Audiobook About the Leo Frank Case: The Murder of Little Mary Phagan authored by Mary Phagan Kean (1987) the victim’s grand-niece, Read by Vanessa Neubauer (2015), during the centennial year of Leo Frank’s lynching.
August 17, 2015, Update: A superb rendition of The Murder of Little Mary Phagan — that was originally written and published in the late 1980s by Marietta Georgia resident, Mary Phagan-Kean (born June 5th, 1954) — had recently been orally transformed by Vanessa Neubauer into a readily available free audiobook, presented in MP3/MP4 format, and published at the centennial of Leo Frank’s lynching in August of 2015. The audiobook is available to listen to from beginning to end without any cost incurred to the hearer at The American Mercury.
Please visit the link below and listen to the audiobook version of the book The Murder of Little Mary Phagan, read by Vanessa Neubauer:
AUDIOBOOK WWW ADDRESS:
https://theamericanmercury.org/2015/12/new-audio-book-the-murder-of-little-mary-phagan
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CENTENNIAL BOOK REVIEW (Published on April 26, 2013): The Murder of Little Mary Phagan was written by Mary Phagan-Kean (Born: Friday, June 5, 1953) and published by New Horizon Press in 1987 (Hardcover version released September 15, 1989).
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan-Kean is an exceptionally insightful semi-autobiographical sketch, detailing a fascinating journey, exploring one of the most infamous and sensational criminal cases in the annals of early twentieth-century Southern legal history. This book provides an intimate view of the Frank-Phagan case from the adult grandniece of the teenage victim “Little” Mary Anne Phagan (1899–1913); the tragic story about a blue-collar child laborer who was sodomized and murdered one hundred years ago on April 26, 1913, in Atlanta, Georgia, by the child molesting sex-killer Leo Frank.
Hashtags: #MeToo #Rape #TrueCrime #SexMurder #sexoffender #pedophiledenialists #rapemurder #sexoffender #stoprape #stopviolenceagainstwomen
The Apocryphal Deconstructed:
An Anti-Gentile Hate Crime Hoax Finally Debunked
This true crime monograph is generally regarded as the most even-handed book about the Frank-Phagan affair (1913–1915) and its contentious aftermath (1915, 1982-1986). It also reveals facts and evidence concerning the case found in no other history books. Most importantly, Phagan-Kean dispels one of the central anti-Christian, anti-Southern, and anti-Gentile conspiracy theories perpetuated by the Jewish community about the Frank-Phagan case — the apocryphal anti-Gentile hate crime hoax that has been reasserted in the popular culture for more than one hundred years as of 2013 — the disingenuous Frankite thesis that Leo Frank was suspected, indicted, convicted, denied his frivolous appeals, and hanged because of widespread white Southern Christian anti-Semitism. Historians have found little to no evidence of anti-Semitism in the South early 20th century, only rare isolated examples. In contrast to the racist accusations of anti-Semitism, White Southerners had one of the highest intermarriage and business partnership rates with Jews in North America.
In the Yawning Darkness on Sunday, April 27, 1913
After old Newt Lee, the newly hired African-American nightwatchman at the National Pencil Company, punched the timeclock in Leo Frank’s second-floor business office at 3:01 o’clock a.m., he went down two levels to the stygian basement for the purpose of using the racially segregated Negro toilet. When he completed his personal activity at the cellar’s “earthen-closet”, and went to check the large sliding wooden and steel framed door of the cellar service ramp, something out of the ordinary appeared faintly in the gloom.
As Lee held up his flickering smoky lantern closer, it appeared to be a dead child who had been horribly mauled. Lee stepped back in a state of shock and disbelief, briskly shuffled his feet to the head of the basement and clambered frenetically up the rickity wooden ladder to the ground floor lobby and then clattered up the flight of wooden stairs to the second floor to call his superintendent Leo Frank. After 8 minutes of trying to reach his boss, no one answered, so Newt Lee called the Atlanta police stationhouse.
The grisly discovery launched an investigation that began precisely at 3:24 o’clock a.m. on Sunday, April 27, 1913, when the graveyard shift call-officer, W.F. Anderson was notified by telephone from a frantic Negro about the horrific discovery. A squad car filled with officers and Britt Craig (a young, one-year veteran Atlanta-Constitution Journalist) was immediately dispatched by Mr. Anderson moments later. In a convertible Model-T ford they zoomed to the National Pencil Company, and parked on the empty street.
What happened next, was later revealed at the Leo Frank trial more than three months hence, as first responders described in detail on the witness stand what events occurred upon their arrival at 3:40 o’clock a.m. until 7:00 a.m. when they finally reached by the factory’s phone, Leo M. Frank, at his in-laws home of 68 East Georgia Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia in the Summerhill neighborhood.
Dawn, Sunday, April 27, 1913
As dawn broke, after the police repeatedly failed to reach Leo Frank by phone, having attempted to call him all night long, they finally made contact with him at about 7:00 a.m. and informed the superintendent they were coming to his residence to speak about a tragedy, though they did not tell him what specifically had been discovered at the factory.
Police rushed over to the Selig residence, in a White cotton bathroom, Lucille answered the door & they carried him directly to the P.J. Bloomfield morgue for identifying the dead body of a little girl. After Leo Frank claimed to be unsure about the identity of the dead child, police officers drove him to the factory in an effort to have him pinpoint the approximate time of Phagan’s arrival the day before, April 26, 1913, via his accounting ledger.
Sunday Morning, April 27th, 1913, the timeline is born with “Saturday, April 26, 1913, at 12:03 o’clock p.m.”
Inside Leo’s second-floor business office at about 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, he opened his payroll ledger and told the police officers that Mary Phagan had arrived at about 12:03 pm on Saturday, April 26, 1913 — asking for her pay envelope, using employee number #186, and upon receiving it, had immediately left his office. Frank went on to tell the police he had not left his work office until 12:45 p.m. on that fateful yesterday.
State Exhibit B, Created Monday, April 28, 1913 (Part 2)
Monday, April 28, 1913, at 9:00 a.m.
The next day, Monday morning, April 28, 1913, Leo Frank would change the time of Phagan’s arrival to his office from 12:03 pm (what he said Sunday), to between, “12:05pm to 12:10pm, maybe 12:07pm” (State’s Exhibit B, Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913; Atlanta Constitution, August 2, 1913).
Tuesday, April 29th, 1913
Leo Frank was arrested on suspicion of the sex-murder, Tuesday, April 29th at 11:35 o’clock a.m., it would be his last day of freedom. Two days after Frank’s arrest, Jim Conley the factory roustabout was arrested on Thursday, May 1st, 1913. Police arrested Conley because E.F. Holloway, the Negro daywatchman saw Conley washing orange-red stains from his blue button-down shirt. The police examined the shirt and realized it was rust, not blood. Conley would wash his clothes in the lavatory and hang them on an iron heating pipe hanging overhead.
A milestone in the Mary Phagan Sexual Assault and Slaying Investigation
Something very interesting happened exactly one week after the slaying of Mary Phagan, which was the following Saturday, May 3, 1913, at noon. The event was an unexpected surprise and major breakthrough that occurred when detectives stumbled upon one of the young female child laborers who was tendering her resignation that day at the National Pencil Company (NPCo).
This significant former employee was fourteen years old Monteen Stover — who was accompanied by her incensed stepmother — making what astonishingly turned out to be a second attempt at collecting her pay envelope! She had failed to retrieve it by herself the first time on Georgia Confederate Memorial Day, when she came to the factory alone at five minutes past noon. This time her mom was with her to make sure she would get the owed wages, so she would not ever need to return to the factory again.
Day 7 Breakthrough: May 3rd, 1913
When police detectives thoroughly questioned Monteen Stover, she revealed something rather curious that would become the crux of the entire molestation-strangulation mystery:
Little Miss Stover said, that when she had arrived at the NPCo exactly one week ago and made her first attempt to get her weekly wages, that she was unable to do so because Leo Frank was not inside his office, like he normally was in the past at the normal payoff time, which was regularly designated as Saturdays at noon. More chronologically specific, Stover said Leo Frank’s office was empty when she waited there inside it from, 12:05 p.m. to 12:10 p.m., and that she knew this was the exact time because it was based upon the office’s wallclock. Of course in those days the clocks could be off by 2 minutes in either direction, but it was the time she noted on Leo Frank’s timepiece that he would wind himself each morning. She also knew the time was correct because she had left her home at noon, and the walk to the office was about 5 minutes.
This was earth-shattering news to investigators, because, on Monday, April 28, Leo Frank in the presence of his elite attorneys (Luther Zeigler Rosser and B’nai B’rith brother Herbert Haas) made an unsworn stenographed deposition to a room full of Atlanta police detectives, where Frank precisely stated he was in his office alone with Mary Phagan between 12:05 p.m. and 12:10 p.m. (State’s Exhibit B). Even more significant is that Leo Frank initially told the police on Sunday, April 27, 1913, not only that Mary Phagan had come to his office at 12:03 p.m., but that he had not left his office until 12:45 p.m.
