# Lizzie Borden murdered her father and stepmother with a hatchet in 1892 and got away with it **No verdict.** Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home on 4 August 1892, each struck repeatedly with a hatchet or similar blade. Andrew's daughter Lizzie Borden was arrested, indicted, and tried; on 20 June 1893 a jury acquitted her after deliberating roughly an hour and a half. No one else was ever charged, and the case is officially unsolved. The rated claim is not that the murders happened (they did) but that Lizzie Borden, or any other named person, was the killer. On the surviving evidence that claim is unproven: the case against Lizzie was entirely circumstantial, key items were excluded or contested at trial, the alternative-suspect theories rest on speculation rather than proof, and no forensic record ties any individual to the crime. This file reports the acquittal as the legal fact it is and does not assert that Lizzie Borden or anyone else committed the murders. Category: Unsolved Crimes & Disappearances · Era: 1890s · First circulated: August 1892, in the days after the killings and Lizzie Borden's arrest on 11 August; suspicion of her guilt spread nationally through the 1893 trial and has been kept alive ever since by the folk rhyme, popular books, and film · Believed by: A large share of the public has long assumed Lizzie Borden was guilty despite the acquittal, a view amplified by the schoolyard rhyme and by true-crime retellings; a smaller set of writers and enthusiasts instead favor alternative suspects such as the maid, an uncle, or an intruder URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/lizzie-borden ## Summary On the morning of 4 August 1892, the wealthy businessman Andrew Borden, 70, and his second wife Abby, 64, were found hacked to death in their home at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Abby was killed first in an upstairs guest room, struck roughly eighteen times; Andrew was killed perhaps ninety minutes later on a sitting-room sofa, struck about eleven times. Andrew's younger daughter Lizzie, 32, and the family maid Bridget Sullivan were the only people known to be at the house. Lizzie was arrested, indicted, and put on trial in New Bedford in June 1893. The prosecution's case was wholly circumstantial, several of its strongest items were kept from the jury, and on 20 June 1893 Lizzie was acquitted. No one else was ever charged and the murders remain officially unsolved. This case file keeps two things apart: a brutal, real double murder and a lawful acquittal, and the claim it rates, that Lizzie, or some specific alternative suspect, did it. On the evidence that claim is unproven in every version. ## The claim That Lizzie Borden killed her father and stepmother with a hatchet and escaped conviction because the evidence was mishandled or the jury would not believe a respectable woman capable of it, or, in competing versions, that the real killer was someone else entirely, such as the maid Bridget Sullivan, the uncle John Morse, or an outside intruder, whose guilt was never established. ## Origin and timeline - 1892-08-04: On a hot Thursday morning in Fall River, Abby Borden is killed in an upstairs guest room and, roughly ninety minutes later, Andrew Borden is killed on the sitting-room sofa, both by repeated blows from a hatchet or similar blade. Lizzie Borden reports finding her father's body and calls for the maid, Bridget Sullivan. - 1892-08-04: Lizzie tells investigators she had been in the barn loft, looking for lead to make sinkers for a fishing trip and eating pears, during the minutes her father was killed. Abby, she says, had gone out after receiving a note asking her to visit a sick friend; the note is never found and no sender comes forward. - 1892-08-05: Autopsies establish that Abby died well before Andrew, undercutting any theory that a single intruder killed both in one quick attack. A hatchet head with a freshly broken handle is later found in the cellar, but it carries no blood and is never conclusively tied to the wounds. - 1892-08-08: Lizzie's friend Alice Russell sees her burning a dress in the kitchen stove, which Lizzie says is stained with paint. The episode, days after the murders, will become one of the most debated points in the case. - 1892-08-11: After an inquest at which Lizzie gives shifting and at times contradictory testimony, without a lawyer present, she is arrested and charged with the murders. - 1892-12: A grand jury indicts Lizzie Borden. Public opinion is sharply divided between those certain of her guilt and supporters, including many in the church and women's organizations, who insist a respectable woman could not have done it. - 1893-06-05: The trial opens in New Bedford before a three-judge panel. The prosecution is led by Hosea Knowlton and William Moody; the defense by former Massachusetts governor George Robinson and Andrew Jennings. The victims' skulls are entered as evidence, and Lizzie faints in the courtroom. - 1893-06: The judges exclude two of the prosecution's strongest items: Lizzie's inconsistent inquest testimony, because she gave it without counsel, and a druggist's account that she had tried to buy prussic acid the day before the murders, ruled too prejudicial and unconnected to the cause of death. - 1893-06-20: After deliberating roughly an hour and a half, the jury acquits Lizzie Borden. No one else is ever charged. Lizzie inherits a share of her father's estate, later moves to a house she names Maplecroft, and lives in Fall River until her death in 1927. The murders remain officially unsolved. ## The evidence, claim by claim - Claim: Lizzie was one of only two people known to be in the house, so she must have been the killer. Evidence: Opportunity is not proof of act. Lizzie and the maid Bridget Sullivan were the only people known to be present, which is exactly why suspicion fell on Lizzie, but presence in a house is not evidence that a particular occupant swung the weapon. No witness saw the crime, and a jury weighing the same fact declined to convict. The