Speaker 1: All right, everybody, this is going to creep you out
Speaker 1: a little bit because this episode is about murder, a
Speaker 1: very famous murder. This goes back to Jeez. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I rereleased it on New Year's Eve, but
Speaker 1: we did from December. This is all about that famous
Speaker 1: lady and her famous acts, how Lizzie Borden worked. It's
Speaker 1: pretty grizzly, So warning about the content right now. Welcome
Speaker 1: to stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Speaker 1: Charles wry And and Jerry's back. Wow. Wow, Wow, look
Speaker 1: at that fine looking lady over there. How's it going, Jerry?
Speaker 1: She gave us it's just like old times. Yeah, Nol
Speaker 1: was just quietly weeping outside. He is, you know, like
Speaker 1: that out side Noel. He's peaking in her little portal window,
Speaker 1: scratching at it. The stint of Noel a k. The
Speaker 1: rain of terror is over done. Yes, has been deposed
Speaker 1: by Jerry. Yeah, so now it's not Noel sitting there
Speaker 1: or nobody sitting there, which happened more times than I
Speaker 1: was comfortable with, at least four. Yeah, Jerry's like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, that we can do that. Yeah, I'm out
Speaker 1: of here. Yeah, so long Jerry. So welcome back, Jerry.
Speaker 1: And uh, we've already said congratulations on little Inez, but
Speaker 1: who just keeps getting cuter and cuter. Yep, I know
Speaker 1: things are going great, so we're happy to have you back.
Speaker 1: And Lily neez, you're being very quiet. Just stay that way.
Speaker 1: She's just rocking in her little swing. Yeah. Great. Would
Speaker 1: that be having babies in here? Yeah? If they shut up,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be cool? For sure? Good energy. I would
Speaker 1: just feel bad for him because it gets pretty gamey
Speaker 1: in here. Yeah, even after like fifteen minutes, a couple
Speaker 1: of hours. I kind of stink today. Actually, I was
Speaker 1: going to apologize. Yeah, I didn't use to you sutorant
Speaker 1: uh the last time I showered when just like two
Speaker 1: days ago. It's fantastic. I know, it's terrible. I dressed up. Man,
Speaker 1: that's a great choke that. Yeah, I'm gonna take care
Speaker 1: of that tonight. That explains the sheen on your face. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're here, Jerry's here, I smell. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Since you do smell, Chuck, I have to say, at least,
Speaker 1: at the very least I'm grateful that we don't happen
Speaker 1: to be in Fall River, Massachusetts on the morning of Augusto,
Speaker 1: because that morning was particularly particularly hot, unseasonably hot. It
Speaker 1: was over a hundred degrees fahrenheit by the time noon
Speaker 1: rolled around. And that figures heavily in the case of
Speaker 1: Lizzie Borden and her forty and forty one wax, which
Speaker 1: we're more like eighteen or nineteen and eleven. Yes, are you?
Speaker 1: You were familiar with Lizie Boyd. Everybody knows Lizzie Borden, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Lizzie Borden took an X, gave her mother forty wax.
Speaker 1: When she found what she had done, she gave her
Speaker 1: father forty one. Yeah. Wrong, there was no ax. Wasn't
Speaker 1: a real mother, wasn't a real mother, There wasn't so
Speaker 1: all about that was just made up. They think to
Speaker 1: sell newspapers. Yes, yeah, they think it's a children's nursery
Speaker 1: rhyme these days, little sicko children. Um, but but they
Speaker 1: do think that it was possibly some newspaper hawker, a
Speaker 1: newsy if you watch Disney movies, Um, who came up
Speaker 1: with it and it just took off? We should change
Speaker 1: it to Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken
Speaker 1: a hatchet given her stepmother eighteen or nineteen wax thirteen
Speaker 1: of them crushed her skull when she saw what she
Speaker 1: had done. Her father got home, she gave him eleven
Speaker 1: or so and then got away. Yeah it scot free.
Speaker 1: That doesn't have the same ring. No, that doesn't. But
Speaker 1: you basically did just sum it up pretty well, pretty accurately, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So for those of you who don't know who Lizie
Speaker 1: Borden is, just settled down, buckling, prepare for a wild ride.
