mary Phagan's grave was like none other that I had seen before. It had a marble tombstone which bore her name and an inscription the length of the burial place in marble. It was a beautiful inscription and was written by Tom Watson. I immediately memorized it.
Bernard and I took photos for the scrapbook about Mary I had begun assembling. A middle-aged couple approached us and asked if we knew where the grave of little Mary Phagan was. The articles in the newspaper had once again revived interest in her.
A sense of sadness for my relatives, especially those who had lived through the horrible ordeal, came over me. And I admired them for not seeking publicity and wishing to remain anonymous.
That year, 1978, proved to be full of beginnings and firsts for me. It was the first time my father had acknowledged our relationship to Mary by contacting a reporter; the beginning of a scrapbook of little Mary Phagan; my first visit to the grave of little Mary Phagan; and my first car accident—which turned out to have a connection to Mary Phagan.
243
Alonzo Mann's Testimony
A few days after the accident I decided to check on the elderly lady who had struck my car and to find out if she had turned in the insurance papers. She was a wealthy, prominent member of the community in which she lived. Her house was extraordinarily beautiful. When she answered the door, I explained that I was the individual involved with her in the accident, and I was checking to see if she had turned in the insurance papers. She welcomed me inside her home and told me that she was becoming blind and deaf and did not have anyone to help her fill out the forms. She asked me if I would help. I filled out the paperwork, and, with a magnifying glass, she read it to correct the errors. When she came to my name, she abruptly turned to me and asked me that question: "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?"
When I said "Yes," she hugged and kissed me. Then she related her memories of it.
She and her
husband drove their horse and buggy to
The next day, I received another invitation for lunch. For the rest of the school year, I would lunch with her on Mondays. We became very close.
In 1980, Bernard
and I moved to
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Education in
When school began in August, my supervisor introduced me to the principals for whom I would be working. Several of them asked me that recurrent question: "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?"
At one of the schools the principal was not available to meet me, but as we were leaving, he ran out after us and asked me my name and what position I held for the county. He took out his pen from his shirt pocket, and as I told him my name, he wrote it on the palm of his hand. He stared at it and asked me that question.
I told him "yes."
He erased my name from his hand and told me he would never forget my name. From that moment on, Mr. Tippens called me "little Mary Phagan," and introduced me as such. I didn't mind.
ALONZO MANN
On
Stunned and bewildered, I waited for the hours to pass. How could there be a witness alive?
The local news
provided a report from two reporters, Colin Sedor from
245
Alonzo Mann's Testimony
years of age and living in
Alonzo Mann claimed that he had attempted to relate what he had seen for years—and that no one seemed interested. After a while, he told reporters, he had given up.
He told
reporters of the Tennessean that as a soldier during World War I he'd
engendered a heated argument with another soldier—who happened to be from
Over the years
he told his wife, his relatives, and his closest friends his story. During the
1950s, he told it to a reporter of an
At about the time he gave his testimony to the media, Mann agreed to a polygraph test and a psychological stress analysis.
The psychological stress analysis electronically measures and charts, with a needle and graph, the stress in the voice in response to questions: the greater stress there seems to be, the greater the probability that the subject is not telling the truth.
The polygraph, broadly used by law enforcement personnel across the United States, tests whether the subject is telling the truth by measuring the respiratory rate, blood pressure, skin reaction, and pulse rate.
In both procedures, the subject responds to questions and a pattern is printed out on graph paper connected to the machines which are connected to the subject's body.
Alonzo Mann, according to both tests, told the truth consistently.
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Alonzo Mann's story was a new twist on the facts presented since 1913. He said that Jim Conley had said to him, "If you ever tell anyone, I'll kill you." He had gone home and repeated what he had seen and what he'd been told by Conley to his mother. She told him to be quiet, and he had been.
Now, after almost seventy years of silence, he decided to come forward to be at peace in his heart.
I wasn't the only one who was stunned. And I could not believe that Alonzo Mann would wait seventy years to reveal his eyewitness testimony. My father and I discussed at length the plausibility of Alonzo Mann's statements. We decided to remain silent until the sensationalism of the story quieted down.
It didn't.
On
Between the publication of that special supplement and Alonzo Mann's appearance before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, reporters on the staff of the Tennessean initiated plans for a book, and had even spoken to the producer of the television miniseries, "Winds of War." Pardon Board Chairman Mobley Howell was quoted as saying that the entire affair had taken on a "showman quality."
Also, on
247
Alonzo Mann's Testimony
in which Dukehart said that Alonzo Mann's statements changed nothing and that his brother always felt that Leo Frank was guilty. On the same newscast there was an interview with Jasper Yeomans, the son of Leo Frank's defense attorney. The reporter also spoke briefly with Stuart Lewengrub of the Anti-Defamation League, who expressed the desire that a posthumous pardon be granted. It was also reported that the Phagan family members denied the station's request for an interview and were tired of their name being dragged through the mud. The Phagan family member who denied the interview was John Phagan Durham.
Ironically, at this point no one in the media knew that either my father or I existed. And several older Phagans who had lived through the murder and its aftermath had also kept silent, even though the media contacted them. They did not discuss the case with even their closest friends.
On
Alonzo's testimony read:
IN THE STATE OF
The undersigned, being duly sworn, deposes as follows:
My name is
Alonzo McClendon Mann. I am eighty-three years old. My father was Alonzo Mann,
who was born in
In 1913 I was the office boy for Leo M. Frank, who ran the National Pencil Company. That was the year Leo Frank was convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan. I was fourteen years old at the time. I was
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
called as a witness in the murder trial. At that time I was put on the witness stand, but I did not tell all that I knew. I was not asked questions about what I knew. I did not volunteer. If I had revealed all I knew it would have cleared Leo Frank and would have saved his life.
I now suffer from a heart condition. I have undergone surgery to implant a pacemaker in my heart. I am making this statement because, finally, I want to have the record clear. I want the public to understand that Leo Frank did not kill Mary Phagan.
Jim Conley, the chief witness against Leo Frank, lied under oath. I know that. I am certain that he lied. I am convinced that he, not Leo Frank, killed Mary Phagan. I know as a matter of certainty that Jim Conley—and he alone—disposed of her body.
Jim Conley threatened to kill me if I told what I knew. I was young and I was frightened. I had no doubt Conley would have tried to kill me if I had told that I had seen him with Mary Phagan that day.
I related to my mother what I had seen there at the pencil factory. She insisted that I not get involved. She told me to remain silent. My mother loved me. She knew Conley had threatened to kill me. She didn't want our family's name to be involved in controversy or for me to have to be subjected to any publicity. My father supported her in telling me to remain silent. My mother repeated to me over and over not to tell. She never thought Leo Frank would be convicted. Of course, she was wrong. Even after he was convicted my mother told me to keep secret what I had seen.
I am sure in my own mind that if the lawyers had asked me specific questions about what I had seen the day of Mary Phagan's death I would have told the whole truth when I testified at Frank's trial.
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Alonzo Mann's Testimony
Of course they didn't suspect what I knew. They asked me practically nothing. I was nervous and afraid that day. There were crowds in the street who were angry and who were saying that Leo Frank should die. Some were yelling things like "Kill the Jew!"
I was very nervous. The courtroom was filled with people. Every seat was taken. I was interested mostly in getting out of there.
I spoke with a speech impediment and had trouble pronouncing the "r" in Frank's name in those days. The lawyers put their heads together and said that it was obvious I knew nothing and since I was so young they would let me off the stand. It was not an easy place for a young boy to be, there in court like that.
I never fully realized until I was older that if I had told what I knew Leo Frank would have been acquitted and gone free. Instead he was imprisoned.
After he was convicted my mother told
me there was nothing we could do to change the jury's verdict. My father agreed
with her. I continued to remain silent. Later, Frank was lynched by a mob from
I have spent many nights thinking about that. I have learned to live with it.
I now swear to the events I witnessed that fatal day, Confederate Memorial Day, 1913, when Mary Phagan, who was just about my age, fourteen, was killed.
I came to work on time that morning,
at about
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
morning, Conley had obviously already consumed considerable beer. He drank a lot, even in the mornings.
He spoke to me. He asked me for a dime to buy a beer. A dime could buy a good-sized beer in those days.
I told Jim Conley I didn't have a dime. That was not the truth. I had some money in my pocket, but I had let Conley have a nickel or a dime for beer before. He never paid me back.
I didn't like to be around Jim Conley.
After I told Conley I didn't have any money I went up the stairs to the second floor where my desk was located in the office of Leo Frank.
My job required that I open the mail, file papers, keep the office orderly, run errands, and the like.
Leo Frank arrived in the building that morning shortly after I did. He came into the office and spoke to me. I always called him "Mister Frank" and he referred to me by my given name, "Alonzo." I do not know whether Leo Frank had seen Jim Conley on the first floor when he came into the building that morning.
A substitute secretary worked for Leo Frank that morning. As I remember, it was a routine Saturday morning for me at the office. Because of Memorial Day the factory part of the company was closed. But sometimes on Saturday mornings people who had worked at the factory during the week would come to the pay window in the office and collect their salaries. Girls who worked in the factory made about twelve cents an hour.
I did not know Mary Phagan by name, but I had seen her at the factory and knew her face. We were just about the same age.
I was supposed to meet my mother that day
251
Alonzo Mann's Testimony
about
Sometime after
Mr. Frank agreed for me to leave at that time. I told him I would return to the office and complete my filing work later in the afternoon. He said he expected he would still be there.
When I left the company premises,
just before
I walked to the point where I was
supposed to meet my mother. It was a short distance—perhaps a block and a half.
We had agreed to meet in front of a store on
I can't be sure as to exactly how long I was gone, but it could not have been more than a half hour before I got back to the pencil factory.
I had no idea that I was about to witness an important moment in a famous murder case—a mo-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
ment that has not been made public until now; that I was about to become a witness to tragic history.
I walked into the building by the front door.
Inside the door, I walked toward the stairwell. I looked to my right and I was confronted by a scene I will remember vividly until the day I die.
Jim Conley was standing between the trapdoor that led to the basement and the elevator shaft. I have an impression that the trapdoor was partially open, but my eyes were fixed on Jim Conley.
He had the body of Mary Phagan in his arms. I didn't know it was Mary Phagan. I only knew it was a girl.
At that moment I couldn't tell if she was alive. She appeared to be unconscious, or perhaps dead. I saw no blood.
