The Netflix anthology series “Monster” focuses this season on Lizzie Borden and the 1892 killing of her father and stepmother in Fall River. The reviews are in – and thoroughly predictable, since showrunner Ryan Murphy is by now well known for mutilating the historical record in pursuit of a juicy story and good ratings.
“Bends and twists the truth,” Variety says (which also thinks the show is “outrageously engaging”). “Faux-feminist nonsense,” The Hollywood Reporter says. “Stifled by rewriting history,” says Kaiya Shunyata at Roger Ebert’s website. The Wrap imagines Murphy and his team asking how they’re going to pad out events into eight roughly hourlong episodes: “What if we just make up what happened?”
Somerville author Sam Baltrusis, whose “Lizzie Borden & the Family Curse” comes out Oct. 13, said Monday that his upcoming book events and lectures will by default be one long, wearied review – just repeated chances to “dispel the myths and misconceptions perpetuated by the show.”
If there’s anyone to do it, it’s Baltrusis. Though he’s had stints as a local journalist running Scout magazine and Spare Change since moving to Boston in 1990, his fame is as author of 20 paranormal-themed books and as a featured expert on shows such as the Travel Channel’s “A Haunting” and “Most Terrifying Places” (and, of course, “The Curse of Lizzie Borden”).
And there’s something else: a blood tie to Borden and other killers, including a serial killer featured in the anthology, Aileen Wuornos.
“I remember having this obsession with topics like the Salem Witch Trials and the Borden murders of 1892 for most of my life,” Baltrusis said. “I was shocked when my mother, using Ancestry.com, was able to trace our twisted family tree … in addition to being distantly related to the Bordens, we were also tied to others that genuinely shocked me.”
While writing the new book, Baltrusis said he uncovered connections to Thomas Cornell Jr., convicted in a 1673 murder trial of killing his mother and executed after testimony involving spectral evidence. “My ties to the Borden lineage start with Sarah Earle, who was married to Thomas Cornell,” Baltrusis said. That’s followed by Sarah Maria Cornell, a mill worker in a sensationalized 1832 murder, and Eliza Borden, who married into the Borden family and killed two of her children before taking her own life with a straight razor.
The family connections extend into more recent history, including Wuornos. And according to forensic DNA research Baltrusis cites, Marilyn Monroe.
“Do I think my family is cursed? No,” Baltrusis said. “But I do feel like there is a common thread.”
Baltrusis provided The Independent with an excerpt from “Lizzie Borden & the Family Curse” that leads readers directly into the book’s exploration of that bloodline – in fact, it follows Baltrusis as he begins his investigation into what lurks in his own genes.
“Lizzie Borden & the Family Curse,” is scheduled for release Oct. 13 and available for preorder. Learn more at SamBaltrusis.com.
Every family has its secrets. But mine? It’s downright twisted.
When my mom discovered that my grandfather, Charles Hughes, was linked to the Borden family through Sarah Earle, the second wife of Thomas Cornell Jr. and the mother of Innocent, the discovery reframed everything. That connection to the Earle family tied us to a chain of tragedies beginning with Sarah Maria Cornell, followed by Eliza Borden, and ultimately leading to my distant cousin Lizzie Borden and the grisly murders that unfolded on that fateful August morning in 1892.
I wanted answers. Was there a bloodline curse and, if so, what’s the origin story? I needed to know where it all began.
In the early 1640s, Thomas and Rebecca Briggs Cornell settled beside the Hutchinson family lot in what would later become the Bronx, New York. The enclave was a fragile colonial outpost held together by faith, necessity and resolve. At its spiritual core stood Anne Hutchinson, the banished Puritan firebrand originally from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who challenged the status quo and helped reshape New England’s religious landscape.
Rebecca, who had followed her husband from England to Boston in 1638, knew both the hardships of migration and the risks of dissent. Thomas Cornell’s troubles with Massachusetts authorities – most notably for unlicensed innkeeping – had encouraged the family’s move toward the unsettled lands near their friends, the Hutchinsons.
Yet the promise of a quieter life there proved illusory. By the summer of 1643, tensions between colonists and Siwanoy warriors had sharpened into open violence.
In August, the small community of Puritan outcasts came under attack. Anne and five of her six youngest children were killed in the assault, an event that sent shock waves through the colonies. The Cornell home was burned and their livestock lost, but the family managed to flee by boat, reaching safety in what later seemed to be an escape that was too narrow to attribute solely to chance.
Another legend involved Cornell’s son Thomas Jr. He briefly remained in the region following the Mespat massacre while his family returned to Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Shortly after joining the militia at 17, he was charged with attempted murder and desertion, as noted by historian Elaine Crane in “Killed Strangely.” The author explained that although the young man was initially condemned to execution, his life was spared when the executioner fired a musket over his head as a warning rather than carrying out the sentence.
