William J. Burns and the Great Leo Frank Case Carnival

Introduction

IN 1914, six days short of the first anniversary of the strangulation-murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan by Jewish businessman and B’nai B’rith official Leo M. Frank on Confederate Memorial Day, 1913, the Frank case entered its most frenetic public phase. A major legal decision was slated to be dropped in a few days. By then, Frank had already been convicted of the gruesome murder of Mary. But Frank’s defense team, flush with money from a national publicity campaign, was furiously working to get witnesses to reverse their testimony, and get Frank a new trial or exonerated one way or another — an exoneration effort that still continues today, led by Jewish groups including the ADL (Anti-Defamation League).

Famed — some would say notorious — private detective William J. Burns (hired months earlier by the Frank defense and paid out of a nationally-raised fund organized by wealthy Jewish businessmen Albert Lasker of Chicago and Adolph Ochs and Louis Marshall of New York) returned to Atlanta, where Mary’s murder had taken place, by train from a secretive trip to the “Big Apple” and announced he was ready at last to deliver his long-promised report on the case, a document he had been teasing in the national press since early April.

Across town at Atlanta Police Headquarters, State’s witness Albert McKnight sat in a self-requested jail cell, having walked in on April 15, 1914 and asked Chief of Police James L. Beavers for protection after un-repudiating his original affidavit in the case. He had repudiated it in a second affidavit he had given to Frank’s defense operative Captain C.W. Burke, an affidavit Burke had paid for, McKnight now admitted, with the promise of a $100-a-month Pullman job.

Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey spent the day assembling counter-affidavits from witnesses.

Frank’s high-priced attorneys, Luther Z. Rosser and Reuben R. Arnold, whose extraordinary motion for a new trial had been filed four days earlier on April 16 and had already won Frank a stay of his April 17 execution, worked on adding late-arriving affidavits as amendments to the motion and roughed out their oral argument.

Tye, Peeples, and Jordan (also working for Frank and doubtlessly paid out of the massive war chest from the national publicity campaign), whose parallel constitutional motion had been filed the same day arguing the verdict should be set aside because Frank had not been in the courtroom when the jury rendered it, assembled their supporting affidavits on the absence issue.

The clock was running on Judge Benjamin H. Hill, who would convene the hearing on both motions two days later, on Wednesday, April 22, 1914 — and would deny them both.

* * * * *

“THE TRUTH IS ON THE MARCH”
William J. Burns and the Great Leo Frank Case Carnival

by Carl Carnie

ADVERTISING MAGNATE Albert Lasker, who led a cynical personal crusade on behalf of Leo Frank in coordination with Jewish elites from New York and Chicago, did not coin the once-famous phrase he used. Émile Zola wrote, “La vérité est en marche, et rien ne l’arrêtera” (“The truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it”), in the closing paragraph of J’Accuse…! on January 13, 1898, sixteen years before the Jewish-American ad man appropriated it. What Lasker did was pinch the well-known line Zola originated during the Dreyfus Affair, polish it, and weld it to the Leo Frank defense campaign as a branded American slogan.

That act of importation made ‘The Truth Is on the March’ a thing of strange, exotic, and dangerous beauty in the United States. The mobilizing tagline was drawn from a highly disputed French military treason scandal that had afterward been politically engineered and media-manufactured into a “miscarriage of justice” in the minds of the public during the late nineteenth century. Lasker then freshly rebadged it for use in the Frank case. He pressed it into service on behalf of a convicted sex killer with zero connection to the Dreyfus case — except for the fact that both of the accused were Jews. More than a century later, some of Leo Frank’s posthumous advocates still insist on calling the Mary Phagan case “the American Dreyfus Affair,” which is exactly the misreading that Lasker’s motto was designed to produce.

“The Truth Is on the March.” Six plain words repurposed by an advertising executive who helped sell cigarettes, Palmolive soap, and Sunkist oranges for a living, applying the same art of persuasion he had perfected at the Lord and Thomas agency while helping addict a nation to nicotine and laying the commercial groundwork for a cancer epidemic. Lasker turned the catchphrase into one of the most effective pieces of ad copy ever written. It had everything a catchphrase needs: gravity, momentum, moral certainty, and the implied drumbeat of Union soldiers trampling south to right a wrong. It would do enormous work for the Frank campaign, raising millions of dollars and changing the minds of millions who knew the case only through the lens of Lasker and his confederates in the press. The effects lasted more than a lifetime. They still reverberate today.

But in April 1914 what was actually marching into Atlanta was not Truth, but a cadre of clowns.

The William J. Burns Detective agency made a show of their arrival, press agents in tow. It was like a circus caravan in slow motion, a snake of painted wagons rolling up Peachtree Street with a brass band in the lead and a line of carnies trudging behind, all gilt and bunting and fresh shellac.

Then the ringmaster stepped off a creaky train in Atlanta’s Terminal Station, with nothing in his hands but smoke. Then the showman barked, “Step right up, goys and goyls! Have I got a story for you!”

What the Lasker operation needed, and what Lasker bought when he brought in the high-priced self-promoting Burns, was a carnival barker. Not necessarily a detective. A showman. A mountebank. A man who could stand in front of the lofty tent with his thumbs hooked in a red vest and bellow, “Roll up, roll up, see the great vindication of Leo Max Frank, the innocent man framed by an ignorant mob of Southern Jew-haters, the truth revealed for the first time here in this tent, just one thin dime.”

William J. Burns played that role with real skill. He was an infamous egotist that would put Donald Trump to shame. He had the nickname the press had given him — “America’s Sherlock Holmes” — stitched into the lining of his elegant and expensive coats. He had a national reputation he could sell to deep pockets.

What he did not have was evidence.

Investigative journalist Tom Watson saw him for exactly what he was and pinned the label down in January 1915, calling Burns “that calliope detective” and “the fussy charlatan who hunts for evidence with a brass band and a searchlight.”

The vaporware at the center of the big tent

Burns did not bring evidence to Atlanta. He brought ballyhoo. By the time he arrived on the morning of April 20, 1914, his unseen “report” on the Frank case had been floating through the American press for roughly three months, morphing from whisper to tease to forthcoming-any-day-now to nearly-ready to almost-here, never once solidifying into something a judge could read, a prosecutor could cross-examine, or a clerk could file. It was the phantom deliverable. The card dealer’s sleight-of-hand. The rabbit that stayed stubbornly in the hat no matter how many times the ringmaster reached in with a flourish.

Watch the timeline, because it was genuinely a dark comedy, one that played hideous games with the feelings of Mary Phagan’s kinfolk and with the blue-collar Georgians who, like little Mary, were struggling to make ends meet during fifty-five-hour workweeks running from Saturday to Saturday. The multimillionaire Burns and the multimillionaire Lasker were from another world entirely.

On April 6, 1914, the New York Times ran an article entitled “Burns Completes His Frank Report.”

On April 20, 1914, the Atlanta Journal announced Burns had returned from his mysterious rail junket and was “ready to make his report whenever the attorneys for the defense want it.”

On April 22, Judge Ben Hill denied Frank’s “extraordinary motion” anyway.

On April 24, two days after Hill’s ruling, the same New York Times that had declared the report “complete” three weeks earlier ran the piece “Hold Back Report of Burns on Frank.”

Completed on the sixth. Ready on the twentieth. Held back on the twenty-fourth. The report did everything a real document does — except appear in a courtroom, except get tested by cross-examination, except appear at all.

It was Schrodinger’s evidence: alive in the headlines, dead on delivery, and the box never got opened.

Burns was running vaporware a century before Silicon Valley. What he was selling wasn’t a detective’s conclusion. No. He was selling the perpetual anticipation of a detective’s conclusion. Every week of “almost ready” was a week the donor checks kept clearing. The actual product — the signed, evidence-annexed, witness-listed document that could be placed in a judge’s hands and defended under oath — would have been a disaster for the Burns Agency, because once delivered, it could be examined. Once examined, it would stop selling tickets and running up bar tabs. So the strategy was simple. Never finish it. Never even start it. Announce it forever. Hold it back. Promise it tomorrow. Issue fragments. Leak “conclusions.” Tease the reveal. Let the caravan roll on. And get the hell out of town before the bullets start.

The clown car was carrying Chicago money

The men writing the checks were not fools, but either they were being played by Burns — or Burns was giving them exactly what they wanted, an impression of Leo Frank’s innocence. Possibly it was a bit of both. Lasker was in Chicago running Lord and Thomas. Marshall was in New York running the American Jewish Committee. Schiff was on Wall Street. Ochs was at the New York Times. None of them was going to show up at the Fulton County courthouse and ask Burns for a page count. They were going to read the New York papers at breakfast, see the Burns byline, and feel reassured that their money was producing results. And that was the whole point. The circus was not pitched at Georgia. The circus was pitched at a half-dozen breakfast nooks on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and the Chicago Gold Coast. It was also aimed at people too busy making a living to investigate for themselves, just as the preposterous ADL version of this case is today.

The Chicago money and the New York money kept flowing like a river of gold because Burns kept the smoke machine running, and as long as the smoke kept rolling out under the tent flaps, the customers outside believed there had to be elephants and magicians inside.

The January 30, 1915, Atlanta Constitution eventually put numbers on the flow: “Large Sums Paid to Burns Agency, Haas Tells Court.” The receipts came out only after the circus had left town.

“The Truth Is on the March.” he said. Stirring words. Napoleonic verbs. What was really coming to town was a clown car.

The three-ring racket

Watch the choreography from the grandstand. The headlines are in the papers week after week: Burns is in Europe. Burns cables back. Burns dispatches an operative. The operative arrives. Burns leaves. Burns is returning. Burns has returned. Burns is in conference with the solicitor. Burns is not in conference. Burns goes to New York. Burns sends word from Newark. Burns is back from Nashville. Burns is in Atlanta. Burns is in Marietta. Burns is being chased out of Marietta by a mob. Burns has been rescued. Burns has lost his Atlanta license. Burns has left town. Every one of those movements generated a news cycle. Every news cycle was a fresh poster tacked to a fresh lamppost. Every news cycle was a sensation of gossip and rumor.

Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian covered the tour with the acid pen Watson had been sharpening his whole life. Watson wrote 30,000 pages during his lifetime that survived to the 21st century. Pencil in hand, he called his writing “sawing wood.” Historians describe his writing as having its own life force of venom, wit, and electricity.

His headline-writing skills impress too:

April 23, 1914: “How Much Longer Will the People of Atlanta Endure the Lawless Doings of William J. Burns? What Right Has This Sham Detective to Tamper With the Witnesses That Told the Truth?”

April 30, 1914: “The Frank Case; the Great Detective; and the Frantic Efforts of Big Money to Protect Crime.”

May 7, 1914: “William Jackass Burns, at Another Angle: Some Tarnished Lawyers; Some Bought Newspapers; and the Murder of a Little Georgia Girl.”

Watson was not subtle, but on the Burns question specifically he was not wrong either. He saw a paid performer mistaking himself for a fortune-teller, and he named him for it, week after week.

The rage that cut both ways

The carnival did not just infuriate Frank’s detractors — though it certainly did that, all the way to a Marietta sidewalk in May 1914 where a mob had Burns by the collar before Dan Lehon could drag him out of town.

Even Frank’s own supporters on the ground in Atlanta began to get impatient with Burns. Every leaked teaser that failed to produce anything substantial was a withdrawal from Frank’s shrinking reserves of public benefit-of-the-doubt. Every day Burns spent working a press gag in New York, Chicago, or Atlanta was a day the clock ran down on Frank’s stay of execution.

The men writing the checks in Chicago and New York could afford an infinite theater run. Frank could not. He was in a cell in The Tower watching a calendar with a deadline on it, listening to a ringmaster in a distant city promise a cavalry that never came.

The poisoned booth

Now came the reward. Burns offered a thousand dollars — and the journalist and Frank sycophant Connolly in 1915 would claim the figure eventually climbed to five thousand — for any person anywhere in the country who could produce evidence of a single immoral act across the entirety of Leo Frank’s thirty years of life. On its face, it looks like a challenge thrown to the prosecution. Look closer and it is something much more clever than that.

Any witness who walks up to the booth, raises a hand, and offers real information damaging to Frank’s character is now, by definition, a bounty-chaser. The second they claim the money, defense counsel stands up at the next hearing and says, with total accuracy, “Your Honor, this witness has a direct financial interest in the testimony he is about to give. He is a paid claimant. His credibility should be weighed accordingly.”

The reward stamps every witness it attracts with a mark in ink that reads “impeachable” the moment he opens his mouth, anywhere. And the more astute kind of witness would see that, and therefore never come forward.

So you can see how the reward does “reverse work” too — and this is where the con really shines. The longer no claimant comes forward, the louder Burns can proclaim that no compromising material on Frank’s character exists anywhere on Earth. Look at the silence, he says. I offered a thousand dollars and nobody took it.

The silence is not exculpatory. Silence in the face of a tainted bounty proves only that nobody wanted to climb into the poison ivy.

It may mean no relevant evidence exists. It may equally mean that anyone with relevant evidence saw the bear trap and stayed out of it. It may mean that the witnesses with the most relevant material — the young women who had already testified in 1913 about Frank’s conduct around teenage girls at the National Pencil Company — had already paid the reputational price of testifying once, under oath, and were not about to volunteer to be called Burns’ bounty-chasers on top of it.

The informational content of the silence is zero. The rhetorical content, however, is enormous.

Meanwhile, Burns’ show rolls on. The “full truth” is always in the future, tomorrow, next week, next month, next never.

That is the deepest trick the Burns operation taught the Frank campaign, and it is the trick that is still being run today, more than a century later. The Truth is always marching. The Truth is never arriving. The Leo Frank vindication is always around the next bend. The exoneration is forthcoming. The absolution is coming. The exculpation is near. The new evidence will be revealed next year, next decade, next generation, in a book not yet written, in a documentary not yet funded, in a pardon petition not yet filed.

In 1914 the deliverable was Burns’s “report.” In 1986 it was a “humanitarian” pardon that explicitly declined to address guilt or innocence, and left the conviction intact. In every intervening year some new Frank partisan has stood in front of a microphone and told the county, the state, the country, and the whole world, with all the credibility of a man who has never read the Brief of Evidence, that Leo Frank “deserves to be exonerated.”

Not a single one of them has ever produced court-admissible evidence that would survive cross-examination by Hugh Dorsey, or Hugh Dorsey’s dog for that matter.

That is the inheritance Burns bequeathed. A memorable slogan lifted from someone else’s work. A “report” that wasn’t even a report, just an unclaimed reward and some offhand opinions. A “report” that is never cited by Frank partisans because it wasn’t even a report at all.

The Chicago money paid the freight. The New York money paid the lighting. The Georgia public paid the cover charge in social trauma, lynching, and endless denigration in the alien-owned “national press.” And when the tent came down and the caravan moved on, what remained in the middle of the empty lot was exactly what had been at the center of it from the start. Nothing. A handbill on the ground reading “The Truth Is on the March,” and under those words, very small, the words “Admission $1,000 and your soul.”

_____________

Citations

Wikipedia contributors. (2026). “Albert Lasker”; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 20, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Lasker

Leo Frank Case Research Library. (2024). New York Times chronology of Frank-case coverage, February through May 1914. https://leofrank.info/newspapers/new-york-times

Wikipedia. (2026). “Leo Frank”; retrieved April 20, 2026, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Frank

Wikipedia. (2026). “Louis Marshall”; retrieved April 20, 2026, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Marshall

Wikipedia. (2026). “William John Burns”; retrieved April 20, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_John_Burns

Watson, T. E. (1915, January). “The official record in the Leo Frank case.” Watson’s Magazine, calling Burns “that calliope detective” and “the fussy charlatan who hunts for evidence with a brass band and a searchlight.”

Atlanta Journal. (1914, April 20). “Burns now ready to present Frank evidence.” Page 16, column 5. Reproduced at
http://MaryPhagan.com

Atlanta Constitution. (1915, January 30). “Large sums paid to Burns agency, Haas tells court.” Reproduced at Leo Frank Case Archive. https://leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-constitution

Atlanta Constitution. (1914, May 2). “William J. Burns driven out of Marietta.” Reproduced at Leo Frank Case Archive.
https://leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-constitution

Atlanta Constitution. (1914, June 20). “Burns is dropped by police chiefs.” Reproduced at Leo Frank Case Archive.
https://leofrank.org/newspapers/atlanta-constitution

Watson, T. E. (1914, April 23). “How much longer will the people of Atlanta endure the lawless doings of William J. Burns?” The Jeffersonian, Vol. 11, Issue 16. Reproduced at Leo Frank Case Research Library. https://leofrank.info/enright/the-jeffersonian.html

Watson, T. E. (1914, April 30). “The Frank case; the great detective; and the frantic efforts of big money to protect crime.” The Jeffersonian. Reproduced at Leo Frank Case Archive.
https://leofrank.org/newspapers/jeffersonian-weekly

Watson, T. E. (1914, May 7). “William Jackass Burns, at another angle: Some tarnished lawyers; some bought newspapers; and the murder of a little Georgia girl.” The Jeffersonian. Reproduced at Leo Frank Case Archive. https://leofrank.org/newspapers/jeffersonian-weekly

Connolly, C. P. (1915). The Truth About the Leo Frank Case. Vail-Ballou Company. Reproduced at Leo Frank Case Archive.
https://leofrank.org/reactions/the-truth-about-the-leo-frank-case

_____________

Source: Author

by Dale Bennett

ON THIS, the 112th anniversary of the rape and strangulation murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan by her sweatshop boss — and Atlanta B’nai B’rith president — Leo Max Frank, let us remember her young life and reflect on the massive Jewish propaganda machine that has been attempting to whitewash her killer’s reputation for more than a century.

Besides the victim, Mary Phagan, there were five people in the National Pencil Company building when she was killed on 26 April 1913. We know that four of them didn’t do it. That leaves Leo Frank.

110 years later, the ADL is still trying to frame the janitor, Jim Conley, for Mary Phagan’s murder: How likely is it that Conley, a Black man—in 1913 Georgia—would rape and kill a White girl just a few feet from the unlocked glass-paneled front entrance door of the National Pencil Company, where people were coming and going all day, right at the foot of an open staircase at the top of which was Leo Frank’s open office door? Preposterous.

Leo Frank was elected the Atlanta B’nai B’rith president of the Gate City Lodge #144 in 1912 and his Summer of 1913 conviction for the rape and strangulation-murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had galvanized B’nai B’rith HQ to found the ADL less than two months after the fact.

