Has Georgia Condemned an Innocent Man to Die?

Is Leo Frank Guilty of Murder or Has Race Prejudice Blinded Justice?

"Caught as a bird in a net"

The Kansas City Star
January 17, 1915

Foreword

Leo M. Frank, a Jew, graduate or Cornell University, president of the B’Nai Brith of Atlanta, Ga., is under sentence of death in that city for the murder of a 14-year-old girl who worked in a pencil factory of which he was superintendent.

Frank is 30 years old. His wife is a member of one of the best Jewish families in Atlanta.

It is the contention of Frank and his friends that he is innocent’ that there was and is not any evidence that points to his guilt, or that even points the fingers of suspicion to him; that the real murderer is a negro who gave the testimony that convicted Frank; that the trial of Frank established beyond doubt the guilt of the negro that the police and the newspapers of Atlanta well know this to be true; but that the authorities and the newspapers of Atlanta were goaded on by public sentiment and a mob spirit to the sacrifice of Frank largely because he was a Jew accused of murdering a Gentile girl.

Franks and his friends contend that this racial prejudice and passion for his sacrifice dominated the court that condemned him, and that his trial was unfair; that the jury knew it would be lynched had it acquitted him; that his same inflamed prejudice spread throughout the state of Georgia and influenced the supreme court that denied him a new trial.

Frank’s case is in the supreme court of the United States. If it refuses to interfere he will surely be hanged.

The Frank case is attracting wide attention throughout the Northern states. Jewish men of greatest prominence have interested themselves in his behalf, solely because they believe he is innocent and was convicted largely because of racial prejudice. The case will go down in history as one of the most remarkable in American jurisprudence.

The Star sent a reported to Atlanta to investigate the Frank case, to learn if his trail measured up to the American standard of fair play to which every man accused of crime is entitled, no matter what his race, creed or condition in life.

This reporter, in his investigation, paid no heed to gossip or rumor. He went for his facts to the court records and to newspaper files.

By A. B. McDonald.
Chapter 1—The Crime

Mary Phagan was 14 years old. She was unusually attractive. She had appeared as “The Sleeping Beauty” in a play in her church. Everyone in her neighborhood liked her. Mary lived in a suburb of Atlanta and worked in a pencil factory downtown. She operated a machine that put metal tips on pencils.

Saturday, April 26, 1913, was a holiday. It was “Confederate Day,” when the veterans of the Southern army paraded and decorated the graves of fallen comrades. That morning Mary’s mother dressed the girl in a new gown and tied new ribbon bows on the braids of her golden hair that fell below her waist. and sent her to town to see the parade.

Mary had worked only one day that week, Monday, because the factory had run out of metal pencil tips, and she had $1.20 in wages coming to her. She went first to the factory to get her money. Saturday was the regular pay day, but this being a holiday the factory help had been paid Friday, and the factory was closed. Mary did not know that until she reached the factory.

She went in the front door, which opens of the sidewalk, went in to the foot of a stairway and up it to the second floor, where Leo M. Frank was busy on the books, trying to catch up with his work. She asked him for her pay envelope; he gave it to her from the safe, and, he says, she went out turning at the office door to ask him if the metal for the tips had come. He answered “No,” and went on with his work. He says he heard her footsteps go down to the head of the stairway. A little later he thought he heard a woman’s voice, but was not sure.

Mary was never seen alive again.

The next morning, at 3 o’clock, Newt Lee, negro night watchman in the pencil factory, found the body of the murdered girl in the rear end of the basement of the pencil factory. Her face was so blackened with ashes, cinders and blood that he could not tell whether she was a white girl or a negress. He called the police by telephone and told them.

The police who got that there first could only tell that she was a white girl by raising her dress and looking at her knee, the cinders of the cellar had been so ground into her face and hands. Her mouth and nose were filled with ashes which she had breathed in her struggle for life. Cinders were packed beneath her finger nails.

This would seem to indicate that she had been killed in the basement, which was unfloored and covered with cinders and ashes form the boiler.

Upon the left side of her head was a long gash made with a club or by falling against some sharp cornered thing. It ripped the scalp open and the blood that flowed from it had matted her hair, but all the doctors agreed that while this blow stunned her is would not have killed her.

She had been strangled to death. The murderer had first torn a strip form her underskirt and wrapped it around her face and neck, probably as a gag, and had then looped a cord around her neck and drawn it so tightly that her tongue protruded.

One of the girl’s undergarments was torn open on the seam from the bottom of its leg up almost to the waistline.

It was established at the trial that she had not been outraged. There were no wounds except the one upon the head.

Beside the body were two noted written upon in lead pencil in a scrawl that was deciphered with difficulty. The pad from which one of the papers was torn, and the pencil with which it was written, lay close to the notes.

One of the notes, with two words stricken out read:
Mam that negro hire down here did this I went to make water and he push me down that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it was, long sleam tall negro. I wright while play with me.

The other note read: he said he wood love me, laid down, play like the night witch did it, but that long all black negro did buy his self.

Near the boiler, several feet from the body, one of the girl’s slippers and her had was found. But the bunch of red flowers was gone from here hat and it and her mesh bag and pay envelope were never found.

The murderer of Mary Phagan had escaped by the back door of the basement which opened upon an alley. He had pried off the lock and staple with a piece of iron pipe, and there were bloody fingers prints upon the door where he had laid his hand upon it to slide it back.

Chapter II
Passion and Prejudice.

To understand the public hysteria which followed the discovery of Mary Phagan’s body, one must know that there had been a series of mysterious murders in Atlanta. There had been a “Jack the Ripper” who went about tat night slashing women with a sharp blade. He was never discovered. Several murders had been done, and the mysteries unsolved. The police were in bad repute.

And here was another murder, more revolting and pitiful than any that had gone before, and as the horror of it grew, so grew the public frenzy and the demand the police find the murderer. The newspapers of Monday after the body of Mary was found said that ten thousand persons surrounded the morgue where her body lay, and they clamored for vengeance.

The murder was done at noon, on a main street, in the heart of the business section, only a black from the office of the Atlanta Constitution. While the girls as being strangled to death persons must have passed on the sidewalk only a few feet away.

The very boldness of the crime added fuel to the public delirium and the demand upon the police to find the murderer.

And the police, in their eagerness to solve the mystery, went at it in a blundering and floundering way. This is proved by the fact that at first they attached no importance to the noted they by the body. There actually given to a newspaper reported to copy and then thrown into a wastebasket, but were afterward recovered. And yet, everyone knew now, and an astute detective would have known then, that to find the murderer it was only necessary to find the man who wrote the notes.

A few hours after the girl’s body was found the police took Frank to the undertaker’s to identify her if he could. He was suddenly aroused in his home and taken without breakfast to a dark room, a light was flashed on and he saw the girl found murdered in the cellar of his factory and murdered, too, while he was in the factory. He was nervous.

The news of his nervousness spread over the city, magnified an hundred fold as it went from mouth to mouth, Frank had lived in Atlanta only four years, coming there from Brooklyn. This “sweat-shop Jew, employer of the white girls of the South.” was nervous when confronted with the body of one of his “white-slaves” found strangled to death in his factory. They said he would not look at her, that he hung back and dodged into a side room, that he trembled and shook.

It was evidence of his guilt then. It was the principal evidence, outside of a negro’s testimony, at his trial.

And yet it was proved at the trial that he did go a second time to the morgue, alone, to examine for himself the rope about her neck.

When this came out during the trial they aid he went there to gloat over his victim.

His nervousness that Sunday morning was his first undoing. His calm demeanor during the trail was one of the damning things against him, emphasized by the prosecution.

The murder was on a Saturday, Frank was arrested Monday, the two chief points against him being his nervousness at the morgue and that he as the last person known to have seen the girls alive.

No one, as yet had attached any importance to the notes found by the body. The police were busy upon one theory only—that Frank was guilty.

The mayor called upon the police to find the murderer or quit their jobs. The Atlanta Constitution printed on its first page a cartoon with Atlanta as a woman pointing at a door marked “Detective Department” and saying: “I wonder if they are all asleep in there.”

