History's Deadliest Women: The Blood Countess

Elizabeth Bathory was a fabulously wealthy Noblewoman accused of torturing and killing some 600 women in the 16th century. Her story is popularly spoken about as one of history's deadliest women... but is it true? And if it isn't, why has it stuck? Helping us get to the bottom of these questions is Shelley Puhak, author of The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal and the Making of a Monster https://shelleypuhak.com/the-blood-countess, to talk through her new findings on Elizabeth Báthory. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX74ZgzrlyH29 Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Betwixt the Sheets is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 1:40Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely Betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back once again to Betwixt the Sheets. Was this the one that you wanted to listen to? Have you got the right podcast? Because if you haven't, this is your time to get out now, before we're all embarrassed, quite frankly. But if you're choosing to stay, I do have to tell you that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults, about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. Oh, God, that just feels so good saying that, knowing that we're all going to be safer from here on out. Right, on with the show.

• 2:14Kate Lister?

  This is awkward. I appear to have walked in on the Countess Elizabeth Bathory preparing herself for a bath. Her candles are lit, the servants are scurrying about, enormous tubs of water are ready to go. Oh, it sounds lovely. Except, instead of hot water and a nice lavender oil, legend has it that her servants are filling the bath with the blood of virgins. Um, I'm all for a good tip to knock out a few wrinkles, but I think that might be a stretch even for me. Apparently, Elizabeth believes that this rather extreme skincare regime will keep her forever young. I'm going to stick with the retinal. But before we brand Hungary's infamous Blood Countess as one of history's most deadly

• 2:59Kate Lister?

  women, there's a problem. There's a big problem. This almost certainly never happened. So where did the story come from? How did the legend get born? Was Elizabeth really a monster at all? And is any of it true? Any of it at all? Well, I'm ready to find out if you are.

• 3:41Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society with me, Kate Lister. Given that we are now streaming a little mini-series on history's deadliest women, it made sense that somebody who's known in the history books as the Blood Countess, the most infamous serial killer of all time, would be included. The stories about this 16th century countess include some really shocking details, like that she killed over 600 victims, many of them young girls, even children. That she bathed in their blood, that she was a sadist, that she loved torturing the weak and the innocent, and was only stopped because she made the mistake of picking on rich victims. But was she as deadly as they say?

• 4:24Kate Lister?

  Or is the whole thing a setup? Joining me today to tell us more about this extraordinary case of this fascinating woman is the fabulous, the wonderful author and historian Shelley Puhak, to help us get to the bottom of all of this. So without further ado, everyone, let's crack on.

• 4:48Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Shelley Puhak. How are you doing?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  I'm well, how are you?

• 4:56Kate Lister?

  Oh, I'm so relieved that you are here, and I'm so relieved that you've written this book, The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster, about bop-bop-bom, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, about bloody time. We'll get into exactly who she is. There'll be people listening maybe never heard of her, but like, she's like such an infamous character in history. But when you actually try and like, find actual biographies of her, that they're pretty, like, there's not a whole lot of them. There's like, a lot of internet blogs, and there's a lot of, like, online stuff, and there's like, stuff on YouTube, but like, an actual, like, serious study of her, not so many. So what made you want to write one? And thank God you have.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. I became familiar with this legend because I have extended family in Slovakia who live in the area of some of her former estates. So it was always kind of on the back burner. It's a hugely popular story in Slovakia. There's kind of a sort of cottage tourism industry, right around a lot of her castles. So this was a fascinating cold case, and I became aware that there were more and more Central European scholars who were questioning, you know, whether or not she had actually done all of these vile and disgusting things that she was accused of.

• 6:14Kate Lister?

  It's a hell of a story, like.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  It is. And a lot of that scholarship had never made it into, you know, English, never been translated.

• 6:22Kate Lister?

  That's why. So it is there, it's just I can't read the language that it's in.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Right, well, and some of it was misfiled, so I was really lucky to, you know, kind of stumble across some documents that, you know, some new documents and, you know, work with new sources, but also work with new translations of old sources that were really revealing.

• 6:42Kate Lister?

  Fabulous.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:44Kate Lister?

  Okay, all right. So like I said, there will be people listening who don't know who the Countess Elizabeth Bathory is. So could you give us the headline story?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Sure. Elizabeth Bathory, or Bathory Erzsibet, as you might know her in Hungarian, she's long been known as one of the world's most prolific serial killers, the most prolific female serial killer. She was accused of torturing and killing over 600 young women. It's an especially salacious story because over time, there's, you know, become this sort of S and M gruesome element transposed over the original legend. She's been cast as this lesbian vampire. And, you know, just to kind of situate listeners, if we want to think about like, where and when we are, when Elizabeth is born, Elizabeth I is the brand new Queen of England, the

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Protestant Reformation is not even 50 years old, she's going to be a contemporary of people like Bacon and Marlowe and Shakespeare. And the canonical legend, the legend that, you know, you hear, or if you look something up, if you Google her, you'll see some version of this idea that she has this finishing school, she's this fabulously wealthy countess from this depraved, old aristocratic family who runs a finishing school, and she is torturing and murdering young women in her care because she's become convinced that if she bathes in their virgin blood, she will stay eternally young. And eventually, there's such an outcry, so many families are complaining about their

• 8:18Speaker 02

  missing daughters, that the king is forced to launch an investigation. When they go to her house, they catch her red-handed, and because of her aristocratic privilege spared the indignity of a trial, and instead, she is walled up in a tower with just a little slit for food, where she will live out her days. The problem with that legend is, almost every bit of it is completely wrong.

• 8:41Kate Lister?

