Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is a forthcoming installment of Netflix's Monster anthology, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. The series turns to Lizzie Borden, the Massachusetts woman tried after the August 4, 1892 killings of her father, Andrew Borden, and her stepmother, Abby Durfee Borden, in Fall River. Andrew and Abby were killed inside the family home at 92 Second Street. Lizzie, then thirty-two, was arrested, indicted, and brought to trial for both murders. A jury acquitted her in June 1893. The case nevertheless became one of America's most enduring unsolved murder stories, surrounded by dispute, sensational coverage, and later retellings.

Netflix announced that Ella Beatty will play Lizzie Borden. The announced cast also includes Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden, Vicky Krieps as Bridget Sullivan, and Charlie Hunnam as Andrew Borden. Their characters are rooted in people central to the investigation: Sullivan was the Bordens' live-in maid and a witness in the household, while Andrew and Abby were the victims. The announced casting deliberately places the drama among the members of the Second Street home rather than treating the famous axe-murder rhyme as evidence. That rhyme says Lizzie gave her mother forty whacks, but it is a later folk verse, not a reliable account of the killings or the trial.

At trial, prosecutors contended that Lizzie had killed both victims with a hatchet-like weapon. No one was convicted for the crimes, and no conclusively established motive resolved the case. Lizzie had given an inquest statement before her arrest, but she did not take the witness stand during the trial. After acquittal she remained in Fall River and lived at Maplecroft, the house she bought in 1893. The series' premise therefore draws on a documented criminal case whose public memory has often been shaped by legend.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is not a reconstruction already available to viewers; its announced subject and casting establish its connection to the wider Monster franchise. Earlier seasons centered on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and Ed Gein, making Borden a shift from twentieth-century cases to a nineteenth-century American trial. Because Borden was acquitted, the program's dramatic interpretation cannot turn a legal verdict into historical proof. Its specific dramatic interest lies in the gap between the brutal deaths, the evidence presented in court, Lizzie's acquittal, and the lasting suspicion that made her name inseparable from the Fall River murders for many generations afterward.