Nearly 125 years have passed since 32-year-old spinster Lizzie Borden supposedly killed her father, Andrew Borden, and her stepmother, Abby Durfee Borden, yet the crime continues to be as fascinating as ever.
Countless books continue to be published offering various reasons for the crime. Was she insane? Was it a crime of passion? Was it a crime of opportunity or greed?
Or was it something else?
In writing my book, Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter, I took the unique approach that Lizzie did indeed commit the crime… because she had no other choice.
After looking at the autopsy reports and records, I realized that there was another plausible reason as to why she would have committed such a vicious crime. Why else would someone repeatedly hit the victims in the head—except that they had become zombies?
Crime, of course, is no laughing matter, but given the distance of the crime in the past, it does allow different interpretations. Then, like now, many find it hard to believe that a woman of her status—unmarried Sunday School teacher, daughter of an upstanding citizen—could or would do such a horrific thing. The crime was bloody and vicious. Could a woman do that? Possibly, but the jury of men declared her not guilty.
No evidence directly linking Lizzie to the crime was ever found or revealed. No forensic tests proved her guilt. Even today, no proof of her guilt has been uncovered.
It was a crime based on circumstantial evidence, with Lizzie being the only one home except for the maid, who claimed to be sleeping upstairs after washing windows. An uncle had been visiting, but had already left. Could he have snuck back into the house unseen? Maybe. A mysterious man had been heard arguing with Mr. Borden days before. A possible killer? Maybe.
Most likely it was a combination of the jurors being unable to believe that Lizzie could do such a thing, and the lack of evidence that allowed her to go free.
But even if Lizzie was declared not guilty, she served a lifetime sentence. By choosing to continue living in her hometown, she soon learned that society passed its own sentence. She became a social pariah, ending up living alone when even her sister, for whatever reason, moved out. They never reconciled.
In recent years, investigators have found traces of blood running down the walls of the former Borden home (now the Lizzie Borden B&B Museum)—and in the cellar. Evidence of her cleaning herself off as has been suggested? Sadly, we may never know.
That mystery, however, is part of what has kept her name alive for generation after generation. And it has kept fiction and nonfiction writers continuing to find new solutions or reasons for the crime.
About Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter:
Every family has its secrets…
One hot August morning in 1892, Lizzie Borden picked up an axe and murdered her father and stepmother. Newspapers claim she did it for the oldest of reasons: family conflicts, jealousy and greed. But what if her parents were already dead? What if Lizzie slaughtered them because they’d become zombies?
Thrust into a horrific world where the walking dead are part of a shocking conspiracy to infect not only Fall River, Massachusetts, but also the world beyond, Lizzie battles to protect her sister, Emma, and her hometown from nightmarish ghouls and the evil forces controlling them.
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Website: http://cverstraete.com – Blog: http://girlzombieauthors.blogspot.com