The authors make a few minor errors of fact, none of which would alter their conclusions. I had to retype a lot of this (Kindle is smart about not allowing endless cutting and pasting) so if something makes no sense whatsoever, please private message me. I'll try to correct it. Having read, typed, reread, typed some more, I've pretty much come to my own conclusions. Before the weekend is over I'll also post the chapters on Domestic Homicide from the Crime Classification Manual that is mentioned in this text. Hope you enjoy reading!
LIZZIE BORDEN
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
This is the way the most famous and notorious American murder case of the nineteenth century has chiefly been remembered. But if the unnamed authors of this rather cruel ditty were being responsible and accurate, they would have recast their verse into something less tuneful yet somewhat more in line with the established facts of this officially unsolved case:
An unknown subject took a hatchet
And gave Lizzie Borden’s stepmother nineteen whacks;
Ninety minutes after that deed was done
He or she gave Borden’s father ten plus one.
The one being sufficient to cause death; the other ten constituting out-and-out overkill. But as we’ll discover, this was a behaviorally different type of overkill than what we saw in the Whitechapel murders.
What was it about this brutal daytime murder in a small but prosperous New England town at the height of the Industrial Revolution that struck such a nerve, not only in New England but, within days, across the nation and around the globe, just as Jack the Ripper had four years previously? For one thing, proper, well-to-do women just didn’t get accused of cold-bloodedly hacking people to death. If the Whitechapel murders were about the potential for random brutality and the loss of public innocence regarding the presence of evil in a confident and complacent world, this case was about the potential for violence lurking within seemingly normal families, and the even more profound and searing loss of innocence that implied.
It’s difficult to avoid the interesting, almost uncanny parallels to another instance of officially unsolved, allegedly domestic murder that would take place 102 years later and an entire continent away: the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman outside her condominium in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles in 1994. Both cases involved an upstanding, well-off, community-pillar defendant, represented by the finest legal team money could buy, who vigorously proclaimed innocence of the savage mutilation murders of one male and one female victim by bladed weapons that were not found at the scene. Nor had virtually any blood been found on either defendant. Both offered substantial rewards for information leading to the killer— rewards that were never claimed. And in both cases, the world was riveted to every word uttered in trial, during which each defendant chose not to take the stand to give her or his own account of what had happened. In fact, the only words both defendants uttered in open court were single sentences proclaiming their innocence.
When people all over the world asked if a wealthy, famous, handsome, and charming ex– football star could possibly be capable of savaging his former wife and an innocent bystander in a fit of murderous rage, they were harkening back to a similar question from the century past:
Could a demure, well-mannered, and well-to-do former Sunday-school teacher, active in her church and charities and a prominent member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, actually be a monster?
It was a question that, with individual variations, would be posed many times in the years between the two cases. It is, in many ways, the essence of criminological behavioral science.
THE BORDENS OF FALL RIVER
Let’s begin with the undisputed facts.
At around 11: 15 on the warm and humid morning of Thursday, August 4, 1892, Rufus B. Hilliard, the city marshal of Fall River, Massachusetts, received an urgent telephone call at the central police station. It was from John Cunningham, a local newsdealer. Cunningham happened to be at Hall’s Livery Stable when he saw Mrs. Adelaide Churchill frantically approach her carriage driver, Tom, telling him to go find a doctor. Her next-door neighbor Andrew Borden, one of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens in town, had been brutally attacked in the sitting room of his house on Second Street. Noticing Cunningham, she suggested that someone call the police.
Which is what Cunningham did. But not before he first called the Fall River Globe and gave them the exclusive story.
The Borden family consisted of four members: Andrew Jackson Borden, one of the town’s most prominent businessmen, seventy years of age; his second wife, Abby Durfee Grady Borden, sixty-four; and Andrew’s two adult, unmarried daughters by his late first wife, Sarah Anthony Morse Borden, forty-one-year-old Emma Lenora and Lizzie Andrew, thirty-two. There was also a live-in maid, a twenty-six-year-old Irish immigrant named Bridget Sullivan, who had been with the family for more than two years.
In 1890, Fall River had a population of eighty thousand and manufactured more cotton textiles than any other city in the world. And if one name could be associated with the economic origins and continued continued prosperity of the town, that name would be Borden. Though he was related to the family that had established Fall River and was by then enjoying its third generation of wealth, Andrew was only a second cousin of the wealthy Borden branch and had grown up without any of their power or advantages. His grandfather had been a brother of one of the original Bordens who made good, and Andrew’s father had never made anything of himself. Everything Andrew had— and he had a lot—he’d earned completely on his own, beginning as a casket maker, then opening his own undertaking business and investing the profits in real estate, banks, and mills. Now tall, thin, white-haired, and bearded, and almost invariably dressed in a heavy black suit regardless of the weather, Andrew Borden was president of the Union Savings Bank; a director of the Merchants Manufacturing Company, the B.M.C. Durfee Safe Deposit and Trust Company, the Globe Yarn Mills, the Troy Cotton and Woolen Manufactory; and the owner of several farms. By 1892 his personal wealth was estimated as high as a half million dollars, a tremendous sum in those days.
Probably as a result of his own struggle, Andrew was known as a fair but tough and hard-nosed bargainer in business, and in his personal life, he was parsimonious in the extreme, eschewing luxuries that were at this point commonly enjoyed by people with far less than he, such as electricity or indoor plumbing. The simple two- story frame house at 92 Second Street was furnished with a water closet in the basement and slop pails in the bedrooms, which had to be emptied every morning. Andrew, who according to all available research had never been accused of a sense of humor, saw no reason for such amenities, much to the dismay of his daughters, who seemed to feel that their father’s penurious lifestyle was prohibiting their chances for social success.
On the morning in question, Emma was away from home, visiting friends in Fairhaven, some fifteen miles away. But the household also had an overnight guest, John Vinnicum Morse, fifty-nine years of age, brother of Andrew’s late wife. He had lived in Iowa for twenty years, but three years before had returned to the Northeast and resided in South Dartmouth. He arrived on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 3, then he left for one of Andrew’s farms in Swansea. Normally, the eggs from the farm were delivered to Andrew by the farmer on Thursdays. But Wednesday night, Morse brought back with him the weekly egg delivery. Then, Morse apparently discussed business details with his former brother-in-law. Though there is some suggestion the two men were talking about Andrew’s intention to write a will, there is no documentation on this point.
The Borden household, normally a rather dour place, would have been particularly unpleasant that Wednesday. At 7: 00 in the morning, Abby had gone across the street to the home of Dr. Seabury Warren Bowen complaining that both she and Andrew had been violently ill during the night with nausea and vomiting and she was afraid someone was trying to poison them. After a quick exam, Dr. Bowen told her he did not think the illness was serious and sent her home. Later that morning, just to be certain, Bowen paid a call on the Bordens. Andrew ungraciously declared that he was not ill and had no intention of paying for an unsolicited house call. Since Andrew was as excessively thrifty with food as he was with everything else, the gastrointestinal upset had possibly been caused by the mutton stew the family had been having at various meals for several days in a row, despite the warm weather. Bridget, who was suffering some of the same symptoms, was convinced the stew had gone bad, but Andrew would not let her dispose of it.
On Thursday, John Morse had breakfast with Andrew and Abby. Lizzie did not join them, which would have been normal. Despite living in the same small house, Lizzie seldom dined with her father and stepmother. Morse left the house around 8: 40 A.M., stopped at the post office, then went across town to see other relatives, the Emerys. Mr. and Mrs. Emery later reported that Morse had been with them between 9: 40 and 11: 20 A.M., and their impression was that after leaving them, he was headed home by way of New Bedford.
Abby had directed Bridget to wash all of the windows, inside and out. This would have been a formidable task on any hot summer day, but it was particularly taxing this morning when she had already prepared and cleaned up after breakfast and was still feeling so ill. Around 9 A.M. she had to interrupt her work to rush outside to the yard to vomit.
A few minutes later, Andrew left for his business rounds. Mrs. Churchill, the next-door neighbor on the north side, saw him leave. Bridget was still in the backyard being sick, and Abby was upstairs straightening out the guest room that John Morse had occupied. When Bridget came back in the house, she overheard Abby and Lizzie talking in the dining room.
At a store he owned that was being remodeled, Andrew Borden told carpenters he didn’t feel well and was going home, where he arrived around 10: 40 A.M. He tried to open the front door with his key, but found it bolted from the inside with an additional lock, unusual during the day. So he knocked and Bridget came over to open it. She had trouble springing the bolt, and according to Bridget, Lizzie was standing at the top of the stairs and laughed at her brief struggle.
Andrew was carrying a small package wrapped in white paper. We do not know what was in this package. Since a burglary in the house the year before, he had kept his and Abby’s bedroom locked, so he took the key from its place on the mantel and went up the back stairs. When Andrew returned downstairs, Lizzie told him that Mrs. Borden— she had some time ago stopped calling Abby “Mother”— had received a note from a sick friend and had gone out. Still characteristically dressed in his tie and jacket, Andrew lay down for a nap on the couch in the sitting room with his feet resting on the carpet.
So as not to disturb him, Bridget moved into the dining room and began on the windows there. Lizzie came into the room carrying an ironing board, which she set up and began ironing handkerchiefs.
“Maggie, are you going out today?” Lizzie asked. Interestingly, Maggie was what Lizzie and Emma called Bridget, since that had been the name of the previous Borden maid. Apparently, the habit was too hard to break. Andrew and Abby called her by her actual name.
Bridget replied, “I don’t know. I might and I might not. I don’t feel very well.”
“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.”
“Miss Lizzie, who is sick?” Bridget asked.
“I don’t know. She had a note this morning. It must be in town.”
Bridget found this odd, since Abby, who was shy, plain, short and overweight, normally told her when she was planning to leave the house, which didn’t happen all that often. But Bridget accepted Lizzie’s story.
As Bridget was finishing up the dining room windows, Lizzie said to her, “There is a cheap sale of dress goods at Sargent’s this afternoon at eight cents a yard.”
This elicited a more enthusiastic response from the young woman, who declared, “I’m going to have one!” She left Lizzie ironing in the dining room and went upstairs to her own room in the attic to rest for a little while, hoping to feel better. She lay down on top of the bedspread without taking off her shoes. It was too hot for a deep sleep, but she fell into a doze until she heard the city-hall clock strike 11 A.M. She lay on the bed for another few minutes.
At that point she heard Lizzie calling urgently from downstairs, “Maggie, come down!”
“What is the matter?” Bridget called back.
“Come down quick! Father’s dead! Somebody came in and killed him!”
Bridget rose quickly and rushed down two flights of stairs. As she was about to head into the sitting room where Andrew had been napping, Lizzie said, “Oh, Maggie, don’t go in!” She then instructed her to go find Dr. Bowen.
THE CRIME SCENE
Mrs. Adelaide Churchill had been returning home after buying groceries when she saw Bridget Sullivan darting back in vain from Dr. Seabury Bowen’s house across the street. She set her parcels down, then rushed over to the Borden house, fearing from Bridget’s actions that someone was gravely ill. Lizzie was standing just inside the screen door on the side of the house, looking dazed. Mrs. Churchill called out to her, “Lizzie, what is the matter?”
“Oh, Mrs. Churchill,” Lizzie responded, “do come over! Someone has killed Father!”
The neighbor went around the fence and up to Lizzie. “Where is your father?” She had to ask several times before Lizzie finally responded:
“In the sitting room.”
Mrs. Churchill went into the sitting room and beheld the carnage for herself. When she emerged moments later, she asked Lizzie where she had been when this happened.
Lizzie replied that she had been in the barn behind the house, where she’d gone to find some iron to use as fishing weights for an upcoming trip. When she’d heard a noise, she had come out and noticed that the screen door was open.
“Where is your mother?” Mrs. Churchill asked.
Lizzie replied, “I don’t know. She had got a note to go see someone who is sick. But I don’t know but she is killed, too, for I thought I heard her come in.” Then she offered, “Father must have an enemy, for we have all been sick, and we think the milk has been poisoned. I must have a doctor.”
At that point, Adelaide Churchill went out in search of Dr. Bowen herself, setting in motion the chain of events that summoned law enforcement authorities.
As it happened, most of the Fall River Police Department was out at their annual picnic and clambake at Rocky Point, Rhode Island. Hilliard dispatched George W. Allen, a young and relatively inexperienced officer, one of the few he had on hand.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bowen had arrived, followed shortly thereafter by Bridget’s return with Lizzie’s best friend, Alice Russell. Bowen quickly went to the sitting room and came upon Andrew Borden’s body. The corpse was half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa, the head resting on Borden’s carefully folded coat, used as a pillow. His boots were still on his feet.
The face was essentially unrecognizable. Blood spots were on the floor, on the wall over the sofa, and on the picture hanging on that wall. But the clothing was not disturbed, and there was no apparent injury to any part of his body other than the face. The most immediate concern of those in the house was Abby’s whereabouts.
Lizzie had reported her outing to a sick friend. With Abby’s limited circle, the only one Bridget could imagine her going to see was her younger half-sister, Mrs. Sarah Whitehead. Bridget suggested that she go try to find Mrs. Whitehead, and if Abby was with her, to tell her only that Mr. Borden was very sick and she needed to hurry home. Then they could give her the horrible truth.
Lizzie brought up again her suspicion that Abby had returned home, but if she had, then why hadn’t she come downstairs when she heard the commotion? “Maggie,” she said, “I am almost positive I heard her coming in. Won’t you go upstairs to see?”
That was the last thing Bridget wanted to do, fearing what she might find. “I am not going upstairs alone,” she insisted.
Mrs. Churchill said she would go with her, so together the two women climbed the stairs.
When they got to the top, they could see her, lying face down in the guest room, propped on her knees as she had fallen. They raced back downstairs, where they found Lizzie now lying down.
Alice Russell asked, “Is there another?”
“Yes, she is up there,” Adelaide Churchill replied.
By this time Officer George Allen had arrived at the Borden home, finding a house painter named Charles Sawyer on the street near the house. He enlisted Sawyer to guard the house while he went in to investigate. The front door was locked, so Allen moved around to the back, but was able to get in through the screen door on the left side near the rear of the house. When he got there, Dr. Bowen had already left to send a telegram summoning Emma home.
Shaken by the grisly sight in the sitting room, Allen quickly searched the remainder of the first floor, then raced back to the police station and reported his findings to Marshal Hilliard, leaving Charles Sawyer guarding the residence. Other officers had returned to the station house, and Hilliard sent them out with Allen. By 11: 45 A.M., seven police officers were in the Borden residence, along with Bristol County medical examiner William Dolan.
Based on the comparative temperatures of the bodies, the condition of the blood on each, and an examination of the contents of the digestive systems, Dolan determined that Andrew had died at least one hour after Abby. Andrew Borden had been struck in the face. One eye was cut in half. His nose was severed, and eleven distinct cuts extended from the eye and nose to the ear. Fresh blood was still seeping from the wounds when he was found. Despite the severity of the attack, the clothing was not disturbed. The wounds were inflicted by a sharp, heavy weapon. He had been struck from above the head while he slept.
The postmortem exam on Abby Borden revealed that her head had been crushed, apparently by the same weapon that would kill her husband. One misdirected blow had struck the back of her head, almost at the neck, cutting off a chunk of scalp. When her body was discovered, the blood was already dark and congealed.
