Crime Library - Closing Knowlton Part 2

The dead body tells us another thing. It is a circumstance, but it is one of those circumstances that cannot be cross-examined, nor made fun of, nor talked out of court. The poor woman was standing when she was struck, and fell with all the force of that 200 pounds of flesh, flat and prone and dead on the floor. That jar could not have failed to have been heard all over that house. They talk about its being a noisy street. Why, Bridget tells us that she could hear the screen door from her room when it slammed. She did hear Andrew Borden trying the lock of the front door and went to let him in without the bell being rung. Lizzie heard her down there letting her father in. Nothing happened in one part of the house that wasn't heard in the other.

My friend has spent some time in demonstrating, as he believes, to you, the unlikelihood of her seeing her murdered mother as she went up and down the stairs. But Lizzie Borden has ears as well as eyes. If she was downstairs she was in the passage way of the assassin. If she was upstairs there was nothing that separated her from the murder but the thinness of that deal door that you saw. And do you believe for a moment, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, do you believe for a moment that those blows could have been struck---that woman was struck in a way that did not make her insensible--that she could have been struck without groaning or screaming; that she could have fallen without a jar, on that floor, a woman as heavy as I am (I just use that by way of illustration), on that floor, nearer than I am to you, sir, from Lizzie, and she know nothing of it?

If the facts I have put to you, Mr. Foreman, are true, that house consisted of a parlor chamber and a passage way to it, practically, from the screen door; a parlor chamber and a passage way to it. At the very instant when the murders were committed we leave Lizzie and Mrs. Borden in the house together. Was she in the passage way when this assassin came in? She alone knows. Was she in her room when that heavy body fell to the floor? She alone knows. But we know, alas, we know, Mr. Foreman, that when Bridget opened that screen door and went out to wash the windows, after Mr. Borden had met his half past nine appointment at the bank, that she left in the house this poor woman and the only enemy she had in the world. And there had been no more chance if there was any conceivable possibility existing to mankind, that anybody else got in, than there would be of getting into this room and you and I not seeing them.

But that is not all. It is provided, as I humbly and devoutly believe, by the Divine Justice itself, that no matter how craftily murder is planned, there is always some point where the skill and cunning of the assassin fails him. It failed her. It failed her at a vital point, a point which my distinguished friend has attempted to answer, if I may be permitted to say so, and has utterly failed. She was alone in that house with that murdered woman. She could not have fallen without her knowledge. The assassin could not have come in without her knowledge. Nothing could have happened that she did not know. She was out of sight and Mrs. Borden was out of sight, and by and by there was coming into the house a stern and just man, who knew all the bitterness there was between them. There came into that house a stern and just man who would have noticed the absence of his wife, and who would have said to her, as the Almighty said to Cain, "Where is Abel, thy brother?" And that question must be answered. He came in; he sat down; she came to him, and she said to him, "Mrs. Borden---she would not even call her "Mother" then,---"Mrs. Borden has had a note and gone out." That stilled his fears; that quieted any apprehensions he might have felt by reason of her absence either from the sitting room or the dining room or the kitchen, or her own room up stairs, where he was sure to go with his key, as he did.

When Bridget went to her room, and I call your attention to this as being the first information that Bridget had of it---it will appear by and by, by the evidence itself---before Bridget went up stairs to her room Lizzie says to her. "If you go out, be sure and lock the door, for Mrs. Borden has gone out on a sick call, and I might go out too." Bridget says, "Miss Lizzie, who is sick?" naturally enough. She said, "I don't know, but she had a note this morning, and it must be in town."

While I am about it, I will read the rest of the statement she made about it. These are not the inquisitorial pryings of the police officers. They are her friends, her relatives, her servant, her confidantes, that she says this story to. Mrs. Churchill came over. "Where is your mother, Lizzie?" She said, "I don't know. She had a note to go to see someone who was sick, but I don't know but she is killed too, for I think I heard her come in." I will talk about that by and by, if I don't weary you too much. Then she said something to Fleet. Although she told Fleet that the last time she saw her step-mother was 9 o'clock, and she was then making her bed in the room where she was found dead, she said, "Some one brought a letter or a note to Mrs. Borden," and she thought she had gone out, and had not known of her return. Then when Bridget came back she wanted to find her. She knew that one of the mother's only relatives was Mrs. Whitehead, the sister of her husband, as it turned out, because it turned out by Miss Borden's cross-examination, and she said, "Oh, Lizzie, if I knew where Mrs. Whitehead lived, I would go and see if Mrs. Borden is there, and tell her that Mr. Borden is very sick."

Mr. Foreman, charged with the due responsibility of the solemn trust imposed upon him, my learned associate said in opening this case that that statement was a lie. Conscious as I am, Mr. Foreman, that any unjust or harsh word of mine might do injury that I never could recover my peace of conscience for, I reaffirm that serious charge. No note came; no note was written; nobody brought a note; nobody was sick. Mrs. Borden had not had a note. My learned friend said, "I would stake the case on the hatchet." I will stake it on your belief or disbelief in the truth or falsity of that proposition. They tried to get rid of the force of it by telling us what Bridget said to Mrs. Churchill. Let me discuss it thoroughly and fully. Afterwards, after Lizzie had told Bridget that Mrs. Borden had had a note to go out and see some one, that Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call and had had the note come that morning, she told her before she went to the room and that murder was discovered, and after it was a matter of common talk, and when Mrs. Churchill was asking Bridget not as a source of original information, but for all the news there could be had about it, Bridget then said to her, "not to my own knowledge Mrs. Borden had a note to go out to see someone who was sick," but repeated it as the story of the original and only author, Lizzie Borden. Obviously that is so, because when my learned and distinguished friend comes to the cross-examination of Bridget, this is what Bridget said, that she never had any knowledge of a note at all except what Lizzie told her. Pardon me for reading it, because this is vital to the case.

