“Lizzie Borden took an axe, 

and gave her mother forty whacks,

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one!” 

– anonymous schoolyard rhyme

On a hot August morning in 1892, the brutal double murder of Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby in the New England mill town of Fall River, Massachusetts shocked the nation. Andrew’s 32-year-old spinster daughter Lizzie Borden was accused of the ghastly crimes and brought to trial. The sensational headline-producing trial lasted thirteen days, and she was acquitted by a jury of her peers. To this day, the killings remain unsolved, with speculation still running rampant among true crime buffs. Did Lizzie Borden really hack her father and stepmother to death?

There are plenty of other suspects in the case, as I learned while taking the guided tour of The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum (yes, it’s a real B&B, and…