Dr. Handy’s Wild-Eyed Man

Q: Where was he in reference to the Borden house?

A: As near as I can tell, opposite a space between the Kelly house and Mr. Wades’ store.

Q: What, if anything, attracted your attention to him?

A: In the first place, he was a very pale individual, paler than common … he was acting strangely …

Q: In consequence of his appearance, did you do anything?

A: I turned in my carriage to watch him as I drove, to look at him.

Q: Can you describe this man any more than you have?

A: He was dressed in a light suit of clothes … well dressed—collar and necktie.”

Handy later noted that that the pale man was “walking very slowly, scarcely moving,” and that “he seemed to be either agitated or extremely weak, or confused, something of the kind,” although he didn’t believe the man to be intoxicated. Handy didn’t know him, but added, “I have a faint idea that I had seen him on Second Street some days before.”

Months before the trial, Dr. Handy had conveyed more recently remembered details to reporters, telling a Boston Post reporter that the man’s paleness struck him as “perfectly white, that color with some men who have been closely confined.” He marked the “strangeness” on the man’s face, and said the man was so “singular” that he could “put this man among a hundred and I’ll pick him out.” His features, he added, were what “might be called of a Spanish cast. He was not stocky, though he was not tall, and was perhaps 5’4” in height. He wore a small moustache. I should say, though I am not sure of it, that his hair and moustache were black. His clothes were light in color, but I cannot say whether of a pepper and salt variety or not.”

In the hours after hearing about the murders, Dr. Handy became convinced this stranger was acting so oddly, so nervously, and lingering near the Borden House for such an unusual amount of time that it was not unreasonable to wonder if he had something to do with the murders. Handy was not shy about sharing this opinion, eventually showing up at the police station to tell them what he saw, as well as being free with his opinion to newspaper reporters. These reporters, desperate for any news to report as they waited for police to make an arrest, ran with the story, although a few did not seem to think it overly significant. According to Edward Radin, The Fall River Globe, which was already calling for Lizzie’s arrest, “poked fun at the clue and although Dr. Handy said the man had kept his head down and he never saw his eyes, it dubbed the stranger: Dr. Handy’s Wild-Eyed Man.” That particular moniker stuck, making this stranger appear more a reason for entertainment than legitimate object of investigation. Certainly, that seems to be how the police approached the sighting at first, even though other reporters would not find their lack of serious consideration so amusing (more on that below).

Students of the case eventually learn that Handy may not have been the only one to see this man. First, in the Jennings Journals, we find that Lizzie’s lawyer had interviewed Thomas Bowles, an employee of the Bordens’ next door neighbor Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, who was washing a carriage in the Churchill yard the morning of murder.

“I was waiting for carriage [at] about 10:20 [and] saw Mr. Borden go in. I was standing there at Mrs. C’s gate. I saw a man by tree in front of Mister Borden’s house standing still, looking towards house, about 10:35, after Mr. Borden had gone in I saw him come up. He passed me at Mrs. C’s gate, then he looked across the street and walked off, as far as Wade’s store. I saw Dr. Handy go by “fast” while the man was walking away.”

Bowles’ sense of the time he witnessed these events was clearly a bit off; numerous other witnesses had seen Andrew Borden downtown as late as 10:35, and by Bridget’s recollection Andrew returned home somewhere between 10:40 and 10:45. (Many witnesses merely “guessed” at the time of events they saw the morning of the murder and there was plenty of conflicting timekeeping.) But it is interesting that this man lingering in front of the Borden house, if it is the same man Dr. Handy saw, remained there quite a bit after Andrew had gone inside, walked north past the Borden’s gate as far as Mrs. Churchill’s gate, where Bowles said the man passed him, and where he would have been able to see the Borden’s side screen door, then turned around to walk south, which is the direction Handy saw him walking. All of his observed movements suggest the man was slowly pacing in front of the Borden house in the time gap between the murders.

