Miss Adelaide B. Churchill was called and said: “On the morning of Aug. 4, I saw Mr. Borden first about nine o’clock; I was then in the kitchen; he was by his steps but don’t know where he went; he was standing there; it was on the barn side of the steps; that morning
I went out and purchased something for dinner; returning I walked southward and upwards towards my house; in going that way I had to pass the Borden house first; when I reached my house I saw Bridget Sullivan going across the street from Dr. Bowen’s to her house. She was white and going rapidly; I went in the side door of my house and into the kitchen, laying my bundles on a long table, and looking out of the window saw Lizzie inside of the screen door leaning against the east side of the door casing. I opened the window and asked Lizzie, what is the matter? She said: ‘Oh, Mrs. Churchill, come over; some one has killed father.’ I went right out the front door over to their house; when I stepped inside the screen door, she was sitting on the second step; I put my hand in her right arm and said: ‘Oh, Lizzie, how did it happen?’ She said: ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Where were you?’ ‘I was in the barn to get a piece of iron, and when I came back I found the screen door open.’ She said they must have some enemies, and she thought they had all been poisoned, as they were all sick in the night. I offered to go for a doctor and returned, after going to where my brother worked and getting him to telephone. Dr. Bowen was there and wanted me to go in and see the body of Mr. Borden, but I refused to go in; he asked for a sheet and someone handed Bridget a key. She and I went up in Mrs. Borden’s room, where Bridget unlocked the door for us; we got a sheet and brought it down; Lizzie asked Dr. Bowen to send a telegram to Emma; then Miss Russell came in and Lizzie said she wished somebody would try to find Mrs. Borden as she thought she heard her come in; I volunteered to go with Bridget, and as we went up the stairs and when my head was on a level with the floor, I saw the body, then I turned about and went back.
“Miss Russell said ‘Is there another,’ and I said ‘Yes, she is up there.’ On the day of the tragedy the agitation of Lizzie wasn’t manifested by tears; I don’t remember whether Lizzie said to me that the reason she came in from the barn was because she heard a distressed noise; the dress she had while I was there was a light blue calico or cambric with a dark navy blue diamond, printed. The whole dress was alike; I don’t remember how often I saw her wearing this dress, and I don’t know how long she had owned it.”
Miss Alice M. Russell was the next witness called, and when her name was mentioned, Lizzie straightened up in her chair and began to watch the door. When Miss Russell came in, she looked everywhere but where Lizzie was seated. “About two years ago I lived in Dr. Kelly’s house,” said Miss Russell; “I knew all of the family well.
On Aug. 4, 1892, I lived on Borden street, between Third and Fourth streets, and near by a baker shop; occasionally Lizzie and I visited each other; when I went to her home she received me, generally, in the guests’ room. On Wednesday night, Aug. 3, Lizzie came to see me; she came alone, and stayed till about 9 o’clock. We conversed and during the evening we spoke about going to Marion. I think when she came in she said, ‘I have taken your advice, and am going to Marion.’ I said ‘I’m glad you’re going’; I spoke about her having a good time, but she said, ‘I don’t know; I feel distressed; when I was at Marion the other day the girls were laughing and they asked me what was the matter with me.’ Then she spoke of her father and mother and her being sick the night before, but Maggie wasn’t sick; she (Lizzie) wasn’t sick enough to vomit; she heard the others vomiting and stepped to the door to help them; she spoke of the bread and the milk and we talked about that, and I said it couldn’t possibly be the bread, because others would have been sick. Lizzie spoke about believing her father had enemies and spoke of the man who came there and wanted to hire a place, and of the quarrel; then she spoke of seeing a man about the place at night; about the barn being broken into, and about the burglary in the houses. I said that I never heard of the burglary before, and Lizzie said her father had forbidden them to speak of it; she described the robbery to me and said it was done in Mrs. Borden’s room; she was afraid somebody would burn the house down, and that she was afraid to go to sleep at night. Lizzie also spoke about the manner of her father treating his friends and how badly he used Dr. Bowen at one time. On the morning of August 4th, while I was at work, Bridget Sullivan came to me; I changed my dress and went at once to the Borden house and saw Lizzie down stairs; she was standing up when I went there and I asked her to sit down, which she did. She told me when I asked her, about going to the barn and her reason, that she went to the barn to get a piece of iron to fix her screen; I don’t remember that she spoke about the note, but I heard it talked over. While I was downstairs she looked faint and I started to loosen her dress, but she said she wasn’t faint; I only unloosened it a little at the lower part. When she went upstairs I was with her; she spoke about getting an undertaker and I went down and spoke to Dr. Bowen; when I went back, met her coming out of Emma’s room tying the strings of her wrapper; at one time when I was in the room I saw her going to the closet door, unlock it and go in; I don’t know whether Mr. Fleet went in that closet or not. Saturday and
Sunday nights I occupied Miss Emma’s room; on Sunday I got the breakfast; after breakfast I left the lower part of the house and returned before noon; when I came back, I went in the kitchen and saw Lizzie standing by the stove, Emma by the sink; Lizzie had a dress and I asked her what she was going to do with it and Lizzie said she was going to burn it, it was all covered with paint. I said nothing and went out. When I came in the room again, Lizzie was tearing the dress, I said: ‘I wouldn’t let anybody see me doing that,’ and she stepped one step back; it was the waist she was tearing; I didn’t remember about the skirt; there were no officers in the house at that time, though there were some about the premises; Bridget had left before that. I saw Mr. Hanscom and saw him at the Borden house on Monday and conversed with him in the parlor; in consequence of that talk I saw Miss Lizzie and Emma in the dining room and I said—‘I’m afraid the worst thing you could have done was to burn that dress; I have been asked about your dresses, and she said, ‘why did you let me do it?’”
