Lizzie Borden Society Forum

When I first joined here, I used to think that Lizzie had committed the murders on her own, but I am gradually starting to accept the possibility that she may have hired someone. The real question for me now becomes if she had done so, whom would that person have possibly been, and how where/how would she had found them? It's not exactly as if she was able to take an ad out in the paper or anything.

It's pretty hard to imagine Lizzie hiring anyone directly; where would she go to find a hired killer? About the only thing I can conjure up is if Lizzie might have gone to a private detective and gained his trust, maybe he could have recommended someone. The trouble is, that involves a third person.

Just a further thought, I tend toward the simplest answer as the most likely. The least amount of complexity to explain known events is probably the most accurate. This extends to involving others in the murders, unless we can better explain the known events by doing so. For instance, involving Bridget would make the disappearance of a hatchet more plausible, she could have perhaps gotten rid of it as she ran to and from the house. Dr. Bowen is another possibility for that scenario. However, until we establish that: 1) the handleless hatchet couldn't possibly be the murder weapon, 2) the murder weapon couldn't possibly have been hidden in the Borden house, and 3) the police couldn't possibly have missed finding the murder weapon, there is not much need to involve a second person. The involvement of an additional individual other than Bridget increases the complexity exponentially if that person was in on the actual murders and not just after the fact.

At the risk of being labeled another Ray type obsessed person, I still maintain that the weapon was a meat cleaver from the kitchen that was washed off and then put back into a drawer. I do not believe that the flap on Abby's head and the hair piece and the neat slicing of an eyeball into two parts without mushing it up could have been done with an axe- a meat cleaver is much sharper. But I won't bring it up again.

Without being able to examine the skulls directly, it is impossible to absolutely rule out a meat cleaver as the murder weapon. We can't rule out anything which might reasonably have caused the wounds as they were described. If the murder weapon wasn't a hatchet, it tends to explain why no hatchet was found as the murder weapon! If all or most of the skull wounds were of a uniform size wider than a meat cleaver would make, then it might be an axe or hatchet, but if only a few were that wide, it might be explained as multiple cleaver wounds to the same area. Maybe Abby really did get forty whacks!

Angel, this one's for you. It appeared in the Fall River Evening News of August 10th, 1892. On the 4th and 5th I found about a dozen newspaper articles that speculated it could have been either cleaver or axe. Early reports, especially those first 2 days, were highly inaccurate as the police were not giving out much information and the press was willing to gamble on the specifics.

"Strangely Coincident.

Some features of the Borden tragedy seemed strangely coincident with some of those that characterized the Belanger murder in this city. In both cases a sharp instrument was used, but in neither case can the precise nature of the instrument be determined. The final conclusion was that a butcher's cleaver was used in the Lowell murder, and the same probability is suggested in the Fall River case. The perfect accuracy with which the blows were struck was something particularly noted in both cases. The blows precisely follow each other; there was no hacking, and the slashing looked like the work of a practical hand. The actual concealment of all traces was another remarkable feature, common to both cases. The assassin left no drippings from his instrument, and no other traces of his retreat. Probably all this is mere coincidence, but, nevertheless, is it not strange? - [Lowell Times.]

Angel, I have wondered about meat cleavers, too. Splitting an eyeball in two pieces without destroying it - with a hatchet?

A sharp hatchet would do about anything a meat cleaver would, but it would tend to split whatever was being cut, driving the halves away from one another. An eyeball, supported by the skull and underlying tissue, might be split with either implement. An eyeball is a relatively fibrous structure, fairly rigid. The difference might lie in whether the eyeball was in or out of the socket. A hatchet would be more likely to force the eyeball out of the socket than a cleaver would due to the displacement or splitting tendency of the hatchet.

I don't think that she would have hired the killer I mean, I am sure there were plenty of people that would have love to have gotten Andrew, but what about Abby? What motive would the other person have to kill her? Then also to why leave Bridget and Lizzie alive to possibly snitch on them?

snokkums wrote:I don't think that she would have hired the killer I mean, I am sure there were plenty of people that would have love to have gotten Andrew, but what about Abby? What motive would the other person have to kill her?

From what I've read about her, Abby didn't seem like someone who usually had enemies-other than her stepdaughters, that is.

If it was a clever, that explains why the murder weapon was never found.... It wouldn't throw the blood like a hatchet either, would it? Would it have been used the same way as a hatchet? Both hands and an over the head swing? Or just one handed, with shorter chopping? It would be an easier weapon for a woman to use, I think. HHmmmmm

Yooper wrote:Without being able to examine the skulls directly, it is impossible to absolutely rule out a meat cleaver as the murder weapon. We can't rule out anything which might reasonably have caused the wounds as they were described. If the murder weapon wasn't a hatchet, it tends to explain why no hatchet was found as the murder weapon! If all or most of the skull wounds were of a uniform size wider than a meat cleaver would make, then it might be an axe or hatchet, but if only a few were that wide, it might be explained as multiple cleaver wounds to the same area. Maybe Abby really did get forty whacks!

