A 13-year-old factory worker was found dead in the basement where she worked. The man convicted of her murder was lynched by a mob two years later — and decades of historical and forensic scrutiny since have cast serious doubt on whether he was guilty at all.
The Murder
On April 27, 1913, the body of 13-year-old Mary Phagan was found in the basement of the National Pencil Company factory in Atlanta, Georgia, where she worked. She had been beaten and strangled.
The Arrest and Trial
Leo Frank, the factory's superintendent and part-owner, was arrested two days later and charged with her murder. Frank, who was Jewish, was tried amid intense public pressure and widespread antisemitic sentiment, stoked significantly by local newspaper coverage at the time. The prosecution's case relied heavily on the testimony of Jim Conley, a Black janitor at the factory, whom many historians and researchers who have since studied the case believe was a more plausible suspect himself, given inconsistencies in his account and the era's deep racial bias, which made his testimony against a white defendant unusually influential despite these concerns. A jury convicted Frank and sentenced him to death.
Commutation and Backlash
Just before his scheduled execution, Georgia Governor John Slaton, reviewing the case and expressing serious doubts about Frank's guilt, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment — a decision that provoked enormous public backlash and effectively ended Slaton's political career.
The Lynching
On the night of August 16, 1915, a group of armed men calling themselves the "Knights of Mary Phagan" abducted Frank from the Milledgeville prison farm and lynched him near Marietta, Georgia, the following morning. No one was ever prosecuted for his killing.
A Wrongful Conviction?
In the decades since, extensive historical, journalistic, and forensic reexamination of the case — including detailed work by researchers and journalists who reviewed trial records, witness accounts, and physical evidence — has led many historians to conclude that Frank was very likely wrongfully convicted, and that Jim Conley was a stronger suspect in Phagan's murder. This view is not universal; some, including members of Phagan's own family, have continued to maintain Frank's guilt. In 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted Frank a posthumous pardon, explicitly citing the state's failure to protect him and to prosecute his killers, while stopping short of formally overturning his conviction or ruling definitively on his guilt or innocence.
Legacy
The case and Frank's lynching had lasting national impact: it contributed to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League, formed in response to the antisemitism that shaped the case, and the mob involved in his killing later played a role in the reorganization of the Ku Klux Klan later that same year.
FAQ
Was Leo Frank guilty of Mary Phagan's murder?
This remains historically disputed, though the modern consensus among many historians who have studied the case leans toward Frank having been wrongfully convicted.
What happened to Leo Frank?
He was lynched by a mob in 1915 after his death sentence was commuted to life in prison; no one was ever prosecuted for his killing.
Was Frank ever exonerated?
Not formally. Georgia issued a posthumous pardon in 1986 citing the state's failure to protect him, but it did not overturn his conviction or rule on his guilt.