bitterly cold morning of March 10, 1933, you couldn't miss it. I was in my office, trying out the radio that I'd finally bought- and found the two-and-a-half-hour ceremony being broadcast on most of the stations. I also found myself drawn to listening to it, dull as it was. I was fascinated by Chicago's efforts to turn Cermak into the 'martyr mayor,' and a little surprised at how little trouble Chicago was having swallowing it.
A few newspaper articles suggesting the mob connection appeared in the days following the shooting; but the chief of detectives- whose son was one of Cermak's bodyguards, remember- had publicly dismissed the theory, and it hadn't reared its head since.
And then the papers had been full of the up-and-down battle Cermak was waging for his life; that, more than anything, had turned him into a hero. The doctors issued statement after statement citing Cermak's 'indomitable courage and will to live'; from the start he was given at least a fifty-fifty chance to pull through.
As for Zangara, he was tried for attempted murder, four counts: Roosevelt, Cermak, and two of the other victims. His story remained for the most part the same as the one he related to Winchell. Occasionally details would shift, but usually it was the same- often word for word the same, delivered with the quiet smile of somebody who knows something you don't know. The psychiatrists examined him and termed him sane; and the judge gave him eighty years. Zangara laughed and said, 'Oh, Judge, don't be stingy. Give me a hundred years.' And was taken back to his skyscraper jail cell.
A few things came out at the trial that nobody- including the defense- seemed very interested in. One was the testimony of several Miami Beach hotel clerks who said that Zangara was constantly receiving mail and packages postmarked Chicago, and always seemed to have plenty of money. The manager of the pawnshop Zangara bought his.32 revolver from said that he'd done business with Zangara for nearly two years and that '… he was supposed to be a bricklayer, but he didn't work at that trade- he always seemed to have money.'
Zangara had money, all right: he admitted losing two hundred dollars at the dog track a day or so before the shooting, and in addition to the money he'd had on him- fort)' bucks- he had two hundred and fifty dollars in a postal savings account. His bankbook showed that the account had. not long ago, contained twenty-five hundred dollars. No one asked Zangara what became of the money, whether he'd sent it home to his father and stepmother and six sisters in Italy, with whom even now he was corresponding. The prosecution did ask Zangara where the money came from, and he had no explanation, other than insisting that he'd earned it as a bricklayer- even though he'd been out of work three years.
Other stories circulated that had no apparent basis in fact: some of the papers reported that Zangara had a drawerful of clippings about Roosevelt's visit to Miami, as well as others about the assassinations of Lincoln and McKinley. Testimony on the witness stand by investigators made no mention of any such clippings.
But Zangara's litany- 'kill the president, kill any president, kill all president'- drowned everything else out. Nobody seemed to notice that Zangara's raving usually was accompanied by a nervous smile, like a child actor who knows the lines but doesn't really have the maturity to give a convincing performance.
I didn't see any of this in person, of course; but it made the newsreels. That sheriff whose shorts Winchell had dropped the fame bug down appeared with Zangara in most of the reels; and Zangara seemed to have been bitten by the bug, too, as he was pictured more than once sitting in his cell surrounded by newspapers with his name in headlines. The judge at Zangara's trial also made the newsreels, giving interviews about the special summation he'd made before pronouncing sentence, in which he'd made an urgent plea for control of handguns: several civic groups took the judge's lead but went another step with it. urging handguns be outright banned.
On hearing of Zangara's eighty-year sentence, Cermak, in the midst of a rally (a political rally, by the time Cermak got through with it), said, 'They certainly mete out justice pretty fast in this state.' He went on to wistfully wonder why other states didn't learn from Florida's example, and stamp out crime via speedier trials.
And when, after the daily reports of improvement alternating with crisis came to an end, Cermak died in a coma on the morning of March 6, the state of Florida didn't disappoint him. Zangara was retried within three days, and sentenced to die at Raiford Penitentiary on March 20. The papers said the electric chair sat in the midst of a little cubicle at the end of a long corridor; when Zangara sat in it, he must've looked like a kid in a grotesque high chair.
He'd taken that seat of his own accord, shaking free from the grasp of two guards who meant to lead him to it; he sat and said, smiling, 'See? I no scared of electric chair.' But then he looked about and saw no cameramen among the handful of reporters present in the visitors' gallery. And he said, 'No camera? No movie to take a picture of Zangara?'
The warden said, 'No. That isn't allowed.'
'Lousy capitalists!'
Guards placed a black hood over his head and he said, 'Good-bye-
And Zangara got his way.
Of course it came out. within days of the execution, that the real cause of Cermak's death was colitis, despite an autopsy report attributing the primary cause of death to the gunshot wound, enabling Florida to rush Zangara to judgment. The nine physicians who signed the report, with colitis listed only as a contributing factor, later admitted that the wound was at best 'indirectly' responsible; that, as earlier reports indicated, the wound had in fact healed; that Cermak had indeed died of ulcerative colitis, that 'old problem' of his.
Of course the way I saw it, fair was fair: Zangara's bellyache had killed Cermak, in a way; why shouldn't Cermak's bellyache return Zangara the favor?
The morning the state of Florida was frying Joe Zangara, the state of Illinois was attempting to try Frank Nitti for shooting police Sgt. Harry Lang in the hand while resisting arrest. I hadn't been called to the grand jury indictment hearing in January, due no doubt to Cermak's string-pulling and the general assumption that the case was cut-and-dried; but for the trial I was present, sitting next to Lang with Miller on the other side of him, as we all waited to see if we'd get to speak our pieces today. Lang and Miller had been very friendly to me, so far; just three pals getting their day in court.
Nitti and his counsel approached the bench. Nitti, looking tan and healthy but a trifle thin, was wearing a blue serge suit with a blue tie; he looked like a business executive, except perhaps for the barber-slick hair.
I heard Lang whisper to Miller, 'Jesus, look at Nitti. He's brown as a berry. Where'd the wop get the tan?'
I said, in less of a whisper than Lang, 'Haven't you guys heard? Nitti's been in Miami vacationing, and looking after his business interests.'
They turned and looked at me blankly.
