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Lizzie Borden: Fact, Fable, and the Verdict of History · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: When she saw what she had done, she gave her
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: father 41. It is just.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate nursery rhyme of the macabre, isn't it?
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Like generations of kids skipping rope to a double homicide.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: It's crazy. It's practically baked into our cultural DNA at
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: this point. We all know the rhyme. We all know
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the name. But I want to stop right there, you know,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: right at the beginning.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And ask you, the listener, a very specific question. Like,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: how much of that nursery rhyme, the one you've probably
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: known since you were on a playground, is actually true?
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Because if we want to talk facts right out of
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the gate, we have to make a correction. Right. It
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: wasn't 40 and 41 wax. No, it wasn't.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It was 19 and it was 10. Which....
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is still a horrific, almost unfathomable amount
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: of violence. Totally. But it highlights exactly how quickly reality
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: gets warped into mythology. You know, the facts are brutal enough.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: They didn't need the exaggeration.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But here is the real kicker. It was 19
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and 10. Right. 29 swings of a hatchet into human
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: skulls in a locked house right in the middle of
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a Thursday morning.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: A bright, sunny morning. Yeah.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And yet somehow when the prime suspect was found just
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: minutes later, She didn't have a single solitary drop of
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: blood on her.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Which is wild.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: So today, we are solving the ultimate locked room mystery.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Our mission for this Deep Dives is to basically strip
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: away more than 130 years of pop culture baggage.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: All the urban legends.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: The ghost stories, all of it. We're looking strictly at
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the original 1892 crime scene facts.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: And the incredibly flawed forensics of the Victorian era.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, and a truly fascinating experiment conducted by the team
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: at 48 hours back in 2020.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, that experiment is amazing.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: It really is. They presented the exact same 1893 trial
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: evidence to a mock jury of modern citizens.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: It is a brilliant way to approach this because when
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: you strip away the lore and just look at the
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: mechanics of the crime, what you are left with is
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: basically a magnifying glass on the justice system itself.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, completely. You start to see how human bias, the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: rigid gender roles of the 1890s, and the very concept
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: of reasonable doubt have evolved.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Or haven't evolved.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Right. In some deeply surprising ways. How they haven't evolved
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: at all over the last century.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty mind-blowing.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: You know, we all love a good true crime mystery.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: But the real intrigue here isn't just the visceral gore
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of it, at least for me.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: For me, this is a puzzle of physics and time. Like,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Put yourself in that hot, unventilated house in August 1892.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, the heat must have been awful.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: You've got no indoor plumbing. You're wearing heavy Victorian clothing.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: How do you even begin to analyze a double homicide?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: A literal bloodbath.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a bloodbath from an era before fingerprinting was standard,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: before DNA testing even existed as a concept.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Well, before anyone even knew how to read blood spatter, right?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Hell, exactly.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: You have to start by looking at the environment that
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: incubated the crime.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: We have to examine the victims, the incredibly tight chronological
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: timeline of that morning, the bizarre lack of physical evidence.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: The absolute circus of the 1893 trial.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Right. And finally, how that modern jury reacted when handed
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: those same exact pieces of the puzzle. We basically have
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: to step inside the pressure cooker that was the Borden house.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. So let's unpack this pressure cooker. We are in
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Fall River, Massachusetts.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: The year is 1892.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: And we really need to talk about Andrew Borden, the
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: patriarch of the family.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: He is a fascinating character.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: He really is. The historical records paint a very specific and, frankly,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: bizarre picture of this man.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a prominent local businessman, a bank president.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: He owned commercial real estate. He was incredibly wealthy.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, massively wealthy. But he was also... famous or maybe
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: infamous for his extreme, almost pathological frugality.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: The cheapest guy in town.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Literally. He was at the absolute extreme end of Yankee frugality.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And the contrast is just staggering when you look at
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: his net worth versus his daily life.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Like here is a man of immense status in the community,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: and yet he chooses to live in a house just
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: a block from the center of town.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: A very modest house.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Super modest. Even by the standards of the 1890s working class.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Fall River was a booming textile town, right?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were these huge mansions going up on the hill.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: And Andrew Borden could have afforded literally any of them. Easily.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: But instead, he kept his family in this narrow, cramped
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: structure right near the noisy, dirty downtown business district.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't just the location either. The records emphasized
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: the specific deprivations inside that house.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, the plumbing.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Or lack thereof. Right.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: This house had almost no indoor plumbing. There was a
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: single cold water faucet in the kitchen.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: And a water closet in the basement.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: No hot water, no bathtub, and no gas lighting.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Which was totally standard at the time for a family
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: of their means.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were still using kerosene lamps.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Like, think about the mechanics of that daily life for
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a second. It's 1892. Right. Indoor plumbing and gas lighting
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: are the markers of basic middle-class comfort.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: And Andrew Borden, a millionaire in today's money, is making
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: his adult daughters haul hot water upstairs in buckets just
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: to wash their faces.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Just to save a few pennies.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: You can imagine the daily grinding resentment that breeds.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, it creates an atmosphere of constant deprivation amidst plenty.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: It's a very specific kind of psychological control.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: And who is living in this environment? You have a
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: cast of characters trapped in this spatial reality.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: There's Andrew, the penny-pinching patriarch. Then there is his second wife,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Abby Borden.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: And here's where we have to do some major myth
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: busting right away because history in all those terrible movies.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, the movies always get this wrong.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: They really do. They have a habit of casting Abby
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: as the classic wicked evil stepmother trope.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Which is completely unfair. Right. It's entirely unsupported by the
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: historical record. The consensus among historians who, you know, actually
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: study the court transcripts and neighborhood accounts is that Abby
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: was likely the nicest person in the house. Yeah.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: She wasn't some domineering, wicked figure.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Not at all. She was a quiet, heavyset woman who
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: was essentially caught in the crossfire of a deeply dysfunctional
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: family dynamic.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: She was just trying to survive her husband's cheapness, honestly.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: That and her stepdaughter's icy contempt.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that contempt was real. So Andrew and Abby, and
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: then we have Andrew's two daughters from his first marriage.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: There's Emma Borden, who is 41 years old. She is
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: the older sister. And she always played a very maternal,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: protective role toward her younger sister.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Especially after their biological mother died.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Right. And conveniently, at the time of the murders, Emma
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: had been out of town for two weeks.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Visiting friends in a neighboring town.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Leaving the younger sister, Lizzie Borden, alone with Andrew and Abby. Yes.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Lizzie was 32 years old at the time. Unmarried.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Described by most who knew her as a fairly unremarkable woman, really.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was heavily involved in the central congregational church.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: She taught Sunday school.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: She was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: To the outside world, she was just a seemingly ordinary, respectable,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: deeply bored Victorian spinster.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: But beneath that respectable veneer, the house was the site
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: of a silent, bitter, cold war.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, definitely.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: The girls, Lizzie and Emma, they desperately wanted a better lifestyle.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: They knew their father had the money.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: They saw the other wealthy families in Fall River living
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: in luxury hosting parties, traveling.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: And they deeply resented Andrew for withholding that life, for
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: making them empty chamber pots while he counted his rental income.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the match that lit the powder keg, or
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: rather the event that turned that Cold War hot, was
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: a real estate transaction.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Yes. Let's get into this because this is wild.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: So Andrew made a financial decision that essentially weaponized this resentment.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: He decided to quietly bail out his wife, Abby's half-sister. Right.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: He bought a house and put it in Abby's name
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: so her sister would have a place to live.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: So let me jump in here and try to put
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: the pieces together.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of people resent their parents for money.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Family disputes over real estate happen literally every day.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, all the time.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: But taking a hatchet and hacking your father and stepmother
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: to death is a massive incomprehensible leap.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: It is a huge leap.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Like, was this one house really enough to trigger the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: sheer unrestrained rage we see in these murders? Because if
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: we look at the mechanics of inheritance back then, it
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: wasn't just about the one house, was it?
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: No, it wasn't.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Inheritance law was strictly chronological.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: That is exactly the key to the entire case. What's
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: fascinating here is that the motive isn't just about a
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: localized family squabble over one property.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: It's about an existential threat to Lizzie and Emma's entire future.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Under the inheritance laws of 1890s Massachusetts, a spouse had
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: a guaranteed right to a significant portion of an estate.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Often referred to as the widow's dower.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Right. So if Andrew dies first, Abby automatically gets her
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: widow's share of his massive fortune.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: And because she has no biological children with Andrew... When
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Abby eventually dies, her inherited wealth doesn't go back to
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Lizzie and Emma.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: It passes to Abby's family, the very half-sister and relatives
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: that the girls already despise.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Precisely. If Andrew dies first, Lizzie and Emma lose a
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: massive cut of the fortune they felt entirely entitled to.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: They would have to watch their father's wealth siphon off
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: into their stepmother's family.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Which they would have hated.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, they would have loathed it. But, and this is
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: the most critical but in legal history.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: If Abby dies first... Her claim to the estate completely vanishes.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: It's gone.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: She has no claim if she predeceases him. So when
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Andrew subsequently dies, everything, every single penny, every property, the
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: entire empire goes directly and exclusively to his biological daughter.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Lizzie and Emma.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: That is just a chilling realization. This wasn't just a
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: squabble over a single piece of property.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: This was a zero-sum game for the entire fortune. If
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Abby outlives Andrew by even a single minute, the girls
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: lose millions in today's money.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: If Abby dies before Andrew, the girls win the lottery.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: That changes the entire complexion of the motive.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: It turns it from simple anger into a highly calculated,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: high stakes financial strategy.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: It provides a chillingly logical framework for the violence. And
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: that legal reality completely sets the stage for the morning
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: of Thursday, August 4th, 1892.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: The order of death becomes the most important fact in
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: the world. Well, let's look at the timeline of that
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: morning because it really is a masterclass in a shrinking
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: circle of suspects.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly tight.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: We know exactly who was in that house when the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: sun came up. Five people woke up under that roof.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Andrew, Abby, Lizzie, the housemaid, Bridget Sullivan.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: An Irish immigrant who actually lived in the sweltering third
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: floor attic.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Poor Bridget. And Andrew's brother-in-law, John Morris, who had arrived
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the day before and stayed in the second floor guest room.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So five people in a very small space. And then
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: the departures begin.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: First, John Morse leaves the house early in the morning
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: to visit other relatives in a different part of town.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: He has a solid corroborated alibi.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so he's out. Then, around 9.00 a.m., Andrew Borden
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: leaves the house.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: He walks into the center of town to check on
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the commercial buildings he owned, to chat with tenants, and
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: go to the bank. He is out of the house,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: seen by multiple witnesses downtown.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: And then there is Bridget Sullivan, the maid. She isn't
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: feeling well. The whole house had actually been suffering from
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: what they called summer complaints.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Basically severe food poisoning.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for a few days. But despite her being sick,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Abby orders Bridget to go outside and wash the windows.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Which is wild to me. It's a sweltering August morning.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: You're violently ill and you have to go wash windows. Right.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: But Bridget gathers her buckets and goes outside.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Leaving exactly two people inside the house. Abby Borden and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Lizzie Borden.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Just the two of them.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And around 930 in the morning, Abby goes upstairs to
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: make the bed and clean up the guest room that
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: John Morris had just vacated.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: And that is where the first murder occurs.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: The brutality of this initial attack is difficult to fully convey.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Abby Borden was struck 19 times with a sharp, heavy instrument.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Determined to be a hatchet.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Right. 18 blows to the back of the right side
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: of her head and one deep blow to the base
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: of her neck.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And we have to talk about the physical reality, the
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: pure physics of this moment, because it completely shatters Lizzie's alibi. Yes.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Let's get into the physics.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Abby was a short woman, only about five feet tall.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: But she was heavy. She weighed roughly 200 pounds.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: She is struck repeatedly. A 200-pound woman falls dead to
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the floor of a Victorian bedroom. She is found face
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: down in a massive pool of blood.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: And yet Lizzie Borden's official claim is that she was
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: downstairs in the dining room ironing handkerchiefs and she heard
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: absolutely nothing.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Which, if you understand the architecture of that house, strains
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: credulity to the breaking point.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It's insane.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: This was a modestly built wood frame house from the 1840s.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: The floors were thin.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Very thin.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: But more importantly, the spatial layout was bizarre. There were
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: almost no hallways on the second floor.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Wait, no hallways?
