Crime Scene Photos: Forty Whacks: The Lizzie Borden Axe-Murder Mystery

"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

Crime Scene Photos: Murdered Jody Arias Victim Travis Alexander

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

That famous quote from "The Mourning Bride" which was written in 1697 by William Congreve seems to sum up the latest high-profile true crime case. One which has elements of both the OJ Simpson trial of the mid nineties, and the May, 2011, Casey Anthony, not-guilty fiasco.

Obviously yet another one of those extreme but all-too-common murderously-dysfunctional-relationship by-products that we true-crime-fans know and love so well, this is the one where extreme religiousness is combined with a great deal of uncommon sexual frustration.

Suddenly, without warning, one of the relationship participants is kicked to the curb and abandoned.

They can no-longer sleep or eat.. they become obsessed with the person who has left them.

This is where they usually jump or fall into a depression so deeply and darkly that they'll be willing make a deal with the devil in order to feel better about themselves and their current situation.

So they then begin to rationalize with themselves. They say: “If I can't have you, then no one else will either. I will end your life," as we witnessed in the OJ Simpson case.

This is the case of Jodi Arias. A 32-year-old Monterey County woman who has admitted to murdering her ex-lover, Travis Victor Alexander, known to his friends as "T-Dogg," also of Riverside, California, in an act of self defense. Far from the truth that defense is almost an impossibility.

This case literally has the proverbial smoking gun. A confession and crime-scene-photos taken accidentally in real-time.

My theory is that Arias went to his house with full intentions of getting back together with "T-Dogg," or else. But he only wanted sex, as we men so often do, and then he likely told her to "get lost."

Arias immediately began feeling those old familiar stabbing wounds to her heart strings, and didn't like the feeling. So she decided to pull out her new best friend and back-up-plan: her gun.

I also would like to point out that regardless of the fact that Aries does not have what society might deem"the typical look of a monstrous, cold, callous, calculating killer," the same primal-instinct of survival, which lies dormant inside all of us, will tell us we should kill or be killed.

For anybody who has taken anger-management treatment, myself included, know that this primitive area of the brain lies hidden deep inside us and is exactly the same no matter what the exterior may look like.

We all share this primal instinct. Only some of us pretend to hide it better than others.

Bang! She shot Alexander in the face, immobilizing him—and then finished him off by stabbing him multiple times. She has no idea why, but she feels a tremendous relief. In fact, she's filmed at the police station smiling and giddy. 

Jennifer Willmott, a death penalty-qualified defense attorney has been selected to represent Arias.

Stay tuned.

I'm @cagestokerblog

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The OJ Simpson Murder Revisited | Nicole Brown Simpson's Neck Decapitation Photo

Although he was acquitted of the horrendous crimes, these graphic crime scene photos show evidence of an extremely psychopathic, angry, jealous, and somewhat deranged husband. One whom, after their break-up, began stalking his wife's every move until one day confronting her—and the man he viewed as her new boyfriend—in the doorway of his upscale mansion.

No doubt about it. The evidence is overwhelming that the husband then murdered them both in cold blood.

That husband's name is Orenthal James Simpson, better known as 'OJ.' And Simpson's estranged wife's name was 35-year-old Nicole Brown-Simpson.

The entire story is a long one, but I will attempt to summarize it for you here and give you my theory.

It took place June 12, 1994, in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles, California—a place where, only days before, after one-too-many highly publicized domestic quarrels, ones where "911" was eventually called, the loving married couple, OJ and Nicole, had finally separated.

Simpson, a former NFL football star for the Denver Broncos of the NFL was a competitive athlete with a passion for winning. But this time after agreeing to move out of the house, he felt he had lost.

OJ had 'physically' left the marriage, but not 'mentally.' And, as a result of the heart-breaking separation, he was now finding himself slowly sinking into a mental depression.

Simpson was now quickly becoming obsessed with another great challenge—maybe his greatest. Which was how to get somehow back-together with his estranged wife, who, by the way, wanted nothing more to do with him.

It was like she was winning an emotional game against OJ..she seemed happy, and she was dating..which made him all the more furious.

Speculation from the evidence tells us that Simpson likely thought that "one way or another" he would get back at his ex-wife...even if it meant death.

OJ, from that point onward, trailed Nicole like a proverbial wounded deer; because, he also most-likely thought, "If I can't have her back, then nobody else will have her either."

On the night of the actual crime, Simpson—while waiting-in-the-weeds like a cowardly Lion—watched closely from afar as Nicole left a local L.A restaurant named the 'Mezzaluna Trattoria.' It was at this eatery where it is said Nicole had met and was now "dating" a 26-year-old waiter named Ronald Goldman.

This is merely speculation, but in my opinion, Simpson probably followed his wife home from the 'Mezzaluna Trattoria.' Albeit, at a safe distance so he wouldn't be detected.

Perhaps then, once his wife had arrived back home, Simpson may have stalked her by circling the block many times, and walking the perimeter of the property, peering in through the windows to see what she was up to.

The key piece of this puzzle—which brought this threesome together like something from an old Alfred Hitchcock movie, or a psychotic perfect storm, or murderous Bermuda sex-triangle, was simply a pair of reading glasses.

The restaurant waiter and suspected boyfriend, Ron "Ronny" Goldman, had found the eye-glasses, which had been left behind at the table of his restaurant. He then slipped them into an envelope, hopped into his car, and was about to deliver them at the door when he found himself face-to-face with the grim reaper.

The jealous husband, Simpson, and his notorious rage, suddenly went into high-gear.

Like a sudden earthquake—which goes from a six to a ten on the Richter scale in mere seconds—all at once, like a rabid predatory-animal, this once-heroic pro-football-playing and star NFL quarterback, suddenly pulled-out either a razor sharp Swiss-army-knife, a stiletto, or both.

Simpson then went to work. He stabbed, slashed, and mutilated both his wife and Goldman until they lay motionless.

Nicole, a statuesque beauty dressed in a seductive black evening dress, was now barely recognizable, except for her sexy black evening dress.

Like the destruction of a precious painting by Rembrandt or priceless Picasso, OJ's wife's beautiful blonde hair and pretty face and body were now defaced and forever defiled.

She had been slashed and stabbed so many times her body was now drenched in buckets of blood.

So much blood that the crime-scene gave the illusion of someone spilling thick tomato cocktail on their way into the house—and it was now running down over the concrete steps where it was then smeared and tracked all the way along the patio-stones.

The scarlet river of blood inched it's way over the decoratively-created entrance-way—which defined the Simpson's immaculately trimmed lawn.

Although acquitted of double homicide, with the verdict being read on October 3, 1995, in 1997, Simpson was eventually found guilty in a civil court trial for the wrongful deaths of his wife and Goldman, and given a $33.5 million penalty.

In what could be called "Poetic Justice," Simpson is now a 65-year-old inmate at the Lovelock Correctional Center in Lovelock, Nevada—where he is serving a nine year sentence (without parole) for other unrelated crimes, such as armed robbery and kidnapping.

~Written by Garth MacIntosh, aka "Cage Stoker." 

Found on Twitter @cagestokerblog