Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 476: Lizzie Borden Part II - ...With An Axe!

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

This week we conclude the story of the infamous Axe Murders of 1892 with the perplexing and fruitless Trial of Lizzie Borden.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 left, we bring you Mothman's Red Eye Blend. Yes, delicious Panama beans, go to lastpodcastmerch.com to order yours today! Hey, what's up everyone? How you doing? Ben Kissel here with Henry Zabrowski. Yes, me, man!

Yeah, bro, Henry Zabrowski is smoking some of that sweet last podcast on the left, babe. Go out there and purchase yourself some. I hope you enjoy it. We have sativa, we have indica, and we have a hybrid. And I have to tell you, from my personal experience, they are wonderful. 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? Alright, so I attempted another poem for today. You did this, but the goal about this poem was to expand the poem's universe. Okay. As much as people did with Loki? What are you doing? Fucking no. Fucking cares.

It's a shit, it's fake. Marvel Universe is fake. It is. It's also made up. They just make it up as they go. That's a complaint that anyone has about anything. They just talk about cinema. You're talking about fiction.

I'm just saying, yeah. Because everyone's like, ugh, it's not canon. It's also the lessons. The lessons are very real. Don't be a mean brother. Loki! Here we go. Lizzie Borden was caught at Licken.

She gave the maid quite the dicken. When her mom walked in her room, those lesbos sent her to her doom. Okay. Does that still work? Alright. I mean, kind of, if it's in an alternate universe, Lizzie Borden. I was just saying, it's on the conspiracy theory.

The rumors. The rumors, the sexual tension between, because there was a movie, Lizzie, with Chloe Seventy. Have you seen that? Oh. Kristen Stewart. Ah, stuff. Sure.

I watched it last night, around midnight. I think it's pretty articulate with the storyline, if you know what I mean. I see. But I think they take a lot of liberties. Okay. I would imagine so. Is that the end of the poem?

Yeah, that's all I got. That's the end of the poem. That is the most prep I did for this. Wow, that's amazing. Welcome to the last podcast on the Left, everyone. I am Ben, hanging out with Marcus, and hanging out with Henry. Live from Boise, Idaho.

Boise. Boise, Idaho. We are on to part two of this crazy tale. It is. It's Lizzie Borden. So when we last left the story of the Lizzie Borden axe murders, the police had ruled out all other suspects. These included Lizzie's uncle, John Morse,

the Borden family doctor, Seabury Bowen. Was it me? The Borden family maid, Bridget Sullivan, and whatever mysterious Portuguese men might be kicking around Fall River, Massachusetts. AKA Portuguese men that did nothing wrong. Yeah. You know, I found out that John Morse's middle name?

Vinicom. Vinicom? Yeah, Vinicom. That was a name? Yeah. Vinicom. It sounds like something you rub on your tooth if it hurts. It might be.

No, I found out that John Morse was actually Lizzie Borden's birth mother's brother. Okay. Vinicom. Yeah, Vinicom. Get over here. Smack my butt. Once all other options were exhausted,

the police laid their suspicions solely on Lizzie Borden, using inheritance and general family discord as the motives for these gruesome crimes. Now, it could be argued that if anyone, Dr. Seabury Bowen was at least partly responsible for the accusations that were coming Lizzie's way. Yes, he got the nickname, or he got the last name Seabury, or first name Seabury?

First name. Taken a dump in the river. Perfectly executed. They call that a Seabury interior. Boise. See, the murder timeline was a hard sell from the intruder angle, because no one could figure out how a stranger could get in and out without being seen by anyone.

Honestly, though, it sounds like no one was paying that much attention to anything within that house. True. To that same point, though, a scenario in which a rich, somewhat bland 32-year-old Sunday school teacher brutally murders her parents with an ax and hides the evidence well enough that the mystery persists for 130 years, that's also a hard sell.

Unless there was a grand conspiracy. Conspiracy. Conspiracy. John Vinicombe, Mars, right? Uh-huh. And her older sister, Lizzie. Lizzie's older sister, Emma. Yes, with a buck, this dude they called her name.

Are we playing dumb clue? No, listen, what's going on? Listen, there's this one theory that a man who'd actually did the killings was a buck from out of town named William Arthur Davis. Are you using buck the racist term for a black man? No, I mean like a big old strong youngin. So they bring in there just to have at the crime,

because he was the one who was doing all the cleaving and the cutting because he went to Butcher School. Okay. Interesting. So this is more like kind of the Jack the Ripper theory, that the Butcher done it. There is a massive essay. Butcher never does it.

The Butcher, honestly, he sees enough blood. I don't know why he needs. Butcher's all day, why would he want to go work at home? I don't know. But there is an almost, it is novel length, long fucking essay I read that is by the, it's about a man by the name of Fritz Adlis that was added to the Lizzie Borden,

the Lizzie Andrew Borden.com, like Trove, it's a journal of Lizzie Borden documents, right? And he wrote this in 2006, and there was no evidence to support a single bit of it. That's great. But if you do read this, it's called The Solution to the Borden. He did blog about it though.

That's evidence. Yeah. And it was, well, it was printed in the hatchet, Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies. Oh my God. There's so much material on Lizzie Borden. Oh yeah man, people are obsessed. And it was called the armchair detectives version

of the story. Okay. And he did this whole long thing where it is highly, highly involved of the big plan. They fake the burglary, they do all this kind of shit to kind of cover up it. They prep for the murder, but it really comes down to, there is a whole section in this that is very,

very vivid incest born. I really feel like it was the point of the essay. Incest born? Between Lizzie and her uncle? Her father that he came in and he did the fiddle and the fiddle and the pressing. He did a bit of the molest, as the French say. And then apparently they made them very, very upset.

All right. Well, that would give her a rationale perhaps. But it's kind of funny. It's the same exact explanation that we came up with Casey Anthony and the Menendez brothers. He had the idea of like punting to the molest to try to get somebody out for it. But at this, her defense attorney, I will say,

did not use that approach. How does the butcher fit into it? Well, the man, William Arthur was a, how do you put this? He was also a border at the place where John Mars was staying, right? And that he was also pissed at Lizzie Borden's father because of a real estate deal gone bad.

Oh, okay. See, it's never the butcher. More often as we know, it's the baker. It's the woman. It could be either. The biggest reason why Lizzie became a prime suspect was that her account of what happened on the morning of the murders kept changing.

And it kept changing partly because of Dr. Bowen. I'm just going to say right now, I'm high as fuck. I know, Dr. Bowen. No, I'm high and I am loving it. That's why we love you, Dr. Bowen. See, as we said, Lizzie was terribly distraught upon discovering the mutilated remains of her father. So Dr. Bowen shot Lizzie full to the gills with morphine.

Tamarine, man. Sweet. But it didn't stop there. The next day, Dr. Bowen doubled the dose of morphine and kept her at that dosage for a considerable amount of time. Well, do you want this woman to be a guitar player or not? I've got tiger blood. I'll take it, remember?

Yeah. As a result, Lizzie spoke in a suspiciously calm, emotionless manner when she was asked about the murders and was often confused and lightly hallucinating as a side effect of the morphine. A bird did it. Some kind of bird did it. Yeah, pretty certain.

If you're going to round up all the different tabs of birds in town, cardinals are the color of blood. All right, good point. I don't trust a cardinal as far as I can throw him. Therefore. Which means I trust them quite a bit because they can fly. That's true. Wow.

Wow. Therefore, Lizzie's answers were not quite the same every time she was asked a question. Then other questions began piling up, namely about the location of the note that supposedly said that Abby Borden was out seeing a sick friend. See, nobody could find the note, nor did the young boy who allegedly delivered the note

ever come forward. As if there was never a note. Oh, young boy. But remember, there was a note. Dr. Bowen stopped the police from reassembling that note. We don't know what that note said, but Dr. Bowen stopped the police from reassembling it and threw it in the fire.

So there was a note. We just don't know what the contents of that note were. We don't know if it was that note, but it was a note. Yes, it was. Who did it? Lizzie did it. Okay. But even though suspicion was in the air,

the Borden sisters acted as expected in other ways. On the day after the murders, Emma and Lizzie offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who might have had information about the murders. Wouldn't you believe it? I just found out. I just knew something. Seriously.

I knew something. Seriously. I would fucking make up a lot of stuff for $5,000. A bird did it. A bird did it. A carnal did it. And they even hired a man named O.M. Henscombe from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to help.

I actually wanted to get to the bottom of this crime before I found out who did it. I wanted to know, and that's why I wrote this book. It's all just about what if I did do it, which I didn't do it, but only is the position you thinking that what if I did do it in a way that you think maybe somebody else did it. Another case solved by the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

I'm just hanging out with Vegas. I'm hanging out with Vegas. Sometimes you go to St. Pete. I know you do, Mr. Pinkerton. But no one ever came forward for the reward, not even to try to scam the Bordens. And the Pinkerton Detective mysteriously quit after two days on the job.

I hate this woman. Now, back in those days, funerals happened fairly quickly after death because while embalming a body did indeed become popular during the Civil War, they needed to transport the bodies back home, it didn't become common practice for civilians until much later.

Good Lord. I can't even imagine what that must smell like. Just like moving to like the idea of, if you have just a delay in the Victorian funeral process. Just put your just rotten ass meat. Even Victorian, you're talking about for the entirety of human history until the late 1800s.

