Countess Elizabeth Bathory is famous for how she tortured and killed for pleasure, and it's been said that she bathed in and drank the blood of young virgin girls because she believed it would help her stay young. The Blood Countess of Hungary is said to have killed over 600 girls, and she even holds the Guinness World Record for the most prolific female serial killer of all time.
Who was Elizabeth Bathory? Did Elizabeth Bathory really bathe in blood? What did the Blood Countess do to her victims?
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Countess Elizabeth Bathory is famous for how she tortured and killed for pleasure, and it's been said that she bathed in and drank the blood of young virgin girls because she believed it would help her stay young. The Blood Countess of Hungary is said to have killed over 600 girls, and she even holds the Guinness World Record for the most prolific female serial killer of all time.
Who was Elizabeth Bathory? Did Elizabeth Bathory really bathe in blood? What did the Blood Countess do to her victims?
Twitter/ Facebook: @macabrepedia
Insta: @macabrepediapod
Email us at: macabrepediapod@gmail.com
macabrepedia deals with dark subject matter and may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Marissa:December 26 1609 King Matthias orders count Georgie Thirza to make his way to shake your castle. Count Thursday sets out on the road to the castle following his kings orders. He didn't really know what to expect, but he did know that the woman who lived in this castle was already famous in the area for torturing and killing servant girls, and many had gone missing. But the count was there because some nobles had recently reported that their daughters had also gone missing, and as nobles had money and power that was cause for concern. The Countess of Shatila Castle had promised to help them advance in society by teaching them how to behave. But then there were never seen again. A local pastor had reported that there were a large number of girls, mostly aged 10 to 14, dying and needing to be buried. Many of them had strange injuries, and often they were the same ones. So it's very odd. An investigation was ordered to determine just exactly what was happening to these young noble girls, and to stop the culprit. When counts Thursday arrived at the castle he met death and torture on a scale that he never would have imagined. And after he finally found the Countess of the castle upstairs, involved in both an orgy and a torture session, he took custody of her along with her friends, the Countess Elizabeth batteries, decades long hobby of torturing and killing within finally stopped. And a legend was born that has lasted for centuries, a terrifying tale of what can happen when someone has money, power, a touch of madness, and too much time on their hands. Join us as we add another entry into this our copper pedia.
Matthew:Welcome to macabrepedia, a marriage of true crime and the truly bizarre we are your hosts, Matthew and Marissa and today we will be discussing Elizabeth Bathory.
Marissa:Yeah, so today we've got a bit more of a popular a more popular topic than we normally discuss. So Elizabeth batteries pretty famous.
Matthew:Hopefully no one's heard it though. Or at least they're just they want to hear it again. I'm sure they've heard it. I've heard it. Well. I am sure of some of the some of the people who we have as listeners. Probably not that familiar with it.
Marissa:Maybe all I know is I know the story and I've known it for years. But not everybody knows.
Matthew:weird ass frickin McCobb stuff.
Marissa:This is true. All right, so we've got the years 1560 And a place we're in Hungary.
Matthew:I do also want to I like that you put your birthday in my name in the opening.
Marissa:Mathias. A daughter is born 1562 Baron George Bathory. And the bareness Anna Bathory. Elizabeth was born into this Hungarian family. It was immense privilege that she was born into. Her family was powerful. They were wealthy, they were very influential. Basically, she was fine. She was born into into wealth. And she knew the finer things in life with this. Elizabeth tall to read and write Hungarian, Greek and Latin. And she was very well educated. When she was a child. She had servants around her to tend to her every need, and she got whatever she wanted, maybe good in some ways, but because of this, she learned to see servants as just tools to get what she wanted. Not as actual real people. This kind of started early with her outlook on this. They were just in her life to bring her what she wanted him to do what she ordered them to do, because in her upbringing, she was superior to them. She felt like she was better than all of the servants. Even very young, she just seemed very indifferent to them. She did not care if they felt pain or anything like that. It was not rare for such families to turn to inbreeding at the time to keep like the power within the family. And that's also the case here with Elizabeth's family. So the batteries did this. They had married their cousins for years and so their bloodline was kept pure, quote pure, right. It's a quote quote, but we know now of course, that inbreeding is very bad it can lead to all kinds of health problems. For instance, like the German Austrian Habsburg family, they produce some inbred monarchs. Most famously King Charles the second of Spain is a little bit off topic but they had a lot of health issues like the Habsburg jaw was believed to be strong and jawline them so strong Yeah, so strong though that the lower jaw would protrude and the teeth would not meet up so they couldn't chew. Like a lot of issues like that. He also suffered from epilepsy Charles a second dead.
