Doomed to Fail - Re-Release: DID SHE DO IT??? - Lizzie Borden

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Did this case enthrall you when you were a child?? I remember the song, and being sure she did it from the TV movie... but after researching I'm just not as convinced!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Everyone, Taylor from Doom to Fail, we're the podcast that brings you stories of history's greatest disasters and epic failures. Today, we're going to re-release episode 24, part one. And this is a, just such a great story. Man, if you grew up in the Midwest of America, I feel like in the 80s, there's no way you didn't sing this song. If you grew up in the 70s, there's no way you didn't see the TV movie. And I think that I say this in the episode, but I remember, watching the TV movie with the woman Elizabeth from Bewitched and eating, this is so dumb, but eating spinach, Fettuccino, like spinach, Fettuccini, and never being able to eat it again without thinking about Lizzie Borden. So we did this last year in advance of Father's Day to talk about the relationship between Lizzie and her dad. It was not good. He was not very nice. Things were stinky and weird in the Borden household. It was hot. Also, if you've been in the American Midwest, it is hot and sticky.

And imagine being there in the summer having to wear Victorian clothing up to your neck. Everything's black. And the door is in the Borden house. They lock them. They closed the door. They lock the door. There's no ventilation. There's no air.

The food is old. Everyone's sick. It's tension. And it's, I don't know. Did she do it? I just don't know. I was so sure when I was growing up. and I guess if you know, you know, if it bothers you as much as it bothers me,

the idea that she didn't do it is wild and also very, very probable. So please enjoy the free release of our dear Lizzie Borden and her axe, maybe. And if you have any suggestions for us for future episodes, let us know. Doomedepilopod at gmail.com. Again, this is episode 24, part one. Our first 26 episodes were in one big episode and we're separating them. so only a few more re-releases to go. But I hope you enjoyed this one.

It's honestly one of my favorite stories of all time. Thanks for listening. The matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

Okay. So next Sunday, oh, June 18th is Father's Day. Did you know that? I've heard that. Call your dad. So to prep for Father's Day, I wanted to sell. a story about fathers and daughters and so talk about the relationship between Andrew and Lizzie Borden. Ooh. It was a sexual relationship, wasn't it? It might have been.

Yep. So you are first generation American. Was Lizzie Borden a part of your life? I mean, I was two when I came here. So like, I mean, I heard the whole like 30 wax and all the, all of, like, Like, I remember buying a book. Dude, it was called Liz Claiborne. Hold on.

What's Liz Claiborne? No, Liz Claiborne is like a, no, Liz Claiborne is like a fashion designer. Okay, then I'm confusing things because I do remember getting a book. And I thought it was about Lizzie Borden, and it was about somebody totally different. And then I'm messing up your story and debiling it as usual. No, no, it's fine. but like you've heard of her you know um so you remember the rhyme which would say in a second um but just for me like it this scared the shit out of me when i was little like it was i feel like it was in my life a lot um i also like associate when i'm doing things with like the media that i'm consuming when i'm doing it so like the kid's bathroom i painted blue and it reminds me of mount everest because while i was painting the bathroom blue i was watching a lot of ever's documentary okay makes sense so i remember watching the Lizzie Borden movie, it was like a lifetime, not the lifetime movie, the one from

1975, it was like a made-for-TV movie starring the woman from Bewitched. Okay. And I love her. Yeah. And I remember watching it and being scared, shitless and eating Fetuccine Alfredo with spinach noodles. Whenever I think about Fetitina al-Fredo, I think about Lizzie Borden. Nice.

Think of her a lot. So we have to, like you said, do the rhyme, which is, Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother 40 wax when she saw what she had done she gave her father 41 and you like skip rope to that they died so people dedicate their freaking lives to this story it is such a fascinating story that people have been like thinking about it forever um and i there's a huge lizzie board in society forum which is like an old older looking web form and people are active on it today people active on it constantly it's all people on it i watched the elizabeth montgomery movie from 19 75. There's a couple other websites I went to. There's a Lizzie Borden Society Forum.

Something from a website called Criminal Element. I watched a show called History's Mystery is a strange case of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden had an axe from the Discovery Channel, and I read a book called The Trial Lizzie Borden. So there's a lot, I mean, there's endless, endless stuff about this story. Several of the documentaries were made, like, right after the OJ trial, which is hilarious because they were trying to equate famous American trials together. And one of them was like, we imagine that Lizzie Bored. Gordon spent her life with these murders hanging over her head, and that will happen to O.J. And I'm like, OJ is fine.

OJ doesn't care at all. He doesn't give a shit. So like, so, you know. But here are the facts. On August 2nd, 1892, the Borden house is at 92 2nd Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. An uncle, John Morse, was visiting the Bordons. Morris ate breakfast served by the maid Bridget with Andrew and Abby, who are like the parents. He left to visit friends around 8.48 a.m. At 9 a.m., Andrew went for a walk.

