The Trial of Lizzie Borden(6)
By this time, the two people Lizzie Borden had thought to summon, the family doctor, Dr. Seabury Bowen, and close friend Alice Russell, had arrived. While Dr. Bowen examined Andrew Borden, Alice Russell joined Lizzie and Adelaide Churchill in the kitchen. A tall, thin woman once reckoned a great beauty, Alice Russell was forty years old, unmarried, and no one’s fool. Unlike the voluble Mrs. Churchill, Miss Russell set to work fanning Lizzie. Emerging shaken from the living room, Dr. Bowen left to wire Emma Borden who was visiting friends in Fairhaven, some thirty miles away. Lizzie asked him not to reveal the full horror lest he alarm the elderly woman with whom Emma was staying.
Body of Andrew Borden on sofa, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society
Bridget Sullivan, unlike the others, had not forgotten about the absent Abby Borden. Increasingly agitated, she suggested asking Mrs. Whitehead, Abby’s half sister and closest friend, of her whereabouts. Lizzie then volunteered that she thought Abby had returned and gone upstairs. If the women present retained the capacity to be shocked, this was startling information. Abby, Lizzie had said, had gone out. She had made no mention of her return. Someone had to look for her. Mrs. Churchill agreed to accompany the reluctant Bridget upstairs. Mrs. Churchill only ascended high enough “to clear [her] eyes above the second floor.” But it was enough to see the body of Abby Borden in the guest bedroom. Mrs. Churchill rushed back to relay her gruesome discovery. Alice Russell asked, “Is there another?” Mrs. Churchill’s response: “Yes.” Lizzie said, “O, I shall have to go to the cemetery myself.”
Bridget Sullivan, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society
Upon his return, Dr. Bowen examined the remains of another Borden. His first thought was that Abby had died of fright. Barely five feet tall, Abby Borden weighed over two hundred pounds, and Dr. Bowen did not initially attempt to move her. Her body was facedown, surrounded by coagulated blood rather than the fresh oozing liquid covering Andrew Borden’s clothes. This left little doubt as to the order of deaths and suggested that Abby had been slain sometime before her husband. Yet, it was not until officers Michael Mullaly and Patrick H. Doherty arrived on the scene that her body was turned over, revealing the extent of her injuries, and permitting Dr. Bowen to ascertain the real cause of her death. Referring to both murders, Dr. Bowen later remarked, “Physician that I am and accustomed to all sorts of horrible sights, it sickened me.”
By the time Dr. Bowen finished his preliminary examination of Abby Borden, “the cry of murder swept through the city of Fall River like a typhoon.” Indeed the brutality of the murders led one newspaper to speculate that Jack the Ripper had come to America. Police officers arrived in force and their numbers attracted an even greater contingent of passersby and concerned citizens. Hundreds of people gathered in front of the Borden house. The next morning, there would be over fifteen hundred spectators.
As the residents of Fall River watched and waited, the police, led by the assistant marshal, John Fleet, “a dyed-in-the-wool policeman,” constructed a timeline of the morning of the murders. Abby and Andrew Borden, still suffering from apparent food poisoning, ate breakfast about 7:00 a.m. with their houseguest John V. Morse, Andrew’s brother-in-law. The breakfast consisted of cold mutton, mutton soup, johnnycakes, coffee, and tea. Morse departed at 8:45 a.m. to visit relatives who lived on Weybosset Street. At 8:50 a.m., Lizzie Borden ate a light breakfast of cookies and coffee by herself. Emma, the older sister, had been out of town for two weeks visiting friends in Fairhaven. Prior to her departure, Andrew Borden had insisted on establishing where she could be reached by telegraph, leading one paper to ask, “Did He Have a Presentiment?” At 9:15 a.m., Andrew Borden left the house to attend to business downtown, and Abby asked Bridget to wash the outside windows. By 9:30 a.m., Abby went up to the guest bedroom to make the guest bed and was struck down by nineteen blows. The force of the blows shattered her skull and separated a flap of skin from her back.
Body of Abby Borden in guest bedroom, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society
At 10:45 a.m., Andrew Borden returned home, but stood on the doorstep fumbling with the lock, unaware that the door had been bolted from the inside. As she struggled to unlock the door, Bridget uttered an exclamation that evoked laughter from Lizzie Borden, who was apparently descending from the front landing—directly opposite the open door of the guest bedroom where her stepmother lay dead. After entering the hallway, Andrew removed his bedroom key from the mantel in the sitting room, its location during the day, and went up the back stairs to his bedroom. When he came downstairs, Lizzie greeted her father and inquired about the mail. In turn, he asked about Abby and was told that she had gone out after receiving a note. Andrew took off his coat and settled down on the sofa for a nap. Whether or not this was his usual practice, this decision to take a late-morning nap on a Thursday elicited no particular comment from either Bridget or Lizzie. But sometime between 10:45 a.m. and 11:45 a.m., this nap became his final slumber. His assassin struck ten times and departed.
The timeline was straightforward but presented one obvious question: How did the assassin manage to commit his crimes without attracting the attention of either Lizzie Borden or Bridget Sullivan? If the murderer was not a member of the household, then he would have had to elude both women for over an hour and a half between the murders. A cramped clothes closet next to the upstairs guest bedroom where Abby was slain could have provided a refuge, but the bedroom door itself remained open, advertising rather than hiding the crime. The cellar door and front door were locked throughout the morning and the screen door at the side of the house was usually in sight of Bridget Sullivan as she went about her household tasks. Moreover, while Andrew’s napping figure presented a convenient target for the assassin, Abby was upstairs making the bed in the guest bedroom when she was struck down. And no one had heard a sound. The Fall River Daily Herald observed that the two-hundred-pound Abby must have jarred the house when she fell.