Lizzie Borden, the famous woman from Fall River, Massachusetts, who went to trial for brutally murdering her father and step-mother, was acquitted, so why does the age-old rhyme vividly describe her wielding an ax, and why do so many of us believe she did it? In this episode, Mary, Kirk, and Haley break down the facts of the murders and explore why a century-old case captures our imagination in such a profound way. Why did the trial create a media frenzy across the country and bring a city to a standstill? How did it reflect important social issues of the time like women’s rights and classism?
Visit our episode page for additional resources:
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/podcasts/lizzie-borden-the-murders-the-trail-the-media-frenzy
Lizzie Borden, the famous woman from Fall River, Massachusetts, who went to trial for brutally murdering her father and step-mother, was acquitted, so why does the age-old rhyme vividly describe her wielding an ax, and why do so many of us believe she did it? In this episode, Mary, Kirk, and Haley break down the facts of the murders and explore why a century-old case captures our imagination in such a profound way. Why did the trial create a media frenzy across the country and bring a city to a standstill? How did it reflect important social issues of the time like women’s rights and classism?
Visit our episode page for additional resources:
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/podcasts/lizzie-borden-the-murders-the-trail-the-media-frenzy
Intro/Outro (00:06)
From the Bill of Rights Institute. Fabric of History weaves together US history, founding principles, and what all of this means to us today. Join us as we pull back the curtains of the past to see what's inside.
Haley (00:20)
Lizzie Borden, the famous woman from Fall River, Massachusetts, who went to trial for brutally murdering her father and stepmother, was acquitted. So why does the age-old rhyme vividly describe her wielding an axe? And why do so many of us believe she did it? In this episode, Mary Kirk and I, Haley, break down the facts of the murders and explore why a century-old case captures our imagination in such a profound way. Why did the trial create a media frenzy across the country and bring a coastal city to a standstill? And how did it reflect important social issues of the time, like women's rights and classism?
Mary (01:05)
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Fabric of History. I'm Mary Patterson. And today I'm joined by Kirk Higgins, BRI's director of content, and our producer, Haley Watson. Welcome, Haley. Welcome, Kirk.
Haley (01:19)
Thank you. It should be a really fun one. I'm excited.
Kirk (01:22)
Yeah. Excited to be here.
Mary (01:24)
Kirk and Haley are here with me today to explore a story that I knew nothing about. And I'm chuckling a little bit because it is one of the most famous and sensational murders in American history. So how I managed to not hear about this one is perhaps the subject of another podcast. But I'm referring to the story of Lizzie Borden. In 1893, Lizzie Borden was put on trial for the murder of her father and her stepmother. Her trial was a sensation. The press had a field day, and the verdict not guilty, caused pandemonium at the courthouse. The immediate question, I think, is obvious. So, Haley, do you think she did it?
Haley (02:05)
I do. I really don't want the ghost of Lizzie Borden to come after me. Based on all the evidence, it would have been very hard for someone else to commit the crime. So I would say yes.
Mary (02:17)
Okay. What about you, Kirk? Do you think she got away with murder?
Kirk (02:20)
I think I've got to go with that reasonable doubt and say I'm not sure if I was sitting on the jury. I think I'd have to say I'm not 100% convinced, but who knows? Maybe Haley exploring the case again for me will change my mind.
Mary (02:35)
Well, I think that's part of what makes her story so compelling is that even today there is a great debate over the verdict and how the trial progressed, and who actually did it. So I am going to reserve my verdict until the end of our conversation. Ha ha. You guys just have to wait till the end. But her story and the soil of her trial are really interesting in their own right. But it also gives us a chance to dive into a really timeless question that we hold near and dear to our hearts here at the Bill of Rights Institute, which is what does it mean to have a fair trial in the United States? And that's a big question. Capital B, capital Q. So before we attempt that, I think perhaps we should start with the basic facts. So Haley, who was Lizzie Borden?
