Bruce Jordan, as the chief

investigator at the Fayette County Sheriff's Department, usually collects

evidence with the goal of successfully prosecuting criminals.

But in Jordan's new book, "Murder

in the Peach State," he concludes that a convicted murderer is innocent,

supporting that belief with carefully cultivated research. The story also

has a local flavor, since Fayetteville native Hugh Dorsey was the prosecutor

who secured the guilty verdict against Leo Frank and who used illegal

means to secure evidence to support Frank's guilt, Jordan charges.

The first chapter of the book

is devoted entirely to the Leo Frank murder trial, which occurred in the

early 1900s. Frank was a Jewish man convicted of murdering Mary Phagan,

who at the time was a teenage employee at a pencil factory Frank ran in

Atlanta.

Phagan's body was found in

the factory building after she was strangled, beaten and sexually assaulted,

according to Jordan's book.

Scheduled for release the first

week of November, "Murder in the Peach State" also details other

famous Georgia murders, such as the John Williams farm in Jasper County,

where a number of farm workers were killed by Williams, who used them

as slaves, Jordan said.

But Jordan's contention that

Frank was innocent represents the first time such a hypothesis has come

from a non-Jewish author whose efforts weren't financed by a Jewish benefactor.

Jordan has been invited to

speak at an Atlanta synagogue about his work on the book.

Atlanta businessman Fred Bleiberg,

who reviewed the manuscript at Jordan's request, said the investigator's

credentials lend weight to the authenticity of his findings.

"It answers a lot of questions,"

Bleiberg said. "... He wrote it like he saw it."

Jordan said he couldn't have

completed his research of the Frank case without the assistance of former

Atlanta newspaper reporter Celestine Sibley.

"She told me exactly where

to go to find the transcripts of the trial," Jordan said in an interview

Tuesday afternoon. He called the transcripts "the mother lode of

what I needed" in addition to newspaper accounts that provided the

backbone for his research.

Frank was not one of the original

suspects arrested by police, although he was eventually targeted by prosecutors

in what would become a racially charged trial. He was found guilty by

a jury and sentenced to death although that sentence was later commuted

Jordan concludes that Frank

was never guilty of the crime to start with.

"A careful review of the

evidence known in 2000 reveals that it is doubtful that Leo Frank could

be convicted today by a non-biased jury based on the evidence presented

at his trial in 1914," Jordan wrote.

To help prove Frank's innocence,

Jordan brings to light evidence from trial transcripts and newspaper accounts

to point fingers at another suspect: Jim Conley, a sweeper employed at

the pencil factory.

Frank was eventually lynched

the place where he was hanged.

But Jordan's book, this many

years later, helps to clear Frank's name. And by the pen of a policeman,

no less.