The Trial of Lizzie Borden(34)

Moody began by baldly acknowledging the seeming impossibility of the crime and the perpetrator: “Upon the fourth day of August of the last year, an old man and woman . . . each without a known enemy in the world, in their own home, upon a frequented street in the most populous city in this County, under the light of day and in the midst of its activities, were . . . killed by unlawful human agency. Today a woman of good social position, of hitherto unquestioned character, a member of a Christian church and active in its good works, the own daughter of one of the victims, is at the bar of this Court, accused . . . of these crimes.” He admitted that he could not improve on this simple statement of fact: “There is no language . . . at my command which can better measure the solemn importance of the inquiry.”

Andrew Borden was, he said, a man of considerable property who chose to live upon “a narrow scale.” About five years before the murders, “Some controversy had arisen about some property, not important in itself.” But that controversy created “an unkindly feeling” between Lizzie and her stepmother. Moody acknowledged: “[I]t will be impossible for us to get anything more than suggestive glimpses of that feeling.” He offered two telling examples: Lizzie no longer called her stepmother “Mother” and she not only referred to Mrs. Borden as her stepmother, but she also sharply corrected those who gave her the more familial appellation. “I know of nothing that will appear in this case more significant of the feeling that existed between Mrs. Borden and the prisoner,” Moody continued, than her correction of the police officer who asked when she had last seen her mother. Lizzie said: “She is not my mother. She is my stepmother. My mother is dead.” He also noted the daughters’ habit of avoiding meals with Andrew and Abby and drew the jury’s attention to Mr. Borden’s habit of locking and bolting doors inside the house as well as to the exterior. As Moody put it, “Although they occupied the same household, there was built up between them by locks and bolts and bars, an impassable wall.”

Moody then set the temporal scene of the crime and noted four unusual facts in the lead-up to the murders: First, John Morse, Lizzie’s uncle, was visiting. Second, the household developed food poisoning. Third, Lizzie Borden, he alleged, went to the drugstore in search of prussic acid purportedly to clean a sealskin cape. Finally, she visited her former neighbor and intimate friend, Alice Russell, to confide her fears that they would be poisoned. During Moody’s recitation of these central facts, Lizzie Borden looked straight at her accuser, attentive yet apparently unconcerned. That is, until Moody mentioned her former intimate Alice Russell. Ever so slightly, Lizzie shifted her foot.

Plan of cellar, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



Yet, at this moment of heightened suspense, Moody stepped out of his narrative to describe the house, both its location in the neighborhood and its odd interior layout. It was a house on a busy street within a short distance of City Hall: “It may fairly be called a thoroughfare . . . for foot passengers as for carriages.” He reminded the jury that the house had three exterior doors: the front door with steps down to the sidewalk, the side door on the north adjacent to Mrs. Churchill’s house, and the rear door of the cellar with steps up to the backyard.

Moody then took the jury on a virtual tour of the Borden home. The front door opened onto a front hall. Inside the hall, there were two doors and a stairway leading upstairs, along the right wall. Door number one led to the parlor on the left. Door number two, opposite the front door, led to the sitting (or living) room. In the sitting room, immediately to the left, was the door to the dining room. The dining room led to the kitchen, which was also accessible through a door at the far end of the sitting room. The kitchen also opened onto a narrow back hall. The back hall led to the back staircase (providing access to the elder Bordens’ bedroom on the second floor and Bridget Sullivan’s bedroom on the third) and also to the exterior side door (where Lizzie was spotted by Adelaide Churchill).

Plan of first floor, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



The second floor had essentially the same floor plan. From the upstairs landing, there were three doors: a door leading to a clothes closet, another to the guest room in which Mrs. Borden was killed, and the last to Lizzie’s bedroom. Moody’s summary, perhaps unwittingly, evoked the dead-end ambiance of the layout: “When you have got up into this part of the house . . . you can go nowhere except into this clothes closet, into this guest chamber, and into the room occupied by the prisoner.” Lizzie’s bedroom adjoined Emma’s room, a room with no separate access to the hall. (The smaller room had been Lizzie’s before her trip to Europe in 1890.)

Moody took special care to note one unusual feature about the upstairs layout. At the rear of Lizzie’s bedroom was a door to Andrew and Abby’s bedroom. But it might as well have been part of the wall: “It was locked upon the front toward the prisoner’s room by a hook. It was locked in the rear toward Mr. and Mrs. Borden’s room by a bolt.” At the back of the house, separated by that locked door, was a mirror image of Lizzie and Emma’s suite. Andrew and Abby shared the larger bedroom. Andrew used the smaller adjoining space as a dressing room. They descended to the first floor and ascended to their bedroom via the back stairs, which also provided access to the servant’s quarters and attic storage on the third floor.

Plan of second floor, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society