Lizzie Borden Took an Ax… But Did She Really? The True Story

“Lizzie Borden took an ax,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”

Immortalized for the savage and sickeningly cold killing of her parents, Lizzie Borden has gone down in history as one of the most cruel murderers America has ever seen. She is the boogeyman, the nightmare that parents all over the country fear, only in this case we know that for Andrew Jackson Borden, it became a brutal reality.

The Borden Family: More Money, More Problems

Andrew Borden himself was no stranger to hard circumstances and even harder times. Born to a moderately well-off family in 1822, Andrew was left to his own devices and to make his own way in life. He struggled and worked hard for every penny that he made, which led him to becoming a crafty and successful businessman who preferred to save money rather than to spend it.

When Lizzie Borden came into the world at Fall River, Massachusetts, just over ten years after her older sister Emma, she was born to a man who would soon be worth about ten million dollars in today’s money. Where the other wealthy inhabitants of Fall River lived on what was called “The Hill,” the Bordens lived in the industrial part of town in a house with no indoor plumbing and no trappings to display Andrew’s incredible wealth.

Before Lizzie’s birth, her mother, Sarah Borden, had had another daughter she called Baby Alice. Baby Alice died shortly after her birth and Sarah had then been struck by a malicious, mysterious condition. We might call some of the symptoms a result of postpartum depression today. She would often have to spend long periods of time in bed and would frequently lament over Baby Alice’s fate. Sarah’s heartbreak, or her condition, however, didn’t improve after Lizzie, healthy and hardy, came into the world. Instead, she died only three years later of a mysterious condition called “uterine congestion.”

Emma, still a child herself, stepped into the role of mother and began looking after Lizzie. She would say, decades later, that she’d made a promise to Sarah before she’d died and that she would spend the rest of her life looking after “Baby Lizzie.”

And, for the most part, Emma seemed to do her job well. Lizzie grew into a conscientious young woman, who regularly attended church and even taught immigrant children at Sunday school. On the outside, both Emma and Lizzie were poised, pious, and charitable - the picture of respectable, nineteenth-century women.

A House Divided and Rising Tensions

But behind closed doors was another matter entirely. Three years after Sarah passed, Andrew married again. Abby Durfee Gray was younger than Andrew and younger than Sarah had been. She was pretty and came from good enough stock to be considered a respectable woman in her own right.

But the Borden girls would quickly learn to call a spade a spade. Emma and Lizzie believed that Abby had married their father for one reason and one reason only: his money. And soon after Abby stepped into their lives, things began to change.

Though he still owned the property that he’d shared with their mother, Andrew bought a new house for his new family. Long and narrow, the new Borden household still lacked all the modern amenities and was focused around a common room. From there, you could go up one flight of stairs and reach Andrew and Abby’s bedroom or you could go up the other on the opposite side of the house and get to the girls’. His new house was literally divided.

Tensions only continued to build as the girls grew older. Andrew, still never a man to lavish anyone with expensive gifts, did buy Abby and her sister a house and drove the wedge deeper.

Appalled that their stepmother and her family were being given their own properties while his own daughters were being forced to live with no indoor plumbing, the Borden women revolted. They demanded that they be allowed to finally live in their own household and they knew which one of Andrew’s existing properties they wanted that one to be. Instead of simply making it a gift, however, Andrew sold the house he’d lived in with Anthony to his daughters for one dollar.

Emma, now around the age of forty, made the controversial decision to move out, even though she was unmarried and had no real means of supporting herself. Lizzie, now close to thirty, joined Emma for a while before the pair of them were coaxed back home. They rented rooms in a nearby boarding house before they could be convinced that the family feud was finally over.

Emma then decided to move back into her own home, leaving Lizzie to return to the Borden household alone. There the family maid, Bridget Sullivan, said that Lizzie very rarely interacted with her father or stepmother. They would often eat separately and Lizzie would later say that she mainly kept to her own room and out of everyone else’s way.

The Morning of the Murders: What Really Happened?

But that was due to change and it was due to change quickly. In the blistering and stifling heat of summer in 1892, the Bordens had a rather unexpected guest. His name was John Morse and he was Sarah’s brother. Emma and Lizzie’s uncle rarely visited, but his arrival landed dead center in the middle of the family dispute over properties, including the very same house that his sister had died in.

