March 12, 2019 • 55 mins
The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists accused of murder, was one of the first "crimes of the century." But did they do it? To this day there is speculation that they did not. Learn all about this famous case in today's episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer
Josh over there. So you put the three of us
together there and we're gonna get a little true crime
(00:22):
history on you with the trial of Saco and ben Zi. Yeah,
these guys, I mean a little backstory on I guess
the time we're talking about the nineties in the United States.
We're talking about, uh, two gentlemen that we're both anarchists
(00:44):
that were both Italian immigrants and both supposedly, um, followers
of this really notable anarchists named Luigi Galiani, who Uh
this guy was um sort of an anarchist leader. He
put out an anarchist rag he was um called for violence. Um.
(01:07):
He has a history of authorizing like bombing's assassination attempts. Um,
like really tough stuff. And so this is who um
supposedly Saco and Vinzetti were, you know, I guess by
association advocating, advocating, sure, advocating for this type of violence
(01:27):
themselves as immigrant anarchists. Do you remember in our anarchism episode.
Like during this period, in like a ten year period,
anarchists assassinated like five or six major heads of state
around the world, including McKinley in the United States. It
was a big deal. It was a big deal. And um,
(01:50):
I mean there was also a struggle going on for
the soul of America. Where we're gonna be socialists, where
we're gonna be capitalists? Should we just go with anarchism? Um,
there was a lot of a lot of debate over
you know, which which economy we should go with, or
what what politics we should go with. And there was
(02:12):
something of a red scare because communism was on the
table too. There was a red scare at the time too.
So it wasn't like the kind of time you would
walk around like, yeah, I'm an anarchist, get on board,
you know. But and at the same time, if you
weren't an anarchist, you're probably scared of our anarchists because
they would bomb stuff and they were well known for
it too. Yeah, So I mean this is not just
(02:33):
the United States, like all over the world. Um, there
were political radicals that was violence from anarchy and and
riots and like you said, people trying to take down
like politicians or judges that were deporting, at least the
United States deporting immigrant anarchists back to their home countries
like as quickly as they could root them out, basically, right,
(02:57):
So this is sort of the stage in the early
night teen twenties. UM, and I guess we should hop
in the way back machine. Oh yes, and head on
over to Boston Town. Okay, that's Boston by the way. Yeah, no,
I know, it doesn't matter if I know. Just make
(03:19):
sure the way back machiners, the way back machine those
it can read my silly accents. So so here we are.
It's ninety around Boston. Actually we're not in Boston proper.
We're about ten ten miles south in the little town
of Braintree, which is these days would be Boston proper.
So I mean, you know, yes, it's like the metro
(03:39):
Boston area. UM and Braintree was known as a shoe
manufacturing center had more than one shoe company, which meant
it was a shoe manufacturing center and UM on this
particular day in April of I think it was April.
Right in Braintree, there was a named Shelley Neil who
(04:02):
was an agent for the American Express Company. And the
function I got of Shelly Neil was that he would
he was kind of like a a Brinx armed guard
basically for money, and not just some money, like a
lot of money. On this day, from the nine eighteen
(04:24):
AM train from Boston, Shelley Neil went to the Braintree, uh,
the brain Tree train depot and picked up thirty thousand
dollars thirty grand in cash, which is about four d
and twenty seven thousand dollars in two thousand eighteen money.
Did this every week, right. Um, he picked it up
and he took it back to his office, and um
(04:48):
he opened up a metal box and inside had to
two canvas bags, and each was the payroll for um
one of the two shoe companies that he picked up
money for, one of which was called Slater in Morrell.
I'm not sure what the other one was. Maybe it
was three K. Definitely Slater in Morrell was one of them.
(05:09):
The other was New Balance. Okay, so Slater in Morrill
and New Balance we're the ones whose payroll he had
on him that day. Yeah, And it's it's so amazing
how that stuff used to work back then, Like how
payroll was just so low fi. It would literally be
a huge amount of cash delivered in a box that
he would take to an office and someone would sit
(05:31):
there and stuff cash into envelopes to then go to
like a factory to pay off employees, not payoff, but
to pay to pay them there legit check from working.
You didn't see nothing this week. This is for all
the shoe leather, alright. So that's how it worked back then,
And so this is what he was doing. It's just
(05:51):
like any other Thursday. UM. However, on this day, as
he went in, he noticed a car out front that
he had not seen before, this big car that had
like these little curtains on the inside windows that were
pulled shut. And other people in Braintree UM later on
would report seeing that car kind of tooling around and
(06:13):
they said, it looks like it's got like four or
five men inside that look Italian and they're just sort
of driving around Braintree, which I guess to raise some suspicions. Sure,
because again, if you were Italian, UM, you may have
been associated with anarchists who were associated with bomb throwing.
(06:33):
So four or five of them kind of aimlessly driving
around the town of Braintree. This little tiny town. I'm
sure arouse some suspicions and definitely did because there were
a lot of people who later on said that they
saw this car driving around between nine am and twelve pm.
That's right, so about three that afternoon. Um, here's what
(06:54):
happened next for payroll. Uh, these people had to get
these envelopes. So what's known as a paymaster and this
is also sort of part of the arm guard thing,
um because the paymaster a has a gun and then
has a guard with a gun. This guy's name was
Freddie Parmenter and the guard was Alessandro Barra Delli. And
(07:16):
so they stopped by, they pick up all these envelopes.
They're going down to the factory. They're gonna pay everybody,
and all of a sudden, bam bam bam bam, gunfire
and mayhem ensues. I didn't realize there's gonna be special
effects in this episode. Hey, well you know you did. Man,
(07:37):
it has been brought it. Um. So they're these guys
are on Pearl Street and when these shots suddenly just
ring out, and um, the first guy's hit, Barret ellis
hit uh and he goes down. I believe it was
Barre Deli who was hit first. Um, Oh, no, he
wasn't hit. It was Parlimenter who was hit. Barret Deli
(07:58):
is on the ground, um, and he has lost his
gun and he's being approached by a man with a
gun on him and uh Baradeli apparently has begged for
his life to no avail. The man shoots him in
the chest at least once and the bullet um punctures
his lungs uh, one of his major arteries, to his
heart and then lodge its lodges itself and its hip
(08:22):
to be fished out later on by a corner and
used in the case against Sacco and Vanzettie. Uh. The
other guy, Parlman or the paymaster. Uh. He gets hit
a few times, staggers across the street and um and collapses.
And this car a blue touring car, um, which is
you know, a big sedan that you would think of
(08:43):
today like a touring We'll call it a Lincoln town car,
even though it's not at all what it was. That
blue car that had been seen kind of driving driving around, right,
that's another way to put it. It was abut yeah,
but the same one that had been seen driving slowly
around Braintree all morning. Suddenly pulls up and the guys
who had shot these these two men and taken the
(09:05):
money about fifteen thousand dollars um hopped in and that
drove off and everyone lost sight of it. Yeah, and
very importantly, the man who shot Baradelli had a hat
a felt cap on, right, So just remember that little
fact um. There were eyewitnesses all over the place. It's
not like no one saw this happen. Like dozens of
(09:27):
people saw this. Yeah, it was a daring daylight robbery
at three o'clock in the afternoon. Daring do right man
named Jimmy Bostock was one of the witnesses. Apparently Barredelli
like died in his arms, and like all people in
the nineteen twenties, didn't know any better. He immediately started
messing with the crime scene, started picking up gun shells.
(09:50):
Another guy came by and picked up the hat, and
you know, they just didn't know any better at the time,
I guess, right, So um, they the crime scene has
been totally messed up. But the cops show up because
again this is a big deal. This is a small
town and something close to two hundred and twenty thousand
dollars has just been stolen and two men murdered for
(10:13):
it in this little tiny town. So it's a big deal.
And the cops showed up, and probably the first thing
they said was anarchists. Maybe, I'll bet that's kind of
what they would say. I think at the time. Should
we take a break? Geez? Okay already, yeah, I think
so that. I mean this falls into acts and that's
(10:34):
definitely act one. Okay, alright, So dead men in the street,
the cops are on the scene, and scene and shock
(11:11):
is the ant scene or end scene, Chuck, We've talked
about this a lot and scene end scene Nope, because
it makes sense, you know, you do in the scene, right. So. Um, So,
the the cops have shown up, they're investigating the place. Um,
(11:33):
they're not really finding anything aside from what the witnesses
have already kind of gathered up and now holding out
to them in their outstretched palms, like here's your evidence, copper, Um.
But the uh, the cars searched for all over and
it's not found. It just totally disappears for a couple
(11:55):
of days. Um, And the the turns up a couple
of days later in the woods. I believe south of Braintree,
in a place called Bridgewater, which is a little even
further south from Boston. I think it's another like ten
or so miles down south from um from Braintree, right.
I think Bridgewater only had seven dunkin Donuts, so it
(12:18):
was a small town, right. And so remember when I
said the cops were probably like anarchists. I knew it. Um,
there was another daylight robbery of payroll, and I found
somewhere that it said it was successful. I found somewhere
else that it was unsuccessful. But both of them agreed
there had been no loss of life whatsoever. But it
(12:38):
was similar enough, and it had happened like two years
or a year before. Um, it was similar enough that
the cops immediately thought of the people they've been thinking
of for this, for this earlier crime. They thought, this
is clearly the work of the same people. Yeah. And um,
when they found this car in the woods, very importantly,
(12:59):
that the license plates had been ripped off, and there
were other tire tracks nearby, so it seemed pretty obvious that, uh,
you know, they ditched this car get in another one.
The officer on the scene said, Maddie, I think this
is a car from the Braintree meta. All I can
think of is Jeremy Renner in in the town. Sure,
(13:23):
that's that's what I think of when I think Boston. Yeah,
everyone thinks of that. So, um, another thing's going on
in parallel, So we need to set this up. Um. Also,
on April fifte which is the day of those maritas, Um,
there was a guy named uh Ferruccio Cocchi, and he
(13:44):
lived in Bridgewater. He was an anarchist. He was being deported. Uh,
so he quits his job, you know, to be deported. Um,
does not show up to be deported. Uh. He calls
the Immigration service after that on the six and said, uh,
you know my wife is a because I have to
tind to her. And they said about am I gonna
(14:04):
get in trouble for that? Now? No, you won't control
everybody loves your Italian XS. At least tell me you
can still do an Italian accent, right, I think? So
we're going to find out after this episode, um, because
I'm just doing the accent, not saying like they're all mobsters,
because like, you know, the Sopranos got in trouble for that,
Oh yeah did they did? They say all Italians were mobsters. No,
(14:27):
but I mean I remember they're just being hey about
from the Italian American community, Like, why is it every
time in movies were just mobsters? Oh I could see that,
you know, sure, I mean I could see them. Yeah,
but these aren't even mobs. No, they're anarchists. Right. So
he's being deported, he doesn't go. He calls them and says,
my wife is sick, and they said, fine, we're gonna
(14:48):
check out your story. Though they found that his wife
was not sick, and that all of a sudden, he's saying, okay,
it's fine. Actually I'm really ready to go, Like now,
come on, come on, can you get me out of
the entry quickly? And they're like, well, you should probably
like leave some money with your wife. He's like, no, no no, no,
she's good, So let's just go. Yeah, And so they're like,
all right, this is a little odd, so let's maybe
(15:10):
he's involved. Can I can I paint the scene a
little bit? Though? I want to go back over and
highlight two things that you've mentioned so far. One, this
was a time where to cover up a crime, all
you had to do was remove the license plates on
the car you ditched. That was it. You just confounded
the cops forever. That helped. And then secondly, if you
(15:32):
were to be deported, all you had to do is
not show up, but then call him the next day
and say your wife was sick and and Immigration and
Naturalization would say, sure, no problem. Well no were they
investigated immediately. Okay, but I'm just saying, like this is
things have changed to tas think is what I'm trying
to say. Hold on, let me let me see, Trush,
what are you trying to say. You're trying to say that. Yeah,
(15:53):
I'm trying to say that. Yes, that's exactly what I'm
trying to say. It's weird because you looked on both
of your shoulders at the devil and the angel. Right,
they won't shut up, Chuck, so uh they some they summarize,
you know, it's all coming together. This guy's acting weird. Well,
he's he's also choked one of those people that they
(16:16):
liked for that that um robbery the the year before,
which is one of the reasons why they had their
intent up about this guy in the first place. Right,
So he's a suspect. The coops go to, uh specifically
um Michael Stewart, police chief, said, I'm gonna go back
to his house. I'm gonna see what else I can
find out from this guy. He shows up and there's
(16:37):
a dude there named Mike Boda, who says, yeah, sure,
you can look around. You can look in the house,
go back and look in the garage. Two car garage shed,
no problem. Uh, usually have my car there. It's an Overland,
but it's in the shop getting repaired. And Steward goes
out there and it's like, all right, so here's where
the Overland parks. But there's some really big tire tracks
(16:59):
next to the over and uh and the second stall
that looked like they would probably fit this large buick
that was so mysteriously kind of tooling around around the
time of this murder, right, and this cop Stewart goes,
mm hmm, I'm gonna make a mental note of that.
And that's what he did. He he asked about the uh,
(17:21):
the the other car. I don't know if you said,
bodhas said that his other car was at the garage
being repaired. So, um so Stewart, who's the police chief
of bridge Ward. I think I get the impression he
was kind of new there's another one who kind of
factors into this case tangentially later on Um who was
the former police chief. So I get the impression that
Michael Stewart was fairly new, but he's investigating this case.
(17:44):
He likes Koachi. He's now met Mike Boda, who is
suspicious of two Um. He goes back to talk to
bodas some more to this place where Kachi lived uh
as Boda's roommate, I guess, away from his wife and kids.
I'm not sure why Koachi was running this place. We
go with coaching, now, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it.
I took Italian in college, and I'm almost a hundred
percent sure it's Coachi. Do you remember from our Dyslexi
(18:07):
episode where Italian is extremely easy to learn because there's
just very few ways to to write things, to write
the phone names. One of the reasons it is easier
because it's kind of like Polish. It's in most most
cases it's actually easier than Polish. But it's pronounced just
like it's spelled, except for the C I is a sound.
(18:28):
So Kachi, Okay, all right, that was your Italian lesson.
I appreciate that after all these years. The other lesson
not all Italians or Italian Americans or mobsters. That's your
other Italian lesson. Now okay, so, um, I've a bunch
of Italians Italian Americans and none of them were mobsters. Bam,
(18:48):
there you go. Um so. Uh. Police Chief Stewart goes
back to talk to Bodha, and things get really suspicious to,
don't they, because he shows up and not boxed on
the door, and the doors just swings open onto an
empty apartment. And Stewart spends about fifteen minutes going boda,
Mr bona, hello, Mr Boda, and he finally takes a
(19:11):
couple of steps in and realizes boat is gone. That's right,
so he uh he goes by the garage where he
the guy said that his car was in the shop. Uh,
goes over there. The car still there, So that checked out,
and he told the owner, whose name was Simon Johnson,
he said, hey, if anyone comes to get this car,
just give us a call. And the guy says, mental note,
(19:33):
call colops if someone comes to get this car. Jeremy writer.
Um so on May five, this is what A couple
of weeks later, Um, a man comes to the door
and this is it. I believe this is. It says
nine o'clock. But that's at night, right, yeah, I I
couldn't tell it first, and then um it feels like night. Yeah.
It says also that the wife is is um illuminated
(19:56):
by a motorcycle headlights at night. Yeah, alright, so unless
it's very dark in the morning. Right, So at nine
o'clock at night, this guy shows up to the owners
of the garages door, knocks on the door. His young
wife answers. The guy says that he's Mike Boda, I'm
(20:16):
here to pick up my car that ovaland over there,
And the owner of the garage comes and tells his wife,
and he says, go call the police. You know, we
don't have a phone. Go next door, called the cops.
She leaves out the back door and is caught, Like
you said, there's this motorcycle sitting outside. She also sees
with a sidecar, also sees a couple of guys that
(20:38):
she said, we're speaking Italian kind of hanging around. So
it's all sort of adding up at this point to
uh something fishy. Yeah, So, um, I guess the fact
that um that Simon uh Johnson, the shop owner or
the mechanic was stalling, made boat a little uneasy, so
(20:58):
he took off without the car. Right. Yeah, he jumped
in the sidecar and was out of there. Okay, here's
where things get super critical. For a pair of guys
named Sacho and van Zetti. There were two other those
other those two other guys that Ruth Johnson Simon Johnson,
the mechanics wife said she saw um hanging out waiting
(21:20):
for Mike Boda to get his car. They split two.
Now they're suddenly like on foot. There's no motorcycle or
car for them, so they have to leave on foot.
So they walk over toward the direction of the Bridgewater
rail line, and she says that she saw them get
on the train or at least go toward the train
station or no, the rail car. So I think it
(21:40):
might have been like a street car kind of thing.
So somehow Chief Stewart gets word of this. I think
he shows up. He gets word of this, and he
calls a the um the police chief in the next
town over in Brockton, and says, hey, there's gonna be
a pair of Italian guy is on the street car.
(22:01):
When the when the when the street car stops in
your the rail car stops in your town, get them.
They are wanted for questioning in a murder robbery. And
so the Brockton police board the train when it arrives
in Brockton, and there are two Italian men sitting there.
And the two men's names were Nicolas Sako and Bartolomeo Venzetti,
(22:21):
and they just happened to be Italian, and they just
happen to be anarchists, and they both happened to be
strapped when the cops came on the rail car and
started asking them questions. Yeah, Sacho had a thirty two
cult UH and Van City had a thirty eight Harrington
and Richardson, which very uniquely had five UH chambers instead
(22:46):
of six. Seems unique. Yeah, yeah, I don't even know
how that works. I would have to see this kind
of revolver because six is a nice even number for
a round thing. I don't I don't get it. But
no one ever says, like, don't point that five shooter
at me. It's always six shooter, you know. Yeah, although
maybe maybe a five shooters, whether it's talking about when
(23:08):
they call it a pea shooter, No, let's know what
they mean. But it was the nies and there were
all kinds of weird guns back then. Right. Okay, so
these these two Italian immigrants who were anarchists and who
were carrying guns, had one other big problem. They were
giving some pretty weak and ever evolving stories. Uh, an
(23:31):
answer to the questions that the cops were asking them.
They get hauled into the police station I believe in Bridgewater,
um or Braintree. Do you know which one it was?
I think it was. I think it was brain Tree.
Actually they got taken a Braintree because it was Stewart
who was investigating them. So they get taken a brain
Tree and police Chief Stewart questions them. But then so
(23:51):
too does the UM. The chief prosecutor for the area,
a guy named Frederick Katzman, who would play an enormous
role in this case as well. Yeah, so he was
the d A and he the I think the key
fact that really sold him was he found out that
on April fifteenth, on the day of these murders, Socca
was not at work at the three K shoe factory.
(24:15):
And uh, he said, you know what, that's enough for me.
We have no real evidence or anything else, but you
are Italian. Uh, Italian American anarchists. You weren't at work
that day, so let's go ahead and haul you in here, right,
because yeah, we left off the fact that they found
like UM anarchists pamphlets on the on the men when
(24:37):
they when they took him off the train. So there
was a lot against them going against them at this point. Um,
just from the outside of this, but you kind of
touched on it. All of this is very very circumstantial. Yeah,
So right away, the anarchists of UM of the area
come on board. Uh. They formed the Saco Vent City
(25:00):
Defense Committee, and one of their leaders, one of the
anarchist leaders in the area named Carlo Tresca, said all right,
let's hire this uh, this lawyer from California. This guy's
a radical. Uh, he's gonna lead our defense and more
comes on board. Fred Morin's like, here's the way we're
gonna do this is let's like let's get everyone worked up,
(25:20):
like not only in this area, but all over the world.
Let's get radicals, and let's get anarchists, and let's get
union members. Let's paint these guys. It's just like hard working,
blue collar union dudes, and let's get people all over
the world paying attention to what's going on over here. Yes,
which is a very common tactics still in use today.
(25:42):
Just turn public sentiment against the government and the prosecutors
in their case and um, basically painted like Saco and Vinzetti,
We're just a couple of normal dudes who are being
railroaded for for political reasons and probably out of a
certain amount of xenophobia as well. Sure, so, uh well,
let's take a break. The trial opens in May with
(26:06):
Judge Webster there and uh we'll be back with what
happens next right after this and shock you chuck. Before
(26:37):
we get back into I want to give a shout
out to Doug Lender. Douglas Lender, who's a law professor
and historian who wrote a paper that we used as
a source that was pretty pretty handy, pretty good stuff. Yeah,
law professors. I mean, there's a lot of good information
out here on this, but you get a law professor
on the on the typewriter and they're gonna condense it
into a nice, readable, workable document. That's right, That's what
(27:02):
they do. They're very good at that. Yes, So all right,
trials underway. Um, Like I said before, Judge Webster there
proceeds over this trial. Um, catsman, that's the d A
that's prosecuting. He has got a lot of circumstantial evidence,
he has eyewitnesses, but not really a lot of hard
(27:23):
evidence going on. Right, It's a little a tough case
for him to like solidly prove. Yeah, And that that
was another reason why um Fred Moore was able to
run around drumming up public sentiment, not just in the
United States or even just Boston or Massachusetts, but around
the world. Um. That that that Sacco and Vanzetti were
(27:45):
being railroaded is that the the evidence against them was
really really weak. Um. The eyewitness testimony was super um.
If you if you had the luxury like historians like
Douglas Linder have had to compare you know, um, the
original notes or the original statements made by eyewitnesses, um
(28:07):
against the types of statements they made in court. The
statements they made in court were much more certain, much
more sure. And this was after a year of reading
the newspaper and being exposed to pictures of Saccho and Vanzetti.
