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Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Facts Vs. Fiction · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine for a second, right, that you are sitting in
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: this cramped, deeply sweltering jail cell.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, like a brutal Massachusetts summer.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's summer, you're on trial for your life, and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the entire country is completely obsessed with you. I mean,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: they're reading every single newspaper headline, and everyone is completely
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: convinced that you took a hatchet and brutally butchered your
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: own parents.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: In their own home, no less.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Right, in their own home. So you're just sitting there
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: waiting for the gavel to drop. And then... Out of nowhere,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: news breaks. Across town, another woman has just been discovered
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: hacked to death in her home with an axe. Wow. Yeah.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: The exact same M.O., the exact same brutality. Yeah. And you,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: sitting in your cell under constant guard, physically couldn't have
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: done it.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Which is just, I mean, that is the ultimate alibi.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: It really is. It's the golden ticket that proves some
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: deranged killer is actually stalking your city, and you are innocent.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: It's the exact kind of exculpatory evidence that, you know,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: any defense attorney literally dreams about. Just a perfectly timed,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: real-world plot twist that completely shatters the prosecution's narrative. The
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: whole idea of a solitary domestic murderer just falls apart.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Right. So keep that in mind. Now imagine it's over
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: a century later. A massively popular streaming service decides to
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: make a multi-million dollar television show about your life. And
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: instead of including this incredibly dramatic, completely true event that,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you know, Basically saved your neck.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: You rewrite it.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: They rewrite history. They take that other victim. They age
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: her up. They move her murdered to a whole year earlier.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: And they write a script where you hack her to
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: death just for practice.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Just for practice. Which, I mean, that fundamentally completely dismantles reality.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Just to build a better monster for television.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It really does. Welcome to the Deep Dive, everyone. We
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: have got a really fascinating one for you today. We
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: are unpacking a truly wild article from CBR by Kai Young.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: It's a great piece.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: It is, yeah. The piece takes a microscope to Netflix's
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: newest true crime anthology installment, Monster, the Lizzie Borden story.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And our objective here isn't just to be pedantic.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Right. We're not just nitpicking.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We aren't sitting here with a red pen acting
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: like grumpy history teachers grading a high school paper. We
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: really want to understand the mechanics of adaptation. We want
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to look at exactly why creators Ian Brennan and Ryan
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Murphy looked at a historical record. that is already deeply
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: ingrained in our cultural consciousness.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, heavily ingrained.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they just decided to take a sledgehammer to it.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Well, to really appreciate the sheer audacity of what they've
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: done here, we have to contextualize the pedigree of the
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: monster franchise itself. Because for you, the listener, you have
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: to remember that this isn't just some run-of-the-mill, you know,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: late-night cable reenactment show.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: But this anthology has massive cultural weight. I mean, they
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: previously tackled the crimes, the investigations, and the massive societal
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: ripples of Jeffrey Dahmer.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Which was huge.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Huge. Then they moved on to Lyle and Eric Menendez
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: diving into all those abuse allegations and the media circus.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: And most recently, they took on Ed Gein. And while
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: all of those seasons were undoubtedly dramatized, right?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: It was as Ryan Murphy.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. It's highly stylized. That is the Ryan Murphy signature.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: But they still relied heavily on the documented, undeniable facts
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: of those investigations. The crimes themselves were anchored in reality.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: But now they have pivoted away from the 20th century
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: and gone all the way back to the infamous axe
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: murders of 1892.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Let's lay the concrete foundation for
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: you before we start looking at the funhouse mirrors the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: show sets up. The bedrock of the actual history-like stuff
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: literally no one disputes is this. On the morning of
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: August 4th, 1892, in the industrial boomtown of Fall River, Massachusetts,
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  Speaker 1: Andrew Borden and his wife Abby Borden were found murdered
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: in their home.
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  Speaker 2: And they weren't just killed.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: No, they were obliterated, seemingly hacked to death with a hatchet.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Andrew's youngest daughter, Lizzie, who's played in this new series
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: by Ella Beattie, she quickly became the prime suspect. And
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: while she was eventually acquitted, she has obviously lived in
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: infamy ever since.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is the core undeniable reality. The bodies, the location,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: the date and the prime suspect. But because the real
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: world police investigation from the late 19th century was so
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: profoundly botched, I mean, truly terrible police work.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Well, it was a mess.
