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12 The Leo Frank Case Georgia's most celebrated case of the early twentieth century began with the murder of a teenage girl at her place of employment on Confederate Memorial Day, 1913. Born in Cobb County, Mary Phagan and her family had moved to Atlanta, where she worked for the National Pencil Company. The factory superintendent was a young Jewish businessman from New York named Leo M. Frank. On Saturday, April 26, 1913, Mary left home shortly before noon, boarded a trolley, and rode uptown. Only a handful of people were working in the factory on the Confederate holiday, but Mary hoped her boss would be in the office, so she could collect $1.20 in wages owed her for ten hours of work. She never left the building. Later that afternoon her body was found in the basement. She had been assaulted, beaten, and strangled. The police concluded that Frank, in a deserted back room, had killed the little girl in a crime of passion. The star witness against him was a black custodian named Jim Conley. Originally a suspect himself, the frightened employee told the police a number of conflicting stories. On the witness stand, however, he stuck to a version of the day's activities which Frank's attorneys, through hours of cross examination, were unable to break. w Conley testified in court that he saw Mary enter the factory and go upstairs. Shortly afterward, he heard a scream and commotion coming from the direction of the metal room behind Frank's office. A few minutes later, the superintendent summoned the janitor; and he saw Mary's mangled body. Afraid not to follow the order of his white employer, the terrified black man helped his boss carry the body to the elevator and down to the basement. When Conley was given permission to leave, he went out and got drunk. Conley further testified that Frank frequently had women in the factory for immoral purposes. His janitorial duty on these occasions was to lock the entrance door until Frank whistled for him to let the women out. The question of Frank's alleged immoralitywas a major part of the prosecution's case. Several female employees testified that they had been sexuallyharassed by their young employer, or that they had seen Mary Phagan receiving unwanted sexual advances. On the other hand, the defense produced some two hundred witnesses, including a large number of women from the factory,who testified to Frank's good character. There was much about the Frank case that was contradictory and confusing at the time, and the trial remains controversial to this day. For instance, even in 1913, one had good reason to question the truthfulness of Jim Conley's testimony . He had a criminal record, changed his story several times, and seemed unable to remember details of anything except what he may have been coached to say. Moreover, it was unlikelythat Frank and Conley could have done all the latter said they did in the short time for which Frank lacked an alibi. It seems improbable that the body was carried to the basement by elevator, as Conley claimed. He admitted that he defecated in the elevator shaft the morning of the murder. Whenever the elevator descended to the basement it always went to the bottom of the shaft, where it should have smashed the stools. Yetthat had not happened before the police went down to the basement, by the stairs, to begin their investigation. The obvious conclusion was that the elevator had not been taken to the basement between Mary's arrival and the time that the police entered the building many hours later. Yetsomehow the defense attorneys failed to notice this critical detail, and it was not impressed upon the jury. Two years later the fact became significantwhen Governor John M. Slaton reviewed the evidence while trying to decide whether to commute Frank's death sentence. Perhaps even more damaging to Conley's testimony today is the revelation of Alonzo Mann in 1982. A fourteen-year-old employee at the time of the murder, young Alonzo had shown up at the factory on the fateful Saturday afternoon and had seen Conley, alone, on the first floor, carryinga body. After the janitor threatened to kill him if he talked, Alonzo fled the factory, confided only in his mother, and never told the police what he knew. Despite a troubled conscience, 1 5 2 & C O R N E R S T O N E S...

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