Prophecy

On the morning of August 3rd, 1892, a sick and nauseous Abby Borden took herself across the street to her family doctor, Seabury Bowen, and told him she believed her family had been poisoned. She and her husband Andrew, as well as her stepdaughter Lizzie, had all been violently ill the night before, and she believed they had eaten poisoned “baker’s bread.” Dr. Bowen told her that it was more likely the “summer complaint,” or the food poisoning so common in the days before refrigeration. Still, that evening, Lizzie Borden took herself down to her friend Alice Russell’s house and also told her friend of her and Abby’s fears that the family had been poisoned, mentioning the bread, but also wondering if the milk left on their doorstep each morning had been tampered with. She spoke darkly of her father’s enemies, then said, “I am afraid sometimes that somebody will do something to him.” The very next morning, Andrew and Abby Borden were dead, brutally murdered in their own home with a hatchet.

When Alice Russell took the stand at Lizzie’s 1893 trial for murder, prosecutor William Moody asked her to describe for the jury what Lizzie had told her about her fears. This is how Alice answered:

[Lizzie] said, “Well, I don’t know; I feel depressed. I feel as if something is hanging over me that I cannot throw off, and it comes over me at times, no matter where I am …

She said, “Mr. and Mrs. Borden were awfully sick last night.” And I said, “Why, what is the matter; something they have eaten?” She said, “We were all sick, all but Maggie … We had some baker’s bread, and all ate of it but Maggie, and Maggie wasn’t sick.” And I said, “Well, it couldn’t have been the bread; if it had been baker’s bread I should suppose other people would be sick, and I haven’t heard of anybody.” And she says, “That is so.” And she says, “Sometimes I think our milk might be poisoned.” And I said, “Well, how do you get your milk; how could it be poisoned?” And she said, “We have the milk come in a can and set on the step, and we have an empty can. We put out the empty can overnight, and the next morning when they bring the milk they take the empty can.” And I said, “Well, if they put anything in the can the farmer would see it.” … She said, “They were awfully sick; and I wasn’t sick, I didn’t vomit; but I heard them vomiting and stepped to the door and asked if I could do anything, and they said, No.” …

She said, “I don’t know, I feel afraid sometimes that Father has got an enemy … He has so much trouble with his men that come to see him.” She told me of a man that came to see him, and she heard him say—she didn’t see him, but heard her father say, “I don’t care to let my property for such business.” And she said the man answered sneeringly, “I shouldn’t think you would care what you let your property for.” And she said, “Father was mad and ordered him out of the house.”

She told me of seeing a man run around the house one night when she went home … She said, “And you know the barn has been broken into twice.” And I said, “Oh well, you know that that was somebody after pigeons; there is nothing in there for them to go after but pigeons.” “Well,” she says, “they have broken into the house in broad daylight, with Emma and Maggie and me there.” And I said, “I never heard of that before.” And she said, “Father forbade our telling it.” … She said, “I think sometimes—I am afraid sometimes that somebody will do something to him; he is so discourteous to people …

Alice’s testimony continued with her description of Lizzie telling her how she “ashamed” she felt by her father’s rudeness to Dr. Bowen when he came over earlier that morning to check on Andrew after Abby’s visit to him to share her fears.

She said, “The way Father treated Dr. Bowen, I was so mortified.” And she said after [the doctor] had gone, Mrs. Borden said she thought it was too bad for him to treat Dr. Bowen so, and he said he didn’t want him coming over there that way.” …  She said, “I am afraid somebody will do something; I don’t know but what somebody will do something.”

Alice also testified that because of that conversation, when Bridget first came to her door to tell her that Andrew Borden was dead, Alice had assumed he had died from the delayed effects of poison. It wasn’t until later, when she was at the house and she heard John Morse talking to Lizzie, said Alice, that “it dawned on my mind that it was cold-blooded murder.”

Cassandra or Clytemnestra?

