Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Do you remember when you first heard the story about Lizzie Borden? I think the first time I heard her name was when I was 5-years-old. I have a vague recollection of my mother watching the TV movie “The Legend of Lizzie Borden” starring Elizabeth Montgomery. Although it took me 35 years to finally watch it again (bootleg DVD), 3 things had stuck in my mind about it after all those years:

1) when the line “And gave her mother 40 whacks” was recited, it terrified me as a kid. I couldn’t understand why someone would repeatedly hit their mother - especially since I loved my own mother so much!

2) the scene in the basement where the embalming tube gets pulled out & blood sprays everywhere – well, that just messed me up as a kid! LOL

3) when Elizabeth Montgomery washes the blood off herself in that basin - yep, that gave me nightmares, too!

When I finally saw the movie again a few years ago, that scene w/the spraying embalming tube still freaked me out.

How 'bout other forum members? Do you recall when you first learned about our alleged infamous axe murderess? I'd like to hear your stories.

I was 13 when it came out, and I watched in on a big old black and white tv set, the kind that was called a "console tv set" in my bedroom. I remember that embalming tube spraying too--it had the same effect on me. The scene was very weird; the director took a lot of liberties with the truth. Andrew never embalmed bodies in the basement; he used to make and sell coffins. Did Lizzie have a flashback to her own mothers' body laying on the embalming table?

The scene I remember most vividly was when Lizzie found her pigeons bludgeoned and crying "they were mine! they were MINE!"

And of course, this was tv, so Elizabeth Montgomery had to be naked...I remember the look on Abby's face when she sees Lizzie standing there with no clothes on, the immediate look of disgust, then confusion.

I'd LOVE to see that movie come out on DVD, but some sort of contract dispute has been holding up that process for years.

I always skipped rope to " Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks and when she saw what she done she gave her father 41" when I was a little kid. I always thought it was just a rhyme, until I took a crime class in high school!!

The first time I heard of Lizzie was when I saw the movie. A few scenes in that movie really creeped me out. After that I went to Fall River and sat in the parking lot of the bus station that was across the street and looked at the house. The house was privately owned and not open to the public. That same day I went to the Fall River Historical Society and bought a book about the case. The years went by and the house was opened as a B&B. My niece from TX came for a visit and that was the number one place she wanted to visit. So we went for a tour of the house. After that I was totally hooked & got every book I could possibly buy. The following spring I got involved with the people there and had a great time. Still have many good friends from coming to Fall River. I still have books I haven't read. So I will have many many hours of read time to look forward to!!
I also like coming to the forum, but with the hours I work it's not always possible, but when I do I always enjoy it.

Nadzieja wrote:The first time I heard of Lizzie was when I saw the movie. A few scenes in that movie really creeped me out. After that I went to Fall River and sat in the parking lot of the bus station that was across the street and looked at the house. The house was privately owned and not open to the public. That same day I went to the Fall River Historical Society and bought a book about the case. The years went by and the house was opened as a B&B. My niece from TX came for a visit and that was the number one place she wanted to visit. So we went for a tour of the house. After that I was totally hooked & got every book I could possibly buy. The following spring I got involved with the people there and had a great time. Still have many good friends from coming to Fall River. I still have books I haven't read. So I will have many many hours of read time to look forward to!!
I also like coming to the forum, but with the hours I work it's not always possible, but when I do I always enjoy it.

Hey Nadzieja, very happy to read you again.

Glad to have a little more time now to poke through the posts.

this is a fun thread. curious how the rest of the people here now first learned about lizzie.

i heard the rhyme when i was a kid, but didn't think anything of it. there were so many gruesome nursery rhymes and fairy tales, i figured this was just one of them.

i remember the elizabeth montgomery movie. probably had heard before then the nursery rhyme was based on a real event, but it wasn't until the movie i paid much attention to it. it was pretty horrifying. mostly i remember the scene with the pigeons and elizabeth montgomery washing herself off in a basin.

years after that, i came across an old copy of victoria lincoln's a private disgrace and read it. that's when my real interest in lizzie began. the fact that she was a fall river insider, that she was looking at it from a woman's pov, which the all-male crew of police, lawyers, and jurors wouldn't have very much intrigued me.

from there i read a number of other books. the worst, in my opinion, was arnold brown's. i found this site quite a few years ago, and would come and read a lot, albeit sporadically; read quite a bit of the trial transcripts, and lizzie's inquest testimony. probably emma, alice, and morse's inquest testimony, but all that was years ago. now i'm going back and slowly re-reading transcripts, and reading some for the first time. i don't think i ever read the initial witness statements, except for whatever quotes from them i found in the various books.

you?

