LIZZIE BORDEN TOOK AN AX?

Want to Know More about the Lizzie Borden Case?

DEAD MEN DO TELL TALES
History & Hauntings of American Crime & Mystery
by Troy Taylor — Includes the Complete Story of the Borden Murders

The August afternoon is unbearably hot, especially for Massachusetts. The temperature has climbed to well over 100 degrees, even though it is not yet noon. The old man, still in his heavy morning coat, is not feeling well and he lies down on a mohair-covered sofa. He sighs as he leans back against the arm of the sofa and he carefully turns so that his boots are on the floor and not soiling the couch’s upholstery. In a short time, he drifts off to sleep, never suspecting that he will not awaken.

The old man also does not suspect that above his head, his wife lays bleeding on the floor of the upstairs guestroom. She had been dead now for nearly two hours and in moments, the same hand that took her life will take the life of the old man’s as well.

And even if he knew these things by way of some macabre premonition, he might never guess that his murderer would never be brought to justice….

The case of Lizzie Borden has fascinated those with an interest in American crime for well over a century. There have been few cases that have attracted as much attention as the hatchet murders of Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby. This is partly because of the gruesomeness of the crime but also because of the unexpected character of the accused. Lizzie Borden was not a slavering maniac but a demure, respectable, spinster Sunday School teacher. Because of this, the entire town was shocked when she was charged with the murder of her parents. The fact that she was found to be not guilty of the murders, leaving the case to be forever unresolved, only adds to the mystique and fans the flames of our continuing obsession with the mystery.

Andrew Jackson Borden was one of the leading citizens of Fall River, Massachusetts, a prosperous mill town and seaport. The Borden family had strong roots to the community and had been among the most influential citizens of the region for decades. At the age of 70, Borden was certainly one of the richest men in the city. He was a director on the board of several banks and a commercial landlord with considerable holdings. He was a tall, thin and dour man and while he was known for this thrift and admired for his business abilities, he was not well-known for his humor nor was he particularly likable.

Borden lived with his second wife, Abby Durfee Gray and his daughters from his first marriage, Emma and Lizzie, in a two-and-a-half story frame house. It was located in an unfashionable part of town, but was close to his business interests. Both daughters felt the house was beneath their station in life and begged their father to move to a nicer place. Borden’s frugal nature never even allowed him to consider this. In spite of this, and his conservative daily life, Borden was said to be moderately generous with both of his daughters.

The first person awake in the house that morning was Bridget Sullivan, the maid. Bridget was a respectable Irish girl who Emma and Lizzie both rudely insisted on calling “Maggie”, which was the name of a previous servant. At the time of the murders, Bridget was 26 years old and had been in the Borden household since 1889. There is nothing to say that she was anything but an exemplary young woman, who had come to America from Ireland in 1886. She did not stay in the house during the night following the murders, but did come back on Friday night to her third-floor room. On Saturday, she left the house, never to return.

Bridget came downstairs from her attic room around 6:00 to build a fire in the kitchen and begin cooking breakfast. An hour later, John Morse and Mr. and Mrs. Borden came down to eat and they lingered in conversation around the table for nearly an hour. Lizzie slept late and did not join them for the meal.

At a quarter past nine, Andrew Borden left the house and went downtown. Abby Borden went upstairs to make the bed in the guestroom that Morse was staying in. She asked Bridget to wash the windows. At 9:30, she came downstairs for a few moments and then went back up again, commenting that she needed fresh pillowcases. Bridget went about her daily chores and started on the window washing, retrieving pails and water from the barn. She also paused for a few minutes to chat over the fence with the hired girl next door. She finished the outside of the windows at about 10:30 and then started inside.

Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Borden returned home. Bridget let him in and Lizzie came downstairs. She told her father that “Mrs. Borden has gone out – she had a note from someone who was sick.” Lizzie and Emma always called their step-mother “Mrs. Borden” and recently, the relationship between them, especially with Lizzie, was strained.

Borden took the key to his bedroom off a shelf and went up the back stairs. The room could only be reached by these stairs, as there was no hallway, and the front stairs only gave access to Lizzie’s room (from which Emma’s could be reached) and the guest room. There were connecting doors between the elder Borden’s rooms and Lizzie’s room, but they were usually kept locked.

