Lizzie Borden

Podcast Transcript

On August 4, 1892, an incredibly grizzly event took place in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were brutally murdered by repeated strikes with a hatchet to their heads.

The primary suspect in the case was their daughter, Lizzie. In the subsequent trial, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict, and ever since, people have wondered if Lizzie did, in fact, kill her parents, and if she didn’t, who did?

Learn more about Lizzie Borden and Borden’s murders on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The case of Lizzie Borden is one of the most famous murder mysteries in American History. It was one of the first murder trials which became a media sensation.

For the past 130 years, hildren have learned a rhyme about Lizzie Borden, even if they know absolutely nothing else about her or the circumstances of the murders.

Before I get into the events of August 4, 1892, I should provide a bit of background on Lizzie and her family.

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on July 19, 1860, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Her birth name was Lizzie, and it was not a shortened form of Elizabeth.

Her father was Andrew Jackson Borden. He was of English and Welsh descent and grew up rather poor despite having close relatives who were rather well off.

He became a self-made man, first by selling furniture and later by buying and developing real estate. He was a respected figure in Falls Church. He was the president of a local bank and was on the board of directors of another bank and several textile factories.

Despite being wealthy, he was very frugal with his money. He and his family lived in a nice house, which was far from the nicest in town and wasn’t in the most fashionable neighborhood.

It was estimated that at the time of his death, he had a net worth of $300,000, which would be worth about $10,000,000 today adjusted for inflation.

His first wife was Sarah Anthony Morse. The couple had two daughters, Emma, who had been born in 1851, and Lizzie.

Lizzie’s mother died in 1863 when Lizzie wasn’t even three years old.

Three years later, in 1866, Andrew married again, this time to Abby Durfee Gray.

Lizzie and her sister Emma had a strained relationship with their stepmother. Rumors circulated that Lizzie felt Abby was after the family fortune and that Lizzie and Emma resented their father for his miserly ways.

Despite having remarried when Lizze was young, she referred to her stepmother as Mrs. Borden her whole life, not “mother.”

Without their mother, Emma became very protective of her younger sister.

Lizzie was very active in her local Congregationalist Church and other civic organizations. She taught Sunday school and was involved with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Ladies’ Fruit and Flower Mission, which delivered fruit and flowers to the sick, and the Christian Endeavor Society, which was a youth organization.

Basically, she didn’t lead the sort of life that screamed axe murderer. There is nothing that any of her acquaintances ever observed that would lead them to believe that something was wrong with her.

Jump to 1892, the fateful year in question.

Both Emma and Lizzie are still living with their parents, having never married. Lizzie was 32 years old, and Emma was 41.

From outward appearances, things in the Borden household were not well in 1892.

For starters, Lizzie’s father, Andrew, gave large real estate gifts to his wife Abby’s family members. This angered both of the daughters, who felt it confirmed their worst fears about their stepmother.

Lizzie had built a roost in a shed in outside the house for pigeons. In May, her father killed the pigeons which were living there. This fact became a major point of contention for researchers years later.

After their father gave away real estate to their stepmother’s family, the girls were given the home they grew up in by their father and then sold it back to him for $5,000, the equivalent of about $175,000 today.

They moved into the house they were given briefly before the sale back to their father, but then in July, they left Fall River to stay in New Bedford for several weeks.

When they returned to Falls River a week before the murders, Lizzie decided to stay in a boarding house for several days before moving back into the house.

A few other players need to be introduced. One is Bridget Sullivan, a 25-year-old Irish immigrant who was Borden’s live-in maid who had a front row seat to the drama in the Borden household. The family called her Maggie.

The other was John Morse, the brother of their deceased mother, who had come to visit and was invited to stay in the house the night before the murders.

There is controversy surrounding the events of Thursday, August 4, 1892. There was contradictory testimony as to what happened, so the timeline needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Based on Bridget Sullivan’s testimony, that morning, Mr and Mrs Borden, with John Morse, had breakfast around 8 a.m. Lizzie didn’t have breakfast with them, and Emma wasn’t in town that day, visiting a friend.

Morse left the house to visit one of his nieces in Fall River while he was in town and to look into buying a pair of oxen. He was to return for lunch.

Mr. Borden left to go on his morning walk and returned home around 10:30. He was let into the house by the maid Sullivan.

He laid down on the sofa to rest.

The details after that differ. Sullivan was reportedly in her room resting after washing windows when, around 11:10, she heard Lizzie shout out, “Maggie, come quick! Father’s dead. Somebody came in and killed him.”

Lizzie ordered Sullivan to go get the family physician, Dr. Bowen, who came to the house and pronounced both Abby and Andrew Borden dead.

The subsequent investigation found that Mr. Borden had been hit with an axe or hatchet eleven times in the head, and Mrs Borden had been hit with 18 or 19 blows to the head.

It is believed that Mrs. Borden was killed approximately 30 to 90 minutes before Mr. Borden. She was found upstairs in one of the bedrooms.

At first, the police thought that it must have been the work of an outsider. However, nothing was stolen from the house, and the Bordens always locked their door.