Even though Leo Frank was convicted in late August 1913, in September 1913 his 500-member Independent Order of B’nai B’rith fraternal organization in Georgia voted unanimously (see Atlanta Constitution, September 24, 1913 at leofrank.info) to re-elect him their president. So while Leo Frank was incarcerated in the city jail as his appeals were wending their way through the appellate courts, he was running the affairs of this powerful Atlanta Jewish group like a powerful mafia boss behind bars until the Autumn of 1914. He was not re-elected once the affidavits, testimony, and evidence of the Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court records were revealed to the public (available at the Internet Archive and leofrank.info).

A must-read on the topic is “100 Reasons Leo Frank Is Guilty” from the American Mercury, and another important source every student of the case must read are the contemporary works of Tom Watson.

I encourage everyone to please listen to the works of investigative journalist Tom Watson in the audio books by Vanessa Neubauer, from the pages of Watson’s Jeffersonian Magazine, January, March, August, September and October of 1915.

I promise you won’t be disappointed.

1. Tom Watson: The Leo Frank Case

2. Tom Watson: A Full Review of the Leo Frank Case

3. Tom Watson: The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank

4. Tom Watson: The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, a Jew Pervert

5. Tom Watson: The Rich Jews Indict a State!

Tom Watson articulated the evidence, testimony and exhibits of the Leo Frank trial with such force and power it is impossible to believe Leo Frank is innocent. Listen and find out why!

DeWitt H. Roberts, 83 Ivy Street, N. E.
Atlanta, Georgia

ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE LEO M. FRANK MURDER CASE

A memorandum for Alex Miller, and the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai Brith upon some aspects of the case and its consequences.

by DeWitt H. Roberts

---

The trial of Leo M. Frank was concluded more than forty years ago. Many articles, books, pamphlets and memoranda have been written in the intervening period. Most of these have been devoted to a discussion of the murder of Mary Phagan, to a search of the record to determine whether the evidence justified a verdict of guilty in a legal sense, and to speculation as to whether the defendant might have committed the crime.

In most of these studies, which rely all too heavily upon the transcript of the evidence and upon private documentation, the case has been torn from its context completely. Some time relationships have been grossly distorted. The social, economic and political contemporaneous events have been relentlessly disregarded, as if Mary Phagan, Leo Frank, Jim Conley, the battery of trial lawyers, and the unhappy Judge Roan lived in a vacuum. Georgia of 1913 has been equated variously with Georgia of 1900 and with Georgia of 1928 and with Georgia of 1950; in no instance has it been equated with its own date.

This treatment does not undertake to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of Mary Phagan. Only in passing is it related to the guilt or innocence of Leo Frank. Only in passing is it concerned with the mishandling of his defense. It is concerned with the personal prejudice that developed toward Frank only as it is important in the aspect of its transference to the entire Jewish community.

The function of this brief treatment is clarification of the background, so that the essential questions can be determined. These are:

1. 1. How and at what point did anti-Semitism enter the case?
   2. How did the Jewish community fail, not Frank, but itself?
   3. Could a similar thing happen in Georgia today, and, if so, where?
   4. What should and could the Jewish community do in such a case?

To answer these questions even partially, it is sometimes necessary to go far-afield, to explore various by-paths, to reconstruct with greater accuracy than heretofore the period in which the events took place, to rectify the chronology frequently assumed, and to interpret the prejudices of 1913 in terms of that day instead of a later period.

Regretably [sic], except for a few valueless journalistic treatments, most studies of the Frank case have been made by specialists in the law or in social science. The former have assumed a legal climate essentially different from that actually prevailing. The latter have failed in their reconstruction of the socio-economic structure of 1913 Georgia. Both have wanted experience in public affairs, and both have misunderstood completely the role of the newspapers of Atlanta, as factional organs, and of the Atlanta Jewish community.

The Chronology of the Case

1913

April 26 Murder of Mary Phagan; Saturday; Memorial Day.

April 27 Body found, 3:30 A.M.; Frank called, 7 A.M. and urges immediate arrest of Jim Conley and J. M. Gantt.

April 28 Frank asks Herbert Haas to protect interest of company, and engages Pinkerton detectives. Coroner calls jury.

April 29 Investigation continues until…

May 1 Epps youth accuses Frank of attentions to Mary Phagan

May 2 Col. Thos. Felder enters case, and seeks funds to hire W. J. Burns for investigation. Milton Klein issues statement.

May 3 Sol. Gen. Dorsey takes over investigation; Frank denies making confession

May 6 Coroner’s jury resumes hearing; Frank testifies; Rosser enters case as his attorney. Frank and Newt Lee held.

May 24 Frank Indicted; Conley “confession” revealed

July 28 Trial opens

Aug. 25 Frank found guilty

1914

Feb. 17 State Supreme Court affirms lower court’s action

1915

April 19 U.S. Supreme Court renders decision.

April 22 Judge B. H. Hill denies extraordinary motion for new trial

June 9 Prison Commission, with one dissent, refuses action.

June 21 Sentence commuted by Gov. Slaton

Aug. 16 Mob breaks into State Prison; Frank lynched near Marietta

Georgia in 1913

Social & Economic: The State was in the midst of very bad times. The banks were having difficulty in financing the cotton crop, and large Federal deposits to assist them had been promised by Pres. Wilson, who had recently taken office. The State was predominantly agricultural. Employment of women in industry, except textiles, was exceptional except in a very few places.

The Jewish Community: Georgia had the largest Jewish population in the Southeast, a condition that had existed almost from Colonial days, since this was the only wholly secular colony and the only one except Rhode Island in which they enjoyed full political rights. The Jewish population in Georgia, proportionately, was four times as large as that in South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi or Alabama. The Atlanta Jewish community, though newer, less integrated with the community, and possibly less influential that those in Savannah and Albany, for example, was probably in about the same ratio to the population as today. There had never been any outbreak of anti-Semitism in the State at any time.

Georgia Politics: At the time of the murder, Joseph M. Brown was Governor; he was succeeded, about the time the trial opened, by John M. Slaton. Watson was influential as a balance of power in many State races, but the fight was chiefly between the Smith and Brown factions.

Atlanta Politics: James Woodward, Mayor of Atlanta, was engaged in his perennial war with Chief-of-Police Beavers. “Vice” was the major issue, with various side-scandals in municipal affairs.

The Newspapers: Dominant was the Constitution, owned by the Howell family, and bitterly antagonistic to Senator Hoke Smith’s faction. Locally it supported Beavers. Dorsey was a protege. The Journal, rapidly growing, was owned by the Gray family, although it was the political organ of the Smith faction. It was somewhat anti-Beavers, but, for reasons of respectability was not a Woodward supporter openly. The Georgian had recently been acquired from the Seely interests by Hearst, who had provided it with the finest staff of any paper in the country, drawn from his New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles papers. The Constitution, as will be shown, assumed Frank’s guilt. The Journal, it is believed because of inside information from certain of the anti-Beavers officers on the force, started with an anti-Frank attitude, but became, through those sources, convinced of his innocence. The Georgian played the case in a spectacular manner, with utter recklessness that probably hurt the defendant, but without actual bias in its writing.

Attitude of Public: Frank’s guilt seems to have been assumed from the first, probably based upon the Constitution’s highly exaggerated stories. Five prominent members of the Jewish community served in the list of twenty-three grand jurors indicting him, and voted for the indictment. Apparently, except for close personal associates, his family and in-laws, Herbert Haas, some members of the Journal staff, a few anti-Beavers officers, and Rabbi Marx, no one believed Frank innocent until after his conviction. The clumsy efforts of the defense, the lurid accounts of the crime and the trial, the want of sophistication of the community and its press, the stories in all papers on child-labor, white slavery, vice and similar topics, the exceptional talents of Asst. Sol. Gen. E. A. Stephens, who prepared the case for the prosecution, the personality of the defendant — all these made it incredibly difficult for the public to accept a theory of Frank’s innocence. The initial prejudice against him was as a “foreign exploiter of our young women”; next it became a prejudice against a “voluptious [sic] Sodomite”; finally it became “a rich man trying to buy his way out of killing a poor girl”.

The Newspaper Coverage

The coverage of the murder and the preliminary investigations were sensational, but did not become prejudicial to Frank until May 1. On that date, the Constitution gave sensational display to a charge by George Epps, a boy of about Mary Phagan’s age who claimed, and later testified, that he rode to Atlanta from Marietta with her on the day of the murder, that Frank had “paid attentions” to the slain girl. On the following day, Milton Klein’s statement of confidence in Frank was given a rather snide play, while the Felder efforts to get Burns to make an investigation were given attention. On May 3, while featuring the story that the Solicitor General was taking over the investigation, the Constitution carried a story captioned: “Frank Denies Confession”.

On the following day, a Sunday, May 4, the Constitution carried a full page feature on the murder, while the front page featured a head:

Fake Detectives;

Impostors Busy

In Sleuth Roles

In Phagan Case

This story suggested by innuendo that the fake detectives were in the employ of Frank or his friends. Undeniably, such persons had forced their way into the home of the murdered girl’s mother and step-father and had questioned other witnesses.

Headlines as they appeared on subsequent crucial days before the trial are cited below. From April 27 until June 4, a period of 39 days, the murder story remained on the front page. It moved inside briefly, with daily stories of some kind, until the opening of the trial.

Files of the Georgian are not fully available; its stories, while sensational, cut in both directions. The Journal never printed immoderate accounts, although its handling of its “exclusive” on the Felder dictophone expose probable damaged the defense badly. The Constitution, however, persistently assumed Frank’s guilt.

Sleuths Believe
They can Convict
Phagan Murderer     Constitution, Monday, May 5.

Quinn Declares That Officers
Accused Him of Being Bribed
To Come to Aid of Superintendent     Constitution, May 6 (coroner’s inquest story)

Officials Plan
To Exhume Body     Constitution, May 7

Chief (of Detectives) Lanford
Reports Someone
Bribing Witnesses,
Planting Evidence     Constitution, May 8

The Constitution of May 9 featured charges that Frank had made improper advances to many female employees. On May 12 it featured the defense employment of Pinkerton detectives. On May 15, it featured a story implying that Mary Phagan expected to be murdered and had prepared an “identification paper” for her purse. On May 16, it supported Felder’s idea of getting in Burns by popular subscription. Some headlines were:

Girl Will Swear Office
Of Frank was Vacant
Between 12:05 and 12:15     Constitution, May 10

Officer Swears
He Found Frank
With Young Girl     Constitution, May 11

In Loop of Death
Dorsey May Have
Clue to Murderer     Constitution, May 17

This contrasts with the Journal head for May 17:

Phagan Case Will
Go to Jury In
Present Form

Documentary Evidence
Sufficient to Convict,
Says Chief Lanford     Constitution, May 18

Rooming House
Sought by Frank,
Declares Woman     Constitution, May 23

This story was especially prejudicial to the defense; the woman, impliedly the operator of a house of assignation, claimed that Frank called her on the day of the murder and sought to engage a room. On the same date, May 23, the Journal obtained an exclusive break on the efforts of Col. Felder to obtain affidavits given by the mother and step-father of the slain girl. On May 24, the date the indictment was returned, the Conley confession, the indictment and the following were featured in the Constitution:

Frank not at Home
Hours on Saturday,
Declares Lanford     Constitution, May 24

Frank Guilty — Lanford     Constitution, Sunday, May 25

Scott Says
Frank Guilty     Constitution, May 26
(Scott was head of the Pinkerton office, employed by Frank)

Burns Agency
Quits Case     Constitution, May 27

Conley Says He Helped Frank Carry     (full page streamer)
Body of Mary Phagan to Cellar     Constitution, May 30

Mary Phagan Murder Work of Negro,
Says Leo M. Frank     Constitution, May 31

The bordello keeper’s story crept back into the news presently. Her testimony was not used; first, because it was inadmissible; second, because it was at complete variance with all the other State evidence. But it had prejudicial value:

Frank Asked Room
To Conceal Body,
Believes Lanford     Constitution, June 2

The mistress of the house of assignation then vanished, but the Constitution hailed her return on June 19: “Mrs. Formby Here for Phagan Trial”.

In the meantime, on June 3, Minola M’Knight, a servant in the Frank home, had been released after four weeks of questioning. Mrs. Frank issued a statement, deploring police methods, which was featured by the Constitution under the following:

Dorsey Replies
To the Charges
Of Mrs. L. Frank     Constitution, June 3

The Georgian meantime had printed a story suggesting that Leo Frank had been bigamously married in Brooklyn, which was refuted by the Journal. The story did not appear in the Constitution.

From June 4, until the opening of the trial, the papers carried few stories. With its opening on July 28, all papers had a field day. The Journal relied largely on courtroom sketches; the Constitution and Georgian had photographers.

The Constitution’s front page of August 29 was garnished with a six column picture of the court room, showing six lawyers and various other persons at the defense table.

The Constitution apparently had no doubts as to Frank’s guilt. In addition, it was strangely pro-Beavers and was a sponsor for Solicitor General Dorsey, whom it afterward supported for Governor (1916, successfully) and for Senator (1920, unsuccessfully). The Georgian played both sides luridly, leaning to the prosecution. The Journal, which had seemed to accept the community verdict of Frank’s guilt, but which had been moderate in its coverage, seems to have become convinced of his innocence on May 21, and took a moderate but partisan position thereafter in the handling of the news of the case.

Contrasting handling of the stories speaks from the headlines:

Conley’s Main Story Still
Remains Unshaken     (1 line, 8 col. streamer)

Grilled 12 Hours
By Luther Rosser,
Jim Conley Insists
Frank Guilty Man     Constitution, Wed., Aug. 6

Dalton Tells About
Visits Paid Pencil
Factory With Women     Constitution, Friday, Aug. 8

The Sunday stories were more moderate, but, probably by chance, a violently anti-Semitic article, with a London, England, dateline appeared in the Constitution: “Lord Newton is fighting to make loan sharks use real names as Moses and Aaron”. Since the defense was presenting evidence, the Constitution played the trial down somewhat, feating the testimony of Schiff, an employee.

The State had become committed to the theory that Frank was a sexual pervert, there being definite evidence that Mary Phagan had not been raped. So on Wednesday, August 13, the Constitution led off with a head: “Office boy asked whether Frank did not make advances to him”. (This element will be discussed later)

The Constitution’s headlines for Sunday, August 17, were:

“Serious Blow is Dealt Defense by Its Own Witness”

Girl Says Frank
Often Looked In
Dressing Rooms

Wealth of Frank’s Relatives Injected
In Cross-Examination of Mother

On Thursday, August 21, as the evidence ended, the Constitution’s front page displayed a picture of the most photogenic of the girls used by the State as rebuttal witnesses after Frank’s character was put at stake by the defense. The picture was captioned: “Girls Tell Jury Frank’s Character is Bad”.

The drop-off head on the lead Sunday story, August 24, in the Constitution read:

“Solicitor Takes up Alibi of Prisoner, Picks it to Pieces; Tells About Minola McKnight (sic) Affidavit and Defends Detective Department. No Doubt Frank Dictated Murder Notes, He Declares.”

The story on the verdict was not overplayed, but a feature showed the bias:

As Bells Tolled, Dorsey Closed
Magnificent Argument Which
Fastened Guilt on Frank     Constitution, Tues., Aug. 26

The Journal’s headlines reflect its belief in the innocence of the defendant. Some are quoted:

“Its Terrible for An Innocent
Man to be Charged With Crime”     Journal, Sunday, Aug. 3
(This captioned a boxed story, leading the general trial story, and is a quotation from a brief interview with Leo M. Frank.)

Jim Conley’s Memory Proved
Bad Under Cross-Examination     Tuesday, Aug. 5

Sheriff Mangum Explains
Why he did not put
Handcuffs on Frank     Friday, Aug. 8

Franks Story of Before and
After the Crime Corroborated     Thurs., Aug. 14

Dalton Excoriated, Conley
Annihilated and Solicitor
Charged With Persecution     Friday, August 22

The story of Arnold’s argument, which introduced the theme of racial and religious persecution, was treated exceptionally fully in the Journal of Thursday, August 21. Their story on the verdict, Monday, August 25, was strongly pro-defense, expressing the belief that Frank’s friends would continue to have complete faith in his innocence.

Anti-Semitism Enters the Case

The verdict of the jury did three things. It sobered the press of Atlanta; the game, played between Dorsey-Hooper and Arnold-Rosser, was concluded, and it could be observed that the prize was the neck of a man. Secondly, it roused the Jewish community, heretofore very largely indifferent to Frank’s fate. Thirdly, it touched off a tremendous outburst of anti-Semitism.

Some people began to consider the evidence impartially; others heard, as undoubtedly Judge Arthur G. Powell was to hear a little later, the quite possibly true story of Conley’s confession; both of these groups began to believe Frank innocent. On far less rational grounds, the Jewish community — in Atlanta. throughout the Southeast — assert his innocence.

It is possible to determine the precise moment when the public became conscious of Leo Frank’s Jewishness. It is, however, quite improbable that more than two members of the jury were affected by the realization, for it was not obtrusive nor a major factor in his conviction. Nevertheless, it entered the trial during the cross-examination of the senior Mrs. Frank on Saturday, August 16. Mrs. Frank previously had irritated the Solicitor by interrupting him with an hysterical outburst during the examination of another witness, and in his cross-examination he turned to the theme of the family’s “great wealth” and the fact that some relatives were “retired capitalists”.

A few anti-Jewish expressions had been heard before, but it became obvious from that date forward that some of the prejudice against Frank had an anti-Semitic flavor. Reuben Arnold, attorney for the defense, in his opening argument turned to the theme, charging religious persecution as the basis for the prosecution. But although some members of the mob outside the court room shrieked to “Hang the Jew”, contemporary accounts and memories unaffected by the trauma of the subsequent events would be inclined to cause adoption of the view that even that cry did not evidence antipathy toward Frank because he was a Jew.

The anti-Semitic aspects entered the case with full violence only with the entrance of Thomas E. Watson into the picture. But ill-advised efforts on behalf of Frank while the State Supreme Court was considering the case prepared the path for Watson’s advent.

It is generally believed that Watson caused Frank’s death. In the sense that he provoked the lynch mob to action, that is true. But Watson made no comment upon the case in his magazine or newspaper* until a month after the Supreme Court of Georgia had waded through the voluminous record and rationalized affirmation of the conviction. In no way did Watson take part in any of the events that preceded the trial, nor did he write anything during the trial.

*See preceding page. Watson published Watson’s Magazine, a monthly, and the Jeffersonian, a weekly.

But in March 1914, he struck with unmitigated venom.

Watson’s political history, including his vendetta with the Atlanta Journal and Hoke Smith, is too well known to require any retelling. He had become almost the balance of power in State elections. He was, in 1914, conducting a mild sniping at Woodrow Wilson, whom he disliked, and a rabid campaign against the Pope, whom he termed “Jimmy Cheesy, a fat old dago who lives with voluptuous women”. That, however, was mild language for one who called rival politicians “keepers of Negro concubines and minions of Rome”.