Haley (03:25)
So, yeah, just kind of going off what I knew going into this podcast. I think we all know the famous rhyme. Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. That's kind of all I knew about the case. And it's obviously pretty clear from this rhyme what seems to have happened. But it doesn't reveal the spectacle that really was this trial and all the many pieces that went into fitting together exactly what happened. And in the background on all the characters involved, I found it really interesting just doing research on all the color of the town that Lizzie grew up in, her father, her stepmother. It was just very interesting. And there's a lot to it. So just to start from the beginning, Lizzie Borden was 32 and she had an older sister named Emma. They both lived at home with their father, Andrew, and stepmother Abby. And I think it's an important fact to point out that Abby actually became Lizzie and Emma's mother by marriage. When Lizzie was five, she was taking the role of the mother since Lizzie was very young.
Haley (04:39)
And I think I realized that kind of late on in the case. And I found that pretty important and interesting to think about. But anyway, Andrew was a very well-to-do do man in the town. He was described as one of the wealthiest and potentially most unpopular men in town. He was frugal to a fault. He did not let the family live in the well-to-do area of town, which is called The Hill. So really, the town is still a Hill, and the richest people live at the top of the Hill. More middle-class people live in the middle. And then the poorest lived at the very bottom of the Hill. So Andrew picked a house in the middle of town, even though he definitely could have afforded that higher class lifestyle. And that's something that there is documented evidence that Lizzie and her sister both resented. They had to go a further distance to see their friends, who are mainly the more well-to-do. And Andrew was a self-made man. He really built a name for himself in the town. He became head of one of the town's largest banks and was also a big property owner.
Haley (05:44)
So people definitely knew who he was, for better or for worse. Lizzie and her sister and her stepmother were definitely well known in the town. It wasn't just kind of a random family that had moved in. They were very established. And Lizzie had established herself in town. She was part of the Central Congregational Church. She served as Secretary to the Fruit and Flower Mission, which I'm not sure what that was, but it sounds delightful and not sinister. She was Treasurer to the Young Women's Christian Temperance Union and also taught Sunday school at the Central Mission. So this was not someone who was hidden from society, who shied away from public events and socializing so kind of important facts to know about this case and what led up to it. There were some jewelry robberies from the Borden house a few months before the murders. And this made everyone in the family very panicked. In fact, Andrew started locking his bedroom that he shared with Abby and leaving the key on the Mantel downstairs. There was kind of an intricate locking system going on. They double-locked all the doors. They were kind of freaked out about this strange jewelry robbery, as anyone would be.
Haley (07:02)
Someone came in and stole your things. Also, in the few days that led up to the murder, the whole family claimed that they were sick, so they had some kind of stomach sickness and there was some thought that they might have been poisoned. So, yeah, that's kind of the lead-up to the murders, definitely try some interesting circumstances around that.
Kirk (07:24)
Yeah, I think it's super interesting, especially thinking about this case in particular, because you look at these cases, and Haley, as you're describing it like you can see the little details that are going to come up in the trial. But it also puts it in a larger context that we're thinking about, kind of getting to Mary's question about this sort of big question about fair trials, because you also set up sort of this period, which is, of course, the Gilded Age period, thinking about sort of rising urbanization and rapidly expanding economic opportunities, but also a lot of increasing economic inequality. And thinking about that historical context, I think is really interesting, too, especially when we dive in a little bit later into sort of how we think about these trials.
Mary (08:10)
So just sort of recapping the basics. So the Borden family, they live in Fall River, Massachusetts. It's the Gilded Age or Victorian era, the end tail end here, the 19th century. And they're a wealthy family, but the father is frugal. So they're living in a home that's not sort of with the upper crust of society but sort of in the middle. And there's some resentment on the part of the daughters, Abby and her sister Emma about this lifestyle. They have a weird locking system in their house, which is interesting if you're thinking about who has access to the house to commit these murders.
Haley (08:52)
And another thing that kind of played into their resentment towards their dad was that Abby's stepmother, Jane Gray, and her daughter Sarah Whitehead, had a house. And Jane actually moved out of the house. And Andrew bought half of that house. So that they could keep that house in the family. So this is Abby's family. And Emma and Lizzy really resented this because they felt like their dad wasn't doing enough for them. And he invested all this money into this other property for his wife's family. And that is actually brought up a lot in the trial. It might seem petty, but that was definitely something that they were mad at their dad about.
Mary (09:31)
I never think resentment is petty, speaking as someone who resents lots of things. So we have this family and there's tension in the family, it sounds like, with the stepmother, and there's tension towards the father at having them live this sort of live under their means, I guess, is the way of saying that. Okay, so this is all important information. So what actually happens? Can you walk us through, like, the murder and how Lizzie becomes the prime suspect?
Haley (09:59)
Yes. So the day of the murders was Thursday, August 4, 1892. The people who are staying at the house were John Morse, who was Lizzie and Emma's uncle. Then, of course, Andrew the father, Abby the stepmother, Bridget, who was an Irish maid. And that was it. Emma had gone to visit some friends, so she was gone. She was out of the town for that day. So really what happened was that John Morse, the uncle, left in the morning to go visit some family. So he was gone. And that was his alibi was that he was gone for the whole morning. He would be back after the murders. Andrew also went out to go for a walk to the bank. So really, it was just Abby, Lizzie, and Bridget the maid, basically Lizzie, this is all kind of based on Bridget's evidence, a little bit of Lizzie's evidence, but really all we can go on is what came out in trial. It's obviously based on people's evidence, as we weren't there. So word of mouth. But Lizzie had told Bridget to not lock the house when she was outside washing the windows because she would be around.
Haley (11:12)
So even though they had this intricate locking system, there's some question about whether that screen door was locked, because Lizzie had told Bridget that basically Bridget washed the outside windows of the house first and when she was washing the inside windows, then she saw Andrew come in. She also heard Lizzie from the top of the stairs laugh when she was fiddling with the lock. She had some issues letting Andrew into the house so she could say that Lizzie was at the top of the stairs. Then Bridget went upstairs to wash the windows and Lizzie told Bridget and Andrew that Abby had received a note about a sick acquaintance and went out. So she was gone. They didn't have to worry about her. When Andrew came back from the bank, he didn't have to worry about her because she was gone. And then Andrew went to the sitting room to take a nap. His wife wasn't there. He'd get a bit of R and R. And then Bridget and Lizzie went into the dining room. They were ironing handkerchiefs and actually talking about the best place to buy a dress. So they're talking about, I think there's a sale going on at a local store.
Haley (12:18)
And after this, Bridget had enough. She went up to take a nap. Lizzie then claimed she went to the barn to retrieve a piece of iron. And she had two contrasting statements for why she did this. One was to mend a flower pot and the other was to make a sinker for a fishing line. So those were her two kind of excuses for that. And she said she was about out there for about 20 minutes. Then she came back and went to the sitting room. And that's when she found her father brutally murdered. It was a very gruesome crime, as described in the rhyme. It wasn't actually that many wacks they later found out, but it definitely was a very disfigured individual. And he certainly was dead. So this caused a lot of commotion. Lizzie sent them made out to get a local doctor. Interestingly enough, this kind of plays into the class system at that time. They had some neighbors who were close who were doctors, who were Catholics, but they did not want to go call a Catholic. They wanted to get a Protestant doctor, member of the higher class that Bridget had to go a little bit farther to get the doctor.
Haley (13:25)
But there's a lot of commotion. They were policemen, doctors. And then finally they thought, maybe we should go check on Abby. And that's when they discovered her upstairs in the guest room, which is where John Morris, the uncle, was staying. So that's kind of the scene right there. And a lot of people did testify that Lizzie seemed very calm for someone who had just witnessed her father and stepmother being murdered.
