Autism Theory

Lizzie Borden became famous for many things in 1892, the alleged axe murder of her parents being the most shocking. Yet another frequently remarked news item about Lizzie was that of her “cool demeanor.” Indeed, her manner was said to be so emotionless that police were continually quoted on their opinion of it, and even the city’s mayor told a reporter that he found Lizzie’s manner to be “absolutely frigid.” These men were trying to make the point that someone who did not openly express her emotions was someone who could easily transform herself into a cold-blooded killer. In the decades since, students of the case have sometimes taken descriptions of emotionless Lizzie as an indication of some kind of psychopathy. Many psychologists have written papers and articles that explain how Lizzie Borden meets certain criteria for any number of mental illnesses. (The proceedings of the 1992 Centennial Lizzie Borden conference feature several such papers.)

More recently, however, one may occasionally run across a comment on a message board about the Borden murders in which someone says something like, “Maybe Lizzie Borden was on the autism spectrum.” They may point out that a seemingly emotionless demeanor, otherwise known as “a flat affect,” is a hallmark sign of autism. They may note that Lizzie’s famous refusal to greet her Uncle John when he arrived for a visit the day before the murders fits in with “social avoidance,” also known to be a common feature of autism. They may say that the comments made by people who knew Lizzie before the murders describing her as “odd” and “peculiar” are words often used to describe the behavior of people who are autistic. (Even Lizzie’s sister, Emma, described her as “queer.”)

But even without official sanction that Lizzie was autistic (at least thus far), the signs of autism, while sometimes misunderstood, are no longer shrouded in mystery. They are not only well known by anyone who spends time with autistic individuals, they are also easily found on lists put forth by organizations with missions to help parents understand their autistic children and autistic adults understand themselves. Here are some of the common indicators that suggest one might sit on the autism spectrum, along with the ways in which Lizzie Borden displayed those traits:

Flat Affect

 “Does someone in your family have a limited range of emotional expression? Maybe they seem stoic? Do they rarely get excited?” asks autism expert Jeremy Brown, Ph.D., in a magazine devoted to autism. “This is called flat affect, and it is common among people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.” In fact, according to a 2019 paper published in a journal on Biological Psychiatry, not only is flat affect common in autism, “reduced facial expressivity (flat affect) and deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors are characteristic symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).”

Other signs of flat affect include what appears to be a “limited range of emotions” because of what can be perceived as “limited facial expressions, body language or a monotone voice.” The brain wiring of autism “makes it harder for autistic people to understand others’ emotions and to process their own,” writes Brown. It also makes it difficult for so-called “normal” (a.k.a. neurotypical) people to understand the true intentions and feelings of people with ASD.

Officer Philip Harrington, who interviewed Lizzie an hour or so after she found her father’s body, reported, “Lizzie stood by the foot of the bed, and talked in the most calm and collected manner; her whole bearing was most remarkable under the circumstances. There was not the least indication of agitation, no sign of sorrow or grief, no lamentation of the heart.” This, said Harrington, is what led him to suspect Lizzie had something to do with the murders.

A few days later, on August 8th, Mayor John Coughlin would echo Harrington’s observation on Lizzie’s demeanor when he told a reporter for the Boston Post, “This girl is not at all emotional. Her nature is not an excitable one. Her manner is cold, at times absolutely frigid. She does not say what she feels. She does not express what she thinks. We know nothing.” This theme carried on into the trial, with District Attorney Hosea Knowlton referring to Lizzie’s “icy demeanor” and “stoical nerve.”

While the authorities would remark much upon Lizzie’s puzzling-to-them demeanor after the murders, those who knew her beforehand took the trouble to point out to reporters that her unexcitable manner was consistent with the Lizzie they knew. Mrs. Susan Handy told the Fall River Evening News on August 10th, “Some have tried to make much ado about Lizzie’s remarkable composure. This is her chief characteristic.” Likewise, “Her conduct since the murders has been just what anyone who knew her would expect,” said Lizzie’s staunch supporter, Mrs. Mary Brigham, to the Boston Post on August 20th. Lizzie, she added, “was a girl of very even temper. She never became excited.”

