John Faulkner, another surprise witness, picked out Vanzetti as a man
who had ridden with him in the smoking car of the train from Plymouth
to Boston on the morning of April 15. Faulkner, a patternmaker at
the Watertown Arsenal, was an unhesitating witness. Each day he was
accustomed to take the train from Cohasset and he always rode in the
smoking car. On the morning of the fifteenth as the train was pulling
into East Weymouth a man across the aisle had said someone in back
wanted to know if the stop was East Braintree. Faulkner turned and
saw a foreign-looking man sitting in the single seat next to the
toilet. He had a black mustache, high cheekbones, and was wearing
old clothes. At Weymouth Heights the man again leaned forward and
asked if the stop was East Braintree. When the train stopped at
East Braintree the man had picked up an old leather Boston bag and
got off. “That is the man,” Faulkner said, identifying Vanzetti.
He was sure. However, when asked by Moore if he could remember the
man across the aisle who had first spoken to him, Faulkner had no
recollection of him at all. He remembered the date because it was the
time when he had been injured and had gone in on the late train to
the hospital. The next day he read about the murders and wondered if
the foreigner he had seen had had anything to do with them.
In refutation Moore brought in Henry McNaught, the conductor of
the train, who said that no cash fares had been collected that day
from Plymouth to Braintree. The station agents of Plymouth, North
Plymouth, and Kingston testified in addition that no tickets had been
sold from their stations to the Braintrees. However, Katzmann made
them admit that they did not know if any such tickets had been sold
the day before or how many might have been sold to Quincy or Boston.
Edward Brooks, the ticket agent at East Braintree, recalled that
about the time of the murders and several times since he had seen a
tall dark man carrying a black bag get off the morning train and walk
from the station toward Quincy Avenue. He had seen the man perhaps
half a dozen times. Vanzetti was not the man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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