MANY WOUNDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

MANY WOUNDS.

HATCHET KILLS AGED COUPLE.

WOMAN ON TRIAL.

Andrew Borden was 70 years of age and his wife six years younger. They Were respected residents of Fall River, U.B-A. He was supposed to be worth £60,000, but lived in the modest manner characteristic of thrifty New Englanders. Lizzie Borden, 32 years of age, was the unmarried daughter of Andrew Borden by his first wife. The girl and her father and stepmother did not get along very well.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Bridget Sullivan, the of all work, was busily engaged on the second floor when she heard Miss Borden «il»Tiplr that her father had been murdered downstairs. It developed that not only Mr. Borden, but his wife had been killed. Twentynine wounds, evidently from a sharp hatchet, were found on the persons of > the aged couple, and the rooms in which they were discovered were badly spattered with blood.

Bridget was sent for a doctor, but when he arrived his services were useless. When ashed where she had been just before discovering the murder, Mi« Borden insisted that she was working in the barn. Under crow-examinatio* she made many conflicting statements. It is possible that this may have been dae to her natural nervous confusion at the time. But, nevertheless, she was arrested and tried for the doable crime. It a was; brought out at the trial Tiirtie Borden and her stepmother M always been on bad terms. Moreover, the girl' and her father had quarrelled violently over the transfer of some of his property to his second wife. •Another feet which the attorneys for the State hammered on incessantly was thai some days after the murder Lizzie Borden had' burned a dress, sayins *li»t it was full of paint. It was furthermore contended by the prosecutor that the front door of the house had been locked daring the whole morning of the crime and the night be* fore, and that the murderer of lbs. Borden could have entered only through the fcifafc—»- door. It waa proved that Bridget Sullivan, the servant,- was in this washing, and that no one could have gone through without her knowing. The esse against lassie Borden was almost wholly circumstantial. On her befatf it was shown that the controversy with .her father regarding money matters had been partially healed by his ■ financial compensation to" his daughter. . The episode concerning the burning of the dress was accounted for by saying that.it had been done openly and in tli» presencei ofa.neighbour, and that ft was always tine family custooi to born old dothea. One witness was produced to prove that the 'dress was staiMd paint and not with human blood. The trial perplexed not only the judge and the jury, but the public as welL The Z™T. deliberated but a short time, and Ijixne Borden was acquitted of murder. , Some thirty years have passed since that double murder at Fall Biver, and the mystery is. as unfathomable to-day as it waa at that time. One of the farmers of the neighbour* hood ssid that shortly after, the crime, while he was walking through the woods, beard a queer voice repeat three f and soon thereafter he came upon a man with blood •pots on his shirt* but before he could asy or do anythingthe strsngrr had disappeared into the depths of the forest.