Borden stayed upstairs for only a few minutes before coming back down and settling onto the sofa in the sitting room. Lizzie began to heat up an iron to press some handkerchiefs.

“Are you going out this afternoon, Maggie?” she asked Bridget. “There is a cheap sale of dress goods at Sargent’s this afternoon, at eight cents a yard.”

Bridget replied that she was not. The heat of the morning, combined with the window washing and her touch of stomach ailment, had left her feeling poorly and she went up the back stairs to her attic room for a nap. This was a few minutes before 11:00.

“Maggie, Come down!” Lizzie shouted from the bottom of the back stairs and Bridget’s eyes fluttered open. She had drifted off into a restless sleep but the urgency of Lizzie’s cries startled her awake.

“What is the matter?” Bridget cried. She smoothed out her dress, slipped into her shoes and scurried to the doorway. As he feet tapped down the staircase, she was horrified by what she heard next!

“Come down quick!” Lizzie wailed, “Father’s dead! Somebody’s come in and killed him!”

As Bridget hurried from the staircase, she found Lizzie standing at the back door. Her face was pale and taut. She stopped the young maid from going into the sitting room, saying “Don’t go in there. Go and get the doctor. Run!”

Dr. Bowen, a family friend, lived across the street from the Borden’s and Bridget ran directly to the house. The doctor was out, but Bridget told Mrs. Bowen that Mr. Borden had been killed. She ran directly back to the house. “Where were you when this thing happened?” she asked Lizzie.

“I was out in the yard, and I heard a groan and came in. The screen door was wide open.” Lizzie replied, and then sent Bridget to summon the Borden sisters’ friend, Miss Alice Russell, who lived a few blocks away.

By now, the neighbors were starting to gather on the lawn and someone had called for the police. Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, the next door neighbor, came over to Lizzie, who was at the back entrance to the house and asked if anything was wrong. Lizzie responded by saying, “Oh, Mrs. Churchill, someone has killed Father!”

“Where is your father?” she asked.

“In the sitting room.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

” I went to the barn to get a piece of iron.”

Mrs. Churchill then asked, “Where is your mother?”

Lizzie said that she didn’t know and that Abby Borden, her stepmother, had received a note asking her to respond to someone who was sick. She also added “but I don’t know but that she is killed too, for I thought I heard her come in… Father must have an enemy, for we have all been sick, and we think the milk has been poisoned.”

By this time, Dr. Bowen had returned, along with Bridget, who had hurried back from informing Miss Russell of the day’s dire events. Dr. Bowen examined the body and asked for a sheet to cover it. Borden had been attacked with a sharp object, probably an ax, and so much damage had been done to his head and face that Bowen, a close friend, could not at first positively identify him. Borden’s head was turned slightly to the right and eleven blows had gashed his face. One eye had been cut in half and his nose had been severed. The majority of the blows had been struck within the area that extended from the eyes and nose to the ears. Blood was still seeping from the wounds and had been splashed onto the wall above the sofa, the floor and on a picture hanging on the wall. It looked as though Borden had been attacked from above and behind as he slept.

Several minutes passed before anyone thought of going upstairs to see if Abby Borden had come home. “Maggie, I am almost positive I heard her coming in,” Lizzie spoke. “Go upstairs and see.” Bridget refused to go upstairs by herself, so Mrs. Churchill went with her. They went up the staircase together but Mrs. Churchill was the first to see Abby lying on the floor of the guestroom. She had fallen in a pool of blood and Mrs. Churchill later said that she only “looked like the form of a person.”

Bridget saw Mrs. Borden’s body. Mrs. Churchill rushed by her, viewed the obviously dead body, and rushed downstairs. “Is there another?” a neighbor asked her.

“Yes,” the woman replied. “She is up there.”

Dr. Bowen found that Mrs. Borden had been struck more than a dozen times, from the back. The autopsy later revealed that there had been nineteen blows to her head, probably from the same hatchet that had killed Mr. Borden. The blood on Mrs. Borden’s body was dark and congealed, leading him to believe that she had been killed before her husband.

Dr. Bowen was heavily involved in the activities of the Borden house on the day of the murder. He was the first to examine the bodies, sent a telegram to Emma to summon her home, assisted Dr. Dolan with the autopsies and even prescribed a calming tranquilizer for Lizzie. He was a constant presence in the house and his involvement with them, especially on August 4, has led to him being considered a major figure in some of the conspiracies developed around the murders.

