Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles and and Jerry's back. Wow. Wow, wow,
Speaker 1: look at that fine looking lady over there. How's it going, Jerry?
Speaker 1: She gave us the fine thumbs up. It's just like
Speaker 1: old times. Yeah, Nol is just quietly weeping outside. He is,
Speaker 1: you know, like back outside Noel. He's peaking in her
Speaker 1: little portal window, scratching at it. The stint of Noel ak,
Speaker 1: the rain of terror is over done. Yes, has been
Speaker 1: deposed by Jerry. So now it's not Noel sitting there
Speaker 1: or nobody sitting there. Happened more times than I was
Speaker 1: comfortable with, at least four. Yeah, Jerry's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that we can do that. I'm out of here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so long, Jerry. So welcome back, Jerry. And uh, we've
Speaker 1: already said congratulations on little Is, but who just keeps
Speaker 1: getting cuter and cuter. Yep, I know things are going great,
Speaker 1: so we're happy to have you back. And Lily Nez,
Speaker 1: you're being very quiet, just stay that way. She's just
Speaker 1: rocking in her little swing. Yeah, would be having babies.
Speaker 1: In here. Yeah, if they shut up, wouldn't that be cool?
Speaker 1: For sure? Good energy. I would just feel bad for
Speaker 1: him because it gets pretty gamey in here. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: after like fifteen minutes, a couple of hours. I kind
Speaker 1: of stink today. Actually, I was gonna oppolize. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't use deodorant the first time I showered him, just
Speaker 1: like two days ago. It's fantastic. I know, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: I even dressed up. Man, that's great. That. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take care of that tonight. That explains the sheen
Speaker 1: on your face. Okay, so we're here, Jerry's here, I smell.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Since you do smell, chuck, I have
Speaker 1: to say, at least, at the very least, I'm grateful
Speaker 1: that we don't happen to be in Fall River, Massachusetts
Speaker 1: on the morning of augusto because that morning was particularly
Speaker 1: particularly hot, unseasonably hot. It was over a hundred degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit by the time noon rolled around, And that figures
Speaker 1: heavily in the case of Lizzie Borden and her forty
Speaker 1: and forty one wax, which were more like eighteen or
Speaker 1: nineteen and eleven. Yes, are you? You were familiar with
Speaker 1: Lizzie Boy. Everybody knows Lizzie Borden. Right, Yeah, Lizzie Borden
Speaker 1: took an X, gave her mother forty wax. When she
Speaker 1: found what she had done, she gave her father forty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah wrong, there was no ax. It wasn't a real mother.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a real mother. There wasn't so all about that
Speaker 1: was just made up. They think to sell newspapers. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they think it's a children's nursery rhyme these days, little
Speaker 1: sicko children. Um. But but they do think that it
Speaker 1: was possibly some newspaper hawker, a newsy if watch Disney movies, Um,
Speaker 1: who came up with it and they just took off.
Speaker 1: We should change it to Lizzie Borden may or may
Speaker 1: not have taken a hatchet given her stepmother eighteen or
Speaker 1: nineteen wax, thirteen of them crushed her skull when she
Speaker 1: saw what she had done. Her father got home, she
Speaker 1: gave him eleven or so and then got away. Yeah
Speaker 1: it Scott Free. That doesn't have the same ring. No,
Speaker 1: that doesn't. But you basically did just sum it up
Speaker 1: pretty well, pretty accurately, Chuck. So for those of you
Speaker 1: who don't know who Lize Boorden is just settled down, buckling,
Speaker 1: prepare for a wild ride. For those of you who
Speaker 1: do know, do the same. Okay, Yeah, because we have
Speaker 1: new evidence, Yeah, that we're gonna reveal the controvertible evidence
Speaker 1: of exactly who carried out these murders, and the only
Speaker 1: people who have it is us, because we're gonna make
Speaker 1: it up and you'll find out in thirty five ish
Speaker 1: minutes or forty apparently to stuffy miss and she classed
Speaker 1: an episode on Lizzie Board. If this floats, your boat
Speaker 1: goes into that one too. Yeah, I should point out
Speaker 1: to the very first thing we said. We told Jerry
Speaker 1: were doing Lizzie Board and she said lesbian. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we said maybe that's one of the theories. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: will all figure in. We're just teasing, teasing like crazy,
Speaker 1: all right. So the morning of August four, Fall River, Massachusetts. Ah,
Speaker 1: very cute town, by the way. I'm sure you mean
Speaker 1: I visited recently? Who did you go to the house?
Speaker 1: Why else would you go there? That's about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was on your death tour, your murder tour, um.
Speaker 1: But in two like I said, it was over a
Speaker 1: hundred degrees ferrent height on August four, really really hot
Speaker 1: for that area. And at about ten I think about
Speaker 1: ten forty five am, wasn't it. Yeah, about ten forty
Speaker 1: five the first murder, No, the father coming home. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They placed both of these events within like thirty to
Speaker 1: forty five minutes. There's you know, a given take there.
