Selects: How Lizzie Borden Worked

Charles wry And and Jerry's back. Wow. Wow, Wow, look at that fine looking lady over there. How's it going, Jerry? She gave us it's just like old times. Yeah, Nol was just quietly weeping outside. He is, you know, like that out side Noel. He's peaking in her little portal window, scratching at it. The stint of Noel a k. The rain of terror is over done. Yes, has been deposed by Jerry. Yeah, so now it's not Noel sitting there or nobody sitting there, which happened more times than I

was comfortable with, at least four. Yeah, Jerry's like, wait a minute, that we can do that. Yeah, I'm out of here. Yeah, so long Jerry. So welcome back, Jerry. And uh, we've already said congratulations on little Inez, but who just keeps getting cuter and cuter. Yep, I know things are going great, so we're happy to have you back. And Lily neez, you're being very quiet. Just stay that way. She's just rocking in her little swing. Yeah. Great. Would

that be having babies in here? Yeah? If they shut up, wouldn't that be cool? For sure? Good energy. I would just feel bad for him because it gets pretty gamey in here. Yeah, even after like fifteen minutes, a couple of hours. I kind of stink today. Actually, I was going to apologize. Yeah, I didn't use to you sutorant uh the last time I showered when just like two days ago. It's fantastic. I know, it's terrible. I dressed up. Man, that's a great choke that. Yeah, I'm gonna take care

of that tonight. That explains the sheen on your face. Okay, so we're here, Jerry's here, I smell. Let's do it. Since you do smell, Chuck, I have to say, at least, at the very least I'm grateful that we don't happen to be in Fall River, Massachusetts on the morning of Augusto, because that morning was particularly particularly hot, unseasonably hot. It was over a hundred degrees fahrenheit by the time noon

rolled around. And that figures heavily in the case of Lizzie Borden and her forty and forty one wax, which we're more like eighteen or nineteen and eleven. Yes, are you? You were familiar with Lizie Boyd. Everybody knows Lizzie Borden, right, Yeah, Lizzie Borden took an X, gave her mother forty wax. When she found what she had done, she gave her father forty one. Yeah. Wrong, there was no ax. Wasn't a real mother, wasn't a real mother, There wasn't so

all about that was just made up. They think to sell newspapers. Yes, yeah, they think it's a children's nursery rhyme these days, little sicko children. Um, but but they do think that it was possibly some newspaper hawker, a newsy if you watch Disney movies, Um, who came up with it and it just took off? We should change it to Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken a hatchet given her stepmother eighteen or nineteen wax thirteen of them crushed her skull when she saw what she

had done. Her father got home, she gave him eleven or so and then got away. Yeah it scot free. That doesn't have the same ring. No, that doesn't. But you basically did just sum it up pretty well, pretty accurately, Chuck. So for those of you who don't know who Lizie Borden is, just settled down, buckling, prepare for a wild ride.

For those of you who do know, do the same. Okay, Yeah, because we have new evidence, yeah, that we're gonna reveal and the controvertible evidence of exactly who carried out these murders, and the only people who have it is us, because we're gonna make it up and you'll find out in thirty five issue minutes or forty apparently to Stephie misson history class in an episode on Lizzie boardon if this floats, your boat goes into that one too. Yeah, I should

point out to the very first thing we said. We told Jerry were doing Lizzie Board, and she said lesbian. Yeah, and we said maybe that's one of the theories. Yeah, this will all figure in. We're just teasing, teasing, like crazy. All right. So the morning of August, Fall River, Massachusetts. Ah, very cute town, by the way, I'm sure you mean I visited recently. Who did you go to the house? Why else would you go there? That's about it? Yeah,

that was on your death tour, your murder tour. Um. But in like I said, it was over a hundred degrees fare height on August four, really really hot for that area. And at about ten I think about ten forty five am, wasn't it. Yeah, about ten forty five the first murder, No, the father coming home? Oh yeah yeah. They placed both of these events within like thirty to forty five minutes. That there's you know, a given take there.