Speaker 1: For those of you who do know, do the same. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we have new evidence, yeah, that we're gonna reveal
Speaker 1: and the controvertible evidence of exactly who carried out these murders,
Speaker 1: and the only people who have it is us, because
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it up and you'll find out in
Speaker 1: thirty five issue minutes or forty apparently to Stephie misson
Speaker 1: history class in an episode on Lizzie boardon if this floats,
Speaker 1: your boat goes into that one too. Yeah, I should
Speaker 1: point out to the very first thing we said. We
Speaker 1: told Jerry were doing Lizzie Board, and she said lesbian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we said maybe that's one of the theories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this will all figure in. We're just teasing, teasing, like crazy.
Speaker 1: All right. So the morning of August, 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 like I said, it was over a hundred
Speaker 1: degrees fare height on August four, really really hot for
Speaker 1: that area. And at about ten I think about ten
Speaker 1: forty five am, wasn't it. Yeah, about ten forty five
Speaker 1: 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. That there's you know, a given take there.
Speaker 1: So about ten forty five am, one Andrew Jackson Borden
Speaker 1: returns to his home at nine two Second Street in
Speaker 1: Fall River, mass and, um, the the house isn't a
Speaker 1: 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 well the man. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was worth between seven and ten million today dollars. I've
Speaker 1: I've heard twelve let's say between seven and twelve then
Speaker 1: of today dollars. That's a lot of dough and also
Speaker 1: a good reason to kill somebody. Yeah. Um, and he
Speaker 1: despite having a lot of dough, he lived in one
Speaker 1: of the lower rent sections of town. Um. His house
Speaker 1: did not have indoor plumbing, which was kind of odd
Speaker 1: by this time for that area. Um. Apparently many of
Speaker 1: the people who were far far worse off than his
Speaker 1: family financially head indoor plumbing. He did not. He also
Speaker 1: didn't have any kind of electric lighting. Instead he used
Speaker 1: kerostene lamps. And uh, he kept doors locked. He was
Speaker 1: very afraid of being robbed. Yeah, let's cover this bit
Speaker 1: real quick. I think we should read this. Um. There's
Speaker 1: a lady named Angela Carter who wrote about the case.
Speaker 1: She actually factored into our our fairy Tales episode. She
Speaker 1: was the feminist rewrote fairy Tale else Well, what was
Speaker 1: that Neil Jordan's take on a little ride ride and
Speaker 1: her hood? Yeah, I remember she wrote the same lady.
Speaker 1: So she said the house was originally a two family
Speaker 1: home and they converted it to a single family home,
Speaker 1: but didn't take a lot of time, apparently, just knocked
Speaker 1: down some walls through in a staircase and it ended
Speaker 1: up being a weird house because of that. And she
Speaker 1: describes it as uh this way a house full of
Speaker 1: locked doors that open only into other rooms, with other
Speaker 1: locked doors for upstairs and downstairs. All the rooms led
Speaker 1: in and out of one another, like a maze and
Speaker 1: a bad dream. It is a house without passages. There
Speaker 1: is no part of the house that has not been
Speaker 1: marked as some inmates personal territory inmate very nice. It
Speaker 1: is a house with no shared no common spaces between
Speaker 1: one room and the next. It is a house of
Speaker 1: privacies sealed as close as if they had been sealed
Speaker 1: with wax on a legal document. Creepy, no hallways or
Speaker 1: anything weird. No each room led into the next, and
Speaker 1: in fact, Lizzie's bedroom led right into her sister Emma's
Speaker 1: bedroom too. For Emma to go to bed, she would
Speaker 1: have had to go through Lizzie's bedroom um and then
Speaker 1: her her stepmother and father's bedroom was behind hers. But
Speaker 1: it was sealed off by a locked door and access
Speaker 1: through staircase that only your father used that you could
Speaker 1: get to only with the key. Yeah, And to go
Speaker 1: up and down the stairs, they had to go through
Speaker 1: their parents bedroom, right, Yes, but they didn't do that.
Speaker 1: That was it was off limits. It was locked. They
Speaker 1: just jumped out the second story window. No, there was
Speaker 1: a front staircase. They actually built a second staircase so
Speaker 1: that her there there's parents could come and go to
Speaker 1: their room without having to go through Lizzie's room. So
Speaker 1: for all intentsive purposes, with this locked door, it was
Speaker 1: a wall that sealed off their parents room from there. Yes.
