Black Man Framed for Child Laborer's Rape and Murder

In 1913, Leo Max Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent was convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee, in Atlanta, Georgia. Two years later, after receiving a prison sentence, Frank was abducted and Lynched, sparking regional, racial, social, and political concerns, specifically regarding the possibility that Antisemitism played a large role in his sentence. Today, it is generally accepted that Frank was wrongfully convicted and that the real murderer was Jim Conley, one of Frank’s workers.

Starting at the Beginning:

Leo Frank was born in 1884 to a Jewish-American family in Texas but was raised in New York. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, before moving to Atlanta, Georgia in 1908. He married in 1910, got heavily involved in the local Jewish community, and in 1912, got elected president of the local chapter of B’nai B’rith, a Jewish fraternal organization. It was around this time that concern was growing over the subject of child labor at factories. Among many children working in factories at the time, was Mary Phagan, who worked in the National Pencil Company factory, where Frank was the director.

Mary started working for the National Pencil Company in 1912. She made 10 cents per hour ($2.96 in today’s money), and worked 55 hours a week, operating a knurling machine that inserted erasers into the metal tips of pencils, across the hallway from Frank’s office. She was laid off on April 21, due to supply shortages, but returned on the 26th to claim her pay. The following day, just before 3:00 am, the night watchman Newt Lee found her in the factory basement after leaving the lavatory. She sat in the back of the basement near an incinerator. Lee immediately called the Police. 

In the investigation, it was found that her dress had been pulled up to her waist, a strip of her petticoat was torn off and wrapped around her neck, and her undergarments were torn and bloody, leading to suspicion of rape. Her face was scratched and blackened, and her head was bruised and battered. A 7 foot of ¼ inch cord was tied into her neck, and buried ¼ inch into it, revealing that she had been strangled. A couple of notes were found near Phagan’s head and came to be known as the “murder notes”, which were written to look like Mary had written them, and looked to be implicating a tall slender black man also called a ‘night witch’ (which police believe was actually referring to the night watch). Lee, who was black, thought that the notes were meant to frame him, and let Frank know. Shortly after the notes’ discovery, Lee was arrested.

The Investigation:

Police initially arrested both Lee and a friend of Mary’s under suspicion of committing the crime, but both were released as it became less and less likely to police that they were the murderers. Both Lee and the police tried calling Frank after this, but he did not respond. Eventually, they managed to reach him, and Leo Frank was brought to the factory for questioning. At the time he was not considered a suspect. That Monday, accompanied by his attorney, Frank presented the authorities with a deposition that included a timeline of his activities on the day of Mary’s murder: at 12:05-12:10 pm Mary was in his office, Lee arrived at 4:00 pm but was told to return later, and did so at around 6:00 pm while Frank was in a confrontation with an ex-employee. He also subjected himself to a strip search, which revealed no scratches or bruises conducive to a struggle.

Suspicious of Frank's nervous behavior through his interviews, the Police arrested him the next day. Frank then met with his assistant N. V. Darley, and Harry Scott of the Pinkerton National Detective agency, whom Frank hired to prove his innocence. Scott looked into every lead he could find, from the crime to allegations of sexual misconduct. He produced copies of all his discoveries (even the incriminating ones) to the police. What Frank didn’t know is that Scott was a good friend of, and had close ties to John Black, a police detective who thought Frank was guilty from the beginning. By the end, police were unable to find enough evidence to construct a case against either Lee or Frank, and the two were ordered to be detained. The Burns Agency sent an investigator down to Atlanta to investigate the murder but decided to withdraw him due to societal implications, including the idea that Frank was able to escape the prosecution because he was a rich Jew, paying off the police and hiring private detectives.

It turns out that the prosecution based the majority of its case on the testimony of Jim Conley, the factory’s janitor. He was arrested on May 1st when he was spotted cleaning red stains from a blue shirt. Thinking it was blood, police investigated and found that as Conley stated, it was rust. While detained, Conley was determined to be literate, and his spelling matched that of the notes found next to Mary. He confessed to writing the notes, but that Frank had told him to do so. They doubted the rest of his story, as it implied that Frank planned the murder and confided in Conley. In a later affidavit, Conley confessed to lying about meeting with Frank but said that he met Frank on Saturday, told him to write the notes, and gave him a pack of cigarettes. After that, he went drinking and saw a movie. The police were satisfied with this story.