It was probably the stand the Atlanta Journal took in demanding a new trial for Frank that precipitated Watson into the case with such energy. At any rate, culling over all the anti-Semitic literature of the ages, he produced a wealth of invective against the Jew.

Among his more original and vitriolic pieces were “Jesus was no Jew”, “Leo Frank: A Jew Pervert”, “The Jewish Conquests” and a serial upon the history of the Jews that is extraordinary for imaginative effort and provocative language; indeed, the lecherous monk with his breed of nuns was replaced in both publications by the lecherous Jew with his harem of child-Christians.

The circulation of the Jeffersonian rose from 25,000 to 87,000.

The vehemence of the anti-Semitic campaign undoubtedly was very greatly stimulated by two factors: first, the natural but clumsy efforts of the Jewish community to save Frank; second, by the acute depression, which hit rural merchants more severely than any other class in Georgia.

As appeals for clemency came from the Texas and Tennessee legislatures and many other sources, as the courts debated the case and Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was making his observations about due process of law to an unheeding majority, as the Prison Commission and Governor Slaton considered commutation, the fever of anti-Semitism increased.

In many rural communities there were handbills: “Buy your clothes from an American Store. Or shall your money go ‘to buy Governors'”. These appeared immediately after Governor Slaton acted.

On August 12, 1915, Watson wrote: “The next Jew who does what Frank did is going to get exactly the same thing that we give to Negro rapists”.

On August 16, 1915, Frank was killed by the mob.

The Mistakes of the Defense

The defense of Leo Frank was one of the most ill-conducted in the history of Georgia jurisprudence. The defendant made all possible mistakes in handling himself before his arrest. His attorneys completely misunderstood the nature of the evidence against him. His defense was handled by so many people, diverted into so many directions, that it is now impossible to determine responsibility.

It is certain that the defense counsel depended very heavily upon Judge Roan. The trial judge was eminently fair, but it was apparent that he did not think Frank guilty. His rulings leaned toward the defense on almost every close point. It is apparent that both Judge Roan and Frank’s counsel expected a verdict of “not guilty”, and that the absence of Frank and his lawyers from the court room when the verdict was brought in arose from that expectation.

Frank was less than candid with officers. A natural nervous shyness doubtless with the case. His four-hour appearance on the witness stand was disingenuous in the extreme, and marked by a factual error (the statement that the noon whistle blew) that completed the case against him.

Undoubtedly some one interested in the defense employed dishonest detectives, and, possibly, induced at least one of the Pinkerton operatives to deviate from propriety; the action of Scott, head of the Pinkerton office, in declaring Frank guilty is explicable only on the theory either of police pressure or personal indignation at tampering with his staff. The mysterious “pay envelope”, bearing not a single fingerprint of any kind — even a smudge, had to have been a plant.

It is uncertain whether friends of Frank were behind the insidious operations of Col. Thomas B. Felder, but the public so believed.

The presence of some seven lawyers and several relatives at the defense table prejudiced the jury. The fashionable dress of some of the Frank relatives was in too sharp contrast to the simple clothes that Stephens, the real genius of the prosecution, saw that Mary Phagan’s mother were.

Introduction of a horde of character witnesses by the defense was one of the three major mistakes of the actual trial. The Brooklyn and Texas delegations created prejudice; the local witnesses were compelled, upon cross-examination to admit that Frank “looked into the women’s dressing room” – – a sure proof, in the eyes of a 1913 jury, of the charge of perversion.

(Whether Frank was or was not tainted with a mild voyeurism can not be determined from the documentary evidence. It is not improbable, since the witnesses summoned on his behalf, all of whom testified to his good character and denied that he had made any ‘advances’ to employees, also gave testimony that supports that view. On the other hand, Frank’s explanation of his looking into the dressing room is consistent with the savage employer mores of 1913, and may have been completely true.)

The second major mistake made at the trial was the verbose cross-examination of Jim Conley. The Pettibone trials were close enough in time for Frank’s attorneys to have known better.

The third major mistake was the parading of a spurious witness, one Mincey, before the jury during the cross-examination of Conley, and the subsequent failure to place him on the stand. Not having him testify was, however, wise enough; the State would have riddled both men and his “evidence” with ease, and has called some sixteen witnesses for the purpose, as Dorsey managed to inform the jury.

It is difficult, at first glance, to understand the mistakes made in organizing the case for trial.

However, a careful reading of actually contemporary documents and the application of even a slight knowledge of human nature will reveal precisely what happened.

The defendant was an acutely nervous individual, a newcomer to Atlanta without very many intimate friends. His life seems to have been very largely devoted to his family, including his wife’s parents and other relatives. His one thought, and theirs, appears to have been: “How can we hush up this mess and avoid a scandal?” It is quite apparent that there was little or no consciousness of his danger until far too late.

As for his attorneys, the answer is even simpler. First, they were far too numerous. At the actual trial, there appear to have been but four attorneys-of-record: Messrs. Arnold, Rosser, Hopkins and Haas; but at least two or three more always occupied space at the defense table, and certainly at least seven or eight individual attorneys busied themselves with one or another aspect of the initial defense.

The leading counsel, Arnold and Rosser, were acknowledged powers as trial attorneys. They had handled many important cases. Arnold, a great figure before juries, had a marvelous range of forensic arguments. Rosser excelled on cross-examination. Undoubtedly they underestimated the skill with which Dorsey, guided by the technical genius of Stephens, had prepared the case. (Actually, the pair went into retirement for more than two weeks to map the trial. Not only were they prepared as to witnesses and cross-examination, but they perfected the timing with absolute skill. It was no accident that Dorsey’s concluding [peroration] coincided with the bells of the Catholic church a half-block away. Their handling of the prosecution was a masterpiece of meticulous detail. Dorsey certainly believed that Frank was not only guilty but a “monster of iniquity”. Stephens, who dominated the Solicitor-General office in Fulton county for more than thirty years under several chiefs, was an extraordinary character. He seldom touched a case until after indictment; he believed that the prosecutor’s office was supposed to prosecute; he had the tenacity of Javert; he was the greatest expert on homicide law and the law of evidence in the South; he was wholly incorruptible; he was entirely without feeling or sentiment in the conduct of the office. Whether Stephens held any opinion at all about Frank’s guilt or innocence could never be determined; discussing the case, almost twenty years later, he said: “The jury thought him guilty. The evidence authorized the verdict. When the appeal came down, I dismissed it from my mind”.)

In addition, the defense attorneys, especially Rosser, appeared to desire to make this “big case” a demonstration of virtuosity. Pulled from the context of the trial, Rosser’s cross-examination of Conley was a marvel of art. But the Negro had been coached far more competently than McPharland had coached Orchard, in the only comparable American trial. A different line of cross-examination would have [produced] acquittal.

Arnold’s injection of the race-religious issue into the trial was a matter of mere calculated risk. With a different stage setting, it might well have succeeded. His speech was intense, brilliant and moving. considering his temperament, he could not have made a better one. Had he been Frank’s only attorney, had the defense rested its case wholly on Frank’s unsworn testimony and a different type of cross-examination, if the ninety-nine character witnesses not prejudiced the jury already, had Arnold, Frank and his wife been the only occupants of the defense table, the Arnold speech might well have swept the jury to an acquittal. If the entire group of defense attorneys and official and unofficial advisers, only Arnold seems to have apprehended any of the true atmosphere of the trial.

The Appeal and Thereafter

Frank would have been well advised to have dismissed all the attorneys who participated in the trial and predicated his appeal solely on the issue of his absence from the court room when the jury returned the verdict. Under these circumstances, it is possible that a new trial might have been directed. In general, the rulings of the trial Judge had been favorable to the defense. Although some members of the highest court felt otherwise, the case could not properly, under Georgia precedents, have been reversed on the general grounds, i.e. that the verdict was not supported by the evidence.

Similarly, in the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court from the denial of the writ of habeas corpus in the Northern District of Georgia (Frank v. Mangum) the present tendency is to consider the current interpretation of “due process” instead of that prevailing in 1913. Likewise, the Frank case is not clearly distinguished from subsequent “due process” case in which a somewhat different doctrine was enunciated; Frank’s attorneys had not sought a mistrial because of the outrageous clamor of the mob, and under the chain of decisions relied upon by the U.S. Supreme Court, he could not invoke his constitutional rights belatedly. That was the general concept the bar and courts held in 1913; it was erroneous, but the erroneous philosophy was not uncovered until more than a decade later, and Frank was not the only man to be convicted without genuine due process.

In some circles, the applications to various State legislatures for resolutions appealing to Georgia to grant Frank a new trial or commutation or a pardon have been severely criticized. Due to the belated interest in the case by the general Jewish community, it is true that this action was a fan to the flames of anti-Semitism and was something of a mistake; but it […] necessary again to consider the emotional climate and the semantics of 1913. For example, the words ‘nationalism’, ‘radical’, ‘Israel’, to select but three examples, did not have the meanings of 1953. In 1913, States rights had no such meaning as in 1953, and States like individuals understood the meaning of the words ‘a decent regard for the opinions of mankind’ in the identical sense of the author.* Colorado probably would today take a far different attitude about “outside interference” in a parallel to the case of Joe Hill; it is very unlikely that the prison authorities of any State would permit the removal of an executed prisoner’s body for the express purpose of spreading his ashes “where some flowers grow”, or that the press would recount in detail such a dispersal of ashes in every State of the Union and in more than forty foreign countries. There were too many ashes at Dachau for men to be concerned longer, in this year of human progress, with the fate of one individual.

*The words appear in the Declaration of Independence.

However, the open efforts to raise money for use in the Frank case was injurious. It provided the anti-Semite groups with arguments. Likewise, the silence of the Jewish community about the case until far too late, and its sudden concern after the conviction — while obviously now attributable to a reversal of attitude as to Frank’s guilt — was interpreted as a mass decision that “none of the Chosen shall die for murdering a gentile girl”.†

† One of the Jeffersonian articles contains this phrase.

A Minor Footnote on the Future

The explosions of the Populist and Free Silver period had brought the ‘Negro question’ to the attention of the South. Among the books most popular in the decade preceding and including the Frank trial were Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman and The Leopard’s Spots.

In the late summer of 1915, shortly after the lynching of Leo Frank, a small gathering of robed-and-hooded figures met on Stone Mountain and burned a cross.

Southern white, Gentile, Protestant womanhood henceforth would be protected from being forced into concubinage to the Negro, into the brothels maintained by Catholic monks, and into the harems maintained by lecherous Jews.

The Klan was created by naive men, intensely emotional. It did not remain their property long.

The Klan was born out of the murder of Mary Phagan and the lynching of a man who did not kill her. There is a certain irony in the fact that its death came because of the murder of Madge Oberholtzer at the hands of […] the Klan for Indiana.

Could the Frank Case be Repeated?

Could there be another Leo Frank case? That is the question that troubles seriously every member of a racial, ethnic, political or religious minority.

There are many changed factors. The legal background, especially as to what constitutes “due process of law”, is vastly different. Police methods have improved immeasurably; blood-typing, fingerprint identification, chemical analysis of soils and dusts, handwriting analysis, and other scientific approaches to the solution of crime have become commonplace. If Frank were alive today, if there were a similar crime in Atlanta, the investigation of the case would take a totally different turn; his guilt or innocence would rest of less subjective factors than in 1913.

Likewise there is a greater sophistication. In 1913, only Savannah among Georgia cities had a truly urban background; Atlanta’s population was swollen by a rural influx. In 1913, the names of Freud, Kraft-Ebbing, Jung and Kinsey were not household words. In 1913, the socio-industrial pattern did not provide for the employment of 54% of all women in Atlanta, more than half of them in industry. In 1913, newspapers were generally wholly irresponsible in the coverage of crime, which was a [diversion] somewhat similar to television; the spectacular methods of Pulitzer, the smug pornography of Bennett, the mercurial sensationalism of Hearst dominated press thinking.

Likewise, the Jewish community has (1) a greater unity; (2) added facilities within their own ranks and within the general community with which to deal with such a problem; and (3) increased experience in combatting the forces of prejudice.

Therefore, it would appear superficially that there could not be a repetition of the Frank case. But beneath the surface…

There are areas in the United States, especially in parts of New England, on the Pacific Coast, and in the newly industrialized rural-urban fringe areas of the Southeast, were a reasonable facsimile of the Frank case could occur. Of these regions, the Pacific Coast is inviting because of the presence of irresponsible smalltown newspapers; the West Coast of Florida because of the impact of industrialization within the citrus industry and a hostility toward the East Coast, and because of probably the highest incidence of latent anti-Semitism to be found outside a few areas in New England.

A depression, with economic stresses in operation in emotional areas, could produce a dangerous condition.

How Can This be Avoided?

In the combatting of overt anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League has been extraordinarily effective. It has been able to mobilize its natural allies among the Protestant and Catholic clergy, among groups zealous in the defense of civil rights, and among those who abhor intolerance and injustice.

But while the Jewish community can protect itself more effectively than before, when it is attacked, it is obvious that the solution lies partly in yet another field.

Had the Jews of Atlanta looked into the Frank case before it was too late, the situation would have been vastly different.

Had not the Jews of Atlanta taken, quite generally, the attitude that Frank was unquestionably guilty, until his cause became their cause because they too were attacked, the flames of bigotry would have expired.

If anybody had listened to Leo Frank…

Conclusion

No one listened to Leo Frank.

Almost from the day of his arrest until eleven months later, there were very few who concerned themselves with the question of his innocence. He was shunned as one who had brought shame and disaster on his coreligionists. There was no true appraisal of the case; his guilt — the guilt of a man who was a ‘moral monster’, a ‘pervert’, a ‘sex fiend’, a man who habitually consorted with lewd women — was assumed. That he was none of those things, and that not a single fact was ever produced to support the wild charges made in the press, never occurred to anyone until he had been found guilty and until that guilt had been transferred to the Jewish community as a whole.

Since his death, Leo Frank has been received, as the victim of a legal blunder and subsequently of a lynch mob, into the Jewish hagiology, and most of the events of 1913 inconsistent with that viewpoint have been thrust out of the mind, together with the guilt of his contemporaries. He is denied the humanity of being a very frightened, myopic, nervous, twitching, perhaps slightly unpleasant young man from Brooklyn; he is a cause celebre, and not a man who was alone, a stranger and afraid…

“It is terrible for an innocent man to be charged with crime…”

These new additions may be accessed by going to

https://www.leofrank.info/enright/default.html

which is also linked in our sidebar and top menu.

New links to the specific material housed in the new (to us) archive can also be found at:

Very near the end of his life in 1955, former Georgia governor John Marshall Slaton (pictured) wrote this mistake-ridden memorandum justifying his decision to commute the sentence of Leo Frank from execution by hanging to life in prison, a decision which effectively ended his political career. It was found, unpublished, among his papers after his death. Slaton’s career ended because he was widely viewed as corrupt for having commuted the sentence of a man who was his own law firm’s client — Slaton being a partner in the firm that defended Frank at trial — and for bowing to a very well-funded worldwide Jewish campaign to exonerate Frank, a campaign which continues to this day.

The Frank Case

by John M. Slaton

I HAVE BEEN ASKED by so many persons to write out facts [sic] influencing me to act in the above case, which were not known to the general public, but which influenced me as Governor to grant a commutation of the sentence to death of Leo Frank. I did not go further than reduce the sentence from death to imprisonment for life. On [Confederate — Ed.] Memorial Day, the 26th day of April 1913, a girl, Mary Phagan, was murdered at the pencil factory in Atlanta, Georgia.

Leo Frank, an official of the pencil factory located on South Broad Street [sic — Actually, South Forsyth Street], Atlanta, Georgia, was arrested and charged with the murder. This charge was made some days after the committing of the crime.

One Jim Conley, a negro employed at the factory, was arrested and charged with the crime.

Two pages of a letter were attached to the body of the dead girl. Conley was arrested and charged with the offense.

He first stated that he could not write and there was produced a signature at a pawn-shop. He then admitted he could write his name, but that was all.

A further reproduction of his handwriting was produced and he admitted that he did write the first page of the letter, but not the second page.

Upon being shown that the letter was continuous and the second page must have been written by the one who wrote the first page, he admitted that he wrote the second page, but said he wrote it at a different time from that at which he wrote the first page. Leo Frank was a Jewish gentleman who had graduated at a Northern College, Cornell at Ithaca, New York, and when the case came on for trial numerous class-mates of Frank testified as to his good character.

There was immense excitement on account of the trial of the case. There was immense prejudice created as to racial differences and politics played a very large part in the formation of public opinion. Mr. Thomas E. Watson published a paper which had circulation over the entire State and was known as the “Jeffersonian.” He strongly urged in his paper that Frank was guilty. Shortly before this at Augusta, Georgia, a man walked into a textile mill and shot down a woman and having shot her down fired three more bullets into her body. A revenge for her refusal to marry him. He was tried and sentenced to death. Watson was offered $2,000.00 to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Governor Hoke Smith declined to grant the commutation, and the Atlanta Journal supported him in his refusal.

Mr. Watson was elected United States Senator largely upon my action in the Frank case. I am informed by those who are associated with him that he never mentioned my name, nor the Frank case.

The Atlanta Journal advocated the commutation of Frank and this caused Watson to turn his attacks on the Governor and on The Atlanta Journal, and he seized the Frank case as the means by which he would direct vengeance because of their preventing the commutation of the man who killed the woman at Augusta.

Mr. Watson sent Dr. Jaragan [actually Jarnagin — Ed.] to see me as Governor with the message that if I would let the Jew hang, he would elect me as United States Senator from Georgia, and make me master in National Politics in Georgia for “twenty years to come”. I believe he published in his paper that he made this statement and had sent Dr. Jarnigan [Jarnagin — Ed.] as a messenger to carry this promise.

As to the committing of the crime itself, immense excitement was created in Atlanta and in Cobb County, from which Miss Mary Phagan came. The Court House was crowded and reporters from the Press took their seats at nearby windows so that they would have means of escape if the Jury found Frank not guilty. After the conviction of Frank, the following events with which the Public was not informed were as follows:

Mr. John A. Boykin wrote a letter in regard to the commutation and was elected Solicitor-General for many years succeeding the trial. He stated in the letter that the Attorney for Jim Conley said to him that he knew that Jim Conley committed the offense, but could not disclose it because he was his Attorney and he only hoped to save his life. The fight was made on Mr. Boykin as Solicitor-General by E. T. Williams, and Mr. Boykin carried every precinct in the County with the exception of one.

Mr. Will Smith became so angry with the City of Atlanta at its attitude towards Frank that he moved to New York. He told Mr. Tuggle, a policeman, who controlled the traffic at the corner of Broad and Marietta Streets, what he had induced Mr. Boykin to say to me.

