Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Vigilantes, Episode 6

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Georgia’s Governor knew his life was in danger when he made his ruling. Would he commute Leo’s sentence, or let him die by execution?. And just how far would the angry mob go to seek revenge for Mary’s death? The planning had already begun… and it wouldn’t take long for a deal to be made with the prison warden. Join us for part six of this seven-episode series, The Vigilantes. 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

Here's Where It Gets Interesting is now available ad-free. Head to SharonMcMahon.com slash ad-free to subscribe today. In the dark early hours of a warm June morning in 1915, Governor Slayton's wife Sally, perhaps awakened by an unfamiliar emptiness on her husband's side of the bed, padded into the library of their home. What did you decide? she asked. Her husband looked up, perhaps giving a long sigh, and replied, It may mean my death or worse, but I've ordered the sentence.

Commuted. Swallowing her own fears for her safety in her husband's life, Mrs. Slayton responded, I would rather be the widow of a brave and honorable man than the wife of a coward. And before he announced his final decision, Governor Slayton put a plan in place to get Leo out of harm's way. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Slayton knew that when he made his decision public, there would be a mob waiting to storm the jail and kill Leo Frank. This wasn't an unusual pattern. Mobs assembled, stormed the jail, often with little resistance from guards, and dragged the person they deemed guilty outside to meet their fate, which was usually a lynching. The difference was that this generally happened only to African Americans. Slayton told the sheriff to disconnect the prison's phone line so that no one could be tipped off to the plan to move Leo Frank

out of the jail. A decoy car idled in front of the prison that night. This caught the attention of reporters who were staking out Leo's cell in the tower while they awaited the governor's decision. A little after 11 30 p.m., that car sped off, leading the reporters away. But Leo was not in it. Leo was escorted to a car waiting in the alley behind the jail, then to a midnight train to Macon, Georgia, and finally into another car driving at top speeds, like 35 miles an hour, to get to the Georgia State Prison Farm in Milledgeville.

These elaborate moves may have saved Leo's life, but he was still far from safe, and even Governor Slayton's life was in danger. Atlanta learned Governor Slayton's decision on Monday, June 20, 1915. The whole city seemed to stop as nearly everyone read the morning newspapers to learn what the governor had done. Just two days before Leo's scheduled execution, Governor John Slayton commuted his sentence to life in prison. Slayton laid out his rationale in a statement printed in full by the Atlanta Journal. It occupied nearly two full pages of the paper. Slayton wrote, I can endure misconstruction, abuse, and condemnation, but I cannot stand the constant

companionship of an accusing conscience, which would remind me in every thought that I, as governor of Georgia, failed to do what I thought to be right. And what he thought to be right in this case was repeatedly asking, did Jim Conley speak the truth? Slayton's research and his conscience helped him answer that question. No. The Atlanta newspapers, for the most part, commended Governor Slayton, saying that he showed quote, wisdom and courage, and deserves the commendation of the people of Georgia. The New York Times said Governor Slayton has saved Georgia from herself. Many of Atlanta's citizens, however, did not share these sentiments. An angry crowd shoved their way into Slayton's office looking

for him, but he had the forethought to not be in the office that day. Slayton's concerns about Leo's safety were not unfounded. By around 8 a.m. on the morning the decision was made public, a group of around 5,000 men had already gathered around the entrance of Atlanta's City Hall. What they didn't know was that Leo was no longer in the city. Police had orders to quickly disperse all large crowds, but the men refused to leave. quickly disperse all large crowds, but the men refused to leave. The summer air was thick with tension, as many police officers who also disagreed with Slayton's decision were duty-bound to protect him and others by keeping control over the crowd. Some of the same speakers who'd incited the crowds just days before were at it again, and skirmishes broke out throughout the day. The police chief spotted one of his plainclothes officers joining the protest and yelled at him for being on the wrong

side. Police needed all the help they could get since furious protesters were fighting attempted arrests by physically restraining the police officers. The officer punched his chief right in the face, immediately losing his badge and gun before being hauled off to jail. Protesters were assaulting cops and how police officers were even assaulting each other. In Marietta, an effigy with the name tag John M. Slayton, King of the Jews, and Georgia's traitor forever, was hung and burned. Georgians also took their hatred out on their Jewish neighbors, threatening them with immediate violence if they didn't leave town. The Jewish citizens of Canton, for example, were given 24 hours. A group calling themselves the Marietta Vigilance Committee handed out small cards to the few Jewish businesses in the town. The card said,

