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 Constitution
August 22nd, 1913

When Attorney Frank A. Hooper had made the opening speech of the prosecution, Attorney Reuben R. Arnold prepared for the first speech of the defense. It had been announced that he would review the entire history of the case and when he started at noon the pasteboard model of the pencil factory was brought In.

A large diagram giving a synopsis of the case was also brought in, but was not unwrapped when Mr. Arnold first started, “Gentlemen of the fury, we are all to be congratulated that this case is drawing to a close,” Mr. Arnold began in a quiet voice as though addressing several friends on an everyday subject.

“We have all suffered here from trying a long and complicated case at the heated term of the year. It’s been a case that has taken as much effort and so much concentration and so much time, and the quarters here are so poor.

Particularly hard on you members of the jury who are practically in custody while the case is going on.

“I know it’s hard on a jury to be kept confined this way, but it is necessary that they be segregated and set apart where they will get no impression at home nor on the street.

“The members of the jury are in a sense set apart on a mountain, where, far removed from the passion and heat of the plain, calmness rules them and they can judge a case on its merits.

Takes Rap at Hooper.

“My friend, Hooper, said a funny thing here a while ago; I don’t think he meant what he said, however. Mr. Arnold then stated. “Mr. Hooper said that the men in the jury box are no different from the man on the street, “Your honor, I’m learning something every day and I certainly learned something today, if that’s true,” he added, turning to Judge Roan.

“Mr. Arnold evidently mistakes my meaning, which I thought I made clear,” interrupted Attorney Frank Hooper. “I stated that the men in the jury box were like they would be on the street in the fact that in making. up their minds about me guilt or innocence of the accused they must use the same common sense that they would if they were not part of the court.”

“Well, let’s get away from that street idea, entirely,” Mr. Arnold fired back.

The speaker then launched into a description of the horrible crime that had been committed that afternoon or night in the National Pencil company’s dark basement. He dwelt on the effect of the crime upon the people of Atlanta and of how high feeling ran and still runs, and of the omnipresent desire for the death of the man who committed the crime.

Roasts Motorman Kenley.

“They are follows Ike that street car man, Kenley, the one who vilified this defendant here and cried for him to be lynched and shouted that he was guilty until he made himself a nuisance on the ears he ran.”

“Why I can hardly realize that a man holding a position as responsible as that of a motorman and a man with certain police powers and the discretion necessary to guide a car through the crowded city streets would give way to passion and prejudice like that.”

“It was a type of man like Kenley who said he did not know for sure whether those negroes hanged in Decatur tor the shooting of the street car men were guilty, but that he was glad they hung as some negroes ought to be hanged for the crime. He’s the same sort of a man who believes that there ought to be a hanging because that innocent title girl was murdered, and who would like to see this Jew here hang, because somebody ought to hang for it.

Frank’s Only Guilt.

“I’ll tell you right now, if Frank hadn’t been a Jew there would never have been any prosecution against him. I’m asking my own people to turn him loose, asking them to do justice to a Jew, and I’m not a Jew, but I would rather die before doing injustice to a Jew.

“This case has been built up by degrees; they have a monstrous perjurer here in the form of this Jim Conley against Frank. You Know what sort of a man Conley is, and you know that up to the time the murder was committed no one ever heard a word against Frank.”

“Villainy like this charged to him does not crop out in a day. There are long mutterings of it for years before. There are only a few who have ever said anything against Frank. I want to call your attention later to the class of their witnesses and the class of ours. A few floaters around the factory, out of the hundreds who have worked there in the plant three or four years, have been induced to come up here and swear that Frank was not a good character, but the decent employees down there have sworn to his good character.” Look at the jail birds they brought up here, the very dregs of humanity, men and women who have disgraced themselves and who now have come and tried to swear away the life of an innocent man.”

To Strip State’s Case Bare.

“I know that you members of the jury are impartial. That’s the only reason why you are here and I’m going to strip the state’s case bare for you. If I have the strength to last to do it.”

“They have got to show Frank guilty of one thing before you can convict him; they’ve got to show that he is guilty of the murder, no matter what else they show about him. You are trying him solely for the murder and there must be no chance that any-one else could just as likely be guilty.”

“If the jury sees that there is just as good a chance that Conley can be guilty then they must turn Frank loose.”

“Now you can see how in this case the detectives were put to it to blame the crime on somebody. First it was Lee and then it was Gantt and various people came in and declared they had seen the girl alive (late Saturday) night and at other times and no one knew what to do.”

Lee Has Not Told All.

“Well, suspicion turned away from Gantt and in a little while it turned away from Lee. Now I don’t believe that Newt is guilty of the crime, but I do believe that he knows a lot more about the crime than he told. He knows about those letters and he found that body a lot sooner than he said he did.

“Oh, well, the whole case is a mystery, a deep mystery, but there is one thing pretty plain, and that is that whoever wrote those notes committed the crime. Those notes certainly had some connection with the murder, and whoever wrote those notes committed the crime.”

“Well, they put Newt Lee through the third degree and the fourth degree and maybe a few others. That’s the way, you know, they got this affidavit from the poor negro woman, Minola McKnight. Why, just the other day the supreme court handed down a decision in which it referred to the third degree methods of the police and detectives in words that burned.”

Here the attorney read the decision which attacked alleged third degree methods.

“Well, they used those methods with Jim Conley. My friend Hooper said nothing held Conley to the witness chair here but the truth, but I tell you that the tear of a broken neck held him there. I think this decision about the third degree was handed down with Conley’s case in mind. I’m going to show this Conley business up before I get through.”

Charges “Frame-Up.”

“I’m going to show that this entire case is the greatest frame-up in the history of the state.”

Here court adjourned for lunch.

“My friend Hooper remarked something about circumstantial evidence and | how powerful it frequently was. He forgot to say that the circumstances, in every case, must invariably be proved by witnesses.”

“History contains a long record of circumstantial evidence and I once had a book on the subject which dwell on such cases, most all of which sickens the man who reads them. Horrible mistakes have been made by circumstantial evidence—more so than by any other kind.”

Here Mr. Arnold cited the Durant case in San Francisco, the Hampton case in England, and the Dreyfus case in France as instances of mistakes of circumstantial evidence. In the Dreyfus case he declared it was purely persecution of the Jew.

The hideousness of the murder itself was not as savage, he asserted, as the feeling to convict this man.

“But the savagery and venom Is there, just the same, and it is a case very much on the order of Dreyfus.

Attack’s Hooper’s Position.

“Hooper says ‘Suppose Frank didn’t kill the girl and Jim Conley did, wasn’t it Frank’s duty to protect her?”. He was taking the position that if Jim went back there and killed her, Frank could not help but know about the murder.  Which position, I think, is quite absurd.

“Take this hypothesis, then, of Mr. Hooper’s. If Jim saw the girl go up and went back and killed her, would he have taken the body down the elevator at that time? Wouldn’t he have waited until Frank and White and Denham and Mrs. While and all others were out of the building? I think so. But there’s not a possibility of the girl having been killed on the second floor.

“Hooper smells a plot, and says Frank has his eye on the little girl who was killed. The crime isn’t an act of a civilized man—it’s the crime of a cannibal, a man-eater. Hooper ls hard-pressed and wants to get up a plot—he sees he has to get up something. He forms his plot from Jim Conley’s story”.

“They say that on Friday Frank knew he was going to make an attack of some sort on Mary Phagan. The plot thickens. Of all the wild things I have ever heard that Is the wildest. It is ridiculous. Mary Phagan worked in the pencil factory for months, and all the evidence they have produced that Frank ever associated with her—ever knew her—is the story of weasley little Willie Turner, who can’t even describe the little girl who was killed.”             

“A little further on in his story Jim is beginning the plot. They used him to corroborate everything as they advised. Jim is laying the foundation for the plot. What is it—this plot?”

Ridiculous Alleged Plot.

“Only that on Friday Frank was planning to commit some kind of assault upon Mary Phagan.”

“Jim was their tool. Even Scott swears that when he told Jim’s story didn’t fit, Jim very obligingly adapted it to suit his defense. He was scrupulous about things like that. He was quite considerate. Certainly. He had his own neck to save.”

“Jim undertook to show that Frank had an engagement with some woman at the pencil factory that Saturday morning. There is no pretense that another woman is mixed up in the case. No one would argue that he planned to meet and assault this Innocent little girl who was killed.”

“Who but God would know whether she was coming for her pay that Friday afternoon or the next Saturday? Are we stark idiots? Can’t we divine some things?”

“They’s got a girl named Ferguson, who says she went for Mary Phagan’s pay on the Friday before she was killed, and that Frank wouldn’t give it her. It Is the wildest theory on earth, and it fits nothing. It is a strained conspiracy, Frank, to show you I am correct, had nothing whatever to do with paying off on Friday. Schiff did it all.

“And little Magnolia Kennedy, Helen Ferguson’s best friend, says she was with Helen when Helen went to draw her pay, and that Helen never said a word about Mary’s envelope.”

“There’s your conspiracy, with Jim Conley’s story as its foundation. It’s too thin. It’s preposterous.

“Then my friend Hooper says Frank discharged Gantt because he saw Gantt talking to Mary Phagan. If you convicted men on such distorted evidence as this, why you’d be hanging men perpetually. Gantt, in the first place, doesn’t come into this case in any good light. It Is ridiculously absurd to bring his discharge into this plot of the defense.”

“Why, even Grace Hicks, who worked with Mary Phagan, and who Is a sister-in-law of Boots Rogers, says that Frank did not know the little girl.”

Defends Factory Conditions.

“Hooper also says that bad things are going on in the pencil factory, and that it is natural for men to cast about for girls in such environments. We are not trying this case on whether you or I or Frank had been perfect in the past. This is a case of murder. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

“I say this much, and that is that there has been as little evidence of such conditions in this plant as any other of its kind you can find in the city. They have produced some, of course, but it is an easy matter to locate some ten or twelve disgruntled ex-employees who are vengeful enough to swear against their former superintendent, even though they don’t know him except by sight.”

“I want to ask this much. Could Frank have remained at the head of this concern If he had been as loose morally as the state has striven to show? It he had carried on with thy girls of the place as my friends alleged, wouldn’t entire working force have been demoralized, ruined? He may have looked into the dressing room, as the little Jackson girl says, that if he did, it was done to see that the girls weren’t loitering.”

“There were no lavatories, no toilets, no baths in these dressing rooms. The girls only changed their top garments. He wouldn’t have seen much if he had peered into the place. You can go to Pledmont park any day and see girls and women with a whole lot less on their person. And to the shows any night you can see the actresses with almost nothing on.”

“Everything brought against Frank was some act he did openly and in broad daylight, ‘and an act against which no kick was made.’”

The Trouble With Hooper.

“The trouble with Hooper is that he sees a bear in every bush. He sees a plot in this because Frank told Jim Conley to come back Saturday morning. The office that day was filled with persons throughout the day. How could he know when Mary Phagan was coming or how many persons would be in the place when she arrived?”

“This crime is the hideous act of a negro who would ravish a ten-year-old girl the same as he would ravish a woman of years. It isn’t a white man’s crime. It’s the crime of a beast—a low, savage beast!”

“Now, back to the case: There is an explorer in the pencil factory by the name of Barrett—I call him Christopher Columbus Barrett purely for his penchant for finding things. Mr. Barrett discovered the blood spots in the place where Chief Beavers, Chief Lanford and Mr. Black and Mr. Starnes had searched on the Sunday of the discovery.

Barrett and the Reward.

“They found nothing of the sort. Barratt discovered the stains after he had proclaimed to the whole second floor that he was going to get the $4,000 reward if Mr. Frank was convicted. Now, you talk about plants! If this doesn’t look mighty funny that a man expecting a reward would find blood spots in a place that has been scoured by detectives, I don’t know what does.”

“Four chips of this flooring were chiseled from this flooring where these spots were found. The floor was an inch deep in dirt and grease. Victims of accidents had passed by the spot with bleeding fingers and hands. If a drop of blood had ever fallen there, a chemist could find it four years later. Their contention is that all the big spots were undiluted blood.”  

“Yet, let’s see how much blood Dr. Claude Smith found on the chips. Probably five corpuscles, that’s all, and that’s what he testified here at the trial. My recollection is that one single drop of blood contains 3,000 corpuscles. And, he found these corpuscles on only one chip.”

“I say that half of the blood had been on the floor two or three years. The stain on all chips but one were not blood. Dorsey’s own doctors have put him where he can’t wriggle—-his own evidence hampers him.”

