Full Transcript for 230 Second Street

1: Okay, take a pulse, sorry, take a pulse metaphorically or my own pulse. 00:03:04 Speaker 4: Or I would see how you feel when you walk into a room. I know you're not psychic, but sometimes they don't need you to be terribly psychic in order to communicate with him. 00:03:15 Speaker 5: You have your own equipment on your body because your hair will stand up on your arms. 00:03:21 Speaker 1: Ok. 00:03:21 Speaker 5: It's like you know how when you rub the rug and then you get the shock or whatever. So the energy will be in whatever room the entity or spirit is and you'll feel it on your arms, your back of your head, or the hairs standing up. Okay, so right away, that's a quick way to get an idea that all something's here. 00:03:43 Speaker 4: Ghosts can communicate to you from any part of the home. It's most likely that you're either dealing with Lizzie Borden herself, or her parents, or all three of them. And so what I would say is that they're not trapped most likely in one area. Idea that you're not in the room where the murder took place may be completely irrelevant to your experience. So what I would say is, so when you walk in, you say hello, I'm Matt, I'm here. I'm going to be staying overnight. If someone wants to step forward and introduce yourself, please reach out just. 00:04:18 Speaker 1: Like that, Just like what you said, I totally do. 00:04:22 Speaker 5: We also use these things you can get them at like pet Smart. It's a cat playball and it's just a plastic ball that lights up when you touch it, and so we put those around the room and then when their energy is close to that, it'll light it up. So at least you'll know that something is there in the room with you, okay, and I think they're like a dollar. 00:04:47 Speaker 4: One other thing I would recommend just finding out what was a popular song from that era eighteen ninety two. The idea is if you have a small trigger device or some that would be interesting to them. 00:05:02 Speaker 5: Pay attention to smells. You might smell a perfume. Some people say they smell like roses. That's usually a sign of something around you, or cigar smell. Maybe he smoked cigars. 00:05:16 Speaker 1: Taking barbon Mark's advice, I selected a few old timey tunes on Spotify that Lizzie and her murdered parents might find tasteful, packed up the cat balls and my new electromagnetic field device, and then I hit the road. This is Murder Holmes. I'm Magrianovitch. The four and a half hour drive north gave me a lot of time to think about the facts of the case and my own theory, which is Lizzie did it first. She had the motive. Her stepmom, Abby, who she hated, was trying to screw out of her father's mind. And her father Andrew, a humorless stick in the mud who had a very frosty relationship with his two daughters and never put them first, despite his accumulating wealth. There had been an awful fight about money a few months before, serious enough that Lizzie and her sister had temporarily been banished from the home, and when Lizzie returned, her stepmom was happy to treat her like a servant again. Every summer day, no matter how hot they were, an endless list of chores had to be completed, ironing, scrubbing, changing sheets, laundry, more ironing. On the sweltering morning of the murderers, Lizzie's stepmom had given her the worst task in the house, heating up two flat irons over a crackling fire so that she could press eighteen of her father's handkerchiefs. The heat and boredom alone must have made her feel murderous. Lizzie, with no suitors, with barely any friends, no hope of a real inheritance, living in a home she despised because it wasn't even on the right side of the tree, must have felt like she had nothing to lose when she hiked up her dress and walked down to the basement, grasping the axe as soon as the livin maid Bridget Sullivan left the home to wash the windows outside, and her father walked out to check on as many rental properties. Lizzie had her chance. She was alone with her despised stepmom, walking slowly up the stairs with the axe in her right hand. She could see her stepmom puffing up some pillows on a bed abby board and heard the creak of the floorboard behind her. Turned and Lizzie swung the axe through the air and sank it deep into her stepmom's skull, yanking it out just in time to enjoy the sight of her falling face first on the floor. Lizzie struck her another nineteen times, an oblong pool of blood spreading on the carpet. You have to picture Lizzie at that moment, stepping away from the body, her heart pounding, both thrilled and terrified about what had just occurred. It most definitely wasn't boring. Dad was next, but we'll get to that later. I had arrived in Fall River, which was nothing like the quaint New England refuge had pictured. I was slowly climbing the long, slow curve of Second Street, past tanning salons and hairy parlors, and what seemed like endless parking lots and fast food restaurants. When I suddenly saw it and passed it just as fast. I made a U turn and pulled into its narrow driveway, bathed in sweat because of my car is faltering ac It was almost the exact temperature it had been on that very hot day of August fourth, eighteen ninety two, when Lizzie would be heard screaming inside the home and then desperately running for help. The house is still in pristine condition. It's painted a drab green and sits on top of a rocky hill overlooking Hope Bay. I'd arrived just in time to see a tour group walking out, so I grabbed my mic and introduced myself. I'd settled firmly on Lizzie being the murderer, but maybe they had other theories. I can I ask you what brought you here? 00:09:02 Speaker 6: My friend and I are doing a road trip. We flew in from California to Boston and rented a car, and we're just doing a whole New England coastal thing. 00:09:14 Speaker 5: And she's a huge Lizzie Borden, Okay, and I grew. 00:09:19 Speaker 3: Up knowing the whole Lizzie Borden. 00:09:23 Speaker

