She did it.
Lizzie Borden did in fact take a hatchet and bludgeon her father and
stepmother to death on the morning of Aug. 4, 1892, according to psychic
medium Kim Dennis, who claims to have been visited by the infamous Fall
Riverite in her Canadian home.
Dennis presented “Lizzie Borden: Her Side of the Story” at Bristol
Community College on Monday night to a packed lecture hall of Borden
buffs all looking for the answer to the 117-year-old question: Did she
do it?
The lecture was part of the Historical Society’s “Lizzie A. Borden: The
Lecture Series.”
Clairvoyant Dennis, of Calgary, explained her tale of receiving a visit
last year from Lizzie in her living room at home. Dennis, who considers
herself a natural born medium, has lived a life of predicting the
future, communicating with the spirit world and having out-of-body
experiences.
The afterlife, Dennis said, “feels incredible. There’s a sense of peace
and colors that don’t exist” to us. “Words can’t describe it. There’s
harmony and unconditional love. We do survive this and go to a better
place.”
In her 20s, Dennis began to learn more about her psychic powers and her
ability to speak to spirits. She started to give free readings and then
found herself on Canadian radio and television. She’s authored a book
and is working on a second. She volunteers her time to help find missing
children.
On the night she met Lizzie, Dennis had just finished a reading on a
woman named “Lizzie,” who said children used to chant the “Lizzie Borden
took an ax” rhyme to her as a child.
Dennis said the woman left and she felt that a soul remained in her
house. She had a vision of someone wearing a long gray/blue dress and
the name “Lizzie Borden” came to mind. Dennis called a journalist
friend, Donna Gray, and told her to come over and bring a notebook.
Once the two were in the living room, Dennis attempted to channel Lizzie
to see if she’d come through — and she did.
“The first thing she said is that she did it,” Dennis said.
Dennis, prior to this meeting with Lizzie, said she knew nothing more of
Lizzie Borden than her having been a possible murderess.
Dennis said Lizzie revealed some details of what the Borden house at 92
Second St. looked like and gave her some other information about her
family that Dennis was able to confirm.
Lizzie told Dennis she wanted to kill her stepmother Abby, but not her
father Andrew. She said she felt she had to kill him too or she’d be
caught.
Dennis and Gray after that meeting came to Fall River and stayed at the
Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast and spoke with the curators of the
Fall River Historical Society.
Once again, Dennis channelled Lizzie.
“She made her presence known,” Dennis said.
Lizzie, according to Dennis, directed her around the house and basement
and made her see what it looked like in 1892, what walls had been moved
and where tools once hung. Dennis said she had a taste of rancid fowl in
her mouth and later found out it was due to Andrew killing Lizzie’s pet
pigeons and the family dining on them for supper.
Lizzie told Dennis she attempted to kill her stepmother some weeks
before, probably with poison.
On the day of the murders, Lizzie and Abby ate breakfast together,
Dennis said, and had some sort of disagreement, leading Lizzie to choose
that day to kill her stepmother. After she murdered her, Lizzie went to
the basement and stripped off her dress and washed herself, Dennis
said. She had another similar dress and put that on. After also killing
her father, Dennis said Lizzie changed once again and most likely burned
one dress and hid the other.
“He saw her just before the hatchet (hit), but had time to react,”
Dennis said.
Andrew’s spirit, Dennis said, was circling the Borden property during
her visit, but never came inside the house.
Dennis said her feeling from Lizzie was that the police didn’t really
conduct a full search of the house on the day of the murders, giving
Lizzie time to dispose of the second dress and the hatchet she’d hidden.
Her motive?
“I think she had psychotic tendencies,” Dennis revealed. “She had
abandonment issues” because her biological mother died when she was a
child. “She was able to shut off her emotions. It was difficult for her
to love or feel.”
There have long been rumors that Lizzie may have been abused in some way
by her father. Dennis said she didn’t feel it was sexual, but rather
mental abuse, that she felt she had been abandoned by her father, too as
he always sided with Abby.
“She had sociopathic tendencies,” Dennis said. “Emotionally she had
disconnected from her family.”
And when the murders were done, Dennis said Lizzie felt relief and
believed she had done it for her sister Emma, too.
“She was shocked by Emma’s grief and may have felt remorse then,” Dennis
said.
Lizzie was somewhat nervous about being convicted for the murders,
according to Dennis. After her acquittal, she lived out her life at
Maplecroft in the city in which she was shunned because she somehow felt
comfortable and perhaps even enjoyed being infamous, Dennis said.
Dennis, who added a new piece to the intoxicating puzzle that is the
Lizzie Borden mystery, said she wanted to tell Lizzie’s side of the
story so she can find peace. Because the case and Lizzie’s life has
garnered such high interest, Lizzie has been continually pulled back to
the crime and to Fall River.
“When we yank at them all the time, it’s difficult to move on,” Dennis
said. “It keeps them at this level. She wants us to know she did it so
she can move on.”
Where?
Perhaps back to the living world. Dennis said she’s found that in
channelling spirits, they’re around for about 150 years before they are
eventually reincarnated and sent back to human life.
“We have many lives ahead of us,” Dennis said.
To learn more about Dennis, visit www.clairvoyantkim.com.
Two more lectures will be held in the Historical Society series. They
are being offered at BCC in Building C, Room C111 at 6:30 p.m.
On Oct. 26, award-winning actress Jill Dalton will present “Lizzie
Borden Live: From the Page to the Stage.”
On Nov. 2, filmmaker Ricardo Rebelo will offer “The Myth and Media of
Lizzie Borden.”
E-mail Deborah Allard at dallard@heraldnews.com.
