The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

by Wilkes, Roger

  Were the distinguished members of the Lowell Committee so unaware of their own bias that they unconsciously permitted it to dictate what they should believe and what they should not believe? What would explain the otherwise inexplicable omissions and commissions of this committee? Was it class feeling, instinctive distrust of a certain class of “foreigners”, lack of sympathy with working-class types represented by Sacco and Vanzetti, their natural antipathy as “patriots” to draft dodgers?

  The committee members had enormous prestige yet—

  (1) They believed a woman whom they said was “eccentric” and “not unimpeachable in conduct”, whom the Commonwealth had refused to call because she was unreliable, whose testimony Governor Fuller rejected, whose son said she was not to be believed, whom a police chief—he had known her all his life—said was “crazy, imagines things—has pipe dreams …”

  (2) They believed that a rent in a cap, alleged to be Sacco’s and found near the scene of the South Braintree crime, was a “trifling matter” and did not warrant a new trial. Yet, Judge Thayer had denied motion for a new trial on the ground that the rent was a vital part of the proof against Sacco. This, too, in the face of new testimony by the Braintree Chief of Police, who told the committee that he had made the rent in trying to find a name inside the cap.

  (3) They omitted all reference to the important “eel” testimony and the receipt that tended to exculpate Vanzetti. (Nor was there any reference to this important incident in the Governor’s report.)

  We followed the new counsel Mr Hill from one legal step to another in his attempt to save the men from death in the electric chair, set for 10 August. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts refused a writ of error. The day before the date set for the execution, Mr Hill, in one of the frankest statements ever made in the State courts, told Judge Thayer in open court that because of prejudice he could not fairly decide the motions before him. He pleaded that Thayer withdraw to allow another judge to be appointed for the final appeal. He pointed out that even the Lowell Committee had found Thayer guilty of a “grave breach of official decorum” in speaking of the case off the bench. He urged that it was an insuperable task to try a case under such circumstances.

  Hill filed a new affidavit of a witness who saw the South Braintree shooting and who told the police Sacco and Vanzetti were not in the murder party but who had not been called at the trial.

  Hill’s appeal was rejected. It was the eighth time in six years that Judge Thayer had denied a new trial.

  Judge Thayer completely lacked judicial temperament in this case. His prejudice overflowed to reporters, acquaintances, and friends whom he sought out during lunch, whom he invited to his chambers. In a Boston club, on the golf links, wherever he went, something impelled him to denounce the prisoners before him. He sought to sway an observer for the Boston Federation of Churches to disbelieve Sacco’s employer, who had given him a fine character.

  Robert Benchley, then dramatic editor of Life, whose family knew the Judge well, said that in the summer of 1921 his friend Loring Coes told him “that Web [Thayer] has been saying that these bastards down in Boston were trying to intimidate him. He would show them that they could not and that he would like to get a few of those Reds and hang them too.”

  The judge was unable to keep his violent language out of the record of the trial. In his charge he went out of the way to compare the duty of the jurors with that of our soldiers in France.

  His lack of restraint and judicial temper even led him to exclaim to a friend after he had turned down a plea for a new trial:

  “Did you see what I did to those anarchist bastards?”

  What drove this New England judge to such extraordinary breaches of judicial decorum? Apparently, his obsession against “Reds” completely deprived him of all unbiased consideration of the case and led him to hang onto it with bulldog insistence, through eight appeals in six years, even going so far as to be a judge of his own prejudice and ruling that he had had none.

  While the argument was under way, the American flag was burned in front of our consulate in Casablanca, Communists called a protest strike in Prague, British labor leaders cabled appeals to Governor Fuller, and President William Green of the American Federation of Labor asked for commutation of sentence.

  August 9 was to have been the last day of life for Sacco and Vanzetti. The execution hour was set for three minutes after midnight, 10 August. That morning Boston was the center of an influx of radicals, trade-union leaders, liberals, and sympathizers from all over the country. We spent hours watching them try to picket the State House. They wore mourning bands on their sleeves. As rapidly as they appeared they were arrested.

  Extraordinary police arrangements were made for the execution. Eight hundred armed men guarded Charlestown State Prison. They were prison police, State Police, and Metropolitan Boston and Cambridge police.

