Williams, who sold advertising space in several foreign-language newspapers, including La Notizia, was well known in Boston. It was not so well known that he was a left-wing socialist and had been an associate of Trotsky and Bukharin in New York in 1917. Every Thursday he made the rounds of the small North End factories soliciting help-wanted ads for the Saturday editions. On April 15, according to his advertising book, he had taken an order from the Washington Knitting Mills. Later in the afternoon he had gone uptown to see his doctor, Howard Gibbs, who was treating him for asthma.
After the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, Felicani asked Williams if he remembered seeing Professor Guadagni and Sacco at Boni’s. Williams said he did. Felicani then asked him if he realized this was the date of the South Braintree crime. Williams had not thought of it, but checking back in his advertising book to the Washington Knitting Mills order, he found it was so. Felicani and Williams felt that this fixed Sacco in Boston instead of in South Braintree. As Williams explained it in court: “The fact that I secured this order and the fact that I met this young man down there, and the fact that he was said to be going for his passport; all of those things brought a sequence of events back to me, and I recalled the incident very easily.”
Under Katzmann’s cross-examination Williams could not remember the dates of other visits to his doctor, or any advertisements he had taken on April 14, or any other occasions when he had met Guadagni. However, Dr. Gibbs testified that although he treated Williams regularly, he had seen him only once in April and that was on the fifteenth.
Albert Bosco, one of the editors of La Notizia, was another witness who claimed to have seen Sacco in the restaurant. Bosco was already at Boni’s with a man named Reffi when Guadagni came in with Sacco and introduced him as “the man that is going to Italy.” Then Guadagni talked about the banquet that the Franciscan Fathers of North Bennett Street were giving at their priory that same day in honor of James T. Williams, Jr., editor of the Boston Transcript, whom the Italian government had just made a Commandante in recognition of his war work. The next day Bosco published an account of the banquet in La Notizia—and also ran a story about the South Braintree killings. When Guadagni spoke to him after the arrests about his meeting with Sacco, Bosco went to the newspaper files and found that the banquet they had discussed in Boni’s restaurant had been held on April 15.
Another witness, a contractor named Angelo Monello, had known Sacco for several months before his arrest. On April 15, just before noon, they had run into each other on Hanover Street. Monello had the date fixed in his mind because on Sunday the eighteenth he had tickets for Madame X, playing at the Tremont Theatre with the great Italian artist Mimi Aguglia. Both he and Sacco were amateur actors and belonged to dramatic clubs, and they had talked about the play. Katzmann at once took Monello over the hurdles, asking if he had talked with anyone about the play on April 16, 17, 13, 12, 19, 21, 28. All Monello could say was that he did not remember.
Michael Kelley and his son Leon appeared willingly as witnesses for Sacco, but because of the agreement of counsel they were not allowed—as they had intended—to testify as to his character. Katzmann hovered over any such mention with an instant objection. Michael Kelley managed to say, however, that he trusted Sacco with the keys to the Three-K factory and that every night the place had been in his hands. Early in the spring Sacco had shown Michael Kelley a black-bordered letter saying that his mother had died. The letter, from Sacco’s father, begging him to come home, was then translated to the jury.
District Attorney Williams now read a deposition by Giuseppe Adrower, made in Rome. In April 1920, Adrower was a clerk in the Italian consulate in Boston. Sacco, he deposed, had appeared early in April about a passport and had been told to come back with two photographs. On April 15 he had returned with an oversize family photograph. Adrower remembered the date because it was “a very quiet day in the Royal Italian Consulate and since such a large photograph had never before been presented for use on a passport I took it in and showed it to the Secretary of the Consulate. We laughed and talked over the incident. I remember observing the date in the office of the Secretary on a large pad calendar while we were discussing the photograph. The hour was around two or a quarter after two, as I remember about a half an hour later I locked the door of the office for the day.” When Professor Guadagni came to the consulate the week after the arrests to ask about the incident, Adrower could not remember Sacco, but after Guadagni showed him the oversize photograph he remembered both it and the date and had no doubt about either.
The written cross-interrogatory contained the by-now-familiar Katzmann hurdles. Adrower had stated that between a hundred fifty and two hundred people a day came to the consulate to inquire about passports. He was asked to give the name of each person he talked with on April 17, 19, 21, 24, 29, and May 2, 3, and 4. He could not remember their names. He was then asked to describe every person with whom he talked on those days. “I cannot describe them in detail,” he admitted. In the defense’s redirect interrogatory, Adrower stated that although many people appeared at the consulate with family group photographs, none had ever brought in such a large one as Sacco produced.
Friday’s last new witness was Dominic Ricci, a carpenter living in a boarding house in South Stoughton, not far from Sacco’s bungalow. He had known Sacco several years. The morning of April 15, he said, he had seen Sacco on the Stoughton railroad platform at about half-past seven and Sacco had told him he was going to Boston to get a passport. Next day, seeing Sacco in the Three-K factory at eight o’clock, Ricci had talked with him about the newspaper accounts of the South Braintree murders.
Katzmann, with deceiving gentleness, asked Ricci if he had worked on the eighteenth. Ricci said he had. Katzmann asked him about the twenty-fifth, May 2, May 9, 16, 23, 30, and June 6, consulting a pocket diary each time he asked. A titter spread through the courtroom as the realization came that each of these dates was a Sunday. The realization did not come as quickly to the embarrassed Ricci. Katzmann continued leading him on a trail of Sundays through the rest of the year, finally closing his diary with mock weariness and smiling ironically at the bewildered Italian. “I have got to the end of my calendar. You worked every Sunday, didn’t you, from then on? That is all.”