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Lizzie Borden: Guilty or Innocent?

October 03, 2021

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on July 19, 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts to mother Sarah Anthony Borden and father Andrew Jackson Borden. Lizzie was the youngest of two, having an older sister named Emma almost 10 years her senior, and Emma often acted as a mother figure to Lizzie, especially after their mother, Sarah, died in 1863 when Lizzie was just a baby.

Andrew Borden had grown up as a descendant of wealthy and influential people in this area, however he had some money struggles when he was younger. He eventually became an extremely successful property developer and owned lots of property. At the time of his death his estate was estimated at $300,000 and that was in the 1890′s, in 2020 his estate was worth $9 million.

Despite the Bordens being extremely wealthy for the time, Andrew was a frugal man, often not wanting to truly live like wealthy people. The Borden house did not have indoor plumbing, though they could afford it and most of Andrew’s cousins lived in a richer area of Fall River known as “The Hill.”

Lizzie and Emma were brought up very religious and Lizzie even taught Sunday school to children of recent immigrants. Lizzie was involved in many organizations such as the Christian Endeavor Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

In 1866, Andrew married a woman named Abby Gray, to whom Lizzie did not like. Lizzie often referred to Abby as “Mrs Borden” and believed that Abby had only married Andrew for his money. Lizzie and Emma would rarely eat meals with the Bordens because of this dislike which Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, their maid later testified.

If you are into true crime than you must of heard the story of Lizzie Borden and her axe before, as this is quite a popular case. But if you do not know the case well, spoiler alert: Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered with an axe on August 4, 1892. Here, we are going to go over a couple of strange occurrences that took place in the Borden household leading up to the murders.

In May 1892, a few months before Mr. and Mrs. Borden were brutally murdered, Andrew had killed some pigeons in his barn with a hatchet. It is believed that Lizzie had built a roost for those pigeons and was very upset to hear that her father had killed them, though some dispute that this ever happened.

Another strange event that occurred just a month before the murders was that Lizzie and Emma ended up taking “extended vacations” in New Bedford after a supposed family argument. The two sisters returned only a week before the murders, and Lizzie even chose to stay in a local rooming house after returning to Fall River for 4 days before she eventually went back to the Borden residence.

Leading up to the murders, various arguments happened between Andrew and his daughters over the fact that he had chosen to gift some of Abby’s family real estate and had boughten Abby a house. John Vinnicum Morse, Lizzie and Emma’s uncle on their mother’s side, visited the Bordens on August 3, 1892, one day before the murders took place and had planned to stay for a few days to discuss business with Andrew.

Some suspect that John and Andrew had been talking about property transfer, which added fuel to a fire between Lizzie and her father.

Another strange unexplained occurrence was that in the days leading up the murders, the entire Borden household was becoming quite sick, and while a family friend believed it was just food poisoning, Abby had fear that it was actually poisoning.

John Morse, the uncle, arrived at the Borden house on August 3, and had slept in the guest bedroom that night. All Bordens, John and Maggie were present at breakfast and Andrew and John went into the sitting room and talked for about an hour. John left the house at 8:48 am to buy some oxen and visit his niece, he had planned to return to the Borden house around noon. Andrew Borden left for a morning walk sometime after 9 am.

It is worth mentioning that Emma Borden was out of town on August 4, 1892. Abby Borden went upstairs sometime between 9 am and 10:30 am to make the bed in the guest room, and according to the investigation it appeared that Abby had been facing her killer at the time of the attack.

Abby Borden was first struck on the side of the head with a hatchet which cut her above her ear, causing her to turn and fall face down on the floor. The killer then struck her more times, hitting her 17 times in the back of her head.

Andrew had returned home around 10:30 am from his walk, and when he tried to open the door with his key, it failed. He then knocked on the door and Maggie the maid unlocked it for him, though she found it jammed. While the door was jammed Maggie had cursed, and she later testified that she heard Lizzie laughing immediately after this from the top of the stairs, though she did not see Lizzie at this time. Abby Borden was already dead at this point and it is said that anyone would of been able to see her body laying on the floor on the second floor of the house, so if Lizzie was standing at the top of the stairs when the door was jammed than she would have known Abby was dead and had not yet said anything.

Lizzie herself denied every being upstairs and said that Andrew had asked her where Abby was and she replied that she had been visiting a sick friend at the time. Lizzie had helped Andrew remove his boots and put him in slippers before he laid down on the couch for a nap. However, in the crime scene photos, Andrew is laying on the couch with his boots on, not slippers.