Speaker 1: So about ten forty five am one, Andrew Jackson Boorden
Speaker 1: returns to his home at nine two Second Street in
Speaker 1: Fall River, mass And. Um, the the house is in
Speaker 1: a part of town that was very popular among recent immigrants,
Speaker 1: specifically Irish Catholics and Portuguese. Uh. And I believe there's
Speaker 1: some Chinese immigrants there as well. It wasn't an upscale
Speaker 1: part of town by any means. Despite the fact that
Speaker 1: Andrew Borden was an extremely wealthy man. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: worth between seven and ten million today dollars. I've I've
Speaker 1: heard twelve let's say between seven and twelve. Then that's
Speaker 1: a lot of dough and also a good reason to
Speaker 1: kill somebody. Yeah. Um, and he despite having a lot
Speaker 1: of dough, he lived in one of the lower rent
Speaker 1: sections of the town. Um. His house did not have
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing, which was kind of odd by this time
Speaker 1: for that area. Um. Apparently many of the people who
Speaker 1: were far far worse off than his family financially head
Speaker 1: indoor plumbing. He did not. He also didn't have any
Speaker 1: kind of electric lighting. Instead he used kerosene lamps, and uh,
Speaker 1: he kept doors locked. He was very afraid of being robbed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's cover this bit real quick. I think we should
Speaker 1: read this. Um. There's a lady named Angela Carter who
Speaker 1: wrote about the case. She actually factored into our our
Speaker 1: fairy Tales episode. She was the feminist rewrote fairy Tales.
Speaker 1: She wrote what was that Neil Jordan's take on Little
Speaker 1: Rod Ride and her hood? Yeah, I remember she wrote
Speaker 1: the So she said the house was originally a two
Speaker 1: family home and they converted it to a single family
Speaker 1: home but didn't take a lot of time. Apparently just
Speaker 1: knocked down some walls through in a staircase and it
Speaker 1: ended up being a weird house because of that. It
Speaker 1: is very weird. And she describes it as, uh, this
Speaker 1: way a house full of doors that open only into
Speaker 1: other rooms, with other locked doors for upstairs and downstairs.
Speaker 1: All the rooms led in and out of one another
Speaker 1: like a maze and a bad dream. It is a
Speaker 1: house without passages. There is no part of the house
Speaker 1: that has not been marked as some inmates personal territory
Speaker 1: inmate very nice. It is a house with no shared
Speaker 1: no common spaces between one room and the next. It
Speaker 1: is a house of privacies sealed as close as if
Speaker 1: they had been sealed with wax on a legal document. Creepy.
Speaker 1: No hallway is or anything weird. No, each room led
Speaker 1: into the next, and in fact Lizzie's bedroom led right
Speaker 1: into her sister Emma's bedroom too. For Emma to go
Speaker 1: to bed, she would have had to go through Lizzie's bedroom,
Speaker 1: um and then her Her stepmother and father's bedroom was
Speaker 1: behind hers, but it was sealed off by a locked
Speaker 1: door and access through staircase that only your father used
Speaker 1: that you could get to only with the key. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to go up and down the stairs, they had
Speaker 1: to go through their parents bedroom right, Yes, but they
Speaker 1: didn't do that. That was it was off limits. It
Speaker 1: was locked. They just jumped out the second story window.
Speaker 1: There was a front staircase, actually built a second staircase
Speaker 1: so that her their their parents could come and go
Speaker 1: to their room without having to go through Lizzie's room,
Speaker 1: so for all intentsive purposes, but this locked door, it
Speaker 1: was a wall that sealed off their parents room from there. Yes,
Speaker 1: and when we say parents, uh, this is a stepmother.
Speaker 1: Lizzie was born Um to Sarah Morse and her father
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty third child. Um had an older sister
Speaker 1: named Emma, ten years older. The second daughter named Alice,
Speaker 1: who died when Lizzie was two. Yes, she had. She
Speaker 1: died from hydra and cephily. You could just make up
Speaker 1: anything back then, something believable, you know. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: her mother died in eighteen sixty three when she was
Speaker 1: just two of uterine congestion. And then when Lizzie turned
Speaker 1: right before she turned five, he remarried to Abby Gray,
Speaker 1: who the daughters were in their thirties by the time
Speaker 1: the murder took place, unmarried at Spinster's Uh. And never
Speaker 1: seemed like they had a great relationship with add they didn't,
Speaker 1: but they both adored their father and Um he he
Speaker 1: personally appreciated that for his benefit, they referred to her
Speaker 1: as mother, and they did for decades until the time
Speaker 1: which we'll get to um. But they they the reason
Speaker 1: that Um Andrew Borden kept a house locked all the time.
Speaker 1: Was because a couple of years before there had been
Speaker 1: a burglary where some mysterious burglar had come in and
Speaker 1: made off with a hundred dollars and some Charlie tickets
Speaker 1: and some jewelry. I think, and Uh it was basically
Speaker 1: pretty well known around town that it was Lizzie who
Speaker 1: had done it. Sounds like an inside job in nation
Speaker 1: she robbed her own father rather than accused his daughter
Speaker 1: of this extraordinarily scandalous behavior at the time. Sure, Um,
Speaker 1: he just locked everything and all doors were locked all
Speaker 1: the time. Um, and he kept a key to his
Speaker 1: room on the mantel, basically daring anybody to even try it,
Speaker 1: because he would know what happened, because the only way
Speaker 1: you could get in was through this key. The only
Speaker 1: way to get to the key would be to have
Speaker 1: a key to the outside doors. We say all this
Speaker 1: to say that when Andrew Um Borden came back home
Speaker 1: that day on August four, that morning, Uh, he was
Speaker 1: locked out of his own house and he had to
Speaker 1: be led in by the maid whose name was Bridget,
Speaker 1: but who Emma and Lizzie called Maggie because they had
Speaker 1: had another maid named Maggie, and they decided that they
Speaker 1: just were gonna call this one Maggie too. That sounds like, um,
Speaker 1: do you watch the show another period? Huh? That's great.
