i don't actually solve the mystery in the course of the story, that i thought it was important to lay out the story from the beginning to the verdict to the strange cultural after life of the case without officially taking a position so that -- so that it would be as even-handed as possible and would allow the readers to puzzle it out for themselves. there's also something i think that always feels a little bit like a cheat when you're reading a non-fiction narrative, and there's a solution to the central mystery, that it's hard not to think that -- and i think that this has been the case with prior works on the borden mystery. you do have the sense that people are really emphasizing and de-emphasizing parts of the story, and, again, that was something i didn't want to do. anyway, all that have is the background, and just to begin with what we know for certain and that is on august 4th, 1892, and drew and abby borden, an elderly couple, were found hacked to death in the words of their local paper in their fall river, massachusetts home. the it seemed initially like the work of a madman. mrs. borden had been felled by 19 blows in the upstairs guest room and then about an hour and a half later after he had returned from a business downtown, mr. borden was himself killed by ten blows while he was having a nap on the sitting room sofa, so it was a pretty horrifying scene regardless of anything else. i mean, that that alone was enough to generate -- generate front-page news, but the police soon discovered some anomalies. you know, they expected, as i said that, this was the work of a madman and that some crazed stranger would be found wandering the streets with an axe or a hatchet, but they noted two central facts. the first was, as i have mentioned in describing the murders, the interval between the murders seemed odd. you know, it was strange that -- that someone from the outside would have come in, killed mrs. borden, waited at least an hour and a half to kill mr. boarden and then departed. it was a small house, quite narrow, with no central halls because it has h been a converted two-family tenement house so there weren't that many places to hide and there were other people in the house. so if someone from the outside had come in, that person would have had to elude the oh, and the second even more important point was that the house seemed to have been locked. the front door was certainly locked, and the back door was certainly locked. that left a side door that was kept closed and latched by custom of the house and was often in the sight of the family's housekeeper, but it wasn't conclusively shown that it was locked throughout, but that's still left very little room for an outside person traitor to have come in. so the police turn their attention to the people known to be in the house at the time. the there were three others who woke up in the house that morning who survived the carnage. the first was a man named john morse. he was andrew borden's brother-in-law. he had been the brother of andrew's first wife. abby who was killed upstairs as i mentioned was his second wife, and he had arrived the day before to pay a visit on the bordens, and that seemed suspicious to many people. he was also an attractive suspect because, you know, he was an outsider. he was from the west. he was a horse trader. people said he consorted with gypsy traders who were down in westport, and there were just things about him that weren't so appealing so he seemed plausible, but he had an alibi that was straight out of a detective novel. shortly after breakfast, he had gone to visit other relatives in a different part of town, and he had been riding on the horse car with six priests. [ laughter ] and while, you know, if that were an a.g. that christie, he would have definitely done it. that seemed like a pretty good alibi. that left two women who were in the house at the time of the murders. the first bridget sullivan, the family's irish catholic housekeeper who incidentally was called maggie by everyone except mrs. borden, and the reason she was called maggie is because maggie is the name of their last housekeeper, and they just couldn't be bothered to learn a new name, so anyway, mrs. borden did maggie, ka bridget sullivan, another favor which was to ask her to wash windows that morning inside and outside, so that meant that bridget sullivan happened to be outside washing windows in sight of other people at the time that mrs. borden was killed, and so that seemed to rule her out of that possible murder, and it was thought that whoever killed mrs. borden had killed mr. borden as well. at the time mr. borden was killed, she was upstairs in her attic room napping. the family had suffered from some food poise anything the day before, and she was feeling unwell and possibly was getting a head start on her -- on her usual thursday half day. so that left one person, and that was andrew borden's younger daughter lizzie who was 32 years old, unmarried, still living at home. she had an older sister named emma who was ten years older, but she had been away visiting friends for about two weeks so she was definitely in the colleagues, and there were a number of suspicious things about lizzie. the first was that she hadn't actually looked for her stepmother when she discovered her father's body atv8sq around 11:00. she said her stepmother had received a note and had gone out. no note was ever found. an investigation failed to disclose any potential sender of the note. it was also the case that she shifting accounts of where she was. she said that she was downstairs ironing handkerchiefs at the time that mrs. border died, a task that was significantly left undone and that she was outside in the barn looking variously for a sinker, for a fishing line or a piece of tin to fix a screen and also eating pears in the upper part of the barn at the time her father was murdered. all of this probably wouldn't have been enough to place her under arrest, but it was also discovered that she had tried to buy poison the day before the murders. she had gone to the local drug store or she was identified as a woman who