Lizzie Borden Society Forum

As Kat mentioned in another thread, today, May 30th, marks the 116th anniversary of the killing of Bertha Manchester in Fall River.

Those who would serve on the jury must have certainly heard of the murder. At the time they were sequestered no one had yet been arrested for the crime. How leak-proof sequestering is is debatable.

Occurring barely a week before the start of Lizzie's trial it's hard to measure the impact it had upon it. It certainly didn't help the prosecution. Obviously it could not have been Lizzie as she was confined at the time.

I never thought about Lizzie being suspected in the Bertha Manchester killing.

You know- what comes next then is the wondering if it was possible to hire out a copy-cat murder to exonerate her!
That's the stuff of TV show plots now-a-days.

It was a huge coincidence to have these 3 hatchet murders in Fall River within a year.

I read an article about that murder last night. That the killer, an azores national, interverntaly helped her get aquitted. Even though he was out of the country at the time of the Borden murders. The jury didn't know this so, they might have been thinking we got the wrong person. The manchester murder happened a week before the trial, so the jury had to been thinking maybe we got the wrong person.

That's a generally accepted theory that abounds.

But actually our Diana proved it was possible that the Borden jury knew the circumstances surrounding the arrest of the Manchester killer, Jose Carreiro, because they had not yet been sequestered when the news hit the papers the day they were chosen.

If you want well-researched information, turn to The Hatchet!
April/May 2004, Vol 1, Issue 2 "Exploding the Myth: The Manchester Connection."