Chapter X: The Dedham Trial (2)

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.

TESTIMONY RELATING TO BOTH—AND TO NEITHER

The discussion of the testimony against Vanzetti and against Sacco must be supplemented with a number of other considerations. In the first place, there were 22 persons on the stand for the defense on the issue of identifications, who had at least as good an opportunity to see the crime and the criminals as the several state witnesses, and who said positively that these were not the bandits.

In the second place, 13 witnesses put on the stand by the prosecution for the purpose of establishing some facts of the crime, of whom several were excellently placed to make identifications, and certainly seemed anxious to apprehend the guilty persons, could not identify either of the defendants.

Thirdly, the government sought to bolster its testimony by evolving a far-fetched and intangible theory of “consciousness of guilt” at the time of arrest, which in turn brought into the limelight the circumstances of the arrest and the defendants’ unpopular social views. There are also a number of other points which consumed much time, clouded the issues, and really had no bearing upon the case.

Testimony contradicting that of Mary Eva Splaine and Frances Devlin was given by Frank Burke, lecturer, who observed the bandits escape from a much better vantage point than either woman. He was on Pearl street near the New Haven tracks and in the immediate path of the escaping car.

He stood within ten feet of the automobile. He saw two men in it, both dark. The bandit leaning out of the rear seat pointed an automatic pistol at him and pulled the trigger, but there was no explosion. Burke got a full view of the man who the prosecution claimed was Sacco. He described him as very full-faced—flat, and a broad, heavy jaw; needed a shave badly, “dark complexioned, looked rather a desperate type of man.”

But Burke declared that neither bandit was Sacco nor Vanzetti. He had an unobstructed view of the car as it fled, while the view of Miss Splaine and Miss Devlin was cut off by the cobbler shop. From a distance of ten feet instead of 80 as in the case of Misses Splaine and Devlin he described the man on the right side front seat who the government claims was Sacco.

Winfred Pierce and Laurence Ferguson, shoe-workers on third floor of Hampton House, saw bandit-car escape from a window directly above where Miss Splaine and Miss Devlin observed the car. Pierce saw one bandit shoot at his friend, Carl Knipps. Both described the bandit leaning out of the car and shooting, but declared neither Sacco nor Vanzetti was that man.

Barbara Liscomb, a woman of about thirty, of good personality, employed as a heeler, on the third floor of the Rice and Hutchins factory. She looked from a window directly above the room in which Pelser worked. She had heard shots, ran to the window; saw two men lying on the ground; a dark man with a pistol in hand standing over Berardelli. He wheeled around and pointed the pistol at her. She fainted, but in the instant of observation, she declared the image of the bandit was firmly implanted in her mind. “I shall remember that face all my life. That man was neither of the defendants. Of that I am positive.”

Mrs. Jennie Novelli, trained nurse, saw a big touring car drive slowly up the street shortly before the murder occurred and took particular notice of the chauffeur and the man beside him, whom she thought at first she recognized. Asked if either of these men were Sacco or Vanzetti she answered, “No, they were not.”

Albert Frantello, worker in Slater and Morrill plant. Passed from one factory building to another at 2:55 p. m. Saw two men leaning on fence in front of Rice and Hutchins factory. Was close enough to touch them. Frantello, who is American of Italian descent, is certain Sacco and Vanzetti are not those two men. Was interviewed by state police officers, and was not summoned by prosecution.

One of the men whom Frantello described was the bandit with whom it was sought to identify Sacco.

Daniel J. O’Neil, 19 years old, a business school graduate, got off the train from Boston and was sitting in a taxi-cab with a Mr. Gilman when he heard the shooting. He got a distinct impression of at least one of the bandits at a distance of 155 to 170 feet from the automobile. He said positively that neither of the defendants was the man he saw.

Five among 22 defense witnesses were laborers shoveling in an excavation across the street from the shooting. They were foreigners who had to speak through interpreters. In cross-examination it was sought to show that they had been too scared or too far from the scene of action to see anything. Their testimony was not broken down, but presumably was accorded little weight. One of them, a Spaniard by the name of Pedro Iscorla, was 40 or 50 feet from crime-action; had gone to get a drink of water. Says man who shot policeman (that is Berardelli) was high and thin, slim. Light complexion, 5 feet 8 or 9. Man who shot paymaster was a little shorter and dark.

