Lizzie Borden: Part 2 | My Life of Crime with Erin Moriarty

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1:30Erin Moriarty:Next time you need a second opinion, head to Maurice's and walk out feeling effortless, comfortable, and completely confident. Use code 48HRS for an extra 10 % off your total purchase at maurices.com. Hi, 48 Hours listeners. It's Erin Moriarty. As you may know, true crime fans are once again being introduced to the story of Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts woman who was once acquitted of the hatchet murder of her parents in 1892. In 2019, we covered the Borden case in a two-part series in the first season of my 48 Hours podcast series, My Life of Crime with Erin Moriarty. Here's part one in its entirety, and be sure to follow the series, My Life of Crime with Erin Moriarty, wherever you get your podcasts.

2:25Erin Moriarty:Lizzie Borden took an act and gave her mother 41. When she seen what she had done, she gave her father 41. There wasn't a lot of time between when she, quote unquote, discovers her dad, and then the police are called, and there's no blood found on her. They never found blood-soaked dresses. And she would have had to be, if she was the one who was wielding that hatchet on her stepmom and her dad, wouldn't she have had to have blood spatter on her? The eternal question. Where did the blood come?

3:03Erin Moriarty:I'm Erin Moriarty, 48 Hours, and this... is my life of crime. I'm 21.

3:21Erin Moriarty:So here I am in Fall River, Massachusetts, for part two of my podcast about one of the most sensational crimes of all time. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 bucks. For those who may not know, Lizzie Borden was 32 years old when she became the prime suspect in the axe murders of her father, Andrew Borden, and her stepmother, Abby. When she seen what she had done, she gave her father 41. Now, there's a little poetic license here. Andrew actually had 10 or 11 blows to the head, not 41. and Abby had 17 or 18. And remember, this was back in 1892. But the fascination with this case is so enduring that the scene of the crime where they were killed is now the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum.

4:23Erin Moriarty:And for reasons that are no longer clear to me, I've agreed to sleep here tonight. Leanne Wilber owns the place. What room are you in? I'm in the room that Abby was killed in. Oh, good. You took my suggestion. Yes. Why? Why? Will there be anything I see? No, no, no. You just... I think he... You seemed a little hesitant, so I was like, oh, put her in the murder room. Of course, of course. Put the one who's most scared in the murder room. You will be fine.

5:00Erin Moriarty:so at this point I say my good nights grab my overnight bag and head for the hallway at the very top of the stairs is the room where I'm going to spend the night come in with me I'm coming into the room because right next to the bed right where I'm standing right now, between a dresser and the bed, Abby Borden was found face down, hacked to death. The room itself is actually very nice, although just a little drafty and cold, and I suppose I should have expected that. It's a very old house. the bed is actually extraordinary with this high backboard that almost goes up to the ceiling and it would be a very charming very sweet room if not for the two pictures sitting right on the dresser one i'm picking it up right now of abby borden face down dead and this one's even more macabre.

6:11Erin Moriarty:There she is. You see her face laying straight down on the carpet with blood around her head. How charming.

6:24Erin Moriarty:I get ready for bed. I'm not wearing PJs. I'm actually wearing running clothes just in case I have to make a quick dash. I don't think I'm going to get a lot of sleep tonight.

6:41Erin Moriarty:It's now 1 11 and I wake up suddenly but it's not ghosts that are waking me up. It's the cold. I've never slept in a place so cold.

7:00Erin Moriarty:At 1.30, I hear voices, men, but it's not inside the house. It's outside on the sidewalk. Inside the house, it's dead quiet.

7:20Erin Moriarty:I feel like I'm not sleeping at all, but clearly I am because it's now 3 a.m. And for some reason, I'm a little warmer than I was. The house doesn't seem quite as cold. Maybe that's because, as I heard, that Abby Borden is kind of a friendly ghost, a caring ghost. And maybe she's making sure that I'm not quite as cold in her bedroom.

7:54Erin Moriarty:5.40 a.m. I wake up hearing the sound of birds. I survived the night. Didn't get a lot of sleep, but I survived the night in the Lizzie Borden bed breakfast, a museum.

