The True Murder Mystery Behind Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story

'Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story' Unveils Bloody First Look at Ella Beatty as the Accused Murderer

The murder of Lizzie Borden's parents is technically a cold case, but takes still run hot when it comes to one of America's most notorious alleged murderesses.

Hence Ryan Murphy's reliably controversial Monster anthology now exploring what really happened to Andrew Borden and Abby Borden, who were found hacked to death in their home on Aug. 4, 1892.

Lizzie—who lived with her father, stepmother and older sister Emma Borden in Fall River, Mass.—was acquitted of killing the couple the following year.

But the true crime lore lives on thanks to movies, books and the infamous skipping-rope rhyme that starts with "Lizzie Borden took an axe" and dates back to when Lizzie, who was 32 at the time of the murders, was still alive to hear it.

"It has been a dream come true to investigate this complicated person’s psychology and to examine an American crime that feels almost mythic in proportion," Ella Beatty, who plays the title role in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, premiering Sept. 17 on Netflix, told Tudum. "This season gives us our first female Monster and delves into female rage and repression, which I’ve found to feel strikingly relevant."

Who was Lizzie Borden?

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born July 19, 1860, the second child of Andrew and Sarah Morse Borden. Sister Emma was 12 and Lizzie was 2 when their mother died, and their father remarried Abby Durfee Gray in 1865.

Growing up in Fall River, Lizzie was educated, cultured (she spent 19 weeks traveling around Europe in 1890) and active at church and in her community, according to Sarah Miller's 2016 book The Borden Murders. 

Friends and family described her as cool-headed and no-nonsense, which came across differently to different people. Her uncle Hiram Harrington told a reporter at the time she had a "repellant disposition," per Miller. But a friend called her a "monument of straightforwardness" who, if she murdered her parents, "it would be like her to say she did it and give her reason."

What happened to Lizzie Borden's parents, Andrew and Abby Borden?

At around 11 a.m. on Aug. 4, 1892, Andrew, a bank president, was found dead on the sofa in the sitting room of the Borden family home.

Dr. Seabury Bowen recalled noticing "like a flash," per Miller's book, that nothing else in the room looked out of place. County Medical Examiner Dr. William Dolan counted 10 disfiguring cuts on Andrew's face and head. 

Abby's body was found in an upstairs guest bedroom, having taken, as Dolan determined, 18 blows to the back of the head.

Going through Andrew's tools in the cellar, police found a claw hatchet with a smudge of red on the handle, but they removed multiple hatchets and axes from the house.

Emma was away visiting friends. According to The Borden Murders, Bowen told Lizzie's friend Alice Russell, one of a number of people by then swarming the house that the increasingly distraught younger sister "had better go up to her room and stay there."

Did Lizzie Borden get along with her father and stepmother?

Lizzie testified at an Aug. 9 inquest that she and her stepmother Abby were "very friendly."

She said in court that her father was "close in money matters," but she could "go to Mother and she would always see that he humored me."

Meanwhile, newspapers readily reported on rumors of a family feud—and that Lizzie was among the police's suspects. At the same time, Lizzie and Emma offered a $5,000 reward for anyone who could "secure the arrest and conviction" of whoever "occasioned the death" of their father and stepmother.

Did Lizzie Borden kill her parents?

Lizzie was arrested Aug. 11, two days after she gave contradictory testimony at the inquest about where she was in the house and when on the morning of the murders. (Incidentally, according to The Borden Murders, she had been taking morphine for several days, Dr. Bowen having prescribed it for "mental distress and nervous excitement.")

At Lizzie's murder trial, which began June 5, 1893, her lawyers argued that circumstantial evidence wasn't enough for a conviction. Attorney Andrew Jennings said, per historian Douglas O. Linder's account of the trial, that there was "not one particle of direct evidence," including "not a spot of blood" and no "weapon that they have connected with her in any way, shape or fashion."

Prosecutors, meanwhile, contended that Lizzie may have stripped naked to commit the murders, hence the absence of bloody clothing. (That's the theory the 1975 TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden, starring Bewitched's Elizabeth Montgomery, went with in its portrayal of the crime.)

The 12-man jury found Lizzie—who fainted when the skulls of the victims were shown as evidence—not guilty after less than two hours of deliberations.

What happened to Lizzie Borden after she was acquitted of murder?

Lizzie never left Fall City, though she and Emma moved into a more luxurious home in an area of town known as "the Hill."

While she was shunned by most, and neighborhood kids had no qualms about reciting the rhyme outside her house, Lizzie—who started going by Lizbeth—doted on the friends she did have, traveled to Boston and New York to see plays, and tended Andrew and Abby's graves at Oak Grove Cemetery.

She died June 1, 1927, at the age of 67 and was buried next to her parents. The family home where the murders took place is now the Historic Lizzie Borden House, an inn and museum.

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