Abby Durfee Borden had also been hacked to death, suffering a total of nineteen blows from a sharp-bladed instrument. As with her husband, the first blow was probably sufficient to cause death.
Officer Michael Mullaly asked Lizzie if there were any hatchets in the house.
“Yes,” she said. “They are everywhere.” Later, at the coroner’s inquest, she testified that she did not know if there were any hatchets in the house. This was only the first of a number of troubling inconsistencies in Lizzie’s responses.
Bridget accompanied Mullaly down to the basement, where he found four hatchets. One was a rusty claw-headed hatchet. A second was dusty and appeared little used. The blade of a third one was covered in ashes and had all but a few inches of the handle broken off. From the condition of the wood fiber, the break appeared to be recent. A fourth bore the residue of dried blood and hair.
About this time, John Morse came back, having been asked by Andrew to return for the noon meal. He strolled into the backyard, where he picked some pears from the trees beyond the barn and spent several minutes eating them, apparently unaware of what was going on inside the house.
Officer William Medley went to the barn and climbed up to the loft where Lizzie said she had been looking for lead to make sinkers for her planned fishing trip after she joined Emma in Fairhaven. He found the loft floor thick with dust and no evidence that anyone had been there recently. By this time, Dr. Bowen was back. He took Lizzie upstairs and gave her bromo caffeine for her headache and to calm her nerves. (The next night he administered the first of what would be a series of injections of sulfate of morphine as a tranquilizer.) Alice Russell noted that while Lizzie was upstairs, she changed from the light blue dress she had been wearing to a pink and white outfit.
Police found a small spot of blood on the sole of one of Lizzie’s shoes and another small spot on one of her underskirts, about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter. It was consistent with human blood, and later laboratory examination determined that the saturation was more concentrated on the outside of the fabric than on the inside. This is important because Lizzie explained the spot as a flea bite, a euphemism at the time for menstrual blood, which was not discussed in polite society, even when speaking with the police.
At 3 P.M. the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden were carried into the dining room and placed on undertaker’s boards, like a folding table. Dr. Dolan performed autopsies there, where just that morning the two victims had had their breakfast. He removed and tied off the stomachs, which were sent by special messenger to Dr. Edward S. Wood, professor of chemistry at Harvard.
Upstairs, Deputy Marshal John Fleet questioned Lizzie, asking her if she had any idea who could have committed the murders. She said that a few weeks ago, her father had had an argument with a man she didn’t know, but other than him, she couldn’t think of anyone. Fleet then asked directly whether her uncle John Morse or Bridget Sullivan could have killed her father and mother. She pointedly reminded Fleet that Abby was not her mother but her stepmother, then said it would have been impossible for either Uncle John or Bridget to have committed the crimes..
Emma returned from Fairhaven just before 6: 00 that evening. The bodies of the Bordens were still in the dining room, awaiting the arrival of the undertaker. Sergeant Philip Harrington continued questioning Lizzie. Finally, the police left, cordoning off the house to keep away the curious, who had assembled en masse. Bridget left to stay with Dr. Bowen’s maid while Emma and Lizzie remained in the house. Uncle John slept in the guest room where Abby had been killed, and Alice Russell slept in the Bordens’ bedroom. Officer Joseph Hyde, on guard that night, reported that he saw Lizzie and Alice go down to the cellar with a kerosene lamp and carrying a slop pail. A few minutes later, Lizzie went down again by herself. He could see her bent over a sink but couldn’t tell what she was doing.
LIZZIE’S STORY
On August 5, an interview appeared in the Fall River Globe with another of Lizzie’s uncles, Hiram Harrington, married to Andrew’s only sister, Luana. The interview claimed that Harrington had spoken with his niece the previous evening and that the reason she had not shown any emotion or grief was because “she is not naturally emotional.”
This became a key issue. Lizzie had seemed to many observers to be emotionally flat— not the type of response one would expect from someone grieving for her beloved father, if not her stepmother. Now, we certainly look closely at this factor in criminal behavior analysis, but I am always wary of considering this subject in a vacuum; that is, strictly in and of itself. My several decades of dealing with perpetrators, victims, and their families have told me that responses to horrible emotional trauma are very individual. It is true here, and will be equally true when we consider the Charles Lindbergh, Jr., and JonBenet Ramsey cases.
It is in the nature of my work that I have been around many people who have lost loved ones to violent crime. I can tell you that the way a person responds to the unspeakable and the unimaginable–whether it is by screaming to the heavens or essentially shutting down–is so private, so interior, that until you really know the individual in question, it is extremely risky to make judgments based on that response. So if I were handling the Borden murder case, I would not, at this point, have been placing much store in Lizzie's reaction, one way or the other.
But from a forensic perspective, there were several highly problematic areas. The first was the timeline. Abby would have been killed around 9:30 in the morning. Andrew died somewhere around 11 A.M. Did the killer hang around the house for an hour and a half, waiting for Andrew to return home? If so, where did he hide? The house was old-fashioned in design, without hallways and only a few tiny closets. To get from one room to another, you went directly through a door to that room. Doors that the family did not want to be opened for privacy were kept locked with furniture up against them. So did the intruder listen for Bridget and Lizzie and whoever else might be home and manage to stay out of their way for ninety minutes? If it was his plan to kill the elder Bordens— and no other motive is apparent— wouldn’t he have staked out the home for a time when they would be there without Lizzie, Emma, and Bridget? Did he leave and then return when he saw Andrew coming home and manage to get into the house a second time undetected? There was no sign of forced entry. In fact, Andrew himself couldn’t get in until Bridget unbolted the door.
Andrew Borden was wearing a gold ring, a silver watch, and had more than $80 in his pocket, all of which was undisturbed, nor was there evidence of anything having been taken from the house. Robbery or burglary were therefore unlikely scenarios.
The most logical way around these problems, of course, was that there was no intruder at all. That made Lizzie and Bridget the prime suspects.
Bridget’s account was pretty straightforward; there was nothing much for the police to sink their teeth into. But Lizzie’s story had some interesting details, holes, and inconsistencies, even if you discounted her supposedly inappropriate affect on learning of her father’s and stepmother’s murders.
There was no indication that Abby had left the house at all that morning. Her half-sister Sarah Whitehead, the only one Bridget could figure she might go visit, turned out not to be ill or even out of town that day and had not sent Abby a note. In fact, no one who knew Abby was ill and none knew anything about a note. Police searched the Borden house but could never find one.
Lizzie had told the police she had gone out to the barn shortly after her father returned home, which would account for why she hadn’t seen the murder or become a victim herself. But depending on whom she spoke to, she had differing versions as to why she was there. One had to do with the lead sinkers she’d need for her planned fishing trip. She told Alice Russell she needed lead for a broken window screen she wanted to repair. Neither statement squares with Officer Medley’s observation that the loft was so thick with dust that any footprint would have left a lasting impression.
A corollary detail was equally troubling. The day before the murders, Lizzie had gone to Smith’s Drug Store, minutes from where she lived, according to the clerk, Eli Bence. She wanted Bence to sell her ten cents’ worth of prussic acid—hydrogen cyanide in solution— saying she needed it to kill insects in a sealskin cape. Bence explained that he couldn’t sell it to her without a prescription, at which point he said she became visibly annoyed and claimed she’d had no trouble purchasing it in the past. Lizzie denied having been at Smith’s, though another clerk and a customer each identified her there between 10: 00 and 11: 30 in the morning. Later, another witness stated that Lizzie had tried to buy the poison from a different pharmacy on an earlier date.
Saturday, August 6, was the day of the funerals for Andrew and Abby Durfee Borden. The service was conducted by the Reverends Edwin Augustus Buck and William Walker Jubb, both representing the town’s central Congregational church. However, the burial at Oak Grove Cemetery did not take place as scheduled. The police had been informed that Dr. Wood wanted to conduct an examination of his own. So after the mourners had left the graveside, the undertaker brought the bodies back, after which the heads were removed and defleshed. Plaster casts were made of the skulls.
(Though untrue, it has long been said that for reasons undetermined, Andrew’s skull was never returned to his coffin and that its whereabouts are unknown to this day. Actually, it was later reburied at the grave site at his feet, as Abby’s was buried at her feat. Another grisly sidelight to this grisly case.)
That day, Emma and Lizzie published their offer of a reward of the then enormous sum of $ 5,000 to “any one who may secure the arrest and conviction of the person or persons, who occasioned the death of Mr. Andrew J. Borden and Wife.”
That same day, after the funeral, Fall River mayor John W. Coughlin and Marshal Rufus Hilliard informed Lizzie that she was officially a suspect.
On Sunday morning, Miss Russell and Emma observed Lizzie burning a dress of blue cotton Bedford cord in the kitchen stove. “What are you going to do?” Emma asked.
“I am going to burn this old thing up,” Lizzie replied. “It is covered with paint.”
Alice said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t let anybody see me do that, Lizzie,” then added, “I am afraid the burning of the dress was the worst thing you could have done, Lizzie.”
Lizzie replied curiously, “Oh, what made you let me do it?” and “Why did you let me burn the dress?” The dress probably was, in fact, stained with paint. This was corroborated by others. But burning it was still odd at best.
The Borden family was so frugal that they made rags out of clothing that could no longer be worn. Perhaps this was Lizzie’s first conscious or subconscious act of defiance against that frugality.
An inquest was held before Judge Josiah Coleman Blaisdell of the Second District Court, during which Lizzie testified. All testimony was kept secret. At this time she was not yet represented by counsel, and as we shall see, this became a critical factor in her subsequent defense.
She was formally arraigned, according to a warrant drawn up by Marshal Hilliard. The grand jury indictment relating to her father asserted:
That Lizzie Andrew Borden of Fall River, in the county of Bristol, at Fall River in the county of Bristol, on the fourth day of August, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-two, in and upon one Andrew Jackson Borden, feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought, an assault did make, and with a certain weapon, to wit, a sharp cutting instrument, the name and a more particular description of which is to the Jurors unknown, him, the said Andrew Jackson Borden feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought did strike, cutting, beating and bruising, in and upon the head of him, the said Andrew Jackson Borden, divers, to wit, ten mortal wounds, of which said mortal wounds the said Andrew Jackson Borden then and there instantly died.
And so the Jurors aforesaid, upon their oath aforesaid, do say, that the said Lizzie Andrew Borden, the said Andrew Jackson Borden, in manner and form aforesaid, then and there feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought did kill and murder; against the peace of said Commonwealth and contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided.
On Friday, August 12, her prominent attorney, Andrew J. Jennings, declared before the court held at the police station, “The prisoner pleads not guilty.”
She was taken to the jail in Taunton, Massachusetts, eight miles to the north, because Fall River had no facilities for long-term female prisoners. They’d never had the need.
On August 16, the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Borden, minus their heads, were finally interred in Oak Grove Cemetery.
And on August 22, six days of preliminary— or probable cause— hearings were held before Judge Blaisdell. Lizzie didn’t testify at these hearings, though the record of her secret testimony for the inquest was offered into evidence.
The murder weapon was still a problem and remains one. After completing his examination, Dr. Edward Wood testified that he could find no human blood or tissue on any of the hatchets from the Borden basement, and that the blood and hairs noted on one ax were from a cow.
That fact notwithstanding, at the end of the hearings, on September 1, Judge Blaisdell rendered his judgment, which is worth examining for its pained but resolute logic:
The long examination is now concluded, and there remains but for the magistrate to perform what he believes to be his duty. It would be a pleasure for him, and he would doubtless receive much sympathy if he could say, “Lizzie, I judge you probably not guilty. You may go home.” But upon the character of the evidence presented through the witnesses who have been so closely and thoroughly examined, there is but one thing to be done. Suppose for a single moment a man was standing there. He was found close by that guest chamber which, to Mrs. Borden, was a chamber of death. Suppose a man had been found in the vicinity of Mr. Borden, was the first to find the body, and the only account he could give of himself was the unreasonable one that he was out in the barn looking for sinkers, then he was out in the yard, then he was out for something else. Would there be any question in the minds of men what should be done with such a man? So there is only one thing to do, painful as it may be— the judgment of the Court is that you are probably guilty, and you are ordered committed to await the action of the Superior Court.
On November 7, the grand jury began three weeks of consideration of the case of Lizzie Andrew Borden. When prosecutor Hosea M. Knowlton completed his presentation, he invited Jennings to present a case for the defense. This was a great surprise, unheard of in Massachusetts. In effect, the two attorneys were conducting a trial before the grand jury.
For a time, it looked as if charges against Lizzie would be dismissed. There were no eyewitnesses, no clearly identified murder weapon, and questionable motive. The key circumstantial piece of the case against her was that she had the proximity and best opportunity to have committed both murders, and no other scenario was nearly as intellectually satisfying.
Then, on December 1, Alice Russell testified about the burning of the dress. The next day, Lizzie was charged with three counts of murder: of her father, of her stepmother, and of both of them together. The trial was set for June 5, 1893. Altogether, Lizzie was in Taunton Jail for nine months before that date arrived.
THE TRIAL
Emma and Lizzie Borden had inherited their father’s estate. So together they had plenty of money and lined up the best defense that money could buy. In addition to Andrew Jennings, they hired a forty-two-year-old Boston attorney named Melvin Ohio Adams. Adams had been an assistant district attorney and was a specialist in criminal prosecution. And the key to the defense team was the Honorable George Dexter Robinson, fifty-nine, former senator, congressman, and governor of Massachusetts. In the “small world” department—or possibly the “conflict of interest” department, depending on your point of view— while governor, Robinson had appointed Justin Dewey, one of the trial’s three presiding judges, to the Massachusetts superior court. Emma and Lizzie paid Robinson the monumental sum of $ 25,000 for her defense, roughly five times what judges were paid annually. It has been asserted that Robinson would not agree to take the case until he was convinced of Lizzie’s innocence. At their first meeting, he advised Lizzie to start wearing black. If convicted, he informed her, she could face a sentence of death by hanging, although no woman had been executed in Massachusetts since 1778.
This is just one of many precursors to other cases and trials we see acted out with Lizzie Borden. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a suspect right after his arrest and then compared that to the way he looked in court months later. He’s cleaned up, cut his hair, wearing a conservative suit, with an intense, pensive, and vulnerable look in his eyes that says to the jury, this fine young man couldn’t possibly have done the hideous things you’ve heard described.
Sometimes, when I’d walk into court and glance over at the defense table, I couldn’t tell which was the defendant and which the attorney.
To assist Hosea Knowlton for the prosecution, Massachusetts attorney general Arthur E. Pillsbury appointed forty-year-old William Henry Moody, the district attorney for Essex County, who would be appearing in his first murder trial. Moody would go on to a career as a congressman, secretary of the navy, U.S. attorney general, and Supreme Court justice. Shortly after the trial, Knowlton replaced Pillsbury as Massachusetts attorney general.
On May 31, 1893— five days before the scheduled start of the trial— an unexpected event, astounding in its proximity to the trial and profound in its implications, occurred in Fall River.
Stephen Manchester, a dairy farmer, came home from his milk deliveries to find his twenty-two-year-old daughter, Bertha, lying beside the black iron stove in the kitchen, hacked to death. Defense wounds and rips in her clothing suggested she had put up a fierce struggle with her assailant. Stephen and Bertha had lived alone in the farmhouse, both of his previous wives having left him, reportedly because he was both cheap and mean.