But I think it's better that way. What? This is big and balming. Big and balming. Oh, you're saying you're against embalming. Well, I'm just against it. What's the point? You're against embalming.

I am, yeah. Well, not the entire human history. I mean, the Egyptians definitely did quite a bit of embalming, but at least modern Western history. I would be cured. Why? That's actually a good question. Why do we embalm a corpse if it's just going to go in the fucking

ground? Because that way we don't have to bury it immediately. We take out all the things that rot very quickly. So we can fucking work around your schedule, Henry, so you can get to my funeral when it's convenient for you. Well, such, Abby and Andrew's funeral was held the day after the murders, attended by 75 relatives and business associates, as well as 2,500 lookie-loos who all hung around outside of the

funeral home. Damn. That was the fucking goth party of the 1890s. Yeah. Because a lot. Everyone was goth back then. Oh, yeah. By nature.

On base. Yeah, at base. Yeah. Interestingly, although the cops hadn't quite gotten around to accusing Lizzie just yet, the papers criticized Lizzie for not wearing the proper funeral attire. Damn. This is the day after the murders.

That was the problem? Yeah. She was supposed to wear very specific types of fabric and trimming, like black wool trimmed with crepe. Uh-huh. And this public criticism might have swayed the police towards Lizzie. Man.

This is a fashion police complaint? Oh, seriously. Literally the fashion police. Dude, this is Victorian times, like fashion and the proper way to do fashion and the proper way that you wear things in certain situations is of the utmost importance. Okay. Because otherwise it shows that you are not a part of society.

And you are bucking against the rules. And that means you are murder. Murder. But once the funeral was over, the Bordens were not buried. No, they were not. Okay. No, they went basically through the process of a restaurant. It's like there are things that are done to these bodies that I

have eaten. They became burger. Instead, they were taken to the medical examiner's office where a man named Dr. William Dolan further mutilated the bodies in a sort of haphazard way one might expect from a late 19th century medical professional. Yes. So much meat I could do.

Yes. What a wonderful set of toys. If you can get that meat off the shoulder, you can create spam. First, Dr. Dolan sliced open their abdomens and removed their stomachs and intestines. Floppy tubes. This is fun. It's a wondrous occasion.

The humans are filled with floppy little tubes. They blow it up the stomach like a balloon. He then carefully tied them off at each end to keep the contents of whatever remained of their breakfasts inside. You're going to want to keep that. You're going to hold onto that. We're trying to scientifically establish a timeline. You can keep them in little beds and like put little sleeping

caps on them in little blankets and be like, you go to sleep now. Your time will come. What's in your belly, belly? Oh. No, put them in airtight jars, seal them with wax and send them to Harvard for testing. Okay, that's great. Harvard gets all the good guts.

Well, yeah, they create a lot of sociopaths up there. Once the test came back, it was found that Abby had died with undigested food in her small intestine, confirming that she'd eaten later in the morning. But Andrew had died with a large intestine full of feces. It's where it goes. It's its birthplace, the delta. I know.

That confirmed he'd indeed died earlier. Now, this was actually good investigative work. This was helpful. It establishes a timeline because they're trying to see whether or not Lizzie's actual testimony was the truth. So far it is. It turns out we found the Taco Bell fourth meal in them. It was a Gordy.

But after the stomach and intestines had been sliced out, the Bordens were not sent to the grave, nor was more examination immediately done, nor were the bodies embalmed or even put on ice. Instead, Dr. Dolan just left out the Bordens bodies to rot for five days. Another great job done by Dr. Dolan. No, you just want him to get soft.

Yeah. Because then he can really get his hands up in there. Tear it apart. Yes. When the belly becomes as yogurt, man, I'm the chef. He gives it right to the bones. Finally, on August 11th, after Dr. Dolan finished whatever important business he had to attend to besides doing the

autopsy, he finally got around to it. He found that the brains had liquefied in his absence, most likely leaking out of the massive wounds in each skull. Yeah, man. That's awesome. It's like it could have used a bit of ice. Yeah. I mean, what did he think was going to happen to the brains?

I don't think he really thought about it that much. He's a doctor. It doesn't say what Dr. Dolan was doing in those five days. Yes, so soft, so delicious. I mean, scientific. That's nice. You can suck up the brains with a straw. Come on, man.

Another great day as a doctor. They truly are very soft, though, brains. Yeah, I would imagine. They don't hold together very well. You have cancer. No. It's called a brain tumor. I actually don't know if the brain tumors get super hot.

I don't know the consistency of a brain tumor, actually. All he knows is that brains are super soft and delicious if you can get at them right. Well, the skin on each body had also started to slough off. So determining the edges of the wounds was also difficult. But once the examination of what was left to the bodies began, Dr. Dolan did make new discoveries. Once Abby Borden's body was examined, it was found that she had

a two and a half inch wound on her back just below the neck, which might support the theory that someone had struck her from behind first, sending her into a silent shock. But of course, that depends on the order of the blows. Sounds like a real Irish surprise, if you know what I mean. I don't know exactly what you mean, but we'll just move on. The Irish surprise, of course, everyone knows that has been later discussed as the, what's it called, the double decker

when you shit in the, when you... Yes, normally, yes. It is called the Irish surprise. Upper decker. Upper decker. Yes, of course. The double decker, another Taco Bell treat. No, I mean, when it was like in that,

they cl-claw even made gut in there in the old mix of here and it was helping. I don't know. I don't know, man. No idea. She was seen outside washing the windows. That's what we think. That's what we know.

Was that a euphemism? Okay. Who's that? Clean your butthole. Washing the window. Well, after that, Dolan shaved the back half of Abby's head to examine her skull fractures further. He found that the skin and bone was slashed in a broad gap

shaped like the number seven at the crown of her skull and 14 parallel blows to the right side of the skull had pulverized the bone behind Abby Borden's ear. Fuck this is a lot first, it's a little head. Yeah, man. It's a lot of hidden. Sounds like someone who's filled with rage at the victim. Yeah, that's for sure.

But just examining these bodies wasn't enough for Dr. Dolan. After knowing what few bodily wounds there were, Dr. Dolan cut off both heads and cleaned the skulls free of flesh and organ by boiling them in a lobster pot. Hey man, they criticized Dahmer when he did it. I would like to call it nurse. Could you please call it my assistant?

Yes. It's I, the bone slicer. I guess it comes up. That must be so much fun. I guess you just, you get you freely, you have these bodies, right? Because you know, you empty all the guts, you play with their liquefied brains,

you start flapping all the heads. I mean, I'm like, you just go like, it's like, what if we just cut the heads off? And then we can get them super close. They're all like, but can't you just lean over the bodies as they're attached to that? But then I can't pick it up and toss it around. Yeah, you do want to toss it around,

make a soup out of it, a little bit of a gumbo perhaps. Well, once the skulls were bone clean, Dr. Dolan made plaster casts to show the position of the wounds for the inevitable trial. He showed that Andrew had suffered 10 wax while Abby got 18.

And Dr. Dolan confirmed that the wounds were perpetrated by someone of average strength, whether they be male or female. It's about how you use the axe, right? When it comes down to it, isn't it about momentum? You are chopping wood. I know it is hard work, but it's not necessary.

You don't have to necessarily be the strongest person in the world to chop. Well, you have to look good without a shirt on. That's different, but it's a good cross-core exercise. Well, you do need experience with an axe. Have you ever used an axe? Oh, yeah. Yeah, one was less than used an axe.

For what? Oh, you know. Have you ever chopped wood? In Queens. Seriously, have you personally ever chopped wood? I know I had an axe. But have you ever chopped wood? No, of course not.

What are you talking about? Very difficult. Granted, he grew up in Queens. He just went to chop down the eight trees that are allowed to grow. Honestly, I have never done an ounce of physical labor in my life, yeah. Using an axe, chopping down a tree, chopping wood,

it's very difficult. And it's also more simple. But it's a hatchet, though. She probably used a hatchet, not a full-length axe. But it is still surprisingly hard to hit the mark with a hatchet. Why? Because you're swinging this big thing.

If you don't know how to use it, you're swinging this big thing. You don't know how much momentum. But Lizzie knew how to use an axe. You don't know when. I just feel like everyone before 1900s used an axe somehow. That's what I'm saying.

I think everyone did, and she lived on her own for quite a bit. She probably had to learn how to use an axe. But you were saying probably. You're not saying that she did. You're saying she probably had to learn how to use an axe. This was 200 years ago. That's speculation, Henry.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not. A defense attorney. How fucking dare you speculate? This is a podcast. No, she was a rich girl. They did say multiple times, like Lizzie did not know how to use an axe. She had servants.

She had maids. That's what the fucking attorney that eventually became governor said. Actually, he was governor before Lizzie. Whatever, man. I'm just saying, man. We just don't know. Sometimes we have to live in the gray, don't we?

Uh-huh. Yes. Now, while Dr. Dolan was busy beheading the Bordens, police turned the Borden home upside down in search of clues or evidence. They pulled up pieces of the carpet, removed wall trim and counted blood spots. Although it seems like they didn't really have much of an idea

as to what they should actually do with all this information. Henry, you go in there. Uh, uh, fucking count the blood spots. They did the same thing I would do with evidence. Yeah. Like, I would just go like, all right, got it. Well. 73 blood spots.

