The Note

When delving into the Borden murder case to try determine Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence in the killing of her father and stepmother, it is often Lizzie Borden’s claim that Abby had received “a note” from a sick friend—her explanation for why Abby was nowhere to be seen that morning—that serves as the most convincing evidence she was guilty. “The key to the case,” wrote crime journalist Edmund Pearson, “was the story about the note.” While most other pieces of purported evidence against Lizzie can be explained away, or at least interpreted toward giving Lizzie the benefit of the doubt, her story about the note is not so flexible. “That lie,” Pearson added, “could not be consistent with innocence.”

The police, of course, had great interest in this alleged note and were keen to find proof of it. Even Dr. William Dolan, who was at the house in his capacity as county medical examiner, said at the preliminary hearing that the one time he spoke Lizzie that day he asked her nothing about medical issues, he queried her only about the note. “I asked her if her mother had received this note; she said she had. I asked her if she had seen the note, and she said no. I asked her if she knew who brought it; she said she did not know and thought it was a boy. I asked her what her mother did with the note; she said she did not know; in all probability she burned it in the kitchen stove.”

It was actually Alice Russell who first suggested Abby may have burned the note. But it seemed a logical conclusion when a search for the note by Dr. Bowen in those first frantic hours turned up no sign of it. The hunt was eventually taken up by Emma as well, who testified that she had looked “in a little bag that [Abby] carried downstreet with her sometimes, and in her work basket.” Yet, no note was ever found inside the house. The Borden sisters eventually resorted to an advertisement in the Fall River Herald, beseeching the writer of the note, or the boy who may have delivered it, to come forward. Another newspaper offered a $500 reward for information on the source of the note. But even though the case attracted intense attention throughout the state, no one ever came forward claiming to be the friend who sent the note. Still, Lizzie did not waver from her story.

Lizzie’s Testimony

An inquest into the horrific murders of Andrew and Abby Borden was convened on August 9th, five days after the murder, and District Attorney Hosea Knowlton had many questions for Lizzie, his primary suspect. The subject of the note came up several times. Lizzie explained that on the morning of Thursday, August 4th, she came downstairs around ten or fifteen minutes before 9 a.m., and encountered Abby dusting in the dining room. She testified that she had a brief conversation with her stepmother, which she described to Knowlton on both her first and second day on the stand. Here is an excerpt from their exchange from the second day:

A: She asked me how I felt. I said I felt better but did not want any breakfast. She said what kind of meat did I want for dinner. I said I did not want any. She said she was going out; somebody was sick, and she would get the dinner, get the meat, order the meat. And I think she said something about the weather being hotter, or something; and I don’t remember that she said anything else. I said to her, “Won’t you change your dress before you go out?” She had on an old one. She said, “No, this is good enough.” That is all I can remember.

Q: In this narrative you have not again said anything about her having said that she had made the bed.

A: I told you that she said she made the bed.

Q: In this time saying, you did not put that in. I want that conversation that you had with her that morning. I beg your pardon again. In this time of telling me, you did not say anything about her having received a note.

A: I told you that before.

Q: Miss Borden, I want you now to tell me all the talk you had with your mother when she came down, and all the talk she had with you. Please begin again.

A: She asked me how I felt. I told her. She asked me what I wanted for dinner. I told her not anything. What kind of meat I wanted for dinner. I told her not any. She said she had been up and made the spare bed and was going to take up some linen pillow cases for the small pillows at the foot and then the room was done. She says, “I have had a note from somebody that is sick and I am going out and I will get the dinner at the same time.” I think she said something about the weather, I don’t know. She also asked me if I would direct some paper wrappers for her, which I did.

Q: She said she had had a note?

A: Yes sir.

Q: You told me yesterday you never saw the note.

A: No sir, I never did.

Q: You looked for it?

A: No sir, but the rest have.

Q: She did not say where she was going?

A: No sir.

Q: Does she usually tell you where she is going?

A: She does not generally tell me.

Q: Did she say when she was coming back?

A: No sir.

In Lizzie’s telling, she then went down to the cellar (where there was a flushing toilet) for about five minutes, and when she came back up into the kitchen, Abby was nowhere to be seen. Lizzie “supposed she had gone out.”

