The Legend of Lizzie Borden

On August 4, 1892, Bridget Sullivan, the maid, summons neighbor Mrs. Churchill to the Borden residence, where Lizzie Borden meets her at the door with a chilling line and a blunt command, > "Mrs. Churchill, do come in, someone has killed father." The scene shifts to the living room, where Andrew Borden lies unconscious on the sofa, his face bearing numerous hatchet wounds. Police arrive and begin their inspection, and as the house is searched, [Mrs. Churchill] and Bridget uncover the body of Abby Borden in the guest room, brutally hacked to death. Outside, neighbors gather, drawn by the shock of the violence inside.

Emma Borden, nine years older than Lizzie, returns from Fairhaven and immediately confronts her sister, pressing for answers. Lizzie denies having any hand in her father’s death, but the mood around the house tightens as authorities take notes and the town starts to whisper. Lizzie is given morphine to calm her nerves, and her statements to the police grow increasingly inconsistent as she moves between upstairs and downstairs recollections, trying to make sense of a night that seems to have unfolded in a fog of fear and rumor.

At the funeral, Lizzie endures sharp social scrutiny for not wearing black and for showing little apparent grief. The atmosphere around the family deepens into suspicion, and Lizzie is formally warned that she is under investigation as a suspect. An inquest is convened to examine the sequence of events and the testimonies that surround them.

During the inquest, Bridget testifies that she and Lizzie were the only people in the house at the time of the murders, aside from the victims. Mr. Borden had left for downtown, and Mrs. Borden had received a note—one no one saw—asking Abby to care for an unnamed sick friend. Per Mrs. Borden’s instructions, Bridget waited outside the house, locked doors, and washed windows while a nap was planned. She did not witness anyone arrive or depart until Mr. Borden returned around 10:45 and lay down for a nap. Lizzie’s testimony is inconsistent: she recalls calling Abby “mother” as a child but later using “Mrs. Borden,” without explanation. She cannot clearly state whether she was upstairs or downstairs when her father returned, and she asserts she last saw Abby about an hour and a half before her body was discovered. The note to Abby and her return go unseen by anyone, and Lizzie’s presence in the barn with the purpose of finding a fish-landing tool complicates the timeline. The magistrate eventually concludes Lizzie is probably guilty and orders her to await trial, though the inquest’s proceedings are later deemed flawed and inadmissible because she had not had proper counsel and was under the influence of morphine.

If the case advances, Lizzie faces the possibility of hanging, but Emma’s support—and Lizzie’s substantial inheritance from her father—enable her to assemble a formidable defense, led by George Robinson, a former governor of Massachusetts. Lizzie squares her prison cell with furniture and selects a wardrobe fit for trial publicity. The press and much of the public rally to her cause, seeing her as a devout Sunday school teacher and a worker for temperance, Christian aid, and foreign missions, which colors the narrative surrounding her.

Key testimonies surface at the trial. A close friend, Alice Russell, testifies that the night before the murders, Lizzie spoke of danger from business rivals and a possible break-in at the house. The day after the funeral, Lizzie burned a dress believed to be stained with paint. The chemist testifies that Lizzie had sought prussic acid a few days earlier to clean a sealskin cape; he refused to sell it without a prescription. Forensic evidence is presented, including a hatchet that matches the wounds on Mr. Borden’s skull and the expectation that the killer would be covered in blood—yet Lizzie appears without noticeable bloodstains, save for a small amount of menstrual blood on her clothes. When the two skulls are shown and a hatchet is fitted to the wounds, Lizzie faints, a moment that remains a pivotal image in the defense’s narrative.

As the foreman of the all-male jury is called to render a verdict, Lizzie’s recollections are framed in flashbacks: Abby persuades Andrew to change his will, and Andrew agrees to consult a lawyer the following week. Lizzie confides in Emma with a disturbing thought—that Abby must die before any new will could be made. Emma resolves to travel to Fairhaven, while Lizzie’s recollection shifts to Bridget's window-washing and a neighbor’s chatter. The sequence culminates with Lizzie locking the doors, removing her clothes, and grabbing a hatchet from beneath her mattress, then confronting Abby and Andrew in turn, killing them in a calculated, methodical surge. After each murder, she cleans herself in the basement and dresses again, discarding the hatchet in the latrine. When the verdict is finally delivered, the foreman pronounces a not guilty finding, and the crowd outside erupts in celebration.

Back home, Emma greets Lizzie with wary caution, asking one last time with a heavy ache, “Did you kill father?” Lizzie’s face remains impassive, offering no reassurance or denial. In the months that follow, Lizzie moves into a grand mansion in Fall River’s upscale district and lives there until her death in 1927 at the age of 66; Emma dies just nine days later. To this day, the question of what happened remains unsolved, leaving a chilling marker on a case that Hutchison and townspeople alike could not fully close.