Weeks, a deceptively mild-mannered man, gave Thompson much the same information about the Morellis that Ehrmann was to bring back from Providence. He had been familiar with that large and notorious family when the brothers were living near Eagle Park, Providence. Once he had helped Joe steal a load of whisky out of a warehouse on Smith Hill, but Joe had claimed that the whisky was vinegar and refused to pay him off. It was true, Weeks said, that the Morellis worked on tips. They always had plenty of money and they liked to flash it at the races and at ball games.
Weeks said he had known Madeiros for six years. A short while before the Wrentham holdup, the two of them had talked over their plans in a barroom in Andrews Square, South Boston, Madeiros remarking that it was strange he should be in the very same bar he had been in four years before on the way to South Braintree. The men concerned in that job, whom Madeiros in his first confession had called Mike and Bill, he had called by their real names in talking to Weeks. They were, according to Weeks, the Morellis of Providence. Madeiros had often talked about the South Braintree crime. The four who had been with him there were Joe, Mike, Bill, and Butsy Morelli.
In the Wrentham job Madeiros had used a Hudson as a getaway car. He told Weeks he had enough of Buicks after South Braintree, where they had used a Buick and switched to a Hudson afterward. Joe Morelli, he said, had double-crossed him on his cut of the payroll.
As soon as Weeks had signed the statement, Thompson drove to the Dedham jail to see Madeiros. Sheriff Capen telephoned Assistant District Attorney William Kelley to ask permission for the interview. Then Thompson himself took the telephone and explained to Kelley that he hoped to clear up the Sacco-Vanzetti case in a few days and that he wanted to question Madeiros about the confession that Weeks had just made to the South Braintree holdup.
Kelley gave his permission, then left at once for Charlestown with State Detective Michael Fleming, who knew Weeks, and Lieutenant Henry Plett of the State Police to act as a stenographer. They met Weeks in the rotunda and moved to a small side room where they sat around a table.
“Jimmy, did you make a full confession in regard to the holdup in South Braintree?” Fleming asked him with professional sternness.
“Jesus, no,” Weeks answered fearfully. “I didn’t make any confession like that.”
Fleming said he heard otherwise. “Well, I did not!” the other insisted. The detective warned him that he would be very foolish to try to help someone else out of a scrape by making statements like that. Kelley then asked Weeks what he had told Thompson.
Weeks said that Madeiros had told him in 1924 “that Sacco was not in the stick-up at South Braintree.” Madeiros admitted that he himself had been in on the South Braintree job but never went into details or said how much of the money he received.
Fleming at this point turned paternally reproachful: “Now all the time we used to ride up to see you here you told us nothing about this. If a man is innocent I want to get him out of it. Joe and I are the first fellows you should have told. You don’t know whether you believe Madeiros?”