Lizzie Borden's Murder House Is For Sale
"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one."
Yep, Lizzie Borden is without a doubt the most nursery-rhymed ax murderer in homicidal history. Sunday School teacher and daughter of a prominent, wealthy investor in Fall Rivers, Massachusetts, Borden was ultimately acquitted for the murder of her parents in 1892 for a variety of reasons most likely related to her wealth, standing, and various racial and ethnic issues circulating in New England at the time (e.g., a non-immigrant, white woman was among the least suspicious), per Smithsonian Magazine. But it was her stepmother, not mother, and a hatchet, not an ax. Nineteen strikes took down her stepmother, and 29 her father, to the point where his face was "unrecognizable."
The senselessness of the crime is part of the reason why it's remembered. Lizzie, one of the town's most well-regarded "Protestant nuns" — the Victorian ideal of a modest, well-mannered lady — claims she came home to find her father's hewn body (Lizzie, 32 at the time, still lived there). The motive was unclear, nothing was stolen, there was no break-in, and Lizzie's parents were murdered during the day. Two months after Lizzie was acquitted, she and her sister Emma moved to a wealthy part of town and left their past, and their house, behind.
And if anyone is looking to pay $2 million to inherit that murder home? Now's your chance.
Care to inherit a murder-based B&B?
On January 22, 2021, the Borden family home went on the market. In the intervening years since the family ax-whacking, the house has been converted into a museum and bed and breakfast. At present, the cheapest of the house's plethora of flower-printed, canopy-bedded rooms goes for $250 a night, per the B&B's disturbingly cheery website. You can even stay in the room where Lizzie's mom Abby was murdered, the "John V. Morse" room. The B&B offers guided tours to the pubic, and in 2019 alone, it conducted a staggering 18,000 daytime tours, per Realtor.com.
The listing doesn't just include the house, but the entire business, an owner's suite, an adjacent barn with two extra bathrooms, gift shops, trademarks, IPs, and websites. The listing's real estate agent, Suzanne St. John, stated on CNN that no one who has expressed interest has any other goals for the property aside from keeping it a bed and breakfast. In fact, the house has been listed as a "turnkey operation," meaning that little to no change needs to be conducted at the property in order for it to continue being used (just turn the key and go inside). No mention of ghosts or hauntings, though — it seems the original owners just want to retire.
Last year in September, Lizzie's "Maplecroft" mansion — where she lived after her trial — also went on sale for $890,000, per Boston Magazine.