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

Atlanta Constitution
August 23rd, 1913

In a quiet yet concentrated tone Attorney Luther Zeigler Rosser, Friday morning at 9 o’clock made the final plea of the defense for the life of Leo Frank.

The beginning of the speech was impressive, it was almost whispered at times, but the voice that delivered it rose above the maze of ozonators and electric fans, and seemed to carry a body message about it. The life of a man was at stake and the message, pleading for his life, was opened almost as a prayer—the subject being fate.

Later on, Mr. Rosser was more vigorous in his methods; he branched from the quiet even tones, and dealt with the ugly features of the case; he told a fib so risqué that probably no other lawyer in the state would have told it in the courtroom, and he talked in plain words of plain facts.

“‘Gentlemen of the jury, all things come to an end,’ he began in a quiet voice, and he leaned over the railing of the jury box and seemed not to address one, but all of the jurors.”

“With the end of this case has almost come the end of the speakers and but for that masterly effort of my brother Arnold, I almost wish it had ended with no speaking. My condition issues that I can say but little; my voice is husky and my throat almost gone.

“But for my interest in this case and my profound conviction of the innocence of this man, I would not undertake to speak at all.”

“I want to repeat what my friend, Arnold, said so simply. He said this jury is no mob. The attitude of the juror’s mind is not that of the mind of the man who carelessly walks the streets. My friend, Hooper, must have brought that doctrine with him when he came to Atlanta.”

“I want to repeat what my friend, Arnold, said so simply. He said this jury is no mob. The attitude of the Jurors mind is not that of the mind of the man who carelessly walks the streets. My friend, Hooper, must have brought that doctrine with him when he came to Atlanta.”

“We walk the street carelessly and we meet our friends and do not recognize them; we are too much absorbed in our own interests. Our minds wander in flights of fancy or in fits of reverence; we may mean no harm to ourselves, nor to our friends, but we are careless. No oath binds us when we walk the streets.”

Defines Duty of Jury.

“Men, you are different, you are set aside; you ceased when you took your juror’s oath to be one of the rollicking men of the streets, you were purged by your oath.”

“In old pagan Rome the women laughed and chattered on the streets as they went to and fro, but there were a few – the Vestal Virgins – they cared not for the strife of the day.”

“So it is with you men, set apart; you care not for the chatter and laughter of the rabble; you are unprejudiced and it is your duty to pass man’s life with no passion and no cruelty, but as men purged by an oath from the careless people of the streets. You are to decide from the evidence, with no fear of a hostile mob and no thought of favor to anyone.”

“What suggesting comes into a man’s mind when he thinks of a crime like this? And what crime could be more horrible than this one? What punishment too great for the brute in human form who committed it and who excited this community to a high pitch?”

Mr. Rosser then launched forth into a description of the horrible crime perpetrated in the factory basement and of the sweet young girl.

He was still talking in the quiet, clear tones he started out with.

“Since 1908 the National Pencil factory has employed hundreds of girls and women and also of men, and not all of the girls and women, not all of the men have been perfect.” he continued, “but you can find good men and women in all strata of life, and yet the detectives, working with microscopes and with the aid of my friend, Dorsey, excited almost beyond peradventure, found only two to wear against Frank.”

Decries Dalton and Conley.

“They found Dalton and they found Jim Conley. Well, I’ll take up Conley at a more fitting time, but Dalton, who is Dalton?”

“God Almighty writes on a man’s face and he don’t always write a pretty hand, but he writes a legible one. When you see Dalton you put your hand on your pocketbook.”

“When Dalton took the stand Mr. Arnold and I had never had the pleasure of seeing his sweet countenance before, but Mr. Arnold leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘There’s a thief if there ever was one.’”

“I smelt about him the odor of the chain-gang and I began to feel him out. I asked him if he had ever been away from home for any length of time, and he knew at once what I meant and he began to dodge and to wriggle, and before he left the stand I was sure he was a thief.”

“Dalton was on, three times in Walton county and then in another county where he probably went to escape further trouble in Walton, he got into trouble again. It wasn’t just the going wrong of a young man who falls once and tries to gel over it, but it was the steady thievery of a man at heart a thief.”

“Of course, Dalton comes here to Atlanta and reforms. Yes, he joined a Godly congregation and persuaded them that he had quit his evil ways. That’s an old trick of thieves and they use it to help their trade along.”

“I believe in the divine power of regeneration; I believe that you can reform, that there’s always line to turn back and do right, but there’s one kind of man who I don’t believe can ever reform. Once a thief, always a thief.”

“Our Master knew it; He recognized the qualities of a thief; You remember when they crucified Him and He hung on the cross there on the hill. Well, He had a thief hanging beside Him and He said to that thief, ‘This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.’”

“He didn’t dare say ‘tomorrow;’ He knew He’d better say ‘today’, because by tomorrow that thief would be stealing again In Jerusalem.”

Dalton a Disgrace to His Race.

“Dalton disgraced the name of his race and he was a thief and worse, it there can be, and yet he joined the church. He joined the church and he’s now a decent, believable man. Well, you remember how brazenly he sat here on the stand and bragged of his ‘peach;’ how indecently he bragged of his fall; how he gloated over his vice.”

“He was asked if he ever went to that miserable, dirty factory basement with a woman for immoral purposes and he was proud to say that he had.”

“Gentlemen, it was the first time Dalton had ever been in the limelight. It was the first time decent, respectable white men and women had ever listened to him with respect, let alone attention.”

“When he was asked about that, if he was guilty, if he had fallen, he might have declined to answer, might have hung his head in shame, as any decent, respectable man would have done, but instead, he bragged and boasted of it.”

“When Conley was asked what sort of a woman, Frank had so brazenly and braggingly said he did not know, that he himself had such a peach there that he could not take his eyes off her to look at Frank’s woman.”

“Well, you have seen Dalton’s peach; you all have seen Daisy.”

Conley’s Story Different.

“Conley tells a different story. He says Frank took the peach (that lemon) for himself and that Dalton had to get him another woman.”

When Mr. Rosser referred to Hopkins as “that lemon” he made a face that caused even the tired jurors to smile and that almost convulsed the court room.

“I’m not saying that we are all freedom of passion, that we are all moral and perfect, but at least the decent man don’t brag of having a peach.”

“Well, if you believe Dalton’s story, and let’s presume it true now. If you believe it, he went into that scuttle hole there at the factory with Daisy.”

“Dalton took that woman into the factory, into a dirty, nasty, fetid hole where no decent dog or cat would go and there he satisfied his passion. That’s what he told us.”

“Well, I thought I’d heard of partisanship before I came here. I thought I knew what the world meant, but I didn’t. I never did until the solicitor whose sworn duty it is to protect the innocent as well as to punish the guilty, was checked in this court and then told the judge, ‘I’ll go as far as you’ll let me.’

“I guess only the Infinite checked him outside of the court and as for these detectives here; well, I guess the infinite had to stretch a little bit when they got going good.”

“Well, Dalton told us he went there about 2 o’clock one Saturday afternoon last year and of course, at that time the Clarke Wooden Ware company occupied the lower floor and used the same entrance that the National Pencil company did, and Frank was at lunch and knew nothing of Dalton’s visit.”

“Of course Dalton left an oogy trail behind him; wherever he went he did that. You can so feel it in this court room.”

Raps Four Detectives.

“Of course, too, Dalton may have gone into the pencil factory that day and left his oozy, slimy trail there, but otherwise there’s nothing against the factory, and you know there’s not, for our great quartet—Starnes and Campbell and Black (Oh, how I have Black. I always want to put my arms around him whenever I think of him) and Scott, for he was with that crowd; they tried their very best to find something that would show that factory up as a vile hole.”

“Well, there’s another reason that proves conclusively that it was not the assignation place Dalton and Conley name it.”

“It has always been wrong for men and women to commit fornication and adultery, but it’s always been done and the world, as long as It was done decently and quietly and not bragged about and blazoned forth in public places, has rather allowed it to go unchecked, but it’s not so now.”

“My good friend, Beavers, has written a new Decalogue”.

“The reason is that the ‘immoral’ squad? —oh, is that it? Is it the ‘immoral’ squad? or what is it? Oh, I know, the ‘vice squad,’ that’s it. I nearly called those dear men immoral, didn’t I? Well, the vice squad has searched the town and they’ve dug into this hole and that and they’ve uncovered many a haunt and hiding place until they’ve run out every lascivious woman in town.”

“You reckon Schiff and Darley and Quinn would be out of jail now if that place was what they claim it was, if it was a house of ill fame?”

Mr. Rosser here entered into a eulogy of the character, life and morals of N. V. Darley, Herbert G. Schiff, Lemmie Quinn and Wade Campbell, all employees of the factory and associates of Frank.

Defends Factory Conditions.

“I’ve got a better reason than any I’ve yet told, for declaring that conditions were decent at the factory. You know, I know the working people of this state and this city. I’ve always worked with my head and it’s never been my good fortune to be one of the working people, but there are no silken ladies in my ancestry, nor are there any dudish men.”

“I know the working men and the working women, because that blood runs in my veins, and if any man in Atlanta knows them I do, and I tell you that there are no 100 working girls and women in Atlanta who could be got together by raking with a fine-tooth comb who’d stay there at that factory with conditions bad as they have been painted, and there are no 100 working men here so thin blooded as to allow such conditions there.”

Mr. Rosser here turned his attention to a discussion of Frank’s statement to the jury, and declared that it was Frank’s handiwork only, and that neither he nor Mr. Arnold knew what Frank was going to say when he got on the stand.

“Look at the statement this man made to you, and it wins his statement, not mine. I can prove that by the simple reason that I haven’t got brains enough to have made it up, and Mr. Arnold (though he’s got far more brains than me), he could not have made it. Mr. Arnold might have given it the same weight and thickness, but not the living ring of truth.”

Frank’s Character.

“Now another thing, We didn’t have to put Frank’s character up, If we hadn’t the judge would have told you Frank must be presumed to have a good character and that you did not have the right to ask that question about him, but we thought you were and we put it up and see what a character the man has.”

“There’s not a man in the sound of my voice who could prove a better character. Of course, I mean from the credible evidence,” not that stuff of Conley’s and Dalton’s.”

“But you say, some people, some former employees swore he had a bad character. Well, I’ll tell you about that later.”

“You know that when you want to you can always get someone to swear against anybody’s character. Put me in his place and let my friend, Arnold, be foolish enough to put my character up and there’d be plenty of those I have maybe hurt or offended as I have gone through life, who’d swear it was wrong and I believe I’ve got an ordinarily good character.”

“Why you could bring twenty men here in Fulton county to swear that Judge Roan, there on the bench, has a bad character. You Know that he’s had to judge men and sometimes to be what they thought was severe on them, and he’s naturally made men hate him and they’d gladly come and swear his character away.”

“But if the men and women who live near him, the good and decent men and women, who live near him and knew, came up and said his character was good, you’d believe them, wouldn’t you?”

Misguided Little Girls.

“Well, gentlemen, the older I get the gentler I get and I wouldn’t think or say anything wrong about those misleading little girls who swore Frank was a bad man. I guess they thought they were telling the truth.”

“Well, did Miss Myrtis Griffin really think Frank a vicious man and yet work there three years with him? Don’t think she heard things confuse him after the crime was committed and that when she got up there and looked through the heated atmosphere of this trial she did not see the real truth?”

“And Miss Maggie Griffin, she was there two months, I wonder what she could know about Frank in that time.”

“There was Miss Dunnagin and Miss Johnson and another girl there about two months, and Nellie Potts, who never worked there at all, and Mary Wallace, there three days, and Estelle Wallace, there a week and Carrie Smith, who like Miss Cato worked there three years.”

“These are the only ones in the hundreds who have worked there since 1908 who will say that Frank has a bad character. Why you could find more people to say that the Bishop of Atlanta, I believe, had a bad character than have been brought against Frank.”

“Well, you noticed they were not able to get any men to come from the factory and swear against Frank. Men are harder to wheedle than are Iittle girls.”

“Does anybody doubt that if that factory had been the bed of vice, that they call it, that the long-legged Gantt would have known of it? They had Gantt on the stand twice, and well, you know Gantt was discharged from the factory, of course you weren’t told why in plain words, but you all know why. Well, Frank is not like by Gantt and Gantt would have loved to tell something against his former employer, but he couldn’t?

Sums Up Character Charges.

