Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Blood Countess” Pt. 2 - Elizabeth Bathory

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

Elizabeth Bathory was a cruel, widowed noblewoman who earned the title “The Blood Countess” from the rumors she bathed in the blood of her victims. We continue to dive deep into her torture and murder of young servants, as well as investigate the many accomplices who only helped her fulfill her lust for blood.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Like any place, there was gossip in 17th century Hungary. Peasants and villages surrounding Castle Chakitza whispered rumors. Nearby noble families gossiped in their parlors. Francis Nadasdi, the Lord of Castle Chaktiza, had passed away and left behind his widow, Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Elizabeth was a cruel mistress to her servants. She had a penchant for torturing them, and over the years she may have even killed a few as a result.

But her husband's presence had always discouraged her from taking it to the next level. After his death, however, no one was around to stop Elizabeth from going too far. With no one left to modulate her murderous desires, Elizabeth started to become the woman she would forever be known as, The Blood Countess. I'm Greg Poulson, and this is serial killers.

Today we're going to continue taking a deep dive into the life of Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess of Hungary, a woman responsible for dozens, if not hundreds, of murders. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Vanessa's not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she's done a lot of research for the show. Hi, everyone. We'd like to ask a quick favor. Would you leave a five-star review of serial killers on your favorite podcast directory. It seems so simple, but it really helps us out. And don't forget to subscribe while you're there, because a new episode comes out every Monday. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast, and on Twitter at Parcast Network.

How did Elizabeth become one of the most prolific serial killers of all time? What was the trigger? What was her motivation? Well, for Elizabeth, it was a confluence of factors. Her life as a Hungarian noble during a violent period, her inclination and desire to torture servants, and her husband Francis' death all played a major role. And perhaps most of all, it was her accomplices who enabled her increasingly violent tendencies. The most important of Elizabeth's accomplices was Anna Darvulia, who moved into Castle Chakitza in 1601.

But following Francis' death in 1604, Anna started to fill in the void he let us. behind. Anna was Elizabeth's closest confidant and friend. She was well-versed in the occult and had a great deal of influence over Elizabeth while Francis was off fighting in the war, which Elizabeth was primed and ready for after being raised under the influence of her aunt Clara. Clara had practiced witchcraft. So Elizabeth was open to the occult a way that other people may not have been.

Take it from Reverend Phil Wyman. They already have an interest in spiritual things. And so the ability to discuss those things and to dialogue in a friendly manner about it is far easier than somebody who just doesn't want to hear about God at all. Anna was already able to influence Elizabeth, where others might have ignored her. But following Francis' death in 1604, Anna became an even more intimate companion to Elizabeth. We don't know if they ever had a sexual relationship, but what we do know is that Anna encouraged Elizabeth in her cruelty, providing her with new and more terrifying torture methods at every turn.

She also took over as the voice in Elizabeth's ear. But when Francis had advised caution and limits, Anna enabled Elizabeth to act on all her violent desires. But she was not the only one enabling Elizabeth. There were four more significant accomplices. There was Elena Yo, the wet nurse to all of Elizabeth's children, Fitsko, a teenage boy known as the dwarf for his small size, Dorothy Asenthesh, a longtime servant of Elizabeth's, and Kata Benetsky, a laundry woman who was the least involved in the torture. They all had their roles. Anna was Elizabeth's closest confidant and a teacher of sorts in the art of torture. Fitsko helped secure victims from the neighboring peasant villages. Elena and Dorothea helped carry out the actual acts of torture, and Katta

got rid of the bodies and cleaned up afterwards. With their health, help, Elizabeth started to rack up a body count. And she started racking it up fast. Without Francis' calming presence to tamper her desires, Elizabeth acted on all of her impulses. At this point, in the years immediately following Francis' death, Elizabeth's murders grew more numerous, but she still remained in line with how we would view a stereotypical female killer today. Traditionally, female murderers killed those close to them who were subservient or weak. Like Elizabeth's servants. Exactly.

In that regard, her methods match the average modern female serial killer. But Elizabeth was also a product of early modern Europe and its conception of female violence. There's a popular misconception that persists in modern day that women aren't naturally violent. However, in 17th century Hungary, people acknowledged that women could be violent. But even in Hungary, female violence was supposed to be kept private. So that's what Elizabeth did. She always kept her torture sessions private. They were conducted in the kitchens, bathrooms, or dungeons of her homes,

with the only witnesses usually being other female servants. Fitsko wasn't even allowed in most of the time. Of course, Elizabeth didn't always perfectly follow these unwritten rules. In one case, there was a steward, Benedict Dejou, who witnessed multiple murders and would later testify against Elizabeth. One such a murder showed how a little bit of her. Elizabeth had started to drift away from what would be considered normal female violence at the time. One day, Elizabeth tortured and murdered a young girl named Ilanka.

