The Femme Fatal
True Crime - Femme Fatale Style
The Femme Fatal tells the stories of women who commit crimes, blending true crime, pop culture, and astrology to explore power, obsession, and the darker side of femininity.
The Femme Fatal
Axe Heiress: Lizzie Borden
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In this episode of The Femme Fatal, we step into one of the most infamous crime scenes in American history. Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted in the brutal 1892 murders of her father and stepmother, but public suspicion never left her. We dig into the family tensions, the strange timeline, the theories that still linger, and how Lizzie transformed from a real woman into a dark American legend. Then we get into the pop culture, the myths, and the astrological symbolism behind the woman forever linked to an axe.
Lizzie Borden Took An Ax (2014)
The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015)
The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975)
INFORMEDISH: Real life. Artificial cohost.Movies, parenting and life's absurdities. Jason and his AI cohost Heather take sides.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Welcome to the Femme Fatal, a true crime podcast with an astrology twist. I'm your host, Stacey Dotson. Each week I'll be joined by a guest host because this femme fatal prefers not to work alone. Hi, welcome to the femme fatal. Today I'm joined by my good friend Melissa, and we're going to talk about the Axe Heiress. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Stacey.
SPEAKER_01How are you today? I'm great.
SPEAKER_00How about you? Doing good. What made you want to talk about Lizzie Borden?
SPEAKER_01I think the thing about Lizzie that's so interesting is, you know, oftentimes with female killers, just the act of violence is shocking in itself because it's by a female killer, but there's evidence, there's a lot of conflicting evidence. She was acquitted. There was nothing to convict her, but there was just a lot of weird circumstances that happened and just the nature of what happened. She was from an affluent family. They were really prominent in the community in Fall River. And I just think it's really interesting that, you know, she continued living there. There's just a lot of complexity to that whole case and her as a person that's interesting to me.
SPEAKER_00It is. It's really an interesting story, especially the fact that she was acquitted, especially so long ago. It seems like they were quicker to judge back then, you know? Yes. Okay. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about Lizzie in the beginning?
SPEAKER_01Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on July 19th, 1860, in Fall River, Massachusetts, to Andrew Jackson Borden and Sarah Anthony Morse Borden. She was the third child to the pair. Um, she was preceded by Emma Borden, who was about 10 years older than Lizzie. And then they had a sibling that passed away due to hydrocephaly. Her name was Alice.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so all three girls.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so all three girls, but they were spaced out pretty far apart. Lizzie's mother, Sarah, passed away when Lizzie was about two years old due to uterine congestion. So for a little bit there, it was just her, her dad, and her sister. But her mom did make her older sister, Emma, promise to take care of Lizzie after her passing. Her father, Andrew, was a wealthy businessman in Fall River. Attributing to his wealth was furniture and casket manufacturing and cell, property development, textiles, mills. Um he was also the president of the Union Savings Bank and the director of the Derby Safe Deposit. So he had quite a bit of financial business and then he had a lot of manufacturing. So they were pretty well off in the community. At the time, his net worth was about 300,000, which is about 10.8 million today. Wow. But despite his wealth, he was very, very frugal. Um, and he was known to be pretty volatile as a person. He wasn't the nicest person. About three years after Sarah's death, Andrew did remarry. Um, he remarried Abby Durfee Gray. Lizzie was not a fan of Abby and would often refer to her as Mrs. Borden. She was not a fan. Um, she pretty much thought that Abby was after her father for money. She just openly disliked her. And then I have, you know, a lot more into that. But she just really was not a fan of her, never really took into welcoming her into the family. The Bordens lived in an affluent area at the time. They lived at 92 2nd Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, but it really wasn't a luxurious house, even though they were an affluent family and they were in a nicer area. They didn't even have running water or bathroomed indoor plumbing or anything like that at this home.
SPEAKER_00Was that common at that time? Do you know? Like what in affluent homes?
SPEAKER_01I think it was a mix. I mean, there was definitely areas of town that had indoor plumbing and bathrooms, but they didn't live in an area that had that, or their home didn't have that. This was a two-story home, roughly four to six bedrooms. Some of the bedrooms that were, you know, bedrooms, quote unquote, were like the attic was turned into bedrooms for the maid. So not necessarily there was true six bedrooms, but it was multi-use. They didn't have a basement on this property that had like a outhouse type setup downstairs, but it really wasn't that great. Lizzie and Emma had a very religious upbringing. Both were highly involved in like church activities, teaching at Sunday school. They were really involved in different organizations, such as like the Christian Endeavor Society and some women's suffrage movements. So they were pretty involved with the community. But Lizzie was pretty much at her core. She was a wealthy, you know, a wealthy socialite. So that's what she really enjoyed. She really enjoyed being a woman of society. She tried to get her father numerous times to buy a new home on the hill, which was a nicer, newer, affluent area of town.
SPEAKER_00Hopefully with plumbing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, with plumbing. She was definitely wanting to live a more lavish, extravagant lifestyle than what they were living, just because her father was so frugal. Despite the family doing all the right things and having them involved in church activities and different society groups and whatnot, Lizzie still had flaws and like some character issues growing up, some issues where she had been involved in some shoplifting around town. So there were numerous merchants that had accused her of shoplifting. Right out about a year before the murders, there was a daytime robbery at her home where cash and jewels were stolen. Emma, Lizzie, and their maid Bridget were the only people home at the time. And Lizzie became like the prime suspect just because of her prior history of shoplifting.
