JOHN ASHLEY JONES, Sworn In For The Defendant, 120th To Testify

Reading Time: 3 minutes [521 words]

JOHN ASHLEY JONES, sworn for the defendant.

I have known Mr. Frank about a year or eighteen months.

His general character is good.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I am resident agent for the New York Life Insurance Company.

I don't know any of the girls at the pencil factory.

I have never heard any talk of Mr. Frank's practices and relations with the girls down there.

Mr. Frank has a policy of insurance with us.

It is our custom to seek a very thorough report on the moral hazard on all risks.

The report on him showed up first class, physically as well as morally.

I went to him in January, 1912, and tried to write him additional insurance, and on April 8th I went to the factory to take his application, where I met him and his wife.

After a thorough examination of him by our physician and a very satisfactory report, covering his moral reputation, we issued him a standard policy.

I have never heard of Mr. Frank going out to Druid Hills and being caught there, but it was the business of our inspector to find out that and he certainly would not have issued such a policy if he had found it out.

Two or three of us in the office signed a long letter to the Grand Jury in the interest of justice.

Mr. Robert L. Cooney, Mr. Hollingsworth, Mr. Clark and myself signed it.

We decided this was a matter of persecution.

I think Mr. Cooney started it.

No, I have never heard of Mr. Frank's kissing girls and playing with their nipples on their breasts.

I have never known Mr. Blackstock.

I never heard that Mr. Frank would walk into the dressing room when the girls were dressing, nor that he tried to put his arms around Miss Myrtis Cato and tried to shut the door on her, or going in the dressing room with Lula Mc Donald and Rachael Prater, nor that Mrs. Pearl Darlson about five years ago threw a monkey wrench at him when he put his hand on her and held money in one hand.

I have never seen any nude pictures hanging in his office, although I have been there a number of times.

I have never heard that he smiled and winked at young girls.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION.

This is the letter I wrote to the Grand Jury:

Mr. W. D. Beatty, Atlanta, Ga.

My Dear Sir:

Without having the slightest intention of interfering in any way in matters which do not concern me, I believe that the interest which any good citizen has in impartial justice warrants my saying that the business men to whom I have talked, commend very strongly the attitude of the Grand Jury in its disposition to at least investigate the merits of the situation as regards the negro Conley in the present matter which has interested the city of Atlanta so much that it is not necessary to describe it, and I sincerely hope that the Grand Jury will go into the matter exhaustively, knowing from the character of several of its members with whom I am acquainted that, to the best of their ability, the right thing will be done.