Lizzie didn't like her 64-year-old stepmom. People had called Abby an "old maid" when, at 37, she married Lizzie's father, and Lizzie had stopped calling her "Mother" about five years before the murders.
Follow this link to see Abby Durfee Borden BEFORE the "forty whacks", and this link to view the police photograph of the crime scene AFTER the murder. Abby was making the bed in the guest bedroom. It was the last thing she ever did. Her 200-pound body was found, face down, next to the bed.
Although it was never proven to be the murder weapon, a hatchet was the likely instrument of death that hot summer day. Investigators found one in the Borden barn. Prosecutors said Lizzie took it from the cellar, did her terrible deed, and then stashed it in the barn. How else did it end up there?