What 'Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story' gets right (and wrong) about the Borden murders

Key Points:

• Lizzie Borden was acquitted in 1893 for the axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts, but the case remains a subject of fascination and numerous adaptations, including the new Netflix series Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan.
• The Netflix series portrays Lizzie as a socially awkward, romantically inclined woman enduring parental abuse, and it dramatizes her relationships, including a fictional intimate affair with the family maid Bridget Sullivan, who is depicted as heavily involved in the murders.
• Monster takes creative liberties with the timeline and events, showing multiple versions of the murders, including a violent chase and joint involvement of Lizzie and Bridget, diverging from historical accounts where Lizzie acted alone and Bridget was mostly an alibi witness.
• The show explores various motives for Lizzie, such as emotional abuse, exclusion from inheritance, and her stepmother's cruelty, and it also dramatizes Lizzie's attempt to poison her parents before resorting to the axe, a theory based on her real-life purchase of poison.
• In a controversial addition, Monster links Lizzie to the murder of Bertha Manchester, a real victim killed with an axe months after the Bordens, portraying it as a "test run" for the Borden murders, a fictional element not supported by historical evidence.