To the Editor:

I read with interest your article about the Sacco-Vanzetti case by James Grossman [“The Sacco-Vanzetti Case Reconsidered,” January], and one fact which was touched upon but not emphasized has always seemed to have been very indicative of Sacco’s guilt. The fatal bullet was fired from a 32-cali-ber Colt, and the experts differed as to whether Sacco’s 32-caliber Colt was the one used or not. However, one point not in dispute was that there were four bullets in the body, two of which were Peters, one a Remington, and one a Winchester, the Winchester being of the type so obsolete that neither the defense expert nor the state witness could find a matching bullet to fire through Sacco’s gun for comparison purposes. Sacco’s 32-caliber Colt was loaded with nine bullets, and in his pocket were 23 additional bullets. These bullets were not all of one make, as is usual if you buy a box of bullets, but were a mixture of Peters, Remington, Winchester and U.S. Several of the bullets were of the obsolete Winchester type which nobody else could find. This mixture of bullets matching the ones in Sacco’s possession with the ones found in the murdered guard seems to be stretching coincidence too far.

R. Hugh Uhlmann
President
Standard Milling Company
Kansas City, Missouri

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To the Editor:

James Grossman . . . states that Herbert G. Ehrmann, in the book The Untried Case, makes out that the late Celestino F. Madeiros was a “gallant, romantic young man” when the truth was that Madeiros was a cold-blooded murderer. . . . In his book, Ehrmann writes that Madeiros was worm-eaten from birth, had fits, and was an epileptic. . . . A delinquent at fourteen, he had twelve previous arrests and convictions. He was mixed-up in shootings, rum-running, hi-jacking, and robbery. While in Dedham jail he made a violent attempt to escape which nearly cost the life of a guard.

Is this making a “gallant” out of Madeiros? . . .

Clement A. Norton
Boston, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

. . . It would be splendid if Justice, Truth, and Reason could be resurrected as guide-posts in our individual and collective efforts at living. . . .

Now James Grossman’s essay seems a curious compromise on the problem of past and current injustice. Grossman is prepared to reason that an injustice may have been done to one of these persons but possibly not the other. . . . The particular reconstruction in which Grossman finds us only half wrong is achieved by the delicate premise that certain police under duress would not be guilty of substituting one bit of evidence for another, and because an imprisoned man did not insistently cry “I’m innocent.”

Let the time come when it is no longer necessary or futile for the victimized to cry out, and there is hope for us all.

John Arsenian
Boston, Massachusetts

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