I'm a lot older than most of you all, so my awareness of Lizzie practically predates the invention of television! My father, who was a gracious and kind gentleman, had an incongruous interest in murder mysteries -- the more gruesome, the better -- and other mysterious, rather romantic things like the Lost Continent of Atlantis, unexplained phenomena, ghost stories* and so on. He always had a little pile of books near his armchair on one of these subjects. One time, when I was 10 or so, he had one on real-life crimes with a chapter on Lizzie Borden. I'd heard the name, so I read the chapter. To say it freaked me out would be putting it mildly!

That scene of Elizabeth Montgomery sponging the blood off her naked body is one of the creepiest things I've even seen. Brrrr!

* Whenever the 1944 movie The Uninvited was on late-night television, we'd stay up and watch it together with hot cocoa and cookies. Best ghost movie ever made! It's finally out on DVD. It's pricey, but worth it.

I'm right on your heels, Mara, with regard to age.

My friend Bonnie had the best jump rope in third grade, and she also introduced me to the Lizzie Borden rhyme. Once a week we were allowed to give up noon recess and walk two blocks to the city library to check out books. I was an encyclopedia reader as a kid so, of course, I looked up Lizzie in every available encyclopedia. From that day on I was hooked on murder mysteries with Jack the Ripper as my main interest followed closely by Lizzie. However, none of them surpassed my fascination with Blue Jacket the Shawnee war chief.

Who is Blue Jacket the Shawnee war chief? Sounds intriguing.
For myself, I've loved unsolved mysteries of all kinds, especially unsolved murder mysteries all my life. As a young teenager I had an older relative who was determined to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper and who would take me to Ripper locations, a few of which, in those days, had the original nearby buildings still standing. I became an amateur Ripperologist, and for me Jack stands alone.

I've seen the Elizabeth Montgomery 'Lizzie' tele-movie twice, once years ago, but I came to Lizzie earlier through various books, and was always intrigued. Domestic murder has its own particular charm! I found this forum and have learned so much more, enjoyably too.

It's another one of those mysteries of history except this one was ultimately solved. Supposedly Blue Jacket was Marmaduke Van Swearingen who was kidnapped as a youth by the Shawnees and adapted to tribal life so well that he became a leading war chief. No doubt Blue Jacket was a war chief of renown but whether born Shawnee or Dutch was unanswered until 2006 when the DNA of Blue Jacket's descendants did not match the DNA of the Van Swearingen family. By that time multiple books had been written that popularized the assumption that Duke and Blue Jacket were one and the same, including one written by Pulitzer Prize winner Allan W. Eckert and another by James Alexander Thom.

Have any books (or articles) been written since 2006 speculating on his identity?

No that I'm aware of...the DNA results pretty much determined they weren't one and the same. Xenia, Ohio, presented a play about Blue Jacket's life as a white boy turned Indian war chief from 1981-2007 (Wikipedia) sort of similar to Fall River and Lizzie. I'm still disappointed.

i'm not too far behind either of you, age-wise. both of you got interested in lizzie very early on.

i've always meant to see the uninvited but for some reason never have. i see dodie smith wrote the screenplay! i loved her book, i capture the castle, and 101 dalmatians. my favorite ghost movie is the b&w version of the haunting, based on shirley jackson's book. it still scares the pants off of me.

my hat is off to anyone who attempts to solve jack the ripper. has your relative come up with who s/he thinks dunnit, and have you, curryong? debbie?

it's fun reading how everyone first discovered lizzie, and their path along the way.

last night i watched the elizabeth montgomery movie. hadn't seen it since i was a kid. it was surprisingly good! they made a decent attempt to be faithful to the facts and using the known dialogue. the outside of the house looked nothing like the borden's. probably used an existing house on the back lot to keep expenses down. they did a better job with the interiors. the scenes of her washing herself off are still pretty brrr. she plays a convincingly creepy lizzie.

