{"id":3472,"date":"2018-07-06T16:34:52","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T20:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/HatchetOnline\/?p=3472"},"modified":"2018-07-06T16:34:52","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T20:34:52","slug":"an-analysis-and-review-of-arnold-browns-lizzie-borden-the-legend-the-truth-the-final-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/an-analysis-and-review-of-arnold-browns-lizzie-borden-the-legend-the-truth-the-final-chapter\/","title":{"rendered":"An Analysis and Review of Arnold Brown\u2019s Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Denise Noe<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

First published in June\/July, 2005, Volume 2, Issue 3, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The title of Arnold R. Brown\u2019s book, Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter<\/i>, is overly optimistic, as the author probably knew. Brown had to be aware that a multitude of previous writers had purported to solve the mystery of the Borden murders and none had ever persuaded all students of the case. However much evidence he amassed, the writer had to realize that many readers would not be convinced and that he was not going to lay this mystery to rest with his \u201cfinal chapter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In his introduction, Brown informs us that he was born and raised in Fall River. Lizzie Borden died only eight days before he turned two. Growing up in Fall River, he believed the standard version of the Lizzie Borden story: she was guilty and got away with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ironically, second thoughts about the conventional wisdom were triggered after he left Fall River to spend his retirement in Florida. There he happened to meet up with another Fall River native and the conversation turned to the Borden case. The other man, whom Brown identifies as one Lewis Peterson, claimed his father-in-law knew the murderer. \u201cYou mean Lizzie?\u201d Brown automatically asked. \u201cHell, no,\u201d Peterson replied. \u201cI mean the guy who killed them!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As Brown relates, Peterson told him his father-in-law Henry Hawthorne wrote down the \u201ctrue\u201d story of the Borden killings in 1978. Knowing death was imminent, the sickly 89-year-old Hawthorne wanted to get the facts off his chest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peterson forwarded that account to Brown. What Brown tells his readers next does not inspire confidence. The story written by Hawthorne was, Brown claims, \u201ca collection of disconnected ramblings with events choreographed backwards, with simple timing wrong, and with major characters totally ignored or, at best, moved from their traditional locations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Brown found something \u201ccompelling\u201d in this disjointed narrative. The Hawthorne account attributed \u201cmotives that offered some semblance of sense to what has always been a senseless crime, and finally a motive that surviving members of the family would generate all necessary pressures to keep hidden.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, Brown felt he had to investigate these claims. He writes that he spent two years researching the case and checking the facts against the Hawthorne \u201cramblings.\u201d He concluded that Hawthorne\u2019s story \u201cfits the facts of the case better than any other theory.\u201d He also tells us that the true murderer was outside the standard line up of suspects. It was not Lizzie, nor sister Emma, Uncle John, Bridget Sullivan or a shadowy suitor of Lizzie\u2019s who hovers in the background of so many tales.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as Brown could not easily dismiss Hawthorne\u2019s story, neither can a committed Borden buff easily dismiss Brown\u2019s book.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Brown appears to have a firm grasp of the basic outlines of Fall River history as well as of the accepted facts and major personages of the Borden tragedy. As in most accounts, Andrew Borden appears in Brown\u2019s book as a vile skinflint. Brown writes, \u201cThrift may be a virtue, but Andrew Borden made it a vice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This author introduces us to Ellan Eagan, who was a young woman at the time of the tragedy and who would become mother-in-law to Henry Hawthorne.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

