FOOTNOTES:
[29] Fuller has been accused of altering his decision following Coolidge’s announcement, but he had undoubtedly made up his mind the week before, after reading the Lowell Report.
[30] In 1960, at the State Police ballistic laboratory, I tried carrying Sacco’s pistol in my belt. I found it impossible to move without being aware of both its weight and bulk.
[31] In his book Sacco-Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth, Robert Montgomery attributes the following story about Magrath to Chief Stewart and G. Andrews Moriarty, a friend of Magrath’s:
“During the trial Stewart ... obtained for Magrath several hairs from Sacco’s cap and several hairs from the comb Sacco was using in the jail. Magrath put these hairs on slides and looked at them through a microscope. They were identical, and both Stewart and Magrath suggested to Katzmann that he use the evidence, which certainly would have been conclusive so far as the cap was concerned.
“Katzmann was tempted, but he finally decided against it, because he believed that the defense and the newspapers might ridicule an attempt to hang the defendants by a hair or make some other pun on this much-punished word.”
[32] A reward was offered and a few unlikely suspects were questioned, but the police never developed any real clues as to the bomber. The same bombing pattern was followed five years later when Judge Thayer’s house in Worcester was partially destroyed. Executioner Elliott’s New York house was also bombed some time after the executions.
[33] Nine years earlier Congressman Fuller had seemed more knowledgeable when he voted to exclude the elected Socialist Victor Berger from Congress and in a jangle of metaphors called for “the crucifixion of disloyalty, the nailing of sedition to the cross of free government, where the whole brood of anarchists, bolsheviks, I.W.W.’s and revolutionaries may see and read the solemn warning.”
[34] Dante had visited his father the day before and Sacco had been much moved, noting proudly that his boy was now taller than he was.
[35] The original of this letter is not available for comparison, but undoubtedly the published version has been edited.
[36] Susie Valdinoce.