Introduction to Mary Phagan-Kean’s Insights into the Murder of Her Great Aunt

HERE ARE SOME of the key points offered by Mary Phagan-Kean in her latest interview with social media activist Ryan Dawson. (video above)

Mary Phagan-Kean’s journey into the dark and complex narrative surrounding the murder of her great aunt, Mary Phagan, began unexpectedly. Her father first shared the story after her name was recognized by a teacher, sparking a lifelong quest for truth and justice. The tale, as recounted by her father, painted a grim picture of Leo Frank, the man convicted of Mary Phagan’s murder. According to testimony, Frank was a sexual pervert who molested numerous young girls and even boys, earning him the moniker “the B’nai B’rith pedophile” — a reference to the fact that he was president of the Atlanta chapter of the Jewish fraternal order B’nai B’rith, the organization which gave birth to the powerful ADL, or “Anti-Defamation League.” Frank was even re-elected president of the group after his conviction for murdering little Mary.

The Vigilance Committee, which consisted of leading community leaders and which sought “Southern justice” after a corrupt governor (who was a partner in the law firm that defended Frank) commuted Frank’s death sentence, played a pivotal role in the case by executing him themselves after, as they saw it, outside influencers had illegally prevented his lawful hanging. (The New York Times-invented “Knights of Mary Phagan” never existed. That moniker was likely invented to link the Vigilance Committee to similar-sounding “Knights” factions of the Ku Klux Klan, in order to smear the Committee.)

The lynching of Frank was the first done by automobile, quite a feat considering the limited ownership of automobiles in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915 — further proving that prominent citizens, who were outraged by Governor Slaton’s involvement in the law firm that defended Frank, and his commutation of his sentence, were involved, and not a “mob.”

The Anti-Defamation League, an organization with a vested interest in the outcome, has been relentless in its efforts to secure a full pardon for Frank for decades. Their tactics, however, have been marred by deception and misinformation, leading to numerous hoaxes, including false claims about a pardon (the existing “pardon” does not address his guilt at all).

Mary Phagan-Kean’s father never mentioned Frank’s Jewishness but emphasized his perverse behavior. Her grandfather, Mary Phagan’s brother, was deeply emotionally affected by the case, becoming distraught when asked about it, particularly noting the resemblance between Mary Phagan-Kean and little Mary.

The narrative surrounding the case is fraught with controversy. Jews have even attempted to portray Mary Phagan as a seducer, a claim that Mary Phagan-Kean vehemently rejects.

There has been documented collusion between Jewish groups and officials to alter the wording on Mary’s commemorative plaque, with the altered plaque suggesting that Frank was exonerated for the murder — which he was not. This alteration occurred under the cover of night and was set up during secret meetings from which the Phagan family — and the public — were excluded, further obscuring the truth.

Rabbi Steven Lebow, a prominent figure in the area Jewish community, demanded that Mary’s marker be changed because it “offended” the Jewish community to tell the truth about the non-pardon. This defense of a convicted child rapist and murderer is a strange hill for Jewish groups to die on.

During the 1960s, when Jewish authors Leonard Dinnerstein and Harry Golden were writing their books on the case, the trial transcript mysteriously disappeared, making it unavailable for public scrutiny.

The best outcome of the efforts of both sides in this case, Mrs. Phagan-Kean says, has been the creation of a team to digitize and make all relevant documents on the case available and searchable online. And the best way to study the case, she avers, is to examine these newspaper articles in conjunction with the Brief of Evidence (all now available on leofrank.info and leofrank.org). Contrary to popular belief, the newspapers were pro-Frank and had Jewish editors, contradicting the notion of an anti-Frank, anti-Jewish atmosphere. Nevertheless, the firsthand reports of the trial at that time were mostly honest and paint a very different picture from that of the “Leo Frank is an innocent victim of anti-Semitism” narrative being pushed today. (One can learn, for example, that the grand jury that indicted Frank included four Jews out of 21 members, and that all voted to charge Frank with the murder.)

