The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

by Edwin H. Porter

attending to her work. Ironing handkerchiefs, going up and down stairs, going down to the cellar, to the closet. You say these things are not all proved? No, but I am taking you into the house just as I would go into the house, for instance, and say, what are your wives doing now? Well, doing the ordinary work around the house, getting dinner. Well, where do they go? Undoubtedly they are going down stairs for potatoes, going out into the kitchen, to the sink room, here and there. You can see the whole thing. It is photographed in your mind. It is just the same there. She was ironing, she was in the dining room. Bridget says she don’t know but she had the dining room door shut to keep the heat out, and she would have occasion to go down cellar for reasons stated. Might she have gone into the parlor for anything? There was a clock there. There are various things you might think about. Now, suppose the assassin came there, and I have shown you he could without question, the house was all open on the north side, and suppose he came there and passed through. Suppose Lizzie was upstairs, suppose she were downstairs in the cellar. He passed through. Where could he go? Plenty of places. He could go upstairs into the spare room, right up the front stairs, and go in there; he could go into that hall closet where you opened it and looked in, and where two men can go in and stand; he could go into the sitting room closet; he could go into the pantry there in the kitchen; you saw that. He could go into various places. He could go into just such places in that house as all these thieves run into if they can find a door open. So it was easy enough for a man to do that. It was easy enough for him to go up into that bed chamber and secrete himself. Now, what is going to be done? He is there for the murder; not to murder Mrs. Borden, but to murder Mr. Borden. And he is confronted and surprised by the former. And he knows—possibly he is somebody that she knew—you do not know, she cannot tell us—somebody that would be recognized and identified, and he must strike her down; and his purpose to kill Mr. Borden would not stop at the intervention of another person, and Lizzie and Bridget and Mrs. Borden, any or all of them, would be slaughtered if they came in that fellow’s way.

Now, at that time in the morning, with the opportunity to go in there and go up into all the house, and when he went in there and had murdered Mrs. Borden in that front chamber, Lizzie could pass up and down stairs, and could go to her room, and know nothing about it, see nothing about it, because of course he did not have the door open and disclose himself. She could pass up and down stairs.

There is no trouble about that, closed door or open door. And when he had done his work, and Mr. Borden had come in, as he could hear him, he made ready then to come down at the first opportunity, and when he came down he would very naturally leave the door open, and so they found it afterward, the door, I mean, to the spare chamber. He could come down, and he was right at the scene ready. Bridget was outdoors, Lizzie outdoors, on all the evidence, which you certainly believe. And then he could do his work quickly and securely, and pass out the same door, if you please, that he came in at, the side door. Now, that is not all. It is well enough to see that a person could come in at the front door. The bolt slid back in the morning, the latch locked, a man can open that door, they all say, by giving it a pressure and trying to come in. And when he gets in what does he do? He doesn’t want to be surprised. He locks the door himself, he takes care of himself, and then when Mr. Borden comes it is slid back by Bridget and left in that way. It is easy to see all these things. You can see then how everything in this idea of exclusive opportunity falls to the ground, because there was no exclusive opportunity.

Now, it is not for us to maintain a theory. It is for the government to prove theirs. You may adopt a theory just as well as I. You may find other theories, as I have no doubt you will as you look at this evidence. You will see other ways in which persons could enter that house by which the exclusive opportunity theory is overturned. It is not a matter for you to sit down in the jury room and criticise the theory that I have advanced to you, because you are going to sit down in the jury room and criticise the theory that the government advances, and you will see that it is vulnerable, and when you see that a person can take one of those theories as well as another, you will hear from the court that you cannot convict upon such evidence, because all the essential facts must be in harmony with this charge against the prisoner, and must not be in harmony with any other theory or any other reasonable explanation. Now, there are two or three things which in the hurry of speaking this morning—perhaps you thought I had not hurried, but speaking rapidly, they were inadvertently passed by—little things, but I want to speak of them before I pass on. Miss Lizzie was ironing downstairs, and there cannot be any question about that. Bridget says so and you recollect the testimony of Miss Russell and Mrs. Holmes, that that morning when they were clearing up they found the handkerchiefs that she had ironed in part, and the sprinkled ones were

carried upstairs and put away separately by themselves, a dozen or more. You see that it is genuine; it is not a fiction. It is really one of those little things that help to establish the truth. I must also in this connection speak of Mr. Medley’s testimony, because the commonwealth relied upon Mr. Medley to make the examination, as he said, of the dust in the barn, to show you that Miss Lizzie could not have walked on the upper floor. Now, if you could be sure of that there would be some test in it. If you did not see a track through freshly fallen snow you would say no person had passed there. It would be a little more doubtful about walking on a floor, but when you find a detective looking after this thing, you begin to suspect that he may be in error, and when you find as you do by the testimony, a half a dozen or more people up there in that barn walking around before Mr. Medley got there at all, as it was proved upon the testimony there had been when he got there, and when he met Mr. Fleet and where he met him, between the gateway and the back steps, and then went directly into the house, Sawyer being at the door, you see how unreliable his testimony is. Well, then, you have the testimony of Mr. Clarkson and you have that of Mr. Manning and Mr. Stevens and the two boys that called themselves “Me and Brown,” Barlowe and Brown. Now, those boys, like all boys, just the same as you and I when we were boys, wanted to go upstairs, to look at things about there and stay as long as they could, and it appears they went there and were out in that barn before Mr. Medley came there. He went into the house and talked with Miss Lizzie and was some minutes in the house before he went to the barn. So when he got there there had been people all about there, and those people give their testimony in such a way as to carry the conviction of truth in their statement, so that you find them up there and walking around in the very place where Mr. Medley went to look, and it shows you that Mr. Medley must have been in error. His detection was not so sure as he thought. He was mistaken about it, consequently while he may have honestly meant what he said, I do not call that in question for the time being, but I want to say that that is not anything which you can depend upon under these circumstances, and when you find him confronted with three or four other witnesses, John Donnelly and the boys and Clarkson, there can be no question that Mr. Medley is mistaken, so that we have in addition to the positive proof that Miss Lizzie went to the barn, to which I called your attention this morning, the affirmation of these other witnesses that they were there, and Mr. Medley finds nobody to support him.

