VICTIMOLOGY
We have examined Andrew Borden’s business prominence and his seemingly obsessive, almost ostentatious frugality. There is no indication he was a likable man. But from what we can gather, despite the frugal nature of the daily lives he imposed on himself and his family, he was moderately generous with his wife and daughters. He did, after all, give Lizzie an expensive trip to Europe for her thirtieth birthday. He was tidy, reserved, and brusque, but we have to keep in mind that it was the social ethos of the day that males worked hard to support the family and, in turn, were expected to rule that family. This was especially true in New England.
Ever since the house had been robbed in the summer of 1891, Andrew had kept his own bedroom locked, although he left the key in plain sight on the downstairs mantel. This may seem strange until we look further into the family dynamics. Though it was never proven, Andrew suspected Lizzie of having been the burglar. This wasn’t just an idle speculation. For some years, Lizzie had had a quiet reputation around town as a kleptomaniac. The local merchants would discreetly present invoices to Andrew for what she had taken and he would discreetly pay them, avoiding any taint of public scandal. As far as we can tell, this habit was never mentioned in the Borden household. It is likely that locking the bedroom door but leaving the key in plain sight was a silent communication to Lizzie.
How much of Lizzie’s behavior was acting out to get her father’s attention is open to psychological interpretation. Andrew had married his first wife, Sarah Anthony Morse, in 1845. Sarah died in 1862. Emma had just turned twelve. Lizzie was two and a half. Two years later, Andrew married Abby Durfee Grady, a shy, squat, heavy, and humorless woman from a family nearly as prominent as the Bordens. Abby was thirty-six years of age and had never been married.
Andrew was a rigid obsessive-compulsive and together with Lizzie’s behavior, there has been speculation that his traits match those of a sexual abuser and hers match those of a woman victimized. Certainly he kept his family socially isolated, and his driving force seemed to be having power and control over others. His choice of a second wife is significant in that it was as pragmatic as everything else in his life. He opted for a socially prominent but unattractive woman without other prospects who he could be assured would be grateful and subservient to him, rather than a younger woman who might give him the son he had always wanted.
Abby was devoted to her much younger half-sister Sarah Whitehead, and Abby’s generous, eager-to-please personality came out only in the home of her sister. Other than with Sarah and Sarah’s daughter, Abby appeared to have no real close relationships. Since the squabble over the ownership transfer of some of Andrew’s properties, Lizzie had stopped calling Abby her mother and now called her Mrs. Borden. She wasn’t shy about telling friends how oppressive she found her home life with Abby.
PRIME SUSPECTS AND MOTIVES
Okay, so where do we go from here?
The next factor to consider is the relative risk level of the crime. It took place in broad daylight, in a low-crime area, on a street with frequent pedestrian and vehicular traffic of both a personal and business nature. And since this was before the days of automobiles, such traffic would be relatively slow. Moreover, we know from Bridget Sullivan’s account that the door Andrew Borden used to gain entry to the house had been locked and bolted. Is it possible that an intruder gained entry through an unlocked door and then locked it behind him to keep others away? Highly doubtful, because an intruder’s primary concern is going to be how to get quickly out of the premises. Bridget herself had trouble with the bolt. This would not have allowed for a quick getaway.
Since we’ve ruled out professional or amateur burglary, what other type of offender might take the kind of risk this crime entailed?
If the stakes were high enough or the payoff sufficiently worthwhile, a contract killer might take such a risk. We could, off the tops of our heads, come up with a scenario in which any of the numerous parties with whom Andrew Borden had business might have a reason to want him “out of business.” But there are two problems with this. First, investigators found no such animosity. Andrew was a hard-driving, tightfisted businessman, but no one was out to get him or found to have profited significantly from his death. Second, a contract killer would have had no conceivable reason to kill Abby. So if the UNSUB got to the Borden home expecting Andrew to be there and found he was not, he would simply have gotten the hell out and waited for another opportunity.