So when they see Sacho and Vanzetti in the court room,
they're like, yes, I saw that man holding that gun
and he was the one that pulled the trigger. The
(28:29):
thing is, there was not one witness, but there were
witnesses who placed both of them at the crime scene
or at least in the buick around town on that day.
But there was not one single witness who placed both
of them there. That's just the eye witnesses. They also had.
The other big piece of circumstantial evidence were the guns
that they were found with. UM, and they used ballistic
(28:52):
experts to come in and say, yes, this bullet came
from this gun, but again looking at it with history
behind the benefit of history. UM. This was at a
time when when ballistics comparison was just beginning to come around,
and the people that they employed as ballistics experts were
self taught amateurs who just basically had an interest in
(29:14):
this field. Were in no way, shape or form genuine
experts because you could make a case there was no
such thing as a genuine ballistics comparison expert at the time.
It was too new as far as forensic goes. Yeah.
So on the defense side, UM, immediately they say, those
guys weren't even in Braintree. UH. Socco was in Boston. UM,
(29:36):
Vansetti was in Plymouth. The both both sides. It's it's
interesting to look back on this trial because both the
prosecution and the defense were like being very hinky with
the truth themselves, um, influencing people on both sides to
testify kind of behind the scenes. Um. Fred Moore, the
defense attorney, trotted out a bunch of witnesses that say, no,
(29:58):
like Vanzetti was definitely in plan if he's a fishmonger,
bought fish from him. And then later on it was
found out that some of these people, well all of
them basically were friends of his. And then some of
the people came out even later and said, yeah, he
kind of told me to say this, But that happened
on the prosecution side too, Yes, supposedly, Um, later on
(30:18):
they would allege that the prosecutor Um Catsman, and the
chief or the lead ballistics or the star ballistics witness
had kind of coordinated the answer that the ballistics witness
would give at trial and that it would be much
more stronger and much um much more certain than he
(30:39):
the the actual conclusion he came to, uh prior to
the trial, based on his original ballistics tests. Yeah, so
there's there's hinkiness on both sides. Um. Catsman has his
hat and remember one of the gunmen definitely had on
a gray cap, so he has this gray cap. He said,
this is Sako's. He gets together with an expert behind
the scenes and says and again with this like like
(31:03):
you were saying, the sort of the beginnings of uh,
not ballistics in this case, but just um forensics, any
kind of forensics. Yeah. They he looked at the hairs
in the hat, got a hair from Soco and Socco
was like, oh that hurt. And he compared him and
he said, yeah, these hairs are identical. I'm telling you,
they're the same hairs. But Catsman was like, you know what,
(31:26):
I don't want to go to court uh and present
this because this stuff is all new. They're gonna paint
you as unreliable because no one knows anything about hair
comparison yet. So instead of doing that, he goes to
the boss of the shoe factory, George Kelly, you know,
was like, have you seen this hat before? And Kelly said, yes,
(31:46):
that's Saco's hat. I've seen him wear that hat and
the hole in it is from the nail that he
hangs it on every day, When in fact, that was
definitely not the case, no that earlier. The previous chief
later testified that he had actually accidentally punched the hole
in the hat while he was examining it for any
(32:06):
kind of identifying marks. He also testified that the hat
had a very um questionable providence, that it hadn't come
into police custody for thirty hours after the crime, so
he couldn't say he as far as he knew, it
was not found at the crime scene, that it hadn't
been secured by the police, He didn't know exactly where
(32:27):
it came from. And then finally I read elsewhere in
a final twist and tell stop me if this sounds familiar.
But they asked Sacho to put the hat on in
court and it was too small for his head. It
didn't fit. They did not acquit though, ruined it. Oh,
I'm sorry, sorry everybody. It's funny. There's probably a lot
(32:49):
of people out there who have no idea how this
is going to turn out, because if you search on
Google just Sacho and Vanzetti. One of the suggested questions
is what is Sacho and Vanzetti? Not who what? It's
a nice appertif right, So, um, I don't know if
we mentioned but like Sacho, had definitely much more evidence
(33:12):
against him, even if it was circumstantial, than Benzetti did
for sure, So Vanzetti is has the thinnest case against him,
but he like he lied to the cops. Um he
had that gun, remember, and on the stand he said, yeah,
actually I got that gun just a few days ago.
(33:34):
I bought it for four or five bucks. And they're like, well,
you told us that you bought it four or five
years ago for eighteen dollars. You said there were six
chambers in it and only had five, And what's going
on here? You're lying, Jimmy Vanzetti. The whole thing with
the gun, I don't know if we've said or not yet.
The reason why the gun was so suspicious and was
(33:54):
basically like the central piece of evidence used against um
van Zetti is that it was supposedly the exact same
kind of gun that Alessandro Barradelli had on and when
he was killed. So the the whole, the whole idea
was that um Vanzetti had been at the at least
at the crime scene, if not one of the killers,
(34:15):
who had taken Barradelli's gun after he had killed him,
and made off with it, which would explain why he
wasn't very familiar with the gun and how many chambers
it had and didn't have a very solid story about
where he'd gotten in and how long he'd owned it too.
That was the implication of the whole thing, and that
was basically the That was it. That was the crux
of the prosecution's case against Vanzetti. Vanzetti's big problem was
(34:39):
he was sitting next to Saco when Soacco got taken
off the train, and they had a lot more on
Socco and they were tried together rather than separately. Yeah,
and Socco. That ballistics evidence made a big, big difference
in the trial because they found out for sure that
that bullet that killed uh Baradelli was definitely fired from
(34:59):
a Colt automatic. Um, and your cult automatic is what
they alleged. And uh, well, we'll hold on to that
last bit until later. But um about what was found
out later about that. But um, I think even some
of the jurors said that that was really some of
the most compelling evidence against Sacho for us in deciding
(35:22):
this case. Yeah, and again, like they're listening to forensic
evidence from a field that's still in the very and
it's cradle from testimony given by people who are not experts.
But that was, like you said, the jurors said, this
was that was it for me. That was what convinced
me was the ballistics evidence. Basically. So they go to
(35:43):
uh jury and they go to deliberations and just five
a house five and a half hours later, the jury
said guilty has charged about six weeks after the trial started,
I believe. Yeah, So it was a big deal. You know,
like uh, Sacho is crying out innocent and Italian in
the court. Um, they were like protests all over the world,
(36:07):
like South America, France, uh, Lisbon. It's just crazy how
much this at the time in the nineteen twenties became
an international thing and uh basically they were due for
the electric chair, so people all over the world were protesting.
There were bombings. Um, it was nuts. Yeah, this is
(36:28):
I mean, this is a time when labor was unionized,
so you could arouse the sympathy of a lot of
people at once by going to the union hall and
saying like, hey, your your brothers in arms over there
in America are being railroaded into a murder rap. They're
gonna be electrocuting the electric chair for something they didn't
commit simply because of their political beliefs. How messed up
(36:49):
is that? And they you could arouse some some people
pretty quickly back then by saying that as opposed to today, Yeah,
for sure, um more immediately starts the defense attorney immediately
starts filing motions, trying to get like new trials. That was,
he had an assistant named Eugene Lions, who later would
(37:10):
come out and say, man, like this guy basically would
do anything. Um, he was framing evidence, he was telling
witnesses what to say, like once he had up in
his mind that and keep in mind, this was like
a radical lawyer from California. He said, once he had
in mind that these guys were innocent, he was like
(37:31):
he he basically would do anything to try and get
them off. Yeah, he's a born perjury. He'd intimidate witnesses,
he do whatever if he thought that somebody was being
innocently prosecuted. Fred Moore would stop at nothing too to yeah,
to get them off. And this article I think kind
of paints an incomplete picture of Eugene Lions and Fred
Moore's relationship. Like Eugene my lions. Was also very much
(37:52):
an admirer of Fred Moore to um, like, he considered
Fred Moore to have the heart of an artist, but
he was that he had dedicated his life to getting
people who were being steamrolled by the system or unfairly
treated by the courts out from under these these charges.
He was he was an early civil liberty civil liberties lawyer,
(38:16):
basically was what he was. Yes, so none of these
motions work. He files a bunch of them. Um, we're
not going to detail them all, but none of them, Uh,
none of them worked. They were basically all turned down.
Fair was still the presiding judge. He was turning down
all these things. Then they went to like federal court,
(38:36):
they were turning down motions. Eventually they went to the
Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court was like, why are
you asking us about this? Like we this is a
state case, Like we don't even do this kind of thing. Yeah.
The the court at the time was very much against
um or the majority I should say, it was against
applying the con federal Constitution to state issues, so they
(38:58):
wouldn't get involved. But um, I mean it did go
all the way to at least petitioning the Supreme Court,
they wouldn't hear it, and they wouldn't stay the execution either. UM.
But he, as much as a lawyer can exhaust petitions
and appeals for clemency UM and and the stay of execution.
Fred Moore did. And then later on another defense lawyer
(39:21):
named William Thompson, who took over for Fred Moore after
Sacho fired Fred Moore, UM did the same thing. Like
up to the eve the eve of the execution, they
were relentless and filing appeals with anything, anything they could
get their hands on. UM. They filed an entire motion
for a new trial based strictly on Judge Thayer's perceived
(39:42):
uh prejudice against um anarchists. Apparently he did not like anarchists,
and he treated Psacho and Vanzetti as such. Um throughout
the trial. UM. And as you're if you're just watching
watching this from the outside, if you're reading about this
in the press, and you're already on Saco and Venzetti's side, Judge,
they are turning down motion after motion after motion after motion. UM.
(40:06):
Looks really bad. It looks very much like this judge
is bent on railroading these two immigrant anarchists into an
an early and unjust death by electric chair. So the um,
the public sympathies and were aroused even further for Sacco
and Van City, and that would last for decades after
(40:28):
this trial up century almost now. Yeah, So Socco's in
jail and another weird thing happens while he's in jail
at uh in deadham d E d H A M.
There was another prisoner there who passed a note on
and said basically, I'm confessing to this crime. My name
(40:49):
is uh Celestino Madeiros And they were like, all right, well,
let's let's talk to this guy. He's confessing to this
crime and saying that Socco and Vincetti or innocent. Uh.
He said, I was there. I was UM with four
other guys, so that kind of checks out. As far
the five Italians, he said, we met in Providence at
(41:12):
a bar and we just come came up with this plan.
He said. There was a guy named Mike, a gun
named Bill. I don't know the other guys. I was scared.
We switched cars in the woods. Like all this stuff
was sort of making sense, um, but it really didn't.
Like in the end, there were too many other things
that were wrong. Uh. Like he said that they didn't
(41:33):
get there until afternoon, and everyone was like, no, that
car was there like maybe between nine am and noon. Um.
