Posted By admin on April 7, 2023
Prelude to Leo Franks August 18, 1913, Trial Testimony
A large body of peer-reviewed research published by modern psychologists, behavioral scientists, and police interrogators suggests macro and micro body language, demeanor, eye contact, speech patterns, and numerous other outward physical manifestations, known in slang as tells, can reveal much about a suspect beneath their surface.
Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
During the normal course of procedural questioning and interrogation, which involves thorough examination of every detail and sometimes incorporating third-degree interrogation methods (good cop versus bad cop technique), the sub-factors that are evaluated about a suspects speech patterns, include the tone, timber, cadence, tempo, syntax, word count, and choice. The goal is to gather and document with a stenographer as much information as possible from suspects and associates for later analysis.
Rule of thumb for guilty criminals: Say as little as possible or nothing at all.
Conversations are carefully evaluated in the manner they were delivered, not just the words, but the subtext and things that dont pass the common sense test. All of the outward auditory and physical expressions of a person are subset variables of an even larger equation, and combined as a unified whole, they reveal a picture. All the manifestations of inward and outward expression come together, often playing a significant role in how we consciously and unconsciously interpret the interactive, circumstantial, external behavior and communication from others. Thats a brief synopsis of how police and detectives did their work back in 1913. It was more intuitive than scientific. In 2015, the analysis of information collected from suspects is now equally intuitive and scientific. In the last one hundred years, forensic science has improved exponentially, but the one thing that has never changed in the history of police detective work is the central reliance on intuition for solving crimes above all, and fine tuning this intuition takes years and decades.
The path of the interrogator is intense scrutiny and persistence.
Body language from suspects often reveals insightful nuances of information to interrogation professionals, individuals with years of training in the art and science of reading people. With experience, professionals can intuitively surmise with minute levels of clarity what might hide beneath the outer veneer of appearances, and when something just isnt right, defies common sense, doesnt corroborate, or just seems plain suspicious, further scrutiny is the normal path of the investigator, and persistence usually wins the day in discovering what is likely truth and falsehood. But this kind of work is tedious, and there are many disappointing dead ends before the solution is found. And looking back with hindsight, the solution is not always, but usually is, the path of least difficulty.
The Average Juror
Unlike the typical police officer, seasoned detective, or investigator, trained in behavioral sciences, the average person can usually only rely on his or her own common sense sense. Whether one is trained to read body language or not, the conscious and unconscious interpretations of it play a role in our perceptions and judgments of others. During trials, judgments are being made not only about what people testify about, but by the their body language and appearance when jurors make decisions about statements, whether truth or embellishment, fact or fiction. In 1913, the term demeanor was often used to describe not just the physical cues, but also verbal information and quantifying it all as a whole.
The Body Language and Demeanor of Leo M. Frank during the Mary Phagan Murder Investigation and His Trial
The body language exhibited by Leo Frank, during the early days of the Mary Phagan murder investigation (April 27, 28, and 29, 1913), was dramatically different from his behavior at his capital murder trial (July 28 to August 21, 1913) and during closing arguments (August 21 to 25, 1913). Leo Frank was frenetically nervous during the first day of the investigation, but he was calm, cool, and collected during his entire murder trial. This seemed to be a major point of contention about him, because many of Leo Franks friends would describe him as a generally nervous man, but at the trial for his life, he was a monument of unwavering stone cold emotion.
The First Forty-Eight Hours Are the Most Important in an Investigation
In the first forty-eight hours of the Mary Phagan murder investigation, Leo Frank set off a number of suspicious red flags in the minds of those crime investigators responsible for evaluating suspects, gathering evidence and testimony, and following lead permutations. Their purpose was unraveling the Mary Phagan murder mystery, not framing Jews as many Jewish historians and authors of the Leo Frank case have suggested.
Sometimes it all comes together during a trial.
Its an unfortunate reality that people of all walks of life sometimes judge people by their outward appearance. The way Leo Frank behaved and acted during his trial might have been misinterpreted to his detriment, or these same judgmental observations may have revealed a lot more than meets the eye about him. As time went on during the trial, most people could probably not help but zoom in on all of his perceived physical defects. Many people who sized up Leo Frank, in a moments notice, thought he seemed rather odd, and some described him as looking like a pervert.