Notice. You are hereby notified to close up this business and quit Marietta by Saturday night, June 29, 1915, or else stand the consequences. We mean to rid Marietta of all Jews by the above date. You can heed this warning or stand the punishment the committee may see fit to deal out to you. Jewish people in Georgia boarded up their homes, barricading themselves inside for protection because many had nowhere else to go. Some families sent their children out of the state. The New York Times later reported that about half of the Jewish people in Georgia at that time left the state. As Jewish businesses closed and people fled or went into hiding, violent eyes turned towards Governor Slayton.

State troopers surrounded the estate of Governor Slayton to protect him and his family. Slayton. State troopers surrounded the estate of Governor Slayton to protect him and his family. Slayton declared martial law in Atlanta and deployed the state militia, who stood guard with bayonets fixed, much like their counterparts in the trenches of Europe. More than once, huge mobs of people swarmed the governor's property. A group of 2,000 people seemed unintimidated by the militia's bayonets and threw rocks and bottles at them, injuring several men. But the militia wasn't intimidated either and marched at the mob, driving them back until finally, at around midnight, the mob gave up. At least for the night.

night, the mob gave up. At least for the night. Martial law remained in effect in Atlanta for about a week until Slayton was ready to leave office and become a civilian again. During the swearing-in of the new governor, the crowd spotted Slayton and began shouting, Lynch him! Lynch him! As Slayton and the new governor, Nathaniel Harris, were walking towards their cars after the inauguration, a man in the crowd raised a five-foot piece of iron pipe intending to strike Slayton down. Luckily, a National Guard commander there to protect Slayton stepped between Slayton and the iron pipe, diverting the blow so that no one was injured. As the new governor reported, the National Guard commander saved both himself and Governor Slayton from a terrible injury or perhaps death. The former governor's driver

whisked him away and cleverly zipped into a viaduct to hide from the angry crowds following the car, shouting, Where's Slayton? Within days, Slayton and his wife left for a pre-planned tour of the United States. And they didn't come back to Georgia for years. A Madison, Wisconsin newspaper commented on the entire affair, writing, The public condemnation of Governor Slayton proves not so much that Georgia has besmirched her honor, as that Georgia has no honor. But maybe Georgia could recover. Leo's case was over, after all. No more appeals. No more trials.

Leo's case was over after all. No more appeals. No more trials. Slayton and his wife were safely out of the state, and Leo was making a new home at the prison farm in Milledgeville. And yet even now, Leo Frank was not out of danger. Milledgeville prison farm spread over 4,000 acres of mainly cotton and corn fields, where prisoners in their black and white striped uniforms were expected to work. The building that housed the wardens and superintendents' offices as well as open barracks for most of the white male prisoners was red brick with a large second-story porch and sweeping front steps that gave it an air of southern grandeur. Leo was finally free of the death

sentence he'd carried for two years and had been moved to the new prison for protection from the mobs that had been calling for his murder since his original trial. After Governor Slayton commuted his death sentence to life in prison, one newspaper reported that Leo was suffering from a nervous breakdown caused by the terrible strain which he had undergone in his long flight to escape the gallows. In his first days at Milledgeville Prison Farm, Leo spent time in the prison hospital being treated for extreme nausea, a bad cold, exhaustion, and a loss of balance. Leo knew he had a long road to recovery ahead of him, but he wrote to Lucille, it has indeed been an ordeal for both of us, my darling, but in time, both of us will be happy. Leo had landed in a place that felt safe,