  Gas and tear-gas squads were held inside the prison gates. A machine-gun detachment was stationed near the gates.

  The nerves of Bostonians were “jumpy”. They called up the police and complained of the activities of “foreign-looking men”.

  On Boston Common I ran into Michael Angelo Musmanno, a vivacious young man with flowing brown hair and streaming black Windsor tie. Musmanno, who had been sent from Pittsburgh to Boston by the Sons of Italy to present to the Governor a resolution expressing that organization’s doubts about the case and voicing the hope for some form of clemency, was on his way to get Sacco and Vanzetti’s signature to an appeal. We rode to the prison in a taxicab and I waited for Musmanno. When he reappeared I asked Musmanno how Vanzetti felt about the day that was to end with the short walk to the electric chair.

  This is what I wrote at the time:

  “VANZETTI: Ah, Musmanno, the trouble with the world is that there is no responsibility. You see it is this way. In the court the District Attorney says it is not his fault that we are there. He is paid to prosecute men and he can’t help himself. The judge says he has nothing to do with the case except to charge the jury on the law. He says the jury brings in the verdict. The jury says it looks to the judge for guidance so they are not responsible. Then you ask the governor and he says it is up to the Advisory Committee. But the committee says it is the witnesses that make the case. The witnesses say they couldn’t help being where they are. They didn’t ask to be called. And then there are the guards before our cells. They say they are sorry for us but they can’t do anything about it. Then, when they come to strap us in the chair they will say they had nothing to do with it as that is how they earn their living. Well, Musmanno [with a smile], I guess only Nick and I are responsible.”

  Sacco, who was on the twenty-fifth day of his hunger strike, would not sign the appeal paper placed before him by Musmanno. Vanzetti did so on condition that it cover both cases. Vanzetti autographed Charles A. Beard’s The Rise of American Civilization for Musmanno and wrote a farewell message on a flyleaf. Musmanno refused to take the two volumes with him at the time as that would mean he had given up hope.

  Mr Hill appealed to the governor for a stay of execution pending a final appeal to the full bench of the Supreme Judicial Court. The governor called a special meeting of his Council. He asked seven of the eight living attorneys general to help him consider the request for a respite.

  While these meetings were in progress in the State House Mr Hill sped to the home of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes at Beverly Farms, thirty miles away. The justice held he could not stay the execution as he had no jurisdiction in the case.

  In the last desperate days a second appeal was made to Justice Holmes. Those who undertook this mission were Mr Thompson and John Finerty, a Washington lawyer. They talked to him on the porch of his Beverly Farms home. The jurist was deeply moved by the lawyers’ recital and told them that there was nothing he would rather do than to grant their request, but he saw no legal way in which he could act.

  “You don’t have to convince me that the atmosphere in
which these men were tried precluded a fair trial,” said Justice Holmes. “But that is not enough to give me, as a Federal judge, jurisdiction.

  “If I listened to you any more I would do it,” he continued. “I must not do it.”

  He turned on his heel and went into the house.

  To Justice Holmes preservation of the fabric of Federal–State relations was a principle higher than life. It was what he had fought for as a lad in the Civil War.

  Mr Hill flung himself into his car and hurried to Circuit Court Justice George W. Anderson, who also found he could not intervene. There was but one hope for a stay, that was Governor Fuller. At eight-thirty p.m. Mr Hill poured his appeal before the governor and the Council. They were reluctant to act. Hill argued and pleaded, summoning every argument he had. His effort was successful and a respite for ten days was granted at eleven-twelve p.m., less than an hour before the men were to have met their death.

  Captain Charles R. Beaupre of the State Police rushed the reprieve to the Charlestown State Prison.

  It was at eleven-forty that Warden William Hendry, the reprieve in his hand and a smile on his face, walked down the long cement corridor leading to the death house. Sacco, Vanzetti, and Madeiros had been prepared for the electric chair.

  “It’s all off, boys,” the warden sang out as he approached the three cells. The men slowly rose from their cots. Vanzetti gripped the bars of his cell. “I’m damn glad of that,” he said, “I’d like to see my sister before I die.” Sacco and Madeiros made no comment.

  The warden returned to his office, passed around cigars to the reporters and witnesses, and smiled with satisfaction as an assistant read the respite with all the “whereases” and “know ye alls”.

