Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George norri here. Lizzie Borden was an American woman tried and acquitted of the August fourth, eighteen ninety two acts murders of her father and stepmother and Fall River, Massachusetts. No one else was charged in the murders. She died of pneumonia at the age of sixty six, just days before
the death of her older sister, Emma. She was in her thirties when she was tried for the murders, but again she was acquitted with us of course, as Rebecca Pittman, she has written a book called The History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden. What was it that captured your attention on Lizzie, Rebecca, I think it's what fascinates most people. It's the audacity of the crime and the good old ten minute window. How did she do it? Why was
there no blood found on her? And why was she acquitted when there were only two people home that day her house and the mate that and many people's opinion could have committed the crime. So it's just one of those that you can't look away from because you want to solve it. And people are still fascinated with this case today. How did she get charged then acquitted? Well, they basically she got caught in a bunch of contradictions. When she was being interviewed, she was the only one
in the house. The stepmother, Abbey died at nine thirty, but her dad was murdered an hour and a half later, and people couldn't wrap their mind around if someone from the outside came in and did this. How they hang around for an hour and a half and no one sees them, including the mate coming and going and washing windows, and Lizzie being in the house the whole time. And this is a house with no hallways, it's literally interconnecting rooms and locks, and there was no really no place
for some one else to hide. So, but mostly what sunk her was her contradictory answers to things, and she kept changing her story and finally that but mainly it was her testimony while she was being interviewed, they went ahead and arrested her. What did your gut tell you? Was she guilty? Oh? Heck yes, they just couldn't nail her. H Well, back in those days for a woman to take an access to somebody was They were having a
hard time with it. The boarding name was very respected, they were wealthy, and she was she'd been a school teacher, and people were having a very hard time with it. And it's a jury of twelve men that were older. They looked at her like if that were my daughter, do I believe she could do it? And plus the judge basically during the charge to the jury almost told them to let her go. Really yeah, her attorney, George Robinson, actually put that judge in his feet, So there was
a little bit of political wrangling going on. I think, what do you think her motivation was to even kill them in the first place? If she indeed did it money inheritance? Well, yeah, because that's what why. I read five thousand pages of trial transcripts, three times, police interviews, witness reports, and I found new evidence in the case.
And what was going on behind her back was her father and her uncle were putting together a cattle and horse scheme out at a two hundred and fifty acre farm that she was going to inherit, she and her sister, and they decided to put it in her stepmother's name. The deeds, and that's what was going to happen the morning of the murders, is that Abby was the post to go to the bank and sign that beat, which would basically take away a huge chunk of Lizzie and
Emma's inheritance. And she made sure Abbey never made that meeting. Did you uncover some new evidence? I did tell us about that. Well, A lot of people think there was one hatchet involved. There was actually three, three hatchets. Yeah, she killed Abby. This is fascinating, George. I mean I sound more of it, but it is fascinating Abby's wounds. Abby was struck eighteen times, mainly to the head. Where
did the poem come? Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty wax It was eighteen, but yes, I don't know. I don't know who enlarged it when the job was neatly done, gave her father forty one. That's not true all no, sorry, no, the father got eleven. But when they were doing the basically the autop see and they looked at Abbey's skull, they found gold guilt in the bone fractures in her skull, which meant the hatchets that was used was brand new. Back then they
would edge them with this gold guilt. Well, Andrew's wounds were totally different. It looked like an older thinner one up an axe hatchet that had been honed over the years and ground down had killed him. And so I believe that she killed Abbey at nine thirty and figured, you know what, I don't need to kill dad. She's the main one. If she can't show up to sign the deed, it's done. We're good. I'm back to my inheritance. And I believe she threw that hatchet over the back fence.
They did find a new hatchet on the roof of the property behind her house a year later, weathered from the you know, from the elements that they could still see the gold guilt on it when they rubbed the you know, the brust and stuff off of it. And so what she did. He came home early because Abby hadn't shown up at the bank and he wasn't supposed
to be there till eleven. He came in at ten forty and Lizzie had been trying to get out of the house and get the maid to go with her because if Bridget had been found there alone with a dead body. They'd a hunger. She was an Irish immigrant and she wouldn't go. So Andrew comes home early and
she stuck. She's already thrown away the new hatchet she got, so she goes to the basement, finds the old one, kills him, and so that it wouldn't be detected, she rolled it and she washed it, rolled it in coal dust in the cellar so it would look dusty, and then broke it in half to make it look like it couldn't have been used, and tossed it up in a box of old tools. Who now, what about the sister Emma. Emma was away visiting in August. It's typical the people had for the water because it's so hot.
And Emma went to stay in fair Haven, which was about thirty minutes away, with some friends that were by the ocean, so she wasn't home. How long was the trial it started? It went almost a year, just shy of the year. There were actually four. There was the inquest, then the preliminary hearing, then the grand jury, and finally the superior court trial. Was she in jail during the course of the trial or was she just a she was in jail for ten months, so they held her
while this was going on. Yes, that's not fair if she got acquitted, isn't well. I think a lot of people knew she did it. I mean some of they didn't allow in a lot of things that probably would have made a difference. They struck her testimony at the inquest, which was damning. She was all over the place and they didn't let the jury hear it. They struck out the evidence that she tried to buy prussic acid the day before the murders. They didn't get to hear that.
