Lizzie Borden Society Forum

I got to thinking. Lizzie never spoke in her defense, which usually means that they are guilty and the lawyer wants them to keep quiet. I am thinking that maybe the reason her lawyers wanted her to keep quiet because she knew who the killer(s) were, perhaps maybe even was in on the deed, even though she didn't swing the axe. Maybe by keeping her quiet and not telling who did it, she couldn't be found quilty.

Hi snokkums. I'm not sure if Lizzie was in on the deed or not, but like you, I don't believe she swung the hatchet. Since I first read material on the case, I have always believed Lizzie knew the person who delivered the fatal blows.

The more I explore, though, I find more possibilities of men who are expert with hatchets. The nature of butchering meat changed with the Gustavus Swift and the invention of the Pullman refrigerator railcars. Many young men left the family farms to work in the dressed meat industry.

Ray would, of course, bring up Arnold's story of William Borden. David Anthony, Ruby Cameron's proposed Lizzie lover, was involved in the meat industry which owned a slaughterhouse in Assonet. Even Mrs. Churchill had butchers in the family, living right next door (including her rarely mentioned son). Lizzie's Robinson cousins had a father who was a farmer and stableman who became an Inspector of the Slaughter in Swansea. William Davis (and his blind father) were the people John V. Morse had been staying with--they were butchers. And of course, John V. Morse had been trained as a butcher himself. And these are just the most obvious hatchetmen Lizzie would have known.

When looking for suspects, there are days that I believe half the men in Fall River were carrying hatchets on August 4, 1892.

That's interesting. I never thought that maybe someone with meat experience. I mean, I thought that maybe it was just somneone picking up an axe or a hatchet and started hacking. I think that that is why many people thought and still do think Lizzie did it. The culprit just started swinging.
I just always had a problem the strength of the blows and brutallity of the crime scene that maybe a man did it.

I always felt that the attacker had a pretty good aim. The sofa and carpet were not all cut up.

Even an innocent person can make themselves sound guilty when they get on the stand. A lot of lawyers try to keep their clients mouths shut whether guilty or not. If Lizzie didn't do it I'm sure she knew who did.

-1bigsteve (o:

They were rather "neat" crimes with so little blood. I don't think an angry amateur would create so little blood. That's why I thought of some of the butchers involved in this tale. A person who can fell a scared, large animal with a single blow has to have some skill with a hatchet.

It's the other blows that pose the question for me. If it was a crime of rage and anger causing the repeated blows, it's hard to reconcile the time lag between the two murders. I suspect it was a person with some skill who was trying to disguise the crime and throw police off the track. The extra blows were to make it look like a "maniac" had committed the crimes.

I have wondered if someone Lizzie knew well committed the crimes, and then she placed the extra blows to make it look like an outsider AFTER Abbie and Andrew were already dead.

I wonder if the doctors ever suspected the blows were made by two different hands, or if there was a time difference between the first (probably killing) blow and the subsequent blows? (Kind of like Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.)

I doubt that anyone wielding a hatchet has much control over the amount of blood produced, amateur or expert. Abby's murder does indeed seem to be a crime of passion, but I can see where Andrew's murder might have been embellished a bit in order to match Abby's. Note that Abby's murder produced relatively less blood from a greater number of blows. If Lizzie could wield a hatchet well enough to direct subsequent blows without missing, why would she be inaccurate with the first blows? The time lag between the murders can be reconciled if they were done by someone who had no reason to leave the house.

1bigsteve @ Sat Jan 08, 2011 11:08 pm wrote:I always felt that the attacker had a pretty good aim. The sofa and carpet were not all cut up.

Even an innocent person can make themselves sound guilty when they get on the stand. A lot of lawyers try to keep their clients mouths shut whether guilty or not. If Lizzie didn't do it I'm sure she knew who did.

-1bigsteve (o:

On the note of "If Lizzie didnt do it, I'm sure she knew who did", my question is, Why didnt she tell? I know I'm not going to go to trial and risk jail time if I didn't do something. Maybe she was being blackmailed?

What would a blackmailer have on Lizzie? If Lizzie was involved in the murders, even if she didn't actually wield the hatchet, she was just as culpable as the other individual(s).

I just can't see Lizzie being in league with anyone, she just seemed too self contained to open herself up to anyone, especially something like killing. The kind of person who would be open to that kind of suggestion would not be someone she'd want to even be around let alone trust enough to put herself in their hands. It just doesn't fit somehow, if you know what I mean.

It tends to complicate things exponentially to include anyone other than Bridget as an accomplice. There is ample coincidence for Lizzie or anyone else to have committed the murders individually, without adding to the remoteness of possibility. I seriously doubt that Bridget was involved in an way.