192. Revisiting the True Story Behind Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story

Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook "Kaelyn's Cookbook" and get 40% off your first order plus a free item in every box for life at https://hungryroot.com/HSP Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order Today, we’re revisiting the details of the Lizzie Borden trial. In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked to death in their locked Fall River home while their 32-year-old daughter Lizzie was the only other person inside. Over 130 years later, the case is still officially unsolved and now serves as the inspiration for Ryan Murphy’s latest installment of the "Monster" series. Let’s dive into mounting family resentment, the evidence the jury never heard, and Lizzie’s lavish lifestyle after the murders. Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

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

• 0:01Kaelyn Moore?

  Welcome back to another episode of Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelyn Moore. Before we dive in today, I want to start with some really huge, really exciting news. So, some of you have maybe seen this already on my socials, but I am creating and hosting a new original true crime podcast for Netflix called Last Trace with Kaelyn Moore. Here's the blurb. Every case leaves behind clues, a grainy video, a voicemail, and overlooked witness. This true crime podcast follows the trail to uncover what was missed. I just want to say a very, very, very big thank you to this community. I am so excited to be bringing a podcast to Netflix. I used to joke on this show about how I would record it in my closet, and now to have a podcast

• 0:45Kaelyn Moore?

  on Netflix. It really is thanks to you guys. I know everyone says that, but I do truly mean that from deep down in my heart. So, what that means. Last Trace with Kaelyn Moore is going to just be on Netflix. If you have an account, please go and hit the remind me bell so you can watch on September 28th when it airs. Everything else Heart Starts Pounding is going to remain everywhere for everyone. That's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all of you guys listening on Amazon Music, I see you, everywhere else you get your podcasts. But today, I actually thought it would be a fun opportunity to blend the worlds of Netflix and Heart Starts Pounding and give a deep dive into the real story of Lizzie Borden, soon to be a Ryan Murphy show on Netflix. And because it's Ryan Murphy, I'm sure it's going to be, you know, that strange blend of history and the mind of the man who made

• 1:27Kaelyn Moore?

  Glee. We first visited Lizzie Borden back in 2023, but I have even more for you this time around, so it is worth revisiting ahead of watching the show, I promise. And then you can join me on Patreon where Leo and I are going to be watching and reacting to the first episode of the show for the High Council. You're not going to want to miss that. And with that, let's dive in. Adelaide Churchill was washing dishes one morning in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1892. It was almost time for lunch, and the New England air was quickly warming up in the early August sun. From her kitchen window, she could see the three-story house of her neighbors, the Borden's. They were a quiet and polite family, but this morning, Adelaide

• 2:08Kaelyn Moore?

  could see the shadow of someone through their front door screen just pacing back and forth as if they were panicking, and she could tell that it was Lizzie, the youngest daughter of the family. Something about this scene just didn't seem right, so Adelaide opened her window and screamed out across the yard, "Is everything okay, Lizzie?" And that's when Lizzie stopped pacing and stood at the screen door and yelled out, "Oh, Adelaide, come quick. Father's been killed." Now, the night before the murder at the Borden's house, everyone inside was throwing up. Something they had eaten at dinner didn't sit right with any of them. So afterwards, everyone retired to their respective bedrooms without speaking, clutching their stomachs. Getting

• 2:51Kaelyn Moore?

  sick after dinner was a rare occurrence in the household, but going to bed without speaking was not. Now, there were several people inside of the Borden house that night. There was Andrew Borden, who was Lizzie's father, Abby Borden, Lizzie's stepmother. The two of them had married more than two decades earlier, just two years after the death of Lizzie's mother, Sarah Morse Borden. Lizzie was just two when her mother died of what was called at the time uterine congestion. It honestly sounds like the most Victorian illness I could have made up, but today, some people do argue that that was likely an ectopic pregnancy. Bridget Sullivan, the housekeeper, was also in the house that night. And then there was a visitor, 59-year-old John V. Morse, Lizzie's biological mother's

• 3:36Kaelyn Moore?

  brother. He had arrived that day unannounced for a short stay, and of course, there was also Lizzie, who wasn't, as you might think, a little girl at the time. No, Lizzie was 32 years old, and she was the youngest of two sisters. Her older sister, the 41-year-old Emma, was not home that night because she had been out of town for two weeks visiting some friends. Now, inside of this household, there were two distinct groups, groups that didn't necessarily like each other. There was Andrew and Abby, and then there was Lizzie and Emma. These two groups never ate together, and they hardly spoke at all. They would even take different staircases up to their bedrooms just to avoid seeing

• 4:16Kaelyn Moore?

