The man in his seventies who showed me into his private office without shaking hands was less the calcined Boston type than I had expected. There was a metallic quality about his eroding features. His wiry gray hair fluffed over the collar of a rumpled white shirt. He had taken off his coat, exposing waist-high trousers held up by police galluses. His eyebrows were tufted and he wore round gold-rimmed spectacles.
“I did not,” he announced, “like the tone of your Sacco-Vanzetti article in American Heritage at all. Nevertheless I am willing to see you. What is it you want to know?”
I told him I was trying to write an impartial study of all the events in the Sacco-Vanzetti case, that I knew he thought they were guilty, and that I wanted to include his point of view.
His knees creaked a little as he sat down opposite me. A smile broke through his clouded face. “If you want to write a book like your article you could probably finish it in four or five months; but if you really want to be honest, it will take you two years just to do the preliminary reading. The fundamental thing is to make the proper comparisons between the trial record and that of the governor’s committee. Of course if you tell the truth you’ll never find a publisher. Because if you really go into the case you can only conclude that those two Italians were guilty. And you’ll never get a hearing on that. Why? Because their innocence has become a liberal trademark. There has never been any real doubt about this case among those who know about it. It was just used by people—by the anarchists and that radical lawyer of theirs and then the Communists.
“The case was open and shut. Everyone at the Dedham trial was convinced they were guilty, except a few old women social workers and Frank Sibley of the Globe. Sacco and Vanzetti said the night they were arrested they were out to pick up anarchist literature from their friends because they were afraid of the Department of Justice raids. That was May fifth, though. All those anarchists knew beforehand that the raids were going to take place on May first. No, they weren’t out to pick up their anarchist papers that night. They were going to Bridgewater with guns on them to get a car because they knew that next day was payday at the factories. They needed money for the defense of their comrade Elia in New York, and they were going to get it in the only way they knew.”
I said that I could not imagine why, if a man had shot someone, he would be foolish enough to have the murder weapon in his belt three weeks later. Any sensible murderer would have thrown the gun away.
“Ordinarily, yes,” he went on, “but they had those guns on them very simply because they needed them, because they were planning a robbery next day. That radical business was an excuse they concocted afterward—and don’t forget it was the defense that introduced anarchism into the case. During the trial they had some Italian professor from the North End testify that he had seen Sacco in town the day of the South Braintree murders and that Sacco had left him to go to the Italian Consulate. But it took him over a year to tell that tale. If, as soon as he’d heard Sacco was arrested, this man had gone to Katzmann and told him he’d been with Sacco that day, then they could have gone directly to the Italian consul. And if the consul had confirmed the story, that would have been the end of the case. But they didn’t because they couldn’t fake that fast, because the whole alibi was something they concocted months afterward.”
“Moore, their counsel, knew they were guilty. He was just in it for the money. Why, all in all they collected a third of a million dollars for their defense fund. They say that Italian anarchist printer fellow who organized it made himself a small fortune. Moore finally had to quit the case or they’d have arrested him for perjury. He chased one witness, that poor fellow Goodridge, to Maine after the trial and pretended he was going to have him arrested if he didn’t change his testimony. The Andrews woman from Quincy who identified Sacco—he had her beaten up. Orciani—the third one they arrested—he probably was the one who did it. Orciani had a time-clock alibi for the day of the robbery so they couldn’t touch him, but you know it’s easy enough to get some other man to punch your time card. He was in the court for the early part of the trial. He was the one the defense said sold the gun to Vanzetti, but Moore could never get him to testify. That was the way it was all through with the defense—lies, cheating, evasion.”
I mentioned that some of the prosecution witnesses had changed their stories several times between the preliminary hearing and the Dedham trial.
“Sacco and Vanzetti weren’t convicted on the testimony of the witnesses,” he said. “It was the evidence of the bullets that convicted them. Some of the bullets they found on Sacco were so obsolete that the State Police experts couldn’t find any duplicates when they wanted to make firing tests. Yet the same kind of obsolete bullet was found in the guard’s body. As far as witnesses go, you may not be able to describe a man properly but if you see him again you’ll recognize him. Could you describe our receptionist now?”