and testify that when he interviewed Mrs. Novelli on April 17, 1920,
she had described the man beside the driver as “twenty-seven years,
five feet seven inches tall, slim build, black hair, black eyes, dark
complexion, thin features, wide mouth, smooth-shaven, but appeared
to be a man who could grow a heavy beard from the dark stubble on
his face.” Hellyer’s Pinkerton report, which was not produced in
evidence, recorded a markedly different description of the man: “27
years, 5 feet eight inches, medium build, light brown hair, fair
complexion and smooth shaven, wore a cap but cannot recollect what
else he wore.”
Mrs. Novelli was followed by minor witnesses whose fleeting glimpses,
although not enough to establish much about the other passengers in
the Buick, at least corroborated the now-undisputed fact that the
driver was a pale, fair man. Elmer Chase, who had been loading his
truck in front of the Co-operative Society as the Buick passed, had
looked down at the driver and the bareheaded man next to him. He was
positive that neither of the men he saw that day were the men in the
cage. Walter Desmond, the tobacco salesman who had met and passed the
Buick on his way from Randolph, had seen the pale-faced driver but
scarcely noticed the man next to him. All he could say in court was
that the driver was not one of the defendants. Wilson Dorr, working
in the sandpit with John Lloyd on the Stoughton Post Road, had
seen four “light complected,” men in the Buick as it passed within
twenty-five feet of him. All had looked directly at him. None of them
resembled Sacco or Vanzetti.
* * * * *
It was to be Vanzetti’s claim that he had spent April 15 in North
Plymouth going his usual rounds with his pushcart. Before he
himself took the stand to make this claim, the defense introduced
witnesses to corroborate it. The first was Joseph Rosen, a
thirty-three-year-old cloth peddler from Dorchester.
On the fifteenth Rosen arrived in Plymouth at ten minutes to eight.
After eating breakfast at Ventura’s Restaurant on Court Street, he
had taken the streetcar to North Plymouth, carrying a valise of
men’s suiting and some swatches. He met Vanzetti near Cherry Street
and showed him a piece of blue serge that was enough for a suit.
He offered it cheap because it had a couple of small holes in it.
Vanzetti wanted to let Alfonsina Brini see the cloth. Together Rosen
and Vanzetti walked several blocks to Cherry Court, where the Brinis
had recently moved. Alfonsina knew cloth because she had once worked
in a woolen mill. She felt the material and said it was a good buy.
Vanzetti paid Rosen $12.25, then gave him another fifty cents when
he complained he was losing money. It must have been about twelve
o’clock when they left the Brinis’, for as they came out the whistles
were blowing and people were hurrying home from the Cordage for lunch.
That afternoon Rosen had gone back to the center of Plymouth, peddled
more cloth, stopped in again at Ventura’s, and finally left on the
last train at 6:10. He had got off at Whitman, about halfway between
Plymouth and Braintree, and spent the night in a dollar room at
Littlefield’s Rooming House. The next day he had continued to peddle
his goods in Whitman.
Katzmann spent an afternoon cross-examining Rosen, using the old
legal trick known as taking the witness over the hurdles. Where, the
district attorney asked Rosen, had he been on May 15, 1920; June 15,
1920; April 15, 1921; May 15, 1921, June 15, 1921?
Rosen could not say, but he maintained he had particular reasons
for remembering April 15, 1920. In the morning his wife had paid
his delinquent 1918 poll tax and when he returned home next day
she had given him the dated and receipted bill he now produced in
court. Also, the evening of the fifteenth “it was all boiling” in
Whitman about the South Braintree murders. Lillian Shuler, who ran
Littlefield’s Rooming House, later corroborated Rosen by producing a
record of having rented him a room the night of the fifteenth.
When Vanzetti’s picture was published in the papers after his arrest
and Rosen saw it and the words “fish peddler,” it reminded him of the
day he sold the piece of blue cloth to the Italian in North Plymouth.
He went to ask Alfonsina Brini about the matter the next time he
happened to be in Plymouth, and it was through her that he came into
the case.
Alfonsina herself again appeared to testify for her old friend.
Katzman had agreed not to refer to the Plymouth trial in return
for the defense’s renouncing any evidence as to the peaceful and
law-abiding reputation of the defendants. Regardless, in his
summing-up he called Alfonsina “a stock, convenient and ready witness
as well as friend who ... in another case when another date was
alleged, testified to the whereabouts of this same Vanzetti on that
other date there involved.”
