1. "What was your impetus in becoming interested in Lizzie?"
Posted by audrey on Mar-9th-04 at 1:58 AM

Mine was hearing about her in a college class.....

Ran right out and checked out all the books on her I could find....

This is an easy question -- my birthday is August 4th.

I went to the library in 1997 to look up some books on a more recent case of a double murder, and a 'not guilty' suspect who was believed to really be guilty. I found AR Brown's book, looked at the covers, browsed the pictures, and became so interested I then borrowed all the other books available. "Je regrette nons."

Reading "true crime" is often better than fiction for entertainment. I used to read a lot of Gardner, Chandler, Fleming, and Hammett when younger and living in a local w/o a TV. (No, not an institution.)
,,,
I remember seeing a "You Are There" progam on TV in the late 1950s. Also, the NY Sunday News (still) runs "Famous Crimes" in this newspaper. (Both made her appear guilty?).

(Message last edited Mar-10th-04  3:35 PM.)

I had heard the "ditty" as a kid ("Lizzie Borden took an axe...") and even spent a summer in Fall River, without any real interest in Lizzie.  What really got me going was the NY Times Sunday Magazine article which appeared on the 100th anniversary of the murders.  That article was really good if anyone wants to look it up in the Times archives.

Mine was being born & raised in Fall River to a mother who loved to try & figure out the Mystery that is Lizzie Borden. I can remember Mom having me or my younger sister be "look-out" while she used the tiny hammer from mt toy tool kit to try and chip off a piece granite foundation from the Borden house on Second st.. I was so embarrased to see my mother trying to defile the house for a small momento. I can also remember summer vacations from school when mom would bring us to the Oak Grove Cematary to try to find the Borden plot. We would walk around that cematary for hours never coming close to the coveted Lizzie grave. It never dawned on me until later in life that all Mom had to do was to go to the front cematary office & ask where Lizzie was buried. She would pack us a lunch which we would eat in the middle of this graveyard. Boy, the looks we would get but we didn't care. We were on a mission.
I can still remember the first time I took my Mom into the Second st. home for the 1st time. Her excitement was priceless. She was like a kid in the candy store! Thanks to my Moms enthuasium regarding Lizzie, I am now hooked for life.

My interest (or the beginnings of it) would date I suppose from the first time I heard the "took an axe" doggerel. I was probably 6 or 7 years old at the time, and the thing just stuck, as it does with most people.

I distinctly remember seeing Liz Montgomery in "The Legend of Lizzie Borden" back in '75 (age 10 I think by the time of the television premiere.) I still have a hard time in reading Lizzie's inquest testimony, because the voice I hear speaking is Montgomery's!!

This last may be a bit morbid, but the first crime scene photo I ever saw was of Andrew Borden, dead on the lounge. I remember being totally shocked - not by the photo's content, but by the fact that there were actually pictures taken (if not immediately published) of the murder scenes.

In a nut shell, that would be it!

Doug

Growing up with the story in Fall River and then finding out my Grandma worked for her at Maplecroft started my interest as a teen. Also the Fall River Historical Society being a favorite place of mine.
Then meeting Ruby Cameron in 1985 and spending hours with her, rehashing the story with her "new" twist. The impression she left on me was indelible.

Gramma

My interest in the Borden case started from not remembering how the LBTA poem went and doing a Google search which led me to Stefani's Web site. It is the unsolvability of the case that does it for me, not to mention the fact that Lizzie seems to me to be a very complex person.

Mine was watching the Legend Of Lizzie Borden movie on TV and finding out it was based on a true story.  Went to the library to get books on her which put me in total awe when I saw how closely Elizabeth Montgomery resembled the real Lizzie!  My twin and I shared all the Lizzie books I could find and had many discussions about her and the crime, I was so thankful to have someone to discuss the case with and now here I am! 

i can't remember when i had not heard of lizzie borden.  i remember someone showing me her picture in some crime book, but i knew the legend.  lincoln's book was the first one i read.  that's a good question though.

When I was nine or ten years old (1961-62) I saw a television program about Lizzie Borden (not the Elizabeth Montgomery movie and I don't think it was the Alfred Hitchcock episode). I was fascinated and began questioning my parents about Lizzie. My father belonged to a book club and recognizing my interest ordered 'Lizzie Borden: The Untold Story' by Edward D. Radin, which was newly published at that time. I was thrilled when the book arrived in the mail and read it cover to cover. From then on I was "hooked" and the Borden case has been a hobby ever since. And, I still have and refer to my first Lizzie book!

I can't really remember ever not knowing about Lizzie, at least her name.  I guess that's true for most of us. 

However, like Doug's message, it was Radin's book which started my serious interest in the case.  I picked it up (paperback edition, mid 60's) as something to read on a train ride.

But it wasn't until the internet came along that I was able to discuss the case with any other seriously interested Bordenites.

My fading memory suggests a "You Are There" episode from the late 1950s; (repeated?).

Yes, Harry, the internet has certainly helped bring isolated Bordenites together! My family and friends, except for a younger cousin who wrote a college paper about Lizzie, were/are generally amused by though do not share my enthusiasm for the Borden mystery. Sometimes when I have been on the computer a little too long my wife asks me if I have been with "the dead lady" again; however, she does periodically bake Lizzie's sugar cookies and last August was more than willing to visit Fall River and attend the Fall River Historical Society program featuring William Masterton as the speaker.

