Читать книгу MYSTERY-MAYHEM:CHRONICLE USA - ALLAN PACHECO - Страница 14

THE TOO PERFECT CRIME

(CHOP, CHOP)

Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she did, she gave her father forty-one.

(A popular children’s rhyme)

Lizzie Borden has been vilified in films and in verse as the ax murderess that killed her father and stepmother, but in a court of law she was acquitted of murder. Was the auburn haired, blue-eyed lady guilty of patricide? Maybe?

On August 4, 1892 at 11:15 AM, seventy year old bank president, Andrew Jackson Borden and his sixty four year old, two hundred pound wife, Abby Durfee Gray Borden, were found bludgeoned to death in their three story mansion. The grotesque murders happened in Fall River, Massachusetts, on a day when the temperature was over one hundred degrees. At the time of the murder only Lizzie and a housemaid were in the mansion.

Tart Andrew Borden was seen by his contemporaries as the incarnation of Ebenezer Scrooge. Before Andrew became a banker, he was a mortician. It was rumored that Andrew gained profit by building short coffins – less wood equaled more dividend. The legs of the departed were bent backwards at the knees. Through Yankee thriftiness and ingenuity, greedy Andrew garnered a fortune.

At the time of the murder, the Borden mansion was home to many people. Lizzie Borden, age thirty-three, was a Sunday school teacher. Servant Bridgett Sullivan, age twenty-six, was an Irish immigrant, from Cork, Ireland. Emma Borden, age forty-three, was a homebody. John Morse, age fifty-nine, an uncle to Lizzy and Emma, was staying at the manner as he visited friends in the area.

The constabulary determined Emma and John Morse had nothing to do with the double murders. Their alibis were thought to be sound. They were both out of the household when the killings occurred.

Only Lizzie and maid Bridget Sullivan; were in the large house during the murders. Both ladies claimed innocence.

The public could not get enough information about the mysterious grisly killings. The event made great copy; reporters wrote in graphic detail how the police tried to come to grips with who slew the Bordens. The crime was billed, “The Murder of the Century”.

Days after the homicides, Alice Russell, a neighbor of the Bordens saw Lizzie burning a dress in the mansion’s kitchen stove. Lizzie attested the dress was a ruined garment covered with paint stains. This event combined with the fact, Lizzie had been in the manner during the crimes, aroused the suspicion of the police investigators. Lizzie who had been viewed as a prime suspect by the police, was now charged with murder.

Lizzie professed on the day of the slayings, she was in the backyard barn. Lizzie entered into the mansion around 11:00 AM, whereupon she found her father dead on a coach. Terrified, Lizzie yelled for housemaid Bridgett Sullivan to come help her.

The police and neighbors were then summoned to the mansion. Yankee myth has it, as Lizzie and the deputies stood next to the body of Andrew Borden; the young lady was asked the whereabouts of her mother. Lizzie calmly said, “She is not my mother, she is my stepmother.”

Abby Borden was found murdered upstairs. Both husband and wife had been repeatedly hit in the head with a hatchet or ax.

The constabulary found several sharpened cleaver tools in the Borden cellar, along with a bloody hatchet. For a brief amount of time the hatchet was thought to be the murder weapon. Tests proved the dried substance on the tool’s cutting edge was cow blood. Had the murder weapon been taken away or destroyed? Or was the blood misidentified? Bovine blood resembles human blood in its thickness and DNA chromosome structure.

Oddly, after the bodies were discovered, Lizzie stayed the night in the mansion. Most people with the knowledge a serial killer is on the loose, would not stay at the crime scene even if they were heavily armed. Bridgett the Irish servant, refused to stay the night at the estate.

Strangely, housemaid Bridgett Sullivan was not considered an accomplice in the murders. Even though the maid was in the mansion when the slayings took place.

On June 5, 1893, Lizzie was put on trial; her pastor escorted her to the courtroom. The prosecution had a weak case; they could not produce a murder weapon. Lizzie’s defense counsel, reminded the jury in many different ways why the defendant was not a murderess.

After the discovery of the butchered corpses, Lizzie became hysterical and more importantly she was not covered with blood. It was thought the culprit would have been splattered with flesh and blood, due to the savagery of the attacks. This simple theorem was believed by the twelve-man jury.

The idea that Lizzie removed her blood-spattered clothes before alerting the authorities and was caught burning stained garments days after the murders, did not register with the jury. Neither did the notion; Lizzie attacked her victims in the nude; then washed herself clean before clothing herself.

Ex-Governor of Massachusetts, George Robinson, was Lizzie’s defense attorney. While in office, Robinson had appointed Justin Dewey to the Superior Court. Dewey was one of the Associate Justices, who presided over the murder trial.

Wagging tongues attested that the judiciary was stacked in Lizzie’s favor because Dewey was beholden to Robinson. According to Yankee lore, a lot of key evidence proving Lizzie was guilty was squelched.

On June 20th the trial ended. After one hour of jury deliberation Lizzie was found not guilty. Was this a just verdict?

Lizzie claimed a stranger with a straw hat had been seen around the mansion the day before the murders. Subsequent research indicates the stranger was William “Billy” Borden, who was the adult illegitimate son of Andrew Borden. Billy made his living as a farmer.

