November 3, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1892, the quiet town of Fall River, Massachusetts, became the scene of one of America’s most famous unsolved murder mysteries. Andrew and Abby Borden were found brutally killed with an axe, and suspicion quickly turned to Andrew’s daughter, Lizzie. What followed was a trial that transfixed the nation, blending questions of class, gender, and justice into a public spectacle that blurred the line between truth and myth. More than a century later, the mystery endures. Historian and author Cara Robertson, writer of The Trial of Lizzie Borden, revisits the Borden murders to untangle fact from folklore. Did Lizzie Borden get away with murder, or has history turned her into one of its most enduring legends?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
And today we have Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Borden. This long unsolved double murder has haunted
(00:34):
Fall River, Massachusetts since the late summer of eighteen ninety two.
Here's Kara with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
You know, we're used to the idea of these trials
that become big media events, but Lizzie Borden's trial was,
to use an off use phrase, the trial of the century.
In her case, it was the trial of the nineteenth century.
There is a combination of technology and you know, sensational
(01:05):
subject matter that converge in turning her case into something,
you know, akin to the O. J. Simpson trial. It
was such a heinous double murder, and the person accused
of it with someone who checks all the boxes of
proper middle class womanhood. She was active in good work,
(01:27):
she was a Sunday school teacher, and yet she's accused
of the murder of her own father and her stepmother,
and this is just more than anyone can really comprehend,
and so there is a strong desire to follow the
case and to see her in mythic terms. You know,
(01:49):
she's either this monster, you know, someone whose appearance must
match the murder, or she's an innocent victim, almost a
sentimental heroine, just ensnared by circumstance and some insidious masculine
conspiracy of men and policemen's blue who were trying to
(02:13):
pin the crime on her to cover up their own
incompetence and the sensationalism of the crime, and also the
press coverage that the trial generated means that it provides
a place from which you can observe America in the
Gilded Age and have a real window onto that period
(02:33):
in American history. Fall River, Massachusetts was an extremely prosperous
mill town. It was a central place for textile production
in the United States. It was often called the Manchester
of America, and it was a town that was separated
(02:53):
from urban centers like Boston and New York, so had
a slight provincialism them to it. But it was also
had easy access to those centers, so there was a
lot of there's a lot of wealth, and the people
who enjoyed the wealth generated by the mills were able
to travel to Boston and New York and the wider
world and had a certain amount of sophistication. And then
(03:17):
the people who worked in the mills were quite poor,
often immigrants. And what is particularly interesting about Fall River
is that it's geography exactly mirrors the social structure. The
people who live closest to the mills, which is low,
(03:37):
are the people who work in the mills. And then
there's a city center that's sort of halfway up up
the hill, and that's where mostly the doctors lawyers live.
And then there is an elite area called the hill District,
which is literally the highest place you can live, and
that that is the place that's favored by the people
(03:58):
who are the owners of the mills. You know, on
the surface, the Borden's probably looked like a fairly typical family.
Andrew Borden was a successful real estate owner. He lived
with his second wife, Abby and his adult daughters, Emma
and Lizzie, in a single family house near the center
of town. That was very convenient for him for walking
(04:21):
around collecting rents, checking on his businesses. But Andrew Borden
was descended from one of the founding families of Fall River,
and he was from what you might call a lesser branch,
So his father was quite poor, and he was himself
a self made man and pretty rich. So Lizzie and
(04:43):
her sister Emma occupied a peculiar position in Fall River.
They were, on the one hand, considered heiresses. One might
have assumed them to be in the elite of Fall River.
But because he chose to live, as one of his
neighbors said, on a narrow scale, the middle class, middling
part of Full River, and because he was a bit
(05:04):
of a miser, wasn't. The daughter's allowance was for pen
money and things were. It's sort of equivalent to the
wage a worker in one of the mills would have earned. Obviously,
they didn't have to work for it. And yet, on
the other hand, they were socially fairly isolated by the
decisions of their father, and it seems clear that they
(05:25):
would have liked to have been cultured girls. As one
of their neighbors put it, they chose to attend or
remain rather in the society church. When their father had
a dispute and left it for a different one. Abby
Borden was Lizzie and Emma's stepmother. Lizzie was very young
at the time of her mother's death and had no
(05:46):
particular memory of her, so Emma was the woman who
raised her. But Emma was thirteen at the time of
her mother's death and was thought to never fully accept
Abby as her mother, you know, as a replacement for
her mother. Five years before the murders, Andrew Borden decided
to give Abby a house, really to bail out her sister,
(06:09):
her own half sister and family, and Lizzie and Emma
got wind of this and really resented this act of generosity.
They said that, you know, what he did for her,
he should do for his own blood. And Andrew subsequently
gave them what had been his father's house, you know
(06:30):
that was rented out so that they would have their
own income. And although this had the effect of equalizing
the gifts, it didn't really heal the breach, and from
that time forward, Lizzie and her older sister Emma avoided
their parents as much as possible. In that small house,
they preferred to take separate meals and to if possible,
(06:52):
entertain visitors in a guest room upstairs that they used
as their own sort of sitting room. So within the
small household they lived quite separate, and it was described
by some as a side of really cold war between
the generations.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And you're listening to Kara Robertson tell the story of
the trial of Lizzie Borden and giving you a backdrop
when we come back more of the Trial of Lizzie
Borden here on our American story. Folks, if you love
(07:32):
the stories we tell about this great country, and especially
the stories of America's rich past, know that all of
our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture
and faith, are brought to us by the great folks
at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that are good in life. And if you can't get
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
(07:54):
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
learn more. And we returned to our American stories, and
we've been listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
(08:15):
of Lizzie bordon By the way, it's a terrific greed
go to Amazon or the usual suspects to pick it up.
The Bordon family from the outside seemed like a normal family,
but there was discord amongst the generations and between them.
Adult daughters Lizzie and Emma didn't care for their stepmother Abbey,
making for a chilling home environment. Back to Kara.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Well, Emma was a fairly stoic character and much more
mild manner, so that she wasn't really quoted saying anything
negative about her stepmother, though it was known that there
was this dispute in the family. Lizzie was a fourth
right character, and she described her stepmother as a mean,
good for nothing thing to a dressmaker of all people.
A few months before the before the murders, she was
(09:02):
just very frank about her dissatisfaction with her living conditions,
her desire for more, and also for the role that
she felt that her stepmother had played, you know, in
keeping her in this condition. About a year before the murders,
the Burdons were the victim of a mysterious daytime theft.
(09:22):
Andrew and Abby were out, but Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget Sullivan,
the Borton's made, were home. Abby Bordon had some jewelry stolen,
and mister Bordon also lost some money and street car tickets.
