406 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

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374 X¥. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

Mr. Dorsey: Rogers said he never did look at that body.

Mr. Arnold: I insist that isn’t the evidence. Rogers said he didn't know and couldn't answer whether he saw it or not, and Black said the same thing.

I’m not going to quibble with you. The truth is, and you know it, that when that man Frank went down there to look at that body of that poor girl, to identify her, he never went into that room. And if he did look at her long enough to identify her, neither John Black nor Rogers nor Gheesling knew it. I tell you, gentlemen of the jury, that the truth of this thing is that Frank never looked at the body of that poor girl, but if he did, it was just a glance, as the electric light was flashed on and he immediately turned and went into another room.

Mr. Rosser: There isn’t a bit of proof that he went into another room. I object again, sir, there isn’t a particle of proof of that.

If that man Frank ever looked at that girl’s face—I challenge them to produce the record to show it—it was so brief that if she was dirty and begrimed and her hair was bloody and her features contorted, I tell you that, if he didn’t know her any better than he would have you believe he knew her, he never could have identified her as Mary Phagan. Never could. And I say to you, gentlemen of the jury, that the reason why this man revisited that morgue on Sunday afternoon, after he had failed to mention the subject of death in the bosom of his family at the dining table, when he tells you that it tore him all to pieces, there was but one reason for revisiting that morgue, and that was to put his ear to the ground and see if at that hour there was any whisper or suggestion that Leo M. Frank, the guilty man, had committed the dastardly deed.

Black didn’t see him, Rogers didn’t see him, Gheesling didn’t see him. One of the earliest to arrive, the superintendent of the factory (Rogers said he had his eye on him), he turned and stepped aside, and he himself said that the sight tore him all to pieces, and he seeks to have you believe that that automobile ride and the sight of that poor girl’s features...

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