Alfonsina told much the same story that Rosen had told of the two
men coming in to show her the damaged cloth. She recalled the date
as the fifteenth because she had been ailing at the time and Dr.
Shurtleff had come from Plymouth to see her on the fourteenth and
sixteenth. In between those visits the Cordage nurse had called.
Gertrude Matthews, a nurse at the Plymouth Cordage Company, said she
had visited Alfonsina between the fifteenth and the twenty-fifth
but could not recall the exact dates. LeFavre Brini, Alfonsina’s
daughter, told of Vanzetti’s coming to their house at about ten
o’clock the morning of the fifteenth with some fish which he had
left in the sink. He had come back about noon with a peddler and she
saw him hand a length of cloth to her mother. She recalled the date
because her mother had been in the hospital and it was just a week
after she had had to quit her own job at the Gorton-Pew Fisheries to
care for her.
Angelo Guidobone, a rug-weaver who lived in Suosso’s Lane, told
through an interpreter of buying some codfish from Vanzetti during
the lunch hour. He remembered it was Thursday the fifteenth because
on the nineteenth he had had his appendix removed. When Katzmann
asked him if he could not have bought his fish on the thirteenth or
the fourteenth, Guidobone said that he bought fish fresh on Thursday
to eat on Friday. “Do you think I keep fish in the house for a week?”
he asked the district attorney indignantly.
Melvin Corl, a Plymouth fisherman from whom Vanzetti some times
bought his supplies, recalled April 15 as the day he had been
painting his boat at Jesse’s Boatyard. About two o’clock Vanzetti had
come down to the water’s edge and stopped to talk with him, saying
that the fish business was so bad he was thinking of looking for
another job. Corl remembered the date because he had planned to put
his boat in the water the next day; however, he had not managed to
finish it until two days later—the seventeenth, his wife’s birthday.
On that same day, the seventeenth, he had towed a boat belonging to
Joseph Morey from Duxbury to Plymouth.
Frank Jesse, the boatyard owner, remembered seeing Corl painting his
boat and Vanzetti standing talking to him, but he could not recall
the date. Joseph Morey testified that Corl had towed his boat on the
seventeenth; he remembered the date because it was two days before
Patriot’s Day. Under cross-examination he admitted that he and Mrs.
Corl had talked it over and finally decided that the seventeenth must
have been the date. Katzmann finally edged him into admitting that
neither he nor Corl was completely sure.
John Dever was not sure either. Corl at first had seemed convincing,
but Dever now felt that if these people could not be certain about a
date, they could not be certain about anything.
* * * * *
For several days Jerry McAnarney had noticed among the courtroom
spectators a man with a high forehead, long nose, and drooping
mustache so combined that he could have served as Vanzetti’s double.
He turned out to be an unemployed Italian named Joseph Scavitto who
had known Sacco slightly, and who, having nothing else to do, was
spending his days at the trial. Jerry sent him, with a borrowed
hat that intensified his resemblance to Vanzetti, to have some
photographs made. If witnesses like Austin Cole could be persuaded
to identify Scavitto from a photograph as the man they had seen, it
might do much to establish Vanzetti’s alibi.
Nothing came of the idea, but Scavitto’s appearance in court resulted
in a comic interlude. Asked on the stand what his business was, he
replied that he was in the mosaic business. Asked where his place of
business was, he answered: “I ain’t got no business.” From the flat
pages of the record it is hard to determine just why his appearance
and his explanation caused so much amusement, but according to the
_Herald_, when he told of picking up someone else’s hat “the court
filled with laughter.”
* * * * *
It would have been logical for Vanzetti to have followed his alibi
witnesses to the stand. However, they had concluded on Friday, July
1, and with the Fourth coming on Monday, Moore did not want to
have Vanzetti’s testimony interrupted by the holiday week end. In
his place several witnesses were introduced to account for Sacco’s
whereabouts on the day of the murders.
The first, John Williams, a mild-looking advertising agent, said
that he had met Sacco in Boston on April 15 between 1:15 and 1:30
at Boni’s Restaurant in North Square. He had gone into Boni’s for
lunch and had seen an acquaintance, Professor Guadagni, sitting at
a table with a stranger whom he introduced as Nick Sacco. Guadagni
had finished his meal and was smoking a cigar. As the three talked
together, Sacco said he planned to go back to Italy and was going to
get his passport that afternoon.
