Lizzie Borden: Did She Get Away With Murder?

[00:00:00] Adam Cox: Fall River Massachusetts 18 19 2. A man and his wife are dead in their own home. C to death In broad daylight,

[00:00:11] Kyle Risi: did no one in the house hear anything?

[00:00:13] Adam Cox: No scream, no struggle, no strangers seem coming or going. Just a woman's voice calling from the bottom of the stairs. Come quick. Father's dead. Someone has killed him.

The daughter of the house, respectable churchgoing. Sunday school teacher is put on trial for murdering her own parents. And in a courtroom in 1893, the prosecution does something almost nobody expects. They bring the actual skulls into court. And Lizzie Borden faints. What, is that a genuine reaction or is it the most well time performance in American legal history?

[00:00:58] Kyle Risi: She's fake. Who faints these days?

[00:01:28] Adam Cox: Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:38] Kyle Risi: We explore strange true stories from the world's of true crime, dark histories, scandals, mysteries, and remarkable people.

[00:01:45] Adam Cox: I'm Adam Cox, your ringmaster for this episode.

[00:01:48] Kyle Risi: And I'm Kyle Receipt, your compendium Lost property attendant for this week. I dunno if we've had a lost property attendant before. I

[00:01:55] Adam Cox: feel like we have. It's only a matter of time that we start going back recirculating.

[00:01:59] Kyle Risi: Well, in this instance, in this imaginary world of ours, Uhhuh, we, we had to sack the lost property attendant.

[00:02:06] Adam Cox: Wasn't that you?

[00:02:07] Kyle Risi: Probably. Um, but then they've had to rehire for the role. Oh. Because of like some of the crazy things that have happened. Like just last year, someone turned in a one gallon spit bucket after we were touring the Tennessee Bluegrass Region. Oh, gross. In the Outback. And the Fire breather mistook it for paraffin.

And so he now lives in a perpetual state where his gag reflex is just constantly engaged. And so yeah, circus performances are, are not great.

[00:02:35] Adam Cox: So you are back to make sure it doesn't happen again.

[00:02:38] Kyle Risi: Oh, Adam, the stories I could tell you, I once we had a Victorian woman who left her prosthetic leg behind the jugular thought would be a good idea to, uh, use that as a juggling baton until she discovered her leg was gone.

She just took it off to kind of relax a bit. You know, she's at the circus

[00:02:54] Adam Cox: like taking off your bra,

[00:02:55] Kyle Risi: taking off your bra. Just it's that feeling at the end of the day when you take off your shoes and you take off your bra. Same thing. And then she had to like hop onto stage to get her her prosthetic leg back.

It's not good for pr. I'm saving lives. Thank,

[00:03:06] Adam Cox: thank God you are here. So Kyle, you know that our Patreon members get all sorts of lovely things just for joining. There's early episodes, our fullback catalogue and an exclusive episode each month. There's a lot going on.

[00:03:20] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I didn't know any of that,

[00:03:22] Adam Cox: but let's face it, none of them are really here for that because secretly they just want our compendium key chains.

[00:03:28] Kyle Risi: The world famous crotch angler.

[00:03:30] Adam Cox: Exactly. It's big, it's bold, it's beautiful, and it is far too large to serve any practical purpose as a key chain. And yet that's the reason why people become certified freak and big top members so they can get their hands on one.

[00:03:43] Kyle Risi: That's true. And it's not called Big Top anymore.

[00:03:45] Adam Cox: Oh,

[00:03:45] Kyle Risi: we've graduated it now.

[00:03:46] Adam Cox: What is it?

[00:03:47] Kyle Risi: The ringmasters.

[00:03:48] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[00:03:49] Kyle Risi: The fellow little minion ringmasters for me.

[00:03:52] Adam Cox: Okay. That puts us out of a job.

[00:03:55] Kyle Risi: We've gotta go on holiday sometime. So basically what you're saying is this is a, a pitch to get people to sign up, basically dangling carrot in front of their face.

[00:04:01] Adam Cox: Get your crotch dangler.

[00:04:03] Kyle Risi: Why would they want that now? Now that they get their free episodes every month, this is what they've wanted since the very beginning.

[00:04:08] Adam Cox: They still need a crotch dangler for, for modesty. Okay. So enough of the housekeeping because Kyle, today on the compendium, we're diving into an assembly of family money, a house full of locked doors, and one of the most argued over double murders in American history.

[00:04:25] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Sounds like every other episode we've ever done.

[00:04:31] Adam Cox: Yeah, probably. So no ideas about,

[00:04:35] Kyle Risi: no. I think you're gonna need to tell me a bit more. I've had a taste of my own medicine and it is bitter, so I have no idea what you're going on about.

[00:04:44] Adam Cox: It's quite a big one, to be honest, and I think we've had it requested before and now feels like the perfect time to cover this

[00:04:50] Kyle Risi: story.

Oh, let guess as a documentary coming out that coincides with exactly the story. Guilty.

[00:04:58] Adam Cox: Okay, so you may know this playground song. He goes, Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 wax. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.

[00:05:11] Kyle Risi: She's badass one. I've never heard that.

[00:05:14] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:05:15] Kyle Risi: Never have you.

[00:05:16] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:05:17] Kyle Risi: Are you lying?

[00:05:17] Adam Cox: No, I've definitely heard this before. There's nothing like a song about murder on the playground, right?

[00:05:23] Kyle Risi: Do you know what? The only song about murder that I remember from school was The one from The Simpsons. It goes, um, glory. Glory. Hallelujah. My teacher hit me with a ruler. I hid behind the door with an AK 44.

I shot her in the belly and she wiggled like jelly. I went to her through and instead of throwing flowers, I threw a hand grenade. The bomb went, boom. My teacher went zoom into a hole as black as coal. I saw her go to heaven with an AK 47. Clap, clap, clap, clap. That was, that's, that's the, as close to murder in terms of childhood, playground songs that I remember.

[00:06:04] Adam Cox: That's, um, worrying.

[00:06:05] Kyle Risi: That was something, wasn't it?

[00:06:06] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:06:07] Kyle Risi: I can't believe I remembered it after all these years.

[00:06:09] Adam Cox: That's nice that we've made this episode all about you.

[00:06:11] Kyle Risi: Yes. But I, yeah. To get to the point, I've never heard of this.

[00:06:14] Adam Cox: I said who we're covering today, right in the song, Lizzie Borden.

[00:06:16] Kyle Risi: Lizzie Borden.

It sounds like Billy, the kid vibes Western American kind of tone of the century. How close am I?

[00:06:24] Adam Cox: I mean, you're like, you're fishing in a barrel.

[00:06:26] Kyle Risi: Okay. I don't like what's happening here.

[00:06:30] Adam Cox: Okay. So I'll give you a bit of a, a summary. So it's a story that carries a lot of drama. Technically, the nursery song isn't factually correct.

[00:06:39] Kyle Risi: No. 'cause you've gotta make it rhyme, right?

[00:06:41] Adam Cox: Yeah. So there's a lot of drama in the court case and during the trial. So the main event occurred on the 4th of August, 1892 in a city called Fall River, Massachusetts. There's a house on Second Street, and it's nothing grand, nothing. You'd look at twice. It's pretty ordinary, essentially.

But inside a woman is laying face down on a guest room floor. And downstairs a man is lying on a sofa with no face left to speak on. Oh

[00:07:06] Kyle Risi: shit.

[00:07:07] Adam Cox: Uhhuh. Two people killed in broad daylight in their own home. And whilst at least two other women were somewhere in that house the entire time, nobody heard a thing.

[00:07:17] Kyle Risi: No one heard someone's face getting smacked off. Wow.

[00:07:20] Adam Cox: So there's no scream. There's no struggle. There's no stranger scene come or going. Just the daughters cry after discovering her father was dead. So we have a double murder case and no real clues. And for over 130 years people have been asking exactly, well, did she do it?

Did Lizzy do it? Who killed her parents and the daughter of the house. Lizzie Borden was a respectable churchgoing Sunday school teacher and was put on trial for hacking two people to death with a hatchet. But it's more than just a story of a double murder. It's also what happens when a family spends 30 years teaching

[00:07:56] Kyle Risi: together.

[00:08:00] Adam Cox: Yeah. Didn't ship, didn't ship her off. You

[00:08:02] Kyle Risi: need to move the fuck out, Lizzie.

[00:08:04] Adam Cox: But actually, it's about spending 30 years teaching on woman that her only value is staying quiet, staying put, and waiting for money that never comes.

[00:08:12] Kyle Risi: I mean, that's gonna make you murderous as well.

[00:08:15] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:08:15] Kyle Risi: So I just have to ask, was Lizzie Borden one of the people in their house who says that she heard nothing?

[00:08:20] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:21] Kyle Risi: And so basically they're like, how could you not hear your dad's face getting smacked off?

[00:08:24] Adam Cox: Well, she wasn't the only person in the

[00:08:26] Kyle Risi: house. Yeah, you did say there was someone else. Who was the other one?

[00:08:28] Adam Cox: Well, let me tell you, Kyle.

[00:08:30] Kyle Risi: Okay, let's do this.

[00:08:31] Adam Cox: So, to understand the Borden family, we've got to go back a little further than 1892.

In fact, the Borden family had been in Fall River, Massachusetts since the 16 hundreds, and by the 18 hundreds, they weren't just old money in the town. They basically were the town, the family owned Mills, banks and property. And basically, if there was money being made in Fall River, there's a good chance the Borden's name was connected to it.

[00:08:57] Kyle Risi: I see. So there, there are big shots in this little town.

[00:09:00] Adam Cox: Yeah. And it's the kind of place where a small number of old families held a genuinely enormous amount of power over everyone else's daily life in that city. And the Borden's were near the top of that pile. Well, some of the Borden's were because that generational wealth didn't trickle down to Lizzy's father, Andrew Jackson Borden.

