What Did Lizzie Borden Do?
Borden was suspected but acquitted in the 1892 ax murders of her father, Andrew, and stepmother, Abby Borden. The 32-year-old lived with her dad and stepmom in Fall River, Mass., alongside her older sister, Emma, and maid, Bridget Sullivan.
The family was wealthy, but Andrew was frugal. Their home was modest, lacking indoor plumbing, and Andrew didn't allow his daughters to freely spend money. They referred to their stepmother as "Mrs. Borden" and worried that her family was interested in their father's fortune.
On the morning of August 4, 1892, Abby was cleaning in the guest room when she was attacked with a hatchet, suffering 19 blows to her back and head. A little while later, Andrew returned from a trip into town and was killed in the sitting room with 11 strikes.
Lizzie was immediately the prime suspect, especially after she was seen burning a blue dress in the days after the murders. She claimed the dress was ruined with paint, but police assumed it was blood. Plus, the crimes appeared to have been committed by someone who knew the victims and the house, and Lizzie couldn't keep her story straight about where she was when the murders occurred.
But there was some puzzling evidence that cast doubt on Lizzie's guilt, like the fact that there was hardly a speck of blood on her, despite this crime being violent and messy. The only blood found on Lizzie was a dot on an underdress, which she chalked up to being on her period. As far as the general public was concerned, she was just a nice delicate lady who could never and would never commit a gruesome crime.
Her all-male jury agreed and declared her not guilty, allowing her to freely live out the rest of her days until her death in 1927. The case was never officially solved. One of the prevailing ideas about what happened that day in 1892 is that Andrew was controlling and keeping his daughters under his thumb in a house of horrors, which is now a tourist attraction. Curious guests can even stay overnight for the full haunted experience.
Was Aileen Wuornos Executed?
As for Wuornos, there's no doubt that her home life was tumultuous. She was born in 1956 to a mother who was just 16 years old and already had a 2-year-old son. She never met her father, who was later convicted of child sexual assault and murder. Her mother abandoned her when she was 4, and she was adopted by her alcoholic grandparents.
In the 2025 documentary Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers, Wuornos says while on death row that her grandparents were gentle people who gave her a "decent, moral upbringing" without "any impurities or perversion or battery."
However, it's well reported that she was beaten and sexually abused as a child and teen, often by her grandfather. She regularly had to fend for herself in the Michigan woods, stealing and prostituting herself to survive.
Wuornos attempted suicide at least six times before she was 22. She was arrested for armed robbery, car theft, battery, forged checks and other crimes over the years, all while she tried unsuccessfully to find men to fall in love with, as she says in Aileen.
Wuornos finally did find love with a woman named Tyria Moore, who she met at a gay club in 1986. They moved in together, and Moore joined Wuornos on her crime sprees. Law enforcement saw Moore as a possible accomplice or accessory, though Moore's denied any involvement and ultimately cooperated with investigators.
Wuornos’ first victim was 51 year-old Richard Mallory, who she shot during a sexual encounter she claims became violent in November 1989. His body was found discarded by a Central Florida highway, and over the course of a year, five more middle-aged men were found in similar places, shot with the same kind of bullets and stripped of their belongings. Wuornos and Moore would then often sell the dead men’s belongings at pawn shops.
Wuornos was arrested in January 1991 on an outstanding warrant for a 1986 charge of carrying a concealed firearm. Moore was questioned by police, but she quickly agreed to record her phone calls with Wuornos to get her to confess, which she eventually did, revealing her plan to say that she had killed all the men in self-defense when they tried to rape her. In reality, she only claimed Mallory—a convicted rapist—had assaulted her. The others were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
While the media wondered if she should be considered too insane and abused to stand trial and be sentenced to death, Wuornos herself had no doubts about her fate or her mental state. After being found guilty of the first-degree murder of Richard Mallory, armed robbery with a firearm or deadly weapon, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, along with the five other murder charges she pleaded guilty to, she was given six death sentences. Wuornos demanded her own execution by lethal injection, telling the Florida Supreme Court that she should not be spared.
"I killed those men, robbed them as cold as ice," she said. "There's no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I'd kill again. I have hate crawling through my system."
She was executed via lethal injection on October 9, 2002. Before she died, Wuornos offered some baffling last words: "I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mother ship and all. I'll be back."
She did return to the spotlight when Charlize Theron won an Oscar for playing Wuornos in the 2003 movie Monster, and again when Cardi B recreated her mugshot for her 2019 single "Press."
In 2026, she's portrayed alongside Borden in the fourth season of the TV series Monster as a modern admirer of Borden. Wuornos never indicated that she was inspired by Borden's story, but Ella Beatty, who plays Lizzie, explained to Tudum that "the show is exploring a legacy of female rage" and how women like Borden and Wuornos reacted to lives they didn't ask for.
Even if we don't know exactly what Lizzie did or why or whether Wuornos had ever heard of her, both figures loom large in pop culture. They've both inspired TV shows, movies, books, and even operas and rock songs that position them as feminist anti-heroes who respond to abuse with violence of their own when they have nothing left to lose.
