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Selects: The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: How toy everybody.
0:02
Speaker 2: This is Chuck here the Stuff You Should Know Podcast,
0:04
Speaker 2: and it is Saturday. It's actually Wednesday in my real
0:08
Speaker 2: time world, but in the future it will be Saturday
0:10
Speaker 2: when you're listening to this, because it is my charge
0:13
Speaker 2: to deliver it to you. A classic Stuff you Should
0:16
Speaker 2: Know episode handpicked and curated by yours truly, and this
0:21
Speaker 2: week we're going with a pretty good history up from
0:24
Speaker 2: March twenty nineteen, the case of Seco and ven Zette.
0:33
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:43
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
0:46
Speaker 3: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Josh
0:50
Speaker 3: over there. So you put the three of us together there,
0:52
Speaker 3: and we're gonna get a little true crime history on
0:54
Speaker 3: you with the trial of Sacco and Benzetti.
1:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys, I mean a little backstory on I
1:05
Speaker 2: guess the time. We're talking about the nineteen twenties in
1:09
Speaker 2: the United States. We're talking about two gentlemen that were
1:15
Speaker 2: both anarchists, that were both Italian immigrants and both supposedly
1:23
Speaker 2: followers of this really notable anarchist named Luigi Galliani. Who
1:30
Speaker 2: this guy was sort of an anarchist leader. He put
1:34
Speaker 2: out anarchist rag he was called for violence. He has
1:39
Speaker 2: a history of authorizing like bombings, assassination attempts, like really
1:45
Speaker 2: tough stuff. And so this is who supposedly Saco and
1:50
Speaker 2: Vinzetti were, you know, I guess by association advocating advocating sure,
1:57
Speaker 2: advocating for this type of violence them as immigrant anarchists.
2:03
Speaker 3: Do you remember in our anarchism episode, Like during this period,
2:09
Speaker 3: in like a ten year period, anarchists assassinated like five
2:13
Speaker 3: or six major heads of state around the world, including
2:16
Speaker 3: McKinley in the United States. It was a big deal.
2:22
Speaker 3: And I mean there was also a struggle going on
2:25
Speaker 3: for the soul of America. Where we're going to be socialists,
2:28
Speaker 3: where we're going to be capitalists? Should we just go
2:30
Speaker 3: with anarchism. There was a lot of a lot of
2:37
Speaker 3: debate over you know, which which economy we should go with,
2:41
Speaker 3: or what what politics we should go with, And there
2:44
Speaker 3: was something of a red scare because communism was on
2:47
Speaker 3: the table too. There was a red scare at the
2:49
Speaker 3: time too. So it wasn't like the kind of time
2:51
Speaker 3: you would walk around like, yeah, I'm an anarchist, now
2:54
Speaker 3: get on board, you know. But and at the same time,
2:57
Speaker 3: if you weren't an anarchist, you're probably scared of our
2:59
Speaker 3: anarchists because they would bomb stuff and they were well
3:02
Speaker 3: known for it too.
3:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.
3:04
Speaker 2: So I mean this is not just the United States.
3:06
Speaker 2: Like all over the world there were political radicals that
3:11
Speaker 2: was violence from anarchy and riots, and like you said,
3:15
Speaker 2: people trying to take down like politicians or judges that
3:19
Speaker 2: were deporting, at least in the United States, deporting immigrant
3:22
Speaker 2: anarchists back to their home countries like as quickly as
3:25
Speaker 2: they could root them out.
3:27
Speaker 1: Basically.
3:29
Speaker 2: So this is sort of the stage in the early
3:32
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties. And I guess we should hop in the
3:35
Speaker 2: way Back machine.
3:36
Speaker 1: Oh yes, let's and head on over to bast In Town. Okay,
3:47
Speaker 1: that's Boston by the way.
3:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I know, Okay, it doesn't matter if I know.
3:51
Speaker 3: Just make sure the way Back Machine knows.
3:52
Speaker 1: Oh, the way Back Machine knows it can read my
3:54
Speaker 1: silly accents.
3:56
Speaker 3: So here we are. It's nineteen twenty around Boston. And
4:00
Speaker 3: actually we're not in Boston proper. We're about ten miles
4:03
Speaker 3: south in a little town of Braintree, Yeah.
4:06
Speaker 1: Which is these days would be Boston proper, so I
4:08
Speaker 1: mean you know more.
4:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's like the metro Boston area. Right. And
4:14
Speaker 3: Braintree was known as a shoe manufacturing center. It had
4:17
Speaker 3: more than one shoe company, which meant it was a
4:20
Speaker 3: shoe manufacturing center. And on this particular day in April
4:26
Speaker 3: of nineteen twenty, I think it was April fifteenth, right, correct,
4:30
Speaker 3: In Braintree, there was a dude named Shelley Neil who
4:34
Speaker 3: was an agent for the American Express Company. And the
4:39
Speaker 3: function I got of Shelley Neil was that he would
4:43
Speaker 3: he was kind of like a Brinks armed guard.
4:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, a courier for money.
4:51
Speaker 3: And not just some money, like a lot of money.
4:55
Speaker 3: On this day, from the nine eighteen AM train from Boston,
4:58
Speaker 3: Shelley Neil went to the brain Tree, the brain Tree
5:01
Speaker 3: train depot and picked up thirty thousand dollars thirty grand
5:06
Speaker 3: in cash, which is about four hundred and twenty seven
5:10
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in twenty eighteen money.
5:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did this every week.
5:15
Speaker 3: Right. He picked it up, and he took it back
5:18
Speaker 3: to his office, and he opened up a metal box
5:22
Speaker 3: and inside had two canvas bags and each was the
5:27
Speaker 3: payroll for one of the two shoe companies that he
5:31
Speaker 3: picked up money for, one of which was called Slater
5:34
Speaker 3: and Morel. I'm not sure what the other one was.
5:37
Speaker 3: Maybe it was three K. Definitely Slater and Morell it
5:40
Speaker 3: was one of them.
5:41
Speaker 1: The other was New Balance.
5:43
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, so Slater and Morell and New Balance were
5:47
Speaker 3: the ones whose payroll he had on him that day.
5:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's it's so amazing how that stuff used
5:52
Speaker 2: to work back then, Like how payroll was just so
5:55
Speaker 2: lo fi. It would literally be a huge amount of
5:58
Speaker 2: cash delivered it in a box that he would take
6:01
Speaker 2: to an office and someone would sit there and stuff
6:05
Speaker 2: cash into envelopes to then go to like a factory
6:09
Speaker 2: to pay off employees, not pay off, but.
6:12
Speaker 1: To pay right to pay them. There they're legit check
6:14
Speaker 1: from working.
6:15
Speaker 3: You didn't see nothing right this week.
6:18
Speaker 2: This is for all the shoe leather. So that's how
6:21
Speaker 2: it worked back then. And so this is what he
6:22
Speaker 2: was doing. It's just like any other Thursday. However, on
6:27
Speaker 2: this day, as he went in, he noticed a car
6:30
Speaker 2: out front that he had not seen before, this big
6:33
Speaker 2: car that had like these little curtains on the inside
6:36
Speaker 2: windows that were pulled shut and other people in Braintree
6:41
Speaker 2: later on would report seeing that car kind of tooling around,
6:45
Speaker 2: and they said, it looks like it's got like four
6:47
Speaker 2: or five men inside that look Italian and they're just
6:50
Speaker 2: sort of driving around brain Tree, which I guess to
6:53
Speaker 2: raise some suspicions.
6:56
Speaker 3: Sure, because again, if you were Italian, you may have
7:00
Speaker 3: been associated with anarchists who were associated with bomb throwing.
7:05
Speaker 3: So four or five of them kind of aimlessly driving
7:08
Speaker 3: around the town a brain Tree, this little tiny town,
7:11
Speaker 3: I'm sure aroused some suspicions, and definitely did because there
7:15
Speaker 3: were a lot of people who later on said that
7:17
Speaker 3: they saw this car driving around between nine am and
7:21
Speaker 3: twelve pm.
7:22
Speaker 2: That's right, so about three that afternoon. Here's what happened next.