As soon as the violence subsided and the troubled son met up again with his mom and dad, the Cornells regained social standing and acquired land in Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay.
In an attempt to get at the heart of what I believed was a family curse, I reached out to my friend and fellow author, Andrew Warburton, and asked him to take a research trip with me to Portsmouth.
It was a crisp November morning and there was an inexplicable energy in the air that felt like something wicked was about to reveal itself when we met up near his home in Rhode Island and then drove toward Newport.
Our first stop was the ancestral home of the Cornell family, which was destroyed by a fire in 1889 and rebuilt based on the homestead’s original plans. A more recent blaze in 1958 led to the closing of a bowling alley, whose salvaged wood was later used to create the bar.
Joe Occhi, the owner of the Valley Inn, said he and his family have lived in the house since his parents opened the restaurant in 1959. When asked whether any elements of the property date back to the original homestead – such as the fireplaces and floorboards – he nodded.
“This side of the restaurant was an addition, and most of the material used to build it was recycled from other historic structures,” Occhi said. “They didn’t let any material go to waste, and most of the stone and wood was reused to build the upstairs area of the house.”
It was at the Valley Inn that the seeds of the family’s dark legacy were sown. In 1673, the original owner of the estate, Rebecca, perished in a horrific fire in her bedroom, apparently accidental, but whispers of foul play soon took hold. Accounts suggest her son, Thomas Jr., may have been responsible for her death. Witnesses reported statements from the son and his wife, Sarah, that now read as chillingly callous, and a second inquest declared the death a homicide.
Rebecca’s son was tried at what historians believe was the White Horse Tavern in Newport and executed on Miantonomi Hill, which takes its name from one of the most influential Narragansett leaders of the 17th century. Chief Miantonomi exercised political and military authority across a wide region, and the hill served as an important vantage point within Narragansett territory.
English colonists bought the land in the aftermath of the Pequot War. Once in colonial hands, the property was quickly recognized for its strategic value and the settlers erected a beacon in 1667 at the summit to signal potential threats approaching by land or sea. It was later used as a fortification during the American Revolution.
While Andrew and I enjoyed our dinner at the Valley Inn, Occhi recommended that we visit the Thomas Cornell cemetery, which was a short drive from the restaurant and where Rebecca and her husband were buried.
“Their headstones are the only ones in the cemetery that aren’t engraved,” he said, adding that it was common for the ancient gravestones from the 1600s to be unmarked.
Occhi pointed out that Thomas Jr. requested during his trial to be buried in the family lot, and for a monument to be erected to mark his remains. His request was denied, and he was interred several feet in front of what was the original homestead. “You know where the bus stop is at the end of the driveway?” Occhi asked. “That’s where Thomas Jr. was buried.”
After we left the Valley Inn, Andrew’s car drifted down Rolling Hill Road toward a quiet neighborhood of immaculate white houses. Wild turkeys scurried across the lawns as if fleeing from an unseen threat.
Behind one of those pristine homes sprawled the historic Thomas Cornell cemetery in complete disrepair, its trees cloaked in the deep colors of fall – gold, rust and bruised red. Much of the undergrowth had already surrendered to the autumn chill, collapsing into withered tangles, yet the hardier ferns still rose above us, and the thorned briars, half-dead but no less vicious, clung to the path with stubborn life.
Some gravestones stood upright, defying the centuries, while others had crumbled into moss-slick rubble as though the earth itself had tried to reclaim them. The air felt wrong there – heavy, expectant. With every step Andrew and I pressed into the fading undergrowth, I braced for some creature to lurch out and greet us by name.
Two solitary headstones, one buried deeper, loomed at what felt like the threshold of the burial ground. As Occhi had told us, they bore no names – only cryptic carvings meant to mark the dead without revealing them.
On the back of one the stones, a single letter had been cut with grim intent: C.
Drawn closer, compelled by something I couldn’t name, I reached toward it – and the thorns seized me. A hooked branch, stiffened by the cold, wrapped around my left hand, scoring deep enough that crimson welled instantly and dripped onto the chilled soil.
My blood. On that ancient ground.
I shivered in the beauty and the madness of the moment, a dizzying sense of recognition – like the land itself had been waiting for this small offering from my veins. I pressed my hand over the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, but part of me wondered if it was already too late. In the hush that followed, I felt the weight of my ancestors coil around me, as though the dead had been roused from a quiet slumber.
It was as if they were expecting me, their silent summons luring me home. I held my breath.
