It’s been three years since I last posted here — and fittingly, I’m breaking the silence on Lizzie Borden’s birthday. She was born on July 19, 1860, and there’s something appropriate about picking this date to come back to the case, and to this blog, after a long time away.
So where have I been?
Behind the scenes, mostly, doing the unglamorous work of keeping this whole world running. Over the past three years I rebuilt MondoLizzie, LizzieAndrewBorden.com, The Literary Hatchet, HatchetOnline.com, and the Lizzie Borden Society Forum — essentially every corner of the online Borden universe I maintain. Some of that was overdue technical modernization. Some of it, frankly, was defensive. The forum in particular came under sustained, serious attack from bad actors, and I spent a great deal of time and money hardening it and making sure it was safe for the people who use it in good faith. It was slow, expensive, unglamorous work, and after finishing it I wanted some distance from the day-to-day of Lizzie Borden for a while. I took it.
I’m back now, and I have some news to share.
All the sites are relaunched. MondoLizzie, LizzieAndrewBorden.com, The Literary Hatchet, HatchetOnline.com, and the Lizzie Borden Society Forum have all been rebuilt from the ground up — more secure, more stable, and ready for the next chapter.
I’m speaking at NecronomiCon Providence this year. My talk is called Forty Whacks and Due Process: How Massachusetts Law Made and Unmade the Case Against Lizzie Borden. The popular version of this story asks whether she did it. The more interesting version is procedural — including the inquest, where Lizzie was questioned under oath without counsel while an unserved arrest warrant already bore her name, testimony that was later ruled inadmissible and quietly gutted the prosecution’s case mid-trial. I’ll also untangle the persistent misinformation around Andrew Borden’s estate and Massachusetts probate law, and close by asking what it means when the law acquits someone a community has already convicted.
I’ll be sharing the dais with Allison Horrocks, whose talk, Walking the Line: Spiritualism and Public History, explores the blurry lines between cemetery tours and seances, and between the skills of historians and the skills of mediums. Details and the full schedule are at necronomicon-providence.com.
Two losses in the Borden community. Jules Ryckebusch passed away recently. He hosted the 100th anniversary Lizzie Borden conference at Bristol Community College in 1992, taught there for many years, and founded the Lizzie Borden Quarterly, serving as its publisher. The late Maynard Bertolet carried the newsletter through the rest of its ten-year run, which concluded in print in 2003. Its spirit lives on through The Hatchet: A Journal of Lizzie Borden and Victorian Studies, now online at HatchetOnline.com. Jules’s full obituary is available here.
Also recently gone is Faye Musselman, who died May 4, 2026, in San Pedro, California, at 81. Faye had followed the case since the 1990s, was a frequent visitor to Fall River, and kept several blogs on Borden history over the years. She was part of this world for a long time.
More soon — it’s good to be back.
