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Enjoy the episode.

Warning, this episode contains descriptions of sexual violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

Just a few days after Mary Fagan is murdered, E F.

Holloway arrives for his morning shift at the National Pencil Company.

That's when something suspicious caught his eye.

A black sweeper at the factory was huddled over a basin vigorously scrubbing a blue work shirt.

As Holloway quietly watched from a distance, he noticed the water turning red as the man scrubbed.

By now everyone was talking about the murder of one of the factory's young workers, thirteen year old Mary Fagan.

Holloway approached the man and asked him what he was doing.

He jumped a bit as if surprised.

The factory sweeper, Jim Connley, explained that he was simply washing a rust stain out of his workshirt.

He wanted it to be clean.

When he went to the police station to give a statement.

Like all the other employees of the factory, he was subpoenaed as well.

Holloway turned and walked away.

Within minutes, Atlanta police arrived at the National Pencil Factory, arrested Jim Conley, and hauled him into the precinct for questioning.

Jim Conley was twenty nine years old.

He'd grown up in one of Atlanta's poor black neighborhoods east of downtown Vine City.

Back in twenty seventeen, Atlanta built an enormous two billion dollars stadium for the football and soccer teams.

Today, that stadium towers over the neighborhood of Vine City like an alien spaceship.

There's a Mercedes Ben's logo on the side of it that's about the size of a house.

Some residents felt like the structure, which is ridiculous in scale, was a pretentious insult to one of Atlanta's first historic black communities.

Back in the early nineteen hundreds, Vine City was a pretty rough place, and that's putting it mildly.

The average lifespan of someone living in Vine City back then was only thirty five.

It received little to no city services, was rife with poverty, and was environmentally toxic.

Newspapers reported rampant crime, cockfighting, prostitution, shootings, gambling, and more.

This was the world Jim Conley lived in.

Conley also had a well documented drinking problem.

A female employee at the National Pencil Company once turned a corner and nearly tripped over him.

He was laid out on the shop floor, stone cold drunk.

His drinking had gotten him into lots of trouble, landing him behind bars on multiple occasions.

At one point, he began telling police his name was Willie Conley in an effort to prevent them from accurately tracking his numerous offenses.

But Jim Conley's lawlessness wasn't just for public drunkenness.

He'd been arrested other times, once for throwing rocks, another time for an attempted arm robbery.

Both of those crimes landed him on the chain gang.

Conley's most serious offense, however, was much worse, and attempted shooting on a female friend.

He fired a gun at her, but the bullet barely missed.

Jim Conley's record was anything but clean.

After bringing Jim into the police headquarters, they took his wet shirt, the one now dripping with a red substance, and sent it off to be analyzed.

Then the questioning began, chiefly where was he on Saturday April twenty six, the day Mary Fagan was killed.

His story was straightforward.

Around ten thirty am, he went downtown.

He drank some whiskey, shot some dyes, played some pool, and then had a few beers.

He went home around four pm and never left the house the rest of the night.

Police, still suspicious, then showed Conley the two murder notes, asking him if they looked familiar.

He shook his head and said no, going on to explain that he couldn't have written them even if he wanted to.

He didn't know how to write.

Now, this certainly was not unusual.

In nineteen thirteen, the city of Atlanta provided no public education to the vast majority of black children.

One reporter would later say of Conley that he was a quote very ordinary ignorant.

It'll negro not unacquainted with the stockaidee side note here.

The Stockade was another jail light detention facility in Atlanta, like the ominous Fulton Tower.

It was designed to look like a fortress.

Unlike the Fulton Tower, the Stockaide is still standing today.

Every time I go to my nearest grocery store, which is over in the Glenwood Park neighborhood, I can see the top of the Stockaide still peeking over the trees.

So if Jim Conley could not write, then there's no way he could have written those murder notes.

And if it didn't write the murder notes, it'd be tough to make the case that he killed Mary Fagan.

There was just one problem.

As a black child growing up in Atlanta, Jim Conley had gone to an elementary school.

