Conley, a 27-year-old sweeper at the
pencil factory, testified that on the day of the murder Frank told him
he was expecting a girl to come by for a "chat." Conley testified
that Frank wanted Conley to "watch out" and that when he stomped his
foot, Conley should lock the front door and keep it locked until he
whistled.
Examination by Hugh Dorsey
Dorsey: “Do you know Leo
Frank?”
Conley: “Yes, I know
him. There he is.”
Dorsey: “Did you have any
conversation with Mr. Frank on Friday, April 25?”
Conley: “Yes, sir. About
three o’clock, Mr. Frank come to the fourth floor where I was working
and said he wanted me to come to the pencil factory on Saturday morning
at 8:30.”
Dorsey: “Had you ever been back
there before on Saturdays?”
Conley: “Yes,
sir. Several times....”
Dorsey: “Who got there first
[on the Saturday of the murder]? You or Mr. Frank?”
Conley: “We met at the door
and I followed him in.”
Dorsey: “What conversation
did you have?”
Conley: “Mr. Frank said that
I was a little early. I told him it was the time he’d said for me to
come. He said I was a little too early for what he wanted me to do. I
asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted me to watch for him like I
had on other Saturdays.”
Dorsey: “What had you been
doing on other Saturdays?”
Conley: “I had watched for
him while he was upstairs talking to young ladies....I would sit down at
the first floor and watch the door for him.”
Dorsey: “How often had you
done this?”
Conley: “Several
times.”
Dorsey: “Was Frank up there
alone on those Saturdays?”
Conley: “No,
sometimes there’d be two young ladies and another young man. A lady for him and one for Mr. Frank.”
Dorsey: “Was Mr. Frank ever
alone there?”
Conley: “Yes, sir. Last
Thanksgiving day.”
Dorsey: “Who came then?”
Conley: “A tall,
heavy-built woman.”
Dorsey: “Now, when you got to
the factory, what happened?”
Conley: “We went in and Mr.
Frank told me about the lock on the front door. ‘If you turn the knob
this way, nobody can get in,’ he said. Then, Mr. Frank told me to come
over and said, ‘Set on this box.’ He said there’d be a young lady up
here pretty soon and ‘We want to chat awhile.’ Mr. Frank said, ‘When I
stomp, that’s her, and you go shut the door. And when I whistle, you
can go and unlock the door and come up and say you want to borrow some
money and that will give her a chance to get out....The
next person I saw was Miss Mary Perkins. She came in and went upstairs.”
Dorsey: “Who is Miss Mary
Perkins?”
Conley: “That’s the lady
that’s dead. I heard her footsteps going toward the front of the
office, and then I heard steps going toward the metal room. The next
thing I heard was her screaming.”
Dorsey: “Then what did you
hear?”
Conley: “I didn’t hear
anymore....”
Dorsey: “Then what
happened?”
Conley: “I heard Mr. Frank
whistle.”
Dorsey: “Well, what did you
do when you heard Mr. Frank whistle?”
Conley: “I unlocked
the door just like he said and went upstairs. Mr. Frank was standing at
the head of the stairs shivering. He was rubbing his hands together and
acting funny.”
Dorsey: “Show the jury how he
was acting.”
[Conley stands up and
shakes his knees and arms.]
Dorsey: “What did Frank have?”
Conley: “He had a little cord
in his hands— a long wide piece of cord.”
Dorsey: “Did you look at his
eyes?”
Conley: “Yes,
sir.”
Dorsey: “How did they look?”
Conley: “His eyes was large. They looked funny and wild.”
Dorsey: “Did Frank say
anything to you?”
Conley: “Yes, sir, he
asked me "Did you see that little girl who
passed here just a while ago?" and I told him I saw one come along
there
and she come back again, and then I saw another one come along there
and she
hasn't come back down, and he says, "Well, that one you saw didn't come
back down, she came into my office awhile ago and wanted to know
something
about her work in my office and I went back there to see if the little
girl's
work had come, and I wanted to be with the little girl, and she refused
me, and
I struck her and I guess I struck her too hard and she fen and hit her
head
against something, and I don't know how bad she got hurt. Of course you
know I
ain't built like other men." The reason he said that was, I had seen
him
in a position I haven't seen any other man that has got children. I
have seen
him in the office two or three' times before Thanksgiving and a lady
was in his
office, and she was sitting down in a chair and she had her clothes up
to here,
and he was down on his knees, and she had her hands on Mr. Frank. I
have seen
him another time there in the packing room' with a young lady lying on
the
table, she was on the edge of the table when I saw her. He asked me if
I
wouldn't go back there and bring her up so that he could put her
somewhere, and
he said to hurry, that there would be
money in it for me. When I came back there, I found the lady lying flat
of [sic] her back with a rope around her
neck. The cloth was also tied around her neck and part of it was under
her head
like to catch blood.... She was dead when I went back there and I came
back and
told Mr. Frank the girl was dead and he said, "Sh-Sh!" He told me to
go back there by the cotton box, get a piece of cloth, put it around
her and
bring her up."
