Georgia Legislators Propose Cold Case Lynching Law But REAL Aim is to Exonerate A Single Person: Leo Frank
There is no more important word in today’s world than JUSTICE. I am Mary Phagan-Kean and I am the great-niece and namesake of “Little Mary Phagan,” the thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by B’nai B’rith leader Leo Max Frank on April 26, 1913. Leo Frank—who admitted he was the last person to see Mary alive—was the factory manager at the National Pencil Company, where the Sam Nunn federal building stands today, and where Mary worked and was killed. On August 25, 1913, after a month-long trial, he was found guilty by a jury of his peers, and on the next day, Leo M. Frank was sentenced to hang for the murder of his young employee Mary Phagan.
Today I represent the Phagan Family as we seek justice for our 
fallen ancestor, Mary Phagan, because a politically strong and economically powerful group of people have for more than a century been attempting through propaganda and deception to exonerate her killer—Leo Frank.
Background of HB 1555 In March of this year HB 1555 was introduced by Reps. Mike Wilensky, Sandra Scott, William Boddie, James Beverly, Derrick Jackson, and Carl Gilliard, with, according to news reports, the support of Georgia’s Legislative Black Caucus, the Urban League of Atlanta, the Anti-Defamation League, and the NAACP. The bill would establish the “Georgia Cold Case Project to Address Historic Lynchings and Related Matters.” The Phagan family believes that any and all earnest attempts to gain 
JUSTICE for the wrongs of the past must be supported and encouraged. HB 1555 appears to intend to achieve that worthy goal, but a careful examination of the issue reveals that it may be yet another attempt to clear Leo Frank of the crime he committed and to pin the crime on a black man named James Conley (pictured on the right). Our family has researched and analyzed this case and the thousands of court documents and newspaper accounts and we reject this effort by Leo Frank’s backers to make an innocent Black man guilty of this horrific crime. Is HB 1555 What It Seems To Be? According to the 2017 report of the Equal Justice Initiative (https://eji.org), at least 589 African Americans were lynched in Georgia between 1877 and 1950. It is a stain on Georgia that Fulton County, where Mary Phagan was murdered, was one of the places in America where lynchings were the highest. These crimes must be accounted for and long-overdue justice must be given to the families of the victims.
However, Rep. Wilensky, in speaking about the aims of HB 1555, did not mention any of those 589 black lynching victims—or the more than 4,000 victims across America. He mentioned just one person—Leo Frank—the convicted murderer and rapist of our ancestor Little Mary Phagan. He only mentioned how the stone marking the site of Leo Frank’s lynching in Marietta was recently vandalized. Rep. Wilensky said, “This is the time this bill should be passed, to bring back and research and look into all these cold cases.”
How Guilty Was Leo Frank? Georgia’s Legislative Black Caucus, the Urban League of Atlanta, and the NAACP are probably not aware of how much generational trauma the Anti-Defamation League has caused the Phagan family in their unceasing efforts to put Leo Frank’s crime on Mr. Conley. The ADL claims that Leo Frank was the victim of “anti-Semitism” and that he was innocent of the murder of Mary Phagan. Rep. Wilensky says he wants “research” 
done, but extensive research has already been done that conclusively proves that Leo Frank was guilty. In 1987, I authored a book on this subject titled The Murder of Little Mary Phagan (Download the FREE PDF
here: http://www.jrbooksonline.com/leo-frank/ mary-phagan.pdf). Further than that, a recently published 536-page book by the Nation of Islam uncovers new facts showing that Frank and his legal team engaged in one of the most racist trial defenses in American history. If the sponsors of HB 1555 were truly interested in researching the Mary Phagan murder case, they need to read both books. The Phagan family has provided physical copies of this book by black scholars of the NOI to the entire Georgia state legislature for their own review. Below are some well-researched facts (along with the relevant pages of the book):
• A 23-member grand jury that included five prominent members of the Jewish community voted for the indictment of Leo Frank. (See pages 52, notes 102-106; 88 n. 181; 146-147;
160; 212; 338.)
• Frank himself told a Jewish newspaper publisher: “Anti-Semitism is absolutely not the reason for this libel [murder conviction] that has been framed against me. It isn’t the
source nor the result of this sad story.” (Page 142.)
• Leo Frank, as leader of B’nai B’rith, publicly and openly used the N-word in referring to African Americans. His defense attorneys used the N-word and other racist slurs
dozens of times in his murder trial. Frank’s main attorney told the jury: “If you put a [N-word] in a hopper, he’ll drip lies.” (Pages 121-133, 363.)
• 20 young women and girls gave such powerful testimony about Leo Frank’s sexual harassment at the factory that none of his many highly paid attorneys dared to cross-examine
them—not one. (Pages 107-123.)