And what was oddest about the crime was that no
one seemed to have heard anyone enter or leave the house.
(09:43):
After the police were called and investigated, and mister Bordon
told the police officer that he didn't think that they'd
ever find the thief, suggesting to many people that perhaps
he knew who was responsible. On August second, the Bordon
household was a hit with what appeared to be food poisoning.
It was a fairly typical complaint in Fall River in
(10:06):
the summer. In fact, it was called the summer complaint
because so many houses didn't have refrigeration. The boards didn't
have an icebox, but they ate a lot of leftovers
and suffered the consequences. The next day, Abby consulted the
family physician who lived across the street. Learning of their dinner,
He wasn't particularly concerned, but Abby confided to him that
(10:30):
she feared they had been poisoned. When the doctor returned
to the house to examine Andrew, along with Abby, Andrew
stood in the doorway and refused to let him enter,
and also to tell him that he would not pay
for the visit. Lizzie also had her own suspicions about poison,
which she shared with her friend and former neighbor, Alice Russell.
(10:51):
On the night before the murders. She said she was
worried that the melk had been poisoned and that there
were strange men who'd been seen in the vicinity of
the house. She also confessed her generalized sense of uneasiness
and a sense of foreboding, remarking, I feel as if
something was hanging over me that I cannot throw off,
(11:14):
and it comes over me at times no matter where
I am. On the morning of August fourth, there were
five people in the Bordon household Andrew Borden, his wife Abby,
his daughter Lizzie, the housemaid Bridget Sullivan, and Andrew's brother
(11:35):
in law John Morse, who was an occasional overnight visitor.
Emma Bordon was visiting friends in fair Haven, which is
some distance away. As was custom, the elder Borton's rose
first and had breakfast, as did John Morse. Andrew left
to go about his business in town. John followed in
(11:58):
order to see some other relatives of the other side
of town. Sometime between nine twenty and nine thirty in
the morning. Around the same time, Abby Borden asked Bridget
Sullivan to wash the windows inside and outside of the house.
She went up to the guest room in order to
change a pillowcase and tidy it up. After John Morse's
(12:18):
departure around nine thirty, she was killed in that room.
An assassin struck and hacked her to death with approximately
nineteen blows. About an hour after Abby was killed, Andrew
Borden returned home. He had trouble getting in the front
(12:40):
door because it had been bolted from the inside. Bridget Sullivan,
the housemaid, came to let him in and as she
was letting him in, uttered some sort of an oath,
and this apparently evoked laughter from Lizzie Borden, who was
upstairs on the landing. In the process of descending the stairs,
mister Bordon came in. His daughter, Lizzie greeted him and
(13:03):
inquired about the mail. He asked about her stepmother, Abby,
and she said that she had had a note from
a sick friend and gone out. Mister Borden decided to
take a nap on the sitting room sofa, and shortly
thereafter the snap became his final slumber, he was struck
by ten blows, mostly in the face. At the time
(13:26):
of her father's murder, Lizzie Borden later said that she
had been outside, first picking pears in the orchard, and
then looking for a sinker, you know, a wait for
a fishing line, or perhaps a piece of iron to
fix a window in the upstairs loft of the barn.
(13:48):
There she tarried and ate a pair or two. She
estimated that she was there twenty minutes, perhaps thirty, came
back in from outside and discovered her father's body on
the city room sofa. She immediately summoned the housemaid, Bridget Sullivan,
who was upstairs in her third floor attic room taking
a little bit of a nap. She dispatched Bridget for
(14:11):
the family doctor, who lived across the street. He was
not at home, so she sent her to find Alice Russell,
who was a friend and neighbor. While she was waiting
for Bridget to return, she waited inside the screen door
at the side of the house and was spotted by
(14:31):
her neighbor, Alice Churchill, who asked her what was the matter,
and she replied that someone has killed father. The murders
were so violent that some speculated that Jack the Ripper
had come to America. The details were gruesome, yet oddly
(14:54):
the house itself seemed to be in what one witness
described as apple pie order. The first thought was that
it must be the work of a madman, but two
key facts seemed to rule out the possibility of a
murderous stranger. First, the house was locked. The front door
(15:15):
had been securely triple locked, and although there was a
door from the cellar leading to the back, that too
was locked. So the only point of access in the
house seemed to be a side door that sometimes was latched,
sometimes was not latched, but it was often in sight
of the neighbors or Bridget Sullivan, the housemaid. The second
(15:36):
key fact that seemed to rule out a murderous stranger
was the interval between the murders. It was something that
one of the prosecutors would later call the controlling fact
of the case. The idea that someone had broken in
from the outside killed Missus Borden first and then waited
an hour and a half to kill Andrew seemed really
(15:59):
implause there were a few places in the house to hide.
It is possible that an upstairs guessed an upstairs, a
clothes closet could have provided a refuge, but it was
quite small and cramped, and also the door had been
left open to the guest room the scene of Abbey's murder,
seeming to advertise rather than hide the fact. All in all,
(16:21):
it was a very small house, and it was a
house that had been converted from a tenement for two
families into a single family house, which meant that the
upstairs and the downstairs layouts neared each other. Neither floor
had a hallway, so that one would have to pass
from one room into the other in order to get
(16:44):
through the house. It's very unlikely that someone from the
outside would have been able to break in and then
would have been able to elude the two women known
to be in the house at the time of both murders,
Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan. Once that was clear, the
police began to dig for a motive, but the first
(17:05):
detective to question Lizzie Borden found her a bit evasive
and suspicious. In particular, he wondered what on earth she
could have been doing in the loft of the barn,
the hottest, most stifling part of the barn. For twenty
or thirty minutes, and.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial of
Lizzie Borden.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
The murders were so.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Violent, she said that some speculated that Jack the Ripper
himself had come to America. When we return more of
the trial of Lizzie Borden here on our American stories,
(18:09):
and we returned to our American stories and to the
mysterious double murder that took place in Fall River, Massachusetts
in the summer of eighteen ninety two. The daughter of
the victims, Lizzie Borden, was the main suspect. Back to
Carra Robertson, author of the Trial of Lizzie Bordon, with more.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Of the story, the police found no evidence that anyone
had been in the loft of the barn. This is
something that is disputed at the trial. At the time
that the inquest started, the police already had strong suspicions
of Lizzie Bordon. Lizzie's family lawyer attempted to participate. He
(18:48):
wanted to represent her at the inquest, but that wasn't permitted.
The prosecutor at the inquest took her through her stated
movements and the day of the murders, Lizzie reduced a
contradictory story. She said that she was upstairs. She said
that she was downstairs. She said that she was ironing
handkerchiefs at the time of Abby's murder, a task that
(19:11):
was significantly left undone or not completed by the time
of her father's arrival. And yet she also claimed that
she had not heard a sound. This seemed implausible to
people who'd been in the house, that the fall of
someone upstairs should have produced some sort of a jar.
On the last day of the inquest, Lizzie Borden was
(19:32):
arrested and taken to The trial begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts,
a neighboring town, on June fifth, eighteen ninety three. Reporters
and journalists from around the country are dispatched to cover
the case. An extension to the courthouse is built in
the rear so that all the wire services can be accommodated,
(19:57):
and the most prominent columnists write not only about what
is happening in the courthouse, but also what is happening
outside the courthouse. Because he becomes an almost festive atmosphere
with people who line up and bring lunch, desire for
admission is widespread and much covered in the newspapers. One
local newspaper, under the headline where to Look for Your Wife,
(20:21):
describes the number of women who are desirous of attending
the trial, and these women, according at least to one
of the journalists, constitute a sort of second jury. The
jury itself is all male. Women were not eligible for
jury service in Massachusetts at the time, and actually wouldn't
serve on a Massachusetts jury until nineteen fifty. Lizzy Bordon
(20:44):
had a team of defenders, the most prominent of whom
was the former governor of Massachusetts, George Robinson, and he
told a simple story that Lizzy Borden was simply in
the wrong place the wrong time, or, as he would
have put it, in the right place in her home
(21:05):
at the wrong time, and that it was not the
defense's job to clear up the mystery. That this was
beyond the capacity of a woman who looked like Lizzy Bordon,
or who had the characteristics of Lizzy Bordon. Lucy Bordon
had an extraordinary self possession. That's something that everyone noticed
(21:25):
about her. In other respects, she was quite ordinary. All
the journalists agreed that she had this extraordinary self possession,
and that divided the audience. Some saw in it evidence
of almost a masculine nerve, that there was something just
disturbing about that kind of self possession in the face
of these kinds of crimes, and one local newspaper, the
(21:47):
Irish Catholic paper, that viewed her case with some suspicion
and hostility, referred to her as the Sphinx of coolness.
By contrast, many of the journalists saw in Lizzie Bordon's
self possession a sign of Yankee grit and of true
American womanhood, and both sides used that appearance or their
(22:11):
analysis of her appearance to confirm their own opinions about
her guilt and innocence or innocence. The prosecution was in
a bind because the very brutality of the murders seemed
to argue against Lizzie Bordon as the murderer. She's someone who,
you know, appears to fit the model of womanly behavior,
(22:33):
and she's someone who just doesn't look like the sort
of person based on late nineteenth century ideas of criminality,
who would be the murderer in such a case. They
were looking for, or you know, people were expecting some
sort of insane immigrants. So for the prosecution, the task
was to show that really only Lizzie Borden could have
(22:54):
committed the murder, and that that was their best their
best way to get a conviction. There was evidence that
would have helped the prosecution that they were unable to
tell the jury. The first piece was that Lizzie Bordon
was identified as a woman who tried to buy prussic
acid on the day before the murders. This was significant
(23:17):
because if Lizzie Bordon had tried and failed to procure
prussic acid, which is a deadly poison, and poison as
we all know, as a woman's weapon, then she might
well have turned to a readily available household implement to
commit the murders. That that explained the choice of weapon,
which otherwise seemed very much like a man's weapon. The
(23:39):
other bit of evidence that they were not allowed to
share was Lizzie Bordon's own testimony that memorialized her conflicting
accounts of where she had been on the morning of
the murders. The judges ruled that because she had effectively
been denied counsel and the Massachusetts Constitution had a protection
that was something like our modern Miranda writes that the
(24:02):
evidence could not be used a trial against her. Medical
experts all testified that a woman could have committed the murders,
and in fact specifically said that, you know, with sufficient leverage,
a weapon held by a woman could produce such wounds.
(24:24):
And the prosecution even tried to argue that the number
of wounds and the fact that some were weak and vacillating,
was somehow assigned that a woman had been the murderer.
You know, they often want to have it both ways,
but the defense just repeatedly said that a woman really
could not have committed those crimes. The prosecution also had
(24:45):
the problem that everyone who saw Lizzie Borden after the
murders testified that she had no sign of blood anywhere
on her person, that she seemed, you know, entirely put together,
And so the defense was able to say that it
just was impossible that someone would not have been spattered
(25:07):
with blood after such violence the murders committed in such
proximity to the victims. It was also known, however, that
Lizzie Borden burned a dress on the Sunday after the murders,
a dress that she claimed had been stained with paint,
and the defense produced the dressmaker to say that yes, indeed,
(25:27):
the dress had been stained with paint, and so the
prosecution was able to imply that the dress that Lizzie
Bordon had been seen in after the murders was not
the same blue dress that she had worn on the
morning before the murders. The police produced a number of weapons,
axes and hatchets found at the Burdon household. The police
(25:48):
found what they thought was the murder weapon, a hatchet
head that had been found in the basement among other
tools that were rusty and fallen into disuse. The hatchet
head was covered with what the police described as ash,
as opposed to the dust that covered other things in
(26:10):
the basement, leading them to believe that someone had actually
hidden it there in an attempt to make it look
like it was just an innocent object. One of the
ways that they determined that this was the likely murder
weapon was by matching the cutting blade of that hatchet
with the indentations in the skulls of the Burdons. The
(26:34):
coroner had decapitated the Burtons and then rendered off the
flesh in order to examine those skulls, and then had
cast made and drawn in the various wounds so that
they could be brought into the trial. When Lizzie Borden
saw the skulls for the first time at the trial,
she promptly fainted, earning her the support of many of
(26:57):
the journalists and the derision of others.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And we're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Bordon, Evil Monster, Innocent family Member. When we
continue the final chapter of the Trial of Lizzie Bordon
here on our American Stories. And we continue with our
(27:39):
American Stories and the final installment of the Trial of
Lizzie Bordon with author Kara Robertson. Let's pick up when
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
The prosecution plays with tropes about hatred of stepmothers and
has a sort of time conceptualizing the murder of the stepmother.
The problem for the prosecution is is Andrew Borden's murder.
