Latest / Deadly Divas True Crime Podcast / Episode 40: Lizzie Borden

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Episode 40: Lizzie Borden · Deadly Divas True Crime Podcast

0:11
SPEAKER_01: Hello, True Crime Divas and Dudes.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm Tina, and welcome back to your favorite True Crime podcast, Deadly Divas.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Sarah.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, welcome.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Every Friday we take a deep dive into a new true crime case.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: And today's case is one you have almost certainly heard of.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Even if you know nothing else about Lizzie Borden, you've probably heard the rhyme.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie Borden took an ass and gave her mother forty wax.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: That is a pretty terrifying thing to turn into a children's rhyme.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: And also, almost every line is wrong.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Abby Borden wasn't Lizzie's mother, she was her stepmother.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: Neither victim was struck anywhere close to forty times.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: The weapon was probably a hatchet rather than the giant axe people usually picture.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: And most importantly, Lizzie Borden was actually acquitted.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Nobody ever proved she killed anybody.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: And yet, more than one hundred and thirty years later, most people remember Lizzie not as a woman accused of murder, but as the woman who did it.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: So today, we are going back to Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892 to separate the actual evidence from more than a century of legend, because the real story is strange enough without the rhyme.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Two people were brutally murdered inside their own home.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: The killings happened roughly an hour and a half apart.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: There was no obvious forced entry, no murder weapon was ever conclusively identified, and one of the few people known to have been on the property during the crucial time frame was Andrew Borden's own 32-year-old daughter.
2:01
SPEAKER_01: And with Netflix's release of the monster series taking on the Lizzie Borden story on September 17th, this infamous case is about to be back in the spotlight.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: So today we are going back to the real story behind the legend and the evidence that still leaves people divided more than 130 years later.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: This is the story of Lizzie Borden.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: So the Bordens, they were not a poor family, not even remotely, and money plays a big role in this story.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Andrew Jackson Borden was actually one of the wealthier men in Fall River.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: He made money through multiple successful businesses as well as properties and investments.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: By the end of his life, he had built a sizable fortune equal to over ten million dollars in today's money.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: But Andrew had a reputation for being extremely frugal, and that caused tension.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: The family lived at 92 2nd Street, a decent home, but not the sort of grand house you'd expect for a man with Andrew's wealth.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: Fall River's wealthier families were increasingly moving to a fashionable area known as the Hill with larger, more elegant homes.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie and her older sister Emma reportedly wanted that lifestyle, but Andrew had no interest in society life or spending utterly any money on it.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: And wanting to live on the hill wasn't necessarily just about Lizzie and Emma wanting a fancier house.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: For two unmarried women in the 1890s, their father's household largely determined their social world, where they lived, who they socialized with, and the circles in which they might meet potential husbands.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: As a woman, finding a husband meant everything during this time.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just a nice to have, it was expected and necessary for a multitude of reasons.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: And yet, Emma and Lizzie never married.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: And as unmarried daughters, they weren't even allowed to live alone as society deemed that improper.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: So they didn't really have any adult autonomy over their own lives.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: From their perspective, Andrew wasn't just refusing them a nicer house.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: His choices were helping dictate what their adult lives could look like, despite having more than enough money to give them access to the society they desperately wanted to be a part of.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, how old were they at this point?
4:42
SPEAKER_01: They were 32 and 41.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: Wow, 41's kind of spinster age, isn't it?