On July 28,1913, Mary Phagans mother, Mrs. Frances Coleman (formerly Frances Phagan), mounted the stand as the first witness at the trial and spoke under examination by Hugh Dorsey and Luther Rosser. While she spoke, journalists seated behind and to the left side of the jury box observed that Leo Frank immediately looked down and away, refusing to make eye contact with Mrs. Phagan during the entire duration of her examination. While this was not necessarily an indication of his guilt, it certainly raised eyebrows and inspired questions.
Why was Leo M. Frank the only person at the trial unwilling to look at this bereaving mother during her examination by defense and prosecution lawyers?
This refusal to make eye contact with a witness was not noted at any other time during the trial after the behavior was published in the newspapers the following morning, leaving one to wonder if it caused Leo Frank to be a bit more cautious in self-monitoring and adapt. After taking a bath each morning, Leo Frank and his legal defense dream team followed the newspaper reports closely every morning.
Given the circumstances and nature of the trial, it was likely the jury may have unconsciously interpreted Leo Franks averted eyes during Mrs. Colemans examination as indicating that perhaps he was experiencing a moment of shame and regret, thus unable to face the mother of the victim while she spoke about her daughter. However, it is equally possible Leo Franks inability to make eye contact with Mrs. Coleman may simply have been a normal act of an innocent man, unable to bear the thoughts conjured up of the heinous crime, especially when the battered and torn clothes of Mary Phagan were so prominently displayed before the court like dirty rags.
Other Indications of the Abnormal: Leo Frank Was an Unmovable Statue
At the trial, there were other physical and behavioral variables to consider about Leo M. Frank, some that also seemed quite peculiar, aside from his clearly defensive poses. Leo Frank gave off a most obtuse ambiance, because of the way he sat unmoving during the duration of the trial. News reports on the trial indicate Leo Frank rarely shifted or stirred in his seat. It could have easily been interpreted as rather unnatural. Whereas some people fidget too much, Leo Frank was the extreme opposite. He sat immovable during the long, grueling days in his odd configurations and postures.
In one permutation of thought, the general body language of Leo Frank could perhaps have been the appearance of someone falsely accused, but for the jury, taking all these variables together the eye contact and body language of Leo Frank they could have easily interpreted some of these variables as rather unusual and others as subtle indications of deception hiding beneath the surface.
Unlike modern trials today, where the accused often sits obscured behind a large wooden table, opposite and diagonal from the jury box, Leo Frank was completely unobscured by any table and in full direct frontal view of the jury, no more than ten to fifteen feet way, with nothing blocking his entire body.
The Countenance of Leo Max Frank Sitting Directly in Front of the Jury
The Legs of Leo M. Frank throughout His Entire Trial
Starting from the floor and slowly looking upward at Leo Frank, one could not help but notice Leo Franks effeminately positioned and testicle-crushing crossed legs. His legs and knees were so tightly wound and twisted together, it was as if he had put his genitals into steel vice and turned the crank handle closed until it couldnt physically be swiveled anymore. It wasnt his crossed legs that seemed odd alone, but how they came together in concordance with his arms and that he held this posture for nearly the entire trial while he was seated.
From Leo Franks legs, ones eyes would be drawn slightly upward to his folded and crossed arms that were metaphorically similar to the configuration of his legs in that he also maintained his defensive arm posture for nearly the entire duration of the trial. His folded arms had given off a defensive and guarded appearance, like he was a scared and defiant little boy shielding some kind of regretful secret and angst hidden deep within his chest, as if he sat with a kind of secret terror in anticipation of an angry mother scolding him for being a bad boy. The way he held his arms also accentuated his skeleton-like chest, the result of dramatic body weight loss during the time of his incarceration at the Atlanta police tower. He looked as if he had dropped from his svelte and lean muscular weight of 155 lbs. to 135 lbs., a dramatic weight loss for a man of 58 (Height source: Cornell Senior Year Book, 1906, Leo Frank Passport Application, 1908).
The Face and Head Posture of Leo Frank at His Capital Murder Trial
Leo Franks face was showing the most pronounced signs of mental deterioration from the whole ordeal leading up to the trial. Looking up from his skeleton-like chest, one would see his contumacious head and face, with a subtle and gay lean to the side. Leo Franks face looked as if it was showing the symptoms of someone suffering from an incurable venereal disease at the terminal stage. The once delicately chiseled, handsome face of Leo M. Frank before the trial had become gaunt and sunken like an inmate serving a long sentence at Auschwitz. Just like the rest of his body, Leo Franks attractive Jewish aristocratic face was clearly another casualty of the whole debacle, primarily from wasting away during three months of incarceration in his sunless prison cell of the tower. His once pretty mouth with succulent lips now looked satyr-like and exhibited a protruding camel-like mouth, set above an animal-like jaw. His gaunt, sunken, and shrunken face exuded a haughty and insolent flare of empty and annoyed impatience, as if his murder trial was a minor inconvenience for him by his inferior, savage, and conspiratorial Goyim captors. Indeed, in the closing arguments of the trial, Ruben Arnold would be the first to play the race card and bring the charge of anti-Semitism against the good people of Georgia.
The Eyes of Leo Frank
His head, because it exhibited a fruity lean to the side, drew ones attention to his liver-stained eye-orbit regions that surrounded his eyeballs. Set in the middle of his magnified eyeballs were perched the most abysmal pitch-black dilated pupils. Despite his friends and family bringing him an endless supply of premium-quality food, his eye regions gave the indication he was malnourished. The bags under his eyes had that mentally-ill lavender flower-petal texture and hue. One could not help but shudder from there, because when zooming inward on his bloodshot white Sclera exophthalmic (bulging) eyeballs, surrounding his dark irises and pupils, it gave the false appearance of Mydriasis that he had no irises eyes with only fully dilated pupils. His strabismus eyes (one eye out of lateral alignment) looked in slightly different directions (just like his father Rudolph Franks eyes and his wife Lucille). It must have been somewhat unnerving that his eyes were looking in two different directions, especially when they were bloated behind the amplifying glass of his wire rim spectacles from a distance of ten to fifteen feet it gave off the appearance that his bespectacled eyes were swollen galactic-mass black holes, a wall blocking out all the light in the whole of the universe and swallowing you at the same time.
All of Leo Frank taken in as a whole likely gave the jury an eery feeling, one that sent chills down their spines. Leo Frank looked like a freak of nature straight out of a carnival side show, especially flanked by his rotund wife one and a half times his size and his witch-like mother.
The Exquisite Dazzling High Fashion Suits of Leo Frank
Leo Frank sat obstinate throughout the entire trial, haughty and pimped out in expensive and glamorously tailored suits tightly wrapped around his skeletal body.
One day Leo Frank donned a tight high-end pinstripe double breasted suit with dramatic one-inch thick prison bar-like stripes, right out of a 21st century Hollywood gangster movie. Given the fact that Leo Frank had the option to wear whatever he wanted, it was rather odd that he chose to wear such flashy finery. Some days his clothes went even beyond the limit of decency and made him stick out like a hammer-struck and throbbing sore thumb, just like the eight Leo Frank defense dream team lawyers, who were equally pimped out in expensive clothes. Together Leo Frank and his eight lawyers were in extreme contradiction of everyone else in the courtroom, who, day by day at the trial, dressed somberly.
The bottom line, Leo Frank and his lawyers were overdressed, and at times, they pushed the envelope of fashion decency.
At other times, Leo Franks trial showcase of sheik and sparkly suit fabrics, tightly woven around his newly created rail thin body, perhaps unintentionally gave him the aura of an effeminate bisexual cosmopolitan pervert. Leo Frank, decked out in the finest threads money could buy at the time, may have been misinterpreted as arrogance and insolence by the jury, given the nature of the trial and the unconscious tension of wealth versus poverty.
