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Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was an American woman who was Trial and Acquittal of the August 4, 1892 of her Patricide and Matricide in Fall River, Massachusetts. No one else was charged in the murders and, despite ostracism from other residents, Borden spent the remainder of her life in Fall River. She died of pneumonia at age 66, just days before the death of her older sister Emma.
The Borden murders and trial received widespread publicity in the United States, and have remained a topic in American popular culture depicted in numerous films, theatrical productions, literary works, and folk rhymes around the Fall River area.
Andrew Borden was of English and Welsh descent. He grew up in very modest surroundings and struggled financially as a young man, despite being the descendant of a wealthy and influential family. He eventually prospered in the manufacture and sale of furniture and caskets, then became a successful property developer. He was a director of several textile mills and owned considerable commercial property. He was also president of the Union Savings Bank and a director of the Durfee Safe Deposit and Trust Co. At the time of his murder, his estate was valued at $300,000 ($10,000,000 in 2024).
Despite his wealth, Borden was known for his frugality; the Borden residence lacked indoor plumbing even though it was a common feature for the wealthy at that time. The house stood in an affluent area, but the wealthiest residents of Fall River generally lived in the more fashionable neighborhood called The Hill, which was farther from the industrial areas of the city.
Lizzie and her sister Emma had a relatively religious upbringing and attended Central Congregational Church. As a young woman, Lizzie was very involved in church activities, including teaching Sunday school to children of recent immigrants. She was involved in religious organizations such as the Christian Endeavor Society, for which she served as secretary-treasurer, and contemporary social movements such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She was also a member of the Ladies' Fruit and Flower Mission.
Andrew Borden married Abby Durfee Gray (1828–1892) three years after the death of Lizzie's mother. Lizzie later stated that she called her stepmother "Mrs. Borden" and demurred on whether they had a cordial relationship; she believed that Abby had married her father for his wealth. "Lizzie Borden". Bio. Retrieved December 17, 2015. Bridget Sullivan was the Bordens' 25 year-old live-in maid who had emigrated from Ireland, and she testified that Lizzie and Emma rarely ate meals with their parents. In May 1892, Andrew killed multiple pigeons in his barn with a hatchet, believing that they carried infections and diseases. Lizzie had recently built a roost for the pigeons, and it has been commonly recounted that she was upset over his killing them, though the veracity of this has been disputed. A family argument in July 1892 prompted both sisters to take extended vacations in New Bedford. They returned to Fall River a week before the murders, and Lizzie chose to stay in a local rooming house for four days before returning to the Borden residence.
Tension had been growing within the Borden family in the months before the murders, especially over Andrew's gifts of real estate to various branches of Abby's family. Their stepmother's sister received a house, so Lizzie and Emma demanded a rental property, the house which they had lived in until their mother died; they purchased it from their father for one dollar. A few weeks before the murders, they sold the property back to their father for $5,000 ($170,993 in 2023). John Vinnicum Morse, Lizzie and Emma's maternal uncle, visited the Borden home the night before the murders, and Andrew invited him to stay for a few days to discuss business matters. This has led to speculation that their conversation may have aggravated an already tense situation, particularly about property transfer.
The entire household had been violently ill for several days before the murders. A family friend later speculated that it was caused by mutton that had been left on the stove to use in meals over several days. Abby had feared poison, given that Andrew had not been a popular man in Fall River.
One of Lizzie and Emma's regular chores was to clean the guest room, but this morning Abby went upstairs sometime between 9:00 am and 10:30 am to make the bed. According to the forensic investigation, Abby was facing her killer at the time of the attack. She was first struck on the side of the head with a hatchet which cut her just above the ear, causing her to turn and fall face down on the floor and creating contusions on her nose and forehead. Her killer then struck her multiple times, delivering 17 more hits to the back of her head and killing her.
Andrew returned at around 10:30 am. His key failed to open the door, so he knocked. Sullivan went to unlock the door but found it jammed; she uttered a curse. She testified that she heard Lizzie laughing immediately after this; she did not see Lizzie, but stated that the laughter was coming from the top of the stairs. This was considered significant, as Abby was already dead by this time, and her body would have been visible to anyone on the second floor. Lizzie later denied being upstairs and testified that her father had asked her where Abby was, to which she replied that a messenger had delivered Abby a summons to visit a sick friend.
