always thinking republicans has more chance to manage education,
develop, to build some day his family, to raise the child and
education, if you could. But that was my opinion; so when I came here
to this country I saw there was not what I was thinking before,
but there was all the difference, because I been working in Italy
not so hard as I been work in this country. I could live free there
just as well.... Of course, over here there is good food, because
it is bigger country, to any those who got money to spend, not for
the working and laboring class, and in Italy is more opportunity to
laborer to eat vegetable, more fresh.... When I been started work
here very hard and been work thirteen years, hard worker, I could
not put any money in the bank. I could no push my boy some to go to
school and other things.... I could see the best men, intelligent,
education, they been arrested and sent to prison and died in prison
for years and years without getting them out, and Debs, one of the
great men in his country, he is in prison, still away in prison,
because he is a socialist. He wanted the laboring classes to have
better conditions and better living, more education, give a push his
son if he could have a chance some day, but they put him in prison.
Why? Because the capitalist class, they know, they are against that,
because the capitalist class, they don’t want our child to go to
high school or to college or Harvard College. There would not be
no chance, there would not be no—they don’t want the working class
educationed; they want the working class to be a low all the times,
be underfoot, and not to be up with the head. So, sometimes, you
see, the Rockefellers, Morgans, they give fifty—mean they give five
hundred thousand dollars to Harvard College, they give a million
dollars for another school. Everybody say, ‘Well, D. Rockefeller is
a great man, the best in the country.’ I want ask him who is going
to Harvard College? What benefit the working class they will get by
those million dollars they give by Rockefeller, D. Rockefellers?
They won’t get, the poor class, but I want men to live like men. I
like men to get everything that nature will give best, because they
belong—we are not the friend of any other place, but we are belong
to nations.... So that is why I love people who labor and work and
see better conditions every day develop, makes no more war. We no
want fight by the gun, and we don’t want to destroy young men. The
mother been suffering for building the young man. Some day need a
little more bread, so when the time the mother get some bread or
profit out that boy, the Rockefellers, Morgans, and some of the
peoples, high class, they send to war. Why? What is war? The war is
not shoots like Abraham Lincoln’s and Abe Jefferson’s, to fight for
the free country, for the better education, to give chance to any
other peoples, not the white people but the blacks and the others,
because they believe and know they are mens like the rest, but they
are war for the great millionaire. No war for the civilization of
men. They are war for business, million dollars come on the side.
What right have we to kill each other? I been work for the Irish, I
have been working with the German fellow, with the French, many other
peoples. I love them people just as I could love my wife, and my
people for that did receive me. Why should I go kill them men? What
he done to me? He never done anything, so I don’t believe in no war.
I want to destroy those guns.... I remember in Italy, a long time
ago, about sixty years ago, I should say, yes, about sixty years ago,
the government they could not control very much these two—devilment
went on, and robbery, so one of the government in the cabinet he
says, ‘If you want to destroy those devilments, if you want to take
off all those criminals, you ought to give a chance to socialist
literature, education of people, emancipation.’ That is why I destroy
governments, boys. That is why my idea I love socialists. That is why
I like people who want education and living, building, who is good,
just as much as they could. That is all.”
Norman’s on-the-spot cartoon caught Sacco gesticulating fiercely, his
string tie awry, the astonished jurymen leaning forward and Moore
and Jerry McAnarney looking blank with dismay, the harassed court
stenographer begging for mercy. Katzmann and Judge Thayer were shown
with heads spinning. The district attorney’s head, however, was
perfectly clear. Making no objections to the passionate outburst, he
registered each point in his mind.
When Sacco finally finished and stood there in rumpled exhaustion a
ponderous silence followed, broken only by a few muffled coughs among
the spectators. Then the district attorney took up the threads of his
web again. If, he asked, things were as bad in America as Sacco said,
why had he not gone back to Italy where by his own admission the food
was better, he could have lived as well, and he would not have had to
work as hard? Did he intend to condemn Harvard College? Did he know
how many children were being educated free by the city of Boston?
