The Murder of Little Mary Phagan
2025 Revised Second Edition
I am genuinely excited to announce the release of the new edition of The Murder of Little Mary Phagan. This is the first major updated treatment of the Leo Frank case since the 2016 publication of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume 3, and it arrives after nearly four decades of additional research, archival work, public controversy, and renewed efforts to reinterpret the case.
I invite you to read it closely and take part in the discussion. Whether you have studied the case for years or are encountering it for the first time, this expanded edition offers an opportunity to examine the history through documents, testimony, newspaper coverage, legal filings, and later developments that were unavailable when the original book appeared.
Your response is important. Please purchase a copy, read it at your own pace, and send me your honest impressions. I am not looking for cookie-cutter praise or generic reviews. I welcome personal, thoughtful evaluations of what the book gets right, what it brings into clearer focus, which chapters affected you most, and where you believe the presentation could be strengthened.
Readers are encouraged to compare individual passages with the legal records, newspaper transcripts, affidavits, court filings, and other materials preserved in this archive. Note the pages that caught your attention. Identify dates, witnesses, documents, or arguments that changed your understanding of the case. Precise criticism is useful. Careful agreement is useful too. What matters most is that the review reflects your own reading and judgment.
Students of the Frank case are especially invited to participate in this community review. Mark the pages that surprised you. Keep notes as you read. Select a few findings other readers should know about and explain why they matter. A review can be short or extensive. Clarity, sincerity, and attention to the record are more valuable than length.
Take Part
Purchase a copy of the book.
Read it alongside the documents preserved in this archive.
Write an original review that refers to specific pages, records, witnesses, or findings.
Share the book with a friend, teacher, student, researcher, journalist, or librarian who values historical documentation.
Thank you for joining this careful and respectful examination of one of the most disputed criminal cases in American history. I look forward to hearing what you discover.
Now Available
Title: The Murder of Little Mary Phagan: 2025 Revised Second Edition
Length: Approximately 500 pages
Original edition: A little more than 200 pages, first published in 1987
Historical period covered: The primary record from 1913 through 1915, followed by major developments, research discoveries, and exoneration efforts through 2025
Formats: Print-on-demand and digital editions, with details available on the website
About the Revised Edition
The 2025 edition expands the original book into a 500-page historical reference incorporating thirty-eight years of additional research. It brings together newly released documents, rediscovered newspaper coverage, archival findings, legal records, and later developments connected to the continuing campaign for Leo Frank’s official exoneration.
The book places public claims beside the surviving documents so readers can compare later interpretations with what witnesses, attorneys, investigators, judges, reporters, and public officials actually said at the time. It also traces how the case was remembered, revised, promoted, and contested long after the trial and lynching had ended.
The purpose is to give readers a clearer path through an enormous and often confusing body of material. Chapters direct students, journalists, historians, and independent researchers toward identifiable records that can be located, read, and evaluated rather than accepted secondhand.
What Has Been Added
The revised edition has grown to approximately 500 pages, allowing for fuller treatment of the investigation, trial, appeals, commutation, lynching, later controversies, and modern exoneration campaign.
It incorporates dozens of newly released, rediscovered, or previously neglected documents, with expanded citations and indexing.
A detailed chronology follows the campaign to obtain an official exoneration for Leo Frank from the late 1980s through 2025, recording major petitions, arguments, decisions, and outcomes.
Rumors and widely repeated stories are traced back to their earliest known sources, allowing readers to see how certain claims entered the literature and whether contemporary records support them.
Cross-references, explanatory notes, document locations, and chapter organization have been expanded to make the book easier to use as both a narrative history and a research guide.
Who Should Read It
This edition is intended for students seeking a roadmap through the original materials.
Journalists will find dates, quotations, citations, and document references that can be checked against the historical archive.
Historians and independent researchers can use it as a consolidated guide to trial testimony, legal filings, newspaper coverage, correspondence, and later developments.
General readers will find a detailed narrative grounded in contemporary records rather than a summary built from later retellings.
Supporting the Legacy Project
All proceeds support the Mary Phagan Kean Legacy Project. Purchases help fund the transcription and publication of legal records, searchable newspaper archives, narrated audiobooks, historical clipping videos, and selected lip-sync presentations designed to make testimony, speeches, and court filings easier for modern audiences to follow.
Every copy helps preserve, organize, and publish material that might otherwise remain scattered, difficult to search, or inaccessible to the public.
Please Take Action
Get your copy at:
Read it.
Review it in your own words.
Share it with a friend, teacher, student, researcher, or librarian.