“They found blood spots on a certain spot and then had Jim adapt his story accordingly. They had him put the finding of the body near the blood spots, and had him drop it right where the spots were found.”

“It stands to reason that if a girl had been wounded on the lathing machine, there would have been blood in the vicinity of the machine. Yet, there was no blood in that place and neither was there any where the body was said to have been found by Conley. The cake doesn’t fit. It’s flimsy.

“A Cheap, Common Plant.”

“And, this hascoline that they’ve raised such a rumpus over. It was put on the floor as a cheap, common plant to make it appear as though someone had put it there in an effort to hide the blood spots. The two spots of blood and the strands of hair are the only evidence that the prosecution has that the girl was killed on the second floor. “Now, about these strands of hair, Barrett, the explorer, says he found four or five strands on the lathing machine. I don’t know whether he did or not. They’ve never been produced. I’ve never seen them, But, it’s probable, for, just beyond the lathing machine, right in the path of a draft that blows in from the window, is a gas jet used by the girls in curling and primping their hair. It’s very probable that strands of hair have been blown from this jet to the lathing machine.”

“The state not only has got no case, gentlemen, but they’ve got the clumsiest, ill-fitting batch I’ve ever seen.“

“The detectives say that Frank is a crafty, cunning criminal, when deep down in their heart of hearts they know good and well that their case is bullshit against him purely because he was honest enough to admit having seen her that day. Had he been a criminal, he never would have told about seeing her and would have replaced her envelope in the desk, saying she had never called for her for pay.”

Defends Character of Women.

“I believe that a majority of the women are good. The state jumped on poor Daisy Hopkins. I don’t contend, now, mind you, that she is a paragon of virtue. But there are men who were put up by the stats who are no better than she. For instance, this Dalton, who says openly that he went into the basement with Daisy. I don’t believe he ever did, but, in such a case, he slipped in. There are some fallen women who can tell the truth. They have characteristics like all other types.

“We put her on the stand to prove Dalton a liar and we did it. Now, gentlemen, don’t you think the prosecution is hard-pressed when they put up such on character ag Dalton? They say he has reformed. A man with thievery in his soul never reforms. Drunkards do and men with bad habits, but thieves? No!”

“Would you convict a man like Frank or the word of a pervert like Dalton? “Now, I’m coming back to Jim Conley. The whole ease centers around him. Mr. Hooper argued well on that part. At the outset of the case, the suspicion pointed to Frank merely because he was the only man in the building. It never cropped out for weeks that anyone was on the first floor.

Taken Rap at Detectives.

“The detectives put their efforts on Frank because he admitted having seen the girl. They have let their zeal run away with them in this case, and it is tragic. They are proud whenever they get a prisoner who will tell something on anybody. The humbler the victim the worse is the case. Such evidence comes with the stamp of untruth on its face.”          

“Jim Conley was telling his story to save his neck, and the detectives were happy listeners. If there is one thing for which a negro is capable it is for telling a story in detail. It is the same with children. Both have vivid imaginations. And a negro is also the best mimic in the world. He can imitate anybody.”

“Jim Conley, as he lay in his cell and read the papers and talked with the detectives, conjured up his wonderful story, and laid the crime on Frank, because the detectives had laid it there and were helping him do the same.”

“Now Brother Hooper waves the bloody shirt in our face. It was found Monday or Tuesday in Newt Lee’s home/house/place (unclear) while Detectives Black and Scott were giving calm to poor, old man Newt Lee. I don’t doubt it for a minute that they know it was out there when they started out after it.

 “I can’t say they planted it, but It does look suspicious. Don’t ask us about a planted shirt. Ask Scott and Black.”

“The first thing that points to Conley’s guilt is his original denial that he could write. Why did he deny it? Why? I don’t suppose much was thought of it when Jim said he couldn’t write, because there are plenty of negroes who are in the same fix. But later, when they found he could, and found that his script compared perfectly with the murder notes, they went right on accusing Frank. Not in criminal annals was there a better chance to lay at the door of another man a crime as well as Jim Conley had.”

“You see, there is a reason to all things. The detective department had many reasons to push the case against Frank. He was a man of position and culture. They were afraid that someone, unless they pushed the case to the jumping off place, would accuse them of trying to shield him. They are afraid of public and sentiment, and do not want to combat it, so, in such cases, they invariably follow the line of best resistance.”

Conley’s Statement Attacked.

Continuing the reading of Conley’s statement, Arnold pointed out the use of words, which he declared no negro would naturally have used. These were long words, with many syllables in them.

“They said that Conley used so much detail in his statements tha­­­t he could not have been lying!” exclaimed Arnold.

Arnold then read parts of statements which Conley had repudiated as willful lies, and pointed out the wealth of detail with which they were filled.

“And yet they say he couldn’t fabricate so much detail! Oh, he is smart!” cried Arnold.

He then took up the reading of the statement of May 24, in which Conley admitted writing the notes. In this he showed three different times at which Conley stated he wrote the notes, these being early in the morning, at 12:04 and at 3 p.m.

Once more Arnold sought to show that the statements were not genuinely Conley’s. “Take the word ‘negro’,” he said. “The first word that a nigger learns to spell correctly is negro, and he always takes particular pains to spell it n-e-g-r-o. He knows how to spell it. Listen to the statement. He says that at first he spelled the word ‘negros’, but that Frank did not want the ‘s’ on it and told him to rub it out, which he did. “Then he says that he wrote the word over.”

Arnold then read rapidly the parts of the statement referring to smoking in the factory with Frank when it was against the rules, taking the cigarette box with money in it, etc.

Conley’s Lies About the Notes.

“Look at the notes,” he said. “He was tried about those notes and he had to tell a lie and put upon someone the burden of instructing him to write them.”

“The first statement about them was a blunt lie—u lie in its incipiency. He said he wrote the notes on Friday. This was untrue and unreasonable, and he saw it. Frank could not have known anything of an intended murder on Friday from any viewpoint you might take, and therefore he could not have made Conley write them on Friday.”

“Ah, gentlemen of the jury, I tell you these people had a great find when they got this admission from Conley!” Arnold cried sarcastically.

“If Conley had stayed over there in the Tower with Uncle Wheeler Mangum he would have told the truth long ago. There’s where he should have stayed, with Wheeler Mangum.”

Says Dorsey Made Mistake.

“My good friend, Dorsey, is all right. I like him. But he should not have walked hand in glove with the detectives. There’s where he went wrong.”

“My good old friend Charlie Hill would not have done that. He would have let the nigger stay In the jail with Uncle Wheeler.”

“I like Dorsey. He simply made a mistake by joining in the hunt, in becoming a part of the chase. The solicitor should be little short of as fair as the judge himself. But he’s young and lacks the experience. He will probably know better in the future.”

“Dorsey did this: He went to the Judge and got the nigger moved from the jail to the police station.”  

“The judge simply said, ‘Whatever you say is all right.’ “Now, I’m going to show you how John Black got the statement of Conley changed. I am going to give you a demonstration. I have learned some things in this case about getting evidence!”

“They say that Frank cut Conley loose and he decided to tell the truth.”

“Conley Is a wretch with a long criminal record. Gentlemen, how can they expect what he says to be believed against the statement of Leo M. Frank?”

Four Pages of Lies.

“They say Conley can’t lie about detail. Here are four pages, all of which he himself admits are lies. They are about every saloon on Peters street, saloons to which he went, his shooting craps, his buying beer and all the ways in which he spent a morning. There is detail enough, and he admits that they are lies.”

“Now, in his, third statement, that of May 28, he changes the time of writing the letters from Friday to Saturday. Here are two pages of what he said, all of which he afterwards said were lies.

“He says that he made the statement that he wrote the notes on Friday in order to divert suspicion from his being connected with the murder which happened on Saturday. He also says that this is his final and true statement. God only knows how many statements he will make. He said he made the statement voluntarily and truthfully without promise of reward, and that he Is telling the truth and the whole truth.”

“He said in his statement that he never went to the building on Saturday. Yet we know that he was lurking in the building all the morning on the day of the murder. We know that he watched every girl that walked into that building so closely that he could tell you the spots on their dresses. We know that he was drunk, or had enough liquor in him to fire his blood.”

Had Guilt on His Soul.

“I know why he wouldn’t admit being fu that building on Saturday. He had guilt on his soul, and he didn’t want it to be known that he was here on Saturday. That’s why!” 

“When they pinned him down what did he do? He says that he was watching for Frank!”

“My God, wasn’t he a watchman! He said that he heard Frank and Mary Phagan walking upstairs, and that he heard Mary Phagan scream, and that immediately after hearing the scream he let Monteen Stover into the building.

“Why, they even have him saying that he watched for Frank, when another concern was using the very floor space in which Frank’s office was located, and you know they wouldn’t submit to anything like that.”

“Look again! He says that Mr. Frank said, “Jim, can you write?” What a lie!”

“He admitted that he had been writing for Frank for two years. It’s awful to have to argue about a thing like this, gentlemen! You will remember Hooper said, ‘How foolish of Conley to write these notes!’ How much more foolish, I say, of Frank to do it!”

“I don’t think that Newt killed the girl, but I believe he discovered the body some time before he notified the police. Newt’s a good nigger.”

Arnold once more read the notes and commented upon Conley’s spelling of the word “negros” and afterwards rubbing out the letter “s.”

“’Frank said he wanted the ‘s’’ rubbed out,’ quoted Arnold. ‘I rubbed it out.’ Frank said, ‘That’s all right, old boy, and slapped me on the back.’”

Over this picture Arnold had much merriment.

“Now, here is what Scott said,” continued Arnold. “He said that it took Conley six minutes to write a part of one note. Conley said that he wrote the notes three times.”

Attorney Laughs Aloud.

Arnold then read from Conley’s statement the description of the congenial manner in which Frank had Conley to sit down and asked him to have a cigarette, and of the pompous, manner in which Conley took the cigarette and smoked it. Arnold laughed loudly as he read this. He described comically how Frank must have looked when he looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Why should I hang? I have rich relatives In Brooklyn.’”

“They say that nigger couldn’t lie. Gentlemen. If there is any one thing that nigger can do it is to lie. As my good old friend, Charlie Hill, would say, ‘Put him in a hopper and he’ll drip lye!”

“He was trying to prove an alibi for himself when he said that he was not in the factory on Saturday and told all the things that he did elsewhere on that day. But we know that the wretch was lurking in the factory all of Saturday morning.

“Further he swore that while he was in Frank’s office he heard someone approaching and Mr. Frank cried out, ‘Gee! Here come Corinthia Hall and Emma Clarke!’ and that Frank shut him up in a wardrobe until they left. According to Conley they came into the factory between 12 and 1 o’clock, when, as a matter of fact, we know that they came between 11 and 12.”

“And as for his being able to fabricate the details of his statement — why, he knew every inch of that, building from top to bottom! Hadn’t he been sweeping and cleaning it for a long time?”

Made Conley Change Story.

“With this knowledge of the building, he naturally had no trouble in his pantomime after he had formed his story”.

“The miserable wretch has Frank hiding him in the wardrobe when Emma Clarke came in after the murder, when it has been proved that she came there and left before Mary Phagan ever entered the building on that day.”

“They saw where they were wrong in that statement, and they made Conley change it on the stand. They made him say, ‘I thought it was them.’ They knew that that story wouldn’t fit.”

“Do you remember,” continued Arnold, “How eagerly Conley took the papers from the girls at the factory? And do you remember how for four or five days the papers were full of the fact that Frank’s home was in Brooklyn, and that his relatives were reported to be wealthy? Conley didn’t have to go far to get material for that statement he put in Frank’s mouth.”

“It so happened, though, that Frank really did not have rich relatives in Brooklyn. His mother testified that his father was in ill health, and had but moderate means, and that his sister worked in New York for her living.”

He read from Conley’s statement about what Frank wanted with the notes, saying that Frank said he wanted to send them to relatives in BrookIyn and show what a smart negro he was, so that he could recommend him to them for a job.

“Why the nigger hadn’t even asked for a job,” exclaimed Arnold. “And if he had, what recommendation would such notes as these have been. Can you for a moment imagine a man saying that he intended to send his mother any such notes as these?”

Here Arnold read the repulsive contents of one of the notes.

“Gentlemen, am I living or dreaming, that I have to argue such points as these? This is what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to swallow every word that Conley has said—feathers and all, and you’ve got to believe none of it. How are you going to pick out of such a pack of lies as these what you will believe and what you will not? Yet this is what the prosecution has based the case upon. If this fails, all fails.”

