July 19

Lizzie Andrew Borden emerged into the world on this date in 1860; about three weeks after her 32nd birthday, Borden discovered the body of her father, Andrew, on a couch in their home at Fall River, Massachusetts. Contrary to popular rhyme, Mr. Borden had not suffered “forty-one” whacks with a hatchet. The eleven he did sustain, however, were quite fatal -- including the one that split his eye and another than severed his nose. The body of Abby Borden, which bore nineteen distinct wounds to the head and neck, was discovered upstairs in her bed a short while later.

Lizzie Borden, who was always the most likely suspect, was charged with the murders and acquitted by an all-male jury in June 1893.

Less fortunate in their own trials, five women from the town of Salem, Massachusetts -- Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe, Sarah Good and Sarah Wildes -- were hanged for witchcraft on 19 July 1692. Nurse, who hailed from a prominent family and was one of the most respected women in the community, had been accused by one Sarah Holton of putting a lethal hex upon her husband, Benjamin, several years before. According to Holton, Nurse came to their farmhouse one Saturday and scolded Benjamin about his pigs, which she claimed had gotten into her fields. The argument went nowhere, as Benjamin Holden insisted his pigs were adequately yoked and had not left their pen. After Nurse left, Sarah Holden claimed, her husband

was taken with a strainge fitt . . . being struck blind and stricken down two or three times so that when he came to himself he tould me he thought he should never have com into the house any more: and all summer affter he continewed in a languishing condition being much pained at his stomack and often struck blind: but about a fortnight before he dyed he was taken with strange and violent fitts acting much like out poor bewicthed parsons when we thought they would have dyed and the Doctor. that was with him could not find what his distemper was: and the day before he dyed he was very chearly but about midnight he was againe most violently sezed upon with violent fitts tell the next night about midnight he departed this life by a cruel death.

On the basis of these and other implausible scraps of “evidence,” Nurse was arraigned and charged with the crime of witchcraft. Tried by a jury, she was initially acquitted on June 30. When the verdict was announced, 12-year-old Ann Putnam and several other girls who had brought forth accusations against Nurse collapsed and howled in pain, insisting that Nurse was somehow afflicting them. The judge then asked the jury to reconsider their decision, which they subsequently did.

Fourteen years after helping to send twenty people to an early grave, Ann Putnam apologized publicly for her role in the witchcraft hysteria. She had, she ruefully observed, been “deluded by Satan.”

April 25

Eighteen years ago today, a migrant fruit picker from Arcadia, Florida named James Joseph Richardson was released from prison in Florida, where he had languished 21 years for seven murders he did not in fact commit. The seven victims were his children and step-children, who succumbed to pesticide poisoning in late October 1967.

Tried and found guilty the following year, Richardson received a sentence of death that was vacated in 1972, when the Supreme Court temporarily invalidated the nation’s capital punishment laws. After the Furman ruling, Richardson’s sentence was altered to 25 years without the possibility for parole. He continued to insist on his innocence, though no one of any importance believed him until 1989, when an investigation by Miami-Dade state attorney Janet Reno concluded that James Joseph Richardson was in all likelihood innocent of all charges.

As it turned out, the lethal doses of parathion were administered by Richardson’s next-door neighbor Betsy Reese, who was babysitting them at the time and had fed them a lunch of rice and beans shortly before they died. Reese was upset that her third husband had forsaken her for one of Richardson’s relatives. At the time, Reese was on parole for shooting and killing her second husband; her first husband had also died under mysterious circumstances after eating a meal she had prepared for him. All of this was apparently known to prosecutors at the time, but charged Richardson instead. To make their case, they accused Richardson of having taken out life insurance policies on his children the day before the deaths. They also insisted that a sack of parathion had been discovered in his shed. Neither allegation was true, though the state also relied on perjured testimony from three men -- jailhouse acquaintances of the accused -- who claimed that Richardson had confessed the crime to them. Each of the three men received an early release.

After Richardson’s conviction was overturned by a circuit court judge in April 1989, the State of Florida did not offer him financial restitution, arguing that he had not filed the proper court documents. According to Richardson’s former attorney, Richardson -- now 70 years old -- is penniless and living in the Midwest.