This week (April 13-19) in crime history – Serial killer
Christopher Wilder shot himself to death to avoid capture (April 13, 1984); Old
West outlaw Butch Cassidy was born (April 13, 1866); President Abraham Lincoln
was shot at Ford’s Theater (April 14, 1865); The Sacco and Vanzetti Case (April
15, 1920); Boston Marathon bombing (April 15, 2013); Nancy Titterton’s murder
shocked New York City (April 17, 1936); Suicide bomber destroyed the U.S.
Embassy in Beirut (April 18, 1983); The Central Park Jogger Case (April 19,
1989)
Highlighted Crime
Story of the Week -
On April 15, 1920, a paymaster and a security guard were killed
during a mid-afternoon armed robbery of a shoe company in South Braintree,
Massachusetts. Out of this crime grew one of the most infamous trials in
American history and a landmark case in forensic crime detection. Both Fred
Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli were shot several times as they attempted
to move the payroll boxes of their New England shoe company. The two armed
thieves, identified by witnesses as “Italian-looking,” fled and their abandoned
car was found in the woods several days later. Through evidence found in the
car, police suspected that a man named Mike Boda was involved. However, Boda fled
to Italy.
Police did manage to catch Boda’s colleagues, Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were each carrying loaded weapons at the
time of their arrest. Sacco had a .32 caliber handgun, the same type as was
used to kill the security guards and bullets from the same manufacturer as those
recovered from the shooting. Vanzetti was identified as a participant in a
previous robbery attempt of a different shoe company.
Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists, believing that social
justice would come only through the destruction of governments. In the early
1920s, mainstream America developed a fear of communism and radical politics
that resulted in an anti-communist and immigrant hysteria. Sacco and Vanzetti,
recognizing the uphill battle ahead, tried to put this fear to their advantage
by drumming up support from the left wing with claims that the prosecution was
politically motivated. Millions of dollars were raised for their defense by the
radical left around the world. The American embassy in Paris was bombed in
response to the Sacco-Vanzetti case; a second bomb intended for the embassy in
Lisbon was intercepted. The well-funded defense put up a good fight, bringing
forth nearly 100 witnesses to testify on the defendants’ behalf. Ultimately,
eyewitness identification wasn’t the crucial issue; rather, it was the
ballistics tests on the murder weapon. Prosecution experts, with rather
primitive instruments, testified that Sacco’s gun was the murder weapon.
Defense experts claimed just the opposite. In the end, on July 14, 1921, Sacco
and Vanzetti were found guilty; they were sentenced to death.
However, the ballistics issue refused to go away as Sacco
and Vanzetti waited on death row. In addition, a jailhouse confession by
another criminal fueled the controversy. In 1927, Massachusetts Governor A. T.
Fuller ordered another inquiry to advise him on the clemency request of the two
anarchists. In the meantime, there had been many scientific advances in the
field of forensics. The comparison microscope was now available for new
ballistics tests and proved beyond a doubt that Sacco’s gun was indeed the
murder weapon. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in August 1927, but even the
new evidence didn’t completely quell the controversy. In October 1961, and
again in March 1983, new investigations were conducted into the matter, but
both revealed that Sacco’s revolver was indeed the one that fired the bullet
and killed the security guards. On August 23, 1977, Massachusetts Governor
Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had not received
a fair trial.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that includes Murder
and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949. Visit
Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:
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