  each other. Whenever Uncle John Morse visited, which was becoming more frequent, he would mostly hang out with Andrew and Abby, rarely seeing Lizzie and Emma unless it was just to exchange the most basic of pleasantries. Bridget, the 26-year-old Irish immigrant housekeeper, tended to float between the groups, helping out wherever she was asked. But I can't imagine she really liked it inside of that house all that much, because even though Bridget had been working with the Borden's for a few years, Lizzie, Emma, and Andrew all referred to her by their last housekeeper's name, Maggie. Abby, the stepmother, was the only member of the house that called her, her actual name, Bridget. So, in this episode, I'm going to be referring to Bridget by her real name, because to do otherwise

• 5:01Kaelyn Moore?

  would be rude. Lizzie, that's a rude thing to do. It sounds odd that these two groups would just flat out ignore each other, but it was somewhat easy to do inside of this house. Now, the Borden residence was a three-story home in Fall River, and, you know, at the time, it wasn't considered extravagant. It was 3,500 square feet, which feels extravagant to me, but I've been told multiple times it was not extravagant at the time, but it was comfortable for its residents and its one guest. Everyone had their own room. Lizzie and Emma's room could be accessed by the front staircase, which you would see if you walked through the front door, and Abby and Andrew's room could be accessed by the back staircase off of the kitchen, and Bridget lived in the quarters upstairs on the third floor. Now, let me be very clear. The Borden's could have lived in a much bigger house if

• 5:46Kaelyn Moore?

  they wanted to. They were not in want of more money. Andrew Borden's family had built serious wealth over generations, and Andrew had grown it even further through his own career. He worked his way up from cabinet maker to furniture maker, and he eventually became the director of the merchants' manufacturing company. He saved his money. He never spent any more than he needed to, and he would even brag that he had never once borrowed money from anyone. But despite this big fortune that Andrew had, he kept the family on Second Street, and that street was below what was known as the Hill, where all of Fall River's elite families lived. And that gap between what the Borden's could afford

• 6:28Kaelyn Moore?

  and how they actually lived would become a consistent source of tension in the family. And Andrew protected his money with everything he had. About a year before the murders, something happened that nobody talked about much at the time, but in June of 1891, the Borden home was burglarized in broad daylight. Andrew's desk was rifled through, and about $100 was taken along with his watch and streetcar tickets. Now, at the house, there was no sign of forced entry. Captain Dennis Desmond investigated the crime, and Andrew told him something that really stuck out to him. He said, "In three separate times over two weeks, I'm

• 7:08Kaelyn Moore?

  afraid the police will not be able to find the real thief." And that was because he thought that the real thief was someone inside of the house. Even still, after the burglary, Andrew became obsessed about locking all the doors of the house, all of the doors. They were locked from the inside and the outside. They were bolted, latched, chained. Bridget received her own side door key, but even still, it was only to one door in the house. But the night of August 3rd, the last night of his life, none of that mattered to Andrew, as he was doubled over with stomach cramps from eating a rancid dinner. Abby was pretty concerned by how violently ill everyone had gotten in the house. Like I

• 7:49Kaelyn Moore?

  said, food poisoning was not common in the Borden family. And so she ended up going across the street to see the family doctor, Dr. Bowen, and she told him that she actually felt like they had been poisoned. Dr. Bowen heard her out, but he chalked it up to spoiled mutton, which is what they had eaten that night, and he prescribed her castor oil and just sent her home. So, that night, everyone retired early to their beds without talking. The next morning, August 4th, was just like any other day at the Borden household. Abby and Andrew awoke early and were feeling a little bit better, so they ate breakfast at around 7:00 a.m. with Uncle John. All of them were still suffering the effects of the food poisoning, but even still, they ate cold mutton, pancakes, drank coffee and

• 8:34Kaelyn Moore?

  tea. At around 8:45, Uncle John left to go visit a relative that lived nearby. And a few minutes later, Lizzie came downstairs to eat breakfast by herself. At 9:15 a.m., Andrew left the house to attend to some business downtown, and around the time that Andrew left, Abby asked Bridget to wash the downstairs window from the outside while Abby went upstairs to make the guest bedroom. Lizzie remained downstairs the entire time. At 10:45 a.m., Andrew returned home from downtown, but he was unable to unlock the front door because it had been bolted from the inside, just like every single door since the burglary a year earlier. The spring lock, the bolt, and the key lock were all secured on this door. To help him get inside, Bridget ran over towards the door and started fiddling

• 9:18Kaelyn Moore?

