Lizzie Borden Society Forum

One of the so called "crank" letters received by the police was this one:

"Dear Sir: If the Bordens were murdered by some one in the house, the hatchet could have been concealed on the person and afterward hid in the caskets without fear of detection. Try a muzzled bloodhound. So far as can be learned, the caskets have not been searched, nor has any muzzled bloodhound been asked to do detective duty. "

No date of the letter is mentioned but it was published in the FR Globe of August 15th, 1892.

Hopefully the Fall River Historical Society will someday soon publish the Hilliard papers which would contain, I assume, many letters of this type.

I think that's a good idea, Lizzie did go downstairs, alone without Alice, she could have concealed the hatchet with Abby or Andrew. Or any time actually, before the funeral. That would explain why it has never been found.

That's a very effective way to dispose of the hatchet, but there was an autopsy performed after the funeral. I would imagine a hidden hatchet would have been discovered at that point.

And the bodies weren't prepared at least until later Friday night. The trip to the cellar happened Thursday night. Of course, in the in-between time after that and the funeral, something may have been hidden there in a casket. But yes there was another autopsy (Aug. 11th I believe) and nothing was noted. I agree something would have been found then.

The caskets were simple wooden ones, weren't they? They didn't have a lining? I think Andrew's head rested on a pillow. Interesting, if Lizzie made the pillow for Dear Old Dad and sewed the weapon up amongst the stuffing. I don't know if the doctors would have removed the pillow when they did the 'second autopsy' at the cemetery. If nobody picked up the pillow - I think it'd be a kind of lack of respect thing to do (it's okay to cut the heads off; just don't touch the pillow ), it seems like that could have worked. Our luck Winward provided the pillow and ruined a good theory.

Perhaps Lizzie hid the hatchet within some object in her room that the police would never think of looking inside such as a pillow or a large decorative object that the police wouldn't think was hollow. That hatchet could have been hiding in plain sight. Perhaps Lizzie was laying on it during the police search. Inside her bed mattress?

-1bigsteve (o: