Overkill

When Agnes DeMille began developing Fall River Legend, her ballet about Lizzie and the Borden murders—a project she said she chose because she knew how it felt “to want to kill”—she decided to “turn away from the ferocity of the crime” itself. She would, she added, “not show the hitting and chopping.” Instead, she would let the work be guided by the “confounding contradictions, the ragged pieces of the investigative puzzle.”

If there is any entry in this encyclopedia in which the focus should stay in those rooms and confront the violence done to the victims, it is this entry about the ‘overkill’ inflicted on them. But it seems that as soon as Andrew and Abby Borden stop breathing, we are left with two choices: either sit with them in a sense of dismay that no words can carry, or leave them lie there within sight of the corner of one’s eye and move on to putting together the pieces of the puzzle.

We will begin by noting that whoever attacked those two old people on the morning of August 4th, they were fiercely determined to kill them. Abby suffered eighteen brutal blows from a hatchet blade, nearly all to the back of her head as she lay face down on the floor, even though the first few blows had almost certainly crushed her skull and caused her death. Andrew Borden took ten piercing hatchet blows to the side of his face and head as he lay napping on the sofa, even though the first blow immediately killed him and stopped his heart. (Experts said that must have been the case, or the scene would have been much gorier from spurting blood.) Such a flurry of excessive blows was inarguably overkill, betraying an explosion of deeply held and deeply personal rage. Many observers have pronounced it one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Lizzie. Who else but someone close to the victims would have reason to feel such malignant animosity?

Likewise, who else but someone in the family would literally obliterate their heads and faces in what psychologists call an act of “dehumanization?” Half of Andrew’s face was left a bloodied mass of flesh, unrecognizable to those who knew him. From a psychological standpoint, such a nullification of identity suggests a killer that feels so much rage that he or she is symbolically trying erase the person. Again, for many this points straight to Lizzie, who, according to the vast amount of creative literature written about her, was simmering in her various resentments for years.

Of course, if an intruder managed to get into the house at 92 Second Street and commit the murders, we have no idea what that person’s history with Andrew and/or Abby might have been and what kind of motive drove him. That person may have been full of foaming-at-the-mouth rage against Andrew for some perceived sin against him. Andrew was known to have enemies, and Lizzie had just the night before expressed her fear of such enemies and what they might do. But because a specific intruder was never identified, or even truly considered a possibility by police, Lizzie has been left on the receiving end of the retroactive psychological analysis prompted by the overkill of her parents.

On one hand, overkill is clearly unchecked rage, an adrenalized tide of emotion. On the other hand, the dehumanization and depersonalization that was inflicted on Andrew is often about detaching and dissociating from emotion. As one astute forum poster put it: “No doubt Lizzie loved her father, but at that moment in time she hated him enough to kill him. Depersonalization allowed her to do it. The father part of the corpse that was left on the sofa, the face that she both loved and hated, no longer existed. She had to objectify him, or she couldn’t have taken his life in such a violent manner. Premeditated murder that is personal is not so much about what’s expedient as it is about what the murderer needs to do to the victim.” If Lizzie did indeed butcher her father and stepmother as so many believe, this complex psychological dance between love and hate would make sense, and perhaps that is exactly the right way to understand Lizzie’s actions that hot August morning.

The only problem is, there was no real evidence that Lizzie hated her father. (The musings of novelists do not qualify as evidence.) In fact, those who knew the family usually remarked that Andrew and Lizzie were quite fond of each other. (The exception being Hiram Harrington, her hostile uncle by marriage who one reporter described to his editor as someone with a penchant for making “unfounded” declarations.) Lizzie clearly didn’t like Abby, but there is no evidence she hated her to the point of murder. She complained about her as do many stepchildren about a stepparent, but their relationship seems to have been one of resigned forbearance rather than lethal acrimony. (For more on the Lizzie/Abby relationship see Motive: Hatred.)

Nor is there much in the way of evidence as to why Lizzie would be filled with such purported rage. She admitted to being upset when her father gave Abby some property five years earlier, yes. But was a gift to his wife worth $1,500 reason to harbor such rage that she had to kill them both? Lizzie would have liked to have lived a more lavish life on the Hill, but Andrew saw no reason to move, yes. But was that reason to seethe with rage enough to kill him and Abby, too? (See Motive: Money.) Some say well, Lizzie obviously had a mental illness, probably a personality disorder that made her feel entitled to have what she wanted, even entitled to kill to get her way. But other than mild bouts of depression (not unusual for women of that era who had limited control of their own lives), she showed no signs of mental illness before or after the murders.

On the contrary, Lizzie was known by her friends to be upstanding, honest, and service-oriented. When arrested and put on a trial for a murder she insisted she did not commit, she endured the ordeal with a grace and dignity that won the admiration of the press. Later in life, she withstood public shunning without public complaint and was known to treat her employees and their children with loyalty and generosity. Where are the signs of this allegedly rage-filled person?

What Lies Beneath?

There is one possibility in which repressed rage toward Andrew and Abby might have been understandable, and that is if she had suffered sexual abuse by Andrew. A number of psychologists have theorized that is exactly what happened to Lizzie and have written well thought-out presentations of an incest theory to explain how Lizzie could have been building up a case of rage for years. Though why a history of abuse may have led her to snap on that particular August morning is unclear, there is no doubt fighting back against one’s sexual predator, or the spouse that turned a blind eye to the abuse, could explain the overkill used against the Bordens.

