Did Lizzie Borden Get Away With Murder?

Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one. You may have heard this creepy nursery rhyme... Lizzie Borden WAS a real person, but does the song hold up to the history? Sarah: It’s like 88% inaccurate. Minimum. Sarah: I don't know who came up with this, but it seems that in the fall of 1892, the murders were committed on August 4th, and Lizzie eventually is incarcerated and will spend most of a year in jail until her trial in June of 1893. Lizzie Borden was born in Fall River, Massachusetts in July 1860. Her mother died when she was only two, and her father, Andrew, married Abby Borden in 1865. At the time of the murders, Lizzie was 32 years old, unmarried, and living with her father, stepmother, elder sister Emma, and their maid, Bridget Sullivan. Sarah: Who Lizzie Borden was sounds like it should be a very simple question, but it's actually a very tricky one because almost no descriptions of her prior to this double homicide exist. Two features that even her friends who defended her would admit to said she was very reserved. She was not a person to get very fluttered and hysteric and create undue drama. And yet she did have a temper. So, if something hit a button, she could go off. At about 11:10 am on Thursday, August 4, 1892, Lizzie found her father’s dead body on the couch in the sitting room. He had been bludgeoned repeatedly in the head. Lizzie screamed, alerting Bridget Sullivan, who came running downstairs to find them both. The first police officer showed up at 11:20am, and ran back to the station for more help. Neighbors calmed a horrified Lizzie with cold compresses and fanning, before she asked after her stepmother. Two neighbors went looking throughout the house, and found Abby upstairs, on the floor of the guestroom. She, too, had been brutally mutilated. Abby had been struck with a hatchet 18 times, and Andrew was hit 11. Sarah: Lizzie Borden came into suspicion within the first hour or two of the police investigation. The police, two of them in particular, were very troubled by her demeanor. In their opinion, she was not showing enough emotion. She didn't appear upset enough. She was answering things very calmly, not crying. To this day, no one knows how or why the murders occurred, but the most prevalent theory about motive was money. If Andrew dies, the fortune goes to Abby, but with them both gone—Lizzie and her sister take all. Sarah: It's kind of like every generation, every decade has its own theory. Perhaps Lizzie Borden was a victim of incest. Perhaps Lizzie and Bridget were having an affair. Perhaps Bridget was so annoyed at having been ordered to clean the windows on a hot August day that she snapped and sliced everybody to bits. Sarah: Perhaps Uncle John Morse, who was Lizzie's mother's brother, he was spending the night, actually, in the room where Mrs. Borden would be murdered on the 4th of August. He'd slept there on the 3rd of August. He shows up for a visit with not a bit of luggage, not even a toothbrush. And by the way, he used to be a butcher. Sarah: I don't really have a guess about what happened and who the murderer was, but I wish that somebody had paid a little more attention to Lizzie's uncle, Hiram Harrington. Mr. Harrington was an uncle by marriage, Lizzie's father's sister's husband. And when Lizzie Borden is asked on the stand at the inquest if Mr. Borden ever had trouble with anyone, he is the only name that she names directly. The day after the murder, Hiram Harrington told the police that Andrew Borden’s $500,000 estate was sufficient motive for the double murder. He described Lizzie and Andrew’s relationship as fraught, and repeated a version of the story Lizzie told him in private, while implying that the murder was Lizzie’s doing. Sarah: The root, the first little seed of the Lizzie Borden legend, is planted by her own uncle. Why is that? And why is he the only one that she mentions? I'm endlessly intrigued by that. Lizzie’s trial was a confusing web of accusations and testimonies. She was seen burning a dress a few days after the murder, which some suspected was to cover up the bloodstains of the dress she wore on the night of the murder. Lizzie claimed it was a separate dress covered in paint—but nobody could corroborate any details. Police testimonies on the suspected murder weapon, the hatchet, contradicted each other. They disagreed about who took it to the station and whether it was found with a handle or just the blade. Finally, a local druggist was ready to testify that a Ms. Borden came into his shop and asked for prussic acid, a lethal poison, and was refused, which suggested she had an intent to harm, but the judge excluded the evidence. Sarah: So with all of those things off the table, and really no direct evidence whatsoever to link her to the crime. The jury, in my opinion, made the only decision that they could, which was to acquit her. Sarah: There's this moment for her, of course, of great joy and relief, and she nearly passed out in court. Sarah: And then reality sets in. She's going home to the place where the murder occurred. Lizzie may have been acquitted, but the effects of the trial followed her. People didn’t want to be associated with her. Not even friends who stood by her during the trial or the members of the church in which she used to be so active. Lizzie became a pariah. The infamous nursery rhyme emerged soon after and spread quickly. Lizzie probably heard her fair share of the chant and was possibly even taunted by the song. Sarah: The vision of Lizzie Borden that anybody gets when you mention her name, is like a little Halloween bobblehead with an ax and murderous eyes. But the Lizzie Borden that we can actually document is so different. Sarah: I think the odds of us finding out what really happened are quite slim. The forensic methods that were available at the time obviously don't measure up. You know, fingerprints weren't a thing. Sarah: You know, we know so little. But what we know is so different from the public's conception of her. And I think that's what really got me like, what is this huge, just gaping canyon between reality and perception? How did that come about and which one is real?