Stew Peters’ Interview with Mary Phagan-Kean: The 1913 Leo Frank Case RevisitedOn March 11, 2025, Stew Peters interviewed 70-year-old Mary Phagan-Kean on his network, delving into the 1913 murder of her great-aunt, 13-year-old Mary Phagan, and the trial of Leo Frank, a case that remains a lightning rod for debates on justice and prejudice. Phagan-Kean recounts the events of April 26, 1913, when Mary Phagan visited the National Pencil Company in Atlanta to collect her wages and was found the next day in the factory basement, raped and strangled. The interview focuses on Frank, the Jewish superintendent convicted of the crime, exploring the trial’s evidence and its lasting impact. Phagan-Kean details the prosecution’s case, led by Hugh Dorsey, which presented forensic evidence—blood and hair in the factory’s machine room—and relied on Jim Conley’s testimony, a janitor who claimed Frank confessed to the murder and forced him to help move the body. She emphasizes the trial’s thoroughness, documented in the Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, which withstood appeals up to the U.S. Supreme Court, affirming Frank’s guilt. Phagan-Kean challenges the defense’s argument, led by Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold, that antisemitism drove Frank’s conviction, pointing to the testimony of numerous witnesses, including factory workers who reported Frank’s inappropriate advances toward young girls. She criticizes the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), founded in 1913 to defend Frank, for promoting a narrative of his innocence that she believes contradicts the evidence
