Moore sprang a surprise on Katzmann when he produced the aged but
peppery Julia Campbell, whom he had brought down from Maine. Mrs.
Campbell addressed Katzmann as “dear man,” and when he tried to
confuse her with a litany of dates, she sent a titter round the
courtroom by exclaiming “Oh, chestnuts!” She swore that Lola Andrews
had never spoken to the man under the car but to the man standing
by it. As for the two defendants in the cage, she did not think she
“ever saw them men in the world.”
Lena Allen, who ran a lodging house in Quincy, was the last refuting
witness. She said that Lola Andrews had roomed at her house until the
other roomers had threatened to leave if she didn’t get rid of her.
Lola Andrews had a bad reputation and was untruthful, according to
Lena Allen—who admitted she disliked her.
* * * * *
Five witnesses identified Vanzetti in one way or another, but only
one of them, Mike Levangie, the Pearl Street gate-tender, placed
him at the scene of the murders. Almost all the other witnesses
had described the driver of the getaway car as pale, fair, sickly.
Levangie, at the inquest two days after the crime, had asserted the
man was dark, with a dark brown mustache. Now he pointed to Vanzetti
in the cage as the man, the only man he had seen.
Katzmann in his summing-up admitted that the driver of the car was
indisputably a pale blond man, but he explained that Levangie’s
identification was still valid as he must have glimpsed Vanzetti
leaning over from the back seat and in the excitement thought he was
the driver.
Although Levangie was the only witness to place Vanzetti in the
Buick, two others placed him in South Braintree on that day.
Harry Dolbeare, the piano tuner, had been summoned to Dedham as
a prospective juror. While waiting in the courtroom he had seen
the defendants being led by. Suddenly he had recalled the carload
of tough tickets he had seen on Hancock Street the morning of the
South Braintree crime. The man with the mustache, handcuffed to
the sheriff, looked just like one of those men in the back seat.
Having gone to the district attorney’s office with his story, he now
found himself appearing as a witness. Dolbeare had no particular
recollection of the other four men in the car except for the general
impression of their toughness, but the middle man in the back seat
was Vanzetti. “I had the same view of him in the courtroom as I
had in the car, a profile view,” he told the court. He had “not a
particle of doubt” about Vanzetti being the man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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