Fascination

The Borden Murders of 1892 are considered America’s first ever true crime obsession, a shocking story that exploded beyond the pages of local newspapers to captivate readers nationwide thanks to the newly established AP Wire Service sending reports to all corners of the country. The case has remained an obsession for many ever since. But why? Out of the many hundreds of murders that have made headlines over the decades before dropping away into obscurity, why have the Borden murders remained so tenacious in our cultural imagination?

One reason the murders are charged with such “voyeuristic magnetism,” said true crime author M. William Phelps, is because they allow us to explore our fascination with the darkness of humanity from the safe remove of time and distance. Indeed, the case does present us with potent symbols and archetypes that pull at us and may serve a unique psychological purpose for each of us. Choreographer Agnes DeMille, who created the ballet Fall River Legend in 1948, described the “gruesome story on which I grew to be fixed” as leading her into a “search for why, a search for an understanding of the murderer, and eventually, as I got deeper and deeper into the work, a search for me, and my relation to the crime.”

Yet, beyond its uncanny psychological draw, there are a number of specific factors that make the case—and the enigmatic woman at the center of it—so enduring in American culture, and so perpetually affixing to the minds of true crime aficionados. Other cases might offer two or three or four of these elements, but no other case boasts such a large collection of factors to hook us.

The case been with us all of our lives; Lizzie is embedded in American culture

The murders are still unsolved

While Lizzie Borden is most often considered guilty of the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother, at least in popular culture, she was actually acquitted by a jury (for good reasons). No one else was ever suspected, let alone charged, so the crime has never been solved, and, despite an industry of media products putting forth plentiful theories, it continues to resist all attempts to definitively solve it. An unsolved crime creates an itch to learn enough to try to get to the bottom of it. However, as any Borden buff can tell you, one can spend weeks, months, years, reading every transcript, source document, and book analyzing the crime, and never quite come up with a foolproof theory that isn’t belied by other evidence that doesn’t quite fit. Yet, somehow, we cannot stop the urge to delve deeper.

The murders were shockingly brutal and grotesque

The Borden murders stunned Fall River with their unprecedented savagery. Writing about the mutilated bodies in Vice, Tori Telfer noted that “one onlooker compared Abby’s head to a ‘badly dressed steak.’ Meanwhile, Andrew’s face was so obliterated into bloody pulp, with a hanging eyeball cut in half, that witnesses who viewed him in the immediate aftermath said he was unrecognizable. Only extreme malevolence could have turned human flesh into the ruined remains seen in autopsy photos. Encountering such relentless violence, we are left haunted by the age-old question: How can one human being do such a foul deed to another?

The murder weapon was an axe or hatchet

Axe murder is a particularly evocative method of murder. A common instrument lying around most households in 1892 for the chopping of wood, the axe’s sharp blade, so helpful for mundane tasks, could quickly be turned to deadly use, and transformed a meek Sunday School teacher into a ruthless killer. In her book, Whack Job, A History of Axe Murder, Rachel McCarthy James wrote that it’s not necessarily “the passion that makes this murder toll as strong and clear as the Fall River city-hall clock throughout American folklore. It’s the puzzle,” in which the axes and hatchets found in the Borden cellar were “shuffled and tested and studied for centuries, slotted into one theory after another like a children’s shape-shifting game. All found wanting, none satisfying the bloody riddle.” Indeed, the weapon that felled the Bordens was never connected to Lizzie’s hand by the evidence, yet she is rarely depicted anywhere in popular culture without a mighty blade in her hand. Agnes De Mille described the axe as Lizzie’s symbolic “lover,” and put it center stage in her choreography. “Lizzie makes love to it with tenderness and horror. It seems to possess her.” The evocative axe continues to flash in our minds and to seize our attention.

The murders took place in broad daylight on a busy street

The accused was a Christian woman from a good family

In 1892, it was unusual for women to kill, even more unusual for a woman to kill in such a violent manner (poison was the more likely method). More unusual still was a woman perceived to be a shining example of Victorian womanhood and femininity—known for her church-going and frequent volunteer work—to be accused of murder. Plus, she was a Borden, a descendent of the town’s founding family, and the daughter of a man who had earned a sizeable fortune along with a powerful spot at the center of Fall River commerce. How could such an upstanding woman from such an upstanding family commit such a grisly and muscular crime? In the words of Victoria Lincoln in A Private Disgrace, “The case has always held its honest students spellbound, because the factual evidence of her sole opportunity … is so overwhelming, yet the bare idea of her guilt is so humanly incredible, so absurd.” The contradiction pulls us in, makes us want to know more, to understand.

The accused was put on trial for killing her parents

In a time when children were strictly brought up to “honor thy father and they mother,” as well as a time when female children were considered the literal property of their parents even into adulthood, parricide—the killing of one’s parents—was particularly horrific to contemplate. It created a specter of fear that no one was safe in their own homes, or safe from harm from their closest loved ones. Even now, the Borden murders cause a question to burn in the chest: What in the world could have made a seemingly dutiful daughter suddenly rise up against those who housed and fed her?

The cast of characters has it all

The Borden murders introduce us to a world of vivid characters in Fall River who seem straight out of a grim Victorian novel. There is, of course, Lizzie, the mysterious woman accused, who may or may not be a cold-blooded killer. There is Andrew, the frugal Yankee patriarch keeping control of his household, and Abby, the stepmother who fills her plate but ignores her stepdaughters. We have Emma, the stoic older sister who stands by her younger sibling despite evidence of her guilt, and the eccentric uncle (John Morse) who shows up to spend the night without a whit of luggage, and Bridget the hard-working maid who is afraid to go upstairs. There is also Alice Russell, the spinster best friend who turns on Lizzie in court, and Seabury Bowen, the kindly doctor across the street who gives her morphine to calm her nerves, and Reverend Buck, the loyal minister who escorts her to and from her jail cell. Add to this a handful of overwhelmed Irish cops, brilliant lawyers locked in battle, scrappy reporters digging up dirt, along with various scheming others (like a spying jail matron), and we have a profoundly compelling cast playing out the most perplexing domestic tragedy of the age.

The crime scene photos were groundbreaking—and mesmerizing

Lizzie Borden’s trial was the first sensationalized trial in the American press

Tabloid-style journalism (a.k.a. “yellow” journalism), which blurred the line between news and entertainment, was just starting to gain a foothold in the American press when Andrew and Abby Borden were found murdered. From the very first days of the investigation, newspapers from all over New England sent reporters to Fall River to track down whatever lurid detail about Lizzie and the killings they could dig up to get readers’ eyes on their pages. By the time the trial began, the most respected and well-known reporters in the country had won spots in the courtroom, while dozens of other workaday journalists were set up in outer buildings from which to dispatch their stories. Most journalists of the time did not hew to strict objectivity, but often made their opinions known within their narratives. Many newspapers thus fell into taking one side or another over Lizzie’s guilt, which fueled lively controversy and debate over the case from California to Maine, a debate that continues to this day.

The Victorian era with all its rules and repressions are a draw

Delving into the Borden murders takes us on a tour to a specific time and place that is at once quaint and familiar, but also exotic. This was an era when traveling was done only by foot, carriage or train, and live-in Irish maids did the heavy housecleaning, and a seamstress would come to stay for weeks to sew together the ladies’ dresses—“staying-in” morning dresses and “going-out” dresses to be worn with corsets and hats and gloves. Then there are all the curious domestic details, milk cans and ice delivered in the mornings, coal bins in the kitchen for the stove, kerosene lamps, slop pails, and wash basins (dear God, was that the only way they had to bathe themselves?). But even more interesting are the social norms we discover of a time when women could not vote, nor serve on juries, and, if of a certain class, were expected not to work but could (and should) devote themselves to church and charitable work. Meanwhile, unmarried women remained dependent on their fathers (or widowed mothers), while those of a different class toiled as servants or seamstresses or millworkers, earning low wages over long hours, in a social caste system that bred discontent (and apparently lethal rage). As Stanford legal historian Lawrence Friedman described it, news coverage of the Borden case “ripped aside a curtain that covered and concealed a kind of dry-rot, a concealed pathology, one which (arguably) was eating away at the pillars of respectable society.”

