Frank on the witness stand

Dr. Thomas Hancock, a Columbia University graduate and chief of medicine for the Georgia Railway and Power Company, conducted a physical examination of Leo Frank. He was called by the defense to cast doubt on the testimony of Jim Conley, who claimed on the stand that Frank had told him he was "not built [sexually] like other men."

Examination by Luther Rosser

Frank: "To the best of my knowledge, it must have been from ten to fifteen minutes after Miss Hall left my office, when this little girl, whom I afterwards found to be Mary Phagan, entered my office and asked for her pay envelope. I asked for her number and she told me; I went to the cash box and took her envelope out and handed it to her, identifying the envelope by the number. She left my office and apparently had gotten as far as the door from my office leading to the outer office, when she evidently stopped and asked me if the metal had arrived, and I told her no. She continued on her way out, and I heard the sound of her footsteps and she went away. It was a few moments after she asked me this question that I had an impression of a female voice saying something; I don't know which way it came from; just passed away and I had that impression. This little girl had evidently worked in the metal department by her question and had been laid off owing to the fact that some metal that had been ordered had not arrived at the factory; hence, her question. I only recognized this little girl from having seen her around the plant and did not know her name, simply identifying her envelope from her having called her number to me...."

Frank: "Gentlemen, I was nervous. I was completely unstrung. Imagine yourself called from sound slumber in the early hours of the morning, whisked through the chill morning air without breakfast, to go into that undertaking establishment and have the light suddenly flashed on a scene like that. To see that little girl on the dawn of womanhood so cruelly murdered-it was a scene that would have melted stone. Is it any wonder I was nervous?...."

Frank: "The date I was taken into custody, my wife was there. But I thought I would save her the humiliation of seeing me in those surroundings. I expected any day to be turned loose and returned once more to her side at home. Gentlemen, we had to restrain her. She was willing to be locked up with me...."

Frank: "[After the detectives failed to get a confession from Newt Lee they] grilled the Negro and put words into his mouth that twisted not alone [my] English but distorted my meaning. I decided then and there that if that was the line of conduct they were going to pursue, I would wash my hands of them..."
Frank: "I did not speak to Conley not because I did not want to ... but because I didn't want to have things twisted. I knew that there was not a word that I could utter that they would not deform and distort and use against me...."

Frank: "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 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...
Gentlemen, some newspaper men have called me "the silent man in the tower," and I have 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...."

 


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