Many other workers saw the crime from the windows of the Slater and Morrill shoe factory a short distance west of the Rice and Hutchins plant. And directly opposite was an excavation where numerous laborers were at work.
Just before the shooting a train had come in letting off passengers at the nearby railroad station. Numerous persons were on the street as the bandits fled, their number swelled quickly by the sound of the shots and the wave of excitement that traveled like the wind through the small town. Westward on Pearl Street the bandit-automobile sped, crossing the New Haven tracks increasing in speed as it proceeded, and continuing the main streets of the town.
This was but one of a series of payroll robberies in Eastern Massachusetts, of which the perpetrators had invariably escaped. These bandits too, got away. The authorities were on the defensive; public indignation was high. Search for the bandits was participated in by the state police and local police, with the active co-operation of the Department of Justice and various agencies employed by the allied manufacturing and banking interests. These included the Pinkerton Detective Agency, acting in the behalf of the Travelers’ Insurance Company, which insured the Slater and Morrill payroll. Investigation by these forces continued from April 15, 1920 to May 31, 1921, when Sacco and Vanzetti were brought to trial.
Of the scores who saw the crime and escape, and with so many powerful agencies co-operating in the search, how many witnesses were brought against Sacco and Vanzetti? A trifling number, as will appear in this analysis; while a very much larger number of those who saw the crime are positive that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti were the bandits.
Several important witnesses for the prosecution were seriously discredited, while various responsible persons who saw the events connected with the crime and who declared that the arrested men were not the bandits, were pushed aside by the state after it interviewed them.
Here follows a careful analysis of the actual testimony for Sacco and Vanzetti. This analysis is the result of a searching study of the 3,900 pages of official transcript. Every statement set down here, unless otherwise specified, is borne out by the court record.
The mass of evidence which went toward the setting of the crime but which had no bearing on the guilt or innocence of the accused is eliminated, while evidence introduced piecemeal and in haphazard order is assembled and arranged under appropriate heads.
The testimony relating only to Vanzetti is presented first because it is the shorter and thus more easily disentangled from the mass of detail under which its inadequacy was hidden. Such an arrangement throws into bold relief the injustice of the court’s refusal to separate the trials of the two men. A request for the separation was entered by the defense at the opening and again at the close of the trial. “Where is there anything prejudicial to Vanzetti,” asked the judge, “if proper instructions are given to the jury?” But juries, despite formal instruction to count this fact against Defendant No. 1 and that fact against Defendant No. 2, inevitably tend to count all facts against both when they are tried together. The human mind is not a mechanical instrument which functions according to judicial instructions.
Then the case against Sacco is treated in full, and finally the evidence applicable to both men is analyzed.