Reading Time: 9 minutes, [1590 words]

To: The Strand Theatre, its Board of Directors, Management, and Production Leadership

@StrandMarietta

By Mary Phagan-Kean

September 3rd, 2026

Subject: Subversive Pedophile Rehabilitation Theater in Marietta Georgia

#StrandTheatre #Marietta #MariettaGeorgia

The Tony-winning musical *Parade* is now being performed at the historic Strand Theatre in Marietta, Georgia, only a few miles from where the events of the Leo Frank case actually occurred and where Frank was extrajudicially hanged on August 17, 1915.

I am writing this open letter because I find the Strand Theatre’s decision to present *Parade* deeply offensive and disgraceful. This production takes the man convicted of murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan and places him at the emotional center of the story, asking the audience to sympathize with Leo Frank and his rehabilitation while the murdered child whose death created this entire history is pushed into the background.

For my family, this is not some distant Broadway story. Mary Phagan was a real child. She was my great-aunt. She lived here, worked here, was murdered here, and her family and community lived with the consequences long after the headlines disappeared.

To me, this subversive theater, lionizing, rehabilitating, and humanizing a child-killing rapist, is truly detestable and disgraceful.

What bothers me most about *Parade* is that Little Mary Phagan, my great-aunt, the murdered 13-year-old child whom Leo Frank was convicted of killing, is treated as little more than a throwaway plot device, while Frank, the National Pencil Company superintendent and president of Atlanta’s Gate City Lodge of B’nai B’rith, is placed at the emotional center of the musical and presented as the person whose suffering, reputation, and supposed injustice the audience is asked to care about.

Atlanta News First describes the musical as dramatizing “the complex story of Leo Frank, his trial, and the unwavering fight of his wife, Lucille, to clear his name.” That tells you immediately whose story the audience is being asked to follow and whose supposed injustice supplies the emotional center of the production (ATL Live, 1).

Yet in real life, Lucille Selig was not buried beside her husband. In real life, she refused to be buried next to her husband, Leo Frank. That is the true story your theatre glosses over: the pain he caused her by betraying her in real life.

The grave that had been reserved for her at Mount Carmel Cemetery remains empty. That empty space hangs over the Leo Frank story like Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s banquet. The public performance may continue, the story may be polished for his rehabilitation and retold as a distorted history, but the unanswered questions refuse to leave the room.

The empty grave is not proof of Leo Frank’s guilt, but as a symbol, it is hard to ignore. It stands there silently, an uncomfortable reminder that even within Frank’s own marriage, the story was not as simple or settled as *Parade* presents it.

The official description from Music Theatre International goes even further. It does not present Frank’s innocence as an open historical question. It describes *Parade* as the story of a man “wrongly accused of murder.” Before the audience even enters the theater, the official description has already told them what conclusion they are supposed to accept about the case (MTI, 2).

That is why I see *Parade* as rehabilitation theater for a homicidal child molester rather than a neutral dramatization of the murder of Mary Phagan.

Leo Frank was the superintendent of the National Pencil Company where Mary worked. He was indicted for her murder, tried in Fulton County Superior Court, convicted by the jury on August 25, 1913, and sentenced to death by hanging the following day. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed that the evidence was sufficient to sustain his conviction on February 17, 1914. Its published decision begins plainly by recording that “Leo M. Frank was convicted for the murder of Mary Phagan.” The conviction remained standing (Georgia Supreme Court, 3).

The trial record also contained testimony accusing Frank of improper sexual conduct toward young female employees. He was accused of peeping into the ladies’ dressing room during designated changing time and taking his mistress Rebecca Carson into the ladies’ dressing room on the fourth floor during work hours. One factory girl quit because he was trying to get her to engage in prostitution. A mounted police officer stated that he found Leo Frank and a girl in the woods of Druid Hills who admitted they had been there for immoral purposes. Another girl quit because Leo Frank tried to corner her in his office and sexually molest her. Off the record, one girl, Dewey Hewell, stated that Leo Frank bit her on the inner thigh. The Georgia Supreme Court discussed testimony concerning Frank’s behavior toward women and girls employed at the factory, including evidence the prosecution offered as showing lascivious conduct. These allegations were part of the actual 1913 case. They were not invented decades later (Georgia Supreme Court, 3).

