April 21, 2018 • 20 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello and happy Saturday everyone. We are coming up on
the one hundred and fifth anniversary of the murder of
Mary Fagan, which led to the trial, conviction, and sentencing
of Leo Frank. I was a superintendent of the pencil
factory where Mary worked, and after his sentence was commuted
to life in prison, he was abducted by a mob
and lynched. This episode is from twenty eleven and it
(00:25):
was recorded by previous hosts Sarah and do Blina, and
as they discuss, it's covered extensively in a lot of
Georgia classrooms, but often not as much in other parts
of the United States and the world. So now we
will hand it over to Sarah and de Blina for
the trial of Leo Frank. Welcome to Stuff you missed
(00:46):
in History Class from houstofpworks dot com. Hello and welcome
to the podcast. I'm toa Blina Chocolate Boarding and I'm
fair Dowdy and the story we're about to tell happened
in Atlanta, actually kind of in our own backyards, but
we don't feel too self conscious about telling it because
(01:08):
this topic has been requested many times by listeners and
that's not surprising. The Leo Frank trial has been called quote,
one of the most shocking frame ups ever perpetuated by
American law and order officials, and the story involves a
Jewish man named Leo Frank being convicted, many think wrongly
convicted for the murder of a young girl named Mary Fagan,
(01:29):
and a group of men taking the law in to
their own hands and trying to make sure that basically
he paid the ultimate price for this. But there was
much more to this story than just these acts and
who was guilty or not guilty. This was a situation
about industrialism and the injustices associated with it, race relations,
North South tensions, so a lot of things. So it's
(01:52):
no wonder that it caught the attention and kind of
the emotions of the entire nation. But it's still a
mystery too in a way to this day, people still
wonder what really happened to Mary Fagan. So we're going
to take a look at the crime, the evidence, the
trial that ensued, But first we're going to try to
talk a little bit about the man that ended up
at the center of all this controversy, Leo Frank. Leo
(02:15):
Max Frank was born in Paris, Texas in eighteen eighty four,
but his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when he
was very small, and he grew up there. He went
to public school, the Pratt Institute, and since he was
very mechanically minded, he got an engineering degree from Cornell University.
Now he worked for a brief time with a few
different companies, but eventually he joined the family business. He
(02:37):
went to work for his uncle, Moses Frank, who was
the principal owner of the National Pencil Company, and that
company had a factory in Atlanta, and in nineteen oh
seven Frank was made co owner and superintendent of that
location of that factory and moved down south. So in
nineteen ten he married a native Atlanton, Lucille Selig, who
came from a prominent Jewish family, and by nineteen thirteen
(03:01):
he'd been honored by the local Jewish community as one
of Atlanta's most promising young businessman. So he looked like
he had a great future ahead of him. And Atlanta's
Jewish community wasn't as big as New York's, of course,
but it was still fairly significant, and it was significant
enough that Frank probably didn't feel very isolated. He probably
didn't worry that much about racism. He spent most of
(03:23):
his time working, so he seemed to be leading a
fairly successful, definitely peaceful life, yes, but all of that changed.
April twenty sixth, nineteen thirteen. That's when Mary Fagan, who
was this strikingly beautiful blonde thirteen year old girl from Marietta, Georgia,
so just outside the city, she stopped by the factory
(03:44):
to get her pay on the way to a Confederate
Memorial Day parade. And around this time, the state's economy
was really undergoing a kind of change. It was going
from a more agrarian economy to more of an industrial economy.
So Frank's factory, like many others and Lloyd women and
children to perform light labor tasks because they could be
paid lower wages than men. So we're talking like five
(04:07):
or six dollars a week is what they were taking home.
So it'd saved the factory some money. And Mary was,
of course one of these workers, and she was even
making less than that at the time because she was
part of a temporary layoff, so she had only worked
one day for that entire week and was picking up
a dollar twenty So she stopped by Frank's office that Saturday,
(04:27):
and according to his story, she got her money, He
paid the bill, and she left and she was never
seen alive again. Around three am the next day, the
night watchman Newt Lee was on his way to the
Negro toilet, which was located in the factory basement, and
that's where he found the body of a girl near
(04:48):
the bottom of an elevator shaft. She was so completely
covered in sawdust and grime that at first it was
hard to even tell if she was white or black.
