The Most Notorious Female Serial Killer in History

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]It's the night of December 30th, 1610.

[00:00:03]Count George Thurzo is leading a midnight raid on Csejte Castle, the stronghold of a Hungarian countess where local girls have been disappearing.

[00:00:11]When they burst through, they find a horrific scene involving torture and murder.

[00:00:15]The countess herself is caught in the middle of it all, screaming at Thurzo and his men to leave her property at once. Thurzo and his team arrest the countess and her assistants and prepare a trial to expose history's most notorious female serial killer, a woman who allegedly claimed over 600 victims and who bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth. But her arrest has as much to do with rival elites as it does her bloody crimes. This is a story of Elizabeth Bathory and how a political conspiracy brought her down.

[00:00:47]Elizabeth Bathory grew up in the east of Royal Hungary, which at the time was ruled by the Habsburgs and now sits in Slovakia. Her family were extremely wealthy. Her uncle was voivode of Transylvania and she was also related to the Polish monarchy. Elizabeth was highly educated for her time, speaking Hungarian, Latin, Greek and German.

[00:01:06]Being literate also meant she could manage her family's vast estates. Like most nobility of the 17th century, Elizabeth was regularly exposed to blood. Whether that was through the violence of the Ottoman wars, public executions or folk medicine, which routinely used human blood to treat conditions like epilepsy. When she was 14, Elizabeth married Count Ferenc Nádasdy, a famed 20-year-old commander known as the Black Knight of Hungary.

[00:01:30]Because of her family's superior status, Elizabeth kept her own surname. Ferenc spent years away fighting the Ottomans, leaving Elizabeth alone to rule their properties by herself. She was an administrator, landlord and judge for thousands of tenants across their estates and also managed a medical center. She also managed a lot of servants. Some historians believe Ferenc encouraged her to severely punish servants who stepped out of line while he was gone, which may have played a role in her future activities. When Ferenc died in 1604, Elizabeth was left as sole ruler of their wealthy estates.

[00:02:05]But behind the busy noble life, there were dark stories spreading about the countess. This was going on for several years leading up to the death of her husband, and they continued when she permanently moved to Csejte Castle as a widow. Locals spoke of young girls going to work for Elizabeth as servants, but never coming home. Some young girls were showing up with wounds in their hands caused by blades and hot irons, and they insisted that the widow lady Nádasdy was the one who did it to them. In 1602, a local pastor named István Magyari complained about hearing screams and the smell of bodies from the castle, which brought a lot of bad publicity to Elizabeth. Unfortunately, in 17th century Hungary, there were no real legal consequences for abusing or killing servants.

[00:02:45]But that didn't mean the locals weren't going to respond. After a while, local families forbid their daughters from going to work for her.

[00:02:51]To secure a fresh supply of victims, in 1609 Elizabeth opened an elite boarding school for noble girls called the gynaeceum, where they learned courtly etiquette. Because the nobles didn't associate themselves with peasants, they would have had no idea about the rumors.

[00:03:05]They would have seen the opportunity to be mentored by a powerful noblewoman as a good thing for their girls. When these noble girls started going missing, they demanded answers. Elizabeth claimed they succumbed to sudden illnesses and staged a cover story that a mentally unstable student had murdered them before taking her own life.

[00:03:22]Now that the nobles were involved, their concerns reached King Matthias II. He didn't seem to care about missing peasant girls, but he did care about keeping the nobles happy. He also had a financial issue on his mind. During the Ottoman wars, Elizabeth's husband Ferenc had given the king a massive loan, and after his death, he owed all of that money to Elizabeth. Lately, she had been demanding her money back, and Matthias needed a way out. Conveniently for the king, Hungarian law at the time stated that if a noble was convicted of a serious crime, all debts owed to them were legally canceled and their lands could be seized by the crown. King saw the perfect opportunity to remove Elizabeth. He turned to Count György Thurzó to lead an investigation and bring down Countess Báthory. Thurzó had actually been a close friend of Elizabeth's husband and pledged on his deathbed to look after their family. Two weeks before the famous raid on the castle, Thurzó signed a secret contract with Elizabeth's own son-in-law, agreeing to arrest her but keep the lands under the family's control to prevent her seizure by the Habsburgs.

