The Trial of Lizzie Borden(28)
As attorney general, Albert Pillsbury was expected to prosecute the capital case personally. Newspaper accounts speculated on a rift among prosecutors, hypothesizing that, unlike Knowlton, Pillsbury wavered about proceeding against Lizzie Borden. But, unbeknownst to the public, he was a sick man, recovering from a sudden incapacitating illness in late December. Although he expressed hopes that he would be able to participate, he took no chances: he recruited the promising young district attorney of Essex County, William Moody, to help Knowlton prosecute the case. Pillsbury told him: “I do not feel sure that we shall have to draw upon you, but we may. I am, at present, under strict orders not to undertake more than a certain amount of work, nor anything of an unusually trying character.” Because of the sensitivity of the case, Moody was sworn to secrecy. He wrote to Pillsbury: “I will of course heed your injunction as to silence, knowing as I do the uncertainty of the course you may adopt, and remembering your caution.”
William H. Moody, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society
Still in his thirties, District Attorney William Moody had “as high a reputation as any public prosecutor in the state.” He cut a dashing figure: he was blond, blue-eyed, and dressed like a New Yorker. And he was “as bright and alert as he is handsome.” The Borden trial was merely an early step in a glittering career. He was touted as a likely candidate to succeed Pillsbury as Massachusetts attorney general, assuming he could beat the other likely candidate, Hosea Knowlton. But he opted to ascend to the national stage. After serving in Congress, Moody was appointed by his former Harvard classmate Theodore Roosevelt as secretary of the navy and then attorney general of the United States. The handsome bachelor also played the role of the avuncular escort to Roosevelt’s high-spirited daughter Alice. After selecting Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and William R. Day, Roosevelt chose Moody as his final appointment to the Supreme Court in 1906. His tenure, however, was short-lived: ill health forced his retirement three years later.
With Moody pegged as an alternate, the trial preparations continued. Knowlton and Pillsbury conferred in person on Wednesday, April 26. After a flurry of scheduling telegrams, the prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to meet on Saturday, April 29. On May 2, Pillsbury informed Robinson: “Chief Judge Mason says they conclude to have the trial begin Monday not later than eleven. He evidently still regards New Bedford as the place. He suggests that Miss Borden should be arraigned and plead.”
Lizzie Borden’s arraignment required a complex ruse to avoid a press stampede. On Monday, May 8, 1893, Sheriff Wright traveled to New Bedford alone and then doubled back to retrieve his prisoner. Lizzie herself was “not in sight more than two seconds” before being hustled to a waiting cab and taken to court. As she entered the courtroom, “she faltered.” According to the New Bedford Evening Standard, “It was but an instant, however, for she seemed to brace herself and then walked steadily to the dock.” Mrs. Wright, the sheriff’s wife, by contrast seemed “nervous and agitated.” When it was time to plead, Lizzie Borden did not hesitate: “In a voice firm, clear, and resonant, she replied, ‘I am not guilty.’?” Outside the courthouse, a crowd gathered, “spectators paced anxiously up and down the sidewalks, determined to catch a glimpse of her as she emerged.” They were largely foiled by another “blind”—empty hacks waited outside both entrances, front and rear. Lizzie Borden was eventually spirited away on the 5:50 train for Taunton. It had been a short excursion: portal to portal in less than four hours.
By the end of the week, Pillsbury concluded he could not participate and designated Moody as his successor. On Sunday, May 13, 1893, Knowlton and Moody spent six hours conferring about the case. Moody agreed to interview every witness and to “prepare the case thoroughly.” Knowlton offered to let Moody take the lead, “tender[ing] him the stroke oar,” but Moody “prefer[red] to take the junior part.” The following day, a relieved Knowlton told Pillsbury: “He is going into the case con amore.” Nonetheless, he continued: “I regret more than I can express, not only on my account, but on yours, that the final decision is that you cannot be with us. You were entirely right in your remark that no possible course we could take in the case would relieve us from criticism, more or less offensive.”
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On the Sunday before the trial, the Fall River Daily Globe reported: “The preliminaries are completed, and this morning the curtain ascends on the most notorious chapter of the Borden murder mystery . . . About it all there is the atmosphere of suppressed excitement—the longing for the opening of the act, and the ending of the suspense.”
Part 2
TRIAL
Chapter 5
THE CURTAIN ASCENDS
Exterior of Bristol County courthouse, New Bedford, Massachusetts, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society
On May 30, 1893, another axe murder roiled Fall River. Twenty-two-year-old Bertha Manchester suffered “twenty-three distinct and separate axe wounds on the back of the skull and its base.” The papers were quick to note the similarity to the Borden murders: the weapon in each case appeared to be an axe, all three victims were killed during the day, and each suffered many more wounds than were necessary to kill. The Providence Journal went further. “The Man with the Axe,” declared its June 2, 1893, headline, “Has Once Again Come to the Front in Fall River.” Elizabeth Jordan of the New York World agreed, remarking, “So it seems there is in Fall River some Jack the Chopper, who has the knack of hacking people to pieces, with strikingly similar evidence of senseless brutality in each instance, and of slipping cleverly through the hands of the police just as did the Whitechapel murderer or murderers in London.” Marshal Hilliard, however, dismissed any “parallel with the Borden case.” The New Bedford Evening Standard expanded on the critical differences: “Everything about the Borden mystery points to a well-concocted plan to kill, while the evidence in the Manchester case points to a struggle and sudden impulse to kill.” When Jose Correa deMello (spelled Correiro in news accounts), a disgruntled farmhand from the Azores, was arrested on June 4, he seemed designed by central casting for the murderer’s role. The Manchester case was the stuff of nativist nightmares: a young woman—said to be “modest, retiring, self-sacrificing”—brutally murdered on her father’s farm by an insane Portuguese immigrant with a grievance about his wages. Correa deMello had arrived only a few months earlier. He could not, therefore, have committed the Borden murders. He had also confessed to the Manchester murder, removing the slim possibility that a still unknown third party had committed both the Manchester killing and the Borden murders. Yet, would the men selected as Borden jurors have this information before deciding Lizzie Borden’s fate? Headlines announcing Correa deMello’s arrest on June 5, 1893, shared newspaper space with coverage of the first day of Lizzie Borden’s trial in New Bedford, a day devoted to selecting a jury.