Lizzie Borden

The Axe, the Trial and the Woman Who Would Not Hang

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on July 19 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts, into a well-off but emotionally strained household. Her father, Andrew Borden, was a self-made man, hardworking, frugal and immensely wealthy by local standards. He was president of several banks, owned extensive property and had amassed an estate valued at what would be over $10 million today. Unfortunately, within the household, warmth and generosity were in short supply.

Lizzie's biological mother died when she was very young. Two years later, her father remarried Abby Gray, a relationship that would grow cold over time, particularly for Lizzie and her elder sister, Emma. By the time of Abby's death neither daughter referred to her as "mother." The house on Second Street, where the family lived, was not just physically tight and austere but emotionally suffocating. While Emma was soft-spoken and modest, Lizzie had a more vivid personality, often described by acquaintances as odd, self-important and difficult.

Lizzie lived a life that straddled the expectations of her time. Unmarried, childless and neither a housewife nor a career woman, she instead leaned heavily into civic respectability. She was active in her church, taught Sunday school and was involved in women's societies. In public, she seemed the model of Christian femininity. In private, however, tensions simmered. There were whispered allegations of shoplifting, a deepening dislike of her stepmother and a growing sense of frustration over her dependency on her father's strict financial control.

Everything changed on August 4, 1892.

That morning, Lizzie, now 32, was at home with Abby, their maid Bridget Sullivan and later, her father Andrew. Emma was away. At 11:00 a.m., Andrew was found murdered in the sitting room, his head crushed by multiple axe blows. Abby was discovered upstairs, killed earlier that morning, her skull similarly smashed. The brutality shocked the nation. Abby had received 19 whacks; Andrew 11.

Suspicion quickly turned inward. John Morse, a visiting relative, and Bridget, the maid, were ruled out based on their alibis. That left only Lizzie.

Her account was inconsistent. She claimed to have been in the barn during the murders but there was no trace of her activity there. She also offered varying statements about what she heard or saw. Crucially, she told police her stepmother had gone out after receiving a note—yet no such note was found. Her behavior struck investigators as odd. She was seen burning a dress after the murders, allegedly stained with paint. Witnesses later recalled she had tried to buy poison days before the killings.

Still, Lizzie didn't fit the mold of a murderer. She was a wealthy, white Protestant woman from a "good" family. Victorian America couldn't easily imagine such a woman hacking her parents to death with an axe. When she was finally arrested, a week after the crime, many in Fall River were stunned.

Her trial the following year became a media sensation, the O.J. Simpson case of its time. Lizzie, who never testified, sat demurely in court in black mourning attire. Her legal team included a former governor of Massachusetts and they played heavily on her image of a grieving daughter, a devout Christian and a woman too refined to commit such a horrific crime.

The prosecution pointed to her conflicting stories, her clear resentment of Abby and the implausibility of an intruder committing both murders undetected. They even introduced a burned dress and tried to establish a motive rooted in family property disputes but they had no murder weapon, no blood-soaked clothing and no witnesses.

Key pieces of evidence were excluded. Her inconsistent inquest testimony was ruled inadmissible on the grounds she hadn't had legal counsel. Her attempt to purchase poison was also struck from the record. In the end, the jury, twelve white, middle-class men, took just over an hour to find her not guilty. The courtroom erupted in cheers. Lizzie was free but not forgiven.

Though she inherited part of her father's vast estate, she found herself shunned by society. She moved into a grand home called Maplecroft in Fall River's elite neighborhood but few visited. Rumors clung to her like smoke. She hosted parties, traveled and befriended the actress Nance O'Neill, an unconventional friendship that sparked gossip and perhaps cost her even her sister's loyalty. Emma moved out of Maplecroft in 1905 and the two sisters never reconciled.

In her later years, Lizzie, who began calling herself Lizbeth, lived in growing isolation. Accusations of shoplifting resurfaced. Once welcomed at church and civic functions, she was now a local pariah. Yet she never publicly addressed the case again.

She died in 1927, at age 66. Emma followed her nine days later. Both are buried in Fall River's Oak Grove Cemetery, just steps from Andrew and Abby.

Lizzie Borden's legacy is tangled. She was acquitted, but never exonerated. Her name lives on not through charity or public service but through a gruesome nursery rhyme that falsely immortalizes her as the woman who gave "forty whacks."

However, the real Lizzie Borden, shrewd, frustrated and perhaps repressed by the limitations of her time, remains elusive. Was she an innocent scapegoat of gender bias and weak policing, or a cold-blooded killer shielded by her social class?

History never delivered a verdict. Perhaps that is what makes her story so enduring.