Everything We Know About Cora's Past Before The Sinner Murder

Like many psychological thrillers before it, USA's new series The Sinner is more about why someone commits a murder than the murder itself. After all, Big Little Lies spent seven full episodes setting up the characters involved in its murder mystery, and just a few moments on the death itself. This time, the newbie limited series revolves around Cora Tannetti (Jessica Biel) — a woman so seemingly "normal" everyone around her can't stop using the word —  who kills a man named Frankie Belmont (Eric Todd) in broad daylight during a beach trip with her picture-perfect family.

Immediately, no one can understand why this "normal" wife, mother, and pillar of the community would murder a complete stranger. Of course, the answer is locked away in some past experience of Cora's, as multiple flashbacks lead us to believe. So far, we've seen moments throughout Cora's life, from her brutal childhood to the second she met her now-husband Mason Tannetti (Christopher Abbott). All of these scenes are dripping with a foreboding sense of dread.

Considering just how heavily the past apparently plays into Cora's murder of Frankie, we decided to put together the definitive list of everything we know about Cora's life before that bloody day at the beach. Scroll through the gallery to make a little more sense out of The Sinner.