Ryan Murphy’s Monster is back and this time, it’s all about the infamous Lizzie Borden.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is here but fans can’t help but question what really happened.
Netflix has finally dropped the long-awaited fourth season of Monster, the horror anthology that delves into some of the most talked about true crimes over the past 100 years and more.
All eyes are on the story of Lizzie Borden for the next eight-part drama, after she was accused of brutally murdering her dad and stepmother with an axe in the late 1800s in Massachusetts.
Her story follows in the footsteps of Murphy’s other infamous culprits, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein with Charlie Hunnam returning to the franchise as Lizzie’s father Andrew Jackson Borden.
As Netflix subscribers take a step back into the world of Monster, many are eager to know if Lizzie Borden was really a killer.
Did Lizzie Borden actually kill her parents?
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Legally, Lizzie Borden didn’t kill her dad and step-mother Abby Borden after an all-male jury acquitted her of the 1892 murders with the crimes remaining unsolved.
But this doesn’t mean Lizzie didn’t actually murder them as Lizzie was nearby at the time of their deaths but gave conflicting accounts of her whereabouts in the house and barn.
A local pharmacist also reported suspicious behaviour as she allegedly tried to buy prussic acid, a type of poison, the day before their murders.
A friend also later claimed that she burned a dress in the stove a few days afterwards but their statement was dismissed and the key testimony of the pharmacy visit was ruled inadmissible.
In addition, there was a lack of evidence with police never finding a bloody weapon directly linked to her with no blood splatters on her body.
One of the biggest factors that is believed to have contributed to the acquitted verdict is that at the time, juries were restricted to just men.
They had trouble believing that an upper-class and devout Christian woman would be capable of committing such a “feral” crime.
While she wasn’t sent to prison and no one was ever tried for the murders, Lizzie was shunned by many in her hometown for the rest of her life.
Talking about people’s fascination with her story to BBC Culture, author of The Trial of Lizzie Borden Cara Robertson said: “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.”
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is available to watch on Netflix