Leo Franks Eight Slick Lawyers
Leo Franks dream team of eight lawyers were pimped out to the hilt in fat-cat Mafioso white Italian city-slicker silk suits tailored in Manhattan, made of the finest material money could buy, which had been originally imported from Italy. Every day was a new clown suit circus for the Leo Frank entourage, even when nearly everyone else at the murder trial had dressed rather appropriately, which meant bland, judicious, and conservative suits, the normal dress code expected for any courtroom in 1913 or 2015. The dramatic difference in dress code between the defense and prosecution had created an air of patrician elitism versus the poor white working class cracker masses.
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Brief introduction and analysis of the four-hour oration by Leo Max Frank at his trial on August 18, 1913, followed by the official record in the brief of evidence capturing the Leo Frank trial statement given at the Fulton County Superior Court House, July Term, 1913:
Inconsistencies, Tall Tales, Fibs, and White Lies through the Eyes of the Judge and Jury
Leo Frank created too many inconsistencies during his numerous sessions of being questioned, made statements that seemed to defy logic, and said things that simply didnt pass the common sense test. As a result, Leo Frank made too many unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims during his trial statement which tended to intuitively trigger the bullshit detector of the individual jury members it damaged Leos honor in terms of believability, trustworthiness, and reliability.
A General Rule of Thumb about Credibility
Once a person loses their credibility at a trial or appeal as in the case of Leo Frank it is very difficult, if not impossible, to regain it given the limited time factor variable of a typical trial, in this particular case, twenty-nine days. At the end of the trial, things had stacked up against Frank, as the prosecution assembled a nearly invincible chain of testimony and circumstantial evidence against him.
Leo Franks Ever Changing and Evolving Stories, Arrival Times, and Claims
On Sunday, April 27, 1913, Leo Frank said Newt Lee had punched his time card perfectly, reviewing it in front of police officers and then putting it back into the four-foot tall safe in his anteroom.
On Monday, April 28, 1913, Leo Frank said Newt Lee had missed three or four punches on the clock, which amounted to a black hole of theoretically three to four hours of unaccounted time. The three or four one-hour time holes spread out across the time sheet seemed a perfectly suspicious match of evidence against Newt Lee, as it took about thirty minutes for Lee to get home from the factory and another half hour to get from his home back to the factory.
Did Newt Lee murder Mary Phagan at the factory and then go home to discard evidence?
Leo Frank had asked the police to check his laundry for blood two days after the murder, ostensibly to intimate they should check Newt Lees home as well. There at Newt Lees home, a bloody shirt planted by Leo Frank cronies was found at the bottom of Newt Lees garbage burn barrel. The discovered item suggested Newt Lee had forgotten to burn the blood-stained shirt created during the Mary Phagan murder.
The planted blood-stained shirt at Newt Lees home could have been the most deliciously orchestrated subplot by Leo Frank, that is, had it been executed more carefully. But instead the intrigue collapsed like a house of cards, becoming one of the most embarrassing, shocking, and failed coup de grace, to pin the crime of the century on the innocent old Negro night watchman, an honest neophyte employee of three weeks, who punched the clock with honesty, accuracy, and integrity.
Did the Police See Right through It?
The police arrested Leo Frank on Tuesday morning, April 29, 1913, at 11:30 a.m. when they figured out the shirt was a plant and began piecing everything together. Looking back more than one hundred years later, we can apply 2015 logic on the 1913 detectives intuition, and it makes sense. They easily figured it out the shirt was a plant because the shirt was clean when it was discovered with blood smeared on it.
Moreover, cops were psychologists too when it came to observing peoples behavior, and Leo Frank had behaved both oddly and nervously when they first made contact with him face to face on Sunday, April 27, 1913. Most seasoned police officers and detectives then and now read peoples demeanor in a crime investigation because it is often very telling.
High-Strung Leo Frank or Calm, Cool, and Collected Leo Frank?
The Jewish community tries to present the image of Leo Frank as a person who was shy, nervous, and neurotically high strung, but do you really believe the five-hundred-member lodge of the Bnai Brith would vote for a Sol Rosenberg from the Jerky Boys to be their leader of the most elite and exclusive Jewish fraternity? Do you think a Sol Rosenberg from the Jerky Boys could manage 170+ employees and juggle its myriad of business variables? Do you think the cream of Jewish genetic stock, the Selig-Cohens, of Atlanta Georgia, who two generations ago founded the first synagogue in Atlanta, would marry off one of their refined daughters to a nebbish mental break down? Who the hell is Sol Rosenberg? You can listen to his numerous unique tracks if you search on Jerky Boys.