She was the shoemaker's daughter. But something was different about the way Elizabeth killed this girl. Because when Elizabeth picked up her blade and candle to torture Ilanka, she attacked the girl's hands and arms, rather than mutilating her face or genitals as was usual for her. This is a very masculine method. Instead of targeting parts of the body associated with beauty or birthing, Elizabeth attacked limbs associated with the young girl's work as the shoemaker's daughter.

It's not exactly clear how Alonka died, but it's likely she either bled or was burned to death. Either way, there was no way to claim the death was natural, and this would be one of the murders that would come back to haunted Elizabeth during the trial. In the 17th century, however, Ilanka was still considered to be a peasant, a young woman who was subservient to Elizabeth and whom the law did not protect. So even though there were witnesses to the crime, no one would take a peasant's or a servant's word over the word of the countess.

And so Elizabeth continued on her torture and murder spree undeterred. At this point, Elizabeth was still motivated by domination. She wasn't interested in using her victims for sexual pleasure, but she usually reinforced her power over her victims by mutilating, sodomizing, and then destroying her victim's sexual anatomy. The murder of Alonka was the start of a shift in Elizabeth's methods and motivations. Soon, Elizabeth transformed from an organized killer driven by a need for power and control to a disorganized one acting on hedonistic drives. What does it mean to be a hedonistic serial killer? Well, generally these types of killers are

driven by the pleasure they receive from killing, which was certainly the case for Elizabeth. At first, Elizabeth seemingly tortured and murdered her servants in order to establish dominance. But as time went on, Elizabeth's motivations seemed to have regressed back to purely animalistic instincts. She got a thrill when she tortured and murdered her victims. So with every kill, she was feeling a rush of adrenaline. Right. And for many people, once they've felt that rush, they become desperate to create circumstances that will continue to give them that feeling. For Elizabeth, that meant she needed to continually find new victims. In 1609, just five years after Elizabeth's husband died,

Anna Darvulia passed away after having a stroke, leaving Elizabeth feeling alone without a confidant once again. And without Anna's guidance, Elizabeth seemed to grow more desperate for victims and more reckless in the way she acquired them. In order to find new victims, Elizabeth decided to start recruiting young noble women from lesser noble houses. To facilitate this, she started a gynecium. The term ginesium was originally used to describe the women's quarters in a Greek household,

but by the 17th century it was also used to describe finishing schools that were run by noble women. The girls would pay tuition, and in exchange, Elizabeth would teach them manners and the etiquette expected at court. This was another sign of Elizabeth's undoing. She was starting to be careless, moving on from peasant women. girls to noble girls, even if they were of the lesser nobility. Today, if a serial killer changes their methods, they're generally more difficult to catch before they kill again because it makes it harder to track them.

But that wasn't the case here. Elizabeth had just opened a new can of worms she wasn't ready for. She had been operating under the protection of Hungarian law, which had basically stripped peasants of all their rights. Daughters of noble families, however, were protected under the law. and Elizabeth would find that she had finally gone too far. Are there any particular reasons why a serial killer may change their methods like this, especially so late in life?

Sometimes it's for the sake of a new challenge. Their method of killing has gotten boring, and they're seeking a greater thrill. Or it's to throw the authorities off one's trail, so the murders don't immediately seem connected. For Elizabeth, it could have been either of these, but it seems it was desperation. There simply weren't enough local servants. and peasant girls to sustain her constant tortures and murders.

So she started her gynecium, and young noble girls came from all over it to live at the castle Choctitsa, and one by one, they started to fall prey to Elizabeth's desires. Within three weeks, every single one of Elizabeth's students was dead. She claimed they all died from disease, but she refused to release any of the girls' bodies to their families. You can imagine how that went over with the parents of these young girls. As the rumors of Elizabeth's gynecium spread, King Matthias, the Hungarian monarch, could not ignore the outcries from the nobles in his country. So he ordered Georgi Thurzo, the recently appointed Palatine of Hungary, to look into the Countess.