7:27
Speaker 2: For payroll, these people had to get these envelopes, so
7:30
Speaker 2: what's known as a paymaster. And this is also sort
7:33
Speaker 2: of part of the arm guard thing because the paymaster
7:37
Speaker 2: a has a gun and then has a guard with
7:41
Speaker 2: a gun. This guy's name was Freddie Parminter and the
7:45
Speaker 2: guard was Alessandro Erredelli. And so they stop by, they
7:50
Speaker 2: pick up all these envelopes. They're going down to the factory.
7:53
Speaker 2: They're going to pay everybody, and all of a sudden,
7:56
Speaker 2: bam bam, bam bam, gunfire and mayhem ensues.
8:03
Speaker 3: I didn't realize there's going to be special effects in
8:05
Speaker 3: this episode, So you did, man, it has been brought it.
8:12
Speaker 3: So these guys are on Pearl Street and when these
8:15
Speaker 3: shots suddenly just ring out and the first guy's hit,
8:20
Speaker 3: Barredelli's hit and he goes down. I believe it was
8:24
Speaker 3: Barredelli who was hit first. Oh no, he wasn't hit.
8:28
Speaker 3: It was Parmenter who was hit. Barredelli is on the
8:31
Speaker 3: ground and he has lost his gun, and he's being
8:36
Speaker 3: approached by a man with a gun on him, and
8:39
Speaker 3: Barredelli apparently has begged for his life to no avail.
8:42
Speaker 3: The man shoots him in the chest at least once,
8:45
Speaker 3: and the bullet punctures his lungs, one of his major
8:49
Speaker 3: arteries to his heart, and then lodges itself and its
8:53
Speaker 3: hip to be fished out later on by a corner
8:57
Speaker 3: and used in the case against Ssacho and van z Eddie.
9:01
Speaker 3: The other guy, parman or the paymaster, he gets hit
9:04
Speaker 3: a few times, staggers across the street and collapses. And
9:10
Speaker 3: this car, a blue touring car, which is you know,
9:13
Speaker 3: a big sedan that you would think of today like
9:16
Speaker 3: a touring. We'll call it a Lincoln town car, even
9:18
Speaker 3: though it's not at all what it was. That blue
9:21
Speaker 3: car that had been seen driving around right, Okay, that's
9:25
Speaker 3: another way to put it. It was abu. Yeah, but
9:28
Speaker 3: the same one that had been seen driving slowly around
9:31
Speaker 3: Braintree all morning suddenly pulls up and the guys who
9:34
Speaker 3: had shot these two men and taken the money about
9:38
Speaker 3: fifteen thousand dollars hopped in and that drove off and
9:43
Speaker 3: everyone lost sight of it.
9:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, and very importantly, the man who shot Baradelli had
9:48
Speaker 2: a hat a felt cap on, right, So just remember
9:52
Speaker 2: that little fact. There were eyewitnesses all over the place.
9:56
Speaker 2: It's not like no one saw this happen. Like dozens
9:59
Speaker 2: of people saw this.
10:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a daring daylight robbery at three o'clock
10:04
Speaker 3: in the afternoon.
10:05
Speaker 2: Daring do right man named Jimmy Bostock was one of
10:09
Speaker 2: the witnesses. Apparently, Bearadelli like died in his arms, and
10:13
Speaker 2: like all people in the nineteen twenties didn't know any better,
10:17
Speaker 2: he immediately started messing with a crime scene, started picking
10:20
Speaker 2: up gun shells.
10:22
Speaker 1: Another guy came.
10:23
Speaker 2: By and picked up the hat, and you know, they
10:26
Speaker 2: just didn't know any better at the time, I.
10:28
Speaker 3: Guess, right, So this crime scene has been totally messed up.
10:34
Speaker 3: But the cops show up because again, this is a
10:36
Speaker 3: big deal. This is a small town and something close
10:40
Speaker 3: to two hundred and twenty thousand dollars has just been
10:43
Speaker 3: stolen and two men murdered for it in this little,
10:46
Speaker 3: tiny town. So it's a big deal. And the cops
10:49
Speaker 3: showed up, and probably the first thing they said was anarchists.
10:53
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll bet that's kind of what they would say,
10:57
Speaker 3: I think at the time.
10:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, should we take a break?
11:02
Speaker 3: Geez?
11:02
Speaker 1: Okay already, yeah, I think so.
11:04
Speaker 2: I mean this falls into uh acts and that's definitely
11:07
Speaker 2: act one. Okay, all right, so dead men in the street.
11:11
Speaker 2: The cops are on the scene.
11:14
Speaker 4: Message and and scene and shot.
11:38
Speaker 3: Shot? Is it and scene or end scene?
11:45
Speaker 1: Chuck, We've talked about this a lot. And scene.
11:51
Speaker 3: En scene? Nope, because it makes sense, you know, you
11:55
Speaker 3: do in the.
11:55
Speaker 1: Scene, right, So by saying and scene.
12:01
Speaker 3: So the cops had shown up, they're investigating the place.
12:06
Speaker 3: They're not really finding anything aside from what the witnesses
12:11
Speaker 3: have already kind of gathered up and are now holding
12:13
Speaker 3: out to them in their outstretched palms, like, here's your evidence, Copper.
12:19
Speaker 1: But the.
12:21
Speaker 3: Cars searched for all over and it's not found. It
12:25
Speaker 3: just totally disappears for a couple of days, and it
12:32
Speaker 3: turns up a couple of days later in the woods,
12:34
Speaker 3: I believe, south of Braintree, in a place called Bridgewater,
12:38
Speaker 3: which is a little even further south from Boston. I
12:41
Speaker 3: think it's another like ten or so miles down south
12:45
Speaker 3: from Braintree, right.
12:47
Speaker 2: I think Bridgewater only had seven dunkin Donuts, so it
12:50
Speaker 2: was a small town, right.
12:52
Speaker 3: And so remember when I said the cops were probably
12:55
Speaker 3: like anarchists. I knew it. There was another daylight robbery
13:00
Speaker 3: of payroll, and I found somewhere that it said it
13:03
Speaker 3: was successful. I found somewhere else that it was unsuccessful.
13:07
Speaker 3: But both of them agreed there had been no loss
13:09
Speaker 3: of life whatsoever. But it was similar enough, and it
13:12
Speaker 3: had happened like two years or a year before. It
13:16
Speaker 3: was similar enough that the cops immediately thought of the
13:20
Speaker 3: people they'd been thinking of for this, for this earlier crime.
13:23
Speaker 3: They thought, this is clearly the work of the same people.
13:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when they found this car in the woods.
13:30
Speaker 2: Very importantly, the license plates had been ripped off, and
13:35
Speaker 2: there were other tire tracks nearby, so it seemed pretty
13:38
Speaker 2: obvious that, you know, they ditched this car get in
13:43
Speaker 2: another one. The officer on the scene said, Maddie, I
13:46
Speaker 2: think this is a car from the brain Tree meta.
13:50
Speaker 3: All I can think of is Jeremy Renner in the town. Sure,
13:55
Speaker 3: that's that's what I think of when I think Boston.
13:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone thinks of that. So another thing's going on
14:03
Speaker 2: in parallel, so we need to set this up. Also,
14:07
Speaker 2: on April fifteenth, which is the day of those maritas,
14:11
Speaker 2: there was a guy named Ferruccio Cocchi and he lived
14:16
Speaker 2: in Bridgewater.
14:17
Speaker 1: He was an anarchist.
14:19
Speaker 2: He was being deported, so he quits his job, you know,
14:22
Speaker 2: to be deported, does not show up to be deported.
14:26
Speaker 2: He calls the Immigration service after that on the sixteenth
14:29
Speaker 2: and said, uh, you know, my wife is as sick
14:32
Speaker 2: and so I have to tend to her.
14:34
Speaker 1: And they said, am I going to get in trouble
14:37
Speaker 1: for that? Now?
14:38
Speaker 3: No, you won't coet control. Everybody loves your Italian accent.
14:40
Speaker 1: Please tell me you can still do an Italian accent.
14:42
Speaker 3: Right, I think, so we're going to find out after
14:45
Speaker 3: this episode.
14:47
Speaker 1: Because I'm just doing the accent.
14:49
Speaker 2: Sure, not saying like they're all mobsters, because like, you know,
14:52
Speaker 2: the Sopranos got in trouble for that.
14:55
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, did they did they say all Italians are mobsters?
14:59
Speaker 2: No, but I mean I remember there just being hay
15:01
Speaker 2: about from the Italian American community, like why is it
15:04
Speaker 2: every time in movies were just mobsters.