  Oh, no. I had a feeling that you were going to say that, you know? It's like, one of those historical stories that you hear, that it's, you listen to it, like, you've got this sense, this, it's not, it's not a good story, but it's too good to be true. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, it's too much somehow. And then, when these stories are this exciting, and it is, it's a very racy story that people can project all kinds of stuff on to, from lesbianism to S and M to vampires to the Blood Countess, is that people almost don't, they don't want the truth anymore. They want the story. That's what they want. But you have managed to push past this. So let's start dismantling the story. Who was Elizabeth Bathory? Did she even exist?

• 9:26Speaker 02

  She certainly existed. She was born in, you know, 1560, and she is born-

• 9:30Kate Lister?

  Off to a good start.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Into, great time to be born. And she's born into this, you know, really, really old. Her family has been in the aristocracy for about 500 years, and she's related to, you know, all of these very important people. So she's the niece of the King of Poland, she's related to some cardinals in Rome, a lot of princes of Transylvania are in her family tree, and her brother is the Chief Justice of Royal Hungary. So, you know, her people go way, way, way back. And she's a very big deal, and she's extraordinarily wealthy.

• 10:05Kate Lister?

  So that's true. She was definitely born, definitely existed, she was definitely very, very rich, and very, very privileged. And where is this, by the way? Where was she born?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  So she is born in what is, I guess, this is, this area is changing hands between Transylvania and Royal Hungary, but we would know it as, you know, was once the Kingdom of Hungary. An important thing for people to know, I get into kind of the nitty gritty in the book with maps, et cetera, but you just need to know that this area is divided, and it has been invaded by the Ottoman Turks, and then there's also a civil war, essentially, going on at the same time. So we have this formerly great kingdom that's been divided into three, and a lot of things are changing hands, you know, it's an active war zone, so that's also going to kind of complicate the story.

• 10:58Kate Lister?

  So it's turbulent.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  I think that might be an understatement, yes.

• 11:05Kate Lister?

  Okay, fair enough. So she is rich, is from aristocracy. The other part of the legend is that she was spectacularly well educated and that she was super, super, super clever. Is that true?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Um, she seems to certainly have been intelligent. Some of the information that you'll see online, like for example, that she somehow spoke Greek. No one can really track down where that's from or where that originated. There doesn't seem to be anything for that. However, for the time period, she's, she's very well educated. She certainly can write and read Latin, Hungarian, German.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  And she leaves behind quite a bit of, you know, correspondence. We know that Yeah, her mother is extraordinarily well educated and like a really interesting figure too. So she does have this sort of really strong willed, intelligent mother. And there's a really long tradition of, I guess we'd say really independent minded women and a very like kind of tolerant family.

• 12:07Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  So she is from a background where it's expected that, you know, she can hold her own and that she is being prepared for the eventuality that she might need to step in temporarily or permanently in some capacity. An important thing too, to keep in mind, because this is a war zone, is a lot of things that we would consider not traditional in other parts of the world at this time. It's kind of like in World War Two where we were like Rosie the Riveter, women get to work, go to the factories, like normally not acceptable, but because of the circumstances, people are saying, you know, the men have to go off to fight. You need to be prepared to take the reins should something happen to your father, brother, husband.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  And we see this across all social classes, not just the aristocracy, but you know, women having to step in and run printing presses or brew beer or run the farm. And even some women stepping in as soldiers. So there's such a man shortage that there's a little bit of an opening for women to perhaps take on more responsibility than they might ordinarily.

• 13:11Kate Lister?

  As a historian, what sources are you working with to try and track this woman? Because like from Hungarian sources from the 16th century in a war zone, it's, it seems like where, where did you find the sources? Where are they held?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  So four different countries. These documents are split between the archives of Austria, you know, modern day Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, and a few in Romania.

• 13:35Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  So that's the other, I think, issue is because the Bathory family has since died out. There's no family archive in the way that there are for some other ancient families, right? So little bits and pieces have been subsumed into other families' archives or other collections, but you have to piece it together. So you might go one place and you might say, this is all that exists for 1610, let's say. This is, this is all that we know. But you might not be aware that there's other bits of information, bits and pieces that you can glean from the other archives and put together to get like a fuller picture. And obviously, a lot of this scholarship and, and work was complicated by, you know,

• 14:16Speaker 02

  virtue of the iron curtain. And then afterwards, this, this idea that territories are changing hands, documents are changing hands, archives are, are kind of coming and going. So this sense that there isn't, in the way there is, for example, in, you know, Britain or France, like a central depository of these documents for hundreds of years.

• 14:36Kate Lister?

  That as a historian researching this, that must have been so difficult for you.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  I think the hardest part is the Hungarian. It's one thing to look at old Latin documents and you can piece together, right? Like what's going on? But, um, and I was fortunate to work with some really outstanding translators and experts in old handwriting. But you know, there's, there's time when you look at a document like this is a will. Clearly it has to do with these people, you know, maybe have to pull in some experts to help me out. But there were some times when you're like, I have, I have no idea what this, what this document even is. Like, I don't even know. Is it important? Is it not?

• 15:16Kate Lister?

