268 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

236 X, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

When the negro Conley was arrested, I didn't know anybody had any suspicions about him. His name was not in the papers; I had no inkling that he ever said he couldn’t write. I was sitting in that cell in the Fulton County jail, about April 12th or 14th, when Mr. Leo Gottheimer, a salesman for the National Pencil Company, came running over and said, “Leo, the Pinkerton detectives have suspicions of Conley. He keeps saying he can't write; these fellows over at the factory know well enough that he can write, can’t he?” I said, “Sure he can write.” “We can prove it; the nigger says he can't write and we feel that he can write.” I said, “I know he can write, I have received many notes from him asking me to loan him money. In other words, I have received notes signed with his name, purporting to have been written by him, though I have never seen him to this date use a pencil. If you will look into a drawer in the safe, you will find the card of a jeweler from whom Conley bought a watch on the installment. If you go to that jeweler, you may find some sort of a receipt that Conley had to give.” Gottheimer took that information to the Pinkertons; they did just as I said; they got the contract with Conley’s name on it; Scott then told the negro to write. The man who found out or paved the way to find out that Jim Conley could write is sitting right here in this chair. That is the truth about it.

Then there is that other insinuation, so dastardly that it is beyond the appreciation of a human being, that my wife didn’t visit me. The truth is, that on April 29th, when I was taken into custody at headquarters, my wife was there to see me; she was downstairs on the first floor; I was up on the top floor. She was there almost in hysterics, having been brought there by her two brothers-in-law and her father. Rabbi Marx was with me at the time. I consulted with him as to the advisability of allowing my dear wife to come up to the top floor to see me in those surroundings with city detectives, reporters, and snapshooters. I thought I would save her that humiliation, because I expected any day to be returned once more to her side at home. Gentlemen, we did all we could do to restrain her in the first days when I was down at the jail from coming alone down to the jail, but she was perfectly willing to even be locked up with me and share my incarceration.

Gentlemen, I know nothing whatever of the death of little Mary Phagan. I had no part in causing her death, nor do I know how she came to her death after she took her money and left my office. I never even saw Conley in the factory or anywhere else on April 26th.

The statement of the witness Dalton is utterly false as to coming to my office and being introduced to me by the woman Daisy Hopkins. If Dalton was ever in the factory building with any woman, I didn’t know it. I never saw Dalton in my life to know him until this crime.

Miss Irene Jackson is wholly mistaken in supposing that I ever went to a ladies’ dressing room for the purpose of making improper gazes into the girls’ room. I have no recollection of the occasions of which she speaks. There was no bath or toilet in that room, and it was not used for such purposes.

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