Lizzie Borden: Family Secrets and a Double Murder Pt. 1

On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were found hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts home... and suspicion fell almost immediately on Andrew's younger daughter, Lizzie. The household behind those locked doors tells a story of financial anxiety, stepfamily resentment, and a woman whose answers never quite added up. Lizzie was acquitted, but the question of what happened that morning has never been settled. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped together on Monday ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com http://crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Serial Killers & Murderous Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Murder True Crime Stories, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse https://www.instagram.com/crimehouse/TikTok: @Crimehouse https://www.tiktok.com/@crimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudios https://www.facebook.com/crimehousestudiosYouTube: @crimehousestudios https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is Crime House.

• 0:42Vanessa Richardson?

  Every family has a version of itself that it shows the world and a version that only exists behind its own front door. And in the summer of 1892, the front door of the Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts, was fastened with three separate locks. From the street, the household looked respectable. Andrew Borden was one of the richest men in town. His younger daughter, Lizzie, taught Sunday School and volunteered for local charities. Neighbors knew the family as quiet, private, church-going people. Inside, the family rarely ate together. Doors between bedrooms stayed locked, and Lizzie no longer called her stepmom "mother." Then, on the morning of August 4, 1892,

• 1:25Vanessa Richardson?

  the family's maid was resting in her attic room when she heard Lizzie shouting from the bottom of the stairs, "Maggie, come down, come down, quick. Father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him." Within the hour, Lizzie's stepmother would be found dead upstairs, too. Almost everyone knows the schoolyard rhyme that came out of that morning. Far fewer know what the record actually shows: a household under strain, a string of strange events in the days before, and a daughter whose answers never quite added up. A jury would eventually decide Lizzie Borden's fate. But more than 130 years later, the question of what happened inside that house

• 2:09Vanessa Richardson?

  has never been settled.

• 2:24Vanessa Richardson?

  The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.

• 2:39Tristin Engels?

  And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Ingles. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.

• 2:49Vanessa Richardson?

  Crime House exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap "Try Free" at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Before we get started, be advised, this episode contains descriptions of violent murder and violence against animals, so please listen with care. Today, we start our deep dive on Lizzie Borden, the Fall River woman accused of killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet in 1892. Lizzie was acquitted,

• 3:33Vanessa Richardson?

  and no one else was ever charged with the crime. So as we tell this story, we'll be holding two questions at once. If Lizzie did commit these murders, what drove her to it? And if she didn't, why was nearly everyone so sure that she had?

• 3:49Tristin Engels?

  As Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like how resentment can build inside a blended family when love, money, and loyalty get tangled together; why people so often read calm as guilt in the aftermath of a tragedy; and how stress can scramble memory and what a changing story can and can't tell us.

• 4:10Vanessa Richardson?

  And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer?

• 4:18Vanessa Richardson?

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• 5:03Vanessa Richardson?

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• 5:37Speaker 03

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• 6:10Vanessa Richardson?

  The Borden House stood at 92 Second Street, a block from downtown Fall River. It was a narrow wooden building, built in 1845 as a home for two families. Andrew Borden bought it in 1872 and took over the whole thing for his own household. By the summer of 1892, five people lived there. Andrew was 69. His second wife, Abby, was 64. Andrew's two daughters from his first marriage still lived at home: Emma, who was 41, and Lizzie, who had just turned 32. Neither had ever married. On the third floor lived the family's maid, a 26-year-old Irish immigrant named Bridget Sullivan. Lizzie and Emma called her Maggie, while Andrew and Abby called her by her given name.

• 6:55Vanessa Richardson?

  The house had running water in the kitchen, but no bathtub and no electricity. The only toilet was down in the cellar. Rooms opened directly into one another with almost no hallways. Andrew and Abby slept at the back of the second floor, reached by the back stairs. Lizzie's bedroom sat between theirs and the guest room at the front of the house. But over the years, the family had arranged things so its members rarely had to cross paths. The door from Lizzie's room into her parents' room was locked and hooked. The door from Lizzie's room into the guest room was locked and bolted, with a writing desk pushed up against it. The sisters used the front stairs. Their father and stepmother used the back. According to Bridget, most of the time, the daughters

• 7:39Vanessa Richardson?

  didn't eat meals with their parents.

• 7:41Tristin Engels?

  I wonder if this started out this way because of concerns for privacy. It's hard to picture the layout as you were describing it, but based on what I gathered, each person's bedroom could essentially be accessed through another person's bedroom. And it doesn't sound like there were traditional hallways connecting everything, and there were separate staircases at the front and back of the house. And everyone living under this roof is an adult, so that can start to feel intrusive in a layout like that, especially at that time, when there would have been an expectation that adult daughters would be living independently with households of their own to run. But what stood out to me here were the locks and the additional barriers, like the furniture against the connecting doors.

• 8:25Tristin Engels?

  That signals to me that there's concerns there. And it could be about one another and their belongings, but it could also be about burglars or just, again, concerns about privacy. But physically dividing a family, even if it initially starts out for practical or circumstantial reasons, like just the layout of the house, that can also make it easy for members of the family to avoid one another emotionally, too, which it seems is already happening if Lizzie and Emma aren't eating with their parents. But at the same time, they're adult women. They may want their space from them. Just given their stage of life, they may also be resentful that they live at home with them, too. They are still, you know, living under their father's roof with limited privacy and one shared toilet.

• 9:11Tristin Engels?

  And maybe being physically separated gave them some feeling of independence in that kind of circumstance as well. But there's a big difference between wanting privacy and locking and barricading your own door at night. And that's what I keep circling back to, because that really stands out to me.