  It's the worst thing in it when like you, you can understand the language, maybe like you can translate the language, but the handwriting is insane. And you're just like, that just feels so unfair when you're like, but I should be able to understand this and now I can't. Right. So the next part of the legend with Bathory is she's aristocratic, she's rich, she's privileged. She's, um, she's like running things and very, very clever is that she gets married to another high flyer. And the story that I've heard is that he was the one with a taste for sadism and he introduced his young wife to it.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yes, there's that or there's the older aunt, you know, who entices her to this like, you know, violent underworld. Um.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Okay. With the husband, like some things, just to clarify. First of all, as far as marriages go for this time period for an aristocrat, this is a pretty decent one. And the reason I say that is there's only a five year age difference. Okay. They're both orphans and they get to live together for a period before they're actually married. You know, obviously they're being, being chaperoned, she's learning the reins of the, of the estate. And he had a very, he was raised by his, his mom, you know, she's essentially single mom for quite a, you know, bit of his life and she's a very strong woman and also very tolerant. So he seems to have, you know, inherited a lot of that. So she's moving from one very liberal, uh, we might say household into another.

• 16:46Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  And we have this idea that there aren't, people said, well, maybe they have a terrible marriage because there aren't a lot of letters between the two of them. And a lot of, you know, historians have pushed back on that and said, no, the reason we don't have so many letters is because they're spending all their time together. You know, and people are traveling, there's no need to, you know? And so he's always coming home whenever he can, even when he's away at war to spend Christmas with her. When she's sick, he writes to people and says, I can't come, my wife's sick, I have to take care of her. And he doesn't have to do this. I mean, there are servants, there's enough money. So we do get the sense that, you know, he, he takes her along when he goes to parliament, that they spend quite a bit of time together. We can't know what was happening, you know, behind closed doors.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Like we don't have a diary that's like, you know, I love my husband, he's amazing. Or, oh my God, he's such a bore. But as far as for the time period, they seem to have had at least a very good working partnership. And they, you know, are affectionate. Another thing that I think is very telling is we have a lot of existing surviving letters between other couples and we can kind of compare what we have between these two with what we have from others. And so for a lot of other women, we have these very effusive and kind of simpering tones towards their husband, right? Like, oh, you are the light of my life and you provide for me and you're amazing. And, you know, it, it's, it's very like,

• 18:12Speaker 02

  she writes to him as an equal. It's like, hi beloved, we have an issue over here, you know, see you in two days.

• 18:20Kate Lister?

  Interesting.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  And some people take that as a sign of coldness. I think a lot of us could take it as almost a contemporary text message. You know, she doesn't need to beg for his approval. She doesn't need to build up his ego. And when he leaves, he trusts her to maintain everything. I think where we get this idea that he was a sadist is he is a warrior. Right? I mean, it's a bloody war, he's off fighting. And there are a couple of instances where, you know, he's beheading people in battle. He's injured himself and he does have, uh, some Turkish officers impaled.

• 18:56Kate Lister?

  Now, that's not nice.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  No, and but I will say he doesn't do it himself. It's ordered and it's ordered as retribution. I'm not trying to excuse it, but because they've done that to his people, it's, it's pretty horrific. But I was going to say, I think, um.

• 19:10Kate Lister?

  Within the context of lots of horrific things.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Most men in this time period have had to do things that are absolutely vile.

• 19:20Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  And it's very difficult there to say that.

• 19:24Kate Lister?

  But it's not like no to, it's not like exceptionally vile, they were all being vile.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yes. And in particular, he didn't have that reputation as a landlord, right? Or as, you know, among his people.

• 19:37Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I mean, it's very hard. People are compartmentalizing.

• 19:40Kate Lister?

  We're not defending impalers here. No, we're not. Don't do that, please.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  They're, they're terrible. It's terrible. It's, you know, absolutely terrible. But he also has this, uh, this reputation among the Ottomans where, you know, they think that he is a badass, like he's, you know, like one of the best and brightest. And he's well respected. He's a target. You know, like they will, if they are raiding, go for him because they know he is a big shot if they can take him out. So I think we have to say that he's got blood on his hands like any other prominent general of this time period. But we have no evidence that he has done anything out of the ordinary. And in fact, I think an interesting little, if you'll indulge me here, uh,

• 20:26Speaker 02

  you know, tidbit is when he's very, very young, but he's taken over. Uh, he has some overseers who are tasked with overseeing, I guess, the, you know, serfs in a particular area. And these serfs are so upset with how they're being treated by these, you know, particular overseers that they all band together, they petition the king, they say, we don't like this guy's beating us too much. He's working us too hard. There's a set procedure to file complaints and, you know, this case, it's respected. They say like cease and desist, you can't touch these people, we have to look into the working conditions, it's investigated and it's improved. So we know at least as a young man, he's learned, you have to be careful that people

• 21:10Speaker 02

  aren't abusing your serfs. And we don't have any other complaints from that point on, but we know that were there issues, there is a venue, you know, to voice those without fear of retribution for a lot of these serfs. And they're not making complaints like that. In fact, they seem quite pleased with him.

• 21:28Kate Lister?

  Okay. What's his name? What's the husband's name?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  It would be Francis, if we anglicize it. Not Oshte.

• 21:34Kate Lister?

  Okay, Francis. So a badass on the battlefield, definitely somebody you'd want on your side, not somebody that you want to cross, it sounds like, but not noted for unusual cruelty.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 21:50Kate Lister?

  Okay. It does kind of sound from what you're saying that they had a reasonably happy marriage, because you don't, you don't get a lot of those in the aristocracy. They're worthy of note.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, you don't. And also a few things that were about Francis is like, when they have children who die, he's brokenhearted, like we have him writing.

• 22:09Kate Lister?

  Oh, they have kids, do they?

• 22:10Speaker 02

  They have kids and, you know, we have that horrific 50% child mortality rate, you know, even like the best medical care doesn't, doesn't like get you out of that. And we see him absolutely like brokenhearted and at his wife's side. So we don't get the sense that he's, you know, kind of cold and arrogant and you deal with the children, that they are both equally devastated each and every time that this happens.

• 22:34Kate Lister?