SPEAKER_00Plus, with her social life, she needed money probably. And if her dad didn't give her money, she didn't work, right? She never worked.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The relationships in the home were strained pretty much her whole life. And especially after the robbery, Andrew had a lot of suspicion with people coming in and out of the home. So he really wanted the house locked down and he was really suspicious about people being in and around the house. Kind of leading up to the murders, there was some conflict and some things that were happening with Lizzie, some acting out that she was doing that was kind of suspicious. You know, she's gossiping with her friends about Abby. She doesn't like her. She's calling her mean old thing and different things to her friends. She's having some issues with her dad and her stepmother. So Lizzie and Emma in July, shortly before the murder murders, they actually leave their home after a disagreement. They go out of town and they're out of town for a little bit and they come back to the house a few days before the murder. But when she first got back to town, she didn't want to stay at the house. So there was a little bit of strife and things going up leading up to the murder. There really wasn't anything that she did leading up to the murder that seemed normal. So about two days before the murders take place, Andrew and Abby come down with a mystery stomach sickness. And then when they go to the doctor, Abby tells the doctor she thinks she's been poisoned. But the doctor's skeptical. Shortly after that, I think it was actually the next day, Lizzie is trying to buy pressic acid from a local drugstore, which is a poison. So she's telling another friend about her parents' illness the day prior, saying that she feared that they were poisoned. And then she also fears that her father has enemies and she has been seen with some suspicious people.
SPEAKER_00She's laying the groundwork for her crime.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So she goes ahead and tells someone that, like, I'm afraid that someone's going to do something to my father. So she's just laying the groundwork everywhere she goes with, you know, I fear they've been poisoned. I think someone's going to do something. I've seen suspicious people around the house. If you were not wanting to get caught, that's probably not what you should be doing. You shouldn't be going around trying to lay the groundwork that something's about to happen to your family. Later that night, Lizzie's late mother's brother, John Morse, comes to town, comes and stays at the house. Um, there's reportedly an argument or a disagreement between her father and John Morris. Everybody goes to bed that night, everything seems fine. The next morning, the morning of August 4th, 1892, is when everything happens. This is when the murders happen and everything just kind of goes crazy. So that morning kind of started off normal. 7 a.m. Andrew, Abby, and John Morse are having breakfast. Shortly after that, about 8:45 a.m., John Morse leaves the house to run errands. He does have some alibis during that time, just different places that he went. At about 9 a.m., Andrew leaves to mail letters that Lizzie asked him to mail. So she sent him out of the house with some postage and she's like, hey, can you go mail this for me?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's where he went?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So he left. So the only people at the house at that point are the maid, Bridget Sullivan, Lizzie, and then Abby. The maid, which to me is a little suspicious, she's the person setting the timeline for pretty much the murders, what happened that morning. She's the person giving the timeline for everything. She said she goes outside to clean windows, which takes about an hour. And then Abby goes upstairs to clean the guest bedroom. She's supposed to be fluffing pillows, doing bedding, all of that. Sometime during that hour, that's when Bridget was cleaning the windows. Abby was murdered by 19 hatchet flows to the back of her head in the guest bedroom. So Bridget then returns inside, is her reports. And shortly thereafter, Andrew Borden returns home carrying a small parcel. Bridget lets Andrew into the house. And at the time she's letting him in, she reports hearing laughter coming from upstairs. She's hearing like a cackle laugh coming from upstairs. And this would be after the time that Abby was murdered. Lizzie comes in, visits with her father briefly in the dining room. And then he lays down on the sofa in the sitting room to rest. Bridget reportedly goes upstairs to her attic bedroom on the third floor because she's saying she's having a stomach illness. So now she's not feeling well. So about 11 a.m., the maid reports hearing Lizzie scream from the living room to come down because father's dead that someone had come in and killed him. We've got the maid in the house upstairs, but not hearing anything. We have Lizzie in the house, and all of a sudden her father's dead in the living room shortly after he returns home.
SPEAKER_00So but they haven't found Abby yet, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So of course it's a graphic scene. Everybody's heard the story about Lizzie Borin took the axe, you know, gave her mother 40 wax, the whole thing. So it's graphic. I mean, they were both killed with a hatchet. So she comes down, he slumped over the couch, his head's nearly split in two. The police and the doctors that were around the house were called to come in and kind of, you know, she said that she called the doctor to see if anything could be done. But I don't know if anyone's seen the pictures. There was yeah, it was there was nothing that could be done at that point.
SPEAKER_00No resuscitation if there's no mouth.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no. Police came in, they laid a sheet over Andrew, and then they searched the house for about an hour. Downstairs, they went all through the first floor, but at no point did they go upstairs, which was abnormal. There was a neighbor that came over to comfort Lizzie during this time. Her name is Adelaide Churchill. For whatever reason, when the police were there, she decided to go upstairs. And she's the one that made the discovery of Abby laying in the upstairs bedroom. Andrew's body. So something interesting, whenever they were trying to come up with like the timeline of when everything happened and how long they had both been dead. When the police got there, Andrew was still warm.
