The Leo Frank Case by Jewish Activist Professor Leonard Dinnerstein (Brown Thrasher Books)

Jurist Cecelia Ellen Connally Writes:

“As a judge, a lawyer and an historian I had heard about the Leo Frank case but did not know the details. Leonard Dinnerstein does an excellent job of relating the story of Leo Frank in a fair and unbiased manner. He also puts the entire affair in a historical context. This would be an excellent read for any student of racism in America and of the New South. It is easy to read and has an excellent bibliography.”

Mark Cohen’s Replies:

“As a judge, a lawyer and an historian”, did you ever actually bother to look-up and read the Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (1913) or the Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Appeals Records (1913, 1914)? Probably not, because if you did, I doubt you would claim, “Leonard Dinnerstein does an excellent job of relating the story of Leo Frank in a fair and unbiased manner”.

Jurist Cecelia Ellen Connally Retorts: “If the author made errors then you should point them out.”

Response to Cecelia by Mark Cohen:

According to Leonard Dinnerstein in his ‘Preface to Revised Edition’ of the Leo Frank Case (2008), page xiv:

As we continue to learn more about the murder of Mary Phagan, there are still people who sincerely believe that Frank was guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. Some are still in doubt. I have no doubts: Frank was innocent. Signed – Leonard Dinnerstein, February 23, 2008, Tucson, Arizona.

Dear Cecelia E. Connally, you requested: “If the author made errors, you should point them out” ….

I have already written and posted reviews for nearly every book available on Amazon-dot-com about the Leo Frank case, you may refer to them for a multitude of answers concerning your request. Given the text limitation quota Amazon-dot-com has set for each and every book review posting and reply, I was only able to highlight some of the most shameless omissions and errors made by Leonard Dinnerstein, with greater focus on the conspicuously grotesque deceit he knowingly perpetuates about Leo Frank Case.

As a “lawyer, judge and historian”, doesn’t it strike you as incomprehensibly odd, that an author (Born May 5, 1934) who spent nearly half a century of his life (he began researching and writing about the criminal affair in 1963 at Columbia University) studying the Leo Frank case — completing his PhD Dissertation (1966) on the subject, followed by his notable 250+ page book (1968), and putting out edition-after-edition between 1968 to 2008 — would devote only *half a page* to Leo Frank’s four hour statement, that he had delivered on August 18, 1913 to the jurors at his famous trial?

Let’s examine Dinnerstein’s entire analysis about what Leo Frank stated on the witness stand (Monday August 18, 1913, from 2:15 p.m. to 6:05 p.m), page 49, exact quote:

Leo Frank climaxed the defense presentation with a four hour effort to convince the jurors of his innocence. He briefly outlined his life history, his reasons for coming to Atlanta, and his actions on the day of the murder. At times he specifically touched on points that the prosecution had scored against him. He explained that Monteen Stover may not have seen him in his office when she arrived because when he sat at his desk “it is impossible for me to see out into the outer hall when the safe door is open, as it was that morning, and not only is it impossible for me to see out, but it is impossible for people to see in and see me there.” On the other hand, he thought he might have been out of his office momentarily because of “a call of nature.” The superintendent branded Conley’s entire narrative “a tissue of lies,” and again denied participating in the crime (Source: Leonard Dinnerstein, Leo Frank Case, p. 49, 2008).

What Leonard Dinnerstein failed to tell his audience is that Frank’s open safe door located in his outer office was only 4 feet tall, and it did not block the vision of more than a dozen visitors coming to see him that day, including 4’11” tall, Mary Phagan, but supposedly blocked 5’2″ tall, Monteen Stover, who testified going all the way into Frank’s inner office and finding his desk empty while waiting there for 5 minutes, between 12:05 p.m., and 12:10 p.m. Compare that with Leo Frank’s deposition to the police (State’s Exhibit B, Monday, April 28, 1913) that Mary Phagan was alone with him in his second floor office located at the front section of the National Pencil Company building (formerly called The Old Venable Building).

Ironically, Monteen Stover was a positive character witness for Leo Frank againt the 19 former employees of the National Pencil Company, who described Leo Frank’s character for lasciviousness as bad. The defense never made any effort to impeach Monteen Stover, because Leo Frank’s accounting ledger indicated she was indeed owed her wages and had not collected them on that fateful afternoon during the normal payoff time at noon.

Curiously enough, Monteen Stover had also been temporarily laid off by Leo Frank on Monday, April 21, 1913, thus one can only wonder if Mary Phagan hadn’t shown up that day to collect her pay, if today we would all be talking about the murder of Monteen Stover instead. We’ll leave that to speculation alone.

On Monday, August 18, 1913, Seated on the witness stand, Leo Frank responded to why Monteen Stover found his office empty between 12:05pm and 12:10pm on April 26, 1913 – Leo Frank’s exact quote from the brief of evidence:

Now, gentlemen [of the jury], to the best of my recollection from the time the whistle blew for twelve o’clock [noon on Saturday, April 26, 1913] until after a quarter to one [12:46 p.m.] when I went up stairs [to the fourth floor of the National Pencil Company building where I was working] and spoke to Arthur White and Harry Denham, to the best of my recollection, I did not stir out of the inner office [located at the front of the second floor] ; but it is possible that in order to answer a call of nature or to urinate I may have gone to the toilet [located in the metal room at the rear of the second floor]. Those are things that a man does unconsciously and cannot tell how many times nor when he does it. Now, sitting in my office at my desk, it is impossible for me to see out into the outer hall when the [4ft tall] safe door is open, as it was that morning [on the day of the murder], and not only is it impossible for me to see out, but it is impossible for people to see in and see me there (Leo Frank’s Trial Statement to the Jury, August 18, 1913, page 186, Brief of Evidence, 1913).

Leonard Dinnerstein’s biggest omission is not informing his readers that the *ONLY bathroom* existing on the second floor was located inside the metal room (according to Defendant’s Exhibit 61, State’s Exhibit A, Brief of Evidence, 1913), the exact same area where a (5″ inch wide fan-shaped) bloodstain was found adjacent to the metalroom’s bathroom door (according to both defense and prosecution witnesses). In terms of errors: Blood was NOT found on the floor by the metal-room lathe belonging to factory employee Robert Barrett, as Dinnerstein erroneously states in his book. The metal-room lathe located on by the North-East wall of the metal room was where Mary Phagan’s bloodied hair was found tangled around its solid iron handle (Robert P. Barrett Testimony, Sworn Under Oath at the Official Coroner’s Inquest, May, 1913; and Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913), which was consistent with the wounds found on the back of her head (Mary Phagan Autopsy Report, Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913).

Dinnerstein also failed to mention that Jim Conley testified at the trial, stating he found Mary Phagan dead in front of the bathroom entryway (State’s Exhibit A, Brief of Evidence, 1913, item 9), located inside the metal room, moments after Leo Frank confessed to assaulting her about there, because she wouldn’t have sex with him (James Conley Trial Testimony, August 4, Brief of Evidence, 1913).

The “death notes” found next to Mary Phagan in the basement that Jim Conley admitted to writing, also have her going to “make water” (urinating) in the metal room bathroom, as there was no bathroom accessible on the first floor, and Phagan certainly would not have climbed through the trapdoor located on the first floor lobby, descending a 14 foot wooden ladder into a pitch black stygian basement, and walked 100 feet deep in the darkness to use the racially segregated toilet in cellar’s rear. It was a “Negroes” only toilet during the era of segregation.

Everything kept pointing to the metal room as the scene of the crime, specifically: the bloodstain on the floor in front of the metal-room’s bathroom entryway and hair with dried blood on it found at the lathe in the metal room proper. Conley’s testimony clearly suggested he found Mary Phagan’s dead body in front of the metal-room’s bathroom door. The death notes (found in the basement) pointed to Mary Phagan going to the metal room bathroom. Pinkerton detective Harry Scott’s testimony about Leo Frank telling him he said, “I don’t know” when Mary asked Frank if the brass shipment had arrived yet in the metal room (So Lets Find Out?).

Ah, but then everything came around full circle when Leo Frank mounted the witness stand and explained where he might have “unconsciously” been when Mary Phagan was murdered in front of the metal-room bathroom between 12:05pm and 12:10pm.

Leo Frank ineluctably entrapped himself beyond escape by his own testimony, because Leo Frank made a deposition to the police at the station house on Monday morning at 8:30 am, April 28, 1913, stating, that Mary Phagan was with him alone in his second floor office between, “12:05 pm and 12:10pm, maybe 12:07pm”, the statement was stenographed by Gay C. Febuary (this is the correct spelling of his real name without the second ‘r’ between the ‘b’ and ‘u’) and entered into evidence as State’s Exhibit B at the trial. You can read this evidence available in the Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (1913) and Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Case Records (1913, 1914).