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  Speaker 2: It left us with this massive historical void. We don't
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: know the exact sequence of events. We don't have a confession.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: We have zero definitive forensic proof. And Murphy and Brennan
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: have basically stepped directly into that void. But instead of
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: leaning into that historical ambiguity, which arguably makes the real
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: case so enduringly fascinating, they've treated the historical record like
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: a narrative algorithm.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Narrative algorithm, yeah.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: They input the names and the locations, but they alter
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the variables completely to ensure the audience gets a very specific,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: highly curated emotional experience.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: It's like they've engineered a completely different reality. I look
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: at modern true crime adaptations almost exactly like that, like
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: renovating an old house. You keep the foundation, but maybe
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: you move a few walls, update the kitchen, you know.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: But in this case, it seems the creators tore down
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the entire house and built a gothic horror theme park
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: on the lot.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: That is a perfect way to describe it.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Right. Why go so far? Let's start with how they
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: handled the patriarch of the family, Andrew Borden.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Structurally, this is one of the most significant and telling
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: changes they made right out of the gate in episode one.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: So in the series, Andrew Borden is portrayed by Charlie Hunnam.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: And just as a quick aside, Hunnam just came off
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: starring in The Monster, the Ed Ginn story season. So
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: he's very well versed in this specific creepy tonal universe.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: He's had to play creepy.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. But the series depicts Andrew not as a businessman,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: but as a highly gifted woodworker and an undertaker. He
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: literally makes custom coffins for his wealthy clientele in Fall River.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: A coffin maker. And as if that isn't heavy handed enough.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: The show gives him this deep, obsessive, almost aestheticistic affection
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: for his axe collection. I mean, he values these tools
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: so greatly that he polishes them at night. And get this,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: he gives them individual names.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: It's so absurd. He names his axes.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it when I saw it.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Now, you have to look at the actual historical reality
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: of Andrew Borden to understand why this shift is just
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: so jarring. The real Andrew Borden was the furthest thing
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: from a dusty, macabre coffin maker whispering to his axes
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: in some dimly lit workshop. He was a quintessential, hyper-successful,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: gilded-age capitalist. Fall River in the 1890s was a massive
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: textile hub. They called it the Spindle City because it
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: was churning out incredible wealth.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: A real boomtown.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And Andrew Borden was at the absolute center of
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: that economic engine. He was the director of several major
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: textile mills. He was the president of the Union Savings Bank.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: He was a director of the Durfee Safe Deposit and
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Trust Company. He was a commercial landlord. I mean, he
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: was a ruthless white-collar financial titan.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Which completely shifts the entire aura of his character and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: really the power dynamics of the household. While the show
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: keeps the fact that he was incredibly wealthy, because that's
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: central to all the real motive theories, turning a bank
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: president into a coffin maker completely changes his societal presence.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: It changes everything.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: It does. In real life, his power was abstract. It
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: existed in ledgers, in boardrooms, in the aggressive collection of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: rents from these struggling immigrant mill workers. He was a sterile,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: untouchable corporate figure who was notoriously, almost psychotically frugal.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, the frugality was legendary.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Despite his massive wealth, the Borden house didn't even
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: have indoor plumbing because you just didn't want to pay
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  Speaker 1: for it.
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  Speaker 2: That frugality is key to his historical persona. He was
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: a man of cold, hard numbers. But the show strips
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: him of that white collar banking status and makes him
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: a blue collar, tactile craftsman of death. Why do that?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: It goes back to that narrative algorithm.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: We talked about. They need the visuals.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The creators needed a convenient, organic origin story for
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: the infamous murder weapon. By making him a woodworker with
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the named axe collection, the show injects this thick layer
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: of physical dread right into the environment. It ensures the
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: weapon is constantly present on screen and Just looming over
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: every single conversation.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because when a character's power is tied up in banking,
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  Speaker 1: it's pretty hard to visualize the physical threat he poses.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But when a character is an undertaker making coffins with
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: a named axe, his power is visceral. It is intimately
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: tied to mortality. It visually communicates to you, the audience,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: that this household is already steeped in death long before
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the murders even occur.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: And I was reading the CBR article trying to figure
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: out if they just pulled this coffin thing entirely out
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of the thin air. And Kai Young points out one
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: incredibly small real world caveat. One of the many, many
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: companies the real Andrew Borden was involved in did actually
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: make furniture at one point.
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  Speaker 2: It's a tiny speck of truth.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, there is this microscopic splinter of truth. But it
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  Speaker 1: was absolutely nowhere near the spooky Victorian Gothic coffin crafting
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  Speaker 1: obsession depicted on Netflix.
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  Speaker 2: Which is the total hallmark of this kind of adaptation.
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  Speaker 2: You find a micro fact in the historical archive, like
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: a single line on a business ledger, and you blow
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: it up to serve your macro theme. If your overarching
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: theme is the inevitable descent into violent death, then the
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: father's profession must visually and narratively reflect that theme. History
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: is secondary to atmosphere.
