The Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River, Mass. 1892

“Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks, when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one!”

From the introduction: “The account presented in these pages of 19th Century America’s most famous murder case is excerpted and adapted from the unpublished memoirs of a (thus far) unknown lady of Fall River, Massachusetts. Since the typewritten, unedited manuscript came to light at a 1990 estate sale, its provenance has been established to a satisfying degree. As part of the contents of an unopened trunk, it resided since the turn of the century in the basement of a private archive in Boston.”

In this third volume of Geary’s Treasury, the famous Lizzie Borden double murder is explored with as much attention to well -researched detail as in his Jack the Ripper. This is another celebrated murder of last century, the one that lead to the infamous school rhyme.

The parrallel between this old case and OJ Simpson’s is striking: both defendants had unblemished reputations; the double murders were gruesome; there were no witnesses and no weapons found; the cases took the media by storm. Both wealthy defendants hired expensive lawyers who convinced the jury of reasonable doubt. Both remain under a cloud of suspicion…