Her bloody life, whether exaggerated or factual, had come to an end -- and Bathory entered the realm of legend. For more information on crime and serial killers , follow the links below. Sign up for our Newsletter!
Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Prev NEXT. History vs. Was a Hungarian countess the world's most prolific serial killer? Courtesy Dennis Bathroy-Kitsz. Gilbert, et al. Fall Moore, Matthew. October 25, December 9, November 23, HTMl "Elizabeth Bathory. Doricza was a strong girl and did not die in the beating. It was getting late into the night when Elizabeth tired of beating the girl and had one of female servants finally stab Doricza to death with a pair of scissors.
As the party burst into the courtyard they immediately came upon the bloody, battered, and still warm body of the murdered girl. A search of the premises revealed the body of two more brutally murdered girls in the manor house. Reportedly, a further search of the castle on the hill revealed numerous decaying bodies hidden at the bottom of the tower, which Reverend Janos had earlier refused to bury.
As was Elizabeth, who believed she was beyond the reach of the law. Aside from their reputation, much was at stake for the family if Elizabeth ended up being convicted for murder or witchcraft—which the rumors of the blood bathing suggested.
If she was executed, the crown debt would be cancelled instead of being paid out to her surviving family members. The news of Elizabeth arrest and charges did not become widely known. All the court officials and jury members owed their allegiance to Prince Thurzo. While the countess was locked away back in Cachtice, four of her servants were questioned at Bytca, including a session under torture to clear away any loose ends. Using the methodology developed by the Inquisition, which is said to be the first in history to use relational databases in investigative procedure, the same questions were put separately to each prisoner, and then their answers carefully cross-indexed and compared.
The four servants were put on trial three days later, on January 2 , Their testimony was entered as evidence against Elizabeth. According to the defendants, the Countess tortured her female servants for the slightest mistake. With her own hands, she tore apart the mouth of one servant girl who had made an error while sewing.
Everyday, young servant girls, who had committed some infraction, would be assembled in the basement of the castle for brutal torture. Elizabeth delighted in the torture of the young women and never missed a session. The Countess stuck needles into the girls; she pinched the girls in the face and in other places, and pierced them under their fingernails.
Then she dragged the tortured girls naked out into the snow and had the old women pour cold water over them. She helped them with that until the water froze on the victim, who then died as a result… Her Ladyship beat the girls and murdered them in such a way that her clothes were drenched in blood.
She often had to change her shirt…she also had the bloodied stone pavement washed… She had the girls undress stark naked, thrown to the ground, and she began to beat them so hard that one could scoop up the blood from their beds by the handfuls… It also happened that she bit out individual pieces of flesh from the girls with her teeth.
She also attacked the girls with knives, and she hit and tortured them generally in many ways…her Ladyship singed the private parts of a girl with a burning candle. The girls would be beaten so long that the soles of their feet and the surfaces of their hands bristled.
They were beaten so long that each one, without interruption, suffered over five hundred blows from the women accomplices. It happened that the noses and lips of the girls were burned with a flat-iron by her Ladyship herself or by the old women.
The countess also stuck her own fingers into the mouths of the girls and ripped their mouths and tortured them in this way. This is typical of sadistic female serial killers today who target victims for sexual motive; they are almost always accompanied by a male partner—usually dominant—which the female serial killer partner mimics. She collapsed into unconsciousness. It is unclear exactly why she took this path but possibly because her reputation had spread by word-of-mouth among the peasants and few dared to come into her domestic service.
Indeed her last victims were girls recruited from the distant Croatia where nobody had heard of Elizabeth. But even this theory is cloudy as there was testimony stating that the servants sometimes washed, groomed and tutored peasant girls to behave as noble ladies when presented to the Countess. That of course led to speculation that she believed only the blood of noble girls would serve the purpose of restoring her skin.
Only problem with that theory is that the bathing in blood story does not appear in any of the affidavits or in the testimony at the trial. It might be entirely the stuff of peasant folklore picked up a hundred years later and reproduced in pamphlets and books dealing with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth became brazen and careless towards the end of her killing career. While staying in Vienna, she ordered a renowned choir singer from the Church of Holy Mary, Ilona Harczy, to perform privately for her at her apartments in the city on Augustinian Street.
The girl was never seen again and witnesses claimed Elizabeth killed her when she could not sing for her either out of fright or shyness. As common practice in those days, the trial lasted only for a day. At the end of the trial two female servants were sentenced to have their fingers torn away with hot pincers before being thrown alive into a fire. The male servant, because his youth was to sentenced to decapitation and his body also thrown on the fire. The fourth defendant was acquitted and vanished from the record.
Unlike the January 3 rd lower court trial, the records of which were kept in Hungarian, the high court trial was transcribed in Latin.
Thus the testimony of Zusanna might have been entirely contrived for that purpose. The high court held:. At the very entrance to the manor house they came upon things pertinent to this case. There was a certain virgin named Doricza who had been miserably extirpated by pain and torture, two other girls were found murdered in similar agonizing ways with that very manor house in the town of Cachtice, which was under the control of the widow Nadasdy. Later victims The Countess is also said to have begun killing daughters of the lesser gentry, who were sent to her castle by their parents to learn etiquette.
Crimes The crimes she was accused of included severe beatings, burning, mutilation of hands, biting the flesh off of faces, arms and other body parts, freezing them, and starving them to death. Other witnesses also said she used needles to torture her victims.
Crimes Still others added that she burned the girls with hot tongs and then placed them in freezing cold water. Crimes Some were also reportedly covered in honey and live ants. Blood thirsty The Countess is perhaps most famous in popular culture for allegedly drinking the blood of her victims. Blood thirsty The legends also claim that she bathed in the blood of their young victims in an attempt to preserve her youth. Confinement The Countess was reportedly locked in a set of rooms, with only small slits left open for ventilation and the passing of food.
She remained there until she died three years later on August 21, She was a powerful and competent woman who ruled her estate efficiently, suggesting there were political reasons for taking her out of the picture.
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