Days of Our Lives

A few weeks ago -- November 22, 2013 -- marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, to the very day, Friday, in fact, and unless one's tether to civilization had been severed, launching him (or her) into a gravity-less free fall through outer space (I haven't seen the movie, by the way, only the trailer), a sixty-hour media blitz guaranteed little likelihood that it would pass unnoticed.

It was a curious dual commemoration. Not only did the reportage plumb the depths of the tragic demise of the nation's youthful, vigorous leader struck down in the prime of life, of our collective, wistful mourning for what "might have been," and of the cult-like mythical greatness that forever after came to be associated with his name, it reminded all of us of requisite age how indelibly is the fateful day etched in our consciousness. If the current generation doubted the relevance of the universal refrain trumpeted by news writers and studio hosts -- "Where were you?" -- the simple truth is that none of us will ever forget.

Memory is a mysterious and elusive concept. As one who has, on this web site, occasionally attempted to recapture and record a handful of significant events from his past -- which has necessitated, frankly, considerable embellishment, if not pure fictionalization -- I am amazed by the retrospective powers exhibited in memoirs like Katherine Graham's Personal History, J. H. Moehringer's The Tender Bar, and our current president's Dreams from My Father -- all of which I enthusiastically recommend as superior examples of the genre. Either the authors initiated meticulous journals as soon as they could grasp a pencil, and dutifully maintained them until publication, or their brains function like digital cameras with unlimited gigabytes, storing reams of chronological images ready for regurgitation at the click of a mouse.

For the vast majority of mere mortals, however, an autobiography does not unwind like a linear length of twine; rather it is revealed in isolated moments in time, which, because of the joy, sadness, humor, anger, satisfaction, or frustration they evoked, have been preserved in a grab-bag of backward-looking tarot cards, to be extracted intermittently for the entertainment or edification of friends and acquaintances or for our own contemplation.

Only a precious few -- at least for me -- of these moments can be deemed truly "unforgettable," in the sense that the details of place and activity remain so pure, crystalline, and three-dimensional that we almost re-experience them, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, whenever they seize our attention. Obviously, there are some "days of our lives" -- like the Kennedy assassination -- whose global impact alone accounts for their palpable clarity, and others -- like the birth of a child or the death of a parent -- which endure because they are so deeply personal. And then there are those curious scenarios where public occurrences intersect with private situations in such a way as to freeze both in recurring synergistic tableaux.

It took no more thought than the mere conceiving of this exercise for five such moments to spring to mind, and only five, odd not only in that respect but also in their alignment with categories one and three above; while family life transitions are certainly memorable, their ceremonial nature, at least for me, relegates them to a secondary tier of recall.

In 1963, I was a fifteen-year-old junior -- I had skipped the fifth grade -- at E. C. Glass High School. Without referring to a cheat sheet, like the annual yearbook, the Crest, four editions of which are safely ensconced in my basement, I can only guess at the subjects I was taking -- English, Latin, French, for sure, Physics maybe, either Government or History of an unknown period -- nor can I name with certainty any of my teachers (Although who could forget the imperious, irrepressible classicist Ms. Lucille Cox?), except for those coincident with 1:00 PM on November 22.

It's Ms. Franklin's Analytical Geometry class -- we took Trigonometry second semester -- and I am anchored to the second or third desk from the front in the far right hand row, directly facing the door; the room itself occupies a corner on the first floor, only a few paces down the hall from administrative headquarters.

Although shorter, stouter, and somewhat more nimble, like Ms. Cox, Ms. Franklin is a stern, commanding presence who brooks no foolishness as she parades before the blackboard elucidating the finer points of her esoteric field -- which makes it all the more surprising that she would countenance anyone disrupting her regimen, even if he wears the familiar face of the assistant principal.

Mr. Milam -- tall and lean, with an angular, furrowed visage obviously chiseled from the same hard blocks of concrete that frame the building's towering portico -- strikes fear into the heart of every student, even one as meekly obedient and rule-abiding as I am. Naturally, one's first thought as the enforcer ambles across the threshold is for the safety and sanity of the unsuspecting delinquent (who could even be himself) about to be snatched from his seat and subjected to the most excruciating inquisition.

On this placid afternoon a quizzical expression has replaced Milam's perpetual scowl. He holds what looks like a baseball aloft in his right hand, as if about to pitch it to one of us wary spectators. It's not rawhide, however, but plastic, and from a hidden speaker a scratchy sound filters through the pregnant hush that has abruptly terminated all mathematical inquiry. (Is it possible, we speculate, that Milam is a closet Yankee fan, and listens to games in the seclusion of his office when he's supposed to be ferreting out malefactors -- although the season ended weeks ago?)

"Have you heard this?" he asks, in his incongruous high-pitched voice -- a rather absurd question, I think to myself, since you, Milam, don't allow us to carry radios around in our hip pockets, and if you did, Ms. Franklin wouldn't permit our listening to them.

At this point, the details evaporate. Does Milam tell us Kennedy has been shot, or do we hear the announcer ourselves? Milam himself is nonplussed; perhaps mindful of Orson Welles's panic-inducing broadcast of War of the Worlds, although he may have been too young to appreciate it in 1938, he muses out loud, "Is this some kind of joke?" before quietly leaving us in suspense in order to investigate further.

Within minutes the stunning news is validated, but what happens next? With two hours remaining, is school canceled? Is a restless student body called into assembly so that Principal McCue and others can attempt to allay its fears? One telling incident speaks volumes: as we swarm the exits, an obnoxious beady-eyed classmate named Scott manages to make himself heard above the din with the gleeful cry, "Kennedy is dead! Kennedy is dead!"

The slain president's posthumous martyrdom tends to obscure the controversial aspects of his career, which, to a white, Jewish, southern teenager could be dazzling, detestable, and confusing. Kennedy's precipitous alliance with a jailed Martin Luther King during the 1960 campaign landed him squarely in the pro-Civil Rights camp, and made him anathema to a region of staunch segregationists; concurrently, since the courts were mandating the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education, a few hardy trailblazers were breaching the racial barricades, including four at our own formerly unsullied institution.

The assassination, of course, accelerated the movement, as Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, orchestrated the passage of sweeping anti-discrimination legislation within one hundred days. And even more irony lay beneath the shooter's motivation. Back in those days, liberalism was synonymous not with the Democratic Party -- the driving force, after all, behind Massive Resistance -- but with the era's Evil Empire, Communism. And though John Kennedy may have been branded as such for his social conscience, it was his determined anti-Communism -- his abortive overthrow of Castro, his missile confrontation with Khrushchev -- that made him the target of Soviet sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald.

And like millions of others who stayed glued to their television screens throughout that surreal weekend, sitting in the den where I live now, I too ingested a double dose of weirdness, as Oswald himself fell to the bullets fired by Jack Ruby, and right before our very eyes.

John Kennedy made possibly the last unbroken presidential promise when, not long after his inauguration, he stated, in words better chosen than those of the incumbent regarding individual health insurance policies, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."

On July 20, 1969, at 4:17 PM EDT, five months shy of that deadline, while the world watched and waited with bated breath, an ungainly four-legged contraption bearing more resemblance to a scorpion than its "Eagle" namesake touched down softly on the barren lunar landscape; within hours its two human passengers would become the first ever to set foot on a foreign celestial body.

I never saw it because at that moment I was in Rome, Italy, where it was 10:17 PM, probably staggering back to the five-story walk-up pensione where I was staying. It was an uncharacteristic oversight on the part of my fellow graduate and traveling companion, BDF, who had meticulously researched and prepared our six-week itinerary -- identifying all the mandatory churches, museums, and historical attractions as well as a number of reasonably-priced accommodations and restaurants -- as we stooped to conquer Europe's most notable citadels -- London, Amsterdam, Paris, Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna, Florence, Rome, and Nice (for rest and relaxation) -- on a measly five dollars a day, an irrational penuriousness, as our parents (at least mine) had just expended an ungodly sum of money to send us to Washington and Lee University for four years.

BDF, or "the Bee," as he was affectionately labeled by our fraternity scribe RAM -- a nickname he despised, by the way, since it prompted upon his approach a chorus of rising "buzzes" followed by a series of resounding "swats" -- was very much my mirror-image; he was Jewish, a southerner, an English major, cerebral, scholarly, and never without his glasses. If there was any difference between the two of us, it was in our politics; although I considered myself a progressive, independent thinker, "the Bee" had witnessed the Birmingham riots and often berated me for not more enthusiastically espousing the cause of the oppressed black man and denouncing the folly of the Vietnam War.

Content to defer to "the Bee" as my guide, I'm amazed at how much sightseeing and culture (including a Shakespearian play and an Italian opera) he manages to cram into the the three or four days allotted to each of our destinations -- the specifics of which long ago faded into oblivion -- and at the quality of the local and imported cuisine we are able to enjoy on our modest budgets. Some days we even have enough coins left over to mitigate the summer heat with a Coca-Cola or a glace.

But by the time we get to Rome, our tightly-wound friendship has begun to fray around the edges. He relentlessly shepherds me to the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, out the Appian Way to the Catacombs, through the massive arches of the Colosseum, and up the steep incline of the Palatine Hill, from which, under the cooling shade of the scattered foliage, we survey with wonder the ruins of the Roman Forum. It was a scene I tried to recreate years later upon my return to the spot -- somewhat to the irritation of my wife, since, as I described it, standing between "the Bee" and me is a pleasing coed named Anne who either in Vienna or Florence hooked up with us and reconfigured our collegial twosome into a complicated triangle. Because both of us are infatuated with her.

Not that any lustful dreams are consummated -- unless "the Bee" is more surreptitiously seductive than my naivete gives him credit for, since, in a rather comedic pas de deux, neither of us will let the other out of his sight.

If the landing eluded us -- either from sheer exhaustion or our persistent, fruitless pursuit of Anne -- "the Bee," who aspires to a career in journalism, is determined that the subsequent moon walk must not be missed, even though it will occur at 5:56 AM, Rome time. There are no alarms or wake-up calls in these primitive quarters, but somehow he manages to arise at that uncivilized hour and throw on his well-worn jeans and tee shirt. He's almost out the door when he turns back to his semi-conscious roommate and exclaims with unequivocal exasperation, "Come on, Marc. Get up. This is a special moment in history." (As for Anne, I can only assume that she is peacefully asleep in her own pensione.)

He's right, I realize, as I rouse myself and, semi-dressed, stumble down the narrow stairway in his wake. He leads me to a smoke-filled bar -- perhaps staked out ahead of time -- which may or may not be on the ground floor of the same apartment building. A few grizzled natives are sitting or standing at the counter, probably drinking their breakfast wine; they gaze skyward, not at the heavens but at a grainy black-and-white twelve-inch television set perched on a shelf, on which is being broadcast the legendary "one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

My imagination -- more than my memory -- tells me I saw and heard it all. But the picture was so small and indistinct, the fuzzy dialogue so reminiscent of Milam's baseball radio, the incomprehensible conversation swirling around me so distracting that I can only be certain of  "Where I was."

In a recently-published novel of the same name by Richard North Patterson, the author draws a parallel between the narrator's Loss of Innocence during her college graduation summer of 1968, which is precipitated by some startling discoveries about herself and her family, and the nation's, which is reflected in the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the violence that surrounded the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Maybe every one's college graduation signals a loss of innocence -- as he bids farewell to the insulated, artificial, idyllic environment of academia and wades into the working world. And if I lost mine during the summer of 1969 when I returned from my European junket and found a draft notice staring me in the face (which I evaded by abandoning my fellowship to Columbia University and securing a high school teaching position), the Moon Landing symbolized its own kind of loss as an indisputable triumph never to be repeated. With defeat in Vietnam looming on the horizon, no matter how politicians might parse it otherwise, the myths that America was invincible and that its power, wealth, and ingenuity guaranteed its accomplishing anything it set its mind to were subsequently forever shattered.

Indeed, on January 28, 1986, one more haunting, tragic exhibition of ill-advised hubris would sear itself into our brain cells, when, seventy-three seconds after liftoff, at 11:38 AM, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart off the coast of central Florida, killing all seven crew members.

Although six moon landings and twenty-four Space Shuttle flights had anesthetized the public to such a degree that most of its attention was still focused on the two-days-old Super Bowl, in which the Shufflin' Chicago Bears had mauled the New England Patriots 46-10, the presence on board of Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, drew an unusually large number of viewers to the live launch. Immediately afterward, however, all major networks except CNN cut away to their regular programming; those who claimed to have seen the disaster as it occurred were most likely recalling a taped replay. Regardless, so extensive was the media coverage that, according to one survey, eighty-five percent of Americans learned of the accident within one hour.

Even in this era before pocket cell phones, news, especially of the tragic variety, travels fast, often by the simplest means -- word of mouth. Which must be how I hear it, since I am not in my home, office, or car, but walking the streets of Richmond, Virginia, engaged in my own exploratory mission.

Schewel Furniture Company is at a crossroads. For thirty years its stock has been divided fifty-fifty between the families of Ben and Abe Schewel. Ben's only son, BRS, has been active in the business all his life; his two sons, JBS and myself, are currently employed there; and his daughter DSC will join them shortly. Of Abe's three children, only one, ESS, has worked for the company, and none of his three children nor his one surviving nephew has any interest. Since ESS is in the midst of his second six-year term as a State Senator (he will be reelected for a third in 1988) and he and his siblings are now in their sixties, it's understandable that his family is seeking an exit strategy -- and a golden one.