The Trial, Sentence, and Aftermath:

On May 23, 1913, in a trial before a grand jury, Leo Frank faced charges of murdering Mary Phagan. The prosecution only presented enough information to obtain an indictment but promised more details would be exposed in the trial. The prosecution used Conley’s testimony and played on prejudiced views like that “a negro was not intelligent enough to make up a complicated story”. The defense fought hard, however. They cited a number of pieces of evidence that brought many witnesses, all of whom confirmed that Frank would not have the time to commit the murder. So instead, the prosecution cited the allegations of sexual misconduct, wherein with Conley’s help, Frank would meet with women whom he would then assault in his office. Conley claimed that he sent Phagan up to Frank, that he heard a scream, and subsequently dozed off. Moments later, Frank came to Conley, showed him the body, and told him to compose the notes.

The trial continued with going over the timeline of the day in question, as well as allegations from the prosecution that there was bribery and witness tampering on the side of the defense, and the defense requested a mistrial because the witnesses and jury faced pressure from the mob watching through the courthouse windows. The motion was denied, and it was decided that Frank and the defense would not be present when the verdict was read. After less than four hours of deliberation, the jury voted unanimously that Frank was guilty. He was sentenced to death and was set to be hanged on October 10. A number of state appeals were made sometime after, citing cases where trials were granted after the judge expressed misgivings about the jury verdict, but the prosecution refuted the defense’s efforts.

In the end, with a focus on the use of other crimes from Conley’s testimony to justify the sentence for the murder, it was found that the prosecution could not use prior misdeeds as a basis for proof of a preexisting scheme, and concluded that the evidence prejudiced Frank in the Jurors’ eyes and prevented a fair trial. The result of these appeals was a stay of execution, and a reopening of the case. The defense produced several affidavits from witnesses that they denied their testimonies against Frank, as well as turned up evidence in the form of letters written by Conley from prison which implicated him as the actual murderer. However, every exhaustive step taken by the defense was ultimately shut down by the state. The battle raged on until 1915 when Frank’s death sentence was commuted to a life sentence, as Governor Slanton, who had gotten involved in the investigation, believed that there was enough evidence not present at the original trial to change the sentence.

The general public was outraged. Most believed that Frank was guilty and deserved to be executed. A mob rose and threatened to attack the governor in his home, leading to Slanton and his wife leaving the state. Frank was taken to Milledgeville State Penitentiary for his safety, though even there, a fellow inmate attempted his life hoping for a pardon. On August 16, 1915, a lynch mob drove from Marietta, GA, to Milledgeville. At 10:00 pm, they cut the phone wires, drained the gas from Prison vehicles, and tied up the wardens before abducting Frank and driving him 175 miles back to Marrietta where he was lynched at 7:00 am, facing the direction of Phagan’s house. The Lynching happened amidst a large wave of Antisemitic sentiment that arose during and after the conviction.

In the decades that followed, further investigation of the case lead people to see through the mask of Antisemitism and racism behind which the prosecution and the state stood, and confirmed that Frank was in fact, innocent and that the true murderer was Conley. Frank was posthumously pardoned as a victim of Antisemitic persecution, and his case was mentioned in 1913 when Adolf Kraus announced the creation of the Anti-Defamation League. The trial and lynching of Leo Frank was a horrible case of intense prejudice and injustice but has since gone to form a vital part of the backbone of the fight against them. 

As for Jim Conley, he was sentenced to only a year in prison as an accessory to murder. However, seven decades later, with little time left to live and a heavy conscience, Alonzo Mann, another man who worked in the factory, provided testimony that Conley had in fact murdered Phagan. He saw Conley carry her limp body on the day of the murder, and was told that he’d be killed if he said anything. Despite numerous attempts to disclose this to the media over the decades, the belief that Frank was guilty, along with the persistence of Antisemitic sentiment led few to believe his story. In 1982, he finally got his chance to say his piece, leading to confirmation that Frank was indeed falsely convicted and that Conley was the true killer. Conley was however unable to receive punishment for his crime, as he had passed away a whole three decades earlier. Nothing done could ever make up for the false sentencing now, but at least the record has been set straight.