  with it, and she yelled out this expletive. Lizzie, who was coming down the stairs from the second floor, heard Bridget swear, and it made her burst out into laughter. When he finally entered the house, Andrew went upstairs to his bedroom, and then he came back down, and he asked Lizzie where Abby had gone, and Lizzie replied that Abby had gotten a note from a friend asking her to visit someone who was sick and that she was out of the house. That note, by the way, has never been found. Andrew then went into the sitting room to take a nap on the couch. Lizzie, on the other hand, went back out to the shed in the backyard. She wanted to get a lead sinker for a fishing line. Bridget stayed in the house. She was upstairs on the third floor in her room when, all of

• 10:00Kaelyn Moore?

  a sudden, she heard Lizzie scream out, "Maggie, come quick. Father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him." Bridget ran downstairs to see Andrew laying on the couch, his head violently smashed in. And Lizzie said when she was walking back into the house, she heard a strange groan coming from the living room, and there her father was, violently murdered. But how could this be? How could the house that was normally locked down like a fortress be the site of a murder this violent and in the middle of the day? The first police officer on the scene was Officer George Allen. And when he got dispatched, he sprinted the roughly quarter mile to Second Street.

• 10:41Kaelyn Moore?

  When he got inside puffing and puffing, he didn't recognize that it was Andrew laying on the couch. And that's because Andrew was lying on his right side, his legs still dangling off the front, and the left side of his head had 10 deep and brutal wounds from some sort of small, sharp object. You couldn't even recognize his face. That's how bloody it was. Whatever was used in this attack was sharp enough to completely bisect his left eye socket. But one thing the officer noticed was that the room looked clean, like disturbingly clean, given how gruesome Andrew's injuries were. There were no specks of blood anywhere aside from where his head had bled into the pillow. Allen deputized a passerby named Charles Sawyer to guard the front door, and then

• 11:25Kaelyn Moore?

  he ran back to his station for help. Lizzie summoned Dr. Bowen, the family doctor next door, and told him to write to her sister, Emma, who was staying about 30 miles away. She told him to not include any of the gruesome details, though. Others needed to be made aware of this tragedy, namely Abby. Officer Allen was told that Abby had received a note asking her to visit a friend who was sick. He asked Lizzie to bring him that note. But Lizzie said that she didn't know where it was. Now Bridget was starting to get antsy, but she was also confused because she didn't hear Mrs. Borden leave the house that day, but also she didn't really hear much of anything when she was up on the third floor. She definitely didn't hear Andrew's attack.

• 12:09Kaelyn Moore?

  And so now she was assisting that they needed to find Abby and tell her what was going on. And that's when Lizzie offered up some information. She told everyone that actually she thought she heard Abby return to the house and go upstairs, up the front staircase towards the guest bedroom. So Bridget ascended the stairs with Adelaide Churchill, the neighbor who had come over, and the two women slowly tiptoed up. If Abby was on the second floor, surely she would have heard all the commotion and come downstairs. So now they were fearing the worst. Mrs. Churchill only cleared the stairs enough to see into the guest bedroom, but from where she stood, she could see that Abby's feet were sprawled out on the floor by the bed. The two women ran downstairs and told Dr. Bowen that he had to go look.

• 12:54Kaelyn Moore?

  They just couldn't do it. And at first glance, Bowen thought Abby had maybe died of fright. She was laying on the floor, face down on her left cheek with her arms above her head. But as he got closer, he could see the blood, all this dark maroon around her head. Abby had suffered even more than Andrew, where Andrew looked like he had 11 wounds to him, Abby had 18 on her head from what appeared to be the same weapon. But there was one detail about Abby's scene that changed everything. The blood around Abby's head had congealed, like really congealed. Andrew's wounds were so fresh that the blood was still dripping down his face when Dr. Bowen arrived.

• 13:37Kaelyn Moore?

  This led him to a shocking realization. Abby had been murdered before Andrew, well before Andrew, by Dr. Bowen's estimates, about 90 minutes prior. So the murderer must have killed Abby without Bridget or Lizzie hearing or seeing anything, waited an hour and a half, and then come back to the house or was in the house and just did the same thing to Andrew? And if Abby was killed at around 9:15 a.m., which is what they estimated, that meant someone that hit her in the back of the head with a hatchet or some other heavy, sharp object, watched her collapse and then kept hitting her 17 more times while Bridget and Lizzie were downstairs.

• 14:19Kaelyn Moore?

