Beating the Devil’s Game by Katherine Ramsland

Author:Katherine Ramsland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

BACK TO BULLETS

Another incident in 1920 highlighted ballistic analysis once again. On the afternoon of Friday, April 15, 1920, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, two men approached a couple of security guards who were delivering the payroll money for the Slater and Morrill Shoe Factory, and opened fire. According to witnesses, one of the men shot both guards mortally, and the other pumped several more bullets into them. They then took the payroll boxes containing nearly $16,000 and sped off in a black Buick. People nearby said they appeared to be Italian, and one man reportedly sported a handlebar mustache.

Investigators on the scene recovered six ejected shell casings from the sidewalk around the dead men and were able to trace them to three manufacturers: Remington, Winchester, and Peters. They also found the apparent getaway car, abandoned, and they linked it to an earlier robbery. The mastermind appeared to be an Italian thug named Mike Boda, but when they located his hideout, he was gone, supposedly on his way to Italy. Yet two of his associates, Italian laborers who were part of an anarchist organization, fit the general descriptions of the robbers: Nicola Sacco, twenty-nine, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, thirty-two. Sacco even had a handlebar mustache. They denied owning guns, but a search turned up illegal pistols on their persons. Sacco’s was the right caliber for the murder weapon—a Colt .32 automatic. He also had two dozen bullets on him made by the three manufacturers whose bullets had been matched to the shells. Both men were promptly arrested. Vanzetti was found guilty of the robbery that had occurred before the double homicide, and Sacco was later tried with him for the murder of Alessandro Berardelli, one of the shoe company’s security guards.

The trial began on May 31, 1921, and public opinion was clearly against the defendants, because they were perceived as dangerous men. Yet many foreigners, resentful of American xenophobia, sided with them and the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee called the ordeal a witch hunt, with these men serving as scapegoats for America’s fear of international politics.

Four bullets removed from the murdered payroll guards were delivered to the self-educated ballistics experts for both sides, and their task was to determine whether Sacco’s .32 pistol was indeed the murder weapon. The prosecutor’s experts could not agree, while the defense experts, James Burns and Augustus Gill, exuded scientifically unwarranted confidence in their opinions.

Still, on June 14, Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed. The verdict was likely based on the fact that had little to do with what the experts or multiple witnesses had said: the bullet that had killed Berardelli was so outdated that the only bullets similar to it that anyone could locate to make comparisons were those found during the investigation in Sacco’s pockets. The jury had even used a magnifying glass to examine the bullets for themselves and had finally bought the prosecution’s case.

Right away another expert declared the others to be frauds, and his opinion was sufficient in 1923 to get a hearing for considering a retrial.

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