The government sought to establish Sacco as the dark man “needing a
shave” who leaned against the fence below the Rice & Hutchins factory,
shot Berardelli, jumped into the automobile and leaning out shot right
and left as the car fled through the town. Towards that end, it brought
into court four alleged eyewitnesses of the crime and escape who
“identified” Sacco. These four were Miss Splaine, Miss Devlin, Pelser
and Goodridge. Two others called for the same purpose, Wade and De
Berardinis, disappointed the prosecution by their failure to identify.
Mary Eva Splaine, bookkeeper for Slater and Morrill, gave a remarkably
complete description of one of the bandits in the fleeing car,
considering that she was in a second-story window a minimum distance of
80 feet from the car, and saw the bandit only in the brief time required
for an automobile to travel 35 feet at 18 miles an hour—which is one and
one-fifth seconds. She saw the car first from an east window; then
switched to a window facing south. As she stepped to the south window, a
man leaned out from behind the front seat.
“He was slightly taller than I,” she testified; “weighed about 140 to
145 pounds, had dark hair, dark eyebrows, thin cheeks, and clean-shaven
face of a peculiar greenish-white. His forehead was high. His hair was
brushed back, and it was, I should think, between two and two and a half
inches long. His shoulders were straight out, square. He wore no hat....
His face was clear-cut, clean-cut. He wore a gray shirt. He was a
muscular, active looking man, and had a strong left hand, a powerful
hand.”
She said he was leaning half out of the car, just behind the front seat,
and that his left hand was on the back of that seat, presumably at arm’s
length from his face.
“He was in my view from the middle of the distance between the railroad
tracks and the cobbler shop, a distance probably 60 to 70 feet, and half
distance would be 30 to 35 feet. My view was cut off by the cobbler
shop.”
Miss Splaine declared positively that Sacco was the bandit who leaned
from the car. Defense Counsel Fred H. Moore confronted her with the
record of the preliminary hearing in the Sacco case, which shows that at
that time, a year before the trial and a few weeks after the crime and
after she had looked Sacco over to her complete satisfaction on three
different days, she admitted under oath that she “could not swear
positively that Sacco was the bandit.”
“That is not true,” she now asserted. “I never said it.”
But next day she came into court and announced that she wished to change
her testimony, and admitted she had said at the preliminary hearing that
she could not swear positively Sacco was the bandit. (Page 416, official
transcript.) She added that her present certainty of Sacco’s being the
bandit came from “reflection.” The transcript of the preliminary
testimony (Page 56) showed that she had said in police court: “I do not
think my opportunity afforded me the right to say he is the man.”
In the preliminary hearing she remembered a revolver in the right hand.
At the trial she recalled nothing about the right hand or this revolver.
Finally she admitted that when she visited state police headquarters in
Boston shortly after the crime, she was shown a rogues’ gallery
photograph of a certain man. Of him she said: “He bears a striking
resemblance to the bandit.”
Later she learned that this man was in Sing Sing prison on April 15.
Frances J. Devlin, also a bookkeeper for Slater and Morrill, gave
testimony similar to that of Miss Splaine. She saw the escaping car from
the same observation point, a window in the second story of the Hampton
House, at least 80 feet from the car. She said she saw a man in the
right rear seat of the automobile lean out and fire at the crowd.
This bandit, she said, was fairly thick-set, dark, pale, rather good
looking, with clear features. His hair grew away from his temples, and
was blown back. She “positively identified” Sacco as the bandit.
Under cross-examination Miss Devlin admitted she had testified in the
preliminary hearing that the bandit was tall and well-built, while Sacco
is only 5 feet 6 inches tall. She admitted she said then: “I don’t say
positively he is the man.”
The Quincy police court record shows she said at the preliminary hearing
that she got a better view of the chauffeur’s face than of the other
bandit’s. This was manifestly impossible as the car was covered and had
a left hand drive. But at the trial she declared that she never said
that; and now said that she did not see the chauffeur’s face.
She admitted that Sacco was made to assume postures like that of the
bandit for her in Brockton police station.
Answering questions by Prosecutor Harold Williams, Miss Devlin explained
she had testified in the lower court that she couldn’t say positively
that Sacco was the bandit “because of the immensity of the crime. I felt
sure in my own mind, but I hated to say so, out and out.”
