Lizzie Borden, daughter of a wealthy man in Fall River, Massachusetts, was accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892. Despite being acquitted, it is believed she committed the murders due to her resentment towards her father’s second wife and the transfer of assets. The motives for the murders were linked to Andrew Borden’s estate. Lizzie’s relationship with her father and rumors of sexual abuse and incest have also been discussed.
Born in 1860, Lizzie Andrew Borden was the younger of two daughters of the richest man in Fall River, Massachusetts, Andrew Borden. Her mother died when she was just a child, and a stepmother they both despised raised Lizzie Borden and her sister, Emma. The New England spinster, who lived with her father and stepmother, Abby, at 92 Second Street, appeared respectable from the outside, even working as a Sunday School teacher. It is probable that were it not for the horrific ax murder forever associated with her name, Borden would have lived and died a life of total darkness.
Many believe that Lizzie Borden was oppressed by the tough, dispassionate New England mentality she had known since birth. Borden had an unusually close relationship with her father, Andrew Borden. The fact that she has never been romantically involved with other men has led many to believe that she Borden may have been sexually abused, sparking incest rumors. In his later life, Borden also maintained a lesbian relationship with an actress named Nance O’Neill. Questions remain about what happened to Borden in her father’s bedroom, which remains locked, to this day, as part of the slightly morbid Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum.
On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife Ab were shot and killed so horribly that they were regarded by the press as the victims of the “crime of the century”. Although Lizzie Borden was acquitted of any wrongdoing, there’s no question today’s courtrooms would have found her innocent. Whether the murders were committed in collusion with her older sister Emma is a question lost in the mists of another time and place, but there’s no question that Lizzie Andrew Borden killed her father and stepmother in cold blood.
The motives for the double homicide concern Andrew Borden’s estate. He died without a will, as he was in the process of transferring some assets to his wife’s relatives that had originally been designated for Lizzie and her sister. This most likely angered the two sisters whose resentment of their father’s second wife had already reached a boiling point.
Some theorize that Andrew Borden was killed because he came home too early and Lizzie knew she couldn’t hide her stepmother’s murder. And so she killed him while he was sleeping on a sofa. Lizzie Borden was the only one at home in the two-story, railroad apartment-type house. No intruder could have entered and not seen her. Why wouldn’t she have been killed too? According to court transcripts, Lizzie Borden says she was in three different locations when her father was killed: in the back, out in the courtyard and upstairs.
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