Lizzie Borden: Part 2 | My Life of Crime with Erin Moriarty

Hi 48 hours listeners, it's Erin Moriardi. As you may know, true crime fans are once again being introduced to the story of Lizzy Borden, the Massachusetts woman who was once acquitted of the hatchet murder of her parents in 1892. In 2019, we covered the Borden case in a two-part series in the first season of my 48 hours podcast series, My Life of Crime, with Erin Moriardi. Here's part one in its entirety and be sure to follow the series, My Life of Crime, with Erin Moriardi, wherever you get your podcasts. Lizzy Borden took a fascinating for mother 40, when she seen when she gave her father 41. It wasn't a lot of time between when she "discovers her dad" and then the police are called in. There's no blood found on her. They never found blood-soaked dresses and she would have had to be, if she was the one who was wielding that hatchet on her set mom and her dad, wouldn't she have had to have blood spatter on her? The eternal question. Where did the blood come? I'm Erin Moriardi 48 hours and this is My Life of Crime. So here I am in Fall River, Massachusetts for part two of my podcast about one of the most sensational crimes of all time. For those who may not know, Lizzy Borden was 32 years old when she became the prime suspect in the ax murders of her father Andrew Borden and her stepmother Abby. Now there's a little poetic license here. Andrew actually had 10 or 11 blows to the head, not 41. And Abby had 17 or 18. And remember, this was back in 1892. But the fascination with this case is so enduring that the scene of the crime, where they were killed, is now the Lizzy Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum. And for reasons that are no longer clear to me, I've agreed to sleep here tonight. Leanne Wilber owns the place. What were you in? I'm in the room that Abby was killed in. Oh good, you took my suggestion. Yes. Why? Why? Will there be anything I see? No, no, you just, I think you seemed a little hesitant, so I was like, oh, put her in the murder room. Of course, of course. But the one who's most scared in the murder room will be fine. So at this point, I say, my good nights, grab my overnight bag and head for the hallway. At the very top of the stairs is the room where I'm going to spend the night. Come in with me. I'm coming into the room because right next to the bed, right where I'm standing right now, between a dresser and the bed, Abby Borden was found, face down, hacked to death. The room itself is actually very nice, although just the little drafty and cold, and I suppose I should have expected that. It's a very old house. The bed is actually extraordinary with this high backboard that almost goes up to the ceiling, and it would be a very charming, very sweet room if not for the two pictures sitting right on the dresser. One, I'm picking it up right now of Abby Borden, face down dead, and this one's even more macabre. There she is. You see her face laying straight down on the carpet with blood around her head. How charming. I get ready for bed. I'm not wearing PJs. I'm actually wearing running clothes. Just in case I have to make a quick dash. I don't think I'm going to get a lot of sleep tonight. It's now 111, and I wake up suddenly, but it's not ghosts that are waking me up. It's the cold, I've never slept in a place so cold. At 130, I hear voices, men, but it's not inside the house. It's outside on the sidewalk. Inside the house, it's dead quiet. I feel like I'm not sleeping at all, but clearly I am, because it's now 3 am. And for some reason, I'm a little warmer than I was. The house doesn't seem quite as cold. Maybe that's because, as I heard, that happy boredom is kind of a friendly ghost, a caring ghost, and maybe she's making sure that I'm not quite as cold in her bedroom. 5 a.m. I wake up hearing the sound of birds. I survive the night. Didn't get a lot of sleep, but I survive the night in the Lizzie Borden, that breakfast, a museum. The next morning, we're treated to scrambled eggs and Johnny Cakes. Johnny Cakes are a lot like pancakes, and that's what people ate in the morning back in 1892. After breakfast, it's time to return to the story of Lizzie Borden, and what really happened back in this house on the morning of August 4, 1892. Two murders committed more than an hour apart in broad daylight. Now, Lizzie made no secret of her dislike of her stepmother, and she had no real alibi for that time. The assumption was that whoever killed one killed the other. So they were always looking for one murderer or one murderer and an accomplice. So, Lizzie Borden was the suspect in both, primarily because of her known hatred for her stepmother. Author Cara Robertson picks up the story again. She's written a fascinating book called The Trial of Lizzie Borden. The police pretty much began by rounding up the usual suspects, that they were looking for what they imagined to be some kind of insane immigrant. Because what was so profoundly upsetting about the idea of Lizzie Borden committing the murders