Inquest: Conflicting Statements

Note: Lizzie’s complete inquest testimony is available for download at lizzieandrewborden.com.

By the time of Lizzie Borden’s trial, the inquest into the Borden murders 10 months earlier had become so freighted with legal controversy that the testimony she gave there was ruled inadmissible. But while the jury was not allowed to hear the only words she ever spoke on the murders under oath, the transcript of her version of events has long been available for students of the case to pore over and dissect. In 1967, Victoria Lincoln described going through Lizzie’s testimony as “unthinkably exciting,” calling it “a challenging puzzle, to be worked out with the puzzle lover’s stubborn joy.” She also described Lizzie’s words as “dynamite” that she believed exploded any possible notion of Lizzie’s innocence. Robert Sullivan, in his 1974 book, Goodbye Lizzie Borden, likewise called Lizzie’s testimony “unbelievably inconsistent and incredibly damaging.” These authors were not wrong; Lizzie’s own words seemed to incriminate her in the murders of her father and stepmother as little else could.

So far, so good; Lizzie answered these questions easily and coherently. Even when the subject moved to her relationship with Abby, Lizzie seemed clear and forthright about her past difficulty with Abby over the Whitehead property. She admitted that she and her stepmother were not the “dearest friends in the world,” but also claimed their recent relationship had been “very friendly” and one of “kindly feelings.” (For more on her relationship with Abby, see Motive: Hatred.) But something happened during the exchange about Abby; it is not easy to pinpoint exactly why the tone shifted to a more adversarial timbre, but it’s easy to find the moment when it happened. Knowlton had just asked her about Abby’s age, and Lizzie had replied she’d only just learned that Abby was 64; she had thought she was closer to Andrew’s age of almost 70. Knowlton then asked:

Q: Why did you leave off calling her mother?

A: Because I wanted to.

Q: Is that all the reason you have to give me?

A:  I have not any other answer.

Q: Can’t you give me any better reason than that?

A: I have not any reason to give except that I did not want to.

Q: In what respects were the relations between you and her that of mother and daughter, besides not calling her mother?

A: I don’t know that any of the relations were changed. I had never been to her as a mother in many things. I always went to my sister because she was older and had the care of me after my mother died.

Q: In what respects were the relations between you and her that of mother and daughter?

A: That is the same question you asked before. I can’t answer you any better now than I did before.

Q: You did not say before you could not answer, but that you declined to answer.

A: I declined to answer, because I do not know what to say.

Q: That is the only reason?

A: Yes sir.

Q: You called your father, father?

A: Always.

Q: Were your father and mother happily united?

A: Why, I don’t know but that they were.

Q: Why do you hesitate?

A: Because I don’t know but that they were, and I am telling the truth as nearly as I know it.

Q: Do you mean me to understand that they were happy entirely or not?

A: So far as I know they were.

Q: Why did you hesitate then?

A: Because I did not know how to answer you any better than what came into my mind. I was trying to think if I was telling it as I should, that’s all.

Q: Do you have any difficulty in telling it as you should; any difficulty in answering my questions?

A: Some of your questions I have difficulty answering, because I don’t know just how you mean them.

It would appear that when Knowlton asked Lizzie why she stopped calling Abby mother, he did not appreciate her curt answer of “because I wanted to,” and shifted into a more challenging style of questioning. This, in turn, seems to have made Lizzie draw back defensively. (This exchange is probably what Knowlton was referring to when he wrote Attorney General Pillsbury that, at the inquest, Lizzie had betrayed “traces of ill-feeling toward her stepmother,” which “made it bad for her” in his estimation of her guilt.)

A few questions later, when Knowlton asked Lizzie about any visits John Morse made to the house before his most recent return to the East, she was trying to remember the year, and said, “If you remember the year the river was frozen over, they went across, he was here that winter, some 14 years ago, was it not?” Knowlton then snapped, “I am not answering questions but asking them.”

From that point on, their exchange remained tense, with Knowlton retaining his challenging manner, and Lizzie offering terse answers to the questions put to her, with no elaboration or helpful details. They covered her memory of being home sick all day Wednesday, how she’d heard John Morse talking with her father downstairs and had closed her bedroom door because their voices “annoyed” her while she was trying to nap. She talked about going to Alice Russell’s the night before, and coming home, and how she locked the front door. She told him she didn’t say hello to her Uncle John Morse, first because she wasn’t feeling well, but also because she didn’t make it a habit to stop into the sitting room and talk to anyone when she came home in the evening. Then Knowlton began asking her about her movements the morning of the murders. This is where Lizzie Borden began to stumble in her telling.