[00:04:23]Thurzó and his legal team began to compile hundreds of testimonies from locals who experienced abuse firsthand or knew someone who went missing or who heard rumors from someone else. Anything counted, really. But supposedly, one girl came running out of the castle with a knife in her foot claiming that she had been attacked by Elizabeth and her accomplices. With the testimonies and a genuine victim at hand, Thurzó and his men set out to Elizabeth's castle. This brings us to the raid where they found bodies and a surviving but wounded girl before arresting Elizabeth.

[00:04:53]The 1611 trial brought together public testimonies and the confessions of Elizabeth's accomplices, a group of her servants who helped her catch, torture, and dispose of victims. Various brutal methods were used. Burning limbs with hot irons, shoving needles under fingernails, punishing bad sewing with a sewing needle to the arm, covering victims in water to freeze outside in winter, or covering them in honey to be bitten by insects in summertime. You know, just for fun. High-ranking officers from Elizabeth's castle testified under oath that they were finding bodies of young girls who were being dug up by wild dogs. Another testimony claimed Elizabeth kept a record of her victims in a journal which mentioned 650 victims. The most infamous accusation of all came much later, that Elizabeth killed all of those girls so she could bathe in their blood believing it would keep her young.

[00:05:44]But there are a few suspicious details about all of this.

[00:05:47]The account of the raid comes from a letter written by Thurzo to his wife, but court documents show that when she was being arrested, Elizabeth was eating dinner, not in the middle of murdering someone. They also never got any testimony from the survivor they found, which is strange. Some historians believe Thurzo may have found some patients after surgery since Elizabeth ran an infirmary, and either misinterpreted or twisted that.

[00:06:08]Elizabeth was not even at any of the trials, and the confessions of her accomplices were given under torture.

[00:06:13]The journal of victims was never found, and seems to have come from a second-hand account. Plus, why would she keep a record anyway?

[00:06:20]The legend about bathing in blood, we can safely say is completely made up. It appears nowhere in the 300 testimonies, and first appears in a book written by a priest 115 years later. What's probably the best piece of evidence against Elizabeth, if we're to believe it, was her statement to a priest. When asked why she allowed it all to happen, she said she did it because she was afraid of her accomplices.

[00:06:45]The court had heard enough. They convicted Elizabeth and her gang of 80 counts of murder out of a claimed 600.

[00:06:51]Still an insanely high number.

[00:06:53]Elizabeth's accomplices were executed in horrific ways, which satisfied the families of the victims.

[00:06:59]The countess herself was simply placed under house arrest. Thurzo told everyone that he bricked up the doors and windows, but this wasn't true. She was fine, she just couldn't leave the property. Thurzo had kept his pledge to Ference, and Elizabeth's children would inherit the lands as per the secret contract.

[00:07:15]Elizabeth died 3 years later in 1614.

[00:07:18]The Hungarian elites probably agreed not to execute Countess Bathory in public because it would bring bad publicity to the nobility.

[00:07:26]What's also interesting is that none of Elizabeth's family members stepped in to claim her innocence, which might be saying a lot.

[00:07:32]So, Elizabeth Bathory was almost certainly a sadistic killer, or at least a very nasty person.

[00:07:38]There's no way they could have fabricated every testimony and all those missing girls whose families demanded answers or the girls who testified with actual signs of torture. But sadly, she was only brought down because she became a problem for the elites. Whether that was because of the disappearance of noble girls or because of the royal debt. What's terrifying is that if she continued exclusively killing peasants and didn't target nobles or have leverage over the king, she might have gotten away with the murders for years more.