When people all over the world asked if a wealthy, famous, handsome, and charming ex–football star could possibly be capable of savaging his former wife and an innocent bystander in a fit of murderous rage, they were harkening back to a similar question from the century past:
Could a demure, well-mannered, and well-to-do former Sunday-school teacher, active in her church and charities and a prominent member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, actually be a monster?
It was a question that, with individual variations, would be posed many times in the years between the two cases. It is, in many ways, the essence of criminological behavioral science.
THE BORDENS OF FALL RIVER
Let’s begin with the undisputed facts.
At around 11:15 on the warm and humid morning of Thursday, August 4, 1892, Rufus B. Hilliard, the city marshal of Fall River, Massachusetts, received an urgent telephone call at the central police station. It was from John Cunningham, a local newsdealer. Cunningham happened to be at Hall’s Livery Stable when he saw Mrs. Adelaide Churchill frantically approach her carriage driver, Tom, telling him to go find a doctor. Her next-door neighbor Andrew Borden, one of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens in town, had been brutally attacked in the sitting room of his house on Second Street. Noticing Cunningham, she suggested that someone call the police.
Which is what Cunningham did. But not before he first called the Fall River Globe and gave them the exclusive story.
The Borden family consisted of four members: Andrew Jackson Borden, one of the town’s most prominent businessmen, seventy years of age; his second wife, Abby Durfee Grady Borden, sixty-four; and Andrew’s two adult, unmarried daughters by his late first wife, Sarah Anthony Morse Borden, forty-one-year-old Emma Lenora and Lizzie Andrew, thirty-two. There was also a live-in maid, a twenty-six-year-old Irish immigrant named Bridget Sullivan, who had been with the family for more than two years.
In 1890, Fall River had a population of eighty thousand and manufactured more cotton textiles than any other city in the world. And if one name could be associated with the economic origins and continued prosperity of the town, that name would be Borden. Though he was related to the family that had established Fall River and was by then enjoying its third generation of wealth, Andrew was only a second cousin of the wealthy Borden branch and had grown up without any of their power or advantages. His grandfather had been a brother of one of the original Bordens who made good, and Andrew’s father had never made anything of himself. Everything Andrew had—and he had a lot—he’d earned completely on his own, beginning as a casket maker, then opening his own undertaking business and investing the profits in real estate, banks, and mills. Now tall, thin, white-haired, and bearded, and almost invariably dressed in a heavy black suit regardless of the weather, Andrew Borden was president of the Union Savings Bank; a director of the Merchants Manufacturing Company, the B.M.C. Durfee Safe Deposit and Trust Company, the Globe Yarn Mills, the Troy Cotton and Woolen Manufactory; and the owner of several farms. By 1892 his personal wealth was estimated as high as a half million dollars, a tremendous sum in those days.
Probably as a result of his own struggle, Andrew was known as a fair but tough and hard-nosed bargainer in business, and in his personal life, he was parsimonious in the extreme, eschewing luxuries that were at this point commonly enjoyed by people with far less than he, such as electricity or indoor plumbing. The simple two-story frame house at 92 Second Street was furnished with a water closet in the basement and slop pails in the bedrooms, which had to be emptied every morning. Andrew, who according to all available research had never been accused of a sense of humor, saw no reason for such amenities, much to the dismay of his daughters, who seemed to feel that their father’s penurious lifestyle was prohibiting their chances for social success.
On the morning in question, Emma was away from home, visiting friends in Fairhaven, some fifteen miles away. But the household also had an overnight guest, John Vinnicum Morse, fifty-nine years of age, brother of Andrew’s late wife. He had lived in Iowa for twenty years, but three years before had returned to the Northeast and resided in South Dartmouth. He arrived on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 3, then he left for one of Andrew’s farms in Swansea. Normally, the eggs from the farm were delivered to Andrew by the farmer on Thursdays. But Wednesday night, Morse brought back with him the weekly egg delivery. Then, Morse apparently discussed business details with his former brother-in-law. Though there is some suggestion the two men were talking about Andrew’s intention to write a will, there is no documentation on this point.