15:07
Speaker 3: Oh I could see that, you know, sure, I mean
15:10
Speaker 3: I could see them. Yeah, but these aren't even mobster now.
15:12
Speaker 1: They're anarchists.
15:14
Speaker 3: Right.
15:14
Speaker 2: So he's being deported, he doesn't go. He calls them
15:17
Speaker 2: and says, my wife is sick, and they said, fine,
15:20
Speaker 2: we're going to check out your story. Though they found
15:22
Speaker 2: that his wife was not sick, and that all of
15:25
Speaker 2: a sudden he's saying, okay, it's fine. Actually I'm really
15:28
Speaker 2: ready to go, Like now.
15:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, come on, come on, can you get.
15:31
Speaker 2: Me out of the country quickly? And they're like, well,
15:33
Speaker 2: you should probably like leave some money with your wife.
15:35
Speaker 2: He's like, no, no, no, she's good.
15:37
Speaker 3: Let's just go.
15:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they're like, hmm, all right, this is
15:40
Speaker 1: a little odd, So maybe he's involved.
15:44
Speaker 3: Can I can. I paint the scene a little bit, though.
15:46
Speaker 3: I want to go back over and highlight two things
15:48
Speaker 3: that you've mentioned so far. Sure, One, this is a
15:51
Speaker 3: time where to cover up a crime, all you had
15:55
Speaker 3: to do was remove the license plates on the car
15:57
Speaker 3: you ditched. That was it. You just confounded the forever.
16:00
Speaker 1: Well, that helped.
16:02
Speaker 3: And then secondly, if you were to be deported, all
16:06
Speaker 3: you had to do is not show up, but then
16:07
Speaker 3: call him the next day and say your wife was sick,
16:09
Speaker 3: and Immigration and Naturalization would say, sure, no problem.
16:14
Speaker 1: Well no were they investigated immediately.
16:17
Speaker 3: Okay, But I'm just saying, like this is things have changed, attack,
16:21
Speaker 3: I think, is what I'm trying to say. Hold on,
16:22
Speaker 3: let me let me see, Josh, what are you say
16:24
Speaker 3: You're trying to say that, Yeah, I'm trying to say that. Okay, Yes,
16:27
Speaker 3: that's exactly what I'm trying to say.
16:29
Speaker 2: It's weird because you looked on both of your shoulders
16:32
Speaker 2: at the devil and the angel.
16:34
Speaker 3: They won't shut up, Chuck, so.
16:39
Speaker 2: They summarize, you know, it's all coming together. This guy's
16:43
Speaker 2: acting weird. Well, he's also sixteenth.
16:46
Speaker 3: He's also took one of those people that they liked
16:48
Speaker 3: for that that robbery the year before, which is one
16:51
Speaker 3: of the reasons why they they had their intent up
16:54
Speaker 3: about this guy in the first place.
16:56
Speaker 1: Right, so he's a suspect.
16:58
Speaker 2: The co ops go to specifically, Michael Stewart, police chief, said,
17:03
Speaker 2: I'm going to go back to his house. I'm going
17:05
Speaker 2: to see what else I can find out from this guy.
17:08
Speaker 2: He shows up and there's a dude there named Mike Boda.
17:11
Speaker 2: He says, yeah, sure, you can look around. You can
17:13
Speaker 2: look in the house, go back and look in the garage.
17:16
Speaker 2: Two car garage shed, no problem. I usually have my
17:20
Speaker 2: car there. It's an Overland, but it's in the shop
17:22
Speaker 2: getting repaired. And Stewart goes out there and it's like,
17:26
Speaker 2: all right, so here's where the Overland parks. But there's
17:29
Speaker 2: some really big tire tracks next to the Overland and
17:33
Speaker 2: the second stall that looked like they would probably fit
17:36
Speaker 2: this large buick that was so mysteriously kind of tooling
17:39
Speaker 2: around around the time of this murder.
17:41
Speaker 3: Right, and this cop Stuart goes, hmm, I'm going to
17:47
Speaker 3: make a mental note of that, and that's what he did.
17:51
Speaker 3: He asked about the other car. I don't know if
17:55
Speaker 3: you said, Boda said, that his other car was at
17:57
Speaker 3: the garage being repaired. Correct, So so Stuart, who's the
18:02
Speaker 3: police chief of Bridge Order. I think I get the
18:04
Speaker 3: impression that was kind of new. There was another one
18:06
Speaker 3: who kind of factors into this case tangentially later on,
18:10
Speaker 3: who is the former police chief. So I get the
18:12
Speaker 3: impression that Michael Stewart was fairly new, but he's investigating
18:15
Speaker 3: this case. He likes Kowachi. He's now met Mike Boda,
18:19
Speaker 3: who is suspicious of too. He goes back to talk
18:22
Speaker 3: to Boda some more to this place where Koachi lived
18:25
Speaker 3: as Boda's roommate, I guess away from his wife and kids.
18:28
Speaker 3: I'm not sure why Kowachi was running this place.
18:31
Speaker 1: Are we going with Kai? Now?
18:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it. I took Italian in
18:34
Speaker 3: college and I'm almost one hundred percent sure it's Kowachi.
18:37
Speaker 1: Okay.
18:37
Speaker 3: Do you remember from our Dyslexi episode where Italian is
18:40
Speaker 3: extremely easy to learn because there's just very few ways
18:44
Speaker 3: to write things, to write the phone memes. One of
18:48
Speaker 3: the reasons it is easy is because it's kind of
18:50
Speaker 3: like Polish. It's in most cases it's actually easier than Polish,
18:54
Speaker 3: but it's pronounced just like it's spelled, except for the
18:57
Speaker 3: ci as a sound. Okay, so kowa chi okay, okay,
19:02
Speaker 3: all right, that was your Italian lesson.
19:06
Speaker 1: I appreciate that after all these years.
19:08
Speaker 3: The other little ushuck. Not all Italians or Italian Americans
19:12
Speaker 3: or mobsters. That's your other Italian lesson. No, okay, So.
19:16
Speaker 2: I've known a bunch of Italians Italian Americans and none
19:19
Speaker 2: of them were mobsters.
19:20
Speaker 3: Damn, there you go. So police Chief Stewart goes back
19:26
Speaker 3: to talk to Boda, and things get really suspicious too,
19:29
Speaker 3: don't they, Because he shows up and knocks on the
19:32
Speaker 3: door and the door just swings open onto an empty apartment.
19:37
Speaker 3: And Stuart spends about fifteen minutes going Bda, mister Bona, Hello,
19:42
Speaker 3: mister Boda, and he finally takes a couple of steps
19:44
Speaker 3: in and realizes Boda's gone.
19:46
Speaker 1: That's right.
19:47
Speaker 2: So he he goes by the garage where the guy
19:50
Speaker 2: said that his car was in the shop, goes over there.
19:53
Speaker 2: The car is still there, so that checked out, and
19:56
Speaker 2: he told the owner his name was Simon Johnson. He said, hey,
19:59
Speaker 2: if anyone comes to get this car, just give us
20:02
Speaker 2: a call. And the guy says, mental note, call cops
20:06
Speaker 2: if someone comes.
20:07
Speaker 1: To get this car.
20:08
Speaker 3: Jeremy Renner.
20:10
Speaker 2: So on May fifth, this is what. A couple of
20:13
Speaker 2: weeks later, a man comes to the door and this
20:16
Speaker 2: is it. I believe this is it says nine o'clock.
20:19
Speaker 2: But that's at night, right.
20:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't tell it first, and then it feels
20:24
Speaker 3: like night. Yeah. It says also that the wife is
20:27
Speaker 3: illuminated by a motorcycle headlights. Yeah, I guess at night.
20:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so it's and let's it's very dark
20:33
Speaker 2: in the morning, right, So at nine o'clock at night,
20:36
Speaker 2: this guy shows up to the owners of the garage's door,
20:42
Speaker 2: knocks on the door. His young wife answers. The guy
20:46
Speaker 2: says that he's Mike Boda. I'm here to pick up
20:49
Speaker 2: my car that ovaland over there, and the owner of
20:54
Speaker 2: the garage comes and tells his wife, and he says,
20:56
Speaker 2: go call the police. You know, we don't have a phone.
