After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - America's 'Innocent Axe-Murderer' Lizzie Borden

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Today we're revisiting an episode which explores one of the most infamous trials in American history. Lizzie Borden's story is breathtaking even today.In 1893 she was accused of using an axe to murder her father and step-mother.The case obsessed America and despite evidence against her, Lizzie was let off. Was that justice? Maddy Pelling tells Anthony Delaney the story today.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Looking for more shady and sinister stories, sign up to History Hit. You can join us to explore the tragic life of the Bronties or discover the chilling story of Burke and Hair. Plus, with your History Hit subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe to start exploring the past. Hello there. You are of course listening to After Dark, and today we're focusing on the case of Lizzie Borden, one of the most famous murderers in American history. June 5, 1893. We're in New Bedford, Massachusetts, standing in the corner of a crowded courtroom. We've had to jostle our way in. It's loud in here. Men and women are discussing the case with a kind of electric excitement. There's debate. The man behind us waves his hand enthusiastically in the air, as though trying to hammer home his point. His friend shakes his head in disagreement. The jury, two rows of near identical men in three-piece suits, their faces dressed with whiskers and mustaches, and their waists glinting with pocket-watchers, look grim, and so they should. For their task is not an easy. one. They must decide on the guilt or innocence of a young woman. In a case so ghastly, the details of it

make everyone, from factory workers to magistrates in the industrial town where it happened, blush in horror. Quite suddenly, a hush falls in the room. A door swings loudly open, and through it comes the accused herself. She is small and neat, dressed in black, with an elegant pin fastened high at her throat. In her hand she carries a bouquet of fresh flowers, the petals trembling slightly as she steps up to the dock to take her place. Over the next few days, this apparently demure, respectable woman,

will be fighting for her life. The question is, did she take those of her closest family away from them? This is After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And today we are delving into one of the most notorious cases, as I said at the outset, in American history. It's a locked room mystery, a story of horrible violence. And then at its heart, a seemingly glamorous, if that's the right word, but strange young woman. It is, of course, the case of Lizzie Borden.

You might remember that in June we had an episode about the murder trial of Polly Bedine, aka the Witch of New York. And that's a fascinating case too. And our guest was Alex Hortis. And he told us about Polly's trial and how sensational it was until it was eclipsed by Lizzie Borden. So this is going to be really interesting. And go back and listen to that Polly Bedine case if you haven't already heard it, because it really is fascinating.

And it sets up the context for what's, about to unfold in the Lizzie Borden case. So speaking of context, Maddie, set the scene for us, I believe we are in 1892, America in 1892. We are indeed. I got really carried away researching this year. Loads happened, but it's now become a bit of a running joke in my household. I got so excited that I started telling my husband about all the things that happened in 1892, but I led with the fact that the first escalator was installed that year in Coney Island. And he laughed at me so much. And now anything that I say is interesting, he says, was it as interesting as the escalator situation in 1892?

That is also a terrible story. I am with Matt on this. Escalators do not make first lead. You should have picked something else. I mean, the first fingerprint bureau is in my notes. That comes next. That's way better. I know.

It really is. So I'm sorry to escalator fans out there, but that was quite a boring opening. Yeah. So there's so much that changes. You know, we're early on in the final. decade of the 19th century. The world is changing hugely. So we do have the first escalators at Coney Island. We've also got Rudolph Diesel patenting his engine. We've got, as you say, the first fingerprinting bureau opens in Buenos Aires, which of course, we're not going to see

Buenos Aires in the story, but interesting to think about these advances in policing taking place. That's amazing, yeah. Not necessarily in America. In the world of sport, something you and I obviously very passionate about. Liverpool Football Club is founded and in the US the first basketball game is played in public. And for anyone who didn't know, it's at the YMCA and it's played between its students and the faculty there. There's lots of social change happening. So Yale University admits its first woman to graduate school there. And in Louisiana, a mixed-race man called Homer Plessy is arrested for sitting in a whites-only train carriage in protest of, of course, racial segregation,

which is absolutely fascinating and quite early on, I would say. In terms of culture and politics, we've got the first ever film studios being set up. Have a guess where you think they would be without looking at the notes in front of you. I mean, you would imagine they're going to be L.A., I guess. So they're in Melbourne, in Australia, interestingly. Yeah, I did not know that.

Well, it was quite a big film industry in Melbourne. actually, even now, or in Australia, at least. In London, we get the first Sherlock Holmes adventure, published in a Strand magazine. Also in London, we've got the general election. We have two elections taking place in this year, a little bit like this year, in fact, the year we're currently living in. We've got the British general election, and it's a conservative and liberal unionist coalition that loses its majority,

and a liberal government comes in. So not a terribly dissimilar situation to the one that we find ourselves in now. And in the US there's a presidential election. And this is really interesting. So Rover Cleveland comes back into office for a second term, but they're not backed about terms. And he's the only president thus far to serve two non-consecutive terms. Of course, Donald Trump would be the second if he is elected later this year. So there's a lot of parallels to our own time. It's a feeling of in the 1890s lots of changes happening. The recognizable 20th century is about to come into being. And this is the setting in which we find Lizzie Borden

on trial for a series of very brutal murders. We have that context going on in the background. What's happening more specifically on the ground in Massachusetts? So this is where these murders unfold. So for me, if I think about Massachusetts, I think New England, I think at this point in time relatively well to do, quite industrial. And, you know, yet with this very strong backbone of tradition and being very much part of the early colonies, but gives us a little bit more detail. Sure. So we're in Full River, Massachusetts, which is an East Coast city in Bristol County.