A call reached the Fall River police station at 11:15 but as things would happen, that day marked the annual picnic of the Fall River Police Department and most of them were off enjoying an outing at Rocky Point. The only officer dispatched to the house was Officer George W. Allen. He ran the 400 yards to the house, saw that Andrew Borden was dead and ran back to the station house to inform the city marshal of the events. He left no one in charge of the crime scene. While he was gone, neighbors overran the house, comforting Lizzie and peering in at the gruesome state of Andrew Borden’s body. The constant traffic trampled and destroyed any clues that might have been left behind.

During the 30 minutes or so that no authorities were on the scene, a county medical examiner named Dolan passed by the house by chance. He looked in and was pressed into service by Dr. Bowen. Dolan examined the bodies as well and after hearing that the family had been sick and that the milk was suspected, he took samples of it. Later that afternoon, he had the bodies photographed and then removed the stomachs and sent them, along with the milk, to the Harvard Medical School for analysis. No poison was ever found.

The murder investigation that followed was chaotic. The police were reluctant to suspect Lizzie of the murder as it was against the perceived social understanding of the era that a woman such as she was could have possibly committed such a heinous crime. Other solutions were advanced but were discarded as even more impossible.

A profusion of clues were discovered over the next few days, all of which went nowhere. A boy reported seeing a man jump over the back fence of the Borden property and while a man was found matching the boy’s description, he had an unbreakable alibi. A bloody hatchet was found on the Sylvia Farm in South Somerset but it proved to be covered in chicken blood. While Bridget was also seen as a suspect for a short time, the investigation finally began to center on Lizzie. A circumstantial case began to be developed against her with no incriminating physical evidence, like bloody clothes, a real motive for the killings, or even a convincing demonstration of how and when she committed the murders.

Over the course of several weeks though, investigators managed to compile a sequence of events that certainly cast suspicion on the spinster Sunday School teacher. The timeline ran from August 3, the day before the murders to August 7, the day that Alice Russell saw her friend burning a dress that may (or many not) have had blood on it.

August 3
There were several incidents that police believed related to the murders that occurred on Wednesday. The first was in the early morning hours when Abby Borden went across the street to Dr. Bowen and told him that she and her husband had been violently ill throughout the night. He told her that he didn’t think the vomiting was serious and he sent her home. Later, he dropped in to check on Andrew, who told him rather ungratefully that he was not ill and would not pay for an unsolicited house call. There would be no evidence of poisoning found in the Borden autopsies.

Another incident took place when Lizzie tried to buy ten cents worth of prussic acid from Eli Bence, a clerk at Smith’s Drug Store. She explained to him that she wanted the poison to “kill moths in a sealskin cape” but he refused to sell it to her without a prescription. A customer and another clerk also identified Lizzie as being in the store that morning, but she denied it. She testified at the inquest that she had not attempted to purchase the poison and had not been at Smith’s that day.

The third incident was the arrival of John Morse in the early afternoon. He came without luggage but intended to stay the night. Both he and Lizzie testified that they did not see each other until after the murders the next day, although Lizzie knew that he was there.

Finally, that evening Lizzie visited her friend, Miss Alice Russell. According to Miss Russell, Lizzie was agitated, worried over some threat to her father, and concerned that something was about to happen. “I feel as if something were hanging over me and I cannot throw it off,” she told her. She added that her father had enemies and that she was frightened that something was going to happen to the family.

An eerie foreshadowing of the future? Or laying the groundwork for an alibi?

August 4
On the day of the murders, there were several parts of the story that did not make sense to the investigators, or could not have happened the way that Lizzie expressed them.

Abby was killed, according to the autopsy, at around 9:30 in the morning. The killer, if it was anyone but Lizzie or Bridget, would have had to have concealed himself (or herself) in the house for well over an hour, waiting for Andrew Borden’s return. Abby could have been discovered at any moment.

Abby’s time of death also posed another problem for investigators. According to Lizzie, she had gone out but she obviously hadn’t. The note that Lizzie said that Abby had received, asking her to visit a sick friend, was never found. Lizzie later said that she might have inadvertently burned it.