There's never a theory as to why he was killed,
(28:13):
except to say that he came home, perhaps before she
could establish an alibi, or even more improbably that she
suddenly realized after killing her stepmother that her father would
know that she had killed her stepmother. And she couldn't
bear the idea that he would look at her as
a murderer, even if he might protect her, as he
(28:35):
did perhaps with the daytime theft of Abby's jewelry. And
so that's something that the defense is able to really
emphasize that whoever killed Abby Borden killed Andrew Borden. And
while there may may have been evidence of discord in
the household and dislike of the stepmother, there was no
(28:58):
real evidence that Lizzie Borden hated her father. In fact,
they seemed to have in some respects an extremely close relationship,
as evidenced by the fact that Andrew Borden wore a
ring that his daughter Lizzie gave him, and it was
the only ring, the only piece of jewelry he wore.
(29:18):
The murders divided full River. The working classes, whose views
were reflected in and shaped by the Irish Catholic Paper,
viewed this as another case of the police giving special
breaks to someone from a good family, and there was
a lot of grumbling that if a mill hand had
been suspected of the murders, then that person would have
(29:41):
been arrested and then convicted very quickly. People from Lizzie
Borden's social set and especially from her church, formed the
bedrock of her support and attended the trial. After an
unusually long trial lasting almost three weeks, the jury found
that they were unanimous on the first ballot, and they concluded, however,
(30:03):
that they better wait about an hour an hour and
a half for propriety's sake, so that they looked like
they'd been appropriately deliberative. When the jury returned, the clerk
of the court asked if Lizzie Borden was guilty or
not guilty. The foreman interrupted the clerk to shout not guilty.
(30:25):
Lizzie bordon fell as if shot in the courtroom, and
then the crowd outside erupted in chears, and she was
warmly congratulated by her friends and attendants, and even the
most prominent journalists who had for the most part been
her supporters. In Fall River, the story was a little
bit different. The town was divided along class lines. For
(30:50):
the most part, the working classes thought that this was
someone who's simply just gotten away with murder. It was
another case of money talking for the people who had
been her supporters. During the trial, however, the verdict was
greeted with great relief, and Lizzie Borden stayed with some
friends and received many telegrams congratulating her from people far
and wide who had supported her during the trial. Once
(31:13):
the trial was over, many of the people who had
backed her cooled in their enthusiasm, and when she returned
to her church, she found many of the pews empty,
so that the message was delivered that she was not
particularly welcome. There's something almost tribal about the way the
(31:37):
punishment was meeted out in the case. The elite and
particularly her fellow churchgoers, supported her during the trial. They
backed her against the idea that someone like them, someone
like her, could have committed the murders, but then exacted
their own punishment by ostracizing her. Lizzie Borden was expected
(32:00):
to live down her notoriety and show by your continued
good works that this was simply had been a tragic
incident of which she too was an innoctant victim. But instead,
Lizzie and her sister moved to a larger, grandeer house,
a sort of Lake Victorian McMansion on the hill, and
(32:21):
had the sort of life that she had apparently imagined
for herself in earlier days. Although no longer fully welcome
and her church. She went to the theater in Boston.
She had a special seat built into her chauffeur driven
car to accommodate her dogs. So she returned to the
(32:43):
to Fall River, bought the house that she had always wanted,
and lived in a sense, in the style that she
had always wanted. But she was shunned. And I think
it says something both about her nerve and her limitations
that she chose to stay in Fall River rather than
disappear into a big city where she could have enjoyed
(33:04):
a high standard of living and been much more anonymous.
I think Lizzie Bordon stayed in full River because of
her own parochialism, that she really couldn't imagine anywhere else,
that that was the limit of her ambition. She wanted
to live, you know, in the style of the grander
Borden's and didn't really imagine anything beyond that. If you
(33:28):
think she did it, then you know that was the
purpose of the murders. The prosecution makes a point of
saying that Lizzie Bordon had plenty of money for the
things that she wanted, you know, plenty of pen money,
and that her father was capable of generosity, at least
towards her, and so therefore she had no financial motive.
But if what she wanted was financial independence rather than
(33:52):
you know, the ability to get a new hat, and
one sees the murders through that lens, then she was
simply living out, you know, what had been her fantasy,
and that, you know, the opinions of the people in
the town were not particularly significant to her. She was
very strong willed, which is something that everyone says about
(34:14):
her that you know, unlike her much more demure sister,
that she is somebody she resembles her father in terms
of strength of character and hardness. Now, of course, if
you think that she's was simply in the wrong place
at the wrong time, or in the right place at
the wrong time, and she had no knowledge of the murders,
then it also wouldn't make any sense for her to
(34:36):
really live anywhere else that that was her home, and
that that's where her sister would want to live, because
her sister's friends were all in Fall River. The sisters
had a split in nineteen oh five, so twelve years
after the murders, Emma moved out of the house and
they never spoke again, what we know is that is
(34:58):
that as soon as Emma moved out, Lizzie lost the
remaining friends she had there and was truly isolated. At
that point. She turned mostly to her domestic staff, enjoyed
the company also of her dogs. The tricky thing is
she's socially isolated in the conventional sense, but she seems
(35:19):
to enjoy the company of her staff. She seems to
have a nice relationship with various housekeepers and the chauffe's family,
and she also sends really sacharine birthday and holiday greetings
to the children of her domestic staff, so that they
received postcards by special delivery with buddies and things on
(35:43):
them wishing them happy Birthday, Happy Easter. She also would
take them out for ice cream. It didn't seem to
be a case of reasonable doubt for the jury. Rather,
it reflected their certainty that someone like Lizzie Borden could
not have come these crimes. It is one way in
which she definitely benefits from the double standard, whether she
(36:05):
did it or not, you know, like she's the beneficiary
of the double standard, and that it just seems it
just seems so difficult to imagine someone like Lizzie Borden,
who is after all, sitting in the courtroom every day
with perfectly quaffed hair, composed picking up a hatchet and
killing her father and her stepmother in such a fashion.
(36:29):
There is discussion on the part of the defense team
that you know, Lizzie and her sisters would continue to
look for the real murderers. The prosecution and the police
considered the case closed, that they had in fact found
the person, and she was acquitted. And although everyone associated
with the household has been suspected at one time or
(36:51):
another bi amateur detectives, no one except Lizzie Borden was
ever tried for the murders. It's a case in which
people project a lot of their worst nightmares. It's such
a horrible case, and it's you know, it's these horrible
unsolved murders, I mean technically unsolved, and even if you
think you know who did it, it's still a you know,
it's it's a wide done And if not a who
(37:13):
done it, it's not surprising then that every generation effectively
reinvents the case that finds an explanation that reflects the
time in which the solution is written more so than
the actual time of the murders. And I mean maybe
you could say that this was true of the town,
you know that in exactly its own punishment, that it
(37:33):
was just it was. It was far better to let
one woman get away with murder than to suggest that
someone like Lizzie Borton was actually capable of it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And a special thanks to Kara Robertson. Please, by all
means go out and buy the book The Trial of
Lizzie bordon It's on Amazon, in all the usual suspects.
