The Trial of Lizzie Borden(41)

Adelaide Churchill provided the trial audience with an amuse-bouche, but the main course of the day was Alice Russell, Lizzie Borden’s “turncoat friend.” If Adelaide Churchill seemed a stereotypical “merry widow,” Alice Russell, “tall, angular, and thin,” could have passed as the model for a typical New England spinster. Julian Ralph described her as “a slender, trim woman of precise manners, of spare figure and sallow face.” Joe Howard declared: “She held her mouth as though prisms and prunes were its most frequent utterances.” Elizabeth Jordan described her in darker terms, “as though one of the strange women characters in which Wilkie Collins delights, and which flit like ominous specters through deep shadows—through his mysteries—had walked out of the pages of one of the dead novelist’s books into real life and real participation in a tragedy more awful and more wrapped in obscurity than any he ever evolved.”

A former next-door neighbor for over a decade—she had lived in what was now the Kelly house—Alice Russell had recently moved a short distance but remained an intimate friend of both Borden daughters. Aside from the doctor, she was the first person Lizzie Borden thought to summon for help after discovering the murders. She then stayed in the Borden house until after the funeral. But the friendship ended when Alice Russell decided to tell the grand jury about the dress Lizzie burned the Sunday after the murders. She did not make her choice lightly. She had omitted mention of the incident in her original statement to the police, her inquest testimony, and her first appearance before the grand jury. But after agonizing about the oath she had sworn, an oath to tell “the whole truth,” she consulted a lawyer who arranged for Knowlton to recall her to the stand. After she testified at the grand jury about the dress burning, Russell ended her regular visits to Lizzie Borden in jail. It was as if the act of testifying, of unburdening herself of the incriminating details, forced her to recalculate for herself Lizzie Borden’s likely culpability. Significantly, Alice Russell’s change of position reverberated in their circle: Elizabeth Johnston, who had steadfastly refused to tell the police the contents of Lizzie’s letter, also ceased her jail visits.

Despite being certain of her duty, Alice Russell initially seemed a tentative witness. Moody instructed her to speak up twice at the outset of her testimony. From his seat, Robinson even chimed in to ask her to “speak a little louder.” Lizzie Borden, too, moved her chair closer to Melvin Adams and whispered something to him. Alice stood at attention as she testified and, according to Julian Ralph, held her handbag “as though it contained her return ticket to Fall River and she did not propose to lose it under any circumstances.” Elizabeth Jordan viewed her testimony as a betrayal and characterized her demeanor in unflattering terms: “Today she took the witness stand and not only testified to what will come nearer to putting a rope around her girl friend’s neck than anything yet brought out, but she did it with a vicious snap in her voice and a cruel compression of her thin colorless lips, which suggested anything but sorr[ow] for the fact that she was compelled to do this.” Whether or not she regretted her felt obligation to testify, Alice Russell had determined her course. She spoke clearly, tapping her black fan as if to underscore her answers.

Moody first asked Alice Russell about Lizzie’s visit the night before the murders. She testified that Lizzie told her that she had been depressed: “I feel as if something was hanging over me that I cannot throw off; and it comes over me at times, no matter where I am.” As if to puncture the tension in the courtroom, Joe Howard’s favorite cow outside the courthouse “gave three tremendous blasts on her accustomed trombone.” Most in the courtroom laughed, but Alice Russell did not waver. Instead, she began to testify that Lizzie described her father’s enemies, but stopped herself, adding, “Oh, I am a little ahead of the story.” Lizzie had first reported the Bordens’ illness—she heard them “vomiting” and told her everyone was ill except Bridget Sullivan. She feared the milk could be poisoned. Alice questioned whether such a thing would be possible: “I shouldn’t think anybody would dare to come then and tamper with the cans for fear somebody would see them.” Lizzie seemed to accept the improbability but spoke of her father’s “enemy.” She said a man came to see him about renting a property. Her father told him he would not “let his property for such a business.” The man responded “sneeringly” as he was ordered out. Lizzie also said she had seen a strange man lurking around the house. More worrying, the barn had been broken into twice. Alice reassured her that thieves were only after pigeons. Lizzie insisted: “I feel as if I wanted to sleep with my eyes half open—with one eye open half the time—for fear they will burn the house down over us.” She then revealed a startling daytime break-in: “Father forbad our telling it.” She recounted the theft of Abby’s keepsakes, Andrew’s money and streetcar tickets, “and something else I can’t remember.” She continued, “I am afraid somebody will do something; I don’t know but what somebody will do something.” Lizzie Borden left about 9:00 p.m.

Courtroom scene during Alice Russell’s testimony, Boston Globe



The next morning just after 11:00 a.m., Bridget Sullivan arrived with the terrible news. Of the sequence of events that Thursday morning, Alice explained: “It is very disconnected. I remember very little of it.” But on Thursday night she well recalled visiting the darkened cellar with Lizzie. Lizzie brought her slop pail; Alice brought a light. Lizzie went into the water closet room to rinse out the slop pail. They walked through the room containing the bloodstained clothes taken from the bodies.