"You simply say that you didn't see anybody come with a note? A. No sir, I did not

Q. Easy enough for anybody to come with a note to the house, and you not know it, wasn't it?" He couldn't fool Bridget. "A. Well, I don't know if a note came to the back door that I wouldn't know." The doorbell never rang that morning at all."But they wouldn't necessarily go to the back door, would they? A. No. I never heard anything about a note, whether they got it or not. I don't know. I never heard anything about a note. Q. Don't know anything about it, and so you do not undertake to say"---anything about it? A. No sir."

She was obviously telling the story as Lizzie had told it to her. Bridget had last seen Mrs. Borden dusting in the sitting room. She had been told by Lizzie that she had got a note and gone out. She knew that Mrs. Borden had not told her that she had gone out, as she always did when she left the house, and so she put those things together and told them as a piece of news to Mrs. Churchill, and the chances are that the next person that Mrs. Churchill saw she told the same thing to. Nobody was suspecting Lizzie then. Nobody was saying to themselves, "Lizzie is not telling the truth." Nobody was dreaming for a moment that there was anything wrong in that story. Lizzie says to Bridget, "Mrs. Borden had a note and has gone out." Bridget then says to Mrs. Churchill, "Mrs. Borden has had a note and has gone out." Mrs. Churchill went home and told her sister, probably, "Mrs. Borden has had a note and has gone out.", just as you tell the news mouth to mouth. There is not any ground to argue that Bridget knew anything about it from Mrs. Borden for she says she did not. No, gentlemen. In the first place Bridget was on guard at that back door until she had washed the windows, and no note came that way. She testifies, and you can easily believe her testimony because the front door was locked with three locks all the time, that nobody came to the front door and rang the bell with a note.

I said that Almighty Providence directed the course of this world to bring murderers to grief and justice. Little did it occur to Lizzie Borden when she told that lie to her father that there would be 80,000 witnesses of the falsity of it. My distinguished friend has had the hardihood to suggest that somebody may have written that note and not come forward to say so. Why, Mr. Foreman, do you believe there exists in Fall River anybody so lost to all sense of humanity, and it is her friend, who would not have rushed forward, without anything being said, and state, "I wrote that." I hoped somebody would come forward and say so, and relieve this case of that falsehood. They have brought to us evidence of a drunken man seen the night before; they have brought to you evidence of the man waiting in the carriage in front of Dr. Kelley's, and going down in the shade of the tree instead of standing in the hot sun. They have advertised for the writer of the note which was never written and which never came.

Gentlemen, incredulity sometimes can be dismissed by evidence, but I am not looking in the face of one single man that will believe for an instant that the writer of that note would not months ago have come forward and cleared that thing up. There never was one. Ah, but my distinguished friend is pleased to suggest---he hardly dares to argue it, such is his insight and fairness,---he is pleased to suggest that it was part of the scheme of assassination. How? To write a note to get a woman away when he was going there to assassinate her? And if the note came it must have come with him and not by him. Suppose I take his contention that the object was to assassinate Mr. Borden. What earthly use was there in writing a note to get rid of Mrs. Borden when there would still be left Lizzie and Bridget in the house? Oh, no, that is too wild and absurd. The whole falsehood of that note came from the woman in whose keeping Mrs. Borden was left by Andrew Borden, and it was as false as was the answer that Cain gave to his Maker, when he said to him, "Where is thy brother Abel?"

I regret to ask you so to believe, gentlemen. It pains me beyond expression to be compelled to state these things. God forbid that anybody should have committed this murder, but somebody did, and when I have found that she was killed, not by the strong hand of man, but by the weak and ineffectual blows of woman, when I find that those are the blows of hatred rather than of strength, when I find that she is left alone at the very moment of murder, shut up in that house where every sound went from one end to the other, with the only person in all God's universe who could say she was not her friend, with the only person in the universe who could be benefited by her taking away, and when I find, as I found, and as you must find, if you answer your consciences in this case, that the story told about a note coming is as false as the crime itself, I am not responsible, Mr. Foreman, you are not responsible, for the conclusions to which you are driven.

(Adjourned to Tuesday, June 20, at 9 A.M.)

THIRTEENTH DAY New Bedford, Tuesday, June 20, 1893

The Court came in at 9 A M. and Mr. Knowlton resumed his argument as follows.

CLOSING ARGUMENT OF DISTRICT ATTORNEY KNOWLTON, Continued

May it please your Honors, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury:

I congratulate you that the end of this hard season is drawing nigh. I trust that before even another day shall have dawned you will be able to return to the home, to the family, to the dear ones and to the surroundings which have become doubly dear to you by your long and enforced absence. It was my hope and expectation to have concluded what I had to say to you before the day closed upon yesterday; but it was felt, and I shared in the feeling, that you were too weary to longer listen to us. My distinguished friend had occupied the greater part of the day, and you had followed his masterly and close and able presentation of the facts that bore upon his client's case with that fidelity which has marked your course during this whole trial. You did the honor also to give me some respectful attention, and it was thought but fair that after a rest I should undertake to take up the thread of my broken discourse, and, so far as I can, proceed through these unwelcome and unpleasant facts to the bitter end.