“If they have any further suspicions against this man, they haven’t given them, either because they are afraid or are unable to prove their suspicions, if they have such suspicions, though, and are doing you a worse injustice.”

“What are these suspicions that they have advanced thus far?”

“First, Miss Robinson is said to have said that she saw Frank touching Mary Phagan how to work. Dorsey reached for it on the instant, scenting something improper as is quite characteristic of him. But Miss Robinson denies it. There’s nothing in it, absolutely nothing.”

“Then they say he called her ‘Mary.’ Well what about it? What If he did? We all have bad memories. If you met me on the street six months ago, can you recall right now whether you called me Luther or Rosser?”

“The next is Wille Turner—poor little Wille! I have nothing against Willie. He seems to be a right clever sort of a boy. But just think of the methods the detectives used against him—think of the way they handled him, and think of the way Dorsey treated him on the witness stand. He says—Willie does—that he saw Frank talking to Mary Phagan in the metal room. What does it show if he did such a scenario?”

“I can’t see for the life of me where it indicates any sign of lascivious lust.” 

Incident Was Public.

“Does what Willie Turner saw, taking for granted he saw it, show that Frank was planning to ruin little Mary Phagan? Does it uphold this plot my friend Hooper had so much to say about?”

“Even with that—considering Wille Turner did see such a thing, there’s one fact that takes the sting out of it. He saw it in broad daylight, Frank was with the little girl right in front of Lemmie Quinn’s office in an open factory, where there were a lot of people and where the girls were quitting their work and getting ready to go home to dinner.”

“It wasn’t so, though, and Frank never made any improper advances to this little girl. Let me tell you why, Mary Phagan was a good girl, as pure as God makes them and as innocent. She was all that, and more. But, she would have known a lascivious advance or an ogling eye, the minute she saw it, and the minute this man made any sort of a move to her, she would have fled instantly to home, to tell this good father and mother of hers.”

“Then next, they bring Dewie Hewell, who says she saw Frank with his hand on Mary’s shoulder. That’s all right, but there is Grace Hix and Helen Ferguson and Magnolia Kennedy who contradict her and say Frank never knew Mary Phagan. You can say all you please about such as that, but there is one fact that stands out indisputable. If that little girl had ever received mistreatment at the pencil factory, no deer would have bounded more quickly from the brush at the bay of dogs, than she would have fled home to tell her father and mother.” 

Laughs at Hooper’s “Plot”.

“Now, my friend Hooper from the Wiregrass says Gantt was a victim of this plot by Leo Frank against Mary Phagan. I don’t doubt that this ‘plot’ has been framed in the sound of my voice. Hooper says Frank plotted to get the girl there on the Saturday she was killed—says he plotted with Jim Conley. Jim says Frank told him at 4 o’clock Friday afternoon, to return on the next morning. How could Frank have known she was coming back Saturday. He couldn’t have known. He’s no seer, no mind-reader, although he’s a mighty bright man.”

“It is true that some of the pay envelopes were left over on Friday, but he didn’t know whose they were. Helen Ferguson says that on Friday she asked for Mary Phagan’s pay and that Frank refused to give it to her, saying Mary would come next day and get it herself. Magnolia Kennedy swears to the contrary. You have one or the other to believe.”  

“Consider, though, that this be true! How would Frank know who would be in the factory when Mary Phagan came? How did he know she was coming Saturday? Some envelopes went over to Monday and Tuesday. How would he know whether she would come on Saturday or either of these latter days?”

“Now, what else have they put up against this man?”

Says Nervousness Was Natural.

“They say he was nervous. We admit he was. Black says it. Darley says it. Sig Montag says it—others say it! The handsome Mr. Darley was nervous and our friend Schiff was nervous. Why not hang them if you’re hanging men for nervousness! Isaac Haas—old man Isaac— openly admits he was nervous. The girls—why don’t you hang them, these sweet little girls in the factory—all of whom were so nervous, they couldn’t work on the following day?”

“If you had seen this little child, crushed, mangled, mutilated, with the sawdust crumbled in her eyes and her tongue protruding, staring up from that stinking, smelling basement, you’d have been nervous, too, every mother’s son of you. Gentlemen, I don’t profess to be chicken-hearted. I can see grown men hurt and suffering and I can stand a lot of things without growing hysterical, but l never walked along the street and heard the pitiful cry of a girl or woman without becoming nervous. God grant I will always be so.”

“Frank looked at the mangled form and crushed virginity of Mary Phagan and his nerves fluttered. Hang him! Hang him!”

Other Suspicious Circumstances.

“Another suspicious circumstance. He didn’t wake up when they telephoned him that morning the body was found. That might depend on what he ate that night; it might depend on a lot of other things. Some of us wake with the birds, while others slumber even through the tempting call of the breakfast bell. Would you hang us for that?”

“Then, they say he hired a lawyer and they call it suspicious—mighty suspicious. They wouldn’t have kicked at it if he had hired Rube Arnold, because Rube has a good character. But they hired me and they kicked and yelled ‘suspicious’ so loudly you could hear all the way from here to Jessup’s cut.”   

“I don’t know that I had ever met Frank before that morning, but I had represented the pencil factory, previously. And as to their employing me, it’s this way:

“There’s no telling what was floating around in John Black’s head that morning. They sent men after Frank and there was no telling what was likely to happen to him. They were forced to do something in his own defense.  And, as a result, the slate’s worst suspicion is the fact that they employed me and Herbert Haas.”

“Now, gentlemen, let’s see what there is in it: I have told you that twice on that Sunday, he had been to police headquarters without counsel, without friends. The next day they adopted new methods of getting him there and sent two detectives for him. John Black had said he had been watching Frank, and woe to him who is haunted by the eagle eye of dear old John.”

Takes Shot at Chiefs.

“They took him to police station Monday—took him I say. The police idea was to show their fangs. He was under arrest, that’s an undisputed fact. they had him at police station, Chief Lanford, in his wanted dignity, sitting around doing nothing, letting Frank soak. Beavers, the handsome one, was doing the same.”

“Frank didn’t call for friends or lawyer. He didn’t call for anything. If he had known what he was up against, though, in this police department of ours, he’d probably have called for two lawyers—or even more.”

“But old man Sig Montag, who has been here a long time, knew this old police crowd and he knew their tactics. He was well on to their curves. He knew what danger there was to Frank. He called up Haas. Haas didn’t want to come to the police station—he had a good reason.”

“Sig went to police station and was refused permission to see Frank. Now, I want you to getl that in your mind. A citizen—not under arrest, as they say— held without the privilege of seeing friends, relatives or counsel. It was a deplorable state of affairs. What happened?”

“Haas went to the phone and called an older and more experienced head to battle with this police iniquity. Why shouldn’t he? Dorsey sees in this harmless message a chance. He snaps at it like a snake. Dorsey Is a good man—in his way. He’ll be a better man, though, when he gets older and loses some of his present spirit and venom.”

“There are things he has done in this trial that will never be done again. Gentlemen, I assure you of that.”

Why Detectives Were Employed.

“Did Frank do anything else suspicious? – Yes! Two others, according to Hooper from the Wiregrass. One of which was the employment of a detective agency to ferret out this horrific murder that had been committed in his factory building. Why? Under what circumstances?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“Frank bad been to police station and had given his statement. Haas was the man who telephoned me and who employed me—not Frank. I went lo police headquarters and was very much unwelcomed. There was a frigid atmosphere as I walked in. I saw Frank for the first time in my life. I said: ‘What’s the matter, boys?’. Somebody answered that Mr. frank was under arrest. Black was there, Lanford was there. Neither took the pains to deny that he was under arrest.”

“Somebody said they wanted Mr. Frank to make a statement, and I advised him to go ahead and make It. When he went into the office, I followed. They said: ’We don’t want you’. I replied that whether they wanted me or not, I was coming, anyhow. I had a good reason, too, for coming. I wanted to hear what he said so they couldn’t distort his words.”

“While we were in the room a peculiar thing happened. Frank exposed his person. There were no marks. It said that it was preposterous to think that a man could, commit such a crime and not bear some marks. Lanford’s face fell.”

“Why didn’t Lanford get on the stand and deny it? Was it because he didn’t want to get into a loving conflict with me? Or did he want to keep from re-opening the dark and nasty history of the Conley story and the Minola McKnight story that are hidden in the still darker recesses of police headquarters?”

“Frank makes his statement and is released. He goes back to the pencil factory, assuming that suspicion has been diverted from him. He thinks of the horrible murder that has been committed in his plant. He telephones Sig Montag about hiring a detective agency to solve the crime. Sig advises him to do it.”

A Horrible Situation.

I don’t believe there is any detective living who can consort with crooks and criminals and felons, scheme with them, mingle with them and spy on the homes of good people and bad who can then exalt his character as a result. He absorbs some of the atmosphere and the traits. It is logical that he should. But, even at that they’ve got some good men in the detective and police department.

“Old man Sig Montag said hire a detective and Frank hired the Pinkertons. Harry Scott came and took Frank’s statement and said:

“’‘We work in co-operation with the city police department.’”

“Now, isn’t that a horrible situation—going hand in glove with the police department? But, it’s a fact. Just as soon as Scott left Frank, he walked down, arm in arm with John Black, to the nasty, smelly basement of the pencil factory.”

“What did that mean?”

“It meant a complete line-up with the police. It meant if the police turn you loose, I turn you loose. If the police hang you, I hang you!”

Gentlemen, take a look at this spectacle, if you can.”

“Here is a Jewish boy from the north. He Is unacquainted with the south. He came here alone and without friends and he stood alone. This murder happened in his place of business. He told the Pinkertons to find the man, trusting to them entirely, no matter where or what they found might strike. He is defenseless and helpless. He knows his innocence and is willing to find the murderer.”

“They try to place the murder on him. God all merciful and all powerful, look upon an scene like this!”

“Anything else? Yes. Look at this.”

Time Slip Incident.

“I do not believe my friend who preceded me intended to do this.”

“I refer to the incident about the time slip. I have to use harsh words here, but I don’t want to. This seems to me the most unkindest cut of all. They say that that time slip was planted. They say the shirt was planted.”

“Gentlemen, is there any evidence of this? Let’s see about this statement.”

“Black and somebody else. I believe, went out to Newt Lee’s house on Tuesday morning and found the shirt planted.”

“In the bottom of a barrel. They brought the shirt back to the police station and Newt said the shirt was his.”

Dorsey objected to this, claiming that the evidence was not that Newt said the shirt was his.

“Oh, well,” continued Rosser, “It is the evidence, but we’ll take his view of it. He says that it looked like Newt’s shirt. Newt Lee had been hired at the factory but three weeks, yet they want you to believe that they found a shirt like the old man had and went out to his house and put it in a barrel.”

“One thing is wrong. The newspapers and others. I am afraid, think this is a contest between lawyers. It is not. God forbid that I should let any such thing enter into this case when this boy’s life is at stake.”

Things Hard to Understand.

“There are several things I don’t understand about this case, and never will.”

“Why old man Lee didn’t find the body sooner; why he found it lying on its face; how he saw it from a place he could not have seen it from.”

“I was raised with niggers and know something about them. I do not know them as well as the police, perhaps, for they know them like no one else. But I know something about them.”

“There must have been a nigger in the crime who knew, about it before Newt Lee or anyone else. I am afraid Newt knew. Yet, if he did, he is one of the most remarkable niggers I ever saw and I wish I had his nerve. There were things you did to him (referring to the detectives) for which you will never be forgiven. You persecuted the old nigger and all you got was ‘Fo’ God I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe he killed her, but I believe he knows more than he told.”

“The first things he said was about Gantt. He knew Gantt and believed he was there to do him dirt.”

Why Frank Jumped.

“But they say now that he jumped back. Suppose he did jump back. Look at the boy (Luther Rosser is referring to Frank.) If you put a girl the size of Mary Phagan in a room with him, she could make him jump out of the window.”

Here Rosser entered into a long eulogy on Frank and the Jewish people. Then he continued:

“Suddenly this boy stepped out in front of this giant of a Gantt, and he jumped back. Dorsey would have done the same thing; Newt Lee would; Jim Conley would, and I would, as big as I am.”

“Here is another suspicious thing. Newt Lee came to the factory at 4 o’clock, and Frank sent the old man away. It was suggested that he was afraid the nigger would find the body, yet when he came back at 6 o’clock, Frank let him stay at the factory, when he knew that in 30 minutes, if Newt was on the Job he must go into the basement where they say Frank knew the body was.”

