Did Lizzie Borden Use A Gossamer for Murder?

Two Innocuous Waterproofs Were Hiding in Plain Sight

Funny Gossamer Video

John E. Kaughran & Co’s Illustrated Catalogue Spring and Summer, 1884, New York.Smithsonian Libraries & Archives / https://library.si.edu/image-gallery/106833

For the last 129 years, Lizzie Borden enthusiasts have had to live with one unanswered question: How did Lizzie appear to her neighbors without blood on her hair or clothes so soon after brutally murdering her parents?  

WHERE DID THE BLOOD GO?

Most believe the Bedford cord dress Lizzie burned in the stove three days after the murders was the dress she wore during the murder of her stepmother. She also wore an apron that she refused to acknowledge eight times during her inquest. This inquest became so incriminating that Lizzie’s lawyers fought and won to have it ruled “inadmissible.”

But the killing of her father occurred two hours later and required that she appear to the public within 11 to 15 minutes and would require a quick-change cloaking device that also left no footprints. Mr. Borden’s body was still warm and dripping blood when discovered.

New England’s infamous 32-year-old haughty spinster was most likely cloaked in a gossamer waterproof raincoat during the brutal murder of her father to protect her hair and clothes from blood spatter.

I am of the opinion that Lizzie quickly donned a full-length gossamer before the murder of her father. Before removing it, she wiped it down with a few wet towels that found their way to the cellar bucket of water, where they lay mimicking menstrual towels. The gossamer was quickly returned to the closet. 

Gossamers

Gossamers were popularized in 1884 and were made from cotton gingham that was lightly rubberized and could be folded and carried in one’s pocket until needed. 

According to six residents of Fall River who wrote letters to the lead prosecutor, District Attorney Hosea Morrill Knowlton, gossamers could be “wiped off with a wet cloth and hung back to dry.”  

These letters were dated one month after the August 4, 1892 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden and are part of a collection of letters known as “The Knowlton Papers” from the prestigious Fall River Historical Society about the trial. The letters were written in the earnest hope of claiming the $5,000 reward offered by the Borden sisters (estimated to be at $155,000 in today’s money). Ironically, the reward was offered by the sister of the accused murderer.

During the trial, Knowlton asked Emma Borden about Lizzie’s “waterproof,” to which she replied, “Lizzie kept her gossamer in the 2nd-floor hall clothes press.” Emma also testified, “Mrs. Borden had a black rubberized gossamer at the bottom of the stairs in the front landing and it’s still there.” Her way of answering those questions gave me pause.

Therefore, I make the observation that each death occurred within feet of a gossamer that was later hidden in plain sight.

DID SHE SLAY WEARING A BONNET?

Advertised along with the Gossamer Raincoat, the Victorian Rain Bonnet could easily cover one’s hair. The plastic was as lightweight as our modern sandwich baggies according to my research. Some 1893 residents warned Knowlton that the gossamer garment could be easily burned in a stove fire. But the smell of rubber would draw attention to the stove, which was already in high use that day as Lizzie saw fit to heat her flats to iron her handkerchiefs and burn a letter for Emma that started, “I’m going through with it …” 

“These articles no one should be without as they are the cheapest and most useful Garment in use; Made of the best Scotch Gingham, and covered with a compound of rubber and warranted waterproof, and such lightweight that they can be carried in the pocket. No person should be without one.” (taken from the original Smithsonian caption)

Knowlton said in his closing arguments that Lizzie Borden turned in the wrong dress in order to avoid “the eye of the microscope.” Yet after all of her trickery, a drop of blood was still found on the outside of her undergarment.

Did leakage occur below the dress’s buttonholes? We may never know, but we do know that when a blood drop is larger on the outside and smaller on the inside, that blood came from an outside source.

DID LIZZIE WEAR RUBBER SHOES? 

On the second of a three-day Inquest, Marshal Hilliard accompanied Lizzie home by horse and buggy, where she went in, removed her pair of black Victorian tie shoes and stockings, and turned them over to him. The record shows that no blood was found on the boots. But were those the boots Lizzie wore to commit the murders? I believe she wore rubber boots over her own shoes that she later discarded or cleaned and placed in Mrs. Borden’s closet to fool investigators.

Photo Source: Vintage Victorian 100% Rubber Overshoes Size 6.5 @Vintage Boots 1890 

Additionally, Knowlton made a tactical error when he asked Massachusetts Attorney General Albert Pillsbury to ask the head of chemistry at Harvard University, Professor Wood, if he thought it was a good idea to check Lizzie’s waterproof for blood with a microscope, instead of going directly to Wood and ordering the exam himself or going through the medical examiner, Dr. Dolan. Apparently, Pillsbury never followed through on the request.

