Sacco and Vanzetti: for a generation of Americans, the names of the two Italian anarchists are forever linked. Questions surrounding their 1921 trial for the murders of a paymaster and his guard bitterly divided a nation. As the two convicted men and their supporters struggled on through appellate courts and clemency petitions to avoid the electric chair, public interest in their case continued to grow. As the end drew near, in August 1927, hundreds of thousands of people--from Boston and New York to London and Buenos Aires--took to the streets in protest of what they perceived to be a massive miscarriage of justice.

From the time of their conviction until decades after their deaths, people lined up in one of two camps: one camp of those believing that Sacco and Vanzetti were the innocent victims of political and economic interests determined to send a message about the rising tide of anarchist violence and another camp of those believing that the trial was fair and that the two murderers got what they deserved. A third possibility, that one of the two men might have been guilty and the other innocent, received little or no attention until a ballistics test in 1961 provided strong evidence that Sacco did indeed fire a fatal bullet on that April day long ago in South Braintree, Massachusetts.

THE CRIME

Today, Braintree is just another indistinguishable part of the Boston metroplex, but in 1920 the town ten miles south of Boston still had something of a small-town identity. Strangers were noticed in this shoe-manufacturing center with a three-person police force.

Each Thursday morning on the 9:18 train from Boston about $30,000 in payroll money for two shoe factories would be picked up by Shelley Neal, the local American Express Company agent in Braintree. Neal would load the metal box containing the money into his horse-drawn wagon and drive to his office on Railroad Avenue. On April 15, 1920, on the way back to his office, Neal noticed a car parked near his office that he did not recognize--a dark blue touring car. Although passenger window curtains in the car were drawn, Neal noticed a haggard-looking man hunched over in the front seat. Neal walked to his office, opened the box, and pulled out two canvas bags of money, one for each of the shoe factories. Neal took one of the bags, climbed an internal staircase, and dropped it off at one of the Slater & Morrill office, where the company's bookkeeper would count out the money and place in into 500 separate envelopes. During the next several hours, several Braintree residents reporting seeing the blue touring car, containing five dark--probably Italian--men, driving rather aimlessly through the town's streets.

Around three o'clock in the afternoon, paymaster Frederick Parmenter and his guard, Alesandro Berardelli, stopped by the Slater and Morrill office to pick two metal cashboxes containing the payroll envelopes. After joking a bit with some of the women in the office, the two men started off down Pearl Street to the factory where they intended to distribute the money to workers. Suddenly shots rang out. A felt-capped man with a gun pointed it at Berardelli, who begged for his life, then took several shots, one severing the great artery to his heart. The gunman bent over an picked up Berardelli's .38 caliber revolver. Parmenter, meanwhile, had been hit next by a second gunman. He dropped his box, staggered across the road, then collapsed in the gutter. The blue touring car started moving uphill. The two gunmen jump in the backseat of the car with the money boxes. As dozens of witnesses watched, the car drove to the end of Pearl Street, took a left, and disappeared.

One of the witnesses, Jimmy Bostock, ran to the fallen men. He held Berardelli in his arms as he died. Then Bostock pi

cked up four spent shells he found lying near the bodies. Another worker picked up a dark cap that apparently had fallen off one of the gunmen.

THE INVESTIGATION

Two days after the crime, a dark blue Buick with stripped off license plates was found in a woods a number of miles south of Braintree, in West Bridgewater. Beside the Buick--soon determined to have been stolen--were the smaller tracks of a second car. Not surprisingly, police concluded that the Buick was probably the car involved in the Braintree murders.

The day of the Braintree crime, April 15, was also the date scheduled for the deportation of an Italian anarchist living in Bridgewater named Feruccio Coacci. In preparation for his deportation, Coacci had quit his job at Slater & Morrill. Coacci failed to show up for his deportation on the 15th. He called the Immigration Service the next day to report that his wife was sick, and that he needed a few extra days to take care of her. When an immigration and a police officer investigated, they found that Coacci's wife had not been ill, and that Coacci was now insisting that he leave the country at once. The agents suggested that Coacci leave some money behind for his wife and children, but Coacci replied that they didn't need any. On April 18, Coacci was put on board on ship for Italy.

