October 4, 2010 • 25 mins
In 1892, Abby Borden was brutally murdered in her home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter her husband Andrew Borden was also murdered, and his daughter Lizzie Borden was the primary suspect. But why was she acquitted? Tune in and learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kate Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and we're going
to start off with a modified nursery rhyme. Here if
(00:21):
you're ready? Are you ready? So I'm ready for it. Okay,
Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother nineteen wax,
and when she saw what she had done, she gave
her father jen. Wait, that's not much of a nursery rhyme. Well,
I'm and rhyme. That's because the real rhyme, Sarah is
a lie. So she gave her mother forty wax and
gave her father at forty one. That is not true.
(00:41):
And Lizzie Borden is one of the podcast topics that
we have always resisted. We probably get this request, maybe
more than any other topic. I don't know. I don't
want to. I don't want to put one above the other,
but it's way way up there, along with Jack the Ripper,
that kind of thing. But the subject has never interested
us my much because you know, here's the story. A
(01:01):
woman was accused of brutally murdering her parents and hacking
their faces to pieces. But she's acquitted and we still
don't know if she really did it. That's that's the
whole story, and that's kind of your standard nightly news fair.
I mean, I hate to say it, but it's something
that happens almost every day. One. Of course, the story
of someone who murders a family member is nothing new.
(01:23):
You know, We've got Cane and Able and Caligula and Drusilla.
But we had to rethink our point of view because
if so many of you are captivated by this story,
there must be a reason why, and we aim to
put our prejudices aside and try to find it. So
here we go. Okay, the basics of our case. On
August four, in Fall River, Massachusetts, a woman is brutally
(01:49):
murdered in her home with a hatchet. Not long after,
her husband meets the same fate while he's asleep on
a couch in his living room. The main suspect is
their thirty two year old daughter, Lizzie Borden, and we
have a few possible motives. Money, the father was a
very wealthy man, or hatred of the stepmother. Stepmother, that's
(02:10):
a crucial part to this story a combination of the two.
The combination of the two. Yeah, So the jury's verdict
is acquittal, and that's probably the main reason why people
are so fascinated with the story. What really happened? How
did Lizzie Borden get acquitted? So a little family background
to start with. Sarah Anthony Morris married Andrew Jackson Borden
(02:33):
the Christmas of eighteen forty five and they had three
children together, Emma Alice and Lizzie. Alice died at the
age of two, and Sarah herself died when Lizzie was
about three, so she never got to know her mother.
And as Sarah mentioned, Andrew was very wealthy. He owned property,
he had holdings in textiles and banking, he directed corporations,
(02:55):
and one would imagine that made him an attractive prospect
for a husband, and so it did. Plussy has two
young girls, and so Lizzie's father remarries and he marries
Abby Durphy, and Lizzie was about five at the time,
and Emma, the older sister, about fourteen, and according to
Lizzie's testimony at the inquest, Emma always called her stepmother Abby,
(03:17):
but Lizzie always called her mother until about five or
six years before the murder went down. So make of
that what you will, but it seems like this is
a woman who she thought of as her mother for
most of her life. And again later when the d A.
Jose and Nolton asked if Lizzie's relationship with her stepmother
was cordial, she replied, it depends upon one's idea of cordiality, perhaps,
(03:42):
which isn't exactly the picture of a happy home. But
Emma and her trial testimony said that the relationship was
cordial and that Lizzie and her father had a very
good one. So we're going to give you the outline
of if she did it, this is what happened. Okay,
So here's here's to basic starting fact. Lizzie and Emma
(04:03):
both admitted that they were upset about their father giving
one of his properties to Abby and her sister instead
of them. They were both older, they're unmarried, and they
expected their elderly father would provide for them and set
them up for the rest of their life financially. And
according to some there was this rumor that he was
going to change his will in favor of his wife,
(04:24):
and that might cause a few family problems, I'd say so.
On August three, which was the day before the murders,
Lizzie attempted to buy prussic acid, a poison from pharmacist
to Eli Bentz, and he refused her. But the Boardens
and their maid, Bridget Sullivan, all reported feeling sick that
day and the next morning. On August four, Emma was
(04:50):
in fair Haven, Massachusetts, but there were a few other
people around, uh, the maide we just mentioned Bridget, but
also kind of randomly, the deceased Sarah brother, John Moore,
so Lizzie's uncle from Lizzie's uncle on her mom's side. Uh,
he's visiting. He'd arrived the night before, but he left
in the morning to go visit another cousin. So he's
(05:12):
not around when the murders go down, but he's there
immediately before and then he comes back, so he's there after.
Andrew Boorden and her father left the house that morning
as well to get some business done in town. Abby
stayed in the house and she began doing chores and
headed to the guest room to make the bed, you know,
put on pillow shams, tidy up, and she asked Bridget
(05:33):
to wash the outsides of the window. So she's in
the house. Bridge is outside the house. The only other
person who's inside the house is Lizzie Borden. Okay, So
according to Lizzie's story, at this point, Abby received a
note from some messenger we don't know who, calling her
to some sick person's home. We don't know the sick
(05:54):
person either, and Abby left the house on this errand.
But this is where our events are gonna start down. Like,
if Lizzie did it, here's what happened. So what happened then,
if if Lizzie did it, is she found Abby on
the second floor, hit her from behind with an axe,
and then hacked her eighteen more times, and she left
(06:17):
the body, She cleaned herself up and the axe. She
knew her father probably wouldn't come home for a while.
