After rummaging about in another room, he laid out an envelope that held the contents of Sonta’s pockets when he died, including some money. He also clunked down what sounded to be a fully loaded pistol. It lay there, heavy on the table. Grace asked if she might use the telephone.
As she walked into the hallway, she was trembling. She called the governor to tell him that Sonta did have a gun and that the appeal had been wrongfully considered! The governor asked to speak to Morgan immediately. Grace gave him the phone and tried not to listen as they exchanged low, mumbling words. Morgan handed Grace the phone again. Governor Stokes instructed Grace to secure an affidavit from Morgan and come before the court of pardons the very next day.
On January 11, Grace appeared before a panel that consisted of the governor, the chancellor, and the six lay judges of the court of appeals. Grace wasn’t the only one fighting for Antoinette. A few states over, the Cincinnati Enquirer had gathered two hundred thousand signatures in her favor from Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh after an incendiary editorial. Various counts and countesses from the Italian consulate were also present. And an anonymous letter had been sent to the county saying the jail would be blown to smithereens by dynamite if Antoinette was not released. Another letter said that if the hangman left his Newark home for Hackensack on the day of Antoinette’s execution, he would be killed before his arrival. The Italians didn’t mess around. But it was only when Grace showed the court the gun that they ordered an immediate thirty-day reprieve for Antoinette Tolla.
Grace was elated. At the same time, she knew that she still had lots of work to do. She now had to disprove that Antoinette Tolla had shot Sonta in the back of the head in cold blood, as had been initially stated in the case. Grace went straightaways from the capitol to the jail. As she turned the corner with an interpreter, Grace saw Antoinette Tolla in person for the very first time in her life.
When Grace told Antoinette Tolla the unbelievable news, it was several minutes before the pretty woman with long black hair regained enough composure to hear the particulars. Then, as considerately as possible, Grace urged her to tell the details of her story. Grace was sure her translator was better than the court-appointed one.
“Sonta’s overtures toward me began some five months before the tragedy,” Antoinette explained. “I had been making daily trips along the railroad tracks just south of town, collecting bits of wood and half-burned coal for use as fuel. We were too poor to get it in the regular way. Sonta began following me there every day, and annoying me with persistent advances. Finally, I denounced him angrily and threatened to tell my husband. Sonta only laughed at this, and when I stopped going to the tracks to avoid him, he began coming to my home and annoying me even in the presence of my husband. My husband became bitterly resentful of these visits, but he was afraid of the influential Sonta and his vengeance, and dared not oppose him too openly.
“On the afternoon of March 4, after my husband flounced out in anger leaving us alone, Sonta again attempted to force himself upon me, I quarreled violently with him, and it was then that he threatened my life. He had been drinking and was in a reckless mood. Taking a revolver from his pocket, he waved it before me and told me he would kill me, my husband Tolla, his wife, or all of us, but that he was determined to have his way, and that I could not escape him. I was badly frightened. I tried to reason with him but he would not listen. Then, still holding the pistol in his right hand, Sonta removed a large roll of bills from his pocket with the other, and offered me a choice. Either I could accept the money and submit to him, he said, or he would kill me, do as he wished, and then shoot himself, too.” Grace winced. The translator for the first trial had gotten much of this wrong.
“At that moment, Sonta’s six-year-old son Rocco, who had been playing in the street, appeared at the door. He became frightened when Sonta turned on him, reproving him in a loud voice, and the boy began to cry. I then fled into the kitchen, where I secured my pistol, and placed it in the pocket of my apron. At the first opportunity, I ran to the outside door, where I met my husband coming in. I continued to Sonta’s home, where I remained about a half-hour pleading with Sonta’s wife and his oldest daughter, Annie, to do something to help me.
“When I returned to my own home, Sonta was sitting in the rocker, smoking his pipe. My husband had fallen asleep in the bedroom, he reached out and drew me to him roughly. His face was flushed, there was a strange, fixed look in his eyes.
“I struggled to free myself. Terrified, and scarcely realizing what I was doing, I grasped the pistol in my apron pocket and fired twice. Both shots struck Sonta in the head, one penetrating the skull near the right temple.”
As Grace prepared to leave, Antoinette’s eyes filled with tears again, and she clung to Grace’s hands as if she would never let go. Then, turning to the interpreter, Antoinette laughingly asked him to tell Grace that she reminded her of a bunch of black grapes. In Italy, Antoinette explained, black grapes meant good fortune. Seeing Antoinette up close, Grace noticed that she had a scar on her forehead and one under her lower lip.
The next day, Grace spent some time investigating the records of the autopsy surgeon in the coroner’s office. When she finally found the actual report, it showed that Sonta had four superficial wounds, two where a bullet had entered the right temple, gone through the brain, and exited under the left jaw. Here was Grace’s proof that the first and fatal bullet had not been fired at Sonta from the back. She grabbed the report and stuffed it in her bag.
Grace was again not alone. The Susan B. Anthony Club of Cincinnati appealed to President Roosevelt himself to pardon Antoinette. His response was that “he has no authority to interfere in this case, and he will not do so.” At a time when Italians all across the United States began to mobilize their newfound political power, an Italian priest, Father Pozzi, wondered, “has America become the woman-killing country?” Governor Stokes remained immobile. “There is no evidence of any kind to show that Sonta ever attempted to assault the woman,” he stated. A bullet in the back was never self-defense. It was murder. Grace had to change the minds of Stokes and those who shared his opinion.