So about ten forty five am, one Andrew Jackson Borden returns to his home at nine two Second Street in Fall River, mass and, um, the the house isn't a part of town that was very popular among recent immigrants, specifically Irish Catholics and Portuguese. Uh. And I believe there's some Chinese immigrants there as well. It wasn't an upscale part of town by any means, despite the fact that Andrew Borden was an extremely well the man. Yeah, he

was worth between seven and ten million today dollars. I've I've heard twelve let's say between seven and twelve then of today dollars. That's a lot of dough and also a good reason to kill somebody. Yeah. Um, and he despite having a lot of dough, he lived in one of the lower rent sections of town. Um. His house did not have indoor plumbing, which was kind of odd by this time for that area. Um. Apparently many of the people who were far far worse off than his

family financially head indoor plumbing. He did not. He also didn't have any kind of electric lighting. Instead he used kerostene lamps. And uh, he kept doors locked. He was very afraid of being robbed. Yeah, let's cover this bit real quick. I think we should read this. Um. There's a lady named Angela Carter who wrote about the case.

She actually factored into our our fairy Tales episode. She was the feminist rewrote fairy Tale else Well, what was that Neil Jordan's take on a little ride ride and her hood? Yeah, I remember she wrote the same lady. So she said the house was originally a two family home and they converted it to a single family home, but didn't take a lot of time, apparently, just knocked down some walls through in a staircase and it ended

up being a weird house because of that. And she describes it as uh this way a house full of locked doors that open only into other rooms, with other locked doors for upstairs and downstairs. All the rooms led in and out of one another, like a maze and a bad dream. It is a house without passages. There is no part of the house that has not been marked as some inmates personal territory inmate very nice. It is a house with no shared no common spaces between

one room and the next. It is a house of privacies sealed as close as if they had been sealed with wax on a legal document. Creepy, no hallways or anything weird. No each room led into the next, and in fact, Lizzie's bedroom led right into her sister Emma's bedroom too. For Emma to go to bed, she would have had to go through Lizzie's bedroom um and then

her her stepmother and father's bedroom was behind hers. But it was sealed off by a locked door and access through staircase that only your father used that you could get to only with the key. Yeah, And to go up and down the stairs, they had to go through their parents bedroom, right, Yes, but they didn't do that. That was it was off limits. It was locked. They just jumped out the second story window. No, there was

a front staircase. They actually built a second staircase so that her there there's parents could come and go to their room without having to go through Lizzie's room. So for all intentsive purposes, with this locked door, it was a wall that sealed off their parents room from there. Yes. And when we say parents, uh, this is a a stepmother. Lizzie was born Um to Sarah Morse and her father

in eighteen sixty third child. Um had an older sister named Emma, ten years older second daughter named Alice, who died when Lizzie was two. Yes, she had She died from hydra and cephili. You could just make up anything back then, something believable, you know. Uh. And then her mother died in eighteen sixty three when she was just two of uterine congestion. And then when Lizzie turned right

before she turned five. He remarried to Abby Gray, who the daughters were in their thirties by the time the murder took place unmarried at Spinster's Uh, and never seemed like they had a great relationship with Abby. They didn't, but they both adored their father, and um he he

personally appreciated that for his benefit. They referred to her as mother, and they did for decades until the time, which we'll get to um, but they they The reason that um Andrew Borden kept the house locked all the time was because a couple of years before there had been a burglary where some mysterious burglar had come in and made off with a hundred dollars and some trolley tickets and some jewelry. I think and Uh it was basically pretty well known around town that it was Lizzie

who had done it. It sounds like an inside job. She robbed her own father rather than accused his daughter of this extraordinarily scandalous behavior. At the time, Um he just locked everything and all doors were locked all the time. UM and he kept a key to his room on the mantel, basically daring anybody to even try it, because he would know what happened, because the only way you could get in was through this key. The only way to get to the key would be to have a

key to the outside doors. We say all this to say that when Andrew um Borden came back home that day, on August four, that morning, uh, he was locked out of his own house, and he had to be led in by the maid whose name was Bridget, but who Emma and Lizzie called Maggie because they had had another maiden named Maggie, and they decided that they just we're going to call this one Maggie too. That sounds like, um, do you watch the show another period? Uh? It's great.