“And do you remember about the watch, where Conley said that Frank asked him, ‘Why do you want to buy, a watch for Your wife? My big, fat wife wanted me to buy her an automobile, but I wouldn’t do it!’”

“Do you believe that, gentlemen of the jury?”

“I tell you that they have mistreated this poor woman terribly. They have “insinuated that she would not come to the tower to see Frank—had deserted him. When we know that she stayed away from the jail at Frank’s own request, because he did not want to submit her to the humiliation of seeing (him locked up and to the vulgar gaze of the morbid and to the cameras of the newspaper men. The most awful thing in the whole case is the way this family has been mistreated! The way they invaded Frank’s home and manipulated his servants.”

Are Not Representative.

“I deny that the people who did this are representative of the 175,000 people of Fulton county! We are a fair people and we are a chivalrous people. Such acts as these are not in our natures!”

Arnold reached the end of the statement where Conley changed the time of the writing of the notes to Saturday.

“That is where he changed the time of the writing of the notes to Saturday, but denied knowledge of the murder.”

“That, of course, did not satisfy these gentlemen and they went back to him. They knew he was dodging incrimination. So they had him to change the statement again.”

“Let me read Scott’s statement about how they got the statements from him.”

He read the detective’s statement about how he and other detectives had spent six hours at the time with Conley on occasions and used profanity and worried him to get a confession.

“Hooper thinks,” continued Arnold, that we have to break down Conley’s testimony on the stand, but there is [np such ruling. You can’t tell when to believe him, he has lied so much.”

Reading on, he came to the statement that the detectives went over the testimony with Dorsey.

“There,” said Arnold, “is where my friend got into it.”

Changed the Day.

Continuing his reading to show how the detectives got Conley lo change his statements, he said that they kept grilling Conley for six hours trying to impress on him the fact that Frank would not have written the notes on Friday.

“They wanted another statement,” he said. “He insisted that he had no other statement to make, but he did change the time of the writing of the notes from Friday to Saturday. This shows, gentlemen, as clearly as anything can show how they got Conley’s statements.

Lawyers Are Accessories.

“In the statement of May 29 they had nothing from Jim Conley about his knowledge of the killing of the little girl,” Mr. Arnold continued, “and the negro merely said that Frank had told him something about the girl having received a fall and about his helping Frank to hide the body.

“Lawyers, why, knowing a person guilty, yet defend him, are guilty of being accessories after the fact.”

“Oh, Conley, we are going to have you tell enough to have you convict Frank and yet keep yourself clear.”

“That’s a smart negro, that Conley.”

“And you notice how the state bragged on him because he stood up the cross-examination of Colonel Rosser, well that negro’s been well versed in law. Scott and Black and Starnes drilled him; they gave him the broad hints.

“Scott says, ‘We told him what would fit.’”

“In his first statement Conley leaves himself not an accessory after the fact.”

“Oh, Conley’s smart enough all right.”

“It ain’t hard to show how perjury comes into this case; the tracks are broad and clear.”

“We came here to, go to trial and knew nothing of the negro’s claim to seeing the cord around the little girl’s neck, or of his claim of seeing Lemmie Quinn go into the factory, or of a score of other things.”

“Yet, Conley was then telling the truth, he said, and he’d thrown Frank aside. Oh, he was no longer shielding Frank, and yet he didn’t tell it all when he said he was telling the whole truth.”

“Well, Conley had a revelation, you know.”

“My friend Dorsey visited with him seven times.”

Conley Saw New Light.

“And my friend Jim Starnes and my Irish friend, Patrick Campbell, they visited him, and on each visit Conley saw new light. Well, I guess they showed him things and other things.”

“Does Jim tell a thing because it’s the truth, gentlemen of the jury, or, because it fits into something that another witness has told?”

“Scott says, ‘They told him things that fitted.’”

“And Conley says they changed things every time he had a visit from Dorsey and the detectives.  Are you going to hang a man on that!?!”

“Gentlemen, it’s foolish for me to have to argue such a thing.”

“The man that wrote those murder notes is the man who killed that girl,” said Attorney Arnold suddenly in a quiet voice.”

“Prove that man was there and that he wrote the notes and you know who killed the girl. Well, Conley acknowledges he wrote the notes and witnesses have proved he was there and he admits that, too”.

Having turned suspicion towards the negro the attorney launched into a description of the way in which Conley might have done the murder.

“That negro was in the building near the elevator shaft; it took but two stops for him to grab that little girl’s mesh bag. She probably held on to it and struggled with him.”

“A moment later he had struck her in the eye and she had fallen. It is the work of a moment for Conley to throw her down the elevator shaft.”

Would Story Stand Pressure.

“Isn’t it more probable that the story I have outlined is true than the one that Conley tells on Frank? Suppose Conley were now under indictment and Frank out, how long would such a story against Frank stand the pressure?”

Here Mr. Arnold read from Conley’s evidence on cross-examination, where he declared that Solicitor Dorsey had visited him seven times and that he had added something new each time.

“Mr. Rosser asked Jim on cross-examination why he had not told all the first time that Dorsey went there and the negro said he didn’t want to; that he wanted to save some of it back. Who corrected the negro? Did Dorsey or Starnes or Campbell?”

“Now, see here,” added Mr. Arnold, “In the statement of May 29 there are any number of things that are not told of which later were told on the stand.”

“In the May 29 statement Conley never told of seeing Mary Phagan enter; he never told of seeing Monteen Stover enter, nor of seeing Lemmie Quinn enter; now he tells of having seen all of them enter.”

“Don’t you see how they just fitted to fit witnesses and what the witnesses would swear?”

“It was, ‘Here, Conley, swear that Quinn came up, swear that the dead girl came up and swear that Miss Stover came up; they all did and it’s true, swear to it!“

“And Conley would say, ‘All right, boss, Ah reckon they did.’”

“And it was, ‘Conley, how did you fail to hear that girl go into the metal room? We know she went there, because by our blood and hair, we have proved she was killed there,’ and the poor negro thought a minute and then he said, ‘Yes, boss, I heard her go in.’”

Made Conley Swear.

Attorney Arnold went through the same methods and In the same way declared that the state’s representatives had put it into the negro’s head to swear he heard Frank go in with her and that he heard Frank come tiptoeing out later and that by that method they made Conley swear that Frank was a moral pervert.

“Now, I don’t know that they told Conley to swear to this and to swear to that, but they made the suggestions and Conley knew whom he had to please. He knew that when he pleased the detectives that the rope knot around his neck grew looser.

“In the same way they made Conley swear about Dalton, and in the same way about Daisy Hopkins. They didn’t ask him about the mesh bag. They forgot that until Conley got on the stand. That mesh bag and that pay envelope furnish the true motive for this crime, too, and if the girl was ravished, Conley did it after he had robbed her and thrown her body into the basement.

“Weil, they got Conley on the stand and my friend Dorsey here asked Conley about the mesh bag and he said yes, Frank had put It in his safe. That was the crowning lie of all!”

“Well, they’ve gone on this way, adding one thing and another thing. “They wouldn’t let Conley out of jail; they had their own reasons for that and yet I never heard that old man over there (pointing to the sheriff), called dishonest. He runs his jail in a way to protect the innocent and not to convict them in his jail.”

Talks of the Murder.

Mr. Arnold then switched away from that and talked of the murder.

“Gentlemen, right here a little girl was murdered (pointing to the pasteboard model of the National Pencil factory, which had been brought Into court when he started to speak), and it’s a terrible crime.”

Mr. Arnold then went on to describe in detail the horror of the Phagan tragedy, the crime that stirred Atlanta as none other ever did.

“We have already got in court the man who wrote those notes and the man who by his own confession was there; “the man who robbed her, and gentlemen, why go further in seeking the murderer than the black brute who sat there by the elevator shaft?” 

“The man who sat by that elevator shaft is the man who committed the crime. He was full of passion and lust, he had drunk of mean whisky and he wanted money at first to buy more whisky.”

Mr. Arnold then asked the sheriff to unwrap a chart which had previously been brought into court. It proved to be a chronological chart of Frank’s alleged movements on Saturday, April 26, the day of the crime, and Mr. Arnold announced to the jury that he would prove by the chart that it was a physical impossibility for Frank to have committed the crime.

“Every word on that chart Is taken from the evidence,” slated the pleading attorney, “and it will show you that Frank did not have time to commit the crime charged to him”.

“The slate has wriggled a lot in this affair; they put up little George Epps and he swore that he and Mary Phagan got to town about seven after twelve and then they used other witnesses, and my friend Dorsey tried to boot the Epps boy’s evidence aside as though it were nothing.”

“The two street car men, Hollis and Mathews, say that Mary Phagan got Forsyth and Marietta at five or six minutes after twelve; and they stuck to it, despite every attempt to bulldoze them, and then Mathews, who rode on the car to Whitehall and Mitchell, says that Macy Phagan rode around with him to Broad and Hunter streets before she got off.”

McCoy Had No Watch.

“Well, the state put up McCoy, the man who never got his watch cut of soak until about the time he was called as a witness, and they had him swear that he looked at his watch at Walton and Forsyth (and he never had any watch), and it was 12 o’clock exactly, and then he walked down the street and saw Mary Phagan on her way to the factory.

“Now, I don’t believe McCoy ever saw Mary Phagan. Epps may have seen her but the state apparently calls him a lie when they introduce other testimony to show a change of time to what he swore to. It’s certain those two street car men who knew the girl, saw her, but the state comes in with the watchless McCoy and Kenley, the Jew-hater, and try to advance new theories about the time and different ones from what their own witness had sworn to.”

“Well, we have enough to prove the time, all right; we have the street car schedule, the statement of Hollis and Mathews and of George Epps, the state’s own witness.”

“The next thing is how long did it take Conley to go through with what he claims happened from the time he went Into Frank’s office and was told to get the body until he left the factory?”

“According to Conley’s own statement he started at four minutes to 1 o’clock and got through at 1:30 o’clock, making 34 minutes in all.”

“Harlee Branch (here the speaker paid a tribute to the newspaper man mentioned) says that he was there when the detectives made Conley go through with what he claimed took place and that he started then at 12:17 and by Mr. Branch’s figures, it took Conley 50 minutes to complete the motions.”

Didn’t Attack Dr. Owen.

“Well, the state has attacked nearly everybody we have brought into this case, but they didn’t attack Dr. William Owen, and he showed by his experiments that Conley could not have gone through those motions in 34 minutes.”

Mr. Arnold then read from Jim Conley’s evidence on cross-examination where he declared that ho started at 4 minutes to 1 o’clock to get the body and that he and Frank left at 1:30.

“If we ever pinned the negro down to anything, we did to that, and we have shown that he could not have done all that in 34 minutes.”

“Leaving out the slander and filth hurled at Frank and the statements of “those poor little factory girls, dragged up here and made to swear that his character was bad, there can be no truth in the state’s case.”

Mr. Arnold then read the chronological chart through to the jury, stopping from time to time to comment on it. He paused at where the chart stated that Miss Hattie Hall left the office at 12:02 o’clock and went on to show from her evidence how that had been settled upon. Then he declared that the little Stover girl had entered the office and left before Mary Phagan did.

“Away with your filth and your dirty, shameful evidence of perversion: your low street gossip, and come back to the time—the time-element in the case,” Mr. Arnold almost shouted.

“Now, I don’t believe the little Stover girl ever went into the inner office; she was a sweet innocent, timid little girl, and she just peeped into the office from the outer one, and if Frank was in there, the safe door hid him from her view, or if he was not there, he might have stepped out for just a moment.”

“Oh, my friend, Dorsey,” Mr. Arnold again launched into an attack on his brother attorney’s methods. “He stops clocks and he changes schedules, and he even changes a man’s whole physical make-up, and he’s almost changed the course, of time in an effort to get Frank convicted.”

Charges Rotten Evidence.

“Oh, I hate to think of little Mary Phagan in this, I hate to think that such a sweety pure, good little girl as she was, with never a breath of anything wrong whispered against her, should have her memory polluted with such rotten evidence against an innocent man.”

“Well, Mary Phagan entered the factory at approximately 12 minutes after 12,” Mr. Arnold continued in a quieter tone, “and did you ever stop to think that it was Frank who told them that the girl entered the office and when she entered it. If he had killed her, he would have just slipped her pay envelope back in the safe and declared that he never saw her that day at all, and then no one could have ever explained how she got into that basement.”

“But Frank couldn’t know that there was hatred enough left in this country against his race to bring such a hideous charge against him.”

