The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (19 page)

Mr Franklin was not alone in his doubts of the way the case was handled. As the days went by the doubts grew. The force of these doubts compelled Governor Fuller to appoint a commission headed by President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University and comprising former Probate Judge Robert Grant and Dr Samuel Stratton, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Many questions have been asked concerning President Lowell’s part in the case. Some have been addressed to him directly but he has made no answers to any of the queries.

During the Sacco–Vanzetti hysteria, alumni and other potential contributors to the Harvard Law School Endowment Fund were refusing to make contributions because of Professor Felix Frankfurter’s written defense of the two radicals in his widely read book,
The
Case
of
Sacco
and
Vanzetti
. It was reported that an offer of $100,000 had been made to the fund on condition that Mr Frankfurter resign.

Why did Mr Lowell accept the appointment at the hands of Governor Fuller when he knew the strong feeling against Sacco and Vanzetti by many potential contributors? Was he willing, for the sake of truth and justice, to take the risk of jeopardizing these contributions if he found the two men innocent? If that is so, how could he have failed to be impressed by those of his associates who denounced Mr Frankfurter for what they considered the effect of the latter’s writings on the endowment fund?

Is it possible that in Dr Lowell’s mind the convicted men were intertwined with their defender of his Law School faculty and that his feeling against the latter somehow overflowed into the Sacco–Vanzetti case?

Judge McAnarney, one of the original defense attorneys, told the Lowell Commission that Joe Rossi, Italian interpreter at the trial, had made incorrect translations. The defense attorneys did not know Italian, and Vanzetti occasionally caught one of the mistranslations, but his command of English was such that he hesitated to pick up Rossi every time.

Before the Lowell Commission Judge McAnarney, discussing this phase of the case, said that Vanzetti accused the Italian interpreter of helping the government by his misinterpretations.

President Lowell, at this juncture, said that Rossi had been “pretty careless”. However, he added that Rossi’s attention was usually called to his misinterpretations.

“I couldn’t see that it did any harm to anybody,” he said; he wasn’t helping the government “very much”.

Yet at least one of these “slips” was concerned with Sacco’s alibi which was obviously of great importance, and in 1926 Rossi was convicted of larceny and also pleaded guilty to an attempt to bribe a judge.

During the trial Rossi frequently drove Judge Thayer in and out of Dedham in his car. The Judge was on very familiar terms with him, calling him “Joe” and telling the District Attorney that he was “going riding with Joe today”.

Rossi named one of his children Webster Thayer Rossi, and District Attorney Katzmann, who prosecuted Sacco and Vanzetti, acted as godfather.

The Lowell Commission explored the trial events and the post-trial developments. In considering a motion for a new trial based on a statement of one Gould, bystander at the scene of the South Braintree crime, who was within a few feet of one of the bandits and whose coat was pierced by one of the gunman’s bullets, the Commission discarded Gould’s testimony as “merely cumulative”.

Now Gould positively declared that Sacco had not fired the shot. He had had an excellent opportunity to view the man with the weapon. Even the Lowell Commission said that Gould “certainly had an unusually good position to observe the men in the car”.

Yet the Commission discarded this affidavit because it was “merely cumulative”. How did they know what the effect of such testimony would have been at the trial? Gould had not been called as a witness, though he had given his name to a police officer and the officer had passed on the name to the State Police. The defense found him after the trial.

In considering the Gould affidavit filed in connection with the motion for a new trial, the Lowell Commission did a strange thing. It said, “There seems to be no reason to think that the statement of Gould would have had any effect in changing the mind of the jury.”

Such omniscience calls for no comment.

A witness, Daly, swore that Ripley, the jury foreman, had said, prior to being called as a juror:

“Damn them, they ought to hang anyway.”

The Commission said: “Daly must have misunderstood him [Ripley] or his recollection is at fault.”

To supplement the Lowell Committee’s report, the Governor also made a personal investigation of the case. In this connection the dramatic and significant incident of the “eel” story is worth telling.