Over the solid objections of the defense, Judge Thayer allowed
such questions on the grounds that they referred to statements the
defendant himself had made. Jerry McAnarney, losing his temper,
announced that he objected both to the questions and the answers.
The South Braintree murders had drifted into the background.
Gradually the district attorney’s questions led back to them. If
Sacco and his friends had been so alarmed by Salsedo’s death, why
did they wait three days before doing anything about collecting
the incriminating papers? Why had Sacco said they were going out to
pick up books and papers on the night of their arrest while Vanzetti
had testified they were merely going to make arrangements to pick
them up? “Probably I mistake or probably Vanzetti is right,” Sacco
replied. Katzmann quietly asked a few irrelevant questions about the
mackinaw Orciani was wearing. Then suddenly Sacco felt the knife at
his throat: “Did you take that revolver off the person of Alessandro
Berardelli when he lay on the sidewalk in front of the Rice and
Hutchins factory?”
“No, sir.”
Defendant and prosecutor stared long and silently at each other in
the quiet courtroom.
There were, Katzmann reminded Sacco, the lies he had told the night
of his arrest. The district attorney led him over them. It was a lie,
Sacco admitted, that he had bought his Colt in the North End. He had
really bought it at a store in Milford in 1917. He had lied, too,
about buying a new box of cartridges. The truth was that cartridges
were hard to come by during the war and he had bought an odd lot of
them in a partially filled box somewhere on Hanover Street. Katzmann
at once wanted to know if the fact that he later learned there were
four different kinds of cartridges had anything to do with his
changing his story. If he had told the truth about that box, would
it have helped to give away the names and addresses of his friends
who had radical literature? Following each logical advantage, the
district attorney pinned Sacco down to admitting he could give no
reason for such lying that had anything to do with the names and
addresses of anarchists.
Sacco still insisted that when he had gone out on May 5 with the Colt
tucked in his belt he had forgotten about it. He was used to carrying
it while on his watchman’s rounds, he said, though it was true he had
not been a watchman during the winter of 1920. Sometimes when he went
into Boston and came back late on the train he carried it.
“Wasn’t it a pretty unusual thing for you to carry the gun?” Katzmann
thrust at him.
“Well,” Sacco parried, “it is, but men have to defend themselves. In
the country you don’t know what you need.”[11]
As to his other lies, Sacco had lied when he denied knowing Orciani.
He had lied about the time he worked in South Braintree because he
was afraid if the police found out he had been working there under
the name of Mosmacotelli he would be punished as a slacker and they
would find the radical literature in his house. He had lied when he
said he had known Vanzetti only a year and a half because he did not
want to tell about their going to Mexico. He had known Boda for three
years; he had lied when he said he never had heard of him; Boda was
a radical and he wanted to protect him. He had had no intention of
looking up Pappi that night. That was another lie. As for the day of
the crime, he had said in the Brockton station he worked all that day
because he really thought he had. Katzmann forced him to admit that
he had lied to George Kelley, his friend, in telling him he would be
gone only half a day. Next morning he had invented a story for Kelley
that there was such a crowd in the consulate that he could not get
his passport in the morning and so missed the noon train.
Katzmann questioned Sacco minutely about the evening of May 5. Then
after a short recess the district attorney appeared with two caps.
Sacco objected that the first, a gray one, was too soiled to be his,
but then admitted it belonged to him. The hole or tear in the lining
he could not account for, although Katzmann pressed him to agree that
it came from the nail in the factory wall on which he used to hang it
each morning. The second cap, the dark one found next to Berardelli’s
body, Sacco denied was his.
Mrs. Evans enlivened the courtroom Friday and caused some confusion
among the courtroom attendants by appearing with binoculars.
