Arrest

It was not normal procedure in Massachusetts to summon the primary suspect to a murder inquest, but this was not a normal murder case, and, if she agreed to appear voluntarily, the district attorney could use the proceeding to compel Lizzie to answer his questions without any interference from her attorney.

In a decision that probably surprised both police and district attorney, Lizzie did agree to appear, although she also asked for her attorney to be present. The judge denied the request, but she sat before the district attorney anyway, spending several hours on Tuesday, August 9th, answering his questions, and another several hours on Wednesday, August 10th, and another hour again on Thursday, August 11th.

Lizzie did not perform well under aggressive questioning from Knowlton. In what Victoria Lincoln would later call the “shifting sand” of her testimony, she came up with disjointed explanations of her own movements and told a story that continually changed and conflicted with the accounts given by others. As the New Bedford Evening Standard reported at the time, “one of the officials who was present stated that as [Lizzie] proceeded with her story the case against her grew blacker and blacker … She was forced to repeat her story time after time, and the prospect ahead looked darker as her examination proceeded. Although the impression cannot be fully confirmed, it is growing that Miss Lizzie was the strongest witness against herself.” (For a closer look at why she may have responded to her questioning so poorly, see Inquest: Mitigating Factors.)

Ultimately, it was Lizzie’s own faltering words, wrung from her in an interrogation that would later be ruled at her trial as “involuntary” and thus inadmissible, that persuaded the district attorney it was time to arrest Lizzie for the murders. After her final appearance before Knowlton on Thursday, the 11th, which ended at about 4 p.m., Lizzie was not escorted home as she had been on the first two days of the inquest. Instead, she was told to wait in the matron’s room at the police station with her sister, Emma, and her friend and staunch supporter, Mrs. Mary Brigham, while Knowlton conferred with the police marshal and obtained a new arrest warrant.

The Long-Awaited Arrest

Other reporters, however, provided more colorful detail as befitting the emotional heft of the occasion. Here is the report from the Boston Post describing the moment Marshal Hilliard faced Lizzie.

He held a document in his hand; he wasted no words: “I have a painful duty to perform,” he said. “I have here a warrant for your arrest and a charge of murder … Do you wish me to read it?”

A moment before she heard the words, Lizzie Borden’s attitude had been that of deep dejection. Her form had sunk deep into the chair as though the awful ordeal of the past several days had wrecked even her wonderful resources, mental and physical. In an instant she was erect. Her eyes … fired instantly with resolution. Her head was carried back to its natural poise. Dejection had vanished. In its place there was only resolve. The hour had come. The woman had risen to its demand …

She looked into the eyes of the grave official before her as though his announcement had been no surprise. A shadow of annoyance momentarily moved over her face; she did not speak. With the gesture, half scornful, half worried, she expressed dissent, she did not wish it read …

“In that case, I arrest you on the charge of murder.”

The words rang through the corridor. The woman did not quail. Her face told of her disdain. She simply nodded.

While witnesses said Lizzie kept her emotions in check, both Emma and Mrs. Brigham were openly upset. The reporter for the New York Herald focused closely on Lizzie’s sister, and wrote:

Emma Borden looked into her sister’s face and the tears began to run down her face, but she did not say anything. Mr. Jennings addressed a few words of hope and comfort to his unfortunate client and bade her goodbye. Emma Borden went with him. Emma did not kiss her sister or even bid her goodbye, but went crying downstairs and through the police guard room filled with curious people.

The reporter for the New Bedford Evening Standard wrote that as Emma tried to leave, “people crowded forward and the police pushed them back. Miss [Emma] Borden appeared to be suffering intensely, and all the external evidences of agitation were visible upon her countenance.”

Lizzie Finally Breaks Down

Back inside the station, Lizzie was formally placed in custody and turned over to the police matrons, Mrs. Hannah Russell and Mrs. Hannah Reagan, then taken into a room to be searched. The Boston Post reporter apparently spoke to one of the matrons afterward because he described how “a deadly pallor crept over the face of the accused. Nature could stand no more. She was seized with a violent attack of nausea.” The reporter continued that the matrons were so shocked by the fit of vomiting that they feared she had carried poison like prussic acid (cyanide) with her into the cell and tried to commit suicide. But, after searching her, they knew it was her deep distress that caused her to become ill, and they sent for Dr. Bowen to attend to her.