The daughter of Mr. Will Smith wrote an article entitled “Why Frank Could Not Have Been Guilty”, which article was sent me by her father, and which I have.

One of the three Prison Board members, Mr. Patterson, wrote me that he knew as far as human knowledge could go, that Frank was innocent.

Col. P. H. Brewster, one of the leaders of the Bar of Georgia, wrote me entreating that I should grant a commutation, since he was acquainted with all the facts being a partner of Mr. Hugh M. Dorsey, Solicitor-General at the time, and from the facts as he learned them at the office, Frank was innocent and Col. Brewster upon being asked by me what I should do with his letter answered, “Publish it, it is the truth.” One other Board of the Prison Commissioners said that he would have nothing to do with the matter since that was the Governor’s responsibility, and he did not propose to interfere to his own personal detriment.

Dr. Bates Block asked me if I knew Dr. Wainwright of New York, a leading Cancer Specialist, under whose care Judge Roan who tried the case was subject. I told him no, and Dr. Block said I noticed in talking to him that you would be interested in seeing Dr. Wainwright, which I did the next time I went to New York.

Dr. Wainwright said to me when I took lunch with him in New York, that Judge Roan said I did what he should have done and he was worried more about the Frank case than anything else.

Judge Roan had charged the Jury incorrectly. Judge Ben Hill, who had to pass on extra-ordinary motions for new trials, told me the whole evidence against Leo Frank was circumstantial. The law is that where the evidence is circumstantial in a murder case, it is the prerogative of the Judge to put the penalty at life imprisonment, instead of death, but Judge Roan charged the Jury that he was compelled to impose the death penalty unless the Jury recommended mercy.

Mr. Frank Myers, Deputy Clerk of the Court, told me that Judge Roan told him in the gentleman’s restroom, that if Charlie Hill was [sic] Solicitor-General, he would ask the Jury to find a verdict of not guilty. Mr. Tuggle who was a prison-keeper at the Station House told me if he had been left for a few days longer in charge of the prisoners he was convinced from the way Jim Conley talked, that Conley would have admitted committing the offense, but the Chief of Detectives said that he didn’t care anything about convicting a negro for the murder. That, of course, was the usual course of events, but it would be a feather in his cap if he could convict a white man and a Jew.

Not only that when the case went to the Supreme Court of Georgia, Chief Justice W. H. Fish, and Judge Marcus W. Beck, Associate Chief Justice, both dissented and said Frank did not have a fair trial and wrote powerful dissents. Not only did the case go to the Supreme Court of the United States, but Charles E. Hughes who afterwards became Chief Justice, and Judge Oliver Wendel [sic] Holmes dissented and would have discharged Frank on habeas corpus petition [sic]. A few years later when five negroes from Arkansas were sentenced to be hanged, the Supreme Court of the United States sustained the Writ of Certiorari and freed the negroes, Justice McReynolds declared in his dissenting opinion in the case of Moore against Dempsey, 261 U.S.-Page 93, as follows:

In Frank vs. Mangum 237 U.S.-309, 325, 326, 327, 329, 335, after great consideration a majority of this Court approved the doctrine which should be applied here. The doctrine is right and wholesome. I cannot agree now to put it aside and substitute the views expressed by the majority of the Court in that cause.

Justice McReynolds entered into an extensive quotation of the Frank case with Justice Sutherland on the reversal by the Supreme Court of the Frank case.

The case of the negroes was one in which it was held by the Supreme Court of the United States that it was the trial by mob law.

If the Supreme Court of the United States had been constituted at the time it decided the Frank case as it was when it decided the five cases from Arkansas, the decision in the Frank case would have been reversed. All that I did was to lessen the penalty from death to life imprisonment for life. It would have been given a cooling down in which the proper authorities would have investigated the matter, and would have decided whether Frank was really guilty or not.

We have in Georgia a case more like the Frank case in which Governor W. Y. Atkinson issued an unconditional pardon under these circumstances. A negro was charged with the rape of a white woman at the corner of Trinity Avenue and Central Avenue. When the case was tried, he was convicted. The case then went to the Supreme Court [of Georgia] and the Supreme Court said in the decision of Judge Lumpkin, 97th Ga., pp. 180, “After referring to the discrepancies in the evidence that they were almost tempted to grant a new trial on the ground of lack of evidence, but since two juries had found the negro guilty, he would send him to his doom.” Upon this decision being called to the attention of Governor W. Y. Atkinson, Governor Atkinson immediately upon seeing the opinion of the Supreme Court granted an unconditional pardon.

The Bar of the State became interested in this case and action of the Governor. The Georgia Bar Association thereupon elected me President of the State Bar Association, and the Supreme Court appointed me on November 11, 1925 Chairman of the Georgia Board of Law Examiners, which position I occupied until February 11, 1954, being 28 years [He evidently means years in office — Ed.] when I resigned.

Judge H. M. Dorsey, who was Solicitor-General, was afterwards appointed Judge. I tried many cases before him and he proved an honest and capable Judge, and I supported him.

The foregoing states generally the questions that came before me as Governor on the matter of clemency. I have stated generally the facts and they forced me to take the action I did. The Defendant being a negro, as was the case with Governor W. Y. Atkinson, or had he been a Chinaman, or a member of any other race whatever, I should have done the same thing.

Dreyfus was called on the drilling grounds in France and the medals and other testimonials of honor were torn from his uniform and he was sent to Devil’s Island where he remained five years.

At the end of that time it was discovered that he was convicted on the testimony of Count Esterhazy, who admitted he committed perjury. Thereupon, Dreyfus was granted an unconditional pardon and was brought back on the drilling grounds and all his honors restored to him. It was solely a matter of justice. I write the above and a statement of the facts as they came to me and I was compelled to do the same thing and had the only alternative been with me to grant an unconditional, or an absolute pardon, I should have granted an absolute pardon. The effect of this action upon my future career was a matter of no consequence. Had I done otherwise, I should have been haunted the remainder of my life, which would have been very short, with the conviction that I committed a murder. The above facts had they been known to the people of Georgia would have led them to a different opinion. Numerous other facts relating to what has been written came to my attention, but it is unnecessary to narrate them. I was aware that a large proportion of the people of the State were against my decision, but I had the firm belief that when they knew what the facts were they would approve what I did.

The last I heard of Jim Conley, there were several burglaries committed in West End, in the City of Atlanta, and the Police advised the owner of the store to shoot whomsoever should break into his store. The owner of the store followed the advice and he did shoot Jim Conley who was prosecuted for burglary in the Fulton Superior Court of Fulton County. He was convicted before Judge Humphrey and when asked what he had to say, he simply laughed, and he was sent up for twenty years for the offense of burglary. After he had served fifteen years he was released by the Board of Pardon Commission, because of his good conduct. This was the last I heard from him, but I understand he has since died.

I have stated in the foregoing the main facts dealing with the Frank case. I did what my sense of justice and my conscience demanded that I do. The effect of my action upon my political future was not a matter to which I paid any attention, and I did my duty under the facts as presented to me, and that was all that was required of me. I practiced law in Atlanta with a clear conscience, and I would not have changed my action. The case was finished as to me, when I signed the order granting the commutation.

[end of document]

A NEW authorized audio book version of The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean has just been recorded for The American Mercury. The Leo Frank Case Research Library is proud to offer it to our readers on this, the 103rd anniversary of the tragic death of Mary Phagan.

You can download the audio book, free of charge, below.

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan is an exceptionally insightful semi-autobiographical book, detailing a fascinating exploration of one of the most sensational criminal cases of all time. What makes this book so intriguing is it provides an intimate view of the Frank-Phagan case from the adult grandniece of the teenage victim — little Mary Anne Phagan, the tragic child laborer who was murdered on April 26, 1913, in Atlanta, Georgia.

This true crime monograph is widely regarded as the most even-handed book ever written about the Frank-Phagan affair (1913-1915) and its contentious aftermath (1915-1986). It also provides facts and evidence about the case found in no other book. Mary Phagan Kean also offers a uniquely neutral analysis of the month-long capital murder trial which ended in Frank’s conviction.

Mary Phagan Kean is the namesake of the murder victim, Mary Phagan, being her grandniece. When the author 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 in 1913.

When her family revealed the truth about her blood relation, she immediately became deeply interested in learning about the murder, its investigation, and its aftermath. She has since devoted thousands of hours of her life studying volumes of legal documents, conducting interviews, and reading every surviving newspaper account of the case. This written-from-the-heart book is the result. (The Murder of Little Mary Phagan; Far Hills, NJ, New Horizon Press, 1987, 316 pp.)

Download the complete audio book as one zip file

You can also download the individual chapters.

You can also play the individual chapters by pressing the play buttons below:

Introduction and Chapter 1; “Are You, By Any Chance . . . ?”; 18 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Introduction-and-Chapter-1.mp3″]

Chapter 2; The Legacy; 1 hour 10 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-2.mp3″]

Chapter 3; My Search Begins; 42 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-3.mp3″]

Chapter 4; The Case for the Prosecution; 1 hour 20 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-4.mp3″]

Chapter 5; The Case for the Defense; 1 hour 30 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-5.mp3″]

Chapter 6; Sentencing and Aftermath; 37 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-6.mp3″]

Chapter 7; The Commutation; 1 hour 30 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-7.mp3″]

Chapter 8; The Lynching; 43 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-8.mp3″]

Chapter 9; Reverberations; 13 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-9.mp3″]

Chapter 10; Alonzo Mann’s Testimony; 37 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-10.mp3″]

Chapter 11; The Phagans Break Their Vow of Silence; 21 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-11.mp3″]

Chapter 12; Application for Pardon, 1983; 1 hour 21 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Chapter-12.mp3″]

Afterword; Pardon, 1986; 11 minutes:
[sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://www.leofrank.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/MOLMP-Afterword.mp3″]

Appendix 1

A Review of The Murder of Little Mary Phagan

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan was written by Mary Phagan Kean (born Friday, June 5, 1953) and published by New Horizon Press on September 15, 1989.

This book is the most even-handed available on the Leo Frank-Mary Phagan murder case, which is all the more extraordinary since it comes from the pen of a woman who is the namesake and blood relative of the victim.

Mary Phagan Kean, author and grand niece of little Mary Phagan

Ms. Kean’s grandfather was Mary Phagan’s older brother, and he recognized an uncanny resemblance between his great-niece Mary and his long-dead sister. The book recounts an incident that took place in 1968:

I decided to ask my grandfather, William Joshua Phagan, Jr. about his little sister. Of all people in our family, he’d be the one to know about the pretty girl for whom I’d been named.

But my grandfather was beginning to show his age then. His light blue eyes reflected the continual tiredness he felt. His balding head glittered in the sunlight. He’d had a stroke earlier and his communication skills were hampered, so I decided to wait until the right moment to ask him my questions.

One day, to everyone’s surprise, my grandfather came out with little Mary’s picture and pointed to me. As he looked at the picture and then me, he sobbed, and as he tried to find the words, nothing came out but low sobs and wailings.

The Apocryphal Deconstructed

Mary Phagan Kean — though scrupulously fair to Leo Frank and his innumerable partisans — successfully dispels one of the central conspiracy theories perpetuated by Frank’s defenders — the disingenuous thesis that Leo Frank was suspected, indicted, convicted, denied his appeals, and hanged because of widespread Southern anti-Semitism. (Frank was Jewish.)

First, let’s take a brief look at the main facts of the case, which are well-reported in the book.

In the Yawning Darkness:
Early Sunday, April 27, 1913

After old Newt Lee, the newly hired African-American night watchman at the National Pencil Company, punched the time clock in Leo Frank’s second floor business office at 3:01 AM., he went down to the stygian basement to use the toilet reserved for Black employees there –remember, this was 1913 in the segregated South. When he went immediately afterwards to check the large steel-framed door of the cellar service ramp, something out of the ordinary appeared faintly in the gloom.

A diagram of the National Pencil Company factory where the murder took place; click the image for a large, high-resolution version.

As Lee held his flickering smoky lantern closer, he saw a dead child who had been horribly mauled. Lee stepped back in a state of shock and disbelief, briskly retraced his steps, climbed up the ladder to the ground floor lobby, and then ran up the flight of stairs to the second floor to telephone his superintendent, Leo Frank. After eight minutes of trying to reach him, no one had answered. So he called the Atlanta police station.

Newt Lee in custody with Detective John R. Black

Newt Lee’s grisly discovery was the impetus for a police investigation that began precisely at 3:24 AM on Sunday, April 27, 1913, when the graveyard shift call-officer, W.F. Anderson, received Lee’s frantic call. A squad car filled with officers and Britt Craig (a young, one-year veteran of the Atlanta Constitution‘s news team) was immediately dispatched by Anderson moments later. What happened next was later revealed at the Leo Frank trial more than three months later, as first responders described in detail on the witness stand what had happened from their arrival at 3:40 AM until 7:00 AM — when they finally reached Leo Frank by telephone.

As dawn broke, after Frank repeatedly failed to answer the phone, the police finally made contact with him when he answered at about 7:00 AM. They informed him they were coming to his residence to speak with him, though they did not tell him what specifically had been discovered at the factory. Police rushed over to the Selig residence, then took him directly to the morgue to identify the dead body. After  Frank claimed to be unsure about the identity of the dead girl, police officers drove him to the factory in an effort to have him pinpoint the approximate time of Phagan’s arrival via his accounting books.

The Timeline is Born:
“Saturday, April 26, 1913 at 12:03 PM”

Leo M. Frank

Inside his business office, at about 8:00 AM, Frank 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 and, upon receiving it, had left. Frank went on to tell the police he stayed continuously in his business office from that time until 12:45 PM on that fateful day.

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 to “12:05 PM to 12:10 PM, maybe 12:07 PM.” (State’s Exhibit B, Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913; Atlanta Constitution, August 2, 1913).

Leo Frank was arrested on suspicion of murder on Tuesday, April 29th, at 11:35 AM. It would be his last day of freedom. On Thursday, May 1, two days after Frank’s arrest, Jim Conley, the factory roustabout, was also arrested.

Milestone in the Mary Phagan Murder Investigation

Something very interesting happened exactly one week after the murder of Mary Phagan — on Saturday, May 3, 1913. The event was an unexpected surprise. The major breakthrough occurred when detectives stumbled upon one of the young female child laborers who was tendering her resignation at the National Pencil Company (NPC). This significant former employee was 14-year-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, because she had failed to retrieve it the first time on the day of the murder, when she came to the factory alone at five minutes past noon.

When police detectives thoroughly questioned Monteen Stover, she revealed something rather curious that would become the crux of the entire murder case: Little Miss Stover said that when she had arrived at the pencil factory exactly one week before and made her first attempt to get her weekly wages, she was unable to do so because Leo Frank was not inside his office. This was unusual, as he normally was in his office at the normal payoff time — which was regularly designated as Saturdays at noon. Stover said that Leo Frank’s office was empty on that tragic day the entire time she waited inside it — from 12:05 PM to 12:10 PM. She stated that she knew the exact times based upon her observation of the office’s wall clock.

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 Herbert Haas), had made an unsworn stenographed deposition to a room full of Atlanta police detectives. In this deposition Frank precisely stated he was in his office alone with Mary Phagan between 12:05 PM and 12:10 PM (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 PM, but that he had not left his office at all until 12:45 PM.

Sunday, May 4, 1913: the Moment of Truth

Without Leo Frank knowing the police had discovered and questioned 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 PM. Leo Frank responded with an affirmative “Yes.” The officers then reworded and slightly changed the question and asked Leo Frank if he had been in his office every minute on Saturday, April 26, from noon to half past noon — and Leo Frank responded again with an affirmative “Yes.”

Detectives John Black and Harry Scott

It was then eight days after the murder of Mary Phagan. The police had discovered a very odd possible discrepancy in Leo Frank’s murder alibi. Leo Frank would maintain stoically — until near the end of his trial — that he had never left his office, from noon until he went upstairs to the fourth floor at 12:45 to tell two employees he was getting ready to leave the building for dinner (what most of us would call lunch today).

Curious Inconsistency

As far as the police were concerned, the murder alibi of Leo Frank had been unintentionally shaken, and possibly shattered, by Monteen Stover. But they would have to wait three and a half months to find out how Leo Frank would account for this discrepancy — because that’s how long Leo Frank would maintain that he never left his office until 12:45. But then, something electrifying happened — something the pro-Frank forces would suppress for more than a century.

Apogee of the Leo Frank Murder Trial, August 18, 1913

At his murder trial, Leo Frank finally responded to Monteen Stover’s trial testimony. Frank finally answered specifically why his office might have been empty at the exact same time he formerly claimed Phagan was with him alone there. Frank totally changed his original alibi — that he had maintained for more than three months — about having never left his office during the critical time. In an unsworn statement on the stand, he stated that he might have “unconsciously” used the toilet in the factory’s metal room bathroom when Monteen Stover was in his office looking for him. And it was in the metal room — at that precise time — that the murder took place, according to the police.

The toilet to which Frank referred was in the metal room at the rear of the second floor, the same floor as his office, the only toilet available to him on that floor — and the metal room was the place where the murder took place. Additionally, the murder occurred at the same time Frank was absent from his office.

Another major breakthrough the investigation was the testimony of Jim Conley, the NPC sweeper who ultimately confessed to being Leo Frank’s accomplice in moving Mary Phagan’s dead body from the metal room to the basement.

Unique Trial Analysis

Judge Leonard S. Roan

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 murder conviction, after the jury deliberated for about two hours. The jury’s decision  also included a “without mercy” recommendation to the presiding judge — suggesting that a death sentence be meted out to Leo Max Frank.

Both the conviction and sentencing recommendation were affirmed the next day by the presiding judge, the Honorable Leonard Strickland Roan. Judge Roan sentenced the defendant Leo Frank to death by way of hanging as prescribed by law. The execution date was first scheduled for October 10, 1913 — but appeals postponed the execution date repeatedly for two more years.

The jury for the Leo Frank case in Atlanta, Fulton county

Leo Frank’s subsequent failed appeals, initiated from August 1913 to April 1915, and the eventual commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment by a corrupt outgoing governor, John M. Slaton, on June 21, 1915, led to a mob of 1,200 angry citizens protesting at the governor’s mansion. The angry crowd was quelled and dispersed by the state militia.

The Law Firm of Luther Rosser, Morris Brandon,
John Slaton, and Benjamin Phillips

Governor John M. Slaton

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 — and this politically powerful law group had been formed before Leo Frank’s trial began.

Governor Slaton had essentially commuted the death sentence of his own client — after that client had suffered two years of failed appeals at every possible level of the United States legal system. Naturally, the public became outraged at the obvious conflict of interest and Slaton’s betrayal of his sworn oath, of his legal ethics, of his public trust, and of his office.

