The Trial of Lizzie Borden(66)

Having established this framework, he turned to the evidence against his client. The prosecution’s case was “wholly and absolutely circumstantial.” He warned: “[T]here is no class of evidence . . . so dangerous and misleading as circumstantial evidence. Our books are filled with cases where the accused has evidently been proven by circumstantial evidence to have committed the crime and subsequent investigations or confessions have shown that he did not.” Remember, he told the jury, “your task is not to unravel the mystery.” Instead, he said they must ask themselves: “Have they furnished the proof, the proof that the law requires, that Lizzie Andrew Borden did it, and that there is absolutely no opportunity for anybody else?”

Jennings permitted himself a note of triumph as he catalogued the prosecution’s deficiencies: “[T]here is not one particle of direct evidence against Lizzie A. Borden.” Not a spot of blood. No weapon. Just a parade of unrelated hatchets and axes all rejected as the actual murder weapon.

Howard applauded: “He ridiculed, with neat sarcasm, the futile efforts of the police” to link one weapon after another to the murders. As for Borden’s purported exclusive opportunity, Jennings countered that if Andrew Borden had not been seen on part of his morning walk, then surely the assassin could have evaded witnesses as well. And where was the motive? Even if Lizzie had a motive in the case of Abby Borden, would she have killed her “loved and loving father”?

Lizzie Borden wiped her eyes during his oration. According to Julian Ralph, Jennings “championed her cause with an ancient knight’s consideration for the sex and herself” and “his belief in her innocence shone in his words like a loving light in the forest.” Howard praised his performance as “brushing away the cobwebs of ingenuity, affirming, with emphatic clarity, the duty of the commonwealth to the living, as well as the dead.”

The defense case began with a series of witnesses who testified about odd noises and strange characters heard and seen. Marthe Chagnon, the Bordens’ neighbor, and her stepmother, Marienne Chagnon, heard a noise about 11:00 p.m. the night before the murders. Prior to the trial, they speculated that someone was climbing over or walking along their fence. According to Marthe, it sounded like “pounding” and came from the direction of the Bordens’ house. She said: “I couldn’t describe the noise because I didn’t see.” They did not investigate, nor, they admitted, did their Newfoundland dog. Knowlton suggested, referring to Marthe’s testimony at the preliminary hearing, that the noise could have come from ice carts to the south. She doubted it came from the icehouse and denied ever saying that it had. When Knowlton pressed her on the point, quoting her prior statements, Marthe, “a very pretty and rather coquettish young French girl,” shrugged with apparent indifference.

After establishing that the windows in the sitting room were shut, he asked, “How could you tell the direction from which the sound came?”

Again the transcript recorded “(No answer).”

Knowlton surrendered: “I won’t press it any further if you don’t care to answer it.”

Knowlton encountered a similar lack of responsiveness in Marthe’s stepmother, Marienne Chagnon, but by this time Knowlton should have detected a language barrier. (Both of the Chagnons were born in Francophone Canada.) Their exchange devolved into an unwitting comedic performance. Knowlton asked her if the noise sounded like pounding.

She replied, “What is it?”

Knowlton repeated the question.

She replied, “Like—?”

He repeated, “Pounding?”

“I don’t understand the expression,” said Marienne. So he tried again in the time-honored Yankee tradition of shouting at foreigners.

“Pounding? . . . Don’t you understand what pounding is?”

“Pounding?” she queried.

“Yes,” he said.

“No,” she said, “I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t know that word? . . . You don’t understand the word pounding? . . . To pound.”

“Pounding,” she said, “No, sir.”

The reporters seemed to enjoy the parade of the less critical defense witnesses, a bit of leavening after the high tension of the poison testimony. Joe Howard described Mary Durfee as “a nice looking old lady, in black, rather short, with enormous high bows in her hat.” Durfee had been prepared to testify that she had seen a man arguing with Andrew Borden—“You have cheated me and I’ll fix you”—sometime before the end of October. But she could not remember exactly when. She explained: “Well, I lost my sister . . . and she died about the 27th of October.” The lawyers struggled to get her to pin down the date of the argument. She said: “[W]hat I heard I heard before then, because I went home and told it.” It could have been two months before that date. The judges decided it was too remote. She retired “with a graceful bow embracing the court, the jury, and the learned brothers.” In contrast, two neighbors were allowed to testify. Charles Gifford and Uriah Kirby, “a venerable white-haired old man of the frontier type,” lived just north of the Chagnon house. On the night before the murders, they saw a man on the side steps (on the sidewalk side of the gate). Gifford unsuccessfully attempted to rouse him. Kirby came by a few minutes later. He, too, tried to wake him, shaking him by the straw hat on top of his head.