Over her three days on the stand at the inquest, with Knowlton asking her to repeat her version of events over and over, Lizzie’s story would vary in detail about other things; for example, at one time she claimed to be upstairs when her father was home, before switching back to a version where she recalled being downstairs most of the time. But her story about the note never varied. She reported that when she greeted her father on his return from town, she told Andrew that Abby “had a note” from a sick friend and had gone out. Bridget overheard her say this to Andrew, confirming that part of her story at least, and a little later, Lizzie would repeat the same thing to Bridget.

Bridget’s Testimony

At the jury trial, Bridget explained that the first time she heard about the note while washing windows in the sitting room. She’d heard Andrew trying to get into the front door of the house with the key that opened the spring lock, but the front bolt was still in place, so she let him in at about 10:40 am. (She also said she heard Lizzie laugh upstairs when she had difficulty opening the bolt). She returned to washing windows, and Andrew went to sit down in the dining room. A few minutes later, Lizzie came into the sitting room through the front entry, then walked into the dining room to speak to her father. “I heard her ask her father if he had any mail, and they had some talk between them which I didn’t understand or pay any attention to, but I heard her tell her father that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out.” Bridget did not say, and was not asked, whether she heard Andrew’s response to this news.

When Bridget finished her task in the sitting room, she went into the dining room to wash the windows there, and Andrew moved into the sitting room to read by the window. While Bridget was at work scrubbing grime from glass, Lizzie came into the dining room and began ironing handkerchiefs on a small ironing board she had set on the dining table. Knowlton asked Bridget to describe any conversation between them.

A: Lizzie said, “Maggie, are you going out this afternoon?” I said, “I don’t know, I might and I might not, I’m not feeling very well.” Then she said, “If you go out, be sure and lock the door, for Mrs. Borden has gone out on a sick call, and I might go out, too.” Says I, “Miss Lizzie, who is sick?” She said, “I don’t know, she had a note this morning; it must be in town.”

When asked if she herself saw anybody come with a note, Bridget replied, “No sir, I did not.” She insisted, “I never heard anything about a note, whether they got it or not. I don’t know. I never heard anything about it.” She made it clear she didn’t know about the note until she heard of it from Lizzie.

Mrs. Churchill’s Testimony

Adelaide Churchill, the neighbor who noticed a distraught Lizzie standing at the back screen door while Bridget ran for Dr. Bowen, immediately hurried over to speak to Lizzie and was the first person to enter the house after the murders. Her testimony at the trial regarding the note, after hearing of it from Lizzie when she first arrived, included Bridget’s apparent confusion over why Abby didn’t mention the note to her. When asked in court what Bridget had told her about it, Mrs. Churchill answered, “She said Mrs. Borden had a note to go to see someone that was sick, and she was dusting the sitting room, and she hurried off, and says, ‘She didn’t tell me where she was going; she generally does’.”

At first, this answer confused listeners because it made it sound as if Abby had told Bridget about the note, not just Lizzie. (Some Bridget-suspicious folk still think that’s what Abby did and Bridget, as a prosecution witness, refused to acknowledge it.) Eventually, Mrs. Churchill would tepidly agree that Bridget was relaying what Lizzie had told her, as Knowlton was quick to clarify with Bridget when he recalled her to the stand:

Q: [Knowlton] Up to the time when Miss Lizzie Borden told her father and told you in reference to the note, had you heard anything about it from anyone?

A: [Bridget] No sir, I never did.

Q: Let me ask you if anyone to your knowledge came to that house on the morning of August 4th with a message or a note for Mrs. Borden?

A: No sir, I never seen nobody.

Robinson had certainly heard this testimony from Bridget, yet in his closing argument,  he stuck to Mrs. Churchill’s testimony in answer to what Bridget told her about the note, and insisted that Abby must have told Bridget about the note, and therefore a note must have existed. This seemed disingenuous of Robinson, even verging on unethical, and it was the primary thing for which he was criticized by legal experts after the trial. But, as Robinson also pointed out, “Lizzie didn’t say anything about Mrs. Borden hurrying off [in the middle of dusting]; nobody says that. Bridget told it to Mrs. Churchill.” That, at least, was a fair point, and it begs the question: If Abby didn’t tell Bridget about a note and hurry off while in the middle of dusting, where did Bridget suppose Abby was when she came inside to wash the windows, and Abby was nowhere to be seen? She did not say, and was not asked.

Alice Russell’s Testimony

When Lizzie’s friend Alice took the stand and was asked about what she knew of the note, she described Dr. Bowen approaching Lizzie as she was lying on the lounge in the dining room during the first hour after the murder. He asked Lizzie if she knew anything about the note her mother had received. According to Alice, Lizzie “hesitated and said, well, no she didn’t.” Dr. Bowen then asked Alice if she had looked in the wastebasket. Alice answered that she hadn’t. Dr. Bowen next asked if they looked in her pocket (perhaps meaning pocketbook or purse). Alice then volunteered, “Well, then she must have put it in the fire.” And Lizzie said, “Yes, she must have put it in the fire.”

Again, it was Alice, not Lizzie, who first suggested that Abby must have burned the note. In his closing, Robinson emphasizes this, and comments on how all had agreed that “very likely it was true.” He seemed to be trying to get across that the story of the note and what happened to it was not wholly Lizzie’s alone, but contributed to by others—by Alice, and also by Bridget, with her claim of Abby “hurrying off” while she was dusting.

Were There Efforts to Find the Note?

We know that a search for a note was made on day of the murders, and an ad placed in the paper asking for the writer, but was there any other effort made to track down the origin of that alleged note from a sick friend? One would expect Abby’s friends and acquaintances might have been questioned not only about whether they themselves were the sender, but also whether they had any ideas on who might have been likely to send it. But there is no record of them looking into Abby’s social network, or her habits (or lack thereof) of helping friends and neighbors in need.

We do know Abby was a churchgoer, so she must have had some acquaintances there. We know from an 1891 article The Fall River Daily Herald that “Mrs. Andrew J. Borden” was in charge of Membership for the Women’s Auxiliary of the YMCA, so she likely had connections there as well. We hear from Mrs. Marianna Holmes in her interview with the Boston Post that “Mrs. Borden had many friends of her own.” We know from testimony from Bridget that Abby occasionally had friends over to stay the night in the guest room. And, according to Lizzie’s inquest testimony, Abby was expecting company to stay the night the following Monday.

Did police officers make inquiries of these friends of Mrs. Borden? It doesn’t seem so, at least judging by Marshal Hilliard’s testimony at the trial.

Q: [Knowlton] Mr. Hilliard have you made any effort to find any person who carried a note to the Borden house on August 4th?

A: [Hilliard] No further than what I instructed my officers in.

Q: And have you been able to find any person who sent or carried a note?

Mr. Robinson then interrupted with, “Wait a moment. I object to that. It doesn’t appear that he has done anything at all.” Knowlton did not argue the point, merely moved on. It seems Knowlton was not interested in whether Hilliard’s police department had actually tried to find sender of the note, only to emphasize that the sender had not been found, and thus did not exist.

To be fair, if Lizzie and Emma and her lawyers made any effort to find the sender other than the advertisement in the paper there is no record of them doing so either. But Emma and Lizzie must have had some idea of the people Abby knew beyond her stepmother and half-sister, or who might have been close enough to her to feel they could call on her for help. We know they hired a private detective for at least a short while. One assumes they did what they could and were left mystified.

The All-Purpose Note

Even the most committed Lizzie defender would admit it to be a suspicious “coincidence” that Abby had received a note to go help a sick friend on the very same day a killer was trying to sneak into the house with murder on his mind. Then again, we don’t really know how big the coincidence; we don’t know if it was rare or common for Abby to either receive notes or to go help sick people or both. No one looking into the murders at the time, or writing about them afterward, seems to have shown much interest in Abby’s habits, her social life, or anything at all about her. In 1967, Victoria Lincoln maintained that Abby was all but housebound and had no friends whatsoever, and many writers since have simply accepted that as truth, repeating it over and over, painting grim pictures of a family all locked miserably together in a house where no one ever comes to the door, and no one but Andrew comes and goes. This was not at all the case.