Was she guilty or guilty of being in the right place,
place at the wrong time. You be the judge The
Trial of Lizzie Borden. Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
And today we have Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Borden. This long unsolved double murder has haunted
(00:34):
Fall River, Massachusetts since the late summer of eighteen ninety two.
Here's Kara with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
You know, we're used to the idea of these trials
that become big media events, but Lizzie Borden's trial was,
to use an off use phrase, the trial of the century.
In her case, it was the trial of the nineteenth century.
There is a combination of technology and you know, sensational
(01:05):
subject matter that converge in turning her case into something,
you know, akin to the O. J. Simpson trial. It
was such a heinous double murder, and the person accused
of it with someone who checks all the boxes of
proper middle class womanhood. She was active in good work,
(01:27):
she was a Sunday school teacher, and yet she's accused
of the murder of her own father and her stepmother,
and this is just more than anyone can really comprehend,
and so there is a strong desire to follow the
case and to see her in mythic terms. You know,
(01:49):
she's either this monster, you know, someone whose appearance must
match the murder, or she's an innocent victim, almost a
sentimental heroine, just ensnared by circumstance and some insidious masculine
conspiracy of men and policemen's blue who were trying to
(02:13):
pin the crime on her to cover up their own
incompetence and the sensationalism of the crime, and also the
press coverage that the trial generated means that it provides
a place from which you can observe America in the
Gilded Age and have a real window onto that period
(02:33):
in American history. Fall River, Massachusetts was an extremely prosperous
mill town. It was a central place for textile production
in the United States. It was often called the Manchester
of America, and it was a town that was separated
(02:53):
from urban centers like Boston and New York, so had
a slight provincialism them to it. But it was also
had easy access to those centers, so there was a
lot of there's a lot of wealth, and the people
who enjoyed the wealth generated by the mills were able
to travel to Boston and New York and the wider
world and had a certain amount of sophistication. And then
(03:17):
the people who worked in the mills were quite poor,
often immigrants. And what is particularly interesting about Fall River
is that it's geography exactly mirrors the social structure. The
people who live closest to the mills, which is low,
(03:37):
are the people who work in the mills. And then
there's a city center that's sort of halfway up up
the hill, and that's where mostly the doctors lawyers live.
And then there is an elite area called the hill District,
which is literally the highest place you can live, and
that that is the place that's favored by the people
(03:58):
who are the owners of the mills. You know, on
the surface, the Borden's probably looked like a fairly typical family.
Andrew Borden was a successful real estate owner. He lived
with his second wife, Abby and his adult daughters, Emma
and Lizzie, in a single family house near the center
of town. That was very convenient for him for walking
(04:21):
around collecting rents, checking on his businesses. But Andrew Borden
was descended from one of the founding families of Fall River,
and he was from what you might call a lesser branch,
So his father was quite poor, and he was himself
a self made man and pretty rich. So Lizzie and
(04:43):
her sister Emma occupied a peculiar position in Fall River.
They were, on the one hand, considered heiresses. One might
have assumed them to be in the elite of Fall River.
But because he chose to live, as one of his
neighbors said, on a narrow scale, the middle class, middling
part of Full River, and because he was a bit
(05:04):
of a miser, wasn't. The daughter's allowance was for pen
money and things were. It's sort of equivalent to the
wage a worker in one of the mills would have earned. Obviously,
they didn't have to work for it. And yet, on
the other hand, they were socially fairly isolated by the
decisions of their father, and it seems clear that they
(05:25):
would have liked to have been cultured girls. As one
of their neighbors put it, they chose to attend or
remain rather in the society church. When their father had
a dispute and left it for a different one. Abby
Borden was Lizzie and Emma's stepmother. Lizzie was very young
at the time of her mother's death and had no
(05:46):
particular memory of her, so Emma was the woman who
raised her. But Emma was thirteen at the time of
her mother's death and was thought to never fully accept
Abby as her mother, you know, as a replacement for
her mother. Five years before the murders, Andrew Borden decided
to give Abby a house, really to bail out her sister,
(06:09):
her own half sister and family, and Lizzie and Emma
got wind of this and really resented this act of generosity.
They said that, you know, what he did for her,
he should do for his own blood. And Andrew subsequently
gave them what had been his father's house, you know
(06:30):
that was rented out so that they would have their
own income. And although this had the effect of equalizing
the gifts, it didn't really heal the breach, and from
that time forward, Lizzie and her older sister Emma avoided
their parents as much as possible. In that small house,
they preferred to take separate meals and to if possible,
(06:52):
entertain visitors in a guest room upstairs that they used
as their own sort of sitting room. So within the
small household they lived quite separate, and it was described
by some as a side of really cold war between
the generations.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And you're listening to Kara Robertson tell the story of
the trial of Lizzie Borden and giving you a backdrop
when we come back more of the Trial of Lizzie
Borden here on our American story. Folks, if you love
(07:32):
the stories we tell about this great country, and especially
the stories of America's rich past, know that all of
our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture
and faith, are brought to us by the great folks
at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that are good in life. And if you can't get
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
(07:54):
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
learn more. And we returned to our American stories, and
we've been listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
(08:15):
of Lizzie bordon By the way, it's a terrific greed
go to Amazon or the usual suspects to pick it up.
The Bordon family from the outside seemed like a normal family,
but there was discord amongst the generations and between them.
Adult daughters Lizzie and Emma didn't care for their stepmother Abbey,
making for a chilling home environment. Back to Kara.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Well, Emma was a fairly stoic character and much more
mild manner, so that she wasn't really quoted saying anything
negative about her stepmother, though it was known that there
was this dispute in the family. Lizzie was a fourth
right character, and she described her stepmother as a mean,
good for nothing thing to a dressmaker of all people.
A few months before the before the murders, she was
(09:02):
just very frank about her dissatisfaction with her living conditions,
her desire for more, and also for the role that
she felt that her stepmother had played, you know, in
keeping her in this condition. About a year before the murders,
the Burdons were the victim of a mysterious daytime theft.
(09:22):
Andrew and Abby were out, but Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget Sullivan,
the Borton's made, were home. Abby Bordon had some jewelry stolen,
and mister Bordon also lost some money and street car tickets.
And what was oddest about the crime was that no
one seemed to have heard anyone enter or leave the house.
(09:43):
After the police were called and investigated, and mister Bordon
told the police officer that he didn't think that they'd
ever find the thief, suggesting to many people that perhaps
he knew who was responsible. On August second, the Bordon
household was a hit with what appeared to be food poisoning.
