Halloween Special | October 31, 2026
Happy Halloween, my lovely little history lovers! 🖤
Since it’s Halloween, I figured we’d spend tonight digging into one of America’s most infamous murder cases. We’ve got a wealthy family, some serious household tension, two brutal murders, and a woman whose name has been associated with an axe for more than 130 years.
That’s right. We’re talking about Lizzie Borden.
Even if you don’t know much about the case, you’ve probably heard the rhyme:
Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.
First of all, who decided a double homicide would make a good children’s rhyme? Because that’s a little concerning. 😂
Second, the rhyme isn’t exactly accurate. Abby Borden was Lizzie’s stepmother, neither victim received anywhere near forty blows, and Lizzie was actually acquitted of the murders.
Yet here we are, more than a century later, and most people still associate her name with an axe.
So, what actually happened?
For that, we’re heading to Fall River, Massachusetts, in August of 1892.
Meet the Bordens
Andrew Jackson Borden was a successful businessman who had made a considerable amount of money through property investments and other business ventures.
He was also notoriously frugal.
Despite being wealthy enough to afford a much nicer house, Andrew continued living at 92 Second Street, a relatively modest home for someone of his financial standing.
Apparently, the man wasn’t particularly interested in spending his money.
Living with him were his second wife, Abby, his two adult daughters, Emma and Lizzie, and their domestic servant, Bridget Sullivan.
Lizzie was 32 years old in 1892. She attended church, participated in charitable organizations, and belonged to a well-respected family.
Nothing about her public life suggested she’d eventually become the central figure in one of the country’s most notorious murder trials.
But things weren’t quite so pleasant behind closed doors.
Andrew’s daughters had a strained relationship with their stepmother, particularly when it came to money and property. Andrew had provided financial assistance to members of Abby’s family, and the sisters reportedly resented what they viewed as unequal treatment.
Lizzie also referred to her stepmother as “Mrs. Borden,” rather than calling her mother.
Now, having a difficult relationship with your stepmother doesn’t mean you’re plotting to kill her. Neither does arguing over money.
If that were the case, Thanksgiving would be a very busy day for law enforcement.
Still, those family tensions would become an important part of the investigation.
August 4, 1892
Thursday morning started out fairly normally.
Emma was away visiting friends. Andrew’s brother-in-law, John Morse, had spent the previous night at the house but left that morning. Bridget was working on her usual chores, including washing the windows, while Andrew went out to conduct business.
At some point, Abby went upstairs to the guest bedroom.
She was attacked there with a sharp-edged weapon, suffering 19 blows to her head.
Her body was left on the floor beside the bed.
Nobody downstairs immediately discovered what had happened.
Andrew eventually returned home and settled onto the sofa in the sitting room.
Sometime before approximately 11:15 a.m., he was attacked, too.
He suffered roughly 10 or 11 blows to his head and face, although historical accounts differ slightly on the precise count.
Both attacks were incredibly violent. Whoever was responsible had struck the victims repeatedly at close range.
And here’s the part that I find especially disturbing.
Investigators concluded that Abby had died before Andrew, possibly more than an hour earlier.
That means Andrew could have returned home, gone about his business, and settled down to rest without knowing his wife was already dead upstairs.
Imagine being in your own home, completely unaware that someone you live with has been murdered just a few rooms away.
It’s an awful thought.
And it raises an obvious question.
Where was the killer during all of this?
The Discovery
Shortly after Andrew was killed, Lizzie called for Bridget, who had gone upstairs to rest.
She told Bridget that someone had killed her father.
Neighbors were called over, and a doctor and the authorities soon became involved.
But there was another problem.
Nobody seemed to know where Abby was.
Lizzie said she believed her stepmother had received a note asking her to visit someone who was ill.
That would explain why Abby wasn’t around.
Except nobody ever produced the note.
Eventually, Abby’s body was discovered in the upstairs guest bedroom.
Now there were two murder victims, killed inside the same house on the same morning.
There were no convincing signs of a robbery, and investigators couldn’t establish that an intruder had entered and escaped during the relevant period.
That didn’t mean an outsider was impossible.
But it certainly made the people who had been inside the house worth questioning.
Including Lizzie.
Where Was Lizzie?
Lizzie insisted she hadn’t killed anyone.
She claimed she’d been outside in the barn around the time her father was murdered, looking for materials to make fishing sinkers.
But her statements about what she’d been doing that morning varied.
At different points, she mentioned looking for iron, eating pears, and spending time in the barn loft.
Investigators questioned whether her account made sense, particularly given the heat that day and the conditions inside the barn.
There was also the matter of Abby’s supposed note.
No one found it, and nobody could establish who had sent it.