perhaps due to the increased security that the warden had ordered when Leo arrived. Leo wrote, I am in an environment which, through the kindness of the warden and his staff, has been made as livable as circumstances will permit. After his initial days in the prison hospital, Leo began waking at four o'clock every morning, putting on his black and white striped prison clothes and doing the light cleaning duties assigned to feebler inmates. Friends and strangers sent Leo money and gifts. He had a real cotton mattress instead of the standard grass prison mattress. He had towels, soap, a razor. Strangers brought him fruit. The New York Public Library mailed him books, and believe it or not, one member of the grand jury that had indicted him sent him a box of 50 cigars. He

called this period in his life the breathing spell in the present phase of my life to gain the strength and reserve for the spurt to freedom, vindication, and that honor which is justly and rightfully mine. Leo had not given up his fight for exoneration, yet he was now able to catch his breath after two years of constant stress. But Leo's respite was brief. but Leo's respite was brief. Leo didn't have his own cell at the prison farm. Instead, sharing bunk space in a large barracks-type room with several other prisoners, their beds lined up along the walls of the room. Less than a month after Leo got to the Milledgeville prison farm, a convicted murderer named William Crean stole a butcher knife from the prison kitchen,

wrapped it in newspaper to conceal it from guards, and hid it in his bunk. In the middle of the night on July 17th, Crean made an excuse to walk past Leo's bed. He pulled the knife out of its newspaper sheath, climbed onto Leo's sleeping form, held him down with one knee, and slashed Leo's neck in a seven-inch cut that severed his jugular vein. The rest of the dormitory sprang awake when Leo screamed. As the lights flickered on, they were stunned by the gory scene. Leo was covered in blood and reaching both arms up to fight off Crean, who was still on top of him, attempting to run the knife through his victim again. The guard and several inmates tackled Crean and wrestled the knife away.

The guard and several inmates tackled Crean and wrestled the knife away. Luckily for Leo, two inmates were doctors, and they quickly clamped his jugular vein, stabilizing Leo enough to be moved into the jail's hospital, where the prison doctor, with the assistance of the two inmate doctors, spent two hours suturing the vein back together, closing the gaping wound, and repairing Leo's right hand, which had been cut when he reached up to defend himself. Leo's life floundered from all of the blood he'd lost, but when one of the prison doctors expressed their concern that he might not survive the attack, Leo replied, I must live. I must vindicate myself.

I must live. I must vindicate myself. Crean said, I only wish that I'd had more strength, and then refused to speak again except to Georgia's new governor, who visited Milledgeville to investigate the attack himself. The would-be killer told new governor Harris that he'd been called from on high to murder Leo in order to protect other prisoners from anyone outside the prison farm who came to kidnap or murder Leo. The governor returned to his office to find multiple petitions demanding that Leo's attacker be pardoned. Writer Tom Watson fanned the flames by falsely reporting that the knife Crean attacked Leo with

had been used earlier in the day to butcher hogs. We don't have evidence that Leo kept kosher specifically, but it's nonetheless clear that Tom Watson intended to literally add insult to injury by claiming that the knife used to cut Leo had been contaminated with non-kosher pork. The worst had finally happened. But Leo had survived. He laid in the prison hospital for weeks, wearing a brace to protect the delicate skin on his neck while he slowly recovered. Prison officials moved Leo to a small room next to the warden's office, explicitly set up for his safe recovery. The superintendent was kind enough to allow Lucille to stay in his home, but she spent

each day in Leo's room, helping to bathe and feed him. She'd arrived in Milledgeville three days before the attack, staying alternately with family friends in Milledgeville and in the prison superintendent's home. These seemed to have been special privileges granted only to Lucille and Leo under these extraordinary circumstances. And yet, even after all of this, Leo may have never been in more danger. At about 11 p.m. on August 16, 1915, while Leo lay recovering in the dark and quiet of his private room, a caravan of cars with dimmed headlights glowing approached the prison. Seven cars and at least one motorcycle sped down the long dirt driveway toward the Milledgeville prison farm, headlights dimmed to avoid attracting