4:46
SPEAKER_01: They were considered spinsters.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: Right.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: So that gives Andrew's extreme frugality a little more weight and explains why there may have been more than a little friction within that household.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: Their home did not even have proper indoor plumbing or electricity for a time, which is actually crazy considering the amount of wealth they had.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: And that's a red flag in my opinion, and indicative that Andrew was more than just a little frugal.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: Like that is extreme.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: And to understand why Andrew's money and eventually his property would become such a source of tension in this family, we need to talk about how the Borden household came together in the first place.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Andrew's first wife was a woman named Sarah Anthony Morse, and they had three daughters.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: Emma, the eldest daughter, was born in 1851.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: A second daughter, Alice, was born in 1856, but sadly died less than two years later.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: And Lindsay Andrew Borden, the youngest daughter, was born in 1860.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: They're middle both well.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she was her middle name was Andrew, which was her father's name.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: But her mother's name, middle name was Anthony.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: So was that tradition back then to have a I guess maybe to be named after your father, maybe.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Didn't know that.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Or it could have been a last name, perhaps.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Anthony.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: I didn't look into that.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, what a coincidence that they both had male middle names.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: That's why I think maybe it was a tradition then.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe so.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: So in 1960 when they were a hundred and fifty-two.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: In eighteen sixty-three, the family suffered another tragedy.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: Their mother, Sarah, sadly passed.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: Before her death, she told Emma to take care of Lizzie.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: And Emma would take that vow very seriously throughout her life, as she and Lizzie were always very close.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: A few years after Sarah's death, Andrew remarried.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: His new wife was Abby Durfee Gray.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: And while Abby had been in Lizzie's life since childhood, their relationship appears to have become strained by the time Lizzie was an adult.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie usually referred to her as Mrs.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: Borden rather than mother.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: In addition to Andrew, Abby, Emma, and Lizzie, there was the family's servant, Bridget Sullivan.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: Bridget was a 26-year-old Irish immigrant who had worked for the Bordens for nearly three years.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie and Emma called her Maggie, although Andrew and Abby used her real name, Bridget.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: So why did Lizzie and Emma call her Maggie if her real name was Bridget?
7:43
SPEAKER_01: Because that was the name of their previous maid, and they couldn't be bothered to learn her.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh real name.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: My God.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Like how dehumanizing, right?
7:52
SPEAKER_01: You're Maggie number two.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: So even so, Bridget herself later testified that the nickname didn't bother her and she found it endearing.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't necessarily know if I believe that, but make of that what you will.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: I think that she was being paid very well, and they could call her whatever they wanted if she got a paycheck.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: So that's our household in 1892.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Andrew and Abby, their adult daughters, Emma and Lizzie, and Bridget Sullivan, the maid.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: But before we get into the tensions brewing inside the house, I want to spend a minute or two on who Lizzie actually was before her name became synonymous with an axe.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: By most outward appearances, Lizzie was a respectable, deeply involved member of her community.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: She was active in her church, taught Sunday school to children from immigrant families, participated in charitable organizations, and was particularly known for her affection for children and animals.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: This was not a woman with a known history of violence, or someone the people around her apparently considered frightening or dangerous, or even uncouth.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that would become part of what made the accusation against her so shocking.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: The woman Fall River would soon be asked to believe had brutally murdered two people with a hatchet was the same woman they knew from church, Sunday school, and charitable work.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: And Lizzie's love of animals apparently lasted throughout her life.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: Years later, she would support animal welfare efforts in Fall River and eventually leave thirty thousand dollars to the local Animal Rescue League in her will.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Now, none of that proves Lizzie was innocent, of course.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: Kind people are capable of terrible things too, but it's important context, because the real Lizzie Borden was considerably more complicated than the cold, axe-wielding monster she eventually became in American folklore.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: One of the strongest theories about motive in this case involves money.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: Several years before the murders, Andrew gifted property to Abby's half-sister.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: That reportedly angered Lizzie and Emma.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: From their perspective, Andrew's estate represented their future inheritance.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: If he began giving pieces of it to Abby's side of the family, that could affect what they were entitled to later.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: And also, he was so greedy that they didn't even have indoor plumbing or electricity.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: But yet he's gifting.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: I do kind of hate situations like this though, because when they're looking at it as their inheritance, it's not yours yet.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: It's his and he can do what he wants with it.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: He certainly can, but I'm putting myself in that situation.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm your daughter, and you won't even get me a working toilet.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: And that's fair.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: You're giving this new wife, her half-sister, a whole property.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Like that would piss me off.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: So I get it.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: I can see that.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: And I guess it's different nowadays because nowadays, if your parents were to give away something that you were hoping to inherit, most women could make that life for themselves.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Whereas back then it wasn't like Lizzie and Emma had the ability to go out and make a bunch of money like Right.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: They had no options and he robbed them of the only choice they had, which was to find a husband to support them.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: So I understand why they're upset.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: So the dispute became significant enough that Andrew later transferred property to Lizzie and Emma as well.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, though, because unmarried women could not live alone, they couldn't even live in that property.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: So they sold it back to him for$5,000 and they were able to make money off of it, but still they had no independence.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: So there were other conflicts in this family as well.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: At one point, Andrew and Abby's bedroom had been burglarized.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: Money and valuables disappeared.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: And while this crime was never solved, all signs seemed to point to Lizzie.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: At that point, Andrew became a lot more security conscious and he installed locks on his bedroom door.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: And then there was the pigeon incident.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: Not the pigeon.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: Andrew apparently killed several pigeons that were being kept in the family's barn.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: They were then served as dinner.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Now, that may not seem like a huge deal, but again, Lizzie was a huge animal lover and she really cared about those pigeons, and this totally devastated and infuriated her.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: Later retellings have sometimes treated that as some dramatic trigger for murder, but there's no good evidence that it was anything more than just one more source of tension.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: You kill my pigeon, I kill you, but right?