Sometime between 9 and 10.30 a.m., Abby went to tidy up the guest room and was hit 19 times in the head with an X. Her body lay on the bed opposite to the door, so you kind of had to be in the room to see where she was. At 10.30, Andrew returned, and the front door was locked. Bridget let him in, and then she went upstairs to take a nap because she wasn't feeling well. Andrew sat down in the sitting room to take a nap and he was murdered so violently that half of his head was gone and one eye was totally exploded so he was like hacked to death and that was sometime after 10.30. At 1110 Bridget and a neighbor heard Lizzie call come quick, father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him. So that's like the stuff that we know for sure and that everything else we're not sure about. So let me tell you about the people. in this story. So Lizzie's dad is Andrew Jackson Borden. He was born in 1822. The Bordons were a Fall River family. They had lived there for generations. They were very, very wealthy. He didn't have the nest eggs, the egg that other Bordons had, but he did make his own fortune. He was a carpenter. He made furniture and coffins. Then he was a bank manager, and he ended up owning a bunch

of property, and he was pretty rich. So in today's money, he had about $10 million. So yeah, so he had a good amount of money. There's another Borden story that happened next door a few decades before where a mother who is like a great, great aunt of Lizzie, Eliza Darling, Borden, through her three children into the basement well and then died by suicide. So they have like another horrible story that's like right in the same neighborhood that happened before. So that's the dad. Lizzie's mom is dead. Her name is Sarah, Sarah Anthony Borden. She was born in 1823.

They had two children, Emma and Lizzie. And Sarah died when Lizzie was two. just like of being sick and being alive in the 800s. So Andrew remarried Abby Borden. She was born in 1828. Her maiden name is Abby Durfie Gray. So she was a lot of like spinsters in this story, which means you're like 30 and not married, you know.

So Abby was kind of a spinster. Aren't they still called spinsters? No, no one uses the word spinster anymore. Oh, my God, am I old? No, you're not 100 years old. No one uses the word spinster. Okay. Um, so he probably just needed help with the family, you know, and so there was like an unmarried woman and they were married.

It happened about when Lizzie was like five. Dherfee is also the name of one of the banks that Andrew managed. So it sounds like he worked with her dad and then met her. Initially, she had a good relationship with the girls. They were young when, and then she was in her 30s when they, when she moved into the house, eventually closer to the time of the murders, Lizzie would start calling her Mrs. Borden instead of mother. So they ended up kind of having a following. out. Emma, the older sister, was also unmarried, and she was agoraphobic, but during the murders, she was out of town, which is weird, because she, like, never left her house, but she was

out of town during the murders, visiting friends. So, Lizzie herself, Lizzie Andrew Borden, was born on July 19th, 1860. She was also unmarried. She's 32 at the time of the murders. She taught Sunday school. She was in the women's temperance league and the ladies' fruit and flower mission. Like, she was bored, you know? So boring. Yeah, she was so fucking bored. A woman at her age was supposed to be spending her time taking care of her family, you know, and, like, managing a household. Like, that's really the only option. So if she didn't have that option, she really had nothing to do. Why would you just casually take up, like, being part of a temperance movement? Like, well, she was very religious and, like, you know. It's like your only favorite thing

in your past something to do is just, like, she'll everybody's buzz. Yeah. I mean, her life sounds terrible. And, like, she has, her dad has a lot of money, but they don't spend it, which is, like, frustrating, I think, probably for both girls because they're like, you know, we might as well be spending this money. But they did spend a little bit. So I'll tell you a little bit more about that. But those two are the people who are in the, in the house at the time. So John Morris is the brother of Sarah, who's Lizzie's birth mom. And he came by to visit. He came by independently, just like randomly and like stopped by. So he's staying with the Bordons. But he leaves in the morning to go visit. And he's staying in the guest room. And it's also

Bridget Sullivan. She's 25 years old. He's 20, was an Irish immigrant and they are so it's such a racist time so they um eventually i don't think of them they got this down but they tried to blame the murders on like a random portuguese person they're just like anyone who's like a different like an other the board and family calls bridget maggie because their last irish maid was named maggie and they just don't want to bother learning a new name that's so awesome which is ridiculous it's like naming your dog the exact same thing yeah is your last dog that's funny oh my god so poor bridge it's like this sucks and also like it's so hot and so victorious everyone's wearing like long

sleeves and it just sounds like really stuffy and kind of awful so I read so much stuff about this but also the books that well also listen to the last podcast obviously and the book that they recommend is Bill James is popular crime which is so good it's such a great book and he's very funny when he talks through different crimes and like tries to quantify who might have done it but his facts are it's almost impossible to see how Lizzie could have committed the crime. And also, it's very, very difficult to understand how anyone else could have committed the crime. Yeah, I remember that. I remember that. Yeah. So the third fact that he has is that Lizzie made a number of statements about the case that were self-contradictory and in conflict with the

testimony of other persons. So there's that. That part is definitely true. So here's the scene and here's the day and what's kind of leading up to the day. So we know the people. We're in Fall River, Massachusetts, which was once one of the biggest cities in Massachusetts, rich people live up on a hill. So the hill where you live if you're rich, the Bordons don't live there. They could afford to live there, but they don't. They live in town. So a house is like on a main thoroughfare, like in town.