At this time Maggie went to go take a nap in her bedroom on the third floor, taking a rest from cleaning the windows just before 11:10 am when she heard Lizzie call from downstairs, “Maggie, come quick! Father’s dead. Somebody came in and killed him.”

Andrew was slumped on the couch in the sitting room, and had been struck 10 or 11 times with what appeared to be a hatchet or close to a hatchet. One of his eyeballs had been split cleanly in two, and it appeared as though he was sleeping when he was attacked. He was still bleeding, suggesting the murder happened very recently. Detectives determined that Andrew Borden died approximately at 11 am.

When Lizzie was questioned many believe her answers were a little strange. She claimed she had heard a groan or a scraping noise or a distressed call before entering the house, and then two hours later she told police she heard nothing and entered the house. When asked where Abby was, Lizzie said she had received a note asking her to visit a sick friend but thought that Abby had returned and asked if someone could go upstairs and look for her. Maggie and a neighbour, Mrs. Churchill were halfway up the stairs when they saw Abby lying face down on the floor.

Multiple officers reported that they did not like Lizzie’s attitude, they thought she was too calm during questioning. No one had checked Lizzie for bloodstains despite her strange behaviour, thought police did check her room but not properly because Lizzie said she was not feeling well.

Police found two hatchets in the basement, two axes and a hatchet-head with a broken handle. The hatchet head was suspected of being the murder weapon as the break was fresh. Andrew and Abby had been tested for poison due to the recent illnesses that had been happening to the family, but none was found in their systems.

Residents believed Lizzie had tried to purchase hydrocyanic acid in a diluted form from the local drugstore, but Lizzie said she had only inquired about it so she could clean her furs.

On August 6, 1892, police searched the house more carefully, inspecting the sisters’ clothing and removing the broken handled hatchet-head. A police officer and the mayor visited the Borden house that evening and Lizzie was informed that she was a suspect in the murders. The next morning, Lizzie’s friend, Alice Russell, entered the kitchen to find Lizzie tearing up a dress. Lizzie said she was planning to burn the dress because it had paint stains on it. No one knows if this was the same dress Lizzie was wearing on the day of the murders.

On August 8, Lizzie had an inquest hearing to which they had given her morphine to calm her nerves, which could have had an impact on her behaviour which was noted as very erratic and she refused to answer a lot of questions even if they were beneficial to her. Lizzie often contradicted herself and provided multiple accounts of the morning. At one point she said she was in the kitchen reading a magazine when her father came home, and then after she said she was in the dining room doing some ironing, and then at another time said she was coming down from the stairs.

On August 11, Lizzie was served with a warrant of arrest and jailed. The inquest testimony provided most of the basis of whether Lizzie was guilty or innocent, though this was later ruled inadmissible at her trial. The testimony at the inquest also changed many of her friends’ opinions on her that she was innocent, questioning if she really had murdered her father and stepmother.

Lizzie’s trial began on June 5, 1893. On June 1, 1893, another axe murder had taken place in Fall River, with the victim being Bertha Manchester, found hacked to death in her kitchen. There were many similarities between Bertha’s murder and the Borden’s murder, though in 1894 a Portuguese immigrant named Jose Correa de Mello was convicted of Bertha’s murder and was not in the area at the time the Borden’s were murdered.

Lizzie’s actual movements and where she was in the house was taken into account during the trial with many disputes. Maggie had entered the second floor of the home at around 10:58 am and left Lizzie and Andrew Borden downstairs. Lizzie told multiple people that she was in the barn at this time, for “20 minutes or possibly a half an hour.” Hyman Lubinsky testified that he witnessed Lizzie leaving the barn at 11:03 am and Charles Gardner confirmed this time as well. At 11:10 am Lizzie called to Maggie from downstairs that Andrew had been murdered and told Maggie not to enter the room, instead Maggie went to get the doctor.

If Andrew Borden was murdered at exactly 11 am then Lizzie supposedly would have still been in the barn for another 3 minutes, but did that give the killer enough time to leave the house undetected?

Both Andrew and Abby’s heads had been removed during the autopsy and the skulls were admitted as evidence during the trial. When seeing the heads at trial, Lizzie fainted. Evidence that Lizzie had been trying to purchase hydrogen cyanide the day before the murders was excluded, with the judge saying that incident was too remote to have any connection to the murders, though the local druggist did say Lizzie tried to buy it.

