Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George
Speaker 1: norri here. Lizzie Borden was an American woman tried and
Speaker 1: acquitted of the August fourth, eighteen ninety two acts murders
Speaker 1: of her father and stepmother and Fall River, Massachusetts. No
Speaker 1: one else was charged in the murders. She died of
Speaker 1: pneumonia at the age of sixty six, just days before
Speaker 1: the death of her older sister, Emma. She was in
Speaker 1: her thirties when she was tried for the murders, but
Speaker 1: again she was acquitted with us of course, as Rebecca Pittman,
Speaker 1: she has written a book called The History and Haunting
Speaker 1: of Lizzie Borden. What was it that captured your attention
Speaker 1: on Lizzie, Rebecca, I think it's what fascinates most people.
Speaker 1: It's the audacity of the crime and the good old
Speaker 1: ten minute window. How did she do it? Why was
Speaker 1: there no blood found on her? And why was she
Speaker 1: acquitted when there were only two people home that day
Speaker 1: her house and the mate that and many people's opinion
Speaker 1: could have committed the crime. So it's just one of
Speaker 1: those that you can't look away from because you want
Speaker 1: to solve it. And people are still fascinated with this
Speaker 1: case today. How did she get charged then acquitted? Well,
Speaker 1: they basically she got caught in a bunch of contradictions.
Speaker 1: When she was being interviewed, she was the only one
Speaker 1: in the house. The stepmother, Abbey died at nine thirty,
Speaker 1: but her dad was murdered an hour and a half later,
Speaker 1: and people couldn't wrap their mind around if someone from
Speaker 1: the outside came in and did this. How they hang
Speaker 1: around for an hour and a half and no one
Speaker 1: sees them, including the mate coming and going and washing windows,
Speaker 1: and Lizzie being in the house the whole time. And
Speaker 1: this is a house with no hallways, it's literally interconnecting
Speaker 1: rooms and locks, and there was no really no place
Speaker 1: for some one else to hide. So, but mostly what
Speaker 1: sunk her was her contradictory answers to things, and she
Speaker 1: kept changing her story and finally that but mainly it
Speaker 1: was her testimony while she was being interviewed, they went
Speaker 1: ahead and arrested her. What did your gut tell you?
Speaker 1: Was she guilty? Oh? Heck yes, they just couldn't nail her.
Speaker 1: H Well, back in those days for a woman to
Speaker 1: take an access to somebody was They were having a
Speaker 1: hard time with it. The boarding name was very respected,
Speaker 1: they were wealthy, and she was she'd been a school teacher,
Speaker 1: and people were having a very hard time with it.
Speaker 1: And it's a jury of twelve men that were older.
Speaker 1: They looked at her like if that were my daughter,
Speaker 1: do I believe she could do it? And plus the
Speaker 1: judge basically during the charge to the jury almost told
Speaker 1: them to let her go. Really yeah, her attorney, George Robinson,
Speaker 1: actually put that judge in his feet, So there was
Speaker 1: a little bit of political wrangling going on. I think,
Speaker 1: what do you think her motivation was to even kill
Speaker 1: them in the first place? If she indeed did it
Speaker 1: money inheritance? Well, yeah, because that's what why. I read
Speaker 1: five thousand pages of trial transcripts, three times, police interviews,
Speaker 1: witness reports, and I found new evidence in the case.
Speaker 1: And what was going on behind her back was her
Speaker 1: father and her uncle were putting together a cattle and
Speaker 1: horse scheme out at a two hundred and fifty acre
Speaker 1: farm that she was going to inherit, she and her sister,
Speaker 1: and they decided to put it in her stepmother's name.
Speaker 1: The deeds, and that's what was going to happen the
Speaker 1: morning of the murders, is that Abby was the post
Speaker 1: to go to the bank and sign that beat, which
Speaker 1: would basically take away a huge chunk of Lizzie and
Speaker 1: Emma's inheritance. And she made sure Abbey never made that meeting.
Speaker 1: Did you uncover some new evidence? I did tell us
Speaker 1: about that. Well, A lot of people think there was
Speaker 1: one hatchet involved. There was actually three, three hatchets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she killed Abby. This is fascinating, George. I mean I
Speaker 1: sound more of it, but it is fascinating Abby's wounds.
Speaker 1: Abby was struck eighteen times, mainly to the head. Where
Speaker 1: did the poem come? Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave
Speaker 1: her mother forty wax It was eighteen, but yes, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know who enlarged it when the
Speaker 1: job was neatly done, gave her father forty one. That's
Speaker 1: not true all no, sorry, no, the father got eleven.
Speaker 1: But when they were doing the basically the autop see
Speaker 1: and they looked at Abbey's skull, they found gold guilt
Speaker 1: in the bone fractures in her skull, which meant the
Speaker 1: hatchets that was used was brand new. Back then they
Speaker 1: would edge them with this gold guilt. Well, Andrew's wounds
Speaker 1: were totally different. It looked like an older thinner one
Speaker 1: up an axe hatchet that had been honed over the
Speaker 1: years and ground down had killed him. And so I
Speaker 1: believe that she killed Abbey at nine thirty and figured,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't need to kill dad. She's
Speaker 1: the main one. If she can't show up to sign
Speaker 1: the deed, it's done. We're good. I'm back to my inheritance.
