The Today's episode takes us back to the summer of 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts,

where the heat wasn't the only thing driving people mad.

Picture this, Lizzie Borden, a well-behaved church-going daughter, living in a house

divided, literally, where the staircase on one side leads to her father and stepmother's bedroom,

and the other side leads to hers.

The Bordons are an odd bunch.

They've got more money than they know what to do with,

yet they're living in a house with no indoor plumbing. Even as Andrew Borden hoards his wealth like

some kind of Victorian Scrooge, his daughters are stuck fuming over mutton stew that's been left out

for far too long. And then the unthinkable happens.

On a sweltering August morning, a brutal axe murder leaves Andrew and his wife Abby hacked

to death in their own home.

And it doesn't take long for the whispers to start.

The maids in shock, the doctor's clueless, and Lizzie, well, Lizzie's story is changing

by the minute.

So what drove the wedge deep enough to split this family?

And maybe a few skulls wide open.

Was it the resentment over their stepmother's inheritance?

A mysterious illness that may have been more arsenic than mutton?

Or something even darker lurking behind those parlor doors.

Today we're peeling back the layers of a case that's fueled speculation for more than a century,

sparking nursery rhymes and ghost stories.

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