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Mrs. Elizabeth R. Bernkopf, who covered for the International News motions made in 1923 for a retrial, said that Judge Thayer presented her with an unsolicited autographed photograph of himself and referred to Attorney Moore as a "long-haired anarchist." He said he could not be "hoodwinked" and that nobody "could put anything over" on him.
Besides affidavits, the petition contained a statement from George U. Crocker, onetime Boston Treasurer. Mr. Crocker is a member of the University Club where Judge Thayer stayed during the trial. His statement said: "At this time I did not know that I had ever met Judge Thayer. He approached me one evening, however, called me by name and began to talk to me about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and I soon was able to gather that he was the Presiding Judge, but even then I did not know his name. . . . One morning at breakfast I particularly remember because it seemed to me that Judge Thayer at that time exhibited his prejudice and bias in the most notable manner. On this morning he either came to the table where I was sitting and asked if he could have breakfast with me, or he called me to his table and asked me to have breakfast with him. He immediately began to talk again about the case and pulled out of his pocket a portion of the charge which he was to deliver, as I understood it, on that day. He read parts of it to me with comments like this: 'Counsel for defense said so and so yesterday, and this is my reply.' He then read a part of the charge and said, 'I think that that will hold him, don't you?' "I tried my best to avoid these conversations and I told the head waiter at the club to see to it that I was not put with him again at meals." From Judge Thayer came only silence. He was said to be on a vacation, perhaps at his Maine summer home. Commenting on the new disclosures in the Sacco-Vanzetti petition, the New York World said: "What comes out of all these statements is a picture not of a judge but of an agitated little man looking for publicity and utterly impervious to the ethical standards one has the right to expect of a man presiding in a capital case." Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller studied the Sacco-Vanzetti petition, said his mind was not made up on what procedure to follow. He received from Chicago a lurid deaththreat. It read: "Hon. Alvin: "If you will execute Sacco and Vanzetti, we are going to murder you, all of your family and turn your home into ashes; the same we do with your judge and Chief Justice as they got our note last week. "Our airplanes had a wonderfull success over your home and the home of your barbars [barbarous?] Judge and Chief Justice. Nobody has not away from us and nobody cannot. "This is the oath of thousands and uiousands that will fight to death. The French spirit never die—as to tell you again, if you, your judge and Chief Justice will execute Sacco-Vanzetti, we going to destroy all of your fellows.
"The French American bankers and unions cooperation. Ad. K. K. K."
Last week many Sacco-Vanzetti pleas were pouring in from highly reputable sources. Among the voices added to the Sacco-Vanzetti cause were those of:
Paul Loebe, President of the German Reichstag
Author Will Irwin
John F. Moors and Charles P. Curtis of the Harvard Corporation