Mary (13:53)
So we have this brutal double homicide here. The father and the stepmother have been hacked to death with a hatchet. And you can see and they took pictures of the crime scene. It's really pretty gruesome for Lizzie. And as you said, no one was in the house except for the maid and Lizzie. So Lizzie becomes the prime suspect. And I think my understanding is this is where the trial becomes really interesting is that you have 1892, you have this upper-middle-class woman in Gilded age society. So she's from a well-to-do family. She's involved in her Church. She teaches Sunday school. So she's sort of like the epitome of this upper-middle-class woman is being accused of this heinous crime. So, of course, I think even if that happened today, there would be a lot of interest in like, oh, my gosh, did she do it? Why didn't she do it? So I think there's sort of this timeless fascination with I don't know if it's just the fact that it was this gruesome murder or if it's the fact that it's allegedly a woman that did it. I don't know if we just have a hard time accepting the idea that women can be violent.
Haley (15:16)
And people did have a hard time accepting that a woman could do this. And that's why early on in the inquest and also in the trial, they were throwing out series of very murderous, low-class individuals. And they talked about Portuguese or Swedes or Catholics because at the time, those kinds of people were looked down upon back then. But they were talking about some gruesome man who kind of came out of the woodwork or came from a local farm, someone who hadn't been in the country long. There's a lot of anti-immigration at play as well. So they were pulling everything out of the hat maybe some kind of creature came out of the woodwork and did this horrible crime because it was very hard to swallow that a woman could do this. And in the inquest, Doctor Bowen, who was the Borden family doctor, had given Lizzie a good amount of morphine to cope with all of her stress. And she was very confused in the inquest when she gave her testimony. This is the only time that she took the stand was in the inquest. It wasn't in the actual trial, but she had a very confusing testimony of where she was.
Haley (16:25)
Was she ironing the handkerchiefs before or after she saw Abby or her dad come in from the bank? So there was a lot of confusion. I think this played into why she was indicted.
Mary (16:39)
There's a couple of things that stand out to me so far. So first of all, I think, again, the story, and it sounds like just hearing the story and someone like myself who didn't know anything about Lizzie Borden just from the facts that you presented. I'm like, of course, she did it. But we have to think about we have these we've sort of touched on the role of the press. So I think maybe we'll take a break and come back to that because there's a lot to unpack there. And there's also this idea of we have these laws and we have these processes to protect people who are accused of violating the law. So even though I'm not like, oh, she did it, there has to be an inquest. You have to have testimony, we have to have evidence. So I think this goes back to this idea of this idea of due process. You have protections. The burden of proof is on the accuser. So let's take a quick break and maybe we can talk a little bit more about the inquest and how the press gets involved and try to make some sense of this.
Mary (17:46)
Kirk, you mentioned at the very start of our conversation that you had reasonable doubts about Lizzie's guilt. So what did you mean by that, or how does that connect to what Haley has told us so far?
Kirk (17:59)
Yes, I think it's interesting, especially when we're looking at these trials. We all have opinions and we'll talk about the press in a minute. But like, the press forms all these opinions, but it's important. The idea of trial by jury is really important that your peers are sitting down and judging you. It's not some abstract government official who may be preserving their own power. So you have your own, hopefully, local citizens who are judging you. And we always have this idea that beyond a reasonable doubt, gets to the idea of innocent until proven guilty. Right. So the state has an obligation if they're bringing charges against you, to prove beyond any moral doubt that you committed this crime. And I think with a lot of these big profile trials, there's always this vagueness this story that gets built up, and this idea that it gets really hard to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. So you always have these people that are kind of holding out and thinking about, well, what if this and what if that? And I think Lizzie Borden's trial is a great example of just that. There's enough degree of uncertainty where you're like, I don't know.
Kirk (19:08)
I think she did it. But did she? I'm not sure.
Mary (19:14)
I'm assuming for killing two people, let alone, like, the horrific manner they're like, hacked to death. If she's found guilty, she will be hung. So, I mean, the stakes are really high in this trial. We have a dramatic and a brutal killing. We have an unlikely suspect. We have this sort of upper-middle-class woman who's involved in all the, quote, unquote right things, Sunday school and such and such that's accused, and then the press is going to latch onto the story and they're following the trial really closely. So, Haley, what is it about this media public frenzy that sort of stands out in the Lizzie Borden case?