attention. It was a quiet, warm night, still about 75 degrees outside and dry enough that dust billowed behind the menacing group. Twenty-five men were coming for Leo. Each man had a rifle and a pistol. Their cars carried explosives, wire cutters, and rope. The barbed wire fence around the prison wouldn't be enough to stop them. Leo was being hunted. The hunters, men who were mostly from Mary Fagan's hometown of Marietta, appointed themselves Fagan family representatives, and they wanted Leo. They had written to Governor Slayton threatening to lynch Leo Frank if the governor commuted his sentence, and they now knew where he was being kept. Within days of former Governor Slayton commuting Leo's sentence, rumors reached Governor Harris's office that these Marietta men were planning to kidnap Leo Frank from Milledgeville. When he took office, Governor Harris made a statement saying that he

considered the Leo Frank case a matter of past history. In other words, he was not going to entertain petitions to reinstate Leo's death sentence. He also said no one, however aggrieved he may feel himself to be, has the right to take the law into his own hands. The kidnappers believe from the start that Leo Frank killed Mary. They also believe that outsiders were stealing Georgians' jobs, their dignity, and their women, and they believed that the only real justice was an eye for an eye. Historian Steve Oney writes, authority, unless it was their own, was an affront to them, the prospect of raging the whole of Jewry and Yankeedom on a lure. They were not deterred by the governor's words. They were ignited. And a scathing article published

by Tom Watson fanned the flames. Watson wrote, we Georgians have often been divided among ourselves, but on this case of our little girl, just a humble daughter of the plain people, we are as warmly united and as deeply stirred as any state ever was, for we know that right has again been condemned and crucified. While Mary Fagin's body lies moldering in the ground, where is the lecherous beast who assaulted her and choked her to death? Watson's writings were eerie echoes of the fake newspaper stories in 1906 about black men assaulting white women. These stories enraged white men in Atlanta

to the point of mob violence that became the Atlanta Race Massacre. The same thing was happening nine years later, enraging white men who felt that Leo Frank must be punished for Mary Fagan's murder. And a life sentence in prison was not enough. It's impossible to overstate how constant and forceful Watson's writings were. He was the 1915 equivalent to a moment-by-moment Twitter threat. From the start of the appeals process, Watson was writing things like, if Leo Frank's rich connections keep on lying about this case, something bad will happen. Something bad will happen. sitting next to me, Steve! Ah! It's my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our

friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. With Watson's words and their own prejudice ringing in their heads, the vigilantes from Marietta decided to take justice into their own hands.

Some of the men in the caravan were very prominent. One of the architects of the plan to kidnap Leo was Joseph Brown, the former governor of Georgia and a close friend of Tom Watson. Leo's would-be kidnappers also included the current and former mayors of Marietta, the town where Mary Fagan was buried. One of the former mayors, Eugene Clay, was now the solicitor general of the Blue Ridge Circuit Court District, making him the most powerful law officer from the Cobb County line north to the Tennessee border. The Marietta Mayors may have been riding in a car with Bolin Glover Brumby, a descendant of the founder of the Georgia Military Institute, who was taught as a child that Yankee was a dirty word. These men were joined by William Fry, former sheriff of Cobb County,

and Newt Morris, a circuit court judge who became a shady real estate magnate around Marietta. Those who did business with him knew to keep their canceled checks in case the judge later claimed non-payment for work and tried to sue. When Judge Morris learned of Leo's commutation, he said, are we to understand that anybody except a Jew can be punished for a crime? Another accomplice was called Black Newt because of his dark tan complexion, acquired while running the Cobb County convict camp chain gang. Black Newt would patrol the line of convicts with a pistol holstered to his leg and a bullwhip at the ready. He was so good with his bullwhip that some took to calling him Whipping Newt.