The newspapers screamed. The most incredible stories were told, the city was in a delirium.

The will tell you now in Atlanta that there was no prejudice against Frank because he was a Jew.

Watson’s Magazine, with a wide circulation in Georgia, reviewed the Leo Frank case in its January issue of this year, 1915. From that article is taken the following extract:

Leo Frank came down form New York, to take charge of a factory where young Gentile girls worked for Hebrews, at a wage scale of $5 to $6 a week.

Leo Frank was a typical young Jewish man of business who loves pleasure, and runs after Gentile girls. Every student of sociology knows that the black man’s lust after the white woman is not much fiercer than the lust of eh licentious Jew for the Gentile.

Leo Frank was reared in the environment of “the gentleman friend,” whose financial aid is necessary to the $5-a-week girl. he lived many years in that atmosphere. he came in contact with the young women who are paid the $5-a-week, and who are expected to clothe themselves, find decent lodgings, and pay doctor’s bills of the regular wage of $5 a week.

Leo Frank knew what this system meant to the girls. In fact, we all know what it means, but we don’t like to say so.

Doctor McKelway analyzed the crime for the newspapers of Atlanta and wrote: “If children of such tender years were not forced to work in sweatshops Mary Phagan might yet be living.

The newspapers of Georgia have been full of that sort of argument since the day Frank was arrested.

The most outrageous stories about him have been printed and told, and are yet believed and told.

Only last week , in an article written for an Augusta paper appealing against any interference with the death penalty, a former governor of Georgia spoke of the “double crime” committed against Mary Phagan.

It is believed everywhere that she was outraged. But the evidence at the trial proves that she was not.

To even mention all the stories that were told, and are yet told, would fill a newspaper, and all of them were false. They said that the assailant of Mary Phagan had stabbed her body in many places with a knife, a Durant had done to his victim in the church tower in San Francisco.

“There was no mutilation at all on the body,” was the testimony of W. II. Ghoosling, the undertaker.

Dr. J. W. Hurt, county physician, testified: “There was no lacerations, no mutilation on the body. I found no signs of outrage.”

Stories were told, then and now, and believed, that Frank drank heavily: that he had killed one wife in Brooklyn and that he had several children born out of wedlock.

But the most cruel story of all was that Frank was a pervert. This is believed everywhere to this day in Georgia, but there has never been a word of proof of it, and a reward of $5,000 has been offered for proof that Frank was ever guilty of one act of perversion, or even immorality. Detectives have followed his trail form schoolboy days up to now, and not one act or word that would reflect against his good character has eve been found. If it had been found it would have been produced against him at his trial.

An examination of the files of the newspapers of Atlanta in the days between his arrest and conviction show in what manner they fed the fire of slander and falsehood against Frank. A day or two after his arrest flaming headlines told how a man had caught Frank with a girl in Druid Hill woods and how Franks had begged off. The author of this story posed for his picture, which was a first page sensation that day.

Yet a day or two later the man who told the story pointed out a young lawyer as the man was Frank.

Then came the Formby woman’s affidavit, which was heralded in the papers. She kept a disreputable house and swore that on the evening of the murder Frank telephoned her frantically that he wanted a room” he had a young girl and “it was a matter of life and death.”

Another version of this story, circulated on the streets, was that after Frank murdered the girl he carried her in a sack to this woman’s house, but she made him carry it out again, and he took the body back to his factory.

later it was proved that at the time the woman said Frank telephoned her he was at a card party in his own home, that his telephone was in plain hearing of his guests, that his telephone was on a system different from that in the woman’s house, and he could not have telephoned her if he wished to.

Then she repudiated here affidavit and made another in which she swore that the police who had here in their power plied her with liquor and got her to swear to the first one incrimination Franks. But the story had already done its part in creating prejudice against Frank.

The air was filled with a welter of rumors which continued to grow and spread. He as a rich Jew, they said, although the fact was proved at this trial that his salary was only $15 a month, and his invalid father had to mortgage his home for money to hire lawyers to defend him.

One of the stories, believed everywhere in Georgia, is that for a week after Frank’s arrest his wife did not go near him, and that the reason was she knew he was guilty. Added to this was the rumor that she had already consulted a lawyer about suing him for divorce before the murder.

The truth is that the very moment Mrs. Frank learned of her husband’s arrest she hurried to the police station, but was advised by her pastor, Rabbi Marx, to return to her home. He told her Frank would be out before night. In proof of this the following paragraph is taken form the Atlanta Constitution of that day:

“While her husband was being sweated by the detectives, the beautiful young wife of the factory superintendent, tearful and anxious, came to police headquarters. She was accompanied by friends. Denied admission to the floor on which her husband sat, she was led, weeping bitterly, into “the probation officer’s room. Frank was not aware of her presence at police station.” When Frank was taken to the jail she was there at the door waiting for him. She has been with him every day since, throughout the trial and all.

In this period of public hysteria Minola McKnight, servant in the home of Frank’s father-in-law, where Frank and his wife lived, made an affidavit in which she said that the night after Mary Phagan was murdered Frank told his wife to get up and get his revolver, he had got in trouble with a girl at the factory and intended to kill himself, and that he forced his wife that night to sleep on the floor.

This, on the first pages of the newspapers, caused tremendous excitement and prejudice against Frank.

But at the trial Mrs. McKnight testified that none of this was true. She said the police arrested her, took in the patrol wagon to headquarters and made her sign the affidavit.

“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,” is her testimony taken from the court record of the trial.

A boy, George Epps, told that he rode to town with Mary on the street car the day she was murdered and she told him Frank had made advance to her and she was afraid of him. This was a newspaper sensation, too, but later it was proved beyond doubt that Epps lied, and even the police had to say so. They sent him to the workhouse.

There are only a few of the stories now admitted to be false, circulated against Frank in those days of excitement. They fixed the crime upon him in the public mind. The South was ready to believe anything bad about this Jew from the North who employed their girls. They forgot all of his past good character and saw him only as a fiend. There were too frenzied, too much controlled by bitter hate to sift the false from the true and see the inconsistencies in the framework of evidence being built up against Frank.

Chapter III
The Police Net

It is important to know that Frank himself was the first one to tell the police that he was at work in his factory office and that Mary came to him for her pay at noon that Saturday. He concealed nothing. He made a full statement to the police Sunday morning of all his movements that day. He repeated that statement to the police Monday and it was put in writing. He made it again under oath at the inquest that week and the newspapers printed it. He told it again to the court and jury in his trial, and, note this, it was the same story from beginning to end. When he came to trial it was not necessary for him to change even a minute of the times and incidents of the story as he first gave it under the stress of excitement that Sunday morning when the police came to his home, before breakfast, before he was dressed, and fist broke the news to him that a girl had been found murdered in his factory.

One of the first things that Frank did in the week following the murder was to induce the factory owners to hire a Pinkerton detective to help the police find the murderer. This was used against him, as an evidence of his guilt. But it was proved that Frank said to the detective: “You find the murderer, not matter who it involves.

It was also told, and generally believed, that at first Frank tried to run suspicion toward Newt Lee, the negro night watchman, and to J.M. Gantt, a workman he had discharged for being short on his accounts.

The court records show that the police first suspected Lee and arrested him and that Frank did and said nothing to throw suspicion upon him. Frank had given orders to his men to keep Gantt out of the factory. Gantt had come to the factory the Saturday of the murder and met Frank on the sidewalk as he was leaving for the day and asked permission to go up into the factory and get a pair of shoes he had left there: Frank did not want him to go in, but finally let him go with Lee, the watchman, and cautioned Lee to watch him and stay with him until he came out.

Frank told this in his statement to the police and they arrest Gantt.

Another argument made by those who believe Frank is guilty is this:

“Why didn’t Frank tell that Jim Conley was at the factory that Saturday of the murder. He concealed that fact, which proves that Conley helped him carry the body from the second floor to the cellar, and that Frank was trying to steer the police away from Conley.”

You hear that argument everywhere you go in Georgia.

But the court records prove it is not true. Frank did not know that Conley was at the factory that day. Conley had no business there. He was a roustabout and sweeper. The factory was shut down.

