The Lizzie Borden house now earns more than $1 million annually from tourists drawn to America’s most notorious unsolved axe murders.
Fall River, Massachusetts, has become a pilgrimage site for true-crime fans and ghost hunters since the 1892 killings at 230 Second Street were converted into a bed-and-breakfast museum. Robert A. Mellion, president, CEO and general counsel for the Fall River Chamber of Commerce, told the Seattle Times that the property draws between 50 and 300 visitors daily. “On average they anticipate about 54,000 visitors annually,” he said. “Consequently, its economic impact is tangible.”
At $30 per person for standard tours, the arithmetic is stark: the house generates roughly $1.6 million in admission revenue alone. The operation also offers overnight stays starting at $259.99, pushing potential earnings far higher for those willing to sleep in rooms where Andrew and Abby Borden were bludgeoned to death.
Rick Bertoldo, a tour guide who also spoke with the Seattle Times, endorsed the full experience for committed visitors. “If you really want to experience it fully, you have to spend the night,” he said. “It’s fun, especially when there are a lot of people.”
The property operates under the name Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum, though it is not the original murder house itself. That distinction belongs to the Borden family home on Second Street, where the killings occurred. The bed-and-breakfast that bears Lizzie’s name is actually a different residence she purchased later with her sister Emma.
The murders unfolded on the morning of August 4, 1892, when businessman Andrew Borden and his second wife, Abby, were found hacked to death with an axe in their home. Only two people were present at the time: Lizzie, Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter from his first marriage, and the family’s Irish maid, Bridget Sullivan.
Sullivan was quickly eliminated as a suspect because she claimed to have been washing windows on the opposite side of the house during the killings. Lizzie was arrested and tried, but prosecutors could not directly connect her to the weapon or establish a clear motive that would overcome her sister Emma’s vocal defense.
The case collapsed, and Lizzie walked free. She never faced trial again, and no one else was ever charged.
The acquittal guaranteed the story’s immortality. Without a conviction, the Borden case joined the small category of American crimes that remain officially unresolved while pointing overwhelmingly toward a single suspect. Films, documentaries, books, television series and even songs have recycled the material for more than 130 years.
Multiple alternative theories have circulated in the decades since. Some accounts implicate Sullivan despite her alibi. Others point to John Morse, Lizzie and Emma’s uncle, who visited the house the night before the murders. A more obscure theory involves William Borden, an alleged illegitimate son of Andrew’s who may have harbored grievances against the family.
None has displaced Lizzie as the central figure of suspicion.
The current commercial operation extends beyond the bed-and-breakfast. Tourists can also visit Oak Grove Cemetery, where the entire Borden family—Andrew, Abby, Lizzie and Emma—was eventually buried. The clustering of victims and accused in a single plot adds a grim symmetry that visitors apparently find irresistible.
The property’s marketing leans heavily on its paranormal reputation. It has been repeatedly labeled one of the most haunted places in the United States, a designation that attracts a dedicated subculture of believers and skeptics alike. The combination of documented historical violence and unsubstantiated supernatural claims has proven durable as a business model.
What began as a Victorian domestic tragedy has become, in effect, a year-round Halloween attraction. The murders that scandalized Gilded Age New England now fund a small tourism economy in a former textile city struggling with deindustrialization.
The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum continues accepting reservations through its website for both day tours and overnight stays.