Doggy Bruno and Guinea Oates vanished. Only Joe Sammarco stayed on in Boston. Three weeks after the Bridgewater failure a policeman was killed during a dance-hall brawl in City Square, Charlestown. Sammarco was convicted for this crime in 1920 and sent to Charlestown State Prison for life. There he found himself with Big Chief Mede.
In August, 1920, Vanzetti was taken to Charlestown. Mede, with an eye to parole, was conducting a weekly English class for those who did not know the language, and Vanzetti became one of his students. Mede never forgot him. Forty years later he was still scornful of the idea that anyone could ever have considered the bookish Vanzetti capable of committing a holdup.
By the end of 1921 Moore’s investigators had picked up rumors connecting Mede and Silva with the Bridgewater affair, and in January, February, and March, 1922, Moore visited Mede in Charlestown. The Big Chief would neither deny nor affirm anything, but intimated that if he was given help in getting a parole, plus certain other favors, he would disclose a lot. Moore wrote to Governor Channing Cox, explaining Mede’s situation and asking for assurance that no statement Mede made would hurt his chances for parole. Cox replied that inasmuch as Mede was not going to be paroled anyhow, he should feel perfectly free to tell what he knew. The Big Chief did not think much of the governor’s answer and refused to talk.
Mede’s counsel was James Vahey, the brother of Vanzetti’s Plymouth lawyer. As soon as Vahey heard that Moore had been seeing his client, he paid a visit to the Charlestown prison and asked Mede point-blank just what he had said to Moore. When Mede denied that he had told Moore anything, Vahey—according to Mede’s sworn statement in 1928—warned him: “Don’t you dare say anything in regard to the Sacco-Vanzetti case. You know, my brother defended Vanzetti, and you will only be putting my brother in Dutch.”
Mede agreed to say nothing, but shortly afterward he broke with Vahey and on receiving the guarantee of an unrevealed sum of money from Moore told a story of the Bridgewater holdup similar to that later told by Silva. Mede had got together with Sammarco and said the latter would corroborate him, but although Moore talked with Sammarco several times, he could get no admissions out of him.
Meanwhile, Adolph Witner, who had been let off with a token sentence for helping to convict Silva and Luban, found himself extradited to Boston on charges of forgery and mail robbery. Moore ran into him at police headquarters, overwhelmed by his new troubles. He told Moore that he could open up the Sacco-Vanzetti case if Moore, in turn, would help him. Somehow the adroit Moore arranged to get the charges against Witner dropped, and late in April the two men, accompanied by an ex-convict named John Jocomo, then working as an investigator for the Defense Committee, headed for Atlanta to interview Luban and Silva.
Luban, envious of Witner’s freedom, decided to turn a little state’s evidence on his own and proceeded to write a long, garbled account of these interviews to William J. Burns, the Director of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice. Burns sent an agent to Atlanta to interview Luban and Silva. Receiving a report of the interview, Lawrence Letherman of the Boston Bureau sent a copy to the attorney general of Massachusetts. A few days later one of the attorney general’s assistants, Albert Hurwitz, arrived in Atlanta to take affidavits from the two men.
Luban told Hurwitz that on April 18 he had been called to the warden’s office to find Silva and an outsider whom Silva introduced as John Jocomo already there. Jocomo said he had come down from Boston to investigate the Bridgewater holdup “committed by Sacco and Vanzetti.” Although he knew that Silva really had had nothing to do with it, Jocomo said he was in Atlanta for two reasons—first because he was being paid; second, to cover himself and his brother, who had deposited some of the money taken in the South Braintree holdup.
The next day Luban and Silva were brought to the office again; this time Moore was there with Jocomo, who asked if they would like to talk to Witner. Moore had Witner brought in. Witner confronted his two former pals as if he were doing them a favor.
During my conversation [Luban explained to Hurwitz] I was interrupted by Moore who said to me, “There is no use talking, Martini [Silva] don’t know the first thing about Bridgewater or about Braintree, but is willing to help along and take the blame providing Mr. Moore will keep the promise that he made him.” I forgot to state that when Mr. Moore came to Atlanta he told me he was in Washington, that he seen William J. Burns and Attorney General Dougherty, and that they told him they would be glad if this case would be disposed of in any way at all, as long as Sacco and Vanzetti go free. He also told me he had a conversation with Attorney General Allen of Massachusetts, a man I never heard of or never seen in my life before and that Mr. Allen told him that if he can find a way how to free Sacco and Vanzetti, “we don’t care whether legitimate or unlegitimate” that he, Mr. Allen, would help him in any shape or form.... He says ... Mr. Allen wants to dispose of this case in the worst way, and he don’t care how it is disposed of as long as these two men are free, because the Governor and everybody else is sick and tired of it.