Conley is a dissolute, degraded, brutal person. By his own testimony he as drunk that day, and he went to the factory to sleep it off. He went in the street door and hid among some empty boxes piled between and behind the elevator and the stairway going up to the second floor. More than twenty men and women entered and departed from the factory that day and did not see him. One woman and two men saw him lurking there in the shadows. Frank says he did not know he was there. Outside of Conley’s own testimony there is no evidence that Frank did know it. He had no reason to suspect Conley.

Conley was arrested Thursday after the murder. A foreman to the factory saw him washing stains from his shirt. Conley said they were rust stains. The man notified the police, and Conley was taken in.

That no importance was attached to the arrest is shown by the newspaper mention of it. The Atlanta Journal had a mere line about it, away down in a mass of stuff about the case saying: “The detectives will hold him until a chemical analysis is made of the stain on his shirt, which he says is rust. The police believe his story.”

The Atlanta Georgian said about the same. The Constitution mentioned it on the second page and said: “Little importance is attached to his arrest.”

Conley told the police he could not write and the police believed him and went on working up evidence against Frank.

For eighteen days thereafter the name of Conley does not appear in a newspaper of Atlanta, and in that eighteen days Conley, simply lounged in his cell while the storm against Frank rages.

The police had satisfied the public that they had caught the murderer. They were giving interviews to the newspapers that were printed with big headlines.

Here are a few of those headlines, printed in big type clear across the front page:

“We Have Sufficient Evidence to Convict the Murderer, Say Detectives.”

“Leo Frank on the Grill.”

“Evidence Against Frank Conclusive, Say Police.”

“Police Say They Have Frank in the Net.”

Conley’s statement that he could hot write was not printed in any paper. There is no reason to believe that Frank knew Conley had denied it. The police believe Conley. But there were to detectives, Whitfield and McWorth, who saw that the two murder notes were the crux of the case and they set out quietly to find out who wrote them. They went to the pencil factory and the girls there told them Conley could write. They had seen him write.

The girls there had suspected Conley from the first, and two days after the murder they accused him of it. They were more astute than the police. Note the testimony of Miss Mary Pirk, given at the trial: “I am one of the foreladies at the factory. I am head of the polishing department. I have been there ___ years. I talked with Jim Conley Monday morning after the murder. I accused him of the murder. He took his ____ and walked right away. I mentioned ____ to several of the girls standing around.”

And the testimony of Miss Dora _____ who accused Conley Tuesday after the murder, “because he acted so different.” He borrowed money from her ____ which to buy extra newspapers, and sat around reading of the murder, _____he had on a jacket “buttoned close to the neck” as if to hide his shirt when he had always “gone around open before.”

Whitfield and McWorth, convinced that Conley could write, went to Frank in his cell in the jail.

“Of course Conley could write, he doesn’t deny it, does he?” said Frank. He told them where they could find specimens of his writing. Conley had bought a watch on installment payments, and the collector used to call weekly to Frank’s office to collect a dollar out of Conley’s pay.

“You go to that watch dealer and see if Conley didn’t sign a contract for the watch,” said Frank. The detectives found it and confronted Conley with it Sunday, May 18. Conley then admitted that he could write. But denied that he had written the notes or that he was in or near the factory the day of the murder. The police made him write the words in the note, it was the same handwriting: anyone could see that. But the police concealed that fact from the public.

The police reporters saw the detectives busy with Conley and suspected something, and the next day had some mention in their papers of it. But the police continued to deny that anything of importance had occurred.

Meantime the police had evolved and give out a theory that Frank had killed the girl in the metal room in the rear end of the second floor and had carried her body on the elevator to the cellar. Around this theory they had woven a web of evidence. They had found a big “splotch of blood like a sunburst” in front of the girl’s dressing room on that floor, a splotch that turned out afterward to be red paint. They had found on the handle of a lathe on that floor three strands of hair, which they said was Mary’s hair, although it disappeared before the trial. The coroner’s jury had recommended that Frank be held for the murder, and, on May 24 the grand jury indicted Frank for murder.

Before the grand jury indicted Frank the police and prosecutor had positive proof that Conley had written the two murder notes, and had a confession from him that he had written them, but this evidence was withheld form the grand jury, and it knew nothing of it when it indicted Frank. Later on the grand jury learned these facts and it wanted to return an indictment against the negro, Jim Conley, but the prosecution induced the jury not to do it, assuring it that he had positive evidence of Frank’s guilt.

Chapter IV
They had to Convict Frank

Why did the police and prosecutor center their efforts upon a conviction of Frank unless the preponderance of evidence pointed to his guilt? When the negro, Conley, confessed that he wrote the murder notes, and that he carried the body into the basement, why did not the authorities abandon the theory that Frank was guilty and prosecute Conley?

Those questions have often been asked, and used as an argument of Frank’s guilt. It would have been easier to convict the negro after he confessed: that was the easy route to follow. The evidence all tends to prove the guilt of the negro and to prove the innocence of Frank. Why did not the authorities follow the easier road?

Hugh Dorsey had been appointed solicitor general to succeed a man who died. Later Dorsey had been elected to the office. The solicitor general has the same duties in Georgia that the prosecution attorney has in Missouri. It was Dorsey’s duty to prosecute the murderer of Mary Phagan if he was found.

Dorsey is a young man. He was a good civil lawyer, but was not experienced in criminal cases. His friends advised him not to take the office of solicitor general. They predicted that he would fall there.

Dorsey is able and ambitious and a bull dog in tenacity. When he takes hold he never lets go. His chance to make good came when Mary Phagan was murdered. Here was an opportunity to make a great reputation, and he grasped it. He took hold of the case himself right after the murder, working with the police and detectives, getting statements from all the witnesses, preparing the case for trial.

There can be no doubt that Dorsey believed during the first eighteen days after the murder that Frank was guilty. He went after him with all the intensity of his nature. He gave out interviews and the newspapers printed them.

“Dorsey Says Frank Is First In the Net.”

These are headlines that appeared ever long interviews with Dorsey.

At about the time the police discovered that Conley had written the murder notes Thomas B. Felder, a clever lawyer and politician, and a political enemy of the police department, came out in a public statement charging that the police had been bought up by “Jew money.” This was the beginning of the cry about “Jew money.” It has never ceased.

At this time the feeling against Frank was at its height. The public, clamoring for vengeance for the murder of the little Southern girl, had pounced upon Frank as a tiger upon its prey. Felder charged, and al the papers printed it, that the public was about to be cheated of its prey. He made the direct public charge that the police had been bought by “Jew money from the North,” and , that they were seeking to extort a confession from Jim Conley, a poor harmless negro.

This inflamed the public mind. The atmosphere, already charged with a cloud of blood, became surcharged. There was imminent fear that a mob would storm the jail and lynch Frank. The public did not want Conley. The dramatic sense of the people would have been deeply offended by the discovery that all their baiting of this Jew as wrong and that a negro was the murderer. They would not listen to that. There was no man in the police department big enough to face that storm. Anyway, the police had gone too far to draw back now. To have admitted no grave an error, such blundering at this state would have been political and official suicide for the police, and for Dorsey, too. They had to “stand pat” and they did. Dorsey quieted the public uneasiness around by Felder’s charge with a statement to the newspapers, which appeared in the Georgian under this heading: “Dorsey says the state’s case is complete and will not be changed: he will go into the trial with Frank and not the negro as the accused.”

The trial was a bitter fight between Dorsey, alone on one side, and two of the ablest and oldest lawyers in Georgia on the other side. They made the mistake of sneering at Dorsey and his inexperience and youthfulness. They called him “sonny” and “young man.” They aroused his ire and his determination to win over them. He fought, as a tiger fights at bay, to convict Frank and thus win fame.

Chapter V
Making Good Their Third Degree

One need not go outside the court record of the trial of Leo Frank to prove that the evidence against him was “framed up.” And it was such a clumsy “frameup,” so full of contradictions and “airholes” that a man accused of murder would never have been brought to trial under it in ordinary times.

The first statement made by Jim Conley, the negro, written by the police at his dictation, and signed by him, is a part of the court record. It was made May 18. In it he tells of drinking hard all day, the day Mary Phagan was murdered, and says he was not at the pencil factory that day.

