Did Lizzie Borden Get Away With Murder?

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 OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites. And today we have Kara Robertson, author of “The Trial of Lizzie Borden.” This long-unsolved double murder has haunted Fall River, Massachusetts, since the late summer of 1892. Here’s Kara with the story.

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-used phrase, the trial of the century. In her case, it was the trial of the nineteenth century. There was a combination of technology and, you know, sensational subject matter that converged 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 was someone who checks all the boxes of proper middle-class womanhood. She was active in good work, she was a Sunday School teacher, and yet she was accused of the murder of her own father and her stepmother. And this was just more than anyone could really comprehend. And so there was a strong desire to follow the case and to see her in mythic terms. You know, 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 in blue who were trying to 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, meant that it provided a place from which you can observe America in the Gilded Age and have a real window onto that period 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 from urban centers like Boston and New York, so had a slight provincialism to it. But it also had easy access to those centers, so there was a lot of—there was 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 the people who worked in the mills were quite poor, often immigrants. And what was particularly interesting about Fall River is that its geography exactly mirrored the social structure. The people who lived closest to the mills, which was low, were the people who worked in the mills. And then there was a city center that was sort of halfway up the hill, and that’s where mostly the doctors, lawyers lived. And then there was an elite area called the Hill District, which was literally the highest place you could live, and that was the place that was favored by the people who were the owners of the mills. You know, on the surface, the Bordens 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 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 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 Fall River, and because he was a bit of a miser, wasn’t. The daughters’ allowance was for pin money and things were. It was 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 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 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 never to 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, 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, which 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, 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 separately, and it was described by some as a side of really cold war between the generations.

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 Stories. Folks, if you love 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 and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale.edu to learn more. And we returned to Our American Stories, and we’ve been listening to Kara Robertson, author of “The Trial of Lizzie Borden.” By the way, it’s a terrific read. Go to Amazon or the usual suspects to pick it up. The Borden 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 Abby, making for a chilling home environment. Back to Kara.

Well, Emma was a fairly stoic character and much more mild-mannered, 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 forthright character, and she described her stepmother as a mean, good-for-nothing thing to a dressmaker, of all people. A few months before the murders, she was 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 Bordens were the victims of a mysterious daytime theft. Andrew and Abby were out, but Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget Sullivan, the Bordens’ maid, were home. Abby Borden had some jewelry stolen, and Mr. Borden also lost some money and streetcar tickets. And what was oddest about the crime was that no one seemed to have heard anyone enter or leave the house. After the police were called and investigated, Mr. Borden 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 2nd, the Borden household was a hit with what appeared to be food poisoning. It was a fairly typical complaint in Fall River in the summer. In fact, it was called the summer complaint because so many houses didn’t have refrigeration. The Bordens 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 she feared they had been poisoned. When the doctor returned to the house to examine Andrew, and 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. On the night before the murders, she said she was worried that the milk 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, and it comes over me at times no matter where I am.” On the morning of August 4th, there were five people in the Borden household: Andrew Borden, his wife Abby, his daughter Lizzie, the housemaid Bridget Sullivan, and Andrew’s brother-in-law John Morse, who was an occasional overnight visitor.

Emma Borden was visiting friends in Fairhaven, which is some distance away. As was customary, the elder Bordens rose first and had breakfast, as did John Morse. Andrew left to go about his business in town. John followed in order to see some other relatives on the other side of town. Sometime between 9:20 and 9:30 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 departure around 9:30, 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 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, she 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, Mr. Borden came in. His daughter, Lizzie, greeted him and 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. Mr. Borden decided to take a nap on the sitting room sofa, and shortly thereafter the nap became his final slumber. He was struck by ten blows, mostly in the face. At the time 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 weight for a fishing line, or perhaps a piece of iron to fix a window in the upstairs loft of the barn. There she tarried and ate a pear or two. She estimated that she was there twenty minutes, perhaps thirty, and came back in from outside and discovered her father’s body on the sitting 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 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 her neighbor, Alice Churchill, who asked her what was the matter, and she replied, “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, 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 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 not latched, but it was often in sight of the neighbors or Bridget Sullivan, the housemaid. The second 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 Mrs. Borden first, and then waited an hour and a half to kill Andrew seemed really implausible. 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 Abby’s murder—seeming to advertise rather than hide the fact. All in all, 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 through the house. It was 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 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.

The murders were so…

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. And we returned to Our American Stories and to the mysterious double murder that took place in Fall River, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1892. The daughter of the victims, Lizzie Borden, was the main suspect. Back to Kara Robertson, author of “The Trial of Lizzie Borden,” with more.

Of the story, the police found no evidence that anyone had been in the loft of the barn. This was something that was disputed at the trial. At the time that the inquest started, the police already had strong suspicions of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie’s family lawyer attempted to participate. He wanted to represent her at the inquest, but that wasn’t permitted. The prosecutor at the inquest took her through her stated movements, and on 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 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 arrested and taken to New Bedford. The trial began in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a neighboring town, on June 5th, 1893. Reporters and journalists from around the country were dispatched to cover the case. An extension to the courthouse was built in the rear so that all the wire services could be accommodated, and the most prominent columnists wrote not only about what was happening in the courthouse, but also what was happening outside the courthouse. Because it became an almost festive atmosphere with people who lined up and bring lunch, desire for admission was widespread and much covered in the newspapers. One local newspaper, under the headline “Where to Look for Your Wife,” described the number of women who were desirous of attending the trial, and these women, according, at least, to one of the journalists, constituted a sort of second jury. The jury itself was all-male. Women were not eligible for jury service in Massachusetts at the time, and actually wouldn’t serve on a Massachusetts jury until 1950. Lizzie Borden 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 Lizzie Borden was simply in the wrong place, wrong time, or, as he would have put it, in the right place in her home 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 Lizzie Borden, or who had the characteristics of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden had an extraordinary self-possession. That was something that everyone noticed 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 “Iri”…