Albert Bosco, editor of La Notizia, conservative Italian daily newspaper in Boston, testified likewise as to the presence of Sacco and the others in Boni’s on that day.
Carlo Affè, East Boston grocer, testified that between 3 and 4 o’clock on April 15 he was paid by Sacco for an order of groceries purchased at an earlier date. He exhibited a notebook record of the transaction.
Giuseppe Adrower, clerk in the Italian consulate at Boston for 6 years, and now in Italy, testified in a deposition sworn to before the American consul general at Rome. He identified the photograph of Sacco, Mrs. Sacco and their son as a picture Sacco brought to the consulate on April 15. He corroborated Sacco’s statements regarding his difficulties over passports.
Adrower remembered telling Sacco that the picture was too large, and that he laughed with others in the consulate over the big photograph, and his eye happened to catch the date on the calendar while so doing. Sacco left the consulate a few minutes before the office was closed for the day; it is regularly open from 10 to 3. Very few persons were there that afternoon.... Adrower went to Italy May 20, for his health, but Guadagni testified that he talked with Adrower about Sacco and the photograph shortly after Sacco’s arrest.
One alibi witness who was brought forward late in the trial and by the merest chance offered what would seem to be incontrovertible evidence. It appeared that Sacco one day had noticed a face in the audience at the courtroom which arrested his attention. He called for Mr. McAnarney and asked him to find out if that man was on the train coming from Boston to Stoughton in the evening of April 15, 1920. Mr. McAnarney called the man into the lobby and inquired. “I don’t know,” answered the stranger, “but will see if I can find out.”
It developed that he was a contractor who kept his own time in his business books, by the hour; and from his books put in evidence and from a check dated April 15th, and used to buy supplies in Boston upon the date in question as well as by the bills for these supplies, he was able to locate himself on that very train. He did not know Sacco and had no recollection of having ever seen him until he dropped in as a spectator at the trial. His name is James M. Hayes; his residence and place of business, Stoughton, Mass.
The District Attorney, attempting to demolish Sacco’s alibi in his closing argument, was silent as to the evidence offered by Hayes.
TESTIMONY RELATING TO BOTH—AND TO NEITHER
The discussion of the testimony against Vanzetti and against Sacco must be supplemented with a number of other considerations. In the first place, there were 22 persons on the stand for the defense on the issue of identifications, who had at least as good an opportunity to see the crime and the criminals as the several state witnesses, and who said positively that these were not the bandits.
In the second place, 13 witnesses put on the stand by the prosecution for the purpose of establishing some facts of the crime, of whom several were excellently placed to make identifications, and certainly seemed anxious to apprehend the guilty persons, could not identify either of the defendants.