Lizzie Borden Facts vs Myths

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

This old nursery rhyme may be easy to remember, but it's inaccurate. According to a pathologist who analyzed the victims' skulls, Lizzie Borden's stepmother received nineteen whacks, and her father received eleven. Today such numbers would be considered to be overkill and that is usually done by someone close to the victim. Overkill is personal, with anger as the common underlying drive.

Still, it is up for dispute whether Lizzie wielded the deadly axe herself, since she was ultimately acquitted. All that is known for sure is that on August 4, 1892, someone viciously hacked Andrew and Abby Borden to death.

The facts of the case are fairly straightforward: During an oppressive heat wave in August 1892, prominent Fall River residents Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered in their home; each had received multiple blows to the head with a hatchet. The only serious suspect was Andrew’s 32-year-old unmarried daughter, Lizzie, who was at the house during the killings. His other daughter, Emma, was out of town, and their live-in maid Bridget Sullivan was in her third-floor room, resting from a morning of window washing and vomiting following the consumption of spoiled mutton stew. But the finer details of the Borden murders were hazy from the beginning, starting when thousands of curious townspeople visited the crime scene, unintentionally tampering with evidence. Moreover, Lizzie’s inquest testimonies were inconsistent, perhaps owing to the fact that she was prescribed morphine after the murders to help calm her nerves.

The circumstantial evidence pointed to Lizzie. And yet, where was the blood? Investigators were stumped by a lack of blood evidence linking Lizzie to the murders. Abby Borden, who was murdered first in an upstairs bedroom, had been struck as many as 19 times. Andrew, struck while sleeping on a couch, was hit multiple times in the head. If Lizzie was the killer, wouldn't she be covered in blood spatter? Wouldn't she have left a trail of blood? A next-door neighbor, who came to the house shortly after Andrew died, saw no blood on Lizzie or her clothing. Two days after the murders, cops searched the house and found no blood-soaked clothing. The only blood found on Lizzie Borden was a tiny speck on an underskirt.

In fact, evidence of a cleanup may have been in front of the officers all along and they discounted it. When investigators searched the house, they encountered what appeared to be bloody cloths or rags in a pail in the basement. When Lizzie indicated that she was menstruating, a fact confirmed by the family doctor, investigators took her at her word and moved on, never actually examining the contents of the pail. Later, the family housekeeper, Bridget Sullivan — who had done the family laundry earlier in the week — wondered why she had not seen the pail at the time, but it was too late.

If, in fact, that pail contained evidence of a crime-scene cleanup, then the person who put those rags there had clearly planned the murders, gambling on the well-known male reluctance to deal with female bodily functions.It may have been a brilliant plan that not only helped clear Lizzie Borden of murder, but left us all still fascinated by a crime that will never be truly solved.

AUTOPSY

The trial of Lizzie Borden opened on June 5, 1893 in the New Bedford Courthouse before a panel of three judges. A high-powered defense team, including Andrew Jennings and George Robinson (the former governor of Massachusetts), represented the defendant, while District Attorney Knowlton and Thomas Moody argued the case for the prosecution.

It is probably fair to say that, however likely it might be that Lizzie did murder her parents, the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The state's case rested largely on the argument that it was impossible for anyone else to have committed the crime. For the Borden jury that, and a few other suspicious actions on Lizzie's part (such as burning a dress), turned out not to be enough for a conviction. Had the defendant been a male, some speculate, the jury might have been more inclined to convict. One of the defense's great advantages was that most persons in 1893 found it hard to believe that a woman of Lizzie's background could have pulled off such brutal killings.

On a hot August 4, 1892 at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, Bridget ("Maggie") Sullivan, the maid in the Borden family residence rested in her bed after having washed the outside windows. She heard the bell at City Hall ring and looked at her clock: it was eleven o'clock. A cry from Lizzie Borden, the younger of two Borden daughters broke the silence: "Maggie, come down! Come down quick; Father's dead; somebody came in and killed him."

A half hour or so later, after the body-- "hacked almost beyond recognition"--of Andrew Borden had been covered and the downstairs searched by police for evidence of an intruder, a neighbor who had come to comfort Lizzie, Adelaide Churchill, made a grisly discovery on the second floor of the Borden home: the body of Abby Borden, Lizzie's step-mother. Investigators found Abby's body cold, while Andrew's had been discovered warm, indicating that Abby was killed earlier (probably at least ninety minutes earlier) than her husband.

Police came to the conclusion that the murders must have been committed by someone within the Borden home, but were puzzled by the lack of blood anywhere except on the bodies of the victims and their inability to uncover any obvious murder weapon. Increasingly, suspicion turned toward Lizzie, since her older sister, Emma, was out of the home at the time of the murders. Investigators found it odd that Lizzie knew so little of her mother's whereabouts after 9 A.M. when, according to Lizzie, she had gone "upstairs to put shams on the pillows."

They also found unconvincing her story that, during the fifteen minutes in which Andrew Borden was murdered in the living room, Lizzie was out in the backyard barn "looking for irons" (lead sinkers) for an upcoming fishing excursion. The barn loft where she said she looked revealed no footprints on the dusty floor and the stifling heat in the loft seemed likely to discourage anyone from spending more than a few minutes searching for equipment that would not be used for days.