Here’s how Mary Phagan Kean recounts her first awareness of those facts, in a conversation she had with her father (Mary Phagan’s nephew) when she was 15 years old:

“Daddy, why did Governor Slaton commute Leo Frank’s sentence?”

“This is one question that our family still asks today. We do not accept Governor Slaton’s explanation in his order. There had to be something else. No man will willingly commit political suicide; but he did just that with the commutation order. I’ve done some research on my own, but I know no more today than my grandmother did back in 1915. I’ve found certain things about Governor Slaton that are hard to accept but are facts.

“The Atlanta newspapers of 1913 show the law firm of Rosser & Brandon, 708 Empire, and the law firm of Slaton & Phillips, 723 Grant Building, as merging. Then the 1914 Atlanta Directory shows the law firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton & Phillips, 719—723 Grant Building. They were also listed in the Atlanta Directory in 1915 and 1916. Slaton was a member of the law firm that defended Leo Frank.

“Governor Slaton was a man that Georgia loved and admired until June 21st, 1915. Then love turned to hate. The people believed that Governor Slaton had been bought. His action caused the people of Georgia to take the law into their own hands, to form a vigilante group and seek justice that they believed had been denied them.”

The Ugly Racist Framing of
the Night Watchman 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 — meaning that Lee had made all his rounds on time and would not have had enough time to leave the building and go to his home between punches. However, the next day Leo Frank changed his story and told the police that Newt Lee did not punch his time card correctly and that there were missing punches indicating four hours of unaccounted-for time. This put even greater suspicion on Newt Lee. The intervals suggested he had more than enough time to go home, potentially hide evidence, and then return to the factory.

Defendant’s Exhibit 1, supposedly a copy of Newt Lee’s “time slip, dated April 26, taken out of clock by Frank.” It indicates four missed punches, though Frank showed officers Lee’s time slip the day after the murder, and no punches had been missed.

Intimations to Search Newt Lee’s Shack

After Frank made his Monday morning, April 28, 1913 deposition to the 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 for blood stains. Leo Frank removed his shirt and the police found no visible scratch marks on his body. At Frank’s residence, the maid brought forth the dirty laundry basket and the clothes within it — and no blood stains were found on any of them. Given Leo Frank’s intimations about Newt Lee’s time card, the natural thing for the Atlanta Police to do next was search Newt Lee’s home for evidence. And, surprise surprise — you can probably guess what they found.

On Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913, the police entered Newt Lee’s shack without a warrant, using a skeleton key. Just outside his residence, at the bottom of a garbage barrel, they found a suspicious-looking otherwise clean but heavily bloodied shirt. The shirt had blood stains right up to the arm pits in the front, back, and inside — overdone to the point that the police suspected it was forged and planted there intentionally. What also made detectives think the shirt might have been planted is the fact that, aside from the oddly-placed blood stains, it appeared clean and did not have any body odor indicating it had even been worn since the last time it was washed.

These are just a few of the facts discovered by investigators in this murder case. I urge you to read The Murder of Mary Phagan and the other sources mentioned and linked below for a fuller understanding. But surely what I have adduced thus far is enough to show you why investigators — and, eventually, jurors — believed that Leo Frank was the most likely suspect.

The planted shirt — the time card that somehow lost four hours’ worth of punches overnight — and the absolutely contradictory testimony of Frank and Monteen Stover — all these circumstances made investigators begin to suspect Leo Frank. It had absolutely nothing to do with “anti-Semitism.”

All this is made clear in Phagan Kean’s book, although the author bends over backwards, chapter after chapter, to be more than fair to Frank. After reading this book, it will simply be impossible for you to take seriously the lurid, exaggerated claims made by biased groups like the ADL (one such claim is shown in the ADL Web site screen shot below).

Screen shot illustrating specious ADL claims of anti-Semitism. No contemporary reporter  in any of the three Atlanta daily papers ever recorded such homicidal threats outside the courtroom, and the jury explicitly denied anything like them ever happened. Even the lynchers — most of them leading citizens — said they were only interested in carrying out the sentence of the court and had no interest in Frank’s Jewishness. Despite their horrible task, they had enough feeling for Frank’s wife — also Jewish — to return his wedding ring to her afterwards.

Kean is not alone in her doubts about the now-popular media narrative of an innocent Frank persecuted by bigots.

Even Frank’s wife, Lucille, may have had doubts about his innocence in the end. After she died in 1957, it was discovered that she did not, as everyone expected her to do, want to be buried in Brooklyn’s Mount Carmel Cemetery next to her husband Leo. Instead, she wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered in an Atlanta public park. The facts are related in an article by pro-Frank author Steve Oney in the March 2004 issue of Georgia Magazine:

On the same day I met Gene Clay in Sarasota, I spent several hours up the road in St. Petersburg with Alan and Fanny Marcus, two Atlantans who’d retired to Florida.

Alan was Lucille Frank’s nephew. He’d grown up at her knee and borne witness to the devastation that the lynching had wrought in her life and in the life of Atlanta’s Jewish community.

Following Lucille’s death in 1957, her body was cremated. She wanted her ashes scattered in a public park, but an Atlanta ordinance forbade it.

For the next six years, the ashes sat in a box at Patterson’s Funeral Home. One day, Alan received what for him was an upsetting call. The ashes needed to be disposed of. Alan didn’t know what to do. In the years since Lucille passed away, the Temple, the city’s reform synagogue, had been bombed. This event had set Atlanta’s Jews on edge. It was no wonder that Alan didn’t want to attract scrutiny by conducting a public burial. For months, he carried Lucille’s remains around Atlanta in the trunk of his red Corvair. Early one morning in 1964, he and his brother drove downtown to Oakland Cemetery. There, under the cover of the gray dawn light, the two men buried this martyred figure in an unmarked plot between the headstones of her parents.

Lucille Selig and Leo Frank

Steve Oney

Oney, whose book And the Dead Shall Rise is one of the best pro-Frank tomes, is honest enough to state that Frank’s lynchers were motivated by a desire to carry out the court’s sentence — and not by anti-Semitism. In an article in the June 11, 2000 issue of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oney made that very clear:

“The lynching is one of the great unsolved crimes of the 20th century,” says Steve Oney, a Los Angeles writer who has been working on a book about the case for more than a decade. Many of the details are known from contemporary and historical accounts.

In the summer of 1915, after Gov. John M. Slaton commuted Frank’s death penalty to life in prison, a group of Cobb civic leaders calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan met secretly to plot the lynching. What drove them to action, Oney says, wasn’t blind anti-Semitism. It was their belief that Slaton had pulled a fast one; one of the partners in his Atlanta law firm was Luther Z. Rosser, Frank’s lead defense counsel.

Oney draws an analogy: “Imagine how people would have felt if O.J. Simpson had been found guilty and the governor of California commuted his sentence and, oh, by the way, he practiced law with Johnnie Cochran.”

A snapshot of Marietta after the lynching of Leo Frank

How the Most Definitive Book
on the Leo Frank Case was Born

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan is written by the namesake of the murder victim, Mary Phagan’s great-niece Mary Phagan Kean. After becoming a lifelong student of the case at age thirteen, inspired by her own family’s accounts of the tragedy, Phagan Kean has since devoted almost 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.

Mary Phagan and her aunt

Most illuminating is Phagan Kean’s description of the intrigues surrounding the granting of the 1986 posthumous pardon to Leo Frank, which I’ll excerpt here:

[In March 1986 m]y father and I met with Wayne Snow, Jr., the new chairman of the Board [of Pardons and Paroles], and Mike Wing. We were told that the Jewish community had again filed application for a posthumous pardon. And that if a pardon were issued, it would be based not on guilt or innocence but on the contention that “the State did not protect Leo Frank and that his rights were violated.” The Board felt that the lynching of Leo Frank was wrong. And that this pardon would “heal old wounds.”

Apparently, renewed efforts for pardon had begun in September 1985. And while at first the petitioners had thought they’d failed to obtain the pardon in 1983 simply because they had not brought enough pressure to bear, they had come to see that, beyond the strictly procedural action of the process which sought to establish Leo Frank’s innocence or Jim Conley’s — or someone else’s — guilt, what was most probably achievable was a pardon that addressed the extra-legal case about Leo Frank.

And this approach by the petitioners allowed Board members’ sympathies for the extra-legal aspects of the case to come through. The Board had been deeply concerned about the problem of setting a precedent for a huge number of posthumous pardon applications, were Frank pardoned on strictly legal bases. By addressing the extra-legal case, however, the precedent that a pardon would grant would only be to exceptional cases like the Frank case. So, six months prior to the Board’s contacting me, an initial proposed pardon application made its way through to some members of the Board. This initial draft repudiated the old standard of absolute innocence and made no mention of a pardon based on innocence or guilt. By March, members of the Board had agreed in principle to grant a special type of pardon which would imply neither innocence or guilt, but merely address the concerns brought about by the case. They approved such a pardon in early March.

After meeting with representatives of the petitioners, the Board began drafting a final pardon order which they approved shortly after ADL officials and others found it acceptable.

But our family had questions.

Why was there no public announcement of receipt of application?

Why were other people who opposed granting of the pardon not told of the new application?

Former Chairman Silas Moore announced the issuance of a pardon order on March 11, 1986 at 1:00 P.M. at the Georgia State Capitol.

It seems that Board members had finally agreed on the bases for granting a pardon. They reflected concern that Frank’s lynching had foreclosed efforts to prove him innocent. The Board also addressed three extra-legal concerns — the repudiation of lynch law, the need to heal old wounds, and the acknowledgement of anti-Semitism.

The question of whether Leo Frank had really committed the murder — the search for his purity or demonhood — was now just dust in the wind. In the discussions of pardon from September through March 1986 the Board had done no detective work, except to ensure the accuracy of its final order, discussing the historic background to the Frank trial. The Board simply overlooked guilt or innocence, something it had never done in pardons of forgiveness or pardons of innocence.

The reports had indicated that the Board worked in secret with the Jewish community for almost a year and Wayne Snow, Chairman of the Board, stated this publicly during a TV station interview. This disturbed us. Wayne Snow had told us at the beginning of March that the Board was thinking of granting a pardon, but, in fact, had already made the decision which they announced immediately after they spoke to us.

We wondered what the purpose was of keeping it secret?

The purpose, of course, was to prevent the Phagan family from having any input at all with the decision.

One of the most unique and moving sections of the book is Phagan Kean’s description of the meeting between her grandfather, William Joshua Phagan, Jr. (Mary Phagan’s brother), and Jim Conley. The current theory of most of Leo Frank’s defenders is that Jim Conley was the actual killer.

Jim Conley, the daytime sweeper at the National Pencil Company who was at the factory on the day of the murder

Twenty-one years after the murder, in 1934, William confronted Jim Conley in private — and was ultimately convinced that the former factory sweeper was telling the truth on the stand when he said that Leo Frank was guilty of the crime and that he, Conley, had been cajoled by Frank into helping move the body.

At times so emotionally moved that he could barely hold back his tears, William Phagan finally told Conley that he believed him — and said that, if he had thought that Conley was lying, “I’d kill you myself.” After the intense meeting was over, Jim Conley and Mary Phagan’s brother went out for a drink together.

This book is full of highly-personal gems like this. I highly recommend it.

Enjoy the audio book version embedded near the top of this page, read The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean at archive.org, or buy the book at Amazon.com.

APPENDIX 2:
Recommended reading

Excellent sources of research and information about the Leo Frank Case include:

1. The Leo Frank Case: Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery 1913 — The first neutral book written about the murder of Mary Phagan and trial of Leo Frank.

2. 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.

Hugh M. Dorsey

3. Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Trial of Leo Frank. Some, but not all, of the nine hours of arguments given to the Jury at the end of the Leo Frank trial on August 22, 23, and 25 of 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 thirteen men (the trial jury of twelve men plus Judge Leonard Strickland Roan).

4. Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913, Brief of Evidence. Only three original copies from 1913 and 1914 exist at the Georgia State Archive.

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 27th 1913:

5. 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. http://archive.org/details/LeoFrankCaseInTheAtlantaConstitutionNewspaper1913To1915

6. Atlanta Georgian newspaper covering the Leo Frank Case from late April though August, 1913. http://archive.org/details/AtlantaGeorgianNewspaperAprilToAugust1913

7. Atlanta Journal newspaper, April, 28, 1913, through the end of August, 1913, pertaining to articles about the Leo Frank Case. http://archive.org/details/AtlantaJournalApril281913toAugust311913

8. Leo Frank confirms he might have been in the bathroom at the time Monteen Stover said his office was empty (12:05 p.m. to 12:10 p.m.): See the Atlanta Constitution, Monday, March 9, 1914, Leo Frank Jailhouse Interview

Tom E. Watson

U.S. Senator Tom Watson

8. Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian Newspaper (1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917) and Watson’s Magazine (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.

8.1. The Leo Frank Case By Tom Watson (January 1915) Watson’s Magazine Volume 20 No. 3. See page 139 for the Leo Frank Case. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source Archive.org

8.2. The Full Review of the Leo Frank Case By Tom Watson (March 1915) Volume 20. No. 5. See page 235 for ‘A Full Review of the Leo Frank Case’. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source www.Archive.org

8.3. The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank By Tom Watson (August 1915) Volumne 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 www.Archive.org

8.4. The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert By Tom Watson (September 1915) Volume 21. No. 5. See page 251 for ‘The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert’. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source www.Archive.org

8.5. The Rich Jews Indict a State! The Whole South Traduced in the Matter of Leo Frank By Tom Watson (October 1915) Volume 21. No. 6. See page 301. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source: www.Archive.org

Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian Weekly Newspaper

9. 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 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.

Tom Watson Brown, Grandson of Thomas Edward Watson

10. Notes on the Case of Leo M. Frank, By Tom W. Brown, Emery University, Atlanta, Georgia, 1982.

Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Archive:

11. Leo Frank Trial and Appeals Georgia Supreme Court File (1,800 pages). http://archive.org/details/leo-frank-georgia-supreme-court-case-records-1913-1914

* * *

For further information, check out the full American Mercury series on the Leo Frank case by clicking here.

2015 Centennial of Leo Frank’s Lynching – John de Nugent’s provocative video about Mary Phagan and modern child abusers:
https://trutube.tv/video/31631/KILL-THEM-ALL-VIP-child-molesters-Arrest-Try-Sentence-and-Hang

2013 Centennial of Mary Phagan’s Murder – The Leo Frank Research Library promo-video published on TruTube.TV by John de Nugent.

Please Read: (Please refresh the page if it appears to not load correctly)

1. Video-Promo: Script for John de Nugent’s Promo-Video About the Murder of Mary Phagan and Lynching of Leo Frank
http://johndenugent.us/glory-to-mary-phagan-and-the-white-men-who-avenged-her-2/script-for-glory-to-mary-phagan-video

2. Part One: Glory to Mary Phagan and the White Men Who Avenged Her Honor
http://johndenugent.us/glory-to-mary-phagan-and-the-white-men-who-avenged-her-2

3. Part Two: Conclusion of Glory to Mary Phagan and the White Men Who Avenged Her Honor
http://johndenugent.us/glory-to-mary-phagan-and-the-white-men-who-avenged-her-2/glory-to-mary-phagan-and-the-white-men-who-avenged-her-conclusion

4. Audiobook: 2015 Centennial Reboot of Jeffersonian Publishing Company’s ‘Watson’s Magazine, January, 1915, The Leo Frank Case’ Edited by John de Nugent
http://johndenugent.us/english/100-years-ago-tom-watson-blasted-leo-frank-hebrew-homeys

5. The Jewish Daily Forward Article Analysis: John de Nugent’s Response to the Editorial of The Jewish Daily Forward by Paul Berger
http://johndenugent.us/glory-to-mary-phagan-and-the-white-men-who-avenged-her-2/forward-com-editorial-of-august-21-2013

6. Open Letter to Paul Berger of The Jewish Daily Forward: Open Letter from John de Nugent to Paul Berger of The Jewish Daily Forward
http://johndenugent.us/glory-to-mary-phagan-and-the-white-men-who-avenged-her-2/script-for-glory-to-mary-phagan-vi6eo/open-letter-to-paul-berger-of-the-forward

If any of these articles listed above do not load correctly, please refresh (reload them).

More information: http://www.JohndeNugent.com

by Kevin Alfred Strom

2015 IS THE YEAR of Jewish failure to contain and control the Leo Frank narrative, a narrative they very much want to control in this, the 100th year after Frank’s death. For in the case of Leo Frank we find century-old confirmation of a pattern — a pattern of Jewish sexual license, Jewish racial solidarity even in the case of a Jewish murderer, Jewish corruption of American law and government via money and via media control, and unrelenting use of that media control to distort our history and pervert the truth.

Next month is the 100th anniversary of the carrying out of the sentence of death by hanging imposed by the courts on the Jewish sex killer Leo Max Frank by a group of prominent Georgia men who were outraged by the commutation of his sentence by a corrupt governor, and last month was the 100th anniversary of that commutation. That Governor’s name, which will live forever as an example of subservience to Jewish power and Jewish propaganda, was John Marshall Slaton (pictured above).

Here’s what happened:

In 1913, the Atlanta president of the Jewish B’nai B’rith, sweatshop operator Leo M. Frank, was convicted of strangling to death a 13-year-old White girl in his employ — Mary Phagan — after sexually assaulting her while they were alone on the second floor of the National Pencil Company, of which Frank was the superintendent and part-owner. Jewish hyper-ethnocentrism, networking, and financial and press power came into play almost immediately after Frank’s arrest and indictment.

The case became a national cause celebre for the Jews, with headlines in major newspapers from San Francisco to New York City trumpeting Frank’s “innocence” and the barbarity of the White Southerners who dared to convict him. Fat-headed Whites who believed the fictional newspaper stories of the “persecuted” member of “God’s Chosen” were recruited to help in the crusade, and the equivalent of many millions of dollars was raised in his defense.

With this Jewish money, Frank hired the finest and most expensive team of lawyers ever seen in the state of Georgia, yet he was still held by the Coroner’s Jury — still charged by the Grand Jury — and still convicted at trial. He hired another expensive legal team — and then another, even including the leading Jewish lawyers in the USA — and appealed his conviction to the Georgia Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court of the United States. In every case, his conviction was upheld.

With this Jewish money, other things were procured as well: Someone planted a bloody shirt at the home of the factory’s Black night watchman, Newt Lee, at a time when both Lee and Frank were suspects in the killing. Someone paid a long list of witnesses to leave town or change their stories in ways that favored Frank. Someone paid an unscrupulous attorney named Felder to fraudulently present himself as working for the Phagan family and attempt to illegally obtain evidence and documents in the possession of the police. Someone paid a Pinkerton detective named W.D. McWorth — and the Pinkertons were openly in the pay of Frank and the other Jewish owners of the pencil factory — to “discover” a bloody club and what was said to be part of Mary Phagan’s pay envelope near the ground floor elevator where the factory’s Black sweeper, Jim Conley, was keeping watch for Leo Frank that day — but the fake was discovered and McWorth dismissed. Someone paid the Pinkertons’ great rivals — the infamous Burns detective agency — to take over when the Pinkertons refused to “cooperate” as the Jews had hoped, and in particular refused to withhold evidence from the police until Leo Frank’s attorneys had had a look at it.