There is, of course, one exception to this logic. And that is if the reason for the murders had to do with insurance and/or inheritance. In that case, Abby is a critical target. And in that case, who would have had reason to put up the contract? The suspect population is small: Emma, Lizzie, and possibly Abby’s half-sister, Sarah Whitehead.
We can reasonably eliminate Sarah. Not only did she and Abby have a close relationship, she had no problem with the Bordens. Andrew had deeded over some of his property to her already and there were indications of more, a fact that the Borden sisters were said to have resented deeply. Also, even if Mrs. Whitehead had decided to do in her sister for her inheritance, she would have needed Andrew to die first, so that according to law, Abby would have first inherited her husband’s estate. As it was, with Abby dying first, the estate would go to his heirs, namely Emma and Lizzie.
And this is exactly what happened. It cannot be by chance that Abby was killed first.
Which leaves the two sisters and a believable motive. But if Emma and/or Lizzie was going to hire a contract killer, wouldn’t the trained professional have made the crime look like a robbery, or at least the clear work of an intruder? What would be the point of hiring a contract killer but then having the crime scene and circumstantial evidence point right back to Lizzie? Unless it was Emma who hired the killer and her intention was to set up Lizzie so that Emma would get the entire estate. But that’s really getting excessively complicated. There is nothing in Emma’s personality to suggest she could be this Machiavellian, and more to the point, when she had the perfect opportunity to cut her sister loose after she was arrested and indicted, Emma stood by her and insisted Lizzie did not commit the heinous killings.
Given all of the foregoing, I’m ready to eliminate the contract killer scenario and move on. Okay, so no robber-burglar, no hit man. What about a disorganized offender? The rumors about a crazed madman were rife. Maybe he broke in and could even have hidden himself in the downstairs closet for the hour and a half between the murders. But not after the rage and overkill demonstrated with Abby’s murder and not before the rage and overkill that would be demonstrated again on Andrew. Nobody with that kind of seething turmoil inside is going to be able to control himself to that extent for that long. I’ve never seen or read about anything like it. Even waiting out in the open for Stephen Manchester to return home after the killing of Bertha, Jose Correira gave up and left. And this was someone with a discernible grudge. Given the physical setting, too, I would be extremely surprised to see a disorganized offender leave no blood trail between the upstairs murder site and the one downstairs. Certainly there would have been blood traces in the closet in which he would have hidden.
So what I’d be telling local police is the same conclusion they came to themselves: This is probably the work of someone close to the family, with knowledge of their comings and goings, with knowledge of the layout of the inside of the house. Someone whose presence would not arouse suspicion.
So is there anyone of this description who had motive for the murders? We could make cases for Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget. And of those, who had access and opportunity between 9:30 and 11:00 A.M. on August 4, 1892? Because of Emma’s trip to Fairhaven, we’re down to Lizzie and Bridget.
What was Bridget’s possible motive? What was the precipitating stressor? She wasn’t feeling well that warm and humid morning; she’d been vomiting and was weak from her ordeal. And yet Abby insisted she clean all the windows in the house, inside and out. Maybe she just cracked . . . lost it. The
two years of domestic oppression caught up with her and she took out all of her frustration and rage on the hapless Abby. She could then either run away or stick around and complete the job on Andrew when he returned home and make it look like an intruder. But then wouldn’t she have killed Lizzie, too? Leaving her alive would have been more dangerous than leaving Andrew alive.
And we have another problem with this. Bridget liked her job. She wanted to be able to keep it. There is no indication that she ever had a serious disagreement with her employers. They got along well, and Mr. and Mrs. Borden treated her with respect and consideration. They even called her by her proper name, something Emma and Lizzie couldn’t be bothered with, calling her Maggie rather than Bridget.
What about Lizzie and Bridget in collusion? One or both of them kills the Bordens, Lizzie inherits a fortune and pays Bridget off for her troubles.