For those listeners not intimately aware of the workings of 17th century Hungarian politics, the Palatine of Hungary was the highest ranking office in the Kingdom of Hungary during the time. The Palatine worked as a representative of the Crown. So Thurzo, eager to prove his worth as a newly appointed Palatine, started sending letters to all the Hungarian authorities he could reach. Quote, you know how both in the past and present time, several serious complaints have come to us regarding the noble Lady Elizabeth Bathory, namely that she, through some sort of evil spirit,

has set aside her reverence for God and man, and has killed in cruel and various ways many girls and virgins, and other women who lived in her gynecium. Meanwhile, at Castle Choctitsa, Elizabeth was passing along her knowledge and love of torture methods to her youngest daughter, Kata, who was soon to be married.

On the morning of January 6, 1610, Elizabeth and her daughter brutally tortured two servants, burning them and then disposing of their bodies in a secret burial. Only it wasn't that secret. There was an eyewitness to this crime who would later testify

against Elizabeth and cite this instance as proof of her guilt. And later, when two gravediggers unearthed the bodies, they found them covered in welts and with contorted faces, which didn't exactly match up with Elizabeth's story that the servants had died from natural unknown causes. As gossip like this started to spread, Georgi Thurzo continued to make his case against Elizabeth. It looked like he sealed the deal when he struck a bargain with Paul Nodosdi,

Elizabeth's only living son. Thurzo must have had some pretty damning evidence, or was at least manipulative enough to convince Paul of it because Paul basically betrayed his mother. Right. He made no defense for her innocence. Instead, Thurzo and Paul agreed that so long as the Bathre-Naddausti family stayed out of Thurzo's way, Thurzo would ensure that Elizabeth never faced trial. This wasn't strictly legal, but the Bathy-Nadosdy family was still powerful, and they were still given privileges other families would never be afforded. So Paul took the bargain, condemning his mother but ensuring she avoided the death penalty.

Of course, when Georgi Thurzo eventually confronted Elizabeth on Christmas Eve 1610, she denied everything and claimed her innocence. But less than a week later, on December 31st, 1610, Elizabeth's actions finally caught up to her. Thurzo and his men conducted a raid, arriving at castle Chakitza in the middle of the night.

And it's there that Thurzo allegedly caught the countess in the middle of the act of torturing a young girl. We'll return to our story in just a moment. And now let's continue our story. After coming upon the scene of Elizabeth Bathory torturing a young servant girl, Georgie Thurzo arrested and charged Elizabeth on the spot. She was immediately confined to a suite in the castle

where she was kept on house arrest by herself. It's hard to know what her thoughts may have been at this point, but I think it's safe to say that she probably thought, at least initially, that her family would clear everything up and she'd be free to go. She was, after all, a powerful Hungarian noble. It was the one fact that had allowed her to operate for so many years. She thought she was above the law. But her family didn't come for her.

Unbeknownst to her, her son had actually conspired with Thurzo against her. But true to his word, Thurzo never brought Elizabeth in to face a trial. Instead, there was a common inquest, and Elizabeth was tried in absentia. In the end, it may have been worse for Elizabeth that she was kept away from the proceedings. During her inquest, which began in January of 1611, nearly 300 witnesses came forth to speak against her, and she was never given the chance to defend herself. It seemed that with the protection of the crown and the palatine behind them,

people were willing to turn on their terrifying mistress. They came out of the woodwork, ready to provide information about her crimes. Although most of the testimony from these 300 people was hearsay, very few of them had actually witnessed any crime or had any evidence. The most damning testimony came from Elizabeth's accomplices, Fitsko, Elena, Dorothea, and Kata. All of them turned on her eventually. But they didn't turn on her without any coercion.

All of her accomplice's testimony came after a second phase of torture, and this was not Elizabeth's type of torture, but rather a more methodical type of torture, intended to get subjects to speak the truth. Instead of helping Elizabeth torture her victims, her accomplices were now being tortured by the local executioner. First, the subject would be stripped down naked and restrained, and then the local executioner would move on to phase one.

This entailed displaying the torture instruments to the subject. The devices ranged from metal pincers to iron collars spiked on the inside to flails consisting of slender barbed chains attached to a wooden handle. If seeing the devices wasn't enough to elicit a confession, then the instruments would be used on the victim's body. From there, usually the mere touch of the instruments would be enough to force a confession from the subject. That was phase two. But if that didn't work, then the local executioner would move to phase three, using the devices at full force. And by that point, the subjects almost always talked. And the prisoners did talk.

Fitsko started off the inquest by claiming that he knew of 37 girls his mistress had murdered. He said that Elizabeth would torture in a variety of locations, in the inner chamber of her various castles, in the privy, in the furnace house. house and in the countess's carriages while they traveled. It all just depended on where they were. But when Elizabeth wanted to torture, they found a way to make it happen for her. He was also adamant that he and the other accomplices had all learned how to torture from Anna Darvulia. She had been the driving force behind everything that happened. This would be a common theme throughout. While all of Elizabeth's accomplices confessed to some role in her crimes, they all attempted to put most of the blame on Anna Darvulia, who had already passed away. This was a way to mitigate

their own involvement in the crimes. When confessing, accomplices almost always try to downplay their involvement in hopes of a lighter sentence. No doubt that's what was happening here. From the little we know about Anna, everything they said about her was probably true, though. Certainly, but it was also a convenient out. Blamed the person who wasn't there to defend herself anymore. Dorothy Ascentesh continued the claims against Anna Darvilla, insisting that she had been the instigator of the earliest and worst cruelties. And Elena Yoh repeated these sentiments as well. The more interesting part of Elena's testimony, however, had nothing to do with Anna. Right. Elena also upped the estimated count of victims to over 50 and provided a list of people

who had assisted in procuring girls for the countess. Turns out it wasn't just Elizabeth's own people who had gone out searching for new victims. Some of the girls had been provided by older women in the community. And despite knowing they were sending these girls to their deaths, the village women continued to supply the girls. Why would women outside of Elizabeth's circle help her secure victims? What could they possibly gain from doing that? It may have been out of fear of the countess, or perhaps a desire to get into her good graces and her inner circle. Whatever their motivations, Elizabeth took full advantage of the situation. And then another accomplice, Katabinetsky, came forth.

She was a laundry woman in Elizabeth's court, and she had not been part of the actual recruitment or torture of the young girls. She was not part of Elizabeth's inner circle like the others had been. In fact, she had initially refused to be a part of Elizabeth's crimes. But that didn't go over well with the countess, as you can imagine. She was badly beaten and had to stay in bed. for a month to recover from her wounds. Eventually, though, she became an accomplice herself, even if it was by force.

She was responsible for taking care of the bodies left in Elizabeth's wake. Clearly and understandably, there was a lot of resentment for the role she was forced to play. Like the other accomplices, she pinpointed Anna Darvulia as the most adept at devising tortures. Unlike the rest of them, however, she had no problem turning on her fellow accomplices, throwing them all under the carriage. She named Dorothea as the one who had supplied the largest number of girls. She also accused Elena of being the most ruthless of the accomplices in supervising punishments. So much for trying to minimize their involvement.

Seriously. It seems that Kata may have been the most self-serving witness, or perhaps she was just telling the simple truth. Either way, it's likely that her testimony solidified the sentencing face of the other three, while minimizing her own involvement and saving herself from execution. Despite some of the inconsistencies between the accomplice's testimony, there was one aspect that remained rather consistent between all of them, the victim count.

They all claimed the victim count was around 35 to 50 victims. Given that they all estimated a victim count within the same range, there is some credibility to this number. Which would have been all fine and good, but then another woman came forward. She's known only as Susanna in the transcript records. She claimed that the administrator of two of Elizabeth Castles, Jacob Chilvasi, had found a list of the countess's victims in a casket,

and that this list contained 650 names. That's quite the jump in estimated victims. No one was ever able to confirm Susanna's testimony, because no such list was ever uncovered. Now, whether that's because it never existed, or because it was destroyed before anyone could find. find it. We may never know. But if this is somehow true, it doesn't just make Elizabeth the most prolific female serial killer. It makes you the most prolific serial killer ever. But it's hard to

imagine it being true. At the low end, Elizabeth's victim count ranges from 35 to 50 victims. While this is by no means a small number, it is conceivable that this many victims could be covered up. It would be completely plausible to say that these deaths occurred naturally. In 17th century Hungary, the idea of five to ten servants dying per year from natural causes, out of the couple hundred employed at any given time, was normal. But if that number jumps to 650 victims, that's an entirely different story. How would Elizabeth and her accomplices have kept that many murders under wraps? It seems implausible that they'd be able to continue operating without,

more difficulty. Either way, Elizabeth was done for at this point. She had not been allowed out of her confinement for any part of the inquest, and she would never have the chance to defend herself. She was found guilty in absentia, along with all of her accomplices. Dorothy, Elena, and Fitsko were all sentenced to death. Kata escaped capital punishment and was instead sent to prison for life, although she was later released. Elizabeth, however, never received the death penalty. This was the privilege of being a noble woman in 17th century Hungary. It would have been too much of a commotion to hang her in the streets.

