Case for Lizzie Borden’s Guilt

Lizzie Borden is the most famous axe murderess in history. The majority of Americans believe it is unquestionably true that Lizzie Borden killed her father and stepmother, and many believe it without knowing why. It is simply understood that Lizzie, muse for the famous jump-rope rhyme, “Lizzie Borden Took An Axe,” really did take that axe. That is why so many are surprised when they learn Lizzie was actually found “not guilty” at her trial and went on to live quietly in Fall River until old age. Yet, because no one else was ever charged for the crime let alone suspected, most of her contemporaries came to believe her guilty of the brutal murders of Andrew and Abby Borden. They had good reason to believe so.

The case for Lizzie’s guilt is very much an aggregate of circumstantial evidence, small pieces that if introduced in isolation might not look like enough to tell us one way or the other, but when fitted together create a convincing picture of Lizzie’s guilt. As crime journalist Edmund Pearson wrote in his seminal 1937 examination of the Borden case, “When seven or eight clear items of circumstantial evidence point directly to the guilt of a person, that person is innocent nowhere but in a detective novel.”

Here is a list of all the reasons so many people come to conclude, as Judge Josiah Blaisdell did during her preliminary hearing, that Lizzie Borden was “probably” guilty. They are listed in the order of the most cogent, fact-based reasons all the way to the most speculative of opinions. You will find an in-depth entry on each of these reasons in this encyclopedia.

Major Reasons

Here are the most solid pieces of evidence on which the case against Lizzie largely rests, evidence with enough substance and validity to push even the most passionate of Lizzie’s defenders to have to admit the possibility of guilt.

1. The Story of the Note — On the morning of August 4th, Abby Borden had not been seen inside the house for over an hour when her father, Andrew, returned home from his business rounds downtown. Lizzie greeted him and told him that Abby was not there because she had received a note and gone out on a sick call. She repeated the same to Bridget Sullivan, the maid, and later to many of those who flocked to the house after she raised the alarm. However, after Abby’s body was discovered, this note was never found, not anywhere in the house, nor on Abby’s person. Despite a reward being offered, no one ever came forward to claim to be the author of the note or the messenger who delivered it. The police concluded the story of the note was a falsehood Lizzie made up to prevent Andrew from searching for his wife, who Lizzie clearly knew was lying dead up in the guest room. Lizzie’s story about a note appears to be an almost certain lie that speaks to consciousness of guilt that is impossible to dismiss.
2. Prussic Acid — A druggist by the name of Eli Bence told police that on the morning of before the murders that a woman who he later identified as Lizzie Borden came into his store and asked to buy prussic acid, a form of cyanide, in order to clean moths from the edge of a sealskin cape. He refused her request as it was only available by doctor’s prescription and she went away unsatisfied. Two other eyewitnesses in the store at the time also positively identified the woman as Lizzie. For police, this news, which they learned the night of the murders, was proof that Lizzie harbored intent to kill her parents. A total of three eyewitnesses swearing an oath in court that they saw Lizzie are hard to refute, and for many, this is definitive proof of Lizzie’s murderous intent. The fact that the judges ruled this eyewitness testimony inadmissible—because Lizzie was charged with a hatchet murder and not murder by poison—created intense controversy at the time.
3. Time Gap Between Murders — When it was discovered through the examination of the stomach contents of the victims that Abby Borden was killed somewhere between one and two hours before Andrew Borden, that meant the killer of both victims had been lurking in the house for at least that long. Add to that the difficulty of someone being able to get in the house undetected at all, and that meant Lizzie, who had been alone in the house with Abby while the maid was outside washing windows for an hour, was logically the only one who had opportunity to commit the murders.
4. Inquest Testimony/Changing Story — Lizzie was served a subpoena to testify at an inquest convened five days after the murders. She was not allowed to have her counsel with her, and left on her own, her answers were confused and incoherent and often conflicted with the answers given by other witnesses. She even contradicted herself several times and gave the strong impression that she was a liar who couldn’t keep her story straight. Many believe that Lizzie’s own problematic words, at the inquest, as well as in her statements to police in the immediate aftermath of the murders, are the strongest indicator of her guilt. However, her inquest testimony was another significant piece of evidence ruled inadmissible in court.

Strong Reasons

While the following are not as cut-and-dried as the major evidence against Lizzie, they remain significant reasons that help paint a picture of guilt.