was that she's someone who ticked all the boxes of respectable femininity. She's someone who was active in her church. She even taught Sunday school. And so the idea that someone like her, someone who seemed to represent the ideal of an unmarried woman living in her father's home, the idea that she could have been capable of this was so upsetting. But in fact, what was going on behind closed doors in this house? It wasn't so peaceful, wasn't. No, it was a house of festering tensions. At a formal inquest, witnesses said that Lizzie had tried to buy poison from a chemist the day before the murders. And although she denied it, that was really incriminating evidence. So she was arrested and jailed. And in fact, Lizzie remained in jail until her trial nearly a year later in the neighboring town of New Bedford. I mean, how big a story was it in 1892? The closest parallel I think is to the OJ Simpson case. It was definitely that level of story. It was covered nationally and internationally. And like that case, it seemed to be a case about something more than the guilt or innocence of the individual defendant, that it seemed to speak to something darker at play in the society. consider the hierarchical nature of the society in that era, particularly one that assumed that men and women were biologically profoundly different. Then the case threatened a lot of assumptions about what a woman might do. The beauty of Kara's book is that she lifts the story right from the court record and from the actual transcripts from trial. And I found it fascinating because I cover trials for 48 hours all the time. I'm reading transcripts all the time and there are aspects in the Lizzie Borden trial that I think you could see and hear in a courtroom today. How would someone, like Lizzie Borden, be able to cut up her stepmother? Hit her, what, 18, 19 times with some kind of sharp object, get rid of those clothing. And then an hour, an hour and a half later, whenever it was, when whoever killed her father, how does she hide the blood? Where's the blood? Well, that's basically the defense argument right there is that there is no way that someone could have committed the murders and not have been spattered. We do know that Lizzie Borden burned a dress on the Sunday after the murders. And this is witnessed by her former friend, Alice Russell, who was the first person after the doctor that Lizzie Borden thinks to summon after the murders. She testifies that Lizzie Borden burned this dress. And the idea is that the dress, you know, might have had blood stains on it. The defense, particularly Lizzie and her sister Emma, let's say that the dress is stained with paint and are able to prove that, in fact, it had been stained with paint. It still raised the issue of why Lizzie Borden would have chosen to burn a dress the Sunday after the murders. Doesn't look good. All right, so the trial starts, what is the prosecution's theory? The prosecution's theory is fairly simple, that really only Lizzie Borden has the opportunity to commit the murders, and that she alone has the motive. There is a sort of CSI fall river aspect to this. Although we don't have DNA evidence, and it is too early for fingerprints to be used as identification, let alone for investigation. The police come and they take the count all the blood spots and blood spatter. They pull up pieces of carpet, they take the bodies, they're autopsyde, and perhaps the most chilling piece of medical drama in the case. The corner removes the heads, renders off the flesh, so that they can examine the wounds on the scalp. On both Andrew and Abby? That's right, that's part of how they know how to count all the wounds. And what happens to those skulls? In perhaps the most dramatic moment in the trial, the prosecutor opens up a bag that contains the skulls, and this leads Lizzie Borden to fate. Something that is noted, both as proof of her essential femininity, that she just finally had more than she could bear, and is, you know, rooffully noted as if it's a kind of theatrical gesture on her part. Did Lizzie know that her dad's skull and her stepmother's skull have been removed and would be brought into the trial to be used against her? It seemed to be a surprise. Local legend has it that the doctor who performed the autopsy had rendered off the flesh in lobster pots at home. Oh my God. Okay, that would not happen in a courtroom today. But stunts by prosecutors really aren't that unusual, especially when it's a tough case and believe it or not, Brian Lizzie Borden was a very tough case. So the prosecution's theory is that Lizzie did both was there reason why she would kill Abby first. Significantly, the order of the murders provides a good explanation if you believe that money was at the heart of the crime. Did I happen to mention that Andrew Borden was a wealthy man, a very wealthy man? At the time of his death, his estate was worth almost $300,000. And if that doesn't sound like a lot, think about this. That's more than $8 million today. All of Andrew Borden's estate was