  Okay. So we can kind of put that myth to bed then. There's no evidence at all that he was the sadist and he introduced her to torturing people, torturing the servants.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 22:46Kate Lister?

  Absolutely not, right? That's gone. That one is out of the window.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  All right. What else have you heard?

• 22:50Kate Lister?

  I heard that he died young.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Young today, yes, like young for the time period. So he dies in his 40s. I, you know, it's 1604 and he catches some sort of illness in the army camps. He's headed home to see his wife for the holidays and, you know, it's a sudden illness and he's dead pretty quickly.

• 23:17Kate Lister?

  Could have been anything, couldn't it really?

• 23:19Speaker 02

  There's typhus going around. It seems to have been that. They talk about the camp, you know, camp fever and how many other people have died at the time. So it could be anything, but it seems like, you know, he's caught up in this epidemic of which there are so many different ones circulating at the time. It's, it's so grim.

• 23:36Kate Lister?

  Do we have any records that tell us how Elizabeth took this, that, that he died?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  She is devastated, we might say. Absolutely devastated.

• 23:47Kate Lister?

  Not the happy widow.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  No, I mean, right away she has to project power and preserve the family, jump in, make sure there's this fabulous, you know, funeral and no one dares question her authority. But we also see that she's withdrawing from a lot of public life, that she's writing to people, you know, things like, I can't handle this, I don't want to go. She's, she's declining invitations, people are concerned. So she seems to have, you know, been upset or at least convinced enough people that she was, you know, genuinely upset.

• 24:21Kate Lister?

  So the next piece of the story, and it's interesting that they had kids, because that's not mentioned anywhere in the myths that surround this.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Hugely important to the story, because there's a lot of things too, when you, when you see the lens of, you know, I think some like horror fans are very upset because like this research does not confirm this like bloody sexy story they wanted. But it's even more chilling. If you imagine that you are a woman who's good at your job, you're in a reasonably decent marriage, you've lived through a whole bunch of trauma, right?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  And you are trying to do the best for your kids. Like you are like, okay, I'm in a bad spot. I will do anything to secure the future of my children. People still take you down. Fine, it happens all the time in this time period. But then imagine that generations and generations and generations, and 400 years later, people are still conspiring with your enemies unwittingly, you know, so you never rest in peace. Like you're a cartoon villain. You're just.

• 25:19Kate Lister?

  You'd be so angry, wouldn't you?

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Like, it's kind of like, if we imagine, I don't know, some of the, not to bring Hillary Clinton into this, but some of the things she was accused of, right? Like with doing with like baby skins with her, with her aide, like these like very bizarre, right?

• 25:36Kate Lister?

  Yeah, the weirdest, the weird stuff.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  And then we imagine like 500 years later, people are dressing up like, you know, Hillary Clinton for Halloween and making horror films about this. And everybody's talking about like the dead baby stuff. And like, oh my gosh, like, how did this happen?

• 26:00Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Shelley and Elizabeth after this short break.

• 26:06Kate Lister?

  In case you weren't aware, World Mental Health Day takes place in October. And I don't know about you, but I'm taking this as a reminder to practice some proper self-care, saying no to plans I don't want to go to, guilt-free snacking and Halloween movie marathons. It's also the perfect time to check in with yourself and your mental health. For many, it can mean taking that step and speaking to a professional who can help and guide you through any difficulties you're having. But often when you try to do that, it's still way harder than it should be. A lot of online therapy platforms don't accept insurance at all, which means even during a month focused on mental health, you're stuck paying out of pocket or signing up for an expensive monthly subscription. This is where Rula comes in.

• 26:51Kate Lister?

  They partner with over 120 insurance plans, making the average co-pay just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. Because the whole point of World Mental Health Day is making sure people actually get help, not just think about it. And Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is actually helping you move forward. With World Mental Health Day this October, it's a good reminder that taking care of your mental health can start with one step. Visit rula.com/shets to get started. That's R U L A dot com slash S H E E T S. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

• 27:39Speaker 01

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• 28:39Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that.

• 29:08Kate Lister?

  Right, let's get on with it.

• 29:21Kate Lister?

  All right. So let's get into the accusations then, because that's, that's where this story just starts to just go woo. So the, the legend, and I, I say that, I say this legend as in this, this is what the internet will tell you happened, is that the husband dies and she loses it completely. And then she just goes on a killing bonanza and that she's got a couple of loyal servants and that one day she hits a servant girl and the blood goes on her face and she goes, oh, that's knocked out a few wrinkles. And then she decides to go on a killing rampage, murdering virgins to bathe in their blood. That's the story, right? I mean, is there anything in this at all that you found that's true? Any, even a beauty tip from Countess Elizabeth?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I wish, right? Like a vampire facial. Unfortunately though, no.

• 30:08Kate Lister?

  Cleaners, toner, moisturize, that's all we need to do.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  And that's completely invented over a hundred years after her death by a priest.

• 30:16Kate Lister?

  Nonsense.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  By a priest who's trying to sell a travel guide. And vampires are really hot at that time. So he's, he's kind of recycling this vampire lore.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  You know, one thing though, that makes me really angry is this guy, right? He's this like essentially religious extremist, has such an outsized.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  I think impact not just on, you know, Elizabeth Bathory's story, but it impacts all of us because this Bathory legend gets used not just by this priest to sell his travel guide, right? But by then it's adopted by social scientists and really early psychiatrists to explain the inner workings of the female brain and that we are completely motivated by vanity, right? Like when women commit crimes or do something violent or unladylike, it's not because they have their own ambitions or because they want to protect their children or, you know, their friends or family, but because they are vain and they are motivated, you know, solely by sexual competition, right?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Like they want to be young and hot and women will do anything. And that really is like embedded in early psychiatry. And it, and it's so much of the ways we think about women. So I think it's such a story of one woman, but it's also how so many of us have been kind of categorized and dismissed.