Now, while many have wondered whether this man, acting so suspiciously as to draw the attention of Dr. Handy, and perhaps Bowles, could have been the actual killer, it’s doubtful he was. As Victoria Lincoln noted, the idea that this man “had twice got in and out of the house unnoticed, waiting outside from one murder to the next” was too unlikely to be believed. Which means the killer of the Bordens, if it wasn’t Lizzie, was almost certainly secreted inside the Borden house at that time, having already killed Abby, and was then waiting for Andrew’s return. Even Dr. Handy didn’t believe the man to have been the killer. In a witness statement recorded by Officer Phillip Harrington, the officer quotes Handy as saying, “Now, Mr. Harrington, I never told you I thought the man I saw committed the crime, did I? I never said the man I saw committed the crime, and I don’t think he did.”

However, as the man seemed to have been lingering in front of the house smack in the middle of the time the murderers were being committed inside, if an intruder had indeed killed the Bordens, this “wild-eyed man” may have seen something relevant that could have assisted police in a diligent search for an intruder  Or, he could conceivably have even known the intruder and, as George Robinson suggested in his closing, been serving as a “lookout” for the killer inside, and was thus an accomplice. That would at least explain the nervous demeanor that so caught Dr. Handy’s attention.

It is also interesting that this eye-catching man may have also caught the attention of yet a third witness, and this one a police officer no less.

Officer Hyde Spots a Stranger

As Dr. Handy’s story was first picking up steam in newspapers, a Boston Post reporter who, from his prolific output in the weeks after the murders was working hard to dig up any clue possible, filed a story that was printed on Monday August 8th, about what Officer Joseph Hyde had seen while walking his regular beat on the morning of the murders.

“I have learned tonight that a man, and a suspicious man, now was seen in front of the Borden House at 10:20 or little later Thursday morning. He stood on the walk before the house and the officer on that beat, who has not told the story until now, could not see his face. He saw at a passing glance that the man wore a finely checkered suit, a pepper and salt mixture the policeman thought. The officer thought nothing of it at the time. A little later her learned of the tragedy. Then he recalled the man he had seen standing before the house, apparently without any special object in his view. He describes the man as rather tall and slim built. A more detailed description he cannot give, for the stranger did not at that moment strike him as worthy of notice.”

It was not immediately obvious that this could have been the same man Dr. Handy saw, the descriptions were different—Hyde perceived a tall, slim man with a salt-and-pepper checkered suit, while Handy saw a “medium-sized” man in a light suit. However, by August 10th, the Boston Post reporter who first interviewed Hyde had heard of Dr. Handy’s story and made haste to interview him as well, and the reporter felt “the facts speak for themselves with startling emphasis.” Dr. Handy, said the reporter, had “read Officer Hyde’s statement and noticed that the slight description given by the officer tallied with what he noticed about the man he saw.” However, as the Post reporter also noted in disapproval that “the officer’s story has been regarded in some quarters as unimportant. It is surely of grave importance that any strange man was seen at the Borden door within a few minutes of the time at which the dark mysterious deed was done. Hyde’s statement becomes doubly significant in view of what Dr. Handy told me today.”

The next day, The New York Times was also reporting on these two sightings of a loiterer near the Borden House in the same time window and putting them together, concluding that “Late last evening the police began to put some credence in this rumor as it was said that a man answering this description was seen by Officer Hyde about the same time.”

Yet, despite this possible corroboration by Hyde, reporters began taking a different direction regarding the Dr. Handy’s man. They came to believe, most likely on the basis of what they were being told by talkative officers, that the man Dr. Handy saw was almost certainly a local drunk well known to the Fall River Police Department.

“Mike-the-Soldier”

When police reporter Edwin Porter of the Fall River Globe (a rabid anti-Lizzie paper), took up the story of Dr. Handy’s Wild-Eyed man, we find his opinion, later adapted for his book, Fall River River Tragedy, that “the chase” for the Wild-Eyed Man, purportedly undertaken by Officer William Medley and assisted by the later disgraced Detective McHenry, “was not a difficult one.” On August 11th, The Fall River Herald described where the chase led:

“He was Michael Graham, better known as Mike-the-Soldier … and for some days previous to Thursday he had been drinking feely … His physical condition, as a result of his excesses, was such as to render his countenance almost ghastly in color … The description of Graham corresponded in every particular with that given Office Hyde, who furnished more details as to the clothing of the man … His trousers were of a peculiar texture and hue and were rendered extremely noticeable on this account sufficient identification, but in all other particulars there was an unmistaken similarity, and the authorities arrived at once at the conclusion that the man was identical with the person described by Dr. Handy and the police officer. The explosion of this theory afforded much satisfaction to the authorities.”

