July 19, 1860

Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done She gave her father forty-one.

Lizzie still Dizzy...

And old-time friends & twilight plays And starry nights, and sunny days Come trooping up the misty ways When my fire burns low.

A local pharmacist claimed that Lizzie attempted to purchase prussic acid from him a day before the crime. Then, at the grand jury hearing, incriminating evidence came from her friend, Alice Russell, who testified that Lizzie burned a stained dress, the defense claiming it was paint-stained, three days after the murders. But the most damning evidence came at the trial, when medical experts appeared to prove that Abby Borden was killed approximately an hour and a half before her husband, making it seem that the perpetrator was more likely to have been a member of the household than an outsider.

The preliminary hearing was held in late August 1892, and the grand jury heard testimony in late November and early December of the same year. The trial of Lizzie Borden began on June 5, 1893 and lasted 13 days. A turning point in the trial was the unveiling of the victims’ skulls; Lizzie fainted and won much sympathy from the all-male jury, who acquitted her on June 20, 1893, after only 68 minutes of deliberation.