Monster skipped the real Lizzie Borden’s attempt to buy poison the day before the murders

Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story packs plenty of real details from Lizzie Borden’s life and infamous 1892 case into its eight episodes.

via Netflix

But, unsurprisingly, not every bizarre detail from the real case made it into the series. One of the stranger omissions involves a reported attempt to buy poison shortly before the deaths of Lizzie’s father Andrew and stepmother Abby.

According to testimony from the time, Lizzie allegedly went to a local drugstore the day before the murders and asked to buy prussic acid, a poisonous chemical also known as hydrogen cyanide.

The pharmacist’s clerk later said that Lizzie had asked for ten cents’ worth of the substance, claiming she wanted to use it on the edge of a “seal-skin cape”. The pharmacy refused to sell it without a doctor’s prescription.

via Netflix

Two other people in the shop also said they saw Lizzie there and heard the conversation about prussic acid. The detail was subsequently raised by the prosecution as potentially relevant to the case.

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During Lizzie’s 1893 trial, prosecutors tried to introduce the account of her alleged poison purchase. They argued it could form part of the evidence suggesting she had been planning to harm her parents.

The judges ultimately excluded the testimony, ruling that the attempted purchase was too remote from the axe attacks to be admitted as evidence for the jury. Lizzie was eventually acquitted of the murders.

via Netflix

Monster does play with the idea of poison earlier in the series, though. Lizzie and Bridget are shown discussing poisoning Andrew and Abby using bad oysters, before the plan fails and Lizzie moves towards using axes instead.

The show also spends time establishing the pair’s knowledge of plants and their properties, meaning the general idea of poison is already woven into its version of the story.

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Featured image via Netflix