June 21, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the brutal double-murder that happened in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892 has long been considered an unsolved mystery. Cara Robertson, author of the The Trial Of Lizzie Borden, tells the story.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
And today we have Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Borden. This long unsolved double murder has haunted
(00:34):
Fall River, Massachusetts since the late summer of eighteen ninety two.
Here's Kara with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
You know, we're used to the idea of these trials
that become big media events, but Lizzie Borden's trial was,
to use an off use phrase, the trial of the century.
In her case, it was the trial of the nineteenth century.
There is a combination of technology and you know, sensational
(01:05):
subject matter that converge in turning her case into something,
you know, akin to the O. J. Simpson trial. It
was such a heinous double murder, and the person accused
of it with someone who checks all the boxes of
proper middle class womanhood. She was active in good work,
(01:27):
she was a Sunday school teacher, and yet she's accused
of the murder of her own father and her stepmother,
and this is just more than anyone can really comprehend,
and so there is a strong desire to follow the
case and to see her in mythic terms. You know,
(01:49):
she's either this monster, you know, someone whose appearance must
match the murder, or she's an innocent victim, almost a
sentimental heroine, just ensnared by circumstance and some insidious masculine
conspiracy of men and policemen's blue who were trying to
(02:13):
pin the crime on her to cover up their own
incompetence and the sensationalism of the crime, and also the
press coverage that the trial generated means that it provides
a place from which you can observe America in the
Gilded Age and have a real window onto that period
(02:33):
in American history. Fall River, Massachusetts was an extremely prosperous
mill town. It was a central place for textile production
in the United States. It was often called the Manchester
of America, and it was a town that was separated
(02:53):
from urban centers like Boston and New York, so had
a slight provincialist them to it. But it was also
had easy access to those centers, so there was a
lot of there's a lot of wealth, and the people
who enjoyed the wealth generated by the mills were able
to travel to Boston and New York and the wider
world and had a certain amount of sophistication. And then
(03:17):
the people who worked in the mills were quite poor,
often immigrants. And what is particularly interesting about Fall River
is that it's geography exactly mirrors the social structure. The
people who live closest to the mills, which is low,
(03:37):
are the people who work in the mills. And then
there's a city center that's sort of halfway up up
the hill, and that's where mostly the doctors lawyers live.
And then there is an elite area called the hill District,
which is literally the highest place you can live, and
that that is the place that's favored by the people who.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Are the owners of the mills.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
You know, on the surface, the Bordon's probably looked like
a fairly typical family. Andrew Borden was a successful real
estate owner. He lived with his second wife, Abby and
his adult daughters, Emma and Lizzie, in a single family
house near the center of town.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
That was very convenient for.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Him for walking around collecting rents, checking on his businesses.
But Andrew Borden was descended from one of the founding
families of Fall River, and he was from what you
might call a lesser branch, So his father was quite poor,
and he was himself a self made man and pretty rich.
(04:42):
So Lizzie and her sister Emma occupied a peculiar position
in Fall River. They were, on the one hand, considered heiresses.
One might have assumed them to be in the elite
of Fall River. But because he chose to live, as
one of his neighbors said, on a narrow scale, in
the middle class, middling part of Full River, and because
(05:03):
he was a bit of a miser, wasn't The daughter's
allowance was for pen money and things, where it's sort
of equivalent to the wage a worker in one of
the mills would have earned. Obviously they didn't have.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
To work for it.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And yet, on the other hand, they were socially fairly
isolated by the decisions of their father, and it seems
clear that they would have liked to have been cultured girls.
As one of their neighbors put it, they chose to
attend or remain rather in the society church. When their
father had a dispute and left it for a different one.
(05:38):
Abby Borden was Lizzie and Emma's stepmother. Lizzie was very
young at the time of her mother's death and had
no particular memory of her, so Emma was the woman
who raised her. But Emma was thirteen at the time
of her mother's death and was thought to never fully
accept Abby as her mother, you know, as a replacement
for her mother. Five years before the murders, Andrew Borden
(06:03):
decided to give Abby a house, really to bail out
her sister, her own half sister and family, and Lizzie
and Emma got wind of this and really resented this
act of generosity. They said that, you know, what he
did for her, he should do for his own blood.
(06:25):
And Andrew subsequently gave them what had been his father's house,
you know that was rented out so that they would
have their own income. And although this had the effect
of equalizing the gifts, it didn't really heal the breach,
and from that time forward, Lizzie and her older sister
Emma avoided their parents.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
As much as possible.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
In that small house, they preferred to take separate meals
and to if possible, entertain visitors in a guest room
upstairs that they used as their own sort of sitting room.
So within the small household they lived quite sep and
it was described by some as a side of really
cold war between the generations.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And you're listening to Kara Robertson tell the story of
the Trial of Lizzie Borden and giving you a backdrop
when we come back more of the Trial of Lizzie
Borden here on our American story. Folks, if you love
(07:32):
the stories we tell about this great country, and especially
the stories of America's rich past, know that all of
our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture
and faith, are brought to us by the great folks
at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that are good in life. And if you can't get
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
(07:54):
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
learn more. And we returned to our American stories, and
we've been listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
(08:15):
of Lizzie Borden. By the way, it's a terrific rereed
go to Amazon or the usual suspects to pick it up.
The Bordon family from the outside seemed like a normal family,
but there was discord amongst the generations and between them.
Adult daughters Lizzie and Emma didn't care for their stepmother Abbey,
making for a chilling home environment. Back to Kara.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Well, Emma was a fairly stoic character and much more
mild manner, so that she wasn't really quoted saying anything
negative about her stepmother, though it was known that there
was this dispute in the family. Lizzie was a fourth
right character, and she described her stepmother as a mean,
good for nothing thing to a dressmaker of all people.
A few months before the before the murders, she was
(09:02):
just very frank about her dissatisfaction with her living conditions,
her desire for more, and also for the role that
she felt that her stepmother had played, you know, in
keeping her in this condition. About a year before the murders,
the Burdons were the victim of a mysterious daytime theft.
(09:22):
Andrew and Abby were out, but Emma, Lizzie, and bridget Sullivan,
the Borton's made were home. Abby Bordon had some jewelry stolen,
and mister Bordon also lost some money and street car tickets.
And what was oddest about the crime was that no
one seemed to have heard anyone enter or leave the house.
(09:43):
After the police were called and investigated, and mister Bordon
told the police officer that he didn't think that they'd
never find the thief, suggesting to many people that perhaps
he knew who was responsible. On August second, the Bordon
household a hit with what appeared to be food poisoning.