It's Tuesday morning. Lots of people are around. It's not like an isolated place. Andrew is very, very stingy. The house had no water. It had no gas lighting. So like those things were available, but they had like kerosene lamps and they had like one water pump in the basement.

him and they had like an outhouse in the basement too i guess i don't get people like that yeah it's like when you hear about warren buffin it's like he still lives in the same house he bought for five hundred thousand dollars like 90 years and why this is such a big jump like modern convenience you know like how about you don't have to be in a chamber pot in the middle of the night you know you could just not do that that's available to you but kind of fun though kind of want the chamber pot now. I absolutely do not want a chamber pot. I would definitely not empty mine. I was to leave it there for like six months at the time.

That's horrifying. No, no, no, no, no. So anyway, it was an old house and they could have done better. But they have, the girls actually have money. They have like an allowance. They get it from a rental house. So Andrew owns a much of property. He buys a house for his sister-in-law for Abby's sister. And the girls are pissed because they want more money. So the girls get the grandfather's house and the money from rent from that.

So they have a good amount of money. Eventually, they're going to inherit the money from their dad. there's like really no reason to rush it but they so that's kind of where they are right now something happened around like 1890 and that's when lizzie started calling abby mrs borden um in 1890 also lizzie traveled to europe for a while with with other borden cousins so she wasn't like trapped in in fall river she got to go to europe and like hang out so i bet it was fucking lame though taylor it wasn't like me and you going to europe they weren't like at pubs like hanging out and having a great time playing darts being locals like they

weren't doing that. They were like repenting or something. It had to have sucked. No, I bet they were doing what other, the other half of our trip to Europe would be like going to churches and museums. Yeah. They just would have been about early. But all the churches and museums in Europe are nice. Dude, I bet they, I bet they would have thought, they're the time of people that would have thought English food is good. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So a couple of other odd things happened leading up to the murders. There was a fight between Andrew and Lizzie, it's presumed, and she had some pigeons in the barn that she was keeping, like, as pets, and he killed them. So, like, maybe with an axe, also that could maybe not be true, but he had, like,

done this to her pets and she was super upset. There's also, like you said, rumors of incest, but those come later. And the reason that people say that is because, like, you know, he had his two older daughters living at home with him. Like, he never allowed them, or for whatever reason, they never went out and got married. The crime was so brutal that it had to be personal. You know, like any forensic person would tell you that. Also, this is weird. Andrew didn't wear a wedding ring, but he did wear Lizzie's high school ring that she gave him. That's gross. That's weird. That's suspicious. He definitely was doing something. So that's, you know, that could have, that could have, could have, could may or may not have happened there's like so many of things on lizzie board a forum about it

someone just had like a webinar about it so it's definitely still like something that fascinates people but isn't this a point in time when like it was common for for incest in the family i don't know i don't know i don't know any more or less than like now in certain areas i have no idea yeah more remote i mean like if you're in west virginia like there's not much It's slim pigings. It's either family or nothing. But they're not remote. They're in the middle of a city. It's true. Okay. You're right. But I don't know. There's also some thefts in the house. So someone had come and stolen some money and a streetcar tickets.

It sounds like Lizzie was a suspect for those theft. So Andrew dropped the charges and like didn't want the police to look into it. So maybe she had done that. But also like she's bored. Maybe maybe she did try to steal some extra money or whatever. So everybody in the board and house locked their doors all the time. after this theft and the house is really weird it is a house with no hallways all the rooms are connected so when you walk in the front door there's stairs on the right and then there's two doors one door goes to a parlor and another one goes to a sitting room so they're both kind of the same purpose just to like hang out and then the sitting room goes to the kitchen and the kitchen and the sitting room both go to the dining room and then there's a little back

entryway and back stairs and the back stairs go up to the third floor where bridget lives and then also to Andrew and Abby's bedroom you can get there that way too. Okay. I'll send you a picture. The other way to get to Andrew and Abby's bedroom is to the second floor. So when you climb up the stairs and on the second floor, there's the guest room where Abby's body was found. That's one door. One door goes directly to Lizzie's bedroom and her room is connected to Emma's bedroom. So weird. Yeah. It's so weird. did. Why didn't they invent hallways? I don't know. I was going to look this up because I feel like

when you go to like, when you're in Europe and you go to like Versailles, there's no hallways. You're just like room to room to room, you know? Yeah, you're right. So I wonder when, I was going to look it up because I remember like when I was in Europe for the first time, someone was telling me how they don't have closets because they used to be charged by the room. So you would have like

a wardrobe. Yeah. that's true, taxed by the room. But either way, like, also on the second floor, there's a big clothes room. They call it a closet, but it's almost as big as Emma's bedroom. It's a big room where they, like, store all their clothes. Emma's bedroom is a small room off of Lizzie's bedroom. And then Andrew and Abby have, like, a bigger room in the back of the house.

So the only way to get to Andrew and Abby's room is through, come going up the back stairs, or there's a door between their room and Lizzie's room, but that one is always locked. Yeah. And so what they do is, again, like, it's hot it's fucking humid they're all wearing long sleeves like Andrew's wearing like a full suit when he's killed and it's like 80 degrees and the house is stuffy like when it's hot and I don't have air conditioning I want the windows open you know like and I want like air to be moving but air is not moving because every single door is always closed and most of the time they're locked

so shitty way to live yeah it sounds terrible it sounds really stuffy I'm sure it smells terrible all that yeah so the family had been also super sick leading up to the murders lizzie had told someone in town that she thought someone was trying to poison them um because they had that bad milk but like also they had no refrigeration they were and they were eating old food they were eating old fish they were eating old mutton like mutton broth um the 1975 movie does such a good job of showing how gross the broth was. Actually, they show Bridgett, like, almost throwing up. And then, like, they have, show the parents, like, it's so gross I might throw up right now thinking about it.

But essentially, like, during this time, because of what the conveniences they had at their house, and probably during all time, like, to keep food from going bad, you would keep it constantly cooking. Yeah, yeah. It's a perpetual stew or something, right? Yeah. So they really stretched the fish in the mutton, and so everybody was sick. like it was old at lizzie was not sick and that people saw that as being suspicious but i also kind of feel like that's just smart um taylor i look this up forever ago and i'm gonna i'm trying

to find it again now but but hold on where is it where is this i will have to add a pose all okay so there's one there's a perpetual stew in germany that has been around since the 15th century. No. Yeah. There's another in Japan that has had the same broth in their perpetual stew since 1945. I hate that. Anyways, okay, sorry.

Exactly. Like, in the Middle Ages, looking at out, there were inns that had a big pot of stew on the fire, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Over time, we added whatever you had, and you never really stopped adding to the pot. like you should make it now you should not do that um i mean no hard now so anyway of course made them sick and so lizzie wasn't sick which people thought it was suspicious but also i feel like she was probably just like i don't want to eat this i would not want to eat it she has cookies for breakfast that morning that sounds a thousand times better than old mutton's do you know

this life sounds so terrible it sounds terrible it's real boring and like dreary um so lizzie's not sick, which makes people feel like she might have done it. Also, a pharmacist during the trial is going to testify that Lizzie tried to buy prussic acid to clean a seal skin cape. I looked it up. The Metropolitan Museum of Art actually has a seal skin cape in their collection, just like a short fur cape. The acid could have been used as like fumigation, but maybe she did ask for it because she

was bored, but also it was probably somebody else. It sounds like the pharmacist who just wanted to be in the news because later a police officer's wife said that she was the one who went in tried to buy plastic acid because you needed a prescription to buy it and they were just kind of like doing like secret shopper trying to trick him so that probably isn't true um Wikipedia told me that both girls were so mad at their father for whatever reason that they stayed at a hotel for a few days before the murders but I didn't read that anywhere else so I don't know where that comes from and then we do know that Emma was out of town and which was weird because she never left the house and then John was there the uncle and he never

saw Lizzie. She came in and didn't say hello. He just left in the morning, so they never even said hi. So as in the morning of August 2nd, as the events unfold for the women, Bridget is in and out of the house washing windows, and she was pissed. She was pissed that Abby asked her to wash the windows. It was hot. She didn't want to do it. She had food poisoning. Like, she just didn't want to do it, but she was in and out of the house. Lizzie is puttering around the house doing like normal Victorian lady things. She's ironing handkerchiefs. She says that she goes to the barn to look for fishing lures for an upcoming trip. So they had like a small yard, but they had a barn in the back. So she's like rifling around barn, doing Victorian stuff. She also stays in the yard and eats four

pairs. And people are like, that's so weird. Why would she say they're eight pairs while her parents are being murdered, you know? But I'm sure she was fucking hungry and it makes sense to eat a fresh pair rather than old stew. That's the most exciting thing that's happened so far. Yeah. You get a pair? It's amazing. It sounds delicious and fresh and that sounds great. So she's eating pairs in the backyard, kind of just hanging out. It's hot as fuck. She's wearing long sleeves. So Lizzie said that Abby got a note from a friend that was sick and needed help. So it's evidence that people liked Abby. She had a lot of friends. So it's possible that happened, but there was never a note. Like no one ever found the note, so they don't know.

