Murder Monday #14 Mary Phagan

  Mary Phagan was born on June 1, 1899, in Georgia. Her father passed away before she was born and not long after her birth, her mother moved the family back to their hometown of Marietta, Georgia, then around 1907, they relocated to East Point, Georgia. Mary left school at the age of 10 to work part-time in a textile mill. In 1912, the family moved to Atlanta, when her mother married John William Coleman and Mary took a job at the National Pencil Company, where she earned ten cents an hour, working 55 hours per week. Her job was to operate a knurling machine that would insert rubber erasers into the metal tips of pencils, which was across the hall from Leo Frank's office. On April 21, 1913, Mary was laid off due to a shortage of brass sheet metal and on the 26th she went to the factory to claim her final paycheck of $1.20.


    In the middle of the night the next day, Newt Lee, the factory's night watchman, went to the factory basement when he found Mary's body near the incinerator. Her dress was up around her waist and a strip of her petticoat was torn and wrapped around her neck. Her face was blackened and scratched, and her head was bruised and battered. Her underwear was around her hips but stained with blood. There was a service ramp near where the body was found that opened into an alley. The police learned that door had been tampered with, so you could you didn't need to unlock the door. There was some evidence found at the scene: bloody fingerprints on the door, a metal pipe that had been used as a crowbar, two notes found near Mary's head, one that said, "he said he wood love me land down play like the night witch did it but that long tall black negro did boy his slef," and the other said," mam that negro hire down here did this i went to make water and he push me down that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it wase long sleam tall negro i write while play with me." Based on the note, the police arrested the night watchman that found the body, initially assuming that night witch was night watch. Lee was eventually let go when the police started to theorize that Mary was murdered on the second floor when they found some of Mary's hair and blood on the second floor. When the police finally go in contact with Leo Frank on April 27, he seemed extremely nervous and pale, his voice was hoarse and was asking questions before the police could answer. Frank claimed that he wasn't familiar with Mary Phagan and the next day Frank, accompanied by his attorney, gave a written deposition about his activities on Saturday. He claimed that Mary was in his office a little after noon and Lee arrived at 4, but Frank was asked to return later and had a confrontation with an ex-employee around 6 Frank didn't have any cuts or bruises on him, nor did he have any blood on the clothes that he had worn Saturday. Frank then hired Harry Scott of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to help investigate the case. Even though he was hired by Frank, he was required to submit duplicates of any evidence to the police, even if it would hurt Frank's case. On April 29, police detective John Black, went to Lee's residence looking for evidence when he found a blood-smeared shirt at the bottom of a burn barrel.  However, detective Black believed that Frank was guilty from the get-go and believed that Frank arranged the plant. Frank was arrested not too long after they found the shirt. The main motivations against Franks were that his uneasiness Sunday, his misgivings on Monday, and the fact that their other two suspects were deemed not guilty; and now the police were beginning to think that Lee was Frank's accomplice.

  Most of the prosecution was based on Jim Conley's testimony, who many historians believed to be the actual murderer, who was the factory's janitor. Police had originally arrested him on May 1 when was seen washing red stains out of his blue work shirt, but it was determined as rust. Conley stated that on the day of the murder, he had been visiting saloons, but this statement was thrown into question when a witness saw "a black negro... dressed in dark blue clothing and hat" in the lobby of the factory. On May 24, Conley admitted that Frank had called him into his office the day of the murder and told him to write the notes; he then changed his story and said that Frank had met him on the street on Saturday and was told to follow him to the factory, then Frank told him to hide in a wardrobe because two women were visiting Frank in his office, afterward Frank dictated the letters to him, gave him cigarettes, then Conley left. The Police were satisfied with the new story and gave The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Georgian the front-page coverage. Some of the officials were not convinced about the story and claimed that Conley had followed another employee into the building, with the intention to rob her, but found that Mary was an easier target. On May 29, Conley had a different statement and claimed that Frank told him "he had picked up a girl back there and let her fall and that her head hit against something." He said that he and Frank took the body to the basement, then returned to Frank's office to dictate the notes. Frank gave him $200, but then took the money back saying, "Let me have that and I will make it all right with you Monday if I live and nothing happens." Conley claimed that he thought Frank would help him out, which was why he didn't tell the police the truth. Later at trial, Conley changed the story again, saying that Frank withheld the money until Conley had burned Phagan's body in the basement furnace. He would eventually be sentenced to a year in jail for being an accomplice after the fact for the murder of Mary Phagan.

   On May 23,1913 the case against Leo Frank in the murder of Mary Phagan began. The prosecution had barely enough information to obtain the indictment but assured the jury that additional information would be provided during the trial, while Frank's legal team suggested to the jury that Jim Conley was the murderer, but they never indicted him. One of the main issues in the case was the implications of trying a white man based on the testimony of a black man in the early 1900s in Georgia. The prosecution made Conley out to be "a familiar type of old negro," one that wouldn't be intelligent enough to come up with such a complicated story; while the defense argued that Conley was the murderer and that Newt Lee helped Conley with the notes. Another thing the prosecution focused on was Frank's alleged sexual behavior. Allegedly, Frank, with Conley's assistance, would regularly meet with women in the office for sexual relations. On the day of the murder, Phagan had gone up to the office and shortly later, Conley heard a scream from the office and then dozed off. He woke up when Frank called him upstairs and showed him Mary's body, admitting that he had hurt her, and then they took her to the basement via the elevator, then returning upstairs to write the notes. The defense cross-examined him for 16 hours, but they failed to break his story, then they moved to have Conley's entire testimony stricken from the record. During the trial, the prosecution alleged bribery and witness tampering attempts made by the defense, while the defense requested a mistrial because they believed the jurors had been intimated by people in and out of the courtroom, but the motion was denied. When the verdict was read on August 25, neither Frank nor his lawyers were present, for Frank's safety. After four hours of deliberation, the jury reached a guilty verdict and was sentenced to hanging on October 10 and appeals were made by Frank's defense team all the way up to the federal level. Eventually, the governor of Georgia, John Slaton, commuted Frank's murder conviction from death to life imprisonment and the public was outraged. A mob made threats against the governor at his home and a detachment fo the Georgia National Guard, along with county policemen were sent to disperse the mob. Frank was taken to the Milledgeville State Penitentiary, which was 150 miles away from Marietta, in the middle of the night before his sentence was commuted. But, on July 17, 1915, an inmate tried to kill Frank by slashing his throat with a butcher knife. He claimed that "Frank's presence was a disgrace to the prison, and he was sure he would be pardoned if he killed Frank."

   On June 21, 1915, a Georgian politician, Tom Watson, wrote in The Jeffersonian and Watson's Magazine, advocating the lynching of Frank and soon a group of prominent men created the Knights of Mary Phagan and planned to kidnap Frank from prison. On August 16, the lynch mob left Marietta separately to Milledgeville and broke into the prison to kidnap Frank. Frank was found at a site in Frey's Gin, two miles away from Marietta, he was hanged from a branch of a tree, facing the direction of Mary Phagan's house, handcuffed, and his legs tied at the ankles.