The prussic acid purchase that changed the Lizzie Borden case
August 3, 1892, the day before the murders.
Lizzie Borden walked into a drugstore in Fall River, Massachusetts, and asked to buy prussic acid.
The poison was for cleaning a sealskin cape, she said.
The druggist refused to sell it to her.
That refusal is documented in the investigation record.
Whether the acid was actually purchased or obtained is not stated in the record.
The purchase attempt became a turning point in the case.
Prosecutors later used it to suggest premeditation.
The defense argued the acid was intended for cleaning a sealskin cape.
One errand.
One small request at a counter.
A day later, two people would be dead.
Why would anyone need poison the day before a double murder?
That question hung over the trial.
It still hangs over the case.
The record shows the attempt.
The record does not show the motive.
AUGUST 4, 1892
August 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts.
A wealthy man and his second wife were found murdered in their home at 92 Second Street.
Andrew Borden was discovered in the first-floor sitting room, his face nearly split by an axe-like blow.
Abby Borden was found in an upstairs guest bedroom, killed by repeated blows to the head.
The bodies were found by the family’s maid, Bridget Sullivan, and a neighbor, Dr. Bowen.
Lizzie Borden, Andrew’s younger daughter, reported finding her father’s body.
The murders occurred within roughly an hour and a half of each other.
Abby was killed first.
Andrew was killed upon his return home.
Two brutal killings in a busy household.
A maid downstairs. A sister nearby. A house on a working street.
No clear witness.
The exact sequence of events inside the house is not fully established.
It is a scene that invites questions.
Who moved through those rooms that morning?
What was heard, and what was not?
How does a face get split by an axe-like blow without a scream carrying?
That would require evidence.
THE INVESTIGATION'S MISSTEPS
The police arrived at 92 Second Street and did not secure the crime scene.
Neighbors and relatives walked through the house, through the rooms where the bodies lay.
The murder weapon was never found.
A hatchet was examined. An axe was examined. Both were dismissed.
Lizzie Borden told police she had been in the barn at the time of her father's murder.
No evidence placed her in that barn.
She had burned a dress shortly after the murders.
The prosecution claimed the burned dress was bloodstained. The defense said the stains were paint.
Whether the burned dress was actually bloodstained is not established.
The police did not interview Bridget Sullivan thoroughly at first.
When the maid finally testified, she described Lizzie's demeanor after the discovery of the bodies.
She described Lizzie as calm.
That calmness damaged the prosecution's case.
The medical experts disagreed on the timing of the two deaths.
Abby Borden was killed first. Andrew Borden was killed upon his return home. The experts could not agree on the hour.
The investigation piled errors on errors.
The scene was left open. The weapon was never found. The witness was not questioned.
What was examined, and what was missed?
What was burned, and what was hidden?
What did a calm daughter mean, and what did it prove?
That would require evidence.
TWO STORIES, ONE ACID
The prosecution told one story with the acid.
The purchase, they argued, was premeditation — a woman poisoning her way toward murder, then taking up the axe when the poison failed.
They pointed to motive: a strained relationship with her father and stepmother.
They pointed to opportunity: Lizzie was in the house, and her testimony shifted.
The defense told the opposite story with the same facts.
The acid was for cleaning a sealskin cape, they said — a household errand, not a plan.
They attacked the lack of physical evidence.
No murder weapon was ever found, though a hatchet and an axe were examined and dismissed.
They argued the impossibility of it: a woman committing two brutal killings without being covered in blood.
The medical evidence settled nothing.
Experts disagreed on the exact timing of the two deaths, so the sequence itself remained a question.
Both sides used the same record to build different certainties.
Was the acid a plan, or a chore?
Was Lizzie calm because she was guilty, or because she was innocent?
That would require evidence.
The jury deliberated for just over an hour.
On June 20, 1893, they returned a verdict of not guilty on both counts.
Lizzie Borden walked free.
The exact meaning of the acid purchase is not established by the record.
Neither is her guilt.
AND THE STORY STILL ISN'T OVER
She walked out of the courtroom and back into Fall River.
The city did not welcome her back.
Social ostracism followed Lizzie Borden, the woman acquitted of two murders, wherever she went.
She and her sister Emma moved into a new home.
They called it Maplecroft.
The sisters later became estranged, and the cause of their split is not established by the record.
Lizzie changed her name to Lizbeth.
She lived quietly, and she died on June 1, 1927.
Emma died a few days later, on June 10, 1927.
The case remains officially unsolved.
No one else was ever charged with the murders.
Who actually committed them is not established.
Was it the daughter who bought poison the day before?
Was it the stranger seen near the house?
Was it anyone at all that the police ever truly considered?
That would require evidence the record does not provide.
The Borden house still stands at 92 Second Street.
It is now a museum and a bed-and-breakfast.
Guests sleep in the rooms where the bodies were found.
They ask the same questions the jury asked in 1893.
They ask the same questions the police never answered.
The hatchet was never found.
The contradictions were never resolved.
The case continues to fascinate, and it continues to resist a conclusion.
She walked free.
The questions did not.
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