Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast
Speaker 1: o Fair Dowdy and I'm to Blaine and Choko reboarding.
Speaker 1: And in our recent Roanoke update, we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about how much we love and evolving history story,
Speaker 1: so something that's far in the past that still has
Speaker 1: the ability to have the story change through new research,
Speaker 1: new exploration, new discoveries. And in that episode, the discovery
Speaker 1: and question was a patched over portion of a map
Speaker 1: that was written in invisible inc So real history sleuth
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that could hopefully offer new information about
Speaker 1: the lost Colony at some point. In this episode, though,
Speaker 1: which focuses on a sensational trial of Lizzie Borden, the
Speaker 1: new information comes from something much simpler to leather bound
Speaker 1: journals that just hadn't made their way into a story
Speaker 1: in his hands until earlier this year. So Sarah and
Speaker 1: Katie recorded a podcast on Lizzie Borden in two thousand ten.
Speaker 1: The young woman accused of killing her father and stepmother
Speaker 1: with an act in Eine two was one of this
Speaker 1: podcast top requests, up there with Tesla for recent listeners.
Speaker 1: I would compare Lizzie Borden to Tesla. But by two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, so just a few months after the podcast,
Speaker 1: there were already updates to the story. A book came
Speaker 1: out that year called Parallel Lives, and it was written
Speaker 1: by the curators of the Fall River Historical Society, which
Speaker 1: holds most of the Boarden trial board and murder artifacts,
Speaker 1: and it contained plenty of previously unpublished information on Lizzie,
Speaker 1: including documents, photographs, even some letters that were written in
Speaker 1: her own hand. And some of the letters had been
Speaker 1: written while she was in prison leading up to her trial,
Speaker 1: so a very um specific time frame there, one where
Speaker 1: you'd be curious about what frame of mind she was in.
Speaker 1: And they did sort of shake up the general perception
Speaker 1: of Lizzie as a very cold, unfeeling person toward her family.
Speaker 1: According to one of the authors, Michael Martin's quote, there
Speaker 1: was a tremendous outpouring of grief in the letters, and
Speaker 1: that's a new side to the story. But even more
Speaker 1: information started to come out earlier the spring, and that's
Speaker 1: when the Historical Society came into possession of the two
Speaker 1: journals that we just mentioned, which had spent most of
Speaker 1: the century stored in a Victorian bathtub, so we won't
Speaker 1: lead you on too much here. So far, there's not
Speaker 1: really any sort of smoking gun pointing to Lizzie's guilt,
Speaker 1: but there is some new insight into Lizzie's successful defense.
Speaker 1: But first, we're gonna give a listen to the original
Speaker 1: episode on Lizzie, which provides the details about the murders,
Speaker 1: the trial, and some prevailing theories. So check that out. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lambert and I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy, and we're going to start off with a
Speaker 1: modified nursery rhyme here. If you're ready, Are you ready?
Speaker 1: I'm ready for it. Okay, Lizzie Borden took an axe
Speaker 1: and gave her mother nineteen wax, and when she saw
Speaker 1: what she had done, she gave her father ten. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's not much of a nurse for your hyme. That's
Speaker 1: because the real rhyme, Sarah is a lie. So she
Speaker 1: gave her mother forty wax and gave her father forty one.
Speaker 1: That is not true, And Lizzie Borden is one of
Speaker 1: the podcast topics that we have always resisted. We probably
Speaker 1: get this request, maybe more than any other topic. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't want to. I don't want to
Speaker 1: put one above the other, but it's way way up there,
Speaker 1: along with Jack the Ripper, that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: the subject has never interested us much because, you know,
Speaker 1: here's the story. A woman was accused of brutally murdering
Speaker 1: her parents and hacking their faces to pieces. But she's
Speaker 1: acquitted and we still don't know if she really did it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the whole story, and that's kind of your
Speaker 1: standard nightly news fair. I mean, I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but it's something that happens almost every day. One. Of course,
Speaker 1: the story of some on who murders a family member
Speaker 1: is nothing new. You know, We've got Caine and Able
Speaker 1: and Caligula and Drusilla. But we had to rethink our
Speaker 1: point of view because if so many of you are
Speaker 1: captivated by the story, there must be a reason why,
Speaker 1: and we aim to put our prejudices aside and try
Speaker 1: to find it. So here we go, Okay, the basics
Speaker 1: of our case. On August four, in Fall River, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: a woman is brutally murdered in her home with a hatchet.
