The prosecution presented several witnesses who put Vanzetti at the scene of the crime. 182184. 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. [172] On November 26, 1927, Di Giovanni and others bombed a Combinados tobacco shop. [25] The robbers seized the payroll boxes and escaped in a stolen dark blue Buick that was carrying several other men. [94], Multiple separate motions for a new trial were denied by Judge Thayer. "Judge Wyzanski Makes History: Sacco and Vanzetti Reconvicted", "Sinclair Letter Turns Out to Be Another Expose", "Sliming a Famous Muckraker: The Untold Story", "Massachusetts Admits Sacco-Vanzetti Injustice", "Governor Dukakis Discusses Impending Exoneration of Sacco and Vanzetti", "Sacco-Vanzetti Vote Reversed," August 16, 1977, Rick Collins, "Forgotten victims: Descendants say both were hard-working family men,", "A Moscow Railway Miscellany, Russia, 2010", "Malamut earns Eagle Scout ranking Jewish Journal", "The Wheels of Justice, Circa 1927, via a Robot and Herky-Jerky Puppets", "The Good Shoemaker and the Poor Fish Peddler", The Roger Reynolds Collection: List of Works, "Music: A Hell of a Noble Story," March 7, 1960, "Ben Shahn, 18981969: The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, 193132", Brooks Atkinson, "'Winterset' and Mr. Anderson," October 6, 1935, "Kurt Vonnegut on Jailbird, His Watergate Novel", "Geary Recounts "The Lives of Sacco & Vanzetti", La marcia del dolore I funerali di Sacco e Vanzetti Una storia del Novecento, Sacco & Vanzetti (Cronologia Strumenti di ricerca), Boston: A Documentary Novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial, The Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Carol Vanderveer, "American Writers and the Sacco-Vanzetti Case", 2001, Sacco-Vanzetti Trial newspaper clippings, AprilNovember 1927, Citizens National Committee for Sacco-Vanzetti/Sacco-Vanzetti National League, The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Deacons at First Church and Parish in Dedham, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sacco_and_Vanzetti&oldid=1149989018, 20th-century executions of American people, People convicted of murder by Massachusetts, People executed by Massachusetts by electric chair, Political repression in the United States, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from April 2023, Articles with dead external links from April 2023, Articles with permanently dead external links, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2020, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2019, Articles needing additional references from August 2020, All articles needing additional references, Articles containing Spanish-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, In 1999, People's Light & Theatre Company in. [17], 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. Three weeks later, on the evening of May 5, 1920, two Italians, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, fell into a police trap that had been set for a suspect in the Braintree crime. In 2014, Joseph Silovsky wrote and performed in an Off-Broadway play about Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti were briefly mentioned in season 1 episode 8 of, In 1976, the German folk group Manderley included the song "Sacco's Brief" (Sacco's Letter) on their album, The song "Facing the Chair" about Sacco & Vanzetti, composed by. [35], Sacco and Vanzetti boarded a streetcar, but were tracked down and soon arrested. [199], Labor organizer Anthony Ramuglia, an anarchist in the 1920s, said in 1952 that a Boston anarchist group had asked him to be a false alibi witness for Sacco. One of them, Alessandro Berardelli[22][23]a security guardwas shot four times[24] as he reached for his hip-holstered .38-caliber, Harrington & Richardson revolver; his gun was not recovered from the scene. [195], In 1941, anarchist leader Carlo Tresca, a member of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee, told Max Eastman, "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent",[196] although it is clear from his statement that Tresca equated guilt only with the act of pulling the trigger, i.e., Vanzetti was not the principal triggerman in Tresca's view, but was an accomplice to Sacco. [105], In November 1925, Celestino Medeiros, an ex-convict awaiting trial for murder, confessed to committing the Braintree crimes. [216][217][218] A resolution to censure Dukakis failed in the Massachusetts Senate by a vote of 23 to 12. After arguing against the credibility of Medeiros, he addressed the defense claims against the federal government, saying the defense was suffering from "a new type of disease, a belief in the existence of something which in fact and truth has no such existence. [66][75] The shop foreman testified that a new spring and hammer were put into Berardelli's Harrington & Richardson revolver. [139], Thayer declared that the responsibility for the conviction rested solely with the jury's determination of guilt. Updates? In the early 1920s, mainstream America developed a fear of communism. [208], The Los Angeles Times published an article on December 24, 2005, "Sinclair Letter Turns Out to Be Another Expos", which references a newly discovered letter from Upton Sinclair to attorney John Beardsley in which Sinclair, a socialist writer famous for his muckraking novels, revealed a conversation with Fred Moore, attorney for Sacco and Vanzetti. [51], The defense case went badly and Vanzetti did not testify in his own defense. Instead he executed a sworn deposition that was read aloud in court and quickly dismissed. 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. [64][65] Each day during the trial, the courthouse was placed under heavy police security, and Sacco and Vanzetti were escorted to and from the courtroom by armed guards. But you are guilty just the same. Folllowing the Parmenter and Berardelli murders, the chief of police in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, kept. In 1936, on the day when Harvard celebrated its 300th anniversary, 28 Harvard alumni issued a statement attacking the University's retired President Lowell for his role on the Governor's Advisory Committee in 1927. [30], 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. Sacco tried the cap on in court and, according to two newspaper sketch artists who ran cartoons the next day, it was too small, sitting high on his head. You had the power in your hands to make them free. [168] The Boston Globe called it "one of the most tremendous funerals of modern times. Demonstrations proceeded in many cities throughout the world, and bombs were set off in New York City and Philadelphia. [25], An earlier attempted robbery of another shoe factory occurred on December 24, 1919, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, by people identified as Italian who used a car that was seen escaping to Cochesett in West Bridgewater. 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. His second story, in June 1962, was written when he had come to believe that one of them . They assessed the charges against Thayer as well. During the Dedham trial's first week, Thayer said to reporters: "Did you ever see a case in which so many leaflets and circulars have been spread saying people couldn't get a fair trial in Massachusetts? From Felix Frankfurter's account from The Atlantic Monthly article: Viewing the scene from a distance of from sixty to eighty feet, she saw a man previously unknown to her in a car traveling at the rate of from fifteen to eighteen miles per hour, and she saw him only for a distance of about thirty feetthat is to say, for from one and a half to three seconds. At first this brutal murder and robbery, not uncommon in post-World War I America, aroused only local interest. [13] Since 1914, the Galleanists had been identified as suspects in several violent bombings and assassination attempts, including an attempted mass poisoning. It is saying what it thinks of Judge Thayer. It sent speakers to Italian communities in factory towns and mining camps. A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, Pres. Socialists and radicals protested the mens innocence. "I guess that will hold them for a while! Stewart discovered that Mario Buda (aka 'Mike' Boda) lived with Coacci. "[135], While Sacco was in the Norfolk County Jail, his seven-year-old son, Dante, would sometimes stand on the sidewalk outside the jail and play catch with his father by throwing a ball over the wall. [127], Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, the target of two anarchist assassination attempts, quietly made inquiries through diplomatic channels and was prepared to ask Governor Fuller to commute the sentences if it appeared his request would be granted. [73], The prosecution claimed Vanzetti's .38 revolver had originally belonged to the slain Berardelli, and that it had been taken from his body during the robbery. Gang leader Joe Morelli bore a striking resemblance to Sacco. The gun was claimed and the half-hour repair paid for, though the date and identity of the claimant were not recorded. [48] Physical evidence included a shotgun shell retrieved at the scene of the crime and several shells found on Vanzetti when he was arrested. The Committee also supported Moore's request for grant money. [66] Among the more important witnesses called by the prosecution was salesman Carlos E. Goodridge, who stated that as the getaway car raced within twenty-five feet of him, one of the car's occupants, whom he identified as being Sacco, pointed a gun in his direction. They were, respectively, a shoemaker and a fish peddler. [136], On April 9, 1927, Judge Thayer heard final statements