Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Vigilantes, Episode 5

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Appeal after appeal, Leo Frank was running out of options. With a new lawyer joining his defense team – the same lawyer who earlier represented the man who testified against Leo – the tide began to turn. Witnesses were coming forward, a new explanation for the murder note comes to light, and the story is making national news. With only days remaining before the scheduled execution, would time be on his side? Join us for part five of this seven-episode series, The Vigilantes. Special Thank You to the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and the Kenan Research Center in Atlanta for their generous assistance in finding and sharing letters sent to Leo and Lucille Frank, his family, and to the Governors of Georgia, as well as the state legislature. Host/ Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder  Writers: Amy Watkin, Sharon McMahon Researched by: Kari Anton, Sharon McMahon, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, Melanie Buck Parks  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Head to SharonMcMahon.com slash ad-free to subscribe today. On February 17, 1914, the Georgia Supreme Court released a 140-page decision denying Leo Frank a new trial. They agreed that Leo should have been allowed to be present when the verdict was read, but they based their ruling on the technicality that his lawyers didn't file their arguments fast enough. And thus, they missed their chance. This denial launched Leo's case onto the front pages of the New York Times, which devoted considerable space to what they called the prosecution's depraved attacks on Leo's character and the sinister circus-like atmosphere of Leo's first trial, where vendors sold souvenir cards

with anti-Semitic sayings on them, and thousands of people picnicked on the courthouse lawn the day the verdict was announced. Within three weeks, the Times had run 25 articles about the case. The entire country was now paying attention to Leo Frank's trial, and his lawyers had just filed yet another appeal. And back in Georgia, the judge set Leo's execution date. He had only months left to live. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. The New York Times articles detailed the lengths that the prosecution went to in order to secure a conviction against Leo, including concealing evidence, encouraging or forcing many witnesses into perjuring themselves, encouraging or forcing many witnesses into perjuring themselves,

and lying to the public about evidence like the hair found on the factory lathe that the prosecuting attorney knew was not Mary Fagan's hair, even before the trial started. On the same day the New York Times started printing stories about Leo's case, the Atlanta Georgian printed a statement that Leo himself had written. The silent man in the tower would be silent no more. Part of Leo's statement read, I don't ask for pity, for sympathy, or for quarter. I take all on the truth. That alone is unshakable, uncrumbling, and lasting. I feel confidently that the truth will out, that God will not let an innocent man suffer for the crime of another.

Leah went on to claim that the murder notes held the key to the whole case, writing, there is one fact, one undeniable fact connected with this case that lifts it from the realm of mystery and places it in the category of just plain, dastardly, ordinary, brutal murder. I refer to the two notes which were found by the body of little Mary Fagan. Unquestionably, the hand that wrote these two notes tied the cord around poor little Mary Fagan's neck. Leo had a thing or two to say about Jim Conley in this statement as well. Conley was the star witness in Leo's trial, giving hours of sworn testimony that Leo was a perverted man who forced Conley to help him deal with Mary's body after Leo killed her. Leo's anger about all of that was clear when he wrote, I say with the assurance of

my innocence that the truth, the ultimate unchangeable truth that must vindicate me in the eyes of the world, that the simple facts show that Jim Conley's recital is not only a vicious lie, but was impossible. Yet I am condemned on Conley's statement, a statement that has been altered and changed to suit each new phase in the working up of the case against me. Less than a week later, Jim Conley went on trial, not for Mary Fagan's murder, but for being an accessory after the fact because he said he had helped Leo dispose of the body. accessory after the fact because he said he had helped Leo dispose of the body. The same prosecutor who got Leo convicted made only a half-hearted effort to convict Conley in this trial, saying, Conley was just Leo's fool and ought not to be punished. Conley's conviction

was a slap on the wrist compared to Leo's death sentence, after deliberating for only 12 minutes, the jury found Conley guilty of being an accessory to the murder of Mary Fagan and sentenced him to one year of hard labor on a chain gang. New evidence and information about Leo's case started pouring in, so Leo's lawyers appealed to the Fulton County Superior Court, asking them to set aside the guilty verdict on the grounds that errors in the law had kept the jury from seeing evidence that could exonerate Leo. As they prepared their next appeal, Leo's new execution date was set, April 17, 1914. If the next appeal didn't work, Leah would be executed on his 30th birthday.

Remember Helen Ferguson, Mary Fagan's friend who worked with her at the pencil factory, the one who informed Mary's family that she had been murdered? In early 1914, Helen Ferguson signed an affidavit stating that on the day Mary was murdered, Helen had been accosted by Jim Conley in the lobby of the pencil factory. She said he was drunk, seemingly as drunk as could be. I saw a whiskey bottle in his hip pocket. He was staggering. He didn't seem to know what he was doing. Then he came over toward me menacingly, and I drew back, and as he pushed nearer me, I jumped to the stairs and ran as fast as I could. Helen's information refocused investigations on Conley as the murderer once again. Her statements put Conley at the factory on the day Mary was killed.

Conley's actions in Helen's statement seemed to be those of a man on the hunt for a young girl to attack. The tide of evidence was turning in Leo's favor, especially as more people seemed to realize that the key to the case was just as Leo had said in his public statement, the murder notes. In March 1914, Henry Alexander, a prominent Atlanta lawyer, examined the murder notes and found they did not match up with Conley's testimony. When police first read the notes, they assumed that bad spelling had turned night watch into night witch. However, Alexander knew that many Southerners at the time believed that when children suffered night terrors, they were being haunted by the night witch.

If someone didn't wake them up, they would be dead the next morning. In some versions of the cautionary tale, they would be strangled with rope or string. Given that Leo was a northerner, it's unlikely that Leo would have known about such cultural beliefs, making it even harder for many to believe that he wrote those notes. Attorney Henry Alexander also discovered that the notes were written on old order forms that were stored in the factory basement, not in Leo's office, as Conley had claimed. Alexander joined Leo's defense team, and as part of their strategy to sway public opinion in Leo's favor and share new evidence for continued appeals, they printed a glossy eight-page pamphlet called Some Facts About the Murder Notes in the Fagan Case, and they sent it to Atlanta's registered voters.

The pamphlet said, The simplest explanation, and the one which seems correct from every logical viewpoint, simplest explanation, and the one which seems correct from every logical viewpoint, is that the notepad was in the basement where it was found by Conley and used by him to write the note through which he hoped to throw the blame on another. The facts about the Mary Fagan murder notes pamphlet created a sensation, and reporters quickly went to Leo for comment, which he happily agreed to. Leo said, they will have to change Conley's statement again if they're going to get around this. They will have to get him to say that instead of reaching into my desk and getting out a pad, I went down to the basement and brought that old pad up and had him right on that.

brought that old pad up and had him right on that. I hope the prosecutor rests as easily in his bed tonight and sleeps as soundly and as free from worry as I shall. I have never felt more confident of ultimate acquittal than I do right at this moment. Things were looking very hopeful for Leo. Leo's attorneys had lost appeals and been denied a new trial based on technicalities, but now they wrote a 60-page document collecting all of the renounced testimonies and new allegations implicating Conley. And things just kept stacking up in Leo's defense. things just kept stacking up in Leo's defense. From the beginning, a nationally famous detective from the Pinkerton agency had been quietly working behind the scenes to find Mary Fagan's murder. Hired by the pencil company to essentially double-check the Atlanta Police Department's work,

Detective William J. Burns had been with the Secret Service before becoming a household name for solving a famous counterfeiting crime with his unusually calm, sophisticated techniques. Burns, who was sometimes compared to Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, never used the third degree that Atlanta police had used to torture Newt Lee. He was methodical, careful, and thorough. He was methodical, careful, and thorough. And now Detective Burns felt confident in his investigation of the most startling and convincing nature against Jim Conley, an examination which conclusively proves that the murder note found by the body of Mary Fagan emanated exclusively from his perverted brain. There could be no more convincing proof of Conley's guilt.