Sunday, May 4, 1913, The Moment of Truth
Without Leo Frank knowing the police had discovered and questioned 14-year old Monteen Stover, Detectives John R. Black and Pinkerton Detective Harry A. Scott, approached Leo Frank in his jail cell on Sunday, May 4, and asked him to confirm again, if he had been in his office every minute on Saturday, April 26, from noon to 12:45 p.m. and Leo Frank responded with an affirmative ‘Yes’. The officers then took a different angle and asked Leo Frank if he had been in his office every minute on Saturday, April 26, from noon to half past noon (12:30 p.m.), and Leo Frank responded again with an affirmative ‘Yes’.
It was then at 8 days after the rape-murder of Mary Phagan, the police had discovered a possible discrepancy in Leo Frank’s alibi. Leo Frank would maintain stoically up until his trial that he had never left his office, from noon, until he went upstairs to the fourth floor at 12:45 pm, to tell two employees he was getting ready to leave the building for dinner (what they called a hot lunch or hot meal in 1913).
Curious Inconsistency in Leo Frank’s Alibi
As far as the police were concerned, the alibi of Leo Frank had possibly been unintentionally shattered by 14-year old Monteen Stover, but they would have to wait three and a half months to find out how Leo Frank would account for his new alibi timeline dispute, because that’s how long Leo Frank would maintain that he never left his office, but then something electrifying happened… Something the Jewish community would continue to suppress for more than a century…
The apogee of the Murder Trial, Monday, August 18, 1913
At his murder trial, Leo Frank directly responded to the contradiction in his alibi caused by Monteen Stover’s trial testimony. Leo Frank finally answered specifically why his office “might” have been empty at the exact same time he formerly claimed Phagan was there with him alone in his window front office.
Even more problematic was that Leo Frank changed the original murder alibi that he maintained for 3.5 months about having never left his office during the critical time, to explain the REAL reason why his office was empty on Saturday, April 26, 1913, between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm, and not only was it deliciously ironic and a delectable twist, but in providing a newfangled explanation, that he ineluctably gave away the solution to who killed Mary Phagan!
Leo Frank solved the murder of Mary Phagan!
Unique Trial Analysis
Mary Phagan Kean also offers a uniquely neutral analysis of the month-long capital murder trial, which began on July 28, and led to Leo Frank’s August 25, 1913, conviction, after the jury deliberated for about two hours. The decision rendered by 12 White men, also included a “without mercy” recommendation to the presiding Judge, that a death sentence be meted-out for Leo Max Frank. Both the conviction & sentencing recommendation were affirmed the next day by the presiding Judge, the Honorable Leonard Strickland Roan, on Tuesday morning, August 26, 1913, at 10:30 a.m. Judge Roan sentenced the defendant Leo Frank to death by way of hanging as prescribed by the law, the execution date was first scheduled for October 10, 1913, but appeals postponed the execution date repeatedly for two more years.
Leo Frank’s subsequent failed appeals, initiated from August 27, 1913, to April 1915, and his eventual death sentence commutation by the corrupt Governor John M. Slaton, on June 21, 1915, led to a mob of 1200 angry citizens protesting at the Governor’s mansion. The angry crowd was quelled and dispersed by a local armed militia.
The law firm of ‘Luther Rosser, Morris Brandon, John Slaton and Benjamin Phillips’
Rarely ever mentioned in connection with Leo Frank’s commutation is the fact that Governor John M. Slaton was part owner of the law firm representing Leo Frank at his trial and appeals. The law firm was officially called ‘Rosser, Brandon, *Slaton* and Phillips’ (the ‘Slaton’ was Governor John M. Slaton), and this politically powerful law group officially formed before Leo Frank’s Trial began.
Governor Slaton had essentially commuted the death sentence of his own law client, after two years of failed appellate review at every level of the United States legal system. Thus naturally the public became outraged, because of the obvious conflict of interest and Slaton’s betrayal to the constitutional oath of the executive office.
Many people in the 21st century poignantly ask the question, “Can you imagine what the outcry would be if that exact same conflict of interest happened today?”
Leo Frank was whisked away by train to the Milledgeville State Penitentiary, located some 170 miles away on June 22nd, 1915.
The Shanking of Leo Frank
About one month later, Leo Frank was attacked in prison and had the left side of his throat slashed at about 11:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 17, 1915. The shanking was conducted by fellow inmate William Creen. Leo Frank barely survived the attack. A fellow inmate, who was a doctor, serving a life sentence for murdering his paramore’s husband, saved Leo Frank by stitching him up.
The Lynching of Leo Max Frank
On August 16, 1915, Leo Frank was abducted from prison in a well-executed military commando-style raid, by some of the most prominent citizens in the State of Georgia. Frank was driven for 8 hours Northwest to the edge of Atlanta and Marietta, then lynched at sunrise on August 17, 1913. The site of Leo Frank’s lynching was at former Sheriff William Frey’s Gin (now 1200 Roswell Rd., Marietta, Georgia).
The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (1913–1987) Becomes ADL
Seven decades after the lynching of Leo Frank, the well organized Jewish community applied political pressure and conducted backroom deals, lead by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, prominent individual Jews and politically influential Jewish groups, resulting in a highly political posthumous pardon without criminal exoneration for Leo Frank officiated on Tuesday, March 11, 1986.
Alonzo “Lonnie” Mann (b. August 8, 1898) who provided obviously falsified testimony for the pardon had died a year earlier on March 19, 1985
The Leo Frank case continues to capture the imagination of the public, now more than ever, as 100 years have passed since this celebrated criminal case began that eventually evolved into a double murder strangulation.
In 1987 Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith dropped B’nai B’rith from its name and became an independent organization, called simply, ADL.
Brief Biography of Leo Frank (1884 to 1915)
Leo Max Frank was born in Cuero, Texas, on Thursday, April 17, 1884, to the local postmaster, Rudolph Frank, an immigrant of Germany (1869), and homemaker Rachel Jacobs Frank, who was a native New Yorker from Brooklyn. The Frank family moved 3 months after Leo’s birth back to Brooklyn, where Leo was raised and educated in the NYC public school system. After completing college prep work at the Pratt Institute Highschool of Brooklyn (1898–1902), Leo Frank matriculated into the Ivy League Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. At Cornell in the Fall of 1902, during his freshman year, Leo Frank chose to major in Mechanical Engineering and became very active in several college groups (debate club), sports teams (basketball and tennis) and general college social life.
1905
During the summer break of 1905, between his Junior and Senior year at college, Leo Frank went with his wealthy uncle Moses Frank on an overseas sojourn, spending the summer traveling around Europe and visiting with extended family.
1906
In the fall of 1905, Leo Frank began his senior year of college. And after successfully graduating on June 21, 1906, with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Leo Frank bounced around from one job to another, until he visited his rich uncle Moses in Georgia, mid-October of 1907. There in Atlanta, Leo Frank meets with a delegation of Jewish Businessmen to discuss a potentially lucrative industrial venture manufacturing pencils.
After visiting Atlanta for two weeks, Leo Frank made the very serious life-changing decision, and decided he wanted to make a major career move. To fulfill this promise, Leo Frank would again go on another sojourn overseas to Europe, arriving at the port in Cuxhaven, Germany, this time to study with the world-renowned Eberhard-Faber in Bavaria.
Leo Frank left NYC on November 7, 1907, ocean-bound for Europe. Once in Germany, Frank began diligently studying the pencil manufacturing process. After his 9-month engineering apprenticeship was completed, Leo Frank returned to NYC, August 1, 1908, on the USS Amerika, and then briefly stopped at his home in Brooklyn to visit his family (Rudolph, Rachel, and sister Marian) for a few days.
On August 4, 1913, Leo Frank embarked on a Southbound train from Penn Station in Manhattan with his weathered leather luggage and relocated to the capital of Georgia. Frank arrived at Terminal Station in Atlanta on August 6, 1908, and started a new life in the Heart of the South. On Monday morning, August 10th, 1908, Leo Frank began his first day of work at the National Pencil Company, located at 37 to 41 South Forsyth Street in downtown Atlanta. On September 1, 1908, he was promoted to the factory’s General Superintendent.
1910, Leo Frank Marries Lucille Selig
Two years later on November 30, 1910, Leo Frank married into an upper-middle-class German-Jewish family (Cohen-Selig), an established patrician Southern family whose ancestors founded the first synagogue congregation in Atlanta two generations prior. Leo Frank emerged as a rising star, becoming very actively involved with Jewish philanthropy and Atlanta’s upper-crust society life. And even though Frank was born in Texas, and raised in Brooklyn, he assimilated rather quickly in Georgia and was elected B’nai B’rith President of the Gate City Lodge #174 in Atlanta, September 1912, by its local 500 members, Jewish fraternal order.
