1. "Certain Similarities..."
Posted by Edisto on Jan-2nd-03 at 12:44 PM

At Christmastime, Santa usually stuffs my stocking (NOT one of the ones I'm wearing) with true-crime paperbacks.  One of this year's crop is "Auto Focus" (which was previously published as "The Murder of Bob Crane").  It's about the 1978 murder of the star of the "Hogan's Heroes" TV series.  Like some other modern cases, it bears a few similarities to the Borden murders.  In this case, there was one victim (male), who was killed during the early-morning hours and was probably asleep at the time.  He was bludgeoned with a blunt instrument, later determined to be a tripod.  The perp was probably someone who knew him well.  Here's a statement from the Medical Examiner in the Crane case:
   "The killer's first blow laid open Crane's scalp, covering
   the weapon with blood.  The second blow was delivered with a
   short arc, slinging only a couple of droplets onto the ceiling
   and table lamp near the bed."
From this evidence, the ME thought the killer was a male rather than a female.  (There were suspects of both sexes.)  He thought a (physically weaker) female attacker would have needed to swing the (obviously heavy) weapon in a wider arc than a male would have needed.  That would have left a longer trail of blood spots on the ceiling and nearby objects.  I wonder if this sex-related difference in stength was considered in the Borden case, except as it relates to the number of blows needed to kill.  Of course, the ceilings in the Borden house were probably higher than in Crane's apartment, and there was a blood-spattered wall close by Andrew Borden's head.  Incidentally, the police in the Crane case were at least as careless as those called to the Borden house.  They allowed people to contaminate the crime scene at will and didn't bother to preserve all of the evidence.  What else is new?  A further point in the Crane case is that the (never recovered) murder weapon was originally thought to have been something like a tire iron.  Years later, it was determined to have been a tripod.  Two of the legs made parallel indentations in the victim's head at the moment of first impact, so there may not have been a second blow with an already-bloodied weapon.  In the Borden case, of course, there were multiple blows, so the "arc" theory would actually fit that scenario better.

I read a book on the Crane murder but I don't believe it was the same one you mention but then again maybe it was if it was reissued. Mine was a paperback when I read it.   In fact every time I see Hogan's Heroes on TV it reminds me of the story of his death.

I remember reading about the tripod as the weapon and the subsequent trial a few years after the crime.

Were there only 2 blows?
And was there a trial (recently?)

Someone had pointed out the apartment or hotel he was staying in where it happened in Arizona while I was living there.  Yikes, and now I live close by where Andrew Cunanan lived, do you think theres some sort of pattern here with me and murderers and the murdered? 

There's a comprehensive piece on the Bob Crane case on the crime library site.  It deals with the trial in 1992 involving the prime suspect in the murder.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/bob_crane/3.htm

I hadn't actually quite finished reading the book when I posted the bit about the "two" blows.  (Since it was later determined the weapon was probably a tripod, which made two parallel tracks at one time, it appeared there might have been only one blow.)  Later in the book, there was a reference to there having been three separate blows.  I can only assume the second and third blows didn't leave the same kind of damage as the first.  The probable murderer, Carpenter, was tried in the early 90s and acquitted.  He has since died.  What an ugly case!  Made me want to go and wash up after reading a few pages.  I'm now reading the new Patricia Cornwell about Jack the Ripper.  We'll see whether she used any modern forensics techniques that could be applied to the Borden case.  I'm highly skeptical...

The modern forensic techniques sound intriguing, please keep us posted.    Its a wonder what they can do nowadays!

There's something on "Dateline" right now, that I'm barely listening to during 1/2 time of the Tostitoe Bowl.
They are talking about a pastor in Texas who they think killed his wife.
One of the things that got the authorities suspicious was he had admitted that he had changed his clothes that day and that he *Lawyered up* the very next day!  [edit here]:  AND he found the body.
Sound familiar?
This woman was strangled and Then beat up with possibly a table leg.
Her FACE.
The expert said someone who beat in her face HATED her.  Absolutely hated her.
AND the husband never talked.  Never explained.  After all.
Supposedly the grand jury is still investigating.

I wonder how Unusual it was in 1892 for a girl to get a lawyer within a day or two of the slaughter of her family.
We accept this nowadays, but STILL manage to look with suspicion upon a relative who gets a lawyer quickly.
At the inquest of Emma she is asked why the sisters contacted an attorney and then infer with their question that it was estate-related...they really had NO business asking her that, and realized it to backtrack like that, telling her she needn't tell them why a lawyer was brought to the house.

Here we have a churchgoing, pious girl from 1892, who changes her clothes after a murder, finds the body and gets a lawyer, and never speaks publicly about the crime.  I suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same?

(Message last edited Jan-3rd-03  10:26 PM.)

Emma and Lizzie might have contacted the attorney, Friday wasn't it, the day after the crimes, to find out about offering the reward for the capture of the criminal who killed the old folks.  During that talk the attorney might have brought up several other points such as how he might be of assistance to them because he was probably more aware than they that the police would focus on the family.

Dr. Henry Lee in his book, "Cracking Cases, the Science of Solving Crimes" 2002, says on page 157, that he resists the term "crime of the century" which is often attributed to notorius murder cases.  He says...."...Lizzie Borden was arrested for killing her parents with an ax, a case that was accorded this title."  He goes on to say, "I find that the title "crime of the century" is more a manifestation of public and media interest in a case than anything else."

