Andrew Borden’s body was still slouched in the sitting room, the fresh blood still gushing from his face, when his younger daughter’s voice cut through the house. “Come quick, father’s dead. Somebody came in and butchered him. ” The maid, Bridget Sullivan, had heard Lizzie’s scream from upstairs, and what she saw when she reached the sitting room would stay with her for the rest of her life.

Andrew Borden had been struck at least ten times with a hatchet-like weapon directly to the face. One blow had cleanly split his eye in two. The attack had occurred only moments before Lizzie called out. The body was still leaking blood.

Sullivan fetched the family physician, Dr. Bowen, who lived just across the street, but a quick response time would not matter. Both Andrew and Abby Borden were gone, the victims of a brutality whose savagery was only surpassed by its apparent senselessness. How this had come to pass began decades earlier, in the prosperous town of Fall River, Massachusetts, a place where nothing so heinous as an axe attack had ever been thought possible.

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born there in 1860 into a family that had not always been wealthy. Her father, Andrew Borden, had struggled to find his own fortune in his youth, but by the time he married Sarah and had Lizzie, things had changed drastically. Andrew found fortune in furniture and coffin sales before expanding into real estate, textiles, and banking. By the time Lizzie came around, he was just as rich, if not richer, than the other residents of Fall River.

At the time of his demise, his estate was worth $300,000, roughly $10 million today. But despite his riches, Lizzie did not live like a princess. Andrew Borden was notoriously frugal, perhaps even frustratingly so. Much to Lizzie’s chagrin and embarrassment, her father refused to relocate to Fall River’s fashionable hill district, choosing instead to live near the industrial center of town.

Worse yet, the family home lacked indoor plumbing. Still, Lizzie seemed happy. She and her older sister, Emma, would have been the last suspects for any wrongdoing. Their parents had raised them both with strong Christian values.

Lizzie taught Sunday school, supported charitable causes, and held leadership roles in religious groups like the Christian Endeavor Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. But not everything was as it seemed. Tragically, Lizzie’s mother, Sarah, had passed shortly after giving birth to her. Three short years later, her father remarried a woman named Abby Gray.

Lizzie and Emma had dark suspicions about their new mother. They thought she was only after their father’s considerable fortune. In fact, they only ever referred to Abby as Mrs. Borden, refusing to call her mother.

Things were frostier than anyone knew. Despite living under the same roof, the sisters kept a polite distance from their father and stepmother. According to the family maid, Bridget Sullivan, the sisters often avoided meals with them, an ominous sign of just how tense things had become inside the Borden household. Just a few months before the brutal axe attacks that would grip the nation, Lizzie had reportedly taken a shine to some pigeons nesting in her father’s barn.

She had even gone so far as to build them a roost. But when Andrew discovered that neighborhood boys were sneaking in to hunt them, he slaughtered the birds with a hatchet. It was a move that allegedly left Lizzie seething, and perhaps plotting a little hatchet revenge of her own. In July 1892, the tensions that had been building up in the Borden family reached a boiling point.

After a massive family argument, both Lizzie and her sister Emma left Fall River for a break to New Bedford. Even after returning to town, Lizzie did not go straight home. She stayed at a boarding house for four days. Only one thing seemed to bring her back home.

Money. Just as Lizzie and Emma had suspected, their stepmother Abby seemed to be only after their father’s money, and he seemed only too happy to give it to her. Andrew had been gifting real estate to Abby and her relatives. Furious, the sisters demanded their share and eventually received a rental property, but the damage had already been done.

On the eve of the bloodbath, Lizzie’s maternal uncle, John Morse, dropped in for a visit and stayed the night. According to reports, he and Andrew were discussing business matters, which only fueled speculation that the conversation, likely about inheritance, may have been the final straw that made Lizzie snap. But there was evidence that she had already laid a terrible plan in motion. In the days leading up to the terrible axe attack, everyone in the Borden household felt mysteriously ill.