He could read and he could write.

Though police had been focusing on Leo Frank, this new development shook up the entire investigation.

You're listening to episode six teen of Catlic one Trial two Tales.

It's May of nineteen thirteen, month number twenty nine of our fifty six Months Saga.

Atlanta police are chasing every possible lead in their quest to solve the biggest murder mystery in the state's history.

Meanwhile, Atlanta's three daily newspapers are embroiled in a fierce battle covering the story.

Suspicion had initially fallen on the Black Night watchman Newt Lee.

However, the factory's Jewish superintendent, Leo Frank, was now on the spotlight, with newspapers printing scandalous reports of Frank's alleged flirtations with young women.

While Atlanta was running wild with rumors, local officials quietly decided to exhume Mary Fagan's remains.

Mary Fagin was laid to rest just two days after her body was discovered.

She was buried in her hometown of Marietta, a few miles north of Atlanta.

About a week after her burial, investigators decided they needed a closer look at her body, so the body was removed and doctors performed a primitive graveside autopsy.

They took tissue samples and examined both the contents of her stomach and the nature of her wounds.

Strangely, after the first autopsy was deemed insufficient, another one was performed just a few days later.

Meanwhile, Atlanta's Jewish community began to mount a fierce campaign in defense of their man, Leo Frank.

You'll remember that just a few days after he was taken into custody.

The Georgian ran the headline police have the strangler, with the picture of Frank underneath it.

This enraged Atlanta's Jewish elites, who felt that the paper's coverage was both irresponsible and biased.

Several influential Jewish merchants around the city canceled their advertising deals with The Georgian, and they demanded fairer treatment, even sending petitions around the city accusing The Georgian of having quote aroused the community to a dangerous degree.

On May the eighth, the coroner's inquest was complete.

It didn't take long for the group to establish that there was in fact enough evidence to send Leo Frank before a grand jury, and the grand jury would decide whether or not a full blown trial was needed to establish Frank's guilt or innocence.

However, just two days after the corners in quest, all three Atlanta papers blasted a big new development in the case, The Tale of Little Montine Stover.

Montine Stover was a fourteen year old laborer at the National Pencil Company who liked Mary Fagan went to pick up her pay on that fateful Saturday.

Montine stover story went like this, She arrived at the factory around midday, knowing that employees could officially draw their pay at noon.

She opened the door to the mostly empty factory and walked up the stairs to Leo Frank's office.

She glanced at the clock twelve or five pm.

The door to the superintendent's office was cracked open, so she gently knocked.

Getting no response, she pushed it open.

Frank's office was empty.

After waiting there for five more minutes, she decided to leave twelve ten pm.

As she left, she looked around a bit more for Frank.

He was nowhere in sight.

This was a fairly major development in the story, and that it contradicted Frank's accounting of his whereabouts on that day.

He had claimed that he was in his office continuously from twelve o'clock to twelve to twenty five.

Now Montine Stover's testimony came in a very official format, a sworn affidavit secured by one Hugh Dorsey as the Solicitor General of Fulton County.

Hugh Dorsey had begun to emerge as the major player in the Fagan investigation.

As Solicitor General.

Dorsey existed in the Georgia legal system, but separate from local law enforcement.

Early on, he believed that Atlanta police had botched and were continuing to botch the investigation, and so on that first week in May, he inserted himself into the case as the lead investigator.

Now, this would not replace the work of the Atlanta Police detectives, but it would certainly annoy them.

Now in the year since, many have speculated that Dorsey became interested in the case only when it became a blockbuster news story.

In previous months, Hugh Dorsey had lost several high profile cases in Atlanta, and this was his chance to redeem himself.

This was his chance to establish himself as a local hero to put a child killer behind bars, and it became a parent who Dorsey believed the child killer to be.

On May twenty third, the grand jury was convened again.

The purpose of a grand jury is to examine evidence and establish if there's enough there to bring the person in question to trial.

That person in question was Leo Max Frank.

The grand jury consisted of twenty one jurors, mostly prominent white businessmen from around Atlanta.

