Everybody knows the rhyme. Almost nobody knows the truth. On a mild summer morning in 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked to death inside a locked house on Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts — and before the police had finished searching for a stranger, the town had already decided who did it. This week we walk through the whole story: the morning of the murders, the cold and comfortless house of a very wealthy man, the shifting testimony, the trial that quietly fell apart, and the acquittal that never really ended. Then we sit with the strangest part of all — how a children's skipping rhyme convicted a woman the court set free, and why we still believe it a hundred and thirty years later.
A story about a hatchet, an inheritance, a house you can still book a room in — and the way a legend can outrun the truth and never look back.
Content note: This episode discusses a real double homicide and describes the injuries involved.
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