According to Brown, Ellan was on an errand on the morning of August 4, 1892 and passed the Borden residence. Spotting the \u201cgreenhorn maid\u201d she thought in exasperation, \u201cImagine being so dumb as to be outside washing windows in this heat. Landagoshen!\u201d Ellan bought the goods she needed from the store, and then headed back for home. Again she passed the Borden home and saw something that, according to Brown, would haunt her ever after. The following is a direct quote from Brown.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ellan saw a man in the Borden yard, just standing there. She started to do the ladylike thing and avert her eyes when, for the first time in her life, she found herself staring at a stranger. There was something about this man that was wrong! He was about halfway between the gate and the back stoop, and he was facing her. He turned as if to go back. His left side and his back were all that she could see now. His clothes were dirty and coarse, but what had caught her eye was that he was wearing an overcoat\u2014and on one of the hottest days of the year! At first Ellan thought his coat was burlap, then she realized he had a burlap bag over his shoulder and partially tucked under his arm. The overcoat, she could see, was a long duster-type like nothing she had ever seen. She felt funny, sort of scared. He stopped and turned his face toward her. His eyes looked into hers.<\/span><\/p>\n

She sucked in her breath, gasping. Feeling faint, she shivered and almost cried out in terror. Speak of the Devil and he will appear<\/i> roared in her ears. I am seeing the Devil!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

When he took a step toward her, she ran. She had to get away, and somehow she did, feeling the fire from his eyes burning right through her. Even though she was confused and filled with terror, she knew something else was wrong, too. As she sped away, her senses finally told her what it was. It was his odor \u2013 one that she had never smelled before. It was not sour, not sweet, not a manure smell, not sweat\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>. . . not anything she could even imagine! Intent on getting help, she ducked into the first yard she came to, gasping and sobbing. Then she was sick.<\/span><\/p>\n

After fainting or at least lying on the \u201ccomforting grass\u201d of a yard that turned out to be that of Dr. Kelly, Ellan recovered and made it home.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Soon the news of the Borden murders swept through Fall River. Ellan was reluctant to involve herself in a scandal. However, Brown writes that she heard tongues wagging that the maid had to have done it because \u201cyou know how them Irish is.\u201d Ellan had seen the woman outside washing windows and thought that was something the police should know. She also believed they should know about that odd-looking, foul-smelling man in the coat.<\/span><\/p>\n

About a week after the murders Ellan overcame her reticence and went to the police station where she spoke with Officer Michael Mullaly. \u201cShe was too outside, and that\u2019s no lie!\u201d Ellan blurted. Soon the nervous Ellan explained that she meant the Borden\u2019s maid.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know she was,\u201d Mullaly said, then added that he would tell his superior, Marshal Rufus Hilliard, that Ellan had confirmed this for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then she tried to stammer out her recollection of \u201cthis man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Brown\u2019s story, the officer teased Ellan, saying sarcastically, \u201cAll covered with blood, carrying a bloody hatchet, and all wild and crazylike?\u201d His ridicule shamed Ellan. She took a vow of silence to \u201cnever, never, never again\u201d mention the man she had seen on that fateful morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after her unproductive trip to the police station, police made a trip to her house. Officers Philip Harrington and Patrick Doherty questioned her about seeing Bridget outdoors and the sickness that had necessitated that Ellan collapse in Dr. Kelly\u2019s yard. Nervously, she kept her vow of silence about the mysterious man.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown believes the police used Ellan to shore up their case against Lizzie. He quotes from the August 11, Fall River Daily Herald<\/i>: \u201cAnother woman dropped into the case Wednesday afternoon, but she did not stay long. A lad who drives for Wilkinson, ice cream man [Russian immigrant Hyman Lubinsky], said he saw a woman come out of the Borden yard about 10:30 o\u2019clock Thursday. Officers Harrington and Doherty went to work to find this woman, and they succeeded in discovering that Ellan Eagan was passing that way Thursday morning when she was seized with a sudden illness. She went into the first yard she came to, but it was Dr. Kelly\u2019s yard, which is next to the Borden house, and the boy was mistaken.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The better-known facts of the case, as well as original material, are cited and interpreted by Brown to buttress the theory he carefully lays out. A critical supporting point is the famous statement Lizzie made to her close friend Alice Russell the day before the murders. Lizzie told Alice that her father had an enemy and that, \u201cI am afraid somebody will do something; I don\u2019t know but what someone will do something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Many people have assumed the \u201csomebody\u201d she spoke of was herself and that she was anticipating her own acts of the next day. Brown believes that \u201csomebody\u201d was indeed somebody else and Lizzie was expressing a (soon to be proven well founded) fear of him.<\/span><\/p>\n

