.Reasonwhy wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 9:38 am Kat, did you really take a complete 8 years off from Lizzie? How does it feel to be dipping back in? Sometimes I feel like I would like to be totally free from curiosity about her. I’m periodically drawn back in to the mystery…yet it’s so fundamentally sad and ugly a story. And so frustrating—both to figure out the “how,” but also to know there is nothing we can do to help any of these people
Yes. Between 2001and 2011, at least 10 years, over 4 incarnations of Lizzie Borden Forum (including ours here now where I have over 13,000 posts), I had about 70,000 posts.
My best friend, Harry, was going thru a lot of serious health issues, and even tho he was my "Lizzie buddy" and we remained interested and talked a lot about the case, I had stopped posting. I had a 2 year gap from this forum from Nov. 2011 to Oct. 2013, when Harry asked me to come back on and answer something. He passed in 2015, and I think it was the following year I made my last visit to Fall River.
The case used to be all-consuming, and I loved it. Website, Forum, Hatchet Magazine mentioned in Time's Unsolved Crimes, being in the Discovety Channel video, the friends I made, the traveling, the fabulous people at the Historical Society, Len Rebello, interviewing fascinating people, writing, having the key to the B&B and able to stay alone at the house.
Harry bought me my copy of Parralell Lives, and we never got to read it because he asked me not to read it ahead of him. We wanted to keep even, but we never got to it.
The piece of my heart that was Lizzie's, died with Harry. And I had used to say: How can anyone ever not be interested in this case?!
Being part of The Hatchet, our fellow writers and friends who died, Terence Dunihoe and Joe Carlton's widows both sent me here their Lizzie Collections. So I had mine and Stef's and Len's, and Joe's and Ter's collections. Oh and some of Bill Pavao's- his files he shared with us were all on the 2 houses, Second Street and Maplecroft.
It's weird that I just went thru all of that material, conferred for hours over the phone with my sister, and winnowed it down to 3 boxes and sent it all to her, just this past summer. Then I got a phone call from our new member MaryM, and her avid interest, plus the fact I had just gone thru all the materials we had here case-related, and the recent passing of Twinsrwe (who kind of kept an eye on the Forum) I guess kind of sent me back here to take a look. Plus, I've had time on my hands recovering from an auto crash in 2020.
So here I am, and it's bittersweet, because I've lost so many Lizzie-friends in 20 years: Joe, Harry, Angel, Judy, William, Lee-ann, Anthony, Richard, Terence, and Barbara Morrisey, Fritz Aldiz, Dee Moniz, Maynard Bertolet and Ed Thibault.
Let's just say I'm dabbling for now, but you'all are pretty interesting as I get to know your styles thru your writing.
And I've always wanted to share, in any way, any Borden case related info: that's what we do in the Lizzie Community.