What if lizzie didnt do it

[snokkums]

Has anyone toyed with the idea if Lizzie really did kill her father and step mom?

Robin

[Kat]

Hello Robin!

I'm a bit confused by the topic title vs. the post.
What if Lizzie didn't do it and what if she did?
Which question is the focus?

I've toyed with both...

[Allen]

I think every theory possible to the human mind has been toyed with at one time or another

[snokkums]

Kat:
I think I was wandering if the police just focused on Lizzie and no one else. Or if they had anyone else, or if she was the most logical one.

Robin

[bullet43]

If Lizzie didn't do it-she or Bridget had to have known or seen something to do with the killing.Maybe it was a threesome?

[snokkums]

I think that that she might have know who did it. But here is an interesting thought. People have thought that she might have been an eplitic. There are some types of eplisy that when they have a seizure, they dont have a grand mall siezure, but it looks like they are staring into space. They can be functioning during this time, but don't remember anything that happens. What if she was having one of those siezures and not remember doing the murders? I remember hearing somewhere that Lizzie used to have funny little moods. or twists.
Think it's possilbe that she was haveing one when she was killing her father and stepmother?

[theebmonique]

The epilepsy thing was part of Lincoln's theory. I will copy and paste what I found in Lincoln's book from the book CLub thread. Lincoln's words are in italics...my comments are in 'bold'

CHAPTER - 1
6. (Pg.25) Here for the first time, I will attempt to clarify the nature of those “peculiar spells,” to demonstrate that in fact they were seizures of epilepsy, epilepsy of the temporal lobe, a strange disease whose symptoms (as I have recently learned and as I will try in time to show you) explain more than on mysterious crime in the Borden house on Second Street. Lizzie’s affliction has never been openly mentioned before. I did not diagnose it; I put the available hard evidence - - two sets of police records, the hitherto disregarded evidence of a defense witness, and certain relevant facts dug out by the prosecution - - into the hands of a top-ranking psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and let him draw his own conclusions. So, is Lincoln’s big thing going to be that the murders have a simple explanation of Lizzie having a form of epilepsy ? Even reading past this passage a bit, it seems so far at least, that Lincoln is not great at showing her sources. It also seems like she is making many assumptions o her own accord

CHAPTER 3 -
7. (Pg. 41 It would have been bad even if she had not suffered from temporal epilepsy. Prior to this, she doesn’t seem to cite any sources for her evidence to this claim.
CHAPTER 4 -

8. (Pg. 41-42) Obviously, a firm diagnosis of epilepsy of the temporal lobe can be made only by running and electroencephalogram. John Hughlings Jackson was making the pioneer studies of this strange disease during Lizzie’s lifetime. His studies are still valuable, but he would have been unable to prove that any single, individual case on his books was actually epileptoid, caused by sudden electrical discharge from the gray matter, and not neurotic or simply faked. He lacked the equipment. His diagnoses, which provided the cornerstone for our understanding of temporal epilepsy, were founded upon odd incidents that occurred in his patients’ lives with predictable, almost clocklike regularity. In other words, while an emotional factor was sometimes present, the somatic factor was stronger. If she saying that if the doctors at this point could not definitely diagnose temporal epilepsy without an EEG, then her claiming that Lizzie had TE cannot be substantiated since the first EEG was not done until 1929 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalogram).

9. (Pg. 42) No, I did not seek this “diagnosis,” but when through lucky chance I happened to stumble across it, all at once the jumbled pieces fell into place, and at last I could make sense out of the events that culminated in Lizzie’s taking up the axe. Even I continued to doubt; the scientific bias is not easily thrown off. I did extensive reading, I consulted with authorities, and ended up convinced: Lizzie Borden did not kill her parents because she had an ambulatory seizure of temporal epilepsy. But all evidence indicates that she killed her stepmother during one. Again...maybe it’s just me, but here Lincoln seems to be saying that while the expertly-trained medical world could not diagnose TE without an EEG, that SHE (Lincoln) could because she got lucky, read some books and talked to some ‘authorities’ ? So...if I did extensive research, I could give a medical diagnosis that my doctors with the latest medical equipment/technology at their disposal could not ?

