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I placed a single red rose on the grave. My finger traced over the name Mary Phagan. The epitaph was one I knew by heart...

IN THIS DAY OF FADING IDEALS
AND DISAPPEARING LANDMARKS
LITTLE MARY PHAGAN'S HEROISM
IS AN HEIRLOOM THAN WHICH
THERE IS NOTHING MORE PRECIOUS
AMONG THE OLD RED HILLS OF GEORGIA.
SLEEP, LITTLE GIRL; SLEEP IN
YOUR HUMBLE GRAVE BUT IF THE
ANGELS ARE GOOD TO YOU IN
THE REALMS BEYOND THE TROU
BEL [sic] SUNSET AND THE CLOUDED
STARS, THEY WILL LET YOU
KNOW THAT MANY AN ACHING HEART IN
GEORGIA BEATS FOR YOU, AND
MANY A TEAR FROM EYES UNUSED
TO WEEP, HAS PAID TRIBUTE
TOO SACRED FOR WORDS.

Looking up, I saw an old couple trudge up the grassy hill towards the grave. I stood up and turned to meet them. "Can I help you?" I inquired.

The lady wore a light blue dress with a matching striped jacket and white sandals. Her brown eyes were framed by glasses and her hair was gray. I guess she was in her mid-to-late eighties. Her husband also had brown eyes and gray hair, balding a little on top. Twin-like, they were almost color-coordinated: he wore a light gray wool suit and pale blue shirt. He must have been around ninety years old, and he walked with a cane. He towered over her.

Somehow, from the way they carried themselves, I knew their questions would be different. Not the usual, "Do you know where the grave of little Mary Phagan is?" "Are you, by any chance, related to little Mary Phagan?" "How do you feel about the murder of little Mary Phagan?"

They seemed to be lost in remembering, too.

The lady looked at me with concern and intensity, and finally spoke: "It was on April 26, 1913, Confederate Memorial Day, that little Mary Phagan was murdered in downtown Atlanta. Not many people celebrate Confederate Memorial Day anymore. Not many native born here anymore."

She turned her head slightly, and her eyes swept over Mary Phagan's gravestone. "We remember different times. Times long ago. Times that don't come back except for her story."

She paused and added, "We were there. And little Mary Phagan's story remains with us. All the sadness and some of the hate—we felt it. Yes, times were different all right. A lot of murders happen today. But they don't symbolize something like hers did. We were one of her kind, hard-working and striving to have a decent life. We made it, but she didn't."

For the first time, she looked closely at me. "You look a lot like her," she said, her voice faltering.

I nodded sadly. "My name is Mary Phagan. Little Mary Phagan was my great-aunt."

For a moment the couple stared at me in disbelief, and then they wrapped their arms around me to comfort me. "Yes," the old woman said, "I can see the resemblance now." Breaking the embrace, she patted my shoulder gently. For a while, we were silent and then, as daylight faded, they politely excused themselves.

*Add all Newsletters here: Do Not Add Position Paper

Will New District Attorney Bow to Pressure to Exonerate Leo Frank for Murder of Little Mary Phagan?

Attorney Fani Willis beat Fulton County DA Paul Howard Jr. in a landslide victory —72% to 28% But will she bow to the same pressure that was put on her former boss to exonerate a man who raped and murdered our family member? The Conviction Integrity Unit established under Fulton County DA Paul Howard was not transparent: the Phagan family was not contacted and he refused to acknowledge the Phagan family. Obviously, it was set up for one single goal—to “legally” clear Leo Frank of a heinous murder—and to pin his crime on a Black man! The recent D.A. election victor Fani Willis is making strong statements about her integrity and skill, but so did Howard before succumbing to the behind-the scenes pressure from the ADL, ex-governor Roy Barnes, and Rabbi Steven Lebow, whose apparent goal has been to lie their way to victory. Fani Willis is quoted recently in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Cases won’t be for sale under my administration. Not for an endorsement, not for money, not for anything.” “You have my word, during my tenure as district attorney in Fulton County, we will become a beacon for justice and ethics in Georgia and across the nation.” “Willis vowed to bring ‘transparency and accountability’ to the DA’s office.” [Willis] “announced she intends to clean house in the Public Integrity Unity, which handles police-involved shootings.” How about cleaning house in the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU)? So, how is it that Leo Frank—a privileged white rich man convicted of murder and having exhausted every possible court appeals process, and having been previously rejected as a pardon candidate—now gets a CIU Review? For over a century, propaganda has masqueraded as “new evidence”: there have been plays, articles, books, videos, movies, dramas claiming death-bed confessions, bite marks and teeth x-rays (no evidence), and anti-Semitic pogroms (no evidence). Virtually all these works have simply disregarded the physical evidence to claim that an African American man named James Conley committed the crime. They ignore Conley’s riveting 15- hour testimony under oath that proved Frank was the murderer. Frank himself refused to testify and would not be sworn at his own trial. Nor would his attorneys dare to cross-examine twenty young girls who testified that Frank had sexually harassed them constantly—he was the Jeffrey Epstein/Harvey Weinstein of his time! Today, Frank’s advocates rely on the 1982 errorfilled “testimony” of an elderly Alonzo Mann who claimed to see many things in 1913 that simply could not have happened. That is what the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles found when they dismissed his new statements as insufficient to exonerate the murderer. Frank’s advocates made a second attempt at obtaining exoneration in 1986, which resulted in the Parole Board granting a posthumous pardon “without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence.” More recently, requests to the Georgia Governor and the Georgia Legislature (2017 requests denied) have tried to enforce Frank’s innocence but do not provide any new, original evidence that would vacate the original verdict of guilty; rather, they just parrot propaganda of other pro-Frank partisans. Conviction Integrity Unit In 2019, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard established a “Conviction Integrity Unit” that he said would review the Leo Frank murder conviction of 1913. Those named as participants in this move are the following:

• Former Governor Roy Barnes
• Rabbi Steven Lebow
• ADL Attorney Dale Schwartz
• Melissa D. Redmon, director of the UG Law School
•Former Supreme Court Justice Leah Ward Sears
•Former Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher
•Cobb County Superior Court Chief Judge J. Stephen Schuster (Retired)
•Assistant District Attorney Van Pearlberg

The Family of Mary Phagan believes that these individuals have “colluded” since August of 2018 to find a way to vacate the conviction of Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan. Dale Schwartz was quoted thus: “we’re still trying to get a new trial that would, in effect, exonerate him.” Every serious student of the case is aware that in 1914, after his conviction and death sentence, several attempts were made by Frank’s supporters to “exonerate” him using “new evidence” that included planted evidence and false witness affidavits later found to have been obtained by bribery and other illegal means. [See the Atlanta Constitution, May 5, 1914, p. 1.] This corrupt behavior IS STILL GOING ON! According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (May 7, 2019), D.A. Howard stated, “The Frank Case helped inspire the creation of the new unit” and that former Gov. Roy Barnes “will serve as a consultant,” and it was further reported that Barnes “had lobbied the district attorney to reexamine Frank’s case.” Let us be clear what that means. Former Gov. Barnes has swayed, influenced, and brought pressure (political bullying) to bear on the Fulton County DA’s office to reexamine the Frank/Phagan case. Those statements alone convince us that there will be no fair hearing—the Conviction Integrity Unity has already re-adjudicated the Leo Frank case. According to the article, Barnes said he is convinced that this will happen: “‘There is no doubt in my mind, and we’ll [Who is “we?”] prove it at the appropriate time, that Frank was not guilty.’” Former Governor Roy Barnes should recuse himself from this case, as well as members of and “consultants” to the Conviction Integrity Unit who have categorically stated that Frank is not guilty. NO NEW EVIDENCE! After all his big and small deceptions revealed in his February 2020 lecture in Savannah, the ADL’s expert on the Leo Frank case, author Steve Oney, finally got down to the reality that after 107 years of failed attempts to exonerate Frank, D.A. Paul Howard’s new Conviction Integrity Unit will have NO NEW EVIDENCE to make a judgment. Oney told the audience, “I don’t see any new evidence out there” that might add anything new to the case. This is a bombshell because D.A. Paul Howard has said, “The unit will investigate claims of actual innocence to determine whether new evidence or facts may prove a convicted defendant didn’t commit the offense.” Howard went further: “The CIU will review cases in which there is new factual, physical, or forensic evidence. The unit will also review cases in which there is relevant evidence that went untested at the time of trial or some other new evidence that a person was convicted wrongfully.” Aimee Maxwell, the director of the D.A.’s Conviction Integrity Unit, was interviewed on WABE’s Closer Look program and was asked, “What is the criteria” for evaluating a case? Ms. Maxwell answered: “Well, for actual innocence, what we’re really looking at is some new evidence—evidence that a court hasn’t looked at...” The fact is, every bit of “new evidence” only supports the verdict of guilty. The new CIU established by D.A. Paul Howard, and now headed by D.A. Fani Willis, has been made aware of the serious perjuries that have been told to exonerate Frank and to posthumously convict the African American man who Frank set up to take the fall. This is not a theory—this is a documented fact. Will the D.A.’s Conviction Integrity Unit continue the deception? History shows that the integrity of Frank’s conviction is secure. The integrity of the District Attorney and her office is what really is at stake. The Hypocrisy of the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) & the Leo Frank Case The Inaugural Conviction Integrity Unit Reception was held at the Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta on Wednesday, January 8, 2019. The Keynote Speaker was Ambassador Andrew Young, Jr. But what is the Conviction Integrity Unit? According to its own description, “The Conviction Integrity Unit endeavors to review past convictions for credible claims of actual innocence, wrongful conviction, and, where feasible, sentencing inequities. This process is afforded to applicants regardless of whether they are pro se or represented by an attorney. The CIU is committed to ensuring all submissions receive a thorough and equitable review.”

Cases the CIU will review:

1. Claims of actual innocence
2. Claims of Constitutional Violations
3. In the interest of Justice
4. Sentence Modification
5. Cases of Historical Significance

That sounds good, but this CIU was NOT the brainchild of the Fulton County D.A. According to former governor Roy Barnes, a group of pro-Frank crusaders (including himself) brought the Leo Frank case to the D.A. to ask him to exonerate this murderer (and to convict a black man for Frank’s 107-year-old crime!) The Milledgeville Journal reported that “When Howard asked Barnes what he had in mind, Barnes said he wanted to see if he could get the judgment against Frank set aside. Howard said he was open to the idea, but believed if he assembled a team to consider it, the team should look at more than one case [such as Wayne Williams].” So it was already determined that the Leo Frank Case would be reviewed before the announcement of the CIU! The Leo Frank Case did not follow the CIU’s own protocol. Why not?

Same Ol’ Lies, Over & Over

Rabbi Steven Lebow, Jerry Klinger, Allison Padilla-Goodman of the ADL, Barnes, and their ilk continue to push the same lies and distortions. This is why none of them will actually publish any serious or scholarly work on this subject, like the Phagan family has done. It would be considered laughable. Here are some facts that they tried to keep hidden from D.A. Paul Howard: Leo Frank was prosecuted after a grand jury with five Jewish members indicted him.

All three Georgian newspapers in 1913 had Jewish editors, and they never reported anti-Semitic slurs or shouts either before, during, or after Frank’s trial.

Frank appealed the guilty verdict and lost 13 separate times.

The claims that the trial was dominated by a mob chanting “Kill the Jew!” was debunked by their own expert, Steve Oney, who said “It never happened.” Why aren’t these facts ever brought up? If one reads the old newspapers, as Oney did, one will not see any mobs or read any anti-Semitism. There were orderly crowds of curious people who waited to get in to the courthouse to view the trial, but that was it. Read many of these articles on LittleMaryPhagan.com. We have made them available to the public. Why won’t LeBow et al. provide proof of their tired false claims. Nowhere can it be found in the original newspapers that there was a “mob outside of the courtroom shouting anti-Semitic slurs” at the jurors or anyone else. The Jewish people were respected members of society in Georgia at the time as well. The religion of Leo Frank played no role in his guilty verdict or his lynching, which was the result of the reprehensible crime he committed. Oddly enough, it was Frank’s own mother who brought religion into the trial by embarrassing herself in court with the shouting of anti-Christian slurs at the prosecutor, Hugh Dorsey.

Jerry Klinger has made a career out of corrupting the facts of the case even though the provable realities have been presented to him on multiple occasions. Nevertheless he recently wrote that “Georgia media’s reporting encouraged their basest desires, the Jew’s blood,” which is an outright falsehood. Of course, today’s Georgia media can easily check this claim, having full and complete access to all of their own archives. Yet, for some unknown reason they won’t. So, Klinger, Lebow and others can blatantly lie with impunity, never fearing they will be challenged. Author Steve Oney, whose 742-page book is considered by the ADL as their top authority, reported: “To the extent that there was bias in the coverage, it was mostly in Frank’s favor…” He goes on to state that Atlanta’s newspapers, “evincing the prejudices of the time, ridiculed the state’s star witness—a black factory janitor named Jim Conley…” In fact, Atlanta’s media declared Frank an innocent man and when they brought up his Jewish background, it was only to reinforce how much integrity he had as the leader of B’nai B’rith. The three Georgian papers—all with Jewish editors—went along with Frank’s defense team in their racist desire to pin the crime on two separate African American men—first Newt Lee (the night watchman who discovered the body), and then Jim Conley. Multiple articles of the Klinger kind are being written every year memorializing Frank’s lynching, either refusing to acknowledge that Leo Frank could have been guilty (based on the mounds of evidence), or blatantly lying about “anti-Semitic mobs” or Frank’s Jewish background being a major factor in the case. More people need to write the truth of the matter so that people are not misled and so that an injustice is not committed against Mary Phagan and the Phagan family.

The ADL has been promoting a lie—for over a century!

