Lizie Borden took an ax

Today, August 4, is the anniversary of the death of Lizzie Borden’s father and step-mother. [If you have never heard of the incident – and I didn’t until I was grown – and have missed the resultant doggerel (below), it was big news in 1892.]

In the mid-1990s I heard a similar piece of doggerel (also below) about a Mr. O. J. Simpson who was also accused and later acquitted of a highly-publicized double murder.

Both of these bits of verse have historical errors [e.g, there is no proof of the death order of the Bordens and it was never confirmed that there was anything other than a eater-waiter relationship between O.J.’s ex and Ronald Goldman] and the latter does not seem to have lasted in the public memory, but likely the memory of the crimes for which both were acquitted will linger for some time.

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one

O.J. Simpson took a knife

And hacked away his ex-wife’s life

When he saw what he could do

He butchered up her boyfriend too.

Fifty years ago Charles Starkweather was executed

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the execution of Charles Starkweather. Together with his girlfriend [as I remember there was some dispute between about how much each of them did] they killed eleven people, including her parents and baby sister.

I remember seeing a picture of him and his girlfriend on television during the brief period between when they were identified and fled Omaha and when they were apprehended in Wyoming. The announcement was very curt, something like, ”If you see these people, get away from them and call the police. They’re killers.” There seemed to be a special emphasis on that last word.
[When I first heard on the radio that they had been caught, I remember thinking it was Wyoming, Iowa, but it was the state of Wyoming.]

I remember reading an article attributed to him in a Sunday paper sometime between his sentencing and execution, in the Parade magazine I think. He said he had been picked on all of his life, that other kids had belittled his red hair, calling him “red-headed woodpecker.” He also indicated that he had come to Jesus since his arrest.

I don’t know if these statements were intended to get him some clemency, but it wasn’t about to come. Capital punishment seemed to be more accepted back then, even if it was not always advocated and even if somehow Nebraska could overlook the severity and the ruthlessness of what he had done, Wyoming would also have had an opportunity to get him.

Starkweather’s feats and his fate were the things which kept boys my age talking back in those days. Nebraska took his life with an electric chair and we would joke about his “hot seat” and watching where we sat for what seems like several weeks after that.

Starkweather’s crimes were especially cruel and grizzly and were stretched out over several weeks and I don’t know that we appreciated the utter evil of what he did, the utter cold-bloodedness of it all as we laughed about it.

In my adult life I have come to oppose capital punishment for more than one reason, but you do have to wonder just what could have ever been done with a boy like this. And I cannot help but notice how much more quickly sentence was carried out than it ever could be carried out these days.

Additional note: His girlfriend got off with a life sentence and was paroled several years ago.

More can be found at
http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkillers/S/STARKWEATHER_charles_FUGATE.php