They said nobody else could have done it. Emma was gone. Morse was gone. There is no doubt about that. Bridget was out doors, they said, and later in her room. They said that the defendant was really shut up in the house with the two victims and that everybody else was actually and absolutely shut out. Now I think you and I will agree about the evidence. The cellar door was undoubtedly locked; I mean the one outside. I have no doubt of that. The front door in the usual course, so says the evidence, was bolted up by Lizzie Wednesday night and unbolted by her Thursday morning. Now they assume she bolted it Wednesday night, but they are not going to assume, I suppose, that in the usual course she unbolted it Thursday morning, but I do, because that is the evidence, leaving only the spring lock on when she unbolted it. They say you do not know that. Well, I say, you do not know it, and you have got the burden of proof, not I. It was fastened by the bolt when Bridget let Mr. Borden in, that is true—the bolt and the key.
The side screen door, gentlemen, was unfastened from about 9 o’clock to 10:45 or 11. That is when Bridget was washing windows and about the house and around the premises in the way she said she was. Now, if that door wasn’t locked, gentlemen, Lizzie wasn’t locked in and everybody else wasn’t locked out. Was it so, the screen door unfastened? You know Bridget said to Lizzie, “You needn’t lock the door, I am going to be around here.” There is no doubt about it. Bridget says she didn’t lock it. Then there was a perfect entrance to that house by that rear screen door, wasn’t there? And when the person got in all he had to do was to avoid meeting Bridget and Lizzie. Bridget was outdoors, she wasn’t in the way, and therefore there was but one person in the house so far as appears, one person below, against whom the intruder could run. Now, look at it. Bridget was outside talking with the Kelly girl, over there on the south side, away off at the corner. She said plainly and decidedly there was nothing to hinder anybody going right in. Mr. Borden had gone down street and there was nobody there on the outside but Bridget, and she was everywhere on the outside. She washed the parlor windows. You know how those are. She couldn’t see the side door when she was there. She went to the barn seven or eight times for water, she says: it may have been more. She was at the dining room windows on the north side of the house; and she said that when she was there she couldn’t even see into the dining room, because the windows are so high that unless a person stood up close to the window they couldn’t see in.