Her skull was dented and caked in blood, her eyes
were used, and her cheeks were cut, and a cord
was wrapped around her neck. So at this point Lee
calls the police. He's afraid they'll suspect him, and they
come in to inspect the scene, and with the help
(05:10):
of another worker, they identify the body as Mary Fagan.
They arrested Lee right away, so his worries were correct,
and incidentally, he was held without charges four months after that.
But then the police went to get Frank. They wanted
to take him along to see the body and question
him at the site, and it was an experience that
Frank did not handle smoothly as we'll see later. He
(05:31):
was disturbed by the side of the body, and he
seemed really nervous to them, So that was kind of
the beginning of his problems, and they questioned him for
a long time and then formally arrested him on April
twenty ninth, nineteen thirteen. But things were moving along at
quite a clip with this investigation because police were under
a lot of pressure to find and convict a killer,
and there had been a series of unsolved murders in
(05:54):
Atlanta during the previous year and a half. So the
city was really frustrated, frustrated with the police, and they
wanted justice, and Mary Fagan ended up becoming a kind
of symbol for them. Initial reports even said that she
had been raped. That made people even more outraged. So
officials moved quickly to assemble whatever clues they could that
(06:14):
would prove Frank's guilt, and this is what they came
up with. At first, they thought, well, he was really
nervous the day after the murder, and that seemed suspicious.
They were also suspicious by the fact that he had
called Lee several times that night to see if there
was any trouble, and that was something that he normally
did not do. And then finally the fact that several
(06:36):
employees came forward and said that Frank quote indulged in
familiarities with a woman in his employ and a woman
who ran a boarding house even claimed that Frank had
called her the day of the murder, trying to arrange
a room for himself and a young girl. So this
is what police were initially acting on. On that last point,
in particular, many of the witnesses, including the boarding house proprietress,
(07:00):
they later recanted their accusations, but these same accusations helped
Hugh Dorsey, who was a prosecutor with pretty big political ambitions,
to build a case around Frank is this Jewish man
who was praying on gentile girls for his own pleasure.
Four weeks later, a grand jury used this information to
indict Frank. But there were some more clues that came in,
(07:21):
clues that seem a little more promising than the ones
we already went over, real clues that seemed to be
all but ignored. Ultimately, there were these two strange notes
that were scribbled on scraps of yellow paper, and they
were found near the body, and they're kind of tricky
to read. Here, but one of them said, ma'am, that
negro higher down here did this. I went to make
(07:41):
water and he pushed me down that whole a long
tall negro black that who it was, long slim, tall Negro,
I write while play with me. And the other note,
also written in this kind of difficult to follow styles,
that he said he would love me land and play
like the night witch did it. But that long, tall
(08:03):
black Negro did buy hisself. So these unusual notes found
near the body seem like a major, major new clue. Yeah,
and obviously they're confusing because they contain some bed spelling
and things like that and are hard to read, as
Sarah said, but they're also contradictory. I mean, the first
one sort of seems to identify the murderer, and the
(08:24):
second kind of suggests that the writer was saying he
was trying to throw suspicion elsewhere. So it was very confusing,
but at least something that seems like it should have
been pursued. The next piece of evidence was also found
(08:45):
near the body, at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
It was human excrement, and we're going to get into
that a little more later because there are a few
other clues involving that. But the likely owner of said
human excrement was a black janitor named Jim Conley, and
he had been seen washing blood out of a shirt
at the factory after the murder. So, WHOA, that sounds
(09:10):
like there is a whole nother potential suspect involved here. Yes,
in fact, there was another suspect. Conley was working at
the factory the day of the murder and even admitted
to have written those two notes when police arrested and
questioned him on the matter, but he claimed that Frank
had dictated the notes to him. So throwing a wrench
in this whole thing, right, And according to Leonard Dinnerstein
(09:31):
in American Heritage, the grand jury wanted to reconvene and
actually charge Connolly instead, but perhaps because of these political
aspirations of Dorsey's and he actually became the governor later,
we should throw that at that actuation, they did pay off,
but he wouldn't allow this. He wouldn't allow them to
reconsider this. We're not really sure how he talked them
out of it, but Donnerstein suggests that quote given Southern values,
(09:55):
they may have assumed that no attorney would base his
case on the word of a black man unless the
evidence was overwhelming. So basically, the grand jury just felt
persuaded by Dorsey's dedication to this case. He was just
so sure that Leo Frank was guilty that he was
willing to believe even Jim Calmly. But regardless of how
he did it, Dorsey did win out and the trial
(10:17):
started July twenty eighth, nineteen thirteen in Atlanta. A large
angry mob showed up in attendance and they were shouting
things like hang the Jew. And they weren't just saying
that outside the doors of the courthouse, they were saying
things like that in the courtroom. So yeah, it was
a really intimidating atmosphere to be in. And you have
to wonder how in this environment they could have chosen
(10:38):
an unbiased jury, I mean they did choose a jury,
or how an unbiased juror would remain unbiased true, I mean,
there were so many tensions going on in this scenario
at the time. There were class tensions that was working
class versus a factory owner race, you know, there was
anti Semitism going on North versus South. Since Frank was
technically a Yankee and that rubbed people the wrong way.