Thursday, July 7, was Judge Thayer’s sixty-fourth birthday, and he
had been sent a bouquet of rambler roses. They now stood in a vase
on the great oak desk, nodding cheerfully in the breeze from the
electric fan.
When Sacco, his face heavy with fatigue, resumed the stand he asked
for an interpreter and Joseph Ross was assigned to him. Katzmann
began to hammer at why Sacco had said he was working at the factory
the day before he had admittedly read in the paper about the South
Braintree murders. Sacco tried to explain that at the time he had not
given the date much though. The district attorney insisted. “Why did
you tell me a falsehood that on Thursday, the day before you read the
account in the paper, you worked all day?”
“Well, I did not remember for certain,” Sacco told him. “I said that
I had been out two or three days.” There were two other days, Sacco
admitted, that he had gone to the consulate, although he could not
even now remember just what days they were. But they were half-days;
April 15 was the only whole day he had spent in Boston.
As the cross-examination continued, a dispute arose as to the
accuracy of Ross’ interpreting. Sacco accused him of translating
inaccurately. Felix Forte, a young, bilingual lawyer brought in by
the defense, debated with Ross as to the translation of _quanto_;
Ross had translated it as _before_ whereas Forte held that it meant
_when_. As the argument boiled up, Judge Thayer sent the jury from
the room. An arbiter called by Thayer, A. Minini, tried to reconcile
his colleagues. A flurry of English and Italian followed. Vanzetti,
in the cage, sprang to his feet to object to Ross.[12]
After the jurors had again taken their seats, Sacco denied that in
Brockton he had said he was away from the factory at the beginning of
April and that this was the only time he was away for a whole day.
The district attorney turned abruptly from the debate on days: “Did
you shave this morning?” When Sacco said yes, he continued, “Have you
shaved every day since this trial opened?” Scarcely waiting for the
affirmative answer, the district attorney announced: “That is all,
sir.”
It was Moore’s task in the re-examination that followed to patch
up the damage done. He brought out that although Sacco might have
admitted in Brockton that there was one whole day in April he had
not worked, he had given Katzmann no definite date. He had lied to
Michael Kelley about being delayed at the consulate because he was
ashamed to admit that the reason he had broken his word about getting
back in the afternoon was that he had spent the time talking to his
friends. The letter that he had received from his father, after
Sabino’s earlier letter announcing the mother’s death, was shown as
corroborative evidence to the jury.
Once more Sacco went over the night in the Brockton police station,
still maintaining that he thought he had been arrested because he
was a radical and a slacker. The first thing Stewart had asked him
was whether he was “an anarchist, communist, or socialist.” Again
the dispute welled up about Ross’ integrity. As the morning session
reached its end Jerry McAnarney asked that the jury be retired. He
then presented another motion for a severance, asking for a separate
trial for Vanzetti on the grounds of Sacco’s outburst:
“At the beginning of these cases,” he told Thayer, “I was
apprehensive and fearful of what might transpire during this case
were it tried in conjunction with the indictment against Nicola
Sacco, and meeting that situation we filed a motion for a severance
and a separate trial. At that time, in informal discussion before
your Honor, mention was made that if at any time during the trial
things should occur we could renew the motion. It now seems to me
peculiarly fitting in view of all the evidence on this record at the
present moment that the motion be granted for a severance of these
cases, and I now offer the motion.”
Judge Thayer asked if proper instructions to the jury would not take
care of the situation. The defense lawyer must have realized that
there was no chance of the motion being granted, but he also realized
what a damaging effect Sacco’s outburst had had on the jury. He felt
he must at least make the gesture of dissociating Vanzetti, with the
possibility that this might be allowed later by a higher court.
As Sacco resumed the stand on Saturday morning, the books and
pamphlets found in his house were admitted as evidence. Then Jerry
McAnarney, taking over the re-examination, asked more details about
letters Sacco had received from Italy announcing his mother’s death.
