man who had waved a gun at him when the black Buick raced by Magazu’s
pool parlor on lower Pearl Street. He remembered the defendant as
“a dark complexioned fellow with dark hair and he had ... a kind of
peculiar face, that came down pointed.” When McAnarney tried to find
out whether Goodridge wasn’t having his own problems with the law,
Judge Thayer intervened. “You can’t attack any witness’ credibility,”
he observed, “except by showing a record of conviction.” The jury was
never to learn that the salesman had recently pleaded guilty to larceny
and had been placed on probation.
Goodridge’s testimony conflicted sharply with that of Harry Arrogani,
a South Braintree barber. Five or six days after the murders,
Goodridge had told the barber that he had seen “a man in the car but
if I have got to say who the man was, I can’t say.” Peter Magazu,
the owner of the pool room, said that Goodridge had described the
man who had pointed the gun at him as a “young man with light hair,
light complexion.” Andrew Manganio, Goodridge’s sales manager, later
testified that his pool-playing employee had refused to identify the
defendants in jail because he had been so frightened by the gun that
“he could not possibly remember the faces.”
Drs. George B. Magrath and Nathaniel S. Hunting had conducted the
autopsies on the two murdered men. Four bullets were found in
Berardelli’s body and two in Parmenter’s. As each bullet was removed,
the physicians had scratched a Roman numeral in its base. The one which
had caused Berardelli’s death, a .32-caliber Winchester, was marked No.
III. At the trial, Captain William H. Proctor, the ballistics expert
for the Massachusetts State Police, testified that all but the No. III
shell had been fired through a Savage automatic pistol.
When Sacco was searched at the Brockton police station, a “.32 Colt
automatic,” which was to become Katzmann’s Exhibit 28, was found in his
belt. Proctor said that he had conducted tests on the fatal bullet and
the defendant’s gun. As a result of his investigation, he was prepared
to say that No. III was “consistent with being fired by that pistol.”
As for the other five bullets, his opinion was that they had not been
fired from Sacco’s Colt.
Captain Proctor’s opinion was shared by Charles Van Amburgh, an
assistant in the ballistics department of the Remington Arms Company.
He also had examined the fatal bullet and Sacco’s pistol.
Q. Have you formed an opinion ... as to whether or not No. III bullet
was fired from that particular Colt automatic?
A. I have an opinion.
Q. And what is your opinion?
A. I am inclined to believe that it was fired, No. III bullet was
fired, from this Colt automatic pistol.
He had reached this conclusion after comparing the No. III bullet
with six test shots which he and Captain Proctor had fired into oiled
sawdust at Lowell, Massachusetts. “My measurement of rifling marks on
No. III bullet as compared with the width of the impressions which I
have taken of No. III or of this particular barrel,” he explained,
“together with the measurements of the width or dimension of rifling
marks in bullets recovered ... in Lowell, inclines me to the belief.”
In addition, he had observed marks on No. III which he thought were
caused by pitting in the groove of Sacco’s Colt.
James E. Burns, an expert marksman who had been employed by the United
States Cartridge Company for more than thirty years, contradicted the
prosecution’s experts. He, too, had examined the fatal bullet, and he
was convinced that it had not been fired from Sacco’s gun.
Q. ... on what do you base that opinion?
A. On the 11 bullets that I examined that were fired from the Sacco
gun. It doesn’t compare with them at all.
The Colt’s barrel had shown “a clean-cut lead all the way through.”
There wasn’t a particle of doubt in his mind that No. III had not been
fired “from a gun that had a clean lead.”
J. Henry Fitzgerald, the director of the testing room at the Colt
Firearms Company, agreed with Burns that No. III “was not fired from
the pistol given to me as Exhibit 28.” He had examined three bullets
which had been fired by Mr. Van Amburgh at Lowell and, “the land marks
of the No. III bullet do not correspond, in my best judgment, to
bullets I have seen fired from this pistol.” Like Burns, he had been
unable to find any distinctive pittings in the groove of Sacco’s gun.
The cap which Fred L. Loring had found lying near Berardelli’s
body had been turned over to Thomas F. Fraher, Slater & Morrill’s
superintendent. Katzmann called George T. Kelley, Sacco’s foreman at
the 3-K Shoe Factory, who testified that the defendant often wore a cap
to work. “There were times that he wore a cap,” Kelley said, “There was
other times he wore a hat.” As to the former, he could remember only
that it had been “a dark cap ... of a salt and pepper design.” He was
unable to recall whether the cap he had seen hanging on a nail near
Sacco’s workbench had earlaps or not.
