Lizzie Borden Essay

Submitted By FrancoAngelia1
Words: 1082
Pages: 5

Lizzie Borden Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. Once she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. So, goes the old verse that immortalized Lizzie Borden as one of history's most notorious murderers, fair or not. Lizzie was born on July 19, 1860 — the youngest child of Andrew Jackson Borden and Sarah Morse Borden. Lizzie was a young, unmarried woman who lived with her parents in Fall River, Massachusetts. Her mother died when she was two years old, and a few years later Andrew married Abby Durfee Grey. Lizzie never acknowledged Abby as her stepmother. For 30 years Abby and Lizzie lived together under one roof, yet on the day of the murder Lizzie gave no indication that they ever got along. Deputy Marshal John Fleet testified that on the day Abby died he asked Lizzie if she had any idea who could have killed her father and mother. Lizzie responded with, “She's not my mother, Sir. She is my stepmother. My mother died when I was a child. I did not regard her as my mother, though she came there when I was young. I decline to say whether my relations between her and myself we those of mother and daughter or not. I called her Mrs. Borden and sometimes Mother.” Very few cases in American history have attracted as much attention as the hatchet murders of Andrew J. Borden and his wife, Abby Borden. On a hot August 4, 1892 at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, Bridget Sullivan, the maid in the Borden family residence rested in her bed after having washed the outside windows. She heard the bell at City Hall ring and looked at her clock: it was eleven o'clock. A cry from Lizzie Borden, the younger of two Borden daughters broke the silence: "Maggie, come down! Come down quick; Father's dead; somebody came in and killed him." A half hour or so later, after the body--"hacked almost beyond recognition"--of Andrew Borden had been covered and the downstairs searched by police for evidence of an intruder, a neighbor who had come to comfort Lizzie, Adelaide Churchill, made a grisly discovery on the second floor of the Borden home: the body of Abby Borden, Lizzie's step-mother. Investigators found Abby's body cold, while Andrew's had been discovered warm, indicating that Abby was killed earlier--probably at least ninety minutes earlier--than her husband. The crime was that an unknown person whacked Andrew Borden in the head ten times. Up until getting murdered, Abby and Andrew lived a pleasant life. All of Massachusetts was shocked when they heard the news that the Abby and Andrew Borden had been victims of an ax murderer. The many suspects included: John Morse, the visiting uncle of the Borden children; Lizzie and her sister Emma, a mysterious and unnamed lover of Lizzie's; Bridget, the maid; and William Borden, Andrew's cousin, who was said to be Andrew Borden’s own illegitimate child. Along with the gruesome nature of the crimes is the unexpected character of the accused, not a hatchet-wielding maniac, but a church-going, Sunday-school-teaching, respectable, spinster-daughter, charged with parricide and the murder of her parents. This is a murder case in which the accused is found not guilty for the violent and bloody murders of two people. There were the unusual circumstances considering that it was an era of swift justice, of vast newspaper coverage, evidence that was almost entirely circumstantial, passionately divided public opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused, incompetent prosecution, and acquittal. Police came to the conclusion that the murders must have been committed by someone within the Borden home, but were puzzled by the lack of blood anywhere except on the bodies of the victims and their inability to uncover any obvious murder weapon. Increasingly, suspicion turned toward Lizzie, since her older sister, Emma, was out of the home at the time of the murders. Investigators found it odd that Lizzie knew so little of her mother's