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To get from one room to another, you literally
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: had to walk through other people's bedrooms. It was cramped,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: acoustically hollow, and offered zero privacy.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Right. I was looking at the floor plans. The guest
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: room where Abby was murdered is situated directly above the
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: sitting room. which is adjacent to the dining room where
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Lizzie claimed to be. So the physics of a 200-pound
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: body hitting the floorboards right above your head, the vibration,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the structural thud, the noise of the hatchet strikes themselves,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the splintering of bone.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: It's physically impossible that someone just downstairs heard nothing.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It defies the laws of acoustics. Even if Lizzie had
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: been outside in the yard, she might have heard it.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Probably.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Inside that echoing wooden box, it's simply not believable.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: No, it's not. But nevertheless, Abby is dead upstairs. It's
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: roughly 9.30 a.m. Now, the clock is ticking on this
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: horrific timeline.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And what a timeline it is. For an hour and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: 15 minutes, nothing happens.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Plus silence.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: The house is silent. Abby is bleeding through the floorboards upstairs.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Lizzie is downstairs. Bridget is outside washing windows.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: And then at 10.45 a.m., Andrew Borden returns home from
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: his errands.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: His key won't work in the front door, so Bridget
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: actually has to let him in. And she later testifies
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: she heard Lizzie laughing from the top of the stairs
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: when the door was jammed.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Which is a chilling detail. She is laughing while standing
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: feet away from her slaughtered stepmother.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly dark. According to testimony, Andrew comes in, greets
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Bridget and Lizzie. He has absolutely no idea his wife
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: is lying dead in the guest room directly above his head.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Clueless.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: He goes into the sitting room, takes off his heavy coat,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: puts on a cardigan, and decides to take a mid-morning
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: nap on the sofa.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: It is such an incredibly vulnerable position. He's an old
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: man lying down in his own home. And 45 minutes later,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: around 1130 a.m., he is dead.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: The attack on Andrew is just as vicious and in
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: some ways more targeted. He suffered 10 blows to the head.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: The medical reports describe his face as being entirely obliterated.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: He was struck while he was sleeping. One of his
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: eyes had been split in half by the blade.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: That's so gruesome.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: And crucially, the medical examiner noted that neither Andrew nor
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Abby had any defensive wounds on their hands or arms.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: No defensive wounds. Let's unpack the mechanics of that. If
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: an intruder breaks into your house with a hatchet, your
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: instinct is to put your hands up. You fight.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: The lack of defensive wounds means what?
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: While it strongly suggests they were taken completely by surprise,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: most likely from behind or while asleep.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: But it also implies a level of comfort. If a
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: stranger walked up to Abby in the guest room holding
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: a hatchet, she would have reacted.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: But if someone she knew, say, her stepdaughter, would walk
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: into the room holding a common household tool, she wouldn't
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: flinch until it was too late.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, here is where it gets really interesting. The forensic
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: contrast between the two bodies.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Yes. The 1890s medicine.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Right, because forensics in 1892 was essentially just visual observation.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: But even with the primitive state of 19th century medicine,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner noticed a glaring, undeniable physical difference that
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: proved exactly what we were talking about with the inheritance laws.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, the state and temperature of the blood.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Which is crucial.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: When Andrew was discovered on the couch, his injuries were
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: still oozing wet, bright red liquid blood. His body was
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: warm to the touch. So the time of death was
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: extremely recent, within minutes. But when they finally went upstairs
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: and examined Abby, her blood was dark, matted, and heavily coagulated. Wow.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: And her body was completely cold to the touch.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Visual, indisputable proof that Abby died first. The timeline is cemented.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Abby dies at 9.30. Andrew dies at 11.30. Exactly. The
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: legal dominoes fall exactly the way they need to for
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the girls to get the money. But think about the
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: logistics of this timeline.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: It's mind-boggling.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Instead of a cliche like a powder keg or a hurricane,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture this house as a stage
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: play with no backstage area.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good way to put it.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: The killer is on stage the entire time. They have
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: to murder Abby at 9.30, wait in the wings, meaning
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: just hanging out in this hot, cramped house. for over
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: an hour with a slaughtered body upstairs.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: They have to wait for Andrew to come home, act normal,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: wait for him to fall asleep, murder him, and then
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: somehow perfectly clean themselves up, change their costume, and appear
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: pristine in broad daylight before anyone notices.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: How?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. How does the physics of that even work?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: That is the central paradox of the Lizzie Borden case.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: It is the question that hung the modern jury in 2020.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: And it reigns the question that utterly baffled the Fall
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: River police in 1892. It's wild. How do you commit
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: two of the bloodiest, most intimate murders imaginable and walk
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: away spotless?
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Let's dive into the discovery because her demeanor in the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: immediate aftermath is baffling.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: It's just before noon. Bridget the maid is up in
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: her attic room resting. Lizzie goes to the side door
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: and calls out to her next door neighbor, Adelaide Churchill.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And she doesn't scream. She doesn't have hysterics. She doesn't
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: yell for the police. She just casually states in a
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: perfectly flat voice, My father has been killed.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Passive voice.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Not someone killed my father or, help, there's a
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: maniac in the house. Just, my father has been killed.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And when Adelaide Churchill hurries over, what is the very
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: first thing she observes? Or rather, what does she fail
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: to observe?
