Studies in Murder

"Pearson is both referring to the tight timetable of the murders, the near impossibility of outsider managing to commit the murders while avoiding the survivors of the day (Lizzie Borden and the maidservant Bridget Sullivan) and, at the same time, the practical difficulty of Borden herself killing both stepmother and father without leaving any trace of the carnage on her person. More than that, he is struggling with the idea that someone like Lizzie Borden, the apparent epitome of feminine respectability, could have committed the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother. Nonetheless, Pearson is quite convinced she did it. As befits someone who started out as a humorist—he was also a librarian before he turned to writing true crime—he has a real eye for the odd details in the Borden case. For example, he memorably describes the depressing bill of fare—leftover mutton and mutton stew—which makes for quite a delightful read. The humor has a distancing effect, mitigating the horror. Sensational accounts of murder were perennially popular and fueled the circulation wars of yellow journalism in the latter part of the nineteenth century. So the timing is right: the stage is set for a trial like Lizzie Borden’s to capture the national imagination. One could argue that the Borden case as one of the first examples of the trial as a public spectacle, a sort of celebrity trial. Obviously, Lizzie Borden is not herself famous before the crime. She’s actually quite unremarkable, and a bit unreadable, which is part of the reason she’s such a compelling figure. “He is struggling with the idea that someone like Lizzie Borden, the apparent epitome of feminine respectability, could have committed the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother” Many people now talk about the ‘renaissance’ or the ‘boom’ in true crime writing. I thought by choosing the early writers—William Roughead and Edmund Pearson—I could show that the higher-brow (or middlebrow, at least) writing about crime started earlier than we usually think. He once wrote—I’m paraphrasing here—that basically eight of any ten people are interested in murder, and the other two are lying. He has a sense that this is a subject people find really interesting, and he describes himself as a “murder fancier.” Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Most of his analyses are of what you might call historic crimes—crimes that have already happened—so that he can tell you the story not only of the crime, but also its resolution or irresolution. Interestingly and unusually, Lizzie Borden was still alive when he began writing about her. On the one hand, it’s a historical case—almost 30 years old—but the protagonist, if you will, is still alive. He becomes quite interested in her as a figure and even lurked outside her post-acquittal manse in Fall River on one occasion, hoping for a glimpse of his subject."