It's Comedy Central, basically a reality TV spoof of like Downton Abbey and um the two lead Natasha Giro and uh oh, I can't remember her name from Garfunkle on notes the blonde she does the she's the other. I think they co created the series. But they're just these rich girls who would like they renamed one of the maid's chair. Check this out. How have I not even heard of this? I don't know, man, It's really funny.

It's got a huge, great cast, big fan h have you seen Anthony jes Nick special in Netflix yet Oh no, dude, I love that guy though. It's really great. Yeah, it's so so awful but wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Andrew Borden gets let back into his own house. Yes not Anthony jes Nick no, um, and he uh, he gets let back in by the maid and he decides he's going to lay down for a little while on the couch. Right.

Apparently the whole family was under the weather, including the maid, um, because they have been eating the same mutton for like five days. Mutton's gross to begin with. Five day old mutton that had been stored in the heat in an ice box outdoors is not just gross, it's really bad

for you. So the whole family had basically come down to varying degrees of um food poisoning, apparently so much so that Mrs Borden Abbey Borden had gone to talk to the doctor the day before the murders and said, I think we're being poisoned by one of my husband's business rivals or my stepdaughter, right, you know something like that. Yeah, that's not all the weirdness. It was going on um

in the in the months and weeks before the murders. Uh, there was a lot of uh not strange, but a lot of financial goings on that kind of raised the ire of the daughters. Um. Notably, Andrews started uh being fairly generous with other members of the family, giving away properties and things, uh, including to Abbey. He gave her a house that she let her sister live in. His sister was in big trouble, so he helped her out. Yeah,

so he's got money. His daughters are like, um. Uh, so he said, you know what, I'll give you each a property as well for a dollar and you're you're welcome. And they ended up reselling that back to Dad for cash later, which was kind of jerky. Yeah. Well it was a rental property, and he had a bunch of rental properties, and apparently his miserliness was very well known. Um. He also directed some mills right and Fall Rivers incredibly famous for its mills. It was it's a huge mill town.

So he knew that if you worked in the mills and rented at home from him or a room from even he knew if you got a raise, and if you got a raise, he would raise your rent. So this is a rental property, one of his renal properties that he sold to his daughters so that they could have rental income. Apparently they were they didn't feel like doing that, so they just sold it back to him

for like I think increase not bad for doing nothing. Uh. The other thing that happened in the um actually the night before the murderer is there uncle John John Vinnegum Morris, who was there decease mother's brother. He came a Colling uh to speak about some business with Andrew and Um, there's a lot of speculation on what was going on here. Basically they think that it just ramped up a tent situation even more like he probably had his hand out

that was maybe. I think it was fairly um common for him to come by, and I think he was also. I don't think he was supplicant to Andrew Borden. I think they had business together a lot. Well, Lizzie didn't like him, so I that's news to me too. Yeah. She she apparently didn't even speak to him, she said at the trial while he was there, right like when he came to visit and stay the night, she hadn't spoken to him the whole time. When he came and then spent the night and then left the next morning.

Because it's very important. He was not in the house when Andrew Borden came back into the house, right, Yeah, and she never called him uncle John, which is the dead giveaway if you love your uncle. Yeah, I I just I I didn't realize there was animosity between the two. I don't know that there necessarily was. Here's one of the problems that we're going to run into it over and over again. And it's also one of the reasons

why Lizzie Borden's legend has remained alive for so long. Like, we have a propensity to take very complex, complicated people and they're very complex complicated relationships with one another and boil them down into caricatures that we can understand and easily explain. And so yeah, so over the century or so, we've done the same thing to Lizzie Borden case. So it's really easy to speculate on and it's also easy to interpret little things one way or the other, which