Was Billy the culprit? The strange man was reputed to be fascinated with his hatchet and would talk to the tool. Billy had in the past, pressed Andrew Borden for a lump sum of money or a guarantee that he would get something from his father’s will. Four different couples saw a horse and buggy in front of the Borden’s house from 9 AM to a little after 10 AM, on the day of the murder.

It is possible in a fit of rage; Billy killed his father and stepmother with the help of Lizzie. Was Billy paid a bounty out of Lizzie inheritance for being an accomplice in the murders? Whatever knowledge Billy had of the homicides, it went to the grave with him. In 1901, Billy’s body was found hanging from a tree. Below his dangling feet was a vile of poison.

The authorities estimated stepmother Abby was killed around 9:30 AM. Patriarch Andrew was killed near 11:00 AM, after returning home from a business meeting. Both Lizzie and maid Bridgett Sullivan swore they were busy washing windows and ironing clothes during the estimated time of Abby’s murder. No screams or sounds of struggle were heard.

Bridgett testified she was resting in her attic room at the time Andrew was murdered. Lizzie’s alibi changed, concerning her whereabouts when her father was killed.

At first, Lizzie claimed she was in the mansion’s backyard barn loft looking for a metal fishing sinker. It was later found out, the dust on the loft floor had not been disturbed.

This lack of physical evidence meant Lizzie was not where she claimed to have been. The prime suspect then remembered she had visited the barn to eat pears. Lizzie’s faulty memory could be from the trauma of seeing a ghastly scene or she had perjured herself.

The day before her murder, stepmother Abby told her friend Dr. Bowen, “She and her husband had been sick, perhaps they had been poisoned.” Incriminatingly, days before the massacre, Lizzie had tried to buy cyanide from the local drug store.

Lizzie warranted, she had wanted to kill insects in her sealskin cape. The druggist refused the cyanide sale because Lizzie did not have a prescription for such a powerful remedy.

In 1901, near the feet of dangling Billy was a vile of poison. Was the beaker a hint to the authorities? Was Billy an accessory in the slaying of his father and stepmother? Did Billy give poison from the tumbler to Lizzie? Was this the reason why the Bordens were sick the day their murder? If Billy had a hand in the slaughter, was his suicide the result of a guilty conscience?

The Borden household was an unhappy place filled with animosities. Lizzie referred to her stepmother as Mrs. Borden. All through her life Lizzie was never comfortable around men, she and her sister Emma never married. The mansion’s bedroom doors had many outside locks, was Lizzie treated like a prisoner? Was Lizzie a victim of abuse and incest?

Contemporary sleuths speculate the Borden murders were the result of greed. It is thought Andrew was going to change his will and favor his wife over his daughters. The Borden sisters were going to receive $25,000 each, while stepmother Abby was to get the mansion and $500,000. The rest of the estate’s money was to go to charities. In every scenario of why the Bordens were murdered, Lizzie is involved by way of motive and circumstance.

Stepmother Abby was bludgeoned in the upstairs guest room; her head was repeatedly smashed with a hatchet or ax. Andrew was butchered downstairs; the trauma to his head was considerable. At minimum both victims were struck ten times with a sharp object that split their skulls wide open.

The victims were dispatched with great hatred; yet during the murders both Lizzie and Bridgett Sullivan swore that nothing unusual was heard. It is hard to believe the tandem occupants did not hear the sound of a body hitting the floor or the whack of a hammer-like device contacting something solid.

Was Bridgett Sullivan involved in the murders? Is it possible she was abused by the senior Bordens, emotionally or physically?

Bridgett Sullivan was an immigrant from Ireland. After the trial she returned to her homeland. Was the servant paid off by Lizzie to keep silent?

Years later Bridgett Sullivan moved back to the USA, she married and lived the last years of her life in Butte, Montana. Legend has it, on her deathbed; Bridgett Sullivan confessed she had lied on the witness stand to protect Lizzie.

After the acquittal, Lizzie and sister Emma, stayed in Fall River, Massachusetts. The duo sold the murder mansion and bought a large Victorian house, at 306 French Street. The manner was named, Maplecroft.

Years later Emma moved out of Maplecroft. The elder sister had become angry at Lizzie’s 1904 notorious lesbian affair with actress Nance O’Neil. Some amateur sleuths think Lizzie’s brazen inamorata with the actress solves the mystery of who killed the Bordens.

Lizzie had a clandestine tryst with housemaid, Bridgett Sullivan. The duo were about to be exposed and shamed by the elder Bordens. Unmasked and labeled as a homosexual pervert, Lizzie would lose her inheritance. Bridgett Sullivan would be fired and deported.

Massachusetts in the 1890s was a very puritanical society. Facing unknown consequences, the ladies became desperate and jointly murdered the elder Bordens. The duo then provided alibis for each other. Other pundits think Lizzie and Bridgett Sullivan bribed or seduced Andrew’s illegitimate son Billy, into become a willing hand in the murders.

Lizzie died in 1927 from gallbladder surgery complications. Emma died seven days later by falling down a stairwell at her house in New Market, New Hampshire.

The Borden murder mansion, built in 1845, is now a bed and breakfast. The inn is located at 92 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts, 02721.

Psychics have long thought the hatchet murder weapon, is hidden in the attic of the now green-painted, mansion. Did Lizzie get away with murder? Did she have an accomplice or was she innocent? Whack, whack, whack. (12)