"Upon inspection of the victims it seems that Mrs. Borden had been slain by the use of some sharp and terrible instrument, inflicting upon her head eighteen blows, thirteen of them crushing through the skull; and below stairs, lying upon the sofa, was Mr. Borden's dead and mutilated body, with eleven strokes upon the head, four of them crushing the skull."~ George D. Robinson, attorney for Lizzie Borden
~
The date was August 4, 1892.
The scene of the crime was Fall River, Massachusetts, more specifically, 92 Second Street, home of the affluent Borden family.
According to newspaper reports from the time, the day was agonizingly humid.
The "Dog Days" of summer they used to call it.
Days when the summer air gets so hot and humid and weighted that one gets an energy-sapping feeling—and the only desire is to seek out a cool spot in which to sleep.
At eleven o'clock in the morning the temperature had already reached into its highest double digits—and still climbing.
Some say the heat can make one crazy.
Bridget ("Maggie") Sullivan, the Borden family's maid, soaked with sweat after washing the windows from the outside, suddenly heard a primal scream coming from inside the home which caused the hair on her arms to stand to attention and her adrenal glands to spring to life.
It was the youngest daughter in the Borden family, thirty-three-year-old Lizzie:
"Maggie, come down! Come down quick; Father's dead; somebody came in and killed him."
The body of Andrew J Borden, Lizzie's father, lay downstairs on a sofa—nearly decapitated.
Upstairs, the body of his wife, Lizzie's stepmother, both pictured above, was also found dead—with strangely similar mortal head wounds.
With an attention-getting front page headline made from the finest of graphic bold print, the local newspaper, called the Fall River Herald, didn't waste a second spreading the news throughout New England:
"Shocking Crime: A Venerable Citizen and his Aged Wife Hacked to Pieces in their Home."
The news reporters who visited the gory crime-scene tried their best to paint a gruesome portrait, made from their finest metaphors and adjectives:
"Over the left temple a wound six by four had been made as if it had been pounded with the dull edge of an axe. The left eye had been dug out and a cut extended the length of the nose. The face was hacked to pieces and the blood covered the man's shirt. The room was in order and there were no signs of a scuffle of any kind."
The coroner along with help from the newspapers, local police, and physicians eventually concluded that the crime was not committed by an intruder—as was previously thought—but by someone inside the family home. More specifically a woman.
Police additionally stated they had also found a possible murder weapon, a hatchet, located in the basement—but it contained no blood or other evidence.
Stated the physician:" 'Hacking' is almost always a positive sign of a crime committed by a woman who is unconscious of what she is doing."
So, mostly due to giving only vague answers to police, coupled with a bad relationship with her stepmother, Lizzie Borden, on August 11, only seven days after the crime was committed, was arrested for double homicide.
In the end however, regardless of the famous Lizzie Borden rhyme, Ms Borden was acquitted of all charges against her. She remained in Fall River for the rest of her natural life until her death from Pneumonia on June 1, 1927. She was 66.
This story, the Lizzie Borden Murder Mystery, much like the Lindbergh baby case, is still wrought with controversy. And, for the most part, remains unsolved.
*The above article was written by me, @cagestokerblog, with quotes from Tru-TV.com
"Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one."
~ Famous Rhyme