He was holding her with both arms gripping her around the waist. I can't remember the color of her clothes but I have an impression that she had on pretty, clean clothes. She was extremely short and her head was sort of on his shoulder, or over it. Her hair was streaming down his back. Her hair was not in braids when I saw her. It was hanging loose. I saw no blood on the part of her neck that was exposed. I do not know if she was dead, but she was at least unconscious. She was limp and did not move. Her skirt had come up to about her knees.
It was as I suddenly barged into the first floor, prepared to go up the stairs to the office that I en-countered Conley with the body of Mary Phagan.
Conley was close to the trapdoor that led down into the basement by way of a ladder. I believe that from the direction he was headed and the attitude of the body that he was preparing to dump Mary Phagan down the trapdoor. I have no clear memory of whether the elevator had stopped on the first floor,
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Alonzo Mann's Testimony
but if it was not on that floor, the shaft would have been open. Conley could have dumped her down the empty elevator shaft. I believe for some reason Jim Conley turned around toward me. He either heard my footsteps coming or he sensed I was behind him. He wheeled on me and in a voice that was low but threatening and frightening to me, he said:
"If you ever mention this I'll kill you."
I turned and took a step or two—possibly three or four steps—up toward the second floor, but I must have worried about whether the office upstairs was closed. I did hear some movement upstairs, but I can't be sure who was on the floors above. I was fearful that the office might be closed, and so I turned back toward Conley. I wanted to get out of there quick. He got to within eight feet of me. He reached out as if to put one arm or hand on me. I ran out of the front door and raced away from that building.
I went straight home. I rode the streetcar.
Once at home I told my mother what I had just seen. I told her what Jim Conley had said to me about killing me. I didn't know for sure that the girl in his arms was dead.
My mother was very disturbed by what I told her.
She told me that I was never, never to tell any-body else what I had seen that day at the factory. She said she didn't want me involved, or the family involved, in any way. She told me to go on about my business as if nothing had happened and that sometime soon I would have to quit working there. From then on, whenever I was at work I steered clear of Jim Conley. I kept away from him and he did the same.
When my father came home my mother explained to him what I had seen and what Conley had
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
said to me. My father told me to forget it and never mention it.
My mother was a very strong-willed woman who was thirty years younger than my father and he said to me what she wanted him to say.
Later on he told me that Frank would never be convicted.
I have wished many times that my mother hadn't taken that attitude and that either she had told the authorities or that she had encouraged me to tell somebody—perhaps Leo Frank—what I had seen.
When the detectives later questioned me I told only the part of the story up to the time I left that day to go meet my mother. I did not tell that I had come back into the building and saw Conley with the body.
When Frank went on trial and I was called as a witness, my mother told me I would have to go and testify. She told me to keep to myself what I had seen. She said if I were not asked a specific question I did not have to give a specific answer.
Jim Conley was the chief witness against Leo Frank.
He testified that Frank had called
him to his office a little after
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Alonzo Mann's Testimony
from the elevator to a point in the rear of the building. Conley contended during the trial that after Frank dragged the body away from the elevator, Conley ascended in the elevator and Frank came back up-stairs by way of the trapdoor to the first floor, and then came on up the stairway from the first to the second floor.
I know that all of that testimony was false. It was Conley who had the body on the first floor. He was alone with the body. Frank was not there on the first floor. Conley did not tell the truth when he said the body was taken from the second floor to the basement. He had the body on the first floor.
I know from what I read of the case that Mary Phagan had come into the building shortly after I went out to meet my mother. She went upstairs to the second floor. Leo Frank had given her her pay envelope. I understand that she had worked one day that week and she was entitled to about $1.20.
I am convinced that she had left the pay window and was coming down the stairs or had reached the first floor when she met Conley, who had been looking for money when I came in that morning. I am confident that I came in just seconds after Conley had taken the girl's money and grabbed her. I do not think sex was his motive. I believe it was money. Her pay was never found in the building after she died.
Many times I have thought since all of this occurred almost seventy years ago that if I had hollered or yelled for help when I ran into Conley with the girl in his arms that day that I might have saved her life. I might have. On the other hand, I might have lost my own life. If I had told what I saw that day I might have saved Leo Frank's life. I didn't realize it at the time. I was too young to understand.
As the years have gone by I have told this "se-
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
cret" to a number of other
people. I told it when I was in the Army in World War I. In fact, I had a fight
with another soldier who became angry when I said Leo Frank did not kill the
girl, but that Conley did. I have told other people. I told my late wife. She
urged me not to make it public because she felt it wouldn't do any good. She
said it would not bring back Leo Frank and it would not bring back Mary Phagan.
And I told other relatives and friends. On one occasion, I believe in the
1950s, when I was operating a restaurant, I discussed this with a reporter in
Leo Frank was convicted by lies heaped on lies. It wasn't just Conley who lied. Others said that Leo Frank had women in the office for immoral purposes and that he had liquor there. There was a story that he took women down in the basement. That cellar was filthy. It was filled with coal dust. I was in the basement twice and remember the dirt and filth there. That was all false.
Leo Frank was a good office manager. He was always proper with people who worked for him. There were witnesses who told lies and I remained silent.
Now I am finally making all this public. I have found reporters, Jerry Thompson and Bob Sherborne, who have heard my story and who understand that it is a case that is important to history. I am glad to have it all come out.
At last I am able to get this off my heart.
I believe it will help people to
understand that courts and juries make mistakes. They made a mistake in the Leo
Frank case. I think it is good for it all to come out, even at this late date.
The two
Marys as children
Mary Phagan and Alonzo Mann look
through the author's scrapbook.
The grave of little Mary Phagan.
Mary Phagan and Mary Phagan
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Alonzo Mann's Testimony
There will be some people who will be angry at me because I kept all this silent until it was too late to save Leo Frank's life. They will say that being young is no excuse. They will blame my mother. The only thing I can say is that she did what she thought was best for me and the family. Other people may hate me for telling it. I hope not, but I am prepared for that, too. I know that I haven't a long time to live. All that I have said is the truth. When my time comes I hope that God understands me better for having told it. This is what matters.
On
When we signed in, the librarian observed us curiously as we checked out more information.
She asked my father, "What did you think of little Mary Phagan?"
My father replied, "Young lady, I wasn't even a gleam in my father's eye in those years!"
We both laughed, and the librarian relaxed.
When we told the librarian what we were looking for, she directed us to a copy of the Tennessean, since one of the Tennessean's reporters had been instrumental in breaking the story of Alonzo Mann's confession.
From our
research, we learned that Alonzo Mann was indeed Leo Frank's office boy. Mann
had begun working
Before we left that day, the librarian gave us the name and address of the Tennessean librarian.
On
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Your name was
given to me by the librarian at the Woodruff Library at
My father and I are very interested in this case because we are direct descendants of little Mary Phagan. My grandfather, William Joshua Phagan, was Mary's brother. My father is a nephew and I am a greatniece.
We would pay for the cost of the newspaper.
On March 26
Sandra Roberts called. She told me that the newspaper staff would be in
Before this time, my father was always the one who dealt with anyone inquiring about the Phagans. He had always represented our family's opinion.
I called my father to let him know about the meeting and to see if he could be there to meet the staff, too. I had never spoken any of my feelings about the murder, and I could sense his concern. He didn't think he'd be able to be there, but he wanted to make sure that either a friend, my husband, or another family member would be.
Chapter 11
THE PHAGANS
BREAK
THEIR VOW OF
SILENCE
Nervousness, curiosity and excitement all plagued me as I awaited the arrival of the Tennessean staff. My mind flitted back and forth to questions I wanted to ask. I wondered what their response would be to me and whether they would push me to come forward with the statement that Mary Phagan's convicted murderer was innocent.
Why, I thought, was that young girl's murder never forgotten? My family and I never really fathomed the publicity that continued almost unabated since her untimely death. And the media never once considered what the publicity did to the Phagan family. But Mary Phagan's legacy is a real part of all our lives—especially mine.
It also occurred to me that my father was right in his assessment of the media's handling of the story: he had told me that the story of little Mary Phagan would never be forgotten and that every three to five years the story would reappear in some form in the media. He had also
259
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
thought that the story would never be put to rest because the Jewish community would not be satisfied until Leo Frank's innocence could be established. And, with the Alonzo Mann story, that now seemed possible.
The Tennessean had sent two staff reporters and a photojournalist to the house. I introduced myself as Mary Phagan and my confidence returned.
We discussed the Mary Phagan/Leo Frank case. They asked no probing questions. One of my questions was how the Alonzo Mann evidence had come to light. One of the reporters, Jerry Thompson, explained that he had been working undercover in the KKK for over a year, developing a story depicting the current KKK. When they discovered that he was a reporter, there were several threats made against his life. The newspaper hired guards to protect him and his house.
One of these guards was Bob Mann, who
is Alonzo Mann's nephew. Bob told Jerry that his uncle had witnessed a murder
in
Jerry was intrigued. He spoke with his publisher, who agreed to run a series of stories on the convictions of innocent people. At that time the series was considered to be low profile.
Jerry had never heard of Mary Phagan or Leo Frank. That began to change when, in working on the series, he called Alonzo Mann. A few weeks later, Jerry met a rabbi who happened to mention Leo Frank and it "clicked." Armed with what Alonzo Mann had told him, Jerry then met again with his publisher. The story was given top priority.
Why did Alonzo Mann wait until 1982? The staff told me that Mann's mother didn't want their name involved in the case and feared for their safety. Alonzo Mann liked Leo Frank and had been relieved that Frank's sentence was commuted. Mann had hoped that the truth would be
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The Phagans Break Their Vow of Silence
found out during the appeals process. Leo Frank's lynching made that superfluous.
The newspaper staff asked me to comment on Mann's testimony. They said they'd be happy to send over any other materials I might need.
As they were leaving, they invited me to a press conference to be held at the Atlanta Jewish Community Center on April 1.
I accepted, but asked to remain anonymous.
The Atlanta
Jewish Community Center is on
But it was months after the night before I saw it that distinctly. My surroundings were a blur the night I at-tended the press conference: for the first time I was participating—even though as an anonymous observer—in a public discussion of my greataunt's murder.
Bernard and I had decided that the best way to retain anonymity was to register as "Mr. and Mrs. Kean" Because of my family's silence, I was not emotionally prepared to come forward at a news conference. In fact, the Tennessean staff had agreed that anonymity would probably be best since I had doubts about making any sort of statement. And I had no idea what they were going to present to the Jewish community.
The room was a typical conference area. Seated around the table were reporters who were either asked to be present or who had an interest in the case. As we entered the room, the Tennessean staff asked me to sit near them. Reporters directed questions concerning all areas of the case to the Tennessean staff for approximately thirty to forty-five minutes. Of foremost interest, of course, was
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Alonzo Mann's affidavit and whether a
posthumous pardon would be sought for Leo Frank.
At the
conference, I listened intently and watched the facial expressions of those
present. What were these people thinking I wondered, and how did they come to
their conclusions?
After all
questions were discussed, we were ushered into a huge main room which was
filled to capacity. My husband and I sat in the back row; I felt most
comfortable there. The Tennessean staff reporters, Jerry Thompson and
Robert Sherborne, publicly presented to the Jewish community the review of
evidence for Leo Frank's innocence.
Then they
answered questions. Most of the questions concerned the effect of Alonzo Mann's
affidavit as the missing link of evidence to finally substantiate Leo Frank's
innocence.
One question
involved the Phagan family. An individual wanted to know the reaction of my
family. Jerry Thompson stated that some Phagan family members upheld their
belief in the convicted Leo Frank's guilt while others "were trying to be
objective." I knew he was talking about me. I had my own opinion, but I
wanted to hear what they had to say. I was trying to be objective, but, because
of my emotional involvement, it was difficult for me. The meeting adjourned on
the thought that the posthumous pardon for Leo Frank was likely to be an issue
for the governor's race.
By the time we
got to the car, tears were running down my face, and I didn't know quite why.
In thinking over the conference the following day, I realized that while
listening to Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherborne present their evidence to the
Jewish community, I had thought how strange it was that they had asked me to be
objective, since they themselves had decided that Alonzo Mann's conclusions
were true and could not themselves be all that objective.
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The Phagans Break Their Vow of
Silence
At the time, all I could see was my grandfather and my father telling me the story of little Mary Phagan, over and over again. They had always told me that Leo Frank was convicted of her murder. How could I not believe them and the evidence? They had never withheld the truth from me. Truth was valuable to them and to me.
How could I reconcile the two views?
On April 4, just three days after the news conference, my youngest brother, Michael, died.
I was the oldest and he the youngest. We were very close. He looked up to me, and I depended on him more than he ever knew.
Michael had a lot of difficult times in his life, but he always knew that the family supported him. We didn't always agree with what he did, but we never stopped loving him.
His death devastated me. I couldn't believe he wouldn't be around anymore. I couldn't believe we'd never talk again.
Michael was buried next to our grandfather. I placed flowers on each grave. For the first time I began to understand the depth of my grandfather's grief over his sister's death—and why he couldn't talk about it. I wished that I could tell him so; placing the red rose on his grave was my gesture to him that I finally understood. Some griefs can never be overcome. Like my father, I learned there are two things in life you can't share: grief and pain.
On April 6, the
following article appeared in The East Cobb Neighbor, a neighborhood
newspaper near
JEWISH LEADERS SEEK EXONERATION FOR
FRANK
Leaders of the Atlanta Jewish
Community say they are seeking ways to obtain a posthumous exoneration of Leo
Frank, the turn-of-the-century
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
a
And one of three
The statements came last week before
two of the reporters, Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherborne of the Tennessean,
told an audience at the Atlanta Jewish Community Center about their
discovery of a possible turnaround in the Frank case.
In a package of copyright stories
published last month, the Tennessean revealed that eighty-two-year-old
Alonzo Mann of
The April 1913 murder of the girl at
the National Pencil Company in
Frank, a Jew, was convicted on what
even then was considered fuzzy evidence at a time of intense anti-Jewish
feeling in the city. His death sentence was later commuted by
Gerald Cohen, Vice President of the
Atlanta Jewish Federation, said last week the new twist in the Frank case
"has really set the
Sherry Frank (no relation to Leo
Frank), area director of the American Jewish Committee, said Jew-
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The Phagans Break Their Vow of Silence
ish leaders would like to make a
possible exoneration of Frank an issue in the gubernatorial race this year.
That time after Michael's death was
the most difficult period of my life so far. Nothing mattered. For the first
time, I could not get excited over—nor even care about—the burgeoning
resurgence of interest in Mary Phagan's death. Then I received a letter from
Sandra Roberts:
Dear Mary and Bernard:
I am sending you the latest story
that we have had on the Frank case. I am also enclosing copies of the letters
on which the story was based. The original letters are in the Goldfarb Library
of
Seigenthaler [President, Editor and
Publisher] told me this morning that the reaction to the Frank story continues
to pour in from all over the world. Reporters and television people are trying
their best to get Lonnie (Alonzo) Mann to tell his story again, but he seems
more comfortable just dealing with Bob and Jerry. I believe that he is at peace
with himself a last.
I must admit, Mary, that when I first
received your letter, I was purely curious about your reaction to the section.
However, since our visit I've tried to put myself in your place. I've wondered
what I would do if I were Mary Phagan.
From the beginning this story has
been fascinating, but it was merely another story to me. It is easy for me to
remain objective as a researcher, since I have no personal involvement with the
people, the races, the religions, or even the state concerned. It was simple
for me to sit silently in the Jewish Community Center in
On one hand I
witnessed a mass of people, totally
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
convinced that
one of their brothers was brutally and unjustly lynched. Moreover they have
remained angry for seventy years because they believe he was lynched because he
was Jewish.
On the other
hand I saw one small woman who bears not only the name but also the face and
figure of an aunt that she will never know. I felt your total devotion to a
family and a legacy that will always bear the burden of the senseless slaughter
of a beautiful young girl.
I honestly don't
know what I would do if I were you, Mary, but the options seem clear. You could
remain silent and let the past stay buried, or you could make a statement
indicating your reaction to the resurgence of the Phagan-Frank case.
When I spoke with Seigenthaler this
morning he revealed his concern (and curiosity) about your reaction to the
case. He assured me of a few things; if you should decide to make a public
statement concerning the case, there will be immediate, world-wide response to
it. The Tennessean would print any statement that you or your father
would make. You could indicate your belief of Frank's guilt or innocence, or
you could simply react to the new evidence of Alonzo Mann's testimony. Any
statement that you make could be preceded by a visit with Mr. Mann (I think
that might be really interesting). We would also let you read the story in full
before its publication (I was quite surprised when John made the last
suggestion. It flies in the face of a basic rule of journalism).
No matter what your decision is, I
have another personal promise to you. I assure you that you have a new-found
friend in
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The Phagans Break Their Vow of
Silence
that what is merely a story for the
newspaper could be a thunderbolt in the existence of a human being. Maybe that
is why I prefer the research end of journalism.
Best wishes,
Sandra
I read her letter again and again and
realized that she was indeed a friend. Her letter stayed with me. Sandra felt
compassion for me and I knew she would not ask anything from me that made me
uncomfortable or some how uneasy. It made me feel good that she respected me as
an individual. She knew that I was struggling inside.
Sandra's letter
also made me see something else in myself: I was fighting my legacy at the
Atlanta Jewish Community Center. I couldn't see it before reading and rereading
her letter, but that was why I cried so abruptly and bitterly after the news
conference. Now those feelings were over, gone. I could never deny or fight my
legacy again. I would now be able to stand up and acknowledge that I am Mary
Phagan.
My family's
strength during my brother's death also proved to me that I could never forget
who I was or where I came from. I was proud of my heritage.
On April 18 I
wrote Sandra to tell her of my brother's death. I also reiterated that I would
not make a public statement concerning Alonzo Mann's affidavit at that time. I
still felt the past should stay buried.
Sandra responded
on April 22 with yet another warm and sympathetic letter:
Dear Mary and Bernard:
Here is the long promised tape of the
WRFG program. The producer, Chris Kuhn, did most of the research. The narrator,
Sherry Conder, is a librarian at Georgia State Library and Archives. She did
her
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The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Master's thesis on Governor
Slaton—and she knows a lot about the case. You'd really enjoy her if you get to
meet her.
Mary, I'm really sorry about Michael.
I don't know the circumstances, if it was accidental or an illness, but I'm
sure you were a great comfort to your parents.
Don't worry about the statement. I'll
be honest with you—your statement would make a great story for this newspaper.
Bob and Jerry and Seigenthaler really would like to have it—But, as I have
reminded them, what is one great story for us could alter your life
considerably. I'm sure that the chances are good that other news people may
track you down (if they haven't already). So all I'm asking is—if and when you
decide to say something, please let the Tennessean have a little
warning.
I hope your healing is swift and as
painless as possible. Let me know when you need anything that I can help you
with.
Best wishes,
Sandra
While reading
through the newspaper articles I'd collected, I came across the name Mike Wing,
a member of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Another big first
step: why not call him, introduce myself, and let him know about my family?
When I told him
that my name was "Mary Phagan," and of my relationship to little Mary
Phagan, he reacted with utter shock. Mike Wing, like countless others, never
knew that there were surviving Phagan family members.
I wanted the
Board to know, I told him, that there were indeed surviving close family
members of Mary Phagan and that the family was anxious to be notified of any
269
The Phagans Break Their Vow of
Silence
information brought before the media. I asked to be informed if an application for a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank was received. At the very least, this would ensure that if the story broke, I'd know ahead of time.
He was responsive. During the conversation, he was curious about the fact that the Phagan family had never publicly acknowledged themselves. I explained that the murder had been a deeply traumatic event whose reverberations we still felt and that we had never seen the need to say anything. It had been, we hoped, best to keep a "vow of silence" among ourselves.
He said he felt certain an application would be filed. He took my address and phone number and those of my father.
After that, I wasn't scared anymore. I was glad that I had called Mike Wing and felt confident that if he did indeed receive a posthumous pardon application for Frank, he would inform me.
But my brother's death continued to cloud my life. I began to ask myself some difficult questions—including why he died and what the true value and purpose of my, life was. I and other close family members learned once again the importance and significance of family, and how vital it was that we continue being loving and caring to one another always.
Then, in August,
a happy event: I was the matron of honor in Amy's wedding. Amy and I had
remained close friends after I left
Amy was there for me when Michael died, too. She kept in close contact, since she knew me well and knew I was having a difficult time adjusting.
The wedding was a beautiful Jewish ceremony and I learned many new things. Her family became my family and I became a part of her family. The love and happiness we all shared was a healing force for me.
Chapter
12
APPLICATION
FOR PARDON:
1983
I had begun to
put my life in proper perspective by October of 1982, when Mike Wing called
from the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. He informed me that the Board had
received a formal application for a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank. The
application was filed by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Commit-tee,
and the Atlanta Jewish Federation, and directed by a Lawyer's Committee chaired
by
He also suggested that if the Phagan family had any factual information concerning the case, we could write a letter to the Board.