I don't fucking know what any of this shit is, man. Bro, you got to stop doing nitrous. Yeah, I just fucking. Please God. But the head of this task was district attorney, Hosea Nolton, who was in charge of both the investigation and the prosecution to come. There's some good names in this series.

Great names. It was said that Hosea Nolton dominated a room, had shoulders, a yard apart. Oh, a pub onion. Legs as strong as the foundation of a bridge. Cool. A head as hard as iron, set on a neck that was a tower for strength.

Is this a criticism or a compliment? These are all bad. For some reason, the people who wrote about the lawyers did so both defense and prosecution, the people who wrote at the time like did so in these extremely fawning, almost sexual terms. But technically this is also how they describe Lizzie. Yeah.

Character wise, Nolton was described as a combative man who regularly snorted like a horse. You should see me when I'm having sex with my wife. That's very good. That's close. And so being in charge of the investigation, it was Hosea Nolton who put the full court press on Lizzie Borden when other investigators found her answers about

her movements on the day of the murders to be unsatisfactory. I did some zigzag movements. I did some up and down movements. I waited. I did some of my, I did some back flies. To be fair, she was drugged. Greatly drugged. Yes.

Exactly. To be very fair, Ben Kissel. Thank you. To be very fair. Someone has to be fair on this show. A little too fair. As far as I'm concerned. Now, Nolton used specific tactics for pinning down a suspect

for a crime, just like police do today when they want to charge someone but don't have any hard evidence for an indictment. Yeah. As pointed out by Bill James, what may have happened here is that Lizzie was repeatedly asked questions in ways that were designed to confuse her and illicit inconsistent statements that could be used later to paint Lizzie as a shady, untrustworthy character capable of double murder.

And he's also doing this while she is on morphine. Okay. It is really interesting though, because at the time it was still like highly uncouth and highly unbelievable that a woman would do this type of crime. So for them to zero in on her, I still feel like, I know. I don't think at the time. That gatekeeping grief, like you're not, that's kind of,

we're seeing the same storyline that we see now today about how she wasn't behaving properly or that kind of shit. But there was also just something about her and something about how she was the only one in the fucking house. I think what it really was, I think a big part of it was that the cops had no fucking clue what was going on. They were under immense amounts of pressure to solve the murder of a respected local businessman.

And at one point they had no choice but to zero in on Lizzie, no matter what the evidence was. Because the most obvious one was John Morse, but he definitely wasn't there. Had an absolute airtight alibi. Airtight. See, as we said, Lizzie Borden's testimony of her day up to the point where she found her father's body

consisted of the mundane putterings of a Victorian Spenster. Basically, she said she spent her morning ironing handkerchiefs. Oh, nice and flat. Inspecting pears. Oh, this one's peary. That was a good pair. Well, the pear does bruise easier than many fruits,

so you don't have to expect them. Pears suck. Pears do not suck. And pears do not suck. And in the dressing room. It was fantastic. In Portland, and I fucking loved it. Marcus ate it.

Marcus ate it. Absolutely loved it. Yes, he did. In fact, did you slice it or did you just bite into it? You just bought it? I bought some bite into it. Yeah, I bit right the fucking. I cringed.

That's how you eat a pear. Do you bite right the fucking? And I was thinking, you know what? When I get back to New York, I'm going to go out and I'm going to buy a shit load of pears. Go ahead and get a top hat and a cane that Mr. Monopoly. Well, it's a working class fruit.

It is not. I mean, many people, I have validation from our people. Sure, sure, sure. Besides ironing handkerchiefs, inspecting pears, she also spent a fair amount of time searching for fishing lures in the barn. Yeah, definitely got to go to the barn. Yeah, it's 100 degrees outside.

For certain better, go check on my fishing lures. See if they're still there. Well, she had an appointment later that week to go fishing with her friend. She was excited. Four days later. She was excited. To be honest, what else is she supposed to do?

Exactly. Anything else? You're in the napkins, check out the pears and find some fishing lures. That sounds like a day to me. I mean, that is a been-kiss-all day. It's at the very least a morning before the morning nap. Absolutely.

Or it sounds like a really stupid excuse for trying to say, I didn't kill my parents. If she made an excuse, wouldn't she say something more dramatic? No, she's stupid. No, she's not. She was on morphine. I mean, I'm sorry. She's not stupid.

No. Because that's the thing, Henry. By your own admission, if she were to actually commit this crime, she would have had to be legally clever. She might have been legally clever, but maybe that's the idea. She's playing on this idea of, I am just this simple woman.

She's on morphine. That is going to come up, though, in the trial, where they are going to position her as like, they do caveman lawyer. Where like, there's no way this simple woman, she goes, I don't even know what shoes are. Like, they try to paint her as if she would have any clue.

To be honest, what are shoes? What are shoes? They are gloves for your feet. Right? So she understood a little bit how to play the game. So yeah, maybe it does sound, it sounds, again, it's a Miss Piggy excuse. It's been like, oh, you know what I was out there.

Wow, demeaning Miss Piggy. I have nowhere. You know how I am. For no reason taking down Miss Piggy. I mean, this is the normal day. I've read a thousand times. That this is the normal day of a Victorian spinster. A thousand times.

Wow. That's the thing, it's not the sort of morning that you're going to recall with great clarity. Especially after you find your father hacked to death with an axe in your own home. And especially not after you've been shot full of morphine for an extended period of time. There you go.

Things get fuzzy. I will also say they're called lures for a reason. It's a lure of the fishing. I think she got lures like a fish out there. Oh, was that a shiny thing? Oh, was that kind of work? Well, either way, it would fit her narrative. Furthermore, Lizzie was questioned for days on end

without a lawyer present, which none of you out there listening should ever, ever, ever do. I plead the fifth. One, two, three, fifth. Absolutely. Nothing wrong with that. Where's my lawyer?

That's the only thing you should ever say to the police. I want my lawyer, man. I want Kubi, man. Especially if you were innocent. I will say that. Yeah. Especially if you're guilty. Well, first, Nolton asked Lizzie about men

that may have been on bad terms with her father. Then they moved on to John Morse, asking how often he visited, when he visited, and when his last visit was. He's doing shit. He's been in and out of town. He's just went, he ate no fish in the lure. No, he's not.

Well, she said that he, the last time he had been to town was before the river had frozen. Okay. It's like, it's a very, it's a very classy way of saying. Well, not before. No, it's not a very classy way of saying that.

That's a super highway of saying that. But they did kind of speak like that. That is true. A little bit. You fucking came over one time, the vibe was all turquoise. You know what I mean? After Lizzie gave vague drug dancers about all that,

Nolten brought out another trick that police still use today. By asking the accused to characterize something that has no precise description, then ask them to characterize it again. In Lizzie's case, Nolten asked her to characterize her relationship with her stepmother.

Well, there was this one time that my boyfriend came over and he said something about, I wasn't doing it right, and then she showed him how to simply have sex with me. Right. She kind of trained the boyfriend a little bit. It's kind of crazy. Well, that's a pretty normal relationship.

Well, Lizzie first said that the relationship was cordial. But when she was asked about the relationship again, the next day, she said it was distant. Have you ever seen Star Wars? Yeah, I mean cordial and distant are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Well, this of course gave Nolten a chance to be aggressive. Jumping on the inconsistency by telling her,

well, yesterday you said it was cordial. Now you're saying it's distant. Which is it, Lizzie? Is it cordial or is it distant? It can be both. Exactly. Quit castling me, man. Seriously, leave this poor,

let this woman have her morphine trip alone. And then after jumping on this, Nolten would accuse Lizzie of the murders, then pull back all the keeper off balance. You guys are keeping me off balance. It seems like you're just sitting there. Well, after that, the cops started asking Lizzie about the ever important Haloft.

See, Lizzie said that she'd gone out to the Haloft at the barn that morning to look for her fishing sinkers. It's just so stupid. It's not stupid. You know people fish, right? I do know. How else do you find a fishing lure? Let me ask you this, Henry.

Let's say that you were at your home, somebody gets murdered in your home, but you say, I wasn't there. I was out looking for my cheddar goblin. I'm in jail. That's what I mean. That is true. But what if you were actually out looking

for your cheddar goblin? I'm still in jail. That is true. Yeah. Slime gang. Well, she was out there. She heard a noise and came back to the house to find her father murdered.

That's what she said. Yes. After hearing this alibi, police said that they went and checked the Haloft and found a thick layer of dust on the floor. And that told them nobody had been in the Haloft for weeks. That's kind of good police work. However, a young boy testified in the trial under oath

that immediately after the murders, he and a friend, two people there, ran to the house to see what was going on. And when they were turned away by the police, they went to the barn and watched the whole thing from the Haloft. Wow. Therefore, the police were either mistaken

or lying about that thick layer of dust. And guess what, boys? That ain't the last lie they're going to tell. Well, what could the dust come quick? Perhaps it was a dusty day. I actually don't know if that's physically possible. I don't know. This is Massachusetts.

This is in Arizona. Sure. But the police do lie. What? Yeah. No way. Finally, there was some hubbub about a dispute over Andrew gifting his father's house to his wife, Abby.