When Andrew Borden returned to the house, Bridget had to let him in as the screen door was fastened on the inside with three locks. This would have made it extremely difficult for the killer to get inside. Only a small window of opportunity would have existed while Bridget was fetching a pail and water from the barn. In addition, Bridget later testified that while she was unlocking the door for Mr. Borden, she head Lizzie laugh from upstairs. However, Lizzie swore that she had been in the kitchen when her father came home.

Borden also had to retrieve the key to his bedroom from the shelf in the kitchen to get into his room. This was done as a precaution because of a burglary the year before. In June 1891, a police captain inspected the house after Andrew Borden reported that it had been broken into. He found that Borden’s desk had been rummaged through and over $100, along with Andrew’s watch and chain, several small items and some streetcar tickets, had been taken. There was no clue as to how anyone could have gotten into the house, although Lizzie offered the fact that the cellar door had been open. The neighborhood was canvassed but no one reported seeing a stranger in the vicinity. According to the police captain, Borden said several times to him, “I’m afraid the police will not be able to find the real thief.” It is unknown what he may have meant by this but various conspiracy theorists have their own ideas.

On the afternoon of the murder, an officer asked Lizzie if there were any hatchets in the house and she told Bridget to show him where they could be found. Four of them were discovered in the basement, including one with dried blood and hair on it (later determined to be from a cow). Another of the hatchets was rusted and the others were covered with dust. One of these was without a handle and was covered in ashes. The broken handle appeared to be recent, so it was taken into evidence.

A Sergeant Harrington and another officer asked Lizzie where she had been that morning and she said that she had been in the barn loft looking for iron for fishing sinkers. The two men examined the barn and found the loft floor to be thick with dust, with no evidence that anyone had been up there.

Deputy Marshal John Fleet questioned Lizzie and asked her who might have committed the murders. Other than an unknown man with whom her father had gotten into an argument with a few weeks before, she could think of no one. When asked directly if Uncle John Morse or Bridget could have killed her father and mother, she said that they couldn’t have. Morse had left the house before 9:00, and Bridget had been sleeping when Andrew had been killed… then she pointedly reminded Fleet that Abby was not her mother, but her stepmother.

August 5
On the following day, the investigation continued. By now, the story had appeared in the newspapers and the entire town was in an uproar. Sergeant Harrington found Eli Bence at Smith’s Drug Store and interviewed him about the attempt to buy poison. Emma engaged Mr. Andrew Jennings as he and Lizzie’s attorney. The police continued to investigate, but nothing of significance was found.

August 6
Saturday was the day of the funerals for Andrew and Abby Borden. The service was conducted by the Reverends Buck and Judd, from the two Congregational Churches. The burial however, did not take place. At the gravesite, the police informed the ministers that another autopsy needed to be conducted. This time, the heads of the Borden’s were removed from the body, the skin removed and plaster casts were made of the skulls. For some reason, Mr. Borden’s head was not returned to his coffin.

August 7
On Sunday morning, Alice Russell observed Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen stove. She told her friend that, “If I were you, I wouldn’t let anybody see me do that, Lizzie.” Lizzie said it was a dress stained with paint, and was of no use.

It was this testimony at the inquest that prompted Judge Blaisdell of the Second District Court to charge Lizzie with the murders. The inquest itself was kept secret but at its conclusion, Lizzie was charged with the murder of her father and was taken into custody. The only testimony that Lizzie ever gave during all of the legal proceedings was at the inquest and we will never know for sure what she said. She was arraigned the following day and replied that she was “not guilty” of the charge. She was then taken to the Taunton Jail, which had facilities for female prisoners.

After that, a preliminary hearing was held, again before Judge Blaisdell. Lizzie did not testify but the record of her testimony at the inquest was entered into evidence by her attorney, Andrew Jennings. The judge declared her probable guilt and bound Lizzie over for the Grand Jury, who heard the case during the last week of its session.

The Commonwealth, represented by prosecutor Hosea Knowlton, had the disagreeable task of building the case against Lizzie. When he finished his presentation to the Grand Jury, he surprisingly invited defense attorney Jennings to present a case for the defense. This was something that was simply not done in Massachusetts. In effect, a trial was being conducted before the Grand Jury. Many saw this is as a chance that the charge against Lizzie might be dismissed. Then, on December 1, Alice Russell again testified about the burning of the dress. The next day, Lizzie was charged with three counts of murder. Strangely, she had been charged with the murder of her father, her step-mother and then the murders of both of them. The trial was scheduled to begin on June 5, 1893.

