Despite what you’ve heard, America’s most famous murderess was actually found innocent in a court of law. In 1893, after deliberating for a mere hour, the (all-male, white, protestant) jury unanimously decided that 32-year-old spinster and Sunday School teacher Lizzie Borden didn’t actually take an axe and give her parents 40 whacks. By their reasoning, someone else must have. But who?
Nobody knows for sure, and we probably never will. Still, more than a century’s worth of authors, historians, researchers, citizen sleuths, tabloid papers and nosy neighbors have examined no shortage of suspects who, if not Lizzie, may have actually committed the dirty deed: the brazen daytime double murder of 69-year-old Andrew Borden, one of the richest businessmen in Fall River, Massachusetts, and his 64-year-old second wife, Abby Borden. Since no will stating otherwise was ever found, should Andrew predecease his wife, she was set to inherit his fortune, while two spinster daughters would inherit nothing.
At 11:10am on a hot August Thursday in 1892, Lizzie Borden “discovered” her still-warm father, who had been bludgeoned to death (after 11 whacks, technically) on a settee in the sitting room. She called for help from their Irish maid, who in turn summoned the town doctor from across the street. Upstairs in the guest room, Abby’s colder body was found facedown. She had been dead approximately an hour and a half before her husband, killed by 18 whacks.
Though the murder predates Agatha Christie, the scene was straight out of one of her novels: All the doors in their humble home were kept locked. No conclusive murder weapon was ever found. Lizzie Borden had no blood splatter upon her person. She’d been leisurely eating pears in the barn as her parents were being bludgeoned, she said. Assuming her alibi is true, who else could have hacked up the Bordens? The game is afoot.
Suspect #1: Bridget Sullivan, the Maid
At the time of the murders—about 9:30 a.m. for Abby and 11 a.m. for Andrew, per the autopsies performed on the Bordens’ dining room table—just one other person was on site at their home at 92 Second Street: 25-year-old Irish immigrant and housemaid Bridget Sullivan, whom Emma and Lizzie called “Maggie”—a derogatory term for female Irish servants. Sullivan said she was washing windows at the time of the murder, an alibi Lizzie corroborated. Sullivan in turn testified faithfully on Lizzie’s behalf, telling authorities that all was well and good in the Borden home—a statement that was clearly false.
If she was actually not involved with the crime, why would Bridget lie? “Because she was a live-in domestic servant and she wanted to continue to get work,” explains C. Cree, author of Killing the Bordens. Unless she was secretly paid off, notes Cree, Sullivan had no motive—unless you get really creative. In the 1984 novel Lizzie, author Ed McBain posited that Borden and Sullivan were involved in a lesbian affair that was discovered by Abby Borden, who reacted with judgement and disgust. In an improbable scenario such as this, though Sullivan probably would not have wielded the hatchet, she could have been an accomplice after Lizzie hastily killed her stepmother, leaving the duo no choice but to kill Andrew when he returned to the house.
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