And, in 1915, when all the appeals had failed and the integrity of the jury’s verdict that Leo Frank was guilty and that Leo Frank should hang had been upheld by every jury, every judge, and every court with jurisdiction over the case, there was only one place left for the Jews to try: the outgoing Governor of Georgia, John Slaton. In addition to their glittering wealth and generous largesse, the pro-Frank forces had another ace up their sleeve with John M. Slaton: He was a leading partner in the partly-Jewish law firm that defended Frank and had been so for many months. Even though he could not practice law while governor during his term of two years, for some reason or other the law firm that was defending Frank — and which doubtless was receiving a huge portion of the money raised in Frank’s defense and would receive even more as “bonuses” for each desired outcome attained — sought out Governor Slaton as a partner.

With Leo Frank’s execution date imminent and all appeals exhausted, and with Governor Slaton leaving office in just days to be replaced by a man without such connections, the time was now or never. One would think that an ethical governor would have nothing to do with, and would not even consider, interfering in the case of a man who was a client of his own law firm, especially when the issue could be handled by the incoming governor, who had no conflict of interest, and who would be in office in less than a week. You would think that a rational governor would know that his political career — and Slaton very much wanted to be become United States Senator from Georgia — would be over for life if he committed such an ethical lapse. It would take some kind of overwhelming consideration for a man in Slaton’s position to interfere in the Frank case. But interfere he did.

On June 21, giving a patently specious string of reasons, he commuted the death sentence of Leo Frank to life in prison. He said his conscience impelled him and that he could not live with himself if there was even the possibility that he would have the blood of an innocent man on his hands. That, if true — though it hardly sounds like the reasoning process of the same man who blithely ignored the commutation requests of several non-Jews while in office — would truly constitute an overwhelming consideration. But you will forgive me when I tell you that the evidence suggests an overwhelming “consideration” of a quite different kind.

Attorney Luther Z. Rosser, lead counsel for Leo Frank, who had argued his case before the jury, paid a very interesting visit to the home of his law partner Governor Slaton just before the commutation decision was made. For reasons which might not seem too obscure, he arrived late at night. For the same reasons, he approached the mansion by a back street, parked several blocks away, and entered the grounds on foot via a dark alley. He did not leave until well after midnight.

I quote from Watson’s The Celebrated Case of Leo Frank:

What Rosser said to Slaton in this clandestine meeting, will never be known; but it was noticed that next day the lamentations of the Jews were replaced by sly grins, and offers to bet ten to one that Slaton would commute!

Read the following, not as evidence of Frank’s guilt, or as proof of Slaton’s hypocrisy and perfidy, but as a side-light on events in Atlanta:

Atlanta, June 22.

Mr. Tom Watson:

What I tell you I know to be true as God is light, and it is this: The Jews all gathered at the home of the Seligs, on Washington Street, where Frank’s wife and father-in-law live, and from 8 till 12 o’clock, they had a regular old-time Belshazzar feast. They drank wine, high balls, whiskey and beer, and smoked and sang, and had music; and there were not less than a hundred and twenty automobiles full of Jews that came there from the time I say to the late hour.

Now, they all knew Slaton had commuted Frank, and were celebrating it.

And I know a policeman who was on the streets yesterday, to make out like controlling the mob, and he told me he passed the jail every night at 12 o’clock for a year, and going on duty, and never saw a light in the office of the Sheriff till Saturday night, and he was surprised to see the Sheriff sitting there like he was waiting for somebody, and suddenly a Jew came running up and tapped on the window, and the Sheriff raised the window and the Jew whispered to him, and the Sheriff smiled, and then the Jew ran off and the Sheriff closed the window. Now, that showed conspiracy, and that Slaton was working with the Jews all the time.

In other words, the Jews knew — some on Friday, and some on Saturday — that Slaton had commuted the sentence.

John Slaton did not announce his commutation order until Sunday.

After you hear my words and read the sources I have provided on the Frank case, I invite you to  watch the NBC television program about John M. Slaton, from their 1964 series Profiles in Courage. I’ll embed the video from that program so you can watch it right here on nationalvanguard.org:

After watching that production, do you recognize John Slaton? — do you recognize the Leo Frank sex killing case? — do you recognize the people of Georgia? No. You cannot. The program — like almost all Establishment works on the Leo Frank case — is a vicious, poisonous cocktail of lies designed to obscure the truth, exonerate and even ennoble a murderer, make the odious and the sleazy into “heroes,” and demonize the real heroes — real heroes like Tom Watson.

Thomas E. Watson’s contemporary series of exposés on the corruption and mendacity of the Leo Frank machine is one of the classics of American muckraking. Watson was an intelligent, cultured, and literate man, author of highly-regarded biographies of Jackson and Jefferson and a history of France. In the NBC episode, he is played by a sweaty, greasy-looking Hollywood “heavy” Michael Constantine, who, as Watson, openly admits his corruption and talks in “cracker” dialect, wearing a heavily rumpled suit without a tie, putting his feet up on Slaton’s desk, and wiping his dripping nose on his sleeve. We get it, Mr. Director, we get it. No such meeting between Watson and Slaton ever took place.

The program is anything but subtle. In the opening scene, another sweaty White man, with a crazed look on his face and a very bad set of teeth, stands on the courthouse roof and screams for the head of Leo Frank to a torch-lit crowd of Whites while the Frank verdict is about to be read. No such rally ever took place — it is an invention of the filmmakers.

Inside the courthouse, Judge Roan, the presiding judge in the case, mutters to an associate that “Frank’s innocence has been proven to a mathematical certainty” — something that he never said.

The noble Slaton is played by Jewish actor Walter Matthau, who is portrayed as a deeply moral man of principle throughout. The screen Watson admits to the screen Slaton that Watson’s newspaper, the Jeffersonian, is “written for the great unwashed,” and that “you bathe too much.”

Almost unbelievably, the program asserts that the Black night watchman and early suspect, Newt Lee, was in the pencil factory building when the murder was committed — and that the factory sweeper Jim Conley, another Black man falsely accused by the pro-Frank forces, confessed to the murder to his own attorney. Needless to say, none of this ever happened.

Jewish screenwriter Don Mankiewicz was the author of this bundle of lies. It was made by Saudek Associates, and aired on Robert Sarnoff’s Jewish-owned NBC. The executive in charge of production was the Jew Bernie Weinraub.

The producers of this program were so sloppy — and so contemptuous of their viewers, who they evidently think will believe even the crudest and most obvious lies — that they even get Leo Max Frank’s name wrong, calling him “Leo A. Frank.”

Thus is history rewritten by liars. Thus is the public fooled into hating those who try to save them, and worshipping those, like John M. Slaton, who have sold them out.

It is satisfying to reflect upon the fact that John M. Slaton, quite contrary to the liars at NBC, was so reviled for his act of evil that he had to flee the state. He did not return to stay for nearly a decade. Tom Watson was elected to the Senate seat that Slaton had coveted, and it was only recently that the Jews were able to force the great writer and statesman’s statue to be removed from the state capitol.

I’ll speak again about the Leo Frank case in three weeks, on the centenary of that moment in US and Georgia history when the leading citizens of that state re-took control of the legal and judicial process and carried out the sentence of the court — the sentence of the judge — and the sentence of the people — on Jewish sex killer Leo Max Frank.

* * *

Source: National Vanguard Radio, American Dissident Voices, July 25, 2015.

Jewish activists and their fellow travelers rarely mention that after Atlanta B’nai B’rith president Leo Max Frank was arrested (Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913, at 11:30 a.m.) as the prime suspect for the rape-strangulation-mutilation of Mary Phagan (a thirteen-year-old working class christian girl who worked at the National Pencil Company) the Governor-Elect John M. Slaton and his law partner Jewish-American Benjamin Z. Phillips (of the well-known Slaton and Phillips legal team) merged with Luther Zeigler Rosser’s law firm, ‘Rosser and Brandon’ (Jewish-American attorney Morris Brandon). Together they formed Georgia’s supreme juggernaut law group of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips on May 1st 1913.

Luther Rosser received an unheard-of $15,000 retainer to represent Leo Frank and defend him at his summer murder trial. $40,000 more from New York City and Chicago was raised for Leo Frank’s defense before his trial began – a gargantuan sum by 1913 standards for a murder case. During Leo Frank’s incarceration at Atlanta’s “Tower” — the city jail — a legal defense fund set up by Herbert Haas (another trial attorney representing Leo Frank) on his behalf. The Leo Frank defense fund eventually raised more than $250,000 for his conviction appeals, an astronomical sum of money in the early twentieth century for any kind of legal case.

Atlanta’s ultra-reform Rabbi Dr. David Marx, clandestinely went beyond the state borders of Georgia to arrange meetings of imploration with Jewish activist leadership of New York and Chicago, for the apparent intention of seeking a broader coalition on behalf of Leo Frank. The efforts of Rabbi Marx ignited a conflagration of solidarity amongst Jewry that would incite the whole nation, Jew and Gentile, in righteous indignation.   When two of the most prominent Jewish American media moguls embraced the case as a personal crusade (advertising magnate Albert Lasker and Adolph Ochs owner of the New York times) the affair that had began as an embarrassing local scandal, was artificially engineered to go viral through widespread nationwide newspaper circulation pathways and radio transmissions. The big lie strategy was employed then as it is now, that if Leo Frank’s supposed “wrongful conviction” was repeated by enough people with academic credentials, newspaper columnists, magazine journalists, book authors and radio announcers, then the masses would eventually believe it as indisputable fact. The Leo Frank case transmogrified into an ugly Jewish-American media war against White Gentile Southerners that ensued with stop-at-nothing vicious attacks and biased reports against the people of Georgia (an onslaught that sadly persists to this day more than a century later with the greatest ferocity). The Leo Frank case has become by defacto a mandatory study subject for future generations of Gentiles because it continues to be a major source of Jewish activist agitation by their civil rights groups, historical organizations and media outlets. Thus by force of Jewry’s transmogrification of this pivotal event in American legal history into an anti-Gentile morality tale, and after a century of indefatigable employment of the Big-Lie strategy in the academy and mainstream media, the case of Leo Frank has become one of the many epicenters of the Jewish culture war against Western Civilization.

Dishonor Celebrated June 2015: June 21, 1915, will forever live in United States legal history as a day of infamy, because when else in the annals of American State jurisprudence has a Governor commuted the death sentence of his own law firm’s client to life in prison after every state and federal court ruled against the convict in question? In this unique example, Leo Frank was convicted of murder and his jury unanimously recommended a punishment of “without mercy” (death by hanging) to the presiding judge Leonard Strickland Roan.  If Judge Roan had any doubts about Leo Frank’s guilt, he could have sentenced him to life in prison or given him a new trial if that would serve the cause of justice. Judge Roan turned down Leo Frank’s petition for a new trial on 107 grounds – that’s not a typo!

It was Slaton’s commutation of Leo Frank’s death sentence to life in prison, which specifically inflamed the people of Georgia and directly lead to Frank’s lynching, not anti-Semitism (If anti-Semitism was the reason Leo Frank was hanged, there were thousands of other Jews in the state of Georgia that would have been much easier targets).  In direct retaliation to this obvious political treachery, 1,200 people protested outside the governor’s mansion and the national guard had to be called to save Slaton from vigilante justice.  Looking back at all the treatments and retellings of this epic saga, 20th and 21st century Frankites (pro Leo Frank activists) rarely discuss Governor Slaton’s betrayal of the Constitution and grotesque conflict of interest involving his wealthy law firm (Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips), especially about the fact that it was the impetus for Leo Frank being abducted and hanging less than two months later on August 17, 1915 at former Sheriff William J. Frey’s farm by some of the leading men of Georgia. The claim that Leo Frank was convicted and hanged because of anti-Semitism is an anti-Gentile, century-old racist hatecrime hoax still perpetuated in the Jewish controlled media today with unyielding bigoted ferocity by Jewish activists and their sycophantic allies.

More than one hundred years later, we continue to pursue justice for Mary Phagan.

We demand the posthumous pardon of Leo Frank be revoked or nullified, whatever it takes, for this centenary racist Jewish mockery to be terminated forever. This is Jewish culture war is not over, and if it requires one hundred years of agitation and activism to get this illegal posthumous pardon overturned, then so be it! Until then, this case is not closed, but re-open. We are calling on the people of Georgia, of every county, to get involved in local politics, work your way up from the ground-up, get a law degree and run for office at the beginning or basic levels of politics to get the experience and build trust needed to climb to higher levels. Every generation we must work towards putting Jew-wise people in every position of political office and power from top to bottom. We must not only un-pardon Leo Frank, but keep that as the status quo for every decade and generation to come.

Jewish Controlled Hollywood 

Dear reader we have embedded the 1964 anti-Gentile propaganda film created by Jewish Hollywood activists called, “Profiles in Courage: John M. Slaton,” for your review 50 years later!

See the Vicious Hatred Against Anti-Gentilism by Hollywood released to the public with ‘Profiles in Courage, John Slaton’ 1964:

Also purchase the murder of little Mary Phagan two part made-for-tv miniseries on Amazon.com or ebay.com (don’t buy new, get a used copy, because they are available through interlibrary loan for free) to see how Hollywood again in 1988 defame, slander and smear Southern Gentiles with a disgusting mockery of legal history. Also read Matthew Bernstein’s Screening a Lynching, (don’t buy new, get a used copy, because they are available through interlibrary loan for free)

Below is an article about the June 2015 honoring of the corrupt politician John M. Slaton. Please read the 1,800-page Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court records to learn more about Slaton’s criminal activity in the Frank-Phagan affair, it will blow your mind! No one has articulated the Leo Frank appeals record from 1913-1915 that have finally been released to the public and are available online at www.LeoFrank.org The Leo Frank Research Library and www.Archive.org The Internet Achive. End of editor’s notes.]

A Lesson for Judges in Memory of the Governor Who Granted Clemency to Leo Frank

Katheryn Hayes Tucker, Daily Report

June 18, 2015

A crowd that included a Georgia Supreme Court justice, an assistant attorney general, a superior court judge and a former governor gathered in the sunshine and 92-degree heat Wednesday to commemorate a plaque at the Atlanta History Center.

It wasn’t so much the simple black-and-white sign that brought them there but the memory of John Marshall Slaton, the lawyer-governor who sacrificed his political career 100 years ago to grant clemency to Leo Frank, widely believed to be wrongly convicted of murder because of anti-Semitism. Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life in prison. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

As Georgia Supreme Court Justice David Nahmias put it in his remarks to the gathering, “In the final blot that the case placed on the history of our state, a mob kidnapped Leo Frank, drove him to Marietta, and lynched him.”

Nahmias continued, “It is altogether right that we still celebrate what Governor Slaton did, because we need to remember those who stood tall in defense of the rule of law, to inspire all of us who need to stand tall when the rule of law is again threatened, as it is in one way or another almost every day. We need to fight for equal justice under the law, even if we do not immediately prevail.

“Governor Slaton is, and should be, a particular inspiration to people like me—judges on the courts of Georgia and on the federal courts—the kind of judges who were unable to protect Leo Frank from the unjust ending that the mob demanded.”

Other speakers included former Gov. Roy Barnes, Cobb County Superior Court Chief Judge Steve Schuster, Assistant Attorney General of Georgia Van Pearlberg and Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. The Georgia Historical Society also supported the project.

The marker stands beside the sidewalk on Slaton Drive near the former governor’s home and between the history center’s Veterans Park on West Paces Ferry Road and the historic Swan House. The inscription includes the governor’s name and lifespan, 1866-1955, followed by this note:

“John Marshall Slaton was born in Meriwether County and graduated from the University of Georgia before practicing law in Atlanta. Slaton served in both houses of the Georgia legislature and two terms as governor (1911-12 and 1913-15). While in office, he modernized Georgia’s tax system and roads. Concerned by the sensationalized atmosphere and circumstantial evidence that led to the notorious 1913 conviction of Jewish businessman Leo Frank in the murder of teenager Mary Phagan, Slaton granted Frank clemency in June 1915. Slaton’s commutation of Frank’s death sentence drew national attention but hostile local backlash resulted in Frank’s lynching in August 1915 and the end of Slaton’s political career. Slaton lived on property adjacent to today’s Atlanta History Center and Slaton Drive (named in his honor). He is buried in Oakland Cemetery.”

References

The 29-page Leo Frank commutation by Governor John M. Slaton http://www.leofrank.org/images/governor-john-slaton-commutation-june-21-1915/

http://www.dailyreportonline.com/

http://atlantajewishtimes.com/2015/04/governor-in-leo-frank-case-to-be-honored/

Jewish Spin and Antigentilism: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7937575

http://www.jta.org/2015/06/17/news-opinion/united-states/auto-draft-106

http://jewishva.org/node/102831

http://georgiahistory.com/georgia-historical-society-to-dedicate-historical-marker-to-governor-john-marshall-slaton/

Temple Kol Emeth, Rabbi Steven Lebow’s ugly lies: http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/26684769/article-John-Slaton—A-Georgia-profile-in-courage

Profiles in Courage: John Slaton (1964): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0679734/mediaindex

Tribute Announced for Governor Who Commuted Leo Frank’s Death Sentence http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202729308620/Tribute-Announced-for-Governor-Who-Commuted-Leo-Franks-Death-Sentence?slreturn=20150523163106

Further Reading About John Slaton’s Obvious Conflict of Interest:

1. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean (1989) New Horizon Press, NJ. pages 287 to 290.

2. The Case of Leo Frank and its Aftermath by Tom Watson Brown, Published at Emory University 1982., page 33.

3. ‘The Frank Case’ by Leonard Dinnerstein page 124 “Some viewed the commutation by [Governor John] Slaton a conflict of interest as Slaton was a law partner of Frank’s lead defense counsel [Luther Rosser].” (the law firm Dinnerstein is referring to is ‘Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips’).

4. The Marietta Daily Journal, Friday, January 20, 1984, Jasper Dorsey “Frank was vigorously defended by eminent counsel, one [Luther Rosser] of whom was a former law partner of the veteran trial judge [Leonard Strickland Roan]. Governor John Slaton who ultimately commuted Frank’s sentence to life, was a law partner of one [of Leo M. Frank’s] defense attorney [Luther Rosser].”

