Lizzie Borden Society Forum

The front door has 3 locks, a spring lock that can be unlocked with a key, and two sliding bolts that have to be manually opened from the inside. Anyone entering the front door has to be let in.

The side door is the door the family used during the day, as shown by John leaving through it, Bridget and Lizzie using it, and Andrew trying it first when returning home.

AFTER Andrew's body was found, the kitchen was never unoccupied. Lizzie told more than one person that Abby received a note and was out, AFTER Andrew's body was found and the kitchen was occupied.

Lizzie then says, I think I heard Mrs. Borden come home.

1. When exactly could she have come home and through which door? The front door was triple bolted. The basement door was locked. The kitchen was never unoccupied. It's literally impossible that Abby could enter the house unobserved.
2. Lizzie knows Abby was not home when she was talking to her father and went to the barn. She told her father Abby received a note and was out seeing a sick friend. Andrew specifically went up to their bedroom and specifically asked where Abby was.
3. Andrew is already dead when Lizzie says she came back from the barn, so the only time range that Lizzie could have heard Abby come home was when Andrew was already dead, but from that moment, the kitchen was never unoccupied.
4. Under no circumstances would Abby come back to the house from an errand and not check in with Bridget or Andrew. That contradicts every piece of testimony we have about Abby.
5. Is Lizzie saying she heard Abby come home while she was in the back yard or barn? If so, why didn't she suspect Abby of being the murderer, or a victim of the murderer? Why did she call out to Bridget and not Abby? Why did she stay alone, with her back turned to potential murderer when she sent Bridget to fetch the doctor?
6. If Abby went out and came home, when did she change clothes? She absolutely, positively did not go see a sick friend in her cleaning dress and Andrew's shoes. Plus the forensics show she died around 9:30AM.

I do not see a way clear to say Lizzie is not lying when she said she heard Abby come home.

I am trying to keep an open mind but it is very difficult to believe Lizzie was not at least an accessory to murder. Can anyone act as her defense attorney on this issue?

The judge's decision to exclude Lizzie's inquest testimony and the constitutional right that the accused does not have to testify have jointly blinded us to plausible answers to questions about Lizzie's movements on August 3 and 4th. I think there is a fair chance that if the inquest testimony had been admitted, she might have felt compelled to risk it and testify.

In addition to your example, we would love plausible clarity into to her supposed chat with Abby; mere moments before AJB's killing, why did she mention a fabric sale to Bridget (only time that occurred during Bridget's tenure); why didn't she scream 'get out' to Bridget, and, she herself get out of danger; what were the peculiar sensations and family threats she described to Alice the evening before......on and on.

For me, the question is did she have help or did she act alone, and what was the murder weapon and where did it go.

A discussion on this general topic can be read on the thread titled......

"Lizzie's knowledge of Abby's Whereabouts"

Thanks, I read through that whole thread. It covered much of what I was asking about. Now I have to check the testimony on the following topics:

1. Is the only source of Dr. Bowen visiting Weybosset Street the newspaper? If it was not covered in the inquest, preliminary hearing, nor the trial, I would have to discount that and with it all the Morse did it theories.

2. Why did Dr. Bowen stop at the Baker's Pharmacy right after telegraphing Emma? This is pure speculation, but after Lizzie was told no one would give her Prussic Acid without a prescription, did she ask Dr. Bowen for a prescription or invoke his name or friendship with him while talking to the Baker Street pharmacists, or did Dr. Bowen ask them questions to determine if Lizzie has asked them about Prussic Acid? Something along those lines - either information gathering or damage control about prussic acid for Lizzie, himself, or both.

Dr. Bowen burning torn up paper at a crime scene has always bothered me. Why tear before burning? Are we 100% positive he wasn't reassembling a torn up note that Lizzie asked him to retrieve and burn from the kitchen trash? If the officer did see the name Emma on it, I think Lizzie is the author of that note, rather than Dr. Bowen.

