Like her sister, Lizzie had evidently given up hope of marriage, but she led a more active life, centered around good works and the Central Congregational Church, where she taught a Sundayschool class of Chinese children, the sons and daughters of Fall River laundrymen.
The Borden family was not happy. While Emma tolerated her stepmother, Lizzie openly disliked her. Ill feelings increased in , when Andrew gave Abby a house for the use of her sister. Seeking peace, Andrew gave his daughters a house of greater value to rent out, but they were not placated.
She is a mean thing and we hate her. Even the house Lizzie lived in vexed her. Its Grant-era furnishings contrasted sharply with her stylish clothes. There was no bath and no electricity, though such conveniences were common elsewhere in town. Beside the water closet in the basement stood a pile of old newspapers for sanitary purposes.
No interior space was wasted on hallways. Rooms simply opened into one another, making it difficult for anyone to pass through unnoticed. On Tuesday, August 2,, strange things began to happen in the Borden house. Borden and Bridget suffered severe vomiting; Lizzie later claimed she felt queasy the next day. Emma, on vacation in Fairhaven, was spared. The next day, Uncle John Morse, brother of the first Mrs. Borden, arrived unexpectedly on business. Like Andrew, Morse was single-minded in his pursuit of wealth, and the two men had remained friends.
Miss Russell later testified that their conversation had been unsettling. Lizzie had spoken of burglary attempts on the Borden home, of threats against her father from unknown enemies.
On Thursday morning, August 4, Bridget rose about six and lit the breakfast fire. Around seven, the elder Bordens and their guest sat down to eat in the dining room. Lizzie did not appear downstairs till nine. By then, Mrs. Borden had begun dusting the downstairs and Morse had left the house to visit relatives across town. Lizzie told Bridget she did not feel well enough to eat breakfast, but sat in the kitchen sipping coffee. About twenty after nine, Andrew, too, left the house, setting off downtown to oversee his investments.
Perhaps ten minutes later, Abby Borden went upstairs to tidy the guest room, and Bridget went outside to begin washing the downstairs windows.
Only Lizzie and Abby remained in the house; Abby was never seen alive again. Perhaps because of the oppressive heat, Andrew broke his longestablished routine by coming home for lunch at a quarter of eleven, an hour and a half early.
Bridget later testified that she had just begun scrubbing the inside of the windows when she heard him struggling with the front-door lock and let him in. Bridget finished her windows and climbed the back stairs to her attic room to rest at about eleven.
Andrew lay down on the parlor sofa to nap. The house was hot and silent. Half an eye hung from its socket. Doctors testified that a single ax blow had killed him; nine others had been gratuitous. Shortly after the police arrived, Bridget and a neighbor ventured upstairs for a sheet to cover the hideous sight, and there they found Abby. Her plump body lay face down in a pool of blood, her head and neck a bloody mass. Those first on the scene noted that Lizzie remained remarkably calm throughout the ordeal.
News traveled fast from neighbor to neighbor, and even before the evening presses rolled, everyone in Fall River seemed to know of the horrifying incident. Trial transcripts suggest that the police did err on the side of caution.
If the victims had not been so prominent, matters would have been simpler. Out of deference to the bereaved daughters, neither Lizzie nor Emma, who had been summoned home from her vacation, was closely questioned for nearly three days.
Yet, by Saturday, the day of the funerals, the police felt that they had little choice but to arrest Lizzie. She alone, they felt, had had the opportunity to commit the murders. They found it hard to believe that anyone could have passed through the house unseen by Lizzie, who claimed to have been on the first floor while Abby was being murdered above. Furthermore, despite a reward offered by the Borden sisters, no sender of the note that Lizzie claimed had called Abby to town could be found.
Furthermore, an officer who claimed to have been the first to examine the loft after the crimes testified that the dust on the floor was undisturbed by footprints or trailing skirts.
The police were certain that the murderer would have been covered with blood. Medical experts would later examine the trajectories of the spurting blood and argue otherwise, but belief in a blood-drenched killer persisted.
Lying in a box of dusty tools, stored high on a chimney jog in the basement, was a hatchet head. It was neither rusty nor old, though it had been freshly rubbed in ashes, perhaps to make it appear so. Moreover, its wooden handle, from which blood would have been difficult to remove, had been broken off near the head. When the news broke that Lizzie was under suspicion, newspaper readers were horrified—not over the possibility that Lizzie might have murdered her parents, but that the police would harbor such horrid thoughts.
Angry letters denouncing the police flooded newspaper offices from New York to Chicago. Editorials appeared castigating the brutish officers who would suspect a grieving daughter of such a crime. Americans were certain that well-brought-up daughters could not commit murder with a hatchet on sunny summer mornings. And their reaction was not entirely without rationale. Many of these articles were written in response to the growing number of women who were demanding equal rights, and were written with the intention of proving women hopelessly unable to handle the sacred privileges of men.
Physical and psychological frailties simply made it impossible. Bridget brought Seabury Bowen, the local doctor to the house, and checked for Abby upstairs, where they found her limp body lying its face down in a pool of her blood. However, Lizzie insisted being innocent, claimed the murder being committed by an intruder who made his way in and out of the house undetected. After an investigation, Lizzies Borden was accused of all the charges and arrested for committing double murder- her father and her stepmother.
