Salem’s Lizzie Borden

From October 13, Boston Herald:

Salem museum puts Lizzie Borden on display for all to judge
By Laurel J. Sweet | Monday, October 13, 2008

Photo by Lisa Hornak
Only in Salem, where history evolved from hysteria, could a Sunday school teacher as steeped in secrets as Lizzie Borden fit in as naturally as a new desperate housewife on Wisteria Lane.

But even if you can recite the childhood rhyme by rote – “Lizzie Borden took an ax . . .” – you likely know little of the “true story” behind the infamous 1892 hatchet murders of Fall River millionaires Andrew and Abby Borden, and what became Victorian Massachusetts’ trial of the century.

“Lizzie Borden is still something that’s not discussed in polite society in Fall River,” said Leonard Pickel, a professional haunted house designer who, with his wife, Jeanne Escher-Pickel, has realized a decade-long dream of dedicating a museum to the enduring whodunit – albeit, one 65 miles from where the ax fell on Borden’s father and stepmother 40 bloodcurdling times.

The venture threatened to be a fight to the financial death. The current owners of the Borden house in Fall River – since 1996 a bed and breakfast for the ghoulishly inclined – filed a federal lawsuit against Pickel in August, fearing tourists would be confused by the two locations. As part of an out-of-court settlement, Pickel has already changed his Web site from lizziebordenmuseum.com to 40whacksmuseum.com.

Here on Salem’s pedestrian mall, where pagans peddle plastic Dracula fangs, “The True Story of Lizzie Borden” has restored an educational component to this increasingly kitschy Halloween heartland.

“People are looking for dark history, but they’re not looking to be scared,” Pickel said. “It’s a story of a very strong woman who got away with murder. Literally.”

The self-guided tour takes about 45 minutes to complete. There is a sense of foreboding as one wends through eight rooms to dirge music, drinking in sepia-toned storyboards, gruesome autopsy photos, and recreations of New Bedford Superior Court and the Borden family plot. A real-life cast of potential suspects plays out like a parlor game of “Clue.”

On June 20, 1893, an all-male jury took just 30 minutes to find the 32-year-old spinster not guilty of killing the banker/casket salesman and his bride, allegedly to get her mitts on their money.

“For 116 years, people have been writing books that try and solve the crime,” Pickel said. “We make no suppositions as to who we think did it. The truth is, no one will ever know what really happened.”