Of course, just because the authorities were satisfied they had identified the “pale man,” that didn’t mean Dr. Handy was satisfied. He knew very well what a drunk suffering from a hangover looked like and that did not strike him as the problem with the agitated man he saw lingering in front of the Borden House. And not all newspaper reporters were satisfied by the quick assumption that Mike-the-Soldier was the man Dr. Handy had seen. The Boston Post reporter who first spoke to Officer Hyde reported his own opinion a few days later. After noting the widespread interest in the story of Dr. Handy’s pale man, he wrote:

“Two officers were at once dispatched to run the claim down. They did it to their own satisfaction if to that of nobody else. They report that one Michael Graham, a mill hand, who was recovering from an extended drunk, was on Second Street Thursday morning about 9:45. Michael Graham, it is said, was at that time on the very edge of a regular precipice of delirium tremors. His appearance was not at all reassuring. The police have found him and he acknowledged having been on the street at the time mentioned. He is about the height of the man seen by Dr. Handy. That was thought sufficient to dispose of Dr. Handy’s story. Regard it for a moment. Dr. Handy was the only man who could give a good description of the suspicious stranger. His office is within a block of police headquarters. He has stated without hesitation that he could pick that man out of a hundred and pick him out quickly. And yet he has not been confronted with Graham, in order that that he may settle the question once and for all, and has not even been consulted about the matter, which is obviously important.”

Nowhere in any story is it mentioned that the police asked Officer Hyde if Mike-the-Soldier was the man he himself saw in front of the Borden House. In fact, Hyde’s sighting of a suspicious stranger, while sometimes referred to again in the pages of the Post, is rarely mentioned in any other articles or official documents regarding the case. There is no preserved statement written by Hyde regarding what he saw while walking his beat that morning. He was not called at the inquest or preliminary hearing. He was called at the trial, but the only thing he was asked to speak on was Lizzie and Alice Russell’s benign trip to the cellar to empty a toilet pail into the water closet, a trip he witnessed through a cellar window on the night of the murders.

But while Hyde seems not to have been pushing to have the stranger he saw identified, the same could not be said of Dr. Handy, who was open with reporters that he didn’t believe Mike-the-Soldier was the man he saw. And with reporters pointing out the laziness of the police department’s approach to identifying this unnamed man, they eventually decided to take the sighting more seriously. In one of the few genuine examples of Fall River Police Department officers doing actual investigating into the possibility of an intruder committing the murders, the police asked Dr. Handy to accompany them to Boston to see if he could identify the strange man that he—and possibly Thomas Bowles and Officer Hyde—had seen lingering in front of the Borden house that morning.

Searching in Boston

A report written by Officer Phillip Harrington described going to speak to Dr. Handy on August 10th about the pale man he had described to police. Apparently, the police had received some kind of information on someone who matched the description—although Harrington does not say how or from what source—and they had a name and address for this man. Harrington’s statement continues:

“Went in search of Dr. Handy; found him at Chas. J. Holmes’ [husband of Lizzie’s good friend Marianna Holmes.] Asked him, would he accompany an officer to Boston to see a party whom the Boston police located, and who they thought resembled the person whom he saw. He said “well, I suppose I must go.” I said “No, there is nothing compulsory about the request.” He did not seem to like the idea of going, and said “it is a very warm night, and I have quite a number of cases on hand, from which I expect births, but then, (laughing) I suppose they are as apt to come during the day as well as night. Wait a moment and I’ll see.” He then went to another part of the house and talked with the Holmes family for a few minutes. He then returned to the parlor and said “Well, I’ll go. Who is going with me, is it you?” I told him I could not say. “Will the officer call at my house, will he come in a carriage, or will we go to the depot in the horse car”? I said I did not know, but whichever way, the officer would be there in time … After arriving in Boston, we called at Station 4, and learned something of, and the residence of the man we sought. We then went to Police Headquarters, and after transacting my business there, we retired.”