“Well, the little girl entered, and she got her pay and asked about the metal and then she left, but there was a black spider waiting down there tear the elevator shaft, a great passionate, lustful animal, full of mean whisky and wanting money with which to buy more whiskey. He was as full of vile lust as he was of the passion for wore whisky, and the negro (and there are a thousand of them in Atlanta who would assault a white woman if they had the chance and knew they wouldn’t get caught) robbed her and struck her and threw her body down the shaft and later he carried it back, and maybe, if she was alive, when he came back he committed a worse crime, and then he put the cord around her neck and left the body there.”

“Do you suppose Frank would have gone out at 1:30 o’clock and left that body in the basement and those two men, White and Denham, at work upstairs? Do you suppose an intelligent man Iike Frank would have risked running that elevator, like Conley says he did, with the rest of the machinery of the factory shut off and nothing to prevent those men up there hearing him?”

Girl Saw Frank.

“Well, Frank says he left the factory at 1 o’clock and Conley says he left there at 1:30. Now there’s a little girl, who tried the week before to get a job as stenographer in Frank’s office, who was standing at Whitehall and Alabama streets and saw Frank at ten minutes after 1.

“Did she lie? Well, Dorsey didn’t try to show it, and according to Dorsey everybody lied except Conley and Dalton and Albert McKnight.”

“This little girl says she knows it was Frank because Professor Briscoe had introduced her to him the week before and she knows the time of day because she had looked at a clock as she had an engagement to meet another little girl.”

“That stamps your Conley story a lie blacker than hell!”

“Then Mrs. Levy, she’s a Jew, but she’s telling the truth; she was looking for her son to come home and she saw Frank get off the ear at his home corner and she looked at her clock and saw, it was 1:20. There Mrs. Selig and Mr. Selig swore op the stand that they knew he came in at 1:20.”

“There’s no one in this ease that can tell the truth,” shouted the attorney in a sarcastic tone, “but Conley, Dalton and Albert McKnight. They are the lowest dregs and jail-birds and all that, but they are the only ones who know how to tell the truth!”

“Well, now Albert says he was there at the Selig home when Frank came in; of course he is Iying, for his wife and the Seligs prove that, but he’s the state’s witness and he says Frank got there at 1:30 and thus he brands Conley’s story about Frank’s leaving the factory at 1:30 as a lie.”

Saw Frank’s Reflection.

“Well, along the same lines Albert says Frank didn’t eat and that he was nervous and Albert says he learned all this by looking into a mirror in the dining room and seeing Frank’s reflection.“

“Then Albert caps the climax for his series of lies by having Frank board the car for town at Pulliam street and Glenn.”

Mr. Arnold then dwelt on the claim of the defense that the affidavit signed by Minola McKnight, the cook for Mr. and Mrs. Emil Selig, was obtained by “third degree” methods.

“How would you feel, gentlemen of the jury, he asked, “if your cook, who had does no wrong and for whom no warrant had been issued, and from whom the solicitor had already got a statement, was to be locked up.”

“Well, they got that wretched husband of Minola’s by means of Craven and Pickett, two men seeking a reward, and then they got Minola, and they said to her: “Oh, Minola, why don’t you tell the truth like Albert’s telling it!”

“They had no warrant when they locked this woman up. Starnes was guilty of a crime when he locked that woman up without a warrant, and Dorsey was, too, if he had anything to do with it.”

“Now George Gordon, Minola’s lawyer, says that he asked Dorsey about getting the woman out, and Dorsey replied, ‘I’m afraid to give my consent to turning her loose: I might get in bed with the detective department.’”

“That’s the way you men got evidence, was it?” he shouted, pointing to a group of city detectives who stood at the table with the state’s lawyers.”

 Then Mr. Arnold changed his subject. He took up the accusations made against certain witnesses and delivered a eulogy upon Miss Rebecca Carson, a forewoman of the National Pencil factory, who, when called by the defense, sword Frank had a good character. The state had introduced witnesses who swore that the woman and Frank had gone into the woman’s dressing room when no one was around. Mr. Arnold branded it a culmination of all lies when this woman was attacked. He said Frank had declared her to be a perfect lady with no shadow of suspicion against her.

Made Out Financial Sheet.

“Well, Frank went on back to the factory that afternoon when he had eaten his lunch and he started in and made out the financial sheet. I don’t reckon he could have done that if he had just committed a murder, particularly when the state says he was so nervous the next morning that he shook and trembled.”

“Then the state says Frank wouldn’t look at the corpse. But who said he didn’t? Nobody. Why, Gheesling and Rack didn’t swear to that?”

“Now, gentlemen,” continued the speaker, “I’ve about finished this chapter, and I know it’s been long and hard on you and I know it’s been hard on me, too; I’m almost broken down, but it means a lot to that man over there (pointing to Frank). It means a lot to him, and don’t forget that.”

“This case has been made up of just two things—prejudice and perjury,” Mr. Arnold continued, “I’ve never seen such malice, such personal hatred in all my Ife and I don’t think anyone ever has.”

“The crime itself is dreadful, too horrible to talk about, and God grant that the murderer may be found out, as I think he has. I think we can point to Jim Conley and say there is the man.”

“But, above all, gentlemen, let’s follow the law in this matter. In circumstantial cases you can’t convict a man as long as there’s any other possible theory for the crime of which he is accused, and you can’t find Frank guilty if there’s a chance that Conley is the murderer.”

“The state has nothing on which to base their case but Conley, and we’ve shown Conley a lie Write your verdict of not guilty and your consciences will give your approval.”

Court then adjourned until 3 o’clock Friday morning.

* * *

Atlanta Constitution, August 22nd 1913, “Arnold Ridicules Plot Alleged by Prosecution And Attacks the Methods Used by Detectives,” 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 12^th, 1913

Sensational Charge Hurled By Physician in Testimony Given at Afternoon Session

Dr. Westmoreland, Answering Question of Attorney Reuben R. Arnold, Declares He Never Heard of a Chemist Who Had Made Examination by Himself and Then Destroyed the Organs Without Bringing Them Into Court

Three experts took the stand Monday afternoon at the trial of Leo M. Frank to repudiate the conclusions reached by Dr. H. F. Harris to the effect that the condition of the cabbage in the stomach of Mary Phagan showed that she must have died within an hour after eating, and that the distended blood vessels showed that she had suffered violence of some sort immediately prior to her death.

Dr. Thomas H. Hancock and Dr. Willis Westmoreland both declared that Dr. Harris’ conclusions were not justified. Dr. Hancock said that no physician in the world could have told from the evidence that Dr. Harris had before him how long the cabbage and bread had been in the little girl’s stomach. He exhibited to the jury a number of specimens of cabbage taken from the stomachs of five different people at different periods after it had been eaten to illustrate that very little if anything could be told by an examination of the food.

An attack upon the ethics of Dr. Harris for having made his examination without calling in any other chemist or physician and then having destroyed the stomach, was made by Attorney Arnold. He asked the following question of Dr. Westmoreland:

“Have you ever known a chemist to make an examination of a corpse nine days after death and utterly destroy the organ and not bring it into court to exhibit it to the jury or give it to the other side for investigation and examination?”
Dr. Westmoreland replied in the negative, after Judge Roan had ruled that the question shouldn’t be allowed.

The sensational statement was made by Dr. Willis Westmoreland that he had preferred charges of scientific dishonesty against Dr. H. F. Harris while a member of the state board of health, that the board had found him guilty but refused to discharge him and that he (Westmoreland) thereupon resigned.

Answering a question of Attorney Reuben R. Arnold, Dr. Westmoreland declared that he knew Dr. Harris to be the same man professionally now as when he preferred his charges.

Dr. J. C. Olmstead also testified and characterized Dr. Harris’ conclusion as pure guesses.

Joel Hunter, expert accountant, was the last witness introduced by the defense. He testified that it would take a pretty swift man to make up the financial sheet, said to have been prepared by Frank on the afternoon that of the day Mary Phagan was killed, in less than three and one half hours. At the conclusion of the testimony at 5:30, court adjourned until 9 o’clock Tuesday morning.

Dr. Thomas H. Hancock, head of the Atlanta hospital, was called as the first witness for the defense when court resumed at 1 o’clock Monday afternoon. Dr. Hancock testified regarding a physical examination which he made of Leo M. Frank, the accused. [1 word illegible] his twenty-two years medical experience, said he, he has observed probably 14,000 surgical cases. He had read the report of Dr. Harris’ testimony, said he.

Mr. Arnold asked this hypothetical question:

“Say a body was embalmed eight hours after death, one gallon of the fluid of the body taken out and one gallon of embalming fluid containing 8 per cent formaldehyde put in its place. Say nine or ten days after death, the body was exhumed, and a cut one and one half inches long found back of the ear, no break is found in the skull, no pressure on the brain, but a little hemorrhage is found under the skull. Could any one tell whether that wound produced unconsciousness?”
“No, the skull might have been fractured and yet the patient remained conscious.”

“There is no possible way to tell, then, is there?”
“No, any statement to that effect would have been merely a guess.”

“Is there any way under those circumstances to tell whether or not the wound was produced before or after death, granted that there was some blood (we don’t know how much) which flowed from it?”

“No. Blood could have flowed for from six or eight to ten hours after death.”

“Say it was inflicted before death by a sharp-edged instrument?”

“There would have been considerable blood. That is, there would have been much more blood before death than afterward. And there would have been more blood from a wound inflicted by a sharp instrument than from a wound inflicted by a blunt instrument.”

“Say nine or ten days after death a visual examination was made of the lungs. Could a person say whether or not the subject died of strangulation?”
The witness said that he knew very little of strangulation cases.

“In strangulation cases, the blood is forced from the lungs, isn’t it?”

“The authorities differ,” said Dr. Hancock. “Usually the right side of the heart fills up and the left empties.”

NOBODY COULD TELL.

“Suppose you remove a stomach and make an examination of its contents. Suppose you find wheat bread and cabbage and 32 degrees of acidity. Suppose on taking out the cabbage you found some to be particles like that (holding up the sample taken from Mary Phagan’s stomach). Suppose you find very little fluid or solid in the small intestines. Suppose you have no more data than that to go on. Could you give a reliable opinion as to how long that food had been in there if you dug the body up nine days later and formaldehyde had been used in the embalming?”
“Nobody could.”

Attorney Arnold again held up the cabbage taken from Mary Phagan’s stomach and asked, “Doctor, lumps like that—what influence have they on digestion?”
“They retard it.”

“How long is cabbage in a normal stomach usually?”
“Three or four hours.”

“Is it possible for it to stay in there longer?”
“Yes.”

“Looking at that cabbage, could you undertake to say how long it had been in the stomach?”

“I could not.”

“What things retard digestion?”
“Excitement, anger and grief and emotions like that.”

“What about exercise?”
“That is a very vague and uncertain subject. Authorities disagree on its effect.”

“Do you think that by any chemical analysis, doctor, you could give a dependable opinion as to how long that cabbage had been in her stomach?”
“I could not.”

“Is cabbage hard or easy to digest?”
“Very hard.”
“Have you made any tests on men, at our request, dealing with cabbage and wheat bread, in the last few days?”

EXHIBITS SPECIMENS.

“One man and four women.” Dr. Hancock then took from a grip which he carried to the stand with him five glass jars containing specimens of results obtained by the experiment.

The bottles were set on a table in front of the jury, and Dr. Hancock resumed the witness chair, using a note book to help him with the answers.

“Consider jar No. 1,” said Attorney Arnold. “Tell us about that.”
Referring to his note book, Dr. Hancock said he had given portions of cabbage and wheat bread to a white woman thirty-two years old at 12:05 o’clock on August 8, and had let it remain in her stomach sixty minutes, after which he induced vomiting and got it up again. It was well masticated, Dr. Hancock said, the woman having taken nine minutes to chew it.

“What is the cause of the reddish tinge of the contents, doctor?” asked Mr. Arnold.

“The young woman was supposed to have had nothing to eat after 6:30 o’clock that morning. I found though, after she had vomited the cabbage and bread, that at 9:30 that morning she had taken a chocolate milk.”

“And that chocolate milk had remained in the stomach, had it not, three hours and thirty-five minutes?”

“I have only her word for the time she drank it.”

RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS.

“But even chocolate milk, a liquid in form, remained in her stomach length of time?”
“Evidently.”
Sample No. 2, according to Dr. Hancock, consisted of cabbage and bread for a normal woman at 12:05 o’clock. It was not chewed well and stayed in the stomach from 45 to 50 minutes. The sample as exhibited to the jury showed the cabbage looking very much like it probably did when it went into the patient’s stomach.