“HANG THE JEW, HANG THE JEW” is what the ADL says was chanted during the month-long trial, but its own expert Steve Oney says it NEVER OCCURRED! According to Oney, at the time of Mary Phagan’s murder, “Atlanta was a philo-Semitic city. Its assimilated, German-Jewish elite were part of the financial and legal power structure…” The governor in Frank’s 1915 commutation, John Slaton, also addressed the false claim of an “anti-Semitic mob” surrounding the courtroom pressing to lynch Frank: “No such attack was made and…none was contemplated.” Governor Slaton also countered the false claim of an “anti-Semitic” atmosphere by reminding Frank supporters that Jews were highly respected and appreciated in Georgia because they had been “conspicuous” contributors to the history and development of the state. Mr. Oney refutes the claim that there were anti-Semitic mobs shouting “Hang the Jew!” He told the Jewish Journal: “[I]t didn’t happen. It was something that someone wrote a couple [of] years after the crime, and then it got stuck into subsequent recountings of the story…. Jews were accepted in the city, and the record does not substantiate subsequent reports that the crowd outside the courtroom shouted at the jurors: ‘Hang the Jew or we’ll hang you.’” It has been claimed that “anti-Semitism” and the “hatred of Jews” motivated Frank’s conviction and lynching. And yet, incredibly, there was no anti- Semitism expressed by police, detectives, prosecutors, jurors, judge, or reporters! There was no “prejudicial trial” or “mob rule” or anti-Jewish bigotry of any kind. Most people are unaware that the prosecutor first brought his case against Leo Frank before a 23-member grand jury that included five prominent members of the Jewish community (including at least two from Frank’s own synagogue), and all the grand jurors signed the bill of indictment against Leo Frank. The Leo Frank trial judge Leonard S. Roan was once a law partner of one of Frank’s defense attorneys and, according to a confidential ADL memo: “In general, the rulings of the trial Judge had been favorable to the defense.” Frank’s defense attorney even declared after the trial: “We do not make the least criticism of Judge Roan. [He] is one of the best men in Georgia and is an able and conscientious judge.” The false claims of anti-Semitism are simply unfounded and untrue.

Roy Barnes’s False Statements

“I’m convinced through the reading not only did he not get a fair trial, he was not guilty. The case just simply was wrong....There’s no question he didn’t get a fair shot.... There is substantial reasonable doubt as to whether Frank was guilty.” The FACTS: Roy Barnes recently told some law students that “If you get interested in this case,” they should read the book by author Steve Oney. But when asked if the trial jury “ignored the facts in the case,” Oney responded, “No, I think there was a reasonable case against Leo Frank.” Even Gov. John Slaton, who (under political pressure) commuted Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment in 1915, wrote: “The Supreme Court…determined as a matter of law, and correctly in my judgment, that there was sufficient evidence to sustain the [guilty] verdict. Leo Frank: White Privilege White Privilege is the unearned, mostly unacknowledged social advantage white people have over other racial groups simply because they are white. In 1913, Leo Frank was convicted for the murder of Little Mary Phagan based on the direct evidence found at the scene of the crime as well as circumstantial evidence and because he was a “sexual deviant/degenerate” with a long history of sexually molesting his female employees. Leo Frank and his defense team used “White Privilege” as a tool to play on white fears about stereotypes of “Negroes” being savage beasts and pathological liars. Scholars of the case have admitted that Leo Frank and his supporters actually relied on racism to defend himself against charges they knew were true. Jewish historian Theodore Rosengarten bluntly asserted that “Readers who wish to find a progressive Jewish social ethic at work in the Frank camp will be sorely disappointed. Frank’s lawyers played the race card for all it was worth.” He was not the only one:

Documented Sources: White Privilege and Leo Frank’s Racism

Harry Golden, A Little Girl is Dead (1965), p. xv:

“Until the mid-1960s, let alone in 1913, no white man in any of the old Confederate States had ever been convicted of a capital offense on the testimony of a Negro.”

Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey, The Silent and the Damned (1988), p. 109: “Leo Frank was convicted on the strength of a black man’s testimony—truly a rare event in the South in the early years of the twentieth century. Certainly the words of a black man were almost never taken over those of a white man. And Frank was convicted by an all-white jury.”

Jeffrey Melnick, Black-Jewish Relations on Trial: Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South (2000), pages xi, 8, 37, 43, 61, 100, 111: “…Frank and his supporters used racist language to demean Conley and took refuge in what they understood to be the privilege of Jewish whiteness.” “This represented the first capital case in postbellum southern history in which a ‘white’ defendant was condemned by the testimony of an African American.” “…Jews like Leo Frank were much more likely to take up whiteness as a self-concept and mode of behavior than their northern counterparts…” “Frank considered himself to be white and enjoyed the privileges thereof, including African American domestic help and control over a large number of poor southerners—white and African American.” “Another of Frank’s lawyers referred to Conley as a ‘dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger.’”

“…Frank’s people tried to establish Frank’s ‘whiteness’ (and I mean that doubly here to signify his racial standing and his innocence) by demonstrating his distance from even the most trivial constituent of American culture that might be traceable to African Americans.” “Frank’s lawyers employed racial epithets at every turn, and... capitalized on much the same sort of racist thinking that helped to turn public opinion against their man.”

Charles and Louise Samuels, Night Fell on Georgia (1956), pages 158, 159: “Again it should be noted that the men defending Frank, while protesting the [nonexistant] prejudice against Jews, saw no reason why anyone should object to their own often expressed prejudice against Negroes.” “‘Who is Conley?’ [the defense lawyer Luther Rosser] demanded. ‘Who was Conley, as he used to be and as you have seen him? He was a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger.’”

Steve Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise (2003), page 148: “For one thing, Leo Frank had already made the grounds of the impending legal battle clear. ‘No white man killed Mary Phagan,’ the factory superintendent had reportedly told a prison attaché upon hearing of Conley’s affidavits. ‘It’s a negro crime, through and through.’ The Negro to whom Frank was referring was, of course, poor Jim, and as [attorney William] Smith later phrased it, the accused was going to use every bit of his ‘ great influence and unlimited financial means’ to bring the point home to a jury.”

Nation of Islam, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 (2016), pages 125, 362: “Frank’s attorneys seized upon the state’s extraordinary blurring of the color line to make their stand. They looked beyond the murder of Mary Phagan and took the position that Frank’s conviction would in fact undermine sacred Southern racial traditions and set in motion a racial upheaval far more significant than Frank’s actual guilt or innocence.” “Today’s believers in the innocence of Leo Frank have continued the tactic pursued in the courtroom by his lawyers, who assigned all manner of dishonesty to James Conley: Frank’s attorneys variously called Conley ‘a dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger’; ‘a dirty negro crook’; a ‘beastly, drunken, filthy, lying nigger’; a ‘ filthy, criminal, lying negro’—being careful to pair untruthfulness and uncleanliness with the Black race.”

R. Barri Flowers, Murder Chronicles (2014): “Racism and stereotyping had been part of the defense strategy throughout the trial, as Frank’s attorneys portrayed Conley as being ‘especially disposed to lying and murdering because of his race.’”

Nancy MacLean, “The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered” (1991), characterizes Frank’s defense as: “a virulent racist offense against ... Jim Conley.” “Frank’s attorneys based their case on the most vicious antiblack stereotypes of the day and on outspoken appeals to white solidarity...”

Dr. Stuart Rockoff, director of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience: “Thus, their defense of Frank was largely an asserting of his and, by extension, their own whiteness.”

Phagan Family Position Paper, June 2019, pages 7-9: “Leo Frank’s lawyers argued to the jury of twelve white men that murder, rape, and robbery were ‘ negro crimes’ and thus Frank, a white man, could not have committed the murder of Mary Phagan. One defense attorney said that ‘the murder was the unreasoning crime of a negro,’ that ‘It isn’t a white man’s crime.’”

Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused, (1991), page 245: “Frank resorted to racial stereotypes in his own defense. He insisted that Mary must have been killed by some sort of violent, primitive brute—in short, a Black, not a Jew. Frank’s lawyers were energetic in insisting that murder of this sort was not a Jewish crime, and they did not hesitate to exploit anti-Black bigotry. They referred to Jim Conley…as a ‘dirty, filthy, black, drunken, lying nigger’...” “There was something...hypocritical about such men, denouncing the bigoty against Jews that they asserted was responsible for the charges against Frank, yet resorting to a far more explicit and vicious bigotry against Blacks in his defense. Significantly, the prosecution avoided racial stereotyping, at least of this blatant sort.” Frank’s own racist thinking is reflected in an Atlanta Constitution front-page headline on May 31, 1913: “Mary Phagan’s Murder Was Work of a Negro Declares Leo M. Frank.” The newspaper quoted Frank: “Here is a negro, not alone with the shiftless and lying habits of an element of his race, that is common to the South….No white man killed Mary Phagan. It’s a negro’s crime, through and through. No man with common sense would even suspect I did it.”

Leo Frank’s supporters then and now have played the White Privilege race card and falsely represent an African American man as the “real killer.” For 107 years James “Jim” Conley has been scapegoated in nearly all the literature on the case. He was a sweeper in the factory on the day of the murder who was ordered by his boss Leo Frank to help move the dead body of Mary Phagan. When Conley confessed to his accessory-after-the-fact role, Frank and his supporters tried (and continue to this day) to smear Conley as a devious criminal who got away with murder, but Conley’s very detailed confession—corroborated by the physical evidence at the crime scene—was so convincing that it became central to the prosecution’s case. (At trial, Leo Frank refused to be cross-examined by prosecutors, but James Conley withstood nearly 16 hours of cross-examination—under oath.) Before he accused James Conley of the crime, Leo Frank worked overtime to pin the murder on the African American night watchman who found Mary Phagan’s body, Newt Lee. Frank hired private detectives who planted a blood-soaked shirt in the innocent black man’s home, and then Frank told the police where they could find that damning “evidence.” When the newspapers reported that a bloody shirt was found at Lee’s home, it almost caused an innocent man to be lynched. Luckily for Lee, Frank’s private detectives did such a sloppy job at planting the shirt that the police were not fooled at all, and it only increased their suspicion of Leo Frank. That is the point when the people of Atlanta came to believe—and rightly so—that Leo Frank was the murderer of Little Mary Phagan. Leo Frank: “Sexual Pervert” According to Dr. Jeffrey Melnick, “The perversion charge merits special attention because it formed the emotional core of the prosecution’s case against Frank, and also became the most important constituent in public feeling against him.” So, according to the Nation of Islam, “The Frank team strategy was to stress the act of rape in Mary Phagan’s murder, and in so doing the Frank team felt they could convince a predisposed white America that only a Black man could be responsible for the brutal killing of this white girl.” Dr. Stuart Rockoff concurs: “Frank’s trial lawyers also relied upon the stereotype of the black rapist to argue that Conley was the one most likely guilty of the crime.” By the time of his lynching in 1915 many people—including his Jewish supporters—not only were repelled by Leo Frank’s abrasive personality but also believed he was in fact the murderer of Mary Phagan. Chicago icon Albert Lasker, a Jewish philanthropist and the “father of modern advertising,” paid millions (in today’s money) for Frank’s defense, but he privately admitted that he was not even convinced that Leo Frank was innocent. It was Lasker who financed all of Frank’s post-conviction appeals and orchestrated his international public-relations campaign that involved media outlets across the nation, including the New York Times. Lasker recalled the meeting in Frank’s jail cell: “It was very hard for us to be fair to him, he impressed us as a sexual pervert. Now, he may not have been—or rather homosexual or something like that…” According to Lasker’s biographer, the men with him during that encounter took “a violent dislike to him.” Lasker “hated him,” and said, “I hope he [Leo Frank] gets out…and when he gets out I hope he slips on a banana peel and breaks his neck.” The fact is Leo Frank was a sexual predator—the Harvey Weinstein/Jeffrey Epstein of his era. He, like those convicted pedophiles, used the factory he managed and the position he held to pressure little girls into sexual situations where he ruthlessly took advantage of them. And that is exactly what he did on Saturday, April 26, 1913, to thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, who came to her place of employment to collect her pay of $1.20 from her boss Leo Frank.. And just like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, B’nai B’rith president Leo Frank used the opportunity to lure Little Mary Phagan to a back area of the factory and attempted to sexually assault her. Evidence shows that Mary resisted Frank with all of her might and in the struggle he struck her and then strangled her to death. At his murder trial twenty of Leo Frank’s own female employees bravely took the witness stand and testified to Frank’s history of sexual deviance and harassment. They testified that he “got too familiar,” “put his hands on” them, tried to corner them, and proposed sexual acts to them for money. Fourteen-year-old Nellie Pettis recounted how Frank had propositioned her for sex and 16-year-old Nellie Wood testified that Frank pushed himself against her and touched her breast. Several male employees also described how they had witnessed Frank rubbing himself against young female workers. The testimony was so explicit that the judge had to clear the courtroom of women. These young girls were the real pioneers of today’s #MeToo Movement. Leo Frank’s lawyers did not even attempt to cross-examine any of the girls who testified at his trial. Instead, the defense attorneys told the jury that Frank’s behavior was: “a sign that we are getting more broad-minded... Deliver me from one of these prudish fellows that never looks at a girl and never puts his hands on her....He’s the kind that I wouldn’t trust behind the door.” Will the new D.A. finally bring INTEGRITY to the Conviction Itegrity Unit, and face the facts of Leo M. Frank’s racism and sexual deviance? Or will she let the lies and the liars have their way and allow them to pin a brutal murder of our family member wrongly on an African American man? We’ll see.

The Phagan family has no objection to anyone expressing their opinions about the Frank case, but we do insist that organizations and personal campaigns not distort the truth and facts to use this case for their own political purposes. For over 100 years, each passing decade brought with it “new historical evidence” falsely claiming to exonerate Leo Frank. The Phagan family has stated since 1982 that if there were clear-cut evidence to clear Frank of this heinous crime, we would come forward and ask for exoneration. However, such historical evidence has never come to light. Rather, there are considerable data, extensive documentation, revealing archival material, and legal, court, and government records that only support and even strengthen the guilty verdict.

Former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes Malfeasance

Former Georgia Governor. Roy Barnes visited Mercer Law students on Tuesday. He discussed his efforts to reopen one of Georgia’s most notorious lynchings. Barnes works as a consultant to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit to review old cases. THE CASE of Leo Frank, a factory superintendent who was lynched in Marietta in the early 1900s. This followed the commutation of his death sentence, for killing Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old female employee in the factory he managed. Barnes also discussed the evidence and process of the case for the possible exoneration of Frank.

[Jack Saw Speaks] Alright, good afternoon!

Thank you, everybody, for joining us despite the rain and the cold. I'm Jack Saw, I'm the president of Historians in Law School, it's a student organization here at school, and we're excited, together with the school, and with the help of our Dean Kathy Cox, to be sponsoring this event. And we're excited to see such a good turnout, including my fellow students and alumni. Welcome back, and welcome home. And current attorneys here in town. So I'll turn it over to Dean Kathy Cox to introduce our speaker.

[Dean Kathy Cox Speaks] Thank you, Jack, and good afternoon to all of you. I want to say a special word of welcome to Judge Hugh Lawson. We are always glad to have you here judge and to my friend, and fellow public servant former state representative, Larry Walker, from Perry, who served in the Georgia legislature with Governor Barnes and me, we're glad that both of you could be here along with so many other friends, alumni and students today. It's a real pleasure to introduce you to former governor Roy Barnes.

