Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Adelaide Churchill,From the Witness Statements, Harrington and Doherty, pages 11-12:

Second interview of Mrs. Churchill. Mrs. Churchill. “Must I, am I obliged to tell you all?” “Well, if I must, I cant be blamed. O, I wish I had not to do this. I do not like to tell anything of my neighbor; but this is as it is. When I went over in answer to Lizzie’s call, I asked O, Lizzie where is your father? In the sitting room. Where were you? I was in the barn looking for a piece of iron. Where is your mother? She had a note to go and see someone who is sick. I don't know but they killed her too. Has any man been to see your father this morning? Not that I know of. Dr. Bowen is not at home, and I must have a Doctor. I think I heard Mrs. Borden come in. Will I go and get one or find someone who will? Yes. I did so. When I returned the first thing I recollect she, (Lizzie) said is, O, I shall have to go to the cemetery myself. No, the undertaker will do that, was my reply. Then Dr. Bowen, Geo. Allen and Charles Sawyer came in.

At this moment, it has not crossed Lizzie's mind that Abby might need to be informed of Andrew's death, Abby's body has not been discovered. Why must Lizzie go to the cemetery herself? Why would Abby not go to the cemetery?

Boy, she really did give herself away then, didn't she?

She also left out her sister Emma, who should also be going to the cemetary. She not ONLY left out Abbie, but also her sister. That's even more telling really, because she didn't like Abbie, and probably didn't consider her feelings in much of anything anyway. Did she really thnk Emma wouldn't be going? Or was she so wrapped up in herself she wasn't thinking of ANYONE else?

Seems to me Lizzie was more concerned about where Dr Bowen was. I wish I could figure out why? What could he do for 2 dead people?

My question has more to do with how Lizzie knew Abby was dead at that moment. She must have known that in order to presume she "shall have to go to the cemetery" rather than Abby.

Lizzie, Inquest, page 83 (40):

(Judge Blaisdell)—Was there any effort made by the witness to notify Mrs. Borden of the fact
that Mr. Borden was found?
Q. Did you make any effort to notify Mrs. Borden of your father being killed?
A. No sir, when I found him I rushed right to the foot of the stairs for Maggie. I supposed Mrs.
Borden was out. I did not think anything about her at the time, I was so—
Q. At any time did you say anything about her to anybody?
A. No sir.
Q. To the effect that she was out?
A. I told father when he came in.
Q. After your father was killed?
A. No sir.
Q. Did you say you thought she was up stairs?
A. No sir.
Q. Did you ask them to look up stairs?
A. No sir.
Q. Did you suggest to anybody to search up stairs?
A. I said, "I don't know where Mrs. Borden is;" that is all I said.
Q. You did not suggest that any search be made for her?
A. No sir.
Q. You did not make any yourself?
A. No sir.
Q. I want you to give me all that you did, by way of word or deed, to see whether your mother
was dead or not, when you found your father was dead.
A. I did not do anything, except what I said to Mrs. Churchill. I said to her: "I don't know where
Mrs. Borden is. I think she is out, but I wish you would look."
Q. You did ask her to look?
A. I said that to Mrs. Churchill.
Q. Where did you intend for her to look?
A. In Mrs. Borden's room.

According to Lizzie's Inquest statement, she had no reason to believe Abby was dead at that time. Why then did she suppose she would have to go to the cemetery herself rather than Abby?

From Rebello (Lizzie Borden Past & Present), page 424---

Re. article "Stalking Miss Lizzie Borden" by Barb Webb, 1991:

Barb Webb...recalled her visit to Fall River and the Fall River Historical Society. It was there a woman stood beside her and said, "She did it, you know. My grandfather was the undertaker. And she had that funeral all planned. She knew exactly how many wagons and everything. It was not a last minute, rush job. She had been planning it for some time."

Thank you for the quote, Tina-Kate, I really should find a copy of Len Rebello's book! According to Mrs. Churchill, Andrew hadn't been pronounced dead, but Lizzie was making funeral arrangements for him and Abby. Lizzie expressed a choice of undertakers to Alice Russell after changing her dress, but that was after both murders had been discovered.

Well, if she had the funerals planned for some time, that sort of blows my theory out the window of Lizzie changing her plan to go out to establish an alibi because her dad came home too early for her to get out of the house, so she had to kill him too. Whew! Long sentence.