The learned counsel who opened this cause for the defence said that one of the essential facts to be proved in connection with the case was the question of motive. I allude to that for fear that I may not have fully explained or made you understand the position of the Commonwealth in this respect. I think upon reflection my learned friend will agree with me that that was not so accurate a statement of law as he is accustomed to make upon consideration and reflection. It is not so, Mr. Foreman. Motive is not a part of the case of the Commonwealth. We are called upon to prove that the thing was done, and our duty stops there. We are not called upon to prove why it was done. It is no part of the Commonwealth's evidence; it is no essential link in its chain of proof, and it has happened, nay, often will happen, that the whole case is substantially proved, thoroughly proved, and the jury's minds are led to a degree of satisfaction that is expressed by the term, proved beyond a reasonable doubt, when no apparent motive is shown for the crime at all. I do not disguise the fact that the consideration of motive has its weight in helping us to elucidate the mystery. I do not either conceal the fact, for I desire to be as frank as frankness can be in discussing the case, that the lack of apparent motive, nay, that the existence of motive not to have done the crime is a circumstance what must be well weighed before you can arrive at the result that the Commonwealth asks in this case. But it is a matter of history that motives are neither adequate nor even tolerable when considered in connection with a crime. It is matter of public history that a Professor of one of our institutions for learning, a man whose character was above reproach, whose surroundings were of the best, whose position if I may be pardoned for saying so, was not less eminent and respectable than that of the learned judges themselves, who preside here,---was tempted by the demon of sin to commit foul murder for no more motive than that he was pressed for the payment of a debt of a thousand dollars. That was the entire incentive in his case. Neither was his character a bulwark against crime, nor was his motive at all to be compared with the enormity of the crime that he committed. The motives of mankind, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, are as inscrutable, though for a different reason, as are the ways of Divine providence. It does afford some satisfaction to the conclusions to which we are compelled to be brought in this case, it does afford some satisfaction to our reasoning, but it is no part of the essential elements of the case to have discovered that there were conditions existing in that unfortunate family which we can take our experience of mankind from and suspect even,---that is enough, it is not any matter of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, because it is no part of our case,---for which we can suspect even the existence of the malice which prompted that deed. I have referred to that condition. I have called your attention to the circumstances in which they were compelled to live under the same roof. They impressed me deeply. I can only say to you that they must impress you as you find your consciences to respond. Speaking for myself alone---and you must answer whether it finds a responsive chord in your hearts, fathers if you are fathers---if I were to have my choice whether a daughter of mine should cast me from life unconsciously to death, without my knowledge, on the one hand, or should live with me for years and taunt me with ingratitude, deny me the title I had earned by years of patient devotion, far would I prefer the unconscious ending that knew not the ingratitude that had marked it.

The malice was all before this fact. The wickedness was all before the fourth day of August. The ingratitude, the poisoning, the hate, the stabbing of the mind, which is worse than the stabbing of the body, had gone on under that roof for many, many months.

And we cannot tell, it is not necessary that we should be able to tell, what new fuel was added to that fire of discontent. It is only necessary that we can consider that there may have been---there had been a quarrel unworthy of that girl, unworthy of anybody, because the man wanted to make a present to his wife of her homestead. We do not know---the lips of those that know are sealed in death, and we never shall know in this world---we do not know what new propositions this poor man had ventured to make with regard to his own. We do not know what had occurred in that family that kept that young woman from the delightful shore of Marion, where all her friends are; and kept her by her father and mother during those hot days of that hot summer. We do not know but that man had talked, as many a man does when he comes to that age, of exercising his legal right of making testamentary disposition of his property. We know nothing of it. It is not necessary that we prove it. It is no part of the Commonwealth's case.

All we know is that there was a jealousy which was unworthy of that woman. All we know is that, as Emma expressed it herself, they felt she was not interested in them, and consequently was interested as against them with her father. And no step could be taken by that poor man, no suggestion could be made by that poor man, that would not fan the embers of that discontent into the active fires of hatred that we have seen, alas, too many times manifested in many an unhappy home.

I speak of these things, Mr. Foreman, at this time, because I have left the dead body of that aged woman upon the guest chamber floor in the room where she was last at work, and am now asking you to come down with me to a far sadder tragedy, to the most horrible word that the English language knows, to a parricide. I do not undertake, far be it from me to seek to detract one iota from the terrible significance of that word; and when I am asked to find and prove and declare and explain a motive for that act, well may my feeble powers quail at the undertaking.

But I do see, I do think I see, and I only suggest it as a course of comment upon the conduct of that young woman, for your consideration, and without undertaking to prove it, for, as I have undertaken to say again and again, motive is not part of our case.

There may be that in this case which saves us from the idea that Lizzie Andrew Borden planned to kill her father. I hope she did not. I should be slow to believe she did. I should be slow to ask you to believe she did. But Lizzie Andrew Borden, the daughter of Andrew Jackson Borden never came down those stairs. It was not Lizzie Andrew Borden, the daughter of Andrew J. Borden, that came down those stairs, but a murderess, transformed from all the thirty-three years of an honest life, transformed from the daughter, transformed from the ties of affection, to the most consummate criminal we have read of in all our history or works of fiction.