• 31:41Kate Lister?

  And it feeds right into a very old fairy tale trope that you have that gets recycled. I mean, if you think like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White in particular, that again, it's an older woman who's jealous of the younger woman's beauty and that she goes on this killing rampage because of it and this demonizing of older women and having them motivated only by their, their, their perceived value within a patriarchal society. It's just, it's a nasty story that reinforces all of that. So who is this priest? Who the hell's he? I'm going to put him on my list.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  His name is Laszlo Taroxi and he lived in the area. And I think it's about 1729, I believe his book comes out. But he, you know, just embellished it and it really, it really took off, especially because when he's writing, it's at the height of this great vampire panic. One thing I think it's really, really, really important to highlight is that, you know, one of the things I explore in my book is how the Elizabeth Bathory case is intertwined with the European witch trials and the Protestant Reformation.

• 32:48Kate Lister?

  Of course.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  That gets completely overlooked. But by the time the priest is writing, everybody's sick of the witch trials, right? Like they've burned everybody they can. No one wants to talk about it.

• 32:57Kate Lister?

  We're done.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  We're doing vampires now, like get, you know, get with the program. So everybody's very eager to say, yes, vampire. Had nothing to do with, you know, all of that nasty witch business.

• 33:09Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Wow. And it is, it's like right in there, just as the, the witch trials are starting to bubble up around Europe with the Protestant Reformation. Jeez. So, but what is, so there's this priest in the 18th century, at least it wasn't the Victorians, most of the time it's the Victorians who mess up.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  I mean, they add to it, right? Like they totally, like, they totally like, you know, find it and they're go running with it. And you know why? I think there's this element where as far as if we look at it as a legend and a crime, like there's so many of these elements, right? Like we have the right kind of aggressor, you know, she's like hot and wealthy, even if she maybe is like menopausal and crazy, who knows?

• 33:50Kate Lister?

  Slightly on the turn.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Right? We have the right victims, right? They're young.

• 33:54Kate Lister?

  Perfect victims.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  White, dead women, right?

• 33:57Kate Lister?

  Virginal.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Everybody loves that. And now we don't just have one, we have like 600 of them. And we also have this excuse then for all of these priests and all of these early social scientists and all of these Victorians to talk about, to sketch, to paint all of these naked, dead white women under the auspices of being really, really concerned about crime. So it's, it's an easy way for this priest who has no other access really to like naked bodies also, right?

• 34:29Kate Lister?

  Faux concern.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm imagining and I have to maybe write about it and maybe sketch it.

• 34:35Kate Lister?

  Unfortunately, I have to imagine them all naked to be this concerned and I am very concerned. Yeah, we've seen that, that trick before. So, all right, so there's a priest in the 18th century who embellishes something, but in the historical records themselves, is there anything about an arrest or a trial or, or like her hurting anybody? Is there anything that this is based on?

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So it's important to know that she is arrested, she's investigated and she's going to be arrested in 1610. There will be no trial. She will have some servants who work for her who will be put on trial and they will be executed. She will also have a good friend of hers who will be burned at the stake as a witch.

• 35:18Kate Lister?

  They don't mess about, do they?

• 35:20Speaker 02

  No, they don't. And I think some other contexts though, where everyone goes, okay, so she's accused of these awful things. There's 300, I think it's 304 people who testify supposedly against her.

• 35:33Kate Lister?

  It's quite a lot.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  This is bad, right? I mean, would you?

• 35:36Kate Lister?

  That is bad.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Look at the legend. And I think when I first started my research, I assumed, what I think most people assume is there's no smoke without fire, right? Like this has got to be wildly exaggerated. There's no way there's 600 bodies, but you know, obviously this woman was cruel to her servants and something happened. But I think we've got to really, really, really, really look at the context and look at what was happening, right? So first I think we have to look at witchcraft, like go back to witchcraft. So it's important to know that Elizabeth Bathory, like her mother-in-law, like her niece, like a lot of her cousins, like a lot of other noble women at this time period is accused of witchcraft.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  So not just that she's, you know, accusations aren't just that she's torturing and killing girls. And it's important to know too, that these accusations are not that these are hot virgins, but that these are prepubescent children. Okay. So she's got a satanic child trafficking ring going on, but also.

• 36:39Kate Lister?

  Oh, the pitch is changing a bit now.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. It's not very sexy. Okay. So, and then, and she's hosting this ring that other noble women are aiding and assisting her with, and they're sometimes donating their daughters to be sacrificed, et cetera. So we have this whole, this whole tape. We also have in the, in the record accusations of cannibal feasts, right? Like they're, they're eating people. They're serving people to other people. She's got this army of invisible cats and dogs that she can, you know, stick on her enemies to annoy them. She's using charms and incantations to like try to kill her enemies. She's got these like supernatural spying devices.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  So it's interesting that we set aside all of these like witchcraft accusations, right? And then we, we like kind of cherry pick out some of these other accusations and say, well, they must be, be true. Because I think if we look at, for example, it's, you know, much later, but if we look at like, when Americans look at Salem, there's no way we would, you know, do movie portrayals of these, these poor men and women like flying around on broomsticks and speared with blood and, you know, like hanging out with the devil, right? Like, we're like, that's insane.

• 37:53Kate Lister?