Ray, that is possible as the program I remember seemed more like a documentary than a dramatic presentation. I watched the show at a friend's house on a warm, summer-like evening; unfortunately I don't remember what it was called.

"You Are There" narrated by Walter Cronkite was a very popular show in the 1950s. Don't know when it went off the air.
I suggest it was just another example of re-writing history according to popular cultural beliefs.

Mike Wright wrote a series of books about American history.
Did you know that Paul Revere was captured and never finished his ride? Crafty Revolutionaries sent 2 or 3 riders out; still SOP today. "When the message really, really, has to get through."

Growing up close to Fall River and always being interested in mysteries and true-crime are what has kept me interested in this story. (In the early 1980s I worked in the ad department at a Fall River factory outlet store and I always wanted to do a "PRICES CHOPPED!" sale during the first week in August, but the bosses wouldn't go for it. Fall River was still downplaying its connection to Lizzie then.)

Later, I worked for a nearby weekly newspaper and wrote a couple of short pieces on Lizzie and the Fall River Historical Society for the special supplement we published for summer tourists. (I met Florence Brigham back then.)

Now I'm most interested in my own town's history. I guide walking tours, etc. That led me to more research about where Emma was staying (about three blocks from my office). Also there's the connections with other old Fairhaven families--the Delanos (all connected to FDR) the Brownells, and so on.

I'm new here, but I'll be posing a couple of questions to the experts soon.

Is the house where Emma was staying on 8/4 still there?
Can we get pictures?

I also became interested in Lizzie through my mother.  She was a very gentle woman, but had a wonderfully macabre streak.  I know I first heard the 40 whacks ditty from her, and I got to read Radin after she got done with it.  My ten year old daughter seems to be carrying on the tradition by savoring good long tramps through local graveyards.  Any time we spot one we haven't visited, she wants to stop the car.

--Lyddie

Yes, the house Emma was staying in on 8/4 is still here. It is now numbered 132 Green Street. It is beginning to fall into disrepair. The front steps are pretty much falling apart and there's peeling paint all over the place. I'll get a picture when I have a chance.

I saw a dreadful old movie, a "musical" "comedy" called George White's Scandals (the last of three of that name, made in 1945), starring Joan Davis and Jack Haley.  Joan is looking at Jack's family photographs and comes across one of which she says, "Say, that looks like Lizzie Borden, the one who hacked her parents to pieces.  Was she one of your relatives?"  "Oh no," says Jack.  "That's my great-grandmother.  She taught Lizzie how to use the axe."  (This is one of the better jokes in the picture.)  I asked my father about the case.  He had only the vaguest recollection of it.

I assumed Lizzie had been convicted and executed.  A few years later I saw some selections from "New Faces" on TV, which included the famous "Can't Chop Your Papa Up in Massachusetts" number.  This was the first inkling I had that Lizzie had been acquitted.

Several years later, I saw a TV dramatization of Edward D. Radin's book, which I subsequently read.  I accepted his theory that Bridget had committed the murders, though a few details did disturb me (the note, the inconsistent stories).  I did a speech on the subject in college, which I botched royally and am mightily and justly ashamed of to this day.

My doubts about Radin's theory were strengthened when I read Gerald Gross's piece in his anthology of pieces by Edmund Pearson (which I loved).  After reading Sullivan and Lincoln, I became--and remain--convinced of Lizzie's guilt.  (As for Gross's theory that Bridget was Lizzie's accomplice, I think she might have been an accessory after the fact, but I don't think she was in on it from the beginning.)

That's pretty interesting.  How can you remember all that?
Stef and I had parents who were interested in biography, autobiography and true crime (among other things like golf and bridge and art etc).
We passed around the true crime from day one- so we were into LIzzie as a 4-person family from the early 70's I guess.
Gawd, our dad would love to talk theory- about any unsolved crime.
The Legend movie became a favorite, corresponding to around the time we read Sullivan, and got Porter from the Library.
The interest waned after a bit but Stef always sent home xeroxed articles she found as an Archivist at Penn State.  She had quite a collection built up for us by the 80's.
Around 1999-turn of the year 2000, our mother died while we were caring for her and we wanted something to occupy us.  We looked for a distraction- a diversion- and stumbled back into Lizzie, on the dark-rose message board, and the LBQ (I had found the quarterly advertised in the Mystery Magazine).
Stef became friends with the Editor and he asked her to join the staff.  I am a bit psychic and I had told her a few years ago she would become the Editor of the LBQ.
Well, I was wrong.  But close!  There is nothing like the LBQ, but Stef is now an Editor of Lizzie Borden Studies and she enjoys the case and her designing job very much.
Over the years we were lucky in that we combined our resources to buy whatever Lizzie books or documents we came across.  Not too many people have that advantage.
It's a fascinating hobby which is more than that- it's a family now, multifaceted.

E Radin correctly accused E Pearson of a "hoax" because his quotes from the trial were so one-sided. That makes the 'not guilty' verdict inexplicable. But while Radin improved the discussion, he also did not quote Lizzie when first questioned: "It wasn't Bridget or anyone who worked for Father". You have to wade through many to find the few nuggets of truth. Each writer has his own point of view.

I believe AR Brown solved the case, in so far as it is possible. He also had a few loopholes in his book, but his Big Picture convinces me.