Читать книгу Lizzie Didn't Do It! - William Psy.D. Masterton - Страница 7

August 4, 1892, was a pleasant midsummer day in Fall River, Massachusetts and indeed throughout most of New England. The sun was shining and the temperature was slightly below 80NF when, shortly after 11 A.M., Lizzie Borden left the barn to walk back to the house at 92 Second Street, where she lived with her father and stepmother. One report has it that on her way, Lizzie sang an aria from Il Trovatore, her favorite opera. This is almost certainly untrue; too bad, because it would have been appropriate. What Lizzie saw after entering the house became perhaps the most gruesome and certainly the most famous true crime story in nineteenth century America.

Andrew Borden, Lizzie's father, was lying on the sofa in the sitting room where she left him twenty minutes before. There was one important difference. When she went out to the barn, Andrew was asleep. When she came back he was dead; his head and face had been chopped to a bloody mass by someone wielding a hatchet. Frightened and horrified, Lizzie ran to the foot of the stairs and called out, "Come down quick, Maggie. Father's dead. Someone came in and killed him."

"Maggie" was Bridget Sullivan, the Borden's live-in maid (nobody knows why Lizzie called her Maggie). She had been sick that morning and was tired after spending a couple of hours washing windows. Shortly before 11 A.M., Bridget had climbed the stairs to her attic bedroom to take a brief rest before preparing dinner. When Lizzie called, Bridget hurried down and started to enter the sitting room. Lizzie stopped her, saying, "Don't go in there Maggie! I have to have a doctor. Go get Dr. Bowen."

Bridget ran across the street to Dr. Seabury Bowen's house. His wife, Phoebe Bowen, answered Bridget's frantic knock. Dr. Bowen was not home; he was making his rounds. (Remember, this was 1892; doctors still made house calls.) Mrs. Bowen promised to send her husband to the Borden house the moment he got home.

When Bridget returned with the disappointing news, Lizzie was standing as if in a trance at the screen door in the kitchen. At one point, Bridget said that Lizzie was crying; later she denied saying it. Lizzie told her, "I can't be alone. Go find Alice Russell and tell her to come over here." Alice Russell, a close friend of Lizzie, lived on Borden Street, a short distance away.

Fortunately, Miss Russell was at home and assured Bridget she would come to the Borden house to console Lizzie. First, though, she had to change her dress, which took perhaps five to ten minutes. You couldn't go calling on a neighbor in Fall River a hundred years ago wearing an ordinary house dress, no matter how urgent the call might be.

While all this was going on, a relatively young (fortyish) widow named Adelaide Churchill, who lived next door to the Bordens, was returning from downtown Fall River, where she had purchased the groceries for dinner. (Dinner, the principal meal of the day, was eaten at noon in most parts of the United States in 1892 and for many years thereafter.) She got back home just in time to see Bridget Sullivan hurrying back to 92 Second Street after her unsuccessful trip to Dr. Bowen's. Mrs. Churchill laid her purchases on the kitchen table and looked across to the Borden house twenty feet away. There she saw Lizzie standing alone at the screen door. Mrs. Churchill called out, "Lizzie, what's the matter?" Lizzie replied, "Oh, Addie, do come over; somebody has killed father."

Adelaide Churchill hurried over to the Borden house. There she asked Lizzie where she was when "it" happened. Lizzie said, "I went to the barn to get a piece of iron, came in and found the screen door open." In response to another question about her stepmother's whereabouts, Lizzie said, "She had a note to go see someone who is sick."

At Lizzie's request, Mrs. Churchill went out onto Second Street to find a doctor. She talked to several people, relating what had happened, and asking someone to locate a doctor or notify the police. A newsdealer named John Cunningham overheard the conversation but got it garbled. Cunningham phoned the police station to report that, "There's a row at the Borden house." It was a lot worse than that!

Marshal Hilliard, the head of the Fall River police force, received the call at 11:15 A.M. As it happened, about half of the policemen were attending a picnic at Rocky Point, a nearby amusement park. Nevertheless Hilliard was able to send a large contingent to 92 Second Street, which was only 400 yards from the police station.

The first officer to arrive at the Borden house, George Allen, had the presence of mind to station Charles Sawyer, a local painter, at the kitchen door with orders to admit no one except police officers. Sawyer carried out his duties faithfully. He remained on duty for seven hours, after which he asked to be relieved so he could go home to eat supper. His request was granted.

Dr. Bowen arrived home sometime between 11:15 and 11:30 and immediately crossed the street to the Borden house. There he examined Andrew's body. Later he described the gruesome scene.

