Lizzie Borden Society Forum

de Mille had access to the crime scene photos! She saw the hat. Wow! I wonder if she assumed the hat to be Dr. Bowen's?
That's interesting!
I think maybe the poster (who I thought had been Edisto) got their reference from Pearson? It sounds like it. Those 2 are good references tho. Thanks Harry.

Forgot to mention, the sitting room has a new/old mirror. There is a heavy oak frame with an inner fancy border of embellished gold gesso with a new mirror reflecting the mantel across the room. Not knowing exactly where the mirror was located-there were three possibilities, it has ended up on the wall between the closet door and the door out to the front entry so Abby can see if her hat is on straight before she heads to Hudner's!

Shelley, do you have a picture of the new mirror in the sitting room? BTW,
I bought a house and moved in recently. It's an almond color, just like Lizzie's used to be. Do you think I should paint my house in drab?

I will get a photo up of the new mirror this week.

The house faded to an almond color during Martha McGinn's tenure, its true. It almost took on a pinky tint just before the house was sold, stripped and repainted the olive drab color. Drab was a real popular Victorian shade- sort of olivey-grey-brown khacki army fatigue shade. Drab with a darker drab trim would be pretty, then maybe a nice complementary shade for the door like a dark rust would work. Many paint stores have a computer program which shows you the colors of paint on the screen on a sample house and you can select trim and everything to see how it will look. You don't mention what style your house is.

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/html/digitaldesigner/

When I was getting ready to paint my house I found this site. There's an exterior paint interactive link in here someplace and I kept dumping paint on my virtual house for hours trying combinations.

Shell's right- you would need to know your house style and also what part of the country you live in because different color combinations are better in different regions.
(Unless you want to end up on that TV show "What's With That House?")

Actually, I was just kidding about painting my house in drab, but I do like it for Lizzie's house. I was a bit shocked by the change in her house color at first, but when I saw it in person last year, I liked it a lot. My first visit t The House had been in 2004 and Leann had just purchased it. I think she and her parnter have done a great job with it!

As for my house, which I have been in for 4 weeks now, is 1960's era split level, so no Victorian style furnishings for me! I'm going with "mid-century" style stuff, or Danish Modern, a lot of which I've inherited and/or grew up with.

Something just strange about waking up in Bridget's room and looking out the window to Third Street- at a swimming pool where Crowe's yard and barn should have been! Third Street has changed the most of all since 1892 it seems.

LeeAnn hung a pretty old Victorian Eastlake mirror at the bottom of the stairwell last night. Mr. Jacobson, who owns a fabulous Rock Street home filled with Victorian furnishings is also an antiques dealer and is finding choice bits for the house.

Although these are just flickering lights, some guests swear they feel warmer near the fireplace. I found these on a string in Chepachet, RI (antiquing paradise) back in October and put them in for Halloween but we've left them up for the winter. The house is closed Thanksgiving day, and nearly all of December for renovations. We will be on the house tour on Sunday December 16th

The painting continues at the house. The third floor is complete and the second floor should be done today. All the trim and moldings have been refreshed. LeeAnn had the painters scrap down to the the wood and the color was a soft ivory all the way down so that is the shade being used for the new paint. It was funny seeing the furniture all bunched up in the middle of the floor. I had not realized that one of the former employees, Rochelle, had painted a fireplace board for that closed-up fireplace behind the Morse room bed. It was hydrangeas. Today the crew is on the first floor and the house should be done by the end of the week. The big news is that "Andrew's" Pepto Bismol pink bathroom is now a soft ivory and looks LOTS better and much larger. I am sure Andrew would be happier. Martha McGinn painted it hot pink to match the roses in the black floral shower curtain back in 1996. Yes- we are getting a NEW shower curtain for the new year. The house is closed next week but I will be seeing in the new year on Dec 31st with a full house rental. The rooms are full so looks like the black sofa for me! This will be more exciting than my usual New Year's Eve of watching the ball fall and trying to keep awake!

Shelley @ Tue Dec 18, 2007 9:45 am wrote:...The house is closed next week but I will be seeing in the new year on Dec 31st with a full house rental. The rooms are full so looks like the black sofa for me! ...

You are one brave woman, Shelley! I couldn't even spend 5 minutes in that room...let alone sleep there. Kudos!