John stayed the night and on the morning of August fourth, he and Andrew retired to the study to talk business. The men were in there for over an hour, before John left and headed into town to run some errands. Andrew left shortly after that as well, which followed his usual morning routine and would also take him into town to follow up on some of his remaining businesses.

That left his wife, forty-five-year-old Abby, his younger daughter Lizzie, and the maid Bridget at the house and by the time he’d returned later that morning, one of them would be dead.

Even though they had a maid, and that it was technically Lizzie’s chore to do, Abby then decided to clean the guest bedroom. There she was interrupted and turned to face someone at the doorway to the room. She was then suddenly struck across her cheek with an ax, stunning the woman and turning her in the air as she fell. Her attacker then began striking again, hitting Abby a total of seventeen times in the back of the head.

Abby was dead, her body clearly visible from the second-floor landing.

Around 10:30, a short while after he’d left for town, Andrew returned, not knowing that his own wife was lying on the very floor right above his head. Tired, he then sat on the sofa in his parlor and closed his eyes for a nap. It was then that he was struck across the face with an ax, slicing one of his eyes clean in two. His attacker struck again and again, killing Andrew before he had a chance to fight back.

According to their own accounts, it was about thirteen minutes later that Lizzie discovered her father’s body. She claimed that she’d been outside in the barn and had come back in to find her father lying there. “Come quick!” she’d shouted for Bridget. “Father’s dead. Somebody came in and killed him.”

Bridget, who said that she’d been in her own room resting, then came rushing only to be sent across the street to the family physician Dr. Bowen. Dr. Bowen arrived on the scene and declared Andrew dead.

No one at this point had ventured upstairs. No one had ventured again when the police arrived to begin their investigation. It was only when one of Lizzie and Emma’s friends and neighbors came over to keep the women company that Abby’s remains were found.

Lizzie explained that she hadn’t gone looking for Abby because she believed that Abby had gone to visit one of her relatives that morning.

Lizzie Borden on Trial: Did She Get Away with Murder?

A panic gripped the town. One of their most affluent and successful businessmen had been attacked and killed in his own home. Worse still, his respectable wife had been murdered along with him. There was no telling where the killer would strike next and no knowing how high their victim count would rise.

The Fall River police found themselves buckling under the mounting pressure to solve this case and find the person responsible. And it was shortly after that that the community divided.

While others blamed a mysterious, disgruntled Portuguese worker, others placed the blame far closer to the Borden family home. The house itself had shown no signs of a break-in or a struggle, which begged a simple question. What if one of the two women already inside the house had been the killer? What if it had been Lizzie Borden herself?

The Bordens had collectively suffered from food poisoning about a week before the murders. The same doctor, Dr. Bowen, had diagnosed them and determined that it had come from mutton that had been left out for too long on the stove. But what if instead of food poisoning, their mysterious sickness had just been a case of actual poisoning?

Lizzie had actually been seen purchasing a well-known poison from the chemist earlier that week, claiming that she was going to clean a cloak. And you know how the story goes:
“Andrew Borden now is dead,
Lizzie hit him on the head.
Up in heaven he will sing,
On the gallows she will swing.”

At trial, the prosecution laid out a dazzling case of circumstantial evidence that painted Lizzie a cold and callous killer who’d been after one thing and one thing only: Andrew’s money. The defense put forth understated but devastatingly clever rebuttals. How could it be possible that Lizzie would have had time to kill Andrew and be seen by witnesses only thirteen minutes later in a clean dress with no blood splatter on her?

How could her own statements be admissible in court when she’d given them under the influence of morphine and without her lawyers being present?

Why was her purchase of poison relevant to the trial when she could have very well been using it to clean her cloak?

After about an hour and a half of deliberation, the jury agreed with the defense and acquitted Lizzie of all charges.

The Legacy of Lizzie Borden: Fact, Fiction, and Folklore

She and Emma then inherited their father’s substantial estate and they built a new life for themselves. They finally moved to an enormous property on The Hill. Lizzie then changed her name to Lizbeth and began patroning the local theaters. She surrounded herself with actresses, artists, and creatives, and she distanced herself from Emma. Unable to keep up with her sister’s new lavish lifestyle, Emma moved out and never saw Lizzie again.

But perhaps stranger still, in 1927 the two Borden daughters, still estranged, would die just days after each other. Lizzie went first after battling complications with her gallbladder and pneumonia. Emma quickly followed after suffering from several kidney conditions. They were buried together on the family plot in Oak Grove Cemetery, right next to their parents.