Some blamed spoiled mutton left simmering on the stove, while others, especially Abby, feared a more sinister cause: deliberate poisoning. After all, Andrew Borden did not have many friends in Fall River. Later on, this mysterious illness would have people looking curiously at Lizzie. The morning of August 4th, 1892, had begun like any other.

After a heavy breakfast with the entire family, Lizzie’s father, Andrew, and her maternal uncle, John Morse, sat down for a long chat, presumably to conclude their business. By 8:48 a. m. , Morse left to run errands, and by 9:00, Andrew went for his daily walk.

But it was Lizzie’s actions that sparked interest. Usually, despite having a living maid, the chore of tidying up the guest room was Lizzie and Emma’s responsibility. However, for unknown reasons, Abby Borden took it upon herself that morning. Sometime between 9 and 10:30 a.

m. , Abby made her way upstairs and came face to face with a horrifying fate. Just as she reached the landing at the top of the stairs, she came face to face with her attacker. Before she could even react, she felt a devastating blow as her assailant smacked her on the head just above the ear with a hatchet.

The vicious attack sent Abby spiraling to the floor, where she landed face down. Horrifyingly, her attacker was not done yet. Whoever stood over Abby’s body delivered a bone-chilling seventeen more strikes to the back of her head. The attacker wielded the axe with such force and dealt so many blows to the head that it left little doubt.

This was personal. And there was just one person with that much animus toward Abby. Lizzie. When Andrew Borden returned home at 10:30 a.

m. , something already seemed off. First, the front door jammed as Bridget Sullivan tried to let him in. But as Sullivan cursed in frustration, she heard a chilling sound.

She reportedly heard Lizzie laughing from upstairs. Sullivan never claimed to have seen Lizzie, but the sound of that laughter was unforgettable. By the time Andrew finally made his way inside, his wife’s horribly hacked and lifeless body was already lying on the second floor, clearly visible from the staircase. Yet when Lizzie’s father asked her where Abby had gone, Lizzie claimed a messenger had summoned her to visit a sick friend.

The next set of events only added to the confusion. The maid, Sullivan, later testified that she had helped Andrew into his slippers before he laid down on the sofa for a nap. However, Sullivan’s story was less convincing than Lizzie’s. Photos from the brutal scene later revealed that Andrew was still wearing his boots, not slippers.

Either way, it was only minutes later, at around 11:10 a. m. , that Lizzie allegedly shouted from downstairs, “Come quick, father’s dead. Somebody came in and butchered him.

” Lizzie’s scream, guilty or not, must have been bloodcurdling. When detectives arrived on the scene, they began questioning Lizzie to find out what had happened. But instead of answers, she only gave them more questions and a lot of suspicion. Lizzie’s answers were oddly inconsistent.

At one point, she claimed she had heard a moan or scraping sound before entering the house. Just two hours later, however, she said she had heard nothing at all. That was not the only thing that seemed off. It did not take long for the detectives interviewing Lizzie Borden to notice her unsettling composure and apparent attitude.

Despite the fact that her father and stepmother had just been hacked beyond recognition, Lizzie did not shed a tear. Some officers thought she seemed suspiciously calm and poised given the circumstances. They should have listened to their instincts. Despite her erratic statements and odd behavior, the officers did not seem to suspect Lizzie at first.

In fact, they were so confident in her innocence that they never searched her for blood. They performed only a half-hearted search of her room, later admitting they did not want to press too hard because she claimed she was not feeling well. As Lizzie retired to her room down in the basement, officers made a startling discovery. There they found two axes, two hatchets, and one particularly damning hatchet head with a broken handle.

Unlike the others, the hatchet head appeared to have been dusted with ash, possibly to make it look like no one had used it in a long time. In the wake of the double tragedy, authorities considered an unsettling possibility: poisoning. After all, everyone in the Borden household had been terribly ill just days before the attack. To put their fears to bed, investigators performed autopsies in the family’s dining room and tested the victims’ stomach contents.