It ended up being an hour and a half, so
in the meantime she did some reading and some ironing
and some sewing, you know, between murders. And when he returned,
Bridget unlocked the door for him, and as she did,
she heard Lizzie laughing on the second floor landing after
(06:40):
she had killed her stepmother. Right, So, Lizzie told Andrew
that his wife had received that note and had gone
off on that arrand, and she settled him down on
the couch and tried to convince Bridget to go out
of the house. There was supposibly a really good sale
on ribbons, trying to sale who can resist to entice
the maid, but Bridget isn't interested. She instead goes to
(07:02):
the attic, probably worn out from all that window washing
and her upset stomach from the poison the night before,
but possible poison. Possible poison. Um. So, after Lizzie settled
her father on the couch, he falls asleep, and then
supposedly she hits him in the face and head with
the axe ten times, so hard that she snaps the
(07:24):
handle off the axe. But then in ten minutes, according
to the timeline that the police tried to put together
based on what everyone said they were doing that day
and and uh Lizzie's own conflicting testimony, she would have
had to clean herself off, her clothes and the murder
weapon in ten minutes and only then axing someone ten times.
(07:46):
Let's see, I imagine that would be a messy scene. Yeah,
I think so. And only after this did she call
to Bridget for help. And announced that her father had died.
She didn't say anything about Abby because she thought that
he had left the house. She's off on the errand
so now we're going to move on to the bodies
and the scene. And this is pretty disturbing stuff. But
(08:08):
Abby had a five inch hole in her skull, and
her head and her face were completely unrecognizable. She was
lying face down in coagulated blood, and her clothes were
soaked in it, and the bed and the pillow sham
next to her were all bloody, and the wall in
the chair in the bureau all covered in blood. Of
(08:30):
just a small disturbing detail, her braid had even been
hacked off. And Andrew was on his back on a lounge,
his face turned as he slept, and his face and head,
too were no longer recognizable. You can find pictures of
the crime scene online if you so desire, which you
very well might not. The axe had gone through his cheekbone,
(08:51):
it had severed his eye in half. There was blood
dripping onto the floor and from the sofa and on
the walls, painting on the wall, the feeling the door,
and it was still wet and flowing when others entered
the scene which is why we assume that Abby had
died first and he had died second. But it seems
very personal to attack only a person's face and had
(09:15):
to us definitely and in so many times too. But
here's an important detail. The rooms were perfectly in order.
There was no sign of a break in, no sign
of a struggle. It seemed likely that whoever did this
knew the couple. And also the boardings kept all of
their doors locked all of the time, and supposedly this
(09:37):
is because there had been a theft in the home
and perhaps Lizzie had a history of shoplifting. Um, so
their house was always on lockdown, which pains rather disturbing
scene for the house too, I'd say make her move out,
not well, and don't think of it. Just as like,
the front door is locked like a normal house would be,
but all of the rooms and everything just completely locked
(10:01):
down all the time. And if it is all locked,
the person probably would have had to be in the
house the whole time. Yeah, exactly. So after the murders,
Lizzie called for Bridget after this ten minute window we have,
and then sent Bridget to go get the family doctor
Dr Bowen. Bridget couldn't find the doctor or he wasn't there.
(10:22):
She comes back without him, and then Lizzie sent her
out again, this time to get a family friend, Alice Russell.
But in the meantime, their neighbor, Adelaide Churchill, showed up
and she went off for help. So just imagine all
of these people sort of coming in and out, but
large periods of time where Lizzie is in the house
by herself, possibly doing anything. Dr Bowen does come to
(10:44):
the house finally, and Bridget and Adelaide return and they're
the ones who discover Abby's body upstairs. Because of course
that police officer asked Lizzie, when's the last time you
saw your mother? She said she went off on the
stern mother, Yeah, and she said she was gone the house,
but the last time she'd seen her was in the
guest room. So the maid and their neighbor go upstairs
(11:06):
and find Abby's body. And you can imagine we've already
listed all of these people who are at the crime scene.
Soon enough we have more officers, more neighbors and onlookers.
Everyone is trampling all over everything. Police are walking through
the crime scenes. That evidence, whatever evidence there would have been,
is completely contaminated and one Katie just kind of mentioned this. Yeah.
(11:29):
An officer on the scene asked Lizzie when she had
last seen her mother, and she was very careful to say, no,
it's my stepmother, and she said her mother died when
she was a baby. And this turns out to be
a really big piece of evidence, or at least it's
keeps coming up turned into a big piece of evidence.
But I don't know how much how much there is
(11:50):
to that. Maybe she was just trying to be very precise. Yea,
and Abby is her stepmother, no matter what kind of
relationship they had, so no one thought z was guilty,
and instead all manner of suspicious characters are implicated. Lizzie
had mentioned an angry tenant that she'd heard with her father.
Others were called seeing suspicious men near the house recently,
(12:12):
including a mysterious Portuguese farmhand who perhaps was the fiendish
murderer that ends up not panning out, and another Portuguese
guy had recently killed someone in town, so we thought
maybe it was him, and arrested a different one. So
try not to be Portuguese around the board and murders.
