American Murder Houses Read online

  Journalists across the nation reported updates from the murder trial, and hungry readers speculated: What did the murderer do in that hour and a half? Other theories were floated: Was the murderer a disgruntled “Portugese” worker who had exchanged harsh words with Mr. Borden earlier in the day? If so, it wouldn’t be much of a lead; the town was known to have a large Portuguese-American community, largely composed of men working in the whaling and fishing trade. Others wondered: Could the thirty-two-year-old unmarried daughter who still lived at home with her parents really be the one who hacked them to death? What would her motive have been?

  The prosecution also had to answer several questions raised by the lack of physical evidence. How could Lizzie have so brutally killed two people without getting blood all over herself? The prosecutors floated a bizarre theory: Lizzie may have committed the murders while naked. This raised more questions—even as it generated murmurs from newspaper readers—about how she could have been running around her house naked for a couple hours without anyone else noticing. After all, the murders were committed during daylight hours and the maid was home the entire time.

  While many members of the public may have been ready to convict Lizzie based on what they heard, the trial judges kept some of the more damning evidence from the jury. The jury did not hear that Lizzie had tried buying poison shortly before the killings. Better for Lizzie, her attorneys had successfully argued that her inquest testimony—where she had testified without an attorney—should be suppressed because she had not been advised of her rights before questioning. As a result, the jury did not get to hear any of Lizzie’s lengthy inquest testimony where she had given confused and contradictory answers to some of the questions she had been asked. A good prosecutor could have used the testimony to show how Lizzie’s story had not remained consistent. Since Lizzie did not testify at her murder trial, and the inquest testimony was kept from them, the jury never got to hear most of Lizzie’s version of what had happened that day. The jury did hear from Lizzie’s older sister, Emma, who told the court that Lizzie’s relationship with her parents was unremarkable—certainly not of the sort that might lead to murder.

  Even so, the testimony fueled arguments for both sides. When a doctor testified that he had been called to the house the day of the killings, Lizzie had told him an alibi that later seemed questionable. She had told him that she had been in the barn behind the house, looking for sinkers—lead weights for fishing—around the time of the murders and perhaps that was why she hadn’t heard anything. But investigators had searched the barn when they had been summoned to the house, and they had found no indication that anyone had been in the barn that day. The floor was covered in dust and showed no footprints. The doctor also admitted, though, that he had prescribed morphine to Lizzie that day to calm her down. Perhaps that had caused her to give muddled and confused answers to investigators. Lizzie’s attorneys seemed able to discredit almost every witness the prosecution produced, with newspapers suggesting that many of the prosecution witnesses ended up helping Lizzie’s case by the time they left the stand.

  It took the jury only an hour and a half to deliberate. They found Lizzie not guilty. Although many people today believe Lizzie killed her parents, the press that had breathlessly covered the trial appeared to support the verdict. The New York Times spoke favorably of the verdict and wrote scathing remarks about the inept members of law enforcement who had arrested and prosecuted the wrong person for the murders. Even so, many people in the community believed that Lizzie must have been involved on some level, and she found herself shunned by the Fall River community. Interestingly, the two daughters had inherited the estate because of the order in which Mr. and Mrs. Borden were murdered. Since the stepmother died first, the court ruled that her estate passed to her husband—if even for just an hour and a half—and became part of his estate, which then passed to his two daughters when he died. If the order of the deaths had been reversed, Lizzie and Emma might have received nothing, with everything in both estates passing to their stepmother’s other relatives.

  Lizzie and her sister bought another house nearby and moved out of the murder house. Their new home was huge and only a mile from the murder house. Located at 306 French Street in Fall River, it had eight bedrooms and three bedrooms. Known as “Maplecroft,” it was almost four thousand square feet. It was also newer than their old house, having been built in 1900. It was built in the Queen Anne style and it still stands. In fact, it was in the news recently when its current owner placed it on the market in 2012, asking $650,000 for it.