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: The blood.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Right. There's absolutely no blood on Lizzie. The neighbor looks
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: at her face, her hands, her hair, her light-colored morning dress.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Nothing. Nothing.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: She appears immaculate. Adelaide later testifies that Lizzie seemed perfectly
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: put together. Not a hair out of place, no signs
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: of a struggle, no frantic breathing.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Lizzie is sitting in the kitchen with Adelaide, and Bridget
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: comes downstairs. And then Lizzie casually offers a suggestion.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: She says she thinks perhaps she heard her stepmother come
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: in earlier. She says, I wish someone would go look
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: for her.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Which prompts Adelaide and Bridget to walk up the narrow
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: front stairs.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And because of the weird layout of the house... When
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: your eyes reach the level of the second floor, you
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: can look straight under the guest room bed.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Right from the stairs.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And that is when they see Abby's body face down
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: on the floor.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: The crime scene investigator from the 2020 48 Hours Experiment,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: a highly experienced former homicide detective, makes a crucial mechanical
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: point here about the blood.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, this is a great point.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Based on the overhead strikes required to inflict the specific
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: wounds with a hatchet, you are talking about cast-off spatter.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Let's explain cast-off spatter for a second. That's when blood
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: adheres to the weapon. And as you raise the weapon
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: back up for the next swing, centrifugal force flings the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: blood off the blade.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And it goes onto the ceiling, the walls, and importantly,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the person swinging it.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You chop downward into a skull. The blade fills
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: with blood and tissue. You swing it back up over
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: your shoulder. The blood sprays backwards over you.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Naturally.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Doing this 29 times, it is a physical certainty that
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: the perpetrator would be covered in fine, high-velocity mist and
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: larger drops of blood.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Their face, their hair, their sleeves, their shoes.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: It's unavoidable. Right.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: You don't walk away from that clean. But Lizzie is immaculate.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: This is the single most perplexing part of the case,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: and honestly, It is the cornerstone of her entire defense.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: And the problem for the investigators trying to solve this
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: paradox is that the crime scene is immediately and catastrophically compromised.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: We really have to transport ourselves back to 1892 to
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: understand the forensics or the complete lack thereof.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: It was bad.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: This was an incredibly primitive era for police work. There
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: was no securing the scene with yellow police tape. There
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: was no strict chain of custody for evidence.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: They didn't know about latent fingerprints. The investigation was based
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: almost entirely on basic visual observation.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I read that their idea of securing evidence was taking
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: a pocket knife, cutting a piece of the bloody carpet out,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and putting it in a box.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Literally. That was it.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the house is just flooded with people. Once the
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: alarm is raised, the Fall River police arrive. But so
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: do doctors, reporters, neighbors, and random rubber knickers off the street.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Just wandering through a double homicide scene.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: They're all tramping through the house, standing around the bodies,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: touching things, moving furniture. They are utterly destroying the integrity
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: of the scene.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if there were microscopic drops of blood on the
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: floorboards or the doorknobs, they were trampled into oblivion within
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: the first hour.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: It was a forensic nightmare.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Complete chaos. But despite the contamination, the police do manage
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: to establish one indisputable mechanical fact about the perimeter.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Of the house. Right, the locks.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. The house was locked down tight.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the doors. Andrew Borden was paranoid about burglars.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Super paranoid.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: The front door was triple locked with a deadbolt, a
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: spring lock, and a chain. The cellar door was locked
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: from the inside. The door leading to the barn was locked.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: So everything is sealed.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: The only door that was unlocked was the screen door
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: on the side porch, which Lizzie had been standing near.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: And this spatial reality leads the police to a singular,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: inescapable conclusion.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Well, at first, the rumor mill in town went wild.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: They assumed it must have been a deranged outsider, a vagrant,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: because the crime was so brutal.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some even whispered that someone like Jack the Ripper
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: had come to America.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Right. But with the house locked from the inside and
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: no stranger spotted in the densely packed neighborhood, logic takes over.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It couldn't have been a transient.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: It had to be an inside job.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: The perimeter dictates the suspect pool. The only people inside
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: that locked box were Lizzie and the maid, Bridget.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: And Bridget was outside in broad daylight washing windows.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Right, chatting with a neighbor over the fence during the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: exact window of time when Abby was murdered.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: So suspicion inevitably, mathematically, falls on Lizzie Borden. She is
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: the only person on the planet who had the opportunity
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: to be on that second floor at 9.30 a.m.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, put yourself in the shoes of the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Fall River police detectives.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine that.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: You walk into this horrific blood-soaked scene. The doors are locked.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: The timeline is incredibly tight. The motive is staring you
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: in the face.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: But the daughter, the only logical suspect, is sitting in
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the kitchen without a speck of blood on her.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Do you trust your eyes, which see no physical evidence
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: of a struggle on her person? Or do you trust
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: your deductive logic, which says she is literally the only
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: person who could have swung the hatchet?
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: That is the tension that drives the entire investigation. They
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: know she did it. They can feel it.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: But they need to find the physical proof.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They need to find the bloody clothes. They need
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: the weapon. So they tear the house apart, searching for it.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And they find remarkably little. But they do find two
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: things that are incredibly suspicious, even if they don't amount
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to a smoking gun. Right. First, during a search of
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Lizzie's room, a police matron finds a minute spot of blood,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: about one-sixteenth of an inch, roughly the size of a pinhead,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: on one of Lizzie's undergarments.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Second... They find a bucket of soaking bloody cloths in
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the cellar washroom.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Now, in a modern context, if police find a speck
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: of blood on a suspect's underwear and a bucket of
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: bloody rags in the basement of a double homicide, those
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: items are bagged in sterile containers, tagged, and sent to
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: a DNA lab immediately. Within 48 hours, a computer would
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: tell us exactly if that blood belonged to Andrew, Abby,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: or Lizzie. It would be game over.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: But in 1892, they couldn't do that. Blood typing didn't
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: even exist yet, let alone DNA.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: No. The best a chemist could do was tell you
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: if it was human blood or animal blood.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Which doesn't count much.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Right. So the police confront Lizzie about the blood in
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: the bucket and on her clothing, and she gives them
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: an explanation that, given the cultural context of the Victorian era,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: acts as a bulletproof shield.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, the alibi.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: She tells them she was menstruating. She says the cloths
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: in the cellar are her menstrual rags soaking, which was
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: standard practice before disposable products.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: OK, this is where the cultural mechanics of the 19th
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: century directly impede a homicide investigation.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Completely.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: You have a police force made up entirely of gruff,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: proper 19th century working class men.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: The idea of these rigid Victorian officers rigorously interrogating an
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: upper middle class unmarried woman about the heavy flow of
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: her menstrual cycle. It is practically unthinkable.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: It was deeply taboo. They couldn't ask follow-up questions. They