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  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. But establishing an atmosphere
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of dread is just the first domino, right? Once you
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: have a visually oppressive environment, and you've conveniently placed a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: collection of named axes in the living room, you run
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: into a narrative requirement. You need a catalyst.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: You need a spark.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You need a singular explosive event that pushes your
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: protagonist to actually pick up that weapon. Because you don't
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: just go from being unhappy with your coffin-making dad to
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: committing a double homicide.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Usually not, no.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: No. And that brings us to the end of episode two,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: which is titled Strong Kitty.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: This sequence serves as the emotional boiling point of the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: early season. In the show's version, we see Liz stepmother,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Abby Burden, who, by the way, is played with this
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: incredible icy ferocity by Rebecca Hall.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: She is fantastic in this.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: She really is. So Lizzie has this collection of pet
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: doves that she absolutely adores. And in a moment of pure,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: unadulterated spite, simply to stop their cooing, Abby goes out
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: and brutally kills all of Lizzie's doves.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: And what does Andrew do? He just stands there. He
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: is portrayed as entirely apathetic to this horrific act of
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  Speaker 1: animal cruelty against his own daughter's beloved pets.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Which is wild.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: It is. The show frames this specific, deeply cruel event
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: as the absolute point of no return. It is the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: exact moment Lizzie's psyche fractures and she decides she is
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: going to murder her parents. Mmm. You watch the scene
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: and you think, OK, I get it now. They push
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: her too far.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: It's highly effective television. But if we look at the
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: historical record, it is a complete inversion of the psychological
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: reality of that household. What's fascinating here is that a
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: bird killing incident did happen in the summer of 1892.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: OK, so there were birds.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: There were birds. But the specifics are fundamentally different. First,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: let's look at the birds themselves. Lizzie didn't keep doves
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: in the show. The doves act as these universal, heavy-handed
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: symbols of peace, innocence, and purity.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Very on the nose. Very.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: In reality, Lizzie kept pigeons. She had a roost built
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: for them in the garden in May of 1892, which
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: was just a few months before the murders.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Pigeons. Which, let's be honest, completely changes the poetic resonance
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of the scene. Saying she murdered my doves sounds like
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: a Greek tragedy. Saying she murdered my pigeons sounds like
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: a dispute over property damage. I mean, pigeons are gritty.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: They're often seen as pests. It just doesn't have the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: same tragic ring to it for a modern audience.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: It really doesn't. But the far more significant change is
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: the perpetrator. It wasn't Abby Borden who killed the birds.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: It was Andrew Borden. Yeah. And he didn't do it
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: out of sheer spite just to silence their cooing. He
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: took a hatchet and slaughtered the pigeons himself because he
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: had developed this intense paranoia that they were attracting local
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: boys to his property to steal them. Plus, he genuinely
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: believed the birds were carrying diseases that would infect the household.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: So the real father, the man who was about to
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: be killed with a hatchet, was out in the yard
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: wielding a hatchet, slaughtering his daughter's pets because he was
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: paranoid about disease and trespassers. And Lizzie, historically, was reportedly
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: deeply distraught by this.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was a massive point of contention in an
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: already boiling household. But look at what the series does
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: with this fact. They take the action, the brutal slaughter
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: of the birds, and they reassign it from the father
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: to the stepmother.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But why?
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Because the show is leaning heavily on a very old,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: very culturally ingrained narrative shortcut, the wicked stepmother trope.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Of course, Cinderella style.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. By shifting the direct act of cruelty to Abby,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: the show creates a clear, easily identifiable and highly unsympathetic
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: villain in the domestic sphere. It allows you to vilify
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Abby instantly without having to parse the complex, paranoid motivations
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: of a Gilded Age patriarch. Furthermore, by changing the disease-carrying
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: pigeons to peaceful, innocent doves, it sanitizes the animals. It
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: makes the cruelty seem entirely unprovoked, purely malicious, and totally
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: devoid of any twisted, pragmatic logic.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: You know, I have to say, as a viewer, I
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: think they actually shot themselves in the foot with this change. Really?