In spite of the seemingly impossible detail of the descriptions of these
two young women, considering their position and the extreme brevity of
the period of observation, in spite of the manner in which doubt at the
preliminary hearings changed into certainty in the final trial, they
were the strongest witnesses against Sacco.
The third of these witnesses, Louis Pelser, went to pieces on the stand.
He was a shoe-cutter in the Rice and Hutchins factory, working on the
first floor above the raised basement. Pelser asserted that through the
crack of an opened window he saw a man sinking on the pavement, that he
opened a window, and that he stood up amid flying bullets and did two
things—he wrote down the number of the approaching bandit-automobile and
he made a mental note of one bandit who was shooting at the fallen
Berardelli. This witness declared that he noticed even the pin in the
bandit’s collar.
“I wouldn’t say it was him,” Pelser said, “but Sacco is a dead image of
him.”
Then Pelser proceeded to tangle himself up in lie after lie. He admitted
he had lied to Robert Reid, defense investigator, “to avoid being a
witness,” and that he had told Reid he didn’t see anything because he
got scared and ducked under a bench. Next he denied ever discussing the
case with any one previous to Reid’s interview with him, but later
admitted he had talked with a state detective previous to that time.
Cross examination revealed that Pelser had been out of work for some
time after the tragedy, and had been re-employed by Rice and Hutchins
two months before the trial. Subsequently he told his foreman he had
testimony to give. On the morning of the day Pelser appeared in court,
he talked with Prosecutor Williams, was shown Sacco’s picture and was
taken to identify him. Fourteen months had elapsed between the
crime-date and the day on which Pelser purported to identify Sacco on
the witness stand at Dedham.
Pelser was noticeably embarrassed on the stand, mopping his forehead
continually, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and unable to
understand the simplest questions. Further his testimony was
contradicted by three fellow workers:
William Brenner declared it was he and not Pelser whose station was near
the partly open window, and that it was McCollum who opened the window
fully. He said that McCollum shouted: “They are shooting; duck!” and
that they all dropped down behind the bench. When the shots sounded
farther away, they got up again, looked out, somebody got the automobile
number and wrote it on the work-bench. By that time the car was near the
railroad tracks.
Peter McCollum declared that it was he and not Pelser who threw open the
window and shut it again instantly, then dropped down behind the
work-bench with his fellows. He was the only one who looked out of the
open window during the shooting, he swore. Opaque glass was in all the
windows in the work room.
Dominic Costantino confirmed Brenner’s and McCollum’s testimony. He saw
Pelser get under the bench along with the rest. He heard him say
afterward that he didn’t see anyone. He volunteered as a witness after
reading Pelser’s testimony in the Globe.
The last of the crime-scene witnesses against Sacco, Carlos E.
Goodridge, is a phonograph salesman. He testified that he was in a
poolroom on Pearl street a few doors west of the Hampton House. He heard
shots, stepped out, saw the bandit-automobile coming; when it was 20 or
25 feet away a man pointed a gun at him; he went back into the poolroom.
Man with gun was dark, smooth-shaven, bareheaded, pointed face, dark
suit. Goodridge identified Sacco as that man.
Four witnesses including the proprietor of the poolroom gave the lie to
this witness:
Peter Magazu, the poolroom proprietor, declared that when Goodridge came
back into the poolroom he said the bandit he saw was light-haired; and
he had said: “This job wasn’t pulled by any foreign people.”
Harry Arrigoni, barber, related that Goodridge said a week after the
shooting that he couldn’t identify any of the bandits.
Nicola D’Amato, another barber, said Goodridge told him on April 15 he
was in the poolroom when the bandit-car passed and did not see anybody
in the automobile.
Andrew Mangano, music store owner and former employer of Goodridge,
testified that he had urged him to go to see if he could identify the
suspects in jail, and that Goodridge told him it was useless; he
couldn’t identify the bandits. Mangano declared that Goodridge’s
reputation for truth and veracity was bad.