Speaker 1: And when we say parents, uh, this is a 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 second daughter named Alice, who
Speaker 1: died when Lizzie was two. Yes, she had She died
Speaker 1: from hydra and cephili. You could just make up anything
Speaker 1: back then, something believable, you know. Uh. And then her
Speaker 1: mother died in eighteen sixty three when she was just
Speaker 1: two of uterine congestion. And then when Lizzie turned right
Speaker 1: before she turned five. He remarried to Abby Gray, who
Speaker 1: the daughters were in their thirties by the time the
Speaker 1: murder took place unmarried at Spinster's Uh, and never seemed
Speaker 1: like they had a great relationship with Abby. 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 the house locked all the
Speaker 1: time was because a couple of years before there had
Speaker 1: been a burglary where some mysterious burglar had come in
Speaker 1: and made off with a hundred dollars and some trolley
Speaker 1: tickets and some jewelry. I think and Uh it was
Speaker 1: basically pretty well known around town that it was Lizzie
Speaker 1: who had done it. It sounds like an inside job.
Speaker 1: She robbed her own father rather than accused his daughter
Speaker 1: of this extraordinarily scandalous behavior. At the time, Um he
Speaker 1: just locked everything and all doors were locked all the time.
Speaker 1: UM and he kept a key to his room on
Speaker 1: the mantel, basically daring anybody to even try it, because
Speaker 1: he would know what happened, because the only way you
Speaker 1: could get in was through this key. The only way
Speaker 1: to get to the key would be to have a
Speaker 1: key to the outside doors. We say all this to
Speaker 1: say that when Andrew um Borden came back home that day,
Speaker 1: on August four, that morning, uh, he was locked out
Speaker 1: of his own house, and he had to be led
Speaker 1: in by the maid whose name was Bridget, but who
Speaker 1: Emma and Lizzie called Maggie because they had had another
Speaker 1: maiden named Maggie, and they decided that they just we're
Speaker 1: going to call this one Maggie too. That sounds like, um,
Speaker 1: do you watch the show another period? Uh? It's great.
Speaker 1: It's Comedy Central, basically a reality TV spoof of like
Speaker 1: Downton Abbey and um the two lead Natasha Giro and
Speaker 1: uh oh, I can't remember her name from Garfunkle on
Speaker 1: notes the blonde she does the she's the other. I
Speaker 1: think they co created the series. But they're just these
Speaker 1: rich girls who would like they renamed one of the
Speaker 1: maid's chair. Check this out. How have I not even
Speaker 1: heard of this? I don't know, man, It's really funny.
Speaker 1: It's got a huge, great cast, big fan h have
Speaker 1: you seen Anthony jes Nick special in Netflix yet Oh no, dude,
Speaker 1: I love that guy though. It's really great. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so so awful but wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Andrew
Speaker 1: Borden gets let back into his own house. Yes not
Speaker 1: Anthony jes Nick no, um, and he uh, he gets
Speaker 1: let back in by the maid and he decides he's
Speaker 1: going to lay down for a little while on the couch. Right.
Speaker 1: Apparently the whole family was under the weather, including the maid, um,
Speaker 1: because they have been eating the same mutton for like
Speaker 1: five days. Mutton's gross to begin with. Five day old
Speaker 1: mutton that had been stored in the heat in an
Speaker 1: ice box outdoors is not just gross, it's really bad
Speaker 1: for you. So the whole family had basically come down
Speaker 1: to varying degrees of um food poisoning, apparently so much
Speaker 1: so that Mrs Borden Abbey Borden had gone to talk
Speaker 1: to the doctor the day before the murders and said,
Speaker 1: I think we're being poisoned by one of my husband's
Speaker 1: business rivals or my stepdaughter, right, you know something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not all the weirdness. It was going on um
Speaker 1: in the in the months and weeks before the murders. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of uh not strange, but a
Speaker 1: lot of financial goings on that kind of raised the
Speaker 1: ire of the daughters. Um. Notably, Andrews started uh being
Speaker 1: fairly generous with other members of the family, giving away
Speaker 1: properties and things, uh, including to Abbey. He gave her
Speaker 1: a house that she let her sister live in. His
Speaker 1: sister was in big trouble, so he helped her out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's got money. His daughters are like, um. Uh,
Speaker 1: so he said, you know what, I'll give you each
Speaker 1: a property as well for a dollar and you're you're welcome.
Speaker 1: And they ended up reselling that back to Dad for
Speaker 1: cash later, which was kind of jerky. Yeah. Well it
Speaker 1: was a rental property, and he had a bunch of
Speaker 1: rental properties, and apparently his miserliness was very well known. Um.
Speaker 1: He also directed some mills right and Fall Rivers incredibly
Speaker 1: famous for its mills. It was it's a huge mill town.
Speaker 1: So he knew that if you worked in the mills
Speaker 1: and rented at home from him or a room from
Speaker 1: even he knew if you got a raise, and if
Speaker 1: you got a raise, he would raise your rent. So
Speaker 1: this is a rental property, one of his renal properties
Speaker 1: that he sold to his daughters so that they could
Speaker 1: have rental income. Apparently they were they didn't feel like
Speaker 1: doing that, so they just sold it back to him
Speaker 1: for like I think increase not bad for doing nothing. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other thing that happened in the um actually the
Speaker 1: night before the murderer is there uncle John John Vinnegum Morris,
Speaker 1: who was there decease mother's brother. He came a Colling
Speaker 1: uh to speak about some business with Andrew and Um,
Speaker 1: there's 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 was maybe. I think it was fairly um common
Speaker 1: for 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 I
Speaker 1: just I I didn't realize there was animosity between the two.
Speaker 1: I don't know that there necessarily was. Here's one of
Speaker 1: the problems that we're going to run into it over
Speaker 1: and over again. And it's also one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why 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: no 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 deats right after this. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you're saying that the family it was tense in the house.
Speaker 1: To be certain, it sounds like it was always tense,
Speaker 1: but notably tense months leading up to the murders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And apparently both Emma and Lizzie took off for several
Speaker 1: weeks right before the murders. When they came back, Lizzie
Speaker 1: didn't even come back to the house. She rented a
Speaker 1: room for a few days, I guess, to ease herself
Speaker 1: back into having to live in this house again, like
Speaker 1: a halfway house kind of that's weird, maybe three quarters
Speaker 1: to the way house. And she, um, she and Emma
Speaker 1: both stopped calling Mrs Borden mother all of a sudden
Speaker 1: around 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 June two, um Andrew, the father killed
Speaker 1: a bunch of pigeons in the barn outside the house
Speaker 1: to make pigeon while so Abby could make a pigeon pie, right,
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
Speaker 1: ply Yeah. There. He apparently also defended his actions by
Speaker 1: saying that he was worried about intruders because local boys
Speaker 1: used to like to come let themselves into their barn
Speaker 1: and hang out with these pigeons and play with them.
Speaker 1: So he solved two problems dinner and boys coming over
Speaker 1: by just killing Lizzie's pigeons. That's right. And she also
Speaker 1: beyond just liking these pigeons, she was also a huge
Speaker 1: animal lover. She left a lot of money to it
Speaker 1: animal rights group, and so I mean she probably would
Speaker 1: have taken this fairly hard. On the flip side, though,
Speaker 1: so her father just that characters caricature thing I was
Speaker 1: talking about her father's painted is like this Ebenezer Scrooge type,
Speaker 1: super mis early typefisted. He definitely was that. But it's
Speaker 1: very easy to extend this idea that he and Lizzie
Speaker 1: hated each other, and that's absolutely not true. They both
Speaker 1: Lizzie and Emma apparently very much loved their father, and
Speaker 1: their father loved them. As my e 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 to like each other a lot.
Speaker 1: Only jewelry ever wore. It was like there was definite
Speaker 1: affection there that often gets overlooked when you're just kind
Speaker 1: 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 wad, that'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: it's true. And it didn't in his case. So, um, also,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it is it reveals a
Speaker 1: lot psychologically that the whole family has been eating the
Speaker 1: same mutton for five days and the first thing that
Speaker 1: Mrs Borden thinks of is that their milk is being
Speaker 1: poisoned by one of her husband's business rivals. That's where
Speaker 1: her mind went exactly. So there's a I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not just inside this house the tension. It's
Speaker 1: also coming from outside a little bit as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, I guess we'll go ahead and point out
Speaker 1: if you have the the circumstantial evidence surrounding Lizzie. So
Speaker 1: one of the things was in the days before the murderer,
Speaker 1: she was trying to uh, she'd been seen trying to
Speaker 1: buy a poisonous prussic acid. She said she yeah, she
Speaker 1: said she wanted it to clean things. But other people
Speaker 1: and the trial said maybe she was trying to poison them.
Speaker 1: Although autopsies revealed no poison in the bodies, no poison
Speaker 1: in the milk, no, but the prosecutors wanted to use
Speaker 1: that to to suggest that she had murder on her mind. Inadmissible.