  It didn't really make sense to investigators that her dead weight fell face first into the ground and no one on the floor below heard a thud. And not only that, but the door to the guest bedroom was left open. And according to the timeline that investigators pieced together from Lizzie and from Bridget, Lizzie and Andrew had gone upstairs, had passed that open door, and never saw a thing. Lizzie and Bridget were immediately questioned that day. Bridget was very frantic and panicked while Lizzie remained composed as she normally was, not even crying once. Bridget's version of events never changed. She was outside washing windows when police believed Abby was killed, and she was upstairs

• 15:01Kaelyn Moore?

  in her servants' quarters, lying down when police believed Andrew was killed. Her separate staircase in the back meant that she never passed the guest bedroom. She would, however, have been able to see an intruder enter at the time of Abby's murder because she was outside of the house in the front. And she never saw a thing, she said. And Bridget's story was confirmed by Lizzie's account. But Lizzie's own story about what she was doing at the time of the murders, that started to change right away. When asked where she was when Andrew came home, she said that she was already downstairs waiting for an iron to heat up. But Bridget had watched as Lizzie came down the stairs and laughed about the door being locked for Andrew. But Lizzie said, no, that actually didn't happen. She had been downstairs the entire time.

• 15:44Kaelyn Moore?

  Then there was also the question of Lizzie's alibi during Andrew's murder. She claimed that she had gone out to the barn to get a lead sinker for a fishing line. And so police asked her, oh, you fish? No, she replied. Well, why were you looking for a sinker and why did it take so long? Lizzie explained that she couldn't remember where the sinkers were because the last time she saw them was five years ago. She also said that after she was in the shed, she went outside, picked a pear from a tree, and then sat down and ate it inside of the barn. And to police, they didn't really think her story sounded realistic. But here's the thing about Victorian women in Lizzie's situation, wealthy ones that don't have jobs, there wasn't a whole lot for them to do during the day. So police also understood that Lizzie was probably just hanging out.

• 16:28Kaelyn Moore?

  But here's where you get two completely contradicting pieces of testimony about that barn visit. So Officer William Medley climbed up to the barn loft about 15 minutes after he arrived on scene, and he said that the dust on the floor inside of the barn was completely undisturbed. Now, you would think that someone walking around the barn would leave footprints, or Lizzie was wearing this long blue dress, maybe it would have dragged on the floor a little bit. He pressed his own hand into the dust to show that it would have left a mark. And because there were no other marks, he questioned if Lizzie had actually been in there that day. But there was a witness on the same day. His name was Hyman Lubinsky. He was a Russian immigrant ice cream peddler who passed the house just after 11 a.m.

• 17:10Kaelyn Moore?

  And he said he saw a woman in a dark dress, walking from the barn toward the side door of the house. And he knew that it wasn't Bridget because he knew Bridget and he could tell it wasn't her. Now, the next order of business for investigators was to search the house. Based on the wounds, they assumed that a small axe or hatchet was the murder weapon. Could it still be in the house? Well, they found something in the basement that might lead them towards that weapon. In a box of tools, there was a hatchet and a handle that had been disconnected from one another. The handle looked like it had recently been separated from the hatchet, which maybe was from hitting something really hard. Now, the only thing was this hatchet didn't have any blood on it.

• 17:53Kaelyn Moore?

  It was coated in this white ash-like film, and there were a couple suspicious looking spots on it, but they all tested negative for blood. There was a separate hatchet in the basement that did have strands of hair on it, but they were later determined to be cow hair. So the most suspicious item they had didn't have blood on it, and the hatchet with hair was clearly used for something else entirely. But those weren't the only things in the basement that caught investigators' eye. Also downstairs was this barrel of water that had a few bloody rags inside. And when asked about these rags, Lizzie said that there was a reason they were there. She said that she was menstruating at the time, and those were the rags she was using. Now, Dr. Bowen intervened.

• 18:35Kaelyn Moore?

  He said that, yes, they were menstrual towels, and he told the investigators that the matter need not be further investigated. That's right. In the Victorian era, if you said something was menstrual blood, no one asked any questions. Even if it was at the scene of an active murder investigation, they would just say, ew, and they would move on. But blood was going to matter a lot in this investigation. The crime scenes, like I said, were shockingly clean, considering how brutal these attacks were, but also they weren't entirely without a trace. So Dr. Dolan mapped the blood spatter by Andrew and Abby very carefully. And he found that by Andrew, there were about 86 spots behind the sitting room lounge. Some reached over six feet high on the wall.

• 19:20Kaelyn Moore?