Speaker 1: And I believe she threw that hatchet over the back fence.
Speaker 1: They did find a new hatchet on the roof of
Speaker 1: the property behind her house a year later, weathered from
Speaker 1: the you know, from the elements that they could still
Speaker 1: see the gold guilt on it when they rubbed the
Speaker 1: you know, the brust and stuff off of it. And
Speaker 1: so what she did. He came home early because Abby
Speaker 1: hadn't shown up at the bank and he wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to be there till eleven. He came in at ten
Speaker 1: forty and Lizzie had been trying to get out of
Speaker 1: the house and get the maid to go with her
Speaker 1: because if Bridget had been found there alone with a
Speaker 1: dead body. They'd a hunger. She was an Irish immigrant
Speaker 1: and she wouldn't go. So Andrew comes home early and
Speaker 1: she stuck. She's already thrown away the new hatchet she got,
Speaker 1: so she goes to the basement, finds the old one,
Speaker 1: kills him, and so that it wouldn't be detected, she
Speaker 1: rolled it and she washed it, rolled it in coal
Speaker 1: dust in the cellar so it would look dusty, and
Speaker 1: then broke it in half to make it look like
Speaker 1: it couldn't have been used, and tossed it up in
Speaker 1: a box of old tools. Who now, what about the
Speaker 1: sister Emma. Emma was away visiting in August. It's typical
Speaker 1: the people had for the water because it's so hot.
Speaker 1: And Emma went to stay in fair Haven, which was
Speaker 1: about thirty minutes away, with some friends that were by
Speaker 1: the ocean, so she wasn't home. How long was the
Speaker 1: trial it started? It went almost a year, just shy
Speaker 1: of the year. There were actually four. There was the inquest,
Speaker 1: then the preliminary hearing, then the grand jury, and finally
Speaker 1: the superior court trial. Was she in jail during the
Speaker 1: course of the trial or was she just a she
Speaker 1: was in jail for ten months, so they held her
Speaker 1: while this was going on. Yes, that's not fair if
Speaker 1: she got acquitted, isn't well. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people knew she did it. I mean some of they
Speaker 1: didn't allow in a lot of things that probably would
Speaker 1: have made a difference. They struck her testimony at the inquest,
Speaker 1: which was damning. She was all over the place and
Speaker 1: they didn't let the jury hear it. They struck out
Speaker 1: the evidence that she tried to buy prussic acid the
Speaker 1: day before the murders. They didn't get to hear that.
Speaker 1: So a lot she was ostracized, whether she was acquitted
Speaker 1: it or not. People didn't want anything to do with
Speaker 1: her after that. And I assumed they didn't have many
Speaker 1: of forensics in those days, did they. No, they really didn't.
Speaker 1: In fact, they literally boiled the heads. They removed the
Speaker 1: heads of Abbey and Andrew and the guy boiled them
Speaker 1: on the stove in his home. The medical examiner to
Speaker 1: look at the wounds. I mean, it was pretty archaic.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Of course at the time, that's the
Speaker 1: best they could do. It is. Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: fascinating story. But the reason I say there were three hatchets,
Speaker 1: were the one that showed gold guilt for Abbey, the
Speaker 1: old one that was broken in the basement for Andrew.
Speaker 1: But they found a third hatchet that day when the
Speaker 1: police were scouring the place that looked like somebody had
Speaker 1: just washed it and wiped it down, And I think
Speaker 1: it's the one that she used to break the other
Speaker 1: hatchet to make it look like it hadn't been used
Speaker 1: for anything. So there were three hatchets. I believe there
Speaker 1: were three murder plots, and I believe there were three
Speaker 1: dresses involved. How did the father, Andrew make his fortune.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of property and that's what one
Speaker 1: of the reasons he wanted to stay in the house
Speaker 1: that Lizzie hated was it was only one street over
Speaker 1: from all of his banking and his real estate. By
Speaker 1: now where they were living, it had become like the
Speaker 1: second main street, so it's intermingled with businesses Chinese laundry, liveries,
Speaker 1: and Lizzie hated it. She wanted to mansion up on
Speaker 1: the hill. So he had acquired quite a bit of
Speaker 1: He had that Yankee ingenuity where he didn't spend it
Speaker 1: if he didn't have to, and he had quite a
Speaker 1: bit of property banking concerns and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: And of course there was some tension in the family
Speaker 1: weeks leading up to the murders. Right yes, In fact,
Speaker 1: a year before the murders, supposedly someone broke in again.
Speaker 1: Lizzie and Bridget were the only ones home. Abby and
Speaker 1: Andrew had gone to their Swansea farmhouse again. It was August,
Speaker 1: and while they were away, somebody broke in and went
Speaker 1: straight upstairs to the bedroom, to Abby's dressing area and
Speaker 1: stole money out of her area and jewelry and some
Speaker 1: horse tickets which were tickets for the horse cars. And
Speaker 1: when the police came, Lizzie excitedly showed them everything, including
Speaker 1: a nail sticking out of the keyhole showing how they
Speaker 1: unlocked the door to the bedroom. Then two weeks later
Speaker 1: it turned out they traced the horse tickets to Lizzie
Speaker 1: back then you wrote your name on him and she
Speaker 1: gave them away and someone they said, where'd you get
Speaker 1: those and they said Lizzie Borden gave them to us
Speaker 1: and her dad. Her even called off the investigation. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a ton of attention going on in the house.
