More than 130 years after Lizzie Borden became the central figure in one of America’s most infamous true-crime mysteries, Netflix is revisiting the case with a new eight-episode season of Monster.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is the fourth installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology series, with Ella Beatty portraying Lizzie alongside Vicky Krieps as the Borden family’s maid, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan.
Charlie Hunnam, who previously portrayed Ed Gein in Monster: The Ed Gein Story, takes on the role of the Borden family patriarch, Andrew Borden, while Rebecca Hall plays Lizzie’s stepmother, Abby Borden, and Billie Lourd portrays her older sister, Emma Borden.
The series premiered globally on Netflix on September 17, 2026.
The real story, however, began more than a century ago, on August 4, 1892, when Andrew and Abby Borden were found deceased inside their home in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Lizzie, Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter, was arrested and charged in connection with the case before going on trial in 1893.
Despite the prosecution presenting a largely circumstantial case, an all-male jury acquitted her, and no one was ever convicted for the two homicides.
More than a century later, the case remains one of America's most enduring true-crime mysteries.
The facts surrounding the case are already extraordinary enough to have inspired countless books, films, and television adaptations.
But Monster takes the story considerably further, filling historical gaps with fictionalized relationships, imagined events, and some decidedly unexpected connections.
For instance, in a surprising leap across time, the series brings Sarah Paulson’s Aileen Wuornos, another notorious criminal, into the story as part of a thematic connection between two infamous female figures.
But how much of what viewers see actually happened?
While the series preserves some important details from the Borden case, it also significantly changes the historical record.
Here are six details in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story where Netflix took creative liberties with the real-life events.
#1 Netflix’s Opening Logo Already Reveals Who It Believes Took The Lives Of The Bordens, Despite The Case Remaining Unsolved To This Day
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#2 Lizzie’s Maid Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan Was A Key Witness In The 1893 Trial, But Netflix Reimagined Her As Her Lover And Accomplice
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#3 Andrew And Abby Borden Were Turned Into A**sive Villains, While Some Of The Worst Stories About Them Were Only Rumors
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#4 Netflix Moved The Timeline Of Actress Nance O’neil’s Friendship With Lizzie Back More Than A Decade, Turning Her Into A Trial-Era Accomplice
The Netflix series makes one of its biggest timeline changes by bringing actress Nance O’Neil into Lizzie’s life long before the two women actually met.
Jessica Barden plays Nance as an actress who becomes closely involved with Lizzie before the homicides.
She even helps Lizzie prepare for her trial, coaching her on how to present herself before the jury and encouraging her to play the part of a vulnerable, innocent woman.
That entire setup is fictional.
In reality, O’Neil was a highly successful American stage actress who became a close friend of Lizzie’s, but their relationship began in 1904, more than a decade after Lizzie had been acquitted.
Nance therefore had nothing to do with the 1892 investigation or the 1893 trial.
The real-life friendship reportedly began after Lizzie attended one of Nance’s performances in Boston.
Fascinated by the actress and her theatrical career, Lizzie reached out to her, and the two soon developed a close bond.
O’Neil eventually spent time with Lizzie at Maplecroft, the Fall River home Lizzie shared with her sister Emma.
Their friendship became significant enough to cause friction between the sisters, particularly as Emma allegedly disapproved of Lizzie’s increasingly social lifestyle and her association with Nance.
Emma moved out in 1905, and the sisters never reconciled.
Nance and Lizzie’s relationship has also attracted speculation over whether they were romantically involved.
No definitive historical evidence shows they were lovers, but their closeness and Lizzie’s financial support of Nance have fueled decades of speculation.
What Netflix changes is not the existence of their friendship, but almost everything about when it happened and what Nance did.
The series essentially pulls a real relationship from Lizzie’s later life and places it directly inside the m**der story.
That lets Nance become part of the courtroom drama, with her theatrical background providing a fictional explanation for how Lizzie presents herself during the trial.
Interestingly, Lizzie really did cultivate a delicate, feminine image before the jury, but Netflix gives Nance the credit for coaching her.
Historical accounts instead suggest that Lizzie’s lawyers encouraged this feminine presentation, not the actress.
Co-creator Ian has acknowledged that the decision was deliberate.
He explained that trial episodes can be difficult to dramatize and that the real-life fact that Lizzie eventually became friends with an actress gave the writers a way to make the courtroom proceedings more theatrical.