The Borden household, normally a rather dour place, would have been particularly unpleasant that Wednesday. At 7:00 in the morning, Abby had gone across the street to the home of Dr. Seabury Warren Bowen complaining that both she and Andrew had been violently ill during the night with nausea and vomiting and she was afraid someone was trying to poison them. After a quick exam, Dr. Bowen told her he did not think the illness was serious and sent her home. Later that morning, just to be certain, Bowen paid a call on the Bordens. Andrew ungraciously declared that he was not ill and had no intention of paying for an unsolicited house call. Since Andrew was as excessively thrifty with food as he was with everything else, the gastrointestinal upset had possibly been caused by the mutton stew the family had been having at various meals for several days in a row, despite the warm weather. Bridget, who was suffering some of the same symptoms, was convinced the stew had gone bad, but Andrew would not let her dispose of it.
On Thursday, John Morse had breakfast with Andrew and Abby. Lizzie did not join them, which would have been normal. Despite living in the same small house, Lizzie seldom dined with her father and stepmother. Morse left the house around 8:40 A.M., stopped at the post office, then went across town to see other relatives, the Emerys. Mr. and Mrs. Emery later reported that Morse had been with them between 9:40 and 11:20 A.M., and their impression was that after leaving them, he was headed home by way of New Bedford.
Abby had directed Bridget to wash all of the windows, inside and out. This would have been a formidable task on any hot summer day, but it was particularly taxing this morning when she had already prepared and cleaned up after breakfast and was still feeling so ill. Around 9 A.M. she had to interrupt her work to rush outside to the yard to vomit.
A few minutes later, Andrew left for his business rounds. Mrs. Churchill, the next-door neighbor on the north side, saw him leave. Bridget was still in the backyard being sick, and Abby was upstairs straightening out the guest room that John Morse had occupied. When Bridget came back in the house, she overheard Abby and Lizzie talking in the dining room.
At a store he owned that was being remodeled, Andrew Borden told carpenters he didn’t feel well and was going home, where he arrived around 10:40 A.M. He tried to open the front door with his key, but found it bolted from the inside with an additional lock, unusual during the day. So he knocked and Bridget came over to open it. She had trouble springing the bolt, and according to Bridget, Lizzie was standing at the top of the stairs and laughed at her brief struggle.
Andrew was carrying a small package wrapped in white paper. We do not know what was in this package. Since a burglary in the house the year before, he had kept his and Abby’s bedroom locked, so he took the key from its place on the mantel and went up the back stairs. When Andrew returned downstairs, Lizzie told him that Mrs. Borden—she had some time ago stopped calling Abby “Mother”—had received a note from a sick friend and had gone out. Still characteristically dressed in his tie and jacket, Andrew lay down for a nap on the couch in the sitting room with his feet resting on the carpet.
So as not to disturb him, Bridget moved into the dining room and began on the windows there. Lizzie came into the room carrying an ironing board, which she set up and began ironing handkerchiefs.
“Maggie, are you going out today?” Lizzie asked. Interestingly, Maggie was what Lizzie and Emma called Bridget, since that had been the name of the previo
us Borden maid. Apparently, the habit was too hard to break. Andrew and Abby called her by her actual name.
Bridget replied, “I don’t know. I might and I might not. I don’t feel very well.”
“If you go out, be sure and lock the door, for Mrs. Borden has gone out on a sick call and I might go out, too.”
“Miss Lizzie, who is sick?” Bridget asked.
“I don’t know. She had a note this morning. It must be in town.”
Bridget found this odd, since Abby, who was shy, plain, short and overweight, normally told her when she was planning to leave the house, which didn’t happen all that often. But Bridget accepted Lizzie’s story.
As Bridget was finishing up the dining room windows, Lizzie said to her, “There is a cheap sale of dress goods at Sargent’s this afternoon at eight cents a yard.”
