Pelser was noticeably embarrassed on the stand, mopping his forehead continually, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and unable to understand the simplest questions. Further his testimony was contradicted by three fellow workers:
William Brenner declared it was he and not Pelser whose station was near the partly open window, and that it was McCollum who opened the window fully. He said that McCollum shouted: “They are shooting; duck!” and that they all dropped down behind the bench. When the shots sounded farther away, they got up again, looked out, somebody got the automobile number and wrote it on the work-bench. By that time the car was near the railroad tracks.
Peter McCollum declared that it was he and not Pelser who threw open the window and shut it again instantly, then dropped down behind the work-bench with his fellows. He was the only one who looked out of the open window during the shooting, he swore. Opaque glass was in all the windows in the work room.
Dominic Costantino confirmed Brenner’s and McCollum’s testimony. He saw Pelser get under the bench along with the rest. He heard him say afterward that he didn’t see anyone. He volunteered as a witness after reading Pelser’s testimony in the Globe.
The last of the crime-scene witnesses against Sacco, Carlos E. Goodridge, is a phonograph salesman. He testified that he was in a poolroom on Pearl street a few doors west of the Hampton House. He heard shots, stepped out, saw the bandit-automobile coming; when it was 20 or 25 feet away a man pointed a gun at him; he went back into the poolroom. Man with gun was dark, smooth-shaven, bareheaded, pointed face, dark suit. Goodridge identified Sacco as that man.
Four witnesses including the proprietor of the poolroom gave the lie to this witness:
Peter Magazu, the poolroom proprietor, declared that when Goodridge came back into the poolroom he said the bandit he saw was light-haired; and he had said: “This job wasn’t pulled by any foreign people.”
Harry Arrigoni, barber, related that Goodridge said a week after the shooting that he couldn’t identify any of the bandits.
Nicola D’Amato, another barber, said Goodridge told him on April 15 he was in the poolroom when the bandit-car passed and did not see anybody in the automobile.
Andrew Mangano, music store owner and former employer of Goodridge, testified that he had urged him to go to see if he could identify the suspects in jail, and that Goodridge told him it was useless; he couldn’t identify the bandits. Mangano declared that Goodridge’s reputation for truth and veracity was bad.