Sullivan stated that she then removed Andrew's boots and helped him into his slippers before he lay down on the sofa for a nap, a detail contradicted by the crime-scene photos which show Andrew wearing boots. She testified that she was in her third-floor room, resting from cleaning windows just before 11:10 am when she heard Lizzie call from downstairs, "Maggie, come quick! Father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him."
Andrew was slumped on a couch in the downstairs sitting room, struck 10 or 11 times with a hatchet-like weapon. One of his eyes had been split cleanly in two, suggesting that he had been asleep when attacked. His still-bleeding wounds suggested a very recent attack. Family physician Dr. Bowen arrived from his home across the street and pronounced both victims dead. Detectives estimated that Andrew's death had occurred at approximately 11:00 am.
Most of the officers who interviewed Lizzie reported that they disliked her "attitude"; some said that she was too calm and poised. Despite her behavior and changing alibis, she was not checked for bloodstains. Police did search her room, but it was a cursory inspection; at the trial, they admitted to not doing a proper search because Lizzie was not feeling well. They were subsequently criticized for their lack of diligence.
In the basement, police found two hatchets, two axes, and a hatchet-head with a broken handle. The hatchet-head was suspected of being the murder weapon, as the break in the handle appeared fresh and the ash and dust on the head appeared to have been deliberately applied to make it look as if it had been in the basement for some time. However, none of these tools were removed from the house. The victims' stomachs were removed during autopsies and tested for poison because of the mysterious illness that had stricken the household before the murders, but no poison was found. Residents suspected Lizzie of purchasing "hydrocyanic acid in a diluted form" from the local druggist. Her defense was that she inquired about using the acid to clean her furs, despite the local medical examiner's testimony that it did not have antiseptic properties.
Lizzie and Emma's friend Alice Russell decided to stay with the sisters the night following the murders. Police were stationed around the house on the night of August 4, during which an officer said that he had seen Lizzie enter the cellar with Russell, carrying a kerosene lamp and a slop pail. He stated that he saw both women exit the cellar, after which Lizzie returned alone. He was unable to see what she was doing, but he stated that it appeared that she was bent over the sink.
On August 5, Morse left the Borden residence and was mobbed by hundreds of people; police had to escort him back to the house. The following day, police conducted a more thorough search of the house, inspecting the sisters' clothing and confiscating the broken-handled hatchet head. That evening, a police officer and the mayor visited the house, and Lizzie was informed that she was a suspect in the murders. The next morning, Russell entered the kitchen to find Lizzie tearing up a dress. She explained that she was planning to put it on the fire because it was covered in paint. It was never determined whether it was the dress that she had been wearing on the day of the murders.
On August 11, Lizzie was served with a warrant of arrest and jailed. The inquest testimony, the basis for the modern debate regarding Lizzie's guilt or innocence, was later ruled inadmissible at her trial in June 1893. Contemporaneous newspaper articles noted that Lizzie possessed a "stolid demeanor" and "bit her lips, flushed, and bent toward attorney Adams;" it was also reported that the testimony provided in the inquest had "caused a change of opinion among her friends who have heretofore strongly maintained her innocence." The inquest received significant press attention nationwide, including a three-page article in The Boston Globe. A grand jury began hearing evidence on November 7, and Borden was indicted on December 2.
Another axe-murder occurred in Fall River on June 1, five days before Borden's trial began. This time, the victim was Bertha Manchester who was found hacked to death in her kitchen. The similarities between the Manchester and Borden murders were striking and noted by jurors. Portuguese immigrant Jose Correa de Mello was convicted of Manchester's murder in 1894, but he was determined not to have been in the vicinity of Fall River at the time of the Borden murders.
A prominent point of discussion in the trial and press coverage was the hatchet-head found in the basement, which was not convincingly demonstrated by the prosecution to be the murder weapon. Prosecutors argued that the killer had removed the handle because it would have been covered in blood. One officer testified that a hatchet handle was found near the hatchet-head, but another officer contradicted this. No bloody clothing was found at the scene, but Russell testified that she had witnessed Lizzie burn a dress in the kitchen stove on August 8, 1892, saying that it had been ruined when she brushed against wet paint. During the course of the trial, the defense never attempted to challenge this statement.