Bear in mind that up to this time the police did not know he could write.

Conley’s next statement, also a part of the court record, was made May 24. At this time it was known that Conley could write and that his handwriting was exactly like that in the notes. In this sworn statement he admitted that he wrote one of the murder notes, at Frank’s dictation, and Frank wrote the other one, not on the day of the murder, but the day before. He says in this statement that Frank was planning murder and got him to write “A long, tall, black negro did this by himself,” to throw suspicion on a negro, and that Frank said: “Why should I hang?”

Conley’s next statement was May 28, and in this he admitted that he was at the factory the day of the murder, that Frank had him there to watch while he was with a girl on the floor above, that he saw several persons go up as he sat in the shadows at the foot of the stairway, that he saw Mary Phagan go up, and that a little later Frank called him up, told him he had hit the girl and hurt her, and that the found her dead and helped Frank carry her to the elevator and put her in the basement. He said he wrote both notes at Frank’s dictation.

The next day May 29, he amended his statement to conform to certain facts with which it was inconsistent, and at the trial he still further corrected it so that everything he said might fit the theory of the prosecution as to how the crime was done.

Harry Scott, a detective, testified at the trial, and explained how he and other police officers worked upon Conley to make him give statements that would “fit” the theory of the police that Frank was guilty. The following extracts from Scott’s testimony are from the official record of the trail:

“We talked very strongly to him. We used a little profanity and cursed him. He was carried to Dorsey’s office and went over his statement with Dorsey. We had him again May 27 in Chief Lanford’s office. He tried to impress him with the fact that Frank would not have written those notes Friday. That was not a reasonable story. That 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. May 28 Chief Lanford grilled him five or six hours again, endeavoring to make clear several points that were far-fetched in his statement. We pointed out to him that his statement would not do and would not fit. May 29 we talked with him almost all day. We pointed out things in his story that were improbable and told him he must do better that that. Anything in his story that looked to be out of place we told him wouldn’t do.”

And so on. The police kept after Conley, coaching him and pressing him until his statement fitted in with every theory of the police as to how Frank killed the girl, and he was drilled in that until he had the story so perfect that he could rattle it off glibly, as he did at the trial.

Chapter VI
The Trial.

Frank’s trial lasted thirty days. It was held in August, in a small courtroom, the windows of which on one side opened upon a street, and on the other opened on an alley. The mob dominated the trial. There can be no doubt about that.

The motion for a new trial certified to by the trail judge as correct in its statements, cites many instances of loud and continuous applause by the spectators when any ruling adverse to Frank was made, or when a point was made against him. There were sneers and hisses, the demonstrations always being against Frank. The judge refused at any time to clear the courtroom, although requested many times by Frank’s attorneys to do so.

The alley and street outside as always filled with a mob through which the jury was led daily, and through which Frank was taken daily by armed guard, with revolvers drawn.

It was a nosy mob. Some reviewers of the trial have said there were cries to the jury of “Hang the Jew or we will hang you.”

There is no proof that this occurred, but it is true that the spirit of the mob breathed upon the jury and the court, and that the jurors knew their lives would be in danger if they acquit ed Frank. The judge knew it and aid so.

As an instance of the methods of the prosecution in creating an impression upon the jury, the following is the from the verbatim report of the trial:

Phillip Chambers, a youth of 15 years of age, questioned by Mr. Dorsey:

Q. You and Frank were pretty good friends, weren’t you?
A. Well, just like a boss ought to be to me.
Q. What was it that Frank tried to get you to do that you told Gantt about several times?
A. I never did complain to Mr. Gantt.
Q. What proposition, was it that Mr. Frank made to you and told you he was going to turn you off if you didn’t do what he wanted you to?
A. He never made any proposition to me.
Q. Do you deny that you talked to Mr. Gantt and told him about these improper proposals that Frank would make to you and told you he would turn you off unless you did what eh wanted you to do?
A. I never did tell Gantt anything of that sort.
Q. Didn’t Frank tell you he was going to turn you off unless you would permit him to do with what he wanted to do?
A. No, sir.

Here Mr. Arnold, attorney for Frank, moved the rule out questions and answers. Dorsey reports: “We are entitled to show the relations existing between this witness and Frank, your honor.”

Mr. Arnold replies: “It is a vile slander and fatigues the indignation to all here and hear things like this suggested. No man can get a fair trial with such innuendos and insinuations as these made against him.”

Mr. Dorsey: “That is all I wanted to ask him. I will bring Gantt in to impeach him.”

But Gantt was not brought in to impeach him, and this prejudicial insinuation of Frank’s perversion must have had its effect on the jury.

There were many such broad insinuation, but no proof outside the testimony of the negro Conley. There is not one word of testimony that Frank was pervert beyond Conley’s statements.

Several girls who worked in the factory were put on the stand by the state, and each was asked the same questions, if they knew the reputation of Frank for lasciviousness.

Each answered “Yes.”
“Is it good or bad?”
“Bad was the answer.

Frank’s lawyers did not cross-examine them because under the law those girls could have told all they had ever heard or read, all the false rumors, and that reeking mess would have been dumped into the courtroom.

Several of the factory girls testified that they had seen Frank grin at the girls and try to flirt with them. Several afterward made affidavits that their testimony was false.

To be fair, anyone who reads the record must admit that Frank’s character was not blackened at the trial. Many witnesses, including those who had known him at school and in Atlanta, testified to his high character.

Under the Georgia laws a man cannot testify in his own behalf, not can his wife testify for him when charged with homicide. Frank made a long statement to the jury, and the papers said it brought tears to many eyes.

Conley, the negro was almost three days on the witness stand. He was dressed in a new suit. He talked glibly, contradicted himself often then laughed and admitted he lied.

Everywhere in Georgia you m ay hear it said that Conley must have told the truth because Luther Z. Rosser, one of the best lawyers in that state, failed to break him down on cross-examination. It is true that he did no force, the negro to get upon his knees and confess that he killed Mary, but he did tangle Conley, and trip him and make him confess himself to be a liar over and over.

It was not evidence that convicted Frank. It was the mob and Dorsey’s speech to the jury.

Dorsey spoke for three days. His speech has been printed in a pamphlet for distribution. The speech was an appeal to the prejudices of the jurors and the mob, as anyone may see who wished to read it. At the outset he attacked Frank as Jew in these words:

When Becker wished to put to death his bitter enemy, it was men of Frank’s race he selected. Abe Hummel, the lawyer, who went to the penitentiary in New York; Schwartz, the man accused of stabbing a girl in New York, who committed suicide; and others that I could mention, show that this 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 the depths of degradation.”

He went over the Durant case, and likened it Frank’s case to his, and to other lust murders, to the case of Oscar Wilde, and other perverts.

He spoke of Judas Iscariot. He denounced Frank as “lust murderer: and a degenerate. He said Frank’s wife had not visited him because she knew he was guilty and a ravisher of young girls. He even conveyed to the jury by the following innuendo the passion of the mob, end the threat of its vengeance if it should acquit him:

I tell you Frank knew, and you know that there would have been men who would have sprung up in this town, had that little girl lived to tell of that brutal assault, that would have run over ten thousand men like you, would have stormed the jail or done anything.”

Mary Phagan had eaten cabbage for luncheon the day of her murder, and the undigested cabbage was taken from her stomach after death and shown in a bottle to the jury to try and fix by it the exact time she was killed. One doctor testified that she must have died within an hour afterward, otherwise the cabbage would have been digested. Several doctors testified that the cabbage proved nothing of the kind, because it often takes from three to five hours to digest.

In arguing to the jury Frank’s lawyers brushed aside the cabbage testimony as of no consequence.

In his argument Dorsey said:

“And Mr. Rosser says he don’t care anything about cabbage, I’m not going back on my raising here or anywhere, and I tell you, gentlemen, that there is no better, no more a wholesome meal than cabbage. I tell you gentlemen of the jury, that cabbage, corn bread and buttermilk is good enough for any man,” and so on, making it appear that Rosser had sought to slur poor little Mary Phagan because her humble meal had consisted of cabbage and corn bread.