  And there were also about 50 spots on the dressing room table upstairs, 15 that were on the guest room mirror. But there was no trail of blood across the floors. There were no bloody footprints in the house leading anywhere. He was able to determine that whoever had committed this crime should have been covered in blood. There's no question about that. Multiple people had seen Lizzie that day, and she was spotlessly clean in her blue dress. And Bridget confirmed that Lizzie hadn't changed her clothes that day. They searched Lizzie's closets. They made meticulous notes about every dress she owned, but they couldn't find anything consistent with the crime scene. All they found was a single pinhead-sized spot on a white skirt that a Harvard chemist

• 20:03Kaelyn Moore?

  conceded could have been menstrual blood. So I'm sure they also said ew, gross, and threw that away as well. So if there weren't any signs that the murderer was someone who was living in the house, could someone really have come in and done this attack in the middle of the day? Well, a local physician who lived nearby, Dr. Benjamin Handy, said that he was walking past the Borden house. He did so twice that morning, and he saw this pale young man near the property. He described him as being agitated, staggering, his eyes were fixed on the sidewalk. The press that picked up the story called him the Wild-Eyed Man. Police were never able to identify this guy, but it got people thinking that maybe there was someone from the outside who had come in.

• 20:49Kaelyn Moore?

  The perimeter of the house was searched for any sign of a break-in or any tracks from someone escaping, but there was literally nothing. Andrew had kept that house locked down, but also Lizzie had opened the door to go outside to the barn. So sure, someone could have slipped in. But Abby also was killed before Andrew. The person would have had to already be in the house. So maybe they took the opportunity when Lizzie went to the barn to escape? Police took stock of the whole situation. There wasn't much that told them anything. It didn't look like someone had broken in, but it also didn't look like the two people inside of the house had anything to do with it. However, there was something that happened the day before the murder that gave police

• 21:34Kaelyn Moore?

  a little insight.

• 21:39Kaelyn Moore?

  Now, two years before his murder, Andrew had sent Lizzie on this all-expenses-paid grand tour of Europe. Her passport application dated June 4, 1890, is still held by the National Archives. Upon returning home, he had gifted her this beautiful sealskin cape. Not really the present I would want, but it was considered very luxurious back in the day. It wasn't really like Andrew to spend extravagantly, especially on his own daughters. For having so much money, the allowance that he gave Lizzie each week was less than what a woman would have made as a spinner in town. Now, I tell you this because on August 3, the day before the murders, Lizzie walked into a drugstore and told the clerk that she needed prussic acid to clean this sealskin cape. This was new to the clerk.

• 22:24Kaelyn Moore?

  He had never heard of prussic acid, which is also known as hydrogen cyanide, being used on clothing. You could take small amounts as a sedative or as cough medicine, but prussic acid is really poisonous. Just one teaspoon was potentially lethal, so the 10 cents' worth that Lizzie wanted to buy was way too much. He refused to sell it to her unless she had a prescription, and two other people in the store, another clerk and a customer, both witnessed this exchange. And eventually, Lizzie just left empty-handed. Now, when investigators learned this, alarms started going off. So Lizzie tried to buy poison the day before her father and stepmother were murdered.

• 23:06Kaelyn Moore?

  And Abby had run to Dr. Bowen, saying she thought they had been poisoned. So now, police had evidence of intent. And even though they didn't know why the murders had occurred, five days later, on August 9, 1892, Lizzie was called to a closed inquest presided over by Judge Josiah Blyzdell. And two things happened that would severely affect this case. One, Lizzie asked that her attorney be present, but she was refused. And two, Dr. Bowen had prescribed Lizzie morphine after her father's death. So there she was, high on morphine, without a lawyer, being questioned by the district attorney. And this was the only time that she would testify under oath about these murders.

• 23:50Kaelyn Moore?

  And her testimony was a mess. It was contradictory. She got confused. She would kind of shift from question to question. It wasn't really clear what question she was trying to answer. She couldn't keep straight whether she was in the barn or if she was downstairs at the time of the murder. And she gave different answers about whether she knew her father had come home. She also contradicted her earlier statements that she had made to the police. The DA pressed her on the note that Abby supposedly received, asking her to visit that sick friend. And Lizzie couldn't give any details about it. She didn't know who wrote it or who delivered it. She also didn't know where it went, and police never, ever found that note. Her stories didn't line up from one answer to the next, and that was a really bad look for her. But Dr. Bowen would later explain

• 24:35Kaelyn Moore?

  that the morphine he had prescribed her was probably the reason for this confusion. Regardless, Lizzie was arrested immediately afterwards on August 11. Lizzie went and spent nine months in jail awaiting her trial. And in that time, there was a preliminary hearing where Judge Blyzdell found her probably guilty, and a grand jury convened. At first, they didn't want to indict, but then, one of Lizzie's friends, Alice Russell, came forward with a story that she had been holding back. See, Alice had been in the Borden house the night before the murders, August 3, and she stayed for several nights afterwards to help. And the night before the murders, Alice said that Lizzie mentioned she was feeling like she was slipping into a depressive episode.

• 25:18Kaelyn Moore?

