"Some people have ideas about Lizzie and Brigid," the woman sniffed. Brigid was the maid's name. "Probably wasn't true anyway since Brigid married a man later."I stared at the picture, trying to convince myself that it was a reflection, a mistake made in the development process. The woman picked the picture up and put it back in a drawer. "Lizzie's still here," she said.I smiled. I imagined they did this for tours. The admission price was $20 a person, and everyone in the gift shop looked like they wanted to be haunted. But I believed her. Even if you don't believe in ghosts, Lizzie Borden still haunts America.Even if you don't believe in ghosts, Lizzie Borden still haunts America.
Lizzie Borden is the subject of numerous made-for-TV movies, TV shows, and documentaries. She is the subject of intense debate on web forums where everyone seems to have an autodidactic knowledge of criminal law, cobbled together from TV shows and their brother-in-law who as an actual degree. Psychic blogs claim to know the "truth" about Lizzie. Ghost hunters claim to have seen her. Conspiracy theorists cling fast to her innocence. Earlier this year Lifetime aired a lurid TV show called the Lizzie Borden Chronicles, which imagined Lizzie after the trial as a cunning serial killer, played by a smirking Christina Ricci. And yesterday it was announced that Kristen Stewart and Chloe Sevingy are in talks to star in a "psychological thriller about the grisly murders of the Borden family." Three decades ago, Angela Carter wrote a short story, "Mise-en Scene for a Parricide," transforming the murder into an artful look inside the stifling world of frustrated woman. And then, there is the charmingly gory children's rhyme, "Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks/When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." Catchy, if inaccurate.Read more: Partners in Sex Crimes: When Women Help Their Husbands Rape and Murder
In her short story, Angela Carter describes the house perfectly: "A house full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors, for, upstairs and downstairs, all the rooms lead in and out of one another like a maze in a bad dream. It is a house without passages. There is no part of the house that has not been marked as some inmate's personal territory; it is a house with no shared, no common spaces between one room and the next. It is a house of privacies sealed as close as if they had been sealed with wax on a legal document."A house full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors.
The trial transcripts reveal a home of close quarters, closed doors, locked passageways, and cordial avoidance. Lizzie herself notes that she hardly spoke to her mother or father for the forty-eight hours before the murders. Her uncle John Morse, brother to her mother Sarah, was in the home at the time and Lizzie denies ever speaking to him as well—a feat in a house with no hallways.Q. You have been on pleasant terms with your stepmother since then?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Cordial?
A. It depends upon one's idea of cordiality perhaps.
He did it so Abby could make a pigeon pie.The next month, Lizzie and Emma traveled to New Bedford. On August 2, 1892, two days before the murder, Abby and Andrew woke up sick. Abby told her doctor she might have been poisoned. The following day, Lizzie was seen trying to buy prussic acid. (She denied this, but there was eyewitness testimony to the contrary). The next day, Lizzie discovered the body of her father in the sitting room. Moments later, Bridget discovered Abby dead in the guestroom. (Lizzie and Bridget, the maid, were the only ones home at the time.) During the murders, Lizzie claims to have been sitting in the barn loft, eating pears and looking out of the window. She claimed she went up there to find weights for her fishing lines. She was planning on taking a trip the following Monday. During the inquest, she was questioned about these idle moments and insisted that she spent "15 to 20 minutes" in the loft.A. I don't know, but I thought he wrung their necks.
Q. What made you think so?
A. I think he said so.
Q. Did anything else make you think so?
A. All but three or four had their heads on. That is what made me think so.
On August 11, Lizzie Borden was arrested for the murder of Abby and Andrew Borden. Ten months later, on June 20, 1893, she was found "Not Guilty." After the trial, Lizzie and Emma bought a home in Fall River that they called "Maplecroft." In 1905, Emma and Lizzie separated after Lizzie held a party for actress Nance O'Neil. And Emma and Lizzie never spoke again. Lizzie died on June 1, 1927 of pneumonia. Emma died days later.Yet, Lizzie will not die. We can't let her. Her ghost is constantly resurrected, the subject of rumors, legends, fiction and folktales. She cannot die—not just because society is convinced she was a murderer, but because she got away with it.Violence has long been held the domain of the masculine. And little Lizzie, at 5' 2", with her ruffled collars, wide incredulous eyes, and indirect way of speaking, still doesn't seem capable of what the crime scene photos reveal 100 years later: brutal, horrific, force. The pictures of the crime scene show a man, Andrew Borden, sprawled sideways on the couch. His hands and legs rest awkwardly on his body, as if he was a doll posed by a child. Where is head is supposed to be is just a black hole, edged by half a face. The picture of Abby Borden is less shocking, but still the violence of the act is apparent all these years later. She lies flat on the floor, and her body looks soft and swollen, like newly risen dough. The back of her head is a void.Little Lizzie still doesn't seem capable of what the crime scene photos reveal 100 years later.
In her book When She Was Bad, Patricia Pearson writes, "Women commit the majority of child homicides in the United States, a greater share of physical child abuse, an equal rate of sibling violence and assaults on the elderly, about a quarter of child sexual abuse, an overwhelming share of the killing of newborns, and a fair preponderance of spousal assaults." Yet, the most abiding myth about women is that they have no part in violence.Lizzie Borden, America's most famous murderer, remains popular because she both confirms and challenges that myth. She was acquitted precisely because of her femininity, because it seemed that she couldn't possibly have the strength to smash in her father's head over and over. Or perhaps it her femininity that gave her the perfect cover for murder. After all, in a home with no place to herself, with locked doors and tight spaces, how could she breathe—much less find a place to place her rage? The answer, possibly, is right there on the floor of the guest room and later, on couch.Read more: Japan's 'Black Widow' Arrested Again After Poisoning Her Eighth Victim