Epilepsy Theory

There is, of course, no evidence that Lizzie suffered from epilepsy, and even Lincoln admits that “a firm diagnosis of epilepsy of the temporal lobe can be made only by running an electroencephalogram.” However, because she had apparently heard all her life that Lizzie had suffered from “peculiar spells,” she convinced herself that Lizzie suffered from seizures.

I came to this conclusion about Lizzie’s ailment, let me state at once, as someone who has a strong scientific bias, combined with a healthy skepticism, for the murder of Abby Borden clearly was no impulse of an irrational moment … I was fully aware of the many supposed inconsistencies in her behavior, and I was plagued by many questions—unanswered and apparently unanswerable questions. No, I did not seek this “diagnosis,” but when through lucky chance I happened to stumble across it, all at once the jumbled pieces fell into place, and at last I could make sense out of the events that culminated in Lizzie’s taking up the axe … I did extensive reading; I consulted with authorities and ended up convinced: Lizzie Borden did not kill her parents because she had an ambulatory seizure of temporal epilepsy. But all evidence indicates that she killed her stepmother during one.

Lincoln then spends several pages making her argument that “psychomotor epilepsy,” a condition in which a person can still move with “automatic action” that she will then forget in a kind of “brownout,” would best explain how Lizzie’s hatred of her stepmother led to a burst of violence uncharacteristic of the real Lizzie. Only such a seizure could account for why Lizzie would undertake something so irrational as to “commit murder by broad daylight in mid-morning—a time when it was least likely to go undetected.” Murder by hatchet, concluded Lincoln, “would not have occurred to Lizzie in full, waking possession of her faculties … It was too direct.” But a Lizzie in the midst of a seizure could more easily do it.

In Lincoln’s mind, a seizure that made Lizzie insensible to herself was the only explanation for the way Lizzie killed her parents. Committing murder during a seizure was very rare, she conceded. She could only come up with two known examples, and yet she concluded that in Lizzie’s case it “tidily parallels many medical case histories.” She also noted that Lizzie’s alleged seizures “came only during the menstrual period, and then only three or four times a year,” and, of course, “Lizzie was going through a menstrual period on the morning of the murders: this is a matter of court records.”

Yes, Lizzie was menstruating, or had finished her cycle, on the morning of the murders, but there is nothing anywhere, in any court record, in any newspaper article, in any statement made by anyone connected to the case, or in any notes made by prosecution or defense, that suggested Lizzie suffered at any time in her life from any kind of seizures, ambulatory or otherwise. Nor is there any evidence of Lincoln’s claim that all of Fall River knew that Lizzie suffered from “peculiar spells.” Lizzie was known to exhibit to her family what her distant cousin, Mrs. Ella Cluny, called “sulkiness” in which she would not want to speak to anyone and would withdraw into her room. But it would be a far stretch to say social avoidance was a symptom of seizures.

If any medical expert ever came forward at the time her book appeared to endorse her theory is unknown but seems doubtful. Certainly, no medical expert in more recent decades has ever substantiated such a claim. But what a few psychologists have considered is that what struck Lincoln as evidence of a seizure could actually have been evidence of some kind of “dissociative state,” the kind described by certain people who have killed someone and but later could not remember committing the crime.

The study of dissociative states is not in the realm of criminal psychology but is understood in the context of surviving severe trauma. Disassociation is usually seen in those who, as children, learned to turn off their conscious minds as a self-defense mechanism in the face of horrific abuse. This kind of psychological phenomenon seems an interesting possibility to those trying to puzzle through how a highly regarded “gentlewoman” like Lizzie could have committed such heinous crimes. However, as far as we know, Lizzie did not experience the type of severe childhood traumas known to trigger disassociation, not unless those who have put forward an incest theory are correct. But, of course, there is no evidence for that either.

What is perhaps most interesting is how hard people are willing to work to come up with exotic theories to explain what Lincoln called her “unanswered and unanswerable questions” about the murders; namely, that it made no sense for Lizzie—a woman with no credible motive, a woman known for kindness and good works—to have committed them. Those in the guilty camp could save themselves a lot of work trying to justify it if they simply considered that perhaps she didn’t do it.