Lizzie Borden- The Unsolved Murder of Her Parents - *WARNING* Actual crime scene photos included in this post.

 

  On a hot August day an assailant dealt 19 blows to the back of Abbey Borden’s head and 11 more to her husband. A medical examiner said they were killed approximately two hours apart.

 At 6:15am that morning the maid Maggie O’Sullivan chose to gather firewood from the basement area of their home. Ten minutes later Mrs. Borden arrived in the kitchen and by 7:00am her husband had joined her. Mr. Borden’s youngest daughter Lizzy arrived wearing a blue dress. Mrs. Borden asked Maggie to wash the downstairs and to change the pillow slips in the guest bedroom.

The Borden House Today

 At 9am Mr. Borden left to run errands, when he returned at 10:00am Maggie heard him struggling to unlock the front door and hurried to assist him. She saw that the spring lock had been fastened and heard Lizzie laughing from upstairs.

 Mr. Borden went into the sitting room and Maggie carried on with her work. Lizzie came down and spoke to her father. She told him Mrs. Borden had gone to visit a sick friend. Maggie began washing the windows in the dining room when she was joined by Lizzie who began ironing clothes chatting as she did so.

Mrs. Abby Borden

 Maggie then told Lizzie she was going to take a nap. Lying on her bed she heard the church bell chime 11:00am.

 Around 11:10am she heard Lizzie call out to her that her father was dead, and someone had forced their way in and killed him. She rushed downstairs to meet Lizzie in the hall and then ventured to find Dr Seabury, who was the local general practitioner, but Maggie could not find him.

Lizzie Borden

Meanwhile a neighbour Mrs. Churchill popped by to check up on the commotion. She found Lizzie distraught and tried to comfort her. Lizzie told her she had been in the barn and had heard a moan. When she came back, she had found her father dead on the couch. Lizzie confirmed to Mrs. Churchill that Mrs. Borden had gone out to visit her sick friend.

 When Maggie returned without the doctor, she was convinced she needed now to find Mrs. Borden. Lizzie then said that she was sure that Mrs. Borden had come home. When Maggie went upstairs, she found Mrs. Borden's bloody dead body face down in the guest bedroom.

Mrs and Mr Borden's slain bodies

 At 11:45am the first wave of police officers descended on the house and searched it, they noted no signs of forced entry or burglary. The front door and cellar doors were locked, and although there was blood on the ceiling and the walls there were none elsewhere. When they searched the cellar more thoroughly, they found a box where there were two axes, one covered in blood and hair, and a recently broken hatchet head covered in ash.

 Lizzie was questioned by police about her movements. She said she intended to iron clothes, when her father had come home tired, she had taken off his shoes before he had a nap on the sofa. She then went to the barn for fifteen to twenty minutes to look for lead to make fishing weights, and she had not seen Mrs. Borden leave to visit her friend. The police inspected the barn again which felt humid despite it being a cold and breezy day and the absence of footprints in the dust meant that Lizzie had probably not been down there.

The Borden House Cellar Today

 On the 11^th of August Lizzie was arrested for the murder of her parents. Her motive was that she suspected her father to be writing her out of his will in favour of her stepmother.

 A passing peddler reported that he had seen a woman walking from the yard to the side door which did support Lizzie’s alibi. An expert then concluded that the blood and hair on the axes were from a cow.

The axe found in the Borden's Cellar 

 Then there was an unexpected turn of events, a prison matron said she had overheard Lizzie saying to her older sister, “you’ve given me away? Haven’t you?” Then a friend of Lizzies testified that she had seen Lizzie burning a blue dress in the kitchen stove a few days after the murders.

 Lizzie Borden’s trial began on the 20th of June 1983. After just 90 minutes deliberation the jury said she was not guilty. She used her vast inheritance to buy a house, where she died in 1927.

Lizzie Borden alive and well in the 1920's

 The unsolved murders are still a source of fascination, and many theories have sprung up from it. A historian Marcia Carlisle that Lizzie may have been the victim of sexual abuse, due to the correlation between incest and patricide. Marcia also pointed out that Lizzie’s mental health was far from good, and that she had said to her friend the day before that she was ‘depressed’ and that something was ‘hanging over her’ no matter where she was. In 1967 a book called ‘Private Disgrace’ theorised that Lizzie suffered from epilepsy and likely committed the murders in a fugue state.

 According to KQED, a nurse who treated Lizzie said that Lizzie had told her that her boyfriend had committed the murders, as her father did not approve of the match. The boyfriend’s identity remained a mystery until this day.

 Others have suggested that Lizzie and the maid Bridget, conspired to commit the murders together. This is either because of a potential relationship between the pair or a mutual dislike of the older Borden’s. Bridget appeared to somehow know that Lizzie’s stepmother was dead before the discovery of the body, as she refused to go up the stairs to tell Mrs. Borden of her husband’s murder. Another strange factor was that when a neighbour went to get a sheet to cover Mr. Borden’s body Bridget reportedly said ‘we will need two’ even though at this point Mrs. Borden’s body had not even been found.

 Other family members could have also committed the crimes. Arnold Brown in his book Lizzie Borden: The legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter, suggested that Lizzie had an illegitimate and ‘mentally defective’ brother who may have committed the murders. Brown theorized that Lizzie had covered up for her half-sibling to make sure that his existence was not discovered.

 Lizzies’ uncle, John Morse, may have also been the murderer, according to a book called Cold Case to Case Closed, Morse had been staying with the family but was dismissed as a suspect because of an alibi that he gave that turned out later not to be watertight. Moreover, the uncle was a butcher who always seemed to carry a meat cleaver with him, which would be a very handy murder weapon.

   Whoever it was that committed both these atrocious murders, the story itself has fascinated generations of people. You can visit the Borden house, which is now a museum, and have your photograph taken on the very sofa where Mr. Borden met his bloody demise. Perhaps one day something will come to light to help solve the case, but in the meantime, it is infamously unforgettable for its unsolvable air of mystery.