(11:01):
So things seemed to be working in Dorsey's favor almost
and he presented his case. He proposed that Frank killed
Fagin in a workroom outside his office on the second floor,
and that the body was dragged to an elevator and
taken to the basement. His argument included witness testimony that
there were blood spots on the floor there and hair
on a lathe, but it didn't really make sense. There
(11:23):
were a lot of holes in this approach. Here's just
an example of a few things. For example, state biologist
had concluded that the hair that was found on that
lathe wasn't actually Fagan's. Witnesses also said that those blood
spots found on the floor could have actually been paint,
and the excrement that Sarah mentioned earlier would have had
to have been mashed when the elevator went down. I mean,
(11:43):
every time that the elevator went down, it completely hit
everything at the bottom right. But apparently it wasn't until
after the body was discovered that that actually occurred that
the excrement was smashed and they smelled that telltale smell. However,
Conley had said that he positive said excrement there before
the murder, so it didn't add up. But the prosecution's
(12:05):
case really revolved around Connolly's testimony almost entirely. Interestingly, though
he had changed his story several times before the trial,
he had even signed four different affidavits, but once he
got in there, once he got up on the stand,
he stuck to his account. He didn't waiver. It's very
likely that he was coached to give this strong story
(12:28):
in front of the court. But he claimed that Frank
summoned him to his office that day and here's what
he had to say. His eyes were large and they
looked right funny, and then confessed the crime. And Conley
said that Frank offered, but never gave him money to
dispose of the body, and asked Connie if he could write,
and once Colley said he could, Frank dictated the murder notes.
(12:50):
So Frank, meanwhile, had two well known attorneys acting in
his defense, Luther Z. Rosser and Ruben R. Arnold, and
most feel that what really hurt their defense is that
they weren't able to make a dent in Conley's testimony.
Just they couldn't shake him. He just completely stuck to
that story. Even though he had changed it quite a
(13:11):
bit before getting into court, and even though Frank had
strong character witnesses too, and alibis people to account for
his whereabouts before, during, and after the murder, the jury
still found him guilty on September twenty sixth, nineteen thirteen,
and they only took They took less than four hours
actually to deliberate what had been one of the longest
(13:34):
trials in Georgia history, so essentially their minds were made up.
Frank was sentenced to be executed on October tenth of
that year, but the execution was stayed by several ultimately
unsuccessful appeals on the part of his lawyers, so they
(13:56):
made a couple of appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court
when all the conviction on February seventeenth, nineteen fourteen, and
another one did the same on October fourteenth, nineteen fourteen.
His defense lawyers then made a habeas corpus petition to
the US Supreme Court, but the court ended up denying
that petition despite the fact that there were some strong
descents to it. I mean Justice is Oliver Wendell Holmes
(14:19):
and Charles Evans among them, So there were some people
who who were in favor of that petition, And while
all this legal stuff was going on, there were some
kind of crazy developments, including witnesses taking back those accusations.
