Nov. 2, 2025 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
54:24
Radio Show Hour 1 – 2025/11/01
Mary Phagan-Kean makes her debut appearance on TPC to discuss the 1913 murder of 13-year-old Little Mary Phagan. Phagan-Kean, the grandniece of the victim and her namesake, walks through the trial evidence, appeals history, posthumous pardon, and the current legal maneuvers. She also previews key chapters from her comprehensive new book, The Murder of Little Mary Phagan. Don’t miss this rigorous discussion filled with audience-friendly explanations of the facts in this historic case.
You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the political cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, going across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight's live broadcast.
I'm James Edwards.
It is Saturday evening, November the 1st.
What has happened to this year?
Thanksgiving right around the corner and Christmas fast on its heels.
And we're all excited and looking forward to that.
What a fun couple of months we'll have here to close out our annual broadcast calendar.
And it begins right now with a guest making her debut appearance on the broadcast, Mary Fagan Keene.
I am very excited to bring this story to you.
Well, who hasn't heard the story of Little Mary Fagan and her death and the conviction of Leo Frank, which led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League?
This is a fascinating case, really one of the most historic trials in American history.
And again, our guest right now to take us behind the scenes is Mary Fagan Keene, the grand niece of the victim and her namesake.
And she's going to walk us through over the course of this hour some of the trial evidence, the appeals history, the posthumous pardon, and the current legal maneuvers.
Yes, even still to this day, there are legal concerns associated with this case.
She's also going to be previewing some key chapters from her comprehensive new book, The Murder of Little Mary Fagan.
And so I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy a rigorous discussion and audience-friendly explanations of the facts of this case.
Mary Fagan Keene, it is my honor to welcome you.
How are you tonight?
I am doing great, and it's an honor to be here tonight.
Thank you so much.
Well, you're very welcome, and I want to get right to it and cede the floor to you because there is so much to get into.
And you and I had worked a week or two ago on a print interview that'll be published soon.
But let's just start there at the beginning.
Tell us about your grandniece, Little Mary Fagan, and the events of April 26, 1913.
Little Mary Fagan was going to the National Pencil Company on Confederate Memorial Day, April the 26th, to pick up her paycheck for $1.20.
When she did not come home, my parents, my great-grandparents, Fannie Fagan-Coleman, and her stepfather, Mr. Coleman, I'm sorry.
Fanny Fagan-Coleman was her mother.
Mr. Coleman was her stepfather's last name, found that they couldn't find her.
So they went searching for her and she never found her.
And they found her body in the basement about 3 o'clock in the pencil factory.
Newtley, the night watchman, called it in to the detectives to report it.
They came and then they took over.
And then that was it.
She was brutally raped.
She was murdered, strangled to death.
And there's been controversy ever since her body was found.
There were two notes by there.
There was all kinds of things.
This case for the last 112 years just amazes me which direction you can take in it.
It depends on which side of the story do you want to go.
And so in 1988, I wrote my first book, The Murder of Little Mary Fagan.
So that has maybe about 200, 300 pages, because at that time it was just going over the recent happenings with that, with the Alonzo Mann hoax that came out in 1982, which led to the posthumous pardon in 1986 of Leo Frank.
So for the last 40 years or whatever, how long?
I guess I always say 57 years because I started at age 13 when I found out about the case, which is ironic.
She was murdered at 18.
Yes.
I had no idea.
I'm a military frat, so please forgive me if I say yes or no, sir.
That's just my way I was raised.
Even though I'm 71, I still do it.
I was brought up that way.
My brothers and sisters do the same thing.
So daddy was in the Air Force and we were at Charleston Air Force Base and my eighth grade science teacher, Mr. Henry, lined us all up back in my day and he had to check us off.
You know, he wanted to look at her, you know, but he didn't really look at you.
He just kind of just let you march through the line.
And when I was going through the line and I said, Mary Fagan, and he stalled, looked at me, put his pen back down, looked at me, pointed with his finger and pen and said, you know, pointing to my name, there was a little girl that was murdered in Atlanta in 1920s that has this name.
Are you by chance related to her?
And I said, no, sir.
I didn't know.
So I said, no, sir.
And that was a horrible day for me because that's when the boys started teasing me, telling me I was dead, and I was reincarnated.
And I was just very emotionally distraught about that.
And you've got to remember I'm 13.
You know, I still get triggered when I talk about it just because it was such a horrible experience telling me I was dead all the time.
Got home.
Dad had to be home.
He was home from a trip.
And I said, Mr. Henry said there was a little girl with my name that was murdered in Atlanta in the 1920s.
And he asked me if I was related and I told him I didn't know.
And he stood, looked at me, had tears in his eyes, turned white as white.
And he says, when you go back tomorrow to school, I want you to tell Mr. Henry that yes, you are related to little Mary Fagan.
You are her great niece and you are the namesake of her.
She was murdered in 1913 on April 26 by Leo Frank.
He was convicted and then he was lynched in 1915.
And that's all he told me.
I'm 13.
