Ep. 132 | The ACTUAL Lizzie Borden Case VS The New SLOP Show

Find your forever cookware @hexclad and get 10% off at https://hexclad.com/CCCM! #hexcladpartner Ready to be seen? Check that appointment off your to-do list with Zocdoc: https://zocdoc.com/cccm #sponsored Let’s talk about the actual, factual case of Lizzie Borden - and Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, which I have… a LOT of thoughts about. And spoiler alert: I don’t like it one bit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:27Speaker 02

  Crime, conspiracy, cult, serial killers, and murder. All things that I love to consume, and I know you do too. You sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded freaks. Today, we are getting into the Lizzie Borden case. Mostly because I haven't covered it, first of all. And secondly, because of the new show that came out on Netflix. The new monster show. You guys know how much I just love Ryan Murphy shows. By that, I mean I hate them. I hate them so much. I think they're disrespectful, over-sexualized, disgusting pieces of crap that just disrespect the victims to the nth degree,

• 2:09Speaker 02

  romanticize serial killers and make them sexy for no reason at all, but to, I don't know, just make them sexy? Because you'll watch that and think it's sexy? I don't know. And, and, and, and, a lot of reasons. We'll get into it. But first, I really wanted to deep dive into the Lizzie Borden case because I've seen a lot of videos covering the show. And they're like 10 to 15 minutes long, and they don't really go over the whole case in great detail. So I would like to do that first, as we always do, because I want to give you the actual, factual case and let you sit on that and realize how inaccurate the show is. And then we'll talk about the show and how it is a steaming pile of slop that should be taken down, in my opinion.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  And I know a lot of people like the shows and they think it's camp, and it's not a documentary. I don't care. I don't really care. These are real people that got slaughtered. And to romanticize and, and lie about who they were as people, and in this case horribly disrespect them and make them look like the villains, and then make the antagonists look like somebody they're completely not as well, is just wrong. I don't like it. I agree with maybe taking some inspiration from something, like with Ed Gein's story. You know, Texas Chainsaw was made from inspiration from Ed Gein. But guess what? In Texas Chainsaw, they don't mention Ed Gein. They don't mention the victims. So that it's taking inspiration. I understand that. But this, it just makes me so frustrated. So Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, who helped write the show.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  I, I, I, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan. So I'm actually gonna tell you what happened in the Lizzie Borden case from start to finish, and you can do with that what you will. All right? So let's get into our regular, scheduled, deep dive video. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go muck around on the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through this windshield into the Lizzie Borden case together.

• 4:18Speaker 02

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  And every piece has a lifetime warranty, which is really good peace of mind. But getting back into the fall routine is already enough. So don't let cooking and cleanup add more to your plate. And for a limited time, our listeners get 10% off at hexclad.com/CCCM. So if you want to support the show and check them out, head to H-E-X-C-L-A-D.com/CCCM and let them know I sent you. Thank you so much to Hexclad for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel and letting me make delicious food on non-stick pans. And let's get back to the video. So before we get into the people involved in this case, I think it's very important to talk about where this was set and the time period.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  So Fall River sits in the southeastern corner of Massachusetts, where the Taunton River spills into Mount Hope Bay. And cutting through the middle of the city is the Quechua River, less than two miles long, which drops sharply over a series of falls before it reaches the water. And those falls gave the city its name, and in the early 1800s, they gave it its fortune, powering the first textile mills built along the riverbanks. Now, when steam engines came along, the mills spread out along the waterfront, where ships could deliver coal straight to their doors. And the city never looked back. So by the 1890s, Fall River was one of the largest producers of cotton cloth in the country, and with more than a million spindles turning inside its granite mills.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  And people called it the Spindle City because of that. And about 74,000 people lived there at the time, and most of them had come for the mills. And they lived in crowded tenements in the shadow of the factories and worked long shifts alongside their own children, while the families who owned those mills grew rich enough to build mansions overlooking the bay. Classism, am I right? And the owners and the workers rarely came from the same place. The mill owners were old Yankee families, Protestant and English in their roots, whose ancestors who had been in the area since colonial times. And the workers were increasingly immigrants. First the Irish, then English, millhands, and French Canadians,

• 7:58Speaker 02

  and a growing number of actually Portuguese families, many from the Azores. And each new group arrived to find the one before it rung higher on the ladder. And by 1892, Irishmen had worked their way onto the police force while the Portuguese newcomers sat on the very bottom. And they were looked down on by nearly everyone, including the Irish. And those divisions would shape almost every part of what happened after August 4th. So it's relevant, I promise. A little history lesson. Who doesn't love that? Now, at the top of it all were a handful of families. And two names stood out above the rest: Durfee and Borden. Now, the Borden had been in the area since the 1600s.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  And by the 19th century, their name was on mills, banks, and ironworks, and the steamship line. And the wealthiest of them lived on the highest hill in the city, known simply as "The Hill." It's not very clever. Where large homes looked out over the bay and far from any of the noise of the mills below. And a woman born into one of those families was expected to be moral, gentle, and above reproach. She did not work for wages, but she could devote herself to her church and charity, joining temperous unions and missionary societies, which was one of the few respectable ways a woman of her class could take part in public life.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  And that was the world the Borden of Second Street belonged to. At least on paper. And in practice, they lived a little differently. So Andrew Jackson Borden was born in Fall River on September 13, 1822. And despite the famous family name, his branch of the Borden did not share in the mill fortunes. And he started out with very little, actually. Now, his father had made a modest living, and Andrew had to build everything he would eventually have on his own. And he started in the furniture business. And like many furniture makers of the time, Also went into undertaking, going into partnership with a man named William Almy. Now, it was pretty steady work, since there was never a shortage of customers.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  And over the years, Andrew saved nearly everything he earned and put it into real estate, buying up property around the city and collecting rent on it. And from there, he moved into banking and the mills. And by the 1890s, he was president of the Union Savings Bank and a director of several other banks and textile companies and the owner of farms across the river in Swansea and Somerset. So in 1890, he put up a large commercial building in downtown Fall River and had his own name set into it for everyone passing by to see. And when he eventually died, his estate would actually be valued around $200,000 to $300,000, which would be worth several million dollars today.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  So it was a real fortune, though still modest next to the richest families on the hill. But what Andrew was known for, more than his money, was how little he spent of it. And stories about his frugality circulated all over town, and after the murders, they grew even more. And some of them were probably exaggerated, obviously, you know, small-town talk. But the house he chose to live in pretty much speaks for itself. And when a reporter later described asking why the family never moved to a nicer part of the city, Andrew was supposed to have answered, quote, "What is the matter with the house? It is good enough for me, good enough for anyone to live in," unquote. So going back in time, on Christmas Day of 1845, Andrew married Sarah Anthony Morse.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  And very little is known about her, I couldn't find too much. But their first daughter, Emma Lenora, was born on March 1, 1851. And a second daughter, Alice Esther, was born in 1856, but unfortunately, she would pass away before she turned two. And then, on July 19, 1860, Sarah gave birth to their third daughter, and she was named Lizzie Andrew Borden. Now, Lizzie was her actual given name, not a nickname for Elizabeth. And naturally, her middle name came from her father, Andrew. And less than three years later, in March of 1863, Sarah, her mother, would pass away. And Emma was 12 years old at the time, and Lizzie was only two years old at the time.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  And the family story holds that as her mother was dying, Emma promised to take care of her baby sister, Lizzie. And whether or not that moment actually happened exactly as it's told, Emma did spend the rest of her life looking out for Lizzie. And the bond between the two sisters would shape a great deal of what came later. So for about two years, Andrew raised his daughters largely on his own, with much of the responsibility falling on Emma. And then, on June 6, 1865, he would remarry. And his new wife was Abby Durfee Gray, who was 37 years old and had never been married. And she came from a working-class family, and she was the daughter of a tin piddler. And in the years before her marriage, she had been living at home with her father and

• 13:00Speaker 02

  the new wife he had taken in after Abby's mother actually passed away, a woman barely older than Abby herself. Now, by most accounts, Abby and Andrew's marriage was more practical than romantic, necessarily. Andrew needed someone to run his household and help raise his girls. And Abby needed a way out of a crowded home that no longer had much room for her. So Lizzie was not yet five when her stepmother moved in, and Abby was the only mother she would ever really remember. And for many years, Lizzie called her "Mother," but Emma never really warmed up to her, because she was 12 when her mother passed away. And by the time Abby came along, she was around 14 years old, so it's like, "You're not my mom," you know, classic age. Basically, she was just old enough to remember her own mother.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  And she would later say on the stand that she felt Abby was never really interested in her or her sister. So in 1872, Andrew bought the house at 92 Second Street, and the family moved in. And it had originally been built as a two-family home, and Andrew never fully converted it, though. Now, the house itself was narrow, and it had no hallways, so most of the rooms opened directly into one another. And it also had no gas lighting, only kerosene lamps, and the toilet facilities were down in the cellar. And just a few blocks away, the city's wealthiest residents lived in houses with running water and modern conveniences. So this is kind of where Andrew's frugality is coming out. But the layout of the second floor would become very important.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Now, the front stairs led up to Lizzie's room, and Emma had to pass through Lizzie's room to reach her own. And beyond Lizzie's room was a connecting door into the bedroom Andrew and Abby shared, and that door was kept locked, with a desk pushed up against it on Lizzie's side. And Andrew and Abby used the back stairs to reach their room. Now, the front of the house belonged to the daughters, and the back of the house belonged to their father and stepmother, and the two halves rarely overlapped. And the family also kept the doors locked, even between rooms inside the house. And it was a habit that would become even stricter after a robbery the years before the murders, which we'll get into. So as they grew up, the two sisters turned out very differently.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Emma was quiet and reserved, and she went away to Wheaton Female Seminary for a time. And Lizzie was more outgoing, and she would attend the local high school, but she would leave before graduating. And Andrew would give each of his daughters an allowance of around $4 a week. That was hard to confirm for sure, but they got some sort of allowance. Which was a pretty comfortable amount for an unmarried woman who didn't need to work, and neither of them ever did. Now, Lizzie poured her energy into the church instead, and she was a member of the Central Congressional Church, where she taught a Sunday School class at the church's mission. And she served as a secretary and treasurer of the Christian Endeavor Society as well. And she was active in the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Ladies Fruit and

