Intruder Theory: Andrew’s Enemies

According to the newspaper accounts of the day, Andrew J. Borden, while well-respected in Fall River, was not known to be a warm, big-hearted man. He was brusque in manner, unyielding in business, and as a landlord he was known to sometimes “quarrel” with his tenants, as Knowlton himself acknowledged in his closing argument. Some of these quarrels were witnessed by others; for example, Mrs. Mary Durfee was called to the stand to describe a yelling match she saw nine months before the murders between Andrew and another man on his front step, while a flustered Abby looked on. Mrs. Durfee recalled the man shouting at Andrew, “You’ve cheated me, and I’ll fix you!” (The testimony was ultimately disallowed by the judges for being “too remote in time.”)

Andrew was also president of a bank, presumably with customers who defaulted on loans, forcing the bank to foreclose on them, take their homes, or perhaps cost them their livelihoods. So, it is not difficult to imagine someone becoming angry enough at Andrew Borden to want to kill him. In fact, according to Victoria Lincoln, as news of his murder spread throughout Fall River, the most common reaction was not surprise, but a kind of satisfaction that was captured by one man being heard by a reporter to say, “Well, somebody did a good job.”

On the day of the murders, Lizzie told police about yet another man who had shown up at the house several times over the previous weeks to argue with her father over his refusal to rent space to him. This unknown angry visitor, she said, spoke “sneeringly” to her father. Yet, she also told officers she didn’t know anyone specific who might have had issues with Andrew; Alice Russell had to prod Lizzie to reveal as much as she did to the officers questioning her. (It is striking how often what she said to police and what she said in private to her friends was quite different, perhaps in keeping with the values of the day that one did not air private troubles in public.)

Many take Lizzie’s reticence to tell the officers about her worries her father had an enemy as a sign of her guilty conscience, believing the stories she told her friends to be some kind of performance meant to maintain an illusion of innocence. But as she didn’t undertake this so-called performance with the people turning suspicion on her and hauling her into various courtrooms, that argument doesn’t hold. Lizzie Borden was clearly an intensely private person, both before and after the murders, and the only reason we know what she said privately to friends is the result of those friends being issued a subpoena to testify against her or deciding to rise to her defense to the press. Apparently, Lizzie did have private thoughts about who she thought might have killed her father, as Mary Brigham also told the Boston Post reporter. “I know what she thinks, but she has, of course, been closely questioned about that at the inquest, and I would not care to say anything about it before the hearing.”

For the record, the only person Lizzie mentioned by name at the inquest as a possible enemy of her father was her uncle by marriage, Hiram Harrington. Many accounts of her later life (including those of Edmund Pearson and Victoria Lincoln) suggested that Lizzie continued to believe her uncle was somehow responsible for the murders, lamenting at his death that there went her last chance to get him to confess and prove her innocent. Yet, the police obviously didn’t take seriously the idea that Andrew’s brother-in-law went after him with violent intent; there is no record that Harrington was ever investigated. Thus, it would seem Lizzie didn’t know how to justify her unease about Harrington with specific details. Of course, it’s doubtful Andrew shared details about his conflicts with others with his daughters or anyone else. If there was anyone more intensely private than Lizzie Borden, it was Andrew Borden. (Apparently, his wife was of the same mold, as her own family described Abby as a “closed-mouth woman.”)

Yet, if there was anyone more unbothered by bothering others it was also Andrew Borden. Harrington described him as a “hard man” who tried to squeeze his own sister for three extra dollars while they were splitting up their deceased father’s property. When Andrew got into a dispute with his church over another piece of property the church wanted to buy from him, he stopped attending that church and moved his financial support to another house of worship. And of course, there was the potential tenant Lizzie heard arguing with Andrew about renting a storefront from Andrew. Other stories about his money-grubbing landlord methods circulated in the newspapers in the weeks after the murders, like the rumor that if he discovered a tenant in one of his stores was making a decent profit he would then raise their rent.

The Boston Post reported on a man named Whitaker, “a tenant upon whose furniture Andrew Borden had levied for rent shortly before the murder and had been heard to have threatened the murdered man.” The same paper also made much of the Ryan family, tenants of the Ferry Street house Andrew had given his daughters and bought back from them, tenants who were reported to have loudly wished harm on Andrew after he evicted them from that house only a few weeks before the murders. “Mrs. Ryan, it was said, could not speak of anything else but Borden, calling him all manner of evil names; and on the day before she finally moved, she said: I wish he was dead. I would like to hear of his death.”

