Audio Book: The Frank Case, part 3

WE ARE proud to present today, on the 107th anniversary of the foul murder of Mary Phagan, the third and concluding part of our audio version of an extremely rare contemporary book on the murder and the trial of Leo Frank, her killer, entitled The Frank Case — read by Vanessa Neubauer.


It becomes obvious in this concluding segment that this is a pro-Leo Frank book. Not only is Frank’s very odd unsworn statement (in which he literally spent hours going over every irrelevant detail of his company’s financial statement, and which obviously did not make a good impression on the jury) praised to the skies, but long extracts from it are quoted — some of them twice!

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Audio Book: The Frank Case, part 2

A photograph of Leo Frank, as published in The Frank Case

THE AMERICAN MERCURY now presents the second part (of three parts) of our audio version of what is probably the most hard-to-find book on the murder of Mary Phagan and the trial of Leo Frank — 1913’s anonymously published The Frank Case — read by Vanessa Neubauer.

The Frank Case: Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery now continues as we get into the detailed story of the trial itself.

One very interesting thing strikes me about this section of the book. Even though the book, I find, is moderately pro-Frank, what it reveals about the atmosphere surrounding the trial tends to strongly disprove the modern “Frank was railroaded by anti-Semitic Southern Whites” theory.

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Audio Book: The Frank Case, part 1

The cover of the book on which our new audio book is based

THE AMERICAN MERCURY is proud to present the first part of our audio version of a rare, almost-suppressed book on the murder of Mary Phagan and the trial of Leo Frank, 1913’s The Frank Case — published almost immediately after the events it details took place, when they were fresh in the minds of Atlantans. Only one original copy is known to survive, though there are rumors of others. This book is also unique as it is the earliest known book published about the case.


Its full title is The Frank Case: Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery. It was published anonymously. It highlights the events leading up to the trial and aftermath surrounding the April 26th, 1913, murder of Mary Phagan by her sweatshop boss, the superintendent of the National Pencil Company, Leo M. Frank. The book strives to maintain neutrality and includes a dramatically-rendered history of this sensational crime.

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