• 9:32Vanessa Richardson?

  What does it do to a person to spend years in a house where they can't move freely from room to room? It's like they're kind of locked in.

• 9:40Tristin Engels?

  Yeah, I think there's two things to consider with that. There's the physical, and then there's the psychological effects, and they can exacerbate each other. Physically, your environment can begin to feel constrained and confined. It can start to feel less like, you know, you're living in a shared space with your family, and it can feel more like territory, which can actually feel threatening. And psychologically, that can increase, I'm sure, frustration or irritability, helplessness, and feeling like you're under control or becoming sensitive to feeling controlled. And when you have adult women living in a home that is still controlled by a parent, it can start to feel like you're having your autonomy being restricted.

• 10:23Vanessa Richardson?

  The distance inside the Borden house had deep roots, starting with the family's patriarch. Andrew Jackson Borden was born in Fall River in 1822. His last name was one of the oldest in the city, but Andrew built his own fortune. He started out in the furniture and undertaking business, then put his profits into real estate. By 1892, he served as a director of several banks, sat on the boards of three textile mills, and owned an imposing office building downtown that carried his name. Estimates of his wealth vary, but some put it close to half a million dollars. That was a fortune at the time. Andrew was also famously careful with that money. He could easily have afforded a house on the Hill,

• 11:07Vanessa Richardson?

  that's the leafy neighborhood where Fall River's elite families lived. Instead, he stayed on Second Street, although some scholars say that stinginess has been exaggerated. Regardless, Andrew married his first wife, Sarah Morse, on Christmas Day, 1845. Their first daughter, Emma, was born in 1851. A second girl, Alice, died just before her second birthday. Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on July 19, 1860, and it wouldn't be long before she came face to face with tragedy. In March of 1863, when Lizzie was 2 and 1/2 years old, her mother died. According to family accounts, Sarah asked 12-year-old Emma to look after baby Lizzie. Emma would spend a lot of her life trying to live up to that request,

• 11:52Vanessa Richardson?

  although Lizzie soon got another mother figure in her life. Two years later, in 1865, Andrew married Abby Durfee Gray, a 37-year-old woman from Fall River. Lizzie was almost five. Abby was known for being reserved. Her own stepmother later described her as "a woman who would bear a great deal and say nothing." Emma was 14 when Abby joined the family, and she never called her mother. She called her Abby. But Lizzie did call her mother for more than 20 years. And during that time, Lizzie appeared to be a well-regarded member of her community. Lizzie left high school in her junior year. As an adult, she threw herself into church life. In 1885, she joined Central Congregational,

• 12:37Vanessa Richardson?

  one of the wealthiest congregations in the city. She taught a Sunday School class for members of Fall River's small Chinese immigrant community. She served as secretary and treasurer of the church's Christian Endeavor Society and worked with the Fruit and Flower Mission, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and a local charity hospital. She seemed well-loved in her family, too. In 1890, her father paid for a 19-week tour of Europe. Over the years, he gave her other expensive gifts as well, a diamond ring, a sealskin cape. Lizzie gave him something in return, a gold ring, which he wore on his little finger. Inside the house, there's little on record about open conflict in those years,

• 13:20Vanessa Richardson?

  but there were smaller signs of distance. Lizzie later said that, in many ways, she'd never related to Abby as a mother. She always turned to Emma instead. After all, her older sister had looked after her ever since her mother died. And Lizzie reportedly chafed at living on Second Street when her father could easily have afforded a house on the Hill. To the outside world, Lizzie Borden was everything a respectable unmarried daughter was supposed to be. But at 32, she had no husband, no home of her own, and no money beyond an allowance from her father, reportedly the same amount he gave his wife.

• 13:57Tristin Engels?

  Lizzie, by all appearances, is doing what is expected of a respectable woman of her social class for that time. And I think this also likely gives her some feeling of purpose outside of the home, too, which is good. But she's still financially dependent on her father and living with him despite all of this. And that is contradictory by the societal standards of the time. In 1892, marriage was one of the primary socially acceptable ways for a woman like Lizzie to gain independence. And unfortunately, there were far fewer opportunities to establish careers or simply go out and build entirely separate lives for themselves, for women. And it's not impossible, but it's very limited.

• 14:42Tristin Engels?

  So, society is essentially telling Lizzie, "If you want an independent life, you need to marry. And if you want to marry, you need to be a respectable woman." Well, here she is, doing that. She's teaching Sunday School. She's involved in charitable work. And the community seems to respond to her as a "respectable woman." But the outcome she's been told should result from that still hasn't happened. She's still living under her father's roof, financially dependent on him in a household where we already know there seems to be some kind of tension with her stepmother. And women were expected also to behave in certain ways. They can't be angry, defiant. Even having ambition could be problematic socially in some ways.

• 15:26Tristin Engels?

  So if Lizzie is experiencing anger, resentment, frustration, or even sadness about her circumstances, at that time, she had very few socially acceptable places to even express any of that.

• 15:39Vanessa Richardson?

  Do you think that all of her good works, I guess her charity, her church work, could that be a genuine source of meaning for her? And also, at the same time, kind of a mask?

• 15:49Tristin Engels?

