Sincerely yours,Feri.
Sincerely yours,Feri.
Sincerely yours,Feri.
Sincerely yours,
Feri.
Let me know if he sends you a check, so that I should not bother him afterwards thinking that you did not get it.â€
That the wife of the affiant, Laura Ruzzamenti, sometime in the spring of 1921, to-wit in the month of April, called on the said Katzmann and presented the claim of her husband and asked that same be paid.
That said claim for transportation, time and expenses has not been paid by said Katzmann or said Weiss or by any person notwithstanding the fact that the affiant has made many and divers efforts to secure said pay, same consisting of the sending of the statement of transportation, time and expenses in accordance with request of said Katzmann on the day following the interview of December 30th, 1920; and the sending of a great number of letters written by the affiant to the said Katzmann. That said statement has not been paid and said letters have not been answered.
SignedJohn Ruzzamenti
SignedJohn Ruzzamenti
SignedJohn Ruzzamenti
SignedJohn Ruzzamenti
(In this connection we must insert the letter of Feri Felix Weiss that did not come into Mr. Thompson’s hands until several weeks after the hearing. Here are his affidavit and Weiss’s letter that completes the picture.)
My name is William G. Thompson. I am counsel for the defendants in the above entitled case. On or about Sept. 21 last I learned from Mr. Frank P. Sibley, a reporter on theBoston Globe, that that newspaper had just received a letter from Feri Felix Weiss, with a request that it be published, but that theGlobe did not intend to publish the letter. Shortly afterward I began efforts to obtain this letter, and succeeded in doing so today, Oct. 7, with it was the envelope in which it was received at the Globe office. I annex said original letter and said envelope hereto, and make them part of this affidavit.
As I remember it, there is a fac-simile of the signature of Weiss on the picture of him annexed to the affidavit of Fred J. Weyand. I also call attention to the fact that this letter is written upon a letterhead stamped with the name of said Weiss, and was received in an envelope also stamped with his name in the upper left hand corner.
In connection with this letter I call attention to the contents of the letter of said Weiss to John Ruzzamenti on file in the case, a fac-simile of a part of which is also annexed to the affidavit of said Weyand, and of the following statements therein—namely, letter dated Dec. 17, 1920:
“Would you like to help me on a case which I may clinch here? It is the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, who are in jail awaiting trial for having shot the paymaster of the South Braintree shoe factory. * * * It is a very important case, and I need a clever Italian who would mix with the gang, and, if necessary, even stay in jail for a few days just to find out what they say. * * * I am afraid they won’t pay $8, so make it less if you can. Of course any expenses would be extra. If we deliver the goods they will probably give us the reward. I think there is $2,000 written out.â€
In connection with this letter I also call attention to the parts of the affidavits of Weyand and Letherman relating to the activities and purposes of said Weiss in connection with the prosecution of Sacco and Vanzetti. I also, in connection with this letter, call attention to the affidavit of Mr. Katzmann on file in this case. I especially desire to call attention to the following sentences in this letter, namely:
“I explained to him (Katzmann) that anarchists do not commit crimes for money, but for a principle, and that banditry was not in their codeâ€, and
“The truth in the “framing†was that we intended to put Ruzzamenti in with Sacco as much to clear Sacco of any guilt in the Braintree affair as to find him guilty.â€
SignedWilliam G. Thompson
SignedWilliam G. Thompson
SignedWilliam G. Thompson
SignedWilliam G. Thompson
LETTER OF FERI FELIX WEISS
The letter annexed to the affidavit follows:
Chicago, Ill., Sept. 19, 1926
Chicago, Ill., Sept. 19, 1926
Chicago, Ill., Sept. 19, 1926
Chicago, Ill., Sept. 19, 1926
Editor,Boston Globe,Boston, Mass.Dear Sir:—
Editor,Boston Globe,Boston, Mass.Dear Sir:—
Editor,Boston Globe,Boston, Mass.
Editor,Boston Globe,
Boston, Mass.
Dear Sir:—
Dear Sir:—
It has just come to my attention—stationed as I am in the Government service in the West—that my name has been mentioned in your account of the “Sacco and Vanzetti†affair through an affidavit by former District Attorney Katzmann on one hand, and the connection of Ruzzamenti on the other.
The facts, as far as I am concerned with this case, are as follows:
Katzmann sent for me at the time to learn what I knew about Sacco, having been Special Agent of the United States Department of Justice in charge of investigations covering anarchists and similar criminals whose aim was the forceful overthrow of the Government of the United States. I told Katzmann that I knew that Sacco was an active anarchist, connected with the famous or notorious Galleani group of Lynn, Mass., who had bomb-outrages on the brain. When Katzmann asked me what I thought of Sacco as a participant in the Braintree holdup, I explained to him that anarchists do not commit crimes for money but for a principle, and that banditry was not in their code.
It was at the suggestion of Katzmann that I wrote the undercover informant Ruzzamenti whether he was willing to go to jail and share the cell with Sacco to find out what Sacco had to tell about his connection with the Braintree affair. Ruzzamenti did not answer this letter by a letter, but took the first train from Pennsylvania to Boston. Though this was against my arrangement with him, I faced the situation, and sent him to Katzmann, who had agreed over the phone to talk to Ruzzamenti regarding the plan we had in mind. Katzmann then decided, after a talk with Ruzzamenti, that he better drop the matter.