Such a mob surrounded the courtroom on Saturday while Dorsey was speaking that the editors of the three newspapers of Atlanta, supposing that the case would to the jury that day, joined in a written request to Judge Roan to not permit a verdict to be returned that day, as they feared mob violence in any event.

But Dorsey carried his speech over into Monday, and when he finished it the crowd sent up a cheer and lifted Dorsey upon shoulders and carried him in triumph in the streets.

Amid such a scene the jury retired to consider a verdict.

Judge Roan called Frank’s lawyers to him. He told them it would be unsafe for Frank or either of them to be in the courtroom when the verdict was returned. He told them he feared the mob would kill them, and he advised them to stay away. Frank’s lawyers agreed, if Judge Roan would poll the jury. The judge promised he would do so.

The judge also sent for E.E. Pomeroy, colonel of the local militia, and warned him to have the militia ready to put down a riot.

That much is all in the court record, certified as correct by the judge himself, Frank’s lawyers say, but it is not in the record that Judge Roan asked of them at that time: “What do you think the verdict will be.” “Guilty, of course,” replied Mr. Rosser.

“Yes,” said Judge Roan. “If Christ and his angels came down here and showed this jury that Frank was innocent, it would bring him in guilty.”

The jury did find him guilty, and the crowd of thousands set up such a cheering that Judge Roan, as he certified, could not hear the responses of the jurors as an effort was made to poll them.

Frank was in his cell a half mile away, and not a lawyer representing him was in court when the verdict was returned.

Chapter VII

The theory to the prosecution is that Mary Phagan entered the front door of the factory (see diagram) at 12:05 o’clock, that she went up the stairway to its head (fig. 3), and turned and went to where Frank sat at his desk (fig. 3), Frank got her pay envelope from the safe and gave it to her and she went back to the metal room, two hundred feet, Frank followed her, and assaulted her, she screamed, he either hit here with something or knocked her head against something, and she fell unconscious at the point marked “3” on the diagram. Frank tore a strip from her underskirt, gagged her, went to the front of the factory and got a cord and looped it around her neck. Then he went to the head of the stairway (3) and called Conley, who was sitting on a box at (1). Conley went up, Frank trembling, excited, “shaking all over,” told him he had hurt the girl back there. Conley went, looked at her, returned, told Frank she was dead and Frank told him he must take her into the basement and burn her. Conley agreed. He lifted her and carried her to (6), where she fell with a heavy thump to the floor. Conley went up front again, got a cloth, wrapped her body in it, “tying the four corners like a bundle of washing” and he at her head, and Frank at her foot, carried her to the elevator. Conley dumped here in on the elevator floor, Frank started the elevator, they took her to the basement, Frank running the elevator and standing astride the body. Arrived there Conley carried her on his shoulder back 175 feet to (12), where her body was found later.

Then he and Frank returned by the elevator to the second floor and went into Frank’s office, Frank sitting at (15), Conley at (16). They had quite an extended conversation. Frank looked out the window and exclaimed: “My God, here comes Emma Clark and Quiney Hall. Get in this wardrobe, damn it quick.”

He put Conley in the wardrobe (17), Conley heard the two women come in and the conversation between them and Frank, and after they departed Frank let him out, gave him a cigarette and lighted one himself, gave him $200 to pay him to come back later and burn the body, and then took it back again, promising to pay after the body is burned. Then Frank and Conley wrote two notes found with the body, and Conley went away.

That is Conley’s testimony, in brief, and that is the testimony upon which Frank was convicted.

Now, to do all of that would take considerable time. After Conley had told that story several detectives and newspaper men took Conley to the factory and had him enact the thing all out in pantomime, and repeating all the conversations. Conley moved and talked rapidly in acting this pantomime, and it took forty minutes. That was the testimony at the trail. In reason it could not have been done in less time.

An analysis of the testimony at the trial shows that Frank worked at the factory six hours the day of the murder. Several members of the office force were with him part of the morning. More than twenty persons saw and talked with him in the factory that day. He was under observation every moment of the time except for a very brief space.

This is not mere theory. It is proved by the testimony at the trail of all the persons who saw him, and the following statements are taken from the official brief of the testimony filed with the supreme court of Georgia and certified by the trial judge as correct. Anyone may confirm the truth of them by consulting that record:

Mary Phagan must have been murdered between 12:15 and 12:30 o’clock. Both the prosecution and the defense agree on that. The time she arrived at Frank’s office is well known. Her mother and the street car men, who knew her well, testified that she took the 11:45 car from home. The Carmen testified she got off at 12:07: it was a 5-minute walk to the factory. Frank says she arrived at 12:15, got her money and went right out of his office.

She was not there at 12:02 when Miss Hattie Hall, the stenographer, left the office.

It is important that this testimony about the time be carefully considered by any person who cares to learn who killed Mary Phagan, and whether the state is about to hang an innocent man. It tends to prove that Frank could not have killed her, and that Conley did kill her, alone and unaided.

Nineteen witnesses testified that they saw Frank in his office that day. Each of them differ radically from Conley while all of the nineteen reasonably agree with each other. Nine were witnesses for the entire state and two for the defense.

Their testimony fixes every move made by Frank that day, with the exception of five or ten minutes and is that brief interval between 12:12 or 12:15 and 12:20 o’clock, a period of ten minutes at the most, Frank and Conley must have enacted the crime, if the prosecution is correct in its theory.

All of that day Harry Deaham and Arthur White were making repairs on the top floor. They were there when Conley says Frank murdered Mary, and a stairway led down to within a few feet of where Conley says Frank killed her, at Figure 3. This was proven and admitted by the prosecution.

Conley says that as he sat on a box at the foot of the stairway (fig. 1) he saw Mary Phagan go up and she was followed almost immediately by Miss Monteen Stover.

Miss Stover testified that she arrived at exactly 12:05, for her pay, that she did not see Frank in the office; she waited five minutes and left at 12:10.

She did not see Conley at the stairway; not one of the nineteen witnesses saw him, except three who testified they saw a negro there, but were not sure it was Conley, as it was dark back there.

It would seem that Miss Stover’s testimony would contradict Frank, who said he was not out of his office between 12 and 12:30 o’clock. But it is a double office. Frank’s desk was in the inner office, the safe was open, it is a tall safe and its large door, standing open, would almost cover the door to the inner office. He might not have been there and Miss Stover not seen him, or he might, as he suggests, have stepped out to the washroom and forgotten it.

If Conley’s story is true Frank was strangling Mary in the metal room while Miss Stover was in the front office. But the Carmen testified that at that moment Mary was alighting from their car, five minutes’ walk away.

In all his statements before the trial Conley did not mention that he had seen Miss Stover go up the stair way. The police knew she had bone in and they may have “coached” Conley to say so to make his story look true, but that overlooked this time element.

Lemmie Quinn foreman of the factory testified that he reached the office at 12:20 o’clock, stayed five minutes, talked with Frank in the office and left at 12:25. But Conley swore that Quinn went in and left before Mary Phagan went in.

Mrs. White testified that she entered the factory a second time at 12:30 to see her husband on the top floor and saw Frank at work in the office. She saw her husband and while she talking with him Frank came up, at 12:50 to tell her he was gong home in a few minutes to luncheon and was going to lock the factory. She went out at 1 and saw Frank in the office as she passed. Her husband and Denham testified to the same thing as to time.

Coley testified that he did not see Mrs. White go.

The strongest most positive evidence that Conley’s story is false is this: he testified that after the murder, after the body had been carried to the basement and he saw Frank had returned to the office, Frank saw Quincy Hall and Emma Freeman coming and put him in the wardrobe.

Those two women testified that they reached the factory at 11:35 and stayed until 11:45, when they left.

They went there to get Mrs. Freeman’s coat and to call up Mrs. Freeman’s husband. They got the coat from the top floor, where Mrs. Freeman worked, and talked to her husband through the telephone in Frank’s office. Frank was there writing and the stenographer, Miss Hall was there, too, and Frank was taking to two men who were just leaving. Mrs. White was there, too, on her first visit that day.