Dr. William Dolan again conducted the autopsy and described “twenty-three distinct and separate axe wounds on the back of the skull and its base.” Very similar to the wounds inflicted upon the back of Abby Borden’s head.
The crime took place in the morning, at the same time as Abby’s murder. There was little blood. Nothing of value was taken. It was likely that the killer had spent considerable time in the Manchester house.
The implications were clear to everyone in Fall River. An almost identical crime had taken place while the accused murderess was safely locked away in Taunton Jail— one of the best alibis I’ve ever heard. Attorney Andrew Jennings commented to the press almost gleefully, “Well, are they going to claim that Lizzie Borden did this too?” Suddenly, there was an alternative theory of the case based on an UNSUB with similar MO who could not possibly have been Lizzie. What could create more “reasonable doubt”? The prosecution knew what had to be on the mind of every prospective member of the jury pool.
Then, on the very day Lizzie’s trial was to commence, a Portuguese immigrant in his late teens or early twenties named Jose Correira was arrested. He had worked as an itinerant laborer for Stephen Manchester and had gotten into a bitter argument with him over severance pay. Apparently, he had returned to the farm to have it out with Stephen, but when he wasn’t there, Correira confronted Bertha instead, murdering her in an overkill frenzy. He waited around the house for a while for his main target to return home, but after some time had passed, he reconsidered the situation and left.
The fact that Correira was Portuguese, and a Portuguese from the Azores at that, had the same effect on Fall River residents as the Jewish rumors surrounding Leather Apron had had on the East Enders of London during the Whitechapel murders. Poor and illiterate Portuguese immigrants were the lowest and most maligned caste in that part of Massachusetts, so if anyone was capable of such a ghastly crime as the murder of Andrew Borden and his wife, it would probably be “one of them.” A proper American certainly wouldn’t be capable of that.
It was later documented that Correira had not entered the United States from the Azores until April 1893, eight months after the Borden murders. But by the time this information became public, the Borden jury had already been chosen and sequestered. Of course, for everyone else, another subtext remained, almost as powerful: if one violent Portuguese immigrant could break in, attack Bertha Manchester with an ax or hatchet in a frenzy of overkill, then wait around for the man of the house to return, another one certainly could have done the same to the Bordens.
The trial of Lizzie Borden began on the morning of June 5, 1893, in the Superior Court for the County of Bristol. This was arguably the most celebrated criminal case of the century— rivaling the trials of Dred Scott, John Brown, the Haymarket bombers, even the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson—such was the interest and hoopla this spectacle created. The murders had long since become the prime topic of conversation not only in Fall River, but throughout New England, just as the Simpson-Goldman murders would rivet Los Angeles and the rest of the nation 102 years later. And as would happen with the Simpson trial, the national and world press converged upon the courthouse. Wealthy, prominent people just didn’t get hacked to death, and their children didn’t get accused of doing it. If this kind of thing could happen to a man like Andrew Borden and his wife, it could happen to anyone.
Knowlton, the district attorney of Fall River, was a reluctant prosecutor, forced into the role by Attorney General Arthur Pillsbury, who, at the time, would have been expected to try capital cases himself. But as the trial date approached, Pillsbury sensed pressure building from Lizzie’s supporters, particularly women’s groups and religious organizations. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, of which Lizzie was a member, publicly proclaimed its “unshaken faith in her, as a fellow worker and sister tenderly beloved.” Likewise, Lizzie’s ministers and fellow congregants at the Central Congregational Church— the most socially prominent church in Fall River—thought it impossible that the kind, demure, and dignified woman they knew could have committed such a pair of unthinkable acts.
The first day was devoted to selecting a jury— all white male— and then the prosecution presented its case. William Moody made the opening statements for the prosecution, presenting three essential arguments that were to represent the body of his case: that Lizzie Borden was predisposed to murder her father and stepmother and planned to do so; that the evidence would show that she did, in fact, murder them; and that her behavior and contradictory accounts were not consistent with innocence. Equally important, Moody made clear, was that the defendant had had the time to kill her stepmother while Bridget was washing the outside windows and was not in the house to hear anything. Then, when Andrew Borden came home, Bridget was up in her room in the attic lying down and, Moody contended, Lizzie was not in the barn but alone on the first floor of the house with her father.
Since there was no sign of struggle, the killer was logically someone well-known to both victims, who would not elicit any alarm. The only one who fit this criterion, the prosecution maintained, was Lizzie Borden herself.
The prosecution called Thomas Kieran, an architect and engineer who was sent in by the government to take full measurements of the Borden house. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that someone could have hidden in the closet in the front hall and not been seen by anyone inside the house. That afternoon, the judges had the jury visit the house to examine the crime scene for themselves.
John Morse testified that he had not seen Lizzie from the time he arrived at the Borden house on Wednesday until he returned after the murders on Thursday. He had been an early suspect, but convinced the police his alibi was sound and that he knew nothing about the crime. Interestingly, he was able to give a full and complete account of his own whereabouts at the time of the murders, down to the number of the streetcar he had ridden, the number on the conductor’s cap, and the names of everyone he had encountered. It is almost as if he knew he would need to have this corroborating information and so made careful note of all of it.
Bridget Sullivan testified that she had no knowledge of the communication from Abby’s sick friend that Lizzie had mentioned. When Robinson asked her if anyone could have entered the house while she was washing the outside windows, she admitted she had spent some time in a corner of the yard talking over the fence to the maid of the neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Michael Kelly.
Crucial to the case was the evidence suggesting a motive. Knowlton and Moody called witnesses to establish that Andrew Borden was intending to write a new will. An old will was never found, nor its existence proven, although John Morse had testified that his brother-in-law had told him he had a will, but then later testified that Andrew had not mentioned one. The “new” will, according to Morse, was to leave Emma and Lizzie each $ 25,000, with the remainder of Andrew’s $ 500,000 estate going to Abby. Further, Knowlton developed the additional motive of Andrew’s intent to dispose of his farm to Abby, just as he had already transferred ownership of a house occupied by Abby’s half-sister Sarah Whitehead to her. This was apparently a sore point between the Borden sisters and their stepmother, and they feared it might be “handwriting on the wall” as to their father’s future intentions.
Hannah Gifford, a local dressmaker, recalled a conversation with Lizzie in March 1892, in which she had referred to Abby as Lizzie’s mother.
Lizzie had rebuked her for referring to Abby this way, calling her “a mean good-for-nothing.”
“Oh, Lizzie, you don’t mean that,” Gifford said she replied.
“Yes,” Lizzie countered, “I don’t have much to do with her.”
Bridget testified that in the two years she’d been with the Bordens, she’d never heard “any trouble with the family, no quarreling or anything of that kind.”
All in all, however, the testimony about Lizzie’s predisposition was ambiguous and contradictory. The relationship between Lizzie and her father could be proven neither cold and flinty nor warm and fuzzy. As is so often the case with human behavior, it depended on who was observing.
However, two rulings by the court became crucial to the eventual outcome of the trial. On Saturday, June 10, the prosecution moved to enter Lizzie’s testimony at the inquest. George Robinson objected, since Lizzie had not been formally charged and was therefore not represented by counsel at the time.
On Monday, when court resumed, the justices disallowed the introduction of Lizzie’s contradicting testimony. Although today the absence of counsel would weigh quite heavily in the defendant’s favor, many legal scholars were mystified by the decision.
Of the other contradictions that crept into the record, the defense got Dr. Bowen to acknowledge that the morphine he had prescribed for Lizzie could have left her thinking fuzzy and confused.
The most dramatic moment of the trial took place on the seventh day. Dr. Edward Wood testified about his examination of the victims’ stomach contents and said that he had found no evidence of poisoning. He had examined the hatchet head broken off from its handle— the one police felt most likely to have been the murder weapon— and could find no traces of blood. He said that the killer ought to have had considerable blood on his or her person. (Remember that Lizzie was seen by Mrs. Churchill within ten minutes of Andrew’s murder.) Told he would produce the actual skulls of the victims to show how the blade would have penetrated them, Lizzie fainted. A true lady, too sensitive to countenance such raw displays, she was allowed to leave the room. Certainly the men of the jury would not have held it against her.
But that this particular blade had been the murder weapon was only a theory. If the police and prosecution couldn’t definitively identify the weapon, then it might have been taken from the house by whoever committed the crimes, leaving a vast gulf of reasonable doubt in one of the key points of the case.
On Wednesday, June 14, the prosecution called Eli Bence, the drug-store clerk. The defense objected. After hearing arguments from both sides as to the relevance of Lizzie’s attempt to purchase prussic acid, the justices ruled that Bence’s testimony —and the entire issue of Lizzie’s alleged attempt to secure poison— was irrelevant and inadmissible. There was, however, a chilling account from Alice Russell about a visit Lizzie had made to her on Wednesday, August 3, the evening before the murders. She quoted Lizzie as telling her, “I feel depressed. 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.”
After telling her friend about the sickness of her father and stepmother, she confided, “Sometimes I think our milk might be poisoned.”
When Russell had related that comment to the police on the day of the murders, they had seized the Borden milk supply and had it tested. Nothing unusual turned up.
Lizzie also mentioned a previous break-in to the house and two break-ins to the barn. She even said she had seen a “strange man run around the house.”
“I feel afraid sometimes that father has an enemy,” she said.
Another item was Anna Howland Borden’s statement recalling Lizzie’s unhappy description of her home life as the two women returned (along with Anna’s sister Carrie Lindley Borden) from a nineteen-week trip through Europe that Andrew had given Lizzie as a thirtieth birthday gift. Some accounts have referred to Anna and Carrie as Lizzie’s cousins, but the trial record states that they were not related (though, of course, Borden was a prominent name through this part of New England). Anna Borden’s statement said that Lizzie did not want to return to her stifling home life after the freedom and stimulation of the grand European tour.
When the defense objected to the introduction of the statement, the judges ruled that the testimony was too ambiguous and did not point directly to ill will against either Lizzie’s father or stepmother, so it, too, was excluded.
The defense used only two days to present its case. Essentially, they called witnesses to verify the presence of a mysterious young man in the vicinity of the Borden home. The intruder scenario was their alternative theory of the case. They explained away the missing note by suggesting that women did not like publicity and therefore it was natural that no one would come forward to say she had requested Abby’s presence on the fateful morning. The defense emphasized that no blood was found on Lizzie, ignoring testimony that the way the murders were committed—the killer’s position relative to the victims’—the offender easily could have avoided being spattered.
Andrew Jennings tried to get across several points to the jury: Lizzie must be presumed innocent unless she could not be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. There was no direct evidence against Lizzie, and some of the circumstantial links were weak. There was no weapon identified. There was no well-established motive, and nothing in the defendant’s character or previous behavior indicated she was capable of violence. Others had the opportunity to enter the house during the crucial time.
To counteract the effects of Alice Russell’s testimony regarding the burning of the dress,
Emma took the stand and said that she had urged Lizzie to burn the dress, a family custom when clothes were irredeemably soiled. This sounded odd from the household of a man as obsessively thrifty as Andrew Borden, actually known to make rags out of old clothes.
Emma testified that Lizzie deeply loved her father, that Andrew had worn a ring Lizzie had given him every day for the rest of his life. She insisted that she and Lizzie had been completely cooperative with the police during their examination of the house and had amply demonstrated they had nothing to hide.
To most observers, Emma remained something of an enigma. So retiring was she, few photographs are known to exist. She was described as shy, small, plain-looking, thin- faced, and bony— altogether an unremarkable forty-one-year-old spinster. She was strongly supportive of Lizzie during the trial, although one witness, Hannah Reagan, a day matron at the Central Police Station who had responsibility for Lizzie during the preliminary hearing, had testified to overhearing an argument between the sisters while Emma was visiting Lizzie on August 24.
“Emma, you have given me away, haven’t you?” Lizzie charged.
“No, Lizzie, I have not,” Emma responded.
“You have and I will let you see I won’t give in one inch.”
“Oh, Lizzie, I didn’t,” Emma insisted.
Lizzie did not take the stand in her own defense.
On Monday, June 19, defense attorney Robinson delivered his closing arguments, reiterating the points Jennings had made and dismissing the possibility that Lizzie could have kept changing out of blood-soaked dresses without anyone noticing and getting rid of them without a trace, as would have had to have happened if she had been the killer.
Then Knowlton began his own closing arguments, completing them the next day. He painted a word picture for the jury of what he considered the most likely scenario. He had Lizzie killing her hated stepmother, then knowing she could not face her father, she had no choice but to kill him, too.
After both sides were done, chief justice Mason asked Lizzie if she wanted to say anything. For the only time during the trial she spoke in open court, saying just, “I am innocent. I leave it to my counsel to speak for me.”
THE VERDICT
Justice Dewey’s charge to the jury remains one of the most controversial aspects of the entire trial. He instructed them to take into account her fine character and devotion to charitable organizations and to keep in mind that any single unprovable element in the prosecution’s chain of logic “is fatal to the government’s case,” or as he restated even more sharply, “if there is a fact established— whether in that line of proof or outside of it—which cannot reasonably be reconciled with her guilt, then guilt cannot be said to be established.”
At 3 :24 on Tuesday, June 20, 1893, the jury was sworn and given the case. At 4: 32 that same afternoon they announced that their deliberations were completed. Yet another way in which this trial prefigured the O. J. Simpson trial a century later.
The verdict was not guilty on all counts.
The case remains officially unsolved to this day.
Many commentators have stated that the trial and the verdict represented the triumph of law over popular emotion, and if one reviews the actual record of the case, this may well be true. But from every perspective other than the strictly jurisprudential one, the case remains troubling and unsettled, with the more than nagging feeling lingering that in the Lizzie Borden case, justice has not been served.
So how would we on the behavioral analysis side evaluate these crimes? And then, once that evaluation is complete, what could we have come up with of a proactive nature that might have gotten us closer to justice?
THE NATURE OF THE CRIME
If we were consulting on a case such as this today, the first thing we’d try to do is to define the crime according to several standard criteria and classifications. Some of this might seem self -evident as we go along, but it is important in all criminal investigations to proceed in a logical, step -by-step manner in which each step makes us more confident of the direction in which we’re heading. A good, experienced detective takes nothing for granted. It’s almost like a pilot’s pre-flight checklist. He may have gone over each item a million times, but if he happens to ignore one and that turns out to be the weak link, then he and his passengers could be headed for disaster. It is too easy— and I have seen this many times— to come to one simple, but wrong, conclusion and then proceed off logically from there. You will then, of course, come up with a logical and well-reasoned, but wrong, answer.
First of all, these murders are what we would term personal-cause homicides, which simply means acts ensuing from interpersonal aggression. Before we can be secure with this, though, we have to examine the other possibilities.
Nothing of value was taken from the victims or the house, which would tend to rule out the felony murder—that is, a murder during the commission of another crime, such as burglary—or the normal criminal enterprise type of homicide. However, we’d have to say that since the victim was a man of considerable means, we must consider that this could have been a contract—or third-party—killing, or an insurance/ inheritance-related death. Sometimes there will be a mixed motive, and we should keep both of these in mind as we proceed.
Nor does this scenario fit the other two general categories for murder. It does not suggest itself to be a sexual homicide as we saw with the Whitechapel murders. And there is no evidence of a group-cause homicide, which would include cult and extremist murders, hostage situations, or what we refer to as group-excitement homicides, in which two or more people commit murder as a result of the spontaneous excitement of the moment.