It was a fairly typical complaint in Fall River in
(10:06):
the summer. In fact, it was called the summer complaint
because so many houses didn't have refrigeration. The boards didn't
have an ice box, but they ate a lot of
leftovers and suffered the consequences.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
The next day, Abby.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Consulted the family physician who lived across the street. Learning
of their dinner, He wasn't particularly concerned, but Abby confided
to him that she feared they had been poisoned. When
the doctor returned to the house to examine Andrew, along
with Abby, Andrew stood in the doorway and refused to
(10:41):
let him enter, and also to tell him that he
would not pay for the visit. Lizzie also had her
own suspicions about poison, which she shared with her friend
and former neighbor, Alice Russell. On the night before the murders.
She said she was worried that the milk had been
poisoned and that there were strange men who'd been seen
in the vicinity of the house. She also confessed her
(11:03):
generalized sense of uneasiness and a sense of foreboding, remarking,
I feel as if something was hanging over me that
I cannot throw off, and it comes over me at
times no matter where I am. On the morning of
August fourth, there were five people in the Bordon household
(11:27):
Andrew Borden, his wife Abby, his daughter Lizzie, the housemaid
Bridget Sullivan, and Andrew's brother in law John Morse, who
was an occasional overnight visitor. Emma Bordon was visiting friends
in fair Haven, which is some distance away. As was custom,
(11:48):
the elder Borton's rose first and had breakfast, as did
John Morse. Andrew left to go about his business in town.
John followed in order to see some other relatives the
other side of town. Sometime between nine twenty and nine
thirty in the morning. Around the same time, Abby Borden
asked Bridget Sullivan to wash the windows inside and outside
(12:11):
of the house. She went up to the guest room
in order to change a pillowcase and tidy it up.
After John Morse's departure. Around nine thirty, she was killed
in that room. An assassin struck and hacked her to
death with approximately nineteen blows. About an hour after Abby
(12:34):
was killed, Andrew Borden returned home. He had trouble getting
in the front door because it had been bolted from
the inside. Bridget Sullivan, the housemaid, came to let him
in and as she was letting him in, uttered some
sort of an oath, and this apparently evoked laughter from
Lizzie Borden, who was upstairs on the landing. In the
(12:57):
process of descending the stairs, mister Borden came in. His daughter,
Lizzie greeted him and inquired about the mail. He asked
about her stepmother, Abby, and she said that she had
had a note from a sick friend and gone out.
Mister Borden decided to take a nap on the sitting
room sofa, and shortly thereafter, the snap became his final slumber.
(13:21):
He was struck by ten blows, mostly in the face.
At the time of her father's murder, Lizzie Borden later
said that she had been outside, first picking pears in
the orchard, and then looking for a sinker, you know,
a wait for a fishing line, or perhaps a piece
of iron to fix a window in the upstairs loft
(13:45):
of the barn. There she tarried and ate a pair
or two. She estimated that she was there twenty minutes,
perhaps thirty, came back in from outside and discovered her
father's body on the city room sofa. She immediately summoned
the housemaid, Bridget Sullivan, who was upstairs in her third
floor attic room taking a little bit of a nap.
(14:09):
She dispatched Bridget for the family doctor, who lived across
the street. He was not at home, so she sent
her to find Alice Russell, who was a friend and neighbor.
While she was waiting for Bridget to return, she waited
inside the screen door at the side of the house
and was spotted by her neighbor, Alice Churchill, who asked
(14:34):
her what was the matter, and she replied that someone
has killed father. The murders were so violent that some
speculated that Jack the Ripper had come to America. The
details were gruesome, yet oddly, the house itself seemed to
(14:55):
be in what one witness described as apple pie order.
The first thought was that it must be the work
of a madman, but two key facts seemed to rule
out the possibility of a murderous stranger. First, the house
was locked. The front door had been securely triple locked,
(15:17):
and although there was a door from the cellar leading
to the back, that too was locked. So the only
point of access in the house seemed to be a
side door that sometimes was latched, sometimes was not latched,
but it was often insight of the neighbors or Bridget Sullivan,
the housemaid. The second key fact that seemed to rule
(15:38):
out a murderous stranger was the interval between the murders.
It was something that one of the prosecutors would later
call the controlling fact of the case. The idea that
someone had broken in from the outside killed Missus Borden
first and then waited an hour and a half to
kill Andrew seemed really implawed. Ball there were a few
(16:02):
places in the house to hide. It is possible that
an upstairs. Guessed an upstairs a clothes closet could have
provided a refuge, but it was quite small and cramped,
and also the door had been left open to the
guest room the scene of Abbey's murder, seeming to advertise
rather than.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Hide the fact.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
All in all, it was a very small house, and
it was a house that had been converted from a
tenement for two families into a single family house, which
meant that the upstairs and the downstairs layouts neared each other.
Neither floor had a hallway, so that one would have
to pass from one room into the other in order
(16:43):
to get through the house. It seemed very unlikely that
someone from the outside would have been able to break
in and then would have been able to elude the
two women known to be in the house at the
time of both murders, Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan. Once
that was clear, the police began to dig for a motive,
(17:05):
but the first detective to question Lizzie Borden found her
a bit evasive and suspicious. In particular, he wondered what
on earth she could have been doing in the loft
of the barn. The hottest, most stifling part of the
barn for twenty or thirty minutes, and.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial of
Lizzie Borden. The murders were so violent. She said that
some speculated that Jack the Ripper himself had come to America.
When we return more of the Trial of Lizzie Borden
here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(18:10):
American stories and to the mysterious double murder that took
place in Fall River, Massachusetts in the summer of eighteen
ninety two. The daughter of the victims, Lizzie Borden, was
the main suspect. Back to Carra Robertson, author of the
Trial of Lizzie bordon with more of the.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Story, the police found no evidence that anyone had been
in the loft of the barn. This is something that
is disputed at the trial. At the time that the
inquest started, the police already had strong suspicions of Lizzie Borden.
Lizzie's family lawyer attempted to participate. He wanted to represent
(18:49):
her at the inquest, but that wasn't permitted. The prosecutor
at the inquest took her through her stated movements and
the day of the murders, Lizzie produced a contradictory story.
