Inside Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the True Crime Tale Driving Netflix's Hit Series

More than 130 years after Andrew and Abby Borden were found brutally murdered in their Massachusetts home, nobody knows for certain who killed them. Their daughter Lizzie Borden was charged with both murders and put on trial in a case that became a US national sensation. She was acquitted in 1893, but suspicion followed her for the rest of her life – and well beyond it. Now her story is being revisited in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth instalment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's Netflix anthology series.

Starring Ella Beatty as Lizzie, the eight-part drama has quickly become a global hit, debuting at No 1 on Netflix's global chart for English-language television shows and recording 12.1 million views in its first four days. The series depicts Lizzie as responsible for the killings and fills in many of the gaps in the historical record with fictional relationships, motives and events.

Lizzie Andrew Borden was born in 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts, the younger of Andrew and Sarah Borden's two daughters. Her mother died when Lizzie was a child, and Andrew later married Abby Durfee Gray, who became stepmother to Lizzie and her older sister Emma. Andrew was a successful businessman and property owner who had accumulated considerable wealth, but was known for living relatively frugal lives compared to Fall River's wealthier residents.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed in their home. Lizzie's stepmother was killed first while cleaning a second-floor guest room, suffering 19 blows from a hatchet. Andrew was attacked about an hour and a half later after returning to the house, sustaining 10 or 11 blows to the head and face while resting on a sofa in the downstairs sitting room. Lizzie stated she had been in the barn and discovered her father's body upon returning to the house, calling for the family's live-in maid, Bridget Sullivan.

Lizzie was not immediately treated as the prime suspect, but suspicion shifted towards her as investigators struggled to reconcile her changing accounts of her whereabouts. Her friend Alice Russell later testified that she saw Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen stove several days after the killings, claiming it had been stained with paint. Lizzie was arrested on August 11, 1892, and charged with the murders.

Lizzie's trial began in June 1893 and lasted about two weeks. The prosecution's case was largely circumstantial, lacking a conclusively identified murder weapon or bloody clothes. The all-male jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before finding her not guilty, and the murders remain officially unsolved.

The supporting cast of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story features Charlie Hunnam as Andrew, Rebecca Hall as Abby, and Billie Lourd as Emma. Vicky Krieps stars as the maid Bridget "Maggie" Sullivan, reimagined as Lizzie's lover and accomplice, while Joey Pollari plays uncle John Morse. Additionally, Sarah Paulson appears as serial killer Aileen Wuornos, and Krieps also portrays 16th-century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory in framing sequences.