This rankled the boarding sisters. Why are you giving grandma's house to stepmom and not to us? Honestly, yeah, that would kind of piss off people. Well, Andrew gifted the house back to Lizzie and Emma just to calm the waters. But a few weeks before the murders, Andrew put the house back into his name. Therefore, it was speculated that Andrew was in the process

of changing his will to cut Emma and Lizzie out, put Abby in. This is one of those weird cloudy things, right? It's very cloudy. It's about whether or not you believe anything that Lizzie said about her relationship with her stepmother, because some people believe that they had a very bad relationship. And if that is true, then what they said

was that her father fucked with the will because I'm sick of how you treat your stepmom and she fucks me. So she's actually going to get the money and you're not. And then she switched from when he was done having sex with Lizzie, because for a while he would treat her to fancy dresses because according to that horrible story, she'd lay there and let him do whatever she wanted her to do. All of what Henry said is rumor

and unsubstantiated in any way whatsoever. I'm a lawyer. We don't speculate. I just want to make sure our listeners know all of that is rumor. What are you going to do? But the thing is, is that Andrew, after Andrew gifted the house back to Lizzie and Emma, you know, put the house back in his name,

Andrew actually bought the house back from Emma and Lizzie. He didn't just take it away from them. He just gave them the money right back. He just gave them a lot of money. Therefore, Emma and especially Lizzie had a lot of cash on hand, which goes against the murder for inheritance theory. And Andrew's business manager said that no conversation about the will ever took place,

despite police insisting that the business manager told them that it did. That's lie number two. As you know, I'm not doing a will. It will be the Southwest Airlines of Deaths. Everyone has to run to the flight and fucking get there. If you want something, show up first like my uncle did and then he took everything that he wanted from the house

after my grandfather died. It caused a massive family rift. But you know what? He got there first. Why don't you set up a foot race across America? The football race. Yeah, absolutely. Now for Lizzie's part,

she did talk about a shadowy figure looking around the house a few nights before the murder. You had wings and it was this very vibrant color. She said that she saw somebody run down the steps of her home as she came home from a friend's house one night. But by way of description, she could only say that he was quote, not a very tall person.

Yeah, and she said something about his gold and how he had to get his gold. And then he's going to do anything that takes to get his gold. Gold? You brought it to Las Vegas? He might go after it? Yeah. Is that what he said?

He said he just came back from outer space. Wow. That's incredible. I'm high as fuck. It sounds like it. But to be fair, what are we talking? We're still talking like gas lamps here, right? When it comes to lighting.

So it would be very dark in the house. Is there electric power in this house? Not in her house. Not in her house. Okay. And I'm not sure if they have electric street lamps at this time either. Okay.

At least not in Fall River, Massachusetts. It's probably in like New York City. Yeah. Definitely. They're not bright street lights. It's not halogen lights. Sure. When will the street lamps come to Fall River?

Honestly, that's a fun song. That is a fun song. Honestly, that's a fun song. It's a good song. When were the street lights? Oh, don't even bring Gordon to this. Soon, however, came a most suspicious action perpetrated by Lizzie Borden, although one could argue

about just how suspicious it really was. See, on August 6th, the day after the murders, police searched all the dresses in Lizzie and Emma's rooms, desperately searching for any sign of blood, but finding none. Then on August 7th, Lizzie was found in her kitchen by her friend, Alice Russell, with a skirt hanging from her arm. Lizzie said that the dress was covered in paint, but she needed the hook for a new dress.

She was going to burn it, which was common practice at the time. It's super thick paint. It's red. It's red as hell. And it's all foggy and crusty. So better put it in there. Certainly not evidence of any kind. No, definitely not.

But that's interesting. They just burned the dress up. Yeah. And it was green paint, my friend. And unless Abby and fucking Andrew were gremlins, it was not blood. It might point to Henry's leprechaun theory. It's possible.

Now, Emma, who was also in the room, she agreed. And she said, might as well. So Lizzie burned the dress in her backyard not two days after her parents had been murdered. But while this does sound bad, Alice Russell did indeed see the dress. And rather than blood, it was spattered with green paint. Another thing, two cops were there at the house when Lizzie did it.

And they didn't say shit. OK. Additionally, a house painter named John Groward testified that he'd painted the boarding house in May of that year. And Lizzie had indeed supervised the work. It's also possible, although this is just my own speculation, that Lizzie did not own mourning clothes prior to the murders. Afterwards, she needed mourning clothes

because mourning dress was something that you were expected this time to wear for an entire year. So it is very possible that she did need a new hook for that dress. Time to go to Hot Topic and pick up your last podcast shirt along with an old doggie style T-shirt. Do not sell them there anymore. Yeah, they do still do. They do?

I was in one and two years ago and they still had the doggie style shirt. I'm talking about our last podcast shirt. Oh, I don't know about that. Oh, yeah, that's probably gone. Yeah. Probably didn't sell very well. We don't do well with a teenager. 15 year olds, they know what it is.

No, absolutely. If you are 15, they're listening to this. Thank you. Thank you. Bring it to TikTok. Please. And like I said, all of Lizzie's dresses were carefully inspected by police prior to the burning.

And considering how bad they wanted Lizzie for these murders, it's likely that they would have jumped on any hard evidence, no matter how small. I feel like there's a push and pull between being, quote unquote, highly respectful of women at the time and doggedly searching for evidence. So I do think that there's a she, Lizzie Borden is also weirdly in this bubble where she is the main suspect,

but also she's a dainty woman. So they, I feel like they're always both like, they're like, don't you shouldn't burn that dress, Lizzie. She's like, but it's got paint on it. I'm like, I'm fucking all right. I guess she didn't burn the dress. We can't be yelling at this woman now. Can we right now?

It's green paint. I don't know how well women had it back then. No, no, of course not. The point is behavior is considered suspicious, but still there is no evidence. Okay. The following Monday though, the cops searched the house again

and reinspected a box of hatchets that had already been ruled out as murder weapons. It's not uncommon to have hatchets. It's not like a box of hatchets. Think about it. If someone gets stabbed in your house, they're not going to take every single knife that you got. They're going to love.

I hope not. I'm a CD murderer. Yeah. My peanut butter spreader, aka knife. Yeah. Now most of these hatchets were dirty and obviously hadn't been used in a while,

but there was one hatchet that looked a little odd. On this one, the handle was freshly broken off near the head and the head itself was coated in an ash-like substance that didn't match the dust of the other tools. No blood though, which made it suspicious, but not evidential.

Man. But even so, on August 8th, 1892, based on Lizzie's inconsistent storytelling, the discovery of the hatchet, and the burning of the dress, which later on in hindsight was seen as suspicious. It is.

A warrant was issued for Lizzie Borden's arrest for the murder of her parents. Whoa. Now before Lizzie was arrested, most people used descriptors like dull, flat, or plain in relation to Lizzie. Sad. But after people started getting more personal,

saying that she was known to be a woman of bad disposition, strong will, relentless, and again and again, ugly. You know. Oh my goodness. What's wrong with, first of all, strong will is good, relentless is good. At the time it wasn't.

And then ugly is subjective. Yes. So especially for a woman. No. 1892, those were pejorative terms. Of course. In relation to a woman. Now it's like that saying you're a hashtag girl boss.

Girl boss. Yes. I like baby boss. Even baby boss is cute. It is fine. Baby boss. What did he do? We don't know actually.

That's my thing. How does a baby become a boss of anything? I don't know anything about that, about that documentary. Yeah, if you did, I would call the police. Yeah. Well, even family members joined in with Lizzie's estranged uncle, Hiram Harrington.

Flat out saying. I ain't stressing a fucking Hiram as far as I can throw him. He flat out said that Lizzie slaughtered her parents for the inheritance. Kissel's throwing a lot of dudes today. Yeah. I'm throwing a lot of dudes, mostly birds, but one dude, Hiram, because that's a horrible name. When asked about motive, Hiram Harrington said quote.

Money, unquestionably money. If Mr. Borton died, he would have left something over $500,000. And all I will say is that in my opinion, that fetishes the only motive, then a sufficient one for the double murder. Oh my goodness, Hiram, such a Hiram. Such a Hiram. But as Bill James put it, most people who kill their parents for the money will show very clear signs of greed.

True. Like when the Menendez brothers killed their parents and immediately bought fancy watches and the finest tennis rackets. They had too much. The tennis practice was too hard for them. They were abused. Now, Lizzie, however, already had money. Her personal bank account was full to the brim.

She was in line to inherit Andrew's money relatively soon anyway. People did not live that long in 1892. And she really had nothing to do with the money once she had it. Instead, all the murders dead was ruined her life forever. Now, interestingly, even though some townsfolk were unkind in their descriptions of Lizzie, most in Fall River openly accused the police of persecuting a young girl because they weren't able to find the actual perpetrator, with some even calling for the tarn and feathering of every lawman in town.

And apparently, tarring and feathering was not as fun as it is in the cartoons. You get a purple and hot tarn, you scream and you scream, and then they put the feathers on you. I don't think you get better from that. I think it's a lot of times you die, and otherwise you have to slowly peel it off your flesh. You do. It's bad.

Yeah, sometimes you do die, but then if you don't, then yeah, you got to peel it off. And that's the thing is that when you peel it off, it's not like you're peeling it off your skin. You are peeling your skin off your flesh. You probably die with infection at some point. Yeah, probably. But it's kind of fun to pretend to be a little chicken for a while.

