By the time the Thayer Academy boys in their black-and-orange jerseys were holding their autumn football practice behind the Braintree town hall the April robbery was no longer a matter of general conversation. However, Shelley Neal still thought of it each time the payroll came in, delivered now by armed guards, and the girls in the Slater & Morrill offices still liked to gossip about it during the lunch hour.
Two days after the Plymouth trial ended, Katzmann appointed Chief Stewart his official investigator. Stewart’s friend Alfred Brouillard, on leave from the State Police, was made his assistant.
Proud of his new status and glad to resign his Bridgewater job, Stewart did most of his sleuthing under the direction of the Assistant District Attorney, Harold Williams. From Katzmann the chief received the four shotgun-shell exhibits of the Plymouth trial. Now, the district attorney told him, it was up to him to dig up the right kind of witnesses. Stewart had little to go on at first. As a starter he went to the Boston Public Library and read the accounts of the South Braintree crime in the back numbers of all the Boston papers, copying down the names of persons mentioned. He and Brouillard were on their own. Chief Gallivan was no help at all. Stewart usually found him sitting on the Braintree town-hall steps with a quid in his cheek.
Not until the new year was the approaching trial mentioned again in the Boston papers. Then a Dedham court interpreter, Angelina DeFalco, spread it briefly across the front pages after Moore had her arrested.
The affair had its origins just before the New Year, when Felicani received a telephone call from Beniamino Cicchetti of Providence, Rhode Island, who introduced himself as a “compatriot of ideas” and said that he had an important letter concerning Sacco and Vanzetti. He agreed to meet Felicani at the Defense Committee headquarters on Sunday morning, January 2.
Like Govoni in Plymouth, Cicchetti was a fixer who followed his special line in the Italian Federal Hill section of Providence, arranging bail and, on a percentage basis, collecting defense funds. For Italians who had run afoul of the law he was useful, almost necessary, to know. An oily, persuasive man, he bustled into the Battery Street office and assured Felicani he knew a woman who could do a great deal for Sacco and Vanzetti. When Felicani showed interest, he bustled out again and returned almost at once with a dumpy nearsighted woman in her early twenties whom he introduced as Mrs. DeFalco.
She explained that she had come from the Dedham court, and that if the Defense Committee would put up a sufficient sum she could guarantee Sacco’s freedom. Felicani asked her how it could be done. “Oh,” she told him, “we have a little society of our own, Fred Katzmann, Mr. Squires, and Percy Katzmann.”[7] When Felicani asked about Vanzetti she said that was something else again, and that she would have to consult Fred. She then tried unsuccessfully to reach the district attorney by telephone. Felicani did not say much. He told her he would have to consult with the rest of the Defense Committee, and she agreed to meet him next day, suggesting at the same time that he bring along five hundred dollars as a deposit.
They met the following morning with Professor Guadagni in a coffee house in North Square. Mrs. DeFalco told them that fifty thousand dollars would be needed to take care of everything. First of all, she said, the committee must appoint Squires and Percy Katzmann counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti. Money spent on other lawyers would be wasted. When they had paid the fifty thousand dollars, Percy would take charge of the defense. Fred would not prosecute, but the case would be given to Harold Williams or one of the other assistant district attorneys. Guadagni said the committee could not collect so much money quickly, and suggested that Mrs. DeFalco take ten thousand dollars and get the case postponed until September. She said she would see what she could do, and Felicani and Guadagni agreed to meet with her again.
During the week various members of the committee met almost daily with Mrs. DeFalco, though as yet she was paid no money. She made an appointment with Felicani and Guadagni for Friday at the defense headquarters. Following Moore’s advice, Felicani concealed a microphone in the room so that a public stenographer in the basement could take down the conversation in shorthand.
Mrs. DeFalco said she had come to complete arrangements with them, that Fred Katzmann and Squires had assured her of the freedom of the two men, but that by Monday the committee must pay fifteen thousand dollars. The money was to be paid to Squires or Percy Katzmann and all the committee’s evidence was to be turned over to the latter. After the payment there would be a mock trial with the jury made up so that the foreman would be a member of the county ring. She told them it was a simple matter to fix a jury.