Well, it sure beats my usual New Year's Eve of snoring in front of the TV with hubby straggling off to bed at 10 p.m., poor Dick Clark , itchy dogs scratching, and a bottle of flat champagne. Actually, I have slept in the parlor on numerous occasions but never on the black sofa in the sitting room. It's either that or out in the hayloft in the barn-but I like to be near in case a guest needs something. shoot- honestly, it truly IS just a house. It was home to the McGinns for years. It's the LIVING, not the dead that you need to watch out for! Granted, it is an odd way to see in the new year. I have a harder time sleeping in the guest room, but then, Abby has always been the one I have most sympathy for of all.

I felt the same way until I stayed in the house. My friends still can't believe that I went downstairs by myself in the middle of the night and ate the rest of my pizza from dinner all alone in the dining room.

Shelley @ Thu Dec 20, 2007 1:31 pm wrote:...It's the LIVING, not the dead that you need to watch out for! ...

Amen to that!

I'm not particularly afraid of the dead---they just seem to play havoc on my mood at times If a room is full of doom & gloom, I don't like to stick around. (That goes for atmospheres full of the living as well). Hehehehe....

The dining room seemed OK to me...

The diningroom? Er.. the dead corpses, stitched up and grisly, were laid out there from Thursday to Saturday morning. Abby's tummy was removed there. No, everytime I sit down to eat in that diningroom I feel queasy. I have never found much jolly spirit or happy ambience anywhere in that house. It is the staff and guests who make it all seem sunny and cheery for spells when we are all together and merry. Quite empty and sitting in it all alone- it does seem a sad place full of terrible memories, especially on long dark winter days.

I agree- tho I've not been there in the winter.
The dining room was one I did not *like* to be in these last 2 visits, tho when I was alone in the House I kept ending up there. It was perplexing.

As it turns out, the house party cancelled so I spent New Year's at home after all- disappointing! I did go over Friday to shoot some promotional film segments and while I was there made a short slide show of the ongoing house improvements which can be seen at the blog link below. The greatest improvement is the new color in Andrew's bathroom!


There were a couple of film crews hard at work on promotional material and items for YouTube that day so I had a great opportunity of recreating a crime scene photo. Mostly lying face down on that carpet just makes me sneeze!

Oh my gosh! Shelley doesn't that give you the creeps? I don't think I could do it, and the picture looks so real (like she did) yikes

Sorry, forgot to say I really like the color in the bathroom, it looks warm and cozy.

I will confess I do a lot of thinking lying there- imagining August 4th and poor Abby's last thoughts. I just noticed in that photo above, if you look in the mirror and see that dress from the Montgomery movie- it looks really eerie-it seems to be holding a hatchet handle! I just noticed this! Eeeek!

Shelley, that photo is too close to the original for comfort.

Thank goodness, no blood!

I think the director is going to dissolve the original into this color version in a slow fade. Of course their photographs and film sequences and angles are far more sophisticated than this one shot with a digital. But still, color adds a new dimension to the subject- and seems to make the victim more real, I saw some of the footage and a camera in the hands of a pro gets unsettling results! There was one sequence of just a sliver of face with a "dead eye" and crescent of ear showing under the bed. I guess because we never see Abby's face after death, that view shocked me most.

When will we be able to see the results of the picture shoot? Or where can we see them? Sounds like it's gonna be exceptional!

I am not sure when the Youtube will be released but it will be posted here as soon as the project is finished and ready to view. Some of the film sequences are for promotional purposes and some for the Lizzie Mini Series. There's a lot in the works for 2008- and I think it will even surpass all the great material on the case from 2007!

Thank you for the color photos Shelley- it's a unique view. We are lucky to have them.

Yes that bit of Liz Montgomery's dress in the mirror with that wood thing looking like a hatchet handle I admit is pretty weird!!!

The thing is, I cannot figure out WHAT it is exactly. Nor how it got into the photo!

I can imagine!!
The more I look at it the more shocking it is...

That color picture gives me the heebiejeebies.

Yes, there's something about color that makes it all so much more real. Agatha Christie's hero, Hercules Poirot would say "I do not approve of murder". Understated, yes- but that says it all.

With so much focus on Lizzie, it is too bad people often forget the victims as human beings deprived of their lives. I imagine that color photo looks pretty close to what was actually there on the day of the crime- and somebody got away with murder. There has been no justice for Abby and Andrew. No justice for Nicole Simpson or Jon Benet Ramsey. And there's something about that fact which galls the average law-abiding Jane and John Doe on the street. Murder is - horrible.

