Starting from scratch

[Catbooks]

nancydrew, i take your points, however with the issue of andrew's coat, regardless of time period, it still strikes me as a very odd thing to do, which would have stuck out to contemporary viewing the crime scene.

the house was neat and tidy, as was andrew's manner of dress. people had far fewer articles of clothing back then, and it's entirely likely that was andrew's only coat. even if neatly folded (doesn't look like it to me, but could have been), it would have gotten mussed and creased if used as a pillow. it just doesn't make sense to me that anyone - now or then, but especially then, and especially andrew - would have done that when he could as easily have hung it up or had it hung up, or folded it over the arm of the sofa.

as well, somehow lizzie or the killer managed to not get blood on their clothing so they escaped detection, within a very short period of time. when i add these two pieces together …

i wasn't thinking of the witnesses, but of the police, detectives, and district attorney. they are the ones, it seems to me, who should have noticed this and pursued it. easy enough to question bridget (imho the most reliable borden household witness) as to andrew's habit of hanging up his coat.

i would give a lot to know what's in those files! it is very strange if they're citing client confidentiality.

[Catbooks]

I had a very hard time understanding, for example, WHY the prussic acid testimony was declared inadmissible, since the judge ruled it would unfairly influence the jury. Well, Geez, isn't that the whole IDEA of evidence? To influence your judgment one way or another?

just remembered i forgot to comment on this part. i have a hard time understanding why it was declared inadmissible as well, but wasn't it ruled out because poison wasn't involved in the killings and also (inexplicably, to me) it was considered 'too remote' time-wise? i can in ways understand the former, but the latter, it was just the day before the murders!

[NancyDrew]

I am afraid of someone at the Donovan law firm destroying the original case files written by Robinson. That would be a tragedy.

Does anyone know WHY the Historical Society hasn't been more aggressive in getting the firm to release these files?
I've read articles in which someone from the firm says the files contain "no smoking gun" but that is only THAT PERSON"S OPINION. Who knows WHAT we might find in those pages...

[Curryong]

Well, the spokesman for the firm might say that but the documents would be enormously interesting to read anyway. I dare say the Fall River Historical Society don't want to appear pushy with a private firm, or something. I wonder whether an appeal could be made to the Law Society of Massachusetts? That would have to be done officially by the F.R.H.S. of course.

[FactFinder]

Trial Testimony of Dr. William Dolan page 855:

Q. What was the head resting on?
A. The head was resting upon a small sofa cushion that had a little white tidy on it. The cushion in turn, I think, rested on his coat, which had been doubled up and put under there, and that, I think, rested upon and afghan or sofa cover, -- a knitted affair.

Q. The lowest of the three was the doubled up coat?
A. No, sir.

Q. Was the ---?
A. Afghan.

Q. Then came the coat?
A. Yes, sir.

Q. Then came the sofa cushion?
A. Yes, sir.

[PossumPie]

The papers will NEVER be releases...it sets a precedent that the firm MAY not hold your information confidential...I know 100+ years later??? Hey if if might lose them a potential client, they will not give that appearance. There is nothing legally preventing them from releasing them, just their paranoia. PERHAPS if people started a campaign to say the firm is squashing historical documents, and no one should ever use that law firm again as a protest, they may then give in. Money talks. A smear campaign would hurt their wallets.

The Prussic acid testimony was ruled inadmissible b/c it was hearsay evidence which was not directly tied to the case. IF the Bordens had been poisoned, it could be ruled admissible b/c it shows prior intent. Since they were not poisoned, the hearsay is not shown to have a direct link EVEN if Lizzie herself admitted that it was her. She could always give an innocent reason for wanting it. If you saw me arguing with my neighbor, then buying a gun, then my neighbor was found dead of poison, the testimony of me buying a gun would be inadmissible also. I may have wanted it for squirrels.

[FactFinder]

Many have stated that the prosecution didn't bring up the coat. Or that anyone might have considered it as being used to cover the killer, or found it odd that Andrew placed it under his head as a pillow. But, in fact, Knowlton did in fact raise the same points in his arguments that we have here on the forum.


From Knowlton's closing argument page 1850 of the trial:

Did it ever occur to you --- I am only suggesting these things. it is not our business to prove what she did to conceal the blood spots; that is for the defense, not part of our case. We prove the murders. The concealment is part of the assassin's business. Did it ever occur to you, however, how remarkable it is that the coat the old man took off, which I presume he took off, at any rate whether that coat or another, instead of being hung upon a nail, as a prudent old man would have hung it, was folded up underneath his cushion? That might have been used. I can't tell. There are plenty of ways in which a woman can conceal that sort of thing.

[Catbooks]

thank you, factfinder! you're well-named. it's been many years since i read the trial (or inquest or any) transcript. as it was i didn't read all of it and didn't recall knowlton brought up the coat at all. i'm relieved to know he too thought it odd, as well as getting into the trial as best he could.

i need to see if i can find the transcripts, not only to re-read, but to c&p here, when warranted. it may be available somewhere on the front page, but last week i found the main part of the site doesn't work very well with my browser.

[Mara]

I bow deeply to your persistence in seeking facts, FactFinder. Good work! Like Catbooks, I'd forgotten (if I ever knew about) that Knowlton observation.

[Curryong]

I didn't know where to post this but or whether it's been posted in any thread lately, so I'm putting it here. When Lizzie stayed at a boarding house in New Bedford for two days, before the murders, it was not in a proper boarding house, but one run a bit like Mrs Churchill's house in Fall River.

Mrs Poole owned the house. She was a widow and the mother of Augusta Tripp, an old school friend of Lizzie's who gave favourable testimony about her at the Inquest. Her sister, Carrie Poole, was an invalid who lived with her mother at the house in Madison St, New Bedford.


Carrie, according to her sister, heard Lizzie say that she did not know whether she or Emma would get anything from their father when he died. Mrs Tripp excused this in her testimony at the Inquest (Pages 141-145) by saying that Carrie 'was feeble, very feeble'. In fact Carrie was very ill with tuberculosis. (She died in 1893.) She wasn't deaf or feeble-minded.

While at the 'boarding house' in July 1892 Lizzie accompanied Mrs Poole and Carrie on a visit to Augusta Tripp and her husband at her home in Westport, in the cool of the countryside.

[Catbooks]

aha, found your post! interesting it wasn't a hotel, but an informal type of boarding house, and that the owner of the house was the mother of one of lizzie's friends from school.

i had recently read mrs. tripp's comments about her feeble invalid sister, but didn't know who mrs. tripp was. i can easily believe lizzie said that, and that it's what she and emma suspected and feared.