The Governor closed his inquiry on 1 August 1927. The last witnesses were Gardner Jackson and Aldino Felicani of the Defense Committee.

“If all the witnesses in the case had been as honest as you two gentlemen are there would have been no trouble in settling it,” he told them. “I know you have been telling the truth.”

Jackson and Felicani almost leaped with joy as they heard these words. The Governor shook them by the hand and as they turned to go he said to Jackson, “You know I’m a businessman and I’m used to having documentary evidence. You have never produced any paper proving that Vanzetti was selling eels on the day of the Bridgewater crime.”

The visitors’ hearts fell. Jackson argued that eighteen witnesses had testified that Vanzetti had sold them eels on 24 December 1919. Eels are an Italian delicacy for consumption on the day before Christmas, and the witnesses remembered the man who sold the eels that day, continued Jackson, but the Governor waved aside this testimony with the words, “Oh, but Mr Jackson, they were all Italians,” and asked for documentary proof.

The Governor wanted “a paper” before he could believe Vanzetti’s alibi that he was selling eels on the day of the Bridgewater holdup. The defense felt it would be impossible to obtain such proof. But perhaps a receipt could be found for the eels. The next day, 2 August, Herbert H. Ehrmann, associate counsel for the defense, and Felicani combed the fish concerns on Atlantic Avenue for record of a shipment of eels to Vanzetti. It was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. All day they rummaged through old and frayed papers in cellars, garrets, and lofts. But life is sometimes stranger than fiction. If this were a short story I would have them find the receipt, rush to the Governor in triumph, and then be rewarded with a new trial or commutation of sentence. Strangely enough, part of this actually happened. The receipt was actually found, almost eight years after it had been filled out, showing a shipment of eels by the American Express to Vanzetti on 20 December 1919. These were the eels he received two days later, prepared and sold the day before Christmas. It is on record that the receipt was found in a box of old papers in the wholesale fish market of the Corsoa and Gambino Company, 112 Atlantic Avenue.

Elated with the find, Ehrmann, Felicani, and Jackson rushed the receipt to the Governor’s office. They embraced each other with joy. This would be the proof demanded by the Governor. Surely he would see that the alibi witnesses were not liars.

On the day Governor Fuller closed his private inquiry in the case, I went to Boston to cover the story. The Governor was due to give out the result of his inquiry and that of the Lowell Commission on 3 August 1927.

Albert J. Gordon, for years a reporter on
The
Boston
Herald
, was assigned to assist me because of his knowledge of the city and its leading personalities. Later, when so many angles developed that we required help, Jonathan Eddy, then a reporter on the
Times
and now secretary of the American Newspaper Guild, was sent to assist us.

In Boston we found newspapermen from all parts of the country. The Sacco–Vanzetti drama was about to reach a climax. Wherever you went there was but one topic of conversation, the Sacco–Vanzetti case. What would Governor Fuller do? The air was electric with excitement. On the streets, in restaurants and shops—wherever men gathered—they talked of the two Italians.

Boston three weeks before the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti was a vast whispering gallery. All sorts of rumors were afloat.

The subject was discussed in Boston’s clubs, where the overwhelming judgment was that the men should be executed. In the east end, where the poor people lived, the prayer was for clemency. “Hope clemency” was the cable received by the Governor from Robert Underwood Johnson, former American ambassador to Italy.

Gordon and I canvassed the situation. We spoke to nearly everyone available to discuss the case intelligently, secretaries to the Governor, the lawyers in the case, state officials in a position to know what was going on, newspaper editors close to the Governor and to his associates. As a result we came to a conclusion which we embodied in a dispatch to the
Times
on 2 August. This is what we said in part:

“Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti will not die in the electric chair on the date set. Neither will they be pardoned. Further reprieve pending steps by the Massachusetts Legislature looking to a new trial was indicated at the State House today as the solution of the historic case of the Italian radicals which Gov. Fuller will place before the Executive Council when it meets tomorrow. The Governor will make known the decision tomorrow night . . .

