Thursday, 5th March 1914: Leo M. Frank Begs Detectives To Open Minds To The Truth, The Atlanta Journal

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Convicted Man in Tower Gives Out New Statement and Hits at City

Detective John Black

"TELL TRUTH WHILE YOU CAN DO SO WITH HONOR"

Stiles Hopkins Tells How Affidavit was Secured From Epps-Boy Sticks to Sworn Story Regardless of Father

Following the Epps affidavit and the replies to it of the detectives.

Leo M. Frank, from his cell in the tower, urges the inhabitants of the "castle on Decatur Street" to open their hearts to the truth, which is on the onward march and to do right, while they can, with honor.

Anent the statement of Detective John Black in reply to the Epps affidavit, Frank says:

When you shoot at a target and hit the bull's eye, the bell rings.

There is pretty good evidence that there is some truth in the Epps affidavit from the notice they are raising at police headquarters.

When a man is in a tight place, and his position has been wrong and is attacked, instead of doing what the truth would enable him to do, producing facts and arguments, he turns in desperation to physical violence and wants to smash someone in the face with his fist.

Detective Black has offered to whip the man who accuses him at any misconduct in the case.

"TRUTH ON THE MARCH."

Frank was apparently gratified by the developments of the past few days.

This is what he said to reporters:

I again say that truth is on the march and a part of it is already here.

And in that castle on Decatur Street they are beginning to feel the denouements that have come and that the future may hold in store.

Truth is coming like a dawning day, and the first pink signs of it can be seen in the east.

The rays of the truth are being concentrated on Decatur Street.

The officers of the law, in view of recent developments should take cognizance of their consciences and do right while they yet can with honor.

I don't think that Black is a man inherently wrong, and I ask him and his colleagues to do right while they can.

Attorney Reuben R. Arnold, of the defense, refrained from commenting Thursday upon the developments in the case, but Stiles Hopkins, a well-known attorney with the law firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton & Phillips, gave out a statement, telling how the affidavit was secured from little George Epps.

HOPKINS STATEMENT.

Mr. Hopkins went to the reformatory with J. Cleveland Cooper, clerk of the superior court of Baldwin County, and presented a letter of introduction to J. E. Lovvron, warden of the reformatory.

He already had the affidavit prepared in accordance with the statement of Epps to one of the agents of the defense.

The warden called Epps into the room and before Mr. Hopkins spoke to the boy, asked him if he had testified at the trial of Frank.

Epps replied that he had, and that he had told falsehoods.

The boy expressed his own desire to correct his false statements, the warden telling him that he was not forced to make any statement that he did not desire to make.

Mr. Hopkins states that he then gave the affidavit into Epps' hands, and asked him to follow while he (Hopkins) read from a typewritten copy, with Clerk Cooper looking over his shoulder.

BOY SIGNS AFFIDAVIT.

Mr. Hopkins says that he purposely made several mistakes in reading, and that each time Epps corrected him, showing that he was listening carefully to the statement, which subsequently he swore was the truth.

After he had sworn to the paper the boy remarked that he felt better, according to Mr. Hopkins.

Despite the statement of his father and the statement of detectives, Epps on Thursday stood by the story told (Continued on PAGE 2, COLUMN 1.)

PAGE 2, COLUMN 1

LEO M.

FRANK BEGS DETECTIVES TO OPEN MINDS TO THE TRUTH (Continued from Page One.)

In the affidavit, according to the following special dispatch from The Journal's correspondent:

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga., March 5.

George Epps, inmate of the state reformatory, in an interview this morning with The Journal's correspondent, corroborates the statement published in yesterday's Journal and declares it is correct in every essential particular.

He avers that his original story told at the Frank trial was concocted by an Atlanta detective named Black, and that he was assured no harm would come to him for swearing to the statement, and furthermore, he says, he was promised money out of the case if he stuck to this story.

He declares that he made no statement to anybody until this story by Black was planned for him, and that he told his father the story because he knew he had to stick to one statement throughout the trial in order to obtain the promised reward, and when it was not forthcoming nor any aid extended him when he got in other trouble, he decided to make a clean breast of the affair, and consequently gave out the story which tallies in most details with his published statement yesterday.

DEATH SENTENCE SATURDAY.

Strict secrecy is being maintained by Judge Ben H. Hill's order as to the time that he has instructed court attaches to bring Frank before him to hear the re-pronouncement of the death sentence.

However, it is generally believed that Frank will not be resentenced until Saturday.

Rumors are persistent that additional affidavits from state's witnesses are in the hands of the defense.

An affidavit from one of the witnesses used by the state in the attempt to break Frank's time alibi is said to repudiate statements by the witness on the stand, and the defense is momentarily expected to make public this affidavit.

Apparently little attention is being paid either by the defense or the state's authorities to the report from La Grange that Ed Ross, colored, tells a story to the effect that Jim Conly on the afternoon of the Phagan murder came to his (Ross') boarding house and washed blood from his hands, telling Ross that he had been in some trouble at the factory.

Further developments in the case are expected when Luther Z. Rosser, senior counsel, and Attorney Herbert J. Haas, of the Frank defense, return to this city from New York on Friday.

Despite the reported denial by Mr. Rosser, the rumor is persistent that the attorney made the trip to consult William S. Obsorne, the handwriting expert, who was employed in the case by Solicitor Dorsey, but whose testimony as not introduced at the trial.