The week had been long, and the morning seemed anticlimactic, as if
the trial were now coasting downhill to its conclusion. Suddenly,
dramatically, McAnarney revealed that Sacco had recently seen a man
sitting in the front row of the court who, he was certain, had ridden
back on the train from Boston with him on April 15.
To Judge Thayer’s question as to why this was not merely hearsay,
McAnarney replied that he proposed to follow the statement by
producing the man in question. Sacco said that Moore had often asked
if he remembered anyone who had ridden up on the train with him that
day. He had never been able to, then all at once he had noticed
this man in court and he somehow remembered his face. He did not
know his name. He had not spoken to him. The mysterious witness had
been subpoenaed by the defense, but with the conclusion of Sacco’s
testimony he could not at once be found.
His place was taken by a routine witness, a Stoughton photographer,
Edward Maertens, who stated that some time in April he had made a
passport photograph of the Sacco family, as well as a much larger
one several weeks earlier. Next Walter Nelles, a New York lawyer,
testified that he talked with Luigi Quintiliano the last week in
April 1920 about disposing of socialistic and radical literature.
Two Brockton shoe-workers, Rocco Dalesandro and Michael Columbo,
then testified that on Monday, May 3, they had talked with Sacco in
Brockton about getting rid of their literature. Later, Columbo had
bundled up all such papers and pamphlets that he owned.
The last witness of the week was Felice Guadagni, the comrade who
had been first to visit Sacco and Vanzetti at the Brockton police
station. He confirmed Sacco’s April 15 alibi, telling how the two of
them had met by chance on the steps of Boni’s Restaurant at 11:30
A.M. Sacco, he said, was wearing a derby and a dark suit. They
had gone in together and were later joined by Bosco and Williams.
Guadagni had come out of Boni’s with Sacco at 1:30. He had then gone
back to his office at the _Gazzetta del Massachusetts_ and Sacco had
gone uptown to the consulate. About three in the afternoon he had
seen Sacco again in Joe Giordano’s café. Guadagni recalled the date
of his meeting with Sacco as the fifteenth because on that day he had
been invited to a banquet given by the Franciscan Fathers of North
Bennett Street in honor of Mr. Williams, the _Transcript_ editor, who
had just been made a _Commandante_.
Four or five days after Sacco’s arrest Guadagni had gone to the
consulate with Rosina, taking along a photograph of Sacco. There
they had talked with the acting consul and the vice-consul and the
clerk Adrower, but by the archaic rule of law—so frustrating to
laymen—Guadagni was not allowed to repeat what had been said.
Under cross-examination he admitted that he had seen Sacco in Boston
on several other days, always wearing the derby and the dark suit.
He could not, however, recall any specific dates. When Sacco came
into Giordano’s Café, Guadagni was already there talking about the
banquet. He had not attended it, but since it was the only banquet to
which he had ever been invited, he could not help but remember it.
The invitation had come the week before—he could not fix the date.
Court adjourned just before one o’clock and the jurors were left
alone in the marble courthouse to face another Saturday afternoon and
Sunday. They were almost certain, however, that this would be the
last weekend they would be kept in Dedham.
Judge Thayer spent his weekends in Worcester. There, at the familiar
golf club, he could join a foursome and forget the incidents and
frustrations of the past week. In the clubhouse after the game, in
the protecting company of his friends, he found a cathartic relief in
saying just what he really thought about those Bolsheviki who were
trying to intimidate him. Nobody, he told his friend Loring Coes,
could intimidate Web Thayer. A bunch of parlor radicals were trying
to get those Italian bastards off and trying to bring pressure on
the bench. He would show them, he told Coes, his face darkening with
accumulated anger. He would see them hanged, and he would also like
to hang a few dozen of the radicals.
On Monday morning George Kelley was recalled to explain more details
about the caps. He maintained that the lighter-colored of the two,
the one Sacco had agreed was his, looked much more like Sacco’s.