"The blows extended from the eye and nose around the ear. In that small span there were 11 distinct cuts of about the same depth and general appearance. [A subsequent, more accurate count showed that Andrew had received 10 "whacks".] The cuts were about 42 inches in length and one of them had severed the eyeball and socket . . . I could not inflict upon a dead dog the additional blows that were driven into Andrew Borden's head."

Partial List of Policemen Sent to the Borden House, August 4, 1892:

Who They Were When They Came What They Did

George Allen 11:20 AM Reported back to Hilliard

Patrick Doherty 11:30 Searched house, talked to Lizzie

Francis Wixon 11:30 Searched premises

Michael Mullaly 11:40 Searched house, interrogated Lizzie

John Devine 11:40 Guarded house

John Fleet 11:50 Searched house, interrogated Lizzie

William Medley 11:50 Searched barn, interrogated Lizzie

Patrick Gillon 12:00 Guarded house

Philip Harrington 12:20 PM Searched barn, interrogated Lizzie

Charles Wilson 1:00 Talked to Lizzie

John Minnehan 1:00 Searched house

John Riley 1:00 Not much, apparently

Rufus Hilliard 2:30 Searched premises

George Seaver 5:00 Searched house

Albert Chase 6:00 Guarded house

Joseph Hyde ? Guarded house

Bowen, like Mrs. Churchill before him, asked Lizzie where she was when her father was murdered. She gave the same answer, that she had been out in the barn looking for some iron. (Bowen thought she said "irons" but that makes no sense.) Shortly afterward, Dr. Bowen went off to send a telegram to Lizzie's older sister, Emma Borden, who was visiting friends in a nearby resort town. Emma was unable to catch the noon train for Fall River; she got home at about 5 P.M.

From the telegraph office, Dr. Bowen went to a drugstore, perhaps to pick up a supply of sedatives. That afternoon he gave Lizzie two doses of bromocaffeine. Throughout the following week he prescribed a stronger sedative, morphine, to calm Lizzie's nerves.

By the time Bowen got back to 92 Second Street, a second body had been discovered. Adelaide Churchill and Bridget Sullivan found Lizzie's stepmother, Abby Borden, in the upstairs guest room. According to Bridget, they acted in response to Lizzie's suggestion; she told them, "I'm almost certain I heard her come in. Won't you go upstairs and see?" Bridget refused to go alone, so Mrs. Churchill accompanied her.

Abby, like her husband Andrew, had been slaughtered with a hatchet. Dr. Bowen examined this victim as well. He later gave a detailed description of the body.

"There was a large pool of blood under the dead woman's head as she lay face downward [on the floor] with her hands under her. Her head had been literally hacked to pieces and I easily made out 11 distinct gashes apparently the same size as those on her husband's face. [Bowen seemed to have a fixation on the number eleven; Mrs. Borden had received 19 whacks in all, 18 to the head.] One glancing blow cut off nearly two square inches of flesh from the side of her head."

Dr. Bowen went on to say that, with both Andrew and Abby Borden, he saw no sign of a struggle. No furniture was overturned, the victims' clothes were not disarranged, and Andrew's fists were not clenched. Bowen interpreted this to mean that Andrew was asleep when he was attacked and that Abby was taken by surprise. In both cases, death was virtually instantaneous.

Five people slept in the Borden house on the night before the murders. We've now accounted for four of them: Andrew Borden, Abby Borden, Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan. The fifth was John Morse, brother-in-law and close friend of Andrew Borden. He had arrived from out of town on the afternoon of August 3 with no luggage, not even a toothbrush. As it turned out, his stay at 92 Second Street was considerably longer than he had anticipated. Morse spent most of the morning of August 4 visiting a niece in Fall River, a little more than a mile from the murder scene. At about 11:45 A.M. he returned, apparently to accept a dinner invitation offered earlier by Andrew.

For a man about to eat dinner, John Morse behaved a bit strangely. He took time out to eat a couple of pears before entering the house, where Bridget told him what had happened. Later Morse said he didn't notice the crowd of a hundred or more curious people milling around outside the Borden house.

FIGURE 1.1 Crowd surrounding the Borden house

Lizzie Borden, newly orphaned, quickly became the center of attention. Alice Russell, Adelaide Churchill and later Phoebe Bowen took turns fanning her and rubbing her hands. Lizzie protested that she wasn't about to faint or go into hysterics, but these well-meaning people continued their ministrations. They didn't know what else to do.