Such stories led to the popular assumption that if an intruder did indeed invade the Borden home, it was most likely to be an embittered tenant—whether in one of houses Andrew rented out, or one of the storefronts he rented out. When the police did ask questions neighbors and acquaintances about anyone with a possible grudge against him (which, from reading the witness statements, was reprehensibly not often) this is where their focus went, in the direction of someone probably poor, someone who blamed Andrew for their misfortunes and who became crazed with a thirst for vengeance. It’s certainly possible there were plenty of such people in Fall River. (See Alternative Suspects.)

Were More Likely Culprits Overlooked?

If Andrew had enemies, looking for embittered tenants was not a bad place to start, but there is another possibility, far more likely, and that is someone the police would not think to suspect, someone above reproach. Perhaps even someone with enough clout in Fall River to head off the merest whiff of suspicion. Andrew J. Borden wasn’t just president of the Union Savings Bank, he also served as a director on the boards of various banks and companies alongside other powerful men of Fall River: The B.M.C. Durfee Safe Deposit & Trust Company, Troy Mills, Merchant Mills, and the Globe Street Railway Company. What if he got into a dispute with one of the men who sat alongside him on those boards? What if unyielding Andrew Borden was standing in the way of something a wealthy and powerful person wanted to see happen? What if that powerful person had plenty of money to hire someone without scruples who was willing to accept a fee to make the problem disappear?  

Clearly, law enforcement knew it was possible Andrew could have inspired enough hatred from someone to want him dead. What they did not seem to be able to do was track down anyone known by others to have argued with Andrew who could also be proven to be in the vicinity at the time of the murders. It would also seem they didn’t attempt to interview his bank colleagues or other business associates about what they might know of conflicts Andrew may have become embroiled in while navigating in his professional life. Perhaps undertaking such detective work seemed beside the point for police and prosecutors who’d already rejected the idea of assailant getting through the door of 92 Second Street that hot Thursday morning. It was almost as if they’d forgotten there was recent precedent for it.

Andrew Jennings, however, did not forget, and kept reminding all who would listen of the 1891 burglary when a stranger had walked into the Borden house in the middle of the day, with Lizzie and Emma and Bridget all at home and about the house. The thief had sneaked up the back stairs, broken into Andrew and Abby’s bedroom, leaving a nail behind in the lock, then gone inside and broke into Andrew’s desk, stealing a number of items. This burglary was investigated by the Fall River Police, but the culprit was never caught. Jennings’ argument was clear: if a thief was able to do it, then why wouldn’t a murderer be able to do it?

Not surprisingly, soon after Lizzie became suspected of the murders, many began to read between the lines and concluded it was Lizzie who staged a burglary in a cruel prank designed to upset her father and stepmother. This rumor still pops up in nearly every article, book, or movie based on the case, to the point it is now accepted as “common knowledge” about the case. It certainly does make for convenient foreshadowing in the creative telling of Lizzie’s tale. But the persistence of a rumor doesn’t make it true, and there is zero proof of that it was Lizzie who committed the robbery, and she was certainly never charged. The “Lizzie-did-it” version of the burglary reveals more about the mythmaking that attended the Borden case than it reveals about Lizzie. More importantly, it shows us that Andrew Borden had been targeted by an intruder before, an intruder who also proved that it was possible for a man determined to get in the house to pull it off.  

Furthermore, the intruder targeted only Andrew’s desk. Now, perhaps that was the only thing he happened to come upon was likely to offer something of value, but it could also be that the thief was looking for some kind of paperwork related to Andrew’s business or financial dealings. Of course, those who think Lizzie responsible for the burglary would say this is more evidence that she was the culprit, probably looking for something like his will. But if it was not Lizzie, here we have a conspicuous clue that someone may have had questions about Andrew’s business dealings that they couldn’t get answers to without resorting to breaking and entering. Lizzie herself apparently thought the burglary could have been related to the killings, at least according to a Boston Post interview with Hiram Harrington about his conversation with his niece the night of the murders. This potential clue, however, was given zero attention by police in their rush to judgment against Lizzie.

Did Police Do All They Could to Identify Alternative Suspects?

“It becomes the duty of the Commonwealth to investigate an atrocious crime like this with the greatest care,” said Andrew Jennings in his closing argument at Lizzie’s preliminary hearing. “It is of the utmost importance that the guilty party should be found and not someone accused of it.” But, he added, “The Commonwealth seems to have made up its mind that the crime was committed by someone in that house. All their labors have been directed with that view.” (See Police Bias.)