Emilio Falcone, was a hundred feet from crime-action. Saw man who did shooting; he was light, tall. Not Sacco nor Vanzetti. Henry Cerro, granite-cutter from Vermont, also worked in excavation. Saw shooting 90 feet away. Parmenter was shot by a light-haired man, he declared.

Five other witnesses were working on the railroad some distance from the crossing and claimed to have run up toward the gate house in time to see the bandit-car cross the track. Angelo Ricci, section gang foreman was put on later by the government to show that they had not left the place where they were at work. Under cross-examination he had exclaimed, “What the hell, I did the best I could; when you’ve got 24 men you can’t put a string on them. I told them to stop and if they sneaked around the piles of dirt I couldn’t help it.” One of these laborers, Joseph Cellucci, wearing the uniform of a sailor from the training station at Newport News, declared he stood within 10 or 12 feet of the car, and that one of the bandits fired a shot at him which left him deaf for 3 days. He described that man and another sitting beside the driver; both about 20 years old. Neither one was Sacco nor Vanzetti, he declared.

Another of them, Nicola Gatti, is especially important because he had been a neighbor of Sacco in Milford eight years back. Had he seen him in the bandit-car he could not have failed to remember. Said he got a good view of the two men in front (with one of them it was sought to identify Sacco) and one behind. Asked if either of the defendants were any of these men, he answered, “No.”

Thirteen prosecution witnesses testified to facts pertinent to the exact moment of the murders, or in connection with the escape—but did not identify. Of these, several could not have been expected to make identification, but others had an excellent view. Five of these have already been discussed under Sacco’s case because they were in a position to see the bandit whom the government sought to identify with Sacco. The others are Shelley Neal, Mrs. Annie Nichols, Harris A. Colbert, Daniel Buckley, Mrs. Alta Baker, F. C. Clark, John P. Lloyd, and Julia Kelliher.

Neal was an important government witness because he attempted to identify the bandit-car with an automobile stationed against the entrance of the express office, in the morning when the money arrived. He claims to have seen neither Sacco nor Vanzetti.

A summary of the identification testimony for the government and for the defense is now in place. Of 35 witnesses called, 7 were unable to make any identifications; 22 were certain that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti were the men they had seen; 4 identified Sacco—two of them making serious changes from former testimony, and the other two thoroughly discredited; only one, the man whom the prosecution itself was obliged to “interpret,” identified Vanzetti.

The prosecution contended that the defendants, by their action, attitude and utterances on the night of May 5, when they where arrested, displayed consciousness of guilt of the South Braintree murders.

Officer Michael Connolly who arrested Sacco and Vanzetti in a trolley car going into Brockton, asserts that as he approached them Vanzetti put his hand in his hip pocket and that thereupon he, Connolly, said: “You keep your hands in your lap or you will be sorry.” Connolly further testified that a revolver was taken off Vanzetti by Officer Vaughn, who boarded the car at the next station, and that he, Connolly kept him covered until he delivered him at the police station. This story Vanzetti absolutely contradicted. With officer Connolly making the arrest was officer Vaughn. Vaughn said he took the revolver from Vanzetti’s right hip pocket (Transcript, p. 1280). Connolly said it was in left (Transcript p. 1284).

In the automobile which carried the arrested men to police station, Connolly testified that Sacco twice reached his hand to put it under his overcoat, and that he told him to keep his hand outside his clothes and on his lap. That some conversation about keeping hands where they belong may have taken place is confirmed by Officer Merle A. Spear, driving the automobile, who testified to hearing Sacco say, “You needn’t be afraid of me.” The government drew from this testimony a deduction of “consciousness of guilt.” What, they ask, could have prompted men to resist arrest, unless there was a murder on their conscience?

“The consciousness of guilt” made so much of by Judge Thayer was the consciousness of the dead body of their comrade Salsedo lying smashed in the spring dawn two days before on the pavement of Park Row.