We mentioned that earlier, the accusations about Frank's alleged sexual deviations,
and also Conley's girlfriend came into the picture. She came
(14:41):
into the picture and gave some testimony about Conley's own
sexual perversions, so to speak. And Conley's own lawyer told
Judge Rohan, who had been the trial judge, that Conley
had confessed the murder to him. So that seems like
a pretty damning new piece of evidence, I would say,
if there's an actual confession, But that had actually come
to light during the appeals process, so we should mention
(15:04):
that it didn't really make a difference in his appeals.
He would have had to get a retrial or something
for that to have an effect. But the last appeal,
the final appeal was made to Governor John M. Slayton,
whose term was almost up by this point, and he
listened to both sides, He studied the records, he visited
the scene, and he also considered all these new things
(15:26):
that we've mentioned, and after struggling with it for twelve days,
so it wasn't going to take him four hours twelve
days of thinking it over. Slayton commuted Frank's sentence to
life imprisonment on June twenty first, nineteen fifteen, and he
knew how serious that decision was. He told his wife,
it may mean my death or worse, but I've ordered
(15:49):
the sentence commuted. And as he suspected, it was a
very unpopular decision. There were demonstrations about it. There were
vandalism took place against Jewish homes stores around the city,
and Frank had been moved already by this point to
a prison at Millageville, which was supposedly more secure, except
that after Slayton's reversal of the decision, it didn't prove
(16:12):
secure at all. No, while he was there, an inmate
cut Frank's throat and they were able to save him.
But while he was recovering, on August sixteenth, nineteen fifteen,
a group of twenty five vigilantes from Marietta drove out
to the prison, overpowered the guards and took Frank with
them back to Marietta, which was a pretty long drive.
So they took him back to where Mary Fagan was from,
(16:35):
and there a lynch mob watched as they hung him
from an oak tree. And all this time during the
drive back and before they hung him, they truly tried
to get him to confess, but he never did. He
just asked for his wedding ring to be sent to
his wife. So after the lynching, locals knew the identities
of the men involved, but they were never prosecuted, and
(16:56):
the men who did it even sort of used it
as a rallying cry point of pride. They called themselves
the Knights of Mary Fagan, and the girl's name just
alone became a rally and cry for the resurgence of
the Ku Klux Klan in the area. It was something
that people still dwelled on even a few years after. Yeah,
(17:17):
a few years after, and some people still debate about
this up until today. I mean they still debate over
whether frank was actually guilty or innocent. Many historians seem
to believe in his innocence and frankly, I mean, if
you look at a lot of sources for material about
this case, they seemed to lean that way that he
was wrongly accused. In nineteen eighty two, an old black
(17:38):
man named Alonzo, man who worked at Frank's factory as
a child, came forward and said that he'd seen Conley
drag Mary Fagan's corpse to the basement, but he kept
silent about it because Conley at the time had threatened
to kill him. And I think he even went to
his mom and told her what had happened, and she
was like, don't get involved. So this didn't come to
light until the eighties. On March eleventh, and nineteen eighty six,
(18:00):
the Georgia State Board of Pardon and Paroles posthumously pardoned Frank.
But as Dinnerstein's piece points out, this doesn't exactly exonerate
him for the crime. It was granted quote in recognition
of the state's failure to protect the person of Leo
Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity of continued legal appeal
of his conviction, and in recognition of the state's failure
(18:22):
to bring his killers to justice, and as an effort
to heal old wounds. So it was basically to give
him back his civil rights in a sense. Yeah, And
I thought it was interesting to talk about this case
because I don't I mean, it is so often suggested
to US, so I guess a lot of people do
know about it, but for a podcast called Stephie Miston
History Class. This is something that I have had in
(18:45):
almost every history class. I mean, from Georgia history in
middle school to high school US history to college. It's
really heavily taught here in Georgia and see and I
hadn't learned anything about it growing up up oh in
another state. So maybe it is something that Georgia and
(19:05):
Georgians are especially concerned with with studying and make sure
we don't forget this, certainly this crime against somebody's civil liberties.
Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic.
Since this is out of the archive, if you heard
(19:27):
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during the course of the show, that may be obsolete now.
So here is our current contact information. We are at
history podcasts at HowStuffWorks dot com, and then we're at
Missed in the History all over social media. That is
our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks
(19:47):
again for listening. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit houstuffworks dot com.
