According to the rhyme, ' Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; when she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one '. But according to justice, the 32-year-old spinster was not resposible for the murder of Andrew J. Borden and his wife Abby. She was aquitted after a 10-day trial, and the courtroom rang with applause at the verdict. Ever since, the world has wondered why. What really happened that fateful day.

The Borden household at 92 Second Street in the Massachusetts cotton spinning town of Fall River had never been a happy one. Andrew was a brusque, ill-tempered and puritanical man whose one aim in life was making money, and holding on to it. He had amassed half a million dollars from shrewd business dealings, first as an undertaker, then as a property speculator and banker. His first wife, Sarah Morse Borden, died in 1862, two years after giving birth to his second daughter, christened Lizzie Andrew because Borden wanted a boy. Borden married again two years later, but it was no love match. Abby Durfee Gray was a plain, plump woman of 37, more of a housekeeper than a wife. And there was no love lost between her and Borden's two girls. The elder sister, Emma called her Abby. Lizzie called her Mrs Borden, refused to eat at the same table as her, and spoke with her only when it was essential.

Despite Borden's wealth, the family lived in conditions worse than many of the town's millworkers. The unsanitary whitewood house had staircases at the front and back, which was as well, because the friction in the family meant that bedroom doors upstairs were kept locked at all times, the parents reaching their room via the rear stairs, the girls using the front ones.

Lizzie's resentment of her stepmother, and the way they lived, boiled over when her father, whom she loved, put up the money for Abby's sister, Mrs Whitehead, to buy the house from which they faced eviction. Borden presented the title deeds to his wife, and when Lizzie found out, she regarded it as further proof that Mrs Borden was only after her father's money. Shortly afterwards, Mr Borden arrived home from business to be told by Lizzie that his wife's bedroom had been ransacked by a burgler. He reported the incident to police, but soon cut short their inquiries when it became clear that lizzie herself had done the damage during ' one of her funny turns '.

Lizzie was plain, introspective and repressed with genteel pretensions. She had a small circle of friends - though she belonged to the Women's Christian Temperance Union, was treasurer and secretary of the local Christian Endeavour Society, and taught a Sunday School of Chinese men at the local Congregational church. She spent most of her time in solitary pursuits - fishing, or merely brooding at her bedroom window. There was plenty for her to brood about.

In the summer of 1892 Fall River sweltered in a heatwave. In May the tedium of the Borden's lifestyle was interrupted when intruders twice broke into outhouses at the bottom of their garden. Mr Borden's reaction was somewhat bizzare. Sure that the intruders were after Lizzie's pet pidgeons, he took an axe to the birds and decapitated all of them.

By August the heat had become so bad that Emma left to stay with friends in the country at Fairhaven, 20 miles away. Lizzie stayed at home for a special meeting of the Christian Endeavour Society. The weather made no difference to Mr Borden's plans for running an economical household. The family sat down to a monsterous sized joint of mutton, cooked by their only servant, named Bridget, and served up in various guises at every meal. Everyone except Lizzie was violently ill.

The 4th August dawned as the hottest day of the year, the family routine went on just the same. After breakfast Mr Borden set out to check on his businesses; John Morse, brother of his first wife, who was staying for a few days, left to visit other relatives; Mrs Borden began dusting the rooms, and Bridget, still queesy from food poisoning, washed the windows. Lizzie came down later than the rest, and was seen ironing some clothes in the kitchen.

Shortly after 09:30 am, Mrs Borden, on her knees dusting in the spare bedroom upstairs at the front of the house, was struck from behind with a hatchet. It was a crushing blow to the head, and killed her instantly. But 18 more blows were inflicted on her before she was left.

Just before 11:30 am, Mr Borden arrived home to find the front door locked and bolted. Bridget,now cleaning the windows inside the house, went to let him in, and expressed surprise that the door was double locked. She heard a laugh behind her, and turned to see Lizzie coming down the front staircase, smiling.

Mr Borden ws nearly 70, and walking in the morning heat had clearly tired him. Lizzie fussed round him, told him his wife had gone out after receiving a note about a sick friend, and settled him on the living room settee where he began to doze, his head resting on a cushion. Lizzie went back to the kitchen, and chatted to Bridget who was still feeling unwell, and decided to retire to her attic bedroom for a while. She heard the clock strike 11:00 as she went up the stairs.