She said that she was upstairs, She said that she
was downstairs. She said that she was ironing handkerchiefs at
the time of Abby's murder, a task that was significantly
(19:12):
left undone or not completed by the time of her
father's arrival. And yet she also claimed that she had
not heard a sound. This seemed implausible to people who'd
been in the house, that the fall of someone upstairs
should have produced some sort.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Of a jar.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
On the last day of the inquest, Lizzie Borden was
arrested and taken to The trial begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts,
a neighboring town, on June fifth, eighteen ninety three. Reporters
and journalists from around the country are dispatched to cover
the case. An extension to the courthouse is built in
(19:52):
the rear so that all the wire services can be accommodated,
and the most prominent columnist write not only about what
is happening in the courthouse, but also what is happening
outside the courthouse, because it becomes an almost festive atmosphere
with people who line up and bring lunch. Desire for
admission is widespread and much covered in the newspapers. One
(20:17):
local newspaper, under the headline where to Look for Your Wife,
describes the number of women who are desirous of attending
the trial, and these women, according at least to one
of the journalists, constitute a sort of second jury. The
jury itself is all male. Women were not eligible for
jury service in Massachusetts at the time, and actually wouldn't
(20:40):
serve on a Massachusetts jury until nineteen fifty. Lizzy Bordon
had a team of defenders, the most prominent of whom
was the former governor of Massachusetts, George Robinson, and he
told a simple story that Lizzy Borden was simply in
the wrong place in the wrong time, or as he
(21:02):
would have put it, in the right place in her
home at the wrong time, and that it was not
the defense's job to clear up the mystery, that this
was beyond the capacity of a woman who looked like
Lizzie Bordon, or who had the characteristics of Lizzy Bordon.
Lizzy Bordon had an extraordinary self possession. That's something that
(21:24):
everyone noticed about her. In other respects, she was quite
ordinary all the journalists agreed that she had this extraordinary
self possession, and that divided the audience.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Some saw in it.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Evidence of almost a masculine nerve, that there was something
just disturbing about that kind of self possession in the
face of these kinds of crimes, and one local newspaper,
the Irish Catholic Paper, that viewed her case with some
suspicion and hostility, referred to her as the Sphinx of coolness.
(21:56):
By contrast, many of the journalists saw in Lizzie Bordon's
self possession a sign of Yankee grit and of true
American womanhood, and both sides used that appearance, or their
analysis of her appearance, to confirm their own opinions about
her guilt and innocence or innocence. The prosecution was in
(22:19):
a bind because the very brutality of the murders seemed
to argue against Lizzie Bordon as the murderer. She's someone who,
you know, appears to fit the model of womanly behavior,
and she's someone who just doesn't look like the sort
of person, based on late nineteenth century ideas of criminality,
(22:41):
who would be the murderer in such a case. They
were looking for or you know, people were expecting some
sort of insane immigrants. So for the prosecution, the task
was to show that really only Lizzie Borden could have
committed the murder, and that that was their best their
best way to get a conviction. There was evidence that
(23:02):
would have helped the prosecution that they were unable to
tell the jury.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
The first piece was that Lizzie.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Bordon was identified as a woman who tried to buy
prussic acid on the day before the murders. This was
significant because if Lizzie Borton had tried and failed to
procure prussic acid, which is a deadly poison, and poison
as we all know, as a woman's weapon, then she
might well have turned to a readily available household implement
(23:31):
to commit the murders. That that explained the choice of weapon,
which otherwise seemed very much like a man's weapon.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
The other bit of.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Evidence that they were not allowed to share was Lizzie
Borton's own testimony that memorialized her conflicting accounts of where
she had been on the morning of the murders. The
judges ruled that because she had effectively been denied counsel
and the Massachusetts Constitution had a protection that was something
like modern Miranda writes that the evidence could not be
(24:03):
used a trial against her. Medical experts all testified that
a woman could have committed the murders, and in fact
specifically said that, you know, with sufficient leverage, a weapon
held by a woman could produce such wounds. And the
(24:25):
prosecution even tried to argue that the number of wounds
and the fact that some were weak and vacillating, was
somehow assigned that a woman had been the murderer. You know,
they often want to have it both ways, but the
defense just repeatedly said that a woman really could not
have committed those crimes. The prosecution also had the problem
(24:46):
that everyone who saw Lizzie Bordon after the murders testified
that she had no sign of blood anywhere on her person,
that she seemed, you know, entirely put together, And so
the defense was able to say that it just was
impossible that someone would not have been spattered with blood
(25:08):
after such violence, murders committed in such proximity to the victims.
It was also known, however, that Lizzie Borden burned a
dress on the Sunday after the murders a dressed that
she claimed had been stained with paint, and the defense
produced the dressmaker to say that, yes, indeed, the dress
had been stained with paint, and so the prosecution was
(25:31):
able to imply that the dress that Lizzie Bordon had
been seen in after the murders was not the same
blue dress that she had worn on the morning.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Before the murders.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The police produced a number of weapons, axes and hatchets
found at the Bordon household. The police found what they
thought was the murder weapon, a hatchet head that had
been found in the basement among other tools that were
rusty and fallen in to disuse. The hatchet head was
(26:02):
covered with what the police described as ash, as opposed
to the dust that covered other things in the basement,
leading them to believe that someone had actually hidden it
there in an attempt to make it look like it
was just an innocent object. One of the ways that
they determined that this was the likely murder weapon was
(26:25):
by matching the cutting blade of that hatchet with the
indentations in the skulls of the Burdons. The coroner had
decapitated the Burtons and then rendered off the flesh in
order to examine those skulls, and then had cast made
and drawn in the various wounds so that they could
(26:46):
be brought into the trial. When Lizzie Borden saw the
skulls for the first time at the trial, she promptly fainted,
earning her the support of many of the journalists and
the derision of others.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And we're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Bordon, Evil Monster, Innocent family Member. When we
continue the final chapter of the Trial of Lizzie Bordon
here on our American Stories. And we continue with our
(27:39):
American Stories and the final installment of the Trial of
Lizzie Borden with author Kara Robertson. Let's pick up when
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
The prosecution plays with tropes about hatred of stepmothers and
has a sort of easier time conceptualizing the murder of
the stepmother. The problem for the prosecution is Andrew Borden's murder.