Conflicts and Contradictions

Before questioning Lizzie, Knowlton had spent several hours asking Bridget her version of events on the murder morning, so he already had a picture in mind of how events had unfolded. But once Lizzie’s testimony about her memories of that morning reached the point where she crossed paths with Bridget, it became clear the two women recalled two different versions of what happened. Lizzie said she came downstairs a little before 9 a.m., encountered Abby dusting in the dining room where they had a brief conversation in which she claimed Abby told her she’d “had a note” from someone sick and that she intended to go out after putting some pillow shams on the bed upstairs. Knowlton then asked her where Bridget was when she first saw her. Lizzie answered, “Just came in the back door with the long pole, brush and put the brush on the handle, and getting her pail of water. She was going to wash the windows around the house. She said Mrs. Borden wanted her to.” However, Bridget had already testified that Abby hadn’t told her to wash the windows until after 9 a.m. and that she hadn’t gone out to start on the task until about 9:30 a.m. after finishing cleaning the kitchen. (John Morse also contradicted Bridget on the point, saying that he heard Abby tell Bridget to wash the windows earlier, at breakfast.)

More contradictions between Lizzie’s memory and Bridget’s version followed:

• Lizzie said the breakfast things were put away when she walked into the kitchen, except the coffee pot. Bridget said she hadn’t finished that task yet.
• Lizzie said she didn’t drink any coffee that morning or eat any breakfast (“I don’t know if I had a cookie or not.”) Bridget said she saw Lizzie sitting at the table “eating her breakfast” and drinking coffee.
• Lizzie said that she took out the ironing board, set it on the dining table in preparation for ironing at the time her father left to go downstreet. Bridget said Lizzie didn’t put the ironing board on the dining table until hours later, after Andrew had come home and Bridget was in the dining room washing windows.
• Lizzie said she didn’t speak to Bridget about washing windows other than to ask her to close the parlor blinds when she was done. Bridget said Lizzie came to the back door as she went out and asked her if that was what she was doing.
• Lizzie said she was downstairs in the kitchen reading a magazine when Andrew came home; Bridget said she heard Lizzie upstairs when Andrew came home.

This was merely the first bunch in a series of mismatches between Lizzie’s version of the morning and Bridget’s version. There would be more contradictions to come as the inquest continued over the next few days, causing Knowlton to recall Bridget to the stand, presumably to better contrast and compare. However, the problem for Knowlton was not just that Lizzie contradicted Bridget; the bigger problem was that Lizzie began contradicting herself as well.

Lizzie Gets Tangled in Her Story

During her first hour on the stand, while Lizzie was telling Knowlton a version of events that was substantially different from Bridget’s story, it was at least mostly consistent. Then Knowlton asked Lizzie where Bridget was when Andrew came home. Lizzie said she herself was in the kitchen, and she thought Bridget was possibly upstairs in her room. Knowlton then asked who had let Andrew in the front door. Lizzie recalled it was Bridget, and realized Bridget must have been downstairs. Knowlton then asked Lizzie for a third time where she herself was when Andrew came home.

A: I think in my room upstairs.

Q: Then you were upstairs when your father came home?

A: I don’t know for sure, but I think so.

Q: What were you doing?

A: As I say, I took up these clean clothes and stopped and basted a little piece of tape on a garment.

Q: Did you come down before your father was let in?

A: I was on the stairs coming down when she let him in.

Q: Then you were upstairs when your father came to the house on his return?

A: I think I was.

Q: How long had you been there?

A: I had only been upstairs long enough to take the clothes up and baste the little loop on the sleeve. I don’t think I had been up there over five minutes.

Q: Was [Bridget] still engaged in washing windows when your father got back?

A: I don’t know.

Q: You remember, Miss Borden, I will call your attention to it so as to see if I have any misunderstanding, not for the purpose of confusing you, you remember that you told me several times that you were downstairs and not upstairs when your father came home? You have forgotten, perhaps?

A: I don’t know what I have said. I have answered so many questions, and I am so confused I don’t know one thing from another. I am telling you just as nearly as I know how.

Q: Calling your attention to what you said about that a few minutes ago, and now again to the circumstances, you have said you were upstairs when the bell rang and were on the stairs when Maggie let your father in. Which now is your recollection of the true statement of the matter? That you were downstairs when the bell rang and your father came?

A: I think I was downstairs in the kitchen.

Q: And then you were not upstairs?

A: I think I was not, because I went up almost immediately as soon as I went down, and then came down again and stayed down.

Q: What had you in your mind when you said you were on the stairs as Maggie let your father in?

A: The other day somebody came there, and she let them in, and I was on the stairs. I don’t know whether the morning before or when it was.

That last answer sounds like an excuse to cover a lie, but to be fair to Lizzie, Dr. Bowen would testify that he did ring the bell the morning before the murders, and Bridget let him into the house, and he did see Lizzie on the stairs. But overall, Lizzie sounds like someone who simply can’t keep her story straight. (It is often presumed she didn’t want to admit she’d been upstairs when her father returned because that would place her only a dozen feet away from where Abby’s butchered body lay.) From that point on Lizzie continued to claim that she was downstairs when Andrew came home, even though Bridget told a different story.