Because of where the crimes took place, we have to strongly consider that they may be domestic homicides, a subcategory of personal-cause homicides. And within this subcategory, we have the further refinements of spontaneous domestic homicide and staged domestic homicide. The prime difference between the two is that the latter involves some degree of planning and follow-through.
The first killing, determined by both direct forensic and circumstantial evidence, was of Abby. This might have been either a spontaneous or a planned crime. The subsequent killing of Andrew had to have been planned. The prosecution’s theory notwithstanding, this gives us some reason to believe the first killing may have been planned as well.
In any case, the sustained aggression of the repeated hatchet cuts to the face of both victims, much more than was necessary to cause nearly instant death, is commonly seen in domestic homicides. We believe this to be not only a manifestation of deep-seated and often long-standing anger by the offender against the victim, but also an attempt to depersonalize him or her. In the Whitechapel murders we could interpret the mutilation of the genitalia and evisceration of the vagina, uterus, and ovaries as an attempt to strip the victim of her sexual identity and power. Here, the facial battery indicates an attempt to strip the victim of actual identity and familiar power.
Significantly, Andrew was attacked as he slept. The first blow would have been sufficient to cause death and would have prevented him from crying out and alerting anyone. From the wound patterns on Abby’s body, however, it is clear that the killer straddled her during the attack, which means he or she would have had to look straight into the victim’s eyes.
VICTIMOLOGY
We have examined Andrew Borden’s business prominence and his seemingly obsessive, almost ostentatious frugality. There is no indication he was a likable man. But from what we can gather, despite the frugal nature of the daily lives he imposed on himself and his family, he was moderately generous with his wife and daughters. He did, after all, give Lizzie an expensive trip to Europe for her thirtieth birthday. He was tidy, reserved, and brusque, but we have to keep in mind that it was the social ethos of the day that males worked hard to support the family and, in turn, were expected to rule that family. This was especially true in New England.
Ever since the house had been robbed in the summer of 1891, Andrew had kept his own bedroom locked, although he left the key in plain sight on the downstairs mantel. This may seem strange until we look further into the family dynamics. Though it was never proven, Andrew suspected Lizzie of having been the burglar. This wasn’t just an idle speculation. For some years, Lizzie had had a quiet reputation around town as a kleptomaniac. The local merchants would discreetly present invoices to Andrew for what she had taken and he would discreetly pay them, avoiding any taint of public scandal. As far as we can tell, this habit was never mentioned in the Borden household. It is likely that locking the bedroom door but leaving the key in plain sight was a silent communication to Lizzie.
How much of Lizzie’s behavior was acting out to get her father’s attention is open to psychological interpretation. Andrew had married his first wife, Sarah Anthony Morse, in 1845. Sarah died in 1862. Emma had just turned twelve. Lizzie was two and a half. Two years later, Andrew married Abby Durfee Grady, a shy, squat, heavy, and humorless woman from a family nearly as prominent as the Bordens. Abby was thirty-six years of age and had never been married.
Andrew was a rigid obsessive-compulsive and together with Lizzie’s behavior, there has been speculation that his traits match those of a sexual abuser and hers match those of a woman victimized. Certainly he kept his family socially isolated, and his driving force seemed to be having power and control over others. His choice of a second wife is significant in that it was as pragmatic as everything else in his life. He opted for a socially prominent but unattractive woman without other prospects who he could be assured would be grateful and subservient to him, rather than a younger woman who might give him the son he had always wanted.
Abby was devoted to her much younger half-sister Sarah Whitehead, and Abby’s generous, eager-to-please personality came out only in the home of her sister. Other than with Sarah and Sarah’s daughter, Abby appeared to have no real close relationships. Since the squabble over the ownership transfer of some of Andrew’s properties, Lizzie had stopped calling Abby her mother and now called her Mrs. Borden. She wasn’t shy about telling friends how oppressive she found her home life with Abby.
PRIME SUSPECTS AND MOTIVES
Okay, so where do we go from here?
The next factor to consider is the relative risk level of the crime. It took place in broad daylight, in a low-crime area, on a street with frequent pedestrian and vehicular traffic of both a personal and business nature. And since this was before the days of automobiles, such traffic would be relatively slow. Moreover, we know from Bridget Sullivan’s account that the door Andrew Borden used to gain entry to the house had been locked and bolted. Is it possible that an intruder gained entry through an unlocked door and then locked it behind him to keep the others away? Highly doubtful, because an intruder's primary concern is going to be how to get quickly out of the premises. Bridget herself had trouble with the bolt. This would not have allowed for a quick getaway.
Since we're ruled out professional or amateur burglary, what other type of offender might take the kind of high risk this crime entailed?
If the stakes were high enough or the payoff sufficiently worthwhile, a contract killer might take such a risk. We could, off the tops of our heads, come up with a scenario in which any of the numerous parties with whom Andrew Borden has business might have a reason to want him "out of business." But there are two problems with this. First, investigators found no such animosity. Andrew was a hard-driving tightfisted businessman, but no one was out to get him or profited significantly from his death. Second, a contract killer would have had no conceivable reason to kill Abby. So if the UNSUB got to the Borden home expecting Andrew to be there and found he was not, he would have simply gotten the hell out and waited for another opportunity.
There is, of course, one exception to this logic. And that is if the reason for the murders had to do with insurance and/or inheritance. In that case, Abby is the critical target. And in that case, who would reason to put up the contract? The target population is small: Emma, Lizzie and possibly Abby's half-sister, Sarah Whitehead.
We can reasonably eliminate Sarah. Not only did she and Abby have a close relationship, she had no problem with the Bordens. Andrew had deeded some of his property to her benefit already, and there were indications of more to come, a fact that the Borden sisters were said to have resented deeply. Also, even if Mrs. Whitehead had decided to do in her sister for her inheritance, she would have needed Andrew to die first, so that according to law, Abby would have first inherited her husband’s estate. As it was, with Abby dying first, the estate would go to his heirs, namely Emma and Lizzie.
And this is exactly what happened. It cannot be by chance that Abby was killed first.
Which leaves the two sisters and a believable motive. But if Emma and/ or Lizzie was going to hire a contract killer, wouldn’t the trained professional have made the crime look like a robbery, or at least the clear work of an intruder? What would be the point of hiring a contract killer but then having the crime scene and circumstantial evidence point right back to Lizzie? Unless it was Emma who hired the killer and her intention was to set up Lizzie so that Emma would get the entire estate. But that’s really getting excessively complicated. There is nothing in Emma’s personality to suggest she could be this Machiavellian, and more to the point, when she had the perfect opportunity to cut her sister loose after she was arrested and indicted, Emma stood by her and insisted Lizzie did not commit the heinous killings.
Given all of the foregoing, I’m ready to eliminate the contract killer scenario and move on. Okay, so no robber-burglar, no hit man. What about a disorganized offender? The rumors about a crazed madman were rife. Maybe he broke in and could even have hidden himself in the downstairs closet for the hour and a half between the murders. But not after the rage and overkill demonstrated with Abby’s murder and not before the rage and overkill that would be demonstrated again on Andrew. Nobody with that kind of seething turmoil inside is going to be able to control himself to that extent for that long.
I’ve never seen or read about anything like it. Even waiting out in the open for Stephen Manchester to return home after the killing of Bertha, Jose Correira gave up and left. And this was someone with a discernible grudge. Given the physical setting, too, I would be extremely surprised to see a disorganized offender leave no blood trail between the upstairs murder site and the one downstairs. Certainly there would have been blood traces in the closet in which he would have hidden.
So what I’d be telling local police is the same conclusion they came to themselves: This is probably the work of someone close to the family, with knowledge of their comings and goings, with knowledge of the layout of the inside of the house. Someone whose presence would not arouse suspicion.
So is there anyone of this description who had motive for the murders? We could make cases for Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget. And of those, who had access and opportunity between 9: 30 and 11: 00 A.M. on August 4, 1892? Because of Emma’s trip to Fairhaven, we’re down to Lizzie and Bridget.
What was Bridget’s possible motive? What was the precipitating stressor? She wasn’t feeling well that warm and humid morning; she’d been vomiting and was weak from her ordeal. And yet Abby insisted she clean all the windows in the house, inside and out. Maybe she just cracked . . . lost it. The two years of domestic oppression caught up with her and she took out all of her frustration and rage on the hapless Abby. She could then either run away or stick around and complete the job on Andrew when he returned home and make it look like an intruder. But then wouldn’t she have killed Lizzie, too? Leaving her alive would have been more dangerous than leaving Andrew alive.
And we have another problem with this. Bridget liked her job. She wanted to be able to keep it. There is no indication that she ever had a serious disagreement with her employers. They got along well, and Mr. and Mrs. Borden treated her with respect and consideration. They even called her by her proper name, something Emma and Lizzie couldn’t be bothered with, calling her Maggie rather than Bridget.
What about Lizzie and Bridget in collusion? One or both of them kills the Borden’s, Lizzie inherits a fortune and pays Bridget off for her troubles.
Again, we have to deal with personality, and there didn’t seem to be anything in Bridget’s that would allow her to take that bold a step. She would have been too scared. The police found her quite timid. Nothing indicates that she would have been motivated to commit such a crime for any amount of money. If Bridget had been involved, a vulnerable young servant with her personality would have broken under interrogation, particularly with the intimidation tactics the police would have used back then. That said, Bridget had to have suspected Lizzie. She was the only other one there, and Lizzie had pointedly brought up the cloth sale, likely in an attempt to get Bridget out of the house.
Although Emma seems to have been out of town during the murders, she has not avoided suspicion. After she received the telegram from Dr. Bowen, she did not take the first train back from Fairhaven. She did not take the second, nor the third. The fourth train did not get her back until the evening. This does not indicate conspiracy to me, but I sure wouldn’t discount it as a possible indication that as soon as she heard about the murders, Emma had at least a vague fear about what had really happened. The same could be said for Uncle John, who strolls back and, despite the activity on the street, stands around the backyard eating pears that have fallen from the trees.
Frank Spiering, who in Prince Jack proposed Prince Eddie, the Duke of Clarence, as Jack the Ripper, weaves a scenario for Emma as the killer of her father and stepmother in Lizzie. He has her establish her alibi fifteen miles away in Fairhaven, then surreptitiously driving her buggy back to Fall River, hiding upstairs in the house, committing the murders, then driving back to Fairhaven. Once Lizzie is accused, the sisters work together to protect each other. However, at one point it seems that Emma is trying to double-cross Lizzie, and Lizzie forces her to share the inheritance equally.
The problem with this scenario is that there is absolutely no evidence to support it— only that it could have happened. To me, this is a perfect example of the common tendency to make the facts fit the theory, rather than the other way around. All of the behavioral evidence concerning Emma— all of it—suggests she was shy, self-effacing, timid, and dominated by Lizzie. There is no way she could have come up with such an elaborate plan to kill her father and stepmother.
Another theory concerns Andrew’s alleged disturbed, illegitimate son, William Borden, by a local woman named Phebe Hathaway. Author Arnold R. Brown makes a case for William as the killer in his interesting and provocative 1991 book, Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter.
According to the William Borden theory, he was making demands of his father, who was drawing up his will. These demands were rejected by Andrew. William, in a fit of rage, killed Abby first, hid in the house with Lizzie’s knowledge, then killed his father. Because of his illegitimate status and a possible claim he might have to Andrew’s estate, Lizzie, Emma, Uncle John, Dr. Bowen, and attorney Jennings conspired to keep his crime hidden. The conspirators then either paid William off, threatened him, or both. They decided that Lizzie would allow herself to be a suspect and be tried for the murders, knowing she could always identify the actual killer, should that become necessary. William apparently was fascinated with hatchets and may have had a connection to the Bertha Manchester murder. Arnold Brown questions whether it might have been a contract murder to divert guilt away from Lizzie. As intriguing as this theory may be, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to support it. In fact, Leonard Rebello, author of the comprehensive and exhaustively researched Lizzie Borden: Past & Present, writes, “No information was located to substantiate Mr. Brown’s allegation.” The behavioral evidence regarding Lizzie, on the other hand, has been well documented.
LIZZIE
Let’s take a look at Lizzie’s situation. From photographs, she had been rather cute as a child and teenager. But by the time in question, she had matured into what can be most delicately described as a rather plain, round-faced, robust woman— not exactly like the late actress Elizabeth Montgomery, the talented beauty I remember from the TV movie about Lizzie. She was an unmarried spinster living in her father’s house, not getting along with her stepmother, with no real prospects of getting out or changing things. The same can be said for Emma, but Emma was not the kind of outgoing woman with high social expectations that Lizzie was. Since their mother’s death, Emma had essentially dedicated herself to caring for Lizzie, a promise she had made to her mother on her deathbed.
Lizzie was willful and stubborn and liked to be noticed, which would almost surely have put her into conflict with her father. At the inquest, she often displayed a belligerent temper. She dropped out of school in the tenth grade, was subject to black moods, and indulged in numerous remedies to deal with them. She desperately wanted to live in the style to which she felt her family’s social station entitled her, and that began with a house on “the Hill,” by far the best neighborhood in town. The people Lizzie envied there were largely her rich cousins who had inherited their wealth for two generations running and had no compunction about spending it. Her father, who had scraped for every penny, however, had no interest in such pretensions. He gave Lizzie a generous allowance, and Lizzie had all the fine dresses she wanted, but Andrew thought the house at 92 Second Street was perfectly adequate for their needs. If he wouldn’t go for electricity and modern plumbing, he certainly wasn’t going to relocate his family to a grand house on the Hill.
Lizzie was in a bind. She yearned to move out and live in a socially prominent manner. But she certainly couldn’t afford to do that on her own, and even if she could, it was so socially improper for a single woman of her class not to live at home while her parents remained alive that had she moved out, she would not have been accepted by the society she so craved to join. The real hope would be marriage to a well-to-do gentleman. But she was thirty-two, so that didn’t look likely. She had had a few beaux over the years, but all of the relationships had Emma, but Emma was not the kind of outgoing woman with high social expectations that Lizzie was. Since their mother’s death, Emma had essentially dedicated herself to caring for Lizzie, a promise she had made to her mother on her deathbed.
And the situation might have been getting desperate. Andrew had already turned over real estate holdings to Abby and her half-sister as early as 1887–five years before–and Lizzie and Emma both feared they would be increasingly cut out of their father's estate. If that was the case, then they would be at Abby's mercy when the already seventy year-old Andrew passed on.
We know that the night before the murders, Andrew and John Morse discussed business with each other in the first-floor sitting room. There is some indication that Andrew was seeking advice about his will. So whether or not Lizzie had been gradually trying to poison her parents, this discussion with Uncle John could have been the precipitating stressor that made the act urgent. Once there was a will bequeathing everything to Abby, it would be too late.
Did a will really exist? We'll never know. None was ever found, though it is difficult to imagine a man as meticulous as Andrew Borden not having one. Perhaps the stained dress was not the only thing burned.
Strong evidence exists that at least at one time Lizzie and Andrew were close, though his marriage to Abby would have made their relationship emotionally complicated at best. He constantly wore the ring Lizzie had given him as a sign of her love and devotion. Father and daughter had gone on frequent fishing trips together while she was growing up, and she maintained a passion for fishing, though she had not been in five years. This fact made her story about going into the barn to make sinkers somewhat suspect.