Matthew:Oh, yeah, well That just means you got to eat more, eat more money. Exactly.
Marissa:Obviously epilepsy does not come from inbreeding. But that is one reason. It's it pops up. Yes, in breeding with the familiar familiar part of your family can help that family maintain power, as it did with the batteries and some, you know, monarchs, but it can also have some serious consequences. And it can amplify traits that otherwise would not have been passed on. Not very good traits. So in this instance, Elizabeth was known to suffer from epileptic seizures herself when she was very young, as I mentioned, it can be the result of inbreeding. She was also sometimes known to fly into a rage, and nobody could talk her down from it. This is her as a young girl. I mean, obviously, some young girls. Exactly right. You can go off on being a bitch. Oh, you know, when a kid goes off on its little tantrum. So she went off on a tantrum happens, right? It was notable for how bad it was, like it's actually written down. So she had more than one family member also who had psychotic behavior. And so one of her aunts was famous in her own right for just how cruel she was. Her uncle was a murderer, he was very out of touch with reality, he didn't seem to really know what was happening. She all she didn't have any like, normal, or great role models at this time is basically the point was you're trying to be a murderer. So as we know, people throughout history also like to watch executions. We've seen a few of those here. It was the entertainment of the time, they didn't get to go to a movie, they went to execution. And Elizabeth was able to watch these as a child. So she would see these public executions. And she also might have even seen some torture carried out by her parents officials, where they were when she was a kid. So these are the things that she learned early on, and kind of stuck with her.
Matthew:And this is a story of redemption. And her becoming a charitable and pious person who did a lot for her community and
Marissa:probably wouldn't have made it to macabrepedia. If that was the case. We'll see. Maybe we'll see y'all. Let's keep let's keep going. So she was growing up. Elizabeth was noted for how beautiful she was. She was really pretty. She had long black hair. Her eyes are said to be just really big, dark eyes, you could really fall into them. And she had a pale complexion. At age 14, she became pregnant by a peasant boy that she had been hanging out with and obviously sexually experimenting with. She was forced to give up this baby after she gave birth, which was then raised as a peasant child. So that's another thing here that could lead into what she eventually does. It probably had a huge impact. I mean, probably no, probably there. It definitely hadn't. She was 14 years old, she had a baby, she gave it out. Right? She thought of herself as superior to peasants. And yet, here she is, she lost her virginity to one, she had a child by one and that child was going to be raised as one that's got to mess with their head a bit here. Then not long after this, she got married. Elizabeth was married in 1575, to a guy named count fairing tenacity. He was actually 25 years old at the time. They had been engaged for about four years at this point since Elizabeth was 11. But they did not wait until after this baby was born.
Matthew:What was his name? Count? What? ferric nasty, fair, nasty. Yeah. Sounds. He's important. I would Yeah, I would imagine her husband,
Marissa:Elizabeth. She married him. And then she left the only life that she had ever known. You know, and even with all of the things that she seen all of the inbreeding and the traits in her family, she still had a pretty stable childhood with her family growing up and her parents, but then she left
Matthew:stable. What do you mean? He just said that she like watched people get tortured and watched executions and stuff and then was pregnant at 14. What is your what is your benchmark of stable?