Speaker 1: They weren't eating meals together, that the girls would eat
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and they didn't even sit down and eat
Speaker 1: with the parents anymore. Wasn't the family violently ill a
Speaker 1: couple days before the murders and they thought food poisoning
Speaker 1: or something. They believed there was arson that put in
Speaker 1: the milk, and Andrew had a habit of pouring milk
Speaker 1: all over big slabs of bread when he ate, which
Speaker 1: made it fit in his stomach even longer. And they
Speaker 1: were really sick. And their bedroom was just on the
Speaker 1: other side of the wall from Lizzie's. And I think
Speaker 1: she sat there that night and listened to them throw
Speaker 1: up until midnight, waiting for them to die, and they didn't.
Speaker 1: And so now she's I mean, this was Tuesday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: She's seen out trying to buy more arsenic and now
Speaker 1: prussic acid, which you'll kill you in seconds. That she's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the arsenic is not going to work. And when nobody
Speaker 1: would sell her the prussic acid, I think she was
Speaker 1: down to a hatchet. So this was a pure greed move,
Speaker 1: you think, Oh, I definitely do. What kind of person
Speaker 1: was Lizzie Borden growing up? What kind of girl was
Speaker 1: she well, it's from what you read in her friend's diary.
Speaker 1: She was a little odd. She had mood swings, really
Speaker 1: violent moods, like bipolar. I think she could have been
Speaker 1: because her friends would say, we went over to see
Speaker 1: her today, she was real blue, she was real fad,
Speaker 1: she was realed down. I do think she had something
Speaker 1: going on, and she felt like the Bordens, the rich
Speaker 1: Gordons living up on the hill. That's what she wanted
Speaker 1: to be, and she felt like she had a hand
Speaker 1: in her face as long as they were living in
Speaker 1: that little house and her dad was about to turn seventy.
Speaker 1: She may have seen the inheritance coming soon on the horizon,
Speaker 1: and then she found out about this land deal and
Speaker 1: was going to lose a big chunk of the money. Now.
Speaker 1: She ended up moving back into the Fall River area
Speaker 1: after the trial, and people still think she was guilty. Yes,
Speaker 1: she ended up getting her mansion on the hill. She
Speaker 1: and her sister inherited the money, but nobody would come
Speaker 1: visit them. They were basically ostracized and Emma just wanted
Speaker 1: a quiet life after all of that, but Lizzie didn't.
Speaker 1: She was one of the first to get a car
Speaker 1: and ride around literally almost waving at everybody. She'd have big,
Speaker 1: lavish parties and it was like an in your face
Speaker 1: and Emma just wanted to hide. She just wanted a retiring,
Speaker 1: quiet life. And the sisters finally had a falling out
Speaker 1: and Emma moved away and they didn't speak again, only
Speaker 1: through their lawyers, and as you mentioned, they died nine
Speaker 1: days apart. Yea, it sounds like Emma suspected Lizzie as
Speaker 1: the killer. I think she knew. I believe honestly in
Speaker 1: my heart that she knew that Lizzie was going to
Speaker 1: kill Abby. I don't think she had a problem with that.
Speaker 1: Emma even admitted on the stand that she just liked
Speaker 1: Abbie more than Lizzie did. But what happened was Andrew
Speaker 1: coming home unexpectedly and having to die, And I don't
Speaker 1: think that was in the plan. That's the father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who got the property after the two died. They the
Speaker 1: girls split it. And this is interesting. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of property over eleven buildings after they moved into Maplecroft,
Speaker 1: which was the mansion on the hill. Not too long
Speaker 1: after those buildings started to catch fire. It was like
Speaker 1: one after another were burning down because they didn't want
Speaker 1: to be Lizzie did not want to be a landlord.
Speaker 1: She just wants the money. So I think that she
Speaker 1: was setting fires to get the insurance money and not
Speaker 1: have to deal with being a landlord. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think that's too much of a leap to to
Speaker 1: think of eleven different buildings to catch fire, and not
Speaker 1: all at once. This is over time and they're all
Speaker 1: Andrews buildings. Well with Rebecca Pittman. She has written a
Speaker 1: book on the Lizzie Borden case called The History and
Speaker 1: Haunting of Lizzie Borden, which she wrote about seven years ago.
Speaker 1: And these older books so they're still availables, Rebecca, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they still so very well. They're all on Amazon. That
Speaker 1: is truly remarkable. And we'll talk about the Lent Mansion
Speaker 1: next hour when we come back and take phone calls.
Speaker 1: But in your gut tells you Lizzie Borden killed them.
Speaker 1: From the evidence I found, I have absolutely no doubt
Speaker 1: at all, and there's other new evidence in there, so yeah. Absolutely.
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