Another story believed to be apocryphal by some students of the case offers an interesting possible precipitating incident in May 1892. Some say Lizzie kept pigeons roosting in the barn, which had recently been broken into. Andrew surmised that the culprits were boys wanting to steal the pigeons, so to thwart them, he went into the barn with a hatchet and killed all of the birds, leaving a bloody hatchet for all, including Lizzie, to see.
The symmetry with the murders three months later seems almost too neat and facile, but we certainly can’t ignore the possible influence if the first event occurred. At the very least, it would show two people apparently unable to deal with each other’s emotional needs or sensibilities.
I don’t think it is going too far to say that in many ways Lizzie saw herself as a victim. Under the section on Staged Domestic Homicide in the Crime Classification Manual, we wrote: “Post-offense interviews of close friends or family members often reveal that the victim had expressed concerns or fears regarding his or her safety or even a sense of foreboding.” If Lizzie had somehow transposed the roles of attacker and victim in her mind, then the anguished visit to Alice Russell the night before the murders fits perfectly into this emotional context.
In late July of 1892, Lizzie accompanied Emma to New Bedford, Massachusetts. By some accounts they left home after a family disagreement over a suspected transfer to Abby of one of the Swansea farms they had often visited as girls. They were on their way to see friends— Emma to the Brownells in Fairhaven and Lizzie to some acquaintances in Marion. But in New Bedford, Lizzie decided to spend several days with an old schoolmate before returning home on August 2. By then, Andrew and Abby were complaining of stomach upset, and Abby would then go to Dr. Bowen with the notion that someone was trying to poison them. (Note again the just mentioned passage from the Crime Classification Manual.)
It was the next day that Lizzie was seen in the drugstore trying to buy prussic acid (for another try?) and that night that she visited Alice Russell.
THE BEHAVIORAL CASE
The personality and the pre-offense behavioral indicators are there. Let’s look at the crime scene indicators.
Lizzie claimed to have discovered her father’s freshly slain body, but did not leave the house. Instead, she sent Bridget out and called a neighbor over, even though she would have to presume the killer might still be inside. Mrs. Churchill reported no expressions of fear for their immediate safety by Lizzie at this time.
Likewise with the first murder, Lizzie said she believed her stepmother had just returned home and asked Bridget (ultimately accompanied by Mrs. Churchill) to go look for her upstairs.
With a crazed killer still in the house?
Lizzie made no move to flee the house or to get the others out to safety. Nor did anyone suggest to Dr. Bowen or arriving police officers that maybe the killer was still in the house.
In domestic murders , the killer often sets up someone else to discover the body, rather than having to “find” it him- or herself.
To assume an intruder, we have to deal with all the implications of someone coming into the house, staying there for more than an hour and a half, and not alerting any family members. This guy would have had to have had the stealth and assassin skills of a Navy SEAL. From my experience, there is no way a stranger off the street would have come in and gone straight up to the second floor. He wouldn’t have known who was inside, what the environment was. He would have been afraid of being trapped. Even a maniac wouldn’t hang around for ninety minutes, and he would have killed Lizzie and Bridget, too. No one is going into that house without some critical information, and this is a subject with which we’ll also deal in the next chapter.
As we’ve said, no note to Abby was ever found, even though Lizzie and Emma offered a substantial reward for it. The story about Abby’s going out would have been necessary to keep Andrew from going upstairs to see her when he returned home.
Normally in a domestic homicide we expect to see some effort at staging the crime scene to make it look like a rape or robbery gone bad or something else that would suggest an intruder rather than someone from the house or family. I think the reason we don’t have that staging here is because with Bridget in and around the house, Lizzie knew there was too much of a chance she would be seen doing this. Also, to make it look like a robbery, she’d have had to take something, and if she was remaining in the house, what would she do with it? She had to know the house would be thoroughly searched.
The crime scene photograph of Andrew Borden shows his wool overcoat folded on the arm of the sofa, as if he had been using it as a pillow. While it is possible that he did this, it would have been completely out of character. He was as meticulous about his clothing as he was about everything else, and it’s unlikely he would have wrinkled a coat he would then wear again on his afternoon business rounds.
Is it possible, we have to wonder, that he had actually hung it up or left it draped over the back of a chair, and that the killer put it on to avoid being spattered with blood? Then, once the deed was done, folded it to appear as if Andrew had been using it as a pillow so that the blood could easily be explained? And who would need to avoid the blood? Only someone who was not planning on getting away from the scene immediately after the murders.
And what of the rest of the blood? There is, of course, the dress Lizzie burned in the stove, which she could have been wearing during one of the murders. It is also possible that she stripped naked to carry out the murders and then quickly washed herself, though I would wonder about a woman of that era with the social pretensions Lizzie had taking off all her clothing in this manner, not to mention the risk of being seen by Bridget. In some ways, that is more difficult to conceive of than the murders themselves.
Bloody water was seen in a washbasin in the house, but when Dr. Albert C. Dedrich, a Fall River physician who also examined the Borden bodies, asked about it, he was told that one of the other doctors or police officers had washed his hands in it after touching the crime scene.
That same afternoon, Officer William Medley noticed a pail of water in the wash cellar containing small towels that seemed to be covered with blood. He asked Lizzie about it, and she replied that she had explained it all to Dr. Bowen. Bowen, in turn, assured Medley that it was all right , implying that the pail contained menstrual rags, a subject about which men were exceedingly squeamish. No one was going to examine Lizzie to determine if she was actually having her period, and no one checked the potential evidence of the pail. Lizzie said it had been there for three or four days, although Bridget claimed she had not seen it before that day. It probably would not have been there two days before or Bridget would have noticed it when she did the washing.
When it came to the trial, the idea that the pail contained menstrual rags was accepted as fact. George Robinson reminded the jury “that Professor Wood said he would not undertake to say that that blood was not menstrual blood. . . . You know enough in your own households, you know all about it. You are men and human. You have your own feelings about it. I am not going to drag them up, but you must not lose sight of these things.”
And no one did.
STRATEGIES
So if you believe Lizzie Borden to have been the killer of her father and stepmother, is there anything that could have been done in the investigation or trial that might have brought about a verdict to that effect? Based on the experience we’ve had in many cases within the Investigative Support Unit, I think that there is. Of course, as in the Whitechapel murders, this presupposes an understanding of criminal behavior and practice that hadn’t been developed at the time, but if it had, could we have gotten Lizzie to crack?
The first thing I would have tried was to play on the strain in Lizzie and Emma’s relationship as perceived by the prison matron. One way to accomplish this would have been to befriend one of the zillions of reporters who were haunting the town and given him an accurate but pretty generic evaluation of the case. I would have told him that it has been our experience that in a crime of this nature, there would have been a primary offender, but also a secondary person, almost a compliant victim, who was dominated by the subject, who knows exactly what happened, and who should now be very concerned for her own well-being.
We would be trying to drive a wedge into a psychological master-slave relationship. The dominant individual will want all of the money and control. The loyalty in the relationship is one-sided. Since this person has shown the capacity to kill twice in cold blood, he or she could easily kill again. And even if she does not resort to violence, she could easily turn on her benefactress and point the finger at her.
I’d make sure my target had seen the newspaper articles before I attempted to interview her. They would confirm a fear that was already in her mind. Important to this strategy would be trying to keep Emma away from Lizzie, since Lizzie’s personality was so dominant. And I would try this not only with Emma, but with Uncle John as well, since we couldn’t be sure which or if both of them might have had inside information or harbored fears about Lizzie.
Of course, I would take a shot with Lizzie, too. In situations where the subject is facing a possible capital murder conviction, getting an outright confession is going to be difficult. He’s got nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling the truth. So we try to offer some sort of face- saving scenario that the subject can buy into.
As readers of Mindhunter will recall, Larry Gene Bell, the brutal and psychologically sadistic abductor and killer of seventeen-year-old Shari Faye Smith and nine-year-old Debra May Helmick in Columbia, South Carolina, was hunted down and caught through an efficient combination of profiling and first-rate police work. Sheriff Jim Metts and his detectives knew they had the right man, but he was understandably unwilling to confess to these despicable acts that could (and ultimately did) get him an appointment with the South Carolina electric chair.
So they gave me a crack at him. I gave him some background on the serial killer study we’d done in the FBI, how we’d gone around to the penitentiaries and learned from the actual killers what was going on in their minds.
“The problem for us, Larry,” I explained, “is that when you go to court, your attorney probably isn’t going to want you to take the stand, and you’ll never have the opportunity to explain yourself. All they’ll know about you is the bad side, nothing good, just that you’re a coldblooded killer.
We’ve found that very often when people do this kind of thing, it is like a nightmare, and when they wake up the next morning , they can’t believe they’ve actually committed this crime.” All the time I was talking, Bell was nodding his head in agreement.
I knew if I asked him outright about the murders, he’d deny it. So I leaned in
close and asked, “When did you first start feeling bad about the crime?”
And he said, “When I saw a photograph and read a newspaper article about the family praying at the cemetery.”
“Larry, as you’re sitting here now, did you do this thing? Could you have done it?”
He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “All I know is that the Larry Gene Bell sitting here couldn’t have done this, but the bad Larry Gene Bell could have.”
I would think a similar tactic might have worked on Lizzie. I’d start by playing on the blood, asking her where it all went. How she washed it off. How she had to burn that dress. She would have been more sophisticated than Bell, so the approach would have to have been commensurate to her intellectual level, but it might have gone something like this:
“Lizzie, we know from our experience and research that this type of act is unlike a woman, certainly unlike a woman of your standing and upbringing. So if you were involved, we know that there must have been strong and compelling factors that drove you, factors over which you had no conscious control. We can only imagine what it must have been like to lose your mother when you did, then having to live with Abby all those years. We know how manipulative she must have been, how she took advantage of your father, how she subtly turned him away from you and Emma. Emma cared for you and protected you, and now you realized the time had come for you to care for and protect her, to assure her future and yours after your father passed on.”
I know I’d have her attention. She’d be quiet, listening carefully, evaluating what I was saying, trying to figure where I was coming from and how it would affect her. If I were dealing with an innocent person, I’d expect a series of strong denials to practically every statement I made. But Lizzie would be receptive as I reeled her in.
“And what about your father? We know he tried to love you, as much as he was capable of. But think back, rip off the scar tissue of the old wounds. Is it possible that he loved you too much, or in the wrong way? You were so much like your mother, a woman he adored far more than he could ever care for Abby. And is this something Emma knew about? Something she saw? You may have repressed this. I know how painful it is, but I’ve seen other cases like this and I know what can happen. I understand. People say you haven’t shown enough grief. But when I see this, I know there’s a reason. What has he done to you? We can’t change the past, Lizzie— the distant past or the recent past. But what we need to do is to get people to understand why you did what you did. I’m going to leave a pad of paper with you, and if and when anything comes to mind, I want you to write it down. Sometimes that’s the easiest way.”
Then I’d go away and give her time to build her story. But before I left, I’d add something to the effect of, “Lizzie, the person who did this doesn’t need punishment, she needs help. She doesn’t need to be in a prison, she needs to be in an institution.”
She might have been disdainful of this approach to begin with, but if I could keep the dialogue going and get her involved, I’d have confidence something useful might emerge.
Another variation of this technique would be to try to get another newspaper article out. This one would be an interview with me, touting me as the outside expert brought in to consult with the police. But in the interview, I’d concede disagreement with some of the investigators and within the department itself. I’d say that most of the detectives feel this was a well-planned, cold-blooded assassination-style crime. But I believed it was impulsive , that it represented suddenly uncontrolled rage, that the subject was literally out of her mind for those brief moments. I’d say that many of these acts are like a dream, but there will be one aspect that will make the subject say to herself, “My God, maybe I did do this!” This would help plant a defense and build up trust in me and my views for the prospective interview. I’d want her to perceive me as her one possible lifeline: she might not get away with murder, but I might understand.
THE AFTERMATH
Two months after the trial, Lizzie and Emma moved into a fourteen-room light stone house they had purchased at 7 French Street, on the Hill. Lizzie named the house Maplecroft and had the name carved into the top stone step leading up to the front door. Lizzie, who began calling herself Lizbeth, found it impossible to go back to her old church because of the gossip and social ostracism. Emma, on the other hand, remained a churchgoer.
Strangely, prosecutor William Moody received in the mail a package from Lizzie containing official photographs of the trial— including the crime scenes—along with a handwritten note to the effect that she thought he might like them “as souvenirs of an interesting occasion.”
As we would expect from someone whose crimes were situational and directed at close family, Lizzie Borden never committed another known act of violence throughout her life. In fact, she became a great friend to animals and was a fervent supporter of the humane movement.
In 1897 , Lizzie was charged with the theft of two paintings, valued at less than $100, from the Tilden-Thurber Co. store in Providence. The problem was privately resolved, although a rumor persisted that in exchange for the charges being dropped, she had agreed to sign a confession to the murders of her father and stepmother. The “signature” proved to be fake.
In 1904, Lizzie met a beautiful and glamorous young actress named Nance O’Neil, and for the next two years, the two women were practically inseparable. After Lizzie staged a lavishly catered party at Maplecroft for O’Neil’s theatrical company, Emma moved out and went to live in Providence. Sometime around 1923, Emma moved to Newmarket, New Hampshire, where she rented a place and lived quietly and virtually anonymously.
On June 1, 1927, after complications from gallbladder surgery, Lizzie Borden died in Fall River at age sixty-seven. Emma was not included in her will and did not return to Fall River to attend the funeral. Nine days later, Emma succumbed to chronic nephritis. Like Lizzie, she left her estate to a variety of charitable causes.
Both sisters were buried in the family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, along with their father, their mother, their stepmother, and Alice Esther, the sister who had died in infancy.
The day of the murders, Bridget left the house, never to return. She was rumored to have gone back to Ireland, although this story has never been verified. In the late 1800s she settled in Anaconda, Montana, where she married a man whose surname was also Sullivan. She did not speak of the Borden murders until 1943, when she contracted a severe case of pneumonia and believed she was going to die. She called her closest friend to her bedside, saying she had a secret to confide. But by the time the friend arrived, Bridget was on her way to recovery and said nothing. The only thing she later told the friend about Lizzie is that she had always liked her. She died on March 25, 1948, in Butte, Montana, at the age of seventy-three.
The house at 92 Second Street in Fall River is still standing. Since, 1996, it has been open as a Bed-and-Breakfast. The curious or morbidly inclined can actually stay in the John Morse guest room, the site of Abby Borden’s murder. That room and the downstairs sitting room where Andrew was killed have been furnished to look just as they did on that warm, humid day in August of 1892.
Douglas, John E.; Olshaker, Mark (2001-01-23). The Cases That Haunt Us: From Jack the Ripper to Jon Benet Ramsey, The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Sheds New Light on the Mysteries That Won't Go Away (pp. 146-147). Scribner. Kindle Edition.
The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
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debbiediablo
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The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
DebbieDiablo
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Curryong
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Well done debbie on your marathon feat! I have 'The Cases that Haunt Us' and was impressed with it. It was the first book I read on the Borden case, besides one so many years ago that I've forgotten the Title, before joining the Forum. It was a great starting point.