Oh. Now he, he was born in 1822 and his father before him was not wealthy, whereas other branches of the Borden family were living it up. But Andrew was pretty successful. He grew up and started making money of his own first in the furniture trade and then in property. And by the time he died, his estate was worth over $300,000, which is about $10 million today.

[00:09:42] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:42] Adam Cox: So he's a self-made man. Sure. Even though his family or his cousins or whatever are rich.

[00:09:47] Kyle Risi: And his dad was probably sitting there going, do not know son of mine is gonna get my money. He's gonna have to earn it all himself. And he did essentially,

[00:09:53] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:09:54] Kyle Risi: $300,000 at that time.

[00:09:56] Adam Cox: $10 million in today's money.

[00:09:58] Kyle Risi: That's a, that's a serious amount of money, right?

[00:10:00] Adam Cox: Not too shabby.

[00:10:01] Kyle Risi: No.

[00:10:02] Adam Cox: Now he was a director of several textile mills, a president of a local bank, and like I said, a self-made entrepreneur that didn't really rely on any handouts. But Andrew Borden did not like spending money. At all?

[00:10:14] Kyle Risi: Well, no. If you come from nothing, you kinda get used to not spending it.

[00:10:17] Adam Cox: Well, yeah. Even with the equivalent of $10 million to his name, he ran his household like some kind of average Joe. His home didn't even have indoor plumbing in a neighbourhood where all his neighbours basically did. So he was not keeping up with the Joneses.

[00:10:31] Kyle Risi: And I'm getting the feeling that this br some resentment in little murderous Lizzie, if she did it,

[00:10:38] Adam Cox: um, if she did it.

So yeah, you'd be spot on there. 'cause this is a man worth a fortune. But he was choosing to live a life like he didn't have the money. And so the question is why? And that's a question that follows his family around for years to come. Now in 1845, Andrew marries a woman called Sarah Anthony Moss. Now by all accounts, they were a good match.

Their first daughter, Emma, was born in 1851 and five years later they had a second daughter, Alice, who you may not have heard of, even though you dunno the story at all. But others that do know the story might not know that there was this middle child essentially. But she died just before she turned two years old.

Oh

[00:11:16] Kyle Risi: wow.

[00:11:16] Adam Cox: Of hydrocephalus, which is a buildup of fluid around the brain. And so that hit the family very hard and child mortality in the 18 hundreds was not that great.

[00:11:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah, not good.

[00:11:26] Adam Cox: And two years after Alice had died, Sarah gave birth again. And this time the baby lived, and her name was Lizzie. She was born in July, 1860, but Andrew had desperately wanted a son to carry on the born name and when he got another daughter, instead it said he was disappointed enough that he insisted she be given his own name as her middle name.

[00:11:48] Kyle Risi: Okay. So what's her full name then?

[00:11:50] Adam Cox: Lizzie. Andrew Borden.

[00:11:52] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's not great. It's a bit like Chandler from Friends where his middle name is Muriel.

[00:11:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's not the, it's

[00:11:57] Kyle Risi: a family name.

[00:11:57] Adam Cox: It's not the prettiest of names. I, Andrew, if you're if a lady. But yeah, for him, he wanted his family name to live on somehow.

[00:12:04] Kyle Risi: Why don't you just call her like Andrea?

[00:12:06] Adam Cox: That's not his name, isn't it?

[00:12:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but it's close to, it's a girl version of his name.

[00:12:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. But I guess also imagine growing up that your father was disappointed you weren't a boy, and that's kind of stamped on your name forever, that you have to have this as your name.

[00:12:20] Kyle Risi: That is a shame. But at the same time, like it feels like, is he trying, is there a practical purpose behind it? Is he going to send her out to do business with the big boys and she's gonna sign all the paperwork as like Andrew Borden and then she's gonna show up and be like, you got breasts. Do you know what I mean?

Who you fooling?

[00:12:38] Adam Cox: Yeah. It probably wasn't that uncommon. I imagine it happened to others as well. Like

[00:12:42] Kyle Risi: Chandler.

[00:12:43] Adam Cox: Like Chandler. Yeah. But I guess it just doesn't give you that warm, fuzzy feeling, and I think it's a bit of a telltale sign of how Lizzie would perhaps go on to be treated by her father.

[00:12:52] Kyle Risi: Sure.

Okay.

[00:12:53] Adam Cox: At nine years old, Emma at least was thrilled to have a baby sister. She basically became a second mother to Lizzie from day one, which turns out to matter a lot because three years later in 1863, their actual mother Sarah dies at the age of 40. Now she had been suffering from what was called uterine congestion, and doctors had been dosing her up with, laden him to manage the pain, which is essentially heroin dissolved in alcohol.

Before Sarah had died, she asked Emma to look after Lizzie, which is interesting. Not that adult father, Emma, this 12-year-old, which again, I think is a bit of a telltale side, that the way that Andrew was perhaps treating his daughters

[00:13:33] Kyle Risi: mm,

[00:13:34] Adam Cox: you know, wasn't the way to raise a girl.

[00:13:36] Kyle Risi: It's also the 18 hundreds as well, very much the gender roles are firmly in place.

She's got a teenage daughter. It's only natural to put the burden of responsibility to take care of the younger kids onto the young girl.

[00:13:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. But with that kind of money, you could get a nanny.

[00:13:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. I'm so intrigued by this. I keep forgetting that he's not spending this damn money.

[00:13:56] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. But then, I dunno actually how wealthy he was at that point versus when he died.

So obviously there's a good 30, 40 years he might still be building wealth.

[00:14:03] Kyle Risi: Sure. Okay. He's on the way up the ladder.

[00:14:06] Adam Cox: It was only two years after Sarah's death that Andrew remarried and his new wife was a woman called Abby Defe Grey.

[00:14:12] Kyle Risi: She missed new boobs.

[00:14:14] Adam Cox: She was Miss New Boobs. Now 14-year-old, Emma's obviously still grieving and wasn't that thrilled that she's got a new mother.

And it seems Abby never really got the chance to be called Mother by either girl. As the years went on, both daughters stopped even calling her that they just, they referred to her as Mrs. Borden. Oh,

[00:14:33] Kyle Risi: okay. I I was hoping for something a bit more salacious.

[00:14:35] Adam Cox: No, they just,

[00:14:36] Kyle Risi: the bitch.

[00:14:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. Um, maybe they did behind closed doors, but yeah, to her face is just Mrs.

Borden.

[00:14:41] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:14:42] Adam Cox: So pretty cold, quite deliberate. And a decision made that was maintained for decades.

[00:14:46] Kyle Risi: It's so bizarre that like when you have an uppity family or you come from good stalk, the, the most aggressive thing that you can do to someone is to be like super polite to them and they're like, Ooh, she, she's harsh.

You know what I mean? Yes. Mrs. Borden,

[00:15:02] Adam Cox: oh, oh God, she's called me by my full name. Oh

[00:15:04] Kyle Risi: my. Yeah.

[00:15:05] Adam Cox: Now it's worth saying upfront whether Abby actually married Andrew for his money or, um, it's not something we can prove either way. I think it's just speculation that followed her around the time. But I think she'd be in for a bit of a shock because Andrew didn't like to spend money, so it must have been love.

[00:15:22] Kyle Risi: But then at the same time, maybe she didn't know what she was getting into and then bam, she's married.

[00:15:27] Adam Cox: That is true. Now, Abby took on most of the domestic work around the house, alongside the one live-in servant, a young Irish immigrant called Bridget Sullivan. Now she's around 25 at this point in time.

But what's interesting is the family made the conscious decision not to call her Bridget, but to call her Maggie. And that wasn't some kind of cute nickname or story. It's because the previous maid was called Maggie and they just didn't bother to learn her new name.

[00:15:55] Kyle Risi: Amazing. I love that. It's like, um, again, so many friend references are coming to mind.

It's when Phoebe goes to Mike's apartment after they get back together, after bar ados and his girlfriend shows up and she's like, who are you? She's like, I'm, I'm precious. And she's like, okay, I won't be calling you that Susie. Can I call you Susie? My name is Precious.

[00:16:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's um, rude. Pretty rude. But at the time, wealthy families of English descent often looked down on Irish immigrant workers.

It was common for employees to view these domestic servants as interchangeable and shows that actually the borders were pretty snobbish if they weren't even gonna be calling her by her real name.

[00:16:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:16:36] Adam Cox: There's always a reason to hate someone.

[00:16:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. You're always gonna find that reason.

[00:16:40] Adam Cox: And I think that's rich considering like they don't even have running water like their neighbours and they're living like poors, you know, people in glass houses.

[00:16:48] Kyle Risi: Yeah. You better watch out Abigail. 'cause I'll, I'll go next door where they've got running water. Do you think I need this gig? Do you think I need to live in the dark? Do you think I need to like deal with this shit? No. And then she'll leave. She's like, no, don't go.

[00:17:01] Adam Cox: I think she needs the job. She's an immigrant.

[00:17:03] Kyle Risi: Okay. Yeah. But she could go anywhere.

[00:17:05] Adam Cox: Now, despite this kind of rocky start, Maggie or Bridget, she performs a relatively close bond with Emma and Lizzie, and they grow up generally close over the years to come, like doing household jaws together while Andrew was out and about running his empire. Now, as the girls grew into adulthood, neither of them married.

Emma was in her forties by the 1890s, and Lizzie in her thirties, Ooh, one might even call them spinsters.

[00:17:32] Kyle Risi: I mean, that's the technical term. That's what you would call them. Yeah. Why can make it sound so salacious?

[00:17:36] Adam Cox: I know. It's just weird calling just now. It'd be like, what? Why would I call a woman who's just not married in her thirties?

A spinster. But back then it's true. 30, it's true, 30 years old.

[00:17:47] Kyle Risi: I'm gonna call my sister a spinster.

[00:17:50] Adam Cox: Um, because they're both still living at home. They're not married, and in effect, they're just these unpaid staff in their father's house. Sure.

[00:17:57] Kyle Risi: But why did they not get married? Do we know?

[00:17:59] Adam Cox: Well, I think they tried to obviously find a suitor, but

[00:18:02] Kyle Risi: maybe I couldn't get enough money from the dowry.

[00:18:04] Adam Cox: Maybe it just didn't happen for them. Now, Lizzie taught at the local Sunday school and also did charity work. Both sisters were seen around Fall River as respectable, trustworthy women, but underneath that respectability and the money situation in the house was getting worse because Andrew just wouldn't share a penny whilst he was alive, essentially.

And that's the whole point that really frustrated them. And things came to a head in 1891 when somebody broke into Andrew's own bedroom and stole around $80 in cash and some jewellery that he was keeping for Abby. Now, $80 doesn't sound a lot, but back then it's around three and a half thousand pounds.

[00:18:43] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:18:43] Adam Cox: So fairly substantial. And it's a robbery in their own house with no sign of forced entry from outside.

[00:18:49] Kyle Risi: Ah, they think it's the girls.

[00:18:51] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. So when police question the household, Lizzie, Emma, and Maggie all said they'd been sat together shelling peas the whole time, and they hadn't heard a thing.

[00:18:59] Kyle Risi: What about Bridget?

[00:19:01] Adam Cox: Oh, that is Maggie is Bridget. I'm gonna call her Maggie.

[00:19:04] Kyle Risi: Why?

[00:19:04] Adam Cox: Because that most people refer to as Maggie throughout this whole story.

[00:19:08] Kyle Risi: But I mean, it's a bit disrespectful. She probably would like us to call her Bridget,

[00:19:12] Adam Cox: Maggie, or Bridget.

[00:19:12] Kyle Risi: But you've written it now you're not gonna remember that.

[00:19:14] Adam Cox: I'm gonna interchangeably call her both names.

[00:19:17] Kyle Risi: Okay. So that was just shelling peas. That seems to echo from the murder as well. Like I didn't, I didn't hear anything.

[00:19:23] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:19:23] Kyle Risi: And so they've done it again with this little, uh, this potential little robbery.

[00:19:27] Adam Cox: And imagine shelling peas, like not just pulling them outta your freezer.

You've gotta shell some peas.

[00:19:32] Kyle Risi: That's fine. Remember we used to do that with Miguel. He used to like get those broad beans and he used to make us sit there. This is a friend of ours and uh, he's Canadian, but like his parents are like proper old school Portuguese, where like they would make their own wine in their basements and yeah, he would make us like peel broad beans.

Do you not remember that?

[00:19:50] Adam Cox: Vaguely.

[00:19:51] Kyle Risi: Vaguely. I

[00:19:52] Adam Cox: brought that out.

[00:19:52] Kyle Risi: We blocked that out.

[00:19:53] Adam Cox: But yeah, so, um, Andrew himself told the police, he doubted that ever catch whoever did it. Whether that's because he suspected it was somebody in his own house, we don't generally know.

[00:20:04] Kyle Risi: Or maybe he was trying to protect the girls.

Yeah. He accepted that it was the girls, but then he was like, Hmm, I don't really want 'em to go to jail.

[00:20:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think he is a bit suspicious because what we do know about a week before the robbery, Lizzie had allegedly been accused of shoplifting by a local shopkeeper. So this is a wealthy family, yet she's stealing, right.

[00:20:21] Kyle Risi: They're not wealthy. They have the money, but these girls are like, I really want that little, uh, that teddy suit. So I'm just gonna, do you know what?

[00:20:30] Adam Cox: I want some new hot

[00:20:30] Kyle Risi: patch. I'm just gonna stick it down Myers and walk out. And then, yeah. That's, so she's gone into petty theft. I mean, we've all been there.

I stole a pair of Barbie scissors as a kid. That was my petty theft era.

[00:20:41] Adam Cox: You still have them?

[00:20:42] Kyle Risi: No, my mom made me take them back.

[00:20:43] Adam Cox: Good.

[00:20:44] Kyle Risi: Because she saw me eyeing them up and said, mommy, can I have these pink Barbie scissors? I was only 18. And she was like, no. And then we got home and I somehow had them, so I'd obviously stolen them.

And then she sat me down and she explained to me right and wrong, great mother. And then we went back to the shop. My mom called the manager. My mom explained, and then he was so angry. He was like, I'm gonna have to call the police. And my mom was like, this did not go out. I planned. And then she just scooped me out and then we left and we just, yeah.

[00:21:12] Adam Cox: And then you're like, you know what? It's okay to steal.

[00:21:15] Kyle Risi: It's okay to steal. Like you accidentally steal something from Tesco's through the self checkout and God, you feel good. I

[00:21:21] Adam Cox: don't think you can do that as easily as

[00:21:23] Kyle Risi: well. Another theft story. Okay. I went to Tesco and for some reason it didn't go through and I just didn't pay attention.

I just walked out. And then when I got home, I saw the notification saying that the payment was declined and then I decided to go back to Tesco. It was the biggest inconvenience for them. They were really huffy with me and they're like, which self checkout was it? And then they had to go check the self checkout that's put all the logs.

I was there for 45 minutes and at the end the woman was like, do you know what? Next time don't, don't even bother. And I was like, too bloody right? I won't. So yeah. Wow. I forgot the point now.

[00:21:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. Moving back to the story. So Andrew, yeah, he's suspicious of his daughters and what he then starts to do is he then kind of locks down his property.

Only he and Abby keep the keys. And essentially Lizzie and Emma could only get into their own bedrooms. The rest of the house is kind of locked

[00:22:15] Kyle Risi: off. Are you kidding me? No, that is horrendous. So they, so I can't go to the living room, it's just their bedrooms like, oh, can I just, can I go watch the Simpsons mom and dad?

Yeah. And they're like, yeah, lemme just unlock it.

[00:22:25] Adam Cox: I think if the rooms are open because Abby or Andrew's in there, then sure, yeah, that's fine. But yeah, they're not allowed to just roam free the house anymore.

[00:22:34] Kyle Risi: I'm gonna say it now. Abby and Andrew. They had it coming.

[00:22:39] Adam Cox: Maybe because these adult women, well, they're being treated like children, although they potentially are stealing, so that's not good either.

[00:22:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But they have to, if I knew my parents were stinking rich and they would not give me even a crumb, I'd be stealing too. I would be, I'm one of those Barbie scissors.

[00:22:56] Adam Cox: Your poor mother earning all that money.

[00:22:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:22:58] Adam Cox: So this, as you can imagine, causes a huge argument. The fact that Lizzie and Emma are being confined to their rooms.

So to try and settle things, Andrew gives Emma and Lizzie a rental property on Ferry Street, which turns out to be, I think, their old home. He gives it to them for $1. And the sisters reportedly decided that they just didn't want the hassle of owning a property anymore. So I think after a couple of years, they sell it back to him for $5,000 because for them being a landlord or whatever, that's just too much hard work for them.

[00:23:28] Kyle Risi: Okay. I've changed my bloody tune here. Jesus Christ. These girls are like, oh, we got nothing. Poor us. Like we have, we're forced to go into Victoria's Secret and steal knickers. And then the dad is like, okay, fine. Let me give you a house for $1 so you can have an asset of your own. And they're like, Ugh, can't be bothered.

They just want a handout.

[00:23:46] Adam Cox: I think a little bit. They definitely want an easier life, but the other thing is for them, whilst they earned this money, $5,000 from the house, it's still not enough for them to live the life that they want, essentially. Hmm. So for them it's just, it's too small a piece of a pie.

[00:24:02] Kyle Risi: I see.

[00:24:03] Adam Cox: And the other thing when I first heard the story is why didn't they just move into this house and get their own freedom, essentially? But back then, society dictated that unmarried women, even adult spinsters in their thirties and forties, must live under their father's roof. So for two single women to move out on their own, well, it'd be quite the scandal.

Plus they're living in a neighbourhood that they didn't wanna necessarily live in. It is a poorer area. So yeah, it's a bit like they're spoiled, but equally they can't, based on society rules do what they want anyway.

[00:24:35] Kyle Risi: But their father has allowed them to live inside. I mean, it technically is his roof. He owned the house.

Right?

[00:24:41] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:24:41] Kyle Risi: I don't know. My tune is changing on these chicks.

[00:24:44] Adam Cox: So Abby, she is reportedly furious about the whole thing, and from that point on, the family basically stops eating meals together. There's like these two households living under one roof, if that makes sense. And around the time Lizzie gets more bad news because she had been keeping pigeons as a hobby at the house they all lived in.

[00:25:03] Kyle Risi: Nice.

[00:25:03] Adam Cox: She would keep them in a barn out the back, building them like a little roost and it was quite sweet. Bit gross. 'cause it's pigeons, but you know, it's sweet. That was until Andrew decided that some of the local kids were sneaking onto the property to try and catch or steal the birds.

[00:25:17] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:25:17] Adam Cox: Whilst this, some historians think this particular part of the story is exaggerated or embellished because it's been recounted several times, but because of these pesky kids, rather than Andrew just scaring them off

[00:25:30] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:25:30] Adam Cox: Andrew's solution to the pigeon problem is, well, no pigeons at all.

[00:25:34] Kyle Risi: Oh.

[00:25:35] Adam Cox: So he goes in and he kills all the pigeons,

[00:25:37] Kyle Risi: he kills them. Just set the free man.

[00:25:40] Adam Cox: Yeah. Well, um,

[00:25:41] Kyle Risi: well, they're homey pigeons, so they're just gonna come back, aren't they?

[00:25:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. And so there's a debate whether he just rang their necks or whether he killed them or whether hatchet

[00:25:49] Kyle Risi: Oh, so like a, a little bit of a revenge killing.

[00:25:53] Adam Cox: Mm. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Possibly. Lizzie, as you can imagine, is devastated and she refuses to speak to her own father for the weeks afterwards. So again, you have this tension and fallout that's all been building up over weeks and weeks to these murders. There was then another huge falling out, almost certainly over money again.

And Emma and Lizzie decided they needed more space. They went on a short trip somewhere, a couple of hours down the road, nothing glamorous. And when they get back, Emma basically takes off again and says she's gonna go visit one of her friends out of town, leaving just Lizzie at the house with Maggie, Andrew, and Abby.

So just the four of them, because shortly after this is when their deaths occur. Andrew and Abby both came down with violent stomach illnesses, vomiting, cramps the lot, and by the second day of these illnesses, it was bad enough that a doctor was called and Abby told him that she was frightened, they'd been poisoned.

Lizzie said that she felt unwell too and so did Maggie.

[00:26:52] Kyle Risi: Of course you would like. Mm. Yeah. Are you feeling a bit sick? Oh, okay. Yeah, me too.

[00:26:57] Adam Cox: Yeah. The whole household is taken down, essentially, and so people are asking, well, who would poison them? Andrew wasn't exactly popular in Fall River. He was a landlord who charged high rents for poor conditions and a mill director who'd put plenty of people out of work over the years.

So he had his fair share of enemies.

[00:27:14] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:15] Adam Cox: However, it's generally been put down that it wasn't that they were poisoned. There was some bad mu left out for too long because Andrew is a stingy bugger. He didn't wanna throw the food away and he just reheated it, and that's what caused.

[00:27:28] Kyle Risi: Sure. So this could have been a valuable lesson to him had he not then gone and got himself murdered?

[00:27:34] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:27:35] Adam Cox: Yeah. The next afternoon, on the 3rd of August, an unannounced guest turns up Emma and Lizzie's uncle. On their late mother's side. A guy called John Vum of Morse said that he was in town to buy some oxen and asked to stay the night. Now he's given the guest room and he, I think he actually catches this household bug as well.

Now, that evening, Lizzie went round to see her best friend and next door neighbour, Alice Russell. She told Alice that she was frightened, that she thought the whole household had been deliberately targeted and that she had a horrible feeling. Something bad was coming.

[00:28:11] Kyle Risi: Okay. As you would, let's assume that she's innocent and everyone in the household is a coming down with a bit of a bug.

Your uncles come to town, he's a bit sick as well. You don't know about probably airborne diseases or like meat infected bacteria in the mutton. And then your dad is going probably a little bit paranoid because he knows he is a hated guy.

[00:28:31] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:28:32] Kyle Risi: Thinking that he's been targeted. You are also gonna think maybe somebody targeting us.

[00:28:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. Maybe

[00:28:38] Kyle Risi: you're making the sound so suspicious.

[00:28:40] Adam Cox: I, well, I think the thing is, it's just an unsettling thing to say the night before your parents get murdered,

[00:28:47] Kyle Risi: is it. Well wait the night before your murder. We'll just catalogue everything I say and we'll see if anything there could be construed as suspicious.

[00:28:56] Adam Cox: You'll be the new Lizzie Borton.

[00:28:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:28:59] Adam Cox: So the next morning, on the 4th of August, 1892, Andrew, Abby, uncle John and Maggie or Bridget all sit down together to have their breakfast around 7:00 AM. Lizzie doesn't come down for it. She says that she's still feeling a bit off from the sickness. After breakfast, Andrew and John go have a business chat in the sitting room for about an hour, and then John heads off basically to go get his oxen.

Now, not long after, Andrew heads out too for his usual morning walk around town before he leaves. Lizzie comes downstairs and asks him to post some letters for her, which he agrees to do. So it's just the woman about the house, Maggie, she's still feeling rough. And she goes outside to wash the windows.

She's got out of the fresh air, and Lizzie, it's believed, just goes back to bed for a bit. Abby, on the other hand, she goes upstairs to make up the guest bed that John has just slept in.

[00:29:45] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:29:46] Adam Cox: But she doesn't make it out of that room alive.

[00:29:48] Kyle Risi: What do you mean?

[00:29:49] Adam Cox: Because sometime while she's up there cleaning, Abby is struck from behind while she's making the bed one blow to the back of her head, and then once down she's hit again and again, 18 or 19 blows in total, depending on which account you read.

[00:30:05] Kyle Risi: Wow.

[00:30:06] Adam Cox: And so that isn't just a murder that happens by chance, right? Or an accident or a burglary.

[00:30:12] Kyle Risi: What?

[00:30:14] Adam Cox: But someone who has killed her spent enough time in hitting her 18 times.

[00:30:19] Kyle Risi: I mean, there's hate in that, right?

[00:30:20] Adam Cox: Exactly. It's not like a heat of the moment thing. This is something that's been building up for a while.

[00:30:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And if you were vengeful, let's say your target was Andrew, and you go into this house, there's other people there, you'd want to eliminate all of them first.

[00:30:33] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:33] Kyle Risi: And then you would go and take it out on Andrew. So he might be really mutilated. The fact that they've also mutilated Abigail means that there was hate there as well.

[00:30:42] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:43] Kyle Risi: But also, it's not like they killed her because she was out the way. She was already upstairs, so very much away from where Andrew was. She wouldn't like the other girls were

[00:30:51] Adam Cox: and targeted.

[00:30:52] Kyle Risi: She was targeted. Yeah. So Lizzie definitely did it.

[00:30:56] Adam Cox: And based on how much blood had settled and dried, doctors believed Abby had been dead for somewhere between one or two hours before anything else happened in that house.

Wow. So the fact that nobody knew that she was dead,

[00:31:07] Kyle Risi: and Andrew is still on his little morning walk.

[00:31:10] Adam Cox: He's on his morning walk,

[00:31:11] Kyle Risi: so she's killing him to get her out the way so that the coast is clear to then murder because like, and the girls in here, anything nor went into their rooms

[00:31:18] Adam Cox: while they're having a nap, they're doing a bit of cleaning.

But yeah, apparently.

[00:31:22] Kyle Risi: I mean, you would hear your stepmom screaming.

[00:31:24] Adam Cox: You would've thought there'd be some kind of ah,

[00:31:26] Kyle Risi: or like a Ah,

[00:31:28] Adam Cox: exactly. At around quarter past 10, Andrew comes home early from his walk, feeling rough still himself. Now the front door's locked up tight because of these new security measures.

So he has to knock and Maggie lets him in now. She struggles to let him in with all the locks, and she utters a curse word, and it's then she says that she hears Lizzie upstairs laughing and, oh, it sounded like Lizzie was at the top of the stairs. And if she was at the top of the stairs, she would be able to peer into the guest room and see Abby dead on the floor.

[00:32:01] Kyle Risi: So the door was left open.

[00:32:03] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:03] Kyle Risi: So why would Lizzie be able to the top of the stairs laughing at her, trying to look at throwing out a curse word?

[00:32:10] Adam Cox: Maybe she's laughing that she's struggling with the front door, whatever it is. But Lizzie actually denies ever laughing. But it's something that Maggie says What happened at that time.

[00:32:20] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And it's a weird thing that like even if you have just murdered your stepmother, for you to be in that state of mind for you to giggle at something like someone like fumbling to open up the doors that is psychopathic.

[00:32:33] Adam Cox: Mm. Now Andrew takes his boots off, he gets his slippers on, and he lies down for a nap on the sitting room sofa.

Maggie still not feeling well, decides to go and lie down too, up in her room, in the attic. Now at some point,

[00:32:45] Kyle Risi: does she not see Abigail?

[00:32:47] Adam Cox: Oh no. This is what I mean. So strange. At some point around this time, Lizzie tells her father that Abby's gone out and apparently to see a sick friend after getting a note that morning, but there's no note ever found.

Then Lizzie herself, she goes out to the barn and she says to look for some lead and some sinkers. I think she was gonna go fishing.

[00:33:06] Kyle Risi: Fishing. Yeah. Weird.

[00:33:07] Adam Cox: Um, I know that's, that was one of the things I thought was like, does this woman really fish?

[00:33:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's an unusual past sign for a, a gentry lady.

[00:33:16] Adam Cox: But then she had pigeons, so I don't know.

[00:33:17] Kyle Risi: That's true.

[00:33:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm not gonna poo the idea.

[00:33:20] Kyle Risi: Don't yuck. Somebody's yum.

[00:33:22] Adam Cox: Yeah. So essentially everyone's alibi, in other words, is they're saying I was somewhere else by myself doing something totally mundane and unremarkable.

[00:33:31] Kyle Risi: They're all guilty.

[00:33:33] Adam Cox: At around 11, Maggie hears Lizzie calling up the stairs.

Maggie come quick. Father's dead. Someone come in and killed him.

[00:33:45] Kyle Risi: Why is that funny to me?

[00:33:47] Adam Cox: Because it sounds like bad exposition in a movie. It

[00:33:49] Kyle Risi: does. I hate exposition when it's not done well.

[00:33:52] Adam Cox: Maggie races to the living room and there Andrew is lying dead, having been struck around 11 times, not by a blunt object, a hatchet and one bloat went straight through his closed eyelid, splitting his eye in two.

[00:34:06] Kyle Risi: Oh geez, God.

[00:34:08] Adam Cox: The fact that it went through his eye suggests he was probably asleep when he was killed, which was lucky for him. And by the time the attack was over, his face was so badly damaged that people who knew him struggled to recognise him. In fact, if you wanna be morbid, there is a photo of his body online, which I didn't search for.

It just comes up when you research this story and you can't really make out what is going on in the face area.

[00:34:32] Kyle Risi: Okay, I need to do this for the listeners.