5: Home thingy. 00:09:25 Speaker 3: Do you know a lot about Lizzie bordon I do. 00:09:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very fascinated with serial killers and all the kind of weird and crazy. 00:09:33 Speaker 3: So was your mind changed? Do you think she did it? 00:09:35 Speaker 6: I still think she did it. 00:09:36 Speaker 4: Whether she did it alone or not, I don't know, but yeah, I agree. 00:09:40 Speaker 6: I just think at the time that the murders happened, it was very unusual. I think people were afraid to maybe convict a woman, or to believe that a woman could create such a you know, painous crime. 00:09:54 Speaker 1: Standing in the shade of a maple tree was the tour group guy named Karen. She was wearing a long red gas to put people in the mood to hear about Lizzie. 00:10:02 Speaker 6: My personal theory it wasn't popular back then, but it is now. 00:10:08 Speaker 3: She paid somebody. 00:10:10 Speaker 6: The timing and everything, and there was no blood on her. She didn't even have a hair out of place. All the neighborhood around here was Irish immigrants. Yes, they had a hot life, they didn't have an easy life. She could have easily paid an Irish immigrants. She just got all that money from her father for selling. 00:10:28 Speaker 3: The house on ferry and bad blood with her stepmother. Correct. 00:10:33 Speaker 6: I think she paid somebody. She was the lookout in the bond, helped him get away and then ran. 00:10:39 Speaker 1: And what about Bridget, like washing the windows, wasn't there a risk with her kind of being around the house that the one was a risk. 00:10:46 Speaker 6: But remember Bridget was on that side of the house at nineteen thirty. That side were the yellow houses. 00:10:53 Speaker 3: Okay, well, okay, I got it. 00:10:54 Speaker 6: Yeah, she was over there, so she wouldn't see anybody over here, and. 00:10:57 Speaker 3: She was washing the windows and not inside the house. 00:11:00 Speaker 6: She wouldn'tess right, she wouldn't have seen anybody here. 00:11:03 Speaker 1: Karen's mentioned a Bridget Sullivan washing the windows outside the home is one of the perpetually infuriating aspects of the case, because how could the maid not see what was happening inside the parlor when Andrew Borden was killed? But maybe it was because Lizzie had made her close those blinds before her father came home. The windows being washed outside as a blood bath occurs as haunting the image of Bridget splashing water upwards from a pail to hit the second four window she couldn't reach, with no idea of the butchering that was going on inside, this sense of life going on at the worst moments, or more specifically, how close we sometimes are to the worst moments without even knowing it. I particularly love Karen's theory that Lizzie hired an Irish hitman from a more unseemly part of town, Corky Row, where the poor were tightly packed into dingy tenements. I imagine Lizzie in her typical silk shirt and blue blouse, passing by straight dogs on the cobblestone streets to rendezvous with a seasoned criminal. Lizzie despised the Iris just as much as the other Protestants in town, but she hated her penny pinching father even more. When I interviewed Lance, he told me that many of the structural elements of the original home are intact. For instance, he said, the steps the staircase you hear me walking up are just as they were the morning of the murders. It's one of the creakiest staircases I've ever walked up, and if it was halfway as noisy on August fourth, eighteen ninety two, Abby Borden would have definitely heard her murderer walking up the steps toward the second floor. And the only reason she would have continued puffing up the pillows is that she wouldn't have been concerned. She would have known that there was only one other person in the home with her at the time. Harmless, Lizzie. We'll be back after a short break. We're back with murder Homes. So I'm standing in the attic of the Lizzie Burton home and I'm looking at some dolls or the dollars looking at me. And they tastefully appointed the attic room with a replica of Lizzie Borton's dress to my left. And then we have the dolls. We have a teddy bear. We have a panda bear that looked like they're from about eighteen ninety nine. And then more toys over here, some towels, a lot of animals and toys. And that's about it for right now. I'm alone in the house and I've just visited the other rooms. That's me in the attic of the Lizzie Bordon home. I figured it would be nice to have a little recording of my voice just in case Lizzie ambushed me on the way to the shared bathroom in the middle of the night, and then, after sending my daughter is a picture of the three dolls looking at me, and feeling somewhat brave, creaked back down the stairs again. I headed to the South Coast plasm Hale and Fall River, where I ate a chicken sandwich huddled over my car, sweat dribbling down my forehead as the day got hotter and hotter. When I headed back to the Lizzie boardon home, the tour group and their cars were gone for a moment in the stifling heat. Walking up to her home, I could feel the toxic mixture of her boredom and loneliness and hopelessness. That was before I entered the keypad code and felt a welcoming blast of air conditioning, one of the few modern updates to the house. There would be only two other guest rooms occupied that night, one by a couple who really looked like they didn't want to be there but had braved it because their kids had booked the room for them as an anniversary present. Then an entire family who filed straight into the most expensive room where Abby Borden was killed. They locked the door behind them as if they were going to conduct a seance. They would not reappear again until the following morning. By the time I'd situated myself back in the attic, I decided to go through the ghost hunting checklist that barbon Mark had recommended. I tossed a couple of cap balls on the floor, introduced myself