How did Monteen Stover inadvertently cause a chain of events that led to Leo Frank providing the solution to the murder of Mary Phagan?

During the early inquiry into the Mary Phagan murder mystery, Leo Frank had been sworn under oath during the Coroner’s Inquest (April 30 to May 8, 1913), swearing on May 5th, and 8th, 1913, to an alibi that he never left his office between noon and 12:20pm (Leo Frank’s Sworn Testimony, Coroner’s Inquest, May 5, and May 8, 1913), but on August 18, 1913, Leo Frank reversed himself and said he might have “unconsciously” been in the metal room bathroom (located at the rear of the second floor) responding to Monteen Stover breaking his alibi. The prosecution’s entire case was argued upon the premise that Leo Frank had murdered Mary Phagan in the metal room, shortly after she arrived at the factory at about noon.

The Murder Trial Jury knew Leo Frank could not be in his office alone with Mary Phagan (Leo Frank’s Deposition to Atlanta Police on Monday April 28, State’s Exhibit B, Brief of Evidence, 1913) and also be inside the metal room bathroom alone at the exact same time, because it defies the laws of physics and reality.

Had you been sitting behind the judge’s rostrum presiding over this case Cecelia, you might have felt cold shivers down your spine when Leo Frank made his infamous “unconscious” bathroom visit to the metal room, that essentially amounted to a murder trial confession. Leo Frank would again make this same shockingly incriminating admission in a 1914 authorized jail house interview — only days after Leo Frank (born. April 17, 1884) was re-sentenced to die on his 30th birthday (April 17, 1914) — published in the March 9, 1914, issue of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. This Atlanta daily newspaper is available online at The Internet Archive.

The solution to the murder of Mary Phagan was given my Leo Frank on the Witness Stand, you can review it on page 186 of the BOE (brief of evidence), 1913.

Leonard Dinnerstein’s Trial Jury Intimidation Hoax:

Now, let’s explore one of Leonard Dinnerstein’s anti-Semitic Hatecrime Hoaxes, found in his scholarly work titled, ‘Leo Frank and the American Jewish Community’, published in the prestigious American Jewish Archive Journal (Cincinnati, November, 1968, volume 20, number 2, page 110:

Beyond the main testimony, the jurors had little more on which to base their decision than hearsay, rumors, and unsubstantiated accusations. Yet most members of the public were thoroughly convinced of the defendant’s guilt and made their voices heard, The intense summer heat necessitated that the courtroom windows be left open, and remarks from the crowds could be heard easily by those inside. “Crack the Jew’s neck!” – “Lynch him!” – were some of the epithets emerging from the more boisterous. Threats were also made “against the jury that they would be lynched if they did not hang that ‘damned sheeny.’ ” (Leonard Dinnerstein, 1968, AJA, v2, n2, p. 110)

Yet none of Leo Frank’s voluminous appeals from 1913 to 1915, ever mention these anti-Semitic death threats were shouted at the jury or into the courtroom’s windows during the trial, none of the newspaper accounts mention these incidents of jury intimidation either. The presiding judge Leonard Strickland Roan and defense counselors never mention these incidents either, because they never happened.

The Mary Phagan X-Ray Bitemark Hoax:

My favorite scientific fraud Leonard Dinnerstein blandly presents to the public as exonerating proof of Leo Frank’s innocence, is the 1964 Pierre van Paassen hoax, about x-ray photographs of bitemarks on Mary Phagans neck and shoulder, and X-rays of Leo Frank’s teeth not matching. Even though it was not even possible to x-ray bitemarks on flesh back in 1913 or today in 2013. So perhaps Cecelia, you could ask one of your doctor friends if it was possible to x-ray bitemarks on skin in the early 20th or 21st century. None of the autopsy reports conducted by defense and prosecution physicians ever mentioned bitemarks on Phagan’s neck and shoulder, or anywhere on her body for that matter.

Leonard Dinnerstein’s, ‘Leo Frank Case’, 2008, p.158, exact quote:

In 1923, at the height of the Ku Klux Klan’s power, a foreign journalist [Pierre van Paassen], working for ‘The Atlanta Constitution’, became interested in Leo Frank and went back to study the records of the case. He came across some x-rays showing teeth indentations of Mary Phagan’s left shoulder and compared them with x-rays of Frank’s teeth; but the two sets did not correspond. On the basis of this, and other insights garnered from his investigation, the newspaperman wanted to write a series “proving” Frank’s innocence. One anonymous correspondent sent him a printed note: “Lay off the Frank case if you want to keep healthy,” but this did not deter him… (Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case, 2008, p. 158).

Leonard Dinnerstein, 1966 Columbia University PhD dissertation, page 280, exact quote:

He [Pierre van Paassen] came across some x-rays showing teeth indentures in Mary Phagan’s left shoulder and compared them with x-rays of Frank’s teeth–but the two sets did not correspond. (Dinnerstein, PhD Dissertation, 1966, p. 280).

Leonard Dinnerstein on page 220 of his references (2008), cites Pierre van Paassen, “To Number Our Days” (New York, 1964) which is available on Amazon-dot-com. The excerpt from this book that discusses the case of Leo Frank and Van Paassen’s (1922) discovery of exonerating photographic evidence, are located on pages 237 and 238.

Leonard Dinnerstein’s Mary Phagan Murder Notes Fraud in his Book and on Film:

In the documentary ‘People v. Leo Frank’ (2009), Leonard Dinnerstein falsified evidence during his interview on film, where he claimed Leo Frank told the police Jim Conley could write, thus exposing Jim Conley as the probable author of the “Mary Phagan murder notes”. Yet the official legal records of the investigation and trial indicates the exact opposite — that Leo Frank actually concealed this information about Conley being able to write from the Atlanta police during all of their initial meetings and interrogations of him.

The Primary Sources of the Leo Frank Case (1913 to 1915):

Based on the official Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (1913), Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court Appeals Records (1913, 1914) and three major local Atlanta daily newspaper accounts of the Leo Frank Case, published in the Constitution, Georgian, & Journal, from April, 1913, to August, 1915, it is now a mathematically proven fact that Leonard Dinnerstein spent his entire academic career and nearly half a century of his life, falsifying American legal history attempting to transmogrify the well documented Mary Phagan murder investigation and Leo Frank trial, into an ugly anti-Semitic blood libel frame-up and anti-Jewish hatecrime hoax. We can easily verify this deceit by comparing his 1966 Columbia University PhD Dissertation and every edition of his book from 1968 to 2008, with the primary sources of the case that he misquotes, censors or obfuscates to prejudice the reader.

Shame on Leonard Dinnerstein for omitting 99% of the 1,800 page unabridged Official Georgia Supreme Court Legal Records that encompass the digest of Leo Frank trial testimony, evidence and exhibits, and state appeals. Did this lofty professor emeritus ever consider that students of the Leo Frank trial, might actually fact-check the sources, references and citations found in his Leo Frank Case PhD dissertation (1966), continuing all the way through every article, and edition of his book from 1968 to 2008?

Cecelia, perhaps it’s time you examine the dry leaves of the trial and appeal legal documents (1913 to 1915), because I would love hear your “lawyer, judge and historian” opinion on the official records, but I won’t hold my breath.

I wrote two reviews of Leonard Dinnerstein’s book, ‘The Leo Frank Case’ on two different editions of his book, the second one will follow later, here is the first:

Retired Arizona Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies, Leonard Dinnerstein, joins the eternal pantheon of notable authors discovered falsifying American legal history in discourse about the early 20th century Mary Phagan murder investigation and ensuing Leo Frank trial.

This 1991 edition of Dinnerstein’s revisionist monograph on the Leo Frank Case is another shameless embarrassment to American academic standards of scholarly research, because Leonard Dinnerstein verifiably omitted 99% of the 1,800 page official Leo M. Frank Georgia Legal Records, that encompasses the 1913 summer trial & State Supreme Court Appeals from 1913 through 1914. These legal records fortunately survived in their entirety into the 21st century and provide a digest of the trial transcript and exhibits.

If anyone wants another example showing the educational system of America has reached its nadir & is infested with pathologically treacherous activist academics with racist agendas to perpetuate Jewish-Gentile culture wars, then students of law and history should study the primary sources of the Leo Frank Case and then cross reference them with every edition (1968 to 2008) of Leonard Dinnerstein’s, ‘The Leo Frank Case’, it indisputably reveals he spent more than 40 years of his life making an absolute abject mockery of Southern legal history and jurisprudence.

