The Trial of Lizzie Borden(67)

This was all fairly tame stuff. But Mark Chase, a local hostler, introduced a new character to the mystery with his description of a man, wearing a brown hat and a black coat, sitting in an open buggy in front of the Borden house at about 11:00 a.m. the morning of the murders. The man he described may have been ordinary, but Chase himself made a physically impressive witness. “When he took the oath,” the six-foot-six-inch-tall Chase “elevated his arm and hand to their extremest length, as though he would touch the ceiling, sending another ripple of merriment through the audience.” Knowlton, however, undercut the impact of his testimony during cross-examination: perhaps the man, visible only from the rear and obscured by a high seat, might not have been a stranger. Wasn’t the buggy really parked at the boundary of the Kelly and Borden properties? Couldn’t it have been “somebody who was waiting for a call on the Doctor?” Chase also could not say how long the wagon had been parked there, nor how quickly it departed.

Dr. Benjamin Handy, a Fall River physician, testified that he passed by the Borden house at about 10:30 a.m. on August 4 and saw a “medium sized young man of very pale complexion, with his eyes fixed upon the sidewalk, passing slowly towards the south.” Over Knowlton’s objection, he declared the man “was acting strangely” and walked very slowly. Knowlton pressed him to describe what made the man so noticeable. Dr. Handy replied, “I can’t put it into words, sir. He was acting differently than I ever saw any individual on the street in my life. He seemed to be either agitated or extremely weak, staggering, or confused, or something of the kind.” In response to Knowlton’s repeated prodding about the man’s appearance, Handy added: “He didn’t see me, his eyes were fixed upon the ground.” He ventured that he might have seen him on an earlier occasion, but he was not certain.

Knowlton summarized sarcastically: “And all you can put into words was that he was looking down toward the sidewalk, and didn’t notice anything that was going on around [him], and walked slowly?” Pausing for effect, he continued: “You cannot express that agitation any more than that?” In the course of his questioning, Knowlton also reminded the jury that he owned the cottage at Marion at which Lizzie had been expected, marking him as Lizzie Borden’s supporter.

Delia Manley may have seen the same man, a stranger also dressed in light clothing. She also lived on Second Street: she knew the Kelly house well because she had often visited her sister-in-law (Alice Russell’s mother), who had lived there. She happened to be walking down the street, accompanied by her sister (Mrs. Sarah Hart of Tiverton), when she stopped between the Borden and Churchill houses to see “pond lilies that a young fellow had in a carriage.” The man was “standing in the gateway, leaning his left arm on the gatepost.” But that was almost an hour earlier, about 9:50 a.m., and, as Knowlton suggested on cross-examination, he was “standing there quietly . . . in full view of everybody . . . where anybody could see him that was on the sidewalk.” Sarah Hart would later confirm her sister’s testimony. In her telling, the pale young man took on a sinister aspect. He seemed to look at the street “as though he were uneasy, trying to pry into my business.” During cross-examination, Knowlton tried to undermine her perspicacity. He pointed out that she had not recognized the man in the carriage, her own nephew, until he spoke to her.

Another set of witnesses demonstrated how easy it was to get into the house after the murders and contradicted the accounts of police witnesses. The day after the murders, Jerome Borden, Andrew Borden’s cousin and future pallbearer, stopped by at 2:00 p.m. and walked right in the front door. This suggested that the spring lock on the front door was not secure—an innocent explanation for the bolted front door on the day of the murders.

Walter P. Stevens, reporter for the Fall River Daily Evening News, arrived with Officer Mullaly. He also tried to open the rear cellar door, but he found it fastened. Then he went into the house via the kitchen and saw Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan. He also spoke with Mrs. Churchill. After nosing around the house, he walked through the yard, already well trampled, along with John Manning, reporter for the Fall River Daily Herald. He then went into the barn, where he saw at least three other people going up the barn stairs, contradicting Fleet’s account of a barn loft undisturbed before his visit. Alfred Clarkson, an engineer who happened to be in the neighborhood, said he arrived at the Borden house about 11:30 a.m. He, too, looked around the barn (in the company of Officer Wixon), including the upper story, where he saw three other men. Critically, he, too, had arrived before Fleet. Knowlton worked to undermine his certainty about his arrival time. At the preliminary hearing, he had testified he had arrived closer to 11:40 a.m. Knowlton questioned how many minutes he had spent chatting with Charles Sawyer, the seconded civilian sentry, before going into the barn. He estimated seven or eight minutes. Knowlton inquired: “Would you swear it wasn’t nine? . . . ten?”

Hymon Lubinsky, an ice cream peddler, offered significant evidence and unintentional comic relief. Howard saw only the latter, writing that Lubinsky “gave some unimportant testimony at great length, the grain of wheat in the chaff being that . . . when he was on his ice cream route he saw Miss Lizzie Borden coming from the barn toward the house.” His account corroborated Lizzie’s claim to have been in the barn during her father’s murder. Lubinsky knew that the woman he saw was not Bridget Sullivan; he sold her ice cream “two or three weeks” before the murders. Lubinsky said he had been on Second Street in front of the Borden house shortly after 11:00 a.m. Lubinsky might have been sent as a personal trial for the normally even-keeled Knowlton. Trying to pin him down on the exact location, Knowlton fired off an exasperated series of questions: “What part of the street was it on? Don’t you understand these questions I put now? Don’t you understand all I am saying? Don’t you understand I am asking what part of the street your team was on?” As with the Francophone Chagnons, Knowlton seemed to think that Lubinsky might better understand repetition and a raised voice, shouting his questions as he walked back and forth between his desk and the witness stand. Lubinsky, for his part, managed a dignified response, pointing out that he was not “educated in the English language.” Knowlton also found Lubinsky maddeningly imprecise about when he had begun his route. Lubinsky said he had looked at his watch because he was running late, but he did not note the exact time. Knowlton asked: “Why could you not tell the time? . . . You did not take notice of the big hand, but you took notice of the little hand?” But Charles Gardner, the owner of the stable where Lubinsky’s horses were kept, corroborated Lubinsky’s estimate that he had left about ten minutes after 11:00 a.m.