Part 7

On February 13th, Charlotte La Posee gave the defense attorneys an affidavit in which she swore that she had seen Oxman watching the parade near the entrance to the Phelan Building, more than a mile from Steuart and Market, at the exact time when, according to his testimony, he had observed Mooney and Billings planting the lethal suitcase. According to the _Examiner_, Fickert was “undisturbed” at this revelation because “John Regal, an Oregon business man, was a companion of Oxman the day of the Preparedness Parade and could corroborate the testimony of the cattle man.” The reason “Regal” hadn’t been called at the trial was “because of domestic difficulties.”

Rigall got around to putting his story in writing on April 22nd when he signed an affidavit in which he claimed that Oxman, with Fickert’s help, had tried to get him to say that he had seen Mooney at the corner of Market and Steuart on Parade Day. For this, he was to receive $250.00 from Oxman and a liberal share of the reward money. But his conscience had gotten the better of him and he had left San Francisco on January 26, 1917, without testifying. When he returned home to Grayville, he had told the story to Mayor Claude O. Ellis, who had persuaded him to return to California and prevent “the God damndest frame-up that you ever heard of.”

Six days earlier, Estelle Smith, the dental assistant who had testified that Billings and his famous suitcase had been on the roof of 721 Market Street on the day of the explosion, had admitted that Oxman had tried to bribe her to identify Weinberg as well. “Wouldn’t you testify,” he had asked her, “that you saw him for a check in four or five figures?” To her question, “Who sent you to me, Fickert?,” he had replied, “No, not Fickert, but men higher up than Fickert.” When she had told the District Attorney of this offer, she was informed that the cattleman was “a queer old duck.”

On April 30, 1917, Oxman was indicted for subornation of perjury. One month later, Rena Mooney was brought to trial and acquitted on July 25th. Fickert managed to keep her in jail on the other seven indictments until March 30, 1918 when she was released in five thousand dollars bail. On November 27th, Weinberg also was acquitted but it was not until March 22, 1918, that he was admitted to bail. Nolan, with Captain Matheson’s help, walked out of prison shortly after the Oxman exposures and was never tried.

In the Weinberg trial, eighteen police officers who had been stationed in the vicinity of Steuart and Market on July 22nd testified that they had seen no jitney in that area between 1:30 and 2:06 p.m. Inspector William H. Smith and Captain Walter J. Peterson of the Oakland Police Department both said that Mrs. Edeau had first told them that she and her daughter had seen two middle-aged men “carrying a black suitcase with white metal trimmings at Steuart and Market Streets.” When Mrs. Edeau was taken to City Prison to identify Mooney and Billings, she had told Inspector Smith, “I have never seen either of these men in my life before.” In any event, it had been her “physical” body at Steuart and Market, she had informed the startled officer, because her “astral” body was standing on the sidewalk in front of the Kamm Building watching Billings leaning over the roof of 721 Market Street. Two years later, her physical hand was to write for the rewards her astral eyes had earned.

Although Oxman was acquitted of subornation of perjury, Woodrow Wilson appointed a Mediation Commission to make an investigation into the Mooney case. On January 16, 1918, the Commission informed the President that, while it was not in a position to determine the defendant’s guilt or innocence, it did feel that “a solid basis exists for the feeling that an injustice was done ... and that an irreparable injustice would be committed to allow such conviction to proceed to execution.” On the strength of this report, Wilson persuaded Governor William D. Stephens to commute Mooney’s sentence to life imprisonment.

Because California law did not permit the granting of a new trial on the basis of evidence that was not in the original record, it became impossible, notwithstanding Judge Griffin’s earnest attempts, to give Mooney another hearing. Both the trial judge and the Supreme Court of California were powerless to act despite that fact that, in May of 1921, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Hatcher of Woodland, California, told a Grand Jury investigating Oxman’s possible perjury at the Mooney trial that the cattleman did not board the San Francisco train until 2:15 p.m., nine minutes after the bomb had exploded some ninety miles to the southwest. When Griffin reminded Governor Stephens that Mooney had been condemned upon evidence “concerning the truth of which, there had arisen a very grave doubt,” he had made the understatement of the century.

But there were still more surprises in the offing. Alice Kidwell, Estelle Smith’s mother, who had testified before the Grand Jury that she saw Mooney waiting for Billings outside of 721 Market Street, had written a letter on February 2, 1917, to her husband, who was then serving a term for forgery in Folsom Penitentiary. In it, she told him that “the authorities are going to let you out and maybe in a few days. Captain Matheson and the District Attorney went to see two of the Board this A.M. and will see the others at Sac. I know I am needed for authorities and they are helping me by getting you out.”

Fickert’s largesse was impressive. Before Estelle Smith had retired to the safety of a dentist’s office, she had been a San Francisco prostitute with a long arrest record. In addition, she and James L. Murphy, an uncle, had been indicted in 1913 for the murder of a boarder at the rooming house in which they were then living. Estelle was never tried but her uncle was convicted and sentenced to twelve years in the penitentiary. Coincidentally, Uncle Jim was released on April 10, 1917, forty-five days after Mooney’s sentence. In 1929, Miss Smith gave Fremont Older, then the editor of the _San Francisco Call_, a sworn statement in which she admitted she and the Edeaus had been carefully coached by Fickert’s men.

On February 7, 1921, John McDonald, the only key witness besides the Edeaus to testify in all four trials, executed a startling affidavit in New York City. In it, he stated that, while he had seen a man “lay down a suitcase” on Steuart Street, he had never seen that man again. But the District Attorney had wanted more out of him than this. “I think I talked to Fickert every day for weeks about the case. He kept saying to me every time I came, always using hard names against Mooney and Billings, ‘Those are the men you saw there that day.’ Up to this time I had never told Fickert that I could not have identified these men if they had not been pointed out to me, and I could not do so.” Just before the trial, Fickert told him that “there is a reward of $17,500 for the conviction of these people, and when I put them away, I will see that you get the biggest slice of the reward.” For a man who hadn’t worked in months, the temptation was just too much.

For some weeks prior to July 22nd, more than two hundred hand-printed post cards had been mailed to various sponsors of the parade. These cards warned their recipients that, because of their “extreme activity in promoting and glorifying militarism ... the extermination of you and your evil class, is going to be the sole and patriotic duty of the Employees Liberty League.” Although many detectives thought that there was a connection between the cards and the explosion, Fickert had dropped any further investigation along this line when handwriting experts advised him that neither Mooney nor Billings could have written them. But in 1930, Alonzo A. Smith swore that his brother, Louis, had told him before he died that he had been hired to throw a time bomb from the top of Market Street building during the Preparedness Day Parade. Dora E. Monroe said that Louis had once stated that “it was me that threw the bomb ... which Tom Mooney was convicted for.” It was to be dropped into a certain car in the parade and Smith had received a two-thousand-dollar advance with eight thousand more promised for results. But he had lost his nerve and thrown the bomb too early.

The rest of the story consisted of one application after another by Mooney for a pardon. Although his petitions were supported, at one time or another, by Captain Matheson, Detective Hand, Matthew Brady, Fickert’s successor, Judge Griffin, and nine of the ten living Mooney jurors, four California governors in a row--Richardson, Young, Merriam and Rolph--refused to free him. Even a daring attempt by the defendant in 1933 “to risk my neck” by insisting on being tried on one of the other murder indictments, came a cropper when the district attorney informed Judge Louis H. Ward that “the evidence in this case is insufficient ... the State asks for an instructed verdict and rests.”

It was not until January of 1939 that Governor Culbert L. Olson ended more than twenty-three years of imprisonment by granting Mooney an unconditional pardon. But for San Quentin Convict Number 31921, it all came much too late. The fifty-six-year-old man, who returned to San Francisco to find his countrymen on the brink of another war, had only three more years to live. The spirit that, as late as 1932, had been “aflame with furious indignation,” had burned itself out in a dungeon.

