C W BERNHARDT, Sworn In For The Defendant, 109th To Testify

C. W. Bernhardt, witness for the Defendant in rebuttal, at the Trial of Leo Frank in the Fulton County Superior Court of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1913 (Testimony Portion From July 28 - August 21, 1913; Closing Arguments August 21-25, 1913)
Contractor and builder C. W. Bernhardt examined Defendant’s Exhibit 52 (a diagram of the Selig home at 68 E. Georgia Avenue) and conducted an on-site inspection.

Standing in the kitchen doorway: zero view of the dining-room mirror.
One foot inside the kitchen: 18 inches of mirror visible—nothing else.
From any kitchen position: no sight of the dining table, chairs, or door to the sitting room.
Seated against the door jamb: no reflection of a man at the table.
Furniture marks on the floor proved the sideboard had not moved in months.

Bernhardt demonstrated that Albert McKnight’s claim—watching Frank refuse dinner, pace, and leave after ten minutes—was physically impossible. Even tilting the mirror yielded only the top of a head, and the mirror was rigid.
On cross-examination, Bernhardt conceded that half the mirror appeared from a pantry angle, but still no table or seated person. He confirmed the mirror could not swivel and the furniture was immovable.
Bernhardt’s blueprint-proof experiment obliterated Albert’s testimony, turning the State’s star domestic witness into a proven liar and collapsing the prosecution’s noon-to-12:15 murder window.