With the jury absent, the defense endeavored to introduce testimony to
show that when Goodridge first identified Sacco in September, 1920 (when
Vanzetti was in this same courtroom in Dedham for a hearing), Goodridge
was in court to answer a charge of absconding with funds belonging to
his employer. Judge Thayer barred that evidence on the ground that no
final judgment was entered in the Goodridge case. Goodridge simply
pleaded guilty to the theft, and the case was “filed.”
Lewis L. Wade was a disappointment to the prosecution, as he was one of
those upon whose testimony the indictment of Sacco was based. He was an
employee of Slater and Morrill, and was in the street when the crime
occurred, saw Berardelli shot from a distance of 72 paces. Just then a
car came up; the man at the wheel was pale, 30 to 35 years old, looked
sick. The assailant threw a cash box into the car and jumped in.
This man was described by Wade as short, bareheaded, 26 or 27, weighed
about 140, hair blown back, needed shave, hair cut with “feather edge”
in back. Wore gray shirt.
“Have you seen the man who shot Berardelli since?” asked Prosecutor
Williams.
“I thought I saw him in Brockton police station,” Wade answered. “I
thought then it was Sacco.”
But Wade declared now that he wasn’t sure. He had felt “a little mite of
doubt” when he had testified in the preliminary hearing at Quincy. “I
might be mistaken,” he had then testified. His doubt deepened about four
weeks before he took the witness stand. “I was in a barber shop, and a
man came in. His face looked familiar. The more I looked at that man and
the more I thought about him the more I thought he resembled the man who
killed Berardelli.”
Another heavy setback awaited the prosecution in the testimony of Louis
De Berardinis, cobbler, who it was claimed had “identified” at Brockton.
His shop is on Pearl Street with the Hampton building behind, a grass
plot being between. He heard shots, ran out of shop, saw bandit-car
coming across tracks, man jumping in. Man leaned out of the car with gun
in hand, came opposite, pointed gun at him, pulled trigger; no
explosion.
“That bandit was pale, had a long face, awful white,” said De
Berardinis, “and he had light hair. A thin fellow, light weight. Not
like Sacco. The one I saw was light. Sacco is dark.”
This is the complete identification case against Sacco so far as the
murder scene is concerned. As has been shown, Pelser is discredited by
his self-contradictions on the stand, and both his testimony and
Goodridge’s is refuted by several undiscredited witnesses. The two
bookkeepers were at a disadvantage in their location for purposes of
identification, and they were positive fourteen months after the crime,
whereas only a few weeks after it, they had expressed some uncertainty.
In addition to the above six, the government put five witnesses on the
stand who got a sufficiently good view of bandit with whom it was sought
to identify Sacco to describe his appearance; namely, Carrigan, Bostock,
McGlone, Langlois, and Behrsin. None of them were able to make an
identification. It is of prime importance that their locations were such
as to make their testimony applicable to the same bandit whom the four
“positive witnesses” identify as Sacco.
Mark E. Carrigan, shoe-worker employed by Slater and Morrill on the
third floor of the Hampton House related that he saw Parmenter and
Berardelli proceeding from the offices to the main factory with the
payroll money, and that he presently heard shooting and saw the
bandit-automobile coming east on Pearl street past the Hampton House. He
saw a dark Italian-looking man in the car with a revolver.
But he could not identify either defendant as being in that car.
Carrigan’s testimony has a large bearing upon the credibility of Miss
Splaine and Miss Devlin, who from a window one floor below where
Carrigan was, claimed to identify Sacco as a man who was leaning out of
the escaping automobile. Eight feet below Carrigan, the two women were
no more than a foot closer to the bandits than he.
James F. Bostock, machine installer of Brockton, had been doing work for
Slater and Morrill. Shortly before the shooting, he came out of the
Slater factory and walked west on Pearl street. He passed two men, who
were leaning against a fence arguing. It is not disputed that one of
these was the man who shot Berardelli.
Immediately afterward he met Parmenter and Berardelli coming down the
road with the payroll boxes. Bostock was a close friend of Parmenter.
They exchanged words in a momentary meeting. Just after Bostock had left
the paymaster, he heard shots, turned, and saw Parmenter and Berardelli
fall. The men he had seen at the fence were shooting. They grabbed the
money-boxes and jumped into an oncoming automobile.