Knowlton next returned to the subject of Abby; he wanted to know why Abby may have lingered up in the spare room after putting on pillow shams. What, he asked Lizzie, did she believe Abby had been doing up there when “struck dead?” Lizzie speculated that she could have been sewing, only she admitted she hadn’t heard the sewing machine. Then where did Lizzie think she had gone? She supposed she had gone upstairs to make her own bed. But Knowlton pointed out that would have meant Abby would have to go through the kitchen where Lizzie said she’d been sitting, so he asked her again, where do you think she was? Lizzie again said she didn’t know, Abby could have gone back up to the spare room a third time, adding “it has always been a mystery.” As he prodded her some more, asking why Abby would have reason to be up in the spare room, Lizzie talked about Abby keeping personal things in that room. This led to more back-and-forth with Knowlton pointing out the illogic of Lizzie assuming she could have been up in the spare room all that time, or anywhere else in the house without Lizzie seeing her at some point. At this point Lizzie finally said:

A: So far as I can judge she might have been out of the house or in the house.

Q: Had you any knowledge of her going out of the house?

A: She told me she had had a note. Somebody was sick and she said, “I am going to get the dinner on the way” and asked me what I wanted for dinner.

Q: Did you tell her?

A: Yes, I told her I did not want anything.

Q: Then why did you not suppose she had gone?

A: I supposed she had gone.

Q: Did you hear her come back?

A: I did not hear her go or come back, but I supposed she went.

Q: When you found your father dead, you supposed your mother had gone?

A: I did not know. I said to the people who came in, “I don’t know whether Mrs. Borden is out or in. I wish you would see if she is in her room.”

Q: You supposed she was out at the time?

A: I understood so. I did not suppose anything about it.

It must have struck Knowlton as suspicious that during the long exchange asking Lizzie where she thought Abby might have been during the morning hours, Lizzie said nothing about the note she’d claimed to witnesses the day before that Abby told her she’d received. He knew that had been Lizzie’s story in the hours after the murders, knew she’d said it to Bridget and Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, as well as to police officers and to Dr. William Dolan. Yet, she didn’t volunteer anything about a note there on the stand until after she had meandered through numerous other possibilities. That has also struck observers, and many conclude that she was trying to avoid talking about the note because it was such a whopper of a lie. Perhaps so. But it is telling that she brought up the note only when specifically asked whether she supposed Abby could have left the house. Until then, Knowlton merely asked her what she thought Abby might have been doing if she’d been inside the house, and Lizzie, as more than a few have noted, seemed to take Knowlton’s questions literally and answered them literally. (Another possibility is that her lawyer, Andrew Jennings, in an effort to protect her, may have instructed her not to volunteer anything and merely answer the questions put to her, and she may have thought she should stick to his advice to the letter.)

Lizzie Helps Knowlton Build His Case

The next day, the second day of the inquest, Knowlton would again call witnesses for the proceeding, including Alice Russell, John Morse, Dr. Bowen and Emma Borden. But before he got to the others, Marshal Hilliard took a carriage to the Borden House to pick up Lizzie and bring her back to the police station for more questioning. Knowlton appeared to be bristling with frustration with Lizzie for her all-over-the-place answers, and he likely didn’t believe much of her story from the day before. Yet he began by asking her to repeat it anyway, insisting she tell him again, for the third time, what she did the morning of the murders. And so, the uncomfortable skirmish began yet again.

Q: Now I call your attention to the fact that twice yesterday you told me, with some explicitness, that when your father came in, you were just coming downstairs.

A: No, I did not. I beg your pardon.

Q: That you were on the stairs at the time your father was let in, you said with explicitness. Do you now say that you did not say so?

A: I said I thought first I was on the stairs; then I remembered I was in the kitchen when he came in.

Q: First you thought you were in the kitchen; afterwards, you remembered you were on the stairs?

A: As I said, I thought I was on the stairs. Then I remembered I was in the kitchen when he came in. 

Lizzie’s claim that she was in the kitchen when Andrew returned was almost certainly not true, and not just because Bridget had already testified she’d heard Lizzie “laugh” from upstairs when she let Andrew in. If Lizzie had been in the kitchen when Andrew returned, she would have been able to see or hear him come to the back screen door and try to get into the house that way, which, according to testimony by his neighbor Mrs. Kelly, he apparently tried to do before going round to the front door. Whether this occurred to Knowlton or not, he never pressed her on how her father could have come to the door and she failed to see him.

Instead, Knowlton repeatedly tried to get Lizzie to admit that she had gone up into “the front part of the house” while her father was out of the house on his morning business rounds, but she continued to repeat she stayed downstairs the entire time except for five minutes “before he went out” when she carried some clean clothes up to her room and spent a few minutes “basting a little piece of tape to a garment.” He prodded her with “are you quite certain?” type questions, and she would repeat, yes, she spent nearly the entire time he was gone either in the kitchen, reading a magazine while she waited for her irons to get hot, or the dining room working through her ironing task, or in the sitting room “directing some wrappers” as she’d testified Abby had asked her to do that morning. Knowlton then asked:

Q: So it would have been extremely difficult for anybody to have gone through the kitchen and dining room and front hall without your seeing them?

A: They could have gone from the kitchen into the sitting room while I was in the dining room, if there was anybody to go.

He was clearly establishing that if Lizzie was where she said she was, an intruder could not have entered the side door and moved about the house without Lizzie being aware of it. And, when he asked her if she’d seen Bridget in all that time—she said no, she supposed she was out washing windows—Lizzie was helping him establish that the opportunity to commit Abby’s murder belonged solely to her. He then moved onto the locked front door, making sure that the defense could not claim an intruder entered by that way. She confirmed that she didn’t think she had unlocked it that morning (although she admitted that was her usual job), and it had remained locked “so far as I know.”

The Inquest Becomes an Inquisition

Until that point, Lizzie’s answers had only helped Knowlton begin weaving the net of exclusive opportunity in which he would eventually try to trap her. Then they arrived at the subject of what happened after Andrew returned home. Bridget had previously told Knowlton that she was washing windows in the sitting room when Andrew returned, and that once Lizzie came down through the front entry, she’d overheard Lizzie conversing with Andrew in the dining room. Bridget had added that a bit later, when she finished the sitting room windows, she moved her wash basin into the dining room to start washing the windows in there. She’d also remembered that as she was finishing this task, Lizzie brought her ironing board into the dining room and began ironing handkerchiefs, chatting with her about her plans to go out later, and there telling her that Abby had had a note and had gone out. But when Lizzie got to this point in her story, she surprised Knowlton by saying she had not gone back to her ironing at all once Andrew returned.

Q: You did not iron any more after your father came in?

A: No sir.

Q: Was the ironing board put away?

A: No sir, it was on the dining room table.

Q: When was it put away?

A: I don’t know. Somebody put it away after the affair happened …

Q: How soon after your father came in before [Bridget] went upstairs?

A: I don’t know. I did not see her.

Q: Did you see her after your father came in?

A: Not after she let him in.

This had to be an even bigger surprise to Knowlton. Not only was Lizzie denying she’d been doing what Bridget swore she’d seen her doing—and what she herself told Officer Fleet on the day of the murders that she had been doing—but she was denying she’d seen Bridget or talked to her in the dining room at all. At that moment, perhaps not knowing what to make of this, Knowlton set that subject aside, going on to talk about the trip she claimed to make to the barn soon after Andrew returned home. But after a few minutes of back-and-forth on that subject, Knowlton returned to Bridget and her window washing.

Q: Did you know [Bridget] washed the windows inside?

A: I don’t know.

Q: Did you see her washing the windows inside?

A: I don’t know.

Q: You don’t know whether she washed the dining room window and sitting room windows inside?

A: I did not see her.

Q: If she did, would you not have seen her?

A: I don’t know. She might be in one room and I in another.

Q: Do you think she might have gone to work and washed all the windows in the dining room and you not know it?

A: I don’t know, I am sure, whether I should or not. I might have seen her and not know it.

Q: Miss Borden, I am trying in good faith to get all the doings that morning, of yourself and Miss Sullivan, and I have not succeeded in doing it. Do you desire to give me any information or not?

A: I don’t know it! I don’t know what your name is!

Knowlton’s frustration with Lizzie was clear from his sharp words. And Lizzie’s dismay at her inability to answer him to his satisfaction was also clear. But he didn’t let up on her.

Q: It is certain beyond reasonable doubt she was engaged in washing the windows in the dining room or sitting room when your father came home. Do you mean to say you know nothing of either of those operations?

A: I knew she washed the windows outside; that is, she told me so. She did not wash the windows in the kitchen, because I was in the kitchen most of the time.

Q: The dining room and sitting room, I said.

A: I don’t know.

Q: It is reasonably certain she washed the windows in the dining room and sitting room inside while your father was out and was engaged in that operation when your father came home. Do you mean to say you know nothing of it?

A: I don’t know whether she washed the windows in the sitting room and dining room or not.