These color photos also (at least to my way of thinking) help to lend an extra something to another topic here – John Morse’s comment at the preliminary hearing about being “nervous” on the 4th. Filling in one or two visual “blanks” - things he must have seen, such as pooled blood, matter, etc. - it’s quite easy to understand why he might have spent the rest of the day outdoors!

Shelley @ Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:27 pm wrote:Yes, there's something about color that makes it all so much more real.

What makes it so awful to me is that I know you, Shelley, and I can't stand to visualize you looking like you suffered the same fate. It's just too horrible.

I think your right Shelley, What happend to Abbie and Andrew was monsterous, that colored picture of you somehow brings it to life, makes it more real to the here and now. That lady had every right to live out her life, to it's natural conclusion. And some one stole that from her, and to all extents and purposes got away with it......in this world, but, I don't think they fared so well in the next

I think your also right Dougo about Morse, and his being nervous, there's people today that are nervous in that house, imagine what it would have been like on that day, seeing what he saw, and knowing the people personally, I wouldn't have stayed in it one second longer then I absolutely had to, and being outside in the sunshine and fresh air would have most deffinately been a reasonable choice.

I am touched by your sentiments, Ellen- and I certainly hope that will never be my fate. Actually, it may sound odd, but I am not afraid to recreate certain scenes from the Past in that house. The Dead are only gone if we stop remembering them. I am often asked if I am afraid to be in that house alone so much. Friday night I was standing in the dark in the cellar with a lantern, recreating Lizzie's trip to the basement. It was unsettling- yes. But it is the Living who are to be feared.

I never lose sight of what happened there and I think it is important not to forget- especially for victims who have no voice and went to their graves unavenged.

This is a visual society- bringing the message home in film, photographs, recreations, is one way of paying tribute to the victims if it is done with respect. Lying face down on the floor, presenting the situation as it was every week certainly makes visitors and house guests revisit the case, think about what happened and who paid the price for it.

Although I do not buy into the haunted house thing, it is a house with unfinished business-and a dreadful history. I am always hopeful that somehow, someday, we may arrive at the Truth at last.

I took the photograph of Shelley in the Abby position for the third Lizzie Mini which will about Abby Borden. I interviewed Shelly about Abby in the master bedroom and then we moved into the Guest room to move the bed and recreate the crime scene photos.

I'm glad we did it and I'm glad people are responding in a serious manner. I know it's disturbing, but in all the fun we have with Lizzie and the Bordens, we do have to keep reminding ourselves that the murders were horrible acts and that people suffered., including Lizzie (if you believe her to be innocent). If any one of us could be a fly on the wall and witness the murders, we would probably be shocked beyond belief at the incredible violence that was involved, even though we've read about it for decades.

When Shelley was on the floor and I was photographing her, I was thinking of Abby and I'm sure Shelley was as well. Even if the woman had her issues and differences with her step-daughters, she certainly didn't deserve the horrible death she suffered. By taking the photos, I'm hoping it would be seen with a sense of respect for what she experienced.

When taking the photograph I kept reminding myself I have a moral responsibility to Abby and the whole Borden family. I hope if Abby is "up there" somewhere looking down at how we are using her house, she would have approved of us taking the photographs and calling attention to the harsh fact that a human being suffered and died here and that we are honoring her in a way that prevents the reality of her being and her death from falling into parody or exploitation.

I'm glad it was Shelly assuming the pose, because I know she has the correct emotional and spiritual attitude towards doing such an act. And such a respect for the history of the house, the crime and the woman Abby. A proper mental attitude makes all the difference when you do such a thing.

Anyway, that's how I look at it. I hope my instincts are correct on this.

I think the picture was a good idea, we've all seen the black and white pictures of both Abbie and Andrew, although real, they, over time, have become JUST pictures. The color picture of Shelley brings back the reality of it, it's once again a real woman lying there, who suffered a horrible death. Well anyway that's what hit me when I saw it.........

Richard, that is a beautiful write-up. I think we really have loss sight of the brutally of Abby and Andrews violent deaths, and that is why we are shocked when we see this photo of Shelley, which brings Abby's death scene photo to life.

Shelley, I give you alot of credit for posing as Abby in the recreation of the crime scene photo. The photo of you looks so real, that at first I thought it was the original death scene photo of Abby that had been colorized! The colored photo of you puts a whole different light on Abby's death photo.

That wood thing which resembles a hatchet handle, in the mirror in front of Elizabeth Montgomery's dress, is eerie. However, what I find even more disturbing is the entire area above Shelley's head appears to be discolored, as if it is a faded blood stain!