Nay, Mr. Foreman, that was not all. She came down to meet that stern old man. His picture shows that, if nothing more, even in death. That just old man, of the stern Puritan stock, that most of you are from, gentlemen. That man who loved his daughter, but who also loved his wife, as the Bible commanded him to. And, above all, the one man in all this universe who would know who killed his wife. She had not thought of that. She had gone on. There is cunning in crime, but there is blindness in crime too. She had gone on with stealth and cunning, but she had forgotten the hereafter. They always do. And when the deed was done she was coming down stairs to face Nemesis. There wouldn't be any question of what he would know of the reason that woman lay in death. He knew who disliked her. He knew who couldn't tolerate her presence under that roof. He knew the discussions which had led up to the pitch of frenzy which resulted in her death, and she did not dare to let him live, father though he was and bound to her by every tie of affection. It is the melancholy, the inevitable attribute of crime, that it is the necessary and fruitful parent of crime.

Ah, Mr. Foreman, how many a man, if he could only be told before he began to commit a crime---could be told and assured that there is no such thing in divine justice as stopping with one crime, would hesitate before he crossed the threshold of virtue. He must go on; he cannot go back. Crime breeds crime, and is the mother of crime. And so when that woman came down stairs, it was her father---it was her father; but it was also the husband of her stepmother whom she had slain, and it came to her---God grant it never came before!---let me have that confidence in human nature to believe it never came before, let me have that confidence in human nature to believe it never came before---it came to her that she had become a criminal and there was no escape from the consequences of that crime but to complete the bloody work.

Let me not be misunderstood, Mr. Foreman. I do not say that that took place. It is not necessary for me to say that that took place. It is no part of this controversy to say that that took place. The Commonwealth is charged with a duty of satisfying you that she killed her mother and father; not why. But it is a grateful relief to our conceptions of human nature to be able to find reasons to believe that the murder of Andrew Borden was not planned by his youngest daughter, but was done as a wicked and dreadful necessity, which if she could have foreseen she never would have followed that mother up those stairs as she left Bridget after giving her instructions about washing the windows---followed her into that room, slain her as she stood perhaps at that very marble that was found spattered with her blood, dusting it in the line of her ordinary avocations. But people never stop to think of the hereafter in crime. And so I leave that there, not as a matter of proof---oh, no, oh, no,---but to relieve my mind of the dreadful necessity of believing that there is a deliberate parricide yet living in America.

Let me go back with you to the history of what happened. Bridget finished her washing of her windows, came into the house, no one being below the stairs, took her step ladder and began the work upon the inside of the windows. Meanwhile the old gentleman was finishing the last walk of his life. We have followed his movements, and it is unnecessary for me to recapitulate them to you now. You find him leaving his house by the back door, where Mrs. Churchill saw him, probably, although it may not have been the occasion of his leaving. We certainly find him down at his accustomed place in the bank that had honored him by making him its president at his usual hour of half past nine. We find him going on from there to the other bank that had honored him by making him a trustee, a little later in the day.

He moved slowly. Everybody moved slowly that day. If you remember the day, gentlemen, you remember that it was not a day of activity on anybody's part. He came back from Mr. Clegg's store, and had a talk with him a little before half past ten. He walked up, as was his wont, I presume, by the store he was having prepared on Main street, talked to the carpenters there at about twenty minutes of eleven, passed around Spring street by the route you went yourselves to see where the old gentleman went; turned down Borden street into the house where his wife lay dead, all unknown to him. He went to the back door, as was his custom, but nobody was there to open it, and so he went around to the front door, as very likely he often did, supposing, of course, that he could gain entrance, as any man does into his own house in the day time, by the use of a spring lock. We have heard something said about the noise and confusion of that street, but Bridget's ears, which are no quicker than Lizzie's, heard him as he put the key into the lock, and came to the door and let him in. He came in; passed into the dining room because she was, I presume, working in the sitting room, took off his coat and replaced it with a cardigan jacket and sat down, and down came Lizzie from the very place where Mrs. Borden lay dead, and told him what we cannot believe to be true about where his wife was.

I am told, gentlemen, that circumstances are to be regarded with suspicion, but, Mr. Foreman, a falsehood that goes right to the very vitals of the crime is not a circumstance---it is proof. Where was that mother? She knew. She told what never was true. That would pass of for awhile; that would keep the old man silent for a time, but it would not last. She took out her ironing board. Why had she not been ironing in the cooler part of the day, Mr. Foreman, we do not know. She had no duties around the house,---so Emma tells us. There was nothing for her to do. Bridget goes into the dining room, having finished her windows in the sitting room; it took only a moment to wash them inside; comes into the dining room to wash the windows, and the old gentleman comes down from his room and goes into the sitting room and sits down. She suggests to him, with the spirit in which Judas kissed his master that, as he is weary with his day's work, it would be well for him to lie down upon the sofa and rest.