“As we were going up the steps Mr. Frank called to Mrs. Freeman to tell Arthur White to come down, that his wife wanted to see him. On the fourth floor we say Mary Barrett, Arthur White and Harry Denham. When we left the factory the following people were still there: Arthur White, Mrs. White, May Barrett, her daughter, Harry Denham, the stenographer and Mr. Frank.”

That is the testimony of Miss Quincy Hall. It is corroborated by Mrs. Matti Hall, who left the office at 12:02, “just after the noon whistle.” It is corroborated by Mrs. Freeman, by Mrs. White who testifies that she sent word upstairs by Mrs. Freeman for her husband to come down. D. Tillander and E K. Graham were the two men who were in the office at that time.

Conley knew from reading the report in the papers before he testified that Miss Hall and Mrs. Freeman were there that day, therefore, he to make his story seem truthful, he said he saw them go up, but his inferior mind could not grasp the time element, and as he testified at the trial before they did he did not know they talked through the telephone and he did not put that in his story. When asked what he heard the women say he answered: “They said, Good morning, Mr. Frank.”

Of course he was safe in saying that. As to the rest of the conversation he said they were “talking low.”

Conley places the time they were there at an hour and a half later then they were actually there. he says it was “four minutes to one” when he was in the office with frank. He looked at the clock and was position.

Unless we believe then that there four women, and Tillander and Graham, and Deaham and Freeman swore falsely we must pronounce Conley’s story as false. But the stories of those witnesses fit together sad first with the testimony of other witnesses like the pieces of perfect mosaic. It is as prefect as mathematics. Its conclusion is as certain as that two and two make four.

Chapter VIII
The Murder Notes.

Jim Conley, the negro, murdered Mary Phagan, and he described how he slew her in the two notes he wrote and laid beside her body.

Conley is a low, dissolute, brutal negro. He had been in jail different times. He lived with a negro woman not his wife. He drank heavily and was always trying to borrow money from the girls in the factory, where he was a roustabout. His brutal nature is shown by the glib, grinning manner in which he told of carrying the body of the murdered girl to the basement, dropping her with a “thump” upon the floor, handling the body of the pretty, golden haired girls as coldly as if it had been a dead dog.

He was drunk the day of the murder. He had spent his last cent for a flask of whisky which he took with him to the factory. That is his testimony. He went there to sell off the effects of the drink. he hid himself among the boxes there, in the deep shadows.

Mary Phagan came down the stairway with her mesh bag in her hand. it is easy to think that she was opening her pay envelope as she came. She might have had the money in her hand. Now, read those murder notes again:

Mam, that negro hire down here did this, I went to make water and he push me down that hole. A long, tall, negro, black: that hoo it wase, long, sleam, tall negro, I wright while play with me.

In the reproduction of this note The Star omits two words represented by the blank space. The punctuation marks are not in the original. The other note reads as follows:

He said he wood love me laid down, play like the night witch did it, but that long, tall black negro did buy himself.

Within a few feet of where the negro was hiding among the boxes there is a large hole in the floor, two feet square, and a ladder reaching down into the basement. The hole is behind the walled-in elevator shaft (See fig. 11).

Mary may have stepped back into the shadow there for the very purpose stated in the omitted words in the note. Conley, crouching there, saw here and on the impulse of the moment may have clutched her by the throat and choked her or he may have hit her with something and laid her scalp open. then he thrust her down the hole, head first, likely. At the foot of the ladder is a chuck of log. Her head may have struck it and caused the wound in her scalp.

Conley hurried down the ladder after her. She was not dead. All the doctors agreed that the wound on the head would not have killed her. There was no skull fracture, no blood clot on the brain. She would have been unconscious a few moments, she would have squirmed and clutched frantically in the agony or returning consciousness. She might have screamed.

Mrs. J. B. Simmons of Birmingham, Ala., states in an affidavit that she was visiting in Atlanta and passed the pencil factory the afternoon of the murder and heard a woman’s screams in the basement. She heard a woman’s voice say “Please don’t.” She stopped to listen. There was a grating there opening directly into the basement. Screams in that basement could have been heard.

She swore that she went and told Prosecutor Dorsey of it and that he tried to get here to change the time she said she heard the screams because Frank had gone to his luncheon then. Dorsey denies this.

In justice to Dorsey it must be said that neither he not the defense places any confidence in her story. She was not used as a witness.

Anyway, the wounded girls must have struggled hard. The cinders under her finger nails and matted into her face prove that. It also proves that she was alive when she was in the cellar. She breathed cinders and ashes into her nose and mouth. There were no cinders on the office floor where Conley says she was killed.

Conley says the cord was put around her neck upstairs by Frank, that she was dead up there. All the doctors agreed that she was strangled to death by the cord. Her face was black, her eyes starting out, her tongue protruding. If that was done upstairs she could not have breathed ashes and cinders in the cellar.

The ashes and cinders were breathed before she died in the cellar, while she was fighting off Conley. In his drunken desperation lest she be heard and he be discovered he ripped a piece from her underskirt and tried to gag her with it. it was not strong enough. Then he grabbed the cord.

The testimony proved that cords like that were in the cellar. He tied it tightly around her neck. It was proved at the trial that a piece of the strip of underskirt was beneath the card, and beneath the strip of skirt were cinders. That proves beyond doubt that both were put on in the cellar.

Having strangled her to death and eternal silence the negro had leisure to carry her back and hide her body at (fig. 12) where it was dark as midnight.

Then he sat down to write the notes. Against the wall opposite the boiler was a small, rude table with paper and pencil. Scattered around in the trash that came down from the floors above to be burned were sheets and pads of paper exactly like those upon which the notes were written. The pad from which one of the notes was torn was found by the body of Police Sergeant L.S. Dobbs, who so testified.

Now mark this, it is proof of Frank’s innocence, that pad had printed on the top of every sheet the name of the pencil company and a date. it was a pad used in the office by Superintendent Becker, who preceded Frank as the factory head. All of those pads were carried into the basement two years before, after Frank became superintendent, and ask had new pads printed. There was no paper in Frank’s office like that upon which that note was written. This disproves absolutely the story of the negro that the notes were written in Frank’s office.

The negro wrote these in the basement: denied for eighteen days after his arrest that the could write, when confronted with proof that the could write, and this proof furnished by Frank , he first said that Frank wrote the notes. Shown that his could not be true, that positively they were in his handwriting, he said he wrote them at Frank’s dictation. He swore that he “wrote them word by word just as Frank told him.”

Frank was then believed guilty by everyone. Frank would naturally be the one upon whom Conley would lay the crime. Under other circumstance, of less public delirium, no one would have believed the negro’s story for a moment. It is too absurd from any point of view.

After writing the notes the negro was afraid to to-up and out the street door. He went by the back door, indicated by an arrow in the diagram. He pried the locked staple out with a piece of iron pipe and went out.

His bloody finger prints were on the door. The authorities sawed out the boards and took them to be examined by experts. The government expert in charge of the Bertillon department as the federal prisons in Atlanta says he could have ascertained positively from those three distinct bloody finger prints whether Conley’s fingers made them. The finger printed boards were never shown at the trial. The prosecution said they had been lost.

It is possible that someone had them examined, found they corresponded with Conley’s finger prints and destroyed them?

The three strands of hair found on a lathe in the metal room, which did so much to center public suspicion upon Frank, also disappeared. Prosecutor Dorsey said in reply to a question from the defense, during the trail, that he had lost them.

Yet, in his impassioned speech to the jury he referred to those strands of hair. He said: “I tell you right now, gentlemen, that when Barrett swore he found that hair on that machine he told the truth.

“I tell you right now, gentlemen, that when Barrett swore he found that hair on that machine he told the truth.”

Mary’s hair was golden in color, easy to identify. But several who saw that hair say it was dark. So it was lost.

Fair trial indeed!

The negro escaped by the back door into the alley, and Mary Rich, an old woman who sold pieces and cakes at the mouth of that alley, and knew Conley well, made affidavit that she saw Conley come out that back door into that alley that very afternoon, right at the time Conley did go out. But before the trail she repudiated her affidavit. She told friends that she had to make a living and could not afford to antagonize the police.