No, Catbooks I'm afraid he died not knowing the identity of Jack the Ripper. It was interesting though, and most of those locations have now changed beyond all recognition. No-one will ever find out for sure who he was, there'll just be this endless industry churning out books claiming to have the final solution.
I've never believed he was anyone well-known, just a local who knew the maze of streets and alleyways of those days. He died in obscurity soon after the last murder, I believe, or was incapacitated in some way. I don't believe he retired to play lawn bowls at a seaside resort!

I too, loved 'I Capture the Castle'. Didn't they make a film of it once upon a time, or am I dreaming? Haven't seen 'The Uninvited' (are we talking 1944 or 2009) or 'The Haunting,' yet I love ghost stories. I must look them up.

Elizabeth Montgomery made a good fist out of playing Lizzie, I think. She was able to convey an 'ice in the veins' quality as well as a sense that Lizzie had a temper that was kept under wraps. I too thought it was a surprisingly good movie, probably because of her performance.

how wonderful that the two of you got to visit the locations, before they changed past recognition.

it would make sense if he died not long after the last murder. i always wondered about that. it's not like someone like that would suddenly realize the error of his ways and live out the rest of his days as a model citizen! i read or saw a theory that he traveled to the states afterwards, i believe first new york, and ending up in san francisco? based on similar murders here that didn't receive the attention jack's did in london.

yes, they made a movie of it! it was very good.

i suspect mara is talking about the 1944 version. until today i didn't know they'd remade it. wonder if it's any good.

agreed, elizabeth montgomery played a chilling, icy lizzie, boiling under the surface, very well. i was pleased it was as good as it was.

Dead, suicide or institutionalized. By the time Jack got to Mary Kelly he was losing control. I think he was rapidly approaching where he would no longer pass as some bloke on the street. He'd seem strange enough that someone would take notice given the hypervigilance of Londoners at the time.

is suicide reasonably common amongst serial killers? if so, any idea as to why? is it that whatever internal torment caused them to do it, they can no longer live with it because the killings are no longer a release of some kind? or, fearing they're soon to get caught and won't face being incarcerated?

I don't know much about serial killers suiciding, other than one possible in a 1960's case in England, of a killer who was nicknamed by the Press 'jack the Stripper'. (He bumped off prostitutes in London who were invariably found nude and with their teeth pulled out.)
The police, through forensic investigation, narrowed their search to an industrial estate, and absolutely swamped the place night and day with police cars, foot patrols, detectives making calls. Eventually, of course, this surveillance stopped and years later it came out that a main suspect, a van driver on the estate who worked at night, had committed suicide after weeks of this swamping, (and no further murders) leaving a note for his bewildered family stating that he 'couldn't stand the pressure any more'. His name was never released but there were no more murders.

Curryong, The Uninvited Catbooks and I are referring to is the 1944 one. Other movies of the same name have no relation to it at all. It's black-and-white despite the garish color packaging of the relatively new DVD release (at last!). Set in Cornwall, it's charming and remarkably spooky.

Stephen King in the early days + Stanley Kubrick + a crazy Jack Nicholson = The Shining.

I have to say I diid enjoy 'Carrie' and 'Stand by Me' of King's very early movie adaptations. Not a great fan of 'The Shining' though I like Jack Nicholson as an actor.
I'm going to stream 'The Uninvited' as soon as I can. I see the 2009 version was made in South Korea so I don't think that one would have been set in Cornwall!

curryong, creepy about that british serial killer in the 60s.

i loved the first 2/3rds of 'carrie.' great story, and i love sissy spacek. but at the point at the dance when the fire hoses start dancing around, i started laughing and it lost me

i'm going to have to google 'stand by me.' know i've seen it, but can't recall what it's about and for certain didn't know it was based on a king novel. … oh wow, he wrote that?? i'd have never guessed. chopper the junk yard guard dog! it was a very good movie.

never wanted to see 'the shining,' and still have only seen some parts from the first half hour or so. the only part i was really interest in is the hotel it was shot in! what an amazing old building.

not early, but of the stephen king films, i very much enjoyed 'the green mile' and 'the shawshank redemption.'

Stand By Me is based on the long short story (novella) The Body: Fall From Innocence that was first published in a Stephen King collection entitled Different Seasons. My kids must've watched that movie at least a hundred times, and we all read the book more than a few times. If you loved Stand By Me like they did, the recent film Mud with Matthew McConaughey is another great coming of age story. Come to think of it, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption was also published in Different Seasons. I'm a Behavior Health Consultant now, but way back then I was a Library Administrator. I've had lifelong love affair with books.