Governor Barnes is a lifelong resident of Cobb County, Georgia. He is a “double dog,” having earned his history degree and his law degree from the University of Georgia and the Georgia law school. He first went to work as a prosecutor in the Cobb County District Attorney's office after graduating from law school, before opening his own law firm in Marietta, where he continues to practice today.

The political bug bit him really early. He was elected to the Georgia Senate at age 26, becoming the youngest member of the state senate at the time. He served eight terms in the Georgia State Senate, rising into numerous leadership positions, and also being appointed as chairman of the Select Commission on Constitutional Revision, which rewrote the Georgia Constitution in 1983. So if any of you students want to know any interpretation about the Georgia Constitution, he's your guy! (At least my view! – Roy Barnes interjects) He and Larry Walker, both, wrote the Georgia Constitution that exists today.

He made his first bid for the governorship in 1990 and was unsuccessful in a primary Zell Miller who went on to win. But Roy Barnes came back two years later and was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives where I got the chance to serve with him in the House and as a member of the House Judiciary Committee along with state representative, Walker.

In 1998 Governor Barnes was elected as the 80th governor of Georgia. He made education reform and improvements to education, public education, in Georgia a hallmark of his administration with efforts to reduce class sizes all over the state, raise accountability standards, require more discipline in classrooms, and other reforms.

He also concentrated on health care reform and remedies for urban growth and sprawl. He took on the very controversial issue of removing the Confederate Battle Flag from the Georgia state flag and he won that battle, changing the Georgia flag, but many believe that battle played a big role in his defeat for reelection in 2002. Nevertheless, he was awarded in 2003 the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award, for his leadership in that effort.

Upon his defeat in 2002 Governor Barnes did something that really surprised the legal community, he did not go back to Marietta to start making money. He instead went to work for the Atlanta Legal Aid office as a full-time volunteer, for the next 6 months, committing his efforts and providing one of the strongest signals possible about what lawyers really owe their profession and the community.

He did eventually return to private practice of law, where he has continued to work as one of the most successful trial lawyers in Georgia and the southeast. He's known for successfully handling personal injury, wrongful death, and medical malpractice cases, along with mass tort cases, and complex business disputes.

There's a pretty well-known saying in Georgia that if you're in trouble, you want Roy Barnes on your side and you don't want to have to fight against him.

Governor Barnes, in my opinion, is one of the wisest and most astute political leaders Georgia has ever known, along with being one of the smartest trial lawyers ever to see a Georgia courtroom. It has been my honor to serve with him, and Georgia government and a special privilege to have him here as our guest today to talk about one of his most recent endeavors in the historic Leo Frank case. Please join me in welcoming former governor, Roy Barnes.

[Roy Barnes Speaks] Kathy read that just like I wrote it, so, I've got to tell you just one little side note. We had a lot of controversy is the judges know about Georgia's voting machines and I had this lady that came out to interview me. She says, “did you know they stole the election from you in 2002, with those voting machines?” I said, “No ma'am. I think I lost that all on my own.” so...

Van Pearlberg, who's here, used to be an assistant district attorney and is now in the Attorney General's office. Van and I are longtime friends. He's probably a better expert on Leo Frank than I am. So we're glad to have him. Now you're one of the Phagan's descendants. “I am, I'm Mary Phagan-Kean, the great niece.” [Mary Phagan Kean comments, Barnes continues] The great niece – this is Mary Phagan-Kean, who's the great niece of Mary Phagan.

I want to turn you back for over a hundred years in Georgia.

Really back to the time of 1913. Georgia was a lot different. It had just come out, about 25 or 30 years before, out of the Civil War and a good part of the state was still recovering. In fact, if you look at the tax digest in 1860, it was 1960 until the tax digest recovered at the same amount that it was in 1860.

Georgia was also torn. It was torn between the Henry Grady, New South and the Old South, that had been brought down in the Civil War. Grady and governors, were trying to attract to Georgia any industry they could because most of the people we're desperately poor.

Now, into all of that comes Leo Frank. Leo Frank, was born in Texas, but he grew up in Brooklyn and he went to Cornell where he studied mechanical engineering. He married Lucille Selig. The Selig family is still one of the greatest and most well-known families in Atlanta – Selig properties, Steve Selig, Slick Selig as his father was known.

Well, the Frank's uncle [Moses Frank] owned a majority of what was the National Pencil Factory which was on Whitehall but now is called Peachtree and they divided it up.

He was a member of the temple [Formerly the Hebrew Benevolent Society] which is now on Peachtree. And they were mostly reform – the temple was reform Jewish faith and it was led by a fellow that was considered a radical in many aspects and that is Rabbi David Marx.

They were mostly German Jews that were members of that community and they were assimilationist and not isolationist.

The Orthodox, and some conservative but mostly Orthodox, believe in living in communities separated from other Jewish or Gentile communities, but the reform, and particularly at this time, with a German influence were assimilationists.

Those of you who have seen Driving Miss Daisy – Miss Daisy, her son was a member of the temple. The temple was bombed, by the way, in the 1950s [circa 1958] because they were very pro-civil rights [that was never proved] and another lawyer the time, Ada Garland's father, Reuben Garland, defended the fellow that was charged. Who, by the way, was acquitted and this was in the 1950s.

Mary Phagan was a teenage [little girl, teenager wasn't used until 1940's- 1950's] girl. She was raised in Marietta, she was buried in Marietta, where I'm from. And child labor was very common at the time. The first industry was really the manual type industry in textile mills, and children were the ones that generally worked there. It was accepted in society, at the time. She was owed a dollar and twenty cents for past wages. Now back then we had the first rapid transit, even though Cobb has none today, but we had the first rapid transit in Cobb County. It was called the trolley line and it was run by the Atlanta Northern Line. So there was a line, a street car that ran every hour going to Atlanta and another one that was returning to Atlanta. She rode the street line, the streetcar down to Atlanta, because the plant was closed, because we were having Memorial Day. Not Yankee Memorial Day as they called it at the time – Confederate Memorial Day, April 26th, [1913].

And she knew the plant was closed, [False: did not know about payday being on Saturday due to the fact she quit the Thursday before her murder] but she also knew that Mr. Frank worked there and she wanted to get her dollar and twenty cents because her family needed it.

So the plant was closed and she went. There's no question she went there. No question she saw Leo Frank, in my view, but her body was found the next morning in the basement where the incinerator was. Now this is going to become important a little bit later.

There was two ways to get downstairs: one was with an elevator, but it was a very rudimentary elevator. It didn't have any brakes on it [False it did have breaks, by a hand cord]. It stopped when it hit the ground and you would jump and ran, then have a break. It just went up a couple of floors.

And then there was a ladder that went into the basement. Mary Phagan was found in the basement and there was soot all over her face. Her dress was hiked up and she was found early the next morning by a fella named Newt Lee who worked there. He was a janitor [ False: He was the nightwatchman not the janitor], or you know, worked around the plant.

Of course, Frank and the police were called and all of that and Newt Lee was the first suspect. Now remember this was before the time of Miranda. It was before the time of anything that had any essence of being a due process, particularly if you were an African-American in the South.

And in fact, both as to Newt Lee and to Conley, Jim Conley, who we'll talk about it in just a moment, who became the star witness. The newspapers would have stories that I've read “Conley, & Lee, Being Sweated by the Police.” Now we can only imagine what “being sweated” was, but it was not uncommon even when I started practicing law. I hate to say this, for police officers to get carried away with rubber hoses and everything else.

The police pretty well ruled Newt Lee out and then the idea, the focus turned to Jim Conley. Now Conley was a janitor, a gopher, or whatever, in the office. He gave three different statements, three different affidavits, which all changed through time. He became the star witness, and what he said was that Frank wanted to have sex with Mary [Phagan], and that he had taken her into the lady's room.

His office was on the same floor as the manufacturing and a wood lathe was there [in the machine department aka metal room]. And that he had hit her too hard. This was his final story. And that he called Conley up to take her down to the elevator. She was dead.

Now this is going to become critical later. Conley also said that they had mattress tick, which is that striped cloth that was around mattresses and then wrapped her in it to take her down there [to the basement of the national pencil company].

Conley also said that he took he and Frank together – took her down the elevator, you know the one that bump! [Roy Barnes is falsifying the story, Leo Frank controlled the elevator with a hand cord] And this became critical later, particularly to Governor [John] Slaton.

Frank was indicted based on that testimony and put on trial pretty well. The trial took about a month. Frank was represented by what probably was the best lawyer in Georgia at the time. His name was Luther Rosser.

The prosecution was represented by, up to that time, a lackluster prosecutor by the name of Hugh Dorsey. By the way, just as a footnote Hugh Dorsey and his wife's daughter would later marry Luther Rosser's son. Everything is connected. You know there's only seven degrees of separation.

Judge [Leonard] Roan was the [presiding] judge and was considered a very good judge and was. The difference in the trials were greatly different [then] than they are today. The Fulton County Courthouse was on Marietta Street at the time. There was no air conditioning, as you might imagine, so the windows were open during the day, and this is one of the things that Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes wrote about in the sense, in the case, was the mob outside. And somebody would sit in the window [False: not true], so is reported in the case, and holler out what the testimony was [False: not true], and there would be a roar of approval or a boo of disapproval [False: Fake news, this was not the case]. 

*After losing 12 successive court appeals Frank’s lawyers went to the US Supreme Court, which REFUSED his 13th appeal. In a statement, Holmes and Hughes simply affirmed that generally trials should not be carried out under mob rule. The Justices never actually reviewed the Frank trial. Indeed, as Governor Slaton
pointed out, the case record shows there were no anti-Semitic mobs in or outside the courtroom. The murder trial, conducted by Judge Leonard S. Roan, was in fact orderly, and the Supreme Court found in the trial “no error of law.”

There are some that say, and I've read some of these reports, that the jury was sequestered and was kept at the old Kimball house. And I have read some reports of, as the jury would come up from the Kimball house to go to the courthouse every day, parts of the mob would say, “hang the Jew or we'll hang you,” [This is the jury tampering hoax, Leo Frank's defenders promote to trick the public into thinking Leo Frank didn't have a fair trial] whatever it was, and all of them and I don't think there's a lot of dispute about this, there was a mob presence there [There was no misbehaving mob outside the courthouse, Barnes is misrepresenting the case]. The effect they had is open to dispute.

Well, to make a long story short, because I only have a little time and I want to get to John Slaton and the lynching. To make a long story short, Frank was convicted and sentenced to hang. Georgia let every sheriff hang his own folks at the time. Fulton County had what was called the Tower and he was to be hung there.

The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, twice. There were two dissents -- Charles Evan Hughes and Oliver Wendell Holmes. And Hughes wrote, and I won't get into it, I read it last night again, about the influence of the mob. [False: no mobs]

John Slaton was governor of Georgia. He was called Jack. He was a rising star in Georgia politics and everybody said that he was going to be the next United States Senator. He was married to the wealthiest woman in Georgia. Her name was Grant, Sarah Frances Grant. She was called Sally. In fact, John Slaton is buried in the Grant Mausoleum at Oakland Cemetery, not his own. He was buried in his wife's mausoleum.

The case finally came up to him in June of 2015 [False: actually 1915]. Now, he had been watching the case and he had started his own investigation in the case.

We had crazy times of governors taking office back then. He was going out of office and Governor Nat Harris was coming in and Nat Harris was the governor who signed a bill allowing women to practice law in Georgia. And Nat Harris was the governor coming in and I'm sure, like every other governor, he'd say, “maybe it won't get there before I leave.” But he had been governor twice. We didn't have a lieutenant governor then. He'd been president of the Senate in 1911 when Hoke Smith died and he became acting governor for about 18 months and then Joseph Mackey Brown, the son of Joseph E. Brown, the Civil War governor, served one term in between and then Slaton came back and served the second term – when he caught the Leo Frank case.

He [Governor Slaton, part-owner of the law firm which represented Leo Frank at his trial and state appeals] read the entire month-long transcript. He did his own investigation. He took detectives and Hugh Dorsey to the scene and he came to the conclusion that there was not certainty as to the death penalty. He middled around as to whether he was actually guilty. He said there was not certainty. He wrote – and I'll leave it here with Kathy in case anyone wants to see it they can – he wrote a commutation order; Twenty-nine pages where he set out the evidence in detail.

He talked about all of the witnesses and things that had arisen since that time.

One of the things that he depended on was – remember Conley said that he and Frank had taken Mary Phagan down the elevator – and so the police, when they came down – and remember that elevator hit the bottom [False: not true, it had a hand cord break, Conley reported Frank controlled the cord and stopped it too soon] -- the police reports coming the next morning to investigate said that they found (I know this is indelicate) human excrement when someone had had a bowel movement under the elevator.

Well now, that is when they came to investigate and that was a turning point, as you'll see with him, one of the turning points, because he said, that if they had gone down on the elevator, it would have smooshed the excrement and they would have been smelling it. In fact, it was not until the next day that it occurred.

Another thing that he relied upon was this: Judge Roan, who had presided over the trial, had talked with Slaton and had written him a letter [False: It was a forgery], in which Judge Roan said, I have doubt, I have doubt. And if I had the power, he didn't think he had the power at the time, he was wrong and Governor Slaton tells him, yeah, he could have done it, I probably would have granted a new trial [False: Judge Roan did have the power].

There's a lot of litigation that's going on right now for a Georgia Supreme Court on the power of a trial judge sitting as a 13th juror. That is, the right to set aside and put their own judgment in.

And so, based upon that and the other facts – there was some hair on the lathe – and somebody testified (remember we didn't have scientific things like we do now), well, that looks like Mary Phagan's hair. After the trial there was somebody that found a microscope and looked at it and a doctor gave an opinion, “this is not the same hair.” That happened after the trial [The examining scientist was likely bribed according to other people stating they were bribed in the Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Records].

At the trial there had been women that had been brought up, “well, Frank tried to sexually harass me” and another group that says, “Oh, I've worked with him for years and had no problem whatsoever.”

Well, and in fact, Slaton received over a hundred thousand letters. He talks about it in his commutation order. He decided he was going to commute the sentence. And he wrote this order.

He went home and told his wife, Sally, and she said, “I would” and he said, “I don't know what's going to happen here to us.” And she said “I would rather be the widow of a brave man than the wife of a coward.” And he signed the commutation.