Dorsey: “Well, then what did
Frank say?”
Conley: Mr. Frank asked "Can you write?" and I said, "Yes,
sir, a little bit." ...Mr. Frank says, ‘I
can tell you the best way for us to get out of this. You write what I
tell you’ and
he taken [sic]
his pencil to fix up some notes. I was willing
to do anything to
help Mr. Frank because he was a white man and my superintendent,
and he sat
down and I sat down at the table and Mr. Frank dictated the notes to
me.
Whatever it was it didn't seem to suit him, and he told me to turn over
and
write- again, and I turned the paper and wrote again, and when I done
that he
told me to turn over again and I turned over again and I wrote on the
next page
there, and he looked at that and kind of liked it and he said that was
all
right."
[Conley claimed
that Frank gave him $200 to write the note and burn the body.
Conley then testified:]
"After awhile Mr. Frank looked at me and said,
"You go down there in the basement and you take a lot of trash and burn
that package that's in front of the
furnace," and I told him all right. But I was afraid to go down there
by
myself, and Mr. Frank wouldn't go down there with me.... And I said,
"Mr.
Frank, you are a white man and you done it, and I am not going down
there and
burn that myself." He looked at me then kind of frightened and he said,
"Let me see that money" and he took the money back and put it back in
his pocket, and I said, "Is this the way you do things?" and he said,
"You keep your mouth shut, that is all right." And Mr. Frank turned
around in his chair and looked at the money and he looked back at me
and folded
his hands and looked up and said "Why should I hang? I have wealthy
people
in Brooklyn," and he looked down when he said that, and I looked up at
him, and he was looking up at the ceiling, and I said, "Mr. Frank, what
about me?" and he said, "That's all right, don't you worry about this
thing, you just come back to work Monday like you don't know anything,
and keep
your mouth shut, if you get caught I will get you out on bond and send
you
away," and he said, "Can you come back this evening and do it?"
and I said "Yes, that I was coming to get my money." He said,
"Well, I am going home to get dinner and you come back here in about
forty
minutes and I will fix the
money," and I said, "How will I get in?" and he said,
"There will be a place for you to get in all right, but if you are not
coming
back let me know, and I will take those things and put them down with
the
body," and I said, "All right, I will be back in about forty
minutes.""
Cross-examination by Luther Rosser:
Rosser: “You can make out
some words in the newspaper, can’t you?”
Conley: “Yes, sir, little
words like ‘dis’ and ‘dat.’”
Rosser: “You can spell ‘dis’ and ‘dat,’
can’t you?”
Conley: “Yes,
sir.”
Rosser: “Can you spell ‘cat’?”
Conley: “Yes, sir, I can
spell that word.”
Rosser: “Well, how do you
spell it, with a ‘c’ or a ‘k’?”
Conley: “With a
‘k.’”
Rosser: “Why, sure you do.
Jim, you and I understand each other thoroughly, don’t we?”
Conley: “Yes, sir, we sho’ does, sir.”
Rosser: “When was the first
time you watched for him?”
Conley: “July."
Rosser: “Was a lady with
him?”
Conley: “Yes, Miss Daisy Hopkins.”
Rosser: “What time was it
they came that first time?”
Conley: “About
3:00 or 3:30 in the afternoon.”
Rosser: “What were you doing?”
Conley: “I was sweeping when
they came in but Mr. Frank called me to his office and asked me if I
wanted to make some money, and then he told me to watch the door for
him. I went down and watched, and pretty soon the other lady came with
Mr. Dalton. They came upstairs to Mr. Frank’s office, stayed there ten
or fifteen minutes. They came back down and went into the basement. I
don’t know how long they stayed [but] Mr. Dalton went out laughing and
the lady went up the steps. Then the ladies came down and left, and
then Mr. Frank came down. He gave me a quarter and I left.”
Rosser: “At police
headquarters, you told Black and Scott that you got up at 9:30 on the morning of the 26th, didn’t you?”
Conley: “Yes, sir.”
Rosser: “That wasn’t so, was
it?”
Conley: “No.”
Rosser: “You lied, didn’t
you?”
Conley: “Yes,
sir.”
Rosser: “You told them you
left home that morning about io:oo.
That wasn’t true, was it?”