While their examination did not turn up any signs of poison, one theory remained on the table. Just days before the attacks, around the time of the family’s unexplained illness, a local druggist claimed Lizzie Borden had come in asking to purchase hydrocyanic acid, allegedly to clean a fur coat. But there was a problem with that story. A medical examiner later testified that hydrocyanic acid had no antiseptic value, suggesting a far more sinister motive.

As the sun set on the horrific day, Lizzie and her sister could not bear to be alone. Fortunately, they had a close friend, Alice Russell, stay at the house with them while their visiting uncle, John Morse, reportedly slept upstairs. Notably, he did not sleep in the same room where Abby had perished, as later rumors would suggest. It was, however, not necessarily a peaceful night.

For the protection of the family, or what was left of it, officers were stationed outside the house, but the attacker may already have been inside. One of the stationed officers claimed to have seen Lizzie Borden and her friend Alice Russell heading into the cellar with a lamp and a slop pail. What happened next baffled him. The stationed officer claimed that he witnessed Lizzie and Sullivan exit the cellar only for Lizzie to return shortly after, alone.

While the officer claimed that he did not know why Lizzie was in the cellar or what she was doing, he did give puzzling testimony. To the best of his knowledge, Lizzie appeared to be hunched over the sink. It was just the kind of behavior that raised eyebrows. The following morning, detectives returned for a more thorough search of the house.

This time they paid close attention to Lizzie and Emma’s clothing and took the broken-handled hatchet with them. Whatever else they found must have been compelling, because that evening detectives returned with the mayor of Fall River and gave Lizzie the bad news. She was officially a suspect. The morning after Lizzie Borden became a suspect, her friend Alice Russell walked into the kitchen to find a curious scene.

Lizzie was standing there tearing up a dress. When asked what she was doing, Lizzie said she was planning to burn it because she had stained it with paint. Unfortunately, authorities never determined whether it was the same dress she wore the day of the bloodbath. Lucky for Lizzie, they continued bungling their investigation.

On August 8th, Lizzie testified at an inquest and left everyone scratching their heads. Her demeanor and answers to basic questions were strange, even erratic. Stranger still, she refused to answer questions that could have helped her defense. The only explanation for her behavior was that a doctor had prescribed her morphine to calm her nerves.

It seemed she barely remembered anything. Throughout the inquest, Lizzie Borden gave conflicting accounts of where she was and what she was doing that dreaded morning. At one point, she said she was reading in the kitchen. Later, she claimed she had been ironing in the dining room.

Then she changed it again. This time she said she was on the stairs. That was enough evidence for the authorities to make a drastic move. The inquest took a turn when the district attorney began hammering Lizzie Borden with aggressive, confrontational questions.

It was a risky tactic that paid off. Just three days later, on August 11th, authorities placed Lizzie under arrest and threw her behind bars. This seemingly faithful heiress would spend the next nine months in a cold, cramped cell. A large part of the case against Lizzie was her testimony, but thanks to her morphine prescription, the judge ruled it inadmissible in court.

Still, that did not stop the public from drawing their own conclusions. Newspapers wrote scandalously about Lizzie’s disastrous testimony, highlighting her stilted demeanor and demure body language. That was not the worst of it. Until the inquest, Lizzie’s closest friends and family members, including her sister Emma, never believed that she had been the assailant.

However, once the details of her testimony leaked out, it caused a change of opinion among her friends who had heretofore strongly maintained her innocence. Just five days before Lizzie’s trial began in June 1893, Fall River was rocked by yet another axe attack. This time the victim was a woman named Bertha Manchester, found slain in her kitchen in a scene disturbingly similar to the Borden case. The timing sent shockwaves through the courtroom.

While Lizzie was the prime suspect in the savage attacks on her father and stepmother, no one believed that she had anything to do with poor old Manchester’s case. She was, after all, sitting behind bars. In 1894, authorities convicted José Correa DeLó, a Portuguese immigrant, of Manchester’s savage end. Crucially, DeLó had not been in Fall River at the time of the Borden tragedy, eliminating him as a suspect in Lizzie’s case, but leaving lingering doubts for the jury.

