MMonster Anthology

Fact vs. fiction

The real Lizzie Borden case vs. the Netflix series

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is a dramatization. Here is the documented 1892 record alongside what the show invents — including the part the nursery rhyme gets wrong.

Updated

The documented record

  1. August 4, 1892

    Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, are found killed in the family's home on Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts.

  2. August 11, 1892

    Lizzie Borden is arrested. She maintains her innocence from the inquest through the trial.

  3. December 1892

    A grand jury indicts Lizzie for both killings.

  4. June 1893

    Lizzie is tried in New Bedford. On June 20, 1893, the jury acquits her after roughly ninety minutes of deliberation.

  5. Afterward

    No one else is ever charged. The killings are never legally solved, and the case hardens into American legend.

The Netflix dramatization

  • Invented scenes and dialogue — the series stages private conversations and interior moments no record preserved.
  • A compressed, heightened household — family tensions sharpened for drama.
  • A cross-era storyline — Sarah Paulson plays Aileen Wuornos, a 20th-century figure with no connection to the 1892 case.
  • A stylized register — early trailers pair Victorian Fall River with a modern score and a darker, wry edge.
  • The maid as a lens — Bridget Sullivan's perspective is expanded far beyond the sparse historical record.

Treat the series as interpretation, not documentation. Nothing in it should be read as a trial transcript.

Lizzie Borden, photographed in 1890, two years before the Fall River killings
Lizzie Borden, photographed in 1890 — two years before the killings in Fall River. Public-domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

The rhyme is not a court record

The jump-rope rhyme — “Lizzie Borden took an axe…” — repeats an accusation, not a finding. Its counts don't match the case's facts, and it presumes a guilt the jury declined to find when it acquitted Lizzie in June 1893. It is folklore, not evidence — and definitely not a court record. Say it if you like; just don't cite it.

Not that Lizzie Borden movie

The 1892 case has been adapted many times. If you're seeing headlines about a different Lizzie project, here's the disambiguation:

This site covers the Netflix Monster anthology only.

See the cast tableRead the FAQ