On August 15th, the circle of church friends Lizzie would have soon joined in Marion at a vacation home had the murders not happened, also spoke about Lizzie’s calm demeanor in the face of stress to The Boston Globe. “A great deal is said about her coolness now. That’s exactly like her.” The friend went on to describe an accident with a dumbwaiter filled with dishes that had fallen onto Lizzie’s arms, badly crushing them. “Instead of screaming or fainting or doing anything that any other woman but Lizzie Borden would done, she merely said in a low voice, ‘Will someone come here?’

A “stiff gaze” is also sometimes a feature of flat affect. Victoria Lincoln, who said she often saw Lizzie as a child, went on about her eyes, saying they were “strangely expressionless.” Meanwhile, Agnes DeMille quoted Eva Kelly Betz, the daughter of Lizzie’s next-door neighbor, Dr. Kelly. “I saw Lizzie a few times when I was young. She had dreadful eyes, colorless and soul-less,” adding that Lizzie “was given to staring.”

It should be made clear that “flat affect in autism is not the same as lacking emotions,” said Jeremy Brown. “While autistic individuals may struggle to show emotions due to flat affect, they can still feel emotions very deeply.” In fact, because of a phenomenon called “masking,” in which an autistic person tries hard to be perceived as “normal,” autistic people may actually be experiencing great extremes of unsuspected emotion.

Literalness in Comprehension and Speaking

In a 2023 paper published in The Review of Philosophy and Psychology, the authors begin with the observation that autistic people “tend to prefer literal interpretations of words and utterances. This literalist bias seems to be fairly specific to autism.” The authors go on to say that this tendency toward literalness means autistic people sometimes fail to interpret “implicit meaning, from indirect speech to figurative language, irony, and sarcasm.”

“Many autistic people respond to the exact question that was asked, rather than the question that was intended,” writes autism expert, Livia Farkas. “When asked ‘Do you have a sibling?”, the answer from the autistic person is probably going to be is a simple ‘yes,’ and no more than that … The neurotypical expectation that you’d volunteer additional information (“Yes, I have a brother, he’s three years older, he lives in Manchester”) is an unspoken social convention layered on top of the literal question. The autistic response is precise—it answers exactly what was asked.” Such precision in language, says Farkas, is a “core feature” of autism.

For a prime example of how Lizzie Borden displayed this trait, one only has to read her inquest testimony. Cara Robertson put it well when she said, “Lizzie’s testimony was very odd, she didn’t have a clear story. She answered Knowlton’s questions in the exact language they were asked, didn’t elaborate even in instances where it would have been exculpatory for her.”

Farkas explains that an autistic person can get stuck on questions that include vague terms like ‘often’ that don’t contain enough information to allow them to form an accurate answer. “Neurotypical respondents tend to approximate, going with a gut feeling about what ‘often’ probably means. Autistic respondents are more likely to get stuck on the ambiguity, give an overly cautious answer, or interpret the question more narrowly than intended.” This phenomenon describes Lizzie’s answers to the questions put to her at the inquest in a nutshell.

And Lizzie’s remark to Officer John Fleet that Abby Borden was not her mother but her stepmother, a remark that immediately struck him as suspiciously callous under the circumstances? That was also a precise distinction to a literal mind.

Social Avoidance

In an article for Autism Speaks, neuroscientist Dr. Katherine Stavropoulos observed that people with autism “tend to be less socially communicative than others” and “many of them show little interest in initiating conversations.” They may also “fail to respond to social overtures from others.”

While neurotypical people are often rewarded with a dopamine surge from social interaction, this isn’t always the case for people with autism—who likely experience communication challenges and sensory overload during conversations. Discomfort in social settings means that making small talk can be not only awkward but even painful, and social interaction is often experienced as effortful and energy-draining. (There are, of course, plenty of people with autism spectrum disorder who swing the opposite direction, and because of their difficulty reading social cues can present as chatty in the extreme.)