Williams, who sold advertising space in several foreign-language
newspapers, including _La Notizia_, was well known in Boston. It was
not so well known that he was a left-wing socialist and had been an
associate of Trotsky and Bukharin in New York in 1917. Every Thursday
he made the rounds of the small North End factories soliciting
help-wanted ads for the Saturday editions. On April 15, according
to his advertising book, he had taken an order from the Washington
Knitting Mills. Later in the afternoon he had gone uptown to see his
doctor, Howard Gibbs, who was treating him for asthma.
After the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, Felicani asked Williams if he
remembered seeing Professor Guadagni and Sacco at Boni’s. Williams
said he did. Felicani then asked him if he realized this was the
date of the South Braintree crime. Williams had not thought of it,
but checking back in his advertising book to the Washington Knitting
Mills order, he found it was so. Felicani and Williams felt that this
fixed Sacco in Boston instead of in South Braintree. As Williams
explained it in court: “The fact that I secured this order and the
fact that I met this young man down there, and the fact that he
was said to be going for his passport; all of those things brought
a sequence of events back to me, and I recalled the incident very
easily.”
Under Katzmann’s cross-examination Williams could not remember the
dates of other visits to his doctor, or any advertisements he had
taken on April 14, or any other occasions when he had met Guadagni.
However, Dr. Gibbs testified that although he treated Williams
regularly, he had seen him only once in April and that was on the
fifteenth.
Albert Bosco, one of the editors of _La Notizia_, was another witness
who claimed to have seen Sacco in the restaurant. Bosco was already
at Boni’s with a man named Reffi when Guadagni came in with Sacco and
introduced him as “the man that is going to Italy.” Then Guadagni
talked about the banquet that the Franciscan Fathers of North Bennett
Street were giving at their priory that same day in honor of James T.
Williams, Jr., editor of the Boston _Transcript_, whom the Italian
government had just made a _Commandante_ in recognition of his war
work. The next day Bosco published an account of the banquet in _La
Notizia_—and also ran a story about the South Braintree killings.
When Guadagni spoke to him after the arrests about his meeting with
Sacco, Bosco went to the newspaper files and found that the banquet
they had discussed in Boni’s restaurant had been held on April 15.
Another witness, a contractor named Angelo Monello, had known Sacco
for several months before his arrest. On April 15, just before
noon, they had run into each other on Hanover Street. Monello had
the date fixed in his mind because on Sunday the eighteenth he had
tickets for _Madame X_, playing at the Tremont Theatre with the great
Italian artist Mimi Aguglia. Both he and Sacco were amateur actors
and belonged to dramatic clubs, and they had talked about the play.
Katzmann at once took Monello over the hurdles, asking if he had
talked with anyone about the play on April 16, 17, 13, 12, 19, 21,
28. All Monello could say was that he did not remember.
Michael Kelley and his son Leon appeared willingly as witnesses
for Sacco, but because of the agreement of counsel they were not
allowed—as they had intended—to testify as to his character. Katzmann
hovered over any such mention with an instant objection. Michael
Kelley managed to say, however, that he trusted Sacco with the keys
to the Three-K factory and that every night the place had been in
his hands. Early in the spring Sacco had shown Michael Kelley a
black-bordered letter saying that his mother had died. The letter,
from Sacco’s father, begging him to come home, was then translated to
the jury.
District Attorney Williams now read a deposition by Giuseppe Adrower,
made in Rome. In April 1920, Adrower was a clerk in the Italian
consulate in Boston. Sacco, he deposed, had appeared early in April
about a passport and had been told to come back with two photographs.
On April 15 he had returned with an oversize family photograph.
Adrower remembered the date because it was “a very quiet day in
the Royal Italian Consulate and since such a large photograph had
never before been presented for use on a passport I took it in and
showed it to the Secretary of the Consulate. We laughed and talked
over the incident. I remember observing the date in the office of
the Secretary on a large pad calendar while we were discussing the
photograph. The hour was around two or a quarter after two, as I
remember about a half an hour later I locked the door of the office
for the day.” When Professor Guadagni came to the consulate the
week after the arrests to ask about the incident, Adrower could not
remember Sacco, but after Guadagni showed him the oversize photograph
he remembered both it and the date and had no doubt about either.
