The Leo Frank case

by Leonard Dinnerstein

In April 1913 the body of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was found in the basement of the Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. Leo Frank, the northern Jew who managed the factory and the last person who admitted seeing her alive, was arrested and accused of her murder. After two years of trials highlighted by sensational newspaper coverage, popular hysteria, and legal demagogery, Frank was sentenced to death. Georgia's governor commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. But then an outraged mob, dedicated to the execution of "justice," kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him near Mary's hometown. The only full account of the murders of Mary Phagan and Leo Frank includes a new preface presenting the most recent evidence of Frank's innocence.