In sum total the whole premise of Leonard Dinnerstein’s book, ‘The Leo Frank Case’, is to smear the people of the South with a plethora of anti-Jewish canards; defame as an unscrupulous political climber, Hugh Dorsey, a man generally regarded as one of the greatest statesmen of the Southern progressive era; perpetuate racist conspiracies against African-Americans; and shamelessly rehabilitate the image of Atlanta’s B’nai B’rith President, Leo M. Frank, the serial rapist-pedophile (see: GA Supreme Court Records, 1913, 1914), strangler and convicted child killer who was lynched on August 17, 1915, for bludgeoning, raping, garroting and ordering the necro-mutilation of 13-year old Mary Anne Phagan during the noon hour of Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913.

Instead of presenting all of the facts, testimony and evidence of the case in a fair, neutral, balanced and cogent manner, thus providing the readers with accurate information contextualized, so they might decide for themselves whether or not Leo Frank was innocent or guilty, instead, Leonard Dinnerstein perpetuates viciously racist blood libel accusation against European-American Gentiles, an example of one that is perhaps the most grotesque imaginable:

Concerning Jewish-Gentile relations, the general conclusion of Dinnerstein’s lifetime thesis about that Leo Frank Case, is that in the context of a White racial segregationist & separatist Atlanta of 1913, White Southern Gentiles were so filled with anti-Jewish animus, that they knowingly and willingly set free a guilty African-American man who pounded his fists into the face of a little 13-year old White girl, just before raping, strangling and mutilating her. Moreover in this same vein, the reason why White Southern Gentiles knowingly let the guilty Black rapist and strangler go free, was so they could instead indiscriminately, but intentionally frame an innocent White man for the crime, primarily because he happened to be Jewish. And wait, there’s more, this out of touch, nutty and lunatic conspiracy gets some icing on the cake too, topping it off, the unscrupulous Solicitor General Hugh Manson Dorsey, Atlanta Police and Detectives, all worked together coaching James “Jim” Conley until perfected as a trained parrot to trick the trial jury and unjustly convict Leo Frank.

Dinnerstein’s 200+ page sleazy diatribe reveals his repulsive and psychopathic obsession with anti-Jewish intrigues and plots in the Old South and page after page he renders wrongful indictments against the good people of Georgia, the South and every Southerner, even though the consensus amongst Southern historians and scholars of all ethnic backgrounds is that Antisemitism was virtually non-existent in the Antebellum South and especially so during the progressive era when Jews prospered. In reality, the traditional culture of Southern hospitality & spirit of libertarian-capitalism, especially in Atlanta Georgia, enabled most Jewish families to thrive.

There is certainly plenty of racism, bigotry, prejudice and injustice to be found in our multicultural world, but there is really nothing more spineless and cowardly than to fabricate evidence of it and then falsely accuse someone of it without real evidence. Especially in a case where someone was convicted and sentenced to death by the overwhelming preponderance of the forensic evidence and trial testimony, sustained by every level of the United States of America’s legal system from 1913 to 1986.

Continuing over a number of decades, the organized Jewish community regularly gave kudos and accolades to Dinnerstein for his numerous editions of his racist anti-Gentile propaganda books. Many once described Dinnerstein as the definitive author on the Leo Frank epic saga, that is until Journalist-Author Steve Oney came along, usurping that title as of 2003, when he published his long-winded and sloppily researched revisionist diatribe, ‘And the Dead Shall Rise’. I strongly encourage people to purchase a copy of each book and then compare them both with the official Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (1913) and period Atlanta newspaper (Constitution, Journal and Georgian) accounts from April 26 through August, 1913, to learn why the definitive 21st century account of this case has yet to be produced as of 2012 by either of these men.

What Leonard Dinnerstein doesn’t tell the reader about the Frank-Phagan Case is an astonishing admission that was made by Leo Max Frank on August 18, 1913, at 2:46 p.m., while he was delivering his three and a half hour unsworn trial statement to the judge and jury. The specific revelation Leo Frank made was so incriminating that it amounted to the equivalent of a murder trial confession, and yet every revisionist Leo Frank partisan author conveniently leaves this stupefying incident out of their discourse.

Many 20th and 21st century Leo Frank activists have accused the populist publisher, Tom Watson, of causing Leo M. Frank to be convicted in 1913, but Watson did not publish anything about the case until the following year, well after the trial ended! Rather ironically, Tom Watson had been asked to represent Leo Frank for a sum of $5,000. In October, 1915, Watson published a scathing piece in his magazine about the national cause celebre created by a number of prominent Jewish leaders in their respective fields and well connected media moguls beginning in 1913, that oddly enough still continues today.

Another Spoiler Alert: The Leo Frank witness stand incriminating statements, made to the jury and judge on Monday, August 18, 1913, during the afternoon courtroom session, exactly three weeks into his month long trial.

Just minutes past noon on Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913, Mary Phagan entered the National Pencil Company to collect her pay envelope of $1.20. She normally earned $4.05 a week, but for only clocking 16 hours, her pay was significantly reduced. She had been temporarily laid off on Monday, April 21, 1913, because of a shortage of brass sheet metal used to make tubular eraser holders attached at the end of pencils. Phagan worked at the rear of the 2nd floor in the metalroom. Phagan’s work station was next to the bathroom entryway. Phagan was a “tipper”, inserting rubber erasers into the brass tubes of pencils for 7 and 4/11 cents an hour during a typical 55 hour, 6-day workweek, since the Spring of 1912.

Only moments after using the racially segregated “Negro Toilet”, Newton “Newt” Lee discovered the dead body of Mary Anne Phagan in the basement of the National Pencil Company (NPCo) at about 3:15 a.m., on Sunday, April 27, 1913. Lee shoe shuffled to the cellar ladder and shimmied up the rungs to the first floor lobby, and then hustled up the stairs from the first floor lobby to Leo Frank’s second floor office, where the only working phone in the building was located. Seizing it’s mouth piece, dialing and asking the operator to connect him with the police, it was then that Lee reported the incident to Sergeant W. F. Anderson, night shift call officer for the Atlanta Police Station, who took the call at 3:24 a.m. Lee also made an attempt for 8 minutes to contact Leo Frank by phone, but no one answered at the Selig residence. The police arrived at the NPCo factory 15 minutes later in a Ford model-T.

The police later remarked about remembering looking through the glass and seeing Lee coming down the staircase with his smoky lantern bobbing as he descended. Moments later the police entered the factory lobby, they climbed through the narrow scuttle, descending 14 feet down a pitched wooden ladder to the cellar. With Newt leading the way, together they walked more than 100 feet to the rear of the stygian basement. When they came upon Mary Phagan in a filthy state, laying on her side, face encrusted with dirt, it gave the appearance she had been dragged. Seeing Phagan’s reverently crossed arms was a site they would never forget for the rest of their lives. Looking closer at the grizzly scene they noticed a long 1/8th inch cord made into a makeshift noose, taut around her neck, sunk flesh deep. Phagan’s dress appeared ripped midsagitally from hem to crotch, and bloodied underwear were still attached to her body, torn open across the crotch up to the right seam, nearby two peculiar hand written notes were discovered scattered on the floor with a contrived message.

The notes later dubbed, “death notes or murder notes” described the Negro killer as the tall, dark & slim nightwitch, exactly describing the demographic information of Newton “newt” Lee, who was the tall, slim, and dark complected, nightwatchman for National Pencil Company only three weeks. The “death notes” essentially accused Newton Lee (colloquially called the Nightwatch) of raping Mary Phagan.

Lee was an old, bald & married African-American security guard with years of graveyard shift experience and no criminal record to boot, but if the incriminating notes stood up to a Grand and Petite Jury, Newt Lee would hang by the neck until dead as prescribed by law.

What made the notes so unusual is how they were written in a contrived manner, as if they were created by little Mary Phagan and addressed to her mother Francis, while Mary was in the midst of being sexually molested by Newt Lee. In the Old South of White racist ethnic solidarity, where the “purity and honor of White Southern Womanhood” was considered the most precious and sacred thing on Earth, if a Negro even whistled or “wild talked” at – or jostled a White woman, there was a dangerous risk of lynching. Out of nearly 3,500 lynchings in American history, the majority of victims were Negroes. It was Hugh Dorsey, who used his political influence & clout to openly advocated against lynching, even when it was politically unpopular to do so. Dorsey’s effort helped to put this practice in morbid decline.

In 1913, Leo Frank was no ambitious upstart, he was an established and prominent leader of Atlanta’s Jewish community, President of the local Bnai Brith (1912 to 1914), and nearly 5-year veteran factory superintendent of the well known National Pencil Company (NPCo).

After trying all night long, the police finally got Leo Frank on the phone at dawn and informed him briefly they needed to speak with him face to face.

