Louis Zancanelli

Italian-American striking coal miner during the 1913-14 Colorado Coalfield War — a year of armed conflict between United Mine Workers strikers and Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron Company that culminated in the April 20, 1914 Ludlow Massacre (where company guards and National Guard killed at least 21 strikers and family members, including 11 children). After President Wilson invoked the Insurrection Act, Colorado prosecutors charged Zancanelli with first-degree murder for the killing of Baldwin-Felts detective George Belcher on the streets of Trinidad. Tried before the pro-operator Judge Hilliard with a packed jury; convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Conviction was reversed by the Colorado Supreme Court in 1917.