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: How so?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Well, you might be thinking, oh, it's just TV. They
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: have to make the stepmother mean so we understand why
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Lizzie hated her. But doesn't making Abby the bird killer
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: actually rob the story of something much deeper and infinitely
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: more terrifying? Think about the real history. Andrew Borden, the
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: head of the house, takes a hatchet, a wildly violent,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: messy tool, and slaughters animals in his own backyard. The
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: psychological terror of living with a father who casually wields
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: a hatchet to solve domestic annoyances, creating this atmosphere of
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: sudden bloody violence that feels so much scarier and more
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: narratively rich than a mean stepmother wringing a dove's neck.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: You are absolutely right. The real history possesses this dark,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: almost suffocating circular irony. The father introduces the hatchet as
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: a tool of domestic problem solving. He sets the precedent
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: for extreme bloody violence in that environment. And then theoretically,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: the daughter absorbs that lesson and uses that exact same
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: tool to solve the problem of the father.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: It's so dark.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: It's Shakespearean in its grim symmetry. But the series trades
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: that complex, psychological dread for an immediate, digestible, sympathetic motive.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: They want the modern audience to root for Lizzie, or
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: at least feel that her impending violence is a justified
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: response to unbearable abuse. To do that quickly in a
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: binge-watched television format You make the victim Abby do something
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: utterly unforgivable to an unequivocally innocent creature.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: It's basically the save the cat screenwriting rule flipped on
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: its head. Kill the dove to make the audience fundamentally
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: despise the antagonist.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Precisely. The writers are actively prioritizing thematic cohesion, this idea
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: of Lizzie as a pure soul driven to madness by
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: unwarranted malicious cruelty over the chaotic, strange, paranoid reality of
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Andrew Borden fighting off pigeon-borne diseases with a hatchet. They
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: need the audience's moral compass to align with Lizzie's rage.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: But psychological motivation isn't enough for a television thriller. You
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: have a furious protagonist, you have an atmosphere of death,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and you have the named axes waiting in the wings.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: But the writers run into a logistical problem. How do
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: two Victorian women escalate from being angry about dead birds
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: to executing absolute, physically exhausting butchery?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: It's a huge leap.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: It is. You don't just jump from zero to ax murder.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: You need a stepping stone. You need to show the
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: audience that they are capable of crossing the line into
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: premeditated murder. And that's where the show invents a deeply
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: grotesque sequence that completely alters the historical record.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: We are talking about the infamous dinner sequence in the series.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: The CBR article breaks down how Lizzie and the new maid,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Bridget Maggie Sullivan, who's played by Vicky Creeps, begin actively conspiring.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: They form this deadly alliance. And their initial plan in
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: the show isn't blunt force trauma, it's poison.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Poison, right.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They decide to assassinate Andrew and Abby by serving
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: them off-season oysters laced with poison.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I watched this scene, and the tonal shift is just jarring.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: It's a lot to take in. The parents sit down,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: they eat the oysters, and almost immediately they fall violently,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: horrifically ill right at the dining room table. It's intense.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: The show goes full visceral horror. We are talking projectile vomiting,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: blood ejecting from orifices, agonizing screams. The audience is totally
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: led to believe, oh, wow, this is it. They're dying
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: right now in episode three. But then, miraculously, they manage
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to purge the poison from their systems and quickly recover.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: It feels like a B-movie Splatterfest horror scene was suddenly
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: injected straight into the middle of a stuffy, corset-wearing Victorian
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: parlor drama.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: It is intensely sensationalized and visually shocking. But much like
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: the pigeon incident, the writers didn't conjure this entirely from
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: the ether. There are two distinct kernels of historical truth
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: that they have mutated and smashed together to create this
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: fictional assassination attempt. First, let's address the sickness.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: They did actually get sick. Yes.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: A couple of days before the actual murders on August 4th,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Andrew and Abby Borden did indeed fall violently ill.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: But not from poisoned off-season oysters served by a conspiring daughter?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: No, absolutely not. Historically, it was attributed to a bad
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: batch of mutton broth. You have to remember the context
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: of the 1890s. It was the height of a Massachusetts summer.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: There was no air conditioning.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: And no indoor plumbing, so probably no icebox. Exactly.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Because of Andrew's extreme frugality, they didn't have an icebox.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: The mutton had been sitting out improperly stored in the
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: sweltering heat, and they just kept eating it over several days.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Ooh.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they contracted severe food poisoning. It was a completely mundane,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: albeit very unpleasant, consequence of Victorian food safety.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the sickness part. Where does the poison
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: aspect come from then?
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: That comes from a totally separate, highly controversial piece of
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: trial testimony. During the actual 1893 trial, the prosecution called
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: a local pharmacist to the stand. This pharmacist claimed that
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: the day before the murders... Lizzie had come into a
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: shop and attempted to purchase a small quantity of prussic acid,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: which is essentially a form of cyanide.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Which sounds incredibly damning. I mean, woman on trial for
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: murder tried to buy cyanide the day before. That's a
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: smoking gun, right?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: It sounds damning until you look at the context. Prussic
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: acid was actually used during that era for cleaning purposes.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Lizzie's defense adamantly claimed she was simply trying to buy
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: the acid to clean a seal skin cape. which was
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: a relatively common, if dangerous, practice at the time.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And more importantly, the pharmacist's testimony was highly contested, and
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: ultimately the presiding judge ruled it inadmissible. The jury was
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: instructed to completely disregard it. It was a dismissed rumor
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: that never factored into her acquittal.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: This is where the narrative manipulation gets genuinely fascinating to me.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: The show takes these two incredibly ambiguous, separate historical footnotes,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: a bad bowl of weak old mutton broth, a legally
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: dismissed rumor about cleaning a sealskin cape with cyanide and
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: forcefully fuses them together. By doing that, they create a confirmed,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: visually shocking, deeply premeditated attempted murder scene. Look at what
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: that does to you as a viewer.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: It changes everything.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It completely obliterates the ambiguity of the historical trial. In
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: real life, the public and the jury had to wrestle
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: with the unknown. Was she really just cleaning a cape?
