Murder in the Name of Love: Alice & Freda Part 2
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Hey strangers, this is part two of Murder in the Name of Love, Alice and Frida. This originally aired June 23rd, 2022. Enjoy. What could drive a person to murder? Is there anything more crazy than killing for love?

And if you kill someone in a crime of passion, can you really call that love? Or is it something else, something closer to obsession or even desperation? Or am I just doing what everyone else did to Alice Mitchell by dismissing her own declaration that she loved Freda Ward and that it was for love that she killed her?

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I'm a writer and an actor who thinks we should believe women, even when they've done something terrible and are trying to tell us why they did it. I mean, we certainly shouldn't gaslight them into thinking they don't understand their own motivations, but that is exactly what everyone did to Alice Mitchell after she killed her former lover, Freda Ward.

despite Alice being like, this is why I did it, the men around her were like, tut tut, young lady, leave it to the men to explain why you killed your gal pal. Quick note, this is part two of a two-parter, so make sure you've listened to part one or you're going to be lost, and not the good kind of lost with Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly. Also, again, we're looking at a pretty abusive relationship dynamic, so if that's a tough subject for you, please take care.

In the last episode, I told you all about Freda Ward and Alice Mitchell's late 19th century toxic love affair. We ended with Alice making good on her promise to kill Freda if Freda ever left her. On January 22nd, 1892, Alice enlisted her friend Lily Johnson to drive her horse and carriage down to the boat dock in Memphis, Tennessee, where she knew her former lover Freda Ward would soon be boarding a boat to go home to Gold Dust, Tennessee.

When Alice spotted Frida on the street, she cried out, I'll fix her, jumped from the carriage, brandishing her father's straight edge razor she'd been storing in her pocket for days in case of an encounter with Frida. And according to author Lisa Lindquist, quote, caught up with Frida, grabbed her by her arm and slashed a straight edge razor stolen from her father and concealed in her hand across Frida's face.

When Frida's sister Jo tried to intervene, Alice stabbed her too, only wounding her slightly, and then chased after Frida, who had stumbled off to nearby railroad tracks and fell. Alice caught up with her and cut her again across the face. Finally, Alice grabbed Frida by the hair, pulled her head back to expose her neck, and sliced her throat from ear to ear.

Some sources reported that Frida staggered several feet, while others, claiming that her head had been nearly severed, reported that she lay on the ground at Alice's feet, writhing in agony. According to Frida's sister Jo, while Alice was attacking Frida, she cried out, "I don't care if I hang for this." Alice ran back to the buggy, where her friend Lillian sat in what I can only imagine was frozen terror.

Alice hopped up onto the buggy and sped off, explaining to Lily that she'd slashed Frida with the straight razor, but wasn't sure if she'd killed her. And if Lisa Lindquist's description was correct, I'd say pulling someone's head back and slicing their throat open is a pretty sure bet. Alice apparently was then like, do I have blood on my face? And Lily was probably like, uh, yeah, girl, you're a mess, literally and figuratively.

And at first, Alice asked Lily to wipe it off, but then thought better of it and said, no, let it remain. It's Fred's blood, and I love her so. Yikes, dude. When police caught up with Alice at her home, according to a piece in the New York Times, Alice told them the reason she'd killed Frida was because she loved her and they'd made a pact to kill each other if they were ever separated. Alice was arrested on the spot. Her friend Lily was also arrested as an accomplice.

A month later, when it came time for Lily Johnson's grand jury trial to determine if she could be tried as an accomplice, public interest in the sensational case was at a fever pitch.

with local and international headlines about the case like, quote, And, quote, And, quote,

More than an unprecedented 1,000 people showed up at court to witness the proceedings. So many people showed up to watch the grand jury trial, including women, which was usually seriously verboten in a courtroom because, you know, they might get their periods all over the place.

In fact, the presiding judge delayed the trial in order to expand the courtroom to make more room for everyone. According to the blog Murder by Gaslight, which covers 19th century murders, quote, That way, I guess, there would be no hanky-panky in the stands?

The hullabaloo over women even being allowed to attend the trial is worthy of its own entire episode. So bonkers were the arguments against it. One paper complained, quote, So, not just at home, but next to the stove.