When the defense objected to the introduction of the cap on the ground
that it had not been sufficiently identified as belonging to Sacco,
Judge Thayer ordered Mr. Williams to ask Kelley whether “that cap ...
is like the one that was worn by the defendant Sacco?” “In color only.”
the witness replied.
THAYER: That is not responsive to the question. I wish you would
answer it, if you can.
KELLEY: I can’t answer it when I don’t know right down in my heart
that that is the cap.
THAYER: In its general appearance, is it the same?
KELLEY: Yes, sir.
Thayer promptly admitted the cap into evidence as the Commonwealth’s
Exhibit 29.
After Sacco’s arrest, Lieutenant Daniel T. Guerin had visited his home
and found another cap in the kitchen. Later in the trial, when Kelley
was recalled as a witness for the defense, he was shown this second
cap. He said that he thought that the cap the policeman had found
looked more like the one he had seen the defendant wearing than did
Exhibit 29. On cross-examination, Katzmann asked him if he hadn’t told
the police when they interviewed him about the cap that “I have an
opinion ... but I don’t want to get a bomb up my ass.” Kelley admitted
that he “might have said it when they drove off, but not at the time
when they showed me the cap.”
Q. Was that in reference to the cap?
A. Yes.
Later in the trial, when Katzmann cross-examined Sacco, he asked him to
put Exhibit 29 on his head. According to the _Boston Herald_, “It stuck
on the top of his head and he turned with a satisfied air to let the
jury see.” He then explained to the District Attorney that the cap was
“too tight” to fit properly.
Q. You are sure of that?
A. I am pretty sure. I can feel it.
He denied that the cap was his and his wife subsequently testified that
her husband “never wore caps with anything around for his ears, never,
because he never liked it and because, besides that, never, he never
wore them because he don’t look good in them, positively.”
Mrs. Simon Johnson said that, after her husband had gone to bed on
May 5th, Boda had knocked on her front door and asked her whether he
could pick up his Overland car. When she awakened her husband, he had
told her to go next door to Mrs. Bartlett’s and telephone the police.
She had walked over to her neighbor’s house and called Chief Stewart.
Although there was no street light near her home, the area had been
illuminated by the headlight of a motorcycle which she noticed was
parked in the street. Two strange men who were standing in the vicinity
of the vehicle, seemed to follow her when she left to make her call.
Ten minutes later, when she was walking back from Mrs. Bartlett’s, she
saw the same men who appeared to be “walking along” with her. She was
sure that Sacco was one of the men who had tailed her that night.
When she had testified in the earlier trial of Vanzetti at Plymouth,
Mrs. Johnson had not been so confident of her identification of the men
who had followed her. Then she had been certain that she “did not know
who they were or whether they were the same men or not.” Now, she was
prepared to say that “one of them” was the same man.
Q. ... do you want to say that you recognized Sacco before you went
into the Bartlett house?
A. I would know him if I saw him again.
Q. I submit it is not an answer to the question.
THE COURT. Can you answer it, Mrs. Johnson, by Yes or No?
A. Yes.
Q. Then by that I assume that you mean you did recognize him before
you went into the Bartlett house?
A. Before I did, yes.
The witness’ husband told a somewhat different story. At no time,
had either of the strange men been illuminated by the beams of the
motorcycle’s light. While he had not watched his wife walk over to the
Bartlett’s, he had seen her on the return trip. At that time, he was
sure that, with the exception of Boda, all the strangers were standing
near the cycle. He had told Boda that he couldn’t have the car that
night because “there were no 1920 number plates on it.” The latter had
replied that “I will send somebody for it tomorrow,” but no one had
ever called for the car.
Michael J. Connolly and Earl J. Vaughan, two Brockton policemen, had
arrested the defendants on the North Elm Street trolley later that
evening. Connolly was the first officer to board the car. “... I went
down through the car,” he said, “and when I got opposite the seat I
stopped and I asked them where they came from. They said, ‘We went down
to see a friend of mine.’ I said, ‘Who is your friend?’ He said ‘A man
by the ---- they call him ‘Poppy.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I want you, you are
under arrest.’”