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Was the mutton just bad meat? But in the reality
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: of the show, Lizzie is definitively 100% guilty of premeditated
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: attempted murder before a single axe is even swung.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: It is a profound shift in genre. When a show
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: removes all ambiguity like that, it stops being a hoodoonet.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: It stops being a historical mystery about whether or not
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: this woman was capable of the crime. It pivots entirely
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: into a how-will-she-get-away-with-it thriller. It actively positions Lizzie and Bridget
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: as cold-blooded, conspiring killers early in the narrative timeline. It
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: sacrifices the deep, enduring historical mystery for sheer narrative momentum.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Right, because the audience isn't questioning her innocence anymore.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They are just sitting back, eating popcorn, waiting for
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: her to realize that poison is too unreliable and she
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: needs to upgrade her weapon to something more direct.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And upgrade she does. But a failed poisoning is still
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: fundamentally a passive act. You slip something into a plate
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: of oysters and you step back. How does someone, especially
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: a Victorian Sunday school teacher... make the colossal psychological leap
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: from slipping poison into a dinner plate to executing a brutal,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: physically exhausting, close-quarters axe murder.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: It's vastly different. It is.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Slashing through bone and tissue requires a level of rage
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and physical commitment that is just staggering. According to the
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: show's logic, they couldn't just do a cold. They needed
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: a test run. They needed a practice dummy to see
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: if they had the stomach for it. Which brings us
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to what I think is unequivocally the most jaw-dropping, historically
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: reckless part of this entire deep dive.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: You are referring to the events of episode three, which
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: is aggressively titled Whack Job. The show sets this episode
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: in June of 1892, exactly two months before the Borden murders.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Right. And in this episode, the show depicts Lizzie and
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Bridget brutally murdering a woman named Bertha Manchester. The series
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: sets Bertha up as this wealthy, abusive, insufferable dowager. She
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: is portrayed as a peer and friend of the Bordens.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: In the show's narrative... Bertha temporarily borrows Bridget the maid
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: to work at her estate, and while there, Bertha violently
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: and sadistically abuses Bridget.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: So they decide to get revenge.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Lizzie and Bridget, unified in their rage, decide to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: kill Bertha. They use her as a practice kill before
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: they target Andrew and Abby. They ambush her and murder
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: her with an axe.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: This is, without a doubt, the greatest creative liberty, or
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: more accurately, the most aggressive historical fabrication taken by a monster.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: The Lizzie Borden story. Because the actual facts of Bertha
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Manchester's life and her tragic death are utterly, completely divorced
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: from the narrative this show is selling.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I remember looking up the trial records for this when
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I first watched the episode because I just couldn't believe
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: they were just so brazen. I thought, wait, she killed
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: someone else first. Tell the listener the actual truth about
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Bertha because the audacity of this change really blew my mind.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: In reality, Bertha Manchester was not a wealthy, abusive dowager
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: rubbing elbows with the Fall River elite.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Not at all.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: She was a 22-year-old woman. She lived on a modest
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: farm out on the outskirts of the city, far removed
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: from the Borden residents and their social circles. And while
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: it is true that she was tragically and brutally killed
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: with an axe, the timing is the critical factor here.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: It did not happen in June of 1892 as a
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: prequel to the Borden murders.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: You know, not even close.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Bertha Manchester was murdered in June of 1893. That is
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: almost a full calendar year after the Borden murders took place.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Hang on. Let's just make sure the listener is tracking
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the sheer scale of this manipulation. You might be thinking, OK,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: they shifted a timeline for pacing. No. Where was the
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: real Lizzie Borden in June of 1893 when the real
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Bertha Manchester was being hacked to death with an axe?