I think I have solved the "hatchet" in the mirror near the dress- it is a picture frame turned sideways on the dresser. I wish the crime was so easy to solve.

I also noticed the darkened area around my head- it was unintentional on the part of the photographer- it was, I believe a shadow- but it sure was startling when it suddenly appeared in the frame.
I studied the b/w crime scene photos again today and I think black and white can sometimes give a flat and two-dimensional look unless the lighting and angles are really good. Film noir sure had all that down to a science. The color rounds out the image- and I must add that Abby and I are the same size which adds to the verisimilitude.

I have always had a theory that the killer sat or knelt on Abby's back to deliver the other 18 blows, grasping her hair in hand. After carefully studying the folds and bunching of Abby's calico dress in the crime scene- that could fit the picture. I thought of this as I lay on the floor and did get my feet correct but could not adjust my own skirt to copy the photo. I will be curious to see how the film version of this recreation came out. I think both photographers got some very good material.

Yes Richard I agree totally that the actual character of the poser and the photographer can influence a picture. In the originals, there was a stranger basically recording forensic evidence, who did not know Abbie and had never been in that house before. There is a detachment in those crime scene pictures- which, for use in court- was a good thing. It was simply a record though.

Here, the mindset you describe, of the photographer (you)- a kind of meditation involved- and your now familiarty with that whole house- stated as "Abbie's House", which it was- shows in the photo. And the fact it is Shelley, a friend we all admire, and her mindset and meditative state, certainly adds character, morality, ethics, respect and a sense of humanity to these new views.
You two are great collaborators on this project. It's like it was meant to be.

I have never believed in coincidences either, Kat. I believe we meet for a purpose in life. Sometimes we wait a long time to see that purpose revealed, but sometimes it is clear in an instant.

A few new additions at the house. Mr. Jacobs who owns a glorious Victorian on Rock St. is also an antiques dealer, and has been a big help to us in finding pieces for #92. This spoon-carved Eastlake dresser fit the bill for a much-needed guestbook and storage unit for brochures and materials. It is oak with a walnut stain.


LeeAnn also found a nice ceramic match safe for the kitchen. It is mounted between the stove and closet.

The December painting party ended up with all of the woodwork on all three floors looking fantastic. All the digs and gouges (some from guests over the years) were filled and a fresh coat of ivory paint really makes the wallpapers pop. The house is getting busy again after a winter lull.

The Eastlake dresser - it is absolutely beautiful!
BTW: I love the iron door stop! Very cool.
Thanks for sharing these pics with us.

Love the dresser! Thanks Shelley, for sharing the pictures!

As usual, your updates and photos of the happenings at the house are appreciated. Keep up the good work.

Thanks! It was good to get back to work again after nearly 2 months' vacation. I had a good prowl around the new courthouse lot which is building across the street yesterday. The concrete foundations looks as if they are taking up the whole space. In the diagram it looked like a park and tree area was part of the original plan, so I am praying the huge foundation is including the underground parking garage. If not- that building is going to be one huge and clunky monster right across the street.

It has turned cold again and all weekend it snowed off and on and was so windy, but I did get a chance to shoot some pix in Oak Grove which I posted at the link below. So far three new trees have been sponsored for the new Friends group. So, it was a good weekend.

Thanks so much for the new pics, Shelley!

Wow, nice paint job, Shelley! Did they strip the trim down to bare wood or just sand the heck out of it? They did a really nice job of it.

It was not sanded down to bare wood, just smoothed, filled, sanded again and painted. Some very deep marks of age can still be felt-so the Past was not entirely obliterated. I ran around checking, hoping to see some paint color or markings of long ago, but there was nothing unusual. I have more photos of the process.

Thanks, Shelley. My twin brother is a house painter and a majority of the homes he works in are from the late 1800s to about the 1920s. He pretty much tries to do what the house painters did at the B&B, though he said that most people aren't willing to pay extra to get a really nice job on the trim; just a quick sand and slap on a new coat of paint. He says its such a shame as these homes have beautiful woodwork covered with layers of oil paint with paint drips, runs, chips, gouges, scratches that he will try to diminish as best as the time he is allowed by his boss to do it.

Thanks so much for the pictures Shelley. The house looks so good. The dresser is just gorgeous. Please send more photos if you have chance. I've been looking at all your pics in the slide shows. Wow, I can't imagine how much time it took to research all of this material. Thanks so much for sharing those, I was fascinated with the funeral fashions. I also always wondered what the memorials were made of that you called zinc.