(rain spattering) (bell ringing) - [David] Seven bedroom, three and a half bath, Victorian, loaded with history.

- [Suzanne] It's an unusual piece of real estate, but it's very much a niche.

- Easily the most famous house in Fall River, asking price $2 million.

Suzanne St. John is the listing agent.

Is it hard to sell a crime scene?

- It's interesting to sell a crime scene.

I mean, everybody knows Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother 40 whacks.

Or did she really?

You're not gonna know until you take the tour.

But it's world known.

It was actually fairly easy to sell it.

We put it on the market on a Monday, and we had probably four offers on Friday.

- Wow, even at 2 million?

- Even at 2 million, yes.

- [David] That's because the Lizzie Borden house has a unique draw.

It may be the only bed and breakfast in New England that's also a crime scene.

Do people get a discount for staying in the murder room, or do they pay extra?

- That's the most requested room, no, no.

I would not sleep there, but yeah.

- And is it haunted?

- You could be the judge of that, you could be the judge.

- Yikes.

We spent the night at the Lizzie Borden BnB along with amateur historian Shelley Dziedzic.

- This is the door he came through.

- [David] She's published a number of Lizzie Borden books, runs a popular website, and for 25 years, Shelley was a tour guide here.

She's no shrinking violet.

- And contact, probably the first or second stroke, you were gone.

- [David] The year was 1892, August 4th.

Lizzie Borden was 32 years old living at home.

It was she who discovered her dad's body around lunchtime on this couch where Andrew Borden had laid down for a nap just a short while before.

- Lizzie said, "I came back from the barn.

I was out there for a while."

She came in, she said, "I put my hat on the table, and I discovered father."

This clearly had just happened and the blood was still flowing.

It was bright red and she was alone.

My reaction would be to run to the front door, open it, and scream blue murder.

- Yes, and never come back into the house.

- But she didn't.

Most people would want to get out.

- [David] Only after police and neighbors finally arrived was the second body discovered, Abby Borden, Lizzie's stepmother found upstairs.

- As far as we can determine, there's only one one way in and out of this room.

But she saw her assailant for sure.

- [David] Killed hours earlier, apparently while making the bed.

- The thinking is the assailant might have straddled, the killer straddled the body, perhaps grabbed the head by the hair and wailed away at that.

So the majority of the blows are when she's on the floor.

- And how many times was she struck?

- Oh, 19.

- So not 40, but plenty.

- But plenty.

- [David] The brutality of the crime only slightly exaggerated by that old jump rope song.

♪ Lizzie Borden took an ax ♪ ♪ And gave her mother forty whacks ♪ - And if you think of it, she got about twice as many whacks as Mr. Borden.

There's 10, 11, I think 11 was the final verdict on him and 19 for her.

So this was a double whammy.

- [David] Even 19 whacks suggests a whole lot of hatred, all of which is not so comforting as night falls and the evening gloom sets in.

So I'm sleeping tonight in what used to be Lizzie Borden's bedroom, and Abby Borden's bedroom where she was killed, the mother, the stepmother is just a few feet that away.

Andrew Borden was killed just downstairs.

I learned what's apparently an old saying today, which I firmly believe now, and that is I don't believe in ghosts, but that doesn't mean I'm not scared of them.

Sweet dreams.

This BnB gives new meaning to R-I-P, rest in peace.

Well, I did hear some voices in the night, but I'm pretty sure it was just the other guests.

Lizzie Borden was not immediately a suspect, but there were details of her story that didn't add up.

Her alibi was thin.

There were no signs of a break-in or robbery.

And Lizzie was later observed burning a blue dress that she claimed was stained with paint.

- It makes no sense, it doesn't fit.

If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

- [David] A hundred years before OJ Simpson, a hundred years before the Menendez brothers.

- I'm just a normal kid.

- Oh, Erik, you're a normal kid who killed your parents.

- I know.

- The Lizzie Borden case was the original trial of the century.

The trial took place in this New Bedford courthouse almost a full year after the crime.

This was a brutal murder in Victorian New England, and the suspect was a woman.

So you can imagine the attention it drew from the news media.

It was huge.

In the absence of modern forensics and with plenty of unanswered questions, there was no shortage of what today might be referred to as fake news.

But it was a sensational trial.

And in the end, the jury deliberated for just over an hour before rendering a verdict of not guilty.

- In the court of law, she was acquitted.

But in the court of public opinion here in the city, many people thought she was guilty.

- [David] Lizzie and her sister inherited everything.

They moved to this mansion in a fancier neighborhood of Fall River.

Maplecroft is also for sale, fully furnished.

- This is the original wallpaper or said to be that Lizzie had picked out.

Apparently, she liked the color blue.

- [David] Here, Lizzie Borden lived out the rest of her days and in what seems like the ultimate irony.

- Lizzie left a note in her will, "I wish to be buried at my father's feet."

- [David] Lizzie Borden will spend eternity right beside the two people she's accused of murdering.

- And there she is at her father's feet.

- So this is dad.

- This is Lizzie.

- And this is Lizzie Borden.

- And this would be Lizzie's head here.

And the casket goes out this way.

So she is indeed at her father's feet.

- [David] And more than a century later, that element of unsolved mystery is what makes Lizzie Borden Fall River's biggest tourist attraction bar none.

- In 2019, we had over 18,000 people walk through this house.

Now, that could be people that were either on a tour or that could be people that were spending the night.

- 18,000?

- 18,000 people through the door from all over the world.

- Folks like Lisa Smith and her family who came all the way from Knoxville.

- What brought you here today?

- It's on my bucket list because I did a paper in college on Lizzie Borden, so I learned a whole lot more today than I did in my papers.

- [David] Do you think that the jury did the right thing?

If you were on the jury, how would you vote?

I would vote that she did it because from what I hear, she kept changing the story three times.

- Well, I can make a case either way.

- [David] For her part, our expert is inclined to agree.

Shelley says it's just not plausible that some random stranger committed this crime, - And why wasn't Lizzie murdered?

If this was a homicidal maniac just off on a spree, why would he leave her sitting in the kitchen having cookies and coffee and walk right by her?

- They talk about Occam's razor.

I guess, in this case, Occam's hatchet, - Occam's hatchet.

- The simplest explanation is generally the truth.

- Murder is generally a pretty simple thing.

It's people that make it complicated.

I think it was Agatha Christie said, "Who had the motive, the weapon, the opportunity?"

- And she had all three.

- She had all three.

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