Bostock ran around the corner of a high board fence along the New Haven
track. The bandit-car passed so close, he said, that he could have
touched it with his hand.
He said he could not identify either of the defendants as the
highwaymen.
James E. McGlone, teamster, helped lower Parmenter to the ground after
the fatal shot. McGlone had been working in the excavation. When the
shooting started he ran forward, and saw the bandits at close range. The
commonwealth didn’t ask him if he could identify. Defendants’ counsel
had not interviewed him. They asked him in court if he could identify
the defendants, and he said he could not.
Edgar C. Langlois, foreman of Rice and Hutchins, was on the second floor
(from the street level) of that factory, facing on the crime-scene. He
could make no identification. The only description he could give was
that the highwaymen he saw were “stout, thick-chested—that is,
full-chested,” a description which fits neither Sacco nor Vanzetti.
Langlois’ testimony is highly significant because he was in a central
window immediately above the window from which another prosecution
witness, Pelser, claimed he observed Sacco. This witness occupies a
responsible position in Rice and Hutchins.
Hans Behrsin, chauffeur for Mr. Slater of the robbed shoe company,
testified for the prosecution. He was sitting in a stationary sedan on
the right-hand side of Pearl street, a little beyond the poolroom.
Five men were in the automobile, Behrsin said. They passed him within
ten feet. One man was leaning out. The car was going 16 to 18 miles an
hour. He could not identify either defendant as being one of the
bandits. A few moments earlier he had noticed the two bandits just
before they opened fire, and he described them as light-complexioned.
The government contends further that the bandits had lingered about
South Braintree during the morning. Precisely as against Vanzetti, three
witnesses uncorroborated—unless impeachment be an inverted kind of
corroboration—were brought forward in support of the contention that
Sacco had been seen in the town that morning.
William S. Tracy, elderly real estate dealer, testified that about 11:45
he saw two men leaning against the window of a drugstore building he
owned. They were “clean-shaven, smoothfaced, respectably dressed.” He
entered the drug store, came out, and drove away in his automobile.
Returning a few minutes later, he found the men still there, talking.
Again he went away and again he came back, and they still were propped
against the window.
Tracy identified Sacco as one of these men: “I would not be positive,”
he said, “but to the best of my recollection he is the same man.”
His statement that the two men were “respectably dressed” contrasts with
that of various prosecution witnesses who swore the bandits were
rough-looking and needed a shave.
In cross-examination it developed that in February, 1921, Tracy was
taken to the Dedham jail and escorted through various departments, and
was shown large groups of prisoners, and that finally he was taken over
to “the pit,” where Sacco was all alone; then he made his
“identification.”
Tracy’s testimony is open to wide question. He stands out in stark
isolation from the scores or even hundreds of persons who must have
stood upon or passed that corner in that noonhour, for it is the
principal intersection of South Braintree, where innumerable people wait
daily for electric cars.
Consider, too, that this corner is only a few hundred feet from the
scene of the crime, that Sacco had worked at Rice and Hutchins’, and was
known presumably by sight to various workers in South Braintree. The
defense argues that it is unreasonable to suppose that Sacco, had he
been intending to commit robbery and wanton murder in that town within
three hours would have lingered on that corner.
William J. Heron, railroad police officer, testified that he saw two men
in the New Haven station at South Braintree on April 15. One was 5 feet
6, the other 5 feet 11. He identified Sacco as the smaller man. He
noticed the two men he said, “because they acted nervous and ... they
were smoking cigarettes, one of them.” (Page 884, official transcript.)
Q. Which one was smoking? A. The tallest one.
Q. Did you pay much attention to the men when you first came in? A. Not
much, only I saw them smoking.
Heron, too, said that the man he saw wore a hat and was respectably
dressed, which conflicts with descriptions of the murderer.
Neither man had any outstanding physical characteristics, according to
Heron. He admitted he didn’t see Sacco to identify him until six weeks
later.
After Police Chief Stewart of Bridgewater and State Policeman Brouillard
had lined up Heron as a witness for the prosecution, the defense sent an
investigator, Robert Reid, to interrogate Heron. He refused to give the
defense any information. When asked in cross-examination why he refused
to talk to Reid he gave a curious answer for a man who had been a police
officer six years.
