The Cases That Haunt Us (18 page)

As we’ve said, no note to Abby was ever found, even though Lizzie and Emma offered a substantial reward for it. The story about Abby’s going out would have been necessary to keep Andrew from going upstairs to see her when he returned home.

Normally in a domestic homicide we expect to see some effort at staging the crime scene to make it look like a rape or robbery gone bad or something else that would suggest an intruder rather than someone from the house or family. I think the reason we don’t have that staging here is because with Bridget in and around the house, Lizzie knew there was too much of a chance she would be seen doing this. Also, to make it look like a robbery, she’d have had to take something, and if she was remaining in the house, what would she do with it? She had to know the house would be thoroughly searched.

The crime scene photograph of Andrew Borden shows his wool overcoat folded on the arm of the sofa, as if he had been using it as a pillow. While it is possible that he did this, it would have been completely out of character. He was as meticulous about his clothing as he was about everything else, and it’s unlikely he would have wrinkled a coat he would then wear again on his afternoon business rounds.

Is it possible, we have to wonder, that he had actually hung it up or left it draped over the back of a chair, and that the killer put it on to avoid being spattered with blood? Then, once the deed was done, folded it to appear as if Andrew had been using it as a pillow so that the blood could easily be explained? And who would need to avoid the blood? Only someone who was not planning on getting away from the scene immediately after the murders.

And what of the rest of the blood? There is, of course, the dress Lizzie burned in the stove, which she could have been wearing during one of the murders. It is also possible that she stripped naked to carry out the murders and then quickly washed herself, though I would wonder about a woman of that era with the social pretensions Lizzie had taking off all her clothing in this manner, not to mention the risk of being seen by Bridget. In some ways, that is more difficult to conceive of than the murders themselves.

Bloody water was seen in a washbasin in the house, but when Dr. Albert C. Dedrich, a Fall River physician who also examined the Bordens’ bodies, asked about it, he was told that one of the other doctors or police officers had washed his hands in it after touching the crime scene.

That same afternoon, Officer William Medley noticed a pail of water in the wash cellar containing small towels that seemed to be covered with blood. He asked Lizzie about it, and she replied that she had explained it all to Dr. Bowen. Bowen, in turn, assured Medley that it was all right, implying that the pail contained menstrual rags, a subject about which men were exceedingly squeamish. No one was going to examine Lizzie to determine if she was actually having her period, and no one checked the potential evidence of the pail. Lizzie said it had been there for three or four days, although Bridget claimed she had not seen it before that day. It probably would not have been there two days before or Bridget would have noticed it when she did the washing.

When it came to the trial, the idea that the pail contained menstrual rags was accepted as fact. George Robinson reminded the jury “that Professor Wood said he would not undertake to say that that blood was not menstrual blood… . You know enough in your own households, you know all about it. You are men and human. You have your own feelings about it. I am not going to drag them up, but you must not lose sight of these things.”

And no one did.

STRATEGIES

So if you believe Lizzie Borden to have been the killer of her father and stepmother, is there anything that could have been done in the investigation or trial that might have brought about a verdict to that effect? Based on the experience we’ve had in many cases within the Investigative Support Unit, I think that there is. Of course, as in the Whitechapel murders, this presupposes an understanding of criminal behavior and practice that hadn’t been developed at the time, but if it had, could we have gotten Lizzie to crack?

The first thing I would have tried was to play on the strain in Lizzie and Emma’s relationship as perceived by the prison matron. One way to accomplish this would have been to befriend one of the zillions of reporters who were haunting the town and given him an accurate but pretty generic evaluation of the case. I would have told him that it has been our experience that in a crime of this nature, there would have been a primary offender, but also a secondary person, almost a compliant victim, who was dominated by the subject, who knows exactly what happened, and who should now be very concerned for her own well-being.

We would be trying to drive a wedge into a psychological master-slave relationship. The dominant individual will want all of the money and control. The loyalty in the relationship is one-sided. Since this person has shown the capacity to kill twice in cold blood, he or she could easily kill again. And even if she does not resort to violence, she could easily turn on her benefactress and point the finger at her.

I’d make sure my target had seen the newspaper articles before I attempted to interview her. They would confirm a fear that was already in her mind. Important to this strategy would be trying to keep Emma away from Lizzie, since Lizzie’s personality was so dominant.

And I would try this not only with Emma, but with Uncle John as well, since we couldn’t be sure which or if both of them might have had inside information or harbored fears about Lizzie.

Of course, I would take a shot with Lizzie, too. In situations where the subject is facing a possible capital murder conviction, getting an outright confession is going to be difficult. He’s got nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling the truth. So we try to offer some sort of face- saving scenario that the subject can buy into.

As readers of
Mindhunter
will recall, Larry Gene Bell, the brutal and psychologically sadistic abductor and killer of seventeen-year-old Shari Faye Smith and nine-year-old Debra May Helmick in Columbia, South Carolina, was hunted down and caught through an efficient combination of profiling and first-rate police work. Sheriff Jim Metts and his detectives knew they had the right man, but he was understandably unwilling to confess to these despicable acts that could (and ultimately did) get him an appointment with the South Carolina electric chair.

So they gave me a crack at him. I gave him some background on the serial killer study we’d done in the
FBI
, how we’d gone around to the penitentiaries and learned from the actual killers what was going on in their minds.

“The problem for us, Larry,” I explained, “is that when you go to court, your attorney probably isn’t going to want you to take the stand, and you’ll never have the opportunity to explain yourself. All they’ll know about you is the bad side, nothing good, just that you’re a coldblooded killer. We’ve found that very often when people do this kind of thing, it is like a nightmare, and when they wake up the next morning, they can’t believe they’ve actually committed this crime.”

