Reading Time: 7 minutes [1288 words]
The Atlanta Georgian,
Wednesday, 11th March 1914,
7th Edition (Final),
PAGE 1, COLUMN 1.
### JUSTICE IS HUSHED IN TUMULT, SHE SAYS
NEW YORK, March 11. "My son is being sacrificed on an altar of infamy above which the seal of the sovereign State of Georgia reposes. In the tumult, the voice of justice is hushed. Loudly boast the Atlanta police that they have brought to justice the slayer of little Mary Phagan. Proudly they tap their shields, calling attention to their omnipotence, their championship of the fair name of Justice. Someone must die that the law might be satisfied. My son, a Jew, was seized upon, trussed like a sheep, and cast upon the mercy of a court that sneered at his every attempt to declare his innocence. But that court gave ear and credence to the loose-mouthed, parrot-like story of a negro that court of justice."
This is the story of Mrs. Rudolph Frank, the mother who sat by Leo M. Frank in the 30-day trial in Atlanta and heard the jury return the verdict that condemned him to die. In her home in Brooklyn, she told her story. With Rudolph, her husband, she lives in Brooklyn in retirement. Rudolph Frank, 70 years old, is a German ever ready to search through the dark for the one ray of sunshine that he knows is somewhere nearby. The mother is a tigress.
She said: Could Kill or Die for Him. "They called me that in Atlanta. A tigress. Why should I not be? I love my son, my boy. I sat at his side and heard a prosecuting attorney degrade him by horrible insinuation, by terrible innuendo. They called me a tigress because I sprang from my chair and cried forth my reproach the denial that they would not listen to from my boy. Yes, I am a tigress. I could kill for him; I could die for him."
"In my heart, as I sat beside him and heard them rend him as hungry wolves would a tired deer, there arose higher than pity, higher than sorrow, higher than love, a rage that made me a tigress. I watched them push him further and further toward the scaffold. I heard that prosecuting attorney declare that he would never indict the negro, Jim Conley, for this crime. I heard him sneer, 'If that be treason, make the most of it.' I heard testimony so false, so perjured, that my nature changed."
"You come to me for my story. You ask me how I feel about it. I am his mother. That is my story."
Mrs. Frank views the plight of her son with a fierce resentment, in which there is nothing maudlin, nothing cloyingly sentimental. She is Spartan-like in her courage, almost elemental in her fierce defense. She said: Atonement Prayer Daily. "On our Day of Atonement we have a beautiful prayer: 'God keep us and protect us against false accusation and a liar.'"
"Nightly I have so prayed. They will never hang my son. God will not permit it. God has told me so. I am strong; God has given me the strength of His strongest soldier to never give up. I shall hope and fight until the end."
"These tears are not of weak sorrow. They are born of fierce resentment; of a terrible passion that surges through me when I recall that horrid mockery that the State of Georgia called a trial. Oh, God, to see one's own flesh and blood painted in shame falsely; to see him denied the very principles of justice; to see him torn away from you and to know that he is innocent innocent understand?"
"Leo was born 30 years ago come April, in Texas. In that year 1884 we moved to New York, and Leo, when he was old enough, went to public school in Adelphi Street. Such reports he brought home! One hundred percent nearly always did they give him. And, too, they sent home little notes with 'GB' (good boy) and 'GW' (good work) marked on them. Then he went to school in Lafayette Street and later to Pratt Institute High School, where he won a scholarship to Cornell."
Won College Degree. "He entered college in 1902 and won his M.E. in 1906. He was studious, kindly, courteous. He wrote to me that he would marry early in life, and I blessed him, even though I hated to give up my boy to another woman. He married a girl who is as pure as the angels, and I was happy because he was."
"The first money that he earned he spent on an insurance policy for $3,000. He made it over to us his parents. When he married, I made him transfer it to his wife. Would a bad boy thus love his parents? In 1910 he married Lucile Selig, and I love her as my own child."
"But she is not a mother. Therefore she, even, cannot feel like I do. People shall read what you write and say: 'But this is the story of a mother. This mother is not a judge of her son's guilt. It is but natural that she should cry his innocence.'"
"I tell you it is not so. Of course, I love him. Maybe my love twists my judgment. But here I saw my son degraded. I did not see real evidence piled against him. I heard him vilified; brutally slandered. I saw neither justice nor righteousness in that trial, and the sorrow gave way to bitterness: to hot protest, to the desire to fight with my hands."
"That is my story. That is how I feel about it. I know that he will not be hung. God will bring him back to me and he shall come to me as pure, as gentle, as upright as he left me."
### FRANK SACRIFICE TO INFAMY, SAYS HIS MOTHER
"Trussed Up Like a Sheep and Cast on Mercy of Court," She Declares.
### Burns at Work on Case in New York
A telegram has been received in Atlanta from William J. Burns, in New York, announcing that the famous detective is at work on the Frank case in that city, with another angle or two to follow elsewhere, but stating that it is impossible for him to discuss progress "under any circumstances" pending the making of his final report. It is inferred that the detective is investigating the report of William Osborne, the handwriting expert, which was obtained by the prosecution but not used in the trial.
Herbert Haas, of the Frank counsel, has returned from New York, where he is said also to have conferred with Osborne and with Nina Formby, the woman who recently made an affidavit repudiating certain scandalous statements she made concerning Frank prior to his trial. Following a short stay in Atlanta, when he conferred with Frank and a number of the convicted man's friends, Burns went to New York and has been there six days. If he has communicated any news of his investigation to the lawyers for the defense, they have been instructed to keep it in confidence, for they will say nothing concerning his work or progress.
Solicitor Dorsey also is active on the case. He was away from his office all of Tuesday, on some secret mission believed to have been connected with the Frank prosecution. Part of the time, at least, he was accompanied by John Starnes and Pat Campbell, the detectives named as prosecutors in the Frank bill of indictment.
### FRANK'S MOTHER, WHO SCORES HER SON'S ACCUSERS
Mrs. Rudolph Frank, Mother of Leo M. Frank. This picture shows Mrs. Frank as she left the courtroom at the trial here last summer. The aged parent of the prisoner did not miss a session of court.