Lizzie's presence at the home was also a point of dispute during the trial. According to testimony, Sullivan entered the second floor at around 10:58 am and left Lizzie and her father downstairs. Lizzie told several people that she went into the barn and was not in the house for "twenty minutes or possibly a half an hour". Hyman Lubinsky testified for the defense that he saw Lizzie leaving the barn at 11:03 am, and Charles Gardner confirmed the time. At 11:10 am, Lizzie called Sullivan downstairs, told her that Andrew had been murdered, and ordered her not to enter the room; instead, Lizzie sent her to get a doctor.
Both victims' heads had been removed during autopsy, and the skulls were admitted as evidence during the trial and presented on June 5, 1893. Upon seeing them in the courtroom, Lizzie fainted. Evidence was excluded that she had sought to purchase prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) from the local druggist on the day before the murders, purportedly for cleaning a sealskin cloak. The judge ruled that the incident was too remote in time to have any connection.
Presiding Associate Justice Justin Dewey had been appointed by Robinson when he was governor, and he delivered a lengthy summary that supported the defense before the jury was sent to deliberate on June 20, 1893. After an hour and a half of deliberation, the jury acquitted Lizzie Borden of the murders. Upon exiting the courthouse, she told reporters that she was "the happiest woman in the world".
The trial has been compared to the later trials of Bruno Hauptmann, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and O.J. Simpson as a landmark in publicity and public interest in the history of American legal proceedings.Multiple sources:
Mystery author Evan Hunter, better known as Ed McBain, in his 1984 novel Lizzie, suggested that Lizzie committed the murders after being caught in a tryst with Sullivan. McBain elaborated on his speculation in a 1999 interview, speculating that Abby had caught the two together and had reacted with horror and disgust, and that Lizzie had killed Abby with a candlestick. She made a confession to Andrew when he returned home but killed him in a rage with a hatchet when he reacted exactly as Abby had. He further speculated that Sullivan disposed of the hatchet somewhere afterwards.
In her later years, Lizzie was rumored to be a lesbian, but there was no such speculation about Sullivan, who later married a man she met while working as a maid in Butte, Montana. Sullivan died in Butte in 1948. Allegedly, she gave a death-bed confession to her sister in which she stated that she had changed her testimony on the stand to protect Lizzie.
Despite the acquittal, Lizzie was Ostracism by Fall River society. Her name was again brought into the public eye when she was accused of shoplifting in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1897. In 1905, shortly after an argument over a party that Lizbeth had given for actress Nance O'Neil, Emma moved out of the house and never saw her sister again.
At the time of her death, Borden was worth over $250,000 (). She owned a house on the corner of French Street and Belmont Street, several office buildings, shares in several utilities, two cars and a large amount of jewelry. She left $30,000 () to the Fall River Animal Rescue League and $500 ($ in ) in trust for perpetual care of her father's grave. Her closest friend and a cousin each received $6,000 ($ today)—substantial sums at the time of the estate's distribution in 1927 —and numerous friends and family members each received between $1,000 ($ in ) and $5,000 ($ in ).
The Borden house became a museum, and operates a bed and breakfast with 1890s styling.Archived at Ghostarchive and the
Folklore says that the rhyme was made up by an anonymous writer as a tune to sell newspapers. Others attribute it to the ubiquitous, but anonymous, "Mother Goose".
In reality, Lizzie's stepmother suffered 18 or 19 blows; her father suffered 11 blows.
The rhyme has a less well-known second verse:
Among the earlier portrayals on stage was John Colton and Carleton Miles's 1933 play Nine Pine Street, in which Lillian Gish played Effie Holden, a character who is based on Borden. The play was not a success and ran for only twenty-eight performances. In 1947 Lillian de la Torre wrote a one-act play, Goodbye, Miss Lizzie Borden.
