Emilio Falcone, was a hundred feet from crime-action. Saw man who did shooting; he was light, tall. Not Sacco nor Vanzetti. Henry Cerro, granite-cutter from Vermont, also worked in excavation. Saw shooting 90 feet away. Parmenter was shot by a light-haired man, he declared.
Five other witnesses were working on the railroad some distance from the crossing and claimed to have run up toward the gate house in time to see the bandit-car cross the track. Angelo Ricci, section gang foreman was put on later by the government to show that they had not left the place where they were at work. Under cross-examination he had exclaimed, “What the hell, I did the best I could; when you’ve got 24 men you can’t put a string on them. I told them to stop and if they sneaked around the piles of dirt I couldn’t help it.” One of these laborers, Joseph Cellucci, wearing the uniform of a sailor from the training station at Newport News, declared he stood within 10 or 12 feet of the car, and that one of the bandits fired a shot at him which left him deaf for 3 days. He described that man and another sitting beside the driver; both about 20 years old. Neither one was Sacco nor Vanzetti, he declared.
Another of them, Nicola Gatti, is especially important because he had been a neighbor of Sacco in Milford eight years back. Had he seen him in the bandit-car he could not have failed to remember. Said he got a good view of the two men in front (with one of them it was sought to identify Sacco) and one behind. Asked if either of the defendants were any of these men, he answered, “No.”
Thirteen prosecution witnesses testified to facts pertinent to the exact moment of the murders, or in connection with the escape—but did not identify. Of these, several could not have been expected to make identification, but others had an excellent view. Five of these have already been discussed under Sacco’s case because they were in a position to see the bandit whom the government sought to identify with Sacco. The others are Shelley Neal, Mrs. Annie Nichols, Harris A. Colbert, DanielBuckley, Mrs. Alta Baker, F. C. Clark, John P. Lloyd, and Julia Kelliher.
Neal was an important government witness because he attempted to identify the bandit-car with an automobile stationed against the entrance of the express office, in the morning when the money arrived. He claims to have seen neither Sacco nor Vanzetti.
A summary of the identification testimony for the government and for the defense is now in place. Of 35 witnesses called, 7 were unable to make any identifications; 22 were certain that neither Sacco nor Vanzetti were the men they had seen; 4 identified Sacco—two of them making serious changes from former testimony, and the other two thoroughly discredited; only one, the man whom the prosecution itself was obliged to “interpret,” identified Vanzetti.
The prosecution contended that the defendants, by their action, attitude and utterances on the night of May 5, when they where arrested, displayed consciousness of guilt of the South Braintree murders.
Officer Michael Connolly who arrested Sacco and Vanzetti in a trolley car going into Brockton, asserts that as he approached them Vanzetti put his hand in his hip pocket and that thereupon he, Connolly, said: “You keep your hands in your lap or you will be sorry.” Connolly further testified that a revolver was taken off Vanzetti by Officer Vaughn, who boarded the car at the next station, and that he, Connolly kept him covered until he delivered him at the police station. This story Vanzetti absolutely contradicted. With officer Connolly making the arrest was officer Vaughn. Vaughn said he took the revolver from Vanzetti’s right hip pocket (Transcript, p. 1280). Connolly said it was in left (Transcript p. 1284).
In the automobile which carried the arrested men to police station, Connolly testified that Sacco twice reached his hand to put it under his overcoat, and that he told him to keep his hand outside his clothes and on his lap. That some conversation about keeping hands where they belong may have taken place is confirmed by Officer Merle A. Spear, driving the automobile, who testified to hearing Sacco say, “You needn’t be afraid of me.”The government drew from this testimony a deduction of “consciousness of guilt.” What, they ask, could have prompted men to resist arrest, unless there was a murder on their conscience?
“The consciousness of guilt” made so much of by Judge Thayer was the consciousness of the dead body of their comrade Salsedo lying smashed in the spring dawn two days before on the pavement of Park Row.