The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

by Edwin H. Porter

that again. The court will tell you in emphatic and clear language, and it will look you in the eye, and touching your sense of justice, say to you: Gentlemen, you must not consider that, and you will not as you go to yonder room under your oath depart from that, because if you do so what is the use in having scales for justice to hold or courts for the apparent administration of it either. Now I said you must leave out rumors, reports, statements which you have heard before the trial commenced. That is true. I repeat it; but more, you must leave out of your minds absolutely every single thing that the learned gentleman who opened this case, Mr. Moody, said that he was going to prove, unless he has actually proven it. Now I would not like to say that about him in private affairs. I would not be pleased to intimate to you that he would say anything that he was not going to do, because he is the soul of honor. But he speaks for the commonwealth, that is all, and the commonwealth tells him: “You must not say anything but what you are going to do and you must tell them that and that only.” And I shall expect the learned district attorney to withdraw the things that brother Moody said he was going to prove, because he has not proved them. The court room ought not to echo still with the utterances of the gentleman who opened this case, because they tend to create a prejudice against the defendant. Now let us tell you about that so that you will understand it. Mr. Moody said that the government was going to claim and prove that this defendant was preparing a dangerous weapon on August 3, the day before the murder. You heard him say that. I did. He said it. They have not proved it, have they? Was there a thing about it in the evidence? You have heard some discussion that we have had at the bar because, in order that there should be no prejudice, you have been asked to stop. Many of those things which have been offered in good faith have not been proved, because the court has said that they are not proper to be proved in this case. They have nothing to do with it. They will only mislead the jury, and the jury shall not hear them in this case. Whenever another case arises, if these things are pertinent and proper they shall be heard, but not now. No, the commonwealth came with the idea of putting these things before you, I say, with good intention, but the court says, “No, though your intention is good, it is not proper, and we will not complicate this thing. It will create a bias against the prisoner which may divert the course of justice, and that shall not be introduced here: it has no right here though you mean to be right.” Now, there is no proof at all, gentlemen, about any dangerous weapon

having been prepared upon the 3d of August. And to make it more specific, Mr. Moody said in his opening that they would prove that this young woman went out to buy a poison on August 3. You have not heard any such evidence. It is not proved: the court did not allow it to be proved, and it is not in the case. Now you will not go to the jury room with the thought that if it had been allowed you would have considered that it was proven. But it is not allowed: no such evidence came before you, and I shall expect the district attorney, man fashion, to get up and say so, and I think you will, and I shall be disappointed in him if he does not. He will tell you that upon that subject, and that the case is not touched at all. Then he said that they were going to show you that the defendant had contradicted herself under oath about these occurrences. Well, there is another question which went to the court, and the court said: “That is not proper in this case. You cannot show that.” And so there is nothing of the kind. Now, are you not going to sit back there and say, “Well, I rather think Mr. Knowlton and Mr. Moody would not have offered it unless there is something behind it.” That is not the way to try cases. That is not the way you hold this defendant in charge. You might just as well have got your verdict before you started, and said, “Guilty, because she is here.” You might as well say, “We don’t want to hear any evidence.” You do not want to say that you do not care whether you hang her right or wrong,—“give us somebody.” Now, the court sits here to guard you and all of us against any such mistake. That will not do. The court says: “Here, gentlemen, decide this case on the evidence given right here from the witness stand and on nothing else.” When you stand there in the box ready to answer, and somebody says to you, “O, don’t mind what they put in about particular evidence, whether competent or incompetent,” you say, “No, I want my rights. I am here under the protection of the law, and I call upon these twelve men, decent men, under their oaths, to stand by me and see that I am not wronged.” So you will leave those things out, gentlemen. No prussic acid, no preparation of a weapon by this woman, no statement made by her under oath in this trial, or anywhere that you know anything about or have a right to consider—I do not care what you have read. Now, we shall agree in the consideration of this case very largely upon many things. My position in this case, in speaking for the defendant, is not to misrepresent or distort facts, but to take the proofs as they are, put them against each other and find out what is right. This defendant wants nothing but justice, and she desires to have it in the proper

administration of the law. Things that are not in dispute I hope I shall not contest. I hope I shall array before you the facts altogether in an intelligent and clear way, and then ask you to give me your judgment on them by and by, and I just as sincerely trust that I will not, even by a single letter, step over the line of the proof or deal unjustly, even with the commonwealth that is really so dear to us all. Now, let us see if we cannot get at these things in a fair way without prejudice.