3. If Lizzie was in the kitchen when Andrew was trying to get in, would she not have heard, if not seen him? That little hallway appears to open right on to the kitchen and would even provide a view of part of the kitchen, I think. I haven't been to the house nor seen the view into the kitchen from the door, but the view out to the door from the kitchen makes it seem like if Lizzie were in the kitchen, she would have seen and heard him trying to enter the screen door. Based on Bridget washing windows in the sitting room and dining room just before Andrew got home, I think she would have had to see Lizzie in the kitchen. Also, based on Bridget saying she heard Lizzie laugh from the top of the front stairs when she swore at the front door lock, I think Lizzie was almost certainly upstairs when Andrew came home.

4. I wonder if Abby had such a small circle of friends/relatives close enough to plausibly send her a note about being sick and requesting her to visit the sickbed, that Bridget jumped to the conclusion that other than the immediate family in the Borden house, only someone at Mrs. Whitehead's house would send her a note. The only reason I can think of at the moment for Lizzie needing Abby to be found close to Andrew being examined by a doctor while he was still warm is that she needed a doctor to confirm Abby was killed first. I don't think Lizzie thought about the stomach contents. I think she would have thought about the state of the blood and the body temperature, but not that the time of death would be from the digestive progression. She absolutely needed a doctor to say Abby died first, therefore the estate passed to Andrew and then to his daughters.

All great topics and questions to dive into. I'm going to let you do your research, which is really what is most enjoyable about this case. If you run into a wall on any of the bullets, let me know and I can nudge you in a direction to get more info. As you research, each of the bullets is a worthy thread on their own.

I will let you know that the Fall River Globe story is the only reference to Bowen visiting the Emery house.

Just checking in to see how your research into a couple of the topics you mention above are going?

Copied from earlier post on this thread.
1. Is the only source of Dr. Bowen visiting Weybosset Street the newspaper? If it was not covered in the inquest, preliminary hearing, nor the trial, I would have to discount that and with it all the Morse did it theories.

2. Why did Dr. Bowen stop at the Baker's Pharmacy right after telegraphing Emma? This is pure speculation, but after Lizzie was told no one would give her Prussic Acid without a prescription, did she ask Dr. Bowen for a prescription or invoke his name or friendship with him while talking to the Baker Street pharmacists, or did Dr. Bowen ask them questions to determine if Lizzie has asked them about Prussic Acid? Something along those lines - either information gathering or damage control about prussic acid for Lizzie, himself, or both.

Dr. Bowen burning torn up paper at a crime scene has always bothered me. Why tear before burning? Are we 100% positive he wasn't reassembling a torn up note that Lizzie asked him to retrieve and burn from the kitchen trash? If the officer did see the name Emma on it, I think Lizzie is the author of that note, rather than Dr. Bowen.

I uploaded the PDFs for the Inquest, Preliminary Hearing, and Trial and I manually searched and sent it through AI and it appears the source was the newspaper interview. Plus, I saw references in the Jennings Journals (from camgarsky, I think) that showed Dr. Bowen's time was accounted for elsewhere in the city.

From the official sources you uploaded, I do not see support for any claim that Dr. Bowen visited Weybosset Street.
What I do see is this:

John V. Morse repeatedly says he went to 4 Weybosset Street / Daniel Emery’s after leaving the Borden house that morning. That appears in the inquest, preliminary hearing, and trial.

By contrast, Dr. Bowen’s official testimony places him elsewhere. In the inquest he says that on the morning before the murders Abby came to him, and on the day of the murders he was not at home when Bridget first went for him. In the preliminary hearing he says that when the alarm reached him he was “just driving up to my house from the south,” then went straight across to the Borden house.
I also searched the official transcripts for “Weybosset” and the hits are about Morse’s movements, not Bowen’s.
So, based on these official transcripts alone, the answer is:

No — the inquest, preliminary hearing, and trial transcripts you uploaded do not provide an official source for Dr. Bowen visiting Weybosset Street.
In these records, Weybosset Street is tied to John V. Morse, not Dr. Bowen. If someone says Bowen went there, that claim is not coming from these transcripts and is likely coming from a newspaper account or later secondary/theoretical writing.

