May 20, 2024 • 40 mins
There is a section of Fall River, Massachusetts spanning just two blocks, where several media-grabbing tragedies occurred over a century. These were not simple domestic disputes or deadly bank robberies, they were deaths that seemed so out of the norm that perhaps they were triggered by something other-worldly.
Written, researched and hosted by Kate Winkler Dawson
Producer Jason Wehling
Senior Producer Alexis Amorosi
Consulting Producer Kyle Ryan
Researcher Carrie Nolte
Sound Designer Eric Friend
Additional Sound Design by Nicholas Muniz
Composer Curtis Heath
Artwork by Nick Toga
Find my books: katewinklerdawson.com
Follow me on social: @tenfoldmorewicked (Facebook and Instagram)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
The funny thing about curses is that a curse is
real if you believe in it, and we can't help
as people to make connections from one thing to another,
even if they have nothing in common. We look for
order in the chaos because we want to try to
make sense of it. So, yeah, I mean, is the
Bordon family cursed? Is Fall River cursed? Is it all
of the above? These are big questions.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
We're still in New England, y'all, but now we're just
about ten miles to the north of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
We're tooling around an infamous town that I'm sure you've
all heard of, Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzy Bordon's hometown. But
this season really isn't about the Bordon case, although we
do need to talk about that because our main family
(01:01):
is closely connected to the Burdens. This is a season
about curses, family curses and curses on entire towns. Do
you think they're real? I'm still not sure, though. This
season has given me a lot to think about. So
with that in mind, we're here at a curious spot
(01:21):
in fall River, an area that back in the nineteenth
century seemed like it might have been doomed We're talking
about an area that spans just a few city blocks,
but it's a place where, over about one hundred and
fifty years, several bizarre, media grabbing tragedies occurred. These were
not domestic disputes or botched bank robberies or random shootings.
(01:45):
These were deaths that seemed so out of the norm
that statistically they were anomalies, even if they were decades apart.
Do you believe that a person or even a place
can be cursed? England to goes to experts. Jeff Balanger believes.
Maybe he told me that it depends how much you
(02:06):
want to believe it you see what you want to see.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
It runs on belief, on faith, on stories, on people
suddenly realizing like whoa, I'm on Second Street in Fall River,
and oh there's Lizzie's and there's Eliza's, and there's the cathedral,
and that's where the fire was. And by the way,
there's the courthouse where all kinds of murderers have been
tried and so on. All right there.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Maybe that place brings an energy that you can't explain,
just a feeling that something feels off. This was the
room where Lizzie Borden stood that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You can let that get into your head and then
from that point out there's nothing you can do. You
are in a scary place.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a crime historian and the author
of The Ghost Club, American Sherlock and All that is Wicked,
And this is our twelfth season of tenfold more Wicked
on exactly right. This season is going to be very
different from what we've done before. It isn't just about
one crime or one tragedy within one family. It's about
(03:32):
a section of a city that has seen tragedy after tragedy,
something that no town deserves, but when we look closer,
the city also benefits from the attention. It's also about
one family with many connections, and this season reaches back
to our last season and the Rebecca Briggs Cornell story.
(03:54):
I call this season a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Do you live here?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Yeah, I'm a local.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
We're born and bred here.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
I was born in Tayan, but I've lived most of
my life. I've had in far.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Other people staying here right now, Yes, we're at the
Lizzie Borden House in Full River, Hello.
Speaker 7 (04:36):
So we can set up in here if you would like.
Speaker 8 (04:38):
I mean, we can pull those stores whatever you need
to do.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
So if people have any experiences, they cannot record them. Okay,
jacket Off.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Last season, we told the story of a deadly fire
in Rhode Island and the tragic death of Rebecca Briggs
Cornell of the famous Cornell family. At the end of
that story, we teased an intriguing familial connection. Well, it
turns out that one of the tragedies of this season
involves one of Rebecca Cornell's descendants, Eliza Darling Borden. And
(05:18):
Eliza Borden was Lizzie Borden's great aunt. Eliza and Lizzie's
great uncle lived right next door to the Bordon House
before Lizzie Borden's father, Andrew Borden lived there. Those two
Bordon homes are still there and they have been surrounded
by tragedy over the past two centuries.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Have you ever been here before?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
To the I have been to Fall River.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I've never been to the Linnie Morton House.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
No, haven't.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
I'm writing a book about something different that happened here,
the Saramony Cornell murder that happened in the eighteen twenties.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
She was Lizzie's cousin.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
She was was it cousin?
Speaker 5 (06:01):
But was it?
Speaker 8 (06:02):
Actually if she was a cousin on the mother's side,
then she would have been a double cousin because she
was also related on the father's side.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Do you remember Carrie Nolty. We heard from her a
lot last season because she's a descendant of Rebecca Cornell.
She's here with me again, thankfully.
Speaker 9 (06:20):
So thsies descended from Thomas Cornell Portsmouth and his son
through So Thomas had Thomas and then had Innocent Cornell Bordon,
who was Zzy's great great great great grandmother, and Thomas
Senior had another son, Stephen Cornell, who was Sarah Cornell's
(06:48):
I want to say sixth great grandfather.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Hmm, it's confusing.
Speaker 8 (06:53):
She's in the midst summerlated.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
On a cold November night, she and I visit to
both Borden houses in Fall River, and I asked Carrie
about these two or three blocks and this supposed curse.
You'll hear about each story soon.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
Sure you're saying there was a fire that killed four
people here. Then you've got Lizzie Bardon, then you've got
Eliza Bardon, and then you've got the Satanic Panic Lady
basically block.
Speaker 10 (07:22):
Of each other.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
That's crazy.
Speaker 8 (07:24):
It's you can see every single location from every single
location on this street. That's where something happens the town.
I think it's this one, just this one street.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
It's actually a few blocks and they're all really close.
Carry and I were joined by Ashley Buliro, she's a
wonderful tour guide. With the Lizzie Borden House on Second
Street and Fall River.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
We're also in the Bridgewater Triangle too, where a lot
of unexplained things just happen in this area.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I had never heard of the Bridgewater Triangle, but later
that will end up widening our scope a bit.
Speaker 8 (08:01):
Isn't this part of the Massachusetts area where the King
Phillips wore really raged? Just awful atrocities on both sides,
people being tortured to death.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Essentially a little bit about that. King Philip's War took
place in New England in sixteen seventy five. Native Americans
banded together and pushed back on the English colonists who
were taking over their land. A Lumpanoag chief named Metacom,
who later renamed himself King Philip, led the bloody battles
(08:35):
that lasted about fourteen months. The colonists fought back, burning
Native American villages, murdering women and children. Thousands of people
were killed, many were wounded or enslaved. Entire Native American
tribes were destroyed, while more colonists moved onto their land,
(08:57):
and much of it happened here in Full River. There
was so much bloodshed right here, Ashley says, you can't
have that much tragedy in one spot and not feel
the consequences for generations.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
This land.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I believe it's fully cursed. There's just so much that
happens here.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
While we're meeting new people this season, Jeff Balanger is
my tour guide on all things cursed. He knows the
history of curses in multiple cities, and I'm going to
let him introduce himself.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I'm an author, a podcaster, my host the New England
Legends podcast, a writer, a researcher and speaker on all
things weird, haunted, and strange.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
My kind of experts. He's obviously from the area and
he knows about its history. So let's have a reality
check because Fall River, Massachusetts feels like a nice city
to me. This season is not meant to be critical
more like curious. I asked Jeff Balanger about Fall River
and what it's like right now.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Great Cherie's some great sausage down there, a lot of
Portuguese population, and so if you like that food, there's
restaurants everywhere. Some great history too.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Jeff says that Fall River is in a great location
and it has a fascinating history as a port, as
a mill town, and as a city with an incredible
backstory that doesn't involve curses.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
You're super close to Providence, Rhode Island. You're down there
on the water. There's Battleship Cove. There's a lot of
great history, you know, mill history, ocean history, all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
But all that great history tends to get overshadowed by
the woman accused in eighteen ninety two of murdering her
father and her stepmother with an axe and getting away with.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It, which is interesting because it's just this one little
house right there in the middle of town, not even
the greatest neighborhood, by the way, and it's all anybody
can think of when you say Fall River.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Let's start from the beginning, miles away from Fall River
with the Cornell family. Here's a reminder of what happened
last season. In February of sixteen seventy three, Rebecca Briggs
Cornell sat alone in her rocking chair in her cold
room on the bottom floor of her large house in Portsmouth.