Again, we have to deal with personality, and there didn’t seem to be anything in Bridget’s that would allow her to take that bold a step. She would have been too scared. The police found her quite timid. Nothing indicates that she would have been motivated to commit such a crime for any amount of money. If Bridget had been involved, a vulnerable young servant with her personality would have broken under interrogation, particularly with the intimidation tactics the police would have used back then. That said, Bridget had to have suspected Lizzie. She was the only other one there, and Lizzie had pointedly brought up the cloth sale, likely in an attempt to get Bridget out of the house.
Although Emma seems to have been out of town during the murders, she has not avoided suspicion. After she received the telegram from Dr. Bowen, she did not take the first train back from Fairhaven. She did not take the second, nor the third. The fourth train did not get her back until the evening. This does not indicate conspiracy to me, but I sure wouldn’t discount it as a possible indication that as soon as she heard about the murders, Emma had at least a vague fear about what had really happened. The same could be said for Uncle John, who strolls back and, despite the activity on the street, stands around the backyard eating pears that have fallen from the trees.
Frank Spiering, who in Prince Jack proposed Prince Eddie, the Duke of Clarence, as Jack the Ripper, weaves a scenario for Emma as the killer of her father and stepmother in Lizzie. He has her establish her alibi fifteen miles away in Fairhaven, then surreptitiously driving her buggy back to Fall River, hiding upstairs in the house, committing the murders, then driving back to Fairhaven. Once Lizzie is accused, the sisters work together to protect each other. However, at one point it seems that Emma is trying to double-cross Lizzie, and Lizzie forces her to share the inheritance equally.
The problem with this scenario is that there is absolutely no evidence to support it—only that it could have happened. To me, this is a perfect example of the common tendency to make the facts fit the theory, rather than the other way around. All of the behavioral evidence concerning Emma—all of it—suggests she was shy, self-effacing, timid, and dominated by Lizzie. There is no way she could have come up with such an elaborate plan to kill her father and stepmother.
Another theory concerns Andrew’s alleged disturbed, illegitimate son, William Borden, by a local woman named Phebe Hathaway. Author Arnold R. Brown makes a case for William as the killer in his interesting and provocative 1991 book, Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter.
According to the William Borden theory, he was making demands of his father, who was drawing up his will. These demands were rejected by Andrew. William, in a fit of rage, killed Abby first, hid in the house with Lizzie’s knowledge, then killed his father. Because of his illegitimate status and a possible claim he might have to Andrew’s estate, Lizzie, Emma, Uncle John, Dr. Bowen, and attorney Jennings conspired to keep his crime hidden. The conspirators then either paid William off, threatened him, or both. They decided that Lizzie would allow herself to be a suspect and be tried for the murders, knowing she could always identify the actual killer, should that become necessary. William apparently was fascinated with hatchets and may have had a connection to the Bertha Manchester murder. Arnold Brown questions whether it might have been a contract murder to divert guilt away from Lizzie. As intriguing as this theory may be, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to support it. In fact, Leonard Rebello, author of the comprehensive and exhaustively researched Lizzie Borden Past & Present, writes, “No information was located to substantiate Mr. Brown’s allegation.” The behavioral evidence regarding Lizzie, on the other hand, has been well documented.
LIZZIE
Let’s take a look at Lizzie’s situation. From photographs, she had been rather cute as a child and teenager. But by the time in question, she had matured into what can be most delicately described as a rather plain, round-faced, robust woman—not exactly like the late actress Elizabeth Montgomery, the talented beauty I remember from the TV movie about Lizzie. She was an unmarried spinster living in her father’s house, not getting along with her stepmother, with no real prospects of getting out or changing things. The same can be said for Emma, but Emma was not the kind of outgoing woman with high social expectations that Lizzie was. Since their mother’s death, Emma had essentially dedicated herself to caring for Lizzie, a promise she had made to her mother on her deathbed.
