“Give me some description of the other men on the back seat,” demanded McAnarney.
But Dolbeare couldn’t give a single detail except that they were a “tough-looking bunch.” All the excitement attendant upon the murders in Braintree that day didn’t impel him to inform the authorities that he had seen a tough-looking bunch in an automobile, nor did he go to Brockton police station with the big delegation which went from Braintree after Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested. Even the photographs of Vanzetti published broadcast then did not move him to any action.
At 4:15 P. M. on the crime-date, Austin T. Reed, gate tender at the Matfield Crossing, some miles distant from South Braintree put the gates down for a passing train and brought a big touring car to a stand. “A dark complexioned man” with “kind of hollow cheeks, high cheek bones—stubbed moustache” wearing a slouch hat, called out in “clear and unmistakable” English, “What in hell are you holding us up for?”
Three weeks later, when Sacco and Vanzetti had been arrested and many persons were being taken to the Brockton jail to look them over, Reed went to Brockton, “looked for an Italian,” as he testified under cross-examination, an Italian with a moustache, and Vanzetti filled the bill. He recognized not only the appearance, but the voice, which speaking in the jail in a conversational tone and in Italian, recalled to the witness “that same gruff voice” in which the Italian had hollered at him from the automobile. This witness was certain of his “identification,” although Vanzetti’s moustache is the opposite of “stubbed” and his accent is noticeably foreign.
It is to be noted that Reed placed the moustached man with whom he “identified” Vanzetti, on the front seat beside the driver, the location in which almost every other witness had placed the bandit with whom it was sought to identify Sacco.
One other witness, Austin C. Cole, conductor on the trolley car into Brockton on which Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested on the evening of May 5th following the crime, testified that these same men had ridden on his car at the same hour on either April 14th or 15th. If this testimony is accepted as to the 14th, it discredits Faulkner’s testimony as to the passenger on the train from Cohasset the following morning. And if it is accepted as to the 15th, then it claims that two red-handed murderers, one of whom had been in the limelight before scores of spectators, left their high power automobile to board a trolley several hours later in a town not far from the scene of their crime.
Under cross-examination Cole admitted that when the two men boarded the car in April he thought at first the larger man was “Tony the Portuguese,” whom he had known in Campello for a dozen years.
Defense Counsel McAnarney showed Cole a profile photograph of a man with a large dark moustache.
Q. Do you recognize that picture?
A. It looks like Vanzetti. (Cole, of course was sitting where he could see Vanzetti plainly as he answered.)