Conley wrote the notes to direct suspicion away form himself and place it upon a negro who fired the boiler in the basement, “that negro hire down here.”

Note that “down here” indicating that the notes were written “down here” not up in the office.

Conley is short, stout and light colored. He wished to throw suspicion upon someone the very opposite of him, and that the murderer “did it by his self, “Conley did not help him. The negro that fired the boiler was “long, slim, tall and black,” and so Conley described him that way in both notes one was not enough. He emphasized in the second note that he “did it by hisself.”

“He pushed me down that hole.” Would Frank have written that after he had taken her down in the elevator? It is pretty good proof that she was pushed down that hole, and not carried down the elevator.

The drunken mind of the negro wished to make it appear that the girl wrote the notes to her mother while the negro was not watching her write. “ I wright while he play with me.” Whose mind but a negro’s would have conceived such a silly explanation.

The second note “he said he would love me laid down, play like the night witch did it,” evidently this: “He told me to play, or make believe or tell, that the night witch did it.” Those words, “night witch” are negro pure and simple. No white man would have used them, especially a white man for the North, who had never lived among negros. The ”night witch” is an old negro superstition prevalent among them over all the South. The “night witch” comes in through the keyhole at night, gets upon the chest of a sleeping person and takes his breath away. Persons who die in their sleep, who have bad dreams and nightmares are victims of the “night witch.”

Nobody but a Southern negro would have written that.

In his speech to the jury Prosecutor Dorsey emphasized that an illiterate negro like Conley would never have written “negro,”: but would have written “nigger:” but would have wrote ten “nigger:” that he would have never written or aid “did it,” but would have said “done it,” and that argument has great weight in Georgia.

I have before me as I write the official stenographic report of Conley’s testimony as he gave it in court. he said “did it” and “negro” many times.”

“I don’t remember what I did.”
“I don’t know what I did.”
“Well, I don’t know sir what I did that day.”
“I did some watching for him.”

Those are characteristic answers.

In his testimony he said “negro,” many times, and seldom “nigger,” and the court stenographer has made affidavit sine that he wrote exactly as Conley pronounced the words. Noting that both notes the writer has a distinct way of describing a person “long, slim, tall, negro” “a long, tall, black negro.”

Conley’s testimony at the trial shows that his habit was to identify persons with several consecutive descriptive words. The following are from his testimony:
“Well, she was a tall built lady, heavy weight.”
“Nice looking lady, kinder slim.”
“She was a very tall, slim built lady.”
“He was a tall, slim built, heavy man.”
“Well, Miss Delsy, she was a low lady, kind of heavy.”
“She was low and chunky.”
“He was a slim looking man, and tall with it.”

The word “slim” was a favorite with him.

Also he used often the word “like: as it is used in the note, “play like the night witch did it.” And he used the words “hisself,” as it is used in the notes. I quote from his testimony: “He went to the front door and fixed it hisself, unlocked the front door hisself.”
“Looked to me like with pieces of velvet on it.”
“I said something like that.”
“Yes, sir, eh looks like he would weigh that.”
“He looked like it.”

And so on often and often

Since he has been in jail Conley has written many letters to a negro woman prisoner. They are filled with the most unspeakable obscenity. They prove, not only the lasciviousness and moral rottenness of his nature, but they establish beyond question that he is a pervert. He writes plainly of his perversion.

When the negro wrote the notes his dull mind, sodden with liquor, did not conceive that there were differences in handwriting. To his ignorant mind all handwriting was alike. Experts say this is a common belief among the ignorant. They think writing is writing and that it is impossible to tell one man’s writing from another’s. Conley never thought that anyone could detect that those notes were not written by the girl.

But Frank, the college graduate, the expert bookkeeper, would have known that. he would have never resorted to so clumsy a subterfuge as using eh notes, even had he been such a fool as to take a dissolute negro roustabout as accessory to his murder.

There are many other evidences, beyond those given here, that Conley murdered Mary Phagan and that Frank is innocent. They can be touched on only briefly here.

The fact that the elevator did not run at all the day of the murder, proven by a soft substance deposited early the morning of the murder in the bottom of the elevator shaft and found intact Sunday morning after the murder. When the elevator was run then it mashed the substance. The elevator floor always hits the bottom of the shaft.

The two men working upstairs did not hear the elevator run, and it runs with a loud noise and shakes the floors.

That Frank was not in the least nervous when seen by witnesses immediately after Conley says the murder was done. He went home and ate dinner with his wife and mother-in-law, returned to the factory and filled out invoice sheets for three hours. Experts testified that it would take three hours to do it. The handwriting was plain and not a sign of nervousness in the writer of it.

And Frank was extremely nervous and excitable at times. Witnesses swore that once when a car on which he was riding struck and killed a child he was so upset that he could do no work all day. A quarrel with his foreman made him so nervous that he gave up work the rest of the day.

Conley says she was wrapped in a cloth when he carried her to the cellar. No such cloth was ever found.

There was no blood at the spot where Conley said he found her on the second floor, where she had lain at least twenty minutes, and none in the elevator. And the undertaker and doctors testified that she “must have bled a great deal” from the wound to the head.

Proof that Conley’s story was “made” for him, that he was coached in the telling of it is found in his testimony that “Frank put a piece of cloth under her head when he killed her to keep the blood off the floor.” A silly and impossible tale.

If Frank wished her body burned why did he dictate the notes? There was no fire in the boiler that day. To have kindled one would have exposed the crime. It is a small boiler. The door is so small the body could not have been put in. The negro would have had to chop it up and burn it piece by piece.

The girl’s mesh bag and the bunch of red flowers from her hat were never found. The drunken negro probably carried them away to give to the negro woman with whom he lived.

At the trial it was proved by Frank’s bankbook and the factory balance sheets that there was not $200 in the office that day; there was less than $0, and Frank had only a few dollars.

The murderer escaped by the back door, breaking it open first.. Frank did not go out that way.

This one fact alone refutes the possibility that Frank murdered Mary Phagan.

The negro’s story is so incredible, so absurd, so inconsistent with all the facts, that one wonders that anyone could believe a word of it.

Chapter IX
The Poison of Unspeakable Things

The people of Georgia honestly believe that Frank is guilty and that the rich Jews of the North have raised a fund of millions of dollars to save his life. it is not fair to criticize them for that. They have been deceived and “fooled” by the clique of political office holders who have worked the ruin of Frank.

A newspaper man of Atlanta, who reported the Frank case from its inception, told me that Frank was innocent. I repeated that to an official who had helped convict Frank, and he put the hollow of his hand to his mouth and whispered in all earnestness:

“He has been brought with Jew money. but don’t say I told you.”

I assured him that the reporter of another Atlanta paper, who had attended each session of the trail, had also told me that Frank was innocent.

“He got some of the Jew money, too. They’ve scattered it all around,” he answered.

Anyone who raises his voice in favor of Frank is accused of being bought by “Jew money.”

A young woman of unusual intelligence, connected with a photograph gallery in Atlanta, said to me that she would like to see Frank hanged by the tongue at the “Five Points,” the center of Atlanta.

“But I believe he is innocent.” I said. “Oh, you have gotten some of the Jew money,” she reported.

The managing editor, associate editor, city editor, assistant city editor and court reporter of an Atlanta newspaper said to me they knew Frank was entitled to a new trial; his trial was not fair.

“Then why don’t you say so?” I asked. “We dare not; we would be accused of being bought by Jew money,” they answered.

Judge Roan, who tried Frank, said publicly from the bench when denying a motion for a new trial:

“I have given this question long consideration. It has given me more concern than any other case I was ever in, and I want to say right here that, although I heard the evidence and arguments during those thirty days, I do not know this morning whether Leo Frank is innocent or guilty. But I was not the one to be convinced. The jury was convinced, and I feel it my duty to overrule the motion.”

The next day the Atlanta Georgian, in a double-leaded editorial on the first page said:

“When Judge Roan, the trial judge, is in doubt, and boldly says so, is it not time to pause before legal murder is added to the long list of other crimes in our state?”

