To counteract this, the defense paraded sixteen separate witnesses, all of whom testified that they had purchased eels from Vanzetti during the period that the prosecution alleged he was carrying out the robbery. Eels were a traditional festival food for some sections of the Italian community. But not all the witnesses spoke good English, and the succession of people talking about foreign traditions did not go down well with the jury. The prosecution found it easy to make the witnesses appear confused and inaccurate.
Though he was losing the case, Vanzetti chose not to testify on his own behalf. His team felt that he would not come across well under cross-examination, being a committed anarchist and enemy of the state. He was convicted and was sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in prison. Strike one for the state.
This trial was followed by a second one—for the Braintree robbery. This time Sacco was also on trial and the charge was murder. It was a tense time; fearing a bomb attack on the courthouse, the courtroom was fitted with cast-iron shutters and heavy sliding doors. Police ringed the building, and Sacco and Vanzetti had an armed escort at all times.
The evidence was ambiguous at best. Sacco had been absent from work on the day of the robbery and the two defendants had been seen in the vicinity on that morning. One witness did say that he had seen Sacco shoot the paymaster, Berardelli, as he was trying to escape. Another testified that as the getaway car was driving off, Sacco had leaned out the window and waved a gun at him.
If the prosecution relied heavily on ever-unreliable eyewitnesses, so did the defense. Both men provided alibis, backed up by witnesses. But were the witnesses fellow anarchists? This was what the prosecution alleged.
The actual physical evidence was inconclusive. Experts agreed that one of the fatal bullets could have come from Sacco’s gun. But the prosecution could not say for certain, even after firing test shots and comparing them to the recovered bullet. The defense said that the bullet did not match the gun. That should have been a score for Sacco.
The case against Vanzetti was that he had been present during a felony murder, so he was as guilty as the man who pulled the trigger. There was no suggestion that he had fired on the day. But he had been seen, according to witnesses, in the vicinity, and one put him in the getaway car.
In a theatrical gesture near the end of the trial, the district attorney produced a flop-eared cap which had been left at the crime scene. Many people had said it was similar to a hat Sacco once owned. He threw the hat at Sacco and told him to put it on. Despite the fact that it was clearly several sizes too small for the Italian shoemaker, District Attorney Frederick Katzmann continued to refer to the cap as his.
The evidence was very poor, but Sacco and Vanzetti had made a negative impression on the jurors. No one liked radical anarchists. The jury retired for three hours, ordered dinner, and then returned with guilty verdicts.
The death sentence was automatic. So were the protests that followed around the world. There were demonstrations in sixty Italian cities alone. Leading left-wing intellectuals, artists, and writers jumped on the bandwagon. There was doubt about the guilt of the two men and even more questions over the conduct of the trials, which had been slipshod. A number of motions for a retrial were made and denied. Unless there was some dramatic new development, they were going to the chair.
Then there was a sensation; a man came forward and claimed it was he who had killed the guard and the paymaster.
Celestino Madeiros was a career criminal awaiting trial for murder. The case against him was strong and he knew he was facing the chair. He told the police that he had been part of a criminal gang drawn from the Italian community in Providence, Rhode Island. The group was led by Joe Morelli and had a history of attacking shoe factories. They also used a car similar to that seen in the vicinity of the Braintree robbery. They ticked all the boxes.
This new version of what happened also explained one troubling thing: why so many witnesses had put Sacco at the scene. The leader of the gang, Joe Morelli, could have been Sacco’s twin. The resemblance was uncanny. But the latest motion for a retrial based on this new evidence was turned down. The judge felt that Madeiros was not a credible witness. Public reaction was shocked, but the judiciary was unmoved. Now, nothing short of a pardon could save Sacco and Vanzetti.
Many petitioned. Those adding their names to the campaign for clemency included John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and even Benito Mussolini. Ordinary workers got involved as well. In August 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World, a trade union, called for a three-day nationwide walkout to protest the executions. In the Walsenburg coal district of Colorado, 1,132 of 1,167 miners left their posts, sparking the Colorado coal strike.