  Of course. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. And like I mentioned, I would not be surprised if her community involvement was giving her a sense of meaning or even routine, or was an outlet for her, given what we know about her home environment. And at the same time, it could have started to become part of her public identity, too. Family reputation was very important back then, especially if your family was higher class. So how she behaved publicly represented the entire family name. And it could also function as a mask, like you said. That doesn't mean it's fake. It just means if she's, in fact, experiencing resentment or anger or conflict, she doesn't necessarily want the entire community noticing or gossiping about that like they probably are

• 16:33Tristin Engels?

  about her being a single adult, an unwed woman at that time.

• 16:38Vanessa Richardson?

  The first serious break in the family came in 1887, and it was over a house. When Abby's father died, his home on Fourth Street was left in two shares, one to his widow and one to Abby's younger half-sister, Sarah Whitehead. When the widow wanted to sell her share, Abby got scared that her half-sister would lose her home. Sarah's husband was struggling, and they couldn't afford to buy it. So in May of 1887, Andrew bought that share of the house for $1,500 and put it in Abby's name. Neither Andrew nor Abby told Lizzie or Emma. The sisters heard about it from people outside the family, which they did not appreciate. Lizzie later described what she told Abby. "What he did for her,

• 17:21Vanessa Richardson?

  he ought to do for his own children." The thing is, it seems like he did. That fall, Andrew deeded his daughters their late grandfather's house on Ferry Street for only $1. Lizzie later claimed that settled things. "It was all the trouble we ever had." But something had changed. Abby's half-sister said that after the deal, the Borden sisters stopped acknowledging her on the street. And Lizzie stopped calling Abby "mother" from then on. She addressed her as Mrs. Borden. Five years later, when a prosecutor pressed her on why, Lizzie gave a short answer. She said, "Because I wanted to."

• 17:59Tristin Engels?

  In a blended family, property can become, you know, a share. I experienced that as a form of betrayal, not only of them, but even maybe of their late mother as well, particularly if they believe that nothing has been provided for them yet. And Lizzie choosing to stop calling Abby "mother" afterward tells us that something about their relationship or how she viewed their relationship changed. And I want to circle back to Lizzie's relationship with her father because I think that's relevant here. He gave her gifts. He sent her to Europe. She reportedly received the same allowance as Abby did, his wife. So to her, she was treated equally,

• 18:41Tristin Engels?

  if not better, than Abby since he married her. So in terms of the hierarchy, Lizzie may have felt, up until this point, that she was still somewhat on top, or at least comparable. But something about this tipped the scale. This may have been one of the first times that Lizzie felt her position with her father was threatened by Abby. And because Andrew is using his resources to provide for Abby's family before he did that for her. And if Lizzie is financially dependent on her father and marriage has not provided her with the independence she expected, then this could have felt like a very real threat to her future security as well. And interestingly, Abby's father dying and seeing that left

• 19:26Tristin Engels?

  his daughters with some property could have just taught Lizzie of another way that independence and income could have been achieved at that time.

• 19:37Vanessa Richardson?

  By the spring of 1892, Lizzie wasn't hiding how she felt. Around that time, a local cloakmaker named Hannah Gifford was making a garment for Lizzie when she referred to Abby as "Lizzie's mother." According to Gifford, Lizzie cut her off. She called her stepmother "a mean, good-for-nothing thing" and added, "I don't have much to do with her. I stay in the room most of the time." Gifford said she was awfully surprised. It was the only time she ever heard Lizzie talk that way. Within a few months, Hannah Gifford would be repeating those words to the police.

• 20:14Vanessa Richardson?

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• 20:58Vanessa Richardson?

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• 22:51Speaker 04

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• 24:11Vanessa Richardson?

  By 1892, Lizzie Borden had lived under her father's roof for more than 30 years. A dispute over a house had driven a wedge in her relationship with her stepmother, Abby, and at least once, Lizzie hadn't bothered to hide her contempt. But in the year leading up to the murders, the Borden household was also shaken by a series of strange events. On June 24, 1891, someone broke into the house in broad daylight while Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget were all at home. Abby's dressing room was ransacked. The thief took a watch and chain, some money, and a stack of streetcar tickets. Andrew reported it to police, but no one was ever caught. According to Lizzie, he told the family not to talk about it.

• 24:55Vanessa Richardson?

  The officer who investigated later wrote that Andrew told him three separate times that he was afraid the police would never find the real thief. Some historians read that as a sign the family privately suspected someone inside the house, possibly Lizzie herself, although no one was ever accused. From then on, the doors in the Borden house were kept locked, inside and out. The following spring, someone broke into the barn behind the house. Then it happened a second time. Lizzie's friend, Alice Russell, assumed it was someone after the pigeons that roosted in the barn loft. That May or June, Andrew decided to get rid of the birds. Some accounts say he used a hatchet to kill the pigeons. Lizzie believed he'd wrung their necks.

• 25:39Vanessa Richardson?

  Some writers have claimed the pigeons were Lizzie's beloved pets, but that has never been firmly established.

• 25:46Tristin Engels?