The only thing I am not so sure of in this book are the Strategies. I'm not certain that a woman so sure of her status in life as Lizzie would be opening up to a stranger, even in order to be placed in an institution rather than being hanged! Nor do I think that she would have admitted that her father had sexually abused her, IF that had ever occurred.
The only thing I am not so sure of in this book are the Strategies. I'm not certain that a woman so sure of her status in life as Lizzie would be opening up to a stranger, even in order to be placed in an institution rather than being hanged! Nor do I think that she would have admitted that her father had sexually abused her, IF that had ever occurred.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I'm inclined to agree although Douglas is the expert, and I'm not. I also think that his strategy is way oversimplified from how it would manifest in real life. For sure it was a marathon. Somewhere amidsr my several zillion books it the old paperback edition of this from back when it was first published. Buying the Kindle edition was easier than finding it!
I took the easy way out with screen shots that can be enlarged on the Crime Classification Manual.
I'm of the opinion that none or very little of what any of us "do" is by chance even though we may not be aware of what drives us. The fact that Lizzie was looking to make sinkers in the barn suddenly took on a new and previously hidden meaning to me.
I took the easy way out with screen shots that can be enlarged on the Crime Classification Manual.
I'm of the opinion that none or very little of what any of us "do" is by chance even though we may not be aware of what drives us. The fact that Lizzie was looking to make sinkers in the barn suddenly took on a new and previously hidden meaning to me.
DebbieDiablo
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(¸.·´ (¸.·'* Even Paranoids Have Enemies
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¸.· ´¸.·*´¨) ¸.·*¨)
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twinsrwe
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
WOW, Debbie, you went to a lot of trouble typing all of that up for us. I have the book, Cases That Haunt Us, by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, which I read when it was first published. Thanks to you, it was interesting to read the chapter on Lizzie again.
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"Vaya Con Dios" (Spanish for: "Go with God"), by Anne Murray ( https://tinyurl.com/y8nvqqx9 )
“God has you in heaven, but I have you in my heart.” ~ TobyMac (https://tinyurl.com/rakc5nd )
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
debbie, thank you so much for going to all the trouble of c&p and retyping this. it was very interesting rereading his thoughts. what a welcome relief it was to read someone writing about the case who got almost all the facts right! also his very logical and acute thoughts, running down the possible suspects, and the process of elimination.
this stands out as not being accurate:
reading everything all of a piece here, lizzie's sending that package to moody, writing that she thought he might like them 'as souvenirs of an interesting occasion,' is
i've been sitting here for 5 or more minutes, trying to get into her head to figure out why she did that. it's such a bizarre and foolish thing to do. we know she was impulsive, but even still, wow! all i can get is it came from anger, and a feeling of 'ha ha, you lost, i won, and you can't touch me now.'
very interesting about the bucket of bloody water and menstrual rags. i knew i'd read somewhere that her menstrual cycle had stopped earlier in the week, but didn't recall that came from lizzie herself. if it had been 3-4 days old, the blood and rags would have turned brown, and i don't believe bridget, whose job it was to deal with these things, wouldn't have seen it and taken care of it. lizzie could have easily taken some clean menstrual cloths, no doubt handily kept in her room, used them to clean herself up, then put them in the pail.
this stands out as not being accurate:
as we know, he's conflating the time period of alice and lizzie's statements, which makes it look a lot worse than it was.On Sunday morning, Miss Russell and Emma observed Lizzie burning a dress of blue cotton Bedford cord in the kitchen stove. “What are you going to do?” Emma asked.
“I am going to burn this old thing up,” Lizzie replied. “It is covered with paint.”
Alice said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t let anybody see me do that, Lizzie,” then added, “I am afraid the burning of the dress was the worst thing you could have done, Lizzie.”
Lizzie replied curiously, “Oh, what made you let me do it?” and “Why did you let me burn the dress?” The dress probably was, in fact, stained with paint. This was corroborated by others. But burning it was still odd at best.
reading everything all of a piece here, lizzie's sending that package to moody, writing that she thought he might like them 'as souvenirs of an interesting occasion,' is
i've been sitting here for 5 or more minutes, trying to get into her head to figure out why she did that. it's such a bizarre and foolish thing to do. we know she was impulsive, but even still, wow! all i can get is it came from anger, and a feeling of 'ha ha, you lost, i won, and you can't touch me now.'
very interesting about the bucket of bloody water and menstrual rags. i knew i'd read somewhere that her menstrual cycle had stopped earlier in the week, but didn't recall that came from lizzie herself. if it had been 3-4 days old, the blood and rags would have turned brown, and i don't believe bridget, whose job it was to deal with these things, wouldn't have seen it and taken care of it. lizzie could have easily taken some clean menstrual cloths, no doubt handily kept in her room, used them to clean herself up, then put them in the pail.
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
good point, and even more than her status in life being an issue, for me, there's the mindset, which was radically different in victorian times than from the perspective of someone living in the 2000s. he's well trained to do what he does, but not to put himself in the mindset of someone living in the late 1800s. if andrew sexually abused lizzie (and emma) or had a similarly inappropriate relationship with her, lizzie might have been willing to talk about it indirectly, in the way such things might have been discussed back then (similarly to the euphemism of 'having fleas'), but certainly not with a man.Curryong wrote:...
The only thing I am not so sure of in this book are the Strategies. I'm not certain that a woman so sure of her status in life as Lizzie would be opening up to a stranger, even in order to be placed in an institution rather than being hanged! Nor do I think that she would have admitted that her father had sexually abused her, IF that had ever occurred.
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Mara
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I got the Douglas book from my library a little while ago and read the section on Lizzie. Ge incorrectly described Abby's wounds as having been delivered from the front, destroying her face. I thought that was a fairly major thing yo get wrong.
I also thought his fantasy Q&A with Lizzie, feeling around for a revelation of childhood sexual abuse was an absurd overlay of modern sensibilities and terminology; I couldn't imagine Lizzie opening up as Douglas seems to think she might have. He did, at least provide some intriguing "evidence " for Andrew as a controlling person. But did he give enough credit to the times for making him that way?
I also thought his fantasy Q&A with Lizzie, feeling around for a revelation of childhood sexual abuse was an absurd overlay of modern sensibilities and terminology; I couldn't imagine Lizzie opening up as Douglas seems to think she might have. He did, at least provide some intriguing "evidence " for Andrew as a controlling person. But did he give enough credit to the times for making him that way?
Last edited by Mara on Sun Mar 09, 2014 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I'm not seeing where Douglas describes Abby's wounds as being inflicted from the front...my experience with digital books that weren't originally published from a digital format is that they're only as good (or as bad) as the person who transcribes them.
It's interesting, if true, that late in life Bridget said she had always liked Lizzie. Bridget seemed to be the only player who responded in any kind of normal way to the murders...she didn't want to go upstairs alone, she got out of the house several days later and never went back. And she never talked about it even though she survived everyone else by several decades.
Yet she had always liked Lizzie...somehow this rings wrong for me or else has implications that Lizzie either didn't kill them or had damn good reason to. If I worked for someone who bludgeoned her parents into minute steaks, I wouldn't "like" her at all. I'd hate her, and be fearful of her. And by the time Bridget supposedly makes this admission, she'd have absolutely no reason not to tell the truth. This makes me wonder if she sympathized with Lizzie for some horrific and secret reason...maybe Dr. Bowen did, too.
Which brings to mind the neighbor's comment: "We never heard that anyone of them is or ever
was Insane but I think some of them worse than Insane."
It's interesting, if true, that late in life Bridget said she had always liked Lizzie. Bridget seemed to be the only player who responded in any kind of normal way to the murders...she didn't want to go upstairs alone, she got out of the house several days later and never went back. And she never talked about it even though she survived everyone else by several decades.
Yet she had always liked Lizzie...somehow this rings wrong for me or else has implications that Lizzie either didn't kill them or had damn good reason to. If I worked for someone who bludgeoned her parents into minute steaks, I wouldn't "like" her at all. I'd hate her, and be fearful of her. And by the time Bridget supposedly makes this admission, she'd have absolutely no reason not to tell the truth. This makes me wonder if she sympathized with Lizzie for some horrific and secret reason...maybe Dr. Bowen did, too.
Which brings to mind the neighbor's comment: "We never heard that anyone of them is or ever
was Insane but I think some of them worse than Insane."
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Curryong
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
This may be relevant, maybe not, but I read this the other day in Edmund Pearson's account of Lizzie's trial. The Chief of Police of Fall River, a man called Feeney, was only a humble patrol officer in the police force in 1892.
He was sometimes given the job of escorting Bridget through the streets, to and from police interrogations and then the Inquest.
He told Pearson 'I thought that a young Irish fellow like meself might get an Irish girl to talk. So while we went through the streets I asked her what she thought about the murders. She wouldn't say a wor-r-d! She said "I'd be afraid to say anything at all. If I did that terrible man that killed poor Mrs Borden might come back and kill me too!"
He was sometimes given the job of escorting Bridget through the streets, to and from police interrogations and then the Inquest.
He told Pearson 'I thought that a young Irish fellow like meself might get an Irish girl to talk. So while we went through the streets I asked her what she thought about the murders. She wouldn't say a wor-r-d! She said "I'd be afraid to say anything at all. If I did that terrible man that killed poor Mrs Borden might come back and kill me too!"
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
another error is andrew, at least, was not given an autopsy in the dining room. a lot of people have made that mistake and i'm not sure where it originally came from. but we've seen his autopsy photos now and that portable mortician or coroner's table with the caning andrew was lying on was definitely in the sitting room.
unless, as you say, bridget knew something so terrible about what went on in that house, it made her sympathetic to lizzie.
otherwise i'd feel the same as you. i'd be afraid of her, in fear of what she might do to me because of what i knew, and hate her. i can't imagine ever saying i liked such a person.
… just got the message there was another post. hmm, curryong, i wonder if there's any truth to that. i can't help but feel that the truth isn't in the testimonies and statements we read and pour over; it's in comments not made while sworn, it's in things people were quoted as saying in newspaper articles.
yep, it is strange, but i thought bridget mentioned liking lizzie (and emma?) elsewhere as well. closer to the time of the trial. yet she also commented about how lizzie (and emma?) treated abby unkindly, so what the what?debbiediablo wrote:…
It's interesting, if true, that late in life Bridget said she had always liked Lizzie. Bridget seemed to be the only player who responded in any kind of normal way to the murders...she didn't want to go upstairs alone, she got out of the house several days later and never went back. And she never talked about it even though she survived everyone else by several decades.
Yet she had always liked Lizzie...somehow this rings wrong for me or else has implications that Lizzie either didn't kill them or had damn good reason to. If I worked for someone who bludgeoned her parents into minute steaks, I wouldn't "like" her at all. I'd hate her, and be fearful of her. And by the time Bridget supposedly makes this admission, she'd have absolutely no reason not to tell the truth. This makes me wonder if she sympathized with Lizzie for some horrific and secret reason...maybe Dr. Bowen did, too.
Which brings to mind the neighbor's comment: "We never heard that anyone of them is or ever
was Insane but I think some of them worse than Insane."
unless, as you say, bridget knew something so terrible about what went on in that house, it made her sympathetic to lizzie.
otherwise i'd feel the same as you. i'd be afraid of her, in fear of what she might do to me because of what i knew, and hate her. i can't imagine ever saying i liked such a person.
… just got the message there was another post. hmm, curryong, i wonder if there's any truth to that. i can't help but feel that the truth isn't in the testimonies and statements we read and pour over; it's in comments not made while sworn, it's in things people were quoted as saying in newspaper articles.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I wonder why not "Mr. and Mrs. Borden" unless there were two killers which is difficult for me to fathom.Curryong wrote:She (Bridget) said "I'd be afraid to say anything at all. If I did that terrible man that killed poor Mrs Borden might come back and kill me too!"
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Curryong
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Maybe it was just that Bridget had fonder feelings for Abby, with whom she worked day by day, than for Andrew, who may have seemed a bit more remote.
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
*fleetingly returning to the ruby/david anthony theory*Curryong wrote:…
He was sometimes given the job of escorting Bridget through the streets, to and from police interrogations and then the Inquest.
He told Pearson 'I thought that a young Irish fellow like meself might get an Irish girl to talk. So while we went through the streets I asked her what she thought about the murders. She wouldn't say a wor-r-d! She said "I'd be afraid to say anything at all. If I did that terrible man that killed poor Mrs Borden might come back and kill me too!"
what if david killed abby, they cleaned up, he was spirited away say half an hour or 45 minutes after the fact, and then lizzie killed andrew?
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
As far out as this might seem, it's no weirder than Charlie Manson or the Hillside Stranglers. Such scenario would also allow for Lizzie trying to protect David by "explaining" Abby's murder and then turning the hatchet on Andrew when he became enraged, fists clenched. Or maybe Lizzie tried to blame it on a violent intruder, and Andrew wouldn't buy it...either blaming David or Lizzie. If he blamed Lizzie, and she was trying to protect David, then the overkill would be totally understandable.Catbooks wrote:*fleetingly returning to the ruby/david anthony theory*Curryong wrote:…
He was sometimes given the job of escorting Bridget through the streets, to and from police interrogations and then the Inquest.
He told Pearson 'I thought that a young Irish fellow like meself might get an Irish girl to talk. So while we went through the streets I asked her what she thought about the murders. She wouldn't say a wor-r-d! She said "I'd be afraid to say anything at all. If I did that terrible man that killed poor Mrs Borden might come back and kill me too!"
what if david killed abby, they cleaned up, he was spirited away say half an hour or 45 minutes after the fact, and then lizzie killed andrew?
I'm also wondering if Lizzie was the "first finder" of the hatchet years before when O'Donnell left it behind. (She could have seen it from upstairs or even from the yard.) Or maybe she snagged it when his attention was elsewhere. People who like to steal will sometimes steal simply for the pleasure, whether or not they need the item. Then again maybe Lizzie saw it as coming in handy sometime in the future. If so, she was brilliant: a murder weapon that comes and goes without anyone's notice. And then gets reclaimed by the original owner.
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
well, she did write in that letter to her friend in marion that she'd do the cutting of the wood during their visit, because she had a 'sharp' ax or hatchet. that's what was supposed to have been in that letter, in any event.debbiediablo wrote:As far out as this might seem, it's no weirder than Charlie Manson or the Hillside Stranglers. Such scenario would also allow for Lizzie trying to protect David by "explaining" Abby's murder and then turning the hatchet on Andrew when he became enraged, fists clenched. Or maybe Lizzie tried to blame it on a violent intruder, and Andrew wouldn't buy it...either blaming David or Lizzie. If he blamed Lizzie, and she was trying to protect David, then the overkill would be totally understandable.Catbooks wrote:*fleetingly returning to the ruby/david anthony theory*Curryong wrote:…
He was sometimes given the job of escorting Bridget through the streets, to and from police interrogations and then the Inquest.
He told Pearson 'I thought that a young Irish fellow like meself might get an Irish girl to talk. So while we went through the streets I asked her what she thought about the murders. She wouldn't say a wor-r-d! She said "I'd be afraid to say anything at all. If I did that terrible man that killed poor Mrs Borden might come back and kill me too!"
what if david killed abby, they cleaned up, he was spirited away say half an hour or 45 minutes after the fact, and then lizzie killed andrew?