Ruzzamenti tried to collect expenses from Katzmann, but failed. Then Ruzzamenti turned around and sold out to the defense. He used my letter to him as evidence. The first I knew of Ruzzamenti’s treachery was when I received a warning from a friendly source in Spain to the effect that my letter had been broadcasted in mimeograph form to aid in the collection of funds for the Sacco and Vanzetti defense. My friend sent me warning lest the rabid Latin anarchists should take it into their heads to “get square†with me for trying to “frame Sacco.â€
The truth in the “framing†was that we intended to put Ruzzamenti in with Sacco as much to clear Sacco of any guilt in the Braintree affair as to find him guilty! I had no interest whatsoever in railroading an innocent man to the electric chair, and Lawyer Thompson’s reference to me as “being heartless†is absurd, if not ridiculous. My entire connection with this case was outlined here, and my only motive in trying to clear up the mystery was to aid justice.
That I should be abused and besmirched with mud by both sides, the defense as well as the District Attorney, when I acted as any patriotic citizen would to protect the life and property of all, is a sad reflection upon legal ethics in Massachusetts. I leave it to the public to pass judgment in view of the above cited facts. That Katzmann is trying to wash his hands of the Ruzzamenti fiasco, putting the blame on me; that Ruzzamenti delivered my life into the hands of the international Reds the world over by his treachery, reminds me of the two characters in the New Testament who always seem to enjoy a resurrection: Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot.
Respectfully,Feri Felix Weiss
Respectfully,Feri Felix Weiss
Respectfully,Feri Felix Weiss
Respectfully,
Feri Felix Weiss
“Have Attorney General Sargent and his subordinates ... stooped so low, and are they so degraded that they are willing by the concealment of evidence to enter into a fraudulent conspiracy with the government of Massachusetts to send two men to the electric chair, not because they were murderers but because they were radicals?â€
(All attempts on the part of the defense to secure information from the Department of Justice files on the case have so far proved fruitless. Chief Counsel Thompson has written the Attorney General of the United States on the subject and in spite of the intercession of Senator Butler of Massachusetts, received no satisfactory reply. The Department of Justice refuses to give up its secrets.)
Where are Sacco and Vanzetti in all this? A broken man in Charlestown, a broken man in a grey birdcage in Dedham, struggling to keep some shreds of human dignity in face of the Chair? Not at all.
Circumstances sometimes force men into situations so dramatic, thrust their puny frames so far into the burning bright searchlights of history that they or their shadows on men’s minds become enormous symbols. Sacco and Vanzetti are all the immigrants who have built this nation’s industries with their sweat and their blood and have gotten for it nothing but the smallest wage it was possible to give them and a helot’s position under the bootheels of the Arrow Collar social order. They are all the wops, hunkies, bohunks, factory fodder that hunger drives into the American mills through the painful sieve of Ellis Island. They are the dreams of a saner social order of those who can’t stand the law of dawg eat dawg. This tiny courtroom is a focus of the turmoil of an age of tradition, the center of eyes all over the world. Sacco and Vanzetti throw enormous shadows on the courthouse walls.
William G. Thompson feels all this dimly when, the last affidavit read, he pauses to begin his argument. But mostly he feels that as a citizen it is his duty to protect the laws and liberties of his state and as a man to try to save two innocent men from being murdered by a machine set going in a moment of hatred and panic. He is a broadshouldered man with steely white hair and a broad forehead and broad cheek-bones. He doesn’t mince words. He feels things intensely. The case is no legal game of chess for him.
“I rest my case on these affidavits, on the other five propositions that I have argued, but if they all fail, and I cannot see how they can, I rest my case on that rock alone, on the sixth proposition in my brief—innocent or guilty, right or wrong, foolish or wise men—these men ought not now to be sentenced to death for this crime so long as they have the right to say, “The government of this great country put spies in my cell, planned to put spies in my wife’s house, they put spies on my friends, took money that they were collecting to defend me, put it in their own pocket and joked about it and said they don’t believe I am guilty but will help convict me, because they could not get enough evidence to deport me under the laws of Congress, and were willing as one of them continually said toadopt the method of killing me for murder as one way to get rid of me.â€â€
Ranney’s handling of the case has been pretty perfunctory throughout, he has contented himself with trying to destroy the Court’s opinion of Madeiros’ veracity. A criminal is only to be believed when he speaks to his own detriment. He presents affidavits of the Morelli’s and their friends denying that they had ever heard of Madeiros, tries to imply that Letherman and Weyand were fired from the government employ and had no right to betray the secrets of their department. He knows that he does not need to make much effort. He is strong in the inertia of the courts. The defence will have to exert six times the energy of the prosecution to overturn the dead weighty block of six other motions denied.
Thompson comes back at him with a phrase worthy of Patrick Henry.
... “And I will say to your honor that a government that has come to honor its own secrets more than the lives of its citizens has become a tyranny whether you call it a republic or monarchy or anything else.â€
Then the dry, crackling, careful voice of Judge Thayer and the hearing is adjourned.
Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, all who have had business before the honorable the justice of the superior court of the southeastern district of Massachusetts will now disperse. The court is adjourned without day.
God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The Court refused to grant a new trial. The Court has decided that Sacco and Vanzetti must die.
God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.