Welcome Crystalized to the forum!crystalized wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 1:13 am Hello, I've been lurking for days and devouring many long threads. This might have been asked somewhere already, but I haven't come across it yet.
I think Lizzie did it, but I keep going back and forth between her being a very sly genius or a complete moron who only got away with it via sheer dumb luck.
One major reason I think she got away with it is BECAUSE she used a hatchet. Nobody wanted to believe a woman was capable of such a gruesome crime. But what if she had succeeded in poisoning them to death instead? Wouldn't they have easily believed her capable of that sort of crime since its a more "feminine" method of killing someone? Even if prussic acid or some other poison wasn't detected in their stomachs, if two people suddenly drop dead, wouldn't the police still expect foul play anyway and launch an investigation? It would be soooo easy to find out Lizzie had purchased prussic acid the day before. It just seems incredibly sloppy and stupid.
Being denied the prussic acid, and having to resort to the hatchet method instead, is actually what saved her butt.
Did Lizzie not really care if they caught her? Maybe the goal was to kill Abbey (and possibly her father) at ANY cost? Even if it meant she herself was executed for it? She was cool as cucumber when they told her she was the primary suspect. Maybe it was a "I'll try not to get caught, but if I do, so what?" Maybe it was much more about revenge than money, and if she happened to survive, then the money was the icing on the cake.
Someone else posted here that they don't think Lizzie thought through the order of inheritance at all, she just got lucky that Abbey died first. Because if she had used the poison method, it would have been much harder to control the order of deaths. Andrew got sick too. So it doesn't seem like she was ONLY trying to kill Abbey and not Andrew.
I agree with you that women tended to use less messy ways of killing such as poison. According to the FBI, poison is rarely used today, but even in modern times, women are seven times as likely as men to choose poison as their murder weapon. I also agree that if the Bordens both died of poisoning out of the blue, Lizzie would have still been suspect. I think that is why she was talking around that someone was trying to poison her family--then when they died of poison she could say "see! I tried to tell you!" She still would have been suspect but perhaps she thought she could outsmart the police.
I'm certain Lizzie did NOT wish to be caught, her love of the finer things was stronger than her hatred of Abby. I have not seen any evidence that Abby treated the girls badly, witnesses said that she tried to be friendly with them. I believe that their despise of her was strictly from a financial standpoint. Lastly, I used to be a firm believer that Lizzie planned Abby to die first for the order of inheritance to go to them, but I'm not so sure about that one. That kind of legal nit-picking may have been beyond her thoughts. Abby's family ended up getting a chunk of the money anyway--just not a big chunk. Most of the "Lizzie was innocent" folks argue from incredulity ("I can't believe a middle-aged women could kill her father") or from the legal side (lack of overwhelming evidence of guilt). I must agree that if I were on the jury, I would have had to aquit as the prosecution and police did a lukewarm job of proving her guilt. I believe she had Motive-Means-and Opportunity, but not legal proof that she did it.