Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 475: Lizzie Borden Part I - 41 Whacks

Episode Date: December 4, 2021

This week we dive into one of the most notorious conundrums in true crime history, the mysterious case of Lizzie Borden and the Axe Murders of 1892.Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

A roast as dark as the night, perfect for fueling the cryptid research and mad ravings required for your podcasting. Don't mind the red eyes, he's just trying to warn you of the bridge! The bridge! Finally, from the caffeine-addled brains of Spring Hill Jack Coffee and Last Podcast on the Let, we bring you Mothman's Red Eye Blend. Yes, delicious Panama beans, go to lastpodcastmerch.com to order yours today! Super tasty, live resin, you really get the delicious, weedy taste, which is what I like, and three different experiences. You go to your local vape store and get it!

Absolutely, thank you all so much for supporting the show. We absolutely love you, can't wait to see you on the road, and get that vape, put it in your brain, and have a good time. And if you want to set your favorite weed store, give them a call and ask for them by name. Last podcast on the left, it's weed! Hail yourselves, everyone! Hail Satan! There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk.

On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Ugh, a whole week off. Ugh, I can't even believe it. Do we even broadcast anymore? Jeez, jeezaloo, a whole week? A whole week? Not talking in a microphone?

Oh, you did talk a lot though. I screamed for five days, yeah, absolutely. You might have talked actually more than in the microphone. Brutish, brutish muscular woman. I'm trying to get my teeth around the words, brutish and muscular big old woman. Are you Vince McMahon trying to cast another wrestler? Are you saying brutish or broodish? Ooh, interesting, brutish mach.

She was kind of, well, she was regular, right? She didn't even care about a lot of things. She did stare eatin' pears a lot. We'll get into the how much fucking pear eating happened in this week. Oh my goodness. But if you have brutish and muscular, I view her as brutish. All right, guys, that's my kind of gal. Welcome to the last podcast on the left.

I am Ben hanging out with Marcus. And Henry Zabrowski, the most brutish man in podcasting. I got a couple of Bordens right here. Oh my. Yes, indeed. Well, it is nice. It is an audio medium, but you always do act out when you kiss your tits, just so Marcus and I can see it and really be in the mood.

I actually want you to, these are more excitems than Bordems. Indeed, what a little nibbler they are. Okay, today's episode, people have been clamoring for it. Probably for like a decade. Maybe you guys got the emails, I'm sure. Oh yeah. We are so excited to talk about, oh my God, there's an axe involved. Lizzie Borden.

Part one. She did it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Scratch that from the record, judge. Scratch that from the record. Getting ahead of yourself there. Getting ahead of yourself. Yep.

The Lizzie Borden axe murders are without a doubt one of the most infamous crimes in our country's history. America's answer to Jack the Ripper in terms of a brutal crime scene. A shallow drama of deadly Victorian spinsters and miserable old misers. A mystery for all time. Cool. She did the crime.

Okay, Henry, once again, we have a whole... You're right, you're right. Big thing, big thing. Two episodes. You're right, yeah. But of course, no piece of media on Lizzie Borden would be complete without a recitation of the schoolyard rhyme recounting the murders, which I would hazard to guess

is most Americans' introduction to true crime when we are but wheat hikes. And I will tell you, I have seen how much documentary footage about Lizzie Borden this week and the two books that we also read to create the spine of this episode. And each one starts with the rhyme. So we have to contractually do it. All right, I want to hear this rhyme. Make it pretend like I had friends growing up.

True crime voice? Do you think true crime voice? Please. All right, all right. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 wax when she saw what she had done. She gave her father 41. 41?

Yes. And what you fucking got. But you know what? Because last podcast on the left, we always add something to the conversation. Sure. We're always a part of bringing true crime, new stories, out of the world, old stories, refreshed, refurbished.

Like, who can't wait to see where Willy Wonka came from? Absolutely. Who can't fucking wait for it? Well, the oompa-loompas, how'd he get those? Who cares? Who cares? But what we decided to do... Bet you he was on a plane with Epstein. I hate...

Yes, honestly, if Willy Wonka of all fictional characters probably was on Epstein's plane. But I decided I wanted to write my own poem for Lizzie Borden. And I'm just... This is all workshopping. All right, because we're trying to... So this isn't perfected in any way. This could just be a colossal nightmare is what you're saying.

Yes, okay. So let's see. All right, here we go. Should I do true crime voice? Sure, sure, sure. I mean, hey, it's your porn, man. Do Nancy Grace? What a pretty dealer's choice.

Lizzie Borden is so ratchet, she killed her stepmom with a hatchet. Whoo! When her pee-paw shouted who, she split his forehead into two. Let us look at the documents. Wow! You know what?

Congratulations, Henry. You are a poet now. And Lizzie Borden, the famous poem, has a second half that nobody ever talks about. What is it? Yeah, the second verse. That's true. It really does.

So I wrote a second verse to my poem. All Fall River thought she the culprit. She was vilified from the pulpit. The town's folks was sure she was a witch, but she's just some, but she's just some regular bitch. Regular bitch, sure. Well, there you go.

I can't believe, you know, it's just like, how did he ever rhyme, witch with bitch? How did he come up with that? That's unbelievable. Try it. Very good. Now, while neither Lizzie's stepmother Abbey nor her father Andrew received anywhere near 40 whacks,

both were certainly killed with a short-handled hatchet very quickly and very quietly in a terribly brutal and messy manner. As a result, the Lizzie Borden case was among the first nationally known American true crime stories in the modern mold. This was not the Wild West escapades of Billy the Kid or the train robberies perpetrated by Jesse James and his gang,

nor was it even the bloody benders of Kansas. Instead, the Lizzie Borden case, in both motive and coverage, could more accurately be compared to true crime cases like the Menendez brothers, or to a lesser extent in that everyone had an opinion on guilt or innocence, Casey Anthony. Yeah, that's why I got a new babysitter for my stupid baby. His name is the Grim Reaper.

Well, he's not going to be... And now give me a television shot, please. Yeah, we'll get you a television show very soon. I do want to point out that Marcus did manage to shoehorn in Billy the Kid, and I am proud of you. Hey, man, that's contemporary. Billy the Kid was like 10, 15 years before that. He was one of the first big American true crime stories,

sir, I take Umbridge, that was not a shoehorn at all. Okay, no shoehorn. The shoe fits. But the difference here is that unlike Casey Anthony or the Menendez brothers, where the conclusions are cut and dry, i.e., they did it, there is still, nearly 130 years later, great debate as to whether or not Lizzie Borden actually did the deed.

To be fair, I think it was cut and wet. Because of all the blood. To that point, as we explore this case, two things will become apparent, and these two things are pointed out by author Bill James in his fantastic book, Popular Crime. Any fucking student of true crime needs to repopulate crime. Awesome.

Let's go through these two points. First, it is nearly impossible to see how Lizzie Borden could have committed this crime. Okay. Second, it is nearly impossible to see how anyone but Lizzie Borden could have committed this crime. This is what I'm saying. Hold on.

You'll see. There's a small window of opportunity. We're going to go through the details of the case. Next week, we're going to talk a little bit more about the trial and how sensational it was and how crazy it was. But this story, every historian that approaches this story, because this has the same kind of gravitas as Jack the Ripper, as any other of these perennial, like now famous true crime stories

that first of all shows that we've always been obsessed with true crime. Absolutely. Every society loves true crime. Always. Every single historian is like, I am going to solve this. And not only do they think that they're going to solve it, but much like Billy the Kid, they all have emotional investments deep

inside of the Lizzie Borden story. Especially the people that own the Lizzie Borden House bed and breakfast that continues to operate to this day. Yeah, man. I want to go so fucking bad. I want that. It's actually on our future vacation list. Fuck yeah, dude.

What a world. Lay on the couch, man. All right. So this is kind of the true crime version of President Bill Clinton arguing what the word is, is. So that's what's happening here. Is it like that? No, because it really, we'll get into the details.

Yeah, we'll get into the details, but it really is. It's impossible either way you slice it. Okay. Now, outside of the analysis of the case in popular crime, we use two other books in research for this series. The first and probably the best is The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson. While the other, also beautifully written,

I'm going to read a couple of excerpts from it, is The Borden Murders by Sarah Miller. These are both very good true crime books. I mean, I must ask from a listener perspective, it seems like these books have more high praise than our usual book. I mean, obviously we always praise the books, but these books seem to be pretty good. They're just great true crime books.

And it's also just a great fucking story. Awesome. Now, to understand The Borden Murders, the local reaction to the crimes, and the public's attitude towards Lizzie, you've got to understand both the time and place in which these murders occurred. Wow.

Trapping back in a tic-tac-tac-tac-tac-tac. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. That's right. That's really good. Yeah, that was good. That was awesome. So we're in the 90s now. We're the New York knickerbuckers.

We're named after pets. We're getting there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting there. It's a basket. Don't cut a hole in the basket. Perfect. It's basketball.