At the jury trial, Knowlton would defend the police investigation, even as he acknowledged that mistakes were made. He was adamant that the police did not fail in their duty to chase every other possibility. “It was in evidence that many things were followed up, that many trails were pursued, and I am not permitted even to tell you how many men were followed with the thought that perhaps they had something to do with crime, how many towns and cities were investigated, and how many were watched and followed, how many trails have been pursued.” This is an interesting statement coming from a prosecutor who at the same time was insisting that one reason Lizzie had to be guilty was because no intruder could have plausibly committed the crime. He put himself and his case in a logical bind by claiming the police took seriously the idea of an intruder and gave that possibility its due diligence even as they were obtaining a warrant for Lizzie’s arrest in part because they were so sure no intruder could have possibly got into the house.

If it was indeed “in evidence” that many trails were pursued and many men watched and followed as Knowlton claimed, that evidence is hard to come by today. The 1892 reports of police officers who described the daily activities of their investigation, preserved in the Witness Statements, show us that the majority of the officers’ time was spent in chasing down Lizzie’s activities and asking people about her and her relationship to her parents. Only a small fraction of the reports address what officers did to follow up on leads provided to them by the public, activities that ended up entirely in the realm of wasted effort, to the obvious irritation of the officers. (Officer Medley’s reports were particularly full of complaints about the time involved in chasing such leads; he wrote things such as, “ten hours of incessant work failed to find any such person.”)

Now, it could be that the reports taken at the time were culled and those most relevant to their case against Lizzie were preserved for the use of the prosecution. That could explain why there are time gaps of days and even weeks when it appears police officers did no meaningful work on the case at all. It could also explain why the interviews such as those conducted with witnesses who lived and worked on Second Street are included as the frequently repeated phrase “saw no one suspicious” was helpful to the prosecution’s argument against an intruder. There are a few examples, but only a few, of assiduous follow-up, like the overnight trip Officer Harrington took to Boston with Dr. Benjamin Handy to see if he could identify the pale-faced man he saw, or the search for Samuel Robinsky, a Jewish peddler and alleged signer of letter sent to Emma which claimed he saw a bloodied someone the day of the murders. (The police eventually declared Samuel Robinsky did not exist and, along with the newspapers, concluded the pale-faced man to be a local drunk named “Mike the Soldier,” despite Handy’s insistence he was not the man he saw.)

But overall, Jennings’ critique that police focused primarily on proving Lizzie guilty seems apt; certainly, there is no evidence to be found in the Witness Statements that police did anything to generate leads that might have led them to a suspect through proactive investigating on their own. As early as the preliminary hearing, Andrew Jennings was pointing out that he and his one researcher, Arthur Phillips, were able to find witnesses such as Mrs. Delia Manley to sightings of suspicious loiterers outside the Borden home, while not one of the dozen police officers assigned to the case had questioned her. Perhaps when the Hilliard Papers are finally published, we will learn more about what the police were up to regarding Marshal Hilliard’s frequent claim to reporters that they were hard at work looking for other suspects. Although, from the rampant criticism of Hilliard and his department that filled local newspapers, it would appear most reporters and editors were not impressed by such claims.

Investigating or Chasing Their Tails?

It wasn’t just the overt critique of the police department in editorial pages that shows us how the performance of the police was perceived by the public in the weeks after the Borden murders. Many straight news articles contained clues as to police attitude – and level of police competence – as well. For example, on August 5th, the Fall River Herald reported on the prospective tenant that Lizzie claimed she had heard arguing with her father in the weeks before his death, with the man visiting the house on two separate contentious occasions. On his second call, the paper reported that this potential tenant “found out that Jonathan Clegg had occupied the store. It is also thought that the tenant wanted to use the place as a rum shop; this Mr. Borden would not allow. It may be added that the police attach little importance to this matter.” (italics mine)

It appears the reporter knew enough about the rebuffed tenant to report on the details of his argument with Andrew, yet the police not only didn’t bother to discover his identity but clearly told the reporter they didn’t deem it important enough to pursue. This same dismissive attitude is evident in Officer Mullaly’s handling of his interview with Hyman Lubinsky, in which he failed to follow up on being told the ice cream peddler had seen “a lady” in the Borden yard around the time of the murders. Mullaly didn’t do anything to confirm Lubinsky’s story, nor did he attempt to discover the identity of this woman; all he did was report the interview to his superior, Deputy Marshal Fleet, and wait for his next order. This stunning lack of curiosity on the part of the police ultimately delivered a blow to the prosecution’s case at the trial when Lubinsky took the stand and identified Lizzie as the woman, corroborating her alibi of being in the barn and, in the process, giving the defense’s intruder theory more credibility.