Speaker 1: It's a comedy Central basically a reality TV spoof of
Speaker 1: like Dounton Abbey and Um. The two lead Natascheaa Gerro
Speaker 1: and uh oh, I can't remember her name from Garth
Speaker 1: funcle On notes the blonde she does the she's the other.
Speaker 1: I think they co created the series, but they're just
Speaker 1: these rich girls who would like they renamed one of
Speaker 1: the maid's chair. How have I not even heard of this?
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, It's really funny. It's got a huge,
Speaker 1: great cast, big fan. H have you seen Anthony Doeslick
Speaker 1: special on Netflix yet? Oh? No, dude, I love that
Speaker 1: guy though. It's really yeah so so awful but wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah so uh Andrew Boording gets let back into
Speaker 1: his own house, not Anthony does. Um and he uh.
Speaker 1: He gets let back in by the maid and he
Speaker 1: decides he's going to lay down for a little while
Speaker 1: on the couch. Right. Apparently the whole family was under
Speaker 1: the weather, including the maid, because they have been eating
Speaker 1: the same mutton for like five days. Mutton's gross to
Speaker 1: begin with. Five day old mutton that had been stored
Speaker 1: in the heat in an ice box outdoors is not
Speaker 1: just gross, it's really bad for you. So the whole
Speaker 1: family had basically come down to very degrees of um
Speaker 1: food poisoning. Yeah, like so much so that Mrs Borden
Speaker 1: Abbey Borden had gone to talk to the doctor the
Speaker 1: day before the murders and said, I think we're being
Speaker 1: poisoned by one of my husband's business rivals or my stepdaughter, right,
Speaker 1: you know something like that. Uh. Yeah, that's not all
Speaker 1: the weirdness that was going on, um in the in
Speaker 1: the months and weeks before the murders. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of uh not strange, but a lot of
Speaker 1: financial goings on that kind of raised the ire of
Speaker 1: the daughters. Um. Notably, Andrews started uh being fairly generous
Speaker 1: with other members of the family, giving away properties and things, uh,
Speaker 1: including to Abbey. He gave her a house that she
Speaker 1: let her sister live in. Her sister was in big trouble,
Speaker 1: so he helped her out. Yeah, so he's got money,
Speaker 1: he's like, um uh so he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll give you each a property as well for a
Speaker 1: dollar and you're you're welcome. And they ended up reselling
Speaker 1: that back to Dad for cash later, which was kind
Speaker 1: of jerky. Yeah. Well it was a rental property and
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of rental properties, and apparently his
Speaker 1: miserliness was very well known. Um. He also directed some
Speaker 1: mills right and Fall Rivers incredibly famous for its mills.
Speaker 1: It was it's a huge mill town. So he knew
Speaker 1: that if you worked in the mills and rented at
Speaker 1: home from him or a room from even he knew
Speaker 1: if you got a raise, and if you got a raise,
Speaker 1: he would raise your rent. So this is a rental property,
Speaker 1: one of his reynal properties that he sold to his
Speaker 1: daughters so that they could have rental income. Apparently they
Speaker 1: were they didn't feel like doing that, so they just
Speaker 1: sold it back to him for like I think, increase.
Speaker 1: Not bad for doing nothing. Uh. The other thing that
Speaker 1: happened in the um actually the night before the murderer
Speaker 1: is there uncle John John Vinnegam Morris, who was there,
Speaker 1: deceased mother's brother. He came a call in, uh to
Speaker 1: speak about out some business with Andrew. And Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation on what was going on here.
Speaker 1: Basically they think that it just ramped up a tent
Speaker 1: situation even more like he probably had his hand out
Speaker 1: that maybe. I think it was fairly um common for
Speaker 1: him to come by, and I think he was also,
Speaker 1: I don't think he was supplicant to Andrew Borden. I
Speaker 1: think they had business together a lot. Well, Lizzie didn't
Speaker 1: like him, so I that's news to me too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She she apparently didn't even speak to him, she said
Speaker 1: at the trial while he was there, right like, when
Speaker 1: he came to visit and stay the night. She hadn't
Speaker 1: spoken to him the whole time when he came and
Speaker 1: then spent the night and then left the next morning.
Speaker 1: Because it's very important. He was not in the house
Speaker 1: when Andrew Borden came back into the house, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And she never called him uncle John, which is the
Speaker 1: dead giveaway if you love your uncle. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: I didn't realize there was animosity between the two. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there necessarily was. Is one of the
Speaker 1: problems that we're going to run into it over and
Speaker 1: over again, and it's also one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: Lizzie Borden's legend has remained alive for so long, Like,
Speaker 1: we have a propensity to take very complex, complicated people
Speaker 1: and they're very complex complicated relationships with one another and
Speaker 1: boil them down into caricatures that we can understand and
Speaker 1: easily explain. And so yeah, so over the century or so,
Speaker 1: we've done the same thing to Lizzie Borden case. So
Speaker 1: it's really easy to speculate on and it's also easy
Speaker 1: to interpret little things one way or the other, which
Speaker 1: also makes the whole thing a lot of fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one. Everyone loves a cold case. Yeah, alright, so
Speaker 1: let's take a break and uh, we'll get back to
Speaker 1: some of the nitty gritty deets right after this. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you you were saying that the family it was tense
Speaker 1: in the house. To be certain, it sounds like it
Speaker 1: was always tense, but notably tense months leading up to
Speaker 1: the murders. Yeah, and apparently at both Emma and Lizzie
Speaker 1: took off for several weeks right before the murders. When
Speaker 1: they came back, Lizzie didn't even come back to the house.