Many were concerned that hearing about two women having a murderous love affair would put improper thoughts in their heads and encourage more same-sex love affairs. Regardless of whether they ended in murder wasn't the important part. Spoiler alert, it was the gay stuff that worried people. Oh, 19th century. You were not as different from today as I originally thought.

At Lily's portion of the trial, it was argued that Lily couldn't have seen what happened while she was still in the buggy. But since she heard Alice declare, I'll fix her, and that she wasn't sure if she'd succeeded in killing Frida once she got back to the buggy, the judge admitted that there was enough evidence to try her and said, quote, the proof is evident that the defendant aided and abetted in the commission of the crime, a crime the most atrocious and malignant ever perpetrated by a woman.

Which is a pretty bold statement, if you ask me. As horrific as the crime was, I'm gonna bet there had been worse over the millennia. Sure, Lily didn't do herself any favors by not going directly to the police once Alice came back to the buggy covered in blood, saying she wasn't sure if she'd killed Frida. But accusing her of knowing Alice was going to kill Frida in the first place just because Alice said, "'I'll fix her' is a stretch."

I'm sure the last thing on Lily's mind was that Alice was going to get all stabby and slashy on the woman she claimed to love most in the world. She probably thought Alice was going to give Frida a stern talking to.

Incidentally, it's worth noting that the judge, Julius DuBose, was pretty garbage. According to Alexis Coe in her comprehensive and highly recommended book, Alice and Frida Forever, A Murder in Memphis, he was an early leader in the Tennessee Ku Klux Klan. And from the way he spoke to the women in his courtroom, pretty obviously a serious misogynist who would later be impeached on no less than 34 counts of misconduct.

Either way, the judge cited Lily's failing health as a reason not to try her and released her on $10,000 bail, but not before she'd been dragged in the media for, brace yourselves, being a flirt with men. It seems this accusation, more than possibly being an accomplice to murder, was the one that sent Lily over the edge. She nearly fainted in court when it was suggested that she was too generous with her affections for young men.

So, just in case you're keeping score, in 1892 Tennessee, if you were a young woman, you could chum around with other young women and rehearse for your ultimate correct relationship with a man, but you could not rehearse with actual men. And also, if you fell in love with your chum, you were insane. Got it? Anyway, the court and the media and the general public clearly had bigger fish to fry.

The very night of the murder, once Alice had been arrested, or possibly even before police arrived at the Mitchells' home, her father, George, had already hired two prominent attorneys who wasted absolutely zero time in establishing a case for insanity.

Despite Alice being very clear about her motive, George decided that the only explanation was that Alice was insane. Not because she'd murdered Frida, but because she claimed to have been in love with Frida. That was the insane part. And so, in June of that year, with a newly expanded courtroom and more than a thousand onlookers, Alice Mitchell's trial to determine if she was mentally fit enough to stand trial began.

Back then, it was called present insanity, which determined not if the person was sane or not when they committed the crime in question, but merely whether they were sane enough at the present moment in order to stand trial. Mostly, I think it was just another excuse for people to use the word insanity, which they seemed to really enjoy doing back then.

Alice's defense team began laying the groundwork to try to prove that not only was she presently insane, but as you'll find out, it seems they also wanted to prove she'd been insane for a while.

It seemed to be less about her current state of mind and more about evidence that she'd showed signs of insanity at least since she'd gotten her first period. Because, don't forget, men were so thrown by the female reproductive system that they frequently used it as evidence of insanity.

Their case relied on two pieces of evidence. One was that she'd inherited her insanity from her mother, who court records showed had been institutionalized for said insanity. Turns out this was not Alice's father George's first trip to the She's Insane rodeo. After his wife Isabella had their first child in 1857, George didn't like her attitude and called a doctor to back him up.

The doctor diagnosed Isabella with puerperal insanity, which is now called postpartum psychosis and is a very real and terrible disorder. But at the time, according to author Alexis Coe, quote, the symptoms associated with puerperal insanity were constantly shifting, but they all amounted to a condition that undermined true womanhood.

The illness was broadly defined to include, at one end of the spectrum, women who denied their baby nourishment or seemed to pose an actual danger to them. But it also included mothers who appeared disinterested in their offspring, women who were gloomy or apathetic,

That's right. If having a baby was overwhelming, and if it made you disinclined to see to the needs of everyone in your household, then clearly you were a nutjob.

