I had a try at persuading her that the Sacco-Vanzetti case was part of the history of our times, that it had all happened too long ago for anyone to be hurt any more, and that if there really was anything in her grandfather’s autobiography that would settle the unsettled question, she had an obligation to reveal it. That was no good either.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “But I’m not changing my mind. There isn’t any money would make me, either. Nobody’s going to see it. Some things better stay a secret, I guess, and this is one of them.”
Not until a year after this interview did I finally manage to learn the contents of Joe Morelli’s document. When he wrote it, Joe was apparently still smarting from the remarks Ehrmann had made about him in The Untried Case. Joe’s opening pages are full of jeers about “smart Mr. Ehrmann,” “Ehrmann who thinks he knows so much.”
According to the manuscript the five men in the South Braintree murder car were Sacco, Vanzetti, Coacci, Boda, and Orciani. Coacci was the driver. Joe had known all five for several years, and in fact they had been with him in a Pawtucket holdup in 1918, one never solved by the police. He himself had planned to pull off the South Braintree job with them. Any number of times he had driven over the route to plan the getaway. He was familiar with South Braintree because, with the help of Coacci, who was working in one of the factories, he had occasionally stolen truckloads of shoes from there. Berardelli, the guard, was another of his confederates.
Joe’s explanation of the actual holdup was that the others had double-crossed him. He had set the job for April 22. They pulled it themselves a week earlier to cut him out, and they killed Berardelli because he recognized them. During the getaway Coacci had got lost because he did not know the roads as well as Joe did.
Throughout his manuscript Joe refers to Madeiros as the Blind Pig—no doubt a reference to his poor eyesight. Neither Madeiros nor Mancini, according to Joe, had anything to do with the South Braintree affair. Madeiros was just a small-time crook who made a fake confession about South Braintree to try to beat his murder rap. There was not even a house, just a vacant lot, at the place on North Main Street, Providence, where Madeiros said he had started out on the morning of April 15. As for the business of Canada Pond and the money-boxes, that was simply a hoax to take in Morris Ernst, for whom Joe seemed to have as much contempt as he did for Ehrmann.
Such, in its truth or untruth, was the confession of Joe Morelli.
On September 1, 1927, Alfred Foote, the Commissioner of Public Safety, wrote to District Attorney Wilbar:
As a finale to the Sacco-Vanzetti case, it appears to me that it would be well to gather and secure certain of the exhibits, particularly the firearms, bullets, cartridges and fired shells.