It's a really wealthy place. It's very prosperous. And there's a lot of opportunity here for social mobility, which is going to be important to our story. I was just reading about Fall River in the 19th century. and something I came across. Now, I love a weird archaeological discovery. And it was famous in the time that Lizzie Borden was living there. This city was famous for a discovery that had actually happened several decades earlier in the 1830s

of a skeleton that was found on the riverbank there, dressed in armour. It's buried with metal objects, some tree bark and some clothing that it's wearing and that's separate. And nobody could work out if this was the burial of a. Native American or possibly an early colonist. It seemed to be already centuries old. And it sort of became the thing that the town was known for, which is just a lovely little detail. And maybe that's a whole episode in and of itself. But certainly by the 1890s, it is also really a center for industry. So we've got printworks. We've got, as we said, textile factories. We've also got ironworks. They're shipping. The river comes in there. So we've got shipping, transporting coal, transporting cotton.

And there's a railroad that's now connecting Allriver to other towns and cities further inland. So this is the really exciting place. It's something that's changing very rapidly. And Lizzie's family are part of this new emerging prosperous upper middle class. And we're going to talk a little bit about who her family are. But first of all, I want you to describe the photograph that we have of the family home. And the thing that I want to say about this before you do that is that the house itself was in a fairly affluent part of full river, but it wasn't in the most after one place, which was an area called the hill, which was literally the houses on the hill that could look down on everyone else. And I want listeners to bear that in mind because that is going to become an important aspect of this story later on.

But for now, Anthony, tell us what we're looking at in this picture. Right, so we're looking at a, in many ways, a typical well-to-do New England house from potentially the end of the 18th century, if not the beginning of the 19th. It is three stories high, ground floor, first floor and a top floor, which looks to be in the eaves, essentially. There is a chimney jutting out of the top. It is surrounded by picket fences, all very idyllic, I suppose, in one sense, although it does very much look. like it's in an urban or a suburban setting. There are logates, windows down the side of the house as well. It looks like very traditional, almost 19th century church building, if I didn't know any better, but obviously this is a domestic dwelling. Yeah, wood frame and it's clad and it's got a very

nice door over it, but it looks very respectable. As you say, not a mansion, but certainly a respectable house. Nothing bizarrely unusual about it, I suppose. is it's worth saying. It seems like a very run-of-the-mill domestic setting in many ways. Yeah, it absolutely is. It's just that it's an affluent middle-class home in an affluent middle-class city in a part of America that is changing shape in terms of the wealth, in terms of the industry, but there's nothing out of the ordinary here. So let's go inside. And if we were to walk into this house, we would meet, first of all, Andrew Jackson Borden, this is the father of the household. He is born in 1822.

He is of English and Welsh descent. And interestingly, and this speaks very much to the times, he grew up in poverty, but by the time we meet him as a grown man and his father to the notorious Lizzie Borden, he is a property developer. He's also the director of several textile mills in the city, and he is, importantly, president of the Union Savings Bank. His estimated worth in 1892 is $300,000, which is about $10 million in 2024. So this is very much a self-made man. This is the American dream in action here. Next we have Lizzie's stepmother. This is a woman called Abby Borden.

She is born in 1828, so she's just a little bit younger than Andrew. and she has a polite, amicable relationship with her stepdaughter Lizzie, but there's no warmth there. It's quite a distant relationship and there is a little bit of tension. There's this idea that Lizzie and her sister that I'll talk about in a minute have, that Abby has married their father, Andrew, for his money. So money is an issue, this family. Andrew obviously protects his wealth and covets more and more, possibly because of the background

that he's come from. And Abby has seen as someone who's maybe taken advantage of that. Next we have Lizzie's sister called Emma Borden. She's born in 1851. She's the older sister, and she's incredibly religious. So she teaches at the local Sunday school. She's a treasurer for the Christian Endeavour Society and a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Movement. I'm not going to lie, she doesn't sound like wildly good fun. But her and Lizzie have a relatively close relationship. And certainly in the context of Fall River in the 1890s, they are respectable women. They are participating in their respectable Christian community.

Also living in the household, we have one servant, Bridget Sullivan. who is an immigrant to the US from Ireland. And although she's called Bridget, the family call her Maggie. So we will be calling her Maggie from now on. She's 25 years old. And as far as I could tell trying to read up on this case, she's been with the family for a relatively long time. So she's very familiar with everyone who she's employed by

and has an existing relationship with the two girls, Lizzie and Emma. What's interesting about discovering a little bit more now about the family is that it sounds to me like Andrew, the dad, is in a position to actually be living better than they are. Not that there's anything wrong with how they're living, but if he's worth $10 million in today's money, and this house is nowhere near, he's not at the end of his means by any stretch at all. So in a way, he outwardly at least appears to be living quite frugally. Does that translate within the household structure itself, or is he spending often with these cases you see people are spending money frivolously and therefore that's putting tension in