But in early newspaper accounts. They said that Lizzie had
(12:33):
been in the barn, she came into the house, she
saw her father's body, rushed upstairs and found her mother's.
And then they were counted any possible theory, this angry tenant,
a man who had been sleeping in the hay loft
and planning these murders, someone who was poisoning the family's milk,
some kind of trickster who sent Abby this note to
try to get her out of the house and commit
(12:55):
other sinful deeds and and go after Mr Borden. And
the newspapers aren't suggesting Lizzie as the possible murderer at
all at this point. According to the Boston Harold quote,
in Lizzie Borden's life, there is not one unmaidenly nor
a single deliberately unkind act. So people were pretty confident
it was not this well bred young woman. It was
(13:18):
some sort of dastardly man, preferably a Portuguese farm hasterious,
for it's a mysterious man who's briefly in town. It
couldn't be Lizzie Borden herself. But the evidence starts piling
up because who else could have done it? According to
this timeline and all the other aspects, like the locked doors.
(13:40):
She was pretty much the only one, and this mysterious
man theory begins to seem a little thin. Lizzie's isn't
a good mysterious man around, no, and she's emerging as
the most likely suspect, especially after her in quest testimony.
So the inquest was August nine, and it's Josea Nolten
questioning her and also Bridget and John Worse and some
(14:00):
of the others, and Lizzie continually contradicts herself about times
and the sequence of events, and she says some very
odd things. She seems confused by the questions and was
disquietingly calm. Yeah, and just a few days later, on
the eleventh of August, she was arrested and claimed she
was not guilty. By August twenty two, there was a
(14:23):
preliminary hearing and at that the judge said, well, she
probably is guilty and she's going to have to go
in front of a grand jury. But the grand jury
wouldn't agree to actually meet until they got this just
sort of decisive account from Alice Russell. And Alice Russell
(14:43):
said she was the friend and neighbor remember she said
that she saw Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen
just a few days after the murder. So once the
grand jury here's that, they're like, all right, better hear
we better hear what Lizzie has to say. The trial
began June fi and again some more fabulous newspaper quotes
(15:04):
um in the Boston Herald quote her dark, lustrous eyes
ordinarily flashing, were dimmed, and her pale face was evidence
of the physical suffering she was undergoing and had experienced.
Poor poor Lizzie. So the prosecution was led by Joseah
Nolton and William Moody. The defense led by Andrew Jennings,
(15:24):
Melvin Adams, and George Robinson. And Moody told the jury
that Lizzie had planned the murders, committed the murders, and
then couldn't even keep her story straight. And they hadn't
seen a tear from her. You know, she was not
reacting as a woman in this position should she hated
her stepmother, she wanted her father's money. That's the story
(15:46):
that they were presenting. But there are plenty of things
that Lizzie had going for her, starting with she's this
woman of breeding from a good family. She has those
newspaper quotes exactly, She had plenty of character recommendations, and
not many people thought a woman was capable of hacking
someone's face to pieces. You know, Poison sounds like a
(16:10):
nice feminine way to kill someone, not a hatchet. And
then we have the character references coming in here too.
So her sister and her uncle and the maid all
said that she had a good relationship with Andrew and Abby,
there was no motive to kill either of them. And
then this is sort of the crucial thing. They didn't
(16:30):
have the murder weapon. They have some axes, because there
are plenty around if you've got a barn, and they've
got one that doesn't have a handle, But there's no
blood anywhere on it, and we're missing the handle, so
it could be the axe, but it could just be
a broken axe sitting around from farm work. And we
also have no blood on her clothes or her shoes.
We have nothing, no blood. It's not a really great
(16:54):
case for the prosecutor. It's all completely circumstantial. And then
this is the killer thing here, her in her inquest testimony,
which is what of course made the judge think she
needed to go in front of a grand jury in
the first place. Was ruled in admissible in court, and
that's because the judge believed that she had been treated
(17:16):
as a prisoner instead of as a suspect while she
was having her inquest, and she like, she wasn't just
a witness, she was under questioning, yeah, and should have
had an attorney present. Since she didn't, he didn't think
that they could actually take her in quest seriously well.
And as a side note, Dr Bowen had dosed her
with morphine before this inquest to keep her calm, but
(17:37):
obviously that could have made her kind of loopy. So
I mean that could explain her contradictory and why everything
could kind of confused her. But the prosecution was saying
even in her inquest she denied everything. There wasn't anything
in the inquest, no confession. Yeah, she wasn't coerced into
confessing to these murders in it because she's all doped
(17:59):
up on morphine. If she didn't confess to it, then
why couldn't they use it? That was their their point.
But the testimony was excluded and also ruled in invisible.
Was Eli Bentz, the pharmacist. His testimony about her trying
to buy poison from him. These are two key points
that are missing from that entire trial, so that Lupi
(18:19):
inquest and the poison fact, which seems very significant. So
there is still a fair amount of evidence against her.
Though according to bridget the maid, there was no way
anyone else could have gotten into the house during the
timeline of the day without being seen, and Lizzie was
simply the only person who would have had access. And
(18:41):
I also thought it was very strange that Lizzie didn't
wonder where her mother went and that she was also
in the house and didn't hear her being murdered and
falling to the ground. You know, maybe after you come
across your father's body, you begin to wonder what happened
to your mother, Yeah, or you would just hear her
falling upstairs. But the family may have said that Lizzie
(19:02):
and Abby had a pretty okay relationship, but others were
testifying no, they Lizzie hated her stepmother and the friend
the family, friend, Alice Russell, said that Lizzie had come
to her the night before the killings and said, quote,
I feel afraid something is going to happen, so starting
to paint a darker picture of Lizzie's psychological state before this.