also makes the whole thing a lot of fun. Yeah, no one, everyone loves a cold case. Yeah, alright, so let's take a break and uh, we'll get back to some of the nitty gritty deats right after this. So, Chuck, you're saying that the family it was tense in the house. To be certain, it sounds like it was always tense, but notably tense months leading up to the murders. Yeah, And apparently both Emma and Lizzie took off for several weeks right before the murders. When they came back, Lizzie

didn't even come back to the house. She rented a room for a few days, I guess, to ease herself back into having to live in this house again, like a halfway house kind of that's weird, maybe three quarters to the way house. And she, um, she and Emma both stopped calling Mrs Borden mother all of a sudden around the time that um, their father had given the house, that extra house to her right, her sister was living in. They started calling her Mrs Borden, including to her face.

That's pretty chilly, right, So that's tense. Like you say, Uncle John Morris might have increased this tension. And the house was very very chilly, civilly cordial to an extent, but just it was a house full of adults who were not getting along and and like you said, probably

hadn't been for a while. Yeah. Then there was a matter of in June two, um Andrew, the father killed a bunch of pigeons in the barn outside the house to make pigeon while so Abby could make a pigeon pie, right, And supposedly Lizzie kind of thought of these pigeons as her pets. So uh, that would not have been a very cool thing to do if you know your daughter loved these pigeons, So I'm in the mood for pigeon

ply Yeah. There. He apparently also defended his actions by saying that he was worried about intruders because local boys used to like to come let themselves into their barn and hang out with these pigeons and play with them. So he solved two problems dinner and boys coming over by just killing Lizzie's pigeons. That's right. And she also beyond just liking these pigeons, she was also a huge animal lover. She left a lot of money to it animal rights group, and so I mean she probably would

have taken this fairly hard. On the flip side, though, so her father just that characters caricature thing I was talking about her father's painted is like this Ebenezer Scrooge type, super mis early typefisted. He definitely was that. But it's very easy to extend this idea that he and Lizzie hated each other, and that's absolutely not true. They both Lizzie and Emma apparently very much loved their father, and

their father loved them. As my e fact, he wore a pinky ring that Lizzie gave him when he was when she was like fifteen, and he'd warn it every day, never took it off to like each other a lot. Only jewelry ever wore. It was like there was definite affection there that often gets overlooked when you're just kind

of painting this thing in broad strokes. You know. Yeah, But like you said, he wasn't beloved in the town because if you ask me if you have money and you're a tight wad, that's like the worst thing it is. Does he have money, be generous, That's what I say. Sure, you know, pick up checks, be generous with your friends. If you have dough and your I don't know, I can, it's not gonna make any friends. Let's just say that

it's true. And it didn't in his case. So, um, also, if you think about it, it is it reveals a lot psychologically that the whole family has been eating the same mutton for five days and the first thing that Mrs Borden thinks of is that their milk is being poisoned by one of her husband's business rivals. That's where her mind went exactly. So there's a I mean, yeah, it's it's not just inside this house the tension. It's

also coming from outside a little bit as well. Yeah, and uh, I guess we'll go ahead and point out if you have the the circumstantial evidence surrounding Lizzie. So one of the things was in the days before the murderer, she was trying to uh, she'd been seen trying to buy a poisonous prussic acid. She said she yeah, she said she wanted it to clean things. But other people and the trial said maybe she was trying to poison them.

Although autopsies revealed no poison in the bodies, no poison in the milk, no, but the prosecutors wanted to use that to to suggest that she had murder on her mind. Inadmissible. It was ruled and admissible because they figured it would be too inflammatory, and it was entirely possible that she really did want to clean this seal skin coat with

that stuff. All right, what else? This the dress? Things pretty damning well, hold on, before we get any further into that, let's let's let's talk about the actual murders. You're ready. So it's August fourth. Her father has just come back in. He's laying down on the sofa, right, and he goes to sleep and he never wakes up.