I wonder what he would have made of the forensic evidence in the Borden case or if he has an interest in it. The book indicates he is overwhelmed with modern cases and teaching.  He lives in Connecticut. Perhaps he would like to be invited to your next party at Maplecroft?

It seems as though people post a large reward for 3 reasons, maybe more...
-That they offer it in haste as they are in a hurry, as in an abduction case.
-That they offer it because time has passed and the leads have dwindled and in the hopes of re-alerting the public to their desperation, by keeping the crime in the news.  At this point they may have lost confidence in the police and those in authority.
-They may offer it to make themselves sympathtic in a reaction to bad press.

Our Borden girls sought an attorney the next day, offered a reward the evening of that next day, and they weren't quite yet in the position of feeling as though they had to off-set bad publicity and gain the public's good graces and added support.

It seems to be "jumping the gun."

Also, in order to file Probate the next day while the bodies were still bloody and closed up in the dining room, and probably coming out of RIGOR, they would need a death certificate, which may have been expedited by the fact of the M.E. being on site Thursday.
BUT, they would have to have thought of all this.  By Friday morning!
It's not as though they didn't have Time.  There weren't creditors claiming past-due bills and ready to throw the girls into the street.  They had time.  They had time to file probate, time to counter-act bad press, which hadn't quite started yet...time to bury the folks before they had to worry about an official Inquest and personal testimony, where a lawyer's advice would be welcome.

And with this lawyer (Jennings) came on his heels a private detective.  Now this may assume a lack of faith in the authorities who were charged on their oath to follow up and attempt to apprehend a guilty party.
The hiring of Hanscomb may have been because Jennings wanted a sort of spy who could hang around where the news happened and get a sense of which way the wind was blowing.
After THAT, would have been time to start preparing for some reputational damage control, and the posting of a reward.

It seems likely that the probate was the goal on Friday...not the reward and maybe not the representation of a possibly guilty party.

Probate , death certificate, filing for the MONEY, seems the #1 priority.  The reward was merely "window-dressing".

Edisto:
Stefani bought that book, read it, and now I am 1/2 way through it.
I do hope Ms. Cornwell gets her million bucks worth out of her research!

I've gotta say I'm not all that impressed with Ms. Cornwell's efforts re the Ripper case.  One thing I find annoying is that she keeps saying, "I found no evidence that he wasn't...."  I haven't finished the book yet, but she's used that same phrase several times.  What she needed to look for was evidence that "He" (Sickert) WAS something (a gambler, for example) rather than evidence that he wasn't.  She also makes great leaps of logic, first saying Sickert "might have" been, said or done something, then a few paragraphs or pages later, she has apparently accepted that as a fact rather than a supposition and moved on to base other "facts" on that one.  The way she describes her research activities and those of her team, it sounds as if the book was quite hurriedly done.  I wonder why?  Well, at the very least it's going to cause me to read up on Sickert and his work.

Regarding the Cornwell book, I saw her recently giving a presentation about her book on The CSPAN channel and she was not happy.  She said she spent 6 million on the research, she would never get anything like reimbursement back from the sales of the book, that the British were not all that easy to work with, and she was so immersed in the horrid aspects of the deaths for such a long period that she was glad it was all over.  Buyt she said the experience of it changed her perspective on writing crime novels and she would never again write in the same way as in her early books.

We do not know, I don't think, whether the Borden sisters went to the attorney on their own or whether the attorney contacted them, perhaps even on Thursday, to come see him.  We don't know how much influence the attorney might have had on the sisters to offer a reward early on. We don't really know that probate was the main reason for seeing the attorney. 

Another reason for offering a reward would be because a guilty party offering it would know it would never have to be paid.  But more likely I think probably the most important reason for an innocent party to post a reward would be that they want the real killer to be found and fast.

As opposed to "jumping the gun" offering a reward quickly would seem like good judgment and a sound move from the standpoint of community good-will towards the sisters.  By Thursday night the whole city was aware of the enormity of the tragedy and to have the newspapers put out that a reward had been offered so swiftly would make a reader aware of the extent of the concern for capturing the villain or villains.  That the Borden sisters were now wealthy made it all the more motivation to do this quickly.

Also Emma made that famous comment on Saturday night about trying to keep it from Lizzie that she was suspected.  Could it be that at the meeting with the attorney she talked with him out of Lizzie's hearing and he explained that the police might indeed treat Lizzie as a suspect.  To me it is to Emma that goes the credit for making the attorney a part of this from early on and getting advice which in the end did free up the sisters to inherit.

Me, too, Kat.  I'm 2/3 of the way through and I'm about to give up and skim through the rest.  Too boring in the middle.  What I find particularly fascinating, though, is the description she paints of those Victorian London days, so I'll probably stick with it.  She does weave a very, very strong case against Sickert.  By and large, a pretty good book.

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/dst-pamandsickert.html

If you don't mind a big fat review in the middle of your book.

I am still reading.
I looked up my other J the R books and at least 3 have him as a suspect or involved in some way.
I'm not sure about a STRONG suspect, tho he has made the team of suspects and survived the cuts, it seems.

I can't see how she can prove any more than maybe he licked the envelopes or stamps of some "Ripper letters"...?

(Message last edited Jan-9th-03  6:00 PM.)