In this day of fading ideals and
disappearing land marks, little Mary Phagan’s
heroism is an heirloom, than which there is
nothing more precious among the old red hills
of Georgia.
grave but if the angels are good to you in the
realms beyond the trouble sunset and the
clouded stars, they will let you know that
many an aching heart in Georgia beats for you,
and many a tear, from eyes unused to weep,
has paid you a tribute too sacred for words.
—Mary Phagan’s epitaph on her tombstone
(donated by Tom Watson)
The Tombstone of Mary Phagan
Thomas E. Watson of Thomson, GA, was a lawyer; politician and Populist Party candidate for United States vice president in 1896, and for president of the United States in 1904 and 1908; elected U.S. Senator for the State of Georgia, 1921-1922. He was a notable book author and newspaper and magazine publisher.
When Tom Watson published analysis of the Leo Frank trial and appeals, it caused a surge in demand for The Jeffersonian newspaper (1914 to 1917) and Watson’s Magazine during the last year of Leo Frank’s life and after the lynching (January, March, August, September, and October 1915). Surviving original copies of Watson’s Magazine about the Leo Frank case are rare and The Jeffersonian newspaper also rare, but digital copies are available online from two major sources.
Many Southerners believed Tom Watson was the voice of the people. If Tom Watson was the voice representing the people of Georgia and Southerners in general, especially concerning the Leo Frank affair, the question arises: What people?
Watson certainly didn’t represent the “dittohead” like sheeple masses of American Christian featherbrained Leo Frank partisans nationally who were duped into thinking Leo Frank was innocent. These were people who never actually read the trial brief of evidence and pondered it according to Watson and oddly enough Georgian Governor John Marshall Slaton.
Watson certainly didn’t represent the local Jewish community who were quietly, but vociferously amongst their own rallying and advocating the exoneration of Leo Frank until it became a national movement outside the state of Georgia, thanks in part to Reform Rabbi Dr. David Marx, Jewish power broker Louis Marshall, Jewish media moguls Adolph Ochs, and Albert D. Lasker.
Tom Watson represented the voice of the “99%” as it might be called in modern time, everyone else who took the side of the Leo Frank trial judge and jury, agreeing the evidence and testimony sustained Frank’s conviction and sentence of hanging.
The Anti-Semite Position on Jews
Anti-Semites take the position on the Jews that no other race in this world over has ever come to the defense of one of their own racial kinsmen so fanatically when a truly heinous crime is committed by one of their own coreligionists against someone outside their ethnoreligious community like the Gentile Mary Phagan.
Modern Anti-Semitism
In the eyes of the anti-Semite, the Jews are perhaps the most tribal, racially conscious, subversive, treacherous, and perfidious race this world has ever seen. Jews are metaphorically seen as the equivalent of mosquitoes, bed bugs, and leeches in human physical form, and with high levels of sentience and intelligence. Moreover, for the anti-Semite, the Jews are seen as an awakened and highly conscious parasite or virus with high levels of ethnoracial xenophobia, but at a detrimental cost, Jews also suffer from extreme self-deception and mental myopia in terms of being unable to understand why they are so despised over the centuries and millennia for their nation-wrecking subversive behavior across the world. Anti-Semites often cite Aesop’s fable of the scorpion and the frog as perfectly describing the essence of the Jew on the genetic, spiritual, and mental level.
Post Human Anti-Semites
Futurist anti-Semites believe Armageddon, the final war, before the singularity comes, will be waged between the global planetary host (Gentiles) and the global planetary parasite-virus (Jews) sometime in the 21st century. It will be the final battle to see whether the host (Gentiles) or the virus (Jews) will rule the world before the age of post-humanism and human genetic engineering.
Good Americans
Faithful American patriots and not-easily-duped Christians were sympathetic for a thirteen-year-old Christian girl in the springtime bloom of her life and for the grieving family she was not meant to leave behind.
Watson attempted to express the rage, sorrow, and anger from the perspective of the general population of Georgians and to a wider degree Southerners as a whole. The most intense energy and venom of Tom Watson can be read in his published articles through his Watson’s Magazine (1915) January, March, August, September, and October, and The Jeffersonian newspapers 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917 (click here) 80% complete.
When the highest court in the world
judicially affirms that the State which
‘tried and convicted Frank, accorded
him every right guaranteed to him
under the highest law’, ought not the
decision to be respected?
-Tom Watson
The Birth of the Jewish Genetic and Jewsmedia Culture War Against Gentile Civilization?
Southerner rage against the national Jewish letter-writing campaign was compounded even more by a widespread national media smear campaigns against the State of Georgia allegedly by the “Jewsmedia” (though that exact term “Jewsmedia” born in the latter half of the 20th century was not used at the time, but it was implied), which might be one of the earliest recorded anti-Semitic claims in America that the Jews control the media and press (which is largely true).
Claims that the Jews control and manipulate the international media have reached a fevered pitch in modern times, during the late 20th and early 21st century, but those claims should decline as the Internet levels the playing field significantly by 2020 and thereafter.
Jewish Fatigue
Exhaustion from well-organized International Jewry — Pax Judaica — her media monopoly, government infiltration and occupation, U.S. education system control, and Judaica’s endless international and Middle East wars fought by proxy through the USA is resulting in Jewish global power waning, the United States in terminal decline, and a final Jewish-Gentile battle for the destiny of Western Civilization is coming. The self-fulfilling prophecy of Pax Judaica is Armageddon for Western Civilization, and if these Judeo-Christian psychopaths get their way, the body count of WW3 should be in the hundreds of millions or more.
Vector One: The Largest Petition and Letter Writing Campaign in U.S. History
Inspired by Rabbi David Marx, led and funded by powerful and wealthy Jewish interests, including Northern media magnates, an aggressive well-financed attempt was made to get Leo Frank exonerated by the emotional appeal from large numbers of people outside of the State of Georgia and primarily the northern States. This was achieved through the aggressive use of the “Jewsmedia”; though they didn’t use that exact term, it was exactly what they meant. It is the anti-Semitic term used to describe the over-representation of Jewish owners and management in national newspapers and media outlets across Western Civilization.
Jewish advertising mogul A. D. Lasker and Jewish media magnate Adolph S. Ochs, New York Times owner took personal interest in the Leo Frank rallying issue as a crusade. Together these tycoons and other Jewish media bosses used their influence and power to ensure there was national press coverage via their extended clique of Jewish editors. Both of these men put up gargantuan sums of money for the Leo Frank defense fund, providing the equivalent of millions of dollars today.
Meet Tom Watson
Thomas Edward Watson (September 5, 1856 – September 26, 1922), generally known as Tom E. Watson or Tom Watson hereafter, is one of the most fascinating and controversial men of late 19th and early 20th century Southern history.
For one interesting perspective on Tom E. Watson, read his unauthorized biography called Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel, by C. Vann Woodward. Available for full download in Adobe PDF format: http://www.archive.org/details/AgrarianRebel1938BiographyOfTomWatson.
Tom Watson and the Lynching of Leo Frank
In terms of the the Leo Frank drama, which started with the violent beating, rape, and murder of Mary Phagan on April 26, 1913, peaking with the conviction of Leo Frank August 26, 1913, and reaching its crescendo with his lynching on August 17, 1915, Watson is most often cited by the contemporary defense side authors of the Leo Frank equation as the key player in terms of inspiring the conviction of Leo Frank and instigating his lynching. But was Watson really the force behind Leo Frank’s conviction and lynching? Tom Watson didn’t even start writing about the Leo Frank case until 1914, so once again, we discovered another falsehood spread by the Jewish community concerning Tom Watson and the conviction of Leo Frank. Was Tom Watson behind the lynching? Watson was more likely expressing the views of the public, than telling the public what to think.
Worse than the Lynching Itself, Tom Watson Articulated the Leo Frank Incriminating Statement
It would be more than just the August 17, 1915, lynching of Leo Frank that would be linked with Tom Watson by the historical and modern supporter-defenders of Frank garnering their wrath. It would also be Tom Watson’s 1915 vitriolic detailed expose of the official record from the Leo Frank trial brief of evidence testimony that had been originally ratified by the defense, prosecution, and trial judge in 1913.
Censorship of Watson’s Magazine and The Jeffersonian Newspaper
The Jewish community has done everything in its power to suppress the Leo Frank incriminating statements by calling Tom Watson an extremist and not allowing his views to be mentioned on Wikipedia, except if it’s showing his anti-Semitism, but articulating Leo Frank’s incriminating statement is not allowed on Wikipedia if Tom Watson is the source or reference.
Why Tom Watson Is Really Hated by Jews
Within the analysis of the Leo Frank trial testimony published in Watson’s Magazine 1915 would emerge the real reason Tom Watson is so deeply hated by Frank supporters back then and now.