It was a fairly typical complaint in Fall River in
(10:06):
the summer. In fact, it was called the summer complaint
because so many houses didn't have refrigeration. The boards didn't
have an icebox, but they ate a lot of leftovers
and suffered the consequences. The next day, Abby consulted the
family physician who lived across the street. Learning of their dinner,
He wasn't particularly concerned, but Abby confided to him that
(10:30):
she feared they had been poisoned. When the doctor returned
to the house to examine Andrew, along with Abby, Andrew
stood in the doorway and refused to let him enter,
and also to tell him that he would not pay
for the visit. Lizzie also had her own suspicions about poison,
which she shared with her friend and former neighbor, Alice Russell.
(10:51):
On the night before the murders. She said she was
worried that the melk had been poisoned and that there
were strange men who'd been seen in the vicinity of
the house. She also confessed her generalized sense of uneasiness
and a sense of foreboding, remarking, I feel as if
something was hanging over me that I cannot throw off,
(11:14):
and it comes over me at times no matter where
I am. On the morning of August fourth, there were
five people in the Bordon household Andrew Borden, his wife Abby,
his daughter Lizzie, the housemaid Bridget Sullivan, and Andrew's brother
(11:35):
in law John Morse, who was an occasional overnight visitor.
Emma Bordon was visiting friends in fair Haven, which is
some distance away. As was custom, the elder Borton's rose
first and had breakfast, as did John Morse. Andrew left
to go about his business in town. John followed in
(11:58):
order to see some other relatives of the other side
of town. Sometime between nine twenty and nine thirty in
the morning. Around the same time, Abby Borden asked Bridget
Sullivan to wash the windows inside and outside of the house.
She went up to the guest room in order to
change a pillowcase and tidy it up. After John Morse's
(12:18):
departure around nine thirty, she was killed in that room.
An assassin struck and hacked her to death with approximately
nineteen blows. About an hour after Abby was killed, Andrew
Borden returned home. He had trouble getting in the front
(12:40):
door because it had been bolted from the inside. Bridget Sullivan,
the housemaid, came to let him in and as she
was letting him in, uttered some sort of an oath,
and this apparently evoked laughter from Lizzie Borden, who was
upstairs on the landing. In the process of descending the stairs,
mister Bordon came in. His daughter, Lizzie greeted him and
(13:03):
inquired about the mail. He asked about her stepmother, Abby,
and she said that she had had a note from
a sick friend and gone out. Mister Borden decided to
take a nap on the sitting room sofa, and shortly
thereafter the snap became his final slumber, he was struck
by ten blows, mostly in the face. At the time
(13:26):
of her father's murder, Lizzie Borden later said that she
had been outside, first picking pears in the orchard, and
then looking for a sinker, you know, a wait for
a fishing line, or perhaps a piece of iron to
fix a window in the upstairs loft of the barn.
(13:48):
There she tarried and ate a pair or two. She
estimated that she was there twenty minutes, perhaps thirty, came
back in from outside and discovered her father's body on
the city room sofa. She immediately summoned the housemaid, Bridget Sullivan,
who was upstairs in her third floor attic room taking
a little bit of a nap. She dispatched Bridget for
(14:11):
the family doctor, who lived across the street. He was
not at home, so she sent her to find Alice Russell,
who was a friend and neighbor. While she was waiting
for Bridget to return, she waited inside the screen door
at the side of the house and was spotted by
(14:31):
her neighbor, Alice Churchill, who asked her what was the matter,
and she replied that someone has killed father. The murders
were so violent that some speculated that Jack the Ripper
had come to America. The details were gruesome, yet oddly
(14:54):
the house itself seemed to be in what one witness
described as apple pie order. The first thought was that
it must be the work of a madman, but two
key facts seemed to rule out the possibility of a
murderous stranger. First, the house was locked. The front door
(15:15):
had been securely triple locked, and although there was a
door from the cellar leading to the back, that too
was locked. So the only point of access in the
house seemed to be a side door that sometimes was latched,
sometimes was not latched, but it was often in sight
of the neighbors or Bridget Sullivan, the housemaid. The second
(15:36):
key fact that seemed to rule out a murderous stranger
was the interval between the murders. It was something that
one of the prosecutors would later call the controlling fact
of the case. The idea that someone had broken in
from the outside killed Missus Borden first and then waited
an hour and a half to kill Andrew seemed really
(15:59):
implause there were a few places in the house to hide.
It is possible that an upstairs guessed an upstairs, a
clothes closet could have provided a refuge, but it was
quite small and cramped, and also the door had been
left open to the guest room the scene of Abbey's murder,
seeming to advertise rather than hide the fact. All in all,
(16:21):
it was a very small house, and it was a
house that had been converted from a tenement for two
families into a single family house, which meant that the
upstairs and the downstairs layouts neared each other. Neither floor
had a hallway, so that one would have to pass
from one room into the other in order to get
(16:44):
through the house. It's very unlikely that someone from the
outside would have been able to break in and then
would have been able to elude the two women known
to be in the house at the time of both murders,
Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan. Once that was clear, the
police began to dig for a motive, but the first
(17:05):
detective to question Lizzie Borden found her a bit evasive
and suspicious. In particular, he wondered what on earth she
could have been doing in the loft of the barn,
the hottest, most stifling part of the barn. For twenty
or thirty minutes, and.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial of
Lizzie Borden.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
The murders were so.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Violent, she said that some speculated that Jack the Ripper
himself had come to America. When we return more of
the trial of Lizzie Borden here on our American stories,
(18:09):
and we returned to our American stories and to the
mysterious double murder that took place in Fall River, Massachusetts
in the summer of eighteen ninety two. The daughter of
the victims, Lizzie Borden, was the main suspect. Back to
Carra Robertson, author of the Trial of Lizzie Bordon, with more.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Of the story, the police found no evidence that anyone
had been in the loft of the barn. This is
something that is disputed at the trial. At the time
that the inquest started, the police already had strong suspicions
of Lizzie Bordon. Lizzie's family lawyer attempted to participate. He
(18:48):
wanted to represent her at the inquest, but that wasn't permitted.
The prosecutor at the inquest took her through her stated
movements and the day of the murders, Lizzie reduced a
contradictory story. She said that she was upstairs. She said
that she was downstairs. She said that she was ironing
handkerchiefs at the time of Abby's murder, a task that
(19:11):
was significantly left undone or not completed by the time
of her father's arrival. And yet she also claimed that
she had not heard a sound. This seemed implausible to
people who'd been in the house, that the fall of
someone upstairs should have produced some sort of a jar.
On the last day of the inquest, Lizzie Borden was
(19:32):
arrested and taken to The trial begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts,
a neighboring town, on June fifth, eighteen ninety three. Reporters
and journalists from around the country are dispatched to cover
the case. An extension to the courthouse is built in
the rear so that all the wire services can be accommodated,
(19:57):
and the most prominent columnists write not only about what
is happening in the courthouse, but also what is happening
outside the courthouse. Because he becomes an almost festive atmosphere
with people who line up and bring lunch, desire for
admission is widespread and much covered in the newspapers. One
local newspaper, under the headline where to Look for Your Wife,
(20:21):
describes the number of women who are desirous of attending
the trial, and these women, according at least to one
of the journalists, constitute a sort of second jury. The
jury itself is all male. Women were not eligible for
jury service in Massachusetts at the time, and actually wouldn't
serve on a Massachusetts jury until nineteen fifty. Lizzy Bordon
(20:44):
had a team of defenders, the most prominent of whom
was the former governor of Massachusetts, George Robinson, and he
told a simple story that Lizzy Borden was simply in
the wrong place the wrong time, or, as he would
have put it, in the right place in her home
(21:05):
at the wrong time, and that it was not the
defense's job to clear up the mystery. That this was
beyond the capacity of a woman who looked like Lizzy Bordon,
or who had the characteristics of Lizzy Bordon. Lucy Bordon
had an extraordinary self possession. That's something that everyone noticed
(21:25):
about her. In other respects, she was quite ordinary. All
the journalists agreed that she had this extraordinary self possession,
and that divided the audience. Some saw in it evidence
of almost a masculine nerve, that there was something just
disturbing about that kind of self possession in the face
of these kinds of crimes, and one local newspaper, the
(21:47):
Irish Catholic paper, that viewed her case with some suspicion
and hostility, referred to her as the Sphinx of coolness.
By contrast, many of the journalists saw in Lizzie Bordon's
self possession a sign of Yankee grit and of true
American womanhood, and both sides used that appearance or their
(22:11):
analysis of her appearance to confirm their own opinions about
her guilt and innocence or innocence. The prosecution was in
a bind because the very brutality of the murders seemed
to argue against Lizzie Bordon as the murderer. She's someone who,
you know, appears to fit the model of womanly behavior,
(22:33):
and she's someone who just doesn't look like the sort
of person based on late nineteenth century ideas of criminality,
who would be the murderer in such a case. They
were looking for, or you know, people were expecting some
sort of insane immigrants. So for the prosecution, the task
was to show that really only Lizzie Borden could have
(22:54):
committed the murder, and that that was their best their
best way to get a conviction. There was evidence that
would have helped the prosecution that they were unable to
tell the jury. The first piece was that Lizzie Bordon
was identified as a woman who tried to buy prussic
acid on the day before the murders. This was significant
(23:17):
because if Lizzie Bordon had tried and failed to procure
prussic acid, which is a deadly poison, and poison as
we all know, as a woman's weapon, then she might
well have turned to a readily available household implement to
commit the murders. That that explained the choice of weapon,
which otherwise seemed very much like a man's weapon. The
(23:39):
other bit of evidence that they were not allowed to
share was Lizzie Bordon's own testimony that memorialized her conflicting
accounts of where she had been on the morning of
the murders. The judges ruled that because she had effectively
been denied counsel and the Massachusetts Constitution had a protection
that was something like our modern Miranda writes that the
(24:02):
evidence could not be used a trial against her. Medical
experts all testified that a woman could have committed the murders,
and in fact specifically said that, you know, with sufficient leverage,
a weapon held by a woman could produce such wounds.
(24:24):
And the prosecution even tried to argue that the number
of wounds and the fact that some were weak and vacillating,
was somehow assigned that a woman had been the murderer.
You know, they often want to have it both ways,
but the defense just repeatedly said that a woman really
could not have committed those crimes. The prosecution also had
(24:45):
the problem that everyone who saw Lizzie Borden after the
murders testified that she had no sign of blood anywhere
on her person, that she seemed, you know, entirely put together,
And so the defense was able to say that it
just was impossible that someone would not have been spattered
(25:07):
with blood after such violence the murders committed in such
proximity to the victims. It was also known, however, that
Lizzie Borden burned a dress on the Sunday after the murders,
a dress that she claimed had been stained with paint,
and the defense produced the dressmaker to say that yes, indeed,
(25:27):
the dress had been stained with paint, and so the
prosecution was able to imply that the dress that Lizzie
Bordon had been seen in after the murders was not
the same blue dress that she had worn on the
morning before the murders. The police produced a number of weapons,
axes and hatchets found at the Burdon household. The police
(25:48):
found what they thought was the murder weapon, a hatchet
head that had been found in the basement among other
tools that were rusty and fallen into disuse. The hatchet
head was covered with what the police described as ash,
as opposed to the dust that covered other things in
(26:10):
the basement, leading them to believe that someone had actually
hidden it there in an attempt to make it look
like it was just an innocent object. One of the
ways that they determined that this was the likely murder
weapon was by matching the cutting blade of that hatchet
with the indentations in the skulls of the Burdons. The
(26:34):
coroner had decapitated the Burtons and then rendered off the
flesh in order to examine those skulls, and then had
cast made and drawn in the various wounds so that
they could be brought into the trial. When Lizzie Borden
saw the skulls for the first time at the trial,
she promptly fainted, earning her the support of many of
(26:57):
the journalists and the derision of others.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And we're listening to Kara Robertson, author of the Trial
of Lizzie Bordon, Evil Monster, Innocent family Member. When we
continue the final chapter of the Trial of Lizzie Bordon
here on our American Stories. And we continue with our
(27:39):
American Stories and the final installment of the Trial of
Lizzie Bordon with author Kara Robertson. Let's pick up when
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
The prosecution plays with tropes about hatred of stepmothers and
has a sort of time conceptualizing the murder of the stepmother.
The problem for the prosecution is is Andrew Borden's murder.
There's never a theory as to why he was killed,
(28:13):
except to say that he came home, perhaps before she
could establish an alibi, or even more improbably that she
suddenly realized after killing her stepmother that her father would
know that she had killed her stepmother. And she couldn't
bear the idea that he would look at her as
a murderer, even if he might protect her, as he
(28:35):
did perhaps with the daytime theft of Abby's jewelry. And
so that's something that the defense is able to really
emphasize that whoever killed Abby Borden killed Andrew Borden. And
while there may may have been evidence of discord in
the household and dislike of the stepmother, there was no
(28:58):
real evidence that Lizzie Borden hated her father. In fact,
they seemed to have in some respects an extremely close relationship,
as evidenced by the fact that Andrew Borden wore a
ring that his daughter Lizzie gave him, and it was
the only ring, the only piece of jewelry he wore.
