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We travel once again over 400 years back in time, to the jagged peaks and boggy marshlands of 16th century Hungary, and the cruel reign of Erzsébet Bathory, the Blood Countess. Last week, on Christmas Eve, perhaps over a cup of mulled wine, we followed young Erzsébet as she grew from a child into a young married woman.
Tonight, we continue that journey, and we will start to see how Erzsabeth's servants suddenly started to disappear. Also, this episode is published on New Year's Eve, the 31st of December. As such, I would like to thank you, dear listener, for staying with me during the year of 2018.
As a small token of my thanks, this episode is entirely free of any sponsored ads. It is financed 100% by you, my loyal patrons and listeners. 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. I have created several tiers for those of you that wish to be a producer of the show, because that is what you are when you support the show financially.
If you pledge $1, that is still a really big help. But you are of course welcome to donate more. And the rewards for doing so grows the larger the donation is. For example, I will read out a public thank you if you donate $15.
And if you really want to join the TSK aficionados, donate $50 or more. Go to patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast to learn more. Any donation is greatly appreciated. The castle Sarvar is still standing today, exactly like it was all those centuries ago.
The main building is a pentagon, with a four stories high main tower, also acting as an entrance with a large iron gate. The moat surrounding the castle is no longer filled with swampy water, but a bridge crossing it is still there. The area is no longer a swampy, smelly, mosquito-infected medieval hellscape, but actually quite picturesque.
It's located in today's western side of Hungary. The name Sarvar literally means mud castle. Sar translated as mud and var translated as castle. The castle is also called Nadasdy Castle from the family that first owned it. Among them, Erzsébet Bathri, the widow Nadasdy. Now,
Imagine, if you will, dear listener, this same castle back in the late 1500s. The now ancient halls were filled with hatred, anger and tension. Much has been said and written about young Erzsabet and her mother-in-law, Countess Orsolia Nadazdi. They are said to hate each other.
and that Erzsébet learned various methods of cruelty from watching her mother-in-law discipline servants at Sarvar. However, such animosity, or lessons in cruelty, cannot have lasted very long. Arsólia Nadasdy died in the spring of 1571, the same year Erzsébet became engaged with Osorlia's son,
Without Orsolia's watchful eye, and with her fiancé off at school or away on adventures with friends, Erzsébet probably had considerable free time. The Nadazdi court flaunted its money on parties and patronizing the arts. Artists, philosophers, schools and libraries flourished in the Nadazdi homelands.
Young Erzsabert probably got much of her education as a result of this, and was certainly exposed to the most contemporary ideas of her time. But even if she had everything material she could want at Sarvar, she might have been quite unhappy there. The culture there was quite different than the one at Exed. At Exed she had been allowed to frolic like a boy—
But at Sarvar it was quite a different matter. She was being groomed to be a wife and noblewoman of high station. Everything was regulated. Eating, dressing, walking, and speaking should all be conducted like a lady. Sarvar was also a large and well-run estate.
and Erzsébet would have had long periods of time when she was unsupervised and with nothing to do. This resulted in her getting into trouble. Two years before her marriage, in 1573, the thirteen-year-old Erzsébet became involved in an illicit affair with a young man while staying at an Adasti manor in Ternava. His name was Ladislav Bendej.
Some sources say Bende was a servant, others that he was a young nobleman. He became pregnant from her illicit liaison and gave birth to a daughter. The baby was immediately taken from her and moved to some place in Transylvania or Wallachia. The Bathory family did everything in their power to cover up the scandal, including hush money to raise the child in secret.
Her groom-to-be, Count Nadasty, was furious and had Ladislav Bender's genitals sliced off and fed to the dogs. Pre-marital affair or not, the wedding between Erzsébet and Ferenc took place according to plan.
On the 8th of May, 1575, 14-year-old Erzsabet and 19-year-old Ferenc married at Varano Castle in Vrano. The celebration went on for several days. By all accounts, the lavishness of the celebration rivaled that of a king's wedding, with 4,500 invited guests. The Holy Roman Emperor himself
was invited to the wedding, although he did not actually attend. He did personally pen a letter of congratulation to the young couple, where he outlines the various lavish gifts he has ordered to be given them on his behalf. The wedding was properly medieval, and included a jousting tournament where Ferenc proved his athletic abilities.
At the conclusion of the jousting, the bride was presented with his wedding gift to her, Castle Cece, and its seventeen accompanying villages. An oddity for its time was that Erzsbert chose to keep her maiden surname of Bathory instead of taking her husband's name of Nadazdi.