I don't understand a lot of things going on like the kids do today.
You know what I'm saying?
We just didn't have that kind of upbringing.
And I said, okay, that was fine.
Nothing happened.
One ear went out the other.
Oh, yes, I'll never be asked that question again.
Well, not true.
I've been asked that question all my life.
Even to this day, I still get asked that question.
Are you by chance related to her?
And as you mentioned to me, and as you mentioned on your website, this has really become a great deal of your life's work.
And this case, I mean, while any such horrific rape and murder would have been notable, I don't know if that's the right word, but you know what I mean.
But this one has certainly just absolutely shaken the entire fabric of America.
As you mentioned, this case, and by the way, I must say, of 21 years on the radio, I have never seen anyone come in so prepared.
I've looked at some of the content you've posted about your appearance tonight, and it's just unbelievable.
But as you write, the case of Mary Fagan and the trial of Leo Frank have shaped American conversations about anti-Semitism, anti-Gentilism, law, media control, partisan academic schools of thought, educational cliques, community memory, and Jewish public diplomacy for more than a century.
In this hour that we're having right now, we are, of course, going to get to, again, the facts of this case.
But I think what made this case something that still to this day people hear about is because Leo Frank was tried and convicted and then, as you mentioned, later lynched.
And that following this conviction, the plans to establish the Anti-Defamation League gained urgency in this very nefarious organization was born in this blood, so to speak.
So again, in your own words, how did Leo Frank make this something that we are still talking about well over 100 years later?
I don't think it's Leo Frank.
I think it's the anti-defamation league of the nade brick.
Actually, it started when he was convicted.
His rabbi, Marks, went to New York and got with Aldolf Ox, the New York Times editor, and told him that he was convicted because of anti-Semitism.
And that's how it started.
Now, this is after the trial.
So he was already convicted.
So he goes there.
Well, Aldolf Ox contacts the Chicago philanthropist, Alfred Rasker, who has lots of lots of money, money, money.
And he tied in with him, Aldolf Hawks, and provided all the funding to claim that it was anti-Semitism that he was convicted.
That's how he was convicted was because of anti-Semitism.
There was no anti-Semitism at the trial.
I will tell you that is one of the hoaxes I have that I just I debated in the book and I share with you all that there was no such evidence that there was ever thing like mobs or crowds or people hanging out on the rooftops shouting, hang the Jew or we'll hang you.
They did not do that.
And that was verified also.
My family verified that a long time.
People don't recognize or realize that my great-grandmother, Fannie Fagan-Coleman, the step-grandfather, Mr. Coleman, and my great-aunt Ollie, Mary's sister, and Mary's brother, my grandfather was Joshua.
And Uncle Ben did not attend the trial, but they attended the trial every day.
Somebody from the Fagan family was at the trial every day, and especially my great-grandmother.
She was there the whole time.
So, you know, we live it through them.
My dad lived it through his grandmother because she would tell him about it.
And so he told me about it.
I had an oral history that was just so different than the books that my daddy gave me when I turned 15.
Because when I turned 15, we moved to Atlanta.
Went to Shamrock High School and had six teachers.
And all six teachers asked me that question.
Are you related to Little Mary Fagan by chance?
And I would say, yes, I am.
Well, my inquisitive mind that I was given a gift with, I thought, hmm, there's more to this than what my daddy told me.
How come they all know about it?
So that was my, I went back to him and I said, Daddy, every one of my teachers asked me if I was related.
And I told him that proudly I was the great niece namesake.
And he said, well, this is time for you now to go and research.
You're old enough where you can understand a lot of things, but you're correct.
There is more to the story.
So he told me a little bit more about the story.
What really convicted Leo Frank was not anti-Semitism.
It was his sexual perversion.
And my daddy called him a sexual pervert.
I'm 15.
I don't know what a sexual pervert is.
So he made me go get the dictionary and look it up.
And when I looked it up, I was just horrified.
I said, he did bad things to Little Mary.
He said, yes, he did.
And today, of course, we say we use the word pedophile.
So Leo Frank is the first Jewish pedophile that was convicted in this country.
If I could, ma'am, just interject here because I want to amplify what you said just a moment ago, if we could just briefly circle back, because this was something that came in from a listener in advance of your appearance today when we began to promote your appearance this evening.
And I thought that it was a fascinating comment.
This is what he wrote to me in an email, and he asked if I could share it with you for your response.
And he wrote that there is absolutely no proof or contemporary reporting of any anti-Semitism in the trial.
There were no mobs outside the courtroom screaming, kill the Jew.
The Jewish community in Atlanta was long established, very successful and highly regarded.
After Frank's trial and even after his lynching, the Jews in Atlanta continued to thrive.
So there wasn't any sort of residual anti-Semitism.
And then he goes on to write this, that, and tell me if this is true, because this is something I had not heard before.
Frank was convicted of murder, as we know, and lost every appeal, including up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
He had the best legal defense team money could buy.
And this is the thing that really is the kicker.
The Frank team he writes hired one of Pinkerton's top detectives, but after reviewing the evidence, he went to work for the prosecution.
Yes, that's all true.
Very true.
That's what I'm saying.
There's just so many parts of this case.
You know, I've really have enjoyed doing these podcasts because everyone goes in a different direction.
And, you know, eventually I'll get the whole book done.
You know what I'm saying?
But yes, he's very absolutely accurate.
There was no, let me tell you about, let's see, let's do the anti-Semitism.
There were two incidents during the trial that it may have been brought up, but it was not outright anti-Semitism.
It was Leo Frank's mother that jumped up in court when Solicitor Dorsey was examining or cross-examining.
That's what he was doing.
He called him cross-examination.
And she jumped up and yelled out, and neither did you, you Gentile dog.
That's the first time the part, if people want to say anti-Semitism, but it wasn't.
It was just a comment.
She was kicked out of the courtroom at that time.
The second time it came up was the last day of the trial by the defense attorneys.
They tried to say that George Kinley, a conductor on the trolley, said to people that if he was on the trial, he would damn well kill that Jew and lynch him.
That's how the trial ended on that last day with his event.
Let me say something about the defense attorneys.
They were the best and brightest that Georgia had at that time.
They were paid $15,000 and $25,000 for Frank's representation.
Their defense, I think when I read the information as they even I got older, I discovered that their defense, they had no defense.
Their defense was that Jim Conley was the guilty person.
It was white privilege.
And you talk about racism, let's talk about what they did to the black people or colored people, which they call, they didn't call them black back then.
They call them colored and or Negro in the South.
That's what we call them.
So that just shows you they call Jim Conley all kinds of names and other people that were of color, you filthy lion drinking the N-word, and I'm not going to say the N-word because I just can't do it.
But they did that in court, and it has been recorded in court that they said those words.
The issue that we have with this case, and which is very disturbing, is that in 1965, two people went to Atlanta, came to Atlanta, and decided they were going to do a book about the case.
And I'm calling it the Mary Fagan case because that's what it used to be called in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and partial 90s.
And now it's reverted to the Leo Frank case.
Well, I'm taking it back now, and I'm calling it the Mary Fagan case, murdered by Leo Frank.
So that's how I'm doing it now.
But they came, one of them was Leonard Dennerstein, a professor from Arizona, and the other one was Harry Golden.
You may have heard of his book, A Little Girl is Dead.
Both are the same religious faith as Leo Frank.
So that gives you a tip off right there.
They have no, they have a bias.
He's definitely innocent.
They haven't even looked at the information.
When they came out of there and did all the research, they had groups of people coming to the research.
The original trial transcript was missing or it was either destroyed.
There is no trial transcript.
In my opinion, for anybody that does a book in the future, they cannot just go back to all these books that have written in the past 20, 30 years because they all say the same thing.
They just parrot everybody.
You must go back to the 1913 original Atlanta Journal, Atlanta Georgian, and Atlanta Constitution newspaper articles as they have the questions and you can see.
And then you can decide on your own what do you think about the Mary Fagan case?
Most people that I do that with will come back to me and say, You are so right.
He was guilty as sin.
Well, you know, let's go right there to that then.
And because again, I think we assume, and I think probably quite rightly, that most people are somewhat familiar with this case and the facts pertaining to it.
But let's just go into that case timeline, as you mentioned it, step by step, and what the records, the original records, actually contain pertaining to what happened with her.
What did the evidence prove?
Not what the ADL said, not all of the politicking about this 100 years later.
What were the actual facts of the case?
What was the evidence that led them to this conviction?
Most of the evidence was the sexual perversion.
And they never bring up that 20 people testified between the grand jury and the trial about his levitious behavior towards little girls.
And there were a couple boys that testified as well.
So it just wasn't girls, I should say.
That was the evidence.
There was no evidence that the defense did.
They didn't have any evidence.
Jim Conley did it, was their evidence.
And that no white man would ever murder a little girl.
It's the work of a Negro.
So this was to what you're talking about, if you'll pardon this interruption, this was the Jewish.
This was the, I guess, the defense of Leo Frank and his associates that they tried to frame at least one, I believe it was two black workers for the murdered even went so far as to plant evidence in their homes.
Yes, that is accurate.
Newt Lee, which was the night watchman who found Mary's body, he was framed by Leo Frank.
They went through when the detectives came at 3 o'clock in the morning.
They called Leo Frank and they came in and they went through his timesheet that they have.
And it was a punch system back then in 1913.
And Leo Frank said, yes, this looks very accurate.
Well, the next day, Leo Frank came in with a different time sheet where it allows Newt Lee to murder little Mary Fagan.
That was planted evidence.
They also planted a shirt.
They also planted evidence for Jim Conley, which is the second person of color that he tried.
But Jim Connolly later admitted that he helped Leo Frank and he was part of an accessory.
And he did serve prison time for that as well.
And that's when it all kind of broke loose.
The other, he did a white man, too, which most people don't know about.
