Elizabeth Bathory

A Hungarian countess (1560-1614) known for her beauty and her cold-blooded sadism. In 1611, she was accused of the torture and murder of over 600 young women, most of them the adolescent daughters of Slovak peasants; as long as her victims were not her fellow Hungarians, she could do as she pleased.
It was when she had exhausted the local population of peasant girls and began preying on the daughters of lesser nobles and the gentry that the authorities intervened.

According to legends added over 110 years after her death, she was said to have bathed and even drank the blood of her victims to gain their youth, beauty, and vitality.

In a case that is over 400 years old, fact and legend are difficult to separate, but Elizabeth Bathory was clearly among them most prolific serial killers of history.

An intelligent, accomplished woman, she belonged to a powerful, wealthy family and was educated beyond even her male peers. She could speak, read and write in Hungarian, German, Latin, and Greek while most of the nobles around her could barely read or write.

She and her husband had three sons and three daughters and she doted on them all... when she wasn't torturing pretty maidens behind their backs, especially the buxom ones because they supposedly lasted longer.

Very likely a psychopath, she allegedly bedded many men and women throughout her adult life (and gave birth to an illegitimate daughter through a peasant boy some months before she married). Never once did she show remorse or accept responsibility for her crimes.

by Lorelili March 9, 2010

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