And so, she escaped traditional Hungarian justice. Instead, she remained up in her tower, confined to house arrest till the end of her days. And even though King Matthias demanded a real trial to sentence her, she never got one. Georgi Thurzo made sure of that. Most serial killers, once caught and contained to prison, or in Elizabeth's case, house arrest, like to take credit for what they've done. They've worked hard over the years to murder people, and most serial killers feel the need for other people to know what they've done.

But here's the thing. Elizabeth maintained her innocence until her dying day. She never took credit for any of her kills. This is something we see today, specifically with female serial killers. In general, female serial killers do not talk about their crimes in the way their male counterparts often do. They don't seek the attention of the press, and they're reluctant to participate in studies. Elizabeth falls into this category. She was never in this for the sake of making a name for herself.

She already had that. She was in this simply because it was what she liked to do. Of course, there's another possibility as to why she never claimed responsibility, and that's that she may have been innocent all along. Our story will continue in a moment after a brief message. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go. Get ready for a new case.

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You can watch the record. breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly. Working at it. Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney Plus rated PG. And now back to our story. Okay.

We know what you're thinking. After all of this, Elizabeth Bathory may have been innocent all along? I think it's unlikely that Elizabeth was innocent, but there are a number of historians and a growing faction of people interested in Elizabeth's story today that believe that there's some

to the idea that this was all a political conspiracy. In order to understand how this could even be a possibility, we have to look at two things. First, Elizabeth's power and what that meant for the Hungarian crown. Second, who Georgi Thurzo really was and why he might feel threatened by Elizabeth's power. Georgi Thurzo was a known schemer who had no problem playing both sides and backstabbing people.

prior to his appointment to Palatine of Hungary in 1609, he was willing to do anything to ensure his own safety. He wrote to his wife of a deal he made with the opposing government. Quote, I have received from Boxi the document guaranteeing the protection of my estates. He writes in his letter that I have accepted his authority, but it is not the truth, and I shall never accept him. I need only his protection to defend myself against his soldiers,

so it would be most unfortunate, if other respected persons were to see this letter. That letter was pretty blatant about his intentions in line to the opposing forces. He was being incredibly trusting of his wife to not share that with anyone. Usually he was a bit smarter than that. He began writing to her in code in order to keep his true motives hidden. But his wife often forgot to write back in that code. From her letters, there is some evidence that Thurzo was plotting against Elizabeth

for some time before he was even Palatine. Like we said before, he started to write to the authorities, detailing the nasty rumors about what Elizabeth Bathory had been doing up in Castle Chak Tizza. Depending on where you stand, Thurzo was either making people aware of the issue, or he was stirring up rumors. Either way, he successfully introduced stories to the general populace that would eventually be repeated over and over again by those who testified against Elizabeth. These were the, I heard this, or I heard this, or I,

I know someone who hearsay stories that were heard throughout Elizabeth's trial. But why would he start spreading these stories around Hungary? Perhaps because he and the king were scared of Elizabeth's power? Or perhaps Thurzo wanted Elizabeth's power for himself? It would make sense. King Matthias owed substantial amounts of money to Elizabeth and had no way of paying her back any time soon. He could have asked Thurzo to take her out of power in order to avoid having to pay her.

The more likely story, perhaps, is that Elizabeth was in a distinctly unique situation. She was still technically loyal to the crown and King Matthias, but her cousin, Gabor Bathory, was starting a war to overthrow Matthias and take the crown. And Elizabeth had more money than she knew what to do with, which made the crown extremely nervous. What if she were to throw her money behind her cousin's insurgency? The only way to bring Elizabeth down was to catch her committing a horrific, act red-handed, which Thurzo did. Or at least he said he did. According to him, he walked in on Elizabeth in the act of torturing a young woman. There was a freshly buried corpse and a cowering

servant, badly beaten, but still alive. That said, Thurzo never provided any evidence that this event actually happened. Elizabeth was arrested on site and confined to her tower on house arrest, but they never actually held a trial against her, even though King Matthias demanded one for years afterward, and Elizabeth was never allowed to testify in her own defense. So Thurzo had the motive to frame her. And as the Palatine and overseer of the common inquest against Elizabeth, he had the means.

Now remember, the witnesses who spoke against Elizabeth were all tortured into confessing, yet all mention of witnesses being tortured was struck from the record before being sent to King Matthias. Clearly, Thurzo didn't want the king to doubt any of the testimony. This is the first piece of evidence historians point to when making the case that there may have been some conspiracy occurring. Torture was a widely accepted practice in 17th century Hungary, but it was also well known that any testimony received because of it was less than perfect.