After two months in the hospital, during which time Isabella seemed to get worse for a while before finally being released, the baby she'd had died. Most likely because its mother was in the hospital. No one bothered to tell Isabella till she got home.

And despite being overcome by grief, Isabella clearly understood she had no room to express her feelings and swallowed them and did her best to be a good wife. She gave birth six more times. Four of her seven children survived, and according to court records, her mental health suffered with each birth, especially, it was said, after giving birth to Alice, which would become an important fact during Alice's trial.

According to Lisa Lindquist's research for her paper, Images of Alice, Gender, Deviancy, and a Love Murder in Memphis, the belief at the time was that a child inherits its traits while in utero. She writes that public opinion, quote, "...still maintained that the mental health of a child was determined by the environment in which the child was conceived and by the mental condition of the mother during gestation."

End quote.

Incidentally, though Alice's mother tried desperately to keep a low profile during this entire debacle, her mental health history and records were splashed all over the papers for everyone, including her community, to read. The other major piece of evidence that Alice was crazy was the very fact that she loved Frida, and also that she was a tomboy.

One of the so-called experts the defense called to prove their claim was one Dr. F.L. Sim, who had the following to say in a report he put together about Alice. Alice was a nervous, excitable child and somewhat undersized. As she grew, she did not manifest interest in those childish amusements and toys that girls are fond of.

She delighted in marbles and tops, in baseball and football, and was a member of a children's baseball team. She spent much time with her brother Frank, who was next youngest, playing marbles and spinning tops. She preferred him and his sports to her sister's. She disliked sewing and needlework. Her mother could not get her to do such work. She undertook to teach her crocheting, but could not.

She was unequal in the manifestation of her affections. She disliked sewing and needlework? Definitely a lunatic. Dr. Sim continued: She was wholly without that fondness for boys that girls usually manifest. She had no intimates or child sweethearts among the boys. And when approaching womanhood, after she was grown, she had no bow and took no pleasure in the society of young men.

To be fair, though, have you met a young man? What with the farting, the poop jokes, and the body odor? Actually, that pretty accurately describes me. Moving on, the doctor's report continued... She was sometimes rude and always indifferent to young men. She was regarded as mentally wrong by young men toward whom she had thus acted.

She was regarded as mentally wrong because she was rude and indifferent to young men. As for her relationship with Frida, or Fred as she was sometimes called, they were very different in disposition. Fred was girl-like and took no pleasure in the boyish sports that Alice delighted in. Her instincts and amusements were feminine. She was tender and affectionate. Time strengthened the intimacy between them.

They became lovers in the sense of that relation between persons of different sexes. Alexis Coe has a great section in her book about that last sentence. How concerned everyone was with how to say that Alice and Frida had had sex. No one could bring themselves to even think of such a thing, let alone say it out loud in a court of law. What would all those impressionable women in the courtroom think?

A parade of, quote, expert witnesses were brought in by Alice's defense to paint a picture of a deranged woman with a diseased mind. One doctor testified...

She seemed, in her simplicity and weakness of mind, to have no conception to the preposterous character of the marriage she looked for, and spoke in detail of the preparations as to man's apparel for the occasion, the procurement of a license for the ceremony, of the clipping of her hair after the fashion of men, and the cultivation of a mustache if Frida wanted her to wear one.

The frankness and sincerity of her manner on this topic was evidence either of a gross delusion or the conception of a person imbecile or of a child without knowledge of the usual results of matrimony or the connubial state or of the purpose of the organs of generation in the sexes.

In other words, marriage is just for having children, and any other reason to want to be married is evidence of gross delusion or having the mind of a child. Okay? Another doctor was brought up to testify that the nosebleeds Alice sometimes suffered were, wait for it, vicarious menstruation. That's right. She was so crazy that she got her period out of her nose.

Other so-called evidence of Alice's unfit mind was that her face was asymmetrical and she was left-handed. I mean, honestly.

Even Alice's family and friends were brought to the stand to testify as to how completely cuckoo bananas Alice was. Her two sisters were asked to testify about Alice's nosebleeds and were like, now that you mention it, they did start around the time she first got her period. And also, for the record, we never bleed through our noses.

