Goodbye Lizzie Borden

by Robert Sullivan

Book Overview

Charged with killing her father and stepmother with an axe in 1893, Lizzie Borden became the center of perhaps the most baffling murder trial in United States legal history. Sullivan returns to the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0828902038
• ISBN13: 9780828902038
• Release Date: January 1974
• Publisher: S. Greene Press
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Goodbye Lizzie Borden by Robert Sullivan

If you only buy one book about the Llzzie Borden murder case, this is the one to have. Probably the best and most lucid book on the subject. Judge Sullivan presents the facts of the case in a fair light without personal embellishments.

Goodbye Lizzie Borden

My book came and was what I had expected. My transaction was satisfactory.

fine analysis

This is an analysis of the Borden case from a legal point of view by a former judge. The facts are well-presented and the legal insights and arguments are convincing, but the impartial reader will sense and be annoyed by the author's clear bias against Lizzie throughout much of the book. The book would have been strengthened by a fairer ad more even-handed, two-sided approach. Even so, it's an excellent piece of factual and analytical work. David Rehak author of "Did Lizzie Borden Axe For It?"

Best book on the case for lawyers

Sullivan, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge, did a meticulous review of the transcript. He discusses legal and factual issues in a cogent and clear fashion. For lawyers, it is by far the best book on the case. He concludes that Lizzie committed the crime, possibly out of material motives (she could have feared that her father was about to convey property to her stepmother). Seems plausible to me. There sure was a lot of circumstantial evidence against her. Those who think she's innocent ought to read her testimony before the coroner. It's hard to explain that testimony except to say that it's a pack of lies designed to cover up a murder. Because of a dubious ruling by the trial judges, the prior testimony was not admitted at trial and, needless to say, Lizzie did not open the door by taking the stand. The verdict was a triumph for the reasonable doubt standard, backed up by an all-male jury's conviction that a respectable woman couldn't do such a thing.