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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast, the podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. Tonight, on New Year's Eve, the year 2018, 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 Erzabetz Bathory, the Blood Countess. Last week, on Christmas Eve, perhaps over a cup of mulled wine, we followed young Erzabetz as she grew from a child into a young married woman.
Tonight, we continue that journey, and we will start to see how Erzabetz'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.
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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 Nadasdi Castle, from the family that first owned it, among them Elisabeth Bathory, the widow Nadasdi. 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 Elisabeth and her mother-in-law, Countess Orsolia Nadasdi. They are said to hate each other, and that Elisabeth 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. Orsolia Nadasdi died in the spring of 1571, the same year Elisabeth became engaged with Orsolia's son.
Without Orsolia's watchful eye, and with her fiancé off at school or away on adventures with friends, Elisabeth probably had considerable free time. The Nadasdi court flaunted its money on parties and patronizing the arts. Artists, philosophers, schools, and libraries flourished in the Nadasdi homelands. Young Elisabeth 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 Exhed. At Exhed 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. An Elisabeth would have had long periods of time when she was unsupervised and with nothing to do.
This would have resulted in her getting into trouble. Two years before her marriage, in 1573, the 13-year-old Elisabeth became involved in an illicit affair with a young man while staying at an Adasdi manor in Ternapa. His name was Ladislav Bende. 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 groomed-be, Count Nadasdi, was furious and had Ladislav Bende's genitals sliced off and fed to the dogs.
Premarital affair or not The wedding between Elisabeth and Ferenc took place according to plan. On 8th May 1575, 14-year-old Elisabeth 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 Cheche, and its seventeen accompanying villages.
An oddity for its time was that Elisabeth 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 Nadazdi or Lady Nadazdi. Both Ferenc and Elisabeth 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 twenty castles across present-day Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Romania, and the Czech Republic. By all accounts, Elisabeth 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 Zholii and the Turks, the younger Nadazdi now set forth, refortifying 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 tights, earning him the title as High Sablemaster, 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 18-year-old Elisabeth, 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 noble women 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 look. 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 Piesani, 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 dock. As most nobles of the day, Ferenc and Elizabeth 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, Elizabeth 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.
Our thanks, after which we wish to inform you that we desire to see this letter carried out without any delay. Give a stone of wheat to Benedek Balas at the mill. We have not agreed to anything more. God keep you.
Donatsarvar, April 7th, 1587. Her Ladyship, Elizabeth Bathory. End quote. More than ten years into the marriage, there are still no obvious signs that Elizabeth was on a collision course for 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 a couple secretly hated each other, although no eyewitness testimony exists to confirm this. Elizabeth 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 Kata, and son Paul.
As the only male beneficiary, the primary estate at Sarvar would ultimately pass to Paul. Elizabeth 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 Esedet Bathory. At first, no one raised much fuss when a servant girl suddenly died in the night in the women's sections 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 of 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 the 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. Elizabeth 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 priest started to protest, but the belfry master simply countered 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 Benedek'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 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 Drabant, was the site of horrific torture and murder, but he had never seen it with his own eyes. Evidently the countess Bathory was very un-debt 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 16th 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, and goes as follows. My brothers and sisters, in order for me to remain at a 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 pulpits on the first row of pews, did not take such public scorn laying down. She countered immediately as follows. See here, Minister Istvan, 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 attendance 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. And so ends Chapter 2, The Tale of the Blood Countess. This series will continue next week, and I promise more graphic details into Asbeth Bathory's bloody reign then. In the meantime, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.
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