These letters completely explode the argument of the state against Leo. The Atlanta Journal printed an excerpt from a note that Conley wrote to his girlfriend, Annie Maud Carter, next to an excerpt from one of the murder notes, making it clear that the handwriting was very similar. That, along with investigations of Conley's vocabulary and spelling, made Burns confident enough to say, Conley is the sole author and writer of the death notes found by the body of Mary Fagan. It has always been admitted, both by the state and the defense, that the author and writer of the death notes was the murderer of the little girl. Now that these letters have established unquestionably that Conley is the author of the notes, there should no longer be any question of Conley's guilt. The authenticity

of these letters is beyond question. And if Burns' conclusions about the murder notes weren't enough, Conley's girlfriend, Annie Maud Carter, had by this time signed an affidavit stating that Conley had confessed Mary's murder to her. According to Annie, he said he was sitting on a box in the factory when the girl came down, that he told her someone had called her, that she turned back and then he struck her with his fist, knocking her down. That he dropped her through the hold. That he then took her around by the furnace, starting to burn her, but his conscience wouldn't let him. That he put her down there to make people believe Newt Lee did it. That afterward he found a piece of blank paper, tears it in two, picks up a pencil, and puts the paper on the cellar door and writes the notes. That he first took the notes and put them in her bosom, then he took them out and laid them by her side.

That he then took a thing they opened boxes with and pulled the staple out of the back door and went out. back door and went out. Shortly after these revelations, the county court granted Leo a temporary stay of execution because the case was still under appeal. Leo would live to see 30, at least. But a few months later, even with all of this new information emerging, the Fulton County Superior Court denied the motion to set aside the guilty verdict. Leo's lawyers would once again appeal to the Georgia State Supreme Court. Leo wrote another statement for the newspapers, which was published in full on the one-year anniversary of Mary Fagan's murder, April 26, 1914. His statement reads, To the people of Atlanta, I make this appeal to your fairness. It was the horrible charge that I was a pervert that poisoned your minds, infuriated you against

me, and put me beyond the pale of human sympathy. It is this charge that has poisoned and still poisons the minds of the public against me the murder and onto the allegations of perversion. Leo needed to focus on the perversion issue because that was the change that could legally earn him a new trial. Claiming innocence of the murder yet again was not a change from his previous statements or cases, but having the state unable to prove that he was a pervert was a change and something Leo's lawyers could base an appeal on. Leo continued in his newspaper statement, I be allowed to make my defense before a jury that knows the truth, that I am not a pervert, a jury that will not be intimidated by fear of being shot down and killed should it acquit me, a jury whose mind will be calm to weigh my testimony against that of a self-confessed

Negro perjurer. A fair trial is what I want, is what I am entitled to, and what no fair-minded man should deny me. Information to help Leo's case kept coming. An Atlanta Baptist minister admitted that on the Monday after Mary's murder, he overheard Conley confessing to the crime to another person in an alley. overheard Conley confessing to the crime to another person in an alley. A parishioner backed up this claim, saying the pastor had come to him with a dilemma at the time, and the parishioner had advised him not to get involved. In October 1914, a monumental change in the case occurred when Jim Conley's lawyer decided he no longer wanted to represent him. William Smith stunned the public by switching to Leo Frank's defense team instead. William Smith told the New

York Times, I am convinced by long study of the records in the case and from new evidence that Jim Conley is the real murderer of Mary Fagan. I believed sincerely in the guilt of Leo Frank, but my further investigations have convinced me that I was mistaken, and I am sure that investigation by the proper authorities will prove conclusively that the Negro is the man who is the slayer. that the Negro is the man who is the slayer. Conley's own lawyer had turned against him. It seemed like everything was finally going Leo's way.