The scene was 1892, Fall River, Massachusetts. At the time, Fall River was the third largest city in the state, and the Bordens were among the most important and powerful families in town, standing alongside other highfalutin clans, like the Britons and the Durfys. The Durfys invented sucking your own dick. That's why it was called the Durfy for so long.

Oh, isn't that something? Andrew Borden, Lizzie's father, was tall, gaunt, severe-looking, and extremely cheap, despite being one of the wealthiest men in town. Did every town need a rich old miser, or is that just every story we've ever covered ever, where it's just like there's always a man with the big cheekbeards, right, because he had the big cheekbeards,

of course. Hangling him crunches at me like, I'll tell you what I know about business. Like, he's like a little ambideaser-scrooge junior. Yeah, I don't know if every town needed one, but it seems like every town had one. We're gonna be flinty and hard as a stone. Well, Andrew Borden started his career as a cabinetmaker

who also made coffins. But such was his reputation, amplified after his death by unscrupulous journalists that it was rumored that he chopped the feet from the dead to fit the corpses into smaller, cheaper caskets. I mean, I can't, you know, my people deserve respect. At some point, at some point, at some point, how big are we?

How big is this coffin gonna be? We're also looking at man hours for digging these graves. Every fucking six inches probably adds a couple hours of work to the grave digger's job, right, at this time period. Is there any reason why we, yeah, I don't particularly care. You can chop me in half and stack me up. Yeah, you're fucking dead. Well, due to both his business acumen

and his thriftiness, Andrew Borden was worth $500,000 in 1892 money when he died, adjusted for inflation, 15 million. Nice. Also, now that I think about it, though, in case of a zombie apocalypse, he may have been on the front lines of saving the human race, zombies without feet.

Well, think about that. They could get on their, they could stomp. Well, they could, but they would still be in pain and they wouldn't be as fast. So I think we actually might need to get rid of all feet post-death just in case. Are you going to just be fixated on this? Are you an inside man for diabetes?

Is it the idea that you want every American to shed their feet? No, but my friend was trying to warn me about my own lifestyle and they sent me how Waylon Jennings died with no feet because of diabetes. That's really very scary. Yeah, he kind of lost his feet. Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, because you don't lose your feet. It's not like losing your shirt. You watch them go and then someone helps come take them from you. Yeah. You don't get to keep them either. No, no, no. It'd be kind of fun if you put them on your hands and you're like, I'm walking with my hands.

Yeah, it's Macal, but it is fun. But even though Andrew Borden was one of the wealthiest men in town, he wore threadbare ties and quote, this is a report from the time, shockingly bad hats. Yeah. Whoa, whoa, big media. There's some hats out there, man.

You've been surprised because like, especially his swatka-shaped dinner hat, there was no reason for it because at the time, it was a symbol for good luck. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the time of hats. Like, if you're going to be a hat guy, this is the time that you want to live in, 1892.

Yeah, and it's your stove, pipe hat. There's a lot of hats going around. I believe at the time it was a proper gentleman had to wear a hat. Yeah, of course, until Kennedy. But to be fair. Let me see what fucking happened I am. Yeah, he should have worn a helmet.

But to be fair, Andrew was known as courteous, industrious, temperate, a gentleman, an old-fashioned Yankee to the core, if a bit thin-lipped. Yeah. Now, in keeping with his somewhat miserly ways, the boredom home was modest compared to Andrew's wealth. Because modest is a very nice way of putting it.

It was like the smallest house on the block. Okay. Yeah. 92 Second Street was a two-story home centered in the busy thoroughfare of town. The only luxuries, central heating, and a flushable toilet in the cellar. Cool.

Yo, you tell me that's not, that's amazing. For back then, 1890? That is what you need. Yeah. At this point in time running water was a pretty, actually having running water in your sink, it was pretty common by this time. And electricity was around as well.

Yeah. It was actually very cheap to just have a fucking shitter in the cellar. Like he didn't even build. Did they have electric cars too? Now this would have been just fine if Andrew lived alone. Or even with just his wife. But the boredom home was also full to the brim

with unmarried daughters. Brutish, muscular woman. I actually think it's kind of refreshing to hear the humility of a very wealthy man just living it in kind of a modest home. This is how you live though, Kissel. I can see why you think that this is cool. But he had millions of dollars.

He had plenty of money to do whatever he wanted. And at some point, what's the point of having the money if you don't live in any way, shape, or form that's above what primitive people are living, especially at the time? To lord it over people. Ah. I forget.

Well, besides Andrew and his second wife, Abby, the boredom home also housed older sister, Emma, 41, and Lizzie, 32 years old at the time of the murders. Cool. And based on inflation, that makes her about 75 years old by today's time. Yes. Damn.

Okay. Wow. Now, this house was built in the old style with no hallways, meaning one had to walk through one bedroom to get to another bedroom, which served to only heightened tensions in an already cramped space. Like imagine, it's living in a railroad house,

not a railroad apartment. And it's cool when everybody's 25 and hot, and then you got a job together down to the shore, and then you have to come back. And also, there's the jacuzzi, but then they have the jacuzzi they can go out and they can do all that kind of stuff. They can all fuck and stuff like that.

But when everybody's just covered in lycra and all the boneware that they had to do, and they all reek, and then again, it is just two don't be daughters. They probably stunk on Jersey shore as well. Yeah. I mean, wow, with like cologne and matizmo. Oh, my God.

I was at a bar in this gale set down next to me, and let me just say she was covering up something. Oh, yeah, it does happen. It's called a whore's bath. Oh, kid. Now, that's certainly a trend in the airports lately, is the cologne and louis shower, or changing clothes for days at a time.

It adds layers to the human experience. It's like you bring in a human experience. It's 4D. Yeah. Now, as I said, Abby was Andrew's second wife and was therefore not Lizzie and Emma's birth mother. Their mother was Sarah.

She died in 1863 of quote, uterine congestion and disease of the spine. All of these illnesses just sound so much worse than whatever cancers we have now. Like, you have a spine disease. What does it even mean? They don't know. In the bones?

It's not good. Do you have a disease in the bones? Uterine congestion? Does it mean you have an old baby leg stuck in there? Got to get a traffic cop. That's all I know. You got to get the congestion out. If you have the miscarriage and it just sits in there,

and then it slowly, maybe you can build another baby on top of it. We're not doctors. I don't know. We're not. Yeah, no idea. No, I don't think you can. I think you die.

Well, all right. Okay. I don't. Well, three years later, Andrew married Abby Gray, a short and plump woman of 37 years whose family was in dire financial straits, which meant that they very much welcomed

the addition of a wealthy man who was willing to take Abby off their hands. Remember, this is Victorian times. So 37 years old, poor family. It was very much like in the carts for her to just die one day. Of course. And are you willing to just come and dress, bathe, and feed a 60-year-old man

that will take care of you for the rest of your life, right? That sounds fun. I can't wait for that. I mean, at the time, he was also in his 30s. He was also in his late 30s. Oh, that's not bad. They all just look older. Yeah, they just look older.

Yeah. He was in his 60s when he died, but at this point, this is like 30 years before that. Okay. But she was described as grayish and unnoticeable. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah, people.

We think we're mean now. Her maiden name was Gray. Oh. That's what she gets. Now, from what it seems like, Andrew married Abby basically because he needed a housekeeper and someone to look after his two young daughters, because Lizzie was only three years old when her mother died.

As such, the boarding home was not one filled with love. Rather, it's stunk of unhappiness, marked by the kind of tension that comes when three adult women, ages 32 to 65, and a sour old cheapskate, live in a relatively small two-bedroom house with little to no privacy. This just sounds like a sitcom from the 1970s.

I wish it was there. I want to see this. Sounds like the waning moments of Hugh Hefner's life. Concerning Lizzie's relationship with her stepmother, there was never any violence between them or even threats of violence. Lizzie had once called Abby mother, but after a mysterious disagreement

five years before the murder, Lizzie merely called her Mrs. Borden. But simply, Abby and Lizzie just didn't like each other. Maybe they had one of those scenarios where Abby came down and saw Lizzie with her boyfriend. I know what you're gonna do. She just heard how to please the boyfriend in a way, and then they kind of come together, and then it gets complicated.

Because she's just chatting down on that fucking dick, and all of a sudden the girlfriend's just there watching. But then she's supposed to want to eat her asshole. The unique creativity that comes from the Zabrowski mind, unbelievable. Yeah, that is true. I guess at those videos, we never see what comes after. We never see the next day.

We never see the next dinner. Depends on who gets the load. Sometimes they share it, and then you're like, oh, that's a family. Yes, sure. Andrew, on the other hand, was reasonably well loved by Lizzie. While he didn't wear a wedding ring,

he did wear a thin gold band on his finger that Lizzie had given him. Which, of course, led to spurious rumors that Andrew and Lizzie had an incestuous relationship that led to the axe murders. But as far as anyone knew, Lizzie never spoke ill of her father.

Now, by this point in their life, neither sister seemed likely to marry. Lizzie was put in the spinster category after failing to snag a man by 22, and Emma at 41 had long passed the Victorian marrying age. Now, I know this also lends towards the idea

that Lizzie was some form of secret lesbian, but I don't think every spinster in Victorian times was a secret lesbian. No, I don't think so. I think just some of them just looked at the dudes at the time and that they were really, they were gross. Many secret lesbians just married, you know? Yeah, they just have kids.

But since Andrew was so wealthy, neither Emma nor Lizzie had anything to worry about financially for the rest of their days and in fact indulged a pheromone by their father, even if they had to ask two or three times before they got what they wanted. He was cheap, but with his daughters,

he'd let the purse strings go a little bit. As such, both women lived the extraordinarily dull lives of Victorian women of leisure. Or should I say women of leisure? Is that bad? I just don't know, man.

It's just like you literally, if you read about this, what Lizzie's story was of the day, there was so much pear-eating. And talking about pears and being like... Our pears were in season this year. Not like our neighbors, the McCunties.

The McCunties, their pears were dry. Yeah, well, that's not the kind of pear you want. Well, let me tell you about Lizzie's life. What Lizzie busied herself with. Mostly, it was charitable works. She served as a secretary for the local fruit and flower mission.

She was treasurer of the local Young Women's Christian Temperance Union. There's some videos that'll be shot inside of there. Sure, absolutely. And she was a teacher at a Sunday school for Chinese immigrants. Put another way, she was a prudish

square. She was a functional part of society. She seems like she was doing okay. I would say that's what it is. She's a square. She's a square. She's a Sunday school teacher and she's a part of... Do you know what a temperance union has been? I think they're not an alcohol.

They don't like alcohol. I know, I actually... The Ken Burns Prohibition I was screaming at certain people that I should have respected. I also understand that men were getting too drunk. You were hammered watching a documentary about prohibition when they threw out the booze.

It's just when you see them throw out all the booze, it's just like, really? Wow! So mean. But while Emma and Lizzie usually got whatever they wanted, stepmother Abby had a lesser status in the household and was barely an entity at all.

When she and Andrew were murdered, people had a great deal of things to say about Andrew, good and bad. But nobody had anything to say about Abby. It's almost like she didn't exist in a way. Because it was, nobody really talked about her

in any way, shape, or form. Everybody mentioned her outside of the house. They didn't really... She just kind of putts it around. It's kind of a real question here. All the descriptions of the Victorian era are gray, unnoticeable. Do you think it's because the world was gray?

There's no color TV. Did people just not have creative imaginations? Do they not even... Yeah, of course they did. Of course, Oscar Wilde. There are people who had imaginations at the time. There are painters and writers and poets. But largely, people weren't having fun.

Right. And you're also talking about, like, these are the upper classes that we're talking about here. We're talking about the wealthiest of the wealthy. Like, the people that were, you know, working in the factories and shit like that, like, they did not live like this. This is not their life. No, they worked until they died.

They worked until they died. Yeah. We're talking, like, upper crust, like, horrific... Like, just people that live very proper and things are the way they are. There was a whole book about a woman who fucking killed her, The Awakening. The woman who fucking walked into the sea

and killed herself because she couldn't handle... Spoilers! Spoilers here! It's like 120 years old. Yeah. But that's the thing. People considered Abby's murder more disturbing than her husband's.

Because, as author Sarah Miller put the attitudes of the townsfolk, Abby wasn't worth killing because there was no angle to her murder. Jesus. So they could see killing Andrew. Like, they could see killing Andrew. Like, well, Andrew might have had enemies.

He was rich and so on and so forth. But why the fuck are you going to kill Abby? Why are you going to kill this woman who is of no consequence to anyone? So if you're Abby, you're like, thank you? Thank you? I guess I get to live because I'm not worth being killed. I'm worth being killed, dammit!

And she did. So what happened below Abby Borden was the family servant, an Irish Catholic named Bridget Sullivan. Bridget was called Maggie by the Bordens because their previous servant had been named Maggie and Abby didn't want to learn a new name.

Oh, my God. That's what Marcus's grandfather did with his dogs. Yeah. That's easier with it on. Shadow, one through four. That makes sense though. But for dogs, the thing is... this is a story that we'll get into

more so next week, but there's a lot of anti-Irish racism in this story. That's really interesting because this is about the rise of the Irish coming to America because it's also the first time we had a bunch of Irish cops. They were doing like, there was all this

weird shit. The thing about Bridget Sullivan thing is that she was from Ireland and she came and they looked down on the Irish, just swarthy, dirty, penguin people, people for the half-thoughting, half-thinking troglodytes. But it's not

so. We know now, thanks to science, modern science, we know now that the Irish think just as fast as everyone else. I'm happy that you stopped that conversation where it can oftentimes go. Now as far as previous crimes that the Borden home went, there was

one daring daylight robbery. Wait a minute, you called the Irish swarthy. They are the opposite of swarthy. Do you know what swarthy means? At the time, they thought of them as so, because compared to Victorian English people, they're swarthy.

I'm not even sure what swarthy means. They lived under the ground, they lived in tunnels under the ground in sub-Duranian worlds and they worshiped trees. I'm not sure. But do you know what swarthy means? It means you're all full of it.

No, it means dark skinned. You called the Irish, the palest people on earth, you called them dark skinned. Black Irish. All right, you know what, let's just move on. Yes, none of us know what that word means. I do.

I know you Marcus. You wrote jokes, okay? Now as far as previous crimes that the Borden home went, there was one daring daylight robbery. The year before the murders, Andrew Borden reported that the house had been burgled in the middle of the day when

everyone was at home. The thief picked the lock on Andrew's desk with a nail and got away with $80 in cash, $25 in gold, Abby's gold watch, and a couple of horse car tickets. Now the robbery was never solved, but it was rumored that the

horse car tickets were traced back to Lizzie, which prompted Andrew to shut down the investigation. She was a little bit... Rumor. There's rumor. Rumor that Lizzie Borden was a... She liked to do a little Winona Ryder style. She would take a little bit.

Like, thieving for fun. Well then, in the spring just before the murders, the Borden barn was broken into twice and a flock of pigeons were stolen. Fuck! How the hell do you do that? You gather them up. They're in cages. You get it, you gather them

and you just carry the cages away. Great, got you. It seems like a very loud burglary, but that's okay. Another rumor is that Lizzie kept the pigeons as pets and Andrew beheaded them as punishment for some unknown transgression, which prompted

the murders. But you know, these a lot of stories that kind of also came up in the Menendez Brothers trial, right? These types of things where the story tried to come up, trying to find a motive, trying to find why would they kill, why would they do it? Yeah, this is just one of many made up stories you're going to hear over the course of the series. Every journalist in the country

tried to create any motive, no matter how ridiculous, to try to explain how someone like Lizzie could kill her parents with an axe! Yes! Fuck yeah! Sick rift.

No stairway. Fuck yeah. Now the days and weeks leading up to the brutal murders of the Bordens held a few strange occurrences that either have nothing to do with the murders, or everything to do with the murders. I feel like we're talking JFK again.

Yeah, deeply confused. First of all, elder sister Emma Borden had been out of town for an extended period of time. That meant that the witness pool had shrunk considerably. But she was also considered an agoraphobe that had never really left the house up until that point, and

she randomly kind of decided to go visit friends brought for certain periods of time. That's very difficult for someone suffering with agoraphobia. Yeah, and so it's almost like she was getting out to help set up either her alibi or the fact that she may have been planning this shit. Whatever. Okay.

We'll get there. Then, on August 2nd, 1892, two days prior to the murders, in the highest heat of the summer, the Bordens took a chance on some leftover swordfish for dinner. Oh, this might not be good. That resulted in the elder Bordens

and Bridget the maid taking turns running backyard to vomit. Lizzie, however, was only lightly affected. Fifth, apparently had running food going on in the house. I guess that was very common at the time, where they had like a boiling pot of simmering

mutton stew that had been there for four days, right? So they were eating that up until that started making them sick. I guess that's how they know it's done. Well, the mutton was after. Yeah. Oh, that was after? Yeah, the mutton was after the swordfish, yeah. Hot-ass old mutton, man. So, did you really know the proper way to store

food at this time? Well, I mean, they didn't have it. They lived in an un-air-conditioned house. It was the summertime. It's just a fucking hot add. There was no fridge. There was no ice box. Like, they're just eating fish that had been left out for a couple of days. And it's obvious that that was the culprit.

But Abby Borden was suspicious of her malady because Lizzie hadn't gotten anywhere near as sick as she and Andrew. Abby became convinced that they had been poisoned. So she went to her doctor, Dr. Barry Bowen, to complain.

Yes, yes, let's take a look. Let's take a look at your uterus. This must be removed. Nothing to do with it. The doctor told her that it was probably the fish, but the night after the swordfish, everyone ate mutton. And again, everyone got sick except Lizzie.