  Already, there are so many competing theories about everything you just shared. So let's talk about Andrew killing the pigeons, because that story has been a popular theory for what motivated what happened next. Firstly, there is research showing an association between exposure to animal cruelty and later aggression or violence, particularly when that exposure occurs within an environment of violence, abuse, or dysfunction. But that does not mean witnessing someone harm an animal causes a person to become violent. It's not causal. A lot of people have witnessed animal cruelty, and they do not go on to commit murder. Secondly, it is a compelling story. Andrew kills the pigeons. They were Lizzie's beloved pets, and she was devastated. So now she has another grievance against him,

• 26:32Tristin Engels?

  and it makes sense of a senseless murder. But from what you've said, we don't actually even know any of that. These are stories. We don't know that she witnessed Andrew kill the pigeons. We don't know that she considered them her pets. And we don't know how she responded to this event. And the problem is, if we blindly accept that story and that motive, then we lose other possible ones. Remember, someone had allegedly already entered that house in broad daylight. The family was locking and boarding up their rooms for a while now. And then there were reportedly repeated break-ins at the barn. We don't know that those incidents were connected, and we don't know who was responsible. We also don't know that those actually happened, but it could have been one person, it could be more than one person,

• 27:16Tristin Engels?

  it could be someone other than the Borden, it could be someone within the home. So I don't think anyone should automatically assume that every strange event around this house was coming from inside the Borden family without examining that as well. But what I also find interesting is Andrew's decision, though, to kill the pigeons himself after these repeated barn break-ins. If he truly believed the pigeons were attracting people onto the property, from his perspective, removing them may have simply been a practical response to a security problem, though of course he could have just let them go free, but that's no guarantee that they won't just come back. So it's not necessarily some vengeful or abuse tactic against Lizzie. And if so, if this is what happened,

• 28:01Tristin Engels?

  then maybe the Borden really did believe someone was targeting their property. And the problem is, we don't know if they were correct or if the call was coming from inside the house or not.

• 28:13Vanessa Richardson?

  Writers have treated those pigeons as a possible motive for more than a century. Do you think that's a fair leap?

• 28:20Tristin Engels?

  That's why I brought that up. I don't think so. And I only say that because it's not based on the evidence. If there was documented proof that the pigeons meant something specific to Lizzie, that she was emotionally connected to them, and not simply because we saw it depicted in Hollywood movies or adaptations of the story, and we knew that this generated anger or rage, or, you know, she wanted revenge, then I would be more inclined to believe that. But she never testified to that. It's not actually documented to have been the case. So for me, no.

• 28:56Vanessa Richardson?

  There was also the question of money. In July of 1892, Andrew bought the Ferry Street House back from his daughters for $5,000. That put real cash in their hands, but it also meant giving up the house he'd gifted them as a peace offering back in 1887. Lizzie had once heard her uncle say that Andrew had made a will, but she said she'd never seen it, and her father never discussed it with her. Given everything that happened with the houses, that made her nervous. She confided her worries to an old school friend. Lizzie said that Abby claimed to have no influence over Andrew, but she had to, or he never would have given her half-sister what Lizzie called "such a very large sum of money." Lizzie also told her friend she didn't know whether she or Emma would get anything when

• 29:41Vanessa Richardson?

  their father died. Then, on July 21st, the sisters left town. Some later accounts say a family argument prompted the trip, but it's unclear what it was about, or whether it happened at all. Emma went on to stay with friends in Fairhaven, about 15 miles away, and Lizzie went to visit friends in New Bedford, just across the harbor from her sister. Five days later, Lizzie came back to Fall River, and Emma stayed away.

• 30:08Tristin Engels?

  This goes back to what I was talking about earlier with regard to financial dependency and future uncertainty. Lizzie and Emma are unmarried adult women at a time when marriage was one of their primary ways they could establish a household, independent of their parents. And Andrew is their father, and also, for at least now, their financial security. And they can't control what Andrew does with his money or his property. They are left out of major decisions, as they should be, including what is included in the will. That can create anxiety, suspicion, and resentment, especially when they feel there is competition. But now they finally had property of their own, thanks to their father, after that rift

• 30:52Tristin Engels?

  that occurred with Abby and her family, and yet, they chose to let him buy it back from them. Cash on hand felt more secure than property in that moment, and I'm wondering if Lizzie felt fear that her father could change the deed or will, so that those properties would secretly be taken from her or from them. And so she decided that she would rather have something now, something she could hold on to and control, than leave her fate in the control of her father. Which is consistent with her comment, expressing concern that she didn't know whether she and Emma would get anything, and now she just ensured that they did. And this also gives us some insight into how she may have viewed Abby.

• 31:33Tristin Engels?

  From Lizzie's perspective, Abby may have represented an obstacle between herself and the financial security she expected from her father, or felt entitled to. Not necessarily because Abby was actually interfering in any way with that security, but because she was Andrew's wife. She had a legitimate financial interest in his property, and legally, as well. And Lizzie had already demonstrated that she's sensitive to those resources when they're directed to Abby or to Abby's family.

• 32:06Vanessa Richardson?

  In the first days of August, the Borden House took a strange turn. On the night of Tuesday, August 2nd, Andrew and Abby both became violently sick. Lizzie later said she felt sick too, though she didn't vomit. Bridget, the maid, was fine. The next morning, Abby crossed the street to see the family doctor, Seaberry Bowen. She told him she was afraid they'd been poisoned. Andrew hadn't wanted her to go. According to Lizzie, he told Abby, "Well, my money shan't pay for it." Dr. Bowen came over to check on him anyway, and Andrew treated him so rudely that Lizzie said she was mortified. The doctor didn't believe it was poison, though. He suspected it was something they'd eaten. That afternoon, an unexpected guest arrived.

• 32:50Vanessa Richardson?

  Lizzie's uncle, John Morse, her late mother's brother. He showed up around 1:30 and planned to stay the night. Lizzie stayed in her room. She heard his voice downstairs, but she didn't go down to see him. That evening, around 7:00, Lizzie walked to the home of her friend, Alice Russell. She told Alice she decided to join some friends at a seaside cottage in Marion. Then the conversation turned. Alice would later repeat it under oath. According to her, Lizzie said, "I feel depressed. I feel as if something was hanging over me that I cannot throw off." Lizzie told Alice about the sickness, and wondered aloud if their milk had been poisoned. She talked about a man who had argued with her father about renting a store, and how

• 33:33Vanessa Richardson?

  her father had ordered him out of the house. She also mentioned a man she'd seen running around the house one night, the two break-ins at the barn, and the daylight burglary her father had forbidden them to talk about. Lizzie said her father had enemies, that he was "so discourteous to people," and that she was afraid somebody was going to do something about it. She told Alice she felt like she wanted to sleep with one eye open half the time, for fear they will burn the house down over us.

• 34:02Tristin Engels?

  There are two ways to read this conversation. First is that Lizzie is genuinely frightened. Her family has recently been sick. She believes they may have been poisoned. There have been multiple unexplained incidents around the property, and she's allegedly witnessed her father in conflict with people. And she describes all the ways this is affecting her emotionally. So in that interpretation, we hear anxiety, and depression, and even hypervigilance. She's trying to make sense of a series of events that have made her feel unsafe in her own home, and given what she's outlined here, I mean, that would be understandable if what she's describing, she truly believes.

• 34:43Tristin Engels?

  But if you start with the assumption that Lizzie is responsible for what ultimately happens, then this conversation starts to look and sound different. It can look strategic and manipulative, as if she's planting a narrative ahead of time. She's identifying suspicious people before there is even a crime. She's reminding Alice that her father has enemies. She's talking about someone who's been lurking around the house and breaking in, and possibly even poisoning the family, and people who might have reason to hurt her father, and why. She's giving a motive. And most importantly, she's not telling this to the police, someone who may be able to help prevent this, or even look into it. Though there are explanations for this that are reasonable, I think, for that time, for

• 35:28Tristin Engels?

  her not to have gone to them with this information. But she's telling all of this to someone who can later repeat it for her, and it's a friend, someone she trusts, someone she thinks and will believe will repeat it for her favorably. That said, the timing is also interesting, but that doesn't necessarily tell us anything. Some people are very intuitive, and if you've been living in a house with strong boundaries or territories that are in your home, like we talked about earlier, and you had to be hyper-aware of where everyone is and when, because of that, you may have a heightened awareness of what's happening around you at all times, too. You might grow increasingly suspicious.

• 36:12Tristin Engels?

  So Lizzie may have just been more in tune because of that, and might have been misdirected, but it also could be explained by that.

• 36:22Vanessa Richardson?

  In Threat Assessment, people talk about leakage. I guess those are hints someone drops before something, an act of violence, happens. Do you think that's what this was, or is that hindsight talking?

• 36:33Tristin Engels?

  Leakage in Threat Assessment by Malloy, who I've actually met, is communicating to a third party an intent to harm a target. And the FBI also talks about leakage, but they're more broad, because they talk about leakage in including thoughts, feelings, planning, or intentions related to violence, even when they aren't expressing intent. What Lizzie is doing here does not really fit with leakage in Threat Assessment, even in the FBI's standards, because she's not communicating her violent intentions, thoughts, or feelings. She's not directly saying that she plans anything. Instead, what she's expressing is fear that someone else intends to harm her family and her.

• 37:16Tristin Engels?

  So it doesn't quite fit with leakage.

• 37:19Vanessa Richardson?

  Lizzie left Alice's house a little before 9:00 and walked home. At 92 Second Street, she left herself in the front door, fastened all three locks behind her, and went straight up to her room. Abby went to bed around 9:15. Andrew and John Morse stayed up talking until about 10:00. By lunchtime the next day, two of the people asleep in that house would be dead.

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• 39:05Vanessa Richardson?

  On the night of August 3rd, 1892, Lizzie Borden told a friend she was afraid someone was going to hurt her father. Her household had been rattled by a burglary, break-ins, and a sudden illness her stepmother feared was poison. The next morning, Thursday, August 4th, was hot. Bridgette came downstairs at 6:15 and started the kitchen fire. Around 7:00, Abby, Andrew, and John Morse sat down to a breakfast of mutton, mutton soup, Johnny cakes, and coffee. Around 8:45, Morse left to visit relatives across town. Andrew let him out the back door and told him to come back at noon. Bridgette had woken up with a headache. After breakfast, she went out into the yard to vomit and stayed outside for 10 or 15 minutes.

• 39:49Vanessa Richardson?

  Lizzie came downstairs sometime around 9:00. Then Andrew left for his morning rounds in town. When Bridgette came back inside, Abby was in the dining room with a feather duster. She told Bridgette she wanted the windows washed, inside and out. According to Lizzie, Abby also said she'd made up the bed in the guest room, where John Morse had slept, and was going back upstairs to put fresh cases on the pillows. That was a little after 9:00 a.m. Bridgette didn't see where Abby went next. She gathered a pail and brush and stepped outside. Lizzie appeared at the back door and asked if she was going to wash the windows. Bridgette said yes and told her she didn't need to lock the screen door since she'd be right outside. Over the next hour or so, Bridgette washed windows on every side of the house.

• 40:34Vanessa Richardson?

  She chatted for a while over the fence with the maid next door and made a few trips to the barn for water. She didn't see anyone come to the house.

• 40:44Vanessa Richardson?