the house. But from all I understand, that's not the case in this particular murder case. You're absolutely correct. It is the other way around. He's strangely frugal. He doesn't like to spend money. And even though the area that they live in has these quite well-to-do homes and their home, at least on the outside, looks very respectable. Inside, there is no indoor plumbing and there are no luxuries compared to the domestic setups of the people around them. So he's, he's a lot of the He's someone who has built up this wealth but doesn't necessarily like to spend it. One thing that he does do, which seems to create some tension amongst the family members, is that he, as we said, he's a landlord in the city and he owns lots and lots of properties

that he rents out mostly to people working in the factories. He actually gifts some of these properties to members of Abbey's family, the stepmother's family. And there's some tension there maybe between the daughters and their stepmother in that their inheritance seems to be being diluted and given away to this new side of the family that's married into the wealth. So there's already some problems and those are not the only issues. So we know, for example, that even though they all live under the same roof, Andrew eats separately with his wife and his two daughters who, let's not forget our grown adults themselves, don't eat at the table. with them, which is potentially a little bit odd. I can understand maybe children not eating with their parents in this period, and certainly that would be the case earlier on for wealthier families. It feels a bit strange not to do that with adult daughters. The other thing to say is that he has some quite strange behaviours. So in the months before these murders take place, and we're going to get into them a little bit, Andrew decides to go outside to the yard,

at the back of the house, where Lizzie has built a wooden roost for some pigeons, that she is just keeping his pets. And he takes a hatchet to the roost, he chops it up, and he actually kills the pigeons that are in it. Unclear why. But of course, Lizzie is very, very, very upset by this. So there's a sort of strange, strange violence in the household, actually. And I suppose knows from this distance and perspective, we could maybe speculate that Andrew is someone who likes to be in control of his money, of his domestic setup, of the women who live in his household. So that's something to bear in mind. This tension only increases in the early 1890s, and Emma and Lizzie go away from the house on extended trips. They travel quite far sometimes, but actually

often they are staying in Fall River itself, in other properties, in hotel. they're renting rooms out, they're trying to get out of the domestic setup that they have with their father. And this becomes a routine thing for them, which, again, may be raising a bit of a red flag. There are some other people to consider before we get on to the crimes that are about to be committed in this house. A few days before the murders take place, Lizzie and Emma's maternal uncle, so this is the brother of their mother who is dead and not in the picture anymore, their maternal uncle, a man called John Vinica Morse, visits Andrew, so his ex-brother-in-law,

to discuss the sale of the house that his sister used to live in. I think when she had the children, this is many years ago now. This seems to be the sort of an argument between the men, because from what I can gather, Morse wants that property back. His sister lived there, his nieces possibly grew up there, and he feels that he and his family have a claim on it that Andrew does not. So there is an argument, and then Morse leaves. This is a few days before the murders.

Now, around the same time as this, something else happens, which is highly suspect, and that is that every single member of the family living in that house starts to become violently ill. They have stomach cramps, they're throwing up, they're very, very unwell. and a family friend later speculates that it's because of some gone-off mutton that's been left on the stove for too long and they've just given themselves food poisoning. But in the days leading up to the murders, Abby, the stepmother is overheard saying that she thinks she's been poisoned. And the reason why she says this is because Andrew, the father, as we say, he's a landlord, he's involved in the bank, he's involved in the factories, he's a deep, the unpopular figure in a town where the wealth and social divide is, I think it's fair to say,

deepening in a lot of ways. And she is worried that someone external to the household is actually trying to assassinate them. So we're in this middle class, if not upper middle class neighbourhood. There is an air of respectability, but there are some tensions boiling beneath the surface, tensions without the house of how popular Andrew may or may not be, and then tensions within the house. and it's around this point that I think those tensions start to boil over. On the morning of Thursday the 4th of August 1892, everything seemed normal in the Borden household. Lizzie and Emma's uncle Morses, who had slept there the night before, rose from the guest bedroom and went downstairs to breakfast with Andrew Borden and his wife Abby.

Maggie, the maid, served the family as usual. After they finished eating, Andrew and Morse continued to chat, while Abbey, conscious of the used bedroom upstairs, went up to clean it. At 8.48 a.m., Morse left the house, heading out to visit Emma, busy sister, in Fall River. Fifteen minutes or so later, Andrew followed him out the door, heading into the street for his morning walk. When Andrew returned at around 10.30, the door to his home was locked. He tried the key, but it did not budge, as though the whole thing had been jammed shut. He called for assistance and from within, Maggie appeared to help him.

She would later describe hearing Lizzie laugh at the scene from the top of the stairs, something Lizzie herself would deny. Maggie helped her master to remove his boots and fetched his slippers, watching him retire to the parlour. He was tired. They all were. The mysterious sickness that had struck them down in the days before had taken their energy. Andrew fell asleep on the couch. Maggie, seizing the opportunity, retired to her own room now, climbing the stairs to the attic and lying down on her bed there. Her eyes slowly closed. The peace would not last.

At 11.10, Maggie awoke to hear Lizzie shouting downstairs. Come quick. Father's dead. Somebody's come in and killed him. The next few moments were chaos. Across the street, the family's doctor, Dr. Seabry Bowen, heard the screaming and rushed medical bag in hand to the scene. What he saw next, he would later recount in court. I saw the form of Mr. Borden lying on the lounge at the left of the sitting-room door. His face was very badly cut, apparently with a sharp instrument.