[00:34:35] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:34:35] Kyle Risi: So I'm just gonna Google it. Yeah, don't Google it. That's awful. And they've only attacked his poor face.

[00:34:44] Adam Cox: Mm. Which to me, again, feels quite personal this attack.

[00:34:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. And um, I am very impressed with how 1960s Council Estate Terrace house from EastEnders or Coronation Street, the decor of his room looks,

[00:35:03] Adam Cox: I mean, it was ahead of its time.

[00:35:04] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But yeah, not much furniture in this massive room. But that's horrendous. We shouldn't be talking about the decor when there's literally a dead man sitting on that sofa.

So she's called up to upstairs to say that someone, someone is killed their father.

[00:35:17] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:35:17] Kyle Risi: And hatched his face.

[00:35:18] Adam Cox: The thing is, nobody has heard anything. A doctor who lives across the street, Ry Bowen comes running when he hears the screaming essentially from probably Maggie, maybe Lizzie. Uh, and later described walking in and finding Andrew lying on the lounge.

His face very badly cut, covered with blood, hardly to be recognised by one who knew him.

[00:35:39] Kyle Risi: Wow.

[00:35:39] Adam Cox: He asked Lizzie where she had been, she said, the barn looking for iron this time. It's actually the doctor who first asked the question, nobody thought to ask, where is Mrs. Borden? And Lizzie said she thinks Abby got a note and she went out.

But then a neighbour who came to help Adelaide, Churchill went upstairs with Maggie to check and they didn't even need to go into the guest room to find her. They

[00:36:00] Kyle Risi: could smell it.

[00:36:01] Adam Cox: Well, I, they could probably peer in and see that she was obviously dead on the floor. So two bodies, one house, and no one heard a thing.

Lizzie by every account seemed strangely calm throughout the entire thing. Was she in shock or was she just cold? That's this kind of debate around her. That's what this case has come down to for over a hundred years. And now shock does strange things to people. It can flatten your reactions in a way that perhaps appears cold to people on the outside, but it's also exactly the kind of detail that made people suspicious of Lizzie from day one.

And that's where the police come in, because what they do next and don't do next is where the case really starts to fall apart. The police arrive and almost immediately make a mess of it. And now this is 1892. But again, this is a crime scene you think could coordinate off. But the thing is, Lizzie and Maggie are allowed to continue living at the house that night unsupervised.

So why is the crime scene not preserved?

[00:36:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but I mean, we are putting standards of modern day onto these people in the 18 hundreds who, yeah.

[00:37:05] Adam Cox: Yeah. But also I think it's the way that they treat Lizzie or don't have any suspicion that it could be her to begin with. Let's go through the other things that they don't do.

[00:37:14] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:37:15] Adam Cox: So neither woman is properly searched. Nobody checks their clothes for blood and nobody thoroughly searches the house or Lizzie's bedroom. Okay. To see if anything's been hidden.

[00:37:25] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:25] Adam Cox: An officer posted outside that night, actually reports seeing Lizzie and her friend Alice, the next door neighbour, going down into the cellar with a bucket several times and thinks they might be cleaning something, but he doesn't do anything about it.

[00:37:37] Kyle Risi: What would they be cleaning?

[00:37:38] Adam Cox: Well, perhaps some of these clothes or whatever that they're trying to get rid of or something.

[00:37:42] Kyle Risi: Oh, I see.

[00:37:43] Adam Cox: But he doesn't do anything about it. He just mentions it the next morning.

[00:37:46] Kyle Risi: It's again, it's one of these like gender dynamic things. Do you know what I mean? Where they go like a young woman murdering her family.

[00:37:53] Adam Cox: Exactly. I think that is what's happening here.

[00:37:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah. A bit of sexism there, but in her favour.

[00:37:58] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:38:00] Kyle Risi: Thank God for sexism.

[00:38:01] Adam Cox: Yeah. Sexism in the 18, 19 hundreds for women

[00:38:04] Kyle Risi: helps you get away. Murder.

[00:38:05] Adam Cox: It does. Yeah. Yeah. Possibly. Now while police do finally search the basement, they find several hatchets and axes down there.

Tools that are pretty normal in a house like this. Which one was it? Well, one hatchet stands out and it's just the hatchet head because the handle has snapped clean off and they can tell it's a fresh break.

[00:38:25] Kyle Risi: How? Because like normally the wood would absorb dirt and stuff and sweat and patina over time, but it sounds like it's quite clean splinters.

[00:38:33] Adam Cox: Exactly. Now if the handle had been covered in blood, it would've absorbed that blood and you wouldn't have been able to get that out. Hence why you might want to get rid of the handle, perhaps.

[00:38:41] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:42] Adam Cox: So that's one of the suspicions around this. The second problem is every tool in the cellar was coated in this kind of grey dust you'd expect from an old basement.

[00:38:51] Kyle Risi: Ah.

[00:38:52] Adam Cox: The hatchet head wasn't, it was covered in a white ash from the houses stoves. Now it was interesting, pretty thick. Now to investigators, it looked less like dust was naturally setting over time and more like someone had rolled a freshly washed blade in the ash heap on purpose to make it look like it had been undisturbed for a period of time.

[00:39:12] Kyle Risi: Oh, interesting.

[00:39:13] Adam Cox: Which I think is pretty smart, but maybe a bit hasty. Perhaps a bit clumsy. Attempt to age a weapon overnight.

[00:39:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Do you know what I would do? I would do the opposite. I'd clean every single hatchet so they had no dust on it. In fact, I clean the whole basement

[00:39:28] Adam Cox: maybe. But then is that too suspicious?

[00:39:30] Kyle Risi: Well, fuck us for like having like staff that actually like do their job round here.

[00:39:36] Adam Cox: Come on, Maggie, Brit.

[00:39:37] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:39:39] Adam Cox: But that wasn't enough because a Harvard chemistry professor tested that hatchet head along with all the other tools from the cellars for blood and hair, and every single one came back negative for blood.

And there wasn't a hair on any of the tools that was human. There was one from a cow. So essentially there's no, or an oxygen or an oxen. Maybe it wasn't oxen. And as for the ash, well, there was ash everywhere down there and it could have blown on, but it was just interesting that it was conveniently blown onto this one hatchet in a particular way.

[00:40:08] Kyle Risi: And that's the thing with a lot of these stories that you find when you're researching them is, yeah, like over the years people have been like, oh, there is a, there's a little bit of ash on this hatchet. And then over time, that evolves into like the whole thing was covered in ash. Do you know what I mean?

The stories evolve, is what I'm saying. How that individual fact has potentially been twisted or evolved over time,

[00:40:28] Adam Cox: exaggerated over time. And we'll see that in a couple of other instances as well. But, but at the time. It was disregarded. And for them, they couldn't find the actual murder weapon. Now, Maggie or Bridget had been pretty clear and consistent with everything that she said, even though there were perhaps a few small inconsistencies here and there.

Police just put that down to shock and quickly they take her off the suspect list. Lizzie is a different story. Her account of that morning keeps shifting where she was, what she was doing, whether she was in the barn or the loft or the yard, whether she'd looking for lead sinkers or scrap iron. And to be fair to her, she had been given morphine to calm her nerves, which perhaps maybe accounts for some of the confusion.

But what we do know is that a pharmacist comes forward not long after the murders and says that the day before Lizzie had come into the shop asking to buy hydronic acid, which essentially is a diluted poison. And that was the day before the murders. She said that she wanted it to clean a fur coat, and the pharmacist told her that it wasn't something you'd use acid for.

[00:41:33] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:41:34] Adam Cox: And refused to sell it to her. So it's just

[00:41:36] Kyle Risi: so I, I mean, I have this axe head that I really need to clean. Oh, that's fine then.

[00:41:41] Adam Cox: Yeah. So it's just very odd the day before she tries to buy this poison. Is

[00:41:46] Kyle Risi: it?

[00:41:47] Adam Cox: Bales and the next day her parents are violently murdered.

[00:41:50] Kyle Risi: Okay. I don't know. I think like we always look back at these stories and we always go, this little bit here is so relevant to the case, but she's just gone shopping

[00:41:59] Adam Cox: for poison

[00:42:01] Kyle Risi: for something to clean a fur coat

[00:42:03] Adam Cox: or like,

[00:42:04] Kyle Risi: and that's fine.

She could have gone, do you know what? My next door neighbour, my best friend by the way, we do everything together. We clean the basement together anyway, she says that in order to get this little stain outta my fur coat, I need this little, this, this type of chemical. And they're like, that's not what that's for.

She's like, oh my, my bad.

[00:42:20] Adam Cox: Maybe. Maybe it's all innocent. But anyway, it does look a bit odd. And in fact, actually at the trial, this evidence was ruled inadmissible because the judge decided it was too remote in time to the murders themselves, even though it was the day before the murder. And so legally it never got put in front of the jury.

But once it was out in the press, it stuck to Lizzie's reputation regardless. A few days later, police came back and finally take that broken hatchet head away as evidence. They also tell Lizzie she's now officially a suspect and then leave her at the house and the next morning,

[00:42:53] Kyle Risi: leave her at the house.

You're a suspect we're gonna arrest you, but you can stay at the crime scene.

[00:42:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. Just don't go anywhere.

[00:42:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Just don't clean up anything. Don't clean up your crime scene.

[00:43:00] Adam Cox: Leave her exactly how it is,

[00:43:02] Kyle Risi: promise. She's like,

[00:43:03] Adam Cox: mm-hmm. The next morning, her friend Alice finds her in the kitchen tearing up a dress and when Alice asks her what she's doing, Lizzie tells her it's got paint on that won't come out.

So she's getting rid of it. So she takes,

[00:43:16] Kyle Risi: what colour is the paint?

[00:43:17] Adam Cox: What hell, this is it. She takes it out to the yard and burns it, which to me

[00:43:21] Kyle Risi: it's a bit drastic for a paint stain.