  The Borden sisters lived together for a while, but they eventually had a falling-out. Lizzie died in 1927 and was buried at the Oak Grove Cemetery, about a mile and half from the home where here parents were murdered. She was sixty-seven years old. She was buried in the family plot. Nearby are the graves of her parents and her sister.

  Fall River is an hour south of Boston and less than half an hour east of Providence, Rhode Island. The city’s two attractions are the Lizzie Borden house and Battleship Cove, a park and museum where visitors can inspect the decommissioned USS Massachusetts along with a retired destroyer and a World War II submarine. What soon became known as the Lizzie Borden House was a private residence until 1986. Then, the current owners decided to open it up as the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum. Overnight guests are welcome to stay in one of the six bedrooms; as many as eighteen guests can be accommodated. The house is also open for tours, which take visitors through the home in a one-and-a-half to two-hour trip back to the time of the murders. The home has been expertly restored to as close to the original condition as possible. Time does not permit for most tours to visit the basement, although it is included in the evening tours that are given to overnight guests. The basement is where the hatchet—which the prosecution believed was the murder weapon—was found.

  A barn has been reconstructed out back to resemble the one Lizzie talked about being in while doing some errands the day of the murders. The original barn had burned down in 1929 and its replacement now houses the museum, where the bestselling item is a Lizzie Borden bobblehead doll, for $20.

  Some people are convinced the house is haunted. Students of the paranormal often visit and describe seeing and feeling things that evidence the spirits of Andrew and Abby still residing within the house. Regardless of what you believe or who you believe committed the murders, you are welcome to visit the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum—as tens of thousands do each year—and investigate for yourself.

  *Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum (“Where Everyone Is Treated Like Family”), lizzie-borden.com.

  “Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown”

  THE CONRAD AIKEN HOUSE

  1901

  228 East Oglethorpe Avenue

  Savannah, Georgia 31401

  On the night of February 26, 1901, an eleven-year-old boy named Conrad Aiken heard his parents fighting, long into the night and the next morning. The family lived in Savannah, Georgia, where the father had a medical practice. Dr. Aiken suffered from mental illness and often fought with Conrad’s mother. The young boy had become accustomed to his father’s outbursts and thought little of this fight at first. This night, his father was hurling accusations at his mother; her replies were ignored by the doctor. She had long since learned to weather these fights by simply letting her husband rant and rave until he ran out of steam, and Conrad had likewise learned to simply ignore the yelling until it stopped. Then Conrad heard his father shouting, “One, two three!” followed by the sound of a gunshot. A moment later, a second “One, two three!” was followed by another gunshot, and then Conrad heard the thud of his father’s body crumpling to the floor. Dr. Aiken had fatally shot Conrad’s mother and then himself. The local newspapermen described it a bit more graphically, saying that after he shot his wife, Dr. Aiken had “sent a bullet crashing through his own brain.” Conrad was the oldest of four children at home at the time of the killings.

  Conrad went i
nto his parents’ bedroom and discovered their bodies. He went downstairs and told the servants what had happened and asked them to attend to his three siblings while he reported the shootings to the police. He then ran barefoot to the nearby police station, where he told them, “Papa has shot Momma.” Local authorities went to the house but didn’t do too much investigation, as it was pretty obvious what had happened.

  Although little known today, Conrad Aiken would grow up to be a well-renowned poet in his day, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and many other accolades for his writing. The Savannah house Conrad Aiken grew up in would become famous for what happened in it when Conrad was eleven years old.

  Conrad Potter Aiken was born August 5, 1889, the child of a physician and his wife, William Ford Aiken and Anna Aiken. Dr. Aiken was both an “oculist” and an “aurist” according to local papers, which meant that he treated problems of both vision and hearing. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1886 but also dabbled in other pursuits such as invention and photography. The family lived in Savannah, Georgia, and Conrad’s childhood was pleasant and unremarkable at first. He idolized his father; at one point he was asked by an adult what he thought God looked like, and he replied, “God must be very like my father when he smiled.” As time went on, his father smiled less and argued often with Conrad’s mother. Conrad also adored his mother, learning to read as he followed along in books she read to him. He jokingly told people later that as a result, he had learned to read “upside down.” Although he had learned to read young and would later become a famous writer, he did not start school until he was ten or so. He later attributed it to parental neglect. He said, “My parents lost track of me… . I just ran wild.”