I mean, while Lizzie's just like, so I got a problem because I got trash canned stomach. I've been building up. I've been building up a resistance to trash and gunk. It's possible, she does. Honestly, look at you, kissle, you never get sick. Never get sick. That's true.

Replacing Emma's place at the table, however, was Lizzie's uncle, John Morris. John Morris had traipsed into town unannounced the day before the murders. This is just a message to our Zoomer listeners, some of your younger people. There used to be a time when there was no such thing as

like a thing called like a texture. Or like any sort of information and people used to do this thing where they called visiting you. Where they used to arrive at your house. They used to just come to your house and you wouldn't even know. They would just knock at the door and then they'd just be there. And like now, obviously, that is a social crime

of the highest order. But then that's how people arrived at your house. You just wake up one day and then you hear a knock and then your brother is there. Yeah, and then you have to feed him? You're like, you're made to feed him? Yeah. Well, John Morris was known as a quote unquote

horse trader, meaning he wasn't unsavory, but not necessarily trustworthy either. Still a judgment in this world. A lot of judgment. That's Victorian England. That's all it is. Okay. Actually, it's not England. It's Victorian times, but it's America, which is more judgy, I would say.

Yeah, I think so. We do. Well, the English are pretty judgy. Yeah. Especially now. Yeah. Well, John Morris would stay the night at the boarding house and the guest bedroom the night before the murders. But would leave to run errands the next morning, right before the murders occurred.

There's got to be some relaxing to that. You got your big horse boots on and you got your pipe and you got there and you got again, you also have a cheek beard and then you sit by a roaring fire going like, so amazing it is. How was it varying? And then like, that's fun. You could just come in and you eat somebody else's mutton. Yeah. I've seen someone else's mutton.

I've seen that video as well. So this guy is kind of the Cato Kalen of the story, thus far. Very much so. He happens to be a Cato. The best slash worst house guest ever. Now, according to one witness, Lizzie had allegedly gone to a drugstore the day before the murders to ask an employee

named Eli Benz if she could buy 10 cents worth of Prusik Acid. Diluted Prusik Acid was used to treat a variety of maladies, but in concentrated form, which was how Lizzie was trying to buy it, Prusik Acid was a

transparent, colorless poison. How does the poison, when you just make it less, not be poisoned and become medicine? I mean, if you drink an entire bottle of booze, you'll die of alcohol poisoning. But if you take one shot. Unless you become an outlaw

country singer. Yeah. Well, Lizzie said that she needed the Prusik Acid to treat a seal skin cape that had been eaten by insects and Prusik Acid was indeed sometimes used to kill moths. But Eli Benz, master

of his own little pharmaceutical kingdom, said that he refused the request, saying Prusik Acid could only be sold under doctors orders. Now, I can't sell you this medicine. But I can remove your uterus. Sir, this is nothing to do with that.

Now, later this supposed attempted purchase would be used to demonstrate that Lizzie Borden had a murderous mind, especially when it was combined with the instances of the elder Borden's getting sick. And she very well may have had that murderous

mind if she did indeed do the deed. Yeah, she did it. But we just don't know Henry, we just don't know. But Eli Benz only came forward when the Lizzie Borden story reached a fever pitch and it's possible that he mistook Lizzie for

someone else. Another brutish muscular woman. Could be. The wife of a police inspector later said that around this same time, she went to that same drug store to test Eli Benz on whether he would illegally furnish poison to a customer

without a prescription. And she was indeed refused. Same exact story that Eli Benz said happened with Lizzie Borden. So it could be that Eli Benz confused his Victorian ladies and just wanted to be a part of the story. You know, during the opioid

crisis, we could have used more Eli Benz. The fact that he actually said no, I'm not going to sell you this thing because he's going to kill somebody. Yeah, he did. He did try. Good for him. But again, we will see. After the fact, a lot of people joined in because oh, for

River. They wanted to be a part of the story so much and they really like, and they to this day, they love being the center of this. You know, it's the third biggest city in Massachusetts. Was Yeah. Cool. But concerning Lizzie's supposed murderous

mind, she certainly had violence of a kind on the brain before the killings. The night before the murders, she visited her friend Alice Russell and told her that their milk had been poisoned, which is why her family was at that moment, horkin in the backyard.

This is the first time they all ever had a group hork after fucking five day dinner. I guess so. I hope it doesn't happen that much. Lizzie also, very coincidentally, I might add, told of the previous daylight break-ins, a shadowy figure. She'd seen Sculkin

around the back of the house one night and an argument she overheard her father having with an unknown gentleman over a rental property. But this is Lizzie's story. Right, so Lizzie's like, he must have been some form of Portuguese.

He's some kind of Portuguese man. Maybe an Irish person could be. This is what she's telling Alice Russell and she added that she was afraid that somebody would do something to her father because he was so discourteous to people.

You know how my father's a fucking asshole? Yeah, actually, it's just so weird that you told me all that. He's a jerk and everybody hates him, and I know. It's crazy. Because I'm the president of the Everybody Hates My Dad Society. It's just so weird you just told me all that random shit I didn't need to hear about.

Yeah, I read it down. Use the times. The time stamp it. Yeah, when all that happened, and here's my schedule for tomorrow. That's totally makes sense. Do you say I'm brutish? No. Thank you. And let's be brutish. Yeah, come on.

Absolutely takes all types. Now if one is inclined to think that Lizzie did it, then this very much sounds like she was laying the groundwork to place the blame of a murder elsewhere. And as it was, the murders did indeed occur the morning after this conversation

with Alice Russell. Now the timeline for the Borden murders is muddy, if only because the events surrounding it are so mundane. In short, Lizzie Borden said she spent the morning of the murders ironing

handkerchiefs and searching for lures in anticipation of a fishing trip that wasn't even going to happen until that following Friday. Well, it's like it's made up. Because she said that she spent the morning being like, I had my handkerchiefs

and they were all sorts of wrinkly and I was like, mmm, just bumming me out. I need these to be perfectly straight so I could hork my fucking mucus into it. That's for certain. Oh well, I got some

iron somewhere in the fucking shed. I guess I'll just go root around in the shed for an hour and a half. You never know when fishing's gonna come. I mean, it's not a made up day. It's just a regular day for a woman with

nothing to fucking do. I mean, she really did wander around the yard just picking up pears from the pear tree and saying, oh, that one looks nice. That's how that one dude discovered fucking gravity.

He was a scientist. Newton. That one dude Newton, but I hate pears. What do you mean you hate pears? I hate pears. Oh, I like the stewed pear. Just eat a fucking pear, bro. I hate pears.

You're a fucking fancy boy. I don't like pears. How did you become such a fancy boy growing up in fucking Queens? He's always been a fancy boy. I know, he's the most fancy pears in Queens. Pears are a fancy fruit, you fucking bullshit. But pears are for the people. Oranges are for the people. You don't even like pears. No, pears are not a fancy fruit. Pears are a fancy fruit. We could do this

all the time. I'm gonna Google. I'm gonna Google. Are pears a fancy fruit? Are pears? You think Google has a fucking answer for that? I want to see what it says. Are pears a fancy fruit? What are fancy pears? The pears the Prince of Fruits? Jesus Christ.

People are saying right here it's called the Prince of Fruits. This is where we want to talk about the dangers of the internet, right? So if you ask a very pointed question like that, you will get the answer that you want. Yeah, exactly. The Prince of Fruits. You just need to know when to eat them. That's what they're saying here. That's when you don't talk about how fancy is that.

There's only tiny window to eat them. You just got told, because you just were always fucking Googling fancy things. And your computer knows that you want to see fancy shit. So it tells you that yes, pears are fancy, Mr. Fancy Boy. Whatever, man. Whatever. I hold my truth. You just proved why journalism is dead.

At least I served a purpose today. Well really, we don't have a solid idea of exactly how the murders happened or even exactly when they happened. What we do know is that at about 11 a.m. on August 4th, 1892 Bridget the maid was washing

the windows outside of the house when she heard Lizzie cry out in horror. Oh! Oh no. She must have found a bad pair. Oh! Fuck! I hate this bad pair! Oh no.

Lizzie said that father was hurt and needed the doctor. So while Bridget ran to fetch Dr. Bowen, a neighbor named Adelaide Churchill spotted Lizzie in distress. Oh! She was laughing her ass into some bad pairs. She asked what was the matter

and Lizzie said, quote, Oh Mrs. Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed father. Okay, I don't... Immediately. Churchill asked where Lizzie's stepmother Abby was and Lizzie replied that Abby had left a note

saying she had gone to see a sick friend. Lizzie also quickly added that father must have an enemy because the milk had been poisoned the night before. I saw him coming he had a little cane in a green top hat and he said something about his precious

coins. Oh, you're referencing Warwick Davis in the leprechaun. Is that correct, Lizzie? Yeah. You didn't even know that movie came out, did you? Whoa! It's 100 years from now. Warwick's a fine name. Yes, it is. Warwick Davis is a fine actor as well. Give the guy a little bit of fucking respect, would you, Hollywood?

