On Monday morning George Kelley was recalled to explain more details about the caps. He maintained that the lighter-colored of the two, the one Sacco had agreed was his, looked much more like Sacco’s. The one found near Berardelli’s body was darker than any Sacco had ever owned. Kelley admitted reluctantly that he might have made some remark about “not wanting to get a bomb up my ass” to Stewart and Brouillard. This morning, while he was waiting in the courthouse library to take the stand, he had seen a pepper-and-salt cap on the table that looked much more like Sacco’s cap than the other two. “The nearest I have seen yet,” Kelley remarked, as the third cap was offered in evidence. When cross-examined by Katzmann, Kelley admitted that he was fond of Sacco. Four or five months before the murders, learning that Sacco’s radical activities were being investigated, he had warned him. It was obvious that Kelley, whatever his own political views, had not changed his friendly feelings.
During the recess Judge Thayer again asked Mrs. Rantoul to come to his chambers. She made notes of the interview immediately afterward. Judge Thayer began by asking her what she now thought of the case.
I answered [she said in an affidavit in 1926], that I thought Kelley’s statement as to Sacco’s character was important. I well remember Judge Thayer’s reply and the manner in which he gave it. He expressed scorn and contempt for my view, and told me that Kelley did not mean what he said because he [Judge Thayer] had heard that on the outside Kelley had said that Sacco was an anarchist and that he couldn’t do anything with him. I told Judge Thayer that I had never before realized that it was fair to judge a case by what witnesses said outside of court, and that I had supposed that the only proper way to judge a case was by what the witnesses said in open court. Judge Thayer’s manner and expression of face expressed dissent from this view, but he made no definite statement of dissent.
The mysterious spectator Sacco claimed to have seen on the Stoughton train now appeared as a witness. He turned out to be James Hayes, for thirty-three years a mason and contractor in Stoneham, and town highway surveyor until March 1920. A defense investigator had brought him to court in regard to some technical information about the Stoughton street layout. Watching the trial, Hayes had become interested in it, and he and his wife had returned on three other days to follow the proceedings. It was while he was sitting there that Sacco caught a glimpse of him.
Hayes agreed that he had indeed gone to Boston on April 15. He was certain of the date because he had gone through his time-books and found that on that day his brother had paid him fifty dollars. He had used part of the money the same afternoon to buy parts for his Ford in Boston.
April 11, Sunday, he remembered because it was the birthday of one of his children. Monday, working at an excavation, he had sprained his instep. Tuesday and Wednesday and part of Thursday morning he had spent at home taking down the rear end of his Ford. Friday he needed parts, and he had gone to Boston on the train that left a little after twelve. He arrived back in Stoughton between five and six. Next day, Friday, he started working again. He did not know Sacco, never had met him, did not know whether Sacco was on that train or not, but he did know he himself was.
Katzmann now took Hayes over the hurdles. What had he been doing on March 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31? Hayes could not say. He thought he had probably gone in to Boston a dozen or fifteen times, but he could not remember any particular date because he had not had any occasion to look it up.
Sacco, recalled, testified that he had seen Hayes that day in the train from Boston. There was another inconclusive dispute with Ross as to whether Sacco had said “in Boston” or “in the train from Boston.” Sacco said he had been sitting in the middle of a coach on the right-hand side, and a man had been sitting opposite him in the aisle seat on the left. There was no particular reason why he should have remembered this man except that they both got off at Stoughton and somehow Sacco was struck by his face.
Hayes corroborated Sacco’s statement that he had been sitting midway in the car on the left next to the aisle. No one had asked him until that moment where he had been sitting. There was a person across the aisle from him, but who it was, a man or woman, he could not say. He had paid no attention.
Following Hayes, Antonio Dentamore of the foreign-exchange department of the Haymarket National Bank took the stand to corroborate Professor Guadagni. On April 15, just before three o’clock, he had been talking with Guadagni in Giordani’s Café when Sacco came in. He had never met Sacco until Guadagni introduced them. They had talked together for about twenty minutes, mostly about passports. The reason Dentamore remembered the day was that he had just come back from the banquet for the Transcript editor, and in fact he and Guadagni were discussing it as Sacco appeared. Katzmann took him over the customary hurdles. Dentamore could not recall what he had been doing at ten minutes to three the day before or the day after the banquet, or twenty days ago, or twenty-one days ago. He could not say where he had had lunch twenty-two days before. “I am not a fortune teller,” he told Katzmann.