If you've spent the last few nights watching Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, you're in good company. The latest season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's anthology series went straight to #1 on Netflix. More than 130 years later, America is asking about the Bordens of Second Street again.

That's good news for anyone who loves history. The series doesn't present itself as a documentary. Netflix describes it as a reimagining of the 1892 murders, a psychological story of "sex, power, and revenge." To tell that story in eight episodes, the series invents, compresses and reimagines a good deal: and that's what good historical drama does.

However: for viewers wondering "wait, did that really happen?", consider:  Lizzie Borden & the Family Curse by Sam Baltrusis.

It's complicated, and more sympathetic than you might expect. Tension between the Borden sisters and their stepmother was real. Lizzie called Abby "Mrs. Borden," not "Mother;” and Emma admitted she disliked Abby even more than Lizzie did. Much of the resentment was about money (isn’t it always?). Andrew put property in Abby's name and let her half-sister live there rent-free.

But the person who saw the household most closely—Bridegt Sullivan, the family’s maid— told a gentler story.Sullivan testified under oath that, “everything was pleasant. Lizzie and her mother always spoke to each other." Sam admits that pop culture's picture of Abby as the villain shaped his own view at first. After many visits to the house, he came to see her very differently.

The idea has become a popular interpretation, and the 2018 film Lizzie imagined it too. As titillating as it may be, there's no historical evidence of a romantic connection between Lizzie and Bridget; it's a creative choice, not part of the documented record.

However, what the record does show is still intriguing. Late in life, Bridget told a childhood friend she had "helped Lizzie out at the trial" and hadn't told everything she knew. She never explained what she meant, leaving just enough room to let fictions like this run wild with probable cause. 

In short? No. In the series, the two women kill their neighbor (Bertha) with a hatchet, but the real case went very differently. Twenty-two-year-old Bertha Manchester was killed with an axe at her family's Fall River farm on May 30, 1893, less than a week before Lizzie's trial began. 

In reality, Lizzie was in jail in Taunto, awaiting trial at the time. The Manchester house was in a remote location and local authorities arrested José Corrêa de Mello, a 19-year-old farmhand who said Bertha's father owed him wages. He was sentenced to life in prison and deported to Portugal in 1914. Historian William D. Spencer tells the full story in The Other Fall River Tragedy. The hatchet he used was the only commonality between the murders, but certainly an enticing one to add to the folklore. 

The real twist? Bertha's murder actually hurt the prosecution's case against Lizzie. Prosecutors argued that the number of blows pointed to a woman and that such a daylight killing must have been committed by an insider. So when a man killed Bertha in broad daylight, struck her more than twenty times, and got away unseen, Lizzie's attorney asked reporters, "Well, are they going to say that Lizzie did this also?"

There's no evidence that she did. What she did do quietly is arguably more telling. In 1913, she helped two local women buy a barn for abused horses. That effort became the Animal Rescue League of Fall River, which still operates at that address today. Lizzie left the League $30,000 in her will, and Emma left another $20,000.

The actress was real. She and Lizzie became close around 1904, and Lizzie hosted parties at Maplecroft for Nance and her theater friends. Newspapers hinted at more than friendship, and the timing lines up with Emma's sudden move out of Maplecroft in 1905. As Bill Pavao, a former curator of the Borden house, tells Sam, "We don't have any real evidence regarding Lizzie's orientation." Some historians point to other reasons for the sisters' split, including a chauffeur Lizzie rehired after Emma fired him.

The show brings in Wuornos, played by Sarah Paulson, but skips one of the most surprising facts. Aileen Wuornos and Lizzie Borden were distant cousins. Both descend from a family line that goes back to colonial Rhode Island, and Sam traces it in detail in the book (read an excerpt).

Period dramas always make small changes, and these are fun to spot:

• Pears, not cherries. The Bordens had pear trees in the yard. Lizzie said she was eating pears in the barn loft that morning, and Uncle John Morse picked pears before he came inside.

• Pigeons, not doves. Lizzie kept pigeons in the barn. Andrew killed them a few months before the murders. According to Lizzie's own inquest testimony, he wrung their necks instead of using a hatchet, as later retellings claim.

• Not forty whacks. Abby was struck nineteen times and Andrew about ten or eleven. The schoolyard rhyme exaggerated from the start.

A newspaper hoax that helped Lizzie. On October 10, 1892, the Boston Globe ran a sensational front-page "exclusive" claiming Lizzie was pregnant and had a secret lover. None of it was true. A self-styled detective sold it for $500. The Globe retracted it the next day, and the scandal left many readers sympathetic to Lizzie–the detective met a rather unfortunate end after fleeing to Canada. Maybe don’t try and walk in front of a train while fleeing your notoriety? 

An injury seven weeks before the murders. In June 1892, a dumbwaiter full of dishes slipped at Lizzie's church and crashed onto her wrists and forearms. People there feared both arms were broken. She came away with severe bruises, but it raises a question few people ask: how strong were her arms on August 4?

The weapon that was never found. The famous handleless hatchet, now held by the Fall River Historical Society, had no human blood on it. The medical examiner reported traces of gilt metal in one of Abby's wounds, which suggested a brand-new hatchet. The cellar hatchet was old and dull. The indictment itself said the weapon was unknown. Months later, a gilt-flecked hatchet was reportedly found on a neighbor's barn roof behind the Borden house.

A tragedy next door. In 1848, in the house next door, Lizzie's great-aunt Eliza Darling Borden drowned two of her young children in the cellar cistern and then took her own life. The tragedy came up at Lizzie's trial when "inherited madness" was raised. The building is now Miss Lizzie's Coffee.

A ghost's testimony in 1673. The family story goes back much further than 1892. Rebecca Cornell was found burned to death in her Rhode Island home, and her son Thomas was hanged for her murder. The case rested partly on her brother's claim that her ghost had appeared to him, saying, "See how I was burnt with fire." Thomas's widow gave birth soon after and named the baby Innocent. Lizzie Borden and Aileen Wuornos both descend from Innocent Cornell, and according to the book, so does Marilyn Monroe.

Another murder in the family tree. In 1832, mill worker Sarah Maria Cornell, another Cornell descendant, was found hanging on a farm in what is now Fall River. In her trunk was a note: "If I am missing, enquire of the Rev. E.K. Avery." The minister was tried and acquitted after his defense attacked her reputation.

Two sisters, nine days apart. Lizzie and Emma never reconciled after 1905. Lizzie died on June 1, 1927, and Emma died nine days later. They're buried together in the family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery.