A Criminal Countess
Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsend (1560 – 1614) owned vast estates in today’s Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. She also owns the Guinness Book of World Records’ record for most prolific female murderess. In a criminal spree from 1585 to 1609, she tortured and took the lives of hundreds of young women. She was probably history’s most vicious female serial killer. She was born into the Bathory family, a distinguished aristocratic lineage that ruled Transylvania as a de facto independent principality within the Kingdom of Hungary. The future countess was raised amidst wealth and privilege, received an excellent education from top notch tutors, and at age twelve, was betrothed to a prominent Hungarian aristocrat.
A year later, however, she got pregnant by a commoner. He fiancé had her lover castrated, torn to pieces, and fed to the dogs. Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter, who was quietly hidden. She wed her betrothed in 1575, but repeatedly cuckolded him throughout their married life – a task made easier by his frequent absences on military campaigns. Elizabeth developed a criminal taste for sadism, and sometime around 1585, began to torture and murder young girls. She started off with servants at her castle, then serf girls from nearby peasant villages. Eventually, her victims included the daughters of local gentry, sent to her castle by their families to receive an aristocratic education and learn courtly manners.