20:58
Speaker 2: Go next door, call the cops. She leaves out the
21:01
Speaker 2: back door and is caught, Like you said, there's this
21:03
Speaker 2: motorcycle sitting outside. She also sees with a side car,
21:07
Speaker 2: also sees a couple of guys that she said were
21:11
Speaker 2: speaking Italian kind of hanging around. So it's all sort
21:14
Speaker 2: of adding up at this point to something fishy.
21:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess the fact that that Simon Johnson,
21:24
Speaker 3: the shop owner or the mechanic was stalling made Boda
21:28
Speaker 3: a little uneasy. Sure, so he took off without the car, right.
21:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, he jumped in the sidecar and was out of there.
21:37
Speaker 3: Okay, here's where things get super critical. For a pair
21:40
Speaker 3: of guys named Saco and Vanzetti, there were two other
21:44
Speaker 3: those two other guys that Ruth Johnson, Simon Johnson, the
21:47
Speaker 3: mechanic's wife said she saw hanging out waiting for Mike
21:53
Speaker 3: Boda to get his car. They split two. Now they're
21:56
Speaker 3: suddenly like on foot. There's no motorcycle or car for them,
22:00
Speaker 3: so they have to leave on foot. So they walk
22:01
Speaker 3: over toward the direction of the Bridgewater rail line, and
22:06
Speaker 3: she says that she saw them get on the train
22:08
Speaker 3: or at least go toward the train station or another railcar.
22:12
Speaker 3: So I think it might have been like a street
22:14
Speaker 3: car kind of thing. So somehow Chief Stewart gets word
22:19
Speaker 3: of this. I think he shows up. He gets word
22:22
Speaker 3: of this, and he calls the police chief in the
22:27
Speaker 3: next town over in Brockton and says, hey, there's going
22:30
Speaker 3: to be a pair of Italian guys on the street
22:33
Speaker 3: car when the streetcar stops and or the railcar stops
22:37
Speaker 3: in your town. Get them. They are wanted for questioning
22:40
Speaker 3: in a murder robbery. And so the Brockton police board
22:44
Speaker 3: the train when it arrives in Brockton, and there are
22:47
Speaker 3: two Italian men sitting there. And the two men's names
22:50
Speaker 3: were Nicolasaco and Bartolomeo Venzetti, and they just happen to
22:55
Speaker 3: be Italian, and they just happen to be anarchists, and
22:58
Speaker 3: they both happen to be strapped when the cop came
23:00
Speaker 3: on the rail car and started asking them questions.
23:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, Saco had a thirty two cult and Van City
23:08
Speaker 2: had a thirty eight Harrington and Richardson, which very uniquely
23:14
Speaker 2: had five.
23:17
Speaker 1: Chambers instead of six.
23:19
Speaker 3: It's very unusual, seems unique.
23:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't even know how that works.
23:23
Speaker 2: I would have to see this kind of revolver because
23:25
Speaker 2: six is a nice even number for a round thing.
23:28
Speaker 1: I don't get it.
23:29
Speaker 3: But yeah, no one ever says like, don't point that
23:32
Speaker 3: five shooter at me. It's always six shooter, you know. Yeah,
23:37
Speaker 3: that's weird, although maybe maybe a five shooters what they're
23:39
Speaker 3: talking about when they call it a pea shooter.
23:42
Speaker 1: No, let's not what they mean.
23:43
Speaker 2: But it was the nineteen twenties and there were all
23:45
Speaker 2: kinds of weird guns back.
23:46
Speaker 3: Then, right, Okay, So these two Italian immigrants who were
23:52
Speaker 3: anarchists and who were carrying guns had one other big problem.
23:57
Speaker 3: They were giving some pretty weak and ever evolving stories
24:03
Speaker 3: an answer to the questions that the cops are asking them.
24:06
Speaker 3: They get hauled into the police station I believe in
24:08
Speaker 3: Bridgewater or Braintree. Do you know which one it was?
24:12
Speaker 3: I think it was. I think it was Braintree. Actually
24:14
Speaker 3: they got taken to Braintree because it was Stuart who
24:17
Speaker 3: was investigating them. So they get taken to Braintree and
24:20
Speaker 3: police Chief Stewart questions them. But then so too does
24:24
Speaker 3: the chief prosecutor for the area, a guy named Frederick Katzman,
24:30
Speaker 3: who would play an enormous role in this case as well.
24:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was the DA and I think the
24:37
Speaker 2: key fact that really sold him was he found out
24:40
Speaker 2: that on April fifteenth, on the day of these murders,
24:42
Speaker 2: Sokka was not at work at the three K shoe factory,
24:47
Speaker 2: and he said, you know what, that's enough for me.
24:51
Speaker 2: We have no real evidence or anything else, but you
24:55
Speaker 2: are Italian Italian American anarchists. You weren't work that day,
25:01
Speaker 2: so let's go ahead and haul you in here.
25:03
Speaker 3: Right, Because yeah, we left off the fact that they
25:05
Speaker 3: found like anarchist pamphlets on the on the men when
25:09
Speaker 3: they when they took them off the train. So there
25:11
Speaker 3: was a lot against them going against them at this
25:16
Speaker 3: point just from the outside of this, but you kind
25:19
Speaker 3: of touched on it. All of this is very very circumstantial.
25:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, So right away the anarchists of the area come
25:29
Speaker 2: on board. They formed the Saco Vinsetti Defense Committee, and
25:34
Speaker 2: one of their leaders, one of the anarchist leaders in
25:36
Speaker 2: the area named Carlo Tresca, said all right, let's hire
25:39
Speaker 2: this this lawyer from California and this guy's a radical.
25:43
Speaker 2: He's going to lead our defense and more comes on board.
25:47
Speaker 2: Fred Moran's like, here's the way we're going to do
25:49
Speaker 2: this is let's like let's get everyone worked up, like
25:53
Speaker 2: not only in this area but all over the world.
25:56
Speaker 2: Let's get radicals and let's get anarchists, and let's get
26:00
Speaker 2: at union members let's paint these guys is just like
26:03
Speaker 2: hard working, blue collar union dudes, and let's get people
26:06
Speaker 2: all over the world paying attention to what's going on
26:09
Speaker 2: over here.
26:10
Speaker 3: Yes, which is a very common tactic still in use today.
26:14
Speaker 3: Just turn public sentiment against the government and the prosecutors
26:19
Speaker 3: in their case and basically paint it like Socco and
26:22
Speaker 3: VINZEEDI where just a couple of normal dudes who are
26:25
Speaker 3: being railroaded for political reasons and probably out of a
26:29
Speaker 3: certain amount of xenophobia as well.
26:32
Speaker 1: Sure, so let's take a break.
26:35
Speaker 2: The trial opens in May of nineteen twenty one with
26:38
Speaker 2: Judge Webster theayer, and we'll be back with what happens
26:42
Speaker 2: next right after.
26:42
Speaker 3: This shot sho check. Before we get back into I
27:11
Speaker 3: want to give a shout out to Doug Linder. Douglas Linder,
27:13
Speaker 3: who's a law professor and historian who wrote a paper
27:16
Speaker 3: that we used as a source. So it was pretty
27:18
Speaker 3: pretty handy, pretty good stuff.
27:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, law professors.
27:22
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of good information out here
27:23
Speaker 2: on this, but you get a law professor on the
27:27
Speaker 2: on the typewriter and they're going to condense it into
27:30
Speaker 2: a nice, readable, workable document.
27:33
Speaker 3: That's right.
27:34
Speaker 1: That's what they do. They're very good at that. Yes,
27:37
Speaker 1: So all right, trials underway.
27:40
Speaker 2: Like I said before, Judge Webster, there proceeds over this trial. Katsman,
27:47
Speaker 2: that's the DA that's prosecuting. He has got a lot
27:50
Speaker 2: of circumstantial evidence, he has eyewitnesses, but not really a
27:54
Speaker 2: lot of hard.
27:55
Speaker 1: Evidence going on.
27:57
Speaker 2: Right, It's sort of a tough case for him to
28:00
Speaker 2: like solidly prove.
28:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that was another reason why Fred Moore was
28:05
Speaker 3: able to run around drumming up public sentiment not just
28:08
Speaker 3: in the United States or even just Boston or Massachusetts,
28:11
Speaker 3: but around the world that that Socco and Vanzetti were
28:17
Speaker 3: being railroaded. Is that the evidence against them was really,
28:21
Speaker 3: really weak. The eyewitness testimony was super if you if
28:28
Speaker 3: you had the luxury like historians like Douglas Linder have
28:31
Speaker 3: had to compare, you know, the original notes or the
28:36
Speaker 3: original statements made by eyewitnesses against the the types of
28:42
Speaker 3: statements they made in court. The statements they made in
28:45
Speaker 3: court were much more certain, much more sure. And this
28:48
Speaker 3: was after a year of reading the newspaper and being
28:51
Speaker 3: exposed to pictures of Socco and Vanzetti. So when they
28:54
Speaker 3: see Socco and Vanzetti in the courtroom, they're like, yes,
28:56
Speaker 3: I saw that man holding that gun and he was
29:00
Speaker 3: one that pulled the trigger. The thing is, there was
29:02
Speaker 3: not one witness, but there were witnesses who placed both
29:06
Speaker 3: of them at the crime scene or at least in
29:08
Speaker 3: the buick around town on that day. But there was
29:12
Speaker 3: not one single witness who placed both of them there.
29:14
Speaker 3: That's just the eyewitnesses. They also had the other big
29:18
Speaker 3: piece of circumstantial evidence were the guns that they were
29:21
Speaker 3: found with, and they used ballistic experts to come in
29:25
Speaker 3: and say, yes, this bullet came from this gun. But
29:29
Speaker 3: again looking at it with history, the benefit of history,
29:34
Speaker 3: this was at a time when ballistics comparison was just
29:38
Speaker 3: beginning to come around, and the people that they employed
29:42
Speaker 3: as ballistics experts were self taught amateurs who just basically
29:45
Speaker 3: had an interest in this field, were in no way,
29:47
Speaker 3: shape or form genuine experts, because you could make a
29:50
Speaker 3: case there was no such thing as a genuine ballistics
29:53
Speaker 3: comparison expert at the time. It was too new as
29:56
Speaker 3: far as forensic goes.
29:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, so on the defense side, immediately they say those
30:02
Speaker 2: guys weren't even in Braintree. SOCCO was in Boston, Vancetti
30:08
Speaker 2: was in Plymouth, both sides. It's interesting to look back
30:12
Speaker 2: on this trial because both the prosecution and the defense
30:16
Speaker 2: were like being very hinky with the truth themselves, influencing
30:21
Speaker 2: people on both sides to testify kind.
30:23
Speaker 1: Of behind the scenes.
30:26
Speaker 2: Fred Moore, the defense attorney, trotted out a bunch of
30:28
Speaker 2: witnesses that say, no, like Vanzetti was definitely in Plymouth,
30:32
Speaker 2: he's a fishmonger, bought fish from him. And then later
30:35
Speaker 2: on it was found out that some of these people,
30:37
Speaker 2: well all of them basically were friends of his. And
30:40
Speaker 2: then some of the people came out even later and said, yeah,
30:42
Speaker 2: he kind of told me to say this, But that
30:44
Speaker 2: happened on the prosecution side too.
30:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. Supposedly later on they would allege that the prosecutor, Catsman,
30:55
Speaker 3: and the chief or the lead ballistics or the star
30:59
Speaker 3: ballistics witness had kind of coordinated the answer that the
31:03
Speaker 3: ballistics witness would give at trial, and that it would
31:06
Speaker 3: be much more stronger and much much more certain than
31:12
Speaker 3: than the actual conclusion he came to prior to the
31:15
Speaker 3: trial based on his original ballistics tests.
31:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's there's hinkiness on both sides. Katzman has
31:22
Speaker 2: this hat. And remember one of the gunmen definitely had
31:25
Speaker 2: on a gray cap, so he has this great cap.
31:29
Speaker 2: He said, this is Saco's. He gets together with an
31:31
Speaker 2: expert behind the scenes and says and again with this
31:34
Speaker 2: like like you were saying, the sort of the beginnings
31:37
Speaker 2: of not ballistics in.
31:38
Speaker 1: This case, but just forensics, any kind of forensics. Yeah.
31:43
Speaker 2: He looked at the hairs in the hat, got a
31:46
Speaker 2: hair from Soco, and Soco was like, oh that hurt.
31:49
Speaker 2: And he compared him and he said, yeah, these hairs
31:53
Speaker 2: are identical. I'm telling you, they're the same hairs. But
31:56
Speaker 2: Catzman was like, you know what, I don't want to
31:59
Speaker 2: go to court and present this because this stuff is
32:02
Speaker 2: all new. They're going to paint you as unreliable because
32:06
Speaker 2: no one knows anything about hair comparison yet. So instead
32:09
Speaker 2: of doing that, he goes to the boss of the
32:12
Speaker 2: shoe factory, George Kelly, and was like, have you seen
32:16
Speaker 2: this hat before? And Kelly said, yes, that's Soaco's hat.
32:20
Speaker 2: I've seen him wear that hat and the hole in
32:23
Speaker 2: it is from the nail that he hangs it on
32:26
Speaker 2: every day, when in fact that was definitely not the case.
32:29
Speaker 3: No, that earlier the previous police chief later testified that
32:33
Speaker 3: he had actually accidentally punched the hole in the hat
32:36
Speaker 3: while he was examining it for any kind of identifying marks.
32:40
Speaker 1: Which is weird.
32:41
Speaker 3: He also testified that the hat had a very questionable providence,
32:46
Speaker 3: that it hadn't come into police custody for thirty hours
32:50
Speaker 3: after the crime, so he couldn't say he as far
32:54
Speaker 3: as he knew, it was not found at the crime scene,
32:56
Speaker 3: that it hadn't been secured by the police. He didn't
32:59
Speaker 3: know exactly where it came from. And then finally I
33:02
Speaker 3: read elsewhere in a final twist, and to me if
33:05
Speaker 3: this sounds familiar, but they asked Sacho to put the
33:09
Speaker 3: hat on in court and it was too small for
33:12
Speaker 3: his head. It didn't fit.
33:13
Speaker 1: You must acquit. They did not acquit though, Well, he
33:17
Speaker 1: just ruined it.
33:18
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sorry, Sorry everybody. It's funny. There's probably a
33:21
Speaker 3: lot of people out there who have no idea how
33:23
Speaker 3: this is going to turn out, because if you search
33:25
Speaker 3: on Google just Socco and Vanzetti. One of the suggested
33:28
Speaker 3: questions is what is Soacho and Vanzetti? Not who what?
33:35
Speaker 1: It's a nice apartee, right, so.
33:40
Speaker 2: I don't know if we mentioned, but like Soco had
33:43
Speaker 2: definitely much more evidence against him, even if it was
33:46
Speaker 2: circumstantial than Venzetti did.
33:49
Speaker 3: Eyewitnesses. Yeah, for sure.
33:51
Speaker 2: So Vanzetti is has the thinnest case against him, but
33:57
Speaker 2: he like he lied to the cops he had that, remember,
34:01
Speaker 2: and on the stand he said, yeah, actually I got
34:04
Speaker 2: that gun just a few days ago.
34:06
Speaker 1: I bought it for four or five bucks.
34:08
Speaker 2: And they're like, well, you told us that you bought
34:10
Speaker 2: it four or five years ago for eighteen dollars, right,
34:13
Speaker 2: you said there were six chambers in it and only
34:16
Speaker 2: had five.
34:18
Speaker 1: And what's going on here? You're lying, Jimmy Vanzetti.
34:21
Speaker 3: The whole thing with the gun, I don't know if
34:23
Speaker 3: we've said or not yet. The reason why the gun
34:25
Speaker 3: was so suspicious and was basically like these central piece
34:28
Speaker 3: of evidence used against Vanzetti is that it was supposedly
34:34
Speaker 3: the exact same kind of gun that Alessandro Barredelli had
34:38
Speaker 3: on and when he was killed. Yeah, So the whole
34:41
Speaker 3: idea was that Vanzetti had been at the at least
34:45
Speaker 3: at the crime seeing, if not one of the killers,
34:48
Speaker 3: who had taken Barredelli's gun after he had killed him
34:51
Speaker 3: and made off with it, which would explain why he
34:53
Speaker 3: wasn't very familiar with the gun and how many chambers
34:55
Speaker 3: it had and didn't have a very solid story about
34:58
Speaker 3: where he'd gotten it. How long you owned it too.
