Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Do you think it would be possible if Lizzie were guilty, she hid the axe in one of the victims' coffins?

I don't think so...didn't they take the coffins back to the funeral home after the funeral? If I recall correctly, they were not buried at the time of the funeral.

Ah, of course you're right, SallyG.

Good thought, though! Personally, I've wracked my brain for a long time to figure out what she did with the weapon. Either the broken hatchet was the murder weapon or it was not a hatchet..more like a kitchen implement that was easy to clean and hide in plain view.

Yes, SallyG - I've often thought the same. Everyone was looking for a hatchet. I don't think I ever read of the cops examining the kitchen items. A meat cleaver comes to mind, but they must have looked at any of them at the house.

My current theory - and one I've had for a few years now - is that Morse got one of his butcher friends to do it. They would have used a meat cleaver probably and maybe taken it with them.

I still can't wrap my mind around John Morse having any reason to kill them, though. If there WAS a reason, getting a butcher friend to do it would be ingenious! Do you have any good theories as to why Morse would want them both dead?

I was watching a show last night on Victorian food..forget the name of it...Supersize something!!....but they were dressing in Victorian attire, and eating the same foods Victorians would have eaten in an upscale home. One of the dishes very common then was mutton!! It was on the menu for breakfast! Another was calves head! They had to boil and cut the calves head open and they were using a pretty heavy cutting tool. It made me think that Victorians had some very different kitchen tools than we would have now. I wonder how many of them would be a heavy chopping tool that might have worked similar to a hatchet??

Far too risky. If it was found, and I think it would have, the gig would have been up and it would point to a family member being the killer. It would have been one more nail in Lizzie's coffin.

-1bigsteve

hmm..true. It must have been that handle-less hatchet, then. Seems like it would have been a bit difficult to break a handle off of a fairly new hatchet, though...maybe there was a vise in the barn.

Sometimes it seems like the more you think about it, the harder and harder it gets to imagine exactly how she did it! However, if we knew HOW she really did it, it would probably seem pretty simple. Does this make sense?

One of the dishes very common then was mutton!! It was on the menu for breakfast!

Oh, yes, in those days people ate all kinds of meat, poultry and fish for breakfast. It wasn't until a couple of decades later that bacon, sausage and ham became the standard breakfast meats. And eggs were seldom eaten for breakfast. Unless you had your own chickens, eggs were very expensive and were usually saved for luncheon or supper dishes or for baking cakes. The August Fourth breakfast menu wouldn't have seemed nearly as strange to people in 1892 as it does to us.

augusta wrote:Do you think it would be possible if Lizzie were guilty, she hid the axe in one of the victims' coffins?

I ithink she might have gotten rid of the axe, but not in the coffin. The police reaslly didn't look all that well for the axe. I think they found the handle part of it, but not the axe head part. Think I read that somewhere, not sure. But, in all honesty, I don't think she got rid of it, maybe someone else, but Lizzie. I think she thought she was innocent, or maybe was in some of a black out, and did't remember what she did. In that scenario, she wouldn't thought about hiding an axe, because of not remembering what she did. She would been under the impression that she didn't do the deed.She wouldn't have had the need to hide the axe. Maybe Bridget might have hid it because she saw Lizzie do the crime.