Of course, people don’t always give perfectly consistent accounts after experiencing something traumatic. Memory isn’t a recording device.
But when two people have been murdered, and you’re among the few people known to have been inside the house, investigators are going to pay attention to those inconsistencies.
Especially when they can’t find the murder weapon.
Police recovered several axes and hatchets from the property, including a hatchet head with a broken handle.
The prosecution considered that hatchet head significant, but it was never conclusively established as the weapon used in the murders.
And then there was the blood.
Given the severity of the attacks, investigators had reason to expect that the killer might have gotten blood on their clothing.
Yet they couldn’t produce an outfit that definitively connected Lizzie to either murder.
So they had a possible motive, an opportunity, and some suspicious statements.
What they didn’t have was solid physical evidence proving she had committed the attacks.
The Dress That Went Up in Smoke
Now, this next part certainly didn’t help Lizzie’s case.
On August 7, just three days after the murders, family friend Alice Russell witnessed Lizzie tearing up and burning a dress in the kitchen stove.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Three days after a double homicide, Lizzie was burning a dress.
Ma’am. 😭
According to Russell’s testimony, Lizzie explained that the dress had paint on it.
Russell was concerned enough to warn her about burning it where people could see.
But there’s another side to this story.
Emma testified that the dress was old, dirty, badly faded, and had been stained with paint. She also said she’d previously suggested that Lizzie get rid of it and had encouraged her to burn it that Sunday morning.
So there actually was testimony supporting an innocent explanation.
And Lizzie wasn’t secretly sneaking into the woods to destroy it, either. The dress was burned in the family kitchen, with other people nearby and police still around the property.
Still, I can understand why the incident raised eyebrows.
If you’re suspected of committing two bloody murders, destroying clothing probably isn’t going to make investigators feel any better about you.
But no one proved that the dress had been worn during either attack.
And without that connection, the incident remained suspicious rather than conclusive.
And Then There Was the Poison
Because apparently this case didn’t already have enough questionable circumstances, investigators also learned of an alleged attempt by Lizzie to purchase prussic acid shortly before the murders.
Prussic acid is another name for hydrogen cyanide, an extremely dangerous poison.
A drugstore employee claimed Lizzie had asked to buy it, supposedly to use on a sealskin cape.
She wasn’t sold the substance.
The prosecution wanted to use the allegation as evidence that she might have considered poisoning someone before the murders.
However, the judge excluded that testimony from the trial.
And there’s an important distinction here: the allegation wasn’t proof that Lizzie had tried to poison Andrew or Abby.
Even if she had asked for the substance, that wouldn’t establish that she later killed them with a hatchet.
But it was another detail that made people suspicious.
By this point, you can probably see why the investigation centered on Lizzie.
There was tension over money, conflicting statements about her movements, an alleged poison purchase, and a dress burned just days after the murders.
Individually, each had possible explanations.
Together, they created a pretty uncomfortable picture.
But would they be enough to convince a jury?
The Trial
Lizzie was arrested on August 11, 1892, a week after the murders.
Her trial began on June 5, 1893, in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
By then, the case had attracted enormous public attention.
Newspapers covered practically every development, and people were fascinated by the idea that a respectable, churchgoing woman from a wealthy family could be accused of such a violent crime.
The prosecution argued that Lizzie had the opportunity and a possible financial motive. They pointed to her inconsistent accounts and the destruction of the dress.
The defense focused on the lack of direct evidence.
Nobody had seen Lizzie kill either victim.
No murder weapon had been conclusively connected to her.
No bloodstained clothing proved her involvement.
And the court had excluded potentially damaging evidence, including her inquest testimony and the poison allegation.
The trial also featured something particularly gruesome.
The victims’ skulls were brought into court as evidence.
Yes. Their actual skulls.
Lizzie reportedly became faint during the proceedings.
I don’t think I need to explain why that would’ve been an incredibly disturbing thing to witness, regardless of whether she was innocent or guilty.
After the closing arguments, the case went to the jury.
On June 20, 1893, following roughly 90 minutes of deliberation, the verdict was announced.
Not guilty.
Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden.
And legally, that settled the question of whether she would be punished for their deaths.
Public opinion, however, was another matter.
Life After the Murders
After her acquittal, Lizzie remained in Fall River.
She and Emma purchased a larger home in the city’s fashionable Hill District, which Lizzie named Maplecroft.
Considering how notoriously frugal their father had been, I can’t help wondering what he would’ve thought about that purchase.
But having a beautiful new home didn’t mean Lizzie could leave the murders behind.
People continued to gossip about her, and suspicion followed her for the rest of her life.
Eventually, her relationship with Emma deteriorated.
Emma moved out of Maplecroft in 1905, and the sisters remained estranged.