By 1913, with nearly 5 years of hands-on experience in pencil manufacturing, Leo Frank had reached the pinnacle of his career, running the factory as not only its director, but also as a stakeholder through the acquisition of company shares. His high rank and partial ownership enabled him to receive $100 a month as a courtesy by the company directors while he was imprisoned.
1913
Founded on April 8th, 1908, the National Pencil Company had three divisions, 1) a cedar slat mill for producing pencil shafts, 2) a Smelting facility for producing lead pencil rods, and the HQ production facility where the industrial materials were assembled. The National Pencil Co. headquarters was where Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan had begun working as an entry-level child laborer in the early Spring of 1912, or about a little more than a year (13 months) before she was molested and garroted.
Mary Phagan worked about 150 feet down the hall from Leo Frank’s office on the 2nd floor, where she participated in the finishing production stages of the pencil manufacturing process. Mary Phagan worked in the metal department, known colloquially by factory employees as the “metal room”, in a section called the tipping department (her workstation was adjacent to the only set of bathrooms located on the second floor). Using a knurling machine, Phagan’s job involved inserting rubber erasers into the paper-thin brass metal tubes that were partially attached around the ends of pencil stock.
The Only Bathroom on the Second Floor was Located Inside the Metalroom
One of the most important details rarely mentioned by Leo Frank partisans about the “metal room”, where Mary Phagan worked 6 days a week, was that the only bathrooms on the second floor were situated there — which became a critical detail to the solution of where she was molested before being garroted by the perpetrator. Moreover, Mary Phagan’s work station where she assembled pencils, was less than 4 feet away from the bathroom entryway and Leo Frank would regularly pass immediately by her every day when he needed to use the toilet. And given that Leo Frank was known for drinking copious amounts of black coffee every day, he would have passed by Phagan on a regular basis during the year she toiled at her assembly table.
Death Announcement
Word of Mary Phagan’s death had already reached all of Atlanta after a newspaper “Extra”, published by the Atlanta Constitution at the behest of Britt Craig, was released on Sunday, April 27, 1913, just hours after the normal Sunday morning edition already appeared. A full front news page announcement in the Atlanta Constitution was released on Monday morning, April 28, 1913.
Forensic Evidence Discovered, Monday, April 28, 1913
It was the metal room, where an unusual 5-inch wide bloodstain pattern crowned with spatter droplets was found on the floor adjacent to the bathroom entryway, and hair soaked with blood that had dried, was found tangled around the solid iron handle of a lathe at an adjacent wall. These forensic discoveries in the metal room were initially made Monday morning, at 6:35 AM, on April 28, 1913, when an early bird employee named Robert P. Barret, arrived at work to start the fresh work week after the holiday weekend festivities. As Barret’s hand reached for the handle of his lathe, his fingers became entangled with hair that was not previously there the prior Friday evening, April 25, at 6:00 o’clock p.m. when he left his workstation.
Once the word got out about the discovery of hair and blood forensic evidence in the metal room, it traveled like wildfire around the factory, employees erupted into emotional hysterics, flocked to the metal room, gawking at these unusual bloodstains on the floor, and tangled tress of 6 to 8 hairs scrambled around and suspended from the handle of the bench lathe. A number of employees immediately recognized the hair as distinctly being Mary Phagan’s, and testified to that effect at the Leo Frank trial.
A white powdery machine lubricant known as haskolene was found suspiciously smeared and rubbed into the fresh bloodstains on the metal room floor. What was so significant about the location of the bloodstains is that they were conspicuously in front of the girl's dressing room and next to the bathroom door, adjacent to where Phagan’s workstation was located. The powder smearing appeared to be an attempt to cover up the evidence, but the blood bled through the white powder, turning the dark maroon stains into variations of white, pink, and maroon. The bloodstains also had a starburst spatter pattern behind them indicating the direction of how they came into contact with the floor.
Botched Crime Scene Clean-up Job
The poorly conducted “clean-up job”, gave the appearance to be a failed attempt at obscuring the bloodstains, near where the murder victim — it was later revealed — was first seen by Jim Conley the factory sweeper. Conley testified he found Mary Phagan dead in the men’s toilet.
Little Mary Phagan’s Life (1899–1913):
The 55-hour workweek Mary Phagan performed at the pencil factory for about 7.5 cents an hour (actually 7 and 4/11 cents an hour), earning her $4.05 was her small way of helping support her five siblings, and widowed mother Frances (who remarried a cotton mill worker named John William Coleman in 1912). Mary Phagan’s stepfather knew Mary and her family quite well, for about 4 years, before marrying into the Phagan family. Mr. Coleman identified the hair found on the lathe machine as belonging to Mary Phagan, as did several other employees who worked in the metal room (See: Georgia Supreme Court Records, 1914).
Temporarily Layoff of little Mary Anne Phagan (b. Thursday, June 1, 1899)
During the week before Phagan’s murder, a shortage of brass sheet metal at the factory had led to a reduction in her work hours and she was temporarily laid off by orders of Leo Frank on Monday, April 21, 1913, until the supplies could be replenished. Phagan’s wages for the shortened workweek came to just $1.20, for the 16 hours she had worked the previous Friday, April 18, (10 hours), and Saturday, April 19, (6 hours) prior to her being laid off on Monday, April 21.
Flash Back to the First 48 Hours of the Mary Phagan Murder Investigation
George W. Epps made statements on Monday afternoon on April 28, 1913, providing troubling allegations to Atlanta police, stating that Mary had told him in confidence that Leo Frank scared her, and he often made lascivious sexual innuendos and inappropriate insinuations toward her. According to Epps, Mary told him specifically that Leo Frank would sometimes run up in front of her, thus ostensibly blocking her way when she was trying to leave work at the end of the day, and during the workday he would pester her, get a little bit too close for comfort, touch her shoulders & stare at her lecherously and then smile. Phagan allegedly suggested to Epps she was growing ever more scared of her superintendent.
According to the unabridged Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Case file, George Epps, after the Leo Frank murder trial concluded, got kidnapped & ensnared in a witness tampering and subornation of perjury scandal by Leo Frank’s legal defense team (Georgia Supreme Court Records, 1913, 1914).
Epps was lured to Alabama with the promise of a job and then coerced into signing a false affidavit under duress, repudiating what he had originally told the police. After George Epps was freed by his kidnappers, he later signed a true affidavit, describing the intimate details, moment by moment, of his being abducted and taken all the way to Alabama. The true affidavit described in detail the dishonest maneuvers and trickery that unraveled when Epps was forced to sign a pre-written affidavit that was filled with lies and recantations.
In The First 24 Hours of the Mary Phagan Murder, Sunday, April 27, 1913
When the police arrived on the scene in the basement of the National Pencil Company at 3:45 a.m., they found Mary Phagan’s mangled body on the remnants of a sawdust mound diagonal to the furnace, she had been strangled with a cord and what looked like a frilly strip or part of her petticoat wrapped around her neck and soaked with blood concealed the garrot (the cord used to strangle Mary). Her dress was soaked in urine as if someone had pissed all over her body.
When Atlanta Police scoured the basement there was evidence Phagan had been dragged by her feet face down from the basement’s elevator entry, 140 feet, before she was dumped near the cellar’s incinerator. Phagan’s face was so scratched up, punctured, and covered with charred cinders, that at first, the police were unsure of her race. They had to roll down a stocking from her knee to see for sure if she was White or Negro. However, Newt Lee remarked that he knew she was White because of the texture of her hair.
The autopsy would reveal Phagan had been hit on the face around the temple and right eye socket with a left fist (Leo Frank was left-handed), there was also a major gash on the back of her head. The knitted bloomers of Mary Phagan were still around her hips, but torn open across the vagina to the seam of the right leg, she had the appearance of having been violently raped, with blood and discharge present on her underwear. Phagan’s face was beaten black-and-blue, and sunk deep into her neck was the 1/8th inch thick, 7-foot jute cord, that she had been strangled to death with. One of the state physicians who performed an autopsy, testified under oath, to several instances of sexual violence, and internal vaginal bruising, torn flesh and inflammation, suggesting some kind of rape either penile or by fingers occurred before she was killed.
Leo M. Frank, Factory Superintendent, September 1908 to April 1913.