But it wouldn't stay that way for long. In November 1914, the Supreme Court for the state of Georgia denied Leo's appeal again. Leo was visiting with a friend in his jail cell when this news reached him. He said, well, I expected the court to be with me this time. Leo was running out of options, and yet the evidence in his favor continued to mount. George Epps, a teenage friend of Mary Fagan's, had previously testified that Mary was afraid of Leo. George came forward now and recanted his entire testimony, saying police had encouraged him to testify against Leo. When he went to tell the prosecuting attorneys the truth, prosecutors told him to stick to the story he was given because it fit

the timeline that the prosecutor was trying to make work. Another witness who testified to Leo's whereabouts the day of the murder also came forward and said he'd been bribed by a member of the grand jury that indicted Leo and that most everything I said on the stand was a lie. Still, Leo's execution date crept closer and closer. After the state Supreme Court denied the case, the judge brought Leo into the courtroom to hear another death sentence. The Atlanta Journal reported that the courtroom was once again packed and the crowd spilled into the hallway, but in contrast to Leo's very first trial, the room was completely silent. Police officers were stationed amongst the crowd and all over the building with orders from the

judge to arrest anyone who manifested the slightest evidence of approval or disapproval. The judge asked the defense team if they had anything to say, and Leo himself stood to face the court reportedly pale and calm, with a clear voice carrying throughout the room as he said, May it please your honor, this is a momentous day, for under the guise of law, Your Honor is about to pronounce words that will condemn to death an innocent man. The jury's verdict of August 25, 1913, finding me guilty of the death of Mary Fagan, did not then and does not now speak the

truth. I declare to Your Honor and to the world that the verdict was made in an atmosphere seething with mob violence and clamor for my life, a verdict based on evidence absolutely false, which under other circumstances would not have been given a moment's credence. Your honor, I deeply sympathize with the parents of Mary Fagan. honor, I deeply sympathize with the parents of Mary Fagan. Someone in the back of the courtroom muttered under their breath, but police officers quickly shut them down. Leo continued, life is very sweet to me. It is not an easy thing to give up the love of dear ones. Though this be true, death has no terrors for me. I go to my end in the full consciousness of innocence and in the firm conviction that as there is a God in heaven, my full vindication must come someday. With the dawn of that day, there will come to the people of Georgia a full realization of this horrible mistake, the execution of an innocent man, a victim of perjury, prejudice,

and passion. Leo hung his head after finishing, and then looked up at the judge's face before sitting down. Reporters noted that the crowd seemed deeply impressed by the condemned man's words. The judge said nothing other than the words that were, by now, familiar to Leo. It is ordered by the court that you shall be carried by the sheriff to the common jail to the county, and there safely kept with a sufficient guard until Friday, the 22nd day of January, 1915, on which day between the hours of ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, you shall be hanged by the sheriff until the sentence of death shall be carried out. In an eerie echo of Leo's first trial, a clock inside the courtroom chimed the time,

as if doubling down on the proclamation that Leo was going to die in just six weeks' time. Leo's lawyers were running out of chances to save his life, so they appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. It took only a couple of weeks to learn that his appeal was denied. According to the Atlanta Journal, Leo was sitting in his cell conversing with his father when the news came that the courts again had refused him another chance for life. Neither he nor his father exhibited emotion or surprise, and the convicted man refused to make any statement.

It was clear that the nation's legal system considered the case closed once and for all. Except, Leo's lawyers went back to the United States Supreme Court with a new slant on the argument, saying that the fact that Leo was denied his constitutional right to be in the courtroom when the verdict was read nullified his conviction, and therefore he was being held in jail illegally. They filed a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that Leo had been imprisoned unlawfully. And this time, the United States Supreme Court accepted the case. Every time there was a new hearing, an update was published and a new statement released by Leo Frank's defense team. But not everyone believed these new retractions and allegations. Almost like clockwork, a well-known and very outspoken Georgia politician

and magazine publisher named Tom Watson would level attacks on Leo and his lawyers. Watson had been a member of Congress and had previously run for both president and vice president. Watson claimed he was, quote, By the time Leo's trial came around, it would have been difficult to run for office in Georgia without the public blessing of Tom Watson, even though his bids for the presidency and vice presidency had failed. By 1914, Watson's newspaper, The Jeffersonian, had a wide circulation, boosted by the murder of Mary Fagan, and Watson had demonstrated that he was among Georgia's most virulent white supremacists. So while the evidence pointing toward Leo's innocence continued to mount, the Jeffersonians circulated to a nationwide audience and painted Leo as not only guilty,