Speaker 1: Not long after her husband meets the same fate while
Speaker 1: he's asleep on a couch in his living room. The
Speaker 1: main suspect is their thirty two year old daughter, Lizzie Borden,
Speaker 1: and we have a few possible motives. Money, the father
Speaker 1: was a very wealthy man, or hatred of the stepmother. Stepmother,
Speaker 1: that's a crucial part to this story. A combination of
Speaker 1: the two, combination of the two. Yeah, So the jury's
Speaker 1: verdict is acquittal, and that's probably the main reason why
Speaker 1: people are so fascinated with the story. What really happened?
Speaker 1: How did Lizzie Boarden get acquitted? So a little family
Speaker 1: background to start with. Sarah Anthony Morris married Andrew Jackson
Speaker 1: Boorden the Christmas of eighteen forty and they had three
Speaker 1: children together, Emma, Alice and Lizzie. Alice died at the
Speaker 1: age of two and Sarah herself died when Lizzie was
Speaker 1: about three, so she never got to know her mother.
Speaker 1: And as Sarah mentioned, Andrew was very wealthy. He owned property,
Speaker 1: he had holdings in textiles and banking, he directed corporations
Speaker 1: and one would imagine that made him an attractive prospect
Speaker 1: for a husband, and so it did. Plessie has two
Speaker 1: young girls and so Lizzie's father remarried and he marries
Speaker 1: Abby Durfy, and Lizzie was about five at the time
Speaker 1: and Emma, the older sister, about fourteen, And according to
Speaker 1: Lizzie's testimony at the inquest, Emma always called her stepmother Abby,
Speaker 1: but Lizzie always called her mother until about five or
Speaker 1: six years before the murder went down. So make of
Speaker 1: that what you will, but it seems like this is
Speaker 1: a woman who she thought of as her mother for
Speaker 1: most of her life. And again later when the d A.
Speaker 1: Jose A Nolton asked if Lizzie's relationship with her stepmother
Speaker 1: was cordial, she replied, it depends upon one's idea of cordiality, perhaps,
Speaker 1: which isn't exactly the picture of a happy home. But
Speaker 1: Emma and her trial testimony so that their relationship was
Speaker 1: cordial and that Lizzie and her father had a very
Speaker 1: good one. So we're going to give you the outline
Speaker 1: of if she did it, this is what happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's here's just a basic starting fact. Lizzie and
Speaker 1: Emma both admitted that they were upset about their father
Speaker 1: giving one of his properties to Abby and her sister
Speaker 1: instead of them. They're both older, they're unmarried, and they
Speaker 1: expected their elderly father would provide for them and set
Speaker 1: them up for the rest of their life financially. And
Speaker 1: according to some there was this rumor that he was
Speaker 1: going to change his will in favor of his wife
Speaker 1: and that might cause a few family problems, I'd say so.
Speaker 1: On August three, which was the day before the murders,
Speaker 1: Lizzie attempted to buy prussic acid, a poison, from pharmacist
Speaker 1: to Eli Bentz, and he refused her, but the Boardens
Speaker 1: and their maid, Bridget Sullivan, all reported feeling sick that
Speaker 1: day and the next morning. On August four, Emma was
Speaker 1: in fair Haven, Massachusetts, but there were a few other
Speaker 1: people around the maid. We just mentioned Bridget, but also
Speaker 1: kind of randomly, the deceased Sarah's brother, John Moore, so
Speaker 1: Lizzie's uncle from Lizzie's uncle on her mom's side. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's visiting. He'd arrived the night before, but he left
Speaker 1: in the morning to go visit another cousin, so he's
Speaker 1: not around when the murders go down, but he's there
Speaker 1: immediately before and then he comes back, so he's thereafter.
Speaker 1: Andrew board, and her father left the house that morning
Speaker 1: as well to get some business done in town. Abby
Speaker 1: stayed in the house and she began doing chores and
Speaker 1: headed to the guest room to make the bed, you know,
Speaker 1: put on pillow shams, tidy up, and she asked Bridget
Speaker 1: to wash the outsides of the windows. So she's in
Speaker 1: the house, bridges outside the house. The only other person
Speaker 1: who's inside the house is Lizzie Borden. Okay, So according
Speaker 1: to Lizzie's story, at this point, Abby received a note
Speaker 1: from some messenger we don't know who, calling her to
Speaker 1: some sick person's home. We don't know the sick person either,
Speaker 1: and Abby left the house on this errand. But this
Speaker 1: is where our events are going to start down. Like,
Speaker 1: if Lizzie did it, here's what happened. So what happened then,
Speaker 1: if if Lizzie did it, is she found Abby on
Speaker 1: the second floor, hit her from behind with an axe,
Speaker 1: and then hacked her eighteen more times, and she left
Speaker 1: the body. She cleaned herself up and the axe. She
Speaker 1: knew her father probably wouldn't come home for a while.