There's never a theory as to why he was killed,
(28:13):
except to say that he came home, perhaps before she
could establish an alibi, or even more improbably that she
suddenly realized after killing her stepmother, that her father would
know that she had killed her stepmother, and she couldn't
bear the idea that he would look at her as
a murderer, even if he might protect her, as he
(28:35):
did perhaps with the daytime theft of Abby's jewelry. And
so that's something that the defense is able to really
emphasize that whoever killed Abby Borden killed Andrew Borden, and
while there may have been evidence of discord in the
household and dislike of the stepmother, there was no real evidence.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
That Bordon hated her father.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
In fact, they seemed to have in some respects an
extremely close relationship, as evidenced by the fact that Andrew
Borden wore a ring that his daughter Lizzie gave him,
and it was the only ring, the only piece of
jewelry he wore.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
The murders divided full river.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
The working classes, whose views were reflected in and shaped
by the Irish Catholic Paper, viewed this as another case
of the police giving special breaks to someone from a
good family, and there was a lot of grumbling that
if a mill hand had been suspected of the murders,
then that person would have been arrested and then convicted
(29:43):
very quickly. People from Lizzie Bordon's social set, and especially
from her church, formed the bedrock of her support and
attended the trial. After an unusually long trial lasting almost
three weeks, the jury found that they were unanimous on
the first ballot, and they concluded, however, that they better
(30:04):
wait about an hour an hour and a half for
propriety's sake, so that they looked like they'd been appropriately deliberative.
When the jury returned, the clerk of the court asked
if Lizzie Borden was guilty or not guilty. The foreman
interrupted the clerk to shout not guilty. Lizzie Bordon fell
(30:27):
as if shot in the courtroom, and then the crowd
outside erupted in chears, and she was warmly congratulated by
her friends and attendants, and even the most prominent journalists,
who had for the most part been her supporters. In
fall River, the story was a little bit different. The
(30:47):
town was divided along class lines. For the most part,
the working classes thought that this was someone who had
simply just gotten away with murder. It was another case
of money talking for the people who had been her supporters.
During the trial, however, the verdict was greeted with great relief,
and Lizzie Borden stayed with some friends and received many
telegrams congratulating her from people far and wide who had
(31:11):
supported her during the trial. Once the trial was over,
many of the people who had backed her cooled in
their enthusiasm, and when she returned to her church, she
found many of the pews empty, so that the message
was delivered that she was not particularly welcome. There's something
(31:35):
almost tribal about the way the punishment was meeted out
in the case. The elite and particularly her fellow churchgoers,
supported her during the trial.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
They backed her.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Against the idea that someone like them, someone like her,
could have committed the murders, but then exacted their own
punishment by ostracizing her. Lizzie Borden was expected to live
down her notoriety and show by your continued good works
that this was simply had been a tragic incident of
(32:08):
which she too was an innoctant victim. But instead, Lizzie
and her sister moved to a larger, grander house, a
sort of late Victorian McMansion on the hill, and had
the sort of life that she had apparently imagined for
herself in earlier days. Although no longer fully welcome at
(32:30):
her church, she went to the theater in Boston. She
had a special seat built into her chauffeur driven car
to accommodate her dogs. So she returned to fall River,
bought the house that she had always wanted, and lived
in a sense, in the style that she had always wanted.
But she was shunned. And I think it says something
(32:53):
both about her nerve and her limitations that she chose
to stay in fall River rather than disappear into a
big city where she could have enjoyed a high standard
of living and been much more anonymous.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
I think Lizzie Bordon.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Stayed in fall River because of her own parochialism, that
she really couldn't imagine anywhere else, that that was the
limit of her ambition. She wanted to live, you know,
in the style of the grander Borden's and didn't really
imagine anything beyond that. If you think she did it,
(33:29):
then you know that was the purpose of the murders.
The prosecution makes a point of saying that Lizzie Bordon
had plenty of money for the things that she wanted,
you know, plenty of pen money, and that her father
was capable of generosity, at least towards her, and so
therefore she had no financial motive. But if what she
wanted was financial independence rather than you know, the ability
(33:52):
to get a new hat, and one sees the murders
through that lens, then she was simply living out, you know,
what had been her fantasy, and that you know, the
opinions of the people in the town were not particularly
significant to her. She was very strong willed, which is
something that everyone says about her that you know, unlike
(34:16):
her much more demure sister, that she is somebody she
resembles her father in terms of strength of character and hardness. Now,
of course, if you think that she's was simply in
the wrong place at the wrong time, or in the
right place at the wrong time, and she had no
knowledge of the murders, then it also wouldn't make any
sense for her to really live anywhere else. That that
(34:38):
was her home, and that that's where her sister would
want to live, because her sister's friends were all in
Fall River. The sisters had a split in nineteen oh five,
so twelve years after the murders, Emma moved out of
the house and they never spoke again. What we know
is that is that as soon as Emma moved out,
(35:01):
Lizzie lost the remaining friends she had there and was
truly isolated.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
At that point.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
She turned mostly to her domestic staff, enjoyed the company
also of her dogs. The tricky thing is she's socially
isolated in the conventional sense, but she seems to enjoy
the company of her staff. She seems to have a
nice relationship with various housekeepers and the chauffe's family, and
(35:30):
she also sends really sacharind birthday and holiday greetings to
the children of her domestic staff, so that they received
postcards by special delivery with bunnies and things on them
wishing them happy Birthday, Happy Easter. She also would take
them out for ice cream. It didn't seem to be
(35:51):
a case of reasonable doubt for the jury. Rather it
reflected their certainty that someone like Lizzie Borden could not
have admitted these crimes. It is one way in which
she definitely benefits from the double standard, whether she did
it or not. You know, like she's the beneficiary of
the double standard, and that it just seems it just
seems so difficult to imagine someone like Lizzie Borden, who is,
(36:14):
after all, sitting in the courtroom every day with perfectly
quaffed hair, composed picking up a hatchet and killing her
father and her stepmother in such a fashion. There is
discussion on the part of the defense team that you know,
Lizzie and her sisters would continue to look for the
(36:36):
real murderers. The prosecution and the police considered the case closed,
that they had in fact found the person, and she
was acquitted. And although everyone associated with the household has
been suspected at one time or another by amateur detectives,
no one except Lizzie Borden was ever tried for the murders.
(36:58):
It's a case in which people project a lot of
their worst nightmares. It's such a horrible case, and it's
you know, it's these horrible unsolved murders, I mean technically unsolved,
and even if you think you know who did it,
it's still a you know, it's it's a wide done
And if not a who done it, it's not surprising
then that every generation effectively reinvents the case that finds
(37:19):
an explanation that reflects the time in which the solution
is written. More so than the actual time of the murders.
And I mean, maybe you could say that this was
true of the town, you know that in exactly its
own punishment, that it was just it was. It was
far better to let one woman get away with murder
than to suggest that someone like Lizzie Borton was actually
(37:43):
capable of it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And a special thanks to Kara Robertson. Please, by all
means go out and buy the book The Trial of
Lizzie Borden. It's on Amazon, in all the usual suspects.
