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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how.
I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Warburg Thun. The Serial Killer podcast recently reached a fantastic milestone. By the 1st of December 2018, this show has over 10,300,000 downloads. I remember well my first episode over two years ago, back in July of 2016.
When it by August 2016 had over 2,000 downloads, I was really happy. So, you can imagine my delight at now reaching the 10 million mark. The podcast is a labor of love, but I could not do it without you, dear listener, and especially those of you that donate to the show via Patreon.
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"'Me greetings and update, beloved heart. "'I arrived here at Ujeli yesterday evening in good health, thank God. "'I apprehended a Nadasti woman.'
by now she has been led away to the castle above now those who tortured and murdered the innocent those evil women in league with that young lad who is in silent cruelly assisted them with their atrocities were sent to bytcha
They are under guard and will be held in strict captivity until, God willing, I arrive home to bring the strong justice they deserve. The woman can remain imprisoned in the town, but the young lad must be confined at the castle.
As for the people and servants that I brought with me, when my men entered Cheche Manor, they found a dead girl in the house. Another followed in death as a result of many wounds and agonies. In addition to this, there were also a wounded and tortured woman there. The other victims were kept hidden away where this damned woman prepared these future martyrs.
I am just waiting until this cursed woman is brought to the castle and the other's destination is determined. And then I break away and hope, if the way permits, that I make it home by tomorrow. May God grant it. I have written this in the greatest haste. 30 December 1610 In Vag Ugele Your loving lord and spouse Count Georgi Thurzov
Good evening, dear listener. I hope you are comfortable for tonight. I shall take you on the beginning of a journey into the very lands where serial murder became common knowledge. Back then, it was of course not called serial murder, or serial killers. Far from it.
In these times, the common folk and nobility alike talked of vampires and werewolves, of witches and warlocks, and the servants of Lucifer himself. As an old Norwegian saying goes, a beloved child has many names. So, imagine, if you will, lightning.
flashing in the dark night, illuminating the jagged mountains surrounding the vale, in which you sit on horseback. You're in a small village, and the year is 1610, the date the 29th of December. Most of the buildings in the little village are small wooden huts, many with thatched straw roofs, few windows and small doorways.
It's raining, and the road is a wet slippery mess of mud. The man in charge of your small party of abled-bodied men is the Prime Minister, called the Palatine of Hungary, Georgi Tharzo, the man whose letter I just read. Three other nobles followed him, Counts Miklós Žrinyi and Georgi Drugath de Homonai,
and the third, Squire Imre Meggieri. A squad of armed guards accompanied these men, lending very real force to their titles of authority. They're all standing in front of a manor house, much larger and better built than all the other houses in the village. They'd all been inside the house, but quickly left.
Inside the manor, they had found Countess Erzsabet Bathory having supper. Some of the guards detained her. The others searched the premises for evidence of a crime. According to Thurzo, when they first had entered, they found the corpse mentioned in the letter. A young girl who had been beaten to death. The body had also been mutilated.
Soon they found two more young girls, also stabbed and beaten. One would later die from her wounds, while the other survived, although maimed for life. Following the sounds of screaming behind a door, the party came upon three old women and a young man, all servants of Countess Bathory.
The four of them were in the midst of torturing a very young girl, while another sobbing young female child waited her turn to be tortured. Even more victims were soon discovered, those who had been hidden away until their turn. The soldiers apprehended the four servants before returning to the Countess Bathory, also known to them as Lady Widow Nadastie.
When they returned, she was at her feet screaming at them, "'What is this intrusion? You shall pay, all of you, for this.' Then, slowly, as she recognized the men in the dim candlelight, her face changed appearance from that of arrogant rage to that of uncertainty. The Prime Minister of the Palatine declared, "'Lady Widow Nadasdy, in the name of the King, you are hereby under arrest.'
The countess laughed at him, but she stopped when the large soldiers brusquely took her by the arm and started to lead her away. The palatine himself pulled her by the hair and dragged her screaming through the manor house. He demanded that she take a hard look at the beastly carnage her four accomplices, now being placed in chains, had done.
The countess stopped screaming insults, and a look of calm arrogance came over her face as she simply stopped speaking. This only infuriated the palatine, who ordered the countess to be taken up to the castle too. Outside, by now nearly thirty local men from the town of Teche had gathered.
Grim procession made its way toward the castle, determined to discover the truth behind their ghastly rumors. What they would find there would forever change them and give rise to a story that would haunt polite Hungarian society for hundreds of years.
During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Bathory family rose to prominence and exerted a great deal of influence over Central Europe. Its members, including several princes, a cardinal, and even the King of Poland, all held positions of high authority in the Kingdom of Hungary and surrounding areas.
