Whack Job!

A long-absent family member comes back to press Andrew for money, and the household's violence turns on Maggie: a sadistic punishment that the episode uses to close off any remaining idea of endurance. Lizzie and Maggie rewrite the plan. The historical uncle John Morse did visit Fall River around the time of the killings; the show compresses that visit into motive, insult, and leverage.

Then the series steps outside the record. It stages an earlier killing as practice — a victim the 1892 case never charged, never tried, and never named. Police in the episode treat it as a robbery and arrest the wrong men. The hour ends with Lizzie asking for the first blow next time. That request is dramatization. The real case has no rehearsal murder in the file.