Alice's half-brother Robert came to the stand with a bunch of, quote, boys' toys he'd said he'd gotten from Alice's room. Lily Johnson was brought to the stand to speak to what Alice was like when they attended the Higbee School for Girls. Lily pointed out that Alice joined the baseball team. The defense was like, "'Aha! You see? She played baseball!'

At this point, the prosecution stepped in and was like, hold on a minute there, Bob. It's not like she started a baseball team. She joined a team that already existed at her school. Their point being, if a girl playing baseball is a sign of insanity, why would a girl's school have a baseball team? This was, it seems, the only sensical thing said in this entire debacle.

Lily Johnson's brother, James, told the court that one time when Lily and Alice were laying in a hammock, he asked Alice to dance and she said no. The local butcher complained that he once called Alice a tomboy and she wasn't offended. And a grocer testified in court that Alice frequently bought cigarettes from him.

And remember, these were the people that were on Alice's side. While Alice's family and friends were testifying to her mental unwellness, what with her cigarettes and refusing to get up out of a comfy hammock to dance with a guy, outside the courtroom, journalists for local and national papers continued to try to come up with a suitable motive for the murder.

Even though Alice had said from the get-go, I told her I would kill her if she wouldn't be mine. And even though she said as much in multiple letters to Frida, the media was like, yeah, but no. A much more acceptable motive, the media thought, was jealousy. After all, they were two young women. Everyone knows women are always jealous of each other.

One paper reported, quote, You know, good, hard, objective facts.

Apparently, this reporter thought I'll fix her meant that Alice just wanted to disfigure Frida, not slice her neck all the way open. But, you know, ladies, what with their stupid, feeble minds, wouldn't know how to use a razor. Quote, because as a lady, she did not use one, and therefore she cut too deeply, accidentally causing Frida's death. End quote. The reporter was not alone in this belief.

Others could not accept that there wasn't a man at the center of this drama. Alice's defense brought Frida's former suitor Ashley Roselle to the stand and were like, "Alice wanted you for herself, didn't she?" And Ashley was like, "Nope."

And so his appearance was mocked in the media. Literally. The reporters in the courtroom were so annoyed that Ashley didn't corroborate this made-up narrative that Alice and Frida were fighting over him that they made fun of his mustache, haircut, and clothes in the papers the following day. Here's what I don't understand about all this.

This case was just supposed to be about whether Alice was presently sane enough to stand trial. But it seems all the evidence brought against her was about her character in general and her motive for killing Frida. Aside from the fact that she got her period out of her nose, none of this seemed to be highlighting her state of mind at the time of the trial. Then again, most of this makes no sense to begin with.

There was even a song made up about the whole thing, complete with the it was all because of a man storyline, with this gem of a lyric. She said she killed her because she loved her, but love was not. These Alice and Freddie both loved the same man, and she'd taken her life. Way to rewrite history, the patriarchy.

The press portrayed Alice's behavior at trial as nonchalant, but also claimed she recounted the details of her crime with relish. She was even criticized for fanning herself in the courtroom during the proceedings. Because, Lord knows, a woman who felt remorse for killing her lover wouldn't be so callous as to try to cool off.

When Alice was finally called to testify on her own behalf, even though she cried on several occasions, the press called her callous and cold. The questions were not about the murder, but about her feelings for Frida. Because remember, it wasn't the murder that showed she was insane. It was the very fact that she loved another woman and thought they could get married.

And Alice was like, "Yeah, bro, I've been saying that since the jump." And they were like, "You even thought you were gonna marry her!" And she was like, "Did I stutter?"

Her lawyers succeeded in portraying her as presently insane, at least according to the experts in the press. The Appeal Avalanche wrote that her intention to marry Frida was like that, quote, of a child who would be capable of forming plans without taking into consideration the responsibilities of life, end quote.

Which is particularly unfair when you consider how thoroughly Alice had thought out and planned their lives together. If anything, her plans, illegal though they may have been, were pretty considerate of the responsibilities of life. Just because something is illegal doesn't make it insane.

After the lawyers were done with Alice and before she could get back to her seat, the judge ordered her back to the stand to be questioned by the jurors, which is apparently a thing that used to happen. One juror had the gall to actually question Alice, asking her about her attempts at suicide and whether she regretted failing. She said she did.