Yes, so am I, always a bookworm! Does Stephen King still publish in the usual way? I heard several years ago something about him planning to release new novels/stories online. Maybe that fell by the wayside though.

By the way, I saw 'The Uninvited' last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. For me it had echoes of 'Rebecca' and 'The Man in Grey' with James Mason.

I just ordered the movie that you talked about "The Uninvited". I was able to get the 1944 version from Netflix. Can't wait to see it.

The first time I remember hearing about Lizzie was when a substitute teacher in grade 3 read to the class from a book with several short stories in it. Lizzie was one of the stories. I didn't remember that until a few years ago when I read the same book, until then I thought the first time I heard about Lizzie was in grade 7 from one of the short story books in the classroom, It was a series of small paperback books on many subjects. the lizzie book had stories about Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James, John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly. I think the Covers were Green.

Hello Fargo, so Lizzie was keeping good company, then! Did you ever see the TV movie version of Lizzie, starring Elizabeth Montgomery? That movie seems to stick in people's minds.

Yup, I remember watching it on TV in the 70's. ( elementary school days ) I didn't connect it with the with the Lizzie story until I saw it again years later. I took a big interest in the story after watching and taping biography; Lizzie Borden, a woman accused, I watched that so many times that I can recite every word in the whole show from memory.

this thread is so much fun to read.

fargo, it's nice to see another long-time forum resident posting again :)

Stephen King went through a weird mid-life introspective thing after he was hit by a drunk driver while walking home. During this period his books ...um...sucked. He has since got a great one with Cell, and another with Under the Dome. 11/22/63 was awesome, and Sleep Doctor also was great. I just read Joyland and it is a great one too. He definitely is back to his great self, after years of Dumas Bay, Lisey's Story and other crap.

BTW...Serial killers almost never commit suicide unless they are sure they are on the verge of capture. Their lack of empathy and sociopathy gives them no guilt at all...just not wanting to live the rest of life in jail.

I'm glad to hear that Stephen is doing well and is back on form. I wonder whether any of his new books will be filmed? Hollywood hasn't really produced anything really great in the last couple of years. Maybe money for the big productions had been a bit scarce.

Re serial killers. Yes, I'm sure that very true. Of course, some, when they are captured and go to trial, love their moment in the sun, don't they. I'm thinking particularly of Ted Bundy here.

Curryong wrote:I'm glad to hear that Stephen is doing well and is back on form. I wonder whether any of his new books will be filmed? Hollywood hasn't really produced anything really great in the last couple of years. Maybe money for the big productions had been a bit scarce.

Re serial killers. Yes, I'm sure that very true. Of course, some, when they are captured and go to trial, love their moment in the sun, don't they. I'm thinking particularly of Ted Bundy here.

Yep, Bundy was a celebrity even in prison, and right before his execution was still giving interviews to Dr. James Dobson as an "expert" on how porn causes serial killers

so weird to think of serial killers as celebrities of any stripe. we are a very strange society.

just remembered another stephen king film i thought was very good - dolores claiborne. kathy bates was excellent in it. but it was so bleak, so it's not on my list of favorites.

I don't recall that one. Maybe it wasn't released in Australia. All of the blockbusters and other 'biggies' are, but when 'The Woman in Black' with Daniel Radcliffe was released in other parts of the world it took a major campaign by Radcliffe fans to persuade the two main distributors here to give it a general release.
Otherwise, it would have been an art-house film, available in only a few cinemas. Maybe they felt the combination of ghost story and Daniel just wasn't commercial. I saw both the play and film of 'The Woman in Black' and loved both versions. I'm just a sucker for a good ghost story, though.

i had to look up the woman in black. knew i'd seen it, and fairly recently, amongst a bunch of other movies. first time i'd seen daniel radcliffe as anything other than harry potter! it was good.

Someone suggested the movie The Uninvited made in 1944. I watched it yesterday and I'm sure it scared people back then. I actually found it quite interesting. Thanks for the suggestion!

I thought 'The Uninvited' was very charming and quaint and lovely. Of course Ray Milland looked years older than his leading lady, Gail Russell (who was actually only 20 at the time) but that's Hollywood for you.
Gail wasn't really suited to acting as she suffered from paralysing shyness, but she was her family's main financial support, (a bit like the recently deceased Shirley Temple, whom audiences adored, of course.)