Houses of Horror: The Lizzie Borden Mystery and a Possible Serial Killer in Philly

Key takeaways

• The Lizzie Borden case still can't be conclusively solved: no weapon, no bloody clothing, and no eyewitness ever tied her to the August 4, 1892 hatchet killings of her father Andrew and stepmother Abby in Fall River, Massachusetts, and she was acquitted after just 90 minutes of jury deliberation.
• Hosts walk through competing theories—Lizzie acting alone over money and a strained relationship with her stepmother, a possible abuse motive involving Andrew, a same-sex affair with maid Bridget "Maggie" Sullivan (the angle leaned on by the new Ryan Murphy series), an illegitimate son with a grudge, and uncle John Morse, whose suspiciously detailed alibi and post-trial comments ("he was forced to kill her") make him a strong secondary suspect.
• The hosts conclude the physical layout of the house (two separate living areas, locked doors, a 90-minute gap between the murders) makes an outside intruder nearly impossible, and they land on a theory that Lizzie likely didn't swing the hatchet herself but knew who did, possibly Morse acting with her knowledge, while Sullivan was pressured to stay quiet.
• The episode's most disturbing segment covers Eugene and Raymond "RC" Horsch in Philadelphia: after a June 2026 traffic stop uncovered fake DEA credentials, guns, drugs, and a missing woman's ID, police found 600,000 images, 70,000 videos, and 10,000 pages of writing at the Horsch home, including footage appearing to show RC Horsch (an artist once published by Rizzoli who publicly called himself an "empathetic serial killer") murdering victims; seven missing women are now linked to the house and five are feared dead, despite police having raided the property on drug charges in 2009 and again days before RC's death in 2025 without acting on the evidence.
• A Florida plastic surgeon, Dr. Tomasz Kozowski, is representing himself at a bench trial for the alleged murder of attorney Stephen Kozzi, whose body was never found; courtroom clips show Kozowski attempting flawed speed-and-distance math to dispute cell tower evidence and asking a witness to climb into a trash bag to test its "capacity."
• Quick-hit news items include a CNN report that a U.S. intelligence assessment built with an AI chatbot nearly triggered a military confrontation with China over a misidentified ship's cargo, and federal charges against alleged Russian intelligence operatives accused of offering $40,000 to have a Kremlin critic in D.C. assassinated.

Notable moments

• The cold open recreates a 1581 Nuremberg market pamphlet about serial killer Peter Niers and "Christman of Kirpen," who allegedly confessed to nearly 1,000 murders.
• "Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother 40 whacks"; the hosts note the actual wound counts (19 for Abby, 10–11 for Andrew) don't match the famous rhyme.
• Discussion of the family's "food poisoning" the week before the murders, including days-old swordfish and mutton stew eaten in 90-degree heat with no icebox.
• John Morse's post-acquittal newspaper quote laying out, in eerie detail, exactly how "the killer" would have been forced to kill Abby after being caught upstairs.
• Tyler reads Morse's own rebuttal to suspicion: "Wouldn't it have just been easier to have smothered them with chloroform in the night and said they had committed suicide?"
• On Bill James's "Popular Crime" timeline analysis, Jason dismisses it as "poppycock" given 1892 clocks weren't synchronized and witness time estimates are unreliable.
• RC Horsch's own 2013 quote: "I do not like society. I do not like civilization," followed by the hosts' repeated disbelief that police missed his crimes for over a decade.
• Kozowski's courtroom math meltdown trying to argue he couldn't have driven two miles in two minutes, which the hosts call "incredible dumb guy math."

Time saved: 1 hour, 26 minutes.