Conley: “No,
sir.”
Rosser: “The truth is, you lied all the way ‘round?”
Conley: “I told some stories,
I’ll admit.”
Rosser: “Didn’t you tell
Black and Scott that you bought half a pint of whisky on Peters Street at
10:00?”
Conley: “No, sir. I told Mr. Black
about 10:30.”
Rosser: “Well, that was not
so, was it?”
Conley: “No,
sir.”
Rosser: “Didn’t you tell them
that after you bought some liquor at 11:00 you went to some other
saloon?”
Conley: “I don’t remember
saying anything about 11:00, but I told them I went to Earley’s Saloon.”
Rosser: “Well, didn’t you
tell them you went to the Butt-In Saloon after that?”
Conley: “Yes.”
Rosser: “Then you told some
things that were not true, did you?”
Conley: “Yes,
sir.”
Rosser: “Did you look them
straight in the face and lie?”
Conley: “No, sir. I hung my head.”
Rosser: “Didn’t you tell
Black and Scott some things that were true and some that were not?”
Conley: "Yes, sir...I didn’t
want to give Mr. Frank away [so) I held back some of the truth, but I
wanted to tell some and let him see what I was going to do and see if
he wasn’t going to stick to his promise as he had said.”
Rosser: “Oh, well, we’ll
get to that later on...”
Rosser: [Asking about his May
15 interview with detectives] “Did you look ‘em in the eye? Did you hang your head?...Jim,
what are some of your other lying habits?”
Conley: “Sometimes, I
played with my fingers.”
....
Rosser: “Jim, all these
lies—I won’t call them lies; I’ll call them stories—did you notice them
before you went to jail or afterwards?”
Conley: “I disremember.”
Rosser: “Jim, to whom did you
make your first change in your confession?”
Conley: “I disremember.”
Rosser: “You disremember a
whole lot, don’t you? You said
yesterday that Frank showed you that day how to unlock the door, didn’t
you?”
Conley: "Yes,
sir.”
Rosser: “Well, hadn’t he
showed you before?”
Conley: “Yes, on Thanksgiving
day.”
Rosser: “Well, why did he do
it again?”
Conley: “I don’t know.”
Rosser: “You say he told you
he was going to stamp on the floor and when you heard him whistle to
unlock the door and come upstairs?”
Conley: “Yes, sir, he told me
that after he told me to sit down on the box.”
Rosser: “He had told you
about these signals before, hadn’t he?”
Conley: “Yes,
sir, on Thanksgiving.”
Rosser: “Why did he repeat
it?”
Conley: “I don’t know,
sir....”
....
Rosser: "What did Frank say
[when Conley saw him holding the cord and trembling]?
Conley: “He asked me if I saw
that little girl come up here a while ago, and I told him yes, sir. I
saw two of them come up and I saw only one go out. He said, ‘Uh, huh.
That little girl that didn’t go out came up to the office. She went
back to the metal room to see about some work. I went back there with
her. I wanted to be with her and she refused me.'"
Rosser: “You got some burlap,
didn’t you?”
Conley: “Yes,
sir.”
Rosser: “How big
a piece?”
Conley: “Well it was longer
than me.”
Rosser: “How wide was
it—about two feet?”
Conley: “I don’t know, sir.”
Rosser: “Well, what do you
call two feet?”
Conley: “This is what I call
two feet [Conley lifts his two feet off the floor].”
Rosser: “Did you meet a man
named Mincey [who] said you promised to
take some insurance with him?”
Conley: “No,
sir.”
Rosser: “Didn’t you tell him
that you could not take any insurance—that you were in trouble?”
Conley: “No,
sir.”
Rosser: “Didn’t you say that
you had killed a girl and that you didn’t want to kill any more people?”
Conley: “No,
sir.”
Rosser: “Didn’t he say that
one a day would be 365 a year?”
Conley: “No,
sir.”
Re-direct examination by Hugh Dorsey
....
Dorsey: “Did
you ever see Mary Phagan’s pocketbook or
mesh bag?”
Conley: “Yes, it was on the
desk in Mr. Frank’s office when I went there to write the notes.”
Dorsey: “Describe it.”
Conley: “It was a wire-ish looking pocketbook like the ladies carry,
light-colored and had little chains on it for the ladies to hold to.”
Dorsey: “What did Frank do
with it?”
Conley: “He put it in the
safe.”
Re-cross examination by Rosser:
Rosser: “Why
didn’t you tell all of this [about Phagan's pocketbook]when you were
telling the whole truth to the detectives?”
Conley: “I don’t think they
asked me.”
Rosser: “When did you first
tell any detective about it?”
Conley: “I don’t remember.”
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