On Sunday morning, April 27, 1913, Leo Frank was escorted by police to P.J. Bloomfield’s mortuary to identify the victim. Leo Frank claimed he wasn’t sure, that he would have to check his accounting & payroll ledgers to verify. The Atlanta Police drove Leo Frank to the NPCo and together they all went up to his second floor window front office, and reviewed his accounting books. The police specifically wanted Leo Frank to examine his payroll book, to try and pinpoint at what specific time Mary Phagan appeared in his office to collect her pay. After eyeballing his payroll logbook, Leo Frank told the police Mary Phagan had arrived in his office on Saturday, April 26, 1913, at sometime around 12:03pm.

Leo Frank then took out Newt Lee’s time card from the clock and eyeballed it, telling the police it was punched perfectly every half hour between 6:00pm on April 26, 1913, to 3:00 am on April 27, 1913. The information given to the police gave the indication that Newt Lee had generally performed in accordance with what was expected of his duties during his security shift. Leo Frank was not under suspicion at the time and was allowed to go home.

The next day Leo Frank was called down to the station house early Monday morning, where he made a deposition to the police at 8:30 a.m., April 28, 1913. In an interrogation room at the Atlanta police station, Leo Frank had two of Georgia’s most powerful lawyers representing him, Herbert Haas and Luther Z. Rosser.

Leo Frank specifically said Mary Phagan came into his second floor office on April 26, 1913, between “12:05 pm and 12:10 pm, maybe 12:07 pm”. The significance of the Phagan arrival time would be revealed at the trial, because Leo Frank precisely nailed the time Mary Phagan was in his possession at 12:07 pm (Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, State’s Exhibit B, April 28, 1913), but the day before he said 12:03 pm. Leo Frank would change the Phagan arrival time at least three separate times.

On Monday morning, April 28, 1913, Leo Frank also told the police that he made a mistake concerning Newt Lee’s timecard that became Defendant’s Exhibit A. In contradiction to his statement on Sunday, April 27, 1913, when he had reported in front of Police that Lee’s timecard was punched perfectly every half hour, but after closer inspection, the nightwatchman had actually missed four half hour punches, leaving open four hours of unaccounted for time. This conflicting new information, added even greater suspicion upon Newt Lee, who was at the time already prime suspect. It was the coup de grace – the death blow – upon Newt Lee after Leo Frank made this revelation, but it turned out the next day to be an overzealous blunder that forever changed the tide against him.

While interrogated, Leo Frank had a flash of brilliance, he stood up and sophorifically disrobed for the police, they inspected his body and it was a genius segway to get them to visit his home for the purpose of inspecting his laundry. Leo Frank had adroitly plucked himself out of the spiders web, and got the spiders to take him home where they inspected his hamper. Ah, that most delicate feint and subtle engram of a hint, for the police to check the Negro’s shack on 68 Henderson St. And on Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, with a skeleton key they did.

On Monday morning, April 28, 1913, at 6:35 a.m., Robert Paul Barret found bloody hair tangled around the iron handle of his bench lathe (Coroner’s Inquest, May, 1913), it was located against the south wall of the metalroom. Moments later, one of the child laborers, Magnolia Kennedy, discovered what looked like a 5″ inch wide fan shaped blood spatter stain crowned with droplets on the floor near the bathroom’s door and she immediately told Barret. Instead of cleaning up the bloodstain on the floor with soapy warm water and a brush, someone had smeared a white powder lubricant over it, known as haskolene.

The metal room forensic discoveries were critical, because it meant Mary Phagan might not have been initially killed in the basement where she was dumped, but in the metal room on the second floor. The police were able to come to this conclusion because the dragmarks on Phagan’s face showed no sign of bleeding or healing under a magnifying glass, thus she had already been quite dead when she was dragged from the bottom of the elevator shaft in the cellar. The police measured 140 feet from the drag marks beginning at the basement’s elevator shaft to the rear where she was found.

After Leo Frank was arrested on Tuesday, April 29, 1913, at 11:35 am, he swore to the Police for 3.5 months he never left his office on April 26, 1913, from high noon to 12:45 pm. During the Coroner’s Inquest on May 5 & 8th 1913, Leo Frank swore under oath that he had never left his office during the noon hour on April 26, 1913, except to go upstairs at a quarter to 1:00 O’clock.

A breakthrough in the Mary Phagan murder mystery occurred on Saturday, May 3, 1913, as Atlanta police accidentally bumped into 14-year old Monteen Stover at the National Pencil Company factory. At that exact moment, Stover was a former employee of the NPCo and present with her step mother who was terrified and livid, because of some very interesting circumstances that occurred exactly one week earlier. Monteen Stover had failed to retrieve her pay envelope the week before on April 26, 1913. When the police asked Stover what time she arrived at the factory, she said she arrived in Leo Frank’s office at 12:05pm and found Leo Frank’s office empty, so she waited for five minutes and left at 12:10 pm, because she thought the factory was empty. When asked how she knew what time it was, Stover reminded the police about the wallclock in Leo Frank’s office.

On Sunday, May 4, 1913, armed with new contradictory timeline information from Monteen Stover, Detective John Black and Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott approached Leo Frank in his jail cell to test his murder alibi and asked him if he had been in his office every minute from high noon to 12:45pm on April 26, 1913. Leo Frank responded affirmatively with the words “Yes”. The question was restated – were you in your office every minute between twelve noon and 12:35pm on April 26, 1913? Leo Frank again responded again affirmatively with the words “Yes”.

Detectives considered it a major breakthrough in the Mary Phagan murder investigation, because the contradiction resulting in Monteen Stover’s factory arrival time, suggested that Leo Frank might have gone with Mary Phagan back to the metal room before 12:05 pm on April 26, 1913. The mystery was narrowing, but then Leo Frank widened it the next day by again changing the time of Mary Phagan’s arrival for the third time.

On Monday, May 5, 1913, Leo Frank told the Coroner and his 6-man-jury, that Mary Phagan had come to his office between 12:10pm to 12:15pm on Saturday, April 26, 1913, contradicting his deposition to police on Monday, April 28, 1913, that Phagan came into his office between 12:05pm and 12:10pm, maybe 12:07pm, and even further contradicting his Sunday, April 27, 1913, statement that Mary Phagan entered his office at 12:03pm. The Coroner and his Jury, unanimously voted to bind Leo Frank over for murder to the Grand jury.

After a 2-week investigation into the Phagan murder, Leo Frank was unanimously indicted by 21 Grand Jurymen which included several Jewish members, on Saturday, May 24, 1913. Putting serious doubt into Dinnerstein’s supposition that Leo Frank was indicted and convicted because of anti-Semitism. For insight into what was stated at the Leo Frank Grand Jury hearings, one can get a good idea by reading the Leo Frank Trial Transcript recorded in the three major competing Atlanta newspapers at the time.

Leo Frank’s 29-day trial began on July 28, 1913 and ended on August 25, 1913, the testimony segment ended on August 21, 1913, when the closing arguments began.

The Solution to the Murder of Mary Phagan:

Leo Frank made his newfangled revelation at his trial on August 18, 1913 at 2:46pm, explaining why Monteen Stover had found his office empty on April 26, 1913, between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm. Leo Frank told the Judge and Jury the reason why his office was empty, was because he might have “unconsciously” gone the bathroom in the metal room during this time.

Leo Frank’s exact words on the witness stand at his trial:

Now, gentlemen, to the best of my recollection from the time the whistle blew for twelve o’clock until after a quarter to one when I went up stairs and spoke to Arthur White and Harry Denham, to the best of my recollection, I did not stir out of my office; but it is possible that in order to answer a call of nature or to urinate I may have gone to the toilet. Those are things that a man does unconsciously and can not tell how many times nor when he does it (Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913, p. 186).

This astonishing admission was most significant, NOT only because the only set of bathrooms that existed on the second floor were located in the metal room (Defendant’s Exhibit 61, State’s Exhibit A), but also, because the bathroom area in the metal room was the place Jim Conley testified finding Mary Phagan dead, after Leo Frank privately confessed to having committed the violent assault, because Phagan refused to have sex with him.

The “death notes” have Mary Phagan going to “make water” in the only place possible she could have gone to the bathroom, namely the metal room bathroom on the second floor. There was no bathroom accessible on the first floor when the Clarke Woodenware company departed on January 17, 1913. The large office space on the first floor had been locked since January and Mary Phagan would likely not have gone all the way down into the dark gloomy basement and walked all the way to the rear in the pitch black darkness for the purpose of using the racially segregated “Negro toilet”.

Everything kept pointed to the the 2nd floor metal room, and Leo Frank would do more than just make his admission that his detractors believe amounted to a murder trial confession on August 18, 1913, Leo Frank would sustain this dumbfounding irony on March 9, 1914, in an authorized jailhouse interview published in the Atlanta Constitution.

Did Leo Frank confess the murder of Mary Phagan to his wife Lucille Selig as Alleged?

