Lizzie Borden

1. Lizzie Borden

2. Meet Lizzie! Oh – And did I mention she was charged with PATRICIDE Lizzie was accused of being a hatchet-wielding maniac who killed her parents. Church-going Sunday-school-teacher Respectable Spinster Loving daughter

3. Setting the Scene The day is stiflingly hot, over one hundred degrees, even though it is not yet noon. The elderly man, still in his heavy morning coat, reclines on a mohair-covered sofa, his boots on the floor so as not to soil the upholstery. As he naps in the August heat, his wife is on the floor of the guestroom upstairs, dead for the past hour and a half, killed by the same hand, with the same weapon, that is about to strike him, as he sleeps.

4. Andrew Borden One of the richest men in Fall River. Tall, thin, white-haired. Thrifty with good business abilities. Lived with his wife and two grown spinster daughters in a small house in an unfashionable part of town. Not likable but moderately generous to his wife and daughters.

5. Discovering the Body! She found Lizzie at the back door. She was not allowed into the living room. Bridget the maid heard Lizzie call her! Lizzie sent her to fetch Dr Bowen. How the day Unfolded! There were now two dead bodies lying in the house. A neighbour came to enquire if there was a problem. Lizzie and Mrs Chapman went upstairs to find Mrs Borden was.

6. Andrew Borden's body was on the right side on the sofa. His head was bent slightly to the right and his face had been cut by eleven blows. One eye had been cut in half and was protruding from his face, His nose had been severed. Blood was still seeping from the wounds. There were spots of blood on the floor, above the sofa and on a picture hanging on the wall. He had been attacked from above and behind as he slept.

7. Mrs Borden • Mrs. Borden had been struck more than a dozen times, from the back. • The autopsy later revealed that there had been nineteen blows. • Her head had been crushed by the same hatchet or axe that had presumably killed Mr. Borden, with one misdirected blow striking the back of her scalp, almost at the neck. • The blood on Mrs. Borden's body was dark and congealed.

8. Why blame Lizzie? • Abbie Borden was meant to be visiting a sick friend according to Lizzie – she had seen a note. Lizzie mentioned she may have accidentally burned it! • Lizzie was heard laughing upstairs but she told the police she had been in the kitchen. • Lizzie went missing for 15 minutes – supposedly in the attic looking for fishing gear – it was dusty with no sign of entry. • The police asked Lizzie if there was an axe in the house – she showed them four – one of which had the handle recently broken off it. • Lizzie showed no emotion about the murders. • Lizzie was seen burning a dress on the stove – evidence perhaps. • Lizzie was arrested and charged with three accounts of murder – her father, mother and strangely enough – both of them.

9. The trial lasted two weeks And it took one hour for The jury to find Lizzie Borden NOT GUILTY! The Trial • The jury was made up of almost • entirely elderly middle class men. • Which was good for Lizzie. • The prosecutor based his case on • three negative things: • Lizzie had a reason to murder her parents – the will – £25,000. • That she did murder them. • That she had not acted innocent. William H Moody

10. BUT DID SHE DO IT? WILL WE EVER KNOW FOR SURE! In Conclusion! • Lizzie died on June 1, 1927, at age 67, after a long illness from complications following gall bladder surgery. Emma died nine days later, as a result of a fall down the back stairs of her house in Newmarket. They were buried together in the family plot, along with a sister who had died in early childhood, their mother, their stepmother, and their headless father.