Over the years, Lizzie’s chilling prescience has been likened by erudite authors to the mythological Cassandra, foretelling the doom of the house of Atreus. “The inspired daughter of the King of Troy seems far removed from the daughter of the Fall River banker,” wrote Edmund Pearson, “but as Cassandra and Miss Borden are the only two genuinely inspired prophetesses recorded in history, it is proper to mention their resemblance.” He described how “Cassandra, in the Aeschylean tragedy, foresees death to Agamemnon as soon as he enters his own house; death by an ax, wielded by a furious woman … Miss Borden, in words less majestic than Casandra’s, but with prescience fully as remarkable said: “I am afraid somebody will do something!” (Pearson also adds that, ironically, the city of Fall River was originally named Troy.)  

Uncanny resemblance to the myth aside, Lizzie was right; somebody did indeed do something. Not even a full day after she shared her worries with Alice, both Andrew and Abby had been butchered. But, of course, Lizzie was not the only one who spoke her fears aloud that day; Abby had also relayed her same fear of being targeted to Dr. Bowen. Thus, Lizzie was not suddenly predicting doom without context, it was a shared feeling swirling about her house.

Strikingly, it is not uncommon for victims of murder to predict that disaster is about to befall them. In The Crime Classification Manual, published in 1992, co-author John Douglas, the FBI agent who pioneered criminal profiling, covered several common forensic findings of domestic homicides. He noted, “Post-offense interviews of close friends or family members often reveal that the victim had expressed concerns or fears regarding [his or her] safety or even a sense of foreboding.” Of course, Abby was the victim, Lizzie was not. (Although, if it was an intruder who committed the murders, it could be sheer luck that Lizzie ended up staying out of the intruder’s way and did not end up a victim, too.) Yet, both Abby and Lizzie expressed fear not just for themselves, but for the entire family. And both seemed to believe the harm coming their way would be the result of retribution directed at Andrew.

Still, for many, Lizzie’s prophecy was nothing less than an admission of her own malevolent intentions. Victoria Lincoln believed Lizzie’s words were less fitting to the mythical prophetess Cassandra than to the mythical murderess Clytemnestra, who killed her husband with a sharp blade, and then killed Cassandra, too. From this perspective, Lizzie’s fear was not for herself, but fear of herself, and what she desired to do. Thus, her prophecy was a confession before the fact. And perhaps it was.

Through the Lens of Guilt

While District Attorney Hosea Knowlton was usually quick to elevate and exaggerate any possible evidence that even obliquely pointed to Lizzie’s guilt, he was surprisingly circumspect about Lizzie’s fearful night-before-the-murders statements to Alice. He said he did not “attach the utmost significance to that thing,” but called it simply another small piece of circumstantial evidence pointing in the direction of guilt, “one of the chips that may float in the current, or may float in the eddy, as you look at it one way or the other.”

Knowlton even acknowledged that presentiments of approaching doom legitimately existed, although he made it clear that he believed any intuitions that occurred “in real life” were only spoken of afterwards. “Did you ever hear one expressed beforehand? … Sometimes we feel that way, but we seldom say so; and if we say so, the something hanging over us does not happen. All the disasters of your life, all the things that ever came with crushing weight upon the happiness of your life, came like a flash of lightning out of the clear sky … You do not know it beforehand, you do not think of it beforehand, you do not speak of it beforehand.”

In his mind, the purpose of Lizzie’s visit to Alice was “to prepare her for something dreadful,” something she herself was planning to do. Most other writers on the case agree that her intent was clear: Lizzie wanted to pave the way for belief in an intruder. She wanted to make sure someone knew that Andrew had enemies who might want to do harm so that when she herself killed him, suspicion would not land on her. What could be more obvious?

Yet, as her statements to Alice did nothing to deflect suspicion from her, but only drew more suspicion to her, it’s not a winning argument. Or at least, it was not a winning strategy for Lizzie to employ. Of course, that would be in keeping with all the other failed strategies she allegedly attempted to throw suspicions off herself, such as her story of the Note, or her “absurd” (Knowlton’s word) alibi of going up in the barn while Andrew was killed. Despite Knowlton’s many attempts to characterize Lizzie as “cunning,” a crafty murderer able to keep a straight cover story Lizzie was not.  

As for the idea that Lizzie was trying to plant the idea that Andew had enemies so that police would not look suspiciously her way? In the immediate aftermath of the murders, when Lizzie was asked by police if her father had any enemies, she said no. She left their suspicion with nowhere to go but to herself.