“They say he was laughing at his home. If he had known of the crime of which he would be accused, that laugh would have been the laugh of a maniac to be ended by the discovery of the body.”

“Another suspicious thing. You Know that he was in the factory, but it turns out that he was not the only one. If the corpse was found in the basement and he was the only one in the building, then there might be some basis. But he was in an open room and there were workmen upstairs.”

“My little friend tried to dispute that. That wasn’t all. Conley was also there, and it came out yesterday that there was also another nigger — A lighter nigger than Conley—there. What scoundrels in white skin were in the building and had opportunity to commit the crime, God only knows.”

Conley of Lowest Type.

“The thing that arises in this case to fatigue my indignation is that men born of such parents should believe the statement of Conley against the statement of Frank.

Who is Conley? Who was Conley as he used to be and as you have seen him? He was a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger. Black knows that. Starnes knows that. Chief Beavers knows it.

“Black got all bailed up in his statement. Scott meant to tell the truth. He might find a flea if he had a spy glass.”

“I asked Scott if this nigger looked like this when they got him. He said, “No.”

“’You slicked him up, did you?’ I asked.”

“He said they did.”

“Who was it that made this dirty nigger come up here looking as slick as an onion. Why didn’t they lot see him as he was?”

“I don’t suppose Dorsey meant to be this thing unless he got green-eyed and forgot his raisin. They shaved him, washed him and dressed him up.”

“The only evidence you have, gentlemen, is the word of this Conley.”

A Terrible Accusation.

“Gentlemen of the jury.” said Attorney Rosser slipping his nose glasses on as the jury came in from the noon recess and took their seats in the box, “Gentlemen of the jury, the charge of moral perversion against a man is a terrible thing for him, but it is even more when that man has a wife and mother to be affected by it.”

“Dalton, even Dalton, did not say this against Frank. It was just ConIey. Dalton, you remember, did not even say that Frank was guilty of wrong-doing as far as he knew. There never was any proof of Frank’s alleged moral perversion, unless you call Jim Conley proof.”

Couldn’t Find Witnesses.

“None of these niggers ever came up and said Conley was there and that they were with him. Starnes— and Starnes could find a needle in a haystack, but the Lord only knows what he’d do in an acre—he could not find any of these niggers.”

“Conley says he played games of dice down there and Conley, oh, he calls himself not ‘Jim,’ as you’d expect the ignorant negro to do, but he calls himself ‘James’ and he never ‘shot craps, played games of dice.’

“In Conley’s old time days, I guess he was ‘Jim’ Conley and ‘shot craps.’ Oh, the day when some sinister man showed him better than that.”

“Well, it does look like some nigger would have come up and told that he saw James on Peters street that day or that he played games of dice with James in some drinking place. It looks like the detectives could have got them, you know, if there is anything an Atlanta detective does know, it’s a Peters street negro.”

“Well, there was ‘Snowball,’ poor ‘Snowball’; you reckon he (pointing to Frank), made the detectives suspect ‘Snowball’?

“They don’t have to be made to suspect anybody or anything, as Charlie Hill said one time when he was solicitor, the Atlanta police are worse than a horsefly.”

“Well, I don’t guess anybody suspected ‘Snowball’; he didn’t work there, they brought him from foreign parts so to speak. Snowball says Conley lied about Frank’s telling him when he heard it, to watch for him, and ‘Snowball’s’ just a plain African and if he could have pleased the police, he would have done it.”

He Would “Join” or Leave Town.

“If I was a nigger,” continued the speaker in an impressive town, “I’d join the police or I’d leave town.”

“Well, I’m sorry for ‘Snowball;’ he’ll melt under the wrath of Black and Starnes and Campbell.”

“Then there was that old negro drayman, old McCrary, that old peg-legged negro drayman, and thank God he was an old-timer, ‘fo’ de war nigger. You know Conley, wishing to add a few finishing trimmings to his lines, said that old McCrary sent him down In the basement that Saturday morning and when the old darky was put on the stand he said simply, “No, boss, I never sent him down thar.”

“Well, everywhere you go you find that Conley lied. He says he watched there one Saturday last year between 2 and 3 o’clock. Well, Schiff says he didn’t and so does Darley and Holloway, the latter guaranteed by the state, and the little office boys, nice looking little chaps from nice families, they all say he didn’t. Cut out Conley and you strip the case to nothing.”

“Did you hear the way Conley told his story? Have you ever heard his story? Have you ever heard an actor, who knew his Shakespearean plays, his ‘Merchant of Venice’ or his ‘Hamlet’. He can wake up at any time of the night and say those lines, but he can’t say any lines of a play he’s never learned.”

“So it was with Conley. He could tell the story of the disposition of the girl’s body and he knew it so well he could reel it, off backward or forward, any old way, but when you got to asking him about other things, he always had one phase, ‘Boss, Ah can’t ‘member dat.’’”

Intimates Story Was Fixed Up.

“They say Conley could not have made up that story. Well, I don’t know about that. There is something queer in the whole thing, you know.”

“I couldn’t climb that post over there, gentlemen, I mean I couldn’t go very far up it, but If I had Professor Starnes, and Professor Black, and Professor Campbell and Professor Rosser. and then Dean Lanford to help me, I’d go quite a way up.”

“Ah, there’s the ‘dean’ now: school will begin,” said Rosser, pointing to where he had just noticed Detective Chief Newport Lanford, who had quietly entered the courtroom a few moments previously.”     

“Well, they took a notion Mrs. White had seen the negro and they carried Mrs. White there to see him and he twisted up his features so that she couldn’t recognize him.”

Says Detectives Cursed Conley.

“Next, they learned Conley could write, Frank told them that, you know. Well, I don’t mean to be severe, but they took that negro and they gave him the ‘third degree.’ I’d hate to get the ‘fourth degree.’”

“Black and Scott, they cursed him, ‘You black scoundrel, they yelled at him, ‘you know that man never had you come there and write those notes on Friday!’”

“And the poor nigger, understanding and trying to please, said, ‘Yes, boss, dat’s right, ah was dere on Saturday.’”

“And so they went on and got first one affidavit and then another out of him. Well, Scott and Black had him then, and Conley was only in high school. I don’t know whether to call Scott and Black ‘professors’ or not.”

“Scott says, ‘We told him what would fit and what would not.’ And it was ‘Stand up, James Conley and recite; when did you fix those notes, James?’ and James would answer that he fixed them on Friday, and then the teachers would tell James he was surely wrong; that he must have fixed them on Saturday, and James would know what was wanted and would acknowledge his error. Then it would be, ‘That’s a good lesson, James; you are excused, James.’”

“Now, I’m not guessing in this thing; Scott told it on the stand, only, in not so plain words. So it was that when this negro had told the whole truth that they had another recitation.”

The Finishing Touches.

“Was it fair for two skilled white men to train that negro by the hour and by the day and to teach him and then get a statement from him and call it the truth?”

“Well, Professors Black and Scott finished with him, and they thought “Conley’s education was through, but that nigger had to have a university course!”

“Scott,” Mr. Rosser shouted, “you and Black milked him dry, you thought you did, anyhow, but you got no moral perversion and no watching. In the university they gave a slightly different course. It was given by Professors Starnes and Campbell (oh, I wish I could look as pious as Starnes does) and Professor Dorsey helped out, I suppose. I don’t know what Professor Dorsey did, only he gave him several lessons and they must have been just sort of finishing touches before he got his degree.

“Well, in the university course they didn’t dare put the steps In writing, as they had done in the high school, it would have been too easy to trace from step to step, the suggestions made, the additions and subtractions here and there.”

“Prof.” Dorsey’s Innings.

“Well, Professor Dorsey had him seven times, I know that, but God alone knows how many times the detectives had him. Was it fair to take this weak, pliable negro and have these white men teach him one after another? Who knows what is the final story that Conley will tell? He added the mesh bag when he was on the stand.”

“I don’t care about that row between the doctors and that was the funniest thing that ever came into a courtroom; they will have their little rows and let’s forget it.”

“Dr. Harris, he thought he was telling the truth about the time the little girl died, and he’s a clever boy. His father admitted me to the bar. I guess that’s about all the old man wasn’t proud of.”

“Well, then, there’s another thing; who ever heard of a normal stomach, like these experts talk of? No two people in this room have normal stomachs and none here have some sort of defect. You might as well ask us to have perfect noses and cite mine as the perfect one.”

Frank Not Guilty Man.

“Well, let Harris have his little theory and let him hang on to it. And rub it, if he wants to, like a boy rubs his pet cat. I don’t care if the little girl died in a half hour or three quarters of an hour after she ate. The thing is, this man didn’t kill her.”

Here Mr. Rosser look up the chart and from it argued that Mary Phagan had reached the factory at approximately twelve minutes after 12 o’clock and that it must have been after Monteen Stover had gone. To prove this he cited the statements of W.M. Mathews and W.T. Hollis, street car men called by the defense, and George Eps, the little newsie, called by the state, and also the street car schedule.”

“But,” said he, “supposing that she was there at 12:05, as I believe the state claims, then  Monteen Stover must have seen her. I don’t see how they could have helped meeting. But suppose she got there a moment after Monteen Stover left, then Lemmie Quinn was there at 12:20 and he found Frank at work.”

Could Frank have murdered a girl and hid her body and then got back to work with no blood stains on him in less than fifteen minutes?”

“If Frank is guilty, he must have, according to Conley, disposed of the body in the time between four minutes to 1 and 1:30. There can be no dispute about this; it’s Conley’s last revelation.”

“If Frank is guilty he was at his office between four minutes to 1 and 1:30, but who believes that story?”

“Little Miss Kern saw him at Alabama and Whitehall at 1:10, and 1:20. Mrs. Levy, honest woman that she is, saw him get off the car at his home corner, and his wife’s parents saw, and they all swear he was there at 1:20, and then if you are going to call them all perjurers and believe Jim Conley, think what you must do, think what a horrible thing you must do—you must make Minola’s husband a perjurer, and that would be terrible.”

The Blackest of All.

“You know about that Minola McKnight affair. It Is the Blackest of all. A negro woman locked up from the solicitor’s office, not because she would talk—she’s given a statement—but because she would not talk to suit Starnes and Campbell, and two white men, and shame to them, got her into it.”           

“Where was Chief Beavers? What was he doing that he became a party to this crime? Beavers, who would enforce the law; Beavers, the immaculate!”

“Starnes said he had to confer with Mr. Dorsey twice before he could get the woman out of the station house.”

 “Believe Frank was in the factory if you can at 1:30; throw aside all the respectable people and swear by Conley. Well, I know the American jury is supreme, that it is the sovereign over lives; that sometimes you can sway it by passion and prejudice, but you can’t make it believe anything like this.”

“Neither prejudice, nor passion, wrought by monsters so vile they ought not to be in the courtroom, could make thew believe it.”

“Well, there’s another point, they said that there was a certain man, named Mincey, whom we called as a witness but did not use. Well, the only use we would have had for Mincey was to contradict Conley, and as soon as Conley got on the stand he contradicted himself enough without our having to go to the trouble of calling on witnesses to do it. If we’d put Mincey up there, would have been a day’s row about his probity and what would have been the use—Conley said time and again that he had lied time and again.”

Wants Only The Truth.

“Gentlemen,” continued Mr. Rosser, “I want only the straight truth here, and I’ve yet to believe that the truth has to be watered and cultivated by these detectives and by seven visits of the solicitor general. I don’t believe any man, no matter what his race, ought to be strict under such testimony. if I was raising sheep and feared for my lambs, I might hang a yellow dog on it. I might do it in the daytime, but when things got quiet at night and I got to thinking I’d be ashamed of myself.”

“You have been overly kind to me, gentlemen. True you have been up against a situation like that old Sol Russell used to describe when he would say, “Well I’ve lectured off and on for forty years, and the benches always stuck it out, but they was screwed to the floor.” You gentlemen have been practically in that fix, but I feel, nevertheless, that you have been peculiarly kind, and I thank you.” 

Here Mr. Rosser ended his five hour speech.

* * *

Atlanta Constitution, August 23rd 1913, “Rosser Makes Great Speech for the Defense; Scores Detectives and Criticizes the Solicitor,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Constitution
August 22nd, 1913

LAWYERS’ BATTLE WILL END TODAY AND JUDGE WILL CHARGE THE JURY

In First Speech for State on Wednesday Morning, Frank Hooper Scored General Conditions at National Pencil Factory, Terming Leo Frank, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Explaining How Easy It Was for People Who Saw Only One Side of Him to Imagine Him a Paragon of Virtue.