On August 9, an inquest into the Borden murders was held in the court room over police headquarters. Before criminal magistrate Josiah Blaisdell, District Attorney Hosea Knowlton questioned Lizzie Borden, Bridget Sullivan, household guest John Morse, and others. During her four hours examination, Lizzie gave confused and contradictory answers. Two days later, the inquest adjourned and Police Chief Hilliard arrested Lizzie Borden.

1. If not Lizzie, then who? Only Lizzie had a good opportunity to commit the murders. At the time of her mother's murder (around 9:30 A.M.), household guest John Morse was visiting relatives, sister Emma was out of town, Andrew Borden was running errands around town, and maid Bridget Sullivan was outside washing windows. Only Lizzie was known to be in the house at the time of Abby Borden's murder. To commit both murders (Andrew Borden was murdered around 11 A.M.), an outside intruder would have either have had to hide in the house for 90 minutes or departed and then returned without being seen.

2. It looks like an inside job. Police found no signs of forced entry into the Borden home (despite the fact that the Borden's habitually locked their doors) and nothing appeared to have been stolen. No stranger was seen entering or leaving the Borden house on the morning of the murders.

3. Although Lizzie claimed to have been downstairs at the very time her mother was violently murdered upstairs, she said she heard no alarming noises--this despite her mother having been struck multiple times with an axe and falling to the floor.

4. On August 3, the day before the murders, witnesses identified Lizzie Borden as having visited Smith's drug store in Fall River, where she attempted to purchase a poison, prussic acid. She explained that she needed the acid to clean a sealskin cape. The druggist refused to sell the prussic acid.

5. On the night before the murders, Lizzie visited a neighbor, Alice Russell, and told her that she feared that some unidentified enemy of her father's might soon try to kill him.

6. Lizzie told police that while she was alone in the house with her mother on the morning of the murder, a messenger came to the door with a note summoning her mother to visit a sick friend. Lizzie told people that she assumed her mother had left. Despite a thorough search of the Borden home, no such alleged note ever was found.

7. When Bridget Sullivan came back inside after having finished washing outside windows, around 10:30 A.M., she reported hearing a muffled laugh coming from upstairs. She assumed that it was Lizzie making the noise. (Lizzie, of course, denied being upstairs during this time period between her mother's murder and her father's murder.)

8. At the time of the murder of Andrew Borden, Lizzie claimed to have been in the loft of the backyard barn for 15 to 20 minutes looking for lead sinkers for a fishing excursion. Police found the loft so stiflingly hot that it was difficult to believe anyone would voluntarily remain in such a place for as much as 20 minutes. They also found no footprints in the loft that could substantiate Lizzie's story.

9. Lizzie had a strained relationship with her step-mother. They usually ate their meals separately. Some theorize that Lizzie resented the fact that her father transferred a Falls River property to Abby's sister, rather than to her. Police noted that during her interview, Lizzie insisted that Abby be described as her "step-mother," not her mother.

10. Although Lizzie appeared to have a somewhat better relationship with her distant and forbidding father, there were problems there as well. Lizzie was outraged, for example, when her father beheaded pigeons in the barn loft for which she had built a roost. (Her father thought the pigeons attracted neighborhood boys, who broke into the barn to hunt the pigeons.)

11. In the week before the murders, following an apparent family argument, Lizzie and her sister Emma left Fall River by coach for New Bedford. When Lizzie returned, she chose to stay in a rooming house for four days, rather than in her own room in the family residence.

12. In 1891, cash and jewelry were stolen from the master bedroom in the Borden home. It was an open secret that Lizzie was suspected as having been the thief. Lizzie also had been accused by several local merchants of shoplifting. (Yes, murder is far different that stealing--but it does suggest that Lizzie was hardly a model daughter.)

13. Immediately after the discovery of her parents' bodies, Lizzie sent various persons who came to help off on various errands. It seems strange that a woman would choose to remain alone in a house if she thought a murderer still might be nearabouts on the loose.

14. On August 7, three days after the murders, Alice Russell observed Lizzie burning a blue corduroy dress in a kitchen fire. When asked about it, Lizzie explained that she chose to destroy the dress because it was stained with old paint.

Ostracized: Borden was shunned by many in Fall River, including the church where she had been a member. Children threw eggs and gravel at her windows, and rang her doorbell late at night.
Isolated: Borden withdrew from society and lived in her home, Maplecroft, with her dogs. She rarely left the house, and when she did, she used a coach or a chauffeured car.
Charitable: Borden quietly engaged in charitable work.
Traveled: Borden enjoyed traveling to Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. for shopping and entertainment.
Renamed: Borden changed her name from Lizzie to Lizbeth.

Fell out with her sister: Borden and her sister Emma had a falling out in 1904 and Emma moved out in 1905. The sisters never saw each other again.

Died: Borden died of pneumonia in June 1927 at the age of 66. She was buried in Fall River, next to her father and stepmother