had gone to the local drug store to be totally precise and asked for acid supposedly to clean a seal skin cape. she said we only sell this on doctor's prescriptions and this particular woman insist that had she had done so on various occasions, but no one believed that she had actually -- that that woman had actually managed to purchase the acid, and the bordens themselves were not poisoned, but it went a long way towards explaining why a woman might turn to a readily available household implement to execute a murder as planned that she had already formed. poison was considered to be a woman's weapon, and so that -- that held a lot of sway, and it also was discovered that the family seemed implaquebly divide between the generations, that there was a lot of ill feeling and that lizzie in particular had disliked her stepmother. so all of these things culminated in lizzie borden's arrest and that catapult what had would have been probably a passing horror into something much darker and a case of international significance, so at this point i'm just going to ride the description of the newspaper coverage of the opening of the trial. the trial of lizzie boarden, according to "the providence journal" would be one of the greatest murder trials in the world's history. "the new york world" more modestly declared it the triflt most extraordinary criminal case in the history of new england. the "boston globe" proclaimed it will be impossible to exaggerate the interest felt and manifested by intelligent readers throughout the country in the outcome of this trial of a comparatively young woman for the murder of her father and stepmother. the "globe" estimated that among its own readership there are at this moment 100,000 persons devoting what they are pleased to call their minds in a hopeless analysis of this tremendous case. to satisfy this demand so many correspond dents and reporters came to new bedford, to see whether the new bedford had a more unique collection of writers were ever to detail a murder trial. some of them, you know, included many of what you might call the bold-faced names of the day, journalists who were so famous that they themselves wrote memoirs and were -- were talked of in the same way as significant literary figures. one was a man james joe howard jr. who covered the case for the "boston globe." he was at the time the highest paid correspondent in america. he traveled, it was stayed, with a bhond stlond stenning a fer, paid a great deal of attention of bringing his readers into the courtroom so that people could follow along in the proceedings, not just what actually happened while the -- while court was in session but also the sense of urgency that so many felt in their attempts to get into the courthouse. the fact that so many women were in the audience. the numbers of women steadily increased throughout the trial so that by the end more than half were women. some even put the number higher, and he would scan the crowd for, you know, pretty faces as he was want to do and other celebrities of the day, you know, would receive mention. he turned minor court officials into characters so that the readers would have the -- you know, the pleasure of reading about their, you know, the familiar people and the pomposity of the sheriff or the eloquence of the lawyer. he even reported on the activities as what he referred to as the cow of the day which was a cow that just happened to be across the street whose mooing was kind of you had aible at different moments and seemed to provide a commentary. the "globe" said that the -- that joe howard's cow will go down in history on the same level as mrs. o'leary's cow, the cow that, you know, started the chicago -- the chicago fire. and in terms of what they were looking at, of course, the person who was of most interest to all of the correspondents was lizzie borden herself, and she presented a conundrum for people because she had this quite extraordinary self-possession, and that was read in opposing ways so that for those who were inclined to think that she was guilty, they saw her as one newspaper wrote as the sphinx of coolness, someone with this detachment that suggested the kind of masculine nerve that was consistent with premeditated violence and not consistent with, you know, late 19th century notions of proper them finnerty. for those who were inclined to be sympathetic, and as happened turned out to be most reporters from out of town especially like joe howard, they saw this consistent with the kind of in-born dignity, a mark of lady hod, as they would put it, that this was someone who ticked all the boxes of respectable femininity. she had been active in -- she had been active in her local church and she was engaged in all the culturally sanctioned activities that one might expect of an unmarried woman in her day. for those reporters her behavior is sort exactly what you expected. she acquitted herself admirably, and that she was just bearing up in an impossible situation. and it was also noted that -- that -- and this gives you some idea of the theater that's involved in the trial. there's a moment where the prosecution displays a bag that happens to hold the schultz of the bordens, and lizzie boarden promptly fainted then, and -- earning the approval of all journalists, even the pretty hostile irish catholic paper from fall river. so there is the sense that her own behavior, her own demeanor during the trial was essential to the question of her guilt or innocence as the argument being made by the law, and i should say that the book is mostly about the trial so i'll just very briefly give you a sense that for the prosecution as was indicated by my summary of the murders, the case is one of exclusive opportunity, you know, mixed with a powerful motive. basically no one else could have done it. therefore, lizzie poureden did it, and we know that she hated her stepmother. they are largely silent on why she killed her father. that's something that the prosecutors can't quite grapple with themselves. this all the focus is about lizzie and her stop mother, not about her father so that the only thing the prosecution can real argue is that liz borden meant to call her stepmother and then didn't get out in time to establish her own alibi say that she was transformed and that's the which she used. transprmd sort of like sickle and hyde into a murderes who then kills her father, too, and you can imagine the defense makes a lot of that. they ridicule the prosecution for not being able to three what they thought was a reasonable explanation of the father's murder. my favorite is the dr. handy's wild-eyed young man who is spotted staring at various people and staring into the ground. the judgment essential lly, loo it's not your business to unravel the mystery so that if you have any kind of doubt at all, then you can't send this woman to the gallows. the trial lasted two weeks which is a long period for that period. but it's worth noting that the jury was unanimous on the first ballot. they found that they were in total agreement and really didn't need to discuss the evidence. however, they waited-in-the-jury room for about an hour envelope so that it would seem like they had been properly deliberative, and then when they came out to deliver their verdict, the foreman was so excited that he couldn't wait for the clerk to fin inthe question and he blurted out not guilty, and at that point there's pandemonium in the courthouse and tears, many congratulations to lizzie borden and her supporters, and the assumption is that lizzie borden will return to fall river and live down her notoriety, but her supporters cooled in their enthusiasm pretty quickly. people began to wonder if she didn't do it then works did? she found that the pews around her own seat at her local church were empty when she tried to return, and which,church had formed the bedrock of her support during the trial and that pretty much set the tone for her -- for her treatment in the polite circles of society. her sister who i mentioned was ten years older and a bit of a mother figure with her lived with her. they had moved from the more cramped out to):baw what you mi call a mcmanusion in the elite river, and they lived there 12 years ago with lizzie borden increasingly isolated until they had a miss remember it yews fight and the rift continued until the sisters died within a month of each other. liddy borczen lived her last days by her own, shunned by most people who she wished to know. it's always struck me that -- that also shows the nerve that is remarked upon at trial and possibly also the provincial dwralism that she had a sense that her universe was fall river and that's where she was going to live. i think it's that piece of the story, too, that contributes to the legend because very little about her later life is known for sure and so it enhances the -- the enigma that she presented at trial, and i just want to be sensitive to the question period, so i -- i think i'll leave it there and then see where you all want to go with this. thank you very much for your attention. [ applause ] i should say if there are no questions i'm going to talk some more. >> i'm sorry. >> just kidding. >> is this on? >> yeah. >> these days, of course, we'd expect marisa hearingtad with the dna stuff and all that sort of thing. what happened to the evidence? do you think there was any travesty of evidence? >> in one sense there was state of the art csi fall river and the police came in and picked up pieces of carpeting and picked up wood molding. the bodies were autopsied. the stomachs were sent to harvard, so in -- you know, in some ways they did what they could. this is before fingerprint evidence, long before dna but even before fingerprint is used as identification let alone, you know -- let alone for investigative purposes and then, on the other hand, you can say they really botched things because there was nothing like the preservation of the crime scene that you would expect. i mean, one of the striking things about reading the accounts is how many people are just wandering through the crime scene on the day of the murders, and we know that based on the testimony that press borden was moved so there are things that, you know, in so far as they hinge on the exact placement of the body or the way that the bodies fell, we can't real be certain about them, so i think it's kind of a mixed -- a mixed bag, but, i mean, one thing would i say is that based on how quickly the jury came to its decision -- i actually don't think that more evidence would have made that much difference, that this was a -- this was a story about what people believe someone like lizzie borden might be capable as opposed to just a question of whether or not she did it, that i think it wasn't -- you know it wasn't what you might call reasonable doubt as much as kind of an unreasoning certainty or anxiety at least not to -- to believe that that was impossible. yes. >> thank you for educating me. i've been hearing about the lizzie borden case, hearing of the existence of the thing for, you know, all my life but never really ever known any detail about the murder or the case, but it does strike me that it would make possibly good material for a film, and i don't know whether there have even been films, good or bad films made on the case up to this point in time, but real question i have is do you think it would make a good film and do you think it especially one based on any -- any new material that you have in in this book? and another related question would be would it be possible in your opinion to make a good film with this without changing the story in any -- in any significant way, without -- certainly without changing the facts or, i don't know, adding in, you know, a romantic interest or whatever. >> yeah. these are really -- >> just comment on the cinema potential of all this. >> yeah. it is -- it is a story that's been retold over and over again in many again res, including film, or, you know, a tv movie and a couple of films, and plays, a ballet, an opera. i just recently saw a rock musical, but it -- which was good, by the way. i recommend it, but all of them resort to heavy fictionalizing particularly on the point that you raise is that people seem to