Ah, good old American free enterprise:
BOSTON - Two Massachusetts businesses are battling over the macabre legacy of a former Sunday school teacher who was accused in the hatchet deaths of her wealthy father and stepmother more than 110 years ago.
The owner of the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River, which is in the home where the 1892 slayings took place, has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent a new museum and gift shop in Salem from using Borden's name.
Donald Woods insists the attraction would infringe on his trademark of "Lizzie Borden Museum" and siphon business away from Fall River, a gritty industrial community 80 miles south of Salem, which is in Boston's far-north suburbs.
The story refers to the Borden case as a "double-murder" mystery, but Lizzie is pretty clearly one of America's first got-away-with-it murderers, which explains our fascination with her. If they ever open up the O.J. Simpson Bed & Breakfast or museum, I'm investing.