Other retellings include New Faces of 1952, a 1952 Broadway musical with a number titled Lizzie Borden, which depicts the crimes, as well as Agnes de Mille's ballet Fall River Legend (1948) and the Jack Beeson opera Lizzie Borden (1965), both works being based on Borden and the murders of her father and stepmother. Other plays based on Borden include Blood Relations (1980), a Canadian production written by Sharon Pollock that recounts events leading up to the murders, which was made into a television movie in Calgary. Lizzie Borden, another musical adaptation, was also made starring Tony Awards nominee Alison Fraser.
A March 24, 1957, episode of Omnibus presented two different adaptations of the Lizzie Borden story: the first a play, "The Trial of Lizzie Borden", with Katharine Bard as Lizzie; the second a production of the Fall River Legend ballet with Nora Kaye as "The Accused". In 1959, The Legend of Lizzie by Reginald Lawrence attracted praise for Anne Meacham in the title role, but still closed after just two performances.
A January 21, 1956, episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, entitled "The Older Sister", presents a fictionalized account, occurring one year after the murders, where Emma is revealed as being the murderer.
The folk singing group The Chad Mitchell Trio recorded a black comedy song, Lizzie Borden by Michael Brown, for their live 1961 album Mighty Day on Campus. Released as a single, it reached 44 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1962.
ABC commissioned The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), a television film starring Elizabeth Montgomery as Lizzie Borden, Katherine Helmond as Emma Borden, and Fionnula Flanagan as Bridget Sullivan; it was later discovered after Montgomery died that she and Borden were in fact sixth cousins once removed, both descending from 17th century Massachusetts resident John Luther. Rhonda McClure, the genealogist who documented the Montgomery-Borden connection, said: "I wonder how Elizabeth would have felt if she knew she was playing her own cousin."
Lizzie: The Musical premiered in 2009, with book by Tim Maner, music by Steven Cheslik-deMeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt, and lyrics by Cheslik-deMeyer and Maner. The musical had its origins in a 1990 song cycle, and focuses on a secret romance between Borden and her neighbour, Alice, as well as her abuse at home.
Lifetime produced Lizzie Borden Took an Ax (2014), a speculative television film with Christina Ricci portraying Borden, which was followed by The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015)—a limited series and a sequel to the television film, which presents a fictionalized account of Borden's life after the trial. A feature film, Lizzie (2018), with Chloë Sevigny as Borden and Kristen Stewart as Bridget Sullivan, depicts a lesbian tryst between Borden and Sullivan, which leads to the murders.
The events of the murders and the trial, with actors portraying the people who were involved in them, have been reenacted on a number of documentary programs. In 1936, the radio program Unsolved Mysteries broadcast a 15-minute dramatization titled "The Lizzie Borden Case", which presented a possible scenario in which the murders were committed during a botched robbery attempt by a tramp, who then escaped. Television recreations have included episodes of Biography, Second Verdict, History's Mysteries, Case Reopened (1999), and Mysteries Decoded (2019). The Lizzie Borden case was partly dramatized on an episode of the 2022 BBC Radio podcast series Lucy Worsley's Lady Killers.
Borden will be the focus of the fourth season of the true crime anthology series Monster, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan for Netflix. Ella Beatty has been cast in the role of Lizzie Borden.
Lizzy Borden, an American heavy metal band, is named after her. The American film director Lizzie Borden also took her name from the historical figure.
Media
Inquest
Lizzie appeared at the inquest hearing on August 8. The court refused her request to have her family attorney present, citing a state statute providing that an inquest must be held in private. She had been prescribed regular doses of morphine to calm her nerves, and it is possible that her testimony was affected by this. Her behavior was erratic, and she often refused to answer a question even if the answer would be beneficial to her. She often contradicted herself and provided alternating accounts of the morning in question, such as saying that she was in the kitchen reading a magazine when her father arrived home, then saying that she was in the dining room doing some ironing, and then saying that she was coming down the stairs.
Trial and acquittal
Lizzie's trial took place in New Bedford starting on June 5, 1893. Prosecuting attorneys were Hosea M. Knowlton and future United States Supreme Court Justice William H. Moody; defending were Andrew V. Jennings, Melvin O. Adams, and former Massachusetts Governor George D. Robinson.