While this was going on, Lizzie also had to deal with a more hostile audience. At least four policemen interrogated her at some length. Not one of the people who came in contact with Lizzie that day saw even a single spot of blood on her person or her clothing. Several of her neighbors (and one policeman) so testified; the other police officers did so by implication.

In all of her interviews with the police, Lizzie told essentially the same story. She said that at about 9 A.M. that morning her stepmother received a note about a sick person. Shortly afterwards, her father went downtown; he returned at about 10:45 A.M. Lizzie said she helped Andrew assume a comfortable position on the sitting room sofa so he could take a nap. Shortly before 11 A.M., she went out to the barn; when she returned perhaps twenty minutes later, she found her father murdered.

THE CROWD GATHERED AT 92 SECOND STREET

From Lizzie Borden Sourcebook, p.2

Lizzie also told the police that she was sure neither Bridget Sullivan nor John Morse committed the murders. Responding to a rumor that a "Portuguese" at Andrew's farm in Swansea was involved, Lizzie denied it. She said that neither of the men who worked there would hurt her father.

Despite all this, Lizzie made a bad impression upon just about all of the policemen who talked with her. It was not what she said but how she said it that bothered them. When Assistant Marshal Fleet asked her if she knew who killed her father and mother, Lizzie replied sharply, "Mrs. Borden was not my mother; she was my stepmother. My mother died when I was a little girl." This might seem like a simple statement of fact, but Fleet interpreted it to mean that Lizzie disliked, perhaps even hated, Abby Borden.

Lizzie had even more trouble with Officer Philip Harrington. After interrogating her, he said, "[Lizzie] talked in the most calm and collected manner . . . There was not the slightest indication of agitation, no sign of sorrow or grief, no lamentation of the heart, no comment on the horrors of the crime and no expression of a wish that the criminal be caught." Later, Harrington told Marshal Hilliard, "I do not like that girl. She does not act in a manner to suit me; it is strange to say the least."

Besides interrogating Lizzie, the police spent considerable time Thursday morning and afternoon (August 4) searching the Borden house, barn and yard. They were looking, first and foremost, for the murderer. Needless to say, they didn't find him. They were also looking for bloody clothes; here again they drew a blank. Finally, the police searched for the murder weapon. Bridget Sullivan showed them two axes and two hatchets in the cellar. The axes and one of the hatchets, which had a peculiar claw hammer design, had suspicious looking stains on them. They were delivered to Dr. Edward Wood, professor of chemistry at Harvard Medical School, to be tested for the presence of blood.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot! Assistant Marshal Fleet came across a hatchet blade in a box on a high shelf in the cellar. Since one can't commit murder with a hatchet minus a handle, Fleet put the blade back in the box and forgot about it.

There were about as many doctors at the Borden house on Thursday, August 4, as there were policemen. A partial list includes:

John Abbott William Dolan William Learned

Seabury Bowen Emanuel Dutra John Leary

John Coughlin Thomas Gunning Anson Peckham

Albert Dedrick ? Hardy J. Q. A. Tourtelott

Dr. Bowen, the Bordens' personal physician, was the first to examine their bodies. Dr. Coughlin was the mayor of Fall River, Dr. Dolan the medical examiner for the Fall River area of Bristol County. It is not at all obvious what the other gentlemen were doing. Perhaps they came for a lesson in human anatomy; it's not every day that you see head injuries of the type suffered by Andrew and Abby Borden. Reportedly Dr. Bowen, after viewing Andrew's body, suggested to Mrs. Churchill that she might like to look at what was left of her nextdoor neighbor. The good lady politely but firmly declined.

Dr. Dolan found out about the murders by accident; he happened to be passing 92 Second Street at about 11:45 A.M. His examination of the bodies was much more thorough than that of Dr. Bowen; it was Dolan who established that Andrew Borden had been struck 10 times, Abby 19. Later, at about 3:30 P.M., Dr. Dolan carried out what he called a "partial" autopsy. He removed the stomachs of the victims and sent them for analysis to the expert, Dr. Wood. This time you might say that Dr. Wood had his work cut out for him.

Legend has it that the calendar on the grandfather clock in the Borden house stopped on the day of the murders. A week later it still pointed to August 4, although the hours and minutes passed in the usual way. For the inhabitants of the house, August 4, 1892, must have seemed endless. It wasn't of course. The sun set at 7:00 P.M., exactly as predicted by the Old Farmer's Almanac. An hour or two later, Lizzie and Emma retired to their bedrooms on the second floor. John Morse, who must have been a remarkably unimaginative person, slept, as he had the night before, in the guest room where Abby Borden was murdered. Bridget Sullivan, with a much more active imagination, spent the night with a friend across the street. Alice Russell, a true friend in time of trouble, volunteered to stay with the Borden girls. On Thursday night, she used the room occupied by the elder Bordens the night before. Their bodies now lay on the dining room table, awaiting the arrival of the undertaker.