His name was John Gant, G-N-A-T-T, if I'm not correct.
And he was a personal friend of the Fagan family, and he did watch over Little Mary for my family because he was part of the community and he knew her very well and the family very well.
And he actually went to prison as well for Leo Frank, who said he did not know Mary Fagan, but he impressed upon the detectives that John Gant was very close to her.
So are you what that doesn't make any sense?
But nobody prints that, Mr. Edwards.
Nobody tells you all this stuff.
What was the evidence?
It's all one-sided.
Well, indeed.
Certainly, what's the old phrase a lie can make its way around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
But what was the actual evidence that they used to get a stone-cold conviction?
A stone-cold conviction was Leo Frank's statement.
He gave a statement and he talked about how he did all his paperwork.
And he never, you know, he was not questioned because he chose not to be.
So that kind of makes you think, why doesn't he want to be questioned?
Whereas Jim Conley, the person of color that was his accessory, went under, I mean, horrendous, horrendous cross-examining by Luther Rosser.
I mean, yeah, Luther Rosser and Ruben Arnold.
And he lasted over 16 hours.
And that's when the entire state of Georgia, when they couldn't break him, believed that Jim Conley told the truth and that Leo Frank was the one that murdered Lil Mary and sexually abused her.
So that was interesting.
You know, that he just didn't do that.
He said, no, I'm not going to do that.
But he just gave a statement.
So you really, you know, a statement to what?
And he alluded to in his statement that he may have gone to the bathroom.
And that was the opening for Dorsey to say, you were there.
You left when the time Mary came.
You took her to the basement.
You came and murdered her.
You came back up late.
And learned later, you guys moved the body and all that kind of stuff when I think it was Magnolia McKnight that came in and said that she had been there and Leo Frank wasn't in the office.
And he said he never left.
In any event, in any event, he was convicted by a jury of this crime.
And so I'm sure people who may not be familiar with the case might be asking, well, if he was convicted of rape and murder, how was he walking around and even able to be lynched?
There's a story there and you've got an answer for it.
Yeah, that's amazing too.
Governor Slayton was a law partner of the defense team.
And so he was governor.
He came up with a commutation and said from death by hanging, and that's what they called it, death by hanging, of course.
And, you know, it's death by any way.
So he said, death by hanging, and he put him in life imprisonment.
My family, I will tell you, said he was bought and paid for by the Jewish community.
This is Georgia Governor John John M. Slayton.
Yeah, he's not a hero.
I'm sorry.
He never has been in my family.
And now I can finally say it because I have a little bit more evidence.
I cannot prove that he received payment, but the rumors around the, that's what my great-grandmother said, that he was paid for.
Well, this is by the Jewish community.
Yeah, and then he had lookout.
We had lookouts.
I guess, I don't know if it was the Sagan family or who are the people that were incensed by his commutation on his last day of office, no less.
We're so incensed that watched him.
That was one thing that was mentioned.
One thing that was mentioned about this, just to add in on what you're saying, this was another comment that came in today.
Governor Slayton, this listener writes, waited until the day, this was a question for you, I guess.
And since we're on the topic, I'll interject it here now.
Okay, Governor.
But did Governor Slayton wait until the day before he left office to commute Frank's death sentence because he knew it would not be popular?
And then the listener goes on to write, I believe he had actually served on Frank's defense team.
It has reported that in private.
He said that anyone who thought that he should pardon Frank was obviously not aware of the facts of the case.
So again, just to sort of reinforce what you're talking about.
Big conflict of interest with the governor, big conflict.
And then back to the prosecutor, of course, I mean, to Dorsey, that said that they had lookouts at the night that they were there.
And the defense attorneys were at the mansion, and they left at an inconvenient time early in the morning.
And it is believed that the defense team helped Flayton write that commutation.
All right.
And so how then did the lynching come about after the commutation?
Well, the commutation was in June, so June 21st.
So the Marietta community was very upset that he gave him life imprisonment.
And they set up what they called a vigilance committee.
It was not a lynch mob, and those people were not anti-Semitic in the lynch mob, which is what former Governor Roy Barnes is saying today.
And the rabbi, Stephen LeBeau, that is not happening today.
Ma'am.
Hold on right there.
I'm so sorry for this interruption.
I heard the music and I looked and was aghast.
I did not think the 30 minutes has already passed, but we do have a hard break at the bottom of the hour.
We will come back with Mary Fagan Keene, the namesake and the grand niece of Little Mary Fagan, littlemaryfagin.com for the book.
We'll talk more about that next.
Pursuing Liberty, using the Constitution as our guide.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
News this hour from Town Hall.
I'm Jason Walker.
Republicans gearing up for a fight in the wake of the Arctic Frost spy case.
It's been revealed to be a widespread Biden administration spy operation that sought to learn more about the activities of conservative organizations and a number of individuals.
Critics say it was a mass surveillance operation.
It also targeted the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point, USA, being spied on as well.
South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham tells Salem Radio Network the investigations into Donald Trump were clearly politically motivated.
