Nicola Sacco (Italian: [niˈkɔːla ˈsakko]; April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Italian: [bartoloˈmɛːo vanˈtsetti, -ˈdzet-]; June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were Italian immigrants and anarchists, controversially accused of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a guard and a paymaster, during the April 15, 1920, armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Seven years later, they were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison, on the same day as Celestino Medeiros, who had confessed to the crime. Most historians consider their conviction unfair due to prejudice against immigrants and radicals.
After a few hours' deliberation on July 14, 1921, the jury convicted Sacco and Vanzetti of first-degree murder and they were sentenced to death by the trial judge. Anti-Italianism, anti-immigrant, and anti-anarchist bias were suspected by some as having influenced the verdict. A series of appeals followed, funded largely by the private Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. The appeals were based on recanted testimony, conflicting ballistics evidence, a prejudicial pretrial statement by the jury foreman, and a confession by an alleged participant in the robbery. All appeals were denied by trial judge Webster Thayer and also later denied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. By 1926, the case had drawn worldwide attention. As details of the trial and the men's suspected innocence became known, Sacco and Vanzetti became the center of one of the largest causes célèbres in modern history. In 1927, protests on their behalf were held in every major city in North America and Europe, as well as in Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Montevideo, Johannesburg, Mexico City and Auckland.
Celebrated writers, artists, and academics pleaded for their pardon or for a new trial. Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter argued for their innocence in a widely read Atlantic Monthly article that was later published in book form. Even the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was convinced of their innocence and attempted to pressure American authorities to have them released. The two were scheduled to be executed in April 1927, accelerating the outcry. Responding to a massive influx of telegrams urging their pardon, Massachusetts governor Alvan T. Fuller appointed a three-man commission to investigate the case. After weeks of secret deliberation that included interviews with the judge, lawyers, and several witnesses, the commission upheld the verdict. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair just after midnight on August 23, 1927.
Investigations in the aftermath of the executions continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The publication of the men's letters, containing eloquent professions of innocence, intensified the public's belief in their wrongful execution. A ballistic test performed in 1961 suggested that the pistol found on Sacco was used to commit the murders, though later commentators have questioned its reliability and conclusiveness, given questions about the chain of custody and possible manipulation of evidence. On August 23, 1977—the 50th anniversary of the executions—Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names". The proclamation however, did not include a pardon.
Background
Sacco was a shoemaker and a night watchman, born April 22, 1891, in Torremaggiore, Province of Foggia, Apulia region (in Italian: Puglia), Italy, who migrated to the United States at the age of seventeen. Before immigrating, according to a letter he sent while imprisoned, Sacco worked on his father's vineyard, often sleeping out in the field at night to prevent animals from destroying the crops. Vanzetti was a fishmonger born June 11, 1888, in Villafalletto, Province of Cuneo, Piedmont region. Both left Italy for the US in 1908, although they did not meet until a 1917 strike.
The men were believed to be followers of Luigi Galleani, an Italian anarchist who advocated revolutionary violence, including bombing and assassination. Galleani published Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), a periodical that advocated violent revolution, and a bomb-making manual called La Salute è in voi! (Salvation Is within You!). At the time, immigrant Italian anarchists—in particular the Galleanist group—ranked at the top of the United States government's list of dangerous enemies. Since 1914, the Galleanists had been identified as suspects in several violent bombings and assassination attempts, including an attempted mass poisoning. Publication of Cronaca Sovversiva was suppressed in July 1918, and the government deported Galleani and eight of his closest associates on June 24, 1919.
Other Galleanists remained active for three years, 60 of whom waged an intermittent campaign of violence against US politicians, judges, and other federal and local officials, especially those who had supported deportation of alien radicals. Among the dozen or more violent acts was the bombing of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's home on June 2, 1919. In that incident, Carlo Valdinocci, a former editor of Cronaca Sovversiva, was killed when the bomb intended for Palmer exploded in the editor's hands. Radical pamphlets entitled "Plain Words" signed "The Anarchist Fighters" were found at the scene of this and several other midnight bombings that night.
