8. The Real-Life Monster Behind a Fairy Tale One
Giles de Rais’ modus operandi was to lure children from peasant or lower class families to his castle with gifts, such as candies, toys, or clothes. He would initially put them at their ease, feed and pamper them, then lead them to a bedroom where he and his accomplices would seize their victims. As he confessed in his subsequent trial, de Rais got a sadistic kick out of watching their fear when he explained what was in store. What was in store was none too good.
Suffice it to say that it involved torture and sodomy, and ended with the child’s murder, usually via decapitation. The victims and their clothes would then be burned in the fireplace, and their ashes dumped in a moat. After de Rais confessed, he and he and his accomplices were condemned to death. The rich aristocrat and discredited hero was executed on October 26th, 1440, when he was burned and hanged, simultaneously. His infamy inspired the fairy tale of Bluebeard, about a wealthy serial-wife killer.