If maximizing their investment is their objective, my own family's is unclear. My brother and I are thirty-eight and twenty-eight respectively, and are anticipating extended careers owning, operating, and growing this business, not only for the financial rewards but also for the psychological satisfaction inherent in proprietorship. My father, who is sixty-six and, unbeknownst to us, soon to be diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, salivates at the thought of one hundred percent ownership of the enterprise which permeates every fiber of his being. The multimillion dollar question is, at what cost, since all of us are averse to assuming a debt burden which recapitalization will most certainly entail and which, for ninety years, the company has been able to avoid.

My father floats the idea of an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan), but it founders under the weight of a less than optimal cash out. Then my cousin, ESS's nephew, EMH, urges us to consider the public option.

Schewel Furniture a publicly-traded company? Isn't that like living in a glass house, with all one's flaws, foibles, and most precious secrets exposed to neighbors and peeping toms? It's true we run a nice, medium-size family business, but I'm not sure we want to be held accountable to anonymous shareholders, investment analysts, bureaucratic regulators, and short-term results. And if our partners are looking forward to a windfall, my father cautions that they will most likely have to wait until the secondary stock offering.

EMH is a Wharton MBA who has accumulated a substantial portfolio as a real estate entrepreneur based in Charlottesville, and insists I give this opportunity a fair look. I agree to meet him in Richmond, where he has arranged a couple of interviews to help me understand the process and appreciate the advantages.

I only remember one -- and whether it occurs before or after our learning of the Challenger event, I cannot say. But it is with a man whose business history presented some notable similarities to ours and whose future would reveal some interesting lessons.

Stuart Siegel is Chairman of the Board of S and K Famous Brands, the men's clothier founded as a reseller of department store overstocks by his father and uncle out of the trunk of a Cadillac in 1967. Succeeding to the presidency in 1972, he began opening stores at a rapid pace, until by 1983 the company was operating twenty-three locations in Virginia and North Carolina, generating revenues of $18.3 million, and realizing profits of $2 million. That year it sold thirty percent of its common stock to the public for $5.5 million, distributing two-thirds of the proceeds to current shareholders and retaining one-third for investment purposes.

S and K Famous Brands, which will grow to 219 stores by 2008, will make Stuart Siegel a wealthy man and one of Richmond's most admired citizens and philanthropists. He will donate a multimillion lead gift to Virginia Commonwealth University's 190,000 square-foot athletic and entertainment facility which will open in 1999 and be named in his honor. But in 2009, victimized by mounting losses, unrelenting pressure to expand, a negative balance sheet, a revolutionary casual trend in men's fashion, and a sinking economy, S and K will declare bankruptcy, and shutter its doors.

Stuart Siegel made the correct decision for himself and his company, and maybe I would have been wiser to score a quick hit rather than take the long route. Because he fails to convince me. On December 31, 1986, after weeks of contentious negotiation, which involves our rejecting a lucrative offer from a venture capitalist firm, my father, brother, and I redeem our partners' stock at a valuation in excess of fifteen times earnings and twice book value -- exorbitant in our minds, insufficient in theirs -- a debt-financed buyout that will require twenty-five years to extinguish.

As for the Challenger, impatience and a failure on the part of NASA officials to heed warnings of a possibly catastrophic problem contributed to a tragedy that should have been prevented. As early as 1977 tests had shown that combustion gases could erode the rubber O-rings that sealed the field joints linking sections of the two solid rocket boosters, releasing a flame path and causing a burn-through of the rocket's casing. Engineers at Morton Thiokol, the system contractor, also believed that the rubberized material would be further compromised at temperatures below 50 degrees. With forecasts calling for an unusually cold morning on January 28, they suggested postponement, only to be told by Marshall Space Center managers George Hardy and Lawrence Mulloy, respectively, "I am appalled by your recommendation," and "My God, when do you want me to launch -- next April?"

As it turned out, thirty-two months would pass before the Space Shuttle program would resume.

Like S and K, Schewel Furniture will add more outlets to its chain throughout the next decade, although, at the modest rate of about one a year, hardly with the same ambitious fervor. With merchandise readily available in a recently-constructed 100,000 square foot distribution center, the formula is a simple one: drive to a small town within two hundred miles of Lynchburg; spy an empty building or shopping center space the landlord is desperate to lease; paint the front, carpet the floor, and put up a sign; fill it with sofas, bedroom suites, and dinette sets; hire a manager, credit manager, two salespeople, and two truck drivers; and advertise the first of many sales. With a dedicated stage crew doing all the heavy lifting, I merely show up for the last act, which for these shows, is the curtain-raising.

The premieres themselves have their own template, and run together like race horses bunched at the far turn -- until one flashy thoroughbred bursts from the pack, its colors imprinted with the date October 3, 1995.

Despite their scripted nature, Grand Openings stir the emotional pot. Pride in the pristine displays and the freshness of the premises; excitement at the start of a new venture; optimism for its forthcoming success (not always fulfilled) -- are all manifest in the facial expressions and body language of the management, staff, vendors, guests, and customers gathered for the occasion. If the latter sightings are a little sparse at 10:00 AM, I herd everyone else outside to form a critical mass, deliver a few thank-yous and introductions, and cut the ribbon.

Today we are in Salem, Virginia, sharing one-half of a former Lowe's with another building supply firm. We're a few miles off the main highway, but our proximity to two other furniture stores (which will eventually close) will help draw traffic. Our usual cosmetic (and frugal) enhancements have transformed a naked shell into an inviting showroom fully stocked with home furnishings value and style; naturally, I would think so, since I selected most of it. As the morning progresses, a steady flow of shoppers circulates through the aisles, persistent salespeople close a few orders, and terms writers finalize contracts. Meanwhile, suited dignitaries engage each other in quiet chitchat.

A bank of televisions lines a wall opposite the entrance, and suddenly, from all corners of the field, like hungry linemen converging on a fumble, a crowd gravitates that way. "Wait a minute," I think to myself. "What's going on here? This is a furniture store, not a sports bar. And besides, what game is being played on Tuesday at 1:00 PM?"

Actually, a very intriguing one. Because at that moment the jury is announcing its verdict in the murder trial of O. J. Simpson.

The thirty or so individuals who find themselves glued to those screens are not alone. An estimated 100 million people worldwide stop what they are doing to watch or listen. Long distance telephone calls drop 58%; trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange falls 41%. Government officials postpone meetings, and congressmen cancel press conferences; says one to a journalist, "You wouldn't be there, nor would I." Domino's Pizza reports that "not a single pizza is ordered in the United States between 1:00 and 1:05." The amount of lost productivity incurred by work stoppage is pegged at $480 million.

For perhaps the first time in the entire proceedings, Judge Lance Ito starts precisely on schedule. The jurors file in expressionless as always, looking vacantly ahead. When Ito instructs Simpson to stand and face the jury, Johnnie Cochrane and the rest of the defense team rise with him. As Clerk Deidre Robertson reads the words "not guilty," Simpson exhales and gives a sort of half smile. Cochrane pumps his fist quickly, and, grabbing Simpson's shoulder, touches it with his cheek. (Toobin, p. 430)

Jeffrey Toobin, who covered the trial for The New Yorker and ABC News, captured succinctly my own feelings, and the feelings, I suspect, of most of my small cohort, when he wrote afterward: "I was sitting . . . in the second row. Numb with shock, I stared at Simpson and had a single thought: He's going home. There is no red tape after an acquittal. The handcuffs come off, and you're on your way." (Toobin, p. 431)

Not only did we think O. J. was guilty and that the evidence against him was conclusive, we also believed that, in spite of the defense's brilliant strategy to portray him as the victim of a racially-motivated frame-up, his conviction was a certainty. That is, if we were white. Because, as Toobin writes, "in the days immediately after the end of the court case, [as] televised images of the verdict itself yielded to images of people watching the verdict," white viewers were shown immobilized in stunned, appalled silence, while black viewers were shown cheering and applauding. (Toobin, p. 434) In a 2004 poll, 87% of whites sampled said Simpson was guilty compared to 27% of blacks.

The fellows around me are more vocal and animated, erupting with denials of "No way," "I don't believe it," and "How could they?" It's a function of the herd mentality, where all of us are professing the same opinion, are bonded by the unique camaraderie of the moment, and are assured of affirmation. Initially, I believe, our reaction is one of "justice thwarted." But it won't take long for the charge of racial solidarity to be assessed against a jury which was comprised of one Latino, two whites, and nine blacks, one of whom, Carrie Bess, was heard to utter upon retiring from the courtroom, "We've got to protect our own." (Toobin, p. 431)

Solidarity of other sorts will underscore, in the words of Don DeLillo, "the defining event of our time," Tuesday, September 11, 2001 -- the solidarity of a great city, the most heterogeneous in the world, responding with courage and compassion to a wave of unprovoked terror; the solidarity of a nation confronted by the unthinkable: a breaching of its impregnable borders, and by means of civilian weaponry symbolic of its industrial supremacy; and, yes, the solidarity of fifteen al-Qaeda hijackers, whose own deaths are preordained the moment they board their four transcontinental jetliners.

Once again, I'm on the road, not for a Grand Opening, but a for a routine store visit, to Henderson, North Carolina. I know I spend the night there, but, strangely enough, I'm unclear as to where I was the previous day. My best guess is that I was at the Blockade Runner Hotel in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina for a Board Meeting of the Southern Home Furnishings Association. The date fits -- a Sunday-Monday in early September; around that time I definitely attended a function at that resort; and Henderson is a natural layover on the way home.

I'm staying at the Comfort Inn, and, after an invigorating five-mile run through the typical downtown blight on this glorious morning, I shower, pack, and head to the lobby for the free breakfast. Of course there's a television in the room, which I normally ignore, since dual multitasking -- scarfing down Raisin Bran, a banana, and a bagel while analyzing the box scores in USA Today (it's still baseball season) -- is my fifty-year-old limit.

My timeline for the next thirty minutes is somewhat hazy. American Airlines Flight 11 strikes the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 AM. Within six minutes all major networks are on the air with live footage. Turning toward the television, I am hearing that a small, private plan has strayed off course -- way off course -- and crashed into the building on the screen, causing an eruption of billowing, black smoke into the otherwise cloudless blue sky.

"It's nothing serious," I muse. After all, who would do something crazy like that intentionally? I'm already checked out, so I grab my bag, settle into my trusty silver Taurus, and motor across town (it takes less than ten minutes) to the store.

Do I get there by 9:03, and see live United Airlines Flight 175 strike the South Tower?  I can't say, but it hardly matters, since the instant replays are coming fast and furiously. Parked in a room setting adjacent to the front door is a television, to which I immediately turn my attention, mesmerized and mystified, like millions of others, including the commentators, by what is happening. Exercising commendable restraint (or maybe because the boss has appeared), the employees are going about their daily business in the office and the warehouse. The three salespeople -- Jay, Nancy, and Clyde, all of whom are still there, by the way -- wander by in turn, their curiosity piqued.

I'm feeling guilty, just standing there. I need to get to work, walk the floor, check the merchandise, prepare a plan of action for primping the display. I take a brief tour, but within minutes I'm back, drawn to the static, polluted cityscape as if it's a magnetic field. I know I see one tower collapse, maybe both, at 9:59 and 10:28. My eyes bulge; my jaw drops. The same words escape me that are being simultaneously repeated across the country: "Oh my God! Look at that! This is like a movie; only it's real."

And then, with jarring finality, it's over -- at least for those of us in the hinterlands, hundreds of miles from New York City and the Pentagon. Of course, the news coverage continues, but how many times can we watch this science fiction horror show, although, frankly, it never ceases to amaze? A return to normalcy seems the best therapy. I make a halfhearted effort to tidy the place up a bit before leaving around 3:00 PM. During my two-and-a-half hour drive home, there's plenty of 9/11 chatter to keep me on edge: George Bush, Osama bin Laden, boxcutters, Rudy Giuliani, War on Terror, travel lock down (which, by the way, infuriates my wife, whose flight out of town tomorrow has been canceled), and so on.

What no one has the fortitude to mention -- as a grieving and frightened public rallies around its political leadership -- is that what we have just witnessed represents a massive and inexcusable failure of intelligence. With all the dollars, bodies, brainpower, and technological wizardry at the beck and call of the CIA and the FBI, I find it inconceivable that a handful of third-world refugees marked as potential saboteurs could evade detection and apprehension.

If Osama bin Laden's aim was to inflict irreparable structural, financial, and psychological harm on American society, I would say he succeeded. It's true that our resilient economy and the devastated site recovered quickly from the attack, but beyond that 9/11 engendered radical changes in foreign and domestic policy -- embroiling the country in protracted, costly misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan; compelling it to squander billions more on a homeland security shadow government that is bloated, intrusive, demeaning, and theatrical; convincing its citizens to acquiesce to the erosion of its constitutional freedoms, all in the name of a misplaced patriotism; and sacrificing its future prosperity on the altar of unsustainable sovereign debt.

Sadly, it's a day in our lives whose memory and consequences will never die.

REFERENCE

Toobin, Jeffrey. The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson. New York: Touchstone Books, 1996, 1997.

Mob Law

Atlanta, Georgia, August 25, 1913: On the twenty-fifth day of his trial for the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, whose mutilated corpse was found four months earlier in the basement of the National Pencil factory where she worked, Jewish superintendent Leo Frank is pronounced guilty and sentenced to death. His conviction is based largely on the testimony of negro sweeper Jim Conley, who swore, in three affidavits and on the witness stand, that at Frank's direction and dictation he helped transfer the body from Frank's office and transcribed the obscure notes that were found at the crime scene.

That public opinion had turned against the defendant -- whose ethnicity, urbanity, perceived wealth, Northern roots, and employment of youthful females epitomized all that was alien to a frustrated, impoverished, formerly rural population -- was manifest in the cheering and applause that, at every prosecution victory, burst from the unruly spectators who roiled the courtroom and the raucous throng which flooded the nearby streets and alleys.

Cognizant of the dark cloud of hostility that enshrouded him and of the poisonous atmosphere that had permeated the entire proceedings, Leo Frank yet had remained confident of acquittal. When the grim tidings reached his friends and relatives who had gathered in the lobby of the Fulton County Tower, so shocked were they that they sent for a physician, Dr. Howard Rosenberg, before mounting the stairs to confront Frank and his wife Lucille in his jail cell. (Oney, pp. 341-342)

"My God," exclaimed Frank when informed of the verdict. "Even the jury was influenced by mob law." Lucille threw her arms about her husband's neck and sobbed bitterly. She refused to speak to the gaggle of reporters who greeted her emergence from the building. One of her entourage, Benjamin Wildauer, issued Frank's lone official statement: "I am as innocent today as I was one year ago." (Oney, p. 342)

The trial's outcome was a source of mounting unease among Atlanta's German-Jewish elite, and to many of them, after considering the evidence and the antipodal reputations of the two protagonists, Frank and Conley, inexplicable -- except by reference to a sentiment heretofore either inconceivable or pridefully dismissed: anti-Semitism. (Oney, p. 345)

Leonard Dinnerstein documents an upsurge in overt anti-Semitism in the South at the end of the nineteenth century, and attributes it to two factors. The first is the centuries-old Christian doctrine that "the Savior was murdered by the Jews." According to the late Southern journalist, W. J. Cash, "All the protests of scholars have been quite unavailing to erase from the popular mind the notion that it was the Jew who crucified Christ." (Dinnerstein, pp. 68-69)

The second factor is the scapegoat syndrome, by which socially, economically, or emotionally deprived individuals or groups fix the responsibility for their plight upon a defenseless minority. No inhabitants of the United States during this period were more insecure, harassed, indigent, paranoid, and nationalistic than those living below the Mason-Dixon line. And the most depressed and frustrated of the lot, to quote C. Vann Woodward, were urban workers, whose "age-long and eternally losing struggle against a hostile industrial economy" made them especially receptive to "exciting crusades against more vulnerable antagonists: against anything strange, and therefore evil," such as the iconoclastic Jew. (Dinnerstein, pp. 69-70)

In a letter to Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish Committee, the organization founded in 1906 to aid Jews "in all countries where their civil or religious rights were endangered or denied," David Marx, rabbi at Frank's Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, compared the condemned man's grievous situation to that of French military officer Alfred Dreyfuss. In 1890 Dreyfuss's conviction for treason was reversed when he was shown to have been a victim of anti-Jewish prejudice. (Dinnerstein, pp. 62-63, 74)

Marx wrote, "The feeling against the D___ Jew is so bitter that the jury was intimidated and feared for their lives, which undoubtedly would have been in danger had any other verdict been rendered." (Dinnerstein, p. 74)

Marx followed up his correspondence with a trip to New York and a personal plea to Marshall. While sympathetic, Marshall expressed concern that Northern and Jewish intervention risked arousing the resentment of Southerners; he preferred to work behind the scenes "in a quiet, unobtrusive manner to bring influence to bear on the Southern press." (Oney, p. 348)

A visit to the powerful Jewish publisher of the New York Times, Adolph S. Ochs, was even less encouraging. In the words of his editorial assistant, Garet Garrett, Ochs was determined not to let the Times become "a Jewish newspaper." Garrett contacted his Atlanta stringer, who reported that "there was a lot of anti-Jewish feeling against Frank, and that the worst thing for him that could happen would be for the Jews to rally to him, as Jews." (Oney, pp. 346-347)

On October 1, 1913, Frank's attorneys -- Luther Rosser, Reuben Arnold, and Herbert Haas -- released their amended motion for a new trial. An appeal in a capital case could be based only on errors in law and not on the validity of the evidence. Therefore the document's 115 points focused on "procedural irregularities," such as the embellished diagram of the pencil factory, the repeated denigration of Frank's character, and the numerous improprieties included in Solicitor Hugh Dorsey's closing remarks. (Oney, pp. 349-350)

Attached were affidavits from bystanders who said that not only had the jurors observed rude displays of pro-prosecution sentiment from the courtroom audience, some had even been accosted by outsiders during recess periods. (Oney, p. 352)

Most shocking were allegations that two members, Marcellus Johenning and Atticus Henslee, had, as headlined by the Atlanta Journal, "Gone on the Jury Prejudiced." A coworker recalled a conversation in which Johenning said of Frank, "I know he's guilty." And two days after the grand jury handed down its indictment, Henslee was heard to refer to Frank as "that God damn Jew," and to proclaim at the downtown Elk's Club, "They ought to take him out and lynch him, and if I get on that jury I'll hang that Jew for sure." (Oney, p. 350)

Solicitor Dorsey would counter with his own file of testimonials. According to jury foreman Fred Winburn, not only was the embattled Henslee not biased against Frank, he had been the panel's lone holdout against conviction on the first ballot. Other jurors refuted the charges against Johenning and denied hearing or being influenced by outside agitators. (Oney, pp. 356-357)

Ignoring Georgia's constitutional prohibitions, at the October 12 hearing before Judge Leonard Roan, Rosser and Arnold reiterated the facts of the case as they saw them. Jim Conley was an admitted liar and a perpetual criminal whose initial statement was so rife with improbabilities that the police and Solicitor Dorsey himself had to reshape it. Sightings of Frank between 1:00 PM and 1:20 PM on the day of the murder left him and Conley not enough time to dispose of the body. The murder notes, "idiotic and ridiculous and inconceivable to the intelligent brain," were "negro scribblings from beginning to end," and contained language that obviously implicated Conley as the sole author and perpetrator. (Oney, pp. 358-360)

Arnold asserted that anti-Semitism had motivated law enforcement's zealous pursuit of Leo Frank and the general antipathy which had been directed against him. Rosser accused the prosecution of forever branding Frank a sexual pervert in the eyes of the jurors by introducing Conley's "maliciously false filthy tale." (Oney, pp. 361, 363)

In response, Solictor Dorsey complimented Reuben Arnold on his eloquence, but reminded Judge Roan that most of it was irrelevant, as he was charged with considering only three questions: bias on the part of the jury, the spectators' cheering and demonstrations, and Conley's evidence regarding the defendant's moral conduct. Dorsey upbraided Arnold with the ringing declaration that, "The people were not aroused against Leo M. Frank because he is a Jew but because he is a criminal of the worst type." (Oney, p. 362)

On October 31 Judge Roan ruled against the defense, yet with serious misgivings. "I have thought about this case more than any other I have ever tried," he told the assemblage. "But I do not have to be convinced. The jury was convinced . . . I feel it is my duty to order that the motion for a new trial be overruled." (Oney, p. 364)

More than duty may have weighed on the judge. He purportedly confided to a friend that had he granted the defense's request, the Governor would "not have had enough troops to control the mob," which would certainly have gathered as the news spread. (Dinnerstein, p. 80)

The judge's equivocation gave some measure of hope to Frank's allies, since, in the words of one, Herbert Haas, "Our Supreme Court has held more than once that it will reverse the judgment of a lower court declining a motion for a new trial where . . . the presiding judge himself is in doubt as to the guilt of the defendant." (Oney, p. 365)

In this case, however, it was not to be. After two months of deliberation, on February 17, 1914, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected Frank's appeal by a four-to-two vote. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Atkinson dismissed the charges of prejudice against Johenning and Henslee, found that the various outbursts interrupting the proceedings did not impugn their fairness, declined to interfere because of the trial judge's oral expression of opinion, and ruled that Conley's explicit testimony was material and relevant in that "it tended to show a practice, plan or scheme on the part of the accused to have lascivious or adulterous association with certain of his employees and other women at his office or place of business." (Dinnerstein, pp. 81-82)

With Frank's fortunes seemingly at low tide, a series of startling revelations would suddenly generate renewed optimism.

As reported in the Atlanta Journal, state biologist Dr. Henry Harris had concluded after a microscopic examination that the strands of hair discovered in the National Pencil Factory lathe had not come from the head of the victim, and indeed had notified Solicitor Dorsey of this fact prior to the trial. (Oney, p. 371)

Albert McKnight, the husband of Minola, the Frank family cook, now swore that, at the behest of his employer, Beck and Gregg Hardware, he had concocted his tale regarding Frank's failure to eat lunch at home the day of the crime and his subsequent hasty departure, and that he had not seen Frank "at any time or place on Saturday, April 26, 1913." (Oney, p. 372)

George Epps, Mary Phagan's fifteen-year-old-friend, now admitted that he had encountered Mary on the trolley on the day of the murder but had barely spoken to her, and that Detective John Black had invented the charge that Mary had sought young Epps's protection from Frank's unwanted advances. (Oney, p. 373)

A new member of the defense team, Henry Alexander, immersed himself in the murder notes and determined that the yellow preprinted order sheet on which the longer of the two had been scrawled was four years old, had been carted to the cellar in 1912, and could not have come from a pad in Frank's office. Further, the term "night witch" referred not to the night watchman, Newt Lee, as had been universally assumed, but to a negro superstition which would have been known only to Conley and not to a white man like Frank. (Oney, pp. 378-379)

On February 18, having been lobbied relentlessly by Louis Marshall, New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs committed his troops to the battle for Leo Frank's exoneration. Within three weeks his "paper had run 25 articles on the case (nine on page one), elevating what had been a drama little known beyond Georgia's borders into a topic of national import." In one interview, Luther Rosser articulated what would become the nascent campaign's call to arms: "I really believe if Frank had been the son of a reputable Gentile, he never would have been arrested." (Oney, pp. 373-374)

Also entering the fray was an equally potent force, Chicago advertising magnate Albert Lasker, who would apply to this cause the same promotional genius that had made Budweiser beer, Goodyear tires, Quaker Oats, and Sunkist orange juice household names. Detraining in Atlanta around March 1, Lasker immediately went to work -- soliciting funds from his many wealthy friends and acquaintances, hiring the famous private detective William Burns, and coining the phrase that would punctuate Frank's increasingly public pronouncements: "The Truth Is on the March." (Oney, pp. 375-377)

From across the South -- from Baltimore to Mobile to Richmond to Little Rock -- and then throughout the state of Georgia shouts were heard for a new trial, until finally the Atlanta Journal lent its voice to the chorus. "A degree of frenzy almost inconceivable," it editorialized, had led the city to demand a scapegoat for the murder of Mary Phagan, and when Conley offered up Frank, the public suspended disbelief. "The courtroom and streets were filled with an angry crowd ready to seize the defendant if the jury had found him not guilty." Under such "indescribable conditions," Frank's execution would "amount to judicial murder. In the name of Justice and in the name of the good people of the State of Georgia . . . let this man be fairly tried." (Oney, pp. 382-383)

The Journal's reveille, however, raised the hackles of the man who would become Leo Frank's most formidable foe, the populist firebrand Tom Watson, whose own weekly publication, the Jeffersonian, had achieved Biblical stature among rural Georgians. Watson's grudge with the Journal stemmed from a personal animus toward its former owner, U. S. Senator Hoke Smith. Seven years earlier, then Governor Smith -- whose election Watson had facilitated -- denied a pardon to a Watson loyalist under sentence of death. Ever since this betrayal, "Watson's desire to bring disgrace upon Smith [had] become an obsession . . . If the Journal was for Frank, then the Jeffersonian would be against him." (Oney, pp. 383-384)

"Tom Watson was equal parts stem-winding stump speaker, defense lawyer, poet, popular historian, sentimental defender of the Old South, and seer of an unlikely New South." Elected to Congress in 1890 as a champion of poor white farmers and negroes -- twin victims of Dixie's elite -- he renounced the Democrats two years later and proclaimed himself a Populist. Robbed of reelection by Democratic chicanery in 1892 and 1894, he suffered further embarrassment as a two-time loser on the Populist national ticket -- running for vice-president in 1896 and for president in 1904. (Oney, p. 8)

He thereupon abandoned his negro constituency -- along with his principles of egalitarianism and humanitarianism -- and took up the Lost Cause of southern honor and orthodoxy, regularly vilifying northern financiers for subjugating his native brethren and demonizing insidious foreigners, including the Pope, for ravishing their women and corrupting their morals. (Oney, p. 8; Dinnerstein, p. 96)

Thriving upon the ignorance and prejudices of the countrified masses, Watson had a fanatical following, most of whom accepted his preachments as gospel. The Leo Frank tragedy offered him an unprecedented opportunity, and he seized it with merciless rage. Within eighteen months the Jeffersonian's circulation soared from 25,000 to 87,000, earning Watson weekly profits of $1000. (Dinnerstein, p. 119)

If the bulk of his March 19 opening salvo was devoted to excoriating Senator Smith's "personal organ," the Journal, for "bringing the courts into disrepute . . . and destroying the confidence of the people in the orderly process of the law," for his finis Watson posed two questions that signaled his imminent crusade: "Does a Jew expect extraordinary favors because of his race?" and "Who is paying for all this?" (Dinnerstein, p. 97)

As Frank's counsel prepared to deploy its next legal weapon -- the extraordinary motion for a new trial, which would be heard by Judge Benjamin Hill -- they inadvertently undermined their efforts by succumbing to the preening egotism of William Burns. Christened the world's greatest detective for tracking down the Los Angeles Times building bombers in 1911, Burns was brash, cocky, and flamboyant; arriving on the scene, he lost no time in flaunting such announcements as "I am utterly confident of success," and "I know who is the murderer of Mary Phagan." Within six weeks the vacuity of these boasts would be painfully exposed. (Oney, p. 386)

The two tantalizing pieces of evidence Burns did manage to unearth proved to be more harmful to Frank than beneficial -- and more ammunition for Watson's cannon.

The first consisted of forty-nine pages of correspondence between Jim Conley and a female inmate named Annie Maude Carter. Conley's vile language, graphic sexual imagery, and unnatural fixation on Annie's enticing hips and broad posterior undeniably stamped him in Burns's mind as the true deviant if not the culprit, since Annie swore that Conley had admitted his guilt in a private conversation. It didn't take long, however, for Solicitor Dorsey to obtain from Annie a repudiation of the letters and a retraction of the confession, which opened the gate for the wily Watson to attack Burns as ill-informed on the nature of racial libido and, by implication, damn Frank. "Is it not possible," he expounded, "that the Great Detective does not know . . . [that] the excited barbarian, like the brutish negro, may commit bestiality; but it is the degenerate of wealth and culture who commits sodomy." (Oney, pp. 390-391, 400, 415)

The second stunner was an affidavit from Reverend C. B. Ragsdale, pastor of the Plum Street Baptist Church, who allegedly overheard the day after the murder one negro say to another, "I am in trouble and I want you to help me out. I killed a girl at the National Pencil Factory." But within days the Reverend backtracked, stating that the tale had been devised by Burns and his operatives, who were "just handing money out."(Oney, pp. 396, 398)

Such antics reinforced the impression that huge sums -- much of it transshipped from Northern Jewish coffers -- were being spent to save the accused. And the embodiment of these interloping forces seeking to subvert justice, fulminated Watson, was William Burns, who, "when he comes to Georgia and begins to work on witnesses who have already testified under oath, and when he uses threats, IF NOT BRIBES, to prevail upon them to change their evidence, he makes himself a criminal." (Oney, p. 397; Dinnerstein, p. 104)

Having dispensed with Annie Maude Carter and Reverend Ragsdale, Solicitor Dorsey launched a systematic assault on the extraordinary motion. A parade of female factory workers did a second about-face, and disavowed that they had been coerced into making false accusations of sexual impropriety against Frank or had done so unwittingly. Albert McKnight revealed having been told by Burns associate C. W. Burke that unless he was more cooperative "the Jews would get him." George Epps said he had been similarly intimidated. Several witnesses testified that the order pad on which one of the murder notes had been written had been moved to the basement, contradicting the research of Henry Alexander. (Oney, pp. 404, 405, 413, 415)

Finally Dorsey delivered his coup de grace, eliciting from Detective Burns that he had not read the court transcript, only the Brief, that he had interviewed only a handful of witnesses (all of whom had been put forth by the defense), and that he had conspired to have Annie Maude Carter removed to New Orleans after securing her affidavit. (Oney, pp. 408-409)

So thoroughly had Dorsey dominated his opponent that Judge Hill advised him that no summation was necessary, and forthwith denied the extraordinary motion. (Oney, p. 419)

Louis Marshall lamented that "the whole business has been terribly botched," that the lawyers "have not at all times acted with good judgment," and that the "ridiculous methods" of Burns has brought a "meritorious" case "to the point of destruction." Marshall urged Frank's partisans to deemphasize religious prejudice, warning, "There is too much of a tendency on the part of our people to attribute everything to anti-Semitism." (Dinnerstein, p. 106)

As the summer of 1914 wore on and the European crisis replaced Leo Frank on the front pages of Georgia's dailies, a major player in the drama, William Smith, the idealistic young lawyer who had represented Jim Conley and had obtained for him a one-year sentence as an accessory to the crime, experienced a remarkable change of heart.

Prompted by Detective Burns and a lifelong friend named Berry Benson -- an Augusta resident, Civil War memoirist, and amateur cryptographer -- and assisted by his wife Mary Lou, a schoolteacher, Smith undertook a detailed analysis of the trial record, the Carter letters, and the murder notes. After weeks of study, Smith deduced that Jim Conley was more intelligent and literate than he had led people to believe, that the language of the notes was altogether consistent with that employed by Conley in his oral communications, and that Frank could not possibly have dictated the notes in such language in the two-and-a-half minutes ascribed to him by Conley. (Oney, pp. 424-433)

Further, during a visit to the pencil factory, Smith and his wife demonstrated that a scream from the metal room could not be heard in the lobby -- which implied, of course, that Conley had lied about that also. (Oney, pp. 427-428)

Smith's efforts, however, were unavailing -- he met with the Atlanta Police Department and Solicitor Dorsey to share his findings -- and in fact ignited a barrage of death threats and a fusillade of condemnation from Watson's Jeffersonian, which chastised him as a traitor to his client. (Oney, pp. 433-434, 438-439)

A scourge of setbacks swiftly descended upon Frank and his defense team -- which now comprised Herbert and Leonard Haas, Henry Alexander, and the firm of Tye, Peeples, and Jordan, trial participants Rosser and Arnold having been dispatched to the sidelines.

On October 14 the Georgia Supreme Court rejected their second request for a new trial. Thirty days later it upheld Judge Hill's adverse ruling on the constitutional motion which had been drafted by Tye and Peebles back in the spring; in it they argued that Frank's enforced absence during the reading of the verdict (which Judge Roan had proposed in the interest of security) invalidated the proceedings. The Court concurred with Solicitor Dorsey's contention that not only had Frank's attorneys acquiesced to the agreement, they had failed to protest in a timely manner. (Oney, p. 446)

On November 21 the Court refused to certify a writ of error that would facilitate a U. S. Supreme Court review of the ruling on the Tye-Peebles motion. (Oney, p. 447)

Subsequent appeals directly to U. S. Supreme Court Justices Joseph Lamar and Oliver Wendell Holmes met similar fates. While both adjudicated that the point raised involved only a state procedure, Holmes made headlines by questioning whether Frank had enjoyed due process of law, as his trial had taken place "in the presence of a hostile demonstration and seemingly dangerous crowd, thought by the presiding judge to be ready for violence unless a verdict of guilty was rendered." (Dinnerstein, p. 109)

On December 7 one final petition for a writ of error to the entire sitting U. S. Supreme Court was denied. (Oney, p. 452)

Holmes's comments and the continuing legal maneuvers stirred the sympathies of the national press. In its December 17th and 23rd issues, Colllier's Weekly published in two parts an 18,000-word essay on the Frank case researched and written by Christopher Powell Connolly. The tenacious muckracker had become nationally renowned for his coverage of the trials of IWW leader Bill Haywood for the murder of Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg and of the McNamara brothers for the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building. (Oney, pp. 444-445)

It was prejudice against the "fire-breathing, murderous Jew portrayed by Marlowe" in The Jew of Malta that had focused suspicion on the "shy, nervous, stoic" Leo Frank, wrote Connolly; and it was the political wrangling between the local press and police and the unstinting pressure on the Pinkerton Detective agency, whose reputation was at stake, that had girded his frame-up. As for Frank's conviction, it could be laid wholly at the feet of Jim Conley, who had obviously perjured himself. (Oney, p. 453)

If the deed had been performed in the second floor office, where was all the blood from a victim brutally abused? Instead, Mary Phagan had walked down to the lobby, where Conley lurked in hiding near a convenient trap door and shaft leading to the basement. Conley wrote the infamous notes to implicate another negro employee. And finally, if Frank and Conley had transported the body by means of the elevator on Saturday, the excrement Conley admitted depositing that morning would have been crushed, rather than on Sunday, when the investigators noticed a foul odor upon their own descent. (Oney, pp. 454-455)

Tom Watson was predictably outraged, and denounced the outside forces which were "spending half-a-million dollars to save the rich Jew from the legal consequences of premeditated and horrible crime." (Oney, p. 455)

The Collier's piece awakened the entire nation to the controversy, and its impact on public sentiment was palpable. In New York, the World, the Herald, and Hearst's flagship, the Journal, were wholeheartedly in Frank's camp. "December 14 found the New York Times in the midst of an all-out drive of the sort it had never undertaken before. Only three days during the month did it not publish an article on Frank," with each one's "overriding intention to arouse indignation and stimulate action." (Oney, pp. 456-457)

Frank's defenders had one last weapon at their disposal -- a hearing for a writ of habeas corpus before the United States Supreme Court. Now they would claim that Frank had been deprived of due process of law not because he had involuntarily absented himself at the reading of the verdict but because the hostile attitude of the court spectators had necessitated it. Further, the writ of habeas corpus gave the U. S. District Court "the discretion and latitude to examine and determine whether a state court has lost jurisdiction." (Dinnerstein, p. 110; Oney, p. 456)

When Northern Georgia District Court Judge William T. Newman denied the petition, maintaining that state authority prevailed, counsel's last recourse was a direct appeal to U. S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Lamar. And that counsel was now Louis Marshall, who, having seen too many lawyers acting discordantly, had arrived in Atlanta to assume sole responsibility for Frank's fate. (Oney, pp. 458, 451)

On December 28 Judge Lamar made the surprising announcement that the U. S. Supreme Court should hear the writ. He reasoned that the Court had never determined whether a defendant in a murder trial could legally waive his right to be present at all times nor whether the failure to raise such an absence in an appeal to a state court precluded him from doing so at a later date. (Dinnerstein, pp. 110-111)

Well aware that granting the writ of habeas corpus would require the Court to make Frank a free man -- a political impossibility -- Marshall carefully crafted his brief as a request for a new trial. But ultimately the Justices would deem the arguments of Solicitor Dorsey and Georgia Attorney General Warren Grice more compelling; after two months of deliberation, on April 19, 1915, they upheld Frank's conviction by a seven-to-two vote. (Dinnerstein, p. 112)

In his majority opinion, Justice Mahlon Pitney wrote that "the allegations of disorder were found by both of the State courts to be groundless except in a few . . . irregularities not harmful in fact to the defendant," that Frank had waived his right to contend a denial of due process by failing to object at the proper time, and in fact, "since the State may . . . abolish trial by jury, it may limit the effect to be given to an error respecting one of the incidents of such a trial [such as the defendant's presence at all times]". (Dinnerstein, p. 112)

Justices Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes dissented. Examining the records and commenting on Judge Roan's expressed doubt, they thought "the presumption overwhelming that the jury responded to the passions of the mob," that "mob law does not become due process of law by securing the assent of a terrorized jury," and that under no stretch of judicial imagination could they presume that Leo Frank had received a fair trial. (Dinnerstein, pp. 112-113)

One avenue remained to save Frank's life -- an appeal for executive clemency to the state Prison Commission, which would make its recommendation and then forward it to the governor. (Oney, p. 471)

But just who would that person be: the incumbent John Slaton, or his successor, Nathaniel Harris, who was scheduled to assume office on June 26?

Slaton had been elected in 1912 "on a tidal wave of general enthusiasm unprecedented in Georgia's annals"; in 1915 he was at the peak of his popularity. Aspiring to a seat in the U. S. Senate, which was attainable only with the blessing of Tom Watson, Slaton had reason to believe his political future would be jeopardized should he alter the court's decision. As the former law partner of Luther Rosser -- the two had merged their firms in 1913 -- he could have recused himself. Instead, his keen sense of justice and a courageous unwillingness to shirk the responsibilities of his office vanquished a safer pragmatism and kept him on notice. (Dinnerstein, pp. 122-124)

Throughout the ordeal, he had adhered to a consistently evenhanded position, stating that when the hour struck, "he would be guided solely by the merits of the case and his own conscience." He stressed that the prisoner's religion would have no bearing on his thinking. Mindful of such professed impartiality and acting upon the advice of Hearst journalist Arthur Brisbane, Frank's brain trust came to believe that Slaton offered the better chance for their client's survival. (Oney, p. 472)

Which is why Marshall expedited the release of the Supreme Court mandate fourteen days earlier than was customary -- which allowed Judge Hill to set Frank's execution for June 22. (Oney, p. 473)

The approaching finality engendered a surge of support for Leo Frank. The highly-acclaimed soprano, Geraldine Farrar, one of the nation's most glamorous women, visited the condemned man and his wife in his Atlanta jail cell and wired the New York Times that unequivocally he was incapable of murder. The governor's office was flooded with more than 100,000 letters imploring him to commute Frank's sentence; many bore the mastheads of U. S. Senators, other state governors, and college presidents. Petitions containing over two million signatures poured into Georgia from the far reaches of the union. The Times published seven pro-Frank editorials during the month of May. Closer to home, the Atlanta Journal and the Augusta Chronicle endorsed clemency. (Oney, pp. 474-478)

The defense turned to widely-respected advocate William Schley Howard to make its case, but to no avail. A letter from trial judge Leonard Roan expressing his doubts about the verdict and Frank's guilt, pleas from eminent citizens both North and South, Lucille Frank's poignant affirmation of her husband's righteousness as she sat sobbing in the front row while her words were read, a review of William Smith's dissection of the murder notes, an emotional and historical validation of the executive power to pardon -- all failed to convince the prison commissioners, who rebuffed Frank's petition for commutation of the death sentence by a two-to-one vote. (Oney, pp. 481-484)

One week later, at 9:00 AM on Saturday, June 12, 1915, in the packed anteroom of his capitol office in downtown Atlanta, Governor Slaton called the final hearing on the Frank case to order. (Oney, p. 489)

Speaking first, Schley Howard broached for the first time the relevance of the smashed excrement detected by the investigators when they descended to the basement on Sunday -- proof that Conley and Frank had not used the elevator to move the body on Saturday. He enumerated nineteen elements of the case, excluding the charges made by Conley, and gave an explanation for each one more consistent with Frank's innocence than his guilt -- calling particular attention to the matter of Frank's nervousness on the morning he was called from his home, which, he said, was a perfectly natural psychological state. William Smith's report on the murder notes, he reiterated, provided a "mathematical demonstration" that they were the mental property of Conley. He speculated that the very act of transcription demanded of Conley by his interrogators planted the idea in his mind of laying the blame on Frank by serving as his "amanuensis." (Oney, pp. 489-490, 498)

When his turn came, Solicitor Dorsey maintained that Frank had received a fair trial, "that at no time from its beginning to its end did anybody cry out against Frank or offer to do him harm." He insisted that the evidence against Frank, minus Conley's testimony, was sufficient to convict him -- his scandalous reputation, the blood and hair which had not been seen in the factory until Monday, the witness to his empty office at twelve noon on the day of the murder, his suspicious behavior the next day. (Oney, pp. 493-494)

In the midst of the hearing, Governor Slaton made a visit to the pencil factory to inspect personally the office where the notes were allegedly written, the lathe handle where the strands of Mary Phagan's hair had been discovered, the spot in the basement where the body had lain, and the elevator shaft where the all-important feces had been deposited. (Oney, p. 495)

For four days Slaton secluded himself in his private mansion and pored over the voluminous court documents, legal briefs, and judicial pronouncements which had accumulated over the past two years. "I left no stone unturned," he confided afterward. "I went over it again and again from every point of view." (Dinnerstein, p. 125)

Tom Watson having warned that, in the event of a reversal, "there will almost inevitably be the bloodiest riot in the history of the South," before announcing his decision, Slaton wanted Frank safe from the wrath of Atlanta's mobs. Around 10:00 PM on June 20, while one diversionary car was left running in front of the Fulton County jail, the sheriff and six deputies escorted Frank to a back alley exit, shoved him into another car, rushed to Atlanta, and boarded a midnight train to Macon. Arriving at 3:00 AM, they drove the remaining twenty-five miles to the prison farm at Milledgeville. (Dinnerstein, pp.119, 126)

Almost simultaneously Slaton was telling his wife, "It may mean my death or worse, but I have ordered the sentence commuted," to which she replied, "I would rather be the widow of a brave and honorable man than than the wife of a coward." (Dinnerstein, p. 126)

In a twenty-nine page commentary, the Governor spelled out the reasons for his decision. The power of his fabrication of details notwithstanding, Jim Conley, he wrote, was "as depraved and lecherous a negro as ever lived in Georgia," and had not told the truth. The presence of the formed feces at the bottom of the shaft Sunday morning was a fatal blow to Conley's gruesome narrative involving the elevator on Saturday. The similarities in syntax and phraseology between the murder notes and Conley's other known writings and utterances clearly identified him as their author. The absence of blood in the workroom, on the lathe, on the floor, in the elevator, or on the steps leading downstairs suggested that Mary Phagan -- who had suffered a severe injury to the head -- had been killed in the basement where her body had been found. (Dinnerstein, pp. 127-128)

"Feeling as I do about this case," Slaton told the press, "I would be a murderer if I let that man hang." (Oney, p. 503)

And a few days later, at his successor's inauguration, he delivered this memorable summation to a luncheon gathering: "Two thousand years ago another Governor washed his hands of a case and turned a Jew over to a mob. For two thousand years that Governor's name has been accursed. If today another Jew were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my duty, I would all through life find his blood on my hands and would consider myself an assassin through cowardice." (Oney, p. 511)

If jubilation greeted Slaton's leniency in many quarters, a vocal majority of Georgians were outraged, and burned him in effigy. Swarms of protestors marched through the streets of Atlanta chanting, "We Want John M. Slaton, Georgia's Traitor Governor." Slaton had no choice but to declare martial law, and call up a battalion of militia to defend his home from a barrage of stones and bottles and a 75-man attack force armed with blackjacks, guns, and dynamite. (Dinnerstein, pp. 129, 132-133)

In his first issue of the Jeffersonian after the commutation, Tom Watson lambasted Watson for raping "our grand old Empire State," decried that its noble sons and daughters had been debased, bought, and sold by "Jew money," and threatened: "Let no man reproach the South with Lynch law: let him remember the unendurable provocation; and let him say whether Lynch law is not better than no law at all." (Oney, pp. 507-508)

Watson's clarion call would not go unheeded. In Mary Phagan's home town of Marietta, a conspiracy was brewing. Six of its most reputable and influential citizens were proposing the well-nigh impossible: abduct Frank from the heavily guarded prison farm in Milledgeville, transport him across multiple jurisdictions, including the city of Atlanta, on mostly unpaved roads back to Marietta, and hang him in plain view. (Oney, p. 513)

They were renegade spirits, defiant of authority, self-righteous agents self-selected to correct a gross miscarriage of justice: Herbert Clay, son of a U. S. Senator, charismatic, irresistible to women, susceptible to drunken rampages (for which he had been expelled from college), affably persuasive, circuit solicitor general at 34; John Tucker Dorsey, Hugh's cousin, big, bearish, magnetic, convicted of bludgeoning a man to death in 1905, a talented trial lawyer who could mesmerize a jury, recently elected to the state legislature; Fred Morris, strong and swift, a three-sport athlete at the University of Georgia, Boy Scout leader, former defender of a negro boy accused of rape; Bolan Brumby, heir to his father's furniture manufacturing business, epitome of arrogant Southern aristocracy, to whom Northerners were an abomination; former governor Joseph Brown, still indebted to Tom Watson for the special Jeffersonian campaign edition that had won him the nomination; and finally Judge Newt Morris, ruthless, intimidating, calculating, unprincipled property developer and contractor, cattle rustler, once indicted for attempted murder, political enemy of John Slaton, opportunistic aspirant for higher office. (Oney, pp. 514-524)

They were the organizers, and would not soil their hands. Instead they would recruit three field commanders -- Black Newt Morris, staunchly loyal to his cousin Judge Newt, foreman of his construction company and of the Cobb County convict camp; Gordon Gann, lawyer protege of Judge Newt; and Gordon Daniell, well-connected jewelry-store proprietor, Rotarian, and hillbilly band leader -- and twenty-five foot soldiers to carry out the mission. (Oney, pp. 525-528)

For Leo Frank, who had arrived at Milledgeville sickly, pale, and thin from his two-year confinement in a dank Atlanta jail cell, life had improved considerably. Most of the one thousand men and women incarcerated there were aged, infirm, or products of privileged backgrounds. Sanitary conditions were good for white male prisoners; the atmosphere was healthy. (Oney, pp. 529-530)

After rising early and spending several hours on simple chores, mostly cleaning, Frank devoted the rest of the day to his prolific correspondence -- writing as many as twenty letters a day, to his wife Lucille, requesting snack food and sundries, to strangers thanking them for their sympathy and support, and to attorneys and dignitaries expressing hope for the future. (Dinnerstein, p. 137)

This idyllic sojourn continued for four weeks until, on the night of July 17, a convicted murderer named William Creen rose from a nearby bunk, crept to Frank's bedside, pinned him to his mattress, and opened a seven-and-a-half inch gash in his throat with a butcher's knife. Only the heroic actions of the two inmate doctors who carried Frank to the prison hospital and applied a ligature to his severed external jugular vein kept him alive until a physician could arrive to operate and suture the wound. (Oney, pp. 546-547)

Frank would recover -- "I must live. I must vindicate myself," he told one of his attending doctors -- but he was still unable to speak to Governor Harris (Slaton's successor) and his panel when they came to the prison to investigate the incident. Satisfied that Creen had acted of his own accord -- in order to forestall an attack on Frank that would endanger other inmates, he claimed -- Harris then announced to the assembled press that he was appalled by the dangerous overcrowding and lack of adequate sewage disposal in the negro dormitories and that he would be requesting a $50,000 appropriation from the state legislature. (Oney, pp. 550, 554, 538)

At the governor's side was the newly-appointed chairman of the legislature's penitentiary committee, John Tucker Dorsey; he already had the three prison commissioners beholden to him. On a previous inspection, Dorsey had absolved them of any blame for the "deplorable conditions," and had himself promised to secure the necessary funding to make improvements -- which he fulfilled in the amount of $30,000 four days after the Creen probe. (Oney, pp. 543-544, 556)

The commissioners' acquiescence, if not complicity, having been sealed with a bond of bribery, the Marietta cabal shouldered their arms and swung into action.

One month earlier their best-laid plans had been thwarted when, in response to an anonymous tip, Governor Harris had mustered the state militia. This time, however, they were not to be denied. (Oney, p. 544)

"The vigilantes needed only ten minutes to abduct the nation's most celebrated prisoner." Traveling by different routes, carrying rifles, pistols, wire cutters, explosives, and a manila rope already knotted into a noose, they rendezvoused outside the prison walls on the night of August 16, 1915. They cut the telephone lines, subdued and handcuffed Superintendent J. M. Burke and Warden J. E. Smith, made their way to Frank's private convalescent room, dragged him outside, threw him into one of the waiting cars, and sped off through the darkened cotton fields of North Georgia. Not a shot was fired. (Oney, pp. 561-562)

Four times during the one-hundred-fifty mile journey Frank was asked if he had anything to say before his execution. Twice he made no reply; twice (the first and last in turn) he said quietly, "No." (Oney, pp. 563-564)

The lynch party arrived at Frey's Gin two miles east of Marietta just as dawn was breaking, and marched Frank two hundred feet to a small grove of trees. They "blindfolded him, bound his feet together, cinched a khaki cloth around his exposed lower torso, lifted him onto a table that had been brought to the site, and placed the noose over his head." (Oney, p. 565)

"After agreeing to return Frank's wedding band to Lucille, a man identified in most reports as simply 'the leader' pronounced the court's sentence and kicked over the table. The time was 7:05. The man was Judge Newt Morris." (Oney, p. 565)

"Frank did not die instantly. Rather, he suffocated slowly, struggling so ferociously he ripped open his neck wound, causing blood to ooze down his shirtfront." (Oney, p. 566)

"Hordes of people made their way to the oak tree where the lifeless figure . . . swayed in the wind." (Dinnerstein, p. 143)

"By 8:30, over one thousand had gathered, and scores more were arriving each minute." (Oney, p. 566)

Wrote the Georgian's O. B. Keeler: "In a terrible way it was like some religious rite . . . a sort of dreadful pilgrimage . . . Among the men there was evident a grim and terrible satisfaction . . . Said one woman, 'It is the justice of God.' " (Oney, pp. 566-567)

When half-crazed Robert E. Lee Howell shrieked, "We are not going to let the undertakers have it! We are going to burn it!" it was Newt Morris who urged the frenzied crowd to allow the dead man a decent burial. But as the corpse was being trundled away, Howell knocked it over, and began stomping on the face and grinding it into the ground. Once again Morris intervened, rescued the body, and accompanied it partway to Atlanta, where another vast throng waited to satisfy their blood lust. By dusk, more than 15,000 morbid curiosity-seekers had filed past the battered remains as they lay on a makeshift bier in the front room of the Greenburg and Bond funeral home. (Oney, pp. 568-571)

The lynching of Leo Frank occupies a singular place in American history. It is the only lynching in which the victim was a Jewish person and in which anti-Semitism was a factor. It is the only lynching in which the victim was seized from a state prison (as opposed to a local jail) and in which he was carried over a long distance before he was killed. It is the only lynching not to occur within hours or days of the victim's falling under suspicion. It is the only lynching that can justifiably be deemed "state-sponsored," since government officials were deeply involved in its planning and consummation. (Wilkes)

Lucille Frank was not about to have her husband interred in the state where he had suffered such a hideous end. She had him transported to Queens, New York, where he was buried in the Mount Carmel Cemetery on Friday, August 20. (Oney, p. 576)

After meeting with the prison commissioners to determine exactly what had transpired that night in Milledgeville, Governor Harris reached the conclusion that "the guards never had a chance," and "to put up a fight would have been suicide." (Oney, p. 585)

A Cobb County grand jury hearing conducted by Herbert Clay and John Tucker Dorsey interviewed thirty-five witnesses before reporting that it "had been unable to find enough evidence to indict anyone for the lynching of Leo M. Frank." (Oney, pp. 588-589)

For his gallant performance at Frey's Gin, Newt Lee was lionized in the New York Tribune as the "soft-spoken youngish man in Marietta at whose words mobs drop their prey" and in the New York Times as "the only hero of the Frank lynching." (Oney, pp. 594-595)

Tom Watkins rode his anti-Semitic diatribes to Jeffersonian heights, increased magazine circulation, and political vindication. In 1920 he was elected to the U. S. Senate seat he had held thirty years earlier, and became an ardent advocate for the Soviet Union and a vociferous opponent of trusts, red-baiting, and  militarism. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1922. (Roche, p. 91)

With Watson railing against Northern meddling and disgruntled Georgians stoked to a fiery pitch, three months after Frank's death, fifteen hardy souls met at Atlanta's Piedmont Hotel, clambered aboard a bus to Stone Mountain, hiked up the granite summit, and watched inveterate fraternalist and failed preacher Colonel William Simmons set fire to a kerosene-and-tar-soaked cross. The new brotherhood would rekindle an old name, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and dedicate itself to defending Protestant orthodoxy and sexual morality, exalting Anglo-Saxon superiority, and resisting urbanization and foreign encroachment. (Oney, p. 607, Dinnerstein, pp. 149-150)

By that time the Anti-Defamation League of the Jewish fraternal order B'nai B'rith had already been in existence over two years -- having been founded four weeks after Leo Frank's trial. Its purpose was to combat prejudice in the United States, which, in the words of Adoph Kraus, president of the parent organization, "had gone so far as to manifest itself recently in an attempt to influence courts of law where a Jew happened to be a party to the litigation." (Dinnerstein, p. 157)

Elected in 1916 for a five-year term, Hugh Dorsey earned a reputation as Georgia's most progressive governor of the era for authoring a radical study detailing 135 racial injustices; his corrective prescriptions were soundly rejected by the state legislature. (Oney, p. 614)

From 1920 to 1930 Jim Conley served ten years in prison for breaking and entering, after which he disappeared from public view. (Oney, pp. 612, 647)

In December 1982 eighty-five-year-old Alonzo Mann told Tennessee Lawyer John Hooker that on Saturday, April 26, 1913, a little after twelve noon, he opened the door to the National Pencil Factory, walked in, and saw Jim Conley with a girl in his arms. Conley said to him, "If you tell anything about this, I'll kill you." And he never did, for sixty-nine years. (Oney, p. 644)

Mann's deposition became the foundation for an application in 1983 for a posthumous pardon for Leo Frank. The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles would reject that application. Three years later, however, it would rule favorably on a different ground, not exonerating Frank, but finding that the state had denied him "his constitutional rights by failing to ensure his safety while he was incarcerated at the prison farm at Milledgeville." (Oney, pp. 645, 649)

So, who did kill Mary Phagan?

I believe the man who had the last word, the courageous Governor John Slaton, got it right. The contrived composition and bizarre context of the murder notes, the egregious discrepancies in the purported time frame in which the crime was committed, the curious incident of the shit in the shaft, the absence of blood at the site where Mary was supposedly struck down -- all point to Jim Conley as a compulsive yet clever liar. Putting aside all the conflicting character references, one is hard-pressed to take the word of a shiftless petty thief and drunk over that of a respectable businessman.

Sadly, however, all the facts and evidence, the arguments and legalities, are irrelevant. Because the racial, religious, regional, sexual, socioeconomic, and hysterical phantoms that bedeviled Leo Frank virtually guaranteed either of two equally grievous finales to this convoluted dual tragedy: his conviction by mob law or his execution by vigilante justice.

REFERENCES

Dinnerstein, Leonard. The Leo Frank Case. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

Oney, Steve. And The Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003.

Roche, John P. The Quest for the Dream: The Development of Civil Rights and Human Relations in Modern America. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1963.

Wilkes, Donald. "Wrongly Accused, Falsely Convicted, Wantonly Murdered," Flagpole Magazine (May 4, 2004), 7.

Who Killed Mary Phagan?

 This is a sad story.

It's also multifaceted and labyrinthine, cloaked in a collage of themes that encompasses a brutal murder, lurid sexuality, racial stereotyping, anti-Semitism, child labor exploitation, journalistic sensationalism, sectional antipathy, class conflict, anti-industrialism, influence peddling, and problematic jurisprudence.

Around 3:00 AM on Sunday, April 27, 1913, Newt Lee, the night watchman at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, Georgia, went down to the basement to use the Negro toilet. "As he started up again a ray of light from his lantern fell upon something that looked like a human form . . . He then hastened up the ladder and telephoned the police, who arrived within ten minutes." (Dinnerstein, pp. 1-2)

So caked with soot and cinders was the young female body illuminated by Call Officer W. F. Anderson's flashlight that he had to lower one of her stockings to determine the color of her flesh; it was white. The girl's face was bruised, her scalp slashed and covered with blood. Her garter belts were unfastened, her underpants ripped, and, in the words of Sergeant R. J. Brown, "You could see . . . blood on the drawers . . . coming from her privates." (Oney, p. 19)

Two strange notes were found buried in the rubbish nearby. The first, "scrawled on a sheet of lined white paper," read: "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." (Oney, p. 20)

The second, jotted across a yellow National Pencil Company order sheet, like its counterpart seemed to implicate Lee: "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 was long sleam tall negro i wright while play with me." (Oney, p. 21)

A trail of sawdust indicated that the corpse had been dragged to its resting place from a ladder connecting the basement with the first floor. At the bottom of the elevator shaft lay a girl's hat and parasol, a ball of twine, and "something that looked like a person's stool," which was shortly mashed by the descent of the elevator, spreading a foul odor throughout the premises. (Dinnerstein, p. 3)

Not until another officer at the scene, W. W. "Boots" Rogers, was able to rouse his sister-in-law and drive her to the funeral home where the remains had been delivered was the deceased identified; she was a company co-worker, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan. (Oney, p. 23)

A native of Marietta, Georgia, whose widowed mother had relocated to the Atlanta area from Alabama in 1907, Mary typified both the hardscrabble tenant farmers who flocked to the city to toil sixty-six hours a week for fifteen cents an hour and the pre-adolescents who worked as rigorous a schedule at a third the remuneration. (Oney, p. 5)

Substandard conditions in Atlanta compounded the problems of labor exploitation. In 1908, one-third of the residents lived without water mains or sewers. More than half the white school children and seventy-five percent of the black suffered from malnutrition, anemia, and heart disease. The death rate per 100,000 exceeded the national average by thirty-three percent. Crime was rampant, with arrests in some years running as high as twenty percent of the total population. In such a pathological environment, "the murder of a young girl in 1913 triggered a violent reaction of mass aggression, hysteria, and prejudice." (Dinnerstein, pp. 8-9)

Although night watchman Lee and two other suspects, Arthur Mullinax and James Gantt, were being held in custody, a number of factors conspired to shift police attention to the twenty-nine-year-old Jewish factory superintendent, Leo Frank.

Mullinax was cleared when his girl friend provided a convincing alibi and the person who supposedly spotted him with Mary Saturday night turned out to have poor vision. Gantt, who had stopped by the factory to pick up some shoes he had left there after his termination, was released when his sister, with whom he roomed, admitted that, when originally questioned, she had lied about his absence from her home that night. (Oney, pp. 33, 47-48, 61-62)

Meanwhile, Lee told the police that Frank asked him to report early (4:00 PM) on the day of the murder, and then sent him away for two hours. When Lee returned at 6:00 PM, Frank left but telephoned him at 7:00 PM to ask if everything was all right -- something he had never done before -- for which Frank's explanation was that he was concerned that Gantt would show up and cause trouble. (Oney, pp. 48, 50-51)

Subsequent calls to Frank Sunday morning by Lee and the police went unanswered. One detective described Frank's voice during the initial visit to his home as "hoarse and trembling and nervous and excited. He looked to me like he was pale," he said. Later, at the factory, personnel manager H. V. Darley, one of Frank's closest associates, would remember, "When we started down the elevator, Mr. Frank was shaking all over." (Oney, pp. 24-25, 30)

Leo Frank was the last person known to have seen Mary Phagan alive. In a deposition, he testified that on Saturday, April 26, he was alone in his office when she "came in between 12:05 and 12:10, maybe 12:07, to get her pay envelope [containing $1.20 for two abbreviated shifts she had worked the past six days] . . . I paid her and she left." (Oney, p. 50)

The Monday morning after the discovery of the body machinist R. P. Barrett noticed a suspicious red spot -- which appeared to be blood -- on the factory floor near a women's dressing room twenty feet from Mary Phagan's workstation. Turning to a nearby bench lathe, he made an even more startling observation: six or eight strands of hair he would swear "weren't there on Friday." (Oney, p. 46)

With evidence now suggesting that Mary had been murdered in the metal room, dragged across the floor, and lowered to the basement in the elevator, the police arrested Leo Frank on Tuesday, April 29.

Certainly they were under intense pressure from an enraged public and a trio of circulation-hungry newspapers, which, in an effort by each one to gain an edge on the competition, would manufacture, in the words of one reporter, "the greatest story in the history of the state, if not of the South." (Dinnerstein, p. 13)

If the Constitution, which had scooped its rivals early Sunday morning, solemnly intoned, "If the men who ferret out crime and uphold the law in Atlanta are to justify their function, it must be in apprehending the assailant and murderer of Mary Phagan," and the Journal boasted that it had "proven conclusively" that Newt Lee "either himself mistreated and murdered pretty Mary Phagan" or knew who did, it was the journalistic shock troops at William Randolph Hearst's Georgian who were best equipped to seize the explosive moment and ignite it with their stock-in-trade "innuendo, misrepresentation, and distortion." (Dinnerstein, pp. 14-15)

The Georgian inaugurated its dramatic coverage of the case with twenty "extras" and five pages of pictures and stories about Mary and her family, including a twelve-year-old playmate's pledge to "help lynch" the man who killed her and the Phagan family patriarch's exhortation that "No punishment is too great for the brute who foully murdered the sweetest and purest thing on earth." It offered a $500 reward (which later escalated to $1800 in a ferocious bidding war) for "information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer." (Oney, pp. 36-37)

During the next four months the Georgian devoted the equivalent of one hundred pages to the story and tripled its normal sales of 40,000 papers a day, enabling it to attain the largest circulation of any southern daily in 1913. (Dinnerstein, p. 13)

Born in Texas, raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., educated at the Pratt Institute and Cornell University, Leo Frank had moved to Atlanta in 1908 to accept a position at the National Pencil Company, of which his uncle Moses Frank was the principal stockholder. He and his wife Lucille, who came from the wealthy and prominent Selig family and whom he married in 1910 -- it was love at first sight, she later recalled -- made their home with her parents. (Oney, p. 82)

Frank's friends, who had recently elected him president of the five hundred member Gate City Lodge No. 144 of B'nai B'rith, were stunned by his arrest, and unanimously of the opinion that it was impossible for him to have had anything to do with the murder. "My husband is absolutely innocent," sobbed Lucille to a Georgian reporter. (Dinnerstein, p. 6)

The sordid circumstances of Mary Phagan's death became a breeding ground for a swarm of rumors -- enshrined by the press as gospel -- related to the sexual proclivities or, more damning, perversions of Leo Frank. Many of these surfaced, or were substantiated, at the Coroner's Inquest, which convened four days after the murder.

In answer to the Journal's sinister front page teaser, "Was Factory Used as Rendezvous?" -- posted after police discovered a cot in a storage shed adjacent to the cellar's south wall -- machinist-sleuth Barrett reported that he had "frequently heard" that the building was utilized for "immoral purposes." (Oney, p. 72)

George Epps, a fifteen-year-old newsboy, testified that during a trolley ride to town with Mary on the fateful day she told him that Frank often tried to flirt with her, by winking, smiling, and "looking hard and straight at her." (Oney, p. 73)

Fourteen-year-old Nellie Pettis explained that when she went to "draw her sister-in-law's pay," Frank pulled a box of money from his desk, looked at it provocatively, and asked, "How about it?" Nellie Wood, two years older, stated that Frank put his hands on her, on the factory floor and in his office. (Oney, pp. 88-89)

Despite these titillating tales, the case against Frank was flimsy. When coroner Paul Donehoo posed the question "Have you discovered any positive information as to who committed the murder?" to police investigator John Black and to Pinkerton detective Harry Scott -- whom Frank had originally hired but whose true allegiance lay with his friend Black -- both men responded "No." (Oney, p. 96)

In the May 11 issue of the Georgian, political editor James Nevin dismissed the Coroner's Jury guilty verdict as based on "horrible false details conjured up in some disordered brain hereabout . . . [and on] misinformation, near-facts, pure falsehoods, and prejudice. Who then did murder Mary Phagan? The question is almost as far from an answer today . . . as it was when [her] body was dragged to light." (Oney, p. 97)

Nevertheless, Hugh Dorsey, the solicitor general of Fulton County, who would direct and coordinate the proceedings for the state, saw in them an opportunity to redeem his tarnished reputation. In the past year he had lost two high-profile trials: that of Atlanta socialite Daisy Grace, who was accused of slaying her husband, and that of vamp Callie Scott Applebaum, who apparently consummated the act, having been found in a locked room with a discharged revolver and the victim shot in the head. (Oney, p. 94)

Since references to Frank's sexual peccadilloes would be inadmissible unless introduced by the defense, Dorsey realized he would ultimately need additional proof of culpability. On May 10, he secured an affidavit from fourteen-year-old Monteen Stover, who said she had stopped by the factory at 12:05 on April 20 to pick up some outstanding pay, searched unsuccessfully for Frank in his outer and inner offices, and left at 12:10. (Oney, pp. 100-101)

Despite presenting a bare minimum of physical evidence, principally the testimonies of Stover, Barrett, Gantt, and a few others, Dorsey was able to convince a grand jury on May 24 to indict Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan. The Georgian remained skeptical, commenting that "the State has failed to establish Frank's connection with the crime . . . Frank was never seen with the girl on the day of the strangling or before . . . Absolutely nothing was discovered in the search of the detectives [of his clothes, fingerprints, or personal belongings] that fastens the crime on him." (Oney, p. 117)

That same day Dorsey would find himself in possession of a smoking gun -- the Delphic pronouncements of a "shiftless, no-account Negro," to quote historian Steve Oney, which would be miraculously embraced by a Jim Crow community as more credible than the words of a white man. (Oney, p. 118)

A sweeper at the factory, Jim Conley had been arrested back on May 1, when day watchman E. F. Holloway had noticed him standing at a second floor water cooler washing red stains -- merely rust, he demurred -- out of an old blue work shirt. Despite a history of intermittent incarceration for petty theft, drunkenness, and disorderly conduct, Conley remained free from suspicion because he swore "he could not do what the Phagan girl's killer or accomplice, one of whom had surely authored the murder notes, could do: write." (Oney, p. 119)