  That's just put an entirely different lens on this. That, that, that's a completely different, as soon as you said that, I'd never thought about it like that before. Why would I have done? But if this was a witchcraft accusation, suddenly the 600 victims and, and flying around on magic charms and satanic cannibalism, now that's fitting within a wider context of, well, of course it's nonsense. Like you look at the witch trials all over the place and they're, they're accusing people of doing things like this, sometimes in vast numbers.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. And I think that even helps explain the large number of witnesses. So, you know, in the book I dig into all the nitty gritty of people are really interested in like the specific, you know, numbers and who's saying what, but just to kind of do like an overview.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  You know, essentially the number of witnesses there, you know, there's 304 people who give testimony is not unusual for a couple of reasons. First is you take any witch trial in the area at the exact same time. So I looked at some of common women, like healers that are just, you know, 10 miles south of here, happening at exactly the same time. And they're able to turn out over a hundred people, you know, right away, just for this one woman. Then you have to say for Elizabeth Bathory, we have this, you know, very famous woman and we have five rounds of testimony given over two years. So they keep going back out in the community and, and pulling more people in, pulling more people in, pulling more people in.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  So the fact that you could out of 10,000 or so people, get 300 people to say something isn't so ludicrous.

• 39:36Kate Lister?

  So this isn't 300 people going, she killed my daughter. I know who she killed. This isn't 300 victims. This is 300 people testifying to random stuff, like involved in a witch trial, which, which as we've seen in other trials, can be anything from, I saw them out at night and then they looked at me, that kind of stuff.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, well, the next thing I would say is of those 304, it's roughly about 80% who say, I don't know anything, or yes, I heard a rumor. You know, most of these people who testify have never met her, have never set foot on her property. They may have seen her at a distance as her carriage was going through town, but a lot of them have no, no knowledge, right? And there's even people who say things, for example, that we can prove that are demonstrably false. I'll give you like just one example. There's this priest that testifies, he's absolutely certain, he was a witness, that she tried to poison the king when he was eating at her house, right? The thing is, is it's a Habsburg king, the Habsburgs keep like ridiculous documentation, right?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  We know for a fact that the king never, ever set, you know, foot on any one of her properties. He never dined with her, ever. She had met him, but you know, that's in like, we're talking in Vienna or Bratislava elsewhere. So this, you know, this couldn't have happened. He could not have, have witnessed, you know, her trying to use some sort of like supernatural magic to poison the king at dinner because the king was never at dinner. So there are some things like this that you can kind of go through one at a time and say, well, this couldn't have happened because, you know, there's numerous examples of this. We also have examples of some of the people testifying who owe money to the prosecutor

• 41:21Speaker 02

  or who have other sorts of very clear conflicts of interest, the prosecutor himself. So I think as you start to look at this, you go, okay, what are we left with? We're left with a handful of people. Making some accusations. And in most cases, they're sure she's a murderer, but they're not sure who she's murdered. No one can really come up with like a first name, last name. And when they say, I know she must have murdered this noble girl, no one ever goes to that family and says, are you missing a girl? Like, did your girl die?

• 41:53Kate Lister?

  Oh, this wouldn't stand up in court today, would it? This isn't 300 accusations. This is mostly people going, I don't know. And then other people making stuff up.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Or people saying, I've heard a rumor. I mean, imagine if

• 42:05Kate Lister?

  I heard something.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know. You, you're involved in some sort of, you know, I don't, somebody says they've seen you out with Brad Pitt, let's say. And, you know, it gets splashed all over a tabloid. And then they just start interviewing people saying, have you heard this rumor? Have you heard this rumor? And they said, yeah, I've heard the rumor. And the next thing we know, you're guilty because people say they've heard this rumor.

• 42:26Kate Lister?

  They're reporting on the rumors.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:28Kate Lister?

  So is there anything in, in the documents that you've looked at? I mean, it's sounding less and less and less credible, but was, was there ever a body found in the castle? Cause that's the other thing that you hear is that the police or the, the equivalent of the police turned up at her castle and there was just bodies everywhere. They're just like dying people.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  So what we do have, what it seems to be rooted in as, you know, actual illness during an epidemic. And so the only thing we have in this case is we have a single body of a maid and we have an injured girl. And what's interesting about this maid is we have, you know, a group of pastors who visit her castle right before this girl dies. And they report, there's a group of girls who are all very, very ill and they're sick. So they say, you know, some of them are on the verge of death. And then one of these girls dies. But the fact that people have seen her the days prior, they don't mention any, you know, signs of torture, murder, but the fact that she's quarantined with these other sick girls and then she dies.

• 43:30Kate Lister?

  That's not the same.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Right? And then we also have a girl who's injured. And now it does sound like some of the treatment that this, this poor girl underwent was probably pretty horrific and traumatic, because they talk about how people use scissors to cut necrotic, black flesh off of, you know, an infected wound. And it seems like she was attacked by a wild animal or something horrific has happened. People are fascinated with this woman because she has these two gashes on her back and she's got this really mangled hand. And people come to visit and are like, oh, her hand is super mangled. You know, it's really gross. And they ask her, you know, how did your hand get like this? And she says, a woman

• 44:14Speaker 02

  working for the countess, you know, used scissors to cut the black flesh from my wound.

• 44:21Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  But it doesn't seem to be a description of torture. It seems to be a description of attempted medical treatment. And then the interesting thing about this girl is that everybody visits her. They're obsessed with her hand. She's entered into evidence as, you know, a torture victim. But then the, you know, essentially like the judges in the county government pay her off with the farm. She never testifies again. Her and her family get land for the first time and she, you know, she kind of quietly disappears.

• 45:01Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Shelley and Elizabeth after the short break.

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• 47:18Kate Lister?