Let me read to you part of it:

“The performance of my duty under the Constitution is a matter of my conscience. The responsibility rests where the power is reposed. Judge Roan, with that awful sense of responsibility, which probably came over him as he thought of that judge before he would shortly appear..” Judge Roan had died in the interim. “...calls to me from another world to request that I do that which he should have done.

I can endure misconstruction, abuse and condemnation, but I cannot stand the constant companionship of an accusing conscience. Which would remind me in every thought that I, as governor of Georgia, failed to do what I thought to be right.

There is a territory between a reasonable doubt and an absolute certainty for which the law provides and allowing life imprisonment instead of execution. This case has been marked by such doubt.”

He was interviewed a little bit later after that and this is what he said:

“Two thousand years ago, another governor washed his hands and turned over a Jew to a mob. For 2,000 years that governor's name has been cursed. If today another Jew” [Leo Frank] “were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my duty, I would all through life find his blood on my hands, and would consider myself an assassin through cowardice.”

Now, he went out of office within four or five days, Slaton did.

What was the reaction?

Well, he had to have the state militia escort him to the train station to leave. He slipped back in from time to time but he stayed gone ten years, before he came back to start back practicing law. He was successful. He went on and was one of the, before a unified bar, he was president of the State Bar.

But he never, of course, held political office again.

What happened to Leo Frank?

Well, Leo Frank was in the Tower, the Fulton Tower, ready to be hung by the sheriff. And so Governor Slaton, before he released the commutation, had the sheriff take him to the state prison, which was not at Reidsville at the time. It was in Milledgeville, because Milledgeville had been the capitol of Georgia until 1868, when it was moved to Atlanta.

He was not there for long, until his neck was slit [July 17th, 1915] and he had a big gash in it by an attempt on his life. And then, remember the commutation was on June 21st, 1915.

By the way, Frank was scheduled to be hung the next morning [June 22nd, 1915]. So it was right upon...Slaton put it off as long as he could.

Well on August the 17th of 1915 [False: Actually, it was the 16th] a group from Marietta got into the state prison in Milledgeville, brought Frank to Frey's Gin road, which is right off 75 and Roswell road in Marietta, and hung him.

This was not the first great stain on all of us, in the South. Is that is estimated there were more than 4,000 African-Americans lynched after the Civil War until the 1960s [60% of that number were African Americans, the other 40% were Whites and a small percentage were other]. The last one in Georgia was in the late 1940s at [name unintelligible] bridge, Walton county.

But this was the first case of a Jew being lynched. But remember this was a tough time in Georgia. The Ku Klux was not risen yet. But it soon did after this with some of the same folks that were lynchers. And they hated three folks: Jews, Blacks and Catholics, and in fact that's one of the reasons, even as a kid I can remember, prejudice against Catholics.

There's a great story that says Richard Russell, he was a great United States senator from Georgia, and his daddy was the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. There's a story that Dick Russell fell in love with a Catholic girl and was going to marry her and he went to his daddy and told him that he was going to marry her and he said, “Well, son.” He said, “You could marry her but your days in politics are over in Georgia.” And he never married. That's a whole 'nother story. Because there's a provision in his will that says he wants a gift to go to a certain person that is exactly [unintelligible] things like that.

But these were the leaders of the community.

There's a famous photograph of the lynching with Frank hanging there and to the right is the superior court judge, standing there. His name was Newt Morris.

If you get interested in this case, this case will drive you crazy, but if you get interested, the book you should read is 'The Dead Shall Rise' [2003] by Steve Oney.

Steve Oney came to see us in the eighties. I was always enthralled with the case and Tom Watson – one of the things I hadn't mentioned – Tom Watson, who was one of the great political leaders – Hugh Dorsey went on to become governor from this. Tom Watson went on to become a United States Senator.

Tom Watson had a newspaper called The Jeffersonian and he printed headlines in red [ False: Not true, we have all the copies of his newspapers and magazines]. And it was scandalous, the reporting on the trial that occurred every day. “Jew pervert,” he used words like that in the headlines instead of being factual. [False: Barnes is wrong, Tom Watson did not comment on the 1913 Leo Frank Trial, until 1914. "Jew Pervert" wasn't published until the late summer of 1915 in Watson's Magazine.]

Here's some of the ones that were involved – Steve Oney has divided it up:

Joseph M. Brown. Well, he was governor from 1909 to 1911, 1912 to 1913, right before Jack Slaton. He was from Marietta. Charlie Brown, his grandson, just died last year. These folks are still around.

Newton Augustus Morris. He was the superior court judge and his great nephew is on the city council of Marietta. I once said, I said, “You can't be an old Mariettan unless you had an ancestor that was at the lynching of Leo Frank and it's just about the truth.

Eugene Herbert Clay. He was the son of the United States Senator. He was mayor of Marietta, but at the time that this occurred he was, what we called him then, the solicitor-general, the district attorney today. I always loved the old name, solicitor-general. I wish they hadn't changed it. They still call him solicitor today.

He is the one that presided and called the grand jury in to listen to evidence about who had taken Leo Frank and lynched him. Surprise, surprise, the grand jury returned a finding that it was “persons unknown” in the community.

John Tucker Dorsey. His son later, Jasper Dorsey, would be president of Bell South or Southern Belle as we called it back then. John Tucker Dorsey, he was one of the best trial lawyers there was. He was a member of the general assembly. He was chairman of the prison committee and that's probably how they got in so easily down in Milledgeville.

He served as district attorney for two years, John Tucker did. He had been twice convicted of manslaughter. I mean, folks were a little bit different back then, you know. And had served in imprisonment on the chain-gang and then was later pardoned by the governor so he could go to law school and become district attorney. He was a distant cousin of Hugh Dorsey, who was the prosecutor.

Fred Morris, he was a Marietta lawyer. He served his first term in the general assembly. He organized the Boy Scouts in Marietta and then went off to the lynching of Leo Frank.

Bowlin Glovitt Glover Brumby. Like I said, had every prominent family in Marietta. He owned the Marietta Chair Company, you know, the Brumby Rocker? This is where it comes from. Oney describes Brumby as the very image of an arrogant Southern Aristocrat and that nothing angered him more than Yankees.

The field commanders, those were kind of the planners, the field commanders was a fella named George Daniels. He ran a jewelry shop on the Marietta Square and was one of the founding members of the Rotary Club.

These folks were not riff-raff.

Gordon Baxter Gann. He was from Mableton, by the way, but he was ordinary and was former mayor of Marietta.

Newt Mays Morris. They called him “Black Newt.” Now Black Newt would whip 'ya. He ran the chain gang in Cobb County and they called him “Whippin' Newt” or “Black Newt.”

William J. Frey. He had been the sheriff of Cobb County from 1903 to 1909. He prepared the noose used to hang Frank and may have actually looped it around Frank's neck. Frey's Gin, Frey's Gin road, the location of where they hung him, was his property.

E.P. Dick Dobbs. He later became very prominent. His family moved north and he was the mayor of Marietta at the time.

L. B. Robeson was a railroad freight agent. He lent his car to the lynch party.

Jim Brumby, Grover Glovitt Brumby's brother – he owned a garage and serviced the automobiles before they went. It was a big affair to go from Marietta to Milledgeville at the time.

Robert A. Hill was a banker. He helped fund the lynching – made sure they had money for gas and other things.

George Swanson, who was the current Sheriff of Cobb County in 1915, and two of his deputies, William McKinney and George Hicks.

Cicero Holton Dobbs. He was a taxi driver and operated a grocery store. He was also my wife's grandfather, who knew nothing about this before Steve Oney wrote the book and was very upset about it.

This case had been whispered about for years and years and years and even among the Jewish community, Steve Selig, told me, he says, “We never mentioned the case, never mentioned it in the Jewish community.”

D. R. Benton was a farmer and an uncle of Mary Phagan's.

Horace Handy was a farmer.

Kuhn Shaw, that's J. F. Shaw's, who died about five years ago, father. He was a mule trader.

Emmett and Luther Burton. We had an Emmett Burton serve, this was the great uncle and grandfather of Emmett Burton who was on our county commission for several years. These were two brothers who were believed to have sat on either side of Leo Frank in the automobile that took him from prison to death. Emmett is said to have been a police officer and Luther, a coal-yard operator.

Yellow Jacket Brown. You know, everyone had a nickname. An electrician who rode his motorcycle to Milledgeville and cut the telephone lines before they got there, so that nobody could call out.

Lawrence Haney, a farmer.

What has amazed me about this case was: how could the best folks in town, the best and leading citizens of the county and of the city – how could they have gone crazy? I ask myself that in our national politics every once in awhile now. How could everybody have gone crazy?

What happened to Rudy Giuliani?

I don't know. We could always have a discussion of that.

But what was it?

Now I know there's two or three things on the other side that everybody tries to bring up. One is, well, they just felt that they were carrying out the lawful sentence that was handed down to Leo Frank. That is what Newt Morris is reported to have said later.

And then, the other thing is, Luther Rosser and Jack Slaton had practiced law before [ False: not before they were law partners during Leo Frank's trial and his appeals], and that Luther Rosser paid Jack Slaton off to commute the sentence.

Now let me tell you something. Jack Slaton had the wealthiest wife in Georgia and at that time, husbands, as you all know from studying law, managed the affairs of the wife. Why in the world, to destroy his political career which was very bright, would he have taken any money? And you cannot read this commutation order without seeing that it is a man that was greatly troubled about it.

So the last thing I'll talk about a little bit: was Leo Frank guilty?

I don't think there's any doubt, and there are few that I think that argue with this today is, he did not get a fair trial [False, the Supreme Court in their majority decisions ruled he had a fair trial]. Not under the circumstances that we would consider today – coerced statements, no scientific, all circumstantial [False, the witnesses later provided affidavits that Leo Frank's defense team tried to bribe them to retract their trial testimony].

The testimony of an accomplice.

There is a reason the common law and the law of Georgia says that, the testimony of an accomplice must be corroborated and a confession must be corroborated and the reason is because of how both of them might have been obtained.

I don't think he was guilty. I think Conley killed her. There's not any doubt in my mind that Conley killed her [False: Barnes opinion defies the evidence and testimony, and majority decisions of the judges at the time]. But at least there is substantial reasonable doubt as to whether Frank killed her [False statements: What substantial reasonable doubt?]. There's two little things and then I'll try to answer some questions. I know we got started late and I know ya'll got other places to go.

There's two things that are happening. One is, the district attorney Paul Howard of Fulton County has created a commission to look into several cases.

One of them is this case [Leo Frank case] and another one is the Child Murders case. And they've got about a dozen, half a dozen to a dozen cases they're looking into to see, to make sure, that there's guilt. Now Wayne Williams is still alive and in the prison.

The other thing that has happened in all of these matters and I think is the import: what is the role of lawyers and judges?

Listen, we are trained to look at facts. There is only a little thin line that separates us from lynchers and a mob and it is lawyers and judges that are trained to not let passion and prejudice overcome us all.

And it is difficult. It is very, very difficult. And it is not an easy path. It is a tough path.

You know, we believe as lawyers, that everybody is entitled to representation. That was our theory all along, but not our practice. Read about the Scottsboro boys, read about through the history and the cases that you stay.

But it is required even more now than ever. That even though everybody cusses us as lawyers, and they do, you know, all the time. Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be lawyers. You know, it's the story instead of cowboys.

But it is the lawyers that have to protect the rights of the individual. And if we ever lose that, that we're not willing to sacrifice ourselves and our reputation and our prosperity, for the rights of those that we represent or what we know is right, then I want to tell you, we're lost, we're lost. It's a very thin line.

Always be the guardians against prejudice, hatred and passion. Sit back and use the skills that you're being trained in and they will be honed much more as you start to practice, to analyze critically, everything that you're presented with.

Thank you, and God bless you and I'll be glad to answer a few questions.

I know we don't have much time but I'd be glad to answer any questions. Yes, ma'am.

Audience Member Question: Was anyone from that long list of lynchers ever prosecuted?

No, nobody was ever tried. And what happened was, Luther Haines, who was [?] judge, good friend of Hugh, Luther Haines practiced law with John Tucker Dorsey, when he was a young lawyer.

And, of course, I was assigned to Luther's courtroom when I was a prosecutor and he and I were great friends until the day he died.

But he knew I was interested in the case and he showed me, one time, a file that John Tucker Dorsey had in his office and had a list of the names of those who were involved and that's the way Oney finally broke it. He broke it through two people. Through Luther Haines and through Bill Kent.

Commentary:

Former Governor of Georgia, Roy Barnes, Speaks at Mercer College's Law School, Students Described it as Biased Propaganda Talk on Leo Frank.

Roy Barnes Mercer Law School (November 12, 2019)

The commentary here within was submitted by a history student of the Phagan-Frank murder case, who is an anonymous insider in the government of Georgia. The Phagan-Frank case--she reports--was a pivotal and unspeakable crime which took place during the early teen years of the 1900s. This "incognito" will be updating us on developments regarding the corrupt Atlanta Georgia "Conviction Integrity Unit" (CIU hereafter) which is presently reviewing Leo Frank's 1913 conviction and planning on issuing a statement that his guilty verdict should be overturned.

Leo Frank's High Profile Advocate: Roy Barnes

Roy Barnes, since its Spring of 2019, inception, has been serving as senior adviser for CIU and has been serving in an ongoing effort as a zealous public relations tour mouthpiece for exceedingly biased Leo Frank advocacy immediately after CIU's formation. Barnes' Leo Frank activism has at times veered into the territory of extremist Frankite* propaganda.

Frankite* is a specific term to accurately describe individuals or clusters of people who typically are college educated and fanatically willing to go to the furthest efforts to trick people into thinking Leo Frank was wrongfully convicted. The behavior requires an extraordinary amount of self-deception, flagrant dishonesty, lack of self-reflection, and unwillingness to dispassionately examine the trial evidence. For the Frankite, their partisan emotions and tribalist feelings, not facts are what should decide whether Leo Frank is innocent or guilty. They often invoke the term "anti-Semitism" when they are unable to form arguments to defend their opinions on the Leo Frank trial

Conviction Integrity Unit's Auspicious Beginnings, Dateline 2019

The CIU was formed under GA State mandate through the Atlanta District Attorney Paul Howard, who during its nascent beginnings started building a committee of social justice warrior (SJW) activists to review controversial criminal cases. When he announced who would be part of his tribunal it read like a handcrafted A-list of race-based activists.

