The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

by Edwin H. Porter

EX-GOVERNOR ROBINSON.

Then he said that he had searched for it, Dr. Bowen; it is Miss Russell telling it, and at any rate she says what was said about that was said in the presence of Lizzie and “the same person said she must have burned it?” “I think I answered that question.” That is Miss Russell. Well now you get nothing from the officers, merely that Mr. Fleet learned from Miss Lizzie that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out. Officer Wilson says the same thing, that she said she had received a note and that she thought she had gone out. That was after the murder, and she said that Mrs. Borden had a note and she thought she had gone out, that is during the forenoon she thought she had gone out. Dr. Dolan says the same thing, so that when you come to consider it you see that the evidence in regard to the note comes from what was told at the very first. If you believe that Mrs. Borden told both Lizzie and Bridget about the note it all looks plain. And why should it not? They were all in the family there together, and she receives a note to go out, and she did have the note, or else they both tell something that Mrs. Borden told that was not true, and we are not going to believe that. Taking the evidence that comes from the living and that drops from the lips of

the dead, you must find that Mrs. Borden did have the note and that she told the two women about it and hurried off, as they thought, and did not tell Bridget or either one of them where she was going. It was not of any great account probably. She got a note to go out, and see a woman, and did go out, as far as we learn to the contrary. It was a natural and ordinary thing, and the note was thrown away and tossed into the fire. It was not a bank note to be kept, but a little scrap of paper probably indicating what was wanted. Now, a person may say “Where is the note?” Well, we would be very glad to see it, very glad. They looked after it and they could not find it. The construction of Miss Russell was that she had burned it up. Very likely that was it. They say that nobody has come forward to say that she has sent it. That is true. You will find men now, perhaps living in this county, who do not know that this trial is going on. They do not know anything about it, don’t pay much attention to it, they are about their own business: do not consider it of any consequence. And after a lawsuit, it very often happens in every court room that some one will come forward and say, “Well, if I had really known that that question was in dispute, I could have told you all about it.” Bless his dear heart, why didn’t he come out of the cellar so we could see him? Well, sometimes people don’t want to have anything to do with it. They don’t want to get into the court room, even if a life is in danger—women especially; they have a dread of all sorts of things. The note may have been a part of the scheme in regard to Mrs. Borden. It may have got there through foul means and with a criminal purpose. We don’t know anything about it. But that a note came there on this evidence you cannot question. That Lizzie lied about it is a wrongful aspersion, born out of the ignorance of the facts as they were to be developed in this case, not with a purpose to wrong her but mis-stating the evidence as we all do when we do not know quite what is coming, really anticipating something that is not proven. So I say that it is not true that Lizzie told a lie about it. If she did Bridget did the same. I would not say that for a minute. There is nothing to connect Bridget with this transaction. See how quickly you would suspect anybody because you get them under pressure. Now look at it. Suppose that Bridget were suspected of this crime, and Mrs. Churchill came forward and told that Bridget said these words that I read, how quick some people would be to say, “O, Bridget!” “She did it. She did it because she told a lie about that note.” Do you see it? It is plain, it is a demonstration. Now I dismiss it with the remark that nobody thinks

that Bridget Sullivan had anything to do with this crime at all. Lizzie does not think so, because she has said so openly. Now she told about her visit out to the barn they say. She told the officers that she went out to the barn; went out in the yard, some twenty or thirty minutes. Now remember that we get this information in regard to the time from the police officers. The others tell us that she said she went to the yard and the barn. It takes assistant marshal Fleet here to tell us about the thirty minutes. You see him. You see the set of that moustache and the firmness of those lips and the distinction he wrought in the court room telling that story.

And there he was, up in this young woman’s room in the afternoon, attended with some other officers, plying her with all sorts of questions in a pretty direct and peremptory way, saying to her: “You said thirty minutes, and now you say twenty minutes: which way will you have it?” Is that the way for an officer of the law to deal with a woman in her own house? What would you do with a man—I don’t care if he had blue on him—that got into your house and was talking to your wife or daughter in that way? You would do just what Marshal Hilliard did with Caldwell, get him out. That is the way to do. Recollect that this was after the tragedies, this was when the terrible pall was over that house and the neighborhood, and an officer should be pretty careful. Recollect that the air was full of policemen at that time; they were running all over that house, putting her to every possible strain, asking her in her loneliness, her absence from any friend, her sister gone—following her up in this way, insinuating in that way and talking to her as if she were a liar. Well I can tell the truth and behave pretty well, if a man treats me decently, but I want to get him out if he talks to me as a liar to begin with. Now she told about her visit to the barn, and they undertake to tell you that she did not go out to the barn. Now let us see about it. They say that it’s another lie. We have got so we know what the small words in the English language mean in the idea of the commonwealth. We can get rid of three letters pretty quick, but you cannot dispose of the facts. Now, let’s see about that. Did she go to the yard or the barn? She told them she did, and they bring it in here, and they say she could not have gone to the yard or the barn. Now let us see whether she did or not. If she did not go out to the yard or the barn then she was there upon her own showing at the time when the murder of her father was committed. You see that. That will end the case if you see it. Now, Bridget Sullivan said: “I went right over to Dr. Bowen’s and when I came back I

