How hard did the police look for another suspect?

[irina]

A big problem is alibis for other suspects. Some really tough modern cases have only been solved because there was a credit card trail plus the suspect was caught on security cameras travelling or buying stuff like duct tape and knives and bullets at WalMart. In Lizzie's day, or Jack the Ripper's day alibis had more to do with character than anything. If an upstanding wife said, "My husband never left the house all day or night", if she cannot be proven wrong, her word would stand. Eye witness testimony is horribly unreliable so even if someone said they saw a suspect who was supposed to be home with his wife, without corroboration, that wouldn't stick.

It has been said about Jack The Ripper that unless he was caught in the act, or extremely close to a victim with blood on his hands, he would never have been suspected. Someone wrote if he was more than 10 feet away from a victim and his hands were clean he could not have been arrested. Apply that to an intruder committing the Borden murders. Once he cleared the yard at 92 and got a bit down the street it would be very hard to finger him unless he did something incredibly stupid.

Considering Lizzie saying who couldn't have done it, hopefully all of us are old enough to remember when we felt we could vouch for friends and relatives close to us. Things are different now. (I had a close friend for over a decade who was a meth addict and I didn't know it until she made some plans to kill some people at which time I did the right thing and no more need be said.) Police now always look at family first. In Lizzie's day that was not so, even though domestic violence happened then as now. Guilty or innocent I always had the feeling Lizzie was saying the people who couldn't have done it were loyal friends of the family and she was protecting them. If she was innocent it shows me she valued and cared about people around her. Of course if she was guilty it falls under a whole, different light.

It would have been interesting if the police HAD zeroed in on some transient, criminal type. Would she have insisted such a stranger couldn't have done it? Her contemporaries seemed to think she had a high moral sense whether or not she committed murder. If she was guilty and the blame was laid on a stranger I believe she would have done something so that an innocent man was not punished.

[Curryong]

I have followed 19th century murder cases quite closely irina, especially domestic ones. Admittedly the vast majority of them were British not American, but I have to disagree with you that the family didn't come under suspicion by the police. This was especially true of the spouse, even in middle class households. They had learned by experience I dare say, and the question of motive always looms large.

If you look at the witness statements in the flurry of the first days after the murders I think you'd have to say that the police on the ground were following up leads from people in the area who reported strangers behaving oddly etc. They got hold of the reluctant Dr Handy and were taking him to see various individuals in an attempt to trace the pale-faced man.

The more senior police were interested, I'm convinced, as to whether John Morse's alibi stood up. When it did, they do seem to have concentrated on Lizzie. Her demeanour didn't help I'm sure, she would have done better to have had hysterics and fainted a lot!

However, motive (Andrew's money) and opportunity (she alone was near both victims when they were killed) loomed large. In the absence of any signs of an intruder she was certainly chief suspect after the first couple of days, in the eyes of Fleet and Hilliard and probably Dolan may have backed them. Would Lizzie have been arrested today? Yes, I think she probably would have been, for the same reasons.

[irina]

My comments were just comments about how things were. Police and investigators did check out everything they could in the Borden case but it was hard to prove or disprove alibis.

One of the officers didn't like Lizzie but those things happen.

My comment about US police not concentrating on family first is based on more modern times because it is my understanding that in the last century family was not automatically suspected first. Even so domestic homicides were solved over many years. I always have the idea that here in the US we idealized family relationships.

It was a reasonable step to suspect Lizzie and to try her. I do however feel the police were handicapped without better forensic knowledge and with other limitations of the time.