The pull of the Gothic, New England style

The first American horror stories originated with writers from New England in the Gothic tradition, writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who drew from Puritan history (witch trials, sin, fanaticism, isolation) and interwove classic Gothic themes like secrets, madness, and psychological dread. We are irresistibly drawn to scary stories, and the Borden murders give off the macabre vibe of the Gothic in spades:

There is even the hint of a family curse, with Andrew’s Uncle Lawdwick (a Gothic name if there ever was one) who had lived in the house next door to 92 Second Street, and whose mentally ill wife had, a few years before Lizzie was born, drowned her children in a cistern in the basement before cutting her own throat. All these elements pull us into the darkness of the Borden murders and hold us riveted.

We secretly thrill to Lizzie’s rage—and to her alleged revenge

There is a reason so many imagine Lizzie as “young” woman; despite her actual age of 32 at the time of the murders, she represents the oppression we have all felt, especially when younger, whether that oppression comes from the patriarchy or from our own parents. Borden scholar Eugene Hosey wrote, “At some point, we have all wanted the macabre legend to be true—morbid as it is for us to think with such a desire.” Lizzie, if she did indeed butcher her parents, resisted conforming; she didn’t just sit there and “take it,” she did something about it, just as we might wish we could do. Lizzie the legend is a rebel, an outlaw, and counterculture to her marrow: we want her to smash it all. (Probably why a heavy metal band named themselves after her.) Even Lizzie’s acquittal is somehow satisfying; she got away with it, she found freedom. The most compelling villains are always those you cannot bring yourself to hate, even if you are appalled at what they do. Lizzie is indeed an anti-heroine, and in nearly every story told about her she is guilty, yet she is also the protagonist we relate to, an innocent transformed by circumstances outside her control into a killer, like our own Victorian-era version of Breaking Bad.

Lizzie never publicly spoke about the crimes, creating a void to exploit

Once Lizzie was set free, she never once talked to reporters about the crimes, despite a clamor for interviews. She remained inscrutable from beginning to end, her thoughts and feelings about the murders an impenetrable mystery. Into that void of firsthand knowledge has spilled floods of conjecture and speculation. With her refusal to publicly define herself, Lizzie became malleable to whatever theory anyone wished to impose on her. And because theories about her have been quick to change with the times, this has given her and her story exceptional staying power. She can be a misunderstood innocent persecuted by police, or a feminist heroine chafing at the injustice of the times and throwing off the patriarchy. She can be an abuse survivor who finally puts an end to the abuse on her own terms. She can be a champagne-swilling party girl determined to get out from under her strict father’s thumb. She can be a closeted lesbian who needed to kill in order to be free to love. Or, she can be something entirely fantastical, a cheerful girl detective, a zombie hunter, or a murderous spirit who takes possession of sorority girls (all versions of Lizzie that have shown up in books, plays, or movies). With her decision to keep her life private, Lizzie Borden became a blank canvas on which we’ve been able to paint whatever depiction of her we wish, again and again, keeping interest in her fresh, alive and relevant, decade after decade.

New information and theories keep emerging

For the first half of the 20th century, accurate information about Lizzie and the Borden murders was hard to find, and new works on the case were confined to books that were released once every few decades. Both Edward Radin and Victoria Lincoln, who published their books about the murders in 1960s, described a difficult and prolonged process to get ahold of the court transcripts. But towards the end of the last century, as more information was unearthed, writers got busy and started churning out their own versions of Lizzie’s story, and new books, and new theories, became more frequent. Then came the arrival of the internet, giving the average person widespread access to source documents and allowing the Lizzie-obsessed to dig deeper and speculate harder. Meanwhile, the discovery of her attorney’s journals, and the occasional book, letter or item that grants new insight, offers the possibility, however faint, that with a close enough reading, the case might be solved. And who doesn’t want to be the one to crack the most famous unsolved mystery in America?