[00:43:23] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:24] Kyle Risi: I mean, for a blood stain, especially if you've murdered your family,

[00:43:27] Adam Cox: I dunno what colour it is, but, and to be fair, there's no record of Lizzie doing any painting during this whole period.

So I dunno if it's a watercolour, maybe she's, I dunno, upholstering some new chairs. Either way it just again adds to her guilt.

[00:43:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It doesn't look great, Lizzie.

[00:43:43] Adam Cox: It's worth saying too. In the same police search, they also find a bucket of bloodied rags down in the cellar. Again, highly suspicious given there's been a murder.

But Lizzie, if indeed she was the murderer, brushes these rags off as simply part of her monthly cycle.

[00:44:01] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:44:02] Adam Cox: The doctor does later verify that to be the case. The police are like, oh God, we don't wanna talk about lady buts. Of course

[00:44:08] Kyle Risi: they don't.

[00:44:09] Adam Cox: And they accept that, which in fact could be a hundred percent true.

She didn't, Lizzie didn't hide the rags, so to her she perhaps didn't think that was gonna get her.

[00:44:17] Kyle Risi: Wow. So basically what she's done is like, we found some bloody rags down in the basement. She's like, yeah. Woman's stuff in that piece of like, Ooh, a good decent cop should have been like, don't try to confuse us with woman's stuff.

[00:44:28] Adam Cox: Yeah. But yeah, they just didn't wanna talk about it. And so on the 11th of August, a week after murders, Lizzie Borden is formally arrested and the pressed absolutely explode. They love this story 'cause it isn't some anonymous drifter. This is a respectable, well off church going young woman from one of the most recognisable families in town.

And yeah, I guess the whole city is basically split down the middle, whether she did it or whether she didn't. So working class residents, many of whom had their own grievances against Andrea, the landlord and mill owner largely think that Lizzie did it. Meanwhile, church groups and interestingly Suffragist societies rally around Lizzie arguing that a woman of her character and standing simply couldn't be capable of something that's violent.

[00:45:14] Kyle Risi: I mean, isn't that a bit of misogyny in itself? And that's anti-feminism. Like a woman would never be able to do that. That's the last thing a feminist would saying,

[00:45:22] Adam Cox: yeah, we could kill it.

[00:45:23] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[00:45:23] Adam Cox: we can kill

[00:45:24] Kyle Risi: her. She had a killing.

[00:45:26] Adam Cox: Now, I should say, Emma, Lizzie's sister was looked at as a suspect. After all, she had similar motives to Lizzie for killing her father and resented Abby just as much.

But because she had been outta town and they could verify that she was outta town, her alibi was concrete.

[00:45:42] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:45:43] Adam Cox: So back to the trial, it takes nearly a full year after Lizzie's arrest for the case to actually reach trial. There's a mountain of suspicion on Lizzie, which we've gone through a lot of it already.

But the thing is, the prosecution is lacking any concrete proof. So on June the fifth, 1893, the courtroom is packed. There's crowds, there's some of them queuing for hours to squeeze inside. Now, this is one of the biggest media events America had seen. Newspapers were running away with the story reporters speculating just as much on the outcome as the evidence itself.

And the papers covered every detail right down to what flowers Lizzie was carrying into court each morning,

[00:46:21] Kyle Risi: what flowers she was carrying into court.

[00:46:23] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:46:23] Kyle Risi: Why is she going to court with flowers for the judge?

[00:46:25] Adam Cox: Well, this is the thing. There's this obsession with how women are representing themselves in court, even back then.

[00:46:30] Kyle Risi: Oh, so it's like what she's wearing, how she's holding herself. Yeah. The court like do, does she seem compassionate?

[00:46:36] Adam Cox: Yeah, she, all

[00:46:37] Kyle Risi: these types of things.

[00:46:37] Adam Cox: She needs to look sympathetic, but not too sympathetic that she's guilty. She needs to be presentable, but not like she's put loads of effort into her. Look,

[00:46:45] Kyle Risi: God.

[00:46:45] Adam Cox: And so for Lizzie that she was wearing black every day she's in mourning. She had a fresh bouquet of flowers and an ornate broach pinned high at her throat, drawing every eye straight up to her face, whether that's a grieving daughter or a woman who understood exactly how to work a full room of newspapers.

I

[00:47:03] Kyle Risi: mean, now that she's got her inheritance, she probably has a bit of a PR team around her. You know what I mean?

[00:47:06] Adam Cox: I mean, she can afford fresh flowers every day.

[00:47:09] Kyle Risi: Calm down. Yes. Yes, you can. But I mean like her lawyers and her legal team and stuff.

[00:47:15] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:16] Kyle Risi: That's, that's where the money comes in, right?

[00:47:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. Now the jury, as you'd expect for 1893, is 12 white men.

The prosecution's case is built almost entirely on motive and circumstance. Lizzie stood to inherit a fortune. There was that poison attempt though inadmissible. There was the burning of the dress, there was the broken hatchet. All this evidence stacked up or supposed evidence, but stacked up against her.

[00:47:39] Kyle Risi: One question though, if she's found guilty, where does her fortune then go to?

[00:47:45] Adam Cox: Guess Emma.

[00:47:46] Kyle Risi: Okay. So it'd still stay in the family.

[00:47:48] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:48] Kyle Risi: So I'm just wondering, like, is there any external factors that would be trying to influence the outcome of the trial? Because it means that they could get access to that money.

Mm-hmm. So the only people that would maybe be invested in that, so it's unlikely to me would be maybe Emma's, maybe connections, maybe a partner or a lover or something. But she's a spinster as well at this point.

[00:48:08] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:09] Kyle Risi: Okay. So red herring, I guess.

[00:48:11] Adam Cox: Yeah. And I think the thing is this was a, an attack that was so violent.

There would've been blood spraying everywhere. And whoever the killer was, should have had blood all over them, unless, of course they changed afterwards. And that's the theory that Lizzie killed in one outfit. She calmly changed into another and hid all later destroyed the first outfit, which is plausible.

We've seen her burning address. They didn't have running water in the house though, so it's not like she could take a quick shower or to rub off all that blood. But then the police never really inspected her properly anyway.

[00:48:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:48:41] Adam Cox: So nothing is proven from that regard. And then the defence leaps hard into that gap.

They call in character witnesses who paint Lizzie as a devoted Sunday school teacher, a charitable gentle woman. And they lean hard into simply physical stereotypes that a respectable short, slender young woman could only muster up enough energy to shell some peas. It's unfathomable to think that she could swing a hatchet hard enough to do this.

[00:49:07] Kyle Risi: I mean, it was a small hatchet as well, but at the same time, that was quite convincing to me when you reminded me that she was a Sunday school teacher. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, character references play a big part because Yeah. She was a Sunday school teacher.

[00:49:21] Adam Cox: Yeah. But they're, they're playing her up as this kind of, almost, not feeble, but kind of innocent young woman who's quite slender.

But if you look at photos of her, she looks strong enough to wield an axe.

[00:49:32] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. She,

[00:49:33] Adam Cox: she's not a weak woman.

[00:49:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She's a working girl.

[00:49:36] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like her main mugshot or portrait. It, it says to me that she would cut you if you stole her jaff cake.

[00:49:44] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Touch my food. Feel my fault.

[00:49:47] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:49:48] Kyle Risi: Let me see a picture of Lizzie.

Ooh, Adam. She's got, she's got a quite intense sta, isn't she?

[00:49:54] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[00:49:55] Kyle Risi: I would not mess with her.

[00:49:56] Adam Cox: She would hit you with her shoe. At least

[00:49:57] Kyle Risi: she would do, I would have to size myself up against her, and if she was small enough, then she'd be less threatening. So I hope that size does work in her defence. But if she was like my height or taller, I'd be pretty scared.

[00:50:10] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:50:10] Kyle Risi: And she looks like a teacher, do you know what I mean?

[00:50:14] Adam Cox: Well, they say that the killer struck with their left hand. Mm-hmm. But Lizzie was right-handed. So again, they kind of obviously try and discount all these theories of her being the murderer.

[00:50:24] Kyle Risi: Do they get a like to wield the act with her left hand in court and they just to show that Oh, she wouldn't be able to do it properly?

[00:50:30] Adam Cox: No, they don't do that. In fact,

[00:50:33] Kyle Risi: that would've been a good piece of, uh, performance.

[00:50:35] Adam Cox: It would've done like, can you throw this axe?

[00:50:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Right here. Right into this bands release.

[00:50:42] Adam Cox: Then the prosecution tries one final brutal move. They bring both skulls of the deceased into the courtroom. Ooh. I know. So these skulls, they've been stripped down to the bone during the autopsy, and they're produced in front of the jury and in front of Lizzie herself.

And on seeing them, Lizzie faints Genuinely, or for show we don't know. And that's what everyone is asking. Was this a woman confronted with the horror of what happened to her father and stepmother? Was it the guilt of having caused it, or was it just a very well timed performance from someone who understood exactly how a fainting woman would land with an all male jury?

[00:51:20] Kyle Risi: Sure. Yeah. And Adam, think about it, right? It's gotta be a performance because name just one person that you know that has seen something and fainted.

[00:51:29] Adam Cox: I think it was quite easy.

[00:51:29] Kyle Risi: People don't faint it anymore.

[00:51:30] Adam Cox: I know, but back then we have to remember, back then you would faint at things. Why?

[00:51:36] Kyle Risi: Why

[00:51:36] Adam Cox: would you?

You'd just be shocked and Yeah. That's what you did.

[00:51:40] Kyle Risi: No, yeah. But it's a perform. That's what I'm saying, A performance thing.

[00:51:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. Where they actually fainted. They fall on the floor and they're like, open up one eye and go to people.

[00:51:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I can't imagine like my nieces like looking at something going, oh my God, they're fainting. No, no one. They go, Ooh, that's nasty. Show me more what's inside it. Is the brain still in there?

