Arrested as Girl’s Slayer

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Photograph of Mary Phagan showing her in street dress. [The almost fourteen-year-old girl was found slain in the dingy basement of her work establishment, beaten and strangled to death. — Ed.]

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

JOHN M. GANT [sic] ACCUSED OF THE CRIME; FORMER BOOKKEEPER TAKEN BY POLICE

Atlanta Georgian

Monday, April 28th, 1913

J. M. Gant [sic], arrested in Marietta for the murder of Mary Phagan, gave to a reporter for The Georgian his story of his actions that led to his arrest. He protested his innocence, and declared he was home in bed at the time the crime is supposed to have been committed.

In striking contradiction to this statement is the assertion of Mrs. F. C. Terrell, of 284 East Linden Street, where Gant said he slept Saturday night, that she had not seen Gant in three weeks.

“I watched the Memorial Day parade in Atlanta,” said Gant, as he sat in the Marietta police station, “and after the parade was mostly over I went out to the ball game. After the game I remembered that I had left some old shoes at the pencil factory, and decided to go over and get them. I went over there at 6 o’clock and Superintendent Frank let me in.

“He told the negro watchman to help me find my shoes, and both of them saw me get them and also saw me leave the building.

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Police Question Factory Superintendent

Police Question Factory Superintendent

Another in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

STRAND OF HAIR CLEW IN KILLING OF PHAGAN GIRL

Atlanta Georgian

Monday, April 28th, 1913

Body of Mary Phagan Is Found in Basement of Old Granite Hotel in Forsyth Street—Mute Evidence of Terrible Battle Victim Made for Life

WHITE YOUTH AND NEGRO ARE HELD BY THE POLICE

After Being Beaten Into Insensibility Child Was Strangled and Dragged With Cord Back and Forth Across Floor—Incoherent Notes a Clew.

Leo M. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil Company plant, in which Mary Phagan was employed, was taken to police court this morning by Detective Black to tell what he knows in connection with the girl’s death. The police say he is not under arrest.

At the same time Geron Bailey, the negro elevator boy employed in the factory, was arrested. One theory names Bailey as the man to whom the incoherent letters apply that were found by the side of the dead girl, and that evidently were written in an effort to describe her assailant.

Policemen Mack, Phillips and Starnes went to the factory this morning upon the statement that blood and matted hair, evidence of a terrible struggle had been found on the third floor of the factory. It was on this visit that they summoned Frank and arrested Bailey.

They conducted a minute investigation of the signs of the struggle of the third floor, going so far as to tear up several sections of the plank flooring in their inspection.

A new and terrifying turn was given the gruesome Mary Phagan strangling mystery to-day when strands of blood-matted hair were found in a lathing machine on the third floor of the National Pencil Company’s factory, 37-39 South Forsyth Street. Continue Reading →

Pinkertons Take Up Hunt for Slayer

Pinkertons Take Up Hunt for SlayerAnother in our series of new transcriptions of contemporary articles on the Leo Frank case.

Atlanta Georgian

Monday, April 28th, 1913

Investigate Story of Wife of Employee That She Saw Strange Negro Around Factory.

The Pinkerton Detective Agency was brought into the Phagan murder mystery this afternoon when Leo Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil Company’s factory, called upon the local representatives and engaged their services.

The operatives went to work at once, following out clews already obtained and developing new ones. Their attention was called to the story of Mrs. Arthur White, wife of one of the employees of the factory, who went to the factory to see her husband Saturday. She noticed a strange negro hanging about the elevator and remarked about the circumstance to her husband later.

When she heard of the murder of the Phagan girl she recalled seeing the negro loafing about the building. The man she saw was tall and thin, answering the description given in the incoherent notes that were found by the body of the dead girl.

Mrs. White will be taken to the station to look at Geron Bailey, the negro elevator man and fireman, who is being held in connection with the case.

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Atlanta Georgian, April 28th 1913, “Pinkertons Take Up Hunt for Slayer,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

Announcement: Original 1913 Newspaper Transcriptions of Mary Phagan Murder Exclusive to LeoFrank.org! (now LeoFrank.info)

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EXCLUSIVE to LeoFrank.org [url now changed to Leofrank.info], original and careful transcriptions of articles from the three major Atlanta newspapers in 1913, concerning the murder case of Mary Phagan, will be appearing periodically on this website. Thanks to complete transcription and hand re-typing, readers can now peruse and search the newspapers of the day (Atlanta GeorgianAtlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution) in improved clarity and from home, as well as in a more consolidated format. In the past, low quality PDF scans had to be read in their entirety to locate a single fact or word of interest. Before the PDFs, researchers would have to travel to a distant research library to examine the fragile originals. In addition to the text, every relevant photograph is included.