SPEAKER_00Oh, she called it right after.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So like it happened, and then immediately she quote unquote found him, alerted the maid, and then they called for help. When the police got there, he was still warm, but Abby was cold. So when they were trying to come up with like the timeline of everything, they thought that Abby was probably killed at least 90 minutes before her husband. Shortly after that time as well, the newspapers and the journalists actually came to the house during the investigation and were going around taking pictures and talking to people. And it was reported that the crime scene was sickening. Andrew was struck an estimated 10 to 12 times, leaving a wound over his left temple that was six inches by four inches wide. And it was caused by being pounded with a dull edge of an axe. His left eye had been dug out and he had a cut that extended like the length of his nose. Despite the gore, though, the room was in order. There was very little blood. There was no signs of struggle. The blood was limited to just the area surrounding him. There wasn't blood everywhere, which you would kind of expect with that gruesome of an attack. And you know, at the time, like I was saying, like Lindsay and Bridget were the only ones at the house, and the uncle was gone. He comes back about 11:45, and then he goes outside to eat lunch while they're doing the investigations.
SPEAKER_00Because that makes you hungry.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I mean, it's just really weird circumstances. You have all these people behaving abnormally during this. And then it was also, you know, Lizzie was very suspicious because despite finding her father, quote unquote, she was stoic, she wasn't crying, she didn't really appear to be upset. And then they started asking her where her mother was, and she quickly corrected them, you know, and she said she's not my mother. So she's like defensive as in regards to Abby, but really emotionless with what happened. So she's got both of her parents killed, brutally murdered in the home, and she's kind of acting indifferent. So when the police started the investigation, they were trying to figure out who actually could have possibly committed the crimes. They initially pointed their suspects to a Portuguese laborer because he had come to the home earlier that morning looking for payment. And Andrew told him he didn't have any money, he would have to come back later. There was a couple of newspapers that ran an article saying that there was a tall man that had been seen around the property. So that was kind of the initial suspect. They didn't originally think that it would have been Lizzie. And then just due to her being from an affluent family, she was part of church organizations and women's movements and things, she didn't have anything that would have indicated a violent nature. So for a while, she was overlooked as a suspect.
SPEAKER_00And probably just because it's not common for women to be the violent personality or it's unexpected. Hence the reason I started this podcast, because that's not true. There's been plenty of bad women.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So during the investigation, the police eventually came to the conclusion that the murders had to have been committed by someone in the boarding home, but they were super confused by the lack of blood, except on the victims. They were struggling to find an identifiable murder weapon. They eventually did find some axes and hatchets around the property. The one they finally settled on was one that they had found in the basement. It was a smaller hatchet, but it was missing its handle. So it was just the blade itself, and it was covered in ashen soot. So they had determined that whoever the murderer was would have pulled the handle off to try to separate the murder weapon or try to, you know, disguise a murder weapon at some point. But they ended up settling on that. There was a lot of conflict on whether that was actually the murder weapon just because of the blade differences, because they can measure the wounds on both of the victims. It didn't match exactly, but they were just trying to find something that they could use as a murder weapon. Two days later, the investigations started to point to Lizzie. Um, there were reports of her trying to buy the poison that was well documented by the pharmacist at the drugstore. And then she had a friend who, not so good of a friend, I guess, came forward and then said her and her stepmother never got along. They were not speaking. The friend kind of instigated that there was strife in the home. And so immediately at that point, she became a suspect. Investigators also found that it was odd that she didn't know where her stepmother was whenever they, you know, whenever everything was happening and she was talking about her father dying. They were kind of asking, why didn't she know where her mother was? Why didn't she realize something was wrong? And her answers changed a little bit. So originally she said she didn't know where she was, and she thought she had gone upstairs to change shams on pillows. And then later she said that her mother had received a letter from a friend. And so she had left the house, or she thought she had left the house to go meet her friend. So there's just a lot of conflicting stories about whenever they were asking her what happened.
SPEAKER_00You would know the house isn't that big. You would know if someone was or wasn't in the house, I would think.
SPEAKER_01And then on top of it, Abby, they said was a much larger built woman. If either one of them were in the house when she would have fallen, they said that it would have made a loud sound. So if the maid or Lizzie were inside with the wooden floors, should have been able to hear her hit the floor. When they were asking her where she was during the time that Andrew was murdered, she kept saying she was outside trying to find fishing weights because she was going to go on a fishing excursion. So she said she was outside in the barn looking around, trying to get weights for her fishing trip. So just a lot of weird excuses, a lot of weird things that happened, you know, whenever she's being questioned. Part of what contributing, I guess, to her inconsistencies, what the doctor said is they have prescribed her morphine due to her grief. So she was essentially high for weeks on end after they were murdered. Yeah. When she was being questioned, that was one of the things that they were saying. Well, her answers could change because she was on morphine. She was on a pretty high dose, apparently. So the police, whenever she was given her excuse that she was outside, she was in the barn, they went to go check the barn and apparently it was pretty dusty on the floor where she said she was walking, looking for the fishing. There was no footprints or anything, nothing seemed disturbed. So immediately they felt that was suspicious. And there was one position, because you know, men love women sometimes. Um, he said the hacking was almost a positive sign of a deed by woman, unconscious of what she was doing. So apparently we can't even murder people correctly. Oh, I know. So a few days after an inquest was held to question Lizzie, Bridget, her uncle John Morris, and a few others, um, Lizzie was questioned for about four hours. And like I said, just gave very contradictory answers due to her being on morphine. On August 11th, the inquest adjured and Lizzie was arrested. She entered a plea of not guilty and was transported to a prison about eight miles away north of Fall River. In November, a grand jury indicted Lizzie after a family friend said she saw Lizzie burn in a blue dress in the kitchen fire. And the maid had also said that morning she was wearing a blue dress. So that was the kind of final nail for her suspicion. They pretty much said, okay, she's trying to burn murder evidence. She said there was paint on the dress, but apparently it was blood.