This was probably due to the fact that she came from a far more prestigious bloodline than Ferenc did, and he is reported to have taken on her, the Bathory name, to his as well. However, her contemporaries did not always respect this, and in official documents written by others, she is usually referred to as Widow Nadastie or Lady Nadastie.
Both Ferenc and Erzsébet inherited their parents' vast properties, generating enormous wealth for the young couple. Collectively, they would own thousands of acres of land, dozens of towns, and more than 20 castles across present-day Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Romania, and the Czech Republic.
By all accounts, Erzsébet was a good wife and mother, at least publicly. She attended official functions with her husband, publicly practiced religion, gave money to the poor, and even assisted with the administration of health care for her staff and surrounding villages. In 1578, only three years after their wedding, Ottoman Turks were again conducting open raids across the countryside.
Mindful that Ferenc's father, Thomas, had betrayed both Joliet and the Turks, the younger Nadazdi now set forth, re-fortifying the family properties and collecting an army in preparation to meet the enemy. He had prepared for this moment his entire life, and the thrill of finally riding off to battle was probably very exhilarating for him.
Over the years, Ferenc would clash with the Turks several times, earning him the title as High Stablemaster, the Black Bay and the Black Knight of Hungary by his enemies. He was a captain in the Hungarian army, and he would spend his entire life engaged in warfare against the Muslim Ottoman Turks.
For eighteen-year-old Erzsbert, this meant she was left home alone for long periods of time. The couple had not yet had any children, and she had little to do. There are many rumors as to what she filled her days with, such as sexual acts with male servants, learning witchcraft, torture, and how to make love to other women. By her mid-twenties,
She seems to have settled into a routine. She spent her time at Sarvar and Kereshtor castles. She also visited other properties at least once a year. Her lifestyle was typical of noblewomen of her time. When she arose in the morning, she would begin a lengthy process of dressing, with the assistance of her ladies-in-waiting.
If attending a formal event or receiving visitors, she would rise very early before sunrise to begin a more elaborate process involving hair and makeup work.
On a typical day, she would spend her time looking after the estate, managing staff, consulting with her court officials and supervisors, dictating or writing letters, paying bills, reviewing documents, making rounds both inside and outside the manor, and receiving visitors.
Lunch would be taken around 11 a.m. Leisure time included horseback riding, picnics, hunts, drives into town and reading. She also enjoyed going to the spa at Piestani, as well as shopping and attending concerts in Vienna. Dinner would be served around 6 p.m. If there were no visitors, the countess would retreat to her bedchamber by dark.
As most nobles of the day, Ferenc and Erzsébet had constant trouble raising liquid capital. They were enormously rich on lands, but poor on readily available gold and silver currency. While Ferenc was away warring, Erzsébet was in charge of the day-to-day economics. Judging from her letters and correspondence,
She had a discerning eye upon even the smallest transactions. One of her letters regarding day-to-day financial management reads as follows. This summer, Instacart presents famous summer flavors coming to your front door, or pool, or hotel. Your grocery delivery has arrived, sir. That was faster than room service. No violins in the lobby? Seriously? Yeah.
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Give a stone of wheat to Benedict Ballas at the mill. We have not agreed to anything more. God keep you. Donat Sarvar, April 7th, 1587. Her Ladyship, Elizabeth Bathory. End quote. More than ten years into the marriage...
There are still no obvious signs that Erzsébet was on a collision course to becoming one of the worst serial killers of all time. Letters from the time show a very typical Hungarian noblewoman. Sometimes she can express slight annoyance with a delayed delivery of goods, but she is always curt and proper.
One matter remained a cause for distress, the issue of children and heirs to the family fortune. There is no record of a child until the birth of their daughter Anna, around 1585, ten years after the couple wed. There are many theories as to why the couple waited so long to have children. One obvious reason is that Ferenc was so often away fighting wars,
But he did return home often enough that this cannot explain it alone. Another theory is that the couple secretly hated each other, although no eyewitness testimony exists to confirm this. Erzsébet may also have had fertility problems, as this was very common among Hungarian nobility of the time. Eventually, the couple ended up having several children.
but several of them died before reaching adulthood. By the date of her will, in 1610, Countess Bathory would identify only three children to whom she left her entire estate in equal shares, daughters Anna and Cata and son Paul. As the only male beneficiary, the primary estate at Sarvar would ultimately pass to Paul.
Erzsébet was a very mature woman by the time standing, having Paul at age 38. It was after having her children we can start to notice something not being right regarding Erzsébet Bathory. At first, no one raised much fuss when a servant girl suddenly died in the night in the women's section of Castle Sarvar.