I had assumed that because six months had passed an application for a posthumous pardon would not be filed.
Actually, the petitioners had been working on the
270
271
Application for Pardon: 1983
filing of an application for pardon
ever since Alonzo Mann had come forward with his testimony. They felt it to be
the basis of a full pardon for Leo Frank.
While posthumous
pardons had been granted not only in
"I am not
working for Leo Frank or his family," Dale Schwartz stated publicly. The
core of seeking a pardon for Leo Frank, he said, was an attempt to obtain an
official repudiation of anti-Semitism and bigotry and to "remove a blot on
The pardon
effort, an Anti-Defamation League staffer later stated, was not simply a matter
of one person, not just the case of Leo Frank.
"I
respectfully disagree . . . ," an official wrote the League's National
Director Nathan Perlmutter, "that 'from a broad point of view, the Frank
pardon is of no consequence.' An innocent Jew was lynched by a mob inflamed by
anti-Semitism. It has never happened before or since in the
Another concern
of the pardon effort was the repudiation of prejudice generally, against Blacks
and Jews. "This is a justice issue," Schwartz said in reference to
some Black critics. "The Klan didn't lynch Jews. They lynched Black
people. And what we're trying to show is that's not the way to run justice in
this country." Responding to a recent Klan demonstration, a local reporter
took up the same theme, reflecting the widespread belief that the Leo Frank
case was something more than a transac-
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
tion between a bureaucratic body and
a dead factory owner:
The state should answer Klan bigotry
with a clear rebuke. It should let the world know that
The third extra-legal element
concerned
I agree entirely that our
constituency—the literate world—knows that Frank was railroaded. Our
constituency also knows that the Holocaust was real, but we continue to
counteract Holocaust denial. We have also proceeded on the assumption that it
was important for the German nation to come to terms with the past and
acknowledge the terrible crime committed in days gone by. Likewise some of us
here in
"
This last
concern apparently spurred counter-argument about the historical stature of
Application for Pardon: 1983
lawyers in general and particularly
Frank's counsel. Though apparently otherwise unconnected to the case, Neely
submitted a formal brief opposing the pardon, which stated, in part:
I am speaking as an individual,
steeped in the law, who wants the law to be upheld and the judicial system of
The leaders of the pardon effort
responded at length, including the outlining of the "new evidence" of
Alonzo Mann, pointing out that it had been unavailable to Frank's lawyers.
Mobley Howell, then Chairman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, is said to
have considered Neely's arguments carefully.
There were four legal means of
exonerating Leo Frank: a declaration by the governor proclaiming Leo Frank
innocent; a resolution by either the House or Senate of Georgia—or
both—proclaiming Leo Frank innocent; a complicated procedure of the courts
beginning with an extraordinary motion for retrial; a pardon by the Georgia
Board of Pardons and Paroles. And while Governor Joseph Harris, District
Attorney Louis Slaton, and the Georgia Senate all expressed sympathy for the
effort to exonerate Leo Frank, all also recommended that they obtain a pardon
from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. The petitioners began to see that a pardon
would, in fact, best fulfill the extra-legal goals of Frank's exoneration, and
that it would be considered by the public as definitive. Dale Schwartz
commented.
The public has come to understand the
pardon process as an exoneration, particularly if it is coupled with a
statement as to the innocence of the applicant.
He stated that a
gubernatorial proclamation might appear as "one of hundreds of such
proclamations and would not have the publicity impact that a pardon
would."
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
The petitioners
also came to feel that a court ruling might appear as though the Jewish
community had manipulated a friendly judge.
The goal, then,
was a pardon from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. As Dale Schwartz told the
editor of Israel Today in a 1984 interview, "It was determined that
Georgia would perhaps recognize the type of posthumous pardon which did not
merely grant 'forgiveness' for a crime committed in the past, but rather would
ask the defendant to forgive the state for having wrongfully convicted
him."
To the
petitioners, such a pardon seemed impossible to deny.
It didn't take a
lot of thought for me to realize that this was just the beginning. This time I
was personally involved and affected, and this was what I wanted: I didn't want
to be left in the dark again about "news breaking" stories of the case.
It seemed my quest had actually just begun. I wondered if I was mentally
prepared for what was about to happen.
My father
suggested I contact the rest of the Phagan family. He, as well as I, knew that
some of the Phagans would be quite distraught and angry over the seeking of a
posthumous pardon. They had objected in March, when the idea was first
broached, and would continue to object until they died.
I did as my
father wished. And we were right in our assessment of the family's opinion:
they objected. And, as Mike Wing had stated to me, all, including the Phagan
family, hoped for minimum publicity.
In December I
contacted Mike Wing about the possibility of my father and I appearing before
the Board hearings on the Leo Frank case. He referred me to Silas Moore, who
would be in charge of handling the case, and again suggested that we write the
Board a letter.
On
Application for Pardon: 1983
the Phagan family be permitted to
appear at any Parole Board hearing regarding the Leo Frank case.
On
Dear Ms. Phagan and Mr. Phagan:
Thank you for
your letter of January 9, written in behalf of the Phagan family, requesting to
be permitted to appear at any Parole Board hearing on the Leo Frank case. We
certainly understand your family's interest in this matter.
This past fall
the Board received a formal written application for a pardon, and in fact, was
requested to do so by Resolution of the Georgia Senate on
The pardon
application may have been inspired by the 1982 statement of Alonzo Mann.
However, the application is not based solely on that information, and certainly
the Board will not be limited to considering that alone.
The applicants
have been told that the Parole Board plans no hearing to take oral testimony
from anyone. We have requested that all information be submitted in writing. If
any members of the Phagan family wish to s are with us information or views
about the case, we would be glad to receive their written letters or
statements. We would be particularly interested in any factual details about
the case they may have.
The Board will
likely render its decision some time this year. It has expressed its
determination to base its decision on the facts and evidence. It desires to
study the case with a minimum of outside pressure and publicity.
If you have any
questions, please give me a call. If you wish, I would be glad to talk with you
in our offices. We appreciate your interest.
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
The letter from Mr. Moore confirmed that,
again, my her's intuition about the case—namely, that there would be some sort
of political involvement with the Board in even deciding whether to consider
the applicantion for a posthumous pardon—was correct.
We discussed the
letter and the Senate Resolution. We determined that we had to present our
views concerning the Resolution, since we felt that the political involvement
would possibly put "outside pressure" on the Board.
So on
Dear Mr. Moore and Board Members:
We would like to present our views
concerning the Resolution adopted in the Senate on
WHEREAS, Leo Frank was tried in the
This is a true statement.
WHEREAS, he was convicted in an
atmosphere charged with prejudice and hysteria; and
This issue was decided by the Supreme Court of
the
WHEREAS, he was sentenced to death
but his sentence was commuted by Governor John Marshall Slaton; and
Application for Pardon: 1983
Governor Slaton stated: "It will
thus be observed that if commutation is granted, the verdict of the jury is not
attacked, but the penalty is imposed for murder, which is provided by the State
and which the Judge, except for his misconception, would have imposed. Without
attacking the jury, or any of the courts, I would be carrying out the will of
the Judge himself in making the penalty that which he would have made it and
which he desires it shall be made."
WHEREAS, in August of 1915, he was
taken by a mob from the state institution in Milledgevile and carried to
This is true.
WHEREAS, Alonzo Mann, a
fourteen-year-old witness at the Frank trial, was threatened with death and was
not asked specific questions which could have cleared Frank; and Frank was ably
represented by a counsel of conspicuous ability and experience—Luther Rosser,
Reuben Arnold, and Herbert and Leonard Haas. They knew what they were doing.
WHEREAS, Mr. Mann has come forward to
clear his conscience before his death and claims that Leo Frank did not commit
the murder of Mary Phagan; and Alonzo Mann gave an opinion that was sworn to,
he did not submit any evidence contrary to the conviction of Leo M. Frank. How
long did he work at the Pencil Factory? I believe his testimony stated two
Saturdays. We challenge and doubt his claim.
WHEREAS, if Leo Frank was not guilty
of such crime, it is only fitting and proper that his name be cleared, even
after his death.
Leo M. Frank was convicted in a court
of law by his peers and was duly sentenced to death.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
SENATE that this body strongly requests that the State Board of Pardons and Paroles conduct an investigation into the Leo Frank case; and, if the evidence indicates that Leo Frank was not guilty, the Board should give serious consideration to granting a pardon to Leo Frank posthumously.
Over the past seventy years, no real
new evidence has been submitted. On
As Phagan family members, we hereby request a copy of the applicant's application and any evidence submitted. We also request any information regarding requests for the Leo M. Frank/Mary Phagan case in the future.
At about the same time my father and I wrote the letter, my father registered as a lobbyist in the Georgia State Capital representing only himself. He wanted to have the privilege of going to the capital and to give a rebuttal to each of the three Senators who had proposed the resolution. In this way the family's feelings could be known.
As I arrived at work the principal of
one of my schools told me there was an article in the Atlanta Journal and
Constitution about little Mary Phagan. A pardon has been asked for Leo
Frank, he said. For the first time I wasn't angry.
Ron Martz, staff writer for the Atlanta Journal and
Application for Pardon: 1983
Constitution reported that the Anti-Defamation
League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Atlanta Jewish Federation urged
the Board of Pardons and Paroles to vindicate Frank. "The conviction and
lynching of Leo Frank was the worst episode of anti-Semitism in the history of
the
Dale Schwartz
said that the petition contained three hundred pages of evidence. The major
pieces were "an affidavit from Alonzo Mann, who was Frank's office boy at
the time of the murder, and a two-and-one-half-hour videotape of Mann giving
that affidavit in which he asserts Frank's innocence."
The myth that
had grown up around Leo Frank colored popular thinking about him long before
Alonzo Mann's testimony became public. "My grandmother would point out
where Leo Frank was lynched," Mike Wing was to recall in 1985. "As a
child, I grew up thinking an innocent man was lynched. I don't even know if I
knew there was a trial."
A recurrent
theme of the Leo Frank myth is the alleged confessions of Jim Conley. The
pardon application claimed that Conley confessed at least three times: to an
insurance agent, in letters to his woman friend, Annie Maud Carter, and to his
attorney, William Smith. Schwartz would later say Conley confessed
"thousands of times," and argue that these reports "should,
standing by themselves, warrant the granting of the posthumous pardon."
