Lizzie Borden Society Forum

A few weeks ago I saw a forensic show on TruTV channel 66. The episode was about a husband who killed his wife by beating her over the head with a big tire iron. When he was done he noticed blood splatter on his shoes and shirt so he changed his shoes and shirt but not his blue denim pants because he didn't see any blood on them. He then called the police claiming that someone else had killed his wife. When the police examined his denim pants with a magnifying glass they found small blood spots deep in the fibers that were not visible to the naked eye. They said those spots hit the fabric at high speed, went through the surface fibers and hit the deeper layers where they soaked in. I guess much like a bullet traveling through the leaves of a tree and hitting the trunk.

I got to thinking of Lizzie's blue dress. What if tiny blood spots hit lizzie's dress at high speed and soaked in deep. Wouldn't those blood spots be just as hard to see on her blue dress as those blood spots on that guys blue denim pants? Could it have been possible that the eye witnesses were looking at Lizzie's dress but couldn't see the spots because they were small and deep?

-1bigsteve (o:

That's entirely possible, the blood might not have contrasted the blue dress material even if it was low velocity. If it had penetrated the fabric to any extent, it may have been almost invisible.

My best guess is that no one had any reason to be examining Lizzie for blood spatter at the time in question, before she changed to the pink wrapper. She was considered a victim at the time rather than the perpetrator. I think people who were not looking for blood might notice it around the cuffs on the sleeves or on the hands before anywhere else. If Lizzie was moving her hands, they would be looked at. Dirt and dust from the hayloft would also be noticed if it was there.

I still think if they didn't notice the dress, they didn't notice anything on the dress. The term "notice" does not address the fact of blood or no blood, it addresses the power of observation by the witness. The only witnesses describing Lizzie's dress were Mrs. Churchill who described the Bedford cord, and Mrs. Bowen who described a blue dress with a white "sprig" in it. These sound like two different dresses.

If someone had said that they didn't notice Lizzie's dress to the point they could describe it, but there absolutely was no blood on it, the attorneys would have had a field day! That's like saying "It was too dark to see, but I didn't see the defendant". Of course you didn't see the defendant, it was too dark!! Of course you didn't notice blood, you didn't notice the dress!!

I don't really know, bigsteve, but I'd think someone who knew about fabric might have a speculation, or even might have conducted an experiment.

My thinking is more along the lines of:
Why would hitting someone with a hatchet cause high velocity spatter? Somehow that doesn't seem like the right weapon for that result you describe. I think of gunshot for that result?

Also, I would think spatter that permeated a fabric without showing on the surface might be due to the type of fabric and thus you might be comparing apples and oranges- or rather bedford cord material with denim.

Kat @ Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:55 pm wrote:I don't really know, bigsteve, but I'd think someone who knew about fabric might have a speculation, or even might have conducted an experiment.

My thinking is more along the lines of:
Why would hitting someone with a hatchet cause high velocity spatter? Somehow that doesn't seem like the right weapon for that result you describe. I think of gunshot for that result?

Also, I would think spatter that permeated a fabric without showing on the surface might be due to the type of fabric and thus you might be comparing apples and oranges- or rather bedford cord material with denim.

Wasn't there blood splatter on the wall behind Andrew's head? A hatchet blade entering a human skull is bound to produce blood splatter to some degree. Christine Demeter was beat over the head with a blunt object and there was blood splatter all over the place; the Cadillac, the wall, the floor, her. A gunshot would have created blood splatter toward the shooter and out the other side if the bullet exited. I'm not sure about the bedford cord being "nappy" enough to hide tiny blood spots beneath the top layer of "fuzz." Too bad that dress doesn't exist today. When it comes right down to it I still think it was the dress Lizzie burned that had blood on it.

Here's a thought: What if Lizzie deliberately brushed that dress against the painted wall knowing it would come in handy later in the killing of her parents? Perhaps Lizzie had planned her parent's death's that long in advance?

-1bigsteve (o:

I think it's much easier to say that tiny blood speckles wouldn't show up on a dark patterned fabric, particularly because the kitchen and dining room were not on the sunny side of the house at that time and there was no artificial lighting indoors, than to say that months earlier Lizzie deliberately brushed against paint.

I spent about a year in an old Victorian house and the windows were small, smaller than what you see today in modern houses. During the day the interior was always on the darkish side so it would not surprise me if the daylight in Lizzie's house was so low that it prevented anyone from seeing any small blood spots that may have been on her dress.

What did Lizzie do with the blue dress when she changed into the "wrapper?" Did she leave it hanging up in full view of the police? I'll have to go dig up these answers. I still lean toward the idea that Lizzie put that painted dress on over her blue dress and removed it after each killing.

-1bigsteve (o:

Excuse please, bigsteve, but I was remarking upon high velocity blood spatter. High speed, enough to drive blood drops thru the surface w/o a mark but embedding within the fabric. That was the point of the topic, yes?

Yes blood on the wall where the picture was above the sofa... but high velocity?
~ ~ ~
Well, we who have spent days and days and nights and nights at the Borden B&B do also know pretty much what was the lighting in the rooms there.

In the TV program the forensic expert refered to the blood hitting the attacker's blue denim pants, traveling through the surface fibers and colliding with the denser deeper fabric, as "high velocity." Those are his words, not mine. He said that blood simply dripping onto a fabric would stay on the very top surface where it would be more visible. I suppose "low velocity" would be drops of blood simply dropping from say the weapon itself when it wasn't in motion. If I were to take a steel rod and beat a cantalope as if that was the head of someone I were trying to kill, whatever sprays out would be considered traveling at "high velocity." The blood on the wall above Andrew's head had to have been traveling at a high speed since some of it went "up hill." I recently saw a forensics show about a blood expert that does nothing but study crime scene blood patterns. Too bad he wasn't around in 1892 with his knowledge.

FairHavenGuy mentioned the fact that the inside of Lizzie's house would have been rather on the darkish side due to the lack of indoor lighting and location of the sun. I brought up my experiences with an old Victorian house as my way of agreeing with his comment. I was not saying that no one else who has been in Lizzie's house knew how dark her house is/can be. We have a gazillion Victorians in California and the interiors can be so dark you have to focus on the floor to keep from tripping, even with the blinds open. Windows in houses today are huge by comparison.

-1bigsteve (o:

That may be right, high and low velocity might be with respect to the force of gravity. In any case, if the spatter showed an uphill direction especially or with any directionality other than a downward angle, it was moving at a velocity equal to or greater than that imparted by gravity. The Poncelet equation deals with penetration of an object by a solid, but a liquid is nowhere near as dense as a solid, so I'm not sure how well it would apply.

I just read the whole thread again, and I want to support the point that no one expected Lizzie to have done it in those few hours (except maybe Phillip Harrington!) so one one was looking at her with anything but sympathy and sorrow.

Everyone wasn't a forensic expert from watching hours of reality TV, as we do today!

"The past is a different country; they do things differently there."