This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,

and we tell stories about everything here on this show. From the arts to sports

and from business to history and everything in between, including your stories, send them to

Our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites. And today we have Cara Robertson,

author of the trial of Lizzie Borden. This long, unsolved double murder has haunted Fall River, Massachusetts, since the late

summer of 1892.

Here's Cara with the story.

You know, we're used to the idea of these trials that become big media events, but Liz Lucy Borden's trial was to use an off-use

phrase, the trial of the century. In her case, it was the trial of the 19th century. There is a

combination of technology and sensational subject matter that converge in turning her case into something,

you know, akin to the O.J. Simpson trial. It was such a heinous double murder, and the person

accused of it was someone who checks all the boxes of proper middle-class womanhood.

She was active in good work. She was a Sunday school teacher.

And yet she's accused of the murder of her own father and her stepmother.

And this is just more than anyone can really comprehend.

And so there's a strong desire to follow the case

and to see her in mythic terms.

You know, she's either this monster,

you know, someone whose appearance must match the murder or she's an innocent victim almost a sentimental

heroine just ensnared by circumstance and some insidious masculine conspiracy of men in policemen's

blue who are trying to pin the crime on her to cover up their own incompetence.

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