Yeah. Well, soon Dr. Bowen arrived in a carriage and entered the Borden home. Lizzie told him that her father had been stabbed or hurt. Then took him to the sitting room where she'd first found the body. What Bowen saw was Andrew Borden's corpse

lying on a sofa sideways with a face so smashed that Dr. Bowen didn't recognize him. As Sarah Miller put it, his features were a pulp of chipped bone and razor flesh. He seems to be kind of hurt.

You need to get a band-aid or something. He really does, doesn't he? He must have forgotten his hat or something because there's a hole there now! He must have fallen down! I have never heard of someone's eye being chopped in half. That's the thing too about the nature of this crime.

The crime scene photos that come out about this is that his fucking, it's very similar to the O.J. Simpson style of murder where it's a rage-based, his fucking head was completely caved in by either, up to debate, is it a brand new axe?

We don't know. It was described by one police officer as raw meat. As far as where Lizzie said she was during this most terrible murder, she said she was in the barn looking for a piece of iron

for a fishing sinker. You never know when you're going to end up on a lake with your pillows, with a bunch of other girls in a big boat! You gotta always have them on you! What a great alibi. But she returned to the house

when she heard a strange noise and that she said is when she found the body of her father. Contrary to later reports of coldness and eerie calm, Lizzie Borden was actually quite upset immediately after finding her father's body. But there was another

more disturbing question that took about 30 minutes to even ask, where was Abby Borden? No one even thought about her. This is the truth. No one even brought her up. Well, Mrs. Churchill did ask like, where's Abby?

But then they immediately forgot about her for another half hour. That's the wife. That's the wife. Yeah, the stepmother. Bridget and Mrs. Churchill decided they couldn't wait until a more police showed up to look for Abby

so they began searching the rest of the house knowing full well that the murderer might still be in the home. This is 11 a.m. in broad daylight and not one of the busiest section of town.

Yeah, they're right off the main street. It's a tiny house. Didn't have that on my 1892 calendar. Really good. Also accurate because I don't know if they played bingo yet. No, maybe not. The idea that this man was hiding on the ceiling

like he was where do you think this guy was? Like this is the thing, you can't just go where was he going to go? Let's get into it. The murderer, whether they were already miles away or sitting downstairs was done with their grisly business for the day.

Mrs. Churchill crept to the top of the stairs, peered through the spindles of the railing and saw a thick black pool of drying blood. I got blood here. Abby Borden was found upstairs in the guest bedroom

on the other side of the bed, lying face down in a puddle of coagulated blood. The coagulation was key because it told investigators that Abby had been killed first. Must have been another pretty catastrophic slip and fall.

Someone's got to stop leaving all these piles of jelly everywhere. He seems like a lot of crazy murders happening in our house. It does seem kind of suspicious. It's just a little suspicious. Arm wrestle me to see if I did it.

Come on. Now when Abby's body was turned over it was found that while her wounds were less gruesome to the eye she'd actually been the victim of more blows. 18 whacks. All to the back, 14

on one side of her head, four on the other. The cut in this cluster were so near to one another that they had effectively become crushing wounds smashing shards of bone into Mrs. Borden's brain as though she'd been clubbed by a blunt instrument.

The bleeding was so profuse she was soaked half way to the waist, clear through to her underclothes. Even the canvas backing of the carpet on which she lay was saturated with blood. To be honest when I first saw her there I thought she was just sucking up a bunch of buried juice that was on the ground

and I didn't want to interrupt my sweet stepmother who I aided. Another totally valid excuse. Now when Abby was first found part of her body was wedged under the bed making the corpse not necessarily easy to miss but not

necessarily hard to see either. And while she had no defensive wounds the position of her injuries suggested that she took at least one whack while facing her attacker. When you get hit with an axe like let's say she got hit in the back

you got to pull the axe up out for the second blow and then they turn around going ohhhh! Well that's the thing though. Axe or hatchet. I'm thinking hatchet much more likely. Axe just sounds better in a nursery rhyme. That's why I updated the poem.

And I rhyme with hatchet. The hatchet and the axe are kindreed spirits though. They are, one smaller that's larger. I do own both but I like my hatchet more. It's fantastic information. Can we chat to Carolina?

Please go. She's very happy. That's exactly what he would say. Well Abby had fallen to the floor during the attack with such force that there were bruises on her nose and left eye and her arms were up around

her face suggesting but not proving that she was flailing and kicking on the floor as the final blows fell. Basically creating a lot of noise which seems to be a thing that no one's really talking about. We'll get to this. Quite possibly creating a lot of noise.

Now you'd think the house would be swarming with police at the first suggestion of a prominent businessman and his wife being so brutally murdered but these murders happen to coincide with an annual policeman's excursion to a nearby amusement park.

So most city cops were out attending vaudeville shows and riding the ferris wheel. They had a set day where all of the cops went to the amusement park. They would go all the cops in town would go to an amusement park. This is real. Except for you. A skeleton

crew that duds were left behind. Fuck you, you're not going to the fucking amusement park. You didn't get your permission slip signed. They were doing wheelbarrow races. They were playing tag full uniform. They were passing their guns around. Did you end up trying them? As such, most investigators

didn't return until late afternoon. With funnel cakes and big teddy bears. You know they were fucking hammered. Oh yeah. Only five officers. And like I said, the duds that were in town to handle the massive investigation that lay before them. Now first they

questioned Lizzie but not to see if she'd done it. Rather they wanted Lizzie to tell them if she'd seen any Portuguese men hanging around the neighborhood. It's the Portuguese. Just randomly just going to throw that out there. This was one of those we had fun race terrors throughout all

of these time periods were like one new race that you showed up and be like that's the new villain. And then they were like this week it was Portuguese. That is fun. Well in Fall River in 1892 the Portuguese were the first to blame if anything unsavory happened because being swarthy

Roman Catholic immigrants because Portuguese can be swarthy. Sure, sure. It made them suspicious to the lily white Protestant ruling class. You look different from me. You're Roman Catholic therefore you are capable of murder more than I am.

We were really suspicious of a long time of any other race that could swivel their hips side inside. Like anybody that had an innate sense of rhythm we did not enjoy. With such two Portuguese men were arrested in Fall River on the day of the murders. One for

withdrawing his life savings of $60 and another for asking directions to New York City. What were they arrested for? Because it made it look like they were on the run. Just being on the lazy cop work. It's a part of the fabric of our country.

But while police were questioning Lizzie her uncle John Morris returned to find the gruesome crime scene thinking that he was just coming back to have lunch with his brother-in-law. And I must be served lunch. I am visiting. I suspect there will be a full lunch

mate and there will be soup and tobacco will be stuffed and I will be allowed to put my poor shit-laden boots somewhere inside your mouth. The guy heads up put a note on the door just like just so you know when you come in there's going to be a lot of blood and stuff like that. Now in 1892 the idea of identifying

criminals from hair, clothing, fibers or even fingerprints was unheard of. Fingerprint identification wouldn't be used in the United States for almost another 20 years. 1911. That's when fingerprinting started in the U.S. Therefore

evidence that could have easily led the investigation away from or towards Lizzie Borden was overlooked, destroyed or completely unidentified. It's said that if the Lizzie Borden murder had happened like say anytime in the late 20th century

we would know who did it immediately. Well it's because it was such a brutal crime. It was a very brutal murder so obviously there would have been something left behind but who knows. Well I'm sure we'll get into it but it seems like the person that did it would be covered in blood. Well that's going to be a big

fucking, we're going to call that a sticking point. That's a sticking point. Okay great good to know. The thing was Lizzie was cognizant enough to know that there was something in the house that could be seen as evidence against her. She pulled Dr. Bowen aside

and told him that she'd been menstruating and as such there was a pale of blood. It's okay. It's okay. I'm saying okay it might be a suspicious amount of blood came out of me I'm talking like

about a gallon of menstrual blood came out of me and I think some of it had a face. Okay well thanks for telling me. Again I'm not a doctor I just work at the gas station. Thanks for that. Well because of this there was a pale of bloodstained menstruating

cloths soaking in the cellar. Now one could say that these bloody rags were not menstrual towels but rather the implements used by Lizzie to clean herself of blood after the murders. But Lizzie Borden was also very much menstruating. Nice.

And it was common practice. Sweet. Fuck yeah bro. That's a mental. And it was common practice at the time for ladies to soak their menstruation cloths in buckets in the cellar. Sure. It's not weird. No no.

In the end though it was the timeline that placed suspicion on Lizzie. So let's take it step by step. Okay. After gathering all the pertinent information police speculated that Abby and Andrew Borden still suffering from illness ate breakfast with Uncle John Morse

at 7 a.m. At 8.45 Morse left to visit relatives and Lizzie ate breakfast alone shortly after. At 9.15 Andrew left the house to go about his business while Abby told Bridget to wash the windows outside.