Sample No. 4, said Dr. Hancock, consisted of cabbage fed to a man twenty-five years old. It was not well chewed, and stayed in the stomach an hour and 15 to 20 minutes. As exhibited to the jury, large particles of the cabbage seemed to have remained unchanged.

Sample No. 3, according to Dr. Hancock, was fed to a woman twenty-one years old, was chewed well, and stayed in the stomach twenty-five minutes. The sample as exhibited to the jury showed particles of what looked like tomato. Dr. Hancock explained that the patient she she had eaten some tomato for breakfast at 6:30 that morning, this indicating, said he, that particles of the tomato remained unchanged after remaining in the stomach some six hours.

The fifth and final sample consisted of cabbage and bread with butter on it, fed to a woman 25 years of age, at [time illegible] o’clock Monday morning. It was taken from the stomach at 12:28, said Dr. Hancock. This sample was not chewed well, said Dr. Hancock. As exhibited to the jury, the sample showed particles of cabbage practically unchanged. Dr. Hancock stated that an hour later the patient gave up some cabbage which showed little if any greater change, although this latter sample was not exhibited to the jury.

Dr. Hancock stated that all of these samples were taken from the stomachs of the patients by vomiting induced by the drinking of warm salt water. He said a stomach pump had not been used because he wanted to obtain samples of the cabbage and bread as nearly as possible in the condition in which they left the stomach.

Stating the circumstances of the examination of Mary Phagan’s body, Mr. Arnold asked this question:

“From such an examination as that, could any physician give any safe or dependable opinion as to how long the cabbage and bread remained in the stomach?”

NO PHYSICIAN COULD TELL.

“No physician in the world could tell. I doubt if any physician in the world could tell from examining these specimens here, how long they had been in the stomach.

NO BASIS FOR OPINION.

Dr. Hancock testified that the conditions described by Dr. Harris on which he based his opinion that Mary Phagan had suffered violence would not be sufficient to warrant an opinion. He said distended blood vessels might have resulted from varying causes.

“Even if you should believe there had been violence, could you possibly tell from the conditions I have enumerated how long before death the violence was inflicted.”

“No man could.”

“Would you consider five or ten minutes a guess, then?”
“I wouldn’t like to express my opinion of that estimate.”

“You mean, I suppose, that you try to express yourself always in parliamentary language?”
Dr. Hancock nodded and smiled.

“It wouldn’t be much violence, would it, that was shown only by a microscope?”
“I should say not.”

“Can an eye be blackened by a blow delivered after death?”
“Yes, if delivered during several hours immediately following death.”

DORSEY TAKES WITNESS.

Solicitor Dorsey cross-examined the witness.

“You are a surgeon of the Georgia Railway & Power Co., are you not?”
“I am.”

“You are familiar with the American Medical Journal, are you not?”
There was objection to the question, but it was allowed.

The witness answered affirmatively. He was asked if it was regarded as a standard.

“I would not say that it is,” answered Dr. Hancock.

“You say you graduated from Columbus, doctor. Do you know anything about Dr. A. A. Brill, one of the professors there?”
Dr. Hancock answered in the negative.

NOT AN EXPERT.

Solicitor Dorsey demanded if the witness did not know that a normal man and an abnormal man do not differ necessarily in physique. The witness said that he had had no experience along that line.

“Then your examination of Frank as an expert amounts to nothing?”

“I didn’t say I was an expert in that line.”

“Well, are you an expert on the stomach?”

The witness declared that he was not an expert, but that he knew enough to make the statements which he had just completed:

“What did you say is the principal element of wheat bread?”
“I didn’t say,” said the witness.

“Well, won’t you say now?” smiled Mr. Dorsey.

“I will not.”

“Come down, doctor,” said the solicitor.

Mr. Arnold called the witness back to the stand and asked some further questions. Before the witness left the stand, Solicitor Dorsey inquired:

“Doctor, are you familiar with the word ‘amidulin?’”

“I don’t know what it means,” said the witness.

“Well, is there such a word?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know anything about the works of Hamilton?” asked the solicitor.

“No.”

“Come down,” said the solicitor.

DR. WESTMORELAND TESTIFIES.

Dr. Willis Westmoreland was called to the stand by the defense as its next witness. He stated that he is president of the (new) Atlanta Medical college. Since 1891 he has occupied the chair of surgery in the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons. Also, said he, he was the first president of the Georgia state board of health.

“Have you read the stenographic report of Dr. Harris’ testimony on the first day?”
“Yes.”

Mr. Arnold put the usual hypothetical question about the blow, behind Mary Phagan’s ear, and Dr. Westmoreland replied that the blow rendered her unconscious was entirely a surmise.

Asked if the statement of a physician with no more facts than those described, before him, could give a scientific opinion on the subject, Dr. Westmoreland replied in the negative. In answer to another question, he said there was nothing to show whether the blow was inflicted before or after her death. He declared that it could have happened either way, provided the blow was inflicted before the blood coagulated.

Attorney Arnold asked about the same hypothetical questions of Dr. Westmoreland that he had asked of the preceding two witnesses, and obtained virtually the same answers.

Dr. Westmoreland termed Dr. Harris’ conclusion about the length of time the cabbage was in Mary Phagan’s stomach before she was killed, as “as wild guessing as I ever heard.” There are a number of things that retard digestion, said he, and that digestion of food is one of the most variable subjects that students of medicine have to deal with.

“Have you ever known a chemist to make an examination of the stomach of a corpse nine days after death, and utterly destroy the organ and not bring it into court to exhibit it to the jury or give it to the other side for investigation and examination.”

“No.”

There was objection to this question by Solicitor Dorsey, and Attorney Arnold made a statement of considerable length to the court, in which he said, “Here is a chemist (referring to Dr. Harris as an alleged chemist), who takes the stomach of this little girl, and other organs, and goes into his own back room and makes an analysis. Are we to be tried solely on this man’s say-so, and not be able to show that we never had an opportunity to make any kind of examination at all?”

“Do you want to show the ethics of the profession?” asked Judge Roan.

“Yes, I want to show the ethics and the rules.”

Judge Roan then allowed the question.

In answer to another question along the same line, Dr. Westmoreland said that the usual custom is to keep a portion of organs examined for further investigation if necessary.

Dr. Westmoreland asserted that from evidence at hand it would have been impossible to tell whether Mary Phagan had suffered violence. He said the distended blood vessels would not necessarily have been caused by external violence.

Attorney Arnold asked the witness it from a visual or microscopical examination a physician could advance an opinion as to whether violence had been done from 5 to 15 minutes before death. Dr. Westmoreland replied, “No.”

“In all your experience, Dr. Westmoreland, have you ever heard such an opinion expressed before?”

A RASH CONCLUSION.

Dr. Westmoreland replied, “It is one of the rashest conclusions I have ever heard.”

“There is no time piece in the human body that would determine it within that accuracy, is there?”
“There is not.”

“Did you at our request on yesterday examine Leo M. Frank?”
“I did.”

“Did he appear to be a normal male human being?”
“Perfectly so, yes sir.”

Solicitor Dorsey took up the cross-examination of the witness.

“Do you make any stomach analyses, Dr. Westmoreland?”
“No, I have it done by a laboratory.”

“It’s true, isn’t it, doctor, that normal and abnormal men are physically the same?”

“Yes, except in some pronounced cases.”

“If a corpse is struck a blow on the eye with a fist, what is the effect?”
“Discoloration.”

“Then it’s not true that it leaves no sign?”
“No.”
“If you have a subject who has been struck a blow on the head, whose skull is not fractured, whose brain is not injured, whose face is livid, whose tongue is out, whose eyes are distended, whose nails and lips are blue—what would you say under those conditions was the cause of death?”
“Answering that strictly as a hypothetical question, I should say the cause of death was strangulation.”

A BLOW ON THE HEAD.

“Suppose there was a blow on the head after death. What would you say as to it?”
“I should say it was a blow on the head.”

“You couldn’t say whether the blow was delivered before or after death?”
“No, I hardly think so.”

“Would a blow on the eye after death produce swelling and discoloration?”
“Yes, it probably would if inflicted within two hours.”
“Would a blow on the back of the head after death cause bleeding?”
“If strangulation was the cause of death, it probably would produce more bleeding than if it had been delivered before death.”

“If there was no violence by a digital examination, if dilation, of the blood vessels was found, would you say that violence caused these conditions?”

Dr. Westmoreland said that nature might have caused the conditions described.

“Assuming that no violence was done by the digital examination, then in that event you would look for other violence as the cause of these conditions, would you not?”
On this point Dr. Westmoreland was reluctant to commit himself. When Solicitor Dorsey insisted, Attorney Rosser objected.

When pressed for an answer, Dr. Westmoreland said he probably would first look into the doctor’s statement.

“Isn’t it entirely possible for an examination to be made without dilating the blood vessels, and so forth?”

“Yes, it is possible.”

“Assuming then that the examination did not produce these conditions, then you must look for other causes, must you not?”
“Yes.”

A DELUSIVE SUBJECT.

Solicitor Dorsey examined the witness upon the subject of digestion, which Dr. Westmoreland declared is “the most delusive subject in medicine.” To not a single question that the solicitor asked him on this subject would the witness give a definite answer. He declared that medical authorities nearly all disagree on the topic of digestion. They have no more than rough estimates on it.

“Assuming that it takes a perfectly normal stomach four hours to digest cabbage, tell how long—“

The witness interrupted: “Why, I’ve had men shot and operated on them hours after they’d eaten it, and found cabbage in their stomachs.”

The solicitor asked Dr. Westmoreland about test meals. The witness declared that none of the deductions found in tables are exactly correct. He admitted that it generally assumed that the digestion of cabbage requires four hours, but said that some authorities put the time at five hours, and that all tables on the subject are rough estimates and not scientific facts.

“You know how long it takes free hydrochloric acid to form after a meal, don’t you?” asked the solicitor.

“No, I don’t,” said Dr. Westmoreland.

“Why, doctor, don’t you know that it takes thirty minutes as a rule?”
“Well, that is more or less of a guess,” said the witness, “though it is generally assumed. Hydrochloric acid is formed on the ascending and descending scale.”

“When does it start to descend?”
“That depends on many things.” The witness enumerated a number.

“Say 32 degrees of hydrochloric acid was found with cabbage and starch, how long would you say that that food had been in the stomach?”
“Any test for hydrochloric acid is only approximate,” said Dr. Westmoreland.

NO FEELING FOR HARRIS.

“What is your personal feeling toward Dr. H. F. Harris? Is it kindly or not?”
“I have none, kindly or otherwise,” said Dr. Westmoreland.

“Dr. Harris was on the state board of health with you, was he not?”
“Yes.”

“Are you on that board now?”
“No.”

“How long has Dr. Harris been there?”
“About six years.”

“Dr. Harris was also associated with you at the Atlanta College of Physcians and Surgeons, was he not?”

“Yes.”

“What was his position there?”
“Professor of pathology.”

“That had a good deal to do with the chemical analysis of stomachs, didn’t it?”

“No, but he did a lot of that work.”

Attorney Arnold asked the witness some further questions on redirect examination.

“What trouble did you have with Dr. Harris?” asked Mr. Arnold.

“When I was president of the state board of health. I preferred charges of scientific dishonesty against him. The board found him guilty and when it would not discharge him I resigned.”

“Do you think he is the same man professionally now as then?”

“I know he is.”

“Whatever trouble or row you had with Dr. Harris has not influenced your testimony here, has it, doctor?”
“I never had a row with Dr. Harris,” Dr. Westmoreland replied. The episode, said he, had not influenced his testimony.

Dr. Westmoreland said the signs of violence described by Mr. Dorsey could not have been produced by perversion.

“Do you think there could be injury to the scalp, a wound which one doctor says is an inch and a half long and another doctor says is two inches and a quarter long, be inflicted before death and not produce some kind of a hemorrhage?”
“The scalp bleeds freely.”

PUTS HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION.

Attorney Arnold put a hypothetical question to the witness.

“Suppose a girl’s head strikes a machine, here,” designating a spot in front of the witness chair, “and she is carried over to a spot over there, and there laid down, and then picked up and carried a certain distance, and then dropped, would you expect to find blood on the last place?”
“I should think it would be found in all three places.”

Solicitor Dorsey questioned the witness again.

“Well, this blood could be washed up while fresh with water, could it not, doctor?” asked the solicitor.

“Blood stains are hard wash up.”