Hello and happy Saturday everyone. We are coming up on
the one hundred and fifth anniversary of the murder of
Mary Fagan, which led to the trial, conviction, and sentencing
of Leo Frank. I was a superintendent of the pencil
factory where Mary worked, and after his sentence was commuted
to life in prison, he was abducted by a mob
and lynched. This episode is from twenty eleven and it
(00:25):
was recorded by previous hosts Sarah and do Blina, and
as they discuss, it's covered extensively in a lot of
Georgia classrooms, but often not as much in other parts
of the United States and the world. So now we
will hand it over to Sarah and de Blina for
the trial of Leo Frank. Welcome to Stuff you missed
(00:46):
in History Class from houstofpworks dot com. Hello and welcome
to the podcast. I'm toa Blina Chocolate Boarding and I'm
fair Dowdy and the story we're about to tell happened
in Atlanta, actually kind of in our own backyards, but
we don't feel too self conscious about telling it because
(01:08):
this topic has been requested many times by listeners and
that's not surprising. The Leo Frank trial has been called quote,
one of the most shocking frame ups ever perpetuated by
American law and order officials, and the story involves a
Jewish man named Leo Frank being convicted, many think wrongly
convicted for the murder of a young girl named Mary Fagan,
(01:29):
and a group of men taking the law in to
their own hands and trying to make sure that basically
he paid the ultimate price for this. But there was
much more to this story than just these acts and
who was guilty or not guilty. This was a situation
about industrialism and the injustices associated with it, race relations,
North South tensions, so a lot of things. So it's
(01:52):
no wonder that it caught the attention and kind of
the emotions of the entire nation. But it's still a
mystery too in a way to this day, people still
wonder what really happened to Mary Fagan. So we're going
to take a look at the crime, the evidence, the
trial that ensued, But first we're going to try to
talk a little bit about the man that ended up
at the center of all this controversy, Leo Frank. Leo
(02:15):
Max Frank was born in Paris, Texas in eighteen eighty four,
but his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when he
was very small, and he grew up there. He went
to public school, the Pratt Institute, and since he was
very mechanically minded, he got an engineering degree from Cornell University.
Now he worked for a brief time with a few
different companies, but eventually he joined the family business. He
(02:37):
went to work for his uncle, Moses Frank, who was
the principal owner of the National Pencil Company, and that
company had a factory in Atlanta, and in nineteen oh
seven Frank was made co owner and superintendent of that
location of that factory and moved down south. So in
nineteen ten he married a native Atlanton, Lucille Selig, who
came from a prominent Jewish family, and by nineteen thirteen
(03:01):
he'd been honored by the local Jewish community as one
of Atlanta's most promising young businessman. So he looked like
he had a great future ahead of him. And Atlanta's
Jewish community wasn't as big as New York's, of course,
but it was still fairly significant, and it was significant
enough that Frank probably didn't feel very isolated. He probably
didn't worry that much about racism. He spent most of
(03:23):
his time working, so he seemed to be leading a
fairly successful, definitely peaceful life, yes, but all of that changed.
April twenty sixth, nineteen thirteen. That's when Mary Fagan, who
was this strikingly beautiful blonde thirteen year old girl from Marietta, Georgia,
so just outside the city, she stopped by the factory
(03:44):
to get her pay on the way to a Confederate
Memorial Day parade. And around this time, the state's economy
was really undergoing a kind of change. It was going
from a more agrarian economy to more of an industrial economy.
So Frank's factory, like many others and Lloyd women and
children to perform light labor tasks because they could be
paid lower wages than men. So we're talking like five
(04:07):
or six dollars a week is what they were taking home.
So it'd saved the factory some money. And Mary was,
of course one of these workers, and she was even
making less than that at the time because she was
part of a temporary layoff, so she had only worked
one day for that entire week and was picking up
a dollar twenty So she stopped by Frank's office that Saturday,
(04:27):
and according to his story, she got her money, He
paid the bill, and she left and she was never
seen alive again. Around three am the next day, the
night watchman Newt Lee was on his way to the
Negro toilet, which was located in the factory basement, and
that's where he found the body of a girl near
(04:48):
the bottom of an elevator shaft. She was so completely
covered in sawdust and grime that at first it was
hard to even tell if she was white or black.