The Real Agenda, Under the Fascade of a Noble Cause

While it might agreeably and fairmindedly seem like a noble cause to review true-crimes with new eyes, its carefully selected members apparently have very specific agendas other than being impartial and dispassionate advocates for justice. Surprisingly, no attempt was made to conceal the underlying core reason why the CIU intentionally came to being. It was revealed early-on to the media that the CIU would review many controversial cases, but that its central creation was initially inspired by the Leo Frank case, which would be given its most careful consideration. They brazenly admitted as much with no thoughts of reservation as if only one outcome was self-evident.

The Paparazzi

When the CIU's formation was pre-announced to the press, the media was front and center when the official announcements were made from pulpit of jurisprudence at the District Attorney office.

At its inaugural event, April 26, 2019 (hideously the 106th anniversary of Mary Phagan's sex-murder), press snapshooters took photographs of those in attendance, and there was not a single person present on behalf of the victim Mary Phagan, but at that event and forth coming meetings, numerous prominent Leo Frank activists, from Rabbi Steven Lebow to ADL executive Shelley Rose can be seen sitting together, giggling in anticipation like a bunch of high school girls huddling together over gossip (captured in media photos and included among the collection here within).

The People of Georgia, Exhausted and Reticent

The people of Georgia see the Conviction Integrity Unit as injustice personified in the making; undoing the original two years of judicial review from 1913-1915, in the name of political correctness and virtue-signaling.

It is important to restate, no efforts are being made to hide the pre-ordained recommendations the CIU plans to finally make on the Leo Frank case. Paul Howard's righthand man, Roy Barnes, is admittedly biased on the lynching victim's behalf, but is supposedly expected to be unbiased when reviewing the associated 1913 Mary Phagan murder trial and ensuing appeals (1913-1915) in the immediate aftermath of Leo Frank's conviction.

Though it pretended to be evenhanded for appearances from its inception, it was understood the CIU was not meant to be a fair-minded tribunal seeking the impartial truth, but one with a baked-in agenda. The clandestine agenda of CIU became decidedly crystal-clear as to its specific intentions, when its leading spokesman, Roy Barnes, started a fresh campaign of going around at continuing education forums promoting bona fide hate crime hoaxes to sway pubic opinion in favor of Leo Frank and provide justification for the eventual decision of the CIU in favor of Leo Frank's vindication, which will in reality amount to one of most egregious violations of human rights for children, who were sexually assaulted and murdered by rapist-pedophile sex killers.

Media Interviews Ongoing

The exoneration of the homicidal serial pedophile, Leo Frank, convicted for the sodomy and strangulation of Mary Phagan, has become the glib supposition and forgone conclusion for Roy Barnes in his hammy media interviews. Barnes' ongoing missionary work to educate the masses about Leo Frank is giving the appearance to mainstream Americans, that he is trying to plant false ideas in the minds of Georgians who will be directly impacted by the erroneous forthcoming exoneration of Leo Frank.

The Callous Disregard

For people outside the state of Georgia, it's obvious what Roy Barnes is trying to do with his repeated statements, which is to justify support for the clandestine recommendation at the final reviewing of Leo Frank's criminal case. There cannot be a mustard seed of doubt, Leo Frank is going to be exonerated, and to make it palatable, Barnes is tricking people into thinking the jury was tampered with during the full length of the trial by throngs of terrorists. Barnes is using the oldest and dirtiest trick in the history of propaganda, which is to recursively create imagery in the minds of those willing to hear, and that conjured vision will become, undoubtedly, plausible false illusions and easily repeatable by those who willingly imbibe the artificial projections in their mind's eye.

The Backstory

Roy Barnes is a former alt-left Governor of Georgia, and a long-time Marietta attorney who caters predominantly a select clientele. Barnes is fond of virtue-signaling that his wife is a familial descendant to one of Leo Frank's lynchers, and so in an ingratiating fashion he regresses to the mean to let everyone know in supposition he intends to seek justice for Leo Frank, and that Mary Phagan the victim is just an afterthought, a throw-away-detail or irrelevant plot device.

The Barnes Hate Crime Hoax Caught on Film

Barnes made himself infamous when on May 7th, 2019, when he was shown during a segment on the mainstream TV channel 11 Alive, to be promoting viciously anti-Gentile and racist propaganda, falsely accusing crowds of European-American Southerners with terrorizing the Leo Frank trial jury with direct threats of mass murder (watch the video, you have to see it to believe it). In case the video gets deleted as an action to cover-up for Roy Barnes' nefarious activities, we are calling on people to make backups of the segment.

Power Behind the Throne

Roy Barnes, and ADL Attorney Dale Schwartz are regularly credited with helping found the CIU behind the scenes, launching itself hideously on the 106th anniversary of Mary Phagan's untimely rape and strangulation. Her murder occurred where the dystopian-looking Sam Nunn government building complex stands today in the capitol. Before being demolished in the 1950s, standing at 80 feet wide and 200 feet deep was a 4-story old pile of bricks, formerly called the "Old Venable" building. It had been at the time of the sex-murder, been occupied by National Pencil Company (1908-1916). The building had at one time been horse carriage storage facility and another time a rooming house. Because of the stigma associated with Leo Frank's sex crimes and lynching, the executive leadership of National Pencil Company decided in 1916 it was best if it sold itself off to be absorbed into another company with a different name which was unrelated in anyway. This way any lingering negative reputation would be wiped clean.

Roy Barnes' 2019 bully pulpit for the movement to set aside Leo Frank's 1913 conviction.

While standing at a podium during a conviction integrity unit public meeting in the capitol of Georgia, he disgracefully told the audience -- while being filmed -- some of the most hideously racist lies, to paraphrase: that mobs of people outside the Fulton county courthouse were threatening the Mary Phagan murder trial jury with being strangled to death by a dozen hangman's nooses if they didn't convict the defendant Leo Frank by the end of his trial.

These terrorist threats supposedly happened, not just once, but literally, each and every single morning (July 29th - August 25th, 1913), during their public service as jurors, as they walked to the courtroom from the well known, New Kimball House Hotel to the temporary Fulton County Superior Courthouse (Formerly the Old City Hall and postal mail center for Atlanta).

Scholars of Jurisprudence Debunk Roy Barnes' False Statements Via 1913-1915 Legal Records of Case

Research scholars have scoured the 2,500 pages of official Leo Frank appeals records to the State, District and Federal Courts, and found not a single mention of any throngs of people outside the courthouse each and every morning making collective death threats at the jury as Barnes claimed.

Historian Researchers Debunk Roy Barnes' False Statements Via Newspaper Accounts From 1913

Historian scholars scoured the Atlanta newspaper daily reports of the Mary Phagan murder trial, as there were many journalists reporting outside the courthouse and inside the courtroom documenting the trial events in meticulous details. There are no press reports extant from July through August 1913 of crowds of people shouting terroristic threats at the jury each and every morning, nor at the presiding judge Leonard Roan, or the 200+ people sitting in the courtroom. The ADL website claims these threats were shouted audibly through the open windows of the courthouse, where the trial proceedings were taking place.

Roy Barnes has been caught red handed making false statements, to justify the CIU having been from its very inception a kangaroo activist committee whose intention is to dishonorably corrupt the judicial system regarding the Leo Frank trial.

Genealogy of Barnes' Hate Crime Hoax

We live in an age where it is safe to dehumanize Christians and especially White people. Barnes' vile racist defamation levied against European-American and Christian Southerners seems to have earlier origins. Barnes anti-Gentile canard of terrorist hatred was not born with him, if we look into the matters historicity. It appears the anti-Gentile canard was scholarly-popularized by Jewish activist professor Leonard Dinnerstein (1934-2019), in the American Jewish Archive Journal of November 1968, the article in question was titled -- Leo M. Frank and The American Jewish Community. Vol. 20, No 2. archive.org/details/american-jewish-archive-journal-volum...

Regarding the root source of this issue, there are thought to be even earlier origins and that it was first started by Jewish-American activist authors the Samueles who wrote the 1956 dell book, "Night Fell on Georgia".

Dates of the 21st-Century Leo Frank Carnival Sideshow, On Tour

Barnes as of 2019 has been going around speaking at law schools to promote his efforts for getting Leo Frank exonerated 106 years after he was convicted (1913, 2019), 104 years (1915, 2019) after the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Leo Frank's final frivolous appeal and put an end to his estoppel.

Violence Directed Against Convicted Criminals, Does Not Retroactively Invalidate Their Jury Convictions

The lynching of Leo Frank was immoral, illegal, unacceptable, and unethical, but crimes committed against convicted homicidal child molesters, do not retroactively nullify their jury rendered convictions for their unlawful actions of sexually assaulting and murdering children.

The Shame-Inducing "Pardoned Without Exoneration"

In 1986, Leo Frank was pardoned posthumously on a technicality, but not because of any new credible or compelling evidence for his innocents. In a strange turn of events, his conviction was not overturned and his guilty status remained. This was a frustrating turn of events for ADL of B'nai B'rith, Atlanta Jewish Federation and American Jewish Committee who had invested enormous financial resources and manpower over 4-years (1982-1986) in a monumental effort to have Leo Frank's criminal conviction rendered no-longer valid.

The unintended setback was so embarrassing that Jewish groups setup a number of historical marker plaques to re-write the history of the case with anti-Gentilism and falsely claim anti-Semitism to invalidate the trial. One of these propaganda historical markers was hideously setup at the Old Marietta Cemetery where Mary Phagan is buried, the first version of the historical marker announced that Leo Frank was pardoned but also mentioned it was without exoneration, but then shortly thereafter the Jewish group that set it up had the plaque changed, removing the textual part where he wasn't exonerated. Let that sink in, they changed the sign to sanitize it. The obvious intention was that most people would not look deeper into the matter and thus would presume if it only said he was pardoned, many people would just think he simply wasn't guilty of the crime anymore. And in fact, the people who changed the marker turned out to be correct, when they took away the fact from the sign that he wasn't exonerated, people who read the text of it presumed that the convicted killer simply wasn't guilty anymore, even though officially the state still recognizes Leo Frank as guilty. The fact of the matter is 99% of the people who read the sanitized sign will never investigate any further that is of course until the Internet became so widespread people could learn about the case from their smartphones.

Despite the setback, the Jewish activist groups privately vowed to never give up and we know this because these groups continue to fund media and school teaching materials to mainstream Leo Frank's martyrdom. Articles on Leo Frank published on ADL's website promote the hate crime hoaxes of Leonard Dinnerstein which are fabricated to invalidate his trial. ADL also created a teaching guide to the Leo Frank case, and partially funded the 2009 docudrama on the case called People versus Leo Frank (Ben Loeterman, Steve Oney).

The Jewish leaders who secured this pardon through political pressure have been bitter over the mixed results and decided instead of it being interpreted with negativity as a half-measure, they would redouble their efforts and interpret it as a steppingstone bringing them closer to exoneration. They have also recommitted themselves to continue their multigenerational agitation until their grandee is vindicated in full.

Leo Frank is still officially recognized by the Georgia Supreme Court, the Fulton County Superior Court and the United States Supreme Court as having been duly convicted, because his guilty verdict was never disturbed, even as of 2019, while the CIU works behind the scenes to subvert justice.

Georgia's Coming Kangaroo Court

Barnes' disinformation war meant to rehabilitate Leo Frank makes sense in light of media reports of CIU associates who are stating they intend to get the guilty verdict nullified at a court somewhere in present-day Georgia. Read that last sentence again, you read that right, they're actually going to try and find a judge in Georgia who will give Leo Frank a new trial and then declare him innocent because he is unable to attend the proceedings. Yeah, it's literally stranger than fictions and pure evil.

If there weren't media reports to back this up, I wouldn't even believe it myself, but associates and supporters of the CIU have stated publicly they intend to take the final pre-decided statement of the CIU on the Leo Frank case and hand deliver it to a Georgia Judge who is going to overturn his conviction, but first calling for a new unconstitutional trial of a man deceased more than 100 years ago. A new trial for a convicted killer where all the witnesses and the former defendant himself are all long dead.

The Kangaroo Judge of Georgia

Who is this Kangaroo Judge who will grant a new trial to a dead man in the year 2020 or thereafter on behalf of the District Attorney's CIU?

We call on the Government of Georgia to have him or her removed from his or her post as a Judge and we call on the Georgia bar to revoke his or her law license.

To grant a new trial to a dead man is unconstitutional.

Efforts to subvert justice for Mary Phagan continues today full speed ahead, by credentialed activists with a variety of university degrees and membership in powerful organizations, people who are willing to engage in academic dishonesty and disgrace their honor in the virtue-signaling game of political expediency, willing to put religion in some cases and political correctness in other cases above justice.

#MeToo Movement Fight Back

Seen in the picture at the front row with platinum and dark ash blonde hair, is Mary Phagan Kean (born June 5th, 1954) the namesake of the 1913 victim, she was present to observe the canned meeting and listen to Barnes counterfeit the evidence of the case. The Phagan family is naturally furious that Roy Barnes is using his social gravitas as an attorney and former Governor to fallaciously manufacture new evidence about the early 20th-century criminal case, in an effort to bamboozle the public into accepting an unjustified exculpation of Leo Frank.

[Leo Frank Museum and Gallery Curator: Commentary submitted by anonymous audience member who examined a major section of Roy Barnes' speech at Mercer Law School. Tuesday, November 12, 2019. End of curator commentary.]

A polite open letter to Former Governor of Georgia, Roy Barnes:

Dear Roy Barnes,

Please consider this a polite request for you Roy Barnes to please step down as the senior advisor of Atlanta Georgia's Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU)

Please understand there is No pressure, No obligations, and No Rush but, Roy Barnes, many students of the Leo Frank case are asking that you please mull an option in the name of fairness and justice, to deeply meditate on stepping down from the Conviction Integrity Unit.

As the CIU's senior most advisor to DA Paul Howard, you have shown yourself publicly to not be fit for the position. You have been pushing hoaxes to the public of jury tampering, even if you pawn them off as reports from the time, you don't seem to have the temperament for this position as an impartial counselor. The things you are asserting at public meeting are beyond the pale and don't reflect someone with the calm disposition to look at the Leo Frank legal records with new eyes, nor dispassionate eyes.

Roy Barnes, with a smidgen of self-reflection, you might see with personal reflection that you don't, in numerous senses, have the curious scientist's spirit which looks at the facts first and then comes to the conclusions. You seem to be presenting only evidence of Leo Frank supposed innocence, and never seem to share the evidence that was against him. It's clear you have a biased agenda.