What Dinnerstein does not provide you with is the complete specifics of what the Selig cook Minola McKnight and her common law husband Albert revealed to the police on June 3, 1913, about the second murder confession of Leo Frank, one that occurred at the Selig residence on the evening of April 26, 1913. At 10:30 pm on Saturday, April 26, 1913, one drunk Leo Frank confessed to his wife Lucille S. Frank, what he had done at the factory that afternoon (see: Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, State’s Exhibit J, June 3, 1913). Leo Frank told his wife he didn’t know why he would murder and asked for his pistol to shoot himself. Leo also made Lucille sleep on the floor. It likely explains why Lucille did not visit Leo Frank in jail for 2 weeks after his arrest on Tuesday, April 29, 1913. It also explains why the grave site #1 reserved for Lucille S. Frank (Official Real Estate Location ID: 1-E-41-1035-01), located to the immediate left of Leo Frank’s grave at the Mount Carmel Cemetery, is still empty according to staff and their records at the front office there as of 2012.

When all was said and done, isn’t it odd the wife of Leo Frank who stood by her husband during his capital murder trial and appeals is not buried next to him? Isn’t it a trifle odd, that her cremated ashes were not dispersed near him at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, NYC?

State’s Exhibit J, would be sustained by Lucille Selig Frank, when she requested cremation in her magistrate notarized 1954 last will and testament (available at the government probate office, 2012). According to Lucille Selig’s grand nephew retired in St. Petersburg Florida, she requested to her family before passing away that the ashes be spread in an Atlanta park, but a local ordinance prevented it, so she was instead buried in an unmarked grave between the tombstones of her beloved parents in the Historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta (Oney, 2003, 2004).

Leonard Dinnerstein also perpetuates the Pierre van Paassen’s (1964) bitemark hoax. Excerpt that discusses the Leo Frank Case and Van Paassen’s discovery of photographic evidence in 1922, see pages 237 & 238:

The Jewish community of Atlanta at that time seemed to live under a cloud. Several years previously one of its members, Leo Frank, had been lynched as he was being transferred from the Fulton Tower Prison in Atlanta to Milledgeville for trial on a charge of having raped and murdered a little girl in his warehouse which stood right opposite the Constitution building. Many Jewish citizens who recalled the lynching were unanimous in assuring me that Frank was innocent of the crime.

I took to reading all the evidence pro and con in the record department at the courthouse. Before long I came upon an envelope containing a sheaf of papers and a number of X-ray photographs showing teeth indentures. The murdered girl had been bitten on the left shoulder and neck before being strangled. But the X-ray photos of the teeth marks on her body did not correspond with Leo Frank’s set of teeth of which several photos were included. If those photos had been published at the time of the murder, as they should have been, the lynching would probably not have taken place.

Though, as I said, the man died several years before, it was not too late, I thought, to rehabilitate his memory and perhaps restore the good name of his family. I showed Clark Howell the evidence establishing Frank’s innocence and asked permission to run a series of articles dealing with the case and especially with the evidence just uncovered. Mr. Howell immediately concurred, but the most prominent Jewish lawyer in the city, Mr. Harry Alexander, whom I consulted with a view to have him present the evidence to the grand jury, demurred. He said Frank had not even been tried. Hence no new trial could be requested. Moreover, the Jewish community in its entirety still felt nervous about the incident. If I wrote the articles old resentments might be stirred up and, who knows, some of the unknown lynchers might recognize themselves as participants in my description of the lynching. It was better, Mr. Alexander thought, to leave sleeping lions alone. Some local rabbis were drawn into the discussion and they actually pleaded with Clark Howell to stop me from reviving interest in the Frank case as this was bound to have evil repercussions on the Jewish community.

That someone had blabbed out of school became quite evident when I received a printed warning saying: “Lay off the Frank case if you want to keep healthy.” The unsigned warning was reinforced one night or, rather, early one morning when I was driving home. A large automobile drove up alongside of me and forced me into the track of a fast-moving streetcar coming from the opposite direction. My car was demolished, but I escaped without a scratch (Pierre van Paassen, To Number Our Days, 1964, p. 237-8).

Basic Fact Checking:

In reality X-ray technology was in its infancy in 1913, it was not possible to x-ray bitemarks on skin in 1913, or today. Vehicles had virtually no safety features to speak of in 1922, so the chances of someone walking away “without a scratch” from a two car head on collision is an incredulous bald faced lie. Was Leo Frank’s appeals attorney named “Harry Alexander” (false) or Henry Alexander (Correct)? Leo Frank was not lynched on his way to his murder trial in 1913, Leo Frank had his trial and he was sentenced to death by Judge Leonard Strickland Roan on August 26, 1913, he was hanged nearly two years later on August 17, 1915. Leo Frank went on trial in Atlanta, not 170 miles away in Milledgeville where the hoaxer suggests the trial was scheduled.

Leonard Dinnerstein’s hatecrime hoax:

Dinnerstein also perpetuates a judicial hatecrime hoax, that mobs of angry people were screaming racist anti-Semitic death threats at the jury through the courtroom windows. See: Leo Frank and the American Jewish Community for the American Jewish Archive Journal 1968 volume 20 number 2. None of Leo Frank’s voluminous appeals ever mention this incident, nor do any of the local Atlanta newspapers that had teams of reports inside the courtroom and outside the courtroom.

Leo Frank helped the police uncover Jim Conley wrote the murder notes?

Leonard Dinnerstein in the documentary, ‘People v. Leo Frank’ (2009), made another bald faced lie that Leo Frank helped the police uncover the fact Jim Conley could write concerning the “murder notes” found next to Mary Phagan. Read my Amazon-dot-com review of the documentary People v. Leo Frank (2009) concerning Dinnerstein’s interview where he publicly falsifies the legal records of the case. The trial transcript reveals Leo Frank never helped the police uncover the fact Jim Conley could write and wrote the “murder notes” framing Newt Lee. See the Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (1913) for the definitive proof.

This book does not stand up to even the most basic fact checking:

Despite the fact this book is filled from beginning to end with easily disproven falsehoods and obfuscations, I must admit the gold leaf sprayed on the page-edges is rather nice. I encourage everyone to buy a copy of this book and compare it with the official legal files, records and documents of the Leo Frank case in the Georgia Supreme Court Archives, to learn why this book is nothing more than an anti-Gentile racist morality tale sham that makes a baseless mockery of U.S. legal history.

REVIEW NUMBER TWO for a different edition of Leonard Dinnerstein’s book, ‘The Leo Frank Case’ and part of my criticism for the docudrama, ‘The People v. Leo Frank’ (2009).

Review of ‘The Leo Frank Case’ by Dr. Leonard Dinnerstein, PhD:

In 1963, nearly 50 years after the most sensational criminal case in the annals of Southern jurisprudence, initially became a national cause celebre for American Jewry – causing division amongst the citizenry of the United States along sectarian lines – an Ivy League graduate student named Leonard Dinnerstein (born May 5, 1934), became engaged in conducting academic thesis research about this celebrated legal affair. Three years later in 1966, Dinnerstein completed his PhD dissertation on the Leo Frank Case for political science department of Columbia University, & his thesis became the impetus of his book, ‘the Leo Frank Case’ (first edition, 1968).

Since the late 1960’s, Dinnerstein’s “The Leo Frank Case”, has undergone numerous tweaks, additions, & revisions, as he’s republished numerous editions over the years & decades that ensued. Forty years later, his latest edition (as of this review posting), retelling this case that refuses to gather dust, published almost a century after the trial, is the culmination of nearly 50 years of research into the Leo Frank epic saga.

Readability of the book: one or two stars out of five stars.

Dinnerstein lacks the eloquence of a wordsmith, producing flat cardboard colored social history. Dinnerstein’s prose are mostly formulated in stale & dated writing styles. Moreover, if it weren’t for the fascinating subject, this book would probably be boring to read, given Dinnerstein’s overwhelmingly bland syntax.

Historical Honesty, Integrity & Reliability of the Facts: one star out of five stars.

Given how many decades Dinnerstein spent studying this case (nearly half a century), it seems almost incomprehensible the sheer number of conspicuous errors, misquotes, mistakes, fabrications, misrepresentations, frauds, deception, falsifications & shameless omissions made in every edition of his book on the Leo Frank Case from 1968 all the way through to 2008. Going even further back, & closely examining Dinnerstein’s 1966 PhD dissertation, reveals early-on his central thesis is based upon paranoid pathological obsessions with accusing *non-existent* widespread anti-Semitism, as the primary reason Leo Frank was indicted & convicted. Dinnerstein believes the Leo Frank conviction was an anti-Semitic outburst & episode, that erupted from “anti-Semitic Southern culture”, despite the consensus among Jewish & Gentile historians that anti-Semitism was virtually non-existent in the South. Moreover, given the fact Jews were considered an integral part of European-American culture in the South, meant that Leo Frank being a German-Jew more likely helped him than hurt him (see: The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs 1894-1915, Lindemann, 1992).