Her skull was dented and caked in blood, her eyes
were used, and her cheeks were cut, and a cord
was wrapped around her neck. So at this point Lee
calls the police. He's afraid they'll suspect him, and they
come in to inspect the scene, and with the help
(05:10):
of another worker, they identify the body as Mary Fagan.
They arrested Lee right away, so his worries were correct,
and incidentally, he was held without charges four months after that.
But then the police went to get Frank. They wanted
to take him along to see the body and question
him at the site, and it was an experience that
Frank did not handle smoothly as we'll see later. He
(05:31):
was disturbed by the side of the body, and he
seemed really nervous to them, So that was kind of
the beginning of his problems, and they questioned him for
a long time and then formally arrested him on April
twenty ninth, nineteen thirteen. But things were moving along at
quite a clip with this investigation because police were under
a lot of pressure to find and convict a killer,
and there had been a series of unsolved murders in
(05:54):
Atlanta during the previous year and a half. So the
city was really frustrated, frustrated with the police, and they
wanted justice, and Mary Fagan ended up becoming a kind
of symbol for them. Initial reports even said that she
had been raped. That made people even more outraged. So
officials moved quickly to assemble whatever clues they could that
(06:14):
would prove Frank's guilt, and this is what they came
up with. At first, they thought, well, he was really
nervous the day after the murder, and that seemed suspicious.
They were also suspicious by the fact that he had
called Lee several times that night to see if there
was any trouble, and that was something that he normally
did not do. And then finally the fact that several
(06:36):
employees came forward and said that Frank quote indulged in
familiarities with a woman in his employ and a woman
who ran a boarding house even claimed that Frank had
called her the day of the murder, trying to arrange
a room for himself and a young girl. So this
is what police were initially acting on. On that last point,
in particular, many of the witnesses, including the boarding house proprietress,
(07:00):
they later recanted their accusations, but these same accusations helped
Hugh Dorsey, who was a prosecutor with pretty big political ambitions,
to build a case around Frank is this Jewish man
who was praying on gentile girls for his own pleasure.
Four weeks later, a grand jury used this information to
indict Frank. But there were some more clues that came in,
(07:21):
clues that seem a little more promising than the ones
we already went over, real clues that seemed to be
all but ignored. Ultimately, there were these two strange notes
that were scribbled on scraps of yellow paper, and they
were found near the body, and they're kind of tricky
to read. Here, but one of them said, ma'am, that
negro higher down here did this. I went to make
(07:41):
water and he pushed me down that whole a long
tall negro black that who it was, long slim, tall Negro,
I write while play with me. And the other note,
also written in this kind of difficult to follow styles,
that he said he would love me land and play
like the night witch did it. But that long, tall
(08:03):
black Negro did buy hisself. So these unusual notes found
near the body seem like a major, major new clue. Yeah,
and obviously they're confusing because they contain some bed spelling
and things like that and are hard to read, as
Sarah said, but they're also contradictory. I mean, the first
one sort of seems to identify the murderer, and the
(08:24):
second kind of suggests that the writer was saying he
was trying to throw suspicion elsewhere. So it was very confusing,
but at least something that seems like it should have
been pursued. The next piece of evidence was also found
(08:45):
near the body, at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
It was human excrement, and we're going to get into
that a little more later because there are a few
other clues involving that. But the likely owner of said
human excrement was a black janitor named Jim Conley, and
he had been seen washing blood out of a shirt
at the factory after the murder. So, WHOA, that sounds
(09:10):
like there is a whole nother potential suspect involved here. Yes,
in fact, there was another suspect. Conley was working at
the factory the day of the murder and even admitted
to have written those two notes when police arrested and
questioned him on the matter, but he claimed that Frank
had dictated the notes to him. So throwing a wrench
in this whole thing, right, And according to Leonard Dinnerstein
(09:31):
in American Heritage, the grand jury wanted to reconvene and
actually charge Connolly instead, but perhaps because of these political
aspirations of Dorsey's and he actually became the governor later,
we should throw that at that actuation, they did pay off,
but he wouldn't allow this. He wouldn't allow them to
reconsider this. We're not really sure how he talked them
out of it, but Donnerstein suggests that quote given Southern values,
(09:55):
they may have assumed that no attorney would base his
case on the word of a black man unless the
evidence was overwhelming. So basically, the grand jury just felt
persuaded by Dorsey's dedication to this case. He was just
so sure that Leo Frank was guilty that he was
willing to believe even Jim Calmly. But regardless of how
he did it, Dorsey did win out and the trial
(10:17):
started July twenty eighth, nineteen thirteen in Atlanta. A large
angry mob showed up in attendance and they were shouting
things like hang the Jew. And they weren't just saying
that outside the doors of the courthouse, they were saying
things like that in the courtroom. So yeah, it was
a really intimidating atmosphere to be in. And you have
to wonder how in this environment they could have chosen
(10:38):
an unbiased jury, I mean they did choose a jury,
or how an unbiased juror would remain unbiased true, I mean,
there were so many tensions going on in this scenario
at the time. There were class tensions that was working
class versus a factory owner race, you know, there was
anti Semitism going on North versus South. Since Frank was
technically a Yankee and that rubbed people the wrong way.