Only after this turbulent exchange did Knowlton finally give up on the subject. His irritation was understandable. Lizzie appeared to be unreasonably obtuse, denying simple things that Knowlton believed to be “certain beyond reasonable doubt.” Even more inexplicable was that Lizzie was putting herself at odds over Bridget’s version of what happened in defense of what various observers, including Victoria Lincoln and reporter Elizabeth Jordan, described as “trifling matters.” It would have mattered not at all to either her guilt or innocence whether she was ironing handkerchiefs in the dining room or not, so why deny it and make herself look like a liar? Why claim she did not speak with Bridget of mundane things when she had to know that Bridget would report that is what they did?

These are vexing question that merit a closer inspection, especially because Lizzie would continue to do it repeatedly throughout the inquest. She would deny she said or did things that Bridget and others testified to hearing and seeing her do in the hours after the murders. Most observers do not think a closer look necessary, as it is conspicuously writ large that Lizzie was fumbling badly at covering up her guilt. And her next baffling exchange with Knowlton only reinforces that opinion.

A Fishy Tale of Lines and Sinkers

After getting nowhere with Lizzie on the subject of seeing Bridget in the dining room, an exasperated Knowlton began questioning her about her alibi for the time Andrew was killed. She told him that once her father lay down on the sofa, she found her flats for ironing handkerchiefs were still not hot enough, and so she decided to go up to the barn to look for “lead for a sinker.” She said she knew there were pieces of lead by the barn door, but she’d remembered seeing a “a box of old things upstairs” and found such a box sitting “on a kind of a workbench.” She admitted she hadn’t been up into the barn for at least three months.

The exchange that follows between the district attorney and his suspect has to be read to be believed (the entirety of it in the sinkers entry). If it were not for the brutal murders that took place while Lizzie claimed to be engaged with this task, her back-and-forth with Knowlton about it would have been almost comical, akin to the famous Abbott and Costello “Who’s on first?” routine, where each person is stuck having a different conversation than the other.  

In a nutshell, Knowlton wanted to know why Lizzie chose that particular time on that particular day to go up in the barn and look for sinkers, presumably for the Marion trip she was planning to take on the following Monday. He kept drilling down, asking many questions (so many!), which she answered literally, clearly not understanding, or at least pretending not to understand, the context for what he was getting at. In the end, after painstakingly getting an answer that her fishing lines at Swansea had no sinkers when she used them last (five years earlier), she told him she didn’t plan to use the lines in Swansea for her fishing trip anyway. She had been planning to go out that afternoon and buy new lines and hooks and wanted to make sure she didn’t need to buy sinkers. One can almost sense the smoke pouring from Knowlton’s ears.

The district attorney moved on to the box, which she described as “sort of a box” that she found on a workbench in the loft. She described the contents of what she remembered being in the box. (The police did find a basket, which was shown in court but not described for the transcript, on the workbench upstairs that contained several of the items she described.) He told her he didn’t understand why looking in that one box would take 20 minutes. She surprised him again by introducing a new detail, telling him she had stood at a window in the barn loft to eat some pears, three pears to be exact. This clearly irked him, as it did each time she brought up something she hadn’t mentioned before (“I asked you to tell me all you did.”), and it set up the next clash that caused Knowlton to briefly lose his cool.

The Problem with Pears

After hearing Lizzie talk about grabbing some pears from the ground under the pear tree on her way to the barn, Knowlton told her to go back and start over and describe what she did upstairs in the barn. He again demanded an explanation of why it would take her 20 minutes to do all that she said she did up there. He was not satisfied with her answers and took on a mocking tone as he echoed her. (“Stood there, eating pears doing nothing.”) He also challenged her on why she would be eating pears when she had earlier said she still didn’t feel well when she came down at breakfast time.

Q: You were feeling better than you were in the morning?

A: I felt better in the morning than I did the night before.

Q: That is not what I asked you. You were then, when you were in that hay loft, looking out the window and eating three pears, feeling better, were you not, than you were in the morning when you could not eat any breakfast?

A: I never eat any breakfast.

Q: You did not answer my question, and you will, if I have to put it to you all day! Were you then when you were eating those three pears in that hot loft, looking out that closed window, feeling better than you were in the morning when you ate no breakfast?

A: I was feeling well enough to eat the pears.

Q: Were you feeling better than you were in the morning?

A: I don’t think I felt very sick in the morning, only yes, I don’t know but I did feel better. As I say, I don’t know whether I ate any breakfast or not or whether I ate a cookie.

Q: Were you then feeling better than you did in the morning?

A: I don’t know how to answer you, because I told you I felt better in the morning anyway.

Q: Do you understand my question? My question is whether, when you were in the loft of that barn, you were feeling better than you were in the morning when you got up?

A: No, I felt about the same.

Q: Were you feeling better than you were when you told your mother you did not care for any dinner?

A: No sir, I felt about the same.

Q: Well enough to eat pears, but not well enough to eat anything for dinner?