Then she goes into the dining room again, gets her ironing board and proceeds to iron her handkerchiefs. Bridget finishes her work; she tells Bridget, and that is the first time that Bridget heard it directly, as I stated to you yesterday, that if she goes out that afternoon to be sure and lock the doors because Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call. And she says, "Miss Lizzie, who is sick?" Miss Lizzie replies, "I don't know, but it must be in town, for she had a note this morning."---she never did---andBridget goes upstairs to take her little rest and leaves this woman ironing those handkerchiefs, nearer to her father as he lay on that sofa than my distinguished friend is to me, at that moment. Again she was alone with her victim. Oh, unfortunate combination of circumstances always! Again she is alone in the house with the man who was found murdered. In what may be safely said to be less than twenty minutes from that time she calls Bridget down stairs and tells her that her father is killed. There is another straw, Mr. Foreman, another chip on the surface, not floating in an eddy, but away out in the middle of the current, that tells us with irresistible distinctness of what happened after Bridget went up stairs. She had a good fire to iron the clothes with. Why do I say that? I will not speak without the evidence if I can help it. Officer Harrington comes along, takes a car that reaches City Hall at quarter past twelve, goes along Main Street, goes to the house, talks with Miss Lizzie, and last of all, in his search takes the cover off the stove and sees there, and I will read his own words: "The fire was near extinguished on the south end. There was a little fire---I should judge about as large as the palm of my hand. The embers were about dying." That was as early as half past twelve. I need not say to you that if there was fire enough to be seen at half past twelve there was fire enough to work with an hour and a half before,---before eleven o'clock. There was fire enough. There is no trouble on that account. It was a little job she had to do,---nine handkerchiefs at the outside, perhaps eight or seven, and when this thing is over Miss Russell gets the handkerchiefs and takes them up stairs, and we find---a fatal thing---we find that four or five, I give the exact words, of those handkerchiefs "are ironed and two or three are sprinkled ready to iron," whatever else is true. She had begun her work before Bridget went up stairs; she was engaged in it when Bridget left her; it was a job that could not have taken her more than ten minutes at the outside, if I may use the common experience of mankind, in that sort of work, and the clock of her course of life, of Lizzie's course of life, stopped the instant Bridget left that room. What for? What for, gentlemen? It would have taken but a minute or two to finish them. The day was well gone, the dinner hour was approaching. There were four or five to take away and but two or three to finish and in less time than I am speaking it would have been done. It is terribly significant. Why did she stop? Why stop the work she had set herself to do right at the eve of its being done?

Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, the officers have been criticized for catechizing Miss Lizzie. It has been suggested that they brutally intruded on her privacy to ask her questions. I never could see the force of that criticism. I never could understand the meaning of it. I don't know how you would feel. It is not for me to say how I would feel, but would it not be the most natural thing in the world to invite the inspection of the officers of the law to punish and avenge if possible the fiend who had murdered the father and mother who lay dead? I will come to that again by and by. But Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, it was not the catechism of the officers alone. The question leaped to every lip, her own friends asked it in wonder, her own servant asked it in amazement, her own physician must know why it was---if it was not put in words it was put in thoughts: "Lizzie, you were there in touch of your father,---how did it happen that he has got killed and you did not know it?" Nobody came there who did not ask her the question. It is not a matter of Fleet, Harrington or Mullaly. It began with Bridget who had left her there so near her father that she could have touched him. She asked, "Where was you? Didn't I leave the screen door hooked," and she tells her first story of it. Let me be fair. The little incidental differences in the story I will not touch upon. They are the natural results of excitement. I would not ask you to consider them vital or significant. There is that in this case which is far deeper than those accidental variations. She says to Bridget, not to an officer "I was out in the back yard and heard a groan and came in and the screen door was wide open." I may have occasion to say that that story was not true either, and was not consistent with any other story that she told. Dr. Bowen came next, I believe. He says, "Where have you been?" Oh, pregnant question that nobody could fail to ask! "In the barn looking for some irons or iron," she answers. Mrs. Churchill came next---I may not have the order right---and that honest woman asked it the first thing, "Where was you when it happened, Lizzie?" "I went to the barn to get a piece of iron." Miss Russell heard the remark. She does not distinctly remember asking it, and she is her friend; "What did you go to the barn for, Lizzie?" "I went to get a piece of tin or iron to fix my screen." I pass over, for I must hasten, the various ways in which she put it to the officers who came from time to time, but there came finally---no, I ought not to say finally---but among the first the representative as my distinguished friend has been pleased to call him, the representative of the majesty of the law in Assistant Marshal Fleet. He came there about as much dreaming that Miss Borden had anything to do with this crime as he did his own Chief did. He is a gentleman. I think I may not inappropriately suggest that to you. He is next in authority to the chief himself. His manners are those of a gentleman, his appearance is that of a gentleman, and as the most natural and obvious thing in the world, not in any spirit of criticism or fault finding or prying or inquisition but as was his duty he came to her room to get the correct story of all this tragedy. And I am going to give it now. And I am going to say before I give it to you, Mr. Foreman, that there isn't any doubt that it is true, word for word and letter for letter. It is no difficulty of remembrance on Mr. Fleet's part. He was not then suspecting her of crime; he was getting the particulars of this transaction from which to make up his mind what course to pursue, as was natural. But there is another reason for it than that. There is a far more powerful and important reason for it than that. When he went into her room to talk with her she was not alone. Miss Russell was there. But there also sat upon the lounge with her that Christian and kindhearted friend of hers, the Rev. Mr. Buck, whose fidelity and zeal in her behalf, as well as that of all her friends, have won my most sincere commendation. He has been here within this Court during the whole progress of this trial, sitting by her and giving such consolation as those of his profession are able to give in hours of distress, and I honor him for it. He heard that talk; he heard every word of that talk, and, Mr. Foreman, if officer Fleet had misconstrued a syllable of it, don't you suppose we should have heard from it? Am I wrong in asking you to believe that he confirms it too? My learned friends have not been slow to produce witnesses that they felt it was safe to produce. And Mr. Buck does not deny that this conversation was true to the last letter. Nor was there then that petty, that miserable ---and I say it without reference to the learned counsel, who have been so courteous in this case---that cowardly suggestion that that woman could not tell the truth because she had taken a drug. Ah, desperate is the cause that has to apologize in that way. It was before anything of that sort. It was when she was cool to a degree of coolness that, whether she is guilty or innocent, has challenged the amazement of the world. She had just told Officer Harrington that she did not want to wait till the next day, that she was as ready to talk then as ever she would be---or it was right afterwards---I don't know which; it was right at that time. And Mr. Fleet came in, and politely, as you may believe, courteously, as you are glad to think, he talked with her about that important question of where she was when this thing happened. Let me read it, word for word, for it is vital and significant, and Mr. Buck will not say that one word of it is misconstrued or misremembered or falsely stated. He asked her if she knew anything about the murders. (Reading from Fleet's testimony).

