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| Sunday, 3 July 2005 |
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Features |
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News Business Features
Editorial
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Famous trials that shook the world : The trial of Lizzie Borden by Lionel Wijesiri For almost one hundred and thirteen years, Lizzie Borden and her hatchet have caused more confusion, speculation and debate than any other murder case in American history. A number of books expounding different theories have been written about this crime.
There is also a 1975 film adaptation of the crime titled The Legend of Lizzie Borden, starring Elizabeth Montgomery. She was the subject of the opera, Lizzie Borden,(1965), by Jack Beeson. Miss Borden also appears as a character in Monkeybone (2001), Joe Killionaire (2004), and Saturday the 14th Strikes Back (1988), played by Shawnee Free Jones, Alice Alyse, and Lauren Peterson, respectively. Lizzie Borden was born to Andrew and Sarah Borden on July 19, 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts, USA. When Lizzie was only two-and-a-half-years-old, her mother died. In 1865 Andrew remarried. His new wife was Abbey Durfee. Lizzie and her older sister Emma were both spinsters who lived with their father and stepmother. Their father was a rich, successful, and influential businessman, but he was also well known for being a miser. Both Lizzie and Emma were ladies with spotless reputations, and Lizzie was popular and engaged in charitable work. She was very active in working with the church and was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden left his house to conduct his business matters. He left Lizzie, Mrs. Borden, and Bridget Sullivan, the Irish maid alone in the house. When he returned home, Andrew decided to settle on the couch for a nap. At precisely 11.15 a.m. Lizzie discovered her father dead on the couch. He had suffered from severe blows to the head with a sharp object. Abbey Borden was found in an upstairs bedroom even more brutally mutilated than her husband. It was concluded that Abbey was murdered at 9.30 a.m. and that Andrew had been killed at 11.00 a.m. On August 12, Lizzie was arrested and accused of the murder of her father and stepmother. The preliminary hearing was held in late August 1892 and the grand jury heard the testimony in late November and early December of the same year. The trial of Lizzie Borden began on June 5, 1893 and lasted two weeks. Her trial became a national sensation in the country. Many key points were brought up during this trial, one being the unstable relationship within the Borden family. Liz and her sister were always at odds with their father and stepmother, mostly over financial matters. The relationship between the stepmother and the sisters too was not a good one, and if the phrase 'dysfunctional family' had been in vogue at the turn of the century, no doubt someone would have tagged the Bordens with it. The prosecution believed it had a solid case. Events that had taken place on August 3 were crucial. On this day, Abby Borden visited Dr. Bowen feeling ill and complained that she thought Lizzie was trying to poison her and her husband. The physician assured her she wasn't that sick, but the prosecuting attorneys did not discard the matter so easily. Furthermore, Bridget Sullivan swore she heard Lizzie laughing from the top of the stairs at 10.40 in the morning of the murders, which would mean that she knew about the crime before she made the official discovery, half an hour later. The other evidence used against Lizzie during the trial was the fact that she had tried to purchase prussic acid the day before the murders. Lizzie also was alleged to have burned a dress in the stove a few days after the murders. No murder weapon was ever found, but an axe found in the basement was suspected to have been used in the killings. As for Lizzie, throughout the trial she remained silent, unwilling to testify or possibly against self. Finally, at the end of the trial, Lizzie was asked if she had anything to say on her own behalf. With a cold, hard stare at the jury she announced, "I am innocent. I leave it to my counsel to speak for me." An all-male jury acquitted her on June 20, 1893 after only sixty-eight minutes of deliberation. After the trial, Lizzie and Emma split their inheritance and bought a much larger house up on the hill, which Lizzie christened 'Maplecroft.' Many Fall River residents still believed in her guilt and as a result, she was ostracised to some degree. More than a dozen years after the murders, she and her sister became estranged, and after Emma left 'Maplecroft' in 1905, the two lived apart until their deaths in 1927. Lizzie Borden died on June 1, 1927, at the age of sixty-six. Emma died nine days later. One-seventh of Lizzie's considerable estate was left to the Animal Rescue League of Fall River and the remainder to those friends and servants who stayed loyal to her over the years. It did not take long for the world to wonder: If Lizzie did not do it, who did? To this day, Lizzie remains the most likely suspect, yet if this is true, perhaps the greatest mystery is that so many people close to her, who must have known, would keep silence and tacitly become accomplices. Why did not Emma, or Bridget or Dr. Bowen speak out? What circumstances could possibly mitigate such a crime in favour of the perpetrator? Whether Lizzie Borden was an innocent victim in the Fall River tragedy or
the All-American Girl with a simple taste for mayhem, her extraordinary
actions that bloody day of August 4, 1892, catapulted her family from the
narrow confines of their New England lives into the spaciousness of American
legend, is still a mystery. |
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