Then there was the "secret evidence" supposedly
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
made available to John Slaton in
1915. When Conley's attorney publicly claimed Frank was innocent in 1914, many
thought that he had somehow passed secret information on to John Slaton. In his
autobiography, I Can Go Home Again Judge Arthur Powell hinted that
Frank's innocence would one day be conclusively revealed:
I am one of the few people who know
that Leo Frank was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted and
lynched. Subsequent to the trial, and after his conviction had been affirmed by
the Supreme Court, I learned who killed Mary Phagan, but the information came
to me in such a way, though I wish I could do so, I can never reveal it so long
as certain persons are alive. We lawyers, when we are admitted to the bar, take
an oath never to reveal the communications made to us by our clients; and this
includes facts revealed in an attempt to employ the lawyer, though he refuses
the employment. If the lawyer were to be so forgetful of his oath as to attempt
to tell it in court, the judge would be compelled under the law not to receive
the evidence. The law on this subject may or may not be a wise law—there are
some who think that it is not—but naturally since it is the law we lawyers and
the judges cannot honorably disobey it. Without ever having discussed with
Governor Slaton the facts which were revealed to me. I have reason to believe,
from a thing contained in the statement he made in connection with the grant of
the commutation, that, in some way, these facts came to him and influenced his
action. I expect to write out what I know and seal it up; for the day may yet
come, after certain deaths occur, when more can be told than I can honorably
tell now.
The file to which he refers may have
contained a confession obtained by Conley's own counsel. There has been an air
of mystery about this evidence in other accounts, as
281
Application for Pardon: 1983
well, such as a recent letter from
the late Governor Slaton's nephew to a relative:
He [Governor Slaton] never talked at
length about the Frank case, but at that time he and Judge Powell had long
since come to the conclusion but elected not to publicize the details.
Eventually they decided to destroy the document and stir up no further fuss.
But it was Alonzo Mann's testimony on
which the petitioners for the pardon were pinning their hopes. If true,
Schwartz eventually argued before the Board, Mann's testimony proved that Jim
Conley, the state's chief witness against Frank, had lied on two counts: first,
since Mann indicated Mary Phagan was alive as she was carried down, it
contradicted Conley's statement that she was dead when he saw her on the second
floor; and second, the testimony corroborated Governor Slaton's conclusion in
1915 that Conley could not have used the elevator to carry little Mary Phagan's
limp body.
The editorial
opinion of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution felt "that
the case is compelling and that the Board of Pardons and Paroles should move
quickly to clear Leo Frank's name—and the enduring blot on the con-science of
The Marietta
Daily Journal article by Brent Gilroy stated that the Board of Pardons and
Paroles would probably take a year before all the evidence could be digested
and a decision be made.
Sherry Frank,
Southeast Area Director of the American Jewish Committee, told the Journal that
"she had been told the pardon not only would wipe from the books the life
sentence given Frank, but also would clear him outright of guilt in Mary
Phagan's killing." Stuart Lewengrub, Southeast Regional Director for the
Anti-Defamation League, said "We are looking for a complete
exoneration." It was also reported that Governor Joe
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Frank Harris expressed his intention
to approve the pardon if it was recommended by the Board of Pardons and
Paroles.
When the
posthumous pardon effort became public, it attracted its own anti-Semitic
response. On
Others felt the
way the petitioners did. For the Atlanta Constitution, the "power
to right a great wrong" was not the narrow legal case, but the extra-legal
ramifications of the Leo Frank case: the ability to signify "that we no
longer excuse or forgive prejudice, no matter how old or how recent:
One could argue that this is not the
role of a pardons and paroles board, that it is merely expected to rule on
narrow issues involving living persons convicted of crimes. Technically, this
may be so. But if the power to right a great wrong and do a great good falls
into the hands of any citizen—or of five citizens . . . [it is their
responsibility] to seize the opportunity and act for the betterment of the
state.
Among those who exhorted the Board to
pardon Leo Frank were a minister in Tennessee who felt that pardon would
"bring a sense of reassurance to many of our citizens who have been hurt
and still suffer because of the prejudicial trial to which he was subjected
many years ago," and a member of the Christian Council of Metropol-
Application for Pardon: 1983
itan
I think most of the Phagan family
felt as I did about this latest episode: we had known about the application for
the posthumous pardon beforehand, and while we weren't pleased with the Board's
considering the application, we realized there was more here than just interest
in clearing the name of Leo Frank.
What bothered my family most was that
little Mary Phagan's horrible murder was not considered. What about her and the
effect of her murder on the Phagan family? Little Mary Phagan was the victim
and now her surviving family continued having unwarranted publicity. No one
seemed to care about that.
Then I took a step to assure that the
next generation of Phagans would not be continually victimized by a news-hungry
press. And it was a hard decision. I contacted Ron Martz, who had written the
"anniversary" article and informed him of his errors.
Ron Martz, along with most people
with whom I come in contact, acted with utmost surprise and shock that I even
existed. Chuckling, I told him I did indeed exist, and he should research his
facts more thoroughly. He asked if I would consider an article or a series of
articles about myself. I told him I was not interested but if I did reconsider,
he would be second—as I would let the Tennessean have the first
consideration.
Several months
later, I contacted the Tennessean staff and informed them I would like
to meet Alonzo Mann and asked if it could be possibly arranged.
On July 19 I met Alonzo Mann at my
home. He, along with Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherborne, arrived about
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
whether I was doing the right thing,
but I knew when I met Mr. Mann that I was.
He was dressed
quite dapperly in a gray suit with a light pink shirt, straw hat, and he
gingerly carried a cane. Of course he was quite elderly now, but I could
picture him as a young boy working in the pencil factory.
Suddenly I felt
a lump of nervousness in my throat. Obviously that same nervousness affected
him, for we stood awkwardly in my livingroom until finally I thrust my hand out
and said, "I'm Mary Phagan."
Taking my hand, he said, "I'm
Alonzo Mann."
I ushered him
over to the daybed and we settled back, sitting beside each other, leaning on
the fluffy blue pillows.
For about an
hour we looked through my huge scrap-book on the murder of Mary Phagan. At one
point I read him the article from The Tennessean about his visit to my
greataunt's grave, and although he must have seen the article before, he leaned
forward, staring at the clipping, listening intently.
By the time we
had finished looking at the scrapbook we had become friends, talking animatedly
together, sharing confidences about Mary Phagan's murder, which knit us
together although we had never met before.
Finally, having made up a list of
things which I wanted to ask him, I began to question him more formally.
"Where were you born?" I asked soberly.
"In
My questions came more quickly.
"How long
did you stay in
Application for Pardon: 1983
"About a
year; then I joined the United States Army." "Did you ever go to the
courthouse besides giving testimony?"
"No. I just passed by."
"Did you ever meet Mary Phagan?"
"I didn't know Mary Phagan, but
I knew her by sight."
"Was she as pretty as they say?"
"Yes."
"How long did you work for Mr. Frank?"
"I worked
at the pencil factory for several months." (This contradicted my father's
understanding that Mr. Mann had only been at the factory for one week.)
"Did you ever keep copies of the
original newspapers?"
No.
"Did you ever confront Jim
Conley after what he says he saw?"
No.
"Did you see Jim Conley murder
Mary Phagan?"
"No, but I
saw Jim Conley with Mary Phagan in his arms. I believe Jim Conley murdered Mary
Phagan, not Leo Frank."
I looked up and suddenly noticed that
Mr. Mann appeared tired, his voice had grown less strong.
"Are you all right?" I asked, concerned.
He nodded, "I've had a heart
operation recently," he said softly. "I have a pacemaker now."
Shaking my head, I confided, "I
have a heart condition also."
"But how old are you?"-1 asked, anxiously.
"Twenty-eight," I replied.
"To have a heart condition at
twenty-eight—how difficult that must be," he said sadly.
I nodded. "But it's something you learn to live
with."
The Murder of
Little Mary Phagan
"Yes," he agreed
sympathetically, "accepting life is something we all have to learn."
We began once again to talk of the
murder.
He told me that
after he encountered Jim Conley, he went home and told his mother what he had
witnessed. She told him not to offer any other information if he wasn't asked.
When the detectives arrived at his home, they asked him what time he left.
That, he said, was their main concern of his account in the matter. He had felt
that if he had been asked specific questions, the course of history might have
changed.
Then he related
a story about little Mary Phagan that to this day I picture in my mind. A bunch
of young girls were pushing a red wagon. In the wagon was little Mary Phagan.
Her hair was pulled up with big bows. She was beautiful and laughing.
As Mr. Mann
recalled the information, I felt for him as I have felt for myself. He, like
me, was faced with a struggle. This was his way of resolving it—to come forward
and tell the world what he believes he had seen. I wasn't angry at him. I could
never be, for I was brought up to respect others' opinions and their values,
and with a sense of what one has to do to be true to his own beliefs whatever
the difficulty. I empathized with him. Our talk had lasted four hours; we were
both exhausted.
As Mr. Mann was
preparing to leave, he told me that his main purpose was to get Leo Frank
pardoned, and that he had personally asked the Board for a pardon. He asked me
to tell the Board again that Leo Frank did deserve a pardon, to come with him.
I felt that I just couldn't.
But something
was stirring in the back of my mind. I had automatically accepted the Phagans'
assumption of Leo Frank's guilt—as had my Dad. Here, in Alonzo Mann, was a
nice, presumably honest and gentle human being, who strongly believed
otherwise.
Application for Pardon: 1983
What was the truth? Would it ever be
known?
On July 20, my
father received The Thunderbolt, issue No. 290, from the current
association of the Ku Klux Klan. Many years before they had asked my father for
a "Remember Mary Day," and he had objected. My father did not object
then and does not object now to anyone or any organization wishing to pay respects
to little Mary Phagan. He objects to individuals or organizations who use
little Mary Phagan's death for their own prejudicial purposes.
My father wrote
the Anti-Defamation League in
Dear Mr. Phagan:
Thank you again for letting us know
about the approach that was made to you by a representative of The
Thunderbolt concerning resurrecting the Leo Frank case. You can be sure
that your aunt's memory would have been used solely for a vehicle to promote
anti-Semitism.
I have enclosed for your information
a copy of The Thunderbolt in order to give you an idea of what this
paper and group engages in. For the extreme vulgarity see especially page 10.
The KKK reprinted in its entirety the
statements of Judge Randall Evans, Jr., from the Augusta Chronicle-Herald dated
. . . The Supreme Court consisted of
legendary giants—Justice Lumpkin, Justice Beverly Evans, Justice Fish, Justice
Atkinson, Justice Hill, and Justice Beck. That court affirmed the conviction,
with Justices Fish and Beck dissenting as to the admission of certain
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
evidence; but on motion for rehearing
by Frank, the entire court unanimously refused to grant the motion for
rehearing.
