My second link, corrected. Sorry.
Gakk! Did you see this thread? I guess the bed and breakfast’s been sold, though the ‘for sale’ site is still up.
But Maplecroft still may be available.
And I’m sorry I’ve posted three times in a row.
…in the nude? The fact that Lizzie was around within 15 minutes of the Father’s murder makes it difficult to understand how she killed them without spattering her clothes with blood. Did she slip out of her dress, and whack the parents? Or, did she clean up with the help of the maid?
Murder in the nude…is it plausible?
Obviously, the murderer was Gallagher.
What she did, according to Lincoln, was hide the bloodstained blue dress inside a heavy winter dress in the closet (the murders took place in intolerable midsummer heat) before the police search. She changed into another blue dress cut from the same pattern, but with the background and figure colors reversed – both shades of blue, confusing the jury – and later burned the bloody dress. Lizzie, caught in the act of burning it in the kitchen stove, said she had spilled paint on it months before.
That was the premise of the Elizabeth Montgomery movie “Legend of Lizzie Borden”
She also claimed that it was menstrual blood on the dress that she burned, possibly to win the “oh the shame of having to speak of such things in public!” sympathy of jurors.
Abby killed Andrew for the inheritance. Lizzie killed Abby in revenge for her father’s murder.
Both were killed by the axe itself, which was possessed by a Vodoun funerary spirit pissed off at Andrew’s failure to pay proper homage when embalming one of his worshippers. Or Lizzie for money and hatred.
I hadn’t heard that one before, but I like it!
I just want to say, though, that Elizabeth Montgomery looked great naked.
The show said that Borden was worh about $350,000 at the time of his death. However, the guy was such a tightwad that he had the maid serve the family some spoiled mutton broth (that must have been good for the family health). They also went to bead early to save on expensive lamp oil. Is there any evidence lat Andrew was stingy with Lizzy? She was living at home at the age of 32-wasn’t this a big embarrassment for them all? She shouldhave been long-married off by that age. Anyhow-Borden was what, 62 at the time of the murders-couldn’t she have waited forhim to croak?
After the trial, Lizzie was shunned by fall River society-how come she didn’t move to Boston? Are there any accounts of her behavior at the funerals ofher parents? Did she put on a good show of grieving?Or wasshe glad to be rid of them?
They still lived better than many families in Fall River (they had servants, their house was no mansion but was respectable, etc.). As for Lizzie, he actually sent her and her sister on the “Grand Tour” of Europe (which was several thousand dollars even then, equivalent to many times that now) so he wasn’t unbearably parsimonious (and certainly Bridget wouldn’t have wept for her, especially since the sisters insisted on calling her “Maggie” because that was the former maid’s name). Lizzie’s irritation was that her family could afford to live much better and in a much more fashionable section of town but Andrew and Abby were both too stingy and puritanical to waste money on ostentation, plus both were a bit crude in their mannerisms, thus Lizzie and Emma [who were both social climber wannabes- about the only ambition available for a woman of their caste] were closed out of any social circles.)
There was a lot more concern that Andrew’s money (much of which had been inherited from Lizzie & Emma’s mother) would go to Abby and her relatives, however. Andrew had turned over some rental property to his daughters from their mother’s estate (because of the laws of the time he did not have to do this, but it was to stop their kvetching) which he then bought back from them with cash, so both sisters had their own money (albeit not enough to support them should he die and disinherit them). When he began doing more and more business with Abby’s relatives (including trading pieces of property that had belonged to their sainted mother) and when they learned that he left part of his first wife’s estate along with much of his own to Abby (who hated her stepdaughters and would surely have left it to her brothers and sisters in her own will), both sisters flipped. (Abby meanwhile was terrified that Andrew would bequeathe his estate to his daughters who would cut her out entirely, which they probably would have.)
After his death Lizzie & Emma, who rarely agreed on anything and had much ill blood already between them, both agreed instantly to spring for a much finer home, carriage and more servants and became accomplished hostesses. Since most of Fall River society would not come to their home due to the scandal, Lizzie (who was a passionate lover of the theater) began entertaining theatrical troupes (a no-no in Victorian society- actors were beneath decent folk) and seems to have had a long-term affair with one actress. It is not known why Lizzie and Emma had their falling out, but they never spoke or communicated again after 1913, with speculation either that it was Lizzie’s increasingly open lesbianism or some revelation about the murders that caused the rift. (Lizzie and Emma died hte same week in 1927.)
(There is at least one book that maintains Emma was the killer; it’s name ironically is Lizzie by Frank Spiering.
Has anybody read or seen the play Blood Relations by Sharon Pollock, incidentally? Odd set-up: in the first scene, Lizzie is entertaining her friend, an unnamed actress, clearly her lover, many years after the murder. When the actress convinces her to describe what happened she offers to act the part of Lizzie to make it more comfortable for her, so the two actresses switch roles. From here until the next-to-last scene, “the actress” plays Lizzie and the actress who previously played Lizzie takes the role of Abby. In this play
Lizzie is the killer, though more from penned up rage at how women in general and lesbians in particular are treated in society than from monetery incentives
I’ve always been inordinately fascinated by this murder, too. I always kind of thought Lizzie did it, either in the complete nude, or in the blue dress. And Abby was paid off to keep quiet.
I think the son-in-law or whoever was just brought in because the world at that time couldn’t believe a woman could commit two such brutal murders.
The actress, by the way, was Broadway star Nance O’Neil (1874–1965). There’s no more than gossip that she and Lizzie were more than friends.
Hmmph—imagine, an affair between a Nance and a Lizzie . . .
Well, there are those letters in which Nance told Lizzie “I don’t know what happened to your folks, but I’d sure like to play with your gaping hatchet wound…”
It’s always the damed blue dress with bodily fluids on it. You’d think people would learn.
I read a pretty interesting book called The Cases that Haunt Us by John Douglas (FBI profiler guy) where he examines various historical crimes using modern psych profiling techniques and made a pretty convincing case that Lizzie did it. (He also makes cases for who Jack the Ripper was, who the Zodiac was, that OJ was guilty, and most surprisingly, that John and Patsy Ramsey did not kill JonBenet.)
No, but he vowed to find the real killers.