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Peace at any cost is a prelude to war!
The Clintonesque Lizzie Borden
by Stephanie Herman
Saturday, October 30, 1999
Lizzie Borden took an axe
Gave her mother forty whacks
And when she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
WHEN LIZZIE BORDEN'S parents were found dead in their home on August 4, 1892,
a maniacally publicized investigation began, consisting of an inquest,
preliminary hearing, and the convening of a grand jury, to determine if
Borden should stand trial for murder. One hundred and six years before the
criminal investigation and impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, Borden's
trial, evidence and defense tactics exhibited several macabre similarities.
According to Borden biographer Ed Sams, Lizzie's foremost talent during the
investigation was a now-familiar tendency to parse her words. At the inquest,
for example, prosecuting attorney Hosea M. Knowlton asked Borden, "Were you
always cordial with your stepmother?"
Her Clintonesque response: "That depends upon one's idea of cordiality."
The judge, impatient with her equivocations, suspended the inquest and moved
for a preliminary hearing. Borden's attorneys hedged. They argued before the
court and in the press that Blaisell was now presumably biased against their
defendant for having heard the inquest testimony, and that he should
disqualify himself from the case. The judge, well within his rights to do so,
refused to step down. Defenders of his day might have argued that he was
simply doing his job, but there were few of those.
That's because, despite the evidence suggesting her guilt, the press
favored Lizzie. Responding to the lawyers'cue, newspaper headlines and
cartoons publicly vilified Blaisell for refusing to step down. Gossip
columnists painted the "accused" as a proper Victorian victim and
whipped the American people into a meringue of misguided support.
Outside the courtroom, Lizzie Borden enjoyed the status of a national
celebrity and her "poll numbers" skyrocketed.
Like Clinton, her most visible and vocal supporters came from the organized
women's movement of her day: the Women's Christian Temperance Movement
Suffragettes and the Women's Auxiliary of the YMCA. To further her own public
relations, Lizzie was always accompanied by two clergymen, Reverend Jubb and
Reverend Buck.
Trouble surfaced for Lizzie, though, when her friend Alice Russell gave grand
jury testimony regarding a stained blue dress. At the inquest, Borden had
testified that she'd worn a blue dress on the day of the murders, and that
she had later changed. Investigators noted that Lizzie's clothes exhibited no
blood stains that day, but Russell claimed she saw Lizzie burn the blue dress
that presumably contained those incriminating blood stains.
Might history have been recorded differently if the family maid had kept that
dress in a safe place until investigators could examine it?
Perhaps, but like modern-day FOBs, those close to Lizzie were willing to
protect her from justice. The Borden's family friend, Dr. Bowen, was caught
in the Borden's kitchen burning evidence in the wood stove, and the maid,
known as "Maggie," accepted compensation to testify on behalf of her boss.
In an effective bit of witness tampering, Maggie was apparently coached on
the technique of parsing words. "Considering [Maggie's]
circumlocutions on the witness stand, one only wonders what [she]
withheld," writes Borden's biographer. "Testifying that 'she never did
say that Lizzie was crying' is not the same as saying Lizzie cried, just as
'not saying one single word that was not true' is not the same as telling the
truth."
Historians are still baffled that Borden's friends and acquaintances
would knowingly protect an axe murderer, just as it baffled us a century
later when so many White House staffers remained loyal to the president.
Sometimes juries surprise us. Borden's apparently didn't think that 81
whacks constituted an impeachable offense.
--------
Stephanie Herman is regular columnist for the American Partisan.
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