The Indian Express ·
Arts, culture, entertainment and media
Lizzie Borden: The real story behind Netflix’s Monster, explained
Lizzie Borden murders: true story behind Netflix's Monster Lizzie Borden Story. See the Lizzie Borden house, axe murder timeline, trial, acquittal, Fall River case and Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden.
Lizzie Borden killed her father. Lizzie Borden killed her stepmother.
And now Lizzie Borden is on Netflix.
The newest episodes of the streaming giant’s smash-hit true-crime series – Monster – tells the story of a young woman from Fall River, Massachusetts, who woke up August 4, 1892, and by noon ‘gave her mother forty whacks’ with a hatchet. And ‘when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one’.
Did Lizzie Borden kill her father? Did Lizzie Borden kill her stepmother?
The court ruled ‘no’.
In June 1892 the then 32-year-old Lizzie Borden was charged with killing Andrew Borden and Abby Borden; Abby was first, the prosecution said, hacked to death in a guest room on the first floor, while Andrew was killed in the downstairs living room.
But no amount of investigation could yield a murder weapon – the broken hatchet head found buried in a box of ash in the basement was not it. There was plenty to tease the authorities – she tried buying prussic acid the day before the killings, and three days after the deaths she was spotted trying to burn a dress.
Timeline, part 1, of the Lizzie Borden case (For high-res image, click here)
Did plans for a less macabre murder go awry? Was she trying to get rid of a dress on which blood had splattered after handing out 81 ‘whacks’ with a hatchet?
But all of that evidence, it was soon apparent, was circumstantial.
There were no eyewitnesses, tests on the hatchet head showed no traces of blood, and the attempt to buy prussic acid was ruled inadmissible in court.
In simple terms, the prosecution had motive (an inheritance) and opportunity (Lizzie Borden was alone at home with her stepmother and father).
Timeline, part 2, of the Lizzie Borden case (For high-res image, click here)
But they didn’t have the means – the weapon – and that was enough for reasonable doubt.
And so in 90 minutes an all-male jury – that later commentators pointed out would have had a hard time believing a woman guilty of this crime – freed Lizzie Borden.
She moved back to her home – 92 (now 230), Second Street. Weeks later, with her father’s inheritance, she bought a larger house on French Street and lived there till she died in June 1927.
And that was it, really.
And gave her mother forty whacks.
She gave her father forty-one.
Today, nearly 130 years later, the house on Second Street is one of the US’ more unusual tourist attractions, right up alongside the Winchester House in California and the LaLaurie Mansion in Louisiana.
Within each is a horrific murder story.
And, if you are a believer, within each lurk ghosts and demons.
Video credit: YouTube/US Ghost Adventures
The house on Second Street was reborn in 1996 as a bed-and-breakfast and museum, a macabre shrine to a still unsolved murder mystery.
Fancy a night in the room in which Abby Borden was hacked to death? Or want to sit in the chair Andrew Borden was sitting when he was butchered? Or a visit to the cellar where the hatchet head was found?
Or, if you’re not quite so brave, you can take a daytime tour.
It’s not a big house, really. And that is an interesting aside because – as many who visited it have commented – it would have been difficult to have not overheard the hacking and screaming.