'Monster' Season 4 to reportedly focus on Lizzie Borden
The fourth season of Netflix's biographical crime drama anthology Monster will reportedly focus on Lizzie Borden.
Variety, citing multiple anonymous sources, reported that though there's no premiere date yet for Season 3, Season 4 is already being prepared for a potential shoot this fall (September to November).
Monster co-creator Ryan Murphy and Netflix declined to comment on the matter, according to Variety.
Borden, who was born in 1860, was suspected of murdering her stepmother and father, with whom she was reported to be at odds, in 1892.
She was arrested and tried for both murders in June 1893 but was acquitted due to circumstantial evidence. People from her hometown Fall River, however, ostracized her. She continued living in the city until she died in 1927.
On Aug. 4, 1892, Borden's father, a businessman, went to work, leaving her, her stepmother, and their maid at home.
When he returned, he went for a nap on the couch. At 11:15 a.m., Lizzie, based on her testimony, said she discovered her father dead, repeatedly struck in the head with a sharp instrument.
Upstairs, her stepmother's body was found and was brutally mutilated. She was dead by an hour or so before her father.
A day before, authorities found Borden had purchased prussic acid, and a few days after the murder, she was accused of burning a dress in a stove.
The maid also became a suspect, though she left the house at night carrying an unexamined parcel.
Monster, created by Murphy and Ian Brennan, follows the lives of "monstrous figures" or killers, with each season focusing on a different one.
Season 1, which premiered in September 2022, featured Jeffrey Dahmer, who notoriously raped, murdered, and dismembered 17 men and boys—while also eating some of them—between 1978 and 1991. It became a huge hit, though it stirred controversy, especially since some family members of the victims said they were traumatized by the series anew.
Season 2, which premiered in September 2024, featured the Menendez brothers, Lyle and Erik, who in 1996 were found guilty of murdering their parents seven years before.
Season 3, rumored to be released later this year, will revolve around serial killer Ed Gein, who not only killed multiple people in the '50s but also exhumed corpses from a nearby grave and fashioned keepsakes from their bones and skin.
