The War of Words

Today’s Boston Herald had a story on the lawsuit between The Lizzie Borden B&B/Museum in Fall River and The True Story of Lizzie Borden in Salem. It appeared in the Business section. Pretty much the same thing we have been reading all along, but this piece is not just a rehash of other articles. There are several new quotes here and it is sort of an update as to where the story stands.

Photo by Lisa Hornack, Boston Herald

Lawsuit over Lizzie legacy

Fall River museum challenges Salem shop over trademark

By Donna Goodison
Sunday, August 10, 2008

How long will it take the two sides in a lawsuit over Lizzie Borden to bury the hatchet?

Fall River’s Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast and Museum is suing a yet-to-be-opened Salem attraction dedicated to the infamous woman acquitted of the 1892 ax murders of her parents.

The lawsuit accuses the True Story of Lizzie Borden Gift Shop and Museum, which has pushed back its intended Aug. 4 opening due to construction delays, of federal trademark infringement. The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Boston last week.

Donald Woods and Lee-Ann Wilber, the owners of the B&B where the murders occurred, say they purchased the federal trademark “Lizzie Borden Museum” when they bought the Bordens’ former Fall River home in 1994. They’re seeking a court order to stop the rival Salem business from using “Lizzie Borden Museum” in its trade name, Web site and e-mail address.

The Salem museum already is causing confusion and prompting phone calls from potential visitors interested in one of Massachusetts’ most famous unsolved murder mysteries, according to Woods.

“They want to know if we’re affiliated, and we said, ‘No, not all,’ ” he said. “And that’s part of the problem – the confusion.”

The B&B, which first opened to the public in 1996, hosts more than 10,000 visitors a year from around the world, and its Web site averages a million hits a month, according to Woods, who said he attempted to resolve the issue out of court.

“We really didn’t get a response,” he said.

The Web site for the True Story of Lizzie Borden, which is owned by South Carolina-based Diversified Adventures, describes it as an historical, interactive walk-through museum designed to separate the truth from the myth about the unsolved double murder.

“This museum will turn visitors into detectives using modern forensic techniques to try and discover who murdered Abby and Andrew Borden on Thursday, August 4, 1892,” the site says.

The new museum contains photographs and newspaper articles from the era and reproductions of the victims’ skulls among other artifacts, according to Beverly resident and museum curator Leonard Pickel.

Pickel said he and Diversified Adventures previously operated the Mayhem Manor attraction in Salem and “realized this is where the true story of Lizzie Borden needed to be.”

Pickel believes the lawsuit lacks merit. Lizzie Borden still is not a topic discussed in polite society in Fall River, he said, and so the city has never fully embraced her parents’ murders as a tourism generator.

“The sad thing is we’re going to drive more people to Fall River than the Fall River tourist bureau ever dreamed of by being in Salem,” said Pickel, who’s also the editor of Haunted Attraction magazine.

“There are a large number of people that come to Salem every year looking for the dark side of history, and the majority of those people have no idea where the Borden murders took place,” Pickel said. “We’re going to make (Woods and Wilber) money, so I don’t understand why they feel they own Lizzie Borden.”