when, shortly after 11 A.M., Lizzie Borden left the barn to walk back to the house at 92 Second Street, where she lived with her father and stepmother. One report has it that on her way, Lizzie sang an aria from Il Trovatore, her favorite opera. This is almost certainly untrue; too bad, because it would have been appropriate. What Lizzie saw after entering the house became perhaps the most gruesome and certainly the most famous true crime story in nineteenth century America.
Andrew Borden, Lizzie's father, was lying on the sofa in the sitting room where she left him twenty minutes before. There was one important difference. When she went out to the barn, Andrew was asleep. When she came back he was dead; his head and face had been chopped to a bloody mass by someone wielding a hatchet. Frightened and horrified, Lizzie ran to the foot of the stairs and called out, "Come down quick, Maggie. Father's dead. Someone came in and killed him."
"Maggie" was Bridget Sullivan, the Borden's live-in maid (nobody knows why Lizzie called her Maggie). She had been sick that morning and was tired after spending a couple of hours washing windows. Shortly before 11 A.M., Bridget had climbed the stairs to her attic bedroom to take a brief rest before preparing dinner. When Lizzie called, Bridget hurried down and started to enter the sitting room. Lizzie stopped her, saying, "Don't go in there Maggie! I have to have a doctor. Go get Dr. Bowen."
Bridget ran across the street to Dr. Seabury Bowen's house. His wife, Phoebe Bowen, answered Bridget's frantic knock. Dr. Bowen was not home; he was making his rounds. (Remember, this was 1892; doctors still made house calls.) Mrs. Bowen promised to send her husband to the Borden house the moment he got home.
When Bridget returned with the disappointing news, Lizzie was standing as if in a trance at the screen door in the kitchen. At one point, Bridget said that Lizzie was crying; later she denied saying it. Lizzie told her, "I can't be alone. Go find Alice Russell and tell her to come over here." Alice Russell, a close friend of Lizzie, lived on Borden Street, a short distance away.
Fortunately, Miss Russell was at home and assured Bridget she would come to the Borden house to console Lizzie. First, though, she had to change her dress, which took perhaps five to ten minutes. You couldn't go calling on a neighbor in Fall River a hundred years ago wearing an ordinary house dress, no matter how urgent the call might be.
While all this was going on, a relatively young (fortyish) widow named Adelaide Churchill, who lived next door to the Bordens, was returning from downtown Fall River, where she had purchased the groceries for dinner. (Dinner, the principal meal of the day, was eaten at noon in most parts of the United States in 1892 and for many years thereafter.) She got back home just in time to see Bridget Sullivan hurrying back to 92 Second Street after her unsuccessful trip to Dr. Bowen's. Mrs. Churchill laid her purchases on the kitchen table and looked across to the Borden house twenty feet away. There she saw Lizzie standing alone at the screen door. Mrs. Churchill called out, "Lizzie, what's the matter?" Lizzie replied, "Oh, Addie, do come over; somebody has killed father."
Adelaide Churchill hurried over to the Borden house. There she asked Lizzie where she was when "it" happened. Lizzie said, "I went to the barn to get a piece of iron, came in and found the screen door open." In response to another question about her stepmother's whereabouts, Lizzie said, "She had a note to go see someone who is sick."
At Lizzie's request, Mrs. Churchill went out onto Second Street to find a doctor. She talked to several people, relating what had happened, and asking someone to locate a doctor or notify the police. A newsdealer named John Cunningham overheard the conversation but got it garbled. Cunningham phoned the police station to report that, "There's a row at the Borden house." It was a lot worse than that!
Marshal Hilliard, the head of the Fall River police force, received the call at 11:15 A.M. As it happened, about half of the policemen were attending a picnic at Rocky Point, a nearby amusement park. Nevertheless Hilliard was able to send a large contingent to 92 Second Street, which was only 400 yards from the police station.
The first officer to arrive at the Borden house, George Allen, had the presence of mind to station Charles Sawyer, a local painter, at the kitchen door with orders to admit no one except police officers. Sawyer carried out his duties faithfully. He remained on duty for seven hours, after which he asked to be relieved so he could go home to eat supper. His request was granted.
Dr. Bowen arrived home sometime between 11:15 and 11:30 and immediately crossed the street to the Borden house. There he examined Andrew's body. Later he described the gruesome scene.
"The blows extended from the eye and nose around the ear. In that small span there were 11 distinct cuts of about the same depth and general appearance. [A subsequent, more accurate count showed that Andrew had received 10 "whacks".] The cuts were about 42 inches in length and one of them had severed the eyeball and socket . . . I could not inflict upon a dead dog the additional blows that were driven into Andrew Borden's head."
Partial List of Policemen Sent to the Borden House, August 4, 1892:
Who They Were When They Came What They Did
George Allen 11:20 AM Reported back to Hilliard
Patrick Doherty 11:30 Searched house, talked to Lizzie
Francis Wixon 11:30 Searched premises
Michael Mullaly 11:40 Searched house, interrogated Lizzie
John Devine 11:40 Guarded house
John Fleet 11:50 Searched house, interrogated Lizzie
William Medley 11:50 Searched barn, interrogated Lizzie
Patrick Gillon 12:00 Guarded house
Philip Harrington 12:20 PM Searched barn, interrogated Lizzie
Charles Wilson 1:00 Talked to Lizzie
John Minnehan 1:00 Searched house
John Riley 1:00 Not much, apparently
Rufus Hilliard 2:30 Searched premises
George Seaver 5:00 Searched house
Albert Chase 6:00 Guarded house
Joseph Hyde ? Guarded house
Bowen, like Mrs. Churchill before him, asked Lizzie where she was when her father was murdered. She gave the same answer, that she had been out in the barn looking for some iron. (Bowen thought she said "irons" but that makes no sense.) Shortly afterward, Dr. Bowen went off to send a telegram to Lizzie's older sister, Emma Borden, who was visiting friends in a nearby resort town. Emma was unable to catch the noon train for Fall River; she got home at about 5 P.M.
From the telegraph office, Dr. Bowen went to a drugstore, perhaps to pick up a supply of sedatives. That afternoon he gave Lizzie two doses of bromocaffeine. Throughout the following week he prescribed a stronger sedative, morphine, to calm Lizzie's nerves.
By the time Bowen got back to 92 Second Street, a second body had been discovered. Adelaide Churchill and Bridget Sullivan found Lizzie's stepmother, Abby Borden, in the upstairs guest room. According to Bridget, they acted in response to Lizzie's suggestion; she told them, "I'm almost certain I heard her come in. Won't you go upstairs and see?" Bridget refused to go alone, so Mrs. Churchill accompanied her.
Abby, like her husband Andrew, had been slaughtered with a hatchet. Dr. Bowen examined this victim as well. He later gave a detailed description of the body.
"There was a large pool of blood under the dead
