In Search of Sacco and Vanzetti: Double Lives, Troubled Times, and the Massachusetts Murder Case That Shook the World

7 | Dry Run at Plymouth

Suassos Lane is just an alley Up here in old north Plymouth You saw my fish cart Roll here in Suassos Lane •Woody Guthrie, “Suassos Lane” 7|Dry Run at Plymouth The Italians of Plymouth were concerned. In the rented rooms and company housing, at the Amerigo Vespucci and Cristoforo Colombo clubs, at Broccoli ’s Market and the Plymouth Theater, on Suosso Lane, Court Street, Cherry Street, and South Cherry Street, people were talking. The housewives, the barbers and bakers, the fishermen and boat builders, the textile workers and rope makersandsardinepackers,thepaesaniwhomeasuredtheirdaysbyclockwork blasts of factory whistles�they were talking about Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The fish peddler was about to go where they hoped never to have to go themselves, into anAmericancourtroom. The two chargesagainsthim: assault with intent to rob and assault with intent to murder in the attempted robbery of the L. Q. White Shoe Company in Bridgewater on December 24, 1919. Vanzetti’s neighbors tended to disapprove of his politics. The majority of them “were not anarchists but ordinary Italians and mostly devout Catholics. They had no sympathy for Vanzetti’s views. But they had bought eels from him [that day] and knew that he was innocent” of the crime at Bridgewater.1 His customers might be poor and uneducated and unskilled in the English language. They might fear the American legal system. But Vanzetti needed them. They possessed something more precious to him than gold: an alibi. • Commonwealth vs. Bartolomeo Vanzetti opened on June 22, 1920, at Superior Court in Plymouth. (Bridgewater, scene of the attempted crime, is part of Plymouth County.) District attorney Fred Katzmann headed up the prosecution , aided by William Kane. Representing Vanzetti were attorneys John Vahey and James Graham. Police chief Michael Stewart drove “Bertie” Vanzetti from Plymouth Jail to the courthouse each morning during the trial. Vanzetti must have been confident of victory at first because, according to Stewart, “he used to sing songs for us in Italian on the way over, and he had quite a voice.” After Stewart testified, however, he said that Vanzetti “never spoke to me again.”2 76 | in search of sacco & vanzetti Overseeing the proceedings was Judge Webster Thayer, 64, of Worcester. Thayer, despite his wizened appearance in later years, had once been an outstanding athlete, captain of both the baseball and football teams at Dartmouth College in the 1870s. After graduation he returned to Worcester and read law for two years in the office of a local attorney. Admitted to the state bar in 1882, Thayer practiced law in Worcester and dabbled in local politics for the next thirty-five years. He deeply regretted that he had been too old to enlist in the Armyin1917,3butwascheeredwhen,thatsameyear,GovernorSamuelMcCall, a Dartmouth classmate, appointed him to a judgeship on the Superior Court. Thayer’s tenure on the bench had been unremarkable until an incident in April 1920 put him on page 1. Sergis Zakoff, a man on trial for the crime of advocating anarchy, was found not guilty. Jurors interpreted Judge Thayer’s instructions as meaning that the defendant had to have actually used violence, not merely spoken about it, in order to be found guilty.4 Thayer took the unusual step of rebuking the jury for its decision. If Bartolomeo Vanzetti had known about this, perhaps he wouldn’t have been singing on his way to the courthouse. • Opening for the prosecution in Plymouth, assistant district attorney William Kane said the state would show that Vanzetti was part of a gang that had Judge Webster Thayer presided at Vanzetti’s 1920 trial in Plymouth and, a year later, at the joint trial of Sacco and Vanzetti in Dedham. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books. Dry Run at Plymouth | 77 tried to rob a truck in Bridgewater on December 24, 1919, and, specifically, that he was the bandit who held and fired a shotgun and who escaped in a getaway car�the stolen Buick found in the woods on April 17. Two witnesses who had been inside the truck during the attempted robbery identified Vanzetti as the shotgun-toting bandit. Guard Benjamin Bowles was “positive” and paymaster Alfred Cox was “sure,” although, he said, “I can’t say that I am positive.” Their identifications had been more tentative at the preliminary hearing on May 18, when Bowles had been “pretty positive” and Cox had expressed “a doubt. . . . I think [Vanzetti] looks enough...