(19:25):
Lizzie also said that she had been in the barn
during the time of her father's homicide, but when officers
went to investigate the loft, it was very dusty and
there were no footprints but the officer's own, which seemed
a little bit strange, and it was also extremely hot
in there. She'd claimed to have been there for thirty
minutes on this silly errand looking for lead for sinkers,
(19:48):
which again, something's not quite right there. Yeah, maybe not
an area or a chorey do in the middle of
the day. And then there's that note which seems very
are you sketchy? Indeed, the note that Lizzie said Mrs
Borden received. No one ever found the note, No one
ever figured out who the messenger was, No one ever
(20:09):
even figured out who the sick person was who needed
visiting in the first place. There was a reward offered,
nobody came forward with any news. And again her timeline
that day made no sense. And the dress Alice saw
her burning, she said it had paint on it, just
doing a little wardrobe cleaning a few days after her Yeah,
(20:30):
and it could very well, of course, have been blood.
And the dress that she gave the police and said
she was wearing that day wasn't the dress she was
wearing at all at the time of the murders. It
was a much too. It was silky and kind of
a nice dress, not the sort of thing you'd sure
a dress around the house. And then Lizzie was eerily
calm during the whole trial. According to the New York
(20:50):
Times quote, the most remarkable feature of the trial has
been the demeanor of Lizzie Borden. From start to finish,
she has manifested no feeling of weakness, and has listened
to the recital of the most cold blooded and shocking
details of the crime with a perfectly impassive and unmoved countenance.
I maintain it could have been shocked, could have been shocked.
(21:10):
But here we do start to see the papers turn
a little bit against her. So she does fate when
the skulls of her parents were revealed, but they considered
that a point for her. There are some rebuttals as
far as that whole dusty hay loft thing. There were
some men doing work a few days before the murders,
(21:31):
and they were like, listen, we were in there, and
there are no footprints of ours either, So this is
a ridiculous piece of evidence. And also, would a killer
be that open about burning a dress in the kitchen?
That was the other point. Wouldn't she be sneakier about it?
You gotta get rid of the dress, You gotta get
rid of it. And again, where is our bloody hatchet?
Where's this axe handle that supposedly came off from the
(21:52):
force of the blows? How could she wash herself, her
clothes and a murder weapon in about ten minutes before
she called ridget? Some people were like, maybe she didn't
naked and that's how but I mean, certainly paints the wilder.
And then one more final important rebuttal Andrew was a
really rich guy, so it's not too unlikely that somebody
(22:15):
might have something against him or want to get money somehow.
And then some people did say that they had seen
suspicious characters, just nobody they could specifically name, hanging around
the house right before the murders. One again, this is
all circumstantial evidence, and there is a reasonable doubt and
I think we can all agree if we were on
that jury, we would have thought the same thing, and
(22:37):
the judge agreed and Lizzie was acquitted. So picking up
with Lizzie's life after the murders, what happens after a
trial like this and sensational murders like this. Emma and
Lizzie bought a nice house together in Fall River. Lizzie
named it Maple Croft and changed her name to Lizabeth.
(22:58):
Emma became very involved in church but eventually moved out.
They had some sort of falling out our argumentum, possibly
because Lizzie had a relationship with an actress and Emma
changed her name as well, And they died only nine
days apart, which is one of those spooky little connected
to the end of this bizarre little thing. So there
(23:20):
you go, guys, Lizzie Borden episode. And I mean, we've
got to think about sort of modern connections to what
we see in the news right well, and and why
it's so important. I mean, today, like you mentioned earlier,
when you're looking at the news, the murder of a
child or a spouse or a parent is unfortunately all
too common, and after a while, maybe the horror that
(23:43):
stops being so shocking, and maybe it's easier to contemplate
a crime like this, with the safety that distance provides.
You're looking back at it in time, it's not so present.
And this has become such a part of American lore
that we've got a nursery rhyme about it. Yeah, Lizzie
Borden has become a club nursery. Maybe because plain rhymes.
(24:04):
That's not what you're seeing in the nursery. Um. You know,
I visited Salem about a year and a half ago,
and Lizzie Borden is not from Salem. But there are
all these shops with Lizzie Borden memorabilia, and you know
those hologram things where it's this staid portrait of a nice,
buttoned up Lizzie Borden and then it's like scary as
(24:26):
or that kind of thing. I think it's just she's
a cult figure. She's caught people's attention somehow. And of
course we're always fascinated by gore and violence human beings
in general, not just Sarah and I, um, but also
by what is unsolved, because you know, we like to
tie up loose ends, we like to find our answers.