So while O’Neil really was an important figure in Lizzie’s later life, she was nowhere near the Borden household when Andrew and Abby were ki**ed.
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#5 The Series Made Bridget Work For Bertha Manchester And Turned A Real Homicide Months Later Into A Fictional Trial Run For Lizzie And Bridget
The series takes another major liberty with the timeline by transforming the real m**der of Bertha Manchester into the fictional first step of Lizzie and Bridget’s ki**ing spree.
In the Netflix version, Bertha is portrayed as an older neighbor and family friend of the Bordens who employs Bridget as a maid.
After Bertha discovers Bridget’s relationship with Lizzie, she subjects her to a brutal punishment, prompting the two women to plot their revenge.
Lizzie and Bridget then decide to use Bertha as a “trial run” before going after Lizzie’s parents.
When they enter Bertha’s home, Bridget freezes in fear, leaving Lizzie to carry out the attack herself with a hatchet.
Netflix’s own episode summary confirms that the attack on Bertha is presented as a practice run before the Borden homicides.
However, in real life, Bertha Mabel Manchester was a real 22-year-old woman from Fall River, Massachusetts.
She passed away following a brutal axe attack on May 30, 1893, nearly ten months after Mr. and Mrs. Borden were found deceased.
By the time Bertha lost her life, Lizzie was already imprisoned and awaiting trial, so she could not have carried out the attack portrayed in the series.
The real-life Bertha also had no documented connection to the Borden family or Bridget.
She was not an older neighbor who employed Bridget, as the series suggests.
Moreover, Manchester was ki**ed at her family’s home, and José Correa de Mello, a Portuguese immigrant who had worked on the Manchester farm, was convicted in connection with the crime.
Later accounts have described that conviction as wrongful.
However, the Manchester case became relevant to the Borden trial for one reason.
Because another woman in Fall River had lost her life after being attacked with an axe shortly after the Borden case, it became part of the wider public discussion surrounding Lizzie’s trial and the possibility that someone other than her could have been responsible for the Borden tragedy.
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#6 Aileen Wuornos Never Had A Connection To Lizzie, But Netflix Invented One And Even Sent Her To The Borden House
The series takes its biggest leap away from historical reality when it brings Aileen Wuornos into Borden’s story.
Played by Sarah Paulson, the real-life serial ki**er appears in the series nearly a century after the Borden homicides.
Monster presents Wuornos as someone deeply fascinated by Lizzie, suggesting that the earlier woman’s story became a source of inspiration as she struggled with her own violent past.
There is no historical evidence that this connection ever existed.
Aileen and Lizzie lived in completely different eras and had no known real-life relationship.
Netflix’s own account acknowledges that there is no evidence the real Wuornos was fixated on the Borden case.
Instead, the show deliberately imagines Aileen as an “inheritor” of Lizzie’s legacy as part of its broader exploration of female rage and why women become violent.
The series takes that fictional connection even further by having Wuornos and her girlfriend, Shelby, travel to Fall River and stay at the Borden family home, which is presented as a bed and breakfast.
That part of the story is also impossible.
The Borden house remained a private residence for more than a century after the 1892 homicides.
It was not converted into a bed and breakfast until 1996.
By then, Wuornos had already been arrested, convicted of multiple homicides, and was incarcerated in Florida.
Aileen was arrested in 1991 and remained behind bars until her e**cution in 2002, meaning she could not have visited the property as an overnight guest when it first became a B&B.
There is also no record that she ever visited the house or stayed there.
The fictional visit allows the series to create a supernatural connection between the two women.
While staying at the house, Wuornos experiences visions involving Lizzie, effectively turning the latter into a ghostly predecessor whose story follows another woman almost a century later.
The show's creators have been open about the fact that this connection was intentional rather than historical.
While creators and the cast described Aileen as part of the season's larger attempt to explore a supposed legacy of female rage across different periods, the decision to connect the two women drew criticism from reviewers who felt the Wuornos storyline pulled the series even further away from the historical case.
Vulture was particularly harsh, arguing that the series gained nothing historically meaningful by placing Wuornos alongside Lizzie.
The review described the sequence as the show's lowest point and wrote, “We learn nothing about Lizzie Borden, or about her world, from having her ghost listen to Aileen’s very sad and violent, very real-life story.”
“It’s the show’s lowest point; the re-creations of her trial testimony and e**cution are abhorrent.”
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