SPEAKER_00It was But I mean, you'd think they would have seen her when the investigators first got there. You would think they would have noticed blood on her there, but they didn't say anything about that, I guess.
SPEAKER_01You know, the violence of what she was doing, the places she was hitting, your face and your head is gonna bleed more than any other place on your body. You're hitting arteries, and there was no blood. That's the suspicious thing. There was no blood on anything other than the victims and the immediate surrounding areas. So that was just really suspicious.
SPEAKER_00It's so long ago and it's never been solved. And we're gonna jump into the movies, but one of the so many bad TV movies that I've been watching doing this podcast, but one of them they showed her like nude doing the murders. Like, so that's why, yeah. So she was making it so there's no blood on her.
SPEAKER_01The prosecution, that was their big thing that they were trying to push because the whole timeline of everything that's where a lot of the trial fell apart. And that was one of the prosecutors' main things, is that the only way they felt that she could do it was if she did it nude. So, you know, Lizzie spent about a year in jail, and the trial finally opened June 5th, 1893, at the new Bedford Courthouse. She had a panel of three judges and 12 jurors. And she was represented by Andrew Jennings and the former governor of Massachusetts, George Robinson. The prosecution presented the skulls of Andrew and Abby Borden as evidence, which caused Lizzie to faint at the site. And then they also presented a blue dress as evidence as well. But it's unclear to me since she was burning a dress, if that's the same dress that was recovered or if it was just a blue dress that was on the property. But the blue dress they presented had a single drop of blood on it. One single drop of blood, one single drop of blood, which Lizzie said was due to female issues, not to murdering anyone. Because it was actually, I think, found on the undercoat of the dress, not on the top of the dress.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's what freaked me out in both the movies I watched on her. They actually bring his skull and then they take the hatchet and put it in the skull. And I'm like, do they still do that in court today? I don't even know. Is that something they do?
SPEAKER_01I would think they would do photographs with measurements and things, but I wouldn't think that they would actually bring the victim's severed head, you know, in the corner. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_00It was so crazy to me when I watched them like that happened.
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SPEAKER_01But they said that it was covered up on the table, and when they pulled the sheet or whatever it was off the top, they exposed both heads and she fainted immediately. So
(Cont.) Axe Heiress: Lizzie Borden
SPEAKER_01the maid, so she's the one that's been setting the timeline the whole time. She's been the one recounting the events of everything. So she testified that her and Lizzie again were the only people at home at the time of the murders. She did say that the whole family basically had stomach pains the day before, but she didn't corroborate the whole, you know, the family had strife. So it was documented by her friend that her and Abby didn't get along and that there was a lot of animosity, but Bridget said there wasn't. So she was the one person giving a little bit of doubt. Whether there was motive with Abby. But contrary to her, though, numerous friends of hers did get on the stand and say that her and Abby didn't get along. Lizzie didn't like her, and she called her a nasty, you know, mean, good for nothing, and all these other things. When it was time for Lizzie to testify, she said she was also outside cleaning windows at that time. Apparently, at that point, she was helping the maid clean the windows. She said she wasn't inside at that point in time either. Lizzie's defense attorneys pointed out a lot of holes with the prosecution's case. They said the murder weapon, it was really suspicious about it not having a handle. They were asking where the rest of the murder weapon could have been. The timeline, again, was really tight, especially after Andrew's murder. He was only home less than 30 minutes before he was murdered. In between whenever they did the autopsy, whenever they were determining how long he had been dead before they got there, they allowed eight to 13 minutes between his death and her calling for the maid. So in an 8 to 13 minute time span, she would have had to take the top off of an axe. She would have had to separate the murder weapon, hide that down in the basement in ash, change her clothes, you know, go upstairs and change her clothes, wash in a home with no running water and no bathroom. So they really leaned heavily on casting doubt on her inability to do that in that amount of time. So eight to 13 minutes is the amount of time she would have had to conceal her actions before alerting the mate. And just the difficulty, you know, they highlighted the difficulty of washing blood off of one's person. So, you know, it would dry, you know, on your skin at some point, but the clothes, her hair, everything, because a hatchet's short, she would have been arm's length away from someone, hitting arteries. So there's no way she wouldn't have gotten blood on her. But again, like you were saying, the prosecution tried to make it seem like that she could have done it. She would just have to have done it naked.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Just, you know, kind of crazy. Her attorneys also pushed that her inquest testimony should be thrown out because she was essentially a prisoner at the time without legal representation. So they really pushed that her inquest testimony was that of a prisoner. She was being forced into saying these things under duress without legal representation. So they did get that thrown out. And then there was also reports by a local doctor that was living in their neighborhood. Their neighborhood had several doctors living. He said that he did see a strange man walking around their house the night before. So they were just casting a lot of doubt on whether it was her. And then with the timeline and her inquest testimony, they were just really trying to make the jury have enough doubt in their mind.
SPEAKER_00Right, reasonable doubt.
