Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Lizzie Borden

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

On August 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts, an incredibly grizzly event took place.  Andrew and his wife, Abby Borden, were brutally murdered by repeated strikes with a hatchet to their heads.  The primary suspect in the case was their daughter, Lizzie. In the subsequent trial, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict, and ever since, people have wondered if Lizzie did, in fact, kill her parents, and if she didn’t, who did? Learn more about Lizzie Borden and Borden's murders on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Plan your next trip to Spain at Spain.info! Sign up at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to get chicken breast, salmon or ground beef FREE in every order for a year plus $20 off your first order! Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On August 4, 1892, an incredibly grisly event took place in Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were brutally murdered by repeated strikes with a hatchet to their heads. The primary suspect in the case was their daughter, Lizzie. In the subsequent trial, there wasn't enough evidence to convict, and ever since, people have wondered if Lizzie did, in fact, kill her parents, and if she didn't, who did? Learn more about Lizzie Borden and the Borden murders. on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The case of Lizzie Borden is one of the most famous murder mysteries in American history. It was one of the first murder trials which became a media sensation. For the past 130 years, children have learned a rhyme about Lizzie Borden, even if they knew

absolutely nothing else about her or the circumstances of the murders. Before I get into the events of August 4, 1892, I should provide a bit of background on Lizzie and her family. Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on July 9, 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Her birth name was Lizzie, and it wasn't a shortened form of Elizabeth. Her father was Andrew Jackson-Borden. He was of English and Welch descent and grew up rather poor, despite having close relatives who were rather well off.

He became a self-made man by selling furniture and later by buying and developing real estate. He was a respected figure in Falls Church. He was the president of a local bank and was on the board of directors of another bank and several textile factories. Despite being wealthy, he was very frugal with his money. He and his family lived in a nice house, which was far from the nicest house in town and wasn't in the most fashionable neighborhood. It was estimated that at the time of his death, he had a net worth of $300,000, which would

be worth about $10 million today adjusted for inflation. His first wife was Sarah Anthony Morse. The couple had two daughters, Emma, who was born in 1851, and Lizzie. Lizzie's mother died in 1863 when Lizzie wasn't even three years old. Three years later, in 1866, Andrew married again, this time to Abby Dufre Grey. Lizzie and her sister Emma had a strained relationship with their stepmother. Rumors circulated that Lizzie felt Abby was after the family fortune and that Lizzie and Emma resented their father for his miserly ways.

Despite having remarried when Lizzie was young, she always referred to her stepmother as Mrs. Borden, whole life, never mother. Without their mother, Emma became very protective of her younger sister. Lizzie was very active in the local Congregationalist Church and other civic organizations. She taught Sunday school and was involved in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Lady's Fruit and Flower Mission, which delivered fruit and flowers to the sick, and the Christian Endeavor Society, which was a youth organization. Basically, she didn't lead the sort of life that screamed Axe Murderer. There is nothing that any of her acquaintances ever observed that would lead them to believe

that something was wrong with her. Jumped to the year 1892, the fateful year in question. Both Emma and Lizzie are still living with their parents, having never married. Lizzie was 32 years old, and Emma was 41. From outward appearances, things in the Borden household were not well in 1892. For starters, Lizzie's father Andrew gave large real estate gifts to his own. wife, Abby's family members. This angered both of the daughters who felt it confirmed their worst fears about their stepmother. Lizzie had built a roost in a shed outside of the house for pigeons.

In May, her father killed the pigeons that were living there, and this fact became a major point of contention for researchers years later. After their father gave away the real estate to their stepmother's family, the girls were given the home that they grew up in by their father and then sold it back to him for $5,000, the equivalent of about $175,000 today. They moved into the house that they were given briefly before the sale back to their father, and then in July they left Fall River to stay in New Bedford for several weeks. When they returned to Falls River, a week before the murders, Lizzie decided to stay in a boarding house for several days before moving back with the family.

A few other players need to be introduced to the story. One is Bridget Sullivan, a 25-year-old Irish immigrant who was the Borden's live-in maid who had a front-row seat to the drama in the Borden household. The family called her Maggie. And the other person was John Morse, the brother of the deceased mother who had come to visit and was invited to stay in the house the night before the murders. There's controversy surrounding the events of Thursday, August 4, 1892. There was contradictory testimony as to what happened, so the timeline needs to be treated. taken with a grain of salt. Based on Bridget Sullivan's testimony, that morning Mr. and Mrs. Borden, with John Morse, had breakfast around 8 a.m. Lizzie didn't have breakfast with them,

and Emma wasn't in town that day. She was out visiting a friend. Morse left the house to visit one of his nieces in Fall River while he was in town, and he looked into buying a pair of oxen. He was to return to the house for lunch. Mr. Borden left to go on his morning walk and returned home around 10.30 a.m. He was let into the house by the maid Sullivan. He laid down to rest on the sofa. The details after that differ, but the maid Sullivan was supportedly in her room resting after washing windows when around 11.10 a.m. she heard Lizzie shout out, quote, Maggie come quick, father's dead. Someone came in and killed him. Lizzie ordered Sullivan to go get the family physician, Dr. Bowen, who came to the house and pronounced both Abby and Andrew Borden,