Speaker 1: She rented a room for a few days. I guess
Speaker 1: the ease herself back into having to live in this
Speaker 1: house again. Kind of that's weird. Maybe three quarters of
Speaker 1: the way house and she um, she and Emma both
Speaker 1: stopped calling Mrs Borden mother all of a sudden around
Speaker 1: the time that um, their father had given the house,
Speaker 1: that extra house to her right, her sister was living in.
Speaker 1: They started calling her Mrs Borden, including to her face.
Speaker 1: That's pretty chilly, right, So that's tense. Like you say,
Speaker 1: Uncle John Morris might have increased this tension. And the
Speaker 1: house was very very chilly, civilly cordial to an extent,
Speaker 1: but just it was a house full of adults who
Speaker 1: were not getting along and and like you said, probably
Speaker 1: hadn't been for a while. Yeah, then' there was a
Speaker 1: matter of in juneo um, Andrew, the father killed a
Speaker 1: bunch of pigeons in the barn outside the house to
Speaker 1: make pigeons while so Abby could make a pigeon pie.
Speaker 1: And supposedly Lizzie kind of thought of these pigeons as
Speaker 1: her pets. So uh, that would not have been a
Speaker 1: very cool thing to do if you know your daughter
Speaker 1: loved these pigeons. So I'm in the mood for pigeon pie. Yeah. There.
Speaker 1: He apparently also defended his actions by saying that he
Speaker 1: was worried about intruders because local boys used to like
Speaker 1: to come let themselves into their barn and hang out
Speaker 1: with these pigeons and play with them. So he solved
Speaker 1: two problems dinner and boys coming over by just killing
Speaker 1: Lizzie's pigeons. That's right. And she also beyond just liking
Speaker 1: these pigeons, she was also a huge animal lover. She's
Speaker 1: a lot of money do it animal rights group, and
Speaker 1: she died, so I mean, she probably would have taken
Speaker 1: this fairly hard. On the flip side, though, so her
Speaker 1: father just that characters caricature thing I was talking about.
Speaker 1: Her father's painted is like this Ebenezer Scrooge type, super
Speaker 1: miserly type visted. He definitely was that. But it's very
Speaker 1: easy to extend this idea that he and Lizzie hated
Speaker 1: each other, and that's absolutely not true. They both Lizzie
Speaker 1: and Emma apparently very much loved their father, and their
Speaker 1: father loved them. As a matter of fact, he wore
Speaker 1: a pinky ring that Lizzie gave him when he was
Speaker 1: when she was like fifteen, and he'd warn it every day,
Speaker 1: never took it off, just like each other. A lot
Speaker 1: only jewelry he ever wore. It was like there was
Speaker 1: definite affection there that often gets overlooked when you're just
Speaker 1: kind of painting this thing in broad strokes, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like you said, he wasn't beloved in the town
Speaker 1: because if you ask me if you have money and
Speaker 1: you're a tight wade, it's like the worst thing it is,
Speaker 1: does he have money? Be generous, That's what I say. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, pick up checks, be generous with your friends.
Speaker 1: If you have dough and your I don't know, I can,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna make any friends. Let's just say that.
Speaker 1: And it didn't in his case. So um, Also, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, it is it reveals a lot
Speaker 1: psychologically that the whole family has been eating the same
Speaker 1: mutton for five days and the first thing that Mrs
Speaker 1: Borden thinks of is that their milk is being poisoned
Speaker 1: by one of her husband's business rivals. That's where her
Speaker 1: mind went exactly. So there's a I mean, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's not just inside this house the tension. It's also
Speaker 1: coming from outside a little bit as well. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll go ahead and point out if you
Speaker 1: have the the circumstantial evidence surrounding Lizzie. So, one of
Speaker 1: the things was in the days before the murderer, she
Speaker 1: was trying to uh, she's been seen trying to buy
Speaker 1: a poisonous prussic acid. She said, yeah, she said she
Speaker 1: wanted it to clean things. But other people, when the
Speaker 1: trial said maybe she was trying to poison them. Although
Speaker 1: autopsies revealed no poison in the bodies, no poison in
Speaker 1: the milk, no, but the prosecutors wanted to use that
Speaker 1: to to suggest that she had murder on her mind. Inadmissible.
Speaker 1: It was ruled and admissible because they figured it'd be
Speaker 1: too inflammatory, and it was entirely possible that she really
Speaker 1: did want to clean this seal skin coat with that stuff.
Speaker 1: All right, what else? This is the dress? Things pretty
Speaker 1: damning well, hold on, before we get any further into that,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's talk about the actual murders. You're ready.
Speaker 1: So it talkings. Fourth. Her father has just come back in.