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Lizzie Borden was sitting in a jail cell in Taunton, Massachusetts.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: She was incarcerated under constant guard just days away from
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: standing trial for the murders of her parents. She physically, undeniably,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: could not have committed the murder of Bertha Manchester.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: My mind is reeling at the ethics of this writing room.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: They took the single most important piece of real-world evidence
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: that historically pointed to Lizzie's innocence, and they actively rewrote
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: it to make her look more guilty.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If you look at the mechanics of the actual
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: 1893 trial, the Bertha Manchester murder was a godsend for
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Lizzie's defense team. The defense attorneys could stand in front
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: of that jury, a jury of men already hesitant to
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: convict a woman, and say, look at the facts. Our
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: client is locked behind iron bars. under constant surveillance, and yet,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: while she is locked away, another innocent woman in our
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: very community has just been brutally hacked to death with
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: an axe in the exact same manner. Wow. Clearly, definitively,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: there is a madman loose in Fall River, a copycat,
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: or the original killer, and you are holding the wrong person.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: And the jury bought it. The jurors and the public
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: absolutely noted the terrifying similarities between the two cases. Historians
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: widely believe that this ongoing conspiracy palpable threat in the community,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the idea that the real killer was still out there
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: swinging an axe, heavily contributed to the reasonable doubt that
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: led to Lizzie Borden's eventual acquittal.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: It is a monumental historical shift. If we connect this
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: to the bigger picture, by turning Bertha Manchester from an
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: exculpatory victim into a fictionalized practice kill, the show completely
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: erases the very evidence that helped save Lizzie's life in reality.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: It's not just tweaking history to make the story flow better.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: It's aggressively rewriting the historical record to ensure the audience
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: is locked into viewing Lizzie not as a potentially wrongfully
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: accused woman, but as a cold-blooded, calculating serial killer who
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: practices slaughter on innocent people.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It really demonstrates a total, uncompromising commitment to the monster
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: thesis of the show's title. The algorithm dictated that Lizzie
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: must be a monster. And if the goal is to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: portray her as a monster, then any exculpatory historical facts,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: like a separate axe murderer, operating while she's literally in
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a jail cell, are highly inconvenient truths.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: They get away.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly. They muddy the narrative waters, they introduce doubt, and
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: modern true crime algorithms hate doubt. So the writers simply
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: inverted the timeline, changed the victim's age, class, and personality,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: and weaponized an innocent 22-year-old woman's tragic death to serve
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: as a stepping stone in Lizzie's villain origin story.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: And this manipulation of historical fact isn't just limited to
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: the victims or the timeline of the violence. It extends
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: deeply into how the show constructs Lizzie's interpersonal relationships and
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: the supposed criminal network she built around herself. Yes.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Let's pivot to the people she supposedly surrounded herself with.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: The CBR article highlights how the show invents entirely fabricated companions, lovers,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and coaches for Lizzie. We already touched on Bridget the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: maid being a co-conspirator, but let's go deeper into the
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: psychology they invent there. The show depicts a gradually building
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: relationship intensely romantic relationship between Lizzie and Bridget.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: The dynamic they build on screen is one of profound
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: emotional and physical intimacy that seamlessly transitions into a deadly conspiracy.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: The show heavily suggests that their romantic attachment, their shared
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: marginalization in that oppressive household, is the glue that binds
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: them together.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Like a trauma bond.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It frames the murders almost as a twisted act
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: of romantic devotion and liberation. But if you look at
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: the historical record, there is absolutely no evidence that Lizzie
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Borden was a lesbian. And there is even less evidence
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: to suggest she had any romantic attachment whatsoever to Bridget Sullivan.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: The only real documented connection they had on August 4th, 1892,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: is that Bridget was the only other person in the
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: house at the reported time of the murders, which naturally
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: led to immense historical speculation. If Lizzie did it, how
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: did Bridget not hear it? Was she paid off? Was
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: she helping? But transforming that geographical coincidence into a passionate,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: romantic conspiracy, that's entirely the show's invention.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: It highlights a core truth about the true crime genre.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: It absolutely abhors a vacuum. Where history leaves emotional or
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: sexual blanks, modern narratives rush in to fill them with
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: whatever themes are currently resonating with audiences. Now, to be
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: fair to the lore, years after Lizzie's acquittal and her
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: father's death, She inherited a massive fortune.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Right. She became very wealthy. Yes.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: She moved to a wealthy neighborhood in Fall River, and
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: she lived a very unconventional life for a single woman
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: of means. Rumors did eventually emerge speculating about her sexuality,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: particularly concerning her very close relationship with a prominent stage
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: actress named Nance O'Neill.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Ah, yes. Nance O'Neill, who is played in the series
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: by Jessica Barton. And the show doesn't wait for the
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: post-trial years to introduce her. They bring her in very
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: early on. Yeah. In the narrative they've constructed, Bridget actually
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: brings Lizzie to the theater and Lizzie becomes instantly obsessively
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: fascinated by Nance. But Nance is portrayed as awful to Bridget.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, she's terrible to her.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she insults her. She's condescending. She makes demanding diva-like
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: requests during a tense dinner at the Borden house. And
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: it creates this intense jealousy and alienation in the love triangle.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: And the culmination of this completely fabricated pre-trial relationship happens
