Lizzie Borden Society Forum

123 years ago, today, Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered. It remains one of the most famous unsolved murder cases in U.S. history.

Rest in peace Andrew and Abby.

Just about now.....

And it's still a hot topic today.

I wonder what makes it such a hot topic after all of these years? I've not seen this devotion to any crime past or present.

That same thought came to me as I was typing my post here. Even the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, tho still remembered today, doesn't get the attention of Lizzie. The only one I can think of that may come in anywhere close to Lizzie is Jack the Ripper.

I agree with both of you. If you type just the word 'Lizzie' in the Google search engine, Lizzie Borden is the first person listed!!!

augusta wrote:...Even the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, tho still remembered today, doesn't get the attention of Lizzie. ...

I also thought of the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

It remains unsolved, and the scales of justice don't clearly convict or exonerate Lizzie. Conjecture invites discussion.

I agree, Debbie. Unless there is more evidence hidden away in someone's attic, the Borden murders will never be solved.

If Professor Starrs would have been allowed to exhume the Bordens' bodies as he wanted to 15 or so years back, do you think he would have solved the crime? How?

Good question, augusta. I know ProfessorJames Starrs is an excellent investigator for forensic science, but…

Most Borden buffs regard Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter as just a fascinating piece of fiction. In reviewing Brown's book for "The Fall River Historical Society Quarterly Report," Fall River attorney John C. Corrigan Jr. writes that it is "long on legend, short on the truth, and not destined to be the final chapter at all."

In his defense, Arnold Brown argues that "I have set up a premise of what could have happened."

The fact that Brown's conspiracy theory has few adherents among Borden regulars led him to threaten to boycott the Borden conference. "That conference," says Brown, "will be 66 percent sideshow acts, 33 percent freaks and crazies, and one percent search for the truth."
Most studies of the Borden murders have used a combination of circumstantial evidence, testimony, rumor, and reason in an attempt to find truth, but James Starrs, a professor of forensic sciences at George Washington University, has been trying to bring the cold, hard light of scientific inquiry to bear on the crime.

Starrs wants to find the skulls of Andrew and Abby Borden so he can take impressions of the wounds to see if they match the hatchet blade at the Fall River Historical Society.

"My hypothesis," he says, "is that she really was innocent."

In February, Starrs hired a geophysicist to survey the Borden grave with subsurface radar in hopes of determining whether the murder victims' disarticulated skulls were interred with their bodies. The radar profile revealed that the grave sites had been disturbed, but Starrs could not tell whether the disturbances were the result of digging a second grave to bury the skulls or were just depressions caused by the coffins collapsing and the earth settling.

There is an element of grandstanding to his high-tech detective work in this Borden centennial year. The professor says he thought that undertaking his investigation in 1992 would make it easier for him to get access to Borden materials, but he is now having second thoughts, having run into what he terms "irrationality run amok" in Massachusetts.

It seems that far from welcoming Starrs's scientific sleuthing, some folks around Fall River would prefer he let the Bordens rest in peace. Many people have written to object to his requests to disinter the Bordens' remains.

What the good professor may be up against in Fall River is a fundamental human truth that folks like him and Arnold Brown fail to fully appreciate. It may be the only truth anyone really needs to understand about the Borden murder mystery.

"We don't want anybody to solve the mystery," explains Bernie Sullivan. "Then all the fun would be gone."

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