Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories
BUTCHERED IN THEIR HOME
Mr. Borden and His Wife Killed in Broad Daylight
FALL RIVER, Mass, Aug. 4 -- Andrew J. Borden and wife, two of the oldest, wealthiest, and most highly-respected persons in the city, were brutally murdered with an ax at 11 o'clock this morning in their home on Second Street, within a few minutes' walk of the City Hall. The Borden family consisted of the father, mother, two daughters, and a servant. The older daughter has been in Fair Haven for some days. The rest of the family have been ill for three or four days, and Dr. Bowen, the attending physician, thought they had been poisoned.
About 8 o'clock this morning Mrs. Borden received a note asking her to go and visit a friend who was ill. She left the house and shortly afterward her husband followed and walked down street to one of the banks. He returned about 10:30 o'clock and sat on the sofa. In answer to a question from Bridget Sullivan, the servant, he said he was very well. Bridget then went outside the home to wash windows. In the meantime, Miss Lizzie Borden, his daughter, arose from bed and walked down stairs, seeing and speaking to her father as she passed through the room. Supposing her mother was out, she went into the yard and stepped into the barn. While there she heard a cry of distress coming apparently from the house, and she ran in. Going directly to a sitting room leading from the main hallway in the house, she saw her father lying back on a sofa, lifeless and covered with blood.
She ran outside again shrieking and her cries attracted the servant and a neighbor. They made a hasty search for the mother and found her up stairs in a spare bedroom lying dead, face downward, on the floor.
Patrolman Allen, who arrived early, became so excited that he ran at once with an incoherent story to the Central Police Station. Unfortunately, to-day was the date of the policeman's excursion, and one-half of the police force were at Rocky Point when the murders occurred.
New York Times
Friday, August 5, 1892