find that the story is kind of incomplete without a romans. >> right. >> and that the -- you know, the festering tensions in the house hold don't -- plus a money motive don't seem to provide an adequate motive for dramatic purposes, that there needs to be, you know, a thwarted romans. the most recent movie puts liz and bridget in a relationship and that hats practical -- i mean, it affords some practical help which is it's easier if they were in it together from the point of view from the cleanup, but there's no particular historical basis for that. >> right. >> so i -- i do think that the trial can be inherently dramatic. of course, i'm biased because that's what my book is about but i do think that that would provide a way to capture the drama. there are real highs and lows in the story and with the skulls, all these moments of great theater, and, you know, there's still the -- the question of -- which i think we struggle with in many other contexts, too, trying to understand human behavior, you know. how is it that someone who led basically a normal life for 32 years might have committed two horrible murders in one day and then went on to live a basically normal life afterwards? >> right. >> so maybe -- maybe in a cop temporary sense the lack afroments might be a good thing to do in a film. in other words, it would give movie reviewers something to say about this film and how it differs and that films shouldn't need a romans. >> mm-hmm. thank you. hi. >> hi. >> i was wondering what precedent, if anything, you think this case set for law enforcement officials and court officials handling similar cases in the near future? >> yeah, i struggled with this one because i think that it doesn't -- it doesn't do much in the doctrinal sense because it was -- because it was so out of the ordinary, you know, so that -- it's hard to imagine the rules, for example, on evidence in the case, two significant rules that favored the defense where the exclusion of the attention to buy poison. the jury never heard about her attempt to buy poison happened the jury never god to jer her inquest testimony which was lizzie borden's only testimony under oath. both of those rules were criticized with being cite inconsistent with current evidence law, even if you could argue them on both sides. it seems pretty clear the fact that lizzie borden was not just a woman but a particular kind of woman had an effect on how the black letter law was alied to the place so i don't think i offered much press temp, but i do think that's a real interesting question. thank you. hi. >> hi. really enjoyed your talk >> thank you >> and i'm enquig the. i have too questions. one is kind of technical, and the other is more overarching. first one, overarching question. you've touched on this a little bit bull i'm yourious as to what your neighboringing is within why we're still fascinated with this gays. what it is it that deep you current, and then the second question is if businessy board endid do the murders, if we assume that judgment for the sake of argument. how do you think she was never found to have any blood on her? that seems like an amazing detail on it. i'm thinking the stake one first if i may. that's the question of why not. less tabs hi had a huge part of the defense care, and of the short answer is she burned a dress the sunday -- it was a dress that had been stained with a punt and she was able to done straight that via testimony from also the dress-maker and the painter, but it's also clear that the police had search and lock for her all of her dress, and had not found one that had been stained with plant so the prosecutes cart it. it's also true that the medical experts all testified that whoever committed the crimes would have been spattered on some part of their bodies. so i'm not sure if the burnt dress even explains all that have given the practical problems of the cleanup, but, you know, that's pretty much what the prosecution's theory was, and as to, you know, why we're still fascinating, it's a truly horrible case that ended with an acquittal which leaves it much more open-ended than a case that organized with an investigation. it's hard to know what an acquittal really means. do they think she didn't do it? did they want her to do it but didn't get away with it. i think there's a mythic quality in this question -- that it's hard -- hard to understand how somebody who seemed so normal transformed into such a violent murderes without benefit of, you know, the tonic turns jekyll into hyde. thank you. >> i once read a book about another famous massachusetts benzetti which pointed out some injustices in the prosecutor's and the defense and the judge who all failed in their duties so in the end he concluded there was no conclusion which could come to which made it an interesting book to read. what's your judgment about the quality of justice in massachusetts at the time of this trial? >> well, i thought the lawyers were excellent on both sides, and i should -- you know, one of the many things i left out for this short talk is that the prosecution was led by a man named hosea knowlton, a man when went on to become the attorney general of massachusetts and his junior in the case is william immediate, a friend of theodore roosevelt and ends up on the supreme court in addition to having an excellent record as a trial lawyer, and on the defense side lizzie borden put her considerable inheritance to good use very quickly in hiring expensive legal talent from boston, one a trial lawyer named melvin adams who was also a bit of a dandy. had a curl right there before the trial and most significant lit former governor of massachusetts, a man named george robinson who was very folksy. i almost could hear a southern accent, though, of course, he was from massachusetts, or springfield, but there's no way he had one, but he had that heir of just stopping by to chat with the jury and being extremely reasonable, so that's not really an answer to -- to the quality of justice, but i think she was -- that the lawyering was good on both side. >> my interest in this case goes back to seventh grade but peaked there