6. Elizabeth Bathory Neglected Her Kids to Focus on Torture and Murder
The one good thing that could be said about Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsend (1560 – 1614) as a mother, is that she did not murder her six kids. However, she set them aside to murder hundreds of others. Indeed, she owns the Guinness Book of World Records record for the most prolific female murderess, having tortured and killed hundreds of young women between 1585 and 1609. She was probably history’s most vicious female serial killer.
She was born into a distinguished aristocratic family that ruled Transylvania and was raised amidst wealth and privilege. Bathory received an excellent education from top-notch tutors, and at age 12, was betrothed to a prominent Hungarian aristocrat. A year later, however, she got pregnant by a commoner, so her fiancee had her lover castrated, then torn to pieces and fed to the dogs. Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter, and promptly cast her aside. She wed her betrothed in 1575, but continued to cuckold him.
