More than 400 years after her death, the truth about the "Blood Countess," a Hungarian noblewoman alleged to have been the most prolific female serial killer of all time, remains elusive. From her castle atop a rugged peak in what's today Cachtice in western Slovakia, Elizabeth Bathory was alleged to have tortured and killed up to 650 young women and girls, sparking gruesome legends that she delighted in bathing in the blood of her victims in the belief it would help her retain her youth. But some researchers have cast doubt on whether she was truly responsible for the alleged savagery, reports the AP.
Rumors of Bathory's cruelty spread throughout the Kingdom of Hungary in the early 17th century, and after a royal inquiry, four of her servants were convicted of murder and brutally executed. The Blood Countess was arrested and confined to the walls of her castle until her death in 1614. But some researchers suggest that as a wealthy and powerful woman in late Renaissance Europe, she herself may have been the victim. Annouchka Bayley, a author of The Blood Countess and associate professor of arts and creativities at Cambridge University, says the popular narrative of Bathory as a serial killer relies on a "woman as monster" trope that isn't supported by the available evidence.
Bathory, born into an aristocratic family in 1560, married a wealthy Hungarian nobleman, Ferenc Nadasdy, in 1575, and the couple controlled major wealth and lands across the kingdom. Nadasdy was a prominent soldier and key figure in wresting back control of numerous Hungarian lands that had been occupied by the Ottoman Empire. But after Nadasdy's sudden death in 1604, Bathory inherited his lands and wealth and commanded a "Jeff Bezos-style huge fortune," according to Bayley. It was that fortune and position of power that Bayley and other scholars have pointed to as a potential motive for other powerful figures of the time to seek to destroy Bathory and seize her wealth.
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Bathory's refusal to remarry following her husband's death, and her activities in educating young women, "would send alarm bells ringing of anyone in power," Bayley said. Bathory also may have owned a printing press—radical acts during the period in which she lived. "You have to remember, these are the years of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation where people were being burned at the stake for their heretical beliefs," Bayley said. "There's enough for me to go, whoa, hold on a minute. Let's just pause here and investigate." And there's one more mystery: where Bathory is buried. She's thought to be interred in a crypt beneath the local church, but there've been rumors that her body was later moved, and the church hasn't allowed an excavation. (More Hungary stories.)
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