Netflix Unveils Lizzie Borden's Dark Past in Monster Season 4

Lizzie Borden, a notorious murder case from Fall River, Massachusetts, is back in the spotlight with Netflix's latest true-crime anthology series, Monster. The show examining the life of Lizzie Borden, who was accused of killing her father and stepmother in August 1892.

According Cara Robertson Author Trial

According to Cara Robertson, author of "The Trial of Lizzie Borden," the case remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in US history. The story has inspired books, movies, and now a Netflix drama. Who is Lizzie Borden?

Lizzie Borden was 32 years old when her father Andrew and stepmother Abby were killed. Abby was 64 years old and Andrew's second wife. Meanwhile, Lizzie was 32 and her older sister Emma was 41, both unmarried daughters from Andrew's first marriage.

Case Became Famous Due Schoolchildren

The case became famous due to the schoolchildren reciting a rhyme about the event: "Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks / And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41."

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However, as per BBC, the weapon was actually a hatchet, not an axe, and the number of blows was exaggerated.

The killer struck Abby first on that hot summer this morning. More than an hour later, Andrew came home from running errands and he was killed too. Lizzie called the police officers, 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 this morning.

Only she and the family's maid, Bridget Sullivan, had been in the house at the time. Then came a troubling detail: 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.

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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 believes that the story still grips people today: "There's something about an acquittal that's open-ended."

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.

Netflix released a trailer on August 20 that shows actor Ella Beatty playing Lizzie Borden as a repressed young woman who teams up with her maid to kill her abusive parents.