  It was like something was hanging over her, following her around. Lizzie also spoke of her father's enemies. She mentioned a man who had come by about renting a property had been turned away and left sneering. But what Alice wanted to tell the grand jury about was something she saw after the murders happened. So on Sunday morning, three days after the killings, Alice came downstairs to find Lizzie and Emma stuffing what looked like a blue dress into the kitchen stove. Alice asked what they were doing, and Lizzie said that this dress was covered in paint, so she was going to burn it. Now, Alice told her that she shouldn't let anyone see her doing that because, I imagine, because it looked so weird. But Lizzie just ignored her.

• 26:00Kaelyn Moore?

  When investigators checked their meticulous notes on Lizzie's dresses, there was nothing in those notes about a dress covered in paint, and they would have noted that. It was this revelation that led the grand jury to reconvene, and they issued the indictment on December 2, 1892. And to make things worse for Lizzie, Emma actually took the stand at trial to testify that it was her idea to burn the dress, not Lizzie's, as if somehow that made the whole thing better. The trial started on June 5, 1893, and it was really a spectacle unlike anything America had ever seen. More than 100 newspapers sent reporters and sketch artists. Telegraph wires were carrying updates to the nation daily. It was one of America's first media sensation trials,

• 26:44Kaelyn Moore?

  like basically the O.J. Simpson case of its day. Now, the people in that courtroom are really important to this case. On the defense side was Andrew Jennings, who was the Borden family attorney. There was also George D. Robinson, the former governor of Massachusetts. On the prosecution side was District Attorney Hosea Knowlton, and a young attorney named William Moody, who would later go on to become a United States Supreme Court Justice. And presiding as one of the three judges on the case was Justice Justin Dewey. And he had been appointed to the bench by George Robinson, who was the former governor and was also now Lizzie's lawyer. So yeah, one of the three judges was appointed by the defense. And then you had the jury, all men.

• 27:28Kaelyn Moore?

  Men that were going to hear a story of how a menstruating spinster might have killed her parents. This was going to be an uphill battle. As the trial unfolded, more information emerged about why Lizzie might have done this. So Lizzie's birth mother, Sarah, had passed when Lizzie was just a child. Andrew and Abby married two years later. So in some ways, Abby was the only mother that Lizzie knew. But that did not stop Lizzie from resenting her. Multiple witnesses testified about nasty remarks that Lizzie had made, saying that Abby was mean, that she was after Andrew's money. A few months before Abby's death, Lizzie snapped at a dressmaker who referred to Abby as Lizzie's mother. "She is not my mother," Lizzie corrected her.

• 28:13Kaelyn Moore?

  "She is my stepmother." The root of it really seemed to go back six years to this dispute they had over property. Abby's half-sister wanted to buy their father's house after their father died, but she didn't have the money to do so. So Andrew stepped up, and he purchased the house outright, putting it under Abby's name. And this infuriated Emma and Lizzie. Their father had always been incredibly stingy with them. He refused to live that high-society life that he could afford. He kept them on Second Street, below the Hill, instead of in the elite neighborhood. And now, he was buying up property for the half-sister of someone who wasn't even their mom. It was after this dispute that these two groups started eating separately,

• 28:56Kaelyn Moore?

  stopped speaking unless absolutely necessary, and really divided the house between them. But was a property dispute from six years ago enough to drive someone to pick up a hatchet? Why now? Then, there was also the medical examiner, who, upon doing autopsies on Andrew and Abby, ruled that there wasn't actually any poison in their stomachs. They did all happen to get food poisoning that night, Lizzie included. There was no evidence that Lizzie had successfully poisoned anyone. And that's when the case against Lizzie really started falling apart. So the prosecution wanted to introduce the testimony of the pharmacist about that prussic acid attempt. But the defense objected to it.

• 29:39Kaelyn Moore?

  I mean, no sale had occurred and no poison was found inside the bodies. The three judges all agreed that there wasn't really any reason to include that testimony. So the jury never heard that Lizzie tried to buy poison the day before the murders, and then came the inquest testimony. The prosecution wanted to admit Lizzie's own contradictory, morphine-fueled statements. But the defense argued that Lizzie had been, for all practical purposes, a prisoner. She was questioned without counsel, under the influence of drugs. And again, the judges ruled that the inquest testimony was inadmissible. So the jury also never heard about Lizzie's own contradictions about her alibi. There were some interesting points that were made during the trial about that handleless hatchet.

• 30:24Kaelyn Moore?

