Well, Lizzie Borden is officially out on Netflix, and of course I binged the entire thing in one day. If you know me, you already know how much I love true crime and how much I love getting into cases that leave us with more questions than answers. The Lizzie Borden case is one I have always been fascinated by, and watching this series brought that fascination right back. There is something about a case that happened more than 130 years ago and still has people asking the same question today that makes it impossible not to dig deeper. Did Lizzie Borden really kill her father and stepmother?
Lizzie Borden was not the first woman accused of murder, but she became one of the most infamous women connected to a murder case in American history. In 1892, her father, Andrew Borden, and her stepmother, Abby Borden, were brutally murdered inside their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie was accused of the killings, and the case became one of the most talked about trials of its time. But here is the part that always gets me. Lizzie was acquitted in 1893, which means legally she was found not guilty, yet more than a century later people are still debating whether the jury got it right.
One thing I think is really important when watching the Netflix series is remembering that what we see on screen is not necessarily the same thing as what actually happened. This is a dramatization, and television has to fill in the blanks, create conversations, develop relationships and sometimes combine or rearrange events to tell a story. Some of the people and theories shown are connected to the real case, but that does not mean every conversation, interaction or event happened exactly as it is portrayed. The real Borden case was already complicated, and there are many things we simply do not know. That is one of the things I find so interesting about true crime adaptations. I want to know where the documented history ends and the storytelling begins. When you are watching a series like this, it can feel like you are actually inside that house watching everything unfold, but we have to remember that we were not there. We have history, testimony, newspaper accounts and evidence, but there are still pieces of this story that may never be known.
And then there is the nursery rhyme that almost everyone knows. We have heard the story so many times that the rhyme has almost become the case itself. But the real story is much different from the legend we grew up hearing. The famous rhyme says Lizzie used an axe and gives numbers for the blows that are not accurate. Abby was struck 19 times and Andrew was struck 11 times. Those numbers alone show how much the story has been exaggerated and transformed over the years. When you strip away the rhyme, the television adaptations and the stories that have been passed down for generations, you are left with a complicated murder case filled with unanswered questions.
What makes this case even more interesting to me are the alternative theories. There have been questions surrounding Lizzie's uncle John Morse, theories involving a possible illegitimate son of Andrew Borden and even speculation about Lizzie's sister Emma. There have been other theories over the years as well, but none has ever given us a definitive answer about who killed Andrew and Abby. Lizzie was ultimately acquitted, but that did not stop many people in her own community from believing she was guilty. Even after the trial was over, the questions followed her for the rest of her life.
And then I start thinking about the evidence against Lizzie. There were certainly things that made people suspicious. She was in the house, there were questions about her statements and behavior, and the prosecution presented a circumstantial case against her. But there was never a confession, there was no eyewitness who testified to seeing her commit the murders, and the prosecution ultimately could not convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. That matters. We can have our own theories about what happened, but the historical fact remains that Lizzie Borden was found not guilty.
This is also why I think Lizzie's story is so fascinating when we look at it as a woman accused of committing an incredibly brutal crime during the late 1800s. Women were held to very different expectations then, and the idea of a respectable young woman being capable of such violence was shocking. Was Lizzie judged partly because people could not understand the possibility of a woman committing a crime like this? Or were there things about her behavior and the circumstances surrounding the murders that genuinely made people suspicious? I think those are questions worth talking about without automatically deciding what the answer has to be.
And this is where I want to hear from all of you. After watching the Netflix series, what do you think? Do you believe Lizzie Borden really killed her father and stepmother? Do you think the evidence against her was enough to make you believe she was guilty, or do you think there is a real possibility that someone else committed these murders? And if Lizzie did not do it, then who did?
I don't think we can look at this case and simply say, "She did it," because the historical record does not give us that certainty. At the same time, I don't think we can completely dismiss the evidence and questions surrounding Lizzie either. That is what makes this case so fascinating more than 130 years later. There is a verdict, but there is not necessarily an answer.
So let's talk about it. I want your theories, your questions and your thoughts after watching the series. Did Lizzie Borden get away with murdering her father and stepmother, or have we spent more than a century blaming a woman whose story was never fully understood? And just as importantly, what parts of the Netflix series made you stop and wonder what was actually true? Because you know me. I don't just want to watch true crime. I want to talk about it, question it and look at the story from every possible angle.
