Lizzie Borden

She did not share a close relationship with her step-mother and often refused to have meals with the family and suspected that her step-mom’s family wanted to gain access to her father’s wealth.

She and her sister did not address her step-mother as ‘mother’ but rather referred to her as ‘Mrs Borden’.

After she was declared innocent by the jury, she moved to a luxurious house, called ‘Maplecroft’ in the elite neighbourhood of the ‘Hill’ in Fall River along with her sister Emma.

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born in Fall River, Massachusetts to Andrew Jackson Borden, a wealthy and successful property developer and Sarah Borden, who died after her birth.

After three years of her mother’s death, Andrew Borden remarried Abby Durfee Gray. The family lived together along with her elder sister Emma at their Bungalow in Fall River.

She and her sister Emma had an orthodox and religious upbringing and she regularly attended the Central Congregational Church. She taught at Sunday school as a young woman and involved herself in church activities.

She was actively involved in Christian organisations like the Christian Endeavour Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

On August 4, 1892, the day of the murder, her father had a breakfast with his wife and left for his usual rounds at the bank and post office. As usual she and her sister did not eat breakfast with the family.

She ordered her maid to clean the windows on the ground floor after which the maid took a bit of a rest on the third floor. Meanwhile Lizzie went up to her step-mother’s bedroom and, allegedly, killed her with a hatchet by repeatedly hacking at her skull.

Her father returned home at 10.45 a.m. and while he took a nap on the couch in the downstairs sitting room; she approached him and, allegedly, stabbed him 11 times with a hatchet.

On August 11, 1892 she was arrested on the grounds of murder and was tried by a grand jury, who heard the case form November 7th to December 2nd.

She was tried in June that year at the New Bedford and the prosecution attorney for the case was Supreme Court Justice, William H. Moody.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, she allegedly murdered her father and step-mother by repeatedly mutilating them with a hatchet at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. She was arrested and tried for the murders and was finally declared not guilty.