The Legacy of Sacco & Vanzetti

The next day, Chief Stewart, connecting the Bridgewater attempt with the previous day's robbery and murders, visited Coacci, who had failed to report for a deportation hearing. Since Boda was said to have a Buick or an Overland, the Chief suspected that Boda and Coacci were part of a gang. He found Coacci packing his trunk, anxious to leave the country. Coacci was not arrested at that time, and later was deported to Italy. When he landed, his trunk was searched by Italian police, alerted for Coacci's arrival by the Bridgewater police, but nothing incriminating was found.

The next day, a Buick was found abandoned in a nearby woods. Tracks from a second car led away from it.

Also on April 17, Boda took his Overland for repairs to Johnson's garage in Cochesett. Stewart visited the Johnsons and instructed them to call when anyone came to pick up the car.

On the night of May 5, Boda and a friend, Riccardo Orciani, arrived at the Johnson garage on a motorcycle with a sidecar. Two other Italians, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, arrived with them, on foot. The four wanted the Overland, but Mr. Johnson pointed out to them that the car lacked 1920 license plates. While Johnson talked to the men, Mrs. Johnson slipped next door and phoned the police. Boda and Orciani left on the motorcycle, Sacco and Vanzetti walked several blocks to catch the trolley back to Brockton.

Sacco's Colt and Vanzetti's H&R

When the trolley had reached Campello, two policemen, Officers Connolly and Vaughn, boarded the trolley, recognized the men as "the Italians" that had been described by Johnson, and arrested them. Vanzetti was carrying a loaded .38 Harrington and Richardson revolver and a number of loose shotgun shells. At the police station, Sacco was found to have a .32 Colt automatic, fully loaded, and a pocketful of ammunition.

Both men gave untrue accounts of where they had been or how they had obtained their guns. They denied knowing Boda and Coacci. They were vague in their responses to questions about their political beliefs. In all probability, Sacco and Vanzetti thought that their arrests were connected to their anarchism or their draft-dodging, since neither the Bridgewater assault nor the South Braintree killings were mentioned. They were locked into cells for the night.

The next day, Frederick Katzmann, the District Attorney, questioned them about April 15th. Sacco said he thought he had been at work, Vanzetti said that he was peddling fish, as he did every day. Witnesses were paraded by them. Mrs. Johnson was one of them, and Sacco denied ever having seen her.

Coacci was arrested, released upon establishing that he had been at work all day on April 15th, and deported. Boda sailed for Italy three days later and never returned to the United States.

Since Sacco had been at work on December 24th, but away from work on April 15th, he was charged with the armed robbery and murders at South Braintree. Vanzetti, who said he was peddling fish on both days, was charged not only with armed robbery and the South Braintree murders, but with "assault with intent to murder" at Bridgewater.

Katzmann decided that Vanzetti would stand trial for the Bridgewater attempt first, and that the two of them would be tried together for the South Braintree crimes.