The neurotic high strung Leo Frank image is a manufactured myth meant to make it harder for people to believe he was someone capable of murdering Mary Phagan.
Where was the nervous, shivering, shaking, frenetic, frantic, frazzled, bustling, rubbing hands, stomach in knots, red-faced, black sparkling diamond-eyed bespectacled Leo Frank from April 26, 1913? Leo Frank, despite his defensive and revealing demeanor at the trial, was also very calm, cold, cool, and collected during the entire trial. There was no shivering, nervous, neurotic, high-strung Leo Frank during the twenty-nine-day trial from July 28 to August 25, especially not on August 18, 1913, when Frank was calm, cool, and crisp, as cold and smooth as ice when he snapped the mind-numbed audience with NOW GENTLEMEN!
Leo Frank:
Now, gentlemen, to the best of my recollection from the time the whistle blew for twelve oclock 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 the inner 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 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 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.
The Bottom Line in These Regards: Leo Frank Was NOT What the Jewish Community and Frankites Claimed He Was
There were a number of things that Leo changed between different occasions during stenographed police and detective interviews Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday after Confederate Memorial Day. Pinkerton Detective Agency interviews (hand recorded and contentious), inquest testimony stenographed, and finally his official murder trial statement of August 18, 1913, which would forever tarnish his credibility, all were different versions.
At the trial, there were numerous situations where it came down to Leo Franks word versus the word of more than a bakers dozen of his employees and associates.
On the Credibility of Leo Frank
At the coroners inquest, Leo Frank said that he met his wife and mother-in-law on their way out to the opera when he came home for a late lunch. At the murder trial, Leo Frank said that he had lunch with his wife and mother-in-law after arriving home. He apparently wanted to appear as arriving home sooner than he had originally said and spending time with his family. However, Lucille Selig Frank and Josephine Selig were not home when Leo Frank said they were, and they were actually seated to watch the last matinee performance by the visiting Metropolitan Opera of Lucia di Lammermoor.
Leo Frank and States Exhibit B
Even in his Monday, April 28, 1913, statement known as States Exhibit B, Frank said he didnt leave the factory until 1:10 p.m. and arrived home at 1:20, a bit late for lunch? No one questioned that it took Leo Frank ten minutes to get home, not the prosecution or defense.
The Seligs Negro Cook, Magnolia Minola McKnight, and States Exhibit J, June 3, 1913
Minola McKnight made an affidavit witnessed by her lawyer, submitted at the trial as States Exhibit J, that put Leo Frank leaving the factory at 1:20 p.m. and arriving at home around 1:30 p.m., a contradiction of ten minutes. A ten-minute difference in arrival time at home might not seem like much, but in a murder trial where every second counts, minutes become immeasurably precious. Especially in light of the fact, Leo Frank wanted to make it seem like he did not spend a lot of time at the factory during the one-hour segment of time immediately after the Phagan murder.
Minola McKnights affidavit also said Leo Frank did not eat lunch and that he left the home five minutes after arriving at 1:35 p.m. However, Leo Frank claimed he had spent nearly a forty minutes at his home, eating a late lunch with his family and lying down to smoke a cigarette. The emphasis of Leo Frank was that he was sitting down with his father-in-law, Mr. Emil Selig, when he first arrived for lunch. The contradiction of Leo versus Minola was that Leo Frank claimed he left home after dinner and a long cigarette at 2:00 p.m., but Minola claimed he left at 1:35 p.m. That is a big time difference.
The whole conflicting and nebulous lunchtime whereabouts on April 26, 1913, surrounding Leo Frank would likely have annoyed the sensibility of any jury given the petty squabbling over time and left them wondering why Frank would be fighting over minutes more than an hour after the murder occurred.
