00:00State takes advantage of points known. The Atlanta Georgian, Saturday, June 14th, 1913.
00:06With certain of the strong defenses of Leo M. Frank exposed by the preliminary battle over
00:11the custody of the Negro Conley, the prosecution in the Fagan murder mystery went to work on the
00:16case today with its first definite idea of the sort of a stronghold it must assault.
00:20It was assured that the accused man's lawyers would not rest with fighting suspicion away from Frank,
00:26but would seek to fasten the guilt so firmly upon Conley that Frank not only would be acquitted,
00:31but that he would be cleared of every stain which has been cast upon his name and reputation by the
00:36terrible charges lodged against him. Report was rife Saturday morning that the attorneys for Frank
00:41had not yet acknowledged defeat in their efforts to have Conley confined at the tower instead of at
00:46the police station, where they charge he is improperly protected and petted by the detectives.
00:52The next move was rumored to be the swearing out of a warrant charging the Negro with the murder
00:57to compel Conley's removal to the tower. Attacked by Rosser
01:02Luther Z. Rosser, Chief of Counsel for Frank, has branded at most unusual and irregular the procedure
01:09which has allowed the Negro, who has confessed to being accessory after the fact, to be left without
01:14an indictment, continued on page 2, column 1. State plans to break Frank defense, continued from page 1,
01:20against him on the charge to which he has virtually pleaded guilty. Rosser urged an impartial
01:26investigation into the possibility that he is even more seriously connected with the crime which
01:30resulted in the gruesome death of Mary Fagan. Chief of Detectives Lanford said Saturday when he was
01:36apprised of the contemplated move of those who wished to see the Negro stories investigated by an
01:41impartial body that he assuredly would honor any warrant which on its face appeared bona fide,
01:46but that he would fight any effort to take Conley to the jail, which he suspected had back of it
01:52the
01:52animus of persons unfriendly to the Negro and friendly to Frank. Lanford asserted that all of
01:57his actions in the Fagan mystery had been inspired by the desire to get the guilty man, and that it
02:03was his conviction that the Negro was only a tool after the actual crime, guarding against surprise.
02:09After the developments of Friday, it became evident that the prosecution, while it is busying itself in
02:14an effort to place the crime on Frank, must guard against the surprise of finding all of a sudden
02:19that the defense has stolen a march, and has in the meantime shifted every tenable suspicion directly
02:24upon the Negro Conley. Most of the evidence must be circumstantial. Even the Negro's succession of
02:31contradictory affidavits, if any one of them is to be accepted, must be regarded as circumstantial,
02:37for in none of them does he say that he saw the killing of the girl. She was dead,
02:42he avers, when he first saw the body, so the death might have been quite accidental,
02:47even if every word of the Negro's latest affidavit is to be believed. From the fact that the evidence
02:52is so purely circumstantial, and that it is a matter of grave doubt whether any of the Negro's
02:57statements can be accepted as having any element of truth, the defense will maintain, it became evident
03:03from its attitude Friday, that the evidence points far more certainly and positively toward Conley as
03:09the murderer than toward Frank. Absolutely nothing of a suspicious nature has been brought against
03:14Frank, the defense will assert, except that he had the opportunity. On the other hand, a score of
03:19suspicious circumstances will be brought against the Negro. The work of the prosecution from this time
03:24on will be the adding of confirmatory evidence to the Negro's stories. The detectives have professed to
03:30have a great amount of evidence bearing out Conley's statements of what happened in the factory on the
03:35day of the murder. They have said that they are keeping much of this undercover for the purposes
03:40of prosecution until the trial of Frank begins. When taxed with the question as to how they could
03:46believe the Negro's latest statement and accept it as the unqualified truth, when the Negro admittedly
03:52had told a string of lies and falsehoods previously, they have said that they will not have to depend on
03:58the Negro's story alone, but will have substantiating evidence to bolster up every statement that he has
04:04made. Besides the collecting of confirmatory evidence, the prosecution is busy in an effort
04:09to break down Frank's iron-bound alibis. So strong have these alibis been established, it has appeared
04:15that they are unassailable, but the Solicitor General is overlooking no chances and has had his agents
04:21investigating Frank's every movement on the day of the crime.
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