• Frank argued in court that the many Black witnesses that testified should not be believed—simply because they were black—and that “negro testimony” was by definition
inferior and unreliable. Further, Frank argued to the all-white jury that murder, rape, and robbery were “negro crimes” and thus, he, a white man, could not have committed the
murder of Mary Phagan. (Pages 124-136.)
• Frank himself hired two of the most prominent (and expensive) private detective agencies in America—the Pinkerton and Burns agencies—and both concluded that Leo Frank was
the murderer of Mary Phagan. (Pages 47-48; 65-66; 91 note 187; 147; 247.)
• Leo Frank’s own black maid, Minola McKnight, swore that she overheard Frank’s wife and her mother discussing how Frank had confessed that he had killed a girl. (Pages
378-379, 423-428.)
• Before Frank accused his employee James Conley of the crime, Frank accused the African American night watchman who found Mary’s body, Newt Lee. Frank’s hired private eyes
actively targeted Lee and actually planted a blood-soaked shirt in the innocent man’s home, and then told the police where they could find that damning “evidence.” At the same
time, Frank altered Lee’s workplace time card in order to make Lee the prime suspect. (Pages 35-44.)
• Jewish businessman Albert Lasker financed Frank’s legal defense. His private view of the B’nai B’rith president was harsh and disturbing: “he impressed us as a sexual pervert. Now, he may not have been, or rather a homosexual or something like that.” Lasker said, “I hope he gets out…and when he gets out I hope he slips on a banana peel and breaks his neck.” (Pages 216-217, 254-255, 322.)
• The New York Times reported that Frank supporters tried to hire a Black woman named Annie Carter to poison Mr. Conley. She identified the plotters in open court as prominent members of the Jewish community. (Pages 262-263.)
• Leo Frank refused to take an oath on the Bible, and then refused to be cross-examined by prosecutors. (Pages 136-140, 362-382.)
• Leo Frank’s attorneys fought tooth and nail to keep Blacks from participating in any part of Frank’s trial. They used their power to eliminate Blacks from the jury pool. (Page 88)
• Several of Frank’s strongest advocates—including his main lawyer and the man who financed his legal appeals—were both Jewish and open and active members of the American eugenics movement. (Pages 217, 221-222.)
• In 1987 a “witness” named Alonzo Mann materialized, claiming that he was at the factory in 1913 on the day of the murder and saw Conley carrying the body of Mary Phagan. I actually interviewed Mr. Mann in my home on July 19, 1983, for four hours. But Mann had given as many as six conflicting stories that are irreconcilable with the known facts. (Pages 435-464.)
There is much, much more that can and will be presented about the murder of Mary Phagan by Leo Frank. If HB 1555 is intended to get justice for the families of the victims of violence, then the TRUTH about Leo Frank’s murder of Mary Phagan should not be LYNCHED by this bill. Over the course of the many efforts by the ADL to deceitfully clear Leo Frank of his crime, the Phagan family has been purposely excluded from official processes. Georgia’s Century-Old Secrets! HB 1555 is clear about the new process: “Using all available criminal investigation techniques and historical research techniques to investigate, resolve, and, if possible, redress unresolved homicides relating to...historical lynchings.” If this is true, then Reps. Wilensky, Scott, Boddie, Beverly, Jackson, and Gilliard can start by answering why the Georgia government has deemed important documents related to the Leo Frank case “state secrets”! In a time where every state agency and politician is preaching “transparency” and open government, how can anything about a 109-year-old case be considered “SECRET”?! The State 
Board of Pardons and Paroles will not tell us how many documents remain “classified” in the “state secret” category; nor what exactly those documents contain. Who and What are they protecting, and Why? There can be no justice or resolution of this case if the state of Georgia will not release documents from 
a 109-year-old case! Censorship Continues The sponsors of HB 1555 should be asking the ADL some hard questions about why they have lurked behind the scenes and pushed to have BOOKS BANNED, YouTube videos removed and to have the internet scrubbed of Georgia and Supreme Court records, and original newspaper links. Thanks to the underhanded actions of the ADL, they are NO LONGER AVAILABLE! What are they trying to hide? If this is NOT the case, then immediately RELEASE THE “SECRET” FILES of the Leo Frank case for all to see.
FACTS ARE NOT HATEFUL!
But the ADL IS DECEITFUL
DECEIT, noun
1. The act or practice of deceiving; deception.
2. A stratagem; a trick.
3. The quality of being deceitful; falseness.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the
English Language, 5th Edition.
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.
For questions and interviews please contact Mary Phagan Kean at http://www.littlemaryphagan.com
Permission granted by Mary Phagan Kean to publish this version of the Phagan Family Newsletter.