REUBEN ARNOLD BRANDS JIM CONLEY MURDERER OF LITTLE PHAGAN GIRL

Attorney for Defense Dwells on Horror of Convicting Man Upon Purely Circumstantial Evidence, and Cites Many Instances Where Such Action Has Resulted in Great Injustice to the Accused. Scores Detective Department Unmercifully and Charges They Concocted Story Which Conley Told on Stand.

Unless all calculations are upset the Frank case should be ready to go to the jury tonight, provided Judge Roan does not decide to postpone his charge until Saturday morning — in which event the case will reach the Jury during the forenoon Saturday.

After that time, it is all a matter of speculation as to the time the verdict will be returned. It may be returned turned in a few moments after the jury retires; again, it may be hours or days. The general opinion is, however, that Frank will know his fate some time Saturday.

Frank Hooper Opens for State.

Thursday, saw the beginning of the big battle of the lawyers to persuade the jury, from the evidence introduced, of the guilt or innocence for the prisoner. […]

LAWYERS’ BATTLE WILL END TODAY

Frank Hooper, who has been assisting Solicitor Hugh Dorsey, opened for the state shortly after court convened at 9 o’clock. He spoke for over two hours, and in conclusion read from many authorities, law governing the application of circumstantial evidence.

Mr. Hooper’s speech was a calm, dispassionate appeal to the reason of the jury. He prefaced his remarks by stating that the state was not seeking a verdict of guilty unless the defendant was in truth guilty. The state, he said, was merely seeking to find and punish the murderer.

He touched on general conditions at the pencil factory, and said as a citizen of Atlanta he was by no means proud. He pictured the place as a moral eyesore and in passing referred to Darley and Schiff and Frank as being responsible for the existence of these conditions.

Of Frank’s character he said:

“You have heard the testimony of girls who still work there and they say it is good. You have also heard the testimony of women and girls who formerly worked there, and they say it is bad.”

He referred to Leo Frank as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and explained how easy it was for people who saw only one side of him to imagine him a paragon of the virtues. He told of what he termed the man’s persistent pursuit of Mary Phagan. He spoke of the discharge of Gantt, the only man who knew Mary Phagan at all well, and said this was significant of the man’s designs on the girl.

Fight of Rosser and Negro.

Coming down to the negro Conley, he said it was only truth that had held him in the stand for three days against the hammering of the mighty Luther Rosser. He took up the negro’s version in detail and plausible and how it was plausible and how it was impossible for the negro to have committed the crime without Frank having known something about it. He touched on all phases of the case and in particular paid his respects to the Pinkertons and the bloody club and the pay envelope found in the factory. These, he said, were planted.

Mr. Hooper made a favorable impression on the crowd and had his facts well in hand.

Rube Arnold’s Long Speech.

Reuben Arnold began speaking at 7 minutes to 12 o’clock and spoke until 12:30 o’clock, when a recess was taken until 2 o’clock. From that time on he spoke until a quarter to 6 o’clock, or over four hours and a half in all.

His speech was one of the most wonderful efforts ever delivered in the south. Beginning in a quiet, conversational tone of voice, Mr. Arnold dwelt on the horror of convicting a man on purely circumstantial evidence. He referred to the Durant case in San Francisco, the Hampton case in England, and the Dreyfus case in France as instances where men had been done an awful injustice on circumstantial or perjured evidence.

He spoke at some length of the feeling against Frank because he is a Jew, and said that the spirit of the mob who would convict and hang him simply because he was a Jew was no worse than that of the murderer who had killed little Mary Phagan.

He ridiculed the idea of the state that Leo Frank laid a plot to get Mary Phagan to the building on Saturday and commit a crime. He said Frank had no way of knowing that Mary Phagan would not draw her pay on Friday and would be at the pencil factory on Saturday. He said the murder of Little Mary Phagan was the unreasoning crime of a negro.

He ridiculed the whole theory that the murder was committed on the second floor, and advanced the idea that Conley had killed the child on the first floor and thrown her body down the elevator shaft.

He scored the detective department unmercifully and charged they had concocted the story for Conley to tell. They would have fixed the crime on Newt Lee If the negro had been of the pliant kind who could have been used.

He described the finding of the bloody shirt at Lee’s house as a “plant.”

Solicitor Dorsey was criticized for having joined in with the detectives in the hunt for the murderer. He had been over zealous, he said, and could not view the case dispassionately.

He poked all manner of fun at Conley’s statement, and declared the idea of Frank taking an ignorant negro into his confidence was preposterous. The negro was simply Iying to save his neck, he said. Toward the conclusion of his speech he introduced a chart giving the time of Frank’s movements on the day of the murder. He concluded by saying the case was made up of two P’s—perjury and prejudice.

The courtroom was crowded from 9 o’clock until adjournment hour. Many ladles — friends of Mrs. Frank — were in the audience.

Luther Rosser will begin speaking at 9 o’clock this morning. Hugh Dorsey will conclude for the state at the afternoon session.

* * *

Atlanta Constitution, August 22nd 1913, “Frank Case May Go to Jury Late This Afternoon,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Journal
August 10^th, 1913

After Two Weeks of Testimony Only Evidence Directly Linking Frank With the Crime is the Sensational Statement Made on the Stand by Negro Sweeper-Summary of Developments in Trial to Date

STATE HAS INTRODUCED 34 WITNESSES, DEFENSE 10

A Synopsis of the Evidence Presented by Both Sides Shows Just What the State Has Sought to Prove and How the Defense Has Begun to Fight to Convince Jury of Frank’s Innocence

For two long and tedious weeks Leo M. Frank, indicted for the murder of Mary Phagan, has been on trial for his life. During those two weeks forty-eight witnesses have testified, innumerable exhibits, documents, books, diagrams, photographs and illustrative contrivances have been displayed to the jury.

Only the remarkable story of James Conley, the negro sweeper, directly connects the defendant with the crime, and even in this ingenious narrative the negro did not say that he actually saw Frank do the deed.

Time and again while under the merciless gruelling of Attorneys Rosser and Arnold, Conley frankly and complacently confessed that he had lied and lied frequently in his many statements and affidavits to the detectives. However, he clung fast to his story as related upon the witness stand Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday. He had every circumstance and feature of this story clear in his mind and not once during the sixteen and a half hours that he was in the witness chair did he admit that any portion of it was false — notwithstanding the terrific bombardment of questions hurled at him on cross-examination by Attorney Rosser.

He would not attempt to explain apparent inconsistencies in his last and final testimony, but contented himself with asserting that he had told the whole truth.

There can be no doubt that Conley’s story made a profound impression even upon those who believe he is lying to save his own neck, and who are convinced that he was enabled to piece together a plausible narrative because the detectives in the continual sweating administered to the negro pointed out the flaws in his original stories.

But the question which present itself most persistently is: “Could this illiterate negro have conceived and fitted together such a set of detailed circumstances without some foundation in fact?”
The verdict in the Frank case without doubt depends on just how much credence the jury places in Conley’s testimony and how it regards the circumstantial evidence which the state has introduced to corroborate it.

ENTER MANY OBJECTIONS.

The defense is evidently playing for position in the event the jury returns a verdict against Frank. Both Attorneys Rosser and Arnold have daily entered many objections and taken many exceptions which they asked to be noted in the record. This is understood to mean that they are paving the way for an application to the supreme court for a new trial in case the verdict is adverse to their client.

With its thirty-four witnesses, the state, through Solicitor Dorsey and Attorney Hooper, sought to show:

That Mary Phagan met her death in the metal room on the second floor of the pencil factory between 12:30 and 1 o’clock on April 26. That she went to the factory between 12:05 and 12:10 o’clock.

That she was struck on the head and rendered unconscious and that she was then strangled with a twine cord.

That Frank was the last person who saw the girl alive.

That he was out of his office between 12:05 and 12:10, after Mary Phagan called.

That she was heard to scream after she went up to the second floor of the factory.

That she was done some kind of external violence a few minutes before death.

That Frank called the negro Conley upstairs to help him get the body into the basement.

That when he went home to luncheon he did not eat anything and remained in the house but a few minutes.

That he was very nervous on the day after the murder when he was brought to the factory by the detectives.

That he refused to look upon the dead girl’s face when taken to the undertaking establishment.

That he is guilty of perversion. The state took nine days in which to […]

FIGHT FOR FRANK’S LIFE WILL CENTER AROUND STORY OF JIM CONLEY

[…] present its evidence. The defense has been offering evidence but three days and has introduced but fourteen witnesses, three of them having been witnesses for the state.

Just what is the theory of the defense as to the time and manner of the murder has not yet been disclosed. So far the defense has been content to confuse and cast doubt upon the evidence offered by the state.

THE EXPERT TESTIMONY.

Dr. H. F. Harris, secretary of the state board of health and a physician and chemist of high standing, testifying for the state said that he had made a careful examination of the dead girl’s boy and that he was satisfied beyond doubt that she had first been struck upon the back of the head and rendered unconscious and that later she was strangled to death.

Dr. Harris was positive that the girl died within a half or three-quarters of an hour after she ate the cabbage and bread which her mother swore she had eaten about 11:45. He based his opinion upon the undigested cabbage which he found in her stomach. Dr. Harris also testified that the girl had without doubt been done some violence a few minutes before death. This he had determined by the condition of the blood vessels.

DR. CHILDS DISAGREES.

The defense put up Dr. Leroy Childs, a well known physician and surgeon to rebut Dr. Harris’ testimony. Dr. Childs had not examined the Phagan girl’s body but from the evidence given by both Dr. Harris and Dr. J. W. Hurt, the coroner’s physician, he was confident that it would have been impossible to tell just how long after she had eaten the cabbage that the murder occurred. He declared that cabbage was one of the most indigestible of vegetables and often remained in the stomach for hours before being digested.

Dr. Childs expressed the opinion that death could have been produced by the blow on the head, but from the information furnished him he was inclined to the belief that she died from strangulation. He declared that the dilated and ruptured blood vessels could have resulted from natural causes and not necessarily from external violence.

George Epps, a newsboy, testifying for the state, swore that he rode into the city with Mary Phagan on the day of the murder and that she left the car at Forsyth and Marietta streets at about 12 o’clock, going across the viaduct to the factory.

By W. M. Matthews and W. T. Hollis, motorman and conductor on the car, the defense showed that Mary Phagan boarded the car alone, rode into the city alone and left the car at Broad and Hunter street at 12:10.

E. F. Holloway, the day watchman at the factory swore that he had timed himself to see how long it would take him to walk to the pencil factory from Broad and Hunter streets and from Forsyth and Marietta streets. He said that in the former instance, it required two and a half to three minutes and in the latter, seven minutes.

WHEN SHE ARRIVED.

If the testimony of the conductor, motorman and Holloway is be to considered and that of George Epps thrown aside then Mary Phagan did not reach the factory until 12:13. On the other hand, if the testimony of Epps and Holloway is to be credited she arrived there before 12:10.

Neither of these calculations fits in with the testimony of Monteen Stover, the witness for the state who swears she went to the factory at 12:05 and left at 12:10, that she saw no one while there and that she went to the office door and looked in to see if Frank was there but that he was not. Conley swore that Miss Stover followed Mary Phagan upstairs.

By N. V. Darley, general manager of the factory, Herbert Schiff, assistant superintendent, Holloway, the day watchman and others, the defense brought out that while at work Frank was accustomed to keep the big safe in the outer room open and that when it was open the door shut off the view into the inner office and that a person no taller than Miss Stover would find it impossible to see over the safe door even if she tiptoed.

Conley was the only witness to testify that the girl screamed. He said he heard the scream very shortly after she went upstairs and after he heard the sound of footsteps going back toward the metal room. Several detectives, policemen and officials at the factory swore that Frank was very nervous on the day after the murder.

To offset this, the defense developed from the factory officials that Frank was of a highly nervous temperament and that when anything went wrong he became excited and nervous; that on one occasion, when he was on a street car which ran over a child, he was so nervous he could not work and that at another time when he had quarreled with a factory official he manifested extreme nervousness.

None of those who visited the undertaking establishment with Frank would swear that he had failed to look at the face of the dead girl. However, both Detective Black and Bailiff Rogers who accompanied him there declared they had not seen him do so.