More typically, however, autistic people tend not only to avoid what seems to them to be unnecessary conversation but may also find themselves “shutting down” in social settings. Lizzie told Alice Russell that while sitting with her friends at Marion the Saturday before the murders that she had been very quiet, and her friends asked her, “Lizzie, why don’t you talk?” Autistic people who are overwhelmed or made anxious by social expectations may also feel the need to withdraw from people for a time to “recharge.”

Much has been made of the fact that Lizzie didn’t say hello to her uncle, John Morse, when he arrived for a visit to the Borden house the day before the murders. She didn’t leave her room to come down to greet him when he first came through the door (even though she said she heard his voice), and she didn’t say hello when she came home that evening while walking past him (a few yards away at most) on the way up to her room. This strikes many as not only as odd, but also rude. Not only did Lizzie fail to speak to her uncle, said Cara Robertson, she “also failed to ask about [him]. It seemed unfathomable that she should display a complete dearth of curiosity about the uncle in the bedroom next to hers, a point Knowlton specifically pursued.” Agnes DeMille also found this lack of acknowledgement “exceptional,” adding, “A niece who will not say hello, will not sit with the family or guests, passes unseen on the stairs, moves like a foreboding behind closed doors, yet always remains nearby, must certainly have caused him uneasiness.” (Morse did not say on the stand that it caused him any uneasiness, or even that he found it odd; but then, more than a few have commented that John Morse was himself “odd,” too).

We find other mentions of this autistic-style social avoidance in newspaper accounts in the weeks after the murders by reporters who interviewed anyone they could find who knew Lizzie. Mrs. Ella Cluny, a distant cousin of the Bordens who said she had spent time staying at the Borden house, told The Fall River Daily Herald, “There were times whereby Lizzie would not speak to members of the family who were visiting … She would act as though she did not see them and go right through rooms where they were without speaking a word to them … A great many members of the family had the same experience.” Mrs. Cluny went on to clarify that during these periods of withdrawal, “She wouldn’t get excited and hysterical. She just seemed to have spells of moping and sulking, and I call it her condition.”

If Lizzie’s “condition” was autism, then the “spells” that others perceived as sullenness or sulking were likely just an overstimulated Lizzie needing some time alone to recover from too much draining social interaction.

Rigid Thinking

“Characterizations of autism include multiple references to rigid or inflexible features,” says a 2023 paper in Frontiers of Psychiatry, before listing “different facets of this phenomenon … such as fixed interests, insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, black-and-white mentality, intolerance of uncertainty, ritualized patterns of verbal and non-verbal behavior, literalism, and discomfort with change.”

We can see signs of Lizzie’s rigid thinking throughout the case against her, in ways big and small. She was clearly a creature of habit, with Bridget saying Lizzie “never drank more than one cup of coffee,” and Lizzie saying, “I never ate breakfast.” Autistics are also known to repeatedly wear the same type of clothing, and Lizzie had a preference for wearing blue. Sticking to habit in regard to clothing could have played a part in her decision to burn the Bedford Cord. If she always disposed of dresses by burning them, then she might have decided to go ahead and burn that dress even when it should have been apparent, as it was to Alice Russell, that it was the worst possible time to do such a thing.

Lizzie was known to reliably stick to her word (some might say rigidly), or so said her friends in Marion. They pointed out that she could have joined the vacationing group earlier but didn’t, because she felt bound to her duty as secretary and treasurer to the Christian Endeavor Society for their “roll call” scheduled Sunday. “I felt I must be there and attend to that part of the business,” she said at the inquest.

We also see signs of rigid thinking in the way Lizzie seemed to hold grudges against those she deemed had wronged her. She held a grudge against Abby for whatever “two-faced” kind of deceit she perceived from Abby over Abby’s ability to persuade her father to transfer property to her. She also apparently lumped Abby’s half-sister, Sarah Whitehead, into this transgression, with Mrs. Whitehead saying that Lizzie refused to “recognize her on the street.” Even with her own sister, Emma, Lizzie showed herself inflexible; once the Borden sisters parted ways, thirteen years after the murders, they apparently never spoke again.