That's the reason he never wakes up is because, like you said, he got hit from behind and above about eleven times with an axe and hit and about the same area, so that basically his face was cut clean away into nothingness. Um. Probably a hatchet, not an X. Yeah, yeah, you're right, I'm sorry, I hatchet. Um. And at about eleven ten, Bridget was upstairs sleeping because again she's been throwing up from the mutton um. When she gets roused

by Lizzie calling from downstairs saying, hurry, something's happened. She comes downstairs and she says someone's coming and killed father. So now this alert has just gone out. The first body has been discovered. Andrew Borden who's still bleeding right, and his face is hacked away. It's pretty grotesque. You can see the picture online. Yeah, so Bridget run across the street to the doctor to get him. Uh, comes back with him and they say, where's your where's your mother?

She's like stepmother. They're like, where's your stepmother? And she says, uh, somebody came with a note or something like that. I think she went to go visit a sick friend who knows and um. Then she goes, well, actually, I think I heard her come back in. Why don't you guys go look upstairs? And Bridget is like, I'm not looking upstairs. There's a dead body here. How do we know there's

not another another dead body? So a neighbor lady and Bridget goes upstairs and they see from the staircase into the bedroom. It's really cool. When you go on the tour of the house, you can stand where they stood and see exactly what they would have seen. And there's Mrs borden All I think two forty pounds of her lay down on the floor with the back of her head just split wide open with something like eighteen blows and again thirteen of them have been um have just

completely crushed her skull. So now there's two dead bodies. And if actually they are dragged into the dining room where they're autopsied, and rather than be buried there before they're buried, they're decapitated and their heads are sent to Harvard. Yes, and then eventually buried at the foot of their graves. Yes,

like all decapitated heads exactly. So Um. Almost immediately the cops went, uh you yeah, you're the Lizzie was the only person in the house, right, That's right, because Bridget was outside when her around the time that her mother Um would have been killed. Lizzie was ironing handkerchiefs with a little mini iron and a little mini ironing board in the dining room. Yeah. Emma was fifteen miles away

out of town, that's right. Uncle John Morris was away in town at the post office, I think on business because he doesn't need stamps dot com. Right, Yeah, and Andrew Borden was in town on his own business as well. So Lislie was the only one in the house at about nine thirty am, around the time when her stepmother would have been murdered. She says that when her father came home and laid down around the time he would

have been murdered. She wasn't in the house then, Yeah, she said she uh went out to that barn that she liked to hang out with the pigeons. Uh. Two, and she was eating pears, just hanging out in the loft, eating pears, eating pears. And the reason she was in the loft is because she was getting led to make sinkers to go fishing with. Yeah. But she while she was there, she's like, I like getting here in the hundred degree weather, especially upstairs in this loft, I'm gonna

eat some pears. So she ate some pairs minutes and when she came back in, she discovered her father called bridget down in the whole chain of events entered the public record around that time. Yes, uh so we already mentioned the prossic acid um. She was caught burning a dress. Yeah, family friend witnessed her doing that and then later uh gave testimony about that, and that's what led to her

being indicted for murder, that's right. And she said that the dress was stained and that's why she was burning it stained with paint though, yes, staying with paint, right, But this is three days after the murder, all of a sudden, she's pulling a dress out of the coal shoot and saying, Ah, this dress is staying with paint. I'm just gonna go ahead and burn it. So this family friend, Alice says, I wouldn't do that if I were you, and Lizzie said shut up you, and Alice

said okay and goes and tells the cops. Uh, So, in the basement they found two axes, two hatchets, and then a hatchet head that it had the handle broken off. They suspected that it was broken off recently, and that hatchet had um they say, looked like it had been planted there and covered with dust and ash to make it look like it had been there a long time. Um basically tampered with evidence. Wise, One officer at the trial said the handle was actually there, and we found it.

Another officer says, no, we didn't, So who knows? Yeah, I think they. The consensus is among historians is that they never found this handle. Yes, but it's never explained why. The one officer said they did. Yeah, so um that hand that that hatchet had that they did find, though, Chuck, they never conclusively showed that it was the murder weapon.