But the thing about Lizzie Borden is that she was rich, and as a result, she already had a family lawyer. Her family lawyer was Andrew Jennings, and Andrew Jennings put together a 19th century dream team. Cool. This was the fucking, the OJ Simpson team of the 1890s. All right. Jennings first hired a Boston lawyer named Melvin O. Adams,

a handsome man with a waxed mustache, two perfect little curls of hair upon his forehead. Where did that go? Why don't people do that? And quote, the generous full mouth of an orator. Yeah, I could suck a dick today. Okay, I don't know. I don't know about the preface of a handsome man

based upon the description, but that's okay. Kiesl and I both have bigger lips. So I guess that's what you'd say. I guess we do have the full mouth of orator. You have good lips too, Marcus. Thank you. I would say Ben has the handsome full mouth of an orator. You have the small mouth of a non-suckler.

I am a cherub of cotton. Got you good, fucker. The third member of the team, however. You're making up for it now. Don't worry about it. Oh yeah. The third member of the team, however, would not be added until after the preliminary hearing.

Now, the hearing to determine whether Lizzie would go to trial would have been fairly boilerplate, if not for the reappearance of the ghoulish medical examiner, Dr. William Dolan. Do you know how many human bones there are? I'm pretty certain there's about a million. Are you a doctor? No, I got the DR up there.

All right. When Dr. Dolan testified on the stand that he had removed the heads of Andrew and Abby Borton, it quickly became apparent from Emma and Lizzie's reactions that Dr. Dolan hadn't even told the family he'd done it, much less as permission. You guys ready to see the melons? He just brought them in a bag.

It's a bully bull bag. And he's like, there we go. There we go. It's about three pounds right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It fits right in the bum. Dr. Dolan went into minute detail about how he boiled Abby and Andrew's heads like suit bones until their faces

slid off their skulls. I wish you could have been there. You would have seen how fucking awesome it was. It was just so fun. Now it slides right off. He pulls out like three, three foot long straws. Like it's a tiki bar. You get that one drink where you'll suck it together

until it's just spit at the end. Suck the brains. Some daddy soup. And Abby and Lizzie were right there watching him describe this. But in the end, the prosecution mostly went with means, motive, and opportunity. And based on those, Lizzie Borden's case went to trial

for the double murder of her parents. Oddly, she was charged three times. One for the murder of Abby, one for the murder of Andrew, and one for the murder of both of them combined. Oh, so double murder was its own charge. I guess in Fall River, Massachusetts at the time. Interesting. I guess maybe our law system was a little goochier then.

Yeah, no more mullible. That's what you're saying. So they had three chances to get her. Yeah. Now with Lizzie, she was stuck in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation with the press. She was reported to have acted uncaring and cold during the first hearing.

But Lizzie responded that she was merely trying to act like a lady, which is what was expected of her in this time period. How do they expect people to act in those situations, though, also? It's damned if you do. It's very hard. If she would have, you know, actually showed sorrow.

If she would have showed sorrow or like lost her shit, they would have said she was overacting, or they would have said she's not acting as a lady. Or it's proof that she did it because she's sad. Yeah, exactly. But if she acts old and uncaring, if she has her shit together, then they say she should be acting in the opposite way. Hear me out, spinny hat.

This is where you bring your spinny hat. Oh, yeah. That's how you're innocent. That's how you know you're innocent. But then the newspaper started lobbing grenades. About two months after the murders, the Boston Globe printed a story saying that Lizzie had killed her father because she was pregnant

and he therefore threatened to reduce the amount of money she'd receive upon his death as a consequence. Well, that is why all of these various conspiracy theories came out, is because of all the lies that the press immediately said during the trial. So it turned into all of this fan fiction about Lizzie Borden that would hang around for 150 years. So it was said that Lizzie murdered her parents with an axe

before Andrew could change the will, presumably doing it so brutally because no one would ever think to pin it on poor little Lizzie, instead of just poisoning them. Wouldn't her dad be happy if she was pregnant? Because then she might have pregnant out of wedlock, sir. I mean, scandaled. Scandaled because it also defended who it was.

Because then there's also the idea of did it come from daddy. A leprechaun. Oh, I see that. Yes. I see daddy. Did daddy make himself a grandpa? Oh, gosh. And a dad again?

Oh, yes. How stressful is that? But then you get to spoil the child when you're grandpa for the day and give him worthers. But the next day when you're dad, you got to yell about, hey, I know you got flipper feet. That's where. To get the story credibility, it was written that all of this

was said by bored and family made Bridget Sullivan, who claimed to have heard Andrew and Lizzie fighting over the pregnancy. Bridget also allegedly said that Lizzie had offered a gold watch in exchange for her silence, sealing Lizzie's nefarious intention. But the whole story turned out to be an utter fabrication written by a journalist named no shit.

Henry Tricky. Come on. What do you want from me? Come on. That's what I do. Well, it really is sad. We've talked about this a lot on this show about the misinformation spread immediately after crimes from

journalists, air quotes journalists. And it doesn't go away. It just stays there in permeates. And now what is this? 200 years old. This case, right? It's just around there. It's bad.

Politicians have learned for forever. It's what you do. You just say a thing and then their jobs are, everyone else has to scramble to stay. No, no, no. That's not true. No, no, that's not true. You just keep people on the defensive all the time.

The journalists just tell you what is true. And then you just never get to state your own version of the truth. The rumor about her being pregnant and killing her father was the next. That still persists to this day. People still think that 130 years later, just like 130 years from now,

people are still going to think that Columbine happened because those two dickheads were bullied when they weren't. They're also saying it was because Abby walked into her scissor in the maid. That's another one, which is also completely totally fanfiction. But it is interesting. It's nice fan fiction, though. I know it's better.

It's better fan fiction. Your poem was all about. No, I want to, though. I'm going to. I'm fine with Lizzie. I like Lizzie. Yeah, it's good. See, tricky.

Henry Tricky, the guy who made all this shit up. He was known to get a little over excited about stories in pursuit of scoops. He kind of went ahead with shit before it was verified. Yeah, that's the nice thing about scoops when you just make them up. Yeah. And he bought this story from a fraudulent private detective

named Edwin McHenry. The Globe printed a retraction 10 hours later, but Tricky soon left Boston to track down the private detective who'd swindled him out of 500 bucks. But two months later. That's a side quest. I would love to go on. Two months later, Henry Tricky was found dead.

Whoa. L. Duched on some train tracks in Ontario. It happens to really types. I wonder what he I wonder if you uncovered an actual truth. I don't think so. I think somebody just said, you're dead now. You're dead. Henry Tricky is dead. I think what he uncovered is a fraudulent private detective who got sick of dealing with this shit.

And I think I would make Henry kill them to shut him up. Or what seems to be the reason why most people die on train tracks is technically the death should be attributed to alcoholism that allows you to fall asleep on the train tracks. Or bad romantic brunch planning. Train side. Train brunch. Well, supposedly Henry Tricky had fallen under the wheels

as the train left the station and police made no further inquiries. Could be pushed. Now, once Lizzie's case went to trial, she rounded out her legal team by hiring the 1892 local equivalent of Johnny Cochran, George D. Robinson. Oh, Robinson was a former congressman. And just five years before representing Lizzie, he'd also been the governor of Massachusetts.

Yep. No, he is very, he is, yes, he's very deeply involved in this establishment. Pretty powerful. And to give you an idea of how much money Lizzie Borden had, her defense would have cost, in today's money, well over a million dollars. Now, when it came to pinpointing not necessarily a motive,

but more a stimulus for the crimes, the papers sell the old 19th century diagnosis of menstrual hysteria. Yeah, apparently this is true. I got an email from a listener that said that they, they said that it was his idea that you could have many seizures while you were menstruating and that you could black out. And that that's also why she robbed the house. Like she, that Lizzie Borden robbed her own house

during a menstruation seizure. And that she's had some sort of menstruation seizures all day. And that's when she went and killed the whole family. I mean, if you're Lizzie also, you could kind of spin that into a defense. Because then the jurors would be like, we're just going to find you're not guilty because of yuck. I don't want to think about it.

Actually, we're going to get to that. All right. See, back then it was believed by many medical professionals that menstruation predisposed women to mental and behavioral conditions not suffered by men, the worst of which being hysteria. Basically menstruation, in their view, encapsulated the entire problem of female physiology,

psychology, and behavior. The onset of menses was viewed as a time of great danger. A systemic shock repeated monthly with varying intensity. But you, hey, y'all women, people get the menses. Wouldn't you rather be perceived as super dangerous when you're on your period? Wouldn't that be nice to have that excuse? I mean, kind of, but then also they would.

People go like, oh, well, you know, and then you're like, I might kill you. I don't know. I don't know if having people be actively horrified of your presence is fun. I think maybe they want to make friends sometimes too. Yeah, sometimes. Like because you're just yelling at people at Dave and Busters.

That's not quite as romantic as you might be thinking. Does your period make you dangerous? Well, in fact, an Austrian criminal psychologist named Hans Gross claimed that women committed crimes more often during menstruation because their inhibitions were lowered when it was their time of the month. They're already seeing all this blood.

Yeah, this though has actually proven to be the opposite of the truth. Women are significantly less likely to commit crimes, violent or otherwise, while they are in the throes of menses. Ooh. The throes. Throes of menses. Take me, would you?

