Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
- Children's nursery rhyme

Q: Miss Borden, I am trying in all good faith to get all the doings that morning, of yourself and Miss Sullivan and I have not succeeded in doing it! Do you desire to give me any information or not?

A: I don't know it! I don't know what your name is!

- Lizzie Borden, replying to District Attorney Hosea Knowlton, at the inquest into the murders of her parents. August 1892.

I have a major creative writing project. You have to take an historical figure or event and turn it into a short story. I want to do it on Lizzie Borden; accused, acquitted but still generally believed to have committed the horrific murders of her stepmother and her father on the morning of August 4th, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts. I've read one short story about her already, "The Fall River Axe Murders" by Angela Carter. It's so brilliant that writing a story about the case myself is more than a bit intimidating.

Anyway, I know there are people here who read true crime. I'm curious to know if anyone has an opinion. Did Lizzie Borden kill her parents, and if not Lizzie, who did? It doesn't really matter if this helps my assignment. I'm just interested.

I've looked up stuff on the Internet and oh God, talk about information over-load. It's overwhelming.
All I can conclude is:
In 1892, people seemed to watch their neighbours instead of TV. Lizzie Borden and the 26 year old maid, Bridget Sullivan were the only people DEFINITELY at the house while the murders of Abby and Andrew Borden took place. Bridget was cleaning the outside windows some of the time. Neither Lizzie nor Bridget claimed to hear or witness anything unusual, and they never blamed or tried to incriminate each other. The house was on a busy street. People in the neighbouring houses noticed a lot of comings and going that morning. Nobody saw a stranger enter or leave the house, and if the killer left, he or she would have been in quite a mess.
Lizzie was menstruating. The Victorian police on the scene turned gentlemenly blind eyes to certain bloodstained items. Bridget even left the house that night with a small "bloody bundle"!

I dunno who did it. Lizzie or Bridget Sullivan seem the only plausible suspects.

I've always wondered if Lizzie really did it or if someone else did it.

From everything I have read and seen the consensus is that Lizzy did it.

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I have crawled so far sideways
I recognize dim traces of creation

You could cut Lizzie a lot of slack if the murders hadn't happened well over an hour apart. On August 4th 1892, Lizzie's mother was "whacked" first, 18 times, a little after 9:30AM.

When Andrew Borden arrived back from running errands downtown, at about 10:30AM, Bridget Sullivan, the maid, had to unlock four separate bolts to let him in. In exasperation, she swore. Lizzie heard, and began laughing - from upstairs. The lay-out of the house made it all but impossible for Lizzie to get back downstairs without seeing her mother's body. If Lizzie didn't do it, there was some maniac hiding in the house for around 90 minutes before "whacking" Andrew Borden in the loungeroom downstairs.

And where was Lizzie while this unknown assailant whacked her father? In her testimony, she claimed she went up to the loft in the barn to find fishing gear.

This was a scorchingly hot day - over 100 degrees well before midday. The loft was so hot - according to police who went up there not long afterwards - it was almost impossible to fathom why anybody would voluntarily hang around there.
But Lizzie (already having said she was too sick to eat breakfast), gave up searching for stuff to go fishing with but stayed up in this place for at least 20 minutes ... to eat pears.

According to Bridget, the town hall clock had just chimed eleven when Lizzie yelled out: "Come down quick! Father's dead! Somebody came in and killed him!"
If Lizzie didn't do it, the unknown assailant had fled the house unseen.
Lizzie told Bridget to leave the house to get the doctor. Strange that she wasn't afraid to be alone in the house, having just seen the sight of her dad.
When the police arrived, there were no signs of forced entry and nothing was stolen.
Lizzie attempted to purchase prussic acid, a deadly poison, the day before the murders and made all sorts of creepy predictions to a neighbour the night beforehand.