I don't think it's an accident that from the time he announced in November to August of 23 that he was, there was an avalanche of legal cases against him that would make it hard for him to be successful in 24.
And I think all of us got caught up in that network of trying to take Trump down.
Iowa Republican Chuck Grashley says nearly a dozen GOP senators, including himself, were the targets of telecommunications subpoenas thanks to a whistleblower.
Other organizations within the conservative orbit were also targets of Biden's Justice Department.
Well, the Trump administration has announced more restrictions on members of the news media.
Here's correspondent Greg Klugston.
Reporters with White House press credentials will no longer be able to access an area of the West Wing known as Upper Press without an appointment.
It's long been an area where reporters would gather to talk with the press secretary and communications staff.
A White House memo cited concerns about protecting sensitive material.
Earlier this month, dozens of reporters turned in access badges and left the Pentagon rather than agree to restrictions on their work there imposed by the Trump administration.
Greg Klugston, Washington.
More on these stories at townhall.com.
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What a unique guest tonight.
Mary Fagan Keene making her debut appearance on this radio program.
And I had the opportunity to speak with her just a little bit during the commercial break.
You couldn't hear it, but we were talking and we were talking a little bit about our shared Southern heritage.
And right on cue, the ad from Dixie Republic played.
And I want to invite you to go to littlemaryfagan.com.
Fagan, of course, is P-H-A-G-A-N, littlemaryfagan.com.
There you'll find the new book by Mary Fagan Keene.
If you are interested in this case, and I know that so many of you are, this is the definitive epic on all things pertaining to it.
This is the Bible on the murder of little Mary Fagan.
And that is, in fact, the title of the book.
LittleMaryFagan.com.
You can buy it now.
Still available.
And I want to just cover a couple of other things pertaining to the time of this terrible, terrible murder, and then move forward to the present, where things are still happening in Georgia politically.
It's just an, I don't know if amazing is the word.
It's incredible.
It's flabbergasting.
It's flummoxing.
But just to go to it, this is, again, more circumstantial, I guess, evidence that has been presented.
And you can tell me if you have heard this before.
Again, this is back to the audience.
And this is some of the things that they have shared with me earlier.
And what we've talked about.
Okay.
So the night of the murder.
Allegedly, the black maid who worked at the Franks' home heard them having a fight.
The wife screamed, what have you done?
You have ruined our life.
The maid testified that from then on they slept in separate bedrooms.
Mrs. Frank refused to be buried in the same grave as her husband.
This was unheard of in Judaism.
This is also a far cry from the loving relationship portrayed in the Broadway musical parade, which paints Leo Frank as a faithful husband in a loving marriage.
Do you know anything about that?
That I do not.
I did not do a lot of research on that.
I did know that it was in her will, Mrs. Frank's will, that she not be buried with her husband.
That is in my book.
I have all that information.
I have the newspaper article.
Also, too, some people said that they didn't want it to be known that she had died.
Well, the Atlanta, I don't remember which newspaper account it was, but it's the current newspapers back then.
I think it was Constitution, maybe even the Journal.
I think they were separate back then.
Both advertised her death.
I'm like, okay, this is totally opposite of what you've heard over all the years in these other books that, you know, they wanted to keep it low-key and all this kind of thing.
And they did not keep it low-key.
They just said, you know, but they never mentioned that.
It's very rarely mentioned that she did not want to be buried next to Leo Frank.
Okay.
Well, that is interesting, though.
I mean, I think that, again, that tells us something.
Well, you're right.
And, you know, back to the Vigilance Committee, I just wanted to let you know that it was a very meticulous, organized community of men that did this, and they felt that they were carrying out the sentence that Slayton announced on the last day of his office.
And so they had it all done.
It was like a military operation.
They had, I mean, it was incredible.
My dad was telling me it was the first lynching dump by automobile.
So, of course, you go back in the newspaper accounts.
If you want to know who those members were of the vigilance committee, all you've got to go do is look at the automobile records, and you know who was involved.
In fact, all Marietta Streets are named after those people right now.
And, you know, a lot of them didn't.
It was a very big, big, dark, dark, dark, dark secret for years until 2003 when Steve One put out the names in the books.
My family had known the names, but we refused to disclose them when we wrote our book in 87 because we knew that some members did not know their family members were part of that vigilance committee, and we didn't feel we were the ones to tell them.
It was not our right to tell them that.
Going back to how you found out about this, and you were sharing with us that sequence of events, so at first you didn't know you were related, and then it became a source of pride and how all of that began to evolve.
But now, as we sit here this evening talking together, you have now spent six decades engaged in original research, archival preservation, and public advocacy regarding this case, which you describe as one of the most analyzed and contested in American legal history.
So again, what motivated you to go that extra step to not just only be interested in the case?
I mean, it is your blood.
This is your family.
So I can understand that.
But you have really gone above and beyond that, which most would do, whether they had relationship or not.
Well, remember when I told you the boys teased me about being reincarnated?
