Lizzie (Part 2) My Favorite Murder Tidbits

I have visited the Lizzie Borden house and I would highly recommend it.  A tour guide takes you around and goes through the timeline of the crime. The guides are very animated and surprise you at just the right moments. Great fun. We arrived only a couple of days after the anniversary of the murder (in August). All the mirrors were covered in black cloth, just as they would have looked after the actual murder. 

Here are my favorite Lizzie Borden Murder Tidbits:

First of all, by all accounts Andrew Borden was a dick. He took a new wife after the mother of Lizzie died, and Lizzie and her sister HATED them both. They hated each other so much that they lived in different parts of the house and took their meals separately. Andrew Borden was about to change the will to leave Lizzie’s stepmother more money, he was actually going to make changes to the will the day he died I believe. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this was motivated by money. However, a couple of days before the murder, Andrew Borden strangled ALL of Lizzie’s pet doves.  Maybe it was more than money.

According to the guide at the Borden house, just after the stepmother was murdered upstairs, the maid Bridget Sullivan came home. She reports that when she came in she heard giggling at the top of the stairs. One can only assume that the giggling came from Lizzie who was standing over her stepmother’s dead body and this room is right at the top of the stairs.

Sullivan then went to lay down because she didn’t feel well. She lived in the attic. Lizzie killed her father in the downstairs living room while Sullivan was upstairs. Sullivan said she never heard a thing. This is IMMPOSSIBLE. Sullivan had to cover for Lizzie.

Lizzie and her sister called Bridget Sullivan “Maggie.” Maggie was their previous servant.  Were all servants the same to those sisters? I bet after the murder, Lizzie started calling her Bridget.

They brought the father’s body into the dining room and put it on the dining room table to clean. I know this was a common practice, but his head was mush. I imagine they would have had trouble moving him and keeping all it together.

Also I think Sullivan was seen burning a dress.

After the trial was over, Sullivan vanished for 5 or 6 years. Obviously Lizzie paid her off.

Can you imagine the will it took to really axe two people to death? I mean really think about using an axe to kill people.

Lizzie never killed again. She moved to another house(Maplecroft) in Fall River (which we went to see) and lived quietly. So she wasn’t a serial killer. She could control it. Maplecroft is a little run down. Children looked at us knowing as we parked our car in front of the house.

She never killed again, but it was common knowledge in Fall River that she was a kleptomanic.

We visited her grave, and the graves of her family. Nice quiet green place. Small stone engraved with "Lizbeth" the Borden stone towering nearby.