Marissa:Yeah, well, she still had her parents though. Okay. I mean, I'm not saying it was perfect. But compared to where she goes, it's a big difference. They go out, they move away to Castle Sardar, it's a place that's deep in the mountains of Transylvania, and here, she becomes mistress of this estate. She's pretty young here. She's moved away from her family. She's just with her husband, so And though she did love and respect him, she really was not that impressed with him initially, intellectually, just because she, you know, could speak and write three different languages. He was
Matthew:illiterate. Oh, really? Yeah. Illiterate count.
Marissa:Well, I mean, I read that his mother's actually the one who arranged this marriage to try to get like the name of batteries. Their family was not near nearly as as well off as the batteries. You can still learn how to read but he did not at the time. He was a soldier though she, you know, she was a little not too happy to begin with. It was kind of a gloomy castle. It was just way off from anyone that she knew. Eventually, she learned to respect him so it was more athletic. Of course he was a soul He was illiterate, but he he he was good at a lot of things still, she got bored. She was living in this castle off on her own, didn't know anyone except her husband. But then she and Frank kind of got closer here. And eventually they actually started getting along fairly well, which makes me wonder they probably were like maybe arranged marriage didn't know each other that well to begin with. But anyway, he was a soldier. He knew what do you mean?
Matthew:You said she, it was an arranged marriage,
Marissa:it was I know. But like, a lot of times, they didn't know each other. 11 years
Matthew:old, she's out betting and peasant boys, of course, didn't know each other.
Marissa:They they may have just moved there without knowing each other at all it took a while is what I'm saying to get to where they connected, but they did connect. So here we are. And they really started getting along fairly well,
Matthew:because they loved killing people.
Marissa:You're not wrong. So Ferran was a soldier. And he had a lot of experience. He had a lot of Shut up, he had a lot of experience with this. And so he shared this with Elizabeth. Because of this, he learned about torture methods. While he was out on campaign, he told Elizabeth about some of these, this is the first time she really starts to get into this. He spent a lot of time here trying to design better ways of trying to make his enemies suffer. This was his hobby. And he shared it with Elizabeth. He designed, he actually designed tools himself to torture people to increase the pain. That's what he did
Matthew:without the ability to write it. So he just found pictures of he might have just drawn and just draw pictures of things that hurt.
Marissa:So ferric and Elizabeth, they bonded over this, and they started experimenting on their servants. For science. They knew they were safe doing this, because nobody would question them. You know, they're nobility. They're powerful. Nobody cares about the servants from the last point in you. Yeah, they're deep in the mountains. They know that nothing's going to happen to them. The first person that they're said to have tested these methods on was just a random servant girl who was at their castle, they covered her and honey, and then made her lay outside for days, which attracted insects to the honey and her flesh.
Matthew:And it's very much like the boat torture. Yeah.
Marissa:So this is there, which is first foray into it.
Matthew:Which is a callback to the episode where we also talked about the Elizabeth Bathory for the first time.
Marissa:Yes, we did. We said that'd be an episode on
Matthew:its promise delivering boom in spades.
Marissa:As I said, apparently, 20 times I want you said he was a soldier, soldier. Yeah. So because of this, he frequently left for months on end on campaign. And while he was a soldier, yep. And while he was gone, Elizabeth soldier stuff. Elizabeth missed him. Because of course she did. You know, that was her husband. She grew pretty bored. He was gone. So she took lovers.
Matthew:Yeah, she missed him. So she started fucking everyone.
Marissa:Yeah, that seems to be what happened here. Even one of them. She actually left with this guy. He was a no woman. He was younger, no woman. And was he a soldier, though? Yeah, I don't know. Actually, let's just say no, because he was actually there. It did not take long before she actually crawled back to fairing. And she just begged for his forgiveness. Maybe because he didn't this guy did not share the same interests as Elizabeth. Maybe he did forgive her. But he also demanded that she give him a son and an heir. And he also at the same time informed her that his mother would be also moving in the castle to keep an eye on her. Yeah, well,
Matthew:yeah, you got did you go? Do you move the in laws and keep an eye on her like that?