They just said, this is probably a pretty good stand in, right, and they never found any blood or anything on it, which that's kind of difficult if you think to completely get a hatchet head clean totally. Yeah, right, So that's kind of weird in a sense. They never found the murder weapon essentially, well, they said they did. Well, yeah, sure, the prosecution said that this was it. But again, all

suspicion is just immediately falling onto Lizzie. Uh. And there were a number of different um hearings and inquests and things and grand juries before she was formally indicted um and each time apparently it looked like she was going to get off because, despite what the cops thought at this time, in this place and era, Victorian ladies did not murder people with hatchets, So that in and of itself was enough to get her off, right, or to

keep her from even being indicted. But each time her friend Alice from down the street would come in and say, I saw Lizzie Byrne addressed that had some sort of brownish red stain all over it, and the jury or the judge or whoever would say, ah, we think that's enough, And so Finally it got to the point where I think the grand jury was indicted her for three counts of murder, right, uh, one of her stepmother, one of her father, and then one of her stepmother and father,

which is bizarre even at the time, but she was She faced three counts of murder, and they used the hatchet head. That was their big case. But they had some real problems. Number one, if that dress had been covered with blood, it was gone now. But number two, Emma, her sister, said that dress actually was covered in paint. That was just paint that had nothing to do with blood. Right. And the big problem here is it almost goes without saying.

If somebody murdered Mrs Borden with a hatchet and then murdered Mr. Borden with a hatchet, they would be covered in blood twice. So what do you do? How how could you have gotten around that? One of the theories was that Lizzie Borden stripped down, was naked, killed, Mrs Borden, put her clothes back on, and then when she had the chance, took her close back off and then killed her father, and then rinsed off both times and put her clean clothes back on. That probably didn't happen, though

probably not. We need to take another break though, and when we come back, we will wrap up what happened in the trials and what happened afterward. Right for this, All right, we're back. Lizzie Borden on trial in big trouble and uh, a lot of circumstantial evidence, but no no hard evidence at this point at the trial. No smoking gun as they say, no, I didn't want smoking hatch, no fingerprints, finger They didn't do any fingerprinting at this point.

Fingerprinting was new and uh, not really trustworthy, so they didn't even bother. Well. Yeah, pretty much every step of the um police investigation was fouled up for the To begin with, the murders took place while almost the entire police force was off on the annual police picnic out of town. Um, all these neighbors and luky loose came through the crime scene and totally messed up. But the big thing was is forensic science wasn't really a big

It wasn't in widespread use at the time. Yeah, so at the trial they point out a lot of incongruencies her Her story changed a lot during the questioning, which is a little weird. The cops went into the barn and they said, you know, it's super hot in here. I don't see how anyone would choose to just sit

here for twenty minutes and eat pairs. And we don't see any footprints anywhere around, which was weird because two workmen later testified that they had been up in that place, um like the week before, yeah, which well, who knows after a week what a footprint in a barn will do. Uh. And then the day before the murders, um, Lizzie went to her old friend Alice and said some weird things that she felt like something bad was going to happen

to her family, almost like there was. She said, I feel as if something were hanging over me and I can't throw it off, and she was frightened. So this sort of looks like she was setting up an alibi. Yeah, she said she was worried something bad was going to happen to her father. Yeah. That was the day before the murders, the night before him. Right. So for the prosecution,

they were like they took two pretty big hits. One the prussic acid the cyanide got thrown out of evidence, uh, and then two so did Um, Lizzie's own testimony, because the judge determined that she had been on copious amounts of morphine at the time, and they were contradictory, and even at their base, they weren't admissions of guilt, they were protestations, right. So, Um, the prosecution didn't have a

lot to go on. They had almost an entirely circum not even almost a completely circumstantial case that really had tons and tons of holes in it. That's right. It was a two week trial. Lizzie never took the stand herself, and um, it was it was huge. It was the trial of the century. Um, she was deemed guilty. But while the trial was taking place in her town basically, and in her town, newspapers all over the world at

this point. So the impression I have though, is that out of town they had a different take on it, that these these bumbling dummies, the yokels in Fall Fall River, Um, we're trying to prosecut cue a woman for a crime that clearly some maniac had had carried out, and that they should just leave her alone. Finally, Yeah, interesting, Um, during the trial, this helped the sensationalized aspect of it. They actually brought in the chopped up skulls and presented it and like it was out of a TV movie.