Speaker 1: It was ruled and admissible because they figured it would
Speaker 1: be too inflammatory, and it was entirely possible that she
Speaker 1: really did want to clean this seal skin coat with
Speaker 1: that stuff. All right, what else? This the dress? Things
Speaker 1: pretty damning well, hold on, before we get any further
Speaker 1: into that, let's let's let's talk about the actual murders.
Speaker 1: You're ready. So it's August fourth. Her father has just
Speaker 1: come back in. He's laying down on the sofa, right,
Speaker 1: and he goes to sleep and he never wakes up.
Speaker 1: That's the reason he never wakes up is because, like
Speaker 1: you said, he got hit from behind and above about
Speaker 1: eleven times with an axe and hit and about the
Speaker 1: same area, so that basically his face was cut clean
Speaker 1: away into nothingness. Um. Probably a hatchet, not an X. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, I'm sorry, I hatchet. Um. And at about
Speaker 1: eleven ten, Bridget was upstairs sleeping because again she's been
Speaker 1: throwing up from the mutton um. When she gets roused
Speaker 1: by Lizzie calling from downstairs saying, hurry, something's happened. She
Speaker 1: comes downstairs and she says someone's coming and killed father.
Speaker 1: So now this alert has just gone out. The first
Speaker 1: body has been discovered. Andrew Borden who's still bleeding right,
Speaker 1: and his face is hacked away. It's pretty grotesque. You
Speaker 1: can see the picture online. Yeah, so Bridget run across
Speaker 1: the street to the doctor to get him. Uh, comes
Speaker 1: back with him and they say, where's your where's your mother?
Speaker 1: She's 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: lay 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 if actually they are dragged into the dining room
Speaker 1: where they're autopsied, and rather than be buried there before
Speaker 1: they're buried, they're decapitated and their heads are sent to Harvard. Yes,
Speaker 1: and 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, That's right, because Bridget
Speaker 1: was outside when her around the time that her mother
Speaker 1: Um would have been killed. Lizzie was ironing handkerchiefs with
Speaker 1: a little mini iron and a little mini ironing board
Speaker 1: in the dining room. Yeah. Emma was fifteen miles away
Speaker 1: out of town, that's right. Uncle John Morris was away
Speaker 1: in town at the post office, I think on business
Speaker 1: because he doesn't need stamps dot com. Right, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Andrew 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 loft,
Speaker 1: eating pears, eating pears. And the reason she was in
Speaker 1: the loft is because she was getting led to make
Speaker 1: sinkers to go fishing with. Yeah. But she while she
Speaker 1: was there, she's like, I like getting here in the
Speaker 1: hundred degree weather, especially upstairs in this loft, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: eat some pears. So she ate some pairs minutes and
Speaker 1: when she came back in, she discovered her father called
Speaker 1: bridget down in the whole chain of events entered the
Speaker 1: public record around that time. Yes, uh so we already
Speaker 1: mentioned 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
Speaker 1: it stained with paint though, yes, staying with paint, right,
Speaker 1: But this is three days after the murder, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, she's pulling a dress out of the coal
Speaker 1: shoot and saying, Ah, this dress is staying with paint.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go ahead and burn it. So this
Speaker 1: family friend, Alice says, I wouldn't do that if I
Speaker 1: were you, and Lizzie said shut up you, and Alice
Speaker 1: said okay and goes and tells the cops. Uh, So,
Speaker 1: in the basement they found two axes, two hatchets, and
Speaker 1: then a hatchet head that it had the handle broken off.
Speaker 1: They suspected that it was broken off recently, and that
Speaker 1: hatchet had um they say, looked like it had been
Speaker 1: planted there and covered with dust and ash to make
Speaker 1: it look like it had been there a long time.
Speaker 1: Um basically tampered with evidence. Wise, One officer at the
Speaker 1: trial said the handle was actually there, and we found it.
Speaker 1: Another officer says, no, we didn't, So who knows? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they. The consensus is among historians is that
Speaker 1: they never found this handle. Yes, but it's never explained why.