4

_Anarchists With Bloody Hands_

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts

_versus_

Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco

Thursday, April 15, 1920, dawned bright and windy in South Braintree, Massachusetts, a manufacturing town some twenty miles south of Boston. Shortly after nine that morning, Shelley A. Neal, the local American Express agent, waited at the New Haven railroad station for the delivery of a $15,776.51 payroll. The money was consigned to Slater & Morrill, Inc., one of South Braintree’s two shoe companies.

The cash arrived on the Boston train at about 9:10, and Neal took it to his office on the first floor of Hampton House, a four-story frame building on Railroad Avenue, a few feet from its intersection with Pearl Street, South Braintree’s main thoroughfare. Slater & Morrill occupied the top three floors of Hampton House, with its business office on the second floor. After he had sorted and counted the money, Neal left his office and walked down Railroad Avenue to the shoe company’s main entrance in the center of the rectangular building. As he locked his door, he saw that the hands on his office clock stood at exactly 9:30. He was a rapid walker and had almost arrived at the double-doored entrance before he noticed, with some apprehension, that a large, newly varnished black automobile with its motor running was parked alongside the curb.

When Neal passed the car, he saw that its driver, a light-haired man with an emaciated, jaundiced face, was watching him intently. As he entered Hampton House, he observed that the man got into the car and drove slowly up Railroad Avenue. Neal followed the vehicle with his eyes and thought that he could glimpse another man sitting in its rear seat. Although he later admitted that he had considered the driver’s conduct extremely suspicious, the agent did not report the incident to anyone at Slater & Morrill.

The company’s paymistress receipted for the money and began at once to fill the pay envelopes. When she had finished, the grey-colored packets were stacked in two large tin flats. Thursday was payday at the factory, and the boxes were scheduled to be picked up at three o’clock that afternoon by Frederick A. Parmenter, Slater & Morrill’s acting paymaster.

The car that had aroused Neal’s suspicions was apparently seen in other parts of South Braintree that morning. At 10:30, Harry E. Dolbeare, a piano repairman, was walking on Hancock Street when he noticed what he later described as “a carload of foreigners” in a large black sedan turning into Hancock Street from Holbrook Avenue. In the back of the car, he saw a man with “a very heavy mustache ... leaning forward as though he was talking to either the driver or the other person in front of the car.” In all, there were four men in the car who appeared to him to be “a tough looking bunch.”

A little after 11:30, Mrs. Lola R. Andrews, an unemployed practical nurse, arrived in South Braintree with Mrs. Julia Campbell, an elderly friend. Both women were seeking work and applied first at Slater & Morrill’s Factory No. 2, a four-story frame building which was located about an eighth of a mile east of Hampton House on Pearl Street. As the women entered the factory, Mrs. Andrews noticed a large black car parked in front of it. She saw a swarthy man, dressed in dark clothing, bending over the hood. In the back seat, she observed a thin, emaciated looking man with what she later depicted as “a light complexion.”

There were no jobs open at Slater & Morrill and, when Mrs. Andrews left the building some fifteen minutes later, she saw that the swarthy man was now lying on the ground with his head and shoulders under the front part of the vehicle. The sickly looking man, who had been sitting in the rear seat, was outside, leaning against the back of the car. Mrs. Andrews asked the man under the car if he could direct her to the Rice & Hutchins factory. At the sound of her voice, he got to his feet and pointed to the five-story brick building which was some 120 feet west of Factory No. 2.

Earlier that day, John M. Faulkner, a Cohasset pattern maker who was bound for the post hospital at the Watertown Arsenal to be treated for an infected hand, had boarded the 9:20 train to Boston. He was sitting in the second seat on the left hand side of the smoker. As the train came into East Weymouth, the passenger sitting on his right asked him if the stop was East Braintree. As Faulkner remembered it, “he said, ‘the man behind me wants to know if it is East Braintree.’” The pattern maker had then looked at the other man who was sitting in a single seat near the lavatory. “He looked like a foreigner, with a black mustache, and cheek bones.” The “foreigner” wore a felt hat and was dressed in “kind of old clothes.” Faulkner had watched him leave the train, carrying a leather bag, when the local pulled into East Braintree shortly after ten o’clock.