Nobody knows for certain what caused their final falling-out, although that hasn’t stopped people from speculating.
Lizzie died on June 1, 1927, at the age of 66.
She was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, in the same family plot as Andrew and Abby.
And I find that interesting.
The woman accused of murdering her father and stepmother was ultimately laid to rest alongside them.
Of course, Lizzie had maintained her innocence.
And despite everything people believed about her, she’d never been convicted of their murders.
So, What About Those Forty Whacks?
Let’s go back to that rhyme for a moment.
Because I think it’s worth pointing out just how much of Lizzie Borden’s reputation comes from a few lines of folklore.
The rhyme identifies Abby as her mother, exaggerates the number of blows, and presents Lizzie as the killer without any acknowledgment that she was acquitted.
And somehow, that’s the version that stuck.
Not the complicated investigation.
Not the questionable evidence.
Not the jury’s verdict.
A children’s rhyme about an axe.
It’s strange how history works sometimes.
The real story is already horrifying enough. Two people were violently murdered inside their own home, and nobody was ever convicted.
We don’t need to invent another sixty or so hatchet blows to make it disturbing.
Who Really Killed Andrew and Abby?
More than 130 years later, people are still arguing about this case.
Some believe Lizzie committed the murders and simply managed to avoid leaving enough evidence to convict her.
Others have suggested Bridget Sullivan, John Morse, or an unknown intruder.
There are theories involving inheritance, resentment, family secrets, and everything in between.
But none has been proven.
And we have to remember that this happened in 1892.
Investigators didn’t have DNA testing, modern bloodstain analysis, or today’s forensic evidence collection procedures. Fingerprinting was still developing and wasn’t used in the Borden investigation.
That leaves us with witness testimony, physical evidence collected under nineteenth-century standards, and a whole lot of unanswered questions.
For me, the timeline is one of the strangest parts.
Abby was apparently killed first.
Andrew returned home later and was killed in another room.
If the murderer was an outsider, did they stay hidden inside the house between the attacks? Did they leave and come back?
And if it was someone already inside the home, how did they carry out both killings without leaving behind more convincing evidence?
Then there’s the question of why Andrew was killed at all.
Was he an intended victim from the beginning? Did he interrupt something? Was the killer waiting specifically for him to return?
There are theories for all of it.
Unfortunately, theories are about all we’ve got.
The House on Second Street
The Borden home is still standing in Fall River.
Today, it’s known as the Lizzie Borden House, and it’s become a destination for history lovers, true-crime enthusiasts, and people interested in paranormal investigations.
Visitors can tour the rooms where the murders took place, and the property has also hosted overnight guests.
Naturally, a house with this kind of history has accumulated plenty of ghost stories.
People have reported strange sounds, unsettling feelings, and other experiences they believe might be paranormal.
There’s no reliable evidence proving the house is haunted, but I can understand why people find it creepy.
Would I stay there overnight?
Absolutely.
Would I spend half the night listening to every creak in the floorboards and convincing myself someone was standing outside my bedroom?
Probably. 😂
But the house doesn’t need ghosts to have a disturbing history.
What happened there was real.
And I think that’s far more unsettling than any alleged haunting.
One Last Thing Before Midnight…
What fascinates me most about this case isn’t necessarily Lizzie herself.
It’s how easily a real tragedy became a legend.
Andrew and Abby were murdered in their own home. Their deaths were violent, their killer was never convicted, and the investigation left behind questions that people are still trying to answer more than a century later.
But ask someone what they know about Lizzie Borden, and there’s a good chance they’ll immediately recite the rhyme.
We’ve remembered the accused woman, the axe, and the exaggerated number of blows.
Meanwhile, the two people who actually died have become almost secondary characters in their own story.
And I think that’s worth considering.
Halloween is a wonderful excuse to explore creepy history, but there’s a difference between enjoying a good mystery and forgetting that real people were involved.
We may never know who murdered Andrew and Abby Borden.
Maybe Lizzie was guilty. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe investigators overlooked something that would’ve changed the entire case.
Whatever the truth was, it died with someone more than a century ago.
And unless new evidence somehow comes to light, we’re probably never getting a definitive answer.
So I’ll leave you with the question that has followed this case since 1892.
If Lizzie Borden didn’t do it, who did?
Happy Halloween, my lovely little history lovers. Stay curious, stay spooky, and I’ll see you next time for another trip into the darker corners of history. 🖤
P.S. Where do you stand on the Lizzie Borden case? Do you think she was guilty, or do you believe someone else committed the murders? And what’s the one piece of missing evidence you wish investigators had found?
History After Dark — The kind of history that didn’t quite make it into your textbooks.