He also said that the payroll money was in a
bag when it was in a metal box, and so
there were enough inconsistencies basically where uh he wasn't really
a major suspect like they considered it. Thompson tried to
(41:56):
use it as the basis for a new trial, but
none of this worked because Air was still kind of
calling the shots before they ran it up the flag bowl. Yeah,
but again, news made made its way out into the
international press that someone had confessed, and not only confessed,
said that Sacho and Vanzetti weren't there. And this this
judge who headed out for Sacho and Vanzetti refused to
(42:17):
even hear this, this motion to uh to have a
new trial. So it looked it looked bad as well too.
It did so it looked bad enough that the governor
at the time, Alvin Fuller, said, you know what, we
have to do something here. There's just too much public
pressure going on from around the world. He said, So
here's what we'll do. We'll get a three person advisory committee.
(42:37):
They're gonna investigate this. He said, Hey, you Lawrence Lowell,
you're the president of Havid. You had this thing up. Uh.
And then what was known as the Lowell Commission UM
finally issued a report which said basically, uh, beyond a
reasonable doubt, Sacho is guilty. Uh. And Vanzetti said on
(43:00):
the whole, it's our opinion that he's also guilty beyond
reasonable doubt. And everyone was like, well, why did you
say all those other words then? And they're like, what
other words? Yeah? Really kind of a strange final report.
What's funny is in the Boston area if they're like,
we need somebody smart, get me the president of Harvard.
(43:21):
Well yeah, And in the end he's like, you are
definitely guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and so are you
more or less in our opinion? Right? No, I know.
It was weird and it remains weird. But apparently years later,
when Lowell was asked about that, he was saying like, no,
that wasn't any indication that we thought vanz he had
any kind of um, any kind of innocence to him,
(43:42):
or that he wasn't guilty. UM. I'm not sure exactly
how he explained it, but he basically said, no, that
wasn't that's not what that was interesting. I don't know
what he thought it was. That was a weird way
to put it, but that was I think the other
thing that kind of arouses people's in t in that
or suspicion maybe even is that that's what a lot
(44:03):
of people think that Sacco was definitely guilty. Yeah. I
shouldn't say a lot, but some people that Sacco is
definitely guilty. And if anyone was innocent, it was Vanzetti.
So the idea that this Lowell commission came up with
this back in the twenties even um is significant. But yeah,
Lowell was like, no, that's not what we meant playing that.
So none of these stays of execution go through. So
(44:25):
there reunited. They were split up in jail for many,
many years, um six years, and then they were finally
reunited at Charlestown State Prison for execution in April, and uh,
they had, like you, you wouldn't believe how many cops
they have in this town, uh, to cover this thing
(44:45):
because it was sort of one of the first crimes
of the century, I think, and people were mad all
over the country and all over the world. Like we've
been talking about. They didn't know if they're going to
be more bombings. People were gonna like literally storm the
prison and trying overtake them and free them. So they
had tons and tons of cops everywhere. Uh, Socco is
(45:07):
first to go, and as they are strapping him in,
he's crying out in Italian along with anarchy, and then
in English very quietly says farewell my wife and child
and all my friends, and uh, right when they finally
threw the switch, he screamed out mama. And I don't
think like that. No, No, I'm not making light of it.
(45:29):
I don't think he was like, whoa mama. No, I
don't think so either. I think he was calling for
his mother. Yes, just pretty sad but also kind of sweet. Um.
And then Vanzetti comes in and he's like, oh, it's
my turn, all right, Well, okay, I want to make
sure everybody knows that I am innocent. Um. So I
(45:50):
think it's significant that Sacco was the one that shouted
in the courtroom that he was innocent, but didn't during
his execution, and Vanzetti didn't say anything in the courtroom,
but his execution he's like, I'm innocent, and not only
that he really turned the screwdriver. He said, I want
to make it known that I forgive all of you
who are about to do this to me. And he
(46:11):
started crying. Well, the wardens started crying when he gave
the switch, gave the nod to turn to throw the
switch on the electric chair and kill Vanzetti. Tears flowing everywhere.
High drama. Yes, surely it has been. But I'll bet
it wasn't like the seventies or something. We just aren't
(46:31):
aware of it. Like Warren Batty played Sacho and ven
Zetti in some weird casting and somehow Jeremy Renner co
he right exactly. Um, but but so Sacho and ven
Zetti are dead. Like they're dead. The state took their lives.
They executed them. These conceivably innocent men who were railroaded
(46:53):
to the electric chair uncircumstantial evidence and the testimony of
some ballistic experts were not experts by anyone's measure. Um,
these men are now dead, and the world reacts um predictably.
There were riots. Six people died in a riot in Germany. Um.
The American embassy in Paris had already been bombed, so
(47:16):
they Uh. They brought tanks out on the night of
the execution, UH and surrounded it this time, and there
were no bombings. Um. There were riots in Geneva, Switzerland.
This may have been the only time anyone ever rioted
in Geneva, Switzerland. Um. They were like five thousand pro
protesters who destroyed everything that was even passingly American. UM.
(47:38):
And Saco and Vinzetti went into the history books as
a couple of innocent men who were executed wrongfully by
the state because of their political beliefs. They were political
prisoners who were executed for their beliefs. Basically is how
most people have come to see Sacho and Vanzetti. Yeah,
but many years later, a couple of a few notable
(47:59):
things happened. UM. In nineteen forty one that gentleman I
mentioned earlier, the Carlo Carlo Trusca, the anarchist leader a
couple of years wore he died in the nineteen forties,
basically said, you know what, Osaka was guilty, he was
a trigger man, but van Setti was not guilty. UM.
Other people had heard the same thing from Trusca, And
(48:20):
then in nineteen sixty one they had um actual ballistics
tests done and uh it was concluded that, uh, that
was in fact a bullet from Sacho's gun. But people
still were saying, no, you know what, I think the
bullet was planted, So we render that inconclusive. But I
(48:43):
think Doug Linder does a pretty good job of of
taking the planted bullet theory fatal bullet or bullet number
three is what it's called in the trial um and
and basically saying no, this is why that doesn't really
hold up. And probably the biggest one is UM, when
the ballistics witnesses gave their testimony, UM, both of the
(49:04):
prosecution star ballistic witnesses said yes, I would conclude probably
that it came out of this gun, or yes, it's
probable or possible or something like that. They couched their
expert opinions when they gave their testimony. And if they
were part of a conspiracy to frame Sacho in the
planting of this bullet, they would have given much more
(49:26):
forceful testimony, which in and of itself as a circumstantial
evidence against this planted bullet theory. But it draws so
closely uncommon sense that I think it makes sense to me.
It undermines the idea that the bullet was planted. Yeah.
There was another gentleman named Giovanni Gambara who said, Um,
(49:46):
you know what my dad um before he died in
nine two, he told me he was on this team
of anarchists that met after their arrest to get their
defense mounted. And he told me and everyone said basically
that Socco was guilty and Venzetti was innocent. And then weirdly, uh,
in two thousand five, Upton Sinclair, the very famous author,
(50:11):
said that he was researching a book and he was
going to write it. Uh, he was writing a book
about this whole thing, and he met with Thread Moore,
that the radical defense attorney that mounted the defense for
basically most of the case. And he said he met
with him in a hotel room. Was like, dude, give
me the real story. And he said that Moore told him, Yeah,
(50:31):
Sacco was guilty and um Vansetti was innocent, and I
basically came up with this whole defense on my own,
like made all this stuff up. Yeah. Yeah. Years later
it came out that um, the seven eyewitnesses for the
defense who said that they saw Um Saco eating lunch
(50:54):
in Boston at the time of the um Robbery and
Braintree had all been set up by the defense, or
at least by an anarchist group had who had asked
them to go perjury themselves. And um, yeah, I think
that kind of jibes with the Eugene Lions quote that like,
if he thought these guys were innocent, they would do
he would do anything to to get him off, including
(51:15):
you know, putting witnesses on the stand knowing that they
were going to lie, and telling them to lie. And
this was a letter from Upton Sinclair based on an
interview with Fred Moore, so it's has has a lot
of teeth. But the the thing there was another letter
from Upton Sinclair, another quote from Upton Zinclair where he
(51:37):
said that Fred Moore had confessed to him that um
ven Zetti was innocent, and he knew he was innocent,
but he was pretty sure Sacho wasn't. But all he
had to do was go to the the jury and say, hey,
you we all know that you don't have anything on
ven Zetti. There's no reason for you to to to
(51:57):
prosecute this man. But he knew that if he did that,
the jury would be like, well, you're probably right, but
we're gonna come down really hard on Socco. So he
had this dilemma and he took it to van Zetti,
he said, and Vanzetti said, you know what, try to
save Nick nicolasako Um, he has the wife, he has
the child. I don't try to get him off. So Vanzetti,
(52:19):
in this retelling by Fred Moore, gave his life on
the chance that that Fred Moore could get Sacho off,
because if he got Sosacho off, he get Vanzetti off,
if he got Vanzetti off, he would almost surely sink
um Sacco and Vanzetti wouldn't take the take the opportunity
to to to be acquitted at the expense of Saco,
(52:40):
which is pretty amazing. Yep. So that's Sacco and Vanzetti, everybody.
That's what Asacho and Vanzetti is now, you know, I
guess when guilty and one innocent. That's what it sounds like,
what it sounds like. If you want to know more
about Saco and Vinzetti, go look up Doug Linder. I
believe he has a whole site on true crime, and
(53:01):
there's plenty of other stuff out there that we found
two on the internet about Sacho and Vanzetti and their
famous trial. And since I said Sacho and Vanzetti like
eighty times, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
this response to a short stuff. UM yeah right, hey guys, Uh,
your show is one of my favorite podcasts, so much
(53:22):
so that I've taken to listening to it while I
get ready for work. WHOA, we know that is your
sacred time. Um. I just finish the episode on Black
Loyalists and immediately started to write the email. UM a
Rhode Islander in Nova Scotia for work and got so
excited to hear a little piece of Nova Scotia's history
on there. I looked into the Loyal Loyalist Heritage Museum,
(53:46):
but it only has weekday operation, so I don't think
I'll be able to make it there. I'll definitely do
some exploring of Halifax in the coming weeks, and we'll
be on the lookout for more information. I just wanted
to mention on the show that it was Josh said
that Rhode Island and out I have ever had slaves. Um. Actually,
we were the first state to abolish slavery in two
but the law was mostly ignored and we ended up
(54:07):
with the most slaves per capita of any comedy. I
did not know that we also had a pretty booming
slave trade in Newport, Rhode Island, now known for their
gilded aged splendor. A piece of Rhode Island history I'm
sure most don't learn in history class that I wanted
to shed light on. Thanks for always putting out a
funny and informative and entertaining show that is from Nadine Greed.