Probably based on tips from Frank himself and from Holloway, Pinkerton detective Scott obtained an installment contract bearing Conley's signature from a jewelry store where he had purchased a watch. After confirming that the handwriting matched that of the notes found beside Mary Phagan's body, Scott and Black confronted Conley and charged him with lying about being illiterate (which he admitted) and with writing the notes (which he denied). (Oney, pp. 128-130)

A week later, however, Conley summoned Black to his jail cell, and "uttered the words that would eventually enthrall all Atlanta: 'Boss, I wrote those notes.' " (Oney, p. 131)

Conley's subsequent affidavit satisfied Scott, Black, and Chief of Detectives Newport Lanford that he was telling the truth, although his rambling account was peppered with glaring implausibilities. Contrary to the generally accepted assumption that the action had been spontaneous, Conley claimed to have written the notes a day before the murder. Further, no one believed that Frank would have said to Conley "Why should I hang?" and thus divulge in advance that he was going to commit a capital crime. Such absurdities, mused the Georgian, actually served to "bring the deed to Conley's door." (Oney, pp. 132, 133)

Badgered by Black for three days and frightened by a Georgian headline naming him the perpetrator, on May 28 Conley produced a second affidavit in which he disclosed his presence at the pencil plant on Saturday, April 26, the day of the murder -- having been instructed by Frank to come there after accidentally meeting him a few blocks away. Once they arrived, Frank summoned Conley to his office around 1:00 PM, shoved him into a wardrobe to hide from two female employees (Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall) who unexpectedly appeared, and, when they departed, asked him to record the notes from dictation, as he had related in his original statement. (Oney, pp. 134-135)

Placing himself on the premises further implicated Conley and led to speculation by Holloway and two other workers that he had struck Mary down while trying to snatch her purse, which had never been found. While Black and Scott dismissed this theory, they were baffled by Conley's neglecting to mention at any time that he knew a crime had been committed. Four more hours of relentless grilling finally elicited from Conley his third and most devastating affidavit. (Oney, pp. 136-138)

Now Conley alleged that Frank had called him to his office because a girl had fallen and hit her head, and needed to be removed. When Conley found the girl dead, Frank ordered him to carry her to the elevator. Halfway across the floor, Conley hollered for help, and together the pair managed to get the body to the basement. From that point the account replicated the two prior ones, except that Frank handed Conley $200 (instead of $2.50 in a cigarette box), but then -- as described in a handwritten addendum -- snatched it back, promising to return it on Monday. (Oney, pp. 138-140)

The detectives escorted Conley to the pencil factory, where, reported the Georgian, he reenacted the "grim drama with a realism that convinced all who listened and watched that he was at last telling the whole truth." (Dinnerstein, p. 25) Ironically, it was his initial dissembling that lent legitimacy to his ultimate revelations. As whites saw them, "Negroes were by nature mendacious," and it often took several passes to cleanse them of all their falsehoods and fabrications. (Oney, p. 141)

Conley was transferred to the laxly-guarded Fulton County Tower, where his penchant for entertaining "jailhouse sharpies" and inquisitive journalists with desultory monologues troubled both Dorsey and Lanford -- who dreaded he would say something that might endanger their case -- and his attorney William Smith -- who feared he might incriminate himself. The thirty-three-year-old Smith was an idealist whose reputation as a fierce defender of underdogs (and Negroes) had prompted the Georgian to finance his representation of Conley -- an arrangement he subsequently repudiated when he came to believe in his client's innocence. (Oney, pp. 145-148)

With the consent of Lanford and Smith, Solicitor Dorsey petitioned the presiding judge of the Fulton County Criminal Court, Leonard Roan, to remand Conley to the police jail -- a highly irregular step which essentially insulated him from any person wishing to interview him, such as Pinkerton detective Harry Scott, who was having second thoughts about Frank's guilt. (Dinnerstein, pp. 25-26)

Just days after their breakthrough with Conley, the police arrested and held without a warrant the Frank family cook, a twenty-year-old black woman named Minola McKnight. Twenty-four hours of intense interrogation -- during which shrieks and protests erupted from Dorsey's office -- extracted from Mrs. McKnight the damaging allegation that Frank had arrived home for lunch on April 26 at 1:20 PM, the same time Frank had given, but had stayed only ten minutes, not touching his lunch, which contradicted Frank's statement that the interval had been thirty minutes. (Oney, p. 164)

Further, Mrs. McKnight said she overheard a conversation in which Lucille Frank told her mother that Leo had been drunk the Saturday night of the crime and that he wanted to shoot himself because "he was in trouble [and] he didn't know the reason why he would murder." Mrs. McKnight added that the Franks had tried to bribe her to silence by offering her extra wages. (Oney, pp. 164-165)

But once released Mrs. McKnight told a Georgian reporter that her published affidavit was "most all a pack of lies."Apparently her husband Albert had been as persuasive as the police in helping her craft her story; he was a porter at the Beck and Gragg hardware company, one of whose principals, L. H. Beck, was the foreman of the grand jury which had indicted Frank. (Oney, pp. 166, 163)

In a letter to the three Atlanta dailies, Lucille Frank denounced Solicitor Dorsey and the city police for torturing Mrs. McKnight "for four hours with the well-known third degree process." She also denied "every conceivable rumor [that] has been put afloat to do . . . harm" to her and her husband, and forcefully asserted his innocence. Dorsey, of course, countered that as his wife she would "certainly be the last person to admit his culpability, even though proved by overwhelming evidence to the satisfaction of every impartial citizen beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt." (Dinnerstein, pp. 27-28)

Frank had engaged two of Atlanta's most renowned lawyers, Luther Rosser, domineering defender of local wealth, elitism, property, and corporate power, and the more genteel Reuben Arnold, those entities' signature spokesperson and their facile intermediary when opposing interests clashed. Emboldened by the McKnight incident, they launched an aggressive campaign to discredit Conley and transform him from the feeble accomplice into the devious malefactor. (Oney, pp. 49, 176, 178)

Three salvos were fired. The first was the discovery of what was purported to be a piece of Mary Phagan's pay envelope near where Conley had said he was sitting on April 26. The second was the emergence of an eyewitness, carnival itinerant Will Green, who described how the "half drunk" negro with whom he was shooting craps on the first floor of the pencil factory threatened to take money from a girl and how "when she came down [he] started for her." The third was a confession, conveyed to schoolteacher William H. Mincey, who declared that on the afternoon of the murder a drunken Jim Conley had told him he had killed a girl earlier in the day. (Oney, pp. 179-181)

Although Rosser and Arnold were able to persuade the grand jury to reconvene -- the first one in Fulton County ever to do so over the objection of the sitting solicitor -- an indictment against Conley was not forthcoming. (Oney, pp. 183-188)

That decision was reflective of a public opinion which was rapidly gaining momentum and adherents -- against Leo Frank; as a northerner, an industrialist, and a Jew, he seemed the epitome of much that was alien to southern culture. (Dinnerstein, p. 32)

Former rural dwellers found an easy scapegoat for all the unpleasantness of the city in the mysterious Jew, who "dealt mainly in trade and commerce . . . controlled finances, practiced strange customs, and personified urban perfidy." Once suspicion lighted upon Frank, his Jewishness became another argument among many to prove his guilt. His situation as an employer of underpaid female labor and a northern capitalist exploiting southern womanhood further incensed the community. (Dinnerstein, pp. 34-35)

How such resentments could even take precedence over the prevailing racial caste was eloquently elucidated by Mary Phagan's pastor, who wrote that "the old negro watchman . . . would be poor atonement for the life of this innocent girl. But when . . . the police arrested a Jew, and a Yankee Jew at that, all of the inborn prejudice against Jews rose up in a feeling of satisfaction that here would be a victim worthy to pay for the crime." (Dinnerstein, p. 35)

Furthermore, it was only natural that the people of Atlanta would assume that the Solicitor would never choose to prosecute a white man rather than a Negro, "unless the evidence was overwhelming," and that they would accept the repeated assertions of the police -- later demonstrated to be untrue -- that the hair strands in the metal lathe had been "positively identified" as Mary Phagan's and that the red spots on the floor were her blood stains. (Dinnerstein, pp. 34-35)

The most sensational trial in the history of the state of Georgia opened on July 28, 1913. The prosecution sought to establish, through various witnesses, that the aforementioned hair strands and red spots were proof "that the murder had occurred in the second floor workroom, opposite Frank's office, and that the superintendent, the last person known to have seen Mary Phagan alive, had the opportunity to kill her." (Dinnerstein, p. 37)

Called to the stand third was the night watchman, Newt Lee, whom Solicitor Dorsey guided through the now-familiar recitation of his encounter with Frank on the Saturday of the murder and his discovery of the body. Dorsey honed in on Frank's apparent alteration of Lee's time card slip to include three omissions -- the slip was supposed to be stamped every hour -- which exposed Frank as trying to frame Lee by fabricating his absence on the night of April 26. (Oney, pp. 49-50, 200)

To assist Lee and enable the jurors to visualize the setting, Dorsey unveiled "a potent piece of graphic firepower" drawn by Georgian artist Bert Green -- an elaborate cutaway of the pencil factory illustrating Frank's office, Mary Phagan's work station, the elevator shaft, and the basement toilet from which Lee said he spied the body, all overlaid with two lines charting the path the accused had traveled while committing the crime. (Oney, p. 200)

Cross-examining  Lee, Luther Rosser could score only a few minor points -- that anyone could have entered the building that afternoon without Frank knowing it; that Frank, unlike someone with something to hide, never instructed Lee to avoid the basement; and that Lee never noticed anything out of place while traversing the metal room that night. So well did Lee maintain his composure under Rosser's fierce attempts to ferret out inconsistencies in his story and to connect him to the murder notes that the Georgian's James Nevin would write: "It is likely altogether that more than once the jury's sympathy went out to Lee in large measure while Rosser was grilling him." (Oney, pp. 202, 206)

Rosser had more success with two subsequent witnesses. Grace Hicks, the girl who had identified Mary Phagan's body at the mortuary, admitted that she had never seen Mary and Frank speak to each other, that the factory floor was dirty, greasy, and spotted with all colors of paint, and that sitting next to Mary was another girl with "sandy" hair, Magnolia Kennedy. (Oney, pp. 214-216)

Detective John Black, who had been involved in every aspect of the investigation and whose characterization of Frank as nervous and excitable on the Sunday after the murder was crucial to the prosecution's case, wilted under pressure from Rosser. He couldn't remember what time he had called Frank Sunday morning, what time he had arrived at the Frank home, and what kind of tie Frank had experienced so much difficulty with. Black conceded that thirty persons searching the factory Sunday morning had not seen any blood spots. (Oney, p. 219)

The prosecution's theory was that Frank had planted a bloody shirt at Lee's home and then manipulated his time slip to show he had gone there to change clothes. But Black inadvertently acknowledged that the shirt had been found before Frank said anything about the missed time stamps. (Oney, p. 222)

The Journal's headline was telling: "Detective John Black Goes to Pieces." (Oney, p. 222)

Although machinist Barrett staunchly maintained that the red stains he had found on the floor were blood, that the hair strands he had discovered were Mary Phagan's, and that the scrap of paper he had spotted at her work station was a piece of her pay envelope, Rosser countered adroitly. Chemist Claude Smith confirmed that the evidence was blood but confessed that his tests had yielded only four or five corpuscles "of indeterminate origin"; in other words, reported the Journal, they "might have been from a mouse." And assistant superintendent Darley testified that blood stains from women's menstrual cycles and injured workers were not uncommon, that "it was pretty hard to tell the color" of the hair strands, and that the shop was often littered with scraps of paper. (Oney, pp. 228-231)

Bolstered by Albert McKnight's reiteration that Frank had hurried back to work on Saturday after spending only ten minutes at home and by sixteen-year-old Helen Ferguson's account of Frank's refusal to give her Mary Phagan's money (which he had done twice before) when she came calling for it on Friday, Solictor Dorsey was ready for his key witness. (Oney, p. 235)

"His face scrubbed, his hair cut and combed, his clothes clean and new," Jim Conley unfolded his mesmerizing tale with such "dramatic realism that 'every spectator in the crowded courtroom hung on [every] word.' " (Dinnerstein, pp. 40,44)

Conley explained that he had arrived at the factory on the morning of the murder at 8:30, but was directed by Frank to go out for a while and then return -- in order that he might "watch out for him like I had on other Saturdays . . . when he was upstairs talking to young ladies." Frank would signal Conley to lock the front door by stamping his foot and to unlock it by whistling. (Dinnerstein, p. 40)

Conley watched Mary Phagan come in and go upstairs. He heard her footsteps moving toward the metal room, followed by screaming. Monteen Stover entered the building, stayed a few minutes, and left. Alerted by Frank's whistle, Conley saw Frank standing at the top of the stairs "shivering and trembling and rubbing his hands . . . [and holding] a long wide piece of cord. His eyes were large and they looked right funny." (Dinnerstein, pp. 40-41)

Frank told Conley, "I wanted to be with the little girl, and she refused me, and I struck her . . . and she fell and hit her head against something, and I don't know how bad she got hurt. You know I ain't built like other men." That last statement, followed by a vivid description of Frank performing oral sex on young women -- a capital offense under Georgia law -- branded the defendant even more strongly in the jurors' and the public's consciousness as a sexual deviant. (Dinnerstein, p. 41)

Conley now retraced some familiar territory: bundling up the body in a cloth, manhandling it by the elevator to the basement, assisted by Frank, and writing the murder notes as dictated. When asked by Dorsey why he cooperated, Conley said, "I was willing to do anything to help Mr. Frank, him being a white man and my superintendent, too." Of course, there was the motivation of $200, the payment of which, he now revealed for the first time, was contingent upon his burning of the body. But he "was afraid to go down there myself," promising to come back later that evening -- which he never did -- in order to complete the task and reclaim his reward. (Oney, p. 242)

Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold pummeled Conley for thirteen hours over two-and-a-half days, but despite landing a few minor blows were unable to shake his confidence or undermine the essential elements of his allegations. Conley admitted he was often in debt, and would flee his creditors through the factory basement. When questioned about the inconsistencies in his serial of affidavits, he said, "I didn't want to give Mr. Frank away [so] I held back some of the truth, but I wanted to tell some and let him see what I was going to do and see if he wasn't going to stick to his promise as he had said." (Oney, p. 248)

"The transportation of Mary Phagan's body to the factory basement, the dispersal of her belongings in the trash, the return trip the superintendent's second-floor office . . . the writing of the murder notes -- Rosser challenged Conley on all these matters. And each time he withstood the onslaught, darting away here, delivering appropriate responses there." (Oney, pp. 254-255)

When the prosecution rested, Conley's narrative had dazzled even James Nevin, who wrote in the Georgian: "If the story Conley tells is a lie, then it is the most inhumanely devilish, the most cunningly clever, and the most amazingly sustained lie ever told in Georgia." (Oney, p. 260)

"The weight of Conley's words assumed greater import because the defense had failed to upset his account. Many observers assumed Conley must have told the truth because Luther Rosser, 'the most feared cross-examiner in the Georgia bar' . . . was unable to make a dent in his story." Further, Rosser's motion to strike from the record Conley's references to Frank's lascivious behavior (which Judge Roan denied) seemed only to underscore his own futility. (Dinnerstein, pp. 45-46)

To build their own case, Frank's attorneys devised a four-pronged strategy: demonstrating that Frank was not alone long enough to commit the crime by refuting the prosecution's time line; impugning the credibility of Jim Conley; burnishing the reputation of Leo Frank; and putting Frank on the stand to exonerate himself.

In testimony corroborated by conductor W. T. Hollis, W. M. Matthews, the motorman on the trolley that brought Mary Phagan to town on April 26, stated that she did not exit until 12:10, five minutes after the prosecution contended she was dead. Minola McKnight reaffirmed that Frank, as he had repeatedly insisted, had returned home for lunch on the day of the crime at 1:20, eaten his meal, and not left the house until 2:00. Foreman Lemmie Quinn made a surprise visit to the factory at 12:20 and found Frank working at his desk. Other witnesses swore they saw Frank traveling to and from his residence during the time Conley said he was with him. (Oney, pp. 266, 282, 285, 287-288)

In summary, all of Frank's time between 11:30 AM and 1:30 PM seemed to have been accounted for, with the exception of eighteen minutes (between approximately 12:02 PM and 12:20 PM), hardly long enough for Frank to have committed the murder and, assisted by Conley, disposed of the body. (Dinnerstein, p. 49)

Day watchman E. F. Holloway impeached Conley on a number of points -- declaring he had never seen the factory's front door locked on a Saturday, scoffing at Conley's accusation that Frank entertained young girls in his office ("I have never known Mr. Frank to have any woman on Saturday excepting his wife," he said), and dismissing Conley's wild tale about salacious goings-on at the plant on Thanksgiving Day 1912. (Oney, p. 269)

Assistant superintendent Herbert Schiff echoed Holloway, called Conley's "general character for truth and veracity . . . bad," and said he would not believe him under oath -- as did handyman Arthur Pride. Drayman Truman McCrary was adamant that he had worked at the plant every Saturday for three years and had "never found the front door locked . . . never seen Jim Conley there . . . guarding the door." (Oney, pp. 271-272, 292)

Foreladies Corinthia Hall and Emma Clark testified that they visited the factory between 11:35 and 11:45, which directly contradicted Conley, who maintained they did not appear until after 1:00 PM. (Wilkes)

The defense summoned over one hundred individuals to attest to the virtues of Leo Frank. Office boy Philip Chambers said he never saw Frank "familiar with any of the women in the factory," or bring any of them to his office to drink. A parade of these girls endorsed Frank's moral rectitude, although in rebuttal Solicitor Dorsey would produce his own cadre of female workers who would depict their superintendent as a reprobate. (Oney, pp. 281, 309)

On cross-examination, Dorsey relentlessly demeaned Frank. When life insurance agent John Ashley Jones referred to a report which classified Frank as "first class physically as well as morally," Dorsey shrugged him off with such questions as "Don't you know of Frank's relations with the girls down there at the factory? . . . Didn't you hear he took girls in his lap down there? . . . Didn't you hear about twelve months ago of Frank kissing girls and playing with the nipples of their breasts?" This last provocation was too much for Frank's mother Rae; she rose from her seat, shook her finger at Dorsey, and shouted: "No, nor you either." (Oney, pp.285-286)

Dorsey asked a former office boy if Frank had not made improper advances toward him, and though the boy denied it the insinuation of homosexuality "went from mouth to mouth gaining credence where it went." (Dinnerstein, p. 51)

Frank himself would spend four hours in the witness chair pleading his innocence to the jury. He discussed his personal and professional background, his reasons for coming to Atlanta, the state of his marriage ("Exceptionally happy," he said, "indeed, the happiest days of my life."), and his duties at the pencil factory. The bulk of his remarks was devoted to the minutiae of calculating and apportioning the week's payroll (which he did on Friday), reviewing a sheaf of invoices for correct pricing, quantities, freight charges, and commissions (his work Saturday morning), and preparing a detailed financial sheet which summarized labor and raw material costs, repacking, investments, and profit (which occupied him Saturday afternoon). (Oney, pp. 299-300, pp. 302-303)

Oddly enough, Frank employed only 236 words to clarify the critical mysterious encounter -- Mary Phagan's appearance in his office to pick up her pay and her inquiring if the metal had come in (so she could resume her full work schedule). Regarding his noticeable anxiety on the morning the body was found, he confided, "I was nervous . . . completely unstrung . . . to see that little girl on the dawn of womanhood so cruelly murdered." (Oney, pp. 301-303)

If the major portion of his discourse had consisted of "tedious tabulations and rote recitations," Frank concluded in impressive fashion. "The statement of the negro Conley is a tissue of lies from first to last," he said. "I know nothing whatever of the cause of death of Mary Phagan, and Conley's statement as to his coming up and helping me dispose of the body, or that I had anything to do with her or with him that day is a monstrous lie." (Oney, p. 304)

A Georgian reporter wrote that "Frank was far and away the very best witness the defense has put forward," and the Constitution observed that his words "carried the ring of truth in every sentence." (Dinnerstein, pp. 50-51)

Throughout the trial Judge Roan struggled to preserve decorum, as two-hundred-and-fifty boisterous spectators cheered the machinations of Solicitor Dorsey and any rulings in his favor while disparaging his opponents' presentations and motions. Outside the courtroom windows, which were left open in the blistering summer heat, could be heard the rumblings of an angry mob, which, in the words of one observer, thirsted "for the blood of Mary Phagan's murderer." (Wilkes)

In its closing arguments, the defense concentrated on attacking Jim Conley. "Let us follow the law and not follow prejudice," implored Reuben Arnold. "Frank's alibi is complete, and Jim Conley has been proven a liar." His "testimony contained  a sufficient number of absurdities to render it implausible" -- his having often stood guard at the factory's entrance, his allowing Monteen Stover to ascend to the second floor despite just having heard Mary scream, his hiding in a wardrobe to avoid being seen by the two foreladies Hall and Clark, and, most preposterous of all, Frank's utterance, "Why should I hang? I have wealthy people in Brooklyn." (Oney, p. 321)

And if Arnold and Rosser had failed to break Conley, it was because he had memorized his lines. Otherwise, whenever asked something not part of his programmed script, why had he, in page after page of court recordings, admitted he had lied or said, "I disremember?" (Oney, p. 325)

Of course, Frank Hooper, speaking for the prosecution, saw it differently. If Conley had held firm, it was because "after all the lies he had told, eventually [he] had arrived at the truth, and the truth is stronger than these lawyers." And that truth was that Frank was a Dr. Jekyll, who associated with bankers and businessmen by day but "when the shades of night came, threw aside his mask of respectability and was transformed into a Mr. Hyde." (Oney, p. 314)

His partner delivered the peroration, which was lauded by the Constitution as "one of the most wonderful efforts ever made at the state bar." If in one breath Hugh Dorsey denied making an issue of Frank's Jewishness, in another he fanned the flames of anti-Semitism by averring that while the Jews can "rise to heights sublime" -- in the persons of Benjamin Disraeli and Judah Benjamin -- they can also "sink to the lowest depths of degradation" -- as exemplified by the criminal acts of Abe Ruef, Abraham Hummell, and that "Schwartz, who killed a little girl in New York." (Dinnerstein, pp. 52-53)

Dorsey turned an innocuous letter Frank had written to his uncle Moses on the afternoon of the murder into an unconscious expression of guilt. The letter read: "It is too short a time since you left for anything startling to have developed down here" -- code words which, fulminated Dorsey, translated to "the dastardly deed was done in an incredibly short time." (Dinnerstein, p. 53)

Dorsey similarly deciphered the murder notes as incriminatory, professing that never a "negro lived on the face of the earth who, after having . . . robbed . . . or murdered a girl down in that dark basement, would have taken the time to write" them. (Wilkes) If Conley had authored the first one, said Dorsey, he surely would have adopted the same terminology he spoke throughout the trial -- "the negro done it" -- rather than the grammatically correct "the negro did it." As for the second, Frank had obviously inserted the phrase "that negro did by his slef" in order to ward off suspicion that two culprits had been involved, since Conley acting alone would have had no reason to draw such a distinction. (Oney, p. 331)

Frank, contended Dorsey, had been plotting his conquest of Mary Phagan for weeks, if not months. He turned away Helen Ferguson when she came for Mary's pay envelope on Friday, lest his assignation the next day be foiled. Upon Mary's arrival, he escorted her to the rear of the second floor on the pretense of investigating if the metal had come, and then, raged Dorsey at Frank, "You assaulted her and she resisted. She wouldn't yield. You struck her and you ravished her and she was unconscious." (Oney, pp. 332-333)

Dorsey spoke for the better part of three days. "He revisited familiar pieces of evidence, interpreted enigmatic clues, and brought to light previously ignored ones. He denounced Frank's character and emphasized his Jewishness and wealth." (Oney, p. 337) He repeatedly referred to Conley as honest and reliable, and portrayed Frank as a "lust murderer," comparing him to the notorious Theodore Durrant, who had been executed in 1898 for the brutal slaying of two women inside San Francisco's Emmanuel Baptist Church. (Wilkes)

As the solicitor concluded his harangue with the prediction that there could be but one verdict, the bells of the nearby Church of the Immaculate Conception began to toll twelve, giving him the opportunity -- having carefully timed his finale -- to pronounce his last words alternating with each succeeding chime: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! "Until finally the bells sounded no more." (Oney, pp. 338-339)

Judge Roan feared that, should Frank be acquitted, he and his counsel would become the targets of the volatile crowd, which, in the nearby streets and alleys, had grown to five thousand and was seething with vengeance; he orchestrated an agreement whereby their presence at the reading of the verdict would be waived -- without asking for or securing Frank's consent. (Dinnerstein, p. 55)

The jury needed less than four hours to decide the case. In a silent courtroom that had been cleared of all spectators except for the two prosecutors, two representatives for the defense, a few curious lawyers, and a delegation of newsmen, "the foreman unfolded a sheet of paper and in a trembling voice announced, 'We have found the defendant guilty.' " (Oney, pp. 340-341)

Historian Leonard Dinnerstein says, "It is difficult to see how the outcome of the trial could have been different." He quotes Edmund Morgan, who wrote in The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti, "Every experienced judge and every experienced lawyer know [that] it is impossible to secure a verdict which runs counter to the settled beliefs of the community." And those beliefs were such that, in all likelihood, "dire social and economic consequences awaited those jurors who would . . . ignore their fellow citizens' attitudes toward Leo Frank." (Dinnerstein, p. 59)

Outside the courthouse a horde of thousands "went wild with joy. . .  As Solicitor Dorsey appeared in the doorway . . . there came a mighty roar." Three muscular men slung him on their shoulders and passed him to his office over the heads of the raucous throng wildly proclaiming its admiration. (Dinnerstein, p. 56)

The next day Judge Roan secretly assembled the principals in the case and sentenced Frank "to be hanged by the neck until he shall be dead." (Oney, p. 343)

Frank's attorneys immediately issued a statement declaring that, "The trial which has just occurred and which has resulted in Mr. Frank's conviction was a farce and not in any way a fair trial. The temper of the public mind was such that it invaded the courtroom . . . and made itself manifest at every turn the jury made, and it was just as impossible for the jury to escape the effects of the public feeling as if they had been turned loose and allowed to mingle with the people." (Oney, p. 343)

They announced that they would appeal the decision.

The dual tragedy of Mary Phagan and Leo Frank was about to enter its second act.

REFERENCES

Dinnerstein, Leonard. The Leo Frank Case. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

Oney, Steve. And The Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003.

Wilkes, Donald E. "Wrongly Accused, Falsely Convicted, Wantonly Murdered," Flagpole Magazine (May 4, 2004), 7.