  The Aikens had moved to a bigger home as the family expanded, and Conrad reached eleven years of age while living in one of four units in a brick building called Marshall’s Row on East Oglethorpe Avenue in Savannah. The Greek Revival building was three stories tall, and each unit had its own front and back door on the second level. Dr. Aiken used the lower level as his office where he met and treated patients. The family’s servants lived in quarters behind the doctor’s office, also on the lower floor. The bottom level had its own entrances to the street.

  Conrad’s life in the big home was marked by fights between his parents. Later, Conrad would write that the arguments his parents had were part of the fabric of his young life. Many of the arguments would focus on the mundane, like money problems, but would be fueled by bizarre behavior on the part of his father. He would often change the topic of the arguments and throw crazy accusations at his wife. The physician had attempted suicide a couple of times and may have been suffering from an untreated mental illness. Once, he took an overdose of drugs and left a note as to how he wanted his burial handled. Anna found him and called for medical help, and another doctor who lived nearby managed to revive him. On the second occasion he turned the gas on in the master bedroom, but Anna spotted the open valve and shut it off before anyone was hurt.

  After the murder-suicide of his parents, local papers carried notices of his parents’ deaths. “Dr. Aiken was wealthy and had a very large practice. Of late, however, he has been nervous and irritable. His friends attribute the tragedy to dementia from overwork and study. He was a deep student and often worked all night in his office at scientific investigation.” Another paper ran a rather abbreviated death notice: “At Savannah, Ga, Dr. William F. Aiken killed his wife and self. Unsound mentally.” If this was an unfitting obituary for the couple, their son Conrad would remedy that with a lifetime of writing, haunted by the deaths. Conrad went to live with relatives in Massachusetts.

  Conrad thrived in Massachusetts and later attended Harvard, where his literary talents blossomed. He wrote for the Harvard publication The Advocate, where he met and befriended T. S. Eliot. After graduation, he worked briefly as a newspaper reporter and then began writing poetry and prose and demonstrated a keen interest in psychoanalysis. In 1912, he married Jessie McDonald. They moved to England and had three children but divorced in the 1920s. Aiken remarried, but, like his father, he also suffered from mental problems. His second wife later wrote that she had prevented Aiken’s suicide on one occasion, and that many of his problems could be traced back to the murder-suicide of his parents. All the while, Aiken was writing and publishing poetry collections and novels.

  In 1930, Aiken was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a book of his collected poetry simply titled Selected Poems. Aiken divorced again and remarried in 1937. He continued moving and settled in Cape Cod. He was haunted by the deaths of his parents and often wondered about his childhood home. He returned to Savannah once in these years, in 1936, worried about how he would feel being so close to where his young life had been so marred by tragedy. Not only did he survive the visit, but he found that he enjoyed it. He even went and saw the home where his parents had died. Of Savannah, he later said, “It was all quite staggeringly beautiful … what was apparently lost turns out to be no such thing.”

  Although his writing garnered prestigious awards, it never gained him widespread fame or fortune. Some critics said his work was not fashionable, suggesting that it may have been a bit too esoteric or learned for readers of popular literature. Aiken even recognized this and told a friend that it was ironic: Critics were harsh on each new work of his, saying that the latest did not stand up to the excellent standards of his previous works. Nothing he wrote ever hit the bestseller lists, however. His biographer summed him up as “one of the country’s best-known, least read poets and men of letters.”