I don't know that I would drop that theory too quickly, Angel. Having the funerals well planned at the time she spoke to the undertaker might mean anything. Having gotten over the shock of finding her father in what seems to be world's record time, Lizzie was mentally choreographing the social event of two funerals for people she didn't know were dead! She might have had the funerals well planned by the time she changed her dress!

Or maybe she'd been fantasizing them for years.

I agree Yooper, no doubt at their age, Lizzie and Emma both had probably given some thought (maybe a LOT of thought) to their father's and Abby's funeral. In 1892 only 7 out of every 100 Caucasian males lived to be 70 years old. Andrew was on borrowed time statistically. Clearly Mr. Almy and Andrew had bought their lots, and Lizzie knew about this. But I quite agree, it is VERY telling to me that Lizzie piped up with the statement SHE would have to go down to Oak Grove to arrange her father's funeral. But of course, I have never doubted that Lizzie knew darned well WHY- Abby was beyond going and was needing an undertaker herself!

Good point about pre-planning due to age. Andrew or Abby might have expressed their wishes at one time or another, too.

Lizzie's awareness that she would have to make the arrangements before she supposedly was aware of Abby's death was a major blunder. Her need to be done with the situation, to get it over with quickly seems to have been her downfall. She had no opportunity to hear Abby return by her own admission, but she seemed to need Abby to be discovered quickly, so she said she hear Abby return which presented another dilemma.

Lizzie's miserable lack of talent for lying and making up creative alibis was unbelievable. She had to have been the luckiest person on earth to have gotten away with what she did.

Yes, I believe the plan (if you believe it was premeditated) went awry on several fronts, and Lizzie was not particularly good at doing damage control off the cuff. I think the plan was to poison Abby while Emma was away. With an inability to get the required substance (arsenic or Prussic Acid or some other lethal potion), something else was tried- and failed earlier in the week. Then the intended victim gave an alarm and had to be dispatched -and quick before she could alert anyone else! A hatchet will work every time.

Andrew was at the wrong place at the wrong time and became a necessary victim; pure self-preservation on the killer's part. Later that worked to advantage because no one would believe Abby had an enemy of that intense hatred, but plenty might have believed Andrew did and that Andrew was the intended victim all along. Of course anyone REALLY wanting to kill Andrew over a business matter, would have been astute enough to become familiar with his habits and not have arrived that time of morning when it was Andrew's habit to be AWAY from the house on his morning routine. Personally I would have bashed him in the head in a dark alley one night coming back from a meeting. How many would-be killers are dumb enough to charge into an unfamiliar house in broad daylight with potentially 4 females inside. Emma's and Abby's presence would have been assumed as the killer-to-be could not know where they would be, nor where Bridget or Lizzie would be in the house. If the killer had staked out the house just prior, surely he would have seen Morse coming out the side- Bridget prowling all around the yard in window-washing preparations-and who could know who else was in the house? With all of those negatives, any potential murderer with half a brain would re-think the plan to just burst in and whack Andrew on the spot.

I agree, Angel, Lizzie seemed to do the best when she kept her mouth shut. The combination of Victorian gender bias, her Inquest testimony being excluded from the trial, and the lack of a positively identified murder weapon seemed to work in her favor.

That's right, Shelley, there were far better places to dispatch Andrew than in his home with who knows how many potential witnesses. I also think Abby sealed her fate with her visit to Dr. Bowen the previous day. It brought the situation to the point of desperation.

I think you're right. I don't buy Lincoln's crazy theory of epileptic fits, but her theory of the horse and buggy and young man seen out front makes a lot of sense to me. If Andrew had dispatched this man to pick up Abby and take her to a meeting place where they could take care of some business (whether it was a will, a Swansea farm sale or change of hands, or a power of attorney or whatever) then it would fit with someone seeing a man at the door at 9 am, maybe Lizzie seeing this, slamming the door in his face, freaking out and cornering Abby so she couldn't leave, the man fidgeting outside waiting and then giving up and leaving. If Lizzie saw something was afoot that morning she would have felt desperate enough to put a stop to it.

I just wonder why this man never came forward to say he was at the house. There would have been no harm in it for him.