Speaker 1: It ended up being an hour and a half, so
Speaker 1: in the meantime she did some reading and some ironing
Speaker 1: and some sewing, you know, between murders. And when he returned,
Speaker 1: Bridget unlocked the door for him, and as she did,
Speaker 1: she heard Lizzie laughing on the second floor landing after
Speaker 1: she had killed her stepmother. Right, So Lizzie told Andrew
Speaker 1: that his wife had received that note and had gone
Speaker 1: off on that urrand. And she settled him down on
Speaker 1: the couch and tried to convince Bridget to go out
Speaker 1: of the house. There was supposedly a really good sale
Speaker 1: on ribbons, drigg and sale who can resist entice the maid,
Speaker 1: but Bridget isn't interested. She instead goes to the attic,
Speaker 1: probably worn out from all that window washing and her
Speaker 1: upset stomach from the poison the night before, but possible poison,
Speaker 1: possible poison. Um. So, after Lizzie settled her father on
Speaker 1: the couch, he falls asleep, and then supposedly she hits
Speaker 1: him in the face and head with the axe end times,
Speaker 1: so hard that she snaps the handle off the ax.
Speaker 1: But then in ten minutes, according to the timeline that
Speaker 1: the police tried to put together based on what everyone
Speaker 1: said they were doing that day and and Um, Lizzie's
Speaker 1: own conflicting testimony. She would have had to clean herself off,
Speaker 1: her clothes and the murder weapon in ten minutes, and
Speaker 1: only then acting someone ten times. Let's see, I imagine
Speaker 1: that would be a messy scene. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: And only after this did she called to Bridget for
Speaker 1: help and announced that her father had died. She didn't
Speaker 1: say anything about Abby because she thought that Abby had
Speaker 1: left the house. He's off on the Errand so now
Speaker 1: we're going to move on to the bodies and the scene.
Speaker 1: And this is pretty disturbing stuff. But Abby had a
Speaker 1: five inch hole in her skull, and her head and
Speaker 1: her face were completely unrecognizable. She was lying face down
Speaker 1: in collagulated blood, and her clothes were soaked in it,
Speaker 1: and the bed in the pillow sham next to her
Speaker 1: were all bloody. In the wall in the chair in
Speaker 1: the bureau all covered in blood. Of just a small
Speaker 1: disturbing detail. Her braid had even been hacked off. And
Speaker 1: Andrew was on his back on a lounge, his face
Speaker 1: turned as he slept, and his face and head too
Speaker 1: were no longer recognizable. You can find pictures of the
Speaker 1: crime scene online if you so desire, which you very
Speaker 1: well might not. The axe had gone through his cheekbone,
Speaker 1: it had severed his eye in half. There was blood
Speaker 1: dripping onto the floor and from the sofa and on
Speaker 1: the walls, painting on the wall, the ceiling, the door,
Speaker 1: and it was still wet and flowing when others entered
Speaker 1: the scene, which is why we assume that Abby had
Speaker 1: died first and he had died second. But it seems
Speaker 1: very personal to attack only a person's face, and had
Speaker 1: to us definitely in so many times too. But here's
Speaker 1: an important detail. The rooms were are perfectly in order.
Speaker 1: There was no sign of a break in, no sign
Speaker 1: of a struggle. It seemed likely that whoever did this
Speaker 1: new the couple and also the boardings kept all of
Speaker 1: their doors locked all of the time, And supposedly this
Speaker 1: is because there had been a theft in the home
Speaker 1: and perhaps Lizzie had a history of shoplifting. Um, so
Speaker 1: their house was always on lockdown, which pains rather disturbing
Speaker 1: scene for the house too, I'd say, make her move out,
Speaker 1: not well, and don't think of it. Just as like,
Speaker 1: the front door is locked like a normal house would be,
Speaker 1: but all of the rooms and everything just completely locked
Speaker 1: down all the time. So and if it is all locked,
Speaker 1: the person probably would have had to be in the
Speaker 1: house the whole time. Yeah, exactly. So after the murders,
Speaker 1: Lizzie called for Bridget after this ten minute window we have,
Speaker 1: and then sent Bridget to go get the family doctor,
Speaker 1: Dr Bowen. Bridget couldn't find the doctor, he wasn't there.