Ironically, Lincoln, the captain for the Lizzie-Is-Guilty team, did believe a note was sent to the house. “There is impressive evidence that the note did come,” she wrote. “In the first place, a young man was seen [by a neighbor] going to the front door at nine; it was briefly opened to him, but he did not go in.” (Lizzie also claimed to have heard someone come to the door around 9 a.m.) “In the second place, Dr. Bowen tried to read the scraps of a torn-up note, refused to show them to the police and burned them in the kitchen stove a little over an hour after the murders were discovered.” However, Lincoln maintained the note delivered to the house was not a note about someone being sick, it was a note from Andrew summoning Abby to the bank so he could put the Swansea farm in her name. Lincoln believed Lizzie intercepted that note, and that reading the contents of it caused her to snap and go upstairs to kill Abby. This is outlandish speculation on Lincoln’s part that fails to match with any known facts and is certainly untrue. Still, it shows us that a note could have arrived at the house for any number of reasons, and writers have taken advantage of this unknown to construct any number of theories that often include an actual known fact or two to give them a sheen of credibility.

For example, Edward Radin took what he gleaned from an interview with Mrs. Abby Potter, Abby’s niece (who as a child was known as “Little Abby” Whitehead), and devised a theory that it was Abby’s sister, Sarah Whithead, who sent a note to tell Abby she wouldn’t need her to watch Little Abby that morning as previously planned (per Potter) while Mrs. Whitehead went to the police picnic at Rocky Point. Radin supposed that Little Abby’s mother refused to come forward to corroborate Lizzie about the note purely out of spite. William Masterson came up with his own version of this idea, and “deduced” that after Abby received that note from her sister (delivered by her 5-year-old nephew, George) she did indeed hurry off to Sarah Whitehead’s house, which Abby partly owned. Although she found her sister not at home, Masterson suggested she let herself in and made herself a snack before returning to 92 Second Street and heading back upstairs to her complete her unfinished task, only to be killed by the intruder determined to confront her husband.

Other types of conjecture can be found on message boards between Borden buffs who enjoy playing guessing games of their own. Perhaps someone came to the door, told Abby of the request for aid, and Lizzie misunderstood, thinking a note had come, but in reality it was just a verbal message. Or, perhaps Abby made up her own story about receiving a note so she could leave the house without anyone knowing where she was going or how long it would take. Perhaps she was still worried about being poisoned and wanted to go see a different doctor after Dr Bowen had brushed her off.

There seems to be all manner of possible reasons that the sender of the note was not found that don’t require Lizzie to be a bald-faced liar and killer. Yet, there is no arguing that all those reasons are based on conjecture and not on evidence.

Through the Lens of Guilt

There is no single piece of evidence more indicative guilt than the Lizzie’s claim that Abby “had a note.” As Knowlton observed in his closing argument, “Little did it occur to Lizzie Borden when she told that lie to her father that there would be 80,000 witnesses of the falsity of it. My distinguished friend [Robinson] has had the hardihood to suggest somebody may have written that note and not come forward to say so. Why, Mr. Foreman, do you believe there exists in Fall River anybody so lost to all sense of humanity … who would not have rushed forward, without anything being said, to state, ‘I wrote that.’ I hoped somebody would come forward and say so and relieve this case of that falsehood.”

Because the note was never found, and no one ever came forward to declare they had sent a note, it is difficult not to conclude that Lizzie was lying about a note being delivered to Abby. Indeed, it appears to be an obvious falsehood that Lizzie cooked up in the moment in order to keep Andrew Borden from asking why his wife was not in the house when he returned home from his trip downtown that hot August morning. And, perhaps, to keep Bridget from asking too many questions as well.

Furthermore, there seems to have been no time window in which a note could have arrived before Lizzie came downstairs and encountered Abby in the dining room at about 8:45 or 8:50 a.m., which is when Lizzie said Abby told her about the note. John Morse had spent the hour-and-a-half between finishing breakfast with the elder Bordens and the time he left the house at 8:40 a.m. in the sitting room, with its door open to the front entry, chatting with Andrew and reading the newspaper. Morse was sure no one had come to the front door during that time, and Bridget was sure no one had come to the back door. So when exactly would this note have arrived?