When the detectives arrived at Leo Frank’s in-laws' home, the door was answered by Lucille clad in a white cotton bathrobe. The police asked if they could speak with Mr. Frank and Lucy welcomed them into her parent's home. Like typically seasoned detectives, without telling Leo Frank why they were there and what it was all about, they closely observed Frank. Suspicion initially fell on Leo Frank at first sight, because he appeared to be extremely nervous, trembling, rubbing his hands, and ghastly pale. Police intimated Leo Frank appeared to be badly hungover, while he was bumbling, and Jim-jamming in an agitated state. When Leo Frank asked for a cup of coffee, one of the police officers jocosely suggested whiskey. Leo Frank then began asking questions faster than the police could answer them in time. Frank’s voice sounded hoarse and he struggled with simple tasks like fixing his collar before leaving with the police. Moreover, Leo kept saying he hadn’t had breakfast and kept asking for a cup of coffee as if he was trying to delay the process of being taken to the industrial plant he managed.
The police asked Leo Frank if he knew Mary Phagan, and he immediately denied knowing any Mary Phagan, saying he would need to check his accounting ledger to be sure. Frank then made some passing remark about not really knowing the girls who worked for him. The significance of Leo Frank claiming to not know Mary Phagan become an important circumstance further into the investigation because it was later determined by factory records, she had worked for him more than a year on the same floor as his office. Another incriminating fact against Leo Frank’s claims of not knowing Mary Phagan, was the payroll ledgers revealed that she had collected more than 52 pay envelopes from Leo during her year of employment and during that time she logged an impressive 2,750+ work hours registered on the punch-clock at the factory from specifically: the Spring 1912, to Monday, April 21, 1913 (when she was temporarily laid off by Leo Frank, because of a shortage in metal). At the trial, several employees testified indicating Frank knew Mary Phagan quite well and on a first-name basis, others suggested they saw Leo behave inappropriately toward girls working at the factory.
Ugly Racist Framing of the Nightwatchman (“night witch”) Newt Lee
On Sunday morning at 8:26 a.m., April 27, 1913, in the presence of the Atlanta police, Leo Frank pulled out Newt Lee’s time card, eyeballed it from the top downward and said it was punched correctly every half hour from the time between 6:00 pm on April 26, 1913, to 3:00 am on Sunday, April 27, 1913. However, on Monday, April 28, 1913, Leo Frank changed his story and told the Atlanta Police that Newt Lee did not punch his time card at 4 disparate intervals, creating 4 hours of unaccounted for time. It put even greater suspicion on Newt Lee, because the old Negro lived less than half an hour away, the intervals suggested he had more than enough time to go home, potentially hide evidence and return to the factory.
Intimations to Search Newt Lee’s Shack
After Frank made his Monday morning, April 28, 1913, deposition to Atlanta Police that became known as State’s Exhibit B, he told the police to check his body for scratches and visit his home to inspect his laundry. Leo Frank removed his shirt and the police found no visible scratch marks on his body, and then accompanying the police to the Selig residence, Minola brought forth the dirty laundry basket and the clothes within it, that indicated no bloodstains. Given Leo Frank’s intimations about Newt Lee’s time card, the natural thing for the Atlanta police to do next was searching Newt Lee’s shack for evidence. And surprise-surprise, guess what they found?
Tuesday, April 29, 1913
Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913, the police entered Newt Lee’s shack without a warrant (violating his constitutional rights) using a skeleton key, outside his residence at the bottom of a garbage burn barrel, they found a suspicious-looking clean, but bloodied shirt. The shirt had blood stains high up on the armpits in the front, back, and inside, in such a manner the police immediately thought it was forged and planted there intentionally. What also made detectives think the shirt might have been fabricated to frame Newt Lee is because the shirt, aside from the oddly placed bloodstains, appeared clean and did not have the distinctive “Negro odor” on it, as they later recalled, when they each had taken turns sniffing it on Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913.
Newt Lee’s Blood-Soaked Shirt
Three contrived elements perplexed Atlanta Police about Newt Lee’s shirt, the fact it was clean, but covered with oddly placed blood smears, and had no funky “African scent”. These factors taken together gave the suggestion the shirt was meant to incriminate Newt Lee, but naturally, they thought why? When the police questioned Newt Lee about the shirt, he said someone gave it to him 2 years ago and he hadn’t worn it since. At that moment, the police began thinking, perhaps someone was trying to implicate Newt Lee the nightwatch, because the “death notes” were written with Lee’s job title misspelled as “night witch” (factory employees called the nightwatchman colloquially Nightwatch) written on them. The time card contradiction seemed odd, because one day it was punched perfectly, the next it was supposedly missing 4 punches and then finally the odd shirt, all together were circumstances that began directing strong suspicion on Leo Frank, at least in the minds of the Atlanta Police and detectives investigating the crime.
Leo Frank’s last full day of freedom was Monday, April 28, 1913, because on Tuesday, April 29, 1913, at 11:30 PM Leo Frank was arrested and would remain incarcerated until his hanging two years later at 1200 Roswell Rd in Marietta.
The Negro Janitor James “Jim” Conley
On Thursday afternoon, May 1st, 1913, the day watchman E.F. Holloway called the police to report that he saw Jim Conley washing out blood from his shirt in a factory sink. When the police arrived and examined it drying on an overhead pipe, they noticed it was rust, and returned the shirt back to Conley, but then arrested him.
The Atlanta police “sweated” Jim Conley using the 3rd-degree methodology (good cop / bad cop) and after weeks of initial failure and 3 half-truth affidavits, Atlanta’s finest finally got Conley to admit he was an accessory-after-the-fact to the crime. More importantly, the police finally got the details out of Conley the events leading up to him finding the dead body of Phagan in the men’s toilet and how he transported the cadaver to the basement. They also were able to get an eye witness account of how Leo Frank was plotting and orchestrating a racist frame-up on the afternoon of April 26, 1913.
What Happened According to Jim Conley
Jim Conley admitted he was asked by Leo Frank to move the corpse of Mary Phagan to the basement and “ghostwrite” dictated “death notes” in his own words as if they were written by Mary Phagan, while she was in the middle of being raped. It was necessary they be written in Negro handwriting, to draw suspicion to another Negro. In the South, it was considered the highest outrage for a Black man to rape and murder a White girl. The bigoted plot was Ivy League brilliant and sinisterly racist, because it put two Negroes between Leo Frank and Mary Phagan. All Jim Conley had to do was keep his mouth shut for the racist gambit to succeed, but it took the cops less than three weeks to crack him.
The Oddity of the Mary Phagan Murder Notes
The murder notes were a very contrived attempt to make it appear as if an ignorant semi-literate Negro was trying to charade the notion that Mary Phagan had written the “death notes” after she went to the bathroom in the metal room, was pushed down a hole and then sexually assaulted by Newt Lee in the basement. The “death notes” where unmistakably clear in their attempt to pin the crime and point suspicion on the “long tall slim Negro” night watchman Newt Lee (“night witch”), because the notes physically described Lee exactly, including his job title colloquially ‘Night Watch’ ebonized as ‘Night Witch’.
Looking back from the 21st century to 1913, the “death notes” cause many people to ask themselves, when or ever in the history of the cosmos has a Blackman committed aggravated battery, rape, robbery, strangulation, and mutilation of a White girl, and then stuck around to write some pseudo-literature as if they were being written by the victim herself in the middle of the rape and addressing the notes to her mother, describing what happened from the perspective of the victim. It became decidedly obvious Leo Frank dictated the notes to Jim Conley, and Conley was to write them in Negro dialect to turn suspicion on Newt Lee the nightwatchman.
“I write while he plays”… but the notes were unbelievable from the start, because Police thought never in history has someone written notes while they were in the midst of being raped.
The Trial of Leo M. Frank (July 28, 1913, to August 26, 1913)
Harry A. Scott of the Pinkerton National Detective agency was hired by Sigmond Montag, treasurer of the National Pencil Company to “ferret out the murderer no matter who it was”. There was some conflicting testimony about what Leo Frank had said concerning a question Mary Phagan asked him (Mr. Leo Frank) at 12:02 pm or 12:03 PM on April 26, 1913. On Monday, April 28, 1913. Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott was told by Leo Frank that Mary Phagan asked him “Has the metal come in?”. Leo Frank said he told her “No”, but Scott told the jury, Leo Frank said to him that he told Phagan: “I Don’t Know” — it tended to create a scenario of three-dimensional time and space with Leo and Mary walking together toward the metal room for the purpose of “finding out”, as the brass was normally kept in the metal-room’s closet.
Star Witness Monteen Stover and the (THIRD) Leo Frank Incriminating Admission
The real star witness at the Leo Frank Trial it turns out was not only Jim Conley, but the 14-Year-old & 5'2" tall White girl Monteen Stover.
Monteen Stover who liked Leo Frank and defended his character at the trial, had inadvertently put Leo Frank’s murder alibi into dispute. Leo Frank swore to his lawyers, the Coroner Paul Donehoo, police, and detectives during the investigation into Phagan’s murder over a 3.5 months period, that he had never left his office on April 26, 1913, from twelve noon to 12:45 pm. However, Monteen Stover had arrived at the factory to collect her pay envelope just minutes after Phagan arrived, but she did not bump into Mary Phagan walking down the stairs and Leo Frank was not in his office. Nor was Leo Frank aware that Monteen Stover had arrived and waited for him inside his second-floor office for five minutes between 12:05 pm to 12:10 pm.