"She said that she did not; all she knew was that her father came home about half past ten or quarter of eleven, went into the sitting room, sat down in a large chair, took out some papers and looked at them. She was ironing in the dining room---some handkerchiefs, as she stated. She saw that her father was feeble, and she went to him and advised and assisted him to lay down upon the sofa."

My friends have introduced the fact that Mr. Fleet did not remember that at the other trial. Mr. Buck never remembered that it was not so. And that is all the difference they can find between Mr. Fleet's remembrance of it when it was fresh in his mind, and what he remembers today, for if there had been a difference of a hair in any other respect, we should have heard from it. (Reading).

"She then went into the dining room to her ironing, but left after her father was laid down, and went out into the yard and went up in the barn."

"Up in the barn."

No, I won't repeat, because I want you to get this word for word. It is only down once---"up in the barn." Let me read again, for I desire not to repeat but to give it just as it is, for it is vital. (Reading).

"She then went into the dining room to her ironing, but left after her father was laid down and went out in the yard and up in the barn. I asked her how long she remained in the barn; she said she remained up in the barn about a half an hour. I then asked her what she meant by 'up in the barn.' She said, 'I mean up in the barn, up stairs, sir.' She said after she had been up there about half an hour she came down again, went into the house, and found her father lying on the lounge."

Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, we must judge all facts, all circumstances, as they appeal to our common sense. There is no other test; there is no other duty; there is no other way of arriving at justice. And, tried by that standard, I assert that that story is simply incredible, I assert that that story is simply absurd, I assert that that story is not within the bounds of reasonable possibilities.

I have briefed the evidence upon that thing, but no evidence is needed. There is not a man of you that does not remember that day. There is not a man of you that does not remember the hour of the day when the tidings of that murder were flashed to you. There is not a man of you that does not remember that that day, which was within four days of being the very midsummer day of one of the hottest summers within our remembrance, was hot to a degree by which this very day upon which I am now talking to you was cool and comfortable in comparison.

And you are asked to believe, and it is addressed to your credible understandings as men, you are asked to believe that, being engaged in an occupation which of itself would be heating, the ironing of those handkerchiefs, she left that job on the eve of its completion, and went out of the house and up in that barn, to the hottest place in Fall River, and there remained during the entire time that was covered by the absence of Bridget upstairs.

Am I overstating it? You were there on a comparatively comfortable day in June. Some kind friend---and I make no misconstruction of it, I do not for a moment suggest it was done with intent to mislead you---some kind friend had opened the front door and windows so that you should not be suffocated by the heat when you were there on that comparatively cool day of June, compared, I mean, with August. But this was under the hot and broiling sun of August. This was at the hour of the day when the sun is right over the barn, roof. This was a building that had been shut up for a year and no air allowed to get to it.

This was a place hot beyond the power of description, and yet you are asked to believe that this woman chose that place, that time and that hour to be out of the way when the assassin should strike the blow that killed her father.

That is not all. Saturday night again the Mayor of the city, who I assume is a gentleman, whom I think you will believe to be one, and Marshal Hilliard, who has answered by his dignified and courteous and wholly respectable presence all the slanders you have heard about him in his simple and unaffected way of testifying in this case, which is refutation enough of all the wicked things that have been said of him,---those men came there Saturday evening, and again, incidentally, that story was referred to. She had told her friend Alice that she went to get a piece of iron to fix her screen. She told them that she went out into the barn to get some sinkers. It is not so much the contradiction I call your attention to, for I want to be entirely fair, for both errands might have been in her mind; let me be entirely fair in this, if there is such a thing as an attorney being fair in a case, and if there ever was a case in which to be fair it is in a capital case,---they have introduced to you the evidence of timid women who were frightened by the shaking of ash barrels by the dogs on Wednesday night, and have taken up your time with that story. Why could we not have had somebody to have told us what was the screen that needed fixing, and to have corroborated that story by finding the piece of iron that was put into the screen when she was left alone and when she came back in her fright? They have told us how some time after the excitement of this murder was over and the front door had been used by thousands of people probably, that as sometimes is the case with my own door, and yours, I presume, it did not work when it was shut to. Show us the fish line that those sinkers went on. It was easy to do if they were in existence; if there was any truth in the story, show us something by which we can verify this ferocious fact, that the alibi she was driven to put for herself, is a good one, which she first gives to Mr. Harrington, and Mr. Harrington is a gentleman who, not to be too fine upon it, is apparently quite a lady's man, one with whom a lady would be at her ease in conversing. My learned friend saw fit to make some sport about his minute description. I was glad that he could relieve the tedium of this trial by any sort of jokes. I cannot. It is too serious for me to indulge in anything of that kind. I leave that to my distinguished friend. Officer Harrington said to her, "Miss Lizzie, if you were out in the barn, why did you not"---all innocently enough; he had not thought of her in connection with this crime then---"Why should you not have heard"---I have not his exact words, but I can state them fully enough---"Didn't you hear any noise, any outcry, any scream, any closing or shutting of the door?" "No, sir, I was up in the loft."