The solicitor asked the doctor if the blood were in sawdust or cinders or like substance, the traces of blood could be scraped away. Dr. Westmoreland answered yes.

Solicitor Dorsey asked, “How many doctors were there on the state board, Dr. Westmoreland, when you and Dr. Harris were there?”
“There were 12, including the secretary.”

Dr. John C. Olmstead was called to the stand as the next witness for the defense. Dr. Olmstead testified that he had been practicing medicine in Atlanta for 30 years. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, he said, and afterward studied in New York.

“Did you read over the transcript of evidence by Dr. Harris that I gave you?”
“I did.”

IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL.

Attorney Arnold put the hypothetical question as to whether or not it could be determined from the wound on the girl’s head that she had been knocked unconscious by it. Dr. Olmstead said that it was absolutely impossible to tell.

“If a doctor advanced this opinion,” asked Attorney Arnold, “would you say it was a scientific conclusion of a wild guess?”
Dr. Olmstead went over the same ground as the witnesses just receding him, under the same hypothetical questions by Attorney Arnold. He testified that he knows of no medical book in the English language that gives a stomach analysis as having any bearing whatever on the time of death. He said that the fact that Dr. Harris found no ferments in the small intestine was not extraordinary in view of the fact that formaldehyde was used in the embalming fluid, but on the contrary it would have extraordinary if the ferments had been present that long after embalming. He said that from looking at the cabbage taken from Mary Phagan’s stomach he would not undertake to estimate how long it had been in her stomach; that it might have been there twelve hours. In answer to a question as to what he thought of Dr. Harris’ supposition as to the time of death. Dr. Olmstead said he thought it was “perfectly absurd.” He said that the conditions as enumerated by Dr. Harris were by no means a sign of violence before death. These conditions might have been produced, said he, by strangulation, or by settling of the blood after death.

Dr. Olmstead said that assuming that Dr. Hurt’s examination of the corpse did not injury it still would have been impossible to tell within five to fifteen minutes just how long before death a violence was inflicted. He said it would have been extremely difficult to tell by an examination very carefully made within a few hours after death, much less after an examination made nine or ten days after the body had been embalmed and buried.

Solicitor Dorsey took up the cross-examination of Dr. Olmstead.

The solicitor took the admissions by the witness that it takes four and a half hours to digest cabbage and two and a half hours to digest wheat bread, and upon them formulated the following hypothetical question:

“Say that two normal people have eaten cabbage and bread prepared just alike that they have swallowed it just alike and that the substance was taken out of their stomachs at different times, couldn’t you tell by the one whether the other had been in the stomach a shorter or longer time?”
The experiment would be too delicate for him to attempt, said the witness. Finally, however, the solicitor held up a number of specimens taken from the stomachs of different people from 30 to 60 minutes after they had eaten cabbage in the same manner that Mary Phagan ate her last meal, and Dr. Olmstead admitted that, shown the sample taken from her stomach, it would be presumed naturally that it had remained in the stomach a shorter time than the others.

“Are you a general practitioner or an analytical chemist?”

“A general practitioner,” replied the witness.

The solicitor concluded his examination there, but Mr. Arnold detained the witness for more questioning. Mr. Arnold brought out over the objection of Mr. Dorsey the statement that in the witness’ opinion a general practitioner, on account of his large dealing with patients and his wide observation and with the tables of the analytical chemist to guide him, would be as well qualified if not more so than an analytical chemist to testify on the subject at issue. Mr. Arnold caused the witness to declare once more that a person exhuming a body nine days after death and stating by an examination of the stomach that the subject had eaten from 30 to 40 minutes before death, was making “nothing but a wild guess.”

The witness was excused, and the electric lights were lit for the first time since the trial began.

Joel Hunter, expert accountant, was called by the defense as the next witness.

EXAMINED FINANCE SHEET.

Mr. Hunter qualified as an expert by testifying that he has had some fifteen years’ experience as an accountant and is an examiner of the Georgia board of accountants. He entered court with copies of all the papers that Frank is supposed to have made out on Saturday, April 26, and after comparing the originals with the copies he took the witness chair.

He said that he had examined the financial sheet and the other accounts and papers that Frank said he compiled and made out on Saturday, April 26. He said that he had seen Herbert Schiff at the pencil factory and that Schiff had acquainted him with the data necessary for making out the report; and that he had done it without making out a new financial sheet. He testified in answer to questions by Attorney Arnold that Frank’s financial sheet was correct with the exception of one decimal in the total; and this error, he said, he thought was in copying or setting down the total; rather than in multiplication.

“As an accountant, would you say that the sheet, was accurately, compiled?”
“I should say so.”

“Tell us the calculations necessary and the least possible time in your opinion, that it would take a person to make out this financial report and bal—

THREE HOURS AND HALF.

“In my opinion,” said the witness, “to make out this financial report and balance the cash would take a person 150 minutes. This is the quickest possible time.” This, said he, would not allow for checking over the accounts. He placed a reasonable maximum time at 172 minutes. He went into exhaustive detail with the jury in regard to this subject, reading from a sheet the time which he had estimated it would take to make every computation in the complex preparation of the financial sheet. His estimates for various calculations ran from two minutes up to twenty minutes. He concluded his answer by saying that it would take a pretty swift man to do the work in less than three and a half hours.

Mr. Hunter was cross-examined by Attorney Hooper.

“As an original proposition, in making up this sheet, this data would all be furnished to you?”
“As to that, I cannot say.”

“One’s familiarity with the figures would enable one naturally to do the work quicker, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I should say so.”

“Then with Mr. Frank’s necessary familiarity he ought to be able to make up this sheet in less time than you made it up?”
“I shouldn’t say his ‘necessary’ familiarity. I should say his probable familiarity.”

“A great many of the items you had to seek, were at his fingers’ ends, weren’t they?”
“I assume so.”

“You say, then, that it would take from three to three and a half hours, to make up this sheet?”
“Yes, that is my best estimate, although I should say it might take longer than that for the reason that the financial sheet is not subject to internal proof.”

“Do you mean to say that Frank proved each one of the sheets?”
“No, I don’t say that because I don’t know. But I should say that a comparison of the sheet with the other sheets would afford valuable information which a good business manager would be glad to have.”

“You make a very small calculation, don’t you, for his familiarity with the business?”
“No, I have allowed for that.”

“In some places, you have allowed gains for yourself over him, haven’t you?”
“No, I have tried to determine how long it would take a practical man. I think 150 minutes to be the shortest possible time.”

“Then you think that a man who could do it quicker than you did it would be a wonderful man, do you?”
“No, I simply mean that 150 minutes is my opinion of the shortest time in which it could be done.”

Mr. Hunter was excused from the stand and court adjourned, at 5:35, until 9 o’clock Tuesday.

* * *

Atlanta Journal, August 12th 1913, “Ethics of Dr. H. F. Harris Bitterly Attacked by Reuben Arnold,” 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.”

* * *

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 Journal
August 2^nd, 1913

WHEN JUDGE ROAN UNWITTINGLY HELD RED HEADLINE IN FRONT OF JURY, DEFENSE MADE POINT

Jury Is Sent Out of Room While Attorneys for the Defense Tell the Court That the Jurymen Were Seen Reading Red Headline, “State Adds Links to Chain” — Judge Then Calls Jury Back and Cautions Them

FOLLOWING JUDGE’S SPEECH TO THE JURY, TESTIMONY IS RESUMED, NO FURTHER MOTION MADE BY DEFENSE

In His Address to the Jury, Judge Roan Declared That They Must Not Be Influenced by Anything They Had Read in the Newspaper, but Must Form Their Opinion Solely on the Evidence That Was Developed in Court

A red headline in a newspaper, held in the hands of the presiding judge, came near causing a mistrial Saturday about noon in the case against Leo M. Frank.

While the defense did not ask the court to declare a mistrial in the case, it seriously considered in a conference of attorneys, asking that the case be stopped, and while apparently satisfied with an admonition to the jury to disregard anything they might have seen in a paper, it is probable that the incident will be a part of the basis for an appeal, in event the verdict goes against the defense.

During the course of the discussion of the incident Solicitor Dorsey contended that the jurors had not seen the headline.

During the progress of the trial Judge L. S. Roan picked up an extra edition of an afternoon Atlanta newspaper bearing an eight column red headline touching on the case before the jury. The headline read:

“State Adding Links To Chain.”

Attorney Rosser for the defense noticed the line and also noticed that the members of the jury were craning their necks to read more of the matter on the front page. Immediately he and his associates went into conference and the jury was excused from the room.

After Mr. Arnold and Mr. Rosser returned to the court, following their conference, Mr. Arnold held a brief conversation with the judge. Mr. Rosser requested that the jury be sent out. That was done.

Addressing the court, Mr. Rosser said:

“May it please your honor, a few moments ago your honor thought [words illegible] was redaing [sic] a newspaper. One side of the newspaper was turned up and toward the jury. At the top of the page, in red box-car letters, was a headline which stated that the state is adding link upon link against this man. Every member of the jury read this headline. I [words illegible] leading forward, reading it. We don’t want to make a motion for a new trial, but we do want your honor to call the jury back and explain to it that it must not be influenced by anything it saw in this or any other newspaper. These red box car letters don’t always convey the real facts. These boys over at the press table do their best to get accurate facts. They write their articles and send them to their offices, and someone else writes the headlines.”

Attorney Arnold walked to Judge Roan’s stand and requested the judge to hand to him the newspaper lying on the desk in front of him. Taking the paper in his hand and unfolding it as he walked back to his table, Attorney Arnold said:

“Everybody knows and loves your honor, and everybody knows that you would not wittingly do anything to influence this case one way or another. But, your honor, in reading this paper, you held it up this way.”

Attorney Arnold opened the paper, holding the front page with the red headline toward the jury box.

“The members of the jury read it. This headline reads, ‘State Adds Links to Chain.’ We say these are very weasly links. Nevertheless, the jury read this red headline.”

Judge Roan interrupted to remark: “I don’t suppose that anyone would think that after a week’s hard work with this trial I would do anything to jeopardize it. I will ask this jury if they see anything to influence them.”

Attorney Rosser objected, saying: “We want your honor to put in writing an admonition to the jury that it is to disregard this headline and anything else that it may see in the newspapers.”

SAYS THEY DIDN’T SEE IT.

Solicitor Dorsey spoke.

“We insist, your honor, that the jury did not see this headline. There have been papers in the court room all the time. The defense at the opening of this trial brought in a great pile of the newspapers, which they lay before the jury. The boys on the street constantly are crying these papers, and jurors cannot help but hear them. I do hope that your honor first will inquire of this jury whether it saw anything in this or any other newspaper to influence it. The newspapers have had more damaging headlines than this. I submit that they have treated the state’s case with contempt. They should be put in contempt for the manner in which they have treated the state’s case.”

Judge Roan told Mr. Dorsey that he thought he know what to say, and called in the jury.

The jury was seated.

ROAN’S STATEMENT.

In his statement to the jury Judge Roan neither wholly acquiesced in the contention of the solicitor nor in that of the state.

“Gentlemen of the jury, as you know, this is an important case. We have to be extremely careful and cautious that nothing gets to the jury except the evidence introduced here. It has been said by some that since the trial of this case commenced you have been able to see some writings or headlines in the newspapers that might influence you.

“You, gentlemen of the jury, are trying this case, and by the evidence introduced here. I want to warn you again, and do warn you, that nothing you might see in a newspaper or that you might hear on the streets, or even in the court room, should have a particle of weight, except the evidence put before you legally. If you have seen anything in the newspapers, or heard anything, I beg of you now to free your mind of it, regardless of whether it be helpful to the state or to the defense.”

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

Atlanta Georgian
July 30^th, 1913

By O. B. KEELER.

The trouble is, plain human emotions won’t stick at concert pitch all the time.

And so the Frank trial, after the first twenty minutes, say, becomes much like any other trial.

Except in the flashes.

You get into the courtroom with some formality. At once you are in the midst of order. It is rather ponderous, made-to-order order. But it is order.

Officials stalk about, walking on the balls of their feet, like pussy cats. But they do not purr. They request you to be seated. You must not stand up; you must sit down. Unfortunately, you must stand up to walk to a place to sit down. And that grieves the officials. They mop their faces. One in particular uses an entirely red bandana handkerchief—sometimes for for his face, sometimes to flag standing spectators, who must sit down.

There is order.

Thrills Get Temporary Check.

