"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks, when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one.”
The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson takes an in depth look at the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden and the covers the subsequent trial that followed in 1892. Abby and Andrew Borden were found brutally murdered with an axe in their Fall River, MA home and Andrew's daughter Lizzie was arrested and tried as the main suspect. She was acquitted of the murders but legend carries that she was in fact guilty. This book is an exploration of every last detail...
This book goes through EVERYTHING with this trial. It begins with the murders and then proceeds through the trial. You hear testimony from both the prosecution and the defense. Some of the theories for why she may have done it included hysteria from her "monthly sickness" to explain the bloody towels found all the way to questioning if she was in a romantic relationship with her father and this was indeed a crime of passion.
I really enjoyed this one and have been obsessed with this case for awhile. I'm only about an hour from Fall River and plan to visit the house this summer! (Did you know you can stay there - its a B&B - some people even sleep face down in the corner where Abby was found!) The entire book is incredibly detailed - I did have to really go slowly through the beginning to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I ended up switching to the audio and I think that really helped me move through this a little faster. I don't read a ton of nonfiction so the audio really brought it to life and helped me get into the trial. Once I hit the trial, I LOVED seeing how the judicial system worked back then. The short-comings of the police handling investigating and the theories presented at trial were astounding to me! So interesting! If you like true crime or are as obsessed with this hacking as I am - you have to grab a copy and prepare to learn all the things!
Thanks to Simon Books for the advanced copy to review! All opinions are my own.