Through the Lens of Innocence

It is always a little head-scratching when observers accuse Lizzie of trying to obscure her guilt with things they then contend only betray her guilt. If Lizzie was a murderer so nimble she could butcher two people with a maid about the house, as well as a murderer so adept she could make all evidence of blood and weapon disappear so well that police couldn’t find any, it is difficult to believe she would make such a clumsy choice as to broadcast her intention the night before. Judge Dewey recommended the jury think hard about “whether it seems to you reasonable and probable that a person meditating the perpetration of a great crime, would, the day before, predict to a friend, either in form or in substance, the happening of that disaster.”

If an intruder was so nimble as to be able to slip inside the house and remain hidden inside for hours, and so adept as to commit two murders without being detected by its inhabitants, then it would be reasonable to assume that an intruder had been staking out the house and observing its habits for quite awhile. That intruder may have been hiding in the shadows for days, watching and waiting for his chance to carry out his plan; in fact, Lizzie claimed to both family members and police that she had glimpsed such a man at least once. If that was the case, it would not be surprising if Lizzie did indeed sense danger gathering around her. This sense would have found plenty of room to grow within the air of paranoia that had long hung over 92 Second Street, with its history of break-ins, its obsessive locking of doors, its barbed wire on the fences, and its shadowy figures lurking on the backsteps. Then, on Tuesday night they all became miserably ill; Lizzie could hear the retching and heaving in the room next door go on for hours. On Wednesday morning Abby was crying “Poison!” Is it any wonder that Lizzie was spooked? Is it any wonder she picked that evening to finally speak her worries aloud?

Author’s Take

Lizzie’s words to Alice were too great a coincidence to be a coincidence, that much is true. But was the coincidence one of Lizzie revealing her own malicious intent to kill? Or was the coincidence more akin to Lizzie seeing “the writing on the wall?”

When you are on the road and see a car zip past you at a hundred miles an hour, dangerously weaving in and out of traffic, you think, ‘That person is going to crash and die,’ and you might even say it aloud to the passenger beside you. Almost never do you come across the same car having crashed, but if you did, you would not be surprised, and it would not be your fault. Or, if you look out your window and see your neighbor’s kid hanging with drug dealers, you might think, ‘That kid is going to die a drug-related death,’ and you might even tell your spouse. And probably the kid won’t die, but if he was found dead one day of an overdose, you would not be surprised, and it would not be your fault. And, perhaps, if you are the daughter of a man who tends to infuriate people in business, and you sometimes hear arguments and threats against your father during his meetings downstairs, and you see dark figures hanging around the house at night, you might think, ‘Someone is going to harm him,’ and you might even tell your friend. And if he did happen to be murdered one day, you would not be surprised, and it would not be your fault, unless … he happened to be killed the very next day, then the assumption would be that you killed him yourself.

I once read that a good detective assumes there are no coincidences but will become curious about them and will work to find the hidden patterns around them to ensnare the perpetrator of the crime. A bad detective also assumes there are no coincidences but does not become curious and instead accepts the surface pattern overlaying them, a pattern that will only ensnare the detective. The Fall River police encountered the coincidence of Lizzie’s prophecy, but they clearly did not become curious about it. They did not wonder if it was a sign that Lizzie may have seen or heard things worth investigating, nor did they work with her or with Emma to look deeper into the feeling of threat Lizzie expressed. They simply jumped to the conclusion that Lizzie was telegraphing her murderous intent and thus ensnared themselves in the surface pattern. They left themselves trapped within a mono-focus that led to a quick arrest of their one and only suspect without enough evidence to convict. Thus, a murder that may have been solvable through genuine curiosity today remains officially unsolved.  

I certainly don’t know if Lizzie was telegraphing her own sinister intent or not. What I do know is that sometimes presentiments of disaster are real. On the day I found my mother dead from suicide, I remember driving to her house and feeling a heaviness within me and somehow knowing exactly what I would find. Even though she had spoken cheerfully to me just a few days before and told me how excited she was that she was about to see her grandchildren. We often register things without being fully aware we are registering them. Perhaps Lizzie did, too.