Updated
Updated · CBS New York · Sep 17
"48 Hours" Revisits 1892 Lizzie Borden Murders, Sleeping in Victim's Bedroom
Updated
Updated · CBS New York · Sep 17

"48 Hours" Revisits 1892 Lizzie Borden Murders, Sleeping in Victim's Bedroom

3 articles · Updated · CBS New York · Sep 17

Summary

  • A "48 Hours" team returned to the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River and spent the night in Abby Borden's bedroom to reexamine the still-unsolved 1892 double murder.
  • The visit focused on gaps in Lizzie Borden's account, especially her claim she heard nothing while Abby was attacked upstairs in a small house with thin walls and rooms stacked directly above one another.
  • The team also revisited physical evidence questions: investigators believed a small hatchet was the weapon, yet no blood was found on Lizzie's dress despite the brutality of the killings and the short timeline.
  • Andrew Borden, 70, and Abby Borden, 64, were found hacked to death on Aug. 4, 1892; Lizzie, then 32, was acquitted in 1893 after an all-male jury deliberated for a little more than an hour.
  • The report argues modern forensic methods and different views of female defendants might have changed the outcome of a case that still fuels books, films and now Netflix's "Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story."

Insights

With bloody clothes and a burned dress, how did a wealthy 1892 woman convince an all-male jury she was innocent of brutal murder?
How could someone butcher two people in a cramped, thin-walled house without the person downstairs hearing a single sound?