Mondo Lizzie Borden

I have to say I watch this web-only show. I keep up with each episode and find it fresh and interesting. 30 Odd Minutes is the brainchild of Jeff Belanger. He is interested in all things paranormal and has created a great informal interview show that is well worth watching. His cohorts and coworkers include Matt Moniz, Rob Bailey, Andrew Lake, Andy White, and Sarah Samways. Check out their bios here, and don’t forget to mouse over the pictures for a laff.

30 Odd Minutes has produced a show on the Lizzie Borden house.

Here is their description:

Episode 27 – “Live” from Lizzie Borden’s

In Episode 27 we come to you “Live” from the haunted Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, Massachusetts. Okay, not totally “live” because we filmed the episode about a week before it aired. Nobody does a documentary like the 30 Odd Minutes crew! And Lizzie Borden is no different. Just like our studio show we do the whole thing live, straight-through, in one take. You get a tour of the house, learn about some of the history, hear from the manager, Lee Ann, and learn from our special guests: EVP specialist, Mike Markowicz, and the host of Spooky Southcoast Radio, Tim Weisberg. You just don’t know what will happen during this show. Do we uncover evidence of the paranormal or just a prank? Tune in to find out! If the truth is out there… 30 Odd Minutes will find it… but only by sheer accident.

Enjoy!

Bloody Rare Books has had a placeholder for a long while where their Lizzie Borden Collection was one day supposed to go. Well that day has finally arrived and I am happy to say that the site is spectacular!

With research and writing by Richard Behrens, of “Lizzie Borden: Girl Detective” and GardenBay Films (which produces the Lizzie Mini films), this section of the rare book store site is jam-packed with Lizzie info, including a most excellent retelling of the trial of Lizzie Borden.

Bloody Rare indicates that their Lizzie Borden inventory will be uploaded soon. I can’t wait!

Some students at Waltham High School (MA) have put together a short video on the Lizzie Borden case. It is a straight retelling of the story, with a strong emphasis on Lizzie’s probable guilt.

The students cite their sources at the end of the show, but get many of the facts of the case incorrect. Can you spot their mistakes? Comment on your findings below.

A group of rather inventive T-shirt designs have popped up recently on Zazzle.com.

Zazzle is the world’s leading platform for quality custom products. Zazzle’s proprietary technology enables individuals, professional artists, and major brands, including Disney and Hallmark, to create and offer billions of unique products for customers worldwide. Zazzle’s rapidly expanding product base covers every topic imaginable and includes t-shirts, business cards, invitations, in addition to a variety of custom gifts. Upon creation, products are instantly and accurately visualized on the site and offered in the Zazzle marketplace. When ordered, each product is made on-demand, typically within 24 hours. Launched in 2005 and based in Redwood City, California, Zazzle’s vision is to redefine commerce, powered by the world’s imagination.

Here are a sampling of their Lizzie Borden wearables.

I really like this one!

Purchase yours here.

This one is less dark and more comical.

Purchase yours here.

This one reminds me of the Haunted Mansion characters at Disney World.

Purchase yours here.

There is an interesting contest that unfortunately ends today where people can submit their ideas for a film poster for a movie that never existed, but models itself as a parody on B movies.

JohnLennon15 submitted a poster for a fake film titled “I Married Lizzie Borden.” It is pretty imaginative and well done (see below). I think it might win as it seems to me to be the best of the entries.

Here are the rules:

Yes, it’s B-Movie time! Your goal? To create a convincing poster for one of those enjoyable B-Movies (or lower down the alphabet).

Sound’s simple? Well, we’re going to make it even more challenging! Your goal is NOT to mock films, not to parody them – your goal is to take a randomly generated B-Movie title and make a poster that is as believable as possible for the movie you’ve imagined!

Here’s what you do!

* Go to the B-Movie Generator and generate a title you want to do the poster of.

Now, when you do this poster, you also have to include the following on your entry at the site it’s hosted at:

* The year it was made.
* A summary of the plot and characters.
* Any other extra detail to make it more believable.

So if your fake picture is from the 70’s, the poster is going to be in a different style than say, the 90’s or the 50’s. This also gives you a chance to find a style that fits your artistic skills and interests, from the cut-and-paste oddness of grindhouse posters to some of the strange and lush art of the 70’s and more!

A few resources to help those of you looking to do a blast from the past:

* Some 1970’s posters.
* Some 1960’s posters.
* Some 1950’s drive in posters.

So go on, let’s see what kind of wonderfully cheese films you can create – that never were.

This image is from Zillow.com, a site where you can find real estate. Once I entered Fall River in the search box, and clicked on the city on the map, the outlines of Fall River are shown with the red marks showing the houses for sale.