8:18Erin Moriarty:The next morning, we're treated to scrambled eggs and Johnny Cakes. Johnny Cakes are a lot like pancakes. And that's what people ate in the morning back in 1892. Tim, you're the cook here, right? So you're here. And how long have you been cooking at the... Eight years. Eight years? Yep. In the B &B. So we're eating the same way that... Same sort of way. Not exactly because no one wants mutton, but... After breakfast, it's time to return to the story of Lizzie Borden and what really happened back in this house on the morning of August 4th, 1892. Two murders committed more than an hour apart in broad daylight.

9:07Erin Moriarty:Now, Lizzie made no secret of her dislike of her stepmother, and she had no real alibi for that time. The assumption was that whoever killed one killed the other. So they were always looking for one murderer or one murderer and an accomplice. So Lizzie Borden was the suspect in both, primarily because of her known hatred for her stepmother. Author Cara Robertson picks up the story again. She's written a fascinating book called The Trial of Lizzie Borden. The police pretty much began by rounding up the usual suspects, that they were looking for what they imagined to be some kind of insane immigrant.

9:51Because what was so profoundly upsetting about the idea of Lizzie Borden committing the murders was that she's someone who ticked all the boxes of respectable femininity. She's someone who was active in her church. She even taught Sunday school. And so the idea that someone like her, someone who seemed to represent the ideal of an unmarried woman living in her father's home. The idea that she could have been capable of this was so upsetting.

10:19Erin Moriarty:But in fact, what was going on behind closed doors in this house? It wasn't so peaceful, was it? No, it was a house of festering tensions. At a formal inquest, witnesses said that Lizzie had tried to buy poison from a chemist the day before the murders. And although she denied it, that was really incriminating evidence. So she was arrested and jailed. And in fact, Lizzie remained in jail until her trial nearly a year later in the neighboring town of New Bedford.

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13:28Erin Moriarty:I mean, how big a story was it in 1892? The closest parallel, I think, is to the O.J. Simpson case. You know, it was definitely that level of story. It was covered nationally and internationally. And like that case, it seemed to be a case about something more than the guilt or innocence of the individual defendant, that it seemed to speak to something darker at play in the society. And if you consider the hierarchical nature of the society in that era, particularly one that assumed that men and women were biologically profoundly different, then the case threatened a lot of assumptions about what a woman might do.

14:25Erin Moriarty:The beauty of Kara's book is that she lifts the story right from the court record and from the actual transcripts from trial. And I found it fascinating because I cover trials for 48 hours all the time. I'm reading transcripts all the time. And there are aspects in the Lizzie Borden trial that I think you could see and hear in a courtroom today. How would someone like Lizzie Borden be able to cut up her stepmother, hit her, what, 18, 19 times with some kind of sharp object, get rid of those clothing, and then an hour, hour and a half later, whenever it was, whoever killed her father, how does she hide the blood?

15:13Erin Moriarty:Where's the blood? Well, that's basically the defense argument right there, is that there is no way that someone could have committed the murders and not have been spattered. We do know that Lizzie Borden burned a dress on the Sunday after the murders. And this is witnessed by her former friend, Alice Russell, who was the first person after the doctor that Lizzie Borden thinks to summon after the murders. She testifies that Lizzie Borden burned this dress. and the idea is that the dress might have had blood stains on it. The defense, particularly Lizzie and her sister Emma, say that the dress is stained with paint and are able to prove that, in fact, it had been stained with paint.

16:00It still raises the issue of why Lizzie Borden would have chosen to burn a dress the Sunday after the murders. Doesn't look good. All right, so the trial starts. What is the prosecution's theory? The prosecution's theory is fairly simple, that really only Lizzie Borden has the opportunity to commit the murders and that she alone has the motive. There is a sort of CSI fall river aspect to this. Although we don't have DNA evidence and it is too early for fingerprints to be used as identification, let alone for investigation. The police come and they take, they count all the blood spots and blood spatter.

16:39They pull up pieces of carpet. they take the bodies, they're autopsied, and perhaps the most chilling piece of medical drama in the case, the coroner removes the heads, renders off the flesh so that they can examine the wounds on the scalp. On both Andrew and Abby? That's right. That's part of how they know how to count all the wounds. And what happens to those skulls? In perhaps the most dramatic moment in the trial, the prosecutor opens up a bag that contains the skulls. And this leads Lizzie Borden to fate, something that is noted both as proof of her essential femininity, that she just finally had more than she could bear, and is, you know, ruefully noted as if it's a kind of theatrical gesture on her part.