The Jewish community’s claims that Frank did not know Mary Phagan are untenable. Frank walked past her daily for a year, handled her pay packets weekly, and even directed police to investigate James Gannt, claiming he was “close to” Mary. These actions suggest a familiarity that contradicts his claim of ignorance.

The Anti-Defamation League’s never-ending defense of Frank has inadvertently contributed to the cause they claim to oppose: anti-Semitism.

Mary Phagan was brutally raped, as evidenced by the autopsy report, which, though difficult to read, showed no markings on her body except those of strangulation. There was blood in her panties, and family proof confirmed she was not on her menstrual cycle. ADL-linked author Steven Oney referred to Mary as a “voluptuous woman,” a claim that Parade magazine attempted to exploit this by implying she was “flirting” before her death, a particularly odious insinuation.

A 1980s miniseries, inspired by Harry Golden’s book and dubious material from Alonzo Mann, was produced without consultation with Mary Phagan’s family. This miniseries further muddied the waters of the case.

In a more recent development, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, under pressure from Rabbi Lebow and the Jewish power structure, established a “Conviction Integrity Unit” in Atlanta. This unit, ostensibly to exonerate falsely convicted individuals, including Blacks, was really created explicitly to push for the exoneration of Frank. They have even floated the idea of a new trial for Frank, despite the extreme improbability of a proper prosecution more than a century later.

Contrary to ADL claims, the “mass exodus” of Jews from the area after the Frank case never occurred. This is one of the many hoaxes that will be debunked in the forthcoming new edition of Mrs. Phagan-Kean’s book, The Murder of Little Mary Phagan.

Mary Phagan-Kean’s father’s enduring belief was that “the truth will always win,” a sentiment that continues to guide her quest for justice.

by Benjamin Smith
Edited by John Anderson

ON 11 MARCH 2025, Mary Phagan-Kean — great-niece of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, who was brutally murdered by Jewish B’nai B’rith official Leo Frank in 1913 — was interviewed on the Stew Peters television program. You can watch that interview by clicking the video link above.

The trial, conviction, and execution of Frank was the major motivation behind the founding of today’s powerful “Anti-Defamation League” (ADL¹), which works to censor and punish those who speak out about Jewish abuses of power. Today, the ADL — along with their allies in the media, academia, and government — maintain that Leo Frank was an “innocent victim of anti-Semitism,” and deliberately ignore and downplay the huge mountain of evidence (the Brief of Evidence alone is well over three hundred pages long and Leo Frank’s appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court are several thousands of pages) proving his guilt, and ignoring the fact that every court from the Grand Jury, the Georgia Court of Appeals, up to and including the Supreme Court of the United States — and every court in between — affirmed his guilt (even though he was defended by a team of the most skillful, famous, and expensive lawyers of his time²).

Mrs. Phagan-Kean recounts the emotionally powerful story of how she first discovered that she was related to the girl who is probably the most well-known American murder victim of her generation, and how, after seeing how the vast monetary and political resources of the ADL and other organized Jewish groups were being used to confuse and trick the public into believing that the killer, Leo Frank, was actually the victim in this case, she decided to devote her life to bringing the truth to light.

In this program she discusses how, after Mary’s sex murder, Frank’s team and allies:

