Instant Justice: The Mary Phagan Murder Case

Instant Justice: The Mary Phagan Murder Case

     Mary Phagan was born in 1899 into a family made up of poor Georgia tenant farmers which seemed to make each day a struggle for mere survival. Mary never knew her father as he died shortly before she was born. What Mary did know was hard work. Times were hard and money was tight, which meant that there was simply no time for the luxury of going to school. No, for Mary, she left school at ten years old and went to work in a textile mill. Her days were long but the money she provided helped prove the difference between eating and starvation.

     In 1912, Mary’s mother met a man by the name of John Coleman who moved the entire family to Atlanta to allow for more opportunities. Mary didn’t waste any time in obtaining work and soon found a job with the National Pencil Company where she earned ten cents an hour inserting rubber erasers into the metal tip of the pencil. She worked a long and hot 55 hours a week, but you’d never hear her complain about it. However, when she looked directly across the hallway, she saw the office of Leo Frank who was the superintendent of the factory. Sometimes, she would allow her mind to drift to what it would be like to sit in a fancy office like Frank. However, reality would come back around, and she would shake dreams from her mind and get back to work.

     In truth, Leo Frank’s life was totally different than anything Mary could ever imagine. Unlike Mary who never knew life to be anything except a struggle, Leo Frank was born into an affluent family where he received a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University. Frank was proud of his Jewish ancestry, and he spent a lot of time involved in Atlanta’s Jewish community. Frank had traveled to Germany to learn everything he could about the manufacturing of pencils and nine months later, he returned to Atlanta and was made the boss of the National Pencil Company.  

     At the time, child labor laws didn’t exist. Many of the largest industrial facilities seemed to be owned or controlled by the Jewish community which led to a lot of anti-semantic views and issues. However, for Mary, she just wanted a paycheck, and she worked excessive hours in conditions that would be seen as barbaric by today’s standards and yet she never wavered. The National Pencil Company, located on South Forsyth Street in Atlanta, employed over 170 workers. The majority of which were children who assembled pencils from cedar shafts and lead rods. Leo Frank held an enormous amount of power over the lives of his workers and wasn’t well liked outside of his own family. A Jewish man from the North that spoke with a fancy northern accent that managed a largely Southern workforce brought out the anti-semantic attitudes of the town.

     While business boomed for several years, in 1913, global material shortages brought production to a halt at the pencil factory and Mary received word that her services were no longer needed. Mary, now thirteen years old, got up early on April 26th, 1913, and walked to the National Pencil Company one last time to pick up her last paycheck. She wore a slightly faded white dress with blue ribbons in her hair. She carried her last ten cents in her purse. She walked into the office of Leo Frank to collect her final paycheck. No one would ever see Mary Phagan alive again.

     One employee whose job was spared was that of Jim Conley. Conley was a janitor of African descent and held one of the lowest paying jobs in the building. While production workers like Mary were forced to stand in one spot for hours on end, Conley has free reign of the entire building. He collected the trash, cleaned up messes and performed any physical labor that was needed. Conley kept to himself and few of his co-workers knew that Conley had a criminal history and had spent several years on the chain gang while in prison. Conley disliked Leo Frank more than most. Many times, he would sneer his nose as he passed by Frank’s office as he wondered why he got to sit in the big comfortable office while he had to push a broom for pennies.

     That night, the wheels of production had come to a halt as the night watchman came on duty. The night watchman and Jim Conley were the only black employees at the factory. The rest was made up of white female girls. The night watchman began his rounds and when he entered the factory basement, he froze as he saw the body of Mary Phagan lying lifeless. It was obvious that she had been beaten and raped at some point. The nightwatchman called the police as quickly as he could.

     When the police arrived, they found two notes lying beside Mary’s body. One read, “that negro down hire [sic] did this” and the other said, “the night witchman [sic] did this”. The police initially suspected the night watchman of the murder and tried to call Leo Frank to have him come to the factory. When Frank finally arrived, he appeared extremely nervous. He wrang his hands and asked the police a flurry of questions while not allowing them time to answer. Due to this, the police began to turn their suspicion towards Frank. Before anyone could be arrested, huge crowds began to gather outside the police station demanding justice. When word got out that Leo Frank was a suspect, the media rolled with it and the town had no problem believing it. Afterall, he was a Jewish businessman from Brooklyn that didn’t exactly fit in with the town. He wore three-piece suits year-round and spoke with a Northern accent that seemed to rub most folks the wrong way. However, all the police had at this point was suspicions. They didn’t have any proof that Frank killed Mary. However, that would soon change

     Conley, the janitor, stepped up and provided a statement that he had seen Mary in Frank’s office. However, something wasn’t quite right. Why would a college educated man like Frank write notes with obvious misspellings. After intense interrogation, Conley admitted that it was he that had written the notes but had done so because he was ordered by Frank to assist in the murder. He admitted that after Frank killed Mary, he carried her dead body to the basement but only did so out of fear of losing his job. Over the next several months. Conley would change his story over four different times.

     The trial was such a media circus that police had to barricade the courthouse to keep the town from storming in. Conley spent three days on the stand telling the hungry crowd of how Frank had called him into his office that day and confessed to murdering mary and ordered him to take her body to the basement and to write the notes to put the blame on the night watchman. The crowd was eating up his testimony. This was a huge deal as in the South in the early 1900’s, it was highly uncommon for a black man to be allowed to testify against a white businessman but that is exactly what happened.

    Once all was said and done, the jury deliberated for less than two hours and returned a guilty verdict against Leo Frank and ordered him to be hanged by the neck until dead. The crowd outside wanted justice so Judge Leonard Roan ordered Frank and his attorneys not to be present for the reading of the verdict. Jim Conley was sentenced to one year in prison for concealing the body. Frank’s attorneys appealed the verdict all the way to the Supreme Court, but the case was such a high-profile story, they wanted nothing to do with it. Finally, Frank’s last chance lay in the hands of Georgia Governor John Slaton who reviewed the case. His final decision was to chance Frank’s sentence from death to life in prison based on the extremely questionable testimony of Conley. It seemed that the public demanded someone to be held accountable for the murder and although the evidence was sparce and the eyewitness had changed his story four times, someone had to pay and that someone would be Leo Frank. The town had no interest in the truth and wanted Leo Frank to die. When they found out his sentence had been changed to life in prison, riots erupted across Georgia with mobs turning on the governor. They stormed the governor’s house forcing the state militia to deploy machine guns to protect him. The governor and his wife left Georgia for their own safety. He was eventually allowed to return but his political career was over.

     On August 16, 1915, a group of men from Mary’s birthplace drove to the state prison farm and abducted Frank. These men were not normal citizens either. The mob was made up of a state legislator, a former governor, a judge, and other prominent citizens. They put a homemade noose around Frank’s neck, and they hanged him from a tall oak tree. Was Leo Frank innocent or guilty of a gruesome murder? That question wouldn’t be answered until years later in 1982. A witness that could have changed the case stayed silent. Alonzo Mann was a fourteen-year-old boy that worked for Frank at the factory. Seventy years later, Mann admitted that he had personally seen not Leo Frank, but the janitor Jim Conley kill Mary and Conley told Mann that if he opened his mouth, he would kill him as well. Leo Frank was officially pardoned on March 11th, 1986.

Blog Post Title Two

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.