Frank appeared to be trying to make it seem like he came home sooner and left later, leaving him with less time for the murder and removing the body. It is also odd that Leo Frank would not be having lunch with his family on a Saturday and State Holiday where it was understood that people should take the day off, at least half the day off concerning work. Leo Frank stated that aside from leaving the factory once in the morning for an hour and once again in the afternoon for lunch and parade watching, he stayed at the factory from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on that infamous Saturday. It left the jury wondering what Frank had actually done that afternoon, when his financial sheets took no more than an hour and a half to complete in reality.
There are numerous inconsistencies, but only some will need to be discussed at length.
Lucille Frank Did Not Visit Leo Frank for Nearly Two Weeks after His Arrest and Incarceration
It was never denied by the prosecution or defense that Lucille Selig Frank did not visit her husband for thirteen days after he was arrested and incarcerated from Tuesday, July, 29, 1913 at 11:30 a.m. Lucille Selig Frank could have visited her husband any of those days, given she was a bored house wife with a Negro mammy.
Trial observers wondered if Lucille Selig might have known what really happened, especially when Minolas States Exhibit J revealed that a drunk Leo Frank confessed to his wife of three years in the privacy of their marital bedchamber, during the late evening of April 26, 1913, that he murdered Mary Phagan earlier that day. Leo Frank made his wife sleep on the floor rug by the side of the bed after he confessed the murder of Mary Phagan in a suicidal drunken stupor, and he asked Lucille for his pistol so he could shoot himself (Minola McKnight, June 3, 1913, Affidavit, States Exhibit J). It was a revealing incident in the Mary Phagan murder mystery when it was revealed that Lucille knew the truth about her husband and engaged in self-deception. All things considered, she really had no choice; the honor of her family and the Jewish community was on the line.
Leo Frank mounted the witness stand chair on August 18, 1913, and with his arms and legs defiantly crossed, he said:
Then that other insinuation, an insinuation that is dastardly that it is beyond the appreciation of a human being, that is, that my wife didnt visit me; now the truth of the matter is this, that on April 29th, the date I was taken in custody at police headquarters, my wife was there to see me, she was downstairs on the first floor; I was up on the top floor. She was there almost in hysterics, having been brought there by her two brothers-in-law, and her father. Rabbi Marx was with me at the time. I consulted with him as to the advisability of allowing my dear wife to come up to the top floor to see me in those surroundings with city detectives, reporters and snapshotters; I thought I would save her that humiliation and that harsh sight, because I expected any day to be turned loose and be returned once more to her side at home. Gentlemen, we did all we could do to restrain her in the first days when I was down at the jail from coming on alone down to the jail, but she was perfectly willing to even be locked up with me and share my incarceration.
Leo Frank lost a lot of credibility on this one because it came off as wild, exaggerated, and fantastic. It also suggested that States Exhibit J might have had some real strong veracity after all in terms of Lucille Frank knowing the real score. She was perfectly willing to even be locked up with me and share my incarceration. If that were actually the case, she wouldnt have cared about the paparazzi taking photos of her walking into the police station, if she truly believed her husband was innocent.
The Lynchpin of the Trial: The Infamous Unconscious Bathroom Visit from 12:05 to 12:10
In States Exhibit B and at the inquest, Leo Frank suggested that he hadnt used the bathroom all day on Saturday. Coroner Paul Donehoo, the inquest judge of the six-man inquest jury, seemed a little incredulous, as well he should have been. It seemed to defy common sense. Even observers one hundred years later are asking, What normal person doesnt go to the bathroom all day? When it was determined Leo Frank drank a full pot of black coffee a day, it became even harder to believe he did not use the bathroom that day.
After 52 tall Monteen Stover gave her witness testimony at the murder trial, she had cracked wide open Leo Franks alibi that he had never left his office. In response, Leo Frank, for the first time in three months, offered a newfangled bathroom revelation. Leo Frank would counter the evidence of 52 tall Monteen Stover, because she said his office was empty from 12:05 to 12:10. Leo Frank explained why he was not in his inner office between 12:05 and 12:10 p.m., saying he might have unconsciously gone to use the bathroom in the metal room or he may have beem hiding behind the safe door.