Also coming for Leo that August night was Fred Morris, a prominent Marietta lawyer and literal Boy Scout, donning his driving goggles next to D.R. Benton, Mary Fagan's uncle. Benton had been arrested a few months earlier as part of the militia group who'd attempted to storm then-Governor Slayton's mansion as he considered whether or not to commute Leo's sentence. Even these fairly wealthy vigilantes didn't have enough cars to transport 25 people, so they hired a taxi. As part of their planning, they had to think ahead to how many people would be there and then hire a taxi to get some of their group to the prison farm.

Perhaps riding in that taxi was John Tucker Dorsey, a distant cousin of the prosecutor who had charged Leo Frank with murder. Dorsey served time on a chain gang for manslaughter after beating a man to death with a shortened billiard cue during a drunken argument. After his release, he became a sought-after trial attorney in Cobb County. The kidnappers also brought Yellow Jacket Brown, a red-headed electrician who had spent days riding his motorcycle around Milledgeville, noting where there were phone lines.

Not many people had phones in 1915, but Brown took thorough inventory. The same group of men had donated the giant slab marking Mary Fagin's grave and started calling themselves the Knights of Mary Fagin. Knights, as you probably guessed, was spelled K-N-I-G-H-T-S. And if that spelling feels ominous to you, it should. The Knights of Mary Fagin would soon become part of the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was founded as a quote-unquote social club in 1865 by Confederate Army General Nathan Bedford Forrest. They wore white robes in order to appear like the ghosts of fallen Confederate soldiers,

risen from the grave to wreak vengeance. The targets of this vengeance were newly freed Black citizens, but anyone believed to be helping them could be lynched as well. In 1866, a white Jewish Latvian immigrant named Samuel Bierfeld sat in the back room of his general store at around midnight in Franklin, Tennessee with a black employee and another black man. The back door crashed open and a group of masked armed white men burst inside. Bierfeld ran into the street straight into a dozen more masked men. The men were dragged into the middle of the street and shot. Bierfeld was shot five times at such close range that his clothes and skin were burned by gunpowder. Historians believe that Samuel Bierfeld was the first Jewish man to be lynched by the KKK. Will Leo be next? President Ulysses S. Grant nearly succeeded in eliminating the KKK while he was in office after the Civil War.

After being restricted and punished through enforcement acts put in place by Grant's administration, the KKK was declared an unconstitutional organization by the Supreme Court in 1882, and the Klan went mostly dormant. Supreme Court in 1882, and the Klan went mostly dormant. But the violence continued, even outside of the official club. Whether or not the Klan was officially active, people remained terrified. And not only Black people. In 1905, a mob of around 75 white men descended on a jail in Watkinsville, Georgia, abducting one white prisoner and seven black prisoners, tying them all to posts and shooting them repeatedly. It's recorded as the bloodiest lynching in the state's history. In 1911 alone,

19 Georgians were lynched. Historians estimate that more than 3,000 people were lynched in the South between 1882 and 1930. More than 450 of those instances happened in Georgia. And in 1915, the Knights of Mary Fagin decided that spending a lifetime in jail was not enough of a punishment for Leo Frank. For Leo's kidnappers, the civil war that their fathers and grandfathers had fought in was still very present in their lives. While the primary target of the KKK in the 19th century had been African Americans, at the beginning of the 20th, members of the Knights of Mary Fagan had expanded the objects of their hate to include not just Black people, but Jews, immigrants, and Catholics as well. All were outsiders. All were seen as threats. These men were determined to succeed where they felt the former governor had failed.

Leo was everything they despised. He was Jewish, he came from an immigrant family, he was an industrialist, and he was an outsider from New York, not a true Southerner. for them to imagine Leo as Tom Watson's caricature of the lecherous factory manager who preyed on defenseless country girls who came to the city for jobs. And now they were going to do something about it. The majority of the Knights of Mary Fagan were wealthy and well-connected, which put them in a good position to make sure that the officials at the Milledgeville prison farm were not going to cause them any problems. In late June, after Leo arrived in Milledgeville, the state legislature appointed a special commission to go to the prison farm and inspect conditions there. the warden, superintendent, and commissioners of the prison had been asking for more funding in order to make improvements to the dorms and sanitation systems.