Several Galleanist associates were suspected or interrogated about their roles in the bombing incidents. Two days before Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested, a Galleanist named Andrea Salsedo fell to his death from the US Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation (BOI) offices on the 14th floor of 15 Park Row in New York City. Salsedo had worked in the Canzani Printshop in Brooklyn, to where federal agents traced the "Plain Words" leaflet.
Roberto Elia, a fellow New York printer and admitted anarchist, was later deposed in the inquiry, and testified that Salsedo had committed suicide for fear of betraying the others. He portrayed himself as the 'strong' one who had resisted the police. According to anarchist writer Carlo Tresca, Elia changed his story later, stating that Federal agents had thrown Salsedo out the window.
Hold-Up Robbery
The Slater-Morrill Shoe Company factory was located on Pearl Street in Braintree, Massachusetts. On April 15, 1920, two men were robbed and killed while transporting the company's payroll in two large steel boxes to the main factory. One of them, Alessandro Berardelli—a security guard—was shot four times as he reached for his hip-holstered .38-caliber, Harrington & Richardson revolver; his gun was not recovered from the scene. The other man, Frederick Parmenter—a paymaster who was unarmed—was shot twice: once in the chest and a second time, fatally, in the back as he attempted to flee. The robbers seized the payroll boxes and escaped in a stolen dark blue Buick that was carrying several other men.
As the car was being driven away by Michael Codispoti, the robbers fired wildly at company workers nearby. A coroner's report and subsequent ballistic investigation revealed that six bullets removed from the murdered men's bodies were of .32 automatic (ACP) caliber. Five of these .32-caliber bullets were all fired from a single semi-automatic pistol, a .32-caliber Savage Model 1907, which used a particularly narrow-grooved barrel rifling with a right-hand twist. Two of the bullets were recovered from Berardelli's body. Four .32 automatic brass shell casings were found at the murder scene, manufactured by one of three firms: Peters, Winchester, or Remington. The Winchester cartridge case was of a relatively obsolete cartridge loading, which had been discontinued from production some years earlier. Two days after the robbery, police located the robbers' Buick; several 12-gauge shotgun shells were found on the ground nearby.
Arrests and indictment
An earlier attempted (unsuccessful) robbery of another shoe factory payroll had occurred on December 24, 1919, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, by four persons identified as Italian who used a car that was seen escaping to Cochesett in West Bridgewater. A delivery truck for the L.Q. White Shoe Factory was taking a $33,113.31 payroll with a driver, paymaster and a police constable. The assailants in a car tried to hijack the truck with one robber using a pistol and the other a double-barrelled shotgun. Police speculated that Italian anarchists perpetrated the robberies to finance their activities. Bridgewater police chief Michael E. Stewart suspected that known Italian anarchist Ferruccio Coacci was involved. Stewart discovered that Mario Buda (aka 'Mike' Boda) lived with Coacci.
When Chief Stewart later arrived at the Coacci home, only Buda was living there, and, when questioned, he said that Coacci owned a .32 Savage automatic pistol, which he kept in the kitchen. A search of the kitchen did not locate the gun, but Stewart found (in a kitchen drawer) a manufacturer's technical diagram for a Model 1907 of the exact type of .32 caliber pistol used to shoot Parmenter and Berardelli. Stewart asked Buda if he owned a gun, and the man produced a .32-caliber Spanish-made automatic pistol. Buda told police that he owned a 1914 Overland automobile, which was being repaired. The car was delivered for repairs four days after the Braintree crimes, but it was old and apparently had not been run for five months. Tire tracks were seen near the abandoned Buick getaway car, and Chief Stewart surmised that two cars had been used in the getaway, and that Buda's car might have been the second car.
