Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories
THE FALL RIVER MURDERS
What makes the Fall River murders so perplexing is that the motive, the weapon and the opportunity for such a crime are all seemingly absent. So is any exhibit of hard circumstantial evidence, although the case swims in a
plethora of clues, secrets and mysteries. According to crime scholar Edmund Pearson, "the public's fascination with the case may have resulted from its very 'purity.' The murders, and Lizzie's guilt or innocence, were
uncomplicated by such sins as ambition, robbery, greed, lust or other usual homicidal motives (Sifakis, 91)."
When the Fall River constabulary investigated the murders, they found no money or jewelry missing, not even small amounts of change or the packet of bus tickets as were taken in the daytime break-in at the Borden home twelve months earlier. Later, Prosecuting Attorney Knowlton hired a machinist who spent two days cracking open Andrew Borden's phenomenal safe in hopes of finding a missing will disinheriting both daughters. But Borden died intestate, leaving Lizzie and Emma to inherit his entire fortune.
Besides the lack of a clear motive
for the murders, there was also the disconcerting lack of opportunity. Fall River found the entire Borden house locked up as usual, and during the two-and-a-half-hour period in which both murders were completed, the
maid Bridget was outside the house washing windows and daughter Lizzie was inside the house reading a magazine. Even if one of the two committed the crime, the violent and bloody act should have been noisy enough
to attract the attention of the other. And even if both were involved for some reason in this heinous enterprise, what became of the blood so conspicuously missing from the bludgeoned corpses of Mr. and Mrs. Borden?
Perhaps most astonishing of all is the lack of a weapon. Every child jumping rope knows that "Lizzie Borden took an ax," yet as James Reach points out, the prosecution never proved the weapon was an ax (59). In fact, the prosecution tried its hardest to make a case for a handleless hatchet smeared with ash that was found in the Borden basement. Yet microscopic examination of the blade revealed no traces of blood (Sullivan, 127). Evan Hunter believed Mrs. Borden was struck with a "heavy, sharp-edged candlestick," yet no ax, hatchet, or even candlestick could be found to substantiate these theories in a court of law. The contrarieties of this case caused more than 1,900 divorces (according to a New York Times poll at the time) in which husbands and wives, arguing over Lizzie's guilt or innocence, decided that they were mutually incompatible (Sifakis, 91). Finally, one pamphlet was published in which the author threw up his hands and declared that with all the clues leading to dead ends, no one committed the murders (Radin, 267)!
In order to understand the compelling drama of the Borden saga, we must return to the scene of the crime during the stifling hot Thursday morning of a week-long heat wave --which culminated in two senseless murders.
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