Yeah, honestly, if you want some room on the bus, throw some menses. That's a good point. That's a good point. But going off 1892 beliefs, Lizzie Borden testified that she did indeed, using the local euphemism at the time, have fleas during the murder.

Why did they make it sound grosser than it? It's not gross. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful part of life, isn't it? It is. I have fleas. It's like she's a Saint Bernard. Yeah, it's a Saint Bernard.

Well, therefore, hysteria was fair game. Now, the trial of Lizzie Borden began on May 8th, 1893. But another axe murder occurred in Fall River before the trial. What? A 22-year-old woman named Bertha Manchester was found with 23 axe wounds to the skull. It takes at least a dozen axe wounds to kill a Bertha.

Bertha Manchester is a tough name. Yeah, that's a tough lady. That's got to be a tough lady. Bertha Manchester, like fucking by next year, I want to see three roller derby girls out there named Bertha Manchester. That's great. Bertha's going to have a comeback when it comes to names.

Maybe. Well, the papers, upon finding this body, they quickly named the possible serial killer, Jack the Chopper. Wow. Original. No, that's bullshit. That's bullshit.

But police dismissed any connection because the Borden murders showed a premeditated plan to kill, while the murder of Bertha Manchester showed a struggle and a sudden impulse. In Bertha's murder, though, the cops finally got a Portuguese to blame after an immigrant named José de Mello confessed to the killing.

Now, the jury for Lizzie's trial was well-chosen by the defense and well-chosen by Lizzie herself. Each member was approved by a head nod from Lizzie, and by the end of it, the box was filled with mustachioed men with sunburn necks and dim expressions on their faces. What they don't say is if she disapproves of a juror, she would do the undertaker, like,

cut like the thumb going across your neck. No. Or she'd fight. Or she would fart. She would fart? Other than the unbelievable scripture bringing that to the show. Or she would fart.

I love it. I guess you're not. I'm sorry, juror number seven, you gotta go. I don't know how to say, I just had some beans on me. I actually lied to you. Oh, juror number nine, you gotta go. That came from the front. That's a queef.

Juror number nine, you're the foreman now. The trial began with an exploration of Lizzie's relationship with her parents, plus a presentation of the broken-handled acts as a possible murder weapon, and a detailed description of the boredom home. See, one of the big questions during the trial was this. If someone was walking through the house,

like Lizzie was, could they have easily seen Abby's body laying in the guest room? But as it is with everything in this case, the answer came back noncommittal. Yeah, I mean, if you don't look, then you don't say it. That's the thing. They finally decided, quote, to see a body if you were looking for one.

That's called the defense-ran-ring around fucking everybody else. I do love this one piece of evidence, because they were talking about how when they went to go look to see if the evidence was destroyed, they found a burnt-up thing in the oven that they thought was a hatchet handle. But it actually was a roll of newspaper.

And then they tested it, and they looked at it, it was a roll of newspaper. And it was in itself, isn't it? Ex-governor George Robinson. This is literally why he's Johnny Cochran, where he said during his closing, did you ever see such a funny fire in the world? What a funny fire that was, a hardwood stick inside the newspaper.

And then the hardwood stick would go out beyond recall, and the newspaper that lives forever would stay there. What a funny idea. What a theory that is. I love that guy. I love that man. So bereft of any hard evidence, the prosecution relied on Lizzie's attitude after the murders,

the burning of the dress, and the hatchet with the missing handle that may or may not have been cleaned after the murders. But concerning the hatchet, the prosecution's witnesses contradicted one another. One cop said that Bridgette handed him the hatchet. But Bridgette said this wasn't true, making her the third person to directly say

that the police had lied in the pursuit of a conviction. But again, no one believed the shift the Irish at the time. That's true. The cops then switched to say that they did find the hatchet on the day of the murder, but didn't take it until later. This sounds more like the truth, because if you'll remember,

the B squad of the police were the first on the scene, because all the other cops were at the amusement park that day. They needed me time. This is great. So many elephant ears and no crime happening in the city. This is a great time to be at the carnival. Hey George, you want to help me shoot all this cotton candy? Absolutely.

I love shooting cotton candy. The bullet goes through it just like an innocent person. In addition, there were also questions as to whether the handless hatchet was sharp enough to cleave into the skulls of the Bordens so many times, because the handless hatchet was quite dull. Most importantly though, the hatchet kind of sorta, but didn't really match the wounds.

Well, that's a pretty big deal. I mean, this is before the time of like exact forensics. We're starting to get there. Like, you know, you have the beginning. But in this case, you just got to take the handle, put it into one of the crevices in the skull, and be like, nope, don't fit. They did?

They just did a lot of shrugs in this high court case. Yeah. There was, however, a claw-handled hatchet in the Borden home that did fit those wounds, but there was no evidence for blood on that hatchet. Basically, they had to find a hatchet that had blood wounds. They had to find a hatchet. There had to be something.

I can get you a hatchet. There was also the question of when the Bordens were killed, because that very importantly informed the timeline. See, it was established during the trial that using methods such as body temperature and blood coagulation were unreliable. So the prosecution had to rely more on the blood absorption on the carpet.

The medical officer, the dude actually went and searched and looked at the bodies, too. The way he described it literally was like different types of jelly. It's like, well, it's got a runny on the other one, and the other one's got, it's more glogged up. It's got more fruit bits, and the other one's got a little bit more of a give to it. Are you ordering an egg breakfast in this diner?

I have not had breakfast yet. You hungry? Mm-hmm. So to test blood absorption rates, a man named, seriously, this is his name, Dr. Ed Wood. Yep. Listen to this. Listen to what he did.

So we're in black and white now? Yes. Okay, great. Some aliens are around. He killed a dog. Oh, no. And opened up an artery on a carpet. You see everybody see what happened here?

Why did you fucking kill a dog, Ed Wood? Oh, fascinating. This is incredible. Oh, God. You were in A to be in court. What a great day. Did he kill the dog in court? I add that.

I actually don't know. Do you shit maybe A? How do you think he did it? Do you think he strangled it, or do you think he bit it on the head with a hammer? Oh, Mike. Well, I would assume he would have to do it with an axe, right? I don't know.

To simulate the crime? But that's the thing. He actually cut the artery on the leg because he's only testing blood absorption rates. Yep. So he might, I don't know, he might have like killed the dog in the next room. Although like considering...

Excuse me, everyone. I don't want to do this in front of everybody else. You're like, okay. Do you hear? Fuck off. Come on. Fuck off. Come on.

Come on. But in the end, it gave them no information. Of course not. It did nothing to chip away at Lizzie's defense. But then... This trial is the most macabre part of the entire story. I just don't know why the dog had to die. But then, there's those bloody cloths

that Lizzie claimed were menstrual towels. Yes. Like my menstruations. I was collecting them. Oh. Now you'd think that the presence of bloody cloths would be highly valuable evidence. No matter what anyone at the scene said they were.

You got to at least believe that is fishy. Yeah. They got rid of all of these quote-unquote menstruation. You want to use that term? Absolutely. Because they were... We didn't see them.

We don't know how soft with blood they were. No idea. No idea. Okay. Because that's the thing, man. Today, weeks of that trial would have been spent on the rags alone. Oh, yeah.

They would have analyzed the consistency of the blood. They would have put them in hot water to see what kind of tea they made. And you're actually drinking that tea right now, juror number three. This is great tea. Irony. Irony.

Irony. They would go through the difference between period blood and blood from a vein. They'd kill another dog. Do they start stretching from another dog? Oh my God, don't have the dog men straight. What has happened? They would have charts demonstrating Lizzie's

monthly cycle, saying whether she was early with their period or late with their period, how often Lizzie was late or early with their period. They would have had testimony from five different kinds of gynecologist. That's great. But in 1892 both the defense and the prosecutor and the prosecution were so squeamish about menstruation

that the rags were barely mentioned. Dr. Ed Wood simply said that they were from, quote, ordinary monthly sickness, so ordinary. Ordinary. Ordinary monthly sickness, okay. And everyone was all too happy to move on. Yes, let's go. I have the Hibijibis officially.

Officially, legally, I have the Hibijibis. Prosecution defense on the judge year. We're gonna yada, yada, yada this. Pleased to meet you. Thank you. I'm in straight right now, boys. No, we're gonna yada, yada. So I meant to say, I have fleas in my pussy.

That's so funny. Sorry everybody. Thank you for having fun today. Thank you for being professional. Have a chat with it. The fleas in your pussy is, oh god. But while menstruation was too icky to mention, nobody had any problem when a doctor named Frank Draper

actually brought Andrew Borden's skull into the courtroom. For what? Why? I don't know what it looked like that he brought a skull in. He's too impressed, everybody. Look what I've done. I'm a doctor. I can do this.

Anybody else would call me a ghoul or a murderer. You could be both. From a report at the time, it was said that the jaw on Andrew's skull moved back and forth in a grisly suggestion of speech. Lizzy, what are you doing? Lizzy, what are you doing? Come on, leave me alone.