But an incest theory is necessarily born from a presumption of guilt and works backwards from there. Thus, we cannot know if it applies to Lizzie, because we don’t know that Lizzie was guilty of the murders. She was tried and acquitted by a jury, and, legally at least, remains under the presumption of innocence. One cannot get to guilt just because it’s possible she was abused by her father, as many girls undoubtedly were then and are now. Certainly, there is no evidence that she was abused, but of course there wouldn’t be; sexual abuse is invariably hidden behind a veil of secrecy and shame.

Still, it seems morally precarious to accuse the victim of a murder of being a child molester. Andrew may have done nothing to earn suspicion of such heinous acts other than lying down to take a nap and getting his head split open. Now, if one was going to accuse him of ruining lives through financial ruthlessness, there is at least evidence to support that. But even if Andrew was indeed a sexual abuser—which admittedly could explain some of the seemingly dysfunctional dynamics in the family—it doesn’t necessarily follow that Lizzie was guilty of killing him. Most violated children do not rise up and kill their violators. Although, it is statistically true that perpetrators of parricide are almost always first victims of some kind of parental abuse. So, if Lizzie did kill Andrew and Abby, it would be reasonable to conclude she had been a victim of sexual abuse. But such a conclusion is not valid unless guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is established first by other evidence. That did not happen at Lizzie’s trial in 1893, and it has not happened in the many decades since.

Another interesting angle on the overkill observation is that even as it appears to be an act of rage by someone who lost themselves in a frenzy of violence, there was a 90-minute time gap between the murders; meaning one could just as easily say there was a marked lack of persistent rage. Overkill suggests a red-hot emotion, nearly uncontrollable. But a killer able to wait an hour-and-a-half between murders does not suggest rage; rather, it suggests cool calculation and great patience. Lizzie came down to the kitchen that morning and chatted casually with her stepmother, her father, Bridget. She sprinkled handkerchiefs to get them ready for ironing.  And between murders she also talked to her father and to Bridget, about the mail, about a good dress sale. That does not seem like someone in the midst of such a blind frenzy of such rage that she will have to obliterate her father’s face to express it.

If Not Rage, Then, …

Yes, overkill can be attributed to blind hatred and long repressed rage. But the excessive number of blows could also be attributed to an uncertain killer who had no idea how many blows it would take to actually kill a human being without leaving a chance of survival. In much the same way one might continually stomp on a dead spider out of fear it could pick itself up and crawl up one’s leg, a killer who wants to make sure their victim is dead might hack and hack, just to be sure.  

This kind of overkill would also seem to point to Lizzie; she had no history of violent outbursts, and likely would have had no sense of how much brute force it would actually take to kill. But the same could also apply to an intruder with a personal vendetta against Andrew, or even to a hired killer who had never undertaken such a job before and was determined to get it right.

Author’s Take

The excessive violence and overkill subjected to Andrew and Abby does indeed look to be an act of intense personal anger and hatred, and I understand why so many people think this points to Lizzie as killer. But because the only evidence that she may have felt such rage toward them was the murder itself, it is a circular argument. It looks like she’s guilty because they were so horrifically killed, but it’s because they were so horrifically killed that she looks guilty. Where in that closed loop is actual evidence that she killed them? The evidence for guilt has to be found elsewhere, as does the evidence for deep-seated rage.

Beginning only hours after the discovery of the disfigured bodies of Andrew and Abby, Lizzie Borden’s life was thoroughly investigated and gone over with a fine-toothed comb, by police, by reporters. Everything of significance she ever said or did was dug up and brought into the light. Some of the things discovered about her were not flattering: she was known to be moody at times, and she didn’t always speak well of her stepmother. However, Hosea Knowlton took her fairly mild complaints about Abby and refashioned them to his own purpose: inventing a motive for murder that was not well-supported by the evidence. As Borden scholar Eugene Hosey pointed out in The Hatchet, “as a prosecutor saddled with a weak circumstantial case, he had no choice.”  

Everything else discovered about Lizzie was on the positive side, or at least neutral. She seemed to be a product of her time, an ordinary spinster who strived to meet the expectations set for her, daughter of a wealthy man with maybe too much time on her hands, but overall a good Christian, looking for purpose in good works. I have yet to come across any information about Lizzie that suggests she was keeping a tight lid on a cauldron of rage before it inexplicably blew up on an ordinary Thursday morning. But perhaps she was doing exactly that in the years leading up to the release of her fury and the obliteration of her tormentors.

As far as I can see, though, evidence of parental torment is lacking as well. Her father irritated her, yes, and it seems Abby may have caused her deep hurt by failing to advocate on her behalf with Andrew. But did they torment her? I see no sign of it anywhere but in the speculative fiction and overwrought movies that are the products of a writer’s imagination. This is why for me, if overkill points anywhere, it is away from Lizzie’s guilt and not toward it. My own writer’s imagination has a much easier time picturing a frenzied intruder than it does a frenzied Lizzie. In the end, the furor of overkill inflicted on Andrew and Abby Borden does seem to be a secret code to the killer’s mind. But without knowing with certainty who the killer is, we don’t have the key, so it’s impossible to break the code.