The Bathory family belonged to a clan of Hungarian nobles called the Gut Keled, which, according to history, formed when two German brothers, Gut and Keled, moved to Hungary. History traces the technical beginning of the family, however, to Andras of Rakomezh, patron of the monastery of Sarvar in the county of Shatmar.
In 1279, King Laszlo rewarded Andras' brother, Heidos, as well as his sons, Georgi, Benedek, and Britsius, for their military service by granting them the estate located at Batur in the county of Zabolks. In 1310, Britsius took possession of Batur.
Soon after, he and his descendants referred to themselves as being of Bathor, or Bathory. The younger branch of the family, the Bathory of Exed, descended from Lukash, the youngest son of Britius. Lukash possessed wide estates in Jatmar, and was granted the lordship of Exed by the king,
There he built a castle called Hraše, meaning loyalty in Hungarian, since they retained possession of Bátor. Members of this branch were called either Off Bátor, i.e. Bathory, or as the younger branch, Nýr Bátor, meaning simply New Bathory.
The Bathory's themselves trace their lineage back to the year 900, well before the brothers Gut and Kelet came to Hungary. In this rather more fantastical version, a warrior named Vitus of the first generation of the Gut-Kelet clan went to fight a terrible dragon that lived in the swamps of Exed.
Vitus killed the dragon with three lance thrusts and, as a reward, received both land and castle located there. He was also honored with the name Bathory, which means good hero. The word for brave in Hungarian is also Bathor.
Due to this legend, the Bathory coat of arms featured three horizontal teeth surrounded by a dragon biting its own tail. In the late 1400s, Istvan V was a voivode of Transylvania, a name most Westerners will recognize. He was the first in a long line of Bathories who would rule that country.
In the 16th century, Hungary was divided over two competing claims to the throne. The Exed branch of the Bathory family sided with the Habsburgs, who organized the election of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria as king of Hungary. However, the Somlio branch supported Janus Japulei, who had been elected king by the majority of Hungarian nobles.
The two branches of Bathory family were eventually united politically by Erzsbet Bathory's own parents, Georgi and Anna, when Georgi Bathory of the Exed branch changed allegiance from the Habsburgs to Japoliai. When the Habsburg king commandeered his castle at Bujak, Georgi was eager to strengthen his alliance with the Voivode of Transylvania.
He accomplished this by marrying Anna and, in doing so, united the two branches of the Bathory clan. Tension between the Habsburgs and the Bathory would continue for generations as the two rival families vied for power in Central Europe. Born amidst this conflict was a daughter who shared blood from both sides of the family tree.
Countess Erzsébet Bathory. Erzsébet Bathory was born on the 7th of August 1560 at the Exed family estate located in what is today known as Nagy-Exed, not far from Nýr-Bator, Hungary. In her time, the massive estate rose out of the swamps, resembling a fortified city built upon the marshy plains.
Located today in the northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary, Nýr Bátor served as the Bathory family seat, an administrative center and family burial site. In fact, the Bathory family owned the town, including the magnificent church and mausoleum.
The young Erzsébet spent her childhood at the family holdings in the countryside of Exed and near Bator, near the Romanian border. Erzsébet had an older brother, Istvan, a brother Gabor we unfortunately do not know the date of birth of, as well as two younger sisters, Zofia and Klara. Despite the raging political conflict the family patriarchs were wrapped up in,
The Bathory children were well protected, and lived a happy, peaceful countryside life. The lands surrounding the estates were pasture lands, misty forests, marshes, swamps, and foggy moors. For the most part, the lands still slumbered in the Middle Ages, and the Bathory family continued to rule its lands and peasantry as it had done for hundreds of years.
In addition to political strife for secular power, the Bathory clan was also heavily involved in the great religious war that was going on in Central Europe at this time in history. Protestant reformation was exploding, and the armies of Islam were at the border of Romania and Hungary, hungry for conquest.
Protestantism was particularly popular in Transylvania, as well with the common people and some of the Hungarian nobility. The kings and other great lords of the region maintained allegiance to the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Emperor. Erzsébet's parents chose Protestantism. Erzsébet herself was raised a Calvinist by her mother.
No doubt, Erzsbet was quite familiar with the teachings of both Catholicism and Lutheranism, as well as Calvinism. In 1566, when Erzsbet was only six years old, the legendary Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent died. His son, Selim, temporarily turned his attention away from Hungary, creating a lull in the fighting for the next twelve years.
Elisabeth Bathory's childhood and first few years of married life were spent during this relative quiet period of Hungarian history. And yet, this same period saw the maturation of the early modern or Renaissance era across Europe. Explorers were now conquering oceans and reaching the New World. Printing presses were operating throughout Europe.