Frank then filed an extraordinary
motion for a new trial before Superior Court Judge Hill, which was overruled,
and this decision was unanimously affirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia.
On
So at this point in time the record
shows that two impartial judges of Superior Court in
Bear in mind, this was not in a rural
county of Georgia where influential politicians are sometimes thought to sway
juries, but it was in the most populous county in the South where it was not
shown or even suggested that Jews are the objects of bias.
Leo Frank's race was not an issue in
the case during the trial.
But the Jewish community of the
entire
It is interesting to note that Gov.
John M. Slaton's term as governor expired on
Application for Pardon: 1983
Frank's final date for execution was
set for the next day,
The Jewish community nationwide
directed its wrath in large part towards Thomas E. Watson of Thomson, charging
that Watson had written incendiary articles in his Jeffersonian, which
contributed to Frank's conviction. They urged that Frank was a victim of racial
prejudice and bias towards Jews.
Now comes "newly discovered
evidence" which is claimed would have proven Frank innocent. Not so! A
year ago the new witness, one Alonzo Mann, was first located, and said that as
a young man he saw a Negro with the body of Mary Phagan in the basement of the
factory building, and that he had remained silent for around seventy years
because he was so young at the time, and he just didn't know what to do about
it. Our State Department of Archives even wrote in one of its publications that
this "new evidence" seemed to prove Frank innocent. I wrote the
Department of Archives and pointed out that this was not new evidence at
all—that during the trial of the case it was plainly proven that Jim Conley
took the body to the basement—and the Archives Department replied with an
apology and, in effect, said it had goofed. That correspondence is now a part
of our Department of Archives.
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
The suggestion
that a governor or Board of Pardons and Paroles may pardon a deceased person is
completely ridiculous.
The Constitution of Georgia provides
that "the legislative, judicial, and executive powers shall forever remain
separate and distinct." The executive department has no power whatever to
reverse, change, or wipe out a decision by the courts, albeit while the
prisoner is in life he may be pardoned. But a deceased party can not be a party
to legal proceedings (Eubank v. Barber, 115
The blood of a little girl cries out
from the ground for justice. I pray the sun will never rise to shine upon that
day in
Application for Pardon: 1983
My father and I were interested in
the statements made by Judge Randall Evans. We had been told that the Phagan
family were the only ones who had objected to a posthumous pardon for Leo
Frank. Evidently there were other people, prominent and well known, who had
also objected.
We felt that the
judge made some important and relevant points. We felt we had to verify the
statements concerning the pardon to find out whether the consideration of the
application by the Board was indeed illegal.
I contacted Mike
Wing of the Board and asked for a copy of the governing rules in consideration
for a pardon. He was again most supportive, and even suggested that we meet. A
date was set for
When I received
the information that I requested, I learned that the application for pardon
filed was indeed illegal. Why, then, had it been accepted? There were only two
instances in which a pardon could be granted. According to the rules of the
Pardons and Paroles Board:
1. A pardon may be granted to a person
who, to the Board's satisfaction, proves his innocence of the crime for which
he was convicted under
2. A pardon which does not imply
innocence may be granted to an applicant convicted under
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
by delaying his qualifying for
employment in his chosen profession. Application must be made by the ex-offender
on a form available from the Board on request.
On July 22 I went to
At
The staff was
very cordial, courteous, and helpful to me. We shared our opinions, both pro
and con, and we remained strong in them. Mr. Seigenthaler asked what my father
thought about the possibility of a pardon and I told him that he objected
unless complete proof of evidence could be submitted. Mr. Seigenthaler felt
that no complete proof of evidence would ever come forth, only so-called
controversies.
I realized
something about myself during our discussion: my opinions were as strong as my
father's, and I, too, felt that a posthumous pardon should not be granted
unless there was complete proof of evidence. Sherry Frank's statement kept
playing in my mind: "The pardon not only would wipe from the books the
life sentence given Frank, but also would clear him outright of guilt in Mary
Phagan's killing." If the pardon was granted, what would the books say?
Application for Pardon: 1983
Our meeting broke up at
He was right: my
name was special to me. It would always be. I would never forget who or what or
where came from.
Later that
evening the staff allowed me to go through Sandra's research files and
determine what materials I would like to photocopy. They were extremely
responsive and showed no hesitation whatsoever in giving me any of their work.
On the way home
I thought about what was happening: I knew that the Board would be deciding
soon. And, I thought, the sooner the better; I just didn't think I could go
much longer without knowing.
Alonzo Mann
called me on July 26 to let me know he had received a letter from a
"Phagan" and thought I would be the most appropriate person to have
it. He also told me that no matter what decision I made, we would be friends
and not have to talk about it. We both realized and understood our mutual
struggle to have the truth known. I respected him and he me.
Frank Ritter of
the Tennessean called me on July 28 to ask me to let him know when I
made a decision about going public. He added that no matter what, he supported
me!
The following
day Sandra Roberts called to ask if I would agree to a meeting with Bill
Gralnick, president of the American Jewish Committee and Miles Alexander, an
attorney, on August 3.
During the days
that followed, I wondered what the real purpose of the meeting was. I trusted
Sandra and liked her. She had become a friend to me. So I knew she would never
put me in an uncomfortable position.
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
The meeting was
held at the Kilpatrick and Cody law firm on
I told them that
we didn't condemn or object to them with regard to their seeking to pardon Leo
Frank, but that we did object to a pardon unless complete proof of evidence
could be substantiated. We understood their position and hoped they understood
ours.
They wanted to
know how we would feel if a pardon were granted without such evidence. I told
them I knew my father would be mad as hell and that he would seek legal advice
if the pardon were granted without adequate proof.
My impression
was that they felt that Leo Frank did not have a fair trial according to
today's standards. They wanted to know how I would deal with the situation if I
were Leo Frank's greatniece but I told them I could only deal with the
questions and heritage that were mine.
On
We arrived at
Application for Pardon: 1983
room. Silas Moore greeted us and then
introduced us to Mike Wing.
Mike Wing was
cordial. We freely discussed the idea of a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank. My
father did most of the talking. He informed Mike that the Phagan family was
opposed to the granting of a posthumous pardon because there was no absolute
proof of Leo Frank's innocence. He felt that Alonzo Mann's affidavit offered no
proof, but was merely Mr. Mann's opinion that Leo Frank did not commit the
murder. The controversies which my father said were "so-called" were
exactly that. He felt that they could not be proven and what was essential was
the transcript at the Supreme Court of Georgia. And he wanted evidence. Not
statements. Not hearsay. Not resolutions. He wanted evidence that would stand
up in a court of law. The known facts were brought out during the trial, the
jury heard them, and the jury of Frank's peers convicted him. He would fight
for Frank's exoneration if new evidence were brought forward, he declared. We
would be the first ones to stand up and support that exoneration.
My father's
other main point was that those who were seeking the pardon chose to impose
today's judicial standards for a trial that occurred in 1913. "How can one
compare yesterday with today," he asked. "Today's laws are built on
yesterday's court decisions."
"The
lynching is a different matter," my father stated. He said "I neither
condemn or condone it. Again, we cannot judge yesterday's values based on
today's standards of morals."
My father told
Mike that he was not in any way associated with the Ku Klux Klan but felt that
any person or organization could and should have the right to pay little Mary
Phagan tribute as long as it wasn't for their own prejudicial purposes. My
father then described the
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
"Remember Mary Phagan"
incident in 1974 to which he had totally objected.
Mike told us that Judge Randall
Evans, Jr., who was quoted in The Thunderbolt, was not a member' of the
Klan or had any association with them. He informed us that he was a retired
judge and felt that the courts of
My father explained his reasons for
wanting to be present when the Board discussed the case. Again, Mike stated
that no oral testimony would be taken but that the Board might consider
granting us a review. My father felt we had a right to it.
We thanked him for notifying us in
advance about the application for a posthumous pardon and for the opportunity
of discussing in person our views with regard to it.
On August 9 I contacted Edgar Neely.
I wanted to know why he opposed the pardon. He told me that the April 26
article made his blood boil. He personally knew Reuben Arnold and Hugh M.
Dorsey and felt it was a disgrace to discredit these fine lawyers. He had even
argued cases against Reuben Arnold, and felt he was brilliant. He stated that
the evidence is "flimsy because no one is alive to dispute Alonzo
Mann," and that he wanted to uphold the courts, "as Leo Frank got a
fair trial for that time." Therefore, he had written a letter to the Board
stating his opposition.
Sandra Roberts called and asked me
how the meeting went with the Board. I told her the Phagan family—including
myself—opposed the pardon. I also told her I would make a decision about going
public by the end of August.
I was ready for another big step. On
Application for Pardon: 1983
back within minutes and we set
September 5 for my interview.
On September 1
the Marietta Daily Journal reported: HARRIS: PARDONS, PAROLES BOARD
SHOULD RE-CONSIDER FRANK CASE.
The article, by
Bill Carbine and Merritt Cowart, was, my family felt, further outside pressure
on the Board to determine its decision. Governor Harris was quoted as saying:
"From what I've seen and heard, the case deserves reconsideration. From
the recent evidence and from what I've heard, I think it is something that the
Pardons and Paroles Board could consider." The governor did not say
whether he would recommend a posthumous pardon for Frank, as several of the
Jewish organizations suggested.
Dr. Edward
Fields of
Fields scheduled
a KKK march for Saturday, September 3, from
Marietta Mayor
Bob Flournoy announced that a service would be conducted at the
September 3
arrived. I stayed home. I felt afraid. A couple of local stations reported the
KKK march to Mary's grave. She was eulogized, and a wreath was placed on her
tombstone. It was stated that everyone might not agree with what the Klan stood
for, but that the remembrance
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
of Mary Phagan is still alive and
that this was part of
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
and Marietta Daily Journal reported on the Klan march and repeated
what the news account reported. It was also reported that the rally and the
counter rally were orderly and without interruption.
On September 5 the Tennessean staff—Frank
Ritter, Sandra Roberts, and Pat Casey (photographer)—arrived at my home. We
grilled hot dogs and hamburgers outdoors and ate before we got into the interview.
My father did most of the talking. The rest of the family listened attentively,
even though we had heard the same stories before.
The staff had asked to be taken to
little Mary Phagan's grave. It was the first time that my father and I had been
there together. When he read the inscription his emotions got the best of him
and he cried. His tears made me cry. Her memory bound us together. It was true.