Which also we want to do this clue style Bridget was super upset because she was forced to go clean all the windows which is extremely heavy hot work do. And of course on the hottest day of the fucking year. They wouldn't even refer to her as her own freaking name which at some point

must be demeaning and you must get really fucking pissed off. The suspects are everywhere. By 9.30 Abby was upstairs in the guest bedroom making Uncle John's bed. Oh make your own fucking bed Uncle John. There she was

struck by 18 blows and killed. Now Abby Borden was a woman of stout stature and it stands to reason that a 200 pound body hitting the floor would have made some noise. But neither Lizzie nor Bridget saw or heard

anything. Especially a Victorian housewife getting stabbed to death with the fucking X right because I think she'd be going ahhhhhhh That's my impersonation. Or perhaps you're so in shock you actually don't make any sound to do. Absolutely not because they say that the remember it's from the back.

Like if someone walks up to you and sinks in X into the back of your head you're not gonna fucking react at all. I don't know but maybe if we did a $100 page here on tier we could maybe try it with one of our incredible listeners. Just to see what it comes out to. It's a great suggestion. Don't do it. Just don't do it.

No don't do it please. Again the only way you get on the show. We haven't said it's here yet. We haven't. The only way you get on the show is if you find an alien. Yeah that's it. We still haven't gotten any fucking takers on six flags on us. It's a million bucks. That's all it is. And then when you provide parking

and lunch. 1045 over an hour after Abby had been killed. Andrew returned home to find the door had been bolted from the inside. Bridget then rushed to unlock the door and uttered a colorful

exclamation. Pashaaw. What was that? Pashaaw? Yeah Pashaaw is what she said which in the time it like god damn it. Oh man. That's the thing back then like you know it's the whole thing with like Deadwood. Like they did not say fuck that much. Everyone would have been

dad gummit. Yeah. And so on and so forth. Got you. Come sarnit. Yeah. But this Pashaaw elicited laughter from Lizzie who was descending the stairs. This is important. She was descending the stairs from the front

landing which lay opposite the guest bedroom where Abby laid dead already. Okay. Andrew entered the house and went to his bedroom passing by that same guest bedroom without noticing his dead wife inside.

Nobody even looked at her. Nobody cared about her existence at any way she performed. It's like prison when you walk by a cell you're not supposed to look into it because you never know what you're going to see but this is a family and it's just kind of sad. You normally would see them you should see them. Yeah. Well it was said that they all pretty much lived separate lives

but Andrew then came back downstairs and did ask Lizzie where's Abby? Okay. And Lizzie said that she'd gone out after leaving a note. Yeah. She said something about like these two guys who came from Brazil that we're going to go down

to the fair together. We're going to get where the cops are. You know how they love all the Portuguese guys. Sure. And all run trade on her or something. I didn't really read the note. Just really bizarre you're telling me that. Andrew then went to the sofa and laid down for his morning nap

while Bridget went back outside to finish cleaning the windows. Sometime between 1045 and 1145 the assailant attacked and killed Andrew Borden again without anyone noticing then the mysterious assailant seemingly

disappeared into thin air. But the one thing that's also again weird about the state of the corpse when they found it is that if he was there taking a nap why were his boots on? Well you took a nap in boots. Yeah you took a nap in books. But not at the time. At the time you undressed.

This is a thing. This is one of those little sticking points. But on the other hand Henry there was also no signs of a struggle. There was no signs of anything. Yeah like we might have known his assailant and didn't see it coming until all of a sudden she was like and here's time

for your hand daddy. I mean I feel like even if I know you but if I saw you with an axe I would be like okay what's up. I'm running real fast. I'm the fastest man within 10 feet. You ought to be a blur to you. I'm like quick silver. That is true and this whole house is like 10 feet from end to end.

It's tiny. And here's where things start to go sideways. See Lizzie by all accounts was extremely upset after discovering her murdered father. So to calm her nerves Dr. Bowen shot her full of morphine but also gave her powdered

caffeine to keep her awake so the police could question her. Yeah because you know who's the most reputable person in all history was John Belushi. Because if you were on a speedball like all you can do is speak the truth. Absolutely. See when officers began questioning

Lizzie in earnest after putting together the timeline she spoke in a calm and collected manner without the least sign of agitation sorrow or grief or any particular urgency towards catching the perpetrator. In other words she was high as fuck on morphine. Yeah she was high

as fuck. Okay. Yeah. And she's like oh fucking well you just tell me where I could get a cheeseburger. I'm just I know it doesn't exist but I've been thinking about this idea of a burger it's called a burger. She came up with a hamburger huh on cocaine and morphine.

How are you looking at her father's face reminder of ground meat. Well the other thing about Lizzie is that she was an emotionally flat person by nature. She was a bit of a dud. She was distraught sometimes like when a description of her father's injuries were read during an inquest and she

cried until she threw up. Unless I was an act. Yeah unless I was an act. I mean to cry until you throw up that's pretty pretty good acting job. I could throw up right now. I'm sure. But other times most likely when she was shot up full of morphine she was so inscrutable that the press described her

as a sphinx which for the most part that was Lizzie's baseline personality. Yeah. She like most people in these situations oscillated between shock and composure dealing with her grief in a way that was specific to her. Of Lizzie

police officer Phillip Harrington said quote. I don't like that girl under the circumstances she does not act in a manner to suit me. It is strange to say the least. It doesn't really matter if you like her we're trying to figure out who killed the Abby and her dad. If I could I'd take her over my knee and I'd spink

I'd remove each stitch of her clothing and I'd wash her first and then I'd spank her and then I'd play with her feet and I'd keep her in a cage until she died. But I also think that it's amazing all history this has been one of those things

that have come up again and again in these true crime stories of like she's not acting like she's that anything's wrong like this idea of like questioning your way of grieving. I'm not sure what her personality I don't know if it means more or less when it comes to her ability to do something like this

if you were like a super chill person like do you just do this? She's just black. Maybe or you it sits inside because there's a lot of people who said she had a temper that was the thing that kept coming up she had a temper. The people who said that she had a temper

aren't necessarily the most reliable of people. We'll go through a lot of these things that people said about Lizzie Borden on the next episode. Is there a single honest person in Fall River? It's the third biggest city in the state. But on the other hand

I don't necessarily blame investigators for at least suspecting Lizzie in the murders because to believe an outsider came into the house to commit the crime you had to believe an increasingly unbelievable series of events. And these are as laid out by Bill James

in popular crime. You had to believe that the intruder entered the house unseen and that he murdered Abby Borden in an excessively violent manner without making any loud noises or attracting the attention of two other people in a relatively small house.

And you've also got to put this in the scene. You've got to put this at 9.30 in the morning in a busy thoroughfare. Absolutely. But if Abby Borden happened to have had some form of mystical gold coin that belonged to an entity that would show up

and he'd be like, I see you've got me gold. And I could see how. I'm just so happy you didn't follow in your father's footsteps and become a cop. How many crimes can you blame on leprechauns? I just keep arresting the Irish. This is an Irish crime.

We also had to believe that Abby Borden's body lay in the house for at least an hour, if not two before anyone noticed it. And that the murderer himself remained hidden in the house that whole time without anyone seeing him. And honestly, you see

the position of the body. Her feet are hanging out in front of the bed like she was visible if you looked in the room. The body was moved. The body in the crime scene photos was moved. That is not where the body originally was. Additionally, you had to believe

that this assailant murdered Andrew with the same amount of violence, again without anyone noticing and that this mysterious assailant left this house, located in a busy neighborhood covered head to toe in blood and carrying a big bloody hatchet because the murder weapon

was never found. And that's up to debate. We'll talk about that next episode. Finally, the note that Lizzie said her stepmother left saying that she was going to go visit a friend was never found and that is in itself extremely

suspicious as to why Lizzie said that. It's very difficult to be like she was in the house the whole time except when she was like fish, fish, oh my gosh. She was just in the other thing just like because that's the only way you could imagine

that she didn't notice anything is that she's so simple. Because that kind of feels like there's one direction that her defense end up going being like this simple woman couldn't possibly come up with this plan. Meanwhile, she's just like yeah, I don't know what anything is. Meanwhile, she was

well aware of things. But there's also the equal improbability of Lizzie's involvement in the murders and it all comes down to one word. Blood. Yeah. Okay.

I've seen the documents. Let's see if there's one thing everyone knows about axe murders is that they're generally messy affairs. I don't think so, yeah. What with the extreme amounts of blood splatter? It's all the stabbing and the splitting and the splatters. That's what it is.