Speaker 1: She comes back without him, and then Lizzie sent her
Speaker 1: out again, this time to get a family friend, Alice Russell.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, their neighbor, Adelaide church Hill, showed
Speaker 1: up and she went off for help. So just imagine
Speaker 1: all of these people sort of coming in and out,
Speaker 1: but large periods of time where Lizzie is in the
Speaker 1: house by herself, possibly doing anything. Dr Bowen does come
Speaker 1: to the house finally, and Bridget and Adelaide return and
Speaker 1: they're the ones who discover Abbey's body upstairs. Because of course,
Speaker 1: that police officer asked Lizzie, when's the last time you
Speaker 1: saw your mother? She said she went off on the stepmother. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she said she was gone from the house, but
Speaker 1: the last time she'd seen her was in the guest room.
Speaker 1: So the maid and their neighbor go upstairs and find
Speaker 1: Abby's body, and you can imagine we've already listed all
Speaker 1: of these people who are at the crime scene. Soon
Speaker 1: enough we have more officers, more neighbors, and onlookers. Everyone
Speaker 1: is trampling all over everything. Police are walking through the
Speaker 1: crime scenes that ever dance, whatever evidence there would have been,
Speaker 1: is completely contaminated. And one with Katie just kind of mentioned.
Speaker 1: An officer on the scene asked Lizzie when she had
Speaker 1: last seen her mother, and she was very careful to say, no,
Speaker 1: it's my stepmother, And she said her mother died when
Speaker 1: she was the baby. And this turns out to be
Speaker 1: a really big piece of evidence, or at least it
Speaker 1: keeps coming up, turned into a big piece of evidence.
Speaker 1: But I don't know how much how much there is
Speaker 1: to that. Maybe she was just trying to be very precise.
Speaker 1: Abby is her stepmother, no matter what kind of relationship
Speaker 1: they had. So no one thought Lizzie was guilty, and
Speaker 1: instead all manner of suspicious characters are implicated. Lizzie had
Speaker 1: mentioned an angry tenant that she'd heard with her father.
Speaker 1: Others were called seeing suspicious men near the house recently,
Speaker 1: including a mysterious Portuguese farmhand who perhaps was the fiendish
Speaker 1: murderer that ends up not panning out. And another Portugue
Speaker 1: guy had recently killed someone in town, so we thought
Speaker 1: maybe it was him, and arrested a different one, So
Speaker 1: try not to be Portuguese around the board and murders.
Speaker 1: But in early newspaper accounts they said that Lizzie had
Speaker 1: been in the barn, she came into the house, she
Speaker 1: saw her father's body, rushed upstairs and found her mother's,
Speaker 1: And then they recounted any possible theory, this angry tenant,
Speaker 1: a man who had been sleeping in the hay loft
Speaker 1: and planning these murders, someone who was poisoning the family's milk,
Speaker 1: some kind of trickster who sent Abby this note to
Speaker 1: try to get her out of the house and commit
Speaker 1: other sinful deeds and and go after Mr Borden. And
Speaker 1: the newspapers aren't suggesting Lizzie as the possible murderer at
Speaker 1: all at this point. According to the Boston Harold quote,
Speaker 1: in Lizzie Borden's life, there is not one unmaidenly nor
Speaker 1: a single deliberately unkind act. So people were pretty confident
Speaker 1: it was not this well bred young woman. It was
Speaker 1: some sort of dastardly man, preferably a Portuguese farm, has
Speaker 1: systerious foreigners, a mysterious man who's briefly in town. It
Speaker 1: couldn't be Lizzie Borden herself. But the evidence starts piling
Speaker 1: up because who else could have done it? According to
Speaker 1: this timeline and all the other aspects, like the locked doors,
Speaker 1: she was pretty much the only one. And this mysterious
Speaker 1: man theory begins to seem a little thin. Lizzie's isn't
Speaker 1: a good mysterious man around, no, and she's emerging as
Speaker 1: the most likely suspect, especially after her in quest testimony.