Theories
Lizzie Borden
Although acquitted at trial, Lizzie remained the prime suspect in her father's and stepmother's murders. Writer Victoria Lincoln proposed in 1967 that she might have committed the murders while in a fugue state. Another prominent suggestion was that she was child abuse and sexually abused by her father, which drove her to kill him. There is little evidence to support this, but incest is not a topic that would have been discussed at the time, and the methods for collecting physical evidence would have been quite different in 1892. This belief was intimated in local papers at the time of the murders, and was revisited by scholar Marcia Carlisle in a 1992 essay.
John Morse
Another significant suspect is John Morse, Lizzie's maternal uncle, who rarely met with the family after his sister died but had slept in the house the night before the murders; according to law enforcement, he had provided an "absurdly perfect and over-detailed alibi for the death of Abby Borden". Morse was considered a suspect by police for a period.
"William Borden"
A man named William Borden, suspected to be Andrew's illegitimate son, was noted as a possible suspect by author Arnold Brown, who surmised that William had tried and failed to extortion money from his alleged father. Author Leonard Rebello, after extensive research on William, proved he was not Andrew's son.
Emma Borden
Although Emma had an alibi at Fairhaven, about from Fall River, crime writer Frank Spiering proposed in his 1984 book Lizzie that she might have secretly visited the residence to kill her parents before returning to Fairhaven in time to receive the telegram informing her of the murders.
Later life
After the trial, the Borden sisters moved into a large, modern house in The Hill neighborhood in Fall River. Around this time, Lizzie began using the name Lizbeth A. Borden. At their new house, which Lizbeth dubbed "Maplecroft", they had a staff that included live-in maids, a housekeeper and a coachman. Because Abby was ruled to have died before Andrew, her estate went first to Andrew and then, at his death, passed to his daughters as part of his estate. A considerable legal settlement, however, was paid to settle claims by Abby's family.
Death
Following the removal of her gallbladder, Lizzie was ill the last year of her life. At age 66, she died of pneumonia on June 1, 1927, in Fall River. Funeral details were not published and few attended. Emma died nine days later at a nursing home in Newmarket, New Hampshire. She was 76, and had been suffering from chronic nephritis. Both lifelong spinsters, Lizzie and Emma were buried side by side in the family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River.
In culture
Scholar Ann Schofield notes that "Borden's story has tended to take one or the other of two fictional forms: the tragic romance and the feminist quest ... As the story of Lizzie Borden has been created and re-created through rhyme and fiction it has taken on the qualities of a popular American myth or legend that effectively links the present to the past."
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Wayback Machine: Pieces of evidence used in the trial, including the hatchet-head, are preserved at the Fall River Historical Society.
Folk rhyme
The case was memorialized in a popular skipping-rope rhyme, sung to the tune of the then-popular song "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay."
Depictions
Lizzie Borden has been depicted in music, radio, film, theater, and television, often in association with the murders of which she was acquitted.
In literature
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See also
Notes
Works cited
(2025). 9780743212397, Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780743212397
(2025). 9781452276816, Sage Publications. ISBN 9781452276816
(2025). 9781550024395, Dundurn. ISBN 9781550024395
(2025). 9781412988766, Sage Publications. ISBN 9781412988766
(2025). 9781402237461, Sourcebooks, Inc.. ISBN 9781402237461
(1981). 9780899173023, T.I.S. Publications Division. ISBN 9780899173023
C.A. Verstraete (2025). 9781717351654, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781717351654
Further reading
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> via: University of Massachusetts at Amherst
External links
Academic sites
Categories: 1860 Births, 1927 Deaths, 1892 Crimes In The United States, 20th-century American Women, 19th-century American Educators, 19th-century American Women Educators, 19th-century Congregationalists, People From American Folklore, American People Of English Descent, American People Of Welsh Descent, Axe Murder, Cornell Family, Deaths From Pneumonia In Massachusetts, American People Acquitted Of Murder, People From Fall River, Massachusetts, Woman's Christian Temperance Union People, Burials At Oak Grove Cemetery, History Of Fall River, Massachusetts, Historical Figures With Ambiguous Or Disputed Sexuality
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