“Since yesterday the idea of a further reprieve and action by the Legislature in January has gained ground, according to information available in authentic quarters. No details are revealed but the meager news that has leaked out is to the effect that Gov. Fuller will propose to the Council that the Legislature be requested to pass an enabling act permitting a new trial for the condemned men. In the meantime they would be reprieved.”

On the same day
The
Boston
Herald
said the indications were that Sacco and Vanzetti would not die and that the Governor would ask his Council to approve another respite “in order that the doubts which still remain after his exhaustive inquiry may be removed.” It began to look as if the men’s long fight was won; that the tramp of the marching armies had been heard in the Massachusetts State House.

On 3 August, Boston was restless. The air was charged with suppressed excitement. The guards at the State House seemed uneasy. Everybody knew that the Governor would announce his fateful decision in the evening. The city was a vast guessing contest. Rumors, whispers, hints, doubts, hopes.

The Governor’s offices opened at nine o’clock. An army of newspapermen greeted Secretary Herman A. MacDonald on his arrival. MacDonald picked up some papers and went to see the Governor at a nearby hotel.

By noon the Executive Offices were filled with reporters, officials, curiosity seekers, and hangers-on. Mr Jackson, secretary of the defense committee, appeared later with an account of the detailed expenditure of $325,000 in seven years to gain freedom for the convicted men.

Elaborate preparations were made for sending out the decision. The press gallery in the House of Representatives, a floor above the Executive Offices, was converted into a telegraph room. Direct connections were established with newspaper offices.

The afternoon passed slowly. At the Charlestown State Prison where the convicted men were confined additional police took up their grim task of patrolling the prison. Mrs Rose Sacco visited her husband during the morning but for the nineteenth day he refused food and insisted on continuing his hunger strike. Vanzetti appeared a little more cheerful but ate nothing after breakfast. The homes of Governor Fuller in Boston and at Rye, New Hampshire, of Chief Justice Arthur P. Rugg, and of Justice Thayer were put under guard. Luigia Vanzetti, sister of the convicted fish peddler, left Italy for the United States, having been delayed ten days before she could obtain a passport. Judge Thayer played eighteen holes of golf in 84 at the Cliff County Club in Ogunquit, Maine, where he was summering.

Crowds waited restlessly before newspaper bulletin boards. But the reporters were just as restless. We gathered at the State House early in the evening but there was a hitch. Finally, sheet by sheet the Governor’s decision was rushed to him for inspection and revision and then rushed back for mimeographing.

Governor Fuller arrived at the State House at eight twenty-five and was surrounded by reporters. He promised to give us a fifteen-minute interview. Half an hour later he emerged, pale and drawn. Instead of making the expected announcement he read from an envelope on which he had scribbled these words:

“I am very sorry not to oblige you with an interview. I can truthfully say that I am very tired and I trust the report will speak for itself. I would prefer not to indulge in any supplementary statement at this time.”

He promised to have the decision in our hands at nine-thirty, well in time for most of our deadlines. But last-minute changes were made and nine-thirty came and went. We walked restlessly up and down the corridors, talking, smoking, nervous, quite different from the picture of gay, nonchalant reporters shown on the screen.

At the bare defense-committee offices on Hanover Street a group of men sat on rickety chairs, tables, boxes, and bundles of pamphlets. Professor Frankfurter was there in his shirt sleeves. The night was warm. Over and over again, the visitors read the posters on the walls. One, urging clemency, was signed by members of the French Cabinet. A Mexican poster read “Liberty and Justice”. Alongside it was a manifesto by a former member of the Italian Parliament. The telephone bell rang incessantly. Was there news? No. When would the decision be given out? Soon, maybe. Hurried telephoning to the Executive Offices. No news. Gardner Jackson was everywhere, at the State House, one minute, dashing to the Hanover Street offices the next.