Things moved quickly.

Solicitor Hugh Dorsey led the way, producing an array of evidence against Frank.

Dorsey made the case that Frank murdered Mary on the floor of the metal room and then took her to the basement to dispose of the body.

This countered the original theory that Mary had been murdered in the basement.

Though he presented no physical evidence, it was apparently enough to convince the jury.

It took them only five minutes to return an indictment against Frank, and it's worth noting here that four of the jurors were Jewish.

The next day, the Atlanta Georgian reported that a full blown trial was forthcoming, predicted that in light of the existing evidence, it would still be difficult to pin a conviction on Frank.

This was their reasoning.

It is regarded as likely that the defense will claim, first of all, that the state has failed to establish Frank's connection with the crime.

The defense will represent that the most of the state has done is to establish that he had the opportunity to commit the murder.

Frank never was seen with the girl, either on the day of the strangling or before.

It is not known that ever spoke to her except in connection with her worth.

None of Frank's clothing has been found with bloodstains upon it.

No fingerprints upon the girl's body or clothes were identified as his.

None of his personal belongings were found near the girl's body.

Absolutely nothing was discovered in the search of the detectives that fastened the crime on him.

While Atlanta was getting geared up for the trial against Leo Frank, there were new developments unfolding with Jim Conley.

Though he initially told police he couldn't write, some good old fashioned detective work proved otherwise.

Detectives tracked down a factory employee who said he'd seen Jim Conley jotting in a notepad on multiple occasions.

They also tracked down various examples of Conley's handwriting.

When they confronted Conley about it, he confessed that it was true he could write.

They then read to him a very specific phrase and asked him to write it out.

The phrase that long, tall black Negro did this by himself.

They then compared his writing to that of the murder notes.

Sure enough, they discovered a remarkable similarity, and that some words had been misspelled in the same way.

Despite all of this, Conley swore he did not write the notes, however, just a couple of days later, he retracted that statement and confessed to writing the notes, but under very specific circumstances.

This was Jim Connley's revised version of events on that Saturday.

As it turns out, Jim Conley had visited a few saloons in downtown Atlanta that morning.

At some point he bumped into his boss, Leo Frank, out on the street.

Frank asked him to follow him to the factory for some important business.

He follows Frank to his office, and Frank asked him to wait down in the lobby.

Some time passes and Conley falls asleep.

He's awoken some time later by the sound of Leo Frank whistling for his attention.

He walks up the stairs to his office.

Conley, at this point says Leo Frank was acting strange, maybe even nervous.

He was also trembling, shaking so bad at one point that he latched onto Conley's arm to steady himself.

Next, Leo Frank asks Conley to write something, as he dictates it to him, the words and the murder notes, and then oddly Frank mumbles why should I hang as Conley as writing.

Once finished writing, Frank gives Conley some money and bids him farewell.

Conley takes the money, buy some booze, goes to a movie, and then returns home.

He finished by saying that he didn't even know about the murder of Mary Fagan until he returned to work on Monday morning.

The newspapers quickly reported on the latest developments with this new suspect.

In late May, further examination of Jim Connley's handwriting only confirmed the theory that he had in fact written the notes.

However, the question that remained was whether or not Conley had killed the girl himself and written the notes, or if he was simply an innocent pawn who'd been manipulated by the diabolical superintendent.

As May turned into June, Solicitor Hugh Dorsey sharpened his case against Leo Frank, working day and night to gather evidence and secure witnesses for the upcoming trial.

Rumors emanating from the National Pencil Factory held that many workers there believed Jim Conley was the real murderer.

Dorsey, however, was vinced that Leo Frank was guilty, and Conley was his most powerful witness in proving it.

That summer attempts were made to bring Jim Conley before a grand jury, but they all failed.

To the chagrin of Leo Frank's legal team, the decision was made that if any action was brought against Jim Conley, it wouldn't happen until after the trial of Leo Frank.

With Frank's trial looming, this predicament created a high stake scenario for Jim Conley.

If he cooperated with Hugh Dorsey to help secure a conviction against Leo Frank, he'd be off the hook.

However, if Leo Frank was acquitted, all the suspicion would shift to Conley, and a whiskey prone black man with a violent past was unlikely to fare too well in that scenario.

For weeks, Solicitor Hugh Dorsey met one on one with Conley, helping prepare him for the witness stand Like today, witness coaching is a common practice in criminal trials, and Dorsey had a lot of work to do to ensure that Calmley communicated clearly and consistently in front of the jury.

By the end of July, final preparations for the trial were being made.

On the side of the prosecution, you had Hugh Dorsey, a seasoned and brilliant law man who was up for the task of leading the state's case against Leo Frank.

He was assisted by a man named William Smith, who was also Jim Conley's attorney.

One interesting note here is that William Smith had a bit of a soft spot for African Americans falsely accused of crimes.

He'd spent much of his legal career defending them.

By all accounts, William Smith was an advocate for racial justice in Atlanta decades before the civil rights movement.

On the other side, Leo Frank's team, Leo Frank's defense team was big, at least eight different lawyers with various specialties, all working to prove Frank's innocence.

However, the most visible on the team would be Luther Rosser and well known Jewish attorney Reuben Arnold.

Leo Frank would be well represented.

On July twenty fourth, one hundred forty four potential jurors were brought in for interviews.

Within several hours, the group was whittled down to its final number twelve, all men, all white, all around the age of forty, and all married but one.

By all accounts, it was a stellar group.

A salesman, an optician, a realtor of bank teller, a writer at the Constitution had this to say.

Of the many juries called upon to serve in famous cases in Fulton County, none has classed higher and intellectual fitness or physical appearance than the men who make up the Frank jury.

For the most part, the jury is composed of young men this side of forty, men who have the appearance of having succeeded in life and who give promise of still greater success.

Presiding over the trial would be none other than sixty four year old Judge Leonard Roan.

If that name sounds familiar, well it should.

Way back in episodes nine and ten, we talked about the trial of William H.

Mitchell down in Thomasville, Georgia, YEP.

Judge Roane presided over that trial as well.

And now five years later, Judge Roane found himself looking down on yet another trial that felt less like illegal proceeding and more like a three ring circus.

When the trial began on July twenty eighth, the courtroom was filled to the brim with lawyers, press and spectators.

It was held in Atlanta's stately City Hall building.

Sadly, this building, like most of Atlanta's great historic structures of the early twentieth century, has been bulldozed.

The summer of nineteen thirteen was an unusually hot one, so special measures were taken to keep the courtroom as cool as possible.

On the first day of the trial, Leo Frank entered the courtroom, followed by both his mother and his wife, Lucille.

Leo and Lucille were heckably dressed.

One reporter noted that Frank's demeanor seemed calm and self assured, though another thought he looked overwhelmed, possibly nervous.

Throughout this entire ordeal, Lucille Frank had been positively supportive of her husband.

Despite Leo's sometimes hard exterior, his wife always saw a softer side.

Lucille Slok Frank had shown friends scores of sappy love notes Leo had sent her in the years before they were married.

She loved her husband deeply, and one time said this about him.

I suppose there are many husbands in the world as good as Leo, and it may be therefore that I am foolishly fond of him.

But he is my husband and I have the right to love him very much.

Indeed, and I do.

If I make too much of him, perhaps it is because he has made too much of me.

More than a month before the trial, Lucille put out a public statement in support of her husband and loudly proclaiming his innocence.

She then took a swipe at Hugh Dorsey, accusing him of manipulating witnesses to speak against her husband.

And so on this monumental day, Lucille Frank did what any loving wife would have done.

She stood by her man or sat rather literally sitting directly behind him for the majority of the trial.

On the trial's first day, the prosecution called a slate of witnesses.

First among them was Fanny Coleman, Mary Fagan's mother.

Missus Coleman was understandably distraught, one time breaking down when shown the clothing her daughter wore on the day she was killed.

Her despair was humanizing.

It forced the jury to feel the weight of her loss.

Young George Epps testified next, telling the courtroom that he'd ridden the street car with Mary on her final day, but that she never shoot up to meet him for a movie later that afternoon.

Newt Lee, however, was the most anticipated witness On that first day, the night watchman who discovered Mary Fagan's body told the same consistent story he'd told many times before.

However, he reiterated that Frank seemed a little bit nervous in fidgetty when he saw him that afternoon.

He also reported that Frank had called the factory about seven pm that night to check on things, and he said this was quite unusual, something Frank had never done before.

Over the next several days, a parade of witnesses moved on and off the witness stand.

Detectives who'd investigated the scene gave their accounting of events and at times contradicted themselves.

Other workers at the National Pencil Factory took the stand too.

Among them was a machinist who discovered blood spatter near Mary's workstation, as well as her pay envelope.

Another woman claimed she'd seen an unidentified black man loitering in the lobby on the afternoon of the killing.

This was presumed to be Jim Conley.

Montine Stover took the stand and confirmed her original story that from twelve oh five to twelve ten pm on the day Mary was murdered.

She stood way in Leo Frank's empty office.

Now, this testimony took on fresh significance when doctor Roy Harris testified.

He was one of the doctors who had examined Mary Fagin's body.

He took particular interest in the contents of her stomach, the cabbage and bread she'd en't for breakfast on the last day of her life.

Mary's mother reported that she'd ean't breakfast that day around eleven am, and the contents of the stomach showed almost no signs of digestion.

Doctor Harris believed Mary was murdered sometime between noon and one o'clock.

The issue of Mary's alleged sexual assault was also discussed.

Doctor Harris, along with another physician who examined Mary Fagan's body, stated that though they observed damage to the vaginal area, it was impossible to conclusively prove that she'd been raped.

On the seventh day of the trial, the prosecution's star witness was set to take the stand, Jim Conley.

On Monday, August the fourth, a throng of people began amassing outside Atlanta City Hall, hoping to get inside the courtroom to hear Conley's testimony.

The line wove its way through the streets for more than a quarter of a mile.

One reporter noted that it looked like a scene from a World Series baseball game.

Jim Conley arrived in court looking like a star.

His lawyers needed to overhaul his image from stumbling town drunk into trusted, debonair gentleman.

So Conley showed up clean shaven in sporting a brand new suit with polished leather shoes.

I will say I've seen pictures of him from that day.

He looks really sharp.

Before this day, Jim Conley's previous statements to police were dicey at best.

He'd been caught in multipleize and made several contradictory statements.

But as he was sworn in on this day, he knew he was expected to give his final and true account of what took place at the National Pencil Factory on April the twenty sixth.

Those who expected fireworks from Jim connley sworn testimony were not disappointed.

This was the story he told.

On the day before Mary Fagan was murdered, Leo Frank pulled Jim Connley aside and told him he needed him to come in on Saturday morning, when Hugh Dorsey asked him what he wanted him to do.

Conley said this, I had watched for him while he was upstairs talking to young ladies.

I would sit down at the first floor and watch the door for him.

Now, the implication here is that Conley was a lookout, ensuring that no one entered the factory's front door while Frank engaged in sexual escapades in his office.

Conley said he'd acted as Frank's lookout on multiple occasions, but on that day, when Conley arrived, Frank gave him a very specific instructions.

He said there was a young lady coming in and that they needed to quote chat a while.

When Conley heard Frank stomp his foot from his office above, he was to allow that girl in and then locked the door behind her.

After a while, Conley heard the stomp.

Seconds later, Mary entered the lobby and ascended the steps to Leo Frank's office.

Conley locked the door.

Minutes later, Conley heard footsteps going towards the metal room and then a woman's scream.

After that, he heard a whistle from Frank.

This was Conley's signed to come upstairs.

According to Conley, when he walked into Leo Frank's office, He saw him holding a chord and said that he had a wild look in his eyes.

Dorsey then asked, did Frank say anything to you.

Here's Conley's response, a direct quote from the trial transcrip.

Yes, sir, He asked me, did you see that little girl who've passed here just a while ago?

And I told him I saw one come along there, and she came back again, and then I saw another one come along down there, and she hasn't come back down.

And he says, well, that one you saw didn't come back down.

She came into my office a while ago and wanted to know something about her work in my office.

And I went back there to see if the little girl's work could come and I wanted to be with a little girl, and she refused me, and I struck her, and I guess I struck her too hard and she fell and hit her head against something, and I don't know how bad she got hurt.

Of course, you know, I ain't built like other men.

This was an absolute bombshell of an accusation.

According to Conley, Frank admitting to making a sexual advance on Mary Fagin, and when she refused him, he hit her, which caused her to fall and hit her head on something and she died.

And then Frank adds something odd there at the end.

He says, quote, of course, you know, I ain't built like other men.

Again, if Frank said this, what did he mean by it?

Conley went on to explain again I'm quoting here.

The reason he said that was I had seen it in a position I haven't seen other men that's got children.

I have seen him in the office two or three times before Thanksgiving and a lady was in his office and she was sitting down in a chair and she had her clothes up to hear, and he was down on his knees and she had her hands on mister Frank.

I have seen him another time there in the packing room with a young lady lying on the table.

She was on the edge of the table when I saw her.

Using very vague language, Jim Conley is saying that he'd seen Leo Frank performing oral sex on several women in the factory, and the reason for that being was that he had some kind of physical flaw that hindered more traditional sexual behavior.

As you can imagine in nineteen thirteen, this was not a socially acceptable thing to describe, and everyone in the courtroom was scandalized after this.

Us Conley testified that Frank had him write the murder notes and then asked him if he would dispose of the body.

Frank then led Conley to the spot in the metal room.

Conley helped bundle up the body of Mary Fagan, walked it to the freight elevator, and carried it to the basement.

According to Conley, Frank then asked him if he would burn the body in the furnace.

Conley agreed.

That's allegedly when Frank said something along the lines of why should I hang I have wealthy people in Brooklyn.

Again, this was according to Conley.

However, Frank's plan was never executed.

Conley's story was that he then left the factory, walked to a saloon and got drunk.

He awoke from his stupor hours later and staggered back home.

The body was never burned, and it was discovered hours later by Newtle.

As you can imagine, Conley's testimony landed like a tornado in the courtroom, wreaking havoc on Leo Frank's defense team.

Journalists, however, praised Conley for his poise on the stand.

They said he was confident, consistent, and utterly unflappable.

One reporter from The Georgian couldn't help but put his finger on the elephant in the room.

The unwritten but universally recognized rules of race in the South.

These are the words of reporter Fuzzy Woodruff.

Jim Conley has upset traditions of the South.

A white man is on trial, his life hangs on the words of a Negro, and the South listens to the Negro words.

But the South has not thus suddenly forgotten the fact that Negro evidence is as slight as tissue paper.

The South is not forgotten that when a white man's word is brought against a negro's word, there is no question as to the winner.

Now, this statement is ridiculous and outrageous, as it was clearly identified what would become one of the controlling dynamics of the entire trial race.

After a brief recess, Leo Frank's attorneys began their cross examination of Jim Conley, and they were fairly relentless.

In addition to using the inward multiple times, Attorney Luther Rosser attacked Conley's intelligence early, at one point even asking him if he could spell the word cat.

Next, Rosser attacked Conley's character.

He brought up Conley's previous statements, highlighting the various lies and half truths he had told.

They were plentiful.

Conley at one point plainly agreed with him, saying, quote, I told some stories, I'll admit.

Of course, Conley's previous record of drunkenness and multiple arrests were put on display as well.

Frank's legal team was determined to show the jurors that anything that came out of the mouth of Jim Conley could not be trusted.

Despite this onslaught, Jim Conley kept a cool He definitely dodged many of the questions, reiterating the line I disremember time and time again.

Jim, you disremember a whole lot, don't you, Rosser barked.

On one occasion, Conley paused and responded, I disremember in all.

Jim Conley was on the witness stand for an unbelievable sixteen hours over three days.

When the dust settled, most agreed that Jim Conley had held his own against one of the best defense teams ever assembled in the state's history.

Though not perfect, his story was considered mostly consistent and fairly believable.

It was reported that after Conley's testimony, Leo Frank was pissed.

He called it quote the vilest and most amazing pack of lies ever conceived in the promoted brain of a wicked human being.

In the days after Conley's testimony, additional witnesses took the stand, and it was the litany of contradictions.

The defense produced multiple medical experts who invalidated doctor Harris's estimated time I'm of death, noting that cabbage digests very slowly in the stomach and that that small detail showed that she was probably murdered.

Much later in the day, a street car driver said he saw Mary Fagan on the morning she died, but that she was alone, a direct contradiction to George EPP's story that he was with her.

They also tracked down one of the women Frank had allegedly been intimate with in his office.

She denied the story outright and said she didn't even know Leo Frank.

Leo Frank's personal assistant, who worked most saturdays, testified that he'd never seen Frank doing anything inappropriate at the factory.

Another man who worked at the factory on Saturdays said he never noticed Frank and Conny interacting or talking at all.

As the third week of the trial began, both sides introduced a flurry of character witnesses.

Nearly two dozen friends and family members of Leo Frank's spoke to his good character.

Frank's in laws took the stand.

They said they were with them on the day of the murder and he wasn't acting strange at all.

Frank's own mother took the stand.

She vouched for her son and produced a letter he'd written to a friend on the afternoon of Mary's death.

The letter was even keel, neatly written, and spoke casually of mundane family affairs.

This was hardly the work of someone who just killed a little girl in a fit of sexual rage.

Other women from the National Pencil Company spoke on Frank's behalf, claiming they'd never seen him do or say anything inappropriate.

However, others maintained that Frank had been a bit too friendly with the factory's female laborers.

In addition to the women, two teenage office boys from the factory testified.

One of them, Philip Chambers, told the courtroom he'd never seen Frank make any inappropriate advances towards women, and that he'd never seen anyone watching the door.

That's when Hugh Dorsey asked him a strange and unexpected question, did you ever complain that Frank can may improper advances towards you?

Now?

Insinuating that Leo Frank was a homosexual was a tactic design to seed the idea in the minds of the jurors that Leo Frank was a sexual deviant, though as far as we know, there is zero evidence that Leo Frank ever had any interest in or sexual contact with men.

Nevertheless, this would not be the last time it was brought up.

The other office boy was fourteen year old Alonso Man.

He'd worked at the factory on that Saturday and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

He'd never seen Frank bring women back to the office either.

However, in the course of his testimony, alonso Man came across timid and unusually nervous, and the press corps even picked up on this.

One reporter for the Journal wrote that alonso Man was quote frightened by his experience in court, and the stenographer had difficulty in hearing his answers.

Though he played a relatively small role in the trial of Leo Frank, this won't be the last we hear of fourteen year old Alonzo Man.

As the trial dragged on, tension continued to build over one lingering question, would Leo Frank himself take the stand?

Well?

On August eighteenth, that question was answered.

Leo Max Frank was sworn in and finally took his place next to the judge.

This was the moment they'd all been waiting for.

In Frank's opening statement, he gave somewhat of a life history, going as far back as his boyhood days in Brooklyn.

He then described moving to Atlanta, meeting his wife Lucille, and eventually he recounted his version of events from Saturday, April twenty sixth.

At one point, he rambled on about the various invoices he dealt with that morning and offered a level of detail that seemed excessive.

He then talked of Mary Fagan's visit to his office that day.

Yet again, he described a very mundane encounter.

She came to receiver pay, He looked up what she was owed, he paid her, she left, and that was it.

After this, he jumped back into a highly detailed description of the work he did at his desk that day.

He outlined the mini mathematical calculations and spoke at length about the minutia of pencil manufacturing.

Frank's apparent strategy here was to demonstrate that he was far too busy and engaged with his work that day to kill anyone.

His story went on for nearly two hours, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on many in the courtroom.

The rambling only invited more suspicion.

Next, Frank addressed his nervousness on that first day.

He explained very matter of factly that anyone who'd been summoned from their home to a morgue to gaze upon the body of a dead girl would have been visibly shaken.

He then voiced his belief that the entire investigation had been biased against him, and that the detective work had been sloppy and the litigators had been mob like in their manipulation of witnesses.

Frank was finally coming alive.

In his closing statement, Leo Frank spoke with conviction.

Here's an excerpt, gentlemen, I know nothing whatever of the death of little Mary Fagan.

I had no part in causing her death, nor do I know how she came to her death.

After she took her money and left my office.

I never even saw Conley in the factory or anywhere else on that day, April twenty sixth, nineteen thirteen.

The statement of the Negro Conley is a tissue of lies, from first to last.

I know nothing whatever of the cause of the death of Mary Fagin, and conly statement as to his coming up and helping me dispose of the body, or that I had anything to do with her or to do with him that day, is a monstrous lie.

The story as to women coming into the factory with me for immoral purposes as a base lie, and the few occasions that he claims to have seen in indecent positions with women is a lie so vile that I have no language with which to fitly denounce it.

Gentlemen, some newspaper men have called me the silent man in the tower, and I have kept my silence and my counsel advisedly until the proper time and place.

The time is now the places here, and I have told you the truth, the whole truth, for several seconds, the courtroom sat and stunned silence.

Lucille Frank burst into tears, and her husband embraced her as he walked back to his seat.

After weeks have built up, Leo Frank's time on the witness stand was over after four hours.

With Leo Frank's testimony complete, there were only a few days left before closing arguments and then a verdict.

Would the twelve men in the jury box believe Frank was a child predator, a deviant who'd finally crossed the line, or would they believe that he was an innocent man with a blameless record, an unfortunate soul caught up in a web woven by bias journalists, crooked cops, and litigators with an extra grind.

We'll soon find out.

That's next time on catlic Hey, they're Catholic fans.

As I mentioned at the top of the episode, early bird tickets for the Catolic Live finale are now on sale.

The big event is planned for March the fourteenth at Plywood Place in Atlanta's historic West End neighborhood.

I would love to meet you there.

We've got an amazing night plan full of history, mystery, and true crime, plus we're going to be ending the night with an after party at Monday night Garage.

General admission and VIP tickets are on sale now.

However, the best deals are the ticket bundles.

These bundles include tickets to the finale, Catolic t shirts and tickets to the Catolic Walking Tour happening that same weekend.

Seating is very limited, as are the spots for the walking tours.

Early bird pricing will only last February the thirteenth.

After that, all prices will increase.

In other words, don't delay.

Go right now to catlic dot com, click on finale.

That's catlic dot com.

Then click on finale to get your early bird tickets.

That's it.

Bring on the Altru.

Catlic is recorded in Atlanta's historic Cabbagetown neighborhood.

Executive producer walnut Ridge Harmon.

Original music for this episode provided by Duco.

Cover art Rachel Eleanor Catolic Store manager Burette Harmon, Catolic Instagram follower of the Week, Lindsay of Soul Anchor Fitness Catolic Instagram commenter of the week.

It's username Ay Underscore JVT, who kindly corrected my mispronunciation of Vashti.

It's actually Vashti who knew Catolic Instagram story Star of the Week Emily of Road to the Sunrise.

While you're at catolic dot com b shirt to check out our Catolic merchandise store.

We're talking about a whole collection of more than twenty products t shirts, prints, stickers, and more inspired by the Catolic story.

Check it out today at catlic dot com.

And finally, Catolic is independently written and produced by me bt Harmon.

Signing off, I'd like to remind you to save old buildings, build bike lanes, and vote for public transit.

We'll see you in the next episode, The Fit of p