365 Books: Lizzie Borden by Arnold R. Brown

On By Libby RomfhIn Books

The Legend, The Truth, The Final Chapter

“BASED ON STARTLING NEW EVIDENCE NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED. At last the shocking solution to America’s most famous crime…”

Right.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I don’t think we’ll ever really know what happened in the Lizzie Borden case. Or who Jack the Ripper was. Or what happened to poor little Jon Benet. I think we’re pretty close on JFK but there are so many conspiracy theories out there, it will never really be settled.1

But authors sure have fun trying to figure it out.

I’ve only read two books about Lizzie Borden. This one and one where the author was sure she had done it.

This one is interesting because the author meets a man whose father-in-law’s mother-in-law lived in the neighborhood at the time and remembers witnessing something that day: a mysterious figure near the house, who smelled really awful. (The smell becomes important later.) There is, in the canon I believe, mention of a mysterious figure. (It’s one of the unsolved aspects of this case.) The story of what the mother-in-law witnessed is the prologue.

The rest of book is split, basically, into three parts: the murder and all that leads up to it; the investigation and trial; and then the author’s theory. The facts in the first two parts are told relatively neutrally. Perhaps there is a little more attention to explaining away Lizzie’s unstained dress, the dusty axe-head, and the condition of the dust2 of the attic of the barn where she testified she had been, looking for fishing weights at the time of the murder.

In the third part, the author goes to town. He explains that the mother-in-law was just a young wife on the day of the murders. She was Irish at a time when the Irish were the undervalued immigrants, and she was pregnant. She didn’t need trouble. The mysterious man and his stink scared her. She kept her head down and didn’t say a word, until many years later, when she shared it with her son-in-law.3 The son-in-law has the feeling he knows this mysterious man: a hired hand on his uncle’s farm, who was obsessed with his personal axe (talking to it as if it were a baby). A man with antisocial tendencies, a man who could be violent. A man who stank to high heaven.

But why would this man, who lives on an apple farm outside Fall River, want to kill Andrew Borden and his wife? Why wouldn’t Lizzie want to expose the man?

Who is this man, really?

That is what the book is about.

A fun book to read, especially if you don’t know much about the case. Am I convinced? Well, as I said, I’ve only read two books on the subject, and this one was better-written. He tells the facts like a story – with just a little too much recreated dialog and interior monologue for my liking – and it’s easy to follow what’s going on. His theory is unique, to say the least and, on the face of it, makes sense. So I’d be inclined to believe him over the other author – except that he speaks well is not a reason to believe someone.

But, since we’ll never really know what happened, this is as good a theory as the next one.4

  1. Best closing line from any Nicholas Cage movie, The Rock: “Honey,” the quavering voice calls from the other end of the house, “do you wanna know who killed Kennedy?” The rest of the movie is a blur for me: we got the last two tickets and ended up in the front row, not five feet from the screen and the action came at us like a firehose. Not the worst movie to end up in the front row of. I give that honor to Reds. At 3 hours 20 minutes – am I remembering right that it had an intermission? – a real pain the neck. Not recommended for a first date… ↩︎
  2. Footprints? Or no footprints? Or a claim of no footprints; but the dust was too disturbed to support that claim, despite police accounts… ↩︎
  3. The son-in-law becomes the father-in-law of the man who told the author the story. ↩︎
  4. And better than the theory that Lizzie killed them naked and took a shower afterwards. Really? Please. ↩︎

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