The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

by Wilkes, Roger

  “I was impressed by the strength of Vanzetti’s mind, and by the extent of his reading and knowledge. He did not talk like a fanatic. Although intensely convinced of the truth of his own views, he was still able to listen with calmness and with understanding to the expression of views with which he did not agree. In this closing scene the impression of him which had been gaining ground in my mind for three years was deepened and confirmed—that he was a man of powerful mind, of unselfish disposition, of seasoned character and of devotion to high ideals. There was no sign of breaking down or of terror at approaching death. At parting he gave me a firm clasp of the hand and a steady glance, which revealed unmistakably the depth of his feeling and the firmness of his self-control …

  “My conversation with Sacco was very brief. He showed no sign of fear, shook hands with me firmly and bade me goodbye. His manner also was one of absolute sincerity.”

  At quarter past eleven, Musmanno burst into Warden Hendry’s office with a plea for a last talk with Vanzetti. The warden, whose heart was touched by the young lawyer, had to refuse. It was too close to the hour set for the three executions.

  Musmanno was on the verge of collapse.

  “I want to tell them there is more mercy in their hearts than in the hearts of many who profess orthodox religion,” he said. “I want to tell them I know they are innocent and all the gallows and electric chairs cannot change that knowledge. I want to tell them they are two of the kindest and tenderest men I have ever known.”

  At the State House in the meantime, Governor Fuller talked with Mrs Sacco, Miss Vanzetti, Dr Edith B. Jackson and her brother Gardner, and Aldino Felicani of the Defense Committee.

  The governor was sorry. Everything had been done, the evidence had been carefully sifted. To prove it he called in State Attorney General Arthur K. Reading, whose legal explanations were lost on the three women. Reluctantly they left the governor. Hope vanished.

  Shortly after midnight, Warden Hendry rapped on the door leading to the interior of the prison and the death house. Musmanno, still in the warden’s office, laid a hand on Hendry’s arm. “Please, one last request.”

  “No, no.”

  Hendry, followed by the official witnesses, solemnly filed into the death chamber. The only reporter present at the execution was W. E. Playfair of the Associated Press. The rules limited the Press to one representative, and Mr Playfair had been handed the assignment when the men were convicted in 1921.

  Madeiros was the first to go. His cell was the nearest the chair. A messenger hurried to us with a bulletin.

  Sacco walked the seventeen steps from his cell to the execution chamber slowly between two guards. He was calm.

  “Long live anarchy,” he cried in Italian as he was strapped in the chair.

  In English: “Farewell my wife and child and all my friends.”

  This was a slip probably due to his imperfect command of English. He had two children: Dante, fourteen, and Inez, six.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said.

  Then his last words.

  “Farewell, Mother.”

  Vanzetti was the last to die. He shook hands with the two guards.

  To Warden Hendry, he said, speaking slowly and distinctly: “I want to thank you for everything you have done for me, Warden. I wish to tell you that I am innocent and that I have never committed any crime but sometimes some sin. [Almost the same words he had used when sentenced by Judge Thayer the previous April.] I thank you for everything you have done for me. I am innocent of all crime not only of this, but all. I am an innocent man.”

  A pause.

  “I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me.”

  The warden was overcome. The current was turned on, and when Vanzetti was pronounced dead Hendry could scarcely whisper the formula required by law—“Under the law I now pronounce you dead, the sentence of the court having been carried out.”

  Mr Playfair lived up to his name. He dashed into our room with all the details of the last Sacco–Vanzetti story most of us were to write.

  Governor Fuller remained at the State House until twelve minutes past twelve, a minute after Executioner Elliott had thrown the switch that ended the earthly existence of Sacco. Until a few minutes before midnight, Francis Fisher Kane had begged Governor Fuller for a respite. Thompson, former attorney in the case, remained with the governor until eleven forty five, making his final heart-rending plea for mercy.

  When the governor left the State House he knew that the Supreme Court had, on 22 August, docketed two appeals for writs of certiorari. He had a request pending before him that alienists be permitted to examine Sacco and Vanzetti, that execution be delayed until the matter of the Department of Justice’s files had been cleared up. He had before him five new affidavits made by new witnesses found by the defense in the closing days. He had, or was presumed to have received from his secretary, the receipt for the eels which Vanzetti had purchased.

  So that when the two men died in the electric chair the legal battle to save them was still under way and there was, in the opinion of many of the best minds in America, more than a “reasonable doubt”. In the last hour a three-or four-hour reprieve was asked by Defense Attorney Hill so that he could fly to Williamstown in a chartered plane to consult Circuit Court Judge Anderson again.

  At the naval airport Hill tried to get in touch with the governor or the attorney general, but without success. When a naval officer found out who Hill and his companions were, he ordered them off the grounds and told William Schuyler Jackson, a former New York attorney general, that “it would give me pleasure to shoot you”. Finally a reporter at the State House told them over the telephone that Sacco was in the death chamber. The long battle had ended.

  On the way back to the Statler Hotel after the execution, Gordon, Eddy, and I picked up a copy of The Boston Herald. BACK TO NORMALCY the leading editorial was captioned.

  “The chapter is closed,” it said. “The die is cast. The arrow has flown. Now, let us go forward to our duties and responsibilities of the common day with a renewed determination to maintain our present system of government and our existing social order.”

  The Italians were presumed to have been done to death by the State for murder. Yet, in their death, as at their trial, they had been bound up with their radicalism. Divesting the men of their radicalism and their foreign birth, their innocence of the murders would have been shown to the world, in the opinion of many capable lawyers and commonsense laymen. Therefore, in a real sense the men gave up their lives for their beliefs. They were foreigners, slackers, and radicals, and were thus stigmatized during the unfortunate, hysteric days of their arrest.

  Many thousands followed the bodies of the two men to Forest Hills Crematory on 27 August. The rain poured on the funeral throng, and when it was all over a policeman wiped his brow and remarked with a sigh, “Well, I hope to Christ it’s over now.”

  But it was not over.

  A year later a committee of lawyers (John W. Davis, Elihu Root, Bernard Flexner, Charles C. Burlingham, Newton D. Baker) sponsored publication of the legal records in the case. A cryptic reference in the Lowell Committee’s report led the lawyers to ask both President Lowell and the defense counsel for an explanation. It was disclosed that the Lowell Committee, by private inquiry, had convinced itself that it had destroyed Sacco’s alibi, which was that he was in Boston applying for a passport to Italy on the day of the South Braintree crime. Witnesses recalled seeing him because on that day an Italian group gave a dinner to Editor Williams of the Transcript. The Lowell Committee insisted that the dinner date was 13 May. When a file of La Notizia showed that the witnesses were correct, and it transpired that Williams had been tendered dinners on both dates, the Lowell Committee omitted reference to the rehabilitation of the Sacco alibi, though the thirty-two pages of examination apparently demolishing it remained. President Lowell privately apologized to the witnesses. He refused, however, to permit them to publish the incident in
La Notizia. No mention of this incident appears in the Lowell record, but the defence counsel’s version has never been disputed. The only reference that appears is the cryptic statement which mystified the lawyers’ committee sponsoring the record, that those present “look in the books produced by the witness”.

  This incident is one of the high watermarks of the entire case. In fact, when President Lowell said he had ascertained that Mr Williams had been tendered a dinner on 13 May and not on the Sacco alibi date, Attorney Thompson threw up his hands. His dejection was complete, but it was then suggested that the witnesses bring the La Notizia files to Thompson’s office. This was done, and Thompson with his own eyes read the account of the Williams banquet on 15 April. From the depths of despair Thompson’s spirits rose to transports of ecstasy. His witnesses were telling the truth! The Sacco alibi, apparently so important when destroyed by President Lowell, would surely now be equally important to the defense, for it had been rehabilitated by the newspaper item.

  Why was this important alibi testimony omitted?

  The stenographer said that Dr Lowell had instructed him not to take colloquies.

  This interesting correspondence may be found as an appendix on page 5256a of The Sacco–Vanzetti Case, published by Henry Holt and Company. President Lowell’s reply is there given to Mr Flexner. He says that the files of La Notizia showed that the Italians had tendered a luncheon to Mr Williams on 15 April (the date of the South Braintree murders), and that the Committee subsequently assumed in its deliberations there had been two affairs for Williams.

  When the record was printed and the correspondence made public many newspapers referred to it editorially and The New York World, The Springfield Republican, and The Baltimore Sun regarded the correspondence as disquieting. They viewed it as a challenge to Dr Lowell. The Springfield Republican of 2 March, 1929, ended its editorial with these words:

  “To this day Mr Lowell has taken no action whatever to clarify his attitude in dealing with the Sacco alibi and he leaves the public in the face of the record as now amplified, to wonder how he could have viewed the alibi as ‘serious’ when he thought he had destroyed it, but apparently as not ‘serious’ after it had been rehabilitated.”

  An interesting and hitherto unpublished sidelight on developments subsequent to the execution was concerned with an inquiry into the relation of the Morelli gang of Providence, freight-car thieves and bandits, to the South Braintree robbery. Madeiros had “confessed” that he had been with the gang that did the South Braintree job. There was reason to believe that it was the work of the Morellis. An enormous amount of material was gathered by the defense on this phase of the situation. In 1929 a meeting of liberals was held in the New York home of Oswald Garrison Villard, and $40,000 was pledged to pursue this inquiry. One of the Morellis appeared to be willing to make a clean breast of the case. It was planned to drain the pond where the holdup men were supposed to have thrown the empty money boxes. But the stock market crash came and pledges were not collected; the pond was never drained.

  “Doubt that will not down,” said Walter Lippmann in his full-page editorial in the New York World on 19 August 1927.

  On each anniversary of the execution of the two men these doubts arise again—they are rehearsed at the meetings in Boston where those who believe Sacco and Vanzetti innocent gather once a year.