Well, I'm thinking that if a meat cleaver was used, it could strike the person from the bottom corner first and then part of the rest of the blade would go in, but not all of it. If that was the case, then it could very easily be around the same length of a hatchet blows.

Would Lizzie have a clue where to find somebody who would kill for money ? Wouldn't there have been gossip about a Sunday school teacher hanging around the " bad " side of town looking for criminals. Or would there have been somebody she knew from church who would do it for her .
Imo Lizze did it , she had the means , motive , and opportunity . But I'd like to know how she managed to not leave a blood trail to where she cleaned the weapon.
The meat cleaver vs hatchet question . Has anybody tested this ? I mean on a pig skull maybe , already dead of course . I know the skulls can't be examined but there are the pictures.

Finding a "hired killer" is still somewhat of a tall order today-in 1892, I'm sure doing so was near impossible.

Hired killers may have been more common than we might think in 1892, many people were still living outside the law in the west at the time. October 1892 was when the Dalton gang unsuccessfully attempted to stage a double bank robbery in Coffeyville, Kansas. Police investigative techniques were relatively unsophisticated, so it may have been a bit easier to get away with murder back then.

As I see it, if Lizzie didn't know the hired killer personally, there was a very large element of trust involved on Lizzie's part if she wanted to hire someone. She would also have to trust a third person if she didn't know where to find someone for hire or do the hiring herself directly. Lizzie could have been blackmailed, she was still liable to be retried as an accessory, which was not a negated charge under double jeopardy when she was acquitted.

Also, if an outside party were involved, why would Lizzie have told them to come during the day when Bridget would be around?
I'm guessing the maid wouldn't normally be up in her room resting during the middle of the day - it was a fluke.
(Unless, of course, she was in on it). But as several people have pointed out, that increases the chance of detection, having then two other
people know about the crime.
My suspicions, if we're talking about a third party, is good old Uncle John. Not that he did it but his alibi was just a bit too tight and convenient, imho.
In regards to the axe and the handle being broken off, wouldn't that be really hard to do? Even if Lizzie was a weight lifter...

RE: Harry's post about the "Belanger" and "Lowell" murders, does anyone know the specific dates and circumstances of these?
thanks, in advance;)

Marg, try this site:

http://www.acgs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.ph ... 926127470b

It was also a forum topic back in 2005:

http://www.lizzieandrewborden.com/LBFor ... f=1&t=1526

If it was somehow proven that a meat cleaver was used instead of a hatchet we mught have to change the name of the Journal from the Hatchet to the Cleaver.

I am not sure if that title would sound as good,

"The Cleaver, A Journal of Lizzie Borden & Victorean Studies"

Maybe it might work.

Fargo wrote:If it was somehow proven that a meat cleaver was used instead of a hatchet we mught have to change the name of the Journal from the Hatchet to the Cleaver.

I am not sure if that title would sound as good,

"The Cleaver, A Journal of Lizzie Borden & Victorean Studies"

Maybe it might work.

If we did that, we might have to discuss how the Beaver killed Ward and June while Wally was out of town. Actually, Jerry Mathers resembles Lizzie to a degree. So does Alfred E. Newman.

How about a new series called " Leave it to Lizzie" ?

Sounds good to me! We could supplant Alice Russell with Eddie Haskell.

On the cleaver note, this prop poster up on E-Bay sure looks like it has a cleaver depicted and not a hatchet!

http://cgi.ebay.com/LIZZIE-BORDEN-HALLO ... 1e65272271

I can see a cleaver being used as the implement, I can also see Uncle John being the one to hire outside assistance to deal with what they considered to be their 'problem'.

Butcher Davis via John Morse

I think for Lizzie to hire a killer, she would to travel in the realm of the criminals street people and the like. Lizzie doesn't strike me as the type of person who would be runnig with these kinds of people. Maybe if she was taling to one of Andrews disgruntled employees and or forme disgruntled employees, maybe they might have gotten together and cooked up a scheme, but that's even to outragous , even for her.

I doubt she went to any of Andrew's employees....didn't she say that no one who worked for her father was responsible, I believe? That's a pretty bold statement to make, especially considering how early on she said it.

Knowing who didn't do it implies knowledge of who did it, especially when she said it early on. If the statement is qualified by why she thought certain people could not be responsible, the meaning may change. For instance, stating that John Morse absolutely could not have been responsible says one thing, saying John Morse could not be responsible because he was visiting his relatives across town is less incriminating. The difference is in the explanation of the thought process, whether the fact for the premise "across town" is correct or incorrect. The statement changes to one of belief rather than absolute fact.

