Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 10, 1995 TAG: 9511100027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUG HARWOOD
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A century ago - 102 years, to be exact - America was riveted by a trial that has spooky similarities to the one that all of us, in one way or another, recently witnessed.
OK, there are some differences. Lizzie Borden wasn't a football star, just the greedy daughter of a prominent businessman. She was apprehended at home several days after the murder, without a nationally televised joy-ride down the highway in a Bronco. Her trial lasted for days, not months. No one affiliated with the trial was offered any money for television appearances. There wasn't any DNA evidence.
But there was some scientific evidence, the best that the era could offer, about blood spattered on the walls of the rooms where she hacked her parents to death, and a few drops of blood that were found on some of Lizzie's clothes.
There was a ludicrous offer made by the defendant of a reward for the "real killers." There were reports of shadowy figures entering the small New England house where she and her family lived during the few hours that enveloped the murders. There were allegations that a neighbor had quarreled with Lizzie's father about money.
The nation's press flocked to Fall River, Mass., where the murders occurred, and printed wild tales, rumors, paid-for stories, propaganda, lies, and every lurid detail that could be found, pried or invented.
There were Lizzie jokes that circulated during the trial. "How did Lizzie know what time it was? She axed her father!"
No bloody clothes of Lizzie's were ever found, although witnesses said she burned an old dress in the days after the murder. No positively-identified murder weapon was found, although there was a hatchet that had been seriously cleaned and broken in the house.
The police screwed up the investigation royally, giving Lizzie plenty of time to get her act and defense together, affording her courtesies that wouldn't have been offered to lesser defendants. The prosecution screwed up royally, failing to convince the judges to allow into the trial evidence of Lizzie's trying to poison her parents a few months before the murder.
Lizzie hired the best lawyers money could buy. And they earned their fees. They argued that Lizzie didn't have time to butcher her hated stepmother and wealthy father, although no one else could have done it without bumping into Lizzie. They argued that the police had simply settled for someone to pin with the murders, rather than find the real killer. They told the jury to send a message to the cops.
Instead of playing the race card, which wasn't there to be played, they played the gender card, arguing that a woman simply couldn't take an ax and chop her parents heads into minute steaks.
The women of America rallied around Lizzie, at least during the trial. And men, perhaps fearing for the consequences of their own indiscretions, and certainly wanting to keep women in their place, far away from hatchet handles, rallied right along with them.
Lizzie never took the stand in her own defense. It would have been risky, since she had given several conflicting statements immediately after the murders. But, in a short statement to the court, she denied having anything to do with the murders.
It took Lizzie's jury only an hour to find her not guilty, and America was split as to whether a great justice or injustice had been done.
Lizzie went back home, wisely declining to discuss the case with anyone. Occasionally, she would mention her father - who left her a substantial fortune for those days - in fond terms. She was shunned by society and remained - except for an occasional party for some friends in the theater, and journeys to Boston - a recluse.
Lizzie Borden died quietly in 1927. The home where she murdered her parents is now a bed and breakfast. O.J. Simpson never slept there.
Doug Harwood is the editor-in-chief of The Rockbridge Advocate news magazine in Lexington.
by CNB