“At the beginning of these cases,” he told Thayer, “I was apprehensive and fearful of what might transpire during this case were it tried in conjunction with the indictment against Nicola Sacco, and meeting that situation we filed a motion for a severance and a separate trial. At that time, in informal discussion before your Honor, mention was made that if at any time during the trial things should occur we could renew the motion. It now seems to me peculiarly fitting in view of all the evidence on this record at the present moment that the motion be granted for a severance of these cases, and I now offer the motion.”
Judge Thayer asked if proper instructions to the jury would not take care of the situation. The defense lawyer must have realized that there was no chance of the motion being granted, but he also realized what a damaging effect Sacco’s outburst had had on the jury. He felt he must at least make the gesture of dissociating Vanzetti, with the possibility that this might be allowed later by a higher court.
As Sacco resumed the stand on Saturday morning, the books and pamphlets found in his house were admitted as evidence. Then Jerry McAnarney, taking over the re-examination, asked more details about letters Sacco had received from Italy announcing his mother’s death. The week had been long, and the morning seemed anticlimactic, as if the trial were now coasting downhill to its conclusion. Suddenly, dramatically, McAnarney revealed that Sacco had recently seen a man sitting in the front row of the court who, he was certain, had ridden back on the train from Boston with him on April 15.
To Judge Thayer’s question as to why this was not merely hearsay, McAnarney replied that he proposed to follow the statement by producing the man in question. Sacco said that Moore had often asked if he remembered anyone who had ridden up on the train with him that day. He had never been able to, then all at once he had noticed this man in court and he somehow remembered his face. He did not know his name. He had not spoken to him. The mysterious witness had been subpoenaed by the defense, but with the conclusion of Sacco’s testimony he could not at once be found.
His place was taken by a routine witness, a Stoughton photographer, Edward Maertens, who stated that some time in April he had made a passport photograph of the Sacco family, as well as a much larger one several weeks earlier. Next Walter Nelles, a New York lawyer, testified that he talked with Luigi Quintiliano the last week in April 1920 about disposing of socialistic and radical literature. Two Brockton shoe-workers, Rocco Dalesandro and Michael Columbo, then testified that on Monday, May 3, they had talked with Sacco in Brockton about getting rid of their literature. Later, Columbo had bundled up all such papers and pamphlets that he owned.
The last witness of the week was Felice Guadagni, the comrade who had been first to visit Sacco and Vanzetti at the Brockton police station. He confirmed Sacco’s April 15 alibi, telling how the two of them had met by chance on the steps of Boni’s Restaurant at 11:30 A.M. Sacco, he said, was wearing a derby and a dark suit. They had gone in together and were later joined by Bosco and Williams. Guadagni had come out of Boni’s with Sacco at 1:30. He had then gone back to his office at the Gazzetta del Massachusetts and Sacco had gone uptown to the consulate. About three in the afternoon he had seen Sacco again in Joe Giordano’s café. Guadagni recalled the date of his meeting with Sacco as the fifteenth because on that day he had been invited to a banquet given by the Franciscan Fathers of North Bennett Street in honor of Mr. Williams, the Transcript editor, who had just been made a Commandante.
Four or five days after Sacco’s arrest Guadagni had gone to the consulate with Rosina, taking along a photograph of Sacco. There they had talked with the acting consul and the vice-consul and the clerk Adrower, but by the archaic rule of law—so frustrating to laymen—Guadagni was not allowed to repeat what had been said.
Under cross-examination he admitted that he had seen Sacco in Boston on several other days, always wearing the derby and the dark suit. He could not, however, recall any specific dates. When Sacco came into Giordano’s Café, Guadagni was already there talking about the banquet. He had not attended it, but since it was the only banquet to which he had ever been invited, he could not help but remember it. The invitation had come the week before—he could not fix the date.
Court adjourned just before one o’clock and the jurors were left alone in the marble courthouse to face another Saturday afternoon and Sunday. They were almost certain, however, that this would be the last weekend they would be kept in Dedham.
Judge Thayer spent his weekends in Worcester. There, at the familiar golf club, he could join a foursome and forget the incidents and frustrations of the past week. In the clubhouse after the game, in the protecting company of his friends, he found a cathartic relief in saying just what he really thought about those Bolsheviki who were trying to intimidate him. Nobody, he told his friend Loring Coes, could intimidate Web Thayer. A bunch of parlor radicals were trying to get those Italian bastards off and trying to bring pressure on the bench. He would show them, he told Coes, his face darkening with accumulated anger. He would see them hanged, and he would also like to hang a few dozen of the radicals.