Dinnerstein goes to unbelievable lengths in his book to obfuscate the 1,800 pages of legal files that survived into the 21st century from the Georgia Supreme Court, records that showed to what criminal extent Leo Frank’s friends & legal defense team (including Governor John Slaton) were willing to go, tricking witnesses into: perjuring themselves, signing false affidavits, & retracting their trial testimony. After omitting all the incriminating evidence against Leo Frank from his monograph, Dinnerstein then claims Leo Frank was innocent, despite the fact every level of the United States legal system from 1913 to 1986, did not disturb the guilty verdict of the trial jury. Moreover, if the presiding judge Leonard Strickland Roan had any real doubts about Leo Frank’s guilt, he could have given him a new trial when the defense petitioned him after August 26, 1913 on 107 grounds.

Anti-Semitism?

The question that arises concerning the May 24, 1913 indictment rendered against Leo Frank: What compelled 21 grand jurors (with several Jewish members amongst them) to vote unanimously against Leo Frank (when only 12 out of 21 votes were needed to indict), was it the compelling facts, testimony & evidence presented to them, or some kind of anti-Semitic blood-libel conspiracies?

We can’t answer this question from Dinnerstein’s overly simplistic book, because he intentionally obfuscates & omits nearly the entire Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (1913) & Coroner’s Inquest Testimony. Dinnerstein also doesn’t tell his readers who testified during the Grand Jury tribunal, so people have no choice but to do their own research, to find out for themselves & then look back in the records, to see what these particular witnesses testified about at the Coroner’s Inquest before the Grand Jury hearings & then later after the Grand Jury concluded with an indictment, what these same witnesses testified to during the Leo Frank Trial.

Let me explain in detail why Leonard Dinnerstein’s book is quackery at its finest:

Dinnerstein uses his agitprop hate-propaganda book to invoke the age-old racist blood-libel canards against Whites, but this time against European-American Southerners, indicting them all as part of a vast anti-Semitic UFO conspiracy theory, to indict & convict Leo Frank “without evidence”, but with rumors & hearsay. Moreover, Dinnerstein accuses the “unscrupulous” & “ambitious” prosecutor, the solicitor general Hugh Dorsey (1871 – 1948), of knowingly playing along with the public in clamoring to “frame” & thus ostensibly committing anti-Semitic murder of an “innocent” Jew, for the long term purpose of advancing his own political career in Atlanta. Dinnerstein is suggesting that one of Georgia’s most progressive Statesmen, a man who openly advocated against vigilante lynching (when it was dangerous & politically unpopular to do so), knowingly murdered an innocent Jew, as a stepping stone to become Governor.

What Dinnerstein failed to elaborate fully is Hugh Dorsey became close friends & roommates with the famous Jewish-American lawyer Henry Alexander during law school while they were students, & that after graduation Dorsey had numerous Jewish law partners & associates he worked with throughout the course of his life. The charge of anti-Semitism & anti-Semite has become the racial epithet of spineless cowards, who use it as a smear to stifle open discuss about political, legal, or social issues concerning Jews.

Dinnerstein has spent his entire academic career writing about the evils of anti-Jewish bigotry, but has spewed his own disgusting blood-libel racism against European-Americans for over 40 years in edition after edition of his ‘the Leo Frank Case’ (1968 to 2008). Indeed, there seems to an infinite supply of tribal activists who make it a career to denounce anti-Jewish racism, but usually when you scratch the surface of these people, underneath you find out that deep down, these same denouncers are prejudiced, racist & bigoted against others. Dinnerstein is no exception & hides his own anti-Gentile racism behind the tribal obsession of blame and shame. Yet, ignorance, racism & prejudice are wrong no matter who the perpetrator or victim.

Was the Georgia Supreme Court & United States Supreme Court anti-Semitic when their majority decisions where against Leo Frank? Was the Georgia Supreme Court Anti-Semitic when they stated affirmatively the evidence presented at the Leo Frank trial sustained his conviction?

This is what makes every version of the book, ‘The Leo Frank Case’ written by Dinnerstein so disappointing: In order to maintain his position of politically correct racism directed against White & Black Southerners, it necessitated the most relevant facts, evidence & testimony of the Frank trial being surreptitiously expunged or distorted into racist incidents. Do we really want racist anti-Gentile activist professors, who will go to the most extreme lengths to deceive people, being allowed to teach college students?

Dinnerstein’s myopic weltanschauung about Jewish-Gentile relations first revealed itself in his 1966 PhD thesis, indicating that he lacks the neutrality & intellect of a dispassionate researcher, one who can look back on history with new, penetrating & lucid eyes, to unlock its sociological & historical mysteries. However these mental shortcomings of Dinnerstein, guaranteed he would have a bright future in the politically charged world of ivory tower academia. Indeed, some forty years later, the 2008 edition of the Leo Frank Case, confirms Dinnerstein lived up to every measure of his potential as an academic pseudo-historian amongst America’s politically correct intelligentsia. Here’s why: Dinnerstein’s book was central in shaping the popular culture myths surrounding the Frank-Phagan case over the last half a century. By first transforming the well documented truecrime legal case about a sadistic child molester, into a semi-fictionalized social-history morality tale about Gentile anti-Semitism & wrongful conviction, it then became another cultural weapon in the un-American arsenal to agitate against & demoralize Black & White Americans for their role in putting away a Jewish serial pedophile, rapist & child killer.

Leonard Dinnerstein vs. Every Level of the United States System of Justice:

Dinnerstein (February 23, 2008, Tucson, Arizona), concluding in the final words of his introductory ‘Preface to Revised Edition’ states, “I have no doubts: [Leo] Frank was innocent.”, this statement sets the underlying tone of his book, that goes against the majority decisions of every level within the United States legal system, where more than a dozen experienced judges – infinitely more qualified than Dinnerstein to sift the evidence – reviewed the Frank trial testimony, affidavits, facts & weighing them all in-context, came to the correct conclusion, sustaining the fairness of the trial & leaving verdict undisturbed.

If an academic professor was subpoenaed to testify at a criminal trial involving a 29-year old man accused of bludgeoning, raping & strangling a 13-year old girl, & this academic professor witness, knowingly falsified & withheld evidence about the defendant, that’s called perjury. If the witness provided perjured testimony & it was later proven so beyond a reasonable doubt, that witness-perjurer would likely find themselves incarcerated in prison for a number of years, but when an academic pseudo-scholar spends 40 years of his life muddling facts, withholding evidence, fraudulently manipulating official legal records & falsifying testimony of a real criminal case, he is called: “historian”, by academia & popular culture!

I have read nearly everything ever written by Leonard Dinnerstein, not just his blandly written books, but his numerous magazine, journal & news articles. When I purchased every edition of Leonard Dinnerstein’s books, I took the time to read, cross reference & compare his works against the sources he cites in his bibliographies. The only conclusion I am able to come to, is Leonard Dinnerstein shows an unrelenting pattern of inventing facts, misquoting, lying, aggrandizing, befogging, embellishing, over stating & over simplifying incidents in all his books. Dinnerstein’s books that are supposedly meant to be non-fiction & wrongly labeled as such, are filled with sometimes falsely convincing pseudo-pedantic analysis & research.

Dinnerstein shows us a perfect example of how to artificially create popular-culture social history, by writing with a deceptive tone of authority, but only when checked against primary sources do we realize his relentless historical inaccuracies. You would think someone who spent nearly a lifetime studying the case, & putting out numerous editions of his book, would at least try to give you some kind of basically honest & accurate portrayal of this pivotal era from the annals of US history. What we got instead is the neurotically lachrymose rendition of history, by a long-time tribally quixotic professor, one who made his career working within the cognitive & intellectual confines of the anti-Semitism lobby. I find it truly astonishing the number of tenured college professors (Dinnerstein is now retired) who write with an air of authority, but knowingly make up stuff out of thin air, & use flawed research, most of which does not measure up to even minimum academic standards of what constitutes reliable sources.

For people who have carefully studied the three major Atlanta newspapers (Georgian, Constitution & Journal) through the years 1913 to 1915, covering the Leo Frank case in detailed accounts, & then cross referencing them with official legal records of the Leo Frank trial & appeals, Leonard Dinnerstein’s book is a colossal let down, failure & disgrace to 20th & 21st century historiography. Dinnerstein’s poorly researched books belong in the ashbin of history.