Marissa:Yeah. So Elizabeth and ferric did have children. They had three daughters that his son in the next decade, so that it for living children in the next decade. She was known to be actually quite a good mother. She was very indulgent and attentive to her children. And her mother in law did move in to keep an eye on her. Elizabeth just kind of kept her own sadistic practices private. She kind of like kept them behind doors if the mother in law couldn't see them. So it wasn't out in the open, but she still did them. Remember the aunt that I mentioned, she was famous for her cruelty. Mm hmm. So Elizabeth really looked up to her and she was actually really intrigued by her aunt, because her aunt approved what she was doing the torture.
Matthew:Did you have any good role models? She did not. She had a very supportive aunt. She
Marissa:did not a good role model. But her her aunt was bisexual and she claimed to be a witch. And all of this really intrigued Elizabeth. So she had an unrelated she had a friend who was a dwarf manservant, his name was fixed. So she also had a friend who was a peasant who claimed to be a witch and her own childhood nurse. So these people made friends Great. Clops now just a normal childhood nurse. These were her friend group in the area and in the castle, and they all enjoyed being servants with whips until they screamed in pain and torturing them. So this was what her friends and her did. They would also burn servants with hot irons. If, for instance, the servant did not iron the laundry properly, stuff like that, and they would sometimes torture Serving girls by making them strip naked and go outside and this is Transylvania in the winter. Very cold. So then they would make them go outside naked and then they would pour buckets of cold water onto them. Obviously some of these girls died of hypothermia, because that is very bad. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:Well, you gotta either certain steps you take for these witchcraft rituals? Yeah.
Marissa:Yeah. Oh, she was very into this. So another story of torture is a young girl who was named Pola polish is 12 years old. She works for the batteries at the castle, or Elizabeth Bathory. She actually managed to escape. But then she was caught and she was brought back very bad news for Pola was the dog one. No bathroom was enraged that she had escaped. So she took Pola she put her in a very small cage is basically just big enough for her to stand up. She couldn't sit down or, or move at all. The cage then was lifted into the air, it had metal spikes that were jutting out from both sides. And so her brand thick, so actually swung it back and forth, so that the girl kept hitting the sides of the cage. And eventually, she was just cut up and pierced and she died from this torture.
Matthew:Yeah, this was this. Was this one of their inventions? I don't know if it was there and mentioned that the counts was one of his drawings. Mm hmm.
Marissa:I don't know. You said a dog when I don't have that one. Did you wanna talk about that? No, I
Matthew:don't know enough about this as you're sorry.
Marissa:I just I don't know what dog one.
Matthew:I'm pretty sure that she staked people in in the yard. Like four posts kind of stake in them at the hands and hands and feet, like on ropes. And then what have dogs bite them. It's also a scene from one of the mark Markita sods stories also.
Marissa:I mean, that sounds about right. But yeah, I would not
Matthew:be surprised at the ins and outs of that. I just had to believe that that one is true. I would not
Marissa:be surprised if she did. I mean, there's some pretty pretty dark shit here. She wrote actually, to her husband, often though, she told him about everything that she was getting up to. And so we have some of this, these letters. And that's how we know some of this. We have some of these letters. Can you read them some of these letters, we as in humanity, leftover history, okay. So you are collecting some stuff. Now, that would be cool. But they're probably way too pricey at our price range. But anyway, these these were very dark deeds that she was doing. She was learning them from her friends and doing them with her friends. Then in 1604, Count Ferrick, her husband, he was wounded and that became infected.
Matthew:And when he was wounded, probably doing soldier stuff.
Marissa:He was definitely doing soldier stuff. Yeah. But unfortunately, he died shortly afterward.
Matthew:Was it unfortunate though?