You're hitting me with that. He puppeted this shit on the stand. Damn it. He did a puppet. He jacked on him. No. See, Draper was brought in specifically to talk about the wounds

and how much blood spurt could be produced by such wounds. You'd be absolutely astounded just how much blood is gushing inside of the human body and just how much can erupt when you cleave a man's head clean open. All right, well, that was a great practice, but when we're in front of the jury, don't be such a fucking creep.

I hunger for blood. No. The spurt of blood. Okay. The rush of ejaculate. Oh. If there is blood in your ejaculate, that is also a time to go to the doctor.

Yeah, sure. It is a sign. Yep, if there's jelly in the icing, go to the doctor. Go to the doctor. Well, Draper was actually there for the prosecution. He was there to say that an axe attack to the head and face would not

send blood spurting all over the place. Wait, what? Instead, he said that blood would merely bubble out through the wound and not really go beyond the surface. I don't think that's true. I think he's covering up for his own crimes. Yeah. It is not true.

Yeah, cause the splatter. Yeah, yeah, you pull out the axe. The axe spreads it all to the ceiling. Well, Draper said that there was, quote, this is him, no rule of blood spatter. All right. Today, blood spatter is its own branch of forensic science. It's got analysts whose entire lives are devoted

to how blood behaves in very specific ways when it spatters. We all know that blood is magic and the sun is fueled by a dragon that lives inside of it. So once again, swing and a miss for the prosecution. Well, there is a story that I like in the conspiracy. One angle is, is that they were all poisoned and that the bodies were then manipulated to look as if they were heinously murdered.

So one, that is like one thing that he postulates. That is interesting. It was so thoroughly planned that they were, they were both poisoned with the food, essentially. Like while they, they had already built up the story that the food was bad and making them sick or whatever. And then essentially they went, they pre-poisoned them, they died, then they made it look like

they were heinously murdered with an axe. So that they can blame the crime on some, I think he was some kind of Portuguese. That's interesting, yeah. However, I have a question on that one. We know from the stomachs, and we also know from the testimonies that Abby ate after Andrew did.

So how did Abby die first while Andrew was still, cause Abby died before Andrew even got home. So how was Andrew partying around town, acting just fine while Abby was poisoned? Abby was, Abby consumed the poison and the poison was pushed into her father's mouth and nose. That essentially he went to go to sleep on the bench, they laid him down and then she literally covered his face

with something and like killed him while he was struggling on the couch. And then they apply the- Like Kala Hamoka. Yes. Oh, that is interesting, very interesting. Now the trial itself was only 15 days long, incredibly short by today's standards

and especially short in a trial of the century case like Lizzie's. They're a lucky juror, though. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I don't know, to get back to like what life? Like today's standards, sure, but yeah. I already found the fishing lures. So I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do with March.

But by the end of it, the prosecution had failed to produce any direct evidence against Lizzie Borden. But it's not like the defense was doing a stellar job either, for the most part. I mean, for the most part they did pretty well, but ultimately defense attorney, George Robinson, argued in his closing statements that the murders were so heinous

that a woman couldn't have committed them. And concerning Lizzie's inconsistent stories, he again said, she's just a woman. I'm just some silly bitch. I don't do anything. Look at these wrists. So as always, it's a blessing and a curse for her to be a woman.

Just a woman easily confused, as she said. As all women are easily confused. I am inherently dizzy. Every day I wake up, I almost fall down. It's like how small my feet are, how big my head is. I'm just some dull woman. Certainly can't kill her fucking shitty dad. Robinson even insinuated that if Lizzie

had killed Andrew and Abby, it was still a crime of passion caused by her, quote unquote, periodic insanity. Because Lizzie was in the throes of her monthly illness when the murders occurred. Yeah, you wouldn't even believe. I had blood coming out of the bottom of me. And to be honest, I was ready to make more.

I believe that, Lizzie. The district attorney, Josey and Nolton, also hit the woman angle, saying that the wounds were feminine and struck at badly aimed angles that were, quote, weak, puttering and nervous. Ooh. Juror number seven, you've gotta go.

Sorry. And so on June 20th, when it was time to read the verdict. Yes. The men and women of Fall River swarmed the courthouse looking for seats, although only the women were admonished by the prudish Fall River Daily Herald

for being, quote, a disgrace to femininity. Oh my Lord, thank God for the love of true crime from women. Yeah, thank God. Jesus Christ, we are alive to it. Seriously, man, it's always been this way. Absolutely. But when it came to how long the jury deliberated, Lizzie Borden was acquitted.

Whoa. Yeah, we know. Faster than OJ. Wow. Jurors were gone, not half an hour before they declared not guilty with glee. Having waited 30 minutes only as, as they put it, a matter of courtesy to the court of law.

And that's how you get away with murder. Spite the football, gotcha, fuckers. Give us that skull, blah, blah, blah. I'll fucking your daddy, still fucking your daddy. Oh, Lizzie, get out of court when you can. Well, in the end, as it goes with many court cases, it didn't matter whether or not Lizzie had actually done it. What mattered was that the prosecution couldn't even

come close to proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Lizzie Borden had killed her parents with an ax. Yes. Woo. Yes. Yes. You can only do the riff when it's at the end of the sentence. You can't do it when it's in the middle.

You're right. Absolutely. What's interesting, though, is that while Lizzie Borden did sell the house where her parents were murdered, she still lived in Fall River for the rest of her life. Just to lord it over everyone. I really do think at that point, she was ready to live high on the hog.

She was like, fuck this shit. Well, she kept all the money, right? Oh, yes. She was not guilty. She got acquittals. She got all the money, and she got to live exactly how she always wanted to live, which was in the nice neighborhood, overlooking Fall River.

And they had to live with her for forever. That's a thing. She had the nice house. Yes. She did have that. And it was a larger house as well. But despite many people being on her side in the beginning, she was shunned from her former social circles

and unwelcome in her old church after the trial. She should have moved to Fort Lauderdale. That's where killers are welcome. Every August, the Fall River Daily Globe would rehash the Borden murders. And every August, the Fall River Daily Globe would make a point to say the murderer still walked among them, all but coming right out and saying

that Lizzie Borden had done the deed. But she never admitted to doing these things. She never talked about it publicly ever. Ever again, OK. The papers continued hounding Lizzie for years, saying that she'd become engaged to one of the jurors. Or constantly printing false stories about Lizzie being a kleptomaniac,

always with the headline, Lizzie Borden again. I don't know why she didn't just move. I feel like it really just comes down to be like, this is my town. Yeah, I mean, it's her home. But that's where she's comfortable. And she wasn't quitted. Got to mean something.

They also reported that Andrew Borden was somehow still alive. And that he was in the habit of paying off shopkeepers any time Lizzie stole something, although it was never proved that Lizzie ever stole anything. Unless she did dress up as a burglar and set up the first burglary of all the conspiracies are true. Unless. OK.

Eventually, Lizzie and Emma moved to a larger home in the city's elite residential neighborhood. Lizzie changed her name to Lisbeth and called herself Lisbeth of Maplecroft after her new estate. Cool. There, and Ben, you're going to like this. She lived a quiet life with her Boston terriers

who rode around with her in her black Packard that she'd specially outfitted with special seats for her little dogs. My bitch is a ragdy copilot. Come on, this is Terriotown. I don't know. If I was, if I did have a child and they did kill me, I would almost say don't charge them.

Yeah. That's depression. No, it's just, I don't know. They're my kid. You created the problem. It's like, technically, it's half my fault. Yeah, I guess you can. You are supposed to replace me anyway.

Yeah. Lizzie also befriended neighborhood children. She bought them ice cream. Was known as a pretty nice lady about town. Hey, I killed my father. I'm a stepmother, right? Here's an ice cream cone. Don't say anything.

Dude, if you're a kid, first of all, she's got kick ass stories. Sick of them getting ice cream. Vanilla, and ooh, vanilla. I assume they only have vanilla. You want some strawberry? Wink, wink, wink. Come on, come over.

I got some rags on show. Yeah, you think you're a fun week? Finally, Lizzie Borden died quietly in June of 1927. OK. Glad, according to her friends, to be done with the whole thing. Oh, I bet. Honestly, though, but she might have had an affair.

Like, this is the type of thing they've been talking about. Why do people think there's any credence to her slapping it with the maid, right? Is that she might have had an affair with a woman by the name of Nance O'Neill, that was an actress at the time, who was also very similar. She was like one of those tall, towering, kind of actress women.

But she was married, but she was known to have lesbian dallances, dallances. And they had a relationship. Her friendship struck up amongst them, both of them, from 1904. It's kind of a point you continue to circle back to, it seems like. I mean, I didn't do this.

It wasn't me who did this. No, man. Nance and Lizzie, they're definitely sharing the lease on a Subaru. Oh, I am. I know you have a lovely town home. Absolutely. I love it.

And the Boston Terriers with their own seats in the car. It's cute, honestly. Well, when Lizzie died, she left her remaining fortune, $30,000, good sum, good chunk. I think it's somewhere, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's money. She left it to the Fall River Animal Rescue League. And it was said that she used the rest of her fortune

while she was still alive to bring ease and comfort to others throughout her life. But still, there are questions. Questions. Namely, who the fuck killed the Bordens? Oh, that's a big one, yeah. And even if Lizzie did do it, then where did the murder weapon go?