The one found near Berardelli’s body was darker than any Sacco had
ever owned. Kelley admitted reluctantly that he might have made some
remark about “not wanting to get a bomb up my ass” to Stewart and
Brouillard. This morning, while he was waiting in the courthouse
library to take the stand, he had seen a pepper-and-salt cap on the
table that looked much more like Sacco’s cap than the other two.
“The nearest I have seen yet,” Kelley remarked, as the third cap was
offered in evidence. When cross-examined by Katzmann, Kelley admitted
that he was fond of Sacco. Four or five months before the murders,
learning that Sacco’s radical activities were being investigated,
he had warned him. It was obvious that Kelley, whatever his own
political views, had not changed his friendly feelings.
During the recess Judge Thayer again asked Mrs. Rantoul to come to
his chambers. She made notes of the interview immediately afterward.
Judge Thayer began by asking her what she now thought of the case.
_I answered [she said in an affidavit in 1926], that I thought
Kelley’s statement as to Sacco’s character was important. I well
remember Judge Thayer’s reply and the manner in which he gave it. He
expressed scorn and contempt for my view, and told me that Kelley did
not mean what he said because he [Judge Thayer] had heard that on
the outside Kelley had said that Sacco was an anarchist and that he
couldn’t do anything with him. I told Judge Thayer that I had never
before realized that it was fair to judge a case by what witnesses
said outside of court, and that I had supposed that the only proper
way to judge a case was by what the witnesses said in open court.
Judge Thayer’s manner and expression of face expressed dissent from
this view, but he made no definite statement of dissent._
The mysterious spectator Sacco claimed to have seen on the Stoughton
train now appeared as a witness. He turned out to be James Hayes,
for thirty-three years a mason and contractor in Stoneham, and
town highway surveyor until March 1920. A defense investigator had
brought him to court in regard to some technical information about
the Stoughton street layout. Watching the trial, Hayes had become
interested in it, and he and his wife had returned on three other
days to follow the proceedings. It was while he was sitting there
that Sacco caught a glimpse of him.
Hayes agreed that he had indeed gone to Boston on April 15. He was
certain of the date because he had gone through his time-books and
found that on that day his brother had paid him fifty dollars. He had
used part of the money the same afternoon to buy parts for his Ford
in Boston.
April 11, Sunday, he remembered because it was the birthday of one
of his children. Monday, working at an excavation, he had sprained
his instep. Tuesday and Wednesday and part of Thursday morning he had
spent at home taking down the rear end of his Ford. Friday he needed
parts, and he had gone to Boston on the train that left a little
after twelve. He arrived back in Stoughton between five and six. Next
day, Friday, he started working again. He did not know Sacco, never
had met him, did not know whether Sacco was on that train or not, but
he did know he himself was.
Katzmann now took Hayes over the hurdles. What had he been doing on
March 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31? Hayes could not say. He thought he
had probably gone in to Boston a dozen or fifteen times, but he could
not remember any particular date because he had not had any occasion
to look it up.
Sacco, recalled, testified that he had seen Hayes that day in the
train from Boston. There was another inconclusive dispute with Ross
as to whether Sacco had said “in Boston” or “in the train from
Boston.” Sacco said he had been sitting in the middle of a coach on
the right-hand side, and a man had been sitting opposite him in the
aisle seat on the left. There was no particular reason why he should
have remembered this man except that they both got off at Stoughton
and somehow Sacco was struck by his face.
Hayes corroborated Sacco’s statement that he had been sitting midway
in the car on the left next to the aisle. No one had asked him until
that moment where he had been sitting. There was a person across the
aisle from him, but who it was, a man or woman, he could not say. He
had paid no attention.
