Lizzie Didn't Do It!. William Psy.D. Masterton
Angeles Times, June 15, 1995
17.Fall River News, June 15, 1893
PREFACE
Unravelling the Borden mystery is a project that has fascinated me throughout much of my life. A great many people have helped me with this project. The list starts with my great-aunt, Minnie Masterton, who lived in Fall River in 1892 when Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered. Conversations with her when I was a child convinced me, emotionally at least, of Lizzie's innocence. Sixty years ago Aunt Minnie argued that if her sister Emma knew Lizzie to be guilty she could never have lived with her for more than a decade after the crime. Could you?
In 1973, my older son Fred R. Masterton, then a college freshman, presented me with the most memorable Christmas gift I have ever received: a syllabus for a course on the Borden case offered at the University of Massachusetts. The readings recommended for that course convinced me that many of the commonly accepted "facts" of the case were flat-out wrong. For example, even though legend has it that the murder date, August 4, 1892, was the hottest day in the history of Fall River, newspaper weather reports proved otherwise. The temperature that day topped out at about 80NF.
When I retired from teaching chemistry at the University of Connecticut in 1987, I began searching in earnest for the solution to the Borden case. Among other things, I accumulated microfilm reels of several New England newspapers covering the events between August 4, 1892 and June 20, 1893, when Lizzie's trial ended in her acquittal. Among these was the Boston Globe, which gave the verbatim trial testimony. Though the courtesy of Dan Lavering, head librarian at the J.A.G. school at Charlottesville, VA, I was able to study these materials at my leisure using the Cadillac of all microfilm readers.
In the summer of 1996, after another edition of my general chemistry text with Cecile Hurley had been put to bed, I began the final line of research that led to this book. Here I was helped greatly by several Fall River residents including:
The staff of the Fall River Public Library, in particular Patricia Redfearn and Dan Lelievre, who generously allowed me to read microfilm copies of several Fall River publications of the 1890s, sometimes breaking the rules to do so.
The staff of the Fall River Historical Society Museum, specifically Michael Martins (curator), Dennis Binette and Jamelle Lyons, who promptly and enthusiastically fulfilled my every request. Beyond that, they put out a series of publications which are invaluable to anyone studying the Borden mystery. Included among these is the testimony at the inquest and preliminary hearing and, most recently, the Knowlton Papers.
Len Rebello, who perhaps knows more about the Borden case than anyone alive today. I was fortunate enough to have access to the first draft of his book, "Lizzie Borden, Past and Present."
The first draft of this book was reviewed, perhaps too kindly, by:
My younger son, Lt. Colonel R. Peter Masterton of the J.A.G. Corps. He convinced me to make this less of a textbook and more of a "whodunit".
A friend, Gunnar Wengel, whose enthusiasm for the manuscript convinced me I was on the right track.
A fellow chemist, Laddie Berka, who knows far more about forensics than I do.
Many people have inspired me as I struggled with this book. I am particularly grateful to:
My friend, Maynard Bertolet, editor of the Lizzie Borden Quarterly, who encouraged me to write about the Borden case.
My publisher, Adolph Caso, who has the old-fashioned idea that quality is the bottom line in publishing. I hope he breaks even with this book, in which case I will too.
My wife, Loris Masterton, who married me on the 60th anniversary of Lizzie's acquittal. (That's one way to remember your wedding date.) Loris loyally praised everything I wrote.
One person more than any other helped me turn a life-long dream into reality, Bob Flynn made available to me his collection of "Bordeniana," unquestionably the most extensive in the world. More important, he has been a sounding board, a counselor and a friend, sharing my moments of disappointment and exhilaration.
As you may have guessed by now, this is not your conventional true-crime book. If you anticipated blood and gore, perhaps you can still get your money back. I have concentrated, not on the horror of the Borden murders, but on the mystery that surrounds them. That is the feature of the Borden case that explains its enduring fascination.
The first half of this book presents what I hope is an unbiased account of the crime and the judicial proceedings that followed. The last half (Chapters 9-16) present my "solution" to the Borden mystery. Of course, I'm convinced that my analysis of what really happened in Fall River on August 4, 1892 is correct. It's just possible, though, that I might be wrong; that's happened before. For that reason, among others, I've gone to a great deal of trouble throughout the book to encourage you, the reader, to come to your own conclusions.
I sincerely hope that you have half as much fun reading this book as I did writing it. Enjoy!
William L. Masterton
Storrs, Connecticut
Chapter 1: DAY OF HORROR
August 4, 1892, was a pleasant midsummer day in Fall River, Massachusetts and indeed throughout most of New England. The sun was shining and the temperature was slightly below 80NF 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