  At some point during that hour, someone went up to the guest room on the second floor, where Abby was tidying, and attacked her. Abby fell face down on the floor between the guest room bed and the bureau. Her killer struck her head again and again with a hatchet or a similar blade. The medical examiner later counted 18 wounds to her head and one more to her back. Abby weighed more than 200 pounds. No one in the house reported hearing her fall. Meanwhile, Andrew Borden was making his rounds. Around 9:30, he told an officer at the Union Savings Bank that he didn't feel well enough to attend a board meeting. At another bank, a clerk thought he looked "real sick." He left a downtown shop at 10:29, checked on one of his buildings,

• 41:29Vanessa Richardson?

  and then headed home carrying a small parcel. Around 10:45, Andrew tried the side door of his house. It was locked, so he went around to the front. Inside, Bridgette had moved on to washing the sitting room windows from the inside. She heard someone fumbling at the front door and went to let them in. The door was locked three ways: a spring lock, a key lock, and a bolt. As she struggled with them, Bridgette muttered, "Pshaw." And from somewhere upstairs, she heard Lizzie laugh. Bridgette said Lizzie was either in the upstairs entry or at the top of the front stairs. At trial, prosecutors would argue that from partway up those stairs, a person could see through the open guest room door to where Abby was lying.

• 42:14Vanessa Richardson?

  The defense disputed it. Whatever she could or couldn't see, a few minutes later, Lizzie came downstairs and joined her father in the dining room. Bridgette heard her tell him that Mrs. Borden had gone out because she'd gotten a note from someone who was sick. Andrew took his bedroom key from the mantel and went up the back stairs to his room. When he came back down, he settled into the sitting room. Meanwhile, Lizzie set up an ironing board in the dining room and started ironing handkerchiefs. She asked Bridgette if she was going out that afternoon. If so, Lizzie told her she should be sure to lock the door since Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call and Lizzie might go out too. Bridgette asked who was sick. Lizzie said she didn't know. She just repeated the story about getting a note

• 42:58Vanessa Richardson?

  from someone who said they weren't feeling well. Lizzie also mentioned a sale on dress fabric at a shop downtown, eight cents a yard. Bridgette didn't seem to question the story. She wasn't feeling well either. She went up to her room in the attic to lie down, and a few minutes later, she heard the city hall bell ring 11 o'clock.

• 43:20Tristin Engels?

  Abby is dead upstairs, and at some point, people are going to wonder where she is. So saying that Lizzie received a note and that Abby left the house provides an explanation for her absence and potentially delays anyone from looking for her. And if Lizzie invented that explanation, she's able to repeat it to both her father and Bridgette while Abby's body is upstairs. And then she carries on as if nothing happened. She's continuing to interact normally. Normally enough that no one appears to even recognize that something's terribly wrong. So if she was responsible, that is a pretty remarkable degree of behavioral control. But we also have to ask the opposite question.

• 44:04Tristin Engels?

  What if Lizzie doesn't know? If Lizzie genuinely believes Abby has left the house, then ironing handkerchiefs and talking about fabric are just ordinary, routine behaviors because from her perspective, it's just an ordinary, routine, normal day. So if we assume she knows about Abby because she killed her, this can definitely look calculated. We can look at how many times she repeated that Abby was out on a call or her questioning where Bridgette would be cleaning or what she would be cleaning as evidence of something. But if we assume she has no knowledge of anything, then it looks completely mundane and normal.

• 44:42Vanessa Richardson?

  What do you make of Lizzie laughing from the top of the stairs just minutes earlier?

• 44:48Tristin Engels?

  I mean, it certainly sounds sinister and calloused when we know that Abby's body is upstairs and what had just happened to her. But again, if we didn't know there was a body upstairs, it sounds completely innocent. Something that you probably wouldn't even think twice about if you heard. And it also makes me wonder whether that's exactly what Bridgette heard. That doesn't mean she's lying. She very much could have heard something and could have heard a laugh, but memory is reconstructive. Once she learns that Abby was dead upstairs at the time she heard something, that can influence how she remembers that sound. So maybe it was clearly a laugh, but it could have also been a chuckle or a vocalization or some other sound

• 45:31Tristin Engels?

  that she later characterizes laughter when she knew what had happened. Was it even clearly a female laugh? This is a case that I find interesting because while all criminal investigations involve some degree of reconstruction, this one feels particularly dependent on it. We're relying on witnesses reconstructing events from memory, but also on law enforcement and attorneys interpreting those accounts, how evidence was presented through testimony, and even historians, and how they continue to interpret it. For more than a century, this is a century old. And there are just so many gaps in the evidence that have been just interpreted and then reinterpreted over all years.

• 46:15Tristin Engels?

  And it's just so interesting to go back and look at retrospectively from where we are.

• 46:21Vanessa Richardson?

  About 10 or 15 minutes after the bell, Bridgette heard Lizzie shouting for her to come down. According to her, when she asked what was wrong, Lizzie said, "Come down quick. Father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him." Bridgette ran downstairs. Lizzie was standing by the back screen door. When Bridgette started toward the sitting room, Lizzie stopped her. She said not to go in. She needed a doctor, quick. Bridgette ran across the street to Dr. Bowen's house, but he was out on his morning calls. When she came back, she asked Lizzie where she'd been when Andrew was killed. Lizzie said she'd been out in the backyard, heard a groan, and came inside to find the screen door wide open. Then she sent Bridgette to fetch Alice Russell.

• 47:03Vanessa Richardson?

  Next door, a neighbor named Adelaide Churchill had just come home from the market. She'd noticed Bridgette hurrying across the street, looking pale. From her kitchen window, she saw Lizzie standing inside the Borden's screen door and called out to ask what was wrong. According to Mrs. Churchill, Lizzie said, "Oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed father." Mrs. Churchill hurried over and asked where Lizzie had been when it happened. This time, she said she'd gone to the barn for some iron. As for her mother, she repeated the sick note story. But then she added something else. She said, quote, "I don't know, but she is killed too, for I thought I heard her come in," end quote. Mrs. Churchill ran to a nearby stable for someone to fetch a doctor.

