District Attorney Williams now read a deposition by Giuseppe Adrower,
made in Rome. In April 1920, Adrower was a clerk in the Italian
consulate in Boston. Sacco, he deposed, had appeared early in April
about a passport and had been told to come back with two photographs.
On April 15 he had returned with an oversize family photograph.
Adrower remembered the date because it was “a very quiet day in
the Royal Italian Consulate and since such a large photograph had
never before been presented for use on a passport I took it in and
showed it to the Secretary of the Consulate. We laughed and talked
over the incident. I remember observing the date in the office of
the Secretary on a large pad calendar while we were discussing the
photograph. The hour was around two or a quarter after two, as I
remember about a half an hour later I locked the door of the office
for the day.” When Professor Guadagni came to the consulate the
week after the arrests to ask about the incident, Adrower could not
remember Sacco, but after Guadagni showed him the oversize photograph
he remembered both it and the date and had no doubt about either.
The written cross-interrogatory contained the by-now-familiar
Katzmann hurdles. Adrower had stated that between a hundred fifty
and two hundred people a day came to the consulate to inquire about
passports. He was asked to give the name of each person he talked
with on April 17, 19, 21, 24, 29, and May 2, 3, and 4. He could not
remember their names. He was then asked to describe every person with
whom he talked on those days. “I cannot describe them in detail,”
he admitted. In the defense’s redirect interrogatory, Adrower stated
that although many people appeared at the consulate with family group
photographs, none had ever brought in such a large one as Sacco
produced.
Friday’s last new witness was Dominic Ricci, a carpenter living in
a boarding house in South Stoughton, not far from Sacco’s bungalow.
He had known Sacco several years. The morning of April 15, he said,
he had seen Sacco on the Stoughton railroad platform at about
half-past seven and Sacco had told him he was going to Boston to get
a passport. Next day, seeing Sacco in the Three-K factory at eight
o’clock, Ricci had talked with him about the newspaper accounts of
the South Braintree murders.
Katzmann, with deceiving gentleness, asked Ricci if he had worked
on the eighteenth. Ricci said he had. Katzmann asked him about the
twenty-fifth, May 2, May 9, 16, 23, 30, and June 6, consulting
a pocket diary each time he asked. A titter spread through the
courtroom as the realization came that each of these dates was a
Sunday. The realization did not come as quickly to the embarrassed
Ricci. Katzmann continued leading him on a trail of Sundays through
the rest of the year, finally closing his diary with mock weariness
and smiling ironically at the bewildered Italian. “I have got to the
end of my calendar. You worked every Sunday, didn’t you, from then
on? That is all.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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