For some unexplained reason she became interested in that car, although its appearance was not unusual. She led the child across Broad Street and into Hale Street, and went out of her way to pass around the front end of the automobile. In it, she said, were four men. Three of these she took no notice of; but she scrutinized the fourth—a man with a dark face, moustache and dark soft hat, who “seemed like some kind of a foreigner.”
She looked twice at this man, who in return looked at her “severely”; and she continued to turn and look at him as she and the child proceeded to the railroad station. That man, she declared, to quote from the trial record, “That man, I should judge, was the defendant.”
Paymaster Cox testified at the preliminary hearing, as did Mrs. Brooks, that Vanzetti had worn a hat. But this detail given by Cox was carefully suppressed by the prosecution during the trial. Chief Stewart exhibited in court a cap, which he claimed to have taken from Vanzetti’s home; then he produced a witness, Richard Grant Casey, who said he thought he saw this cap on the shotgun man’s head on December 24.
Maynard Freeman Shaw, 14-year-old high school prodigy, stood behind a tree and saw the shotgun man running 145 feet away. He was one of those who “identified” Vanzetti. He admitted he never had more than a fleeting glimpse of the bandit’s face.
“I could tell he was a foreigner by the way he ran,” young Shaw testified at the trial.
“What sort of a foreigner?” asked the defense.
“Either Italian or Russian.”
“Does an Italian or a Russian run differently from a Swede or a Norwegian?”
“Yes.”
“What is the difference?”