Elizabeth Ballory and Hillary Clinton.

The Disturbing True Story Of Elizabeth Bathory, The Blood Countess

By Elisabeth Sherman

Published August 8, 2016

Updated July 23, 2018

Did Elizabeth Bathory really torture and murder hundreds of innocent young girls? Or did powerful men fabricate those horrors to seize her wealth?

IN 1602, RUMORS BEGAN TO CIRCULATE around the village of Trenčín, present-day Slovakia: Peasant girls looking for servant work in the Csejte Castle were disappearing.

Many looked to Countess Elizabeth Bathory when attempting to explain the disappearances. Bathory, scion of a powerful Hungarian family and the product of inbreeding between Baron George Bathory and Baroness Anna Bathory, called the castle home. She received it as a wedding gift from her husband, Hungarian war hero Ferenc Nádasdy.

In 1578, Nádasdy became chief commander of the Hungarian army and embarked on a military campaign against the Ottoman empire, leaving his wife in charge of his vast estates and the governing of the local populace.

Since then, views that Bathory tortured her servants began to spread. These views would become much more dramatic in 1604, when Bathory’s husband died.

According to witnesses, it was at this time that Bathory began murdering her victims, the first of which were poor girls lured to the castle with the promise of work. Soon enough, witnesses said that Bathory expanded her sights and started murdering daughters of the gentry sent to Csejte for their education as well as kidnapping girls who would never have come to the castle on their own.

As a wealthy noblewoman, Bathory evaded the law for six years, until Hungarian King Matthias II sent his highest-ranking representative, György Thurzó, to investigate the complaints against her. Thurzó collected evidence from some 300 witnesses who leveled a bevy of truly horrifying charges against the countess.

According to the reports and the stories told long after, Bathory burned her victims with hot irons; beat them to death with clubs; stuck needles under their fingernails; poured ice water over their bodies and left them to freeze to death outside; covered them in honey so that bugs could feast on their exposed skin; sewed their lips together, and bit chunks of flesh off their breasts and faces.

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