Telescopes peered into the heavens, cannons and rifles changed the nature of warfare, and some of the world's greatest art and architecture came into being. This was the world of Galileo, Queen Elizabeth, Da Vinci, Luther, and Michelangelo. This was also the world—complex, dynamic, revolutionary, artistic, brilliant, and bloody—
in which Elizabeth Bathory grew up. As a member of the High Nobility, she would experience all of it. It's that time of the year. Your vacation is coming up. You can already hear the beach waves, feel the warm breeze, relax and think about...
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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As a family man with three kids, I know firsthand how extremely difficult it is to make time for self-care. But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night.
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Visit BetterHelp.com slash SerialKiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash SerialKiller. Some scholars have speculated that Arsabet suffered from insanity and exhibited sexual sadism later in life as a result of her formative years spent at the Bathory family estate.
The place has been described as if it was an insane asylum, filled with dysfunctional inbred lunatics. They claim her brother, Istvan, for example, was a sadistic, lecherous sex fiend and drunkard who could be found running naked in marketplaces after a binge. Her uncle, Gabor,
dressed in armor and fought off invisible attackers, while shouting in unknown languages and foaming at the mouth. Her aunt, Clara, was a bisexual who allegedly practiced witchcraft, killed her husbands, and taught Erzsbert how to torture servants and make love to women. Her father refused to leave a favorite chair, whether to sleep, eat, or bathe.
As a child, Erzsébet witnessed the bizarre execution of a peasant, who, when accused of selling his child to the Turks, was sewn alive into the body of a horse. The absolute validity of such stories is questionable. We know for a fact that this family rose to power and prestige, both at court and on the battlefield, not merely by means of patronage or luck.
but due to superior intelligence, cunning, and courage. While Erzsabet's brother Istvan might have been a sex fiend, it apparently did not result much in the way of offspring. He had no children with his wife, Frugina Drugeth, and only one illegitimate child.
His drunken behavior would not have affected Erzbert much. He was only five years her senior, and she had already moved out of the estate by the age of eleven. Mental illness may indeed have run in the family. In this era in Europe, it was very common for a nobility to inbreed.
The common belief was that the blood of nobility was different than that of the common people, hence the phrase blue blood, and as such they often turned to incest in order to keep the family line pure. Inbreeding, for example between uncle and niece or brother and sister, increases the risk of chronic illness and mental disability in the fetus by a dramatic factor.
While wedding between brother and sister was very rare, a coupling between first cousins was not. Temper tantrums, swordplay in the house, or an unusual allegiance to a favorite chair were all very typical aristocratic eccentricities in the late and early 16th century Europe. It is known that young Erzsbert suffered seizures and fits of rage as a child.
It is also said that her father suffered from these symptoms as well. In later years, her letters described both eye and head pain that caused her problems, likely migraines and epilepsy. In Erezebet's time, servants were viewed as only slightly better than slaves. The common notion was that they could be dealt with almost however their master wished.
Killing servants was generally frowned upon, but no nobleman would face any official sanctions for executing a servant who had been caught stealing, or, even worse, fornicating with someone in the nobleman's family. Human life was generally thought of as cheap in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe.
Wars, famines, religious revolts, disease, and terrible inflation affected both low- and high-born people. Hungarian peasants faced some of the very greatest of hardships, as the lands they tilled were used as frequent battlegrounds by various warlords, be they Catholic, Protestant, or Muslim.
In addition to this, their landlords exploited them to an extreme degree in order to finance their various religious and territorial wars. Finally, the peasants had enough and revolted in 1514. Georgi Dozhda championed their revolt.
Dorja and his men raided villages and towns, looted churches, and went on a killing spree, impaling area priests and lesser nobles. Dorja and his rebels were eventually met on the battlefield by senior nobility and their knights. The combined forces of Janos, Japoljai, and Erzsbet's great-uncle Istvan Bathory
routed and captured the rebels at Temesvar. Any hopes of revolution were short-lived and disastrous for those who participated. Gyorgy Dozsa was executed by being roasted alive. An illustration from a 16th century Hungarian almanac shows his reveling captors placing a red-hot metal crown on the captured Dozsa's head.
Bound half-naked to an iron throne, hot coals were shoveled beneath his seat and ignited. His accomplices, who had not already been impaled all around him, were force-fed their commander's flesh before being broken on the wheel. Before we continue, it is important to understand what being broken on the wheel really entails.
The convicted is placed on the ground, usually having his arms and legs bound tight, spread eagle outwards. The executioner then uses a mallet or hammer to break every single bone in the condemned man's body, from the smallest finger to the thigh bone. When all the bones had been broken, the condemned was then tied to a large wagon wheel.
His limbs interlaced with the wheel's spokes. Before the wheel was raised on a pike, the victim, if still alive, would lie broken on top of the wheel, exposed to the elements. Ravens and crows would rapidly descend on him and start to eat his eyes and the flesh on his face. Finally, the condemned man would die of shock, exposure, or thirst.