10. (Pg.43-44) Psychomotor epilepsy - - epilepsy of the temporal lobe, that is - - shows only one obvious, and strange, symptom. During a seizure, there are periods of automatic action which the patient in some cases forgets completely and in others remembers only dimly, through a “brownout.” To name two simple examples from actual case histories: a man comes to and wonders why in the world he is digging a deep hole in his back yard; another finds himself strolling along a street in an unfamiliar part of town, eating a bag of doughnuts.
In some patients, the period of automatism is marked by fumbling, confusion, lack of response. In other patients, it is altogether different. A man has reported feeling the familiar aura of the onset as he set out down a famous and tricky ski slope; when he came to himself on the frozen lake far below, he saw by his ski tracks that he had made the descent by an extravagantly showy path over rough terrain which he would have avoided, when properly conscious, simply because it was too difficult for him. As a case history, this is not exceptional.
Nor is another case history cited by Dr. William Lennox, author of the exhaustive and authoritative work Epilepsy and related Disorders 1 (1 Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1960), though I find it amusing. A young man “woke” in his office, knowing that he must have just passed through an attack. He discovered how remarkable it had been when, a few days later, his salary was raised. The boss, faced with his firm and lucid demand that he increase the pay or lose his services, had been most favorably impressed.
We should forget neither of these case histories as we come to consider the death of Abby Borden. While there is SOME documentation...what little she ‘cites’ is not anywhere near enough convincing for me. I am sure she has done the best possible research, but I get the feeling that her spin is in there A LOT. I need to reserve some comments for later, and maybe as I read mor of this book, and of things like the trial transcripts etc., I will understand more.

11A.(Pg.45) I knew that on the day before the murders Abby betrayed a panic fear of being murdered - - by poison. I knew that Lizzie, on the day before the murders, was trying in vain to buy some prussic acid.11B. As in hypnosis, the victim resists anything he would refuse to do while in full possession of his senses (Lennox). Was there testimony that Abby betrayed this fear ? It is possible that Lizzie was not going to use the prussic acid for criminal purposes, but that she really thought of cleaning her sealskin coat...even if that wasn’t the conventional method ? “As in hypnosis”...I take that to mean that Lincoln is comparing a hypnotic state to that of a TE seizure ?...and if so, and Lizzie hadn’t show a murderous level of violence like this in the past, then why would she if she was in the throws of TE ?

12. (Pg. 46) The duration of an attack of temporal epilepsy, like its incidence, varies widely from patient to patient, though any given patient both incidence and duration can be predicted. Hearsay evidence as to the frequency and length of Lizzie’s “spells” is in accord with previously unnoted evidence in the court documents2, and tidily parallels many medical case histories. Apparently her seizures came only during the menstrual period, and then only three or four times a year. They were of brief duration, an hour or so at the most. Lizzie was going through a menstrual period on the morning of the murders: this is a matter of court record.
The preliminary aura of an attack also differs from patient to patient. A phrase that Lizzie used to Alice Russell on the night before the murders accurately describes one that is quite common: “This feeling as if something was hanging over me that I cannot shake off.” Wouldn’t Dr. Bowen who had know Lizzie all of her life, have already been able to in some form (minus the EEG of course), diagnose these “spells” as more than just menstrual-related had then actually been ‘more’ ?

Tracy...

[Mark A.]

Let's remember that no matter what we believe, Ms. Lizzie was aquitted and the case remains unsolved in the files of the Fall River Police Department.
Wouldn't it be something if concrete evidence were found today proving that someone else was the murderer? I don't think that it would change many peoples minds about Lizzie.

[Nancie]

wow, good job tracy, really good research and
comments. I have never subscribed to that epilptic
stuff, but you make me think...thank you...

[theebmonique]

Thank you Nancie. If anything, reading these Lincoln passages, made me sway AWAY from the epilepsy theory. I think it's more of what Lincoln wants it to be than fact. Like Mark says: the case remains unsolved in the files of the Fall River Police Department.



Tracy...

[snokkums]

I never quite believed epliespy theory. But we will never know who did it.