So she was saying that Abby was out. So sometime in the morning around 930, Abby is killed. So she's cleaning in the guest room. She is axed in the head. And Abby weighs 200 pounds. She falls. Someone would have fucking hurt it. You know, you would have sink but she falls someone would have heard her we stayed in the house that's like this age in columbus ohio one time uh my family and you could like see the first floor through the second floor like it was like the house was old you know i'm sure that like through the wood in the floor yeah like there was no like insulation you know like i don't think that like it would be you would not you wouldn't miss it if someone fell yeah you know someone like dropped a book you wouldn't miss it

right you know you hear it Andrew comes home and he can't get the door open so he's annoyed but also all the doors are locked and can't get it open and the door is locked and Maggie tries to get the door open not Maggie I'm sorry Bridget I wrote Maggie you're doing you're doing it I'm doing it so Bridget tries to get the door open and she curses and she says that she heard Lizzie laughing on the stair on the stairwell when she cursed so either she was laughing because of the bad word which is what Bridget thought but also the spot that Lizzie was standing on the stairway was the only place where you could have seen Abby's body. Because you had to be at a certain point on the stairway to kind of see like

underneath the bed into the guest room and see Abby laying on the floor. So that may or may not but you. Bill James thinks it isn't true. He thinks that she didn't hear laughing, but like, I don't know. Andrew takes a nap in the sitting room. In the pictures, he's sitting on the couch with his head on the pillows and his feet off of the couch and his shoes are on. So that's weird. Like, do you take a nap like that? But also he's a lot taller than the couch. So you wouldn't like see him cuddle up. He wouldn't like be a cuddler. But also. So he's in a really weird position. So I wonder if, like, he fell, but, but I don't know.

So, Kelly, can I, can I posit a, a thing, working theory I have here? Yeah, yeah. Because so much about this case is based on, like, what normal humans would be doing or wouldn't be doing or experience. These people are, like, total freaking weirdos, right? Yeah. Is it really what I think that is weird if Andrew were to go to sleep in a full tuxedo at noon? In 95 degree weather? Probably not.

Because he's a fucking weirdo. They're all weirdos. That's true. Exactly. Yes. Like, we don't know. Does he do it every day? I don't know.

Like, he very well might. It's a great point. Yeah. Do weird stuff. So Lizzie calls. Someone yells out. Someone's killed father. Neighbors start to come.

Bridget goes to the doctor, Bowen, the family doctor to get him to come. The police come. And I'm sure you remember this. But the police is like the B squad. Because everyone else is at like the county fair. It's like the police. like the police day of fun and most of the police are out of town so they send the B squad to uh to help

they've never seen anything like this and the you know this town is you know they're like dealing with drunks and dealing with like petty crimes they're not dealing with axe murders for the most part so also like the murderer could still be in the house like potentially they are because lizzie's there like who knows so people start coming in and out of the house the police do take pictures which is cool because that's pretty new it wasn't a a thing to take pictures of bodies, but they don't take the pictures until about 3 p.m. So it's been like five hours since they died. And they've definitely been touched and moved around. But they take the pictures. So we have those. A neighbor, Mrs. Churchill,

finally asks, where's Abby? And Lizzie said, oh, she went out. And then they go for looking around for her, and then they find Abby's body. So they don't find it until after the police are already there. It's wild. Yeah. So some other things that they find in the house, There's a bucket full of bloody rags in the basement, but Lizzie says that they're from her period, which they very well could be having a period of cerebral. It was terrible. So they also find an axe with a broken handle covered in ash in the basement. So they think that that may have been the murder weapon, but they're not sure. But also, like, there's no footprints or handprints.

So does you feel like if you axed someone to death, you'd have blood on your, like, had to open the door? So, like, okay, so that's. the part of it where I'm trying to say my piece of this is like I don't think she did it only because I'm looking at the crime scene photos dude this guy this guy's face was butchered yeah absolutely gone like there's like the fact that there was no blood on her in if she's like oh I was on my period there's no way you confuse like what what is her like 50 gallons like you know it's all over her face yeah it would be exactly so like so that's the only part where like I'm just like super and the Lizzie's probably not guilty campus is because the blood

it's not there and it's I mean my whole life I thought I thought she did it so this like this blows my mind because I feel like maybe she didn't because and because of that because she was so clean and also Bridget saw her between the murders and said she was clean so she would have had to like clean herself off change and then do it again so They didn't have plumbing, right? Yeah. So it would have been really, really hard, but I also just feel like anyone would have trailed blood, like, through that house,

and they would have had to leave the house covered in blood. So that, and no one noticed on, like, the street. So, like, maybe they were wearing, like, black clothing, you just couldn't tell, or maybe they were the butcher already covered in blood, you know, stuff like that, like, it could have been, but it feels like someone should have saw something if another person had been there. They do the autopsies at the house, and they leave the bodies there.

so they leave the bodies there like overnight with with the girls which is crazy um so in the next few days the bodies do go to the morgue and then they get sent to harvard and a man named dr edwood um performs another autopsy on them he takes the heads and boils them so he has just the skulls so they're buried up with other heads and he has the skulls also lizzie does something super suspicious she burns a dress so she probably did it in front of her sister and a friend and maybe in front of some like other people but she was like oh you know we're just cleaning up the house because also the thing I just thought about is who the fuck cleaned up the blood probably poor Bridgett and so she has a dress and she's like oh this old dress has paint on it people knew that she had a dress that had paint on it for real but she burned it in the stove which was like normal you didn't really have like the garbage men coming by so you would burn things but she didn't in front of her friends and they're like that's the worst thing you could have done like now everybody knows you burned a dress like maybe it was covered in blood you know I don't know why she did that why didn't she just do when she was alone you're just doing the middle

fucking night you know what was her excuse she was like oh i just had paint on it and just was i'm just like doing chores like normal chores again again these are weirdos that's a weird thing do but like it could be totally normal for them exactly yes super weird um so lizzie doesn't act doesn't act like you know again like they always say like you never know how you'll act in like an emergency but lizzie acts like kind of suspicious the whole time but it's also because Dr. Bowen is giving her a shit ton of morphine. She is high as fuck. She's, like, totally out of it.