(11:01):
So things seemed to be working in Dorsey's favor almost
and he presented his case. He proposed that Frank killed
Fagin in a workroom outside his office on the second floor,
and that the body was dragged to an elevator and
taken to the basement. His argument included witness testimony that
there were blood spots on the floor there and hair
on a lathe, but it didn't really make sense. There
(11:23):
were a lot of holes in this approach. Here's just
an example of a few things. For example, state biologist
had concluded that the hair that was found on that
lathe wasn't actually Fagan's. Witnesses also said that those blood
spots found on the floor could have actually been paint,
and the excrement that Sarah mentioned earlier would have had
to have been mashed when the elevator went down. I mean,
(11:43):
every time that the elevator went down, it completely hit
everything at the bottom right. But apparently it wasn't until
after the body was discovered that that actually occurred that
the excrement was smashed and they smelled that telltale smell. However,
Conley had said that he positive said excrement there before
the murder, so it didn't add up. But the prosecution's
(12:05):
case really revolved around Connolly's testimony almost entirely. Interestingly, though
he had changed his story several times before the trial,
he had even signed four different affidavits, but once he
got in there, once he got up on the stand,
he stuck to his account. He didn't waiver. It's very
likely that he was coached to give this strong story
(12:28):
in front of the court. But he claimed that Frank
summoned him to his office that day and here's what
he had to say. His eyes were large and they
looked right funny, and then confessed the crime. And Conley
said that Frank offered, but never gave him money to
dispose of the body, and asked Connie if he could write,
and once Colley said he could, Frank dictated the murder notes.
(12:50):
So Frank, meanwhile, had two well known attorneys acting in
his defense, Luther Z. Rosser and Ruben R. Arnold, and
most feel that what really hurt their defense is that
they weren't able to make a dent in Conley's testimony.
Just they couldn't shake him. He just completely stuck to
that story. Even though he had changed it quite a
(13:11):
bit before getting into court, and even though Frank had
strong character witnesses too, and alibis people to account for
his whereabouts before, during, and after the murder, the jury
still found him guilty on September twenty sixth, nineteen thirteen,
and they only took They took less than four hours
actually to deliberate what had been one of the longest
(13:34):
trials in Georgia history, so essentially their minds were made up.
Frank was sentenced to be executed on October tenth of
that year, but the execution was stayed by several ultimately
unsuccessful appeals on the part of his lawyers, so they
(13:56):
made a couple of appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court
when all the conviction on February seventeenth, nineteen fourteen, and
another one did the same on October fourteenth, nineteen fourteen.
His defense lawyers then made a habeas corpus petition to
the US Supreme Court, but the court ended up denying
that petition despite the fact that there were some strong
descents to it. I mean Justice is Oliver Wendell Holmes
(14:19):
and Charles Evans among them, So there were some people
who who were in favor of that petition, And while
all this legal stuff was going on, there were some
kind of crazy developments, including witnesses taking back those accusations.