Ten minutes later she dashed downstairs again. She heard Lizzie shouting 'come down quick. Father's dead. Someone came in and killed him.' Lizzie would not let the maid into the living room - she sent her across the road to fetch the local doctor, a man called Bowen. He was out on a call. Lizzie then sent Bridget to fetch Alice Russell, one of her closest friends. By this time, the maid's rushing about had attracted the attention of neighbours. Mrs Adelaide Churchill, who lived next door, spotted Lizzie looking distressed, and asked what was wrong. She was told: 'Someone has killed father.'

Mr Borden had been hacked to death in exactly the same way as his wife, though his head had been shattered with only 10 blows. The hatchet had landed from behind as he slept, a tricky task as the settee was aginst a wall. Blood had splashed everything - wall, settee, carpet. Dr Bowen arrived and examined the body. The blows seemed directed ar his eyes, ears and nose. He was was sure that the first blow would have killed him. He placed a sheet over the body.

Mrs Russell and Mrs Churchill did their best to comfort the bereaved Lizzie, fanning her, dabbing her face with cold cloths, rubbing her hands. But both noticed that she did not really need comforting. She was not crying or hysterical, and she assured that she did not feel faint. She was still strangely calm when the police arrived, declining their offer of delaying the necessary interview until she had a chance to rest.

At first suspicion fell on John Morse, who behaved strangely when he returned to the house. Though a large crowd had gathered in front of the house, he was seen to slow down as he approached. Then, instead of going inside, he wandered round to the back garden, picked some fruit off one of the trees, and started eating it. Inside the house, his alibi came so glibly, in the most minute detail, that it almost seemed too perfect. But when tested it was found to be true.

Attention then turned to Lizzie, whose behaviour had been equally strange, and whose statements were not only curious but contradictary. When Bridget had asked her where she was when her father was killed, she replied: 'I was out in the yard and heard a groan.' When Mrs Churchill asked the same question, she said: 'I went out to the barn to get a piece of iron.' She told the same story to the police, saying she had eaten three pears while searching in the attic of the barn. But a policeman who checked the attic found no cores, only undisturbed dust.

Mrs Churchill also recalled the extraordinary reply Lizzie had given when she first arrived, and asked where her mother was. Lizzie said: 'I'm sure I don't know, for she had a note from someone to go and see somebody who is sick. But I don't know perhaps that she isn't killed also, for I thought I heard her coming in.' It was ten minutes before Mrs Churchill and Bridget began to search for Mrs Borden. They saw that she was not in her room, for the sheet that covered her husband came from there. So they started climbing the front staircase. Halfway up, Mrs Churchill glanced through the open door of the spare bedroom, and saw the body lying on the floor beyond the bed.

Why had Lizzie not seen it there when she came down the stairs to welcome her father home? Why had she been trying to buy prussic acid, a lethal poison, only the day before from the shops in town? And why, the previous evening, had she visited her friend Mrs Russell, told her of the food poisoning, and complained about her father's brusque way with people, saying that she was afraid one of his enemies would take revenge on him soon?

Those were the questions police asked themselves as they pieced together the clues, and studied Lizzie's statements. They were sure that the murders had been committed by someone in the household. Though neighbours had noticed a young man outside the Borden home at 09:30, looking agitated, they had not seen him go in. And police thought it unlikely that a killer could hide in the house for 90 minutes between the murders while Bridget and Lizzie were going about their chores.

Bridget was considered as a suspect and dismissed. Neighbours had seen her cleaning the windows. Some had seen her vomitting because of the food poisoning. And she had no known reason for killing her employers. But Lizzie had motives in plenty. The tension in the family, the quarrels about money, the hatred of the stepmother, were all well known in the area. She was warned that she was under suspision and told not to leave the house. She accepted the conditions, in the arrogant, off-hand way that she had dealt with all the police's questions.