5. Augusta Chronicle-Herald, May 15, 1983, statement by Justice Randall Evans Jr. (see: The Murder of Little Mary Phagan pages 287 to 290)

6. Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court records containing the Leo Frank trial brief of evidence, 1913-14. This record indicates Governor John M. Slaton was committing subordination of perjury at his law office.

7. Steve Oney has said concerning Governor John Slaton’s commutation of his own law firm’s client, Leo Frank “there was a clear and troubling appearance of a conflict of interest”. Governor Slaton was a law partner of Rosser, Frank’s lead defense counsel. (from wikipedia)

Must watch, to see how the Prosecutor Hugh M. Dorsey and Governor John M. Slaton are portrayed by disgusting Hollywood:

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan two Part miniseries NBC 1988. Available on Amazon.com

[Editor’s Note: Over one hundred years of relentless media demoralization efforts, anti-Southern deracination, “us verses them” agitation, and wildly over-the-top anti-Gentilism by the hyper-ethnocentric and well-organized Jewish community against African-American and European-Americans continues unabated with this latest disgusting outrage: the centennial clemency decision honoring with a prominent sign-post historical marker erected for the 60th Governor of Georgia John Marshall Slaton (1866-1955) on June 17, 2015, for his June 21, 1915 commutation of Leo Frank’s June 22, 1915 scheduled capital punishment by way of hanging. After 20 months of appeals by the leading attorneys of our nation to every level of the United States legal system, on April 19th 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States voted unanimously against Leo Frank, rendering its last and final decision upon the case. With all of his state and federal appeals fully exhausted, Leo Frank submitted a request to the prison paroles committee to recommend gubernatorial clemency for his death sentence to life in prison, but it was rejected. Leo Frank’s last hope was his lead trial attorney’s law partner the outgoing Governor John M. Slaton, who was slated to complete his term of office in the last week of June.

Jewish activists and their fellow travelers rarely mention that after Atlanta B’nai B’rith president Leo Max Frank was arrested (Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913, at 11:30 a.m.) as the prime suspect for the rape-strangulation-mutilation of Mary Phagan (a thirteen-year-old working class christian girl who worked at the National Pencil Company) the Governor-Elect John M. Slaton and his law partner Jewish-American Benjamin Z. Phillips (of the well-known Slaton and Phillips legal team) merged with Luther Zeigler Rosser’s law firm, ‘Rosser and Brandon’ (Jewish-American attorney Morris Brandon). Together they formed Georgia’s supreme juggernaut law group of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips on May 1st 1913.

Luther Rosser received an unheard-of $15,000 retainer to represent Leo Frank and defend him at his summer murder trial. $40,000 more from New York City and Chicago was raised for Leo Frank’s defense before his trial began – a gargantuan sum by 1913 standards for a murder case. During Leo Frank’s incarceration at Atlanta’s “Tower” — the city jail — a legal defense fund set up by Herbert Haas (another trial attorney representing Leo Frank) on his behalf. The Leo Frank defense fund eventually raised more than $250,000 for his conviction appeals, an astronomical sum of money in the early twentieth century for any kind of legal case.

Atlanta’s ultra-reform Rabbi Dr. David Marx, clandestinely went beyond the state borders of Georgia to arrange meetings of imploration with Jewish activist leadership of New York and Chicago, for the apparent intention of seeking a broader coalition on behalf of Leo Frank. The efforts of Rabbi Marx ignited a conflagration of solidarity amongst Jewry that would incite the whole nation, Jew and Gentile, in righteous indignation.   When two of the most prominent Jewish American media moguls embraced the case as a personal crusade (advertising magnate Albert Lasker and Adolph Ochs owner of the New York times) the affair that had began as an embarrassing local scandal, was artificially engineered to go viral through widespread nationwide newspaper circulation pathways and radio transmissions. The big lie strategy was employed then as it is now, that if Leo Frank’s supposed “wrongful conviction” was repeated by enough people with academic credentials, newspaper columnists, magazine journalists, book authors and radio announcers, then the masses would eventually believe it as indisputable fact. The Leo Frank case transmogrified into an ugly Jewish-American media war against White Gentile Southerners that ensued with stop-at-nothing vicious attacks and biased reports against the people of Georgia (an onslaught that sadly persists to this day more than a century later with the greatest ferocity). The Leo Frank case has become by defacto a mandatory study subject for future generations of Gentiles because it continues to be a major source of Jewish activist agitation by their civil rights groups, historical organizations and media outlets. Thus by force of Jewry’s transmogrification of this pivotal event in American legal history into an anti-Gentile morality tale, and after a century of indefatigable employment of the Big-Lie strategy in the academy and mainstream media, the case of Leo Frank has become one of the many epicenters of the Jewish culture war against Western Civilization.

Dishonor Celebrated June 2015: June 21, 1915, will forever live in United States legal history as a day of infamy, because when else in the annals of American State jurisprudence has a Governor commuted the death sentence of his own law firm’s client to life in prison after every state and federal court ruled against the convict in question? In this unique example, Leo Frank was convicted of murder and his jury unanimously recommended a punishment of “without mercy” (death by hanging) to the presiding judge Leonard Strickland Roan.  If Judge Roan had any doubts about Leo Frank’s guilt, he could have sentenced him to life in prison or given him a new trial if that would serve the cause of justice. Judge Roan turned down Leo Frank’s petition for a new trial on 107 grounds – that’s not a typo!

It was Slaton’s commutation of Leo Frank’s death sentence to life in prison, which specifically inflamed the people of Georgia and directly lead to Frank’s lynching, not anti-Semitism (If anti-Semitism was the reason Leo Frank was hanged, there were thousands of other Jews in the state of Georgia that would have been much easier targets).  In direct retaliation to this obvious political treachery, 1,200 people protested outside the governor’s mansion and the national guard had to be called to save Slaton from vigilante justice.  Looking back at all the treatments and retellings of this epic saga, 20th and 21st century Frankites (pro Leo Frank activists) rarely discuss Governor Slaton’s betrayal of the Constitution and grotesque conflict of interest involving his wealthy law firm (Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips), especially about the fact that it was the impetus for Leo Frank being abducted and hanging less than two months later on August 17, 1915 at former Sheriff William J. Frey’s farm by some of the leading men of Georgia. The claim that Leo Frank was convicted and hanged because of anti-Semitism is an anti-Gentile, century-old racist hatecrime hoax still perpetuated in the Jewish controlled media today with unyielding bigoted ferocity by Jewish activists and their sycophantic allies.

More than one hundred years later, we continue to pursue justice for Mary Phagan.

We demand the posthumous pardon of Leo Frank be revoked or nullified, whatever it takes, for this centenary racist Jewish mockery to be terminated forever. This is Jewish culture war is not over, and if it requires one hundred years of agitation and activism to get this illegal posthumous pardon overturned, then so be it! Until then, this case is not closed, but re-open. We are calling on the people of Georgia, of every county, to get involved in local politics, work your way up from the ground-up, get a law degree and run for office at the beginning or basic levels of politics to get the experience and build trust needed to climb to higher levels. Every generation we must work towards putting Jew-wise people in every position of political office and power from top to bottom. We must not only un-pardon Leo Frank, but keep that as the status quo for every decade and generation to come.

Jewish Controlled Hollywood 

Dear reader we have embedded the 1964 anti-Gentile propaganda film created by Jewish Hollywood activists called, “Profiles in Courage: John M. Slaton,” for your review 50 years later!

See the Vicious Hatred Against Anti-Gentilism by Hollywood released to the public with ‘Profiles in Courage, John Slaton’ 1964:

Also purchase the murder of little Mary Phagan two part made-for-tv miniseries on Amazon.com or ebay.com (don’t buy new, get a used copy, because they are available through interlibrary loan for free) to see how Hollywood again in 1988 defame, slander and smear Southern Gentiles with a disgusting mockery of legal history. Also read Matthew Bernstein’s Screening a Lynching, (don’t buy new, get a used copy, because they are available through interlibrary loan for free)

Below is an article about the June 2015 honoring of the corrupt politician John M. Slaton. Please read the 1,800-page Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court records to learn more about Slaton’s criminal activity in the Frank-Phagan affair, it will blow your mind! No one has articulated the Leo Frank appeals record from 1913-1915 that have finally been released to the public and are available online at www.LeoFrank.org The Leo Frank Research Library and www.Archive.org The Internet Achive. End of editor’s notes.]

A Lesson for Judges in Memory of the Governor Who Granted Clemency to Leo Frank

Katheryn Hayes Tucker, Daily Report

June 18, 2015

A crowd that included a Georgia Supreme Court justice, an assistant attorney general, a superior court judge and a former governor gathered in the sunshine and 92-degree heat Wednesday to commemorate a plaque at the Atlanta History Center.

It wasn’t so much the simple black-and-white sign that brought them there but the memory of John Marshall Slaton, the lawyer-governor who sacrificed his political career 100 years ago to grant clemency to Leo Frank, widely believed to be wrongly convicted of murder because of anti-Semitism. Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life in prison. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

As Georgia Supreme Court Justice David Nahmias put it in his remarks to the gathering, “In the final blot that the case placed on the history of our state, a mob kidnapped Leo Frank, drove him to Marietta, and lynched him.”

Nahmias continued, “It is altogether right that we still celebrate what Governor Slaton did, because we need to remember those who stood tall in defense of the rule of law, to inspire all of us who need to stand tall when the rule of law is again threatened, as it is in one way or another almost every day. We need to fight for equal justice under the law, even if we do not immediately prevail.

“Governor Slaton is, and should be, a particular inspiration to people like me—judges on the courts of Georgia and on the federal courts—the kind of judges who were unable to protect Leo Frank from the unjust ending that the mob demanded.”

Other speakers included former Gov. Roy Barnes, Cobb County Superior Court Chief Judge Steve Schuster, Assistant Attorney General of Georgia Van Pearlberg and Jerry Klinger, president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. The Georgia Historical Society also supported the project.

The marker stands beside the sidewalk on Slaton Drive near the former governor’s home and between the history center’s Veterans Park on West Paces Ferry Road and the historic Swan House. The inscription includes the governor’s name and lifespan, 1866-1955, followed by this note:

“John Marshall Slaton was born in Meriwether County and graduated from the University of Georgia before practicing law in Atlanta. Slaton served in both houses of the Georgia legislature and two terms as governor (1911-12 and 1913-15). While in office, he modernized Georgia’s tax system and roads. Concerned by the sensationalized atmosphere and circumstantial evidence that led to the notorious 1913 conviction of Jewish businessman Leo Frank in the murder of teenager Mary Phagan, Slaton granted Frank clemency in June 1915. Slaton’s commutation of Frank’s death sentence drew national attention but hostile local backlash resulted in Frank’s lynching in August 1915 and the end of Slaton’s political career. Slaton lived on property adjacent to today’s Atlanta History Center and Slaton Drive (named in his honor). He is buried in Oakland Cemetery.”

References

The 29-page Leo Frank commutation by Governor John M. Slaton http://www.leofrank.org/images/governor-john-slaton-commutation-june-21-1915/

http://www.dailyreportonline.com/

http://atlantajewishtimes.com/2015/04/governor-in-leo-frank-case-to-be-honored/

Jewish Spin and Antigentilism: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7937575

http://www.jta.org/2015/06/17/news-opinion/united-states/auto-draft-106

http://jewishva.org/node/102831

http://georgiahistory.com/georgia-historical-society-to-dedicate-historical-marker-to-governor-john-marshall-slaton/

Temple Kol Emeth, Rabbi Steven Lebow’s ugly lies: http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/26684769/article-John-Slaton—A-Georgia-profile-in-courage

Profiles in Courage: John Slaton (1964): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0679734/mediaindex

Tribute Announced for Governor Who Commuted Leo Frank’s Death Sentence http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202729308620/Tribute-Announced-for-Governor-Who-Commuted-Leo-Franks-Death-Sentence?slreturn=20150523163106

Further Reading:

1. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean (1989) New Horizon Press, NJ. pages 287 to 290. https://archive.org/details/TheMurderOfMaryPhaganByLeoFrankIn1913

2. The Case of Leo Frank and its Aftermath by Tom Watson Brown, Published at Emory University 1982., page 33. https://archive.org/details/NotesOnTheCaseOfLeoMaxFrankAndItsAftermath

3. ‘The Frank Case’ by Leonard Dinnerstein page 124 “Some viewed the commutation by [Governor John] Slaton a conflict of interest as Slaton was a law partner of Frank’s lead defense counsel [Luther Rosser].” (the law firm Dinnerstein is referring to is ‘Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips’).

4. The Marietta Daily Journal, Friday, January 20, 1984, Jasper Dorsey “Frank was vigorously defended by eminent counsel, one [Luther Rosser] of whom was a former law partner of the veteran trial judge [Leonard Strickland Roan]. Governor John Slaton who ultimately commuted Frank’s sentence to life, was a law partner of one [of Leo M. Frank’s] defense attorney [Luther Rosser].” (Sometimes the link doesn’t work, please try reloading it).

5. Augusta Chronicle-Herald, May 15, 1983, statement by Justice Randall Evans Jr. (see: The Murder of Little Mary Phagan pages 287 to 290). The original article is not available from the online Augusta Chronicle at the time of this writing.

6. Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court records containing the Leo Frank trial brief of evidence, 1913-14. This record indicates Governor John M. Slaton was committing the heinous crime subordination of perjury at his law office.
https://archive.org/details/leo-frank-georgia-supreme-court-case-records-1913-1914

7. Steve Oney has said concerning Governor John Slaton’s commutation of his own law firm’s client, Leo Frank “there was a clear and troubling appearance of a conflict of interest”. Governor Slaton was a law partner of Rosser, Frank’s lead defense counsel. (source from wikipedia)

Must watch, to see how the Prosecutor Hugh M. Dorsey and Governor John M. Slaton are portrayed by disgusting Jewish dominated Hollywood:

1. The Murder of Little Mary Phagan two Part miniseries NBC 1988 (don’t buy new, get a used copy, because they are available through interlibrary loan for free)

How Jewish Supremacists Falsify History With Anti-Gentile Naratives:

The People v. Leo Frank by Ben Loeterman (2009)

Leo Frank in the Media over the last 100 years:

Matthew Bernstein’s ‘Screening a Lynching’ (don’t buy new, get a used copy, because they are available through interlibrary loan for free)

Quotes About the Leo Frank Posthumous Pardon Efforts:

Article ‘Augusta Chronicle-Herald, May 15, 1983, statement by Justice Randall Evans Jr.’ cited in the Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean.

Quoting “Judge Randall Evans, Jr., from the Augusta Chronicle-Herald dated May 15, 1983.

In here, Judge Randall Evans, Jr., stated the review of the case and discussed Leo Frank’s appeals to the Supreme Court of Georgia:

Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean pp. 287

. . . The Supreme Court consisted of legendary giants — Justice Lumpkin, Justice Beverly Evans, Justice Fish, Justice Atkinson, Justice Hill, and Justice Beck. That court affirmed the conviction, with Justices Fish and Beck dissenting as to the admission of certain

Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean pp. 288

evidence; but on motion for rehearing by Frank, the entire court unanimously refused to grant the motion for rehearing.

Frank then filed an extraordinary motion for a new trial before Superior Court Judge Hill, which was overruled, and this decision was unanimously affirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia.

On June 6, 1914, Frank filed a motion to set aside the verdict, again before Judge Hill, which motion was denied. And all of the justices concurred in the denial, except Justice Fish, who was absent.

So at this point in time the record shows that two impartial judges of Superior Court in Fulton County, twelve impartial jurors in Fulton County, and six impartial justices of the Supreme Court of Georgia, all held that Leo Frank was legally tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged.

Bear in mind, this was not in a rural county of Georgia where influential politicians are sometimes thought to sway juries, but it was in the most populous county in the South where it was not shown or even suggested that Jews are the objects of bias.

Leo Frank’s race was not an issue in the case during the trial.

But the Jewish community of the entire United States sought to shield Frank by saying he was convicted because he was a Jew! Nothing is further from the truth! Money was raised on the streets of New York and elsewhere in the Jewish community for Leo Frank’s defense; the best lawyers were employed, including the top defense lawyer in Georgia, Reuben Arnold, associated with and aided by Rosser and Brandon, Herbert Haas and Leonard Haas. But the evidence was overwhelming — and it is still so today.

It is interesting to note that Gov. John M. Slaton’s term as governor expired on June 21, 1915.

Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean pp. 289

Frank’s final date for execution was set for the next day, June 22, 1915. On his last day in office, Governor Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment, thereby thwarting and overturning the due process of law as set forth by the Superior Court of Fulton County and the Supreme Court of Georgia. People were so aroused and dumbfounded by this maneuver they went

to the Slaton Mansion. But the Governor called out the National Guard for his protection, and succeeded in escaping. Mobs formed in many other parts of Georgia on learning of the rape of the judicial process by Slaton.

The Jewish community nationwide directed its wrath in large part towards Thomas E. Watson of Thomson, charging that Watson had written incendiary articles in his Jeffersonian, which contributed to Frank’s conviction. They urged that Frank was a victim of racial prejudice and bias towards Jews.

Now comes “newly discovered evidence” which is claimed would have proven Frank innocent. Not so! A year ago the new witness, one Alonzo Mann, was first located, and said that as a young man he saw a Negro with the body of Mary Phagan in the basement of the factory building, and that he had remained silent for around seventy years because he was so young at the time, and he just didn’t know what to do about it. Our State Department of Archives even wrote in one of its publications that this “new evidence” seemed to prove Frank innocent. I wrote the Department of Archives and pointed out that this was not new evidence at all — that during the trial of the case it was plainly proven that Jim Conley took the body to the basement — and the Archives Department replied with an apology and, in effect, said it had goofed. That correspondence is now a part of our Department of Archives.

Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean pp. 290

The suggestion that a governor or Board of Pardons and Paroles may pardon a deceased person is completely ridiculous.

The Constitution of Georgia provides that “the legislative, judicial, and executive powers shall forever remain separate and distinct.” The executive department has no power whatever to reverse, change, or wipe out a decision by the courts, albeit while the prisoner is in life he may be pardoned. But a deceased party can not be a party to legal proceedings (Eubank v. Barber, 115 Ga. App. 217-18). If Leo Frank were still in life, he could apply for pardon, but after death neither he nor any other person may apply for him. As the Supreme Court of Georgia held in Grubb v. Bullock, Governor, 44 Ga. 379: “It [pardon] must be granted the principal upon his application, or be evidenced by ratification of the application by his acceptance of it [the pardon].” Leo Frank’s case was finally terminated absolutely against him by the Supreme Court of Georgia on June 6, 1914. He lived thereafter until August 16, 1915, and never did apply for pardon. It is too late now for any consideration to be given a pardon for Leo Frank. Pardon can only be granted to a person in life, not to a dead person. To illustrate the folly of such proceedings, could someone at this late date apply for a divorce on behalf of Leo Frank?