The jury naturally would ask themselves, how come Monteen Stover neither coming nor going from the factory didn’t bump into Mary Phagan between 12:04 pm and 12:11 pm, as it took about 1 minute (46 seconds) to reach Leo Frank’s second-floor office from the front door of the factory lobby and about the same time to leave the factory from the said office.
Leo Frank would change his alibi-story about never leaving his office and respond to the testimony of Monteen Stover stating, he might have “unconsciously” gone to the only bathroom in the metal room during that exact time!
Leo Frank Gave the Jury the Solution to the Mary Phagan Murder Mystery on Monday Afternoon, August 18, 1913, at 2:46 pm
Now gentlemen [of the Jury], to the best of my recollection from the time the whistle blew for twelve o’clock [noon on Saturday, April 26, 1913] until after a quarter to one [12:46 p.m.] when I went upstairs and spoke to Arthur White and Harry Denham [at the rear of the fourth floor], to the best of my recollection, I did not stir out of the inner office [at the front of the second floor]; but it is possible that in order to answer a call of nature or to urinate I may have gone to the toilet [in the metal room at the rear of the second floor]. Those are things that a man does unconsciously and cannot tell how many times nor when he does it (Leo Frank Trial Statement, August 18, Brief of Evidence, 1913).
The crescendo of the Leo Frank Murder Trial: State’s Exhibit A and Defendant’s Exhibit 61
Leo Frank ineluctably entrapped himself beyond escape, because the only men’s toilet on the second floor was located within the metal room, it was the metal room where the murder forensic evidence was found (bloody hair and bloodstains) and the prosecution had successfully built a month-long case that Leo Frank had murdered Mary Phagan on April 26, 1913, in the metal room between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm.
To make matters even worse, Leo Frank had made a statement (as stated above, known as State’s Exhibit B) stenographed by G. C. Febuary on Monday morning, April 28, 1913, where Frank said Mary Phagan had arrived into his office alone between 12:05 PM and 12:10 PM on April 26, 1913, but Frank’s office was empty according to Monteen Stover during that same time, when she came for her pay. And then it happened! Leo replied to this incongruity, by saying he might “unconsciously” have been inside the metal room’s bathroom using the toilet, the exact place where Jim Conley had stated to the Jury on April 4th, 1913 that he found Mary Phagan dead, after Leo Frank told him he strangled her because she wouldn’t have sex with him.
Be sure to read the *abridged* final closing statements of State’s prosecution team leader, the Solicitor General Hugh Manson Dorsey and his Associate Frank Arthur Hooper in American State Trials Volume X (10) 1918 by John Davison Lawson LLD, for their unique take on the Leo Frank trial testimony and evidence. One should also read the really long-winded *unabridged* closing arguments of Hugh Manson Dorsey published in 1914 as ‘The Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey’ (available on the Leo Frank Research Library).
The Leo Frank trial would make history, because it would be the first time in the South, the testimony of two Negroes (James “Jim” Conley & Newton “Newt” Lee) would provide evidence that in part, led to the conviction and death sentence of a Whiteman by an all-White jury, in the White racially conscious, Separatist and segregated Old South (a place where Jews were respected, highly regarded and treated as equals to Whites).
Firebrand Tom E. Watson
Many would argue the best post-trial analysis of the Leo Frank “murder confession” is articulated by the criminal defense lawyer, and populist politician Tom Edward Watson, in his Watson’s Magazine, January, March, August, September and October of 1915, and his weekly Jeffersonian Newspaper in some specific issues during the years of 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917. Though some would argue his best analysis on the Leo Frank trial are found in Watson’s Magazine issues August and September of 1915.
Appeals 1913 to 1915
Numerous half-baked and frivolous appeals petitions were made by the Leo Frank Legal Defense Team to the Georgia Superior Court, Georgia Supreme Court, US Federal District Court, and the United States Supreme Court, all of these appeals were denied after careful review, with lengthy decisions written and rendered (see: Leo Frank Appeals 1913, 1914, 1915). In April of 1915, Leo Frank had exhausted all of his court appeals.
Commutation June 21, 1915
The departing Governor of Georgia, John M. Slaton, decided to commute the death sentence of his own law firm's client, Leo Frank, at the 11th hour, to life in prison on June 21, 1915, just days before the end of his last term as Governor. It was an act of political suicide, but it didn’t matter, as Slaton was leaving office anyway on June 26, 1915, and he earned 25% of the law firm's lucrative profits. Slaton left Georgia and went on a tour of the United States.
The protest at the Governor’s mansion formed to angrily protest the commutation, because it was a gross conflict of interest, not because of anti-Semitism. Rarely ever mentioned by Leo Frank partisans is the connection between Leo Frank’s commutation and the fact Governor John M. Slaton was part owner of the law firm that represented Leo Frank at his trial and during his appeals. Rarely do books written by Jewish authors ever mention the law firm was called Rosser, Brandon, ‘Slaton’ and Phillips (the ‘Slaton’ was Governor John M. Slaton).
Leo Frank Prison Shanking, July 17, 1915
Leo Frank got shanked in prison by a fellow inmate named William Creen, who used a 7-inch butcher knife to slash the left side of Leo Frank’s throat. To add anti-Semitic psychological warfare to the incident, rumors began circulating the knife had been used for slaughtering hogs. Leo Frank barely survived the attack, thanks to inmate doctors who came to his aid in the nick of time and stitched him up. The tender wound was slow to heal in the hot & humid summer of 1915.
The Lynching of Leo Frank
One month after the shanking and almost 2 months after Leo Frank received his controversial clemency, a well-organized group of about 25 to 35 men, many of whom were from Georgia’s highest strata of politics and society, organized themselves into the ‘Knights of Mary Phagan’. This newly formed group of Georgia’s elites, sought to fulfill the conviction of the Jury and death sentence judgment ratified by Judge Leonard Strickland Roan. From their point of view, this band of men sought to deliver righteous retribution in the form of “Southern Style Vigilante Justice”, which is called by the mainstream: Lynching.
From Milledgeville to Atlanta
After more than 2 months of careful planning, Leo Frank was kidnapped from the minimum security Milledgeville penitentiary infirmary on the evening of Monday, August 16, 1915, at 10 p.m., then driven all through the night for 8 hours and lynched in the early hours of August 17, 1915, from a mature oak tree’s sturdy branch a few miles away from where Mary Phagan had formerly lived at one time.
Post Lynching, August 17, 1915
Once word got out about the lynching, Leo Frank’s dangling body became a public spectacle, photographs were taken and the pictures of Leo Franks's lifeless suspended body became popular postcards. Leo Frank was cut down and one hot-headed yahoo started stomping on his face and chest and other people had to pull him away and calm the savage down.
How the Most Definitive Book on the Leo Frank Case was Born
The book ‘The Murder of Little Mary Phagan’ is written by the namesake of the murder victim, Mary Phagan’s great-niece named Mary Phagan Kean. When Phagan Kean was 13 years old, she discovered her given name was no mere accident or coincidence. When people heard her name, they started asking her questions about whether she was related to the famous little Mary Phagan who had been murdered long ago by Leo Frank on Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913.
Phagan-Kean would learn a startling secret when people started asking her questions about her curious name, so she asked her family if she was somehow connected to the Litte Mary Phagan who was sexually assaulted and murdered so long ago in the National Pencil Factory. When her family revealed the truth about her blood relation, she immediately became insatiably interested in learning about the investigation, and its aftermath.
Instantly becoming a life long student of the case at age 13, Phagan-Kean has since devoted every free moment of her life studying volumes of legal documents, and reading every surviving newspaper account surrounding the rape and strangulation of her great aunt, 13-year-old Little Mary Anne Phagan (1899 to 1913) and the biography of Leo Max Frank (1884 to 1915).
The International Order of B’nai B’rith
Leo Frank was the President of the 500 member Atlanta Chapter of B’nai B’rith beginning in 1912, and even after his conviction, he was unanimously re-elected again in September 1913, until his term expired in September 1914. Leo Frank ran B’nai B’rith Atlanta from his jail cell for one year.
As a result of his 1913 conviction, the case turned into a national scandal and eventually evolved into a sensational cause celebre for the Jewish Community. Leo Frank’s conviction would become the galvanizing force of false “anti-Semitism”, catalyzing the formation of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, born in October 1913, or ADL for short. The great myth of the case is that the lynching of Leo Frank sparked the revival of the defunct and nativist ethnic nationalist Ku Klux Klan (KKK) on November 24, 1915. It was actually the movie Birth of a Nation that inspired the refounding of the KKK, not Leo Frank’s lynching.