Her body was placed in a casket, and the priest summoned. He was surprised to see the casket was already nailed shut. Ordinarily, he would have expected to have found the body laid out on a bed. The countess quietly took him aside and said, "'I'm afraid we have a case of cholera on our hands, and I do not want to alarm the other servants or create a panic in town.'
The priest nodded understandingly. Inside Castle Sarvar, however, the female staff members were unusually quiet that day. When no one was in sight, they whispered constantly. More servants started to disappear. The Sarvar clergy was summoned again, and once again he found a casket nailed shut.
The casket was also much larger than usual, holding three bodies instead of one. The priest asked the countess why there were three bodies in a single casket. Elisabeth showed slight annoyance at such a question, and answered that there were not three bodies, but two. She ordered them to be buried in one grave. The priest, feeling his Christian conscience pressing him to push the matter further, did not let up.
He asked what happened to them, and why did the servants die so quickly, one after the other. The countess simply said that it would cause less gossip if the servants were buried together, and would not elaborate any further. The belfry master took the young priest aside and said, "'Father, it's best not to say anything or question the lady about these things.'
The priests started to protest, but the Belfry master simply countered with the statement, "'It will go badly for the servants if you do.' What began as an isolated incident slowly turned into an ever-increasing flood of dead bodies that began to follow Countess Bathory wherever she went."
In the preliminary investigation against the Countess, that took place years later in October of 1610, the first witness was the very same young priest that first had objected to the servants being buried together. His name was Benedek Bixardi. He testified that to his knowledge there were at least 175 girls and women who had died.
but he knew nothing regarding how they died. Once he did glimpse a bloodstain on one of the walls, and said that when he had been walking outside along the castle walls, he could hear the sounds of lashings. He knew, judging by the sounds, that the lashing and beating could go on for six or more hours at a time.
If Benedict's estimate of the death toll seemed high, another witness confirmed it. Balthazar Paube, also a priest, testified that he had heard the number of victims who had died from the after-effects of torture actually numbered over 200, maybe even as high as 300. Other servants, clergy, and townspeople from Sarvar and the surrounding areas testified
would come forward, they all said the same thing. Burials and funerals took place at an alarming rate, and the dead were almost always young servant girls. Access was forbidden to a certain part of the estate under heavy guard, and everyone had heard tales that girls had died as a result of torture.
Reverend Michael Zvonarich claimed that when the Countess was in the house, it was not possible to see anything unusual, since the staff had been strictly warned not to enter certain rooms. He too had heard rumors that an inner room, always guarded by a man named Drabont, was the site of horrific torture and murder, but he had never seen it with his own eyes.
Evidently, the Countess Bathory was very adept at covering her bloody tracks. Benedict reported that a few times he was called for in the secret areas of the castle, everything was cleaned up, and there was nothing to see. The fact is that the death of a few servants was hardly unusual in the sixteenth century. It was not common to bathe or wash more than once a week, if that.
and hygiene in general was extremely poor. Their nobility often defecated beneath the stairs or inside cupboards, and the servants had to clean it up, and they did not necessarily wash themselves afterwards. Disease was rampant. Both cholera, plague, and other ailments were common occurrences that left numerous corpses in their wake.
So at first, no one cared much for the news of a few dead servant girls. However, the numbers started to rapidly multiply. More stories of torture and outright murder, combined with bizarre behavior, began to bubble to the surface. It went so far that a local chaplain, Pastor Istvan Magyari, gave the countess a flaming rebuke from his pulpit sermon that goes as follows.
"'My brothers and sisters, in order for me to remain at the pulpit, I must disclose something of the utmost importance to you. I cannot conceal it. It must be even more so announced that, regarding the girl, your grace should not have so acted because it offends the Lord.'
"'And we will be punished if we do not complain to and criticize your grace. In order to confirm that my words are true, we need only exhume the body. You will find that the marks identify the way in which death occurred. The Countess, who had sat before the pulpit on the first row of pews, did not take such public scorn laying down.'
She countered immediately as follows. "'See here, Minister Istwan, you will soon see that I will make you pay for this. My husband and I have relatives who will not tolerate that you bring such shame on me and denounce me so. You have introduced me to an outrageous situation in which I am subjected to the pulpit, including even the indictment of my husband.'"
At the mention of her husband, she rose up and started to walk out of the church, taking her attendants with her. As she walked away, the brave minister shouted at her, "'If your grace has relatives, then I also have a relative, the Lord God. But for better proof of what I say, let us dig up the body, and then we will see what you have done.'
Whoa, easy there. Yeah.
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This series will continue next week, and I promise more graphic details into Erzsabet Bathory's bloody reign then. In the meantime, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. I have been your host, Thomas Weiborg-Thun. 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, 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.