Conley swore that Frank called him up at about 4 minutes to 1 to aid in carrying the body down to the basement. The testimony of Mrs. Arthur White, who said she saw a negro sitting on a box at the foot of the stair when she went out of the factory about 1 o’clock, has never been disputed, although Solicitor Dorsey developed that this information did not reach the police until several days after the murder, notwithstanding, Mrs. White reported the fact to Frank on the Monday following.

In his statement, Conley related incidents reflecting on Frank’s moral character. The defense made vigorous objection to the admission of this evidence and during the argument which followed Solicitor Dorsey announced that the state expected to be able to corroborate Conley’s accusations.

DALTON’S TESTIMONY.

C. B. Dalton was put up by the state and he swore that he had visited the factory with Daisy Hopkins, a former employe that he knew Frank and had seen him in his office on Saturday afternoons drinking beer and soft drinks with girls.

Dalton also testified that he had taken Daisy Hopkins to the factory and that Conley had kept a lookout for him. The Hopkins girl was put up by the defense and she denied everything that had been stated by Conley and Dalton declaring that she only knew Frank when she saw him, that she had never been into his office and that she had never seen him drinking soft drinks and beer with women.

Solicitor Dorsey made the Hopkins girl admit that she had been in jail on a statutory charge.

Officials and employes of the factory put upon the stand all swore that they had never seen girls visit Frank in his office nor had they ever seen girls drinking soft drinks and beer with him in his office.

COULDN’T SEE THE MIRROR.

The testimony of Albert McKnight, the negro husband of Minola McKnight, cook at the Frank-Selig home, in which he swore that on the day of the murder Frank came home for luncheon about 1:30 and left a few minutes later without having eaten was rebutted by the defense with pictures and diagrams of the Frank-Selig home. McKnight swore that he was sitting in the kitchen near the passageway to the dining room and could by looking in the sideboard window in the dining room see that Frank didn’t eat anything. He also swore that Frank caught a street car at Pulliam street on his return to the city.

Albert Kauffman, a civil engineer, who made blueprints of the Frank-Selig home, and of the pencil factory and who measured the distance from the home to Washington and Pulliam streets, testified that it was impossible to see the mirror in the dining room sideboard from where McKnight said he sat in the kitchen; that a street car ran on Georgia avenue in front of the home, and that it is further to Pulliam street by about 100 feet than it is to Washington street.

H. J. Hinchey, manager of the South Atlantic Blow Pipe company, declared he saw Frank on a Washington street car, just in front of the capitol about 2:15.

Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott, who had been first called by the state, was also called by the defense. He testified that Conley had made a number of statements to him: that he had called the negro’s attention to defects in his statements and that later the negro would change his story to confirm.

WITNESS CONFUSED.

The very favorable testimony for the defense given by E. F. Holloway, the day watchman at the pencil factory, was greatly minimized by the fact that he went completely to pieces under the cross-examination of Solicitor Dorsey. The solicitor asked him many question which he evaded and others he answered only when forced to do so by the judge. Holloway became excited and belligerent when the solicitor asked him if he had not sought to get a former night watchman at the factory to swear that Frank had frequently telephoned him at night. He was also disconcerted when the solicitor demanded to know if he had not sought to convict Conley in order to obtain the reward offered for the murderer, and when Mr. Dorsey inquired if he had not boasted about “turning up” Conley and set up his claim to the rewards the witness became sullen.

During the cross-examination of Holloway Solicitor Dorsey implied that the witness had “planted” the bloody stick which was alleged to have been found nearly two weeks after the murder on the first floor of the factory close to where Conley admits to have been in hiding. This was vehemently denied by the witness.

* * *

Atlanta Journal, August 10th 1913, “Conley’s Story is Still Center of Fight in Frank Case,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Constitution
August 7^th, 1913

On the opening of court Wednesday morning when Judge L. S. Roan announced that he would postpone his final decision in regard to the admissibility of Jim Conley’s evidence in regard to Leo Frank’s alleged misconduct and also to the negro’s acting on previous occasions as his “lookout,” Luther Rosser began his final effort to break the negro down.

Conley stayed on the stand until 10 o’clock and was then excused. He had been testifying for fifteen hours in all and of this thirteen hours had been under the merciless grilling of Attorney Rosser.

The negro stuck to the last to the main points of his story, and, while admitting that he had lied on previous occasions, swore that he had only tried to save himself and that about the murder he was telling the whole truth. No amount of effort could break him from this declaration.

Conley also added a new point to his story when under additional questioning from Solicitor Hugh Dorsey he swore that he had seen Frank hide Mary Phagan’s meshbag in his safe. Before that both sides had declared that they could not account for the disappearance of the pocketbook or bag in which the girl had carried her money.

Reads Black Affidavit.

Mr. Rosser opened the morning cross-examination by reading to the negro the second affidavit he made to Detective John R. Black and Harry Scott. It was in this that the darkey swore he had left home at about 9 o’clock and after visiting several saloons and poolrooms, among which was one bearing the name of the “Butt-In” saloon, he had won 90 cents at dice and then gone to the factory at about 1 o’clock. In it he had admitted to writing the murder notes, but made no mention of helping Frank dispose of the body.

Then the lawyer read the next affidavit in which the negro declared he had aided Frank in taking the dead girl’s body to the cellar in which, despite the fact that he had put into it the claim that he was telling the whole truth, he had not told certain things which he waited until he got on the stand to tell.

Mr. Rosser made Conley acknowledge to having made these affidavits and with particular emphasis called his attention to the various discrepancies between them and also between the final one and his sworn testimony.

Then the lawyer asked the witness about several conversations he is alleged by the defense to have had with various factory employees after the murder was discovered and before he was arrested.

“Jim,” began Mr. Rosser, “soon after the murder weren’t you working near where Miss Rebecca Carson was and did she say to you, ‘Jim, they ain’t got you yet for this,’ and didn’t you say, ‘No, and they ain’t goin’ to, ‘cause I ain’t done nothin’?’”

“No, sir,” replied Conley: “dat lady ain’t never said nothing like dat to me and I ain’t never said nothing like dat to her.”

“Didn’t she say, ‘Well, they’ve got Mr. Frank and he ain’t done nothing,’ and didn’t you then say, ‘Mr. Frank is ez innocent as you is and de Lord knows you ain’t guilty’?”

“No, sir,” replied Jim positively: “no, sir, Mr. Rosser, wasn’t nothing lak dat passed ‘tween us.”

Denies That He Hid.

“Jim,” Mr. Rosser next asked, “weren’t you talking to one of the ladies there right after the murder and she said, ‘Jim, you did this,’ and didn’t you lay down your broom and go off to another part of the building?”

“Nothing lak dat ever happened,” asserted the witness.

“Well, Jim, one day just before you were arrested, weren’t you hiding yourself on the second floor, afraid to go downstairs, and didn’t you say in the presence of Mr. Herbert Schiff that you’d give a million dollars to be a white man, and that if you were a white man you’d go on down the steps?”
“No, sir,” replied Jim, “I did say I wished I was a white man and dat if I was I’d go on down.”

“Didn’t you ask Mrs. Dora Small to read an extra to youa bout that same day, and then tell her Mr. Frank was innocent?”
“No, sir,” replied Jim, “I never had no talk like dat with her.”

“Didn’t you tell Miss Julia Foss that Mr. Frank was as innocent as an angel in heaven?”
“No, sir, I never said nothing like dat to dat lady, either.”

Dorsey Takes Witness.

It was then 10 o’clock and Mr. Rosser suddenly announced that he was through with his cross examination. Solicitor Dorsey declared that he wished to ask a few more questions before Conley was excused.

“Jim,” he said, “when you told Mr. Rosser about being in jail where did you mean you were kept?”
“I meant at police station,” replied Jim.

“What did they put you in jail for, Jim?”
Mr. Rosser objected strenuously, declaring that every negro when asked that question answers “for nothin’ boss; I hadn’t done nothin.’”

After some argument on both sides Judge Roan held that the question might be asked and answered.

Conley then swore that the first time he was put in jail was when a boy and [w]as arrested for throwing rocks, and that the other times had been for fighting with other negros and for being drunk and disorderly. He declared that he had never been in the county jail until after he was placed there following the murder, and that he had never been arrested for a serious offense.

“Did you ever see Frank down there in the jail?” asked Mr. Dorsey.

“No, sir.”

“Why didn’t you?”
Mr. Rosser succeeded in having this ruled out.

“From the time you were arrested, did you see Frank until the day you came into this courtroom?” asked Dorsey.

“Yes, sir, I seed him at the coroner’s court down there at headquarters, and he went by me and bowed his head and smiled.”

“Was that before you had told on him?”

Says Frank Dictated Notes.

“Tell the jury what, if anything, Frank did with your pencil while you were writing the murder notes.”

“He tuck de pencil outer my hand and rubbed out the letter ‘s’ I had put at the end of negro,’” said Jim.

“Did you ever see the pocketbook, purse or meshbag of Miss Mary Phagan?”

“Yes, sir, I saw it on Mr. Frank’s desk after we came back from putting the body in the basement, and he tuck it and put it in his safe,” said Jim.

Mr. Dorsey then asked the negro to describe the scream he claims to have heard, but Mr. Rosser succeeded in leaving that ruled out, claiming that it had been gone into before.

“Jim,” Mr. Dorsey then asked, “who has asked you the most questions and talked to you the longest, Mr. Black, Mr. Scott, Mr. Starnes, Mr. Campbell, myself or Mr. Rosser?”
Rosser got this question declared illegal.

“Well, what was the longest time any of these detectives talked to you?”

Conley Causes Laughter.

“You means Mr. Rosser dere, don’t you,” said Jim, and the courtroom forgot itself for the moment until the vigorous rapping of deputies restored order.

Conley finally was made to understand that Mr. Rosser, although he had grilled him for about two days, did not wear a star and rubber-heeled shoes, and he then stated that Scott and Black had talked to him more than any of the other detectives, and had kept him on one occasion from about 11 o’clock until dark, but he declared that they had given him several rests between talks, and that they actually talked to him about three and a half hours.

“Well, how long did Mr. Rosser talk to you?”
Mr. Rosser had this question ruled out, the solicitor making a vigorous but vain plea, that it should ge on record how long the negro had been under the cross-fire of questions on the stand.

“Was there any cloth around the place where you got the gunny sack?”
“There was some near there.”

“Was moving the body a pretty hard job?”

“Yes, sir.”

Attorney Rosser’s objections to this were overruled.

Upon the request of the solicitor the negro then lay down on the floor and illustrated how he had placed the girl’s body in the basement, and he also took The Constitution’s flashlight picture of the basement and showed exactly where he had placed the body.

“Tell the jury everything you did after you looked at the clock, and saw it was four minutes to one,” said Mr. Dorsey.

“Where did Mr. Frank wash his hands?”
Conley indicated on the diagram a spot near the office.

“What was said about your going to Brooklyn?”
“Mr. Frank never said nothing about my going to Brooklyn; he said he would send me away,” replied Jim.

Denies Seeing Mincey.

“Did you ever have a talk with W. H. Mincey?”
“Never except that day at the station house when he come there.”

On Mr. Rosser’s objection to this, Judge Roan ruled that the state could not go into Mincey’s talk at the station.

“Jim, on the night you were put in jail and the newspaper men came, what did they do to you?” asked Mr. Dorsey.

“They jes’ talked to me, an’ one of them offered me a paper,” said Jim.

At this juncture Mr. Dorsey requested that Harllee Branch and Harold W. Ross, two reporters at the press table, leave the courtroom. When they left he continued:

“What did you say to Mr. Schiff?”
“Mr. Schiff asked me if I saw the crowd out there.”

“How long have you known Mr. N. V. Darley?”
“Ever since he come to the factory.”

“Did Mr. Schiff and Mr. Darley know you could write?”
Mr. Rosser entered an objection to this and in reply Mr. Dorsey said: “Your honor, while this negro was in jail and the National Pencil factory had employed detectives to find the murderer, and while he was claiming he could not write, these men knew that he could and yet did not tell the detectives.”

“It’s not in evidence that these men knew the detectives wanted Conley to write,” replied Mr. Rosser.

“I can prove it by those two newspaper men I asked to leave the room,” replied Mr. Dorsey, “and yet these two men connected with the pencil factory concealed the fact that this negro could write.”

Evidence Ruled Out.

Judge Roan ruled that Mr. Dorsey could not introduce the evidence to show that Schiff and Darley knew Jim could write, and that he could not introduce his evidence to show that the two factory employees knew the detectives desired him to write. The two newspaper men were then allowed to re-enter the room.