Was she guilty or guilty of being in the right place,
place at the wrong time. You be the judge The
Trial of Lizzie Borden. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
And today we have Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Borden. This long unsolved double murder has haunted
(00:34):
Fall River, Massachusetts since the late summer of eighteen ninety two.
Here's Kara with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
You know, we're used to the idea of these trials
that become big media events, but Lizzie Borden's trial was,
to use an off use phrase, the trial of the century.
In her case, it was the trial of the nineteenth century.
There is a combination of technology and you know, sensational
(01:05):
subject matter that converge in turning her case into something,
you know, akin to the O. J. Simpson trial. It
was such a heinous double murder, and the person accused
of it with someone who checks all the boxes of
proper middle class womanhood. She was active in good work,
(01:27):
she was a Sunday school teacher, and yet she's accused
of the murder of her own father and her stepmother,
and this is just more than anyone can really comprehend,
and so there is a strong desire to follow the
case and to see her in mythic terms. You know,
(01:49):
she's either this monster, you know, someone whose appearance must
match the murder, or she's an innocent victim, almost a
sentimental heroine, just ensnared by circumstance and some insidious masculine
conspiracy of men and policemen's blue who were trying to
(02:13):
pin the crime on her to cover up their own
incompetence and the sensationalism of the crime, and also the
press coverage that the trial generated means that it provides
a place from which you can observe America in the
Gilded Age and have a real window onto that period
(02:33):
in American history. Fall River, Massachusetts was an extremely prosperous
mill town. It was a central place for textile production
in the United States. It was often called the Manchester
of America, and it was a town that was separated
(02:53):
from urban centers like Boston and New York, so had
a slight provincialist them to it. But it was also
had easy access to those centers, so there was a
lot of there's a lot of wealth, and the people
who enjoyed the wealth generated by the mills were able
to travel to Boston and New York and the wider
world and had a certain amount of sophistication. And then
(03:17):
the people who worked in the mills were quite poor,
often immigrants. And what is particularly interesting about Fall River
is that it's geography exactly mirrors the social structure. The
people who live closest to the mills, which is low,
(03:37):
are the people who work in the mills. And then
there's a city center that's sort of halfway up up
the hill, and that's where mostly the doctors lawyers live.
And then there is an elite area called the hill District,
which is literally the highest place you can live, and
that that is the place that's favored by the people who.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Are the owners of the mills.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
You know, on the surface, the Bordon's probably looked like
a fairly typical family. Andrew Borden was a successful real
estate owner. He lived with his second wife, Abby and
his adult daughters, Emma and Lizzie, in a single family
house near the center of town.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
That was very convenient for.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Him for walking around collecting rents, checking on his businesses.
But Andrew Borden was descended from one of the founding
families of Fall River, and he was from what you
might call a lesser branch, So his father was quite poor,
and he was himself a self made man and pretty rich.
(04:42):
So Lizzie and her sister Emma occupied a peculiar position
in Fall River. They were, on the one hand, considered heiresses.
One might have assumed them to be in the elite
of Fall River. But because he chose to live, as
one of his neighbors said, on a narrow scale, in
the middle class, middling part of Full River, and because
(05:03):
he was a bit of a miser, wasn't The daughter's
allowance was for pen money and things, where it's sort
of equivalent to the wage a worker in one of
the mills would have earned. Obviously they didn't have.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
To work for it.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And yet, on the other hand, they were socially fairly
isolated by the decisions of their father, and it seems
clear that they would have liked to have been cultured girls.
As one of their neighbors put it, they chose to
attend or remain rather in the society church. When their
father had a dispute and left it for a different one.
(05:38):
Abby Borden was Lizzie and Emma's stepmother. Lizzie was very
young at the time of her mother's death and had
no particular memory of her, so Emma was the woman
who raised her. But Emma was thirteen at the time
of her mother's death and was thought to never fully
accept Abby as her mother, you know, as a replacement
for her mother. Five years before the murders, Andrew Borden
(06:03):
decided to give Abby a house, really to bail out
her sister, her own half sister and family, and Lizzie
and Emma got wind of this and really resented this
act of generosity. They said that, you know, what he
did for her, he should do for his own blood.
(06:25):
And Andrew subsequently gave them what had been his father's house,
you know that was rented out so that they would
have their own income. And although this had the effect
of equalizing the gifts, it didn't really heal the breach,
and from that time forward, Lizzie and her older sister
Emma avoided their parents.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
As much as possible.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
In that small house, they preferred to take separate meals
and to if possible, entertain visitors in a guest room
upstairs that they used as their own sort of sitting room.
So within the small household they lived quite sep and
it was described by some as a side of really
cold war between the generations.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And you're listening to Kara Robertson tell the story of
the Trial of Lizzie Borden and giving you a backdrop
when we come back more of the Trial of Lizzie
Borden here on our American story. Folks, if you love
(07:32):
the stories we tell about this great country, and especially
the stories of America's rich past, know that all of
our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture
and faith, are brought to us by the great folks
at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that are good in life. And if you can't get
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
(07:54):
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
learn more. And we returned to our American stories, and
we've been listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
(08:15):
of Lizzie Borden. By the way, it's a terrific rereed
go to Amazon or the usual suspects to pick it up.
The Bordon family from the outside seemed like a normal family,
but there was discord amongst the generations and between them.
Adult daughters Lizzie and Emma didn't care for their stepmother Abbey,
making for a chilling home environment. Back to Kara.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Well, Emma was a fairly stoic character and much more
mild manner, so that she wasn't really quoted saying anything
negative about her stepmother, though it was known that there
was this dispute in the family. Lizzie was a fourth
right character, and she described her stepmother as a mean,
good for nothing thing to a dressmaker of all people.
A few months before the before the murders, she was
(09:02):
just very frank about her dissatisfaction with her living conditions,
her desire for more, and also for the role that
she felt that her stepmother had played, you know, in
keeping her in this condition. About a year before the murders,
the Burdons were the victim of a mysterious daytime theft.
(09:22):
Andrew and Abby were out, but Emma, Lizzie, and bridget Sullivan,
the Borton's made were home. Abby Bordon had some jewelry stolen,
and mister Bordon also lost some money and street car tickets.
And what was oddest about the crime was that no
one seemed to have heard anyone enter or leave the house.
(09:43):
After the police were called and investigated, and mister Bordon
told the police officer that he didn't think that they'd
never find the thief, suggesting to many people that perhaps
he knew who was responsible. On August second, the Bordon
household a hit with what appeared to be food poisoning.