Suspicion quickly turned to someone inside the house who had access, Lizzie.

One of the biggest reasons why Lizzie became a suspect was her inconsistency in explaining her whereabouts.

Lizzie initially stated that she was in the barn at the time her father was murdered, looking for fishing sinkers and eating pears. However, police found it strange because the loft area where she claimed to have been was covered in dust, with no footprints or other signs of recent activity.

Lizzie’s account of her activities changed multiple times. At one point, she said she had been ironing in the dining room, and then she mentioned she was in the kitchen. These inconsistencies about her location made her seem evasive or forgetful about her exact whereabouts.

The maid, Sullivan, contradicted Lizzie’s testimony. She claimed that when she let Mr. Borden into the house she heard Lizzie let out a laugh from upstairs.

Witnesses described Lizzie’s reaction to the murders as unusually calm. Friends and police officers remarked on her lack of visible distress, which struck some as odd given the brutal nature of the killings.

Lizzie reportedly said several strange things after the murders. When a family friend offered to stay the night for comfort, she responded dismissively, “What good would that do?” and reportedly hinted at fearing someone within the household rather than an outside threat.

Lizzie was seen burning a dress on the kitchen stove a few days after the murders. When asked, she claimed the dress had been stained with paint and was unusable. This was suspicious to the police, as they had been searching for bloodstained clothing that might connect her to the crime.

At Lizzie’s trial, which began in June 1893, her defense argued that it was natural for her to burn a stained dress. Still, others found it suspicious, especially since she burned it secretly after the police began their investigation.

In addition to the inconsistencies, there was also the fact that Lizzie had plenty of motives to kill her parents for the reasons I listed before.

The circumstances surrounding the murder made it one of the biggest stories of the year. The press followed every detail, portraying Lizzie as either a victim of cruel suspicion or a cold-blooded killer.

The case against Lizzie was far from open and shut. There was little in the way of hard evidence.

There wasn’t a murder weapon. They did find a broken hatchet in the basement, but only the head with the shaft broken. Moreover, there was no blood on it, and there would have been little time to clean it.

Likewise, given the nature of the murders, the murderer should have been covered in blood. However, Lizzie wasn’t. It is highly unlikely that she could have washed herself so quickly and changed her clothes without leaving a mess.

On June 20, 1893, both sides rested their cases, and it was put to the jury.

It only took them an hour to deliberate and come to a verdict.

The jury found Lizzie Borden…..innocent.

In all fairness to her defense team, who included former Massachusetts governor George D. Robinson, they did provide ample reasonable doubt, and the evidence was entirely circumstantial. There was no smoking gun….on, in this case, a bloody hatchet.

All the evidence aside, the jury was made up of 12 men, and they simply had a hard time believing that an upper-class, respectable woman could have committed this heinous of a crime.

While Lizzie Borden was found not guilty, there was never anyone else who was considered a serious suspect, and no one else was ever brought up on charges for the murder of the Bordens.

Despite being acquitted, Lizzie was ostracized in Fall River. She and Emma inherited their father’s estate, but Lizzie lived under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of her life.

Emma and Lizzie lived together for many years, even though Lizzie had become a pariah in Fall River. The respectable upper-class society in the city thought that Lizzie was guilty.

Lizzie, on her part, never spoke about the murders again.

In 1897, Lizzie was arrested for shoplifting, which became a news item because of her previous trial.

In 1905, the sisters had an argument over a party that Lizzie threw for an actress named Nance O’Neil, and afterwards, Emma left the house and never saw Lizzie again.

Lizzie Borden died on June 1, 1927, in Fall River at the age of 66.

In the years since the trial of Lizzie Borden, there has been a constant fascination with the case.

There have been numerous books, movies, and television shows about the Lizzie Borden case and numerous theories trying to solve it.

Some theories hold that the maid was the murderer. Others said that her uncle, who was staying with them, committed the crime.

One theory holds that her sister Emma did it, secretly coming back to Fall River and leaving without getting caught.

Still, others think that it might have been a botched robbery by outsiders.

However, most people think that the preponderance of evidence points to Lizzie.

She is portrayed alternatively as an insane killer or a victim who was justified in her killings.

Depending on who is telling the story, she has been painted as a feminist hero, a victim of sexual abuse, a repressed lesbian, or she suffered a rare psychological condition known as a fugue state.

Because she never spoke to anyone about it, there is no real evidence for any of these theories.

One interesting fact, which also can’t be verified, came to light years later: Bridget Sullivan, the maid who worked in the house, later married and moved to Butte, Montana. In 1948, while on her deathbed, she allegedly told her sister that she lied on the witness stand to protect Lizzie from being executed.

If true, it would be damning evidence, but the reports of the deathbed confession are also just hearsay.

We will probably never know the truth about who killed Andrew and Abby Borden. While circumstantial evidence does point to Lizzie, there is nothing conclusive to tie her to the murders.

However, if she did it, what we can know for certain is that she didn’t give her mother forty wacks. It was, at most, only 19.