• Planted fake evidence to frame two innocent Black men for the crime: When the first frame, of night watchman New Lee, failed (they planted a fake bloody shirt at his home as well as altered his time card for that night³), they tried to frame janitor Jim Conley (with a fake planted bloody club and pay stub) and are still trying to frame him in 2025. Are these the acts of an innocent man?
• Created out of whole cloth, years later, a fake story of how the killer left “bite marks” on Mary Phagan’s body, marks which supposedly didn’t match Leo Frank’s dental X-rays (the autopsy report indicated no such marks whatever, and dental X-rays were not used in any Georgia case until decades after Frank’s trial)
• Tried to falsely imply that 13-year-old Mary Phagan, whose reputation was absolutely unimpeachable, was of low moral character and some kind of “seductress” — again, totally inverting the victim and perpetrator roles in the case.
• Created a false story, months after the trial, that a screaming and seething “anti-Semitic mob” dominated the trial for weeks, shouting “Hang the Jew or we’ll hang you” and similar epithets within hearing of the judge and jury. Contemporary pictures and newspaper reports prove that no such mob ever existed.
• Had the audacity to change — in the dead of night and without informing the Phagan family — the historical marker at Mary Phagan’s grave site, so its text reflected the Jewish narrative of Frank’s “innocence.” (See below for further details)
• Have consistently, right up to 2025, held secret meetings with Georgia and Fulton County officials — meetings from which the Phagan family, the press, and the public at large were purposely excluded — in an attempt to get Leo Frank officially exonerated. The meeting minutes also seemingly disappear or are not taken. Mary Phagan-Kean has asked to see these and has been prevented from doing so.
• And much more!

You’ll learn that Mrs. Phagan-Kean’s book about the case — The Murder of Little Mary Phagan — is about to be released this year in a brand-new, much-expanded edition.

Make sure and share this interview with everyone you know. You can’t understand what is happening in the world today without understanding the powerful forces that tried — and are still trying — to exonerate this vile rapist and child-murderer.

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1. Leo Frank was president of the Atlanta B’nai B’rith twice and was even re-elected after his conviction for the rape and strangulation of Mary Phagan. B’nai B’rith founded the ADL, originally called the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith before being shortened to just the Anti-Defamation League. The indictment, trial, and conviction of Leo Frank are what led to the founding of the ADL, not his execution, as the first announcement of its creation was on September 16th, 1913. Leo Frank was hanged in 1915.
2. An interesting thing to note here is that Georgia Governor John Slaton was a partner at the same law firm as Luther Z. Rosser, Leo Frank’s defense attorney.
3. Below is Defendant’s Exhibit 1, from the Brief of Evidence, showing where Leo Frank erased Newt Lee’s time stamps of 10:00 pm, 11:30 pm, 12:30 am, and 2:30 am to make it appear that he had been too busy with Mary Phagan to punch his time card:

* * *

Below is the original inscription on the historical marker at Mary Phagan’s grave site where it did not hide the fact that Frank’s pardon did not officially exonerate him from the crime of murder. The newer historical marker does not provide this specific fact and implies that the pardon absolved him of the crime which is not true:

Below is what it was then changed to with no vote and no media present, in 1995. Most people, who are not well-researched in the case, would assume that “he was issued a pardon,” means that he was absolved of the crime:

The Marietta Daily Journal published an article describing what happened and why the Phagan family was outraged by this (transcribed below):

“Family of Mary Phagan protests marker change

“Without a formal vote and with the press absent, Marietta City Council has changed the inscription on the city’s historic marker at the grave of rape-murder victim Mary Phagan in the Marietta City Cemetery. The Phagan family is blaming Councilman Philip Goldstein.

“The descendants of Miss Phagan are upset because the family was not notified before or after the change, and only learned of it on a cemetery-cleaning visit. The family says the newly-placed marker – which sits on a city-maintained path near the grave and is not to be confused with Miss Phagan’s ornate tombstone, which makes no mention of the circumstances of her death – omits the reason for the 1986 posthumous pardon given Leo Frank.

“Frank – Miss Phagan’s boss – was convicted in 1913 by a Fulton Superior Court jury of the 13-year-old girl’s murder in an Atlanta pencil factory and sentenced to hang. When Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life in 1915, a group of Marietta men abducted Frank from the state prison near Milledgeville and lynched him near what is now the Big Chicken on Frey’s Gin Road in Marietta.

[Years later someone vandalized the elegant white marble flowerpot situated at the footer of the epitaph slab and stole the broken piece of it.]

