Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Hungarian: Báthory Erzsébet, pronounced [ˈbaːtori ˈɛrʒeːbɛt]; Slovak: Alžbeta Bátoriová ; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614)[2] was a Hungarian noblewoman and reputed serial killer from the noble family of Báthory, who owned land in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Hungary, Slovakia and Romania).
She has been labeled by Guinness World Records as the most prolific female murderer,[3] though the precise number of her victims is debated. Báthory and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of young women between 1585 and 1609.[4] The highest number of victims cited during Báthory's trial was 650. However, this number comes from the claim by a serving girl named Susannah that Jakab Szilvássy, Countess Báthory's court official, had seen the figure in one of Báthory's private books. The book was never revealed, and Szilvássy never mentioned it in his testimony.[5]
Despite the evidence against Elizabeth, her family's importance kept her from facing execution. She was imprisoned in December 1610 within Čachtice Castle, in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia), and held in solitary confinement in a windowless room until her death four years later.[6]
The stories of her sadistic serial murders are verified by the testimony of more than 300 witnesses and survivors as well as physical evidence and the presence of horribly mutilated dead, dying and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest.[7]
Stories describing her vampire-like tendencies (most famously the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth) were generally recorded years after her death, and are considered unreliable. Her story quickly became part of national folklore, and her infamy persists to this day.[8] She is often compared to Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia (on whom the fictional Count Dracula is partly based); some insist she inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897),[9] though there is no evidence to support this hypothesis.[10] Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include The Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.
The case of Elizabeth Báthory inspired numerous stories during the 18th and 19th centuries. The most common motif of these works was that of the countess bathing in her victims' blood to retain beauty or youth. This legend appeared in print for the first time in 1729, in the Jesuit scholar László Turóczi’s Tragica Historia, the first written account of the Báthory case.[44] The story came into question in 1817, when the witness accounts (which had surfaced in 1765) were published for the first time. They included no references to blood baths.[45]
In his book Hungary and Transylvania, published in 1850, John Paget describes the supposed origins of Báthory's blood-bathing, although his tale seems to be a fictionalized recitation of oral history from the area.[46] It is difficult to know how accurate his account of events is. Sadistic pleasure is considered a far more plausible motive for Elizabeth Báthory's crimes.[47]
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