Murder Weapon Found in 1902?

[InterestedReader]

Here is a marvellous news-story.
I think it's probably been overlooked - at least I've never myself seen it anywhere reproduced.

"Blood Stained Hatchet Found"

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ ... d-1/seq-9/

It was published in the Wichita Daily Eagle on June 17th 1903. As you know, such pieces of copy would appear simultaneously in many different titles throughout the States. This one is strange because I've not yet found it in any other newspaper. I can't yet find any follow-up, either. The date calls it into doubt - surely it was fabricated for the anniversary of Lizzie Borden's acquittal. And yet...

Mrs Milland is said to have discovered the hatchet a year and three months ago - in other words long before the anniversary. I've lost count of how many hatchet-finds there were but to give her her due, Mrs Milland's may only be the second.

All the people named can be found in the Census (which is unusual for newspaper articles of the day) and what's more, they live exactly where the account places them, close to the Bordens' house. John Carey, originally from England, is the tailor at the centre of it. Carey, his wife, and other family members ran a tailoring and dressmaking business with premises on South Main Street which fit perfectly with the locus of this abandoned 'murder weapon':

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M95L-G1X

It was Carey who'd employed one Thomas P. Walker, and we are already familiar with Walker's small rôle in the case back in 1892. Walker owed Mrs Borden unpaid rent, the Bordens took action against him, so the police for a while regarded Walker with suspicion. Officers Doherty and Harrington investigated Walker but became satisfied Walker was at work at the time of the murders. Could they have been wrong? This is from the Witness Statements, Phillip Harrington, page 13:

'Thos. Walker, a tailor employed by John Carey, lived in a tenement of Mrs. Borden's on Fourth Street. He was ordered out, and R. S. Reed's store took his furniture. He worked all day Thursday, so says Mr. Carey. Walker said he had no feeling against Mr. Borden. What trouble he had was caused by himself. He said he went on a drunk, and could not pay his bills, so he had to vacate the tenement and return the furniture, which was purchased on the installment plan.'

As you can see, in this account of animosity between tenant and Borden landlord, Abby Borden is involved. Then Abby's half-sister Bertha Sarah Whitehead says she's scared of Walker's wife - or denies she said it. This is from The Fall River Globe of August 11 1892:

'MARSHAL HILLIARD - Tells the Reporters of the Clues He Has Exploded.

'...This morning I received a note from Mrs Whitehead of 11 Division Street, in which she made reference to what Mrs. Walker had been reported as having said to her. The note read: "I emphatically deny that I ever said that I was afraid of Mrs. Walker"'.

Here's the man I take to be Thomas Walker, in 1900 still living - with that redoubtable wife - on Fourth Street:

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M952-H44

So what do you think of this hatchet? Did it exist? And if so, could the murderer have escaped down that alley opposite the Borden house? Could Walker have been the killer? It was only Carey's word which gave him his alibi.

Walker and Carey were fellow Englishmen

[InterestedReader]

'Mrs Margaret Miland lives in a little apartment over Mooney's tailor shop, fronting on Main St and opening on the rear on a network of narrow passage-ways and unpainted sheds.

'Mooney's tailor shop is the second from the corner of Spring Street. The corner house is occupied by a music and stationery store.

'On the Spring Street side, behind the music store and fronting on Spring Street, is a furniture store. In the angle formed by those buildings in the rear there are a dozen dark places where a criminal may hide himself away from the police.'


I'm trying to work this out!

John Carey's tailoring business was at 232 South Main.
The music store on the corner seems to be Forest's the Stationer's at 234 South Main.
(These identified from the 1896 City Directory).
The news-story implies it's Walker who heads to the back of his place of employ to hide and jettison the weapon. Therefore, to the back of 232 South Main.
The furniture store - I'm wondering if that might be Kilroy Brothers at 384 Spring Street?
(1905 City Directory).

On the old map we do see a small rear yard or enclosure made by those buildings at the Spring St and South Main St junction. On the block of land between Second and South Main streets - everything opposite the Borden house - there's now heavy redevelopment, but a screenshot of the South Main vantage-point looking across towards the house shows it is a shortish distance to cover.

I'm also trying to single out just which particular Thomas Walker got mixed up in the aftermath of the murders and is here incriminated in print... The chap I rashly suggested who's later living on Fourth Street - well he didn't marry til 1895, I realise, so he doesn't really fit. What's odd is - in 1880 there was Thomas Walker the police-officer who's born in England in 1842 exactly the same as this 1900 Thomas Walker on Fourth St. His children all remain in Fall River but the father seems to vanish. However I don't suppose a police-officer would fall as low as the drunk questioned over the murders...

The reporter did some meticulous research, ten years on. Why did he and his Kansas paper feel free to accuse Walker? Did they know him to be dead in 1903?