Speaker 1: The one officer said they did. Yeah, so um that
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, right, So that's
Speaker 1: kind of weird in a sense. They never found the
Speaker 1: murder weapon essentially, well, they said they did. Well, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: the prosecution said that this was it. But again, all
Speaker 1: suspicion is just immediately falling onto Lizzie. Uh. And there
Speaker 1: were a number of different um hearings and inquests and
Speaker 1: things and grand juries before she was formally indicted um
Speaker 1: and each time apparently it looked like she was going
Speaker 1: to get off because, despite what the cops thought at
Speaker 1: this time, in this place and era, Victorian ladies did
Speaker 1: not murder people with hatchets, So that in and of
Speaker 1: itself was enough to get her off, right, or to
Speaker 1: keep her from even being indicted. But each time her
Speaker 1: friend Alice from down the street would come in and say,
Speaker 1: I saw Lizzie Byrne addressed that had some sort of
Speaker 1: brownish red stain all over it, and the jury or
Speaker 1: the 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, took 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
Speaker 1: trouble and uh, a lot of circumstantial evidence, but no
Speaker 1: no hard evidence at this point at the trial. No
Speaker 1: smoking gun as they say, no, I didn't want smoking hatch,
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, pretty much every step of
Speaker 1: the um police investigation was fouled up for the To
Speaker 1: begin with, the murders took place while almost the entire
Speaker 1: police force was off on the annual police picnic out
Speaker 1: of town. Um, all these neighbors and luky loose came
Speaker 1: through the crime scene and totally messed up. But the
Speaker 1: big thing was is forensic science wasn't really a big
Speaker 1: It wasn't in widespread use at the time. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: at the trial they point out a lot of incongruencies
Speaker 1: her Her story changed a lot during the questioning, which
Speaker 1: is a little weird. The cops went into the barn
Speaker 1: 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, um, Lizzie went
Speaker 1: to her old friend Alice and said some weird things
Speaker 1: that she felt like something bad was going to happen
Speaker 1: to her family, almost like there was. She said, I
Speaker 1: feel as if something were hanging over me and I
Speaker 1: can't throw it off, and she was frightened. So this
Speaker 1: sort of looks like she was setting up an alibi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said she was worried something bad was going to
Speaker 1: happen to her father. Yeah. That was the day before
Speaker 1: the murders, the night before him. Right. So for the prosecution,
Speaker 1: they were like they took two pretty big hits. One
Speaker 1: the 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: and in her town, newspapers all over the world at
Speaker 1: this point. So the impression I have though, is that
Speaker 1: out of town they had a different take on it,
Speaker 1: that these these bumbling dummies, the yokels in Fall Fall River, Um,
Speaker 1: we're trying to prosecut cue a woman for a crime
Speaker 1: that clearly some maniac had had carried out, and that
Speaker 1: they should just leave her alone. Finally, Yeah, interesting, Um,
Speaker 1: during the trial, this helped the sensationalized aspect of it.
Speaker 1: They actually brought in the chopped up skulls and presented
Speaker 1: it and like it was out of a TV movie.
Speaker 1: Lizzie saw this, Uh, swooned and fainted, which of course
Speaker 1: is going to get some sympathy from the jury. And um,
Speaker 1: it didn't take long. It was about ninety minutes and
Speaker 1: the jury said not guilty. Yeah, and she got away
Speaker 1: with it. So thinks many many people. What do you think.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, here's some here's some theories. One
Speaker 1: that she was like in a fugue state and committed
Speaker 1: these murders. Uh. Yeah, but a fugue state that lasted
Speaker 1: ninety minutes where she was able to conceal the murder
Speaker 1: weapon in her own guilt and wait for a father
Speaker 1: to come home and fall asleep. That's not a fugue
Speaker 1: states what they say. And it could have been less
Speaker 1: than ninety minutes. Uh, if you take the shorter side
Speaker 1: of both ends of the murders of the time range. Uh.
Speaker 1: One was that she was gay and that she was
Speaker 1: having an affair with the maid. They were caught by
Speaker 1: the stepmother. She was really super mad and so Lizzie
Speaker 1: killed her with a candlestick and then I went and
Speaker 1: confessed this to her father, thinking that he might understand,
Speaker 1: and he got really mad and so they killed both
Speaker 1: killed him. Okay, that's another theory, one that she was
Speaker 1: abused by her father sexually and physically abused, although there's
Speaker 1: no evidence to substantiate this. One is that the maid um.
Speaker 1: There was a deathbed confession from the maid to her
Speaker 1: own sister, Um, which no one knows if that's true
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, I mean, the maid was most likely
Speaker 1: not a lesbian. It's entirely possible that Lizzie Borden was
Speaker 1: because later on after the murder, she and her sister
Speaker 1: continued to live together. They bought a mansion in the
Speaker 1: well healed part of um Fall River, and Lizzie named
Speaker 1: at Maple Croft and Um the maid eventually remarried, got married.