Speaker 1: So the inquest was August nine, and it's Josea Nolten
Speaker 1: questioning her and also Bridget and John Morris and some
Speaker 1: of the others, and Lizzie continually contradicts herself about times
Speaker 1: and the sequence of events, and she says some very
Speaker 1: odd things. She seems confused by the questions and was
Speaker 1: disquietingly calm. Yeah, And just a few days later, on
Speaker 1: the eleventh of August, she was arrested and claimed she
Speaker 1: was not guilty. August there was a preliminary hearing and
Speaker 1: at that the judge said, well, she probably is guilty,
Speaker 1: and she's going to have to go in front of
Speaker 1: a grand jury. But the grand jury wouldn't agree to
Speaker 1: actually meet until they got this just sort of decisive
Speaker 1: account from Alice Russell. And Alice Russell said she was
Speaker 1: the friend and neighbor. Remember she said that she saw
Speaker 1: Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen just a few
Speaker 1: days after the murder. So once the grand jury here's that,
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, we better hear, we better hear
Speaker 1: what Lizzie has to say. The trial began June, and
Speaker 1: again some more fabulous newspaper quotes um in the Boston
Speaker 1: Herald quote her dark, lustrous eyes ordinarily flashing, were dimmed,
Speaker 1: and her pale face was evidence of the physical suffering
Speaker 1: she was undergoing and had experienced. Poor Liszie, Poor Lizzie.
Speaker 1: So the prosecution was led by Joseah Nolton and William Moody,
Speaker 1: the defense led by Andrew Jennings, Melvin Adams and George Robinson.
Speaker 1: And Moody told the jury that Lizzie had planned the murders,
Speaker 1: committed the murders, and then couldn't even keep her story straight,
Speaker 1: and they hadn't seen a tear from her. You know
Speaker 1: she was not reacting as a woman in this position.
Speaker 1: Should she hated her stepmother, she wanted her father's money.
Speaker 1: That's the story that they were presenting. But there are
Speaker 1: plenty of things that Lizzie had going for her, starting
Speaker 1: with she's this woman of breeding from a good family.
Speaker 1: She has those newspaper quotes, she had plenty of character recommendations,
Speaker 1: and not many people thought a woman was capable of
Speaker 1: hacking someone's face to pieces. You know, poison sounds like
Speaker 1: a nice feminine way to kill someone, not a hatchet.
Speaker 1: And then we have the character references coming in here too.
Speaker 1: So her sister and her uncle and the maid all
Speaker 1: said that she had a good relationship with Andrew and Abby,
Speaker 1: there was no motive to kill either of them. And
Speaker 1: then this is sort of the crucial thing. They didn't
Speaker 1: have the murder weapon. They have some axes, of course,
Speaker 1: there are plenty around if you've got a barn, and
Speaker 1: they've got one that doesn't have a handle, But there's
Speaker 1: no blood anywhere on it, and we're missing the handle,
Speaker 1: so it could be the ax, but it could just
Speaker 1: be a broken ax sitting around from farm work. And
Speaker 1: we also have no blood on her clothes or her shoes.
Speaker 1: We have nothing, no bloods Borden. It's not a really
Speaker 1: great case for the prosecute. It's all completely circumstantial. And
Speaker 1: then this is the killer thing here. Her in her
Speaker 1: inquest testimony, which is what of course made the judge
Speaker 1: think she needed to go in front of a grand
Speaker 1: jury in the first place, was ruled in admissible in court.
Speaker 1: And that's because the judge believed that she had been
Speaker 1: treated as a prisoner instead of as a suspect while
Speaker 1: she was having her inquest, and she like, she wasn't
Speaker 1: just a witness, she was under questioning, yeah, and should
Speaker 1: have had an attorney present. Since she didn't, he didn't
Speaker 1: think that they could actually take her in quest seriously well.
Speaker 1: And as a side note, Dr Bowen had dosed her
Speaker 1: with morphine before this inquest to keep her calm, but
Speaker 1: obviously that could have made her kind of loopy. So
Speaker 1: I mean, that could explain her contradicting story, stimy and
Speaker 1: why everything could kind of confused her. But the prosecution
Speaker 1: was saying even in her inquest she denied everything. There
Speaker 1: wasn't anything in the inquest, no confession. Yeah, she wasn't
Speaker 1: coerced into confessing to these murders in it because she's
Speaker 1: all doped up on morphine. If she didn't confess to it,
Speaker 1: then why couldn't they use it? That was their their point.