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Flower Mission, which brought food and flour to the sick and the poor. So to most people in Fall River who knew her from these circles, would talk about her as a devoted, respectable young woman, doing exactly what a woman of her background was supposed to do. So in the summer of 1890, she took a grand tour of Europe with several cousins, a trip lasting around 19 weeks. And it was the kind of trip that wealthy young women of their time often took. And for a daughter of Andrew Borden, it would have been an enormous expense. But for all his, you know, frugality and tightness with his money, he actually paid for it, because Lizzie and her father were pretty close. And years earlier, she had given him a gold ring, and he wore it every day for the rest of his life.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  And he did not wear a wedding band from his marriage to Abby at all, but the ring was one sign of affection in the house, and he kept it. But obviously, money was a source of most of the tension in the house. So in 1887, Abby's half-sister, Sarah Whitehead, was living in a house on Fourth Street that she co-owned with her stepmother. And when the stepmother wanted to sell her half, Sarah couldn't afford to buy it, and she stood to lose her home. So Abby went to Andrew, and he quietly bought the stepmother's share for $1,500 and put it in Abby's name. And when Emma and Lizzie found out, they were furious. Because as far as they were concerned, their father was handing family property to his

• 17:23Speaker 02

  wife's relatives instead of to his own children. So to smooth things over, Andrew gave his daughters a property of their own, the house on Ferry Street, where their grandfather had once lived. And they would be asked about this dispute on the witness stand years later, and Emma described the trouble it caused, quote, "Between my father and Mrs. Borden and my sister and I," unquote. Because the gift did not completely fix things. Yeah, believe it or not, money doesn't actually fix problems you have with your kids. You actually gotta, like, pay attention to them and not throw them into the weeds. And it was around this time where Lizzie would stop calling Abby "Mother," and from then on, she called her just "Mrs. Borden."

• 18:05Speaker 02

  And there was a little open fighting in the house after that, and the tension just kind of settled in. And according to the family's maid, the daughters did not always eat meals with their father and stepmother, and a dressmaker who worked in the house in the spring of 1892 later testified that when she once referred to Abby as Lizzie's mother, Lizzie corrected her and called Abby "A mean, good-for-nothing thing." Classic, classic stepmom language. And that maid was Bridget Sullivan. Now, she had been born in Ireland and came to the United States alone in her late teens, eventually finding her way to Fall River and to the Borden House, where she had worked

• 18:48Speaker 02

  for nearly three years by the summer of 1892. Now, she did the washing, the ironing, the cooking, and the cleaning downstairs, while the bedrooms were left to the family. And Andrew and Abby called her Bridget, and Emma and Lizzie called her Maggie, the name of the maid who had worked for the family before her, which is kind of disrespectful. Honestly, it's kind of like in The Devil Wears Prada, where she calls the new girl Emily all the time. "Emily!" Emily, is it Emily? I think it's Emily.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  She means you.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  And also in my head right now, there's about like 92 contradictions to the show that have already happened up until this point. There's so many, I'm refraining from talking about all of them until after I explain the whole story. Okay. But one of the big ones is that Lizzie was not close to Maggie slash Bridget at all, like at all. And in the show, they're lovers for some fucking reason. I'm anyway, I'm not going to get into it yet. So in July of 1892, the sisters sold the Ferry Street property back to their father for $5,000. And later that same month, both of them left Fall River to stay with friends in a nearby town. Now, Lizzie came home after a short time, but Emma stayed away. So as

• 20:04Speaker 02

  August began, the house on Second Street held four people, Andrew, Abby, Lizzie, and Bridget, the maid. And within a few days, a fifth would arrive. Now, the Borden's had not always kept their doors locked the way they did in the summer of 1892. That habit could be traced back to a day the year before. So on June 24th, 1891, someone got into the house in the middle of the day while the family was home. And Andrew and Abby's bedroom was ransacked, and the desk in Abby's dressing room was broken into. And around $100 in cash was taken, along with a gold watch and a chain, some jewelry, and a supply of streetcar tickets. So Andrew naturally reported it to the police, and a captain came out

• 20:49Speaker 02

  to the house to look around. And a nail was found jammed into the keyhole of the dressing room door, but nobody could say who had put it there, and nobody was ever charged for it. And according to accounts that circulated later, Andrew grew quiet about the whole thing and asked the police to let the matter drop, telling them he didn't think they would actually ever find the real thief. Now, some people who have studied the case believe he had already decided the thief was someone who lived under his roof. But whatever he believed, the result was that from then on, the doors inside the house stayed locked. And Andrew began keeping the key to his bedroom in plain sight on the mantel in the sitting room downstairs, which meant anyone could see if it was missing. And there was

• 21:32Speaker 02

  more trouble at home the following spring. Lizzie had kept pigeons in the barn behind the house, and when neighborhood boys kept breaking in to get at them, Andrew just took a hatchet out to the barn and killed the birds himself. Another thing they get completely wrong in the show. And there is no exact record of what Lizzie said to her father about it, but the story would be repeated often in the years that followed. So in late July, after the sisters sold the Ferry Street property back to their father, both of them left Fall River. And Emma went to stay with friends in Fairhaven, about 15 miles away, and planned to be gone for some time, like we were talking about before. And Lizzie went to New Bedford and stayed at the home of a family friend, a Mrs. Poole, whose daughter

• 22:15Speaker 02

  had been a schoolmate of hers. And she had talked about going on from there to spend part of her summer at a cottage in Marion with a group of friends from church. But instead, after a few days, she would come back to Fall River alone. And later on, she explained that she was needed at home for her duties with the Christian Endeavor Society, which had a meeting coming up on the first Sunday in August. So by the start of August, Lizzie was back on Second Street with her father, her stepmother, and Bridget, while Emma remained in Fairhaven. So on the night of Tuesday, August 2nd, Andrew and Abby would both fall violently ill. And not violently ill like in the show. Oh my God, that was

• 22:55Speaker 02

  comical and terrible. But they would spend the hours after midnight, puking, and neither of them slept much. And Lizzie later said that she felt sick that night as well, though not nearly as badly, and that she heard them through the wall and knocked on the locked door between their rooms to ask whether they needed help or not. And she said they told her there was nothing she could do, and Bridget was sleeping up in the attic. And there are some accounts that say she was feeling sick too, and some accounts that said she wasn't really affected by it. So I'm not totally sure on that. But she definitely was not as sick. So in the morning, Abby was frightened. She had convinced herself that someone had actually poisoned them. And she crossed the street to see the family

• 23:38Speaker 02

  doctor, who was Seabury Bowen, who lived almost directly across from the Borden's, and told him she was afraid they had eaten something that had been tampered with. Now, Andrew had not wanted her to go, and he let everyone know that he had no intention of paying for the visit. Now, when Dr. Bowen came over to the house to check on them, Andrew was cold and short with him. And Bowen didn't believe anyone had poisoned them at all. And the more likely explanation was just the food itself, because it was the middle of the summer, and the house had no refrigeration, as we know, beyond an icebox. And the Borden's were a family that did not throw anything away. Remember, Andrew is very frugal. And a large mutton roast had been cooked over the weekend, and the family

• 24:22Speaker 02

  had been eating it for days, served again and again in different forms, including as soup. And Bowen concluded they had most likely eaten something that had gone bad, and he told Abby not to worry. And that morning, Wednesday, August 3rd, a woman walked into D.R. Smith's Drugstore on South Main Street, just a few minutes' walk from the Borden house. And the clerk behind the counter was a man named Ellie Benz. Now, the woman asked him for 10 cents' worth of prussic acid, a highly toxic form of cyanide. And when Benz asked what she wanted it for, she told him it was to clean the edge of a sealskin cape. Now, he refused to sell it to her without a prescription, and she left, clearly unhappy.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  And Benz later told police that he hadn't known her by name at the time, but that when they brought him to see Lizzie Borden, he was certain she was the woman, recognizing both her face and her voice. And two other men, who had been in the store that morning, later said the same thing. But Lizzie denied ever going in there. There was no cameras, so we'll never know. So around 1:30 that afternoon, a visitor came to the front door. Now, the visitor was John Vinicen Morse, who was the brother of Andrew's first wife, Sarah, which made him Emma and Lizzie's uncle. And he was a tall, white-bearded man in his late 50s, who had spent about 20 years farming out in Iowa before coming back to Massachusetts, where he now lived in South Dartmouth and made his living dealing in livestock. Now,

• 25:49Speaker 02

  he and Andrew had stayed on friendly terms over the years, and he often helped Andrew with the farms across the river. And he had a habit of showing up without writing ahead, and this visit was no different. And he hadn't even brought any luggage with him. Now, dinner was already over by the time he arrived, but Abby got him something to eat anyway, which turned out to be more of the mutton soup. Why are we still eating that? And afterward, he borrowed a horse and carriage from a nearby stable and drove out to Andrew's farm in Swansea, where he talked with the hired man about some oxen and collected the eggs. And he came back to Second Street at around half past 8 that evening and sat up talking with Andrew and Abby in the sitting room until about 10 o'clock. So when they went to bed, Morse went upstairs to the guest room at the front of the house, the room

• 26:33Speaker 02

  right next to Lizzie's. And Lizzie didn't see her uncle that afternoon at all. And she later said she was upstairs for most of the time and could hear him talking with her father and stepmother through the thin walls of the house. Now, that evening, while Morse was still out at the farm, Lizzie left the house and walked a few blocks over to Borden Street to visit Alice Russell. And Russell was a single woman in her early 40s who had once lived next door to the Borden's, and she was closer to Emma than she was to Lizzie. So she seemed a little surprised by the visit, and even more surprised by what Lizzie wanted to talk about. And Lizzie told her she was going to take Russell's advice and go to Marion after all, but that she felt depressed. And Russell later testified