The reason is that Tom Watson’s analysis of the Leo Frank incriminating statement, which Frank made at the trial on the 18th day of August 1913, made it impossible to overlook, spin, or deny, except by die hard Frankites like Steve Oney, Elaine Marie Alphin, Leonard Dinnerstein, Donald Wilkes, Jeffrey Melnick, and other pseudo-scholars and pseudo-historians who suppress the Leo Frank murder trial incriminating statement from their writing about the case.
Not Just Suppression Back Then, But Suppression Now Too
As it was then and now, the Leo Frank incriminating statement is almost certainly ignored with absolute perfection of omission by the Jewish community and Frank partisans, even though three of the most prominent men associated with the case articulated it.
Three Lawyers Articulate the Leo Frank Incriminating Statement
Three men articulated the Leo Frank incriminating statement, two of them were State’s Prosecution team members, the Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey and Assistant Solicitor Frank Arthur Hooper, at the closing days of the Leo Frank trial August 21 through 25, but some could easily argue, Tom Watson’s post-trial articulation some two years later in 1915 was better than the two State’s prosecution attorneys combined.
Tom Watson had articulated the incriminating statement made by Leo Frank, something Frank defenders wished he had never done, because the public almost totally overlooked it, and the last time the Leo Frank murder trial incriminating statement subject was even broached was briefly within a small segment of the final closing arguments given by the prosecution team members Hugh M. Dorsey and Mr. Frank Arthur Hooper at the end of the trial.
Only the most learned Leo Frank scholars who study the closing arguments of State’s Prosecution attorneys Hugh M. Dorsey and Frank Arthur Hooper know of the incriminating statement. These closing arguments were very difficult to come by for obvious reasons, but they are available now and immortalized in American State Trials Volume 10 (1918) by John D. Lawson, LLD, and digitized thanks to www.LeoFrank.org and archived on www.Archive.org (see Bibliography).
Jewish and Gentile Media Black Out
The Leo Frank incriminating statement was never ever touched upon or mentioned in terms of its breaking news by the general media, and therefore, Watson brought widespread irrevocable attention to the slip-up made by Frank, a confession that might have otherwise remained hidden within the 318 pages of trial testimony. The Leo Frank incriminating statement is omitted from history by Frank supporters who put a cacophony of anti-Semitic persecution and victim claims in its place.
Tom Watson and the Internet Age
Tom Watson put the eternal spotlight on Leo Frank’s incriminating statement and brought undue attention to something the Frankites quietly pretend never happened. But now that Watson’s Magazines are digitized and available to the world through the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) and people are no longer frightened by the word anti-Semite and anti-Semitism, individuals are going to start reading Watson’s Magazines January, March, August, September, and October 1915 to get all the details of the August 18, 1913, Leo Frank incriminating statement.
Now that The Jeffersonian newspapers are available online, the public can now get even more juicy details about the Leo Frank case published nowhere else.
The Leo Frank Jailhouse Incriminating Statement
Only after the Leo Frank incriminating statement is comprehended should one read the Atlanta Constitution, March 9, 1914, jailhouse interview where he affirms his August 18, 1913, statement.
Only One Person in History Provides Physically Published Analysis of the Leo Frank Trial Testimony Supporting the Prosecution Side of the Case in 1915
There was no interpretation of the July 28 to August 26, 1913, trial at the time by what might be called the prosecution side of the Leo Frank case, except in 1914 through 1917 in The Jeffersonian newspaper and Watson’s Magazine in 1915 by Tom E. Watson. Written in simple but savvy lawyer lingo, these analyses made Watson dangerous to Jews because he deflated any legitimate or illegitimate efforts to exonerate Leo Frank.
Tom Watson 100+ Years Later
Today Tom Watson is still a dangerous enemy of the Jewish community and Leo Frank partisans (Frankites) one hundred years after the 1913 conviction and 1915 hanging. As Jewish writers continue to present the Frank case as a wailing wall of anti-Semitic persecution, the last thing in the world the Frankites would want anyone to do is read Tom Watson’s writings on the case, because the five Watson’s Magazine articles published in January, March, August, September, and October of 1915 make it nearly impossible to believe that Leo Frank was even remotely innocent – that is, of course, if you do not suffer from the genetic disease of Jewish neurosis, symptoms include self-deception, false perceptions of victimhood, egomania, and believing Leo Frank was infallible and innocent.
Tom Watson vs. Leo M. Frank (1913, 1914, 1915): Why The Jeffersonian Was So Important
Populist Firebrand Tom Watson, a seasoned barrister from Georgia, produced a newspaper called The Jeffersonian and a monthly magazine called Watson’s Magazine. Both were distributed through his Jeffersonian Publishing Company, and from a political and social standard, because Tom Watson was a prominent attorney and politician, being both a member of both U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate during his lifetime, it tended to add great strength and credibility to his writing and influence.
Watson did something none of the three local newspapers did (Journal, Constitution, Georgian). He provided more than superficial information about the case; he plumbed its ugly depths.
Watson: Heroic Voice of the People or Anti-Semitic Demagogue? Depends on Who You Ask
Tom Watson had a lasting influence on Southern history, and he is still talked about today with love, hate, and reverence, depending on the individual or group asked. For the Jewish community both historically and contemporaneously speaking, Watson represents an anti-Semite antagonist and mob leader of “Southerner anti-Semitic hate” vs. “Jewish victimization and persecution.” Because of this, many people cannot stand the fact that Watson’s statue towers in the capital in a prominent location on government property.
White Christian Southerners vs. White Jews
For Southerners, Tom Watson is remembered and cherished as a kind of Robin Hood hero and defender of the poor laboring and agrarian castes against wealthy despotic industrialists, which included the better organized and perfidiously tribal Jewish community. But from the Jewish community perspective, Tom Watson takes on the imagery of a protagonist, an ominous diabolical figure, often labeled as an anti-Semite. For the Jewish community and Frank partisans, Tom Watson is a kind of proto-Hitler in the making, and the Leo Frank lynching is a mini-Holocaust. Every Jewish movie, book, and play has taken on this supposition whether they are overt or covert about it to varying degrees.
Watson’s Magazine on the Leo Frank Case: Anti-Semitic Ad Hominem Attacks?
One thing for certain, Tom Watson’s writings on the Leo Frank case can be summarized as demystifying the longest and most expensive murder trial in Southern history at the time. But it tends to depreciate Tom Watson’s brilliance at simplifying the Leo Frank case, when at times his writing descended into infantile, but colorful ad hominem and insulting attacks against Leo Frank (as captured in Watson’s Magazine in 1915).
As an example of attacks on the physical appearance of Leo Frank, Watson described the mandible jaw of Leo Frank as simian, animal, and ape-like, and Leo’s goat-like sensual lips as that of a seductive, but aggressive sexual satyr. In looking for lips that are similar to Leo Frank’s lips, one must go to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and look at the eight-hundred-year-old ancient statues of female Aspara. There you can see lips astonishingly similar to Leo Frank’s. Leo Frank was blessed with pretty lips that had natural lip liner around them.
Champion of the Working Class
Tom Watson is very much remembered as a controversial populist writer and politician, who championed poor farmers and the working class in general, including Negroes. But you wouldn’t get that impression from his magazines that feature Leo Frank. In Tom’s Watson’s Magazine, he often railed against the corruption of the international Catholic Church. And during and after the tail end of the post Leo Frank trial battle in 1915, Watson went berserker, condemning what he perceived as Jewish money and influence being used for treacherous, defamatory, and slanderous purposes against the State of Georgia and European-American Southerners as a whole. When you read Watson’s Magazine, you really can feel the energy, fire, venom, and rage; it’s quite exhilarating. In fact, sadly, there is a real dearth of writers who produce Watson’s level of delicious sarcasm.
Jewish Media Control Tom Watson Claimed
By drowning the nation in duplicitous pro-Frank radio and news propaganda to turn him into a persecuted victim-hero, using the loudest and most widespread media, radio, and newspaper circulation, the Jews were able to create the sense of national-majority support of the people for the Leo Frank defense side of the equation. It turned the Leo Frank case into the ultimate Jewish hoax, the Jewish bludgeon of Jewish victimhood and persecution vs. ignorant Southerner (Georgian) race hatred.
Watson felt as if the entire state of Georgia had been traduced as a Republic of Savagery by what anti-Semites today label the Jewsmedia (Jewish-biased international Jewish-controlled media).
The Biggest Letter-Writing Campaign in U.S. History Led by the Jewish Community
Watson also raged against what he perceived as the well-organized but corrupt Jewish community, one that knows no borders nationally or internationally, which successfully energized the most widespread and successful letter-writing campaign across the United States in its history, with letters even coming from as far-off international cities in Europe (like Paris, France). The letter writing campaign was perceived as the height of Jewish tribal insolence, mostly an in-state inspired, but big money out-of-state movement, directed at libeling the State of Georgia as an unjust backward, primitive, and crass booger-eating hillbilly regime.