Speaker 1: He's laying down on the sofa, right, and he goes
Speaker 1: to sleep, and he never wakes up. The reason he
Speaker 1: never wakes up is because like you said he got
Speaker 1: hit from behind and above about eleven times with an
Speaker 1: axe and hit and about the same area, so that
Speaker 1: basically his face was cut clean away into nothingness. Um,
Speaker 1: probably a hatchet, not an X. Yeah, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I hatch it. Um. And at about eleven ten,
Speaker 1: Bridget was upstairs sleeping because again she's been throwing up
Speaker 1: from the mutton um. When she gets roused by Lizzie
Speaker 1: calling from downstairs saying, hurry, something's happened. She comes downstairs
Speaker 1: and she says, someone's coming and killed father. So now
Speaker 1: this alert has just gone out. The first body has
Speaker 1: been discovered, Andrew Borden, who's still bleeding right, and his
Speaker 1: face is hacked away. It's pretty grotesque. You can see
Speaker 1: the picture online. Yeah, so Bridget runs across the street
Speaker 1: to the doctor to get him. Uh, comes back with
Speaker 1: him and they say, where's your where's your mother? She's
Speaker 1: like stepmother. They're like, where's your stepmother? And she says, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody came with a note or something like that. I
Speaker 1: think she went to go visit a sick friend who
Speaker 1: knows and um, then she goes, well, actually I think
Speaker 1: I heard her come back in why don't you guys
Speaker 1: go look upstairs, and Bridget is like, I'm not looking upstairs.
Speaker 1: There's a dead body here. How do we know there's
Speaker 1: not another another dead body? So a neighbor lady and
Speaker 1: Bridget goes upstairs and they see from the staircase into
Speaker 1: the bedroom. It's really cool when you go on the
Speaker 1: tour of the house, you can stand where they stood
Speaker 1: and see exactly what they would have seen. And there's
Speaker 1: Mrs borden All I think two forty pounds of her
Speaker 1: laid down on the floor with the back of her
Speaker 1: head just split wide open with something like eighteen blows
Speaker 1: and again thirteen of them have been um, have just
Speaker 1: completely crushed her skull. So now there's two dead bodies.
Speaker 1: And eventually they are dragged into the dining room where
Speaker 1: they're autopsied, and rather than be buried there before they're buried,
Speaker 1: they're decapitated and their heads are sent to Harvard and
Speaker 1: then eventually buried at the foot of their graves. Yes,
Speaker 1: like all decapitated heads exactly. So um. Almost immediately the
Speaker 1: cops went, uh, you yeah, you're the Lizzie was the
Speaker 1: only person in the house right because Bridget was out
Speaker 1: side when her around the time that her mother Um
Speaker 1: would have been killed, Lizzie was ironing handkerchiefs with a
Speaker 1: little mini iron and a little mini ironing board in
Speaker 1: the dining room. Yeah, Emma was fifteen miles away out
Speaker 1: of town. That's right. Uncle John Morris was away in
Speaker 1: town at the post office. I think on business because
Speaker 1: he doesn't need stamps dot com right. Yeah, and Andrew
Speaker 1: Borden was in town on his own business as well.
Speaker 1: So Lislie was the only one in the house at
Speaker 1: about nine thirty am, around the time when her stepmother
Speaker 1: would have been murdered. She says that when her father
Speaker 1: came home and laid down around the time he would
Speaker 1: have been murdered, she wasn't in the house then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said she uh went out to that barn that
Speaker 1: she liked to hang out with the pigeons. Uh two,
Speaker 1: and she was eating pears, just hanging out in the
Speaker 1: loft eating pears, eating pears. And the reason she was
Speaker 1: in the loftice because she's getting led to make sinkers
Speaker 1: to go fishing with. Yeah, but she while she was there,
Speaker 1: she's like, I like getting here in the hundred degree
Speaker 1: was there especially upstairs in this loft, she's gonna eat
Speaker 1: some pairs. So she ate some pairs minutes and when
Speaker 1: she came back in she discovered her father called bridget
Speaker 1: down in the whole chain of events entered the public
Speaker 1: record around that time. Yes, uh so, we already mentioned
Speaker 1: the prossic acid um. She was caught burning a dress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: family friend witnessed her doing that, and then later uh
Speaker 1: gave testimony about that, and that's what led to her
Speaker 1: being indicted for murder. That's right. And she said that
Speaker 1: the dress was stained and that's why she was burning it.
Speaker 1: Staying with paint though, yes, staying with paint, right, But
Speaker 1: this is three days after the murder. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: she's pulling a dress out of the coal shoot and saying, Ah,
Speaker 1: this dress, the stain with paint. I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: a him and burn it. So this family friend, Alice, says,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do that if I were you, And Lizzie said,
Speaker 1: shut up you, and Alice said okay and goes and
Speaker 1: tells the cops. Uh So, in the basement they found
Speaker 1: two axes, two hatchets, and then a hatchet head that
Speaker 1: it had the handle broken off. They suspected that it
Speaker 1: was broken off recently, and that hatchet had um they say,
Speaker 1: looked like it had been planted there and covered with
Speaker 1: dust and ash to make it look like it had
Speaker 1: been there a long time. Um, basically tampered with evidence. Wise.
Speaker 1: One officer at the trial said, the handle is actually there,
Speaker 1: and we found it. Another officer says, no, we didn't,
Speaker 1: So who knows. Yeah, I think they The consensus is
Speaker 1: among historians is that they never found his handle. Yes,
Speaker 1: but it's never explained why. The one officer said they did. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: that hand that that hatchet had that they did find, though, Chuck.
Speaker 1: They never conclusively showed that it was the murder weapon.