The ADL considers itself the foremost Jewish-Israel civil rights group in America and the Western world, defending Jews and Israel against criticism, calling it “anti-Semitism”.
Misrepresentations
Jewish Scholars overwhelmingly produced the lion share of all the written “persecution and victim-centric” books, articles, web sites, scripts, video, media, songs, Broadway plays, documentaries, miniseries, and texts about the subject of Leo Frank and Mary Phagan, and almost unanimously allege widespread Antisemitic Gentiles were behind it all, “a textbook case of Anti-Semitism”; the railroading, and framing of an innocent Northern Jewish Man because of Gentile anti-Jewish racism, prejudice, and religious hatred. Leo Frank's partisan books often leave out volumes of the relevant facts, evidence, affidavits, and testimony concerning the Leo Frank case, dishonestly spinning the facts convenient to creating doubt about Leo Franks's guilty verdict and making racist blood-libel smears against non-Jews.
If you have any doubts about Leo Frank’s guilt study the brief of evidence and Georgia Supreme Court records!
1982 and 1983: The Alonzo Mann Media Circus
In 1982, Alonzo Mann, a lonely, broke and senile octogenarian, who also happened to be the former office boy of Leo Frank for three weeks in April 1913, came forward in 1982 at the behest of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith to provide new statements about what he saw on April 26, 1913.
In 1982, which was about 69 years after the murder of Mary Phagan and trial of Leo M. Frank, Alonzo “Lonnie” Mann went public with a questionable story, claiming he had withheld information from the Leo M. Frank legal defense team, police, Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey, Judge Leonard Strickland Roan, the Jury of 12 White men, Appeals Courts, Slaton’s Commutation hearing and seven decades of people.
Alonzo Mann said that, he went back to the National Pencil Company Factory five minutes after he left it at noon on April 26, 1913, and saw the Negro Janitor Jim Conley, carrying the body of Mary Phagan on his shoulder, and Jim Conley reached out his hand for Alonzo Mann and said to the young boy, “if you tell anyone, I will kill you”. Alonzo Mann claimed he ran home and told his family and his mother told him not to tell anyone.
These statements given by Alonzo Mann in the 1980s made no sense at all and came off as a desperate web of lies according to many people who heard his newfangled claims.
First, why would White parents in a White racial separatist Georgia of 1913, tell their White son not to tell the police about a “murdering”, and thus ostensibly guilty black janitor Jim Conley, with the result being an “innocent” clean-cut White boss, Leo Frank, who gave their son a highly prized job, wrongfully going to gallows? Instead of a guilty Negro?
Second, why would White parents allow their son to report to work on Monday Morning, April 28, 1913, right after their son was threatened with death on Saturday, April 26, 1913? Alonzo Mann Reported for work Monday morning, April 28, 1913, when all the forensic revelations were made at the National Pencil Company and he too witnessed them since he worked on the second floor, and was Leo Frank’s office boy.
Third, if Alonzo Mann admitted in 1982 he lied under oath at the Leo Frank trial in 1913 (about leaving at 11:30 am instead of noon), what’s not to say he wasn’t lying again in 1982 / 1983, when he said he had gone back to the factory at 12:05 pm after leaving at noon?
70 years after the trial, he was asked why he came back, and he said it was about a baseball bet he made with Schiff, but everyone knew Herbert Schiff was not meant to come to work that day — including Herbert Schiff who hinted as such at the trial. Herbert Schiff prided himself in never missing a day of work, except during the great flood in 1912, when it wasn’t possible. Herbert Schiff had a perfect attendance record at the factory, otherwise.
Fourth, Alonzo Mann said he came back to the factory at 12:05 pm, this was about the time Monteen Stover said she came to the factory, how come Monteen Stover didn’t walk in on this horrifying scene either?
Fifth, when Jim Conley was arrested and held by police there was no risk of Alonzo Mann being “killed”, he could have safely approached the police with what he had supposedly seen. Alonzo Mann’s tale does not pass the common sense quiz.
1983 Posthumous Exoneration of Leo Frank Failed.
The ADL tried to use the Alonzo Mann hoax to get a posthumous exoneration for Leo Frank at first in 1982–1983, but it failed. But they didn’t give up, three long years of political machinations, backroom wheeling, and dealing continued until a second attempt was made.
1986: ADL Second Attempt, Partially Successful, Posthumous Pardon but no absolution of the Mary Phagan murder.
In 1986, pressure from the powerful Jewish community, Jewish groups, and ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith), resulted in the highly political March 11, 1986, posthumous pardon of Leo Frank without exoneration of the crime.
There was only one problem with the highly political pardon of Leo Frank, because Alonzo Mann had died March 19, 1985, and no one could question him about the incident. The politically corrupt Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles forgave Leo Frank with a pardon, but kept Leo Frank’s GUILT intact and thus did not disturb the verdict of the Leo Frank Trial Judge and Jury.
On March 11, 1986, a pardon without exoneration of guilt was issued by the board:
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.
A most grotesque symbol of ADL power reminded the American people who really run politics in the USA. Drop the ADL promoted as hashtag #droptheADL has formed by a coalition of left-wing groups to fight this group that many leftists claim defends “Apartheid Israel”.
Jewish Americans are no longer going to sit on their hands, a movement to get Leo Frank’s pardon nullified is now underway again with the founding the of Georgia Conviction Integrity Unit on the anniversary of Mary Phagan’s murder date, April 26, 2019.
Even with the posthumous pardon, it was specified the guilt of Leo M. Frank remains permanently intact because his official conviction was not changed, disturbed, or tampered with from 1913 to 1986.
As of March 11, 1986, Leo M. Frank remains guilty in the eyes of Black Letter and Settled Law forevermore (hopefully), though he was forgiven of his crime by the board, he was not forgiven by the public that detests rapist-pedophiles and child killers. Leo Frank’s partisans cite the posthumous pardon as proof of Leo Frank’s innocence. The dubious nature of his pardon was revealed by a retired Georgia Judge.
A number of fictionalized media dramatizations and treatments have been made about the case in the form of miniseries, Broadway plays, Hollywood dramas, political docudramas, video blogs, and songs, conducted across the international media landscape, all mostly created by Jews making a mockery of the life of a little Christian girl, who is used as nothing more than a cheap plot device to launch Leo Frank’s persecution hoax at the hands of evil anti-Semitic Goyim.
Attempts for more than 100 years are continually being launched to idealize and rehabilitate the reputation of Leo Frank as an innocent and stoic Jewish victim of American anti-Semitism. The efforts to transfigure Leo Frank from a perverted pedophile, habitual rapist, and sex-strangler into a holy Jewish religious martyr of collective Gentile prejudice has continued unchallenged in the popular culture for more than 100 years.
The blood libel against the Leo Frank prosecution team, European-Americans, and people who think Leo Frank is guilty, continues to this day by the organized Jewish community.
Three Leo M. Frank incriminating statements considered admissions equivalent to murder confessions From the 1913 Brief of Evidence
- Jim Conley, Saturday, April 26, 1913, circa noon to 1:00 PM (See Jim Conley affidavits and trial testimony in the brief of evidence (1913) and Georgia supreme court case file about Leo Frank (1913, 1914).
2. Lucille Selig Frank, Saturday Late Evening, April 26, 1913, 10:30 PM (See State’s Exhibit J, Brief of Evidence, 1913)
3. The Public, Monday, August 18, 1913, (Leo Frank’s four-hour unsworn trial statement, August 18, Brief of Evidence, 1913). Leo Frank’s explanation on the witness stand to the trial jury, why Monteen Stover had found his office was empty between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm on April 26, 1913, with an unconscious bathroom visit: (Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913, p. 186). Only the Atlanta Journal published this fact, both the Georgian and Constitution censored it.
The Fourth Leo Frank Admission that his detractors believed was tantamount or amounted to an authorized Jailhouse Murder Confession, Published in the Atlanta Constitution
4. Leo Frank confirmed his August 18, 1913, murder trial bathroom admission in the March 9, 1914, issue of the Atlanta Constitution.
Leo Frank’s defenders won’t ever dare to mention the “unconscious” bathroom murder trial confession that Leo Frank made on the witness stand when he was giving his four-hour unsworn statement to the court on Monday afternoon, August 18, 1913, between 2:15 pm and 6:00 pm.
Thoughtful and analytical interpretations of the statement which Leo Frank made to counter Monteen Stover’s testimony are always left out of most Leo Frank revisionist books, even though it proves Leo Frank’s guilt indisputably when juxtaposed with State’s Exhibit B and Jim Conley testimony about finding Mary Phagan dead in the metal room bathroom (see: State’s Exhibit A, item #9), at the behest of Leo Frank (see: Leo Frank’s trial statement, Monteen Stover’s trial testimony, State’s Exhibit B, Jim Conley’s trial testimony and affidavits, brief of evidence, 1913).