“The Phagan family initially opposed placing a marker at their ancestor’s grave, fearing there would be increased damage to the cemetery plot and curiosity seekers would leave graffiti. That hasn’t happened. Late Mayor Joe Mack Wilson told east Cobb resident and Cherokee County special education teacher Mary Phagan Keen, a great-niece of Mary Phagan, that the grave was the most sought by visitors to Marietta and should have a marker, along with several other notable graves in the cemetery.

[Newly Concealing the fact that Leo M. Frank was not officially exonerated]

“Mayor Wilson told the Phagan family the city would let them approve the text of the marker. The family insisted the unusual conditions of Frank’s 1986 pardon be explained. That was done. Now controversy has arisen because that portion of the marker has been changed.

“The Georgia Pardons and Parole Board in 1983 turned down a request for a pardon based on Frank’s alleged innocence. [Leo] Frank’s former office boy, Alonzo Mann, told two Nashville Tennessean newsmen he saw black janitor Jim Conley holding a limp body in his arms the day of the murder. In its 1983 denial of a pardon for Frank, the board said after Mann’s testimony it “did not find conclusive evidence proving beyond any doubt that Frank was innocent.”

“A new parole board then granted Frank a pardon in 1986 on the grounds the state did not protect him in prison, thereby allowing him to be lynched and thus ending any further court appeals. Frank’s conviction was appealed unsuccessfully by his lawyers three times to the Georgia Supreme Court and twice to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The 1986 pardon said: “Without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence, and in recognition of the state’s failure to protect the person of Leo M. Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity for continued legal appeal of his conviction, and in recognition of the state’s failure to bring his killers to justice, and as an effort to heal old wounds…the board hereby grants to Leo M. Frank a pardon.” The family opposed the 1986 pardon, and now is irked at the council and [Philip] Goldstein.

[The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles failed to mention the fact that Leo Frank had fully exhausted all of his trial appeals at the Georgia and Federal Supreme Court in April of 1915.]

“”We are as much a victim as the family of Leo Frank,” said Ms. Keen. For 80 years, we have been the object of the curiosity-seekers and subjected to unfair and untrue books and TV docudramas. The current council didn’t show the same respect to us as did Mayor Wilson and a previous council.” Ms. Keen’s father, James Phagan, said the action was “extremely insensitive of the council” and “disingenuous of Councilman [Philip] Goldstein. How can you separate Mary Phagan and Leo Frank?” he asked. “Can you mention the Holocaust and not mention Hitler? It’s simply pandering by Councilman [Philip] Goldstein to a segment of the community. It’s another effort to change history.”

“The inscription change was made by the Parks and Tourism Committee chaired by Councilman Dan Cox. Members are Councilwoman Betty Hunter and Goldstein. The full council OK’d the action. Cox admitted the committee had yielded to “political pressure” by [Philip] Goldstein and the Jewish community. Calling the change “a no-win situation,” Cox said he reluctantly consented to the change “because it offended a part of the community.”

[August 17, 1995. Leo Frank’s Lynching Site, 1200 Roswell Road, Marietta, Cobb County, Georgia]

“On the 80th anniversary of Frank’s lynching on Aug. 17, [1995] a group of Jewish leaders led by Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth in East Cobb said the historic marker at Mary Phagan’s grave should be removed. The group placed a small plaque in the side of the VPI Corp. building owned by Roy Varner at 1200 Roswell St., near the site of Frank’s lynching. The plaque reads: “Wrongly Accused, Falsely Convicted and Wantonly Murdered.” Attending the ceremony were Marietta Councilmen Goldstein and James Dodd, who told Jewish leaders they would look into removing the line of the marker that refers to the pardon conditions.

“”This is a plaque that marks the grave of Mary Phagan,” said [Philip] Goldstein. “The last two lines deal with information on Leo Frank, and it’s not his grave.” Goldstein was quoted in the Jewish Times as saying: “The wording is factually correct. The mention of Frank [not getting officially exonerated] on Phagan’s marker should be deleted because it is irrelevant, not because it upsets the Jewish community.”