from Sacco and Vanzetti. Young and Kaiser, pp. Both left Italy for the US in 1908,[11] although they did not meet until a 1917 strike. "[36] He accused Vahey of having conspired with the prosecutor "to agitate still more the passion of the juror, the prejudice of the juror" towards "people of our principles, against the foreigner, against slackers. [30] The guard Berardelli was also Italian. The same year the True Detective article was published, a study of ballistics in the case concluded, "what might have been almost indubitable evidence was in fact rendered more than useless by the bungling of the experts. [141], In response to public protests that greeted the sentencing, Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller faced last-minute appeals to grant clemency to Sacco and Vanzetti. He called it "a case like the Dreyfus case, by which the soul of a people is tested and displayed." Controversy clouded the prosecution witnesses who identified Sacco as having been at the scene of the crime. Just after midnight on Aug 23, 1927, 90 years ago today, the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were sent to the . After weeks of secret deliberation that included interviews with the judge, lawyers, and several witnesses, the commission upheld the verdict. [107][108][109], The defense filed a motion for a new trial based on the Medeiros confession on May 26, 1926. Vanzetti testified that he had been selling fish at the time of the Braintree robbery. Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, was considered to be the most . [84], The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee was formed on May 9, 1920, immediately following the arrests, by a group of fellow anarchists, headed by Vanzetti's 23-year-old friend Aldino Felicani. He knocked it to the ground "with an exclamation of contempt. Both sides presented arguments to its five judges on January 1113, 1926. [66], In 1987, Charlie Whipple, a former Boston Globe editorial page editor, revealed a conversation that he had with Sergeant Edward J. Seibolt in 1937. [119] In December 1927, four months after the executions, the Massachusetts Judicial Council cited the Sacco and Vanzetti case as evidence of "serious defects in our methods of administering justice." Among the dozen or more violent acts was the bombing of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's home on June 2, 1919. Sacco worked as a skilled shoemaker and Vanzeti sold fish. [30] Poggi added that he "had a strong feeling that Buda himself was one of the robbers, though I didn't ask him and he didn't say. Jackson bridged the gap between the radicals and the social elite so well that Sacco thanked him a few weeks before his execution: We are one heart, but unfortunately we represent two different class. Seven years later, they were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison. "[63] Throughout the trial, Moore and Thayer clashed repeatedly over procedure and decorum. [164], Violent demonstrations swept through many cities the next day, including Geneva, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. [80], Yet cross examination revealed that Splaine was unable to identify Sacco at the inquest but had recall of great details of Sacco's appearance over a year later. [25] Vanzetti had four 12-gauge shotgun shells[33] and a five-shot nickel-plated .38-caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver similar to the .38 carried by Berardelli, the slain Braintree guard, whose weapon was not found at the scene of the crime. The second exhibit is a metal plaque that memorializes the victims of the crime. anarchists believed no government and were against the us government . In a lengthy speech Vanzetti said:[137][138], I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth, I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. "We whacked them out, we killed those guys in the robbery," Butsy Morelli told Vincent Teresa. Joughin, pp. In October 1927, H. G. Wells wrote an essay that discussed the case at length. I guess that will hold them for a while. [143], He also thought that the Committee, particularly Lowell, imagined it could use its fresh and more powerful analytical abilities to outperform the efforts of those who had worked on the case for years, even finding evidence of guilt that professional prosecutors had discarded. [62], Sacco and Vanzetti went on trial for their lives in Dedham, Massachusetts, May 21, 1921, at Dedham, Norfolk County, for the Braintree robbery and murders. 