Lizzie Borden Had an Axe
DiscoveryTimes cable network will be showing Lizzie Borden Had an Axe tonight, Monday, November 26, at 8PM and 11PM EST. This is the latest documentary on the case, made for the Discovery Channel a few years ago in 2004. In it you will see Detective Tom Lange (of OJ Simpson fame) and professor of criminology Tom Mauriello spray Luminol around the murder house on 92 Second Street, looking for blood evidence. They do find some blood evidence on the ceiling under the sitting room where Andrew was murdered, which is very interesting, but in the same section of the show they claim that the luminol test also shows blood evidence around a bowl in the chimney (after how many people lived there since the murders in 1892??) that may or may not be original to the house when the Bordens owned it. My favorite part continues to be the dollhouse reconstruction of the crime, and I think this part works well to show in 3-D just how the crimes were committed.
The site for the show is still online and shows photos from the production.
In the interest of fair reporting, I appeared in the documentary as an expert on the case and assisted the production as a consultant. If you look real close at my neck in the shots of me you might see the welts that I had from a reaction to an antibiotic I was taking at the time. The turtleneck sweater almost covered up the marks!
November 27, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Thanks for the tip-off on the repeat of this program, which was new to me.
I’d like to address the psychological assessment, based on speculation, presented at the close of the program.
More than a decade ago, I was conversing with a friend who was born in Boston in 1926, and who lived there until she married a Southerner after WWII. The subject of Lizzie emerged, and the born-and-bred Bostonian immediately commented: “There was incest.”
If so, one wonders whether Dr. Bowen performed one or more abortions, on one or both of the daughters. It would explain why Andrew resented him, for having “something over” Andrew, although I can just see Andrew dragging Emma and/or Lizzie over by the scruffs of their necks, saying, “My slut daughter is in a bad way. Fix it.” However, the good doctor would have known better. Andrew would have probably resented the cost, as well.
At the very least, one can make this assessment of his character, such as it was: He liked to be surrounded by women, particularly women whom he could dominate. He controlled Emma and Lizzie via his pursestrings, and Bridget, of course, because she was a servant. He picked an unattractive, “lucky to be married at last” wife whom he could also lord it all over.
It’s safe to say Pops loved to see his little harem jump at his commands. If he had been a remotely sensitive father, he would have settled an inheritance on his daughters and let them move on their way. Hey, surprise: There would have been peace in his household. Abby could have had her reasonable share, as well as no. 92, which would have had plenty of room for her hard-up family post Andrew’s demise.
It would have been a simple solution to so many problems, and it would have no doubt insured him a death by natural causes. His penuriousness cost him more than he could ever imagine.
Why did he want to keep “his women” so closed in? At the very least, it’s rather safe to call him “a control freak.” Indeed, that’s putting it politely. His self-insulated household does indeed reek of sinister secrets. If there were incest, then Abby would have known, which would have made the daughters all the more resentful of her. However, Abby wasn’t about to rock her ship of good fortune. If she had any true sway with Andrew, she could have gotten the daughters out of the house. Why did she tolerate such an untenable situation? Was she indeed hoping “to have it all,” thinking if she “kept still” long enough, it would all land in her ample lap?
If Lizzie were bipolar, she would have been the prime candidate to snap, to insure that the unpleasantries (and perhaps horrors) she had endured did not go unremunerated– or unpunished.
A sidebar here: Why did Andrew involve Uncle John in his property dealings? Wasn’t there someone, anyone in the vicinity whom he trusted? This speaks volumes about his dealings with the local business community, that there was no one in Fall River in whom he put his faith. Doubtless, this feeling must have been reciprocated by his peers. All his actions cast him in a poor light– the dim light of cheap kerosene, as this program would have it. Or, better yet, he’d prefer the household stay in the dark, to facilitate the lord of the manor in whatever situation he intended to preserve within the narrow walls of his domain.
December 2, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Just to clarify a couple of statements above into points: If Dr. Bowen did indeed perform one or more abortions on one or more of the Borden daughters, his “cover up”– and there is no other way to describe it– from the day of the murders onward becomes crystal. (That is, if he suspected the pregnancies to have resulted from incest.)
Covering up the particulars of a double-homicide is a mighty serious offense, particularly if Lizzie actually confessed to him, or if he had irrefutable evidence of her having committed the crime. What would compel him to keep his silence? Something grave, indeed. And, what if someone innocent had been arrested, tried, and convicted? Would he have broken that silence?
The Borden murders– from Dr. Bowen’s actions to Lizzie’s refusal to point a finger at the other suspects, as noted by the program and elsewhere– reek of complicity. If Lizzie were indeed innocent, why wouldn’t she entertain the notion that Bridget or Uncle John might have committed the crimes? After all, they were round and about and familiar with the peculiar layout of the house. BECAUSE SHE KNEW SOMETHING!!! At the very least, she didn’t seem to care that the victims were dead.
Perhaps no one outside the household other than Dr. Bowen had a better take on what was really happening within the narrow confines of no. 92, being the family physician and such a close neighbor. A more objective MD might have secured Lizzie a far different fate the day of the murders. Is it any wonder that Lizzie sent Bridget after Dr. Bowen, first thing? Not the police, but the doctor, when her father’s face was a cavernous, bloody pulp? She might as well have said, “Go fetch Dr. Bowen, so that he might cover up after me,” as surely that was her intent.