Haley (20:04)
Yeah, I was really surprised. As I mentioned, just the atmosphere of the trial. They described it as resembling the bustle of a mill or a stock exchange. Apparently, there are people out on the streets who brought their lunch, who skipped school, who came out just to get a glimpse of Lizzie or hear a bit of the trial. And Lizzie had to push through this crowd. There are actually a lot of women as well who are interested in the case. A lot of upper-class people would come out in support of Lizzie, but this is really the event of the decade or maybe even a lifetime for a lot of these townspeople. So it was a very electric trial. And you don't get that sense if you just listen to the rhyme or read one thing about the case. But people were glued to this. Just like today when we have cases like OJ Simpson is very similar in terms of the fascination of the public, but just in terms of the trial. So this opened June 5, 1893. So it was about six or so months after the preliminary hearing of the inquest. And really what they were looking at was, where is the murder weapon?
Haley (21:17)
Why would someone do this? How could a woman do this? And back then, of course, they didn't have DNA. They didn't have fingerprinting. They couldn't really do mathematical calculations. So much the technology on where the blood-spattered or things like that. So some of the methods that they use seemed a little barbaric for our times, but they try their best. I mean, there are a lot of doctors, medical experts involved from Ivy League schools. This was a big deal. It wasn't just a local doctor who was taking the stand. A lot of people came through, came to the house, inspected the bodies. This is a very big deal, but just kind of looking at the facts of the case. The rhyme suggests that Abby was killed with 40 blows. Andrew was killed with 41. This is not true. It was pretty much a fact that Abby was killed first based on kind of evidence from what she'd eaten, her blood. I don't want to get into it, but let's just take that as fact that she was killed first upstairs, remember in that guest room, she was probably making a bed or doing some cleaning.
Haley (22:28)
I think it was from the back of the head. She was taken by surprise. And then Andrew was killed second, and he received about ten or eleven blows. So Abby had a lot more blows. I think that's an undisputed fact, which is interesting. Maybe the murderer hated Abby Morrison, had to cover up kind of what he or she did by killing Andrew, as well as maybe Andrew would know about it or not be able to deal with it in some way. That's my suspicion. But very gruesome crimes. They actually found multiple hatchets in the cellar of the boarding house. And many of them did have dust on them. So those were ruled out as potential weapons because dust couldn't form on weapons in a matter of hours after being used. There was a hatchet without a handle, and the handle seems to have been broken pretty recently. And this did not have dust on it. It had something that resembled ash. For a while, they were thinking that this was the weapon. This hatchet was a weapon. It fit into the skull of Andrew and Abby.
Mary (23:36)
I want to interrupt you for a second because we mentioned or I mentioned before that I think part of what made this crime so dramatic was that it's very brutal that these people were hacked multiple times with a hatchet that actually fit into the skull. In the trial, the prosecution brings out the skulls and puts the hatchet in there. I mean, really like, oh, very traumatic. But the fact that it's a woman that's accused of this. And I think this goes to this idea, this late 19th-century idea of what is woman, especially for this upper-middle-class woman, it's culturally inconceivable for a woman to have committed so heinous a crime. And one of the newspapers, even at the time, comments that she doesn't have, quote, Amazonian proportions. So just the idea that such a manly weapon couldn't be wielded by a woman or a woman would never do something so brutal and horrific. I think that's part of what made it sensational at the time is that you have these very specific notions of femininity in this era. And Lizzie Borden is like many of these people are thinking, how could she have possibly done this?
Mary (24:57)
So I think that's worth considering sort of the context of the world view of many of these people, like Lizzie at the time.