The culprit, according to Brown who is telling the story laid out by Hawthorne, was a son Andrew Borden had fathered out of wedlock. Brown says this son, William \u201cBill\u201d Borden, was a young man at the time of the killings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown postulates that not only did this shadowy Bill Borden commit the murders but also that his guilt was deliberately covered up by Fall River authorities\u2014at the behest of Lizzie herself! According to him, the trial was a farce with a largely pre-arranged script in which Lizzie, her defense team and the prosecution co-operated both in having her tried and having her acquitted.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The cover-up was supposedly orchestrated by a group Brown calls the \u201cMellen House gang.\u201d They were the bigwigs of Fall River, whom Brown designates as the \u201cSilent Government\u201d of the city and they did not want the true identity of Abby and Andrew Borden\u2019s murderer ever publicly disclosed.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

However, the truth came out decades after the fact because, as a child, Henry Hawthorne had worked on the large apple farm owned by Bill Borden. It seems rather odd that Bill was able to farm successfully as he was characterized in Brown\u2019s book as both mentally retarded and mentally ill. Like a child clutching a security blanket, the adult Bill, who is said to have possessed the mental faculties of an 8-year-old, always held onto his one favorite item: a hatchet. In front of young Henry, Bill frequently talked to his hatchet in the manner of a child confiding in a teddy bear.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Young Hawthorne was there as Bill chatted with his hatchet, saying, \u201cYou knew my father and that fat sow he married when he should have married my mother. Of course you knew them; you were there when they died!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Years later, Brown writes, Hawthorne discussed Bill Borden with his mother-in-law, Ellan Eagan. She wanted to know if the man she had seen outside the Borden residence was in fact Bill Borden\u2014and if he was the killer\u2014and so began keeping three lists that she believed would help her pinpoint the truth. The first was a list of the facts she remembered from that day. The second was of \u201call the things Henry had said over the years about Bill Borden.\u201d The third was of \u201cthings that had been said at Lizzie Borden\u2019s trials about the murderer when somebody assumed it was someone other than Lizzie.\u201d She found a great deal of agreement on the lists. While not every item was on all three, there was nothing on any of the lists that directly contradicted anything on the other two.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Recalling the horrible stench of the man she had seen, Ellan asked Hawthorne if Bill Borden had ever had a \u201cstink\u201d that could not be explained as a normal smell that could be expected on a farmer. No, Hawthorne replied, but there was a time when Bill Borden had pulled a malicious prank on young Henry Hawthorne that caused him to have a terrible odor.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Hawthorne often performed the chore of cleaning the equipment used to store apple cider. According to Brown, after the boy had finished with the casks, \u201cBill handed him a jar of something that looked like axle grease and a cake of lye soap and told him to be sure and rub this secret grease on all the spots of his body where the cider residue and the cleaner had come in contact. Henry did exactly as he was told and, when he got into the waterhole that was a summertime bath tub, every part of his skin he had rubbed with Bill\u2019s grease began to burn. When the burning stopped, he noticed the foulest odor he had ever smelled.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The smell that clung to the boy was so offensive that he \u201chad to sleep in the barn that night and for the next three nights.\u201d He had a terrible smell for two weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ellan was certain that must have been the odor that had made her sick. She asked Hawthorne if Bill had possessed a very long coat and he told how Bill \u201chad his wife make him an extra long custom-fitted duster.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after this revelation, Ellan shared her recollection of that day with her son-in-law and the two agreed that the man she had seen was Bill Borden and that he had slaughtered Abby and Andrew Borden.<\/span><\/p>\n