The deluging of the governor’s office with a tsunami of pro-Frank support letters, largely in an attempt to create the false impression of an overwhelming democratic and numerical majority paper voting bloc, united to overturn the conviction and two-year appeals process, was perceived as an insulting outrage by Southerners and a grave dishonor to the memory of Mary Phagan. The nationwide movement for Leo Frank’s freedom can accurately be described as a letter-writing campaign appealing by emotion and passion for a wide range of positive outcomes or appeasements for Leo Frank, from executive clemency to outright exoneration of the murder.
A Jewish Guide in Mind Control and Manipulation
The Jewish-inspired Leo Frank letter-writing campaign is a textbook example of how to influence people and motivate them. All you have to do is slice and dice just the right amount of information, add a martyrdom, and spin it with just the right subtlety, package it, and deliver it to the general ignorant masses of the public, and if done just right, it will inflame the fires of indignation amongst people of every walk of life.
In many ways Leo Frank became like a Jesus Christ figure, because indeed, most people have some altruistic feelings, motivation, and behavior against a perceived gross injustice, that is, if you can conjure that perception of injustice in their minds with a kind of finesse, applied by pushing all the right emotional buttons. And most people will respond to a perceived injustice with outrage, especially when someone’s life is on the line. Most people will want to join the “righteous” cause or help out in some way or another, whether it’s donating money, spreading the word of the cause, signing a petition, or writing a letter of support. Think of how successful Christianity is with its own Jewish martyr. Leo Frank was turned into another Jesus Christ by Jewish fiat.
The Most Successful Letter-Writing Campaign in U.S. History
The national Jewish letter-writing campaign could arguably be considered the most successful paper flooding, pound for pound in global 20th century history, showing the supremely unmatched organization skills of a highly motivated Jewish community. It resulted in over ten thousand letters from across the United States and several European countries being sent to Governor John M. Slaton and physically submerging his office with an avalanche of letters the likes in volume never seen or heard of before or since — relatively speaking. So many Santa Claus mailbags of letters were sent to the governor’s office in Atlanta that John M. Slaton admitted to being unable to open the vast super majority of them. Indeed, 99% of them ended up in the furnace unopened, but it was understood that most of them were fan mail for Frank based on the postmarks.
The Message of the Most Successful Letter Writing Campaign in U.S. History Was Made Loud and Clear
It would tend to create great tensions in Jewish-Gentile relations in the South and Georgia more specifically, possibly signifying the end for the more racially conscious white Southerners that Jews were loyal white Southerners. Somehow the Leo Frank case blew over, and Jews continued to prosper in the white racial separatist South, but the cult of Leo Frank perpetuated by Jews continues unabated and more aggressively in the 21st century.
An Alleged Jewish Disinformation Campaign Against Non-Jews
Tom Watson’s rage stemmed from the fact that virtually none of the outsider (people outside Georgia) writing support letters on behalf of Leo Frank had actually ever read the official record of trial testimony or had an understanding of the facts and evidence in the Frank case. To add more petrol-soaked coal to the bonfire of Jewish-Gentile tension, in a divided, mixed, and controversial commutation order, Governor John M. Slaton (1915) tended to corroborate Tom Watson’s position concerning the “outside” meddling. But Slaton was more tactful and direct, not mincing words in his June 21, 1915, commutation order about the appeals made by people who had no understanding of the laws in the State of Georgia or had ever read the trial evidence in the case (Leo Frank Commutation Order, John M. Slaton, June 21, 1915).
1913 to 1915
The Leo Frank trial and appeals documents were difficult to obtain back then in the early 20th century and 99% of the people interested in the case never took the time to actually get copies of the official State and Federal documents on the Leo Frank case which numbered more than three thousand pages. Even the brief of evidence (1913), the core document was only 318 pages and is an easy read. Thanks to the Internet, most of the surviving Leo Frank documents are being made available to the public, and as time goes on, it is hoped that all surviving documents of the case will make their way online for the public. The trial transcript was stolen before 1966 by Jews in an effort to suppress what really happened at the trial, but it might be possible to rebuild most of the trial transcript using the three local Atlanta newspapers (Constitution, Journal, and Georgian).
Tom Watson Says, “The Whole State of Georgia Traduced”
At the time, the State of Georgia had the most favorable laws protecting murderers, Frank had to go through a coroner’s inquest jury (seven men total, consisting of the Coroner Paul Donehoo and six jurymen), grand jury (twenty-one jurymen in total, including four Jews), and trial jury (thirteen men total, twelve jurymen and Judge Leonard Strickland Roan), and once convicted, there were appeals within appeals upon appeals, all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, more than once.
Frank and his dream team of lawyers would have months to prepare each appeal in their two-year struggle, and more than a dozen judges in their quiet oak and leather bound quarters and committee rooms would meticulously study, discuss, argue, and review the murder trial brief of evidence, pouring over every detail without the accusation of mob terror being even remotely possible, and they determined Leo Frank had a fair trial. The appellate courts, including the Superior Court of Georgia, Supreme Court of Georgia, United States District Court, and United States Supreme Court, also gave majority and unanimous decisions stating Leo Frank had a fair trial. And they consciously chose not disturb the verdict of the jury, thus making all the hysterical and emotional claims made by Frank supporters and defenders about supposed mob terror and injustice fully null and void, but that didn’t stop the false accusations from Jews in the 20th or 21st century.
John Marshall Slaton, or Jack Slaton (December 25, 1866 – January 11, 1955)
Georgia Governor John M. Slaton (June 28, 1913 – June 26, 1915) became a part owner, full member, and senior law partner in the firm chosen, funded, and hired to be the Leo M. Frank legal defense team, which disqualified him from being impartial in his 1915 commutation order. The law firm was called Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and Phillips, the “Slaton” being John Marshall Slaton.
In a gross conflict of interest and at the eleventh hour, or just one day before Leo Frank was to be executed, John M. Slaton commuted the sentence of his client Leo M. Frank from death by hanging to life in prison. In the early hours of the morning, Leo Frank was whisked away to a minimum security prison farm facility in Milledgeville, Georgia. Leo Frank escaped the hangman’s noose on June 21, 1915, by a matter of inches, but the battle to bring him to his final justice or injustice (depending on who you ask) did not end there.
With new intrigues forming, a plot was brewing, and the final say in the matter was not over in the minds of the elites and the general Southern masses, even when Slaton offered some life-saving level of relief in the form clemency granted to Leo Frank and shipping him far away from Atlanta.
Available for download in Adobe PDF format: Leo M. Frank Clemency Decision by John M. Slaton, published on June 21, 1915.
To put the 1915 chapters of the Leo M. Frank case in perspective, read Slaton’s twenty-nine-page clemency order written on behalf of Leo M. Frank and compare it with these works that support the prosecution: (1) Tom E. Watson’s August, September, and October issues of Watson’s Magazine 1915; (2) Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey (August 1913); (3) Murder Trial Brief of Evidence (July Term 1913); and (4) Argument of Mr. Frank Arthur Hooper (August 1913) to decide if it was a just commutation provided by John M. Slaton or if it was a undeniable betrayal of the judge and jury.
Review the defense position and prosecution positions, and be able to argue both sides of the case superbly.
The Jewish Defense Position
From the Leo M. Frank defense and Jewish community, or Frankite position, the commutation primarily takes into consideration some inconsistencies in the testimony of Jim Conley and disregards entirely the main star witness Monteen Stover’s testimony and Leo Frank’s August 18, 1913, response to Monteen Stover. It also ignores the reaffirmation of his response to Monteen Stover’s testimony in the Atlanta Constitution, March 9, 1914, the jailhouse interview of Leo Frank.
The major issue concerning Jim Conley’s testimony being, as Oney (2003) put it literally, is “the shit in the shaft.” Jim Conley had dumped a natural steaming pile of fresh doo-doo in the elevator shaft before the elevator was used to deposit (no pun intended) the body of Mary Phagan in the basement just next to the elevator shaft exit (according to various stories) where she was first dumped (no pun intended). This would mean that at the bottom tray of the uneven elevator shaft floor, there would have been a fresh pile of human excrement left there by Jim Conley and that when the police arrived Sunday morning and took the elevator down to the basement, it mashed this pile of human feces causing it to unlock and immediately release its terrible smell (I know this sounds absurd, and you’re rolling your eyes, but try to hear out this defense position). As a result of this forensic analysis of elevator shaft feces, Leo Frank should be exonerated because the feces pile should have been mashed before and releasing the smell already if Conley and Frank took the body of Phagan down to basement by elevator, they would have mashed it already, before the police came. However, before Conley and the police could have anticipated the “shit in the shaft” exoneration defense, Conley mentioned that Frank had exhibited nervous and hasty behaviors using the elevator and stopping it prematurely, and at one point in the elevator, this hasty behavior caused Frank to fall into Conley’s embrace — ah, a match made in heaven.