It was a fairly typical complaint in Fall River in
(10:06):
the summer. In fact, it was called the summer complaint
because so many houses didn't have refrigeration. The boards didn't
have an ice box, but they ate a lot of
leftovers and suffered the consequences.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
The next day, Abby.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Consulted the family physician who lived across the street. Learning
of their dinner, He wasn't particularly concerned, but Abby confided
to him that she feared they had been poisoned. When
the doctor returned to the house to examine Andrew, along
with Abby, Andrew stood in the doorway and refused to
(10:41):
let him enter, and also to tell him that he
would not pay for the visit. Lizzie also had her
own suspicions about poison, which she shared with her friend
and former neighbor, Alice Russell. On the night before the murders.
She said she was worried that the milk had been
poisoned and that there were strange men who'd been seen
in the vicinity of the house. She also confessed her
(11:03):
generalized sense of uneasiness and a sense of foreboding, remarking,
I feel as if something was hanging over me that
I cannot throw off, and it comes over me at
times no matter where I am. On the morning of
August fourth, there were five people in the Bordon household
(11:27):
Andrew Borden, his wife Abby, his daughter Lizzie, the housemaid
Bridget Sullivan, and Andrew's brother in law John Morse, who
was an occasional overnight visitor. Emma Bordon was visiting friends
in fair Haven, which is some distance away. As was custom,
(11:48):
the elder Borton's rose first and had breakfast, as did
John Morse. Andrew left to go about his business in town.
John followed in order to see some other relatives the
other side of town. Sometime between nine twenty and nine
thirty in the morning. Around the same time, Abby Borden
asked Bridget Sullivan to wash the windows inside and outside
(12:11):
of the house. She went up to the guest room
in order to change a pillowcase and tidy it up.
After John Morse's departure. Around nine thirty, she was killed
in that room. An assassin struck and hacked her to
death with approximately nineteen blows. About an hour after Abby
(12:34):
was killed, Andrew Borden returned home. He had trouble getting
in the front door because it had been bolted from
the inside. Bridget Sullivan, the housemaid, came to let him
in and as she was letting him in, uttered some
sort of an oath, and this apparently evoked laughter from
Lizzie Borden, who was upstairs on the landing. In the
(12:57):
process of descending the stairs, mister Borden came in. His daughter,
Lizzie greeted him and inquired about the mail. He asked
about her stepmother, Abby, and she said that she had
had a note from a sick friend and gone out.
Mister Borden decided to take a nap on the sitting
room sofa, and shortly thereafter, the snap became his final slumber.
(13:21):
He was struck by ten blows, mostly in the face.
At the time of her father's murder, Lizzie Borden later
said that she had been outside, first picking pears in
the orchard, and then looking for a sinker, you know,
a wait for a fishing line, or perhaps a piece
of iron to fix a window in the upstairs loft
(13:45):
of the barn. There she tarried and ate a pair
or two. She estimated that she was there twenty minutes,
perhaps thirty, came back in from outside and discovered her
father's body on the city room sofa. She immediately summoned
the housemaid, Bridget Sullivan, who was upstairs in her third
floor attic room taking a little bit of a nap.
(14:09):
She dispatched Bridget for the family doctor, who lived across
the street. He was not at home, so she sent
her to find Alice Russell, who was a friend and neighbor.
While she was waiting for Bridget to return, she waited
inside the screen door at the side of the house
and was spotted by her neighbor, Alice Churchill, who asked
(14:34):
her what was the matter, and she replied that someone
has killed father. The murders were so violent that some
speculated that Jack the Ripper had come to America. The
details were gruesome, yet oddly, the house itself seemed to
(14:55):
be in what one witness described as apple pie order.
The first thought was that it must be the work
of a madman, but two key facts seemed to rule
out the possibility of a murderous stranger. First, the house
was locked. The front door had been securely triple locked,
(15:17):
and although there was a door from the cellar leading
to the back, that too was locked. So the only
point of access in the house seemed to be a
side door that sometimes was latched, sometimes was not latched,
but it was often insight of the neighbors or Bridget Sullivan,
the housemaid. The second key fact that seemed to rule
(15:38):
out a murderous stranger was the interval between the murders.
It was something that one of the prosecutors would later
call the controlling fact of the case. The idea that
someone had broken in from the outside killed Missus Borden
first and then waited an hour and a half to
kill Andrew seemed really implawed. Ball there were a few
(16:02):
places in the house to hide. It is possible that
an upstairs. Guessed an upstairs a clothes closet could have
provided a refuge, but it was quite small and cramped,
and also the door had been left open to the
guest room the scene of Abbey's murder, seeming to advertise
rather than.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Hide the fact.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
All in all, it was a very small house, and
it was a house that had been converted from a
tenement for two families into a single family house, which
meant that the upstairs and the downstairs layouts neared each other.
Neither floor had a hallway, so that one would have
to pass from one room into the other in order
(16:43):
to get through the house. It seemed very unlikely that
someone from the outside would have been able to break
in and then would have been able to elude the
two women known to be in the house at the
time of both murders, Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan. Once
that was clear, the police began to dig for a motive,
(17:05):
but the first detective to question Lizzie Borden found her
a bit evasive and suspicious. In particular, he wondered what
on earth she could have been doing in the loft
of the barn. The hottest, most stifling part of the
barn for twenty or thirty minutes, and.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial of
Lizzie Borden. The murders were so violent. She said that
some speculated that Jack the Ripper himself had come to America.
When we return more of the Trial of Lizzie Borden
here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(18:10):
American stories and to the mysterious double murder that took
place in Fall River, Massachusetts in the summer of eighteen
ninety two. The daughter of the victims, Lizzie Borden, was
the main suspect. Back to Carra Robertson, author of the
Trial of Lizzie bordon with more of the.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Story, the police found no evidence that anyone had been
in the loft of the barn. This is something that
is disputed at the trial. At the time that the
inquest started, the police already had strong suspicions of Lizzie Borden.
Lizzie's family lawyer attempted to participate. He wanted to represent
(18:49):
her at the inquest, but that wasn't permitted. The prosecutor
at the inquest took her through her stated movements and
the day of the murders, Lizzie produced a contradictory story.