Marissa:He was unfortunate. Was it though? A little bit? Yeah, I don't think it got worse after he died. Yeah. So anyway, he was known to the country of Hungary as a national hero. When he died, he was actually known as the Black hero of Hungary. But then after he died, Elizabeth, she became a widow of the war hero. And she inherited everything. And some people this might be some console constellation. She was incredibly wealthy. And the first thing that she did, though, with her newfound power was to banish her mother in law from the castle.
Matthew:No need for her. Yeah, exactly. I
Marissa:mean, the mother in law left she actually took the kids with her. Probably a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. So the kids are gone with her mother in law. But because the mother in law and the kids are gone, Elizabeth is now pretty much unchecked. As I said she was a good mother. But now they're not even there for her to focus on and the mother in law has gone to keep an eye on her her husband's gone. She's got nobody to keep a check on her now. Just her and her little circle of friends. And they all like this stuff. She moves she goes into her book becomes her favorite residents. She moves into Castle cactus, which is near the river van in northern Hungary. Here, she actually meets a woman named Anna de Rula, who also seems to share this taste and torture now I don't know how it was. The bathroom keeps meeting these people who are all about torture, but she does. I don't
Matthew:think it's that unusual at the time. I mean, one you have unchecked wealth and power. And people are, you know, they're there. I mean, I hate to say they're like, animals to you. You know, it's just it's pulling off. It's pulling wings off of flies as a as a psychopath except you're doing it to people because it's no different to you. I don't I don't think it's that I don't think it's that uncommon for rich people to do torturous shit.
Marissa:Now, perhaps not. But it just it seems like everybody that she meets here at this point, they just they all are all about this torture life. Nobody is trying to derail her in this quest to be shitty, right? She meets this woman Anna Darvill. They become best friends and then they actually become lovers. And as perhaps the person who introduced Elizabeth to satanic rites at this point, which adds another level to Elizabeth Bathory. She was very interested in this. At this point, Elizabeth is in her 40s She starts To become a bit obsessed with her own fading beauty at this point very important.
Matthew:Yeah, this is this. That's very important, right? The most most recognizable part of her story.
Marissa:Sure, yes, she has all of this wealth and power, but the one thing she cannot control is time. And so here we go. She started to spend hours in front of the mirror, critiquing her own appearance up close. We all do those, you know, I look at those pores and wrinkles. Oh,
Matthew:we don't do that. Yeah, we don't all do that. Wow. revealing a bit about yourself because
Marissa:I think a lot of women do that. A lot of men too, I'm sure I'm sure a lot of a lot of people
Matthew:do that. We don't all do it. perfectly comfortable in my my unbelievable handsomeness.
Marissa:Well, I'm comfortable. It's funny. You are handsome.
Matthew:laughing at the fact that the mice, assuming that my high self esteem, he called me ugly. I did not call you ugly or leaving leaving it. He called me ugly.
Marissa:So she starts to spend hours in front of the mirror, critiquing her own appearance. Up close, she becomes pretty obsessed with the lines that are deepening there. She sees these pores. Everything's there. It's just getting older. It's getting just ring clear. And Ma. She doesn't like it. She's only 40 Just under 40. I know. I know that. No, no, no, no. But I as you age, things change falling apart. And now but as you age, things change, you start to see that. So that's what she's doing. She just becomes obsessed. Like, if you're not obsessed, you wouldn't notice it as much. But she really just she she focuses on this really hard. So what does she do about it? One day, as she's thinking about this, she's considering her own disappearing youth. She's mourning it. One of her maid servants is brushing Elizabeth's hair. Elizabeth had a reputation. So the circuit was probably stressed about this. She was just trying not to upset her. She did not want to be one of the ones who were tortured. But she pulled on Elizabeth hair just a little bit too much. And Elizabeth lashes out at the servant and blood from the servant drops onto Elizabeth's hand. A few days later, Elizabeth notices the spot on her hand where the blood had dropped. And the color and the tone of the skin seems to be improved from what it used to be. So she becomes excited here thinking this is this is the solution. This is what she needs. This is her fountain of youth. She's found it right she needs young virgin blood. Elizabeth and her friends comb the countryside near the castle for young peasant girls, and they offer them jobs as servants at the castle. few questions were asked I mean, come on, you get offered a position as a servant at the castle as a peasant at the time, it's gonna be pretty appealing, right? You're just gonna, you're just going to leave it go? Yes, absolutely. So these girls leave their homes, they see it as a great opportunity to go and work. They are offered these positions and they're quickly carted off to the castle where they're taken to a small home near the castle. And then through a series of underground caves, which lead to a secret passageway that came out in the castles, dungeons here, the young girls would be killed. Many candidates say that bath three would bathe in the blood of these girls, once they were killed longing for it to make her appear younger. So this is the whole idea behind all of this. She would also drink the blood, because she believed that it would restore her youth but also helped cure her epilepsy.
