Aileen Wuornos and Lizzie Borden’s made-up connection explained after Netflix’s Monster

Everyone is really confused about why Aileen Wuornos is in Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, so here’s their connection explained. 

Ryan Murphy’s latest Monster series is about the 19th-century woman who was accused and acquitted of killing her father and stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts, yet serial killer Aileen Wuornos makes an appearance, even though she was born over 100 years later. 

Wuornos murdered seven men between 1989 and 1990 while doing street prostitution along Florida highways and was executed in 2002. But was she actually obsessed with Lizzie Borden in real life? 

Credit: Netflix

Aileen Wuornos and Lizzie Borden’s connection explained

The only connection between Aileen Wuornos and Lizzie Borden is that they were both female killers, or an accused and acquitted killer in Borden’s case. Wuornos wasn’t obsessed with Borden and never visited her home in real life. The Borden house only actually became a B&B in 1996, years after Wuornos was arrested.

She was included in the show to compare female violence in the 19th century vs the 20th century. In 1892, people couldn’t believe that Borden could be capable of killing her father and stepmother, yet just 100 years later, Wuornos was convicted of murder and sentenced to death without a care. 

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Aileen was also included to explore female rage. Monster follows a fictional theory where Borden killed Andrew and Abby because she was so sick of the way they treated her. It then shows Wuornos killing her male clients because of the way they treated her as a prostitute, so both killings come from rage.

Credit: Netflix

Legally, Borden didn’t actually commit the crimes, and we don’t know why Wuornos killed seven men, but Ryan Murphy’s aim with Monster has always been the same: explore a motive for the crimes and determine if that person really is a monster. Including both stories helps to do just that. 

Ella Beatty, who plays Lizzie, told Tudum: “The show is exploring a legacy of female rage and reaction to the set of circumstances that they are presented with. I think there’s a connection [between Borden and Wuornos] that Ryan and Ian were interested in mapping and exploring.

“Every season of Monster has been an exercise in understanding the person’s psychology. Are they born or are they made? I knew from the beginning that Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were really interested in exploring what brings a woman to the point of violence.”

Brennan similarly added to The Hollywood Reporter: “It very quickly became that the story we were telling was about female rage,” he explained. “Then we were able to develop this triptych of Elizabeth Bathory, Aileen Wuornos and Lizzie Borden, which kept the show from seeming like a stuffy, diorama piece by going through these time periods of women who were each aware of the next. To have those three stories talk to one another made it feel much more contemporary and of the moment.”

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