  The defense pointed out that the blade was 3 and 1/2 inches long. Some of Abby's wounds were only 2 inches wide, so they couldn't have been made by that blade. And probably one of the most shocking moments of the trial was actually on day two. And this is the most Victorian thing I've ever heard of. But the prosecution brought in the actual skulls of Andrew and Abby, cleaned and defleshed, because they wanted the jury to see them. And when Lizzie saw the smashed skulls of her dad and stepmom, she passed out. And this, by all accounts, was the most emotional that Lizzie got during the entire trial. For the most part, she was calm and collected like she was every other day of her life. She was also still on that morphine that Dr. Bowen had prescribed.

• 31:08Kaelyn Moore?

  But for the jury and everyone watching, they really had to ask themselves, could a woman who seems this calm do something this brutal? Now, just a few months before Lizzie's trial, there was another axe murder that happened just up the road in Fall River that reinforced the notion of who commits axe murders. On May 30, 1893, Bertha Manchester was killed and left with over 20 axe wounds in her family's farmhouse. A Portuguese farmhand who had grievances about his wages had attacked the farmer's daughter to get revenge on her father. He confessed to this crime immediately. And also, he wasn't in the country yet for the Borden murders. But the timing of this, when it came to Lizzie's trial, really mattered.

• 31:53Kaelyn Moore?

  Because everyone in town had read the newspapers and they saw what a, quote, "typical ax murder" looked like. It was passionate and hateful and messy. It was impulsive, made by someone with a huge grievance. All of these things that the quiet, composed Lizzie Borden was not. This trial went on for three weeks in the sweltering summer heat. There were reporters who said they couldn't believe that anyone survived the humidity in that courtroom. And Lizzie never testified, not once. But she didn't really need to. The facts of the case just spoke for themselves. The jury was left with no definitive murder weapon, no evidence that she tried to buy

• 32:34Kaelyn Moore?

  poison, no blood found on Lizzie, and none of her weird, contradictory testimony. All they had was circumstantial evidence and a composed, well-dressed woman from a rich family. When it came time to render a verdict, after roughly 90 minutes of deliberation, the same amount of time between Abby and Andrew's murders, the all-male jury gave a resounding, "not guilty." And the courtroom, mainly made up of women, erupted in cheers. Lizzie fell to her knees and she rested her head on the rail because she was free. Though the crowd initially celebrated her acquittal, their support for Lizzie Borden dwindled over the coming years.

• 33:20Kaelyn Moore?

  Five weeks after the verdict, Lizzie and Emma bought a 13-room, stone Victorian home right on French Street, located on the hill, that neighborhood their father had always refused to move to. Lizzie carved the name "Maplecroft" in the top step and she restyled herself "Lisbeth of Maplecroft." After a lifetime of her father's penny pinching, she finally was able to live the way she wanted to. And as a result, Lizzie was shunt in Fall River. She was treated as guilty despite the verdict. Around 1904, Lizzie developed an intense friendship with the actress Nance O'Neill. She hosted lavish theatrical parties at Maplecroft. In 1905, Lizzie's sister Emma moved out. The only thing she ever said about moving out was that, quote, "the conditions became

• 34:05Kaelyn Moore?

  absolutely unbearable." And the sisters never reconciled after that. Lizzie Borden died on June 1, 1927, of pneumonia following gallbladder surgery at age 66. Few attended her private funeral. She was buried at her father's feet in the Borden family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery. And Emma died nine days later, on June 10, in Newmarket, New Hampshire. They hadn't spoken in over 20 years. Lizzie's will was also a big point of contention. Her estate, which was worth roughly $265,000, which is over $5 million today, left nothing to Emma, just a note saying, quote, "she has enough to make her comfortable."

• 34:47Kaelyn Moore?

  She also left $30,000 and her stock in the Stevens Manufacturing Company to the Fall River Animal Rescue League, saying, quote, "I have been fond of animals and their need is great and there are so few who care for them." She also left $500 for perpetual care of her father's grave and nothing for Abby's grave. In 2012, the Fall River Historical Society received this big trove of documents that had been stored for decades in an attic. These were the private journals and case notes of Lizzie's defense attorney, Andrew Jennings, alongside the original evidence, including that handleless hatchet. They were called "The Hit Bath Collection" and it's the most significant new Borden archive in a century.

• 35:31Kaelyn Moore?

  And then, in 2021, the Borden House at 232nd Street, long operating as a bed and breakfast, sold for its full $2 million asking price. And it still operates as a museum and it offers overnight stays. No DNA testing has ever been conducted on the evidence. In 1992, forensic scientist James Stares sought to exhume the bodies, but the Borden family denied permission. The case remains officially unsolved and no one else has ever been charged. Now, many, many, many people think that Lizzie Borden was actually guilty of this crime. When I first covered this topic years ago, I actually spoke with two professors of criminology who broke down why they believe Lizzie was guilty. It's a great discussion.