“Because I didn’t want to be brought into it.”
This man’s testimony was attacked by the defense from the same angle
that Tracy’s story was attacked. Defense counsel asked: Is it reasonable
to suppose that Sacco, if intending to rob and kill three hours later in
that town where he had worked, would have lingered in places where many
persons would have opportunity to observe him?
Mrs. Lola Andrews, a lady of miscellaneous avocations, attested that on
the morning of the crime-date she and Mrs. Julia Campbell went from
Quincy to South Braintree to seek work in the shoe factories. They
arrived between 11:00 and 11:30. Mrs. Andrews said that she saw an
automobile in front of the Slater and Morrill plant, and a man working
around the hood.
When they came out of the Slater factory, this man was under the car
fixing something. She called him from beneath the car, she asserted, and
asked him how to get into the Rice and Hutchins’ factory. She identified
this man as Sacco.
But at that moment, according to her own statements, another man was
standing near that automobile—a light-complexioned emaciated
Swedish-looking man. Mrs. Andrews’ testimony does not explain why she
addressed her inquiry to the man under the automobile instead of asking
the man standing near.
While Mrs. Andrews was being cross-examined by Defense Attorney Moore,
and when he was showing her some photographs she fainted, and was
carried out. Prosecutor Katzmann left the room, returned, scanned the
faces of the audience, then conferred in whispers with the court. Judge
Thayer ordered the courtroom doors closed, and various spectators were
searched.
When the witness took the stand again, she asserted that she fainted
because she saw a man in court whom she thought was the person who
assaulted her in February, 1920, in a toilet in the Quincy lodging house
where she had rooms.
Her testimony was impeached by five defense witnesses. The most
important of these was Mrs. Julia Campbell, who accompanied Mrs. Andrews
to South Braintree that day, and gave testimony directly opposite.
An elderly but active woman, Mrs. Campbell had come from Maine to
testify for the defense after a state detective had told her she needn’t
go to Massachusetts to testify; that she didn’t know anything of
importance; and that it would cost too much to have her make the trip.
She submitted to an eyesight test in court at the hands of District
Attorney Katzmann, and proved that she was able to distinguish objects
and colors at long distance; one instance was her specifying the color
of a hat picked at random among the audience. And she had been working
in the shoe factories as a stitcher, at a task which requires unerring
vision.
“Neither of us spoke to the man under the automobile,” declared Mrs.
Campbell. “Mrs. Andrews did not speak to either man. It was I who
addressed the inquiry about how to get into the Rice and Hutchins’
factory. But I spoke to the man standing in the rear of the car, not to
the man underneath.”
Why did Mrs. Andrews faint in court? Harry Kurlansky, a Quincy tailor,
testified that she told him she fainted because the defense was digging
into her past history, and that she was afraid the lawyers would “bring
out the trouble she had with Mr. Landers.” Landers was a naval officer,
Kurlansky said.
She told him also, Kurlansky stated, that she couldn’t identify the men
at Braintree. The police wanted her to identify some one in Dedham jail
as one of the men she saw in Braintree, but she couldn’t because she
didn’t get a good look at the faces of those men. Kurlansky volunteered
to testify for the defense after reading in newspapers of the
“identification” she swore to in court.
Policeman George Fay of Quincy testified that he interviewed Mrs.
Andrews in February, 1920, in connection with the alleged assault upon
her. Did she suppose that attack had anything to do with the South
Braintree affair? She answered that she could not identify the men she
saw in Braintree as she didn’t get a good look at them.
Alfred La Brecque, Quincy reporter and secretary of the Chamber of
Commerce there, said she told him the same thing.
Miss Lena Allen, rooming house proprietor, testified that Mrs. Andrews’
reputation for truth and veracity was bad, and that she would never want
her in her house again.
At the end of the trial the Government put Mrs. Mary Gaines upon the
stand to support the testimony of Mrs. Andrews and to contradict that of
Mrs. Campbell. Mrs. Gaines declared that a few weeks after the crime she
had heard Mrs. Andrews say in Mrs. Campbell’s presence that she had
spoken to the man under the automobile, and that Mrs. Campbell did not
contradict her.