Officer Hyde, who was on guard at the Borden house, reported that sometime around 9 P.M., Alice Russell and Lizzie Borden made a trip to the cellar. Alice carried a kerosene lamp, Lizzie a chamber pot. Lizzie emptied the pot in either a sink (according to Hyde) or the water closet (according to Miss Russell). After that the two women went upstairs; fifteen minutes later Lizzie returned to the cellar alone. Hyde couldn't make out what she was doing this time. Perhaps she was using the water closet. Then again she might have been adding to a collection of menstrual pads soaking in a pail in the cellar; it was that time of the month for Lizzie. There is still another possibility; Lizzie could have added more sinister bloodstained objects such as a dress or undergarment to the pail. Apparently no one ever checked.

After Shocks

For many days after August 4, the Borden crime was the lead story on the front page of every newspaper in Fall River and vicinity. Early accounts of the crime were loaded with factual errors. The article shown below contains at least seven misstatements. The most interesting of these is the assertion that, "the murder suicide theory finds many supporters." So far as I know, no one has ever committed suicide with a hatchet.

FIGURE 1.2 Newspaper Article on Crime

On the other hand, newspaper accounts are the first place to look for insights into the Borden case. They are full of intriguing suggestions that were never followed up, mostly because they contradicted the legend that gradually became frozen in place. For anyone hoping to solve the Borden mystery a hundred years later, the primary source has to be the local newspapers. In 1892 there were three dailies in Fall River. The Evening News was the most reliable and authoritative; it was also the dullest. At the other extreme was the provocative and often controversial Globe; the Herald was somewhere in between.

Two items of particular interest in the Fall River papers of Friday, August 5, are shown below. The reproduction at the left cites the reward offer made by Emma and Lizzie Borden, promising $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer. Although it appeared daily for over a year, no one ever claimed the reward. Sorry; it's too late now!

FIGURE 1.3 Two newspaper articles

The newspaper headline shown at the right refers to an article which first appeared in the Fall River Globe, a newspaper generally hostile to the Bordens. It relates to a statement made by a clerk named Eli Bence who worked at Smith's drugstore in Fall River. He said that on the day before the murders a young woman came to his store and attempted unsuccessfully to buy ten cents worth of prussic acid, a deadly poison. Bence identified this woman as Lizzie Borden.

On the morning of August 6 (Saturday), the double funeral of Andrew and Abby Borden was held in the sitting room where Andrew was murdered. The bodies were arranged so as to conceal the marks of violence; everyone agreed that undertaker Winwood had done a marvelous job. There were about 75 mourners present in the house; a crowd variously estimated at 1000-4000 people jostled around outside.

The services, in which the customary eulogy was omitted, were conducted jointly by Reverend Buck, Minister for Missions of the Central Congregational Church, and Reverend Adams of the First Congregational Church. Until quite recently, the entire Borden family had been members of Central Congregational. Andrew left in a cold fury when the deacons refused to meet his selling price for a piece of property. He bought a pew in First Congregational which he never used.

According to legend, Lizzie shocked Fall River society by refusing to appear in black for the funeral. The legend was wrong; two independent newspaper accounts said she wore a black lace dress. She and Emma were, of course, the principal mourners; they led the funeral procession to the Oak Grove cemetery where the Borden lot was located. At the cemetery there was a surprise that disappointed the curious onlookers. By order of Medical Examiner Dolan, there was no interment; the bodies were held in a receiving vault pending further examination.

On Saturday afternoon a second search was made of the Borden house. Six people took part: Marshal Hilliard, Assistant Marshal Fleet and Captain Desmond of the Fall River police department, Detective Seaver of the state police, Medical Examiner Dolan and Andrew Jennings, the Borden family lawyer. They had the complete cooperation of Lizzie and Emma Borden, who made it clear that they wanted the search to be as thorough as possible.

Indeed it was thorough. The Providence Journal reported, "Stoves, mattresses, bureau drawers, clothes, cupboards and shelves were examined. No place big enough to conceal a weapon as large as a table knife or clothing of the dimensions of a glove finger escaped the eyes of the officers."

One of the rooms searched was a second floor closet called a "clothes press" which contained dresses belonging to Lizzie and Emma. Detective Seaver took each dress off its hanger and examined it carefully. In a few cases, Assistant Marshal Fleet took a dress to a window to look at it in stronger light. They were looking for blood stains; they didn't find any.

