Book Description

On April 15, 1920, a band of five armed robbers made off with the payroll of a South Braintree, Mass. shoe company, shooting dead the guard (Alessandro Berardelli) and the paymaster (Frederick Albert Parmenter). Two Italian extremists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were charged on May 5, 1920, with the murders; indicted on September 14, 1920; and brought to trial in the Superior Court at Dedham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Judge Webster Thayer presiding. A verict of guilty was rendered but sentence was not pronounced until April 9, 1927. Following a worldwide outcry of injustice, Governor Alvan Fuller appointed an independent commission to advise him of the fairness of the trial. The commission's members were Abbot Lawrence Lowell, Pres. of Harvard University, Judge Robert Grant, and President Samuel W. Stratton. In Nov. 1925 Celestino Medeiros, a young Portugese, confessed to the crime. A motion based on Medeiros' statement was argued before Judge Thayer, who denied it. On Aug. 22, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed.