When Cocchi first returned to Italy undetected, Francesco Baroncin, husband of Emma Magrini, Maria’s older sister, was worried that Cocchi had harmed his family. Baroncin persuaded Cocchi to go out to dinner one evening. Baroncin ordered the wine. “He did not tell me exactly how it was committed,” Baroncin told police, “but his meanderings indicated he had killed the girl.” Though there were “certain details that even a man of that sort is ashamed to tell,” admitted Cocchi’s brother-in-law. Cocchi’s father and brother insisted that Cocchi had told them nothing. Baroncin also told the police that Cocchi’s father had once traveled to New York to visit his son, but had left—sometime between 1913 and 1915—because of some sort of attempted violence. Baroncin said that Alfredo Cocchi was a “degenerate by heredity.”
Cocchi’s defense lawyer was Signor Venturini, who was the best defense lawyer in Bologna—twenty-five years earlier. He was now seventy-five, creaky, and angular, but he still knew the law like few else in the city. Even though Venturini was Cocchi’s defense lawyer, he had not yet been allowed to see his client. Venturini went to court and made an official complaint against the secret manner of the investigation thus far and asked why he was not allowed to see Cocchi. Venturini also argued strongly against his client’s extradition. When the court seemed to snicker at him, Venturini referred to articles in the Italian penal code that he said not only did not admit the possibility of Cocchi’s extradition but prevented the Italian government from trying the prisoner for a crime committed abroad. “This cannot go on” he said. “The law exists, and cannot be violated. It is a matter of honor with me, to see that the prisoner gets a fair trial, as I have undertaken in my old age to defend all poor Italians whom I can serve.” He shook his finger and his eyes blazed. Venturini would not be underestimated, either.
Venturini’s great worry was the length of time that would pass before his client’s trial. The Italian government still had to determine if Cocchi was an American citizen or an Italian subject. The trial could slog on for months as records were pulled and men argued. “I am guilty, and I want to pay the penalty,” Cocchi repeated from his cell. “Why spend your money on a lawyer? I won’t see him,” he said defiantly. It was not clear who was paying for his defense. “I would rather know the worst at once than live in this uncertainty,” Cocchi said. He allegedly told his father, several days before his arrest, that he was going to plead insanity.
On June 26, a woman slipped into Bologna very quietly. She was taken to Judge Zucconi’s rooms to be questioned. When the interview was concluded, the person returned home to America. The secret witness was reported to be an American woman who came to Italy for the sole purpose of giving testimony concerning the motive for the crime and the circumstances behind it. The name and address of the woman were not made public. The press speculated it might have been a Miss Cruger, though they offered no proof.
*
When Wallstein reconvened his hearings on June 26, it was for Captain Cooper to testify for the second time. This time, Wallstein had questions about Detective Lagarenne. Cooper said that Lagarenne’s report was recorded on a large blue card that indicated he had searched the premises. The card also mentioned Lagarenne’s interrogation of Rubien, the taxi driver who claimed to have seen Ruth Cruger. The card summarized Rubien’s statement that a man had called him to bring his taxi to a jewelry store at 127th and Manhattan. There, the man beckoned to a girl, got in with her, and Rubien took them to the subway station at 127th and Lenox. Lagarenne stated on the report that he believed this girl to be Ruth Cruger.
“Did you ask him how he came to that conclusion?” Wallstein asked.
“Yes, and he said it was on account of her appearance, her clothing,” replied Cooper.
“Did you accept this as conclusively as Lagarenne did?”
“No, they have to show me.”
“Were you ever able to locate the man reported as accompanying this girl in the taxicab?”
“No, sir.”
Wallstein wanted to talk about the motorcycle squad next. A group of them were at a restaurant near Cocchi’s when they learned that he had disappeared. As soon as they heard, they jumped on their bikes to Fourth Branch to tell the captain. Wallstein specifically questioned John L. Ochsenhirt and James Haggerty, both motorcycle cops who knew Cocchi. Ochsenhirt admitted that he was in the store earlier on the day that Ruth disappeared. He was also the man who reported that a girl and a young man had been seen in a taxicab in the neighborhood on the same night. The entire motorcycle squad was ordered to report the last two years of their paperwork. Twelve of their number had already been suspended due to the graft inquiry.
Dooling, fresh off his own interrogation of Maria Cocchi, was the next to stomp up to Wallstein’s table. He was chomping at the bit to talk. He knew that he was not here to be pointed at and accused. He was here to share what he knew.
“Three facts,” Dooling said, “proved that there were accomplices. First, the toolbox in the shop weighed seven hundred pounds and could not be lifted by one man. Second, the removal of the hot air flue and its replacement after the girl had been dropped through the improvised trap, required at least two persons. Third, more than one person helped carry away from the premises the earth that was taken from the tunnel grave.” The flue Dooling was referring to was the heating passageway from the first floor of the store to the cellar, which they were surmising Cocchi used to transport the body for burial. The coroner, Dr. Otto Schultze was next. He did not fear Wallstein. He testified that the smears on the tin around the hole in the floor were indeed drops of human blood.
In Italy, Cocchi seemed to be finally exhibiting a proud kind of remorse. “I am racked with grief,” he said. “I cannot bear the remorse. I would like to go to the front and be killed in the first line.” Police had found that Cocchi had tried to enlist in the Italian army the year before, only to be rejected. The word “deformity” was typed into his application file. In Italy, Cocchi underwent corrective surgery to fix it, but the procedure left him unable to lift heavy weights.
Cocchi even talked about the search of his cellar by Lagarenne and McGee. “The reputation I had with the police was so good,” he said, “that these detectives told me they made this inspection merely to be able to say that they had done it.” Cocchi then admitted that when the detectives searched his basement, Ruth’s body wasn’t even covered in the ground. Cocchi also elaborated on some of his name changing and trickery in getting back to Italy, though it didn’t add up. “Gueiseppe Gesundheit” was quoted in an Indiana paper explaining that Cocchi’s name was “pronounced the easiest possible way, just ordinary ‘cock-eye.’” But in Bologna, Cocchi seemed immune to real scrutiny, humorous or otherwise. Cocchi even told Milt Snyder that while in Bologna, he had begun an affair with a young girl.