Leo Frank is the only person in early 20th century US history to make what appeared to be a virtual murder confession at his own trial, leaving most people shocked. None of the Leo Frank partisan books mention this fact.
See: The final closing arguments of Hugh M. Dorsey, Frank Arthur Hooper (American State Trials, Volume X, 1918, John D. Lawson), and Tom Watson’s analysis of Leo Frank’s incriminating trial admission amounting to a tantamount murder confession (Watson Magazine, September 1915).
Be sure to study, the Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913, and the 1,800 page Leo M. Frank Georgia Supreme Court Case File (1913, 1914).
This Review Published on April 26, 2013
Excellent sources of research and information about the Leo Frank Case include:
The Leo Frank Case Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery 1913 — is the first neutral book written about the rape-murder of Mary Phagan and the trial of Leo Frank. Available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean. Written by Mary Phagan Kean, the great grand-niece of Mary Phagan. A neutral account of the events surrounding the trial and appeals of Leo Frank, including his posthumous pardon. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan is well worth reading and it is a refreshing change from the endless number of Jewish authored modern and contemporary books, disingenuously transforming the Leo Frank case into a neurotic, anti-Gentile, race-obsessed tabloid controversy. Available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
American State Trials, Volume 10, 1918, by John Davison Lawson, LLD
American State Trials, volume X (1918) by John Lawson tends to be biased in favor of Leo Frank and his legal defense team. This case commentary review provides an *abridged* version of the Brief of Evidence, leaving out some of the important testimony and evidence when it republishes parts of the trial testimony. Be sure to read the abridged closing arguments of Luther Zeigler Rosser, Reuben Rose Arnold, Frank Arthur Hooper, and Hugh Manson Dorsey. For a more complete version of the Leo M. Frank trial testimony, read the 1913 Leo Frank Case Brief of Evidence. Available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
The August 1913 Peroration of Atlanta Prosecutor H.M. Dorsey
The argument of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Trial of Leo Frank. Some but not all of the 9 hours of arguments given to the Jury at the end of the Leo Frank trial on August 22, 23, and 25, 1913. Only 18 libraries in the United States have copies of these statements in book format. This is an excellent book and required reading for students of the Leo Frank case to see how Hugh Dorsey, in sales vernacular, ‘closed’ the panel of 13 men (the trial jury of 12 men plus Judge Leonard Strickland Roan). Available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
The Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (Required Reading)
Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. the State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913, Brief of Evidence. Only three official original copies from 1913 and 1914 exist at the Georgia State Archive. The digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Three Major Atlanta Dailies: The Atlanta Constitution, The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Georgian (Hearst’s Tabloid Yellow Journalism). The most relevant issues center around April 28th to August 28th, 1913.
Atlanta Constitution Newspaper: The Murder of Mary Phagan, Coroner’s Inquest, Grand Jury, Investigation, Trial, Appeals, Prison Shanking, and Lynching reported about the Leo Frank Case in the Atlanta Constitution Daily Newspaper from 1913 to 1915. The digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Atlanta Georgian newspaper covering the Leo Frank Case from late April through August 1913. The digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Atlanta Journal Newspaper, April 28, 1913, through till the end of August 1913, pertaining to articles about the Leo Frank Case: Digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Leo Frank confirms he might have been in the bathroom at the time Monteen Stover said his office was empty (12:05 pm to 12:10 pm): See the Atlanta Constitution, Monday, March 9, 1914, Leo Frank Jailhouse Interview. The Digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
U.S. Senator Tom Watson
Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian Newspaper (specific years 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917) and Watson’s Magazine (Months, 1, 3, 8, 9 and 10, of 1915). Tom Watson’s best work on the Leo M. Frank case was published in August and September 1915. Watson’s five major magazine works written serially on the Frank-Phagan affair, provide logical arguments confirming the guilt of Leo M. Frank with the superb reasoning of a seasoned criminal attorney. These five 1915 articles published over numerous months are absolutely required reading for anyone interested in the Leo M. Frank Case. Originals of these magazines are extremely difficult to find.
The Leo Frank Case By Tom Watson (January 1915) Watson’s Magazine Volume 20 №3. See page 139 for the Leo Frank Case. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
The Full Review of the Leo Frank Case By Tom Watson (March 1915) Volume 20. №5. See page 235 for ‘A Full Review of the Leo Frank Case’. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank By Tom Watson (August 1915) Volume 21, No 4. See page 182 for ‘The Celebrated Case of the State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank”. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert By Tom Watson (September 1915) Volume 21. №5. See page 251 for ‘The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert’. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
The Rich Jews Indict a State! The Whole South Traduced in the Matter of Leo Frank By Tom Watson (October 1915) Volume 21. №6. See page 301. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian Weekly Newspaper
The archive of Tom E. Watson Digital Papers, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, contains the full collection of Jeffersonian Newspapers: http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/watson
Modern Leo Frank cult members (known as Frankites) are posing as neutral reviewers and attempting to convince people not to read Tom Watson’s (1914 Jeffersonian weekly, 1915 Watsonian Magazine) analysis about the Frank-Phagan affair. Watson’s analysis of the case is the controversial forbidden fruit of truth that have been censored for more than 100 years. For a nearly complete selection of Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian newspaper articles specifically related to the Murder of Mary Phagan and Leo Frank Case. The Digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Tom Watson Brown, Grandson of Thomas Edward Watson
Notes on the Case of Leo M. Frank, By Tom W. Brown, Emery University, Atlanta, Georgia, 1982. The Digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Archive:
11. Leo Frank Trial and Appeals Georgia Supreme Court File (1,800 pages). The Digital version is available on the Leo Frank Research Library.
Notes
This book is the best attempt of all the books on the subject at creating an even-handed review of all the remaining documents on the trial and conviction of Leo Frank.
TUNE-IN, Please Listen to this audiobook: https://theamericanmercury.org/2015/12/new-audio-book-the-murder-of-little-mary-phagan
TERTIARY RESEARCH
- National Pencil Company vs Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency https://archive.org/details/national-pencil-company-vs-pinkertons-national-detective-agency
- National Pencil Company vs Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency: Bill of Exceptions Certification https://archive.org/details/national-pencil-company-vs-pinkertons-national-detective-agency-bill-of-exceptions-certification
- National Pencil Company vs Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency: Bill of Exceptions Certification (Supreme Court) https://archive.org/details/npc-vs-pnda-bill-of-exceptions-certification-supreme-court
- National Pencil Company vs Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency: First Division https://archive.org/details/national-pencil-company-vs-pinkertons-national-detective-agency-first-division
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs National Pencil Company https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs National Pencil Company: Amended Motion for New Trial https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-amended-motion-for-new-trial
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs National Pencil Company: Answer of Defendant https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-answer-of-defendant
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs. National Pencil Company — Approval of Brief of Evidence https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-approval-of-brief-of-evidence/mode/1up
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs National Pencil Company: Bill of Exceptions https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-bill-of-exceptions
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs National Pencil Company: Brief of Evidence https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-brief-of-evidence/mode/2up
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs National Pencil Company: Charge of Court https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-charge-of-court/mode/2up
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs National Pencil Company: Corporation/Partnership https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-corporation-partnership/mode/1up
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs. National Pencil Company: Judgment https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-judgment/mode/1up
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs. National Pencil Company: Motion for New Trial https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-motion-for-new-trial/mode/1up
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs. National Pencil Company: Motion for New Trial Acknowledged by Plaintiff https://archive.org/details/pnda-vs-npc-motion-for-new-trial-acknowledged-by-plaintiff/mode/1up
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs. National Pencil Company: Motion for New Trial Read and Considered https://archive.org/details/pnda-vs-npc-motion-for-new-trial-read-and-considered
- Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency vs. National Pencil Company: Verdict https://archive.org/details/pinkertons-national-detective-agency-vs-national-pencil-company-verdict/mode/1up
- Report of Assistant Superintendent Harry Scott: April 28, 1913 https://archive.org/details/report-of-assistant-superintendent-harry-scott-1913-04-28/mode/2up
- Report of Assistant Superintendent Harry Scott: May 18, 1913 https://archive.org/details/report-of-assistant-superintendent-harry-scott-1913-05-18/mode/2up
- Report of Assistant Superintendent Harry Scott: May 23, 1913 https://archive.org/details/report-of-assistant-superintendent-harry-scott-1913-05-23/mode/1up
- Report of Assistant Superintendent Harry Scott: May 24, 1913 https://archive.org/details/report-of-assistant-superintendent-harry-scott-1913-05-24/mode/2up
- Report of Assistant Superintendent Harry Scott: May 25 & 27, 1913 https://archive.org/details/report-of-assistant-superintendent-harry-scott-1913-05-25-and-1913-05-27/mode/1up
- Report of Assistant Superintendent Harry Scott: May 28, 1913 https://archive.org/details/report-of-assistant-superintendent-harry-scott-1913-05-28/mode/1up
- Report of L. P. Whitfield https://archive.org/details/report-of-l-p-whitfield/mode/2up
- Statement of James Conley: May 18, 1913 https://archive.org/details/statement-of-james-conley-1913-05-18/mode/2up
- Statement of James Conley: May 24, 1913 https://archive.org/details/statement-of-james-conley-1913-05-24/mode/1up
- Statement of Jim Conley: May 28, 1913 https://archive.org/details/statement-of-jim-conley-1913-05-28/mode/2up
- Statement of Jim Conley: May 29, 1913 https://archive.org/details/statement-of-jim-conley-1913-05-29/mode/2up
- Testimony of Helen Kerns https://archive.org/details/testimony-of-helen-kerns/mode/2up
APPENDIX
How it all started to come together is that on Monday morning, April 28, 1913, National Pencil Company factory superintendent, Leo Max Frank, was taken to the Atlanta police station for routine questioning during the critical first 48 hours of the Mary Phagan murder investigation. In an interrogation room, Leo Frank was flanked by his two elite lawyers, Luther Z. Rosser and Herbert Haas, and surrounded by a team of police, staff, and detectives. Leo Frank made an unsigned deposition concerning his whereabouts during Georgia Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913, and about his “brief” encounter with Mary Phagan minutes after high noon. His statements were recorded by a stenographer, Gay C. Febuary, and released to the public on August 2nd, 1913 in the Atlanta Constitution.