I started having second thoughts about it.
that the voice teased me at 13 when I said I was reincarnated and I was her, oh, I guess maybe was it maybe 10 years, 10 years ago or something like that.
Something happened to me at the cemetery.
I always had something weird happening when I would go to the cemetery.
And all of a sudden, I just felt this presence.
I felt her presence and I felt it in my heart.
And I said, she's telling me something.
She's the one that told me to write the book in the first place, the first book.
My whole family, I want people to know my family never talked about this.
It was my dad, oral history.
I had no evidence.
All I had was oral history.
And so the elder family, Fagan's members, told me no way in H was I allowed to write this book.
They said, no, we cannot let you write this book.
We do not want you to go to the book.
So I was very hurt and I would honor that.
If that's what the family decided, I was going to do it.
Like my daddy said, we have to consider that they're still alive.
They're the ones that went through it, not us.
They actually lived it.
So I had all that knowledge and everything and all that from cousins and aunts and uncles and, you know, some family members.
And I wanted to get all that, but it wasn't going to happen.
So I go to the cemetery and it's drizzling out and I'm sitting there on the marble little seat that they have out there.
And I'm looking up and I look at her greystone and I said, what am I supposed to do here?
What do you want to do?
What are you trying to tell me?
Why is it in me?
It's telling me that I need to do this.
And I've always believed my direction in life by higher being.
Why is this happening?
What do you want me to do?
Please help me.
And just as I said that, the sun broke, stopped drizzling, and it focused right on her name and shined on her name.
And I knew she was telling me to write the book.
Well, the Fagan family is very religious, especially those elders were very religious.
When I told them that story, they allowed me to write the book.
They said, this is a story.
You're right.
That's a story right there.
They said that is, and I know a lot of people don't know this, so I'm glad I'm sharing this with you.
So that's where all this comes in.
You know, you were asking me, why did I do this?
And why did I research this?
One, I didn't have kids.
So, I mean, I had a lot of time on my hand when you think about it.
I did have a career, but I was able to do the career.
And I just started collecting things at age 13.
But really, 15 is when I really, really started the collection.
15, 16, 17, my dad and I went to the library at Georgia State University and started reading the original newspaper articles.
And then I'm looking at him and say, this isn't what this book says, Daddy.
Why is it different?
He said, ask yourself that question.
He was letting me, he was training me to be a very historical, accurate researcher.
I think I could have done that.
Well, I have done this with this case.
And by the way, I want your audience to be aware that my collection of 57 years is now at Georgia State University where nobody can destroy it.
Like I said, I don't have children.
I have nephews and I have nieces.
And this is the burden that I did not want them to carry, the generational trauma that they have caused for these 112 years and decided out of the blue that it just happened.
It was just a miracle what happened with it.
So I donated it back to Georgia State where I actually started at when I was 15 years old going there with daddy because I couldn't drive at the time.
I didn't have a license.
So that's what it says.
So it's there and it's there for people to look at.
I mean, everything, everything's there.
The ballad of Mary Fagan, the movie, I got the script and I compare it to A Little Girl Is Dead.
It was exactly a little girl is dead book.
It even had the same misspellings of the names.
That's how recent my research was.
I picked up on all that stuff.
Let it be preserved for all time.
That is very good to hear.
I was not aware of that.
I am glad that it was archived.
No, no, not that.
Not that part.
I'm glad that it is archived in that capacity.
And as we mentioned, folks, if you want to archive it in your own homes, you can do so.
Mary Fagan Keene, our guest this hour, refers to this book as the great work of her lifetime.
And you can purchase a copy at littlemaryfagan.com.
And this is again a case that has transformed America in a lot of ways and all for the worse, I might add.
So let's fast forward now from then to the present.
Let's talk about institutions, advocacy, and the ADL question.
Okay.
The ADL, and the biggest thing that happened with them was in 1982, Alonzo Mann came forward.
My family had always had a friendly, kind relationship with the ADL because daddy would get calls and people would come and want to do a remember the Mary Fagan day.
But they were with, I guess, the right word is to say Nazi-oriented or you know, anti-Semitic.
They were anti-Semitic.
My dad felt that they were anti-Semitic and he did not want our name to be associated with that.
He said, anybody can honor her, but we're not doing it because they would take it and turn it around and make it against a new anti-Semitism, and we weren't anti-Semitic.
So that's what happened with that.
And then in secret, they never told anybody that we existed.
And there's three when Alonzo Mann came forward and they did the Georgia Pardons and Paroles to seek his pardon, they all met in secret with the governor and the pardons and paroles board and kind of wrote it up and everything.
But the first time they denied it.
And after they denied it in 1983, they all got together, the same members of the board that denied the first one because they said there was no significant evidence that Alonzo Mond proved that Leo Frank was innocent.
End of discussion.
But in the meantime, a young man by the name of Clark Freshman at Harvard was writing a thesis, and he came up with an enlightened idea that since Georgia didn't protect Leo Frank at the penitentiary where he was at, that they could give him a posthumous pardon without addressing his guilt or innocence, but the failure to protect him.