According to Connolly, Vanzetti, who had been sitting on the seat
nearest the window, put his hand in his hip pocket. The policeman had
shouted, “Keep your hands out on your lap, or you will be sorry!” When
the two defendants asked him why they were being arrested, he had told
them that they were “suspicious characters.” Vaughan then boarded the
car and Connolly ordered Vanzetti to stand up so that the latter could
“fish” him. He himself gave Sacco “a slight going over ... did not go
into his pockets.”
Q. Was anything found on either man at that time?
A. There was a revolver found on Vanzetti.
The two suspects were then transferred to a police car which was
waiting alongside the tracks. Connolly “put Sacco and Vanzetti in the
back seat ... and Officer Snow got in the back seat with them. I took
the front seat with the driver, facing Sacco and Vanzetti.” During
the trip to the Brockton station house, Connolly noticed that Sacco
“reached his hand to put under his overcoat and I told him to keep
his hands outside of his clothes and on his lap.” When he asked the
defendant, “Have you got a gun there?,” the latter had replied, “No, I
ain’t got no gun.” Merle A. Spear, the driver of the car, swore that he
had heard this conversation and that Sacco had answered, “You need not
be afraid of me.” Later that evening, a Colt revolver had been found in
Sacco’s pocket.
Chief Stewart had arrived at the police station shortly after eleven
o’clock that night. The two prisoners told him much the same story
that they had related to Connolly. They insisted that they had gone to
West Bridgewater to see a friend named Poppy but denied any knowledge
of Boda or Orciani’s motorcycle. Sacco thought that they had left his
house at 6:30 that day while Vanzetti was sure that they had started
out three hours earlier. Sacco claimed that he had purchased his Colt
in Hanover Street in Boston many months before his arrest.
On June 22nd, after fifty-nine witnesses had testified for the
prosecution, Katzmann informed Judge Thayer that “We believe we have
nothing further to offer ... the Commonwealth rests, if your Honor
please.” Following Callahan’s opening statement, the defense promptly
called Frank J. Burke, the glassblower who had watched the Buick race
over the Pearl Street crossing after the murders. He had gotten a
good look at its passengers and he was certain that neither defendant
had been in the car. “I would say they were not,” he said. But on
cross-examination, Katzmann succeeded in showing that the witness had
such poor eyes that he had thought that Mr. Callahan’s Hudson in which
he had been driven to the courthouse that very morning was a Buick.
Mrs. Barbara Liscomb, the Rice & Hutchins employee who had fainted when
one of the gunmen pointed his pistol at her, “would always remember his
face.” When she had been taken to the Brockton police station, she had
been unable to identify either defendant.
Q. And you have looked at these men in the dock?
A. I have.
Q. Are either of the men in the dock the man you saw pointing the
revolver at your window?
A. No, sir.
She was “positively sure” that she had never seen either Sacco or
Vanzetti before.
Jennie Novelli, a nurse, who, some ten minutes before the shooting, had
seen the Buick proceeding slowly up Pearl Street in the direction of
the Rice & Hutchins plant, said the man who had been sitting next to
the driver was not Sacco although she had previously told a detective
that a photograph of the defendant “resembled” the man she had seen in
the car. Albert Frantello insisted that the defendants were not the
men he had noticed leaning against the Rice & Hutchins fence before
the murders. None of the laborers at the restaurant excavation or the
railroad employees who had been repairing tracks at the Pearl Street
crossing could say that they had seen Sacco or Vanzetti in the vicinity
of the crime. In all, some two dozen eyewitnesses testified that they
had not seen either defendant in South Braintree on April 15, 1920.
Vanzetti was the first of the two defendants to take the stand. As far
as the day of the murder was concerned, he insisted, in broken English,
that he had not left Plymouth. In the morning, he had been “selling
fish from a cart” on Castle and Cherry Streets. Some time during the
morning, he had asked Joseph Rosen, a peddler, to accompany him to the
home of Mrs. Alphonsine Brini so that she could look at a piece of
cloth which Rosen wanted to sell to him. Vanzetti thought that this had
taken place “near one o’clock, about half past eleven, something like
that, half past twelve, about one o’clock.”
After he had sold all his fish, the defendant had visited Melvin
Corl, a friend of his, who was painting his boat. He had had a long
conversation with Corl--about an hour and a half--during which time he
had also talked to a boat builder by the name of Frank Jesse. Then he
had gone home, changed his clothes, and eaten his supper. He could not
remember what he had done after finishing his dinner.
