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