Ah, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, it was necessary that she should be in the loft. It was not only the hottest place in all this hot day, this hot city, this hot country; it was the only place where she could put herself and not have known what took place.

Mr. Foreman, let us be just. We are trying a woman of high social station for a high crime. Some of you have been on juries before and have heard suggestions of what are called alibis. In all your observation and experience have you heard an attempt to create an alibi which was more unreasonable and less within the credence of jurors? My distinguished friend utterly fails to explain it by suggesting that she only went up into the barn on an errand. Cool and comfortable in the seclusion of her home, seated by the side of her spiritual adviser, calmly, much more calmly than I can tell it to you here now, she tells that gentleman who came to talk with her absolutely as a fact that she went to the barn, and went upstairs in the barn, and remained there for twenty minutes. That story is not true. That alibi will not stand. We leave her again by the side of the victim. We leave her nearer even than she was to the murdered woman. We leave her engaged in an employment which if followed to its conclusion would have scarcely have taken the time I am now occupying in completing the sentence. We come back and find her father dead, the occupation surrendered and forgotten, and the story at her lips ready to tell, which has no vestige of truth in it.

I will spend little time in the prosecution of this argument to discuss Mr. Lubinsky. What he saw and when he saw it are absolutely indefinite. Let me treat him with entire fairness and justice. To begin with, he is a discarded witness. He went with his story first to Wilkinson and then to Mr. Mullaly, and then to Mr. Phillips before the hearing in the district court. Mr. Mullaly tells you just what he told him.

MR. ROBINSON. That is not in evidence.

MR. KNOWLTON. Exactly in evidence. Find it, Mr. Moody, for I won't mis-state a hair of this evidence. He saw Mr. Mullaly and told him that it was about half-past ten when he went by and saw somebody coming from the barn. That was on the eighth day of August. About two weeks after that time---I do not need the record, for I remember it as though it was yesterday---about two weeks after that time he told Mr. Phillips---yes, it would be the 22nd of August. This hearing ran through the 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, up into the first day of September. He told a reporter, and I presume it was published, although I do not know anything about that. I won't say that, for I do not know. Mr. Phillips was present there in court; witnesses were called for the defence, and Lubinsky was not called. He had not got things patched up.

MR. MOODY. Here it is.

MR. KNOWLTON. My friends won't contradict it when I have stated it. They are too fair. I have put it exactly as it was. And I want to know in this connection what was the necessity of having that line drawn so carefully by the surveyor across that plan the first day. What has been the significance of that thing, by which it was made to appear that a surveyor could find a line clear from a point on the street to the barn door? And you were asked to squint across there. You saw that you could not see the fraction of a rabbit that came out of that barn door. Has that any connection with the first attempt at Lubinsky? I do not know. It is one of those things they have started and have flashed in the pan. But taking his story as he tells it now, and dealing with Lubinsky with entire fairness, all that is absolutely known is that at 11 o'clock, by the testimony of Mr. Gardner, who gives to us as he remembers it, about 11 o'clock when he looked at his watch, Lubinsky came in for his horse. He was in a hurry. The horse was being fed. He had to wait for him to be fed, and for some other teams to be harnessed, and as soon as he had got through feeding he started away with him. How long does it take to feed a horse? Half of you know, and you can tell the rest. It is a matter of ordinary common knowledge. At some time, taking his story, going down in his haste, he forgot that he was in a hurry when he was going down the street, going down the street in his haste and not as my distinguished friend says, looking around for ice cream customers, for his cart was empty then and he was going to have it filled, he glanced into that yard and he saw a female form. It may have been Mrs. Churchill, it may have been Bridget, it may have been Alice Russell. It was more than likely that it was quarter past eleven or ten minutes past eleven, for the news of the tragedy was communicated to the world, and was known at the police station which it reached at quarter past eleven, and what he saw and when he saw it have no significance whatever.

And, to be exact about it, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, it is not charged here that she did not go to the barn. It is not charged here that perhaps, in some part of the work of concealing the evidence of that crime, she may have not found it necessary to visit the barn. What is charged here---and Lubinsky never touches a hair of it in any part of this story, if you take it to the uttermost---what is charged here is that her deliberate, her chosen, her formal alibi of being up in the loft of that barn for twenty minutes (she won't even vary in the time of it upon being asked again), is absolutely beyond the power of human credence to believe.