Evidence of Academic Dishonesty:

For example, from the prestigious American Jewish Archive Journal (1968) Volume 20, Number 2, Dinnerstein wrote & published an article about the Leo Frank case, claiming mobs of revelers outside the court room were shouting into the open windows during the Leo Frank trial, “Crack the Jews Neck!” and “Lynch Him!”, & that people were making open death threats against the trial jury, that they would be individually or collectively lynched if they didn’t lynch the “damn sheeny”, but none of the three major Atlanta newspapers (Constitution, Journal & Georgian), who had teams of journalists documenting feint-by-feint the events in the courtroom, while other journalists teams of the same newspapers, were milling around outside the Fulton County Superior Courthouse, ever reported these incidents. Are we to believe that newspapers & reporters, intensely competing against each other & looking to advance their careers & readership, wouldn’t mention such incidents? Never were these alleged vociferous death threats ever reported by anyone, including the judge, jury, spectators, media, police, prosecution or defense. During the two years of Leo Frank’s appeals, none of these alleged anti-Semitic death threats were ever reported by the defense in the unabridged 3,000 pages of official Leo Frank legal records, that fortunately survived into the 21st century – this despite the fact Reuben Arnold played the race card, claiming during his closing arguments that Leo Frank was tried only because he was a Jew. The patently false accusations that European-American Southerners, on more than one occasion, openly terrorized the jury during the Leo Frank trial in full public view, forcing them with unequivocal death threats, into convicting Leo Frank, is an unforgivable racist blood libel & hate crime hoax created by Dinnerstein. If these things had actually happened in reality, the national media would have gone into foaming at the mouth rabid frenzies, & we would have never heard the end of it, even today. Dinnerstein’s lachrymose fabrication of anti-Semitic incidents that never happened are nothing more than maudlin & tawdry hatecrime hoaxes.

Another Leonard Dinnerstein Fraud & Hoax:

Dinnerstein in a video interview segment, during the Leo Frank documentary ‘The People vs. Leo Frank’ (2009), makes authoritative comments on the interrogation of Jim Conley by the Atlanta Police (May, 1913) as they break him down in one of the docudrama scenes.

Dinnerstein, States to Director Ben Loeterman:

They [The Atlanta Police] asked him [Jim Conley] about the [Mary Phagan death] notes, he [Jim Conley] said, “i cant read and write”, that happened to come up in a conversation, between the [Atlanta] police and [Leo] Frank, and [Leo] Frank said, “of course he [Jim Conley] can write, I know he [Jim Conley] can write, he [Jim Conley] used to borrow money from me [(Leo Frank)], and sign promissory notes”, so [Jim] Conley had not been completely honest with the police (People v. Leo Frank, 2009).

This Dinnerstein segment is available on either YouTube or one can review it on the docudrama ‘People v. Leo Frank’ by Jewish-American director Ben Loeterman with Steve Oney as chief consultant (available on Amazon.com).

Dinnerstein made a bald faced lie, during this interview, a lie that is easily verified by the Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, & Leo Frank Georgia Supreme Court records, 1913 & 1914.

Leo Frank was arrested by Atlanta Police on Tuesday, April 29, 1913, at 11:35 am. Jim Conley was arrested on Thursday, May 1, 1913. Leo Frank never informed the police, he knew Jim Conley could read & write on a semi-literate level, until it was weeks too late. It was Harry Scott who got the tip Jim Conley could read & write from a detective who spoke to Herbert Schiff and a pawn broker, NOT Leo Frank who concealed the fact he managed Jim Conley’s hand written pawnshop contracts.

On May 18, 1913, after 2.5 weeks of interrogating Jim Conley — using the third degree method (good cop vs bad cop) — Atlanta police finally began to break Jim Conley down, & got him to admit he wrote the Mary Phagan “Death Notes”, but Conley revealed it was at the behest of Leo Frank, who was trying to frame his Negro nightwatchman Newt Lee. With each successive interrogation after that, Atlanta police finally got approximately what chain of events that likely had occurred in the shuttered National Pencil Company on Saturday, April 26, 1913. Leo Frank was given on several occasions, the opportunity to confront Jim Conley face-to-face, but Leo Frank refused, even with his high powered lawyers present.

In over a million Police interrogations conducted across the United States over the last 100 years, criminally involved people are typically not always forthcoming, & often lie or hide facts initially. It sometimes takes long grueling interrogation sessions & pointing out inconsistencies (holes in peoples stories) to get people to finally let go, telling what really happened or as close to the truth as possible within probable reason. It’s generally known throughout police history to be common for suspects, witnesses & criminals who participated in crimes, to conceal or obfuscate evidence, facts & information. This is why generally speaking, interrogation is usually a process of time, & doesn’t always reap significant results in the beginning stages. Though there are many instances where people spill the beans on the first shot. Jim Conley was a tough cookie who held out for nearly 3 weeks. Leo Frank promised Jim Conley $200 if he kept his mouth shut (roughly six months salary for Jim Conley), but weeks of intense interrogation eventually trumped it.

There were 170 employees who worked under Leo Frank at the National Pencil Company in 1913, & eight of the employees were African-Americans, but Leo Frank kept completely quiet about the fact that Jim Conley could read & write for more than 2 weeks, even though Jim Conley – working as a roustabout at the factory – had done written inventory stock work for Leo Frank.

Why did Leo withhold this evidence that Jim could read & write?

After Leo Frank was arrested, he never said a word to the Atlanta police that Jim Conley could write, despite the fact Leo Frank would take out small payments from Conley’s weekly wages & pay down the pawnshop owner’s contracts. Leo Frank allowed Jim Conley to run a shady side business out of the National Pencil Company, wheeling & dealing pocket-watches under questionable circumstances. Jim Conley even ripped off fellow co-worker, Mr. Arthur Pride, who testified about it at the Leo Frank Trial, but you would never know that reading Dinnerstein’s books or magazine articles on the Frank Case.

For nearly 50 years Dinnerstein perpetuates one of the biggest known frauds in Leo Frank case history since 1964:

Dinnerstein knowingly references claims that do not stand up to even minimal scrutiny & he openly supports the 1964 Pierre van Paassen’s Leo Frank hoax, that there were in existence in 1922, photographic x-rays at the courthouse archived from 1913, showing Leo Frank’s teeth indentures & x-ray photographs of bitemarks on Mary Phagan’s neck & shoulder, that did not correspondingly match Leo Frank’s dental fingerprint.

The 1964 excerpt from ‘To Number Our Days’ (available on Amazon.com), that discusses the case of Leo Frank, & Pierre van Paassen’s alleged 1922 discovery of photographic X-ray evidence, are on pages 237, 238:

The Jewish community of Atlanta at that time seemed to live under a cloud. Several years previously one of its members, Leo Frank, had been lynched as he was being transferred from the Fulton Tower Prison in Atlanta to Milledgeville for trial on a charge of having raped and murdered a little girl in his warehouse which stood right opposite the Constitution building. Many Jewish citizens who recalled the lynching were unanimous in assuring me that Frank was innocent of the crime.

I took to reading all the evidence pro and con in the record department at the courthouse. Before long I came upon an envelope containing a sheaf of papers and a number of X-ray photographs showing teeth indentures. The murdered girl had been bitten on the left shoulder and neck before being strangled. But the X-ray photos of the teeth marks on her body did not correspond with Leo Frank’s set of teeth of which several photos were included. If those photos had been published at the time of the murder, as they should have been, the lynching would probably not have taken place.

Though, as I said, the man died several years before, it was not too late, I thought, to rehabilitate his memory and perhaps restore the good name of his family. I showed Clark Howell the evidence establishing Frank’s innocence and asked permission to run a series of articles dealing with the case and especially with the evidence just uncovered. Mr. Howell immediately concurred, but the most prominent Jewish lawyer in the city, Mr. Harry Alexander, whom I consulted with a view to have him present the evidence to the grand jury, demurred. He said Frank had not even been tried. Hence no new trial could be requested. Moreover, the Jewish community in its entirety still felt nervous about the incident. If I wrote the articles old resentments might be stirred up and, who knows, some of the unknown lynchers might recognize themselves as participants in my description of the lynching. It was better, Mr. Alexander thought, to leave sleeping lions alone. Some local rabbis were drawn into the discussion and they actually pleaded with Clark Howell to stop me from reviving interest in the Frank case as this was bound to have evil repercussions on the Jewish community.

That someone had blabbed out of school became quite evident when I received a printed warning saying: “Lay off the Frank case if you want to keep healthy.” The unsigned warning was reinforced one night or, rather, early one morning when I was driving home. A large automobile drove up alongside of me and forced me into the track of a fast-moving streetcar coming from the opposite direction. My car was demolished, but I escaped without a scratch….