  Now began the ten last days of mental torture for the convicted men and their friends. Robert Morss Lovett, of the University of Chicago, formed a Citizens’ National Committee. Glenn Frank, President of the University of Wisconsin, Dr Felix Adler, of the Society for Ethical Culture, and many well-known men and women accepted membership on the committee.

  The police refused to allow Sacco–Vanzetti meetings on Boston Common. Powers Hapgood, nephew of Norman Hapgood, tried to make a “free speech” test and was sent to the psychopathic ward for observation.

  A week after the reprieve the full bench of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts heard the last appeal in the case. The same day a bomb explosion wrecked the home of Lewis McHardy, who had been a juror in the case six years previously. This and other events fanned Massachusetts opinion to fever heat. Sacco, under threat of forcible feeding, broke his self-imposed fast on the thirtieth day, six days before he was to die. Four days later he bade a pathetic farewell to his fourteen-year-old son Dante.

  August 19. The State Judicial Court denied the final appeal. Preparations were made for an appeal to the Federal courts.

  From Cotuit President Lowell told The New York Times he would not discuss the case and declined to say why he would not make public the record of examination of witnesses.

  Extra police were placed on duty to protect all public officials and public property.

  Luigia Vanzetti, in a faded travelling cloak and grasping in her hand a gold medallion of the Madonna, stepped off the Aquitania in New York in time to hear that the highest legal tribunal in Massachusetts had shut the door against hope for the brother whom she had not seen in nineteen years.

  August 20. Luigia arrived in Boston at four-thirty a.m. At eleven-thirty Mrs Sacco took her to Charlestown State Prison. Every day for a week Mrs Sacco had passed the electric chair on the way to visit her husband in the death house. This day she tried to save Luigia from the gruesome sight by appealing to Warden Hendry. The bluff Scot who had come to respect his two prisoners yielded, and the women were permitted to enter the death cells from another direction.

  The warden opened the door for Miss Vanzetti.

  “Barto,” she murmured, sinking into her brother’s arms.

  The defence suffered three setbacks in the Federal courts.

  Behind the scenes strong pressure was exerted to have the Department of Justice’s files opened. Affidavits of former Department of Justice agents indicated that the state and the Federal governments had exchanged information on the case and that the Federal authorities were certain that Sacco and Vanzetti were radicals but not murderers.

  August 21. Governor Fuller remained silent on the request that he ask for the Federal files. The acting attorney general had announced he would submit the files if the governor made the request.

  Justice Brandeis declined to intervene, as members of his family had been personally interested in the case. (Mrs Sacco had lived in a house in Dedham placed at her disposal by the Brandeis family, and Mrs Brandeis and her daughter Susan had become interested in the case.) They also discussed it with Mrs Elizabeth Glendower Evans of Boston, who assisted the defence committee.

  Large crowds gathered near the State House and police stopped a parade of pickets, forbidding all public demonstrations. They called it a “death watch”. More than 150 persons were arrested for picketing, including Edna St Vincent Millay, Lola Ridge, John Dos Passos, Professor Ellen Hayes of Wellesley, John Howard Lawson, and “Mother” Ella Reeve Bloor.

  Paula Halliday, who used to manage “Polly’s” restaurant in Greenwich Village, walked on the Common wearing a red slicker. On her back in black paint were the words: “Save Sacco and Vanzetti. Is Justice dead?”

  Police dragged her to the nearest patrol wagon.

  Musmanno returned from Washington where he had filed papers for a writ of certiorari, which could not be argued until October.

  Lawyers, in a final desperate attempt, dashed off to call on Supreme Court Justice Stone, vacationing on rock-bound Isle au Haut, off the Maine coast.

  A telegram imploring Justice Taft to confer on American soil with counsel was sent to him at Point au Pic, Quebec.

  Senator Borah, from Portland, Oregon, wired that he would volunteer his legal services if a new trial were obtained.

  August 22. Turmoil and street fighting in Paris such as had not been witnessed since the World War. Hundreds arrested and scores hurt.

  Forty hurt in a Sacco–Vanzetti demonstration in London.

  A riotous demonstration before the American Consulate in Geneva.