but evil. Watson's religious bigotry convinced him that Leo was guilty and that his entire defense was an example of, quote, outsider interference in Georgia's affairs. If there was anything Watson despised more than a non-Protestant, it was a non-Georgian. And between Watson's own publication and his name recognition in Georgia, he got plenty of space in newspapers to print his opinions. In fact, the Jeffersonian circulation reached its peak of close to 100,000 subscribers during Leo's appeals process. Tom Watson's writing was so popular that people flocked to newsstands to buy the Jeffersonian for a nickel and then resell it for a quarter. Watson was wildly anti-Semitic and not afraid to admit it. He wrote things like,

here we have the pleasure-loving Jewish businessman. Here we have the Gentile girl. Here we have an employer who came down from the north where the $5 a week working girl is presumed to need the financial aid of a gentleman friend. And people were listening. Watson's reader said things like, you not only expressed my sentiments, but you expressed the belief of 90% of the people. And Tom Watson is a lighthouse of strength, ever ready with tongue and pen to give courage to the wavering masses, for he loves them. Leo's case was still getting plenty of other national press as well, despite the fact that

by this time, World War I had begun overseas and was dominating the news. In December 1914, Collier's Weekly published two extensive articles laying out Leo Frank's case for their nearly 1 million subscribers. Collier's writer Christopher Powell Conley corresponded with Leo for months while writing a number of pieces to give the entire country a big-picture view of what was happening in Atlanta. Conley sent an advanced copy of Collier's to Leo, who responded, I am still fighting and have lost neither courage nor hope. All here join me in best wishes to you. The first Collier's article did not paint a favorable picture of Atlanta, calling the fervor over Mary Fagan's murder a quote-unquote public delirium that had not existed for the 16 or 18 women

murdered in Atlanta just a few years before Mary. But, as this article pointed out, most of those victims had been women of color. Apparently, the Southern tradition of protecting the virtue of girls and women only applied to white people. Collier's also had a quote from the prosecuting attorney's law partner saying, no Jew in modern times has been persecuted as this Jew has been. Collier's even quoted Tom Watson saying Detective Burns had quote, sold out to the Jews. The Collier's weekly articles brought even more national attention to Leo's case,

but not all of that attention was good. They gave Tom Watson more fuel for his rants about, quote, Northerners trying to control our business. As 1915 began, and the country waited for the Supreme Court hearings to start, Fulton County Judge Benjamin Hill pushed back Leo's execution date yet again. And Tom Watson's written assaults continued. Watson attacked Leo by saying that wealthy Jewish people throughout the country threw money towards his defense. Leo certainly did have financial supporters, though historians

have not found evidence of Watson's claim that anyone defending Leo was being bribed by wealthy Jews from New York. Watson even dropped not-so-subtle hints that if the law wouldn't punish Leo, Leo could be punished outside of the law, writing, If the efforts of Frank's millionaire backers succeed in concealing the truth and giving immunity to a most heinous crime, then the punishment of a convicted criminal will really begin outside the courthouse, outside the state, and outside of the methods of the law and evidence. Watson wasn't bold enough to attack the New York Times outright, so instead he denigrated papers like the New York World, Chicago Tribune, and the St. Louis Dispatch, naming their owners, all of whom were Jewish. On the afternoon of February 25, 1915, the United States Supreme Court began hearing arguments in the Leo Frank case.

Arguing for Leo, lawyer Louis Marshall listed the ways in which the jury in Leo's trial was cajoled, intimidated, and threatened by crowds in and out of the courtroom, building to such a frenzy for Leo's life that, finally, upon the insistence of the court that the prisoner might be torn from the sanctuary of the court and lynched by a mob if he was present when the verdict was returned, counsel consented to his being absent. The jury was left to return its verdict to the prosecuting officer and the mob. They knew what that meant. What that meant was that the jury would choose to protect themselves by convicting Leo. The nine justices sat on their raised platform, listening as Marshall argued that Leo's trial had been co-opted by threats and intimidation from the start.

