She's said to have believed the blood of virgin girls would maintain her youthful-looking skin. Bathory's life has been the subject of films, books and online websites -- and is thought by some to have influenced Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" -- but seems to have been forgotten west of Vienna. Highborn and unaccountable, she was the absolute ruler of a patch of what is now Slovakia, and with the help of three of her servants sadistically tortured to death between and girls.
We'll never know the exact number. Beyond Prague -- 8 undiscovered European cities. Missing daughters. She was married to a nobleman, Ferenc Nadasdy, a Hungarian national hero of the wars against the Turks.
Although there were reported killings before his death in , afterward she seems to have become totally unhinged. She settled in Cachtice and more and more girls started disappearing from the surrounding villages. It was said she eventually ran low of girls to satiate her habit and she began to lure victims of higher born families, who began to notice their missing daughters.
By , rumors of her horrible deeds had reached the Hungarian king, who sent his second in command, Palatine Georgy Thurzo, to investigate. In December , Bathory was arrested along with three of her servants, who were tortured and burned at the stake.
She wasn't put on trial but walled-in at Cachtice Castle, where she died on August 21, Castle restoration. Cachtice today is a well-off village with large houses sporting high hedges, satellite dishes and top-end SUVs parked in the driveways.
We could be anywhere in Central Europe but for a large, wooden statue of Elizabeth Bathory in the main square. A sign points us to the castle, which stands 2. It's a pleasant minute walk up the narrow stony path under oak, beech and chestnut trees, through mulberry bushes and wild strawberries. The castle is a ruin, but pictured alone against a blue sky, looks majestic and aloof.
It reopened in June after a much needed two-year restoration. One tower collapsed in the s leaving only two towers standing: an eastern defensive tower with a chapel and a south-facing residential tower where Countess Bathory died. And she was a widow, no less.
I'll tell you, lots of people identify with Bathory as a strong woman who was simply betrayed and conspired against. I've read her letters, and she was a very intelligent woman who often bullied men who tried to threaten her. There were plenty of people with reasons to frame her. It's very possible she was tough and possibly cruel, but essentially innocent. This is the room Bathory was alleged bricked up in. You can see there is actually a bricked up doorway here, although Tony believes this was probably didn't happen.
So what happened to her after the trial? Well, you just couldn't put someone who was second only to the royal family on public trial. So instead her closest servants were put in the dock. And the evidence was read out and they were condemned and executed. Then Bathory was imprisoned in her castle. She probably wasn't walled up in her tower, which some people claim, but she was imprisoned in the castle for the last years of her life. She died a few years later, at the age of Do you think she was guilty?
What's frustrating is that there's no absolute evidence that she committed these crimes. The claim she was bathing in the blood of virgins only appeared in the records years after her death, and that was from a Catholic priest who revived the story to discredit her.
There were no personal letters written between aristocrats talking about her. They all talk about each other, but not her! The more I look into it, the more uncertain it all seems. In your mind, what's the most compelling evidence of her guilt? The one thing that raises doubts for me is if they wanted to frame her, why did they choose mass murder?
That's the key question. Why not frame her for witchcraft? That was a far more common accusation in those days. Were serial killers, as a concept, as understood back then? Yes, but we use completely different language. We use forensic language and police terms. In those days they would've called her a she-demon. The idea of murder and cruelty was an everyday fact for them. People were killing each other in taverns with swords, there were mutilated soldiers wandering starving all over the country side.
It was a goddamn horror show, but accusing a woman of sadistic murder was still quite unusual. There are old ladies selling Bathory-themed merch on the road up. Two of the women and the male servant were sentenced to death, which was quickly carried out. The fourth was spared immediate execution; what happened to her afterward is unknown. Another woman, who'd supposedly used magic to aid Bathory, was also soon killed.
As a member of a powerful family, Bathory was not put on trial. As she was not convicted of a crime, Bathory's holdings passed to family members instead of being seized. The evidence against Bathory has flaws: Of witness accounts, more than offered either hearsay or no information whatsoever.
The testimony that Bathory had listed victims was a secondhand accounting of what a court official had discovered — yet the official who'd supposedly seen this information didn't testify. And the fact that Bathory's servants were tortured makes their confessions unreliable. Why might Bathory have been subject to outside machinations? Imprisonment allowed family members to take control of the powerful widow's possessions her sons-in-law knew beforehand that her arrest was coming.
The Habsburg court owed her money they didn't want to pay. However, it's unlikely Bathory was completely innocent. In a priest wrote a letter that discussed the excessive cruelty exhibited by Bathory and her husband towards their servants.
The testimony against Bathory could have included true tales about how harshly she acted with lower classes.
Such acts weren't illegal at the time — Bathory was only punished because her victims were said to have included noblewomen — but would still make Bathory responsible for many ruined lives. She was initially buried in the crypt on her estate, but her body was likely moved afterward. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.
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