In August, 1920, Vanzetti was taken to Charlestown. Mede, with an eye to parole, was conducting a weekly English class for those who did not know the language, and Vanzetti became one of his students. Mede never forgot him. Forty years later he was still scornful of the idea that anyone could ever have considered the bookish Vanzetti capable of committing a holdup. By the end of 1921 Moore’s investigators had picked up rumors connecting Mede and Silva with the Bridgewater affair, and in January, February, and March, 1922, Moore visited Mede in Charlestown. The Big Chief would neither deny nor affirm anything, but intimated that if he was given help in getting a parole, plus certain other favors, he would disclose a lot. Moore wrote to Governor Channing Cox, explaining Mede’s situation and asking for assurance that no statement Mede made would hurt his chances for parole. Cox replied that inasmuch as Mede was not going to be paroled anyhow, he should feel perfectly free to tell what he knew. The Big Chief did not think much of the governor’s answer and refused to talk. Mede’s counsel was James Vahey, the brother of Vanzetti’s Plymouth lawyer. As soon as Vahey heard that Moore had been seeing his client, he paid a visit to the Charlestown prison and asked Mede point-blank just what he had said to Moore. When Mede denied that he had told Moore anything, Vahey—according to Mede’s sworn statement in 1928—warned him: “Don’t you dare say anything in regard to the Sacco-Vanzetti case. You know, my brother defended Vanzetti, and you will only be putting my brother in Dutch.” Mede agreed to say nothing, but shortly afterward he broke with Vahey and on receiving the guarantee of an unrevealed sum of money from Moore told a story of the Bridgewater holdup similar to that later told by Silva. Mede had got together with Sammarco and said the latter would corroborate him, but although Moore talked with Sammarco several times, he could get no admissions out of him. Meanwhile, Adolph Witner, who had been let off with a token sentence for helping to convict Silva and Luban, found himself extradited to Boston on charges of forgery and mail robbery. Moore ran into him at police headquarters, overwhelmed by his new troubles. He told Moore that he could open up the Sacco-Vanzetti case if Moore, in turn, would help him. Somehow the adroit Moore arranged to get the charges against Witner dropped, and late in April the two men, accompanied by an ex-convict named John Jocomo, then working as an investigator for the Defense Committee, headed for Atlanta to interview Luban and Silva.