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

Here is the translated text as follows:

680 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS

It is old in Europe and the East. It is new in Georgia because we have not had many rich people. After this prosecution, blackmailers in this part of the world will roost lower.

I doubt if Mrs. Hirsch would have admitted the figures about her husband’s debts if her notations on the margin of The Constitution had not been kept. She wanted half a million for herself and $5,000 for him! Think of the way that husband has been treated. How would any man feel in like circumstances? He must have the patience of Job.

Mrs. Hirsch is a dangerous woman. She is liable to get a dozen men killed. If Candler had been hot-headed, he might have shot Cook, or Cook might have shot him if he had resisted Cook’s entrance. Or Mr. Hirsch might have gone gunning for someone if he had learned of the affair. A woman like this can cause more tragedies than anything I can think of.

We all want to look at the facts. Southerners are never going to hurt a woman unjustly. We put her on a pedestal because we expect much of her. But we do not if we know she is running around to offices for immoral purposes. No good woman loses her virtue so easily at 38 years of age. According to her own statement, she only had to be asked.

From Thursday to Monday, Mrs. Hirsch raised her demand from $3,000 a year to a lump sum of $500,000. Don’t you know that Cook and she were together in that time? They were pleased with their success. Didn’t expect it to be so easy. Cook probably said, "Don’t be a piker; put it up to half a million." That’s the gambler’s game, all bluff, and Cook is a gambler through and through. Mr. Hirsch is a high-class man in a high-class position, and I don’t believe what she told the Humphries woman about his complicity in the affair was true. I am going to ask the court to charge you that the blackmail charge is true, even if Mrs. Hirsch was caught in the act.

Mrs. Hirsch, when she believed they would take care of her, decided to get all she could. She and Cook got together, and Cook says, "Where do I come in?" It was their intention...

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