(24:46):
But in this case, the only real satisfying answer would
be for Lizzie Borden to appear right before us and say, yes,
I did it, perhaps in hologram, for I hope that
it would just be the real her. But that's the
answer we can't have, and that's what makes it all
the more alluring. So if you would like to tell us,
(25:07):
all you requesters of Lizzie Borden, exactly why this matters
to you, we're still wondering, so you can email us
at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter and missed in History, and we have
a Facebook fan page, and there's an article that might
go along with this, how blood stained pattern analysis works,
(25:29):
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you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff
works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kate Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and we're going
to start off with a modified nursery rhyme. Here if
(00:21):
you're ready? Are you ready? So I'm ready for it. Okay,
Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother nineteen wax,
and when she saw what she had done, she gave
her father jen. Wait, that's not much of a nursery rhyme. Well,
I'm and rhyme. That's because the real rhyme, Sarah is
a lie. So she gave her mother forty wax and
gave her father at forty one. That is not true.
(00:41):
And Lizzie Borden is one of the podcast topics that
we have always resisted. We probably get this request, maybe
more than any other topic. I don't know. I don't
want to. I don't want to put one above the other,
but it's way way up there, along with Jack the Ripper,
that kind of thing. But the subject has never interested
us my much because you know, here's the story. A
(01:01):
woman was accused of brutally murdering her parents and hacking
their faces to pieces. But she's acquitted and we still
don't know if she really did it. That's that's the
whole story, and that's kind of your standard nightly news fair.
I mean, I hate to say it, but it's something
that happens almost every day. One. Of course, the story
of someone who murders a family member is nothing new.
(01:23):
You know, We've got Cane and Able and Caligula and Drusilla.
But we had to rethink our point of view because
if so many of you are captivated by this story,
there must be a reason why, and we aim to
put our prejudices aside and try to find it. So
here we go. Okay, the basics of our case. On
August four, in Fall River, Massachusetts, a woman is brutally
(01:49):
murdered in her home with a hatchet. Not long after,
her husband meets the same fate while he's asleep on
a couch in his living room. The main suspect is
their thirty two year old daughter, Lizzie Borden, and we
have a few possible motives. Money, the father was a
very wealthy man, or hatred of the stepmother. Stepmother, that's
(02:10):
a crucial part to this story a combination of the two.
The combination of the two. Yeah, So the jury's verdict
is acquittal, and that's probably the main reason why people
are so fascinated with the story. What really happened? How
did Lizzie Borden get acquitted? So a little family background
to start with. Sarah Anthony Morris married Andrew Jackson Borden
(02:33):
the Christmas of eighteen forty five and they had three
children together, Emma Alice and Lizzie. Alice died at the
age of two, and Sarah herself died when Lizzie was
about three, so she never got to know her mother.
And as Sarah mentioned, Andrew was very wealthy. He owned property,
he had holdings in textiles and banking, he directed corporations,
(02:55):
and one would imagine that made him an attractive prospect
for a husband, and so it did. Plussy has two
young girls, and so Lizzie's father remarries and he marries
Abby Durphy, and Lizzie was about five at the time,
and Emma, the older sister, about fourteen, and according to
Lizzie's testimony at the inquest, Emma always called her stepmother Abby,
(03:17):
but Lizzie always called her mother until about five or
six years before the murder went down. So make of
that what you will, but it seems like this is
a woman who she thought of as her mother for
most of her life. And again later when the d A.
Jose and Nolton asked if Lizzie's relationship with her stepmother
was cordial, she replied, it depends upon one's idea of cordiality, perhaps,
(03:42):
which isn't exactly the picture of a happy home. But
Emma and her trial testimony said that the relationship was
cordial and that Lizzie and her father had a very
good one. So we're going to give you the outline
of if she did it, this is what happened. Okay,
So here's here's to basic starting fact. Lizzie and Emma
(04:03):
both admitted that they were upset about their father giving
one of his properties to Abby and her sister instead
of them. They were both older, they're unmarried, and they
expected their elderly father would provide for them and set
them up for the rest of their life financially. And
according to some there was this rumor that he was
going to change his will in favor of his wife,
(04:24):
and that might cause a few family problems, I'd say so.
On August three, which was the day before the murders,
Lizzie attempted to buy prussic acid, a poison from pharmacist
to Eli Bentz, and he refused her. But the Boardens
and their maid, Bridget Sullivan, all reported feeling sick that
day and the next morning. On August four, Emma was
(04:50):
in fair Haven, Massachusetts, but there were a few other
people around, uh, the maide we just mentioned Bridget, but
also kind of randomly, the deceased Sarah brother, John Moore,
so Lizzie's uncle from Lizzie's uncle on her mom's side. Uh,
he's visiting. He'd arrived the night before, but he left
in the morning to go visit another cousin. So he's
(05:12):
not around when the murders go down, but he's there
immediately before and then he comes back, so he's there after.
Andrew Boorden and her father left the house that morning
as well to get some business done in town. Abby
stayed in the house and she began doing chores and
headed to the guest room to make the bed, you know,
put on pillow shams, tidy up, and she asked Bridget
(05:33):
to wash the outsides of the window. So she's in
the house. Bridge is outside the house. The only other
person who's inside the house is Lizzie Borden. Okay, So
according to Lizzie's story, at this point, Abby received a
note from some messenger we don't know who, calling her
to some sick person's home. We don't know the sick
(05:54):
person either, and Abby left the house on this errand.
But this is where our events are gonna start down. Like,
if Lizzie did it, here's what happened. So what happened then,
if if Lizzie did it, is she found Abby on
the second floor, hit her from behind with an axe,
and then hacked her eighteen more times, and she left
(06:17):
the body, She cleaned herself up and the axe. She
knew her father probably wouldn't come home for a while.
