Читать книгу The Fall River Tragedy - Edwin H. Porter - Страница 5

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Let us go back to the Borden house on the afternoon following the time of the massacre. Medical Examiner Dolan and his associates are found at work on the partial autopsy. The bodies had been removed to the sitting room. The physicians found thirteen wounds on the head of Mr. Borden, which were clean cut and evidently made by some very sharp instrument. The largest was four and a half inches long and two inches wide. Many of them penetrated the skull and one severed the eye-ball and jaw bone. In Dr. Dolan’s own words the “sight was the most ghastly” he had ever witnessed. Mrs. Borden’s body was even more severely dealt with. The head was chopped into ribbons of flesh and the skull broken in several places. A deep wound was discovered between the shoulder blades, and had the appearance of having been made by a hatchet, the blade penetrating full three inches deep. The stomachs of the victims were taken out, sealed up and sent to Prof. E. S. Wood, an eminent chemist of Harvard University, for analysis. It was desirable to know if their contents would reveal the fact as to whether or not the milk which was used, had been poisoned. Then again there was a difference of opinion as to which of the two persons had been killed first. Only the condition of the blood at the time of the discovery, and the contents of the stomachs could determine that question. The pool of blood in which Mrs. Borden’s head lay was coagulated, while the life-giving element of Mr. Borden’s body was fresh and oozing from the wounds. It was evident that the woman had been dead two hours before the assassin slaughtered the old man. Yet this must be established beyond a doubt, and in order to do so, Prof. Wood must determine to what stage digestion had passed. The autopsy was partially finished and the bodies delivered into the hands of undertaker Winward, who prepared them for burial.

CHARLES S. SAWYER.

The police were more than ever active during the afternoon. City Marshal Hilliard and State Detective George Seaver of Taunton, visited the house and made personal inquiry of the inmates, and viewed the bodies and their surroundings. The search for evidence was continued until night with little or no satisfactory result, so far as the public knew. Dr. Bowen, who was the first physician to enter the house, told the writer the following story of the condition of things as he found them.

DR. S. W. BOWEN.

“When I reached my home, and before I entered it, my wife said to me, ‘you are wanted at the Borden’s, something terrible has happened.’ Without waiting to learn what the trouble was, I hurried across the street, and entered the house by the side door, which leads to the kitchen, there I was confronted by Mrs. Churchill, who lives next door to the Bordens, and by Miss Alice Russell and Miss Lizzie Borden. Miss Russell was sitting by Miss Lizzie’s side, rubbing her forehead and hands and otherwise comforting her. I asked what the trouble was and they told me that Mr. Borden had been killed. I asked how long since it had happened, and they replied that it was only a few minutes. By conservative calculation, I believe that I was present at Mr. Borden’s side not over twenty minutes after the fatal blows had been inflicted. Alone I walked into the sitting room and there I saw the body of Mr. Borden on a lounge. I determined to make a thorough investigation without delay and proceeded. The sofa upon which the dead man reclined was of mahogany with hair cloth covering, such as was commonly manufactured for high class parlor furniture forty years ago. Mr. Borden lay partly on his right side, with his coat thrown over the arm of the sofa at its head. He wore a dressing gown and his feet rested on the carpet. It was his custom to lie in that way. His position was perfectly natural and he appeared as if he had just lain down to sleep. I was impressed at this point with the manifest absence of any sign of a struggle. Mr. Borden’s hands were not clinched; no piece of furniture was overturned; there was no contraction of the muscles or indications of pain, such as we expect to find under similar circumstances. I am satisfied that he was asleep when he received the first blow, which was necessarily fatal. I approached the body and felt for the pulse. It had ceased to beat. Then I examined the body to note its condition and the extent of the wounds. Mr. Borden’s clothing was not disarranged, and his pockets had apparently not been touched. The blows were delivered on the left side of the head, which was more exposed than the other, by reason of the dead man’s position. I do not believe he moved a muscle after being struck. The cuts extended from the eye and nose around the ear. In a small space there were at least eleven distinct cuts of about the same depth and general appearance. In my opinion, any one of them would have proved fatal almost instantly. Physician that I am and accustomed to all kinds of horrible sights, it sickened me to look upon the dead man’s face. I am inclined to think that an axe was the instrument used. The cuts were about four and a half inches in length and one of them had severed the eye-ball and socket. There was some blood on the floor and spatters on the wall, but nothing to indicate the slaughter that had taken place. I calculated that nearly all the blows were delivered from behind with great rapidity. At this point I returned to the kitchen and inquired for Mrs. Borden. Miss Lizzie replied that she did not know where her mother was. She said that she (Lizzie) had been out to the barn and that the servant was on the third floor. Mrs. Churchill suggested that I go up stairs, which I did, entering the front room. I was informed that Mr. John Morse had occupied it the night before. As I passed within I was horrified to see the body of Mrs. Borden on the floor between the bed and dressing-case in the northeast corner. I walked over and realized that she was dead, but at that moment I was not sure she had been murdered. I thought she might have fainted. The sad truth was discovered too soon. Mrs. Borden had also been murdered. I think she must have been engaged in making the bed when the murderer appeared with an axe or hatchet and made a slash at her. After that she turned, and the fiend chopped her head as if it had been a cake of ice. One blow killed the woman but the murderer kept on hacking at her until he was well satisfied that she was dead. It is a mystery to me how he could have done so much savage work in so short a time and made no noise. The weapon must have been a sharp one for the cuts were as clean as if made by a razor. There were, however, no signs of a struggle in the surroundings. There was a large pool of blood under the dead woman’s head as she lay with her hands under her. I easily made out eleven distinct gashes of apparently the same size as those on her husband’s face. Some of these blows had been delivered from the rear and two or three from the front. One glance blow cut off nearly two square inches of flesh from the side of the head. In my judgment, the dead woman did not struggle. She was rendered unconscious by the first blow. Not a chair was displaced and not a towel disturbed on the rack near by. I visited the dead in company with the police officers, but made no further observations at that time. I afterwards talked with Miss Lizzie, but she was in a highly nervous state. She said that her father left the house about 9 o’clock and went to the bank and the post-office. He returned about 10:30, as near as she could remember, and took off his coat to put on his dressing gown. She asked him about the mail, and also if he was feeling any better, as he had been sick the day before. She said he replied to her, ‘I feel no better now, no worse,’ and then went into the sitting room. Shortly afterward the daughter went out to the barn. She told me that she didn’t think that she was gone more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and then came back and discovered the murdered bodies of her father and her step-mother.