This elicited a more enthusiastic response from the young woman, who declared, “I’m going to have one!” She left Lizzie ironing in the dining room and went upstairs to her own room in the attic to rest for a little while, hoping to feel better. She lay down on top of the bedspread without taking off her shoes. It was too hot for a deep sleep, but she fell into a doze until she heard the city-hall clock strike 11 A.M. She lay on the bed for another few minutes.
At that point she heard Lizzie calling urgently from downstairs, “Maggie, come down!”
“What is the matter?” Bridget called back.
“Come down quick! Father’s dead! Somebody came in and killed him!”
Bridget rose quickly and rushed down two flights of stairs. As she was about to head into the sitting room where Andrew had been napping, Lizzie said, “Oh, Maggie, don’t go in!” She then instructed her to go find Dr. Bowen.
THE CRIME SCENE
Mrs. Adelaide Churchill had been returning home after buying groceries when she saw Bridget Sullivan darting back in vain from Dr. Seabury Bowen’s house across the street. She set her parcels down, then rushed over to the Bordens’, fearing from Bridget’s actions that someone was gravely ill. Lizzie was standing just inside the screen door on the side of the house, looking dazed. Mrs. Churchill called out to her, “Lizzie, what is the matter?”
“Oh, Mrs. Churchill,” Lizzie responded, “do come over! Someone has killed Father!”
The neighbor went around the fence and up to Lizzie. “Where is your father?” She had to ask several times before Lizzie finally responded:
“In the sitting room.”
Mrs. Churchill went into the sitting room and beheld the carnage for herself. When she emerged moments later, she asked Lizzie where she had been when this happened.
Lizzie replied that she had been in the barn behind the house, where she’d gone to find some iron to use as fishing weights for an upcoming trip. When she’d heard a noise, she had come out and noticed that the screen door was open.
“Where is your mother?” Mrs. Churchill asked.
Lizzie replied, “I don’t know. She had got a note to go see someone who is sick. But I don’t know but she is killed, too, for I thought I heard her come in.” Then she offered, “Father must have an enemy, for we have all been sick, and we think the milk has been poisoned. I must have a doctor.”
At that point, Adelaide Churchill went out in search of Dr. Bowen herself, setting in motion the chain of events that summoned law enforcement authorities.
As it happened, most of the Fall River Police Department was out at their annual picnic and clambake at Rocky Point, Rhode Island. Hilliard dispatched George W. Allen, a young and relatively inexperienced officer, one of the few he had on hand.
Meanwhile, Dr. Bowen had arrived, followed shortly thereafter by Bridget’s return with Lizzie’s best friend, Alice Russell. Bowen quickly went to the sitting room and came upon Andrew Borden’s body. The corpse was half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa, the head resting on Borden’s carefully folded coat, used as a pillow. His boots were still on his feet. The face was essentially unrecognizable. Blood spots were on the floor, on the wall over the sofa, and on the picture hanging on that wall. But the clothing was not disturbed, and there was no apparent injury to any part of his body other than the face.
The most immediate concern of those in the house was Abby’s whereabouts. Lizzie had reported her outing to a sick friend. With Abby’s limited circle, the only one Bridget could imagine her going to see was her younger half-sister, Mrs. Sarah Whitehead. Bridget suggested that she go try to find Mrs. Whitehead, and if Abby was with her, to tell her only that Mr. Borden was very sick and she needed to hurry home. Then they could give her the horrible truth.
Lizzie brought up again her suspicion that Abby had returned home, but if she had, then why hadn’t she come downstairs when she heard the commotion? “Maggie,” she said, “I am almost positive I heard her coming in. Won’t you go upstairs to see?”
That was the last thing Bridget wanted to do, fearing what she might find. “I am not going upstairs alone,” she insisted.
Mrs. Churchill said she would go with her, so together the two women climbed the stairs.
When they got to the top, they could see her, lying facedown in the guest room, propped on her knees as she had fallen. They raced back downstairs, where they found Lizzie now lying down.
