Alonzo McClendon Mann was 83 when he swore this statement on March 4, 1982, in Sullivan County, Tennessee. Born August 8, 1898, near Memphis, he moved to Atlanta as a boy. In 1913, at age 14, he worked as office boy for Leo M. Frank at the National Pencil Company. That year Frank was convicted of murdering 14-year-old Mary Phagan on April 26, Confederate Memorial Day. Mann testified at trial but hid key facts out of fear. He now claims this silence doomed Frank, who was later lynched.
Janitor Jim Conley, the prosecution's star witness, lied under oath, Mann asserts. Conley alone killed Phagan and moved her body. That morning Mann found Conley drunk under the stairwell, begging for beer money. Mann refused and went upstairs. Around noon he left to meet his mother for the parade. Phagan had not arrived. On returning shortly after, Mann saw Conley near the basement trapdoor cradling Phagan's limp body. Her hair hung loose. Her skirt was hiked up. She seemed dead or out cold. Conley turned, growled he would kill Mann if he spoke, and advanced. Mann fled home.
Mann told his horrified mother. She and his father forbade him to tell authorities, fearing Conley's threat and scandal. At trial Mann stuck to events before his outing. He never mentioned the body. Conley's false tale of Frank calling him upstairs to help haul Phagan by elevator was impossible. Mann saw Conley solo on the first floor. He suspects Conley killed for her $1.20 pay, which vanished. Frank was upstairs, innocent. Mann calls Frank proper, refutes lurid lies about office trysts or basement sex.
Over 69 years Mann shared privately with family, a WWI soldier buddy, his late wife, and a 1950s reporter. All urged silence. Now ill with a pacemaker, Mann clears the record. Courts err. Frank died for lies. Some may scorn his and his mother's caution. He hopes God forgives. Sworn before notary Charles M. Gore.