“Members of the family had been sick recently. Mrs. Borden came to me Wednesday morning and said that she was very much frightened, for she thought she had been poisoned. She and Mr. Borden had vomited all night and she feared the poison had been from the baker’s bread or the milk. Miss Lizzie and Bridget had been sick with the same symptoms, and it was their belief that an enemy had attempted to kill the whole family.”

The police upon investigation found that Dr. Bowen’s story that the Borden’s had been ill was true in every particular and they naturally went to work in order to find, if possible, the person who administered the poison. Special officers Harrington and Doherty were assigned to this task and before midnight they had made a startling discovery. So astounding in fact, that they hardly believed their senses. They started out late in the afternoon, to visit the various drug stores of the city and to make inquiry as to who bought or offered to buy poison. They worked without success until they came to D. R. Smith’s pharmacy, at the corner of South Main and Columbia streets. Eli Bence, the clerk, informed them that on Wednesday before the murder, a young woman had come into his store and asked to buy a small bottle of hydrocyanic acid.

THE BORDEN HOMESTEAD, FERRY STREET.

Suspicions are cruel, and if unfounded, they burn like hot iron; but in a murder mystery, where every link may strengthen the chain, they rise up at a thousand points and cannot be ignored. She wanted poison to kill the moths which were eating her seal skin cloak. If a person wished to kill and avoid detection, and that person were wise, hydrocyanic acid would be first choice among all deadly drugs. It is a diluted form of prussic acid and it does its work surely. It is not necessary to use it in bulk, homeopathic doses are all sufficient. It is absorbed by the nervous system and leaves no traces, and it produces none of the ante-mortem symptoms peculiar to most violent poisons. There is no vomiting, no spasm or convulsions, no contraction of the muscles—hydrocyanic acid simply takes hold of the heart and stops its beating. It may not have been used in this case, and at this time the detectives did not claim that it was. Mr. Bence told her that he did not sell so deadly a poison except upon a doctor’s certificate and she went away empty handed. This woman, Mr. Bence and others positively identified as Miss Lizzie Borden. When the clerk told his story to the officers they took him to the Borden house. This was about 10 o’clock on the night following the murder. He was placed in a position to see Miss Lizzie and when he came out was more certain than before that she was the lady who called for the prussic acid. This then was a possible clue and the first and only one which the police had secured. The Fall River Daily Globe published the particulars of this incident the next day. But almost every newspaper in the country failed to accept it as authentic, and while it served to point the police toward a possible solution of the great murder mystery, it also brought down upon them the vituperation of many a bucolic newspaper man who knew not of what he wrote, or knowing cared little for justice and truth. From the day after the killing, newspapers throughout the country questioned the ability of the officers of the Fall River police department and some of them went so far as to criticise sharply the work done. An act of injustice unless the author of the criticism knew as much of the case as the police themselves, which was hardly to be expected. However, the work went on, yet with this slight clue the mystery seemed dark as ever.

More bewildering in fact, for there arose countless suggestions during the afternoon which the police were called upon to consider. John V. Morse developed into a seemingly very important factor before the day had passed, and special officer Medley was detailed to look up the facts concerning his whereabouts during that day. Mr. Morse had told the newspaper reporters of his visit in the morning to the house of a relative, Mrs. Emery at No. 4 Weybosset street. Thither went the policeman accompanied by the writer to investigate. The Emery’s were found at home and Mrs. Emery said that Mr. Morse had visited her house that morning, arriving there before 10 o’clock and remaining until 11:20. A niece of Mr. Morse was present and she also declared that her uncle had left the house at the time stated. The testimony of these two witnesses would set at rest forever the theory that John V. Morse was within a mile of the Borden house when the old people were done to death. But these facts were not then generally known and there were many persons who believed that he knew more concerning the killing than he cared to relate.

The City Marshal sent a detail of police to guard the Borden house soon after the murder was reported and instructions were given out that every member of the household be shadowed. Officer John Devine was designated to keep Mr. Morse in sight and every movement which he made was carefully watched. He was allowed to come and go at will, but whenever he appeared on the street a great crowd gathered. On one evening in particular when the excitement was at the highest tension Mr. Morse set out for the post office. Before he had completed his journey a mob numbering a thousand people was at his heels and fears were entertained less he would be roughly handled. Officer Devine was in the shadow of Mr. Morse and saw him safely back to the Borden house.