1259 Sheet – Supreme Court Georgia Appeals of Leo Frank, 1913, 1914

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night was the time they chose to talk to me, but even at such an outlandish hour I was still willing to help them, and at the investigation I spoke to Newt Lee alone, but what was the result? They commenced and they grilled that poor negro and put words into his mouth that I never said, and twisted not alone the English, but distorted my meaning. I just decided then and there that if that was the line of conduct they were going to pursue I would wash my hands of them. I didn't want to have anything to do with them. On the afternoon of May 1st, I was taken to the Fulton County Tower. On May 3rd detectives Black and Scott came up to my cell in the tower and wanted to speak to me alone without any of my friends around. I said all right, I wanted to hear what they had to say at that time. Then Black tore off something like this: "Mr. Frank, we are suspicions of that man Darley. We are watching him; we have been shadowing him." Now open up and tell us what you know about him." I said: "Gentlemen, you have come to the wrong man, because Mr. Darley is the soul of honor and is as true as steel. He would not do a crime like that, he couldn't do it." And Black chirped up: "Come on, Scott, nothing doing," and off they go. That showed me how much reliance could be placed in either the city detectives or our own Pinkerton detectives, and I treated such conduct with silence and it was for this reason, gentlemen, that I didn't see Conley, surrounded with a bevy of city detectives and Mr. Scott, because I knew that there would not be an-action so trifling, that there was not an action so natural but that they would distort and twist it to be used against me, and that there was not a word that I could utter that they would not deform and twist and distort to be used against me, but I told them through my friend Mr. Klein, that if they got the permission of Mr. Rosser to come, I would speak to them, would speak to Conley and face him or anything they wanted—if they got that permission of Mr. Rosser. Mr. Rosser was on that day up at Tallulah Falls trying a case. Now, that is the reason, gentlemen, that I have kept my silence, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't want to have things twisted.

Then that other implication, the one of knowing that Conley could write, and I didn't tell the authorities.

Let's look into that. On May 1st I was taken to the tower. On the same date, as I understand it, the negro Conley was arrested. I didn't know anybody had any suspicions about him. His name was not in the papers. He was an unknown quantity. The police were not looking for him; they were looking out for me. They didn't want him, and I had no inkling that he ever said he couldn't write. I was sitting in that cell in the Fulton County jail—it was along about April 12th, April 13th or 14th—that Mr. Leo Gott-heimer, a salesman for the National Pencil Company, came running over, and says "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"