A Gaslight Poll: Who killed Andrew and Abbey Borden? Well over 100 years after the fact, this murder is still news. Did Lizzie Borden get away with murder, or did someone else? No one knows but everyone has an opinion. Choose from the following major suspects (or add your own) and cast your vote in the box to the right.
Lizzie Borden - The accused - Had means, motive and opportunity; but there was reasonable doubt.
Emma Borden - Lizzie's older sister - Had the same motives, but a better alabi.
Brigit Sullivan - The maid - Driven mad by having to wash windows on such a hot day while recovering from food poisoning.
John V. Morse - Lizzie's uncle - Happened to be visiging at the time, making deals with Andrew.
William S. Borden - Illigitimate half-brother - Enraged by his father's refusal to meet his demands for money.
The stories behind murder ballads are never as pretty as the songs. The story behind “Tom Dooley” – the 1866 murder of Laura Foster by Tom Dula in Elkville, North Carolina – is particularly ugly. Tom Dula was having an affair with Mrs. Ann Foster Melton and when her cousin Pauline Foster came to work at the Melton home, Tom Dula had her too. They had another cousin, Laura Foster, and Tom took her to bed as well. One member of this group contracted syphilis and soon they were all infected. Tom blamed Laura and threatened revenge. Laura Foster’s body was found in a shallow grave and Tom Dula had left for Tennessee. Might have gotten away, “Hadn’t been for Grayson.”
Date: June 18, 1866
Location: Elkville, NC
Victim: Laura Foster
Cause of Death: Stabbing
Accused: Tom Dula
Synopsis:
A good storyteller never lets the facts get in the way. When an event is preserved in song and story, the tale will change at the whim of the teller. The sordid tale of Laura Foster’s murder in 1868 has changed through more than 140 years of telling to the point where those involved would hardly recognize it. Mythical villains have emerged, love triangles have sprung from thin air, vengeance and cowardice have been recast as honor.
In the traditional story, Laura Foster was a beautiful young girl with blue eyes and chestnut hair who was being courted by Bob Cummings (some say Bob Grayson) a Yankee schoolteacher. When Laura met Tom Dula, a tall handsome Confederate soldier returning from the war she instantly fell in love. Ann Melton also fell in love with Tom Dula. She was a wealthy, married woman who was even more beautiful than Laura. Ann Melton stabbed Laura Foster to death out of jealousy and Tom Dula was blamed. Dula was hunted relentlessly with Cummings in the lead. He was captured and brought to trial. A witness who could have provided an alibi for Dula was paid by Cummings not to testify. Tom Dula was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Before his execution he confessed to the murder and exonerated Ann Melton. Years later when Ann Melton died people heard the sizzling of cooking meat and saw a black cat climb the wall as the devil came to take her to hell.
That's the storyteller's version, but newspapers and the transcripts of Tom Dula’s trials tell a different tale.
The section of North Carolina known as Happy Valley was marked by sharp class distinctions in the 1860’s. The town of Elkville and the fertile lands along the Yadkin River were home to merchants and gentleman farmers. But in the ridges of the mountains a lower class of people lived in squalid cabins on subsistence farms. In an 1868 article, the New York Herald described conditions there:
“A state of immorality unexemplified in the history of any country exists among these people, and such a general system of freeloveism prevails that it is ‘a wise child that knows its father.’”
Tom Dula was born and raised in these mountains and became sexually active at a young age. Ann Foster married James Melton, a successful cobbler, when she was 14 or 15. Almost immediately she began an affair with Tom Dula who was about the same age as she was. At age 17 Tom joined the 42nd Regiment North Carolina Infantry (not 26th Regiment as is sometimes reported) and fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. When he returned from the war he picked up his relationship with Ann Melton where it had left off. James Melton, who no longer slept with his wife, didn’t seem to mind when Tom shared his wife’s bed in their one-room cabin.
There were three beds in the Melton cabin. The third was occupied by Pauline Foster, a distant cousin of Ann’s who was hired to do house and farm work. Tom would sometimes share her bed as well, and sometimes Ann, Pauline, Tom would all sleep together. Unbeknownst to Tom and the Meltons, Pauline Foster had come to Elkville seeking treatment for syphilis.
