The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti

A Summary of the Outstanding Testimony
by
LOUIS BERNHEIMER
“ The Truth Shall Make You Free ”
Few murder cases have attracted the anxious attention of the entire civilized world over so long a period of time as the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti at Dedham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. These men, Italian radicals and aliens, were arrested during the “Red Raids” carried out by the United States Department of Justice in 1920, convicted of murder in connection with a payroll hold-up, and on April 9th, 1927, seven years after their arrest, sentenced to die in the electric chair.
Agitation for the release of Sacco and Vanzetti has taken place in every corner of the earth. Many celebrated men at home and abroad have declared them to be innocent, their defense has fought a heroic fight, while the machinery of the law has steadily brought them closer to death day by day, until there now stands between them and execution in the week of July 10th of this year, one man, Governor Alvin T. Fuller of Massachusetts.
Widespread ignorance on the part of the general public of the actual testimony on which the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti was secured has made it advisable that a brief summary of the testimony of outstanding importance at the trial should be made.
The summary here offered, is based on the book by Professor Felix Frankfurter, of the Harvard Law School, “The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti,” itself based on the written record of the trial, published by Little, Brown, and Company in association with the Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass., and available at all bookstores.
L. B.
New York, May 15, 1927.
Seven years ago, on the afternoon of April 15, 1920, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, Parmenter and Berardelli, a paymaster and his guard, while carrying in two boxes the payroll of the shoe factory of Slater and Morrill, amounting to over $15,000, from the office building to the factory of the company, a three minute walk, were fired upon and killed by two men. As the paymaster and guard fell, an automobile carrying several men drew up. The bandits seized the boxes of money, threw them into the car, jumped in, and were off.