Moody did an excellent job and many have regarded him as the most competent attorney involved in the case. At one point, he threw a dress onto the prosecution table that he planned to admit as evidence. As he did so, the tissue paper that was covering the skull of Andrew Borden lifted and then fluttered away. Dramatically, Lizzie slid to the floor in a dead faint.

Crucial to the prosecution in the case was evidence that supplied a motive for Lizzie to commit the murders. This was done by using a number of witnesses who testified to Lizzie’s dislike of her step-mother and her complaints about her father’s spendthrift ways. The prosecution also tried to establish that Borden was writing a new will that would leave Emma and Lizzie with a pittance and Abby with a huge portion of his half million dollar estate. One of the witnesses called to establish this was John Morse, who first said that Andrew discussed a new will with him and then later said that he never told him anything about it.

The prosecution then turned to Lizzie’s predisposition towards murder and her strange behavior before and after the events. They again called Alice Russell to testify about the burning of the dress. The destruction of it seemed a possible answer as to why Lizzie was not covered with blood after killing her parents. It was highly probable that she would have been spattered with it if she did commit the murders. In later years, some have theorized that perhaps she wore a smock over her dress during the murders or that perhaps she was naked when she did it. However, the smock would have been bloody too and would have had to be disposed of. As far as Lizzie being naked, this seems doubtful as well. Ignore the fact that in the Victorian society of Fall River, a young woman would have never appeared nude in front of her father (even to kill him) and focus on the fact that Lizzie never had time to bathe after killing Abby or in the few minutes between the killing of Andrew and her calling for Bridget.

To the prosecution though, the burning of the dress suggested that Lizzie had changed clothing after the murders. But why would she have kept the dress for three days before burning it and what would she have worn for the hours between the two deaths? Someone would have surely noticed a dress covered with blood.

On Saturday, June 10, the prosecution attempted to enter Lizzie’s testimony from the inquest into the record. The defense objected, since it was testimony from one who had not been formally charged. The jury was withdrawn so that the lawyers could argue it out and on Monday, when court resumed, the three-judge panel excluded Lizzie’s contradictory inquest testimony.

On Wednesday, June 14, the prosecution called Eli Bence, the drug store clerk, to the stand. The defense objected to his testimony as irrelevant and prejudicial. The judges sustained the objection and Lizzie’s attempt to buy poison was thrown out of the record.

The prosecution called several medical witnesses, including Dr. Dolan. One of them even produced the skull of Andrew Borden to show how the blows had been struck. Unfortunately for the prosecution, these witnesses had an adverse effect on the case as the defense used their testimonies to strike points in Lizzie’s favor. They were forced to state that whoever had committed the murders would have been covered with blood. There was no one to say that Lizzie had been!

Lizzie Borden’s defense counsel used only two days to present its case. The two attorneys consisted of Andrew Jennings and George Robinson. Jennings was one of Fall River’s most prominent citizens and had been Andrew Borden’s private attorney. He was a solemn man who never again spoke about the Borden case after its conclusion. He and his younger associate, Melvin Adams, were instrumental in getting Lizzie’s damaging testimony excluded from the case. Jennings was joined by George Robinson, who even with less legal experience, was very beneficial to the case.

For the most part, the defense offered witnesses who could either corroborate Lizzie’s story, or who could provide alternate possibilities as to who the killer might be. The testimony of the various witnesses was meant to do little but provide “reasonable doubt” about Lizzie’s guilt.

For instance, an ice cream peddler testified to seeing a woman (presumably Lizzie) coming out the barn. This bolstered her story that she had actually been there. A passer-by claimed to see a “wild-eyed man” around the time of the murders. Mr. Joseph Lemay claimed that he was walking in the deep woods, some miles from the city, about twelve days after the murders when he heard someone crying “Poor Mrs. Borden! Poor Mrs. Borden! Poor Mrs. Borden!” He looked over a conveniently placed wall and saw a man sitting on the ground. The man, who had bloodstains on his shirt, picked up a hatchet, shook it at him and then disappeared into the woods. Needless to say, Lemay’s story has never been given much credibility.