Given her inconsistent statements, one of the most debated elements of the case was Lizzie’s whereabouts at the time of her father’s demise. Sullivan, the family’s maid, claimed that she had left Lizzie downstairs at around 10:58 a. m. with her father.

However, Lizzie countered this claim by revealing that she had gone into the barn for twenty minutes or possibly a half an hour. For once, Lizzie’s story seemed to hold up. According to a witness, Hyman Lubinsky, Lizzie was telling the truth about her whereabouts. Lubinsky claimed to have seen Lizzie Borden leaving the barn at 11:03 a.

m. , just minutes after the time her father passed and before she called for help. Another witness, Charles Gardner, confirmed the time. Plus, Lizzie could barely stomach the sight of blood.

On June 5th, 1893, Lizzie’s trial reached a morbid crescendo. The prosecution, playing for effect, brought into the courtroom the skulls of both victims as evidence. At the mere sight of her father’s shattered skull, Lizzie was overcome and fainted in the courtroom. With such a powerful reaction, hardly anyone could believe she was guilty.

After just ninety minutes of deliberation, the jury returned with a verdict that would sharply divide opinions in Fall River and across the nation. Lizzie Borden, they said, was not guilty. When reporters asked for her reaction outside the courthouse, Lizzie gave a heartfelt, if a little chilling, response. She said she was the happiest woman in the world.

She would also become one of the richest. Following the trial, Lizzie Borden and her sister Emma left their old home and all of its bloody memories behind and moved to Fall River’s upscale Hill neighborhood. It was precisely where Lizzie had always wanted to live. Their new residence, which Lizzie dubbed Maplecroft, had all the modern luxuries, including a staff of maids, a coachman, and indoor plumbing.

She was practically a new woman. Perhaps in an effort to move on, or to leave the scandal and the stain on her reputation behind her, Lizzie adopted a new name. She dropped the diminutive Lizzie and instead went by the more adult-sounding Elizabeth A. Borden.

Though a jury found Lizzie not guilty of the heinous axe attacks, Fall River society never forgave her. But she did not exactly help herself either. In 1897, Lizzie once again made headlines when she was accused of shoplifting in Providence, Rhode Island. After that, she became a true pariah, snubbed, whispered about, and shunned by her former social circles.

At least she still had her sister. Or did she? In 1905, Lizzie Borden hosted a party for the actress Nance O’Neil, but there was little festivity in the gathering. For unknown reasons, the event caused a major rift with her sister Emma.

Whatever the dispute, shortly after, Emma moved out of Maplecroft and never spoke to Lizzie again. Her final years would be lonely ones, with nothing but her family’s money to keep her company. Following gallbladder surgery, Lizzie’s health deteriorated rapidly. But at least she stayed out of trouble.

Lizzie Borden drew her last breath on June 1st, 1927, succumbing to pneumonia in her beloved Maplecroft estate. Given her status as a pariah, her funeral was a quiet affair that few attended. Nine days later, her estranged sister passed away from kidney disease. At the time of her passing, Lizzie’s estate was valued at over $250,000, more than $6 million today.

Her assets included multiple real estate holdings, an enviable jewelry collection, and a few other investments. But of all her bequests to various relatives and charities, the most puzzling was a trust fund for the perpetual care of her father’s grave. Though Lizzie Borden was found not guilty, many people continued to doubt the verdict. And recently, an author and researcher, Rebecca F.

Pitman, uncovered startling new evidence. Though Pitman claims to have identified two mystery men who were spotted near the Borden home at the time of the grisly attacks, she actually fully believes that Lizzie was responsible and that she exhibited signs of sociopathy. Pitman believes the two men were distant relatives of the Borden family, which fits into a theory that Andrew Borden was preparing to make a deal to transfer ownership of one of the family’s farms to his wife Abby, cutting into Lizzie’s inheritance. Pitman’s husband also performed experiments to prove that Lizzie could have in fact been responsible for breaking off the handle of one of the hatchets used in the crime.

The questions around her involvement still linger, a century later, unresolved.