His face was covered with blood. I felt his pulse and satisfied myself he was dead. Glanced about the room and saw there was nothing disturbed, neither the furniture nor anything at all. Mr. Borden was lying with his face toward the south on his right side, and apparently at ease, as if asleep. His face was hardly to be recognized by one who knew him. I made no other examination at the time except to feel his pulse. Miss Lizzie had followed me partway through the dining room, and as I went back to the kitchen, I asked her if she had seen anyone.

She said, I had not. Then I asked her, Where have you been? She replied, in the barn looking for some iron. She said she was afraid her father had had trouble with the tenants, and she had overheard loud conversation several times recently. I asked for a sheet to cover up Mr. Borden. Bridget brought me one.

Then Miss Lizzie asked me to telegraph to her sister Emma, and I went to the telegraph office. Nothing had been said about Mrs. Borden until now, but before I went to send the telegram, the question was asked, Where is Mrs. Borden? And the answer, from Miss Lizzie, I think, but I am not certain, was that Mrs. Borden had received a note that morning to visit a sick friend and had gone out. On leaving the house I met Officer Allen.

On my return from the telegraph office, I met Mrs. Churchill, who said, They have found Mrs. Borden. I asked where? And she replied, upstairs in the front room. I went up the front stairs and stopped a moment at the door of the guest room. At that point, I looked over the bed and saw the prostrate form of Mrs. Borden. I was standing directly in the door. I went round to the front of the bed and placed my hand on her head.

I found there were wounds. Then I felt her pulse. She was dead. Quite the scene. I love the detail that Lizzie stepped outside to get iron. Like, what? Just terrible alibi. Okay, so we know from the medical report that follows that Mrs. Borden, Abby Borden, probably died first around 10.30 in the morning.

And that Andrew, the father, died at around 11. So he was killed afterwards. And we also know that each of them was bludgeoned and hacked with some kind of axe or a hatchet. The other thing that's really important to say is that unlike Andrew, who was possibly still asleep on the couch when he was killed when that first blow landed, Abby upstairs, Mrs. Borden, was thought to be facing her attacker, indicating perhaps that she knew them, that she was speaking face-to-face with them when she was first hit, and that she falls then face-first on the floor where she is the victim of a more. sustained attack. So it's very, very brutal. It's very intimate in this family space. And we know from the testimonies of different people, including the people inside the house who are not dead, Lizzie and Maggie the servant, that Maggie is upstairs on her bed and Lizzie is supposedly in the yard. She at some point, according to Maggie, might be at the top of the stairs. She is the one, however, it's important to remember that raises the alarm.

She's the one that calls Maggie from the bedroom and says, somebody's come in, father's dead. And none of them seem to realize that Abby is dead upstairs. Two, and the last detail that I think we need to take from this is that when the doctor comes into the household and asks where Abby is, it's Lizzie who says she's not here, she's gone out. For me, and there must be some other theories that we're about to meet with here, but for me it seems really plain where the suspicion would be directed.

It doesn't scream at all of innocence to me that Lizzie is the first person to discover, let's say, her father. You know, I can imagine the thinking being that, oh, well, if I discover him, you know, I've raised the alarm. But mind you, at the same time, there's no account here of Lizzie being covered in blood. And surely she would have had to have been covered in blood if these attacks were as brutal as they've been described. Yes, that is a really crucial detail. and we will get to that, before we shine the light on Lizzie, because I think, I agree, she is the obvious suspect. I think we need to run through some of the theories

that are put forward by the police at this early stage, because let's remember, Lizzie is the daughter of a now middle-class banker, landlord, factory owner, who's a respectable woman, and she's never going to be their first port-of-call. so they have to exhaust all the other avenues first. So the most obvious, I suppose, is that there might be an intruder. And initially, and I think this is sadly predictable for this period, or indeed most of history, that the authorities begin to look beyond the household itself

at the poorest and the most marginalized in the community. So they round up people living on the streets, they round up known criminals, and they even look at lots of Andrew's tenants across the city. Remember, you know, just a call back to Abbey's fear that maybe someone renting off them and disgruntled in some way had poisoned them. And Maggie absolutely repeats that information to the police. So it seems like that might be, at least initially, a viable threat. And there is this huge fear at the time of crossing the threshold, of an outsider crossing your domestic threshold. The domestic threshold haven't become more pressure. than it ever was before. And this intimate space being violated is seen as one of the most violent acts

that can occur. And it's always seen that people from the lower classes can intrude into these more polite spaces. So that would be a very, very tropey trope, if that makes sense. So yeah, I'm not surprised that that comes up as a theory. It's an interesting one, but I don't see any proof of it anywhere. But yeah, anyone else? Who else did they turn their attention towards? So the attention then turns to the family. If it wasn't someone from outside, and I agree that it's a sort of obvious fear in that time period, right? Especially when, I suppose, when people are earning huge amounts of money

or making huge wealth off industry, and there's a sense of their property being the most valuable and you don't want anyone to try and come and take it or violate it in any way. So you can see why that's the initial claim. But, yes, there is attention turned to the family, themselves, the more intimate acquaintances of Andrew and Abbey who are dead. One thing police do find in an initial search of the house is the hatchet. It's in the basement.