Speaker 1: She just totally falls off the map for five years
Speaker 1: and then pops up again and Butte Montana and gets
Speaker 1: married and dies in Um. But Lizzie and her sister
Speaker 1: lived together until nineteen o five, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, her sister moves out of the house and
Speaker 1: they never speak again for twenty two years until they die.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's some people say that it was because
Speaker 1: her sister didn't improve of a relationship with this um
Speaker 1: woman named Nance O'Neill. Yeah. Um, which is entirely possible.
Speaker 1: Who knows what happened? Um. It could have been that
Speaker 1: her sister believed she was innocent and then finally Lizzie
Speaker 1: admitted it in nineteen o five and her sister was like,
Speaker 1: I am done with you. Who knows. One of the
Speaker 1: other theories is that William Borden, who was the illegitimate
Speaker 1: son of Andrew and also a butcher, um, was the
Speaker 1: the Basically he killed him because of like failed extortion attempts.
Speaker 1: So was he proven to exist William Borton? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: thought he was hypothetical. Is he like a real person? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then the final two was that Emma did it
Speaker 1: and had the perfect alibi and setting up that she
Speaker 1: was fifteen miles away. Uh. And that uncle John did
Speaker 1: it who was there visiting. Yeah. So basically anyone who
Speaker 1: had anything to do closely with the family, there's a
Speaker 1: theory that they did it, right. Yeah, And these are
Speaker 1: all theories. Like you, if you look at the evidence,
Speaker 1: you can I think you can basically get rid of
Speaker 1: everybody except Lizzie. And there were some big problems with
Speaker 1: their story to like, even if you believe she's innocent,
Speaker 1: there's some stuff you really have to contend with. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, she says she was in the house at
Speaker 1: the time her stepmother would have been killed, and her
Speaker 1: stepmother was like two d forty pounds and the police
Speaker 1: came and they dropped a two hundred pound weight in
Speaker 1: the place where her stepmother had fallen when she would
Speaker 1: have been killed. And um, the cop downstairs, whose job
Speaker 1: it was to listen to hear if you heard anything,
Speaker 1: said it felt like the whole house shook. I'm sure, right, so,
Speaker 1: and Lizzie's like, I didn't hear anything. That's that's kind
Speaker 1: of a weird thing, right. Um. Then Lizzie also was
Speaker 1: she behaved rather strangely here there, Like when the neighbor
Speaker 1: came over, she was like, oh, Mrs Churchill, do come in.
Speaker 1: Someone's come in and killed father, Like come in for tea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of weird stuff that she's done.
Speaker 1: And then the dad was posed afterward on the couch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his favorite coat was rolled up beneath his head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he had his arms folded over in his lap.
Speaker 1: And that's just creepy. Yeah, but if you really look
Speaker 1: at all the evidence to especially the prosecution's case, there's
Speaker 1: no way that that jury should have convicted her. They
Speaker 1: definitely did the right thing in acquitting her because they
Speaker 1: had there was no case against her. Really, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: she was little, She's like five ft one, and basically
Speaker 1: one of the big defense points was like this, this
Speaker 1: tiny little lady just couldn't have done this. These were
Speaker 1: like brutal, powerful, forceful blows with this hatchet, and uh,
Speaker 1: despite I mean the fact that she has crazy guys.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just that one picture. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it definitely didn't do her any favors in history. Like
Speaker 1: that one big photo of her, she looks like a
Speaker 1: psycho killer. She does, you know a little bit for sure.
Speaker 1: But they said that there's no way this little lady
Speaker 1: could have done this, and that was kind of one
Speaker 1: of their main defense points. But it didn't matter what
Speaker 1: happened because everyone thought she did it, and she would
Speaker 1: go to church and have people whisper about her and
Speaker 1: kids through rocks at her windows for years and through
Speaker 1: rotten eggs at her house and ding Dong ditch and
Speaker 1: basically was shunned by her local town folk. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: a murderous and even the people, all the out of
Speaker 1: towners who came and used her as you know, to
Speaker 1: promote their own stuff, like the Suffragettes, like men her
Speaker 1: basically a hero. By the time she died, like most
Speaker 1: people had left her. Um. And she she died a
Speaker 1: fairly lonely old woman, despite having not spoken to her
Speaker 1: sister in twenty two years. They died within nine days
Speaker 1: of each other. Lizzie died first, and then Emma and
Speaker 1: sweetly oddly weirdly, um, all of the Bordens, Lizzie, Emma, Andrew, Abby,
Speaker 1: the original Mrs Borden uh and their sister who died
Speaker 1: as a child, are all buried next to one another
Speaker 1: in the family plot. Yeah, that's normal. It's not weird.