A: She asked me if I wanted any meat.

Q: I ask you why you should select that place, which was the only place which would put you out of sight of the house, to eat those three pears in?

A: I cannot tell you any reason.

Q: You observe that fact, do you not? You have put yourself in the only place perhaps, where it would be impossible for you to see a person going into the house?

A: Yes sir, I should have seen them from the front window.

This also must have flummoxed Knowlton, as Lizzie had just undercut her own alibi, placing herself for a large part of the time she was allegedly out of the house at a window in which she could see the side screen door of the house.

Q: You now say when you were eating the pears, you could see the back door?

A: Yes sir.

Q: So nobody could come in at that time without your seeing them?

A: I don’t see how they could.

Q: After you got done eating your pears, you began your search?

A: Yes sir.

Q: Then you did not see into the house?

A: No sir, because the bench is at the other end.

Q: Now, I have asked you, over and over again, and will continue the inquiry, whether anything you did at the bench would occupy more than three minutes?

A: Yes, I think it would because I pulled over quite a lot of boards in looking.

Q: To get at the box?

A: Yes sir.

Q: Taking all that, what is the amount of time you think you occupied in looking for that piece of lead which you did not find?

A: Well, I should think perhaps I was 10 minutes …

Q: Now can you explain why you were 10 minutes doing it?

A: No, only that I can’t do anything in a minute.

If, after all this, Knowlton felt near the end of his rope, no one could blame him. (Whether he was investing time in asking questions that would actually help police solve the murders is another question.) If Knowlton felt sure Lizzie was dodging his questions as well as lying to his face, not many would blame him for that, either.

Why Didn’t Lizzie Call for Abby?

As Knowlton doggedly continued asking his questions, he got from Lizzie that she came back from the barn, noticed the fire in the stove hadn’t caught despite her earlier effort to “put a stick in,” so she decided to go back up to her room “to sit down.” As she passed through the dining room and into the sitting room, she said she saw her father on the sofa with his “face cut up.” She said she felt so “frightened and horrified” that she turned and hurried to call for Bridget. She told Knowlton she didn’t know for certain if Andrew was dead or not. Knowlton then asked if she’d made any search for her mother, and she answered, “No, sir.”

Q: Why not?

A: I thought she was out of the house. I thought she had gone out. I called [Bridget} to go to Dr. Bowen’s. When they came in, I said, “I don’t know where Mrs. Borden is.” I thought she had gone out.

Q: Did you tell [Bridget] you thought your mother had come in?

A: No sir.

Q: That you thought you heard her come in?

A: No sir.

Q: Did you say to anybody that you thought she was killed upstairs?

A: No sir.

Q: To anybody?

A: No sir.

Q: You made no effort to find your mother at all?

A: No sir.

Knowlton knew that despite Lizzie’s denials, Mrs. Churchill had told him that one of the first things Lizzie said to her when asked about Abby was, “I don’t know but that she’s been killed, too. I wish someone would go find her, I thought I heard her come in.” She also told Bridget and Alice she thought she’d heard her stepmother come in. Again, it is strange that Lizzie would deny saying things other witnesses all agreed she had said that morning. And again, taken at face value, it appears to be a bald-faced lie meant to cover up for the fact that she already knew Abby was dead because she herself had killed her.

Perhaps this is why Knowlton seemed to indulge in a bit of cruelty during his next series of questions about what she saw when she first looked into the sitting room and saw her father’s murdered body.

Q: Saw his face?

A: No, I did not see his face because he was all covered with blood.

Q: You saw where the face was bleeding?

A: Yes sir …

Q: Did you see his eyeball hanging out?

A: No sir.

Q: See the gashes where his face was laid open?

A: No sir.

Q: Nothing of that kind?

A: No sir. (Witness covers her face with her hand for a minute or two, then the examination is resumed.)

Knowlton was now back on the subject of Abby, and again wanted Lizzie to explain what she thought Abby might have been doing those two hours she hadn’t seen her. They had covered the subject extensively the day before, but Knowlton repeated the same questions he’d already asked and insisted she recount her conversation with Abby again as well. “I told you that yesterday,” she said. “Never mind about yesterday,” he said. “Tell me all the talk you had your mother when you came down in the morning.” She then repeated the same story, only now she provided a new detail, telling Knowlton that after Abby told her she was going out on a sick call, she asked Abby if she was going to change her dress, and Abby had said “No, this is good enough.” Knowlton chastised her for not telling him this before and had her repeat the story yet again.