Fred Loring, shoe-worker for Slater and Morrill, stated that he found a
dark brown cap near Berardelli’s body; it was offered as an exhibit by
the commonwealth. When tried on by Sacco on the witness stand this cap
seemed too small; whereas a cap of his own, tried on immediately
afterwards fitted with nicety.
The “bandit cap” was fur-lined and had ear-laps, which accounts for its
being smaller although the same size numerically as Sacco’s. Sacco never
owned a cap of this character. George Kelley, superintendent of the
Three K Factory where Sacco worked, said the cap he had seen daily
behind Sacco’s bench, as he remembered, was a pepper-and-salt cloth,
which he believed was different from the one produced by the
commonwealth. A cap like the one described by Kelley was found in the
house at the time of Sacco’s arrest.
Of the four bullets found in Berardelli’s dead body, three were
admittedly from a Savage pistol. The other one, however, was from some
other kind of revolver, the make of which is in dispute. It is the
prosecution’s contention that the leaden pellet designated as Bullet No.
3 which inflicted the fatal wound upon Berardelli, was from a Colt
automatic found on Sacco when he was arrested three weeks after the
murders. The bullet was a Winchester of an obsolete make.
The testimony upon this point by experts put upon the stand by both the
government and the defense was voluminous and highly technical. The
disagreement was sharp.
Captain Charles Van Amburgh, of the Remington Arms Works, testified for
the prosecution: “I believe the bullet was fired from a Colt automatic
pistol.... I am inclined to believe it was fired from this Colt
automatic.” He based this belief, he said, on a mark he found on the
bullet, visible only under a microscope, and on similar marks noted on
three bullets which he had fired from the revolver. These bullets were
all Winchesters of a modern make. On three Peters bullets fired at the
same time no such marks were visible. The Peters bullet, he said, are a
trifle smaller than Winchesters, and therefore under less pressure.
Under cross-examination, Van Amburg acknowledged that pitting such as
was present in the Sacco pistol was generally caused by rust or fouling
and that to the best of his judgment, in the pistol before them, it was
so caused.
Captain William H. Proctor, head of the state police.
He said that bullet No. 3 was consistent with being fired from Sacco’s
revolver. “That bullet was fired from a 32 Colt automatic,” Proctor
asserted. “It has a left twist and a .060 of an inch groove. No other
revolver except the Colt has a left twist.”
“Don’t you know,” asked Defense Counsel McAnarney, “that at least two
other kinds of revolvers make a left twist marking?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Proctor.
“Do you know that the Spear and the Sauer guns both make a left twist
marking?”
Proctor didn’t know. He had never seen either kind of gun, never heard
of them before. Both are German makes, it appears, and occasionally one
of them bobs up in a pawnshop.
Although this witness had said he had been a gun expert in a hundred
cases, he was unable to take a Colt automatic revolver apart in court.
Proctor struggled with it vainly until his face grew crimson, dropped it
on the floor in his awkwardness, and then the court suggested that some
one else try. Another expert took the weapon apart in a moment.
“And what is the part of the gun through which the firing pin
protrudes,” asked Attorney McAnarney.
“I do not know as I can tell you all the scientific parts of the gun,”
answered Proctor.
Proctor said he received the Colt pistol and some 32-calibre cartridges
from another officer at Brockton police station.
Q. Will you look at this envelope of cartridges and see if you can
identify them?
A. That is the same envelope, and it looks like the same amount of
cartridges. I can tell by counting them.
Neither revolver nor the bullets were ever impounded before the trial.
They were in the hands of police officers, and most of the time in
Captain Proctor’s possession. Prosecutor Katzmann refused to permit the
defense to examine any of the exhibits until they were produced in
court.
To meet the testimony of Proctor and Van Amburgh, the defense put on two
gun experts of long standing—James E. Burns, noted rifleman, champion
pistol shot, and head of a department of the United States Cartridge
Company; and James H. Fitzgerald, superintendent of the testing
department of the Colt Automatic Pistol Company. Burns declared that
Bullet No. 3 might have been fired from either a Colt or a Bayard
revolver. The latter is a Belgian gun; many have been brought here since
the war. Burns declared positively that the bullet did not come from
Sacco’s revolver. He fired 8 bullets through it, and all came through
clean and without any markings.
