5. Elizabeth Bathory Tortured and Murdered Hundreds of Young Women
Elizabeth Bathory developed a taste for sadism, and sometime around 1585, began torturing and killing young girls. She started off with servants at her castle, then serf girls from surrounding peasant villages, and eventually, the daughters of the local gentry, sent to her castle to receive an aristocratic education and learn courtly manners. Witnesses reported seeing Bathory stabbing her victims; piercing their lips with needles; burning them with red hot irons; biting their breasts and faces; and cutting them with scissors. Some of her victims were beaten to death, while others were starved.
In winter, she got a kick out of sending serving girls out in the snow, where she had water poured over them and watched them getting turned into human icicles. In summer, she would often coat her victims in honey, and watch them get tormented by ants, bees, and other insects. She bathed in her victims’ blood, and drank it, in the belief that it would preserve her youth. The exact number of Bathory’s victims is unknown, but estimates range as high as 650. Rumors eventually got out, and the authorities conducted an investigation. In 1610, Bathory and four of her accomplices were arrested. Her accomplices were tried and convicted, and three were executed. Bathory, however, never faced trial. Instead, she was quietly sent to a castle, and confined to a windowless room until her death, five years later.
