Goodridge was released next morning. There was nothing more Moore
could do about him.
* * * * *
On September 11 Moore presented a fourth supplementary motion,
requesting a new trial because of additional facts discovered about
the witness Lola Andrews, “a person whose testimony should not
constitute the basis of a verdict of guilty on a charge of murder.”
Six months before the trial, when Moore had interviewed her in
the Alhambra Block in Quincy and shown her pictures of Sacco and
Vanzetti, she had been unable to identify them and had made a
statement exonerating the defendants. On the witness stand she had
claimed that this statement had been untruthfully reported. Now
Moore, as he wrote to Upton Sinclair, had “wilted” her. She had
signed an affidavit for him repudiating her court testimony and
admitting that she had lied because the district attorney knew “many
chapters of her private life that she could ill afford to have
revealed.”
Her affidavit stated that some time before the trial Stewart and
Brouillard had taken her to the Dedham jail, shown her Sacco, and
asked if he was the man she had seen on April 15. She said she did
not know. Later Assistant District Attorney Williams put the same
question to her. She said she could not be positive. Williams then
shook his finger in her face and told her, “You can put it stronger
than that. I know you can.”
Her testimony in court had been “false and untrue.... She had never
... at any time or place or under any conditions and specifically on
April 15, 1920, at South Braintree, seen said Nicola Sacco until she
saw him in the Dedham County Jail.” Her false statements “were made
under the intimidating influences of Michael E. Stewart, Albert L.
Brouillard, Harold Williams and Frederick G. Katzmann.”
Like Pelser, Lola Andrews found herself overborne by any determined
person who talked with her. In addition she had much to conceal.
Her life in Quincy was in part known to the police. Recently there
had been some business about a naval officer named Landers in her
room, hushed up for the time but still rumor-heavy. When Moore found
out that she had originally come from Gardiner, Maine, he sent Bert
Carpenter there to see what he could learn. What Carpenter learned
would have ruined her in any court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account