In March of 1866, when Tom Dula was 21, he began to visit Laura Foster, another cousin of Ann Melton, about the same age, who lived with her father Wilson Foster. Laura was described by the newspaper as “frail but beautiful.” She had large front teeth with a large gap between them. Laura had been with many men, but there is no record of a Bob Cummings or a schoolteacher of any name courting her.
Tom Dula frequently spent the night with Laura in her father’s house and, though Wilson Foster was well aware of this, it didn’t seem to bother him. Not long after he started seeing Laura, Tom went to Dr. George N. Carter in Elkville and was diagnosed with syphilis. Tom blamed the disease on Laura Foster and told a friend that he intended to “put through” the woman who gave it to him.
The date of Laura Foster’s disappearance is uncertain – three separate trials recorded three different dates – but from trial testimony, it can be assumed that the date was Friday, May 25, 1866. When Wilson Foster woke up that morning his daughter was gone and so was the mare he kept tied to a tree. The following day the mare returned to Foster’s cabin alone. It was assumed that Laura had died and men in the community spent weeks looking for her body. On June 24, in a spot in the woods near Tom Dula’s place, they found the rope used to tie the mare to a tree and a spot on the ground presumed to be blood.
As Rumors began to spread that Tom Dula had killed Laura Foster, Tom left for Tennessee. Around the same time Pauline Foster also went to Tennessee for some undisclosed reason. When she returned, a friend said she must have gone because she killed Laura Foster. Jokingly Pauline replied “Yes, I and Dula killed her, and I ran away to Tennessee.” Two or three weeks after the remark, Pauline was arrested as an accessory to murder and taken to Wilkesboro Jail. Pauline decided to tell all she knew. She said that Tom Dula and Ann Melton had killed Laura Foster and on September 1 she led a search party to a spot Ann Melton had pointed out as the place they buried Laura. At the spot, one of the horses snorted at a foul order coming out of the ground. The men dug there and found a woman’s body, badly decomposed but identified as Laura Foster by the dress she wore and the gap in her teeth. She had been stabbed through the ribs under the left breast.
In Tennessee, Tom Dula had already been captured. He had changed his name to Hall and was working as a farm hand for Col. James Grayson when deputies from Wilkes County, NC came to arrest him. Dula had left Grayson’s farm by the time deputies arrived. After hearing the story, Col. Grayson joined the deputies in the search for Tom Dula. They caught up with him in Pandora, Tennessee and Col. Grayson persuaded him to surrender. He spent the night under guard at Grayson’s farm before being taken back to Elkville.
Trial: 1. October 1, 1866 2. January 20, 1868
In a move that surprised everyone involved, Tom Dula’s defense was handled, pro bono, by Zebulon B. Vance, former Governor of North Carolina and Colonel of the 26th North Carolina Regiment who fought valiantly for the Confederacy. Tom Dula is often incorrectly identified as a member of the 26th Regiment, an attempt to explain why Governor Vance took the case.
The trial opened in Wilkesboro, NC on October 1, 1866. The defense requested a severance – that Tom Dula and Ann Melton be tried separately- and a change of venue. Both were granted and the trial was moved to Statesville, NC.
The case against Tom Dula was circumstantial but compelling. All of the dirty laundry was aired, the promiscuity, the syphilis, and the threats made by Tom against Laura Foster. While there were many witnesses who testified on each of these aspects, the most damaging testimony came from Pauline Foster who held nothing back.
Tom Dula was found guilty of murder but the verdict was thrown out on appeal due to some irregularities in the admission of testimony.
The second trial was delayed twice as each side was granted a continuance when witnesses did not appear. To end the delay, a special court of Oyer and Terminer was convened in Statesville on January 20, 1868. Once again Tom Dula was found guilty of murder. This verdict was appealed as well, but the appeal was declined. Dula was sentenced to death.