We especially see the result of rigid thinking and adherence to routine in Lizzie’s decision to remain in Fall River after the verdict. Even when it became clear that she was being socially shunned and would have presumably had an easier life in a new place where she was not so well known, she chose to stay in the place that was familiar.

Difficulty Forming Close Relationships

Difficulty forming relationships, whether romantic or not, is a hallmark of autism. There are many reasons why social interactions are baffling for autistic individuals, including different styles of communication, an inability to accurately read social cues, and greater social anxiety. When faced with such challenges, autistic people often struggle to hold relationships together, and they often have only one or two close friends with whom they feel safe to be themselves with. (Alice Russell would appear to have been one such friend to Lizzie.)

According to a story about Lizzie’s life that appeared in The Boston Herald, Lizzie struggled to form friendships even in her school days. “As a child, Lizzie was of a very sensitive nature, inclined to be non-communicative with new acquaintances, and this characteristic has tenaciously clung to her all through life, and has been erroneously interpreted … An unusual circumstance is that of her practically having no choice of friends until she attained womanhood … Her school days were perhaps unlike most girls in this lack of affiliation with her fellow pupils … She thought people were not favorably disposed toward her and that she made poor impression.” Perhaps it was because of such social difficulties that Lizzie left high school early and did not graduate.

It was not until later in adulthood, five years before the murders, said the article, on joining the Central Congregational Church, that Lizzie found a community of people who presumably accepted her quirks, and appreciated her for what she had to offer, that she began to come out of her shell. “When she was thoroughly understood, when the ‘obnoxiously retiring manner was dissipated’ and the responsive nature of the girl came to view, she became at once popular and then came the acquisition of the friends who today sound her praises.”

Yet, despite finding her stride within a church community, Lizzie Borden famously remained unmarried. She was an attractive woman, with a reputation for working hard for volunteer causes, and she had a rich father to boot; suitors would have expected to marry an eventual heiress. Yet, as far as we know, Lizzie Borden never had a serious romantic relationship. Some assume that stern, controlling Andrew Borden repelled any potential suitors from seeking her hand; others speculate she may have declined to marry because she was not attracted to men (see Lesbian Theory).

But if Lizzie was autistic, then we don’t have to speculate on other reasons. Today, according to statistics provided by Key Autism Services, people with autism marry at much lower rates than neurotypical individuals. “While about 50% of neurotypical adults enter marriage, only approximately 5% to 9% of autistic adults are married.” These are, of course, modern numbers, but it is almost certainly true that autistic people in 1892, who were likely to be pronounced by others as “odd” and “peculiar” just as Lizzie was, were less likely to be married.

Autistic people are known to successfully maintain a different kind of relationship, however, and that is a relationship with animals. In a paper for the Autism Research Institute, Gray Atherton Ph.D. writes that “research shows that autistic people prefer interactions with animals over humans.” Atherton believes this could be “because animals give much more direct social cues than humans—as there are no contradictory social signals to puzzle together (i.e., contradicting words and facial expressions); animal behavior is more straightforward to interpret.” He also adds that “autistic people use relationships with pets to compensate for social avoidance experienced as a result of social difficulties.”

While we don’t know of any pets in the Borden household while Andrew and Abby were still alive, it is well known that Lizzie doted on animals in her life at Maplecroft, the home she moved to after the jury verdict that set her free. Not only did she own dogs, she had a special seat built in her car for them. She also set out food in her yard for birds and squirrels. And of course, she was a founding benefactor of the Animal Rescue League of Fall River, leaving the organization $30,000, plus stocks, on her death. “I have been fond of animals, and their need is great and there are so few to care for them,” she said.  

Catastrophizing

“Many autistic people find that their brain goes straight to worst case scenario in a variety of situations,” says the National Autistic Society of the UK. Thanks to a tendency toward black-and-white thinking, autistic people have trouble finding the middle ground between minor hiccups and total disaster. In other words, they are prone to catastrophizing and often live in expectation of the worst-case scenario befalling them.