Haley (25:06)
Yeah. I think the two questions are how could a woman have done this? And how could anyone have done this? Because just the lineup of circumstances was so specific. And like I said, there was this intricate locking system. The house wasn't that big. There was a maid there. So really, how could anyone have committed these crimes, including Lizzie, and gotten away with it and not had anyone seen anything? There were some comments about Lizzie changing dresses halfway throughout the day. Potentially, maybe one of those dresses could have had some blood on it, but there was never any bloody dresses found. A pretty damning piece of evidence came from one of Lizzie's best friends who actually stayed at Lizzie's house in the days after the trial, which I find hard to believe. She stayed at the house and was fine with it, actually. The bodies were still there, but she obviously wanted to support her friend. But she said that she saw Lizzie burn a dress in the days after the murders, and she didn't get a good look at it. She thought it had paint on it, so that was a little bit suspicious. And then she also gave some evidence that in the days before the murder, I think it was maybe the day before the murder.
Haley (26:16)
Lizzie told Alice, I feel as if something was hanging over me that I cannot throw off. And it comes over me at times, no matter where I am, I don't know, but somebody will do something. Pretty vague, but she had voiced her anger towards her father, all the tensions of her family dynamics. So that's something Alice brought up. I don't know how good a friend she was after that testimony, but I thought that was interesting. And the prosecution is definitely like that.
Mary (26:46)
This makes me think of again, I have to go back to Kirk and the Reasonable Doubt. There are so many suspicious and sketchy things about this story. She burns her dress also the maid, where was she during all of this? The only ones that had access to the house, and it just seems super suspicious to me. But again, if we're talking about a court of law, they can't definitively prove that this was the murder weapon and they can't definitively prove she had on this dress and burned it because it's gone. So it's like poking holes in the prosecution's argument, anything.
Haley (27:24)
They really couldn't prove anything and that was the problem.
Mary (27:26)
Well, I think the press I mean, the press again, and even this has echoes of today certainly thought they knew what was going on. And I think that's also what's really interesting about this story is that you see this closing of ranks and you have the upper-middle-class people saying, of course, she's innocent, she's a, quote 'Protestant nun.' She never could have done something like this. And you also have these more working-class papers that really say, well, she's obviously guilty. So it's exposing these fault lines in society between working-class immigrants. And you even said they first suspected some sort of random immigrant that had done this because that fit their narrative. Right. Only such a person like that could have done something. So heinous. So I think it's really interesting how you see these divisions coming out over this story. Yeah.
Kirk (28:17)
I think it's fascinating to me that these major trials that come up always reflect what's going on in society. And of course, we mentioned a couple of them. I know, Haley, you mentioned OJ Simpson, but the one that comes to mind for me is happening in the same period, but is the Dreyfus affair, which of course happens in France but becomes a very polarizing thing that represents a lot within French society. There's others later into the 20th century. You have things like the Alger Hiss trial that's reflecting tensions over communism. I mean, you have these moments, and I think Lizzie Borden is no exception. And Mary, you talked about sort of the reasonable doubt. And I know I brought it up a couple of times, but to me, it's important to keep in mind as we think about these trials, there's a cost to having that high bar. Right. It's hard if Haley thinks that Lizzy is guilty. Obviously, we're letting an innocent person walk free. But that high bar is there for a reason to try to make it difficult to convict someone of a capital crime like this, should there be a reasonable doubt? And it's an important thing.
Kirk (29:23)
And I think that the public nature of the trial, to me, gets in the 6th Amendment. This idea that you get a speedy and public trial. Well, the public piece of it is really important because it means that you're not being tried behind closed doors. Everyone can see the evidence. If there is a miscarriage of justice or people are concerned about it, there's an opportunity for the public to see it and to comment and hopefully be a part of sort of seeking justice on behalf of the accused. But again, with this press coverage. There comes a cost to that. There are challenges that result from that kind of thing.
Mary (29:58)
Another important piece of that, of the burden of proof being on the state is that you have a jury of your peers. And I think that's a really interesting piece of this trial, too, is that her jury is all men, of course, because women couldn't vote, so they couldn't serve on juries. Again, the make-up of the jury is something that we talk about even today when we're talking about crimes, especially these high-profile cases. But we have the benefit of hindsight and we know that she is found not guilty. So what happens next? What's the response to that, Haley?