Verdict: 1. Guilty of murder - overturned on appeal 2. Guilty of murder
Aftermath:
The legend says that Tom Dula rode to his execution in a wagon, sitting atop his coffin, playing the banjo and writing the song that 90 years later would be recorded by the Kingston Trio. Over the years, a number of people have claimed authorship but after so long it is impossible to give credit, so believe what you want. There is no evidence that Tom Dula played banjo, though his banjo playing during the civil war is legendary. He did play the fiddle, though. Several people testified to that, and he made one trip to the Melton cabin specifically to retrieve his fiddle.
On May 1, 1868 Tom Dula was taken to the old depot in Statesville to a makeshift gallows with a cart as scaffold. According to the New York Herald he spoke for nearly an hour about his childhood, about politics, and about all the people who had perjured themselves at his trials. He did not confess to the crime or exonerate Ann Melton. Allegedly his last words were, “You have such a nice clean rope, I ought to have washed my neck.”
In on November 22, 1958, the Kingston Trio’s recording of “Tom Dooley” reached #1 on the Billboard charts.
On January 9, 2009, his last day in office, Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina received a request from the Wilkes County newspaper, The Record, and the Wilkes Playmakers, to pardon Tom Dula. The request was denied. The group claimed that Laura Foster was pregnant when she died and Tom Dula was planning to marry her. A good storyteller never lets the facts get in the way.
Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward, aged 19 and 17, had become close friends at the Higbee School for Girls in Memphis. So close, in fact, that they declared their love for each other and planned to elope to St. Louis to live together as husband and wife. When Freda’s family stopped the relationship, forbidding Freda from seeing Alice, events took a dreadful turn. On the afternoon of January 25, 1892, Alice Mitchel met Freda Ward on Front Street and cut her throat with a straight razor. Was Alice driven by insanity, jealousy, or “an unnatural love?”
Date: January 25, 1892
Location: Memphis, TN
Victim: Freda Ward
Cause of Death: Slashing
Accused: Alice Mitchell
Synopsis:
Freda Ward and her sister Jo, daughters of a wealthy planter and merchant, met Alice Mitchell and Lilly Johnson, also from prominent families, at the Higbee School for Girls in Memphis Tennessee. They became very close friends, with Freda especially close to Alice. It was not uncommon in 1892 for girls to form close relationships and express undying love for each other in letters and diaries. They were considered “a rehearsal in girlhood of the great drama of a woman’s life”, something the girls would outgrow when they reached adulthood. It was not considered unusual that Alice and Freda were seen kissing and embracing.
After Freda’s family moved several miles south to the town of Gold Dust, Arkansas, they began to see Freda’s relationship with Alice as unhealthy. One night in August 1891, Freda’s older, married sister, Ada Volkmar, caught Freda, with her suitcase packed, ready to leave for Memphis. Alice had given her a ring and the two considered themselves engaged. They had planned to elope to St. Louis where Alice would be the man, changing her name to Alvin J. Ward, and Freda would be the wife. Mrs. Volkmar stopped the elopement and forbade any further contact or correspondence her sisters and Alice Mitchell and Lillie Johnson.
The following January the Ward sisters were visiting a family friend, Mrs. Kimbrough, in Memphis. Alice and Lillie had attempted to visit them but were turned away. On January 25, Alice arrived at Lillie’s house with a horse and buggy and they went for a ride. They drove past Mrs. Kimbrough’s house and saw Freda and Jo leaving for the ferry to take them back to Gold Dust. As the sisters were heading to the dock on Front Street, Alice jumped out of the buggy saying “I’ll fix her!” She ran to Freda, grabbed her by the arm and slashed her face with a straight razor she had concealed in her hand. Jo Ward knocked Alice down and hit her with an umbrella as Freda ran away. Alice jumped up and ran after her. She caught up with her and slashed her face again. Then Alice grabbed Freda by the hair, pulled her head back and slit her throat from ear to ear. Alice went back to the buggy and Freda was carried to a nearby office where she bled to death. Alice was arrested that night at her parent’s home and Lillie was arrested at her home the next morning.