Matthew:I mean, everything is everything. Curiously.
Marissa:These girls went missing and were never seen again by their families and loved ones. But people did not really care because they were peasants. So the people who cared were just peasants, the people who had the power. Don't care about the peasants at this point, right?
Matthew:Yeah, and the peasants never that much of a voice. It's not like they can really do much about it.
Marissa:They don't have power. And Elizabeth knows this. So she threw caution to the wind. And she did what she wanted here. And she would sometimes bite these girls, one tortured young woman had her breasts cut off and then was forced to cook and prepare it before also being forced to eat it. Yeah, Elizabeth as
Matthew:a missed story in the cannibalism episode.
Marissa:Truth. Elizabeth would also bite the faces of these women sometimes. Just a lot of things here.
Matthew:What is it? What is it about Transylvanian and be in vampires?
Marissa:Then okay, so later in 1609 Elizabeth's lover we talked about her Anna Darvill, she dies. So this is the second close lover that Elizabeth had who dies. And after this Elizabeth just she did not really care as much about keeping her DS under wraps. You know, she's lost. These people should just whatever.
Matthew:I mean, the longer you get away with something, then the more
Marissa:and more blatant you're going to start to
Matthew:starts to start slipping, right covering your tracks.
Marissa:And she found a new assistant named module Rova, who was more than happy to help her out with this. And at this point, she started to think, you know, this peasant blood doesn't seem to be working as well. It's not making me feel or
Matthew:appear that much younger start building up an immune immunity to
Marissa:what's not having the desired effect. So she started thinking, maybe I need a better blood. Exactly. And for her, yeah, for her, that means a more superior blood, a noble blood. So this is when Elizabeth and her friends start targeting the daughters of noble families. Most of these were in some kind of financial difficulty. They were not like the upper crust, but they were still noble Bathory declared here that she was going to be starting an academy for young noble ladies. She's going to teach them what they needed to know,
Matthew:giving back to the community. Exactly. Finally changed your ways. Yeah,
Marissa:she's gonna teach them etiquette. Very important for them to know if they wanted to get a good marriage match. So this is what she promises to the community. Send me your children Bathory declared. If you send them to me, I will teach them and they will get good marriages and that will be good for everybody.
Matthew:They never I mean, Elizabeth Bathory never remarried, right? No. I mean, she got Okay. Pregnant at 14 Arranged marriage, I'm going to teach you how to, to land at a good man. Based on what your track record ain't really much to talk about.