It ended up being an hour and a half, so
in the meantime she did some reading and some ironing
and some sewing, you know, between murders. And when he returned,
Bridget unlocked the door for him, and as she did,
she heard Lizzie laughing on the second floor landing after
(06:40):
she had killed her stepmother. Right, So, Lizzie told Andrew
that his wife had received that note and had gone
off on that arrand, and she settled him down on
the couch and tried to convince Bridget to go out
of the house. There was supposibly a really good sale
on ribbons, trying to sale who can resist to entice
the maid, but Bridget isn't interested. She instead goes to
(07:02):
the attic, probably worn out from all that window washing
and her upset stomach from the poison the night before,
but possible poison. Possible poison. Um. So, after Lizzie settled
her father on the couch, he falls asleep, and then
supposedly she hits him in the face and head with
the axe ten times, so hard that she snaps the
(07:24):
handle off the axe. But then in ten minutes, according
to the timeline that the police tried to put together
based on what everyone said they were doing that day
and and uh Lizzie's own conflicting testimony, she would have
had to clean herself off, her clothes and the murder
weapon in ten minutes and only then axing someone ten times.
(07:46):
Let's see, I imagine that would be a messy scene. Yeah,
I think so. And only after this did she call
to Bridget for help. And announced that her father had died.
She didn't say anything about Abby because she thought that
he had left the house. She's off on the errand
so now we're going to move on to the bodies
and the scene. And this is pretty disturbing stuff. But
(08:08):
Abby had a five inch hole in her skull, and
her head and her face were completely unrecognizable. She was
lying face down in coagulated blood, and her clothes were
soaked in it, and the bed and the pillow sham
next to her were all bloody, and the wall in
the chair in the bureau all covered in blood. Of
(08:30):
just a small disturbing detail, her braid had even been
hacked off. And Andrew was on his back on a lounge,
his face turned as he slept, and his face and head,
too were no longer recognizable. You can find pictures of
the crime scene online if you so desire, which you
very well might not. The axe had gone through his cheekbone,
(08:51):
it had severed his eye in half. There was blood
dripping onto the floor and from the sofa and on
the walls, painting on the wall, the feeling the door,
and it was still wet and flowing when others entered
the scene which is why we assume that Abby had
died first and he had died second. But it seems
very personal to attack only a person's face and had
(09:15):
to us definitely and in so many times too. But
here's an important detail. The rooms were perfectly in order.
There was no sign of a break in, no sign
of a struggle. It seemed likely that whoever did this
knew the couple. And also the boardings kept all of
their doors locked all of the time, and supposedly this
(09:37):
is because there had been a theft in the home
and perhaps Lizzie had a history of shoplifting. Um, so
their house was always on lockdown, which pains rather disturbing
scene for the house too, I'd say make her move out,
not well, and don't think of it. Just as like,
the front door is locked like a normal house would be,
but all of the rooms and everything just completely locked
(10:01):
down all the time. And if it is all locked,
the person probably would have had to be in the
house the whole time. Yeah, exactly. So after the murders,
Lizzie called for Bridget after this ten minute window we have,
and then sent Bridget to go get the family doctor
Dr Bowen. Bridget couldn't find the doctor or he wasn't there.
(10:22):
She comes back without him, and then Lizzie sent her
out again, this time to get a family friend, Alice Russell.
But in the meantime, their neighbor, Adelaide Churchill, showed up
and she went off for help. So just imagine all
of these people sort of coming in and out, but
large periods of time where Lizzie is in the house
by herself, possibly doing anything. Dr Bowen does come to
(10:44):
the house finally, and Bridget and Adelaide return and they're
the ones who discover Abby's body upstairs. Because of course
that police officer asked Lizzie, when's the last time you
saw your mother? She said she went off on the
stern mother, Yeah, and she said she was gone the house,
but the last time she'd seen her was in the
guest room. So the maid and their neighbor go upstairs
(11:06):
and find Abby's body. And you can imagine we've already
listed all of these people who are at the crime scene.
Soon enough we have more officers, more neighbors and onlookers.
Everyone is trampling all over everything. Police are walking through
the crime scenes. That evidence, whatever evidence there would have been,
is completely contaminated and one Katie just kind of mentioned this. Yeah.
(11:29):
An officer on the scene asked Lizzie when she had
last seen her mother, and she was very careful to say, no,
it's my stepmother, and she said her mother died when
she was a baby. And this turns out to be
a really big piece of evidence, or at least it's
keeps coming up turned into a big piece of evidence.
But I don't know how much how much there is
(11:50):
to that. Maybe she was just trying to be very precise. Yea,
and Abby is her stepmother, no matter what kind of
relationship they had, so no one thought z was guilty,
and instead all manner of suspicious characters are implicated. Lizzie
had mentioned an angry tenant that she'd heard with her father.
Others were called seeing suspicious men near the house recently,
(12:12):
including a mysterious Portuguese farmhand who perhaps was the fiendish
murderer that ends up not panning out, and another Portuguese
guy had recently killed someone in town, so we thought
maybe it was him, and arrested a different one. So
try not to be Portuguese around the board and murders.
But in early newspaper accounts. They said that Lizzie had
(12:33):
been in the barn, she came into the house, she
saw her father's body, rushed upstairs and found her mother's.