This is perhaps the most convincing of all the evidence when it comes to considering whether Elizabeth may have been framed. Even at the time, confessions made under torture were not considered as good as confessions made without it. And nowadays, there's compelling scientific evidence that disproves the idea that torture provides genuine confessions. Torture has been shown to be widely ineffective in securing confessions and can even produce false information. The victims provide a false confession so that the torture stops, right? Well, that's one possibility, certainly. A famous example of a victim giving a false confession under torture from Elizabeth's era

would be the German mayor Johann Junius, who confessed under torture to being a witch. Before Junius's execution, he managed to smuggle a letter out of prison to his daughter, in which he told her that he confessed to end the excruciating pain. So Elizabeth's accomplices may have also confessed because they could no longer withstand the torture. Exactly. Another new theory, however, argues that torture can also produce false information by harming those areas of the brain associated with memory. Victims of torture can actually start remembering things incorrectly, which leads to a form of false confessions. So the first argument for Elizabeth's innocence is that the confessions from her accomplices may have been false to start with. On top of that, according to Hungarian law, peasants should never have been allowed to testify.

We don't want to get too bogged down with Hungarian law here, but in general, peasants were not allowed to testify against nobles. Some historians claim that the peasant testimony invalidated the investigation because a noble could not be charged on the word of a peasant. It's certainly strange that Thurzo would let the testimony of peasants carry so much weight. On the other hand, this was also a common inquest and not an official trial, and there was no specific rule against peasants' testifying. in a common inquest, even if it was a little unorthodox. So all of this is to say there may have been some fishy things going on in Thurzo's case against Elizabeth, but that doesn't mean she didn't commit the crimes. The case for her innocence is a thin one in the end. And it may be that some try so hard to prove Elizabeth's innocence largely because she

was female. Many simply found it hard to believe that a noble woman could commit violent murders. This is the same type of thinking that led to the blood-bathing myth. For the people who believed that she actually bathed in blood in order to maintain her youthful beauty, they were simply trying to understand her motives as a female serial killer. And similarly, people who now believe she was innocent all along do so because it's easier than accepting that a woman could commit such atrocities on such a large scale.

But the truth is, Elizabeth was a serial killer, perhaps one of the most prolific of all time. And for some people, it's just hard to imagine the depths of her cruelty. Instead, they choose to believe she was framed, rather than accept that a woman like her could exist. It's the same reason people attribute the myth of bathing in blood to her. In a twisted way, it's easier to understand her if all of this boiled down to her chasing after the female desire

to be eternally youthful and beautiful. It's much harder for people to understand and explain, except that a female serial killer could be motivated strictly by the pleasure she derived from torturing and killing young girls. Elizabeth Bathory's guilt or innocence may be debated forever. But while political conspiracies are thrilling, it's unlikely that Elizabeth was truly innocent. The evidence is stacked against her. And for every claim that proves her innocence, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Thurzo went about things the way he did. There were also much easier ways to frame a woman in the 17th century than by claiming they murdered 650 people.

Had Thurzo wanted to simply ruin Elizabeth, he could have gone the much more traditional route and accused her of a more womanly crime, like sexual deviancy. Instead, he charged her with murder. And from that fateful New Year's Eve in 1610, until her dying day in 1614 at the age of 54, Elizabeth remained locked under house arrest in the Tower of Castle Chakitza. It must have been lonely for her up there, and Elizabeth absolutely hated being lonely. Perhaps in the end it was the best type of punishment for her, not a swift death, but a prolonged, miserable confinement. Elizabeth Bathory will always be remembered as the blood countess. And while that nickname came from a false myth that she bathed in her victim's blood, it's still accurate.

Countess Elizabeth Bathory may not have bathed in blood, but she definitely spilled enough of it to earn herself the name. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. If you want to listen to any previous episodes of serial killers, you can find them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Spotify, or on our website, parkast.com, spelled P-A-R-C-C-A-S-T-com. If you like what you hear, please leave a five-star review. view or tell us what you think on social media. We're on Facebook and Instagram as

at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. It seems simple, but it really helps our show. Join us next Monday as we delve into the twisted psyche of another serial killer. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and developed by Ron Cutler. It is a production of Cutler media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, Sound design by Ron Shapiro with production assistance by Joel Stein. Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Admeier. Serial Killers is written by Alex Burns and stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving,

the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 is out now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.