The subject of what she did or didn’t do to find Abby after discovering Andrew’s murder would come up again. Even Judge Blaisdell interjected to ask if she’d done anything to locate Abby. Lizzie answered by saying, “I did not do anything except what I said to Mrs. Churchill. I said to her, ‘I don’t know where Mrs. Borden is. I think she is out, but I wish you would look’,” When questioned where she intended Mrs. Churchill to look, Lizzie said “In Mrs. Borden’s room.” (Mrs. Churchill and Bridget had already been up in Abby’s room to fetch sheets to cover Andrew’s body, and so when they went searching for Abby at Lizzie’s prodding, they went up the front stairs, where they found her, dead for close to two hours by then.)

Lizzie on the Rack

Knowlton began to move rapidly through a number of questions on a number of subjects. When Lizzie gave an answer that didn’t suit him, such as her saying she didn’t think she was wearing an apron (which in Knowlton’s mind, might have protected her clothing from blood spatters), he pushed her again and again about it, as if trying to get a different answer. He asked her to explain why there would be blood on any of the hatchets found in the cellar. When she said she had no idea, he pushed her several times to think of an answer. She finally came up with the possibility her father had killed some pigeons with the hatchet, although she had believed he had wrung their necks. (And thus, the seed for another Lizzie Borden myth about the pigeons being her pets was planted.)

Returning to the subject of what she remembered happening after Andrew came home, she said she didn’t remember where she talked to him. She said she didn’t remember him being in the dining room at all. (Bridget said he went straight into the dining room and that’s where Lizzie spoke to him.) She again repeated that she had been in the kitchen when he returned home and believed she went from the kitchen into the sitting room to speak with him. She didn’t think he had gone upstairs at all. (Bridget said he did.) And she again repeated that she saw her father take his shoes off and change into slippers. (He was found with Congress boots on his feet.) She estimated that she had gone out to the barn only five or ten minutes after he returned home. Knowlton asked her to describe what took place after she went into the sitting room to speak to him. She replied: “I asked him if he had any mail. He said, ‘None for you.’ He had a letter in his hand. I supposed it was for himself. I asked him how he felt. He said, ‘About the same.’ He said he should lie down. I asked him if he thought he should have a nap. He said he should try to. I asked him if he wanted the window left the way it was or if he felt a draught. He said, ‘No.’ That is all.”

Lizzie didn’t mention telling him about the note from Abby, although she had referred to that earlier. Nor did she say anything about going back to ironing her handkerchiefs (as Officer Fleet said she had told him, and as Bridget saw her do). She denied helping him to lie down (as Officer Fleet also reported she had claimed to him). She said she did see Andrew lie down, but that he was not asleep when she went out. She told Knowlton that was the last time she saw him alive.

From there, both district attorney and his suspect returned to a calmer question and answer cadence, covering several subjects, including Lizzie’s difficulty with Abby over the property Andrew put in Abby’s name on behalf of Abby’s half-sister. Lizzie played it down, “I talked with her about it and said what he did for her he ought to do for us; that is all the words we had.” He asked about a heavy knobbed club Alice Russell had found under Andrew’s bed, and Lizzie recalled her father had whittled it when she was a little girl. She told him again about picking up pears from under the pear tree on her way to the barn, adding, “I stood looking around, looked up at the pigeon house that they have closed up.”

Then Judge Blaisdell asked one last question. “Was this witness on Thursday morning in the front hall or front stairs or front chamber, any part of the front part of the house at all?” Lizzie said she hadn’t been upstairs, except for the short time she had taken her clean clothes up to her room and sewed something onto a garment. She was then excused from the stand for the rest of that day.

In the early afternoon, John Morse took the stand to answer Knowlton’s questions. He was followed by Emma, then Dr. Bowen, then Mrs. Churchill. Hiram Harrington was the final witness, and after his testimony, the proceedings were adjourned.

And on the third day …

On Thursday, August 11th, a more composed Knowlton called Lizzie back for a short half-hour session that consisted of basic questions. He asked her if she had gone to D.R. Smith’s and asked for prussic acid on Wednesday, the day before the murders. She said she had not and repeated that she had been home in her room that morning, because she had felt sick all day. She did say she went down to meals with the family on Wednesday, although she didn’t remember eating anything, because she wasn’t feeling well. She also confirmed that she did own sealskin capes and that they were kept in the attic during the summer.

Lizzie then told Knowlton the story of seeing a shadowy man in the dark, less than two weeks before the murders, sitting on the back steps of the house, a man who was not very tall, a man who ran as she approached and disappeared into the dark backyard. She recalled that it was a Thursday evening, as she was returning home from church. She said that she wrote to her sister in Fairhaven about that particular man but did not tell her father about it. Although, she did tell her father about a similar experience she had the winter before, when she “saw somebody run around the house.” She considered her and Emma’s offer of a reward for information leading to identification of Andrew and Abby’s killer to be an effort to find that man.

And that was it, the end of Lizzie Borden’s inquest testimony. She was escorted to the matron’s room and told to wait. A few hours later, Marshal Hilliard showed up with a freshly-signed warrant and placed her under arrest for the murder of her father.