Fitzgerald testified that Bullet No. 3 did not come from the Sacco gun;
that there was no condition existent in that gun to cause the peculiar
marking on the bullet.
Expert Burns fired U. S. bullets, for the reason that, as stated above,
the “fatal” bullet was of an obsolete make, and he had found it
impossible to secure an exact duplicate in spite of having made great
effort to do so. He considered that the U. S. bullets which he used
corresponded more nearly with the “fatal” bullet than did the newer make
of Winchester used by Captain Van Amburgh.
To the minds of many who followed this gun testimony, the claim of the
government regarding a certain gun seemed farcical. The fact that two of
the bullets said to have been fired through the so-called Sacco gun did
bear microscopic marks faintly resembling that on the “fatal bullet”
seems to have carried weight with some members of the jury; that is
indicated by the circumstance that the microscope was called for while
the verdict was under consideration. The question was so involved, the
chances of error so great, the opinion of experts so conflicting, that
it would seem as if a layman could hardly have made a final judgment on
the matter.
Then came up the testimony about Sacco’s reputation.
From 1910 to 1917 he worked in the Milford Shoe Factory. The foreman
during four years of this time, John J. Millick, a responsible looking
person of the English operative type, testified of Sacco, “a steady
workman, never lost a day.” Asked as to his reputation as a peaceful and
law-abiding citizen, he answered “good.”
Michael F. Kelley, the senior partner in the Three K Factory at
Stoughton where Sacco was employed the 18 months previous to his arrest,
and his son George Kelley, superintendent and part owner, bore testimony
as to Sacco’s character similar to that of Mr. Millick.
Both of the Kelleys gave testimony which dovetailed in with that of
others in establishing Sacco’s alibi. Late in March, Sacco had told both
Michael and George Kelley that he had received letters from Italy
announcing his mother’s death, and that he must go home as soon as
possible to see his father. With George Kelley he had arranged to break
in another man to do his work and that he should be free to start for
Italy as soon as his place was satisfactorily filled.
On Monday or Tuesday of the week of April 15th, Sacco told George Kelley
he would like a day off that week, to make a trip to Boston and get the
passport. On Wednesday, April 14th, Sacco told him that he was well
ahead of his work and would go to Boston the following day. He was
absent the following day, Thursday, April 15th (the fateful day of the
South Braintree murder), in Boston; so Sacco claimed and so George
Kelley believed. The day following that, April 16th, Sacco was at work
at the usual hour. This day, the 15th of April, was the only day of
absence which George Kelley recalled. And he believed he would have
remembered had Sacco been absent on any other day as his was “a one-man
job,” and if “he was out, the work was blocked.”
It was not controverted that Sacco had been to Boston about his passport
at approximately the date he claimed. Whether he had really gone to
Boston on April 15th as he claimed, or to South Braintree to commit
murder as the Government claimed, was the issue of the trial. Ten
witnesses supported the alibi. The truthfulness of their testimony was
not impeached, although efforts were made to impeach the reliability of
their memory. However, it appears that they certainly saw Sacco in
various parts of Boston some day that week. And since Thursday was the
only day it was shown that Sacco was not at work, the conclusion is
obvious.
Mrs. Sacco, when upon the witness stand, unwittingly to herself
buttressed her husband’s alibi claim. She fixed the date he had gone for
the passport by the visit she received from a friend who had come with
his wife from Milford the day her husband was absent, and who had stayed
to dinner. The friend she said was Enrico Iacovelli whom her husband had
sent for to see Mr. Kelley and arrange to be broken into Sacco’s work.
Henry Iacovelli, the shoe-worker who took Sacco’s place in the Kelley
factory, testified that he received a letter from Mr. Kelley offering
him Sacco’s job as an edge-trimmer, a highly important function in the
factory mechanism. He replied that he could go and talk with Kelley on
April 15; went to see him that day; called at the Sacco home to see
Sacco; Mrs. Sacco informed him that her husband was in Boston arranging
for passports.
The original correspondence exchanged between Kelley and Iacovelli was
introduced as evidence by the defense.