  Aiken had friends who were writers, many of whom were as tormented as he was. One of them, Malcolm Lowry, wrote Under the Volcano during a time when Aiken visited him in Mexico. Under the Volcano, published in 1947, became one of the most acclaimed novels in the English language and included references to Aiken. In 1954, Aiken was given the National Book award for a book titled Collected Poems. As Aiken’s career progressed, his writing became more introspective and often focused on themes of psychoanalysis. Many considered his 1952 work Ushant to be the pinnacle of his career. An “autobiographical novel,” it described the life Aiken had led, writing and dealing with his own demons.

  As the years went by, Conrad began thinking more fondly of Savannah. He wrote, “Born in that most magical of cities, Savannah, I was allowed to run wild in that earthly paradise until I was nine; ideal for the boy who early decided he wanted to write.” In 1962, Conrad moved back to Savannah and bought the house next door to the one where he had lived when his father had killed himself and his mother. His new home was 230 Oglethorpe; his childhood home was 228 Oglethorpe.

  In March 1973, Jimmy Carter, then governor of Georgia, named Aiken poet laureate of Georgia. One day, Conrad was visiting a local cemetery and saw a ship pass by on the Wilmington River named the Cosmos Mariner. He was so intrigued by the name that he looked for information on it in the local papers but found nothing. He decided that he would incorporate the phrase into his own epitaph: Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown. He had the words inscribed on a marble bench he placed at his parents’ graves. It also said, Give my love to the world. Interestingly, very little was ever written about the ship other than its connection to Aiken. The SS Cosmos Mariner was a freighter owned by the Cosmos Steamship Corporation and apparently spent much of its time moving freight up and down both coasts of the United States. When Aiken died on August 17, 1973, he was buried in the family plot with his parents, and the bench became his gravestone.

  The Conrad Aiken house—the one he lived in as a boy—was built in 1842 and is 3,936 square feet. It has three bedrooms and two and a half baths. It is three stories tall and made of brick. In 1988 it sold for $122,500. Less than twenty years later, in 2005, it sold for $1,050,000. It is privately owned, although a historical marker across the street identifies the house and tells the story of the boy who lived there.

  The Aiken family plot is in the Bonaventure Cemetery, Lot 78, Section H, at the corner of Johnny Mercer Lane and Ai
ken Lane. The bench Aiken placed at his parents’ graveside is famous in its own right. It was featured in the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. There, a character named Miss Harty shares martinis in silver goblets with the story’s narrator and explains how she had lived next door to Johnny Mercer when she was young. The Mercer name in Savannah is linked to another murder house, but that is another story altogether.

  *“Kills His Wife and Commits Suicide,” Moberly (MO) Democrat, February 28, 1901.

  *Edward Butscher, Conrad Aiken: Poet of White Horse Vale (1988).

  Gruesome and Unsolved—Axe Murders on the Plains

  THE VILLISCA AXE MURDER HOUSE

  1912

  508 East 2nd Street

  Villisca, Iowa 50864

  About seventy miles southeast of Omaha is the sleepy town of Villisca, Iowa. On June 9, 1912, Josiah Moore and his family—his wife and four children—had invited two young sisters to spend the night in their farmhouse. In the middle of the night, a stranger crept onto the property and found the axe Josiah used to chop firewood. With the axe in hand, the intruder checked the back door to the farmhouse and found it unlocked. Quietly, he entered the house and closed the door behind him. He sneaked into the guest bedroom on the first floor, lifted the axe, and slammed it into the head of one of the young women who had been invited to spend the night. He quickly raised the axe again and struck the other sister lying in the bed. Both were killed instantly. The killings happened so quickly that neither victim cried out. The killer then hit each victim in the head a few more times and went looking to see who else was in the house he could kill. Upstairs, he found more people to victimize. In each bedroom he repeated his actions, chopping and hacking the victims as they slept. When he was done, he went back and double-checked his work, striking the victims again to make sure they were dead. He was so zealous in his actions that he even hit the ceilings in some of the rooms with his axe. Then, as if to tidy up the scene, he went from room to room, pulling the bedsheets up to cover the victims’ bodies. In all he had killed eight people: the six Moore family members upstairs, and the Stillinger sisters, the overnight houseguests.