17:37Erin Moriarty:Did Lizzie know that the skull, her dad's skull and her stepmother's skull, had been removed and would be brought into the trial to be used against her? It seemed to be a surprise. Local legend has it that the doctor who performed the autopsy had rendered off the flesh and lobster pots at home. Oh, my God.

18:04Erin Moriarty:Okay, that would not happen in a courtroom today. But stunts by prosecutors really aren't that unusual, especially when it's a tough case. And believe it or not, trying Lizzie Borden was a very tough case. So the prosecution's theory is that Lizzie did both. Was there a reason why she would kill Abby first? significantly the order of the murders provides a good explanation if you believe that money was at the heart of the crime did i happen to mention that andrew borden was a wealthy man a very wealthy man at the time of his death his estate was worth almost three hundred thousand dollars and if that doesn't sound like a lot think about this that's more than eight million dollars today All of Andrew Borden's estate was split between his daughters.

19:00And significantly, that would have been good support for the prosecution. But they're quite reluctant to make that argument, that money is not seen as a feminine motive. So the prosecution is essentially forced to argue that Lizzie Borden hated her stepmother. and there may have been some money within that, but that it was basically an extreme exaggeration of the sort of dislike that a stepdaughter might have for her stepmother. So how does the defense counter all of this? Well, the defense, first of all, says, look, it's not your job to unravel the mystery. The question's not whether or not Lizzie Borden is even the most likely suspect.

19:45It's whether or not you prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.

19:48Erin Moriarty:Describe the closing arguments in this case. The closing arguments are perhaps the most dramatic part of an already sensational trial. The defense argues essentially that Lizzie Borden was someone who is exactly how she appears, that she is this proper, respectable, church-going woman who lived a quiet life. And then just on one Thursday morning, her life is completely upended by the murders of her stepmother and her father. And then the defense also makes the argument, contrary to the medical evidence, that Lizzie Borden simply could not physically have committed the murders. And that was consistent with prevailing ideas about women's capacity, but was not consistent with the evidence that was actually presented at the trial.

20:51So tell me about inside the jury room. You have 12 men. Yeah, the assumption is that the jurors will take a while to go through the evidence, but they find that they're unanimous on the first ballot. So what do they do when they first go into the room? What do they do? What do the jurors do? They take a vote, and they're all unanimous for not guilty.

21:15Erin Moriarty:Not guilty? Not guilty? Yes.

21:25Erin Moriarty:surprised i sure was i grew up thinking that lizzie borden was absolutely the killer so i just assumed that she was convicted of the murders and she wasn't but i was also shocked by what cara told me next. And at that point, the crowd erupts into cheers, and those are joined by cheers of the people outside waiting for news. Cheers, because they're glad that she's acquitted? Cheers, cheers of joy and also of relief. You can see that many of the men in the courthouse are crying. Because people really felt she was innocent? I can only imagine how tense it was, And so you can imagine that there would be some relief in being able to believe, at least for a moment, that an innocent person was being released.

22:19But also that, as I said, I think there's something larger at stake in this trial. And that it's not simply whether or not Lizzie Borden herself killed her stepmother and, more importantly, her father. But whether or not someone like her could have done it. someone who seemed so unremarkable, someone who seemed to be on paper the model of unmarried ladyhood, whether a respectable woman could be so transformed as to commit brutal crimes like that. Cara, what do you think? Did she do it? I'm in the same place as many of the people were at the time, which is that as a practical matter, it's quite difficult to believe she could have done it.

23:02But at the same time, it seems impossible to me that anyone else could have done it.

23:12Erin Moriarty:The jurors, the all-male jury panel back in the 1890s, just couldn't accept the idea that a woman like Lizzie, who was so proper, so well-dressed, could commit such heinous acts.

23:28Erin Moriarty:that probably wouldn't happen today if it was the same kind of case and a jury today. So the big question is, did she do it or did she not? Who did kill Andrew and Abby Borden with an axe on that summer day in August of 1892? And maybe that's why the story still resonates. A 127-year-old murder mystery.

24:01Erin Moriarty:As for Lizzie, she and her sister Emma split their inheritance and bought a house in the fanciest part of Fall River, Massachusetts. But there was no happy ending. They had a falling out, and they never saw each other again after 1905.