Wednesday, 11th June 1913 Police Hold Conley By Courts Order

Name: Wednesday, 11th June 1913 Police Hold Conley By Courts Order
Uploaded: 2026-07-23T10:03:15+00:00
Duration: 14 min 55 s
Channel: VERDICT VOYAGER

00:00Police hold Conley by court's order. Atlanta, Georgian. Wednesday, June 11, 1913. Judge Rohn

00:06gives suspect chance to show why he should not be released. The Fagan case took a queer turn

00:11Wednesday afternoon when Judge Rohn, apparently stirred by Luther Z. Rosser's arraignment of the

00:15way Jim Conley has been petted by the police, issued notice to suspects in the mystery that

00:21they will be given opportunity Friday to show cause why the Negro should not be released from

00:26custody as a suspect. However, the move is strictly legal in character. Conley, through his attorney,

00:33W. M. Smith, having signed a written statement to stay in the custody of the police as a principal

00:38witness if previous orders are vacated and he is legally freed as a suspect, agrees to remain.

00:44Judge Rohn informed Solicitor General Hugh M. Dorsey that he wanted to withdraw his previous order

00:49committing Conley to the police station so that the Negro status could be definitely fixed and so

00:55that he could perhaps be sent back to the county jail. Both Conley and his attorney announced that

01:00the prisoner wanted to stay at police headquarters. Smith also came forward with the agreement that

01:05Conley would remain in custody of the chief of police. Sensations ahead. Judge Rohn then issued what

01:12is known as a rule nile, informing Frank, Gordon Bailey, an elevator boy, and Newt Lee, the Negro night

01:19watchman, that they could be given a chance Friday to show why Conley should not be released.

01:24Sensational developments may follow Friday if the Frank defense is allowed to present facts against

01:29Conley for attorney Rosser is firmly convinced that the Negro is the guilty man and has so announced.

01:34Whether the Negro shall be indicted as an accessory after or to the fact, or be continued to be held

01:40as

01:40a witness, will then be determined. Napier analyzes the Fagan case. The Georgian publishes the following

01:47letter written by George M. Napier, the well-known lawyer, on the Fagan case, as it gives for the

01:52first time a legal analysis of the case for and against Frank. To the editor of the Georgian,

01:57This section of our country has held very few criminal cases so profoundly interesting as the

02:03Fagan case. Indeed, it is questionable whether the entire South has ever had enacted within it a crime

02:10which has created such intense and widespread interest. Personally, I have no concern in the case,

02:15save as a citizen of the state, desiring that the guilty party or parties may receive condign

02:20punishment. Profoundly interested. As a lawyer, being interested more intimately perhaps than those

02:26not of that profession, certain aspects of the case the procedure taken in the efforts of those

02:31immediately charged with ferreting out the facts of the crime, and the varied and swiftly changing

02:36developments in connection with it, I find these to be of profound interest. One thing has been made

02:42evident. The people generally are disposed to ascribe guilty to one who has the opportunity

02:46to commit crime. This was shown by the widely accepted conclusion that Leo Frank and Newt Lee,

02:52colored, were guilty of the murder of the Fagan girl as soon as it became known that they had been

02:57at the pencil factory on the day of the homicide. This conclusion was fixed in the minds of many

03:03by reason of the evident inclination of the detectives to believe Frank guilty,

03:07and there is little doubt that if the two men had been imprisoned in an unprotected town jail,

03:12they would have been lynched while suspicion and excitement were at their height.

03:16Praises newspaper.

03:18This mental state of the community did not last, however. The remarkable success of the local press

03:24in obtaining and publishing every detail of the evidence of the detectives enabled the reading

03:28public to weigh the testimony by piecemeal. It is safe to say that there lately have been many

03:34accessions to those who from the first hesitated to accept the theory of the guilt of Frank,

03:39or of the night watchman who found the body, upon the sole basis of their opportunity to commit the

03:45crime, and with all the circumstances going to negative motive to kill the young girl,

03:50especially on the part of the white man.

03:52The zeal of the secret servicemen in trailing to cover criminals who affect getaways is to be commended,

03:58but the work of building a successful prosecution upon a mere case of suspicion will,

04:03in many instances, fail.

04:05The testimony of Frank before the coroner's jury, in which he gave, with conspicuous consistency and

04:11openness, an account of his actions and whereabouts on the day of the killing,

04:15created a favorable impression on the public mind, strengthened by witnesses.

04:19This was strengthened by the corroboration of his statements as to the time of his movements by

04:24impartial witnesses of unquestioned veracity. The indictment of Frank by the grand jury seems to

04:30have been seized upon as the psychological opportunity for the negro Conley to admit that

04:34he wrote the notes found by the dead girl's body, and the comparison of his handwriting with that of

04:39the notes proves that fact beyond peradventure. But the network of lies in which Conley has become

04:45enmeshed, seems not to have given the forces conducting the prosecution any serious impression

04:51as to his own guilt as the actual murderer of Mary Fagan. Two things, it seems to me,

04:57would be sufficient to clear Frank of the crime, in the absence of any proved motive to commit it.