Little Mary Phagan was not forgotten.
We felt strongly that the story in
the Tennessean, "Little Mary Phagan Is Not Forgotten," would
be done honestly, accurately, and with sensitive feelings toward us. We were
correct. Frank Ritter called us and read the entire story before it went into
print. He wanted to make sure there were no mistakes. We were pleased.
On September 7 Durwood McAlister of
the Atlanta Journal wrote an editorial opinion on the Frank case. He
felt that the Klan march was a futile attempt on the part of the Klan for its
very existence, using the posthumous pardon for Leo Frank as an excuse.
His explanation of why the KKK
marched to the grave of Mary Phagan was that the legacy had begun there. It was
well documented that the modern Klan, known as the "Knights of Mary
Phagan," gathered on top of
Application for Pardon: 1983
It was evident
that he believed Leo Frank to be innocent of the murder of little Mary Phagan
and that the lynching was wrong.
He felt that Leo
Frank should be officially pardoned due to the fact that remaining doubts were
dispelled by the confession of Alonzo Mann.
He also stated,
"Ten years after the murder, a journalist working for the Atlanta
Constitution uncovered new evidence proving Frank's innocence, but
prominent Atlanta Jews, fearing the story would only bring on new
repercussions, persuaded the newspaper to withhold the publication."
I couldn't
believe what he was saying. Why didn't he present the evidence to the Board
along with Alonzo Mann's eyewitness testimony? I called to try and find out,
but my call was never returned. I thought it was incredibly one-sided to
present the story in such a way.
My father and I
contacted Ron Martz of the Journal to tell him we were ready to public
in
On September 14
the Atlanta Journal printed a letter from Randall Evans, Jr., in
response to Durwood McAlister's editorial opinion.
It said that
Judge Randall Evans, Jr., was not a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but one of the
thousands of Georgians who vigorously opposed a pardon for Leo Frank. And it
reminded readers that the law of
Judge Evans
responded to every one of Durwood McAlister's statements. His last paragraph
also expressed my sentiments exactly: "It is hoped that the Board will
permit oral argument on this question and then your hired editorial writers
will be privileged to speak out in public and justify their statements written from
the privacy of your editorial offices. And perhaps others of us will be allowed
to reply."
Ron Martz's story, which appeared in the
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Journal on
Once again, my father and I were
pleased with Ron Martz's reporting.
On
My father addressed the Board:
My name is James Phagan, and this is
my daughter, Mary Phagan, named for little Mary Phagan. We are direct
descendants of little Mary Phagan. My father, William Joshua Phagan, Jr., was
little Mary's brother. We have come here today to express our views and
opinions on the request for a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank, who was the
convicted murderer of little Mary Phagan. We prefer to remain within ourselves
and not to seek publicity concerning our legacy. We have never said anything
before because we never had anything to say. We granted Ron Martz, staff writer
for the Atlanta Journal, an interview because of the many articles,
editorial opinions, both in the news-paper and on TV stations, and
"outside pressure" of the Senate. It was time for it to be known that
we do indeed exist, and we are concerned about the granting of a posthumous
pardon.
Application for Pardon: 1983
I am here today
with my daughter, Mary, to inform you that if you find evidence—not statements,
not hearsay, not resolutions, but evidence—that will stand in a court of law to
prove the innocence of Leo Frank for the murder of little Mary Phagan, then we
would like to come forward with you and tell the world. A miscarriage of
justice is a miscarriage of justice whether it happened two years ago or
seventy years ago.
We cannot compare yesterday with
today's standards. We were not there and it is unfair to say that Leo Frank did
not get a fair trial according to today's standards.
The lynching of Leo Frank is an
entirely different matter. But I am not going to condemn or condone what was
done. You had to be there to understand the feeling that Governor Slaton's
commutation order caused. The people felt robbed of justice and became a
vigilante committee.
I am emotional about this, and my
daughter is emotional about this. We thank you for the opportunity to address
you and for letting us express our views and opinions.
I listened to my
Dad as he spoke and felt proud to be his daughter and to be a Phagan.
Mobley Howell asked if any of the
members had any questions. There were none. Mr. Howell told us the nicest part
of this tragedy was that the Board had the opportunity to meet my father and
me.
"Young lady," he said,
"you are beautiful and have a startling resemblance to your
greataunt."
I smiled and thanked him. He also
told us that the Board would render its decision by the end of 1983.
The rendering of this decision
weighed heavily on my mind in the following months. During that time, The
New
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
York Times, Washington Post and U.S. Magazine sent
reporters to interview my father and me. One of the reporters told me outright
that my grandfather and father "have been lying" and that Leo Frank
was innocent.
My nightmares returned.
In December the Atlanta
Journal and Atlanta Constitution reported that the Board of Pardons
and Paroles would announce its decision sometime during the last two weeks of
1983. Finally, I thought, it would be over. Or would it?
On
When we arrived
at Bernard's parents' home, Bernard's mother couldn't wait to tell me: Dan
Rather had reported on CBS news that the request for a posthumous pardon for
Leo Frank had been denied!
I cried. I was
relieved, angry, and sorrowful. I wanted to know if it was truly over.
The Board had
begun work on the pardon in January 1983, pretty much going over the same
routes of investigation that John Slaton had sixty-eight years earlier.
It organized an
investigation staff under the direction of Chairman Silas Moore. This staff was
presented with "evidence": newspaper accounts, the trial brief,
books, and letters—along with short summaries. Many of the Board members turned
to history books to get a perspective on the lynchings, yellow journalism, and
the general temper of the time when little Mary Phagan had been murdered.
Alonzo Mann's
testimony was the first to be evaluated. While many, including Mr. Mann, felt
that his new recollection "proved" Frank's innocence, the Board felt
it merely cast doubt on Jim Conley's testimony. It proved in
Application for Pardon: 1983
the Board's estimate that Jim Conley
lied about carrying Mary Phagan in the elevator, and possibly about her dying
on the metal room floor, but it did not prove that Frank had not killed her
upstairs nor even that he might not have later killed her downstairs. The Board
felt Mann made Conley into a liar, which everyone knew, but not necessarily a
killer. Also, the seventy-year gap that made his testimony so sensational to
the media and would-be movie producers cast doubt on the validity of his
recollections. Moreover, it was perceived that his testimony itself had
internal contradictions.
Once the Mann
evidence had been weighed and found to be non-conclusive, there wasn't much to
go on. "We set about to do almost the impossible," one Board member
was to state publicly, "to reconstruct something that occurred seventy
years ago—frankly, all the actors were deceased except Alonzo Mann. We were
totally at the mercy of accounts by others—mostly journalism accounts,
letters—and mostly opinions." He was correct: no other witnesses appeared;
no one unearthed heretofore secret material; and, despite rumors, there was no
concrete evidence of a confession by Jim Conley. Seventy years after it all
began, the Leo Frank case remained a mystery—and, because of the passage of
time, an even deeper mystery. Even if Alonzo Mann's account were entirely true,
Frank still could have killed Mary Phagan, either accidentally or deliberately,
either in combination with Jim Conley or on his own—or he could have been
completely innocent.
And there is a third possibility.
Someone, whose identity we may never know, could have slipped unnoticed into
the pencil factory that day, or have been allowed in by a person on duty. What
would this person's motive for killing little Mary Phagan have been? Robbery? A
grudge against the pencil company? Anger at Mary because she may have rejected
advances this person might have made to her?
304
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
I wondered: how
many others had thought of this possibility?
In the announced decision itself, the
Board declared cogently:
The lynching of Leo Frank and the
fact that no one was brought to justice for that crime is a stain upon the
State of Georgia which granting a posthumous pardon cannot remove.
I called my Dad and asked him if it
was over. He told me it wasn't. He said that when the Board of Pardons and
Paroles changed chairmanship there would be another request filed. Somehow I
knew he was right.
The Board sent me the decision in
response to the application for posthumous pardon for Leo M. Frank. It stated:
On
For almost two
years the case was appealed unsuccessfully up to the highest levels in the
state and federal court system.
On
On
On
Application for Pardon: 1983
In accepting the
application, the Board informed the applicants that the only grounds upon which
the Board would grant a full pardon exonerating Leo M. Frank of the murder for
which he was convicted would be conclusive evidence proving beyond any doubt that
Frank was innocent. The burden of furnishing such proof would be upon the
applicants.
The information which has been
submitted to the Board in this matter is considerable. The pardon application,
prompted by the affidavit of Alonzo Mann dated
Alonzo Mann made statements to
journalists Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherborne, which appeared in a copyright
article in the Tennessean on
Assuming the statements made by Mr.
Mann as to what he saw that day are true, they only prove conclusively that the
elevator was not used to transport the body of Mary Phagan to the basement.
Governor Slaton concluded as a result of his investigation, that the elevator
was not used and so stated in
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
his order of commutation. Therefore,
this in and of itself adds no new evidence to the case.
Briefs have been submitted in
opposition to the pardon. These briefs cite evidence and information to support
that view, none of which is new.
Numbers of other letters have been
received reflecting opinions in support of and in opposition to the pardon.
In addition to the information and
material submitted to the Board by interested parties, the brief of trial
evidence was obtained from the Supreme Court of Georgia. This extensive
document contains all the testimony given at the trial. It is the foundation
upon which most arguments on both sides of the issue are based.
The lynching of Leo Frank and the
fact that no one was brought to justice for that crime is a stain upon the
State of Georgia which granting a posthumous pardon cannot remove.
Seventy years have passed since the
crime was committed, and this alone makes it almost impossible to reconstruct
the events of the day. Even though records of the trial are well preserved, no
principals or witnesses, with the exception of Alonzo Mann, are still living.
This case is tainted due to the lynching of Leo Frank. Would he eventually have
won a new trial? Would he have been paroled? These questions can never be
answered. After an exhaustive review and many hours of deliberation, it is
impossible to decide conclusively the guilt or innocence of Leo M. Frank. There
are many inconsistencies in the accounts of what happened.
For the Board to grant such a pardon,
the innocence of the subject must be shown conclusively. In
Application for Pardon: 1983
the Board's opinion, this has not
been shown. Therefore, the Board hereby denies the application for a posthumous
pardon for Leo M. Frank.