Because it obviously was not in the house. I am going to say, there is no way that she did this. I don't believe that this is. But if she did do the thing where she wanted to kill, let's say, there's a case we might be doing pretty soon that goes by the name of Leopold and Lowe, right? At some point, where the idea of killing for pleasure or the experiment of it, or what she did,

maybe she did hate her father. Maybe she did hate her father. And maybe she ran literal drills, practicing when she was going to murder them and how she was going to do it. And try to figure out ways to do it and look for opportunity to do it. And then finally, the opportunity arose and she took it

and she figured out a way to change her clothes super fast. And that's what she did. And she spent her whole, ever-loving life doing it while she was out looking for fishing lures. But big question is, at least for me, is that if she did plan it out so well and was running drills and all that shit, why did she do it on the day that her uncle came to visit?

Because that seems like that introduction. It was a surprise. But that's the thing. Why not just move it to another day? Do we know what it was suicide? Because it was suicide. That's always where I go to. Because Emma was gone and she was still

going to be gone for a long time. Like Emma wasn't coming back any time soon. So why still do it that day? John was in on it. But why? Because he wasn't going to get any money and there's no record of Lizzie giving him any money. So you can just say stuff, though.

Because you remember, like, John and Morse. The carriage riders that are also a part of this whole thing. There were two carriage riders. They were hired, knowing for a fact they were trying to get into the garbantry business. And they were going to get paid out if they helped the murders happen. They picked up the butcher dude.

The dude came in. He came dressed up as a butcher. He laughed in a butcher's outfit, all spattered with the blood of the Bordens, right? But they just thought he was a normal butcher walking down the street. He got inside of this carriage and he drove off, right? This is a heist, man.

This is a team. That's conjecture. It also seems a little bit classic, perhaps. You're just blaming the butcher into taxi drivers. No, this is what? This is according to that incest porn I read. Well, again, with the timeline, you'd have to assume that if Lizzie broke the handle of the ax

during the murders, she would have had to burn the handle or hide it extremely well. And also clean the ax itself completely of any blood in addition to cleaning herself. Remember on the last episode, I went through that timeline of everything she would have had to do in about five minutes. Add burning an ax handle and cleaning the head of an ax

to that timeline. But as it turned out, the broken handled ax wasn't the murder weapon at all. At all? See, about a month after Lizzie was acquitted, a boy looking for a lost ball found a hatchet in the yard behind the Borden's property. That is a lucky day for a boy.

What a time to be a boy looking for a lost ball. How fun. Now they try to find Pokemon. Yeah. Now the hatchet was rusted. But underneath the rust was a glint of gilding, which indicated that the hatchet had been new when it was bought.

And considering how deep the ax wounds were, it made sense that the hatchet used would have been new. Yes. It was also revealed that one of the cuts in Abbey Borden's skull held a small deposit of gilding metal, the same kind that were used to ornament hatchets when they left the factory, which points towards the new ax and away from the broken one.

Wow. Well, I'm going to go with a Scooby-Doo ending. It was old man Withers who owns the amusement park that all the cops were at, because he understood all the cops were there, and then, boom, he can do it. Do we have an old man Withers? It was a literal roller coaster tycoon. Wow.

So it seems likely that this was indeed the murder weapon, which supports the theory that the murderer was an intruder who dropped or tossed the murder weapon on his way out of the house, and most likely wore dark clothing to hide the blood stains. Because after all, if Lizzie Borden did indeed commit these murders, then she would

have had to have shown an enormous amount of foresight to hide all of the blood evidence. Therefore, it just doesn't make sense for her to simply toss the murder weapon into the next yard so willy-nilly never to return to retrieve it. Unless she used two axes. What do you mean unless she used two axes? She killed the one, because she killed the one

the hour before, and she tossed the axe out. I don't know. The other axe is the other one that they found. But that one doesn't fit any of the wounds, and they never found the handle, and she didn't have time to burn the handle or hide it. Because you know that those motherfuckers who bought the Lizzie Borden house and ran the bed and breakfast

have looked for secret chambers for decades. You know, we just got sold for $2 million. What, did it really? Yeah, a year ago or something. They never checked her pussy. It seems like they were disgusted by it, to be honest. Come on. Now, this is indeed bombshell material, possibly even

exonerating material. But the finding of this hatchet wasn't noticed by anyone until someone went through D.A. Milton's records in 1989, almost 100 years later, long after the axe in question had disappeared. You know, it's just weird that someone was looking through the files in 1989, because there was probably like an active homicide going on

that they could have been investigating. But you know, it's good to get it. Now, these weren't active homicide detectives. Oh, these are like, these are armchair slews. These are historians that are looking through this shit. And also, it was announced today that there is a brand new book coming out. Jesus fucking Christ.

About Lizzie Borden, in which they have found the up to this point hidden Jennings journals, which are all of the notes of the entire defense team, all of the interviews, evidence collection, all this kind of stuff. The book is the article came out announcing that a book is coming out based on this new evidence that has been hidden since the trial.

Nice. It hasn't been hidden. I know about these notes. These notes have been with that law firm this entire time. But the law firm always said that we have attorney-client privilege, and that has no expiration date. OK. So they finally gave it up.

Yep. Fucking hell. It's fine. But they're saying that it actually more clearly, it might more clearly exonerate her. That you don't know yet. That we don't know yet, because we're going to see. But they apparently, there's a bunch of evidence in there.

Wow. Wow. That didn't even submit to trial. Today, the article came out. I was going through shit today. Man, this shit never stops. It never stops. We'll do a little relax fit, perhaps, and do a catch up.

We might have. I guess we will. Let's catch you a catch up. Is that wild? Yeah, that's fucking. To this day, we do this show. These cases. Synchronicity.

They never end. It's true. All right, it's real. But of course, by 1989, the legend of Lizzie Borden had already taken hold and become a part of American history. Yes, indeed. So while it seems likely, in my opinion,

that Lizzie Borden didn't do it, that's my opinion, we will also, unfortunately, never know who really killed Andrew and Abby. I'm taking Marcus's opinion, although your leper contrary does hold up his own. I mean, where was Warwick Davis, if not a time-traveling actor? Oh, love being doing his, honestly, the Lizzie Borden. Leprechaun 5, Lizzie Borden is a fun idea.

That's a great idea. That's really cool. All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening to our tale of Lizzie Borden. Oh, was Leprechaun 5 the one in space? I think Leprechaun 5 was in the hood, or was Leprechaun 5 in Vegas.

Was there one in Vegas? Four was Vegas? I think four was in the hood. Or four was in space. We'll actually have to ask Warwick Davis. It is the role of B movie that four or five has to be in space. Look at Critters 4. True.

And of course, Jason X, which I think that was actually number seven or something. Yeah, number eight, nine. That would have been 10. Yeah, that's great. Because of the Roman numeral X. Yeah, eight was Manhattan, nine was Jason goes to hell, making Jason X number 10.

Yeah, Jason goes to hell where Jason wasn't running. But that's a whole other thing. But is it multiple or five? Is it not? It is. Indeed it is. Lizzie Borden, everyone, hopefully you're more confused now than ever.

Sure, yeah. Because it seems like that's the consensus. Well, thank you all so much for listening. We want to thank everyone who came out to our shows in Portland. Eugene, you all really know no joke. You gave us a little pep in our step. You really energized us. You really did, because you all were just so wonderful.

And it was just awesome to be back in Oregon. And yeah, we're excited. The show in Boise was fantastic. And so thanks to everyone who came out in Idaho and truly apologize for the people of Vancouver. But we will be there June 23rd. Yes. Yes, honestly, we just had fucking problems

with getting over the border. But now you'll see, we're going to make it up to you. You will have fun. Absolutely. And we'll see you in Seattle and Spokane. And I just don't know what I'm going to do with all this tall salad and scrambled eggs. Such a jackass.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with all that scrambled eggs. Mercy. That show holds up, though. Actually, Seattle should be very happy. Oh my god, it holds up. Me and Carolina are watching the whole thing from beginning to end right now.

It's fantastic. It's sexually fueling them. It is. Oh, is that right? Absolutely. Yes. I get to be Niles and she gets to be Maris. Who's the dog?

The dog. Our dog. Georgie. Who is also a half Jack Cross Latterio. So it works really well. Nice. I want to be the dad. He was funny because he's like, I had World War II.

You're gay. That's all. Basically, that's the undercurrent of the entire show. But no. All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening. And anything else? Check out the new issue.

Soul plumber. Soul plumber. It is out. Well, I think you have to ask them for it. Issue number three is out. You have to ask them for it. The comic book store or go on the comics. Yeah.

Or DC infinite. The DC universe. Yeah. You can go on any of those. But please, if you can go to your local comic book store and grab those, I think a lot if you missed, if you haven't read any of them so far, call up your comic book store. See if they got the second printing of issue one, see if they still have issued copies of issue two.

And if not, we're going to have, we'll have a trade eventually, but try to buy them individually if you can. Support your local comic book store. Absolutely. Sweet. And then of course we have our weed vapes and everything else. Go to the merch page for all the cool clothings and things like that. Yeah.

Okay, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Magustylations. Help me, you fuck us. Yes, indeed. Don't kill your parents. I still think she did it.

Yeah, but nothing will shake you from that. No. Yeah. No. Even though there's mountains of evidence to say otherwise. I don't know. I see two dead parents. No questions asked about them.

A lot of questions. We've been talking about it for 130 years.