The Setup

Fourteen months prior to the murders, in June of 1891, a burglar using a sixpenny nail broke into the house, worked their way to an upstairs bedroom in the back, into a private clothes press, and broke into Mr. Borden’s locked desk. Only Mrs. Borden’s personal things, some gold coins, and horsecar tickets were taken. Lizzie, Emma, and the maid were all at home at the time.

While Knowlton was acutely aware of Lizzie’s motives and actions, Pillsbury seemed oblivious to what is obvious to me: that breaking into Andrew Borden’s desk with a sixpenny nail was an inside job, one that only someone with an intimate knowledge of the comings and goings of the occupants that were home at the time of the robbery could commit. (Ten months after the inquest, prosecutor William H. Moody would say something similar in his opening statement.) Add to that the fact, that Lizzie gave a house tour to the police officers who came to investigate the burglary, and I arrive at the conclusion that Lizzie used the home burglary as a dress rehearsal. 

I believe Lizzie had it in her mind that the murders had to occur on Thursday, August 4, 1892, the day of the Rocky Point Clam Bake, when only a skeleton crew of Fall River Police Officers would be on duty.

“IF IT WERE SIMPLE, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?”

Three days after the murders and with the household in chaos, Lizzie’s best friend Alice Russell (who was staying with the women) walked into the kitchen from an outside errand to discover Lizzie burning the Bedford cord dress in the stove. This dress, which was newly made in May of cheap material, had suspiciously appeared stained with paint on the same day the dress was finished. (The paint stain was mentioned in interviews with several witnesses, the housepainter, and the dressmaker). Lizzie was known to have worn this dress on the morning of the murders. As Alice testified, “It was not a calico or a cambric, it was a Bedford cord.”

Lizzie Borden standing over the dead body of Abby Borden wearing a raincoat but testimony tells us she wore a Bedford Cord Dress with an apron that was most likely discarded in the autopsy clothes in a second trip to the cellar on the night of the murders watched by police. No explanation was given for 2 bloody aprons found in the autopsy clothes.

Artist: Nic Potocki 3/8/2018 Commissioned by Kate Lavender.

Lizzie kept herself busy before the murders buying cheap dress material, visiting out-of-town pharmacies (including one with Emma) looking for poison, and consulting with probate attorneys in Boston. Knowlton had those pharmacists at the courthouse, ready to testify until the poison testimony was ruled “excluded” at the Superior Court Trial. Many have speculated their testimony about her poison-seeking would have made a difference, and others say that train had already left the station. 

WAS SHE A DARK HORSE?

Perhaps Lizzie’s greatest skill was how she used her intelligence to mask her psychopathy to appear normal for five years while she secretly pined away daydreaming of the most expedient way to dispose of the Bordens. The second part of her red herring will be the topic of the next newsletter as I couldn’t possibly explain how Lizzie hood-winked the legal system in one introductory post.

In a recent podcast, entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss asks, “If this were easy, what would it look like?” Ferriss goes on to say “As humans, we tend to overcomplicate things.” As I thought about this, I came to believe that Lizzie was a thrifty, practical spinster that used what was freely available to her. 

In Conclusion…

Discussing women’s clothing and their monthly periods in the Victorian Era was dangerous territory and Lizzie knew this. Perhaps Knowlton considered the gossamer theory and rejected it as too difficult to prove as the smoking gun in a court of law where hard evidence is the rule of law.

Ironically, I feel there was no bloody dress to be had after the stove burning, the burial of the autopsy clothes, and after the bodies were laid to rest where many a thing has been hidden inside a casket. Lizzie had to have used a sheath that offered ease and concealment, something innocuous. Something she could hide in plain sight. Something you saw every day and paid no mind to. Lizzie wasn’t a mastermind and the laws of physics must always apply.

© 2021 lizziebordenaudio.substack.com

Reference sources:

https://www.lizziebordenaudio.com

Trial testimony on the podcast Lizzie Borden Audio, The Witness Statements, Episode 3 by Kate Lavender, January 17, 2021. Podcast based on “The Superior Court Case of Lizzie Borden June 5–20, 1893,” and the Fall River Historical Society as The Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Lizzie A. Borden: The Knowlton Papers 1892–1893: A Collection of Previously Unpublished Letters and Documents from the Files of Prosecuting Attorney Hosea Morrill Knowlton by Michael Martins and Dennis A. Binette (ISBN 0-9641248-3-1).

Pat Flynn, Tim Ferriss Changed My Life with Literally One Question, in The Smart Passive Income Podcast, podcast, July 15, 2021, 5:21,