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The Phagan family filed requests for all of the documents, recordings, and other data related to the case of the convicted murderer Leo M. Frank. We received over 1500 documents in December 2020, which included Alonzo Mann’s videotaped testimony when certain people and organizations were seeking a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank in the 1980s. But some documents were DENIED to the family and considered “state secrets”? In a time where every state agency and politician is preaching “transparency” and open government, how can anything about a 106-year-old case be considered “SECRET”?! We were not told how many documents remain in the “state secret” category; nor were we told what exactly those documents contain. Who and What are they protecting, and Why? There can be no justice or resolution of this case if the state of Georgia will not release documents from a 106-year-old case! And WHY isn’t the media asking these questions and INSISTING on answers?
Will Sen. Ossoff help the Phagan family get to the “truth” of this case? Facts Senator Ossoff should know about Leo Frank: • 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. • Frank tried to pin the murder of 13-year-old Mary on two different black men, claiming that rape and murder are “negro crimes” and that the blacks who testified against him should be barred because “negro testimony” was invalid. • The claims that the trial was dominated by a mob chanting “Kill the Jew!” were debunked by ADL expert Steve Oney, who said, “It never happened.” • Leo Frank was not lynched because he was Jewish, but because he was a convicted child rapist and murderer. A group calling itself the “vigilance committee” carried out the sentence after Governor John Slaton, on HIS LAST DAY IN OFFICE, commuted Frank’s death sentence.
On January 5, 2021, the noted presidential historian Michael Beschloss, tweeted the false and thoroughly debunked fiction that Jews fled the state of Georgia as a result of the lynching of Leo Frank on August 17, 1915. There is no evidence of this alleged exodus and none of the serious historians of Jewish history will back the claim. Several notable scholars correct Beschloss on that issue:
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:
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:
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.
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.
“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:
offense on the testimony of a Negro.”
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.”
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.”
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.
tone of someone deeply convinced.” Frank’s wife Lucille, wrote Cahan, “supported her husband’s claim.” Why has the Barnes crew ignored the words of Frank himself? The false claims of Roy Barnes and his cohorts are bad enough, but the fact that they are trying to use District Attorney Paul Howard to rig the legal process through these deceptive means is really troubling. It remains to be seen whether D.A. Paul Howard will fall for it in spite of the overwhelming evidence of Leo Frank’s guilt in the murder of my great aunt, Mary Phagan.
On May 7, 2019, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard stated, “The Frank Case helped inspire the creation of the new unit” and that “Former Governor Roy Barnes, who will serve as a consultant to the Conviction Integrity Unit, had lobbied the district attorney to re-examine Frank’s case.” Those statements alone convince me that the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) has already re-adjudicated Leo Frank. Roy Barnes said he is convinced that this will happen. “There is no doubt in my mind, and he’ll prove it at the appropriate time, that Leo Frank was not guilty.”
members of the Conviction Integrity Unit who know Barnes or any others who have categorically stated that Leo Frank is not guilty. For over a century, propaganda has masqueraded as “new evidence”: there have been plays, articles, books, videos, movies, and dramas claiming death-bed confessions, bite marks and teeth x-rays (no evidence), and antisemitic pogroms (no evidence). So, how is it that Leo Frank—a 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?! On what basis, Mr. Howard? What about the 589 other Georgia lynchings? The report on June 14, 2017 states that Fulton County was the scene of far more lynchings, 35, than any other county in the state! Where is the JUSTICE for them? Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882-1968.
107 years ago, Leo Frank, the general superintendent of an Atlanta pencil factory, targeted my great aunt, 13-year-old Mary Phagan—just like he had targeted 20 other young girls who worked there at the National Pencil Company. He attempted to rape her and she resisted. He beat her and then strangled her. Now former governor Roy Barnes and the Anti-Defamation League want to exonerate Leo Frank and claim that an African-American man was the “real killer.” We must assure every reader that no one on earth wanted Mary’s murderer to be convicted and sentenced for this horrific crime more than the Phagan Family. Over many years we have devoted many hours of research and published a book on this historic case.
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.’”
Roy Barnes simply made that up. Perhaps he is referring to Alonzo Mann, whom I actually interviewed in my home on July 19, 1983, for four hours. Mr. Mann was a very nice elderly gentleman but he has told so many different stories to detectives, to the court, to reporters, to Georgia officials—even things that conflict with Leo Frank’s story—that even Barnes’s expert author Steve Oney has said: “You can’t reverse an 80-year-old conviction based on the wavering memory of an 85-year-old man.”