All the time I was talking, Bell was nodding his head in agreement.

I knew if I asked him outright about the murders, he’d deny it. So I leaned in close and asked, “When did you first start feeling bad about the crime?”

And he said, “When I saw a photograph and read a newspaper article about the family praying at the cemetery.”

“Larry, as you’re sitting here now, did you do this thing? Could you have done it?”

He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “All I know is that the Larry Gene Bell sitting here couldn’t have done this, but the bad Larry Gene Bell could have.”

I would think a similar tactic might have worked on Lizzie. I’d start by playing on the blood, asking her where it all went. How she washed it off. How she had to burn that dress. She would have been more sophisticated than Bell, so the approach would have to have been commensurate to her intellectual level, but it might have gone something like this:

“Lizzie, we know from our experience and research that this type of act is unlike a woman, certainly unlike a woman of your standing and upbringing. So if you were involved, we know that there must have been strong and compelling factors that drove you, factors over which you had no conscious control. We can only imagine what it must have been like to lose your mother when you did, then having to live with Abby all those years. We know how manipulative she must have been, how she took advantage of your father, how she subtly turned him away from you and Emma. Emma cared for you and protected you, and now you realized the time had come for you to care for and protect her, to assure her future and yours after your father passed on.”

I know I’d have her attention. She’d be quiet, listening carefully, evaluating what I was saying, trying to figure where I was coming from and how it would affect her. If I were dealing with an innocent person, I’d expect a series of strong denials to practically every statement I made. But Lizzie would be receptive as I reeled her in.

“And what about your father? We know he tried to love you, as much as he was capable of. But think back, rip off the scar tissue of the old wounds. Is it possible that he loved you too much, or in the wrong way? You were so much like your mother, a woman he adored far more than he could ever care for Abby. And is this something Emma knew about? Something she saw? You may have repressed this. I know how painful it is, but I’ve seen other cases like this and I know what can happen. I understand. People say you haven’t shown enough grief. But when I see this, I know there’s a reason. What has he done to you? We can’t change the past, Lizzie—the distant past or the recent past. But what we need to do is to get people to understand why you did what you did. I’m going to leave a pad of paper with you, and if and when anything comes to mind, I want you to write it down. Sometimes that’s the easiest way.”

Then I’d go away and give her time to build her story. But before I left, I’d add something to the effect of, “Lizzie, the person who did this doesn’t need punishment, she needs help. She doesn’t need to be in a prison, she needs to be in an institution.”

She might have been disdainful of this approach to begin with, but if I could keep the dialogue going and get her involved, I’d have confidence something useful might emerge.

Another variation of this technique would be to try to get another newspaper article out. This one would be an interview with me, touting me as the outside expert brought in to consult with the police. But in the interview, I’d concede disagreement with some of the investigators and within the department itself. I’d say that most of the detectives feel this was a well-planned, cold-blooded assassination-style crime. But I believed it was impulsive, that it represented suddenly uncontrolled rage, that the subject was literally out of her mind for those brief moments. I’d say that many of these acts are like a dream, but there will be one aspect that will make the subject say to herself, “My God, maybe I did do this!” This would help plant a defense and build up trust in me and my views for the prospective interview. I’d want her to perceive me as her one possible lifeline: she might not get away with murder, but I might understand.

THE
AFTERMATH

Two months after the trial, Lizzie and Emma moved into a fourteen-room light stone house they had purchased at 7 French Street, on the Hill. Lizzie named the house Maplecroft and had the name carved into the top stone step leading up to the front door. Lizzie, who began calling herself Lizbeth, found it impossible to go back to her old church because of the gossip and social ostracism. Emma, on the other hand, remained a churchgoer.

Strangely, prosecutor William Moody received in the mail a package from Lizzie containing official photographs of the trial—including the crime scenes—along with a handwritten note to the effect that she thought he might like them “as souvenirs of an interesting occasion.”

As we would expect from someone whose crimes were situational and directed at close family, Lizzie Borden never committed another known act of violence throughout her life. In fact, she became a great friend to animals and was a fervent supporter of the humane movement.

In 1897, Lizzie was charged with the theft of two paintings, valued at less than $100, from the Tilden-Thurber Co. store in Providence. The problem was privately resolved, although a rumor persisted that in exchange for the charges being dropped, she had agreed to sign a confession to the murders of her father and stepmother. The “signature” proved to be fake.

In 1904, Lizzie met a beautiful and glamorous young actress named Nance O’Neil, and for the next two years, the two women were practically inseparable. After Lizzie staged a lavishly catered party at Maplecroft for O’Neil’s theatrical company, Emma moved out and went to live in Providence. Sometime around 1923, Emma moved to Newmarket, New Hampshire, where she rented a place and lived quietly and virtually anonymously.

On June 1, 1927, after complications from gallbladder surgery, Lizzie Borden died in Fall River at age sixty-seven. Emma was not included in her will and did not return to Fall River to attend the funeral. Nine days later, Emma succumbed to chronic nephritis. Like Lizzie, she left her estate to a variety of charitable causes.

Both sisters were buried in the family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, along with their father, their mother, their stepmother, and Alice Esther, the sister who had died in infancy.

The day of the murders, Bridget left the house, never to return. She was rumored to have gone back to Ireland, although this story has never been verified. In the late 1890s, she settled in Anaconda, Montana, where she married a man whose surname was also Sullivan. She did not speak of the Borden murders until 1943, when she contracted a severe case of pneumonia and believed she was going to die. She called her closest friend to her bedside, saying she had a secret to confide. But by the time the friend arrived, Bridget was on her way to recovery and said nothing. The only thing she later told the friend about Lizzie was that she had always liked her. She died on March 25, 1948, in Butte, Montana, at age seventy-three.