“Jim, can you write ‘luxury?’”

“Yes, sir,” replied Jim, “they had boxes with that on ‘em at the factory and when they gave out I had to write it down and give it to Mr. Frank so he would know to order some more.”

“Did he furnish the paper for you to write on?”
“Yes, sir.”

It was now 10:50 o’clock and Mr. Rosser again took up the cross-examination for a few questions.

“Did Mr. Frank have the dead girl’s meshbag on the desk when you came back from the basement Jim?”
“Yes, sir.”

“He put it in his safe and locked the door, did he?”
“He put it in the safe,” said Jim, “but I dunno whether he locked the door or not.”

Mr. Rosser then went into much detail about the various times that detectives and the state’s lawyers had talked to Conley about the crime. He had to explain to Jim what was meant by the state’s lawyers.

“Jim,” he next asked, “how long had you been caring for the boxes?”

“’Bout a year,” said Jim.

“So Mr. Frank knew for over a year that you could write?”
“I reckon he did,” said Conley; “I’d been writing down the things about the boxes and givin’ ‘em to him that long.”

A New, Simplified Method.

It was at this juncture that Conley, prompted by Attorney Rosser, introduced to the world an absolutely new method of spelling, and one that would put A. Carnegie and T. Roosevelt to shame should they ever learn that a man with no education had introduced it.

The exemplification of the new method began with “Uncle Remus,” a word known and loved by Carnegie himself. It happened that Jim said that the National Pencil company used this as a trade name for one of their brands of pencils.

“How do you spell ‘Uncle Remus,’ Jim?” Mr. Rosser asked.

“Well, I kin spell it,” replied Jim.

“Go ahead,” he was urged.

“O-n,” said Jim.

“Well, does that spell Uncle?” asked Mr. Rosser.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, spell ‘Remus.’”

“R-i-m-e-s-s-,” said Jim proudly.

“That’s fine, Jim. Now, spell ‘luxury.’”

It was here that the new system reached its climax.

“L-u-s-t-r-i-s,” Jim replied.

“All right, Jim. Now, spell “Thomas Jefferson,’” urged Mr. Rosser, that being also a trade name of the pencils.

“T-o-m-a-i-s, Thomas,” said Jim.

“Go ahead.”

“J-a-s-s,” finished Jim.

Leo Frank was laughing by this time and deputies were frowning and threatening to eject certain spectators from the courtroom.

Conley wound up the spelling bee by declaring that “Joe Wishton” was the othrodox [sic] way of spelling the name of the man who made the cherry tree famous.

“Jim,” next asked Mr. Rosser, “wouldn’t you sometimes write Mr. Frank a note in order to draw on your wages?”
“Yes, sir; I’d write out, ‘Please let me have 50 cents,” replied the negro.

“And you’d say, ‘An’ take it out of my wages,’ wouldn’t you?” the questioner asked.

“No, sir; I couldn’t write out all dat last part. Mr. Frank he’d know where to take hit from.”

Mr. Dorsey then put a few minor question and after these Mr. Rosser asked the negro if Schiff did not have charge of the boxes instead of Frank. Conley declared that Frank had charge of them.

It was 11:14 o’clock when the negro finally left the stand.

* * *

Atlanta Constitution, August 7th 1913, “Unable to Shake Conley’s Story Rosser Ends Cross-Examination,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Constitution
August 6^th, 1913

ROSSER ADOPTS NEW TONE MONDAY

Jim Conley, upon whose story practically the entire result of the Frank case is believed to rest, went on the stand at 9:03 o’clock and when court adjourned for lunch at 12:30 he was still being cross-examined by Luther Rosser for the defense.

The lawyer had reached that point in his cross-fire of questions where he had begun to hector the witness and to take him up whenever he made a mistake, but it appeared that he was only about half through with his work. When the adjournment was taken Conley was still sticking to the main points of his story in a way that was considered remarkable, although he had admitted discrepancies in many of the minor points and had grown confused over them.

When Attorney Rosser started out Monday his manner was mild, but only throughout the afternoon he worked up to a slightly harsher manner. When he began Tuesday he was using his usual rather abrupt tone of voice.

Solicitor Hugh Dorsey and Frank A. Hooper, his colleague, made frequent objections to the manner in which the cross-examination was being conducted and did, to a certain extent, restrain the defense.

“Jim, you made your second statement to Mr. Black and Mr. Scott on a Saturday, didn’t you?” was the first question Mr. Rosser asked.

“I disremembers the day, boss,” replied Conley.

“You told them, though, that you wrote those notes on Friday?”
“Yes, sir, I tole ‘em dat.”

“They they [sic] told you that that wouldn’t do, didn’t they?”
“No, sir, dey didn’t say nothing about that.”

“Didn’t they tell you that it wouldn’t fit in?”
“They didn’t say them words.”

“Are you sure, Jim?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure.”

“Didn’t Black and Scott tell you it was all rot, that Frank had never had you there Friday?”

“No, sir.”

Not Asked to Change Story.

“Didn’t they try their best on May 27 to make you change your story?”

“No, sir; they never said nothing to me about changin’ my story.”

“They didn’t?”
“No, sir, they sho’ didn’t,” protested the darkey.

“They didn’t tell you anything about changing it?”
“No, sir.”

“You swear to that?”
“Yes, sir, if you want me tuh.”

The above list of questions and answers were only a starter to what followed, the attorney asking each question a dozen times or more, each time changing his wording a little, or compelling the negro to deny it again and again, and finally to say that he would swear to his statements.

By this means Mr. Rosser went over the question of how long the detectives had questioned the negro before he made his final affidavit. Conley never did say how long the detectives had grilled him. He said it was not a whole day, but he would not be more definite than that, although his interrogator mentioned nearly everything by which time is usually measured.

Then Mr. Rosser took up in the same way as before the reason the negro had for not saying right at first that he had got up at about 6 o’clock, instead of declaring that he had got up at 9 o’clock.

Conley Admits Lying.

Conley admitted that he had simply lied about it, and declared that at the time he did not see any use telling about his early rise and his first trip to the factory, as “there wasn’t nothing doing there then and I didn’t see no use mentionin’ it.”

Next came the discrepancies in what the negro had first said he had eaten that morning, and what he had later said he had eaten. According to Mr. Rosser’s notes Conley had first told of eating sausage and in his final statement the negro had said there was sausage on the table, but that he didn’t remember whether or not he ate of it.

By this time Mr. Rosser had worked up to a point where he was showing a sort of fretful impatience every time he caught a discrepancy between the statements even in the smallest detail, and Jim was apparently worried because he had caused this attitude towards himself.

Conley took refuge behind a plea of forgetfulness and Mr. Rosser made him feel that he was simply living about his memory and by certain comments called the attention of the jury to it.

At this point Solicitor Dorsey objected to the commenting, and Judge L. S. Roan held that the cross-examiner could not make any comment.

Mr. Rosser then went over with Conley the amount of beer he had drunk and Conley admitted certain differences in all of his stories about the beer. Then the shrewd attorney, seemingly casting aside all thoughts of the case at issue, entered into a discussion with Conley of the wonderful effect of a night in jail upon a man’s memory and had apparently convinced Jim that the Monday night he had spent in jail was worth more to his mental development than a university education.

“I jes don’t know what you’se talkin’ ‘about a tall,” interrupted the darkey, and then the attorney switched off on other things and had Jim agree without protest this time that in certain points his memory was not as good as on the second day’s examination as it had been on Monday.

The negro had been subjected to an hour’s questioning by this time, and Mr. Rosser had gradually worked up to the point where Frank got back from Montag’s. Conley said this was about 10 o’clock. He also said that Darley had left the factory about 11:30. Mr. Rosser then questioned Conley in great detail about the comings and goings of all the people there that morning, and Conley showed a clear knowledge of this and stuck to his story of the day before.

Says He Made Mistake.

“Didn’t you tell the officers that you saw Mr. Holloway go upstairs that morning, and that a lady in green followed him?”
“Yes,” admitted the negro, “but I made a mistake.”

“How long did you say the lady in green stayed upstairs?”
“A good while,” said Conley.

“What do you mean by a good while?”
“About ten or fifteen minutes.”

Mr. Rosser then fired question after question relating to the negro’s many varying statements to the officers, until finally the solicitor arose and objected to what he termed the “argumentative method” of the cross-examination. The point was sustained, Judge Roan ordering that the “argumentative method” cease.

“Well, you just went on from time to time adding a little more each time to your statement?” said Rosser.

“Yes, sir, I’d jes tell a little more each time,” admitted Jim.

“Why did you tell it that way?”
“Well, boss, I didn’t want to tell any more than I had to.”

“You talked to Mr. Dorsey seven times in all before you had taken back all the untruths and finally told the whole truth, didn’t you?” urged the attorney, putting a slightly sarcastic emphasis on the “whole truth.”

“No, sir, I told it all before that,” said Conley, patiently.

The jury, the defendant and the witness were then allowed to leave the room for a five-minute recess. It was then 10:45.

“You first told the officers that you went to a moving picture show that Saturday, didn’t you?” asked Mr. Rosser, when the cross-examination started again.

Solicitor Again Upheld.

Mr. Dorsey objected that if the defense wanted to impeach the witness or even trap him that they ought to produce the affidavits if there were any, or ought at least to state the specific time and place referred to in the conversation.

“Well, Jim,” said Mr. Rosser when Judge Roan upheld the solicitor, “on May 28, in the presence of Messrs. Starnes and Campbell, in Atlanta, Ga., Fulton county, didn’t you say that on the Saturday of the murder in the city, state and county above mentioned, went to a moving picture show?”

The irony went over the negro’s head, but caused even the state’s attorneys to smile, and Conley solemnly answered.

“I told ‘em I went and stood in front of a picture show and looked at what I could from the outside.”

“You say Mr. Dorsey visited you seven times?”
“No, sir, I said he did about dat many times,” replied Jim.

“Well, he either visited you or you visited him all together about seven times, you just paid each other calls, didn’t you?”
“I reckon so, boss,” said Conley.

“Well, of course, Jim, I don’t mean that they were social calls, just calls for the purposes of the case.”

I spose you’se right,” replied the negro.

Rosser Fastens on Discrepancy.

Then, after taking Jim up because he first said he and Mr. Frank went into the factory together and afterwards said that Mr. Frank went in and he followed right behind him, Mr. Rosser asked him a score of detailed questions about the locking of the front door.

“I locked it,” said Jim.

“About what time?”
“I don’t know, sir.”

“Was it 12 o’clock?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Was it 1 o’clock?”
“Well, it couldn’t have been 1 o’clock, because afterwards, when I got upstairs and looked at the olock [sic] it was four minutes to one.”

Mr. Rosser then began to go over with the negro the latter’s testimony on the previous day, and referring to a transcript from his direct testimony on the stand Monday, called his attention to certain discrepancies between his statement on the stand and the final affidavit he had made.

Mr. Hooper here entered the objection that the negro’s testimony on the stand Monday had now become written evidence, and that the cross-examiner should be forced to allow the witness to read it or to read it to him, before he questioned him about it.

Mr. Hooper won his point, the judge holding that Mr. Rosser, however, could ask the negro what he had said about any particular thing.

“Well, your honor,” said Mr. Hooper, “my brother here is asking this witness questions now on what he said yesterday, but he is asking what he said after this and what after that, and it would be a superhuman task for any person, let alone an ignorant one, to tell in regular sequence all that he said the day before.”

“This witness stood up here yesterday and gave a parrot-like statement, and all I want to do is to show that he cannot repeat that parrot-like story again today,” said Mr. Rosser, “and I’ve already shown it in one instance.”

Judge Roan upheld Mr. Hooper.

Negro Causes Amusement.

After some further questions the attorney asked the witness what were the words that Frank had used when they met at Forsyth and Nelson streets that Saturday.

“Mr. Frank, he jes’ say, ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha; you’se here is yer,’” replied Conley.

For about six times the attorney made the witness repeat this, but Conley said it in the same words and even the same tone all the time, and finally Mr. Rosser asked how many “ha’s” there were in that statement.

Conley repeated it again, and by this time the spectators were keeping the deputies busy, and Mr. Rosser asked the negro to count the number of “ha’s.” He could not say them and count them at the same time, and the lawyer repeated the words while Jim counted.

“Dey’s two, boss,” said Jim.

“I thought there was four ‘ha’s,’ Jim,” objected Mr. Rosser.

“Well, I count ‘ha-ha’ as one and ‘ha-ha’ as the other,” replied Jim, “and that makes two.”

