“No one really knows what happened that day,” a voice whispers at the end of the new trailer for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.

Few unsolved crimes have captured the American imagination quite like the 1892 axe murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, when Andrew’s daughter Lizzie was the prime suspect in the case.

Although Lizzie was acquitted of killing her father and stepmother in 1893, the case has inspired a famous nursery rhyme, several books and films — and now, the latest iteration of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix true-crime series Monster. The new drama, releasing September 17, will focus on how one young woman changed what the world believed a killer could be.

The installment follows Ella Beatty’s Lizzie — the first female “monster” to be the subject of the ongoing series — alongside Vicky Krieps as the maid Bridget Sullivan, Rebecca Hall as stepmother Abby Borden and Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam as Andrew Borden. The Netflix adaptation follows a frustrated young woman suffocated by the expectations of Andrew and Abby Borden — and consumed by her affair with the family’s new maid, Maggie.

Here, we breakdown what is known about Lizzie Borden.

What happened to Andrew and Abby Borden?

On the morning of August 4, 1982, Andrew Borden left his house, leaving just his wife, their maid and Lizzie at the home in Fall River, Massachusetts. When he returned, he rested on the couch for a nap, and at about 11:15 a.m., Lizzie — according to her testimony — discovered her father dead, and that he had been repeatedly struck in the head with a sharp instrument.

Upstairs, his wife’s body was found in a bloody state; examination proved that her death had happened an hour before her husband's.

It was found that Lizzie had tried to purchase a poisonous substance August 3, and a few days later she was alleged to have burned a dress in a stove.

Lizzie was arrested and tried for both murders in June 1893, but she was acquitted, though plenty of works of fiction imagine that she was the murderer.

How has Lizzie Borden’s story been adapted through the years?

The story has inspired different books and works of fiction. There was a ballet by Agnes De Mille, Fall River Legend in 1948; the 1965 opera Lizzie Borden by Jack Beeson and Kenward Elmslie; and one nursery rhyme.

It went: “Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks / And when she saw what she had done / She gave her father forty-one.”

Several books have also captured Lizzie’s story, including The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson (which includes Lizzie’s own letters), A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight by Victoria Lincoln, and The Fall River Tragedy which was published in 1893 by local reporter Edwin H. Porter.

More recently, the story of Lizzie Borden has been fictionalized on screen. Christina Ricci starred in the 2014 movie Lizzie Borden Took an Ax while Chloë Sevigny starred in the 2018 thriller Lizzie.

When does ‘Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story’ premiere?

In the trailer for Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming series, Lizzie is seen covered in blood, with splatters across her face and body.

The official logline reads: “When the repressed daughter of a wealthy New England family and her rebellious maid find themselves trapped in a house built on humiliation and cruelty, they escape into a fantasy of sex, power and revenge.

“The gruesome unsolved murders that follow don’t just shock the world — they give birth to an icon who refuses to live imprisoned in a cage, choosing instead to forge her own legend: shocking, monstrous and gloriously free.”

Murphy’s Monsters series has focused on the stories about serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein, as well as the Menendez brothers Lyle and Erik, who were convicted of murdering their parents in 1996.

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story premieres September 17 on Netflix.