Speaker 1: But the testimony was excluded and also ruled in invisible
Speaker 1: was Eli Bentz, the pharmacist, his testimony about her trying
Speaker 1: to buy poison from him. These are two key points
Speaker 1: that are missing from that entire trial, so that loopy
Speaker 1: inquest and the poison Act, which seems very significant. So
Speaker 1: there is still a fair amount of evidence against her.
Speaker 1: Though according to bridget the Maid, there was no way
Speaker 1: anyone else could have gotten into the house during the
Speaker 1: timeline of the day without being seen, and Lizzie was
Speaker 1: simply the only person who would have had access. And
Speaker 1: I also thought it was very strange that Lizzie didn't
Speaker 1: wonder where her mother went and that she was also
Speaker 1: in the house and didn't hear her being murdered and
Speaker 1: falling to the ground. You know, maybe after you come
Speaker 1: across your father's body, you begin to wonder what happened
Speaker 1: to your mother, Yeah, or you would just hear her
Speaker 1: falling upstairs. But the family may have said that Lizzie
Speaker 1: and Abby had a pretty okay relationship, but others were
Speaker 1: testifying no, they Lizzie hated her stepmother and the friend
Speaker 1: the family. Friend Alice Russell, said that Lizzie had come
Speaker 1: to her the night before the killings and said, quote,
Speaker 1: I feel afraid something is going to happen, so starting
Speaker 1: to pay a darker picture of Lizzie's psychological state before this.
Speaker 1: Lizzie also said that she had been in the barn
Speaker 1: during the time of her father's homicide, but when officers
Speaker 1: went to investigate the loft, it was very dusty and
Speaker 1: there were no footprints but the officer's own, which seemed
Speaker 1: a little bit strange, and it was also extremely hot
Speaker 1: in there. She claimed to have been there for thirty
Speaker 1: minutes on this silly errand looking for lead for sinkers,
Speaker 1: which again, something's not quite right there, ye, maybe not
Speaker 1: an area or a tory do in the middle of
Speaker 1: the day. And then there's that note which seems very sketchy. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the note that Lizzie said Mrs Borden received. No one
Speaker 1: ever found the note, no one ever figured out who
Speaker 1: the messenger was. No one ever even figured out who
Speaker 1: the sick person was who needed visiting in the first
Speaker 1: place there was a reward offered. Nobody came forward with
Speaker 1: any news. And again her timeline that day made no sense.
Speaker 1: And the dress Alice saw her burning, she said it
Speaker 1: had paint on it, just doing a little wardrobe cleaning
Speaker 1: a few days after her and it could very well,
Speaker 1: of course, have been blood. And the dress that she
Speaker 1: gave the police and said she was wearing that day
Speaker 1: wasn't the dress she was wearing at all at the
Speaker 1: time of the murders. It was a much too. It
Speaker 1: was silky and kind of a nice dress, not the
Speaker 1: sort of thing you'd shore a dress around the house.
Speaker 1: And then Lizzie was eerily calm during the whole trial.
Speaker 1: According to the New York Times quote, the most remarkable
Speaker 1: feature of the trial has been the demeanor of Lizzie Borden.
Speaker 1: From start to finish, she has manifested no feeling of weakness,
Speaker 1: and has listened to the recital of the most cold
Speaker 1: blooded and shocking details of the crime with a perfectly
Speaker 1: impassive and unmoved countenance. I maintain it could have been shocked,
Speaker 1: could have been shocked. But here we do start to
Speaker 1: see the papers turn a little bit against her. So
Speaker 1: she does bait when the skulls of her parents were
Speaker 1: revealed that they considered that a point for her. There
Speaker 1: are some rebuttals as far as that whole dusty hay
Speaker 1: loft thing. There were some men doing work a few
Speaker 1: days before the murders and they were like, listen, we
Speaker 1: were in there, and there are no footprints of ours either,
Speaker 1: So this is a ridiculous piece of evidence. And also
Speaker 1: would a killer be that open about burning a dress
Speaker 1: in the kitchen? That was the other point. Wouldn't she
Speaker 1: be sneakier about it? If you've got to get rid
Speaker 1: of the dress, you gotta get rid of it. And again,
Speaker 1: where's our bloody hatchet? Where's this axe handle that supposedly
Speaker 1: came off from the force of the blows? How could
Speaker 1: she wash herself, her clothes and a murder weapon in
Speaker 1: about ten minutes before she called bridget Some people were like,
Speaker 1: maybe she didn't naked and that's how But I mean,
Speaker 1: it certainly paints the wilder. And then one more final
Speaker 1: important rebuttal Andrew was a really rich guy, so it's
Speaker 1: not too unlikely that somebody might have something against him
Speaker 1: or want to get money somehow. And then some people
Speaker 1: did say that they had suspicious characters, just nobody they
Speaker 1: could specifically name hanging around the house right for the murders.