Morse may have told him to keep quiet. Or he could have been hired from out of town. Lincoln thinks Morse was in such a hurry to get to the post office after the murders because he wanted to communicate with him to ensure he would lay low or maybe pay him off.

But we know the letter Morse mailed was to Issac Davis- the blind butcher with whom Morse stayed in Dartmouth?

How do we know that was all he wrote?

What would Morse's motive be for keeping the man quiet? Say the man came forward and said he had been asked to pick up Abby and take her somewhere for a sort of legal transaction and his carriage had been ordered by Andrew. The man would not have been in trouble for saying so.

Why was Abby still dressed in her old work dress then, and why was she in her workroom sewing pillowslips with her work basket out and the yardstick on the floor? It did not seem she was planning to go down town or had started any preparation to leave. If Morse, Andrew, Abby or anyone else had wanted to, Lizzie could simply have been told Mrs. Borden was going to any sort of location to do anything ( spend a week in Swansea at the farm, go to visit, take her sister out, etc. - . They never had to conspire to get Abby out secretly.

Mostly I think that since Second Street had a livery stable and that Boston Express stop, it may simply have been a driver with time to kill, "parking " his horse for a rest and a little time out while awaiting his next fare. Sometimes things which have the simplest explanation take on all kinds of sinister possibilities due to a proximity to a crime.

Here's yet another thought. Abby knew how much she and the girls were at odds throughout the years. Maybe she was letting Andrew know (with maybe Lizzie eavesdropping) how worried she was that once he was gone the girls would not want to have Abby stay in the house and would give her untold grief about the money. Maybe she did not want to be a burden to her own family as she got older, so she was obsessing on what would happen to her in her old age. To appease her maybe Andrew devised a plan to either leave the Swansea house to Abby and offer Morse some kind of financial arrangement, or leave the house to Morse with the stipulation that he have Abby live there with him and his niece (for respectability) with money that Andrew would leave her, but have Morse manage for her. She would then have a man continue to tak care of her and she wouldn't have to worry about anything. He would then leave the house in town to the girls with their share of the money so they too would be taken care of. However, having gone through the nastiness of the previous house fiasco he didn't want to broach the subject with them, so he arranged everything with Abby, Morse, the bank, etc. without telling them. Lizzie caught wind of this and was furious because she didn't want Abby to have anything she thought the girls were entitled to. That's why Morse was in town and that's why he was acting so weird after the murders because he probably realized what had gone down.

That's a possibility. I agree Andrew was from the school where he would wanted a trusted family member to watch over his fortune and women. He had no son so John was a good candidate perhaps to look out for their welfare. I always figured Andrew made the Fourth Street house over to her because 1. it was her family's homestead, 2. Sarah Whitehead, who was a lot younger could look after Abby at his death. He had arranged his burial plot long before so he had actually made some contingency plans. Too bad he had not finalized a will.

Shelley @ Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:51 pm wrote:What would Morse's motive be for keeping the man quiet? Say the man came forward and said he had been asked to pick up Abby and take her somewhere for a sort of legal transaction and his carriage had been ordered by Andrew. The man would not have been in trouble for saying so."quote)

That's true. I have to think about that.


(quote"Why was Abby still dressed in her old work dress then, and why was she in her workroom sewing pillowslips with her work basket out and the yardstick on the floor? It did not seem she was planning to go down town or had started any preparation to leave. If Morse, Andrew, Abby or anyone else had wanted to, Lizzie could simply have been told Mrs. Borden was going to any sort of location to do anything ( spend a week in Swansea at the farm, go to visit, take her sister out, etc. - . They never had to conspire to get Abby out secretly."quote)

Maybe they were afraid Lizzie would smell a rat because Abby wasn't one to jaunt out. Or maybe they knew Lizzie was snooping around and had heard something.

(quote"Mostly I think that since Second Street had a livery stable and that Boston Express stop, it may simply have been a driver with time to kill, "parking " his horse for a rest and a little time out while awaiting his next fare. Sometimes things which have the simplest explanation take on all kinds of sinister possibilities due to a proximity to a crime.

[shadow=green][/shadow][shadow=black][/shadow][glow=darkred][/glow]

True, too. Just thinking about possibilities. Because something had to have happened and there had to have been some sinister things we don't know about because, after all, there were two murders, and they just didn't happen with nothing else revolving aound them.