She was weaving, a craft she did most nights. Sometime
(11:34):
that evening, her son Thomas visited her. She turned down
his offer of dinner with the family because she didn't
feel well, and he left her for the night. Rebecca
later died after catching her clothing on fire. It was
assumed that the seventy three year old had died accidentally.
Our experts believed that she might have actually had a
(11:57):
heart attack and fallen near the fireplace, catching herself on fire,
or maybe it happened when a spark flew out and
ignited her clothing. But Rebecca's brother, John Briggs, claimed that
he was visited by Rebecca's ghost and that she insisted
he look into her cause of death. Rebecca's body was
(12:17):
re examined and a tiny wound was discovered, something that
apparently went unnoticed by the matrons that had dressed her
for the funeral. Soon, her son, Thomas Cornell Junior, was
arrested for her murder. Accused by neighbors of elder abuse.
If his mother died, he was the one who would
receive the estate. But did he murder her? Maybe not,
(12:41):
our experts told me, and I don't think there's enough
evidence to say for sure. Thomas certainly shouldn't have been
charged or hanged, but at least he was buried on
his own property. His wife, Sarah Earle of the famous
Earl family, continued to proclaim her husband's innocence, and then
when she was charged as an accessory after his execution,
(13:04):
she proclaimed her own innocence too. Maybe Sarah Earle was innocent,
but before her mother in law's fiery death, Rebecca had
claimed that Sarah chased around her own step children with
an axe. An axe sounds familiar. Here's where the story
really gets interesting. It turns out that Sarah Earle was
(13:28):
pregnant when Thomas was hanged, and if you recall, she
had a little girl who she named Innocent. Local historians
Anne Burns and Gloria Schmidt from last season remind us
of how innocent fits into this story.
Speaker 10 (13:44):
That is, the direct great great great grandmother of Lizzie Boreden.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Lizzie is an innocent sline, so it's a very interesting family.
You have the founder of Cornell Universities in that line too,
So all these families are all interconnected. It's an interweaving story.
So you know, you find in other situations where you know,
somebody that was a son or daughter of Thomas Cornell
(14:13):
comes into other stories of Wortsmouth history.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Okay, So Sarah Earl may have helped murder her mother
in law, or perhaps she had just been an erratic person.
We don't know, but we do know Sarah's daughter, Innocent,
was directly related to Lizzie Borden, and there were other
people in between other incidents between sixteen seventy three and
Lizzie's trial in eighteen ninety three, over two hundred years later,
(14:40):
and they all seem connected to the region. Let's talk
about this phenomenon regions or cities that are supposedly cursed.
The first one that comes to my mind is from
my very first season of tenfold Moore Wicked, the one
about multiple murderer Edward Ruloff and the town he tormented, Dryden,
(15:01):
New York. I love Dryden. I got to go there
several times to visit the scut family at their farm.
It had an old house and a nineteenth century well
with a creek running behind it. But that family farm
was the backdrop for a family tragedy. In the mid
eighteen hundreds, self proclaimed genius Edward Ruloff moved to Dryden
(15:23):
and married into a prominent local family, the Scuts. He
eventually murdered his wife and their infant child, along with
his sister in law and her child, and then later
he killed a store clerk before he was finally hanged.
But Edward Ruloff would not be the only killer to
haunt Dryden. Almost one hundred and fifty years later, the
(15:46):
area endured a series of horrible murders, ten killings in
seven years. Outsiders called it the Village of the Damned,
a nickname the locals really dislike, and actually they have
a point because many of the murders happened just outside
of Dryden. But for almost a decade, the region really
did seem to cursed. In nineteen eighty nine, just three
(16:08):
days before Christmas, four members of the Harris family were
brutally killed inside their home. The murderer simply knocked on
the door asking for help. The whole family was murdered, mother, father,
and two children, so that was just down the road
from the Scuts. After the Harris murders, residents began dead
bolting their doors, applications for gun permits dramatically increased, and
(16:33):
people began buying more security systems. The killer died just
a few days later in a shootout with police, leaving
the community stunned and frightened. But there was almost no
time to mourn, because just two months later, the next
tragedy struck. In February of nineteen ninety, a young mother
called the authorities claiming that her toddler had been kidnapped.
(16:55):
After a massive search, investigators discovered that actually she had
killed her two year old daughter and buried her in.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
The nearby woods.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And then four years later, a high school student fatally
stabbed a teenage friend over a lover's triangle, and in
nineteen ninety four, a different high school student shot to
death his ex girlfriend's father, who was the high school
football coach. Two years later, in nineteen ninety six, a
man killed his supervisor at work. But perhaps the most
(17:25):
shocking event came the very next month, October nineteen ninety six,
two cheerleaders at Dryden High School were kidnapped sexually assaulted,
and then dismembered. The remains scattered throughout the surrounding countryside.
The suspect was a neighbor, and before he could stand
trial for his crimes, he died by suicide in prison.
(17:48):
Unlike Fall River, Dryden has not benefited from its moniker
The Village of the Damned. Someone turned it into a
TV show and many of the locals were outraged. But
it does seem odd all those terrible things happening in
one place, not just deaths or even murders.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But truly awful things.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Local historian Jeff Balanger says, if you look hard enough,
every area is cursed, especially if it's old like Dryden,
New York, or Fall River, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Suddenly you go, oh, I broke a mirror, And later
that day you drop your favorite coffee cup and it shatters,
and you go that's the curse, that's the mirror thing.
And then you get a paper cut, and you're like,
oh no, now what right now, I've got a paper cut,
And then you know you're on edge and you're nervous
all the time because what's next. What happens after the
paper cut and the coffee cup breaks? Am I gonna die.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Jeff says that the paper cut and the broken coffee
cup can lead you into a panic.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
If you're superstitious, we start going down that hole our
defense mechanism, we start panicking, we start having anxiety, and
so on.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Jeff believes that communities can experience the same kind of phenomena.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Well, wait, there was a Lizzie Borden murder. There's a
new Bedford highwa murder. There's a call Drew Cull murder.
There's you know, you start going back in time and
connecting one thing to the next, to the next, to
the next to the next, and suddenly you think you're
living in the most cursed place on earth.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I'm still not convinced of curses, and making all of
those connections sounds exhausting, and yet I keep returning to
Fall River and that block of curious blocks. If a
place can be cursed, then it seems like maybe a
family can be too. Here's our first story about a
(19:33):
supposedly cursed family.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
But I need to keep it short. I have a
new book.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Coming out next year called The Sinners All Bow, and
it's about this case.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
The person at the center is a member of the
Cornell family. But the location of her death isn't in
the two block or three block radius of Fall River
that we're focused on for this season. It's several blocks away,
and right now we're talking about the curse of the Family.
Almost one hundred and sixty years after Rebecca Briggs Cornell's death,
(20:06):
another Cornell woman with a troubled history was facing an
uncertain future. Sarah Maria Cornell was a direct descendant of
Thomas Cornell on her father's side. At age thirty, Sarah
was what was known as a mill girl. She was
one of a generation of young women in New England
who toiled long hours in the rash of factories and
(20:28):
mills that had begun peppering the region. Sarah converted from
being a Congregationalist to a Methodist, but when she accused
a Methodist minister of sexual assaulting her and getting her
pregnant and may have gotten her killed, in December of
eighteen thirty two, she was found hanging from a haystack
pole in Fall River, which at the time was known
(20:49):
as Tiverton, Rhode Island. The minister went on trial for murder,
but the question was did Sarah die by her own
hand or his. In my book, I'm reinvestigating the case.
I'm using forensic experts as well as new knowledge to
determine if there was a miscarriage of justice and if
(21:10):
my co author's work condemned an innocent man. The trick
is my co author died about one hundred and seventy
years ago. Sarah Maria Cornell had been an outcast to
her family, a wayward but committed woman who had a
complicated past. A lot of the Cornells seemed to have
(21:31):
complicated pasts, as we'll see. As I said, Sarah's death
happened a few blocks south from the Borden House, toward
the water. But now let's get to our next interconnected tragedies,
which happened right across the street from the Bardon House.
(21:53):
There were five horrific violent incidents at two locations just
feet from each other, all involving the Bordon family. The first,
more than ten years after Sarah Maria Cornell's death, was
a terrible fire. Ashley Belliro is that tour guide from
the Bordon House. She takes her customers outside of the
(22:15):
infamous home and points to the large building across the street.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
Then we stop at the Farvard Courthouse in that area
in eighteen forty three. It was the Great Fire of
eighteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
But before we talk about the fire, we need to
meet some people first. More intertwining of families. Let's jump
over to the family of Sarah Earle, wife of Thomas
Cornell Junior. Remember how we said that these two families
were interconnected with a line going straight from Innocent Cornell
to Lizzie Borden about two hundred years later. For now,
(22:52):
we need to stop in the middle where this fire happens.
On the street Lizzie Borden would later call home in
eighteen forty three, Eliza Bode, Lizzie Borden's great aunt, lived
here with her husband, Lordwick Borden, along with her son
from her first marriage. For orientation, Carrie Nolty helps me
understand how Lizzie Borden's great aunt fits into our family
(23:13):
line that starts with our sort of villain from last season,
Sarah Earl.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So Eliza is a descendant from Innocent.
Speaker 8 (23:24):
Or no no, she is a descendant from Earl Sarah
Earl's sister Martha Gosh. So there are several descendants along
in this family who have committed fairly heinous acts or
have been accused of committing fairly Hannah's acts. And they
are all descended from this group of siblings who are
(23:48):
descended from one man named Ralph Earl, of whom we
know very very little, just that he was quite prosperous
and really of good repute in the town of Portsmouth,
Rhode Island, which is where he settled after coming to America.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Many descendants from the Earl family committed heinous crimes. I
wondered why I hadn't heard that when I had read
about Lizzie Borden a history of mental illness or violence.
Either of those would have helped the prosecutor. I would think, how.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Entrenched I know, we're going to jump around a little
bit bit.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
How entrenched do you think Lizzie Borden was in the
Earle family.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
I think that the connection was all but forgotten. I
don't direct, direct, direct in three ways. So Sarah Earl
Cornell and Thomas Cornell Junior were her fifth great grandparents.
Mary Earle, Sarah's sister, was another fifth great grandmother, and
(24:47):
William Earle, sarah Earl's brother, was Lizzie's sixth great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
There are a lot of family ties in this story.
Speaker 8 (24:57):
So it really it folds in on its quite a
bit in this family, and that's pretty natural for a
fairly insulated community. Thank god we had a lot of
immigration in the nineteenth century, because where would we be.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
So you get it.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Everyone in this area who was white and moderately affluent
seemed to be related. The Cornells, the Brigs, the Bordons,
and the Durfees all married each other, and Eliza Darling
was one of those who married into the Bordon family,
which almost seemed to doom her. In eighteen forty three,
the thirty two year old married Loudwick Borden and they
(25:36):
and her young son moved into the house next door
to Andrew Borden's future home. The boy liked to play
around the neighborhood, including across the street from their house
at the warehouse that will become the site of our
next tragedy. I'm back with our Borden tour guide, Ashley
(26:09):
Buliro and Carrie Nolty on a cold November night in
Fall River. We're standing near a modern looking building. Thankfully,
both Carrie and Ashley know a lot about the.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
History, so this is the back of the courthouse, So
the front of the courthouse. This is where the great
fire of eighteen forty three had happened.
Speaker 8 (26:30):
And it happened directly across the street from where the
Burdens were eventually killed and where Lodwick and Eliza were living,
and a little bit down the street. What was the building?
Speaker 11 (26:43):
Do we am?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
The building?
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I believe was a furniture warehouse. It was immense.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
It was July second of eighteen forty three, around four pm,
and two boys who were never identified, explored the back
of a large three story where house owned by a
man named Abner Westgate, near the corner of Maine and
Borden Streets. The area was sizable and very open. The
(27:10):
boys were bored and they killed time by looking around.
It was a hot day, more than ninety degrees, and.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
It had been a very hot and dry summer.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
We're also in a drought, so the ground is extremely dry.
The day of July second, two small boys are in
this field where the Fall River Courthouse is located downtown
Fall River, and they come across a small cannon and
curiosity gets the best of them.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
They believe that.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
This small cannon is in this field because Fall River
is getting ready to celebrate the Fourth of July festivities.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
The boys stared at the cannon, smiled at each other,
and lit it with a match. The blast ignited a
scattering of wood shavings on the ground, which were left
behind by workers in the warehouse.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Once that small pile of wood shavings is ignited, within
five minutes it reaches nearby buildings and it is towering
fifty feet up into the sky.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
At this point, I'm going to pull in for ends.
Like chemist Rachel Burks, whom we met last season, I
asked her how a small pile of wood chips and
wood shavings could cause such a big fire.
Speaker 10 (28:25):
Well, as soon as you.
Speaker 11 (28:26):
Said woodchips, I went, yeah, yah, because the surface area
is so high, right, And so another thing think about cold.
Think about briquets, you know, small, a lot of them,
spatially spread out, maximize surface area. And sometimes people will
talk about all these your cats are too big, right,
because you want to really make them a bit smaller,
(28:47):
so there's higher surface area. Sometimes some of these big fires,
or like a storage accident with grain, is that fine
powder and it's a particle to particle burn, which if
it goes into a explosion called deflagration, which is a
particle to particle burn. It's very rapid, slow compared to detonation,
but you cannot outrun it.
Speaker 10 (29:08):
I don't care what Hollywood movies say.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
And then there's the wind.
Speaker 11 (29:12):
And if anyone's ever cut a plywood, you can see
like the dust material with a windy day in a
dry environment, I'm imagining layers of particulate matter. It's fuel,
it's already got oxygen.
Speaker 10 (29:25):
You sock it with heat. Are we actually talking.
Speaker 11 (29:28):
About a fire that rolled over into a deflication and
that's why it just went right through this place?
Speaker 10 (29:37):
And this is one of those examples.
Speaker 11 (29:39):
Unfortunately, it sounds like of evil luck like because it's
such complicated chemistry, but it does sound like it was
a perfect storm for.
Speaker 10 (29:52):
A combustion of this uncontrollable.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Nature, especially with the conditions.
Speaker 10 (29:58):
And then you have it on that rye aird you're
in a drought.
Speaker 11 (30:02):
And the other thing, if any kind of really wall
of heat is moving with this thing where there's a
particle to particle burn.
Speaker 10 (30:11):
That can be you know, very fast, right faster than.
Speaker 12 (30:15):
We can run.
Speaker 10 (30:16):
You're coming in with this wall of energy. You just
have this heat front that is marching through.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Within five minutes, the fire raged Fall River's fire bell
clanged as terrified residents evacuated onto the streets, including the
residents at the Borden home across the street. A sheet
of fire pushed onlookers backward. Here are details from a
book called The History of Fall River. Showers of sparks
(30:53):
and cinders carried by the heavy wind kindled many buildings
before they were reached by the body of the fire.
The whole space between Maine, Franklin Rock, and Borden Streets
was one vast sheet of fire, entirely beyond the control
of man. Here's another contemporary description. The buildings on both
(31:13):
sides of Main Street were soon burning, and the wind
blowing nearly parallel with the street.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
All hope of.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Controlling the flames and saving the business part of the
village was abandoned. So sudden were the movements of the
flames unexpectedly rising in different localities, that in many cases
all efforts to preserve property were ineffectual. The people could
only helplessly watch with fear as the fire spread. They
(31:41):
listened to the crackling flames, the crash of falling timber
and the whistling of the wind. The blaze flashed like lightning.
The fire raced across wooden buildings, roaring like thunder.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
The fall of a fire department comes down, and the
channels that they would have used to obtain the water
to put the fire arrow is actually down for maintenance.
So the fire rages on until midnight. That night, twenty
acres of land is ruined and thirteen hundred people are displaced.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Despite every effort from responders, only a change in wind
direction stopped the fire spread. Luckily, mother nature intervened, but
in the end the fire had destroyed almost three hundred buildings.
The history of Fall River says they looked upon their
village in ruins and felt that it must long bear
(32:32):
the marks of this fearful calamity. The toll on Fall
River was enormous, but the human toll was the most devastating.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Four people had perished because of the fire, whether it
be Smokinghalasian or the flames. But on one of the
death certificates it's said that someone wasn't smoking elation or flames.
They died of right, So it's kind of like they're
way back then of saying someone had a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
That's a good theory. I asked rachel Burks about it.
What would cause someone to die in a fire without
being burned aside from smoke inholation. But as Ashley said
to me, these folks were terrified.
Speaker 12 (33:20):
What if that panic, that rising panic that you described,
along with the response to pain and all of these
other things going on, then maybe the precipitating event was
not a stroke or cardiac arrest or whatever.
Speaker 10 (33:36):
But what maybe that could be leading to is a
substantial event like that.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Rachelle says that a victim's health history would also be important.
Speaker 11 (33:47):
But you had all these other health challenges that were
contributing to this whole sequence of events. And I think
a lot of times what you'll see in forensic literature
or pathology litters sure is it isn't.
Speaker 10 (34:01):
Usually just one thing.
Speaker 11 (34:03):
It is a lethal sequence of events that occurs.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
In the fire of eighteen forty three, there was so
much devastation. Even precious artifacts were lost.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
The biggest thing that we lost in this fire is
the fall River Anthoneum, And in this library is a
skeleton that's encased in glass and it was actually found
by Hannah Bordon Cook in eighteen thirty two. She was
digging up sand to use it as a scoring agent
when she comes across the top of a skull. Instead
(34:41):
of burying this skull and leaving it there to rest
in peace, they decide to unearth it. When they're digging
this skeleton up, they noticed that it is buried in
an upright position with its arms pointed towards its shoulders.
It would have been a common burial practice by the
Native American. But what's odd is that this skeleton is
(35:03):
encased in bark.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Ashley says that when they pulled the bark back, they
found a chest plate of brass and a brass belt,
along with brass and copper arrowheads in the grave.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
So a lot of people assume, well, maybe it was
Native American, but they didn't really have access to those
type of metals. Or maybe it was a chief of
the Wampanog or the Narraganta tribe that maybe traded with
the early settlers of America. Some people believe that it
was a Viking. Some people believe that it was just
an early explorer, but because the Great Fire of eighteen
(35:37):
forty three will never know because it claimed it as its.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Own Ashley says that she's certain that unearthing and then
exploiting the remains of people who were once in full
river might have just doomed the city.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
Since then, Ball River has had a lot of fires
since that had happened. I do I think that Fall
River is definitely cursed. I think a lot of Native
American burial lands have been disturbed.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Fall River was devastated. It was such a huge event
that residents often referred to eras in the city's history
as before the fire and after the fire. Every time
they heard the fire bell from July second, eighteen forty
three on, it evoked terror. One contemporary description read, the
(36:30):
alarm is scarcely sounded before our firemen are at their posts,
our steam and hand engines in working order, and our
streets filled with anxious and interested lookers on The residents
blamed the inadequate fire department for the blaze, but two
unidentified boys, even though this was an accident, were really responsible.
(36:51):
Carrie Nolty thinks she knows who one of them was,
the son of a tragic figure in history. His mother
was a Borden who struggled with life and then eventually
lost the struggle right across the street from the warehouse.
Speaker 8 (37:06):
Something interesting is that Eliza Hathaway Darning is she had
two sons by her first husband, and only one of
them survived, and he would have been maybe ten or
so at the time of the fire and living potentially
at this house.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
No way, remember that Eliza and Lodwick Borden were living
in the house across the street during the fire. Eliza
had one son from a previous marriage, a little boy
named William. He was ten in eighteen forty three, and
he would have been about the same age as the
boys who were suspected of starting the fire. Did Eliza
(37:46):
Borden's son ignite the fire that nearly destroyed Fall River? Maybe,
but we can't confirm it because contemporary newspapers never revealed
the identity of the boys. But it was quite a coincident.
And you know how we feel about coincidences on this show.
They're kind of bullshit. And the problems for the Bordon
(38:07):
family and for Full River were just starting on this
season of tenfold more wicked on exactly right.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Lodwick, I mean, his bad luck started much earlier. So
Eliza was not his first wife. Eliza was his second wife.
His first wife died.
Speaker 7 (38:36):
Eliza Darling had three children back to back to back,
and she was suffering from what we know now today
as postpartum depression, and I think it took a big
toll on her.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
And women back then weren't really allowed to talk about
mental health. They probably would have been thrown into an
institution if they mentioned, like, oh, I feel a certain way.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
In May of eighteen forty eight, even though the boom
was happening and her husband was in good circumstance, she
had been expressing fears that everything was going to come
crashing down around them, that they were going to be
found in dire circumstances.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
If you love true crime, check out my books American
Sherlock and All That Is Wicked. I also have an
audio book called The Ghost Club. I can't wait to
tell you the real story about the world's most famous
ghost hunter, who was the head of the world's most
famous ghost club and how he investigated England's most famous
haunted house. This has been an exactly right tenfold more
(39:54):
media production producer Jason Whaling, senior producer Alexis m Rosi,
consulting producer Kyle Ryan, sound designer Eric Friend, composer Curtis Heath.
Additional music Jeremy Buller, artwork Nick Toga. Executive producers Georgia Hartstark,
Karen Kelgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
The funny thing about curses is that a curse is
real if you believe in it, and we can't help
as people to make connections from one thing to another,
even if they have nothing in common. We look for
order in the chaos because we want to try to
make sense of it. So, yeah, I mean, is the
Bordon family cursed? Is Fall River cursed? Is it all
of the above? These are big questions.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
We're still in New England, y'all, but now we're just
about ten miles to the north of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
We're tooling around an infamous town that I'm sure you've
all heard of, Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzy Bordon's hometown. But
this season really isn't about the Bordon case, although we
do need to talk about that because our main family
(01:01):
is closely connected to the Burdens. This is a season
about curses, family curses and curses on entire towns. Do
you think they're real? I'm still not sure, though. This
season has given me a lot to think about. So
with that in mind, we're here at a curious spot
(01:21):
in fall River, an area that back in the nineteenth
century seemed like it might have been doomed We're talking
about an area that spans just a few city blocks,
but it's a place where, over about one hundred and
fifty years, several bizarre, media grabbing tragedies occurred. These were
not domestic disputes or botched bank robberies or random shootings.
(01:45):
These were deaths that seemed so out of the norm
that statistically they were anomalies, even if they were decades apart.
Do you believe that a person or even a place
can be cursed? England to goes to experts. Jeff Balanger believes.
Maybe he told me that it depends how much you
(02:06):
want to believe it you see what you want to see.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
It runs on belief, on faith, on stories, on people
suddenly realizing like whoa, I'm on Second Street in Fall River,
and oh there's Lizzie's and there's Eliza's, and there's the cathedral,
and that's where the fire was. And by the way,
there's the courthouse where all kinds of murderers have been
tried and so on. All right there.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Maybe that place brings an energy that you can't explain,
just a feeling that something feels off. This was the
room where Lizzie Borden stood that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You can let that get into your head and then
from that point out there's nothing you can do. You
are in a scary place.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a crime historian and the author
of The Ghost Club, American Sherlock and All that is Wicked,
And this is our twelfth season of tenfold more Wicked
on exactly right. This season is going to be very
different from what we've done before. It isn't just about
one crime or one tragedy within one family. It's about
(03:32):
a section of a city that has seen tragedy after tragedy,
something that no town deserves, but when we look closer,
the city also benefits from the attention. It's also about
one family with many connections, and this season reaches back
to our last season and the Rebecca Briggs Cornell story.
(03:54):
I call this season a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Do you live here?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Yeah, I'm a local.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
We're born and bred here.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
I was born in Tayan, but I've lived most of
my life. I've had in far.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Other people staying here right now, Yes, we're at the
Lizzie Borden House in Full River, Hello.
Speaker 7 (04:36):
So we can set up in here if you would like.
Speaker 8 (04:38):
I mean, we can pull those stores whatever you need
to do.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
So if people have any experiences, they cannot record them. Okay,
jacket Off.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Last season, we told the story of a deadly fire
in Rhode Island and the tragic death of Rebecca Briggs
Cornell of the famous Cornell family. At the end of
that story, we teased an intriguing familial connection. Well, it
turns out that one of the tragedies of this season
involves one of Rebecca Cornell's descendants, Eliza Darling Borden. And
(05:18):
Eliza Borden was Lizzie Borden's great aunt. Eliza and Lizzie's
great uncle lived right next door to the Bordon House
before Lizzie Borden's father, Andrew Borden lived there. Those two
Bordon homes are still there and they have been surrounded
by tragedy over the past two centuries.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Have you ever been here before?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
To the I have been to Fall River.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I've never been to the Linnie Morton House.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
No, haven't.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
I'm writing a book about something different that happened here,
the Saramony Cornell murder that happened in the eighteen twenties.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
She was Lizzie's cousin.
Speaker 6 (05:58):
She was was it cousin?
Speaker 5 (06:01):
But was it?
Speaker 8 (06:02):
Actually if she was a cousin on the mother's side,
then she would have been a double cousin because she
was also related on the father's side.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Do you remember Carrie Nolty. We heard from her a
lot last season because she's a descendant of Rebecca Cornell.
She's here with me again, thankfully.
Speaker 9 (06:20):
So thsies descended from Thomas Cornell Portsmouth and his son
through So Thomas had Thomas and then had Innocent Cornell Bordon,
who was Zzy's great great great great grandmother, and Thomas
Senior had another son, Stephen Cornell, who was Sarah Cornell's
(06:48):
I want to say sixth great grandfather.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Hmm, it's confusing.
Speaker 8 (06:53):
She's in the midst summerlated.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
On a cold November night, she and I visit to
both Borden houses in Fall River, and I asked Carrie
about these two or three blocks and this supposed curse.
You'll hear about each story soon.
Speaker 6 (07:11):
Sure you're saying there was a fire that killed four
people here. Then you've got Lizzie Bardon, then you've got
Eliza Bardon, and then you've got the Satanic Panic Lady
basically block.
Speaker 10 (07:22):
Of each other.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
That's crazy.
Speaker 8 (07:24):
It's you can see every single location from every single
location on this street. That's where something happens the town.
I think it's this one, just this one street.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
It's actually a few blocks and they're all really close.
Carry and I were joined by Ashley Buliro, she's a
wonderful tour guide. With the Lizzie Borden House on Second
Street and Fall River.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
We're also in the Bridgewater Triangle too, where a lot
of unexplained things just happen in this area.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
I had never heard of the Bridgewater Triangle, but later
that will end up widening our scope a bit.
Speaker 8 (08:01):
Isn't this part of the Massachusetts area where the King
Phillips wore really raged? Just awful atrocities on both sides,
people being tortured to death.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Essentially a little bit about that. King Philip's War took
place in New England in sixteen seventy five. Native Americans
banded together and pushed back on the English colonists who
were taking over their land. A Lumpanoag chief named Metacom,
who later renamed himself King Philip, led the bloody battles
(08:35):
that lasted about fourteen months. The colonists fought back, burning
Native American villages, murdering women and children. Thousands of people
were killed, many were wounded or enslaved. Entire Native American
tribes were destroyed, while more colonists moved onto their land,
(08:57):
and much of it happened here in Full River. There
was so much bloodshed right here, Ashley says, you can't
have that much tragedy in one spot and not feel
the consequences for generations.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
This land.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I believe it's fully cursed. There's just so much that
happens here.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
While we're meeting new people this season, Jeff Balanger is
my tour guide on all things cursed. He knows the
history of curses in multiple cities, and I'm going to
let him introduce himself.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I'm an author, a podcaster, my host the New England
Legends podcast, a writer, a researcher and speaker on all
things weird, haunted, and strange.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
My kind of experts. He's obviously from the area and
he knows about its history. So let's have a reality
check because Fall River, Massachusetts feels like a nice city
to me. This season is not meant to be critical
more like curious. I asked Jeff Balanger about Fall River
and what it's like right now.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Great Cherie's some great sausage down there, a lot of
Portuguese population, and so if you like that food, there's
restaurants everywhere. Some great history too.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Jeff says that Fall River is in a great location
and it has a fascinating history as a port, as
a mill town, and as a city with an incredible
backstory that doesn't involve curses.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
You're super close to Providence, Rhode Island. You're down there
on the water. There's Battleship Cove. There's a lot of
great history, you know, mill history, ocean history, all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
But all that great history tends to get overshadowed by
the woman accused in eighteen ninety two of murdering her
father and her stepmother with an axe and getting away with.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
It, which is interesting because it's just this one little
house right there in the middle of town, not even
the greatest neighborhood, by the way, and it's all anybody
can think of when you say Fall River.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Let's start from the beginning, miles away from Fall River
with the Cornell family. Here's a reminder of what happened
last season. In February of sixteen seventy three, Rebecca Briggs
Cornell sat alone in her rocking chair in her cold
room on the bottom floor of her large house in Portsmouth.