• 27:15Speaker 02

  that Lizzie said, quote, "I feel as if something was hanging over me that I cannot throw off," unquote. And Lizzie told her about the illness the night before, and said she had begun to wonder whether their milk might have been poisoned. And when Russell pointed out that it seemed pretty unlikely anyone would be creeping around Second Street at dawn tampering with milk cans, Lizzie moved on to her father. And she said she was afraid he had an enemy, because he had so much trouble with the men he did business with. And she told Russell about a man who had come to the house arguing with Andrew, and said she'd seen someone running around the house one night. And she said the barn had been broken into twice. And Russell told her it had probably just been the boys after the pigeons,

• 27:57Speaker 02

  pigeons that her dad ended up killing. And Lizzie then reminded her about the robbery the year before, and how the police had never found out who did it. And Russell said that by the end of the conversation, she had actually started to believe the Borden's were in danger. And before Lizzie left, she said one more thing that Russell would repeat under oath the following year, quote, "I feel as if I want to sleep with my eyes half open, for fear they will burn the house down over us," unquote. And then Lizzie walked home a little before 9 o'clock. And when she came in, she went straight up the front stairs to her room, passing the sitting room where her father, Abby, and John Morse were talking, without going in to say hello. And Bridget would come home from an evening

• 28:38Speaker 02

  out later that night and lock the back door behind her before going up to bed. So when the house went dark on the night of August 3rd, there were five people sleeping inside it. And by noon the next day, two of those people would be dead. Let's take a quick pause to talk about one of my biggest flaws, and that is procrastinating, making doctor's appointments. And not because I don't care, but because the finding a doctor part is kind of miserable, not gonna lie. Between the whole music and phone tag, finally getting a human, and then hearing they're not in your network, or that it's gonna take like 70,000 business days to actually get in, it's, it's, it's not something I look forward

• 29:19Speaker 02

  to doing. So I just don't. And maybe you're the same as me. But don't do that. Don't be like me. Actually, do be like me, because I've started using Zocdoc a long time ago, now actually. And this episode is sponsored by Zocdoc. So Zocdoc lets you search and compare high-quality in-network doctors. And they have more than 150,000 providers within 200-plus specialties across all 50 states. That was a mouthful. And you can see actual appointment openings and click to instantly book a visit. So no phone calls, no miserable phone calls. I know the millennials and Gen Z love that. I booked one in a matter of five minutes from my couch, and then I was able to see my therapist the next day. It was great. And I really needed it. DBH. But your health matters, and taking care

• 30:04Speaker 02

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• 30:24Speaker 02

  So the morning of August 4th started early at 92 Second Street. And John Morse was the first one downstairs, a little after 6 o'clock. And Bridgette came down soon after to start the fire in the kitchen stove and get breakfast ready. And she had woken up with a headache and still didn't feel really well. And Andrew and Abby came down around 7 o'clock and the three of them sat down to eat in the dining room. Now, the menu was the same food the family had been living on all week. The leftover mutton, along with Johnny cakes and coffee. Now, Lizzie didn't come down yet. After breakfast, Andrew and Morse talked for a while in the sitting room. And at around a quarter to nine, Morse got up to leave. And he planned to visit his niece and nephew who were staying across town.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  And Andrew walked him to the side door and told him to come back for lunch at noon. And Morse said he would. And Lizzie would come downstairs a little before 9 o'clock. Bridgette was in the kitchen and Lizzie told her she didn't want much for breakfast, maybe just a coffee and a cookie. And that's when Bridgette would go to the backyard where she would vomit because she felt sick to her stomach. And she stayed outside for several minutes before coming back in. Now, Andrew left the house around 9 o'clock to make his usual morning rounds downtown. And before he went, Abby asked Bridgette to wash all the windows that day, inside and out. And Abby said she was going upstairs to make the bed in the guest room where Morse had slept. And then she planned to put fresh pillow shams on it.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  So Bridgette went to the cellar in the barn to get a bucket, a brush, and a step ladder, and she started working on the outside of the house windows. And Lizzie would later tell police that the last time she saw her stepmother, Abby was downstairs dusting in the dining room, and that Abby told her she had received a note from someone who was sick and that she would be going out to see them. Now, nobody else ever saw that note, and nobody ever came forward to say they had written it or delivered it. So while Bridgette was washing the windows outside, she stopped at the fence for a while to talk with a maid who worked for the Kellys next door. And she worked her way around the house, window by window, for more than an hour, coming in and out of the kitchen to refill her bucket.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  And she later said she saw nobody go in or out of the house that entire time, and she never saw Abby leave. But upstairs, in the guest room at the front of the house, Abby Borden was already dead. It's sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 that morning, while she was working between the bed and the dresser, someone came at her with a hatchet or a similar weapon. And the first blow caught her on the side of the head while she was facing her attacker. And she fell forward onto the floor, face down, and the killer kept going, striking the back of her head over and over again. And by the time it was finished, she had been hit 18 or 19 times.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Now, a woman of Abby's size falling to the floor of that small house would have made some heavy sound, but nobody later admitted to hearing it. Now, meanwhile, Andrew was going about his morning. He stopped in at the Union Savings Bank where he was president around 9:30 and mentioned to one of the staff that he still wasn't feeling that well. And he deposited a check at the First National Bank around 10 o'clock, and a clerk there thought he looked tired and sick. Now, he stopped by another bank, then checked in at one of his buildings on South Main Street where carpenters were doing some work, and talked with a man about renting one of the stores. And on his way out, he picked up an old lock that had been removed from the building and carried it home with him, wrapped in a small package.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  So he left South Main Street at around 10:30, and a neighbor saw him coming around the side of his house toward the front door at about 20 to 11. So the front door of the Borden house was locked three different ways, with a spring lock, a bolt, and a key. And when Andrew put his key in and tried to open it, the door wouldn't give. And Bridgette was inside washing the windows in the sitting room by then, and she would come to the front door and let Andrew in. And she struggled with the lock and the bolt, and in her frustration, she said something like, "Oh, pshaw." And at that moment, she later testified she heard Lizzie laugh, and the sound came from above her, from the top of the front stairs.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  And at the top of those stairs was the door to the guest room where Abby's body was now lying on the floor, deceased. Now, Lizzie came down a few minutes later, and she asked her father if there was any mail, and she told him that Mrs. Borden had gotten a note and had gone out. And Andrew took his bedroom key from the mantel and went back upstairs to his room and came down again after a few minutes. And then he settled onto the sofa in the sitting room to rest. And at this point, Andrew was 69 years old, he had been sick for two days, and it was a pretty warm morning. So he was just beat from walking around and being warm, and he just wanted to take a nap. And at this point, Lizzie set up an ironing board in the dining room and began pressing handkerchiefs.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  And Bridgette finished the windows and washed out her clothes in the kitchen. And as she did, Lizzie came in and mentioned that there was a sale on dress fabric that afternoon at Sargent's, a store downtown, and asked Bridgette whether she planned on going out. And Bridgette said she might, and she told Lizzie she wasn't really feeling well still, and went back upstairs to her room in the attic to lie down for a while before she had to start preparing dinner. And at this point, it was just before 11:00. So Bridgette laid on her bed, and a few minutes later, she heard the City Hall bell strike the hour. And in the sitting room below, Andrew Borden was asleep on the sofa, lying on his side with his head on a cushion and his feet still resting on the floor.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  And his coat was folded under him as a pillow, and he never woke up. But in that moment, someone struck him in the head and face with a hatchet 10 or 11 times, and one of those blows split his left eye cleanly in half. And there was no sign that he had moved at all, or struggled at all, or tried to protect himself at all. And not long after the bell stopped ringing, Bridgette heard Lizzie calling to her from the bottom of the back stairs. And Bridgette later repeated what she heard, quote, unquote, "Maggie, come down. Come down quick. Father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him."

• 36:50Speaker 02

  And Bridgette naturally hurried down and found Lizzie standing by the side door. And when Bridgette started toward the sitting room, Lizzie stopped her and told her not to go in there. She told Bridgette to run across the street for Dr. Bowen. And she asked her where she had been when it happened, and Lizzie gave an answer she would repeat many times over the next few days, though never in quite the same way. She said she had gone out to the barn behind the house and up into the loft. And to one other person, she said she had gone there for a piece of iron to fix a window screen. And to others, she said she was looking for lead to make sinkers for a fishing trip she was planning to go to in Marion, and that she had eaten some pears while she was up there.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  And she said she was gone for around 20 minutes, or maybe half an hour. And at some point, she said she had heard a noise, perhaps a groan or a scraping sound, and at another point, she said she had heard nothing at all. And when she came back to the house, she said she found the screen door open and her father dead on the sofa. So Bridgette ran across the street to Dr. Bowen's house, but Mrs. Bowen told her that the doctor was out on call. So Bridgette came back with the news, and Lizzie sent her off again, this time to get Alice Russell. And next door, Adelaide Churchill, a widow who lived with her mother on the north side of the Borden, had just come home from the market. And looking out her kitchen window, she saw Lizzie standing inside the Borden's screen door, leaning against the frame and looking distressed.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  She called out to ask what was the matter, and Lizzie called back, "Oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed father." And Mrs. Churchill hurried over and asked Lizzie where she had been, and Lizzie told her she had been out in the barn getting a piece of iron. And then Mrs. Churchill asked where her mother was, and Lizzie told her that Mrs. Borden, not her mother, had gotten a note asking her to go see someone who was sick, and added, quote, "But I don't know, but that she is killed too, for I thought I heard her come in," unquote. Now, Lizzie asked her to find a doctor, and Mrs. Churchill went up the street to a stable to send a man out to look for one. Now, word began to spread along Second Street almost immediately, and a newspaper vendor

• 39:01Speaker 02

  passing by heard the commotion and telephoned the police station, just a little after 11:15. And City Marshal Rufus Hilliard sent an officer named George Allen running up the street to see what had happened. Now, most of the Fall River Police Force wasn't available to go with him, because that Thursday happened to be the day of the department's annual summer picnic, and a large number of the officers were away for the day. So by the time Allen got there, Dr. Bowen had come home and hurried across the street, and Alice Russell had also arrived. And Allen went in with Bowen, looked at Andrew's body, and ran back to the station to report what he had seen, leaving a local painter named Charles Sawyer to guard the side door. Now, Bowen examined Andrew on the sofa, and he found the blood still fresh and flowing,

• 39:45Speaker 02

  and he later said Andrew could not have been dead for more than about 20 minutes at that point. And the wounds had left his face so badly damaged that Bowen, who had been the family's doctor for years, said he couldn't be sure at first it was even him. And he asked for a sheet to cover his body. Now, in the kitchen, the women gathered around Lizzie. Mrs. Churchill and Alice Russell fanned her and rubbed her hands and wrists, and someone brought water. And accounts of how Lizzie behaved in those first minutes don't agree. Some of the people there described her as calm and composed. And Bridgette, who testified later, would say she had been crying And more excited than Bridget had ever seen her. Now with her father covered and the house filling with people, Lizzie said she wished

• 40:30Speaker 02

  someone would go upstairs and look for Mrs. Borden because she was almost sure she had heard her come in. And Bridget refused to go up alone, so Mrs. Churchill went with her. And they took the front stairs and Mrs. Churchill got only part of the way up, just far enough that her eyes were level with the floor on the second story. And from there, she could see through the open door of the guest room and underneath the bed. And on the far side of it, she could see the body of a woman lying on the floor. She turned and came back down and Alice Russell asked her, is there another? And Mrs. Churchill told her that there was and that Mrs. Borden was upstairs. Now Dr. Bowen went up to examine her and Abby was lying face down between the bed and

• 41:15Speaker 02

  the dresser. And her head was completely crushed in a pool of blood that had turned dark and begun to congeal. And Bowen noticed that her blood looked very different from Andrew's. Hers had stopped flowing some time ago. And later that day, a neighbor who went up to see her described the blood as dark with a kind of skin on top and said she must have been dead for at least an hour. And the medical examiners would later come to the same conclusion. So Abby Borden had been killed somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half before her husband. The implications of that were not lost on anyone in the house. Whoever killed Abby had done it while Bridget was washing windows and Lizzie was, by her

• 41:58Speaker 02

  own account, somewhere in the house. And either the killer had slipped out and then come back in later to kill Andrew, or the killer had stayed inside that small locked house for more than an hour while Andrew came home. Lizzie ironed in the dining room and Bridget went upstairs to lie down. So at about a quarter to 12, John Morse came walking back toward the house for lunch. And a crowd had already begun to gather out front. Morse didn't go in through the front and he walked around to the backyard, picked a few pears from the tree there and stood eating one before he came inside, where he learned for the first time that Andrew and Abby were both dead.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  And the house quickly filled with police officers, doctors, and curious neighbors, and it was never properly sealed off. People walked in and out of the rooms where the bodies lay and the crime scene was trampled almost immediately. And the county medical examiner, Dr. William Dolan, happened to be passing by and came in to take charge of the bodies. And Officer Patrick Doherty and Officer Michael Malali were among the first to speak with Lizzie. And she told them she had been in the barn and when they asked whether there were any hatchets or axes in the house, she told them there were and that Bridget could show them where. Now Bridget took them down to the cellar where they found two axes and two hatchets.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  And one of the hatchets, a claw hatchet, appeared to have hair and what looked like blood on it. And for a time, police thought they might have found the murder weapon. And tests would later show the stains were rust and the hair was from a cow. And in the washroom in the cellar, Officer William Medley noticed a pail with several bloody claws soaking in water. And when he asked Lizzie about it, she told him it was nothing to be concerned about, that she had already explained it to the doctor and that the claws had been there for three or four days. And Dr. Bowen confirmed that it had been explained to him and he said it was all right. The claws were understood to be menstrual rags and the matter was dropped.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  And Bridget told Medley that she had never noticed the pail before that day and that if it had been there two days earlier, she would have washed the claws with the rest of the laundry. And Lizzie's account of the barn loft was checked that same day. Medley went out to the barn and climbed the stairs to the loft. And when he got to the top, he later testified he put his hands down on the floor and left a clear print in the thick dust. And looking around, he saw no other marks in the dust at all, apart from the ones he had just made himself. And the loft was stifling hot with the windows closed and no air moving and Medley said he couldn't bring himself to stay up there for very long. Holes in the alibi. And Officer Philip Harrington spoke with Lizzie in the bedroom a little after noon.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  And she had changed by then into a pink and white striped wrapper. And he told her that given what had happened, maybe she wasn't in a state to answer questions and should wait until the next day. But she told him she could tell him everything she knew just as well now. So she repeated the story about the barn and she told him about the man she overheard arguing with her father a couple of weeks earlier over renting one of his stores. And in a report Harrington wrote, quote, "There was not the least indication of agitation. No sign of sorrow or grief, no lamentation of the heart, no comment on the horror of the crime, and no expression of a wish that the criminal be caught. All this and something that, to me, is indescribable gave birth to a thought that was most revolting.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  I thought at least she knew more than she wished to tell." Unquote. Later that afternoon Harrington found the city marshal out in the barn and told him plainly that he didn't like the way she was acting. An assistant marshal, John Fleet, arrived at the house around noon and took over. And when he questioned Lizzie, he asked when she had last seen her mother and she corrected him, quote, unquote, "She is not my mother, sir. She is my stepmother. My mother died when I was a child." Well, so did your stepmom. So Fleet searched her room later that afternoon and found nothing that looked like blood or a weapon. And she told him nobody could have gotten into her room because she always kept it locked. And down in the cellar, Fleet made another discovery.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  And that was in a box on a shelf near the chimney, he found the head of a hatchet with most of its handle broken off. And the break in the wood looked fresh. And the rest of the tools in the box were covered in the ordinary dust that builds up in any cellar, but the hatchet head was coated in something different, a fine layer of ash that looked to Fleet as though it had been rubbed onto the blade deliberately. And for reasons he never fully explained, he put the hatchet head back in the box and left it where he found it. Genius investigator, this guy. Now Emma Borden arrived home by train that evening. Someone had sent a telegram to Fairhaven telling her that her father was ill and she

• 46:59Speaker 02

  came home to a house full of police and front yard full of strangers. And the bodies of Andrew and Abby were examined on the dining room table that afternoon. And they stayed in the house overnight. And Bridget couldn't bring herself to sleep there and she went across the street to stay with a neighbor. And Alice Russell agreed to spend the night with Emma and Lizzie and she slept in the guest room, the same room where Abby had been murdered that morning. And an officer named Joseph Hyde was left outside to guard the house. Late that night, while he stood watch, Hyde saw a lamp moving through the house. And he watched Lizzie and Alice Russell come down into the cellar together and Russell carrying the lamp and Lizzie carrying something he couldn't make out.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  And Lizzie went to the sink in the washroom and emptied something into it that sounded to him like water while Russell hung back. And then they both went back upstairs. And about 15 minutes later, the light came back. And this time, Lizzie was alone and she set the lamp down on a table, walked over toward the sink where the pail of bloody claws had been and bent down. And from where he was standing, Hyde couldn't see what she was doing. And after a moment, she picked up the lamp and went back upstairs and the house went dark again. So by the morning of Friday, August 5th, the story had already left Fall River. Papers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington ran it on their front pages. And within a day, it had reached as far as Nebraska, Idaho, and South Dakota.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  And the early coverage mixed fact with guesswork, kind of like Ryan Murphy's show. And some papers had Abby found on her bed instead of on the floor. And at least two floated the idea that the deaths were suicides. Most of them, though, were printing far more detail than they should have had, describing Andrew's morning errands down to his stop at the barber and the wounds on both bodies blow by blow. And from the start, some of that was coming straight out of the police department. And locally, the papers split along familiar lines with the Fall River Globe, which spoke for the Irish working class side of town, hostile to the family, while the papers read by the Yankee establishment were protective of it.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Now that Friday, Emma and Lizzie offered a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the killer. John Morse, meanwhile, had become the public's first suspect. And he was a stranger to most of Fall River. He had arrived unannounced the day before the murders and the story of him eating pears in the backyard while a crowd gathered out front didn't really help. And when he walked to the post office that day, a crowd followed him and an officer had to escort him back. So the police had already checked his story, though. And the relatives he visited confirmed he had arrived around 20 to 10 that morning and left around 20 past 11. And Ellie Benz was brought to the house that same day to see and hear Lizzie.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  And he left certain she was the woman who had asked him for Prusik acid. That was the guy from the drugstore. Now meanwhile, the police chased every lead that came in. They picked up a Portuguese man withdrawing his savings from a bank simply because it seemed suspicious and rounded up and released several more Portuguese men over the following days. And a doctor named Benjamin Handy reported a pale, strange-looking young man walking slowly along Second Street shortly before the murders. And an officer took him All the way to Boston to look at a suspect who turned out to be nobody. And a man from Westport confessed and turned out to have spent the day at home on his couch. And a report of a bloody axe at a farm across the river led to an old dull axe with no

• 50:37Speaker 02

  blood on it at all, owned by a family whose children had frequent nosebleeds. And when a man named Frank Wade reported a suspicious figure near a pond, officers dragged the bottom with rakes and came back with a paper bag containing an old banana peel tied up with a long string, which I low-key kinda wanna know what was going on there. And one of them wrote in his report, quote, "This was very suspicious indeed," unquote. But behind the noise, the investigation kept circling back to the house. Almost everyone the police interviewed had heard that things were unhappy in the Borden household, and the women who did the family sewing had heard Lizzie speak harshly about her stepmother. A friend from Westport said Lizzie had called Abby deceitful, one thing to her face and

• 51:21Speaker 02

  another behind her back, and said she wasn't sure she and Emma would get anything when their father died. Now Andrew's brother-in-law, Hiram Harrington, told police that whoever had done it would turn out to be someone inside the house, and described Lizzie as a "strong-willed and willing to fight for what she considered her rights." Now on Saturday morning, August 6th, the police asked Lizzie for the dress she had worn on the morning of the murders. So she handed over a dark blue silk. And Mrs. Churchill, who had seen her standing at the screen door on Thursday, remembered a light blue cotton-printed dress with a darker figure. And the funeral was held at the house that same morning with about 75 people inside,