I'm also wondering if Lizzie was the "first finder" of the hatchet years before when O'Donnell left it behind. (She could have seen it from upstairs or even from the yard.) Or maybe she snagged it when his attention was elsewhere. People who like to steal will sometimes steal simply for the pleasure, whether or not they need the item. Then again maybe Lizzie saw it as coming in handy sometime in the future. If so, she was brilliant: a murder weapon that comes and goes without anyone's notice. And then gets reclaimed by the original owner.
unfortunately she couldn't have gotten that hatchet before the fact. o'donnell was only doing some work for dr. chagnon 'around the time or a little after' the murders.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Would be interesting to know if around the time of the murders is a few days before....
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
he said, according to the papers, it was either the day of or a little after that. it shouldn't have been difficult for them to nail down the day he started, but if they did, i never read anything about it.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
My thought has always been what's he doing with a hatchet when working on a roof unless there were limbs hampering his work. Although wooden shingles might be the explanation. Maybe the exact date of the work on the roof made no difference since the hatchet was found too late to be of use by the prosecution.
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
i don't think he was on a roof, any roof. at least that was never said, only that he'd been doing some work for dr. chagnon.
i just ran a search and there is something called a carpenter's shingling hatchet. not that it matters, since in order for him to have lost it on the crowe roof, he'd have had to fling it up there by accident, and then develop amnesia until it was reported in the newspapers.
i wonder what would have happened if that hatchet had been found in the first few days, first week, or month, after the murders, instead of the day the prosecution rested its case.
i just ran a search and there is something called a carpenter's shingling hatchet. not that it matters, since in order for him to have lost it on the crowe roof, he'd have had to fling it up there by accident, and then develop amnesia until it was reported in the newspapers.
i wonder what would have happened if that hatchet had been found in the first few days, first week, or month, after the murders, instead of the day the prosecution rested its case.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Maybe it really was McDonnell's, and he simply thought he lost it while working nearby so he claimed the one on the roof because that seemed to make sense. My husband operates six farms, three contiguous and the other three contiguous. He lost a huge log chain and few years ago, and the following season we found it under a berry bush on the opposite group of farms from where he remembered last using it. We still have no idea how it got there other than with him, somehow. People who work with tools are prone to misplace them.Catbooks wrote: i just ran a search and there is something called a carpenter's shingling hatchet. not that it matters, since in order for him to have lost it on the crowe roof, he'd have had to fling it up there by accident, and then develop amnesia until it was reported in the newspapers.
And some people are prone to steal any tool that isn't locked down. The machine shed is across the road from our house, and we have to chain the doors shut when someone isn't right there because of too much theft.
The murder hatchet is of mysterious origin and then of mysterious disappearance. McDonnell says it was his, but there's some confusion as to when he worked in the area. Plus, it didn't jump onto the roof by itself. But it could have disappeared (with Lizzie who spots it on the ground) and then been thrown onto the roof after the murders. Or it could've been left behind one night after work and picked up that way.
Too bad the police didn't examine it more closely; by then they likely realized it would make no difference.
This is a carpenter's hatchet. Look how wicked it is with the notch to pull shingle nails on the bottom:
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
but how would it have gotten up on the roof of the crowe barn, flown there? teleported? we're talking on top of a roof, and on top of that, quite a distance from dr. chagnon's, where he was working. there was a whole orchard between chagnon's house and the crowe buildings, and it's not like it was found under a bush or something reasonable.debbiediablo wrote:Maybe it really was McDonnell's, and he simply thought he lost it while working nearby so he claimed the one on the roof because that seemed to make sense. My husband operates six farms, three contiguous and the other three contiguous. He lost a huge log chain and few years ago, and the following season we found it under a berry bush on the opposite group of farms from where he remembered last using it. We still have no idea how it got there other than with him, somehow. People who work with tools are prone to misplace them.Catbooks wrote: i just ran a search and there is something called a carpenter's shingling hatchet. not that it matters, since in order for him to have lost it on the crowe roof, he'd have had to fling it up there by accident, and then develop amnesia until it was reported in the newspapers.
And some people are prone to steal any tool that isn't locked down. The machine shed is across the road from our house, and we have to chain the doors shut when someone isn't right there because of too much theft.
The murder hatchet is of mysterious origin and then of mysterious disappearance. McDonnell says it was his, but there's some confusion as to when he worked in the area. Plus, it didn't jump onto the roof by itself. But it could have disappeared (with Lizzie who spots it on the ground) and then been thrown onto the roof after the murders. Or it could've been left behind one night after work and picked up that way.
Too bad the police didn't examine it more closely; by then they likely realized it would make no difference.
This is a carpenter's hatchet. Look how wicked it is with the notch to pull shingle nails on the bottom:
i could maybe buy someone borrowing and misplacing it (except, up on the roof next door??), but as far as we know he'd been hired by himself, no co-workers, and it was a time when fewer people were inclined to steal. (except maybe lizzie ;)
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
What I wonder is if Lizzie saw it at the construction site, took it, then used it, then threw it on the roof. All in a matter of one or two days. And McDonnell claimed it because he lost a hatchet in that general area and decided it had to be his, perhaps thinking that some kids throw it up there as a joke. Which is not impossible given the verdict wasn't in on Lizzie, and most people believed the hatchet in evidence to be the murder weapon. This is where knowing exactly when he started working at Chagnon's is important. I'd love to know exactly when he first missed the hatchet, or if he merely needed a new one at the time it was found.
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Much has been posted as to why the hatchet on Crowe's barn was not spotted from the upstairs windows. If you are searching for something IN THE ROOM, why would you stare out the windows searching for something IN THE YARD? You simply go down and search the yards, which they did. Remember, the attic rooms had sloping ceilings. The only one in use was Bridget's. It was stated the others were locked. The only drawing I have seen of Bridget's room showed her bed running long ways against the window. Meaning someone would have had to climb on Bridget's bed to look out the window. Again, I ask why would they?
I don't know how tall the Crowe barn was. Being a barn, instead of a shed, I take it had some height to it. Maybe not as tall as the third floor windows, but maybe as tall as the second floor windows. But no one spotting it from a upstairs window, to me, is not that big of a deal.
I don't know how tall the Crowe barn was. Being a barn, instead of a shed, I take it had some height to it. Maybe not as tall as the third floor windows, but maybe as tall as the second floor windows. But no one spotting it from a upstairs window, to me, is not that big of a deal.
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Mara
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I don't have the e-book version. I got it off the shelf at the library. It's out in the car and I'm in my jammies, so I don't want to trudge out there to get it, but I remember it's quite an old copy. I wonder if a second edition corrected a few things? I'll double-check myself tomorrow.debbiediablo wrote:I'm not seeing where Douglas describes Abby's wounds as being inflicted from the front...my experience with digital books that weren't originally published from a digital format is that they're only as good (or as bad) as the person who transcribes them.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Somewhere I have an old paperback copy from when Douglas's book was first published unless it got donated to one of the smaller rural libraries here. Mistakes do get corrected if enough people fuss, so that very well could have happened given that's a huge mistake to make. E-books are notoriously inaccurate because the galleys set up for publishing older books do not convert to digital, so somebody has to key in the e-version. This can result in the color of eyes or hair changing, names being juxtaposed, and one time a novel had the protagonist locked in a bathroom, ready to be murdered. Suddenly he's out on the street doing something different, with no explanation of the escape. In the above version he somewhat withholds his opinion on whether Abby's murder was premeditated but labels Andrew's death as a planned personal domestic homicide. Do you remember whether this is how he viewed it with Abby being whacked from the front rather than from behind?
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
i suppose it's possible, but what would lizzie be doing on 3rd street, near chagnon's? the rest of it i can see happening. yep, i'd love to know when he started working.debbiediablo wrote:What I wonder is if Lizzie saw it at the construction site, took it, then used it, then threw it on the roof. All in a matter of one or two days. And McDonnell claimed it because he lost a hatchet in that general area and decided it had to be his, perhaps thinking that some kids throw it up there as a joke. Which is not impossible given the verdict wasn't in on Lizzie, and most people believed the hatchet in evidence to be the murder weapon. This is where knowing exactly when he started working at Chagnon's is important. I'd love to know exactly when he first missed the hatchet, or if he merely needed a new one at the time it was found.
the bit about the hatchet not being spotted doesn't bother me. you're right, if you're searching a room, you're not going to be thinking about looking out of windows to see what you can see. your focus is going to be on the room. also, there was the pear tree back there, in full leaf, as it was august. that would have provided coverage of the roof and hatchet.
i got the measurements of the three crowe structures and posted them in another thread. i'll locate them. the lowest, flat-roofed structure that adjoined the borden's property was the least tall - 9 feet.
in all of the articles the information was contradictory. they all said the hatchet was found on the barn, which was the biggest and tallest building, near 3rd. but it also said it was found on a flat-roofed building, and the only flat-roofed building was the small one in the back.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Unlike the new millennium where we all drive hundreds of miles to see a play or have dinner or water ski, people in the 1890s tended to have friends in the neighborhood or through community activities like church. Or they were blood-related. The snapshot we have of Lizzie doesn't tell us what she would or would not be doing on 3rd Street. Maybe it was the route for her evening constitutional, or maybe she passed through there twice a year in a carriage. We simply don't know.Catbooks wrote: i suppose it's possible, but what would lizzie be doing on 3rd street, near chagnon's? the rest of it i can see happening. yep, i'd love to know when he started working.
in all of the articles the information was contradictory. they all said the hatchet was found on the barn, which was the biggest and tallest building, near 3rd. but it also said it was found on a flat-roofed building, and the only flat-roofed building was the small one in the back.
I like the idea of her using this hatchet because (if she did it) we have no idea where the new, gilded weapon originated. No one testified that a new hatchet had been purchased to replace one with the broken handle. Or even that a hatchet was missing from household inventory. Then again, the prosecution withheld information about the gilding. They were convinced they had the murder weapon, or at least tried to persuaded the jury, so perhaps searching for another hatchet seemed irrelevant. Or maybe it was like a lot of other testimony...misleading by evasion.
I opt for the flat roof. A hatchet might remain on the the upper, less sloped section of a barn roof, but I doubt it would stick on the steeper sides. But even if it did stick, the kids' ball sure wouldn't have.
Is there anything to support the statement that Bridget ultimately told her childhood friend from Ireland, Minnie Green, that she evaded questions under oath but still told the truth. That Lizzie-Emma paid her off. That she had always liked Lizzie and felt she was on the short end of things in the household. Which is interesting even if partly true since Lizzie is now viewed as this dominant sociopathic personality rather than as a victim who snapped under long-term pressure.
This begs the question: at what point in the life of a woman in 1892 does murder seem like the only option left?
Having the lost testimony from the inquest would be incredibly helpful. Bridget hadn't hadn't yet the time to ponder her testimony. Just how does something like that get misplaced, especially for (arguably) the Murder Trial of the Century. I often wonder how much of the Borden money changed hands under the table. Not to mention that both Dewey and Blaisell should've recused themselves.
Was it Catbooks who parlayed Bridget's $600 funeral into current value slightly over $5,000? Using a similar calculator, Andrew's estimated $500,000 estate in 1892 would be worth $12,581,698.21 in 2012!!!! The $40,000 in defense expenses for Lizzie would equal $1,006,535.86 in 2012!!!! The Borden sisters could've spent an additional $1,006,535.86 in today's money and still lived happily ever after. Just think, if Lizzie killed her father, how his extreme frugality kept her from paying a different kind of price.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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Curryong
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I always thought that Lizzie may have pinched or purchased the hatchet weeks or perhaps days before. It might have been while she was staying the couple of days in New Bedford! She then performed her throwing the discus act onto the Crowe barn roof immediately after Andrew's murder.
(Agree with Catbooks, the newspaper report doesn't exactly make it clear where specifically it was found.) It would be good if we could find anything out about when work was done at Chagnon's, and it would be fun if Lizzie HAD purloined McDonnell's hatchet!
By the way, I have the ancient year 2000 paperback edition of 'The Cases that Haunt Us'. (Originally bought it for its account of the Lindbergh kidnapping!) The only reference I can find in that copy of frontal wounds is (Page 127) is this.
'From the wound patterns on Abby's body, however, it is clear that the killer straddled her during the attack, which means he or she would have had to look straight into the victim's eyes.'
(Agree with Catbooks, the newspaper report doesn't exactly make it clear where specifically it was found.) It would be good if we could find anything out about when work was done at Chagnon's, and it would be fun if Lizzie HAD purloined McDonnell's hatchet!
By the way, I have the ancient year 2000 paperback edition of 'The Cases that Haunt Us'. (Originally bought it for its account of the Lindbergh kidnapping!) The only reference I can find in that copy of frontal wounds is (Page 127) is this.
'From the wound patterns on Abby's body, however, it is clear that the killer straddled her during the attack, which means he or she would have had to look straight into the victim's eyes.'
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PossumPie
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I used to get in a friendly debate with another member of this forum a while back about the police's completeness of their searching. He was of the opinion that the police are smart, and they searched the house completely from top to bottom and there COULD NOT have been a hatchet hidden there. I gave him some modern examples such as JonBenet Ramsey, where the cops could not find A BODY in the Ramsey house, the friends of the family ended up contaminating the crime scene, and finding her body in a basement room. Cops usually find only obvious evidence that is right in front of their faces...even then they miss it. I have no problem at all saying that hatchet was laying on the roof of the barn and they didn't see it by looking out of the third floor window. Life in 2014 is not like CSI where the cops find DNA evidence in cracks and solve cases. Crime detecting in the late 1800's certainly wasn't. Heck, they washed potential evidence off of a wall near a Jack the Ripper victim b/c it might get people mad a the Jews living in the neighborhood. Never photographed it. Just washed it off. Police generally don't solve crimes b/c of their intelligence....rather it is because most criminals are even stupider than we imagine.
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Christopher Hitchens
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
here's the info on the height of the crowe barn and buildings, from one of the newspaper articles:
yes, of course people walked in their neighborhoods, but 3rd street was not a good neighborhood and lizzie knew no one there. the only relative of anyone in that direction was mrs. whitehead, and lizzie wouldn't be visiting her! this again makes me think of what a big loss for lizzie andrew's selling of their horse and carriage was. she was even more trapped, more isolated from places and people she wanted to be friends with. there was only alice she could visit, two blocks away. she'd have had to start walking to church, or arrange for a friend to pick her up.
the barn does not have a flat roof, nor does the 12-foot building right behind it. only the 9-foot building does.The barn is a flat roof structure about 18 feet high. In the rear is an ell, the full width of the main building, but not more than 12 feet high. Still extending to the west and toward the Borden estate is a narrow flat roofed ell, about nine feet high. A six-foot fence runs diagonally and southeasterly from the north line of the first ell to the second ell, so that it is very easy to scale the roof.
yes, of course people walked in their neighborhoods, but 3rd street was not a good neighborhood and lizzie knew no one there. the only relative of anyone in that direction was mrs. whitehead, and lizzie wouldn't be visiting her! this again makes me think of what a big loss for lizzie andrew's selling of their horse and carriage was. she was even more trapped, more isolated from places and people she wanted to be friends with. there was only alice she could visit, two blocks away. she'd have had to start walking to church, or arrange for a friend to pick her up.
aha! thank you for finding that. i too had thought i'd read something about that, but when i went back to find it in the op, wasn't seeing it. it's there though. mara's right, that is a significant error on the part of the author.'From the wound patterns on Abby's body, however, it is clear that the killer straddled her during the attack, which means he or she would have had to look straight into the victim's eyes.'