So she's definitely confused. Also, like, there are thousands of people coming to Fall River to see the house because they will forever. Like, people are there right now, staying the night. It's a bed and breakfast. Like, it's, it's really? Oh, yeah. I mean, 100% need to go there. Everybody.

We have to go there. Yeah. It sounds amazing. So, like, there's, like, museums, like the whole town. This is all this is it. This is all Fall River has. This is Lizzie Borden story. And of course, like, if my neighbor was murdered, I would be over there right now.

I would definitely want to see. I'd be looking at it, you know. Also for the murders, the board of the sisters offer a $5,000 reward in the paper for the murderer. So this is also just like the OJ case. Like, no one bothers to find the real fucking murderer, you know? Yeah. You know, like after the person's acquitted, they're like, cool, guess that's it. You're like, what?

You said he didn't do it. Who the fuck did it? So Lizzie was charged on August 8th, 1892. She spent 11 months in jail before her trial. What are you looking at? Dude, Taylor, you can book. Wait, how much does it cost? Hold on.

Oh, my God. You can, Taylor, you can stay in Andrew and Abby's bedroom for $300 a night. They didn't die there, but that sounds great. Can you say the guest room? Wait, no, Abby did. Abby died in her room. No, she died in the guest room. Damn, okay.

Wait, hold on. So let me see me into the guest room. no you got lizzie and emma sweet you got bridget hosea john morse well john morse did in the guest room i mean i can look it up too this is the silent part of podcast official lizzie borden house see our rooms oh oh they've two 300 bucks it's like consistently 300 bucks it's crazy yeah the johnsie more sweet is the guest room that's where abby boardin was found 300,000-8. Bridges room.

Three people can see in Bridget's room. Oh, my God. It's so funny. You would say that, right? For sure. Which room? Oh, there's so many rooms in the third floor that they don't talk about. It's weird. I would want to stay in Lizzie's room, even though it's not where anybody was murdered.

I want to say in the room that she lived in. Yeah, I agree. But, wow, it's interesting that looking at this, there's, like, there's Bridgett's room, and there's also two other bedrooms on the top floor. So, like, who knows? I don't know. Maybe someone could have hit up there. I don't know. Also, wait, just scroll down. It says no alcohol is permitted on the property. We have already had two fatal head injuries in the home. That's funny. Yeah, that's a temperance people. Oh, oh, okay. But, yeah, no, it sounds awesome. Okay, cool. Anyway, that's, this is fun. People should go there. You can get a tour, a ghost two,

were a ghost hunt nightly from 10 a p.m. to midnight. So if you're staying there, you can be part of the ghost hunt. Okay, anyway, that sounds great. Let's definitely do that. So the trial started on June 5th, 1893, which is 130 years ago this week is when it started. It was in Taunton, Massachusetts. It had to be moved for, like, jury purposes. During the trial, Lizzie was very quiet because she was like on all these drugs. She was chewing on her fan. It was so hot. She did laugh at one point when there was like a funny witness talking about dresses. So she has feeling. but most of the time she was just like really quiet. The jury is all men, of course. There's a picture of the jury that is on Wikipedia. They all are the same. It's like very bushy mustaches, just like white dudes. Actually, black men could serve on juries since 1860 in Massachusetts, but this one was all white men.

Women didn't serve on juries until 1951. Wow. Yeah. So, but women were there. Women from all over brought food, had pickings outside, tried to get and see it. It was just like there are women all around, just like, of course there are. This is the most exciting thing that ever happened. They're going to hang out around the courthouse.

Her lawyer was a former governor of Massachusetts. He was very expensive, but very, very worth it. It was like a dream team. They placed her as a good Christian woman who wouldn't do, dream of doing such a thing. One crazy thing that happened during the trial is they brought the heads, the skulls, into the courtroom to show the brutality of the crime but they didn't tell lizzie or her sister that they were going to do that so lizzie fainted right away it's kind of a fun day yeah it's kind of fun day at court exactly a fun day at court um she also at one point cried until she threw up so she just had like emotions and it's also

really fucking hot so there's stuff happening um but the jury deliberated for an hour and a half and she was acquitted so yeah i happen real fast um after the trial lizzie does move up to the hill she buys a big house up there there's a summer bedroom and a winter bed bedroom. There's 14 rooms. There's Tiffany lamps. She has servants. She names it Maplecroft and has a sign made out of concrete on the steps. So she lives in this lavish house that she presumably always wanted to live in. She changed her name to Lisbeth Borden. I don't know. She changed name to that. But nobody loves her. Like while she was in the trial, people were like on her side, but afterwards they don't want to be associated with her. So like her life was essentially ruined.