We mentioned that earlier, the accusations about Frank's alleged sexual deviations,
and also Conley's girlfriend came into the picture. She came
(14:41):
into the picture and gave some testimony about Conley's own
sexual perversions, so to speak. And Conley's own lawyer told
Judge Rohan, who had been the trial judge, that Conley
had confessed the murder to him. So that seems like
a pretty damning new piece of evidence, I would say,
if there's an actual confession, But that had actually come
to light during the appeals process, so we should mention
(15:04):
that it didn't really make a difference in his appeals.
He would have had to get a retrial or something
for that to have an effect. But the last appeal,
the final appeal was made to Governor John M. Slayton,
whose term was almost up by this point, and he
listened to both sides, He studied the records, he visited
the scene, and he also considered all these new things
(15:26):
that we've mentioned, and after struggling with it for twelve days,
so it wasn't going to take him four hours twelve
days of thinking it over. Slayton commuted Frank's sentence to
life imprisonment on June twenty first, nineteen fifteen, and he
knew how serious that decision was. He told his wife,
it may mean my death or worse, but I've ordered
(15:49):
the sentence commuted. And as he suspected, it was a
very unpopular decision. There were demonstrations about it. There were
vandalism took place against Jewish homes stores around the city,
and Frank had been moved already by this point to
a prison at Millageville, which was supposedly more secure, except
that after Slayton's reversal of the decision, it didn't prove
(16:12):
secure at all. No, while he was there, an inmate
cut Frank's throat and they were able to save him.
But while he was recovering, on August sixteenth, nineteen fifteen,
a group of twenty five vigilantes from Marietta drove out
to the prison, overpowered the guards and took Frank with
them back to Marietta, which was a pretty long drive.
So they took him back to where Mary Fagan was from,
(16:35):
and there a lynch mob watched as they hung him
from an oak tree. And all this time during the
drive back and before they hung him, they truly tried
to get him to confess, but he never did. He
just asked for his wedding ring to be sent to
his wife. So after the lynching, locals knew the identities
of the men involved, but they were never prosecuted, and
(16:56):
the men who did it even sort of used it
as a rallying cry point of pride. They called themselves
the Knights of Mary Fagan, and the girl's name just
alone became a rally and cry for the resurgence of
the Ku Klux Klan in the area. It was something
that people still dwelled on even a few years after. Yeah,
(17:17):
a few years after, and some people still debate about
this up until today. I mean they still debate over
whether frank was actually guilty or innocent. Many historians seem
to believe in his innocence and frankly, I mean, if
you look at a lot of sources for material about
this case, they seemed to lean that way that he
was wrongly accused. In nineteen eighty two, an old black
(17:38):
man named Alonzo, man who worked at Frank's factory as
a child, came forward and said that he'd seen Conley
drag Mary Fagan's corpse to the basement, but he kept
silent about it because Conley at the time had threatened
to kill him. And I think he even went to
his mom and told her what had happened, and she
was like, don't get involved. So this didn't come to
light until the eighties. On March eleventh, and nineteen eighty six,
(18:00):
the Georgia State Board of Pardon and Paroles posthumously pardoned Frank.
But as Dinnerstein's piece points out, this doesn't exactly exonerate
him for the crime. It was granted quote in recognition
of the state's failure to protect the person of Leo
Frank and thereby preserve his opportunity of continued legal appeal
of his conviction, and in recognition of the state's failure
(18:22):
to bring his killers to justice, and as an effort
to heal old wounds. So it was basically to give
him back his civil rights in a sense. Yeah, And
I thought it was interesting to talk about this case
because I don't I mean, it is so often suggested
to US, so I guess a lot of people do
know about it, but for a podcast called Stephie Miston
History Class. This is something that I have had in
(18:45):
almost every history class. I mean, from Georgia history in
middle school to high school US history to college. It's
really heavily taught here in Georgia and see and I
hadn't learned anything about it growing up up oh in
another state. So maybe it is something that Georgia and
(19:05):
Georgians are especially concerned with with studying and make sure
we don't forget this, certainly this crime against somebody's civil liberties.
Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic.
Since this is out of the archive, if you heard
(19:27):
an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar
during the course of the show, that may be obsolete now.
So here is our current contact information. We are at
history podcasts at HowStuffWorks dot com, and then we're at
Missed in the History all over social media. That is
our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks
(19:47):
again for listening. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit houstuffworks dot com.
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