Leo Frank was jerky, nervous, and bugging out on the afternoon of the murder. It is possible that he might have pulled the elevator stop and go chain too soon, perhaps a couple of inches above the pile of excrement that was resting at the bottom of an uneven elevator shaft floor, before the elevator touched the ground. It was also determined that the bottom of the elevator did not bottom out and was uneven, because it was a dirt floor, and the bottom of elevator shafts always have a little extra room, because it is notorious for stuff like garbage to be thrown down the elevator shaft and thus they need extra room.
In fact, the entire basement was an uneven dirt floor, and the elevator shaft was no different. Moreover, Reuben Rose Arnold, arguably the best lawyer on the Leo Frank defense team, suggested Conley dumped Mary Phagan down the elevator shaft from the first floor, fourteen feet up. Is it possible she would have landed smack square on Jim Conley’s doo-doo brown pile? Or did she miss it? But if she missed it and was dragged or carried, wasn’t there a risk of bumping into that doo-doo brown or scraping it? It is, after all, very dark in that basement, which had only one primitive gas jet barely providing any light for the whole gloomy basement.
Final Analysis of the Shit in the Shaft Exoneration Movement
It’s really hard not to poke fun, but all this speculation about the “shit in the shaft” is silly. In addition, what makes “the shit in the shaft” exoneration movement so funny is that fresh human feces do not withhold odor until mashed and that the floor of elevator shafts, especially in a uneven dirt floor basement, would have likely also contained space — all elevator shafts have extra space at the bottom of them in 1913 or 2013.
More importantly, Conley described Leo Frank making hasty prestops with the elevator, which could have meant in his rush, Frank may have stopped the elevator just moments before it touched the uneven floor of the basement elevator shaft. Regardless of all of this, whether it is right or wrong, the “shit in the shaft” is a really desperate and cheesy attempt to exonerate Leo Frank, because human feces smell the moment of release. It doesn’t hide its odor until mashed. Human feces do not have a magical chocolate shell to contain the smell until it is cracked open. Thus, the “shit in the shaft” exoneration movement was another embarrassing attempt by Leo Frank supporters to get him exonerated.
Is It Possible to Convict Leo Frank without Conley?
From the Leo M. Frank prosecution side, Georgia community, and Southern position, it was believed, as Tom Watson articulated, that it will always be possible to fully convict Frank without the testimony of Jim Conley and that John Slaton disregarded volumes of facts from the official record and evidence against Frank, especially the testimony of star witness Monteen Stover, a young girl who said she looked for Leo Frank in his inner and outer office between 12:05 p.m. and 12:10 p.m. and she described Frank’s office as empty. Leo Frank did respond to this testimony at his trial on August 18, 1913, and said he was “unconsciously” in the metal room bathroom — the scene of the crime — when he claimed Mary Phagan was in his presence (see State’s Exhibit B). The invincible final conclusion about Leo Frank’s guilt came in his jailhouse interview on March 9, 1914, in the Atlanta Constitution. This was enough to affirm the incriminating statement and conviction of Leo Frank.
Jim Conley is not needed to convict Leo Frank. Conley just made the case more interesting by revealing at the trial that Leo Frank’s favorite dessert is eating out the STD-infected vaginas of Atlanta’s most seasoned prostitutes.
The Neutral Dispassionate Researcher Position
From the position of a dispassionate researcher, whether the commutation of Leo M. Frank was right or wrong, it ignited an inferno of indignation and rage in the people of Georgia, Southerners in general, and most probably Northern Pro-Prosecution Partisans (Right-leaning Christians). All felt it was a great betrayal and injustice that a well-connected Jew could buy himself out of a death sentence for the murder of a teenage Christian girl after he pummeled her face with his fists and raped her.
In response to Slaton’s controversial clemency order, Tom Watson exploded to new venomous heights of wit, sarcasm, and ferocity. Watson’s fire and brimstone intensity is unrivaled in terms of his sarcastic wit as published in his best works on the Leo Frank case: Watson’s Magazine, August, September, and October 1915. Don’t miss The Jeffersonian newspapers (1914 to 1917) either.
Tom Watson Vindicates and Shields the Lynchers from Prosecution with the Ink Feathered Pen
Of all the writing on the Leo M. Frank case by Watson, one stands out above the rest. Available for download: 4. The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert, September 1915 by Tom Watson. Showing his true colors, Watson dubs Frank a “Jew pervert.”
One might argue that Watson’s September 1915 “Jew Pervert” publication was far superior and more convincing in terms of making a powerful case to convict Leo M. Frank for murder than “The Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey.” Watson seems to transcend the best elements of Mr. Frank Hooper and Mr. Hugh Dorsey’s closing remarks, which isn’t difficult to do given that people were discussing the case for countless months and years after the trial, analyzing it allegorically with electron microscopes.
A Rehash: The Jewish Defense Position More than One Hundred Years Later
From a historical standpoint and now more than ever in the last one hundred years, Tom Watson, it is argued by the Frank defense side of the equation, is the sulfur match lighting murderous rage against Leo M. Frank. The Jewish community has nearly unanimously claimed Tom Watson is responsible for inspiring Leo Frank to be lynched in all their books, movies, articles, plays, and media representations of the case. More specifically, they argue Tom Watson ignited the savagery and ruthlessness of an incensed people and motivated an elite lynch party of Georgian men from the highest strata of Atlantan society to form an unlikely military commando group known as “the Knights of Mary Phagan” or “the vigilance committee,” one whose sole purpose of formation was to kidnap and assassinate Leo M. Frank in cold blood. For the Jewish community, Tom E. Watson is nemesis number one and takes on the equivalent of an Anti-Semite Rock Superstar raging away at a Hitlerian Pulpit.
The Final Analysis of Watson from the Southern Perspective
For the people of Georgia, Tom E. Watson is considered an immortal hero of the people, an invincible Promethean standing against a fang-mouthed ethnocentric troglodyte faced Jewish community that resembles an ugly monolithic Titan. The name Tom Watson for Southerners is synonymous with the merger of Robin Hood, a prodigious savant detective, and seasoned lawyer.
The Knights of Mary Phagan
This group of elite men who infamously forged themselves as The Knights of Mary Phagan planned one of the most audacious prison breaks in Southern and possibly U.S. history, executing it with surgical precision. First, the Knights overpowered the guards at the Milledgeville prison and abducted Leo M. Frank from his prison dorm bed on August 16, 1915. At around eleven o’clock in the evening, five men dragged him out of bed, and the party of twenty-eight men vanished into the summer midnight toward Marietta in a conga line of seven slow-moving Model T Fords, cruising at eighteen miles an hour over pothole faced rolling dirt and bumpy roads in the pitch blackness of night, for what would feel like hundreds of miles. “Are we there yet?” The lynchers reported a small delay in the seven-hour journey when one of the autos got a flat tire.
With hats pulled down, motorcycle goggles and handkerchiefs folded bandit style and wrapped around the mouths of the assailants during the military-style operation of kidnapping Leo M. Frank, not a single gunshot was fired at any time during the raid. The Knights of Mary Phagan drove Frank after his immediate abduction toward an area near Marietta in Cobb County Georgia called Frey’s Gin (1200 Roswell Rd.), and the lynching spot became known as Frey’s Grove.
The lynching location was selected because Mary Phagan had lived near there formerly, and it was felt to be a significant and symbolic spot by the lynch party. Just after the sun rose on August 17, 1915, and the morning dew kissed the sky, they read Leo Frank the sentence of Judge Leonard S. Roan, kicked away the table that he was perched upon, and watched him dance. Leo Frank was lynched from a mature oak tree shaped like a Y at about 7:00 a.m.
The KKK Is Reborn Thanksgiving EVE 1915
Moreover, the rebirth of the formerly defunct KKK, the Leo Frank defense side of the equation says, was inspired by Tom Watson because he energized a hurricane of anti-Semitic hate and racism, bringing the general public to a fevered pitch against the Jewish community. However, the KKK would say the rebirth of the Klan was inspired because the murder of little Mary Phagan was with absolute certainty committed by Leo M. Frank, and the Jewish community waged a multi-state and international ethnoreligious tribal war against European-Americans over it, one that still rages today in the Jewsmedia. Moreover, the KKK would claim, the Jewish community unleashed a disgusting nationwide media hate campaign against the State of Georgia and, even worse, that the Leo Frank Defense Team, Dr. Rabbi David Marx, and Lucille Selig used every criminal means and tactic of genuine underworld gutter behavior, bribery, coercion, and black-handed enterprise in an attempt to free a loathsome pedophile-rapist-murderer. The KKK perceives Jews as being metaphorically like the HIV virus, in that Jews work relentlessly to destroy the immune system of Western Civilization. The KKK sees itself as the immune system response to Jews.
