Netflix series 'Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story' shows the main character suffering from certain health issues. However, only a few of those moments happened in real life.
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Add BollywoodShaadis on GoogleLizzie Borden was accused of murdering her father, Andrew, and stepmother, Abby, with a hatchet in Fall River in 1892. The wealthy 32-year-old became the prime suspect due to family tension, but was acquitted in 1893. No one else was ever convicted.
Netflix's new show Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth season of Ryan Murphy's anthology, is also based on the case. It reframes the case as a story of repression, power, and revenge inside the Borden house. The show features Lizzie battling some health problems. But questions are also being raised about whether this happened in real life.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story features Lizzie suffering from intense menstrual pain, so severe she bleeds through onto furniture in the house. Historically, there is no record of her having unusually painful cycles.
What did happen is that police found bloodied cloths in a bucket in the cellar after the killings. Lizzie told them it was menstrual blood. The family doctor backed up that she was on her period at the time, so the rags were never tested as evidence.
In the series, the maid Bridget examines Lizzie and decides she has an imperforate hymen. That is a rare birth condition where tissue covers the vaginal opening. The show uses it to explain her symptoms. That diagnosis is entirely invented for the drama. There is no historical account of Lizzie ever being diagnosed with it, and medically the condition typically prevents or complicates bleeding, rather than causing heavy bleeding.
The show also depicts Lizzie Borden becoming hysterical after the murders and being sedated with morphine. That part has a real basis. Records show her physician did give her morphine to calm her after her father and stepmother were found.
Because Lizzie was questioned while under sedation, without a lawyer present and without being told her words could be used against her, those early police interviews were later ruled inadmissible. During those conversations, she had given conflicting versions of where she was when the murders happened.
For its ending, the series takes creative liberty. Instead of following Lizzie Borden to her actual death in 1927, it ends years earlier, imagining her living with Bridget in a new house bought with her inheritance and even supporting the fight for women's right to vote. In reality, her later life was different. The show leaves out that she continued to live in Fall River and that shortly before she died on June 1, 1927, she had her gallbladder removed.
Lizzie Borden is one of the most famous figures in American crime history, remembered for a double murder that was never solved. On August 4, 1892, her father Andrew and stepmother Abby were found dead in their house in Fall River, Massachusetts. Both had been attacked with a hatchet. Lizzie was 32 at the time and lived in the home with them, along with their maid.
Police focused on Lizzie as the prime suspect. She had a tense relationship with Abby; she gave inconsistent accounts about her movements that morning, and a day earlier she had tried to buy prussic acid at a pharmacy.
Despite that, the trial in June 1893 ended in acquittal. There was no eyewitness, no blood on her clothes, and the alleged murder weapon was never conclusively identified. The jury deliberated for about 90 minutes. Lizzie stayed in Fall River until her death on June 1, 1927, but lived mostly isolated from the community that once judged her.
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