Lizzie borden

Running Head: LIZZIE BORDEN

Lizzie Borden
Maria C. Perez Quiroga
Sullivan University

"Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”

On august 4th of 1892 a rich and well known business man and his wife were murdered in a horrible way in their Massachusetts home. The crime caused great commotion especially becausethe main suspect of it was their own daughter. This story is one of the most famous ones between the murder stories in the world due to the violence and cruelty it was produced with and also because of the way the trial developed.
For Lizzie Borden and her sister Emma the presence in their house of the woman that married their father after their mother’s death was unbearable. It was so hard forthem that it became common for them to eat their meals in their bedrooms just to not to eat in the same table their stepmother was. Time went by and their resentment against her grew more and more each day.
The day of the crime Emma decided to go to her friend’s house and Lizzie stayed home with the housekeeper. Around eleven in the morning of the same day the oldest sister of the Borden’s,Lizzie, discovered her father’s body laying dead in the coach. Later on the same day the body of the Borden’s sister’s stepmother was found dead in her bedroom.

After reading and analyzing all the bibliography I could find about the referred crimes I consider that the responsible of the two murders was Lizzie Borden based on the following facts:
1. One the Borden’s neighbors’ named Alice Russelltestified that the night before the crime Lizzie visited her and told her that she was afraid somebody could kill or harm her father because he was very rude with other people.
2. The day before the murder Lizzie tried to purchase a poison named prussic acid stating she needed it to clean a sealskin cape. Per the druggist testimony in the trial it was known that he refused to sell thepoison to Lizzie.
3. Even though Lizzie’s father was a rich man he was very greedy with her and her sister and this caused a lot of anger in her. At a certain point Mr. Borden decided that the house belonging to his ex wife (Lizzie and Emma’s mother) was going to be inherited after his death to his second wife.
4. Another important fact to take on consideration is that Andrew Borden wasextremely protective and controlling with his daughters. Despite of the fact that Lizzie was in her thirties he used to keep her locked in the house to the extreme of not allowing here to have contact with strangers.
5. One of the alibis that Lizzie tried to used for her defense was that at the time the murder was being committed she went the loft, located in their property, in order to look forsome items she needed for a fishing excursion she was going to take. She stated that she stayed in the loft for around fifteen to twenty minutes. But after the screening of the murder location police came to the conclusion that due to the extreme hot weather of the day of the murder it became impossible for anybody to spend that amount of time in a closed placed as the loft voluntarily.Furthermore, after the proper police screening there was no evidence of any footprints in the loft making it harder to believe Lizzie’s alibi.
The Trial of Lizzie Borden started on June 5, 1893 in the New Bedford Courthouse. It was composed by three judges and a jury of twelve men. After the statements presented by the prosecution trying to proof that Lizzie was guilty, the arguments presented by thedefense attorneys claiming her innocence and the testimony of the witnesses called in the trial; the jury deliberated and decided the verdict. Lizzie Borden was declared innocence of the charges of murdering her father and stepmother. Lizzie couldn’t keep her emotions after the verdict was said; she cried and asked her sister Lizzie to take her back home.
Per Alice Russell’s testimony the...