And she got the money and she had to live in a nice house, but she didn't have any, like, friends. She didn't get to be a part of the, like, society that she'd wanted to be a part of. But she also never left Fall River. She could have left, but she didn't. Did she want that? Again, these are weird people. It's like they're just not fun or interesting. I don't know.

I don't know. And like, that's also a good point. Like, if this hadn't happened, we would never know anything about her. And how many millions of people we know nothing about, billions of people, because nothing extraordinary happened. Right. But she had this extraordinary thing happen. whether or not she did it which is just I think crazy I don't know what do you think what do you think hold on I'll get there so later in life she does become like good friends with an actress from

Boston named Nancy O'Neill or New York maybe but it's like a fan like an actress and everybody's like it's same with all time until right now we're like being an actress was like scandalous and so they think that she used to have Nancy O'Neill come over and have these big parties and the town kind of frowned on that as well. At some point, Lizzie and Emma have a falling out, and they don't speak for years. In all of the films, they stop talking because Lizzie tells her that she did it. And Emma's like, like the 1975 film and so great, Emma is played by the grandma from Who's the Boss. And Lizzie comes home and Emma is like, Lizzie, you have to tell me, did you do it?

and it just like zooms into Elizabeth Montgomery's face and it's all her face is very moist the whole time because it's so hot and the camera pans around her and they sing the nursery rhyme it's so good that's awesome and then in the end there's a Christina Ricci movie and that one it ends with her having a party and being like Lizzie is Christina Ricci and she's like I she's like having this party and her sister is like what are you doing and there's music going off and Christina Ricci whispers to her sister or something and her sister's eyes go wide so she like confesses So the movies are all like she did that. I can't believe that.

She played Lizzie. I got to watch that one. There's also one with Chloe Seventy and Kristen Stewart. That's very, very gay. I'll tell you more about that theory in a minute, too. The sisters Emma and Lizzie die within nine days of each other. They die in their 60s. Lizzie leaves the largest amount of money to the Fall River Animal Rescue League,

which I also was thinking about when you said that about pets in Manchester in the 1960s or whatever, because this is like the 1920s and they have an animal rescue league in Fall River. So there's like some of it. She needs money and a trust to care for her father's grave for all time. And Lizzie is buried with her parents in Fall River. So they're buried and like all buried together. So yeah. So was it her?

I don't know. Bill James, who had popular crime says no. Most people on the Lizzie Borden forum think yes. I'm not sure. My whole life I thought it was her. And then this kind of blew my mind because it was like, I thought about it a lot, and maybe she didn't do it.

She was mad at her dad. He was mean. Her life was boring. Maybe it was incest because, and then that was such like a violent crime because she was so upset about it. This is before the man from the train X murders, but it is right after Jack the Ripper. So there is like violence in the news, but he didn't use an axe. But you'd probably try to think of like, you know, what was in there.

Could she have been gay and been, and he like found out and was super upset? Like, some people think she was having a favorite of a maid, which I doubt, but or like she's a kind of girlfriend he found out and she's wanted to live her life. But the big thing is, like, how could she've gotten clean? That seems almost impossible. The only, so while you were talking, I was saying, me the only way I could buy that she did it was like there was a fit of rage. It was not premeditated. She cracked them open. And by some fluke of cosmic luck, all the blood splatter went.

everywhere but her that's the only way i can make it work yeah yeah i mean that technically could happen because because they might this way so like here's the plausibility of this remember peter curtain the vampire of yeah duclorf yeah so he would do all the scrounge where he would be killing people out in the public and go home totally clean and and people would be like how is that even possible like he just like learned that like if you stand a certain in a certain spot that the blood splatter would just like avoid you like whatever he like did the math and figured out how to do it so like it's possible yeah yeah totally in the elizabeth montgomery movie they have her do it naked and then she just like washes herself off afterwards but the chances of that are really like low because

i bet she was never naked like you know like ever like she probably like washed her body parts separately out of a bowl you know like she didn't like nowadays we get naked all the time because we take a shower, but she never did that. So I feel like she was probably like a perpetual stew, just perpetually changing different parts of her body, like never fully again. So it would be weird that she would do that because also she's like very modest. Rude. Yeah.

So some other suspects are, could it be a stranger? Someone said that they heard someone come to the door in the morning and Abby let them in. Andrew had a share of enemies. He was like a bad landlord, you know, not bad, but like mean. So like, you know, whatever. they could have hid in that hall closet that hall closet was huge so they could have gone to that closet hid and then killed um andrew but then also wears the blood yeah just i feel like there have to be footprints and there just weren't any which is so weird um later in life lizzie had a nurse and the nurse said that um she told them she confessed to the nurse that she had a boyfriend who had done it and hid in the closet and they had and then he like ended up leaving her and that was like what happened um a woman obviously this is crazy had a dream that Emma came to her in her dream and said that she did it, that she came into town, killed her parents, then went back to visit friends.