450458, For Vanzetti's complete statement to the court, from which this quotation is excerpted, see, Bortman, p. 60: "An East German scholar researching in the Soviet Union archives in 1958 discovered that the Communist Party had instigated these 'spontaneous demonstrations. "[121], Many socialists and intellectuals campaigned for a retrial without success. "[155], Defense attorneys William G. Thompson and Herbert B. Ehrmann stepped down from the case in August 1927 and were replaced by Arthur D. Amidst the Palmer Raids and the Red Scare of the 1920's, two Italian Anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti would be tried and convicted of armed robbery and murder. Author Francis Russell says in a new book about the case that a member of the anarchists' inner circle insisted that Sacco was guilty but . Parmenter, paymaster of a shoe factory, and Alessandro Berardelli, the guard accompanying him, in order to secure the payroll that they were carrying. Judge Thayer, though a sworn enemy of anarchists, warned the defense against bringing anarchism into the trial. He arrived in the United States in 1908. [66] According to the foreman of the Iver Johnson repair shop, Berardelli's revolver was given a repair tag with the number of 94765, and this number was recorded in the repair logbook with the statement "H. & R. revolver, .38-calibre, new hammer, repairing, half an hour". Over the following years, they were united by their advocacy for workers and. 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. Both Sacco and Vanzetti had previously fled to Mexico, changing their names in order to evade draft registration, a fact the prosecutor in their murder trial used to demonstrate their lack of patriotism and which they were not allowed to rebut. [69] After the trial, Capt. [53] Decades later, a lawyer who assisted Vahey in the defense said that the defense attorneys left the choice to Vanzetti, but warned him that it would be difficult to prevent the prosecution from using cross examination to challenge the credibility of his character based on his political beliefs. The prosecution matched bullets fired through the gun to those taken from one of the slain men. The defense attorneys considered resigning when they determined that the Committee was biased against the defendants, but some of the defendants' most prominent supporters, including Harvard Law Professor Felix Frankfurter and Judge Julian W. Mack of the U.S. [95] One motion, the so-called Hamilton-Proctor motion, involved the forensic ballistic evidence presented by the expert witnesses for the prosecution and defense. Sacco seemed to many observers more incensed about Vanzetti's conviction than his own and Vanzetti--unlike Sacco--continued to passionately proclaim his innocence right up to his execution. The names Sacco and Vanzetti are for the first time linked by officials to anarchist activities. (Health is in you!). At the time, Italian anarchistsin particular the Galleanist groupranked at the top of the United States government's list of dangerous enemies. In 1927, the Dedham jail chaplain wrote to the head of an investigatory commission that he had seen no evidence of guilt or remorse on Sacco's part. [185], The Judicial Council repeated its recommendations in 1937 and 1938. [130], In August 1927, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) called for a three-day nationwide walkout to protest the pending executions. Judge Thayer denied their motion in November 1924. [171], Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni, one of the most vocal supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti in Argentina, bombed the American embassy in Buenos Aires a few hours after the two men were sentenced to death. [203][204] However, at the time of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, Seibolt was only a patrolman, and did not work in the Boston Police ballistics department; Seibolt died in 1961 without corroborating Whipple's story. [197] Both The Nation and The New Republic refused to publish Tresca's revelation, which Eastman said occurred after he pressed Tresca for the truth about the two men's involvement in the shooting. He believes that their execution was a miscarriage of justice. After agreeing, he had remembered that he had been in jail on the day in question, so he could not testify.[200]. Berardelli's wife testified that she and her husband dropped off the gun for repair at the Iver Johnson Co. of Boston a few weeks before the murder. Although originally not under. "[133] The article made a reference to La Salute in voi!, the title of Galleani's bomb-making manual. But, whenever the heart of one of the upper class join with the exploited workers for the struggle of the right in the human feeling is the feel of an spontaneous attraction and brotherly love to one another. The four men knew each other well; Buda would later refer to Sacco and Vanzetti as "the best friends I had in America". [30][38] In 1921, a booby trap bomb mailed to the American ambassador in Paris exploded, wounding his valet. The idea to go to Mexico arose in the minds of several comrades who were alarmed by the