She said that she was upstairs, She said that she
was downstairs. She said that she was ironing handkerchiefs at
the time of Abby's murder, a task that was significantly
(19:12):
left undone or not completed by the time of her
father's arrival. And yet she also claimed that she had
not heard a sound. This seemed implausible to people who'd
been in the house, that the fall of someone upstairs
should have produced some sort.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Of a jar.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
On the last day of the inquest, Lizzie Borden was
arrested and taken to The trial begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts,
a neighboring town, on June fifth, eighteen ninety three. Reporters
and journalists from around the country are dispatched to cover
the case. An extension to the courthouse is built in
(19:52):
the rear so that all the wire services can be accommodated,
and the most prominent columnist write not only about what
is happening in the courthouse, but also what is happening
outside the courthouse, because it becomes an almost festive atmosphere
with people who line up and bring lunch. Desire for
admission is widespread and much covered in the newspapers. One
(20:17):
local newspaper, under the headline where to Look for Your Wife,
describes the number of women who are desirous of attending
the trial, and these women, according at least to one
of the journalists, constitute a sort of second jury. The
jury itself is all male. Women were not eligible for
jury service in Massachusetts at the time, and actually wouldn't
(20:40):
serve on a Massachusetts jury until nineteen fifty. Lizzy Bordon
had a team of defenders, the most prominent of whom
was the former governor of Massachusetts, George Robinson, and he
told a simple story that Lizzy Borden was simply in
the wrong place in the wrong time, or as he
(21:02):
would have put it, in the right place in her
home at the wrong time, and that it was not
the defense's job to clear up the mystery, that this
was beyond the capacity of a woman who looked like
Lizzie Bordon, or who had the characteristics of Lizzy Bordon.
Lizzy Bordon had an extraordinary self possession. That's something that
(21:24):
everyone noticed about her. In other respects, she was quite
ordinary all the journalists agreed that she had this extraordinary
self possession, and that divided the audience.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Some saw in it.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Evidence of almost a masculine nerve, that there was something
just disturbing about that kind of self possession in the
face of these kinds of crimes, and one local newspaper,
the Irish Catholic Paper, that viewed her case with some
suspicion and hostility, referred to her as the Sphinx of coolness.
(21:56):
By contrast, many of the journalists saw in Lizzie Bordon's
self possession a sign of Yankee grit and of true
American womanhood, and both sides used that appearance, or their
analysis of her appearance, to confirm their own opinions about
her guilt and innocence or innocence. The prosecution was in
(22:19):
a bind because the very brutality of the murders seemed
to argue against Lizzie Bordon as the murderer. She's someone who,
you know, appears to fit the model of womanly behavior,
and she's someone who just doesn't look like the sort
of person, based on late nineteenth century ideas of criminality,
(22:41):
who would be the murderer in such a case. They
were looking for or you know, people were expecting some
sort of insane immigrants. So for the prosecution, the task
was to show that really only Lizzie Borden could have
committed the murder, and that that was their best their
best way to get a conviction. There was evidence that
(23:02):
would have helped the prosecution that they were unable to
tell the jury.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
The first piece was that Lizzie.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Bordon was identified as a woman who tried to buy
prussic acid on the day before the murders. This was
significant because if Lizzie Borton had tried and failed to
procure prussic acid, which is a deadly poison, and poison
as we all know, as a woman's weapon, then she
might well have turned to a readily available household implement
(23:31):
to commit the murders. That that explained the choice of weapon,
which otherwise seemed very much like a man's weapon.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
The other bit of.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Evidence that they were not allowed to share was Lizzie
Borton's own testimony that memorialized her conflicting accounts of where
she had been on the morning of the murders. The
judges ruled that because she had effectively been denied counsel
and the Massachusetts Constitution had a protection that was something
like modern Miranda writes that the evidence could not be
(24:03):
used a trial against her. Medical experts all testified that
a woman could have committed the murders, and in fact
specifically said that, you know, with sufficient leverage, a weapon
held by a woman could produce such wounds. And the
(24:25):
prosecution even tried to argue that the number of wounds
and the fact that some were weak and vacillating, was
somehow assigned that a woman had been the murderer. You know,
they often want to have it both ways, but the
defense just repeatedly said that a woman really could not
have committed those crimes. The prosecution also had the problem
(24:46):
that everyone who saw Lizzie Bordon after the murders testified
that she had no sign of blood anywhere on her person,
that she seemed, you know, entirely put together, And so
the defense was able to say that it just was
impossible that someone would not have been spattered with blood
(25:08):
after such violence, murders committed in such proximity to the victims.
It was also known, however, that Lizzie Borden burned a
dress on the Sunday after the murders a dressed that
she claimed had been stained with paint, and the defense
produced the dressmaker to say that, yes, indeed, the dress
had been stained with paint, and so the prosecution was
(25:31):
able to imply that the dress that Lizzie Bordon had
been seen in after the murders was not the same
blue dress that she had worn on the morning.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Before the murders.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The police produced a number of weapons, axes and hatchets
found at the Bordon household. The police found what they
thought was the murder weapon, a hatchet head that had
been found in the basement among other tools that were
rusty and fallen in to disuse. The hatchet head was
(26:02):
covered with what the police described as ash, as opposed
to the dust that covered other things in the basement,
leading them to believe that someone had actually hidden it
there in an attempt to make it look like it
was just an innocent object. One of the ways that
they determined that this was the likely murder weapon was
(26:25):
by matching the cutting blade of that hatchet with the
indentations in the skulls of the Burdons. The coroner had
decapitated the Burtons and then rendered off the flesh in
order to examine those skulls, and then had cast made
and drawn in the various wounds so that they could
(26:46):
be brought into the trial. When Lizzie Borden saw the
skulls for the first time at the trial, she promptly fainted,
earning her the support of many of the journalists and
the derision of others.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And we're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Bordon, Evil Monster, Innocent family Member. When we
continue the final chapter of the Trial of Lizzie Bordon
here on our American Stories. And we continue with our
(27:39):
American Stories and the final installment of the Trial of
Lizzie Borden with author Kara Robertson. Let's pick up when
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
The prosecution plays with tropes about hatred of stepmothers and
has a sort of easier time conceptualizing the murder of
the stepmother. The problem for the prosecution is Andrew Borden's murder.
