L. B.
New York,
May 15, 1927.
Seven years ago, on the afternoon of April 15, 1920, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, Parmenter and Berardelli, a paymaster and his guard, while carrying in two boxes the payroll of the shoe factory of Slater and Morrill, amounting to over $15,000, from the office building to the factory of the company, a three minute walk, were fired upon and killed by two men. As the paymaster and guard fell, an automobile carrying several men drew up. The bandits seized the boxes of money, threw them into the car, jumped in, and were off.
Charged with the murder on May 5, 1920, three weeks after the crime, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the former an industrious workman with a family, the latter a fish peddler, both extreme radicals, were put on trial on May 31, 1921, at Dedham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. The presiding Judge was Webster Thayer, of Worcester. Chief counsel for the Italians was Fred H. Moore, a Westerner and a radical, later, Jeremiah and Thomas F. McAnarney, and finally William G. Thompson, a former President of the Boston Bar Association.
Three main lines of attack were followed by the Commonwealth in its effort to secure a conviction, as follows:
| I. | Identification of the defendants as the murderers by means of eyewitnesses and other witnesses. |
| II. | Identification of the defendants as the murderers by means of “consciousness of guilt.” |
| III. | Identification of the defendants as the murderers by means of testimony centering on the “mortal bullet.” |
The trial lasted seven weeks, and Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty of murder in the first degree.
Were Sacco and Vanzetti two of the assailants of Parmenter and Berardelli, or were they not?
That is the issue now, as it was then.
Let us examine the testimony.