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: in episode seven, which is titled The Trial of the Century.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: The show portrays Nance O'Neill acting as a sort of
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Victorian media consultant. She is shown actively coaching Lizzie on
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: her wardrobe, her demeanor, and how to present herself to
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: the jury to manipulate their sympathies and secure an acquittal.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Which, again, for you listening who might be taking notes.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: We have to pull the emergency brake because absolutely none
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: of that happened. None of it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: The reality is that Lizzie Borden and the stage star
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Nance O'Neill did indeed meet, and they did become very
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: close friends. Their bond was tight enough to incite massive
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: gossip in high society about the nature of their relationship. But,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: and this is a structurally massive, but they did not
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: meet until 1904.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: 1904.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. That is more than a decade after Lizzie was
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: acquitted of the murders.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We have to ask ourselves,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: why does a writer do this? What does it mean
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: for the story being told on our screens? Well, it
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: fundamentally changes the archetype of Lizzie Borden. Historically, she's remembered
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: as a deeply solitary, enigmatic, almost impenetrable figure. She stood
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: trial and error.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Well, it fundamentally changes the archetype of Lizzie Borden. Historically,
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: she's remembered as a deeply solitary, enigmatic, almost impenetrable figure.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: She stood trial alone. She faced the scrutiny of the
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: world alone. But by placing Bridget as an active romantic
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: accomplice leading up to the murders and by placing Nance
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: O'Neill as a pretrial coach manipulating her public image, the
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: show transforms Lizzie's entire characterization.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Right. She's not alone anymore.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She is no longer an isolated, potentially abused Victorian
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: woman lashing out in a moment of solitary madness. She
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: is the mastermind at the center of a bustling, manipulative,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: highly orchestrated criminal conspiracy.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: It makes for incredibly juicy television. I mean, you have
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a love triangle, a jealous maid, a glamorous actress coaching
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: a murderer on how to cry on the stand. It's
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a soap opera wrapped in a true crime aesthetic. But
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: it's pure fiction wearing the skin of history. And speaking
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: of fiction wearing the skin of history, we cannot finish
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: this deep dive without talking about the most bizarre, jarring
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: metanarrative choice in the entire series. Yeah. I'm talking about
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the inclusion of a completely different, entirely unrelated serial killer.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yes. The show takes a massive meta swing by bringing
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: in Eileen Wuornos, portrayed by Sarah Paulson, who is, of course,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: a longtime collaborator of Ryan Murphy's.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Now, we all know Wuornos' profile as the infamous highway
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: killer of the early 90s. We know her tragic background,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: the abuse she suffered. and how she shot and killed
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: seven men in Florida. But she lived a full century
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: after Lizzie Borden. So how on earth does this show
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: justify smashing these two timelines together?
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: The series creates this incredibly strange supernatural bridge. It depicts
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: Aileen Wuornos in the late 20th century expressing a deep,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: obsessive fascination with Lizzie Borden. In the show's logic, Wuornos
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: deeply empathizes with Lizzie. She views Lizzie as a kindred spirit,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: a fellow victim of intense patriarchal abuse, who is finally
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: forced to violently kill her Eclipsers to survive.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It's a bit of a stretch.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: The show goes so far as to have Wuornos speak
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: directly to Lizzie's ghost in these stylized sequences. It even
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: shows Wuornos physically visiting the boarding house after it has
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: been transformed into a macabre bed and breakfast.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Which is just factually, timeline-wise, impossible.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Right. Completely impossible. Let's look at the reality. There is
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: zero historical evidence that Aileen Wuornos had any connection to
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: or even a passing fascination with, the Lizzie Borden case. Furthermore,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: the timeline makes the show's physical depiction impossible. The Borden
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: house only opened as a tourist bed and breakfast in 1996.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, so 96.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Right, and by 1996, Aileen Wuornos was already incarcerated on
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: death row in Florida. She physically couldn't have visited the
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: gift shop.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting to me, looking at
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it from a critical media perspective. The show brings in
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Aileen Wuornos to draw this heavy-handed, neon-lit thematic parallel about
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: abused women finally snapping under the weight of patriarchal violence.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: It's the writers trying to say, look at Lizzie, look
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: at Aileen. They're two sides of the same historical coin.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: They're both monsters created by monstrous men. But the massive,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: glaring irony, the absolute elephant in the room, is that
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the show had to invent 90% of Lizzie's villain arc
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: and her specific abuse narrative to make that comparison work
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: in the first place.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's a narrative araboros.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Right. They had to invent the stepmother killing the doves.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: They had to invent the practice murder of Bertha Manchester.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: They had to invent the romantic conspiracies. All of it
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: just to justify this ghostly philosophical conversation with a 1990s
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: highway killer.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: They create a completely fictional version of Lizzie Borden to
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: validate a fictional interaction with Aileen Wuornos, which in turn
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: is meant to validate the fictional theme of the entire season.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: It's a fascinating, if somewhat exhausting, look at how modern
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: creators use historical trauma simply as raw clay. They mold
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: it to sculpt contemporary social commentary, regardless of what the
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: actual facts dictate.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Which finally brings us to the actual murders themselves. The
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: brutal climax of the real world history in the show.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: The morning of August 4th, 1892. After all the buildup,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the poisoned oysters, the practice kills, how does the series
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: handle the main event?