From the front page headlines two days after the murder, the suspicion and arrest of Leo Frank, the coroner’s inquest questions-and-answers sessions to the trial jury’s verdict, now, for the first time, the newspaper coverage of the entire case is readily available for researchers and the public to access at their convenience!

New Audio Book: The Murder of Little Mary Phagan

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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.

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The Murder of Andrei Yushchinsky

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A notable aspect about the murder trial of Menachem Mendel Beilis is that it has amazing parallels with the Leo Frank trial, both of which took place in 1913

THIS NEW book is an English translation of G.G. Zamyslovsky’s book Ubiystvo Andryushi Yushchinskago, published in Russia in 1917. It is about the trial of Menachem Mendel Beilis (pictured), who was charged with the ritual murder of Andrei Yushchinsky, a 13-year-old boy, committed in Kiev in an occult rite with other fanatics.

On March 12, 1911, in Kiev, then part of Russia, on the grounds of a brick factory owned by a Jewish merchant named Zaitsev was found the body of a brutally murdered — and almost completely bloodless — 13-year-old student of the Kyiv-Sophia Religious School, Andrey Yushchinsky. On the teenager’s body the forensic doctors counted 50 stab wounds. Officials assigned to the case, including Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov, believed that the child had been ritually murdered by Beilis.

This was one of the most high-profile cases in pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia. Like the Leo Frank case, wealthy Jews and press barons gave it worldwide publicity, characterizing the prosecution of Beilis as a case of “anti-Semitism.”

product_thumbnailGeorgy Georgiyevich Zamyslovsky was a well-respected member of the Russian State Duma (analogous to the Senate in the U.S.), and also an attorney. He served as a civil prosecutor (or “civil plaintiff”) in this case. Zamyslovsky has done us a great service by reproducing sections from the authentic transcript and even documents of the pre-trial investigation (testimonials, on-site examinations, etc.), items that have long disappeared into the Bolshevik tophet (a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem where Semites were believed to have conducted human sacrifices). For example, Pranaitis’ opinion was taken from his pre-trial testimony, not from the testimony he gave in court. This book was ordered destroyed by the Bolsheviks and is extremely rare.

Beilis was defended by a powerful legal team. Despite the investigators’ and prosecutors’ strong belief in his guilt, Beilis was acquitted (so much for those evil “anti-Semitic” Russians and Ukrainians!). He died in 1934 in New York. He is buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, the same cemetery where convicted Jewish sex killer Leo Frank — also tried in 1913 — is buried. There are two other amazing parallels between the Beilis and Frank trials, too: Frank’s victim, Mary Phagan, was, like young Andrey Yushchinsky, also 13 years old — the exact age at which the Jewish religion teaches that childhood ends and adulthood begins — and Beilis, like Frank, was also a factory superintendent.

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Source: JRBooksOnline

30 Years Later: The No-Pardon Pardon of Leo Frank

frank_Atlanta_Journal_Apr_29_1913Today, March 11, 2016, is the 30th anniversary of the granting of a limited pardon to Leo Frank.

by John Pierson and Vanessa Neubauer

IN 1983 — 70 years after the conviction of sex killer and Atlanta B’nai B’rith president Leo Max Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan — lawyers associated with the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Atlanta Jewish Federation and the American Jewish Committee tried to obtain a pardon for Frank. (ILLUSTRATION: Leo Frank gives a big smile for the camera just two days after the murder of Mary Phagan. The snapshot was published the next day, April 29, 1913 on the cover of the Atlanta Journal. It was taken at a time when it was widely believed that a Black man, Newt Lee, would be charged with the crime.)

The ADL based their claims almost entirely on the 1982 affidavit of Frank’s office boy, Alonzo Mann, who took 69 years to reverse his trial testimony. Mann, elderly and with mounting medical bills, created a media sensation when he averred — contrary to what he had testified in 1913 — that he had seen another man (Frank’s janitor and accessory after the fact Jim Conley) carrying Mary Phagan’s body on the day of her murder.

Tremendous pressure was placed on the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to exonerate Frank and issue him a pardon. But the Jewish groups’ efforts failed. The Board ruled that Alonzo Mann’s new affidavit added nothing of substance to the evidence and did not at all, despite Mann’s opinion to the contrary, prove that Frank was innocent. It only proved that Conley may have carried Mary’s body by a different route than the one to which he had admitted in 1913. (Even the prosecution stated — as did Conley himself — that Conley had moved the body.) The pardon request was rejected and Frank’s conviction was affirmed and upheld. Continue Reading →