(54:30):
Thanks a lot, Nadine. That was great. Thanks for listening
while you get ready for work. Hopeworks going well up
there in Nova Scotia. Just think spring to you and
everybody up there in Nova Scotia. Frankly, if you want
to get in touch with us, you can join us
on Stuff you Should Know dot com. Check out our
social links there. Uh, and you can just send us
(54:51):
a good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank it
on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcasts
and how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
(55:12):
M
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer
Josh over there. So you put the three of us
together there and we're gonna get a little true crime
(00:22):
history on you with the trial of Saco and ben Zi. Yeah,
these guys, I mean a little backstory on I guess
the time we're talking about the nineties in the United States.
We're talking about, uh, two gentlemen that we're both anarchists
(00:44):
that were both Italian immigrants and both supposedly, um, followers
of this really notable anarchists named Luigi Galiani, who Uh
this guy was um sort of an anarchist leader. He
put out an anarchist rag he was um called for violence. Um.
(01:07):
He has a history of authorizing like bombing's assassination attempts. Um,
like really tough stuff. And so this is who um
supposedly Saco and Vinzetti were, you know, I guess by
association advocating, advocating, sure, advocating for this type of violence
(01:27):
themselves as immigrant anarchists. Do you remember in our anarchism episode.
Like during this period, in like a ten year period,
anarchists assassinated like five or six major heads of state
around the world, including McKinley in the United States. It
was a big deal. It was a big deal. And um,
(01:50):
I mean there was also a struggle going on for
the soul of America. Where we're gonna be socialists, where
we're gonna be capitalists? Should we just go with anarchism? Um,
there was a lot of a lot of debate over
you know, which which economy we should go with, or
what what politics we should go with. And there was
(02:12):
something of a red scare because communism was on the
table too. There was a red scare at the time too.
So it wasn't like the kind of time you would
walk around like, yeah, I'm an anarchist, get on board,
you know. But and at the same time, if you
weren't an anarchist, you're probably scared of our anarchists because
they would bomb stuff and they were well known for
it too. Yeah, So I mean this is not just
(02:33):
the United States, like all over the world. Um, there
were political radicals that was violence from anarchy and and
riots and like you said, people trying to take down
like politicians or judges that were deporting, at least the
United States deporting immigrant anarchists back to their home countries
like as quickly as they could root them out, basically, right,
(02:57):
So this is sort of the stage in the early
night teen twenties. UM, and I guess we should hop
in the way back machine. Oh yes, and head on
over to Boston Town. Okay, that's Boston by the way. Yeah, no,
I know, it doesn't matter if I know. Just make
(03:19):
sure the way back machiners, the way back machine those
it can read my silly accents. So so here we are.
It's ninety around Boston. Actually we're not in Boston proper.
We're about ten ten miles south in the little town
of Braintree, which is these days would be Boston proper.
So I mean, you know, yes, it's like the metro
(03:39):
Boston area. UM and Braintree was known as a shoe
manufacturing center had more than one shoe company, which meant
it was a shoe manufacturing center and UM on this
particular day in April of I think it was April.
Right in Braintree, there was a named Shelley Neil who
(04:02):
was an agent for the American Express Company. And the
function I got of Shelly Neil was that he would
he was kind of like a a Brinx armed guard
basically for money, and not just some money, like a
lot of money. On this day, from the nine eighteen
(04:24):
AM train from Boston, Shelley Neil went to the Braintree, uh,
the brain Tree train depot and picked up thirty thousand
dollars thirty grand in cash, which is about four d
and twenty seven thousand dollars in two thousand eighteen money.
Did this every week, right. Um, he picked it up
and he took it back to his office, and um
(04:48):
he opened up a metal box and inside had to
two canvas bags, and each was the payroll for um
one of the two shoe companies that he picked up
money for, one of which was called Slater in Morrell.
I'm not sure what the other one was. Maybe it
was three K. Definitely Slater in Morrell was one of them.
(05:09):
The other was New Balance. Okay, so Slater in Morrill
and New Balance we're the ones whose payroll he had
on him that day. Yeah, And it's it's so amazing
how that stuff used to work back then, Like how
payroll was just so low fi. It would literally be
a huge amount of cash delivered in a box that
he would take to an office and someone would sit
(05:31):
there and stuff cash into envelopes to then go to
like a factory to pay off employees, not payoff, but
to pay to pay them there legit check from working.
You didn't see nothing this week. This is for all
the shoe leather, alright. So that's how it worked back then,
And so this is what he was doing. It's just
(05:51):
like any other Thursday. UM. However, on this day, as
he went in, he noticed a car out front that
he had not seen before, this big car that had
like these little curtains on the inside windows that were
pulled shut. And other people in Braintree UM later on
would report seeing that car kind of tooling around and
(06:13):
they said, it looks like it's got like four or
five men inside that look Italian and they're just sort
of driving around Braintree, which I guess to raise some suspicions. Sure,
because again, if you were Italian, UM, you may have
been associated with anarchists who were associated with bomb throwing.
(06:33):
So four or five of them kind of aimlessly driving
around the town of Braintree. This little tiny town. I'm
sure arouse some suspicions and definitely did because there were
a lot of people who later on said that they
saw this car driving around between nine am and twelve pm.
That's right, so about three that afternoon. Um, here's what
(06:54):
happened next for payroll. Uh, these people had to get
these envelopes. So what's known as a paymaster and this
is also sort of part of the arm guard thing,
um because the paymaster a has a gun and then
has a guard with a gun. This guy's name was
Freddie Parmenter and the guard was Alessandro Barra Delli. And
(07:16):
so they stopped by, they pick up all these envelopes.
They're going down to the factory. They're gonna pay everybody,
and all of a sudden, bam bam bam bam, gunfire
and mayhem ensues. I didn't realize there's gonna be special
effects in this episode. Hey, well you know you did. Man,
(07:37):
it has been brought it. Um. So they're these guys
are on Pearl Street and when these shots suddenly just
ring out, and um, the first guy's hit, Barret ellis
hit uh and he goes down. I believe it was
Barre Deli who was hit first. Um, Oh, no, he
wasn't hit. It was Parlimenter who was hit. Barret Deli
(07:58):
is on the ground, um, and he has lost his
gun and he's being approached by a man with a
gun on him and uh Baradeli apparently has begged for
his life to no avail. The man shoots him in
the chest at least once and the bullet um punctures
his lungs uh, one of his major arteries, to his
heart and then lodge its lodges itself and its hip
(08:22):
to be fished out later on by a corner and
used in the case against Sacco and Vanzettie. Uh. The
other guy, Parlman or the paymaster. Uh. He gets hit
a few times, staggers across the street and um and collapses.
And this car a blue touring car, um, which is
you know, a big sedan that you would think of
(08:43):
today like a touring We'll call it a Lincoln town car,
even though it's not at all what it was. That
blue car that had been seen kind of driving driving around, right,
that's another way to put it. It was abut yeah,
but the same one that had been seen driving slowly
around Braintree all morning. Suddenly pulls up and the guys
who had shot these these two men and taken the
(09:05):
money about fifteen thousand dollars um hopped in and that
drove off and everyone lost sight of it. Yeah, and
very importantly, the man who shot Baradelli had a hat
a felt cap on, right, So just remember that little
fact um. There were eyewitnesses all over the place. It's
not like no one saw this happen. Like dozens of
(09:27):
people saw this. Yeah, it was a daring daylight robbery
at three o'clock in the afternoon. Daring do right man
named Jimmy Bostock was one of the witnesses. Apparently Barredelli
like died in his arms, and like all people in
the nineteen twenties, didn't know any better. He immediately started
messing with the crime scene, started picking up gun shells.
(09:50):
Another guy came by and picked up the hat, and
you know, they just didn't know any better at the time,
I guess, right, So um, they the crime scene has
been totally messed up. But the cops show up because
again this is a big deal. This is a small
town and something close to two hundred and twenty thousand
dollars has just been stolen and two men murdered for
(10:13):
it in this little tiny town. So it's a big deal.
And the cops showed up, and probably the first thing
they said was anarchists. Maybe, I'll bet that's kind of
what they would say. I think at the time. Should
we take a break? Geez? Okay already, yeah, I think
so that. I mean this falls into acts and that's
(10:34):
definitely act one. Okay, alright, So dead men in the street,
the cops are on the scene, and scene and shock
(11:11):
is the ant scene or end scene, Chuck, We've talked
about this a lot and scene end scene Nope, because
it makes sense, you know, you do in the scene, right. So. Um, So,
the the cops have shown up, they're investigating the place. Um,
(11:33):
they're not really finding anything aside from what the witnesses
have already kind of gathered up and now holding out
to them in their outstretched palms, like here's your evidence, copper, Um.
But the uh, the cars searched for all over and
it's not found. It just totally disappears for a couple
(11:55):
of days. Um, And the the turns up a couple
of days later in the woods. I believe south of Braintree,
in a place called Bridgewater, which is a little even
further south from Boston. I think it's another like ten
or so miles down south from um from Braintree, right.
I think Bridgewater only had seven dunkin Donuts, so it
(12:18):
was a small town, right. And so remember when I
said the cops were probably like anarchists. I knew it. Um,
there was another daylight robbery of payroll, and I found
somewhere that it said it was successful. I found somewhere
else that it was unsuccessful. But both of them agreed
there had been no loss of life whatsoever. But it
(12:38):
was similar enough, and it had happened like two years
or a year before. Um, it was similar enough that
the cops immediately thought of the people they've been thinking
of for this, for this earlier crime. They thought, this
is clearly the work of the same people. Yeah. And um,
when they found this car in the woods, very importantly,
(12:59):
that the license plates had been ripped off, and there
were other tire tracks nearby, so it seemed pretty obvious that, uh,
you know, they ditched this car get in another one.
