Lizzie Borden: Did She Or Didn't She?

I always thought that Lizzie Borden had committed the murders, but after visiting her house in Fall River, Massachusetts, I'm firmly convinced of it now. I had the adventage of seeing the house and hearing the full story to help me come to my conclusion.

Do you think she did it? Tell me in comments.

Lots of people don't know that Lizzie Borden was a small woman. I saw one of her dresses at the house. She couldn't have been more than five foot nothing and only about 100 pounds. I bet the jury couldn't imagine such a tiny, delicate woman committing such heinous acts. The nursery rhyme had it wrong. She hacked her stepmother about twenty times, not forty. She hacked her father's head up even more than that, but not forty-one times. Still, hacking someone's head into a bloody pulp like that was definitely a crime of passion. It was overkill. She hated her father and stepmother.

I asked the tour guide how Lizzie's stepmother felt about living such a frugal life, and she was apparently okay with it. I should have asked why Lizzie hated her stepmother so much, but I didn't think to ask about that. Lizzie's father had bought her stepmother's parent's house to keep them from being evicted. Stepmom was grateful. Lizzie wasn't. She threw a hissy fit over why Daddy bought a house for Stepmom's family, but wouldn't buy a mansion for Lizzie and her older sister. Yet another reason to kill off Daddy and Stepmom to get all that wealth for herself.

I rather liked the house. I like small, cozy houses. If it was for sale as a single family home, I would buy it, ghosts and all. Lizzie obviously had other ideas. The room she was originally in was very small. When she was older, she convinced her older sister to switch rooms with her. Her new room was much larger, but it was still on the small side. One of the doors to Lizzie's room opened into the Master Bedroom, where Daddy and Stepmom slept. Lizzie moved her bed catty-corner against the wall, blocking the door to that room. After Daddy had enough of Lizzie stealing from him (yup, she robbed her own Pa), he locked the door to the Master Bedroom from the inside. Lizzie never went in there again. The only way to get to the Master Bedroom was by the back stairs. There was also no hallway upstairs. The house was originally built as two apartments. There was little privacy upstairs. Daddy and Stepmom would have originally had to go through Lizzie's new bedroom to get to their own room, unless they went up the back stairs. The lack of privacy surely grated on Lizzie's nerves. I know I wouldn't like it.

Lizzie was also stoned on morphine and another drug whose name escapes me at the moment before the murders and during the trial. That's one reason why her story changed so much. She said that at the time of the murders that she had been in the barn eating pears. The police saw a thick layer of dust in the barn. No one had been there in at least three months. There were no leftover pear cores in there. Lizzie also said that she was looking for (I think) lead to use to go fishing. There was nothing in the barn that could have been used for fishing. Her story was flimsy. No one knows where Lizzie was when her parents were murdered. That's one of the case's big mysteries. The maid thinks she heard Lizzie laughing when she (the maid) ran downstairs to let Daddy in the house, since the front door was locked. He had come home from work early because he was sick after eating that rancid mutton broth for breakfast. Ew. I can understand wanting to eat leftovers to be frugal, since we do it, but rancid mutton broth? Sometimes leftovers need to be tossed. Daddy was so frugal that he was a cheapskate.

I agree with Sheelzebub that Lizzie Borden was a sociopath. She was only concerned with her own entitlement and comfort. I have to agree, though, that her father was a humorless old fart. He didn't socialize. He hoarded his money, and was a cheapskate. Lizzie had never married, so marrying into money wouldn't appease her appetite for riches.

Could we turn the Lizzie Borden case into a feminist issue? I don't think so. Even if women were able to get good, well-paying careers at that time (not that women didn't work - they did), I don't think Lizzie would have wanted to get a good job and pay for her own upkeep. I think she was a rich, spoiled brat who had severe entitlement issues. Marrying into money had never presented itself as an opportunity for her. She wanted her father's money, and she felt entitled to it. The only way she could get it was to kill him and her stepmother.

Here's another interesting fact that a lot of people probably don't know. The bodies were kept in the dining room for a few days. That was common in that era. Funerals and even autopsies were performed in the home. It was stiflingly hot when the murders took place. The bodies decomposed rapidly in the dining room, and they must have stunk to high heaven. I'm sure the smell wasn't gone by the time they had been removed. That kind of stink sinks into the walls and floorboards. It must have been horrible to live in such a small, confined house with that kind of smell to deal with.

This case is the second most famous unsolved murder in the world. It is surpassed only by the Jack The Ripper case. I enjoyed visiting the house very much. It's a bed and breakfast. I'd love to stay there sometime soon. I'll sleep in the room where the stepmother was hacked to death. I love creepy things like that. I can never get enough of it.