What happened to Lizzie Borden’s parents, Andrew and Abby Borden?
At around 11 a.m. on Aug. 4, 1892, Andrew, a bank president, was found dead on the sofa in the sitting room of the Borden family home.
Dr. Seabury Bowen recalled noticing “like a flash,” per Miller’s book, that nothing else in the room looked out of place. County Medical Examiner Dr. William Dolan counted 10 disfiguring cuts on Andrew’s face and head.
Abby’s body was found in an upstairs guest bedroom, having taken, as Dolan determined, 18 blows to the back of the head.
Going through Andrew’s tools in the cellar, police found a claw hatchet with a smudge of red on the handle, but they removed multiple hatchets and axes from the house.
Emma was away visiting friends. According to The Borden Murders, Bowen told Lizzie’s friend Alice Russell, one of a number of people by then swarming the house that the increasingly distraught younger sister “had better go up to her room and stay there.”
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