So it was to my surprise to see that the part of Fall River where the people live is shaped like a hatchet!!! Do you see what I see?

Another little tidbit from Parallel Lives: A Social History of Lizzie A. Borden and Her Fall River was posted online today at the website for the Fall River Historical Society.

And a lovely Christmas present it is!

Also: the Historical Society has released a statement regarding the book’s scheduled publication!

I have seen the cover of this book and it is going to be a first class production.

A blast from the past: A letter to the editor of the New York Times from 1992, written by Neilson Caplain of Fall River, Massachusetts, former president of the board of the Fall River Historical Society.

Letter: On Lizzie Borden; The Murder Weapon Mystery
Published: May 16, 1992

To the Editor:

According to a report from George Washington University (Campus Life, April 26), Prof. James E. Starrs hopes to dig up the bodies of Abby and Andrew Borden to compare the chips on a hatchet with the wounds inflicted by the hatchet when they were slain in Fall River, Mass., in 1892. The professor is bound to be disappointed. The hatchet to which he has access is not the one that did in the Bordens.

The hatchet he would examine, dubbed the “handleless hatchet,” is in the collection at the Fall River Historical Society. It is indeed the one presented at the trial of Lizzie Borden in June 1893. However, the prosecution did not claim that this was the very instrument used in the double murder. Reference to “The Trial of Lizzie Borden” by Edmund Pearson, which gives the verbatim testimony, discloses that the good doctors who testified said only that this hatchet could have been the murder weapon.

Furthermore there was no evidence presented at the trial to tie the hatchet to the crime — no blood, hair or tissue staining the metal or wood, or in the crevices between the two. To the contrary, the testimony of the forensic experts at Harvard was that the hatchet was clear of any such tell-tale matter.

To this day the mystery of the murder weapon has sustained interest and titillated investigators. What happened to the hatchet? How could it have been hidden or otherwise disposed of? Never before has a credible explanation been postulated.

Now, however, 100 years after the commission of the crime, startling new information regarding the actual murder weapon has become known and will be revealed in forthcoming books, confirming that a hatchet other than the one at the historical society did the dirty deed.

Under the circumstances exhumation of the bodies would serve no useful purpose, and it is to be hoped that the responsible authorities in Fall River will bar any violation of the graves. NEILSON CAPLAIN Fall River, Mass., April 30, 1992 The writer is a director and immediate past president of the Fall River Historical Society.

From Roman Holiday. The voice of Audrey Hepburn.

Our good friend and fellow Bordenite, William F. Schley-Ulrich passed away on September 27, 2009. He was 90 years, 7 months, and 3 days old.

Born in 1919, William was a regular contributor to the old Lizzie Borden Quarterly and penned a few major pieces for The Hatchet as well. Bill also was a regular on the Lizzie Borden Society Forum (421 Posts), and would often send me material in the mail on the Borden case. Before he passed away he wrote me and several close friends that he was soon to go and wished to say goodbye.

He was particularly interested in Nance O’Neil and did an extensive study of her films for The Hatchet. He also penned a great work on the books that we know to have been in Lizzie’s library, and what her reading habits must have been like based on these titles.

Bill had lost his lovely wife Marjorie a few years ago and mourned her passing each and every day. She was his angel. They were married for over 60 years and he kept referring to her as his “bride.”

Bill was a true gentleman and a scholar. He will be greatly missed.

This information was passed onto me by Sherry Chapman, one of the FriendsFour.

Here is Bill’s avatar from the Lizzie Borden Society Forum. I think I will always remember him as this Victorian St. Nicholas.

We had a truly wonderful meeting of the Fall River History Club on Wednesday night. Without a lecturer scheduled (the holidays are neigh after all), the idea was hatched to ask members to bring in anecdotes of growing up in and around Fall River and/or select a few artifacts from their collection to share.

We had a great turnout and some new members came as well. The stories were fantastic and the company was full of good cheer. It is a great experience to have so many interested people turn out for a story or two. We all went away more enriched because of it.

Here is the write up in the Herald News.

Herald News Marc Dion told the story of his grandmother’s rosary, bringing it in for us to hold. George Petrin shared with us some of his Fall River souvenir ware and a screwdriver with the advert on it for Kaplan’s Furniture Store, his mother’s favorite place. Oh, he also brought a beer bottle from King Philip’s Brewery, and told stories about the old breweries in Fall River, with the audience members adding to the tale with their own remembrances.

A highlight of the night was Rosemary Pettine who read a letter to us from the Confederate soldier who had killed her ancestor at the battle of Fredricksburg. This letter was written with such grace and compassion, that it brought tears to our eyes, some 130 years after it was penned. The soldier was writing to her grandfather letting him know he had some possessions that belonged to the Union man he had killed in that battle and wanted to return them.

