Famous story of a Murder

On April 27th, 1913, the beaten and strangled corpse of 13-year old Mary Phagan was discovered in the basement of the National Pencil Company factory in Atlanta, Georgia. It was later inferred that before her demise using strangulation, Phagan had also been cruelly beaten and raped. It wasn’t long before the perpetrator of the horrible crime was apprehended.

Two days later, Leo Frank, a superintendent and co-owner of the factory, was arrested and formally accused of Phagan’s murder. His guilt was evident, despite his assertions to the contrary, as were his attempts to frame an innocent African-American night watchman at the factory, Newt Lee. In 1913, more than 19 workers at the National Pencil Company factory disclosed that Frank was a sexual predator and child molester who would frequently proposition pre-teen and teenage workers for sexual favours. It should also be noted that the factory was a sweatshop which exactly worked its child workers like dogs for pennies a day.

A grand jury voted unanimously, 21 to 0, to impeach Frank for the killing. At the proceeding prosecution, Frank was found guilty by a jury and convicted to be hanged on June 22nd, 1915. Then, just days before his execution was to take place, outgoing Georgia governor John Slaton, who was also a partner in the law firm that defended Frank, commuted Frank’s execution to a life sentence.

(Pictured below is Leo Frank.)

Shortly there was a public outcry, and reasonably so. During the night of August 16th, 1915, a group of armed men reached the Milledgeville Prison Farm, where Frank was imprisoned and restrained the guards there without harming any of them. They then drove Frank 175 miles to Marietta, Georgia where, on the morning of August 17th, they hanged him using a Manila rope.

There have been many tries by several lobbying groups over the years to rehabilitate Frank for the horrible crime he committed, and in 1986 the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a very unique and dubious pardon in which Frank was granted a posthumous pardon for the killing, but was still found guilty of the crime and not exonerated for it. Those same lobbying groups that contend his innocence was accountable for the pardon being issued. But for those who have looked nearly at the case, including Mary Phagan’s great-niece Mary-Phagan Kean, pictured below, Frank’s guilt is obvious.

While the topic of vigilantism is a hotly debated one, it appears that if anyone was deserving of vigilante justice, then it was Leo Frank. I’m not a backer of the death penalty, but in some cases may be exceptions must be made. Below is a link to Mary Phagan Kean’s official website in which she examines the circumstances surrounding the case of her murdered great-aunt and the irresistible amount of evidence involving Frank in the murder.

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