idea that, remaining in the United States, they would be forcibly restrained from leaving for Europe, where the revolution that had burst out in Russia that February promised to spread all over the continent. Sacco testified that he had been in Boston applying for a passport at the Italian consulate. He explored Vanzetti's life and writings, as its focus, and mixed fictional characters with historical participants in the trials. The prosecution countered that the timing was driven by the schedules of different courts that handled the cases. and saying he would "get them good and proper". Three weeks later, Sacco and Vanzetti were . He supported the suppression of functionally violent radical speech, and incitement to commit violent acts. [210], In 1977, as the 50th anniversary of the executions approached, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis asked the Office of the Governor's Legal Counsel to report on "whether there are substantial grounds for believingat least in the light of the legal standards of todaythat Sacco and Vanzetti were unfairly convicted and executed" and to recommend appropriate action. As Michele Fazio writes in this week's Working-Class Perspectives (new window), while their story is not widely commemorated in the U.S., it reflects tensions around class, race, and politics that still reverberate in . 115ff. [25] When they were questioned, the pair denied any connection to anarchists. [85] Defense attorney Fred Moore drew on its funds for his investigations. The Winchester cartridge case was of a relatively obsolete cartridge loading, which had been discontinued from production some years earlier. In Braintree, Massachusetts on the corner of French Avenue and Pearl Street, a memorial marks the site of the murders. [30] While discussing the Braintree robbery, Buda told Poggi, "Sacco c'era" (Sacco was there). The clerk also remembered the date, April 15, 1920, but he refused to return to the United States to testify (a trip requiring two ship voyages), citing his ill health. 4. 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. [198] Others who had known Tresca confirmed that he had made similar statements to them,[198] but Tresca's daughter insisted her father never hinted at Sacco's guilt. On June 1, 1927, he appointed an Advisory Committee of three: President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, President Samuel Wesley Stratton of MIT, and Probate Judge Robert Grant. [20] According to anarchist writer Carlo Tresca, Elia changed his story later, stating that Federal agents had thrown Salsedo out the window. No one testified to seeing anyone take the gun, but Berardelli had an empty holster and no gun on him when he was found. Vanzetti wrote, "I will try to see Thayer death [sic] before his pronunciation of our sentence" and asked fellow anarchists for "revenge, revenge in our names and the names of our living and dead. Attorney William Thompson made an explicitly political attack: "A government which has come to value its own secrets more than it does the lives of its citizens has become a tyranny, whether you call it a republic, a monarchy, or anything else! [28], Vanzetti was being tried under Massachusetts' felony-murder rule, and the prosecution sought to implicate him in the Braintree robbery by the testimony of several witnesses: one testified that he was in the getaway car, and others who stated they saw Vanzetti in the vicinity of the Braintree factory around the time of the robbery. Analyzes how nicola sacco and bartolomeo vanzetti were convicted and executed for a series of crimes in bridgewater and south braintree. A review could defend a judge whose decisions were challenged and make it less likely that a governor would be drawn into a case. "[194] Whether Buda and Ferruccio Coacci, whose shared rental house contained the manufacturer's diagram of a .32 Savage automatic pistol (matching the .32 Savage pistol believed to have been used to shoot both Berardelli and Parmenter), had also participated in the Braintree robbery and murders would remain a matter of speculation. [115], The defense promptly appealed again to the Supreme Judicial Court and presented their arguments on January 27 and 28, 1927. The Secret Jewish History Of Sacco And Vanzetti, Executed Radicals. Nicola Sacco (died 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888-1927), Italian-born anarchists, became the subject of one of America's most celebrated controversies and the focus for much of the liberal and radical protest of the 1920s in the United States.. On April 15, 1920, two employees of a shoe factory were shot and killed in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Volume. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Radical pamphlets entitled "Plain Words" signed "The Anarchist Fighters" were found at the scene of this and several other midnight bombings that night. BOSTON (AP) _ Bartolomeo Vanzetti was innocent in the celebrated Sacco-Vanzetti anarchist case that has been argued over for 60 years, but codefendant Nicola Sacco, who was definitely guilty, refused to let him off the hook, says the author of a new study. Sacco and Vanzetti's plight was a cause clbrea sensational case that . His biographer allows that he was "not a good choice," not a legal scholar, and handicapped by age. In April 1920, in South Braintree . [101][104] The Court did not have the authority to review the trial record as a whole or to judge the fairness of the case. [61] A few years later, Vahey joined Katzmann's law firm. On Sunday, August 28, a two-hour funeral procession bearing huge floral tributes moved through the city. Sacco was next and walked quietly to the electric chair, then shouted "Farewell, mother. [201], In October 1961, ballistic tests were run with improved technology on Sacco's Colt semi-automatic pistol. Proctor signed an affidavit stating that he could not positively identify Sacco's .32 Colt as the only pistol that could have fired Bullet III. [citation needed], Authorities anticipated a possible bomb attack and had the Dedham courtroom outfitted with heavy, sliding steel doors and cast-iron shutters that were painted to appear wooden. [99] Judge Thayer began private hearings to determine who had tampered with the evidence by switching the barrel on Sacco's gun. [190][191] Though in general anarchist groups did not finance their militant activities through bank robberies, a fact noted by the investigators of the Bureau of Investigation, this was not true of the Galleanist group. "Sure", he replied. "Report to the Governor in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti," July 13, 1977, in Upton Sinclair, "Report to the Governor" (1977), pp. Although several historians of the case, including Francis Russell, have reported this story as factual, nowhere in transcripts of the private hearing on the gun barrel switch was this incident ever mentioned. Neither led a life of crime. They included Heywood Broun, Malcolm Cowley, Granville Hicks, and John Dos Passos. Settling in Massachusetts, Sacco worked as a shoe factory edge trimmer, while Vanzetti was a fishmonger. Many believed Sacco and Vanzetti guilty of only two things: foreign birth and radical beliefs. John W. Johnson has said that the authorities and jurors were influenced by strong anti-Italian prejudice and the prejudice against immigrants widely held at the time, especially in New England. [140], On May 10, a package bomb addressed to Governor Fuller was intercepted in the Boston post office. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. All appeals were denied by trial judge Webster Thayer and also later denied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. [183], Following the SJC's assertion that it could not order a new trial even if there was new evidence that "would justify a different verdict," a movement for "drastic reform" quickly took shape in Boston's legal community. Sacco was represented by Fred H. Moore and William J. Callahan. "[175], In 1928, Upton Sinclair published his novel Boston, an indictment of the American judicial system. While a few others singled out Sacco or Vanzetti as the men they had seen at the scene of the crime, far more witnesses, both prosecution and defense, could not identify them. Sacco had been at work on the day of the Bridgewater crimes but said that he had the day off on April 15the day of the Braintree crimesand was charged with those murders. The prosecution also brought out that both men had fled the draft by going to Mexico in 1917. The prosecution's firearms expert, Charles Van Amburgh, had re-examined the evidence in preparation for the motion. After the Committee hired William G. Thompson to manage the legal defense, he objected to its propaganda efforts. By 1926, the case had drawn worldwide attention. Fuller left the inauguration of his successor, he found a copy of the Letters thrust at him by someone in the crowd. 37. Once contacted in Italy, the clerk said he remembered Sacco because of the unusually large passport photo he presented. Its principal proposal addressed the SJC's right to review. Both wrote dozens of letters asserting their innocence, insisting they had been framed because they were anarchists. Salem Press Encyclopedia. At the funeral parlor, a wreath over the caskets announced In attesa l'ora della vendetta (Awaiting the hour of vengeance). Both men testified that they had been rounding up radical literature when apprehended, and that they had feared another government deportation raid. Following the private hearing on the gun barrel switch, Van Amburgh kept Sacco's gun in his house, where it remained until the Boston Globe did an expos in 1960.