Now, this is probably the hatchet that was used by Andrew to break up the roost, the coop for the pigeons in the yard. So, you know, we know it's in use in the household anyway. It would have been used to chop up firewood, possibly for protection, but it's more a household tool than a weapon necessarily. But it is found in the basement and the wooden handle has been broken, clean off, as though the person using it last wielded it with enormous force, which is pretty chilling. Well, we know that Andrew did, do we? Is it the hatchet covered in blood? Is that how we know or is it just assumed that this is the hatchet? Because Andrew had used that

with force against the chicken coop, that sounds like it was a pretty maniacal. election on his behalf. Yeah, and he kills the pigeons. So even if there was blood on there, that could be the blood of an animal very, very easily. The other suspect that comes up is the uncle, Uncle Morse, who had been obviously staying the night before in the house, but had been witness leaving that morning and had been going off to meet the sister Emma who was staying elsewhere. We don't know if she's staying away because of a recent argument with the family. Maybe it's because everyone else in the household got ill and she didn't and she wanted to remove herself. Maybe she's visiting friends.

It's quite unclear. But she's also held up briefly as a suspect, although she seems to have alibi. There's one of the person that I want to mention really briefly here, and this isn't a theory that I spent particularly long looking into, but it's worth mentioning that there is a possibility that Andrew had an illegitimate son from a different, a completely separate relationship. and there is some speculation that this illegitimate son wanted financial recognition from his father and that that was a source of argument. It's too neat, isn't it? It's too neat to be here. It feels more fiction than it does reality.

I was just going to say that, yeah, it feels like it would be on the stage in the 19th century. That's like a theatrical plot. But pretty soon, the authorities have no choice but to turn to Lizzie as the social. And interestingly, they don't necessarily turn to Maggie in the same way, which I find very interesting and not necessarily how you'd expect it to play out. So Lizzie claims to have been in the yard outside the house the whole time. But what strikes Maggie about that initial moment when Lizzie raises the alarm and shouts for her to come is that actually when she stood over the body of her father and later when

they discover Abby dead upstairs, Lizzie's quite cold and actually almost. a little bit curious about the injuries, and she doesn't seem particularly hysterical or disturbed by what they're looking at. Of course, we might today contribute that to being that she's in shock. If anyone's ever been in shock, they'll know that your body kind of shuts down to a certain extent, and you don't necessarily behave in a way that you would be able to predict. Crucially, though, because of her social standing and because it's her father who is dead, the police don't really search her and they also don't search her bedroom.

She says when the police arrive that she's feeling unwell that she's so shocked by everything that she needs to lie down and so the policeman in the house do a very cursory head around the door just checking that there aren't blood splatters

up the wall and they don't look at anything beyond that which of course is we would consider now to be hugely remiss but they think that she is a vulnerable young woman She's had a great loss. She needs to rest and recuperate. That is then coupled with the fact that when she is questioned by the police, she acts in a way that's actually quite snobbish.

And she really draws on those social distinctions. Who is this? Lizzie now is snobbish. This is Lizzie, yeah. And something to remember about the police force in America generally in this period, but specifically in Fall River, is that they're made up almost primarily. of immigrants, specifically Irish immigrants, which I suppose you could say potentially that's why they don't necessarily leap to the idea that Maggie might have done it. Maybe there's some solidarity there, or maybe there's simply not the prejudice that police who didn't have that background wouldn't have brought to it. But when they interview Lizzie, she absolutely

leans in to her social superiority. She acts in a way that's very stoical. very cold, very calm. She's very clear and precise in the information she gives them, but it does not take long for that to start breaking down and little mistakes in her testimony start to creep in. So she claims, for example, that Maggie was the one who handed her a note from Abby, her stepmother, saying Abby was going out to visit a sick friend. But when Maggie's asked by the police about this, she says that there never was a note like that. So it's not looking great for Lizzie already. And that's where this testimony comes from the doctor

where he said Lizzie had said that Abby was gone out. So this is potentially... Now look, let's give her the benefit of the doubt. You know, we said Maggie was escaping a lot of attention here. Maybe Maggie had got the note and is now denying it. But there is another crucial piece of evidence that comes next that is quite damning for Lizzie, right? Two pieces of really crucial evidence.

The first of these is that, and this seems totally wild to me, Lizzie has tried to buy poison the day before from the local druggist. When the police find this out, of course, they ask her about it, and she claims that she wanted to use the poison to clean a fur coat. But even by 19th century standards, this wasn't really a method that anyone used. And Maggie certainly has never heard of this. Also, it would most likely have been Maggie's job to clean the clothes, not Lizzie herself. So it's very, very odd behaviour if this is true.