Sacco and Vanzetti remained defiant while in prison, calling on their supporters for revenge on the powers of the state that they blamed for their incarceration. They wrote dozens of letters protesting their innocence. Their demeanor convinced many of their innocence. But innocent or not, an aura of violence hung around them. On August 15, just a week before the scheduled execution, a bomb destroyed the home of one of the jurors who convicted them.
The day before the execution twenty thousand people thronged Boston Common, calling for a last minute reprieve. In their cells at Charlestown State Prison, both men refused to see a priest on their last day. Although they were Italian Catholics, they had chosen a different path and stuck to their principles to the end. Vanzetti, through his lawyer, asserted the pair’s innocence one last time and asked that no violence should follow their deaths.
That evening the death chamber was busy. The man in charge was Robert Greene Elliott, who held the title of State Electrician for the State of New York. He also worked for the neighboring states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Massachusetts. He had been appointed in 1926 and would hold the post until 1939.
A devout Methodist, his parents had hoped he might enter the ministry. But as a child he had read about the electric chair and began to wonder what it would be like to throw the switch. A qualified electrician, he joined the prison service. At the time the state electrician was Edwin Davis, who passed the torch to John Hulbert in 1913. Hulbert was a nervous man who became depressed over the work he was expected to do. He oversaw 140 executions, and only the fee of $150 per job kept him at it. But he finally suffered a nervous breakdown in 1926 and retired. “I got tired of killing people,” he said. Three years later Hulbert, still brooding over the 140 executions he had carried out, put a gun to his head and took his own life.
Elliott applied for the vacant job and got it. He had assisted both Davis and Hulbert and was ready for the responsibility.
Elliott had a detached attitude to the job and tried his best to perfect the method. He began with 2,000 volts for three seconds, and then lowered the charge to 500 volts for the rest of a full minute. This cycle was repeated until the process ended with one more high voltage jolt. The first high voltage charge was designed to render the victim immediately unconscious so that he would not suffer during the process. The lower voltage would heat the vital organs, cooking them to the point where life was extinguished, without causing too much bodily burning. A higher voltage would have caused burning, leaving terrible smells, smoke, and other unpleasant side effects (for the watcher—not the victim!). The oscillating cycle of shocks would also cause the heart to go into arrest, bringing death quickly.
During the time he was state electrician, Elliott also ran an electrical contracting business on the side. The night he executed Sacco and Vanzetti he collected a fat fee of $450—roughly $6,000 in today’s terms—for his grisly work. But this was not his busiest night. Though he was opposed to the death penalty himself, he executed 387 people during his career. Once (January 6, 1927), he carried out six executions in two different states in a single evening.
On August 22, 1927, he knew he had to get everything right because of the high profile of the case. In his memoir, Agent of Death, he wrote: “I k
new that the eyes of the world were on Boston that night, that the least thing out of the ordinary or the slightest mishap in the death chamber would be inflated into a sensation that might result in serious repercussions.”
The first to enter Elliott’s chamber was Madeiros, who still maintained that he was guilty of the crime for which Sacco and Vanzetti would later meet their deaths. His electrocution, at eleven o’clock at night, was carried out flawlessly, and the chair was readied for its next victim. Sacco walked calmly to the chair and sat down, waiting patiently as the electrodes were strapped in place. Then he said, “Farewell, Mother.” A few minutes later, he shouted, “Long live anarchy!” They were his final words; he died on the first attempt, at eleven thirty.
The final man to enter the chamber at midnight that night was Vanzetti. He was as calm as Sacco had been. A bookish man, he quietly shook hands with the guards and thanked them for their kind treatment of him in his final days and hours. In a controlled voice, he said, “I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me.”
Sacco and Vanzetti, wrongly convicted and executed, became poster boys for anarchists and communists worldwide. There were violent demonstrations in many cities throughout Europe and Asia, and wildcat strikes closed factories worldwide. Three died in demonstrations in Germany and ten thousand people turned out for the funerals of the two men in Boston.
