The day before the murder, lizzie borden visited her neighbor, alice russell, and warned that she was afraid that somebody was out for her fathers life and his family. This is an exert from the testimony given by alice russell on june 8th, 1893, and QUESTIONED by PROSECUTOR william H. moody. the full testimony can be found at:
"Q. Anything about trouble with tenants, or anything of that sort?
A. She says, "I don't know," she says, "I feel afraid sometimes that Father has got an enemy. Far," she said, "he has so much trouble with his men that come to see him." She told me of a man that came to see him, and she heard him say-she didn't see him, but heard her father say, "I don't care to let my property for such business." And she said the man answered sneeringly, "I shouldn't think you would care what you let your property for." And she said, "Father was mad and ordered him out of the house." She told me of seeing a man run around the house one night when she went home. I have forgotten where she had been. She said, "And you know the barn has been broken into twice." And I said, "Oh well, you know well that that was somebody after pigeons; there is nothing in there for them to go after but pigeons." "Well," she says, "they have broken into the house in broad daylight, with Emma and Maggie and me there." And I said, "I never heard of that before." And she said, "Father forbade our telling it." So I asked her about it, and she said it was in Mrs. Borden's room, what she called her dressing room. She said her things were ransacked, and they took a watch and chain and money and car tickets, and something else that I can't remember. And there was a nail left in the keyhole; she didn't know why that was left; whether they got in with it or what. I asked her if her father did anything about it, and she said he gave it to the police, but they didn't find out anything; and she said father expected that they would catch the thief by the tickets. She remarked, "Just as if anybody would use those tickets."
Q. Yes. Is there anything else that you recall? Anything about burning the house?
A. She said, "I feel as if I wanted to sleep with my eyes half open—with one eye open half the time—-for fear they will burn the house down over us."" (linder).