On 15 April, a paymaster and guard were killed during a payroll hold-up outside a shoe factory near Boston, Massachusetts. The bandits escaped, but three weeks later a pair of Italian immigrants were arrested on firearms charges and subsequently charged with the payroll murders. They were Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartholomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler- and their names were to echo through the decades to the shame of American justice.

The events occurred during one of America's periodic 'Red Scares'. Sacco and Vanzetti held anarchist views, and their trial in May 1921 proved a grotesque travesty. The mere facts that the accused were immigrants and anarchists were practically enough to convict them, and their fates were sealed when the prosecution tried to prove by dubious means that Sacco's.32 Colt was the murder weapon. The prejudicial atmosphere of the court was barely credible: the accused were freely referred to as 'wops', 'dagos', and 'sons of bitches', and Judge Webster Thayer, in summing up, disclosed an open detestation of foreigners ('Did you see what I did to those anarchistic bastards?' he asked after the proceedings). The whole affair was complicated in 1925 when a convicted gangster, Celestino Madeiros, confessed to the payroll robbery and started that Sacco and Vanzetti played no part in it. Since Madeiros himself was awaiting execution however, his testimony was of limited value.

In July 1927, a three-man committee was appointed to re-examine the evidence. Authoritative new testimony for the prosecution came from Major Calvin Goddard, a pioneer of forensic ballistics. Using the recent invention of the comparison microscope, he showed conclusively that the fatal bullets had allegedly been fired by Sacco's gun (but had the bullets been planted of him? So much was a stake by now in the case that both defence and prosecution were fighting dirty). On 3 August the state Governor refused a retrial. Sacco and Vanzetti must die, and following the