Roy Barnes, you don't seem to have the soul of a conscientious judge-- an arbiter who goes into a trial without preconceived determinations. A fair-minded jurist does not take side at the beginning of an inquiry, he allows the facts, testimony, exhibits and evidence to lead him to the truth. Those kinds of mental architectures of a person with logical outlooks are needed to fairly evaluate, first the Case of Mary Phagan, especially the investigation and interviews, and the series of events which lead to the indictment, trial and appeals of Leo M. Frank.

Roy Barnes, you don't have the majestic symbolic mind posed by the beautiful women, lady justice, blind folded from illusions, with the scales of justice being held high with impartiality.

Question: Roy Barnes are you a thoughtful judge-minded modern day man who tries to be truly impartial in the 21st-century, or are you fighting for Leo Frank's defense team from the early 20th century? This question is asked of you, because, Roy Barnes, you have made your position clear that you think Leo Frank--who was convicted--is innocent and Jim Conley--who was not convicted of murder--is guilty of the murder.

Rhetorical question: With that position hard wired in your brain, how can their ever be prudence applied to reviewing the facts of Leo Frank's legal saga?

Roy Barnes, the citizens of Georgia are beginning to believe that you might possibly think that because Leo Frank was not protected while he was incarcerated in the penitentiary and therefore, wantonly assassinated, this somehow causes a time travelers loop, where the lynching of Frank, creates an H.G. Wells time machine that goes back and stops Leo Frank from committing aggravated battery, sodomy-rape and slaying Mary Phagan.

Roy Barnes, the lynching of Leo Frank was ILLEGAL.

Roy Barnes the lynching of Leo Frank was IMMORAL.

Roy Barnes the lynching of Leo Frank was UNETHICAL IN THE EXTREME.

Roy Barnes the lynching of Leo Frank was EXTRAJUDICIAL.

but the lynching of Leo Frank is not a time machine, it doesn't cause a UFO to appear, that goes back in time and prevents Mary Phagan from going to the factory that day.

In other words Roy Barnes, the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, does not put you outside the office of Leo Frank on April 26, 1913, with an envelope filled with $1.20 in period coinage, for you to hand it to Mary Phagan, and tell her to never come back to the factory again.

Do you get that Roy? Do you get that prisoner's being killed outside the law is not ever justice? But that it also doesn't magically undue the heinous crimes convicted criminals had committed?

Are you getting this Roy? That we all agree with you that Leo Frank's lynching was a perversion of justice, but that it doesn't magically go back in time, and prevent the former Pencil manufacturing superintendent from beating the shit out of Mary Phagan in the National Pencil Company's second-floor machine department on April 26, 1913, during its noon hour?

Does that make sense, Roy Barnes? It's an honest question.

Do you get it Roy Barnes, that the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 doesn't go backward in time and prevent the former Pencil manufacturing superintendent from defiling Mary Phagan while she was unconscious, after he knocked her out cold, by slamming the young child's head onto the steel handle of a large drill press in the machine department?

Do you get it Roy Barnes, that the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, doesn't park H.G. Wells time machine in a parking space at your office, where you can go back in time at the last moment, and have a police conversation with Leo Frank to please kindly remove the garrote from Mary Phagan's throat, and lets think this through?

Do you get it Roy Barnes, that the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915, doesn't let you go back to 1913, and rent a penthouse hotel room at the piedmont, where you can leisurely go down to the National Pencil Company at 11:30pm on April 26, 1913, and show Leo Frank a print out of the Wikipedia article on him, and all the con-artist books written on him, so that he changes his mind from raping and strangling Mary Phagan?

Do you get that Roy Barnes?

Do we Mercer Law Students and You Roy Barnes, have an agreed understanding and meeting of the minds that the lynching of Leo Frank was, pure and simple, was an act of murder?

Forget about the fact that the 60th Governor of Georgia Jack Slaton was the most prominent owner-partner of the law firm which represented Leo Frank up until his trial, defending him through his trial and state appeals. Lets forget that fact Jack Slaton was a corrupt Governor who should have recused himself and that it was unconstitutional that he commuted the capital punishment sentence of his law client. Lets put that aside for a minute, Roy Barnes.

The Lynching was still wrong.

But it doesn't make him innocent.

Convicted murderers don't get their murder convictions thrown out because they were vilely killed during their life of incarceration.

Do you get that Roy Barnes? Does that sink in?

Can you marinate on that Roy?

Do you see why you're not fit to be the highest ranking advisor on a committee whose job it is to look at the Leo Frank case without emotion, but logic? without emotion but empiricism? without hate crime hoaxes and shams about the shit in the shaft magically exonerating Leo Frank? Without the wishful thinking of the Alonzo Mann's 1980s perjury?

Roy Barnes, we Mercer students don't think you have what it takes in you to be honest, honorable and serve with integrity on the Conviction Integrity Unit.

Please do the right thing, and give it your best mulling, to step down from the conviction integrity unit, you're just doing more harm than good.

You're literally poisoning any chance of a fair hearing with repeated accusations about "reports at the time" of the jury being threatened with anti-Semitic terrorism on a daily (how many days does that total, Roy Barnes if it was everyday) basis during that 4 week trial (July 28- August 26, 1913).

Roy Barnes, Please we don't need that bullshit being flicked and flung around on TV. Everyone in Georgia saw you on 11Alive news, we saw you mouth those words.

Roy Barnes, How can you be the senior advisor of the Conviction Integrity Unit when you go around promoting the so-called reports at the time of jury tampering which have mutated over the years, when you have access to the courtroom records, newspaper reports from the time and the full appellate reviews of the Ga court of appeals, which never mention mobs terrorizing the jury on a morning basis?

Roy Barnes, how can the case of Leo Frank be fairly evaluated when you were shown on TV via 11Alive saying that EVERY MORNING during the month long trial crowds shouted anti-Semitic terrorist threats at the jury, "HANG THE JEW OR WE'LL HANG YOU" as they walked to court?

Roy Barnes, We got you on film saying that. You repeated it at our Mercer Law School discussion, but this time you qualified it as something like "reports from the era"

Roy Barnes, If you decide you are a passionate member in Leo Frank's defense team, we ask you to present the full brief of evidence to every practicing attorney in Georgia and those retired too. While we're at it, let's have the whole bar study the trial transcript, published day by day, in the Atlanta daily newspapers (Constitution, Journal and Georgian) during the end of July to the end of August, and have them all closely review the Frank appeals with the highest and best in all of us.

If that's possible, Roy Barnes, we should at least try, we would like some checks and balances here, because you Roy Barnes, have lost your mind.

Roy Barnes, lets have a state-wide discussion of the full case of LMK with all law students and law professors in the borders of Georgia--is that unreasonable (?), that the full state of Georgia, and every citizen of the state of Georgia, is asked to read the original newspaper reports from the capitol's presses, published in the Atlanta constitution, Atlanta journal and Atlanta Georgian, and the questions and answers of the trial transcript in those newspapers?

Roy Barnes, How do these said recordings on antique typewriters compare to the Georgia Supreme Court's majority responses? Where they too prejudiced and part of the grand conspiracy to conspire against Leo M. Frank?

And does District Attorney Hugh Dorsey's side of the state's case, the one presented in that very same Ga Supreme Court report filing, sift him as a man seeking: justice for the child sweatshop assembly line attendant OR unscrupulous injustice of framing an innocent man with a commitment to judicial murder?

Several sections of Roy Barnes's November 12, 2019 monologue at Mercer Law School, stands out. The most prominent being, what Journalist-Author Steve Oney, called, "The Shyte in the Shaft":

Roy Barnes during his speech at Mercer Law School on Tuesday, November 12th, 2019, in his monologue acts as if it's axiomatically a hard-fact that the primitive freight elevator in Atlanta's National Pencil Company of 1913, could NOT have been used during the noontime hour of Saturday, April 26, 1913, to transport Mary Phagan's dead and defiled body, down from the second floor of the factory, down two flights to the factory's cellar. The supposition of his reason why it didn't happen that way, is because the police took the freight elevator down to the said basement on Sunday morning, April 27th, 1913, it crushed some feces in the ground tray of the elevator shaft. At face value, and with limited information about the incident, it could easily be believable for those unfamiliar with the reports provided by investigators.

To summarize, Barnes touches briefly upon The elevator's maneuverability with dramatics, "Boom", referring to the "the shit in the shaft" (as journalist-author Steve Oney labeled it), and the smooshing of Conley's feces at the said base tray at the hard dirt floor ground in the elevator shaft at the front section of the basement, below the street entry of the National Pencil Company. Roy Barnes hints at this as something which tends to impeach Conley's testimony about how he and Leo Frank moved the cadaver of Mary Phagan and his series of evolving affidavits eludes to how the events took place. The undercurrent of Barnes' statements are this provides more exonerating evidence for Leo Frank, as part of a larger suite of perceived opinions on evidence absolving Frank of the rape-murder for which he was duly convicted.

Roy Barnes, presenting limited information, tries to make it out like the elevator was automated and that it would go all the way to the bottom on its own, after presumably pushing a button? But that's not how the elevator worked based on the descriptions of it. There was actually a rudimentary pull cord to pause the elevator's descent or ascent (not modern computerize numeric floor buttons like we have today), it wasn't just that the elevator cut off on its own presumably flipping a power switch when it reached the basement, the driver of the vertical elevator car had control.

Jim Conley in his testimony at the Leo Frank trial and his affidavits finally talks about how Leo Frank was so nervous with the elevator control cord that he hints it might have stopped the elevator before it hit the bottom on their descent, and again too soon before they ascended to the above floors, going back up toward the second floor. Leo Frank was said in Conley's testimony to have stopped the freight elevator too short, and upon exiting it, he tripped inside the elevator car catching the floor as he was trying to get out of it and thus fell backward right onto Jim Conley.

Surprise, Surprise, Roy Barnes never mentions these above-detailed descriptions in his 2019 monologue on that particular incident, of using the elevator to move Mary Phagan's body away from the metal room, located opposite Leo Frank's business office, to the rear corner of the basement where it was intended to be burned in a furnace--which Barnes essentially cites as a reason among others, why Leo Frank is innocent, and supposedly proof that in the noon hour of Saturday, April 26, 1913, they didn't use the means to transport the battered and bruised corpse of the 13-year-old girl to the basement.

James "Jim" Conley's meticulous details in several evolving affidavits and his trial testimony no August 4, 5, and 6th, 1913, at the Mary Phagan murder trial, about these said events, tend to show Leo Frank's nervous-erratic demeanor immediately post-murder and his mishandling of the elevator brake cord.

The freight elevator likely would not go all the way down to the cellar tray by a matter of some inches, because police initially described during their initial investigation at 3:40 o'clock a.m. that there was lots of trash in that bottom-most tray, and also found Mary Phagan's parasol right smack in the middle of it (there is even a contemporary diagram sketch of it). The police described the contents of the tray and moved that trash around, in search of clews, they might have moved the trash enough or removed some of it, so that later when they took the elevator down, it could actually go down all the way completely to the bottom. Later that morning in the presence of Leo Frank, they took the freight elevator down on April 27, 1913, in the daytime morning, when they had done so, it smooshed Conley's natural deposit he left there in the said tray.

What Roy Barnes also fails to also mention is those first-responder police officers who investigated the crime scene that morning on April 27, 1913, specifically reported they saw drag marks from the elevator shaft entryway, 140 feet across the hard dirt floor to the rear of the basement, where garbage was normally staged before being burned in the furnace, a furnace that provided heat and hot water to the factory. He uses the excuse that he has limited time, to give the audience the information they need to make an informed decision, to instead focus on the then-present and then-former government officials and prominent citizenry who organized to hang Leo Frank on August 17th, 1915, in fulfillment of the Mary Phagan murder trial jury's unanimous decision to recommend "no mercy" for Leo Frank on August 25th 1913, to therefore have the defendant be sentenced to capital punishment, and Judge Roan's ratification the next day of that verdict and sentencing decision on August 26, 1913.

[End of their response on the "Shit in the Shaft Hoax" being used to Exonerate Leo Frank]

SOURCES

Article: Former Governor Roy Barnes Discusses Leo Frank Case at Mercer Law School 41nbc.com/2019/11/13/former-georgia-gov-roy-barnes-discus...

VIDEO: Former Governor Roy Barnes at Mercer Law School, November 2019 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIviA9GXGQI

VIDEO (Recommended): 11Alive Roy Barnes, May 7th 2019 youtu.be/4tgKcqOXyhc

Mercer University Law School law.mercer.edu/

Direct source of the hoax framed as Jury tampering: American Jewish Archives Journal, November 1968, Leo M. Frank and the Jewish Community by Leonard Dinnerstein

A revisionist is someone who examines and tries to change existing beliefs about events that happened or what their importance or meaning by deliberately and purposely using deceitful, dishonest, fraudulent, underhanded, hiding information secret from public knowledge.

A closer look at the deception of fraud, deliberate effort to deceive misrepresentation of historical sources:

Censorship:

Since the Conviction Integrity Unit (2019) has been established to review the Leo Frank Case, BOOKS have been BANNED, YouTube Videos have been removed and Georgia and Supreme Court records, original newspaper links are NO LONGER AVAILABLE!

Why? To “silence the opposing view.” What is the truth of the Leo Frank Case? Truth has become inappropriate or offensive or objectionable and is deemed “hate speech” to impose censorship.
FACTS ARE NOT HATEFUL!

Is it because we are Making a Difference, and the truth is finally being told?  

Internet:

Debunk:  Censorship

The web site [www.littlemaryphagan. com] of Mary Phagan-Kean, a descendant of Mary Phagan, who was murdered by Leo Frank in 1913. It contains facts, news, videos and articles about the case, and challenges the ADL's narrative of Frank's innocence.

New Georgia Encyclopedia

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/.../mary-phagan_001_0- no mention that Frank was Jewish

Mary Phagan a pencil factory worker, was raped and murdered in 1913. The factory manager Leo Frank was convicted for the murder and imprisoned but then was lynched two years later on August, 16 1915. Courtesy of Atlanta History Center.  No mention Frank was Jewish.

In 2024 Censorship/DoS Attacks denial-of-service (DoS) cyber-attacks [malicious attempt to overwhelm an online service and render it unusable] increased on my websites in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network.

It didn't work!

Anti-Semitism:

The Leo Frank Case, Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913; 32, 137;  I Can Go Home Again, Arthur Gray Powell, 1943, Chapter 36:  Up Against the Mob; page 277-292; Guilty or Not Guilty, Francis X. Bush, 1952, page 15,62; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956; page 27; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein,1991; page 32 51-52. 