Why, do you not all think with me of what a blessed Providence it was that interfered with that girl, so that as she walked about that house, passing from the sitting room into the dining room and hall, she did not step on some of the blood and have it on her shoes? Anybody else, according to the theory of the government, could have stepped on that blood and have bloody shoes, but if Lizzie had walked there just the same as any other person innocently, and there had been so much as a pin head stain upon one of her shoes, it would have led her to the severest penalty on their theory. See within what close limitation we walk in commonest things and see how close we come to precipitate of danger when we find any part in the wrong. Why, upon the theory of the government—no, it isn’t the theory of the government, for I really do not know what it is, but the handleless hatchet down there in the box, the theory being for the time, if it is a theory and is indulged, that she ran down and put that through a course of washing, scraping with ashes, etc., and threw it up in the box after breaking the handle off, as claimed, and then got rid of the handle; they say that they found it there, and put it right up into the box to which she directed Bridget to go with the officers and find the hatchets and axes. Why gentlemen, she is not a lunatic or an idiot. She is a great colossal contriver of wrong and murder, shrewd, discriminating, far-seeing, with premeditated malice aforethought, and planned all this thing. Well, she did not plan so foolishly as that. She would not send officers to find the very thing and in the very place where she had put it. She burned no clothing that day. She put none away. They tell us nothing about that with all the vigilance of their searches, and you know that the officers say that when they went there first, and looked in that box down cellar, they took out the two smaller hatchets that were on top. Now, whatever the theory, or any theory of the government in regard to that hatchet, you have got to assume she was down there and washed it up and got it all clean beyond what science can do, and got the blood out of it, and then broke off the handle, and went herself and took out the other two hatchets so as to get this old one underneath, and then she had it all covered with ashes, too. And when they found it that Thursday afternoon it was all dry and covered with dust like the other. They undertake to tell you it was coarser dust. Just see into what a labyrinth of impossibilities and improbabilities they try to lead this woman. Then she had to run upstairs, run up to her own room and make a change, run down cellar and take care of herself, and take care of the hatchets, upon their theory, run back

again and get up there and call Bridget—all in that short space of time. I said it was morally and physically impossible. You may find her not guilty, if that be your judgment, for two reasons. One because you know that it has not been proven. And the court will tell you that if, when you reach that point in your decision, you are not satisfied and convinced as reasonable men, beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what your suspicions may be and what you may think about it otherwise, you have but one duty to perform and one that is safe to you to render in this case.

You may have heretofore thought things looked dark for her. You may have said, “If they can come into the court and show all the things I have seen in the newspapers, gossip and rumor and report, I might feel that I ought to, but now that I find the government’s case only the thing that it is, insufficient, weak, contradictory, critical, lame, why, I have nothing else to do in my conscience but to say to Massachusetts, we have this woman in charge, you have not proved it against her, we still keep charge of her, and we say to you, you have not proven this against her and she is not guilty.” But there is another ground. If, when you see through this evidence, you are satisfied again, convinced—which is more—you are convinced affirmatively that the woman is innocent, that you are entitled to say, “Not guilty,” and you are bound so to speak. It is rare that the defendant goes so far as to prove her innocence. It is not a task that is set before her. But I dare to speak to you upon that branch in this case with full confidence. Look at it for a period. Take the facts as they are, and I would not misrepresent or belittle any of them. I have not knowingly omitted any of them, for a purpose of benefit to the defendant. Take them as they are. What is there to prove to you absolutely, as sensible men, the innocence of this defendant? You go and search some other man’s house and let me alone. Search somebody else, I think he had some trouble with my father: that would be the policy of such a defendant. What was her conduct? Uniformly, openly frank every time, shutting all the doors against any person that might be put under this foul suspicion. Why, you say, shutting them against herself. Yes, it was the impulse, the outcome of an honest woman. Were she a villain and a rascal, she would have done as villains and rascals do. There was her uncle, John Morse, suspected as you heard, followed up, inquired about, and she is asked and she said, no, he did not do it. He went away from the house this morning at nine o’clock. Some one said Bridget did it. Now there

were but two persons around that house as we now find out, so far as we can locate anybody, and the busy finger was pointed at Bridget Sullivan—Bridget Sullivan, only an Irish girl, working in the family, working for her weekly pay, been faithful to them, been there two years and nine months, lived happily and peacefully with them and they have had no trouble, and Lizzie spoke out right determinedly, as you know, and promptly: Why, Bridget did not do it. Then somebody said: Why, the Portuguese on the farm. No, says Lizzie, he is not a Portuguese; he is a Swede, and my father has not any men that ever worked for him that would do that to him. Not Alfred Johnson that worked for them, not Mr. Eddy, another farmer that worked for them, no assistant—I cannot believe it of any of them.