The Borden Murder house still stands and welcomes visitors

The house once known as 92 Second Street still exists in Fall River as a combination museum and Bed and Breakfast. Anyone can walk in and take a tour or make a reservation and sleep in the same room Lizzie slept in, or the same room Abby was killed in. We can walk in Andrew’s footsteps as he headed into the sitting room for his nap, lie down on the floor where Abby bled into the carpet, sit in the same room where Lizzie presumably hatched her plan, or step down into the cellar where police officers found the handleless hatchet. This opportunity brings the Bordens back to vivid life for visitors who make the effort to travel there, and for those who view the numerous online videos shot there.

Rumors of ghosts keep the paranormal industry churning out content

The growth of the internet and its ability to cater to niche audiences put more genuine information about the murders and Lizzie’s trial at our fingertips, while at the same time, it opened the door for more creative ways of getting information of a more incorporeal sort. Of course, psychics and mediums were following the murders from the very first days, with both the police chief and the district attorney prosecuting the case receiving numerous letters from those who said they’d “received” messages from the spirit world about the guilty party. No doubt many a séance has been held over the years in the effort to solve what has heretofore been unsolvable. But in the past few decades those efforts have ramped up considerably, with ghost-hunting and haunted tours now a multi-million dollar industry. This industry includes a proliferation of podcasts and videos that invite viewers to watch their experiments in conversing with the dead. Some of the most visited YouTube videos about Lizzie Borden are those that feature ghosthunters or psychics trying to speak with her spirit, or the spirits of those who died in her infamous house. Interestingly, most of the videos that claim to show contact with Lizzie’s spirit have her denying she was the killer. According to the ghostly energy detected in the house, it is usually someone else who did the dark deeds. (Uncle John is a big favorite.) Which goes to show the debate between guilt and innocence goes on even in the afterworld. Either way, the paranormal industry keeps Lizzie’s legend alive and increasingly known to newer generations.

An enthusiastic subculture around Lizzie stirs further interest

I once came across a snippet asserting that even while Lizzie Borden was still alive, a small group would write letters to newspaper editors to defend her innocence. I can’t verify whether that’s true, but I do know that in the decades since, organizations have sprung up here and there, with names like “The Society of the Friends of Lizzie Borden” and “International Lizzie Borden Society,” with a mission to discuss Lizzie and the case that made her famous. Agnes de Mille described an informal group that helped her research the Borden murders in her 1968 book Dance of Death, and she claimed the group included two Supreme Court justices, lawyers, and cultural critics. The impulse to gather and discuss the case with like-minded others has persisted, with the 1992 centennial anniversary of the murders giving a new jolt of energy to such efforts. After a national conference centered on “Borden Studies” that year, a group of Borden buffs gathered in Fall River on and off for the next 20 plus years to take part in annual re-enactments at the Borden House, to work on mutual research projects, and to trade information and theories in an online forum (which is still active at lizzieandrewborden.com). From this ever expanding-and-contracting group came a newsletter, The Lizzie Borden Quarterly, which was published for about ten years, followed by a magazine called The Hatchet, which was published for another ten (back issues are online, also at lizzieandrewborden.com). As Shelley Dziedzic, one of the more prolific group members, wrote in The Hatchet about her introduction to Lizzie Borden world, “It was then that the feeling, which many of us know so well, struck like a thunderbolt: Bordenitis—a full-fledged Lizzie-Tizzie—a condition for which there is, thankfully, no cure.” This, of course, could describe most of us who get swept up into a Borden obsession, and it is the work and careful thought of those who make up this fascinating subculture, both past and present, that has, as much any other factor on this list, kept the case alive and well these many decades later.