Conditions for many prisoners there, especially Black prisoners, were especially horrific. About 140 Black male prisoners were packed into one room, giving each of them just a few feet of space to themselves. There were no bathroom facilities in the room. 129 Black female prisoners were held in an even smaller space that somehow made it so even fewer of their basic needs were met. The inspectors were on site for only one day when they determined that conditions at Milledgeville were worse than reported. Halfway through 1915, three inmates had already died that year of typhus. The inspectors discovered that prison officials were dumping raw sewage upstream from the water supply, feeding not only the prison, but the city of Milledgeville. In July 1915, the Atlanta Constitution's front page showed the state of Georgia Department of Health inspectors' reports calling some of the prison properties

quote-unquote death traps. The story continued that such conditions should be allowed to exist in a state institution is almost beyond comprehension. Conditions could not be much more favorable for the spread of typhoid, dysentery, smallpox, tuberculosis, or other contagious disease. State health inspectors recommended that the prison officials be indicted for criminal neglect. Despite the fact that they were the ones

who had alerted the state to the problems, now the Milledgeville warden and superintendent faced prosecution and their jobs were at risk. The only way out of this bind was to work with John Tucker Dorsey, the chairman of the legislature's penitentiary committee, and one of the knights of Mary Fagan. Dorsey's committee toured the prison farm to assess the conditions, but what Dorsey was really there to do was strike a deal with the prison warden and superintendent. The deal was this. The committee would give the prison farm the money it needed to make improvements, but only if prison officials let the kidnappers do what they wanted when it

came to Leo Frank. So that was the choice for prison officials. They could protect Leo, lose their jobs, and go to jail. Or they could cooperate with Dorsey and hand Leo over to the Knights of Mary Fagin. The warden's daughter told a writer many decades later that, My father believed Leo Frank was innocent. But after applying hours of pressure, Dorsey and the men in charge of the Milledgeville prison farm finally came to an understanding. Dorsey announced to the press that while conditions at the prison farm were deplorable,

the prison commission should be exonerated of any blame. For the last four years, they've called attention to these conditions in writing, and they've predicted an epidemic of typhoid fever. But they cannot install a sewage system in a pure water supply with no money. The legislature alone is to blame for its stingy policy. The warden and the superintendent, along with the prison commission, would keep their jobs and avoid prison. The only price they had to pay was looking the other way when the Knights of Mary Fagin arrived at the prison. the other way when the Knights of Mary Fagin arrived at the prison. Dorsey's announcement exonerating the prison officials was made on July 12, 1915. That night, the Knights of Mary Fagin

were going to uphold their end of the bargain. They were ready to drag Leo out of the prison. At some point that evening, an unknown caller tipped off the Georgia militia, warning them that people were going to try and storm the prison. Three militia companies were mobilized, and the governor was notified. The Knights of Mary Fagin heard about these actions and decided to stand down. For now. The story made the newspapers, but prison officials downplayed it to avoid harassment from Tom Watson. Leo's lawyers also resisted drawing attention to the planned kidnapping to avoid giving others similar ideas. Just a few nights after this thwarted plan,

William Crean slit Leo's throat. There was only moderate public outcry over William Crean's knife attack on Leo. One journalist noted that Governor Harris's quote-unquote investigation was minimal at best. No one ever looked into how Crean got his hands on the knife in the first place, for example. Ultimately, the newspaper stories and Crean's attack delayed the Knights of Mary Fagin, but also allowed time for Dorsey to work some legislative levers and guarantee that the group would face no armed opposition at the prison. While Governor Harris was investigating Crean's attack on Leo Frank,