35:01
Speaker 3: That was the implication of the whole thing, and that
35:03
Speaker 3: was basically the That was it. That was the crux
35:07
Speaker 3: of the prosecution's case against Vanzetti. Fanzetti's big problem was
35:11
Speaker 3: he was sitting next to Saco when Soco got taken
35:14
Speaker 3: off the train, and they had a lot more of
35:16
Speaker 3: Soco and they were tried together rather than separately.
35:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, in Soco, that ballistics evidence made a big, big
35:23
Speaker 2: difference in the trial because they found out for sure
35:27
Speaker 2: that that bullet that killed Bearadelli was definitely fired from
35:31
Speaker 2: a cult automatic and your cult automatic is what they alleged, right,
35:38
Speaker 2: And well, we'll hold on to that last bit until later.
35:42
Speaker 2: But about what was found out later about that, But
35:47
Speaker 2: I think even some of the jurors said that that
35:49
Speaker 2: was really some of the most compelling evidence against Socco
35:53
Speaker 2: for us in deciding this case.
35:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, like they're listening to forensic evidence from
35:58
Speaker 3: a field that's still in the very and it's cradle
36:03
Speaker 3: from testimony given by people who are not experts. But
36:06
Speaker 3: that was, like you said, the juror said, was that
36:09
Speaker 3: was it for me? That was what convinced me was
36:11
Speaker 3: the ballistics of it.
36:12
Speaker 2: It's basically so they go to jury and they go
36:18
Speaker 2: to deliberations and just five and half five and a
36:21
Speaker 2: half hours later the jury said guilty is charged.
36:26
Speaker 3: About six weeks after the trial started, I believe.
36:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was a big deal, you know, like
36:31
Speaker 2: Saco's crying out I'm innocent and Italian in the court.
36:36
Speaker 2: There were like protests all over the world, like South America, France, Lisbon.
36:44
Speaker 2: It's just crazy how much this at the time in
36:47
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties became an international thing and basically they
36:52
Speaker 2: were due for the electric chair. So people all over
36:55
Speaker 2: the world were protesting, that were bombings.
36:58
Speaker 1: It was nuts.
37:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is I mean, this is a time when
37:02
Speaker 3: labor was unionized, so you could arouse the sympathy of
37:06
Speaker 3: a lot of people at once by going to the
37:08
Speaker 3: union hall and saying like, hey, your brothers in arms
37:11
Speaker 3: over there in America are being railroaded into a murder rap.
37:15
Speaker 3: They're going to be electrocuting the electric chair for something
37:18
Speaker 3: they didn't commit. Simply because of their political beliefs. How
37:21
Speaker 3: messed up is that? And they you could arouse some
37:24
Speaker 3: people pretty quickly back then by saying that as opposed
37:28
Speaker 3: to today.
37:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
37:31
Speaker 2: More immediately starts the defense attorney immediately starts filing motions trying.
37:38
Speaker 1: To get like new trials.
37:40
Speaker 2: He had an assistant named Eugene Lyons who later would
37:43
Speaker 2: come out and say, man, like this guy basically would
37:47
Speaker 2: do anything. He was framing evidence, he was telling witnesses
37:52
Speaker 2: what to say, like once he had up in his
37:54
Speaker 2: mind that and keep in mind, this was like a
37:57
Speaker 2: radical lawyer from California. He said, once he had in
38:00
Speaker 2: mind that these guys were innocent, he was like he
38:03
Speaker 2: basically would do anything to try and get them off.
38:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, he'd suborn perjury, he'd intimidate witnesses, he'd do whatever
38:09
Speaker 3: if he thought that somebody was being innocently prosecuted. Fred
38:13
Speaker 3: Moore would stop at nothing to yeah, to get them off.
38:17
Speaker 3: And this article, I think kind of paints an incomplete
38:20
Speaker 3: picture of Eugene Lyons and Fred Moore's relationship. Like Eugene
38:23
Speaker 3: Lyons was also very much an admirer of Fred Moore too,
38:28
Speaker 3: like he considered Fred Moore to have the heart of
38:30
Speaker 3: an artist, but he was that. He had dedicated his
38:34
Speaker 3: life to getting people who were being steamrolled by the
38:37
Speaker 3: system or unfairly treated by the courts out from under
38:43
Speaker 3: these these charges. He was a he was an early
38:46
Speaker 3: civil libered, civil liberties lawyer, basically was what he was.
38:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, so none of these motions work. He files a
38:53
Speaker 2: bunch of them. We're not going to detail them all,
38:56
Speaker 2: but none of them, Uh, none of them worked. They
38:59
Speaker 2: were basically all turned down. Thayer was still the presiding judge.
39:04
Speaker 2: He was turning down all these things. Then they went
39:06
Speaker 2: to like federal court, they were turning down motions. Eventually
39:11
Speaker 2: they went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court
39:13
Speaker 2: was like, why are you asking us about this? Like
39:16
Speaker 2: this is a state case, Like we don't even do
39:18
Speaker 2: this kind of thing.
39:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. The court at the time was very much against
39:24
Speaker 3: or the majority I should say it was against applying
39:27
Speaker 3: the federal Constitution to state issues, so they wouldn't get involved.
39:32
Speaker 3: But I mean it did go all the way to
39:35
Speaker 3: at least petitioning the Supreme Court. They wouldn't hear it
39:37
Speaker 3: and they wouldn't stay the execution either. But he as
39:42
Speaker 3: much as a lawyer can exhaust petitions and appeals for
39:46
Speaker 3: clemency and the stay of execution. Fred Moore did, and
39:51
Speaker 3: then later on another defense lawyer named William Thompson, who
39:54
Speaker 3: took over for fred Moore after Saco fired Fred Moore,
39:58
Speaker 3: did the same thing. Like up to the eve the
40:01
Speaker 3: eve of the execution, they were relentless and filing appeals
40:05
Speaker 3: with anything, anything they could get their hands on. They
40:08
Speaker 3: filed an entire motion for a new trial based strictly
40:12
Speaker 3: on Judge Thayer's perceived prejudice against anarchists. Apparently he did
40:18
Speaker 3: not like anarchists, and he treated Socaco and Vinzetti as
40:21
Speaker 3: such throughout the trial. And as you're if you're just
40:26
Speaker 3: watching watching this from the outside, if you're reading about
40:29
Speaker 3: this in the press, and you're already on Socco and
40:31
Speaker 3: Vinzetti's side, Judge Theayer turning down motion after motion after
40:36
Speaker 3: motion after motion looks really bad. It looks very much
40:41
Speaker 3: like this judge is bent on railroading these two immigrant
40:45
Speaker 3: anarchists into an early and unjust death by electric chair.
40:50
Speaker 3: So the public's sympathies were aroused even further for Socco
40:57
Speaker 3: and Vanzetti, and that would last for decades after this
41:01
Speaker 3: trial up century almost now.
41:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Socho's in jail and another weird thing happens
41:07
Speaker 1: while he's in jail. In Dedham d e d h
41:11
Speaker 1: a M.
41:12
Speaker 2: There was another prisoner there who passed a note on
41:16
Speaker 2: and said basically, I'm confessing to this crime. My name
41:21
Speaker 2: is Celestino Madeiros And they were like, all right, well.
41:27
Speaker 1: Let's talk to this guy.
41:28
Speaker 2: He's confessing to this crime and saying that Socco and
41:31
Speaker 2: Vince Eddie are innocent. He said, I was there. I
41:35
Speaker 2: was with four other guys, so that kind of checks out.
41:39
Speaker 2: As far as the five Italians. He said, we met
41:43
Speaker 2: in Providence at a bar and we just came up
41:46
Speaker 2: with this plan.
41:47
Speaker 1: He said.
41:47
Speaker 2: There was a guy named Mike, a gun named Bill.