• 47:48Vanessa Richardson?

  A newspaper carrier overheard and called the police. When Dr. Bowen finally arrived, he went into the sitting room. Andrew Borden was lying on his side on the sofa, as if he'd fallen asleep. He'd been struck in the face around 10 times with a sharp, heavy blade. His wounds were still bleeding. One blow had split his left eye. Dr. Bowen said that even someone who knew Andrew would hardly have recognized him. Lizzie told Bowen she hadn't seen anyone and that she was afraid her father had had trouble with his tenants. Bowen covered the body with a sheet and left to send a telegram to Andrew's older daughter, Emma, in Fairhaven. Soon after, Lizzie asked for someone to look for Mrs. Borden. According to Bridgette, Lizzie told her,

• 48:32Vanessa Richardson?

  "I am almost positive I heard her coming in. Won't you go upstairs to see?" Bridgette said she wasn't going upstairs alone. Mrs. Churchill offered to go with her, so they climbed the front stairs together. As Mrs. Churchill's eyes came level with the second floor, she looked through the open guest room door and across the floor to the far side of the bed. Something was lying there. It looked like the form of a person. She turned and went back down. Alice Russell had just arrived, and in the dining room, she asked, "Is there another?" Mrs. Churchill told her, "Yes."

• 49:08Vanessa Richardson?

  When Dr. Bowen got back and went upstairs, he found Abby face down between the guest room bed and the bureau. Her body was cold and the blood around her head had already darkened, meaning she'd been dead much longer than Andrew. Doctors later estimated by an hour and a half. At first, Bowen thought she might have fainted. Then he placed his hand on her head and felt the wounds. He went back downstairs and told everyone that Mrs. Borden had been killed, probably with the same weapon. He said it was fortunate that Lizzie had been out of the house, or she might have been killed too. In the kitchen, the women fanned Lizzie and rubbed her wrists. At one point, she sat down as if she might faint. But when Alice moved to loosen her dress,

• 49:51Vanessa Richardson?

  Lizzie told her she was all right. Mrs. Churchill said she never saw Lizzie cry that morning. Bridget, Mrs. Churchill, and Alice would all say the same thing about her appearance. They saw no blood on her face, her hands, or her dress, and her hair was neat. Lizzie seemed focused on practical things. She told Mrs. Churchill she supposed she would have to go to the cemetery herself. Mrs. Churchill told her the undertaker would take care of it. Upstairs, Lizzie told Alice that when the time came, she wanted a particular undertaker, windward. At some point, she changed out of the dress she'd been wearing and into a pink and white striped wrapper. Witnesses would later disagree sharply about what that first dress had looked like.

• 50:35Vanessa Richardson?

  It wasn't long before the police came and started investigating, and right away, something seemed off. When Assistant Marshal John Fleet questioned Lizzie and referred to Abby as her mother, Lizzie corrected him. Abby was her stepmother. Then around 12:15, Officer Philip Harrington questioned Lizzie in her bedroom. He offered to wait until the next day, when she might be thinking more clearly. She said, no, she could tell him everything now. In his report, Harrington wrote that Lizzie stood at the foot of her bed and spoke, quote, "in the most calm and collected manner," end quote. He saw no sign of agitation, sorrow, or grief, and heard no wish for the killer to be caught.

• 51:16Vanessa Richardson?

  In his opinion, she knew more than she wished to tell.

• 51:21Tristin Engels?

  People respond to loss, especially a sudden, violent, and traumatic loss like this in different ways. And it's only been a matter of hours. There's no one correct way to react. And for those who respond with shock or dissociation or in any way seem emotionally detached, people can and often misinterpret that as callousness or coldness. And unfortunately, we have a tendency to evaluate other people's reactions against what we believe that we would do in the same situation. If they don't respond the way we would expect, then we start to explain it. And in a situation like this, it easily starts to become something involving guilt, innocence, or lying and deception.

• 52:06Tristin Engels?

  And remember, it's 1892, and there are expectations about women, especially in certain classes. Lizzie changing her clothing may have had more to do with maintaining that expectation and about being presentable than anything else. That may seem bizarre to us, but it may not have been socially bizarre or abnormal to her, even in that context. There were also expectations regarding how they should behave, like we talked about earlier. Someone in Lizzie's class was likely expected to weep or faint or even otherwise seem distressed by what they had discovered and what occurred in their home, because she's privileged. But instead, she's presenting as calm and composed. And that could have influenced,

• 52:49Tristin Engels?

  or seemingly did influence, how Officer Harrington interpreted her, especially because he believed she knew more than she was telling him. And that, by the way, is an inference. And it seems like he's making it solely on how she's behaving. But remember, Lizzie is also used to presenting a certain way publicly, too. She may be behaving under her own set of family expectations as it pertains to having house guests, even under these circumstances. She could have been in shock. She could have also been deliberately controlling her emotions because she knew something about the murders, too. The bottom line is, how she is behaving here and the fact that she changed before people arrived

• 53:31Tristin Engels?

  is not enough to determine that she has something to hide. And assuming that it is and assuming that she does based on just that and no other evidence to support it, could be a confirmation bias forming, and that can become dangerous.