While Leo Frank was in the hot-seat, here is how the police interrogation went:
Q. What is your position with the company?
A. I am general superintendent and director of the company.
Q: How long have you held that position?
A: In Atlanta, I have held that position since August 10th, 1908, My place of business is at 37–41 South Forsyth Street.
Q: About how many employees have you there?
A: About 107* in that plant?
Q: Male or female?
A: Mixed. I guess there are a few more girls than boys.
Q: On Saturday, April 26, I will get you to state if that was a holiday with your company?
A: Yes, sir, it was a holiday. The factory was shut down.
Several People in Building.
Q: Who was in that building during the day?
A: Well, there were several people who come in during the morning?
Q: Was anyone in the office with you up, to noon?
A: Yes, sir, the office boy [Alonzo Mann] and a stenographer.
Q: What time did they leave?
A: About 12 or a little after.
Q: Have you a day watchman there?
A: Yes, Sir.
Q: Was he on duty at 12 o’clock?
A: No, sir, he left shortly before.
Q: Who came in after the stenographer and the office boy left?
A: This little girl. Mary Phagan, but at the time I didn’t know that was her name. She came in between 12:05 [pm] and 12:10 [pm], maybe 12:07 [pm], to get her pay envelope, her salary.
Frank Pays Mary Phagan:
Q: You paid her?
A: Yes, sir, and she went out of the office.
Q: What office was you in at that time?
A: In the inner office at my desk, the furtherest office to the left from the main office.
Q: Could you see the direction she went in when she left?
A: My impression was she just walked away I didn’t pay any particular attention.
Q: Do you keep the door locked downstairs?
A: I didn’t that morning, because the mail was coming in. I locked it at 1:10 p.m. when I went to dinner.
Q: Was anyone else in that building?
A: Yes, sir, Arthur White and Harry Denham, They were working on machinery, doing repair work, working on the top floor of the building, which is the fourth floor, toward the rear, or about the middle of the building, but a little more to the rear.
Q: What kind of work were they doing?
A: They were tightening up the belts; they are not machinists, one is a foreman in one department and the other is an assistant in another, and Denham was just assisting White, and Mrs. White, the wife of Arthur White, was also in the building. She left about 1 o’clock. I went up there and told them I was going to dinner, and they had to get out and they said they had not finished, and I said, “how long will it take?” and they said until some time in the afternoon, and then I said, “Mrs. White, you will have to go, for I am going to lock these boys in here. “
Door was Locked:
Q: Can anyone from the inside open those doors?
A: They can open the outside door, but not the inside door, which I locked.
Q: In going in the outside door, is there any way by which anyone could go in the basement from the front?
A: Yes sir, through the trap door.
Q: They would not necessarily have to go up the steps?
A: No, sir, they couldn’t get up there if I was out.
Q: You locked the outer door?
A: Yes, sir, and I locked the inner door.
Q: What time did you get back?
A: At 3 o’clock, maybe two or three minutes before, and I went to the office and took off my coat and then went upstairs to tell those boys I was back, and I couldn’t find them at first, they were back in the dipping room, in the rear, and I said, Are you ready? and they said, We are just read, and I said, all right, ring out when you go down, to let me know when you go out, and they rang out, and Arthur White come in the office and said, Mr. Frank, loan me $2, and I said, What’s the matter? We just paid off, and he said, My wife robbed me, and I gave him $2 and he walked away, and the two of them walked out.
Newt Lee Arrives.
Q: And you locked the doors behind them?
A: I locked the outer door, when I am in there, there is no need of locking the inner door. There was only one person I was looking for to come in, and that was the nightwatchman.
Q: What time did he get there?
A: I saw him twenty minutes to 4 [3:40 p.m]
Q: Had you previously arranged for him to get there?
A: Yes, sir. On Friday night I told him, after he got his money, I gave him the keys and said you had better come around early tomorrow, because I may go to the ball game, and he came early because of that fact. I told him to be there by 4 o’clock and he came 20 minutes to 4. I figured I would leave about 1, and would not come back, but it was so cold I didn’t want to risk catching cold, and I came back to the factory as I usually do. He came in, and he said, Yes, sir, and he had a bag of bananas with him, and he offered me a banana. I didn’t see them, but he offered me one, and I guess he had them. We have told him, once he gets in that building never to go out. I told him he could go out, he got there so early, and I was going to be there. He came back about four minutes to 6, the reason I know that, I was putting the clock slips in, an the clock was right in front of me. I said, I will be reading in a minute, and he went downstairs and I came to the office and put on my coat and hat, and followed him and went out.
Saw Newt [Lee] and [James Milton] Gantt Talking
Q: Did you see anybody with him as you went out?
A: Yes, sir; talking to him was J.M. Gantt — a man I had fired about two weeks previous.
Q: Did you have any talk with Gantt?
A: Newt told me he wanted to go up to get a pair of shoes he left while he was working there, and Gantt said to me, Newt don’t want me to go up, and he said you can go with me, Mr. Frank, and I said, that’s all right, go with him Newt and I went on home and I got home about 6:25 p.m.
Q: Is there anything else that happened that afternoon?
A: No, sir, that’s all I know.
Q: You don’t know what time Gantt came down after he went up?
A: Oh, no, I saw him go in and I locked the door after him, but I didn’t try them.
Q: Did you ask Newt?
A: Yes, sir, I telephoned him. I tried to telephone him when I got home. He punches the clock at half-hour intervals, and the clock and the phone is in the office and didn’t get an answer, and at 7 o’clock I called him and asked him if Gantt got his shoes, and he said yes, he got them and I said is everything all right, and he said yes, and the next thing I know they called me at 7:30 a.m. the next morning.
Did Lee Let People In?
Q: Do you know whether your watchman at any time has been in the habit of letting people in there any time?
A: No, sir.
Q: did you ever have any trouble with any watchman about such as that?
A: No, sir.
Q: Do you know whether any of your employees go there at night?
A: Yes sir, Gantt did when he was working there, he had a key and sometimes he would have some work left over. I never have seen him go but until I go out, I go out and come back, but he has come back before I left, but that is part of his duty.
Q: Did you take a bath yesterday or Saturday night?
A: Yes, sir. Saturday night at home.
Q: Did you change your clothes?
A: Yes sir.
Q: The clothes that you changed are at home?
A: Yes sir, and this is the suit of clothes I was wearing Saturday. After I left the shop I went to Jacobs Pharmacy and bought a box of candy for my wife and got home about 6:25.
Source of Question and Answer Deposition: Atlanta Constitution, August 2nd, 1913 and State Exhibit B, April 28, Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913.
Leo Frank’s statement was stenographed by a notary and government magistrate named Mr. Gay C. Febuary (Oney gets his name wrong and this early 2013 stenographer was not mustachioed), and the statement became part of the official record at the Leo Frank trial, registered as State’s Exhibit B (Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913). The most important detail was that Leo Frank specifically stated that Mary Phagan had entered his second-floor office on Saturday, April 26, 1913, between “12:05 pm and 12:10 pm, maybe 12:07 pm.” Leo Frank also repeatedly told the police and detectives that he never left his office on April 26, 1913, between twelve noon and 12:45 pm. However, Leo Frank’s timeline alibi would dramatically change at his trial (which took place from July 28 to August 21, 1913) on August 18, 1913, when he mounted the witness stand.
END OF REVIEW.
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