EPPS' STATEMENT.

A denunciation of the new story of George W. Epps, Jr., as false by the boy's own father; by the solicitor general and by Chief Newport Lanford and Detective John Black, forms a late development in the Frank case.

A telegram from the Georgia chamber of commerce to the New York Times, characterizing as absurd statements attributed to Luther Z. Rosser, chief counsel for Frank, was also made public Wednesday night.

George W. Epps, night superintendent of the Candler annex building, and father of the newsboy, who in an affidavit made public by the defense Wednesday repudiated parts of his testimony against Frank and made sensational charges against the detectives and the solicitor, declares that his son, in the affidavit is lying.

He asserts that the boy told him almost immediately after the murder of Mary Phagan, the same story, which he told on the witness stand.

Yet in the affidavit the boy declared the story was "framed for him" by Detective Black.

"George told the story to his mother and myself two days before he ever saw Detective Black," Mr. Epps declares.

The affidavit states, in substances, that the parents of the newsboy didn't know that he was a witness in the case until he appeared before the coroner's inquest, and that he was whipped by his father for testifying.

DIDN'T WHIP SON.

Mr. Epps declares that this is palpably false, as he has not whipped his son in several years.

Mr. Epps says that the whole of George's testimony at the trial was known to him just a short time after the murder, and before the boy saw the detectives.

Chief of Detectives Lanford declares that the new sensation is simply "another one of the defense's false affidavits."

"The truth will stand," says Chief Lanford, "regardless of these false attacks upon it.

If I had a shadow of a doubt of Frank's guilt I would proclaim it to the world in box car type.

But I haven't, and I am sure the only effect of these false affidavits will be to land someone in the chaingang."

Chief Lanford calls attention to the statement of the Epps affidavit in which the former newsboy, who is now at the state farm at Milledgeville, says that Detective Black told him that he must make his story fit with Jim Conley's.

At the time that George's testimony was first put on record at the coroner's inquest Conley had not even been arrested, Chief Lanford points out, and did not admit any connection with the case until some-time later.

WHAT DORSEY SAYS.

Solicitor Dorsey emphatically denies the portion of Epps' affidavit referring to him, in which the boy asserts that the solicitor encouraged him to make false statements.

Detective John Black is highly indignant as a result of the charges hurled against himself and the other detectives, and he declares that he has suffered long enough and is ready to resent personally and physically the charges of crookedness, if he can find the man who really makes them.

"I did as much work, if not more than any detective at police headquarters on the Phagan case," Black says, "and there is not a man on earth who can truthfully say that I turned a finger to any crookedness.

I defy any man to accuse me of crookedness.

I simply did my duty, and will continue to do it.

One phase of my duty, I consider, is to whip any man who charges me with being a crook, and believe me, I will do it."

Specifically, as to the Epps affidavit, Black declares that it is "undiluted bunk."

The charges against himself, which are made in it, he characterized as lies.

He points specifically to the paragraph saying that he found Epps in the vicinity of the boy's home, and declares as a matter of fact that the lad was brought to headquarters by the slain girl's step-father, J. W. Coleman, and made his first statement in the presence of a number of people.

ROSSER RIDICULED.

The Georgia chamber of commerce has taken exception to the purported interview with Luther Z. Rosser, which was published in New York papers.

The following telegram has been sent the New York Times:

"We understand interviews given your paper March 4 by Attorney Luther Z. Rosser, of Atlanta, chief counsel for Leo M. Frank, stated 'You see, the Jewish population of Atlanta is not large.

Frank came to Atlanta a stranger and engaged in a new enterprise. He knew few people who were not of his own religion, being closely occupied with his business, and this fact rather counted against him at the time.

There was the prejudice to be found in the south of the employee class against the employer and some local prejudice against a stranger.'"

"Without expressing any opinion on the merits of the Frank case, this organization can only account for Attorney Rosser's misstatements concerning (1) the alleged anti-Jewish feeling in Georgia, and (2) that there is any prejudice to be found in this state of the employee class against the employer, and (3) that there is any local prejudice against a stranger on account of his zeal for his client."

"Atlanta's Jewish population has gained over 100 per cent during past ten years and they number among our most respected and best citizens."

"Atlanta and the whole state of Georgia not only have no prejudice against a stranger, but we cordially invite manufacturers and investors, farmers and the better class of immigrants to make their homes and engage in business among us.

The statement of Attorney Rosser concerning 'some local prejudice against a stranger' is doubly absurd when it is known that the heads of our public service corporation, many of the banks and largest business houses and manufacturing concerns came to Atlanta from New England, the north and the middle west."

"In the name of fairness to Atlanta and the entire state of Georgia, this statewide organization requests your publication of this telegram in your issue of Thursday morning."

"GEORGIA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.

"CHARLES D. M'KINNEY,"

"Acting Secretary-Manager."

BOY RAN AWAY.

The record of the children's court shows that George W. Epps, Jr.; aged fifteen years, of 246 Fox street, was first brought to the detention home on June 9, 1912, because he would continually run away from home.

He was released after a lecture, but appeared again on December 22, 1913, charged with larceny after trust, in that he had collected various small sums for a messenger service and converted the money to his own use.

On this charge and because of general waywardness he was committed, in December, to the Georgia state reformatory, where he now is a prisoner.