41:49
Speaker 2: I don't know the other guys. I was scared. We
41:52
Speaker 2: switched cars in the woods. Like all this stuff was
41:55
Speaker 2: sort of making sense, but it really didn't. Like in
41:59
Speaker 2: the end, there were too many other things that were wrong,
42:04
Speaker 2: Like he said that they didn't get there until afternoon
42:06
Speaker 2: and everyone was like, no, that car was there like
42:08
Speaker 2: maybe between nine am and noon. He also said that
42:13
Speaker 2: the payroll money was in a bag when it was
42:15
Speaker 2: in a metal box, and so there were enough inconsistencies
42:18
Speaker 2: basically where he wasn't really a major suspect like they
42:26
Speaker 2: considered it. Thompson tried to use it as the basis
42:29
Speaker 2: for a new trial, but none of this worked because
42:32
Speaker 2: there was still kind of calling the shots this before
42:34
Speaker 2: they ran it up the flag bowl.
42:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, but again news made made its way out into
42:39
Speaker 3: the international press that someone had confessed, and not only confessed,
42:43
Speaker 3: said that Socco and Vanzetti weren't there, and this this
42:46
Speaker 3: judge who had it out for Socco and Vanzetti refused
42:49
Speaker 3: to even hear this, this motion to have a new trial.
42:53
Speaker 3: So it looked it looked bad as well too.
42:55
Speaker 2: It did so it looked bad enough that the governor
42:58
Speaker 2: at the time, Alvin Fuller, said, you know what, we
42:59
Speaker 2: have to do something here. There's just too much public
43:02
Speaker 2: pressure going on from around the world. He said, so
43:06
Speaker 2: here's what we'll do. We'll get a three person advisory committee.
43:10
Speaker 2: They're going to investigate this. He said, hey, you Lawrence Lowell,
43:14
Speaker 2: you're the president of HAVID. You had this thing up.
43:17
Speaker 2: And then what was known as the Lowell Commission finally
43:21
Speaker 2: issued a report which said basically beyond a reasonable doubt,
43:27
Speaker 2: Soco is guilty, and Voncetti said on the whole it's
43:33
Speaker 2: our opinion that he's also guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
43:37
Speaker 2: And everyone was like, well, why'd you say all those
43:38
Speaker 2: other words then?
43:40
Speaker 3: And they're like, what other words?
43:42
Speaker 1: Yeah? Really kind of a strange final report.
43:47
Speaker 3: What's funny is in the Boston area if they're like,
43:49
Speaker 3: we need somebody smart, get me the president of Harvard, Well.
43:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in the end he's like, you are definitely
43:55
Speaker 2: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and so are you more
43:58
Speaker 2: or less in our opinion?
44:00
Speaker 3: Right? No, I know. It was weird and it remains weird.
44:02
Speaker 3: But apparently years later, when Loll was asked about that,
44:07
Speaker 3: he was saying, like, no, that wasn't any indication that
44:10
Speaker 3: we thought Vanzetti had any kind of any kind of
44:14
Speaker 3: innocence to him or that he wasn't guilty. I'm not
44:18
Speaker 3: sure exactly how he explained it, but he basically said, no,
44:20
Speaker 3: that wasn't that's not what that was. Oh interesting, I
44:24
Speaker 3: don't know what he thought it was. There was a
44:26
Speaker 3: weird way to put it, but that was I think
44:29
Speaker 3: the other thing that kind of arouses people's interest in
44:32
Speaker 3: that or suspicion maybe even is that that's what a
44:35
Speaker 3: lot of people think that Socco was definitely guilty. Yeah,
44:39
Speaker 3: I shouldn't say a lot, but some people that Socco
44:41
Speaker 3: was definitely guilty and if anyone was innocent, it was Vanzetti.
44:45
Speaker 3: So the idea that this Loll Commission came up with
44:47
Speaker 3: this back in the twenties, even it is significant, but yeah,
44:51
Speaker 3: Loell was like, no, that's not what we meant by that.
44:53
Speaker 2: So none of these stays of execution go through. So
44:57
Speaker 2: they are reunited. They were split up in jail for many,
45:01
Speaker 2: many years, six years, and then they were finally reunited
45:05
Speaker 2: at Charlestown State Prison for execution in April, and they had,
45:11
Speaker 2: like you wouldn't believe how many cops they have in
45:15
Speaker 2: this town to cover this thing because it was sort
45:19
Speaker 2: of one of the first crimes of the century, I think,
45:22
Speaker 2: and people were mad all over the country and all
45:25
Speaker 2: over the world, like we've been talking about. They didn't
45:27
Speaker 2: know if they're going to be more bombings, people were
45:29
Speaker 2: going to like literally storm the prison and trying to
45:32
Speaker 2: overtake them and free them. So they had tons and
45:35
Speaker 2: tons of cops everywhere. Socho is first to go, and
45:41
Speaker 2: as they are strapping him in, he's crying out in Italian,
45:44
Speaker 2: long live anarchy, and then in English very quietly says,
45:48
Speaker 2: farewell my wife and child and all my friends. And
45:52
Speaker 2: right when they finally threw the switch, he screamed out, mama.
45:58
Speaker 1: And I don't think like that. No, no, I'm not
46:01
Speaker 1: making light of it. I don't think he was like,
46:02
Speaker 1: whoa mama.
46:04
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so either. I think he was
46:06
Speaker 3: calling for his mother. Yes, just pretty sad but also
46:09
Speaker 3: kind of sweet.
46:10
Speaker 1: Yes.
46:11
Speaker 3: And then Vanzetti comes in and he's like, oh, it's
46:14
Speaker 3: my turn, all right, Well, okay, I want to make
46:17
Speaker 3: sure everybody knows that I am innocent. So I think
46:22
Speaker 3: it's significant that Saka was the one that shouted in
46:25
Speaker 3: the courtroom that he was innocent, but didn't during his execution,
46:30
Speaker 3: and Vanzetti didn't say anything in the courtroom, but during
46:32
Speaker 3: his execution he's like, I'm innocent. And not only that,
46:35
Speaker 3: he really turned the screwdriver. He said, I want to
46:39
Speaker 3: make it known that I forgive all of you who
46:41
Speaker 3: are about to do this to.
46:42
Speaker 1: Me, and he started crying.
46:44
Speaker 3: Well, the wardens started crying when he gave the switch,
46:48
Speaker 3: gave the nod to turn to throw the switch on
46:50
Speaker 3: the electric chair and kill Vanzetti.
46:52
Speaker 1: Tears flying everywhere. Highdrama.
46:57
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm surprised there's movie. Surely it has been, but
47:01
Speaker 3: I'll bet it wasn't like the seventies or something. We
47:03
Speaker 3: just aren't aware of it. Like Warren Batty played Socco
47:06
Speaker 3: and Venzetti in some weird casting.
47:08
Speaker 1: And somehow Jeremy Renner played all the.
47:11
Speaker 3: Cops right exactly. So Socco and Venzetti are dead like
47:18
Speaker 3: they're dead. The state took their lives. They executed them,
47:21
Speaker 3: these conceivably innocent men who were railroaded to the electric
47:26
Speaker 3: chair on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of some ballistic
47:30
Speaker 3: experts who were not experts by anyone's measure. These men
47:35
Speaker 3: are now dead, and the world reacts predictably. There were riots.
47:41
Speaker 3: Six people died in a riot in Germany. The American
47:46
Speaker 3: embassy in Paris had already been bombed, so they brought
47:50
Speaker 3: tanks out on the night of the execution and surrounded it.
47:54
Speaker 3: This time, and there were no bombings. There were riots
47:57
Speaker 3: in Geneva, Switzerland. This may have been the only time
48:01
Speaker 3: anyone ever rided in Geneva, Switzerland, there were like five
48:04
Speaker 3: thousand protesters who destroyed everything that was even passingly American,
48:10
Speaker 3: and Socco and Vinzetti went into the history books as
48:14
Speaker 3: a couple of innocent men who were executed wrongfully by
48:18
Speaker 3: the state because of their political beliefs. They were political
48:21
Speaker 3: prisoners who were executed for their beliefs. Basically is how
48:24
Speaker 3: most people have come to see Socco and Vanzetti.
48:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, but many years later a couple of a few
48:31
Speaker 2: notable things happened in nineteen forty one that gentleman I
48:35
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, Carlo Tresca, the anarchist leader a couple of
48:40
Speaker 2: years before he died in the nineteen forties, basically said,
48:43
Speaker 2: you know what, Socca was guilty, he was a triggerman,
48:47
Speaker 2: but Vanzetti was not guilty. Other people had heard the
48:51
Speaker 2: same thing from Tresca. And then in nineteen sixty one
48:54
Speaker 2: they had actual ballistics tests done and it was concluded
49:01
Speaker 2: that that was in fact a bullet from Socho's gun.