Until you are thoroughly sitting down there is no chance for the concert pitch to vibrate. Human emotions are constituted so curiously that a rasping collar has been known to overbalance the dread presence of the King of Terrors. Honest persons have admitted this. And the grim portent of the Frank trial produces no thrills while you are stepping on other people’s feet.

Being seated, the first thing you do is to perspire gently. That of itself is not romantic. Also it interferes with the concert pitch. It is hard to reconcile perspiration and cold prickles back of the ears.

You get the first tingle when you pick out the accused. Your neighbor does not help you do this. One’s neighbor at a trial rarely knows anything about anything connected with it.

You pick out the prisoner because you have seen many pictures of him. He is one of those whose pictures look like them. You are quite certain who it is.

First Chord a Mere Tinkle.

But the opening chord of the concert pitch is disappointing. It is not majestic and soul-stirring. Frankly, it is more of a tinkle.

Here is a slim little man. He is dark. His face is sharply cut and lean. His eyes are well opened, back of thick lenses. * * * That was the first real tingle. * * * Did those eyes glare down upon the huddled figure of Mary Phagan in the echoing loneliness of the pencil factory that Saturday afternoon?

Glared through the thick lenses?

The grotesquery jars oddly.

The thrill passes.

There is Rube Arnold, objecting to something. It is among the duties of counsel for the defense to be constantly injured. Mr. Arnold is good at that. He is not going to fall, if the court please, in his full duty to his client, who sits there. And the particular part of Mr. Arnold’s duty at this moment is to see that his learned brother does not get before the jury from this witness any of his (the witness’) ideas as to how the defendant looked the morning after the tragedy at the pencil factory.

Mr. Arnold Philosophizes.

Mr. Arnold begs to submit that an officer, if it please the court, thinks everybody looks guilty. Mr. Arnold begs to submit further that the human face is the most inscrutable thing in the world. And Mr. Arnold will say—

You discover the defendant’s wife and mother, and lose the thread of Mr. Arnold’s philosophy.

They sit by his side. The mother’s face is of the inscrutable type pictured by Mr. Arnold. The wife’s face * * * That was thrill No. 2 * * * You realize in a flash what the Frank trial means to her. * * *

She watches the witnesses more closely than her husband. She moves her fan nervously at times. She regards the prosecutor and his assistant with a certain contemptuous defiance. * * * The tingle lasts until you realize she is chewing gum.

Mr. Arnold’s philosophic objection has spun itself out. Mr. Dorsey resumes his questioning. Mr. Dorsey has a querulous manner of asking questions. Mr. Arnold’s injured objections may explain that.

The Pathos of a Dress.

The testimony just now is not thrilling. It has to do with a stairway and an office and some very usual-looking cord or heavy twine. The witness has to get up frequently and point out things on a framed plan of the pencil factory that hangs on the wall where the jury can see it.

He uses an umbrella. He may be pointing out the very spot where Mary Phagan * * * But the handle of the umbrella is bent. Is it his own umbrella? It looks like a woman’s. * * * Where did Mr. Dorsey get that twine, anyway?

Oh, the suitcase. There are other things in the suitcase. * * * A little heap of things on the floor of the witness stand—a crumpled dress, a hat. * * *

And that time you wink your eyes very hard, because they sting. What was in that little girl’s mind as she put on that hat for the last time? What painstaking care had she used, to make it her “best” hat—what needle pricks, maybe, in the small fingers? And the lavender dress. * * * And the end of all, in the dust and dirt of the pencil factory basement.

Just for a flash it’s all real. And cold. And grim. And pitiful.

Rosser Soars—Regardless.

Then Mr. Arnold objects again, and there is another dreary wrangle, and the idea gets uppermost in your head that the city detective is a most literal-minded witness.

It is confusing.

Mary Phagan’s sister is there. She wears a black hat and an unaccustomed veil. You look in vain for tributes to emotion. She shows a mild interest in Mr. Rosser’s pomp and circumstance of language. Instead of another thrill, you gain a hazy impression that Mr. Rosser is an orator who loves to soar—who would soar, in fact, when he might get along faster by walking.

You hear the purr of the fans, the shuffle of feet, the clearing of throats. You are sensible that it is very warm and that the judge twice has handled his palm leaf as if it were a gavel. You see a juror yawn luxuriously and once more find proof that yawning is contagious.

Oh, yes—after the first twenty minutes (say), the Frank trial is much like any other, except—

Again a Thrill—Then Reaction.

“A big splotch that looked like blood.”

“Where was it?”

“Well, some of it was over in the corner. * * * It looked as if it had been swept over with something white. * * * The rest——“

“Well, tell the jury where was the rest.”

“Around a nail that stuck out. * * * The top of the nail was covered with blood, and * * *”

You sit back and your hands hurt from squeezing the arms of the seat. They are talking about a stairway again, and the city detective is pointing out something on the map with the bent-handled umbrella.

No use.

Plain human emotions simply won’t stick at concert pitch, even for the terrific romance of murder.

Once in a while, over the whirr of fans and the shuffle of feet and interminable squabbling of counsel, you feel the shadow of a crime—an uglier crime than that which took Eugene Aram out of Lynn, “with gyves upon his wrist.”

But only in the flashes.

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

Atlanta Constitution
July 29^th, 1913

Will Frank’s lawyers put any evidence before the court?

That is a question that was much discussed on the opening day by a score or more of lawyers who secured seats in the courtroom in order to hear the trial and to watch the way in which the skilled attorneys on both sides handled the case.

The fact that so many witnesses have been summoned by the defense does not mean to the legal mind that Attorneys Rosser and Arnold will put up any evidence any more than the summoning of scores of the accused man’s personal friends means that Frank’s lawyers will put his character in evidence.

The presence of the witnesses may mean that the defense will, as usual, use them, or it may mean that they merely subpoenaed them to keep the state from learning in advance that they did not intend to put up any evidence.

There is a certain advantage in some cases in not putting up any evidence for the defense. It gives the defending attorneys the right to close in the addresses to the jury and frequently it delivers to the jury a message that the defense regards the state’s accusations as of so little weight and importance that they do not have to rebut them.

In many famous cases, although these are in the minority, the defense has been content to cross-examine the state’s witnesses and then to close without putting up any of their own. The discussion proved an interesting one during the recess for lunch Monday.

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

Atlanta Constitution
July 29^th, 1913

Men Who May Be Called to Stand Report Trial by Attorney’s Agreement.

Just as the state was about to open formally its case against Leo M. Frank, Attorney Reuben R. Arnold interrupted by declaring to the court that he expected to have to call on a number of newspaper men to testify as the case went on.

“They know a great deal about this case, and we have complete files of the papers here and will be able to tell to a certain extent from them whom we will want,” he said.

“I may want to use some of them, too,” said Solicitor Hugh Dorsey.

“Well, your honor, I’m willing to waive the right to put these gentlemen under the rule, if the state is willing to do so,” continued Mr. Arnold.

“Why don’t you name the ones you will need and let them leave the courtroom?” replied the solicitor.

“I can’t tell until things develop how many I may want. I may have to call in every man at the press table over there,” he continued, waving one hand at the table around which a perspiring group of men sat writing down the developments of the case.

Solicitor Dorsey then agreed to allow all newspaper men who might be used as witnesses, to remain in the courtroom and continue their work, with the provision that some of them who would later be put on the stand would have to absent themselves while certain others were testifying.

No mention of the names of the men needed were made by either side, but it has been generally expected that several of The Constitution men who went to the scene of the crime on that Sunday morning, when The Constitution got out the exclusive extra telling of the crime, would be placed on the stand.

Testimony as to statements made by witnesses to newspaper men, as shown in the various papers, is also expected to be brought into the trial.

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

Atlanta Journal
July 29^th, 1913

Indications Are That Trial Will Be Longest Over Which Judge Roan Has Presided, To Hold Two Sessions Daily

Attorneys both for the defense and for the prosecution of Leo M. Frank believe that his trial will last at least one week, perhaps, two weeks.

If the trial continues through more than one week it will be the longest over which Judge L. S. Roan has ever presided.

But, while he will expedite the trial as fast as possible, he intenrs [sic] to give attorneys all the time needed for the introduction of testimony and for argument.

He will hasten the proceedings chiefly by holding afternoon as well as morning sessions. The exact time at which the court will take recess for luncheon, and will adjourn in the afternoon as not been fixed. But the morning session will begin at 9 o’clock, and recess will be taken about 12:30. Court will reconvene again at 2 and will continue in session until about 5:30.

By this arrangement about seven hours a day will be spent in taking testimony, in argument or in other details of the trial.

In giving their opinion of the length of the trial, attorneys for the defense and for the prosecution said:

Solicitor General Hugh Dorsey—“One week, maybe two weeks.”

Attorney Reuben Arnold—“One week, at least.”

Attorney Luther Z. Rosser—“Certainly not less than one week.”

The longest trial in the experience of Judge L. S. Roan, the presiding judge, was the Mitchell case at Thomasville which continued one week. But at that hearing, one witness was kept on the stand during a day and a half.

Atlanta Georgian (Hearst’s Sunday American)
July 27^th, 1913

Dorsey Ready to Avenge Mary Phagan

Mystery of Months Is Still Unsolved

Most Bitter Legal Battle in History of Atlanta Courts Is Expected—Case Will Probably Last for Weeks.

After three months of mystery in the death of Mary Phagan, a climax is at hand more tense, more dramatic, more breathlessly interesting to Atlanta and all Georgia than any situation of fiction. Leo M. Frank, employer of the little girl whose tragic death, April 26, stirred a State, will be brought to trial Monday on the charge that he killed her.

Frank’s trial is the crowning event of the hundred thrilling circumstances surrounding the tragedy. Whatever the outcome, regardless of Frank’s conviction or acquittal, the incidents that follow the trial will come as an anti-climax. The prosecution has cast almost all its chances for solving the mystery into the case it has prepared against Frank. Its heavy guns are trained against the factory superintendent. It has opposed the indictment of the single other suspect, the negro Jim Conley. The enthralled interest of a public has been pitched about the question: Is Leo Frank guilty?

FRANK DRAMA’S CENTRAL FIGURE.

Even the pitiful figure of the little factory girl, mysteriously slain, has become subordinate in interest to that of Frank. The young man’s own personality, his steadfastly loyal and loving family, his friends who affirm his innocence in the face of a dark suspicion, all have become factors in making Frank the central figure of the crime drama.

At the last moment efforts have been made by Frank’s counsel to have the case continued until fall, bu the indications are that Judge Roan will order the trial to go on Monday.

A hundred ramifications have sprung out of the case, each one entailing bitterness, aligning factions, engendering a deeper mystery. Many persons, even before the trial, are ready to express a belief of Frank’s guilt. As many are firm in the conviction that he is innocent. But the great bulk of the public views the case through a haze of speculation and doubt which is as impenetrable as on the first day.

LEGAL TALENT BRILLIANT.

Everybody is in one of the three classes. It is likely that no one lives in Atlanta who is indifferent to the case, which has been the central topic of news and of conversation since the day the body of Mary Phagan was found.

The trial will be an event worthy of all the interest with which the public has invested it. The array of legal talent is most imposing. Already the defense and the prosecution have met in skirmishes, in the courts and in the newspapers. They were skirmishes so hard fought and bitter as to hold out the promise that the trial will be a titanic fight.

Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey, Frank Hooper and Assistant Solicitor Stephens will conduct the case against Frank. The three are known as aggressive, tireless lawyers. The Solicitor General has put into the State’s case all the energy for which he is noted.

At the very first he took charge of the case with a masterful hand, and when the mystery seemed beyond solution he sent an army of detectives to work. Through all the stress of a veering public opinion, he has held firmly to the course he had set, defiant, obviously preparing for the great fight of his career as a public prosecutor. In most of the preliminary legal battles, especially in his hardest fight against the indictment of Conley, he has been successful.

The Solicitor General from the evidence in his hands, believes in the guilt of Frank. He will defend his conviction to the end.

The defense presents a corps of attorneys who are reputed to to be as able criminal lawyers as the South can produce. Luther Z. Rosser, county attorney, is the towering figure of the defense. He is a pitiless questioner of witnesses and cross-examinations which he conducts are generally productive of significant results. The defense will build its greatest hope, it is expected, on the charge that Jim Conley killed the Phagan girl. Jim Conley will be one of the witnesses against Frank, and all the force, all the ruthless power of Luther Rosser’s questions will be brought into play against the negro. The public expects a wonderful psychological demonstration on the hour the negro takes the stand.

Arnold Striking Figure.