05:02The first is the work done by him on his books at the pencil factory on the afternoon of the

05:08killing, and subsequent to the time which is assigned by common consent for the occurrence of

05:13the deed. How could he have done work? That a man could go to the delicate and intricate task of

05:19spreading upon account books, the record and figures of a week's transactions of a factory

05:24employing a large number of hands, and involving numerous financial dealings, and requiring four

05:30or more hours of steady work, and that he could do this with his usual accuracy and celerity

05:35staggers belief. The other fact is a piece of testimony by the negro Conley himself.

05:40He has made the statement that when he was assisting Frank in the disposal of the dead

05:45girl's body, he noticed the time clock in the factory, and saw that it lacked four minutes of

05:50one o'clock. At that moment, he says, Miss Corinthia Hall and Mrs. Emma Clark Freeman, two employees,

05:57came into the factory and Frank told him to hid in a cupboard in the office. But Miss Hall and

06:01Mrs.

06:02Freeman testified that they were at the factory one hour and eleven minutes earlier than that,

06:06and that they left the factory at eleven forty-five and did not return that day.

06:11The conversation they had with Mr. Frank is the same that the negro says he heard,

06:16discrepancy in time. The murdered girl reached the city by streetcar at twelve o' four.

06:21This has been definitely proved. She reached the factory and received her pay envelope at twelve

06:26ten or twelve fifteen, so far as is known. Thus the negro adds this to his many other admitted lies,

06:32and if the girl was dead at the time he heard Frank talking to Miss Hall and Mrs. Freeman,

06:37she was murdered before she left her home. To one who is sufficiently interested to look over the

06:42scene of the crime, several things worth nothing will be revealed. Coming down from the office in the

06:47pencil factory, a young girl, unprotected, might well glance with nervous dread at the pile of large

06:53boxes under the stairway near the elevator shaft. In daytime, the corner under the staircase is in

06:59semi-darkness. It is an ideal place for a would-be criminal to screen himself. If the girl left the

07:05factory after receiving her pay and came down the stairs, this dark corner was behind her as she

07:10walked down the steps. A woman who testified but whose name I do not now recall saw a negro lurking

07:17in this corner. Conley has admitted that he sat for some time near the elevator. He had the opportunity

07:22to spring upon the poor girl as a spider would upon a fly. If robbery was his motive, an assault

07:28with a

07:28stick might have felled her. She could have been thrown down the elevator shaft or through the

07:33opening near the elevator which has a ladder under it leading down to the dirt floor of the basement.

07:38The place on the second floor where Conley says he picked up the body of the girl shows no trace

07:42of blood. Every circumstance indicates that she received the blow on her head before she died,

07:48and he says she was dead when he saw her there. So if she bled anywhere, the strong probability is

07:54that the bloodstains would have been found where she had been picked up. Even the mystifying fact

07:59that the staple of the rear door, leading out of the basement to the street, had been pulled from

08:04the inside could be easily explained on the theory that the criminal took the precaution to pull that

08:09staple so as to be able to run down the ladder and make his exit safely by the back street

08:14in the even

08:15any outcry was made by his victim. Much emphasis is placed upon the dramatic manner with which Conley

08:21reenacted the supposed work of carrying the body from the second floor to the basement that fatal

08:26day. Might not he swear falsely? Does it tax our credulity greatly to believe that a cunning negro

08:32who has been proved to have had unobstructed opportunity to commit the crime, and who admits

08:38having secreted the body, is capable of swearing that another man was with him when the crime was

08:43committed a man behind whom he can hide from the law? Would a drinking, irresponsible, perhaps criminal man

08:49of a low order of life be incapable of swearing away the life of any man, if by so doing

08:55he could save

08:56himself from the gallows? What is called the humanity of the law invests every person charged

09:01with crime with the presumption of innocence until his guilt has been proved, and proved to the extent

09:06of being irreconcilable with every hypothesis of his innocence. Guilt must be established beyond a

09:12reasonable doubt. And the reasonableness of a doubt on the minds of the jury trying a given case might

09:17depend largely upon the state of the public mind regarding that case. For this reason, if for no

09:23other, the people in a community where a crime has been committed should be reluctant to reach a

09:27conclusion of the guilt of anyone, where only circumstantial evidence is inducible. It would be

09:32a remarkable termination of the Fagan case, which is not now so mysterious as it once seemed, if Frank,

09:39the first man suspected by the detectives, should be acquitted, and his accuser, the negro Conley,

09:44should be brought to trial and convicted. But stranger things have happened. And if the evidence

09:50against Conley is as strong as it now seems assured it will be, will not the prosecution be greatly