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: couldn't ask a doctor to examine her.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: They just had to awkwardly clear their throats and back
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: out of the room.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: She played the gender norms perfectly. Whether it was the
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: truth or a brilliant, improvised lie, it stopped the interrogation
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: dead in its tracks.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Who was going to challenge that alibi in 1892? No
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: man in that town.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: So the police are forced to abandon the bloody rags
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: and move on to searching for the murder weapon.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And down in the cellar, rummaging through the coal bin
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and the ash piles. They find what becomes famously known
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: as the handleless hatchet.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: The physical characteristics of this specific hatchet are vital to
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: the case.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Tell me about it.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It has a three and a half inch cutting blade.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: When the medical experts carefully examined the deep clefts in
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: the skulls of Andrew and Abby, they measured the cuts.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: The dimensions of the wounds perfectly aligned with a three
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: and a half inch blade.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: But it's missing its handle. It's just the heavy iron head.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: The handle has been broken off near the eye of
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the blade, and the police note that the wood inside
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: the eye looks like a fresh, splintered break.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Not old, rotted wood.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: And the iron hatchet head itself looks completely dull, as
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: if it has been deliberately rolled in the white ash
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: from the cellar furnace.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: The working theory developed by the investigators is chillingly simple
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: and mechanically sound.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Walk me through it.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: She commits the murders. She goes down to the cellar sink.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: She quickly rinses the iron hatchet head to wash away
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the bulk of the wet blood and tissue. But she
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: knows iron is porous on a microscopic level, so she
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: rubs it in the thick, dry ash pile to absorb
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: and obliterate any lingering traces of blood or moisture.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Clever.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Then she snaps off the wooden handle. Why? Because wood
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: is highly porous. It absorbs blood deeply, and you cannot
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: wash it clean.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: She likely burned the blood-soaked wooden handle in the kitchen stove.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: And she hid the iron blade in a box of
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: old tools in the cellar to make it look like
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: just another piece of discarded junk.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: It makes perfect logistical sense. It solves the weapon problem.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: But again, it's circumstantial.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: They can't prove that specific blade made the cuts without
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: modern tool mark analysis. And they still don't have the
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: bloody dress.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Nope. The dress is missing.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: The killer had to be wearing a shield, a smock,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: or a dress that absorbed the cast-off blood. But then,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a few days later, on the Sunday morning following the murders...
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Something happens that feels like a massive, unforced error on
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Lizzie's part.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is the most suspicious moment. Alice Russell, a
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: family friend who was staying at the house to comfort
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: the sisters, walks into the kitchen.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: And what does she see?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: She catches Lizzie standing over the hot iron stove, tearing
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: up a light blue dress and throwing the pieces into
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: the roaring fire.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: When Alice confronts her, basically asking, what on earth are
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: you doing? Lizzie casually claims the dress had been stained
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: with paint. from brushing up against the freshly painted wall
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. Paint.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And she was simply getting rid of it. She says
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: she thought it was as good a time as any
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to clean out her closet.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: The day after your parents are buried.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: With police officers literally standing on the sidewalk outside your house.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: You decide it's a good day to randomly burn a
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: dress in the kitchen stove.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: It is incredibly suspicious behavior.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: The former homicide detective who reviewed this for the 2020
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: experiment specifically stated that from an investigative standpoint, the burned
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: dress is the single most valuable piece of circumstantial evidence.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: If she committed the murders, she would be covered in blood.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Burning the dress is the only permanent, undeniable way to
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: destroy that evidence.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: But this is where the sisterly dynamic comes into play,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: providing crucial cover for Lizzie. Emma Borden, the older sister
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: who was conveniently out of town, later testifies under oath
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: that that burning the dress was actually her idea.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: How convenient!
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Right. Emma claims she was the one who told Lizzie,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: you should just get rid of that old paint-stained dress.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: By taking ownership of the suggestion, Emma completely dilutes the
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: suspicious nature of the act.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: She provides a safe, innocent context for what otherwise looks
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: like the desperate destruction of the prime piece of physical evidence.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: If it was Emma's idea, how could it be Lizzie
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: covering up a murder?
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: It is so convenient. It's almost too perfect. But as
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: we dig deeper into the timeline of that week, we
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: find out that the hatchet and the burned dress might
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: have been plan B. Right.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Plan A was much quieter.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And this is the part of the case that absolutely
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: blows my mind because it shows undeniable premeditation. Let's rewind
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: the clock to the day before the murders, Wednesday, August 3rd.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: The timeline is critical here. On Wednesday morning, Lizzie Borden
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: walks out of her house, goes down the street, and
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: walks into a local pharmacy run by a man named
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Eli Bentz.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: And she attempts to purchase prussic acid.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Let's explain what prussic acid is. We're talking about hydrogen cyanide.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: It is a highly lethal, fast-acting poison. It disrupts the
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: body's ability to use oxygen at a cellular level. It
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: is deadly in incredibly small doses.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Very deadly.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: And in 1892, it was strictly regulated, available only with
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: a registered doctor's prescription.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: So Lizzie walks up to the counter and tries to
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: buy a lethal dose of cyanide over the counter. And
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: her excuse to the pharmacist is amazing.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: What does she say?
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: She claims she needs the acid to put an edge
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: on a sealskin cape.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: A cape?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Now, she did actually own sealskin garments, so she had
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: the prop ready in her mind. But Eli Bentz, the pharmacist,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: is just looking at her like she's out of her mind.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: He tells her he's been a pharmacist for years. He
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: has never heard of prussic acid being used to clean
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: or edge fur. And he flat out refuses to sell
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: it to her without a prescription.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: He turns her away.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Which forces a terrifying pivot in the timeline.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: The prosecution's theory is that poison was the original clean,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: quiet plan.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Slip it into their morning tea.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Or the leftover mutton broth they had been eating for days.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: No blood, no mess, no cast-off spatter.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And given that they had all been suffering from severe
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: food poisoning all week anyway, maybe it just looks like
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: a sudden fatal intestinal illness or a heart attack.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: The doctor writes it off as natural causes.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: A perfect crime. But when she is denied the poison
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: by a stubborn pharmacist on Wednesday, she is forced to
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: turn to Plan B on Thursday.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: A messy, brutal, readily available household implement. The hatchet.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to push back here, or at least
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: vent for a second on behalf of logical thought.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Put all of this together. She tries to buy a
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: highly lethal poison the day before. The pharmacist says no.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: The very next morning, the two people she hates most
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: in the world, the two people standing between her and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: a $ 10 million fortune, end up hacked to death in
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: a locked house where she's the only person with the opportunity.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks pretty bad.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: She then immediately burns a dress. How is this not
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: case closed? How on earth does a jury hear she
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: tried to buy poison the day before and just ignore it?
