The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (22 page)

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

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

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

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

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

Police dragged her to the nearest patrol wagon.

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

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

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

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

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

Forty hurt in a Sacco–Vanzetti demonstration in London.

A riotous demonstration before the American Consulate in Geneva.

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

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

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

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

Justices Taft and Stone refused to intervene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musmanno was on the verge of collapse.

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

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

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

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

“No, no.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said.

Then his last words.

“Farewell, Mother.”

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

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

A pause.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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