Three Spaniards who had been working next to Falcone testified
through an interpreter of their own. Pedro Iscorla, on his way to get
a drink of water, had seen a “high, thin, slim, light fellow” shoot
Parmenter and a dark man shoot Berardelli. These men were not the
defendants. Henry Cerro had seen a light gunman who resembled neither
of the defendants. Like Iscorla, Sibriano Guidierris had seen a light
man and a little dark man with a dark cap. Each shot a different man.
Neither gunman resembled the men in the cage.
Moore now brought in eight of the railroad workers who had seen
the Buick pass. They had all noticed the meager light-complexioned
driver and four of them had seen the dark man next to him. All
were positive that the defendants had not been in the car. Nicola
Gatti, one of the workers, had known Sacco in Milford eight years
earlier—the only witness of the crime who had previously known either
of the defendants. In spite of the remonstrances of the foreman, he
had pushed ahead of the others when he heard the shots until as the
Buick passed he was standing just behind the gate-tender. He had been
that close, and he had seen three men distinctly: the pale driver,
the dark man beside him, and a man in the back who was firing a gun.
Sacco was none of these men—nor was Vanzetti.
One of the track workers, Joseph Cellucci, testified in English. He
had recently joined the Navy and appeared on the stand in uniform. As
soon as he had heard the shots he had thrown down his shovel. Ricci,
the foreman, had tried to stop him, but he had ducked away and was
only about five feet from the Buick as it passed. A dark bristly man
half-kneeling between the front and back seats had leveled a revolver
and fired at him, the shot winging so close to his ear that he was
deaf for three days. Cellucci had only a glimpse of the driver but it
was enough to convince him that neither of the prisoners had been in
the getaway car.
Barbara Liscomb, who had looked directly down at the bareheaded
gunman, was considered the star witness for the defense. The
contorted face of the dark man with the pistol who stared up at her
as she stood at a second-floor window of Rice & Hutchins, had made an
imprint in her mind she could never forget. “I would always remember
that face,” she told the court. She was “positively sure” it was not
the face of Sacco or Vanzetti.
Jenny Novelli described the man she had seen in the car who looked so
much like her friend as having “dark hair and a dark complexion, like
a man that has to shave every day.” Neither prisoner was that man.
Just after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, Hellyer, the Pinkerton
operative, had shown Mrs. Novelli a photograph of Sacco and she said
it greatly resembled the man next to the driver. She now denied ever
making such a tentative identification. Sacco was not the man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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