She was weaving, a craft she did most nights. Sometime
(11:34):
that evening, her son Thomas visited her. She turned down
his offer of dinner with the family because she didn't
feel well, and he left her for the night. Rebecca
later died after catching her clothing on fire. It was
assumed that the seventy three year old had died accidentally.
Our experts believed that she might have actually had a
(11:57):
heart attack and fallen near the fireplace, catching herself on fire,
or maybe it happened when a spark flew out and
ignited her clothing. But Rebecca's brother, John Briggs, claimed that
he was visited by Rebecca's ghost and that she insisted
he look into her cause of death. Rebecca's body was
(12:17):
re examined and a tiny wound was discovered, something that
apparently went unnoticed by the matrons that had dressed her
for the funeral. Soon, her son, Thomas Cornell Junior, was
arrested for her murder. Accused by neighbors of elder abuse.
If his mother died, he was the one who would
receive the estate. But did he murder her? Maybe not,
(12:41):
our experts told me, and I don't think there's enough
evidence to say for sure. Thomas certainly shouldn't have been
charged or hanged, but at least he was buried on
his own property. His wife, Sarah Earle of the famous
Earl family, continued to proclaim her husband's innocence, and then
when she was charged as an accessory after his execution,
(13:04):
she proclaimed her own innocence too. Maybe Sarah Earle was innocent,
but before her mother in law's fiery death, Rebecca had
claimed that Sarah chased around her own step children with
an axe. An axe sounds familiar. Here's where the story
really gets interesting. It turns out that Sarah Earle was
(13:28):
pregnant when Thomas was hanged, and if you recall, she
had a little girl who she named Innocent. Local historians
Anne Burns and Gloria Schmidt from last season remind us
of how innocent fits into this story.
Speaker 10 (13:44):
That is, the direct great great great grandmother of Lizzie Boreden.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Lizzie is an innocent sline, so it's a very interesting family.
You have the founder of Cornell Universities in that line too,
So all these families are all interconnected. It's an interweaving story.
So you know, you find in other situations where you know,
somebody that was a son or daughter of Thomas Cornell
(14:13):
comes into other stories of Wortsmouth history.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Okay, So Sarah Earl may have helped murder her mother
in law, or perhaps she had just been an erratic person.
We don't know, but we do know Sarah's daughter, Innocent,
was directly related to Lizzie Borden, and there were other
people in between other incidents between sixteen seventy three and
Lizzie's trial in eighteen ninety three, over two hundred years later,
(14:40):
and they all seem connected to the region. Let's talk
about this phenomenon regions or cities that are supposedly cursed.
The first one that comes to my mind is from
my very first season of tenfold Moore Wicked, the one
about multiple murderer Edward Ruloff and the town he tormented, Dryden,
(15:01):
New York. I love Dryden. I got to go there
several times to visit the scut family at their farm.
It had an old house and a nineteenth century well
with a creek running behind it. But that family farm
was the backdrop for a family tragedy. In the mid
eighteen hundreds, self proclaimed genius Edward Ruloff moved to Dryden
(15:23):
and married into a prominent local family, the Scuts. He
eventually murdered his wife and their infant child, along with
his sister in law and her child, and then later
he killed a store clerk before he was finally hanged.
But Edward Ruloff would not be the only killer to
haunt Dryden. Almost one hundred and fifty years later, the
(15:46):
area endured a series of horrible murders, ten killings in
seven years. Outsiders called it the Village of the Damned,
a nickname the locals really dislike, and actually they have
a point because many of the murders happened just outside
of Dryden. But for almost a decade, the region really
did seem to cursed. In nineteen eighty nine, just three
(16:08):
days before Christmas, four members of the Harris family were
brutally killed inside their home. The murderer simply knocked on
the door asking for help. The whole family was murdered, mother, father,
and two children, so that was just down the road
from the Scuts. After the Harris murders, residents began dead
bolting their doors, applications for gun permits dramatically increased, and
(16:33):
people began buying more security systems. The killer died just
a few days later in a shootout with police, leaving
the community stunned and frightened. But there was almost no
time to mourn, because just two months later, the next
tragedy struck. In February of nineteen ninety, a young mother
called the authorities claiming that her toddler had been kidnapped.
(16:55):
After a massive search, investigators discovered that actually she had
killed her two year old daughter and buried her in.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
The nearby woods.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And then four years later, a high school student fatally
stabbed a teenage friend over a lover's triangle, and in
nineteen ninety four, a different high school student shot to
death his ex girlfriend's father, who was the high school
football coach. Two years later, in nineteen ninety six, a
man killed his supervisor at work. But perhaps the most
(17:25):
shocking event came the very next month, October nineteen ninety six,
two cheerleaders at Dryden High School were kidnapped sexually assaulted,
and then dismembered. The remains scattered throughout the surrounding countryside.
The suspect was a neighbor, and before he could stand
trial for his crimes, he died by suicide in prison.
(17:48):
Unlike Fall River, Dryden has not benefited from its moniker
The Village of the Damned. Someone turned it into a
TV show and many of the locals were outraged. But
it does seem odd all those terrible things happening in
one place, not just deaths or even murders.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But truly awful things.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Local historian Jeff Balanger says, if you look hard enough,
every area is cursed, especially if it's old like Dryden,
New York, or Fall River, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Suddenly you go, oh, I broke a mirror, And later
that day you drop your favorite coffee cup and it shatters,
and you go that's the curse, that's the mirror thing.
And then you get a paper cut, and you're like,
oh no, now what right now, I've got a paper cut,
And then you know you're on edge and you're nervous
all the time because what's next. What happens after the
paper cut and the coffee cup breaks? Am I gonna die.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Jeff says that the paper cut and the broken coffee
cup can lead you into a panic.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
If you're superstitious, we start going down that hole our
defense mechanism, we start panicking, we start having anxiety, and
so on.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Jeff believes that communities can experience the same kind of phenomena.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Well, wait, there was a Lizzie Borden murder. There's a
new Bedford highwa murder. There's a call Drew Cull murder.
There's you know, you start going back in time and
connecting one thing to the next, to the next, to
the next to the next, and suddenly you think you're
living in the most cursed place on earth.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I'm still not convinced of curses, and making all of
those connections sounds exhausting, and yet I keep returning to
Fall River and that block of curious blocks. If a
place can be cursed, then it seems like maybe a
family can be too. Here's our first story about a
(19:33):
supposedly cursed family.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
But I need to keep it short. I have a
new book.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Coming out next year called The Sinners All Bow, and
it's about this case.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
The person at the center is a member of the
Cornell family. But the location of her death isn't in
the two block or three block radius of Fall River
that we're focused on for this season. It's several blocks away,
and right now we're talking about the curse of the Family.