Speaker 1: Then again, this is all circumstantial evidence and there is
Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt, and I think we can all agree
Speaker 1: if we were on that jury, we would have thought
Speaker 1: the same thing. And the judge agreed and Lizzie was acquitted.
Speaker 1: So picking up with Lizzie's life after the murders, what
Speaker 1: happens after a trial like this and sensational murders like this.
Speaker 1: Emma and Lizzie bought a nice house together in Fall River.
Speaker 1: Lizzie named it Maple Croft and changed her name to Lizabeth.
Speaker 1: Emma became very involved in church, but eventually moved out.
Speaker 1: They had some sort of falling out our argumentum, possibly
Speaker 1: because Lizzie had a relationship with an actress and Emma
Speaker 1: changed her name as well. And they died only nine
Speaker 1: days apart, which is one of those spooky little connected
Speaker 1: to the end of this bizarre little thing. So there
Speaker 1: you go, guys, the Boarden episode. And I mean, we've
Speaker 1: got to think about sort of modern connections to what
Speaker 1: we see in the news right well, and and why
Speaker 1: it's so important. I mean, today like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: when you're looking at the news, the murder of a
Speaker 1: child or a spouse or a parent is unfortunately all
Speaker 1: too common, and after a while, maybe the horror of
Speaker 1: that stops being so shocking, and maybe it's easier to
Speaker 1: contemplate a crime like this with the safety that distance provides.
Speaker 1: You're looking back at it in time, it's not so present.
Speaker 1: And this has become such a part of American lore
Speaker 1: that we've got a nursery rhyme about it. Yeah, Lizzie
Speaker 1: Borden has become a club nursery rhyme. Maybe playing rhymes,
Speaker 1: not what you're seeing in the nursery. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I visited Salem about a year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: and Lizzie Borden is not from Salem, but there are
Speaker 1: all these shops with Lizzie Borden memorabilia, and you know
Speaker 1: this hologram things where it's this stay a portrait of nice,
Speaker 1: buttoned up Lizzie Borden, and then it's like scary acts
Speaker 1: or that kind of thing. I think it just she's
Speaker 1: a cult figure. She's caught people's attention somehow, And of
Speaker 1: course we're always fascinated by Gore and violence, human beings
Speaker 1: in general, not just Sarah and I um, but also
Speaker 1: by what is unsolved, because you know, we'd like to
Speaker 1: tie up loose ends, we like to find our answers.
Speaker 1: But in this case, the only real satisfying answer would
Speaker 1: be for Lizzie Borden to appear right before us and say, yes,
Speaker 1: I did it, perhaps in hologram. For I hope it
Speaker 1: would just be the real her. But that's the answer
Speaker 1: we can't have. Okay. So, now that we've listened to
Speaker 1: the older podcast, Katie and I really discussed in depth
Speaker 1: of the perception of Lizzie as as cold and unfeeling
Speaker 1: and how that sort of changed over over the course
Speaker 1: of the trial. So clearly the letters and other documents
Speaker 1: from last year have somewhat altered that perception of her.
Speaker 1: She did seem to be grieving, although naturally that doesn't
Speaker 1: totally get her off the hook. For anyone still speculating
Speaker 1: on this too, just because you're grieving doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: didn't do it. But it's the new info that really
Speaker 1: might change perceptions about this case. I think. Yeah. After
Speaker 1: the trial, Lizzie's lawyer, Andrew Jackson Jennings, wound up with
Speaker 1: much of the evidence sustained pillow shams, the hatchet with
Speaker 1: its handle broken off, and he kept all of this
Speaker 1: plus his two leather journals, one which contained an annotated
Speaker 1: newspaper clippings a collection of annotated newspaper clippings, and the
Speaker 1: other contained his handwritten notes, and all of this was
Speaker 1: in a Victorian tub. As we mentioned an entry, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to put all this kind of grizzly stuff
Speaker 1: in your closet, of course, and you just can't live
Speaker 1: it and leave it in any random place. But his daughter,
Speaker 1: Marian Jennings Wearing, left most of the collection to the
Speaker 1: Fall River Historical Society in the nineteen sixties, but then
Speaker 1: his grandson Edward Waring, held on to the journals himself,
Speaker 1: since he was afraid researcher would be unable to read
Speaker 1: his grandfather's messy handwriting and then they might misquote him.
