What was their conduct on the night of May 5th, and how did they come to possess firearms?
It will be remembered that as the murder was being committed a car containing several other men drew up. The murderers threw the two boxes containing the money into the car, jumped in and sped away at high speed across near-by railroad tracks. Two days later this car was found abandoned in woods a distance from the scene of the crime. Leading away from this spot were tracks of a smaller car.
At the time of the Braintree hold-up the police were investigating a similar hold-up in a neighboring town, Bridgewater. In both hold-ups a gang was involved. In both they made off in a car. In both eyewitnesses believed the criminals to be Italians. In the Bridgewater hold-up, the car had left the scene in the direction of Cochesett.[1] Police Chief Stewart, of Bridgewater, at the time of the Braintree hold-up, was therefore on the trail of an Italian owning or driving a car in Cochesett. He thought he had found his man in one Boda, whose car was then in a garage awaiting repairs. Stewart instructed the garage proprietor, Johnson, to telephone the police when any one came to fetch it. Pursuing his investigation, Stewart found that Boda had been living in Cochesett with a radical named Coacci.
Now, on April 16, 1920, the day after the Braintree murders, Police Chief Stewart, at the instance of the Department of Justice, then engaged in the round-up of Reds, had been to the house of this same Coacci to see why he had failed to appear at the hearing regarding his deportation. He had found Coacci packing a trunk, and apparently very anxious to get back to Italy. Coacci’s trunk and his haste to depart for Italy were not connected in Stewart’s mind with the Braintree affair; but when, later, the tracks of a smaller car were found near the Braintree murder car, and he surmised that this murder car was Boda’s, and discovered that Boda had once been living with Coacci, he connected Coacci’s packing, his eagerness to depart, his actual departure, with the Braintree murders, and assumed that the trunk contained the booty. In the light of later discoveries, Stewart jumped to the conclusion that Coacci, Boda’s pal, had “skipped with the swag.” As a matter of fact, the contents of the trunk, when it was intercepted by the Italian police, on arrival, revealed nothing.
In the meantime, however, Stewart continued to work on his theory, which centered around Boda: that whosoever called for Boda’s car, at Johnson’s garage, would be suspected of the Braintree crime. On the night of May 5th, Boda and three other Italians did in fact call, and two of them were Sacco and Vanzetti.
To explain how they came to do so, let us recall here the proceedings for the wholesale deportation of radicals under Attorney-General Palmer, in the Spring of 1920. In particular, the case of one Salsedo must be borne in mind, a radical who was held incommunicado in the New York offices of the Department of Justice, on the 14th floor of a Park Row building. Boda and his companions were friends of Salsedo. On May 4th, the day before they called at Johnson’s garage, they had learned that Salsedo had been found dead on the sidewalk outside the Park Row building, to which he had been thrown or jumped from the 14th floor. Already frightened by the Red raids they bestirred themselves to “hide the literature and notify the friends against the Federal police.” For this purpose an automobile was needed, and they turned to Boda.
Such were the circumstances under which the four Italians appeared on the evening of May 5th at the Johnson garage.
Mrs. Johnson telephoned the police. The car, not being available, the Italians left, Sacco and Vanzetti to board a street-car for Brockton, Boda and the fourth member, Orciani, on a motorcycle. Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested on the street-car, Orciani was arrested the next day, and Boda was never heard of again.
Stewart at once sought to apply his theory of the commission of the two “jobs” by one gang. The theory, however, broke down. Orciani had been at work on the days of both crimes so he was let go. Sacco, in continuous employment at a shoe factory in Stoughton, had taken one day off, on April 15th. Hence, while he could not be charged with the Bridgewater crime, he was charged with the Braintree murders. Vanzetti, a fish peddler at Plymouth, and his own employer, could not give the same kind of alibi for either day, and so he was held for both crimes.
The testimony concerning “consciousness of guilt:”