I Thnik she was innocent.
Considering they didn't have DNA back in the days when Lizzy Borden allegedly killed her parents there was little they could do to punish Ms. Borden. Ms. Borden got off on a technicality ... she was never read her rights. There is also here say that many of the men on the jury couldn't believe a woman could commit such a heinous crime.
Did Lizzy Borden really kill her parents? I have studied this particular case for quite sometime and I don't believe she did, but Ms. Borden is the only one that knows the truth.
Lizzy was spoiled and adored by her father. He always bought her gifts and the last thing he gave her was a ring. She would often sit on her father's lap (unusual for those days and considering she was in her 30s.) Not once, since anyone has considered looking over the case have they thought that it's highly possible that there was incest in the family involving the spinster Lizzie and her father. I often wonder about that.
There was no evidence to support the fact that Ms. Borden killed either of her parents. The maid was hanging up clothes and no one heard anything. I find it odd that two people could be bludgeoned to death with an ax and screams were not heard. The myth is that Lizzy gave her step-mother 40 whacks and her father 41, but there was nowhere near those amounts of wounds however grizzly the bodies looked.
One person who was over-looked in this scenario was Lizzie's sister. Te years older and not as pretty as Lizzie nor getting the attention from the father that Lizzie got it could well have been the sister, but unfortunately no one will ever know.
Ms. Borden could no longer stay in her hometown because many thought she'd gotten away with murder (especially the women) and she was snubbed. In those days not only being a spinster, but a curse of murder put upon a woman such as murder would finish that woman's life off.
Ms. Borden and her sister bought a home in Falls River. From gossip an argument ensued between the two sisters and her sister moved out. Lizzie died and very shortly after her sister died as well. Lizzy is buried near her parents, but there was no mention of her sister.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where was the origination of the thanksgiving turkey
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Most of the information above is erroneous. Lizzie did not get off on a technicality because she wasn't read her rights, she was tried and aquitted. She never left her hometown- she and her sister did buy a house in Fall River and lived out the rest of their days, but Fall River was their home town and was where the murders took place. The killings are even called "The Fall River Tragedy". The sister could not have committed the crimes because she was out of town when it happened, and had been out of town for two weeks prior. They sent her a telegraph telling her of the murder and she returned that night. There was never any mention of Mr Borden giving Lizzie a ring, in fact they spoke in court about how Mr Borden always wore a ring that was given to him by Lizzie, he was wearing it when he was killed and he was buried wearing it as well.
Given the evidence of the case, my view is that there is no way that Lizzie Borden could have killed her parents. The timeline shows that Mrs Borden was killed first, around 9:30am. There was blood splatter on the floor and wall in front of the body, on the bed to the right of the body, on the dresser to the left of the body and on the window behind the body, giving a pretty clear indication of where the killer stood while swinging the hatchet. Yet Lizzie Borden was seen by their maid and her father throughout the morning wearing the same clothes and hair style that she was wearing prior to her stepmother's death and she had no blood on her at all.
Her Father left the house around 9am and came home around 10:45am. The maid was washing the windows inside the house and went upstairs to her attic room at approximately 10:55am. The police station got the call that Mr Borden was murdered at 11:15am. When Lizzie found her father's body she called out to the maid to come down and then she sent the maid to walk over to the Dr's house. The Dr was not home, and a neighbor sent one of her workers down to a paint shop where they had a telephone and they called the police. So, that process would take at least 5 minutes, probably more. But for the sake of argument let's say 5 minutes, which would put Lizzie calling the maid down at 11:10am.
That gives us a 15 minute time frame between when Mr Borden was last seen alive at 10:55am and when he was found dead by Lizzie at 11:10am. The prosecution says that during that 15 minutes Lizzie got the hatchet from wherever she hid it after killing her stepmom, killed her father by hacking him with the hatchet 11 times, went down to the cellar and hacked off the handle of the hatchet with an axe (allegedly because it was covered in blood), covered the hatchet head with ashes and put it in a box of other hatchets and put the box up on a 6-foot high shelf. Then, she threw the hatchet handle in the fire, went upstairs, changed her clothes, underclothes and shoes (which was a lot more complicated at the time then just throwing on jeans, a tee-shirt and a pair of sneakers) and hid her bloody clothing. Then she washed her hair of blood, somehow dried it and then fixed it up so that not a hair was out of place, went back downstairs and called the maid.
This timeline to me is preposterous. There is just no way that she would have the time to do all of these things in 15 minutes. Also, the prosecution first started to suspect Lizzie after she made conflicting statements. She said one thing to witnesses and police directly after the murders, and then 7 days later when she was officially questioned by police her story was slightly different in some parts. BUT, during the trial it came out that the Dr had started giving Lizzie double doses of Morphine (for her nerves) the day after the murders and had continued to give Lizzie double doses of Morphine every day after that, even while she was in police custody. Morphine in that dose has be proven to "affect the memory and change and alter the view of things and give people hallucinations". So, it is no wonder that there were conflicting statements in her recollection of what happened that day, and I highly doubt that modern courts would even find testimony given under the influence of Morphine admissible in court.
There are other things that could be put in a way that makes Lizzie look guilty if you are looking to blame her, but they can also be disputed and do not prove her guilt. The deciding factor for me is that 15 minute time frame. I just do not believe there is any way that she could have done all that in such a short amount of time. They never found any blood on her dress or shoes or on any of the hatchets in the house. They say she is guilty because she burned and old dress two days after the murders (please note, this is a time in which she was under the influence of Morphine). Her best friend is the one that told the prosecution about Lizzie burning the dress, and watched her burn the dress, but she never says that there was any blood on the dress. The police had searched the house up an down many times after the murders but never found any bloody clothes, or any bloody shoes.
The maid was upstairs and Lizzie's stepmother and father were dead. If Lizzie did in fact kill her Stepmother and her Father, why would she call the maid down so soon? Why wouldn't she burn the bloody clothes right then and there? Why wouldn't she have left the house and gone into town to give herself an alibi and let the maid find the bodies? How could a lady of that era be so skilled with an axe to strike such small targets with such accuracy 29 times?
We will never know for sure what happened that day, but for me it seems as though Lizzie Borden was innocent and someone got away with one of the most horrific crimes in history.
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