We can see this most clearly in Lizzie’s visit to Alice Russell the night before the murders when, after worrying that a recent vomiting illness meant her family had been poisoned, she spoke darkly of her father’s enemies and predicted doom was about to fall on her house. “I feel I should sleep with one eye open for fear they are going burn the house down over our heads.” (In this case, Lizzie’s fears were not farfetched, for disaster did strike the very next morning.)

We see glimpses of Lizzie’s bent toward pessimism in other places. Augusta Tripp said at the inquest that her sister, Carrie Pool, had once told her that Lizzie said she worried her father might not leave her anything in his will. Lizzie also told friends in letters from prison that she had no hope of ever being free again. While observers might not be able to detect the turmoil that an autistic person is feeling, beneath their flat affect people with autism are more likely than neurotypical people to fixate on negative or distressing thoughts.

Slowness of Movement

Autistics often have demonstrably slower processing speeds, in both cognitive thinking and in their physical motor skills. Reddit boards reveal numerous autistic people talking about their awareness of moving slowly, and how often they have heard people tell them they are “slow as molasses.” One can also find plentiful “advice” articles for family members of autistic people on how to work with their slowness. This symptom of autism is not as well-known as some of the others listed above, but if Lizzie was autistic, it could explain several otherwise inexplicable comments made about her by witnesses.

Bridget testified that when she overheard Lizzie talking to her father in the dining room on his return home, she “spoke slowly.” When asked if Lizzie spoke particularly slowly that day, Bridget said, no, it was just her normal slow way of speaking. Hyman Lubinsky, while testifying the he saw a woman in a dark dress walk from the Borden barn to the side door, observed that she had been walking “very slowly.” An entry in the Jennings Journals made by Arthur Phillips, says that Mrs. Phoebe Bowen said, “Lizzie was slow & deliberate, her ironing hakfs [handkerchiefs] (her nice ones) would have taken a long time.” Even Lizzie herself acknowledged her slowness when she told Knowlton at the inquest that it took her a long while to look for sinker material because “I can’t do anything in a minute.”

How Autism May Have Triggered Police Bias Against Lizzie

When police officers showed up in the minutes after Lizzie raised the alarm about the murders, there is no doubt that these officers were immediately offput by Lizzie’s cool demeanor. Her flat affect was so contrary to the kind of emotional response they expected that they immediately placed her under suspicion for the killings.

Research in how autism impacts the relationship between suspect and police published in a 2016 edition of Forensic Scholar Today, observed that “The emotional deficits of ASD can be misinterpreted as a lack of remorse or empathy. This can translate to perceptions of general indifference during police interviews and court testimony. Further, emotional dysregulation can result in over—or under—reactions to common life events.”

Additionally, because people with autism are more easily overwhelmed by overstimulation and stress, they can lack the psychological resources to withstand the same level of pressure and distress as neurotypical individuals. This makes them more likely to fold when undergoing accusatorial police interrogations, such as offering false confessions or deciding to tell the interrogator what he wants to hear in hope that it will put an end to the interrogation.

Autism could thus explain a lot about the rush to judgment against Lizzie. If we add the impact of traumatic shock to the challenges she would have faced processing events through a neurodivergent brain, it wouldn’t be all that surprising she was unable to answer the questions put to her by both police and the district attorney in a way that seemed coherent to them. One cannot blame her for difficulties outside her control; nor can one blame police for not understanding why she may have been experiencing such communication troubles.

Of course, autism does not preclude Lizzie from being the murderer of her father and stepmother. Some high-needs autistic children experience poor impulse control and can explode in rage, the famous “autistic meltdown.” But such explosions are not nearly as common in low support needs adults who practice “masking” a lot. Furthermore, there is no recognized correlation between autism and violence; in fact, according to a research published in 2016 in The Journal of Psychology, “rather than being more likely to engage in offending or violent behavior, individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may actually have an increased risk of being the victim rather than the perpetrator of violence.”

