At 11.10 on the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden called the family maid downstairs. His father had died.

Andrew Borden lay on a couch in the living room of his Fall River home, his head and face battered by repeated blows. Upstairs, his wife Abby was sprawled face down in the guest bedroom. He was attacked even more brutally.

There was no apparent robbery, no stranger was seen running from the house and there was no loud commotion to alert the bystanders. Yet someone had murdered two people in broad daylight, apparently walking past the Borden house without noticing.

Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter Lizzie soon became the focus of the investigation. He would be arrested, tried for both murders and acquitted by a jury less than a year later. No one else was ever charged.

That’s why the question has persisted for more than 130 years: Did Lizzie Borden kill her father and stepmother—and walk free?

of Netflix the monster The collection has returned to the case Monster: The Lizzie Borden StoryThe fourth installment in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime series. It revisits a murder that became part of American folklore, helped along by a nursery rhyme that was memorable, gruesome and not particularly accurate.

The original story needed no embellishment. It already had a divided family, lost time, a burnt dress, an alleged attempt to buy poison and a hatchet found in the basement.

A divided family

Long before the murders, the Borden household was marked by tensions over money and loyalty. Lizzie was born on July 19, 1860, the youngest surviving daughter of Andrew and Sarah Borden. Her mother died when she was three, and her older sister Emma reportedly promised to take care of her.

Andrew later married Abby Durfee Gray. She became the girls’ stepmother, although accounts suggest that neither daughter fully accepted that role. Emma and Lizzie reportedly called her Mrs. Borden or Abby instead of Mother.

Lizzie offered a softer account when questioned after the murders. “We were friendly, very friendly,” he said, according to testimony by the people. Other reports describe a house in which civility sat restlessly with displeasure.

Andrew was wealthy but famously frugal, and the family lived more humbly than his fortune. Her daughters wanted a more comfortable life and reportedly resented the influence Abby had. In 1887, complaints intensified when Andrew bought property for Abby’s half-sister without telling her.

According to American Heritage, Lizzie was charged that “what she did for her people she should do for her children.” Andrew later bought property for his daughters as well, but the concession did not necessarily fix the relationship within the household.

In the morning everything changed

Burdens woke up on August 4, 1892, a typical summer morning. Andrew, Abby, Lizzie and the maid, Bridget Sullivan, whom the family called Maggie, were at home. Emma was away.

Abby is believed to have been killed first. She had gone upstairs to make the bed in the guest room when the assailant attacked. A later autopsy suggested that she died about 90 minutes before her husband.

Andrew, meanwhile, had left the house to do his morning business. When he came back he sat down on the couch in the living room. He may have been resting or sleeping when the killer got close enough to stab him about 10 or 11 times in the head and face.

Soon after, Lizzie calls Sullivan and tells him that Andrew is dead. The maid went for help, and neighbors and Dr. Seabury Bowen arrived at the house. Amidst the shock, another question emerged: Where was Abby?

Lizzie initially said her stepmother had received a note asking her to visit a sick friend. The note was never found. He later suggests that Abby may be motivated to search the house, having returned.

Upstairs, a neighbor looks into the guest room and sees Abby’s body. She lay there while Andrew was still out, and possibly when he returned home and was resting downstairs, unaware that his wife had already been killed.

Time changed the matter. It wasn’t a single outburst of violence followed by a quick getaway. The killer appears to have struck, waited, and then struck again.

Why did the police start to suspect Lizzie?

Investigators initially considered the possibility of an intruder, but the theory raised more questions than it answered. There was no apparent forced entry, nothing of value was taken and no one saw a stranger running from the property.

Lizzie said that when her father died, she was in the barn, looking for fishing gear and eating pears. Investigators found parts of her account inconsistent and wondered how she remained unaware of two violent attacks under the same roof.

His behavior drew further scrutiny in the following days. A dress attached to it was burnt in the kitchen stove. Lizzie said it was stained with paint; To the authorities, its destruction looked as suspicious as the disappearance of evidence.

Blood-stained clothes were also found in the basement, although Lizzie said the blood was associated with menstruation. Once again, there was an explanation, but not one capable of eliminating suspicion.