Such spectacular executions were rare. The most common way of executing criminals were to hang them, or chop off their heads with an axe. Only in special cases, especially treason, did extravagant methods, like I just described, come to use. The result of the peasant uprising was not beneficial to the common man.
Chief Justice Istvan Verbozsi imposed a terrifying decree upon them called the Opus Tripartitum Juris Consuetu Dinarii Hungariei, printed in 1517. In short, as punishment for rising up against their noble lords, the peasantry would forever be chained to the land as lifelong slaves.
all of their descendants would be enslaved as well, so that they would also be forced to pay tithes. Peasants were forbidden to own firearms and expected to provide fifty days of unpaid labor per year, usually consisting of one day every week. They would not be allowed to travel without permission, and their lords could, at will, condemn them to death for any transgression as they saw fit.
Erzabeth was born almost fifty years after the Opus Tripartitum, and she had thus never known a time when the people who tilled her family's soil or cultivated their harvest were free to come and go as they pleased, not to mention being free to choose their employer. Travel was, even for the nobles, strictly limited, especially considering how dangerous the lands surrounding the Bathory homelands were.
Ottoman Turks poured in all over the eastern borders of Europe, and the threat of being kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed was very real, no matter if you were of common or noble stock. By the time Erzsébet was born, the local workforce had been reduced to property status.
For commoners, particularly gypsies, the usual punishment for any transgression was hanging or the cutting off of a hand or fingers. Elisabeth was witness to one of the more unusual punishments, the aforementioned execution of a gypsy being sewn into a horse. Her reaction was unusual as well. She is recorded as giggling gleefully at the sight of the poor gypsy's head poking out of the dying horse.
Erzsbert had Anne, for its time, excellent education at her parents' home, and her family believed that a girl should be just as educated as a boy. She was trained in the classics, mathematics, and could read and write Hungarian, Greek, Latin, German, and even Slovak, the language of her many servants.
She also appears to have been interested in religion, occultism, astronomy, botany, biology, and, not surprising, anatomy. Throughout her life, she ordered books from merchants, requested copies of works from fellow nobles, and appears to have been what we would today call a lifelong learner.
She was an avid writer, and many of her letters and diary entries are preserved. She had a writing style that was short and to the point, almost curt. She wasted few words, generally, and wrote in the controlled style of one trained in the classics. In addition to this, young Elisabeth was somewhat of a tomboy. Today, nobody would think much of such behavior from a girl. But four hundred years ago,
It was scandalous. She demanded to be treated as well as her male relatives, and enjoyed dressing up like a boy, studying like a boy, and playing like a boy, including fencing and horsemanship. If she didn't get the treatment she demanded, she would throw violently hysterical fits of rage. In 1571, when Elisabeth was only eleven years old,
She was engaged to a 16-year-old count named Ferenc Nadasdy de Nadasd et Fogarasfeld. When she turned 12, the engagement was made official.
Her marriage into a premier Hungarian family at a young age, combined with her sharp intellect, magnificent education, and impeccable sense of fashion, certainly caused her to be somewhat of a celebrity of her day. She was also very wealthy as a newlywed.
since she had inherited an enormous amount of property from both her parents, who had died only a couple of years prior to her wedding. Her husband's estate, the castle at Sarvar, was approached by a long rampart and surrounded by a moat as wide as a river. The town and castle sat amidst wetlands, and homes of some staff members were located on boggy islands.
In the summer, clouds of mosquitoes, biting flies, and the terrible smell of swamp water made for a most unpleasant experience. It is no wonder that, in the future, Elisabeth would typically spend summers at her other residences, preferring to reside at Sarvar Court only in the colder months.
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And so, we come to a close on the first chapter in the story of the Blood Countess, Elizabeth Bathory.
This is a series that I plan to run every week until its completion, much the same way I did the Bundy series. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. This podcast had not been possible if it hadn't been for my dear patrons that invest in this show via Patreon. My special thanks go out to those of you that have stayed loyal for a long time.
Those of you I would like to give an extra heartfelt thank you to are Sandy, Amber, Christina, Charlotte, Claudette, Evan, Joe, Lisbeth, Maud, Mickey, Philip, PJ, Sarah, and Troy. Your monthly contributions really helps keep this podcast thriving. You have my deepest gratitude.
If you wish to have your name read here on the podcast, go to patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast now and choose the $15 tier option and I'll make sure to include you in this very exclusive club. As always, I thank you, dear listener, for listening.
And please feel free to leave a review on your favorite podcast app, my Facebook page at facebook.com slash the SK podcast, or website, and please do subscribe to the show if you enjoy it. Thank you. Good night and good luck.