On May 5th, he had accompanied Boda to the Johnson home in order to
pick up the latter’s car which was to be used in collecting radical
literature from the homes of some of his friends “in five or six
places, five or six towns.” The mysterious death in New York, on May
3rd, of Andrea Salsedo, a radical with whom he had been associated
for many years, had convinced him that he should “get the books and
literature to put at some place and hide not to find by the police or
the state.” He had not told the police about his plans for that night
“because in that time there, there was the deportation and the reaction
was more vivid than now and more mad than now.”
He readily admitted that he had lied to Stewart when the police chief
had questioned him after his arrest. “I was afraid,” he said, “he went
into the house of the people that they named and found some literature
or paper and arrested the men ... I was scared to give the names and
addresses of my friends as I knew that almost all of them have some
books and some newspapers in their house by which the authorities
take a reason for arresting them and deport them.” His fears had been
aggravated by the fact that Officers Connolly and Vaughan had refused
to tell him why he was being taken into custody.
Q. What did they say what you were arrested for?
A. They say, ‘Oh, you know, you know why.’ And when I try to sleep in
the cell, there is no blanket, only the wood. Then we called for the
blanket, because it was rather cool. They say, ‘Never mind, you catch
warm by and by, and tomorrow morning we put you in a line in the hall
between the chairs and we shoot you.’
In fact, during the night, one of his jailers had spit in his face and
threatened him with a revolver.
Vanzetti also conceded that he had lied to Katzmann when the District
Attorney had questioned him about the price he had paid for his
revolver, the number of times he had visited Boston overnight, and his
acquaintance with Boda. Again he based his reluctance to tell the truth
on his desire to shield his friends. “I intend to not mention the name
and house of my friends” he explained.
Joseph Rosen testified that he had sold Vanzetti several pieces of
cloth at noon on April 15th. Mrs. Brini remembered that she had seen
the defendant selling fish that morning and that he and Rosen had come
to her house to get her opinion as to the worth of some swatches of
material. Her daughter, LeFavre, had also seen the fish peddler on both
occasions. At noon, Angel T. Guidobone, a rug worker, had purchased
some codfish from Vanzetti. Melvin Corl recalled that the defendant had
visited him when he was painting his boat, and Frank Jesse stated that
he had talked to Vanzetti about an automobile while they were watching
Corl at work.
Sacco confirmed Vanzetti’s testimony that both men had told falsehoods
because they were afraid that they had been arrested for their radical
activities. Since the police had not informed them of the nature of
the charges against them, he had been convinced that he and Vanzetti
had been picked up because they had been working “for the movement for
the working class, for the laboring class.” In fact, one of the first
things Stewart had asked him was whether he was a Socialist.
Q. When he asked you what you were in Bridgewater for, did you give
him a true reason for being there?
A. No, sir, because I was afraid to arrest us, they arrest somebody
else of the people....
Like Vanzetti, he freely admitted that he was a Socialist who did not
believe in war. After the United States entered the war in 1917, both
he and his co-defendant had run away to Mexico to avoid the draft.
Sacco had returned to Massachusetts several months later under an alias
and had not resumed his real name until after the war ended. As he put
it, “What right do we have to kill each other? I don’t believe in no
war. I want to destroy those guns.” He loved his adopted country, but
his hatred of war was greater than his devotion to an abstraction.
As far as April 15th was concerned, he maintained that he had spent the
entire day in Boston. In the middle of March, he had received a letter
informing him that his mother had died in Italy. He had decided to take
his family back to the old country and had gone to Boston on the day of
the murders to have his passport validated at the Italian Consulate. He
had taken the 8:56 train from Stoughton and, after arriving at South
Station, had walked to Hanover Street where he had met Angelo Monello,
a Roxbury contractor. Then he had gone to Boni’s Restaurant for lunch
with Felice Guadagni, the editor of an Italian journal. The two men
were later joined by John D. Williams, a space salesman for several
foreign-language newspapers, and Albert Bosco, a _La Notizia_ editor.