“It was Dodd who brought the matter before council, supported by [Philip] Goldstein. “This is a lose-lose situation for me,” [Philip] Goldstein said. The marker referring to the condition of Frank’s pardon has been removed and replaced with a marker the Phagan family had objected to.”

A letter to the editor regarding the incident (transcribed below):

Many now know that Frank is guilty and oppose exonerating him, due to the efforts of National Alliance members and others fighting for truth

THE LATEST SALVO in the century-long saga over Leo Frank’s guilt or innocence was fired on Monday when a digital billboard went live at the intersection of Upper Roswell Road and Sewell Mill Road in east Cobb. It features a photo of Frank and reads “Leo Frank Was Innocent” and adds details about the upcoming 2 p.m. service Aug. 16 at Temple Kol Emeth.

“It will be seen by tens of thousands as they drive by on the first week of school,” Rabbi Steve Lebow (pictured) told Around Town late Monday afternoon.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a posthumous pardon to Frank in 1986 for the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan, based on the state’s failure to protect him while in its custody and “as an effort to heal old wounds.”

But those “old wounds” haven’t done much healing in the years since then. And the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Aug. 17, 1915, lynching of Frank in Marietta is likely to put some still-raw emotions back on full display.

A series of major events are planned in coming days, several of which seem to favor further efforts to seek “justice” for Frank in connection with the 1913 rape and murder of former Mariettan Phagan, 13, at the factory he managed in Atlanta. Frank was tried and found guilty, but after Gov. John Slaton commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment, a well-organized and well-connected group of men from Marietta abducted Frank from the state prison in Milledgeville, drove him back to Marietta and hanged him at Frey’s Gin just off Roswell Road near the present-day Big Chicken.

No one was ever held responsible for the death of Frank, who is believed to be the only Jewish-American ever lynched in this country.

Among those who likely won’t be attending any of those events is retiree Mary Phagan Keane of Ellijay, the grand-niece and namesake of “Little Mary” Phagan. Keane has served as her family’s spokesperson in recent decades, giving voice to the many here who still think Frank was guilty.

His 1986 pardon was the result of political pressure and threatened economic pressure, she says.

“That’s why they granted it,” Keane said. “They could not prove that Leo Frank was not guilty. (That ruling) was bought and paid for by the supporters of Leo Frank.

“That rabbi (Lebow) needs to stop all this cr-p. It’s already been decided. He has no clue what he does to our family when he brings this up. “Who is he? He has no connections to the (Frank) family, but he’s eager to stir up trouble. Tell him to stop. He wants ‘a new Marietta’? Well, ‘the new Marietta’ needs to move on.” …

Below is a clip from the get together and service led by Rabbi Steven Lebow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIv8ZQ0MAc

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Source: The Marietta Daily Journal

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

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

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

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

Mary Phagan Kean is the namesake of the murder victim, Mary Phagan, being her grandniece. When the author was 13 years old, she discovered her given name was no mere accident or coincidence. When people heard her name, they started asking her questions about whether she was related to the famous little Mary Phagan who had been murdered long ago by Leo Frank on Confederate Memorial Day in 1913.

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

Download the complete audio book as one zip file

You can also download the individual chapters.

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

Introduction and Chapter 1; “Are You, By Any Chance . . . ?”; 18 minutes:
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Chapter 2; The Legacy; 1 hour 10 minutes:
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Chapter 3; My Search Begins; 42 minutes:
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Chapter 4; The Case for the Prosecution; 1 hour 20 minutes:
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Chapter 5; The Case for the Defense; 1 hour 30 minutes:
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Chapter 6; Sentencing and Aftermath; 37 minutes:
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Chapter 7; The Commutation; 1 hour 30 minutes:
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Chapter 8; The Lynching; 43 minutes:
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Chapter 9; Reverberations; 13 minutes:
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Chapter 10; Alonzo Mann’s Testimony; 37 minutes:
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Chapter 11; The Phagans Break Their Vow of Silence; 21 minutes:
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Chapter 12; Application for Pardon, 1983; 1 hour 21 minutes:
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Afterword; Pardon, 1986; 11 minutes:
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Appendix 1

A Review of The Murder of Little Mary Phagan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Apocryphal Deconstructed

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newt Lee in custody with Detective John R. Black

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

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

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

Leo M. Frank

Inside his business office, at about 8:00 AM, Frank opened his payroll ledger and told the police officers that Mary Phagan had arrived at about 12:03 PM on Saturday, April 26, 1913, asking for her pay envelope and, upon receiving it, had left. Frank went on to tell the police he stayed continuously in his business office from that time until 12:45 PM on that fateful day.