I regard that evidence, together with the murder conviction, as supporting the description of Frank as a sexual predator. The historical record should be stated accurately. Frank was convicted of murder. He was not separately indicted or convicted of rape. The sexual allegations and testimony were nevertheless part of the prosecution’s case through Dr. Harris and Jim Conley, and were part of the appellate record reviewed by the highest court of Georgia (Supreme Court of Georgia, 3).

There is another biographical fact that should not disappear from the story. Leo Frank was president of Atlanta’s Gate City Lodge No. 144 of B’nai B’rith. After his conviction, *The Atlanta Journal* reported on September 24, 1913, that Frank had again been elected president of the local B’nai B’rith organization while he was confined in the Fulton County jail during his appeals (Atlanta Journal, 4).

His B’nai B’rith position does not establish guilt. His conviction and the evidence presented in court have to stand on their own. But his social and political position is part of his biography, especially when modern retellings make Frank’s social identity, religion, ethnicity, leadership, and community standing central parts of the story.

And that brings me back to *Parade*.

Mary Phagan was 13 years old.

She went to the National Pencil Company on Saturday, April 26, 1913, to collect $1.20 in wages. She never came home. Her body was discovered in the factory basement early the following morning. Leo Frank was later tried and convicted of murdering her.

More than 113 years later, a Broadway musical is being performed in Marietta that places Leo and Lucille Frank at the emotional center of the story and officially begins from the false premise that Frank was “wrongly accused” (MTI, 2).

The musical ignores the pain and suffering of the working-class community of Atlanta, the Phagan family, and generations of Little Mary’s family, who have been fighting for 113 years to set the record straight and stop the falsification of history about the case.

Where is Mary in all of this?

Why does the man convicted of murdering her get the songs, the dancing routines, the orchestra, the romance, the emotional development, the sympathetic characterization, and the struggle to clear his name, while the murdered 13-year-old girl becomes only the background event around which his story is built? Why is the suffering of Mary’s community, neighbors, friends, family, and co-workers erased from the retelling of this case?

That reversal is what I find so disgraceful.

People are free to study the Leo Frank case and reach their own conclusions. They can read the 1913 trial record, the newspaper coverage, the Georgia Supreme Court decisions, the later appeals, Governor John M. Slaton’s commutation, and the pardon proceedings. But that is very different from a theatrical production whose official description starts by announcing that homicidal rapist-pedophile Frank was “wrongly accused of murder” (MTI, 2).

Mary Phagan should not be reduced to a supporting character in the rehabilitation of the child-molesting pervert a Georgia jury convicted of murdering her.

Point-blank, this is child-molester rehabilitation theater in Marietta, Georgia.

Your musical is unwatchable, and I hope and pray your ticket sales flop so that you cannot profit off your pedophile-apologist theater.

The trauma your theatre is causing my family, Georgians, families of child victims, and the community at large is incalculable. More than 113 years after Mary Phagan was murdered, her family should not have to watch the man convicted of killing her placed at the emotional center of a theatrical production while Mary herself is pushed into the background.

Mary was a real 13-year-old child, a human being with a family, friends, co-workers, and a community. She was not a theatrical device, a supporting character, or simply the event around which Leo Frank’s story should be told. Her life, her murder, and the suffering carried by her family deserve respect.

I hope you will seriously consider what this production looks like from the other side of the stage, from the perspective of the murdered child’s family and community that has lived with her loss for generations.

Sincerely,

Mary Phagan-Kean
Great-Niece and Namesake of Mary Phagan

References

1. ATL Live Staff. (2026, August 27). “Tony-Winning Musical ‘Parade’ Set to Open at Marietta’s Historic Strand Theatre.” *Atlanta News First*.
https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/08/27/tony-winning-musical-parade-set-open-mariettas-historic-strand-theatre/

2. Music Theatre International. “Parade: Revised Version (2009).” *Music Theatre International*.
https://www.mtishows.com/parade

3. Supreme Court of Georgia. (1914, February 17). *Frank v. State*, 141 Ga. 243, 80 S.E. 1016.

4. *The Atlanta Journal*. (1913, September 24). “Leo M. Frank Again Heads B’nai B’rith,” p. 18, col. 3.

Image: Header graphic created with AI for this open letter.