The police’s cavalier treatment of the idea of a possible intruder was carried forward over the decades, and we see it alive and well in Edmund Pearson’s 1937 account of the investigation. He listed a number of possible alternative suspects looked at by police at the time and described this list as a “comic chorus.” He claimed that “every single one of these—and many hundreds more—were patiently and intelligently investigated by the police.” Although, where he got the idea that “hundreds” were investigated is curious, as the reports in the Witness Statements show nothing close to that number. And, some of the Fall River Police Department’s  “intelligent” investigation consisted merely of grabbing any suspicious-seeming person off the street, at least in those first few days after the murders, and dragging them to the police station—such as the Portuguese man who was famously hauled in simply for withdrawing all his money from his own bank account. This approach did indeed lead to a comic chorus of so-called “suspects” which led them on wild goose chases.

A favorite example of wild goose-chasing is the report Harrington and Doherty wrote describing their efforts to follow up on a clue provided by Frank Wade. “Got a boat and rakes and went all over the pond where he saw the suspicious person. We pulled up much stuff and things but failed to find the hatchet which he thought might be thrown there. We brought back to the station a paper bag which contained an old banana peel, which was tied up with a very long string. This was very suspicious indeed.”

With such tidbits to be found throughout the police reports, it is no wonder Pearson considered the leads that came in the mail to authorities to be “ideas which had the same value as the regurgitations of an infant.” The majority of the letters both Hilliard and Knowlton received were indeed of the speculative and often of the nonsensical variety (like the suggestion to police to check the retinas of the victims in order see the image of the killer burned into them), and the authorities were clearly wise to take such advice with a grain of salt. But again, what most stands out in the police reports is that despite their earnest efforts to chase down tips given to them by a public stirred up by the murders, they didn’t seem to put any effort at all into developing leads of their own through the investigation of Andrew’s life or from speaking to the people who knew and worked with him.

For example, when police talked to the men who spoke to him on the morning of his murder, it appears they asked the men only about Andrew’s movements throughout morning, and nothing about the substance of their business with him, or what they might know about his business interactions with others. Even Andrew’s business manager, Charles C. Cook, the man most likely to about Andrew’s relationship with tenants and his different partners in business, was asked almost nothing about Andrew’s professional relationships, but much about what he knew of Andrew’s personal relationship with Lizzie.  

Likewise, reading the transcripts of the entirety of the inquest proceedings, which took place less than a week after the murders, reveals no real interest from the district attorney in the possibility of an intruder committing the murders, despite his stated intention of wanting to discover the “author of these tragedies.” He did ask the witnesses who knew Andrew if they were aware of any person who may have had difficulties or conflicts with Abby or Andrew. When given the answer no, he simply moved on, focusing the bulk of his questions on what the witness knew of Lizzie’s difficulties with her father and stepmother. Knowlton did not plumb for knowledge of Andrew’s business dealings, or what plans or enterprises he may have been involved in or had the power to thwart or otherwise impact, or other associations which might have led to be possible sources of ire directed toward him. The district attorney stuck primarily to questions that would give him ammunition to help him prosecute Lizzie, and that was all. Less than a week after the murders, with any number of possibilities still open for potential discovery, Knowlton ventured no further.

Author’s Take

I do not doubt that both the district attorney and police officers were dedicated to their jobs and performed their work to the best of their ability. However, it is painfully obvious that there was no person on the Fall River Police force that we would recognize as a “detective” as we understand the term today. As Borden scholar William Spencer noted, the police department then was basically “a constabulary,” consisting of patrol officers who typically rounded up drunk and disorderly types or went on the hunt for an occasional burglar. There were few, if any, men on the force with actual murder investigation experience, let alone an understanding of investigative procedures such as crime scene management or the process of pursuing and analyzing relevant information. And so, rather than curiously questioning or proactively gathering evidence and following wherever it might lead, the men of the Fall River Police Department operated on feelings and hunches and their own often faulty reasoning. (For more on their investigation, see Police Bias)

In the end, it is clear to me that police officers were not objective investigators who “did all they could” to discover any potential enemies of Andrew Borden and come up with alternative suspects in his murder and the murder of his wife. They did, however, do everything they could to put his daughter Lizzie in a jail cell and keep her there. Perhaps they had good reasons to pursue such a strategy (i.e., Eli Bence’s Prussic Acid story); or, perhaps they simply lacked the experience and know-how to do otherwise. Either way, thanks to that myopic focus, if an intruder full of rage toward Andrew was indeed responsible for the murders, he had nothing to fear from police officers. Nor did a murderous intruder have anything to fear from an equally myopic district attorney. Knowlton frequently pontificated in court about his dedication to his “duty;” however, in my mind, in failing to explore other possibilities, he woefully failed Andrew and Abby Borden, the victims who never received the justice that was his duty to deliver.