The next day, Monday morning, April 28, 1913, Leo Frank would change the time of Phagan’s arrival to his office from 12:03 PM to “12:05 PM to 12:10 PM, maybe 12:07 PM.” (State’s Exhibit B, Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913; Atlanta Constitution, August 2, 1913).

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

Milestone in the Mary Phagan Murder Investigation

Something very interesting happened exactly one week after the murder of Mary Phagan — on Saturday, May 3, 1913. The event was an unexpected surprise. The major breakthrough occurred when detectives stumbled upon one of the young female child laborers who was tendering her resignation at the National Pencil Company (NPC). This significant former employee was 14-year-old Monteen Stover — who was accompanied by her incensed stepmother — making what astonishingly turned out to be a second attempt at collecting her pay envelope, because she had failed to retrieve it the first time on the day of the murder, when she came to the factory alone at five minutes past noon.

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

This was earth shattering news to investigators — because on Monday, April 28, Leo Frank, in the presence of his elite attorneys (Luther Zeigler Rosser and Herbert Haas), had made an unsworn stenographed deposition to a room full of Atlanta police detectives. In this deposition Frank precisely stated he was in his office alone with Mary Phagan between 12:05 PM and 12:10 PM (State’s Exhibit B). Even more significant is that Leo Frank initially told the police on Sunday, April 27, 1913, not only that Mary Phagan had come to his office at 12:03 PM, but that he had not left his office at all until 12:45 PM.

Sunday, May 4, 1913: the Moment of Truth

Without Leo Frank knowing the police had discovered and questioned Monteen Stover, detectives John R. Black and Pinkerton detective Harry A. Scott approached Leo Frank in his jail cell on Sunday, May 4, and asked him to confirm, again, if he had been in his office every minute on Saturday, April 26, from noon to 12:45 PM. Leo Frank responded with an affirmative “Yes.” The officers then reworded and slightly changed the question and asked Leo Frank if he had been in his office every minute on Saturday, April 26, from noon to half past noon — and Leo Frank responded again with an affirmative “Yes.”

Detectives John Black and Harry Scott

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

Curious Inconsistency

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

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

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

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

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

Unique Trial Analysis

Judge Leonard S. Roan

Mary Phagan Kean also offers a uniquely neutral analysis of the month-long capital murder trial, which began on July 28, and led to Leo Frank’s August 25, 1913 murder conviction, after the jury deliberated for about two hours. The jury’s decision  also included a “without mercy” recommendation to the presiding judge — suggesting that a death sentence be meted out to Leo Max Frank.

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

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

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

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

Governor John M. Slaton

Rarely ever mentioned in connection with Leo Frank’s commutation is the fact that Governor John M. Slaton was part owner of the law firm representing Leo Frank at his trial and appeals. The law firm was officially called Rosser, Brandon, Slaton, and Phillips — and this politically powerful law group had been formed before Leo Frank’s trial began.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ugly Racist Framing of
the Night Watchman Newt Lee

On Sunday morning at 8:26 a.m., April 27, 1913, in the presence of the Atlanta police, Leo Frank pulled out Newt Lee’s time card, eyeballed it from the top downward, and said it was punched correctly every half hour — meaning that Lee had made all his rounds on time and would not have had enough time to leave the building and go to his home between punches. However, the next day Leo Frank changed his story and told the police that Newt Lee did not punch his time card correctly and that there were missing punches indicating four hours of unaccounted-for time. This put even greater suspicion on Newt Lee. The intervals suggested he had more than enough time to go home, potentially hide evidence, and then return to the factory.