12:53
SPEAKER_01: The point is though, this was not necessarily a warm, peaceful household.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: Money mattered, independence mattered, property mattered, and the relationship between Lizzie and Abby was strained.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Then, immediately before the murders, the family got sick.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: On the night of August 2nd, Andrew, Abby, and Bridget became sick.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: They were vomiting profusely.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: The next morning, August 3rd, Abby spoke with the family doctor, Dr.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: Seabury Bowen.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: She told him that she was afraid someone had poisoned them.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: But apparently, stomach problems weren't entirely unusual in the Borden household.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: Again, Andrew was notoriously frugal and had a reputation for keeping and serving food well past its prime.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: So when the family became sick, Dr.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Bowen kind of just brushed it off.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: And this again goes back to Andrew's quote unquote frugality being blatantly harmful to the family.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: Like, you have more than enough money to provide food that is not tainted and going to make them sick.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, Abby was genuinely worried about this and she really thought that they'd been poisoned.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: And that same day, something else happened.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: A drugstore clerk named Eli Bentz later claimed Lizzie came into the store and tried to buy prusic acid, aka cyanide.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: And this is a rapidly lethal chemical that causes internal suffocation by blocking cells from using oxygen, leading to immediate dizziness, violent convulsions, and if ingested, death occurs within minutes.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: So it really can't be overstated just how dangerous this substance is.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie allegedly said she wanted it for a seal fur cake.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: Benson refused to sell it to her, citing that was not a legitimate use for it, and that she did not have a prescription from a doctor.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Why would you use it on a seal fur cake?
15:04
SPEAKER_01: That's the thing, is it wouldn't make any sense to.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, was she claiming it was a preservative?
15:09
SPEAKER_01: I think what she claimed was that it was to help preserve it, but the pharmacist was like, that is not a thing.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Also, animal lover with a seal fur cake.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: I know, that's kind of ironic, isn't it?
15:20
SPEAKER_01: So Lizzie denied ever asking for that acid, and the allegation was later excluded from her trial because tests on Andrew and Abby also found no poison in their bodies.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: Still, that is very sus.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: That evening, Lizzie visited her friend, Alice Russell, and she seemed worried.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: She talked about her father's enemies.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: She talked about feeling as though something terrible might happen.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: And by the next morning, both Andrew and Abby were dead.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about that fateful day, August 4th, 1892.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Andrew, Abby, Lizzie, and Bridget were home that morning.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Emma was away traveling, visiting friends.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: And there was one guest in the house, John Morse, a brother of Andrew's first wife and Lizzie's uncle.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: He had spent the night in the upstairs guest room, and that detail becomes important very quickly.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: At around 8 45 that morning, John Morse left to visit relatives.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: Andrew also left to conduct business downtown.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: That left Abby, Lizzie, and Bridget at 92 Second Street.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: At some point that morning, Abby went upstairs to the guest room and while she was there, someone attacked her.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: She was brutally and repeatedly struck in the head with a sharp-edged weapon about nineteen times.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: She fell beside the bed and remained there.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: And downstairs, life continued.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: So nineteen not forty.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: Right, nineteen not forty.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: Bridget was washing windows downstairs.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie said she was moving around the lower part of the house.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: No one reported hearing Abby scream.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: No one saw a blood covered stranger run away.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And for roughly the next hour and a half, Abby Borden lay dead upstairs.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: Then Andrew came home.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: At around ten forty AM, Andrew returned to the house.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: The front door was locked.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Bridget went to let him inside and struggled with the locks.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: And while she was doing that, Bridget later testified that she heard Lizzie laugh upstairs.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: She couldn't see Lizzie.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: She only heard the laugh and believed Lizzie was somewhere above her.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Creepy, right?
