The defense lawyers did not search Bridgewater for refuting witnesses. Their strategy was to rely on Vanzetti’s alibi as established by his North Plymouth neighbors. Judge Thayer charged the jury that if they could conclude Vanzetti was in Plymouth on the morning of December 24, the case was ended. In addition the defense had collected several witnesses to testify that during all the years Vanzetti had lived in Plymouth he had never worn anything but his present shaggy mustache. Awed and uneasy, the Italian witnesses marshaled by Vahey sat together in the back of the courtroom talking in whispers and waiting for their names to be called. Except for those who were American-born, they spoke through the interpreter, Govoni. First to take the stand was Vittorio Papa, the elusive Poppy Vanzetti had claimed he was trying to visit the night of his arrest. Papa merely said that he had been friendly with Vanzetti in Plymouth and that when he moved to East Bridgewater he had asked his friend to come and visit him. He had not given Vanzetti his address there. Papa was followed by Mary Fortini, Vanzetti’s landlady, who told how on that day before Christmas she had gone upstairs and called her lodger at a quarter past six. A few minutes later he had come down in his stocking feet, wearing overalls and a green sweater. She had warmed some milk for his breakfast. After drinking it, he had put on his boots and gone out. A day or two before, a barrel of eels had come down from Boston for him by express, and she happened to be at home when it arrived. Vanzetti had spent the evening of the twenty-third in the kitchen cleaning and weighing them, wrapping them in newspapers, and ticketing them for delivery next day. After he left the house the morning of the twenty-fourth, he came back again about eight o’clock with a boy who was helping him, and the two of them had loaded the pushcart and a wheelbarrow with the packages of eels.