The Trial of Lizzie Borden(24)
The anticipation was brief. “Paler than usual,” Judge Blaisdell “allowed his keen eyes to wander about the courtroom.” After jotting a note on “the large piece of legal paper which the officers . . . could see was the murder complaint,” Judge Blaisdell began to speak. Then he paused. Continuing in a “husky voice, almost inaudible,” he slowly and deliberately rendered his judgment, “its impressiveness enhanced by the palpable reluctance with which it was uttered”: “Suppose for a single moment that a man was standing there. He was found close by that guestchamber which to Mrs. Borden was a chamber of death. Suppose that a man had been found in the vicinity of Mr. Borden and the only account he could give of himself was the unreasonable one that he was out in the barn looking for sinkers, that he was in the yard, that he was looking for something else. Would there be any question in the minds of men what should be done with such a man?” He continued, his voice now “almost a whisper”: “So there is only one thing to do—painful as it may be—the judgment of the court is that you are probably guilty and you are ordered to wait the action of the Superior Court.”
During his speech, Lizzie “sat calm and apparently unmoved.” By contrast, “strong men lowered their heads. Weaker men wiped tears from their eyes. Every woman in the courtroom sobbed and wept except one.” But as she rose, Lizzie seemed to falter. Once standing, “she was as resolute, as composed, and as self-possessed as at any time during the entire hearing.” She assured her stalwart supporter Reverend Buck: “Don’t be afraid. I am all right. I feel quite composed.” She added as she left the courtroom for Taunton jail: “It is for the best, I think. It is better that I get my exoneration in a higher court, for then it will be complete.” Lizzie’s lawyer Jennings was far less sanguine. He told reporters: “I am all tired out and want to go home. I don’t see what I can add to what I have already said.” Nonetheless, he gamely continued: “The government has not the slightest evidence in support of their claim of a motive excepting the fact of some little difficulty six years ago with the stepmother . . . The government has not by any means established the improbability of the murder being committed by some one outside the family.”
LIZZIE BORDEN’S SECRET
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On Monday, October 10, the Boston Globe published a bombshell—its headline: “Lizzie Borden’s Secret.” The secret was threefold: she was pregnant, her father knew, and Andrew threatened to turn her out of the house if she did not reveal “the name of the man who got [her] into trouble.” According to the Boston Globe, Andrew Borden issued his ultimatum on August 3, telling Lizzie: “You can make your own choice and do it tonight. Either let us know what his name is or take the door on Saturday, and when you go fishing fish for some other place to live.” There was more. The article also named twenty-five prosecution witnesses—some present at the decisive family quarrel, others who had seen a hooded Lizzie Borden in the guest room at the time of her stepmother’s murder. The list included familiar names with new revelations: Bridget Sullivan, according to the article, had overheard an ominous discussion between Morse and Lizzie. Morse said: “Quarreling will not fix the thing. Something else has got to be done.” Lizzie, for her part, tried to buy Bridget’s silence: “Are you a fool or a knave?” she demanded. From farther afield, another witness claimed Lizzie had offered to sell her Abby’s gold watch for $10. This watch had been stolen during the unsolved burglary the previous year. Yet another declared Lizzie Borden had consulted a lawyer to inquire how the order of deaths—if, say, a wife were to die before her husband—would affect the other beneficiaries in a given will. It was compelling, it was damning, and it was “the most gigantic ‘fake’ ever laid before the reading public.”
How did such an elaborate hoax find its way into print? Henry Trickey, the Globe’s star crime reporter, bought what he thought was the government’s case from a private detective named Edwin McHenry for $500. McHenry owned a Providence, Rhode Island detective bureau; he and his wife, Nellie, assisted the Fall River police during the Borden investigation. He also had a history with Trickey: they had been on opposing sides of another murder case—the trial of Dr. Graves in Denver, Colorado—the previous year. (Pinkerton detective O. M. Hanscom was another alumnus of that case.) McHenry was, to put it charitably, unscrupulous and he apparently relished the opportunity of doing Trickey a bad turn. Later McHenry described the sequence of events: “After Mr. Trickey had made the proposition to buy the State’s case from me, I lay in bed that day and thought the matter over, and formed some idea of the story which I could give out . . . He wrote and I dictated. We were at it until three o’clock in the morning.” Before he was duped, Trickey was reckoned one of the best reporters in Massachusetts. In retrospect, Trickey’s initial credulity was understandable. A colleague later noted that his enthusiasm for his job and his “loyalty” to the paper “sometimes outran his caution.” McHenry’s fake also had clever verisimilitude in its chosen details—Andrew’s reference to Lizzie’s stated plan of fishing in Marion (presented as the reason for her trip to the barn); the many Fall River surnames on the fictitious list of witnesses (including Chace with two c’s); the illicit affair (with resulting pregnancy) as the motive for the murders. That said, even a cursory investigation would have shown that most of the claimed witnesses did not exist.