Sacco had left Boni’s at 1:30 and gone to the consulate. He was told
by some man there that the photograph he had brought was much too
big to fit on a passport. Then he had dropped in at a nearby coffee
house where he had again met Guadagni and Antonio Dentamore, a former
newspaperman. At 3:20, after buying some groceries at a nearby store,
he had paid a debt of fifteen dollars to a man named Affe. Then, he had
caught the 4:12 train back to Stoughton, arriving home shortly after
six o’clock.
Katzmann was remorseless in his cross-examination. Why hadn’t the
defendant gone to the consulate in the morning and taken the noon
train back to Stoughton? “Well, I think to pass all day when I been in
Boston,” was the reply. Hadn’t he lied to George Kelley, his foreman,
when he had told him “that there was such a crowd in there you could
not get your passport and the place closed and you missed the noon
train for that reason?” Yes, he had lied to Mr. Kelley. He also hadn’t
told the truth at Brockton when he claimed that he had worked on the
fifteenth. “I was not sure,” he explained, “There was not interest to
me very close to find out the date I have been out.”
A bevy of witnesses paraded to the stand to buttress Sacco’s alibi.
Dominick Ricci said that he had seen the shoemaker early on the morning
of the fifteenth at the Stoughton railroad station. At eleven a.m.,
Angelo Monello had passed the time of day with him in East Boston.
Guadagni, Williams and Bosco verified the lunch at Boni’s. According
to an affidavit submitted by Guiseppe Andrower, the former passport
officer at the Italian consulate, Sacco had come to his window at
two p.m. and shown him a photograph which the official had said was
too large for a passport. “April 15th, 1920, was a very quiet day,”
he swore, “and since such a large photograph had never been before
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.”
At 2:45, at Giordani’s coffee house, the defendant had complained to
Dentamore that he would have to go to the expense of having another
picture taken for his passport. Carlos M. Affe remembered that Sacco
had dropped in at his grocery store between three and four o’clock to
pay an outstanding bill of $15.50. Mrs. Sacco, who testified through
an interpreter, knew that her husband had gone to Boston on the 15th
because that was the day she had been visited by Henry Iacovelli, a
friend from Milford. Mr. Iacovelli confirmed that he had indeed called
at the Sacco home that day.
As for their guns, each defendant had an explanation. Vanzetti claimed
that he had bought his for five dollars from a friend named Luigi
Falzini in early 1920 because “it was a very bad time and I like to
have a revolver for self defense.”
Q. What do you mean ‘It was a bad time?’
A. Bad time, I mean it was many crimes, many holdups, many robberies.
Sacco maintained that he had gotten into the habit of carrying a gun
when he had worked as a night watchman at the 3-K Shoe Factory. On the
day he was arrested, he and Vanzetti had planned “to go to shoot in
the woods” but had not done so because “we started an argument and I
forgot....”
On July 14th, after Judge Thayer had delivered his charge from a
flower-bedecked bench, the jury retired. Some seven hours later, it
filed back into the courtroom. When Clerk Worthington asked if it had
reached a verdict, Foreman Walter R. Ripley announced that it had. He
and his colleagues had found each defendant guilty of murder in the
first degree. Thayer was happy to express the Commonwealth’s gratitude
for “the service that you have rendered. You may now go to your homes,
from which you have been absent for nearly seven weeks.” As the twelve
men hurried to take his Honor’s welcome advice, Sacco shouted, “They
kill an innocent man! They kill two innocent men!”
His prophecy was somewhat premature. On November 5th, a motion for a
new trial on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of
evidence was argued before Thayer. It was denied on the day before
Christmas. As far as the judge was concerned, he would not “announce
to the world that these twelve jurors violated the sanctity of their
oaths, threw to the four winds of bias and prejudice their honor,
judgment, reason and conscience, and thereby abused the solemn trust
reposed in them by the law as well as the Court.” If any errors had
been committed during the trial, no one would be happier than he if the
Supreme Judicial Court corrected them. “But until that time comes,” he
said, “so far as these motions are concerned, the verdicts of the jury
must stand.”
Before Thayer’s decision, Jeremiah McAnarney had learned that, during
the trial, Foreman Ripley had exhibited some .38-caliber cartridges to
other members of the jury. Unfortunately, Ripley died before the lawyer
could obtain a statement from him. However, two of his fellow jurors
admitted that they had seen the bullets and, on the strength of this,
the defense attorneys filed the first of six supplementary motions for
a new trial. In their briefs, they argued that it was improper for the
jurors to have considered any but legitimate exhibits.