John Cunningham told the story of how he had telephoned news of the horror to the Central police station; and Deputy Sheriff Francis H. Wixon related that he was in the station when the message was received.
Officer George W. Allen said he was sent to the Borden house at 11:15 on the morning of the 4th. He described the manner in which he went and about enlisting Mr. Sawyer for an outside guard. He saw Lizzie at the table in the kitchen and he also saw the body of Mr. Borden. He saw that the front door was locked with a night lock and a bolt. When he went to the station and reported to the Marshall he hadn’t heard of Mrs. Borden’s death. He detailed his coming again and his searches through the house and his finding the cellar door locked on the inside, or bolted. Witness said that when he saw the body of Mrs. Borden, there was a small stand upon which were two books and a small oil lamp about three feet away, but there were no marks of blood on the books or the stand. He noticed a bloody handkerchief on the guest chamber floor, lying about midway between the body and the wall.
Assistant City Marshal John Fleet, when sworn, testified that he went to the house arriving at 11:35. Saw several persons and went into the house and saw the bodies. Came out and found the door at the head of the stairs locked; it leads into a closet; then went into Lizzie’s bedroom upstairs; she sat with Mr. Buck; told her that he was an officer and asked her if she knew anything about the killing; she
said she did not; all that she knew was that she was ironing when her father came home and saw him sit on the sofa; he was feeble and she assisted him to lay down; then she went out and up to the barn and remained about half an hour upstairs in the barn. She came back and found her father on the sofa in the position she had left him, except that he was dead; she then called Maggie; asked her who Maggie was, and she said the servant girl; said she sent her after Dr. Bowen and Miss Russell; told me there was no one else in the house beside the family and her uncle, John Morse; said Morse could not have killed the people because he left the house and did not return till nearly 12; said Maggie could not have done it, because she had gone upstairs after her father came in. I then asked her if she knew who could have killed her father and mother. She answered: “She is not my mother; she is my stepmother; my own mother died when I was a child.” Witness said that on the way up he tried the door of Mr. Borden’s bedroom and found it locked; all the rooms except Bridget’s was locked; the witness went into the cellar and found a lot of officers; Mr. Mullaly had two axes and hatchets on the floor; searched the cellar for any instrument, but found none at the time. A few days before, her father had some angry talk with a man in the back yard about a storeroom. Mr. Fleet then went down stairs through the rooms on the lower floor and then up to Bridget’s room. The weapons which Mullaly had were placed behind some boxes in the cellar. At this point Mr. Moody brought out his collection of axes and hatchets which Mr. Fleet identified as the ones he had seen in the cellar. The red stain which he had seen on the handle of one hatchet had disappeared. Then Mr. Fleet went to Lizzie’s door and rapped; Dr. Bowen came, and holding the door eight inches open, asked, ‘what is wanted.’ I told him we came to search. He said, ‘Wait a a moment,’ shut the door and talked with Lizzie, opened it and asked if it was absolutely necessary to search it, and I said, ‘Yes;’ I said again to Lizzie, ‘You said this morning that you were up in the barn half an hour; what do you say now?’ She replied, ‘I say from twenty minutes to half an hour.’ Asked her when she saw Mrs. Borden last and she said, ‘In the guest room, about nine o’clock,’ and that some one brought a letter or note to Mrs. Borden and that she supposed Mrs. Borden had gone out. Then went to a door leading into another bedroom and found it was hooked; opened it and went in; saw a bed standing in the middle of the room; Lizzie told him that she hoped he would get through as soon as possible, as