17:51
SPEAKER_01: But Andrew eventually came inside.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie told him Abby had received a note saying someone was sick and had gone out.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: Why would she say that?
18:01
SPEAKER_01: No note was ever recovered.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: Its sender was never identified.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: Bridget never saw anyone deliver it, but she also couldn't swear one had not arrived without her knowledge.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: So the note remains one of the case's biggest unanswered questions.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Andrew eventually settled onto a sofa in the sitting room.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie said she went to the barn to look for fishing lures and then gathered pears from their pear tree, which she ate outside.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: And during that general time frame, someone attacked Andrew.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: He was struck approximately ten or eleven times in the head and face, just like Abby.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: The attack was devastating.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: It was so brutal that Andrew's face was literally gone, and one of his eyeballs had been chopped completely in half.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: It seems like whoever committed this attack wanted to erase him from existence.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, caught in the passion.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Then Lizzie came back inside.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: At least that's what she said.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, Bridget had gone upstairs to rest.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: She was still feeling sick from the stomach illness.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: Then she heard Lizzie calling.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Maggie, come quick.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: Father's dead.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Somebody came in and killed him.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: Bridget rushed downstairs.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: Andrew was lying on the sofa.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: There was no question what had happened.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: He had been murdered.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie sent Bridget to find Dr.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: Bowen.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Neighbors began arriving.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: One was Adelaide Churchill, who lived next door.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: Then someone asked the obvious question Where was Abby?
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie had said she had gone out, but now she suggested Abby might have returned.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: So Bridget and Mrs.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: Churchill went upstairs.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: As they approached the guest room, they could see Abby's bloody corpse beneath the bed.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: And doctors quickly realized something really strange.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: Abby had been dead significantly longer than Andrew.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Medical evidence suggested the murders had occurred roughly an hour and a half apart.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: That changed everything.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: If the same person killed both victims, where were they for that hour and a half between the murders?
20:28
SPEAKER_01: If it was an outsider, did they hide in the house?
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Did they leave and return?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: And if it was someone who belonged there, who?
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, investigators faced a major problem trying to answer that question.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: This was eighteen ninety two.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: There was no DNA, no modern blood testing, no security footage, and no cell phone data.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And crime scenes were not preserved the way they are today.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Between the neighbors, family, doctors, and police entering and moving around the home, the crime scene was not even remotely preserved.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: So this investigation unfortunately was limited by the science of its time.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: Still, police searched the house and found several axes and hatchets.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: One broken handled hatchet became the major focus.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: Prosecutors later argued it could have been the murder weapon and that the handle broke off during the violent attack, but they could never conclusively prove that.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: And there's another piece of evidence that makes the handleess hatchet even more questionable.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: When Abby's skull was examined more closely, Dr.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: Frank Draper reported finding a tiny deposit of gold colored metal embedded in one of the cuts near the right ear, and that was potentially a really big deal.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: New hatchets at the time were sometimes sold with decorative gold on the metal, which would gradually wear away with use.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: Draper believed the deposit indicated that the weapon that struck Abby was actually for.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Fairly new.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: And the handless hatchet police found in the Morden cellar did not look new at all.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: It was old looking, dull, and dusty.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: So while experts believe that hatchet could have produced the wounds, they could never establish that it actually did.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: And to this day, the real murder weapon has never been confirmed.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: And then there was the blood problem.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: These were violent, close range killings.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: It would be impossible for the killer not to get blood on themselves.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: They literally hacked into Abby and Andrew repeatedly and forcefully.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: And not to be too gory, but I mean blood would have been flying everywhere.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: And yet, Bridget testified that after the murders, she saw no blood on Lizzie's face, hands, or clothing.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Police never found blood covered clothes that they could prove Lizzie had worn during the attacks.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, they did find bloodstained cloths in the cellar, but Lizzie said that they were minstrel cloths and had been soaking there for several days.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: At the time, there was no way for authorities to confirm that.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: It seems like they chose to believe Lizzie regardless, probably also because that was an extremely taboo and uncomfortable topic of discussion in those days.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: In today's world, we could probably very quickly and simply determine if that was menstrual blood or not.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: They also never established where the killer cleaned up.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Remember, this home did not have proper indoor plumbing, and no weapon was ever definitively tied to Lizzie.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean she couldn't have done it, but it created major holes in the case.