The defense also called witnesses who claimed to see a mysterious young man in the vicinity of the Borden house who was never properly explained. They also called Emma Borden to dispute the suggestion that Lizzie had any motive to want to kill their parents. Emma remained very supportive of her sister during the trial, although there is one witness, a prison matron, who testified that Lizzie and Emma had an argument when she was visiting her sister in jail.

On Monday, June 19, Robinson delivered his closing arguments and Knowlton began his closing arguments for the prosecution. He completed them on the following day. The judges then asked Lizzie if she had anything to say for herself and she spoke for the only time during the trial. “I am innocent”, she said. “I leave it to my counsel to speak for me.” Instructions were then given to the jury and they left to deliberate over the verdict.

A little over an hour later, the jury returned with its verdict. Lizzie Borden was found “not guilty” on all three charges. Public opinion was, by this time, of the feeling that the police and the courts had persecuted Lizzie long enough.

Five weeks after the trial, Lizzie (who henceforth called herself “Lizbeth”) and Emma purchased and moved into a thirteen-room, stone house at 306 French Street in Fall River. It was located on “The Hill”, the most fashionable area of the city. Lizzie named the house “Maplecroft” and had the name carved into the top step leading up to the front door.

In 1897, Lizzie was charged with the theft of two paintings, valued at less than one hundred dollars, from the Tilden-Thurber store in Fall River. There were no charges ever filed and it is believed the affair was settled privately.

In 1904, Lizzie met a young actress, Nance O’Neil, and for the next two years, Lizzie and Nance were inseparable. About this time, Emma separated from her sister and moved to Fairhaven. She and Lizzie stopped speaking to one another. Rumors said that sensational revelations about the murders would follow the split, but the revelations never came. Emma stayed with the family of Reverend Buck, and, sometime around 1915, she moved to Newmarket, New Hampshire.

Lizzie died on June 1, 1927, at age 67, after a long illness from complications following gall bladder surgery. Emma died nine days later, as a result of a fall down the back stairs of her house in Newmarket. They were buried together in the family plot, along with a sister who had died in early childhood, their mother, their stepmother, and their headless father. Both Lizzie and Emma left their estates to charitable causes and Lizzie designated $500 for the perpetual care of her father’s grave.

Bridget Sullivan never worked for any of the Borden’s again. After the terrible events of the murder and the trial, she left town. She lived in modest circumstances in Butte, Montana until her death in 1948. Those who suggested that she had been “paid off” to keep quiet about the murders could find no evidence of this in what she left behind.

Over 100 years have passed since the murders in Fall River and we still cannot be sure of what we think we know about them. Perhaps because the case remained “unsolved”, we still have a fascination for the events surrounding the murders. No single theory has ever been regarded as the correct one and every writer on the case seems to have a favorite culprit.  But how can we explain what draws us to the story? Is it because of the murders themselves, or is Lizzie herself to blame? Who can look at a photo of her, always smiling slightly, and wonder what secrets she carried with her to the grave? We will never know — but that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying to guess.

The books and articles that have followed the events have each put their own special spin on the story. They use the same evidence and testimony to argue different suspicions of who really killed Andrew and Abby Borden. During the early days of the investigation, and well into the days of the trial, a number of accusations were made. At times the killer was said to be John Morse, Bridget Sullivan, Emma Borden, Dr. Bowen and even one of Lizzie’s Sunday School students. Since that time, there have been other suggested killers. Some of the theories are credible and some are not.

One of the theories remains that Lizzie Borden actually committed the murders of her parents and managed to get away with it. This theory was especially popular in books written prior to 1940 and it still turns up occasionally today. Most of the writers who stand by this solution see the court rulings and poorly executed prosecution case as the reason that Lizzie was never found guilty. They simply refuse to see how an outsider could have committed the crimes.

The main problem with this idea is that it would have taken careful planning for Lizzie to kill Abby Borden and then wait patiently for the time to come to kill Andrew and still interact with Bridget Sullivan. This seems inconsistent with the “blitz” style attacks on the Borden’s. The killer was obviously in a frenzy when each murder was committed and during the “cooling down” time between them, it seems unlikely that they would have been able to so easily iron handkerchiefs, attend to household duties and carry on conversations with the maid.

There is also the glaring problem of the blood. If Lizzie did kill her step-mother, where was the blood that would have been on her dress when she called Bridget a short time later? If she did change clothing (twice in the same morning), wouldn’t Bridget have noticed this? It has been suggested that Lizzie may have gone to the barn between the murders as she claimed to and washed the blood off (there was running water there), but if she did, how did she wash off the blood after her father’s murder?