And then they were counted any possible theory, this angry tenant,
a man who had been sleeping in the hay loft
and planning these murders, someone who was poisoning the family's milk,
some kind of trickster who sent Abby this note to
try to get her out of the house and commit
(12:55):
other sinful deeds and and go after Mr Borden. And
the newspapers aren't suggesting Lizzie as the possible murderer at
all at this point. According to the Boston Harold quote,
in Lizzie Borden's life, there is not one unmaidenly nor
a single deliberately unkind act. So people were pretty confident
it was not this well bred young woman. It was
(13:18):
some sort of dastardly man, preferably a Portuguese farm hasterious,
for it's a mysterious man who's briefly in town. It
couldn't be Lizzie Borden herself. But the evidence starts piling
up because who else could have done it? According to
this timeline and all the other aspects, like the locked doors.
(13:40):
She was pretty much the only one, and this mysterious
man theory begins to seem a little thin. Lizzie's isn't
a good mysterious man around, no, and she's emerging as
the most likely suspect, especially after her in quest testimony.
So the inquest was August nine, and it's Josea Nolten
questioning her and also Bridget and John Worse and some
(14:00):
of the others, and Lizzie continually contradicts herself about times
and the sequence of events, and she says some very
odd things. She seems confused by the questions and was
disquietingly calm. Yeah, and just a few days later, on
the eleventh of August, she was arrested and claimed she
was not guilty. By August twenty two, there was a
(14:23):
preliminary hearing and at that the judge said, well, she
probably is guilty and she's going to have to go
in front of a grand jury. But the grand jury
wouldn't agree to actually meet until they got this just
sort of decisive account from Alice Russell. And Alice Russell
(14:43):
said she was the friend and neighbor remember she said
that she saw Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen
just a few days after the murder. So once the
grand jury here's that, they're like, all right, better hear
we better hear what Lizzie has to say. The trial
began June fi and again some more fabulous newspaper quotes
(15:04):
um in the Boston Herald quote her dark, lustrous eyes
ordinarily flashing, were dimmed, and her pale face was evidence
of the physical suffering she was undergoing and had experienced.
Poor poor Lizzie. So the prosecution was led by Joseah
Nolton and William Moody. The defense led by Andrew Jennings,
(15:24):
Melvin Adams, and George Robinson. And Moody told the jury
that Lizzie had planned the murders, committed the murders, and
then couldn't even keep her story straight. And they hadn't
seen a tear from her. You know, she was not
reacting as a woman in this position should she hated
her stepmother, she wanted her father's money. That's the story
(15:46):
that they were presenting. But there are plenty of things
that Lizzie had going for her, starting with she's this
woman of breeding from a good family. She has those
newspaper quotes exactly, She had plenty of character recommendations, and
not many people thought a woman was capable of hacking
someone's face to pieces. You know, Poison sounds like a
(16:10):
nice feminine way to kill someone, not a hatchet. And
then we have the character references coming in here too.
So her sister and her uncle and the maid all
said that she had a good relationship with Andrew and Abby,
there was no motive to kill either of them. And
then this is sort of the crucial thing. They didn't
(16:30):
have the murder weapon. They have some axes, because there
are plenty around if you've got a barn, and they've
got one that doesn't have a handle, But there's no
blood anywhere on it, and we're missing the handle, so
it could be the axe, but it could just be
a broken axe sitting around from farm work. And we
also have no blood on her clothes or her shoes.
We have nothing, no blood. It's not a really great
(16:54):
case for the prosecutor. It's all completely circumstantial. And then
this is the killer thing here, her in her inquest testimony,
which is what of course made the judge think she
needed to go in front of a grand jury in
the first place. Was ruled in admissible in court, and
that's because the judge believed that she had been treated
(17:16):
as a prisoner instead of as a suspect while she
was having her inquest, and she like, she wasn't just
a witness, she was under questioning, yeah, and should have
had an attorney present. Since she didn't, he didn't think
that they could actually take her in quest seriously well.
And as a side note, Dr Bowen had dosed her
with morphine before this inquest to keep her calm, but
(17:37):
obviously that could have made her kind of loopy. So
I mean that could explain her contradictory and why everything
could kind of confused her. But the prosecution was saying
even in her inquest she denied everything. There wasn't anything
in the inquest, no confession. Yeah, she wasn't coerced into
confessing to these murders in it because she's all doped
(17:59):
up on morphine. If she didn't confess to it, then
why couldn't they use it? That was their their point.
But the testimony was excluded and also ruled in invisible.
Was Eli Bentz, the pharmacist. His testimony about her trying
to buy poison from him. These are two key points
that are missing from that entire trial, so that Lupi
(18:19):
inquest and the poison fact, which seems very significant. So
there is still a fair amount of evidence against her.
Though according to bridget the maid, there was no way
anyone else could have gotten into the house during the
timeline of the day without being seen, and Lizzie was
simply the only person who would have had access. And
(18:41):
I also thought it was very strange that Lizzie didn't
wonder where her mother went and that she was also
in the house and didn't hear her being murdered and
falling to the ground. You know, maybe after you come
across your father's body, you begin to wonder what happened
to your mother, Yeah, or you would just hear her
falling upstairs. But the family may have said that Lizzie
(19:02):
and Abby had a pretty okay relationship, but others were
testifying no, they Lizzie hated her stepmother and the friend
the family, friend, Alice Russell, said that Lizzie had come
to her the night before the killings and said, quote,
I feel afraid something is going to happen, so starting
to paint a darker picture of Lizzie's psychological state before this.