Haley (30:32)
Yeah, just to back up. Also interesting point is that women's rights groups also rallied to Lizzie's side and did protest that she would not really be judged by a jury of her peers because there were no women. So that still kind of in the midst of the women's rights movement. And they definitely were on her side in this, but yes. So when she was declared not guilty, a cheer came from inside and outside the courtroom. So it's a unanimous jury. Two of the three judges actually cried. Lizzie received telegrams of Congratulations like she was a celebrity. So I thought, this is really interesting that the majority of people, it seemed, were very excited that she was not found guilty for whatever reason. Interesting enough, she decides to live in Fall River even after that whole ordeal, being put on trial in front of her whole town, and she will move into a house with her sister Emma that she named Maplecroft. And some people commented that it's kind of a hoity-toity thing to do. Not many people, even members of the elite, name their houses like they were estates or mansions. She changed her name to Elizabeth.
Haley (31:45)
And then she became friends with some actresses, kind of got into theater. She did a lot of charity, but Emma actually couldn't stand Liz's friend actress named Nancy O'Neill. And she moved out of the house and they never spoke again. So Liz's just having a bad time with her family throughout her life, unfortunately. But she lives her life out in peace with no further major issues in Fall River. She never married, but I think she definitely had good acquaintances in the town. She could never get her status back. Interestingly enough, as a well-respected member of the elite. She was shunned from her old Church after the trial, even though it seemed like initially, members of her class came out in support of her. After a while, they did shun her. And then when she died, she had instructions to be buried at her father's feet, which I think was interesting. I don't know if this could be maybe a sign from my perspective that she could be guilty, that she wants repentance. She wants him to forgive her. So she wants to be at his feet, not besides him.
Kirk (32:50)
Yeah. I think what strikes me about that is we hear these stories, we hear about these trials, but there's people at the heart of them, there's on either side, whether it's the side of the victim and those who lost their lives to the families that were impacted by that. There's also those who survive, those who've been accused. Remembering the human side of these trials, I think, is really important and can be really profound.
Haley (33:13)
Everyone kind of knows the name Lizzie Borden, how much they know after this podcast we'll all be experts, of course. But there's something about this trial that just endures, which is fascinating. I still want to keep learning about this. Apparently, I think Mary and I were talking about this before the recording. One of the attorneys, the defense attorneys, had some journals that never were released to the public that are still at his law firm to this day locked away. And who knows if those will ever be released or what secrets does have. So even today, new evidence is coming out and questions are still being asked.
Mary (33:53)
I started by asking you guys if you thought she was guilty or not. And we had a split jury. And I'm going to come in and I'm going to say I have a qualifying answer. So I do think it's really suspicious to me, especially after the trial when she's acquitted, she sort of lives the life that she always wanted. Right. She moves to the upper crust of society and does spends more money, which she wanted to do before when she was living with her dad. And it just seemed like who else could have done it other than the maid? So I feel like but can I say it's beyond a reasonable doubt? I don't think that I can. It's like I want to, but I can't. No, I'm not making you look bad. I mean, if you're talking about is justice, how do you achieve justice? And I don't think we like to think about it, that it's always going to be served, but sometimes it doesn't. But we have all these systems in place and these protections to make sure that it is a high bar, like you were saying, Kirk, and that the people and the press are reporting on it now.
Mary (34:59)
Is it good reporting? That's a whole other question, but it's out in the open, I think, which is good and healthy. And the fact that we're still talking about it today speaks to our concern for something. I mean, these are people's lives that are taken horrifically. It could be taken from you if you're accused of having done them. So it truly is life or death. So it's important to take it seriously. And it's important, I think, to understand all the threads that go into the tale. So I really want to kick it out to our listeners and ask you? What do you think? Was she guilty? Is she innocent? What are your thoughts? Kirk Haley, thank you so much for helping us unpack the story of Lizzie Borden. I know I learned a lot and we'd like to hear from you guys what you learned. What you think. Was this a miscarriage of justice or not? So until then, you can find us on all the social media channels and we'd love to hear from you. And until next time, keep asking questions.
Intro/Outro (36:07)
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