Phagan Family Newsletter Number Twelve

According to a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution report, former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, a Marietta attorney, is representing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis before the Georgia Senate special committee investigating Willis. Is this a backdoor attempt by Barnes and the Anti-Defamation League to induce Willis to get a “pardon” for the B’nai B’rith leader who in 1913 was convicted of murdering a 13 year old girl? We know that Barnes has been on a crusade on behalf of the B’nai B’rith’s ADL for many years. So, is there a quid pro quo involved in Barnes’s representing Willis? Is there a conflict of interest? Political corruption? Political bullying? Secret Meetings?

Let’s Review:

The Conviction Integrity Unit, established under Fulton County DA Paul Howard in 2019, was not transparent, as it claimed to be. The Phagan family was not contacted and Howard refused to acknowledge the Phagan family. Obviously, it was set up for one single goal: to “legally” clear Leo Frank of a heinous murder and to pin his crime on a Black man!

Fani Willis made strong statements about her integrity and skill:

“Cases won’t be for sale under my administration. Not for an endorsement, not for money, not for anything.” “You have my word, during my tenure as district attorney in Fulton County, we will become a beacon for justice and ethics in Georgia and across the nation.” According to reports, Willis “announced she intends to clean house in the Public Integrity Unity, which handles police-involved shootings,” vowing to bring “transparency and accountability” to the DA’s office. But so did Paul Howard, before succumbing to the behind-the scenes pressure from the ADL, ex-governor Roy Barnes, and Rabbi Steven Lebow, and others in the Marietta Jewish Community. On May 16, 2019, the Phagan Family filed a Fulton County Open Records Request seeking “All records with regards to Fulton County DA Paul Howard, Jr. in establishing the Conviction Integrity Unit meetings, correspondence with Former Governor Roy Barnes with respect to the Leo Frank Case.” We received this suspicious response from Tristan Gillespie, Fulton County’s Assistant District Attorney:

”Unfortunately, the files you have requested have been reported as destroyed from our archives center. Fulton County’s retention policy states that all files are to be destroyed after 20 years.” Of course, 2019 was just FIVE years ago —not 20. So we don’t believe that the D.A. has broken the law and destroyed those records. So, what is in those records that they are so desperate to hide? In 1982 the ADL tried to exonerate Leo Frank and, strangely, records of that underhanded operation were made a “Georgia State Secret.” Fani Willis can get to the bottom of this corrupt backroom dealing and give the family of the murder victim clarity and honesty on this case. That’s if she is true to her word: “During my tenure as district attorney in Fulton County, we will become a beacon for justice and ethics in Georgia and across the nation.”

Pure Propaganda

For over a century, propaganda has masqueraded as “new evidence”: there have been plays, articles, books, videos, movies, dramas, claims of death-bed confessions, mysterious bite marks and teeth x-rays (no evidence), and claims of anti-Semitic pogroms (no evidence). Instead of actually examining the trial record, former governor Roy Barnes cobbles together all of the propaganda and pushes it on District Attorney Fani Willis, the media, and the public as “truth.”
In recent interviews and lectures Roy Barnes has exhibited a truly embarrassing lack of knowledge about critical details of the Leo Frank case. He has misstated the evidence and invented “evidence” that does not exist. He tells his audiences to read books that actually disprove his own point of view. Barnes seems unaware that most of the things he believes about the case are pure propaganda direct from the ADL’s public relations team. Barnes insists that the century-old conviction was “wrong.” For years he has been promoting a fraudulent narrative about the Frank case, and in particular that the 1913 trial was illegitimate because it was “mob-dominated.” Roy Barnes said that “there were just mobs of people. And as the jury would go [to] the courthouse every day, the mob would scream, ‘Hang the Jew or we’ll hang you!’” This charge is a blatant lie that has been disproved by the scholars of the case, including the ADL’s Frank case expert Steve Oney. The “anti-Semitic” charge was made up long after the trial by an overzealous writer trying to make a name for himself. Only Barnes & Lebow continue to push the falsehood. For this and many other reasons Former Governor Roy Barnes and Rabbi Steven Lebow are simply unfit to participate in any serious inquiry into the Leo Frank case.
Barnes’s June 23, 2023 interview with the Marietta Daily Journal:

“The case has always fascinated me. For several years, we’ve been trying to exonerate [Frank]….I think there should be a new trial and exoneration that his conviction be vacated and that a new trial and exoneration ought to be entered. That’s what we are exploring right now.”
What funds would be used for the said trial? Federal? State? Grants? Georgia Senate Committee is investigating the D.A. for “potential conflicts of interest and misuse of public funds.” And who in this “trial” defends Mary Phagan? Barnes said he’s spoken with Willis about the matter “And she is very interested, but she is very busy with the Trump investigation.”

But now he is involved in the Trump investigation as Willis’s attorney. Does she know what his REAL interest is? It should be blatantly obvious to Willis that Barnes’s aim is to convict a Black Man of the murder that Leo Frank committed. Will
she use her office to help him? Or will she be “a beacon for justice and ethics in Georgia and across the nation”?

