Why Juror 13?
In June 1893, twelve men from Bristol County heard the evidence against Lizzie Borden and acquitted her. Juror 13 is the chair history left empty. It’s a place to weigh the same evidence yourself and see where you land.
Why today
Netflix released Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the fourth season of Ian Brennan’s anthology series, on 17 September 2026. It debuted at number one on Netflix’s global chart with 12.1 million views in four days. In late September 2026 the Wikipedia article on Lizzie Borden was drawing around 400,000 views a day, second only to the Featured Pictures page. People want to know what really happened. This site is our answer.
Fact, fiction and the show
The series is drama, and it fictionalises freely. Most notably it shows Lizzie and the maid Bridget Sullivan as lovers who plotted the killings, which has no basis in the historical record. Everything presented as an exhibit, a timeline moment or a quiz answer on this site comes from the trial record, contemporary reporting or published histories listed below. Where sources disagree, for example on how long the jury deliberated, we give the range.
How the jury game works
- Exhibits. Each one gives the record, a summary of what the prosecution and the defense argued (paraphrased, not quoted, unless marked), and whether the 1893 jury actually heard it.
- Your ledger. Your weightings, from −2 to +2, are averaged into an “evidence lean” from −100 to +100. It’s a mirror, not a verdict. You still decide.
- The jury room. Jurors 1 to 12 are fictional composites, farmers and tradesmen like the real panel. Each has a starting lean and cares more about some kinds of evidence than others. Your arguments nudge them, the majority pulls a little, and there’s some chance involved. Their votes are a game model, not survey data about real people.
- Profiles. Your juror type depends on your verdict, how sure you were, your ledger, and which kinds of evidence moved you most.
- Sharing. Your result is encoded in the link (for example
trial.html?r=…), so friends see the card you saw. Nothing is sent to a server, and this site has no analytics or trackers. Your record, best quiz score and suspect ranking stay in your own browser’s local storage.
A note on tone
Andrew and Abby Borden were real people who died violently, and Lizzie Borden was a real woman who was acquitted and lived the rest of her life under suspicion. The game asks you to weigh evidence, not to enjoy gore. There are no crime-scene images here, only line drawings and schematic floor plans.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Lizzie Borden”: family, timeline, trial, verdict, later life. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden
- Wikipedia, “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story”: release, viewership, accuracy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster:_The_Lizzie_Borden_Story
- Wikipedia, “Lizzie Borden House”: the house, plumbing, bed and breakfast. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden_House
- Smithsonian Magazine, “How Lizzie Borden Got Away With Murder”: jury composition, evidence, press. smithsonianmag.com
- Biography.com, the Lizzie Borden timeline, the acquittal, and Alice Russell’s testimony. timeline · acquittal · Alice Russell
- Trial testimony of Alice M. Russell (transcript excerpts). historictrialtranscripts.com
- Trial testimony of Bridget Sullivan, June 1893. crimearchives.net
- Famous Trials (Prof. Douglas O. Linder): trial account, testimony of Emma Borden and Dr. Edward S. Wood, inquest testimony. famous-trials.com
- Lizzie Borden: Warps & Wefts, on Officer Medley’s barn-loft testimony. lizziebordenwarpsandwefts.com
- The Tab, “The most jarring inconsistencies in Lizzie Borden’s actual testimony” (21 Sep 2026). thetab.com
- Yahoo/People, “What Was Lizzie Borden’s Alleged Motive?”, on the 1887 property dispute. yahoo.com
- Wikimedia pageview statistics, 25–26 September 2026. wikimedia.org
Credits
Concept, writing, code and illustrations are original to this site. Type is set in Playfair Display, Source Serif 4 and Special Elite from Google Fonts. The floor plans are simplified schematics drawn from written descriptions of the house and aren’t to scale.
This is an independent educational project with no connection to Netflix, the Lizzie Borden House, or the Fall River Historical Society. Found an error? History deserves a correction. The permanent address of this page is dailyma.de/archive/2026-09-27/about.html.