Leo Frank also described the factory as being virtually empty, except for two people on the top floor banging away with hammers and removing a partition, to open up the space on the fourth floor. Observers began asking common sense questions like, Who else could have killed Phagan in the second floor metal room? If it wasnt Leo Frank and if it was someone else, why didnt Leo Frank hear the scream in the silent empty building?
Leo Frank also said the reason why 52 tall Monteen Stover didnt see him was because his four-foot tall safe door was open. Monteen Stover was much taller than the safe and would have been able to see him had she not gone into his inner office, but according to her, she did go into his inner office. It was empty and the safe was certainly not left open in an empty office.
The Cosmos Became One Universally Conscious Legal Eye and Mind in an Event that Seldom Ever Happens in Human History
That moment in Leo Franks four-hour statement was the hushed spine-tingling crescendo of his trial testimony, and the ultimate linchpin moment of truth for the entire case would come down to Franks unconscious bathroom visit to the metal room.
This first-time bathroom disclosure was perceived by observers, prosecution councilors, Tom Watson, the judge, the jury, and two years of appellate review by over thirteen constitutionally sworn judges as an inescapable admission of guilt, simply because the entire prosecutions case argument was based on trying to prove that Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan in the second-floor metal room between 12:05 and 12:10, an area of the factory that was just down the hall from where Frank worked in his front office and the precise place Phagan worked where the metal would be. It was the place where the bathroom was, according to the defenses and prosecutions drawings of the National Pencil Co. factory. To get to the bathroom, you had to walk into the metal room.
Grand Slam Home Run
Leo Frank, by his own words, had just pitched the prosecution a grand slam home run. The statement by Frank was just short of him actually coming out with it and saying: I, Leo Frank, beat, raped, and strangled Mary Phagan after luring her into the metal room, using the ruse to see if the metal had come in, starting around 12:02 to 12:03 p.m.
Observers one hundred years after the trial are asking: How many times in U.S. legal history did the prime suspect, indicted for murder, make an inescapably incriminating statement on the witness stand at his or her own criminal capital murder trial?
No one could have dreamed the Leo Frank trial would end up this way, as something so fantastically unlikely in Southern legal history.
Shocking, Jaw-Dropping Blunder
Franks shocking jaw-dropping blunder helped the prosecution, which was already far ahead in the case by the third week of the trial, essentially guaranteeing them a hands-down victory, one week before the judge and jury would give its unanimous verdict of guilt, without MERCY, voting 13 to 0.
Why Leo Frank made such a mind-boggling blunder is hard to comprehend, but he had personally sealed his own doom in that very moment on the afternoon of August 18, 1913.
Be sure to read the closing arguments of Hugh M. Dorsey and Frank Arthur Hooper (available in American State Trials Volume X 1918), followed by Tom Watsons, January, March, August, and September 1915, Jew Pervert article, in Watsons Magazine to get the delicious details of the Leo Frank murder confession. Also read Tom Watsons Jeffersonian Newspapers from 1914 to 1917 on Leo Frank. We provide 80% of the Jeffersonian Newspaper articles on the Leo Frank case.
Mary Phagan Who?
When the police first visited Leo Frank at his house on the morning of the April 27, 1913, he denied knowing any Mary Phagan and said he would have to check his accounting log book. It was a bit of a shocker given Mary Phagan worked on the same floor as Leo Frank for one full calendar year, having been hired in the spring of 1912, and she was one of only four girls working in the metal room section known as the tipping department.
It was later determined Leo Frank would pass immediately by Mary Phagans workstation each day to go to the bathroom, because she worked less than 2-3 feet away from the bathroom door. The bathroom in the metal room was the ONLY bathroom on the second floor. Given that Leo Frank religiously drank a lot of coffee, it is likely he might have gone to the bathroom more than once in a typical eleven- to twelve-hour workday. Ask one hundred people who drink coffee if the beverage is a diuretic and therefore makes you tend go to the bathroom more often than usual and note the numerical results in terms on their answers.
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The Complete Leo Frank Trial Statement Delivered On August 18, 1913 ...
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