Lizzie Borden: What Happened in That House on Second Street, and Is Still It

Two people were killed with a hatchet in a locked house on a Thursday morning in August of 1892, and a jury of twelve men decided that nobody did it. Ichabod Poole has lived his whole life a few miles from 230 Second Street. He has taken the daytime tour, paid for the room, and slept in that house twice, once under the old owners and once after it changed hands, and he can tell you which of those two nights was worse. He has also watched an entire industry grow up on a street where working families still live and still get asked by strangers in souvenir shirts where Lizzie is. This book takes the murders seriously as a crime against two people, Andrew and Abby Borden, and tells the truth about the haunting anyway. Inside: - Fall River in 1892: the mills, the money, the Hill and the Flats, and why a man worth a fortune lived without a bathtub- The house itself, room by room, and the bolted doors that made a ninety minute gap possible- The week before, the morning of, and what the police did with a crime scene full of neighbors- The New Bedford trial, the defense that worked, and the thirty-four years Lizzie spent in this city afterward with nobody speaking to her- Every suspect anybody has ever floated, weighed against the record- Two original Poole arguments: that the layout of the house did the planning, and that this was two separate killings with a gap of decision in between- A night at 230 Second Street, and what the author believes after fifty years of listening to this city talk about it- A visitor's guide to the house, Maplecroft, Oak Grove, and the historical society, with the rules that keep you from being the tourist everybody complains about He tells you who he thinks did it in the last chapter. He also tells you why a jury that heard more evidence than he ever will said otherwise. Book Four of Ichabod's Haunted New England.