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