Guilty or Innocent? Lizzie Borden

Guilty or Innocent?  Lizzie Borden

In a case which remains unsolved more than a century after the crime, the murders of Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother, Andrew and Abby Borden, continues to intrigue.

It was late morning on August 4th, 1892, when the bodies of Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were discovered at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, hacked to death, their skulls battered and broken. Andrew’s daughter Lizzie was arrested a week later for both murders, despite the lack of physical proof, and circumstantial evidence tenuous at best. Police did not know where else to look.

The murders, although shocking to the local community, were perhaps not so surprising in delivering a premature demise for Andrew Borden. He was, it seemed, the richest, but also one of the most unpopular men in town. He was frugal to a fault and had made many enemies on his rise to the top, as rumours of revenge killings circulated due to his shady business dealings.

He was just as tight-fisted with his own family, their home, despite his immense wealth, lacking even the most basic conveniences such as indoor plumbing. His second marriage following the death of his first wife was also said to have damaged his relationship with his daughters Lizzie and Emma, both now in their thirties and considered to be spinsters by society. Lizzie was not your normal murder suspect. She was described as a respectable church attendee, a Sunday school teacher, later gaining the support of women’s and religious groups leading up to the trial.

Police investigators considered that Lizzie had at least as much to gain as anyone, and some of her actions leading up to and following the killings certainly raised enough eyebrows to give grounds for her arrest, in their mind. It was established that prior to the murders she had attempted, although unsuccessfully, to purchase Prussic Acid, a highly poisonous liquid, and she also apparently burned a dress which she claimed was stained whilst doing housework. Subsequent questioning yielded contradictory answers, so the police pressed on and charged Lizzie with the murders.

Gaining a conviction was always going to be an uphill battle as there was no actual physical evidence linking Lizzie to the deaths. The murder weapon, a hatchet, was found in the basement of the home but the blade was clean and the handle broken off and missing. There was no forensic testing and fingerprinting was in its infancy and was not used as a part of the investigation.

By the time the trial began over nine months later the press had turned it into a media circus. The manner of death was printed in lurid detail, motives speculated upon and even alternative suspects were bandied about.

When the victims skulls were accidentally and prematurely unveiled to a shocked courtroom, Lizzie dramatically (some will also say conveniently) fainted, allowing her defence team to successfully rule previously contradictory evidence as inadmissible. This also reinforced the ideology of women as the weaker sex, incapable of such a heinous act. Lizzie never testified at the trial and the jury took just over an hour to declare a verdict of not guilty.

Lizzie and her sister Emma jointly inherited their father’s huge estate and finally gained the financial independence they had wanted for so long. Lizzie purchased a large house in a fashionable neighbourhood and spent a considerable amount of her time travelling to Boston and New York enjoying and indulging her love of the theatre.

Although the sisters rarely spoke in later years, they both died within days of one another in 1927 and were buried beside their parents in the family plot. Their estates were left to charity, Lizzies to animal welfare organisations and Emma’s to various humanitarian causes.

The public fascination has continued long after Lizzie’s death with the family being the subject of numerous books, plays, films, even a ballet. Elizabeth Montgomery of ‘Bewitched’ fame was a distant relative of Lizzie and portrayed her in a 1975 movie. Lizzie also made a cameo appearance on the ‘Simpsons’ in which she and other notorious characters such as Richard Nixon, John Wilkes Booth and Benedict Arnold were part of a jury presiding over the trial of Homer Simpson’s soul!

Just over two years ago, the handwritten journals belonging to Andrew Jennings, Lizzie Borden’s defence attorney, were discovered. Containing interview notes, pre-trial preparation and newspaper clippings, speculation that new insights into this gruesome crime will come to light are rife. It will, however, be sometime before the contents are made public as the extremely fragile material must first be preserved.

These days, Lizzie’s childhood home is called the ‘Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast’ allowing guests to tour and experience a dramatization of the events, to sleep in a room originally occupied by members of the family and even eat the same breakfast served up to the family on that fateful day on August 4th 1892!!!

What do you think? Did Lizzie do it, or not?

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