49:07
Speaker 2: But people still were saying, no, you know what, I
49:10
Speaker 2: think that bullet was planted, So we render that inconclusive.
49:15
Speaker 3: But I think Doug Linder does a pretty good job
49:17
Speaker 3: of taking the planted bullet theory fatal bullet or bullet
49:22
Speaker 3: number three is what it's called in the trial and
49:25
Speaker 3: basically saying, though, this is why that doesn't really hold up.
49:28
Speaker 3: And probably the biggest one is when those ballistics witnesses
49:33
Speaker 3: gave their testimony, both of the prosecutions star ballistic witnesses
49:38
Speaker 3: said yes, I would conclude probably that it came out
49:43
Speaker 3: of this gun, or yes, it's probable or possible or
49:46
Speaker 3: something like that. They couched their expert opinions when they
49:50
Speaker 3: gave their testimony, And if they were part of a
49:53
Speaker 3: conspiracy to frame Soco in the planting of this bullet,
49:57
Speaker 3: they would have given much more forceful testimony, which in
50:00
Speaker 3: and of itself is a circumstantial evidence against this planted
50:05
Speaker 3: bullet theory. But it draws so closely on common sense
50:08
Speaker 3: that I think it makes sense to me, it undermines
50:11
Speaker 3: the idea that the bullet was planted.
50:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was another gentleman named Giovanni Gambera who said,
50:19
Speaker 2: you know what, my dad, before he died in nineteen
50:22
Speaker 2: eighty two, he told me he was on this team
50:26
Speaker 2: of anarchists that met after their arrest to get their
50:28
Speaker 2: defense mounted. And he told me, and everyone said basically
50:33
Speaker 2: that Soaka was guilty and Venzetti was innocent. And then, weirdly,
50:38
Speaker 2: in two thousand and five, Upton Sinclair, the very famous author,
50:43
Speaker 2: said that he was researching a book and he was
50:45
Speaker 2: going to he was writing a book about this whole thing,
50:49
Speaker 2: and he met with Fred Moore, that the radical defense
50:52
Speaker 2: attorney that mounted the defense for basically most of the case.
50:56
Speaker 2: And he said he met with him in a hotel
50:59
Speaker 2: room and was like, dude, give me the real story.
51:01
Speaker 2: And he said that Moore told him, Yeah, Socco was
51:04
Speaker 2: guilty and Vanzetti was innocent, and I basically came up
51:10
Speaker 2: with this whole defense on my own, like made all
51:13
Speaker 2: this stuff up.
51:14
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Years later it came out that the seven
51:19
Speaker 3: eye witnesses for the defense, who said that they saw
51:24
Speaker 3: Soco eating lunch in Boston at the time of the
51:29
Speaker 3: robbery and Braintree, had all been set up by the defense,
51:34
Speaker 3: or at least by an anarchist group who had asked
51:36
Speaker 3: them to go perjure themselves. And yeah, I think that
51:40
Speaker 3: kind of jibes with the Eugene Lions quote that like,
51:43
Speaker 3: if he thought these guys were innocent, they would do
51:45
Speaker 3: he would do anything to get them off, including you know,
51:49
Speaker 3: putting witnesses on the stand knowing that they were going
51:51
Speaker 3: to lie, and telling them to lie. And this was
51:54
Speaker 3: a letter from Upton Sinclair based on an interview with
51:59
Speaker 3: Fred Moore, So it has a lot of teeth. But
52:03
Speaker 3: the thing there was another letter from Upston Sinclair, another
52:07
Speaker 3: quote from Upton Sinclair where he said that Fred Moore
52:11
Speaker 3: had confessed to him that Vanzetti was innocent, and he
52:16
Speaker 3: knew he was innocent, but he was pretty sure Soacho wasn't.
52:19
Speaker 3: But all he had to do was go to the
52:22
Speaker 3: jury and say, hey, we all know that you don't
52:26
Speaker 3: have anything on Vanzetti. There's no reason for you to
52:30
Speaker 3: prosecute this man. But he knew that if he did that,
52:32
Speaker 3: the jury would be like, well, you're probably right, but
52:34
Speaker 3: we're going to come down really hard on Soaco. So
52:37
Speaker 3: he had this dilemma and he took it to Vanzetti,
52:40
Speaker 3: he said, and Vanzetti said, you know what, try to
52:43
Speaker 3: save Nick Nicholas Sacho. He has the wife, he has
52:48
Speaker 3: the child. I don't try to get him off. So Vanzetti,
52:52
Speaker 3: in this retelling by Fred Moore, gave his life on
52:55
Speaker 3: the chance that Fred Moore could get Soacho off because
52:59
Speaker 3: if he Scaco off, hed get Vanzetti off, if he
53:01
Speaker 3: got Vanzetti off, he would almost surely sink Soco and
53:05
Speaker 3: Vinzetti wouldn't take the take the opportunity to be acquitted
53:11
Speaker 3: at the expense of Socco, which is pretty.
53:13
Speaker 1: Amazing, amazing.
53:15
Speaker 3: Yep. So that's Soacho and Vanzetti, everybody. That's what a
53:19
Speaker 3: Socaco and Vanzetti is.
53:20
Speaker 1: Now, you know, I guess one guilty and one innocent.
53:24
Speaker 3: That's what it sounds like.
53:25
Speaker 1: That's what it sounds like.
53:27
Speaker 3: If you want to know more about Socco and Vanzetti,
53:29
Speaker 3: go look up Doug Linder. I believe he has a
53:31
Speaker 3: whole site on true crime. And there's plenty of other
53:35
Speaker 3: stuff out there that we found too on the internet
53:38
Speaker 3: about Socco and Vanzetti and their famous trial. And since
53:41
Speaker 3: I said Socco and Vanzetti like eighty times, it's time
53:44
Speaker 3: for listener mail.
53:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this response to a short stuff. Yeah right, Hey, guys, your.
53:52
Speaker 2: Show's one of my favorite podcasts, so much so that
53:54
Speaker 2: I've taken to listening to it while I get ready
53:56
Speaker 2: for work.
53:57
Speaker 1: WHOA, we know that as your acred time. Nadine I just.
54:03
Speaker 2: Finished the episode on Black Loyalists and immediately started to
54:06
Speaker 2: write the email. I'm a Rhode Islander in Nova Scotia
54:10
Speaker 2: for work and got so excited to hear a little
54:12
Speaker 2: piece of Nova Scotia's history on there. I looked into
54:15
Speaker 2: the Loyalist Heritage Museum, but it only has weekday operation,
54:20
Speaker 2: so I don't think I'll be able to make it there.
54:22
Speaker 2: I will definitely do some exploring of halifaxx SO in
54:24
Speaker 2: the coming weeks, and we'll be on the lookout for
54:26
Speaker 2: more information. I just wanted to mention on the show
54:30
Speaker 2: that it was Josh said that Rhode Island may not
54:32
Speaker 2: have ever had slaves.
54:34
Speaker 1: Actually, we were the.
54:34
Speaker 2: First state to abolish slavery in sixteen fifty two, but
54:37
Speaker 2: the law was mostly ignored and we ended up with
54:40
Speaker 2: the most slaves per capita of any colony. I did
54:43
Speaker 2: not know that we also had a pretty booming slave
54:45
Speaker 2: trade in Newport, Rhode Island, now known for their gilded
54:49
Speaker 2: aged splendor. A piece of Rhode Island history I'm sure
54:52
Speaker 2: most don't learn in history class that I wanted to
54:55
Speaker 2: shed light on. Thanks for always putting out a funny
54:58
Speaker 2: and informative and entertaining. That is from Nadine Greed.
55:03
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Nadine, that was great. Thanks for listening
55:06
Speaker 3: while you get ready for work. Hope work's going well
55:08
Speaker 3: up there in Nova Scotia. Just thinks bring to you
55:12
Speaker 3: and everybody up there in Nova Scotia. Frankly, if you
55:16
Speaker 3: want to get in touch with us, you can join
55:18
Speaker 3: us on Stuffishould Know dot com. Check out our social
55:21
Speaker 3: links there, and you can just send us a good
55:24
Speaker 3: old fashioned email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
55:27
Speaker 3: and send it off to stuff Podcasts at HowStuffWorks dot com.
55:33
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