Still, nobody saw any blood on Lizzie or on her clothing in the aftermath, which is a hard one to explain if she did it. There was no definitive murder weapon found on the premises. And Bridget Sullivan was there too, and like Lizzie Borden, claimed she never saw or heard a thing.
I think it's possible Lizzie didn't do it, but if she didn't do it, she had to know the identity of the person who did.

Sorry for saying "fuck" in The Library. That's what comes from reading Lizzie Borden's entire testimony during the inquest, on a Friday night too. (Ugh, it's pitiful!)
I quoted that part of her testimony because I really felt for the DA at that point! On and on and on Lizzie gave the most elusive, contradictory replies about where she was and what she was doing that morning. "Miss Borden" was an infuriating witness.

Mr and Mrs borden were killed like an hour and a half apart, and it would have been difficult for an intruder to hide in the house that long. also, the room abby borden was in was locked, and the whereabouts of the key were known only by residents of the house. and finally lizzie was seen burning a bloody dress days later. VERDICT::: GUILTY

Oh yeah, since this is the library, any true crime junkies know a good book on the case? I've only read one (advancing an "illegitimate psycho son" theory, a son there is no proof even existed).

yar.

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when that bitch breathes, the air comes out crooked.

what motive could Lizzie Borden have to murder her parents???

I swear that sometimes the justice system can be plain scary. It's like it can't be trusted. O.J. Simpson comes to mind. He's like the modern day Lizzie Borden. I remember watching a special on Lizzie, on the History Channel and it freaked the hell out of me.

[quote=Fried~Butter]Oh yeah, since this is the library, any true crime junkies know a good book on the case? [quote]


the only one i've read was a max haines artical about her, it was good. but yeah. looks like lizzie did it.

The prosecution argued "inheritance". But most domestic murders are committed for far more prosaic reasons, emotional reasons. Petty reasons.
I've read convincing "emotional" motives attributed to Lizzie, and I think she was most likely guilty. But this guy emailed me a very long essay by Caroline Gage, theorizing that the maid Bridget Sullivan had a convincing motive too.

Gage's essay is so long, I'll try to condense it as best I can to the part about motive:

Two nights before the murders, Lizzie, her father, and her stepmother had all experienced symptoms associated with food poisoning. Mr annd Mrs. Borden had been up vomiting during the night, and the next day, all three were still feeling the effects ...

Bridget did not feel the effects of the food poisoning until the morning of the murders. She reported that she woke up with a headache and that, after preparing breakfast for the family, she had spent fifteen minutes vomiting in the backyard.

The next part of Bridget's story was completely overlooked by a police force, a press, and a public whose attention was riveted on the half-million dollars and on Lizzie Borden, the woman who stood to inherit them. The testimony they overlooked was, after all, that of the woman who was repeatedly referred to as "just the maid."

And here is the key to the crime: On the morning of August 4, 1892, Bridget Sullivan, having finished her morning chores, was given orders by Mrs. Borden to wash the windows of the house — and to be sure she washed both the inside and the outside.
Why should the jury have taken any special note of this?

First, window-washing, as any housekeeper can tell you, is not a routine, daily chore like making beds.
It's not even a weekly chore, or even a monthly one.
It is done only a few times a year.
It's also not a chore for which there is an immediate, compelling need.
It is an arduous chore, requiring ladders and buckets of water, multiple trips to the sink, climbing up and climbing down, scrubbing and drying.

Second, by seven o'clock the morning of August 4, 1892, the temperature had already reached eighty degrees. It was one of the hottest days of the year.

Third, Bridget Sullivan was sick. She had already gotten up, in spite of feeling ill, lit a fire on a hot morning, cooked breakfast for Mr and Mrs Borden, and then cleared up, washing the hot stove and the dishes. She had a headache and she had been vomiting for fifteen minutes. Mrs. Borden knew that she was sick and had been vomiting, and would have good reason to know how she felt, as she herself had been sick with similar symptoms the day before — so sick, in fact, she had called in a doctor.