When Stewart discovered that Coacci had worked for both shoe factories that had been robbed, he returned with the Bridgewater police. Mario Buda was not home, but, on May 5, 1920, he arrived at the garage with three other men, later identified as Sacco, Vanzetti, and Riccardo Orciani. The four men knew each other well; Buda would later refer to Sacco and Vanzetti as "the best friends I had in America". None of these arrests led the police to the relevant robbed cash loot.
Sacco and Vanzetti boarded a streetcar but were tracked down and soon arrested. When searched by police, both denied owning any guns, but were found to be holding loaded pistols. Sacco was found to have an Italian passport, anarchist literature, a loaded .32 Colt Model 1903 automatic pistol, and twenty-three .32 automatic cartridges in his possession; several of those bullet cases were of the same obsolescent type as the empty Winchester .32 casing found at the crime scene, and others were manufactured by the firms of Peters and Remington, much like other casings found at the scene. Vanzetti had four 12-gauge shotgun shells and a five-shot nickel-plated .38-caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver. All looked exactly alike, similar to the 38 carried by Berardelli, the slain Braintree guard, whose weapon was not found at the scene of the crime. When they were questioned, the pair denied any connection to anarchists.
Orciani was arrested May 6, but gave the alibi that he had been at work on the day of both crimes. Sacco had been at work on the day of the Bridgewater crimes but said that he had the day off on April 15—the day of the Braintree crimes—and was charged with those murders. The self-employed Vanzetti had no such alibis and was charged for the attempted robbery and attempted murder in Bridgewater and the robbery and murder in the Braintree crimes. Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with the crime of murder on May 5, 1920, and indicted four months later on September 14.
Following Sacco and Vanzetti's indictment for murder for the Braintree robbery, Galleanists and anarchists in the United States and abroad began a campaign of violent retaliation. Two days later, on September 16, 1920, Mario Buda allegedly orchestrated the Wall Street bombing, where a time-delay dynamite bomb packed with heavy iron sash-weights in a horse-drawn cart exploded, killing 40 people and wounding 134. In 1921, a booby trap bomb mailed to the American ambassador in Paris exploded, wounding his valet. For the next six years, bombs exploded at other American embassies all over the world.
Trials
Bridgewater crimes trial
Rather than accept court-appointed counsel, Vanzetti chose to be represented by John P. Vahey, a former foundry superintendent and future state court judge who had been practicing law since 1905, most notably with his brother James H. Vahey and his law partner Charles Hiller Innes. James Graham, who was recommended by supporters, also served as defense counsel. Frederick G. Katzmann, the Norfolk and Plymouth County District Attorney, prosecuted the case. The presiding judge was Webster Thayer, who was already assigned to the court before this case was scheduled. A few weeks earlier he had given a speech to new American citizens decrying Bolshevism and anarchism's threat to American institutions. He supported the suppression of functionally violent radical speech, and incitement to commit violent acts. He was known to dislike foreigners but was considered to be a fair judge.
The trial began on June 22, 1920. The prosecution presented several witnesses who put Vanzetti at the scene of the crime. Their descriptions varied, especially with respect to the shape and length of Vanzetti's mustache. Physical evidence included a shotgun shell retrieved at the scene of the crime and several shells found on Vanzetti when he was arrested.
The defense produced 16 witnesses, all Italians from Plymouth, who testified that at the time of the attempted robbery they had bought eels from Vanzetti for Christmas, in accordance with their traditions. Such details reinforced the difference between the Italians and the jurors. Some testified in imperfect English, others through an interpreter, whose inability to speak the same dialect of Italian as the witnesses hampered his effectiveness. On cross examination, the prosecution found it easy to make the witnesses appear confused about dates. A boy who testified admitted to rehearsing his testimony. "You learned it just like a piece at school?", the prosecutor asked. "Sure", he replied. The defense tried to rebut the eyewitnesses with testimony that Vanzetti always wore his mustache in a distinctive long style, but the prosecution rebutted this.