# Question about the Lizzie Borden case **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 7, 2007, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-lizzie-borden-case/414770 "2007-08-07T18:24:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-lizzie-borden-case/414770/1 "2007-08-07T18:24:08Z")
Well, sorta. It’s not “Did she really murder her parents?” One article I read many years ago gave a possible additional reason for the acquittal was that shortly before the murders of her parents, there had been a previous axe murder in or around Fall River. Unbeknowst to the jury, by the time Lizzie’s trial rolled around, the suspect had been apprehended and incarcerated at the same time that Lizzie’s parents were murdered. The gist of the article was that in all the history of Fall River, the only other axe murder had just previously occurred, and the jury thought it plausible that that same perp might have axed the Bordens–not knowing that at the time he had already been put into the pokey. The questions: Did this earlier axe murder actually take place? What happened to that suspect? Was the timeline accurate on his incarceration? Is there any evidence that the jury was/was not aware of his incarceration at the time of the Bordens murders (assuming that it really happened)? ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-lizzie-borden-case/414770/2 "2007-08-07T18:58:44Z")
From [Lizzie Andrew Borden (.com!)](http://lizzieandrewborden.com/NewResearch/NewResearchArticles/NoeMurderer.htm) > [@](#): > > Ten months after the Borden slayings, another axe murder was committed in Fall River, Massachusetts. The victim was a twenty-two year old woman named Bertha Manchester who worked on her father’s dairy farm. > > […] > > ``` > A headline ran in the Boston Globe that could not have been of more benefit to the jailed Lizzie: STARTLING PARALLELISMS -- MANY POINTS OF RESEMBLANCE FOUND BETWEEN BORDEN AND MANCHESTER MURDERS. The article pointed out the uncanny similarities of Manchester's wounds to those of Abby, both in number and place, and it said that, as at the 92nd Street Borden house, nothing seemed to have been stolen from the Manchester. Furthermore, the assassin appeared to have spent a long time at the crime scene after finishing his brutal work. The finger of suspicion had pointed at Lizzie, in large part, because it seemed so improbable that an outsider could have murdered Abby and then dallied around the residence for an hour and a half until Andrew came home. Finally, the Manchester murder was committed at 9:30 AM, a busy time at the Manchester dairy farm. Again, people have always wondered how a stranger could have exited onto a well-frequented street after slaying the Bordens but here was a murderer with a similarly reckless modus operandi. > > One of Lizzie's defense attorney's, the talented Andrew Jennings, made the most of these similarities when he asked a group of reporters: "Are they going to claim that Lizzie Borden did this too?" > > Of course, the joke was that that was impossible since Lizzie had been in jail at the time. > > ``` > > […] > > ``` > Luckily for Lizzie, the Borden jury went to trial knowing that Fall River had an axe murderer who could not be her and who fit the stereotype of a brutal murderer far better than she did for José Correira was no refined, upper-class "lady" but, as Ann Jones points out in Women Who Kill, exactly the type of person expected to commit brutal violence: young (twenty-two at the time), male, lower-class, a manual laborer, and an immigrant. > > What the Borden jury did not know was that José Correira could not possibly have been the murderer of Abby and Andrew Borden because he was not in the United States when they were committed. He was in his native land, the Azores, the Portuguese-held islands that are almost midway between Europe and North America. Correira arrived in the US in April of 1893, a full eight months after the Borden slayings. > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-lizzie-borden-case/414770/3 "2007-08-07T19:00:49Z")
Thanks a bunch!