Students re-examine Lizzie Borden case

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- The very cold case of accused killer Lizzie Borden will be re-examined by forensics trainees at Park Point University in Pittsburgh, students say.

Students in the school's forensics and criminal justice departments have constructed an exacting, 1/12th-scale model of the house in Fall River, Mass., in which the bodies of Borden's parents were found in the infamous 1892 case, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Wednesday.

Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the ax slayings of her parents Andrew and Abby Borden for lack of evidence, although contemporary popular sentiment -- and a children's nursery rhyme -- have convicted her in the court of public opinion. Nineteenth-century investigators couldn't test an ax found in the house for fingerprints, but Park Point students say they hope to reconstruct the crime by using the model complete with the bodies.

"It's a big, glorified doll house, where they found dead people, unfortunately," James Hudak, a senior who worked on the project, told the newspaper.

Steven Koehler, a Park Point associate forensics professor, says he came up the idea after coming across the Borden case in a book about unsolved murders.