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WWII’s French Serial Killer Doctor and Other Forgotten Monsters From History

Khalid Elhassan January 27, 2020 32 min

19. Getting Started as a Murderess

A likeness of Elizabeth Bathory, created from her historical description. Wikimedia

After things settled down following the tempest with her fiancée and the castration of the lover who had gotten her pregnant, Elizabeth Bathory gave birth to a daughter, who was quietly hidden. She wed her betrothed in 1575, but kept cuckolding him throughout their married life – a task made easier by his frequent and prolonged absences on military campaigns.

Somewhere along the line, Bathory developed a taste for sadism, and sometime around 1585, she began torturing and killing young girls. She started off with servants at her castle, then began murdering serf girls from surrounding peasant villages. Eventually, even the daughters of local gentry, sent to her castle by their families to receive an aristocratic education and learn courtly manners, were added to her murder menu.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.