With this information from Hawthorne, Brown pieces together what he claims constitutes the truth of the Borden case. As Brown tells it, when Andrew Borden was still married to his first wife Sarah (mother of both Emma and Lizzie) he had an affair with Phebe Borden who was married to Charles Borden (Brown never says what relationship Charles had to Andrew). Out of this doubly adulterous union, William Borden was born in 1856. Brown does not say how it was possible in those pre-DNA days to be sure the child was Andrew\u2019s, but claims the existence of the \u201cillegitimate\u201d son was well gossiped about in Fall River. He also relates that, \u201cHenry Hawthorne says he spoke with a woman who professed to be the midwife who delivered Phebe Hathaway of Andrew\u2019s son and to have full knowledge of the affair.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown writes that William Borden had a half-brother named William Lewis Bassett. How they were half-brothers is obscure. According to Brown, it is known that Bill Borden\u2019s father, Charles, was married first to Bill\u2019s mother Phebe and then to a woman named Peace. He does not know whether Phebe and Charles\u2019 marriage was ended by divorce or her death. He thinks it likely that Bill Borden and William Lewis Bassett were actually stepbrothers as the latter was, he speculates, Peace\u2019s son by a previous marriage.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As anyone familiar with the Borden case knows, several witnesses reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the vicinity of the Borden house close to the time of the slayings. Brown quotes the August 10, 1892 Daily Globe<\/i> as saying that Dr. Benjamin Handy was \u201cdriving by the Borden house at about 10:30 or 10:40 . . . [when] he noticed a man walking slowly by the house.\u201d Dr. Handy \u201cdescribed him as being a man about five feet four inches in height, of medium weight, and wearing a dark moustache. His face was deadly white but was round and full. The young man was apparently 24 years of age.\u201d The article notes that, \u201cThis description tallies with that of a man whom Officer Hyde saw in the vicinity on the morning of the murder.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For reasons he does not explain, Brown does not believe this man was William Borden but William Lewis Bassett.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Borden had been \u201cmaking demands of his father,\u201d says Brown. Both Uncle John and Lizzie knew of these demands and sometimes acted as \u201cmediator\u201d between father and officially unacknowledged son.<\/span><\/p>\n

The note that Lizzie claimed Abby received calling her away was real in this account. William Lewis Bassett delivered it and its purpose was to lure her outside the house while Bill Borden dealt with Andrew. However, it did not accomplish that purpose. Perhaps Abby got distracted by household chores or simply decided to delay the visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Brown\u2019s theory, Bill Borden was distressed because Andrew had recently drawn up a will. Brown does not claim to know exactly how Andrew was dividing his estate but thinks it likely he left out Bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown states that Bill actually spent the night prior to the killings somewhere on the property of his natural father. He could have entered through the front door, allowed in by Lizzie and Uncle John and slept either in the same guest room as Uncle John or in Emma\u2019s empty room. If he did not do that, Brown postulates that he \u201cspent the night in the hayloft of the Borden barn and was admitted to the cellar that morning by Lizzie after Uncle John and her father had left the house.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Lizzie and Uncle John cooperated with Bill to avoid a fuss that could become public. However, Lizzie deeply feared Bill. It was that fear, Brown believes, that led her to try to buy prussic acid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown thinks Abby may have surprised Bill in the guest room and Bill let her have it with his trusty hatchet. He speculates that she may have taunted him with his being left out of his father\u2019s will or that Bill hated her because he saw her as that \u201cfat sow he [Andrew] married when he should have married my mother.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The laugh that Bridget heard on the stairs and attributed to Lizzie was actually Bill\u2019s, in Brown\u2019s account.<\/span><\/p>\n

