'A story of deep psychological drama': The notorious axe murders of Lizzie Borden's parents still haunt, 134 years on

In June 1893, Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted of the murder of her father and stepmother. It became one of the most infamous unsolved mysteries in US history – and the subject of novels, films and a new Netflix drama.

By vividly dramatising the lives of notorious killers, creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have turned Monster, their true-crime anthology show on Netflix, into a smash hit. Serial slayer Jeffery Dahmer, patricidal brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, and Wisconsin murderer-cum-grave-robber Ed Gein have all received the "Monster" treatment – portrayals that Murphy says aim to address one question: Are monsters made or are they born?

Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find upsetting.

For the fourth season, the duo has selected Lizzie Borden as the focus of their creative speculation. And they are hardly the first. For decades, novelists, dramatists, poets – even opera composers and rock musicians – have been inspired by the macabre story of the American woman who was accused of two grisly murders in August 1892. 

It is so infamous in the history of crime in the US that schoolchildren still recite the ditty: "Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks / And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41."

While the rhyme might misidentify the killer, it also exaggerates the number of blows as well as the weapon (it was a hatchet, a small axe that is light enough to use with one hand). But the sequence of events is accurate – whoever killed Andrew and Abby Borden on a hot summer morning in Fall River, Massachusetts, began with Abby. She was 64, Andrew's second wife, and stepmother to his two unmarried daughters Emma, 41, and Lizzie, 32.

More than an hour later, when Andrew came home from running errands, he too met his end. Summoned by Lizzie, the police found her father on the living room sofa, nearly unrecognisable, after 11 hatchet blows.

Such was the brutality of the crime, authorities at first did not suspect Lizzie, a seemingly mild woman who taught at Fall River's Central Congregational Church. Yet at the inquest, she kept changing her account of her movements on the morning of the murders, when only she and Bridget Sullivan, the family's Irish maid, were at the house. (Emma was away on holiday and a house guest had gone out.)

Besides, although Lizzie and her sister denied it, friends and neighbours were aware of tensions in the home. Andrew was a wealthy but miserly man who forced his daughters to live in a shabby part of town and scrimp on household expenses, while he gave money to his new wife's family.

After a local pharmacist reported that Lizzie had tried to buy poisonous prussic acid on the day before the murders, a judge had her arrested and jailed. Then, in December, a friend testified to a grand jury that Lizzie had burned a dress (supposedly her own) in the stove a few days after the killings. Formal charges of murder were brought, and a trial date set for the following June.

In his book Lizzie Borden on Trial: Murder, Ethnicity and Gender, historian and Fall River native Joseph Conforti recounts how Lizzie, with her late father's money, hired a top lawyer from Boston to defend her in front of the all-male jury. (Only men could serve on juries in that era.) "She presented herself as a helpless maiden," Conforti wrote. "Her lawyers told her to dress in black. She appeared in court tightly corseted, dressed in flowing clothes, and holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a fan in the other."

Because the murder weapon was never found, and the suspicious pharmacy visit ruled inadmissible, the case against Borden remained circumstantial. Convinced that Lizzie possessed neither the physical strength nor the moral depravity to be what the prosecution called a "feral… insane fiend", the jury acquitted her after a brief deliberation.

But no one else was ever tried for the gruesome killings, and Lizzie lived under a cloud of suspicion, shunned by many in her hometown, for the remainder of her life.

So why does the Lizzie Borden story continue to be so fascinating – especially to writers?

"There's something about an acquittal that's open-ended," Cara Robertson, author of The Trial of Lizzie Borden, tells the BBC. "And the case has a lot of what we look for in a detective story: limited number of suspects, it hinges on alibis of timing, and if we are saying that Lizzie Borden is the killer, then this is really a story of deep psychological drama."

Fiction writers have explored Borden and her circle in dozens of novels, stories, and retellings. Angela Carter's spookily claustrophobic short story from 1982, The Fall River Axe Murders, reimagines the hours leading up to the murders. "Every image reminds you that Lizzie's world is overheated, literally stinking, and emotionally stultifying," wrote Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere, in Fiction Writer's Review. "We never see the hatchet fall. We don't need to."

Three notable filmed versions of the killings have been produced over the last half century, starting in 1975 with The Legend of Lizzie Borden, a critically acclaimed ABC television film. Elizabeth Montgomery of Bewitched fame earned an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Lizzie.

Here, the suspect is an aloof, steely-eyed Victorian lady, someone who gives nothing away, let alone a confession of murder. While the question of guilt is never directly addressed, Montgomery as Borden wields a hatchet in speculative, dreamlike flashbacks. 

Christina Ricci was cast as the accused murderer for the 2014 Lifetime TV movie Lizzie Borden Took an Ax. Ricci played Lizzie as a recognisably modern type: the malevolent, scheming, high-school mean girl. According to a review in the Hollywood Reporter, Ricci "relishes every moment of her portrayal, turning up the volume on her crazy eyes without spilling over into camp". Lifetime followed up the next year with an eight-episode mini-series The Lizzie Borden Chronicles.

Lizzie, a 2018 psychological thriller with Chloe Sevigny in the title role, is a feminist-coded retelling. Borden is the oppressed daughter driven to murder, spurred on by her love for the maid, Bridget Sullivan (Kristen Stewart), whom Andrew has sexually assaulted. (A romance between Borden and Sullivan was also imagined in Evan Hunter's 1984 novel, Lizzie). Sevigny researched the case as a passion project for nearly a decade before producing as well as starring in the film. For her, Borden was "like an American outlaw who fights against the patriarchy".

Viewers of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story can expect something closer to Sevigny's portrayal than Ricci's. The newest Lizzie, Ella Beatty (daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Benning) has said that the show explores "a legacy of female rage and reaction to the set of circumstances that they are presented with".

In a recent interview Ryan said he enjoyed investigating the Borden case because "in many ways you can look at what it deals with [in terms of] women and society and it's very much about today".

The Monster trailer hints that once again Lizzie will be shown caught up in an intimate relationship with Bridget Sullivan. Robertson, who has spent more than 30 years studying and writing about the Borden case, tells the BBC she isn't surprised – many novelists and film-makers have "found the story as is kind of inadequate… for a long time they would simply invent a male love interest. More recently they found someone in the house, namely the maid."

But this choice, Robertson points out, is undermined by some known facts about Borden's treatment of Sullivan. "I suppose [a romance] is possible, but it's also true that Lizzie never bothered to call her by her real name." Instead, Lizzie called Sullivan Maggie, the name of a previous maid.

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One curious twist in this season of Monster is the weaving in of a second story, that of a more contemporary murderer. Some scenes will feature Sarah Paulson playing Aileen Wuornos, a sex worker in Florida convicted in 1992 of killing seven of her male clients. By linking the two cases, the Monster makers seem to be making a larger point: while women are far less likely to kill than men, in certain circumstances their rage can turn murderous. 

Borden herself isn't known to have behaved violently before or after the case, so what could have motivated her to pick up a hatchet with lethal intent – if indeed she did? Given that we'll never have the answer, Monster's new "take" on her won't be the last word on the subject.

Other imaginative minds will revisit the events of August 1892, probing a brutal crime that remains confounding.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is released on 17 September on Netflix.

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