Lizzie Borden Society Forum

If Lizzie were guilty, do you think she would’ve immediately confided in Emma about what she’d done (that is, if Emma hadn’t known/conspired about it beforehand)? Would she have admitted the truth to her sister, even if it were years after the fact?

In my opinion, IF Lizzie did it,

1. I don't think Lizzie would have confessed the fact to Emma. If Emma knew the fact, she should have known it accidentally.

2. Even though Emma promised to her mother to take care of Lizzie, I hardly believe that Emma could support, tollerate the patricide of her sister. The maximum she could do would be not denounce her to the authorities. So, if Emma knew that Lizzie was guilty, this, in my opinion, should have occured very shortly before Emma's leaving from the house she had been sharing with Lizzie.

I believe Emma would have kept the secret.

Man, if my siblings murdered someone (whether they were family, friend or a stranger) you can bet I wouldn't be keeping it a secret no matter who I promised what to!

MysteryReader wrote:Man, if my siblings murdered someone (whether they were family, friend or a stranger) you can bet I wouldn't be keeping it a secret no matter who I promised what to!

I must be morally bankrupt-- because for me, there are family members and friends who could call me at 3am telling me they killed someone and I would load a shovel in my trunk and head out.

Very true, MysteryReader, but the Bordens were an odd family in a lot of ways. Emma and Lizzie's relationship is an intriguing one.

Aa, have the authorities taken a look in your back yard, LOL?

A lot of posters over the years on this forum have pointed out that Emma is an unknown quality, an enigma that you can't really get a hold on. Outwardly a drab and colourless Yankee spinster, yet someone who seems to have had more influence on Lizzie than anyone else.

Did Emma know? For ages I've wobbled between -- (a) having loaded Lizzie's bullets for years with regard to Lizzie's behaviour towards Abby, she thought in that July before the murders that her sister was in a strange mood and it would be best for Lizzie to have a long holiday in Marion with her friends. Alice Russell said she had a conversation with Emma on that very subject. So Emma might have suspected that something was up when she went away to Fairhaven, supposedly for the entire summer.

(B) She didn't know anything at all about what was to happen, but perhaps was secretly relieved that Abby was gone. She was probably grieved about her father's murder.

I don't think the sisters discussed it EVER, not even the big quarrel in 1905 brought it out, I believe. Emma was a very buttoned up Yankee, (even when she returned home that Thursday she apparently didn't show much emotion.) She wouldn't have wanted it discussed and out in the open. She knew Lizzie very well, though, and I think in her heart she knew what her sister was capable of.