Why was the guest room door open?

[Franz]

Hello, I am new here. I apologize for my mediocre English. I am Chinese.

We know that both Bridget and Mrs. Churchill said the door to the guest room was open when they discovered Mrs. Borden’s body. I wonder: why?

Most people believe that Lizzie was the author of the murders and invented the note story to prevent her father (and probably Bridget) from seeking Mrs. Borden. If this was true, Lizzie, after killing her stepmother, would have closed the door carefully and she would have had plenty of time to do so. The reason was obviously the same: to minimize the risk that Mrs. Borden’s body could be found before her second killing.

But if the killer was not Lizzie but someone else, it would be less difficult to explain the guest room door’s being open. People discussed a lot the hiding place of the intruder. I asked myself: why not the guest room? (Augusta suggested this scenario here in 2009). It seems the best place for the killer while waiting, with the door closed: 1. He could kill whoever entered in the guest room before his second planned murder (whoever, Mr. Borden included); 2. No matter whether he knew the routine of Mr. Borden, he could observe the outside from the windows of the room, which, if I were not wrong, was in a corner from where one can watch the two entries of the house. After Mr. Borden’s arrival, the killer left the room at the moment the most opportune judged by him. In this case, to close the door would be always considered but may not be absolutely necessary, because the murderer knew well that he would have finished his second attack in just one or two minutes.

Bridget said when she tried to open the front door for Mr. Borden, she heard Lizzie laugh in the hall upstairs. Let’s imagine such a scene: at that very moment, behind the closed door, the real killer was raising his axe, ready to attack at any moment, only the guest room door separated him from the innocent Lizzie…

What do you all think about this? Am I wrong from A to Z?

[DJ]

Hello, Franz, and welcome!

You make a good point-- if the killer were hiding in the bedroom, why not just ambush Lizzie while she was upstairs? Stand behind the door of the guest room (be it open or closed), make a noise, Lizzie opens it (or walks in) out of curiosity, and then she is felled by the hatchet. One less possible witness out of the way.

So, "unknown outside killer hiding in bedroom" scenario (although it would have been a good place to hide, if one didn't mind sharing it with Abby's corpse and a congealing pool of blood and the attendant odors) doesn't play too well.

If Lizzie knew the killer and was hiding him/her, he/she would have been better off in Lizzie's room.

Why didn't Lizzie (as possible murderer) close the bedroom door? After all, if it were open, she walked right by it at least twice after Mrs. Borden was murdered. Yes, Bridget places her most definitely upstairs when Mr. Borden returns that a.m., and Mrs. Borden was already deceased.

That argues heavily for her guilt, if the door were open while she was upstairs.

But-- and this plays in to your "where did the pear cores go" post-- Lizzie's story about going out to the barn (searching for lead for fishing-line sinkers, eating pears, and what-al, supposedly) was meant to cover the time in which the intruder entered and killed both Mr. Borden and Mrs. Borden.

It's Lizzie's big alibi for both murders, because she didn't account for forensics to determine such a time-lapse between the times of the deaths.

Otherwise, she would have probably shut the guest-room door. She ought to have suggested that the killer was hiding in there with the door shut (and she probably would have, had she known the time lapse would be determined), but then again, why wouldn't the killer just have lured her in the room and killed her, too?

Why does Lizzie survive, hanging around the house for an hour and a half (Bridget, too, as far as that goes, even though she was outside a good bit of the time), but Mrs. Borden and Mr. Borden are both killed? Why not Lizzie, too, if an intruder were hiding?

After all, she could have spotted him/her and escaped. And then have been able to make an ID, most probably. Why risk that if you're an outside murderer?

Personally, Franz, I don't believe Lizzie ever went to the barn. As you say, no pear cores or other evidence corroborated her story. She really should have made an effort to go out and make it look as if she had been there, but I don't think she was thinking that far ahead.

Her Inquest testimony was not admitted at trial, so the barn story couldn't be picked apart then.

[Franz]

Hello DJ, thank you for your reply.

At the beginning of my participation in this forum, I would like to say that I am, for the moment, more convinced for Lizzie’s total innocence (without any relationship with the real killer) than for her guilty. Certainly, I will always consider the both possibility.

Let’s suppose now that there was really an intruder hiding in the guest room with the door closed (for such a killer I don’t think the corpse of Mrs. Borden and the blood odor were insupportable), and let’s suppose too that in that fatal morning Lizzie was upstairs only once, at the very moment when Mr. Borden returned home and Bridget was trying to open the front door for him. If Mr. and Mrs. Borden were the principal targets of the killer (I think they were), he should not attack Lizzie at that moment unless the later entered in the guest room by herself. When Lizzie went away, the killer, at the most opportune moment, reopened the door and left the room. In a hurry he didn't shut the door so it remained open until Bridget and Mrs. Churchill went upstairs for seeking Mrs. Borden.

In my post I didn’t say that “no pear cores… corroborated her story.” What I said is that the pear cores were not mentioned anywhere by the prosecution part (please correct me if I am wrong). We are not sure whether the police searched them. If they didn’t search them at all, then this should be considered as a big mistake, and this mistake should be in favour for Lizzie’s defence.

I would like to repeat that probably the killer’s targets were only Mr. and Mrs. Borden, for this reason neither Bridget nor Lizzie was attacked. (I have in mind the theory of Arnold Brown, even though I haven’t read his book).

I will discuss the barn story later.

[DJ]

Franz, remember Lizzie's visit to Alice Russell the night before the murders, when she told Alice that her Father had an enemy, that Lizzie thought someone was trying to poison their milk cans and proceed on to other dire deeds? (By the way, I believe what Lizzie said was a smokescreen for what she herself was planning to do the next day.)

Why do you think someone would target Mrs. Borden, and not Lizzie or Bridget?

Also, supposedly Mrs. Borden was called away from the house by someone with a note regarding a sick realtive of Mrs. Borden who needed Mrs. Borden's assistance.

Now, Lizzie knew of this alleged note, which never surfaced, and which no one ever claimed to have sent to the Borden house in the first place.

Why would Mrs. Borden not have left the house with all due haste to attend to this relative? Remember, she died about an hour and a half before her husband did. Why would she have been checking on the bedspread upstairs when she had a sick relative who needed her?

In other words, the note, having never surfaced and having never claimed to have been sent (and why wouldn't Lizzie have asked her stepmother who sent it, where she was going, so Lizzie could tell Mr. Borden, who would certainly want to know?), didn't rouse Mrs. Borden out of the house as it should have, if it ever existed.

Basically, what would have been the motive to target Mrs. Borden, but not Lizzie or Bridget?

Apparently, Mr. Borden had upset some persons in his business dealings, but why would someone kill Mrs. Borden, too, but not Lizzie, who was Mr. Borden's daughter, if such a killer meant to harm Mr. Borden and his family?

[PossumPie]

Survivors at a murder scene who have no knowledge of the event seem implausible, but are not without precedent. At the Sharon Tate murder scene, Steve Parent was shot in the driveway, the murderers took their time and killed/chased Sebring, Tate, Frykowski, and Folger around the house and yard, stabbing them repeatedly. At first the police couldn't believe that William Garretson, who was staying on the property in a guest house, didn't hear anything. He was literally feet away from the Manson gang as they stabbed and killed the others. But slowly they had to admit that while 'in the thick of it'...he had no idea what was going on.