Almost one hundred and sixty years after Rebecca Briggs Cornell's death,
(20:06):
another Cornell woman with a troubled history was facing an
uncertain future. Sarah Maria Cornell was a direct descendant of
Thomas Cornell on her father's side. At age thirty, Sarah
was what was known as a mill girl. She was
one of a generation of young women in New England
who toiled long hours in the rash of factories and
(20:28):
mills that had begun peppering the region. Sarah converted from
being a Congregationalist to a Methodist, but when she accused
a Methodist minister of sexual assaulting her and getting her
pregnant and may have gotten her killed, in December of
eighteen thirty two, she was found hanging from a haystack
pole in Fall River, which at the time was known
(20:49):
as Tiverton, Rhode Island. The minister went on trial for murder,
but the question was did Sarah die by her own
hand or his. In my book, I'm reinvestigating the case.
I'm using forensic experts as well as new knowledge to
determine if there was a miscarriage of justice and if
(21:10):
my co author's work condemned an innocent man. The trick
is my co author died about one hundred and seventy
years ago. Sarah Maria Cornell had been an outcast to
her family, a wayward but committed woman who had a
complicated past. A lot of the Cornells seemed to have
(21:31):
complicated pasts, as we'll see. As I said, Sarah's death
happened a few blocks south from the Borden House, toward
the water. But now let's get to our next interconnected tragedies,
which happened right across the street from the Bardon House.
(21:53):
There were five horrific violent incidents at two locations just
feet from each other, all involving the Bordon family. The first,
more than ten years after Sarah Maria Cornell's death, was
a terrible fire. Ashley Belliro is that tour guide from
the Bordon House. She takes her customers outside of the
(22:15):
infamous home and points to the large building across the street.
Speaker 5 (22:20):
Then we stop at the Farvard Courthouse in that area
in eighteen forty three. It was the Great Fire of
eighteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
But before we talk about the fire, we need to
meet some people first. More intertwining of families. Let's jump
over to the family of Sarah Earle, wife of Thomas
Cornell Junior. Remember how we said that these two families
were interconnected with a line going straight from Innocent Cornell
to Lizzie Borden about two hundred years later. For now,
(22:52):
we need to stop in the middle where this fire happens.
On the street Lizzie Borden would later call home in
eighteen forty three, Eliza Bode, Lizzie Borden's great aunt, lived
here with her husband, Lordwick Borden, along with her son
from her first marriage. For orientation, Carrie Nolty helps me
understand how Lizzie Borden's great aunt fits into our family
(23:13):
line that starts with our sort of villain from last season,
Sarah Earl.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So Eliza is a descendant from Innocent.
Speaker 8 (23:24):
Or no no, she is a descendant from Earl Sarah
Earl's sister Martha Gosh. So there are several descendants along
in this family who have committed fairly heinous acts or
have been accused of committing fairly Hannah's acts. And they
are all descended from this group of siblings who are
(23:48):
descended from one man named Ralph Earl, of whom we
know very very little, just that he was quite prosperous
and really of good repute in the town of Portsmouth,
Rhode Island, which is where he settled after coming to America.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Many descendants from the Earl family committed heinous crimes. I
wondered why I hadn't heard that when I had read
about Lizzie Borden a history of mental illness or violence.
Either of those would have helped the prosecutor. I would think, how.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Entrenched I know, we're going to jump around a little
bit bit.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
How entrenched do you think Lizzie Borden was in the
Earle family.
Speaker 8 (24:26):
I think that the connection was all but forgotten. I
don't direct, direct, direct in three ways. So Sarah Earl
Cornell and Thomas Cornell Junior were her fifth great grandparents.
Mary Earle, Sarah's sister, was another fifth great grandmother, and
(24:47):
William Earle, sarah Earl's brother, was Lizzie's sixth great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
There are a lot of family ties in this story.
Speaker 8 (24:57):
So it really it folds in on its quite a
bit in this family, and that's pretty natural for a
fairly insulated community. Thank god we had a lot of
immigration in the nineteenth century, because where would we be.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
So you get it.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Everyone in this area who was white and moderately affluent
seemed to be related. The Cornells, the Brigs, the Bordons,
and the Durfees all married each other, and Eliza Darling
was one of those who married into the Bordon family,
which almost seemed to doom her. In eighteen forty three,
the thirty two year old married Loudwick Borden and they
(25:36):
and her young son moved into the house next door
to Andrew Borden's future home. The boy liked to play
around the neighborhood, including across the street from their house
at the warehouse that will become the site of our
next tragedy. I'm back with our Borden tour guide, Ashley
(26:09):
Buliro and Carrie Nolty on a cold November night in
Fall River. We're standing near a modern looking building. Thankfully,
both Carrie and Ashley know a lot about the.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
History, so this is the back of the courthouse, So
the front of the courthouse. This is where the great
fire of eighteen forty three had happened.
Speaker 8 (26:30):
And it happened directly across the street from where the
Burdens were eventually killed and where Lodwick and Eliza were living,
and a little bit down the street. What was the building?
Speaker 11 (26:43):
Do we am?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
The building?
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I believe was a furniture warehouse. It was immense.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
It was July second of eighteen forty three, around four pm,
and two boys who were never identified, explored the back
of a large three story where house owned by a
man named Abner Westgate, near the corner of Maine and
Borden Streets. The area was sizable and very open. The
(27:10):
boys were bored and they killed time by looking around.
It was a hot day, more than ninety degrees, and.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
It had been a very hot and dry summer.
Speaker 5 (27:20):
We're also in a drought, so the ground is extremely dry.
The day of July second, two small boys are in
this field where the Fall River Courthouse is located downtown
Fall River, and they come across a small cannon and
curiosity gets the best of them.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
They believe that.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
This small cannon is in this field because Fall River
is getting ready to celebrate the Fourth of July festivities.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
The boys stared at the cannon, smiled at each other,
and lit it with a match. The blast ignited a
scattering of wood shavings on the ground, which were left
behind by workers in the warehouse.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Once that small pile of wood shavings is ignited, within
five minutes it reaches nearby buildings and it is towering
fifty feet up into the sky.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
At this point, I'm going to pull in for ends.
Like chemist Rachel Burks, whom we met last season, I
asked her how a small pile of wood chips and
wood shavings could cause such a big fire.
Speaker 10 (28:25):
Well, as soon as you.
Speaker 11 (28:26):
Said woodchips, I went, yeah, yah, because the surface area
is so high, right, And so another thing think about cold.
Think about briquets, you know, small, a lot of them,
spatially spread out, maximize surface area. And sometimes people will
talk about all these your cats are too big, right,
because you want to really make them a bit smaller,
(28:47):
so there's higher surface area. Sometimes some of these big fires,
or like a storage accident with grain, is that fine
powder and it's a particle to particle burn, which if
it goes into a explosion called deflagration, which is a
particle to particle burn. It's very rapid, slow compared to detonation,
but you cannot outrun it.
Speaker 10 (29:08):
I don't care what Hollywood movies say.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
And then there's the wind.
Speaker 11 (29:12):
And if anyone's ever cut a plywood, you can see
like the dust material with a windy day in a
dry environment, I'm imagining layers of particulate matter. It's fuel,
it's already got oxygen.
Speaker 10 (29:25):
You sock it with heat. Are we actually talking.
Speaker 11 (29:28):
About a fire that rolled over into a deflication and
that's why it just went right through this place?
Speaker 10 (29:37):
And this is one of those examples.
Speaker 11 (29:39):
Unfortunately, it sounds like of evil luck like because it's
such complicated chemistry, but it does sound like it was
a perfect storm for.
