Lizzie Borden Society Forum

A few things stand out
—presuming the extant copy from the New Bedford Evening Standard is precise.
1) Lizzie is quick witted in conversation.


2) She has an excellent memory, seemingly remembering every word she previously spoke,

3) Is not easily tripped up.

4) Could go toe to toe with Knowlton, even frustrating him.

5) She recognizes her contradictions, and learns not to make them twice.

6) She will not be bullied.

7) All her (several) full narratives of the only conversation she had with Abby on Thursday morning either adds or leaves something out but doesn’t contradict,

8) Her only real contradiction of the 3 days of questioning in my opinion, was her whereabouts when Andrew came in the front door but her recognition of the error, and willingness to humble herself, gave her new life as she admitted she was mistaken.

9) To admit being the only person in the house for most of Thursday morning after Bridget went outside, while not in the attic and very briefly in the cellar, Lizzie did the most marvelous dodge of Knowlton’s best. She knew that house and was a step ahead of his positional questions

10) Lizzie while not a direct contradiction, gave her narrative of events in the barn loft in two different orders.
1—search for lead sinkers —then ate -pears by window
2—ate pears by window—-then search for lead sinkers

11) Lizzie doesn’t seem impaired by medication, quite the contrary .

These are a few I have by memory.
Regardless of how ridiculous one may call her answers, in some ways they are brilliant, and illusive, having her on top of the murders and not at the same time.
Her answers as Knowlton tries to snag her movement between rooms, when she saw and spoke to Bridget and her father are some of her best. Ultimately Knowlton realized he could get no more.
Several times I wished Knowlton would have pursued certain answers, but ultimately he didn’t.

I'm done with the inquest and preliminary testimony and I'm working on Bridget for the trial. 71 witnesses to go, so it'll be a while, but I'll find a way to make the safe, plain text Q&A table available. That should help all of us to more easily find contradictions - some on this board probably have just about all of it in their heads, but this is my first full run through and I have a long way to go.

I have had to make some punctuation and formatting changes to get my copy in a format that can be used with database tools, so it may not match the PDFs that Dr. Koorey and others produced, but it should be close enough to reference them back and forth. I'll give my version the Dr. Koorey or anyone else who would like a plain text Q&A of all the transcripts in a single searchable document.

The narrator of Jim Jordan's The Fall River Murders and the Trial of Lizzie Borden, vol1 & 2, has the majority of the transcripts dramatized word for word and the narrator makes her sound a bit like she is making some of it up on the fly, but they captured her iron will of not being bullied as well.

If that’s the one on YT, I’ve listened to them, and enjoyed the northern accents, and the dramatic effect
Reading through on the other hand lets me ponder the situations better.
The testimony of the medical examiner’s concerning the wounds was utterly painful, and for the most part, a waste of time—in my opinion.
I can only imagine those old timers on the jury asking themselves—what in the world are they talking about?

I’m going back through the primary sources again myself, but am not a note taker or document saver, so I would enjoy something like what you’re working on.
Cam has been very patient, and helpful to me over the last year or so and helped me with tough questions.