Why was Lizzie arrested, though being innocent? During the investigation, the cops found a hatchet with a broken handle in the cellar. It was found that Abby was struck 19 times and Andrews for 11 times with the same hatchet. Later, the county medical examiner, Dr. Dolan performed a detailed analysis of the body, removed the stomach and tested, but failed to find any traces of poison, claiming that the couple had never been poisoned.
However, there was no concluding proof for convincing the jury about the hatchet being the murder weapon and eyewitness testimony of Lizzie burning a dress that might or might not have been worn by her on the day of the murder. After years, professional detectives, amateur sleuths and paranormal investigators continued their investigation of the grisly mystery, with a hope to discover some overlooked clues. Several theories and suspects have been debated upon. Could this be one of the reasons for his murder?
Whether motivated by the morbid fascination or for a desire for cracking the case, the curious folks want to get a peek behind the door of the Lizzie Borden House are considered lucky. The Borden home continues being a mainstay of historical documentaries and paranormal reality shows, remains open to the public for bed and breakfast, and museum.
The violent nature of the double murder cases led most of the researchers, and paranormal experts to believe the house to be a hotbed of paranormal activities and tour guides willingly recount their own as well as others' precious experiences. The milk was left at the door every morning at five or half-past. I washed a can every day and left it on the doorstep at night; the milkman took that can and left a full one, so there was an exchange of cans every day.
The next morning I felt a dull headache as I got up. I came down at , went down cellar for wood, started my fire, and went down again for coal. Then I unlocked the back door, took in the milk, and put out a pan for the iceman, and a pitcher with some water in it. When I went in again, I hooked the screen door. I worked in the kitchen and dining room, getting breakfast, and didn't go into any other rooms. Borden was the first one I see that morning; she gave me orders about breakfast; it was about half-past six.
Borden came down in about five minutes; he went into the sitting room and put the key of his bedroom on the shelf. He kept it there. He then came out into the kitchen, put on a dressing coat and went outdoors with a slop pail he had brought downstairs. The screen door was locked until he went out. I was in the kitchen; the windows of the kitchen look out into the backyard. Borden emptied the slop pail; then he unlocked the barn door and went into the barn. Then he went to the pear tree, picked up a basket of pears, and brought them into the house.
He washed up in the kitchen and went in to breakfast. When I put the breakfast on the table I saw Mr. For breakfast, there was some mutton, some broth, and johnnycakes, coffee, and cookies. The broth was mutton broth. After they had their breakfast, I ate mine and commenced to clear things up.
Then I see Mr. Borden and Mr. Morse going out by the back door. Borden let him out, came to the sink and cleaned his teeth at the sink, and took a big bowlful of water and took it up to his room. First, he took the key off the shelf in the sitting room. Five minutes later Miss Lizzie came through to the kitchen. I was washing the dishes and I asked her what did she want for breakfast.
She said she didn't know as she wanted any breakfast, but she guessed she would have something, she guessed she would have some coffee and cookies. She got some coffee, and she was preparing to sit down at the kitchen table. I went out in the backyard.
I had a sick headache and I was sick to my stomach. I went out to vomit, and I stayed ten or fifteen minutes. When I came back, I hooked the screen door again. I didn't see Mr.
Borden after he went up to his room. I finished my dishes and took them in the dining room. Borden was there; she was dusting the door between the sitting room and dining room. She had no covering on her hair. She said she wanted the windows washed, inside and outside both; she said they are awful dirty.
I didn't see Miss Lizzie anywhere about. I can't say exactly, but I think this was about nine o'clock. Then I cleaned off my stove, went in the dining room and sitting room, shut the windows I was going to wash, and went down cellar and got a pail for to take some water.
I didn't see anybody in the rooms. I got a brush in the kitchen closet, filled my pail and took it outdoors.
As I was outside, Lizzie Borden appeared in the back entry, and says, "Maggie, are you going to wash the windows? First I washed the sitting-room windows-on the south side of the house-the Kelly side. This was away from the screen door. Before I started washing, Mrs. Kelly's girl appeared and I was talking to her at the fence. Then I washed the parlor windows: the two front windows. Between times I went to the barn and got some water. I washed the dining-room windows and one parlor window on the side.
I went to the barn for water twice while I was on the south side of the house-went round by the rear-and went three or four times more while I was working in front or on the other side of the house. Then I went past the screen door to the barn. Then I got a dipper from the kitchen and clean water from the barn, and commenced to wash the sitting-room windows again by throwing water up on them.
When I washed these windows, I did not see anyone in the sitting room, and I did not see anyone in the dining room when I washed those windows. I went round the house rinsing the windows with dippers of water. Then I put the brush handle away in the barn and got the hand basin and went into the sitting room to wash those windows inside.
I hooked the screen door when I came in. I began to wash the window next to the front door. Had not seen anyone since I saw Lizzie at the screen door. Then I heard like a person at the door was trying to unlock the door but could not; so I went to the front door and unlocked it.
The spring lock was locked. I unbolted the door and it was locked with a key; there were three locks. I said "pshaw," and Miss Lizzie laughed, upstairs. Her father was out there on the doorstep. She was upstairs. She must have been either in the entry or at the top of the stairs, I can't tell which.
Borden and I didn't say a word as he came in. I went back to my window washing; he came into the sitting room and went into the dining room.
He had a little parcel in his hand, same as a paper or a book. He sat in a chair at the head of the lounge. Miss Lizzie came downstairs and came through the front entry into the dining room, I suppose to her father.
I heard her ask her father if he had any mail, and they had some talk between them which I didn't understand, but I heard her tell her father that Mrs.
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