In the 1800s, the story of ax-wielding spinster Lizzie Borden was a national
phenomenon. But did the infamous Borden,
who has been portrayed by Christina Ricci and Chloë Sevigny, actually butcher her parents?
Here's everything you never knew about Lizzie Borden and her infamous ax spree.
Born in 1860, Lizzie Borden was the youngest child of Andrew and Sarah Borden. Tragically,
Lizzie's mother passed away when the girl was just 2-years-old,
and she spent most of her life with her stepmom, Abby. Decades later, at the age of 32, Lizzie had
become a prominent figure in her hometown of Fall River. She was energetic and outgoing, especially
compared to her 41-year-old wallflower sister Emma. In addition to teaching Sunday school,
Lizzie kept herself busy singing in a church choir and delivering baskets and bouquets to the sick
and poor. She campaigned against alcohol as a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union,
worked at a charity hospital, and served as the secretary treasurer for the Christian
Endeavor Society. She even prepared turkey dinners on Christmas for underprivileged kids.
Neither of the Borden sisters was married, which was unusual for the time.
As a result, Lizzie and Emma lived at home with their 70-year-old father,
Andrew. He started off as an undertaker before making it big in real estate and
the banking business. But even though he was one of the wealthiest men in Fall River,
most described Andrew as a notorious penny-pincher. As for his second wife,
the 63-year-old Abby, most sources claim she didn't really get along with her stepdaughters.
With a stingy dad and a stepmother she didn't like, Lizzie wasn't crazy about her home life,
and as it turns out, Lizzie's relationship with her parents was about to get even worse.
On August 4, 1892, Bridget "Maggie" Sullivan, maid to the Borden family,
woke up with a serious case of nausea and vomited after preparing breakfast. However, she wasn't the
only one suffering from stomach sickness. Both Andrew and Abby Borden had been violently ill,
and Mrs. Borden had gone to the family physician the day before claiming she'd been poisoned.
That morning, Sullivan was ordered to wash all the outside windows, leaving Lizzie and her stepmother
in the house alone. Meanwhile, Andrew was running errands, Emma was meeting friends in another town,
and their uncle and houseguest, John Morse, was visiting other relatives.
However, things got weird a little before 11. Andrew had just returned home, and as Sullivan
went to let him in, she heard laughing coming from upstairs. The maid wasn't sure what was so funny,
but shortly after Andrew stepped inside, Lizzie came downstairs and said Abby had
received a note from a sick friend and had gone to visit. With his wife gone,
Andrew settled down on the living room sofa and quickly fell asleep for the last time.
According to The New York Times, the maid was woken from a nap by Lizzie Borden's screams,
and she rushed downstairs to see what was the matter. She was met by Lizzie,
who told her that an intruder had attacked her father. Lizzie sent the maid to fetch Dr. Bowen
and her good friend Alice Russell, which left Lizzie alone in the house for several minutes.
As for Andrew, it was determined he'd been struck 11 times by an ax or hatchet. Later,
Abby Borden was found lying dead in the upstairs guest room, the victim of 18 or 19 vicious blows.
During their investigation, the police found the head of a hatchet,
minus the handle, down in the basement, and while it was treated as the murder weapon,
it seemed pretty clean for something just used to butcher two people. Because of how sick
the Bordens had been, their stomachs were sent away for testing, but no poison was identified.
Almost immediately, the police focused on Lizzie, the only other person thought to have
been in the house at the time of both murders. After all, there was a lot of circumstantial
evidence pointing in her direction. For instance, according to a clerk at a local drug store, Lizzie
had come in the day before the murders hoping to buy prussic acid, which is incredibly poisonous.
She claimed she wanted it for cleaning purposes, but the timing seemed suspicious in retrospect.
"Sometimes, Alice, I have a feeling that something terrible is going to happen there."
Others wondered how Lizzie could've been inside for Abby's murder and not have heard
the sounds of a vicious attack, especially since the Borden house wasn't that big.
Alice Russell, Lizzie's friend, claimed Lizzie had recently mentioned that she
was worried that something bad might happen to her father.
There was also the issue of the note Lizzie said Abby Borden received that morning,
asking her to visit a sick friend. The police couldn't find it anywhere. Plus,
the timing just didn't work. Abby was killed at around 9:30, and Andrew was murdered at about 11.
If a stranger had committed the crimes, they would've had to wait inside for 90 minutes,
or have left in between the murders and then come back, which seems highly unlikely.
When Lizzie was questioned at a coroner's inquest several days later, things didn't go well,
as her testimony appeared to be full of contradictions.
Coupled with the circumstantial evidence, her statements soon landed her behind bars,
kicking off one of the most sensational trials in American history.
The trial started on June 5, 1893. At one point, the prosecution dramatically revealed
Andrew and Abby's skulls, prompting Lizzie to faint in the courtroom. Things only got
worse for the state when the judges ruled that Lizzie's inquest testimony was inadmissible,
in part because she hadn't had a lawyer at the time and partly because
she'd been questioned while under the influence of doctor-prescribed
morphine. The judges also threw out testimony about her trying to purchase prussic acid.
As for the defense team, they did a great job of getting the state's witnesses to
contradict themselves, as well as discrediting several of the prosecution's biggest arguments.