Dave Dennis told an amazing story about meeting a long lost relative while trying to secure the needed signatures to have a recount done after losing a city council seat by just 40 votes. The woman was agonizing over what to do with her dead husband’s pocket watch. The watch belonged to Dave’s grandfather, as this woman’s husband had been Dave’s cousin. The watch had been treasured by Dave’s grandfather, a cop who walked the Corky Row beat for years. The sequence of events that led up to this gift of the watch is almost unbelievable, with so many different things having to line up to make it possible.

Al Lima brought a photo of his sister Rikki, and told a few stories about her. She died years ago from asthma when she was just 39.

Alan Amaral served up some tales of his Italian heritage and donated two copies of a book about the Italian immigrants in Fall River (which were immediately borrowed!).

Everett Castro brought in some really old images of the Quequechan and asked the assembled group to ID their current incarnation/location.

Mary Jane Walls brought in a WWI German bayonet she had found in the house she moved into.

Jim Mullins brought in a piece of the floor from the old city hall where his father was the tax collector and regaled us with humorous tales of his boyhood and the way things used to be.

I brought in a load of postcards of Fall River and a 1922 Planning book that had been commissioned to improve the look of the city. Some of this plan is actually in the new master plan. If only they had followed this plan back in 1922—Fall River would be such a different place!

It was a grand time had by all. There won’t be a meeting in December, as usual, but we will return again in the new year for our January meeting. If anyone would like to join us, we meet the third Wednesday of every month (but December) at 6:30 in the Fall River Public Library. Or you can join our mailing list by emailing us at fallriver(at)mac.com.

UPDATE: here is an even longer and better story about the latest mock trial in Taunton.

The third and final mock trial, LIzzie Borden Redux, has ended with the jury again finding for the defendant. Lizzie Borden was set free once again.

These retrials were quite interesting. I attended all of them and they were very different from one another. The actors and the judges were the same, but the attorneys for each of the events were pulled from the local areas. In New Bedford we had lawyers defending and prosecuting from New Bedford. Same with Fall River and Taunton.

One of the great good things about these shows is that we got to sit in these splendid courtrooms. The New Bedford courtroom was the best, of course, because it was in that very space that Lizzie was tried and acquitted in 1893.

I videotaped all there events as well, and in the coming days will be posting them to YouTube so you can watch the entire event, city by city, for yourself.

The retrial this week in Taunton was noteworthy because several members of the bar who had tried the Big Dan trial were playing roles. And for this showing, the jury of the audience acquitted Lizzie by the largest margin yet.

The story has been picked up by the AP. Here it is.

A great deal of work went into these productions, and the actors are to be commended for their work. With three different sets of lawyers, each approaching the case in a different way and asking different questions, they performed admirably. It was charming, albeit inaccurate, to have Lizzie herself testify at these mock trials, but even with her giving her story, she was still set free each time. The jury had to admit that there was no evidence to convict her of these heinous crimes. Perhaps if Lizzie had testified back in 1893 a similar outcome would have been in store for her.

Another observation I would like to make is that the living breathing recreation was a great historical event. Even with one as versed in the case as I am, I still learned new things, realized bits and pieces that had gone unnoticed before, and had a greater appreciation for the process of law by seeing these trials. It was as if one were watching the real thing, in a way, and for that, nothing can rival it as a learning experience.

Sometimes it was just the way an attorney phrased something that made me think anew about this case. For instance, when the defense attorney, who was trying to show there were other suspects not pursued and therefore doubt could be cast on Lizzie’s guilt, pointedly declared that Bridget Sullivan was the only one in the house that day who had direct access to a bucket of water and cleaning implements. If she was the killer, she could have changed clothes and bathed and no one would be the wiser. It was a thought that I had never entertained before hearing this lawyer make his case.

All in all, these mock trials were first rate and if you missed even one of them you should consider yourself deprived.

I have been waiting for this. For a year or more, Google maps had one road on their street view of Fall River: President Avenue.

Well, now they have mapped out a lot of the city (leaving out a great deal too, I might add). You can travel down Fall River’s streets and see the “for rent” signs, look at the deepening potholes, and feel saddened that the new courthouse doesn’t fit in with the architecture of the surrounding neighborhood.

One thing that I think is really cool about this, however, is that it looks like they came by 92 Second Street on August 4th! When you see that street view you see the tent in the side yard that is erected to offer visitors cookies and lemonade and a place to sit while waiting for a tour.

You also see people waiting outside for their tour and if you look very closely, you see a reenactor at the side door. Cool huh?

Short piece on Fox Providence on the opening of the Lizzie Borden exhibit, A Tale of Two Cities, held at Gallery X in New Bedford, MA. This appeared on TV October 15, 2009.