Who Was Bridget Sullivan, and What Role Did She Play in the Borden Murders?

When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered inside their Fall River, Mass., home on August 4, 1892, only two other members of the household were known to have been on the property during crucial portions of the morning: Andrew’s daughter Lizzie and the family’s live-in maid, Bridget Sullivan.

That made Sullivan one of the most important witnesses in the investigation. She had been moving in and out of 92 Second Street as she performed her chores, saw members of the family shortly before the killings and was inside the house when Lizzie discovered Andrew’s body.

Her testimony helped investigators reconstruct the morning and later became an important part of Lizzie’s murder trial. But Sullivan’s unusual position also raised questions that have persisted for more than a century: How could two people have been violently murdered while she was nearby without her seeing or hearing anything? And did she know more than she ever revealed?

Sullivan was a 26-year-old Irish immigrant who had come to the United States about seven years before the murders. Like many young immigrant women of the period, she found work as a domestic servant. By August 1892, she had been employed by Andrew and Abby for two years and nine months and lived in a small attic bedroom at their Second Street home.

The Bordens called her “Maggie,” although that was not her name. The practice may have reflected the tendency of some households to call successive Irish servants by the same familiar name rather than use their actual names. Her duties included cooking, cleaning, laundry and other household work.

As a live-in servant, Sullivan occupied an unusual position. She was intimately familiar with the family’s routines and relationships but remained an employee rather than a member of the household. On August 4, that position would make her a crucial witness to the events surrounding the murders.

According to her trial testimony, Sullivan began the morning preparing breakfast and completing her usual chores. She was also feeling ill. Several members of the household had recently suffered stomach problems, and Sullivan testified that she went outside and vomited before returning to work.

Despite feeling unwell, she was instructed by Abby to wash the downstairs windows. The chore took Sullivan both inside and outside the house during the period when investigators believed Abby was murdered.

Andrew’s brother-in-law, John Morse, who had stayed overnight, left the house that morning, followed later by Andrew. While Sullivan washed windows, Abby went upstairs to make up the guest room where Morse had slept. Investigators later concluded that she was killed there sometime around 9:30 a.m. Sullivan said she heard nothing indicating that an attack had taken place.

Andrew returned home at approximately 10:40 a.m. and found the front door locked. Sullivan went to let him in and had difficulty with the locks. As she struggled with the door, she later testified, she heard Lizzie laugh from somewhere upstairs.

That detail attracted considerable attention because Abby’s body was already lying in the second-floor guest room. Sullivan did not say she saw Lizzie upstairs, however, only that the laugh appeared to come from that direction.

After Andrew entered, Sullivan continued her chores. She also recalled hearing Lizzie tell her father that Abby had received a note saying someone was sick and had gone out. Sullivan had not seen anyone deliver such a note and never saw the note itself.

Sullivan eventually went upstairs to her attic bedroom to rest. Not long afterward, she heard Lizzie calling to her from below: “Maggie, come down quick! Father’s dead. Somebody came in and killed him.” Sullivan rushed downstairs, where Andrew lay dead on the sitting-room sofa.

Sullivan’s account became important because it provided investigators with one of their best timelines of the morning. She placed Lizzie at the house between the two murders. She recalled hearing her laugh upstairs when Andrew returned, and she confirmed Lizzie’s statement that Abby had supposedly gone out after receiving a note. Sullivan could not confirm that such a note ever existed.

However, her testimony was not entirely damaging to Lizzie. Sullivan said she saw no blood on Lizzie’s face, hands or clothing after Andrew’s body was discovered, and recalled that her hair appeared to be in order. That was potentially significant after two extraordinarily bloody attacks. Sullivan also acknowledged that while she was outside washing windows, someone could have entered through an unlocked side door without her seeing them.

Her testimony therefore cut both ways. It helped establish circumstances that made investigators suspicious of Lizzie while also reinforcing some of the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case.

Sullivan’s proximity to the murders inevitably made her the subject of later theories. She was on the property when Abby was killed and inside the house when Andrew was murdered. Yet she said she neither witnessed an attack nor heard anything that alerted her to what had happened.

Some later writers have suggested that Sullivan may have helped Lizzie commit the murders or deliberately concealed evidence afterward. Others have proposed that she witnessed something and remained silent to protect Lizzie. 

Later theories have imagined a more personal reason Sullivan might have protected Lizzie: that the two women were romantically involved. Some versions of the story even suggest that Andrew or Abby discovered the relationship and that the confrontation somehow contributed to the murders.

There is no contemporary evidence that Lizzie and Sullivan were lovers. Neither woman described such a relationship, and nothing in Sullivan’s testimony suggests one. The theory emerged much later and has been reinforced by fictional portrayals, including the 2018 film Lizzie, which depicts the two women as lovers.

There has also been broader speculation about Lizzie’s sexuality, fueled in part by her close relationships with women, including actress Nance O’Neil. However, there is no definitive evidence that Lizzie was a lesbian or that she had a romantic relationship with Sullivan. The idea that Bridget helped conceal the murders out of love for Lizzie remains a later theory rather than one supported by the historical record.

Investigators questioned Sullivan extensively but never established a convincing motive or found physical evidence connecting her to the killings. Neither prosecutors nor the defense produced evidence showing that she participated in the murders.

After Lizzie’s acquittal, Sullivan eventually left Fall River and made a new life far from the Borden case. She settled in Montana, where she married John M. Sullivan in 1905. The couple had no children. Unlike Lizzie, whose name remained inseparable from the murders, Bridget largely disappeared from public view and rarely discussed the case.

The most intriguing claim about Sullivan’s later life involves her longtime friend Minnie Green. According to author Victoria Lincoln, who recounted the story in her 1967 book A Private Disgrace, Green said that Sullivan spoke to her about the Borden case late in life. Sullivan allegedly suggested that she had not told everything she knew about the murders and said she had “helped Lizzie out” during the trial.

The remark has naturally fueled speculation about what Sullivan might have withheld. Did she see or hear something that implicated Lizzie? Did she deliberately alter part of her testimony? Or was the comment, assuming Sullivan made it at all, referring to something far less significant?

There is no way to know. Sullivan’s alleged admission was not recorded at the time, and the story reached the public secondhand, years after her death. No letter, statement or other documentation has surfaced showing that Sullivan confessed to lying under oath or revealed what information she supposedly kept to herself.

Sullivan died in Montana in 1948, more than half a century after the murders. She had spent most of her later life far removed from Fall River and left no known written account revealing anything beyond what she had told investigators and testified to in court.

In the decades after her death, however, the story attributed to Minnie Green and other later theories renewed questions about whether Sullivan had known more than she revealed. None has been substantiated, leaving her documented testimony as the best evidence of what she actually saw and heard inside the Borden home.