Speaker 1: They just said this is probably a pretty good stand in, right,
Speaker 1: And they never found any blood or anything on it,
Speaker 1: which that's kind of difficult if you think to completely
Speaker 1: get a hatchet head clean totally, right, So that's kind
Speaker 1: of weird in essence, they never found the murder weapon essentially, Well, well, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: the prosecution said that this was it. Again, all suspicion
Speaker 1: is just immediately falling onto Lizzie. Uh. And there were
Speaker 1: a number of different um hearings and inquests and things
Speaker 1: and grand juries before she was formally indicted um and
Speaker 1: each time, apparently it looked like she was going to
Speaker 1: get off because, despite what the cops thought at this time,
Speaker 1: in this place and era, Victorian ladies did not murder
Speaker 1: people with hatchets, So that in and of itself was
Speaker 1: enough to get her off right, or to keep her
Speaker 1: from even being indicted. But each time her friend Alice
Speaker 1: from down the street would come in and say, I
Speaker 1: saw Lizzie Byrne addressed that had some sort of brownish
Speaker 1: red stain all over it, and the jury or the
Speaker 1: judge or whoever would say, ah, we think that's enough.
Speaker 1: And so finally it got to the point where I
Speaker 1: think the grand jury was indicted her for three counts
Speaker 1: of murder right, uh, one of her stepmother, one of
Speaker 1: her father, and then one of her stepmother and father,
Speaker 1: which is bizarre even at the time, but she was.
Speaker 1: She faced three counts of murder, and they used the
Speaker 1: hatchet head. That was their big case. But they had
Speaker 1: some real problems. Number one, if that dress had been
Speaker 1: covered with blood, it was gone now. But number two, Emma,
Speaker 1: her sister, said that dress actually was covered in paint.
Speaker 1: That was just paint that had nothing to do with blood. Right,
Speaker 1: And the big problem here is it almost goes without saying.
Speaker 1: If somebody murdered Mrs Borden with a hatchet and then
Speaker 1: murdered Mr. Borden with a hatchet, they would be covered
Speaker 1: in blood twice. So what do you do? How? How
Speaker 1: could you have gotten around that? One of the theories
Speaker 1: was that Lizzie Borden stripped down, was naked, killed, Mrs Borden,
Speaker 1: put her clothes back on, and then when she had
Speaker 1: the chance to her close back off and then killed
Speaker 1: her father and then rinsed off both times and put
Speaker 1: her clean clothes back on. That probably didn't happen, though
Speaker 1: probably not. We need to take another break, though, and
Speaker 1: when we come back we will wrap up what happened
Speaker 1: in the trials and what happened afterward. Right for this,
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, Lizzie Borden on trial in big trouble,
Speaker 1: and uh, a lot of circumstantial evidence, but no no
Speaker 1: hard evidence at this point at the trial. No smoking
Speaker 1: gun as they say, no, not even want smoking hats,
Speaker 1: No fingerprints, finger they didn't do any fingerprinting at this point.
Speaker 1: Fingerprinting was new and uh, not really trustworthy. So they
Speaker 1: didn't even bother. Well. Yeah, and pretty much every step
Speaker 1: of the um police investigation was fouled up for the
Speaker 1: to begin with, the murders took place while almost the
Speaker 1: entire police force was off on the annual police picnic
Speaker 1: out of town. Um, all these neighbors and looky loose
Speaker 1: came through the crime scene and totally messed up. But
Speaker 1: the big thing was is forensic science wasn't really a
Speaker 1: big It wasn't in widespread use at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So at the trial they point out a lot of
Speaker 1: incongruencies her. Her story changed a lot during the questioning,
Speaker 1: which is a little weird. The cops went into the
Speaker 1: barn and they said, you know, it's super hot in here.
Speaker 1: I don't see how anyone would choose to just sit
Speaker 1: here for twenty minutes and eat pairs. And we don't
Speaker 1: see any footprints anywhere around, which was weird because two
Speaker 1: workmen later testified that they had been up in that place,
Speaker 1: um like the week before. Yeah, which, well, who knows
Speaker 1: after a week what a footprint in a barn will do. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the day before the murders, Lizzie went to
Speaker 1: her old friend Alice and said some weird things that
Speaker 1: she felt like something bad was going to happen to
Speaker 1: her family, almost like there was She said, I feel
Speaker 1: as if something were hanging over me and I can't
Speaker 1: throw it off, And she was frightened. So this sort
Speaker 1: of looks like she was setting up an alibi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said she was worried something bad was gonna happen
Speaker 1: to her father. That was the day before the murders,
Speaker 1: the night before him. Right. So for the prosecution, they
Speaker 1: were like they took two pretty big hits. One the
Speaker 1: prussic acid the cyanide got thrown out of evidence. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then two so did um Lizzie's own testimony because
Speaker 1: the judge determined that she had been on copious amounts
Speaker 1: of morphine at the time, and they were contradictory, and
Speaker 1: even at their base, they weren't admissions of guilt, they
Speaker 1: were protestations, right. So, Um, the prosecution didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot to go on. They had almost an entirely circum
Speaker 1: not even almost a completely circumstantial case that really had
Speaker 1: tons and tons of holes in it. That's right. It
Speaker 1: was a two week trial. Lizzie never took the stand herself,
Speaker 1: and um, it was it was huge. It was the
Speaker 1: trial of the century. Um, she was deemed guilty. But
Speaker 1: while the trial was taking place in her town, basically
Speaker 1: in her town, newspapers all over the world at this point.