[00:52:01] Adam Cox: Yeah, they'd like start swearing at you.

[00:52:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. People just don't faint anymore. So therefore to me it would've been a performance, especially with the going

[00:52:13] Adam Cox: either way it works in her favour

[00:52:16] Kyle Risi: because men go, oh, it damsel in distress. How could she possibly do this at the sight of a skull?

[00:52:21] Adam Cox: Yeah. They see it as feeling, so they feel sympathy towards her and that it was a cruel thing to do to a possibly innocent woman.

[00:52:28] Kyle Risi: Okay. So actually making a move of having like 12 male jurors is about how you play them, right?

[00:52:35] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:35] Kyle Risi: So like you play them with your sexuality, how you look, how you come across, if they had women jurors, then you play into kind of the whole, I don't know, maybe a different angle, maybe the feminist angle. I dunno what that angle would be, but Yeah, I'm sure you're playing to

[00:52:50] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:52:50] Kyle Risi: Who the audience is

[00:52:51] Adam Cox: again, but this is obviously speculation that people have thought about after the event.

We don't actually know whether she did this for that particular reason or she was playing the court.

[00:52:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Regardless of whether or not you're innocent or guilty, it does not matter still, when it comes to defending yourself, you have to put on a show.

[00:53:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:08] Kyle Risi: It is showmanship

[00:53:09] Adam Cox: to a

[00:53:09] Kyle Risi: degree, regardless.

[00:53:10] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:53:10] Kyle Risi: You cannot rely on the fact that you are innocent for sure.

[00:53:14] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:15] Kyle Risi: To get you off, you have to kind of play the people that are around you. That includes the jurors and the judge

[00:53:20] Adam Cox: and the defence team may have told her to do that or act a certain way. In fact, what was interesting is the judge, he had been appointed to that position years earlier by the very same man now leading Lizzie's defence team.

So they were pretty chummy. And so again, is there speculation that he sided more with the defence because of that?

[00:53:41] Kyle Risi: Sure. So the trial was basically just a protocol. We have to do this, but we're gonna find her innocent.

[00:53:47] Adam Cox: Yeah. And people knew that at the time, but back then they didn't see it as sort of anything being biassed or something corrupt.

[00:53:53] Kyle Risi: I see.

[00:53:53] Adam Cox: Their attitude was very much meh. I. And on the 20th of June, 1893, the jury retires to deliberate. And it doesn't take long before they decide that Lizzie Borden was, in fact,

[00:54:05] Kyle Risi: go on.

[00:54:05] Adam Cox: Not guilty.

[00:54:06] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:54:07] Adam Cox: She walked free.

[00:54:08] Kyle Risi: What do you think?

[00:54:09] Adam Cox: Well, it feels anti-climatic in a way, saying that because there's no weapon to prove that she did it.

There's no blood found on her. There's no witness, there's no confession. So if it wasn't her, who was it? And I think that's the question that doesn't go away, essentially to me. I feel like there's enough evidence stacked up against her. I just think at the time we didn't have the like technology to really pin it on her.

[00:54:33] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I mean, there's no physical evidence that would really prove that she did it, but I think the character evidence and what we know of the family dynamic and her father hoarding the wealth, I can understand why Lizzie would go and smack her dad's face off.

[00:54:48] Adam Cox: Yeah. I think that's it. There's enough evidence in the lead up, I think in hindsight to look at this and go, yeah, there's a good chance you did it.

At the time, police did briefly consider outsiders, drifters, disgruntled tenants of Andrews. Uh, even the possibility of Andrew having a secret illegitimate son somewhere who wanted recognition and money. But there's nothing that's backed that up.

[00:55:09] Kyle Risi: And we also have to remember, like for someone to come in and murder, and that must have been difficult to do considering the house was in lockdown.

It did routinely lock the door.

[00:55:17] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. So how would someone sneak in and do that?

[00:55:22] Kyle Risi: And I'm going basing this based on Abigail's murder, because we know that when Maggie went to go open the door to let Andrew in, remember the doors were locked. Yeah. And she struggled.

[00:55:30] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[00:55:30] Kyle Risi: So that meant that whoever killed Abigail just hours before or however long it was must have been from inside.

[00:55:37] Adam Cox: That's very true. I never thought of it like that.

[00:55:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so true. I think maybe she probably did it.

[00:55:42] Adam Cox: I think so. Interestingly, there's another axe murder in Falls River just days before Lizzie's trial.

[00:55:48] Kyle Risi: Oh.

[00:55:49] Adam Cox: A young woman called Bertha Manchester was killed in a similar way. And so for a while it looked like, oh, okay, there is like a, a murderer,

[00:55:57] Kyle Risi: a serial murderer now technically with

[00:55:59] Adam Cox: three

[00:55:59] Kyle Risi: murders.

Yeah.

[00:56:00] Adam Cox: On the loose. But the man eventually convicted of that crime was proven not to have been in the area when the dens were killed. So it is just a strange coincidence that two near identical crimes were committed. Mm-hmm. Then there's the uncle where a lot of people are suspected over the years because he turns up just at the time that obviously these murders happened.

[00:56:20] Kyle Risi: Oh, I need, I need some money for oxen.

[00:56:21] Adam Cox: Yeah. So is he connected? But again, there's just nothing to pin it on him either. But he's the only one that does have access to that house. He had a meeting beforehand with Andrew. Did that not go the way that he wanted it to and he snuck back?

[00:56:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably if Andrew's got a reputation of not sharing his wealth.

So I can understand how that would make someone angry.

[00:56:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. And so there's a theory that perhaps Lizzie put him up to doing it, or perhaps they were in cahoots. But again, but like we say, what I don't think has happened is that a random stranger walked in, killed two people, two hours apart, and then walked out without anyone ing and then locked

[00:56:58] Kyle Risi: the door.

[00:56:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. So I think it is definitely one of the family

[00:57:03] Kyle Risi: for sure.

[00:57:03] Adam Cox: Some later writers have speculated that Maggie might have had something to do with it, and that she was in a relationship with Lizzie.

[00:57:12] Kyle Risi: Excuse me. So we've got the cleaner in a lesbian relationship. With a Lizzie Borden.

[00:57:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. That there was

[00:57:18] Kyle Risi: sexy,

[00:57:20] Adam Cox: that there was this forbidden romance and they were wanting to run away.

It was frowned upon in front of the family. Mm-hmm. Is that what was happening?

[00:57:28] Kyle Risi: Wow. A couple of like gild and age geese.

[00:57:30] Adam Cox: I know, it's like bridgeton.

[00:57:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:57:32] Adam Cox: But this seems to be one of the avenues people used to add mystery to the story. And there's no historical evidence that there was this relationship. In fact, this angle comes from a 1984 novel by Evan Hunter, the book's called Lizzie.

And in it he imagine,

[00:57:47] Kyle Risi: is he the lesbian? They miss the mark there.

[00:57:51] Adam Cox: Yeah. He imagines a scene where Abby catches Lizzie and Maggie in bed together. Mm-hmm. And calls Lizzie an unnatural thing. Oh. And that's what gets her killed. But then he does admit the writer that he made that up. It's fiction. And he was just actually playing on some rumours that did exist about Lizzie's sexuality at the time.

But it wasn't that she was in a relationship with Maggie.

[00:58:14] Kyle Risi: I see. Wow. Okay. I wanna believe that they were in a relationship that would've just made this story a bit more spicy.

[00:58:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. Um, and the thing is, Maggie does back up some of Lizzie's alibi and they were good friends at one point. It became good

[00:58:29] Kyle Risi: friends that make your lesbians.

[00:58:31] Adam Cox: Yeah. So

[00:58:32] Kyle Risi: sometimes it does.

[00:58:33] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:58:33] Kyle Risi: I mean, they may have had their first kiss together. That's fine. It doesn't make you a lesbian. We've all been there.

[00:58:39] Adam Cox: So I think that's just, that's people have speculate is about the loyalty and maybe it says something more to their relationship. Not long after the acquittal, Maggie leaves Fall River for good and some versions of the story make it sound that Lizzie was paying her off.

But what we can say for certain is that Lizzie had the means, she had the opportunity and she had by any measure, the most gain by killing her father and her stepmother. One thing we know for sure is that Lizzie and Emma got their inheritance after the trial. Lizzie didn't leave for river. She stayed and used her inheritance to buy a large modern house up in the most sort of desirable part of the city.

And she started going by the name Elizabeth instead of Lizzie trying to shed the name. It didn't fully work because not long after the trial, this little rhyme starts doing rounds dammit. Where she takes an axe and gives her mother 40 wax. But we now know that wasn't factually correct, that playground rhymes were not known for their journalistic accuracy.

[00:59:35] Kyle Risi: The thing is though, it's more about like keeping the, the incident that happened fresh in your memory, right? Mm-hmm. So rhymes are very good with that because a lot of these things are told or remembered through oral history.

[00:59:45] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:59:46] Kyle Risi: But yeah, so it wasn't quite 42 wax,

[00:59:50] Adam Cox: it was still a lot. It was still 40 combined.

Pretty much.

[00:59:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Also, it doesn't really help that she went off and started living a more grand lifestyle, but at the same time. You also can't hold that against her because she has the money. What do you expect her to do with it? Continue living like a father.

[01:00:05] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly.

[01:00:06] Kyle Risi: So from an optics point of view is what I'm saying is I can see how it probably doesn't make her look any less guilty.

[01:00:12] Adam Cox: Yeah. And even though, okay, she changes her name, the society still turns their back on her anyway. In 1897, she's accused of shoplifting again this time in a jewellery store. So she's

[01:00:22] Kyle Risi: now due because it feels good.

[01:00:24] Adam Cox: I think so. Like old habits, they die hard.

[01:00:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's such a rush.