But the public raised such a storm about this that the Georgian, form that day to this, has not dared to say a word in Frank’s favor.

March 14, 1914, the Atlanta Journal, conscience stricken and determined to try and undo some of the wrong done to Frank, printed, an editorial in large type, filling four full columns, headed:

“Frank Should Have a New Trial..”

Here are a few paragraphs form that editorial:

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

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

A verdict of acquittal would have caused a riot such as would shock the country and cause Atlanta’s streets to run with innocent blood.”

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

For this the Journal was accused of being bought with Jew money and was so threatened with ruin that I dared not continue the policy it set out on, and it has never said a word since then about unfairness to Frank nor a new trial.

The wife and daughter of L. Z. Rosser, who defended Frank, have been called on the telephone many times and told that he was going to be killed unless he ceased his efforts to save Frank.

W. J. Burns, the famous detective, who went to Atlanta and investigated the Frank case and declared he was innocent and that Conley was the murderer, had to leave the city hurriedly to escape threatened indictment, and his agents were not permitted to operate in Atlanta, and he was forced to close his office there.

Collier’s Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and Baltimore Sun, which each sent a man to Atlanta to investigate and who asserted that Frank was innocent, are accused of having been bought with “Jew money.”

The people of Georgia resent bitterly any criticism of their officers or the court which convicted Frank.

Hugh Dorsey, solicitor general, who prosecuted Frank, said publicly when a new trial was sought:

“ The Courts must keep the respect of the people. The Frank verdict must not be upset if the administration of law is not to be brought into contemp.”

The Jeffersonian of Thomson, Ga., said in its issue of January 7 this year:

“The state of Georgia is under indictment; her people stand arraigned at the bar of public opinion, and she is made defendant before the world in a matter that is peculiarly her own.”

“If the efforts of Frank’s millionaire backers succeed in concealing the truth, and giving immunity to a most hideous crime, then, hereafter the struggle for the punishment of a convicted criminal will really begin outside the courthouse, outside the state and outside of the methods of law and evidence, which were built up by the painful labor of centuries, and which as every competent lawyers knows, are so extraordinarily lenient to the prisoner, that it is practically impossible to convict an innocent man.”

The evidence in the Frank case has never been reviewed by an appellate court, although it is generally supposed that it has been. Under the Georgia laws the supreme court cannot review the evidence. It can only pass upon the rulings of the trial court; it can only consider errors of law and not errors of testimony. The Supreme Court of Georgia, in a recent decision, said it was not satisfied that the evidence was sufficient to convict, but with that it could not interfere; the jury was the sole judge of it, and the supreme court affirmed the conviction.

Frank has been thrice sentenced to die and three times has come very near to the gallows. The battle to get him a new trial has made his case one of the most noted in criminal annals. His first appeal was denied by the supreme court. His lawyers then filed an “extraordinary motion” for a new trial, raising the point that he was not in court when the verdict was returned and citing newly discovered evidence of his innocence, and further evidence of perjury at his trial, and affidavits showing that several of the twelve jurors had asserted before the trial their belief in his guilt, one, in particular, having declared that he hoped he could get on the jury s he could “crack his damned neck.”

This motion was denied by the supreme court.

Then Frank was examined by a commission of experts who declared eh was sane and normal in every way and not a pervert.

Another motion to annul the verdict was made and denied by the supreme court.

December 31, last, a motion for a certificate of “probably cause” for appeal was denied by Judge Newman of the United States District Court in Atlanta. This acts as a stay of execution of the death sentence, which was to have been carried out January 23.

The point to be passed upon by the United States Supreme Court is whether at the supreme moment of his trial, when the verdict was returned, Frank was denied his constitutional right of being present and looking his condemners in the face. The supreme court of this country has never decided this question before.

If the supreme court decides in his favor it will discharge him, a free man, he cannot be tried again.

Throughout it all Frank has kept a brave front. His fortitude has been amazing, in one of his statements, issued to the public from his cell, he said:

“Is the technical finesse of the law forever to preclude a hearing of the facts, and human rights to be trampled beneath the judicial feet? If this is so, and I cannot as yet believe it, then our Twentieth Century civilization is but a myth and the divine spark in each beast a fairy tale. Then in truth we hark back hundreds of years in human progress to when the arena and ‘thumbs down’ were the last word of the law. It just cannot be that way”

When he was sentenced to death and was asked by the court if he had anything to say he faced the judge and made a statement, which indicates his high mental caliber. Champ Clark said it was a wonderful statement and he pasted it in his scrap book. Senator Borah said it touched him deeply and almost impelled him to go at once to Atlanta to Frank’s aid.

The statement follows:
“May it please your honor, I trust your honor will understand that I speak impersonally, addressing my words more to the bench as representing the majesty of the law of Georgia than to the gentleman now on the bench.

“In your honor’s presence, representing human law, and in the presence of the Supreme Judge who at this very moment is casting the light of hi omnipotent and omnipresent eye upon me from his throne on high, I assert I am innocent of little Mary Phagan’s death and have no knowledge of how it occurred.

“Law, as we know it, your honor, is but the expression of man’s legal experience. it is but relative. It tries to approximate justice, but being man-made, is fallible. In the name of the law many grievous errors have been committed—error that were colossal and irretrievable. I declare to your honor now that the state of Georgia is about to make such an error.

“The law says that when one has lost his life through violence of another, the perpetrator of the deed must answer with is own. That may be just. But the law does not say that where one is killed a blood-sacrifice shall be made of the next convenient individual. If this latter obtains, then the taking of such life is not justice. It is but murder legalized. Oh, what a terrible thing this is to contemplate!

“Your honor is about to pronounce words that will thrust me over the abyss that separates our earthly existence from the higher life, the life eternal. I may shortly stand before the tribunal of the Higher Judge of whom human minds have but the slightest conception.

Before this tribunal I will be judged as I now am innocent, and will receive the reward of them who suffer wrongfully on this earth.

“Your honor, as astounding and outrageous state of affairs obtained previous to and during my trial. On the streets rumor and gossip carried vile, vicious and damning stories concerning me and my life. These stories concerning me and my life. There stories were absolutely false, and did me great harm, as they beclouded and obsessed the public mind and outraged it against me. From a public in this state of mind the jury that tried me was chosen. Not alone were these storied circulated on the street, but to the shame of our community be it said, there vile insinuations crept into my very trial in the courtroom, creeping in insidiously; like a thief in the night. The virus of these damning insinuations entered the minds of the twelve men and stole away their judicial frame of mind and their moral courage. The issues at bar were lost. The poison of unspeakable things took their place.

“Your honor, in this presence and before God, I earnestly ask that God in his mercy may deal lightly with those who unwittingly, I trust, have erred against me, and will deal with them according to his divine judgment. If the state and the law wills that my life be taken as a blood-atonement for the poor little child who was ruthlessly killed by another, than it remains for me only to die with whatever fortitude my manhood may allow. But I am innocent of this crime and the future will prove it. I am now ready for your honor’s sentence.”

I saw, the other day, a little group gathered in front of Frank’s death cell. The young wife, her happiness cut short, her life ruined, her heart broken, stood outside the bars through wwhich her husband’s hands were thrust in vain attempt to soothe. Her lips quivered. Tears coursed down her cheek. There was unutterable pathos and tragedy and agony in her eyes that gazed vacantly beyond him to a bit of sunshine filtering through a barred window.

I thought of the Gethsemane through which she is passing, ,her father, dead of a broken heart since this blow fell, herself crushed: of her long, lonely, sleepless nights in the shadow of the gallows waiting for him out there on the other side of that wall, and my heart went out in pity to her.

Beside her stood Rabbi Marx, kindly, cultured, “faithful unto death,:” and tears filed her eyes too.

I was trying to say good-by, going out with a message that might help, some way, lift the burden of their grief, and as I turned to go, her uncle, aged and white haired, reached his hand to me and could only shake his head and say:

“Oh, it has been awful, awful.”

It is not “Jew money: that has brought the nation-wide protest. It is the pity , the sympathy, the loyalty of a people long oppressed, long harried and hounded, that reaches out to one of their race, sorely pressed, and “caught as a bird in a net.”