Since Dinnerstein was an academic professor, perhaps he should ask current freshman students majoring in medicine if it was even possible to x-ray bitemarks on skin in 1913 or 2012, because it’s not. Not only that, but in 1913, X-ray technology was in its infancy & never used in any criminal case until many years after Leo Frank was hanged. Was Leo Frank’s lawyer named “Harry Alexander” or Henry Alexander? Why would the famous attorney who represented Leo Frank during his most high profile appeals say he didn’t have his murder trial yet & want to submit evidence to a Grand Jury?! Leo Frank was not lynched on his way to trial in Milledgeville in late June of 1915, Frank was convicted at his trial in August of 1913, & was hanged in Marietta on August 17, 1915 (not Milledgeville, but 170 miles away). It defies high school level physics, logic & reason, that any person driving a motor vehicle in 1922 – when there were virtually no safety features in autos — slamming into a head on collision with another car, would survive without a scratch.

I can not fathom why a former career university professor emeritus of Judaic studies would surreptitiously re-write history, when one can now easily check all the sources, facts, evidence & testimony of the Leo Frank case, by accessing the primary sources & official legal documents online at the official State of Georgia’s Archive know as ‘Virtual Vault’. Did Dinnerstein think these official legal records buried in dusty Government vaults, would never make their way online? Did Dinnerstein think Georgia’s three major newspapers (1913 to 1915): Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Journal & Atlanta Georgian, from April of 1913 to August of 1915, would never make their way online?

Dinnerstein’s Shameless Coverup of a Racist Plot Against Two African-Americans:

What Dinnerstein shamelessly left out of his books are the juicy details of how Leo Frank botched a racist plot to frame the murder of Mary Phagan on his nightwatchman, Newt Lee, a bald, married, old, tall, slim & dark complected Negro. Leo Frank told the police on Sunday, April 27, 1913, Newt Lee’s time card indicated he had punched it perfectly during his shift, once every half hour, on the evening of the day the Phagan murder occurred, but the next day, Leo Frank showed Atlanta Police the same time card, but altered, with 4 hours of unaccounted for time (busted!). Leo Frank had a bloody shirt planted at Newt Lee’s shack as the Coup de grace, but he made a huge mistake & used a clean shirt smeared with blood. After that intrigue failed, Leo Frank changed course & tried to frame his accomplice-after-the-fact, James “Jim” Conley, but that also failed. Leo Frank’s legal defense team, played every White racist card they could muster against Conley at the trial, thinking Southerners were too stupid to see right through the ignorant White against Black racism.

Jewish Racism Against African-Americans:

Since the end of the Frank trial, the anti-Gentile blood libel smears & false accusations of anti-Semitism conspiracies against European-American & African-American Southerners have never ceased by charlatans who refuse to tell their readers what really happened at the Leo Frank Trial. With that, Dinnerstein perpetuates the racist lie that a bumbling semi-literate Negro janitor, James “Jim” Conley committed the murder alone, & then framed his well educated White boss.

Mockery of Jurisprudence:

The ‘Leo Frank Case’ by Dinnerstein is a mockery of legal history, because he intentionally left out volumes of the damaging incidents about Frank documented in the GA Supreme Court Case File, thus misleading the reader, & retelling the case with nonsensical half-truths that would never stand up to even the least academic inquiry. The bottom line is Dinnerstein created a book that will be remembered by history as another shameless attempt to use every kind of fraud & deceptive tactic for rehabilitating the image of a sex killer.

I have studied the several thousand pages of Leo Frank trial & appeals records (1913 – 1915), read every book (1913 – 2010) on the subject & reviewed more than once, the three local primary Atlanta newspapers, the Journal, Constitution, & Georgian (1913 – 1915), concerning their coverage of the Leo Frank case, so I feel compelled to state affirmatively, the jury made the correct decision in the summer of 1913, & so did the State & Federal appeals courts in their majority decisions, essentially sustaining the verdict & fairness of the Leo Frank trial.

Governor John Slaton on June 21, 1915, sustained the trial jury & appeals courts on the last page of his commutation order too. Finally, March 11, 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons & Paroles sustained the verdict of the Jury, by NOT EXONERATING Leo Frank of the murder, even though they gave him a highly political posthumous pardon as an appeasement to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith & other Jewish pressure groups & individuals involved in the petition.

The Crowning Achievement of Intellectual Cowardice by Leonard Dinnerstein, PhD:

Frank told Atlanta Police officer John Black & Pinkerton Detective Harry Scott on Sunday, May 4, 1913, that he had never left his office from *noon to 12:45 pm on April 26, 1913*. Leo Frank was sworn under oath (May 5 & 8, 1913) during the Coroner’s Inquest (April 30, 1913 to May, 8, 1913) testifying he had never left his office between noon & 12:20 pm on Saturday, April 26, 1913, when Mary Phagan came into his office. Frank maintained this alibi until his trial, when he made a newfangled admission that amounted to a murder confession!

In sifting Frank’s trial brief of evidence (1913), on August 18, 1913, at 2:15 pm, Leo mounted the witness stand, changed his 4-month long maintained murder alibi & admitted to the jury he might have “unconsciously” been in the metal room (at the real scene of the crime) using the toilet, to explain why his office was empty between 12:05pm & 12:10 pm on April 26, 1913, which was at the exact same time he formerly gave the murder alibi to the Atlanta Police, that Mary was with him inside his office between 12:05pm & 12:10pm on April 26, 1913, & that he never left his office until 12:45pm.

Leo Frank changed his murder alibi about being alone with Mary Phagan between 12:05pm & 12:10pm & said (direct quote on witness stand):

Now, gentlemen [of the jury], to the best of my recollection from the time the whistle blew for twelve o’clock [noon on Saturday April 26, 1913] until after a quarter to one [12:45 p.m.] when I went up stairs and spoke to Arthur White and Harry Denham [on the fourth floor], to the best of my recollection, I did not stir out of my office [located at the front of the second floor]; but it is possible that in order to answer a call of nature or to urinate I may have gone to the toilet [in the metal room located at the back of the 2nd floor]. Those are things that a man does unconsciously and can not tell how many times nor when he does it (Leo Frank Trial Statement, August 18, Brief of Evidence, 1913, p. 186).

Frank went on to say in that same vein, his 4 foot safe door was open and suggested that might have blocked her from seeing him and blocked him from seeing her.

I would highly suggest anyone who is interested in learning about the Leo Frank trial, to read: State’s Exhibit B (Leo Frank’s deposition to Atlanta Police where he states Mary Phagan had arrived at his office “between 12:05pm & 12:10pm, maybe 12:07pm on April 26, 1913”); Monteen Stover’s testimony about going to Leo Frank’s office & it being empty between 12:05pm & 12:10pm on April 26, 1913; & Leo Frank’s response to Stover’s testimony – reversing himself – with an “unconscious” bathroom visit to the metal room between 12:05pm & 12:10pm on April 26, 1913.

Be sure to also read Albert McKnight’s Affidavit and State’s Exhibit J (Who was Leo Frank saving his kisses for? Why did Leo so thoughtfully buy his wife a one or two pound box of chocolates from Jacobs pharmacy on the evening of the murder?), and study the National Pencil Company floor plan diagrams (Defendant’s Exhibit 61, & State’s Exhibit A) to see the only toilets on the second floor were located in the metal room. Finally, read the testimony of Jim Conley, where he describes finding Mary Phagan dead in the bathroom area of the metal room, after Leo Frank confessed to him privately about assaulting her there. This evidence ties it all together when you consider Mary Phagan’s bloodied hair was found on Monday morning, April 28, 1913, tangled around the solid iron handle of Robert Barret’s lathe, paces away from a 5 inch wide blood stain found diagonally in front of the metal room’s bathroom door. Both Mary Phagan’s blood & hair were found in the metal room.

Dinnerstein simply does not have the academic honesty or intellectual bravura, to look back on the case 100 years later with the fearless eyes of a truly dispassionate historian. In fact, I find his book to be one of the most cunning, cowardly & underhanded renditions of the Frank affair, in the same league as books written about the Frank case by authors like Harry Golden, Robert Seitz Frey and Elaine Marie Alphin (available on Amazon.com).

The real life Frank-Phagan Case is filled with Leo’s failed racist plots, followed by his gutter mouth legal defense team leader, Luther Ziegler Rosser, spewing every sort of vile racial epithets & stereotypes against African-Americans (Leo Frank Trial Closing Arguments, American State Trials, Volume 10, 1918 by John D. Lawson, LLD).

Even though the vast majority of people are not trained in properly analyzing or evaluating legal documents, most sensible people who carefully study the Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence (1913), agree with the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision, that the testimony & exhibits were sufficient enough to convict Leo Frank beyond a reasonable doubt.

Final Conclusion: Even emeritus professors sometimes falsify legal history.