“Oh, you count them as double words,” replied the lawyer, and apparently a great light was arising in his mind.

“I don’t know what no ‘double words’ is,” replied Conley, “but you asked me to count de ‘ha’s,’ and I counted dem.”

Still the negro, while apparently puzzling his brain over all this business of “ha-has,” did not appear rattled, and the attorney took up a detailed questioning about how Frank had showed Conley about locking the front door when he sat on watch duty for him.

Conley Remains Cool.

Then came the question for the second time in the morning of who the people were that were said to have visited the factory that Saturday before 1 o’clock, and, despite question after question, Conley remained cool, and again and again gave the same version of the comings and goings on that day.

Next Mr. Rosser entered into a discussion with Conley about the front door being left unlocked, and the attorney seemed to be paving the way for a claim that a third party had entered the building and committed the crime without either Frank or the negro sweeper being aware of their presence.

By the time of adjournment Mr. Rosser had got to the place in the negro’s story where he and Frank were bearing away the body, and on each point he asked the negro scores of questions about the real happenings, and also about what he had declared about that point in his various affidavits.

* * *

Atlanta Constitution, August 6th 1913, “Conley Remains Calm Under Grilling Cross-Examination,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Journal
August 6^th, 1913

Jim Made for a Newspaper and a Cigarette as Soon as He Left the Stand—He Is Interviewed Through Medium of His Attorney

Jim Conley wasn’t garrulous after he left the witness stand Wednesday morning, and that’s saying the least of it.

Perhaps Jim figured that he had done enough talking to last him a few weeks.

He went into the reporters’ room first and sat down and heaved a sort of sigh. Then he picked up an edition of The Journal and commenced to read about himself.

A reporter turned from the telephone and said something to him, and thereupon a deputy sheriff, standing [1 word illegible], gave an imitation of a balloon ascension.

About that time William M. Smith, Conley’s lawyer, stuck his head through the door. It was the first chance the lawyer had been allowed, since Conley went on the stand, to talk to him.

“Come over here, Jim,” said Attorney Smith, and led the negro across the hall into a little ante-room.

Jim shucked off his coat as he crossed the hall, and made for a chair, stretched out his legs, and heaved another sort of a sigh. He sat there, gazing out the window, his eyes on the face of a brick wall some distance away.

A reporter came in.

“How about it, Bill,” said he. “Let me talk to him.”

“Sorry, old man,” said the lawyer, “but you see they’re already trying to get some of you boys balled up about a story some time ago, when Conley was in jail. Jim, don’t you say a word to anybody, do you hear?”
“All right,” said the reporter. “Then you do the talking. Ask him what he thinks of Rosser.”

Attorney Smith, “What do you think of Rosser, Jim?”
Jim gave a combination of snicker and a laugh. He waged his head expressively.

“He shore does go after you, don’t he?” said Jim.

Reporter – “Ask him how he felt when he came off the stand.”

Attorney Smith – “How do you feel, Jim?”
Jim – “I feel all right, sir, ‘cept I’m kinder tired.”

Reporter – “Ask him what he wanted while he was on the stand.”

Attorney Smith – “What did you want most, Jim, while Rosser was grilling you?”
Jim, showing his white teeth, “Outside a wonderin’ when he was goin’ to quit, reckon I wanted to smoke most.”

Attorney Smith – “Here, Jim, smoke this cigarette.”

And Jim fired up and blew a cloud of blue smoke through the window.

Reporter – “Ask him how that tablet affected him. If it helped him any?”

Attorney Smith – “How about the tablet they gave you, Jim?”
Jim – “I reckon it must a been calomel. I just tuk it and swallowed it, ‘cause I knowed they wan’t goin’ to give me nuthin’ to hurt me. It shore was bitter, too, white folks. It galled my tongue so I couldn’t hardly talk for a minute, and then it went on down my throat and spread out, and burnt and galled. You see, I tuk it without no water or anything. Just dry so. I reckon it helped me, though.”

* * *

Atlanta Journal, August 6th 1913, “”He Shore Goes After You” Says Conley of Mr. Rosser,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Georgian
August 6^th, 1913

As soon as court opened Mr. Rosser asked the judge if he was ready to hear argument on the proposition to eliminate parts of Conley testimony. He said he was prepared to support his motion with authorities.

Judge Roan replied that he would postpone this decision until 2 o’clock.

Solicitor Dorsey declared that he had witnesses he expects to put on the stand Wednesday morning to substantiate the part of the negro’s testimony in dispute. He said:

“I just want the court to understand that I am going to do this.”

Judge Roan replied:

“I’ll give you the benefit of whatever you bring out.”

Conley was then recalled to the stand for the conclusion of his cross-examination.

Jim Conley was the same cool, unafraid negro when he returned to the stand Wednesday morning in the trial of Leo Frank after almost two whole days under the cross-examination of Luther Rosser. He had passed through fire and didn’t seem to mind it. He had no fear of anything that was yet to come.

Mr. Rosser might threaten him or might joke with him; it was all the same to the negro. He had tried both and had established but one thing—that Conley is a liar, and Conley admits that.

Arnold might describe him as “that miserable wretch in the witness chair,” he could gaze calmly out the window as he had done before. He didn’t quite understand all those names they were calling him, anyway.

If, in all the time that Conley was under the raking fire of Rosser’s cross-examination, he was disturbed in the slightest degree it was when he was being asked about that mysterious affidavit of William H. Mincey.

The declaration of Mincey that Conley had boasted the afternoon of April 26 of killing a girl was sinister and held in it the possibility that Rosser would finish by blazing forth with a direct charge of murder against the negro. Conley moved uneasily in his seat. He refused to meet the eye of his inquisitor. He fidgeted with his hands, but with his lips he framed a denial of every damning charge contained in the document.

The ordeal soon was over, Conley regained his composure, and when court adjourned a few minutes later a grin of triumph cleft his black face almost in twain.

Attorney Sees Conley.

Conley’s attorney, William M. Smith, provided him with supper and breakfast at the jail and talked for some time with the State’s star witness. He had been prevented from holding any sort of a conference with his client the night before, and protested at this procedure at the close of court Tuesday night. Judge Roan extended him the privilege of seeing Conley. Reuben Arnold asked that an exception be entered in the record.

Conley slept between nine and ten hours and arose much refreshed.

“I’se telling the truth now,” he said to a newspaper man who encountered him outside the jail. “That Mr. Rosser ain’t got no chance to get me mixed up because I’m telling just what happened.”

Frank occupied his usual cell on the second floor of the Tower. He was joined by his wife and mother as soon as he arrived at the courthouse.

Rosser Reads Affidavits.

Rosser asked Dorsey for the original of Conley’s third affidavit. The Solicitor advised Mr. Rosser that the original had never been signed. Rosser took a copy of the affidavit, which the Solicitor said was identical with the original, and read it to Conley. It was a signed statement from the negro, in which he admitted the other two affidavits contained lies and the ones which the detectives said was the last word in the great mystery.

The reading consumed nearly fifteen minutes, Rosser enunciating clearly and slowly, emphasizing every statement that differed with Conley’s evidence on the stand.

Freely Admits He Lied.

All of Rosser’s quiz Tuesday had only the one possible effect—that of casting suspicion in the minds of the jury of the story that Conley now is telling. He spread his lies with a lavish hand in that first affidavit he made to the detectives.

He freely admitted this and rather gloried in his prowess as a first-class liar. He lied in his second affidavit, although he maintained that this was a step nearer the truth. And in his third affidavit, which he and the detectives had joined in proclaiming “the whole truth,” there were still little discrepancies and deviations from the straight path of veracity.

But this tale that he was unfolding to the jury, this was the pure, unalloyed, gospel truth. He had raised his right hand and sworn that he was going to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Mr. Rosser was most unkind to throw over it a shadow of suspicion.

And the lawyer labored in vain to shake the negro’s storyq [sic] as it had gone before the jury. Rosser midway in the Tuesday forenoon session abandoned his line of interrogation in regard to statements that Conley had made to the police and detectives and began questioning Conley directly on the crime.

Questioned Closely on Time.

He questioned him most closely in regard to the time in an effort to show conclusively to the jury that Frank and Conley did not have the opportunity to accomplish all which the negro narrated before Frank left the factory for luncheon at his home, No. 68 East Georgia avenue, at which place he arrived by 1:30 o’clock, according to the State’s own witnesses.

Conley testified, under Rosser’s cross-examination, that he went to the rear of the factory at Frank’s direction and there found the body of the slain girl. He said that he yelled to Frank that the girl was dead and that Frank told him to bring her to the front of the factory.

Conley said that he did not know how he was going to carry the girl and he asked Frank. Frank, he said, yelled back something about getting some crocus bagging, but he did not quite understand him and walked to the front of the factory so that he could hear the superintendent better. He noticed the clock at this moment. It was four minutes of 1 o’clock.

With this time as a starting point, […]

CONLEY ON STAND AGAIN; SAYS HE’S NOT ‘SCARED’

Continued from Page One.

[…] Rosser began to quiz the negro closely as to how long it took him to accomplish each part of the remainder of the afternoon’s events.

It was plain that the negro’s estimates did not coincide with what the lawyer though they should be.

Defense’s Views Evidently Differ.

“How long did it take you from the time that you came forward and looked at the clock until you had taken the body down to the cellar and was back again on the second floor, and Frank went to wash his hands?” asked Rosser.

Conley thought it was only four or five minutes. It evidently was the opinion of the defense that it should have been nearer twenty minutes, as it included rolling the body of the girl into the cloth from the cotton box, carrying it to the elevator, the wait while Conley says Frank went into the office after the key, the trip down the elevator, the carrying of the body to the rear of the basement, the disposal of the cloth and the return to the second floor.

Rosser asked how long it took Frank to wash his hands. Conley replied that it was only a minute or two. Rosser then inquired how long Frank had Conley in the closet while the two women were in his office. Conley said it was eight or ten minutes. This incident, if it is as Conley represented it, would have brought the time up to 1:12 or 1:15.

Rosser then asked how long it took Conley to write the four notes, two of which were found by the girl’s dead body.

Wrote Notes in a Hurry.

“You couldn’t have written those four notes inside of ten minutes to save your soul, could you, Jim?” Rosser inquired.

“Yas, sah; I think I wrote ‘em in about a minute and a half,” replied the negro.

“You’re some rapid writer,” retorted Rosser after he had called attention to the laborious scrawl.

Rosser then questioned Conley as to the time of each part of his conversation with Frank while he was in the office that afternoon. He asked him about Frank giving him the cigarettes with the money in the box, about Frank giving him the $200 roll of bills and the attendant conversation, about the conversation in respect to Conley’s watch and to Frank’s wealthy folks in Brooklyn.

While he did not make the actual computation of time, he impressed strongly on the minds of the jury that it would have been impossible for all this to have occurred in connection with the undisputed fact that Frank arrived home at or before 1:30 that afternoon.

Defense to Test Story.

It is understood that persons interested in the defense have rehearsed a number of times every event that the negro says took place in the disposal of the body as Conley narrates it, and that they will be prepared to testify, that it could not have been completed by the time that Frank had arrived at his home.

This was by far the most important testimony in the examination of the negro. Rosser also quizzed him sharply regard to the cloth in which he wrapped the body; his evident theory being that, as a matter of fact, no cloth was used at all and that Conley, the only one connected with the crime, simply dragged the body to the rear of the basement. No cloth was found by the police or detectives, although Conley testified that he threw it in the same place he threw the hat and shoe.

The sensation of the day came when Reuben Arnold moved to have stricken from the record all of the testimony regarding Frank’s alleged conduct previous to the day of the crime.

The motion was met with strenuous opposition on the part of the prosecution but received a favorable ruling from Judge Roan who said that he would hold himself in readiness to reverse the decision before court convened Wednesday morning should the Solicitor be able to show him sufficient law on the subject to warrant a change.

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Atlanta Georgian, August 6th 1913, “Judge Will Rule on Evidence Attacked by Defense at 2 P.M.”, Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Journal
August 5^th, 1913

“They Haven’t Shaken Him a Particle,” Says Dorsey—“He Has Told About 240 Lies Already,” Declares Attorney Reuben Arnold

Both the state’s attorneys and the counsel for Leo M. Frank Tuesday at noon expressed satisfaction with the progress of the cross-examination of James Conley, the negro sweeper. The negro had been on the stand then for more than nine hours, during eight hours of which he had undergone a strenuous grilling at the hands of Attorney L. Z. Rosser.