“It was one of the most tremendous funerals of modern times,” reported the Boston Globe.
Controversy reigned for decades and opinion is still divided. Were the killings carried out by Madeiros and his gang or by Sacco with Vanzetti present? We will never know, but there is enough doubt to make their conviction unsafe. This was the view of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who asked for a review in 1977 on the fiftieth anniversary of the executions. Based on that review, he took the bold decision to declare that both men had been unfairly tried and convicted, and that “any disgrace should be forever removed from their names.”
He did not issue a pardon, because that would imply they were guilty. But significantly he did not assert their innocence. That is a question that may never be answered.
CHARLES STARKWEATHER REBEL WITHOUT A CLUE
The teen culture did not emerge until the fifties, with the arrival of Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, and James Dean, the original rebel without a cause. But James Dean did not invent the moody teenager kicking against authority. He just reflected what was already out there—a youth culture growing up on postwar austerity who felt alienated and out of touch with their parents’ generation. The old certainties were gone and kids felt they did not fit in. So they sought their own music, their own clothing, and their own way of belonging.
And some just never fit in.
If you are looking for the ultimate teen idol, he is not James Dean but Charles Starkweather, the Rebel Without a Clue.
Starkweather decided to impress his young girlfriend by shooting her father; then the two lovers went on a road trip across the Badlands of Nebraska, leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. And like Dean, Starkweather came to a violent end. He was sentenced to die in the electric chair, guilty of eleven murders.
The story was immortalized in the movie Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.
Charles Raymond Starkweather was born in 1938 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He came from a good working-class family and was raised well. But he had a medical condition which left him slightly bowlegged and he had a speech impediment. So his school years were marred by bullying and misery. But in his teens he grew physically strong and began to hit back at his tormentors. In a matter of months he went from well-behaved child to troubled and troublesome teenager. He developed a James Dean obsession and styled his hair to match the pint-sized actor. But though he had the look and the swagger, he did not have the confidence. He was a misfit and a loner, prone to violent outbursts.
As an eighteen-year-old dropout, he was introduced to thirteen-year-old Caril Ann Fugate. Her older sister was dating one of Starkweather’s few friends. Caril was the ideal girlfriend for Charles. So many years his junior, she looked up to him and fed his ego. She was impressed by his looks, his car, and the fact that he seemed to have endless money to spend on her. The fact that he stole the money and the gifts he gave her was not immediately apparent. He worked minimum wage as a garbageman, but she only saw the James Dean look-alike. He, in turn, felt that Caril gave him a reason to live.
But it was not all roses. Starkweather’s father threw him out, forcing the young man to fend for himself. He felt depressed, believing that his life would amount to nothing. The only solution to his difficulties seemed to be crime.
On November 30, 1957, Starkweather went into a service station and tried to buy a stuffed dog for Caril. He had no money and was refused credit. Furious, he returned later on that bitterly cold night with a shotgun and robbed the store. He took the attendant, Richard Jensen, away in his car, stopping in a remote area. The attendant struggled and in the scuffle the gun went off, hitting the attendant in the knee. As Starkweather stood over the injured man, he decided this was the moment his destiny changed. For once he was the one in charge. He shot Robert Colvert in the head. Afterward, he claimed that he felt he left his former self behind that night and was now a new man, facing a new future.
He told Caril Ann Fugate about the shooting but said that an accomplice had actually pulled the trigger. She wasn’t fooled, but like her boyfriend she seemed to exult in the violence. He had killed without remorse, and he felt powerful and euphoric. He had money in his pocket. He was not one of the suspects and their secret seemed to bind the couple more closely together. All was good.
