Five men were in the automobile, Behrsin said. They passed him within ten feet. One man was leaning out. The car was going 16 to 18 miles an hour. He could not identify either defendant as being one of the bandits. A few moments earlier he had noticed the two bandits just before they opened fire, and he described them as light-complexioned.
The government contends further that the bandits had lingered about South Braintree during the morning. Precisely as against Vanzetti, three witnesses uncorroborated—unless impeachment be an inverted kind of corroboration—were brought forward in support of the contention that Sacco had been seen in the town that morning.
William S. Tracy, elderly real estate dealer, testified that about 11:45 he saw two men leaning against the window of a drugstore building he owned. They were “clean-shaven, smoothfaced, respectably dressed.” He entered the drug store, came out, and drove away in his automobile. Returning a few minutes later, he found the men still there, talking. Again he went away and again he came back, and they still were propped against the window.
Tracy identified Sacco as one of these men: “I would not be positive,” he said, “but to the best of my recollection he is the same man.”
His statement that the two men were “respectably dressed” contrasts with that of various prosecution witnesses who swore the bandits were rough-looking and needed a shave.
In cross-examination it developed that in February, 1921, Tracy was taken to the Dedham jail and escorted through various departments, and was shown large groups of prisoners, and that finally he was taken over to “the pit,” where Sacco was all alone; then he made his “identification.”
Tracy’s testimony is open to wide question. He stands out in stark isolation from the scores or even hundreds of persons who must have stood upon or passed that corner in that noonhour, for it is the principal intersection of South Braintree, where innumerable people wait daily for electric cars.
Consider, too, that this corner is only a few hundred feet from the scene of the crime, that Sacco had worked at Rice and Hutchins’, and was known presumably by sight to various workers in South Braintree. The defense argues that it is unreasonable to suppose that Sacco, had he been intending to commit robbery and wanton murder in that town within three hours would have lingered on that corner.
William J. Heron, railroad police officer, testified that he saw two men in the New Haven station at South Braintree on April 15. One was 5 feet 6, the other 5 feet 11. He identified Sacco as the smaller man. He noticed the two men he said, “because they acted nervous and ... they were smoking cigarettes, one of them.” (Page 884, official transcript.)
Q. Which one was smoking? A. The tallest one.