No person of this man’s make-up [Ernst wrote later] would have read the minutes of the trial with enough precision to fit all his answers into the known facts, down to the description of the flapping of the side curtains on the murder car. Nor could any human being have guessed the answers as to time and place of the many details of the shooting day about which I confronted him. I left completely satisfied that the gang chieftain was in the murder car and knew all the details of the planning of the robbery, the details of the shooting, and the technique of escape.
Joe was even willing to sign a statement—for a price—but he became angry when Ernst let slip that an underworld intermediary had been promised fifteen hundred dollars for his assistance in the case. Joe hinted that his price would be ten times that. Ernst finally offered him twenty-five hundred if he would produce the metal payroll boxes. “You couldn’t get them out of Canapa Pond,” Joe told him.
Later, while Morelli was doing his stretch at Lewisburg, Ernst said he learned that Canapa Pond was the local name for a body of water on the route of the escaping murder car, but he made no effort to recover the boxes.
During his three years at Lewisburg Joe continued writing his life history, accumulating almost six hundred pages by the time of his 1936 parole. Back at Toledo Avenue, he made various attempts to cash in on the manuscript. For some time he corresponded with Silas Bent, a friend of Jack Callahan, the journalist who had brought Frank Silva’s confession to the Outlook in 1928. Bent was impressed enough to get in touch with the Outlook and with Upton Sinclair, to whom he wrote:
Joe Morelli has asked me to write you about his autobiography, which he has completed. I have not seen it, and do not know whether he goes fully into the South Braintree holdup; but I have talked to him more than once about it, and if he is free to tell the whole story, the book should be a smash.
When Bent asked Joe’s price for a sworn confession that he had organized and committed the South Braintree holdup, Joe, apparently with an author’s vanity, insisted that his whole book appear, not just a chapter. After some further dickering, the deal fell through.
Meantime Joe had been angling Ernst, promising him “the real truth and not baloney” about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and when Ernst again met him in Jackvony’s office, Joe had the manuscript with him. His price was twenty-five thousand dollars, and he would not allow the pages to be inspected even briefly. All Ernst managed to see was the cover. Subsequently, with the help of Oswald Garrison Villard, Ernst raised an initial five thousand dollars. Joe still held out for his twenty-five thousand, which in Ernst’s court-hardened mind meant he would settle for ten thousand.
Some time in 1939 Ernst took Joe to lunch in Boston with Robert Lemond, an editor of Little, Brown & Co., to discuss publishing the confession-autobiography. Joe had his sealed manuscript with him, but he still refused to turn it over for less than his price. He and Ernst were not to meet again.
With the shadow of World War II moving across the landscape, interest in the Morellis faded. The only person still concerned with them was Ben Bagdikian, a reporter on the Providence Journal. In August 1950, he learned that Joe was dying of cancer. Hopeful of getting some last statement from him, Bagdikian went to Jackvony, one of the few men Joe trusted. Jackvony in turn went to Joe’s bedside and told him that a friend wanted to see him about the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
At first Joe refused to see anyone, but a few days later he whispered to the lawyer: “All right, tell him to come. I’ll tell him the whole story.” Jackvony reminded Joe that he did not have to say anything, but if he had something to get off his chest, this was the time. “Tell him to come,” Joe said again.