  Delegations of citizens visited Governor Fuller all day. Frank P. Walsh and Arthur Garfield Hays of New York, and Francis Fisher Kane, former US Attorney in Philadelphia, begged for a respite pending examination of the Department of Justice files.

  They said that Acting Attorney General Farnum had at last agreed to have the files opened, and pleaded with the governor not to rush Sacco and Vanzetti to the chair in “indecent haste” while the files were still locked.

  Mr Hill begged the Governor to delay the case until the appeal, docketed in the Supreme Court, had been argued.

  Congressman LaGuardia flew to Boston to see the Governor and emerged saying the condemned men had one chance in a thousand.

  Justices Taft and Stone refused to intervene.

  Again Sacco and Vanzetti were prepared for the short walk to the electric chair.

  Boston was in a veritable state of siege. Police precautions of 10 August were augmented. Three hundred policemen were thrown around the State House, while pickets marched up to the front door only to be bundled into patrol wagons. Legionnaires shouted and hooted and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

  A New York labor group headed by Julius Hochman, Luigi Antonini, A. I. Shiplacoff and Judge Jacob Panken saw the Governor. President Green wired again asking for commutation. The governor received 900 telegrams during the day. Two-thirds asked for clemency.

  A group of liberals added their appeals. I watched them leave the governor’s office without hope. It was no use, they said. They felt an air of unreality about the whole thing. Never have I seen a more dejected lot. Among them were John F. Moors, a member of the Harvard Corporation; Paul Kellogg, of The Survey; Waldo Cook, of The Springf
ield Republican; Dr John Lovejoy Elliott, and Dr Alice Hamilton.

  Police charged a crowd near the Bunker Hill Monument. The prison area was an armed camp. Searchlights swept glaring fingers over rooftops, revealing whole families gazing at the prison. All streets leading to the prison zone. Police horses stamped restlessly in the yellow glare of street lamps.

  Mrs Sacco and Miss Vanzetti paid three visits to the prison on the last day and made their final appeal to the governor in the evening.

  Reporters were given special passes to the prison. Those of us who were to do the execution story were asked to present ourselves at the prison by ten o’clock if possible. Eddy remained on the streets observing the police and the crowds, and Gordon covered the last hours at the State House.

  When I arrived at the prison, I found that telegraph wires had again been strung into the Prison Officers’ Club. From ten o’clock we filed details of the preparations for the execution. The windows had been nailed down by a nervous policeman “because somebody might throw something in”. The shades were drawn. The room was stuffy, and in an hour the heat was unbearable. We took off our coats, rolled up our shirt sleeves, and tried to be comfortable. The Morse operators were the coolest of the fifty men and women in the room. The noise of the typewriters and telegraph instruments made an awful din. Our nerves were stretched to the breaking-point. Had there not been a last minute reprieve on 10 August? Might there not be one now? We knew of the personal appeal then being made by Mrs Sacco and Miss Vanzetti to the governor.

  W. G. Thompson, counsel for the two men, saw them for the last time. In an extraordinarily moving account of his final talks, later published in The Atlantic Monthly, Thompson described the attitude of the two Italians, their calmness in the face of death, their sincerity, their firm belief in their ideals:

  “I told Vanzetti that although my belief in his innocence had all the time been strengthened both by my study of the evidence and by my increasing knowledge of his personality, yet there was a chance, however remote, that I might be mistaken; and that I thought he ought for my sake, in the closing hour of his life when nothing could save him, to give me his most solemn reassurance, both with respect to himself and with respect to Sacco. Vanzetti then told me quietly and calmly, and with a sincerity which I could not doubt, that I need have no anxiety about this matter; that both he and Sacco were absolutely innocent of the South Braintree crime and that he [Vanzetti] was equally innocent of the Bridgewater crime; that while, looking back, he now realized more clearly than he ever had the grounds of the suspicion against him and Sacco, he felt that no allowance had been made for his ignorance of American points of view and habits of thought, or for his fear as a radical and almost as an outlaw, and that in reality he was convicted on evidence which would not have convicted him had he not been an anarchist, so that he was in a very real sense dying for his cause. He said it was a cause for which he was prepared to die. He said it was the cause of the upward progress of humanity and the elimination of force from the world. He spoke with calmness, knowledge, and deep feeling.