Lizzie was willful and stubborn and liked to be noticed, which would almost surely have put her into conflict with her father. At the inquest, she often displayed a belligerent temper. She dropped out of school in the tenth grade, was subject to black moods, and indulged in numerous remedies to deal with them. She desperately wanted to live in the style to which she felt her family’s social station entitled her, and that began with a house on “the Hill,” by far the best neighborhood in town. The people Lizzie envied there were largely her rich cousins who had inherited their wealth for two generations running and had no compunction about spending it. Her father, who had scraped for every penny, however, had no interest in such pretensions. He gave Lizzie a generous allowance, and Lizzie had all the fine dresses she wanted, but Andrew thought the house at 92 Second Street was perfectly adequate for their needs. If he wouldn’t go for electricity and modern plumbing, he certainly wasn’t going to relocate his family to a grand house on the Hill.
Lizzie was in a bind. She yearned to move out and live in a socially prominent manner. But she certainly couldn’t afford to do that on her own, and even if she could, it was so socially improper for a single woman of her class not to live at home while her parents remained alive that had she moved out, she would not have been accepted by the society she so craved to join. The real hope would be marriage to a well-to-do gentleman. But she was thirty-two, so that didn’t look likely. She had had a few beaux over the years, but all of the relationships had been short-lived. The men in her neighborhood were all working class, and she couldn’t very well have the young men who lived on the Hill come calling in her embarrassing house.
And the situation might have been getting desperate. Andrew had already turned over real estate holdings to Abby and her half-sister as early as 1887—five years before—and Lizzie and Emma both feared they would increasingly be cut out of their father’s estate. If that was the case, then they would be at Abby’s mercy when the already seventy-year-old Andrew passed on.
We know that the night before the murders, Andrew and John Morse discussed business with each other in the first-floor sitting room. There is some indication Andrew was seeking advice about his will. So whether or not Lizzie had been gradually trying to poison her parents, this discussion with Uncle John could have been the precipitating stressor that made the act urgent. Once there was a will bequeathing everything to Abby, it would be too late.
Did a will actually exist? We’ll never know. None was ever found, though it is difficult to imagine a man as meticulous as Andrew Borden not having one. Perhaps the stained dress was not the only thing burned.
Strong evidence suggests that at least at one time, Lizzie and Andrew were close, though his
marriage to Abby would have made their relationship emotionally complicated at best. He constantly wore the ring Lizzie had given him as a sign of her love and devotion. Father and daughter had gone on frequent fishing trips together while she was growing up, and she maintained a passion for fishing, though she had not been in five years. This fact made her story about going into the barn to make sinkers somewhat suspect.
Another story believed by case scholars to be apocryphal offers an interesting possible precipitating incident in May 1892. Some say Lizzie kept pigeons roosting in the barn, which had recently been broken into. Andrew surmised that the culprits were boys wanting to steal the pigeons, so to thwart them, he went into the barn with a hatchet and killed all of the birds, leaving a bloody hatchet for all, including Lizzie, to see.
The symmetry with the murders three months later seems almost too neat and facile, but we certainly can’t ignore the possible influence if the first event occurred. At the very least, it would show two people apparently unable to deal with each other’s emotional needs or sensibilities.
I don’t think it is going too far to say that in many ways Lizzie saw herself as a victim. Under the section on Staged Domestic Homicide in the Crime Classification Manual, we wrote: “Post-offense interviews of close friends or family members often reveal that the victim had expressed concerns or fears regarding his or her safety or even a sense of foreboding.” If Lizzie had somehow transposed the roles of attacker and victim in her mind, then the anguished visit to Alice Russell the night before the murders fits perfectly into this emotional context.
In late July of 1892, Lizzie accompanied Emma to New Bedford, Massachusetts. By some accounts they left home after a family disagreement over a suspected transfer to Abby of one of the Swansea farms they had often visited as girls. They were on their way to see friends—Emma to the Brownells in Fairhaven and Lizzie to some acquaintances in Marion. But in New Bedford, Lizzie decided to spend several days with an old schoolmate before returning home on August 2. By then, Andrew and Abby were complaining of stomach upset, and Abby would then go to Dr. Bowen with the notion that someone was trying to poison them. (Note again the just mentioned passage from the Crime Classification Manual.)
The Cases That Haunt Us Page 13