Sunday, August 4, 2019

127 Years Later: Legend Hunter! Lizzie Borden


Sketch by B. West Clinedinst. Library of Congress
The other night I caught a show on the channel-that-formerly-covered-travel-but-now-is-all-about-paranormal-stuff...channel. Legend Hunter: Lizzie Borden innocent? (pay to watch) is kind of a wannabe Destination Truth and Expedition Unknown, crossed with Ghost Hunters and Finding Bigfoot. The first two shows I heartily endorse simply for the fun factor. The next two are...whatever. However, back to Legend Hunter. The premise of this episode was that host, Pat Spain, read The Man From The Train, saw the brief blurb about Lizzie Borden, then ran with it. Basically, Spain really, really, really wants to believe that Lizzie was just misunderstood and was innocent. First, Spain attempts to debunk some already established facts (i.e. Emma Borden's alibi) and fails.  He then tries to prove a serial killer could have been responsible for the murders of the Bordens. He specifically brings up Villisca! Although he never gets around to the "real" connection between the Borden murders and Villisca.  The show is essentially 45 minutes of Spain proposing alternate hypotheses in order to absolve Ms. Borden and swing the case to focus on anyone else. Particularly, a serial killer.
Pat Spain
Legend Hunter host Pat Spain

It basically boils down to the following:

Spain: I think this is what happened. Let's ask some experts!
Expert #1: Yeah, that's not at all likely.
Expert #2: No. Probably not.
Expert #3: lol no
Spain: I'm not convinced.

Now to be fair to Pat, in his closing monologue, he finally admits defeat and acknowledges that his desire for Lizzie to be misunderstood was hard for him to overcome. The problem is, his "confession" at the end of the episode makes up roughly two minutes of of a 45 minute show. And he is still rather ambiguous about whether or not he believes Lizzie was the killer (she WAS!). Now I'm not mad about anything; the show was interesting and I'm glad he brought in actual criminal investigators to debunk things. But, man, why are we even discussing the possibility that a serial killer did this? Lizzie Borden obviously did it. She was the only one with means, motive, and opportunity. Serial killers don't kill one person in a house, then hide from other people in the house for an hour and a half, then kill another person before running off. And why is anyone comparing this case to Villisca?

2 comments:

dks said...

Your posts are always so interesting. I appreciate your sense of humor as well as your analysis. Have been following you for many years (I'm a Marzyck descendant). ~ Deb

Inspector Winship said...

Thanks for reading! I'm glad someone doesn't mind my humor. I feel like it's the prime reason people never email me back o_o