Elizabeth Bathory: The Blood Countess

Serial killers have been around much longer than people think. For as long as humans have existed, there have been people with the uncontrollable desire to kill. Although they are not well known, many earlier serial killers were so brutal and vicious that they make more contemporary killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy look like saints. A majority of people have never heard of Elizabeth Bathory. She was a serial killer who lived and killed during the Middle Ages. Nicknamed the "Blood Countess," she was horribly vicious and depraved. Her crimes were like something out of a gruesome horror movie. This is the story of her life.

Erzsebet (Elizabeth) Bathory was born in 1560. She was the daughter of a soldier and the sister of a king. The Bathory family was one of the most ancient and noble families in Hungary, or at least it was until the mid 16^th century. The Bathory's royal bloodline was tainted by incest, alcoholism, murder and sadism. Elizabeth was the product of sullied genetics and a dysfunctional upbringing. She often suffered from severe headaches and seizures, a condition that was diagnosed by her irrational family as possession by demons. Like the fictional Count Dracula, Elizabeth lived at the base of the Carpathian Mountains. While she was still in her teens, various members of Elizabeth's family introduced her to devil worship and other perversions.

On May 5, 1575, Elizabeth was married to Count Ferencz Nadasdy at the age of 15. The couple moved into Csejthe Castle, which was equipped with a torture chamber. Nadasdy was an aristocratic warrior and his work often kept him away from home; at times he was absent for months. His bride had a very disturbed way of keeping herself occupied; she tortured and killed peasant girls for sport and amusement.

With the aid of her procuress, Doretta Szentes, Bathory lured peasant girls to the castle with the promise of employment. The countess had a psychotic imagination and often created horrifying ways of torturing her victims. Not one peasant who entered Bathory's castle ever escaped alive. The difference in social classes allowed Bathory to evade the law for decades. There were not many laws protecting peasants in those days and being a noblewoman, Bathory was not blamed if the disciplining of her workers grew out of control.

The exact number of victims is not known for sure, but records indicate that somewhere between 300 and 600 people lost their lives at the hands of the "Blood Countess." Her workers would strip the poor young girls as Elizabeth bit off their breasts or seared their genitals with the flame from a candle. She used irons, whips, hot pokers, pincers and needles to torture her young victims. Some were drenched in cold water and sent out into the snow to freeze. One of Bathory's favorite torture contraptions was a cage lined with sharp spikes. She would force her naked victims into the cage and jab them with a poker, forcing them against the spikes. Sometimes Bathory watched in excitement as her servants tortured the peasant girls. She often bathed in the blood of her virginal victims; she believed that doing so would preserve her youth.

Disposal of corpses was not difficult in medieval times. Some of the victims were buried, some left in the castle and some were fed to local predators. Because of who she was, Bathory had absolutely no fear of punishment in the event that the bodies were found; she had her bloodline to protect her.

Eventually, Bathory grew tired of peasant girls and made the mistake of preying on the daughters of lesser nobility. It was her new choice of victims that called attention to her and resulted in her arrest. Complaints made their way to the king, who ordered that Count Gyorgy Thurzo investigate the happenings at Bathory's castle. On December 26, 1610, he caught Elizabeth red-handed conducting a torture session.

Elizabeth's accomplices were put on trial and executed for aiding and abetting the "Blood Countess" in her heinous deeds. Elizabeth was held under house arrest while parliament created a special statute to remove her immunity from conviction. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and died approximately three and a half years later. Her story is partially potrayed in the 2006 motion picture thriller, Stay Alive.