Through the Lens of Guilt

Lizzie Borden’s testimony at the inquest was inarguably damning, not only in the eyes of the district attorney at that time, but also in the eyes of all those who have read her words since. First, she appears to be doing her best not to answer tough questions. Out of the 849 questions that Knowlton asked her, she responded 109 times with “I don’t know,” and 18 times with “I don’t remember.” And, sometimes when she did answer—often only because Knowlton kept pushing her to come up with an answer—she would contradict herself by changing her story on important points (such as where she was when her father returned home). More importantly, she contradicted what other witnesses remembered her doing and saying, and especially contradicted Bridget’s consistently told account of the murder morning.

Then there was the odd literalness of her answers—such as the exchange about fishing lines and sinkers—as if she was trying to dodge answering questions and avoid revealing what the district attorney was clearly trying to learn. Her inability, or her refusal, to give straightforward answers suggests that she was trying to conceal her actions on that day. And there was also the sheer number of things she said happened that appeared to be verifiably untrue, such as her story about the note from a sick friend she said Abby received; no one ever came forward to corroborate that story.

But she offered other obvious falsehoods as well. She said that after putting away clean laundry in her room that as she went back downstairs the guest room door was closed, yet when Bridget and Mrs. Churchill went upstairs looking for Abby, they found the guest room door open. Lizzie said that Abby had told her she planned to go to the store to buy meat for dinner; Bridget testified that Abby had told her to warm up leftover mutton and soup for dinner. Lizzie said she saw her father take off his shoes before he lay down on the sofa; Andrew’s shoes were still on his feet when his body was discovered. Lizzie told Knowlton that she did not tell anyone she thought she heard Abby come in before asking that someone go look for her; several witnesses said she repeated several times that she thought she heard Abby come in.

The “pattern of [Lizzie’s] consciousness of guilt,” wrote Robert Sullivan in 1974, “was overwhelming,” and appears evident in every other line she uttered. Borden scholar William Spencer agreed, writing in his 2020 account of the murders that in his opinion, “Perhaps most damning is Lizzie’s inquest testimony. To me, it a clear indication of her guilt.”

Even the defense understood how damaging her testimony was to her claim of innocence, which is why they fought so hard to have it made inadmissible at trial. That her lawyers were successful in keeping Lizzie’s words from being heard by the jury didn’t make them disappear. Lizzie said what she said, and as the legal scholar John Henry Wigmore asserted in his 1893 analysis of the case, “no conceivable hypothesis except that of guilt will explain the inconsistencies and improbabilities that were asserted by her.” End of story.

Through the Lens of Innocence

Taken at face value, there is absolutely nothing in Lizzie’s inquest testimony that helps support a case for innocence. One can attempt to excuse a few of her untrue statements to habitual impressions; for example, saying she saw her father take her shoes off even though he was still wearing them when he found dead. Surely, she’d seen him take his shoes off for a nap numerous times, and thus it would be understandable if the image made its way her memory of that day. But such justifications only get one so far. Ultimately, far too many of Lizzie’s answers to the district attorney’s question don’t just subtly suggest that she was guilty, they fairly shout that she was guilty.

Yet the loudness of that shout is, paradoxically, suspicious in itself. How could anyone trying to cover up their responsibility for two murders be so horrendously bad at it? Why continue to put herself in the middle of the house during Abby’s murder and make it more difficult for police to believe an intruder could have slipped inside the house unnoticed? If she was guilty, wouldn’t she have claimed to have been in her room, or down cellar or somewhere where she wouldn’t be able to see someone come into the house? And why openly contradict other witnesses she knew were there with her, witnesses she knew were also talking to the police? Why keep insisting on details of a story that Knowlton openly told her he knew “beyond a reasonable doubt” was not true? Guilty or not, why box herself in and torch her own credibility like she did?

Reading Lizzie’s testimony, wrote Kat Koorey in The Hatchet, leaves “the modern researcher with many more questions than Lizzie was ever required to answer.” Because Lizzie “seemed so erratic and duplicitous, it is even more important to study her ordeal upon the stand, and surmise if there was any underlying reason which might explain at least some of her more evasive answers.” I agree with Koorey; if one hopes to get a more accurate understanding of what may have happened in the Borden house on the morning of August 4th, then simply dismissing Lizzie’s testimony as a poorly-told pack of lies is a mistake. Back in 1892, Lizzie’s perplexing appearance on the stand did not unfold without surrounding context and a host of mitigating factors, however little understood some of those factors may have been at the time. Those factors still exist and still matter when analyzing the evidence on the murders today, and one cannot hope to judge her testimony fairly and justly without taking them into account, and they are discussed thoroughly in Inquest: Mitigating Factors.