Speaker 1: So he was worried about this stuff and just decided
Speaker 1: to hang onto it. Mr Waring died though, in late
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, leaving the journals to the society and
Speaker 1: his will. So since that point, curator Michael Martin's has
Speaker 1: been able to examine some of what's contained inside. Although
Speaker 1: the journals are still too fragile to read entirely, they
Speaker 1: need to be better preserved. First, and according to The
Speaker 1: Boston Globe, Martin says, quote, it's the only file Jennings retained,
Speaker 1: and it's the first idea we have about how the
Speaker 1: defense went about building its case. So clearly those annotated
Speaker 1: news clippings in that first journal might be of interest
Speaker 1: to historians considering how much the press reaction to the
Speaker 1: trial transformed over its course. So um, you know, we
Speaker 1: might be able to find out what concerned Lizzie's lawyer,
Speaker 1: what was being printed about her at the time that
Speaker 1: caught his attention. But the real kicker is jennings list
Speaker 1: of people in viewed for the case and his notes
Speaker 1: on those interviews. According to Martin's and ABC News quote,
Speaker 1: a number of the people Jennings spoke to were people
Speaker 1: he knew intimately on a social or business level, so
Speaker 1: many of them were perhaps more candid with him than
Speaker 1: they would have been otherwise. But it's also evident that
Speaker 1: there are a number of new individuals he spoke to
Speaker 1: who had previously not been connected with the case, So
Speaker 1: new witnesses, I mean, new kinds of information here and possibly, um,
Speaker 1: possibly some kind of information about why these people weren't
Speaker 1: involved in the case publicly, Yeah, kind of inside scoop.
Speaker 1: Why did her lawyer not want them involved? So Jennings
Speaker 1: also peppered the one hundred page written journal with a
Speaker 1: lot of his own insights and just I mean it
Speaker 1: gives you a sense of that, just the fact that
Speaker 1: he knew a lot of the people um involved pretty closely,
Speaker 1: he had some insights himself. So for instance, he wrote
Speaker 1: about how Andrew Borden had always spoken of his girls
Speaker 1: and he'd call him his girls quite far only and
Speaker 1: provided for them well, So that slightly debunked the miser theory.
Speaker 1: You know, Andrew Borden was well off, but he was
Speaker 1: supporting his his adult daughters. And then um, he also
Speaker 1: supposedly mentioned how much he liked receiving letters from them,
Speaker 1: how much he enjoyed that. So, as of this spring,
Speaker 1: the journals hadn't been entirely reviewed yet, even though the
Speaker 1: Society does plan to eventually publish them. So maybe by
Speaker 1: that time, by the time the whole thing comes out,
Speaker 1: we'll be ready for another update to this podcast. You
Speaker 1: guys keep us updated on it. This is when one
Speaker 1: of those episodes that we got a lot of suggestions
Speaker 1: for it before it came out, but then we got
Speaker 1: a lot of links and news stories sent to us
Speaker 1: when all this new information. People really love gruesome as
Speaker 1: it as People really love the story and just continue
Speaker 1: to want to find out more about it. Incidentally, Lizzie
Speaker 1: was big in the news for another reason the spring too. Though. Maplecroft,
Speaker 1: the fourteen room queen and she lived in after her acquittal,
Speaker 1: is up for sale for six d and fifty thou dollars.
Speaker 1: So if you're a really big Lizzy boarding buck, there
Speaker 1: you go. Um. So, if you have any new information
Speaker 1: to to share with us or any thoughts on this case,
Speaker 1: you know why it continues to fascinate people, while why
Speaker 1: it continues to fascinate you if it does, let us
Speaker 1: know where at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
Speaker 1: also on Twitter at Miston History, and we're on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the techniques that people might use to solve a
Speaker 1: crime like this, today, we have an article called how
Speaker 1: blood stained pattern analysis works and you can find that
Speaker 1: by searching on our homepage at www dot how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot Com named
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