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

Intimations to Search Newt Lee’s Shack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucille Selig and Leo Frank

Steve Oney

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

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

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

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

A snapshot of Marietta after the lynching of Leo Frank

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

The Murder of Little Mary Phagan is written by the namesake of the murder victim, Mary Phagan’s great-niece Mary Phagan Kean. After becoming a lifelong student of the case at age thirteen, inspired by her own family’s accounts of the tragedy, Phagan Kean has since devoted almost every free moment of her life studying volumes of legal documents and reading every surviving newspaper account surrounding the rape and strangulation of her great aunt.

Mary Phagan and her aunt

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

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

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

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

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

But our family had questions.

Why was there no public announcement of receipt of application?

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

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

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

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

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

We wondered what the purpose was of keeping it secret?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

APPENDIX 2:
Recommended reading

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

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

2. American State Trials, volume X (1918) by John Lawson tends to be biased in favor of Leo Frank and his legal defense team. This case commentary review provides an abridged version of the Brief of Evidence, leaving out some of the important testimony and evidence when it republishes parts of the trial testimony. Be sure to read the abridged closing arguments of Luther Zeigler Rosser, Reuben Rose Arnold, Frank Arthur Hooper and Hugh Manson Dorsey. For a more complete version of the Leo M. Frank trial testimony, read the 1913 Leo Frank Case Brief of Evidence.

Hugh M. Dorsey

3. Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey in the Trial of Leo Frank. Some, but not all, of the nine hours of arguments given to the Jury at the end of the Leo Frank trial on August 22, 23, and 25 of 1913. Only 18 libraries in the United States have copies of these statements in book format. This is an excellent book and required reading for students of the Leo Frank case to see how Hugh Dorsey, in sales vernacular, closed the panel of thirteen men (the trial jury of twelve men plus Judge Leonard Strickland Roan).

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

Three major Atlanta dailies: The Atlanta Constitution, The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Georgian (Hearst’s Tabloid Yellow Journalism). The most relevant issues center around April 28th to August 27th 1913:

5. Atlanta Constitution newspaper: The Murder of Mary Phagan, Coroner’s Inquest, Grand Jury, Investigation, Trial, Appeals, Prison Shanking and Lynching reported about the Leo Frank Case in the Atlanta Constitution daily newspaper from 1913 to 1915. http://archive.org/details/LeoFrankCaseInTheAtlantaConstitutionNewspaper1913To1915

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

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

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

Tom E. Watson

U.S. Senator Tom Watson

8. Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian Newspaper (1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917) and Watson’s Magazine (1915). Tom Watson’s best work on the Leo M. Frank case was published in August and September 1915. Watson’s five major magazine works written serially on the Frank-Phagan affair, provide logical arguments confirming the guilt of Leo M. Frank with the superb reasoning of a seasoned criminal attorney. These five 1915 articles published over numerous months are absolutely required reading for anyone interested in the Leo M. Frank Case. Originals of these magazines are extremely difficult to find.

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

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

8.3. The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank By Tom Watson (August 1915) Volumne 21, No 4. See page 182 for ‘The Celebrated Case of the State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank”. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga., Digital Source www.Archive.org

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

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

Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian Weekly Newspaper

9. The archive of Tom E. Watson Digital Papers, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, contains the full collection of Jeffersonian Newspapers: http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/watson

Modern Leo Frank cult members (known as Frankites) are posing as neutral reviewers and attempting to convince people not to read Tom Watson’s analysis about the Frank-Phagan affair. Watson’s analysis of the case is the controversial forbidden fruit of truth that have been censored for more than 100 years. For a nearly complete selection of: Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian newspaper articles specifically related to the Murder of Mary Phagan and Leo Frank Case.

Tom Watson Brown, Grandson of Thomas Edward Watson

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

Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Archive:

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

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