Watson’s Newspaper Publications Surge in Readership 1914 through 1917, and 1915 for His Magazine
Watson’s controversial September 1915 issue of Watson’s Magazine featuring the “Jew Pervert” caused a publication surge that reached the zenith of readership during his magazine’s reign. Formerly a circulation of around 30,000, the zine had surged well beyond the printing presses capacity of 100,000 and could still not meet the insatiable demand. The 1915 “Leo Frank” issues of Watson’s Magazine were read, reread, shared, and reshared until they were worn out into beaten-up and tattered rags. Very few of these issues have survived today for obvious reasons, but they are available now in digital format on the Internet Archive (www.Archive.org), and aside from the typos, they are well written and an interesting read from a historical standpoint.
When Watson began writing Jeffersonian newspaper articles about the Leo M. Frank case in March and December 1914 and published booklets within his Watson’s Magazine starting in January 1915, the controversy alone caused a surge in publication numbers, and demand was due to the ravenous hunger and sensational fanfare for Watson’s refreshingly powerful and invigorating wit and sarcasm, especially in scoring Leo M. Frank and his Jewish allies who Watson claimed control the national media. For people who had blindly, indignantly, and emotionally hated Leo M. Frank, Watson provided a delectable kind of articulation with lucid arguments and logical explanations, with Sherlock Holmes detective-scientist analysis, and clear reasoning to unequivocally affirm the judgment of guilt for L. M. Frank.
Protestants vs. Judaism
Tom Watson became a fire and brimstone hero against what was perceived as a deadly threat, a Jewish ethnoreligious group that had no state or country borders, an unscrupulous tribe of Hebrews (as they were called back then) willing to spare no dollar or effort to liberate one of their own high-profile child molesters, regardless of whether or not the evidence was strong on behalf of his guilt or innocence. It almost doesn’t even matter today that the evidence against Leo Frank is overwhelmingly incriminating. Jewish groups, individual high-profile Jews of all walks of life, push the anti-Semitism, victim, and persecution angle on the Frank case, as if grandee Leo Frank has taken on the status of an infallible mythical holy religious martyr of Judaism. Leo Frank has become a new chapter in the religious scriptures of Judaism with a melodramatic flare (now play the organ pipes).
Tom Watson uses the official stenographed record of Leo M. Frank’s murder trial testimony to make the kind of argument you would have expected from Hugh M. Dorsey, logical and well thought out, analyzed with superb reasoning, using only the most relevant parts of the testimony and evidence, to convince the jury to convict. Though in many respects some of Watson’s arguments are more convincing than Dorsey’s, observers might argue, in terms of clear and logical formulation. Though some of the anti-Semitic language and characterizations used by Watson appealed to the basest of human emotions, they resulted in some mixed feelings about his sometimes crass analysis from polite society.
Tom Watson’s Coup De Grâce Reviewed
“The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert,” September 1915, by Tom Watson is arguably the best work Tom Watson had ever put together on the Leo M. Frank case. Despite some overt anti-Semitic language, it provides a superb and fresh analysis of the trial. Some of the language can at times detract from the content and substance of the arguments and reasoning.
Leo Frank’s Statement Revealed Something
Surprisingly, Solicitor General Hugh Manson Dorsey and Mr. Frank Arthur Hooper weakly covered this one distinct area, but Hooper did so slightly better. He brushed over it with vague, but visual wording. Both Dorsey and Hooper had an opportunity to spend more time interpreting or arguing a damaging tidbit of information Leo M. Frank orally gave to the jury –Watson made sure to spend ample time on “it.” What is “it”? We will get to it.
Observers would reason that Dorsey had to walk a cautious and fine line, as to not give too much credibility for Leo M. Frank’s four-hour unsworn statement to the jury, as the reason why the prosecution did not spend more time on specific areas of Frank’s own damaging testimony. Dorsey and Hooper made sure not to focus on any one piece of evidence and testimony, but to use all the best elements in synergy, so that no matter how much the defense tried to break apart an issue here or there, they would ultimately fail against the chain of circumstantial evidence that encompassed Leo Frank.
When the wind blows through a weeping willow, you can see the tree ebb and flow in the wind. You cannot see the wind itself, but you know the wind is there because the tree showed the evidence. When Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan in the metal room between 12:05 p.m. and 12:10 p.m. on April 26, 1913, no hidden cameras captured the event, but all the evidence showed it was Leo Frank who did it.
When virtual universe comes out in the 22nd century, viewers will watch Leo Frank beat, rape, and strangle Mary Phagan in 4D.
The Unconscious Climax
The climax of this infamous booklet by Watson (September 1915) points out that Leo M. Frank made an “unconsciously” fatal and damaging statement during his testimony during his murder trial to the judge and jury on August 18, 1913. Watson would claim that a key segment of Leo Frank’s statement to the jury amounted to an unconscious confession that he murdered Mary Phagan in the metal room.
Does Leo M. Frank Incriminate Himself?
Indeed, Frank says something to counter Monteen Stover’s testimony that even the Leo Frank defense team lawyers and contemporary Frankites wish he had never said. It was something that would have sent chills up the spines of anyone who had watched the trial closely, listened carefully, and knew the layout of the National Pencil Company second floor. Leo Frank’s incriminating statement likely sent cold chills down the spines of the State’s prosecution team, Judge Roan, and the petite jury of twelve men sworn to impartially judge Leo Frank.
The Prosecution Used 3D and 2D Models
All throughout the trial, a detailed three-dimensional model of the factory was used to assist the prosecution in developing their chain of events leading up to and after the murder. Moreover, newspapers also published well-designed two-dimensional models. The brief of evidence in the Leo M. Frank murder trial also includes defense exhibits of aerial two-dimensional models of the pencil factory levels, the most important floors the basement, first, and second floor. The details and explanations are mostly clear in these diagrams, which are available for your review.
No Contemporary Writers Touch the “Unconscious” Bathroom Visit
It is perplexing that no contemporary Leo Frank partisan writers, like Steve Oney or Leonard Dinnerstein, cover these ominous and specific words Leo Frank made during his statement to the jury, testimony Frank gave in an attempt to account for the unaccounted time-hole in his alibi, especially due to the sworn evidence of Miss Monteen Stover, who came to the factory for her pay envelope at about the same time Frank said Mary Phagan walked into his office. Monteen Stover arrived just minutes after Mary Phagan, but when Monteen Stover stepped into Frank’s empty office, Leo Frank and Mary Phagan were already in the metal room.
Did Phagan see it coming? Allen Koenigsberg, the world’s foremost expert on the Leo Frank case, believes the answer is no.
Monteen Stover Was the Star Witness
Tom Watson would argue that because Frank never mentioned Monteen Stover during his whereabouts on the afternoon on April 26, 1913, between 12:05 p.m. and 12:10 p.m., Monteen Stover became the main star witness at the Leo Frank trial, not Jim Conley. Monteen Stover made it possible to convict Leo M. Frank, and the defense made no effort to impeach her testimony. The defense made a big effort to impeach Jim Conley, but they mostly failed.
Watson Solved the Murder of Mary Phagan without Conley
In “Jew Pervert,” Watson believed he solved the Mary Phagan murder, without using Jim Conley’s testimony — thus countering the defense position that without Conley’s accusations, Leo Frank would never have been convicted. Most of the arguments by Dorsey and Hooper at the end of the trial did not rely solely on Conley, but on other features of the evidence, including all the State’s key witnesses.
The laws of Georgia at the time stipulated that a person cannot be convicted by an accomplice, so Jim Conley’s testimony was given only limited mention in the closing arguments phase, August 21 to 25. Dorsey and Hooper had to secure a conviction by building a credible case beyond the testimony of Jim Conley and without giving to much credence to Leo Frank’s unsworn statement.
The People of Georgia Convinced with a Kind of Religious Fanaticism
Tom Watson with poisonous rage revealed from the official record that Leo Frank and Monteen Stover, by their own individual testimony together, solved the murder mystery of little Mary Phagan, making any alternative impossible, except for some level of connivance. Another view is that Jim Conley might have participated with Leo in the bludgeoning, rape, and strangulation of Phagan.
Watson’s Exultation
Watson said Leo M. Frank entrapped himself beyond escape on August 18, 1913.