Sacco declared under oath that he took the 8:56 o’clock train from South
Stoughton to Boston on April 15, to arrange for passports to Italy.
South Stoughton is 19 miles from Boston.
In Boston, Sacco said, he had lunch with friends at Boni’s restaurant in
North Square, then went to the Italian consulate to see about the
passports. A photograph of his wife, his son Dante and himself which he
brought was too large for consular purposes; there was considerable
conversation about that; he was instructed to furnish a smaller picture.
On the streets he met and talked with certain persons. Going again to
North Square, he spent some time in Giordano’s coffee-house; then went
to East Boston, where he paid a bill for groceries, and finally returned
to Stoughton on a train about 4:20 p. m.
Prof. Felice Guadagni, journalist and lecturer, testified that he had
lunch at Boni’s on April 15 with Sacco and Albert Bosco, editor of _La
Notizia_. While they ate, John D. Williams, an advertising agent,
entered and joined them. Sacco told them about his intention to visit
the consulate. They discussed the banquet given that day by Italians to
Mr. Williams of the _Boston Transcript_ who had been decorated by the
King of Italy for the stand his paper had taken in the war—a memorable
occasion among Boston Italians.
Later that afternoon Guadagni met Sacco again in Giordano’s
coffee-house. And after the arrest of the defendants, Guadagni said he
visited the consulate and talked with Giuseppe Adrower, clerk there,
establishing the fact that Sacco had applied for a passport on April 15
and had been sent away because the photograph he brought was too large.
Prof. Antonio Dentamaro, Manager of the Foreign Department of the
Haymarket National Bank in Boston, testified in court that he met Sacco
in Giordano’s coffee-house on April 15, between 2 and 3 p. m. Remembered
date because he went to the Coffee-House directly from the banquet to
Mr. Williams which he had attended.
He especially remembered meeting Sacco because he had sent a message by
him to Leone Mucci, a member of the Chamber of Deputies in Italy.
They had talked about Sacco’s prospective return to Italy. Sacco had
said he had come to Boston to get his passport.
Albert Bosco, editor of _La Notizia_, conservative Italian daily
newspaper in Boston, testified likewise as to the presence of Sacco and
the others in Boni’s on that day.
Carlo Affè, East Boston grocer, testified that between 3 and 4 o’clock
on April 15 he was paid by Sacco for an order of groceries purchased at
an earlier date. He exhibited a notebook record of the transaction.
Giuseppe Adrower, clerk in the Italian consulate at Boston for 6 years,
and now in Italy, testified in a deposition sworn to before the American
consul general at Rome. He identified the photograph of Sacco, Mrs.
Sacco and their son as a picture Sacco brought to the consulate on April
15. He corroborated Sacco’s statements regarding his difficulties over
passports.
Adrower remembered telling Sacco that the picture was too large, and
that he laughed with others in the consulate over the big photograph,
and his eye happened to catch the date on the calendar while so doing.
Sacco left the consulate a few minutes before the office was closed for
the day; it is regularly open from 10 to 3. Very few persons were there
that afternoon.... Adrower went to Italy May 20, for his health, but
Guadagni testified that he talked with Adrower about Sacco and the
photograph shortly after Sacco’s arrest.
One alibi witness who was brought forward late in the trial and by the
merest chance offered what would seem to be incontrovertible evidence.
It appeared that Sacco one day had noticed a face in the audience at the
courtroom which arrested his attention. He called for Mr. McAnarney and
asked him to find out if that man was on the train coming from Boston to
Stoughton in the evening of April 15, 1920. Mr. McAnarney called the man
into the lobby and inquired. “I don’t know,” answered the stranger, “but
will see if I can find out.”
It developed that he was a contractor who kept his own time in his
business books, by the hour; and from his books put in evidence and from
a check dated April 15th, and used to buy supplies in Boston upon the
date in question as well as by the bills for these supplies, he was able
to locate himself on that very train. He did not know Sacco and had no
recollection of having ever seen him until he dropped in as a spectator
at the trial. His name is James M. Hayes; his residence and place of
business, Stoughton, Mass.
The District Attorney, attempting to demolish Sacco’s alibi in his
closing argument, was silent as to the evidence offered by Hayes.