SPEAKER_01Reasonable doubt, yeah. To throw out a lot of the evidence as well. Prosecution, of course, brought up the attempted purchase of the poison, strained family relationships, and that she was the only person with the motive and the opportunity to commit the murders. But the lack of evidence in Lizzie's background with the community left enough doubt for the jury. On June 20th, 1893, after about an hour and a half of deliberation, they did come back with a verdict of not guilty.
SPEAKER_00Apparently it was mixed. Like there were people outside protesting that she was guilty. And then there was a lot of people protesting free Lizzie.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. But even though she was acquitted, I mean, the whole community pretty much at that point, though she was a murderer. She was ostracized immediately. She was cast out from society. Her life changed completely.
SPEAKER_00So she was convicted in the court of public opinion, basically.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And so, you know, in true Lizzie fashion, you know, acting abnormally, immediately after getting acquitted, after the trial ended, she bought her huge mansion on the hills. She bought an eight-bedroom mansion with the insurance money that she received from her father. This is the life she always wanted to have. So her and Emma moved into the house and she named that property Maplecroft and had it etched on the French steps. So everything that Second Street House lacked, this house had. So she had the indoor plumbing, she had servants, she had a telephone, and her servants were apparently the best paid in the city from what the gossip was.
SPEAKER_00She probably had to to get them to come work for her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Her life just wasn't easy. You know, even though she had the money, even though she had quote unquote the life she wanted, she was living that society life. She had a lot of kids that would come by, taunt, throw rocks at her windows. That's where the little rhyme came from. And so she was pretty much taunted and tortured daily by people coming by her house. She was ostracized for her old friends and new neighbors. There was a quote that Lizzie gave when they asked her why she never left Fall River. Because she had the money. She could have gone anywhere in the world and started over. She could have had a new life. But she said, when the truth comes out about this murder, I want to be living here so I can walk downtown and meet those of my friends who've been cutting me down all these years. So not that, you know, when it comes out that I'm innocent, it's just when the truth comes out about the murders. So it kind of leads you to believe, is it one of those where she felt she was rightful in doing that? Was there something going on where she felt like she was protecting herself? You know, it kind of makes you question.
SPEAKER_00Or was she doing that like she did when she laid the groundwork for that? Like, hey, if I'm willing to stay here, I'm not guilty. You need to start changing your mindset. I'm not guilty.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So Lizzie kind of tried to start over her life and everything, but she did find herself back in the headlines a few years later. Um, she was rested again for theft of two paintings where a warrant went out for her rest. You know, so of course that was kind of in line with her bad behavior. In 1905, she changed her name to Lizbeth to kind of give herself a fresh start, to separate herself from Lizzie a little bit. She started engaging more in charitable organizations, but she did leave her church. And she started reportedly only leaving her home by coach or a chauffeur car just because she was being bullied, for lack of a better word, by her community. But she started visiting Boston, New York, Providence, Washington for shopping entertainment. She loved the theater. She started hanging out with different actors and actresses. And there was a rumor that one of the actresses that she was hanging out with, Nance O'Neill, that they were more than just friends, that they were in a relationship. And her sister actually did an interview at some point. They asked if she was quote unquote queer, and she said yes.
SPEAKER_00That Lizzie was.
SPEAKER_01Yes. The community, I guess, thought that at some point for them to even ask in an interview.
SPEAKER_00I watched a couple, I already mentioned I watched a couple made for TV movies, but there's one movie that came out, I want to say like seven or eight years ago called Lizzie, and it starred Chloe Savini and Kristen Stewart. I wish I would have had time to watch that one, but the premise is that Kristen Stewart plays Bridget and Chloe Savini plays Lizzie, and apparently the father was abusing the maid, and Lizzie had feelings for her. So I think that the plot, I haven't seen the movie, is more of them conspiring to do the murders. So he would stop doing that, and then they have a relationship. Also, neither sister married ever. No, no. So the family line over there died out after they both passed, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So Andrew Borden was a little bit of a Miranda Priestley. So he had one maid one time named Maggie, and he refused to call any of the other maids by their name. So he called every single maid going forward Maggie. So Bridget, the whole time she was employed by them, was named Maggie. Huh. That's weird. So he was not respectful of his staff. He was definitely not the nicest guy, but he's definitely not a respectful person. So I don't know, maybe there was something, you know, maybe there was abuse or something going on.
SPEAKER_00Right. Both movies I watched, but I watched Lizzie Borden took an axe, and that was uh starred Christina Ricci. And apparently that movie had a lot of success. Uh they also did a mini-series afterwards. I didn't watch that, but uh Christina Ricci also played her in the mini-series. And then I watched the legend of Lizzie Borden, and it was a made-for-tv movie that actually won two Emmys. It had uh Elizabeth Montgomery, she was bewitched in the 70s. This movie was from the 70s. It's pretty, you know, cheesy. But there was very much insinuation that Lizzie and her dad had a weird relationship. And I did some digging, and it never said there was any kind of abuse or reported about the dad, but they did portray weird songs, and then she tried to very much like daddy manipulate him and stuff like that in the movie. So I don't know if it's just young daddy's girl that wanted his money so she could go party and hang out with her friends or whatever.
SPEAKER_01But I mean, I could definitely see that. I mean, you would think for someone, you know, I know money's a motive for a lot of people, but she already had money through her dad. And then there was the animosity with Abby, you know, one of the things that really like set her off with Abby is that Andrew had given Abby and her family some rental property, and Lizzie was mad about that because she felt like, you know, a lot of their estate or whatever was going to Abby, but then he gave her rental property so she wouldn't be mad. So she had money coming in. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_00They did hint to that inheritance was part of it. Like in one of the movies, she overhears Abby's pillow talk with her dad saying, Why don't you just put me in the will? And you know, like, because if something happens to you, you think they're gonna take care of me, you know, they'll just chunk me out on the street. Anyway, so that was before the murder. So who knows? That could have been a motive. Like, before he has a chance to do this, I'm gonna, I'll just put that to bed, make sure we're taken care of, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So Lizzie, she pretty much lived in Maplecroft, you know, just for the rest of her life, kind of keeping to herself. Her and Emma did have a falling out in 1905. For whatever reason, Emma left the home and never returned. And then sisters only spoke a handful of times after that. But Lizzie, you know, shortly thereafter, she started getting various illnesses, some health problems. She died at the age of 67 of pneumonia while at her home of Maplecroft. So she had some friends that held like a small funeral for her, but there was a soloist that came in to sing that reportedly sang to an empty room. So, you know, a few people came, but pretty much it was a pretty empty, sad funeral service. She died with an estimated amount of $265,000, which is several million dollars. And today's time's a pretty good chunk of change. And she left a bunch of her money to charities and to animal rescue in Fall River. And then she left money to service, she left them like cash and jewels. She left the city of Fall River $500 in perpetual care of her father's grave site. She didn't have any mention of her stepmother. And for her sister, she said that she had enough to make herself comfortable. So she didn't leave anything to her sister.
SPEAKER_00Her sister had her own inheritance from her father, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. And her sister died 12 days after Lizzie, and neither of the sisters knew that either were sick. Oh, so they didn't even know. Mm-mm. They didn't know. So Emma did not know that Lizzie passed, and then Lizzie did not know that Emma was sick. But her last request was to be buried at her father's foot. So she is buried with her father at his foot. Oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00Weird, yeah. And so I'm sure you're probably gonna mention this, but they've turned that house where they were murdered into a bed and breakfast, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And it's very haunted, apparently. And this same company or the same people that owned the second street house doing the tours of the bed and breakfast had at one point bought Maplecroft and they were gonna kind of do the same thing, but I think Maplecroft hasn't sold, and I think it's a private family home now. Oh, okay. A lot of ghost hunting companies and TV shows and things have gone into both homes and done investigations. So they're apparently both pretty active.
SPEAKER_00I guess you can go to the graves too. They're probably not too far from there.
SPEAKER_01On her grave, though, I think I've seen a picture of it, but she does have her new name Lizbeth on her grave and not Lizzie. So she pretty much took that when she changed her name. She pretty much just changed her identity to try to, I think, kind of like compartmentalize and like separate that time in her life. But she had that even on her headstone. I did find one interesting thing, because you know the whole thing with the murder weapon, it was pretty inconclusive, just the timeline of like, you know, her trying to dispose of something, take the handle off. So there was never really conclusive that that was a murder weapon. They just kind of ran with it because they needed something. The prosecution needed something. About 10 months after the murders, there was a little boy in the neighborhood that was bouncing a ball and it went on the roof of a neighbor's barn. He went up there to try to get the ball off, and they found a hatchet on the roof of the neighbor's barn behind the house. So I, along with like one of the movies, I really think the maid was in on it. I think it was a two-person thing, and I can kind of go into my like theory on that, but I think it was a two-person thing because you could see that hatchet on the top of the roof. You could see that barn's roof clearly from the third floor of the Lizzie Borden house. Where the maid stayed. Where the maid stayed. She continued to stay in that house during the trial while she was in jail and everything. So she stayed in that house for another year after both of the boardens deceased. Lizzie was in jail. Emma was kind of off doing her own thing. She stayed there with John Morse, the uncle, for a year. That was the only room that it was visible. And I just have a hard time believing that she went into her room every day, never looked out, and never saw a hatchet on the top of the roof. And that would make sense for the timeline because how is I just I'm thinking about an heiress who has probably not done a lot of manual labor in her life, has not done a lot of heavy lifting, that kind of thing. I'm just trying to figure out how she would have been able to get the handle off an axe, dispose of it separately, get it downstairs, you know, all of that. It doesn't make sense. So just chunk it out the window of the third floor. Yeah, just chunk it out. And apparently the blade size on this one more accurately aligns with the marks on both of the victims. So I just have a hard time believing that she didn't see that.
SPEAKER_00So outside of the maid, though, outside of Bridget or Maggie, according to him. Yeah. Uh, you said the other suspects were a guy that came by that he owed money to. Yeah. And then a tall guy. So that was it. Like they never really tried to pursue anything after that.
SPEAKER_01No, I think they just tried to run with the fact that she had motive and that she was in the house. And then her story kept changing.
SPEAKER_00I looked up some, not necessarily conspiracy or some facts. Like, okay, the maid may have unintentionally trapped the killer in the house. So if it wasn't Lizzie, if someone else came in and say Abby was the target for some reason, then the maid coming upstairs, the killer had to stay upstairs. And then, of course, when the maid went outside, that's when they broke free and then the father was already there. So that's another theory that some people have. But I think the maid was in on it.
SPEAKER_01You know, after the whole robbery thing that took place where they had cash and jewels stolen from the home, that's when Andrew made the maid start locking all the doors. So the maid had keys, like physical keys, that she would have to go around and make sure the doors were locked. He became paranoid. So she was the only person allowed to open and close the doors. My thing is like, how would the intruder have gotten in without the maid knowing? Because the doors remain locked at all times because Andrew Gordon was paranoid. To me, it makes more sense if there was something going on between Lizzie and the maid, or if there was abuse or something going on, I think it makes a lot of sense time-wise that Lizzie would have killed Abby and then the maid would have killed Andrew.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you think the maid actually did something as well?
SPEAKER_01I think she did too. Okay, let's say Lizzie killed Abby. She's gonna be covered in blood. So she's gonna have to change clothes and she's gonna have to clean herself up. She can't walk around for the next hour covered in blood, walk around the house. I mean, so she would have had to gotten herself changed, got herself cleaned up to then do that all over again and then hide her murder weapon in the time that they say, all of the timeline is dictated by the maid. She is the one driving the timeline.
SPEAKER_00She was gonna give her that eight minutes, like say, okay, she only would have had eight minutes. There's no way this could have happened. When technically it was probably more than eight minutes because she did it.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if you've looked at the layout of the house. You can go online and see like the diagrams and everything. The stairs are directly across from the bedroom that Abby was found and she was visible from the stairs. The maid went to the third floor after Abby was murdered. You think she would have seen it? She would have because when the neighbor came over and she went upstairs for something, she immediately saw her as soon as she went up the stairs. I just feel like there's no way at all that the maid didn't see her. There's absolutely no way because she would have gone up the stairs and around to go up to the third floor and then she would have come down again. I think Lizzie had the motive for the mother. And then I think Lizzie did that. She got herself cleaned up. And then they, you know, chit-chatted or whatever with Andrew when he got home. But we've got the maid said she was upstairs or whatnot. She could have done that, or they both could have killed Andrew. She would have gone upstairs to change while Lizzie's calling everybody saying, This is what happened, this is what happened. We need the police to come. That would have given the maid enough time to get cleaned up. Because Lizzie at that point would have had three outfits that day. The one she wore to breakfast, the one she killed Abby in, and then the one she killed Andrew in.
SPEAKER_00Unless she did it naked.
SPEAKER_01Unless she did it naked. I feel like it was a two-person job. It makes more sense. It really does. Because for her to get the murder weapon to get cleaned up in eight to 13 minutes, if the maid was not involved, to do that in eight to 13 minutes is kind of unheard of. I mean, there's no running water in the house. So would she have premeditated, put buckets of water and things around the house? The other thing is she potentially put something on top of herself to shield her clothes, but she still would have had it in her hair.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Her hair would have still been wet. That's what I was thinking. The blood would have gotten in her, especially because, like you said, it's a hatchet. She has to be really close to the body. So it would have gotten on her face, in her hair.
SPEAKER_01And if you look at Andrew's pictures, I mean, he had a four by six sunken intention in his face. She had arteries. His eyeball was hanging out. There's just absolutely zero way that she wasn't covered in blood. I feel like the timeline, the maid being upstairs, she could have used that time to get cleaned up. And she said, you know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00If you think about it, it's pretty diabolical because so say Lizzie killed Abby, but they just stayed in that house waiting for him to get home with the body for over an hour. Just that body just laying there like that. So obviously premeditated, well planned. But I agree that sounds like a two-person job. And definitely I think that, oh my God, I want to call her Maggie now. I'm like the guy. I know. Bridget.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I just can you imagine though, just kind of going about your life? Could you imagine doing that? And you have to have so much anger to be that close to someone in that close of proximity to do something like that. It's not like shooting a gun and walking away. I mean, you're a foot from someone's face doing that.
SPEAKER_00She would have been convicted, I would bet, if it had been the the acid, the poison, the prostitut acid. Because they always say women are poisoners. Like there's, you know, that's what they choose, how they choose to murder people is with poison. So I think it would have been a different trial had they died by poison.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think just because of her, you know, apparently being affluent and her being involved in the church and all these things, they just kind of thought, you know, she couldn't have done that initially.
SPEAKER_00It couldn't have been her. And again, like you said, men, we can't even murder, right? So, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The only reason his face was sunken in because she couldn't properly throw the hatchet, you know.
SPEAKER_00Oh, God. So interesting. I'm definitely gonna go watch that movie. They call the bed and breakfast, they call it the Lizzie Borden house, right? Yeah, the Lizzie Borden house.
SPEAKER_01And they have a bunch of information. I was able to find a lot of information on their site. And then there was a law school that had some of the transcripts from the trial. Um, it was UNKC School of Law. They had a lot of the transcripts, so just like a lot of good information, and they had the diagram as well of the house. And kind of when you see it on paper and you see where the stairs were, you see the location of the body and everything. I just have a hard time believing the May going up and down the stairs a couple of times, wouldn't have seen her, whenever the neighbor immediately saw her when she came up. And then to hear cackle laughing from upstairs, but to not investigate. So you're you're like, that's kind of weird. Someone's cackle laughing from upstairs, you know?