  A bronze plaque sculptured by Gutzon Borglum, bearing the images of Sacco and Vanzetti, was offered to the State of Massachusetts on 22 August 1937, ten years after their death. The offer kicked up a row, and Governor Charles F. Hurley, Democrat, rejected the plaque which bore these words of Vanzetti:

  “What I wish more than all in this last hour of agony is that our case and our fate may be understood in their real being and serve as a tremendous lesson to the forces of freedom so that our suffering and death will not have been in vain.”

  The tragedy of the Sacco–Vanzetti case is the tragedy of three men—Judge Thayer, Governor Fuller, and President Lowell—and their inability to rise above the obscene battle that raged for seven long years around the heads of the shoemaker and the fish peddler.

  THE BUILT-IN LOVER

  (Fred Oesterreich, 1922)

  Alan Hynd

  You just couldn’t make this case up. There is a sense of the surreal about the story of sex-crazed Mrs Walburga Oesterreich who kept her lover Otto Sanhuber hidden in the attic, away from her husband Fred. Admittedly, the affair began in Milwaukee and burned brightly there for fifteen years, but when the bizarre ménage moved west, the murderous outcome might have been made for Hollywood; indeed, southern Californians would boast it could only have happened in Los Angeles. The case defeated the LA legal system, and no one ever discovered what really happened when the bullets began to fly. If this were fiction, remarked the true crime author Alan Hynd (1908–1975), you would say it was overdrawn. “But,” he added, “the whole incredible series of events is a matter of cold official record.”

  There were, back in the year of 1903, in the comfortable and robust city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, three ill-assorted persons—a forty-year-old man, his thirty-six-year-old wife, and a seventeen-year-old boy—who, thrown into unique juxtaposition, became participants in a plot that not only lent impressive weight to the theory that truth is stranger than fiction but which twisted the long arm of concidence all out of shape. The goings-on in which these three became involved lasted for nineteen long years and didn’t come to light until after one of them shot the other one to death in the city of Los Angeles, a municipality that somehow seemed a most fitting place to serve as a backdrop for the climax of a bizarre series of events without counterpart in the annals of crime.

  Fred Oesterreich, one of the three principals in our chronicle, was an arrogant, round faced German who ran an apron factory in Milwaukee. He was in the habit of blustering through the factory, which employed about fifty men and women, verbally lashing the workers on to greater effort. Had the workers taken a poll to determine whom they hoped the factory would fall in on there is little doubt who would have won.

  Oesterreich’s wife, Walburga, was a well stacked woman of medium height who, though mostly of German origin, had just enough Spanish in her to make her interesting. The lady was, as it turned out, what a certain Hollywood motion-picture producer might call an over-sexed nymphomaniac. Walburga had a low, musical voice, smouldering dark eyes and a Mona Lisa-type smile. She worked in the apron factory as a forelady and was very popular with the workers because, after her husband had blustered through the place balling out everybody, Mrs Oesterreich would follow in his wake, picking up egos and returning them to their owners.

  Fred and Walburga Oesterreich, who had been married for fifteen years and who were childless, were not a happy couple. Oesterreich had, from his wife’s point of view, several failings. Although he was worth about a quarter of a million dollars in 1903, the man was, like many Germans, a careful custodian of a buck. The couple lived in an ugly mustard-colored frame house that was big enough to require the services of two maids but Oesterreich would not allow his wife even one servant. Worse yet, the man was a heavy drinker. Worst of all, he had come to be painfully deficient on the connubial couch.

  It was this latter failing that Mrs Oesterreich, what with that Spanish blood and all, simply couldn’t overlook. She used to get into terrible battles with Fred in the watches of the night, taunt him about his unforgivable deficiency, and punctuate her remarks by throwing small articles of furniture at him. She raised enough racket several times for neighbors to call the police. If Fred was a lion in the apron factory, he was a mouse at home; Walburga was by, all odds the stronger personality of the two.

  One day, when one of the sewing machines in the Oesterreich factory broke down, the third principal in our chronicle entered the scene—a seventeen-year-old youth by the name of Otto Sanhuber. Otto, who bore a striking resemblance to nobody in particular, was a wizened little fellow, not quite five feet tall, with rumpled brown hair, a receding ch
in, and watery blue eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses. He was so painfully shy that he blushed when a lady so much as spoke to him.

  Just as Otto was completing his repair job, Mrs Oesterreich spied him. What Walburga saw in little Otto is a tribute to the woman’s powers of perception. Here was a nondescript youth, less than half the woman’s age, who had never gotten so much as a second glance from the girls down by the Milwaukee beer vats. Yet, Mrs Oesterreich saw in Otto exactly what she was searching for.

  Mrs Oesterreich, the sly one, saw to it that there was plenty of repair work at the factory for the bashful youth. In a few months Otto had grown to like and trust her.

  One day a sewing machine that Mrs Oesterreich kept in the master bedroom at home broke down, no doubt by design, and she asked her husband what she should do about it. “Why,” said Oesterreich, “get that kid to fix it—that kid who’s been coming around the factory.”