Description:

The Preliminary Hearing phase of the Commonwealth vs. Lizzie A. Borden began on August 25 and lasted until September 1, 1892. The copy given to Lizzie’s lawyer, Andrew Jennings, is the only one known to have survived. It has recently been discovered that this copy is, in fact, both incomplete and inaccurate, having been altered and edited for some long-forgotten reason. This new edition of the Preliminary Hearing combines a number of transcriptions from various sources in an effort to reproduce, as accurately and authentically as possible, the day-by-day proceedings of this all-important legal event in the history of the Borden murders of 1892. This new edition, for the first time, reads in the order in which the witnesses were called, includes the closing statements of the defense and prosecution and the judge’s summation and verdict, and contains the entirety of Lizzie’s own Inquest testimony which was read into the official record but not reproduced in the original transcription.