• 53:47Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, whatever the investigators were thinking, there were fewer of them than usual. Fall River's police force was shorthanded that day. A lot of its officers were away on the Police Association's annual excursion to Rocky Point. That's a seaside resort in Rhode Island. I already mentioned the two who had talked to Lizzie, but the first to arrive was Officer George Allen, who'd been dispatched at 11:15. He saw Andrew's body, left a passerby named Charles Sawyer to guard the side door, and ran back to the station to report. Over the next hour, more officers arrived, along with the city's medical examiner, Dr. William Dolan. Officers, doctors, and neighbors moved in and out of the house all day. And that afternoon, doctors examined both bodies

• 54:30Vanessa Richardson?

  on the Borden's dining room table. Police searched the house from attic to cellar. They found no intruder, no sign of a struggle, and nothing missing. Andrew still had his watch in his pocket and Lizzie's ring on his finger. In the cellar, Bridget showed officers where the household's hatchets and axes were kept. One of them would become the most debated object in the case. Officers also wanted to see where Lizzie said she'd been. The Borden's barn sat just behind the house. Lizzie told police she'd gone up to the loft to look for lead to make fishing sinkers for her trip to Marion, and that she'd stayed there about 20 minutes. She said she hadn't heard a thing from the house, not even the screen door. The loft was stifling that day.

• 55:14Vanessa Richardson?

  Not the kind of place you'd want to spend 20 minutes working on some fishing equipment. And Officer William Medley later reported that when he climbed up, he found no footprints in the dust on the floor, except his own. Officer Harrington helped search the barn, too. Down on the first floor, he told City Marshal Hilliard, "I don't like that girl." Then up in the loft, he said that if any girl could show them what could hold her interest up there for 20 minutes, he'd like to see her do it. By the end of the day, Lizzie's account had shifted, depending on who was asking. She told Bridget she'd been in the backyard and heard a groan. She told Alice she'd gone to the barn for a tin or iron to fix a screen. And she told police she'd been in the loft looking for lead for sinkers.

• 55:58Tristin Engels?

  The complicated thing about memory, especially under stress or pressure, is that your brain can work against you. It can get flooded with stress hormones that disrupt the prefrontal cortex's ability to recall information. Stress and stress hormones affect the hippocampus, where memory consolidation occurs, which, incidentally, has the highest concentration of cortisol receptors in the brain. And when under questioning like this, following a crime, it often leads to fragmented, inconsistent, or unintentionally inaccurate statements. Most law enforcement knows this, which is why even in this story, they reportedly offered to come back and question Lizzie

• 56:43Tristin Engels?

  when things were less emotionally intense. It's also why they sometimes question people more than once. They can then see if there are changes in their story, changes in details, or even changes in the chronology of the story. If someone seems to have logical inconsistencies or contradictions, selective memory, in the sense that they remember very specific details but cannot remember the basic facts, or they're evasive, that is generally when they tend to become more suspicious about deception. And right now, Lizzie, based on what you shared, has seemingly given a different story to every person that she spoke to.

• 57:26Tristin Engels?

  But what we do not know is what question was asked. All of those could have been true at some point throughout the day. Did they all ask the same question? Because right now, we know that Abby was killed, what, an hour and a half approximately before Andrew was? So are they asking about that range of time? Are they saying, what were you doing within this hour and a half? Or are they asking about a specific time? Like, at this very moment, what were you doing? So trying to account for what you did within a general timeframe under stress can cause someone to produce fragmented or just inconsistent stories, especially if you're being questioned by multiple people over and over again.

• 58:07Vanessa Richardson?

  Do you think it matters, for better or for worse, that the core of her story, saying that she was out at the barn, stayed the same, even though the details around that changed?

• 58:17Tristin Engels?

  Yes, because that actually aligns with what we understand about memory and how it processes information under stress and pressure. The central details of the story haven't changed, that she was in the barn. But the individual details have. Those central and basic facts, where she was, would be what we expect someone to remember without an issue. And that's something she remembered, and that has stayed the same. The specific details of what she was doing at that very moment or both moments are more difficult, I think, to reconstruct. If she didn't have anything to do with that, then she has to really think back about what was occurring at those moments. And again, she was also questioned by multiple people, which could add to that pressure.

• 59:01Tristin Engels?

  But at the same time, there are a lot of details in her history that suggest for a strong motive as well.

• 59:11Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, Lizzie wasn't every officer's first suspect. That afternoon, police picked up a Portuguese laborer who was withdrawing his savings from a local bank. Once he explained himself through an interpreter, they let him go. Officers chased reports of suspicious strangers all over town. But the questions about the daughter of the house kept piling up. That night, Officers Harrington and Patrick Doherty went from drugstore to drugstore across Fall River. At Smith's Drugstore, a clerk named Eli Bence told them that on Wednesday morning, the day before the murders, a woman had come in and asked for prussic acid. That's a fast-acting and deadly poison. She said she wanted it for the edge of a sealskin cape. Bence had refused to sell it to her.

• 59:56Vanessa Richardson?

  He said she left the store in a very haughty manner. He didn't know the woman's name. But later, when police put him where he could see and hear Lizzie Borden, he was certain it was her.

• 1:00:25Vanessa Richardson?

  Thanks so much for listening. Come back next time for the conclusion of our deep dive on Lizzie Borden.

• 1:00:31Tristin Engels?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at Crime House. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.

• 1:00:54Vanessa Richardson?

  And to enhance your listening experience, join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday, completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap "Try Free" at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page.

• 1:01:19Vanessa Richardson?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds team: Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Sarah Camp, Alyssa Fox, Mara De La Rosa, Claire Swartzlander, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.

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