Speaker 1: That's just how they did things, not weird. Um. She
Speaker 1: did change her name to which I thought was you
Speaker 1: didn't go far enough. She changed her name to Elizabeth Borden.
Speaker 1: I might have gone with something completely different without l
Speaker 1: I Z even in the name. That would have been
Speaker 1: my recommendation, maybe like Tammy Borden or something, or Tammy Smith.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you could get rid of the board and
Speaker 1: thought about that you know. Yeah, She's like, hmm, I
Speaker 1: want to disappear about Elizabeth Borden instead of Lizzie Board
Speaker 1: and I'll ever suspect that I'm Lizzie Gordon. And she
Speaker 1: was pretty young. She was sixty six and she died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and her sister was like a several almost a decade
Speaker 1: older than um. So she died at a I guess
Speaker 1: a respectable old age. Lizzie died young ish. Her sister
Speaker 1: didn't even die of an illness. She fell down the
Speaker 1: stairs supposedly with push marks in her lower back. Right,
Speaker 1: So we've basically just given like a really like broad overview.
Speaker 1: You can dedicate all of your spare time to this case.
Speaker 1: It's really fascinating and there's a lot of stuff on
Speaker 1: it on the internet too. And if you're ever in
Speaker 1: the Providence or Boston area, like, do yourself a favor
Speaker 1: and go down to the Lizzie Borden house and take
Speaker 1: the tour. It's pretty cool to stay there, right, 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 and reveal
Speaker 1: it Okay, go ahead, I have none. I don't. Okay, man,
Speaker 1: you scared me. I thought like you really did. After
Speaker 1: a second, No, they'd that'd be great. I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: sitting on that. Uh. And you can type Lizzie board
Speaker 1: and all you want in the search bar. It just
Speaker 1: turns up some lame definition of her I think on
Speaker 1: our site. So just go look elsewhere. And since I
Speaker 1: said elsewhere, it's time for listener mail. Greetings gents and
Speaker 1: Jerry or Knoll or empty space. Um. I've recently developed
Speaker 1: somewhat of a novel biological effect or remember we talked
Speaker 1: about those, uh. And it's taught me a lot about
Speaker 1: how I did and how I should be carrying myself
Speaker 1: in the world. UM. I'd like to believe I've been
Speaker 1: polite about it, but I'm definitely the type of person
Speaker 1: has a hard time not noticing and having my attention
Speaker 1: drawn to irregularities about people, especially on their faces. About
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, I developed a bacterial infection of my
Speaker 1: skin that covers about half of my forehead and extends
Speaker 1: down to one eye, causing redness and swelling that makes
Speaker 1: eye remain more lows and the other interresting state I
Speaker 1: was surprised of how many of my friends and strangers
Speaker 1: in public I could tell her distracted by it when
Speaker 1: talking to me, and it made me feel a little
Speaker 1: self conscious on top of my own hang ups about
Speaker 1: such things. I think I've learned a little bit from
Speaker 1: the experience about what it might be like to be
Speaker 1: someone that goes through their whole life in this situation.
Speaker 1: In my case, at least, it's not as simple as
Speaker 1: just ignoring the condition, but it goes a long way
Speaker 1: for people to acknowledge it and be able to accept
Speaker 1: it without judgment. Thanks for the work you guys do
Speaker 1: for keeping me company with a wide variety of topics.
Speaker 1: That is from Andrew in Utah. Thanks a lot, Andrew.
Speaker 1: We appreciate that. Yeah, sorry to hear about that, man,
Speaker 1: and but I like your attitude about it and fresh
Speaker 1: perspective it's brought you. If you got a brush with
Speaker 1: fresh perspective, we want to hear about that, no matter
Speaker 1: what it has to do with You can tweet to us.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, Chuck, we want to say Happy New Year
Speaker 1: at everybody. Yeah, Happy New Year, and happy birthday you me,
Speaker 1: Happy birthday, you me? Okay, So if you want, you
Speaker 1: can tweet to us an s y ESK podcast. You
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at House to worst dot com and has always
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