PBS is showing the People v. Leo Frank tonight, check your local time.
This is the case of little Mary Phagan, who worked in a pencil factory, (like thousands and thousands of little poor girls and boys), and went to collect her check ($1.20) for the whole week she worked, and was raped & murdered in Georgia. In this case Leo Max Frank was lynched for the crime, he being the only known jew to be lynched in our history.
Early in this case it was thought that she was drugged, and lured to her death by three young men, a possible gang rape, never proven. She was horribly beaten, and had a blow to her head, and rope marks on her neck. She was found in the basement of the boiler room (likely they, were going to burn her, so no one would find out). As it was, Will Newton Lee, was the night watchman who found her body, he was arrested on suspicion. The grand jury came out and indicited James "Jim" Conley, another black man, who on his death bed, said it was Leo Max Frank.
This case is not so much about Mary Phagan as it is about Leo Frank. I am just considering the time frame Mary lived in. And 90 years later, the victims of rape and murder, often are accused of suggestive behaviors, as though it was their fault because they used red lipstick, and rouge, danced the Turkey Trott, and wore dresses that exposed their body, meaning they cause the men to lust after them, henced were raped.
The women of Georgia actually created a Mary Phagan Investigative Fund to find the criminals, like us today, they knew it could be their daughter next.
The case is horrible all the way around, from the Pinkerton's, to Scotland yard, to the pencil factory, to the local politicians, and jail officials, and all the corruption and bribes.
I don't know that any DNA has been done in the 90 years that has passed, but I'll tune in to watch it tonight.
-- Edited by Building 4112 on Monday 2nd of November 2009 12:43:00 PM
Thanks for this info. It is bad and outrageous enough when a grown woman is accused of causing her own rape by dressing too attractively or seductively. But to accuse a child is beyond atrocious.
The act of rape is basically an act of violence. It can't be justified by blaming the victim of the crime.
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It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less. ~Susan B. Anthony