Although, like you said earlier, he went to three Georgia, 13 appeals, three of them were Georgia Supreme, and two were U.S. Supreme Court, and not one of those 13 ever questioned Frank Skilp.
Not one.
That is never told.
Not one.
They did not.
You know, but they are now.
And this is something that you and I have talked about.
I would like to draw attention to this.
And this is well, a question and an observation, if you would indulge me.
I would ask, why should the public still be concerned about this murder?
And in what ways do you see the official narrative now being currently questioned?
And this is something that we had talked about through email a few days ago.
But you wrote this in your response via email.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, continues to face criticism on X. Every year on August 17th, Greenblatt commemorates the hanging of Leo Frank, asserting that Frank was innocent and claiming that his conviction was driven by anti-Semitism.
What kind of reaction and reception is he getting on social media when he asserts that now?
The same.
98.9% is against Jonathan Greenblatt and don't believe that Leo Frank was convicted because of anti-Semitism.
Incredible.
It started in actually, hang on, my records show that I started in 2021.
It started with Jonathan Greenblatt.
That's the first time it came out.
And that's when I believe Elon Musk or something happened with a community note came out and somebody wrote a community note.
And then that was it.
He shut it down because it was so negative.
And it still is negative to this day in 2025.
This last August, it was the same thing, very, very negative against Jonathan Greenblant and the ADL.
And so people are now aware that they're spreading untruths and their allies, you know, it's now, yeah, sure, they, I will tell you, they censored me.
I have to be honest.
They censored some of my stuff.
You know, well, they still did today.
Just your promotion of your appearance on the show tonight got censored on X today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know that's what I'm saying.
I mean, I'm getting censored because they don't want the truth out there.
But, you know, this is the destiny that I have, and this is what I'm supposed to do.
And I think it's awesome people like you are interested in telling the truth.
We've got to have the truth.
They are lying about everything about this case.
Everything.
It's just the propaganda and the things that they, you know, think about it.
The ADL got all the money started because of Leo Frank, claiming he was anti-Semitism.
Some of the other things they claimed is like you said earlier when we opened, is, you know, that the Jews disappeared or they had a mass exodus of Jews after his lynching.
Not true.
They had an increase.
You know, I show the records in there.
I show the book, the page number of the book from the 1921 archive books that has the Jewish numbers in there.
It's just a bunch of baloney and propaganda.
It just, I get angry sometimes with them, you know, because they will never bet that that's the truth.
You know, hey, they did mention, though, and one of them, and I haven't found it, I have to find it again.
They did mention finally that it came out that Mary Fagan was raped.
And that's the other thing.
She was sexually assaulted, but he was not charged for that.
He was just charged for the murder.
The sexual assault came out during the autopsy report by Dr. Harris during the trial.
I think it has to be very telling that a group like the ADL came to be as a result of its defense of a child rapist and a child murderer.
I mean, what kind of legacy is that?
For really, you know, and that power may be declining to some extent, but they are still plenty powerful.
Yes.
That, you know, this is their inception was through this, you know, defending Leo Frank.
I mean, how repulsive.
But nevertheless, through your life's work, what is it like for you to see now, though?
As you mentioned, Greenblack Community Noted, the fact that the public awareness of the facts of this case now have transcended and superseded all of the censorship.
That has to be really something for you.
Well, it has, yes, you're right.
It has been something for me, except for the fact that Georgia is an issue here.
And I know we have only a few minutes left, so I do want to.
I do want to talk about Fonnie Willis.
It's been a long time.
Yeah, that's what I'm going to talk about right now.
Yeah, I was going to say, shame on Georgia, because they really have deceitfully underhanded and revised this political corruption of the Mary Fagan case with the Jewish community, former Governor Barnes, Rabbi Stephen Leveaux, the Southeast ADL, and the Fulton County DA, Fonnie Willis.
The case was supposedly in April, went this year, went to the Innocence Project.
I heard a new trial, but I haven't heard anything.
They haven't officially announced that it's really been being looked at or whatever.
But they are looking to, they established the Conviction Integrity Unit in 2019, but it was a different Fulton County DA, Paul Howard.
And that unit was established by Governor Roy Barnes, Rabbi LeBeau, the Southeast ADL, Van Perdeberg, who's passed, and several judges in Georgia.
And they were just, it's political corruption.
Shame on Georgia.
They should stay out of this business.
Even today or even a couple years ago, when I asked for records, I can't get records from Fonnie Willis about the conviction and unit integrity, even starting.
How did it start?
But yet there's big articles in the newspapers about Roy Barnes and the ADL and the rabbi and how they started it.
But there's no record.
So what were they talking about?
How did they get together?
But yet I've got all these names.
The one interesting thing was me, Lewis.
Go ahead.
Well, I was just going to ask very quickly, and I'll give the remainder of the time to you.
What exactly is Fonnie Willis?
And of course, this is the, what's the word I'm looking for here?
The disgraced prosecutor there in the Atlanta area.
