The Trial of Lizzie Borden(83)

Knowlton simply evaded that essential dilemma. He reminded the jury: “The Commonwealth is charged with a duty of satisfying you that she killed her mother and father; not why.” Instead, he returned to comfortable ground, a methodical discussion of the timeline of events. Andrew returned; Lizzie told him that Abby was out. Here the staunch Universalist Knowlton indulged in the most inflammatory New Testament metaphor possible: Lizzie “suggests to him, with the spirit in which Judas kissed his master, that, as he is weary with his day’s work, it would be well for him to lie down upon the sofa and rest.” Knowlton pointed out that Lizzie said she returned to the dining room to iron handkerchiefs, a task left undone in the morning. Yet again, despite the need to reheat the iron every time, she did not finish that simple chore. As Knowlton explained, “She had begun her work before Bridget went upstairs; she was engaged in it when Bridget left her; it was a job that could not have taken her more than ten minutes at the outside.” But, in her account, she left that work and decided to look for a piece of iron in the barn, variously, to fix a screen or make a sinker. Knowlton described Lizzie Borden’s account of her actions as “simply incredible.” He reminded the jurors: “We must judge all facts, all circumstances, as they appeal to our common sense.” Reviewing Lizzie’s account of her morning, in particular, her decision to visit the stifling barn loft to get fishing sinkers, he asked the jury the questions Lizzie had left unanswered at the inquest. Where, for example, was the fishing line? In that light, he concluded, Lizzie Borden’s story about being in the barn loft was “not within the bounds of reasonable possibilities.” It only made sense as a concocted alibi for murder, for “it was not only the hottest place in all this hot . . . city . . . it was the only place where she could put herself and not have known what took place.” In a similar vein, he pointed out her “presentiments” of doom, arguing that she went to see Alice Russell and “prepared her for something dreadful.” Knowlton dismissed the defense’s notion that “presentiments” are common: “All the disasters of your life, Mr. Foreman, all the things that ever came with crushing weight upon the happiness of your life, came like a flash of lightning out of the clear sky. Today you are happy; tomorrow you are plunged in grief.”

Knowlton then abandoned his prior gallantry. In an attempt to destroy this image of the bereaved daughter, Knowlton focused upon Lizzie Borden’s conduct after the murders, in particular her transgressions of femininity. He described her as “cool to a degree of coolness that . . . has challenged the amazement of the world.” He acknowledged “that the absence of tears, that the icy demeanor, may have either meant consciousness of guilt or consciousness of loss”; however, he quickly dismissed the latter explanation. Lizzie Borden’s behavior at the scene of the murder suggested a masculine courage highly suspicious in a woman. Knowlton contrasted her “calm and quiet demeanor” at the scene of the crime with the “agitation of a man in the same position fifteen minutes afterwards.” Knowlton also emphasized her willingness to go into the room containing her late parents’ bloodstained clothing the night after the murders, commenting, “All I propose to make of that incident is to emphasize from it the almost stoical nerve of a woman, who, when her friend, not the daughter or the stepdaughter of these murdered people, but her friend, could not bear to go into the room where those clothes were, should have the nerve to go down there alone, alone, and calmly enter the room for some purpose that had I know not what connection with this case.” He reminded the jury of Lizzie’s comments after failing the egg experiment reported by Matron Reagan, that it was the only thing she had ever put her mind to that she could not do.

Knowlton then turned to the defense’s trump card: Where was the blood? As he put it, “How could she have avoided the spattering of her dress with blood if she was the author of these crimes?” Acknowledging this weakness, he suggested that she might have taken advantage of the “solitude of the house with ample fire on the stove.” Perhaps Lizzie used a roll of paper to protect her dress or, more likely, she hid the bloodstained dress until she burned it in the kitchen the next Sunday. But he admitted: “I cannot answer it. You cannot answer it . . . You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and deftness of the sex.”

Speaking of dresses, he pointed to the disputed blue dress Lizzie wore on the morning of the murders. He argued that the dress handed over to the police was not the dress she had been wearing. Adelaide Churchill, “clear eyed, intelligent, honest daughter of one of Fall River’s most honored citizens,” described the dress as some kind of cheap cotton, a calico or cambric. He reminded the jurors that she had first seen Lizzie Borden that morning before she knew the full horror of the scene and did not think the trial exhibit was the same dress. Compare her forthrightness, he advised the jury, to Phoebe Bowen’s evasiveness. “When Mrs. Bowen raised her hand to take her oath,” he said, “it shook like an aspen leaf.” Nonetheless, she described it as a “cheap morning dress.”

Where was the paint-stained dress before Alice Russell saw Lizzie destroy it? None of the officers had encountered a paint-stained dress during their searches—“It was not where the officers could find it”—proof, according to Knowlton, “it was concealed.” And, to make sure it would never be examined, Lizzie burned it the morning after the officers conducted their inventory of her dresses. “That dress,” he said, “had been good enough to keep through May, through June, through July, through the first weeks in August. It was a singular thing that of all times in the world it should be selected on the Lord’s day to destroy a dress which had been concealed from the search of the officers made the afternoon before and within twelve hours of the time that Lizzie was told that formal accusation was being made against her.” What could that demonstrate but consciousness of guilt? Knowlton paused to wonder aloud what might have been Bridget Sullivan’s fate had she behaved in the same way: “Supposing she had told wrong stories; supposing she had put up an impossible alibi; supposing she had put up a dress that never was worn that morning at all, and when the coils were tightening around her had burned a dress up that it should not be seen, what would you think of Bridget? Is there one law for Bridget and another for Lizzie? God forbid.”