And so she's tried to buy this poison the day before, but wasn't it the day before that the family were, according to Abby, that she felt the family had all been potentially poisoned as well? It's in the days, multiple days, leading up to the deaths, that they're unwell. But I suppose there's a moment of doubt that's introduced there. to the minds of the police investigating this, that if Lizzie was trying to buy poison the day before, had she succeeded on other days, had she already dosed those people,

was she giving them something that was already available in the household? I'm thinking, you know, something like rat poison, that kind of thing. It's definitely where my mind is going with this, yeah. Uh-huh, yeah. So is it actually that she, that Lizzie has already tried to kill her family in the days leading to this, these more brutal physical murders? The next completely damning thing that happens is that two days after the killings, the police of course have taken the bodies away from the house now,

but Lizzie's still here in the house with Maggie. She has nowhere else to go, really. This is her home. And neighbours that are well-meaning keep popping in to check how she's doing, and I suppose they're curious as well. They want to see the crime scene. News of this has already spread all over Fall River, and very soon it's going to become an incredibly famous case. across America. One of these neighbours comes into the house and she finds Lizzie in the kitchen

tearing up a dress and putting the ripped parts of it into the fire in the stove. And of course, the neighbour says to Lizzie, what's that? What are you doing? And what's all that red stuff on the dress? And Lizzie says, oh no, no, no, don't mind this. I was wearing this dress and I brushed against some wet paint and it's not washing out so I'm just getting rid of it and I'm going to burn it. So for this to add up then, if this is a clue and it appears to be, what would have had to happen is that Lizzie is wearing these clothes that she's now trying to rip up when she kills Abby and then her father because Maggie is asleep. She then takes time to go and change into another outfit so therefore she's not covered in blood, and then she raises the alarm.

She's hidden these clothes somewhere in the meantime, the ones she was wearing when she committed the murder, this would be the theory. And now she's going back to try and destroy that evidence. And as you say, they haven't checked her room. They haven't searched her room at this point. So I guess this certainly could add up, right? The only thing that I find strange about it is that, so we have the dress that is covered, Lizzie says, if we take her at face value, in red paint, that she's brushed up against

something. We're of course suspect that it's blood, but we don't know that. But she's destroying the evidence. Now, another thing that the police find in the days afterwards when they come back to the house and comb through it again is a bucket of rags that's been left in the cellar. These are torn pieces of material, and they are covered in blood. Now, when they find these, of course, they think these are the rags that have helped clean up the crime scene, clean up the murderer, and so they assume that they're Lizzie's. She says, no, no, no, these are the rags that I use when I'm on my period. You know, they're covered in menstrual blood. And the family doctor confirms that she is on her period. On the surface, we've got the dress covered in blood and some rags covered in

blood hidden in the same place, don't forget in the basement where the hatchet, the broken hatch is. But to me, those are the actions of two very different people. If Lizzie is destroying evidence on her dress, why would she leave a bucket of bloody rags in the basement? And why would she have used multiple sheets of fabric to clean herself, to clean the crime scene? You know, we know that obviously in the 19th century, there weren't the same sanitary products available that there are today, and women did use rags in their undergarments as a way to clean themselves, you know, to put inside their underwear. Is that really what this bucket of rags is?

And of course, because, we've seen this in multiple cases, actually. I'm thinking back to, is it the Sarah Malcolm case in the early 18th century that we saw? That was exactly the same defence. When people found rags covered in blood, Sarah Malcolm in that instance says, oh, no, no, no, that's just my period. It's menstrual blood. And we see it again and again. And the effect on the men, it's always men who are doing the prosecution,

is often to take a step back and say, oh, okay, don't want to know anything about that. but we won't take that any further. That's your private business. That's ladies' business, nothing to do with us. And women in the cases that we've looked at so far have sometimes used that. I mean, it's ambiguous, but I think they have used it almost as a way to evade punishment to escape being prosecuted. But in the case of Lizzie, I don't know.

She could still be cleaning the blood of her father off her dress, but those rags could be her period blood. That's my instinct. I think the dress is something. I think the rags are nothing got to do with this case. Because as you say, why would she leave them there? It doesn't really add up. And then for the doctor to confirm that she is having her period,

then that to me seems like it's not really worth following up because they're not going to be able to prove anything about that blood, regardless of whose it is, given the context of the time that this is happening in. And the fact that, as you say, the rags rather than, you know, a swathe of material that was, used to clean up. But also, I mean, how bloody were the crime scenes? Was there a clean-up job done? Like, that would have been relatively obvious, I would have thought. So it appears to me that these will have been what she says they are. And that's possibly why the police don't pursue it

any further. Well, they are about to pursue it further. She is going to be arrested. So on August 11th, several days after the murders, she, Lizzie is arrested for murder. Although it will take, I think a year, almost a year, for the trial to come to fruition. What's so interesting in this initial moment of the arrest is that opinion about whether or not Lizzie did it is absolutely split. It splits the city into two camps. On the one hand, we've got people who think she did it. And interestingly, most of the people who fall into that camp are factory workers, are people in the lower and working classes who see her and her father and everything that she stands for as their natural enemy. And on the other hand, we've got the people

who believe that she's innocent, and among those are the church groups that her and her sister were part of. And interestingly, suffragist societies, societies for the advancement and equality of women, rally to support her. And so by the time it gets to trial, the case is already this notorious thing, but we're really no closer to knowing whether or not she did it, and it's that ambiguity that people cannot get enough of. By the first day of Lizzie Borden's trial for murder, interest in the case was booming. Newspaper presses ran hot with copy reporting on events and speculating not only on motive, but on the outcome of the courtroom, and crowds, notable for the high numbers of women among them,

blocked to see the drama unfold. The Daily Herald, June 9, 1893. It was just 11 o'clock when a closed carriage drew up to the rear of the courthouse. A deputy sheriff stepped out of it and handed out his hand to assist Lizzie Borden. The crowd pressed forward in a sort of frenzy to catch a glimpse of the woman, but she slipped quietly into the building before they were able to do so and walked quietly to her place in the prisoner's dock. The Washington B, June 10th.