Marshall asked that Leo be given a new trial. from the start. Marshall asked that Leo be given a new trial. The state of Georgia, represented by the same lawyer who had prosecuted Leo, argued that there was no public prejudice against the defendant at the opening of the trial, and that Marshall was enlarging upon the truth. After their arguments were completed, the wait began. Leo's six-by-eight-foot cell had been scrubbed and polished, and two chairs and a table had been brought in for him. Every morning he woke, looked out the window, and then did 20 minutes of exercise with dumbbells. He read the newspapers until his father-in-law brought him breakfast, and then more often than not, Mr. Sig or other National Pencil Company leaders stopped by. Leo was no longer running the factory,

but still weighed in on big decisions. Leo had a bridge game going through the mail with Florence Irwin, the New York Times bridge writer. Leo's wife, Lucille, usually visited at around 4 p.m. and stayed for the evening. Leo and Lucille waited helplessly for others to decide his fate. It had to have been especially painful to sit for two months while the Supreme Court deliberated. on April 19th. In a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Leo Frank.

They found that the 14th Amendment does not prohibit the state of Georgia from making rules about policies and procedures of their trials, and that Leo not being present in the courtroom when the verdict was read did not deny him his constitutional rights. Leo's execution was once again rescheduled, this time for April 25, 1915, just one day short of the second anniversary of Mary's murder. At this point, Leo had been in jail for two years. His lawyers had lost seven court appeals. His execution had been rescheduled four times. Leo reportedly started to show signs of fatigue and trauma,

like weight loss, extreme exhaustion, and even loss of balance. But Leo's attorneys weren't done. They brought Leo's case to the Georgia State Board of Pardons or Prison Commission, asking them to recommend that the governor commute Leo's sentence to life in prison. Leo's execution date was once again pushed back. The Georgia Prison Commission held a special session on May 31st to hear arguments in Leo's case. At 9.30 a.m. on May 31st, the prison commission's meeting room in the state capitol building was packed. 100 spectators filled the allotted seats, and more were crowded in the hallways outside. The three commissioners sat at desks facing the rest of the room. Leo's lawyer presented

the dissenting opinions from the state and U.S. Supreme Courts. He shared Annie Maud Carter's letter detailing Jim Conley's confession to Mary Fagan's murder. He circulated reports from medical doctors showing that Leo was of a sound mind and not considered a pervert. And he shared an expert analysis of the handwriting in the murder notes, arguing that it was far more likely that Conley, and not Leo, had written the notes. Upstanding Atlanta citizens testified on Leo's behalf, including the coroner, who claimed, I have never made up my mind that Mr. Frank is guilty. Even Lucille had written an emotional letter that the lawyer read in court while she sat sobbing. The lawyer said, our marriage has been exceedingly happy and has never been marred by the slightest cloud. Leo's new lawyer and Jim Conley's former lawyer, William Smith, wrote a 100-page

report on the murder notes that was shared with the prison commission. He wrote, I swear to you that I believe Leo Frank to be innocent. With all the earnestness and seriousness of my life, I appeal to you not to let him die. Tension in Atlanta was growing, and during the eight days the prison commission deliberated, Leo's well-wishers crowded into the jail while hundreds gathered on the Capitol steps to protest commutation. Driven by the same fervor that had ignited crowds hovering outside the courtroom windows during Leo's trial, the same itch for

vengeance that had started the Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906, protesters clamored for Leo's execution. 2,500 people surged toward the Capitol steps, egged on by a Baptist minister there to preach against outsiders interfering in Georgia's business. And of course, Tom Watson, who shouted a direct threat to Robert Davison and Thomas Patterson, the prison commissioners who were supposedly leaning towards commutation. As a local musician named Fiddle and John Carson played his new song, The Ballad of Mary Fagan, detailing Leo's guilt and calling for his execution, Tom Watson called out,