The search started at 3 P.M. in Bridget's attic bedroom and ended at about 6:30 P.M. in the cellar. A further examination took place on Monday morning, starting in the cellar where a stone mason took a brick out of the chimney to make sure nothing was hidden there. The handleless hatchet was rediscovered; this time it got to the police station. The officers then went out into the yard where they probed an abandoned well and took apart a pile of lumber piece by piece. The search ended in the barn, where all the hay was moved and some of the floor boards torn up. Afterwards it was reported that, "Absolutely nothing was discovered which would lead to a clue or assist in any way in clearing up the mystery."

Suspects du Jour

To this point, we've concentrated upon what happened at 92 Second Street on August 4, 1892, and successive days. This account is based largely on contemporary newspaper reports corroborated later by court testimony. Actually the newspapers dealt mostly with speculations as to who committed the crime and how he or she did it. Public opinion on this subject changed from day to day.

Initially it was assumed that the murderer came in off the street to wield his hatchet. He could have hated or feared one or both of the victims, probably Andrew. Then again, considering the excess violence involved, he could have been a homicidal maniac striking at random. This is what people in Fall River feared. As a newspaper reporter put it, "It is not exactly reassuring to reflect that a maniac with an insatiable thirst for human blood may be at large, emboldened by his success and looking for additional victims."

There were several reports of suspects who behaved weirdly. A farmer named Joseph Lemay said that while walking through the woods near his house he heard someone say, "Poor Mrs. Borden." Looking around, Lemay saw a rough looking, unshaven man dressed in black sitting on a stone. The man had blood stains on his shirt. He picked up a small hatchet, shook it at Lemay, and began to grind his teeth (his own, not Lemay's). Then he got up, jumped a wall, and disappeared. Small wonder that the police were never able to locate this truly unique individual. Within a day or two of the murders the police became convinced that Abby Borden died first, a considerable time before Andrew. Their conclusion was apparently based mostly on the fact that no one saw Abby after about 9 A.M. on Thursday morning. In contrast, Andrew Borden was seen as late as 10:45 A.M. The assumption of a time lapse between the murders virtually ruled out the possibility of an "outside job". A person coming in off the street to kill Abby Borden would have to conceal himself for an hour or two waiting for Andrew to show up. That, at least, was the way the police looked at it. Very early on they began to look within the Borden house for likely suspects.

The first insider to be suspected was John Morse. The police and the public were inclined to doubt that it was just a coincidence that the Bordens were killed less than twenty four hours after Morse came to visit them. Moreover, as we have pointed out, his behavior when he returned to 92 Second Street after the murders was peculiar to say the least. However, the police soon lost interest in Morse. His alibi, that he had been visiting his niece at the time of the murders, seemed solid.

FIGURE 1.4

John Morse

under suspicion

From New Bedford

Evening Standard,

Aug. 5, 1892

Bridget Sullivan seems never to have been seriously considered as a suspect, although there was one inconsistency in her story. She originally told the police that she had been washing windows on the third floor at the time of Andrew's murder. Later she admitted that she had actually been resting in her third floor bedroom. One can well understand the motivation behind her original statement; for anyone, and especially a servant, to lie down during the day was considered downright immoral in 1892. One newspaper article stated primly, "The servant in the average Fall River family is much more likely to be found washing windows or making bread than in bed at 11 o'clock in the forenoon."

Within forty eight hours the police settled upon Lizzie Borden as the likely murderer; they never changed their mind. There seem to have been three principal reasons for suspecting Lizzie. First, Fleet and Harrington became suspicious of Lizzie when they interviewed her after the murders. She seemed altogether too calm and unconcerned, showing no signs of grief for her father and stepmother. Second, Lizzie's story about the note Abby Borden received was hard to believe. The note was never found and no one ever acknowledged sending it. Finally, Lizzie's attempt to buy prussic acid, a deadly poison, seemed incriminating.

On Saturday evening, Marshal Hilliard and Mayor Coughlin drove through crowds of curious onlookers to 92 Second Street to talk to Lizzie, Emma and John Morse. Coughlin started the conversation by saying, "I have a request to make and that is that [all of] you remain in the house for a few days, as I believe it would be better for all concerned if you do so." Lizzie asked, "Is there anybody in this house suspected?" After some hesitation, Mayor Coughlin replied, "Miss Borden, I must answer yes; you are suspected." A court later ruled that from that point on Lizzie Borden was, in effect, under arrest.