Video: 'Murder case, Leo Frank lynching live on'

(Tuesday, August 17, 1915, at around 7:00 a.m. local time) — Jewish American factory superintendent Leo Frank was abducted from his prison cell in Milledgeville, Georgia, this morning and lynched in Marietta, capping one of the most contentious criminal cases in Georgia history.

Frank, 31, had been serving a life sentence for the 1913 murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, an Atlanta factory worker. His conviction — based largely on circumstantial evidence — had drawn national attention, with supporters arguing he was innocent and the target of anti-Semitic sentiment.

Authorities said a group of armed men overpowered prison guards at the Georgia State Prison, seized Frank, and drove him more than 100 miles to Marietta, Phagan’s hometown. There, shortly before dawn, the mob hanged him from a tree near the home of Phagan’s mother.

Investigators and witnesses said the lynch mob included several prominent political figures in Georgia, among them former Gov. Joseph Mackey Brown and Eugene Herbert Clay, a former mayor of Marietta. No arrests have been made.

Video: 'Archives reveal troubling details of Leo Frank case'

Frank’s case had been marked by public outrage and mob pressure from the start. His death sentence was commuted to life in prison by Gov. John M. Slaton in June, after the governor cited doubts about his guilt. That decision sparked riots and threats against Slaton, who soon left the state.

Civil rights advocates condemned the lynching as a grave miscarriage of justice. “This is an affront to law and order,” said one supporter of Frank, speaking from Atlanta. “It’s a stain on Georgia’s history.”

Phagan was found dead in the basement of the National Pencil Company factory in April 1913, where Frank was superintendent. While prosecutors alleged he killed her after she resisted his advances, defense attorneys maintained that another employee was responsible.

Frank, who maintained his innocence, was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1986.