To fill in the glaring hole in his alibi created by Monteen Stover, Leo M. Frank put himself “unconsciously” where the prosecution built its case on where the murder of Mary Phagan occurred, namely the second floor metal room, where the bathroom was located. The ONLY bathroom on the second floor was in the metal room. Why Leo Frank would say something like his unconscious bathroom visit to the metal room is impossible to figure out, but it amounts to an incriminating statement.
Pre-Climax of the Trial, Before Jury Was Charged to Decide the Case
At one point during the trial, the whole of the Universe seemed to become one single legal eye, looking under a magnifying glass, examining this case, and it was on August 18, 1913, when Leo Frank mounted the stand at 2:00 p.m. and spoke to the jury and for the first time told the panel of thirteen men (judge and jury) and 200+ spectators that he might have unconsciously gone to the scene of the crime, the bathroom in the metal room, at the approximate time the murder occurred there.
Note the importance of it being the first time Leo Frank mentioned unconsciously leaving his office, as before August 18, 1913, Leo Frank claimed he never left his office from noon to 12:45 at the coroner’s inquest (see newspaper articles), and he also told police he was in his office every minute from noon to 12:35. These early statements were entered into evidence through testimony, because the coroner’s inquest was conducted under oath.
Dorsey’s Noose
All the individual pieces of evidence came together as single strands of entwining wire, wrapping and weaving into an unbreakable noose that Leo Frank put around his own neck, a paraphrase of the colorful narrative Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey described in his final arguments at the trial August 22, 23, 24, and 25. No single piece of individual evidence convicts Leo Frank. It is all the evidence taken together that hangs him, Dorsey muses. What made it really difficult for the defense was that they concentrated too much effort on failed attempts to break down Jim Conley on the stand.
Watson: A Secret Murder Confession
Amongst the long-winded diatribe given by Leo Frank at the trial, there are some specific words in Leo M. Frank’s testimony on August 18, 1913, including a passage that — if one had been paying close attention to the testimony and had a clear understanding of the layout of the National Pencil Company factory diagrams — would leave one in absolute shock that a secret confession would almost be made at the trial by Leo M. Frank.
Even today one hundred years after the trial, it is shocking Leo Frank would incriminate himself. When in the history of the United States has someone made a murder confession at their own trial?
Leo Frank Essentially Confessed to the Murder by Proxy and Fiat
On August 18, 1913, during his loquacious four-hour testimony before the jury, Leo M. Frank spent most of the time in boring and mind-numbing details explaining how he did complicated pencil mathematical computations to the point of making everyone numb in the courtroom. In fact, for nearly three or more hours out of a total four-hour statement time to the jury, Leo Frank, in an attempt to show that he was too busy that day to commit the murder, went over boring financial sheets, order forms, and tabulation charts with nauseating effect. To paraphrase, Oney writes there was something unsettling and unconvincing about Leo Frank’s statements and in the People vs. Leo Frank. Oney makes the suggestion that if Sigmund Freud were watching the trial testimony of Leo Frank, he would have said he was hiding something. Indeed, Frank was hiding something, but he stopped hiding it when he made his “unconscious” metal room bathroom statement.
When Frank was not going over the minutiae of the work he did that day, he sprinkled about and spoke about his whereabouts here and there. He talked about the people he saw and the time of the day, all based on the large time clocks in his office. Frank in his statement to the jury recollected some details with exquisite clarity and at other times seemed suspiciously vague, but one thing he said would shock the whole court and knock them out of their chairs!
Leo M. Frank Went to the Bathroom “Unconsciously” in the Metal Room
When Frank told the jury he must have “unconsciously” left his second-floor office and went to the bathroom down the hall to use the toilet or urinate in the metal room, thus attempting to account for the glaring hole in Frank’s alibi created by Monteen Stover, he had incriminated himself beyond retreat.
I Repeat Unbelievable: A window or period of time was specifically created during the five minutes that Monteen Stover waited from 12:05 p.m. to 12:10 p.m. It was time that Monteen testified to and was credible because she wanted her pay envelope, as she was looking for Leo M. Frank in his empty second-floor office. She described the building as seeming deserted. No one ever challenged that she had come to get her pay, because the books indicated she hadn’t been paid yet.
This testimony tends to corroborate Leo M. Frank’s own trial testimony words as he puts himself in the second-floor metal room bathroom, the very place where the prosecution spent more than three weeks building a case that Frank murdered Mary Phagan.
Everything Leads to the Bathroom?
The damage of Frank’s testimony is this: To get to the bathroom on the second floor, one must physically walk through the metal room. When Frank uttered these words, all the people watching, who were paying attention, must have experienced a spine-tingling moment, and the jury that paid close attention would also have been in a silent shock, because all 200+ people in the courtroom knew that Mary had not “unconsciously” gone to the toilet at the same time Frank did (Watson, 1915)! And they know she didn’t go downstairs, or she would have bumped into Monteen Stover.
The Death Notes Lead to the Bathroom
The death notes put Mary Phagan in the bathroom making water (using the toilet or urinating) before she was attacked, beaten, raped, and killed. The five-inch fresh blood stain with a sunburst pattern on the floor of the metal room in front of the dressing room, along with six or eight strands of Mary Phagan’s hair found on the lathe handle that weren’t present on Friday but were there on Monday morning, made a credible case for the prosecution that she was killed in the metal room.
All the testimony and evidence in the Leo Frank case led to the metal room. Frank said he went to the metal room, Conley said he found the body of Phagan in the metal room after Frank told him to go there, the murder notes led to the metal room bathroom, the blood on the floor was in the metal room, the hair on the lathe was in the metal room, Mary worked in the metal room, and the kind of cord used to strangle Mary was found in the metal room hanging on nails. Everything led to the metal room, including Leo Frank.
How Do You Get to the Bathroom?
One has to go through the metal room to get to the toilets. This is one of the most important facts demonstrated on the defense exhibits of the National Pencil Company factory diagrams. With the prosecution building its entire case around Frank murdering Mary in the metal room, Frank with his own words put himself unconsciously there where all the testimony and evidence said the murder occurred.
Excerpt from Watson’s Jeffersonian Newspaper March 25, 1915, Issue:
The Leo Frank Case Still Raging in Northern Papers
A letter to the editor….
Dear Sir:
Leo Frank’s effort to account for his absence from his office from 12 noon until 12:20 p.m., the very time that little Mary Phagan was being outraged and murdered, by stating that he might have unconsciously gone to the toilet, is absurd to the extreme.
No man ever went into a toilet without a shock caused by the great difference in the air as between the toilet and the hallway, and I venture the assertion that even though one were walking in his sleep, the shock to his sense of smell would arouse him immediately to consciousness.
At the hotel dinner table recently several drummers and a country newspaper editor all expressed their belief in Frank’s innocence, because the paid hirelings of big magazines and prostituted newspapers as well have acquitted him. One of the drummers said that out of 549 letters to the Post-Dispatch of St. Louis—Mr. Palitser’s western edition of the egotistical New York World—534 of the writers believed Frank’s innocence.
My reply was that probably 532 of the 549 letters were from Israelites and that none of them had read the evidence as shown by the record. I also handed the editor my Watson’s for March, and dared him to read it.
If the big Jew editors, bankers and others don’t look out, they will fan into flame the smoldering embers of that old-ground-in-the-bone prejudice from which even the double eagle may be unable to save them.
–BOB MUNROE, Arkansas, published: March 25th 1915
Watson responded…
Outsiders cannot, or will not, weigh the undisputed which prove Frank’s terrible crime. Excuse me for again saying that these convincing facts are—
(1) That Frank’s own friends and employees—Schiff, Barrett, etc.—prove that the physical indications of the crime were on Frank’s office floor within a few steps of his office;
(2) That Frank’s own confession placed the murdered girl in his office, and in his company, a few minutes before she disappeared;
(3) That Monteen Stover would have met Mary Phagan going out, if Mary had gone out—for Frank’s own stenographer and Frank’s own statement fixed the time by the clock, when Mary disappeared, and when Monteen went to Frank’s office;
(4) That Mary must necessarily have been in the metal room, where the blood was found, at the time Monteen was in Frank’s office, and waiting around for him;
(5) That Frank was not in his office at that…
(The rest of this newspaper article continues on page six. We do not provide it here.)
The chain of Events According to Tom E. Watson’s Five Booklets on Leo Frank (Watson’s Magazine, January, March, August, September, and October 1915)
Watson continued along the lines that Leo M. Frank and his bewildered lawyers failed to see or pretended not to see was this:
Defense Witness Detective Harry Scott
Ironically, it was powerful evidence the defense witness, Pinkerton Detective Superintendent Harry Scott (who was hired by National Pencil Company), told the jury — that Leo Frank answered “I don’t know,” when Mary Phagan asked Frank in his second floor office, “Has the metal come in yet?” This testimony created three-dimensional motion and motive to go to the metal room with, “Let’s go see,” thus putting Frank and Mary walking down the hall to the second-floor metal room to find out. Jim Conley also said he heard Leo Frank walking with Mary to the metal room.