Careys the tailors, Mooneys the tailors, Walkers the grocers - these families trading on South Main Street were all migrants born in Britain, so Thomas may turn out to be part of the grocer family

[InterestedReader]

Well this is becoming interesting,
Yes, the Thomas Walker on Fourth Street in 1900 is the former Fall River police-officer. In 1892 he was a policeman no longer.
His wife died seven months before the killings.
(That 1895 marriage is his because he would remarry.)
Yes he was still alive in 1903 - his home now on Second Street, a few yards from the Borden house.

But is he the Thomas Walker questioned by Harrington?
I'm checking the findings so far to post them, and looking for anything more which can determine the question.

In 1892 the Walker story was variously reported - some said he was a tailor, some said it was Mr Borden he owed rent to, while the Fall River Herald had him living at 11 Division Street with the Whiteheads and reported it was Walker himself who Mrs Whitehead denied being scared of, not the wife. ( ! Yes, it is that garbled.) The Herald said it was Walker who went to the police to deny what was in the papers - that he'd frightened Mrs Whitehead - and took along her handwritten denial. Some papers turned Carey into Carr. I need to search the 1892 newspapers and get a clearer picture of what did happen. As to actually identifying this Walker, it seems that here on the Forum no-one's had a bash at finding him since 2005, and it was inconclusive then.

[camgarsky4]

Interestedreader initiated this thread back in 2016. She did some good research, but got zero responses. I found this article in the Boston Post and then searched the forum, finding Interested's original post. She seemed to think it was only in the Kansas paper, but after seeing in the Boston Post, I looked more and it is printed in a number of national papers. Alas, not in the Fall River papers, which of course, is quite strange.

I'm going to try to find more on this, but does anyone know what the resolution was on this found hatchet?

Screenshot 2023-12-09 141119.png

Screenshot 2023-12-09 141147.png

[camgarsky4]

Certainly not conclusive, but this photo of the Bowen/Miller house across from the Borden's appears to show that the property was fully fenced in and there does not appear to be an alleyway to scurry down as the article suggests.

Photo from the Lizzie Borden Virtual Library website photo gallery.

Screenshot 2023-12-10 081014.png

[camgarsky4]

There are a handful of newspapers scattered across the country that reported this story. The timing is suggestive because they are all published within weeks/days of the 10 year anniversary of Lizzie's acquittal.

As you can see, the illustration below of the escape route doesn't show a fence or anything blocking the murderers path thru the Miller's property across the street from the Borden's. But as shown in the photo above, that pathway was blocked by a substantive fence which looks to go up to the Miller home. That throws a healthy wrench in this theory.

St. Louis Post Dispatch. June 3, 1903. Page 55.

Screenshot 2023-12-16 095109.png

Zoomed in to show the suggested route the article suggests the murderer took to escape the Borden home (dotted lines mark the trail). The star at the end of the dotted lines is where the hatchet was reported to have been found.

Screenshot 2023-12-16 095139.png

[camgarsky4]

Below is the only Fall River newspaper article I could find with any details. The Daily Herald did have a little snippet basically ridiculing the Globe for their article suggesting the hatchet had been found.

In a nutshell, Mrs. Miland found a hatchet under the floor boards of a shed behind her tenement off South Main St. The timing of the find seems to have been March 1903. With the article in the Globe being the first reporting of the find. It clearly then went national as newspaper editors leaned into the 10 year anniversary of her acquittal.

As a curious sidenote, the Borden sisters owned the building and shed. Per Mrs. Miland, the hatchet was wrapped in newspaper and had stains she believed was blood. She discarded the newspapers and cleaned the 'blood' off the hatchet. Couple days later she sold the hatchet to a handyman (sent by Charles C. Cook) for $1. After telling the story to others, the idea that this might be the Borden murder weapon was suggested to Mrs. Miland and she received two higher offers to buy the hatchet. However, the handyman refused to sell it back to her. Per the article, the Fall River police had access to the hatchet (presumably w/ the handyman) and were looking into it via a "secret investigation". Perhaps another tidbit the Hilliard Papers might provide enlightenment upon!!

Just like the Crowe barn roof hatchet, without additional information, we have no way of definitively determining if the hatchet had anything to do with the murders. We can only apply our knowledge and common sense. The 'hole' in this particular theory is why no one saw a man carrying something wrapped in newspaper (assuming he wrapped it at the Borden house) crossing Second St. and scaling the Miller's fence shown in the photo in the prior post. As mentioned, not impossible, but we would need to come up with a plausible explanation for escaping the front of the house undetected. We know Lubinsky was moving down Second at that time and Mr. Chace and Dr. Handy were eyeballing the front of the Borden house in the minutes after 11a.m. That would seem to be when the killer would have sprinted across the street to escape.

Click on the attachment to enlarge.

Screenshot 2023-12-16 103639.png

Screenshot 2023-12-16 103756.png

Screenshot 2023-12-16 103900.png

Screenshot 2023-12-16 103921.png

[camgarsky4]

Adding to the point above that there was not an opening in the fence across the street from the Borden house. In the contemporary photo above the 'red' arrow points to where the alley opening suggested by the newspaper articles would be located. It looks fenced off to me.

I've also circled close proxies for the buggy Chace saw and where Lubinsky would have passed by the Borden house...both around 11a.m.

Source: Lizzie Borden Virtual Library Photo gallery

Screenshot 2023-12-17 105020.png

[Kat]

Thank you so much for more coverage!
A couple of things we might find bothersome… especially after you noted who would have been out and around the area at the relevant time:

We also had Mrs Dr Bowen (Prelim) within the time frame of 10:55 watching out her north window for her daughter, for five, ten, or fifteen minutes, but the blinds were down, so it seems she was checking the street periodically and would have been looking thru blinds.

Also: The lady has no witness to her story of the find: like getting rid of *bloody* newspapers, washing the axe and forgetting about it(?!) Another is, notice that the drawing left out the big church at Spring Street. It doesn’t look like the same street without the church. And did anyone see the person with a hatchet or axe approach the house and enter, in order to leave later?
And the story recounts the distance to the shed is about 100 yards. To me, that is the length of a football field and the path looks much further than that.

It is an interesting story, but as interestedreader remarked early on we have plenty of hatchets.
BTW: isn’t this all 1903? I changed the topic title on my post.

(Am adding my “World” coverage…it’s been manipulated by moi to be highlighted and bigger on that first page when we clic on it- I really wanted a good look at that alley and shed …)
What’s also interesting is that the “vicinity” is a drawing, but the shed and alleyway are actual photographs.
Can anyone read the artist name? It’s at the top left of the shed photo.

[camgarsky4]

Couple things to consider.....
1) The hatchet was found on property owned by the Borden sisters. Andrew was the owner of the property at the time of the murders.
2) Per the article, Charles C. Cook employed the handyman who ended up with the hatchet. The Borden sisters employed Charles C. Cook. Andrew employed Charles C. Cook.

[Reasonwhy]

Camgarsky and Kat, I had never heard any of this story and reading your dissection of it is absorbing. Thank you, both!

[Kat]

I also rounded up a news item picture in my files with Len and Charles Cooke. I don’t know the date or what the article is about…maybe someone can find that info?

[Kat]

This Birds-Eye-View has a type of alley way, do you think, next to Miller side of house, where X is?
So we are shy of the church…that’s why it’s in neither immediate area depiction?

[camgarsky4]

This photo doesn't seem to show the opening the hand drawn birdseye view shows.

Screenshot 2023-12-10 081014.png

[Reasonwhy]

Could it be a gated fence? Just noticing the black mark; maybe a handle? Of course, it could be just a flaw in the photo, or a stain.

[camgarsky4]

Certainly could be.....I zoomed in as much as I could and just too fuzzy to make anything out to tell definitely one way or the other.

The piece of this story that intrigues me is a possible direct connection to the evicted Fourth St. renter, Walker. That would create a possible connection between a potential suspect and a possible murder weapon. Still can't imagine how he escaped after 11am without anyone mentioning seeing a man moving away from the house and opening the fence across the street. And, of course, that still doesn't answer the $million question of how he avoided Lizzie for those couple hours.

But before we tackle those riddles, I'll reread Interestedreaders work at the start of this thread and then, if possible, probe further on the Walker connection.

It is certainly suggestive that Fall River newspapers published a grand total of TWO newspaper articles about this hatchet find. The Globe article provided above and a editorial 'laugh' at the Globe for their article in the Daily Herald. That is it...two and really just one was a news article.

Fall River had three daily newspapers competing for survival and there is absolutely no chance this find wouldn't have been pursued by any and all of the papers if there was anything to pursue. I'm still looking around for Walker connections, but the more I think about it, this is likely a case that the out of town papers made a bigger issue than warranted.

[Kat]

The JJ book has several pages on Walker, whom we know from The Witness Statements- but editors note stated there was not(at the time of publishing) bio info on Walker.
Also, if one looks at JJ, plz be aware the Boston Globe is not to be trusted, and yes, should always be checked against a Fall River Paper. The JJ content does have more FR coverage than just Boston Globe, tho. This coverage was at the time that the defense team was investigating for alternative theories and suspects, so one can imagine Walker would be heavily interesting to them…however he had an alibi.

But, is it possible the axe found (and maybe used in the murders) could have been carried away and secreted on another day or time altogether? (Whether Walker was involved or not)

[Inspector]

Cam, I was wondering if you ever made any resolution concerning Cook, and Walker.
One of the more intriguing theories in the case, and you’ve researched it quite well.
What are the chances that Cook worked for Andrew, and the property owned by the Bordens?
That makes it stand out to me, but you’ve looked at it with skepticism, which I think best.