Yeah. Especially when you it's not just one axe wound here that we're talking about here. We're talking about 14 on the father and 18 on the mother. Deep, deep wounds that completely destroy and mutilate entire heads,

human heads full of blood and brain. And you get a good chop on the dad, right? You get a good chop it fucking sinks into this head, right? So then you have to you have to pull it up out. You have to hit him again with it, right? So 14 times. But you're looking at the blood going up, right? The blood goes up to the

ceiling. They always talk about that's where they look for. They look for the, it's the exit wounds. It's how it pulls, which is also weird that the mom was all the gore and shit was concentrated underneath her. Well, she might have immediately dropped and then she was stabbing and stabbing. But even then you would see some

some splatter. Well, concerning Abby, Lizzie was seen by Bridget after Abby had been murdered and Lizzie was completely free of anything, even resembling blood. Additionally, she was seen almost immediately

after Andrew's murder and again no blood. Weird. Now some speculated that she wrapped herself in sheets to protect her clothes. But unless she had completely mummified herself, then hidden the rags from investigators for days on end,

she would have at least had blood on her face, hands, feet, and hair. I also think though when it comes down to it, I want to see these menstruation rags. I mean I isolate the audio. We'll get to it in a second. We'll get to the menstruation rags in a second.

There's also a suggestion made in a 1975 made for TV movie starring Samantha from Bowich to Elizabeth Montgomery. Okay. That Lizzie committed the murders in the nude. Then washed herself and quickly redressed before calling down the maid.

You know. Oh my god. That's plausible for me. It might be plausible in the age of modern plumbing. This is 1892. The only running water in the house was the flush toilet and a weak spigot in the cellar. Both of which, okay, let me

ask you for a second. Think about how much of a mess you made when you had to clean up just corn syrup and foods coloring after a murder fish show. True. How much of a mess did that make it a sink with modern plumbing? True. It does make a mess unless it depends on because they each room had

the clean water dish, right, that you'd use to clean up before and after dinner. So it is possible that she did it in her room, created the mess, then dumped the water, brought it in. So they did have, she did have access to water inside of her room.

I would argue that you would have, even if you had just dipped your hand in blood, I would argue that it would be near impossible to clean that off using just a water dish. But think about how little attention any of these people paid to anybody else. Everybody was up their own fucking ass.

So when you're all walking around, they're all living separate lives, no one's really looking at busy. Bridget's already fucking mad because she's been, she's been profiled by the family, right, because she says out there going like, I had to tell you what happens when my home country, we made a unicorn president. Like, you know,

like she's doing all this shit and she's grumbling shit. So she's not really caring about what Lizzie's doing or what anybody's doing. I don't know. I mean, think about, okay, think about those wounds. Both heads were completely shattered with great force, meaning chunks of brain and bone

would have found their way at least into Lizzie Borden's hair. But, her hair was completely clean of anything, both times she was seen and her hair was completely dry. It was completely put together in the Victorian style.

Maybe I'm just really lonely, man, but when you said she was naked, man, I was like, that's kind of hot though, too, but you're still stuck on it. You're thinking of naked Elizabeth Montgomery. That's hot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, furthermore, speaking of the nudity, this is a Victorian

Sunday school teacher and member of the local temperance link we're talking about here. This is the very definition of approved. This is not someone who is likely to even think about traipsing around the house nude in broad daylight. That tracks for me. Absolutely, of course. But then I feel like there's just a way to do it.

You just, you know, again, give me the rags. Let me see these rags. Well, there's a lot more bushier back then as well, so perhaps that had something to do with it. So she could just pull it up over her. She could just pull it over her head and she could protect everything. Yeah, like the cousin from family, oh my goodness.

Adam's family. The other thing is that Lizzie also couldn't have gone through the house to clean herself up between the two murders without Bridget seeing Lizzie through the windows the Bridget was cleaning all morning. Right in the line of sight. We'll talk about the trial. Bridget said

that she was talking to some other maid for a period of time where she walked away and commiserated with some maid like it was fucking Wilson from Home Improvement. They were all bitching about how everybody hated Irish people and she came back. So I don't know. Okay. Well, let's just go through a timeline

of what Lizzie would have had to do in order to do this completely clean people seeing her in between the murders and people seeing her immediately after Andrew's murder at most 10 minutes after Andrew's murder. Okay.

She would have to murder Abby naked, sneak past Bridget covered in blood from head to toe, dripping blood the whole time. Clean herself up including washing and drying her hair. Go back clean up all the blood that she

tracked down to the basement. Get redressed in a cumbersome Victorian outfit to be seen by Bridget again. Then she has to get naked again, murder her father clean up again, get redressed again, do her hair again, wash

and dry her hair. Then you're left with an impossible time crunch. The practical example Bill James uses go to the kitchen empty a bottle of ketchup all over yourself. Your face, your hair, your shoes, your clothes, everything. Bill James is weird. Bill James is a fighter.

He's fantastic. I love him. Then go see how long it takes to get yourself back to clean and dry even while using a modern sink and shower. You'd be hard pressed to do it under an hour. I agree. I honestly I really do agree because it is strange but I also wonder is there a way

to have put like I've seen in movies. I don't want people do this or not. Like put a pillow over the dude's head and then fucking hit him with the axe. Well where's the pillow? But where's the pillow? Like that's the thing. The cops like turn this tiny house turned it upside down for

days on end and look through the entire thing top to bottom and found nothing. I blame the franchise villain the leprechaun. I know you do. I know you do. But the other scenario in which the Bordens are basically murdered by a ghost for no reason anyone

has been able to figure out in 130 years is nearly as implausible. There's no motive there. Besides just random. Like I understand. But Lizzie also doesn't have a motive. Well I feel like it's kind of like when I go home for Christmas and I

explained to Natalie like just beware of my mom's psychological games. If your mom dies over Christmas though all of this will be used against you. Of course. But no but I'm saying that when Natalie comes back she's just like your mom's fine. I don't know why you think she's playing all these psychological games. I was like I know the cues. I know.

And so it's like within a family you know what I mean. But I'm saying that within a family there are things that build up over time. I think that you can kill somebody just because you don't like them. I don't think you can. She's menstruating. This is more of a therapy. That's more of a that's more of a talk to your therapist about it.

Are you seriously going to blame it on the menstruation? Menstruation. Are you an 1890 you're an 1892 lawyer. That's exactly what they tried to blame it on in the trial. When they tried to fucking prove that she was guilty. Jesus Christ. Again we are not lawyers. We are not doctors.

She's on the rag. That's probably why she fucking killed him. That is a satire angle of mine. It's satire angle. I see. But she's mad. She could have gotten mad. She could have gotten mad. Sure. Are you going to say anything like I don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die. You want to say that? You said that. You want to say that?

You want to go for that? She said that. I love menstruation. Great. Yes. We all have a good attitude towards menstruation here. Absolutely. We really do. But there's but the problem is nine years old. I'm a nine year old. I'm not just having a good time. I love it.

But the problem here is that this crime takes an insane, if Leslie Borden did it it takes an insane amount of premeditation. It takes an insane amount of premeditation. She also would, what, she would risk

doing it while her uncle's in town. That he's gone for the morning and she's going to say like today's the day that I do it. She's going to risk it while Bridget is there. She's going to risk all of these things. And the other thing is too is that she doesn't have like, she doesn't have a motive really because she lives a comfortable life.

She had plenty of money. She had a lot of her own money too. This is a mystery. It's why it's a fucking mystery. Has anyone ever suspected John, the brother? I'm actually about to get to that. I'm actually about to get to that. But no, it's all, the whole thing with like means motive

and opportunity, like to, you know, quote Bill James once again, is that he does a great breakdown of means motive and opportunity in that it's a great investigative tool, but as a prosecution tool, it's actually fairly useless because the way he puts it is that he has the means motive and opportunity to buy a

watermelon. Does he have the means? He do it every once. Does he have the means? Yeah, he's got five bucks. Does he have the motive? Yeah, he likes watermelon. Does he have the opportunity? Sure. They sell watermelon at the supermarket around the quarter. That doesn't mean that he bought a fucking watermelon. Gotcha. Unless he has a watermelon. Unless he's home. The thing is the two parents are

still dead. That's the watermelon. Yeah. Now when word got out about the murders, the people of Fall River swarmed to the Borden home and by the next day, over 1500 spectators had gathered at the scene to see what they could see.

Hey, honey, you want to go fuck up a crime scene? Yeah. Great. I brought all my extra horse blood. We could just kind of do it. That's awesome. And of course, the newspapers turned everything up to 11 immediately, speculating that Jack the Ripper had come

to America just four years after he'd escaped capture in London. Wow. But since Lizzie wasn't named a suspect for a while, the newspapers took it upon themselves to announce that John Morris, Lizzie's horse trading uncle, was the main suspect.

Yeah. And it started that Morris had appeared in town unannounced the day before the killings without any belongings and it stayed in the room where Abbey Borden was killed. Plus, one of his early jobs had been as a butcher, meaning he was comfy with blood.

Again, that's more watermelon talk with the idea of just because you're a butcher doesn't mean you love blood, you just are used to it. Yeah. And so, this being 1892, the townsfolk, upon seeing John Morris in the street, they formed a mob and called for a lynching then and there.