5. Opportunity — While it is not true that Lizzie had exclusive opportunity to kill Andrew and Abby (Bridget also had opportunity, and the screen door was unlocked for nearly an hour that morning which would have technically allowed an intruder to slip inside), it is true that she had the most practical opportunity. There was no one else known to be inside the house when Abby was killed, and no one on the busy street outside saw anyone either entering or exiting the house, which seemed to effectively rule out the possibility of an intruder.
6. The Bedford Cord — Three days after the murders, and the morning after she learned she was an official suspect in the murders, Lizzie famously burned a dress in her kitchen stove, all but shouting that she had destroyed important evidence against her.
7. Motive — There was no overwhelmingly clear-cut motive for Lizzie to resort to something as drastic as murder, but she did inherit quite a bit of money from her father. She also was not shy about expressing her dislike for her stepmother, a fact that the prosecution leaned into most heavily to establish motive.
8. The Prophecy — The night before the murders, Lizzie went to visit her friend Alice Russell and spoke of her fears that Andrew had an enemy out to get him and that she expected something terrible was going to happen. This too-coincidental prophecy appears to be Lizzie broadcasting her intention to kill her parents.

Other Reasons

A number of issues connected to the case can be interpreted in either direction, as consistent with either guilt or innocence; nonetheless, the following issues are most often interpreted as indicators of guilt.

9. Lizzie’s Demeanor — The first thing that raised the suspicion of police that something was “not quite right” at the crime scene was what they considered Lizzie’s overly cool demeanor. Although her friends were quick to notice her distress, in the eyes of police officers, she did not seem nearly as upset as they expected the daughter of two murder victims should be.
10. The Handleless Hatchet — An ash-covered hatchet head was found in a box in the Borden cellar. While it was never conclusively connected with the murders and would have been useless as a weapon without it’s handle, the blade was the only sharp instrument found in the house that was the right size to make the wounds in the skull of the victims. It was introduced in court as the “possible weapon.”
11. Barn Alibi — Lizzie told authorities that, at the time her father was being killed, she was up in the barn loft looking for iron for fishing sinkers. This alibi was perceived to be too convenient and, because of the heat of the day, too “absurd” to be true.
12. The Bengaline Silk — When asked to hand over the dress she wore the morning of the murders, Lizzie provided a dark blue dress that several witnesses failed to recognize as the dress she wore that morning, causing authorities to accuse her of subterfuge.
13. Burglary the Year Before — In June 1891, Andrew Borden reported a burglary at his house that took place in broad daylight while Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget were all at home. After the murders, speculation was rampant that it was Lizzie herself who staged the burglary as a kind of dry run for the murders, or at the very least a way to thumb her nose at her father and stepmother. Even though the police never officially confirmed she was suspected at the time of the burglary, newspaper reporters claimed that the police marshal was firmly of that opinion.
14. Overkill — Abby Borden was killed by 19 hatchet blows; Andrew Borden was killed by 10. Such a flurry of violence inflicted on the victims’ heads and faces suggest a very personal kind of rage, the kind that is known to spring up between family members.

Speculative Reasons

Many writers on the Borden case will add a number of suspicious-seeming words and actions attributed to Lizzie that they believe help bolster the case against her. For example, just minutes before Andrew was killed, Lizzie told Bridget about a sale of dress goods at a nearby store, and this is often interpreted as Lizzie trying to get Bridget out of the house in order to kill her father undisturbed. Likewise, Lizzie telling those who asked about Abby’s whereabouts that she thought she’d heard her come in and to please go look for her is interpreted to mean that Lizzie already knew Abby was dead upstairs and was nudging others to go discover her body.  

Any number of minor things could be added to the speculative end of the list: Lizzie didn’t flee the house in fear after discovering her father dead, which could mean she knew very well there was no killer inside. Alice Russell noticed Lizzie’s blouse was “loose,” which could mean it had pulled out from her waistband as she raised the hatchet. Lizzie’s official story was that she last saw her stepmother downstairs dusting, but she allegedly told Officer Fleet, in the manner of a Freudian slip, that the last she saw of Abby was while she was upstairs making the bed. These are only a few examples; most people in the guilty camp have their own list of elements they’ve drawn from the case which they consider compelling reasons to believe Lizzie killed her parents.

Too Many Coincidences

Again, if any of the above reasons to consider Lizzie guilty had to stand on their own, there would not have been much of a case against her. Most of them could potentially be explained as a singular coincidence. But the odds of so many coincidences coming together at once strain credulity. Lizzie just happened to share with Alice her fears that “someone will do something” the night before the murders? Abby just happened to receive a note from a sick friend the very morning she was killed? Lizzie just happened to go to the barn for the first time in months while Andrew was being killed? The Borden family just happened to get violently ill two nights before the murders, and the night before three men allegedly saw Lizzie come into a drug store to ask for poison? Lizzie just happened to burn a paint-covered dress the morning after she was told she was a suspect? These are simply too many coincidences to swallow all at once in order to find Lizzie innocent.

In the end, Edmund Pearson again may have summed it up best when he said that it would be “in defiance of common sense” not to recognize that Lizzie was probably guilty. And yet, when presented with most of the evidence above, a jury of twelve men, presumably with some measure of common sense, failed to do so. Lizzie Borden was found “not guilty” and acquitted of the charges against her due to the reasons listed in The Case for Innocence.

You can also find a more personal look at wrestling with the contradictory evidence in the case in some of the opinion pieces listed in Did She or Didn’t She?