Andrew & Abby Borden

Case background and investigation

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Andrew Jackson Borden, a prosperous 69-year-old businessman, and his second wife, 64-year-old Abby Durfee Borden, were found hacked to death inside the family home at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Abby was killed first, struck roughly 18 to 19 times in an upstairs guest room sometime between about 9:00 and 10:30 a.m. Andrew was slain about an hour later as he lay on a downstairs sofa, receiving 10 or 11 blows to the head and face from a hatchet-like weapon. Andrew's younger daughter, 32-year-old Lizzie Andrew Borden, who was in the house, alerted the family's maid, Bridget Sullivan, and neighbors were summoned.

The investigation was hampered by the era's limited forensic methods and by a crime scene that was not tightly secured. Police recovered several hatchets and axes from the basement, including a hatchet head with a broken handle that prosecutors would later suggest was the weapon, but no blood-soaked clothing or definitive murder implement was ever conclusively tied to the killings. Suspicion fell on Lizzie because of her presence in the home, her shifting accounts of her whereabouts, her reportedly composed demeanor, and testimony that she had tried to buy the poison prussic acid the day before the murders and later burned a dress. She was arrested on August 11, 1892, and a grand jury indicted her on December 2, 1892.

Lizzie Borden's trial opened on June 5, 1893, before a three-judge panel of the Massachusetts Superior Court in New Bedford and drew intense national press coverage. Represented by prominent attorneys, including former Massachusetts governor George Robinson, the defense benefited from a largely circumstantial prosecution case, the exclusion of her inquest testimony and the prussic-acid evidence, and prevailing assumptions that a well-bred Victorian woman was incapable of such violence. On June 20, 1893, the all-male jury deliberated for roughly an hour to ninety minutes and acquitted her on all counts.

Because Lizzie Borden was acquitted and no other person was ever charged or convicted, the murders remain officially unsolved. Numerous theories have been advanced over the decades, variously implicating Lizzie, the maid Bridget Sullivan, an unknown intruder, or other relatives, but these remain historical speculation rather than proven fact. Lizzie, who inherited a substantial share of her father's estate, stayed in Fall River, bought a larger house she named Maplecroft, and lived largely ostracized by local society until her death on June 1, 1927; her sister Emma died days later that same year.

The case became one of the most enduring in American true-crime folklore, immortalized by the inaccurate skipping-rope rhyme that credits Lizzie with giving her mother 'forty whacks' and her father 'forty-one' (the actual blows numbered far fewer, and Abby was her stepmother). The Second Street house now operates as the Lizzie Borden House museum and bed-and-breakfast, and the murders have inspired films, plays, operas, books, and television dramas. Modern scholars and writers continue to reassess the evidence, the trial's fairness, and the social attitudes of gender and class that shaped its outcome, but the identity of the killer has never been legally established.