“In the morning (August 11th) we went again to Station 4, from whence a local officer accompanied us to No. 19 Oxford street, the home of Henrick Wood, the man wanted. Mr. Wood was not at home; he had gone to Lexington in the morning to see a friend who was building a house near a lot owned by him. From the lady who came to the door, we got a description of Mr. Wood. She also showed us a photograph of him. She handed it to me, and I immediately turned it over to the Doctor, who before he had it rightly in his hand, pronounced him not the person. There were three persons on the card, two men and a child. The child was in Mr. Wood’s arms. Owing to the position in which he sat, his face was very much shaded, which made it rather difficult of observation. This, together with the fact that Dr. Handy so readily pronounced him not the man, is, to my mind, very significant. His social relations with Miss Lizzie are very close. She was to spend her vacation at Dr. Handy’s cottage at Marion, with his daughter.”

Clearly, Officer Harrington was unimpressed by Handy’s quick dismissal of the photo of the man they spent the night in Boston to try to identify. He also seemed overtly suspicious of Handy’s connection to Lizzie, making it a point to emphasize his status as “friend of The New Bedford Evening Standard family.” Then again, Harrington was the first to openly declare his dislike and distrust of Lizzie only an hour or two after the murders, and once an idea is set in one’s mind, it usually stays lodged there. There was probably no hope for more detective-like curiosity from Harrington or, it would seem, any other officer working the case. When State Detective Seaver was asked what was being done about Dr. Handy’s man, the detective replied, “That clue is being worked for all it’s worth, and in my opinion it’s not worth much.” He then pointed out that Dr. Handy’s closeness to Lizzie made it suspect information in his mind. (For more on early police certainty that Lizzie was the culprit, see Rush to Judgment.)

With official doubt from police about Handy’s motive for relaying the story, along with the time-consuming and fruitless trip to Boston, on top of the rejection of their theory that it was Mike-the-Soldier that Dr. Handy had seen, police officers were clearly ready to abandon their search for the Wild-Eyed Man. Other than the defense harping on it at the trial, which helped plant a seed in the jury’s mind on the viability of the defense’s intruder theory, it did not often come up again in later discussions of the case—unless by authors who seemed to enjoy subtly mocking it.

Crime journalist Edmund Pearson, writing in 1937, was openly dismissive of Handy, primarily because Handy simply wouldn’t accept that Mike-the-Soldier was the man. “Similar delusions attend every notorious crime.” And, Victoria Lincoln, writing in 1968, expressed a similar sentiment. “Dr. Handy’s firm statement that his neat, pale young man bore no resemblance to Mike-the-Soldier was largely shrugged off, and many continued to laugh for years about Dr. Handy’s wild-eyed man. Since poor Dr. Handy had never said that the young man was wild-eyed, an apparent lunatic, or even drunk—indeed he had stressed the opposite—he remained for the rest of his days equally vexed by those who had mocked him and those who had accorded him overearnest faith.”

Author’s Take

Whether the man Dr. Handy saw in front of the Borden house had anything to do with the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden—whether as assassin himself or as lookout for the assassin inside—is unknown and will almost certainly never be known. The police never located him, and other than that single trip to Boston, it would appear they didn’t have a lot of interest in engaging in the work to do so. Being so quickly convinced that they already had the killer locked in a jail cell, why would they continue searching?

Yet I am with the reporter for the Boston Post, who seemed continually surprised and dismayed that the police failed to properly investigate this potential source of information that, if Lizzie was innocent, may have led to the real perpetrator of the crimes that sent the Bordens to early graves. In my mind, whether Lizzie was innocent or guilty, the police department’s incurious and inept investigative response to the killings has led us to be eternally unsure of the culprit, adding another layer of tragedy on top of tragedy.