  So we're looking at this through the lens of the witch trials, which it's now sounding, I think that you've just flipped this entire thing on its head. The one constant that you have in the witch trials, no matter where they are, or what they're happening, or who is being accused, is someone, somewhere is on the make. Someone, there's somebody in the background that has a reason for doing this, whether it's that they are trying to make a name for themselves, that they are a religious zealot, trying to rid the world of the devil and trying to prove themselves. Or a lot of the time, it's people accusing other people, they just happen to end up with their farm now. Oh, look how that worked out. So whoops-a-daisy, witches can't be having farms. I'll just have that. Thank you very

• 47:59Kate Lister?

  much. What is the motivation for doing this, for launching an accusation of this magnitude against this woman?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  If you approach this case as a whodunit, as in a who framed her, there are almost too many suspects for all of the motivations you outlined. So, you know, for example, we have the, the political angle where she is related to, you know, she's the aunt of the Prince of Transylvania. Transylvania, Royal Hungary are in the middle of these very contentious land negotiations. They're kind of on the verge of war, right? And she happens to be investigated and arrested at the same time as other members of her family and an assassination attempt on her nephew, the prince.

• 48:45Kate Lister?

  Oh, look at that.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  That happens to be organized by the prosecutor. So it is that idea of is she being held as a pawn? Okay, that's one option. Option two is we definitely have these religious zealots that are involved, like these men who legitimately believe, you know, they call her Jezebel. They really, really, really think because she's not doing Christianity the right way, the way they would like to. She's Calvinist, they're Lutheran, therefore devil. Okay. So we definitely have the religious zealots. And then we have a lot of more just kind of ordinary greed and ambition, you know, certain nobles who want her land, who are in kind of court battles with her. And we have a prosecutor whose son is a direct

• 49:27Speaker 02

  rival for the same positions that her son is, you know, and, and also has like a dozen other reasons, like not to, not to like her and to, and to want to push her to the side. So it's almost like, who didn't want her out of the way?

• 49:43Kate Lister?

  Hmm. A powerful, single woman, a powerful widowed woman in 15th century, 16th century Hungary. Yeah, she's going to have a lot of enemies.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And she controls, you know, vast amount of land. I think we think of a castle or, you know, two castles, but she's got 17 castles and like kind of 500 miles of land. Like the land she commands is bigger than a lot of kingdoms and nations at this time. It stretches in a arc across the country. So if you wanted to invade, say your nephew, you know, was interested in doing that, there's boop, ba doop, ba doop, ba doop, like these little sort of stopping points right across. So it's not just that she's wealthy and that she's powerful, but it's also the strategic importance of the particular fortresses and castles that, that she commands.

• 50:33Kate Lister?

  So this will be, this will be one of the smoking guns. What happens to her land and possessions after she's accused and convicted of witchcraft?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Well, she's never convicted. So that's the thing. They, they keep putting off, they just imprison her. They just say, well, we're just going to put you under house arrest. And she's pushing for a trial. She wants a trial. And we actually even have the Habsburg King say, well, let's let her have a trial. And they prepare for a trial and the prosecutor's always like, you know what? I just can't get around to it.

• 51:01Kate Lister?

  My diary's not good that week.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, oh, the paper, it just didn't arrive. And now Parliament, you know, left for the holidays, can't do it. Now he's delaying, delaying, delaying until she's dead. And then a good portion of her property ends up being technically given to her minor son, but he's being controlled by men who are loyal to the prosecutor. Right? And the rest of it is split up between like an ambitious scheming son-in-law and, and other people. So if we follow the money trail, follow what happens to that land, it's, it's pretty obvious. There's even a point where she has her daughter go back to her house, break in and get all of her jewels because she's like, they're going to take those from you too. And we have these complaints in the courts. Like her daughter visits her and she's like,

• 51:46Speaker 02

  you need to start securing all of this. They're going to

• 51:48Kate Lister?

  They're going to go in and get the copper out the roof this lot, aren't they?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:52Kate Lister?

  What happens to the kids, by the way? So, and also like you mentioned there that she dies. So presumably she dies young-ish?

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, she's, it's four years from the time she is accused to the time she's dead.

• 52:04Kate Lister?

  Do we know how she died? Is that suspicious? Is that a hmm?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  It could be, but we don't have any evidence. And there is some evidence that she may have had some sort of chronic illness. That might've been what initiated the proceedings is that she seemed maybe vulnerable or a little run down. And they were like, this is the time to go.

• 52:22Kate Lister?

  Witch, right?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  So, but you know, it seems that she, she, we know that she goes to her jailers and she says, my hands are really cold. And they say, don't worry about it. She goes to bed. She's singing hymns. She thinks she's going to die and she's dead in the morning.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Could it have been poison? I mean, yes, but also very, very likely, you know, it could have been a result of some sort of chronic disease, cancer.

• 52:50Kate Lister?

  You'd think that if she was a witch or, you know, the devil, that she would have done something about that particular situation. That's the thing that always baffles me about the witch trials is like, well, all right, if they've made a pact with the devil and if they have the backing of Satan himself, why are they pissing around making cows' milk sour? Like, it's, they have a big enough budget to do something better than this, surely.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Right? Like, all they do is annoy their neighbors and...

• 53:11Kate Lister?

  Yeah, like, why? That's, like, I don't understand that. At least if you're murdering 600 innocent servant girls, at least that is, you know, an impressive use of satanic power. But that's absolutely not what happened in this case. What happened to her kids?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  So, it's like a mixed bag. She has a daughter who dies right after her. So, you know, her son, her poor son, like, just never can get out from under the thumb of these, like, really powerful women. And then he's going to, like, fall from a horse and have a traumatic brain injury and then have epilepsy. Like, he's just basically going to be...