The blood of a little girl cries out from the ground for justice. I pray the sun will never rise to shine upon that day in Georgia when we shall have so blinded ourselves to the records, to the evidence, to the judgments of the court, and the judgment of the people, as to rub out, change, and reverse the judgment of the courts that has stood for seventy years! God forbid!

End of Quote.

Marietta Daily Journal, Friday January 20th, 1984 by Jasper Dorsey

Page 4A – The Marietta Daily Journal

If Trial Were Today, Frank Would Still Be Found Guilty by Jasper Dorsey, Friday, January 20, 1984.

The Mary Phagan murder case has been in the news for many months since Atlanta lawyers, representing several organizations, applied to the Georgia Board of Pardons an Paroles, requesting a posthumous pardon for Leo Max Frank, the convicted murderer.

The murder took place in Atlanta on Saturday, April 26, 1913. Medical evidence proved Mary Phagan, 13 years old, had been beaten unconscious, bitten, raped in an unnatural way, then strangled by a small cord. Three competitive Atlanta newspapers then — Journal, Georgian an Constitution — gave the murder and trial sensational coverage.

A posthumous pardon is an unprecedented action, especially for someone tried and convicted in 1913. A 70-year-old case cannot really be retried. The petition advanced no significant new evidence. After the trial, efforts of outsiders to re-fight the Civil War was a serious mistake, for it induced feelings of anti-Semitism where none existed. Charges of anti-Semitism and racism raised now, are also counterproductive.

What draws attention is the mob violence after Frank’s death sentence was commuted to life by the governor, and way Frank died. He was lynched. Mob violence and lynching are a disgrace. Lynching is an especially heinous crime. Those actions of 1915 are a disgrace today to our state.

But the trial in 1913 was another matter. Frank was represented by legal giants, had a fair trial, and two years of appeals to the highest state and federal courts said that he did.

Alonzo Mann, then a 14-year-old office boy of two weeks, had been a witness for Frank in 1913. His obviously inspired latter-day testimony, if given full credence would not have changed the trial’s verdict. Only if Frank had dolts for lawyers would they have failed to get the whole story from a 14-year-old before putting him up as a witness.

Frank was vigorously defended by eminent counsel, one of whom was a former law partner of the veteran trial judge [Leonard Strickland Roan].

Governor John Slaton who ultimately commuted Frank’s sentence to life, was a law partner of one defense attorney [Luther Rosser]; Another associate had a cousin on the jury.

There were three motions for new trial before two Superior Court judges, three appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court and two appeals to the U.S. Supreme court; each affirmed the trial court’s decision.

Had there been mob influence or intimidation on the trial judge or jury, the judge or defense counsel would have moved for a change of venue or moved for a mistrial.

The three very competitive Atlanta newspapers of 1913, report no mobs during the trial’s five weeks, according to an expert who researched the newspaper files. Historian Franklin Garrett reports no mobs in his definitive “Atlanta and Environs.”

All jurors signed affidavits that there was no mob influence as did court staff. Even Governor Slaton in his commutation order went to some length to deny that mob influence or anti-Semitism influenced the guilty verdict.

Mob violence began when Frank’s sentence was commuted June 21, 1915. The National Guard had to be called out to protect the Governor, who eventually had to leave the state. Years later he ran for a U.S. Senate seat, failing to carry any of Georgia’s 159 counties. The disgraceful lynching occurred August 17, 1915, an indelible blot on the state’s escutcheon.

There is no way to pardon that terrible event. The Pardons and Paroles Board could consider only the trial. They advised the petitioners that to change the verdict, affirmed many times before the nation’s highest courts, new evidence had to prove Frank’s innocence beyond any doubt. Mann’s new evidence was insignificant if the trial is studied in court records: State vs. Frank, 141 Ga. 243; 142 Ga. 617; 142 Ga. 741; 35 S. Ct. 208.

The evidence there also shows Frank’s religion had nothing to do with his conviction. He would have been convicted had he been a Presbyterian minister. He would also be convicted today.

He had married into a distinguished Atlanta family, whose heartbreak was and still is incalculable. His widow was heroic. Al of his class, Jewish or Gentile, who knew him, had no idea prior to the murder that he was anything like he turned out to be.

-Marietta Daily Journal, Friday, January 20, 1984. Article by Jasper Dorsey.

All independently written articles on the web site turned into Audiobooks.

2016, Centennial Publishing:

The case of Pinkerton Detective Agency verses National Pencil Company, February 1916.
http://www.leofrank.org/trial-and-evidence/pinkerton-detective-agency/

Case Related Newspaper Articles All Transcribed so people can search and mine them for keywords!

1,800 page Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Case Files Transcribed.

2015, Centennial of Leo Frank’s Lynching:

The Coroner’s Inquest Article Updated!

Five Articles by future U.S. Senator Tom Watson for the State of Georgia (1915) Transformed into Audiobook! WoW!

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan Book (1989), Independently Analyzed at the VNN Learning College by Alex Linder.

The first book ever published on the Leo Frank case has been turned into a 6 hour audiobook published on Leo Frank’s 131st birthday, April 17, 2015.
http://www.leofrank.org/extremely-rare-leo-frank-case-book-written-in-1913-transformed-into-audiobook/

Tom Watson published 5 major articles about the Frank-Phagan Affair in his Watson’s Jeffersonian Magazine in January, March, August, September and October 1915 that are at their centennial being converted to audiobooks and published free online.

2013, Centennial of Mary Phagan’s Rape and Strangulation by Leo Frank:

April 26, 2013, the three Competing Atlanta Newspapers are published online in PDF from April to August, 1913:

1. The Atlanta Constitution Newspaper from 1913 to 1915. http://archive.org/details/LeoFrankCaseInTheAtlantaConstitutionNewspaper1913To1915

2. The Atlanta Georgian newspaper covering the Leo Frank Case from April though August, 1913. http://archive.org/details/AtlantaGeorgianNewspaperAprilToAugust1913

3. The Atlanta Journal Newspaper, April, 28, 1913, through till the end of August, 1913, pertaining to the Leo Frank Case: http://archive.org/details/AtlantaJournalApril281913toAugust311913

In these three newspapers be sure to read the testimony during the Coroner’s Inquest and pay special attention to the Leo Frank Trial Transcript, and 4 days of Closing Arguments from July 28, 1913 to August 25th, 1913.

News articles from the Alonzo “Lonnie” Mann Hoax, were added to: http://www.leofrank.org/images/alonzo-mann-newspaper/. Learn about how Alonzo Mann sold his soul to the Jewish supremacist hate mongers who used it to further their culture and genetic war against Americans and Western Civilization.

http://www.leofrank.org/alonzo-mann/.

Elusive Legal Records Suppressed for One Century Uncovered:

The online ‘Internet Archive’ version of Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913. Brief of Evidence 1913

The Jeffersonian Newspaper, 1914 through 1917 specifically about the Leo Frank Case: http://leofrank.org/images/jeffersonian/

Dr. Edward R. Fields’ Analysis February, 1961:

Dr. Edward R. Fields wrote his take on the case in The Thunderbolt magazine in February 1961. He takes the side against Frank as you will clearly see by reading it. The booklet is clearly biased for the prosecution and is provided here for historical archive reasons. In terms of fact accuracy and logical reasoning it gets 3+ stars out of 5 stars.

Download: Dr. Fields’ Analysis in Adobe PDF format.

Dr. Edward Fields visited Mary Phagan’s grave on April 26, 2013, to commemorate the centennial of her murder. He placed flowers at her grave.

Instauration, June, 1986:

http://www.instaurationonline.com/ The disingenuous romanticizing and idealizing of the Jewish pedophile Leo Frank, written by one of the most prolific writers of the traditionalist American views. See the June 1986 issue.
Download: http://www.leofrank.info/library/instauration-1986-06-june-part-1.pdf

Tom E. Watson Archive (try searching on individual and various keyword combinations: leo frank, “leo frank”, luther rosser, john slaton, mary phagan etc…)

The Tom E. Watson Digital Papers (recommended) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/watson/

Testimony of Jim Conley: http://www.leofrank.org/jim-conley-august-4-5-6/

One of the most accurate accounts of the Mary Phagan murder mystery:

‘The Murder of Little Mary Phagan’ by Mary Phagan Kean.

Arguably the most even handed book on the Leo M. Frank Case, the book titled, ‘The Murder of Little Mary Phagan’ was written on behalf of Mary Anne Phagan (1899 to 1913), by her namesake and great-grand-niece, Mary Phagan Kean and published in 1987. The book makes the best attempt of all the books on the subject to provide a fair and balanced overview of what really happened, against the tide of numerous contemporary writers who mostly take the side of Leo Frank and claim he was railroaded, framed and scapegoated in a vast Anti-Jewish conspiracy.

If you are looking for a neutral account of the Leo M. Frank trial and aftermath, without taking sides, you will definitely want to read ‘The Murder of Little Mary Phagan’ by Mary Phagan Kean. The book The Murder of Little Mary Phagan by Mary Phagan Kean available on Amazon.com and Archive.org is 204 pages and 4.7MB.

To read or write reviews of this book, you may also visit Amazon and ‘The Internet Archive‘: ‘The Murder of Little Mary Phagan’ By Mary Phagan Kean

Five booklets, published as articles on the Leo M. Frank Case by Tom Watson.

Tom Watson, populist libertarian politician, writer, activist and seasoned lawyer.

Firebrand Tom Watson, a citizen of the State of Georgia, produced through his ‘Jeffersonian Publishing Company’ a monthly magazine called, ‘Watson’s Magazine’ and a newspaper titled, ‘The Jeffersonian’. Watson often criticized what he perceived as a corrupt and Internationalist Catholic Church, and during the tail end of the Leo Frank court appeals process, he unleashed ferociously sarcastic, devilishly witty and venomously energetic article booklets articulating Leo Frank’s guilt and condemning the Jewish Community and Frank partisans, generally known as Frankites, for waging a successful national media smear campaign against the State of Georgia and precipitating a letter writing campaigns across the northern and western states that resulted in an avalanche of support on behalf of Leo Frank drowning Governor John Marshal Slaton office with over 100,000 letters.

The Primary Southern Perception about the National “Jewish” War Waged Against the State of Georgia in 1914, and 1915.

Watson stepped into the media and social-political arena in 1914, taking very distinct and personal interest in Leo Frank’s case after what was widely perceived and condemned amongst Southerners and particularly the people of Atlanta and Marietta, as a national (and perhaps international because of rallies held in European Cities) media defamation war lead by the well organized and highly racially conscious Jewish community waged against the State of Georgia.

Watson Articulates the Prosecution Position

Tom Watson’s writings on the Leo M. Frank Case tended to exquisitely articulate the prosecution side of the case (arguably better than the state’s prosecution team), including zooming in and expanding on the most damaging evidence presented at the trial. The reaction by Southerners after reading Watson’s five collective works (Watson’s Magazine, Jan, March, August, Sept and October 1915) tended to inflame an already great inferno of rage and indignation felt by the good people of Georgia and the South.

The perception Southerners had, before Watson published his five major works on the Leo Frank case, was they were being hounded by an outsider and National Jewish controlled press. Watson claimed Southerners for the first time experienced the new found power of the united Jewsmedia, which was smearing Georgians as small-minded and hidebound xenophobic cave dwellers, savages that would stop at nothing to quench their blood thirst. Once the commutation order was published by the office of Governor John M. Slaton after June 21st 1915, the people accused their Governor of being a toady manipulated by Jewish and moneybag meddlers, who undermined the Justice System of Georgia.

According to the Jewish Community, Watson Inspired the Lynching of Leo Frank

With strong reason, the Jewish community and many of Frank’s partisans would respond by accusing Watson of stirring up an Anti-Semitic climate of race hatred and inspiring the extra-judicial lynching of Leo Frank. Moreover, after the lynching, Watson continued to publish superb and commanding articulations of the Leo M. Frank trial, which were so well received by the citizens of Georgia, that observers might argue, made it impossible to convict any members of the lynch party, that is if their names had ever be made public at the time. However, it could also be equally argued that even if Watson, had not made comprehensible and definitive articulations of Frank’s guilt in his post lynching publications, that the mood of the people would still have made it impossible to convict Frank’s vigilante assassins. Though it is safe to say that the majority of the public had already made up their minds about Frank’s guilt by the time 1915 rolled around, Watson can be said to have mainly provided articulation of the great masses of Georgia that had full belief in Leo Frank’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Watson poured literary gasoline on that fiery precipitous of rage the people of Georgia experienced witnessing for the first time in any individual U.S. state, the vicious fist of Jewish Media Control seizing power over popular opinion in the United States of America (See: Watson’s Magazine, October, 1915). Since 1913, Jewish media control has slowly transformed the U.S. from a free Western superpower nation into an androgynous Jewish multicultural empire and police state nightmare in terminal decline towards civil war and eventual break-up.

Watson’s Magazine September and October, 1915

Watson offers his best legal analysis on the Leo M. Frank Case in his September and October 1915 issues of Watson’s Magazine. The arguments made against Leo M. Frank published in the September 1915 issue of Watson’s Magazine are possibly or arguably better than the actual arguments given by Prosecutor Hugh M. Dorsey and Mr. Hooper during the final August days of the Leo M. Frank Trial. Those who take the side of the prosecution might also claim there has yet to be a better articulation of Leo Frank’s guilt, than Watson’s August, Sept and Oct of 1915 publications. For the Jewish Community, Watson’s August, September and October 1915 publications would stand as the apogee of Anti-Semitism concerning the Leo Frank Case.

Prosecution Team vs. Tom Watson

For those familiar with the facts and evidence in the Leo M. Frank Case, one should read and review the Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey and Argument of Mr. Hooper comparing them with Watson’s September 1915 “Jew Pervert” booklet / article. Which particular ones tend to provide superior arguments using the murder trial testimony captured in the Brief of Evidence (1913).

Slaton on the Charge of Anti-Semitism

Though taking the side of Leo Frank, Governor John M. Slaton, would tend to corroborate Watson and the concerns of Southerners, by writing in his commutation order, that the charges of race hatred and injustice against the State of Georgia were unfair and that the people making such false accusations never actually read the official record or understood the facts in the Leo M. Frank case.

Ironically

Watson was approached at one unnamed point early in the Mary Phagan murder investigation to join the prosecution team and ironically enough, it is said that Watson was before that, originally approached by an unnamed party who offered him $5,000 to defend Leo M. Frank and join the Frank Legal Defense Team. Watson refused both offers, but his writing in 1914 and 1915, clearly indicates his position on the case. For those who are aficionados of exploring the time-web, it would have been truly fascinating beyond words to have read Watson’s arguments on behalf of Leo Frank had he accepted the five grand and joined the defense team. Watson’s closing arguments would have been equally delicious, if not more so if he had joined the State’s prosecution team.

Read these Five Watson’s Magazine in Order, 1915:

1 Star. The Leo Frank Case By Tom Watson (January 1915) Watson’s Magazine Volume 20 No. 3. See page 139 for the Leo Frank Case. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: January 1915 in Adobe PDF format. Watson introduces the Frank case in this edition. In terms of it’s logical arguments and reasoning it gets 2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars.

2 Stars. The Full Review of the Leo Frank Case By Tom Watson (March 1915) Volume 20. No. 5. See page 235 for ‘A Full Review of the Leo Frank Case’. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: March 1915 in Adobe PDF format. Here Watson goes into much further detail on the Frank case. In terms of it’s logical arguments and reasoning it gets 2.5 to 3 out of 5 stars.

3 Stars. 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. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: August 1915 in Adobe PDF format. Watson calls the Frank trial the “celebrated case.” In terms of it’s logical arguments and reasoning it gets 4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars.

4 Stars. The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert By Tom Watson (September 1915) Volume 21. No. 5. See page 251 for ‘The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert’. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: September 1915 in Adobe PDF format. Showing his true colors, Watson dubs Frank a “Jew pervert.” In terms of it’s logical arguments and reasoning it gets 5 out of 5 stars.

5 Stars. The Rich Jews Indict a State! The Whole South Traduced in the Matter of Leo Frank By Tom Watson (October 1915) Volume 21. No. 6. See page 301. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: October 1915. Watson criticizes the “rich Jews” that indict the State of Georgia. In terms of it’s logical arguments and reasoning it gets 4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Read and compare Watson’s August, Sept and Oct 1915 publications on Leo M. Frank.

American State Trials by John D. Lawson

A 1918 Primary Source emerged about the Leo M. Frank case produced by John D. Lawson, it provides an extensively abridged version of the Official Record in the 1913 Leo M. Frank trial. It is worth reading and comparing it directly with the testimony provided within the unabridged 1913 Official Record / Brief of Evidence. You can see what Lawson left out in terms of evidence and testimony, which is very interesting. Be sure to read the closing arguments of Luther Rosser, Reuben Arnold, Mr. Frank Hooper and Hugh M. Dorsey. These closing arguments are rarely given the lengthy and indepth analysis they deserve.

Compare American State Trials Volume X with the Official Brief of Evidence in the 1913 Leo M. Frank trial, both are available here.

A journal of major U.S. court cases, this one included much about Leo Frank. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: American State Trials 1918, Volume X.

The [Leo] Frank Case: The First Neutral Book Published About the Leo M. Frank Case in 1913

A book published shortly after the conviction of Leo M. Frank that goes into some very interesting depths on some subjects. Highly recommended, albeit the fact that this rare original book used for the scan shows the decades of exposure to air and use. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: The Frank Case.

Agrarian Rebel: The Biography of Tom Watson

Tom Watson, writer, lawyer and former U.S. Senator and House of Representatives member from the State of Georgia. Read the 1938 Biography, ‘Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel’. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: Agrarian Rebel the Biography of Tom Watson from www.Archive.org.

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

Instauration, June, 1986, is an addition to the Leo Frank library and archive. Instauration represents the right winger view on the Leo Frank pardon, which is an opinion shared by many people.

The Jeffersonian Newspaper on Leo M. Frank, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917 (80% complete): http://www.leofrank.org/images/jeffersonian/

Library of Congress “Chronicling America” Leo Frank newspaper Search

Be sure to read the Brief of Evidence, before reviewing these other works for the best understanding of the differing opinions on the Leo M. Frank Case.

Trial Testimony of Jim Conley: http://www.leofrank.org/jim-conley-august-4-5-6/

Required Reading, Leo Frank Documents (in PDF): http://www.leofrank.info/library/

Read the 1,800 Page Georgia Supreme Court Archive on the Leo Frank Case:

Leo Frank Appeals Georgia Supreme Court Complete Record (1,800+ pages). http://archive.org/details/leo-frank-georgia-supreme-court-case-records-1913-1914

Last Updated: April 26, 2013, Word Count 2476