The Truth about Leo Frank
Leo Frank was a criminal who murdered a 13-year-old girl named Mary Phagan in 1913. Because he was the Atlanta chapter head of B'nai B'rith (essentially, Brotherhood of the Chosen), many Jews from across the US worked in a concerted movement to free him for the crime, with one Jewish donor alone donating $100,000 towards Frank's defense (equivalent to over $2 million today).
Many Jews argued that racist Gentiles in the deep South were simply persecuting Frank because he was Jewish, and wanted to let the real criminal, a Black man, go free - because everyone knows how much Whites in the deep South prefer Black rapist child-murderers to White Jews (written with obvious sarcasm) - or so some Jews with their deficient arguments claimed.
While unsuccessful in their attempts to secure a new trial, with appeals up to the Supreme Court being denied based on the evidence, B'nai B'rith was successful with getting the governor (who had been a law partner with Frank's defense team) to change the murderer Frank's sentence from death to life imprisonment. During all the defense's arguments, there were even allegations of bribery.
The public was outraged because of the child-murderer Frank having his sentence commuted. Frank had reportedly raped Mary Phagan, according to some accounts. However, it may not have simply been a sex-crime. Indeed, it may have been a much more depraved act than has been admitted, as noted in the Brief of Evidence (part 1 - linked - see p. 11). Read Newt Lee’s testimony at the Frank trial, describing Mary Phagan's body when initially found :
“Her face was punctured, full of holes and was swollen and black. She had a cut on the left-side of her head, as if she had been struck, and there was a little blood there. The cord was around her neck, sunk into her flesh.”
Punctured? Full of holes? She had been tied with cords? Other testimony, however, while showing that she was indeed strangled to death, suggests that the head wounds may have been caused by a blunt instrument. Whatever the case may have been, it was a hideous crime nevertheless--one for which Frank undoubtedly deserved the death sentence.
Governor John Slaton was not re-elected because of his decision to commute Frank's sentence. The prosecuting attorney in the Frank case, Hugh Dorsey, ended up being elected to governor for his ethical and civil behavior in getting Frank his just death sentence. Thomas Watson, who undauntedly informed the public about the true nature of the Frank case, was elected to the Senate. And, some Southerners who were concerned about justice being lost decided to give Frank the death sentence he rightly deserved--to hang Frank themselves.
Later, in 1986, after years of trying to get the sentence changed, due to the efforts of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (with the ADL having been formed due to the Frank case, as many aristocratic Jews sought to help Frank due to him being the Atlanta chapter head of B'nai B'rith), Frank was pardoned by the prison parole board. The parole board pardoned him not because he was innocent but because that the board felt that citizens, working as vigilantes to ensure justice was met, somehow deprived Frank of his rights.