For the Board,
Mobley Howell, Chairman
Though the
testimony they had collected convinced the petitioners of Leo Frank's
innocence, it must have seemed far less certain to Board members. Dale Schwartz
had declared Alonzo Mann's testimony "so credible you couldn't get an
actor to do that," but the Board members apparently doubted its value as
concrete evidence. To the Board it became clear that Mann's testimony did no
more than support Slaton's conclusion, based on the argument of the excrement
in the elevator shaft, that Jim Conley did not tell the truth about using the
elevator to carry Mary Phagan's body to the basement. But at worst, considering
that it took seventy years for Alonzo Mann to come forward, as well as a couple
of unsupported assertions in his testimony, the testimony proved nothing at
all. Even if Jim Conley had lied, the Board argued, it did not mean that Frank
was innocent. As Mike Wing is quoted as saying in an Esquire article in
1985:
The testimony of Mann sounded good. It matched up with
the shit in the shaft to suggest that Conley was the killer. But does his
testimony provide sufficient reason to overturn the findings of the court. I
wouldn't convict someone seventy years after the fact solely on the testimony
of an eighty year old man, so how can I pardon someone on that testimony. To
get that pardon, they needed to prove that Frank was innocent beyond a shadow
of a doubt, and Mann's testimony just didn't do that.
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
And, while the pardon effort was
motivated by extra-legal goals, it spoke of the pardon process as within the
structure of the "judicial process" that provided for "the
privilege of pardon and commutation as a 'safety valve' for use in
extraordinary cases," and probably worked against it. As if meant for a
formal court, the application cited federal court cases to justify
"standing" to seek a pardon. The petitioners, in attempting to
repudiate anti-Semitism, represented their attempt as a legal effort to
repudiate the libel against the Atlanta Jewish Community—an "injury in
fact."
The conclusion of the pardon
application read:
The public good will be served; a
historic injustice will be corrected; a seventy-year libel against the Jewish
Community of Georgia will finally be set aside, and the soul of Leo Frank will,
at last, rest in peace.
The "proof" in Mann's
testimony and the collective weight of the number of people, including John
Slaton, who believed in Frank's innocence in 1915, provided the claim for
Frank's innocence. But the leaders of the pardon effort tied the extra-legal
justifications for the pardon and their procedural mindset very tightly
together, which led to claims of innocence that were not easily justified.
Dale Schwartz
publicly responded to the passage in the Board's statement which said that
Frank's innocence was not "proved beyond any doubt," with "The
'beyond any doubt standard' is one which none of us have [sic] ever seen
applied in Anglo-American jurisprudence." Yet the pardon application itself
stated that: ". . . the statement of facts demonstrates, Leo Frank was
innocent to a mathematical certainty."
The response to
the Board's denial of pardon was immediate and vociferous. The
Application for Pardon: 1983
members, packing away a crate. The
cartoon was captioned: "Well, that's done . . . Now where can we stash
it?" Television and radio broadcasters took up the cry, as did the three
groups who had filed for the posthumous pardon—the Anti-Defamation League, the
American Jewish Committee, and the Atlanta Jewish Federation. They were, they
said, in shock. Board members, convinced of the sincerity of their
investigation and decision, also pro-claimed themselves in shock. Hundreds of
letters criticizing the decision came into the Board weekly.
I felt that the
Board made a fair decision. From the start the Board had explained to the
applicants that complete and new evidence must be shown before a posthumous
pardon could be granted. Alonzo Mann's testimony was not new evidence: in
essence it suggested that Jim Conley probably lied about the use of the
elevator, but it did not prove that Leo Frank did not murder little Mary
Phagan. I wondered if the editors of the papers sifted through the mounds of
evidence and whether they had read the 454-page trial transcript or the daily
accounts in newspapers. I was amazed that the Atlanta Journal stated on
I felt they were
wrong. There are many people in
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
My father
requested time on one of our local TV stations to make a rebuttal to an
editorial opinion on the pardon. He was denied it. My father decided not to
report the TV station to the Federal Communications Commission. This phase was
over—for the rest of the world. Not for my family. The story of little Mary
Phagan would go on. The denial of the posthumous pardon was, I felt, merely a
breathing space.
And the
nightmares continued.
PARDON: 1986
On
On
It shouldn't
have been a surprise. The reverberations from the Board's denial of pardon in 1983
had never really died down.
"I don't
know," Board member James Morris had said in 1985, "I wish we could
do something to right this wrong. I know we want to do something, but to say
with one hundred per cent certainty that Leo Frank is an innocent man is a very
difficult thing to do."
That year Wayne Snow, Jr., who had
been appointed chairman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, said, "The
case is so repulsive because of the lynching—because it terminated all the
rights of an individual." Another Board member had been disturbed by
"the State's inability to protect one of its citizens" since Frank
was in state custody during the lynching.
311
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
And while no one
on the Board mentioned the goal of repudiating anti-Semitism, there was no way
anyone could have been unaware of the pain that the Frank case seemed to cause
the Jewish community—nationally.
The following
day, my father and I met with Wayne Snow, Jr., the new chairman of the Board,
and Mike Wing. We were told that the Jewish community had again filed
application for a posthumous pardon. And that if a pardon were issued, it would
be based not on guilt or innocence but on the contention that "the State did
not protect Leo Frank and that his rights were violated." The Board felt
that the lynching of Leo Frank was wrong. And that this pardon would "heal
old wounds."
Apparently,
renewed efforts for pardon had begun in September 1985. And while at first the
petitioners had thought they'd failed to obtain the pardon in 1983 simply
because they had not brought enough pressure to bear, they had come to see
that, beyond the strictly procedural action of the process which sought to
establish Leo Frank's innocence or Jim Conley's—or someone else's—guilt, what
was most probably achievable was a pardon that addressed the extra-legal case
about Leo Frank.
And this
approach by the petitioners allowed Board members' sympathies for the
extra-legal aspects of the case to come through. The Board had been deeply
concerned about the problem of setting a precedent for a huge number of
posthumous pardon applications, were Frank pardoned on strictly legal bases. By
addressing the extra-legal case, however, the precedent that a pardon would
grant would only be to exceptional cases like the Frank case. So, six months
prior to the Board's contacting me, an initial proposed pardon application made
its way through to some members of the Board. This initial draft repudiated the
old standard of absolute innocence and made no mention of a pardon based on
innocence or guilt. By March, members of the Board had agreed in principle
Afterword: Pardon
to grant a special type of pardon
which would imply neither innocence or guilt, but merely address the concerns
brought about by the case. They approved such a pardon in early March.
After meeting with representatives of
the petitioners, the Board began drafting a final pardon order which they
approved shortly after ADL officials and others found it acceptable.
But our family had questions.
Why was there no public announcement
of receipt of application?
Why were other people who opposed
granting of the pardon not told of the new application?
My father reminded the Board that if
the pardon were granted books, miniseries, and movies of the Mary Phagan/Leo
Frank case would be made, and, he believed, the pardon would not "heal old
wounds" as they had hoped: instead, little Mary Phagan's story would never
die, and the controversy surrounding her horrible death would continue.
"You are damned if you do and
you are damned if you don't," he told them.
Former Chairman Silas Moore announced
the issuance of a pardon order on
It seems that Board members had
finally agreed on the bases for granting a pardon. They reflected concern that
Frank's lynching had foreclosed efforts to prove him innocent. The Board also
addressed three extra-legal concerns—the repudiation of lynch law, the need to
heal old wounds, and the acknowledgement of anti-Semitism.
The question of whether Leo Frank had really committed
the murder—the search for his purity or demonhood—was now just dust in the
wind. In the discussions
314
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
of pardon from
September through March 1986 the Board had done no detective work, except to
ensure the accuracy of its final order, discussing the historic background to
the Frank trial. The Board simply overlooked guilt or innocence, something it
had never done in pardons of forgiveness or pardons of innocence.
The final statement read:
On
The funeral of Mary Phagan, the
police investigation, and the trial of Leo Frank were reported in the overblown
newspaper style of the day. Emotions were fanned high.
During the trial a crowd filled the
courthouse and surrounded it. While the verdict was read, Frank was kept in
jail for protection. He was convicted on
After unsuccessful court appeals the
case came to Governor John M. Slaton for his consideration. The governor was
under enormous pressure. Many wanted Frank to hang, and the emotions of some
were fired by prejudice about Frank being Jewish and a factory superintendent
from the North. On
On the night of
Afterword: Pardon
The lynching
aborted the legal process, thus foreclosing further efforts to prove Frank's
innocence. It resulted from the State of
In 1983 the State Board of Pardons
and Paroles considered a request for a pardon implying innocence, but did not
find "conclusive evidence proving beyond any doubt that Frank was
innocent." Such a standard of proof, especially for a seventy-year-old
case, is almost impossible to satisfy.
Without attempting to address the
question of guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the state's failure to protect the
person of Leo M. Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal
appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the state's failure to bring
his killers to justice, and as an effort to heal old wounds, the State Board of
Pardons and Paroles, in compliance with its constitutional and statutory
authority, hereby grants to Leo M. Frank a pardon.
Given under the Hand and Seal of the
State Board of Pardons and Paroles, this eleventh day of March, 1986.
STATE BOARD OF PARDONS
Wayne Snow, Jr., Chairman
Mrs. Mamie B. Reese, Member
James T. Morris, Member
Mobley Howell, Member
Michael H. Wing, Member
The reports had
indicated that the Board worked in secret with the Jewish community for almost
a year and Wayne Snow, Chairman of the Board, stated this publicly during a TV
station interview. This disturbed us. Wayne Snow had told us at the beginning
of March that the
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
Board was thinking of granting a
pardon, but, in fact, had already made the decision which they announced
immediately after they spoke to us.
We wondered what
the purpose was of keeping it secret?
The pardon was
covered by the media across the country. Everyone who knew me sent me the
articles. Most of the newspapers reported that the relatives of Mary Phagan
said that "Frank's official pardon doesn't mean he was innocent."
My father felt
that the pardon which was finally issued was meaningless, for it had not
settled the real question of Leo Frank's innocence or guilt.
As the publicity
surrounding the announcement of the pardon died down, my struggle for inner
peace became more difficult. I continued to have nightmares. It was as if
someone was trying to warn me, to prod me into action. I felt compelled to tell
my family's side of little Mary's story, to let the next generation of Phagans
know their heritage, to let everyone know the true legacy of little Mary
Phagan.
In January of
1987, the story of little Mary Phagan appeared in the newspapers again. Because
of racial tension in nearby all-white
And now my
father's prediction of more books being written about the case and television
miniseries is beginning to come true. I wonder what the next phase will be.
Even more, I
wonder: will we ever know with complete certainty who killed Mary Phagan?
Has the answer
gone to the graves with all the participants in the tragedy?