When it comes to Bridget being up in her room resting, there is evidence in her own testimony that points to this being a rather normal occurrence. Her work wasn't as easily done with none of the modern gadgets we're all used to. She still had to heat the stove using coal and wood to cook, and carry water back and forth from the one running water faucet in the house. Which only had cold running water. It was all hand labor. Washing and hanging the laundry was likely to take the better part of the day. Just washing the dishes was pretty time consuming. Washing the windows that morning was probably no easy task either. She had to keep filling up her bucket in the barn with clean water to first wash, and then go back to rinse each window. Using the dipper method of throwing water up on each window, and knowing the size of those windows, I'm going to say it took a lot trips to the barn once her bucket was empty. Then she had to start on the inside. I'm sure she was grateful for any time she had to take a little rest before beginning her next task.

I think it wasn't so hard to find someone to off your parents back then. My problem is I think Lizzie did it on her own. I've tried to come up with one single person she might have trusted enough, or been close enough to trust with doing this. I don't think Lizzie would've just hired anyone off the street. Her fortune she had wanted for so long was riding on some stranger keeping their mouth shut, or not deciding they wanted a bigger piece of the pie. What it all boils down to for me is I don't think Lizzie would trust anyone but Lizzie with a deed like that.

http://www.vintageconnection.net/VictorianLaundry.htm

It seems incomprehensible to me that Lizzie would go to the trouble and expense (and risk the danger) of hiring someone to kill Andrew and Abby if she was then just going to hang around the house while the job was being done. The whole point to hiring a hit man is to give you the opportunity to be somewhere else; to establish an airtight alibi and remove yourself as a suspect. What possible good could it do Lizzie to hire someone to kill Abby while she waits in the next room or to kill Andrew while she waits in the barn? Her presence at 92 Second Street during the time of the murders still guarantees that she'll be considered a prime suspect, which negates the whole purpose of a hit man. If Lizzie was paying to have her parents murdered, she'd be awfully stupid not to pick a time when she was away in Marion with her girlfriends, or even downtown at one of her Christian Endeavor or Fruit and Flower Mission meetings. And, guilty or innocent, I don't think anyone has ever characterised our Miss Borden as "stupid".

Also, if the job was being done by a hired killer, the logical thing to do would have been to stage the scene to deflect attention away from the idea that Lizzie was behind it. Some other motive would be needed to keep people's minds from turning to family discord or a big inheritance as the most likely reason for the killings. A robbery gone wrong would have satisfied most people. All the killer would have to do is grab Andrew's wallet, take out the cash and leave the wallet lying on the carpet next to the body. Then leave the front door ajar, smashing the lock to make it look like a forced entry. The police might still have suspected that Lizzie was behind it all (Why was Abby killed first?), but they'd have been much less likely to arrest her if it was even possible that someone had broken in.

Hired killers don't want to get caught, any more than the people who hire them do. Why would a hit man kill Abby in broad daylight in a busy neighborhood, then hang around for over an hour waiting for his next victim? And what if Andrew hadn't come home alone? Then what? Any sensible hit man would have broken into the house in the dead of night and murdered Andrew and Abby together in their bed while they slept, then staged a robbery and made a fast getaway. And the killings themselves would probably have been quicker and cleaner. Why splash around a lot of blood if there are other methods like strangulation or a quick blow to the head with a blackjack? The sheer amount of "overkill" in Abby's case doesn't point to a dispassionate outsider, it points to someone who had a lot of emotion invested in seeing Abby dead.

Welcome to the forum, Albanyguy! All of your points make perfect sense, Lizzie alone had exclusive opportunity and the motive for the overkill in Abby's murder.

Welcome to the forum, Michael! I hope you find this forum informative and interesting.

Great post!!! You really put a lot of thought into it.

Aw, thanks for the warm welcome, guys! It's going to be fun hanging out here. Can't wait for the anniversary next week!

Another welcome and another "well-done" to the analysis!

And-- I've said this before-- an out-of-household killer most probably wouldn't have risked leaving the house with the weapon, no matter how well concealed.

(For this reason, I don't believe Lizzie ever left the house with the weapon: If Mrs. Churchill-- or Hyman Lubinsky!!!-- or even Bridget had come upon her trying to conceal the hatchet, then the jig would have been up. Or, if anyone had merely spotted her from a window, or the street, carrying a sack, or something wrapped in a cloth ... the testimony would have been damning. She had made it thus far ... why tote the hatchet to the barn or anywhere else outside of the domicile? It could have meant instant disaster.)

No, a hired assassin would have left the hatchet buried in Andrew, after the second or third blow. Maybe the first. Then skedaddled.

That the police searched the house for the murder weapon means that they immediately suspected an inside job. No "outside killer," hired or otherwise, would have taken the time to hide the weapon!

No, he or she would have gotten the heck out of Dodge.