At 11:30, William S. Tracy, a real estate broker, had driven by South Braintree Square. He “saw two men standing with their back to the window of that [drug]store, the window nearest the corner of Pearl Street.” Some ten minutes later, he returned to the Square and noticed that the two strangers were still there. “The man nearest the drugstore was the shorter of the two and the other fellow ... the shorter man of the two, he stood erect, and their general appearance was that they were dressed respectably and looked as if they might have been waiting for a car.” What had attracted his attention to the men, whom he thought were Italians, was the fact that “no one was allowed to lean up against that building.”

Just after noon, one William J. Heron, a railroad detective, saw two strange men loitering near the station restroom. “One of them was about 5 feet 6 inches, weighed about 145 pounds, Italian. The other fellow was about 5 feet 11; I should say, weighed about 160. They were smoking cigarettes, one of them.” He had observed them closely because he considered it unusual for them to be there with no train due for some time, and “they acted kind of funny to me, nervous....” Heron had come to South Braintree to look for a lost boy whom he had found in the station and taken into the ticket office. When he emerged, a few minutes later, “the two men were gone.”

Shortly before three o’clock, Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli, a guard, arrived at the paymistress’ office on the second floor of Hampton House. They signed for the payroll and each man took one of the tin boxes containing the pay envelopes. Mark Carrigan, a shoe cutter, who worked on the third floor of Hampton House, watched the two men leave the building. They crossed Railroad Avenue, passed to the right of the New Haven station, talked briefly with James E. Bostock, a Slater & Morrill millwright, and then started up Pearl Street toward Factory No. 2.

A few minutes earlier, Bostock had noticed two foreign looking strangers--he later said he thought they were Italian fruit peddlers--leaning against a fence near a water tank on the north side of Pearl Street, but he did not mention them to Parmenter or Berardelli. His conversation with the paymaster and the guard was brief--he remembered only that Parmenter had ordered him to “go into the other factory and fix the pulley on the motor” and that he had answered that he couldn’t do the job that afternoon because he was “going to get this quarter past three car to Brockton.”

Albert Frantello, a former Slater & Morrill employee, also saw the two strangers who had attracted Bostock’s attention, and remembered that “the one that was nearest me had on a black cap, dark suit, dirty front on him, looked like a jersey, dark complexion and needed a shave, and he was a stocky build. The other fellow, he was light complexioned. He had on a cap; dark suit. He was about as tall as the other fellow, about the same height, only he was slimmer, kind of pale looking, and his hair was light. It was not as dark as the other fellow’s. I would say he was slimmer than the other fellow. He was not stocky build.” The first man had been wearing “a dark cap ... pulled down just like any ordinary fellow would have his cap on, just resting on his forehead.” The two men had been having an argument and Frantello overheard the stocky one berate his companion “in the American language.”

After his brief conversation with Parmenter and Berardelli, Bostock hurried on toward Hampton House. He had only gone a few steps when he was startled to hear a fusillade of shots behind him. He turned and saw the guard lying on the ground and a man standing over him with a smoking pistol in his hand. As he later testified, “... he stood over him. He shot, I should say, he shot at Berardelli probably four or five times. He stood guard over him.” Parmenter had dropped his box when he was hit by the first bullet and managed to run across Pearl Street, closely pursued by a second man who shot him in the back just as the pair reached an excavation for a new restaurant on the north side of the street.

According to Bostock, both bandits “was dressed in sort of dark clothes, with ... dark caps ... they appeared to be foreigners.” As for their physical appearance, “they was fellows of medium build ... smooth face, dark complected.” When one of the gunmen fired two shots at him, the millwright jumped behind the wooden fence where he had first noticed them just before meeting Parmenter and Berardelli. He had started to run back toward the railroad crossing when a black seven-passenger Buick drove slowly down the street, picked up the two gunmen and their loot, and then proceeded down Pearl Street toward the railroad crossing. The millwright ducked behind the water tank as the car shot by him. It was so close to him that “if I laid out at arm’s length I could have touched the spokes of the car as it passed me.” He saw four men inside, one of whom was firing at the excited crowd which was rapidly collecting around the bodies of the paymaster and the guard.