Marissa:Well, that doesn't mean they know this, you know, they see this Countess who's willing to help them, you know, up or up, go up in society? And they say okay, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Take my daughter teach her. She's gonna need this, right. As I said, as I said, these nobles, often were in financial difficulties, maybe they did not have the money to send their daughters to learn etiquette at a real finishing school, right or to have a tutor come in and pay them. These noble families were really excited about this. It did not take much to convince them. Their daughters would be learning etiquette from a countess. And she said there were 25 spots available. And applications are not lacking. Plenty of people wanted to send their daughters here. Many people brought their daughters straight to the gates of the castle and their carriages, dropped them off. Here you go, Elizabeth. They didn't know obviously, but looking back on us like oh, well, you just lambs to the slaughter here. And most of the girls who came here were between the ages of 10 and 14. So pre pubescent young, nobody,
Matthew:nobody some time period. I mean, you're not going to do much older than that. It's a waste of your time. I mean, if you were going to an actual finishing school, yeah. Look, I mean, you're not going to train an 18 year old now. Because she's already four years past, past her marriage, marriage prime
Marissa:Well, and that's what bathroom wanted. She wants young virgin girls. Yeah, at this time, she was getting very brazen with her deeds. She was not really making an effort to hide them. So she, she takes these kids in, but she's not making a huge effort to hide what she's doing. So many bodies start turning up to be buried, a local pastor started noticing marks on their bodies. And he refused to bury any more girls because they were so many of these girls coming in. And they all had these marks on their bodies, and they're all young. It's really weird. So he stops burying them. And then another pastor actually goes and asks, Bathory how these girls died? And she says, do we know what's coming from the cast? They do? Yeah. I know, what's their excuse? Do not ask me how they died. just bury them. Do what you're told. Exactly. This is just her her attitude, right? She just just just do it. You're just a peasant, just just do it. So. And then at one point, a man snuck into the castle to try to find his love who had gone missing. And he saw what was happening in there. And he sneaks back out and he tells battery's cousin, Lord Palatine, who's living nearby. So when the King of Poland who was Elizabeth's uncle actually heard about what was happening with these noble girls, he could not ignore it any longer. And he ordered an investigation, Lord Palatine, who had been told about his cousin Elizabeth Teads, actually decided to lead this invasive investigation on his own. You know, it's his family. He doesn't want the battery name to be exclusively. Elizabeth, he wants to at least save some face for his family by doing it himself by trying to lead this investigation and bring her down.
Matthew:We're also I mean, you want to make sure that you know, you don't seem to turn a blind eye to it because then if it's something does come up, that it is true that that's what's happening. And then it looks like you tried to cover it up and exactly makes it so that you you were also doing it too and then all of a sudden there's a bunch of people knocking on your door. Check your day. dungeons for 14 year olds.
Marissa:So he led the raid on Castle cactus in December and they found out what was happening here at the castle not good. It's actually said that these men what when they found what they found at the castle, it was too terrible for them to write down and so that a lot of this says they just couldn't put it all on record because it was so bad. I mean, you know, that leaves a lot to the mix imagination. They did write some down of course, based upon what we do know. It says that they when they opened the doors to the castle, they found that these noble girls were laying everywhere, the dead and the dying, and some were okay and they were released, but these were the ones who were still waiting to be tortured. They hadn't gotten them yet. As the raiding party continued into the castle, they went upstairs to find Bathory. They walked in on a drunken orgy and bathrooms rooms, with a young girl being tortured there in the room with them. At this, Elizabeth Bathory and her group of friends were all arrested. Her friends were taken away and the Countess herself was held prisoner in her own castle, angry but no longer able to kill and torture. The year after the raid, she was actually put on trial for her crimes. Judge Theodosius de su lo heard all of the evidence against Elizabeth and her friends. And it took weeks to gather evidence from the survivors and the witnesses. You have to understand this was very unusual. For the time, nobility almost never went to trial. It was really rare. They were seen as above the law. In most cases, it had to be really bad for them to go to trial. And this was of course, so her crimes were so bad, they decided to do it. So it took 21 judges assisting to listen to up to 35 Witnesses every day of that trial. They asked everybody the same questions. They had more than 300 people overall who were witnesses against her. And they entered her diary into evidence. And in this diary, she had written the names of 650 women. And these we believe she killed and though they could not trace all of these names, they did stop at 80. And she was convicted of these at
Matthew:they're just like, Alright, that's enough. Good. We're good. We're good here.