Good, apart from the fact that he was fired as a garbageman and thrown out of his apartment for falling behind on the rent. All was about as bad as it could get. On top of that, he knew that Caril’s parents did not like him and were against the relationship. But the relationship was the only thing that gave his life meaning. He was nuts about his girl and felt he could win over her parents. In late January 1958, he called on them while Caril was still at school. He had a rifle with him, and he said he had been planning on inviting Caril’s stepfather, Marion Bartlett, out hunting. But Marion and Velda (Caril’s mother) immediately began arguing with him, telling him firmly to leave their daughter alone. He was thrown out of the house. He returned some time later for his gun and was thrown out again.
When Caril returned from school she was shocked at the way her boyfriend had been treated. She went in and argued with her parents. Starkweather followed her in, and the argument became physical. Velda struck Starkweather, and then Marion came at him with a hammer. Starkweather shot him in the face and then turned his rifle on Velda, shooting her too. In his rage he turned the gun around and battered her head with its butt. Her two-year-old child, Betty Jean, began to cry and Starkweather turned, driving the butt of the gun into the child’s head.
Starkweather later claimed that Velda had tried to attack him with a knife. He went on, “I picked up that knife that the old lady had … started to walk in the bedroom … and the little girl kept yelling, and I told her to shut up, and I started to walk again, and just turned around and threw the kitchen knife I had at her. They said it hit her in the throat, but I thought it hit her in the chest. I went on into the bedroom. Mr. Bartlett was moving around, so I tried to stab him in the throat, but the knife wouldn’t go in, and I just hit the top part of it with my hand, and it went in.”
The teenage lovers cleaned up as best they could. They stuffed Velda’s body into the toilet in the outhouse. Marion was dragged into the chicken coup. And the dead baby, Caril’s sister, was put in a cardboard box and left in the outhouse with her mother. Caril and Charles spent the next six days living in the house as if nothing had happened, telling callers that they could not come in because of an outbreak of flu. But they fled hours before the police, their suspicions aroused, raided the house.
Starkweather and Fugate were now on the run. The
y drove to the remote farmhouse of seventy-year-old August Meyer, a friend of Starkweather’s parents. They shot the old man and stole his car, but they crashed and had to abandon the vehicle. Two teenagers picked them up and were killed for their troubles. The body count now stood at seven and would grow over the coming hours.
They drove back to Lincoln, breaking into a house in one of the wealthier sections of town. They killed the owners of the house and their maid, stole their jewelry and money, and made off in their car. It was time to leave Nebraska.
With a manhunt in full swing in their home state, they drove into Wyoming. They needed a new car, one whose plates were not known to the cops, so they stopped outside the small town of Douglas, where they had spotted a salesman asleep in his car. They shot him where he slept in the passenger seat. Two days, seven kills. Caril got into the rear and Starkweather got behind the wheel, and they tried to drive. But the car had an emergency brake, unusual in those days, and Starkweather was unable to get it started. A motorist stopped to help, but when Starkweather pointed the gun at him, he knew he was in trouble. He grabbed the barrel and struggled with the teen killer.
Just then, Deputy Sheriff William Romer drove by and stopped to check out the commotion. At that point Caril Fugate could see the writing on the wall. Their car would not start, the cops were here, and Starkweather could not wrestle the gun from the motorist who had stopped to help. So she decided to abandon her lover and jump to the side of the angels. She ran from the car, shouting, “He killed a man,” as if she was completely innocent of the murder spree.
Starkweather let go of the gun and ran from the stolen car, getting back into his first car. He turned the key and took off at a high speed. Immediately Romer set off in pursuit, calling for reinforcements as he gave chase. Douglas Police Chief Robert Ainslie and Sheriff Earl Heflin of Converse County, Wyoming, were in a car together and joined the chase. As Starkweather zoomed by at over 100 miles per hour, they got in behind him, their lights flashing. As Ainslie drove, Heflin leaned out the window and took careful aim, shooting out the back window of Starkweather’s car. As the window exploded in a cloud of glass shards, the fleeing car suddenly came to a dead stop in the middle of the road. The flying glass had cut Starkweather’s ear and he believed he had been shot. He thought he was going to bleed out.
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