When the shooting started, Lewis L. Wade, a sole leather cutter who doubled in brass as an auto mechanic for Slater & Morrill, was filling Mr. Slater’s car with gasoline from a pump located in a little concrete shed in front of Factory No. 2. He saw Parmenter run across the street and disappear from view behind “a dirt truck.” A short, bareheaded man who “needed a shave” was standing over Berardelli, pumping bullets into the fallen guard. “And the next thing that I saw was a car come up Pearl Street, and stop--well, it didn’t exactly stop. I wouldn’t say for sure whether it stopped or not. And there was a man at the wheel ... he was a pale-faced man, a man, I should judge ... about probably 30 or 35. He looked to me like a man that had sickness or he was sick.”

As soon as the car had passed him, Wade ran into the factory office and called in the first alarm to the Braintree police. When he returned, he “went to where Berardelli lay and he was not dead then. He was breathing, and when he breathed the blood would come up and down on his face.” Across the street, the mechanic noticed that James E. McGlone, a teamster who was transporting stone from the restaurant excavation, was struggling to keep his frightened team from stampeding. McGlone later described the killers as “dark-skinned Italians” while Hans Behrsin, Mr. Slater’s chauffeur, who had been crouched behind the gasoline shed during the shooting, thought they had been “light complexioned boys.”

Mrs. Barbara Liscomb, who had been looking out on Pearl Street from a third-floor window squarely in the middle of the Rice & Hutchins building, said she saw “two men lying on the ground and one man, a short dark man, standing on the ground facing me with his head up, holding a revolver in his hands.” She was only at the window “about two seconds,” having collapsed when the man waved the gun at her, and she did not see the automobile traveling down Pearl Street. As she later put it, “I sort of fainted away.”

Mary E. Splaine, a Slater & Morrill bookkeeper, was working in her corner office on the second floor of Hampton House that afternoon. Just after three o’clock, she had watched Parmenter and Berardelli walk up Pearl Street toward Factory No. 2, and had returned to her desk when they passed out of her line of vision. When she heard the shots, which she first thought were automobile backfires, she returned to the windows which opened on Pearl Street. She saw a black automobile driving slowly in the direction of the railroad tracks. It crossed the tracks and, as it passed under her window, she saw one of its passengers leaning out of the car, a man she later described as “an active looking man.”

Miss Splaine did not see the actual shooting but twenty-two-year-old Lewis Pelser, a Rice & Hutchins employee, claimed that he did. He was working on the main floor of the factory building when he heard the first shots. He had rushed to the window, looked out and, as he put it, “I seen this fellow shoot this fellow. It was the last shot. He put four bullets into him.” The killer “had wavy hair pushed back, very strong hair, wiry hair, very dark.” Pelser also jotted down the license number of the car, noticing as he did so that the rear window of the vehicle had been removed and that a rifle or shotgun barrel protruded from this opening. Edgar C. Langlois, his foreman, had watched the shooting from the floor above Pelser. According to him, the murderers had been “stout ... thick-chested young men.”

Winifred H. Pierce, a Slater & Morrill shoemaker, had run to a window on the Pearl Street side of Hampton House as soon as the gunplay started. He saw two men in a black car, one of whom was climbing into the front seat from the rear. Lawrence D. Ferguson, a co-worker who was standing next to Pierce at the window, corroborated his story. But Daniel J. O’Neil, a South Braintree school boy, had a different version. According to him, the man in the car’s back seat had “walked along [its] running board and before the car had got over the other side of the crossing that man was sitting in the front seat.” The man he had seen “was a man [with] dark hair, cleanly shaven, broad shoulders light complexion.... He wore a blue suit and no hat ... of and his hair was thick but light and combed back straight over his head.”