Other newspapers published similar accounts, with the New York Herald reporting that, “The wonderful courage and self-possession that have sustained this extraordinary woman abandoned her in her chief hour of need … A fit of violent trembling seized her, so complete was the collapse of her physical system, weakened, no doubt by the prolonged and terrible strain.” The same article said that although a jail cell had been prepared for her, Marshal Hilliard “concluded that a cell was no place for a human being so crushed and broken. He gave orders instead that she should occupy the matron’s sleeping room, a large, well-furnished apartment on the second floor.” Most accounts noted that Dr. Bowen came at least once; others said he returned several times in the evening.

The following morning, Lizzie Borden was arraigned in court. Asked for her plea, she first quietly said, “Not guilty.” When the clerk asked her to speak up, she repeated it firmly, “Not guilty,” with emphasis on the word “not.” Afterward, she was escorted to a carriage to be put on a train for Taunton, where she would be imprisoned in a cell to await her preliminary hearing scheduled for August 22nd.

The Text of the Complaint

The morning after the arrest, newspapers printed the wording of the warrant:

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bristol County

Rufus B. Hilliard, City Marshal of Fall River, in said county, on behalf of said Commonwealth, on oath complains that Lizzie A. Borden of Fall River, in the county of Bristol at Fall River aforesaid, in the county aforesaid on the 4th day of August in the year of our Lord 1892, in and upon one Andrew J. Borden, feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought, did make an assault, and that the said Lizzie A. Borden then and there with a certain weapon, to wit, a hatchet, the said Andrew J. Borden, in and upon the head of the said Andrew J. Borden, then and there feloniously, willfully and of her malice aforethought did strike, giving unto the said Andrew J. Borden, then and there with the hatchet aforesaid by the stroke aforesaid in manner aforesaid, in and upon the head of the said Andrew J. Borden one mortal wound of which said mortal wound the said Andrew J. Borden then and there instantly died. And so the complainant aforesaid upon his oath aforesaid further complains and says the said Lizzie A. Borden, the said Andrew J. Borden in manner and form aforesaid, then and there feloniously and willfully and of malice aforethought did kill and murder.

R.B. Hilliard

Lizzie’s Arrival at Taunton Jail

Over the next few days, newspapers continued to offer vivid details of Lizzie’s move to Taunton jail. On August 15th, the New Bedford Evening Standard printed an account of her time with Mrs. Russell, the Fall River matron. “During all the hours Mrs. Russell was with Lizzie she never alluded to the crime but once, and that was just before her departure for Taunton. ‘So, they are going to take me to Taunton, are they?’ asked Lizzie. ‘I believe they are,’ replied Mrs. Russell. ‘Well,’ continued Lizzie, ‘they seem to do about as they please with me …’

Meanwhile, The Boston Herald wrote in an editorial:

It was a pathetic scene that a Boston reporter witnessed at Taunton when Lizzie Borden entered the jail, with her aged pastor by her side, and met for the first time in many years the matron of the prison, who had been a neighbor in Fall River when she was a child, who used often to receive visits from her as a child, and who had lost sight of her in the interval of years, but had not forgotten her name or the promise that her childhood gave. The scene was too much for this old neighbor who was now to have her in charge. “Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie,” was the cry of the matron as she met the child, now grown to be a woman, accused of a terrible crime. It was one of those meetings where all the defenses of life are torn asunder and people speak out of the anguish of their hearts.