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: But still, investigators became increasingly suspicious of Lizzie.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: Part of the reason was that her accounts of the morning were not consistent.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Her descriptions of where she'd been and what she'd been doing changed in certain details.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: She struggled with chronology.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: Her explanation for the barn raised questions.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: There was the mysterious note.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: There was Bridget's testimony about hearing her laugh upstairs.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Then there was Lizzie's inquest testimony.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: She was questioned extensively, and some of her answers were confused or contradictory.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: But there was important context.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: She had been under enormous stress and had also been given significant doses of morphine after the murders.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: And the judges later ruled that her inquest testimony could not be used against her at trial.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: That became a major blow to the prosecution.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: But then Lizzie did something that looked about as suspicious as humanly possible.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: She burned a dress.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Three days after the murders, Lizzie's friend Alice Russell saw her near the kitchen stove.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie was tearing up a dress and burning it.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie said the dress was ruined because it had paint on it.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's true.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: People reused and repurposed clothing constantly in the 1890s.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: Burning ruined fabric wasn't automatically suspicious.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: But your father and stepmother were just murdered in extremely bloody attacks.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Police are looking for blood stained clothing.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: And now you're burning a dress.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: That is terrible timing.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: That is very suspicious.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Alice eventually told authorities, and the burned dress became one of the prosecution's strongest pieces of circumstantial evidence.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: But even here there was a problem.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: They couldn't prove the dress Lizzie burned was the same dress she wore on the morning of the murders.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: So once again, suspicious?
25:51
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: Proof?
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Not quite.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: In any case, on August 11th, one week after the murders, Lizzie was arrested.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: And the case became a national sensation.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: A wealthy, unmarried, church going woman from a prominent New England family was accused of slaughtering her father and stepmother with a hatchet.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: It shattered Victorian expectations about women.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: Respectable women were supposed to be gentle, passive, and nurturing, but Lizzie was accused of an extraordinarily brutal crime that worked both for and against her.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Some people saw her as monstrous.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: Others genuinely struggled to imagine a woman like Lizzie being physically capable of doing this.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: And when the case went to trial, there would be no women on the jury.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: Massachusetts did not allow women to serve, so Lizzie's fate would be decided entirely by men.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie's trial began in June 1893.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: The prosecution had a huge problem.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Their case was almost entirely circumstantial.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: No eyewites, no confession, no proven murder weapon, no bloody clothing, and absolutely no forensic evidence whatsoever connecting Lizzie directly to the attacks.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: So prosecutors tried to build a case from everything surrounding the murders.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: The family tensions, the money, the mysterious note, the burned dress, her inconsistent statements, the fact that she was one of a very small number of people inside the home when the murders occurred, and the enormous difficulty of explaining how an outsider could have possibly committed both murders an hour and a half apart.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: But Lindsay had a powerful defense team.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: One of her attorneys was George D.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: Robinson, a former governor of Massachusetts.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: And the defense had a very simple job.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: They did not have to prove who killed Andrew and Abby.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: They only had to show that prosecutors had not proved Lizzie did.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Then two major pieces of evidence disappeared from the state's case.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: First, the jury was not allowed to hear Lizzie's inquest testimony.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: Remember, because she was high on morphine?
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Second, they weren't allowed to hear the allegations that Lizzie tried to buy the prusic acid the day before the murders.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Andrew and Abby had tested negative for poison anyway.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: Right, but she only tried to buy it.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: She didn't successfully secure it, did she?
28:33
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: So by the time the jury heard the case, some of the most suspicious details people associate with Lizzie today were not actually part of the evidence they were allowed to consider.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: And this is where the case gets really difficult.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: If Lizzie killed Abby first, she would have had to attack her 18 or 19 times upstairs.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: Then she has to somehow deal with the blood.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: She has to hide or clean the weapon.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: She has to return to normal household activity.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: Then Andrew comes home.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie interacts with him.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: Bridget eventually goes upstairs.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: Then Lizzie kills Andrew another ten or eleven blows.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: Again, she has to deal with the blood.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: Again, she has to conceal the weapon.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: And remember, this house did not have proper indoor plumbing.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Then within a relatively short period of time, she summons Bridget.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: And Bridget sees no blood on her.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: Is it possible?