SPEAKER_00Like, what's so funny? You know? You can send me a link to that diagram and all that stuff, and I'll put it in the description after the podcast. So okay, well, let me just jump into the astrology part real quick because it's kind of crazy how this one's really dead on a little bit. So she was born July 19th, 1860, making her a cancer son, which I believe you are as well, right? Yes, yes. So cancer is the good qualities. You're the good qualities. Cancer is the sign of home, family, and emotional protection. So, what makes that really interesting is everything that happened happened inside of the home. You know what I mean? And it's cancer energy is extremely protective, it's environment and Sensitive to emotional tension within a household. They don't seek confrontation outside the home, but when they feel threatened inside their home, they can become very defensive. Her Venus, which is your love, things that make you happy too. Your social side was in Gemini. And a Venus and Gemini is really, they are social. They're charming, they're communicative. Like they're the ones that would host the parties and do all things like that. And apparently she loved doing that. She loved being a social light. So she had that energy. And then her Mars was in Taurus, which is a very stubborn and I'm a Taurus. So a very stubborn and Taurus is very fixed Earth and homebody. And they're tangible. They're not impulsive, they're deliberate. So her Mars, which is her action planet, you know what I mean, or her action sign is deliberate. They relate to property, security, and inheritance, which there was major tensions inside the board and household about all of those things, like with her and Abby. Like Abby wanted security and property and inheritance, but Lizzie thought Abby didn't deserve any of that, you know, that she wasn't her mother, that she deserved all that. Here you have domestic territorial cancer with family, you know, emotions. You have the social adaptability and dual presentation of a Gemini where she can go out and like say those things like that, be in social situations, lay the groundwork for her alibi, I guess, if you will. And then the determination and basically the premeditation of her actions being in Taurus. So, you know, obviously astrology is fun. And not that, but I was like, this is pretty dead on. There's not a stretch to try to like sway it one way or the other. Yeah. You know? So I just thought that was a good chart. But yeah, Venus and Gemini. I'm a Venus and Gemini. And when I was young, all I wanted to do was go out. You know, before they called it FOMO, I had FOMO big time. I always wanted to be everywhere. I didn't want to miss a party or anything.
SPEAKER_01So well, that's what she did. You know, as soon as she got acquitted, she had her new friends from New York and Boston and the social circles and the theater and all of that. She tried to kind of get back into that, but she couldn't do that with the people of Fall River. So she found her some new friends so she can have some parties.
SPEAKER_00New friends, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, oh my goodness. Well, thanks for coming on. I love the whole angle of that she might have been in a relationship with the maid and they were in cahoots. I like that angle because it sounds more plausible than just her doing this alone, or a random tall guy, or a guy mad about, you know, not getting paid. Yeah. The twist that I had never heard of before was the axe on the roof. That's badass.
SPEAKER_01It's really interesting. I don't know. Maybe Lizzie felt empowered a little bit. She was part of like a women's suffrage club where they were really working on women's rights and things. And I don't know, maybe there was something going on with the maid. Maybe the maid was being abused and she was trying to protect her or trying to protect herself, but you never know.
SPEAKER_00Well, if he was also frugal and apparently cheap and didn't pay a lot of day laborers, like maybe he also was like that with the maid. Like, you know, she lived there, right? She was a housemaid.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she lived upstairs, so she was there all the time. But she still got paid. You would think.
SPEAKER_00So not just in room and board.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00They're eating mutton in the movies I watch. Like, there's like so much mutton that they were eating, like mutton stew. And there's one where I made Greg watch it with me. Oh my god. I always make him watch these terrible movies with me. But they were eating mutton stew. Emma wasn't there, so it was just Lizzie, Abby, and the dad. And they're just slurping. And Lizzie's just like looking at the two of them eating fast and slurping. And I was like, Oh, I might have ask them just for those sounds. Slurping. Maybe she was overstimulated for far too long. It was like, ah, she like pushed her mutton stew away. Like, I'm not eating any of the yeah, I think I'd be skinny if I lived back then because I ain't eating mutton stew. Yeah. Same. Same. So Greg had never heard the nursery rhyme. So you want to read it that way, if case someone has never heard it.
SPEAKER_01Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 wax. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. So she really hit them about half of that, but still gruesome. I think that one does have like a second part.
SPEAKER_00And I think it's like Yeah, there's a second part, and it's really gruesome or something. Okay, so Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 wax. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. Then she wiped the axe so clean and hid it where it could not be seen. When the neighbors came to say, Lizzie told them she'd been away. And then another darker version circulated later. Said, and the moral of the story is if you want to give your parents fits, take an axe and give a whack and make sure you don't look back. Oh my gosh. I know. Could you imagine though kids coming by your house saying this? Think about as a kid, you don't even really think about stuff like that. Like being a kid and listening to music, that I think about some of the songs I listened to when I was young, and I was like, I didn't realize it was about that. You know, it's just like you don't think like that. So that's probably just like, you know, you're doing the double Dutch rope and chanting your Lizzie Borden nursery rhyme.
SPEAKER_01I cannot imagine her being inside her house, hearing that as like kids throw rocks at her window. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00Especially if she was innocent. Yeah. Yeah. There's just a lot of speculation and I mean, at the end of the day, it kind of had to be. It had to be them or her. You know what I mean? It just had to be. Yeah. But oh well. One for the woman. She got away with it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00She had ultimately kind of got the life she wanted in a way. Okay. Well, thanks for coming and being on the show. You are very welcome. The Femme Fatal. Created and hosted by Stacy Dotson. Produced by Mark Williams. Music by Marcia Yingling, Chad Chank, and Greg Loicano.