All three men had been shown the car found in the Manley Woods.
Harding, disregarding his first statement about a Hudson, again
described the Bridgewater car as a seven-passenger Buick. The
“croppy” mustache of the bandit that he “did not get much of a
look at” was now “a heavy dark mustache that had been trimmed.”
On December 24 he had described the shotgun bandit to a Pinkerton
investigator as “slim, five feet ten inches, wore a long black
overcoat and a derby hat.” Now he described him: “Long coat, no hat,
high forehead, hair was short, dark complected man, I should say,
high cheekbones, rather hard, broad face and the head, perhaps, more
a round head, bullet shaped.”
Mrs. Brooks repeated her story of crossing in front of the parked
car and looking through the windshield at the driver. She had picked
Vanzetti out of a lineup of four men in the Brockton police station
as that driver. Facing him in the courtroom, she was still certain
he had been the driver. After she had entered the railway station,
she testified she heard shots and, looking out the window, saw the
flashes from two gun barrels as the L. Q. White truck lurched down
Broad Street. In cross-examining her Vahey questioned whether it
was possible (as indeed it was not) to have an unimpeded view of
the street from the station, and whether in fact she had seen the
shooting at all. Mrs. Brooks became confused and hesitant, but Vahey
did not press the point. Neither did he bring out the fact that
Vanzetti did not know how to drive.
The only other witness to identify Vanzetti in court was Maynard
Shaw, a schoolboy who had been delivering papers at the time of the
attempt. From one hundred fifty feet away on Broad Street he had seen
a dark-mustached man with a shotgun get out of a touring car on the
corner and fire at the payroll truck. “He is the one I saw,” the boy
said, pointing at Vanzetti. He added that even at a distance he knew
the man was a foreigner “by the way he ran.” Vahey made much of this
remark, asking Shaw whether Italians and Russians ran differently
from Swedes or Norwegians and how anybody could tell the difference.
Shaw had not paid much attention to the bandits’ car, thinking it a
Hudson or a Buick. Later, though he did not explain why, he concluded
it was a Buick.
The other witnesses were routine. John King of Grove Street had been
in his upstairs bedroom when he heard the car roar by. Looking out,
he noted it was a seven-passenger Buick. Dr. Murphy once more told of
picking up the spent shotgun shell. Simon and Ruth Johnson appeared
and told their stories, and George Hassam, the Needham garage owner,
told his. Officer Connolly told of arresting Vanzetti. Chief Stewart
submitted a transcript of his interview with the defendant. Most of
it was excluded because of its references to political beliefs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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