1892: The Axe Murders That Made Lizzie Borden Infamous
On the morning of 4 August 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were found hacked to death in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew, a self-made millionaire with an estate valued at $300,000, had built his fortune through furniture, property, and banking, yet kept a famously frugal household. Suspicion fell almost immediately on his younger daughter, Lizzie, a churchgoing Sunday school teacher and temperance advocate.
Lizzie Borden was tried for the axe murders of her father and stepmother and acquitted, with no one else ever charged. She spent the rest of her life in Fall River, dying of pneumonia in 1927 at age 66. The case never left the public imagination, inspiring films, plays, literary works, and one of the most enduring folk rhymes in American criminal history.