The theory of the prosecution is that Lizzie Borden was on bad terms with her mother-in-law, and that this enmity, with her knowledge that her father intended to change his will to favor Mrs. Borden, incited her to the double murder. The case against Lizzie was compelling, especially when a neighbour, the same that had caught her ripping and burning her dress, swore before the jury that Lizzie had said to her the day before the murder, that she would soon be going on vacation, and felt that something is hanging over me. I cannot tell what it is.

And yet, opinion over Lizzie's guilt was divided. In one remarkable and callous moment of the trial, the skulls of Andrew and Abby Border now stripped of their flesh and used as evidence were brought into the courtroom, a ripple of shock and sympathy ran through the crowd when confronted with the bones, Lizzie fainted. On June 20th, the all-male jury stepped out to deliberate.

They took just an hour and a half to reach their conclusion. Lizzie Borden was not guilty. Do you know what? I did not know the outcome of this case. That's the first time that I'm... I know it exists in folklore and there's been movies and there's been all kinds of comics and stuff, but that is I didn't know what the verdict was.

And I am surprised, it has to be said. But we'll come to that in a second. That image of the heads being brought out into the courtroom, that's pretty incredible. If I were being skeptical, and I always am, it's very easy to feign fain fainting. Yeah, exactly. Now, there's ambiguity around this moment. There are some reports that say that these were models of the skulls of victims. other people in other places have claimed these were the skulls.

But either way, you know, these are the skulls of people who've been, let's not forget, without putting too fine a point on it, hacked to death with a hatchet. And Lizzie's fainting, is that the reaction of an innocent daughter-slash-stept-daughter seeing the reality of what had been done to her loved ones? Is it the reaction of someone who committed those murders and is now having to relive that? Or are there the actions of someone who did do the killings and is trying to act as she believes an innocent person would do? The other thing to say, I think, about the court case and why she gets off is because of the all-male jury. And she absolutely, whether she's guilty or innocent, she plays them.

She turns up every day for court with a fresh bouquet of flowers. We famously know that flowers in the 19th century have their own language. You can make bouquets and gift them. It's part of a courtship ritual that people do. You know, and these different flowers have different meanings, different ideas that they symbolise. And the newspapers every single day clamour to see what flowers she's brought in and try and decode them.

It's sort of quite Taylor Swift-esque, minus the murder, of course. But that thing of hiding messages and giving something to your public to decode and that they'll become obsessed with. And interestingly, the newspapers every day report completely different flowers. So obviously a lot of these newspaper men have no idea what they're looking at and are just making it up, you know, one man's white rose will be another man's peony. Like they don't have a clue. But she does that and she also wears these really ornate brooches at her throat to draw attention up to her face whilst wearing entirely black morning clothes. And this is a year on from the deaths of her family.

this is someone who either has an unbelievable instinct for PR and how to play it or she is being coached really well by the team around her defence. I suppose regardless of whatever tactics she's using, they work, right? Because she's found innocent. And the shock to know as I might be by that, even at the insinuation that she was manipulating the jury potentially, she now has to go on and live her life and she has to live out the rest of her life. look, it's the late 19th century.

If we know anything about the late 19th century, it's that reputation is everything. But then we did have the suffragists coming out in support of her during the trial. So is she now heralded as this hero, or is her reputation destroyed? Her reputation is largely destroyed because of the way that she gives evidence in court,

because of the way that her private life is laid bare. She's seen as a bit of a pariah, really. And interestingly, she doesn't leave the city. She doesn't leave Full River. but her and her sister actually sell up the house where the murders happened, which, you know, you can understand. And they buy, with all the money they've inherited from their father, a big house on the hill, the hill being the desirable part, the most desirable part of the city where the wealthiest live. And so it's such a fascinating thing that she ends up quite literally

on top of this city, living with its wealthiest, looking down on everyone else, using the money that her dead father has left her that's come to her through his death, when potentially she took his life. Yeah, it's suspicious as well, right? Because what it highlights is the fact that Abbey had to be killed in this scenario in order for the sisters to get the money. Yes. Just the father dying is totally pointless because then the money is going to Abby. So, and the fact that Abby is killed first, according to the forensics at the time. It doesn't look great. Yeah.

There's an interesting question, I suppose, about Lizzie's sister Emma as well, who we know she's not in the house at the time of the murders. She's been staying elsewhere, and their uncle, Uncle Morse, does go to find her later on in the day. But they do live together afterwards. And I suppose there's maybe a case to be made that they did the murders together in some way. But interestingly, after the trials died down and Lizzie's got her newfound freedom and

they've bought the house on the hill. Lizzie takes up what historians have called a very close friendship with an actress, question mark over the nature of that relationship, certainly. And this actress moves into the house. And it actually leads to a breakdown in the relationship between Lizzie and her sister Emma. Oh. And so there's some fascinating dynamics going on there. There's some possible queerness. There's this family intimacy that's interrupted by another person. And I'm so fascinated by the fact that Lizzie is drawn to an actress, no matter the relationship, status, that for someone who's put on quite the performance herself, that is so tantalizing. But of course, she lives on for a very long time in pop culture and she's, you know,

she's ever, as you mentioned, Anthony, she's in comics, she's in film, she's in TV. Interestingly, she's written sometimes this sort of murdering psychopath, but she's often a kind of feminist hero as well. Yes. Which I find interesting. And I love that on TV she's played in one particular production by Christina Ritchie, the absolute queen of 90s Gothic. Yes, we love Christina.