The officer on the scene said, Maddie, I think this
is a car from the Braintree meta. All I can
think of is Jeremy Renner in in the town. Sure,
(13:23):
that's that's what I think of when I think Boston. Yeah,
everyone thinks of that. So, um, another thing's going on
in parallel, So we need to set this up. Um. Also,
on April fifte which is the day of those maritas, Um,
there was a guy named uh Ferruccio Cocchi, and he
(13:44):
lived in Bridgewater. He was an anarchist. He was being deported. Uh,
so he quits his job, you know, to be deported. Um,
does not show up to be deported. Uh. He calls
the Immigration service after that on the six and said, uh,
you know my wife is a because I have to
tind to her. And they said about am I gonna
(14:04):
get in trouble for that? Now? No, you won't control
everybody loves your Italian XS. At least tell me you
can still do an Italian accent, right, I think? So
we're going to find out after this episode, um, because
I'm just doing the accent, not saying like they're all mobsters,
because like, you know, the Sopranos got in trouble for that,
Oh yeah did they did? They say all Italians were mobsters. No,
(14:27):
but I mean I remember they're just being hey about
from the Italian American community, Like, why is it every
time in movies were just mobsters? Oh I could see that,
you know, sure, I mean I could see them. Yeah,
but these aren't even mobs. No, they're anarchists. Right. So
he's being deported, he doesn't go. He calls them and says,
my wife is sick, and they said, fine, we're gonna
(14:48):
check out your story. Though they found that his wife
was not sick, and that all of a sudden, he's saying, okay,
it's fine. Actually I'm really ready to go, Like now,
come on, come on, can you get me out of
the entry quickly? And they're like, well, you should probably
like leave some money with your wife. He's like, no, no no, no,
she's good, So let's just go. Yeah, And so they're like,
all right, this is a little odd, so let's maybe
(15:10):
he's involved. Can I can I paint the scene a
little bit? Though? I want to go back over and
highlight two things that you've mentioned so far. One, this
was a time where to cover up a crime, all
you had to do was remove the license plates on
the car you ditched. That was it. You just confounded
the cops forever. That helped. And then secondly, if you
(15:32):
were to be deported, all you had to do is
not show up, but then call him the next day
and say your wife was sick and and Immigration and
Naturalization would say, sure, no problem. Well no were they
investigated immediately. Okay, but I'm just saying, like this is
things have changed to tas think is what I'm trying
to say. Hold on, let me let me see, Trush,
what are you trying to say. You're trying to say that. Yeah,
(15:53):
I'm trying to say that. Yes, that's exactly what I'm
trying to say. It's weird because you looked on both
of your shoulders at the devil and the angel. Right,
they won't shut up, Chuck, so uh they some they summarize,
you know, it's all coming together. This guy's acting weird. Well,
he's he's also choked one of those people that they
(16:16):
liked for that that um robbery the the year before,
which is one of the reasons why they had their
intent up about this guy in the first place. Right,
So he's a suspect. The coops go to, uh specifically
um Michael Stewart, police chief, said, I'm gonna go back
to his house. I'm gonna see what else I can
find out from this guy. He shows up and there's
(16:37):
a dude there named Mike Boda, who says, yeah, sure,
you can look around. You can look in the house,
go back and look in the garage. Two car garage shed,
no problem. Uh, usually have my car there. It's an Overland,
but it's in the shop getting repaired. And Steward goes
out there and it's like, all right, so here's where
the Overland parks. But there's some really big tire tracks
(16:59):
next to the over and uh and the second stall
that looked like they would probably fit this large buick
that was so mysteriously kind of tooling around around the
time of this murder, right, and this cop Stewart goes,
mm hmm, I'm gonna make a mental note of that.
And that's what he did. He he asked about the uh,
(17:21):
the the other car. I don't know if you said,
bodhas said that his other car was at the garage
being repaired. So, um so Stewart, who's the police chief
of bridge Ward. I think I get the impression he
was kind of new there's another one who kind of
factors into this case tangentially later on Um who was
the former police chief. So I get the impression that
Michael Stewart was fairly new, but he's investigating this case.
(17:44):
He likes Koachi. He's now met Mike Boda, who is
suspicious of two Um. He goes back to talk to
bodas some more to this place where Kachi lived uh
as Boda's roommate, I guess, away from his wife and kids.
I'm not sure why Koachi was running this place. We
go with coaching, now, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it.
I took Italian in college, and I'm almost a hundred
percent sure it's Coachi. Do you remember from our Dyslexi
(18:07):
episode where Italian is extremely easy to learn because there's
just very few ways to to write things, to write
the phone names. One of the reasons it is easier
because it's kind of like Polish. It's in most most
cases it's actually easier than Polish. But it's pronounced just
like it's spelled, except for the C I is a sound.
(18:28):
So Kachi, Okay, all right, that was your Italian lesson.
I appreciate that after all these years. The other lesson
not all Italians or Italian Americans or mobsters. That's your
other Italian lesson. Now okay, so, um, I've a bunch
of Italians Italian Americans and none of them were mobsters. Bam,
(18:48):
there you go. Um so. Uh. Police Chief Stewart goes
back to talk to Bodha, and things get really suspicious to,
don't they, because he shows up and not boxed on
the door, and the doors just swings open onto an
empty apartment. And Stewart spends about fifteen minutes going boda,
Mr bona, hello, Mr Boda, and he finally takes a
(19:11):
couple of steps in and realizes boat is gone. That's right,
so he uh he goes by the garage where he
the guy said that his car was in the shop. Uh,
goes over there. The car still there, So that checked out,
and he told the owner, whose name was Simon Johnson,
he said, hey, if anyone comes to get this car,
just give us a call. And the guy says, mental note,
(19:33):
call colops if someone comes to get this car. Jeremy writer.
Um so on May five, this is what A couple
of weeks later, Um, a man comes to the door
and this is it. I believe this is. It says
nine o'clock. But that's at night, right, yeah, I I
couldn't tell it first, and then um it feels like night. Yeah.
It says also that the wife is is um illuminated
(19:56):
by a motorcycle headlights at night. Yeah, alright, so unless
it's very dark in the morning. Right, So at nine
o'clock at night, this guy shows up to the owners
of the garages door, knocks on the door. His young
wife answers. The guy says that he's Mike Boda, I'm
(20:16):
here to pick up my car that ovaland over there,
And the owner of the garage comes and tells his wife,
and he says, go call the police. You know, we
don't have a phone. Go next door, called the cops.
She leaves out the back door and is caught, Like
you said, there's this motorcycle sitting outside. She also sees
with a sidecar, also sees a couple of guys that
(20:38):
she said, we're speaking Italian kind of hanging around. So
it's all sort of adding up at this point to
uh something fishy. Yeah, So, um, I guess the fact
that um that Simon uh Johnson, the shop owner or
the mechanic was stalling, made boat a little uneasy, so
(20:58):
he took off without the car. Right. Yeah, he jumped
in the sidecar and was out of there. Okay, here's
where things get super critical. For a pair of guys
named Sacho and van Zetti. There were two other those
other those two other guys that Ruth Johnson Simon Johnson,
the mechanics wife said she saw um hanging out waiting
(21:20):
for Mike Boda to get his car. They split two.
Now they're suddenly like on foot. There's no motorcycle or
car for them, so they have to leave on foot.
So they walk over toward the direction of the Bridgewater
rail line, and she says that she saw them get
on the train or at least go toward the train
station or no, the rail car. So I think it
(21:40):
might have been like a street car kind of thing.
So somehow Chief Stewart gets word of this. I think
he shows up. He gets word of this, and he
calls a the um the police chief in the next
town over in Brockton, and says, hey, there's gonna be
a pair of Italian guy is on the street car.
(22:01):
When the when the when the street car stops in
your the rail car stops in your town, get them.
They are wanted for questioning in a murder robbery. And
so the Brockton police board the train when it arrives
in Brockton, and there are two Italian men sitting there.
And the two men's names were Nicolas Sako and Bartolomeo Venzetti,
(22:21):
and they just happened to be Italian, and they just
happen to be anarchists, and they both happened to be
strapped when the cops came on the rail car and
started asking them questions. Yeah, Sacho had a thirty two
cult UH and Van City had a thirty eight Harrington
and Richardson, which very uniquely had five UH chambers instead
(22:46):
of six. Seems unique. Yeah, yeah, I don't even know
how that works. I would have to see this kind
of revolver because six is a nice even number for
a round thing. I don't I don't get it. But
no one ever says, like, don't point that five shooter
at me. It's always six shooter, you know. Yeah, although
maybe maybe a five shooters, whether it's talking about when
(23:08):
they call it a pea shooter, No, let's know what
they mean. But it was the nies and there were
all kinds of weird guns back then. Right. Okay, so
these these two Italian immigrants who were anarchists and who
were carrying guns, had one other big problem. They were
giving some pretty weak and ever evolving stories. Uh, an
(23:31):
answer to the questions that the cops were asking them.
They get hauled into the police station I believe in Bridgewater,
um or Braintree. Do you know which one it was?
I think it was. I think it was brain Tree.
Actually they got taken a Braintree because it was Stewart
who was investigating them. So they get taken a brain
Tree and police Chief Stewart questions them. But then so
(23:51):
too does the UM. The chief prosecutor for the area,
a guy named Frederick Katzman, who would play an enormous
role in this case as well. Yeah, so he was
the d A and he the I think the key
fact that really sold him was he found out that
on April fifteenth, on the day of these murders, Socca
was not at work at the three K shoe factory.
(24:15):
And uh, he said, you know what, that's enough for me.
We have no real evidence or anything else, but you
are Italian. Uh, Italian American anarchists. You weren't at work
that day, so let's go ahead and haul you in here, right,
because yeah, we left off the fact that they found
like UM anarchists pamphlets on the on the men when
(24:37):
they when they took him off the train. So there
was a lot against them going against them at this point. Um,
just from the outside of this, but you kind of
touched on it. All of this is very very circumstantial. Yeah,
So right away, the anarchists of UM of the area
come on board. Uh. They formed the Saco Vent City
(25:00):
Defense Committee, and one of their leaders, one of the
anarchist leaders in the area named Carlo Tresca, said all right,
let's hire this uh, this lawyer from California. This guy's
a radical. Uh, he's gonna lead our defense and more
comes on board. Fred Morin's like, here's the way we're
gonna do this is let's like let's get everyone worked up,
(25:20):
like not only in this area, but all over the world.
Let's get radicals, and let's get anarchists, and let's get
union members. Let's paint these guys. It's just like hard working,
blue collar union dudes, and let's get people all over
the world paying attention to what's going on over here. Yes,
which is a very common tactics still in use today.
(25:42):
Just turn public sentiment against the government and the prosecutors
in their case and um, basically painted like Saco and Vinzetti,
We're just a couple of normal dudes who are being
railroaded for for political reasons and probably out of a
certain amount of xenophobia as well. Sure, so, uh well,
let's take a break. The trial opens in May with
(26:06):
Judge Webster there and uh we'll be back with what
happens next right after this and shock you chuck. Before
(26:37):
we get back into I want to give a shout
out to Doug Lender. Douglas Lender, who's a law professor
and historian who wrote a paper that we used as
a source that was pretty pretty handy, pretty good stuff. Yeah,
law professors. I mean, there's a lot of good information
out here on this, but you get a law professor
on the on the typewriter and they're gonna condense it
into a nice, readable, workable document. That's right, That's what
(27:02):
they do. They're very good at that. Yes, So all right,
trials underway. Um, Like I said before, Judge Webster there
proceeds over this trial. Um, catsman, that's the d A
that's prosecuting. He has got a lot of circumstantial evidence,
he has eyewitnesses, but not really a lot of hard
(27:23):
evidence going on. Right, It's a little a tough case
for him to like solidly prove. Yeah, And that that
was another reason why um Fred Moore was able to
run around drumming up public sentiment, not just in the
United States or even just Boston or Massachusetts, but around
the world. Um. That that that Sacco and Vanzetti were
(27:45):
being railroaded is that the the evidence against them was
really really weak. Um. The eyewitness testimony was super um.
If you if you had the luxury like historians like
Douglas Linder have had to compare you know, um, the
original notes or the original statements made by eyewitnesses, um
(28:07):
against the types of statements they made in court. The
statements they made in court were much more certain, much
more sure. And this was after a year of reading
the newspaper and being exposed to pictures of Saccho and Vanzetti.