Another problem with Lizzie’s story about her conversation with Abby that morning is her claim that Abby told her she would go out to pick up meat for the noon meal while she was out, while Bridget testified that she had already been given directions by Abby to serve more mutton leftovers for the noon meal. So that appears to be several falsehoods in a row.

Just before court adjourned on the day Knowlton began his closing argument, he finished with these words on the note, no doubt to drive home his strongest piece of evidence so it would stew all evening in the minds of jury members. “When I find, as I found, and as you must find, if you answer your consciences in this case, that the story told about a note coming is as false as the crime itself, I am not responsible, Mr. Foreman, and you are not responsible, for the conclusions to which you are driven.”

Through the Lens of Innocence

When legal scholar John Wigmore wrote his analysis of the Borden case, he asserted that “the story of the note requires for its truth a combination of circumstances almost inconceivable.” This is the same John Wigmore, who, in the same article, said it didn’t matter if we can’t explain how Lizzie didn’t have any signs of blood on her because this was a “difficulty of ignorance; in other words, there is no proved fact which is inconsistent with the thing being so.” Wigmore insisted that just because we don’t know how Lizzie got herself clean of blood, this difficulty of ignorance doesn’t mean she wasn’t able to do it. By that standard, wouldn’t the inability to identify the sender of the note also qualify as a difficulty of ignorance?

Edward Radin presents a good argument for Lizzie being truthful when he points out that when Lizzie told Andrew that Abby had had a note and gone out, “her father made no reply.” We have no idea if that’s true or not; however, Bridget, who overheard the conversation, didn’t report that Andrew asked Lizzie any questions about where Abby went. Radin finds this significant. “It would have been normal for him to ask who was ill; after all, it might be a close friend or a relative … Yet, he kept silent. Why? The answer could be that he knew about the note or message.” In Radin’s mind, “Andrew Borden’s lack of curiosity is a strong indication of prior knowledge,” and he suggests Andrew likely knew about the note because he was still at home when the note arrived. (Perhaps this was the visitor Lizzie told Fleet she heard arrive at about 9 a.m. before she went downstairs?) But whether he previously knew about a note or not, Andrew clearly didn’t find it all that unusual that Abby had gone out on a sick call or he wouldn’t have proceeded to lie down for a nap.

So, for the sake of argument, let’s say a note was delivered. Wouldn’t the person who sent it have come forward to admit to being the sender? Not necessarily. Sociological research into criminal justice, psychology, and the “bystander effect,” tells us that a significant portion of witnesses do not report crimes and/or choose to remain silent during investigations. A study utilizing the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) found that a bystander was present in nearly two-thirds of violent victimizations, yet 48 percent, nearly half, of those who were aware of the crime did nothing to help. The decision to remain silent when someone has knowledge of a crime is often driven by a combination of fear, apathy, and cultural or personal reasons, including a mistrust of police and lack of confidence in the justice system. As Governor Robinson noted in his closing, “Sometimes people don’t want to have anything to do with it; they don’t want to get into the courtroom, even if a life is in danger.”

According to newspaper accounts of the time, the Borden murders whipped up a great deal of fear in Fall River. This created intense pressure on police to apprehend the culprit, who in those first few days did grab people off the street and drag them to the police station on the slightest suspicion (such as withdrawing too much money from their own bank account). Immigrants were especially targeted, and the city was full of them. This surely created an atmosphere of worry about being wrongfully accused by the police. Even Alice Russell, who was staying at the Borden House the first few days after the murder and happened to find a heavy knobbed stick in the room she was occupying, described at the inquest how she became “terribly alarmed” at the discovery because she felt it could somehow implicate her in the minds of police.

