Monday, August 18, 1913: Unsworn, Oral Statement of Leo M. Frank in the Fulton County Superior Court, Atlanta, Georgia
Now, that is the reason, gentlemen, that I have kept my silence, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't want to have things twisted.
Then that other implication, the one of knowing that Conley could write, and I didn't tell the authorities.
Let's look into that.
On May 1st 1913, I was taken to the tower.
On the same date, as I understand it, the negro Conley was arrested.
I didn't know anybody had any suspicions about him.
His name was not in the papers.
He was an unknown quantity.
The police were not looking out for him; they were looking out for me.
They didn't want him, and I had no inkling that he ever said he couldn't write.
I was sitting in that cell in the Fulton County jail--it was along about May12th or 14th 1913 that Mr. Leo Gottheimer, a salesman for the National Pencil Company, came running over, and says "Leo, the Pinkerton detectives have suspicions of Conley.
He keeps saying he can't write; these fellows over at the factory know well enough that he can write, can't he?"
I said:
"Sure he can write. We can prove it. The nigger says he can't write and we feel that he can write."
'
I said: "I know he can write. I have received many notes from him asking me to loan him money. I have received too many notes from him not to know that he cannot write.
In other words, I have received notes signed with his name, purporting to have been written by him, though I have never seen him to this date use a pencil."
I thought awhile and then I says:
"Now, I tell you; if you will look into a drawer in the safe you will find the card of a jeweler from whom Conley bought a watch on the installment.
Now, perhaps if you go to that jeweler you may find some sort of a receipt that Conley had to give and be able to prove that Conley can write."
Well, Gottheimer took that information back to the Pinkertons; they did just as I said; they got the contract with Conley's name on it, got back evidently to Scott and then he told the negro to write.
Gentlemen, the man who found out or paved the way to find out that Jim Conley could write is sitting right here in this chair.
That is the truth about it.
Then that other insinuation, an insinuation that is dastardly that it is beyond the appreciation of a human being, that is, that my wife didn't visit me; now the truth of the matter is this, that on April 29th, 1913, 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.
Gentlemen, I know nothing whatever of the death of little Mary Phagan.
I had no part in causing her death nor do I know how she came to her death after she took her money and left my office.
I never even saw Conley in the factory or anywhere else on that date, April 26,1913.
The statement of the witness Dalton is utterly false as far as coming to my office and being introduced to me by the woman Daisy Hopkins is concerned.
If Dalton was ever in the factory building with any woman, I didn't know it.
I never saw Dalton in my life to know him until this crime.
In reply to the statement of Miss Irene Jackson, she is wholly mistaken in supposing that I ever went to a ladies' dressing room for the purpose of making improper glances into the girls' room.
I have no recollection of occasions of which she speaks but I do not know that that ladies' dressing room on the fourth floor is a mere room in which the girls change their outer clothing.
There was no bath or toilet in that room, and it had windows opening onto the street.
There was no lock on the door, and I know I never went into that room at any hour when the girls were dressing.
These girls were supposed to be at their work at 7 o'clock.
Occasionally I have had reports that the girls were flirting from this dressing room through the windows with men.
It is also true that sometimes the girls would loiter in this room when they ought to have been doing their work.
It is possible that on some occasions I looked into this room to see if the girls were doing their duty and were not using this room as a place for loitering and for flirting.
These girls were not supposed to be dressing in that room after 7 o'clock and I know that I never looked into that room at any hour when I had any reason to suppose that there were girls dressing therein.
The statement of the negro Conley is a tissue of lies from first to last.
I know nothing whatever of the cause of the death of Mary Phagan and Conley's statement as to his coming up and helping me dispose of the body, or that I had anything to do with her or to do with him that day is a monstrous lie.
The story as to women coming into the factory with me for immoral purposes is a base lie and the few occasions that he claims to have seen me in indecent positions with women is a lie so vile that I have no language with which to fitly denounce it.
I have no rich relatives in Brooklyn, New York,
My father is an invalid.
My father and mother together are people of very limited means, who have barely enough upon which to live.
My father is not able to work.
I have no relative who has any means at all, except Mr. Moses Frank who lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Nobody has raised a fund to pay the fees of my attorneys.
These fees have been paid by the sacrifice in part of the small property which my parents possess.
Gentlemen, some newspaper men have called me "the silent man in the tower," and I kept my silence and my counsel advisedly, until the proper time and place.
The time is now; the place is here; and I have told you the truth, the whole truth.
EVIDENCE IN REBUTTAL FOR STATE