So when they see Sacho and Vanzetti in the court room,
they're like, yes, I saw that man holding that gun
and he was the one that pulled the trigger. The
(28:29):
thing is, there was not one witness, but there were
witnesses who placed both of them at the crime scene
or at least in the buick around town on that day.
But there was not one single witness who placed both
of them there. That's just the eye witnesses. They also had.
The other big piece of circumstantial evidence were the guns
that they were found with. UM, and they used ballistic
(28:52):
experts to come in and say, yes, this bullet came
from this gun, but again looking at it with history
behind the benefit of history. UM. This was at a
time when when ballistics comparison was just beginning to come around,
and the people that they employed as ballistics experts were
self taught amateurs who just basically had an interest in
(29:14):
this field. Were in no way, shape or form genuine
experts because you could make a case there was no
such thing as a genuine ballistics comparison expert at the time.
It was too new as far as forensic goes. Yeah.
So on the defense side, UM, immediately they say, those
guys weren't even in Braintree. UH. Socco was in Boston. UM,
(29:36):
Vansetti was in Plymouth. The both both sides. It's it's
interesting to look back on this trial because both the
prosecution and the defense were like being very hinky with
the truth themselves, um, influencing people on both sides to
testify kind of behind the scenes. Um. Fred Moore, the
defense attorney, trotted out a bunch of witnesses that say, no,
(29:58):
like Vanzetti was definitely in plan if he's a fishmonger,
bought fish from him. And then later on it was
found out that some of these people, well all of
them basically were friends of his. And then some of
the people came out even later and said, yeah, he
kind of told me to say this, But that happened
on the prosecution side too, Yes, supposedly, Um, later on
(30:18):
they would allege that the prosecutor Um Catsman, and the
chief or the lead ballistics or the star ballistics witness
had kind of coordinated the answer that the ballistics witness
would give at trial and that it would be much
more stronger and much um much more certain than he
(30:39):
the the actual conclusion he came to, uh prior to
the trial, based on his original ballistics tests. Yeah, so
there's there's hinkiness on both sides. Um. Catsman has his
hat and remember one of the gunmen definitely had on
a gray cap, so he has this gray cap. He said,
this is Sako's. He gets together with an expert behind
the scenes and says and again with this like like
(31:03):
you were saying, the sort of the beginnings of uh,
not ballistics in this case, but just um forensics, any
kind of forensics. Yeah. They he looked at the hairs
in the hat, got a hair from Soco and Socco
was like, oh that hurt. And he compared him and
he said, yeah, these hairs are identical. I'm telling you,
they're the same hairs. But Catsman was like, you know what,
(31:26):
I don't want to go to court uh and present
this because this stuff is all new. They're gonna paint
you as unreliable because no one knows anything about hair
comparison yet. So instead of doing that, he goes to
the boss of the shoe factory, George Kelly, you know,
was like, have you seen this hat before? And Kelly said, yes,
(31:46):
that's Saco's hat. I've seen him wear that hat and
the hole in it is from the nail that he
hangs it on every day, When in fact, that was
definitely not the case, no that earlier. The previous chief
later testified that he had actually accidentally punched the hole
in the hat while he was examining it for any
(32:06):
kind of identifying marks. He also testified that the hat
had a very um questionable providence, that it hadn't come
into police custody for thirty hours after the crime, so
he couldn't say he as far as he knew, it
was not found at the crime scene, that it hadn't
been secured by the police, He didn't know exactly where
(32:27):
it came from. And then finally I read elsewhere in
a final twist and tell stop me if this sounds familiar.
But they asked Sacho to put the hat on in
court and it was too small for his head. It
didn't fit. They did not acquit though, ruined it. Oh,
I'm sorry, sorry everybody. It's funny. There's probably a lot
(32:49):
of people out there who have no idea how this
is going to turn out, because if you search on
Google just Sacho and Vanzetti. One of the suggested questions
is what is Sacho and Vanzetti? Not who what? It's
a nice appertif right, So, um, I don't know if
we mentioned but like Sacho, had definitely much more evidence
(33:12):
against him, even if it was circumstantial, than Benzetti did
for sure, So Vanzetti is has the thinnest case against him,
but he like he lied to the cops. Um he
had that gun, remember, and on the stand he said, yeah,
actually I got that gun just a few days ago.
(33:34):
I bought it for four or five bucks. And they're like, well,
you told us that you bought it four or five
years ago for eighteen dollars. You said there were six
chambers in it and only had five, And what's going
on here? You're lying, Jimmy Vanzetti. The whole thing with
the gun, I don't know if we've said or not yet.
The reason why the gun was so suspicious and was
(33:54):
basically like the central piece of evidence used against um
van Zetti is that it was supposedly the exact same
kind of gun that Alessandro Barradelli had on and when
he was killed. So the the whole, the whole idea
was that um Vanzetti had been at the at least
at the crime scene, if not one of the killers,
(34:15):
who had taken Barradelli's gun after he had killed him,
and made off with it, which would explain why he
wasn't very familiar with the gun and how many chambers
it had and didn't have a very solid story about
where he'd gotten in and how long he'd owned it too.
That was the implication of the whole thing, and that
was basically the That was it. That was the crux
of the prosecution's case against Vanzetti. Vanzetti's big problem was
(34:39):
he was sitting next to Saco when Soacco got taken
off the train, and they had a lot more on
Socco and they were tried together rather than separately. Yeah,
and Socco. That ballistics evidence made a big, big difference
in the trial because they found out for sure that
that bullet that killed uh Baradelli was definitely fired from
(34:59):
a Colt automatic. Um, and your cult automatic is what
they alleged. And uh, well, we'll hold on to that
last bit until later. But um about what was found
out later about that. But um, I think even some
of the jurors said that that was really some of
the most compelling evidence against Sacho for us in deciding
(35:22):
this case. Yeah, and again, like they're listening to forensic
evidence from a field that's still in the very and
it's cradle from testimony given by people who are not experts.
But that was, like you said, the jurors said, this
was that was it for me. That was what convinced
me was the ballistics evidence. Basically. So they go to
(35:43):
uh jury and they go to deliberations and just five
a house five and a half hours later, the jury
said guilty has charged about six weeks after the trial started,
I believe. Yeah, So it was a big deal. You know,
like uh, Sacho is crying out innocent and Italian in
the court. Um, they were like protests all over the world,
(36:07):
like South America, France, uh, Lisbon. It's just crazy how
much this at the time in the nineteen twenties became
an international thing and uh basically they were due for
the electric chair, so people all over the world were protesting.
There were bombings. Um, it was nuts. Yeah, this is
(36:28):
I mean, this is a time when labor was unionized,
so you could arouse the sympathy of a lot of
people at once by going to the union hall and
saying like, hey, your your brothers in arms over there
in America are being railroaded into a murder rap. They're
gonna be electrocuting the electric chair for something they didn't
commit simply because of their political beliefs. How messed up
(36:49):
is that? And they you could arouse some some people
pretty quickly back then by saying that as opposed to today, Yeah,
for sure, um more immediately starts the defense attorney immediately
starts filing motions, trying to get like new trials. That was,
he had an assistant named Eugene Lions, who later would
(37:10):
come out and say, man, like this guy basically would
do anything. Um, he was framing evidence, he was telling
witnesses what to say, like once he had up in
his mind that and keep in mind, this was like
a radical lawyer from California. He said, once he had
in mind that these guys were innocent, he was like
(37:31):
he he basically would do anything to try and get
them off. Yeah, he's a born perjury. He'd intimidate witnesses,
he do whatever if he thought that somebody was being
innocently prosecuted. Fred Moore would stop at nothing too to yeah,
to get them off. And this article I think kind
of paints an incomplete picture of Eugene Lions and Fred
Moore's relationship. Like Eugene my lions. Was also very much
(37:52):
an admirer of Fred Moore to um, like, he considered
Fred Moore to have the heart of an artist, but
he was that he had dedicated his life to getting
people who were being steamrolled by the system or unfairly
treated by the courts out from under these these charges.
He was he was an early civil liberty civil liberties lawyer,
(38:16):
basically was what he was. Yes, so none of these
motions work. He files a bunch of them. Um, we're
not going to detail them all, but none of them, Uh,
none of them worked. They were basically all turned down.
Fair was still the presiding judge. He was turning down
all these things. Then they went to like federal court,
(38:36):
they were turning down motions. Eventually they went to the
Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court was like, why are
you asking us about this? Like we this is a
state case, Like we don't even do this kind of thing. Yeah.
The the court at the time was very much against
um or the majority I should say, it was against
applying the con federal Constitution to state issues, so they
(38:58):
wouldn't get involved. But um, I mean it did go
all the way to at least petitioning the Supreme Court,
they wouldn't hear it, and they wouldn't stay the execution either. UM.
But he, as much as a lawyer can exhaust petitions
and appeals for clemency UM and and the stay of execution.
Fred Moore did. And then later on another defense lawyer
(39:21):
named William Thompson, who took over for Fred Moore after
Sacho fired Fred Moore, UM did the same thing. Like
up to the eve the eve of the execution, they
were relentless and filing appeals with anything, anything they could
get their hands on. UM. They filed an entire motion
for a new trial based strictly on Judge Thayer's perceived
(39:42):
uh prejudice against um anarchists. Apparently he did not like anarchists,
and he treated Psacho and Vanzetti as such. Um throughout
the trial. UM. And as you're if you're just watching
watching this from the outside, if you're reading about this
in the press, and you're already on Saco and Venzetti's side, Judge,
they are turning down motion after motion after motion after motion. UM.
(40:06):
Looks really bad. It looks very much like this judge
is bent on railroading these two immigrant anarchists into an
an early and unjust death by electric chair. So the um,
the public sympathies and were aroused even further for Sacco
and Van City, and that would last for decades after
(40:28):
this trial up century almost now. Yeah, So Socco's in
jail and another weird thing happens while he's in jail
at uh in deadham d E d H A M.
There was another prisoner there who passed a note on
and said basically, I'm confessing to this crime. My name
(40:49):
is uh Celestino Madeiros And they were like, all right, well,
let's let's talk to this guy. He's confessing to this
crime and saying that Socco and Vincetti or innocent. Uh.
He said, I was there. I was UM with four
other guys, so that kind of checks out. As far
the five Italians, he said, we met in Providence at
(41:12):
a bar and we just come came up with this plan.
He said. There was a guy named Mike, a gun
named Bill. I don't know the other guys. I was scared.
We switched cars in the woods. Like all this stuff
was sort of making sense, um, but it really didn't.
Like in the end, there were too many other things
that were wrong. Uh. Like he said that they didn't
(41:33):
get there until afternoon, and everyone was like, no, that
car was there like maybe between nine am and noon. Um.