Indeed, Mrs. Wright, the prison matron, took Lizzie into her charge with great sympathy, and worried aloud to a reporter that Lizzie didn’t sleep at all her first night, Friday August 12th, at the Taunton jail, and still had eaten nothing by the time her sister, Emma, arrived the next day. Mrs. Wright told the Fall River Herald that she allowed them to walk together in the corridor, where they “conversed with one of the prisoners, who told her story, and for whom they expressed their sympathy … Then [Lizzie] and her sister dined together, a nice dinner being sent over from the hotel, where we ordered it at their request.”

The Herald reporter then asked Mrs. Wright if she believed Lizzie guilty. Mrs. Wright answered:

“No, I can’t. I said so to her when she first came, and the only emotion she has shown came then. She looked up at me quickly and said in a surprised way: “‘Oh! you don’t? Oh, Mrs. Wright!’ and she threw her arms about me, as if it was more than she could stand of relief to find anyone who had not turned against her outside of her own sister and most intimate friends.”

Before Lizzie’s arrest, the public, who knew within 24 hours that Lizzie was the prime suspect in the murders, had been loudly critical of the police for not moving faster to make an arrest; yet, once such stories as those above appeared in the press, seeming to humanize Lizzie, the tide of public opinion began to turn toward sympathy for her. Criticism of police in the press then became likely as not to be an accusation of an overly hasty rush to judgment against the Sunday school teacher of good character who, according to Mrs. Wright, brought only the bible and other religious texts into her cell to read.

Still, police officers didn’t let the criticism shake them; they stood firm that their handling of the case had been properly cautious in the beginning and that they had gathered plenty of evidence with which to prove the arrest had been justified. Most of all, as the Boston Post reported, “The heads of the police department were noticeably relieved” to have a suspect in custody.

A Satisfied Police Department

Soon after Lizzie’s arrest, said the Post reporter, police officers “went to supper with a more elastic step, in keener appetite than they had known for a week. A load had been lifted from their minds.”

Indeed, several officers, including Deputy Marshal John Fleet, openly boasted that they had known from their first hour in the house that Lizzie was guilty. Before the arrest, officers had repeatedly told reporters that they were considering every possible scenario and chasing down every possible lead. Yet, after the arrest, numerous reports appeared that the police had never budged from their original theory that Lizzie was the culprit and had found looking into other possibilities a complete waste of time.

As the New Bedford Evening Standard described it, “Nobody, outside of a small circle of police officials and State officers, appreciates the influence which has been brought to bear to persuade them to abandon the theory which has kept them penned in the district court room four days. They have been forced against their better judgment to pursue every clew and demonstrate the absurdity of almost every [other lead].” In other words, after the first day or two, it was only to keep up appearances that they followed tips supplied by the public. They never took seriously the possibility that anyone else could have committed the crimes, nor did they put any discernable effort into investigating Andrew’s life to discover if anyone else may have had reason to want him dead and out of the way.

It was a stunning example of police bias that many editorials of the day commented upon, and law enforcement officials were forced to defend. On August 15th, a reporter for the Evening Standard wrote, “City Marshal Hilliard was this morning shown about 50 editorials clipped from various papers published in New England during the past few days. Most of them reflect a belief in Miss Lizzie Borden’s entire innocence of the crime charged against her and assail the Fall River police for … directing their efforts wholly toward proving Miss Borden guilty.” Fifty editorials accusing police of bias is a large number but it would appear that the marshal was unmoved by the criticism, saying to reporters, “The district attorney and myself are satisfied that the public authorities have ample cause for holding this girl, and she has not been imprisoned in haste nor without a full understanding of what her arrest means.”

Whether they rushed to judgment or not, the police had fully satisfied themselves they had found the culprit and, today, most believe they did arrest the right person and that Lizzie Borden did indeed kill her father and stepmother. A close examination of the circumstantial evidence in the case for guilt tells us it is certainly possible that she did commit the grisly murders.

Unfortunately, the evidence that satisfied police did not satisfy Lizzie’s jury; they found her “not guilty.” So, if Lizzie Borden did butcher Andrew and Abby, she got away with it. And if she didn’t do it? Then the one who did wield the hatchet not only got away with it but was never in danger of being suspected, leaving Lizzie under the relentless eye of suspicion for the rest of her life.