to Lizzie and also to Abby and Andrew in case they were hanging around there too. Played an old timey song on my phone to get the ghost in the more receptive mood, and then I fired up the EMF. I was disappointed to see that there was absolutely zero electromagnetic interference. And I hate to say this, but as darkness fell, and as I checked some work emails and read a few pages of a book, I felt almost comfortable, or, to be more accurate, a little bored. Just a thought here in that Lizzie bored and attic. And one of the weird things about a murder home is when you get a little bit used to it and the sun is still up, and you kind of look for things like what the Wi Fi password is, which I think is a little bit strange considering she hacked her parents to death. The floor below me. Just a thought at a six fifty two PM. I'll keep you updated. It's seven or nine pm, so these updates are coming fast and furious. But I'm probably going to pass out soon because there's not much else to do, and as I confer with my neighbors that there's no board games here or obviously there's no television or any sort. The wildfires from Canada are kind of obscuring the sun right now. But I have to say from the attic, Lizzie would have had a pretty nice view, and it has a nice vantage point. It's on a slight hill for a nice view the entire city of a Fall River. It wasn't until the sun came up a little after seven in the morning that I had a strange experience. I was just about to record one last diary jury from the attic, envious of the family downstairs, who I could hear happily climbing down the steps talking about everything they'd been spooked by that night. At first, it seems silly. It was a box containing an emergency step ladder, just in case the board and home burst into flame and the guests in this room had to escape. I was staring at the photograph on the face of the box. A father was helping his daughter out of a burning home onto a ladder. But it's her appearance and expression that we're all wrong. She looked like a fucking evil child, and she was looking down at her father with his arms outstretched, with this disgusted expression. It's as if she'd rather burn up in the home he's trying to save her from and return to hell than let him touch her. So there's that and this. Maybe ghosts come to us in ways we don't expect. Aren't lured by dolls and catballs and electronic devices, but speak to us when they see fit, or are curious enough about the living to drop a subtle hint. And there's also the fact that this is really a murder home. And by the time I walked down those creaking stairs the last time, it really felt like it. It's a small home, much more intimate than I had pictured. The parlor where Andrew Bourdon was slain is not some grand room. It measures fourteen by fourteen feet. I had a few minutes to stand in it all by myself in silence. Someone had tastefully placed a replica X on the arm of the replica couch where his real head had once been split

open. But despite this, I could see him his fingers clenched nearly into fists, his long body tilted at the odd angle as rigor mortis had set in, legs outstretched, boots still on his face, a pulpy mess of blood and tissue. Jacket he wore neatly folded underneath his cheek before he took a nap. We'll be back after a short break. We're back with murder Homes. Lizzie's last moments with her father and the parlor were so ordinary and mildly affectionate that it might have felt like any other morning. I've enlisted the help of my producer JB. To play the part of Lizzie here as she testifies in court. Where did you leave him on the sofa? Was he asleep? 00:19:00 Speaker 4: Pep? No, sir? 00:19:02 Speaker 1: Was he reading? 00:19:04 Speaker 5: No? 00:19:04 Speaker 4: Sir? 00:19:06 Speaker 1: What was the last thing you said to him? I asked him if he wanted the window left that way? Then I went into the kitchen and from there to the barn. In the barn behind the home, she ate three pears by a window as she stared down at her own home, then looked for some lead sinkers, since she planned to go fishing. This was her alibi when she returned to two thirty second Street. Her father was dead three pears. She was exact about some things, and hazy about the things she chose not to remember. She had a night key, and on her way up the stairs after her day spent teaching at the local Sunday school, she would enter that house as if it were filled with strangers, as quietly as she could, desperate to avoid them. She must have already felt like a ghost. Maybe she crept up the stairs in the evening she had begun to see two thirty second as a thief. Mit each room mapped out, timing perfected. She had nothing to lose. Did you see the blood on the floor. 00:20:06 Speaker 5: No, sir. 00:20:07 Speaker 1: You saw his face covered with blood, yes, sir. Did you see his eyeball hanging out? No, sir? See the gashes where his face was laid open? 00:20:17 Speaker 4: No, sir. 00:20:19 Speaker 1: I keep thinking of Bridget Sullivan laying down her bed before noontime, then hearing Lizzie's scream. What happens to a scream? Are there nano traces of it that are still embedded somewhere? Can it be conjured out of the air again? How about Lizzie's voice, the look, and her eye. This woman who was always a loner at school and remembered for her sharp sarcasm, but who also had such a soft spot for animals that, years after she had inherited her father's fortune, had two bronze ploques that you can still see today. They are screwed above the stable doors where her dead horses had once lived. Lizzie was eventually acquitted, and despite being shunned by Fall River Society after the trial, wow, she chose to stay there. She and her sister Emma moved to a bigger home in a better part of town called Maplecroft, where she remained until her death in nineteen twenty seven. Lancell bought two thirty Second Street for two million dollars in twenty twenty two. This is Murder Holmes. I'm Matt Mrinovitch. 00:21:26 Speaker 3: Murder Holmes is. 00:21:27 Speaker 1: A production of iHeart Podcasts. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.