How the Gruesome Lizzie Borden Rhyme Gets the Murders Wrong

It is one of the most famous murder ballads in American history:

Lizzie Borden took an ax And gave her mother 40 whacks, And when she saw what she had done, She gave her father 41.

For generations, this old folk rhyme has reinforced the assumption that Lizzie Borden confidently got away with murder in 1892. Nearly a century after her death, Borden’s name has remained a byword for grisly killing. But the infamous rhyme has some big problems: It misstates the victims, exaggerates the number of blows and, most of all, ignores the fact that Borden was acquitted.

So why, after all this time, do people continue to think Borden got away with murder?

Most storytellers and sleuths don’t seem as interested in if Borden did it but why. “Unlike the equally puzzling case of Jack the Ripper, where the fascination seems to be who done it,” writes scholar Ann Schofield, “Lizzie biographers almost without exception agree that she done it. All, though, ask why she done it.”

A host of fictional works, historical dives and dramatic adaptations suggest a range of possible motives: a hidden (possibly queer) romance, a family dispute, financial greed, resentment of a gold-digging stepmother or a boiled-over reaction to abuse or patriarchy. All are enticing interpretations but none especially provable.

What we know about the Bordens’ lives certainly tempts sensationalism. Andrew Borden and his second wife, Abby, were reasonably well-to-do residents of Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew was wealthy from a career in real estate but was notably frugal, choosing to live outside Fall River’s elite neighborhood and forgoing luxuries like indoor plumbing.

He married Abby three years after the death of his daughters’ mother, Sarah, in 1863, and his girls were reportedly not especially fond of their new stepparent. Nothing about the Bordens suggested drama, though: Andrew was retired, and Abby mostly kept to home, where Lizzie and her sister, Emma, (both unmarried) also lived.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Mr. and Mrs. Borden sat for breakfast with a visiting uncle named John Morse. Lizzie and family servant Bridget Sullivan were the only other people at home. Emma had gone to nearby Fairhaven to visit friends. After breakfast, the group dispersed. The men left the house to run errands, and Abby went upstairs to prepare the guestroom. She was killed there around 9:30 a.m. that morning.

Mr. Borden returned home to take a late-morning nap in the parlor, where he was killed sometime after 11 a.m. Lizzie found Andrew’s still-warm body and called for Bridget. His face had been mutilated, an eye and his nose split by what would be surmised to be an ax or hatchet blow. The women soon found Abby’s body. The back of her skull had been similarly bashed. Historical accounts report 18 or 19 blows to Abby and 10 or 11 to Andrew.

On August 11, 1892, 32-year-old Lizzie was arrested for the murder of her father and stepmother. She was tried for the crime in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in June 1893. The case’s grisly details made it a media sensation and the “Fall River Tragedy” was publicized internationally.

The trial produced conflicting arguments and confusing details. On the one hand, prosecutors hammered home the idea that bloody hatchets were found on the Borden property and that Lizzie had burned a dress shortly after the murders, claiming it was old and paint-stained. On the other, papers like San Francisco’s The Morning Call readily characterized Lizzie as “a young woman whose moral character was of the highest.” There were no signs of struggle. Outside of the horrifying state of the Bordens’ corpses, there was no blood elsewhere in the home, aside from some bloody rags that were quickly dismissed as menstrual supplies. Lizzie’s inconsistent pre-arrest inquest testimony—under oath but without counsel—was ruled inadmissible.

Some suggested police conspiracy. The July 1893 issue of the American Advocate of Peace stated that eager cops had adopted the theory of Lizzie’s guilt and then “sought evidence to further corroborate this theory till other clues were given up.”

Cara Robertson, author of The Trial of Lizzie Borden, explains that there is a common temptation to explain the crime by demonizing the elder Bordens and their role in Lizzie’s life. Very often, she says, “Andrew is portrayed as a Scrooge-like miser and Abby as a wicked stepmother.” In truth, though, “Abby Borden was, by far, the most sympathetic character in the story, a kind and thoughtful person,” she says. “Andrew was extremely frugal but capable of financial generosity as evidenced by Lizzie Borden’s trip to Europe.”

Lizzie Borden was acquitted on June 20, 1893. She lived a relatively quiet life in increasing isolation until her death in 1927 at a home she called Maplecroft. Meanwhile, the case went unsolved and remains up for debate in the public sphere.

Much of Borden’s enduring notoriety comes from the playground rhyme that transformed a complex murder case into a simple and inaccurate story. No one knows who wrote the verse, but it spread through oral tradition among children. Cultural mythmaking has continued to keep the Borden story alive, turning Lizzie into a bloody fairytale avatar of feminine rage. In 2026, a trailer for the TV series “Monster,” which dramatizes high-profile American murders, is narrated by the rhyme, presuming Borden guilty.

Most people in Borden’s own time preferred to believe that there was no way a young, respectable white woman could be capable of such horror. Today, we seem to hate to think that she wasn’t.