She went after Trump.
I mean, she has a very negative reputation with at least half the population.
What exactly is she trying to do here?
She's trying to exonerate him and give him a full party that he did not murder Little Mary Fagan.
Bottom line.
That's what they are.
Yeah, that is just ridiculous.
There is no evidence.
There's nothing.
My daddy and the Fagan family for 112 years have said this, and my daddy repeated it.
He said, if there's evidence to prove that Leo Frank was innocent, we would like to come forward with you and say that.
Never has.
But Fonnie Willis is in charge in Georgia, is in trouble.
She's under investigation for fraudulent funds and for other things and the prison and all this stuff.
And they have a Georgia Senate committee who their investigator.
And I think she's supposed to be subpoenaed this month.
But her, guess who her attorney is?
Governor Roy.
Roy Barnes.
Yeah.
Roy Barnes.
Is that not a political corruption that they're that he's asking her to look at this case?
Oh, come on.
It's a, you know, I know it's a done deal.
I'm not stupid.
The thing about being stupid is you have to be careful about being that way.
And I know it's, you know, in my heart, if it happens, the thing about it is, is I've got it all out there now that I got a good argument that people will in the future question.
And that's what my purpose was.
Well, that will bring me to then this final question.
And thank you again for spending a wildly informative.
I mean, if this is a case that interests you, and again, folks, I know for so many of you it does.
I mean, this is going to basically the source.
I mean, the blood and the bone and the DNA of the decedent, Little Mary Fagan, her grandaunt, Mary Fagan Keene.
The book is, again, the murder of Little Mary Fagan.
It's available at your website, littlemaryfagan.com.
You can't miss it if you go to littlemaryfagan.com.
There's a button right there that says buy now.
But underneath it is a lot, and I mean a lot, more content and information about this case that we could not have possibly gotten to in this hour.
But I wanted to give that final word to you, Miss Fagan-Keen.
Anything else in the four or five minutes we have left tonight, three or four minutes left that we haven't covered that you would like to bestow upon the audience?
Well, the book is now available on Amazon.
How long it's going to be on there, I don't know because they censored my first one, so I don't know.
And I wanted to tell you about the website.
My old book is on there, and that's at no cost to anybody.
I don't, the money that I make on the book, if I make any money, and I'm not in it to make money, but if I do, I will be doing the Mary Fagan Keene legacy, like you said, transcribing all the records.
We are in the process right now for the first time ever in the Mary Fagan case, transcribing the Georgia Supreme Court records.
The only way to search those is to have the book, which I had.
So we're transcribing records that have never been seen by the public before.
Well, folks, I hope that we have given this at least A fair treatment tonight in terms of bringing you some interesting facts that, if nothing else, will whet your appetite to learn more because there is still so much more to learn tonight that we did not have the time to get to, but you can get to it on your own time by getting the book.
500 pages, more than twice the length of your original edition back in 1987.
This is a newly revised and expanded second edition, and it's now available for you at littlemaryfagan.com.
Mary Fagan Keene, final word to you, and thank you again.
I hope this is the first of many more conversations we'll have together.
We do too.
The final word for you is: I'd like everybody, if they can, when they purchase the book, is to look at chapter 15.
That is where the Marietta Jewish community changed the marker outside Mary's grave because they said it offended the Jewish community.
And it said that he was issued a pardon, and they rewrote it and put it up in the clandestinely with no meetings, no votes, no nothing.
And they just did it.
And I was told to go clean the grave.
And I went to the grave and they had changed the marker outside her grave.
And it's propaganda.
It's total propaganda.
It said he was issued a pardon, which means that he was not guilty.
And that is not true.
And they are bamboozling the public and the Jewish community and all those people that were involved.
And they know who they are because I name them.
Who had the right to change that marker?
Because, of course, I mean, the fact of the matter is it was commuted, but not a pardon.
And it's interesting.
The rabbi felt that it was very offensive, very offensive.
And he got up in a meeting and said it had to be taken down now.
Within two months, it was taken down.
No contact, none of everything done in secret.
Everything, in secret.
The America of 100 years after Little Mary Fagan.
If you are offended, it is illegal and it will be removed and rewritten.
That's why we're so thankful to have truth tellers.
Yeah, and the other thing that they need to know is what I did in 2016, I put my own damn marker at her grave, you know, combating that sign.
They told me I was revising history and I started laughing.
I said, you idiots, you are so stupid.
I am not revising history and you know it.
You just don't want to accept the truth, you know.
Good for you.
Good for you.
And they're at the website.
Again, I got to say, littlemaryfagan.com.
Get the book, but scroll down and read some of the other content and posts from Mary Fagan Keene's blog there.
She has here one of the actual posts that Jonathan Greenblatt posted on one of the August 17ths.
He wrote, It's been 108 years since 25 hatefield men kidnapped Leo Frank from his prison cell and hanged him from a tree at the ADL.
We remain fully committed to honoring Frank's legacy each and every day by fighting hate for good.
I mean, imagine posting that with a straight face.