Andrew Borden came home, Bridget went upstairs for a nap and Andrew asked Lizzie to leave the house so he could have talk with Bill privately. Lizzie acceded to her father\u2019s request. Brown believes Bill may have murdered Andrew because he knew his father planned to leave him out of his will.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Writes Brown: \u201cAfter killing his father, Bill left by the open cellar door and looked to the front of the house to see if his half brother and his team might still be there. They were not, but Bill was seen by Ellan Eagan and, sensing from her reaction that he might be in danger, he retreated into the Borden back yard where, before leaving, he may even have talked with Lizzie, although he would not have mentioned what he had just done. He then headed for Uncle Hiram Harrington\u2019s shop on Fourth Street where, by arrangement, his half brother should be waiting with his out-of-town horse and buggy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Lizzie and Uncle John knew who the culprit was as soon as they found out about the murders\u2014and both wanted his identity kept secret. It was at Lizzie\u2019s behest that the Mellen House gang swung into action to cover up for Bill.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Why did Lizzie want the murderer of her stepmother and father to go free? Brown asserts that she feared having to share her inheritance with her half-brother should his existence be discovered. To avoid that, she set in motion a plan that would have her tried for the killings. Brown notes that she was ultimately safe because she \u201chad the actual murderer as her ace in the hole.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lizzie was indeed tried and acquitted. The reasons for that \u201cnot guilty\u201d verdict have been endlessly debated but one thing that might have contributed to it was a similar crime committed while Lizzie was in custody.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On a farm just outside Fall River, 22-year-old Bertha Manchester was brutally axed to death between 9 and 10 AM on 30 May 1893. One of Lizzie\u2019s defense attorneys, Andrew Jennings asked reporters, \u201cWell, are they going to say that Lizzie Borden did this also?\u201d Police soon arrested Manuel Jos\u00e9 Carreiro, a young Portuguese farmhand, for the slaying. Thus, the jury and public knew that a crime remarkably similar to the Borden murders had been committed close to Fall River and Lizzie Borden had the most airtight possible alibi: she was in jail at the time. Additionally, the suspect was someone\u2014a male laborer\u2014who fit the profile of a violent felon far better than did Lizzie, an upper-class female known for her good works.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