Marissa:Yeah, I mean, at a certain point. So Countess Elizabeth Bathory was found guilty. But sentence was It was basically just delayed indefinitely. They didn't want to actually pass sins on her. But uh, did condemn her to be on house arrest in solitary confinement basically forever. So that was more or less just what happened to her it was not technically her sentence, but that's what she ended up having happened to her. So she was walled up in a room at our castle. She was bricked into it with only a small slot for food to be given to her. The room was surrounded with mirrors, and there was a tiny window for light to come in.
Matthew:surrounded with mirrors, watch yourself get old lady.
Marissa:Exactly. That was the idea. So Elizabeth batteries friends, so they were not nobleman, or noble women, so they were not that lucky. Nobility. walkie he was birthed into an apartment, but she was not killed. I mean, he should eventually she did. She did but okay, so nobility at the time could not legally be executed. But they get they were not nobility, as I said, so they did not get that treatment. Instead, they were sent to die. And they all died by either beheading or burning at the stake for witchcraft. So all of our friends died that way. So while Elizabeth was alive,
Matthew:they probably also had to get tried for witchcraft, too. And that generally involves some torture. Yeah.
Marissa:This is true. While Elizabeth was alive, nobody came to visit her except for the person who brought her food. So they would bring her food and they put it in this little slot in the wall. And that was it. Only person she ever got to see. Actually what read one accountant said the only thing she could hear it was just the scurrying of the rats in the castle. She died in isolation for years after she was walled up. And then she was found dead in August of 1614. She was 54. And she never showed remorse for what she did.
Matthew:To sit in there for so many years by yourself. That's pretty crazy.
Marissa:That's horrible torture, but she deserved it for sure. Elizabeth Bathory became known as Hungary's national monster, and as the blood Countess of Transylvania, lots of various things on the internet that say that she was a vampire and all that but
Matthew:you're well you know, you bathe in blood, you drink blood, you kind of feel like that kind of goes part and parcel.
Marissa:Her deeds were very dark. Looking at it as seems almost like she couldn't avoid it, her fate. She was the product of an inbred family line that had already had a history of mental illness. And she happened to meet people in her life who were interested in torturing people as much as she was and even introduced her to some of these things. She did not have great role models. She had both the building blocks and the support from her friends and her husband to make her be the person that she became. Her son did end up supporting her during the trial.
Matthew:Oh, yeah, she had kids and stuff. They ended up panning out. Well, her
Marissa:son supported her daughter's wanted nothing to do with her though. They were Yeah, completely done with our Yeah.
Matthew:Whoa, hey, Mom. Hey, thanks, grandma, for taking us out of there. Because that would have been a real awkward.
Marissa:Yeah, I mean, can you imagine what she might have done? I mean, they said she was a good mother. But you never know. There's some speculation that the stories were embellished here. Yeah, this is very true. A bathroom was politically opposed to the ruling family of the time, the Hapsburgs. She was very outspoken on her views, and they were probably exaggerated to some point. But there are so many stories surrounding Elizabeth Bathory they can't all be made up. Some of these absolutely have to have some truth in them. She suspected to have killed more than 600 young women. And she actually has the Guinness World Record for the most prolific female serial killer. She's an interesting lady. People kind of I kind of lump her in my mind with the Vlad Drakul who maybe will be another episode. Thank you
Matthew:for joining us, as always, as we explored the terrible person that was Elizabeth Bathory. Even if her even if it was 1/100 of the terrible murders that she is accused of. That would still be still pretty bad. Yeah, that would still be quite a few deaths. But
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Matthew:and if you have any questions, concerns, comments or would like to get in touch with us via email you can do so at macabrepediapod@gmail.com We Shona all in the show notes and we we do appreciate all of the feedback that we get. Let us know if there is a topic that you would like for us to cover. And as always, thank you for listening and join us next week as we add another entry into this our macabrepedia.