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: But where is the clothing?
29:37
SPEAKER_01: Where's the cleanup evidence?
29:39
SPEAKER_01: Where is the weapon?
29:40
SPEAKER_01: How did Bridget not notice a thing?
29:44
SPEAKER_01: Those questions are difficult to answer.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: But if Lizzie didn't do it, we have the opposite problem.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: Who did?
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, Uncle John Morse attracted suspicion because of the timing.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: He had arrived the night before.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: He slept in the guest room.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: Then he left shortly before Abby was killed in that same room, but Morse had an extremely detailed alibi.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: Investigators checked it and his timeline held up.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: But the alibi almost seemed a little too good, like he knew he was gonna need one, so he had it immaculately prepared.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: But no direct evidence otherwise tied him to these crimes.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: Then there's Bridget Sullivan.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: She was in the house, she knew the layout and the family's routines, but there's no compelling evidence connecting Bridget to the murders either.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: Modern dramatizations have sometimes portrayed Bridget as Lizzie's accomplice or lover, but there is no reliable historical evidence proving those claims.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: And then there's the unknown intruder theory.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: Andrew was a businessman and a landlord.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: He had enemies.
30:56
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie had even told Alice Russell that she feared someone might hurt him.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: But an outsider would have to enter the house, kill Abby, remain unseen for roughly an hour and a half, then kill Andrew after he returned home.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: That is an extraordinary scenario.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: Not impossible, but extraordinary.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: And that's the entire problem with this case.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Every theory explains one thing and then creates another mystery.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: So by the end of the trial, the prosecution had given the jury plenty of reasons to be suspicious.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: But suspicion does not equal a conviction.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: You need solid evidence.
31:37
SPEAKER_01: One of the judges presiding over the trial was Justice Justin Dewey.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: Years earlier, Dewey had been appointed to the bench while George Robinson, now one of Lizzie's defense attorneys, was governor.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't prove anything improper happened, but Dewey's final instructions to the jury were notably favorable to Lizzie and emphasized the weaknesses in the prosecution's circumstantial case.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: The jury's question was not, do you think Lizzie probably did it?
32:08
SPEAKER_01: It was did the Commonwealth prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did it?
32:13
SPEAKER_01: And on june twentieth, eighteen ninety three, after roughly an hour and a half of deliberation, the jury returned not guilty.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie was free.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Legally, that should have ended the case, but the public had already reached its own verdict, and that verdict lasted much longer.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: After the trial, Lizzie and Emma inherited a substantial amount of money from their father's estate, and they finally did something they had wanted to do for years.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: They left 2nd Street and bought that grand house on the hill that they'd coveted all their lives.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie named it Maplecroft.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie traveled, she attended theater, she entertained, and she became close with an actress named Nance O'Neill.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: That relationship has fueled speculation for generations about whether the two women were romantically involved.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: There's no definitive evidence proving that, but Lizzie's social life apparently became another source of tension between the sisters.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: They had a falling out in 1905, causing Emma to move out of Maplecroft, and they never lived together again.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: After leaving Maplecroft, Emma spent time in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, even traveling to Scotland, before eventually settling in Newmarket, New Hampshire.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: She never married and lived quietly off her inheritance, preferring simple things like reading, traveling, shopping trips, and walks.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't sound horrible, right?
33:49
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie lived out the rest of her days at Naplecroft, but acquittal never truly restored her reputation.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: People stared, children taunted her, and many members of Fall River Society simply avoided her.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: A jury had found her not guilty, but the public effectively convicted her anyway.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie died on June first, nineteen twenty-seven.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: She was 66 years old.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: Nine days later, Emma died too.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: Lizzie never married, she never had children, and she never confessed.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Nobody else was ever convicted.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: And Lizzie was buried in the Borden family plot alongside Andrew and Abby.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: So now we get to the question that everybody wants the answer to.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: Did Lizzie Borden kill Andrew and Abby?
34:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are very good reasons she became the prime suspect.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: The missing note, the burned dress, the alleged poison purchase, her inconsistent accounts, the family tension, and of course, the very large inheritance it brought her.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: But a criminal trial isn't asking whether someone seems suspicious.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: It's asking whether the government proved the person committed murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: And after looking at what prosecutors had in 1893, I understand the acquittal.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't prove Lizzie was innocent.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't prove she was guilty either.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: Nothing definitively said she did it, and there were far more questions than answers in this case.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: And more than 130 years later, we are still stuck in that gap.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: People are very divided on whether they think Lizzie did this or not.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: And I'll give my take on that shortly.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: But first, if more than 130 years of books, movies, ghost stories, and children's rhymes weren't enough to prove how thoroughly this case became part of American folklore, you can actually spend the night at 92 Second Street.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: The Borden House still stands in Fall River, Massachusetts, and today it operates as a museum and bed and breakfast.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: We need to go.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: Visitors can tour the house, and overnight guests can even book rooms connected to the case, including the guest room where Abby Borden was murdered.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: That's where we're staying.
36:13
unknown: No.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: The house has also become a huge destination for paranormal investigators, with visitors reporting everything from unexplained footsteps and voices to doors moving on their own.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, whether you believe any of that is up to you.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Personally, there is not a complimentary breakfast on earth good enough to convince me to sleep in the room where Abby Borden was murdered.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's why Lizzie Borden has remained so famous.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: We hate unanswered questions.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: So over time, the real case became synonymous with four lines of a rhyme.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: And eventually the legend became easier to remember than the evidence.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, the people who actually died became supporting characters in a story carrying Lizzie's name.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Somebody killed Andrew and Abby Borden.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: And despite more than a century of books, theories, movies, and documentaries, we still cannot say with any certainty who.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: And that is the story of Lizzie Borden and one of the most famous unsolved double murders in American history.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: Please let us know what you guys think.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: Do you think that Lizzie did it?
37:25
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it was somebody else entirely?
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it was multiple people?
37:30
SPEAKER_01: Sarah, what are your final thoughts?
37:32
SPEAKER_01: I think Lizzie did it.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: You think Lizzie did it?
37:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: Like do you think she actually swung the hatchet?
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: On both of them?
37:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: Do you think that she had accomplices?
37:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I think she had accomplices, but I don't think that she swung the axe.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: I think somebody would have had to help her with the cleaning up.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: And that most obvious person is Maggie.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: And I would like to know what happened to Maggie after Lizzie and Emma got the inheritance.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, did they continue to employ Maggie at the new place?
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Did Maggie move to some mystery place with a bunch of money?
38:10
SPEAKER_00: My gut feeling is that she couldn't have done all of that without any help, especially the the cleaning up and the changing and everything.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And that the most obvious person to have helped her would have been Bridget, but Bridget would have had to have been offered something.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: And I can't imagine that Bridget loved living in the house with the frugal master and the rotten food and the no-plumbing.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot in it for her.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: If she was going to be employed at the new house, there was a lot in it for her to be moved there too.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there would have been a lot in it.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: She actually had to sleep up in the attic, which was obviously hot as hell and disgusting and dusty.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that can't have been a great place to live.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: I can't say I ever really thought that they had a relationship, but then when you're saying that maybe she had a relationship with a woman later on in life, maybe she did have a relationship with Bridget.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: I just think that Bridget's the most obvious Bridget would have been easy to bribe because she was the servant.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Right, and she was an immigrant and she was just trying to make it.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: And she had the opportunity to do all the things that needed to be done.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: She knew the house layout, she knew the routines.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: And she was the person that supposedly first saw Lizzie after she discovered Andrew.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: So therefore, if she was in on it, she could say there was no blood on her when I got there.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: That's just the most obvious.
39:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree, but I think that Lizzie was involved.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: I think that Lizzie had multiple accomplices.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: I think there are too many coincidences.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: I will go into more details in the after show.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say, let's really get into it there because there's so many questions.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely more questions and answers in this case.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm considering this the start of my kind of spooky season stories, even though this comes out September 10th.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: September 1st is the start of my spooky season.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: Just letting you know.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, and in October, we are actually gonna be doing spooky episodes all month long.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: So look forward to that.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, subscribers, we will see you in the after show.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, we will be back next week with another true frying case for you.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: And until then, be divas.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Not deadly.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Bye.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: Bye.