Lizzie saw this, Uh, swooned and fainted, which of course is going to get some sympathy from the jury. And um, it didn't take long. It was about ninety minutes and the jury said not guilty. Yeah, and she got away with it. So thinks many many people. What do you think. I don't know. Well, here's some here's some theories. One that she was like in a fugue state and committed

these murders. Uh. Yeah, but a fugue state that lasted ninety minutes where she was able to conceal the murder weapon in her own guilt and wait for a father to come home and fall asleep. That's not a fugue states what they say. And it could have been less than ninety minutes. Uh, if you take the shorter side of both ends of the murders of the time range. Uh. One was that she was gay and that she was having an affair with the maid. They were caught by

the stepmother. She was really super mad and so Lizzie killed her with a candlestick and then I went and confessed this to her father, thinking that he might understand, and he got really mad and so they killed both killed him. Okay, that's another theory, one that she was abused by her father sexually and physically abused, although there's no evidence to substantiate this. One is that the maid um.

There was a deathbed confession from the maid to her own sister, Um, which no one knows if that's true or not. Yeah, I mean, the maid was most likely not a lesbian. It's entirely possible that Lizzie Borden was because later on after the murder, she and her sister continued to live together. They bought a mansion in the well healed part of um Fall River, and Lizzie named at Maple Croft and Um the maid eventually remarried, got married.

She just totally falls off the map for five years and then pops up again and Butte Montana and gets married and dies in Um. But Lizzie and her sister lived together until nineteen o five, and then all of a sudden, her sister moves out of the house and they never speak again for twenty two years until they die. And uh, it's some people say that it was because her sister didn't improve of a relationship with this um woman named Nance O'Neill. Yeah. Um, which is entirely possible.

Who knows what happened? Um. It could have been that her sister believed she was innocent and then finally Lizzie admitted it in nineteen o five and her sister was like, I am done with you. Who knows. One of the other theories is that William Borden, who was the illegitimate son of Andrew and also a butcher, um, was the the Basically he killed him because of like failed extortion attempts. So was he proven to exist William Borton? Yeah? I

thought he was hypothetical. Is he like a real person? Uh? And then the final two was that Emma did it and had the perfect alibi and setting up that she was fifteen miles away. Uh. And that uncle John did it who was there visiting. Yeah. So basically anyone who had anything to do closely with the family, there's a theory that they did it, right. Yeah, And these are all theories. Like you, if you look at the evidence, you can I think you can basically get rid of

everybody except Lizzie. And there were some big problems with their story to like, even if you believe she's innocent, there's some stuff you really have to contend with. Like, for example, she says she was in the house at the time her stepmother would have been killed, and her stepmother was like two d forty pounds and the police came and they dropped a two hundred pound weight in the place where her stepmother had fallen when she would

have been killed. And um, the cop downstairs, whose job it was to listen to hear if you heard anything, said it felt like the whole house shook. I'm sure, right, so, and Lizzie's like, I didn't hear anything. That's that's kind of a weird thing, right. Um. Then Lizzie also was she behaved rather strangely here there, Like when the neighbor came over, she was like, oh, Mrs Churchill, do come in.

Someone's come in and killed father, Like come in for tea. Yeah, there's just a lot of weird stuff that she's done. And then the dad was posed afterward on the couch. Yeah, his favorite coat was rolled up beneath his head. Yeah, and he had his arms folded over in his lap. And that's just creepy. Yeah, but if you really look at all the evidence to especially the prosecution's case, there's

no way that that jury should have convicted her. They definitely did the right thing in acquitting her because they had there was no case against her. Really, yeah, I mean, she was little, She's like five ft one, and basically one of the big defense points was like this, this tiny little lady just couldn't have done this. These were like brutal, powerful, forceful blows with this hatchet, and uh, despite I mean the fact that she has crazy guys. Maybe it's just that one picture. I don't know, but