• 52:02Speaker 02

  and according to the New York Times, 3,000 to 4,000 packed into the streets outside. And at Oak Grove Cemetery, the caskets were not lowered into the ground because the medical examiners weren't finished. Now, days later, a second autopsy was performed there, and the heads of Andrew and Abby were removed so their skulls could be studied, and their bodies would be reburied without them, and the ultimate fate of their skulls is unclear. Now that evening, Mayor John Cullen came to the house with Marshall Hilliard and asked the family to stay inside there for their own protection. And Lizzie asked him directly whether anyone in the house was under suspicion, and Cullen later testified that he answered, quote, "Well, Ms. Borden, I regret to answer, but I must answer yes.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  You are suspected," unquote. And he said Lizzie replied that she was ready to go at any time. Now the next morning was Sunday, August 7th, and Alice Russell walked into the kitchen and found Lizzie standing by the cupboard, holding a dress while Emma washed dishes at the sink. Russell heard Emma ask what she was going to do with it and testified that Lizzie answered, quote-unquote, "I am going to burn this old thing up. It is covered with paint." Now Russell left the room, and when she came back, Lizzie was at the stove, tearing the dress apart and feeding it into the fire. Russell told her, quote-unquote, "I wouldn't let anybody see me do that, Lizzie." And Lizzie didn't answer, and she stepped further out of view of the window. Now there were police officers in the yard the entire time, and the next day, Russell

• 53:31Speaker 02

  told her that the burning was the worst thing she could have done, and according to Russell, Lizzie said, quote-unquote, "Oh, what made you let me do it? Why didn't you tell me?" And Emma would later explain that the dress was a cheap, light-blue Bedford cord that Lizzie had stained with paint back in May, and that she herself had told her sister to get rid of it. And for the time being, Alice Russell kept what she had seen to herself. So on Monday, August 8th, the police searched the house again with the family's permission and with Andrew Jennings, the family lawyer present. Emma and Lizzie told the officers to go anywhere they liked, and when the searchers reached a bricked-up section of the chimney, the sisters told them to "tear it out." The officers went through the attic, the bedrooms, the cellar, the barn, the privy,

• 54:16Speaker 02

  the well, and the lumber pile in the yard, and again, found nothing with blood on it. Down in the cellar, though, they collected the handless hatchet head that Fleet had found on the day of the murders and left in place for whatever frickin' reason. And this time, it was wrapped in newspaper and carried out. So that same morning, Alice Russell called Officer Hyde upstairs to show him a wooden club about 20 inches long lying under the head of the bed in the guest room where she had been sleeping, and she said she couldn't understand how she had missed it before. So on Tuesday, August 9th, an inquest opened in a courtroom at the Fall River Police Station. And inquests in Massachusetts were closed hearings meant to gather facts before anyone was formally charged, and the public and press were kept out, which is probably for the best.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  So Judge Josiah Blaisdell presided, and the questions came from District Attorney Hosea Knowlton, who had known Andrew Borden personally. And Lizzie asked that Jennings be allowed in the room with her. But the request was refused, and she testified over three days with no lawyer present. So Dr. Bowen had been giving her morphine since the murders and had recently increased the dose, and whether it had affected her on the stand has never been settled. But the transcript shows a woman, sometimes sharp and sometimes lost. Asked whether her relations with her stepmother had been cordial, she answered, quote-unquote, "It depends upon one's idea of cordiality, perhaps." And she said she didn't regard Abby as her mother, and that she had called her "Mrs.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Borden" for some years, and "mother" before that. Now her account of the morning kept shifting, as we know. At one point, she was in the kitchen reading a magazine when her father came home, and at another, she was upstairs in her room. And she said she had gone up to her room earlier that morning to sew a piece of tape on a garment, which would have taken her up the front stairs and past the open door of the guest room, where Abby was already deceased. Now she said she hadn't heard Abby come back into the house, though she had told Mrs. Churchill on Thursday that she thought she had. And she said she had eaten three pears in the barn loft. So when Knowlton pressed her on where she had actually been when her father came in, she told him, quote, "I don't know what I have said.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  I have answered so many questions, and I am so confused, I don't know one thing from another. I am telling you just as nearly as I know how," unquote. Now there are a few ways to read that. She may have been confused by the morphine, and she may have been an innocent woman being questioned for hours by a district attorney with nobody there to help her. Or she may have been tangled in a story she was having trouble keeping straight, because it's harder to remember what lies you tell. It's pretty easy to remember the truth, especially in the case of a murder. Oh, sorry, two murders. But Knowlton and the police had already decided which. And her last session was short, and when it ended, the court took a recess.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  And Lizzie waited in the matron's room with Emma while Knowlton met with Marshall Hilliard and the medical examiners in another room. And they agreed she should be arrested. So a little after 7:00 that evening, Hilliard came in and told her he had a warrant for her arrest for the murder of her father, and he offered to read it. Jennings told her she didn't need to hear it, and she waived the reading. So it had been one week since the murders, and the next morning, she was brought into the district court, walking in on the arm of the Reverend Edwin Buck, the minister of her church, through a room packed with people who had come to see her. And asked for her plea, she answered firmly, quote-unquote, "Not guilty." Now murder was a capital crime in Massachusetts with no bail.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  So after the arraignment, Lizzie Borden was taken by train to the county jail in Taunton. So at her preliminary hearing in late August, Jennings argued that Judge Blaisdell should step aside since he had already heard her inquest testimony. Now Blaisdell refused, but Jennings had planted an idea that stuck with a lot of people in Fall River, that Lizzie was a lone woman being pushed around by a roomful of powerful men while she was being held at the police station during the hearing. A matron named Hannah Reagan was in the room when Emma came to visit. And Reagan later said the sisters quarreled, and that Lizzie told her, quote-unquote, "Emma, you have given me away, haven't you?" Now when Emma denied it, Reagan said Lizzie answered, quote, "You have, and I will let

• 58:41Speaker 02

  you see I won't give in one inch," unquote. So Lizzie's supporters pressured Reagan to sign a statement saying the conversation never happened, but she refused. The most important witness at the hearing was Dr. Edward Wood, a chemistry professor at Harvard Medical School, who had tested the contents of both victims' stomachs. Now he found no poison, and testified that Abby's food was much further along in digestion than Andrew's, confirming she had died well before her husband. And when the hearing ended, Blaisdell, his voice reportedly breaking, acknowledged how hard it was to believe a woman like Lizzie could have done such a thing, and then asked the courtroom to imagine a man in her place.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Quote, "Would there be any question in the minds of men what should be done with such a man?" But he found her probably guilty and sent her back to Taunton to await the grand jury. And outside the jail, Lizzie had become a cause. The women from her church and temperance groups couldn't accept that one of their own could be guilty, and her Christian Endeavor Society passed a resolution declaring its faith in her. And Susan Fesiden, president of the Massachusetts Women Christian Temperance Union, visited her in jail and pointed out that she would be judged by men alone, since women couldn't serve on juries at that point. And much of the press took her side, too, portraying her as a refined daughter of a

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  respectable family who couldn't possibly have done it, and many papers took to calling her "a girl," though she had turned 32 that July. So in October, the case took a strange turn. So the city had hired a private detective from Providence named Edwin Mc- Henry and McHenry sold a young Boston Globe reporter named Henry Tricky what he claimed was the police department's secret case against Lizzie. So on October 10th, 1892, the Globe ran it across the front page under the headline, "Lizzie Borden's Secret." And it claimed there were 25 new witnesses and that Lizzie was pregnant and her father had threatened to throw her out and that someone had seen her in the guest room at

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  the time of Abby's murder with a hood over her head. And within hours, people in Fall River discovered the witnesses didn't exist and McHenry had invented all of it, kinda like Ryan Murphy, piece of shit. And the Globe ran a front page apology to Lizzie, quote, "for the inhuman reflection upon her honor as a woman," unquote. Now, Tricky was later indicted and fled to Canada and was killed there that December when he was struck by a train. So the damage to the prosecution was done. The biggest newspaper in Boston had been caught lying about Lizzie Borden and the man behind the lies had been hired by the city of Fall River. It's a bad look.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  So the grand jury met in Taunton that November and adjourned without indicting her. And what changed things was Alice Russell. She had kept quiet about the burned dress, even at the inquest, but she eventually decided she had to tell the truth and she went back before the grand jury and described what she had seen that Sunday morning. So on December 2nd, 1892, the grand jury voted 20 to 1 to indict. Privately, Knowlton wrote to the Attorney General that he didn't expect a conviction, though he felt the case was too serious not to try. So the Attorney General, who had been expected to help lead the prosecution, withdrew citing poor health and was replaced by William Moody, a young district attorney who had never handled a case of this magnitude.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  And the defense, paid for out of Andrew's fortune, because he's dead, brought in George Dexter Robinson, a former three-term governor of Massachusetts and one of the most respected men in the state. And three judges would hear the case as the rule in capital trials required. And one of them, Justin Dewey, had been appointed to the bench years earlier by the governor at the time, George Robinson. So the trial was set to begin on June 5th, 1893. So the courthouse in New Bedford filled early on the morning of June 5th with reporters from across the country and so many spectators that officers had to turn people away at the doors. And Lizzie came back in dressed in black and after questioning more than 100 men, most

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  of whom had already formed an opinion about the case, the court seated a jury of 12, mostly farmers and tradesmen from the small towns around the county. And nearly all of them were Protestant and reportedly only one was Irish. So the next day, William Moody gave the prosecution's opening statement. He told the jury about the tension in the Borden house, the fight over property and what Lizzie had said to Assistant Marshal Fleet while Abby's body still lay upstairs, quote unquote, "She is not my mother, she is my stepmother. My mother is dead." And he promised they would hear about the Prusik acid, along with the dusty barn loft that was completely untouched, even though she said she went up there to eat pears, and the burned dress.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  And when he finished, Lizzie fainted in her chair. And over the next week and a half, the prosecution called its witnesses. Bridget walked the jury through the morning of August 4th, including the laugh she heard from the top of the front stairs, though on cross-examination, Robinson got her to say she had never seen any quarreling in the family. And Alice Russell described the burning of the dress and Melvin Adams, handling the cross for the defense, asked her only whether she had seen any blood on Lizzie that day. And she said she hadn't and the police fared worse. And the defense answered Officer Medley's testimony about the undisturbed dust in the loft by calling boys who swore they had been up there themselves that morning.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  And Assistant Marshal Fleet admitted he had left the handleless hatchet head in the cellar after finding it. And then Officer Malali surprised everyone by saying he had also seen its missing handle in the box, which Fleet flatly denied. So to the jury, it looked like a police force that couldn't keep its own story straight. And the medical testimony went better for the state. And Dr. Frank Draper testified that the handleless hatchet head was the right size to have made those wounds and the skulls of Andrew and Abby were brought into the courtroom to demonstrate it. And after, Lizzie was allowed to step out. And the doctors also said a woman of ordinary strength could have struck those blows pretty easily.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  And then, in the middle of the trial, the prosecution lost its two strongest pieces of evidence. The judges ruled that the jury could not hear Lizzie's inquest testimony because she had effectively been a prisoner when she gave it, questioned without a lawyer while a warrant for her arrest already existed. And they then ruled that Eli Bentz could not testify about the Prusik acid, agreeing with the defense that trying to buy poison had nothing to do with a hatchet murder. So in a case built entirely on circumstantial evidence, those two rulings took away the state's best circumstances. So when the defense opened, Andrew Jennings told the jury that Andrew Borden had been

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  his friend since boyhood and that if he showed more feeling than usual, they should understand why. Quote, "The counsel, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, does not cease to be a man when he becomes a lawyer," unquote. The drama. And the defense called witnesses who had seen strangers around Second Street and an ice cream peddler named Hyman Lubinski, who said he saw a woman walking from the barn toward the house shortly after 11:00 that morning. And Emma testified that her sister and father had been close, that the property dispute had long since cooled and that she herself had told Lizzie to get rid of that old, paint-stained dress. Now, Lizzie never took the stand.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Given a chance to address the jury, she said only, quote, "I am innocent, I leave it to my counsel to speak for me," end quote. And in his closing, George Robinson went through the state's case piece by piece and argued that none of it proved anything. And then he pointed to the woman sitting in front of the jurors, quote, "To find her guilty, you must believe. She is a fiend. Gentlemen, does she look it?" Unquote. And Knowlton closed for the prosecution, reminding the jury that Abby had raised Lizzie from the time she was a small child. Quote, "It is useless to tell you that there was peace and harmony in that family. We know better," unquote. So on June 20th, Justice Dewey delivered his instructions and much of what he said

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  sounded like an argument for the defense. And he told the jury her good character mattered, suggested her harsh words about her stepmother were the kind of thing a young woman might say in irritation, and proposed that the killer could have written the missing note himself to lure Abby out of the house. And he reminded them again and again that any reasonable doubt meant they had to acquit. So the jury went out a little before 3:30 and some jurors later said that they had decided almost immediately and waited before returning so it wouldn't look too hasty. But 66 minutes later, the foreman, Charles Richards, stood and said, quote unquote, "Not guilty." And the courtroom erupted in cheers.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Lizzie sank into her chair, put her head down on the rail in front of her and cried. And that evening, she went home to Fall River, a free woman. And that night, a crowd gathered outside the house where Lizzie was staying to cheer for her. And for a few days, it seemed Fall River was glad to have her home. Now, Andrew had never written a will and because Abby died before him, his entire fortune went to his two daughters. And within a couple months, Emma and Lizzie left Second Street for good and bought a large queen and house on French Street up on the hill in the neighborhood their father had always refused to move to. And Lizzie named it Maplecroft, had the name carved into the front step and began calling herself Lizbeth.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  But whatever goodwill the verdict had bought her didn't really last. And the woman from her church and temperance groups stopped coming around and she soon stopped attending Central Congressional altogether. And neighborhood children rang the doorbell and ran, threw gravel and eggs at the house and sang the rhyme that was spreading far beyond Fall River. So the court had acquitted her, but the town had reached its own verdict now. So in 1897, a Providence jewelry and art store called Tilden Thurber reported two small porcelain paintings missing after a visit from Lizzie Borden. And the matter never went to court and appears to have been settled quietly, but it made the papers. And a supposed signed confession to the murders tied to the incident surfaced decades later

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  and was eventually shown to be a forgery. Now, around 1904, she befriended an actress named Nance O'Neill and helped her through a difficult financial stretch and in 1905, through a lavish party at Maplecroft for Nance and her theater company. And not long after, Emma moved out and the sisters are not known to have ever seen each other again. And in a rare interview in 1913, Emma said only that conditions at Maplecroft had become unbearable. And when asked about her sister's guilt, she said, quote, "As for her being guilty, I say no and decidedly no," unquote. And the others from this case scattered as well. John Morse died in 1912 and Alice Russell never spoke publicly about the case ever again.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  And Bridget Sullivan left Fall River after the trial and eventually settled in Montana, where she married and lived until her death in 1948. Whatever else she knew about that morning, if she knew anything more, she took with her. And Lizzie would die of pneumonia at Maplecroft on June 1st, 1927, at the age of 66. And very few people came to her funeral. Nine days later, Emma died in New Hampshire after a fall at her home. And Lizzie left $30,000 to the animal rescue League of Fall River, along with money to care for her father's grave in perpetuity. And both sisters were buried in the family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery alongside their mother, their sister Alice, their father, and Abby.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  And the small headstone over Lizzie's grave reads, "Lisbeth." So the verdict settled the legal question, but never the real one. And over the decades, nearly everyone who was anywhere near Second Street that morning has been accused by someone. And the theory most historians still find most convincing is the one the state put before the jury. Lizzie was the only person inside the house during both murders, with no one to vouch for where she was, and her account of where she had been changed each time she told it. And Abby was killed at the top of the front stairs, the same stairs Lizzie admitted climbing that morning, and the place Bridget heard her laugh from when Andrew came home.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  And the note that supposedly called Abby away was never, ever found, and nobody ever claimed to have sent it. And add the alleged attempt to buy poison, the warning to Alice Russell the night before, and the burned dress, and the circumstantial case is a very, very strong one. And so is the motive, because Andrew's fortune went entirely to his daughters. And had he died first, a share would have gone to Abby, and through her, to the relatives the sisters already resented. But the biggest problem with that theory has always been the blood. Two people were killed at close range with a hatchet, yet nobody who saw Lizzie that morning noticed a drop of it on her.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  And those who believe she did it point to the hour and a half between the murders, the dress she burned, and her late-night trips to the cellar where the pail of bloody cloths sat soaking. But none of it has ever been proven, as we know. And other suspects have been named. In his 1961 book, Lizzie Borden: The Untold Story, Edward Radin argued that Bridget was the killer. And an unverified story claims she confessed on her deathbed in Montana that she had shaded her testimony to protect Lizzie. But none of that has ever been seriously confirmed, or considered, really. Frank Spearing argued in 1984 that Emma secretly slipped back from Fairhaven, though the people she was staying with confirmed she was there.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  And John Morse was suspected from the start, but his relatives obviously confirmed the alibi, as we know. And the defense's outside intruder would have had to hide inside a small locked house for more than an hour between the two killings, and then escape onto a busy street in broad daylight without being seen. And he would have been covered in blood. Now, some theories go further still. In a 1991 book, claimed Andrew had an illegitimate son who killed for money, with zero credible evidence behind it. And the novelist Victoria Lincoln, who grew up in Fall River, argued in 1967 that Lizzie suffered from a form of epilepsy and killed during an episode she might not have remembered.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  That is not remotely verified either, that she was ever epileptic. And others have suggested Andrew abused her, or that Lizzie and Bridget were, you know, lovers, ideas that have spread mostly through fiction. But really stood out to Ryan Murphy, of course. He loves the rumors. And this includes Evan Hunter's 1984 novel, Lizzie, and the 2018 film of the same name. But nothing in the record supports either one, and Lizzie didn't even call Bridget by her real name. So only one of these theories rests on actual evidence, even if that evidence is circumstantial. And one part of the record has never been seen at all. According to the last public reports, the files of George Robbins's defense team remained locked away

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  at the Springfield law firm he founded, which has refused access on the grounds of attorney-client privilege more than a century after its client and its founder both died. That's a bit suspicious, if you ask me. So I'm curious to know what you guys think. Please let me know in the comments below. I'm gonna get into the show now. I'm gonna get into the show now. I'm gonna get a little riled up. But I would love to know and hear and read your theories down below. But let's get into the slop fest that is Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story. So on September 17th, 2026, Netflix released Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story,

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  the fourth season of Ryan Murphy's true crime and mythology. And all eight episodes dropped at once, and every one of them was written by the show's co-creator and showrunner, Ian Brennan, and approved by Ryan Murphy. And nepo baby Ella Beatty played Lizzie, Charlie Hunnam played Andrew, he also played Ed Gein in his last show, which I ripped apart, not a fan. And Rebecca Hall played Abby, and Billy Lord played Emma, Vicky Krebs, sorry if I'm saying your name wrong, played Bridget Sullivan, and also the 16th century Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory, which that was also included for, for reasons. And Joey Polari played John Morse, Jessica Varden played Nance O'Neil, and Sarah Paulson appeared as the Florida serial killer Eileen Wuornos,

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  for whatever reason. Well, we, we know the reason. We know the reason. It's filler. It's filler, and just more blood and sex and bullshit falsities to put in the show.

• 1:16:14Speaker 04

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  Because Ryan Murphy has built a very successful franchise out of turning real-life murders, people who have been brutalized and slaughtered, into overly dramatized, unsympathetic, vile slop television. And it has come at a cost to real people. And well, the first season about Jeffrey Dahmer came out in 2022. Relatives, and I've spoken about this before, because I've ripped apart, I think, all of his shows now. I think. But relatives of the Dahmer victims said publicly that nobody from Netflix had contacted them before recreating the worst days of their lives for an audience of millions and completely romanticizing it. Fucking disgusting.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  And when the second season took on Lyle and Eric Menendez, Eric Menendez put out a statement from prison accusing the show of turning him and his brother into cruel caricatures and dismissing it as dishonest, which that show basically alluded to the fact that they were gay and incestual with each other? For whatever, he loves, he loves just adding whatever sexual angle that is completely untrue to every single one of his shows. It's gross. And the pattern has stayed the same from season to season. Real deaths become raw material, and whatever doesn't make for good television just gets completely rewritten with bullshit and lies

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  about real human beings that were slaughtered, or real human beings that were the actual killers, whom of which I don't really give a fuck about, to be honest. But it's still dishonest to the story for the victims. And I've said this before, there's a way to make shows that maybe are inspired by a certain story, changing the names of everybody, changing the names of the killer, what, like I said it before, you know, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, inspired by Ed Gein, has nothing to do with Ed Gein. That kind of stuff's okay. And I'm fully aware that Ryan Murphy is not the first person to do this, especially with the Lizzie Borden case. And, and I don't like those shows either.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  But his just went so far that I, I had trouble watching this. And I know thousands of people that also had trouble, because my whole For You page is just people shitting on the show and being like, "This is the worst piece of crap ever." But then I also have on my For You page people defending it and saying, you know, "It's not a documentary. It's art. It's camp." If I haven't already explained why that is so wrong, I, I will get into it, okay? I'm just gonna get into the show. I'm gonna get into the show. I'm gonna start freaking out. Okay, okay. So, so Andrew and Abby Borden were real people that were murdered,

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  slaughtered in their own home, and their deaths have now been used as the backdrop for a story that has almost nothing at all to do with the historical record. And Time called it, quote, "Perhaps the least historically accurate monster yet," unquote, which I agree with. And the list of what the show invents is long enough to make that hard to argue with. I could probably make this video two hours longer talking about how many inaccuracies are in the show and how much is just, just, just wrong. Like, some things, sure. You could do little things here and there to fill in some of the gaps, not create your own story and shit on the victims who, who, who weren't these people you're describing

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  them as. Same as Lizzie and just everybody involved. Nobody in this show is remotely what they were like in real life, according to all of the records, which are publicly available. I could see them. You could see them. But, you know, it's not interesting enough, right, Ryan? Right. And the problems start before the murders. First of all, the actors look fucking nothing like any of these people. I could name like 80 other actors that would be better for these roles, which, fine, we can put that one aside. I could, you know, it's Hollywood. I could put that one aside. But it, like, even the age of Lizzie, like, how she looked,

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  it's, it's exhausting. But yeah, Lizzie, especially the main character, just not even a little bit close to what the actual Lizzie Borden looked like. Same as Abby, not even like a little bit close. They have to be like skinnier, hotter versions to, because of course, Lizzie also has, you know, a lesbian lover in the show. That was never proven at all, but there was one rumor, and Ryan just ran with that, and Ian ran with that. So we can, you know, I can put that aside, but that's just the start, you know? And the show introduces Andrew as an undertaker who saws the legs off of corpses so they'll fit into smaller, cheaper coffins, because it just needs to show some sort of brutality

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  that never existed. Because Andrew did run a furniture and coffin business, Borden, Almy and Company, which he started with a partner in 1844, as we know, and had retired from by 1878. But the story about him mutilating bodies was a piece of gossip that circulated around Fault River after the murders, because people like to just say shit. There's no evidence of that, but of course, you know, they read one little article that's a rumor, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, let's just use that as fact for this show." And in her 2016 book, The Borden Murders, Sarah Miller notes that the more sensible people in town dismissed it as a very outlandish rumor, but the show obviously presents it

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  as fact. And the show also rewrites the family's past entirely. It has Andrew marrying Abby just weeks after burying his first wife, which we know isn't true, because in reality, Sarah Borden died in March of 1863, and Andrew didn't marry Abby until June of 1865, more than two years later. So they're just making the victim, Andrew, out to be this just piece of shit who, like, his wife just died and he remarries and then has an affair with, like, every fucking prostitute and, and, and the Irish maid Bridget, who Ryan Murphy and Ian defile too, because she, she never had an affair with him. Obviously, that's

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  on record or whatever. It's just, I'm tired. I'm gonna keep going. And it also invents a tragic history for Abby for no reason, with brothers killed in the Civil War, a mother who died by suicide, and an inability to have children, none of which appears anywhere in any record. And it gives Lizzie a painful medical condition, which Bridget diagnoses as an "imporfrate hymen," bringing the two women closer, of course. But there's no evidence Lizzie had any such condition, just a, just something to make you feel better, feel a little bit bad for the killer in this show. Obviously, she's not legally the, the killer, but she is in the show, of course. But they grabbed

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  onto that because the only reason her menstrual cycle comes up in historical records at all is because of the pail of cloths in the cellar, which Lizzie said were her menstrual rags, because she got her period on a regular basis, and Dr. Bowen confirmed. And at the center of the seasons is the invented romance between Lizzie and Bridget. And in the show, Bridget plants the idea of murder in Lizzie's head, and the two of them plan the killings together as lovers, because that's way sexier, you know? And like I said before, this theory has floated falsely around through fiction, like Evan Hunter's 1984 novel and the 2018 film, Lizzie, but there is nothing in the historical record to support it, and there's

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  nothing to suggest the two women were even remotely close. Emma and Lizzie actually just disrespected Bridget, because they didn't even call her by her name. They called her Maggie, like the old maid's name. And Bridget gave the police a clear and consistent account of where she was that morning also, and at trial, she was a witness for the prosecution. So legally and in the historical records, she had nothing to do with these murders at all. So that paints an innocent woman, who is now dead, by the way, as a killer. They, they said, "Oh, she's dead. Who gives a fuck? Let's say she did it in our show, because it's our, because it's our interpretation. Shut the fuck up."

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  What if your sister died, and then fucking Ryan Murphy made a show saying that she was part of this, like, she was an accomplice to somebody's killer? How the fuck would you feel? I'm getting really worked up. I'm getting really, I'm, I'm speaking to the people that are like, "The show's not that bad." Anyway, I'm gonna continue. But the show goes even further than earlier fiction by giving Bridget an affair with Andrew as well, as if Lizzie wasn't enough, and having her become pregnant with his child and then miscarry. Why? Guy loves dead babies and just, and death and just murder. Literally, I feel like if I went onto Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's hard drive, they'd go to jail.

• 1:25:46Speaker 02

  That's, I'm joking, but like, low-key not at all. Because Bridget Sullivan was a real woman, like I was saying before. She was a young Irish immigrant who came to America alone, took a job in a difficult household, found two bodies in the house where she worked, and spent the rest of her life with her name attached to one of the most famous murders in American history, and she died in Montana in 1948. And she could never defend herself with this show. I'm sure she would feel the exact same way the Dahmer victims' families would feel, and that, that the Menendez brothers would feel. There's no doubt in my mind. She could sue them for defamation, honestly, but she can't, because she's dead. But Netflix has just told millions of viewers that she seduced her employer, schemed to

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  kill him, and helped carry it out with zero evidence behind any of it. But it's not a documentary, so they can just say whatever the fuck they want. And the show's version of the week before the murders is just as invented. In reality, the household fell sick on the night of August 2nd, and the doctor blamed it on spoiled food. Most likely, the mutton the family had been eating for days in the summer heat. And in the show, though, Lizzie and Bridget deliberately feed Andrew and Abby bad oysters in a failed first attempt to kill them, leaving them vomiting comically, also disgusting, and not what happened, and completely unnecessary, all over the dining room. And it also shows Andrew

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  spending the night before his murder with a sex worker, when the real Andrew spent that evening sitting in his own dark sitting room, talking with Abby and John Morse until about 10 o'clock, as we know, and then he went to bed. And the show gives Abby an affair with Morse too, because fucking why not? Not enough fucking sex, you know? Not enough falsified weird sex in the show. And has Morse ask Andrew for money to open a butcher shop and later try to blackmail Lizzie with his suspicions or whatever? There's no evidence of any of this, obviously. And perhaps the ugliest invention involves a woman who has nothing to do with the Borden case at all. There's more of that, but this one specifically

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  irked me, because in the show, Bridget is sent to work for a family friend named Bertha Manchester, who beats her with a whip. And Lizzie and Bridget decide to kill Bertha as a kind of trial run before murdering Andrew and Abby. And Lizzie does it with an axe when Bridget freezes.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Just more blood and murder, just not enough, not enough. This is a real person, by the way, and the show then depicts a Portuguese farmhand being unjustly arrested for the crime. Now, Bertha Manchester was a real person, as I just said. She was 22 years old, and she was murdered with an axe in her father's farmhouse in the Fall River on May 30th, 1893, nearly 10 months after the Borden murders and less than a week before Lizzie's trial began. And there is no evidence, obviously, that Bridget ever worked for her or that Lizzie and Bridget had anything to do with her death at all, obviously. And a Portuguese immigrant named Jose Coria de Melo, who had worked for Bertha's father, confessed to the attack, pleaded guilty to

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  second-degree murder, and served 21 years in prison before being deported to Portugal in 1914. So the show just takes the real killing of a young woman, the real butchering of a young woman, pins it on two people who had nothing to do with it. By the way, again, Lizzie and Bridget are just being dragged to the mud here, although personally, I don't know if Lizzie's totally innocent and all the other stuff, but still, I just imagine a family member that died, and then this fucking asshole just decides to say, "Oh, she's not only an accomplice to these murders, she actually is an accomplice to another murder that they never had a part of. They didn't even, they barely even knew her." What? And the guy that actually did it and confessed

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  to the murder is now portrayed as an innocent victim of just prejudice when he slaughtered somebody. He just loves making murderers look great. And the murders themselves are rewritten to be way more cinematic, obviously, because the butchering of two humans in the real way couldn't be enough for Ryan and Ian Brennan. And in the show, Andrew comes home, finds Abby's body, and is attacked and escapes to the basement with an axe in his shoulder. And he later comes back up and fights, threatens to kill Lizzie, and only stops when he sees a vision of his dead first wife, after which Lizzie finally finishes him off. And the real Andrew Borden,

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  as we know, just got killed while sleeping on the sofa. He didn't even know what the fuck was going on. He got a hatchet to the head before he knew what was going on. But not dramatic enough, of course. And Dr. Bowen testified that nothing in the room was disturbed at all. So yeah, he never even moved when that happened. And the aftermath fares no better, to be honest. And the show has Lizzie alone in the house that night with bodies laid out in the dining room. That actually happened, as we know, there were bodies out there. But she wasn't alone. Alice Russell stayed over, Emma had come home, and John Morse was there as well. And it had Emma see her father's body and attack Lizzie in the kitchen, which didn't happen, and call her a

