Graham set down his version thirty years later. According to it he and Vahey went to the Plymouth jail one evening and spent hours discussing whether or not Vanzetti should take the stand. Graham said he told Vanzetti that when a defendant failed to testify in Massachusetts he was usually found guilty.
Vanzetti [Graham wrote] was carefully advised as to the evidence that had gone in as to what inference the Jury might draw if he failed to take the stand despite what the Judge would tell them in his charge, and as to what information might be elicited from him if he did take the stand. “But you,” Vahey told him, “are the one who has got to make the decision as to whether you will testify or not.”
Sacco had been moved to the Dedham jail and Vahey, at Vanzetti’s request, went there to discuss the matter with him. When he returned, Vanzetti, according to Graham, said in substance: “I don’t think I can improve upon the alibi which has been established. I had better not take the stand.”
Vanzetti was sure afterward that he had been betrayed, and attacked Vahey in the bitter language of his pamphlet. Part of his bitterness was undoubtedly caused by the fact that in 1924 Vahey became Katzmann’s law partner.
May passed into June. Except among the Italians of North Plymouth and the small anarchist circle in East Boston, Vanzetti’s forthcoming trial caused little interest. There was a flurry in June when the Boston Sunday Advertiser reported—it later turned out to be a newspaperman’s hoax—that a letter, signed the “Red X Society,” had been found near Plymouth Rock demanding Vanzetti’s release “or take the consequences.” But for most people the trial was just a routine affair coming at the end of the spring criminal session. The newspapers and public were much more interested in the trial of Jennie Zimmerman in Springfield, accused of murdering her cousin and lover, Dr. Henry Zimmerman.
Although Chief Stewart had received a setback with Orciani’s release, he still stuck to his theory that the deported Coacci and the missing Boda had been mixed up in both crimes. Boda, he was convinced, was the man who had appeared at Hassam’s garage in Needham looking for license plates. But Boda had successfully vanished. Actually, during all the time the police were looking for him, he was living quietly with friends in East Boston. In August he moved on to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he stayed for two months, then went to Providence where—under his old name of Buda—he received a passport from the Italian vice-consul and returned to Italy. Several attempts were made later to induce him to come back to Massachusetts and testify for Sacco and Vanzetti, but each time he refused, maintaining that his life would be in danger.
When Stewart went to North Plymouth and searched Vanzetti’s room at 35 Cherry Street, he discovered nothing except odds and ends of clothing. He took away a black coat, a shirt, a sweater, and a brown cloth cap. An earlier search of Sacco’s bungalow in Stoughton had produced a gray cap and a rifle, along with a few books and a few anarchist pamphlets that Rosina had neglected to burn. In Joseph Ventola’s garage in Hyde Park the police turned up a box that had belonged to Coacci. It contained forty dollars’ worth of shoe material stolen from Slater & Morrill. Of the missing South Braintree payroll there was no trace anywhere.
Vanzetti’s trial began in the second-floor courtroom of the brick-pilastered Plymouth courthouse on Tuesday, June 22, with the selection of the jury. This ran off quickly. There were no challenges by either side, even though one of the jurymen, Arthur Nickerson, a foreman at the Cordage, might well have been challenged by the defense. Vahey and Graham were opposed by District Attorney Katzmann and Assistant District Attorney Kane. Judge Webster Thayer presided.