For example, the state claimed that the reason no one ever found the handle of the murder
weapon was that Lizzie had burned the shaft because it was covered in blood. Of course,
this was impossible to prove. The defense also pointed out how clean the hatchet head had been,
and how unrealistic it would have been for Lizzie to wash the murder weapon and hide her
bloody clothes in the few minutes between killing Andrew Borden and calling for Bridget Sullivan.
When the state argued that maybe Lizzie committed the crime in the nude, the defense
laughed the theory out of court, as Lizzie was considered a respectable lady. Lizzie's lawyers
also found witnesses who'd seen a suspicious character in the vicinity of the Borden house,
and handymen who'd been working in the loft shortly before the crimes,
calling the police's evidence into question.
Andrew Borden was one of the wealthiest men in Fall River, with an estate worth about
$7 million by today's standards, but he was also incredibly stingy. As a result, the Bordens lived
in a house without electricity or running water. There weren't even any bathtubs or toilets.
"Excuse me father."
Things got even worse when Andrew gave a house to Abby's sister in 1887.
Evidently, Emma and Lizzie thought their father preferred his in-laws over his own
flesh and blood, and this allegedly made things pretty icy in the Borden household.
Plus, the Borden girls never liked their stepmom. To this day, most people who believe Lizzie was
guilty hold to the theory that money and hatred of her stepmom led to her committing the murders.
"My father is a complicated man and he was known to be difficult."
However, it should be noted that not everyone thinks that Andrew was as
greedy as the history books suggest. According to journals kept by one of Lizzie's lawyers,
it appears that Andrew and his daughter were at least
somewhat close. As explained by Michael Martins, curator of the Fall River Historical Society,
"Andrew Borden was apparently quite concerned about his daughters' well-being."
Andrew also paid for Lizzie to tour Europe a few years before the murders,
suggesting that he could be generous at times.
Lizzie Borden's trial lasted two weeks, and by the end of it, it was looking like she might
walk away clean. The defense had successfully stopped key prosecution witnesses from testifying
and had painted Lizzie as a virtuous woman incapable of such a massacre.
In fact, before sending the jury off to deliberate, one of the judges reminded
them to consider Lizzie's "Christian character" while discussing her fate.
When the jury of 12 men returned after just 90 minutes, they pronounced Lizzie Borden not guilty.
Lizzie let out a yell after hearing the verdict,
and it was a sentiment reflected by much of the media. The New York Times reported,
"It will be with a certain relief to every right-minded man or woman who has followed the
case [...] that the jury at New Bedford has not only acquitted Miss Lizzie Borden of the atrocious
crime with which she was charged, but has done so with promptness that was very significant."
While it's fair to say the state failed to prove Lizzie's guilt,
it's also fair to say that the all-male jury was probably influenced by certain attitudes
of the day. As many have pointed out, people in 1893 couldn't believe a woman like Lizzie,
a Sunday school teacher from a wealthy family, could commit such a ghastly deed.
Lizzie walked out of that courtroom a free woman,
and the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden are unsolved to this day.
After the trial, Lizzie Borden put her father's money to good use,
buying a house in an upper-class neighborhood. And unlike her previous digs, Lizzie's new home,
which she called Maplecroft, came equipped with four bathrooms, per The New York Times.
In addition to buying a new house, Lizzie changed her name to "Lizbeth" and visited
big cities like Boston and New York, but she could never really shake her old reputation.
While she was found not guilty, people in town still had their suspicions,
and slowly but surely, everyone in Fall River turned their backs on Lizzie Borden. Nobody would
sit near her at church, and she became something of a ghoul for the local children, who would
hurl rocks and eggs at her house. And then, of course, there was that notorious jump rope rhyme.
Regardless of what the jury said, the rest of the world still thought she had blood on her hands.
Eventually, Lizzie became sick, and after a year of health problems, the notorious woman passed
away in June 1927. She was buried next to her murdered parents. No one attended her burial.
There are several theories about who "really" killed
Andrew and Abby Borden, or why Lizzie might have done it.
Author Edward Radin suggested that maybe the maid, Bridget Sullivan, went ax crazy after she was
ordered to wash the windows because it was hot outside and she felt ill. Meanwhile, a theory
from author Arnold Brown suggested that Andrew allegedly had an illegitimate son named William
who slaughtered Andrew after the businessman refused to comply with his financial demands.
But perhaps the wildest theory of all suggested that Lizzie suffered a seizure caused by
menstruation, and this sent her into a fugue state where she unknowingly diced up her dad.
Though Lizzie Borden quietly shuffled off this mortal coil in 1927,
her legend has lived on for decades. Borden has appeared in multiple movies and TV shows,
including an episode of The Simpsons, a made-for-TV movie starring Elizabeth Montgomery,
and Lifetime's The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, starring Christina Ricci.
But to get the best glimpse of Lizzie's life, it's best to visit Massachusetts and check out
the Fall River Historical Society. It houses a multitude of Lizzie Borden paraphernalia,
including notes from Lizzie's defense team, slides containing samples from Abby Borden's stomach,
and the alleged murder weapon itself. Plus, you can spend an evening at the
Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, located inside the infamous murder house itself.
If you want to stay the night, you can sleep in the guest room where Abby Borden's body was
discovered, and if you arrive in August, you might get to watch actors reenact the crime. Many people
who've stepped inside claim the house is haunted, full of wandering spirits who've been trapped
inside ever since the murders took place in 1892. Regardless, the locale attracts visitors annually,
as the world remains fascinated by the life and legacy of Lizzie Borden.
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