Yet, fear of getting involved is not the only reason why someone might not come forward. As Robinson also noted, “You will find men now living perhaps in this county who do not know this trial is going on, do not know anything about it, do not pay much attention to it; they are about their own business; do not consider it of any consequence. And after a lawsuit is over … someone will come forward and say, ‘Well, if I had really known that question was in dispute, I could have told you all about it.’  Bless his dear heart, why didn’t he come out of the cellar so we could see him?”

While it is possible that not every citizen of Fall River knew about the murders, it does seem unlikely the writer of the note, presumably close to enough to Abby to ask her for help, wouldn’t have heard about the murders or the story of the note. Perhaps that is why Edward Radin, in his defense of Lizzie, was more swayed by the “shy immigrant” theory. Not only is an immigrant more likely to be reluctant to talk to police, Radin finds evidence for it from Lizzie’s claim that when she had asked Abby if she was going to change her dress before she went out, her stepmother answered, “No, this is good enough.” If, says Radin, Abby was answering the call of an immigrant family of a “lower” station, maybe she wouldn’t feel the need to change her dress. (Victoria Lincoln proclaims this a ridiculous idea, as no one of Abby’s station would dare set foot outside her door in stay-at-home morning dress, no matter who she planned to visit.) Others are of the opposite opinion and believe it more likely that someone from the upper class, in which the cost of becoming embroiled within a lurid murder investigation would be much higher, would be the most reluctant to come forward. This could be especially true if the sickness that led to someone reaching out to Abby was of a particularly embarrassing nature.

Whether these theories are valid or not, it remains objectively possible that Abby (or Andrew) could have heard a knock at the front door just before Lizzie came downstairs, a knock that Bridget didn’t hear while in the sink room washing dishes, a knock that came with a note that Abby read before tossing it into the kitchen stove fire just as Alice Russell surmised. Abby could have then spoken to Lizzie about it in the dining room as Lizzie passed through, but with Bridget having just gone outside to be sick, Abby didn’t have a chance to tell her about it before deciding to go upstairs an finish her bed-making task. And that, of course, was where the intruder who was hell-bent on killing Andrew encountered her—while Andrew was making his way downstreet, and Bridget was vomiting under the pear tree, and Lizzie was downstairs in the water closet. This would, of course, only be possible if Bridget was wrong about the time she spoke to Abby and received her instructions for washing the windows. There is support for that conclusion from John Morse, who testified he heard Abby give her that instruction much earlier, at breakfast. (Other issues with Bridget’s timeline are examined in-depth in Abby’s Time of Death.)

As for Lizzie’s added detail that Abby said she would be getting meat for dinner “while she was out” after Abby had told Bridget earlier in the morning they’d have mutton leftovers, well, Abby may have changed her mind about the menu once she received a note and realized she would be going out anyway. Or she could have changed her mind about what to serve after learning that Andrew had just invited John Morse back for dinner.

There is also the argument made by Judge Dewey in his charge to the jury that there was no necessity for Lizzie to make up the existence of a note. He suggested that if Lizzie had killed Abby around 9:30 a.m., she would have “had a period in which she could turn over the matter in her mind,” and presumably to understand the implications of making up a note that could not be proven. Dewey reasoned that Lizzie could have simply said Abby told her she was going out, without saying why, and not placed herself under such heavy suspicion. Perhaps that is true, perhaps not. Either way, the fact that Lizzie stuck to her note story when there was a less risky story to tell can be interpreted as a sign that Lizzie was telling the truth, and was willing to stick to that truth, however many problems it created for her. Lizzie claimed to be as confused as anyone about the note and where it might have come from. As Robinson concluded in his closing, “We don’t know anything about [the note]. That Lizzie lied about it is a wrongful aspersion, born out of ignorance.”

Author’s Take

At the end of the day, the note is indeed one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Lizzie. It appears to be a lie that, like nothing else in this case, betrays consciousness of guilt. It has certainly been the biggest factor in painting a picture of guilt to me. Which is inconvenient, because it is Lizzie’s story about the note that most stops me from going all-in on my instinct to believe Lizzie innocent. It is the one piece of evidence my mind cannot explain away as easily as it can so many others.