DEBUNK:  Anti-Semitism

Executive Minutes; Governor Slaton: Racial Prejudice, Anti-Semitism, Racial Prejudice, June 21, 1915; I Can Go Home Again, Arthur Gray Powell, 1943, Chapter 36:  Up Against the Mob; page 287; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956; page 189, 221; A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965; 227; The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey, 1988, 60. 71; The Jew Accused, Albert S. Lindemann, 1991, page 242, 246-247, 248, 249, 262; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam 2016, page 44,198,199,327; CNN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikepedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RFC:_The_Anti-Defamation_League, June 19, 2024.

Hang the Jew: 

'The Leo Frank Case, Inside Story of Georgia's greatest Murder Mystery,  Published by Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913, Preface; The Truth About the Frank Case, C.P. Connolly, 1914, page 11, 18; Tom Watson Agrarian Rebel; C. Vann Woodward, 1938, Chapter XXII, page 436; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956, page 39-41; 156; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991, page 60;  The Jew Accused, Albert S. Lindemann, 1991, page 258; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin, 2010; page 61,100; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, 2003, page 453; The Leo Frank Case, Former Governor Roy Barnes, Bell-Jones Courtroom, Mercer Law, November 12, 2009.

Debunk:  Hang the Jew

Newspapers Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Georgian, Atlanta Journal in 1913 never reported any of the spectators shouting "Hang the Jew"; Black Jewish Relations on Trial, Jeffrey Melnick; 2000, page 53, 59; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, 2003; 453; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin, 2010, page 26; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol 3; The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam, page 163, 166; The Phagan Family Newsletter #4, March 2020, littlemaryphagan.com

Mobs:

The Leo Frank Case Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery; Published by Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913; page 69,83,105-106; Executive Minutes, Governor Slaton: Mobs, June 21, 1915; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956; page 39; A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965; page 94, 98, 99; The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey, 1988, page 46, 51;  Black Jewish Relations on Trial, Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South, Jeffrey Melnick, page 15; 2000; The Leo Frank Case, Former Governor Roy Barnes, Bell-Jones Courtroom, Mercer Law, November 12, 2009.

Debunk: Mobs: See Anti-Semitism; Racial Prejudice; Hang the Jew

Fair Trial/Appeals/Judge Roan:

The Leo Frank Case Inside Story of Georgia's Murder Mystery; Published by Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913; page 63, 64; Tom Watson Agrarian Rebel, 1938, Vann Woodward; Chapter XXIII Pages 431-450; Page 443, 445; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956; page 195-196; A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden; 1965; Page 253; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin, 2010; page 98.

Debunk:  Fair Trial/Appeals/Judge Roan

The Leo Frank Case Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery; Published by Atlanta Publishing Company; 1913; page 63-64; Atlanta Georgian Night Edition, James Nevin, August 18, 1913 ;Claims That Leo Frank Obtained a Fair Trial; Newspaper Article, June 14, 1914; Executive Minutes; Governor Slaton, June 21, 1914 [Slaton’s commutation disregarded volumes of trial evidence and testimony against Frank, but Slaton also chose to not disturb the jury’s verdict and affirmed the murder conviction by saying he sustained the jury and appellate tribunals.];The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frye, Nancy Thompson-Frey, 1988; page 74; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991; page 30-31,79; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam 2016, page 428-433.

Leo M. Frank had fully and completely exhausted every possible court appeals process concerning every level of the United States Federal and State Appellate Tribunal System.

Majority and Unanimous Decisions during the Appeals Process Affirm the Murder Conviction Given by the Trial Jury including “extraordinary motion for new trial!”

Slaton, also suggested, that the Jewish Communities charge of race hatred as being the reason Frank was convicted was unfair, as it was certainly not true, because numerous other legal tribunals reviewed the evidence and testimony, and felt it was strong enough to convict Leo M. Frank. None of the appeals courts could be falsely accused of being mob terrorized or antisemitic, as the Jewish community put such false accusations and slander against the murder trial Jury.

After the Leo Frank murder trial ended August 21, closing arguments began and then ended on August 25 at noon. The jury rendered its decision on August 25 at 4 p.m., and August 26 at 10:00 a.m., the trial judge Leonard Strickland Roan affirmed the jury’s decision. Frank’s lawyers immediately appealed on August 27, 1913.

The appellate process slowly wended its way through the Fulton County Superior Court, Georgia Supreme Court, United States District Court, and United States Supreme Court, more than once. Every court meticulously sifted the murder trial testimony and evidence, and every court affirmed the trial was fair and the jury was not mob terrorized, with only four dissenting judges out of more than a dozen affirming judges. The verdict rendered by Leo Frank’s trial jury was not disturbed at the conclusion of the appeals.

Plants [Fake or Framed up Evidence to the benefit of the Defense]: 

Club Not Found in Clean-Up, Atlanta Georgian, August 1, 1913; The Leo Frank Case Inside of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery, published by Atlanta Publishing Company, Chapter III Plants Charged to Frank1913; page 64-67, 142; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956; page 36, 81-82, 142; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, 2003; page 179-180; 420,The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam 2016, page 38-44, 327-328.

Sexual Assault/Menstrual Cycle:

Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956; page 15; A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965, page 18, 111; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991; page 10; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, page 19; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin; 2010, page 67;  The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol. 3, The Leo Frank Case, They Lynching of a Guilty Man, 2016; page 326; Murder at the Pencil Factory, R. Barri Flowers, 2017; page 7.

Debunk:  Sexual Assault/Menstrual Cycle:

Pinkerton Reports, L.P. Whitfield, May 2, 1913; Interview: Fannie Coleman, Ollie Mae Phagan, page 25: [Mary did not have a menstrual cycle as she did not reach the age of complete puberty and would have had some type of cloth attached to her underwear]; Mary Phagan Autopsy, Conducted on Monday, May 5, 1913, by Dr. H. F. Harris, Reported During the Leo Frank Trial on Friday, August 1, 1913; The Leo Frank Case Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery, published by Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913; Chapter XV page 80,81; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam 2016, page 22, 51,123.

Bitemarks:

To Number our Days, Pierre Van Paassen, 1965; page 237-238; A Little Girl is Dead; Harry Golden, 1965; page 53, 54,256, 257; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991; page 158; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, 2003; page 617-618; Flagpole Magazine May 5, 2004, Dr. Donald Wilkes, Jr.; page 7; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin,; pages11, 46, 132.

Debunk Bitemarks:

No x-ray evidence, no photographic evidence of teeth or bitemarks; Autopsy Report, May 5, 1913; Atlanta Constitution, August 1, 1913: William Gheesling Embalm Tells of Wounds on Girl; Atlanta Journal, August 3, 1913; Dr. Harris and Dr. Hurt no beastly and unspeakable mutilations about the dead girl's body, such as street rumor and gossip originally attributed to the perpetrator of the crime; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol. 3; The Leo Frank Case: The Lynching of a Guilty Man., 2016; page 433-434

Murder Notes/Night Witch:  

The Leo Frank Case Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery, Published by Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913; page 86-89; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels; 1956; page 186-188; A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965; page 128, 144, 232, 233;  The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991; Page 87-90; 102-103; Black -Jewish Relations on Trial, Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South, Jeffrey Melnick, 2000; page 91. 

Debunk:  Murder Notes/Night Witch:

Black -Jewish Relations on Trial, Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South, Jeffrey Melnick, 2000, page 66-67; 89-103; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin, 2010; page 91-93; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol. 3, The Leo Frank Case The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam, 2016. page 390-395; 405-410.

Shit in the Shaft:

The Leo Frank Case, C.P. Connolly, 1914; page 91; Executive Minutes, Governor Slaton, June 21, 1915, A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965; page 103, 134; The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson Frey, 1988; page 46; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991; page 3, 127; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, 2003 page 213; Murder in the Pencil Factory, R. Barri Flowers, 2017; page 47.

Debunk: Shit in the Shaft:

Trial of Leo Frank, Defense; 1913: Defense abandoned theory of Mary Phagan being thrown down the first-floor scuttle hole, midway through the trial, instead for the "down the elevator shaft theory"; Brief of Evidence, Conley Testimony, 1913; Conley Testimony; Frank made hasty prestops with the elevator moments before it touched the uneven floor of the basement elevators shaft; human feces smells the moment of release and doesn't hide odor until smashed; The Leo Frank Case Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery;  page 13, 27-28, 51; 75 [Much has been made of Conley’s admission that he defecated in the elevator shaft on Saturday morning, and the idea that, because the detectives crushed the feces for the first time when they rode down in the elevator the next day, Conley’s story that he and Frank used the elevator to bring Mary Phagan’s body to the basement on Saturday afternoon could not be true — thus bringing Conley’s entire story into question. But how could anyone determine with certainty that the “crushing” was the “first crushing”? And nowhere in the voluminous records of the case — including Governor Slaton’s commutation order in which he details his supposed tests of the elevator — can we find evidence that anyone made even the most elementary inquiry into whether or not the bottom surface of the elevator car was uniformly flat. Furthermore, the so-called “shit in the shaft” theory of Frank’s innocence also breaks down when we consider the fact that detectives inspected the floor of the elevator shaft before riding down in the elevator and found in it Mary Phagan’s parasol and a large quantity of trash and debris. Detective R.M. Lassiter stated at the inquest into Mary Phagan’s death, in answer to the question “Is the bottom of the elevator shaft of concrete or wood, or what?” that “I don’t know. It was full of trash, and I couldn’t see.” There was so much trash there, the investigator couldn’t even tell what the floor of the shaft was made of! There may well have been enough trash, and arranged in such a way, to have prevented the crushing of the waste material when Frank and Conley used the elevator to transport Mary Phagan’s body to the basement. In digging through this trash, detectives could easily have moved it enough to permit the crushing of the feces the next time the elevator was run down.]; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol. 3, The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, 2016; page 410-415.

Exodus of Jews:

A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965; page 275-276; Portrait of an American: Lawyer Sam Boorstein, Daniel J. Boorstein; The Wilson Quarterly, 1976, Vol. 14. No 1 (Winter, 1990), page 118-123.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Boorstin

Biography, "Boorstin was born in 1914, in Atlanta, Georgia, into a Jewish family. His father, Samuel, was a lawyer who participated in the defense of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent who was accused and convicted of the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. After Frank's 1915 lynching led to a surge of anti-Semitic sentiment in Georgia, the family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Boorstin was raised. He graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in 1930, at the age of 15.

Debunk No Mass Exodus or Panic of Jews

1921 American Jewish Year Book; Volume 22; September 13, 1920, to October 2, 1921; edited by Harry Schneiderman for American Jewish Committee.

This chart shows a Jewish population 
INCREASE in Georgia of 13,114!

Strangers within the Gate City:  The Jews of Atlanta 1845-1915, Steven Hertzberg, Philadelphia 1978; page 213, 217; The Jew Accused, Albert S. Lindmann, 1991; page 270, 275; Institute of Southern Jewish Life Study, Goldring/Woldenberg, 2006. http://www.isjl.org/history/archive/ga/atlanta.html

The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam 2016, page 339; 330-344.

Knights of Mary Phagan/Ku Klux Klan:

Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise, 1956; page 212; A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965; page 288; The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson Frey, page 91, 104, 132; The Jew Accused, Albert S. Lindemann, 1991, page 271; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991, page 136, 139; 150; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, 2003, page 148; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin, page 107; Murder at the Pencil Factory, R. Barri Flowers, 2017; page 38.

Knights of Mary Phagan/Ku Klux Kan: Debunk:

New York Times, June 26, 1915, No Source; None of the Atlanta -based newspapers [Constitution, Georgian, Journal] mention "Knights of Mary Phagan", 1915; Jeffersonian, Tom Watson, August 19, 26, 1915 called Vigilance Committee, Tom Watson Agrarian Rebel, C. Vann Woodward, 1938 Chapter XXIII, pages 421-450; page 443, 450; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam 2016, page 309-320,328-329.

Judges:  I am one of the few people who know that Leo Frank was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted and lynched.

I Can Go Home Again. Arthur Gray Powell, 1943; Chapter 36: Up Against the Mob; page 277-292, page 291; Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer, Allen Lumpkin Henson, 1959; Chapter 7: The Leo Frank Case; page 59-76; page 61-66; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991; page 129; The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey, 58, 59, 137; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney; 2003; page 618, 627, 647;   Screening of a Lynching, Matthew Bernstein, 2009; page 148, 156, 270;An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alpin; 2010; page 104-105; The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 3, The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, 2016, page 182-187, 434.

Debunk: Judges

I Can Go Home Again. Arthur Gray Powell, 1943; Chapter 36: Up Against the Mob; page 277-292, page 291-292

Page 291-292:

Judge Arthur Gray Powell died August 5, 1951. "I expect to write out what I know and seal it up; for the day may yet to come, after certain deaths occur, when more can be told than I can honorably tell now.  If he left any such statement, it has not come to light.

Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer, Allen Lumpkin Henson, 1959; Chapter 7: The Leo Frank Case; page 59-76; page 61-66;

Page 76:

"I am the sole survivor of the "few people" to whom Judge Powell referred. Every reason which he had for not including this story in his book has disappeared."

Movies/Mini Series/Plays/Documentaries: 

ALL FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNTS 

Movies

They Won't Forget 1937

Documentaries

People vs Leo Frank 2008 

Leo Frank Case Revisited 2009

Debunk: Chapter 19

Mini-Series

         The Murder of Mary Phagan NBC 1988

Debunk: Chapter 13 

Musicals 

Night Witch 1967

Parade 1988-Present

Debunk:  Chapter 16

Racial Prejudice: Negro

The Truth About the Frank Case, C.P. Connolly, 1914, page 50-51, Night Fell on Georgia; Charles and Louise Samuels; 1956; page 35; The Jew Accused, Albert S Lindmann, 1991; page 245; Black Jewish Relations on Trial, Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South, Jeffrey Melnick, 2000; page 12. 

Racial Prejudice Charge in Trial: Defense

Leo Frank's mother, Mrs. Rae Frank, caused a scene in the courtroom on August 13, 1913 by standing up and shouting an anti-Christian epithet directed towards Hugh Dorsey, the prosecutor. She was subsequently removed from the courtroom. This event brought religion into the trial for the very first time.

What exactly did Mrs. Rae Frank Say?

Some confusion about the exact words Mrs. Rae Frank: “Christian Dog” or “Gentile Dog” ? And the Dead Shall rise, Steve Oney; 2003; page 286.

Secret Relation Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 3; The Leo Frank Case The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam, 2016 page 28.