The same day that Coacci left for Italy, police were digesting reports concerning the Buick discovered in the Bridgewater woods. They began to wonder whether Coacci might have been involved in the Braintree murders. Bridgewater Police Chief Michael Stewart decided to return to Coacci's ramshackle rented home to see what he might learn. A man named Mike Boda greeted Stewart, and allowed him to look through the house and the rear shed. Boda explained that he kept his car, an Overland, in the shed, but that it was currently being repaired at the Elm Street Garage. Stewart also noticed tire imprints in the left-hand space of the two-car shed. The tracks were too large for an Overland, but about right for a Buick.

Three days later, Stewart returned to look for Boda again, only to find the house vacant and all its furnishings removed. Stewart stopped by the Elm Street Garage and discovered Boda's Overland was still in the shop. He told the garage owner, Simon Johnson, that if anyone were to try to pick up the Overland, he should call the police immediately.

On May 5, a little after nine o'clock, a man knocked on the door of Johnson's home. Ruth Johnson, Simon's twenty-one-year-old wife, answered the door. The man said he was Mike Boda and that he'd come to pick up his auto. Remembering Stewart's instructions, Simon told Ruth to go next door (the Johnson's had no phone) and call the police. As Ruth left, she was caught in the headlight beam of a motorcycle parked outside the Johnson home. Ruth noticed two men, talking in what she thought was Italian. Meanwhile, Simon Johnson tried to delay Boda. He told him that he would take him to the garage as soon as his wife returned with the milk she had gone to borrow from their neighbors. Boda seemed uneasy. Then, as Ruth Johnson walked back to her house, he suddenly took off, climbing into the sidecar of the motorcycle. Two other men, started walking away in the direction of the streetcar line--and at 9:40 those two men boarded the car from Bridgewater.

Stewart somehow determined (it's not clear how) that two of Johnson's visitors were on the Bridgewater streetcar. From Johnson's house, Stewart called the Brockton police. At 10:04, when the car pulled into Brockton, two officers boarded the car and arrested two men whose names, it was soon learned, were Sacco and Vanzetti. When arrested, Sacco carried a loaded .32 caliber Colt automatic. Vanzetti had a .38 caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver with its fiv

e chambers loaded. In Vanzetti's pocket was a penciled announcement for an anarchist rally.

Sacco and Vanzetti were questioned, first by Stewart and then by District Attorney Frederick Katzmann. In the opinion of Katzmann, the men gave implausible answers for being in Bridgewater and carrying weapons. They denied knowing either Boda or Coacci. Once Katzmann learned that on April 15 Sacco was absent from his job at the Three-K shoe factory, he was pretty sure that he had two of the men responsible for the Braintree murders.

THE TRIAL

The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, at the urging of anarchist leader Carlo Tresca, hired Fred H. Moore, a long-haired radical lawyer from California, to lead the defense. Moore decided that the best hopes for acquittals rested on turning what might have been an ordinary criminal trial into a closely-watched political trial. Without Fred Moore, the names of Sacco and Vanzetti would have been known to few, and long forgotten. In the year leading up to the start of trial, Moore did his best to arouse the radical and immigrant communities. He sent out word that a political effort was being made to frame Sacco and Vanzetti, and that they would be facing a biased judge. Moore did his best to turn Sacco and Vanzetti into archetypal working men with whom he hoped large segments of the blue-collar community might identify. He even tried to arouse international interest in the case, especially in Italy. The tactics showed early signs of working. Groups such as the New England Civil Liberties Union soon joined the fight, sending to its supporters a letter declaring that the evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti was unsubstantial and that they were being prosecuted merely because they were foreigners and are active and influential radicals.

The trial finally opened in Dedham, Massachusetts on May 31, 1921, under heavy guard. Police stood at every entrance to the courthouse, searching all those who ent

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