Yet, I also think about Knowlton’s advice to the jury about how to look at circumstantial evidence, how I might observe a great many chips floating down the river one way, while a few in this little eddy before me are moving a different direction. The few that seem to move against the general direction of the majority, says Knowlton, shouldn’t take away from our sense that we know which way the river is flowing. Lizzie’s claim about the note is one of the few chips going against the current that flows in the direction of innocence that I personally see.

I also take to heart Dewey’s comments on the note. “You are asked to find that a deliberate fact, a deliberate falsehood on the part of the defendant, has been established.” And, “Judging the matter fairly—and not assuming beforehand that the defendant is guilty—does the evidence satisfy you beyond any reasonable doubt … that note must necessarily be false?” In trying to judge the matter fairly, I see no way that a deliberate falsehood about the note can be established. It is one thing to say it appears unlikely that a note existed; that is a reasonable inference supported by the facts. But to say unequivocally that the note did not exist is, to borrow a phrase from Pearson, “intellectual bankruptcy.” We don’t know what we don’t know.

Furthermore, if I take seriously Dewey’s charge to not assume beforehand that Lizzie was guilty, and assume that Lizzie was telling the truth about Abby receiving a note, then I find room for other questions to be asked beyond who might have been the sick friend, questions that recognize the too-convenient “coincidence” of such a note arriving minutes before Abby was killed. Usually, even those who lean toward Lizzie’s innocence believe, as Knowlton did, that it makes little sense for the killer to be the one who delivered the note, say, to lure Abby out of the house; he’d still be leaving Lizzie and Bridget behind to “watch the proceedings.” (Knowlton’s words.) But what if the killer had a different purpose in mind for delivering the note? Even Judge Dewey suggested that as a possibility, and it seems the defense team had been seriously working through the idea as well.

Indeed, decades later, Arthur Phillips asserted the defense had been leaning toward the possibility that the killer delivered the note in order to gain access to the house, and had even been let into the house by Abby, who was then followed upstairs by the killer. Of course, that particular scenario doesn’t make sense, as Abby would have had to tell Lizzie about the note after it arrived. The point is, there was clearly an avenue of investigation in which, if the police hadn’t so quickly dismissed the note story as a lie, could have potentially led to the identification of other suspects. Again, we don’t know what we don’t know.

Then again, I am not so sure it is the “note” part of the story that is the real problem. When I conduct a thought experiment and ask, what if Lizzie had done as Judge Dewey suggested and had not spoken of a note but had simply said to her father that Abby told her she was going out? I don’t think it would have made much difference to those prosecuting the case against her; Knowlton still would have claimed Lizzie had spoken a too-convenient lie to stop Andrew from wondering where his wife was. When I take the thought experiment a little further and ask, what if Lizzie said Abby hadn’t told her anything at all and she had just assumed Abby had gone out? Again, Knowlton probably still would have claimed Lizzie was lying, or at least mocked her assumption just as he mocked her claim to have gone up into the barn on a hot day.

The police had their first warrant for Lizzie’s arrest just four days after the murder, not nearly enough time to conclude that no one was going to show up to claim to be the sender of the note. This tells me that no matter what Lizzie said to explain why she thought Abby was away from the house, it wouldn’t have mattered because the essential problem remained: Lizzie said she believed Abby was out when Abby was actually lying upstairs murdered. Ironically, the story of the note that became so damning to her might have been the one thing to save her from suspicion if someone had actually come forward to declare themselves the sender. But of course, no one did.

As we have explored, there could be any number of reasons for that, a scared immigrant perhaps, or someone reluctant to get involved for reasons of their own, or perhaps even a killer working his way through whatever plan he may have concocted. Or, it could simply be that Lizzie, after killing her stepmother, knew her father might wonder where Abby was when he came home so she made up that story of a note without thinking through how it could blow up in her face afterward. I honestly don’t know which is true; each seems as likely as the other to me. What I do know is that it doesn’t seem reasonable, let alone ethical, to declare Lizzie guilty of two horrific murders primarily because no one came forward about sending a note. That, to me, is too thin a rope by which to hang her.

But oh man, I can’t deny that it appears to be a tremendous lie, and I don’t blame anyone who feels certain that’s exactly what it was.