Tomorrow marks 134 years since Andrew and Abby Borden were killed in their home on Second Street in Fall River. It is, and should remain, a solemn date. Two people were murdered in broad daylight, in their own house, and however much the case has since been absorbed into rhyme, cartoon, musical, and meme, it began as a real tragedy that struck a real family in a real city. Whatever else August 4, 1892 became, it started as someone’s worst morning — and that’s worth pausing on before anything else.
It’s also, undeniably, one of the most mythologized crimes in American history. In the century-plus since, Lizzie Borden has been flattened into a hatchet-wielding punchline, recast as a feminist icon, a lesbian folk hero, a wronged innocent, a calculating murderer, and everything in between — often with little regard for what the trial transcript, the inquest testimony, or the surviving physical evidence actually say. Separating the woman from the legend, and the known facts from the century of embellishment, has been the work of my career. It doesn’t get less interesting the longer I do it — if anything, the primary sources keep raising better questions than the folklore ever did.
So it feels fitting that this year, the day after the anniversary, I’ll be sitting down in Fall River to talk about exactly that gap — the space between what happened and what we’ve decided to believe happened.
Join me Wednesday evening
Lizzie Borden: Lies, Legend, & Lore 📅 Wednesday, August 5th, 6:30 PM 📍 Once Upon a Bookstore, 418 Quequechan St, Fl 2, Fall River, MA 🎟️ Free and open to the public
I’ll be joined by author and illustrator Ricardo Rebelo for an informal conversation about the mythology that’s grown up around the case — where it came from, why it sticks, and what it obscures. This isn’t a lecture; it’s a discussion, and I’d genuinely love for the audience to come with questions. Whether you’ve read every inquest page I have or you just know the jump-rope rhyme, there’s a seat for you.
We’ll have books on hand, including The Preliminary Hearing in the Lizzie Borden Case, Ricardo’s Lizzie Borden: Fact & Fiction and his Lizzie Borden Coloring and Activity Book, and Murder, Manslaughter, and Mayhem on the SouthCoast, Vol. 1.
Hope to see some familiar faces from this blog there — and if you can’t make it, keep an eye out here for a recap.
Event flyer courtesy of Once Upon a Bookstore.