Dorsey asked the Georgia legislature to approve $30,000, which is close to a million dollars today, for the basic improvements needed at the prison. Approval came less than a week later. While on the surface it appeared to be payment for housing and water safety, the truth was much darker. The state of Georgia had just signed a check for blood money. Members of the Georgia legislature didn't know it yet, but when prison officials agreed to accept the money for improvements and not be prosecuted for

the horrific conditions, it also meant that they agreed to look the other way when a prison break-in was about to occur. The plan was simple and bold. The men would drive 175 miles from Marietta, north of Atlanta, to Milledgeville, southeast. On modern roads, this route is about 115 miles, but in 1915, the route was less direct with mostly dirt and gravel roads. It would take the kidnappers about five hours to make the drive. Windshields were an optional feature back then, so the men would have been wearing driving goggles. The cars traveled separately because even three or four cars traveling together on these back roads would have roused curiosity. Yet despite their efforts to not attract attention, they drove about 25 miles an hour pretty fast for 1915. It was Monday, August 16th, and Leo was doing so well under Lucille's care that he was scheduled to be returned to the general prison population the next day.

Around 5 p.m. that evening, just as the Knights of Mary Fagin were preparing to leave Marietta, Lucille left the prison grounds and went to stay with family friends in Milledgeville. Yellow Jacket Brown's work had started hours before the caravan departed. Brown grabbed his wire cutters, got on his motorcycle to Milledgeville, and started his surreptitious work around town, climbing poles and snipping wires. Another member of the mob cut the telegraph wires and then both raced to join the caravan. A few hours later, as Lucille slept peacefully in town, the mob arrived at the warden's quarters, barely outside the prison fence. They weren't loud or

hasty. Only two of the men wore masks, though some kept their driving goggles on. Six armed men confronted the warden at the front door of his home, probably shouting as they pushed their way in. The warden didn't put up a fight. He had known what they were up to and reluctantly agreed not to stand in their way. Two armed men stayed with the warden, more than likely to keep him from trying to help Leo if he changed his mind. to keep him from trying to help Leo if he changed his mind. Meanwhile, one of the inmates, who was trusted enough to help watch over the prison at night, raced to find the night watchman in charge, exhausting, quote,

every available energy and effort to prevail upon the night watchman in charge to send Mr. Frank out the back way under guard as he would be protected. But no one was willing to try to hide Leo from this mob. No one would even try to save him. The vigilantes cut the gas lines to the warden's car. Yes, the prison officials had agreed to stand aside, but this mob was not taking any chances of being followed. At the same time, six more kidnappers were pounding on the door of the superintendent, who later reported, quote, when I passed the threshold, two strong men grabbed me and in an instant snapped handcuffs onto my wrists. Four others stood guard over me, two with shotguns and two with heavy pistols, and I was marched up to the

penitentiary building. An inmate standing watch at the prison gate saw the armed men with the handcuffed superintendent and later recalled, I saw that they meant business, and there was nothing for me to do but open the gate. Despite the open gate, the mob used wire cutters on some of the barbed wire anyway to make their exit easier. Things were going according to plan for the kidnappers. The mob knew exactly where they were headed thanks to the map and insider information Dorsey had acquired on his previous visit. They knew that Leo was still in the small room next to the warden's office. In a small act of resistance, one of the night watch prisoners told the invaders that he did not have a match to light their way. But once they pointed a gun at him, he quickly

lit the oil lamp near Leo's room. They found Leo in bed, still awake. Just like the morning after Mary's murder, when police came to Leo's home before he had his tie on, Leo asked his would-be kidnappers if he could get dressed. He was only wearing a long white nightshirt. The scene seems to have been surprisingly calm, which makes it all the more eerie when you hear the kidnappers reply. You won't need clothes where you're headed, they told him. The Knights of Mary Fagin dragged Leo out of bed and handcuffed him. One man took each of his limbs and one grabbed Leo's hair, dragging him down the stairs and outside where they tossed him into the backseat of one of their cars. As the mob

piled back into their cars with Leo in tow, one of them yelled over the sound of the engines and slamming car doors. All right, boys, make for the swamps. Altogether, the mob's activities at the prison farm took less than ten minutes. The caravan headed back into the dark night, towards Mary Fagin's hometown and burial place, Marietta, Georgia. By daylight, they would reach their destination, a place carefully chosen for what came next. Join me next time for the final episode of The Vigilantes.

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 carrie 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.