According to Brown, Bill Borden died nine years after the Borden murders, a supposed suicide. Brown quotes from newspaper reports of a body of a man who had apparently killed himself being found \u201cin the New Boston road woods\u201d on 17 April 1901. An April 18th article in the Daily Globe<\/i> misidentified him as \u201cGeorge F. Borden.\u201d It also said he was \u201ca son of the late Deacon Charles Borden\u201d and had \u201ca half brother living in the person of William Lewis Bassett.\u201d The article continues that the suicide had been \u201ca lodger at the house of William Michen\u201d who \u201clives in a farmhouse in the territory about half way between New Boston road and the Manchester estate, where Bertha Manchester was murdered some years ago by Jos\u00e9 de Correiro.\u201d A piece in the Fall River Daily Herald<\/i> published the same day identified him as \u201cWilliam S. Borden\u201d and describes him as \u201ca farmer\u201d with an \u201capple orchard which yielded him many barrels of cider yearly which he peddled through the country.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The dead man was found suspended from the limb of a tree. He had apparently drank carbolic acid and then hanged himself with a chain. Brown quotes the 17 April 1901 Fall River Daily Globe<\/i> as writing that the victim\u2019s \u201cclothing was almost new, and had probably not been worn but a few times. A black overcoat covered a brown suit with a small check and he wore a pair of congress shoes.\u201d In the April 18th Fall River Daily Herald<\/i> article, the age of the deceased is said to be \u201cabout 50.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Brown points out unusual elements in the story of this suicide, noting that the man seemed \u201coverdressed for suicide.\u201d He also finds it unlikely that he would easily be able to hang himself with a chain wearing a coat and congress shoes, especially since he was middle-aged. He believes that the Mellen House gang had Bill Borden killed in such a way as to make it look like suicide.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Brown says that Bill Borden was probably the true murderer of Bertha Manchester. He backs this up by the similarities between the slayings and because the supposed \u201csuicide\u201d took place close to the Manchester farm. He also thinks it is possible that Bill Borden was persuaded to commit the murder by the Mellen House gang to ensure that Lizzie would escape conviction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did the Mellen House gang go to such lengths to help Lizzie\u2014and help the murderer of two respectable people escape justice? Brown believes she paid them off. He supports this assertion by incorrectly noting that, at the time of her death, her estate was worth less that half her sister\u2019s so \u201csomewhere her expenses must have been much greater.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no question that Brown\u2019s book is interesting. His theory is intriguing and supported in places but ultimately unconvincing.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The motive attributed to Lizzie for wanting to draw suspicion on herself and away from her guilty half-brother is weak. It seems unlikely an imprisoned or, given the temper of justice during the era, a hanged Bill Borden would be in any position to claim his inheritance. Moreover, Brown undercuts this greed hypothesis when he writes that Lizzie\u2019s estate was worth only approximately half of what Emma\u2019s was on her demise and suggests that the difference was because Lizzie had made such large payments to the Mellen House gang. It would seem that the people who were plotting with her took at least as much money as Bill Borden could have gotten, especially if he had been convicted of the murders.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Leonard Rebello in Lizzie Borden: Past and Present<\/i>, the two sisters\u2019 estates were much closer in value at their deaths than is reported by Brown. Rebello reports that Emma left behind about $447,000 and Lizzie roughly $348,000, a difference of less than $100,000. Could that difference have been due to payments to the mysterious Mellen House gang?\u00a0 <\/span>Or could that money have gone toward more mundane living expenses?\u00a0 <\/span>Since the sisters separated, Lizzie had lived more largely, had the sole upkeep, tax burden and insurance of the house, and paid Emma for her use of her share. Lizzie did treat herself to trips out of town, and to dinner and the theatre, with the concomitant need of a social wardrobe. Author Brown seems to disregard these expenses. It still seems unlikely that Lizzie paid off anyone as the weakness of motive is aggravated by the natural feelings a grieving, outraged\u2014and innocent\u2014Lizzie would have been assumed to have had if the father she loved had been murdered by another.<\/span><\/p>\n

A central difficulty with Brown\u2019s theory lies with the character Bill Borden is alleged to have possessed. It is hard to accept the idea of someone who was both mentally ill and mentally retarded committing these murders and escaping detection\u2014even with the help of that powerful, shadowy, Mellen House gang. After all, Bill Borden was so sloppy as a murderer that he did not have the sense to get rid of the murder weapon but kept it constantly with him, even years after the crime. Furthermore, he was such a blabbermouth that he habitually chatted with that same weapon and even confessed the double murder in the presence of a child.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is also a major improbability in Ellen Eagan\u2019s story. When she matched her recollections with those of Henry Hawthorne, the story of the boy\u2019s stinking from a Bill Borden prank seemed to clinch his identity as the man she saw and smelled. There seems no reason why Bill Borden would have deliberately caused himself to stink. Of course, it is possible that someone else played this same prank on him<\/i> but highly improbable that he would have selected a day when he was so odious to murder or even confront his father. Bridget made no report of an unseemly smell on the day of the killing and she surely would have sniffed it if it had been as extraordinary as the smell Henry Hawthorne claims to have suffered from.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter <\/i>is a worthwhile read for connoisseurs of Borden theories but the careful, informed reader is apt to give it the Scottish verdict of \u201cnot proven.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Brown, Arnold R. Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter<\/i>. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebello, Leonard. Lizzie Borden: Past and Present<\/i>. Fall River, MA: Al-Zach Press, 1999.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStartling Parallelisms.\u201d Boston Daily Globe<\/i>, 1 June 1893.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

However much evidence he amassed, the writer had to realize that many readers would not be convinced and that he was not going to lay this mystery to rest with his \u201cfinal chapter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-denise-noes-lizzie-whittlings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}