[camgarsky4]

For me, this is one of the most compelling alternative theories for the murders. We have a hatchet found nearby the Borden home and it was found behind the location of where Walker (an unhappy tenant at the Fourth St. property) was employed. Certainly creates a bit of smoke, if not fire.

Cook really wasn't employed by Andrew to the extent or in the same manner as the sisters. Up to the murders, he was 'just' the on-site property manager for the AJ Borden Building. He was primarily an insurance and real estate salesman who had his office in the AJB Bldg. I suspect they had a trade-out arrangement. Free office rent for free property on-site management. Other than that, he had nothing to do with Andrew's other business dealings.

With that said, he had nothing to do with the management of the properties which Andrew owned on the east side of South Main Street (often referred to as the Birch properties). To give a bit more location context, Mrs. Miland found the hatchet essentially behind the store which Shortsleeves and Mather were working on when Andrew picked up the broken lock.

As the overall business manager for the Borden sisters, that he arranged to have the hatchet retrieved is not surprising. What is less clear is why he bothered...unless he was told to get it to stop the talk (by you know whom).

His employer provided him with an alibi. Your guess is as good as mine as to how unassailable that alibi would have been, but the police AND Jennings/Phillips did not seem to pursue.

To your point, it sure seems the defense would have pursued this if their was any traction. Attorney Arthur Phillips did a lot of good detective work enhancing the testimony of Mark Chace, Brownie & Me, Lubinsky & Gardner, etc. Can't imagine he would have missed on this since we know he was aware of Walker from the Jennings Journals.

I still find it odd that the 1903 finding was covered to such a minimal degree by the local papers. Since these three papers were in a rabid competition for readership and I don't imagine they would ever jointly conspire, it has to indicate something about the find didn't pass muster.

[Inspector]

Thanks for that update, Cam you have some good points in there, that makes a lot of sense that “you know who “ would want to keep that story quiet if that’s what happened. It also explains why there would be no need for the defense to pursue that angle if it could somehow be tied to the sisters at the time of the trial.

[Lorcan]

I'll read through all of this, but I wanted to make a more readable version of the Miland article for us.

[Lorcan]

Minor resizing and contrast adjustments.

[Lorcan]

I agree with Camgarsky that the fences had changes and there wasn't an accessible alleyway in Aug 1892.

I also don't buy the story at all. The case was already very famous. There is no statute of limitations on murder. You don't discard the newspapers, that is destroying evidence of a double murder, plus they help prove provenance, plus they are monetarily valuable in their own right.

Also, the way it was supposedly wrapped in newspaper and twine and then put into a pile of coal at a place the killer had access to and never came back to remove the evidence and that coal was never used nor moved all those years? Too many holes in the hatchet story itself for me and that's not even counting the plausibility mountain this story must climb if he were the actual murderer.

Here are a couple images of the fences. There are higher resolution versions of these at FRHS, but I am limited to the 1MB size on the forum, but I think these will be pretty good for us all to look for an alleyway.

[Inspector]

Those are great photo enhancements Lorcan.
I wonder if that’s Lizzie in front of the house, or perhaps Bridget since she’s taller.

[Lorcan]

Inspector - these are actually downgraded photos. I had to shrink the file size below 1MB to post them here. You can get the good ones from Fall River Historical Society here:

https://fallriverhistorical.org/lizzie- ... ollection/

It's possible that one of those ladies is someone we know, but it was a busy street. Both photos were taken in 1892.

I hope there is a benefactor / donor / or professional photographer who will help the FRHS use modern equipment and techniques (not AI) to get the highest resolution scans possible for the entire FRHS collection. The digital photos we currently have are ancient technology and we can do so much better if the project can be funded and carried out.

[Inspector]

I agree. it would give everyone a closer look at what has been so blurry all these years.

[camgarsky4]

Both photos were taken by Arthur Phillips after the murders.

The top pic is at the corner of Second and Spring Streets. The man on left side facing camera is standing in front of Mark Chace's stable and where Chace would have looked across the street to see the buggy and man in front of Kelly's house about 11a.m.
The bottom pic is in front of Lew's Livery Stable and where Mrs. Churchill would have told Thomas Bowles to go find a doctor and about where the boy told Cunningham what he knew.

[Inspector]

Funny you’d mention that Cam.
I was wondering earlier today if the bottom picture was from Hall’s stable.

[camgarsky4]

Clarification for any future (or current) readers.

The livery stable the photo was taken from was operated by Lew Hall. I left out the 'Hall' part in my post above.

[Inspector]

Thanks for the clarification Cam.