So the question is this: Why would Mrs. Borden decide, on the hottest day of the year, that every window in her house needed to be washed — on both sides — by a servant who has just spent fifteen minutes vomiting? Could it have been that Mrs. Borden was making work for a servant as a punitive act? Or even a sadistic one? Or was she just arrogantly indifferent to the health of a working-class woman during working hours in her employ? Whatever her reasons, we will never know, because within the hour of issuing this order, Mrs. Borden lay dead on the guest room floor, her skull hacked to pieces.

Mr. Borden's murder had not included a frontal attack. He had been struck from behind while asleep on the couch. Unlike his wife, he never knew what hit him. If the window-washing provided a motive for the murder of the stepmother, what about Mr. Borden? He may have overheard an altercation earlier between his wife and Bridget, one that would have pointed to her being the murderer. But it's also possible that Bridget experienced him as a tyrannical employer, also.

However much accounts of the case may vary, there is one point on which they all agree: Andrew Borden was not a nice man. He is universally described as joyless, obsessed with thrift — especially in petty transactions, quick to take advantage of other people's adversity, and notably abstinent in donating to charity. By profession, he was an undertaker. It would have been consistent with his principles to get as much work as possible out of a domestic servant for the least possible wages.

Certainly his penny-pinching ways translated to a house with no electricity, only one sink with running water for three floors, and one toilet located all the way in the basement. Although both Lizzie and Emma Borden deeply resented their father's parsimony, the burden from this lack of amenities would fall the heaviest on the person who did the most cooking and cleaning in the house.

The jury, however, was not interested in housekeeping or working-class Irish immigrants. They had bigger fish to fry, and so did the police. While the members of the family had been confined to the house during the week of investigations, Bridget had been free to come and go ...

Of course, this hypothesis has holes. The Bordens lived on the "second busiest street" in the town, and passersby saw the "Borden maid" washing the outside windows. She exchanged small-talk "over the fence" with another over-worked Irish maid, while Lizzie was doing God knows what to her parents, inside.
As I said I still think it was PROBABLY Lizzie. But I thought this was well argued, and worth reading for people who say, "It was Lizzie! No ifs, ands or buts!"

maybe they cryed while watching brokeback mountain?

that's reason enough there.

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"Monster" maybe? "Heavenly Creatures"?

god, you are such a loser.

that was interesting. I should look it up, but I'm not that interested lol, but what was the relationship between Lizzie and her parents??? If I'm not mistaken they were very opressive right??

i love you

awwwww. but i love you?

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really?? I doubt that. but it's ok, no hard feelings

Yeah it's interesting but not THAT interesting!
I've discovered sites full of people just as bad as Kurt conspiracy theorists, they're so fixated about Lizzie, so set on selling THEIR theory, no matter how crazy. Same as the Jack the Ripper obsessives.

Not that I think interest in things like this is wrong per se. (Unless it's one of those people interested in coming here screeching "COURTNEY KILLED KURT!")
There are people obsessed with sport - not even playing sport, but watching it for hours on end.
Not only is obsession with sport regarded as normal, it's considered a bit abnormal not to give a fuck. (Especially if you're a guy.)

What happened to the maid after Lizzie's trial? I mean, did she continue to work for Lizzie? Perhaps they planned it together? They both seemed to have motives to "get rid of" them. I don't know a lot about the case except from watching a couple of documentaries on tv a few years back. But wasn't Mrs. Borden Lizzie's step mother whom she didn't get along with? At the time she wouldn't have just been able to move out like somebody could today. In those times it would've been quite a scandal for a single woman to live on her own, unless, of course, she was widowed or orphaned. Actually, women couldn't even buy or rent land or property back then could they? So perhaps both Lizzie and the maid saw this as their only option to ever be free from the Bordens' control. Not to mention, Lizzie was able to hear the maid curse from upstairs, and she could be heard laughing downstairs, but neither heard anything at all of the murders?