Winter Times News ~ Hard Times in the 1850s ~ | Page 2

On August 4, 1892, the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden were found hacked to pieces in their own home. Mr. Borden’s body was found warm whereas his wife’s body was found cold, suggesting that she had been killed almost ninety minutes earlier than Mr. Borden.

Only two days after the double homicide, people suspected Lizzie. Eli Bence, from the drug store, told police that Lizzie had come in and tried to buy prussic acid, a very lethal poison.

Lizzie’s older sister hadn’t been in the house at the time of the murder but Lizzie had. They also found it suspicious that though she was “upstairs…[putting] shams on the pillows” she didn’t know where her mother was at the time she was murdered in the upstairs bedroom.

When asked where she was when her father was murdered, Lizzie replied that she was in the barn, but police suspected that the killing lasted for 15 minutes, too long for a person to want to stay in a hot barn.

So came the trials on August ninth. At the hearing, neighbor Alice Russell claimed she had seen Lizzie burning a blue dress in the kitchen. Lizzie says this was because the dress was covered in “old paint” but Lizzie had been wearing a blue dress on the morning of the murder.

Even with all the evidence against her, she was let go and announced “not guilty.”

But was that the right thing to do? The murder of the Bordens was never solved. The handle to the axe and murder weapon was missing, and since the rooms were so tidy, did the killer have to clean the blood from the place himself?

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother 40 whacks,

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father 41.

Lizzie Borden

This is the axe that killed Mr. and Mrs. Borden

The handle was missing.