The real Bridget Sullivan Lizzie Borden connection is far more complicated than Netflix lets on, and a lot less intimate. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story puts Bridget Sullivan at the centre of its drama, but the historical record tells a quieter, more ambiguous tale of a maid who witnessed something terrible, spoke plainly at trial, and then got on with her life.
Who is Bridget Sullivan in Monster?
In the Netflix series, Bridget Sullivan (known to the Bordens as Maggie) is played by Vicky Krieps, whose previous credits include Phantom Thread, Corsage and Old. The show depicts her arriving as the family’s new maid in episode one, after yet another servant has been dismissed. On screen she is outspoken and self-possessed, growing close to Lizzie and taking on something of a mentor role: pushing her to read female writers, encouraging her independence, and eventually becoming intimate with her.
The series also depicts Andrew Borden paying Bridget for sex. Neither relationship (the romantic one with Lizzie nor the transactional one with her employer) has any basis in the historical record.
Bridget Sullivan Lizzie Borden: What the Evidence Actually Shows
According to Biography.com, Bridget Sullivan came to the United States around 1886, arriving first in Newport, Rhode Island, before eventually taking up work as a housemaid for the Borden family in Fall River, Massachusetts. The Bordens had a habit of calling their maids “Maggie” (the name a previous servant had used) regardless of their actual name, a detail the Netflix series folds into its first episode.
When Sullivan took the stand during the 1893 trial, she testified on 7 June 1893 that she was 26 years old, unmarried, and had been employed by the family for two years and nine months at the time of Andrew and Abby Borden’s deaths. She spoke plainly: no blood on Lizzie, no weapon in sight, no intruder observed. Her account of the moment she learned of Andrew Borden’s death has stayed in the historical record ever since. According to her testimony, Lizzie called out: ‘Maggie, come down! Come down quick; Father’s dead; somebody came in and killed him.’ Bridget went downstairs, raised the alarm, fetched the doctor and alerted the neighbours.
The prosecution at the 1893 trial was led by District Attorney Hosea Knowlton, with William H. Moody as co-counsel. Lizzie Borden faced charges of killing both her father and stepmother, each struck multiple times with an axe. At the time of the murders, only Lizzie and Bridget were believed to be inside the house. Despite that, and despite Bridget’s testimony placing her firmly at the scene, Lizzie was acquitted.
There is no historical evidence of a close personal relationship between Bridget and Lizzie beyond that of employer and employee. Bridget had worked for the family for the best part of three years before the murders, and nothing in the trial record or in subsequent historical accounts suggests anything beyond a working arrangement. After the verdict, rather than return to serve Lizzie and her sister Emma, Bridget left for the West Coast, settled there, and built a life of her own.
Drama Versus the Record
Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Netflix anthology has previously focused on Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is the first in the series to centre on a woman accused of murder. Like the earlier editions, it takes a dramatised approach: events are reconstructed, relationships are imagined, and motivations are filled in where the archive goes quiet.
That is a legitimate creative choice, but it is worth knowing where the licence kicks in. The Bridget Sullivan of the Netflix drama (intimate with Lizzie, entangled with Andrew) is largely a fictional construct. The real Bridget Sullivan was a young Irish woman who worked for a difficult family, found herself at the centre of one of the most discussed murder cases in American history, gave her testimony, and walked away.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is streaming on Netflix now.