The Lizzie Borden murder case is recognized up to this day as one of the most famous in American criminal history. In fact, the case was so famous that it was immortalized through a children’s rhyme passed down across generations. The rhyme goes like this:
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
It is obvious that Lizzie murdered them. However, the rhyme did not get some parts of the story correctly. A hatchet, not an axe, served as the murder weapon. It wasn’t really Lizzie’s mother — the 64-year-old woman, named Abby, was her stepmother. The number of strikes in the rhyme does not match up with the real story, either. Lizzie Borden struck her stepmother nineteen times, and her 69-year old father Andrew she struck ten more. If there was something the rhyme got correct, it would be the sequence of events that happened on the morning of August 4, 1892.
Despite the convincing evidence that were thrown against her, she was eventually pronounced not guilty.
But why was Lizzie pronounced not guilty? Find out on Smithsonian.com.
(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)