Watson Continued…
It was just as necessary for Frank to explain WHERE MARY PHAGAN WAS, while Monteen Stover waited in Leo M. Frank’s empty office (Frank said Mary left his office), as to explain Leo M. Frank’s OWN DISAPPEARANCE, at that fatal time between 12:05 and 12:10, maybe 12:07 (Frank said he unconsciously went to the bathroom in the metal room).
Watson said: Frank’s repeated statements entrapped himself beyond escape!
Watson continued: Frank said, again and again, that Mary came next after Hattie Hall (Hattie Hall left the factory at noon), and Frank did not mention Monteen Stover, an unimpeachable witness, who claimed she was in Leo Frank’s empty inner and outer office from 12:05 p.m. to 12:10 p.m. on April 26, 1913. This proved to the jury that Frank did not know of Monteen Stover’s coming.
Leo Frank never mentions the prosecution’s star witness, Monteen Stover, in his testimony. Which means Frank was indeed not in his office 12:05 to 12:10, despite the fact Frank told detectives he was in his office every minute from noon to 12:30. Thus Leo Frank was caught in a lie about his whereabouts on April 26, 1913.
And Frank would have known about Ms. Monteen Stover, had he been in his 2nd floor office, when he said he was there “every minute from noon to 12:30.” Now, as he had (in ignorance of Monteen’s visit) placed both Mary and himself in his office — while Monteen waited in his empty office — he had deliberately and repeatedly lied as to Mary’s whereabouts, as well as his own. Frank’s alibi does not stand up by his own words and the testimony of Monteen Stover.
Frank might have “unconsciously” gone to the toilet as he said in his unsavory testimony at his murder trial. Very well; but where did Mary Phagan go people are asking? According to Frank she left the office, but where did she go? Downstairs to bump into Monteen Stover? or to the toilet in the second floor metal room to make water as the contrived death notes point? Or did she go to see if her work had come in the metal department in response to Frank’s “I don’t know if the metal has arrived yet.” It’s her livelihood, of course, she wants to go see if she is going to have a job on Monday morning or if she is still laid off. She had been working 55 hours a week at the factory, loyally for a year, and it was of the utmost importance to determine whether or not she would have a job or not, and certainly the factory was not about to go out of business. So when was the metal supposed to arrive? Wouldn’t Leo Frank the superintendent and account who is responsible for knowing these things know approximately when?
Frank said he went to the bathroom which is located in the metal room to use the toilet or to urinate (to the jury). If Phagan went to see if her work had arrived she also went to the second floor metal room, and if she had gone to make water (urinate), she would have also gone to the metal room, because the only set of bathrooms are located in the metal room. If she did not check on her work or go to the bathroom, she went down stairs to leave the building and would have bumped into Monteen Stover between 12:05 and 12:10 on April 26, 1913. If Mary Phagan had gone down stairs and Conley attacked her in broad day light, Monteen Stover would have walked in on them and thus Jim Conley would not be stupid enough to attack Phagan in the most high traffic area of the building when people were coming and going all day long. Monteen Stover did not see Mary Phagan, and therefore the only possible explanation is that Mary Phagan and Leo Frank were in the metal room.
To paraphrase Watson: Because Phagan’s hair, and her blood, and the only possible explanation of the wounds— the swollen eye in front, and the scalp cut on the back of the head, ranging from down upward — were all back there at the metal (room) department, where the toilet was.
The fact you have to walk through the metal room / department to get to the bathroom put Frank in a blind alley – NO ESCAPE. The murder window of time had been narrowed down by Leo M. Frank’s original statement to Chief Landford on April 28, 1913 (States Exhibit B), that Mary arrived between 12:05 to 12:10, maybe 12:07. And regardless of whether Phagan came before or after Monteen Stover, they would have bumped into each other, but they did not.
Watson called Frank an infatuated young degenerate! To escape Monteen’s evidence and explain his absence from his office from 12:05 to 12:10, he supposed himself to have gone, “unconsciously,” to the only place in his factory where there were damning and damaging evidences of the crime. Frank put himself in the second floor metal room bathroom during the time period of 12:05 to 12:10 on April 26, 1913.
Watson’s Final Conclusion: The metal room is the very place where Leo M. Frank murdered Mary Phagan, and the prosecution spent nearly a month from July 28, 1913, to August 25, 1913, successfully convincing the jury that Leo Frank had murdered Mary Phagan between 12:05 and 12:10.
Bottomline: Monteen Stover was the star witness, not Jim Conley. Watson used Leo Frank’s own testimony to convict Frank without the use of Jim Conley’s testimony to solve who murdered Mary Phagan.
Prelude to Watson’s Magazine, January 1915
In The Jeffersonian, December 17, 1914, Watson gave a teaser and successfully promoted his Watson’s Magazine January 1915 issue.
The Jeffersonian, December 17, 1914, Watson Wrote:
In the January 1915 issue of Watson’s Magazine, which will be out in a few days, there is a careful review of the State’s case against Leo Frank. It is too long for our weekly paper, but not too long for the honor of Georgia, the integrity of her courts, and the majesty of her laws.
So persistent have been the falsehoods that have gone abroad, and so unscrupulous the methods adopted to save Frank from the just consequences of his premeditated and awful crime against poor Mary Phagan, that I considered the time well spent that was required to write out a fair argument on the material facts.
I have not used the Negro’s evidence at all!
The evidence of Jim Conley is not necessary for the conviction of Frank. This statement will create surprise, no doubt, but why?
Because Frank, and Burns, and the lawyers, and the newspapers, and C. P. Connolly have so often alleged that he was convicted on the testimony of Jim Conley, “a drunken brute of a negro.” That allegation is impudently false, just as was Frank’s written and published statement, that the Supreme Court of Georgia had never reviewed the evidence in the case.
If you will simply read the record that went up, on the motion for a new trial, and will read Hugh Dorsey’s speech, you will see at once how outrageously Frank has misrepresented the relation of Conley’s testimony to his conviction.
Dorsey did not rely on the Negro’s evidence; he scarcely touched upon it in the argument: he placed the case almost entirely upon those PROVED CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH ARE INCONSISTENT WITH FRANK’S INNOCENCE.
Don’t take my word for this: Dorsey’s speech (Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey) was reported by a stenographer, and has been published in booklet form. Read the speech!
As already stated, it is impossible for me, in this paper, to go over all the proved circumstances, which appear in the record; I do that in the magazine. But, I will call your attention to one vital, fatal point against Frank.
You will remember that the undisputed evidence placed both Frank and the negro in the factory building, at the time of the crime. Frank’s present story puts both him and the Negro there. Mrs. Arthur White’s testimony also puts both Frank and Conley there.
Indisputably, the girl was there, for her blood marks were on the floor, and her body, with her under-garments dyed in her virginal blood, was there.
(CONTINUED ON PAGE EIGHT of The Jeffersonian newspaper December 17, 1914, which has been left out here, but will be added in the future.) For now, start with January 1915 issue of Watson’s Magazine.
Five Powerful Issues of Watson’s Magazine (1915)
1. Tom Watson, “The Leo Frank Case,” Watson’s Magazine, January 1915, 139. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: January 1915. Watson introduces the Frank case in this edition.
2. Tom Watson, “The Full Review of the Leo Frank Case,” Watson’s Magazine, March 1915, 235. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: March 1915. Here Watson goes into much further detail on the Frank case.
3. Tom Watson, “The Celebrated Case of The State of Georgia vs. Leo Frank,” Watson’s Magazine, August 1915, 182. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: August 1915. Watson calls the Frank trial the “celebrated case.”
4. Tom Watson, “The Official Record in the Case of Leo Frank, Jew Pervert,” Watson’s Magazine, September 1915, 251. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: September 1915. Showing his true colors, Watson dubs Frank a “Jew pervert.”
5. Tom Watson, “The Rich Jews Indict a State! The Whole South Traduced in the Matter of Leo Frank,” Watson’s Magazine, October 1915, 301. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Ga. Available for download in Adobe PDF format: October 1915. Continuing on his anti-Semitism, Watson criticizes the “rich Jews” that indict the state.
Other Reading:
Download the twenty-nine-page commutation Leo M. Frank Clemency Decision by John M. Slaton, June 21, 1915 in Adobe PDF format.
See: Internet Archive copy of Leo M. Frank, Plaintiff in Error, vs. State of Georgia, Defendant in Error. In Error from Fulton Superior Court at the July Term 1913. Brief of Evidence 1913.
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From THE THOMAS E. WATSON PAPERS Site.