Mr. Andrew J. Borden left his house and went down street that morning, Thursday, August 4, about 9:30 o’clock, so that he arrived at the Savings Bank, upon the evidence, about 9:30. He went into several places along the street, not material now to consider, walked back along South Main street toward his house, stopped at a store of his that was being repaired, talked with Shortsleeves and Mr. Mather, and after picking up an old block, which he wrapped up in paper and took home, he started to go to his house. You recollect something was said that it is not material to consider in this connection, but he walked along up toward his house, arriving there, the defendant thinks, about 10:45. It did not vary, probably, more than two, or possibly three minutes from that time. It must have been as much as that because you recollect how Mr. Mather put it, his looking at the clock and the time that Mr. Borden lingered at the store, went upstairs, came down, went out into the middle of the street, went back and talked with Mather and Shortsleeves a minute or two and then went on. It was 10:40, twenty minutes of 11, as he came up to the store. Now he probably consumed two or three or four minutes in doing those things that they have spoken of, and so you may well, perhaps, infer that he reached his house about 10:45. We have learned of several things that he did, that he came into the house, sat down, went upstairs to his room, laid down his little package, and so on, was occupied with a few things that would consume a short space of time, so that we can say that he was murdered somewhere within a given fifteen or twenty minutes of time which may be between five minutes of 11 and ten minutes past 11. I presume that the commonwealth will not differ with me about this. At any rate, if there is a clearer statement of it to be made, the defendant has no objection if it lies within the proofs. That is the way I propose to argue, to take that as a fact. Mrs. Borden had died earlier. On the testimony of the physicians, inspecting the character of the wounds, the condition of the blood, the state of the stomachs and the intestines, they put it from an hour to an hour and

a half earlier than he died. That is probably correct. At any rate, no issue is made about it; and so, if I may be permitted to state it, she would seem to have died between 9:45 o’clock and 10:15, somewhere within that half hour, taking all the evidence into account. That answers the demands of the physicians, and seems to me, if I may be permitted to say it, to accord to the facts. Now you have those tragedies within that short space of time in that place, and it is for us to see whether the defendant is connected with them: whether the defendant alone or the defendant with any confederate, if there is any proof about it, did the deed. I am at a loss to know where there is any evidence about any accomplice or anybody else connected with it at all, and so it is only my inquiry to find out if there is any truth as to this defendant. Of course, I need only suggest to you that until there is some sort of evidence that connects somebody with it, it is not well to assume that she must have had somebody, because you cannot think of anything else. That is not the way to try this case. Now it will be my endeavor in discussion of these questions to be very guarded about giving my opinion of the evidence. I have no right to put in whatever personal weight I may have in my construction of the evidence. That is bad practice, and I should expect, if I get over the line, for the learned court to call me to order, because I trust I know my place.

I have no right to tell you that I believe so and so about this case. I may believe all I want to, but my duty is to keep it inside of me, that is all. And so the district attorney will do the same: carrying his great weight and the strength of his convictions every way into this case, he is not so to demean himself as to tell you that he believes so and so. You do not want our beliefs, we want yours and your judgment. Now there sits the defendant. In yonder city were the crimes. Those crimes were the foulest and the darkest kind. She comes here under this presumption of innocence. It must be overcome absolutely and you must bind her up to the acts before you can say she is guilty. What is the cord that holds her to those terrible criminal acts? Let us see where it is to be found. It is not in the charge that is read in the indictment; it is not in the procedure of the court, but it must be in that chain of circumstances or in that line of direct proof that shall show you that she is tied up to this thing, that she is the one, and that it is not reasonable that anybody else did it or could have done it; that there is no reasonable way of accounting for the things that are proved except that she did it. That is the kind of bond that you must frame in order to hold her or to permit you even to think of holding her.