Speaker 10 (29:52):
A combustion of this uncontrollable.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Nature, especially with the conditions.
Speaker 10 (29:58):
And then you have it on that rye aird you're
in a drought.
Speaker 11 (30:02):
And the other thing, if any kind of really wall
of heat is moving with this thing where there's a
particle to particle burn.
Speaker 10 (30:11):
That can be you know, very fast, right faster than.
Speaker 12 (30:15):
We can run.
Speaker 10 (30:16):
You're coming in with this wall of energy. You just
have this heat front that is marching through.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Within five minutes, the fire raged Fall River's fire bell
clanged as terrified residents evacuated onto the streets, including the
residents at the Borden home across the street. A sheet
of fire pushed onlookers backward. Here are details from a
book called The History of Fall River. Showers of sparks
(30:53):
and cinders carried by the heavy wind kindled many buildings
before they were reached by the body of the fire.
The whole space between Maine, Franklin Rock, and Borden Streets
was one vast sheet of fire, entirely beyond the control
of man. Here's another contemporary description. The buildings on both
(31:13):
sides of Main Street were soon burning, and the wind
blowing nearly parallel with the street.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
All hope of.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Controlling the flames and saving the business part of the
village was abandoned. So sudden were the movements of the
flames unexpectedly rising in different localities, that in many cases
all efforts to preserve property were ineffectual. The people could
only helplessly watch with fear as the fire spread. They
(31:41):
listened to the crackling flames, the crash of falling timber
and the whistling of the wind. The blaze flashed like lightning.
The fire raced across wooden buildings, roaring like thunder.
Speaker 5 (31:53):
The fall of a fire department comes down, and the
channels that they would have used to obtain the water
to put the fire arrow is actually down for maintenance.
So the fire rages on until midnight. That night, twenty
acres of land is ruined and thirteen hundred people are displaced.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Despite every effort from responders, only a change in wind
direction stopped the fire spread. Luckily, mother nature intervened, but
in the end the fire had destroyed almost three hundred buildings.
The history of Fall River says they looked upon their
village in ruins and felt that it must long bear
(32:32):
the marks of this fearful calamity. The toll on Fall
River was enormous, but the human toll was the most devastating.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Four people had perished because of the fire, whether it
be Smokinghalasian or the flames. But on one of the
death certificates it's said that someone wasn't smoking elation or flames.
They died of right, So it's kind of like they're
way back then of saying someone had a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
That's a good theory. I asked rachel Burks about it.
What would cause someone to die in a fire without
being burned aside from smoke inholation. But as Ashley said
to me, these folks were terrified.
Speaker 12 (33:20):
What if that panic, that rising panic that you described,
along with the response to pain and all of these
other things going on, then maybe the precipitating event was
not a stroke or cardiac arrest or whatever.
Speaker 10 (33:36):
But what maybe that could be leading to is a
substantial event like that.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Rachelle says that a victim's health history would also be important.
Speaker 11 (33:47):
But you had all these other health challenges that were
contributing to this whole sequence of events. And I think
a lot of times what you'll see in forensic literature
or pathology litters sure is it isn't.
Speaker 10 (34:01):
Usually just one thing.
Speaker 11 (34:03):
It is a lethal sequence of events that occurs.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
In the fire of eighteen forty three, there was so
much devastation. Even precious artifacts were lost.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
The biggest thing that we lost in this fire is
the fall River Anthoneum, And in this library is a
skeleton that's encased in glass and it was actually found
by Hannah Bordon Cook in eighteen thirty two. She was
digging up sand to use it as a scoring agent
when she comes across the top of a skull. Instead
(34:41):
of burying this skull and leaving it there to rest
in peace, they decide to unearth it. When they're digging
this skeleton up, they noticed that it is buried in
an upright position with its arms pointed towards its shoulders.
It would have been a common burial practice by the
Native American. But what's odd is that this skeleton is
(35:03):
encased in bark.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Ashley says that when they pulled the bark back, they
found a chest plate of brass and a brass belt,
along with brass and copper arrowheads in the grave.
Speaker 5 (35:15):
So a lot of people assume, well, maybe it was
Native American, but they didn't really have access to those
type of metals. Or maybe it was a chief of
the Wampanog or the Narraganta tribe that maybe traded with
the early settlers of America. Some people believe that it
was a Viking. Some people believe that it was just
an early explorer, but because the Great Fire of eighteen
(35:37):
forty three will never know because it claimed it as its.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Own Ashley says that she's certain that unearthing and then
exploiting the remains of people who were once in full
river might have just doomed the city.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
Since then, Ball River has had a lot of fires
since that had happened. I do I think that Fall
River is definitely cursed. I think a lot of Native
American burial lands have been disturbed.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Fall River was devastated. It was such a huge event
that residents often referred to eras in the city's history
as before the fire and after the fire. Every time
they heard the fire bell from July second, eighteen forty
three on, it evoked terror. One contemporary description read, the
(36:30):
alarm is scarcely sounded before our firemen are at their posts,
our steam and hand engines in working order, and our
streets filled with anxious and interested lookers on The residents
blamed the inadequate fire department for the blaze, but two
unidentified boys, even though this was an accident, were really responsible.
(36:51):
Carrie Nolty thinks she knows who one of them was,
the son of a tragic figure in history. His mother
was a Borden who struggled with life and then eventually
lost the struggle right across the street from the warehouse.
Speaker 8 (37:06):
Something interesting is that Eliza Hathaway Darning is she had
two sons by her first husband, and only one of
them survived, and he would have been maybe ten or
so at the time of the fire and living potentially
at this house.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
No way, remember that Eliza and Lodwick Borden were living
in the house across the street during the fire. Eliza
had one son from a previous marriage, a little boy
named William. He was ten in eighteen forty three, and
he would have been about the same age as the
boys who were suspected of starting the fire. Did Eliza
(37:46):
Borden's son ignite the fire that nearly destroyed Fall River? Maybe,
but we can't confirm it because contemporary newspapers never revealed
the identity of the boys. But it was quite a coincident.
And you know how we feel about coincidences on this show.
They're kind of bullshit. And the problems for the Bordon
(38:07):
family and for Full River were just starting on this
season of tenfold more wicked on exactly right.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Lodwick, I mean, his bad luck started much earlier. So
Eliza was not his first wife. Eliza was his second wife.
His first wife died.
Speaker 7 (38:36):
Eliza Darling had three children back to back to back,
and she was suffering from what we know now today
as postpartum depression, and I think it took a big
toll on her.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
And women back then weren't really allowed to talk about
mental health. They probably would have been thrown into an
institution if they mentioned, like, oh, I feel a certain way.
Speaker 8 (38:56):
In May of eighteen forty eight, even though the boom
was happening and her husband was in good circumstance, she
had been expressing fears that everything was going to come
crashing down around them, that they were going to be
found in dire circumstances.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
If you love true crime, check out my books American
Sherlock and All That Is Wicked. I also have an
audio book called The Ghost Club. I can't wait to
tell you the real story about the world's most famous
ghost hunter, who was the head of the world's most
famous ghost club and how he investigated England's most famous
haunted house. This has been an exactly right tenfold more
(39:54):
media production producer Jason Whaling, senior producer Alexis m Rosi,
consulting producer Kyle Ryan, sound designer Eric Friend, composer Curtis Heath.
Additional music Jeremy Buller, artwork Nick Toga. Executive producers Georgia Hartstark,
Karen Kelgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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