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: The series does what television loves to do. It takes
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: a definitive stance on an event that history has left
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: frustratingly unresolved. It portrays the actual axe murders as an
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: absolute certainty. In the show's climax, Lizzie definitively, brutally murders
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Abby Borden in the guest room after a heated confrontation.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: And then later that same morning, Andrew is killed by
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: both Lizzie and Bridget, who then actively, calmly take coordinated
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: steps to conceal their involvement before calling for help.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: It leaves zero room for doubt. The x-ray shows the
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: clean break. It is a closed case on screen. But
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the reality of that morning is a chaotic, contradictory mess.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: In reality, the timeline is one of the very few
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: things forensic historians actually agree on. Based on stomach contents
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: and body temperature, Abby Borden was killed first, sometime between
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: 9 a.m. and 10.30 a.m. Andrew Borden came home later
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: and was killed at approximately 11 a.m. while napping on
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the sofa. We know for a fact that both Lizzie
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: and Bridget were at home on the property during this
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: entire prolonged window. But their accounts of where they were
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: in the house, Lizzie claimed she was in the barn
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: eating pears, Bridget claimed she was resting in her third
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: floor room, and what they were doing were wildly inconsistent.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: And because of those inconsistencies, the prosecution argued they must
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: be guilty. The logic being, if they were innocent, it
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: means a random axe murderer broke in, casually stalked upstairs,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: brutally killed the stepmother, waited around in the house for
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: over an hour and a half without making a sound,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and then killed the father. all while the daughter and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the maid were just hanging out on the property and
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: didn't notice a single thing.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Which is incredibly hard to believe, but that is the
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: bizarre reality the jury had to wrestle with. And we
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: have to talk about why they ultimately acquitted her. The
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: actual 1893 trial was a circus of incompetence. The police
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: investigation was completely botched from the moment they arrived.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: They didn't even secure the scene, did they?
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: No. They didn't stir the crime scene. They let neighbors
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: and doctors trample all through the house. Modern forensics, like fingerprinting,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: were essentially non-existent. They didn't properly test the hatchet heads
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: they found in the basement.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't just forensic failure that saved her. It
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: was sociology.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The acquittal was heavily, perhaps primarily, influenced by the
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: deep-seated sexism and classism of the Victorian era. You have
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: an all-male jury. These men operated under the strict cultural
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: assumption of the angel in the house. The idea that
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: upper class white Victorian women were biologically fragile, morally pure,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: and physically incapable of extreme violence.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: So they just couldn't picture it.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Right. The prosecution was asking these men to believe that
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: a Sunday school teacher, a prominent member of their own
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: social class, took a hatchet and swung it with enough
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: force to shatter her father's skull multiple times and then
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: calmly cleaned herself up.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: They literally couldn't conceive of it. It caused massive cognitive dissonance.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: You might read the transcripts today and think her guilt
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: is obvious, but those jurors looked at her corset, her
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: social standing, and her gender, and their brains just short-circuited.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: So she was acquitted on June 20, 1893. And as
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the CBR article points out so well, despite all the books,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: all the true crime discussions, and all the Ryan Murphy
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Netflix shows, only Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan ever truly
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: knew what happened in that house that morning.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: But whichever story is true, Monster, the Lizzie Borden story
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't care about the ambiguity. It doesn't want you to wonder.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: It wants to give you the monster that history denied you.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And I think that is why it is so vitally
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: important for you, the listener, to consume these true crime
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: adaptations with a highly critical eye. We live in an
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: era where shows like Monster are brilliantly produced. The lighting
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: is incredible, the acting is top tier, and they are
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: wildly entertaining. But they value thematic cohesion over historical reality.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: They want to give us clear villains, understandable motives, and
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: satisfying narrative connections. They want the algorithm to output a
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: perfect story. But real life, real history, is chaotic, messy,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: and often deeply unresolved.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy have created a truly captivating
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: piece of television. They've woven a gothic thriller out of
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: the frayed threads of a historical tragedy. But we must
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: always remember that it is an illusion. The axes with names,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: the poisoned oysters, the ghostly visitations from future serial killers.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: These are the modern myths we project onto the past
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: to make sense of the senseless.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: And it leaves me with one lingering, highly provocative thought
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: for you to mull over as we wrap this up.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: We spent this whole time unpacking how the show fabricated
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the birth of Manchester murder to make Lizzie look like
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: a calculated monster. But let's look at the real history
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: for just one second. Let's assume the all-male jury was right. Okay.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: If Lizzie truly was innocent and she was sitting in
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: a jail cell in June of 1893... And Bertha Manchester,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: a 22-year-old woman, was brutally hacked to death with an
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: axe on a nearby farm in the exact same manner
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: as the Bordens who did it. Who's the real axe
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: murderer stalking the outskirts of Fall River?
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate blind spot of our cultural obsession.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly. If we spend all our time, all our television budgets,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and all our cultural bandwidth mythologizing Lizzie Borden as this definitive,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: unquestionable monster, are we letting a real, completely unknown serial
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: killer slip forever to the cracks of history?
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: That is a chilling thought to end on.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: It really is. Thank you for bringing these incredible sources
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: to the table and joining us for this deep dive.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep questioning what you watch.