Speaker 1: So the impression I have though, is that out of
Speaker 1: town they had a different take on it, that these
Speaker 1: these bumbling dummies, the yokels in Fall Fall River, Um,
Speaker 1: we're trying to prosecute a woman for a crime that
Speaker 1: clearly some maniac had had carried out and that they
Speaker 1: should just leave her alone. Finally, interesting, Um, during the trial,
Speaker 1: this helped the sensationalized aspect of it. They actually brought
Speaker 1: in the chopped up skulls and presented it and like
Speaker 1: it was out of a TV movie. Lizzie saw this, Uh,
Speaker 1: swooned and fainted, which of course was going to get
Speaker 1: some sympathy from the jury. And um, it didn't take long.
Speaker 1: It was about ninety minutes and the jury said not
Speaker 1: guilty and she got away with it. So thinks many
Speaker 1: many people, what do you think. I don't know, Well,
Speaker 1: here's some here's some theories. One that she was like
Speaker 1: in a fugue state and committed these murders. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: but a feuge state that lasted ninety minutes where she
Speaker 1: was able to conceal the murder weapon in her own
Speaker 1: guilt and wait for her father to come home and
Speaker 1: fall asleep. That's not a FuG states what they say,
Speaker 1: and it could have been less than ninety minutes if
Speaker 1: you take the shorter side of both ends of the
Speaker 1: murders of the time range. Uh. One was that she
Speaker 1: was gay and that she was having an affair with
Speaker 1: the maid. They were caught by the stepmother. She was
Speaker 1: really super mad and so Lizzie killed her with a candlestick.
Speaker 1: And then I went and confessed this to her father,
Speaker 1: thinking that he might understand, and he got really mad
Speaker 1: and so they killed both kill him. Okay, that's another theory.
Speaker 1: One that she was abused by her father sexually and
Speaker 1: physically abused, although there's no evidence to substantiate this. Right
Speaker 1: one is that the maid um There was a deathbed
Speaker 1: confession from the maid to her own sister, um, which
Speaker 1: no one knows if that's true or not. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the maid was most likely not a lesbian. It's entirely
Speaker 1: possible that Lizzie Borden was, because later on after the murder,
Speaker 1: she and her sister continued to live together. They bought
Speaker 1: a mansion in the well healed part of um Fall
Speaker 1: River and Lizzie named at Maple Croft and Um the
Speaker 1: Maid eventually remarried, got married. Well, she just totally falls
Speaker 1: off the map for five years and then pops up
Speaker 1: again and Butte Montana and gets married and dies in Um.
Speaker 1: But Lizzie and her sister lived together until nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, her sister moves out
Speaker 1: of the house and they never speak again for twenty
Speaker 1: two years until they die. And uh it's Some people
Speaker 1: say that it was because her sister didn't improve of
Speaker 1: a relationship with this um woman named Nance O'Neill. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: which is entirely possible. Who knows what happened? Um. It
Speaker 1: could have been that her sister believed she was innocent
Speaker 1: and then finally Lizzie admitted it in five and her
Speaker 1: sister was like, I am done with you. Who knows.
Speaker 1: One of the other theories is that William Borden, who
Speaker 1: was the illegitimate son of Andrew and also a butcher, um,
Speaker 1: was the the Basically he killed him because of like
Speaker 1: failed extortion attempts. So was he proven to exist William
Speaker 1: B Yeah, I thought he was hypothetical. Is he like
Speaker 1: a real person? I think so? Huh uh. And then
Speaker 1: the final two was that Emma did it and had
Speaker 1: the perfect alibi and setting up that she was fifteen
Speaker 1: miles away. Uh, And that Uncle John did it who
Speaker 1: was there visiting, so basically anyone who had anything to
Speaker 1: do closely with the family. There the theory that they
Speaker 1: did it right, Yeah, And these are all theories, Like
Speaker 1: if you look at the evidence, you can, I think
Speaker 1: you can basically get rid of everybody except Lizzie. And
Speaker 1: there were some big problems with their story to like,
Speaker 1: even if you believe she's innocent, there's some stuff you
Speaker 1: really have to contend with. Like, for example, she says
Speaker 1: she was in the house at the time her stepmother
Speaker 1: would have been killed, and her stepmother was like two
Speaker 1: forty pounds, and the police came and they dropped a
Speaker 1: two hundred pound weight in the place where her stepmother
Speaker 1: had fallen when she would have been killed. And um,
Speaker 1: the cop downstairs, whose job it was to listen to
Speaker 1: hear if you heard anything, said it felt like the
Speaker 1: whole house shook right. So, and Lizzie's like, I didn't
Speaker 1: hear anything. That's that's kind of a weird thing, right. Um.
Speaker 1: Then Lizzie also was she behaved rather strangely here there,
Speaker 1: Like when the neighbor came over, she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: Mrs Churchill, do come in. Someone's come in and killed father, Like,
Speaker 1: come in for tea. There's just a lot of weird
Speaker 1: stuff that she's done. And then the dad was posed
Speaker 1: afterward on the couch. Yeah, his favorite coat was rolled
Speaker 1: up beneath his head. Yeah, and he had his arms
Speaker 1: folded over in his lap and it's just creepy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But if you really look at all the evidence to
Speaker 1: especially the prosecution's case, there's no way that that jury
Speaker 1: should have convicted her. They definitely did the right thing
Speaker 1: and acquitting her because they had there was no case
Speaker 1: against her really. Yeah. I mean she was little, She's
Speaker 1: like five ft one, and basically one of the big
Speaker 1: defense points was like this, this tiny little lady just
Speaker 1: couldn't have done this. These were like brutal, powerful, forceful
Speaker 1: blows with this hatchet. And uh, despite I mean the
Speaker 1: fact that she has crazy guys. Maybe it's just that
Speaker 1: one picture. I don't know, but it definitely didn't do
Speaker 1: her any favors in history, like that one big photo
Speaker 1: of her. She looks like a psycho killer. She does,
Speaker 1: you know a little bit for sure. But they said
Speaker 1: that there's no way this little lady could have done this,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of one of their main defense points.