asked her, ‘Miss Lizzie, where was you?’ I says ‘Didn’t I leave the screen door hooked?’ She says, ‘I was out in the back yard and heard a groan and came in and the screen door was open.’”

I am going to talk about going to the barn, and by and by talk about the groan—take them separately. Now, she says that she went into the yard. You understand? What did they have in the yard? Pear trees. That is the evidence, and the evidence that in the partially digested contents of the stomachs pear skins were found. Bridget says Mr. Borden had been out and had brought in a basket of pears and they had these in abundance. You saw the trees; the neighbors saw the trees; Patrick McGowan saw them and got in one of them and helped himself. We know that there is no lie about it. This was an August morning, and it appeared that before this time Lizzie had been ironing, had been around the kitchen trying to iron some handkerchiefs. No doubt about that. She had been in and out about her work. She tells us she has been out in the yard. That was true, we will say, upon that statement. Now, Dr. Bowen said, “where have you been?” Her reply was, “in the barn, looking for some irons,” or “iron.” Both can be reasonably true, can’t they? She could not get into the barn unless she went into the yard, naturally, and that she should stop there by the trees five or ten minutes is perfectly consistent. Does that look unreasonable? Do you not see families out in the yard, strolling about in your own yards, stopping under the trees, sitting under the trees, especially when they have a right to have a little leisure. Mrs. Churchill says, “I stepped inside the screen door, and she was sitting on the second stair, at the right of the door. I put my right hand on her arm, and said, ‘O Lizzie.’ I then said: ‘Where is your father?’ She said, ‘In the sitting room,’ and I said, ‘Where were you when it happened?’ and said she, ‘I went to the barn to get a piece of iron.’” Miss Russell says, “she told about going to the barn, she says she went to the barn, she told us when she came in she saw her father, and he was killed.” “Did she say anything about why she went to the barn?” “Not until I asked her.” “State what you asked her and what she replied?” “I said ‘What did you go to the barn for, Lizzie?’ and she said, ‘I went to get a piece of tin or iron to fix my screen.’” “Did she refer to any screen in particular, or simply ’my screen?’” “My screen.”

Now, Mr. Fleet told us that she went into the dining room, she said that her father lay down and that she went out into the barn: and he brings in the half-hour—he is the only one that does. And then he goes there and talks to her about it, as to whether she means a

half-hour or twenty minutes. Now just listen to this man. Recollect when this was, Thursday afternoon. Recollect he is the same man that said “Dr Bowen was holding the door on him—holding the fort.” Think of it. And Mrs. Holmes and Dr. Bowen and Miss Russell tell you, and Wilson, the officer who went with him, comes right up here and says there was not the slightest resistance, that he knocked at the door, and just as soon as Dr. Bowen could ask them if they were ready to have the officers come in, and I am sure that was perfectly proper—they were admitted without any trouble. Now this man Fleet was troubled, and he was ascent for a job. He was ferreting out a crime. He had a theory. He was a detective. And so he says, “You said this morning you were up in the barn for half an hour. Will you say that now?” I think the man impertinent. I beg your pardon, the defendant thinks he was: thinks he was impertinent. She said, “I do not say half an hour; I say twenty minutes to half an hour.” “Well, we will call it twenty minutes then.” Much obliged to him. He was ready to call it twenty minutes, was he? What a favor that was; now Lizzie has some sense of her own, and she says, “I say from twenty minutes to half an hour, sir?” He had not awed her into silence. She still breathed although he was there. Think about a woman saying something, ordering something in the presence of a man who talks that way to her, under such circumstances. Mr. Harrington states that she said to him that she was there about twenty minutes. He asks her whether she would not have heard the opening or closing of the door. Why not? “You were but a short distance away, and you would have heard the noise if any was made.” But Bridget said she did not hear the screen door shut at all and she said she would not hear it in her room, and never heard it when it shut unless somebody slammed it or was careless about it. You remember that.