The jury deliberated for an hour and a half on June 20, 1893 which is a very quick deliberation. They acquitted Lizzie Borden of the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden and when Lizzie was exiting the courthouse she told reporters that she was, “the happiest woman in the world.”

Though Lizzie was acquitted, many believe that she is the prime suspect in her father and stepmother’s murders. Many theories have been brought forward of what Lizzie’s motive could be. Some believe Lizzie was physically and sexually abused by her father, but there has been little evidence to support this theory.

Another popular theory is that Lizzie was in a relationship with Maggie the maid, and that perhaps Abby had caught the two in a sexual act so Lizzie decided to kill her. The theory then goes on to say Lizzie told Andrew what she had done to Abby and killed him when he also reacted in horror and disgust at the idea of a lesbian relationship. Some had speculated that Lizzie was a lesbian as she was in her 30′s at the time of the murders and had still been living in her father’s home unmarried, which was taboo in 1892. Maggie was never speculated as being a lesbian however, and she found other employment as a maid in Butte, Montana and married a man after the murders.

Maggie Sullivan died in Butte in 1948 and supposedly gave her sister a deathbed confession, that she had changed her testimony at Lizzie’s trial to protect her. Many believe that Maggie helped Lizzie after and fully knew that Lizzie had committed the murders. Maggie herself was a suspect to some, as it was believed she was unhappy about washing the windows on the day of the murders because it was a very long and difficult task and it was extremely hot that day. Some believe she murdered the Borden’s because she had to wash the windows on a hot day and was still recovering from feeling ill.

Another suspect was John Morse, Lizzie’s uncle who they rarely saw but had been visiting and slept in the Borden house the night before. However, Morse had an alibi for Abby’s murder, which law enforcement said was almost too perfect and over detailed. He was considered a suspect by police for a period of time.

A man named William Borden who was suspected to be Andrew Borden’s illegitimate son was a possible suspect as the theory believes he was trying to extort money from his father but failed. Author Leonard Rebello did lots of research in relation to this theory and proved that William was not Andrew Borden’s son. Emma Borden was also believed to have committed the murders, though she was out of town some think she came back to kill Abby and Andrew before returning to Fairhaven where she was staying to receive a telegram that the murders occurred.

After Lizzie had been acquitted her and Emma moved into a large modern house in “The Hill” area of town, the one the girls wanted Andrew to live in. At this time Lizzie began going by “Lizbeth A. Borden” instead of Lizzie and the girls had live-in maids, a housekeeper and a coachman. Because Abby had died before Andrew, her estate first went to Andrew and then to Lizzie and Emma as part of his estate when he died. A considerable settlement was paid to Abby’s family, however Lizzie and Emma received a lot of money due to their father being quite wealthy at the time of his death. Many believe this was most of the motive for Lizzie killing her father, to gain money so she could live the luxurious life she always wanted.

Lizzie was hated in Fall River, with many believing she had gotten away with murder. She was accused of shop-lifting in 1897 in Providence, Rhode Island, which Lizzie was known to have shoplifted a lot before her father died, as Andrew would pay for whatever Lizzie stole.

In 1905, Lizzie and Emma got in an argument and Emma moved out of the house and the two sisters never saw each other or spoke again. Lizzie began ill following the removal of her gallbladder, and died from pneumonia on June 1, 1927. Very few people attended her funeral and the details were not released.

Nine days later on June 10, 1927, Emma died from chronic nephritis at the age of 76 in a nursing home in Newmarket, New Hampshire which she had moved to in 1923. Lizzie and Emma were buried side by side in the family plot in Oak Grove Cemetery.

The Borden house is now a museum and a bed and breakfast with 1890′s style. Pieces of evidence used in the trial, including the axehead are preserved at the Fall River Historical Society.

The Lizzie Borden case is one of the most famous true crime cases in history, with many people split on whether they think Lizzie is guilty or innocent. Some of you have probably heard of the famous rhyming melody that many sing in relation to Lizzie and the axe murders,

“Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done,

she gave her father forty-one.”

The rhyme has a less well-known second verse:

“Andrew Borden now is dead, Lizzie hit him on the head. Up in heaven he will sing, on the gallows she will swing.”

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