it definitely didn't do her any favors in history. Like that one big photo of her, she looks like a psycho killer. She does, you know a little bit for sure. But they said that there's no way this little lady could have done this, and that was kind of one

of their main defense points. But it didn't matter what happened because everyone thought she did it, and she would go to church and have people whisper about her and kids through rocks at her windows for years and through rotten eggs at her house and ding Dong ditch and basically was shunned by her local town folk. Yeah, as a murderous and even the people, all the out of towners who came and used her as you know, to promote their own stuff, like the Suffragettes, like men her

basically a hero. By the time she died, like most people had left her. Um. And she she died a fairly lonely old woman, despite having not spoken to her sister in twenty two years. They died within nine days of each other. Lizzie died first, and then Emma and sweetly oddly weirdly, um, all of the Bordens, Lizzie, Emma, Andrew, Abby, the original Mrs Borden uh and their sister who died as a child, are all buried next to one another in the family plot. Yeah, that's normal. It's not weird.

That's just how they did things, not weird. Um. She did change her name to which I thought was you didn't go far enough. She changed her name to Elizabeth Borden. I might have gone with something completely different without l I Z even in the name. That would have been my recommendation, maybe like Tammy Borden or something, or Tammy Smith. Oh yeah, you could get rid of the board and

thought about that you know. Yeah, She's like, hmm, I want to disappear about Elizabeth Borden instead of Lizzie Board and I'll ever suspect that I'm Lizzie Gordon. And she was pretty young. She was sixty six and she died. Yeah, and her sister was like a several almost a decade older than um. So she died at a I guess a respectable old age. Lizzie died young ish. Her sister didn't even die of an illness. She fell down the

stairs supposedly with push marks in her lower back. Right, So we've basically just given like a really like broad overview. You can dedicate all of your spare time to this case. It's really fascinating and there's a lot of stuff on it on the internet too. And if you're ever in the Providence or Boston area, like, do yourself a favor and go down to the Lizzie Borden house and take the tour. It's pretty cool to stay there, right, Yeah, it's a ben breakfast that you can stay in supposedly

haunted allegedly. Yeah, yeah, if you believe in that kind of stuff. Wait our new evidence though, we and reveal it Okay, go ahead, I have none. I don't. Okay, man, you scared me. I thought like you really did. After a second, No, they'd that'd be great. I wouldn't be sitting on that. Uh. And you can type Lizzie board and all you want in the search bar. It just turns up some lame definition of her I think on our site. So just go look elsewhere. And since I

said elsewhere, it's time for listener mail. Greetings gents and Jerry or Knoll or empty space. Um. I've recently developed somewhat of a novel biological effect or remember we talked about those, uh. And it's taught me a lot about how I did and how I should be carrying myself in the world. UM. I'd like to believe I've been polite about it, but I'm definitely the type of person has a hard time not noticing and having my attention

drawn to irregularities about people, especially on their faces. About two weeks ago, I developed a bacterial infection of my skin that covers about half of my forehead and extends down to one eye, causing redness and swelling that makes eye remain more lows and the other interresting state I was surprised of how many of my friends and strangers in public I could tell her distracted by it when talking to me, and it made me feel a little self conscious on top of my own hang ups about

such things. I think I've learned a little bit from the experience about what it might be like to be someone that goes through their whole life in this situation. In my case, at least, it's not as simple as just ignoring the condition, but it goes a long way for people to acknowledge it and be able to accept it without judgment. Thanks for the work you guys do for keeping me company with a wide variety of topics. That is from Andrew in Utah. Thanks a lot, Andrew.

We appreciate that. Yeah, sorry to hear about that, man, and but I like your attitude about it and fresh perspective it's brought you. If you got a brush with fresh perspective, we want to hear about that, no matter what it has to do with You can tweet to us. Oh wait, Chuck, we want to say Happy New Year at everybody. Yeah, Happy New Year, and happy birthday you me, Happy birthday, you me? Okay, So if you want, you

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