No less powerful as a criminal lawyer is Reuben R. Arnold, who was retained by the defense to co-operate with Mr. Rosser. Arnold is a brilliant lawyer, and always a spectacular and compelling figure in the criminal cases with which he is connected. Associated with Rosser and Arnold in the case will be Herbert Haas and Sam Boorstin, who were employed by the Frank family when Leo Frank first was arrested, and who have been zealous in conducting the score of investigations that were made necessary by the unexpected turns which incidents took time after time.

The trial will be called Monday morning in the Superior Court room on the first floor of the courthouse, at South Pryor and Hunter streets. The room, which is the largest available to the State courts, is expected to be all too small for the crowd that will come, eagerly curious and expectant. A strict police supervision of the crowds will be necessary, and arrangements already are being made by court officials to prevent congestion or disturbance.

Special deputies will be employed for the occasion, and altogether it is expected that twenty officers will guard the courtroom. The little army will be in charge of Deputy Sheriff Miner, who will be stationed at the main entrance. According to the plan, all principals in the case, all who are interested as lawyers, relatives, witnesses and press representatives, will be admitted before any spectators are allowed to enter. After them the spectators will be admitted, one by one, until the seats in the room are filled. Then the doors will be locked.

It has been suggested in the Sheriff’s office that every person admitted to the courtroom will be searched for firearms, but whether this course will be followed has not been decided.

Postponement Unlikely.

Judge L. S. Roan will preside at the trial. He announced in a telegram from Covington, where he is spending a short vacation, that the case will be called Monday morning without fail. There is little probability that an attempt will be made to obtain a postponement, although it has been hinted that there are one or two causes which might tend to bring about delay. One is excessive heat, another the fact that certain attorneys in the case are engaged simultaneously in other litigation hardly less important. But the court officials and all who are interested vitally are ready to scout the idea of a postponement.

The ground thus is laid for what is confidently expected to be the greatest battle of Atlanta’s legal history. A mysterious death, a chain of damaging circumstances pointing to the guilt of the accused, a coterie of lawyers for the defense who are given to surprises and who are known for inexhaustible resources, a Solicitor who is determined and a fighter—everything points to a great struggle.

Considerable difficulty will be entailed at the first, it is expected, when the jury must be drawn. From indications, it is likely that the preliminary jockeying will consume the first day of the trial, or even more. So widespread has been gossip concerning the Phagan case, so thoroughly have citizens of Atlanta had the details recalled, so much as it become a part of the city’s life that men will be hard to find. It is expected, who will be willing to view the evidence coolly, without prejudice or without bias. Then, too, the lawyers, knowing the men from whom the jury must be picked, will select the men with the utmost care.

The defense, it has been announced, will ask that a jury be selected from the Grand Jury venire. Whether this request will be granted is altogether in the discretion of the trial judge. It is expected, however, that it will be refused unless significant reasons are brought to bear by the defense.

Trial Will Last Days.

Then the case will start. Evidence probably will not be taken until the morning or afternoon of the second day. It will be taken slowly, in great detail, at such length as to insure a trial of many days’ duration. If the length of time consumed in examining the witnesses at the Coroner’s inquest is any indication.

Surprises will come, surely. It is likely that most of the surprises will be those of the defense; the public generally crediting that side with more evidence hitherto hidden than the prosecution.

The State’s case has been perpetually before the public. The agencies of the State have been crossed at times, and out of the antagonism has grown publicity that was not good for the privacy of the prosecution’s lines of attack. The defense, on the other hand, has kept quiet. When the Mincey affidavit was published last week, favoring the defense, it came as a surprise to the public, and led everyone to expect further surprises.

The Frank trial absorbs the public interest for more than one reason. The revolting nature of the crime by which Mary Phagan went to her death, the mystery surrounding its circumstances, the uncertainty that came with new revelations day after day, pointing first to one and then to another suspect, the final centering of all suspicion on the two prisoners—Frank and Conley—the charges and countercharges that have been bandied back and forth—all make the case one to attract and to hold the interest of every man or woman who can hear or read.

At Factory Short Time.

Mary Phagan, an employee of the National Pencil Factory, was a girl 14 years old. Her father was dead, and she lived with her mother and her stepfather, W. J. Coleman, at No. 148 Lindsay street. This is in that suburban section of Atlanta known as Bellwood. She was a gay, friendly, loveable girl, well liked by the children of the neighborhood and by the grown folks as well, according to every revelation of her personality that has come since her death.

The little girl had worked for some time, driving her to that necessity. She had been employed at the pencil factory on South Forsyth street only a short time.

Saturday afternoon, April 26, she went to the factory to draw her weekend pay. It was the day of the Confederate Memorial parade. Forsyth street was deserted. The factory was quiet. The little girl went alone to the big building at about 12:10 or 12:15 o’clock, according to the statement of the street car men who took from her home to the down town section.

Watchman Finds Body.

Early Sunday morning, at about 3 o’clock, Newt Lee, the negro watchman at the factory building, found the girl’s body in a dark corner of the basement, bloody from a dozen cuts and bruises. The clothes were torn, and every evidence pointed to the fact that there had been a struggle in which the little girl fought vainly against her assailant. Her neck was discolored, where a rope had been used to lower her body down an elevator shaft from the first floor.

Later, on the third floor, in the bathroom of the factory, blood, strands of hair and other evidences of a struggle were found, pointing to the fact that the child had been attacked first.

Few men were in the factory building between the last time Mary Phagan was seen alive and the hour her body was found by the night watchman. The men were Leo Frank, the factory superintendent; Jim Conley, a negro sweeper; Newt Lee, the negro night watchman; John Gantt, a former employee of the company who entered with Frank’s permission, that he might get a pair of shoes he had left behind, and two workers, Harry Denham and Arthur White, who were on the fourth floor and who remained in the building until 3 o’clock. At that time Frank, who had left the building at 1 o’clock, came in and let them out. Frank was alone in the factory until 4 o’clock by his own admission. When Conley came in, or when he left, no one knows.

Newt Lee Suspected.

After the first discovery of the body suspicion fell on Newt Lee, who had reported the discovery of the body. He was arrested. The negro, frightened to within an inch of his life, protested his innocence. The police were not satisfied that he was the murderer, and began the search.

Information came thick and fast and of every variety. The first tangible statement was from Ed Sentell, a groceryman, who said he had seen Mary Phagan walking by the side of a tall young man as late as 12:30 o’clock Saturday night. Later he identified the young man as Arthur Mullinax, a street car worker. Mullinax was arrested.

Developments came fresh with every hour that day. Gantt, the young man who was in the factory late Saturday afternoon, was arrested on suspicion, which deepened when it was announced that he had been in love with Mary Phagan.

Monday morning following the discovery of the body an inquest was held, and as a result of revelations that he had been alone in the factory building much of Saturday afternoon. Superintendent Frank was arrested on suspicion. Detectives asserted their conviction that the guilt lay between Lee and Frank. Gantt and Mullinax, proving alibis, were released.

The third day of the mystery a young man named Paul Bowen was arrested in Houston, Tex. on the charge that he had killed Mary Phagan. It is said that he had acted in a suspicious manner upon being confronted with news of the girl’s death. He was arrested by the Houston police, but later was released when he established an alibi. Out of his arrest grew a scandal in the Houston police circles.

That Lee killed the girl was assured by the detectives for several days. By the side of the girl’s body had been found several dirty scraps of paper, on which were written almost undecipherable words. They were supposedly from the unfortunate girl. One note was as follows:

“He said he wood love me laid down like the night witch did it, but that long, tall, black negro did it by hisself.”

The other was:

“Mama, that negro hired down here did this I went to get water and he pushed me down this hole a long tall negro black that has it woke long lean tall negro I write while play with me.”

Experts declared positively that these notes were in Lee’s handwriting.

The inquest, stretching through several days, was productive of one result, at least. The bulk of the suspicion veered to Frank. The negro Lee made a number of candid statements which afterward were found to be true, and thus much of the suspicion against him lightened.

Elevator Boy Arrested.

Testimony tending to show that Geron Bailey, a negro elevator boy in the factory’s employ, had been seen lurking around the building the fatal Saturday evening, brought about his arrest. Lee and Bailey still are held in the Tower, although suspicion against them is negligible.

Until several days after the body of the unfortunate girl was found no one had thought of Conley as a man to be suspected. But while the inquest over Mary Phagan’s body was in progress E. F. Holloway, an employee of the factory, found the negro sweeper in a secluded spot on the fourth floor washing a bloody shirt. He told detectives and Conley was arrested on suspicion.

Days passed, days that were full of theories speculation, but productive of no real result. Eyes were turned to Frank as the guilty person, with an inconsiderable number of people suspecting Newt Lee.

On May 25 came a statement from a woman named Mrs. Mima Formby, the keeper of a rooming house. Mrs. Formby declared that the night of the murder Frank had telephoned her with the request that she rent him a room for himself and a girl. She declared in her statement that she refused him, that he insisted, later becoming desperate and announcing that it was a matter almost of life and death with him. The statement was pretty generally discredited by the public.

Conley Admits Writing Notes.

After three weeks Frank was indicted by the Grand Jury.

Then came a startling and unexpected thing. Jim Conley, silent under a siege of questions, suddenly issued an affidavit, in which he declared that he had written the notes at Frank’s dictation, on Friday before the Sunday on which the girl’s body was found.

Not until then was Conley suspected with any degree of strength. But when the affidavit came, with its inconceivable charge that Frank had plotted the death of the girl more than a day before he killed her, Conley was suspected of having had a hand in the murder. It was recalled that Mary Phagan’s visit to the factory had not been anticipated Friday, and that there would have been no reason for a murder plot. Conley, it seemed, had destroyed himself.

The next day he issued a revised affidavit, declaring that he wrote the notes on the morning of Saturday, the day before the body was found. Then came his third affidavit, that he had dragged the body of the girl to the cellar, where it was found, at the instance of Frank.

The three affidavits seemed to contradict one another, and to make charges that were unbelievable. It was not until then that suspicion against the negro solidified.

Public speculation and doubt deepened. Then, after two weeks, it developed that W. H. Mincey, a school teacher, in conversation with a negro on the afternoon of April 26, when the murder occurred, had been told by the negro:

“Go away, I’ve killed a girl this evening. I don’t want to kill anybody else.”

Mincey Identifies Conley.

He identified this negro as Conley.

Against every statement and every affidavit that has been published, charges of untruthfulness and misapprehension have been made by one side or the other. Mincey’s statement has been attacked, Conley’s affidavits are declared false, Mrs. Formby’s declaration is said to be without foundation. Refutations come for every bit of evidence, revealing plainly that the trial itself will be a fight of veracity and of reasonableness of testimony.

And so the case stands to-day. Brilliant detective talent has been engaged. Pinkertons were first retained to reinforce the local detectives, and later the Burns men were called in. But out of that incident grew another scandal, another of the unpleasant incidental features that have made the Phagan case the most notable of Georgia’s crime annals, even beyond the fact that it is the greatest mystery.

Last week it was announced that the Pinkertons believed Frank innocent, after weeks of announcing that he was guilty. Later the declarations came that they had not made the statement. This incident was valueless in unfolding the mystery, but is indicative of the turmoil in which the case has been from the first.

* * *

Chronology of Phagan Case

April 27—Body of Mary Phagan found in factory. Arthur Mullinax arrested. Newt Lee arrested.

April 28—J. M. Gantt arrested. Geron Bailey arrested. Leo Frank held.

April 29—Pinkertons declare Lee guilty. Eliminate Gantt, Mullinax and Bailey.

May 1—Coroner issues commitment against Lee and Frank. Jim Conley, negro sweeper, arrested.

May 8—Coroner’s verdict orders Frank and Lee held for grand jury.

May 12—Burns put on case, through agency of T. B. Felder.

May 23—Grand jury considers case. Dictograph scandals revealed. A. S. Colyar accuses T. B. Fedler of attempts to corrupt policeman. Frank indicted. Conley says he wrote notes at Frank’s dictation, Arpirl 25. Newt Lee indicted.

May 25—Mrs. Mima [sic] Formby says Frank asked her for room night of killing.

May 30—Conley says he helped Frank dispose of body. Re-enacts crime at factory.

June 6—Conley denies he confessed killing to A. S. Colyar.

June 15—Mrs. Frank, in statement to Sunday American, stands by her husband.

July 10—W. H. Mincey’s statement first published, that he heard Conley boast of killing.

July 15—E. F. Holloway, factory employee, says he was told of negro’s boast just after killing.

July 23—Frank says he is ready for trial. Search for Will Green, Conley’s companion, said to have seen killing.