Who Did It?!

............."They won't Forget" was loosely based on the murder of Mary Phagan, a worker at a Atlanta, Georgia pencil factory, in 1915. Although a black janitor, Jim Conley was initially suspected of the murder suspicion quickly shifted to the factory manager, Leo Frank, who was a Northerner (although he was born in Texas) and Jewish. He was arrested and put on trial for the crime. The situation was not only inflamed by regional Anti Semitism, but sensational coverage by Hurst newspapers and a Tom Watson, an area publisher and politician, was was trying to advance his career and bring about a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Frank was convicted, but his lawyer contended he hadn't received due process. As a result then Georgia Governor, John M Salton, reviewed the case and, after reading the transcripts, changed Frank's sentence from death to life in the believe her would soon be found innocent..............A group calling themselves "The Knights of Mary Phagan" manged to kidnap Frank from a Georgia prison farm and Lynched him near Marietta................Belatedly, during the mid seventies, a witness came forward and linked Jim Conley, now long dead, to the Phagan murder. In 1986 Leo Frank was given a full pardon...............During a time when many innocent black men were lynched due to even the hint they had touched a white women that in this case they had over looked an obvious black suspect in order to convict someone from the north who was Jewish. I guess sometimes one form of bigotry is more important then another.
True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.

There is solid evidence pointing to Frank being the culprit. The only reason he was "lynched" was because his death sentance was commuted to life by the Governor who was a partner in the law firm that had defended. He was never cleared of murder and was only found to have been failed by the state for not protecting him from the lynching and for the failure to prosecute his killers. The story has been turned into a lesson in anti semitism and intolerance. Hiding key facts to portray the accused as the victim of racial hatred and nothing more. This is a clear distortion of the real motivation for the anger,
The brutal mangling and rape of a 13 year old girl.

Whilst I dont condone vigilantism, I find it hard to feel sympathy for a child rapist and murderer.

DONT BELIEVE THIS HOLLYWOOD PROPAGANDA.

LEO FRANK WAS GUILTY

Professor Buxton acted oddly when Mary came back to the school. He doesn't follow her back into the school but walks down the front stairs toward the left side of the building. He could have re-entered the building on the left side and climbed the interior stairs, also on the left side of the building, where we later hear the footsteps coming from. Also, the footsteps we hear going up the stairs are slow, possibly indicating an older person. He's my guess as the murderer.

Based soley on what we see as the movie unfolds, when you watch the scene where Mary Clay goes back into the classroom to retrieve her lipstick, you can see immediately by her expression that the person who enters the room and kills her isn't someone she trusts and isn't someone she had a friendship with because she was all fear from the get-go. If it had been a friendly relationship she would not have shown fear when the person entered the room.
I missed the beginning so I don't know if Hale had actually gotten his hair cut or had been cut while being shaved. He seemed like he might have been guilty but if the girl really liked him as a teacher she wouldn't have shown fear or shock when he entered his own classroom.
For that reason I thought that maybe it was someone not in the girl's circle of acquaintances and it occurred to me that it may have been the janitor. But then that would have been too easy. I don't even know who the movie makers want us to believe did it.
The boyfriend's time could be accounted for before, during, and after the crime so he didn't do it. It's possible someone who wasn't even a suspect got away with the murder.

It's losely based on a true story which is far more interesting than this movie but it involved rape, and human excrement, and other ugly realities so Hollywood gave us a whitwashed account. It's also an interesting crime because it shows police work and politicians at their worst. It's appalling the way the case was handled.

After reading several accounts of the trial and other statements, I suspect the rapist/murderer was the factory sweeper named Jim Conley, who incidentally, tried to frame the janitor for the crime.

Here is one of similar accounts. Decide for yourselves:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/frank/frankaccount.html

Just be truthful and if you can fake that you've got it made. ;)

It's possible it was Hale, but doubtful. The obvious lying of the barber shows he was there and that part of his story pans out at least. I thought the barber's wife would save the day since she seemed to know the truth, but she's just a shrew who only opens her mouth when it doesn't count. So much for being useful. He also is very nervous several times, but is cool as a cucumber after the murder and also when he heads to school the next day, supposedly not knowing of the murder. I believe his character would have been more anxious in these situations.

Redwine being the murderer would have been ridiculous as he is shown calmly reading right before the murder. He takes great care to hide the book as well. Looks like a murder mystery, ironically enough. It's amusing that he never tells the truth in any versions of his stories. Nobody in this southern town would ever believe a negro was actually reading instead of sleeping or murdering. He probably could have mentioned he woke from his nap to go hide in a woodpile. They would have believed that immediately.

Early in the movie, I thought the boyfriend did it because he suspected Mary and her teacher of "acting inappropriately," especially since her best friend explicitly asks what her boyfriend would think if he found out how she felt about their teacher. But as the movie wears on, this idea goes nowhere.

Little by little, it becomes increasingly obvious that the murderer was Buxton, although, amusingly enough, the evidence is all circumstantial. First, when Mary goes into the building he acts oddly, like he was going to re-enter the building, then thinks better of it and leaves. As someone pointed out, he may have returned later or through another entrance. He obviously had "something" on his mind after seeing Mary. He also looks incredibly tense at the trial. But the most damning piece of evidence is his interactions with Redwine. First, he hires a lawyer for him. Why Redwine? He claims it is because he works for him, yet I don't see him hiring a lawyer for Hale. Secondly, not only does he hire the lawyer, but Redwine is instructed to lie to get Hale condemned. Why? To protect Buxton. I thought for sure the movie would end with some kind of confession, but when it got to the actual ending, when the DA was asked if he thinks Hale did it, I was really hoping he would say something like,

Griffin: "Hale? Of course not. It was Buxton."
Brock: "Buxton?" Why did you prosecute Hale?!"
Griffin: "I thought it was Hale. I did. You heard me; I staked my reputation on it. But by the time I figured it out, it was too late. There was no turning back."
Brock: "So much for your reputation."
Griffin: "Reputation? I need votes. Governor Griffin doesn't need a reputation."
The End

It was purposely left ambiguous. This is so the viewer can experience the feeling of not knowing whether or not an innocent man was lynched.

It was filmed this way because of all the uncertainty regarding the actual case it was based on; the murder of Mary Phagan.