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Well, because they didn't hear it.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Wait, what do you mean they didn't hear it? The
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: pharmacist testified at the inquest. He did.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: But this brings us to the trial and the incredibly
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: complex legal maneuvering that ultimately saved Lizzie's life.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, walk me through this.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: On June 5, 1893, ten months after her arrest and incarceration...
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Lizzie Borden goes on trial for double homicide in the
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Superior Court in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: And we have to set the scene here because it
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: was a spectacle unlike anything the American justice system had
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: ever seen.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: The historical accounts describe it as the trial of the century.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: There were massive crowds thronging the streets of New Bedford.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Major newspapers dispatched their best reporters from all over the country.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Telegraph operators were sending out updates minute by minute.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: People were waiting in line for hours, camping out just
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: to get a glimpse inside the sweltering courtroom.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: And significantly, the demographics of that crowd were heavily skewed.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, very skewed.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: The crowds outside and packing the gallery were predominantly made
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: up of women. Women were obsessively following this trial.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Some accounts suggest they were there out of morbid curiosity
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: to see the monster. A woman who seemed to have
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: completely transcended the limits of her sex in the most
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: physically violent way imaginable.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: It was a profound challenge to Victorian gender norms. The
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: idea that a woman of her social standing could swing
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: an axe 29 times shattered their entire worldview.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: But while women were flooding the gallery and writing letters
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: of support, they were completely legally absent from the jury box.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Right. The jury consisted strictly of 12 men, farmers, tradesmen,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: respectable Victorian patriarchs.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: In fact, women wouldn't even be allowed to serve on
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: a jury in Massachusetts until 1951. Wow.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: So Lizzie is being judged entirely by men of her
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: father's generation.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The prosecution, however, comes out swinging. They present a
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: highly methodical, logical case.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: They explain the inheritance motive, laying out the financial necessity
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: that Abby had to die first.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: They explain the locked-door timeline, mathematically eliminating outsiders.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: They bring in medical experts from Harvard to testify that
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: a woman of ordinary build and strength was completely capable
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: of wielding a hatchet with enough force to cause those
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: specific cranial wounds.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: And they employ a massive theatrical shock tactic.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: This part is wild.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Right there in the crowded courtroom, the prosecution brings out
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: the actual severed, boiled skulls of Andrew and Abby Borton.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: They place them on the evidence table.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: It was incredibly gruesome, but it had a legal purpose, right? Yeah.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: They used the skulls to physically demonstrate how the dimensions
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: of the handleless hatchet found in the ash... perfectly matched
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: the deep, horrific, V-shaped cuts in the bone.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: And Lizzie, who had been sitting stoically for days, actually
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: faints in the courtroom when they bring out her parents' skulls.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: It is pure courtroom theater.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: But despite all of this momentum, the prosecution suffers a fatal,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: devastating blow before the defense even really has to try.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yes. The panel of three judges makes a ruling on
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: the prussic acid evidence.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: This is the legal twist you were asking about.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: The prosecution attempts to call Eli Bentz, the pharmacist, to
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: the stand to testify that Lizzie attempted to buy cyanide
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: the day before the murders.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: But the defense vigorously objects.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: They argue it is inadmissible, and the panel of judges
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: agrees with the defense.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Wait, really?
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: They exclude the evidence entirely, the jury is escorted out,
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: the ruling is made, and the jury never gets to
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: hear a single word about the poison.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: How is that justified legally? She tried to buy a
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: murder weapon the day before a murder.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I know, it sounds crazy.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: If I try to buy a bazooka, on Tuesday, and
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: someone is blown up with dynamite on Wednesday, you'd think
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: my interest in explosives is highly relevant.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: The legal reasoning, which is based on the doctrine of
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: relevance and prejudice, is something modern defense attorneys would still
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: argue today.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, explain it to me.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: The legal logic goes like this. The victims were not poisoned.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: They were bludgeoned to death. Therefore, attempting to buy poison
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: does not prove she wielded a hatchet.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: The judges decided that introducing the poison attempt would only
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: serve to inflame the jury against her character, making her
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: look like a malicious person, without actually proving the specific
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: physical mechanics of the hatchet crime she was charged with.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: That is a staggering piece of luck for Lizzie.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable luck.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: With the premeditation of the poison evidence completely gone, the
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: defense team executes what is honestly a masterstroke of psychological manipulation.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, they lean into it hard.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: They don't try to solve the crime. They don't point
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: the finger at John Morris or the maid. They lean entirely,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: heavily into the inherent gender bias of those 12 male jurors.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Their closing argument essentially boils down to this. Look at
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: the defendant. Look at this sweet, ordinary, church-going, tearful woman
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: sitting before you. Does she look like a monster capable
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: of slaughtering her own flesh and blood in a blood-soaked frenzy?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: The Tent's attorney, George Robinson, famously argued that it was
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: morally and physically impossible for a woman of her refined
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: nature to commit such an act.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: They hammered home the lack of physical evidence. They argued
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: that the prosecution simply had a story, a cynical narrative
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: of greed, but they had absolutely no direct physical evidence
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: linking this respectable Victorian woman to the violence.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: No bloody dress. No blood on her skin. Just a
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: handless hatchet in a pile of ash. A perfectly innocent
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: explanation for burning an old paint-stained dress. And a whole
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: lot of coincidence.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: But it works. It works spectacularly.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: The trial lasts 13 days. The jury receives their instructions
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: and retires to deliberate. And in less than two hours,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: they have a verdict.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Two hours.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: They barely even needed to discuss the evidence. The foreman
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: stands up and according to newspaper reports, he is so
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: excited he doesn't even wait for the clerk's full formal prompting.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: He just blurts out, not guilty.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: The reaction in the room is explosive. Lizzie falls into
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: her chair weeping as if she's been shot. The courtroom
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: absolutely erupts in cheers.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: People outside on the streets are cheering so loudly it
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: could be heard blocks away.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: The public and those 12 Victorian men simply could not
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: bridge the cognitive gap between the brutal, vitriol nature of
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the crime and the gender, class, and social standing of
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: the defendant.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: It's a stunning moment in American legal history, but it
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: naturally raises a fascinating sociological question, you know? Yeah.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Was the acquittal solely due to the sexism and rigid
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: class structures of the era? Was it just Victorian men
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: unable to fathom female violence?