09:55handicapped in the necessity of prosecuting Conley by reason of having put forth such strenuous and

10:00hopeful efforts to convict Leo Frank? How rewards would be shared. Rich rewards will recompense the

10:06discovery of evidence to convict the slayer in this case. If Frank should be found guilty, the division

10:12of the large sums offered for evidence to convict will go to certain secret servicemen who first

10:16called attention to the opportunity of Frank to commit the crime, and who have directed their

10:21energies in the investigation of it on the theory of his guilt. If Conley should be proved guilty,

10:26one of the foremen of the factory who saw the negro washing a shirt under suspicious circumstances,

10:32and who directed his arrest, will likely get the coin. But with the public it is not a question of

10:37rewards to be distributed, but it is the vital, the supreme question, who is the real murderer?

10:43The law, if rightly followed, is a noble instrument of protection to society, including the ignorant,

10:49the weak, and those of little understanding. It points the finger of suspicion at no man,

10:54but demands evidence before guilt can be determined either the clear and unmistakable proof of eyewitnesses,

11:00or an array of circumstances which excludes every reasonable hypothesis of innocence.

11:06Lauds Frank's character. In determining motive to commit crime, we have reason to regard the

11:11character and reputation of the individual. In the case under consideration, the man who protests

11:17his entire innocence and ignorance of the crime, but who now stands indicted as a criminal, has been

11:23for six years an exemplary citizen of this community, and the trusted manager of an important

11:28manufacturing enterprise, he has sustained well the confidence reposed in him. A leader in the

11:34community life of his race, he has been highly honored for one of his years. The attachment of

11:39his friends to him in the weeks of his imprisonment has been rarely significant of an unshaken confidence

11:44in his complete innocence. The high character of a large majority of his friends, who are men

11:50incapable of the desire to shield the perpetrator of so heinous a crime, removes the suggestion of a

11:56clannish defense of racial bias. Is not the case against Leo Frank so far presented against him

12:01palpably weak? And does not the far greater weight of evidence now point unmistakably to the Negro

12:07Conley as the sole perpetrator of the crime, George M. Napier, Lanford Laud sleuth's work in Fagan

12:12Mystery? The extra labor falling on the detective department because of the Fagan Mystery received

12:17special reference in the monthly report of Chief of Detectives Lanford, sent to Chief of Police

12:22Beavers for submission to the police commission. Chief Lanford also commends several detectives

12:27for their untiring work on the case. He said, It has been a very hard and laborious month on account

12:33of the Fagan case, and I wish to state that the men have been very vigilant and untiring in their

12:39efforts to run down this case. I wish especially to commend officers Starnes and Campbell for their

12:44untiring, faithful, and able work. I feel that the public will feel throughly satisfied with the

12:50results when wound up. I wish to thank each and every man, and especially yourself, for the services

12:56and valuable assistance rendered my department during the month. With the remark that she had

13:01been away on business of her own as the explanation of her mysterious disappearance of two days,

13:07Manola McKnight, Negro cook at the Selig residence, returned to her work Monday. To every inquiry she

13:13replied, I've just been away on some business of my own. And with this meager enlightenment, Mrs. Frank and

13:19other members of the household were forced to be content. The Negro woman was as positive on her

13:23return as she was before she mysteriously dropped out of sight for forty-eight hours that she had

13:29told the detectives nothing of the nature of that contained in the document purporting to be her

13:33affidavit. Attempt to remove Jim Conley reported. There were unconfirmed reports Wednesday that an effort

13:40would be made to have Jim Conley, the Negro sweeper who made three conflicting affidavits accusing Leo M.

13:46Frank of the murder of Mary Fagan, removed from the police station to the county jail.

13:51Solicitor Hugh M. Dorsey held a hurried conference with Superior Court Judge Roan and the Negro's

13:56attorney, W. M. Smith, but would tell nothing about the conference. Just what was to be gained by the

14:01transfer was not planned unless it was to get the Negro out of the reach of persons who may be

14:07interested in drilling him in his story. The police consistently have denied that Conley was drilled

14:11in his narrative. The reports were evidently the result of the announcement made Tuesday by

14:16Luther Z. Rosser, who charged that the police had made no real effort to get the entire truth from

14:21the Negro. He pointed out that after the Negro had made two conflicting affidavits, the police announced

14:27themselves satisfied with the third, which was just as patently unsatisfactory in the things it left

14:32unexplained. Slain girl's parents, subpented by Dorsey. Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Coleman, parents of Mary

14:39Fagan, were subpented by Solicitor Dorsey Wednesday, and appeared at the courthouse shortly after noon.

14:44The Solicitor would not say for what purpose they had been summoned. It was, however, expected that

14:49they would be called before the trial of Frank.

Wednesday, 11th June 1913 Police Hold Conley By Courts Order

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