[01:00:28] Adam Cox: And in 1904, she forms a close relationship with a stage actress called Nance O'Neill who came to stay at her house.

Uh, yeah. And it's long been speculated though, never confirmed by Lizzie herself that the relationship went beyond friendship and that they were lovers. And that, I think is where the lesbian rumours about Maggie and Lizzie come from. Sure. But it's actually someone else.

[01:00:50] Kyle Risi: I see. Okay.

[01:00:51] Adam Cox: And it's believed that the sister Emma hears about this and in disapproves, and there's a falling out between them two.

And so Emma moves out of the house that they'd shared for so long, and she's

[01:01:01] Kyle Risi: doing what upstairs.

[01:01:04] Adam Cox: And apparently she never speaks to Lizzie again.

[01:01:07] Kyle Risi: Really?

[01:01:07] Adam Cox: She refused to give in an interview on her. And when she does, I think she says that she thinks her sister is innocent. But it's strange, after everything that they went through growing up, they have this break.

And both sisters live out the rest of their lives quietly. But in one strange coincidence, they died within nine days of each other in June, 1927. So that's a

[01:01:27] Kyle Risi: shame.

[01:01:28] Adam Cox: First, Lizzie and then Emma, and they're buried side by side, whether they wanted it or not. And in the same plot as their parents at Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River.

[01:01:38] Kyle Risi: Ooh.

[01:01:38] Adam Cox: Now

[01:01:38] Kyle Risi: if she did kill her dad, you'd be,

[01:01:40] Adam Cox: he'd be mad.

[01:01:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he'd be mad.

[01:01:41] Adam Cox: What are you doing

[01:01:42] Kyle Risi: here? Yeah. Get outta here.

[01:01:44] Adam Cox: Now. Lizzie's estate at her death was worth around $250,000. So still a significant fortune. And she left $30,000 to an animal rescue charity,

[01:01:54] Kyle Risi: cats.

[01:01:55] Adam Cox: And the see

[01:01:55] Kyle Risi: I told you's lesbian

[01:01:57] Adam Cox: and the most telling detail is that she, in her will wanted to make sure that there was ongoing upkeep of her father's grave.

So again, that makes you go, oh, did she do it? Is it guilt? I don't know.

[01:02:10] Kyle Risi: So strange considering and obviously that stigma against her or her father's murder,

[01:02:15] Adam Cox: and this is a man that made you unhappy, but yet you still do this. Yeah. So there is some kind of love

[01:02:21] Kyle Risi: letter. It could it be a bit of PR going on there?

Like, if I pay for the upkeep, it makes me look better.

[01:02:26] Adam Cox: Mm. And so I don't think we'll generally know why. And it's probably why this story has had so much following over. You know, 130 years later, Lizzie Borden has turned up in comics and TV, movies, even in an opera. Currently we are now gonna see her in Ryan Murphy's new season of Monsters airing on Netflix.

Wow. And it's the same monster anthology series that he did with Dharma, the Menendez Brothers and Ed Gein. And this time he's focusing on the Lizzie Borden story,

[01:02:57] Kyle Risi: which is really strange. I dunno how he, what kind of take he was gonna bring to it. But now that you gave the revelation that she may have been a little bit of a lesbian, I can now see the Ryan Murphy in the story.

[01:03:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. If you watch the trailer, you go, oh, they did include that.

[01:03:13] Kyle Risi: Okay. That's, I mean, that's exactly what I expected, but I struggled to see how it was on a par with

[01:03:19] Adam Cox: and

[01:03:19] Kyle Risi: Dharma.

[01:03:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. 'cause the others were like serial killers or there's a lot more, whereas this is kind of a family drama

[01:03:25] Kyle Risi: that's go kill dad.

[01:03:28] Adam Cox: So yeah, it's a bit different. But what I think he's doing is it's the first female sort of season or focused season of Monster. And what's interesting is he is bringing Elizabeth Bati a Hungarian serial killer in the 15 hundreds as well as Eileen warns, she's gonna be in it. Exactly. It doesn't quite make sense.

[01:03:47] Kyle Risi: Like these three different, but I guess they're like notorious female killers. But Eileen Warnes is a serial killer.

[01:03:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like she, she did have a movie called Monster. But I think what's interesting is they're gonna build this idea of female rage and what actually pushes a woman to that kind of violence.

Interesting. And how society decides to label her once she does these things. Mm-hmm. So he's gonna obviously have some creative licencing and how they're gonna merge these characters together.

[01:04:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I feel like with every season of monsters it's getting a slightly, a bit more abstract.

[01:04:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:18] Kyle Risi: And this sounds like this is the most abstract, but it always seems to work well in the end.

Right?

[01:04:24] Adam Cox: Yeah. And conveniently for us, we've already covered the Menendez Brothers, ed Geen and Eileen Warnoff.

[01:04:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's right. And they're always our most popular episodes because the Ed Geen one earned us a spot in Rolling Stones magazine.

[01:04:37] Adam Cox: It does. We get that this year.

[01:04:39] Kyle Risi: We will.

[01:04:39] Adam Cox: We will please.

[01:04:41] Kyle Risi: We have to.

[01:04:42] Adam Cox: Um, and so yeah, once you've done listening to this episode, go listen to them. If you haven't done already,

[01:04:47] Kyle Risi: I'll make sure I link to them in the show notes.

[01:04:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. And finally, one last thing before we go The house where this all happened is still standing in Fall River and you can actually stay the night there.

It now runs as a bed and breakfast.

[01:05:00] Kyle Risi: Really? How much?

[01:05:02] Adam Cox: Dunno how much it is. I think it's maybe a couple hundred dollars a night. Oh, that's

[01:05:05] Kyle Risi: cheap.

[01:05:05] Adam Cox: Um, you can do a 90 minute house tour, a daytime basement, ghost hunt, an evening ghost tour, and a guided Oak Grove Cemetery Torah, and a Victorian tea party with actors playing Lizzie and Emma.

[01:05:17] Kyle Risi: Wow. Okay. But for a start, all the other activities sound great, but the house tour, I'd be like, bitch, I'm already staying here. I'll just look around myself. Thanks.

[01:05:25] Adam Cox: And the most requested room to stay in is the one where Abby is killed.

[01:05:30] Kyle Risi: Really? Not the living room where dad had his face smacked off.

[01:05:32] Adam Cox: No, I guess that's just where you have afternoon cake

[01:05:35] Kyle Risi: and over there would've been Andrew.

[01:05:39] Adam Cox: It's quite morbid, isn't it? But I don't know. It's So would you stay there?

[01:05:42] Kyle Risi: I would purely because it happened in the 18 hundreds. So there's a lot of thematic stuff going on there. Do you remember we say at the rookery, God, the history, you could smell the opium in kind of the, the drawers when you'd open them up.

That wonderful hotel in like Victorian London. Mm-hmm. That was amazing. But if you'd said, Hey, do you fancy staying in like the hotel room where Jeffrey Dharma murdered all his victims? I'd be like, no thank you. You know what I mean? It's not thematic enough. I'd stay here, but not in Jeffrey Dharma's apartment.

[01:06:11] Adam Cox: Yeah. I still think it's weird whether you'd sleep well, whether there's ghosts.

[01:06:15] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:16] Adam Cox: Don't know.

[01:06:16] Kyle Risi: My mom's honeymoon, she went to stay in this old miners village near the Kruger National Park. I think it was called Nail Sprite. And um, she said that throughout the night, all she could hear was someone calling her her name the whole night

[01:06:30] Adam Cox: God.

[01:06:30] Kyle Risi: And the next morning she said to my dad and he was like, I heard it. He heard it too.

[01:06:37] Adam Cox: Wow.

[01:06:37] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Isn't that strange?

[01:06:39] Adam Cox: Maybe there's just someone else nearby with her

[01:06:41] Kyle Risi: name. Yeah. But my mom, my mom is nuts. So calm down.

[01:06:48] Adam Cox: And so well, yeah, that is the story of Lizzie Borden and whether she really did get away with murder.

[01:06:54] Kyle Risi: Ah, I thought you were gonna say, and whether or not she really was a lesbian. Well, we'll find out. And Ryan Murphy. But anyway, it was, that was a great episode. It's not what I expected at all.

[01:07:03] Adam Cox: No, it's an interesting tale. Definitely.

[01:07:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Lots of

[01:07:05] Adam Cox: twists.

[01:07:06] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. For sure. So when does Ryan Murphy's episode come out?

I guess it's gonna be out like this week. It's

[01:07:11] Adam Cox: a roundabout. Now this gets

[01:07:12] Kyle Risi: released.

[01:07:12] Adam Cox: Now we've got about eight episodes of him dragging out this story. Um, but you can just do it in an hour.

[01:07:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. Come to the compendium.

[01:07:21] Adam Cox: Okay.

[01:07:21] Kyle Risi: Very good.

[01:07:22] Adam Cox: Shall we run the outro?

[01:07:24] Kyle Risi: I'm ready to say goodbye. Yes.

[01:07:26] Adam Cox: And that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium, an assembly of Fascinating Things.

[01:07:32] Kyle Risi: If today's episode has sparked your curiosity, then please do us a favour and follow us on your favourite podcasting app, because it truly makes the world a difference and helps more people discover the show.

[01:07:43] Adam Cox: And for our dedicated freaks out there. Don't forget. Next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and it's completely free to access.

[01:07:51] Kyle Risi: And if you want even more, then join our certified Freaks tier to unlock our entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get that sneak peek of what's coming next.

[01:08:01] Adam Cox: We drop new episodes every Tuesday. So until then, remember when you uncover a strange locked door, it only tells you someone wanted to keep something out or keep something in.

Mm-hmm. It never tells you, which.

[01:08:13] Kyle Risi: Ah, very good. See you next time.

[01:08:15] Adam Cox: See you.