(29:18):
The murders divided full River. The working classes, whose views
were reflected in and shaped by the Irish Catholic Paper,
viewed this as another case of the police giving special
breaks to someone from a good family, and there was
a lot of grumbling that if a mill hand had
been suspected of the murders, then that person would have
(29:41):
been arrested and then convicted very quickly. People from Lizzie
Borden's social set and especially from her church, formed the
bedrock of her support and attended the trial. After an
unusually long trial lasting almost three weeks, the jury found
that they were unanimous on the first ballot, and they concluded, however,
(30:03):
that they better wait about an hour an hour and
a half for propriety's sake, so that they looked like
they'd been appropriately deliberative. When the jury returned, the clerk
of the court asked if Lizzie Borden was guilty or
not guilty. The foreman interrupted the clerk to shout not guilty.
(30:25):
Lizzie bordon fell as if shot in the courtroom, and
then the crowd outside erupted in chears, and she was
warmly congratulated by her friends and attendants, and even the
most prominent journalists who had for the most part been
her supporters. In Fall River, the story was a little
bit different. The town was divided along class lines. For
(30:50):
the most part, the working classes thought that this was
someone who's simply just gotten away with murder. It was
another case of money talking for the people who had
been her supporters. During the trial, however, the verdict was
greeted with great relief, and Lizzie Borden stayed with some
friends and received many telegrams congratulating her from people far
and wide who had supported her during the trial. Once
(31:13):
the trial was over, many of the people who had
backed her cooled in their enthusiasm, and when she returned
to her church, she found many of the pews empty,
so that the message was delivered that she was not
particularly welcome. There's something almost tribal about the way the
(31:37):
punishment was meeted out in the case. The elite and
particularly her fellow churchgoers, supported her during the trial. They
backed her against the idea that someone like them, someone
like her, could have committed the murders, but then exacted
their own punishment by ostracizing her. Lizzie Borden was expected
(32:00):
to live down her notoriety and show by your continued
good works that this was simply had been a tragic
incident of which she too was an innoctant victim. But instead,
Lizzie and her sister moved to a larger, grandeer house,
a sort of Lake Victorian McMansion on the hill, and
(32:21):
had the sort of life that she had apparently imagined
for herself in earlier days. Although no longer fully welcome
and her church. She went to the theater in Boston.
She had a special seat built into her chauffeur driven
car to accommodate her dogs. So she returned to the
(32:43):
to Fall River, bought the house that she had always wanted,
and lived in a sense, in the style that she
had always wanted. But she was shunned. And I think
it says something both about her nerve and her limitations
that she chose to stay in Fall River rather than
disappear into a big city where she could have enjoyed
(33:04):
a high standard of living and been much more anonymous.
I think Lizzie Bordon stayed in full River because of
her own parochialism, that she really couldn't imagine anywhere else,
that that was the limit of her ambition. She wanted
to live, you know, in the style of the grander
Borden's and didn't really imagine anything beyond that. If you
(33:28):
think she did it, then you know that was the
purpose of the murders. The prosecution makes a point of
saying that Lizzie Bordon had plenty of money for the
things that she wanted, you know, plenty of pen money,
and that her father was capable of generosity, at least
towards her, and so therefore she had no financial motive.
But if what she wanted was financial independence rather than
(33:52):
you know, the ability to get a new hat, and
one sees the murders through that lens, then she was
simply living out, you know, what had been her fantasy,
and that, you know, the opinions of the people in
the town were not particularly significant to her. She was
very strong willed, which is something that everyone says about
(34:14):
her that you know, unlike her much more demure sister,
that she is somebody she resembles her father in terms
of strength of character and hardness. Now, of course, if
you think that she's was simply in the wrong place
at the wrong time, or in the right place at
the wrong time, and she had no knowledge of the murders,
then it also wouldn't make any sense for her to
(34:36):
really live anywhere else that that was her home, and
that that's where her sister would want to live, because
her sister's friends were all in Fall River. The sisters
had a split in nineteen oh five, so twelve years
after the murders, Emma moved out of the house and
they never spoke again, what we know is that is
(34:58):
that as soon as Emma moved out, Lizzie lost the
remaining friends she had there and was truly isolated. At
that point. She turned mostly to her domestic staff, enjoyed
the company also of her dogs. The tricky thing is
she's socially isolated in the conventional sense, but she seems
(35:19):
to enjoy the company of her staff. She seems to
have a nice relationship with various housekeepers and the chauffe's family,
and she also sends really sacharine birthday and holiday greetings
to the children of her domestic staff, so that they
received postcards by special delivery with buddies and things on
(35:43):
them wishing them happy Birthday, Happy Easter. She also would
take them out for ice cream. It didn't seem to
be a case of reasonable doubt for the jury. Rather,
it reflected their certainty that someone like Lizzie Borden could
not have come these crimes. It is one way in
which she definitely benefits from the double standard, whether she
(36:05):
did it or not, you know, like she's the beneficiary
of the double standard, and that it just seems it
just seems so difficult to imagine someone like Lizzie Borden,
who is after all, sitting in the courtroom every day
with perfectly quaffed hair, composed picking up a hatchet and
killing her father and her stepmother in such a fashion.
(36:29):
There is discussion on the part of the defense team
that you know, Lizzie and her sisters would continue to
look for the real murderers. The prosecution and the police
considered the case closed, that they had in fact found
the person, and she was acquitted. And although everyone associated
with the household has been suspected at one time or
(36:51):
another bi amateur detectives, no one except Lizzie Borden was
ever tried for the murders. It's a case in which
people project a lot of their worst nightmares. It's such
a horrible case, and it's you know, it's these horrible
unsolved murders, I mean technically unsolved, and even if you
think you know who did it, it's still a you know,
it's it's a wide done And if not a who
(37:13):
done it, it's not surprising then that every generation effectively
reinvents the case that finds an explanation that reflects the
time in which the solution is written more so than
the actual time of the murders. And I mean maybe
you could say that this was true of the town,
you know that in exactly its own punishment, that it
(37:33):
was just it was. It was far better to let
one woman get away with murder than to suggest that
someone like Lizzie Borton was actually capable of it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And a special thanks to Kara Robertson. Please, by all
means go out and buy the book The Trial of
Lizzie bordon It's on Amazon, in all the usual suspects.
Was she guilty or guilty of being in the right place,
place at the wrong time. You be the judge The
Trial of Lizzie Borden. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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