The Trial of Lizzie Borden(23)
Bence said: “She spoke in a tremulous voice.”
At this point, Lizzie was overheard to say: “I never was in that man’s store in my life.”
As if he had heard his client, Adams said, “I suppose you are reasonably sure of the people you see . . . [D]id you ever mistake one person for another, find you had made a mistake in identification?”
Bence admitted that such a thing was “a matter of common experience,” yet he could not himself recall doing so.
Jennings’s subsequent investigation turned up two instances that could call into question Bence’s certainty about his identification: According to one Jas. Taussiq, “Bence once made a bet that this Taussiq was killed in an accident he witnessed.” When he next saw Taussiq, Bence reportedly told him: “I was never so much surprised at seeing you come in here.” A druggist at a different pharmacy recounted another story Bence had told him: Bence “mistook a person in Boston & hit him & like to got arrested for it.” There were also two other instances of women seeking prussic acid on the Monday before the murders: Hypolyte Martel reported turning away a woman seeking first arsenic, then prussic acid. According to the Fall River Daily Herald, “A woman also called at Corneau & Latourneau’s drugstore on Pleasant street on the same date, but it was found out afterward that it was the wife of Inspector McCaffrey who was then on a crusade against the drug stores.” Better still for the defense, “[s]he is said to resemble Miss Borden.”
Nonetheless, two others in the store, Frank Kilroy and Frederick B. Hart, also testified that Lizzie Borden had asked for poison. Frederick B. Hart, another drug clerk at D. R. Smith’s, confirmed Bence’s account. Under cross-examination, Kilroy, a medical student, contradicted part of Bence’s testimony but supported his identification of Lizzie as the woman who had asked for the prussic acid. He thought she spoke in a “loud tone” and he did not notice any “tremulous tones.” Although he had not been taken to the house to identify Lizzie Borden’s voice, he had seen her several times on the street before he encountered her in the store. Like Bence, he could not describe her dress or even if she had worn a veil. Aside from that cavil, the identification stood. Lizzie betrayed the strain: “The prisoner herself has been more uneasy than has been her wont, and though her undemonstrative nature still asserts itself, the constant biting of the lips and the restless movements of the hands indicate that there is a limit even to the wonderful power of self-control which she seems to possess.”
After that blow, the defense needed good news. Medical expert and Harvard chemist Professor Edward Stickney Wood unexpectedly provided a break from the prosecution’s relentless success. First, he declared the Bordens’ stomachs free of poison. Second, he could not identify the murder weapon. He found no blood or human hair on any of the hatchets or axes taken from the Borden house. But any defense jubilation was short-lived. Knowlton next read Lizzie Borden’s inquest testimony into the record for two hours. Even her supporters found “it was very painful . . . to hear the recital she had given of her visit to the barn and her purpose in going.” With that coup, the government rested its case.
The defense was brief and to the point. The prosecution had not produced the murder weapon and no blood had been found on Lizzie. Neighbors reported strange noises in the night and had seen odd men about the neighborhood. Although the courtroom was uncomfortably warm, Lizzie needed a woolen shawl, embodying her special ability “to keep cool when other people are warm or excited.”
All that remained were closing arguments. For the occasion, Borden wore a dark blue gown with a black lace hat “adorned with a few red berries,” and black gloves. Andrew Jennings spoke for Lizzie Borden. He spoke of his friendship with Andrew Borden, effectively vouching for his late client’s daughter. It had its intended effect. When Jennings “drew his pathetic pictures of her youth and relations with her murdered father, she broke completely down and burst into tears, sitting with her hands in her eyes.” He explained away her inconsistent answers as a function of the inquisition conducted against her. In his telling, she was “on the rack” at the inquest. He minimized the disagreement over the property and emphasized the lack of a credible motive. Comparing the two women in the house at the time of the murders, he asked: “In the natural course of things who would be the party to be suspected? Whose clothing would be examined, and who would have to account for every moment of her time? Would it be the stranger, or would it be the one bound to the murdered man by ties of love? And . . . what does it mean when we say the youngest daughter? The last one whose baby fingers have been lovingly entwined about her father’s head. Is there nothing in the ties of love and affection?” He dismissed the notion that Lizzie could have, as a matter of her physical capacity, committed the murders: “Every blow showed that the person who wielded that hatchet was a person of experience with the instrument . . . [N]o hand could strike those blows that had not a powerful wrist and experience in handling a hatchet.” And, if she were guilty, where was the blood?
The prosecutor’s closing argument was short and to the point. Knowlton lamented the painful duty that had befallen him. He reminded the judge that Professor Wood, the chemist, and Dr. Dolan, the medical examiner, agreed that both victims were killed by a hatchet or some other sharp implement and that Abby died more than an hour and a half before Andrew. “Who could have done it?” Knowlton answered his own question: “No man could have struck them. You are struck with the thought that it was an irresolute, imperfect feminine hand.” He continued: “The first obvious inquiry is who is benefitted by that removal?” The defendant. And who had the only opportunity of committing both murders? Again, the defendant. As for Lizzie’s attempt to buy prussic acid, Knowlton argued: “The crime was done as a matter of deliberate preparation.” Finally, he alluded to Lizzie’s “singular” demeanor: “While everyone is dazed, there is but one person, who . . . has not been seen to express emotion.” In closing, he summarized his case: “She has been dealing in poisonous things; . . . her story is absurd; and . . . hers and hers alone has been the opportunity for commission of the crime.” As Knowlton concluded, “a deathly silence” permeated the room, a mood of dread made manifest as “the sun, which had been streaming into the room during the early afternoon, went under a cloud . . . and a chilling draught at the same moment came in at the open window.”