Let Davison and Patterson have a care. They are walking on the edge of an abyss. Watson might as well have called out the same threat that had been shouted to the jury during Leo's trial. Hang the Jew or we'll hang you. Those 2,500 people couldn't compete with the millions who had signed petitions supporting clemency for Leo, but those millions of people weren't in Atlanta, and none of them decided the case. It was up to only three men. In June 1915, by a two-to-one vote, the Georgia Prison Commission voted against clemency for Leo Frank. The two commissioners who voted against clemency for Leo wrote a two-paragraph rationale that was printed in the New York Times. They said that every other judge, jury, and court involved so far had upheld the death sentence,

far had upheld the death sentence, so we see no reason for taking this case out of the ordinary rules of law and justice and feel constrained not to interfere with the enforcement of the orderly judgment of the courts. The end of the road was near. Only one option remained for saving Leo's life. Commutation by the governor. Even without the prison commission's recommendation, John Slayton, governor of Georgia, could commute Leo's sentence from death to life in prison. It wouldn't remove the guilty verdict or get Leo out of jail, but it would keep Leo alive. Governor Slayton's term as governor was scheduled to end on June 26th. But Leo's life was scheduled to end on June 22nd. Both men stood at the edge of a cliff.

The governor had 10 days to hear the arguments and decide if he was going to save a man's life or ensure his death. The governor didn't have to take the case, but he did. It would be his final decision as governor of Georgia, possibly even his legacy. Slayton risked his future by even considering whether to commute Leo's sentence. He'd hoped to transition from one of Georgia's most popular governors into a senator. An unpopular decision in the Leo Frank case would effectively torpedo his political career and maybe even cost him his life if the angry mobs of Atlantans hell-bent on avenging the death of Mary Fagan could get a hold of him. Slayton was a lawyer by trade, and he wanted to investigate Leo's case

with the impartial eyes of the law. He also had religious and moral reasons for taking the case. In one of his public statements regarding Leo Frank, he said, reasons for taking the case. In one of his public statements regarding Leo Frank, he said, 2,000 years ago, another governor washed his hands of a case and turned a Jew over to a mob. 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. In order to get to the bottom of Leo's case, Governor Slayton held hearings in his office, and nearly a hundred people tried to squeeze themselves into the antechamber so they could hear and see the proceedings. Slayton knew he was under

a microscope. During these hearings, a delegation from Marietta, Mary Fagan's birthplace, appointed themselves as the Fagan family representatives and claimed to voice the opinions of many Georgians. This group included a former governor of Georgia, the mayor of Marietta, a justice of the peace, a newspaper editor, a solicitor general, a state football hero, Mary Fagan's uncle, and a cousin of the prosecuting attorney. They had been spoon-fed the anti-Semitic poison Tom Watson had been printing for months, and now they felt compelled to ensure that Leo Frank paid the ultimate price. We can imagine these seemingly respectable men sitting around a table, conspiring about how to conceal their

threats with just enough plausible deniability. Much like the articles they'd been reading, these men were not concerned with facts in the case. Tom Watson had given them a clear enemy in Leo Frank, and now they were jittery for revenge. It was Georgia's former governor, Joseph Brown, who read the Marietta delegation statement in Governor Slayton's packed office, saying, Now, in all frankness, if your excellency wishes to ensure lynch law in Georgia, if you wish to hopelessly weaken trial by jury in Georgia, you can strike this dangerous blow at our institutions and our civilization by retrying this case. If you defeat the law, the people of the state see no reason for jury trials. This is the most important case any living man in Georgia has had under review. One law for all, or no law at all. And sure, lynch law.

So if these men didn't like the governor's decision, they would take matters into their own hands? The threat might have worked. Except that Slayton was growing more and more suspicious of Jim Conley's testimony. Which brings us back to one of the most notorious pieces of evidence in this case, the pile of human waste at the bottom of the elevator shaft. It could have helped determine who had been in the basement near the time Mary was killed, but no one ever collected it for testing. During recess in the commutation hearings, Governor Slayton visited the pencil factory to make sense of discrepancies in the timeline. He spent a lot of time in the factory basement and asked questions about the operation of the elevator. He paid special attention to whether or not the elevator touched the dirt floor of the basement every time it stopped there.

Conley had admitted to using the bottom of the elevator shaft as a toilet on the day that Mary was killed. If the elevator touched the dirt floor every time, and Conley's testimony about him and Leo moving Mary's body to the basement using the elevator was true, then the pile of waste would have been squashed before police got the scene. But remember, the waste was still intact when Mary's body was discovered very early on Sunday morning. It was later crushed by detectives using the elevator. This was the inconsistency that bothered Slayton. In Slayton's repeated testing of the elevator, as well as his questioning of anyone familiar with it, he confirmed that the elevator always hit the ground in the basement when stopping.

In other words, it was likely that Conley had lied about using the elevator with Leo to bring Mary's body into the basement. In the mind of Governor Slayton, this fact about the elevator opened the door to all of the other things that Conley might have lied about. Crate after crate of letters poured into Slayton's office demanding that he spare Leo's life, totaling more than 100,000 appeals. Most of the letters were from ordinary people, but many U.S. senators and even the vice president of the United States sent messages urging clemency. Northern newspapers were so against what was happening in Georgia that some printed coupons in their pages with a note written directly to officials in Georgia.

They urged readers to sign their names and gave them instructions on how to send in their petitions. Two million people signed, and their coupons filled massive crates that had to be shipped by train to Atlanta. And of course, the governor also received notes demanding that he let the execution take place, and more than a thousand letters threatening his own life and that of his wife if Leo's sentence was commuted. But there was another letter that perhaps influenced Slayton's decision. Judge Leonard Roan, the judge who had ruled in Leo's original trial and in the first appeal, had died a few months earlier. But on his deathbed, he wrote a letter saying that he was still uncertain of Leo's guilt and that, quote,

at the proper time, I shall ask the prison commission to recommend and the governor to commute Leo's sentence to life imprisonment. The judge didn't live long enough to make these requests, but the letter perhaps weighed on Slayton's mind. Once he'd collected the evidence, Slayton retreated to his estate with boxes for continued study before announcing his decision. William Smith, Jim Conley's former lawyer who'd recently switched to Leo's side, brought Governor Slayton a crucial document at this time. Smith brought the sworn statement of a prisoner who said he had been at the pencil factory the day Mary Fagan died. He'd been playing craps in the factory basement with Jim Conley and winning. Conley left for a few minutes, saying that

he was getting more money. The man waiting in the basement heard a small scream. When he went to see what the noise was, he saw Conley fighting with a girl. A few minutes later, Conley gave him a small purse with money in it and told him to take it. The man left without asking any other questions. When he heard about the dead girl in the factory a day later, the man left Atlanta. He was arrested a few weeks later on an unrelated charge and had recently decided to come forward. Slater on an unrelated charge and had recently decided to come forward. Slayton took less than 72 hours to come to a decision, but public debate during those three days was tense, and they were only six days away from Leo's scheduled execution. At 2 a.m., on the day Slayton would announce his decision, he sat in the library of his mansion, writing what would become his 29-page rationale.

The Slayton's 75-acre estate was an expanse of woodlands and rose gardens that should have been backdrops for farewell tea parties and schmoozy luncheons as Slayton marked his final days in office. Instead, the governor sat alone in a dimly lit room, constructing a document that would change many lives, including his own. Join me next time for Episode 6 of The Vigilantes. We'd like to give a special thank you to the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and the Kenan Research Center at Atlanta for their generous assistance in finding and sharing letters sent to Leo and Lucille Frank, his family, and to the governors of Georgia, as well as the state legislature. The show is hosted and executive produced by Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is

Melanie Buck-Parks, and our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. It's written by Amy Watkin and Sharon McMahon, and it's researched by Kari Anton, Sharon McMahon, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reed, and Melanie Buck-Parks. If you enjoyed this episode and want to subscribe ad-free, head to SharonMcMahon.com slash ad-free. We'd love for you to leave us a rating or a review and be sure to hit subscribe so you'll get the next episode as soon as it's available.