It was on this day in 1893 that the verdict was announced in the trial of Lizzie Borden, who had been accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an ax. It was one of the first murder trials in American history that got covered by the national press, not because it involved anybody famous, but just because of the sensational nature of the crime.
The case against Lizzie was entirely circumstantial. No one had witnessed the murders, no weapon was found, and there was no physical evidence linking her to the crime. All the police could prove was that Lizzie had been in the house at the time of the murders, she had a lot of money to gain, and she had recently tried to buy poison at the local pharmacy.
The trial lasted for two weeks, and Lizzie was found innocent on this day in 1893. No one else was ever tried for the murder. She told the press on the day of her acquittal that it was the happiest day of her life, but she refused to say anything else. After the trial, she bought herself a three-story mansion, where she had running water for the first time in her life. She never spoke about the murders in public again.
Most newspapers, including The New York Times, wrote at the time that the trial of Lizzie Borden had been an unjust and cruel persecution of an innocent woman. But a journalist named Edwin H. Porter wrote the first book about the trial, The Fall River Tragedy (1893), in which he distorted much of the evidence and testimony at the trial, in order to make Lizzie look guilty. There have been dozens of books written about the murders since then, most of which implicate Lizzie as the murderer. So even though she was acquitted, she’s become the most famous murderess in American history.
One thought on “Lizzie Borden took an ax — or not”
Comments are closed.
and so it has always been? the american public is more fascinated by a single murder case than in the causualties of war, more busily intrigued by the lurid circumstances of crime scene investigation than the anonymous bloodshed around the globe at the hands of its thousands of soldiers? there is something hopelessly juvenile in all this which suggests we have always been and will always be a teenage country. it suggests, as estragon said, there is nothing to be done.
i’m beginning to come round to that opinion.