Speaker 1: But it didn't matter what happened because everyone thought she
Speaker 1: did it. And she would go to church and have
Speaker 1: people whisper about her and kids through rocks at her
Speaker 1: windows for years and through rotten eggs at her house
Speaker 1: and ding Dong ditch and basically was shunned by her
Speaker 1: local town folk yeah, as a murderous and even the people,
Speaker 1: all the out of towners who came and used her
Speaker 1: as you know, to promote their own stuff, like the
Speaker 1: Suffragettes like made her, uh, basically a hero. By the
Speaker 1: time she died, like most people had left her Um
Speaker 1: and she she died a fairly lonely old woman, despite
Speaker 1: having not spoken to her sister in twenty two years.
Speaker 1: They died within nine days of each other. Lizzie died first,
Speaker 1: and then Emma and Sweetly Oddly weirdly Um all of
Speaker 1: the Bordens, Lizzie, Emma, Andrew Abby, the original Mrs Borden, Uh,
Speaker 1: and their sister, who died as a child, are all
Speaker 1: buried next to one another in the family plot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's normal. It's not weird. That's just how they did things,
Speaker 1: not weird. Um. She did change her name to which
Speaker 1: I thought was you didn't go far enough. She changed
Speaker 1: her name to Elizabeth Borden. I might have gone with
Speaker 1: something completely different without l I z even in the name.
Speaker 1: That would have been my recommendation, maybe like Tammy Borden
Speaker 1: or something, or Tammy Smith. Oh yeah, you could get
Speaker 1: rid of the boarding. You know. She's like, hmm, I
Speaker 1: want to disappear. How about Elizabeth Borden instead of Lizzie Borden.
Speaker 1: Suspect that izz And she was pretty young. She was
Speaker 1: sixty six when she died. Yeah, and her sister was
Speaker 1: like a several almost a decade older than um. So
Speaker 1: she died at a I guess a respectable old age.
Speaker 1: Lizzie died young if her sister didn't even die of anilence.
Speaker 1: She fell down the stairs supposedly with push marks in
Speaker 1: her lower back. Right, So we've basically just given like
Speaker 1: a really like broad overview. You can dedicate all of
Speaker 1: your spare time to this case. It's really fascinating and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff on it on the internet too.
Speaker 1: And if you're ever in the Providence or Boston area, like,
Speaker 1: do yourself a favor and go down to the Lizzie
Speaker 1: boarden house and take the tour. It's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a ben breakfast that you can stay in supposedly
Speaker 1: haunted allegedly. Yeah. Yeah, if you believe in that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Wait our new evidence though we didn't reveal it. Okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I have none. Man, you scared me. I thought,
Speaker 1: like you really did. After a second, that would be great.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be sitting on that Uh. And you can
Speaker 1: type Lizzie board and all you want in the search bar.
Speaker 1: It just turns up some lame definition of her, I
Speaker 1: think on our site. So just go look elsewhere. And
Speaker 1: since I said elsewhere, it's time for listener mail. Greetings
Speaker 1: gents and Jerry Ornel or empty space. Um. I've recently
Speaker 1: developed somewhat of a novel biological effect or remember we
Speaker 1: talked about those, uh, And it's taught me a lot
Speaker 1: about how I did and how I should be carrying
Speaker 1: myself in the world. Um, I'd like to believe I've
Speaker 1: been polite about it, but I'm definitely the type of
Speaker 1: person has a hard time not noticing and having my
Speaker 1: attention drawn to irregularities about people, especially on their faces.
Speaker 1: About two weeks ago, I developed a bacterial infection of
Speaker 1: my skin that covers about half of my forehead and
Speaker 1: extends down to one eye, causing redness and swelling that
Speaker 1: makes the eye remain more closed than the other in
Speaker 1: arresting state. I was surprised of how many of my
Speaker 1: friends and strangers in public I could tell are distracted
Speaker 1: by it when talking to me, and it made me
Speaker 1: feel a little self conscious on top of my own
Speaker 1: hang ups about such things. I think I've learned a
Speaker 1: little bit from the experience about what it might be
Speaker 1: like to be someone that goes through their whole life
Speaker 1: in this situation. In my case, at least, it's not
Speaker 1: as simple as just ignoring the condition, but it goes
Speaker 1: a long way for people to acknowledge it and be
Speaker 1: able to accept it without judgment. Thanks for the work
Speaker 1: you guys do for keeping me company with a wide
Speaker 1: variety of topics. That is from Andrew in Utah. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, Andrew, We appreciate that. Yeah, sorry to hear
Speaker 1: about that, man, and but I like your attitude about it,
Speaker 1: fresh perspective. It's brought you if you got a brush
Speaker 1: with fresh perspective, we want to hear about that, no
Speaker 1: matter what it has to do with. You can tweet
Speaker 1: to us. Oh wait, Chuck, we want to say Happy
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Speaker 1: you me, Happy birthday, you me? Okay, So if you want,
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