Appearance

Mary Elizabeth Naugle entertainingly described the array of descriptions of Lizzie in her article, “If Looks Could Kill,” for a 2004 edition of The Hatchet.

Even if looks could kill we would still be arguing about the Borden case. It seems that everyone sooner or later returns to Lizzie’s likeness with the famous question, “Is this the face of a fiend?” But the problem is that everyone sees something different. Whether we go by descriptions by friends or reporters of the time or by the responses to her photograph by modern case enthusiasts, her face is never the same. She seems to have had many faces then, and even now her photos don’t hold still. Each viewer sees someone different, as if the portraits have become inkblots in a forensic Rorschach test. 

A number of reporters would express on seeing her for the first time surprise that this suspected murderer seemed so … normal. So … ladylike. As a reporter for the Boston Herald said when he saw her leave her house on the day of Andrew and Abby’s funeral, “she makes an exceedingly favorable impression and her dignity and her reserve are at once impressed.”

Others would at first see the unattractive and “coarse” murderess of their expectation, and would talk about how unpleasantly wide her face, how “dull and lifeless” her expressions. But as Naugle noted, a number of them notably changed their perception of her as they watched her closely each day at trial, including journalistic heavyweights Julian Ralph and Joe Howard. Ralph wrote an article that appeared in the Herald which said, “When she smiles or laughs it is [a] bright and sensitive countenance, but her evidences of pleasure and humor are very effervescent.”

Later Portraits

In the mid-20th century, authors writing on the case, who were almost always in the Lizzie-Is-Guilty camp, still had access to people who had known her when they were young, and would take pains to describe how much Lizzie looked exactly like one would expect a murderer to look. Agnes DeMille, in her book Dance of Death, wrote …

Lizzie was known in town for her “peculiar look.” Eva Kelly Betz said, “I saw Lizzie a few times when I was young. She had dreadful eyes, colorless and soul-less like those of a snake.” Another neighbor unkindly remarked she was certain the lids came up from the bottom. She was given to staring; old women still remember how frightened they were as children, even though at first ignorant of her identity, whenever that face appeared with its peculiar unexplained look staring outside windows of stores or stations. It was her eyes, they said, the emptiness in her eyes. But for her eyes, her face would have been mild, even comely.”

Victoria Lincoln, who remembered her childhood encounters with an older Lizzie, also went on about Lizzie’s eyes, she described as “huge and protruding, the irises an almost colorless ice blue. They were strangely expressionless. I have heard many speak of them as dead eyes, but the eyes of the dead are dull; Lizzie’s had the shine of beach pebbles newly bared by the outgoing tide.”  

However, those who believe Lizzie to be innocent are more likely to describe her eyes more generously, as did Gail Howard, the granddaughter of a woman she claimed was Lizzie’s “traveling companion” in the few years after the trial. Howard told the Journal-Bulletin in August 1992 that her grandmother always told her, “Lizzie had the kindest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.”

For a fascinating look at the evolution of Lizzie’s face as revealed in photos over time, see this AI-generated clip on YouTube released by the Lizzie Borden House.