What Happened to Lizzie Borden After Her Trial?

Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were found brutally slain inside their Fall River, Mass., home on August 4, 1892. Andrew had been struck repeatedly while lying on a sitting room sofa; Abby had been killed upstairs roughly 90 minutes earlier.

Suspicion soon centered on Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter and Abby’s stepdaughter, Lizzie. She was arrested and charged with both murders, setting the stage for a sensational 1893 trial that ended with her being found not guilty. No one else was ever charged, and the killings remain officially unsolved.

Soon, however, the Borden murders became far more than a local crime story. Newspapers across the country followed the investigation and trial in extraordinary detail, transforming Lizzie into one of the era’s most famous criminal defendants. Long before television cameras, podcasts and streaming documentaries turned murder cases into mass entertainment, the Borden murders showed how quickly a violent crime could become a national obsession.

From the beginning, the crimes attracted widespread attention. Andrew Borden was a wealthy and prominent figure in Fall River. He and his wife had been murdered in broad daylight inside their own home, with no obvious sign of robbery and no witness who saw a killer enter or leave.

Newspapers began reporting on the murders almost immediately, and the mystery soon attracted attention well beyond Fall River. Early coverage focused on the crime scenes, possible suspects and the search for an unknown killer. At first, police looked heavily at male suspects, and various outsiders were briefly scrutinized.

Then, suspicion shifted toward Lizzie. The respectable, churchgoing daughter of one of Fall River’s wealthiest men was now suspected of committing a brutal crime. Her arrest on August 11, 1892, intensified public interest, and newspapers around the country began following developments in the case.

At 32, Lizzie was unmarried, lived with her wealthy father and participated in church and charitable activities. She did not fit popular expectations of a violent criminal, much less someone capable of repeatedly striking two family members with a hatchet.

That contradiction became central to the coverage. Some newspapers portrayed Lizzie as cold, calculating or strangely unemotional. Others emphasized her respectability and questioned whether a woman of her background could have committed such brutal murders.

Lizzie also attracted organized support from women. Members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, an organization in which Lizzie had been active, rallied to her defense, while other women publicly questioned the case against her. For some supporters, her prosecution raised a broader contradiction: Lizzie could be accused, tried and potentially condemned to death under the law, yet as a woman, her political voice did not have the same power as that of a man, and she would be judged by a jury composed entirely of men.

Her appearance and demeanor became part of the story as well. Reporters described her clothes, expressions and behavior in court, subjecting her to the kind of intense personal scrutiny that would become familiar in later high-profile criminal cases involving women.

The case also unfolded in a city divided by class and ethnicity, and some local newspapers reflected those tensions in their coverage. But nationally, the larger fascination was simpler: Could a seemingly respectable Victorian woman really have done this?

When Lizzie went on trial in New Bedford on June 5, 1893, reporters packed the courtroom and newspapers published lengthy accounts of the proceedings. The prosecution’s case was circumstantial. Investigators questioned Lizzie’s changing accounts of her movements, explored tensions inside the Borden family and presented testimony about her behavior after the murders. Andrew and Abby’s skulls were even brought into court during testimony, adding to the trial’s macabre notoriety.

However, some potentially damaging evidence never reached the jury. The judges excluded Lizzie’s inquest testimony and barred testimony from a drugstore clerk who claimed she had attempted to buy prussic acid the day before the murders.

Lizzie also had a formidable defense team, including former Massachusetts Governor George Robinson. Her lawyers attacked the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case and emphasized the absence of direct physical evidence connecting her to the killings.

Gender remained impossible to separate from the proceedings. Lizzie appeared in court dressed conservatively and presented herself as the respectable woman jurors already knew from newspaper accounts. Her defense needed only to create reasonable doubt, but prevailing assumptions about female respectability likely worked in her favor.

On June 20, after 15 days of trial, the jury found Lizzie not guilty. The verdict ended the criminal case against her. It did not end the public argument.

After the trial, Lizzie returned to Fall River and moved with her older sister Emma into a large house in the fashionable Hill neighborhood. Legally, she was acquitted of the crime. Socially, suspicion followed her.

Then came the rhyme that would do more than almost anything else to ensure the case remained infamous:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother 40 whacks…”

Almost every detail distorted the historical record. Abby was Lizzie’s stepmother, the number of blows was greatly exaggerated and Lizzie had been acquitted of the murders.

The rhyme reduced a complicated, unresolved criminal case to a memorable piece of American folklore, effectively declaring Lizzie guilty in popular memory despite the jury’s verdict. Over time, the real woman became inseparable from the character created around her: the prim Victorian daughter secretly capable of extraordinary violence.

The Lizzie Borden story anticipated many features that still define true crime: a seemingly respectable suspect, gruesome violence, family secrets, disputed evidence, intense media attention and a verdict that failed to settle public opinion.

It also showed how quickly media coverage could turn a criminal defendant into a public character. Long before the trial began, readers had encountered competing versions of Lizzie—innocent daughter, calculating killer, potential wealthy heiress, persecuted woman. Her acquittal could resolve her legal status, but it could not erase those narratives.

The case has been continually reinvented ever since. Books, plays, films, television programs, documentaries and podcasts have returned to the murders, often reshaping Lizzie to reflect contemporary ideas about gender, sexuality, family and violence.

More than 130 years after Andrew and Abby were killed, the evidence remains disputed and the murderer unsolved. Yet Lizzie’s name remains inseparable from the crime. In that sense, the case established one of true crime’s most enduring patterns: When an unresolved murder collides with intense media attention and a compelling suspect, the story can outlive both the investigation and the people involved.