Lizzie Borden Murders

August 4, 1892

Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked to death with a hatchet in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home. Andrew's spinster daughter Lizzie was charged and acquitted. A children's rhyme preserved the story; the real killer was never identified. The trial was the first true-crime national sensation of the telegraph age. Lizzie lived another thirty-four years in Fall River, wealthy, ostracized, and forever shadowed by the forty whacks.