…’In fact, it was this Jewish woman’s bigoted utterance that introduced Frank’s religion into the trial.”

Newspapers of the day:

Mrs. Rae Frank, Mother of Prisoner, Denounces Solicitor Hugh Dorsey

Atlanta Constitution

August 14, 1913, 1,3

Court stirred by Outburst from Leo Frank’s Mother

Atlanta Journal, 4

August 14, 1913

“No, and you didn’t either.”

Frank’s Mother Resents Questioning of Dorsey

Atlanta Georgian, 3

August 14, 1913

“No, nor you either.”

Jews Fight to Save Leo Frank

New York Sun, p. 6

October 12, 1913

Mrs. Rae Frank: “You, Christian Dog”! was reported as to the utterance made.

Debunk: Racial Prejudice in Trial: Defense

Argument of Hugh Dorsey:

Atlanta Constitution

August 26, 1913, 7

“They have aligned and abused me; they have abused the detectives; they have heaped calumny on us to such extent that that good lady, the mother of this defendant, was so wrought up that she arose and, in this presence, denounced me as a dog.”

George Kendley *Defense called four witnesses claiming Kendley was antagonist toward Frank

August 10, 1913 pg. 1

Atlanta Journal

Rueben Arnold Closing Arguments

August 21, 1913

Atlanta Georgian, pg. 4

The Leo Frank Case

Inside Story of Georgia’s Greatest Murder Mystery

Published by Atlanta Publishing Company

1913

Page 137:

Racial Prejudice

"The first-time prejudice was brought into the case, it was brought in by them and brought in for a purpose. "Never have I seen two men so delighted as Rosser and Arnold when they put those questions to Kendley. Never will I forget that scene. We did not put it in, and prejudice is not in this case. "Mark you, they, not us. raised the cry of prejudice.”

Guilty or Not Guilty, 1952

Francis X. Bush

Page 62:

Four witnesses called by defense to testify that George Kendley, streetcar employee and one of the rebuttal witnesses had publicly expressed himself as violently antagonist to Frank – “ he was nothing but a damned Jew and should be taken out and hung” “guilty as a snake” “ninety percent of the best people in the state think he is guilty and ought to hang”

It was on this note that the evidence closed by the defense.

The Leo Frank Case, 1991 [Special Edition]

Leonard Dinnerstein

Page 51-52:

“The state also brought forth George Kendley, a trolley car conductor, who remembered seeing Mary Phagan walking in the direction of the factory at noon on the day of the murder.  The defense rebutted with people who made incrementing remarks about Kendley.  One man claimed to have heard the trolley conductor say that ‘Frank was nothing, but an old Jew and they ought to take him out and hand him anyhow.’ Another recalled that Kendley expressed the sentiment ‘that Frank was guilty as a snake and should be hung….’The remarks attributed to the trolley conductor were less important than for the attitudes expressed.  It was the first time any indication of overt anti-Semitism appeared in the court.”

Sexual Pervert

The Truth About the Frank Case, C.P. Connolly, 1914, page 12, 92; Tom Watson Agrarian Rebel, C. Vann Woodward, 1938; page 435-436; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956, page 26, 93; Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer, Allen Lumpkin Henson, page 59.The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frey, Nancy Thompson-Frey; 1988; page 71, 126; The Leo Frank Case; Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991, page 19; The Jew Accused, Albert S. Lindemann, 1991, page 243; Black-Jewish Relations on Trial, Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South, Jeffrey Melnick, 2000, page 47,The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3 The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, Nation of Islam 2016, page 111-120.

Smearing of Mary Phagan:

Black Jewish Relations on Trial, Jeffrey Melnick, 2000; page 31, 62; And the Dead Shall Rise, Steve Oney, 2003; page 3, 4, 5; An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin, page 6; Murder in the Pencil Factor, R. Barri Flowers, 2017; page 2, 3.

Debunk: Smearing of Mary Phagan

Atlanta Constitution, May 4, 1913; Pinkerton Reports, L.P. Whitfield, may 2, 1913; page 25; The Truth About the Frank Case, C. P. Connolly, 1914; page 11, 23; Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, 1956, page 9, 10; A Little Girl is Dead; Harry Golden, 1965, page 5; The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein, 1991; page 11; The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy Thompson-Frey, 1988; page 6, 7.

Tom Watson; Silent on case until Frank conviction; declined offer to defend Frank

Tom Watson Agrarian Rebel, C. Vann Woodward, 1938; page 436; A Little Girl is Dead, Harry Golden, 1965; page 217, The Silent and the Damned, 1988, Robert Seitz Frey, Nancy Thompson-Frey; page 90; The Jew Accused, Albert S. Lindemann, 1991, page 259, 260;

White Privilege; Prejudice Against Negroes

The Leo Frank Case, Inside Story of Georgia's Greatest Murder Mystery; Atlanta Publishing Company, 1913, page 54, 137;  Night Fell on Georgia, Charles and Louise Samuels, page 158, 159; A Little Girl is Dead, 1965, Harry Golden, page xv; The Silent and the Damned, Robert Seitz Fry, Nancy Thompson-Frey, 1988, page 109; Black Jewish Relation on Trial, Leo Frank and Jim Conley in the New South, Jeffrey Melnick, 2000, preface xi; pages 8, 27, 43, 61;  And the Dead Shall Rise The Murder of Mary Phagan and The Lynching of Leo Frank, Steve Oney, 2003, page 148;   Murder at the Pencil Factory,, R. Barri Flowers, 2017, page 31.

Yellow Journalism:  Deliberate exaggeration or manipulation of news stories to evoke emotional responses and capture audience attention.

The Mary Phagan/ Leo Frank case was reported on in newspapers across Georgia between 1913 and 1915. The three main newspapers covering the trial from July 28 to August 26, 1913, included the Atlanta Constitution, the Atlanta Journal, and the Atlanta Georgian (Hearst’s Yellow Journalism) who in particular, sensationalized the story with daily dramatic headlines. 

Fortunately for 21st century Leo Frank scholars, most of the questions and answers survived in the three major local newspapers and are a must read since the original trial transcript disappeared around 1965 when Harry Golden and Leonard Dinnerstein were researching the case. 

These newspapers also report on the criminal activity (plants)the Leo M. Frank legal defense team played to try and get their guilty client free. 

Alonzo Mann:  See Chapters 10, 11, 12.

In 1982 Alonzo Mann, who in 1913 at 13 years old had been the office boy for the National Pencil Company, made a sensation in the press by denying the sworn testimony he had made at the Leo Frank trial, and stating his belief that Jim Conley was the real killer of Mary Phagan. In 1913, Mann had testified that he left the office on the day of the murder at 11:30 AM. In 1982, he changed the time and told a quite different story.

In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL), along with other Jewish groups, spearheaded a campaign to get the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to issue a posthumous pardon to Leo Frank, basing their case largely on the 1982 statement of Alonzo Mann. The Board found that Mann’s statement added no new evidence to the case. They also noted that Governor Slaton in his 1915 commutation decision had already considered that the elevator may not have been used to move Mary Phagan’s body, but nevertheless he upheld Frank’s conviction. The ADL’s petition was denied, and Leo Frank’s guilty verdict was affirmed.

The Leo Frank Case, Leonard Dinnerstein 1991, The Tennessean Special News Section Frank Ritter, Jerry Thompson, Robert Sherborne Sunday, March 7, 1982; Pages 1-19 [back of book].

Debunk:  Alonzo Mann

Special News Section; Frank Ritter, Jerry Thompson, Robert Sherborne, Sunday, March 7, 1982, pages 1-9, The Jew Accused, Albert S. Lindemann, 1991; page 254 Footnote #38:

“Much has been made of the testimony of Alonzo Mann, an office boy at the time of the murder, who came forward in the mid-1980s to say that he had seen Conley in the factory, carrying Mary Phagan’s body.  As we will see, this was not the only testimony implicating Conley, but since Mann’s recollections, after so many years, have not been subjected to in-court cross-examination, it is difficult to know how to evaluate them.  It should be noted that Mann did not testify that he actually saw Conley commit the murder.

The issue is discussed in Phagan (Kean), Murder

The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, Vol 3, The Leo Frank Case, The Lynching of a Guilty Man, 2016; Nation of Islam; Page 453-455; 450-463: Chart of Alonzo Mann:  Then and Now; Nashville Tennessean on Trial, Falsehoods and Fictions in the March 7, 1982, Edition.

Murder At the Pencil Factory, R. Barri Flowers, 2017, page 51: “In spite of Alonzo Mann’s sworn statement, persuasive to many in placing the onus for Mary Phagan’s murder squarely on the shoulders of Jim Conley, there are some who remain skeptical of his story…”

The Troubling Testimony of Alonzo Mann in the Murder of Little Mary Phagan, Mickey Lawson October 22, 2019.

The Hoaxes of the ADL, Roy Barnes,
and Rabbi Lebow: They Lie, & Lie, & Lie

“Hang the Jew”: Never happened.
For the last half century the ADL and other
propagandists like Alan M. Dershowitz have
claimed there were “mobs” crying “Hang the
Jew”! Leonard Dinnerstein invented the “Hang the Jew” hoax out of whole cloth and committed academic fraud as he misrepresented historical sources.
The ADL’s own case expert, author Steve
Oney, told the Jewish Journal: “[I]t didn’t
happen....Jews were accepted in the city, and
the record does not substantiate subsequent
reports that the crowd outside the courtroom shouted at the jurors: ‘Hang the Jew or we’ll
hang you.’”

Anti-Semitism: None.
Anti-Semitism was absent from the case,
but vicious anti-black racism was present. Leo
Frank—as leader of B’nai B’rith—his defense
attorneys and supporters publicly and openly
referred to Blacks as “ni@@ers” in and outside
of court. In fact, Leo Frank’s own assessment of
his circumstance was as clear as can be:
“Anti-Semitism is absolutely not the reason for this libel that has been framed against me. It isn’t the source nor the result of this sad story.”

Wikipedia Now Labels ADL [Top Jewish Civil Rights Group]
“UNRELIABLE” Source on Antisemitism; David Coleman, CNN June 19, 2024

Wikipedia is the largest on-line encyclopedia and has become the Go-To source for fast information on millions of subjects. But its editors have finally had enough with the internet’s most prolific LEO FRANK LIAR, the Anti Defamation League (ADL). In a stunning rebuke of that group, Wikipedia’s editors declared that the Anti-Defamation League cannot be trusted to give reliable information on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they overwhelmingly said the ADLis an unreliable source on “antisemitism.” Since its founding in 1913, the ADL has falsely presented itself as the world’s preeminent advocate for the rights and causes of American Jews.

Yet, Wikipedia editors voted last week to label the ADL as a “generally unreliable” source. That means that the ADL should usually not be cite in Wikipedia articles.

“The ADL is heavily biased regarding Israel/Palestine to the point of often acting as a pro-Israel lobbying organization,” the editors said. “This can and does compromise its ability to accurately report facts regarding people and organizations that disagree with it on this issue, especially non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews and Jewish organizations.”

The ADL became the world’s major source of false and misleading misinformation on the Leo Frank case, and it has made the case central to its tactic of weaponizing the label of “anti-Semitism” to fundraise and push hateful propaganda.

As expected, the ADL strongly objected to the Wikipedia decision, though the group continues its Leo Frank lies unimpeded.

Mobs at trial: None.

Unfair Trial: False.
According to the legal record and Frank’s many Appeals, Frank had a Fair Trial. There were 13 Appeals—and the guilty verdict was upheld in every appeal.

Exodus of Jews: Never happened.
Pro-Frank advocates have claimed that
“thousands” of Jews fled Atlanta, but this is
a complete myth. Jewish demographers show
that the Jewish population of Atlanta actually
increased over the weeks, months, and years
after the Frank episode.

Alonzo Mann: did not prove Leo Frank innocent.
Mann had given many conflicting stories—in 1913 and in 1982—that are irreconcilable with the known facts. The elderly Alonzo Mann was very likely coaxed and coached by Frank’s
advocates according to the transcript of Mann's videotape conference with ADL representatives, members of Georgia Pardon and Paroles Board, and attorneys.

For 111 years the Anti-Defamation League has
pushed the narrative that according to “historians”
B’nai B’rith leader Leo Frank was “wrongly accused, falsely convicted, wantonly murdered, pardoned in 1986” due to antisemitism and yellow journalism. Yet, in the original newspaper accounts of the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Georgian, and Atlanta Journal there is no evidence of an atmosphere
of hysteria. In fact, Leo Frank is always referred to as “Superintendent, National Pencil Company”—and there is never any mention of Frank being Jewish.

Most of the “historians” of the case are of the
same religious faith as Leo Frank, and consistently over a century they have trafficked in propaganda that has masqueraded as “new evidence.”

There have been plays, articles, books, video's, movies, docu-dramas claiming death-bed confessions, bite marks and teeth x-rays (no evidence), and anti-Semitic pogroms (no evidence). Virtually all these works claim that an African American man named James Conley committed the crime. The most brazen concoction was the error-filled “testimony” of Alonzo Mann in 1982, which the Georgia State Board of Pardon and Paroles found to be insufficient. The ADL then tried a second time to strong-arm the Board, and in 1986 a strangely worded “pardon” was granted that specifically DID NOT ADDRESS THE GUILT OR INNOCENCE of the murderer Leo Frank.

Most of Frank’s advocates have relied on blatantly false information and politically biased propaganda and have not considered all the facts or reviewed all the original legal documents, including the original official testimony and evidence. Frank’s conviction was upheld by thirteen courts and judges in his thirteen appeals. Driven by the need to exonerate a Jewish leader, they “convict” in the media an innocent African American man. Frank’s racist defense was that rape and murder were “negro crimes,” and since Frank was a white man he could not have committed those horrific acts. Therefore, the black janitor at Frank’s factory named Jim Conley was the guilty party! WHITE PRIVILEGE!

Little Mary Phagan was ruthlessly raped and murdered by the sexual pervert Leo Frank in 1913.

What evidence does Rabbi Lebow, Governor Barnes, ADL representative Robert Wittenstein have that Leo Frank should be exonerated? There is no new evidence; nor was antisemitism the reason for his conviction to warrant a “new trial” through the Fulton County Innocence Project.

Announcement:

Mary Phagan-Kean, Great- Niece and Namesake of Little Mary Phagan, donates Phagan Family Collection: memorabilia, books, photographs, and papers, August 21, 2024. These materials will be housed at Georgia State University [GSU] Special Collections and Archives Department, as part of the GSU library’s digital collections, making them accessible to the public.