But then, the prosecution never suggested that Lizzie suddenly snapped in an impulsive fit of rage; on the contrary, they suggested she had been shopping for poison weeks before the murders, which meant a long period of premeditation. So, if Lizzie did have autism, it almost certainly didn’t lead her to kill; however, it almost certainly made others more prone to see her as guilty, whether she did it or not.

Author’s Take

I still remember the experience I had years ago, reading Lizzie’s inquest testimony—the stretch on iron sinkers to be exact—and noticing how literally she was answering the questions put to her. That’s when it hit me: “Oh!  She was autistic!” I have not doubted it since; in fact, the more research I do on the case, and the more observations I come across about Lizzie, the more convinced I am that Lizzie Borden would today be diagnosed with ASD.

This seems an overly bold declaration, even to me. I usually roll my eyes at those who attempt to retroactively diagnose Lizzie with this condition or that. I thought Victoria Lincoln made herself ridiculous with her certainty that Lizzie suffered from epilepsy—based only on her gut feeling and some flipping through medical texts. I really don’t want to be the next Victoria Lincoln, spouting certainty over something I know nothing about. As it turns out, though, autism is something I do know about—a great deal, in fact.

I have lived with autistic people for literally my entire life. My father was autistic, and I grew up confused about why he was so blank-faced and why he had so little to say to me. My ex-husband was autistic (they say we are drawn to mates like our parents), and for years I tried in vain to create a sense of shared intimacy with someone who, although a very nice and reliable person, had no idea what his own emotions were, let alone how to express them. My oldest child was long ago diagnosed as autistic, and she still lives with me far into adulthood, as she struggles to navigate a bewildering-to-her neurotypical world. Her willingness to articulate how her mind works has been especially illuminating. But even if I didn’t have her helpful explanations, or I couldn’t draw from my own reading on the topic to understand loved ones better, I would still know that Lizzie Borden was autistic.

I would know because the ways in which she is said to be strange are such ordinary parts of my life that it’s strange to me when others remark on it. Lizzie didn’t say hello to Uncle John when she came into the house? My autistic father and my autistic child both lived in the same house for two years, passing within a few feet every day, and yet they would go weeks without saying a single word to each other. I frequently have to defend my autistic family members when asked by others why they act in ways deemed “odd” or “peculiar.” I have to explain that my child is not really being rude when she abruptly disappears into her room, nor is she “sulking” about anything, she simply needs space to gather herself after too much social interaction. I could go on and on, offering a dozen more examples of the way certain things I’ve read about Lizzie remind me exactly of what it’s like to live with an autistic person.

Whether or not an autism expert ever weighs in on the possibility that Lizzie was autistic, it’s clear to me that autism might explain a great deal about how police reacted to her, and how she reacted to them, and how quickly she became their prime suspect. Of course, even if a hundred autism experts diagnosed that she was autistic, it wouldn’t make any of the perceived evidence against her disappear. (The one exception might be that her inquest testimony would appear less damning.) Autistic or not, Lizzie could still have committed the murders; in fact, autism could even explain certain mysteries, such as why she may have been such a bad liar (people with autism are famously unable to lie well), or why she was able to appear so calm to a window-washing Bridget while allegedly in the midst of brutally butchering two people.

Still, I think it matters to put forth this theory as part of my effort here to explore all aspects of the case against Lizzie. Over the decades, hundreds (thousands?) of trees have fallen to make paper for the many efforts to understand and explain the enigmatic Lizzie Borden. For most of those decades we did not have a good understanding of autism or its prevalence, but we know far more now, and it’s undeniable that Lizzie displayed many features of autism. Why look back at the murders at all if we’re not willing to apply new knowledge and gain a better understanding of the elements that factored into the investigation of those murders? From where I sit, I don’t think it’s possible to fully understand the case, and the rush to judgment against Lizzie, without at least considering the possibility that Lizzie Borden was autistic.