If your timeline has been full of corsets, hatchets and Vicky Krieps lately, you’re not imagining it. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth season of Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology on Netflix, tells the story of Lizzie Borden, the woman accused of killing her father and stepmother with an axe in 1892. It’s the first time the series has put a woman at its centre, and Murphy has given her a love interest: the family’s Irish maid, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan.
So were Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan really together? And was Lizzie Borden gay? Here’s what the history actually says, what Monster made up, and the glamorous actress who may be the more interesting part of Lizzie’s love life. Light spoilers ahead.
Who was Lizzie Borden?
Lizzie Borden was a 32-year-old woman living with her wealthy, famously tight-fisted father Andrew, her stepmother Abby and her older sister Emma in Fall River, Massachusetts. On the morning of 4 August 1892, Andrew and Abby were found hacked to death inside the family home on Second Street.
Lizzie was arrested, put on trial in New Bedford the following summer, and acquitted by an all-male jury on 20 June 1893. Nobody else was ever charged, and the murders are still officially unsolved. That didn’t stop a schoolyard skipping rhyme turning her into a legend, with the number of axe blows wildly exaggerated.
After the trial, Lizzie and Emma moved to a grand house on the posher side of town, which Lizzie named Maplecroft. She started calling herself Lizbeth, was largely shunned by Fall River society, and lived there until her death in 1927.
Who was Bridget Sullivan?
Bridget Sullivan was an Irish immigrant who arrived in America around 1886 and worked as the Bordens’ live-in maid and cook. She was about 25 when the murders happened. The Borden sisters called her “Maggie”, which was the name of the maid before her. Not exactly a sign of a close bond.
On the day of the murders, Bridget had been washing the windows in the heat before going up to her attic room for a rest. She came back down when Lizzie shouted up to her that her father was dead. She and Lizzie were the only two people known to be at the house that morning, which is why Bridget has been at the centre of theories about the case ever since.
She became a key witness at the trial, and her testimony didn’t do Lizzie any harm. Afterwards she left Fall River, eventually settled in Montana, married, and died in Anaconda in 1948.
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What happens between Lizzie and Bridget in Monster?
In the series, Ella Beatty’s Lizzie is a repressed daughter trapped in a cruel household, and Vicky Krieps plays Bridget as her rebellious, free-spirited opposite. The two fall into a secret affair, and the show goes further, with Bridget encouraging Lizzie towards the murders. Their relationship is basically the engine of the whole season.
Were Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan really together?
Short answer: there’s no evidence they were. Nothing in the trial records or the newspaper coverage of the time suggests a romance between the two women, and nobody floated it as a motive.
The idea comes from fiction. Evan Hunter (better known as crime writer Ed McBain) imagined the affair in his 1984 novel Lizzie, where Andrew finding out about it is what sets everything off. The 2018 film Lizzie, starring Chloë Sevigny as Lizzie and Kristen Stewart as Bridget, ran with the same idea, and Monster is the latest to pick it up.
There have been other rumours about Bridget over the years. In her 1967 book A Private Disgrace, Victoria Lincoln passed on a claim from a friend of Bridget’s that she had helped Lizzie out at the trial and kept some of what she knew to herself. There are also old stories about hush money and a deathbed confession, but none of it has ever been backed up. And there’s no record of the two women staying in touch after Bridget left town.
So was Lizzie Borden gay?
The honest answer is we don’t know. Lizzie never married, left no diaries or love letters, and lived in an era when women’s relationships with each other were rarely written down, let alone labelled. But if you’re looking for a sapphic thread in her story, you’ll find a much stronger one about a decade after the trial.
Who was Nance O’Neil?
Nance O’Neil was a stage actress, born Gertrude Lamson in 1874, who was one of the big tragic leading ladies of her day. In 1904, Lizzie saw her perform in Boston and reportedly sent a note backstage asking to meet. Nance said yes, and the two became inseparable for a while.
There were parties at Maplecroft with Nance and her theatre crowd, and Lizzie is said to have helped her out financially with her debts. Then in 1905, Emma suddenly moved out of the house for good. Nobody knows exactly why, but the papers at the time were quick to point at Nance. By around 1906 the friendship had cooled.
Nance was rumoured to have had relationships with other women, and several historians have wondered whether she and Lizzie were lovers. Intense, long-term partnerships between women, known as Boston marriages, weren’t unusual in New England at the time either. Still, neither woman ever confirmed anything, so this one stays in the maybe pile too.
Jessica Barden plays Nance in Monster, though the show has her coaching Lizzie before the trial. That couldn’t have happened, as the two only met 11 years later.
The queer reading of Lizzie Borden isn’t new, and it comes with a tired trope attached: the murderous lesbian. The more interesting version is less about whodunnit and more about a woman who never quite fitted the life she was handed.
Where to watch Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
All eight episodes of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story landed on Netflix on 17 September 2026. Alongside Ella Beatty and Vicky Krieps, the cast includes Rebecca Hall as Abby Borden, Charlie Hunnam as Andrew Borden, Billie Lourd as Emma Borden, Jessica Barden as Nance O’Neil, Joey Pollari and Sarah Paulson.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Trailer
Just go in knowing it’s a lot more fan fiction than history.
Nonchalant x
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This article was written by one of our creative team writers here at Nonchalant Magazine.
