Stewart’s questioning of the second man followed the same line. The
suspect said his name was Nicola Sacco, that he was married, lived in
South Stoughton, and had been in America eleven years. For the last
two years he had worked at the Three-K factory in Stoughton. He had
once looked for a job in Bridgewater, but he had never been in West
Bridgewater until tonight. He did not know any Boda or Coacci. He had
not seen a motorcycle. He was not an anarchist or Communist. As for
the automatic in his waistband, he carried it because there were a
lot of bad men about. He had bought it a long time ago at some shop
near Hanover Street in Boston. The cartridges were from a box he had
bought and they just happened to be in his pocket. He had planned to
shoot them off in the woods with his friends.
Stewart’s questioning of both men lasted about ten minutes. They were
then locked up.
Neither Sacco nor Vanzetti had been behind bars before. Now, in
adjoining cells under the shadowless glare of the overhead light,
with a wooden shelf to sleep on and a seatless toilet in the corner,
they sensed the isolating fear of arbitrary impersonal force. To
the policemen going on and off duty they were curiosities and as
such subject to a certain amount of crude horseplay. When the two
men requested blankets the reply was that they would find it warm
enough when they were lined up in the hall for a little live target
practice, and one patrolman showed Vanzetti a cartridge which he then
slipped into the barrel of his revolver, cocking it and pointing
between the bars. When Vanzetti did not move, the other spat on the
floor contemptuously and turned away.
* * * * *
According to the Registry of Motor Vehicles records the motorcycle
in which Boda had ridden off belonged to Ricardo Orciani. A molder
in a Norwood foundry, Orciani boarded at 1532 Hyde Park Avenue with
Angelo Ventola, whose brother, Joseph Ventola, lived across the
street. Orciani was picked up in his room the night of May 6 and
taken to Brockton. Still wearing the checked mackinaw of the night
before, he was identified by Simon and Ruth Johnson as the driver of
the motorcycle. A short, cocky Italian with an assured round face
and clipped mustache, he was unperturbed by his arrest. He refused
to answer questions. Where he went, he told the police, was his own
business. The revolver found in his bureau was one he just happened
to have.
On Thursday, May 6, the district attorney for Norfolk and Plymouth
counties, Frederick Gunn Katzmann, appeared at the Brockton station
to take over the questioning, bringing with him a stenographer and an
interpreter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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