FALL RIVER, Mass. -- A forensics expert hopes a radar scan of a cemetery will turn up the skulls of Lizzie Borden's parents so he can study them and resolve some questions about the nearly century-old ax murder mystery.
James E. Starrs, a professor of forensic sciences at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., spent much of Monday at the Oak Grove Cemetery scanning the area around the graves of Andrew and Abby Borden, looking for their skulls.
It was nearly a century ago, on Aug. 4, 1892, that the Bordens were found hacked to death in their Fall River home.
Their 33-year-old Sunday school teacher daughter Lizzie was charged with the crime but she was acquitted by a jury in June 1893 after a 13- day trial.Circumstantial evidence failed to convince the jury of her guilt.NEWLN: The crime gave rise to the ditty:
Lizzie Borden took an ax,
And gave her mother 40 whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father 41.
The ax introduced at her trial as the murder weapon is now in the custody of the Fall River Historical Society.
The skulls also were used as evidence in the trial and reportedly were returned to Lizzie after she was acquitted.
Starrs said if the skulls are in the cemetery, he hopes to get permission from the Borden family and a court order to exhume them so he can use modern forensics technology to determine if the ax is the actual murder weapon.
He said he wants to compare marks in the bone to imperfections on the hatchet.
'I love a good mystery like everyone else,' Starrs told reporters as he worked the radar equipment over the gravesite.
Starrs said he expects results from the scans by March but all his work would prove is whether the hatchet was or was not the murder weapon.
'No one is quite sure if this is the murder weapon,' said Michael Martins, curator at the Fall River Historical Society.
Martins said the hatchet the society has is the one presented in court but even if Starrs matches it with the skull wounds, 'that will still not be able to tell us who the murderer was.'
Martins said he did not believe Starrs's efforts will exhonerate Lizzie but he said, 'I personally tend to think she probably was guilty. But all the evidence was circumstantial. They (the prosecution) had no real evidence.'
Martins also questioned the accuracy of the famous ditty. He said the Bordens were actually struck between 10 and 14 times.
'Had it been 40, there wouldn't have been too much left,' he said.
Prosecutors had claimed Lizzie killed her father and the woman who was actually her stepmother to gain a large inheritance, which she eventually received.
Lizzie built a large house in Fall River with the inheritance. She died there in 1927.
The approaching centenary of the crime and Starrs new investigation has rekindled interest in the case. Residents are selling T-shirts, one of which reads: 'Fall River: Home of Lizzie Borden and the Original Top 40 Hits.'