Candace Owens Takes on the Leo Frank Liars

Political commentator Candace Owens made a powerful statement about the ADL and the Leo Frank case in a Tweet she posted on May 23, 2024. She wrote:

The ADL was literally created to cover for a wealthy pedophile murderer named Leo Frank, who raped and killed a 13 year old little girl then tried to blame it on a poor black illiterate janitor who worked for him. This was in 1913 in the racist segregated south. The evidence was so overwhelming that they convicted him wealthy Leo Frank despite his attempts to plant evidence on other people. The ADL now refers to Leo Frank as a “victim of antisemitism”. They are sick, perverted defenders of pedophilia and murder. Every single person should study the Leo Frank case and ask yourself why the ADL has so much pull in our government.

Her Tweet has 3.5 million views and has created immense support for her position. Of course, she is COMPLETELY accurate in her assessment of the evidence, and she is correct in her subsequent Tweet that Leo Frank had a sordid history of pedophilia, which was revealed in his trial. Twenty young girls testified to sexual harassment. It seems clear that Ms. Owens will be revealing more about the case in the days to come.

Leo Frank: Murderer And Pedophile

During the 1913 murder trial of Leo Frank, Atlanta stood aghast as witness after witness testified that Frank engaged in sexual misconduct with women other than his wife. Even prosecutors seemed surprised as witnesses uncovered a pattern of planned sexual misbehavior by Frank at the factory he managed. And with every incident they described, the jurors became convinced that Frank probably had targeted 13-year-old Mary Phagan to pressure her for sexual favors. When she fought back, Frank became violent and strangled her to death. The testimony was of such a sleazy nature that Judge Roan cleared the courtroom of all 150 women and teenagers.

A procession of Frank’s teen-aged female employees testified about their negative personal encounters with their boss—a man they all agreed was possessed of a “bad character.” Their allegations seemed to verify the persistent rumor that “there was a brothel operating” at the factory.
Here is some of their testimony:

Nellie Pettis testified that Frank leered at her, winked at her, pulled a box of money from his desk, and finally asked, “What about it?” She left his office and his employ, telling Frank to “Go to hell!” Myrtice Cato swore that she had seen Frank and factory employee Rebecca Carson repeatedly go into the ladies’ dressing room and remain there for fifteen or twenty minutes. She concluded with a foreboding, “That ain’t all I know…and that ain’t all I saw either.” Former employee Dewey Hewell refuted Frank’s claim that he did not know Mary Phagan (whose work station was only a few feet away from Frank’s office): “I have seen Mr. Frank talk to Mary Phagan two or three times a day,” even putting “his hand on her shoulder” and calling her Mary. Mamie Edmunds said: “I was in the dressing room with Miss Irene Jackson when she was undressed. Mr. Frank opened the door, stuck his head inside. He did not knock. He just stood there and laughed. Miss Jackson said, ‘Well, we are dressing, blame it,’ and then he shut the door.” Nellie Wood said at the coroner’s inquest that Frank had made an indecent proposal to her:

“He asked me one day to come into his office, saying that he wanted to talk to me. He tried to close the door, but I wouldn’t let him. He got too familiar by getting so close to me. He also put his hands on me.”

Q. “Where did he put his hands?”
A. “He barely touched my breast. He was subtle with his approaches, and tried to pretend that he was joking, but I was too wary for such as that.”

Former factory employee Thomas Blackstock had witnessed Frank “picking on” factory girls a half dozen times and had heard other complaints around the factory. Ruth Robinson, who had known Mary Phagan as a little girl, testified:

“...Sometimes Frank would remain at Mary’s machine fifteen or twenty minutes. Frank’s visits to Mary, and talks with her, and assistance given her, became more and more frequent.…” A news report characterized the testimony of 16-year-old Will E. Turner: [H]e had seen Frank in conversation with Mary Phagan in the metal room; that the girl was retreating from Frank and Frank was following her. Frank had said, according to the witness, that he was the superintendent of the factory and wanted to talk to her. The girl had replied that she had some work to do and retreated from him. With every witness, Frank’s initial claim not to know Mary Phagan seemed more and more like the evasions of a guilty man. In all, 20 of these girls and young women swore that Leo M. Frank’s character and behavior were indecent. Frank’s attorneys offered NO DEFENSE at all for this behavior. His main attorney Luther Rosser actually said this: “The fact that Frank might have been frequently guilty of immorality could not be held against him. Deliver me from one of these prudish fellows that never looks at a girl and never puts his hands on her He’s the kind that I wouldn’t trust behind the door.”

And with that, Leo Frank’s attorneys conceded that their client had engaged in sexually deviant behavior. This man Leo Frank was so detestable that even his most ardent supporters felt he was creepy to even be around. Albert Lasker, a Jewish philanthropist and the “father of modern advertising,” paid millions (in today’s money) for Leo Frank’s defense, but he privately admitted that at their FIRST MEETING in Leo Frank’s jail cell:

“It was very hard for us to be fair to him, he impressed us as a sexual pervert. Now, he may not have been—or rather a homosexual or something like that…”

This is the man that the ADL has chosen to represent its history and heritage, a proven liar, duly convicted murderer, and serial rapist-pedophile.