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: To find out, the team at CBS's 48 Hours did
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: something incredible in 2020. They staged a highly controlled mock trial.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I loved watching this part of the deep dive. They
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: hired two extremely seasoned, heavy-hitting attorneys, former Brooklyn homicide prosecutor
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Anastasia Nicolazzi and veteran criminal defense attorney Matthew Troiano.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: The rules for this modern experiment were incredibly strict. They
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: were not allowed to use any modern forensic analysis. Right.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: They could only present the evidence, testimony, and photographs that
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: were actually admitted in the original 1893 trial.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: So no DNA talk. And crucially, the judge's ruling stood.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: No mention of the Prussic acid poison attempt.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They presented this 19th century case to a modern,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: diverse jury of eight men and women who had intentionally
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: never heard the details of the Lizzie Borden case.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: They wanted to see if a 21st century jury, free
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: of Victorian hangups, would reach the same conclusion as those
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: 12 men.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: And the modern lawyers basically adapted the exact same arguments
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: as their 1893 counterparts.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: The prosecutor, Nicolazzi, focused heavily on the timeline, the claustrophobic
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: layout of the house, the inheritance motive, and the absolute
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: lack of opportunity for anyone else.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: While the defense attorney, Troiano, hammered away at the complete
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: lack of physical blood evidence on Lizzie, arguing that the
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: physics of the crime made her innocence obvious.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: But the deliberations of the modern jury were entirely different
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: from 1893. Because 48 hours filmed the jury room, we
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: actually get to hear how modern citizens dissect the evidence.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: And right away, a massive fundamental shift is apparent.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: These modern jurors had absolutely no trouble believing a woman
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: was capable of extreme hatchet-wielding violence.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: The protective gender bias that completely shielded Lizzie in 1893
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: simply did not exist for the 2020 panel.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: They didn't care that she taught Sunday school. They dug
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: straight into the morbid details.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: They debated the overkill aspect. Striking Abby 19 times when
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: one or two blows would have been fatal.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: One juror astutely questioned whether this proved malice aforethought.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: No.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: The deep Personal intent to kill that defines first-degree murder?
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: They argued that a burglar wouldn't swing 19 times. You know,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: a burglar hits you once and runs. 19 times is personal.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: So personal. They also questioned the bizarre logic of the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: crime from the killer's perspective. Yeah.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: One juror pointed out a massive flaw in the prosecution's theory.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Which was?
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: If Lizzie was on a highly calculated killing spree to
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: eliminate witnesses and secure her inheritance, why on earth would
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: she leave Bridget the maid alive?
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Bridget was right there on the property washing windows. She
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: was a massive liability. If you are ruthlessly cleaning house,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: leaving a potential witness alive is a terrible strategy.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: It's a very sharp observation. But ultimately, the modern deliberation
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: stalled on the exact same physical hurdle the police faced
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: in 1892. Triano's defense strategy worked.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: The blood.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Or rather, the lack of it.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Right. One juror explicitly stated in the room. I can't
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: figure out how she could have done it and been
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: standing there with nothing on her. Everything normal.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: They could accept she had the motive. They could accept
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: she had the rage.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: But they could not physically reconcile the bloody mechanics of
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: cast-off spatter with her spotless appearance just minutes after Andrew's death.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: And this leads to a profound division among the modern jurors.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: When they finally took a vote, the result was stunning,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: especially compared to the swift 1893 acquittal.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: On the charge of first-degree murder for Abby Borden... The
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: modern jury was hung.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Hung jury.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: On the charge of first-degree murder for Andrew Borden, it
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: was also a hung jury. They could not reach a
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: unanimous decision to convict or acquit.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: The breakdown of that vote is deeply fascinating. Several of
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: the modern jurors voted guilty. They believed in their hearts
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and their minds that she absolutely did it.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: One juror even split the difference, believing she premeditated Abby's
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: murder for the inheritance, but thought Andrew's murder was a
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: spontaneous panic when he came home early.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: But there were stubborn holdouts who voted not guilty.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: And this is where the expert analysis of the mock
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: trial brings us to the very core of the American
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: justice system. The modern prosecutor, Nicolazzi, noted that while several
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: jurors believed she was factually guilty, they felt the state
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: had failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: The lack of physical blood evidence on her person was
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: a bridge too far for a conviction.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate takeaway from this whole deep dive.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: The Lizzie Borden case perfectly illustrates the massive structural difference
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: between factual guilt and legal guilt.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Factual guilt is what actually happened in reality in that
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: house on that morning. Legal guilt is what the state
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: can definitively prove in a courtroom using legally admissible evidence
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: to a unanimous jury.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The modern jury's inability to convict, even without the
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: blinding sexism of the 1890s, validates the fundamental design of
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: the justice system.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: The system is designed to protect the innocent. which means
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: it requires undeniable proof, not just a compelling narrative or
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: a lack of bitter suspects.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: It demands that the state overcome the presumption of innocence
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: with concrete, physical evidence linking the defendant to the act.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: And in the case of Lizzie Borden, the evidence was
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: washed down a cellar sink, burned up in a kitchen stove,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: or excluded by a panel of judges.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: So because the state couldn't meet that high burden of proof,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Lizzie walks free. She beats the system in 1893. And arguably,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: the strength of her circumstantial defense beats it again in 2020.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the aftermath, because she didn't just fade
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: away quietly into the night.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Far from it.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Following the acquittal, Lizzie and her sister Emma got exactly
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: what they wanted. Remember the motive. Abby died first. So
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the girls inherited their father's entire estate.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: The financial payout was massive. They inherited around $ 350, 000. When
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: you adjust for inflation and the economic standards of the time,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: that is roughly $ 10 million in today's money. Overnight, they
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: went from living on a meager allowance in a house