They needed television. They really did. Thankfully, though, this mob was stopped by two police officers who had been assigned to John Morris just in case this very thing happened. That's how common it was. Oh, yeah. Good work, people. Good work, human race.

Forming a posse must have been the funnest afternoon you could have in the 1892s. I remember when people used to form a posse to go watch Friends on Thursday night. We used to watch Lost. We watched Lost every week. Were you happy with the end? Yeah, it was fine with it.

I don't know why everyone bit so much about it. It was actually fine. There was one suspect in the Stranger category at the beginning. A pale young man spotted by Borden family friend, Dr. Benjamin Handy. You don't want to know how I got my name.

I'm about to get a house visit from Dr. Handy in our hotel room. Oh my goodness, I can't wait. Well, according to Handy, this young man kept his eyes fixed on the sidewalk and walked nervously on the morning of the murders. He's just a writer.

Yeah. When this young man identified as Mike the soldier was questioned and released Dr. Benjamin Handy began accusing every stranger in town. Just picking him out. Just giving one reason or another. Of course, nothing came of it because Dr. Benjamin Handy

was fucking crazy. I really miss my time period, man. I really miss my time period where my skills could have been the most effective. Henry Handy, that's the name you want? He did it! There he is, the fishbonger! That's what happened in Salem.

Yeah, you would have been killed. I don't know unless you got to be in front of the pack. I see. You always got to be the guy pointing, so you're never the guy getting pointed at. You've got to be the witch finder. That'll work out. In no way will that backfire. But ask Charles Manson.

Theories bounced around Fall River so numerously that all manner of suspicious characters were arrested under the flimsiest of pretenses including a man who claimed to be the son of Andrew Borden and a mental patient. But all of them were ruled out. Then, this again being 1892,

a medium named J. Byrne Strand traveled to Fall River and claimed that Andrew had spoken to him from beyond the grave. Cool! He demanded that he travel to Fall River so he could arrest Lizzie Borden, her uncle John Morse,

and quote, the man at Westport, whoever that may have been. I'm getting something, I'm getting something here at Fall River, it's the third largest city in Massachusetts. Someone's been reading a tourist pamphlet! Psychic? Now most people were still pretty hung up

on John Morse, with one newspaper saying that he teamed up with a man wearing a ragged beard, a shallow, gray, bloodshot eyes. Hey man, some of us are tired! You lover, stoned! But then Morse proved to have an airtight alibi. The people he went and visited said he was here,

people saw him on a streetcar. John Morse absolutely could not have done it. From Morse, they moved on to Dr. Bowen, the first man on the scene. It was rumored that Dr. Bowen and Lizzie were lovers, but as it turned out, the rumor had been started by Lizzie's stepmother

four years earlier. Because Lizzie and Dr. Bowen had dared to go to church together one Sunday. I only wanted to see her uterus for removal purposes. Wouldn't that make her father immensely happy

if she found love? Only until the day they are married. You know what I mean? They can't just be hanging out. They can't just do the thing, we're like, you know what I mean? She's in her 30s, whatever. Dr. Bowen did engage

in suspicious behavior. When police found the bloody towels in the cellar, Dr. Bowen Let me see these. Stop sniffing. You're licking them. Dr. Bowen explained to them that Lizzie had been menstruating,

so there was no need to investigate the towels further. Don't look at the towels, they're menstruation towels. Don't look at them. With the big broom, it's just sopping up a whole basement floor of blood. She has called me, honestly, we call her the greatest whale I've been searching for, the mother whale of my whole time.

The gush of four women. I just want to see these fat cops just deluxe on their face when they talk about menstruation. Oh, no. They were especially squeamish about menstruation. As soon as Dr. Bowen said she's menstruating, they're like

a totally natural thing. No, they took us directly immediately and we're like, we're not touching those things. Even more suspicious was the fact that a torn note was found. Quite possibly the note that said that Abbey

had gone to visit a friend. Quite possibly the note that would have unlocked this entire mystery. But while police were in the process of reassembling that note, Dr. Bowen told them that it was of no importance. Absolutely not.

And that's when they were able to get into the kitchen stove. Oh, my goodness. I feel like the doctor and the lady may have been in it together. This is what I'm seeing. And then also her sister was also mysteriously not in town.

Okay. So once all the other options were exhausted, police had no choice but to turn the investigation towards the two people who had actually been at the scene of the crime. Bridget Sullivan and Lizzie Borden. Now Bridget Sullivan was considered the more likely suspect because she was Irish Catholic

and she was a servant. As investigators put it, servants were a sly and lying class. So you see, she's the most likely suspect for racist reasons, you see, because it's racism, blatant on our part. And classism. And classism is blatant on our part. And even though an axe was a man's

weapon, working-clash Irish women were known to be capable of swinging the implement to chop wood or behead chickens. If it was an Irish murder, it would have been done with the food. Oh. It would not have been done with a crime

or technically an IED. I could see Maddie or Bridget. I could see her poisoning the family. Sure, I mean with the food. I love Irish food. We know. No, I know. I'm just saying it stays old. If it gets old. I like some Irish food.

Yeah, sure. Normally Irish things are done with explosions. Bridget had been outside cleaning the windows during the murders. Plus, she had no motive other than Abby never remembering her name. And there wasn't a single shred of evidence connecting her to the crimes.

Additionally, the story Bridget told was straightforward and never changed. She cleaned up after breakfast, washed the outside windows, let Andrew into the house, and went inside to lie down when Lizzie called out in horror. Same thing every time they asked her. So,

suspicion finally fell on Lizzie Borden. Both the most likely and least likely suspect. And that's where we'll pick back up for the conclusion to our series. Hey, you better. I'll tell you what. These cops better check her mozilla.

I don't know what that means, but alright. Skatesy Anthony reference. I see. Mozilla. Firefox. Yeah, if she had googled like how clean up blood fast, then yeah, that would be definitely a bad thing.

But back then, the only google they had was a bent bugle. Oh, isn't that neat? They couldn't do anything with that regarding information. Absolutely not another home run from Henry Zabrowski. Thank you all so much. Google was a bent bugle.

It doesn't really even make sense. I love your phone. Actually, that was a very good phone. Thank you all so much for listening. Lizzie Borden part one. I can't wait to hear the end of this story. Holy hell, I didn't realize how fucking brutal these murders were.

Thank you all so much for supporting us. We just saw, you know, thanks for, you know, just saying that you liked the show and stuff like that. The Spotify, like the spy every year, they're like, we've been spying on you too. It is weird, but it's also fun and I'm glad that they're out there and you guys,

we want to thank you so much for the support you guys giving us all year. We're so excited to see you. We got a couple of dates left this year though. A couple. We got like 34, bro. Oh, God, yeah, we got nine dates. We got nine dates left this year. Very, very excited. Coming to you, Portland.

Can't wait to be in Oregon again. And then we got Birmingham, Alabama. Yeah, we got Seattle. We got Vancouver. We got Boise, Idaho. We got Birmingham and we got New Orleans. We usually do New Orleans in December. So yeah, New Orleans, December.

Go to lastpodcastontheleft.com for all the tour dates for the rest of the year to see if you're in the Pacific Northwest or the South. We might be coming near you. We just might. And also check out. We got our documentary that Kissel and I are part of called Fresh Meets on Tubi, about Jeffrey Dahmer. We did our best.

They did yell at us about doing characters. They called it Fresh Meat, which is kind of funny. They said I couldn't do characters and you have to do understand how often I did break into character and they'd be like, oh, you know, we should stop that. And then I'm like, well, you brought me here. I'm a head work Henry. It's less performative than you think.

I am an actor. Then we have our Soul Plumber. Check out Soul Plumber. Issue three should be coming out soon. We got a second pressing, second printing of issue one out there. So yeah, if you've missed issue one, check it out and issue three is going to be coming out soon.

It gets fucking nuts. Issue three is the action issue. Yeah, I'm excited. And Hbone and I are also, I think it's called behind the monsters or something. And keep on supporting all the shows here on Lost Podcast Network. Thank you all so much for your support. Yeah, no dogs in space. We just finished

our five part series on the Velvet Underground. So if you've been waiting, thank you. So if you've been waiting for the whole thing to be over and done with before you listen, it is now up and available wherever you listen to podcasts. Fantastic. And of course, check out Top App for all the insanity of the political world. We talked about Liberty University a little bit

today, believe it or not, it's totally fucked. Yeah, I bet. Hey everyone. Yep. Again, just thank you so much for the bottom of our hearts. Can't wait to see you in Oregon. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail Geen. I'm a goose deletions. Hail me. Don't kill your father. Don't kill your stepmother

this weekend. And then you're better than maybe Lizzie Borden. Yeah. Lizzie Borden did it. I still say she did it. We're going to get their views. We're going to talk. I'm kind of on team Henry, but goes back and forth. We're going to solve it though, of course. We're the final. We're finally the one piece of media that we'll solve.

Yeah. Most likely and least likely. We'll see you next week everyone.