Free Fatal Families - Unleashing the evil within (Infamous Murderers) by Rodney Castleden

moment, and he may have expected a confession and mis-heard her on that account. Berry thought she said, ‘My sentence is a just one but much of the evidence against me is false’. But what if she actually said, ‘My sentence is an unjust one and much of the evidence against me is false’? If so, it could be that she knew that someone else had committed the murders, but she was taking the blame. Who was this person in Madrid that she wanted to reassure? Was MECP the real murderer? Or was he just another lover who was anxious not to have his name dragged through the courts?
    Another reason for her resignation may have been that Mary was unable to deal with her solicitor’s persistent questions about the crime; perhaps she simply had no recollection of it. If she really had had an epileptic fit, she would remember none of the events of those critical hours, and be unable to answer any questions.
    On balance, it looks as if Mary Wheeler killed Phoebe Hogg, and with malice aforethought. Mary had a strong motive. She was in love with Frank Hogg and evidently wanted Phoebe Hogg out of the way. It was not a chance meeting; Mary had invited Phoebe round for tea. The house seems to have been set up for the murder by having the blinds pulled down. It is nevertheless very peculiar that Mary seems to have done nothing to escape punishment afterwards. Wheeling the bodies through the streets in a pram in the early evening and dumping them on the pavement was inviting discovery. By wrapping the victim’s head in one of her own garments, she was almost deliberately implicating herself. She could also have cleaned up the kitchen and the murder weapons, instead of which she left everything just as it was for the police to find. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was an elaborate way of committing suicide – suicide by proxy. Instead of killing herself, which she had tried to do twice and failed, she would get the public hangman to do it for her.

Lizzie Borden
    ‘who gave her mother forty whacks’

     
     
     
    In July 1860 Lizzie Borden was born in Massachusetts. The family, who lived at Fall River, was at odds with itself from the start. Lizzie’s mother died, leaving Andrew, Lizzie’s father, to care for the two-year-old and her elder sister Emma. Three years later Andrew Borden remarried. The new wife, Abby Durfee, was a short, heavy and rather withdrawn woman. The small town gossip was that this was a marriage of convenience, and that all Andrew wanted from Abby was the services of a maid and child-minder, but the truth is that Andrew Borden seems to have cared for his new wife, one of life’s non-starters, and wanted to make proper provision for her. That was at the heart of the problem.
    From the beginning the two girls resented their new stepmother. The 32-year-old Emma despised Abby, and for the very specific reason that Abby was likely to rob her of her inheritance. Andrew Borden, now seventy, had become wealthy as a result of his investments but, in spite of being one of the richest men in town, he and his family lived frugally in a small house in an unfashionable district of Fall River. As events developed, she turned out to be right. First one of Andrew Borden’s properties was made over to Abby, then, just at the time of her death, there were plans to make over another. Lizzie and Emma were fully justified in their fears that they were going to be disinherited. As the two girls grew older, things got steadily worse and they refused to eat meals with Abby, pointedly calling her ‘Mrs Borden’. Lizzie decapitated Abby’s cat after it annoyed her.
    Another problem was the narrow focus of Lizzie’s life. She was over thirty now and still had no job, no husband, no love life, nothing to distract her from the long-simmering grievance against her father and his second wife. She did some voluntary work and taught at a Sunday school, but those were not enough to distract her from the frustrations that were intensifying in