and i haven't really thought about it but i got interested it in there because my cousin ed raiden wrote a book that you probably know, it was a best-seller back actually in the early '60s, and ed took a different tack. he was a journalist in addition to a crime writer, and he basically decided she's innocent and picked the guilty one. now you know who he picked. >> yes. >> as guilty one. >> and you don't have to solve the case now, but do you think he probably was right? >> no. i think he -- i think he was a terrific writer, and it's a great book, you know, so i recommend it highly as a read, but. can i spoil the book? >> sure. >> i don't want to ruin your cousin's posthumous sales. >> i don't think he's at risk at that at all. >> he fingers the servant, bridget sullivan, and, you know, it makes sense, if it's not lizzie borden it makes sense that it would be bridget sullivan but would i say he brings to bear a lot of the prejudices that would have been very familiar to late 19th century readers she -- i mean, although his book is much later. lizzie borden's lawyer at one point wonders out loud, you know works in the natural course of things should be the party suspected? you know, the stranger, and he might as we will have said, you know, the immigrant, or liz borden and so, you know, his book also has a -- yeah, so i would say that it incorporates some of those biasses in that the only explanation for why she would have done it is that she just didn't want to wash the windows on that day and it just pushed her over the edge. >> so without solving this case, tell us who you think probably but not certainly done it. >> well, this is -- you can imagine -- >> you're not convicting them but i don't want you to exonerate them them either. >> this is the question i would get the movement i would have to say that it's hard to imagine how anyone else besides lizzie borden could have done it. it's also true that after looking through everything i am struck by how difficult it would have been for her to do it, too. i think that i was more smug when i first started about it, that this being a case about the biasses of a particular era leading to some blindnesses on the part of the men who were conducting the trial. i do think it's harder than that, but, you know, i do come back to see it's hard to see how it could have been anyone else and i'm content to leave it unsolved. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> i only read the first chapter, but i read a lot of reviews, and a number of them seem to be bringing up the adjoining door connecting the rooms and the ring that she wore and seemed to be creating a relationship between the father and -- father and daughter. >> yeah. so this is -- you know, i struggle -- in some talks i've talked about that and in others i haven't. there are many odd things about the family, and one that seems to particularly grab people's attention is the way in which the house has no feng sway to put it mildly. it's a tenement hall. upstairs and downstairs are the same. no central hall and when that means for the upstairs is that the bedrooms open on to each other, and at the time of the proper dispute to which i had allude, that either raised the tension in the borden household or, you know, created some new grievance, the bordens lock and move furniture to seppi's bedroom from the parent's bedroom so that now, for example, if you were going to the house which is a b & b which you can walk from the second floor to the front and back but then you would not have been able to because the doors that separated the daughter suite of rooms from the parent suite of rooms was locked and the furniture was moved in wouldn't it of it. i think this gives us an example on the way in which we bring our own biasses and preoccupations to this kind of case. i don't think it's a cone dense that the people looked at this saying this is an incest story and sexual abuse and someone who struck back against a father who victimized her and the stepmother who was complicit in the -- in the victimizationings, and it suddenly seems very obvious, and there are little details like lizzie poureden had given her father a ring and he wore it an his finger always though he would no room to commemorate his wedding to his second wife. that sort of analysis just sews us more about our own personal concerns at the time. many of the things that are shown to be signs of that kind of relation ship could have been equally true of unmarried fwhim this era, the fact they were two systems livings unmarried, it wasn't an unusual close relationship with his father where he controlled most of the mother, would also not have been unusual, and recall bull i -- i think it provides and also gets at our desire to have an slepgs for the -- it's much moe more froublg to think that there might not be something like that at its ways:well. >> thank you so much. >> you're watching "american history tv." every weekend on c-span3 explore our nation's past. "american history tv" on c-span3 created by american television companies and today we're brought to you by these television companies who provide american history tv to their viewers as a public service. week nice this-minute we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span3. tonight we begin a night of programs about the johnson presidency with a u.s. information agency film describing the death and funeral of president john f. kennedy who was assassinated in dallas on november 22nd, 1963. it includes footage of president lyndon johnson's statement in washington, the fine patrol processions, the mass at st. matthews cathedral and the ceremony at arlington national cemetery. it ends with president johnson's meetings with world leaders who attended the funeral. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy "american history tv" every weekend on c-span3. next, on "lectures in history" university of colorado professor sarah fields teaches a class about the 1981 trial of jean harris accused of murdering the scarsdale diet doctor. professor fields describes the suspect's kg

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