Following Hayes, Antonio Dentamore of the foreign-exchange department
of the Haymarket National Bank took the stand to corroborate
Professor Guadagni. On April 15, just before three o’clock, he had
been talking with Guadagni in Giordani’s Café when Sacco came in. He
had never met Sacco until Guadagni introduced them. They had talked
together for about twenty minutes, mostly about passports. The reason
Dentamore remembered the day was that he had just come back from the
banquet for the _Transcript_ editor, and in fact he and Guadagni were
discussing it as Sacco appeared. Katzmann took him over the customary
hurdles. Dentamore could not recall what he had been doing at ten
minutes to three the day before or the day after the banquet, or
twenty days ago, or twenty-one days ago. He could not say where he
had had lunch twenty-two days before. “I am not a fortune teller,” he
told Katzmann.
The defense tried to get the information into the record that
Dentamore and Sacco came from the same district in Italy. Judge
Thayer excluded the references. Thwarted at each turn, Moore tried to
explain that “through this witness the defense offers to prove that
in the conversation that was had between the witness and Mr. Sacco
it became known to the witness that Mr. Sacco and himself were both
from the same section of Italy, that they were both mutual friends
and acquaintances of Mr. Mucci,[13] and that the witness, after
learning that Sacco was returning to Italy at an early date ... asked
Mr. Sacco to convey to Mr. Mucci his good wishes and the fact that
they had met one another in Boston.” At once the district attorney
objected and his objection was sustained.
As Monday drifted into afternoon there was a feeling of the wheels
running down, of impatience for the hour of decision. Everyone in
the court sensed there would be no more surprises, no more climaxes.
Half the reporters’ desks were empty. The _Post_ sent its cartoonist
over to the Middlesex courthouse to sketch the juicier proceedings
in the Mishawum Manor scandal. The remaining witnesses, including
the handful to be offered by the Commonwealth in rebuttal, were like
odd bits of string, useful only for tying up loose ends. Speaking
through an interpreter, Carlos Affe, a grocer whom some of the
Italians jokingly called the mayor of East Boston, told of selling
$15.67 worth of groceries to Sacco on March 20, 1920. On April 15 he
had again seen Sacco, who had paid him $15.50. Affe had made a record
of this in his account book and marked the date. That book he now
produced.
Luigi Quintiliano appeared briefly to say that he had seen Vanzetti
in New York on April 27 and 28 and had talked over the problem of
getting rid of radical literature. The Spanish anarchist Frank Lopez
refused to take an oath and affirmed instead that he had talked
to Vanzetti both before and after his New York trip about getting
incriminating literature out of their friends’ houses.
Then Rosina Sacco came forward, glancing at her husband with as much
courage as she could muster. She stood there, a slight pathetic,
determined figure, her red-gold hair softening her fine, slightly
archaic features so that with her sprinkling of freckles she looked
almost adolescent. Her story was simple. She told of her husband’s
receiving the black-bordered envelope containing the news of his
mother’s death one noon just after he had eaten. He had gone back to
the factory, but after half an hour came home again. She remembered
how on the day of his arrest she had been cleaning out a closet and
found the shotgun shells. Vanzetti had picked them up and said he
would sell them for fifty cents to a friend. Then, going through the
bureau drawers, she had found a pistol and some more shells. These
she placed on top of the bureau and asked her husband what he was
going to do with them. That same day Orciani and Boda had come to
supper. After supper her husband left with Vanzetti to catch the
Brockton streetcar. Boda and Orciani started out later after fixing
a tire on the motorcycle. When Vanzetti had said good-by to her, he
had given her a message to take back to Italy. She did not learn of
her husband’s arrest until twelve the next day when officers Connolly
and Scott and two or three others arrived at the house. On April 15
a man from Milford named Iacovelli had come to see about taking over
Sacco’s job and stayed a quarter of an hour.
Jerry McAnarney showed Rosina the caps that had been exhibited
before. The gray cap, she thought, looked like her husband’s, like
the cap the police had taken from her house on May 6. As for the
dark one with the earflaps, her husband had never owned such a cap
“because he never liked it ... he don’t look good in them positively.”