dead. The subsequent investigation found that Mr. Borden had been hit with an axe or a hatchet 11 times in the head, and Mrs. Borden had been hit with 18 or 19 blows to the head. It's believed that Mrs. Borden was killed approximately 30 to 90 minutes before Mr. Borden. She was found upstairs in one of the bedrooms. At first, the police thought that it had to be the work of an outsider. However, nothing was stolen from the house, and the Bordons always locked the. front door. Suspicion quickly turned to someone inside the house who had access. Lizzie. One of the biggest reasons why Lizzie became a suspect was her inconsistency in explaining her whereabouts. Lizzie initially stated that she was in the barn at the time her father was

murdered, looking for fishing sinkers and eating pears. However, police found it strange because the loft area where she claimed to have been was covered in dust with no footprints or other signs of recent activity. Lizzie's account of her activities changed multiple times. At one point, she said she had been ironing in the dining room, and then she mentioned that she was in the kitchen. These inconsistencies about her location made her seem evasive or forgetful about her exact whereabouts.

The maid Sullivan contradicted Lizzie's testimony. She claimed that when she let Mr. Board into the house, she heard Lizzie let out a laugh from the upstairs. Witnesses describe Lizzie's reaction. action to the murders as unusually calm. Friends and police officers remarked on her lack of visible distress, which struck some as odd given the brutal nature of the killings. Lizzie reportedly said several strange things after the murders.

When a family friend offered to stay the night for comfort, she responded dismissively, what good would that do? And then reportedly hinted at fearing someone within the household rather than an outside threat. Lizzie was seen burning a dress on the kitchen stove a few, few days after the murders. When asked, she claimed that the dress had been stained with paint and was unusable. This was suspicious to the police, and they had been searching for bloodstained

clothing that might connect her to the crime. At Lizzie's trial, which began in June of 1893, her defense argued that it was natural for her to burn a stained dress. Still, others found it suspicious, especially since she burned it secretly after the police began their investigation. In addition to the inconsistencies, there was also the fact that Lizzie had plenty of motives to kill her parents for the reasons I listed before. The circumstances surrounding the murder made it one of the biggest stories of the year. The press followed every detail, betraying Lizzie as either a victim of cruel suspicion or a cold-blooded killer. The case against Lizzie was far from open and shut, because there was very little in the way of hard evidence. For example, there wasn't a murder weapon.

They did find a broken hatchet in the basement of the house, but only the head with the shaft broken. Moreover, there was no blood on it, and there would have been little time to clean it. Likewise, given the nature of the murders, the murderer should have been covered in blood. However, Lizzie wasn't. It's highly unlikely that she could have washed herself so quickly and changed her clothes without leaving a mess. On June 20th, 1893, both sides rested their cases, and it was put to the jury. It only took them an hour to deliberate and come to a verdict. The jury found Lizzie Borden innocent.

In all fairness to her defense team, which included former Massachusetts Governor George D. Robinson, they did provide ample reasonable doubt, and the evidence in the case was entirely circumstantial. There was no smoking gun, or in this case, a bloody hatchet. All the evidence aside, the jury was made up of 12 men, and they simply had a hard time believing that an upper-class respectable woman could have committed this heinous of a crime. While Lizzie Borden was found not guilty, there was never anyone else who was considered a serious suspect, and no one else was ever brought up on charges for the murder of the Bordons.

Despite being acquitted, Lizzie was ostracized in Fall River. She and Emma inherited their father's estate, but Lizzie lived under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of her life. Emma and Lizzie lived together for many years, even though Lizzie had become a pariah in Fall River. The respectable upper-class society in the city all thought that Lizzie was guilty. Lizzie, on her part, never spoke about the murders again. In 1897, Lizzie was arrested for shoplifting, which became a news story because of her previous trial. In 1905, the sisters had an argument over a party that Lizzie threw for an actress named Nancy O'Neill, and afterwards, Emma left the house and never saw Lizzie again.

Lizzie Borden died on June 1st, 1927, and Fall River at the age of 66. No one attended her funeral. In the years since the trial of Lizzie Borden, there has been a constant fascination with the case. There have been numerous books, movies, and television shows about the Lizzie Borden case, and numerous theories trying to solve it. Some theories hold that the maid was the murderer. Others say that it was her own. uncle who was staying with them that committed the crime.

One theory holds that her sister Emma actually did it, secretly coming back to Fall River and leaving again without getting caught. Still, others think that it might have been a botched robbery by outsiders. However, most people think that the preponderance of evidence points to Lizzie. She is portrayed alternatively as an insane killer or a victim who was justified in her killings. Depending on who's telling the story, she's been painted as a feminist hero, a victim of sexual abuse, a repressed lesbian, or she suffered a rare psychological condition known as a fugue state.

But because she never talked to anybody about it during her entire life, there's no real evidence for any of these theories. One interesting fact, which also can't be verified, came to light years later. Bridget Sullivan, the maid who worked in the house, later married and moved to Butte, Montana. In 1948, supposedly, while she was on her deathbed, she allegedly told her sister that she lied on the witness stand to protect Lizzie from being hung. If true, it would be damning evidence, but the reports of the deathbed confession are also just hearsay. We'll probably never know the truth about who killed Andrew and Abby Borden. While circumstantial evidence does point to Lizzie, there's nothing conclusive to tie her to

the murders. However, if she did it, what we can know for certain is that she didn't give her mother 40 wax. It was, at most, only 19. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the completion Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server.

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