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: without plumbing to being incredibly wealthy, independent women.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: And they wasted absolutely no time changing their lifestyle. They
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: immediately vacated that cramped, sweltering house near the business district
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: that was the source of so much misery and bloodshed.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: They bought a massive, sprawling, fully-plumbed mansion at the top
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: of the hill in the wealthy, elite part of Fall River.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: They named the estate Maplecroft. actually having the name carved
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: into stone steps.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Lizzie even changed her name. She stopped going by Lizzie,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: which was associated with the nursery rhyme in the trial,
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: and started calling herself Lizbeth.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: It was a very deliberate, almost aggressive attempt to rebrand herself.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: She wanted to shed the notoriety of the hatchet murders
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: and step into the high society life of theater, travel,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: and luxury that she felt she had always been denied.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: But the reality of her post-trial life was much colder
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: than she anticipated. Despite her legal innocence, the court of
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: public opinion had rendered a very different verdict.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: The town completely turned on her. She became a social pariah.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: The historical accounts note that she became unwelcome at the
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: very church, Central Congregational, that had been the absolute foundation
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of her support during the trial.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: The people who prayed for her acquittal suddenly didn't want
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: to sit in the same pew as her, perhaps realizing
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: that a not guilty verdict didn't mean she didn't do it.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: The social exile was profound. She was ostracized by the
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: wealthy elite she tried to join. But the most telling
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and frankly, the most disturbing detail of the aftermath involves
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: her sister, Emma.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, Emma.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: The sister who provided the ensign cover story for the
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: burned dress. The sister who shared equally in the $ 10
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: million inheritance. For 12 years, they lived together in Maplecroft.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: And then abruptly, Emma moved out.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't an amicable split where one sister just
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: wants her own place. Emma packed her bags and severed
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: all ties with Lizzie.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: The historical record states that Emma told friends she was
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: deeply troubled by something that was going on in the house.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: She moved away to New Hampshire, and the two sisters,
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: who had survived this massive ordeal together, never spoke a
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: single word to each other again for the rest of
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: their lives.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: It is an incredibly haunting detail. It casts a shadow
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: over everything we thought we knew about the dynamic between them.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: What could have happened 12 years later to make Emma
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: abandon the sister she had protected so fiercely during a
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: murder trial?
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: What secret was finally too heavy to carry anymore? Was
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: it a confession or realization?
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: We will never know. Lizzie lived out the rest of
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: her life as an isolated recluse behind the walls of Maplecroft.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: Just her, her servants, and her dogs.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: She never spoke to the press. She never gave a
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: deathbed confession. She never gave her side of the story.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: She maintained absolute silence. until she died of pneumonia in
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: June of 1927.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: And in a bizarre, almost poetic twist of fate, Emma,
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: living in complete exile in New Hampshire, died just nine
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: days later.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: They were brought back together in death. Both sisters are
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: buried in the family plot in Oak Grove Cemetery in
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Fall River, right alongside their father, Andrew, and their stepmother, Abby.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: The family that destroyed each other in life is bound
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: together under the same dirt for eternity.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: It is a dark, tragic, and fittingly unresolved conclusion to
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: an incredibly bitter story. Family saga.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: And there is a final dark irony to all of this.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Fall River, the town that shunned Lizzie in life, now
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: fully embraces the economic notoriety of the crime.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: That modest, unplumbed house where Andrew and Abby were slaughtered.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: It is now a bed and breakfast and a museum.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: You can book a room. You can actually sleep in
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: the exact spot where Abby was hacked to death.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: They sell hatchet keychains. They have fully, completely monetized the
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: tragedy that Andrew Borden, in all his extreme frugality... ultimately
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: died over.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Which perfectly encapsulates our cultural obsession with true crime, doesn't it?
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: We take the horrific, the unresolved trauma, and we turn
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: it into hospitality and entertainment.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: We really do.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: But if we pull back and synthesize everything we've discussed today,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: the strict timeline, the missing blood spatter, the excluded poison evidence,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: the swift 1893 acquittal, and the divided 2020 hung jury,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: the enduring legacy of Lizzie Borden isn't just a nurse rhyme.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: No, it's not.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: It is fundamentally a lesson in the limits of the law.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: It forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality that sometimes
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: the absolute truth of a crime and the legal verdict
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: of a jury are two entirely different, non-intersecting things.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: It really is the perfect case study. It shows us
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: that a compelling motive and a lack of other suspects
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: isn't enough to put someone in an electric chair.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: But before we wrap up this deep dive, I want
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: to leave you, the listener, with one final lingering thought
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: to mull over. We constantly debate how modern technology, DNA sequencing,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: cell phone tracking, surveillance footage has revolutionized the justice system,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: making it harder to get away with murder.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: But look at Emma Borden. Look at the human element
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: that technology can't measure. Emma was conveniently out of town
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: visiting friends during the exact window of the murders.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Very convenient.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: When the police closed in, it was Emma who provided
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: the innocent cover story for the burned paint-stained dress. Emma
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: shared equally in the $ 10 million payout that resulted directly
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: from the specific order of her parents' deaths.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, she did.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: And then 12 years later, she fled the Maplecroft mansion
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: in terror because of something deeply troubling, refusing to ever
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: speak to her sister again.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: So why?
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Looking at the pure logistics of cleaning up a bloody
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: crime scene in broad daylight, you have to ask yourself.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Was Lizzie Borden really a solitary mastermind who somehow managed
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: to commit two flawless, bloodless murders and just got incredibly lucky?
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Or did she have help covering her tracks from the
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: very beginning? Help from the one person in the world
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: who benefited just as much from the swing of that hatchet?
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. Keep
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: questioning the stories you think you know, and we'll catch
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: you next time.