Trials: Lillie Johnson - February 23, 1892 Alice Mitchel - July 18, 1892
Lillie Johnson’s habeas corpus hearing was held first, to determine whether there was enough evidence to try her for murder. Though it would not determine anyone’s ultimate fate and was far less important than the pending murder trial of Alice Mitchell, it would be the most significant trial held in Memphis to date. The anticipated crowd would be so large that Judge Julius DuBose delayed the opening so that construction could be done to enlarge the courtroom until it had a seating capacity to rival Memphis’s largest theatres. On the day the trial opened judge Dubose was overwhelmed by a crowd of over a thousand people of all races and nationalities, about half of them women. In an effort stem the confusion he issued a “ballroom order”: “Ladies to the right, gents to the left.” Women were drawn to the hearing in numbers unprecedented for a criminal trial.
All of the salient evidence came out in this hearing; the “unnatural love” of Alice for Freda, the attempted elopement, Lillie’s intimacy with Alice and with the Ward sisters, and vivid descriptions of the murder scene. The defense argued that Lillie had no idea of Alice’s intention that day and in no way assisted her. But Judge Dubose ruled that:
"The proof is evident that the defendant aided and abetted in the commission of the crime, a crime the most atrocious and malignant ever perpetrated by a woman."
Lillie Johnson was released on $10,000 bail.
Alice Mitchell pled not guilty to murder but also entered a plea of “present insanity” which meant that before she could be tried for murder a hearing would be held to determine if she were mentally fit to stand trial.
To show a genetic predisposition to madness, Alice’s father testified that her mother, who had borne seven children, suffered from “puerperal insanity” after the birth of her first child and had to be committed to a lunatic asylum for several months. After the death of the child she became increasingly unstable. Other testimony brought by the defense stressed Alice’s boyish behavior growing up as an indication of her insanity. The engagement ring, inscribed “From A. to F” was entered as evidence and the story of the elopement was retold. Frank Mitchell, Alice’s brother, testified that Alice had once tried to commit suicide by taking laudanum over Freda’s infidelities.
The prosecution argued that though Alice’s behavior was strange, it was not insane. Her tomboyish behavior was not even unusual, just a normal part of growing up. However, the defense brought in a number of psychologists who unanimously thought Alice insane, probably incurably so. Her predisposition to insanity was triggered and “exciting cause”, the emotional disturbance of love and jealousy. Alice’s belief that she could marry Freda was a manifestation of her insanity.
Throughout the trial, Alice seemed docile and unconcerned which, to some observers, seemed further evidence of her insanity. On the witness stand she remained calm and indifferent as she told of her love for Freda detailed their intended elopement. Then she told of her plan to kill Freda:
“I wanted to cut her because I knew I could not have her, and I did not want anyone else to have her… My intention was to cut Freda’s throat and then my own, but Jo’s interference made me cut Freda again.”
The trial lasted ten days and the jury returned the verdict of insanity. She was committed to the Tennessee State Insane Asylum at Bolivar, Tennessee. Charges against Lillie Johnson were later dropped.
Verdict: Lillie Johnson - Sufficeint evidence to try for murder. Charges later dropped Alice Mitchel - Present insanity - not competent to stand trial.
Aftermath:
Officials at the Tennessee State Insane Asylum could have, at any time, declared Alice Mitchell competent to stand trial, but she never left the institution. In 1898 she reportedly died of tuberculosis. However, one of her attorneys later stated in an interview that she committed suicide by jumping into a water tower.
In 1892 the terms “lesbian” and “homosexual” were not commonly used in America. At that time, the medical term for Alice’s condition was “sexual inversion”, the condition where a person inappropriately took on the characteristics of the opposite sex.
While much was said about the “unnatural love” of Alice Mitchell for Freda Ward, there was never a suggestion that their relationship was sexual. The public also had trouble accepting Alice’s sexual inversion as the driving force behind the murder. Though Alice never wavered from her assertion that she killed Freda for love, two other stories were told as a motive for the murder:
1. Alice, Lillie, and the Ward sisters were “fast” girls, always flirting with men. Freda was prettier than Alice and had more luck with men. Alice was jealous of Freda’s beauty and was only trying to disfigure, not murder her.
2. A mysterious man was involved. He followed Alice’s buggy and disappeared after the murder. The murder was the result of a rivalry for the love of this man. The folk song "Alice Mitchel and Freddy Ward" expresses this view.
A Gaslight Poll:
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