Ryan Murphy's hit true-crime anthology series Monster is back with its fourth season, this time telling the story of Lizzie Borden.
Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted in June 1893 for the murders of her father and stepmother. The case remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in US history and has inspired books, movies and now a Netflix drama.
Who is Lizzie Borden?
According to BBC, Lizzie Borden was accused of killing her father Andrew and stepmother Abby in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892.
Abby was 64 years old and Andrew's second wife, while Lizzie was 32 and her older sister Emma was 41, both unmarried daughters from Andrew's first marriage.
The case became so famous that schoolchildren still recite the rhyme, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks / And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”
{{/usCountry}}The case became so famous that schoolchildren still recite the rhyme, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks / And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”
{{/usCountry}}However, as per BBC, rhyme gets some facts wrong as the weapon was actually a hatchet, not an axe and the number of blows was exaggerated.
The story behind the murders
As per BBC, the killer struck Abby first, on that hot summer morning. More than an hour later, Andrew came home from running errands and he was killed too. Lizzie called the police, who found her father on the living room sofa, barely recognizable after 11 hatchet blows.
At first, authorities didn't suspect Lizzie at all. She seemed like a mild, quiet woman who taught at a local church. But things changed at the inquest, where she kept giving different accounts of where she was that morning. Only she and the family's maid, Bridget Sullivan, had been in the house at the time.
Then came a troubling detail. As per BBC, a local pharmacist came forward and said Lizzie had tried to buy poison the day before the murders. That report led to her arrest. Months later, in December, a friend testified that Lizzie had burned a dress in the stove just days after the killings. Soon after, murder charges were filed.
But the case against Lizzie was not strong enough. The murder weapon was never found, and some evidence could not be used in court. With most of the evidence being circumstantial, the jury acquitted Lizzie after a short discussion.
Cara Robertson, author of "The Trial of Lizzie Borden," told BBC why the story still grips people today: "There's something about an acquittal that's open-ended. And the case has a lot of what we look for in a detective story: limited number of suspects, it hinges on alibis of timing, and if we are saying that Lizzie Borden is the killer, then this is really a story of deep psychological drama."
That lingering mystery is likely why the case has inspired so many books and films over the years, including three notable adaptations: "The Legend of Lizzie Borden" (1975) starring Elizabeth Montgomery, "Lizzie Borden Took an Ax" (2014) with Christina Ricci, and "Lizzie" (2018) starring Chloe Sevigny.
Also read: Helen Mirren delves into Patricia Highsmith's mind in 'A Talent for Murder'
About the new Netflix docuseries
As per Biography, "Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story" premieres on Netflix on September 17 and focuses on the 1892 axe murders and Lizzie's trial. Netflix released a trailer on August 20 that shows actor Ella Beatty playing Borden as a repressed young woman who teams up with her maid to kill her abusive parents.
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