Lizzie Borden’s neighbour who was first at murder scene spoke in court about what she saw

After Lizzie Borden’s parents were killed, their neighbour was the first one on the scene, and she spoke out about what she saw in court. 

As shown in Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892. Lizzie was arrested and tried for the murders, but was acquitted. 

Adelaide Churchill, who went by Addie, lived next door to the Bordens and had known them for more than 20 years. She lived with her mother, sister, son and niece.

Recalling the day her neighbours were murdered in court, she said: “I saw Mr Borden on the morning of August 4th, about nine o’clock. I was in my kitchen, and he was standing by his steps. At eleven o’clock I went to M. T. Hudner’s market on South Main Street, to buy some things for dinner. When I got back to Second Street, I saw Bridget Sullivan crossing the street from Dr Bowen’s to the Borden house. She was walking fast, she looked very white, and I thought someone was sick. I went into my house, put down my bundles, and looked out my kitchen window.

Credit: Public domain

“Miss Lizzie Borden was standing inside their screen door, at the side of their house. I opened the window and said, ‘Lizzie, what is the matter?’ She replied, ‘Oh, Mrs Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed Father’. I went over and stepped inside the screen door. She was sitting on the stair. I put my hand on her arm and said, ‘Oh, Lizzie!’ Then I said, ‘Where is your father?’ She said, ‘In the sitting room’.”

Churchill said she asked where Lizzie was when it happened, and she said she “went to the barn to get a piece of iron,” which matched up with the doctor’s testimony. According to her, Lizzie was worried that Andrew had an “enemy” who killed him because they had all been sick, and thought the milk had been poisoned.

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“I went down Second Street to Mr Hall’s stable and asked a man there to go for a doctor. Then I went back to the Bordens’, and presently Bridget came and then Dr Bowen. The doctor went into the sitting room to see Mr Borden. Shortly after, he came out and made some exclamation. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Addie, come in and see Mr Borden.’ I said, ‘Oh no, Doctor, I don’t want to see him. I saw him this morning. I don’t want to see him’,” Addie recalled.

“Later, after the body was covered, I saw his feet. Miss Russell came soon afterwards, and Lizzie said she wished someone would try to find Mrs Borden. So Bridget and I started. She led the way, and as I went upstairs, I turned my head to the left, and when I got up so my eyes were level with the front hall, I could see across the floor of the spare room. At the far side, I saw something that looked like the form of a person.

Credit: Netflix

“I turned and went back. I don’t know what I did. I went into the dining room and made some noise or other, and Miss Russell said, ‘Is there another?’ I said, ‘Yes, she is up there.’ I had had no information about this, except what I saw myself as my head rose above the level of the floor. I remember that later Miss Lizzie said that she should have to go to the cemetery, and I said, ‘Oh no, the undertaker will attend to everything for you’.”

Most interestingly, Churchill ended her testimony by saying she never saw Lizzie cry: “I never saw her in tears that morning.” Lizzie was found not guilty less than a year later, but speculation continues to this day about whether she did or didn’t commit the crimes. 

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