There's never a theory as to why he was killed,
(28:13):
except to say that he came home, perhaps before she
could establish an alibi, or even more improbably that she
suddenly realized after killing her stepmother, that her father would
know that she had killed her stepmother, and she couldn't
bear the idea that he would look at her as
a murderer, even if he might protect her, as he
(28:35):
did perhaps with the daytime theft of Abby's jewelry. And
so that's something that the defense is able to really
emphasize that whoever killed Abby Borden killed Andrew Borden, and
while there may have been evidence of discord in the
household and dislike of the stepmother, there was no real evidence.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
That Bordon hated her father.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
In fact, they seemed to have in some respects an
extremely close relationship, as evidenced by the fact that Andrew
Borden wore a ring that his daughter Lizzie gave him,
and it was the only ring, the only piece of
jewelry he wore.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
The murders divided full river.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
The working classes, whose views were reflected in and shaped
by the Irish Catholic Paper, viewed this as another case
of the police giving special breaks to someone from a
good family, and there was a lot of grumbling that
if a mill hand had been suspected of the murders,
then that person would have been arrested and then convicted
(29:43):
very quickly. People from Lizzie Bordon's social set, and especially
from her church, formed the bedrock of her support and
attended the trial. After an unusually long trial lasting almost
three weeks, the jury found that they were unanimous on
the first ballot, and they concluded, however, that they better
(30:04):
wait about an hour an hour and a half for
propriety's sake, so that they looked like they'd been appropriately deliberative.
When the jury returned, the clerk of the court asked
if Lizzie Borden was guilty or not guilty. The foreman
interrupted the clerk to shout not guilty. Lizzie Bordon fell
(30:27):
as if shot in the courtroom, and then the crowd
outside erupted in chears, and she was warmly congratulated by
her friends and attendants, and even the most prominent journalists,
who had for the most part been her supporters. In
fall River, the story was a little bit different. The
(30:47):
town was divided along class lines. For the most part,
the working classes thought that this was someone who had
simply just gotten away with murder. It was another case
of money talking for the people who had been her supporters.
During the trial, however, the verdict was greeted with great relief,
and Lizzie Borden stayed with some friends and received many
telegrams congratulating her from people far and wide who had
(31:11):
supported her during the trial. Once the trial was over,
many of the people who had backed her cooled in
their enthusiasm, and when she returned to her church, she
found many of the pews empty, so that the message
was delivered that she was not particularly welcome. There's something
(31:35):
almost tribal about the way the punishment was meeted out
in the case. The elite and particularly her fellow churchgoers,
supported her during the trial.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
They backed her.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Against the idea that someone like them, someone like her,
could have committed the murders, but then exacted their own
punishment by ostracizing her. Lizzie Borden was expected to live
down her notoriety and show by your continued good works
that this was simply had been a tragic incident of
(32:08):
which she too was an innoctant victim. But instead, Lizzie
and her sister moved to a larger, grander house, a
sort of late Victorian McMansion on the hill, and had
the sort of life that she had apparently imagined for
herself in earlier days. Although no longer fully welcome at
(32:30):
her church, she went to the theater in Boston. She
had a special seat built into her chauffeur driven car
to accommodate her dogs. So she returned to fall River,
bought the house that she had always wanted, and lived
in a sense, in the style that she had always wanted.
But she was shunned. And I think it says something
(32:53):
both about her nerve and her limitations that she chose
to stay in fall River rather than disappear into a
big city where she could have enjoyed a high standard
of living and been much more anonymous.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
I think Lizzie Bordon.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Stayed in fall River because of her own parochialism, that
she really couldn't imagine anywhere else, that that was the
limit of her ambition. She wanted to live, you know,
in the style of the grander Borden's and didn't really
imagine anything beyond that. If you think she did it,
(33:29):
then you know that was the purpose of the murders.
The prosecution makes a point of saying that Lizzie Bordon
had plenty of money for the things that she wanted,
you know, plenty of pen money, and that her father
was capable of generosity, at least towards her, and so
therefore she had no financial motive. But if what she
wanted was financial independence rather than you know, the ability
(33:52):
to get a new hat, and one sees the murders
through that lens, then she was simply living out, you know,
what had been her fantasy, and that you know, the
opinions of the people in the town were not particularly
significant to her. She was very strong willed, which is
something that everyone says about her that you know, unlike
(34:16):
her much more demure sister, that she is somebody she
resembles her father in terms of strength of character and hardness. Now,
of course, if you think that she's was simply in
the wrong place at the wrong time, or in the
right place at the wrong time, and she had no
knowledge of the murders, then it also wouldn't make any
sense for her to really live anywhere else. That that
(34:38):
was her home, and that that's where her sister would
want to live, because her sister's friends were all in
Fall River. The sisters had a split in nineteen oh five,
so twelve years after the murders, Emma moved out of
the house and they never spoke again. What we know
is that is that as soon as Emma moved out,
(35:01):
Lizzie lost the remaining friends she had there and was
truly isolated.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
At that point.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
She turned mostly to her domestic staff, enjoyed the company
also of her dogs. The tricky thing is she's socially
isolated in the conventional sense, but she seems to enjoy
the company of her staff. She seems to have a
nice relationship with various housekeepers and the chauffe's family, and
(35:30):
she also sends really sacharind birthday and holiday greetings to
the children of her domestic staff, so that they received
postcards by special delivery with bunnies and things on them
wishing them happy Birthday, Happy Easter. She also would take
them out for ice cream. It didn't seem to be
(35:51):
a case of reasonable doubt for the jury. Rather it
reflected their certainty that someone like Lizzie Borden could not
have admitted these crimes. It is one way in which
she definitely benefits from the double standard, whether she did
it or not. You know, like she's the beneficiary of
the double standard, and that it just seems it just
seems so difficult to imagine someone like Lizzie Borden, who is,
(36:14):
after all, sitting in the courtroom every day with perfectly
quaffed hair, composed picking up a hatchet and killing her
father and her stepmother in such a fashion. There is
discussion on the part of the defense team that you know,
Lizzie and her sisters would continue to look for the
(36:36):
real murderers. The prosecution and the police considered the case closed,
that they had in fact found the person, and she
was acquitted. And although everyone associated with the household has
been suspected at one time or another by amateur detectives,
no one except Lizzie Borden was ever tried for the murders.
(36:58):
It's a case in which people project a lot of
their worst nightmares. It's such a horrible case, and it's
you know, it's these horrible unsolved murders, I mean technically unsolved,
and even if you think you know who did it,
it's still a you know, it's it's a wide done
And if not a who done it, it's not surprising
then that every generation effectively reinvents the case that finds
(37:19):
an explanation that reflects the time in which the solution
is written. More so than the actual time of the murders.
And I mean, maybe you could say that this was
true of the town, you know that in exactly its
own punishment, that it was just it was. It was
far better to let one woman get away with murder
than to suggest that someone like Lizzie Borton was actually
(37:43):
capable of it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And a special thanks to Kara Robertson. Please, by all
means go out and buy the book The Trial of
Lizzie Borden. It's on Amazon, in all the usual suspects.
Was she guilty or guilty of being in the right place,
place at the wrong time. You be the judge The
Trial of Lizzie Borden. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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