People think that the uncle might have done it. His alibi was perfect in like a suspicious way, which is like not fair because he had like a perfect alibi. And then think that like also like it could have been Bridget, the maid. She was mad. Obviously her life sucked, but she was sick and she had to clean it up. You know, either way she'd just clean up. I don't think she would do it.

So yeah, that's it. We don't know who did it. It's a crazy mystery because the facts don't really tell us anything. And just like OJ, like, she got acquitted, but there was no, like, find the real killer, figure out what really happened. The people were just like, she probably did it back out off because she was like a nice Christian woman and people couldn't believe that she had done it. OJ is the one who vowed that he would find a killer, though. Oh, great. You could just wake up and look at a mirror.

I don't think he's done much more combat. No, he's not out there investigating. Yeah. taking fingerprints outside in the cult house it's great it's interesting how like one crime can become so iconic like it's a part of culture like this website's hilarious by the way like i don't know if you've gone on the forum no i'm not on the forum i'm on the website for the house and it's so funny they even have like this section for like you can shop and they like have this ghost called lily the host of ghost doll and it is terrifying looking and it's like they're really the haunted dog oh god yeah strike like lizzie borden

is that a is that like a union shirt oh my god miss elizabeth miss lisabeth miss lisabeth's finishing school turning girls into sharp young ladies wait where's the union shirt well it says i strike like lizzie borden oh that's funny you know um yeah i love these guys like if you look at the staff they look like a fun group and they really i mean they're doing a lot lot of they got a bloody act for sale like it's oh they look real fun yeah they do they look like you'd have a good time going on a house with them i love them i love that they're all dressed up yeah 100% oh my god susan give you a peace sign i fucking love it um yeah i love it i think it's super fun it's so it's just like a crazy story and also this is like a far far fetch

but i've read the book middle march a long time ago which is a english novel written whatever a long time ago, but one of the things that it ends with a really, like, a line that reminded me of this, I'm going to read it, but I don't know if it's going to make a sense, but for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and the things that are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs, meaning like, if you just do good things and live a normal life, will ever know but you're contributing to the future in the subtle way that everyone does

but when something crazy happens that's when you become like a part of the Zait guys forever and that's what happened to Lizzie. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. So I'm sure her tomb is very visited and I definitely want to go and I don't know but also like is it another fucking random crime

someone came to the house an expert or stuff? Yeah. Yeah. The randomness of it right? Yeah. I don't know. I, yeah, this is a rollercoaster of an episode. I know. It started with celebrating the death of Pat Robertson and mourning the death of Tekazintki. I know. So much has happened in the past a couple hours.

Ooh, I'm watching that. Now I'm looking like a video of the boarded house. Join us to stay, play, and for a hauntingly fun time. I was a parking lot in the back now, as a bummer, that the thing is gone. Oh, you can buy a bloody ax? That's a lot. Yeah. You could buy a bobblehead, brick dust file?

What does that mean? I don't know. I tried to, I clicked on the brick dust. I thought they'd have an explanation of it, but they don't. I have no idea what I was. EMF, EMF detector. Yeah, they're having fun. They are having fun.

A pen, a coin for no reason, a mug. A rise and grind coffee mug? The cookie cutter is a pair. Oh, no way. I haven't got on there yet. That's awesome. they're a fun bunch yeah crazy and like you know oh it was a christmas ornament that's that's what i like to get when i go on vacation i like to get christmas ornaments to remember where

i've been so i definitely get that when i go there yeah oh live the haunted doll don't love her don't love the doll georgia from the ghost love him CBD coffee cookie cutter's up here anyway anyway how what a fun story i don't know it's fun it's scary it's very the time you know a a woman who has to what a fucking terrible life what a terrible life so it sounds so boring it's like i would have killed them just for the excitement of killing someone what an exciting exciting thing that happened you have to live a life in the nice house and have actors over you know all of that all of that sounds good but her dad would have died soon anyway he was like in his 60s so i don't know i don't know such as life Taylor we are our

a little over our time oh yes i got to take a shower and get to do your things i got to go i don't know what i'm going to do with joe i guess we'll go for a walk or something but oh my god hilarious we'll have a great time i will and we're going to start some awesome advertising for the show here shortly which will be really really exciting we're going to get our but we got like 10 more instagram followers from me doing instagram ads there you go there you go things are happening now to being famous again nobody who doesn't know us listens to this because no one emailed me so friends only i don't know if that's causation or correlation then we've done the ask twice email us doomed to fill pod at gmail if you don't know us and listen but no one's done it so i think it's

all friends i'm gonna invent a new email address just to you please make me feel better um yeah please like and subscribe on all of the things we're on instagram twitter YouTube, Facebook, at Doomed to Fail pod. You don't know me. Send me an email. There it is. Awesome. Thank you, Taylor.

Every day. You do.