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Yes, you are right. I cut and pasted right past it.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I'm not sure we know this. Our snippet as carefully examined as it may be does not rule out her knowing someone in this area. I was somewhat surprised that she stayed out so late with Miss Russell the night before the murder.Catbooks wrote:but 3rd street was not a good neighborhood and lizzie knew no one there.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
I totally agree. They bumbled the entire investigation. All Lizzie had to say was "flea bite" and everyone including the prosecutors gave wide berth to the only unexplained blood in the entire house. My kids (all of them are really smart) could smuggle stuff into their rooms from upper elementary school forward that I couldn't find...even when I was 95% sure it was there...someplace. I'm totally not good at hiding things so when I looked where I'd stash something, it wouldn't be there. As adults they confessed to secreting things in the most confoundedly clever places.PossumPie wrote:I used to get in a friendly debate with another member of this forum a while back about the police's completeness of their searching. He was of the opinion that the police are smart, and they searched the house completely from top to bottom and there COULD NOT have been a hatchet hidden there. I gave him some modern examples such as JonBenet Ramsey, where the cops could not find A BODY in the Ramsey house, the friends of the family ended up contaminating the crime scene, and finding her body in a basement room. Cops usually find only obvious evidence that is right in front of their faces...even then they miss it. I have no problem at all saying that hatchet was laying on the roof of the barn and they didn't see it by looking out of the third floor window. Life in 2014 is not like CSI where the cops find DNA evidence in cracks and solve cases. Crime detecting in the late 1800's certainly wasn't. Heck, they washed potential evidence off of a wall near a Jack the Ripper victim b/c it might get people mad a the Jews living in the neighborhood. Never photographed it. Just washed it off. Police generally don't solve crimes b/c of their intelligence....rather it is because most criminals are even stupider than we imagine.
There's JonBenet and then Jaycee Dugard who was captive in a backyard tent for much of 18 years. Her abduction was witnessed, the vehicle described. It, too, sat on the property while her kidnapper was in prison and as the police came to the premises at least twice. Two years after the disappearance a man reported seeing her two miles from where she was being held. Child protective services were called numerous times, and her captor was actually picked up and then released. Somehow the police searched the property (more than once over the years) and failed to find her and her two children living in a backyard tent city.
Police don't get smart, they get lucky. The ones in Fall River were no different.
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BOBO
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
The paper says "The barn is a flat roof structure about 18 feet high." Catbooks says "The barn does not have a flat roof..." Sorry Catbooks, but did I miss something?
Tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything.... Mark Twain
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
There seems to be some discrepancy on the height of the building, whether barn or shed, etc, even from reports of that period. However, the height of the building, whether 9 or 18 feet, may not be the salient issue. Either way someone (including a woman) could pitch a hatchet onto the flat roof and it would stay there, unlike the steeply sloped roof of what we think of as a traditional barn. Which would be more like 50-60 feet tall. The one across the road from my house is midway between the 30 foot and 80 foot silos that stand beside it.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Here's an interesting post made by Kat regarding the Douglas book. At this moment in time I don't agree with her on many of these points (still on the fence about this case), and some of what she calls into contention are what many of us consider just the facts,ma'am. But just because I don't agree doesn't make what she says any less valid food for thought. My gravest concern is Douglas and Olshaker failed to pay attention to the known truths of the case. I'm not sure any of them would've altered his conclusion, but I prefer accuracy in books that turn into bestsellers and influence bazillions of people. Especially when the authors are so highly regarded in their field.
Post by Kat » Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:34 am
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Post by Kat » Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:34 am
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Kat wrote:This topic was titled "Misc." before but I finshed the Lizzie chapter in John Douglas where he profiles the killer of the Bordens and now I want to put my thoughts here.
I had given a list before of errors, but not really searched out what I considered important aspects of the crime that Douglas might have misunderstood yet used in his profiling.
I will list them here if anyone wishes to comment.
Some may think a few of these issues should not corrupt a profile of the killer.
I will say, however, that it is true Douglas seemed to know the answer before he did the profile.
Some may take issue with that as well.
I've narrowed my interest to the minimum issues:
91+ The dust in the barn. I think Douglas takes for total fact that the dust in the loft of the barn was undisturbed.
That Lizzie did try to buy prussic acid.
A fact that the family made rags of old clothing, therefore Lizzie burning a dress after the murders could be her first act of "defiance", Sunday, against frugality.
That by the inquest Lizzie was "not yet represented by counsel"- and this became a "critical factor" in her later defense. (93, hardback)
Brings in the questions arising from the Manchester murders which happened so close by in time and place- murder by ax- but makes some mistakes in the re-telling.
Information about a will.
"Crucial to the case was the evidence suggesting a motive. Knowlton and Moody called witnesses to establish that Andrew Borden was intending to write a new will...The 'new' will, according to Morse, was to leave Emma and Lizzie each $25,000, with the remainder of Andrew's $500,000 estate going to Abby. Further, Knowlton developed the additional motive of Andrew's intent to dispose of his farm to Abby..."
(98)
Lizzie's kleptomania and her hand in the daylight robbery.
Why Andrew married Abby- and Douglas calls her "socially prominent but unattractive."
Douglas claims as factual information that Emma did not take the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd train to return to Fall River. (108)
[My notes here say that on page 109 our own Len Rebello is quoted!! and then it seems I am wondering why erasers on pencils are so crummy and "What's the point?" of bothering in putting lousy erasers on pencils? Just for "show?"]
That Andrew and Lizzie used to fish together. (110)
And the biggy: That Lizzie felt a victim.
"...in many ways Lizzie saw herself as a victim. Under the section on Staged Domestic Homicide in the Crime Classification Manual, we wrote: 'Post-offense interviews of close friends or family members often reveal that the victim had expressed concerns or fears regarding his or her safety or even a sense of foreboding.' If Lizzie had somehow transposed the roles of attacker and victim in her mind, then the anguished visit to Alice Russell the night before the murders fits perfectly into this emotional context." (111)
I really would like to know what everyone thinks about these points which might have influenced Douglas' profile of Lizzie as the killer. Does he need them- what if his info is debateable or unproven? etc...
DebbieDiablo
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
yes, you missed something :)BOBO wrote:The paper says "The barn is a flat roof structure about 18 feet high." Catbooks says "The barn does not have a flat roof..." Sorry Catbooks, but did I miss something?
once i found out about the crowe hatchet, i had to try to see what the buildings and area looked like. i found a scale model of the borden house and immediate area, including the 3 structures. the barn may have been 18 feet high, but definitely did not have a flat roof. only the small structure in the back had a flat roof.
someone else located and posted a period line drawing of the buildings. i'll get them in a second, but it shows the same thing. (aha, found it on my drive, am posting both.)
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Do you think the heights of everything are comparatively accurate for 1892? If so, the pear tree looks more like a pear bush which may alter whether the roof of barn/shed/carriage house/granary/whatever/chicken coop could be seen from the Borden upstairs. Actually, the tree doesn't look big enough bear much fruit, but we know it did some. The roof pitches surprise me given Fall River has an average snow fall of three feet, and that flat roof looks like nothing but trouble. (We've had over 60 inches of snow this season, and it's affecting my brain.) I'm trying to decide whether they dumped the night soil in the corner by 5 or in the corner by 2 or by the side door of 1. 
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
"Purloined". Love it. Haven't seen that used since Edgar Allen Poe...into my vocabulary cache it goes. And yes, it's totally fun to think of Lizzie purloining the hatchet from McDonnell, using it for a double murder and then abandoning it for him to claim almost a year later...the perfect unwitting alibi. Not so funny had McDonnell been unwittingly arrested for murder.Curryong wrote: (Agree with Catbooks, the newspaper report doesn't exactly make it clear where specifically it was found.) It would be good if we could find anything out about when work was done at Chagnon's, and it would be fun if Lizzie HAD purloined McDonnell's hatchet!
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
i think the buildings are more or less accurate, but not the shrubberies and so forth. i don't think the pear tree is even shown in that last image. i think that's an arbor of some sort they had back there. the pear tree is in the scale model, but i don't know if it was actually that tall or full, or not.debbiediablo wrote:Do you think the heights of everything are comparatively accurate for 1892? If so, the pear tree looks more like a pear bush which may alter whether the roof of barn/shed/carriage house/granary/whatever/chicken coop could be seen from the Borden upstairs. Actually, the tree doesn't look big enough bear much fruit, but we know it did some. The roof pitches surprise me given Fall River has an average snow fall of three feet, and that flat roof looks like nothing but trouble. (We've had over 60 inches of snow this season, and it's affecting my brain.) I'm trying to decide whether they dumped the night soil in the corner by 5 or in the corner by 2 or by the side door of 1.
good point about the roofs and snow. all the same, we do know that shed had a flat roof.
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debbiediablo
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
The diagram confuses me. I'm thinking the roof of tallest building looks like a slope of about 60º from a straight line the parallel to the ground and intersecting with the peak (I am so not a carpenter...or a mathematician...but hopefully you get my meaning.) This might be enough to hold a hatchet in place but I cannot see a kid's ball stuck up there unless the shingles had some irregularity. Which could happen with wood shingles. The one directly behind looks like a slope of 30º, and the last one has the flat roof. The one in the middle looks half as high as the one in front...9 and 18...but that makes the one behind with the flat roof only about 6 feet tall. What would a 6 foot high structure be used for...adding 2 or 3 more feet upward wouldn't be all that expensive and would be much more functional. If the last one is 9 feet high (this makes more sense) then the measurement of 18 feet for the first one is to the eaves, not the peak which would be about 21 feet high. Right???? Old newspapers were about like the internet is now...unreliable. But then so is my math.
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
i could swear i responded to this already. hrm.debbiediablo wrote:I'm not sure we know this. Our snippet as carefully examined as it may be does not rule out her knowing someone in this area. I was somewhat surprised that she stayed out so late with Miss Russell the night before the murder.Catbooks wrote:but 3rd street was not a good neighborhood and lizzie knew no one there.
anyway, we know lizzie had very few friends, and alice was the only one in the neighborhood.
still makes me think about what andrew getting rid of the horse and carriage meant to her. she was too embarrassed to have any of her other friends come to the house, and didn't have the carriage anymore to go visit them. now i'm wondering if andrew did that as some kind of punishment, for something. emma was reasonably social, so it would have affected her negatively too. (although i don't think emma was as fussy about being friends with people in the neighborhood.)
ah, that's probably why lizzie and dr. dolan went to church. he gave her a lift there.
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
i don't think a ball got stuck on any of the roofs. the only one it could have gotten stuck on is the one in the back. i think the kids threw or hit the ball, it went up onto the roof of the barn, rolled out of their sight towards the other buildings, and off one of the kids went behind the shed and up on it, trying to find the ball.debbiediablo wrote:The diagram confuses me. I'm thinking the roof of tallest building looks like a slope of about 60º from a straight line the parallel to the ground and intersecting with the peak (I am so not a carpenter...or a mathematician...but hopefully you get my meaning.) This might be enough to hold a hatchet in place but I cannot see a kid's ball stuck up there unless the shingles had some irregularity. Which could happen with wood shingles. The one directly behind looks like a slope of 30º, and the last one has the flat roof. The one in the middle looks half as high as the one in front...9 and 18...but that makes the one behind with the flat roof only about 6 feet tall. What would a 6 foot high structure be used for...adding 2 or 3 more feet upward wouldn't be all that expensive and would be much more functional. If the last one is 9 feet high (this makes more sense) then the measurement of 18 feet for the first one is to the eaves, not the peak which would be about 21 feet high. Right???? Old newspapers were about like the internet is now...unreliable. But then so is my math.
the barn is about double the height of the shed in back, which is correct. 18 (to the peak) and 9 feet, respectively. the middle one was 12 feet high.
the slope of both of the pitched roofs don't look severe enough that a hatchet couldn't land and stay there, but since the articles said it was found on a flat-roofed building, and there's only one, i'm going with the shed. which was in easy tossing distance from the borden's back yard.
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Curryong
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Yes! Lizzie, with time of the essence and taking a risk anyway, had to aim for a target that was do-able. The roof of a 9ft building, especially if it was flat, would, in my humble opinion fit the bill better than one 18ft high, and further away.
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
also it'd be harder to see a hatchet on a flat roof from the ground than one that slopes down. well, unless it was nice and tall :)
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PossumPie
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Bottom line is for a shed to be usable...an adult to stand up in...it must be at least 7ft. high INSIDE, meaning after the roof trusses, roof, shingles are on we are talking about an 8ft. MINIMUM roof. That can't be seen by casual 6ft. observer from the ground, yet short enough for adventurous boys to climb up without trouble.
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Christopher Hitchens
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BOBO
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
THANKS to everyone for the input, info, pics etc. Whichever building the hatchet was found on, I truly believe that it was the one that, at least, did Abby in.
Tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything.... Mark Twain
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Mara
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Just to be obsessively complete, the passage I was thinking of is on page 104 of the 2000 hardback library edition I have. Douglas wrote: "Significantly, Andrew was attacked as he slept. The first blow would have been sufficient to cause death and would have prevented him from crying out and alerting anyone. From the wound patterns on Abby's body, however, it is clear that the killer straddled her during the attack, which means he or she would have had to look straight into the victim's eyes." (Emphasis mine.) So okay, that's a little bit different from what I remembered, but I think you might agree it's possible to extrapolate from this that Douglas was portraying Abby as having been attacked from the front, with blows raining down on her from above while she faced up, which we know was not the case.debbiediablo wrote:I'm not seeing where Douglas describes Abby's wounds as being inflicted from the front...my experience with digital books that weren't originally published from a digital format is that they're only as good (or as bad) as the person who transcribes them.
Okay...back to our regularly scheduled thread :)
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Catbooks
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
more on the pail of menstrual pads and bucket. from bridget to i believe harrington. (witness statements.)
I inquired about some cloths which looked to me like small towels, they were covered with blood, and in a pail half filled with water, and in the wash cellar. She [lizzie] said that was all right; she had told the Doctor all about that. I then asked her how long the pail and its contents had been there; and she [lizzie] said three or four days. I asked the Doctor about it, and he said it had been explained to him, and was all right.
I then had a talk with Bridget about the pail and it contents. She said she had not noticed the pail until that day, and it could not have been there two days before, or she would have seen it, and put the contents in the wash, as that was the day she had done the washing.
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Curryong
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Re: The Cases That Haunt Us – Chapter 2: Lizzie Borden
Yet another lie from Miss Borden, unless she fibbed and had stored the pail etc in her room until the Thursday because she couldn't be bothered to take it down to the cellar before. (Gosh, I've just had my tea and am feeling a bit grossed out, by all this!)
This is one of several areas where Lizzie's statements and Bridget's definitely clash. Of course, if Lizzie had brought them down on the Tuesday or the Wednesday, then, as I put in a post in another thread, those were days when the household was feeling nauseous with strange fish and off mutton, and maybe Bridget avoided washing that sort of thing out until she felt better.
This is one of several areas where Lizzie's statements and Bridget's definitely clash. Of course, if Lizzie had brought them down on the Tuesday or the Wednesday, then, as I put in a post in another thread, those were days when the household was feeling nauseous with strange fish and off mutton, and maybe Bridget avoided washing that sort of thing out until she felt better.