Claims of poison deepened it. Two pharmacists said that Lizzie had tried to obtain prussic acid shortly before the murders. One said he refused to sell the deadly substance without a prescription. The allegation never became conclusive evidence, but it gave prosecutors another troubling detail to put together.

Police then found a hatchet head in the basement, apparently mixed in with other tools and covered in ash. Investigators believe it may be connected to the murders. However, they could not prove that it was the murder weapon or that Lizzie had ever used it.

This weakness will overshadow the whole affair. The authorities had a variety of troubling circumstances, but no eyewitnesses, no hard physical evidence, and no direct connection between Lizzie and the moment the victim was killed. Smithsonian Magazine noted that the prosecution’s case ultimately hinged on how those circumstances and Lizzie’s behavior were interpreted.

Daughter in lap

Lizzie was arrested on August 11, a week after the murders. What began as a horrific local crime became a national sensation: a respectable, churchgoing woman from a wealthy family was accused of murdering her father and stepmother in their home.

His background complicated the prosecution’s case. In the Victorian imagination, a woman of Lizzie’s class and social status did not fit the image of a murderer capable of such brutality. Newspapers and audiences were preoccupied with her dress, expression and demeanor, reading guilt or innocence in the way she carried herself.

His trial began on June 5, 1893 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Prosecutors pieced together details that made him seem suspicious: strained family relationships, alleged poison purchases, his changing account, burned clothing and the hatchet in the basement.

But when those details were removed from their drama, the holes were hard to ignore. No one saw Lizzie attack the victim. The alleged weapon certainly could not be tied to him. There was no conclusive forensic evidence of her being near the bodies at the time of death.

The defense suppressed those weaknesses while portraying Lizzie as a daughter caught up in a horrific event rather than its author. Emma stood by her sister and disputed parts of the prosecution’s explanation of Lizzie’s conduct.

The case became a contest between two fictional stories. The prosecution observed a woman whose displeasure and demeanor pointed to guilt; The defense saw investigators turn to suspicion because the real killer had left them with nothing more.

Concepts of the era lingered in the courtroom. Women could not serve on Massachusetts juries, so 12 men were asked to decide whether the evidence was sufficient, but whether a woman like Lizzie could have committed such a crime.

not guilty

On June 20, 1893, the jury returned its verdict after a relatively short deliberation. Lizzie Borden was found not guilty.

The verdict freed him, but it did not solve the murders. No alternative suspects were successfully prosecuted, and no subsequent discovery was made as to who killed Andrew and Abby. The Library of Congress records the full course of the case—the murder on August 4, Lizzie’s arrest a week later, her trial the following June, and her acquittal 15 days after it began—but the most important line is still missing.

Name of the killer.

After the trial, Lizzie stayed in Fall River. He and Emma bought a large Victorian house in the affluent hill district and named it Maplecroft. It offered the life the sisters once wanted, but money couldn’t buy Lizzie back into respectable society.

Neighbors saw him, children allegedly harassed the house and the community continued to treat him as if nothing happened with the jury’s verdict. She traveled, attended the theater and entertained guests, but wherever she went, murder followed her.

Even his relationship with Emma fell apart. In 1905, after an undisclosed dispute, Emma left Maplecroft. The sister who defended Lizzie during the investigation and trial reportedly never got along with her.

Lizzie died on June 1, 1927 at Maplecroft, age 66. Emma died nine days later. Both were buried in the Borden family plot near Andrew and Abby.

A house kept secret

By then, the murders had escaped the courtroom and entered folklore. The famous rhymer gives Lizzie an axe, calls Abby her mother and adds to the injury count. The facts were less tidy and, for that reason, more volatile.

Two persons died in their own house in broad daylight. The daughter, who was the sole accused, was tried and acquitted. No one else has been brought to justice, and no alternative account has explained every gap in the story.

Maybe Lizzie killed them. Perhaps suspicion gathered around him because he was the one person the investigators could not eliminate. The evidence created a legend, but not a conclusion.

More than a century later, the Borden house still holds the same secret: not how Andrew and Abby died, but who was standing over them when they did.