“They have not shaken him a particle,” declared Solicitor Dorsey, “and that isn’t all. I don’t believe they will be able to do so.” Attorney Frank A. Hooper, who is assisting Mr. Dorsey in the prosecution of Frank said: “Mr. Rosser will go ahead and wear himself out, and Attorney Arnold will hurl questions at Conley until he, too, grows weary, and when it is all over the negro will still be there ready for more.”

Mr. Rosser was confident that he had made great headway in discredited Conley’s testimony. He smilingly commented upon how he had tangled up the negro when he got him away from his recited story, but said that when Conley got back into his well-drilled tale he ran along like a piece of well-oiled machinery. “I’ve caught him in a mass of lies,” asserted Mr. Rosser.

“Conley has lied both specifically and generally,” declared Reuben Arnold. “He has lied about material things and he has lied about immaterial things. He has told about 340 lies since he has been under cross-examination. I kept tab on him until he had told over 300 lies, and then they came so fast I couldn’t keep up with him.”

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Atlanta Journal, August 5th 1913, “Lawyers on Both Sides Satisfied With Conley,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Georgian
August 5^th, 1913

The determined onslaught against Jim Conley, his string of affidavits and the story he told before the Frank jury had its real beginning Monday afternoon.

Luther Rosser, starting with the avowed purpose of breaking down the negro’s story and forcing from the negro’s lips a story more incriminating to himself than any he had uttered, went deeply into Conley’s past history, his home life, his prison record and everything that directly or remotely might have a bearing on the solution of the murder mystery.

Before taking up the events of the day that Mary Phagan was murdered, the attorney made Conley admit that he had been in jail seven times. The negro did not seem particularly loath to make this admission, but was inclined at first to let it go into the record that he had been behind the bars “five or six times.”

Rosser, however, seemed to have about as thorough an acquaintance with these circumstances of Conley’s life as did Conley himself, and he refreshed the negro’s memory until Conley was willing to agree that it probably was seven times.

Rosser’s manner of examination provoked recurrent wrangles among the attorneys all the afternoon. He was unmolested so long as he maintained his kindly, ingratiating attitude toward the negro, which he manifested several times by the remark: “Jim and I are the best of friends; we’re going to get along fine.”

As he departed from the inconsequential incidents of Conley’s career and began to to touch on the vital issues of the trial, the attorney’s benign manner vanished and his questions were rasped out in such rapid succession that many times the negro did not have time to complete his answer to one of them before Rosser had asked another.

Hooper protested vigorously and often against this.

The Solicitor protested strongly against the method which he declared Rosser was employing to impeach the witness. He asserted that the affidavits concerning which he said Rosser was questioning Conley should be read to the witness instead of Conley being asked about them with no reference being made to their wording.

Protests of Little Avail.

The protests were of little avail. The objections, for the most part, were overruled, and the cross-examination proceeded along the same line.

At one point late in the afternoon, Dorsey threw a law book down on the table with an expression of disgust when he failed to get a favorable ruling from Judge Roan.

Rosser began his interrogation in the afternoon by asking Conley in regard to the times he said he had watched at the street door of the factory when Frank had women upstairs in his office.

Conley said that the first time he remembered doing this was on Thanksgiving. The lawyer then proceeded to ask Conley about all of the times he had performed this office for Frank and couples, who, he said, made the factory a rendezvous. Rosser made the negro give dates, the evident purpose being to show later in the trial that Frank was not at the factory at the times mentioned in the negro’s testimony.

Dalton May Take Stand.

Conley related that he was given extra money each time that he watched at the door. Rosser forced him to tell the amount that he received on each occasion.

The names of Miss Daisy Hopkins and a Mr. Dalton figured frequently in the negro’s stories of the clandestine visits of couples to the factory. It was said that Dalton later would take the stand and corroborate Conley’s story.

Conley said that Daisy Hopkins worked at the factory in 1912, but he could not remember much in regard to her appearance.

Rosser tested Conley’s familiarity with various parts of the factory and questioned him in great detail in respect to his knowledge of the arrangement of Frank’s office, the outer office and all the rooms on the second floor.

It was when Rosser began questioning the negro about his many statements to the detectives that his manner began to arouse the objections of the attorneys for the prosecution.

Admits That He Lied.

“You told Harry Scott that you got up at 9:30 Saturday morning, didn’t you?” asked Rosser.

“I guess I did, sah,” the negro admitted.

“Well, it wasn’t so, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t so.”

“What time did you get up?”

“About 6 o’clock.”

“When you were telling Scott this lie, you looked him right in his face, didn’t you?”
“No, I kinda hung my head.

Rosser continued along this line, bringing out the differences between the stories he told the detectives and the testimony he gave on the stand in the forenoon. He called the negro’s attention to this accoutn of visiting numerous saloons, Saturday morning. Conley admitted that much of this was false.

“I told Mr. Scott and Mr. Black just part of the truth,” Conley explained, “so that Mr. Frank would get scared and send some one down to get me out.”

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Atlanta Georgian, August 5th 1913, “Rosser Goes Fiercely After Jim Conley,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)

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

Atlanta Georgian
August 4^th, 1913

A bitter, determined cross-examination of Jim Conley by Luther Rosser was marked by a prolonged battle between counsel for the defense and State over the method of questioning the negro.

The defense won a complete victory, Judge Roan ruling that the accuser of Leo Frank could be cross-examined on any subject the prisoner’s lawyers saw fit.

In the course of this legal tilt Luther Rosser said:

“I am going after him (referring to Conley) and I am going to jump on him with both feet.”

Turning to counsel for the State he added significantly: “And I won’t enlighten him, either. Your period of enlightenment is over.”

Rosser, before the afternoon session concluded, got the negro to say that he had been lying when he said that he got up at 9 o’clock the day of the crime. He said he got up at 6 o’clock.

He admitted he lied when he said he left home at 10 or 10:30 in the morning. It was about 7, according to his story before the jury.

He could not remember that he he had told Harry Scott that he stayed on Peters street that morning until 11 o’clock. It wasn’t so, anyway, he declared.

Two gleaming rows of teeth were exposed and his face broke into a broad smile when he said to Rosser:

“Jus’ you read me them things that you got in them papers and I’ll tell you whether I said them or not.”

At the close of the afternoon session Conley was declaring that all of the statements he had made on the stand were the truth, but that there were falsehoods in each and all of his affidavits.

It is understood that the cross-examination of the negro will continue through the forenoon session Tuesday.

He soon involved Conley in a maze of dates. The negro probably was confused, but he had not as yet been attacked as to the essential of his accusation against Frank.

The attorney reversed his most powerful batteries for the time he should train his guns on the tale of the occur[r]ences the day of the tragedy.

If Rosser intended to use the bullying, badgering tactics that routed and humiliated City Detective John Black, he did not evidence it in the early part of his questioning. As he proceeded, however, his questions gained in force and rapidity. The friendly, ingratiating attitude he had borne toward the negro fell from him and he stood a hostile and menacing figure before the witness chair.

At first, in tone almost kindly, he asked Conley of a hundred intimate details of his life. He asked him where he had lived, who had been his sweethearts, where he had worked and when, when he started to work at the pencil factory, how many times he had been in prison, of whom he got his pay, how much he received, and of the incidents that happened on the occasions when Conley said he guarded the door for Frank when the superintendent had women in his office.

Conley repeated, under Rosser’s questioning, the story of frequent trysts at the factory kept by other couples. The names of Daisy Hopkins and a Mr. Dalton figured prominently. It was here that William M. Smith, Conley’s lawyer, told the newspaper men that Dalton was in the courthouse and would be called to corroborate these details of the negro’s story.

There were no women in the courtroom at the afternoon session, Judge Roan having issued an order barring them.

As black and revolting a story as ever told to a […]

CONLEY TELLS OF DISPOSAL OF PHAGAN GIRL’S BODY

Factory Sweeper Recites Details of Tragedy, Accusing Leo M. Frank

NEGRO REPEATS CHARGE THAT ACCUSED MAN ASKED HIM ‘WHY SHOULD I HANG?’

[…] Georgia jury held a packed courtroom bound with horror and irresistible interest Monday.

Leo M. Frank, brilliant young superintendent of the National Pencil Factory, was pointed out as the brutal murderer of little Mary Phagan and a degenerate of the worst type.

James Conley, an illiterate negro leveled his finger at Frank in the prisoner’s chair and said: “That’s the man.”

It was Conley’s story for which an eager public—a morbidly curious public, perhaps—had been waiting. The story came with an unexpected wealth of horrible detail.

The negro forgot nothing, omitted nothing that he had told before. If he was telling a black lie to save his own neck from the gallows, it was still more wonderful. He had a remarkably retentive memory or an imagination far beyond the normal even for his notably imaginative race.

Frank told him he had killed the girl accidentally. That was the negro’s first and entirely new damning accusation against the young factory superintendent who sat eyeing him coolly and impassively. Conley followed this charge with a thrilling narrative of the grewsome events of that day at the factory in which he said he had a part.

“He said he had struck her too hard when she fought back at him and that she had fallen back and hit her head against something,” was the negro’s statement in effect.

As every spectator in the crowded courtroom hung on his words, Conley unfolded his dramatic story. He related the details already familiar to the public and added to them a story of revolting actions unprintable in their nature which he ascribed to the young superintendent.

Glibly he recited his tale of horror. So fast the words fell from his lips that the stenographers were hard put to keep up with him and the jurors, straining forward in their seats, found difficulty in following his recital.

Gripped Audience With Story.

He sat there, an uncouth, thick-lipped ignorant negro, but he told a story that gripped his auditors with a compelling interest that an eloquent-tongued orator could not have aroused.

Clad in a suit of clothes which the officers only recently got for him to take the place of those he had worn ever since the time he was arrested, he entered the courtroom with the shadow of a smile on his lips. He was pleased with the interest he was attracting. What did anything matter so long as he was the center of the white folks’ interest now.

A blue shirt, newly laundered, but ill-fitting, was unbuttoned at the throat. He carried his old cap in his hands as he made his way half proudly to the witness box.

He detailed each move from that time until Frank went to Montag’s and returned and carried his thrilling narrative along to the moment when Frank, he said, called him from the top of the stairs on the second floor and directed him to go back and get a girl whom he had struck too hard and who had hit her head against something.

From that point he related in minute detail a story of carrying the body, with Frank’s help, to the front of the building and down the elevator.

Tells of Disposal of the Body.

An audience sat spellbound as he narrated the ghastly story of bundling the limp body into some crocus bagging and starting on his trip to the basement. Unconcernedly, as though it were an everyday matter, he told of the burden becoming too heavy and of Frank coming with an oath on his lips to help him.

When he had finished this grisly portion of his testimony, he was asked concerning Frank’s actions at other times. He responded with a revolting story on incidents which he said had occurred in Frank’s office and in the metal room.

There was nothing lacking of the dramatic.

The very cord that was found about the neck of the murdered girl was given the negro and he threw it about his own black neck.

He showed exactly where it made its deep impress in the tender neck of the little factory girl.

He drew the noose tighter and tighter. Frank looked on quietly with never a quiver of his features. As he slipped it taut about his neck he demonstrated the exact position of the rope as it, according to the State’s contention, strangled the life of the girl.

Other Women Figure in Details.

He told of other times when he said Frank had made appointments with women at the factory. He told of alleged incidents in Frank’s office at which the young superintendent’s wife hung her head in momentary shame, her face bathed in crimson.

He recalled a Thanksgiving Day in particular when a tall, heavily built woman entered the factory and he was instructed to watch the door for inopportune visitors.

He declared it was this duty he was performing on the first floor of the factory when Mary Phagan came to her death.

Only once during this narrative was there a lightening of the tragic incident with which it was hedged. This was shortly after the cross-examination had begun.

Frank and his wife both laughed heartily when Attorney Rosser facetiously referred to Frank A. Hooper, admittedly the Beau Brummell of the trial lawyers, as “that old weazened-up fellow with the gray hair.”

Conley was trying to describe the color of the hair of Daisy Hopkins, one of the girls figuring in the testimony. He pointed out that of Attorney Hooper as most like that of the girl. A ripple of laughter arose in the courtroom in which the prisoner and his wife joined.

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The Atlanta Georgian, August 4th 1913, “Rosser’s Grilling of Negro Leads to Hot Clashes by Lawyers,” Leo Frank case newspaper article series (Original PDF)