house was not sealed off in the modern forensic sense, and the timeline left gaps that the prosecution could not close. - Claim: No blood was found on Lizzie, which a killer of such a savage attack could not have avoided. Evidence: This cuts against the case rather than for it. A double hatchet murder would be expected to leave the attacker heavily bloodstained, yet no blood was found on Lizzie's person and the dress she surrendered bore only a tiny spot on the hem. The prosecution argued she could have washed or destroyed bloodied clothing, but no bloody garment was ever produced. The absence of forensic blood evidence was a genuine hole in the state's case. - Claim: The handleless hatchet found in the cellar was the murder weapon. Evidence: It was never proven to be. Police recovered a hatchet head with a recently broken handle in the Borden cellar, but it carried no blood, and medical testimony suggested the fatal weapon may have been a newer, gilt-edged hatchet rather than the old, dull head that was found. The weapon was, in effect, never definitively identified, which is one reason the case remains open. - Claim: Burning a dress days after the murders shows Lizzie was destroying evidence. Evidence: It is suggestive but not conclusive. Alice Russell testified that Lizzie burned a dress on 7 August, saying it was stained with paint. The defense noted that the dress Lizzie handed to police showed no blood and argued the burned garment was an ordinary, paint-marked one. The act looks bad in hindsight, yet it is consistent with an innocent explanation and was never tied to any bloodstain, so it proves motive to suspect, not guilt. - Claim: The real killer was someone else, such as the maid, the uncle, or an outside intruder. Evidence: Each alternative rests on speculation rather than evidence. Bridget Sullivan, the uncle John Morse (who had an alibi for the morning), and a supposed illegitimate son named William Borden have all been proposed by later writers, and a passing stranger is always possible. But none of these theories is backed by physical proof, a confession that can be verified, or contemporary evidence that would survive scrutiny. They shift the question without answering it, which is why the case stays unsolved rather than reassigned. ## Why people believe it - The setup is claustrophobic and damning. Two people were butchered in a small house in broad daylight while, as far as anyone can show, only a daughter and a maid were home, and the daughter told an account that investigators found hard to credit. That closed-room quality makes the mind want to name the person standing inside it. - The excluded evidence feels like a cheat. Many people learn that Lizzie's contradictory inquest testimony and the prussic-acid story were kept from the jury and conclude she was saved by legal technicalities rather than innocence, which converts an acquittal into a suspected escape. - Class and gender did real work. Jurors and much of the public in 1893 struggled to imagine a respectable, churchgoing woman committing so savage a crime, and later observers read that disbelief as the reason she walked, which makes the guilty verdict people wanted feel like the true one that was denied. - The rhyme fixed a verdict in memory. The schoolyard chant about forty whacks turned an unproven accusation into a catchy, near-permanent cultural conviction, even though it inflates the number of blows and calls a stepmother a mother, so millions absorbed guilt as a nursery fact. - A single unsolved horror resists an open ending. Because no one was ever convicted, the story has no resolution, and the human urge to close a narrative pushes people to fasten on the most obvious suspect, or on a dramatic alternative, rather than sit with an unsolved case. ## Open questions - Who actually killed Andrew and Abby Borden has never been established, and the physical weapon was never conclusively identified, so the fundamental question of the case remains open more than a century later. - Whether the exclusion of Lizzie's inquest testimony and the prussic-acid evidence changed the outcome is genuinely debatable, and it is one of the enduring what-ifs of American legal history, though excluding compelled testimony given without counsel reflected real legal principle, not favoritism. - The note that supposedly summoned Abby to a sick friend was never found and no sender ever came forward, a small anomaly that both sides have used, and that has never been explained. - None of the alternative-suspect theories, from the maid to an illegitimate son to a passing stranger, has ever produced verifiable proof, leaving the question of an outside killer possible in principle but unsupported in fact. ## Sources - Lizzie Borden, Wikipedia (2026): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden - Lizzie Borden | Rhyme, Biography, Trial, & Facts, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2024): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lizzie-Borden-American-murder-suspect - How Lizzie Borden Got Away With Murder, Smithsonian Magazine (2019): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-lizzie-borden-got-away-with-murder-180972707/ - The Lizzie Borden Trial of 1892, National Women's History Museum (2020): https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/lizzie-borden-trial-1892 - June 20, 1893: Lizzie Borden Is Acquitted of Murder, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2024): https://www.britannica.com/today-in-history/June-20-Lizzie-Borden-Is-Acquitted-of-Murder - Arrest and Trial of Lizzie Borden: Topics in Chronicling America, Library of Congress (2023): https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-lizzie-borden - The Trial of Lizzie Borden: An Account, Famous Trials (Douglas O. Linder, UMKC School of Law) (2018): https://famous-trials.com/lizzieborden/1437-home - Lizzie Borden Trial: 1893, Encyclopedia.com (2019): https://www.encyclopedia.com/law/law-magazines/lizzie-borden-trial-1893 Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/lizzie-borden