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  monster. "Oh, my God, that's the name of the show. Oh, my God, they said the name of the show in the show." And they also have Emma, like, later doubting her innocence even while she was visiting her in jail. But the real Emma, as we know, stood by her sister through the inquests, the months in jail, and the trial where she testified in Lizzie's defense. And 20 years later, she was still telling reporters her sister was innocent. And the show even has Emma testify at trial about seeing a man with an axe trying to break into the house before the murders, which was never said and doesn't add to the show at all and kind of like goes against her, like, thinking she's a monster and just whatever. And the trial itself is reframed around Nance O'Neill, who, in the show, meets Lizzie before the murders and later coaches her on how to faint

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  and cry in court, because, remember, she's an actress, to win over the jury, asking only that Lizzie become her patron in return. But Lizzie didn't even fucking know Nance O'Neill until around 1904, more than a decade after the acquittal. What are we doing? Like, there's, you know, I think you can have 2% creative freedom on this type of stuff, and there's about 90, about 90% in this show, for no reason. And the fainting, the tears, and the careful demeanor are presented as like a performance that saved her, which, I mean, maybe, like, she did that on her own accord, but it's just, I mean, it's just stupid, because they say that she was, like, coached by an actress she didn't even know at the time. It would have been

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  interesting enough for her to just, just do that stuff. Like, you could have her on her cell, like, practicing to faint or, like, cry on command or something. But no, they have to just make a whole person up a decade before, you know? God forbid. And the show also leaves out Bridget's actual trial testimony, in which she told the court she had never seen quarreling in the family, which doesn't fit the story it wanted to tell. And after the verdict, the show has Lizzie deliver a triumphant speech on the courthouse steps to a cheering crowd, set to a cover of Bittersweet Symphony, of course, declaring that her home will be a safe haven for everyone, including animals, which, as we know, she gave her money to animals and stuff

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  in her life and after death. But they just mix it up, because there was cheering crowds, but it was at her house, and she never gave a speech, because in reality, Lizzie just shook the hands of the jurors and said, according to Cara Robinson's history at the trial, she said very little to the reporters waiting outside. And then there's the thread tying Lizzie to Elizabeth Bathory and Eileen Wuornos. What the actual fuck? Literally, I saw a lot of people be like, they thought they turned on the wrong show when these episodes came up. They're like, what's going on? But it's because, guys, they didn't have enough filler and sex and blood and bullshit for the, for the Lizzie Borden story, so they had to grab these other stories,

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  who were also, you know, female rage killers, to mix it in, so they could have eight episodes, obviously. And in one episode, the show jumps to the 1980s, where Wuornos visits the Lizzie Borden house with her girlfriend and stays the night, but there is zero evidence Wuornos ever visited the house or was ever even interested in Lizzie Borden at all. And the house didn't even open as a bed and breakfast until 1996. Why are we doing this? And listen, I love Sarah Paulson as an actor, but I gotta be totally honest, that I have little respect for the actors

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  involved in this, too. If I was asked to play a role in something like this, you bet your ass I'd be doing all of the research, and then I'd read the script and realize, oh, this is so disrespectful and vile, I'm gonna pass. But nah. I've seen the answers of some of the actors in these, in these interviews about the show, like, the main person, Beatty, and they're like, oh, did you think Lizzie's actually, you know, the killer? And she's just like, you know, it's not for me to say. I did feel a connection to the character. Just like, just these bullshit answers. And it's like, just say, you know nothing about the case, or you did know stuff

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  about the case, and you just were fine with just acting out bullshit, you know, gore porn, basically. You see how this looks, right? But anyway, I digress. Of course, Brennan, Ian Brennan, the writer of the show, explained the choice to The Hollywood Reporter by saying, "The season was meant to look at female rage." Quote, "We were able to look at rage, female rage, and women who kill as less of an aberration throughout time than actually a through line and an aspect of our species and existence in society." Unquote. Shut the fuck up. Literally, shut up. That was a bunch of words that said, ah, it just needed some filler. We just needed some filler. We just

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  needed to lie a little more, just wanted to confuse people a little bit more. But that's the show's thesis, and it explains a lot about why it treats Lizzie's guilt as settled. God forbid this case went unsettled and that we don't actually know everything. I think that's actually pretty okay. And I think you could actually make a show that, that could just tell the story with some uncertainties, I think, you know? Or a little bit of filler, but only, like I said, 2%, maybe 5%, 5% bullshit, just to fill it in a little bit, anyway. But, but the

• 1:36:40Speaker 02

  story about female rage just needs a woman who killed, and it needs to know why she did it. So the show fills every gap in the record with a very false answer. Abuse from Abby, betrayal from Andrew, random affairs, a lover pushing her toward it, and presents those answers as history, or, you know, you know, or history, or whatever. I know it doesn't claim to be truthful, but I don't really care, honestly. You're making a story about a real case, and if 90% of it is false, go fuck yourself. Because it would be one thing if the show didn't know the real story, and the frustrating part is, is that it clearly does. It pulls lines directly

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  from Lizzie's first interviews with police. It shows the burning of the dress, the police waving off a pail of bloody cloths, the skulls brought into the courtroom, and the jury reaching its verdict quickly, and then waiting to come back so it wouldn't look rushed. Those are very important, minute details in the case. So the people who made this show read the history, and then they just chose to replace most of it because it wasn't sexy or entertaining enough, because real murder isn't sufficient enough for these sick fucks. And critics largely weren't buying it either, shocking, and neither were most people that watched it that I saw. And according to Gold Derby, the season opened at 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and 47% on Metacritic. I don't know what it is the day this comes out, but that's what it opened with. And then

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  The Hollywood Reporter, Angie Hahn, called it faux feminist nonsense with nothing more substantial to say than, "Women be chopping." Couldn't agree more. And several reviewers did praise the performances, especially Rebecca Hall and Vicky Cripps and Cara Robertson, whose 2019 book, The Trial of Lizzie Borden, is one of the most thorough, modern accounts of the case, told today, that the romance angle sounded as though the creators wanted to make it a sexy story, adding that it just isn't one. God forbid. God forbid a story about people getting slaughtered isn't sexy. And about Bridget, she said, quote, "Bridget was an observer of

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  the family tensions. She lived in the house and negotiated the dynamics," unquote. But Ian Brennan, of course, defended the romance in an interview with Vanity Fair with more bullshit, saying, quote, "There's some adage, 'Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' It just screams Boston marriage to me, and it seemed too rich to ignore. I think it's one of the smaller leaps that we take in the show," unquote. Are you kidding me? The absence of evidence is an evidence of absence?

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  You could say that about every, that is the whole show. They're like, well, you could say that about anything. You could say there being no evidence that I've ever stolen a car, but there's no absence, but there's no evidence of absence. So I want to just say she did. What, what? That is like the, the, the, the, the, the perfect way to just get away with anything you do and anything. I couldn't believe that quote when I read it, but the only thing he might be right about is, is that it's one of the smaller leaps. Maybe, I don't know, that's pretty outlandish to say that, uh, Lizzie and Bridget had a full on affair. And, uh, because of that affair murdered people because of it. That's a pretty big leap, I think.

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  Uh, but that's the problem because by the time the show finished, a real woman who was murdered in her home has been turned into an abusive villain, Abby. A real man was made to look like a vile, unfaithful, abusive husband and father, Andrew. And a real maid, Bridget, has been turned into a seductress and a killer. And a real young woman's murder has been pinned on people who didn't commit it. The random trial murder of that neighbor, like, and the man who confessed to that murder has been turned into an innocent victim. And all of that is just false. The, the whole story is just false. And the thing is you just heard it. Like I just told you the whole story.

• 1:40:52Speaker 02

  The real case already had everything that there is to need a, to need to tell a good story. You know, it has, it has a rich, frugal father and, and a resented stepmother. A locked house with no hallways, a laugh on the stairs, a missing note, a burned dress, and a verdict that left more questions than it answered. But there's not enough blood, sex appeal scandal, extra dead people and babies and abuse. Right, Ryan and Ian? It's not enough. So anyone who finishes Monster, believing they know what happened in that house has been told far more than anyone actually knows, and most of it isn't true.

• 1:41:33Speaker 02

  So for the people who watch it and are like, obviously it's not true. Like it's not a documentary. I just want to say to those who, to those who enjoyed it, please take a step back and really look at what you enjoyed. Maybe use your brain to get a little perspective. Imagine your family was brutally slaughtered by a killer. And then Ryan Murphy decided to make a show about how your family was abusive and mean and cruel. And almost justifies them getting murdered. And to top it off, he makes the killer seem kind of sexy, misunderstood, sympathetic even,

• 1:42:15Speaker 02

  and causes the audience to fantasize about them and even make sexy edits of them on TikTok. While you're just sat there wondering how a man could disrespect and defile your murdered family like that. So I don't think you would say, well, it's not that serious then. That's all I'm trying to, and I know most of you probably agree with me. Uh, but yeah, I just want to, it just makes me upset. It makes me upset because I, I do really want to take care of talking about these kinds of cases in the most respectful way possible, giving back to these causes in any way I can, after telling these stories, by the way, as well. And making sure I'm allowed to tell these stories.

• 1:42:58Speaker 02

  I think those are all very important things to take into account when telling real people's stories. And honestly, I just think just scrap anything, Ryan Murphy, and bring back Mindhunter. For the love of God, because that's a good show. But anyway, that's it for me. I need to lay down and go watch, re-watch Mindhunter or something. Let me know what you think though. Sorry, I got a little heated at the end there. But a lot of you guys requested me going into the show, going into the Lizzie Borden case. I'm, I'm always happy to dive deep into these kinds of cases. Let me know what else you want me to watch. What, if there's any other shows you want me to rip apart, love to. Let me know in the comments below. Until then, be safe out there and stay beautiful. All right, bye.

• 1:43:40Speaker 05

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