“As one who is quite familiar with the Thomas E. Watson Papers, let me urge every research library with an interest in American history to acquire this immensely valuable collection in microfilm form.”
C. Vann Woodward, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University and author of Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel
The life and career of Tom Watson (1856–1922) embodied the major themes of southern politics for two generations. Studying Watson’s public life offers valuable insights on Populist and Democratic Party politics, race relations, rural poverty, antimilitarism, isolationism, and many other topics central to understanding the region and the times.
Watson represented the growing mass of poor farmers in the South and Midwest at a time when their economic and political status was rapidly slipping in the wake of urbanization and industrialization. He lashed out at the growing influence of cities and corporations in America, harkening back to a Jeffersonian ideal of a republic of independent yeomen.
When as an incumbent Georgia congressman he bolted from the Democrats for the new People’s (or Populist) Party in 1892, Watson began his rise to national attention. His talents as an impassioned orator and popular magazine editor catapulted him to the leadership of the southern Populists, whom he represented in the 1896 presidential campaign as William Jennings Bryan’s running mate. Twice in later years he would be the Populist presidential candidate. Although he was an ardent supporter of the free coinage of silver, he fought within the party to broaden its focus from simple monetary reform to other causes such as antitrust and railroad regulation.
Watson’s early populism was an appeal to the oppressed of both races against the common foe of corporate domination. That appeal came to grief in the rising tide of racism at the end of the century, and by 1906 Watson was in the forefront of those sponsoring state legislation to ensure white supremacy. The documents that trace and help explain that transition will be for many researchers the most intriguing in the collection. Watson’s dominance in Georgia politics during much of the new century’s first two decades gives his personal odyssey a special significance.
This narrowing of his sympathies was not confined to jim crowism but expressed a nativism that attacked all carriers and representatives of foreign entanglements—Jews, Catholics, recent immigrants, and various stripes of internationalism. He encouraged the revived Ku Klux Klan, and his editorials in the Leo Frank case contributed to that Atlanta Jewish plant manager’s lynching in 1915.
True to his Jeffersonian and isolationist ideals, Watson strenuously opposed American entry into World War I and restrictions on civil liberties during it—views that led to a Post Office ban on mailing his magazine, Watson’s Jeffersonian. After the war he opposed U.S. entry into the League of Nations. He died in 1922, a first-term Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia.
In more than 30,000 pages, Watson’s papers amply reflect the breadth of his impact. There is his nationwide correspondence with fellow Populists and others, including many of the impoverished white farmers who made up his core constituency. His productions as a writer of fiction and history are here, including drafts of his autobiographical novel, Bethany, a Story of the Old South, his biographies of Napoleon and Andrew Jackson, and his popular history of France. Press coverage of his career is preserved in voluminous scrapbooks. The collection also preserves many of the ephemera of the Populist movement.
Accompanying the collection is a printed guide that allows researchers easy access to individual files. It includes an index to major subjects and names as well as a reel guide.
Ordering Information
THE THOMAS E. WATSON PAPERS
35mm microfilm (34 reels) with printed guide. ISBN 1-55655-291-2.
Source note: Filmed from the Thomas Edward Watson Papers in the Southern Historical Collection, Academic Affairs Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Congressional Information Service, Inc.
4520 East-West Hwy · Bethesda MD 20814.3389 USA
800.638.8380 800.638.8380 | 301.654.1550 301.654.1550 | Fax: 301.657.3203
Tom Watson-Brown
Thomas Watson Brown, 73; philanthropist from Georgia
OBITUARIES | PASSINGS
January 18, 2007|From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Thomas Watson Brown, 73, a prominent Georgian who combined Old South roots with a wide-ranging philanthropic streak, died Saturday of complications from diabetes at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. His death was confirmed by former Gov. Roy Barnes.
The Harvard-educated Brown lived in an antebellum home in Marietta, Ga., that flew the Confederate flag, but he was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center’s community service award for peace and justice. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, presented the award to Brown in 1987 for his contributions to the Atlanta Legal Aid Society.
Brown was a staunch defender of his great-grandfather, Thomas E. Watson, a publisher and U.S. senator. Many still blame Watson for whipping up anti-Semitism that led to the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, who had been convicted of killing 13-year-old Mary Phagan two years earlier. Watson’s great-grandson was convinced by extensive research that Frank was not lynched because he was Jewish but because the populace was outraged that his sentence was commuted by the governor, who had been bribed.
The Watson-Brown Foundation that Brown established awards millions of dollars in scholarships and is committed to historic preservation.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/18/local/me-passings18.2
Mr. Thomas Watson Brown
MARIETTA, Ga. – Mr. Thomas Watson Brown, of Marietta, died Saturday, January 13. He was 73.
Born in Washington, D.C., Mr. Brown attended Saint Alban’s School. He received his A.B. in history from Princeton University, where he graduated magna cum laude. After serving briefly in the United States Army, Mr. Brown attended Harvard Law School, graduating with his L.L.B. in 1959. He moved to Atlanta where he practiced law until his death. Mr. Brown led numerous business, civic, philanthropic and scholarly organizations. He was the former Chairman of Spartan Communications, Inc., a television broadcasting company. He served on the boards of the Atlanta Historical Society, the Georgia Historical Society, the Georgia Civil War Commission, the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and the Georgia Legal History Foundation. He was a life trustee of Mercer University. Mr. Brown was a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table, the Lawyer’s Club of Atlanta and the Advocates, Ltd., the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and the Atlanta Lawyers Club. He chaired the Atlanta Symposium, the Mercer University Press and the Watson-Brown Foundation. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Atlanta Press Club. Mr. Brown was an intellectual and a respected historian, but he is perhaps remembered best as a Civil War scholar and a raconteur of the first order. The great-grandson of former Georgia U.S. Senator Thomas E. Watson, Mr. Brown was a lifelong Jeffersonian Democrat and a staunch defender of the South.
He is preceded in death by his first wife, Mary Ellen McLaughlin Brown, his second wife, Ann Henderson West Brown, and two sons, John Judson Brown, II and John Durham West Brown.
He is survived by his remaining four children, Melissa Ellen Brown Cummings of Massillon, Ohio, Thomas Watson Brown, Jr. of Evans, Anne Georgia Lawrence Brown McCarroll of Memphis, Tenn., and Elizabeth Courtney Brown of Marietta; and eight grandchildren. Mr. Brown is also survived by a cadre of loyal friends whose support and companionship, especially in his failing years, provided him immortal humor, succor, and strength.
Funeral services were held at 2 p.m. Wednesday, January 17, on the west lawn of Hickory Hill, historic home of Thomas E. Watson, in Thomson,.
In lieu of flowers, please send contributions to the Watson-Brown Foundation, 310 Tom Watson Way, Thomson, Georgia 30824.
http://mirror.augusta.com/stories/011807/obi_113020.shtml
References and Further Reading
The Tom E. Watson Digital Papers (recommended) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/watson/
The Jeffersonian newspaper on Leo M. Frank 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917: https://www.leofrank.org/images/jeffersonian-newspaper-images/
Watson’s Magazine (1915): January, March, August, September, and October issues (Must Read).
‘Notes on the Case of Leo Max Frank and its Aftermath,’ by Tom Watson Brown, 1982.
Did Leo Frank Make a Murder Trial Confession?: https://www.leofrank.org/confession/
Background and Testimony of Jim Conley from the Brief of Evidence: https://www.leofrank.org/jim-conley-august-4-5-6/
Obit for Tom Watson Brown: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/18/local/me-passings18.2
Hickory Hill Website: http://www.hickory-hill.org/
Tom Watson’s Jeffersonian Publishing Company Background
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/jeffersonian-publishing-company
Tom Watson on the Leo Frank Case (Required Reading):
The Jeffersonian weekly newspaper specifically about the Leo Frank case from (1914 to 1917):
Individual Issue Pages: https://www.leofrank.org/images/jeffersonian-newspaper-images/
Watson’s Magazine, January 1915:
Full Page Images (pages 139-163): https://www.leofrank.org/images/watsons-magazine-january-1915/
Watson’s Magazine, March 1915:
Full Page Images (pages 235 – 278): https://www.leofrank.org/images/watsons-magazine-march-1915/
PDF: https://www.leofrank.org/library/watsons-magazine-1915/watsons-magazine-march-1915-pages-235-278.pdf
Watson’s Magazine, August 1915:
Full Page Images (pages 182 – 235): https://www.leofrank.org/images/watsons-magazine-august-1915/
Watson’s Magazine, September 1915:
Images: https://www.leofrank.org/images/watsons-magazine-september-1915/
Watson’s Magazine, October 1915:
Images: https://www.leofrank.org/images/watsons-magazine-october-1915/
Last Updated: April 26, 2012
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