• 36:15Kaelyn Moore?

  I'm actually gonna add it to the free shelf on my Patreon, so everyone can just go over and listen to it. Just sign up and you can listen to it. But those who truly don't think she did it have a couple of other theories as to who might have. Now, there was that wide-eyed man, the pale young man that Dr. Handy said that he saw hanging around the Borden's, acting strange on the morning of the murders. He wasn't walking so much as he was drifting, his eyes were glued to the ground. And Handy's word for him at the time was just agitated. Nobody ever identified this guy, though. The Fall River Herald tried. Months later, they floated this local guy named Mike the Soldier, but Handy said, "No, that wasn't him." And remember, Lizzie herself told Alice the night before the murders, "there was a man

• 37:00Kaelyn Moore?

  who came to the house wanting to rent a property and he had been turned away by Andrew and was pretty upset when he left." There's also another suspect. People believe it could have been Bridget Sullivan, the housekeeper. And the case for her is essentially just that she was there. She was the only other person in and around the house for both murders. And she maybe had reason to be angry that morning. She was still sick from that same food that made everyone else throw up. And Abby had sent her outside anyway on a hot August day to wash windows. In 1961, a crime writer named Edward Radin built an entire book about that grievance, just Bridget being a servant that was pushed too far. Plus, how could she have been home and didn't know a thing?

• 37:42Kaelyn Moore?

  Decades after the murders, Bridget was living in Montana and a friend named Minnie Green claimed that Bridget, who believed she was dying at the time, confessed that she had changed her testimony to protect Lizzie. So maybe even if she didn't commit the murder, she had done something in order to protect the person that did. But I think the case against Bridget is even stronger. I mean, she was seen outside with a bucket by neighbors backing up that window washing story at the time of Abby's murder. Even though some people say there was an hour and a half after Abby's murder where she could have gone outside and carried on with her duties until Andrew got home. And then the third suspect is actually Uncle John. And this one is kind of interesting. So John Morse was 59 years old. He was Sarah Borden's brother and he had trained as a butcher as a young man, which

• 38:27Kaelyn Moore?

  a lot of people look to when it comes to the actual crimes being done possibly with a hatchet. He had also gone west and made a comfortable living farming and trading horses in Iowa before he came back to Massachusetts a couple of years earlier. He showed up at the Borden House the afternoon before the murders, unannounced. He also had no luggage on him, no change of clothes. He ate dinner with Andrew and Abby and then he slept in the guest room, the room Abby would be killed in the next morning. Now, people have really made the case against John for basically the whole time, the whole 130 years. He was a butcher. He was in the house the night before. He was talking business with Andrew. Specifically, he was talking about the Swansia Farm, which is a property that some people believe Andrew intended to leave to Abby.

• 39:12Kaelyn Moore?

  And then, there was his alibi, which actually was almost too good. So when police asked where John had been, he didn't just say that he went to go visit his niece and nephew across town. He gave them the number of the streetcar he rode back on and he also gave them the conductor's badge number. Now, investigators thought that was way too specific for a man who had no idea when he boarded the car that anyone would ever ask him any identifying details about it. But Andrew's alibi was rock solid. The relatives confirmed the visit. The conductor remembered seeing him on that ride. He left the house at 8:45 and he didn't return until nearly noon, which puts him out of the house for both murders. And he also didn't inherit anything. Lizzie, for what it's worth, which is maybe not a lot, told police the same day that

• 39:57Kaelyn Moore?

  her uncle could not have had anything to do with the murders. So you know, we may never really know what happened in that house. But that has never once stopped Ryan Murphy from making a season of television about it. And it sure as hell not gonna stop him now. Now, I'm not sure what Ryan Murphy's version is gonna look like, but I bet every dollar that I've ever made that it will probably be more psychosexual than the version I just told you about. But now I turn it over to you guys. Let me know what you really think. Do you think that Lizzie's really innocent? Do you think that the timing, the cultural elements of this case had anything to do with this? And after you watch the show, come back here and let me know if they made anything up. Or actually, just tell me all the stuff they made up, because I'm pretty sure they're just going to.

• 40:40Kaelyn Moore?

  I'm gonna be back here next week with another episode for you all. Like I said, if you want more context on this story too, you can go over to my Patreon. On my free shelf, you'll see the interview that I did with those professors, kind of getting more into the psychology of Lizzie, which I think is really interesting. Check that out. Let me know what you think. And I will see you here next week. Until then, stay curious.

• 41:05Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Sound design and mix by Redrum Creative. Video editing by Creative Step. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grace Njordan, and the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request, check out hearts start pounding.com.