The fact is Tom Watson did not write ANYTHING at all about the trial until 1914, seven months after Leo Frank had been convicted! So Watson had absolutely NO EFFECT on the trial or the verdict. In fact, Frank himself tried to hire Watson to be his attorney. Watson declined.
have probably ran in a new trial….’ [H]e didn’t think he had the power at the time—he was wrong—and Governor Slaton tells him yeah you could have done that.” This is simply made up by Barnes. There is no such letter; there is no proof of
Students at Point Park University in Pittsburgh have rejected the Alfred Uhry play PARADE and the school has CANCELLED its performance. For years Uhry, the writer of the movie Driving Miss Daisy, has promoted PARADE as the “true story” of the Leo Frank case. It is not. Its sole purpose is to falsely place blame for the murder of Little Mary Phagan on an African-American man named James Conley. According to the Jewish Chronicle, “some Point Park students...took issue with the show’s conclusion that implies that Jim Conley, a black janitor and Frank’s main accuser, was the actual perpetrator of the crimes...” Students at Point Park determined that they would not be a part of racist propaganda. Will the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit do the same?
Georgia. But the FACT is Leo Frank lived such a charmed life in prison that the keys may have metaphorically belonged to him! Most inmates at the Milledgeville Prison Farm, slept in barracks, not cells. No other inmate in the history of MILLEDGEVILLE PRISON had an experience like Leo Frank. His letters home during the first few weeks, wrote author Leonard Dinnerstein, “resemble those from a child vacationing at a summer camp.” In one letter Frank writes: “We get the finest Elberta peaches and watermelons here, grown on the Farm. The apples are stewed for me. I also sleep well.”
In 2019, under intense pressure from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard established the “Conviction Integrity Unit,” which is intended to reverse the 1913 conviction of the murderer and rapist Leo Frank. All evidence proves that Frank murdered our beloved family member, 13-year-old Mary Phagan, but many outright lies have been told about the case that MUST BE CORRECTED! Go to LITTLEMARYPHAGAN.COM for more TRUTH about the murder of Little Mary Phagan.
justice and have for years ducked and dodged the actual evidence that proves Leo Frank’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. Instead, they have provided D.A. Howard with false and deceptive data and outright lies in order to force him to do their bidding. This century-old murder case was rife with fraud and deception from the beginning. A May 4, 1913 Atlanta Constitution article titled “Impostors Busy in Sleuth Roles in Phagan Case” asks: “What interests are promoting the planting of evidence in the Mary Phagan mystery?...[W]e are convinced that there are mysterious forces antagonizing our investigation.” D.A. Howard should know (but his “consultants” won’t tell him) that the planted evidence was specifically targeting the African-American night watchman at the factory, Newt Lee. Had the police not discovered the fraud Lee would very likely have been lynched! Later, Leo Frank’s most zealous supporter Albert Lasker—the man who financed Frank’s 13 post-conviction appeals—admitted that he would stoop to the lowest criminal level to secure Leo Frank’s acquittal, by putting in “as much perjured stuff” as his agents could create. And it appears that this kind of dishonest activity has not stopped. These facts—and many, many more like them—used to be available on the internet until very recently. Before he takes on the Frank case, D.A. Howard might do well to ask why the original documents in the case have all of a sudden been removed from the internet. Indeed, the books, videos, articles, and court documents that provide a balanced view of the case have been systematically removed SINCE THE CONVICTION INTEGRITY UNIT WAS ANNOUNCED!
CENSORSHIP occurred right after the CIU was formed? How can they have “integrity,” when they are working so hard to suppress the official case record and evidence from the public and from the media? Who is removing these important documents from the internet and why? How can records from a 100-year-old legal case be called a “state secret”? What are they hiding? And most importantly, What are District Attorney Paul Howard and the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office going to do about it? D.A. Paul Howard was quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution saying, “One of the things we’re going to try to do is find official records…The criminal justice system has an obligation to get at the truth…” Fortunately for him and the CIU, the public and the media will still be able to access those critical official documents that the Leo Frank crusaders are trying to hide. We have made them available at LittleMaryPhagan.com where we believe they will be safe from the Leo Frank censors and their internet cleansing campaign. The Phagan Family calls on District Attorney Paul Howard to STOP THE SECRECY! Investigate these obvious attacks on Free Speech and the hiding of critical case information. If the CIU is honestly seeking justice, then they should contact YouTube, Archive.org, Amazon.com, Google.com, etc., and SPECIFICALLY request that the items containing alternative views of the case be returned for public access.
Weinstein her services to plant slanderous lies about one of Weinstein’s accusers on the internet. Bloom said what her goal was: “so that when someone Googles her this is what pops up and she’s discredited.” And that is the SAME tactic they are using on our family. At this very moment, the internet is being censored to keep the public away from factual truthful information about Leo Frank. Visit our website @ 
to meet Alonzo Mann and asked if it could be possibly arranged. On July 19 I met Alonzo Mann at my home. He, along with Jerry Thompson and Robert Sherborne, arrived about 11:00 a.m. I had had second thoughts about whether I was doing the right thing, but I knew when I met Mr. Mann that I was.