split between his daughters. And significantly, that would have been good support for the prosecution. But they're quite reluctant to make that argument that money is not seen as a feminine motive. So the prosecution is essentially forced to argue that Lizzie Borden hated her stepmother, and there may have been some money within that, but that it was basically an extreme exaggeration of the sort of dislike that a stepdaughter might have for her stepmother. So how does the defense counter all of this? Well, the defense, first of all, says, look, it's not your job to unravel the mystery. The question's not whether or not Lizzie Borden is even the most likely suspect. It's whether or not you prove this beyond a reasonable doubt. Describe the closing arguments in this case. The closing arguments are perhaps the most dramatic part of an already sensational trial. The defense argues essentially that Lizzie Borden was someone who is exactly how she appears. That she is this proper, respectable church-going woman who lived a quiet life. And then just on one Thursday morning, her life is completely upended by the murders of her stepmother and her father. And then the defense also makes the argument contrary to the medical evidence that Lizzie Borden simply could not physically have committed the murders. And that was consistent with prevailing ideas about women's capacity but was not consistent with the evidence that was actually presented at the trial. So tell me about inside the Jerry Room, you have 12 men. Yeah, the assumption is that the jurors will take a while to go through the evidence, but they find that they're unanimous on the first ballot. So what do they do when they first go into the room? What do they do? What are the jurors do? They take a vote and they're all unanimous for not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty? Yes. Surprised? I sure was. I grew up thinking that Lizzie Borden was absolutely the killer. So I just assumed that she was convicted of the murders and she wasn't. But I was also shocked by what Cara told me next. And at that point, the crowd erupts into cheers. And those are joined by cheers of the people outside waiting for news. Cheers because they're glad that she's acquitted. Cheers, cheers of joy and also of relief. You can see that many of the men in the courthouse are crying. Because people really felt she was innocent? I can only imagine how tense it was. And so you can imagine that there would be some relief in being able to believe, at least for a moment, that the, you know, an innocent person was being released. But also that, you know, as I said, I think there's something larger at stake in this trial. And that it's not simply whether or not Lizzie Borden herself killed her stepmother and more importantly her father. But whether or not someone like her could have done it, someone who seemed so unremarkable, someone who seemed to be on paper the model of unmarried ladyhood, whether a respectable woman could be so transformed as to commit brutal crimes like that. Cara, what do you think? Did she do it? I'm in the same place as many of the people were at the time, which is that as a practical matter, it's quite difficult to believe she could have done it. But at the same time, it seems impossible to me that anyone else could have done it. The jurors, the all-male jury panel back in the 1890s just couldn't accept the idea that a woman like Lizzie, who was so proper, so well dressed, could commit such heinous acts. That probably wouldn't happen today if it was the same kind of case and a jury today. So the big question is, did she do it or did she not? Who did kill Andrew and Abby Borden with an axe on that summer day in August of 1892? And maybe that's why the story still resonates a 127-year-old murder mystery. As for Lizzy, she nurses Mr. Emma split their inheritance and bought a house in the fanciest part of Fall River Massachusetts. But there was no happy ending. They had a falling out and they never saw each other again after 1905. Lizzie spent the remainder of her life ostracized by the Fall River community. I would have loved to have interviewed her. But the truth is, she never did talk publicly about the murders and she died of heart disease in 1927. I'm Aram Moriarty, 48 hours. And that's my life of crime. This podcast series is developed by 48 hours in partnership with CBS News Radio. Judy TaiGuard is our executive producer. Nancy Kramer is our executive story editor, Mike Valle, the series producer editor. This episode was produced by Luis Herraldo, Jamie Halman, and Tamara Whitesman. Morgan Canty and Emma Steele are our associate producers, Craig Swagler, the vice president and general manager of CBS News Radio. Charles Z. Pavlunas is the executive vice president of business development and the CFO of CBS News. A special thanks to our guests, Cara Robertson, and the team of the Lizzie board in bed and breakfast. Finally, a shout out to all of you, our fans. We owe it to you. 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