(I got some of my answers in the white part and I don't know how to fix it.)

Oh I know- it is a puzzle. And yes, I also believe we are missing a CRITICAL bit of information. But we keep looking for it!

I keep hoping for a solid motive, but the only thing we seem to have is the Whitehead house as a starting point, five years prior. That may have festered and squirmed for five years. There was a robbery attempt focused on Abby the year before and some unnamed "they" took Abby's front door key which was missing as late as two days before the murder. Andrew was supposed to have said he had trouble at home when asked by an associate if he would visit Swansea, but I'm not sure of the source for that. There may have been more turmoil in the Borden household than we think.

I am sure there are things we will never know, but I do think that Lizzie saying she would have to go to the cemetary alone was pure Lizzie drama. Poor, pitiful me, the sympathy factor.

Shelley @ Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:51 pm wrote:What would Morse's motive be for keeping the man quiet? Say the man came forward and said he had been asked to pick up Abby and take her somewhere for a sort of legal transaction and his carriage had been ordered by Andrew. The man would not have been in trouble for saying so.

That's true. I have to think about that.--Angel


Shelley wrote:--

Why was Abby still dressed in her old work dress then, and why was she in her workroom sewing pillowslips with her work basket out and the yardstick on the floor? It did not seem she was planning to go down town or had started any preparation to leave. If Morse, Andrew, Abby or anyone else had wanted to, Lizzie could simply have been told Mrs. Borden was going to any sort of location to do anything ( spend a week in Swansea at the farm, go to visit, take her sister out, etc. - . They never had to conspire to get Abby out secretly.

Maybe they were afraid Lizzie would smell a rat because Abby wasn't one to jaunt out. Or maybe they knew Lizzie was snooping around and had heard something.--Angel

Shelley wrote:

Mostly I think that since Second Street had a livery stable and that Boston Express stop, it may simply have been a driver with time to kill, "parking " his horse for a rest and a little time out while awaiting his next fare. Sometimes things which have the simplest explanation take on all kinds of sinister possibilities due to a proximity to a crime.

True, too. Just thinking about possibilities. Because something had to have happened and there had to have been some sinister things we don't know about because, after all, there were two murders, and they just didn't happen with nothing else revolving aound them.--Angel


(I got some of my answers in the white part and I don't know how to fix it.)

<<I "fixed" it for you Angel, I hope you don't mind.>>Kat

Shelley @ Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:42 pm wrote:But we know the letter Morse mailed was to Issac Davis- the blind butcher with whom Morse stayed in Dartmouth?

Since you put this as a question I thought you might like the testimony. Morse mentions Davis several times in the inquest, but not that he wrote to him.

The person Morse says he wrote to is Vinnicum. I wasn't sure either- I had to look it up thru 3 testimonies.

Morse
Prelim
Q. To whom did you write that letter you put in the post office; you are not obliged to tell that.
A. I think it was to William Vinnecum.

Q. Of Swansea?

Page 244

A. Yes; it was to him, I know now; it was about some cattle.

Q. You mailed it here in the post office?
A. Yes Sir.

Q. Did you go straight up in the horse cars, up to Emery’s?
A. No Sir, I walked up.

--Hope it helps.

Aha! I hope the police checked on that letter then.
Now I will always wonder what was IN that letter or letters. Am trying to recall where I read Morse sent word to Davis that he would be staying in Fall River under the circumstances.

Shelley @ Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:51 pm wrote:Mostly I think that since Second Street had a livery stable and that Boston Express stop, it may simply have been a driver with time to kill, "parking " his horse for a rest and a little time out while awaiting his next fare. Sometimes things which have the simplest explanation take on all kinds of sinister possibilities due to a proximity to a crime.

I agree. Maybe too much significance has been given to the waiting driver over the years. If he WAS just killing time, then imagine his reaction when he learns that the house he was parked in front of was the scene of a double murder at the same time he was there!!

I can see him NOT coming forward for fear of being blamed for the murders, or somehow implicated in them. I think in his shoes, I might lie low as well.

Its really strange, the one's who saw or heard nothing, came forward to say as much and the one's who could have shed some light on the subject or clarify something, chose to remain silent. Tis strange indeed.....