(19:25):
Lizzie also said that she had been in the barn
during the time of her father's homicide, but when officers
went to investigate the loft, it was very dusty and
there were no footprints but the officer's own, which seemed
a little bit strange, and it was also extremely hot
in there. She'd claimed to have been there for thirty
minutes on this silly errand looking for lead for sinkers,
(19:48):
which again, something's not quite right there. Yeah, maybe not
an area or a chorey do in the middle of
the day. And then there's that note which seems very
are you sketchy? Indeed, the note that Lizzie said Mrs
Borden received. No one ever found the note, No one
ever figured out who the messenger was, No one ever
(20:09):
even figured out who the sick person was who needed
visiting in the first place. There was a reward offered,
nobody came forward with any news. And again her timeline
that day made no sense. And the dress Alice saw
her burning, she said it had paint on it, just
doing a little wardrobe cleaning a few days after her Yeah,
(20:30):
and it could very well, of course, have been blood.
And the dress that she gave the police and said
she was wearing that day wasn't the dress she was
wearing at all at the time of the murders. It
was a much too. It was silky and kind of
a nice dress, not the sort of thing you'd sure
a dress around the house. And then Lizzie was eerily
calm during the whole trial. According to the New York
(20:50):
Times quote, the most remarkable feature of the trial has
been the demeanor of Lizzie Borden. From start to finish,
she has manifested no feeling of weakness, and has listened
to the recital of the most cold blooded and shocking
details of the crime with a perfectly impassive and unmoved countenance.
I maintain it could have been shocked, could have been shocked.
(21:10):
But here we do start to see the papers turn
a little bit against her. So she does fate when
the skulls of her parents were revealed, but they considered
that a point for her. There are some rebuttals as
far as that whole dusty hay loft thing. There were
some men doing work a few days before the murders,
(21:31):
and they were like, listen, we were in there, and
there are no footprints of ours either, So this is
a ridiculous piece of evidence. And also, would a killer
be that open about burning a dress in the kitchen?
That was the other point. Wouldn't she be sneakier about it?
You gotta get rid of the dress, You gotta get
rid of it. And again, where is our bloody hatchet?
Where's this axe handle that supposedly came off from the
(21:52):
force of the blows? How could she wash herself, her
clothes and a murder weapon in about ten minutes before
she called ridget? Some people were like, maybe she didn't
naked and that's how but I mean, certainly paints the wilder.
And then one more final important rebuttal Andrew was a
really rich guy, so it's not too unlikely that somebody
(22:15):
might have something against him or want to get money somehow.
And then some people did say that they had seen
suspicious characters, just nobody they could specifically name, hanging around
the house right before the murders. One again, this is
all circumstantial evidence, and there is a reasonable doubt and
I think we can all agree if we were on
that jury, we would have thought the same thing, and
(22:37):
the judge agreed and Lizzie was acquitted. So picking up
with Lizzie's life after the murders, what happens after a
trial like this and sensational murders like this. Emma and
Lizzie bought a nice house together in Fall River. Lizzie
named it Maple Croft and changed her name to Lizabeth.
(22:58):
Emma became very involved in church but eventually moved out.
They had some sort of falling out our argumentum, possibly
because Lizzie had a relationship with an actress and Emma
changed her name as well, And they died only nine
days apart, which is one of those spooky little connected
to the end of this bizarre little thing. So there
(23:20):
you go, guys, Lizzie Borden episode. And I mean, we've
got to think about sort of modern connections to what
we see in the news right well, and and why
it's so important. I mean, today, like you mentioned earlier,
when you're looking at the news, the murder of a
child or a spouse or a parent is unfortunately all
too common, and after a while, maybe the horror that
(23:43):
stops being so shocking, and maybe it's easier to contemplate
a crime like this, with the safety that distance provides.
You're looking back at it in time, it's not so present.
And this has become such a part of American lore
that we've got a nursery rhyme about it. Yeah, Lizzie
Borden has become a club nursery. Maybe because plain rhymes.
(24:04):
That's not what you're seeing in the nursery. Um. You know,
I visited Salem about a year and a half ago,
and Lizzie Borden is not from Salem. But there are
all these shops with Lizzie Borden memorabilia, and you know
those hologram things where it's this staid portrait of a nice,
buttoned up Lizzie Borden and then it's like scary as
(24:26):
or that kind of thing. I think it's just she's
a cult figure. She's caught people's attention somehow. And of
course we're always fascinated by gore and violence human beings
in general, not just Sarah and I, um, but also
by what is unsolved, because you know, we like to
tie up loose ends, we like to find our answers.
(24:46):
But in this case, the only real satisfying answer would
be for Lizzie Borden to appear right before us and say, yes,
I did it, perhaps in hologram, for I hope that
it would just be the real her. But that's the
answer we can't have, and that's what makes it all
the more alluring. So if you would like to tell us,
(25:07):
all you requesters of Lizzie Borden, exactly why this matters
to you, we're still wondering, so you can email us
at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter and missed in History, and we have
a Facebook fan page, and there's an article that might
go along with this, how blood stained pattern analysis works,
(25:29):
that you can find if you search our homepage at
www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
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