The police obtained a warrent for her arrest, but did not serve it until after the inquest. Though they had found an axe-head that had recently been cleaned in the cellar of the Borden house, they had no proof that it was the murder weapon, or that Lizzie was the murderer. Once she was arrested, she could use her legal right to silence. It was important to hear her evidence at the inquest.

More than 4,000 people attended the funeral of Mr and Mrs Borden. The two heads were cut off before burial, and the battered skulls sent for forensic examination. A few days later, the inquest opened. It was held in secret, conducted by the public prosecutor, who gave Lizzie a tough time in cross-questioning. And once again she started contradicting herself.

She claimed now that she had not been on the stairs when her father arrived home shortly before 11:00, but was downstairs in the kitchen. Asked why she had changed her story, she explained: 'I thought I wwas on the stairs, but now I know I was in the kitchen.' She also denied saying she heard her stepmother returning to the house. The public prosecutor was certain she was guilty of the killings. So were the newspapers, which daily poured out torrents of emotional misrepresentation and libel on Lizzie, adding smears and lies to the known facts But it was one thing to obtain a conviction in print, quite another to obtain one in a court of law. And the public prosecutor confided in a letter to the Attorney General that he was not confident.

His fears were well founded. The tide of anti-Lizzie propaganda in the press turned public feeling in her favour. How could such a God-fearing, quiet, respectable woman do such horrible and bloody deeds? Flowers and good luck messages began pouring into Fall River for her from all over the country. Suddenly the state became the villain of the piece for persecuting her.

Lizzie had something else on her side also. She hired the best lawyer in Massachusetts, George Robinson, a former governer of the state. One of the three trial judges was a man Robinson had elevated to the bench while governer. He owed the defence lawyer a favour - and he delivered. The judges refused to allow evidence of Lizzie's attempt's to but prussic acid, saying it was irrelevant to the case, and they ruled that transcripts of her questioning at the inquest were inadmissable.

Lizzie's friend's also rallied round. Both Emma and Bridget gave favourable evidence, playing down Lizzie's enmity for her stepmother. Mrs Russell admitted that Lizzie had burnt one of her dresses, the day after her parents funeral, but insisted there was no blood stains on it. Lizzie almost fainted halfway through the hearing, there was an outcry at the way she was being treated. And as she stood in the dock, modest, refined and neatly dressed, it was easy for George Robinson to say to the jury: 'To find her guilty, you must believe she is a fiend. Gentlemen, does she look it?'

The jury agreed she did not. After a ten-day trial her ordeal was over, and she was whisked off for a lavish celebration party, laughing at newspaper clippings of the hearing that friends gave her, she was now very rich, able to inherit her murdered father's wealth. She chose to stay on in Fall River, buying a larger house in the better part of town. Bridget, whom many suspected of helping Lizzie dispose of clues to the killings, returned to Ireland, allegedly with a lot of money from the Borden bank account. She later returned to America and died in Montana in 1947, aged 82.

For a while Emma shared the new home with Lizzie, but the sisters quarrelled, and Emma moved out. Lizzie became something of a recluse, living alone, unloved and whispered about, until she died in 1927, aged 67. Emma, nine years older, died just a few days later. They were both buried in the family plot alongside their real mother, their stepmother, their father and their sister Alice, who had died as a child.

No-one else was ever arrested for the murders. No-one else was even seriously suspected. The case became one of the most intriguing unresolved mysteries in the annals of crime. Countless books have been written about it.

In her book A Private Disgrace, American authoress Victoria Lincoln writes that Lizzie committed the murders while having attacks of temporal epilepsy, the 'funny turns' her family were accustomed to. Lizzie suffred from attacks four times a year, usually during menstruation. Miss Lincoln says: 'During a siezure, there are periods of automatic action which the patient in some cases forgets completely and in other remembers only dimly. 'That could explain Lizzie's confusing statements and her coolness when accused of the killings. Or was she as some think a cunning, cold and calculated killer?

Miss Lincoln suggests the trigger to Lizzie's attacks. A note was delivered to the house on that morning of 4th August, but it was not from a sick friend. It was to do with the transfer of property to Mrs Borden's name. The first such transaction had driven Lizzie to vandalism. Did the second drive her to murder?