That is not all. It was an old and dusty barn loft. It had been used for hay a year before. (I think that is the evidence, if I am wrong I may be corrected), when the horse was last kept there. The time is not material. Its use has ceased. It had become a depository for rubbish. The accumulated dust of months had settled down upon it; and among the early men that came there was the keen eyed Medley. And he heard her story. He went in there very soon. He spent but little time in the house. He went in and asked her also where she was, and she told him.

"I asked her where she was when this thing occurred, and she said she was upstairs in the barn."

Well, he seems to have had his wits about him. I say it in no spirit of criticism, for it was an occurrence when men's wits might well leave them. There were few people in Fall River that kept their heads that day excepting the woman who now sits in the box. Everybody was lost in excitement and wonder and amazement. Hard headed and trained officers of the police forgot their duty, and who is there that can criticize them for it.

But Medley did not. It occurred to him, not in a spirit of criticism of her, perhaps, but with a desire to verify every fact as he went along, to go to that barn. He found the door shut. He went in. He went upstairs. Let me read his account of it.

"I went upstairs till I reached about three or four steps from the top, and while there part of my body was above the floor, and I looked around the barn to see if there was any evidence of anything having been disturbed, and I didn't notice that anything had or seemed to have been disturbed. I stooped down low to see if I could discern any marks on the floor of the barn having been made there."

Just as one can see when they get in a line with dust.

"I did that by stooping down and looking across the bottom of the barn floor. I didn't see any, and I reached out my hand to see if I could make an impression on the floor of the barn, and found that I could. What was on the floor was accumulated hay dust and other dust. Then I stepped up to the top and took four or five steps on the outer edge of the barn floor, the edge nearest the stairs they came up, to see if I could discern them, and I did. I did it by stooping down and cast my eye on the level of the barn floor and could see them plainly."

Gentlemen, that thing occurred; that thing occurred. There is not a man on this panel that will believe that a man, even if he is an officer, can take the oath of God upon his lips and stand upon that stand and face that unfortunate woman and deliberately commit perjury to send her to an ignominious doom.

Perjury is a light word to use in a liquor case, in an assault and battery case, in an ordinary civil case involving a thousand dollars, but it is a terrible thing to face a defendant like this, and be guilty of it.

That thing occurred. Whether his conclusions were right is entirely for you. Your judgment is as good as mine about that. It would not be becoming in me to say one word as to whether his observations were accurate or not. You have been upon barn floors. You have seen dust. You can tell as well as I about that. But that thing occurred.

Other things occurred, too. Mr. Manning and Mr. Stevens came there, and they went upstairs. They did not see Medley and they cannot say they went up first. Nay, when they went there they found the barn door open, and Medley found it shut. Mr. Clarkson came there. He tries hard to put himself early. But in the district court he put it at 11.40, and he has not given us any reason for changing it now. He went there at 11.40 and he stayed around in the yard seven or eight minutes. How indefinite! And then he went up, and the barn door was open. He did, undoubtedly, But he didn't go there before Medley.

I dismiss, with scarcely a word of comment, the testimony of those two boys, who got their dinner at half past ten, who seemed to have been engaged in no useful occupation, and who say that they went up there at some early time in the day. O, did my learned friend expect, when he asked the question of that boy if the barn was a hot place or a cool place, did he expect to offer some evidence to you to control the evidence of your own senses, your own experience, to get the boy to say that it was cool and comfortable? Out upon such testimony! It is not worth the weight of consideration at all. If it happened it never happened before Medley.

Medley was the first one there. He got the news before half past eleven. He took a team that was coming up the street and drove as fast as he could drive it. He went to the station house and got the news and started for the Borden house, and as he went by the City Hall clock it was nineteen or twenty minutes before twelve. He went there; he went into the house. He saw Miss Borden. He came out and went into the barn. Other men did the same thing: it occurred to many. He went there first, because he was the one that found the door shut, and the others, excepting these wonderful boy detectives, found it open. All the contradiction of Medley is an attempt to contradict him about time. Time, gentlemen---what can you tell about time in ordinary events? Who of you can tell at this moment---you went there to those premises, you looked around up stairs and down, you went into the barn and into the yard, and you went with cool deliberation, as cool as you could be on that rather warm day,---with cool deliberation and the purpose of taking your time and seeing all that was to be seen. Are there two men on this panel that can tell when you got there within half an hour? Is there a man on the panel that can tell within ten minutes how long you were in the house, how long you were in the cellar, how long you were in the yard, how long you were in the barn, how long you spent there all together? People do not notice the flight of time in ordinary and deliberate events: and here was the occurrence of a century, when every heart stopped beating and every hand forgot its cunning. That thing occurred, and it is another nail in the coffin in which we are sadly compelled to lay away the dead and blasted remains of that attempted alibi. Something has been said, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, as to the conduct of the defendant during this trying time. In my desire to say no word that is not borne out by the exact facts, I forbear to criticize or to ask you to consider against her her general demeanor after this tragedy. I quite agree for once with my distinguished friend in his suggestion that the absence of tears, that the icy demeanor, may have either meant consciousness of guilt or consciousness of loss. I would not lift the weight of my finger to urge that this woman, remarkable though she is, nervy as she is, brave as she is, cool as she is, should be condemned because grief, it may have been, but for other things in the case, drove back the tears to their source and forbade her to show the emotions that belong to the sex.

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