The foregoing is the whole case against Vanzetti in the way of identification.
It was the theory of the government that the Harrison & Richardson revolver which Vanzetti carried when arrested had been taken from Berardelli’s dead body by the bandit who shot him. No one had seen this done. Prosecutor Katzmann based the theory on evidence that Berardelli was known to have carried a revolver (whether of similar make is unknown), which had been seen in Berardelli’s possession and handled by a prosecution witness, James F. Bostock, the Saturday previous to the shooting, and that no weapon was found on Berardelli after his death.
Three weeks before the murders, however, Berardelli took his revolver to the Iver Johnson Company in Boston for repairs, according to testimony given by his widow, Mrs. Sarah Berardelli. She accompanied him on the trip. The gun had a broken spring.
Berardelli had obtained the revolver originally from his superior, Parmenter, and he gave the repair check to Parmenter so that the latter could take the gun out after it was repaired, the widow stated. “I don’t know whether the revolver ever came back.... Mr. Parmenter let him have another revolver, with a black handle like the first.”
Mrs. Berardelli did not identify the Vanzetti revolver as her husband’s.
Lincoln Wadsworth, in charge of gun repairing at the Iver Johnson Company, testified that the company’s records show that Berardelli brought in a 38-calibre Harrington and Richardson revolver for repairs on March 20. But Geo. Fitzmeyer, gunsmith for that firm, testified that a revolver on Repair Job No. 94765 was a 32-calibre gun. The company’s records, according to the testimony of James H. Jones, manager of the firearms department, do not show whether the revolver repaired on Job No. 94765 was ever delivered.
When Fitzmeyer was testifying, he was asked to examine the Vanzetti pistol, and he declared that a new hammer had recently been put into that gun. But he found no indications that any new spring had lately been put into it.
Of important, almost conclusive, bearing upon the state theory is the testimony of Mrs. Aldeah Florence, the friend with whom Mrs. Berardelli made her home after her husband’s death. She testified that the day following the funeral, while in conversation with the widow she had lamented “Oh, dear, if he had taken my advice and taken the revolver out of the shop, maybe he wouldn’t be in the same condition he is today.” The government might have called Mrs. Berardelli to the witness stand to contradict this evidence had it believed it to be untrue, but did not do so. If Mrs. Florence’s testimony stands, and the government did not challenge it, then the rest of the voluminous testimony relative to the pistol is irrelevant.
Vanzetti’s gun was traced from owner to owner until no doubt remained as to its identity.
If the evidence against Vanzetti was slight, there was nevertheless the fact, never referred to, but in everybody’s mind, which cannot fail to have been counted as evidence, that upon his arrest he had been at first charged, not with complicity in the South Braintree crime, but as principal in the attempted holdup at Bridgewater.