So a lot she was ostracized, whether she was acquitted it or not. People didn't want anything to do with her after that. And I assumed they didn't have many of forensics in those days, did they. No, they really didn't. In fact, they literally boiled the heads. They removed the heads of Abbey and Andrew and the guy boiled them on the stove in his home. The medical examiner to look at the wounds. I mean, it was pretty archaic. Oh my god. Of course at the time, that's the
best they could do. It is. Yeah, it's just a fascinating story. But the reason I say there were three hatchets, were the one that showed gold guilt for Abbey, the old one that was broken in the basement for Andrew. But they found a third hatchet that day when the police were scouring the place that looked like somebody had just washed it and wiped it down, And I think it's the one that she used to break the other hatchet to make it look like it hadn't been used
for anything. So there were three hatchets. I believe there were three murder plots, and I believe there were three dresses involved. How did the father, Andrew make his fortune. He had a lot of property and that's what one of the reasons he wanted to stay in the house that Lizzie hated was it was only one street over
from all of his banking and his real estate. By now where they were living, it had become like the second main street, so it's intermingled with businesses Chinese laundry, liveries, and Lizzie hated it. She wanted to mansion up on the hill. So he had acquired quite a bit of He had that Yankee ingenuity where he didn't spend it if he didn't have to, and he had quite a bit of property banking concerns and that kind of thing, And of course there was some tension in the family
weeks leading up to the murders. Right yes, In fact, a year before the murders, supposedly someone broke in again. Lizzie and Bridget were the only ones home. Abby and Andrew had gone to their Swansea farmhouse again. It was August, and while they were away, somebody broke in and went straight upstairs to the bedroom, to Abby's dressing area and stole money out of her area and jewelry and some
horse tickets which were tickets for the horse cars. And when the police came, Lizzie excitedly showed them everything, including a nail sticking out of the keyhole showing how they unlocked the door to the bedroom. Then two weeks later it turned out they traced the horse tickets to Lizzie back then you wrote your name on him and she gave them away and someone they said, where'd you get those and they said Lizzie Borden gave them to us
and her dad. Her even called off the investigation. But yeah, there was a ton of attention going on in the house. They weren't eating meals together, that the girls would eat somewhere else, and they didn't even sit down and eat with the parents anymore. Wasn't the family violently ill a couple days before the murders and they thought food poisoning
or something. They believed there was arson that put in the milk, and Andrew had a habit of pouring milk all over big slabs of bread when he ate, which made it fit in his stomach even longer. And they were really sick. And their bedroom was just on the other side of the wall from Lizzie's. And I think she sat there that night and listened to them throw up until midnight, waiting for them to die, and they didn't.
And so now she's I mean, this was Tuesday, Wednesday, She's seen out trying to buy more arsenic and now prussic acid, which you'll kill you in seconds. That she's like, Okay, the arsenic is not going to work. And when nobody would sell her the prussic acid, I think she was down to a hatchet. So this was a pure greed move, you think, Oh, I definitely do. What kind of person was Lizzie Borden growing up? What kind of girl was she well, it's from what you read in her friend's diary.
She was a little odd. She had mood swings, really violent moods, like bipolar. I think she could have been because her friends would say, we went over to see her today, she was real blue, she was real fad, she was realed down. I do think she had something going on, and she felt like the Bordens, the rich Gordons living up on the hill. That's what she wanted to be, and she felt like she had a hand in her face as long as they were living in that little house and her dad was about to turn seventy.
She may have seen the inheritance coming soon on the horizon, and then she found out about this land deal and was going to lose a big chunk of the money. Now. She ended up moving back into the Fall River area after the trial, and people still think she was guilty. Yes, she ended up getting her mansion on the hill. She and her sister inherited the money, but nobody would come visit them. They were basically ostracized and Emma just wanted a quiet life after all of that, but Lizzie didn't.
She was one of the first to get a car and ride around literally almost waving at everybody. She'd have big, lavish parties and it was like an in your face and Emma just wanted to hide. She just wanted a retiring, quiet life. And the sisters finally had a falling out and Emma moved away and they didn't speak again, only through their lawyers, and as you mentioned, they died nine days apart. Yea, it sounds like Emma suspected Lizzie as
the killer. I think she knew. I believe honestly in my heart that she knew that Lizzie was going to kill Abby. I don't think she had a problem with that. Emma even admitted on the stand that she just liked Abbie more than Lizzie did. But what happened was Andrew coming home unexpectedly and having to die, And I don't think that was in the plan. That's the father. Yeah, who got the property after the two died. They the
girls split it. And this is interesting. There was a lot of property over eleven buildings after they moved into Maplecroft, which was the mansion on the hill. Not too long after those buildings started to catch fire. It was like one after another were burning down because they didn't want to be Lizzie did not want to be a landlord. She just wants the money. So I think that she was setting fires to get the insurance money and not
have to deal with being a landlord. I think it's I think that's too much of a leap to to think of eleven different buildings to catch fire, and not all at once. This is over time and they're all Andrews buildings. Well with Rebecca Pittman. She has written a book on the Lizzie Borden case called The History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden, which she wrote about seven years ago. And these older books so they're still availables, Rebecca, Oh yeah, they still so very well. They're all on Amazon. That
is truly remarkable. And we'll talk about the Lent Mansion next hour when we come back and take phone calls. But in your gut tells you Lizzie Borden killed them. From the evidence I found, I have absolutely no doubt at all, and there's other new evidence in there, so yeah. Absolutely. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more