Some writers believe that Lizzie and Bridget planned the murders together and that Bridget (when she went to Alice Russell’s house) spirited away the bloody hatchet and dress so that they were never found. This theory is also used to explain the testimony that each woman gave about the day of the murder, never implicating the other. It seems hard to believe that Abby Borden’s fall to the upstairs floor would not have been heard from below, especially since Abby weighed in at close to 200 pounds. However, there is no proof of this either and it still places one or both of the women in the role of a depraved killer.

While it seems hard to believe that Lizzie did commit the murders, it doesn’t mean that she was not guilty in other ways. In other words, while she may not have actually handled the hatchet, she may have known who did.

One person who has been accused in this capacity was Emma Borden. It has been noted with some suspicion how she may have arranged an alibi for herself, claiming to be some 15 miles away in Fairhaven, but actually returned to Fall River, hid upstairs in the Borden house, committed the murders and then returned to Fairhaven, where she received the telegram from Dr. Bowen. Once Lizzie is accused, the two sisters worked together to protect each other. Later, the women had a falling out over their father’s estate and Lizzie’s alleged affair with Nance O’Neil. However, neither one of them every spoke of the murder again.

Another astonishing theory pins the murders on William Borden, the slightly retarded, illegitimate son of Andrew Borden, who coincidentally (or not) committed suicide a few years after the trial. According to this theory, Lizzie, Emma, John Morse, Dr. Bowen and Andrew Jennings all conspired to keep his involvement a secret because of his illegitimate status and a claim that he might make against the estate if his relationship with the Borden’s was found out. Allegedly, William was making demands of his father, who was in the process of writing a new will. Borden rejected the boy and William became enraged. He first killed Mrs. Borden and then after hiding in the house with Lizzie’s knowledge, killed his father as well. The conspirators then either paid William off or threatened him, or both, and decided that Lizzie would allow herself to be suspected and tried for the murders, knowing that she could always identify the real killer, should that be necessary. This may be much in the way of speculation, but it’s long been a favored theory by many.

So who did kill Andrew and Abby Borden? It’s unlikely that we will ever know. It’s also unlikely that we will ever discover just what Lizzie, and her defense counsel, really knew about the events in 1892. The papers from Lizzie’s defense are still locked up and have never been released. The files remain sealed away in the offices of the Springfield, Massachusetts law firm that descended from the firm that defended Lizzie during the trial. There are no plans to ever release them.

But the question of who killed Mr. and Mrs. Borden is not the only mysterious riddle that lingers in the wake of this heinous event. Another question might be, who haunts the house at 92 Second Street where the Borden’s once lived?

In the years since the murders and the trial, the house has gone on to become the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum, a time capsule of the era when the murders took place and a quaint inn. Guests come from all over the country to be able to sleep in the room where Abby Borden was killed, but not all of them sleep peacefully — and not all of the spirits here rest in peace.

Guests and staff members alike have had their share of strange experiences in the house. Some have reported the sounds of a woman weeping and others claim to have seen a woman in Victorian era clothing dusting the furniture and straightening the covers on the beds. Occasionally, this even happens when the guests are still in the bed! Others have heard the sounds of footsteps going up and down the stairs and crossing back and forth on the floor above, even when they know the house is empty. Doors open and close as well and often, muffled conversation can be heard coming from inside of otherwise vacant rooms.

One man, who had little interest in ghosts, claimed that he accompanied his wife to the inn one night and took their luggage upstairs. The room had been perfectly made up when he entered, the bed smooth and everything put in its place. Over the course of a few minutes of unpacking, he happened to look over to the bed again and saw that it was now rumpled, even though he was in the room alone and had not been near it. With a start, he also noticed that the folds of the comforter had been moved so that they corresponded to the curves of a human body. On the pillow, there was an indentation in the shape of a human head!

His wife found him a few minutes later sitting in the downstairs sitting room. His face was very pale and he seemed quite nervous. When she asked him what was wrong, he took her back upstairs to show her the strange appearance of the bed. However when he opened the door, the pillow had been plumped and the comforter looked just as it did when he first entered the room — the room where Abby Borden had been murdered!

 

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