Investigation Overview

The first police officers to arrive were understandably stunned by what they found and, in those all-important first hours, swirled around the house in chaotic fashion, repetitively searching the same rooms over and over, taking turns interviewing Lizzie, yet somehow failing to secure the crime scene well. Even though Allen had placed a neighborhood man, Charles Sawyer, at the door, numerous people, including three reporters, managed to get in the house and walk around.

Several of those first officers on the scene were bothered by what they considered the oddly unemotional demeanor of the victims’ daughter, Lizzie Borden, as well as elements of her unbelievable story of being up in the barn at the time her father was killed. This led to a strikingly fast rush to judgment against Lizzie in which the police marshal would later boast that their theory of the crime had been “formed on the spot.”

By the end of that first day, Lizzie was already the primary suspect in the minds of police, a development that colored the rest of their investigative decisions and led to an arguable police bias for which they were frequently criticized by the press and by the defense team at trial.

By Saturday evening, police had become so convinced of Lizzie’s guilt that the marshal and the Fall River mayor paid the surviving Borden family members a visit and asked them not to leave the house, essentially placing them all under house arrest. This triggered Lizzie to ask if anyone in the house was under suspicion and the mayor answered, “Well, I regret very much to say, Miss Borden, but you are suspected.”

After thorough searches of the house on that first day didn’t lead to the discovery of any evidence against Lizzie, more intensive searches were conducted by police on Saturday and Monday, which also failed turn up any evidence against their primary suspect. Nonetheless, the police marshal had a signed warrant for Lizzie’s arrest by Monday afternoon, August 8th, four days after the murders.

When the district attorney took over the case on Monday evening, he was clearly swayed by Hilliard that Lizzie was the culprit, yet apparently didn’t believe they had gathered enough evidence to prove it in court. He thus directed the marshal not to arrest Lizzie yet so he could summon her to an inquest on the murders and question her himself, a decision that went against the legal norms of the day and ended up causing the testimony he obtained to be ruled inadmissible at trial.

Exactly one week after the murders, on the final day of a three-day inquest in which Lizzie famously gave confused and conflicting answers to the questions put to her, Lizzie was finally arrested for the murders of her father and stepmother.

Two weeks later, on August 25th, Lizzie sat as a defendant at a preliminary hearing during which she and her attorneys heard the evidence against her for the first time. At the end of the eight-day hearing, Judge Josiah Blaisdell declared Lizzie “probably guilty” of the murders, sending her back to jail to await the decision of the grand jury.

On December 1st, 1892, after hearing from dozens of witnesses, a grand jury voted 20-1 to indict Lizzie Borden for the murders of her father and stepmother. Her trial would not start until June of the following year.

For more on the determined police officers and prosecutors that played a prominent role in the investigation, see The Investigators.

The most well-researched and detailed account of how the investigation unfolded on a day-by-day basis can be found in William Spencer’s excellent and exhaustive account, The Case Against Lizzie Borden.