Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity

Many people know about the case of Lizzie Borden, the woman accused of killing her parents in the summer of 1892. But almost no one today knows of the similarly sensationalistic story of Alice Mitchell, who was accused of stabbing to death her teenage lesbian lover, Freda Ward earlier that year. I was less interested in the author's dense academic feminist psychological observations and interprettations and much more interested in the objective facts she gave of this most unusual love and murder story between two Memphis girls. The girls were once neighbors, but when Freda moved away, Alice's obsession became even stronger and she started beseiging her with letters. Freda's guardian, her married older sister Mrs Volkmar, refused to let her see Alice when she and her husband noticed Alice's obsessive attachment to Frede and of their secret lesbian "engagement" to each other, and plans for Alice to dress up as a man so they could have a secret wedding and marry. Insanely frustrated that her plans with Frede were destroyed, Alice decided that if she couldn't have Frede, no man would. One day she stalked Freda down and cut her throat. This story, and the subsequent trial, caused a nationwide sensation that all the newspapers picked up on. David Rehakauthor of "A Young Girl's Crimes"