• 53:47Kate Lister?

  Not good.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  She's gonna have one daughter who is going to kind of fight, right? She's gonna, like, marshal her resources, try to get troops to get the land back that her mother had. And she's going to, you know, have a, have a son who also similarly fights. There's going to be a long line of Habsburg rebels that continue in this family until the last one is caught, tried, and beheaded in, like, spectacular, you know, fashion in the late 17th century. So, there's this pattern of this particular family, the Bathory family, being involved in political intrigue, political plots, rebellions, in particular against the Habsburgs, that you see throughout the generations. And it's weird how we think, oh, she wasn't

• 54:31Speaker 02

  a part of that. You know, she was just, she was just a witch.

• 54:35Kate Lister?

  That's what she was accused of, witchcraft specifically.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Lot of the accusations are specifically of witchcraft.

• 54:40Kate Lister?

  They never mention that, do they?

• 54:41Speaker 02

  They say that she's very skilled in magic and sorcerer's crafts. They say that she has spells and incantations, that she's, you know, all of these things. So, there's definitely this dimension that I think is completely overlooked because the witch trials aren't nearly as sexy as vampires.

• 54:57Kate Lister?

  No.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 54:59Kate Lister?

  That, Shelley, you have done the most incredible work with this. I mean, this episode is part of our History's Deadliest Women, but she's not at all, is she? She's a woman who's accused... No, don't be sorry. That, that's a phenomenal piece of research that you've done there, overturning that. And the, the lens of that, no, she wasn't. She was a woman that was accused of witchcraft. And effectively, we're still believing the witchcraft accusations 500, 600 years later.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  It's horrific, right? I mean...

• 55:27Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Justice for Countess Elizabeth Bathory. And there's no evidence at all that she hurt anybody, really.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, when we, if we really pare this down, there seem to have been five or six girls, noble girls, I mean, well, if we don't count this one maid, but who died while under her care. The important thing to mention is that most of their parents believed that they died of natural causes, and they died during circulating epidemics. These were young girls, you know, eight, nine, 10. One of the girl's mothers even went to court, you know, to exonerate Elizabeth Bathory and said, no, I, I cleansed the girl's body myself. I know she died. I was there while she was sick. It wasn't a murder. So, we do have a couple girls, you know, who die. But they're certainly not a serial

• 56:20Speaker 02

  killer, you know, at most, even if we want to believe the worst things about her. You're looking at just a few girls. And then we also have to say, these are, you know, the motive, because these particular girls are family friends. Like, these are the daughters of your friends. So, you also have to think about, why, why are you, why are you doing this? And why are their parents allowing you to do this? Because that's part of the accusations, that her daughter, these other noble women, are giving her their daughters to sacrifice, right? I mean, like, that's...

• 56:52Kate Lister?

  Do you think there's any truth in that, that she was, that she was hurting a few girls? Or do you think that's, that's wildly out of proportion as well?

• 56:59Speaker 02

  I think that the medical treatments of the time period were absolutely painful. I think that throughout this period, there's all kinds of medical malpractice. It's so awful. You know, I mean, there's people drilling people's heads open who are being sued, going, that didn't work. And there's somebody who, you know, bleeds somebody and they bleed out. Could she have employed unskilled healers? I guess aggressive procedures, absolutely. Could part of the problem have been that she had female healers who were doing things that were often the province of men, right? Like, things like stitches, setting bones, et cetera. There's an instance where we have a description of cupping, which is, you know, would, we still do that today, if you've ever had that done, like, an acupuncture treatment

• 57:42Speaker 02

  or massage, where you use a candle and a, and a glass, right? And you create a vacuum and then you put it on the area. And we have a servant who's, claims that he spied at the, you know, the keyhole, which first off, really shouldn't be looking at naked nine-year-old girls. But that they're using glasses and candles and they're leaving a bruise. And you're like, well, that's what cupping does.

• 58:05Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that's, that's not torture. That's just a shit medical treatment.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  But there are a lot of shit medical treatments. I mean, there's descriptions, for example, people accuse her of beating girls with nettles. And you're like, but in the actual medical books of the day, that's a treatment, you know? And it was something the Romans did. You actually do that because, you know, there's, there's like, a real reason to do that. Release, you know, particular histamines, try to, try to get a particular, like, reaction on a paralyzed limb, for example, or to cure certain diseases. So, a lot of the things that are descriptions of torture are also indistinguishable from medical treatments of the time period.

• 58:45Kate Lister?

  There's nothing in this, is there?

• 58:47Speaker 02

  She may have had a servant flogged. Like, that seems like that happened.

• 58:52Kate Lister?

  That happened quite a lot, didn't it? That's, yeah, not great by our standards, but it's certainly not she tortured 600 girls to death personally.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 59:00Kate Lister?

  Shelley, you have been a revelation. You've been phenomenal. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 59:07Speaker 02

  I'm at ShelleyPuhak.com. So, it's S-H-E-L-L-E-Y-P-U-H-A-K. And the book is The Blood Countess. It's murder, betrayal, and the making of a monster.

• 59:17Kate Lister?

  And are you on social media at all?

• 59:19Speaker 02

  I am not. I am a Luddite.

• 59:20Kate Lister?

  Excellent. Good, good. Don't do it. It's insane. But people should go and they should buy your book and read it for the new research, because this has been phenomenal. Thank you so much.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. This was a delight.

• 59:35Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Shelley for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got episodes on the evils of Roman slavery and the Bayou Tapestry sex scandal, all coming your way. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer is Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt, a sheet, history of sex scandal and society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.