The written cross-interrogatory contained the by-now-familiar
Katzmann hurdles. Adrower had stated that between a hundred fifty
and two hundred people a day came to the consulate to inquire about
passports. He was asked to give the name of each person he talked
with on April 17, 19, 21, 24, 29, and May 2, 3, and 4. He could not
remember their names. He was then asked to describe every person with
whom he talked on those days. “I cannot describe them in detail,”
he admitted. In the defense’s redirect interrogatory, Adrower stated
that although many people appeared at the consulate with family group
photographs, none had ever brought in such a large one as Sacco
produced.
Friday’s last new witness was Dominic Ricci, a carpenter living in
a boarding house in South Stoughton, not far from Sacco’s bungalow.
He had known Sacco several years. The morning of April 15, he said,
he had seen Sacco on the Stoughton railroad platform at about
half-past seven and Sacco had told him he was going to Boston to get
a passport. Next day, seeing Sacco in the Three-K factory at eight
o’clock, Ricci had talked with him about the newspaper accounts of
the South Braintree murders.
Katzmann, with deceiving gentleness, asked Ricci if he had worked
on the eighteenth. Ricci said he had. Katzmann asked him about the
twenty-fifth, May 2, May 9, 16, 23, 30, and June 6, consulting
a pocket diary each time he asked. A titter spread through the
courtroom as the realization came that each of these dates was a
Sunday. The realization did not come as quickly to the embarrassed
Ricci. Katzmann continued leading him on a trail of Sundays through
the rest of the year, finally closing his diary with mock weariness
and smiling ironically at the bewildered Italian. “I have got to the
end of my calendar. You worked every Sunday, didn’t you, from then
on? That is all.”
George Kelley now reappeared briefly to say that on April 16 he had
got to the factory at seven in the morning and Sacco had already been
working there three-quarters of an hour.
* * * * *
Friday evening about ten o’clock, long after the courthouse gate had
been bolted and the jury locked in for the night, John Drummond, the
courthouse janitor, heard a noise in the library and found Jerry
McAnarney lying collapsed on the center table. One of the deputy
sheriffs drove him back to Quincy. Actually, Jerry was malingering
to give Moore an extra day he claimed he needed for tracking down a
new witness. Next morning Thomas McAnarney told Judge Thayer that
his brother was under a doctor’s care and asked for a postponement.
Thayer adjourned the court until Tuesday, July 5.
The prospect of the long week end dismayed the jurors, most of whom
had hoped to be back with their families by the Fourth. However, they
felt somewhat more cheerful after Judge Thayer told the sheriff to
see that they were taken on an outing over the holiday. When John
Dever heard that after a month of sitting still they were going to
the beach, he felt the way he used to when the circus came to town.
The rest of Saturday the jurors spent as usual—playing cards,
talking, reading the cut-up remains of the newspapers, and going out
to meals. Sunday afternoon they went on their usual ride, this time
through Wellesley and the Newtons.
Monday morning, after breakfast at the Dedham Inn, they went by bus
to the wooden-turreted Cliff House at North Scituate. There they sat
in rocking chairs on the wide veranda, looking out over the sea and
enjoying the breeze until their shore dinner was ready. Dever long
remembered that meal—clams and lobsters and more lobsters. George
Gerard, the Stoughton photographer, had a Graflex with him. He had
been born in Paris, and the others kidded him at the table, telling
him it was too bad he couldn’t go down on the beach and take French
pictures of the girls. During the afternoon Sheriff Capen produced a
fishpole for each man and they sat on the rocks in the sun, joking
and fishing.
It was almost dark by the time they got back to the courthouse. Dever
felt contented even though his face and arms were red and the skin
tingled on the back of his neck. As he went up the courthouse steps
he noticed fireflies zigzagging about.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] The six Winchester shells found on Sacco in the police station
were of this same obsolete type, a parallel overlooked by the
prosecution and barely hinted at by the defense during the trial but
emphasized later.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE TRIAL: III
On July 5 Jerry McAnamey resumed his place within the bar enclosure.
Attendance had fallen off in the last week, but on this Tuesday
morning every seat was occupied in anticipation of the defendants’
taking the stand. The first witness was Aldeah Florence of Quincy,
with whom Sarah Berardelli had boarded after her husband’s death.
Testifying for the defense, she said that Sarah had told her a few
days after her husband’s funeral that he might still be alive if only
he had not left his revolver in the repair shop. Her examination and
cross-examination lasted less than ten minutes. Then came a pause,
with Moore and the McAnameys whispering together, while the district
attorney stood by, smiling knowingly.