If a person commits a murder like this and we know it, we have no occasion to inquire for what reason he did it. If he did it then it does not make any difference whether he had any motive or not. He might have done it for pure deviltry, without a motive. He may have done it in insanity, and then the law comes in, in another way, to intervene in his behalf. But if it is proved—proved, I say, not guessed, but proved—that he did it, it is not of the slightest importance whether he had a motive or not. If he did it, that is all there is about it. Now, why is the commonwealth bound in this case to attempt to show a motive for doing? merely this, gentlemen, because they say here are the crimes—there are the crimes, there sits the defendant, you see her over there? Now, in order to hold her responsible for the crimes we have got to bind her up to the crimes. We have no direct evidence that puts her there, we have some circumstances that look as if she might get there: and so in order to bring her to it, we must show a reason why she would do it. What moved her to do it, that is the motive, that is to say the motive in this case, is only to explain the evidence. You get my idea I think. It is only to tell you how you can explain her acts or her words. If you can explain them in a reasonable and honorable way she is entitled to that. But if they cannot explain except that you find a criminal thought running through them, then that motive operates against her. Not to make her commit the crime, but to show you that what is said about it is a reasonable construction, that she was led to do it. That is it, if I understand the case properly, and I state it just as I believe it to be—the court will correct me if I am wrong—and I believe I state it about as the commonwealth attorneys would state it, intentionally I do; and so that motive is only to be inquired into to help out about the circumstances, and I think I can explain it to you—and I am guarding myself against saying anything I ought not to. Suppose the crime were committed in another place, and a man was suspected of it, and he proved that he were in the state of Georgia at the time, at the very instant, and everybody knew it. Well, now, you could not bind him for doing the crime anyway, no matter if he stood down there and swore profanely that if he could only get home he would have killed that man. That would not be anything, because the circumstances do not come up to it, they are not connected. So you do not want his motive to explain his acts. He hasn’t any acts to explain. Now, the government says that Miss Lizzie Borden has some acts to explain, therefore they will find out whether there is anything in her motives that will put a color on it. I think you see

that, and they are inseparable from the conditions. Now, I say that the argument will be only this, that you are to look at the motive to see what effect you shall give to the evidence. It will not do to say that no adequate motive is shown and none is necessary. That is true when the crime is proved. That is true when you have the facts. But that is not true when you are trying to show the motive in order to explain the facts. Now there is absolutely (and I think the commonwealth will say it) no direct evidence against Miss Borden, the defendant. You know what I mean. Nobody saw or heard anything or experienced anything that connects her with the tragedies. No weapon whatever, and no knowledge of the use of one, as to her, has been shown. You know if you had found her with some weapon of that kind in her control, or in her room, or with her belongings, that would be direct evidence. But there is nothing of that kind. It is not claimed. It is not shown that she ever used an implement of the character that must have produced these murders. It is not shown that she ever touched one, or knew of one, or bought one, or had one. In fact, the evidence is that she did not know where the ordinary things in the house of that kind were.

And the murders did not tell any tales on her either. There was no blood on her, and blood speaks out, although it is voiceless; it speaks out against the criminal. Not a spot on her from her hair to her feet, on her dress or person anywhere. Think of it. Think of it for an instant. Yes, there was one drop of blood on the white skirt as big as the head of the smallest pin, says Prof. Wood. Less than a sixteenth of an inch in diameter; and that is every particle of blood that was found upon her clothing. And that was not where you could expect it to be; not in the front of the skirt that must, if she had it on and had done these foul deeds, have first come in contact, but around back down toward the bottom near the placket, as I believe the women call it, out of the way. I do not know but the government are going to say that she turned her skirt round hind side before, before she began, in order to get at it in a practical way. I don’t know what they are going to say yet. I shall have occasion to speak of that by and by. But Prof. Wood does not claim now—I don’t know as there is a Fall River policeman, from the top down, that claims now—that that little fly speck, as it were, of blood tells any tale here. I forbear to allude to what is proved in this case—Miss Borden’s illness, monthly illness, at that time—and to tell you or remind you that Prof. Wood said he would not undertake to say that that blood was not the menstrual blood. You know the facts.