Sacco was born at Torre Maggiore, province of Foggia, in Southern Italy. He was christened Ferdinando but took the name of an elder brother when the latter died. His father, Michele Sacco, was a substantial owner of vineyards and olive orchards. In April 1908 he emigrated to the United States, where in 1912 he was married.
With the exception of an absence in Mexico (1917 - 18) to avoid the draft, Sacco at the time of his arrest in 1920 had been for eleven years employed as a skilled edger in a shoe factory at Milford, Massachussets, where he was known as a steady workman absorbed in his family, his work, and his garden.
During his residence in Massachusetts Sacco first became interested in Socialism and later, like Vanzetti, came under the influence of Luigi Galleani, a philosophical anarchist of the school of Blake and Tolstoy. In the winter of 1919-20 a wave of anti-radicalism swept the United States. At the height of this campaign, on Apr. 15, 1920, the paymaster and guard of a shoe factory were shot dead in the main street of South Braintree, Massachussets, and robbed of some $16, 000. The shots were fired by two men of foreign appearance who were immediately driven away in a car by their accomplices. It was with this brutal crime that Sacco and Vanzetti, arrested on May 5, were charged.
Their joint trial began on May 31, 1921, at Dedham, before Judge Webster Thayer. No money had been traced to the defendants nor was there any evidence that either of them had ever been in possession of the car in which the murderers made their escape. The prosecution relied on two main points: (1) evidence of eye-witnesses identifying the defendants as participants in the crime; (2) the fact that on arrest the defendants made to the police false statements as to their movements and circumstances, from which a guilty consciousness of murder might be inferred.
On July 14, both defendants were found guilty of murder in the first degree. After the trial, applications for a re-hearing were made to Judge Thayer, partly on the ground of fresh evidence, partly on the ground that the question of radicalism, unavoidably introduced by the defence, had been improperly capitalized by the prosecution and the presiding judge. It was claimed that the district attorney's cross examination, ostensibly directed to disprove, was really calculated to emphasize and exploit the defendants' evasion of military service and their unpopular opinions for the double purpose of prejudicing them in the eyes of the jury or, if they were acquitted, of providing the federal agents with materials for a deportation order against them. These motions were all denied and the supreme court of Massachusetts, whose power of review is limited to questions of law, refused to intervene.
Meanwhile, the spontaneous confession in 1925 of a condemned criminal named Madeiros (or Medeiros) exonerating the defendants had led to the discovery (1926) of much corroborative detail pointing to the theory that the murder was the work of a gang of professional bandits from Providence, R. I.
Sacco and Vanzetti were now defended by a prominent and conservative Boston lawyer, William G. Thompson, whose courageous, powerful, and disinterested presentation of their case aroused doubts of their guilt in many minds. Meetings of protest took place all over the world and such famous names as Mazaryk, Einstein, Anatole France, and Romain Rolland were associated with petitions for the men's release.
Nevertheless, so insistent was the demand for an impartial review that on June 1, 1927, Gov. Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts announced the appointment of an advisory committee to report to him on the fairness of the trial and the justification for the conviction. On Aug. 3 the Governor, who had meanwhile conducted his own inquiry, announced that both he and the advisory committee were unanimous in finding the trial fair and the defendants guilty. But the committee's report, published a few days later, was at once the object of serious and detailed criticism, particularly in regard to its treatment of the charge of prejudice against Judge Thayer. The defence unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the federal courts to intervene and demonstrations in favor of the defendants continued both at home and abroad.
After midnight of Aug. 22, that is, in the first hours of Aug. 23, both defendants were electrocuted.
(Commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Sacco and Vanz...)
In 1913, Sacco started attending weekly meetings of the anarchist group "Circolo di Studi Sociali".
In 1912 he married Rosina Zambelli (born 1895). in 1913 they had a son, who was named after the Italian poet Dante.