Finally Jerry McAnamey turned toward the cage and asked “Will the
defendant Vanzetti be brought forward?” A murmur ran through the
courtroom. It was the moment that everyone had been awaiting since
the beginning of the trial. A deputy unlocked the metal door.
Quietly, Vanzetti stepped forward and raised his hand in oath before
Clerk Worthington. The receding hairline of his domed forehead, the
wrinkles around his eyes, the slight sag of flesh under his chin,
above all his drooping mustache, made him look at least fifteen years
older than thirty-three. He was dressed neatly in a dark suit, white
shirt, high stiff collar, and black bow tie. On the stand he told
his story in an assured manner, using few gestures, answering all
questions without hesitation.
Guided by Jerry McAnamey, he told briefly of his early life, then of
his years of wandering until he ended up with the Brinis in Plymouth.
The rest had by now become a familiar story. On April 15, he said, he
had been peddling fish in North Plymouth. Almost at the corner of
Castle Street he had met Rosen with his bolt of cloth and they had
gone to the Brinis’ together. About one o’clock he had sold all his
fish and was going down Ocean Street with his empty pushcart when he
saw Mr. Corl painting his boat. He stopped to talk with him and while
they were talking Mr. Jesse, the boatbuilder, came along, and also
a Mr. Holmes from the lumberyard. They chatted a while, and after
he left Mr. Corl he had gone home with his pushcart, changed his
clothes, and cooked his evening meal. What he had done that evening
he did not now remember. The next morning he went to Marvelli’s
store to buy a Boston _Post_ and find out what time the tide would
be low so that he could dig clams. He dug clams most of the day and
afterward sold them. On April 17 in the morning he tried to get a
job at the garage they were building in front of the carbarn. There
was no work there, however, so in the afternoon he took the train to
Whitman and from there the streetcar to Brockton where he had eaten
supper with a friend named Caldera and afterward gone on to Boston.
He stayed overnight with a friend, Vincent Colarossi, and next
morning, Sunday, had breakfast with him and Felicani in Scollay
Square; later they had dinner at Boni’s with a group of friends. They
spent the afternoon at the Naturalization Club in East Boston and at
the end of the day Vanzetti had gone back to Plymouth.
On Monday he went around Plymouth looking without success for a job.
The next day he tried to get fish from Antonio Carbone down on the
pier, but fish seemed as scarce as jobs. He was at Carbone’s house
that evening paying a bill for fish and Carbone had just given him
two cigars when Chief of Police Armstrong came in to tell them an
Italian fisherman named Pacci had drowned. Two days later Vanzetti
happened to visit the dock, and there was a dory near the wharf with
Pacci’s body in it and the undertaker’s car waiting on the siding. He
told the men in the dory it would be easier if they brought the body
to the shore and took it up the three cement steps to Water Street.
All that week he could find neither work nor fish. On Saturday he
went to Boston, again staying with Colarossi. At their Sunday meeting
in the Naturalization Club his friends asked him to go to New York on
their affairs and he left that night. Three days later he returned,
coming back on the Providence boat.
May Day found him again in Boston with Colarossi, and the next day
there was the usual get-together at the Naturalization Club. Monday
morning he spent at the fish piers; everywhere he went he found the
prices too high. In the afternoon he took the train to Stoughton and
stayed overnight at Sacco’s house. Next day he spent around the house
while Sacco went to Boston to pick up his passport. In the evening
Sacco came back with Orciani on the latter’s motorcycle, and the
three of them agreed to meet the following day.
That last day he and Sacco cut wood while Rosina packed. Just by
chance he had pocketed four shotgun shells he found on Sacco’s
kitchen cabinet.[10] Vanzetti told in detail about the evening of May
5: how Orciani, with Boda, had gone on ahead, and how he had composed
a notice for the next Sunday’s meeting. Sacco had thought the notice
too long, so he had cut out some of it. Although they had agreed to
meet Orciani and Boda at Elm Square, there was no sign of them when
they arrived. Only when they were walking over the railroad bridge
near Simon Johnson’s house had they seen the motorcycle coming along
from Brockton.
After talking about the license plates with Johnson they had given up
their project. Boda had then told Vanzetti: “I and Orciani go with
the machine and you take a car and you go home. We will look for a
new number. When I am ready I will tell you and we will come here
some other day. We will come to take the automobile.”