216 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

184 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

lathe under 3 microseope, gave his opinion that it was not
her hair.’ Other witnesses said they thought they saw blood
on the floor near the dressing room, at which place Conley
said he dragged the body, and that it was not there on Fri-
day.* Other witnesses who examined the floor said the spots
looked like blood stain, but they were not sure,’ and there
was testimony that there were frequent injuries at the fac-
tory, and blood was not infrequent. A part of what they
thought to be blood was chipped from the floor and Dr.
Claude Smith testified that on one of the chips, he found un-
der e microscope, from three to five blood corpuscles, but he
could not say that it was human blood.’

Near the body in the basement there were found two notes
in a negro’s handwriting, one written on brown paper and
the other on a leaf of scratch pad. That written on white
paper contained these words: ‘‘He said he would love me,
laid down play like the night-witch, did it, but that long tall
black negre did boy hisself.’? On the brown paper, which
was the carbon sheet of an order blank, was written the fol-
lowing: ‘‘Mam that negro fire down here did this when i went
to make water and he push me down a hole a long tall black
negro did (had) it. i right while play with me.’”

But the startling evidence, and that upon which the eon-
vietion of Frank was based waa that given by a dissolute and
good-for-nothing negro, Jim Conley, a man 27 years of age,
and one who had frequently ‘been in the chain-gang. Conley
had worked at the factory for about two years, and in the
basement about two months, and had ran the elevator, also.
The detectives learned, about the middle of May, that Con-
ley could write, although at first he denied it, He made, be-
fore the trial, one statement and three affidavits about his
connection with the matter.

* This opinion seems to have been given later on a motion for a
new trial,

°R. P, Barrett, ante.

TJ. N. Starnes, post, p. 192; J. L. Beavers, post, p. 199.

8 Post, p. 200,

° Post, p. 244,