Moore came back again and again to his central question: Why had Goodridge refused to talk from September to July, and then suddenly gone on the stand and identified Sacco? Goodridge did not have any explanation.
“I think I testified to the truth to the best of my ability,” he complained, “and it’s a pretty hard proposition.”
The lawyer asked him sharply if he thought a man should die on his statement. No, Goodridge did not think so. But when he had testified he thought he had been right. No one had forced him, no inducements had been offered. It was just that Sacco was the man he thought he had seen. “But afterwards a good many times since I have thought that I am not positive,” he went on. “I am not positive that if I would have to swear that that man was the one, I could positively identify him as the man.” As Moore continued to batter him with questions, Goodridge began to cry.
Moore insisted that the assistant district attorney had badgered Goodridge into taking the stand. Goodridge no longer denied it. “You know just how those things is yourself,” he told the lawyer pleadingly. “He talked to me so much I was just about dead, I guess.”
The stenographer now interrupted to say she had run out of paper. The four drove back to the farm. On the way Moore urged Goodridge to sign an affidavit. He refused. Finally Moore turned to the sheriff. “I think, Mrs. Lee,” he said sternly, “that it is your duty to take this man back to Augusta and notify the New York authorities.”
While Goodridge changed his clothes, Moore spent twenty minutes talking, with his wife, reducing her, too, to tears. Goodridge then quietly got in the car and they headed for Augusta. Just before they reached the city Moore made a final effort: “Whitney, what I would like to know is what inducement was held out to you to testify at this trial. You did not testify at this trial willingly unless you benefited by it some way or another; that is what I want to know and if you will tell me you will save yourself the trouble of going back to New York.” Goodridge still would not say.
Moore took him first to the county jail. There the warden refused to admit him without a warrant. With the help of Deputy Sheriff Lee, Moore managed to have him locked up in police headquarters as a fugitive. “I will come back later,” Moore told the police chief, “as I want this fellow to come clean and he is holding back things that he ought to tell us.” Mrs. Lee then telegraphed the district attorney of Livingston County that they were holding Erastus Corning Whitney for him. Moore telephoned the clerk of courts in Genesee and asked if Whitney was still wanted. The clerk said he did not think so, but he would ask the sheriff. The sheriff expressed no interest in the eleven-year-old indictment.
Goodridge remained the night at police headquarters. When next day he was brought before Judge Robert Cony and the judge learned that the indictment was dated November 24, 1911, he announced angrily from the bench: “They will never bother you on it, and unless I hear from them tonight I will let you go in the morning, and I do not intend to have his office used by any lawyer to build up any cases for the State of Massachusetts or any other state, and the best thing you can do is not to see Mr. Moore again.”
Goodridge was released next morning. There was nothing more Moore could do about him.