Alice Russell asked, “Is there another?”
“Yes, she is up there,” Adelaide Churchill replied.
By this time Officer George Allen had arrived at the Borden home, finding a housepainter named Charles Sawyer on the street near the house. He enlisted Sawyer to guard the house while he went in to investigate. The front door was locked, so Allen moved around to the back, but was able to get in through the screen door on the left side near the rear of the house. When he got there, Dr. Bowen had already left to send a telegram summoning Emma home.
Shaken by the grisly sight in the sitting room, Allen quickly searched the remainder of the first floor, then raced back to the police station and reported his findings to Marshal Hilliard, leaving Charles Sawyer guarding the residence. Other officers had returned to the station house, and Hilliard sent them out with Allen. By 11:45 A.M., seven police officers were in the Borden residence, along with Bristol County medical examiner William Dolan.
Based on the comparative temperatures of the bodies, the condition of the blood on each, and an examination of the contents of the digestive systems, Dolan determined that Andrew had died at least one hour after Abby.
Andrew Borden had been struck in the face. One eye was cut in half. His nose was severed, and eleven distinct cuts extended from the eye and nose to the ear. Fresh blood was still seeping from the wounds when he was found. Despite the severity of the attack, the clothing was not disturbed. The wounds were inflicted by a sharp, heavy weapon. He had been struck from above the head while he slept.
The postmortem exam on Abby Borden revealed that her head had been crushed, apparently by the same weapon that would kill her husband. One misdirected blow had struck the back of her head, almost at the neck, cutting off a chunk of scalp. When her body was discovered, the blood was already dark and congealed.
Abby Durfee Borden had also been hacked to death, suffering a total of nineteen blows from a sharp-bladed instrument. As with her husband, the first blow was probably sufficient to cause death.
Officer Michael Mullaly asked Lizzie if there were any hatchets in the house.
“Yes,” she said. “They are everywhere.” Later, at the coroner’s inquest, she testified that she did not know if there were any hatchets in the house. This was only the first of a number of troubling inconsistencies in Lizzie’s responses.
Bridget accompanied Mullaly down to the basement, where he found four hatchets. One was a rusty claw-headed hatchet. A second was dusty and appeared little used. The blade of a third one was covered in ashes and had all but a few inches of the handle broken off. From the condition of the wood fiber, the break appeared to be recent. A fourth bore the residue of dried blood and hair.
About this time, John Morse came back, ha
ving been asked by Andrew to return for the noon meal. He strolled into the backyard, where he picked some pears from the trees beyond the barn and spent several minutes eating them, apparently unaware of what was going on inside the house.
Officer William Medley went to the barn and climbed up to the loft where Lizzie said she had been looking for lead to make sinkers for her planned fishing trip after she joined Emma in Fairhaven. He found the loft floor thick with dust and no evidence that anyone had been there recently. By this time, Dr. Bowen was back. He took Lizzie upstairs and gave her bromo caffeine for her headache and to calm her nerves. (The next night he administered the first of what would be a series of injections of sulfate of morphine as a tranquilizer.) Alice Russell noted that while Lizzie was upstairs, she changed from the light blue dress she had been wearing to a pink and white outfit.
Police found a small spot of blood on the sole of one of Lizzie’s shoes and another small spot on one of her underskirts, about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter. It was consistent with human blood, and later laboratory examination determined that the saturation was more concentrated on the outside of the fabric than on the inside. This is important because Lizzie explained the spot as a flea bite, a euphemism at the time for menstrual blood, which was not discussed in polite society, even when speaking with the police.
At 3 P.M. the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden were carried into the dining room and placed on undertaker’s boards, like a folding table. Dr. Dolan performed autopsies there, where just that morning the two victims had had their breakfast. He removed and tied off the stomachs, which were sent by special messenger to Dr. Edward S. Wood, professor of chemistry at Harvard.
The Cases That Haunt Us Page 10