Which I just love. And I'm going to leave you with two thoughts on this ambiguous case. The first is a nursery rhyme that has come down to us. And I think it probably does date from the 19th century in the moment of the trial. And it is this. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 wax and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. I love it.

Catchy. I do like it actually. I think I've heard that on like some TD thing or something before. Oh, definitely. You will have done. You will have done. Now, the other thing that I want to say to you, and I want your opinion on this, so the Borden house where the murders take place, it still exists.

and it is now a B&B. Oh my God, please can we go. You can stay there. The rooms are named after all the members of the family and some of the police who investigated. Oh, I don't necessarily love that now. I don't necessarily love that. Okay, let the record show that that's a bit weird.

It does feel kind of voyeuristic, doesn't it? And it's a sort of house museum slash B&B. Would you stay there? Yeah. Really? Oh, God, yeah. In a heartbeat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wouldn't need to question it. Yeah, no, I absolutely would. I'd stay there right now if somebody came and took me. The naming of the rooms after the people, a little bit close to the bone. Because you can even stay in Abby's room where she was hacked to death on the floor. I mean, it's not the most tasteful.

No, it's not the most tasteful. But I suppose there are some people that would argue that this episode of this podcast is not the most tasteful. Like, why are we still going on about this? What does it serve? That it's just the glorification of a woman being murdered, that it's the... The women's reproductive cycles are coming into the frame in criminal trials.

You're linking femininity with criminality. True crime is gory. Why do we come to these things with such interest? I just think it's a continuation of that. Like, where do we draw that line? You know what I mean? For me, one of the most tantalizing things about any historical experience is the space in which things, big things, life-changing things, life-ending things happen.

And there's something otherworldly that happens in those spaces even today. So for me, the chance to experience what that space still feels like and the communication within those spaces would be utterly fascinating. I think it brings you a little bit closer to that history. Why do we want to go closer to that history? Well, I think anybody listening to this or anybody who's watched the Lizzie Borden TV drama or anybody who's read a true crime book ever in their lives can't kind of ask that question because you're all doing it too.

We're all doing it too. So I think sometimes we get a little bit squeamish about this true crimeness. But what ultimately it boils down to is that human beings are inquisible. about going to the edges of what's acceptable and to get us close to those edges without it ever affecting them as you possibly can. And to be in that space would be truly, truly remarkable. Grim, yes, haunting, yes, sad, I'm sure. But all of that history, all of those lives, all of those stories contain in this one particular space, I'd have to go. Do you think Lizzie did it?

It's tricky because I came into this thinking she'd been found guilty potentially. that's how I knew. Because she's so famous or infamous, I was like, well, she obviously was found guilty, but of course she becomes more infamous because she's not. Do I think she did it? Yes. Now, does her sister and uncle know a little bit more than potentially we think, possibly, I think? I wouldn't rule that out, particularly because that's who seems to coalesce around her in the immediacy of the discovery of the bodies. And that's interesting in itself. The fact that the uncle is in the house within 24 hours, within two hours of this happening is interesting. The fact that the sister is entirely away is also interesting.

But yeah, I think she definitely played a part, if not totally on her own. What do you think? I think she probably did. But I think for me, what this case gives us, and I suppose it links to what you're saying about being in that space today if you were to go as a visitor to the B&B. It takes you inside a late 19th century middle class home in a way that, you know, this is not a home that was unusual across America in this period or indeed across Britain, but it takes you inside that home and plunks you right down in amongst these complicated interhuman relationships. This is, again, non-extraudinary family, but one filled with real people, with real fears and aspirations and resentments. and it allows us into the broader context in which they live,

but also into their minds, into their inner workings, and into the acts that they do and do not commit within that space. And I think that's fascinating. And I think that's what After Dark does for us so much, is that we get to go into these spaces throughout history and to think about the way that they're set up, the hierarchies, the power balances that exist within them, then what happens when that's all turned on its head or disrupted in some way, and chaos

ensues? And it can tell us so much about the moments of history that that's taking place in. And I suppose something wider about how human beings react in these scenarios. Well, so many of you have requested this episode, and I can see why, because there is so much to think with here. But as a result, I now want to know what you think about this. Let us know on our socials or write into us at after dark at history hit.com. Did Lizzie Borden commit these murders? And we do love hearing from you. So if you have any suggestions for episodes, let us know there too.

That's the best place to contact us for any episode suggestions. Follow us, obviously, wherever you get your podcasts, tell your friends about us and how great we are. And please leave us a five-star review because it helps other people discover the podcast as well. And if you've enjoyed our exploration of American history in this episode, then don't forget that History Hit has an entire podcast dedicated to American History. It's called American History Hit, and it's hosted by Don Wildman. So go and check that out now, and we'll see you next time, back on After Dark.