He asked her if she still thought she might try to kill herself again, and she replied, "No, sir. I don't know that I will, but I want to die." He then said that there was a rumor that she'd kept a handkerchief that had been soaked with Frida's blood and asked her if it would please her to look at it now, and she said yes, she thought it would. Honestly, this may have been the one thing that showed that she was not particularly of sound mind at the present moment.

The jury came back with a verdict of present insanity in just 20 minutes of deliberation. It was more palatable for the general public to buy the story that Alice was insane than to wrap their minds around two women loving each other. It challenged everything most people believed about gender roles, and it was super important to the powers that be to send a message that deviating from acceptable gender norms was crazy.

Any respectable middle-class woman should want to marry a man and have children, regardless, remember, of its effects on her mental health. Alice was committed to Western State Insane Asylum in Virginia, where she spent the last six years of her life before dying on March 31, 1898.

There's no cause of death listed on her official file. Most people believe that it was probably consumption, as criminal psychiatric institutions and, incidentally, prisons, are known to be extremely dangerous places to be during an infectious disease outbreak. But some people think she may have killed herself. You might be wondering why I chose to talk about an abusive love affair and a person who clearly needed serious mental health intervention during Pride Month.

Shouldn't we be celebrating LGBTQIA+ people this time of year? Yes, of course we should. But there's no celebrating without acknowledging the bullshit we've trudged through. Without that, Pride's just a party.

And can I just say, I wish we could just have a party. In a just world, LGBTQIA+ people wouldn't be sequestered to June, nor black people and women to February, nor any group to any designated month of attention.

Queer people are just people. We go to school. We work in regular jobs. We fall in and out of love. Some of us have mental health issues. In fact, a lot of us suffer from mental health issues because of oppression. And part of recognizing that queer people are just people is allowing them to fail just like everyone else.

Alice was just a person. Her queerness shouldn't have been a thing that made her stand out. And if she'd been treated with love, equality, empathy, and compassion, and been afforded help for her violent and disordered thinking, maybe she could have, like many queer people before and after her, fell in love and lived a good life, or at least a perfectly average life.

One thing I will never understand is why it was so hard, and still is today for many people, to accept that two women might love each other. Why wouldn't women love each other? Women are awesome, resilient, resourceful people who contribute enormously, overwhelmingly even, to society. Also, if men really were scientifically believed to be brutish thugs with no control over their base desires,

Wouldn't it sort of stand to reason that at least some women would be like, "No thanks, I'm cool." It seems to be happening more and more that formerly straight identifying women are like, "Wait a minute, I can be with someone who asks me how my day was and then, wait for it, listens to me when I answer? Sign me up!" The same goes for more and more people migrating to gender identities that actually make them feel like themselves.

I guess therein lies the fear, right? Normalizing romantic love between women and queering gender represents a real threat to the heteronormative family. But I would argue, considering what a mess the world is, maybe heteronormative families have had a fair shot and it's time to give us queers a chance. I'm queer and in a pretty heteronormative family, at least outwardly appearing. I guess it doesn't all have to be one way or the other.

But people balk at things that are not easy to categorize. I get it. Change is hard. Nuance is challenging. But if we only had two flavors of ice cream, life would be pretty boring. It is not easy to sum up a case rooted in harsh moral judgment, probable gender dysphoria, and cruel social denial. It is not easy to cast what happened between Alice and Frida in a clear light. But in the end...

It most likely just seems like the unfortunate mishandling of fragile emotions and the frustrating obtuseness of society merged to cause a heartbreaking, irreversible tragedy, and then sought to recast that event as solely the responsibility of one young girl.

There is no doubt that Alice was a disturbed person who did something awful when she took Frida's life. But it also seems like a lot of heartbreak could have been avoided if Alice and Frida could have just been who they were. And if people had just listened and believed when a woman told the world she intended to murder someone. Who might Alice and Frida have become if they were afforded the respect and acknowledgement cis straight couples are given?

The world will never know. Next time on Strange and Unexplained, we'll be back with Season 5, a brand new season with brand new episodes. This episode was originally produced by Becca DiGregorio and Natalie Grillo, with research by Jess McKillop, editing by Eve Kerrigan, and sound engineering by Jennifer Swatek. Our voice actors for this episode were Ryan Garcia and Raymond J. Lee.