Facing the chair

by John Dos Passos

Mark E. Carrigan, shoe-worker employed by Slater and Morrill on the third floor of the Hampton House related that he saw Parmenter and Berardelli proceeding from the offices to the main factory with the payroll money, and that he presently heard shooting and saw the bandit-automobile coming east on Pearl street past the Hampton House. He saw a dark Italian-looking man in the car with a revolver.

But he could not identify either defendant as being in that car. Carrigan’s testimony has a large bearing upon the credibility of Miss Splaine and Miss Devlin, who from a window one floor below where Carrigan was, claimed to identify Sacco as a man who was leaning out of the escaping automobile. Eight feet below Carrigan, the two women were no more than a foot closer to the bandits than he.

James F. Bostock, machine installer of Brockton, had been doing work for Slater and Morrill. Shortly before the shooting, he came out of the Slater factory and walked west on Pearl street. He passed two men, who were leaning against a fence arguing. It is not disputed that one of these was the man who shot Berardelli.

Immediately afterward he met Parmenter and Berardelli coming down the road with the payroll boxes. Bostock was a close friend of Parmenter. They exchanged words in a momentary meeting. Just after Bostock had left the paymaster, he heard shots, turned, and saw Parmenter and Berardelli fall. The men he had seen at the fence were shooting. They grabbed the money-boxes and jumped into an oncoming automobile.

Bostock ran around the corner of a high board fence along the New Haven track. The bandit-car passed so close, he said, that he could have touched it with his hand.

He said he could not identify either of the defendants as the highwaymen.

James E. McGlone, teamster, helped lower Parmenter to the ground after the fatal shot. McGlone had been working in the excavation. When the shooting started he ran forward, and saw the bandits at close range. The commonwealth didn’t ask him if he could identify. Defendants’ counsel had not interviewed him. They asked him in court if he could identify the defendants, and he said he could not.

Edgar C. Langlois, foreman of Rice and Hutchins, was on the second floor (from the street level) of that factory, facing on the crime-scene. He could make no identification. The only description he could give was that the highwaymen he saw were “stout, thick-chested—that is, full-chested,” a description which fits neither Sacco nor Vanzetti.

Langlois’ testimony is highly significant because he was in a central window immediately above the window from which another prosecution witness, Pelser, claimed he observed Sacco. This witness occupies a responsible position in Rice and Hutchins.

Hans Behrsin, chauffeur for Mr. Slater of the robbed shoe company, testified for the prosecution. He was sitting in a stationary sedan on the right-hand side of Pearl street, a little beyond the poolroom.