Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Do we know if Andrew and Abbie locked their bedroom door while they were sleeping?

Could Lizzie have sneaked in there while they slept?

Audrey @ Thu Sep 08, 2005 7:24 am wrote:Could Lizzie have sneaked in there while they slept?

Excellent point, Audrey. I never thought about that before. If Lizzie did want to kill her folks why not kill them in their sleep when there are no eye witnesses? That makes a lot more sense then doing it in broad daylight with neighbors and the maid around to catch Lizzie.

Lizzie would have had the time to clean herself up, and after leaving a back door unlocked, got back into bed. No one the wiser. But if Andrew did lock the bedroom door at night or had a .45 at hand... It's something to think about.

-1bigsteve (o:

Audrey @ Thu Sep 08, 2005 11:24 am wrote:Could Lizzie have sneaked in there while they slept?

I guess she could have but she may have been afraid one of them would wake up while she was hacking away at the other and then start screaming or try to stop her.

She couldn't have killed them both simultaneously, and Bridget would have been right upstairs (although she didn't hear anything during the morning of August 4, either.) Probably enough people knew about the Bordens' habit of keeping the exterior doors well locked, too.

I think that a murder at night might have pointed even more to someone within the house. Or at least Lizzie might have felt that way. During the day, with exterior doors more likely to be open, more people coming and going and more noise on the street, it might have been thought that there was a greater likelihood of an outsider getting in and doing the damage.

Sound's logical. After I posted the above comments I sudenly realized that emma or the maid, or both, would probably have heard Lizzie walking around at night. So it's back to the drawing board for me. Bummer.

-1bigsteve (o:

What about a pillow over a face??? (This works best if one wants to believe Abbie was the only intended victim) This can be done rather silently.

Didn't I read the elder Borden's had dentures? What about some poison in their tooth cup? (I cannot imagine dentures in those days fit well enough to be left in while sleeping) The poison would be on the teeth-- and maybe enough of it would get in their mouth.

If you assume Lizzie killed them for the money then it is important that Abby die first, and just as important that that fact be provable. Killing them at roughly the same time would make it difficult to prove.

Even though there was no legal way for Abby's heirs to inherit anything beyond her own personal wealth, which I believe the law said was up to $5000, we don't know that Lizzie knew of that fact.

To keep Lizzie in line Andrew may have threatened her with leaving everything to Abby.

In Lizzie's inquest she said it would take 2 keys for someone to get from her room to the elder Borden's and out again to the back hall, plus she had a hook on her side.
She said she had no keys to do that.

If she had 2 keys, she would have to unlock the door between, kill them, and then open their bedroom door and screw with the lock to make it look like an intruder, and then lock herself back into her bedroom.
Oh, and go downstairs and leave an outer door unlocked.

It sounds complicated.