MURDER OF A FACTORY GIRL

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2546, 21 August 1915, Page 6

MURDER OF A FACTORY GIRL

THE MURDERER LYNCHED By Telegraph—Press Associatioa-CopyrisSt ("Times" and Sydney "Sun" Services.) New York, August 19. Leo M. Frank, a wealthy resident of Georgia, who was sentenced to death for the murder of a factory girl named Martha Phagan, but whose sentence was commuted to one of life imprisonment, was removed from tho gaol by a band of masked men, taken in a motor-ear to Marietta, and hanged, tho body being afterwards maltreated. Intense national feeling is developing against tho lynchers. Mrs. Frank is prostrated. She nursed .her husband ill the gaol "hospital, where a fellow-prisoner ' attempted to cut Frank's throat.

[Leo M. Frank's death sentence for the murder of Martha Phagan in the National .Pencil Factory, Atlanta, in April, 1913, was commuted to life imprisonment in June last by Governor .Tohn.M. Slaton. The Governor's decision was announced barely more than twentv-four hours before the time set for Frank's execution and after he had beeu taken sccrctly from the Fulton County Gaol to tho State prison farm at Milledgeville. There was excitement among the crowds on the streets in' Atlanta after the Governor's action became known, and a mass meeting was held, several speakers taking exception to Governor Slaton's action. Two hearings were held on Frank's application for Executive clemency, one before the State Prison 'Commission on May 31, and the other before the Governor. Petitions bearing hundreds of thousands •of names from various State Legislatures, societies, and committees, and thousands of individual letters, urging clemency for Frank were presented to the Commission. The Commission recommended against clemency. Frank's counsel, prior to the clemency appeal, had made seven unsuccessful attempts before the County Superior and State Supreme Courts to obtain <i_ new trial, or to have the verdict set aside. Four times the sentence of death was passed upon him.]