He also said that the payroll money was in a
bag when it was in a metal box, and so
there were enough inconsistencies basically where uh he wasn't really
a major suspect like they considered it. Thompson tried to
(41:56):
use it as the basis for a new trial, but
none of this worked because Air was still kind of
calling the shots before they ran it up the flag bowl. Yeah,
but again, news made made its way out into the
international press that someone had confessed, and not only confessed,
said that Sacho and Vanzetti weren't there. And this this
judge who headed out for Sacho and Vanzetti refused to
(42:17):
even hear this, this motion to uh to have a
new trial. So it looked it looked bad as well too.
It did so it looked bad enough that the governor
at the time, Alvin Fuller, said, you know what, we
have to do something here. There's just too much public
pressure going on from around the world. He said, So
here's what we'll do. We'll get a three person advisory committee.
(42:37):
They're gonna investigate this. He said, Hey, you Lawrence Lowell,
you're the president of Havid. You had this thing up. Uh.
And then what was known as the Lowell Commission UM
finally issued a report which said basically, uh, beyond a
reasonable doubt, Sacho is guilty. Uh. And Vanzetti said on
(43:00):
the whole, it's our opinion that he's also guilty beyond
reasonable doubt. And everyone was like, well, why did you
say all those other words then? And they're like, what
other words? Yeah? Really kind of a strange final report.
What's funny is in the Boston area if they're like,
we need somebody smart, get me the president of Harvard.
(43:21):
Well yeah, And in the end he's like, you are
definitely guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and so are you
more or less in our opinion? Right? No, I know.
It was weird and it remains weird. But apparently years later,
when Lowell was asked about that, he was saying like, no,
that wasn't any indication that we thought vanz he had
any kind of um, any kind of innocence to him,
(43:42):
or that he wasn't guilty. UM. I'm not sure exactly
how he explained it, but he basically said, no, that
wasn't that's not what that was interesting. I don't know
what he thought it was. That was a weird way
to put it, but that was I think the other
thing that kind of arouses people's in t in that
or suspicion maybe even is that that's what a lot
(44:03):
of people think that Sacco was definitely guilty. Yeah. I
shouldn't say a lot, but some people that Sacco is
definitely guilty. And if anyone was innocent, it was Vanzetti.
So the idea that this Lowell commission came up with
this back in the twenties even um is significant. But yeah,
Lowell was like, no, that's not what we meant playing that.
So none of these stays of execution go through. So
(44:25):
there reunited. They were split up in jail for many,
many years, um six years, and then they were finally
reunited at Charlestown State Prison for execution in April, and uh,
they had, like you, you wouldn't believe how many cops
they have in this town, uh, to cover this thing
(44:45):
because it was sort of one of the first crimes
of the century, I think, and people were mad all
over the country and all over the world. Like we've
been talking about. They didn't know if they're going to
be more bombings. People were gonna like literally storm the
prison and trying overtake them and free them. So they
had tons and tons of cops everywhere. Uh, Socco is
(45:07):
first to go, and as they are strapping him in,
he's crying out in Italian along with anarchy, and then
in English very quietly says farewell my wife and child
and all my friends, and uh, right when they finally
threw the switch, he screamed out mama. And I don't
think like that. No, No, I'm not making light of it.
(45:29):
I don't think he was like, whoa mama. No, I
don't think so either. I think he was calling for
his mother. Yes, just pretty sad but also kind of sweet. Um.
And then Vanzetti comes in and he's like, oh, it's
my turn, all right, Well, okay, I want to make
sure everybody knows that I am innocent. Um. So I
(45:50):
think it's significant that Sacco was the one that shouted
in the courtroom that he was innocent, but didn't during
his execution, and Vanzetti didn't say anything in the courtroom,
but his execution he's like, I'm innocent, and not only
that he really turned the screwdriver. He said, I want
to make it known that I forgive all of you
who are about to do this to me. And he
(46:11):
started crying. Well, the wardens started crying when he gave
the switch, gave the nod to turn to throw the
switch on the electric chair and kill Vanzetti. Tears flowing everywhere.
High drama. Yes, surely it has been. But I'll bet
it wasn't like the seventies or something. We just aren't
(46:31):
aware of it. Like Warren Batty played Sacho and ven
Zetti in some weird casting and somehow Jeremy Renner co
he right exactly. Um, but but so Sacho and ven
Zetti are dead. Like they're dead. The state took their lives.
They executed them. These conceivably innocent men who were railroaded
(46:53):
to the electric chair uncircumstantial evidence and the testimony of
some ballistic experts were not experts by anyone's measure. Um,
these men are now dead, and the world reacts um predictably.
There were riots. Six people died in a riot in Germany. Um.
The American embassy in Paris had already been bombed, so
(47:16):
they Uh. They brought tanks out on the night of
the execution, UH and surrounded it this time, and there
were no bombings. Um. There were riots in Geneva, Switzerland.
This may have been the only time anyone ever rioted
in Geneva, Switzerland. Um. They were like five thousand pro
protesters who destroyed everything that was even passingly American. UM.
(47:38):
And Saco and Vinzetti went into the history books as
a couple of innocent men who were executed wrongfully by
the state because of their political beliefs. They were political
prisoners who were executed for their beliefs. Basically is how
most people have come to see Sacho and Vanzetti. Yeah,
but many years later, a couple of a few notable
(47:59):
things happened. UM. In nineteen forty one that gentleman I
mentioned earlier, the Carlo Carlo Trusca, the anarchist leader a
couple of years wore he died in the nineteen forties,
basically said, you know what, Osaka was guilty, he was
a trigger man, but van Setti was not guilty. UM.
Other people had heard the same thing from Trusca, And
(48:20):
then in nineteen sixty one they had um actual ballistics
tests done and uh it was concluded that, uh, that
was in fact a bullet from Sacho's gun. But people
still were saying, no, you know what, I think the
bullet was planted, So we render that inconclusive. But I
(48:43):
think Doug Linder does a pretty good job of of
taking the planted bullet theory fatal bullet or bullet number
three is what it's called in the trial um and
and basically saying no, this is why that doesn't really
hold up. And probably the biggest one is UM, when
the ballistics witnesses gave their testimony, UM, both of the
(49:04):
prosecution star ballistic witnesses said yes, I would conclude probably
that it came out of this gun, or yes, it's
probable or possible or something like that. They couched their
expert opinions when they gave their testimony. And if they
were part of a conspiracy to frame Sacho in the
planting of this bullet, they would have given much more
(49:26):
forceful testimony, which in and of itself as a circumstantial
evidence against this planted bullet theory. But it draws so
closely uncommon sense that I think it makes sense to me.
It undermines the idea that the bullet was planted. Yeah.
There was another gentleman named Giovanni Gambara who said, Um,
(49:46):
you know what my dad um before he died in
nine two, he told me he was on this team
of anarchists that met after their arrest to get their
defense mounted. And he told me and everyone said basically
that Socco was guilty and Venzetti was innocent. And then weirdly, uh,
in two thousand five, Upton Sinclair, the very famous author,
(50:11):
said that he was researching a book and he was
going to write it. Uh, he was writing a book
about this whole thing, and he met with Thread Moore,
that the radical defense attorney that mounted the defense for
basically most of the case. And he said he met
with him in a hotel room. Was like, dude, give
me the real story. And he said that Moore told him, Yeah,
(50:31):
Sacco was guilty and um Vansetti was innocent, and I
basically came up with this whole defense on my own,
like made all this stuff up. Yeah. Yeah. Years later
it came out that um, the seven eyewitnesses for the
defense who said that they saw Um Saco eating lunch
(50:54):
in Boston at the time of the um Robbery and
Braintree had all been set up by the defense, or
at least by an anarchist group had who had asked
them to go perjury themselves. And um, yeah, I think
that kind of jibes with the Eugene Lions quote that like,
if he thought these guys were innocent, they would do
he would do anything to to get him off, including
(51:15):
you know, putting witnesses on the stand knowing that they
were going to lie, and telling them to lie. And
this was a letter from Upton Sinclair based on an
interview with Fred Moore, so it's has has a lot
of teeth. But the the thing there was another letter
from Upton Sinclair, another quote from Upton Zinclair where he
(51:37):
said that Fred Moore had confessed to him that um
ven Zetti was innocent, and he knew he was innocent,
but he was pretty sure Sacho wasn't. But all he
had to do was go to the the jury and say, hey,
you we all know that you don't have anything on
ven Zetti. There's no reason for you to to to
(51:57):
prosecute this man. But he knew that if he did that,
the jury would be like, well, you're probably right, but
we're gonna come down really hard on Socco. So he
had this dilemma and he took it to van Zetti,
he said, and Vanzetti said, you know what, try to
save Nick nicolasako Um, he has the wife, he has
the child. I don't try to get him off. So Vanzetti,
(52:19):
in this retelling by Fred Moore, gave his life on
the chance that that Fred Moore could get Sacho off,
because if he got Sosacho off, he get Vanzetti off,
if he got Vanzetti off, he would almost surely sink
um Sacco and Vanzetti wouldn't take the take the opportunity
to to to be acquitted at the expense of Saco,
(52:40):
which is pretty amazing. Yep. So that's Sacco and Vanzetti, everybody.
That's what Asacho and Vanzetti is now, you know, I
guess when guilty and one innocent. That's what it sounds like,
what it sounds like. If you want to know more
about Saco and Vinzetti, go look up Doug Linder. I
believe he has a whole site on true crime, and
(53:01):
there's plenty of other stuff out there that we found
two on the internet about Sacho and Vanzetti and their
famous trial. And since I said Sacho and Vanzetti like
eighty times, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
this response to a short stuff. UM yeah right, hey guys, Uh,
your show is one of my favorite podcasts, so much
(53:22):
so that I've taken to listening to it while I
get ready for work. WHOA, we know that is your
sacred time. Um. I just finish the episode on Black
Loyalists and immediately started to write the email. UM a
Rhode Islander in Nova Scotia for work and got so
excited to hear a little piece of Nova Scotia's history
on there. I looked into the Loyal Loyalist Heritage Museum,
(53:46):
but it only has weekday operation, so I don't think
I'll be able to make it there. I'll definitely do
some exploring of Halifax in the coming weeks, and we'll
be on the lookout for more information. I just wanted
to mention on the show that it was Josh said
that Rhode Island and out I have ever had slaves. Um. Actually,
we were the first state to abolish slavery in two
but the law was mostly ignored and we ended up
(54:07):
with the most slaves per capita of any comedy. I
did not know that we also had a pretty booming
slave trade in Newport, Rhode Island, now known for their
gilded aged splendor. A piece of Rhode Island history I'm
sure most don't learn in history class that I wanted
to shed light on. Thanks for always putting out a
funny and informative and entertaining show that is from Nadine Greed.
(54:30):
Thanks a lot, Nadine. That was great. Thanks for listening
while you get ready for work. Hopeworks going well up
there in Nova Scotia. Just think spring to you and
everybody up there in Nova Scotia. Frankly, if you want
to get in touch with us, you can join us
on Stuff you Should Know dot com. Check out our
social links there. Uh, and you can just send us
(54:51):
a good old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank it
on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcasts
and how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
(55:12):
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