A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight

On a stiflingly hot August morning in 1892 Lizzie Borden, of Fall River, Massachusetts, chopped her stepmother to death with an ax. An hour and a half later, she killed her father the same way. Although the story has been told by those least qualified to do so — outsiders and men. Now, for the first time, this famous American crime is examined by someone with all the proper credentials: Victoria Lincoln, a native of Fall River and thus knows the never-revealed ‘inside’ story of the crime that insular community regarded as its private disgrace; she is a woman, and as she convincingly demonstrates, the Borden murders — and their solution — can be fully understood only by a fellow woman.

Miss Lincoln comes up with startling new findings in her penetrating analysis of the crime. Among them: the hitherto unknown motive for the killings (a secret no one but an inhabitant of Fall River, Massachusetts, ever could possibly disclose); a startling new hypothesis to account for Lizzie’s celebrated ‘peculiar spells’ that casts new light on how the crime was committed; and the place where Lizzie hid the dress she was wearing at the time of the murders — a mystery that has been plaguing criminologists for years.