One caution: this conclusion is limited to the official materials you uploaded, not every surviving police note, telegram record, or other archival document outside those transcripts.


For the question about burning the paper and whether it was his paper or Lizzie's or already ripped up and him reassembling it. So, there is at least a roll of paper burning and a note most likely with the word Emma written on it - Dr Bowen claims it was a note about his daughter visiting, and her name is Florence. Why tear up and burn a note about your daughter visiting while at a crime scene? That is extremely suspicious.

I'm listening to the audiobook (Jim Jordan's book) and the narration of the inquest is making me want to draw a map of the house layout and get some chess pieces and try to follow her testimony. One thing I missed was it was actually 4 pears she talked about eating that morning, not 3. At one point she said she was eating a pear in the kitchen when her father came home, then there are the 3 in the loft while overlooking the screen door - why she limited the time window by saying she was eating the pears while overlooking the driveway is something to consider. I have never eaten 4 pears within half an hour - has anyone tried that experiment? I tried and could only eat two on an empty stomach.

I think there is a big problem with Lizzie's eating a pear in the kitchen when Andrew came home. The screen door was just a few feet down a very small hall from the kitchen - how could she not hear nor see him trying to get into the screen door if she was in the kitchen?!

Moody’s opening at trial: he says Andrew was seen “coming around, apparently, from the screen door, where he had attempted to get in, out upon the sidewalk and toward his own front door, taking out his key to open it.”

The next door neighbor, Caroline Kelly, was on her way to the dentist when she saw Andrew coming from the direction of his alley towards his front door. That is what Moody was referencing.

Kat and I debated whether Andrew might have gone to the barn to 'put away' the broken lock he had picked up at Clegg's new store as an alternative to the accepted theory that he tried to go in the side door. Bridget saw Andrew carrying a small white parcel when he entered the front door and I suspect the white parcel was the door lock....so that would put a cloud over the idea that he had gone to the barn and not the side door.

Lizzie's entire inquest is a bevy of contradictions and broken timelines. The "Lizzie is innocent" folks will blame that on the fact that Bowen gave her a prescription for morphine to calm her nerves. Read the section in Spencer's book on his take about the morphine and Lizzie's inquest testimony about her alibi. He provides a good example of how much of her answers seem like evolving lies vs. confusion or hallucinations.

If someone thinks Lizzie wasn't lucid during the inquest, show them this exchange. I think the initial real estate question caught her off guard.

Hosea Knowlton: Do you know something about his real estate?
Lizzie Borden: About what?

Hosea Knowlton: His real estate?
Lizzie Borden: I know what real estate he owned, part of it; I don't know whether I know it all or not.

Hosea Knowlton: Tell me what you know of.
Lizzie Borden: He owns two farms in Swanzey, the place on Second street and the A. J. Borden building and corner, and the land on South Main street where Mc Mannus is, and then a short time ago he bought some real estate up further south that formerly, he said, belonged to a Mr. Birch.

I won't even comment further. Lizzie's answer speaks for itself. I have Spencer's book, but I haven't started it yet. I'm reading Rebecca Pittman and listening to Jordan's audiobook, but I can try Spencer next. I heard good things about the accuracy of his book.

I believe Lizzie to be upstairs when Andrew came home, possibly peering out her window for her dad, and Bridget while cleaning the sitting room window should have witnessed Andrew arriving home walking along the sidewalk before going to the side door.
Though I’ve never been to the house personally, it bothers me that Bridget herself didn’t hear Andrew at the side door, even if the kitchen/sitting room door was closed.
Both women potentially on the south side of the home and windows at the exact time of Andrew’s arrival—-waiting.