The Kiss of Death.

Little Murders

Frank Sharon, a young barber in Fall River, Massachusetts had some difficulty with his wife in December 1881, which resulted in his arrest. After his release, he went home and entered the room where his wife, and mother of his three children, lay sleeping. He leaned over and kissed her three times, then drew a pistol and shot her in the side of her neck. She died almost instantly.

Sharon went straight downtown and turned himself in to the police. He said something crossed his mind and told him to kill his wife. At his arraignment in January, Sharon pled not guilty to the charge of murder. He was probably planning to plead insanity, but it does not appear that the case ever went to trial.

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Sources:
"Brutal Case of Wife Murder." Philadelphia Inquirer 8 Dec 1881.

"Kiss of Death." National Police Gazette 24 Dec 1881.

"Local Intelligence." Springfield Republican 23 Jan 1882.

The Borden Murders, 120 Years Unsolved.

120 years ago today, August, 4, 1892, the bodies of Andrew Jackson Borden and Abby Durfee Borden were found brutally hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts home. The prime suspect of this brazen, daylight axe murder was Andrew’s daughter and Abby’s stepdaughter, Lizzie Borden. When a jury found Lizzie not guilty the following June, it raised a question that has been hotly debated ever since: did Lizzie Borden get away with murder?

The Borden murder was one of the first posted on Murder by Gaslight, and the question of her guilt has been the  subject, directly or indirectly, of several more:

Startling Parallelisms.

Just five days before the start of Lizzie Borden’s trial for the murder of her father and step-mother in Fall River, Massachusetts, the town was shocked by another brutal axe murder. The mutilated body of Bertha Manchester was found in the kitchen of her home. The “startling parallelism” between this case and the Borden murders—the excessive number of wounds in each case, the fact that both incidents occurred in broad daylight, the lack of any apparent motive—threatened to open a new line of defense in Lizzie’s trial. It would, at very least, challenge many of the prosecution’s stated assumptions.

Lizzie Borden's Confession

In a book called Piracy, Mutiny and Murder by Edward Rowe Snow, I came across a Lizzie Borden story I had not heard before. It concerns a written confession allegedly signed by Lizzie in 1897, four years after she was acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother. Though the confession was soon proven to be a hoax, in 1959, when his book was published, Mr. Snow was firmly convinced of the confession’s authenticity and tells an interesting tale of its origin.

The Minister and the Mill Girl

In December 1832, the body of a young pregnant woman was found hanging at a Tiverton, Rhode Island farm. She was identified as Sarah Cornell a worker in a textile factory in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts. Evidence implicated Methodist minister Ephraim Avery and the community was outraged that a man of the cloth had seduced and murdered an innocent mill girl. But Sarah Cornell was far from innocent and she had reasons hate Reverend Avery that had nothing to do with her pregnancy. Could Sarah Cornell have planted evidence against Avery before taking her own life? The story of the minister and the mill girl would put the town of Fall River at the center of a national controversy 60 years before Lizzie Borden would do the same. And the outcome would be just as inconclusive.

Lizzie Borden Took an Axe...Or Did She?

Either Lizzie Borden got away with murder or someone else did. Lizzie was acquitted of the axe murder of Andrew and Abby Borden and no one else was ever arrested. The Borden murder case has been cold for over a hundred years yet criminologist - professional and amateur - continue to pore over newspaper accounts, police reports, and trial transcripts looking for the real killer. There have been many theories, but the case remains unsolved.