The Trial of Lizzie Borden(69)
Yard with Crowe’s barn, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society
Where Thursday had been “a red hot experience” reaching 92 degrees, the weather had cooled on Friday morning to 55 degrees. “The cold east wind,” in Howard’s view, was “not only a change and a novelty, but a pneumoniac [sic] provocation.” More seriously, he considered it “a tonic and a bracer” and “everybody in the crowded room, from the black-robed judges on the bench to the last juror in the panel, looked brighter, cheerier and more contented.” The judges’ bench seemed to bloom in response: “a veritable floral glory . . . a bushel of great golden lilies shining amid a wealth of small white flowers” appeared on their bench. Lizzie Borden also seemed lighter: “The sable-garbed prisoner was at her very best in looks and spirits, and sat wedged in among her lawyers, a bright faced, bright eyed, wide-awake old maid.” Overall, Friday was a “gala day” for the defense. Robinson, however, decided to take no chances. He had worn a new pair of trousers on Thursday and “his associates insisted upon his keeping them on until the close of the trial, that the luck might not be changed.”
Robinson’s new trousers notwithstanding, the judges agreed with the prosecution about Lemay’s testimony, handing the defense a rare evidentiary loss. But that small setback did not dampen the defense’s momentum. Charles Sawyer, the “ornamental, fancy painter” deputed to guard the side door after the murders, testified about his experience. He had heard “there was a man stabbed,” spotted Alice Russell walking to the house, and accompanied her the rest of the short distance to the scene. Officer Allen, arriving around the same time, tasked him with guarding the side door. On cross-examination, he admitted that he locked the interior door leading to the cellar because he feared “somebody might be concealed around there.”
Three reporters testified. John Manning, a reporter for the Fall River Daily Herald (and the local reporter for the New York World and the Associated Press), arrived at the Borden house around 11:25 a.m. He entered the house with Officers Doherty and Wixon. In the guest room, he watched as Officer Doherty moved the bed to permit Dr. Bowen a better look at Abby’s body. (Originally, Dr. Bowen barely had room for his foot on that side of Abby’s body.) After about ten minutes in the house, Manning walked around the yard and then went into the barn. He, too, saw others there. He also corroborated the Fall River Daily Evening News’s Walter Stevens’s account of finding the outside cellar door locked. Manning was an excellent witness, in Joe Howard’s view, telling his story clearly “without hesitation or zeal, but in a straightforward, businesslike way.”
Manning provided key support to the defense argument that Matron Reagan had lied about the Borden sisters’ argument. He had interviewed Mrs. Reagan the day the Boston Globe published her account of the quarrel between Lizzie and Emma. At that time, Mrs. Reagan denied the story, telling him, “There is nothing in it.” Knowlton, on cross-examination, asked where he had conducted the interview. Manning admitted that he had interviewed Reagan at her house that night. With this piece of information, Knowlton implied that Reagan, rather than revealing the truth to Manning, might have been trying to get rid of yet another pesky reporter—there had been “some 30 or 40 in town.” But Thomas Hickey, a reporter for the Fall River Daily Globe and local reporter for the Boston Herald, also testified that, when he asked about the quarrel the next day, Mrs. Reagan had denied the story. Knowlton, however, pointed out that her denial had given Hickey a scoop to match the original one published by the Globe: “That was what you were after, to have something to offset the Globe scoop, wasn’t it?”
Finally, the reporter John R. Caldwell recalled the scene in Marshal Hilliard’s office during which Hilliard said to Mrs. Reagan, “If you sign that paper it will be against my express orders.” Once Hilliard noticed the reporter, he ordered him out of the office. During his cross-examination, Knowlton pressed Caldwell to describe the crowd that followed her down stairs” to demonstrate the fraught context of Mrs. Reagan’s denial.
Lizzie’s friends also testified that the story was a hoax. Marianna Holmes, “a nice little old lady with a large face and a large voice,” who had known Lizzie Borden since childhood, said Mrs. Reagan had told her, “It isn’t so.”
When Knowlton insisted that the redoubtable Mrs. Holmes simply answer his questions, she bridled at the implication that she might be embellishing, replying, “I am not used to this business and I expect to overstep.” She testified that she heard Mrs. Reagan agree to sign the affidavit, prepared by her husband Charles J. Holmes, denying the quarrel so long as Marshal Hilliard gave his permission.
Knowlton objected on the grounds that the affidavit itself should be produced. Unfortunately, it had been given to reporters. Holmes, in frustration, handed the lawyer his own copy of the paper. He, too, testified that Mrs. Reagan denied the published version of events and was willing to sign the affidavit, which stated: “I expressly and positively deny that any such conversation took place.” Thwarted, Knowlton asked a series of questions designed to establish Holmes’s partisanship and that of Reverend Buck (who had read the statement to her): “You had been quite actively interested in the case, had you not? . . . You attended the Court as a friend of Miss Borden, did you not? . . . And accompanied her into Court and when she went out? . . . Sat by her side during the trial? . . . All these things are also true of Mr. Buck?”