Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now.
While every other channel is fighting for your customer's attention, podcasts are where they've already given it. No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here. They trust the voice in their ears, and when that voice talks about your brand, it doesn't sound like advertising.
It sounds like a recommendation from a friend. ACAST gives you that trust at scale. Visual precision, post-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention.
Buy it with ACAST. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise. You know your own degrees. Sit down.
And first and last, a hearty welcome. Yes. Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers.
Who they were, what they did, and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Vyborg Thun. The first welcome you heard was my idol, Orson Welles, in his excellent performance in the film Macbeth. I found it rather apt.
We are nearing the end of our stay in early 16th century Hungary. The walls around our blood countess are closing in on her, and she grows ever more desperate. But we are not finished with our dear Lady Bathory. This episode is, thanks to you, dear listener, 100% sponsored ad-free.
It is financed solely by my very loyal patrons, who are helping to produce the show via Patreon. As I have mentioned in the last couple of episodes, the podcast reached a 10 million downloads mark by the 1st of December 2018. If you wish to participate in this show's continued success and development, I have created several tiers for those of you that wish to 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 theserialkillerpodcast to learn more. Any donation is greatly appreciated. Also, do not miss out on bonus content, previews, exclusive interactions with me, and more, on both my Facebook page at facebook.com slash theskpodcast, and my subreddit on reddit.com slash r slash theskpodcast. I really appreciate listener feedback, so please feel free to post reviews, comments, or questions there.
Imagine if you will, dear listener, the castle Chechi looming over you and your traveling companion. You are sitting on horseback with two other men, the nobleman Janos Belashky and his friend Martin Sanadi. Janos' sister had not too long ago been admitted to Countess Bathory's Gynoseum for young girls of noble birth. But since entering Ershebet's supposed school of etiquette, the young girl had given no word of her stay there.
The castle, silhouetted against the gray sky, is very impressive. It has a large central tower, where you can see the yellow light of perhaps a fireplace. The castle is situated on the top of a peak above the local village, and the stone walls rise up from the mountain rock, as though part of the mountain itself. The road you're on is narrow and winding like a snake up the mountainside towards the heavy iron gate in the foundation wall.
You're allowed entry by one of the castle's unhappy servants, and are greeted by a very grumpy Countess. Janos demands to see his sister at once. But the lady refuses. The girl is tired from studying and chores, and simply cannot be disturbed, she states.
However, Janos is relentless, and your party stole the weight in the courtyard. It's cold, and it's miserable. There aren't many people to see. Most of the windows and doors are shuttered, and the few servants you do see scatter like rats.
After over an hour, the girl is finally brought out. She is a shadow of her former beautiful self. She can hardly walk, and hold out her bruised and scabbed arms for her dear brother, who catches his beloved little sister. She cries miserably in his arms, but is soon left behind.
Later, at a trial of the Countess, Martin Shanadi recounts that after they had left, the poor girl was tortured to death. It is quite odd that the men would leave the poor girl alone in such a state, but probably the Countess managed to convince the men that the girl was simply weak and needed discipline. It is also quite possible that monetary reasons doomed the young girl. Noblewoman Anna Zeleste also testified that her daughter, Zuzka, had been given to the court, where she had been so badly beaten and tortured, that the flesh literally fell from her bones before she died.
How she knew this is not discussed in her deposition, nor whether she did anything to attempt a rescue. Nobles Melchior and Paul Nagy-Wathy testify that their sister had been entrusted and passed on to the Gynoseum. The brothers made extensive inquiries regarding her, but learned only later that she had died there. Nobleman Gaspar Zhudy-Bashay lost his sister Anna, for Georgios Kukunski, Benedict Barbell, and Dorothea Yezhan-Nishki.
It was a daughter. Michael Hervoit, provisor of Setia Castle, said that one could hear every day the sounds of beatings being heard from her Gynoseum, including the crying and lamenting of the beaten girls. The fact that they were beaten more and more often, and that they could be heard crying, changed nothing. The Castellan at Cece, Michael Horvath, stated that he knew of seven girls, who had died at the Gynoseum, and that they had been buried in the little garden behind the courtyard at Cece.
Unfortunately, the bodies were not buried deeply enough. Dogs promptly dug up the corpses, and carried body parts around the yard. Even the relatives of faithful servants were not exempt, from a fate of torture and death. Janos Desaio, Castellan of Castle Kereshtur, testified that his niece, Carta Berenyi, had been accepted at the Countess's court.
Rumors quickly circulated, however, that the girl was being beaten severely. He went first to one of Erzhebet's accomplices, asking to see his niece, and perhaps give her a little money. The following is an account of what happened. The old woman told him, if you value your head, you should not dare to try this without the knowledge of her grace.
Desaio next learned that the Countess was planning an extended trip to Cece. She intended to take his niece with her for an unknown period of time, and he wished to intercept the traveling party before they left. As the horses were being fixed to the carriages, he met up with the Countess. Your Grace, he said bowing to her, might I please see my niece before you take your leave?
I hear you are going to take her along to Cece, and no one knows when I might be able to see her again. He added breathlessly, I also want to give her some money. Avoiding eye contact, the lady replied evenly, you definitely cannot speak with her now, but if you want to see her, you can see her when she climbs into the carriage. She then hurried to her coach.
At this point, only two horses had been hitched, yet the Countess still ascended the carriage, believing the entire team to be ready. Meanwhile, Deseo caught sight of his niece. She was freezing and in tears, and seeing her in this condition brought him to tears as well. He ran back after the Countess.
Merciful lady, he begged please, do not take my niece with you, I implore you, in the name of God, not by me alone, but on behalf of all my relatives. The Countess pretended not to hear. Deseo persisted, we indeed see that she does not know how to serve the will of your Grace. Elshebet turned to him now, furious.
I certainly will not give her back, because she has already escaped from me three times. All the more will I kill her. She cried to the coachman to hurry on now, while Janos Deseo grabbed onto the coach, weeping and begging. The horses secured, the coach lurched forward.
Deseo recounted, that his niece never returned, and that she was later beaten to death. By this time, the Countess was simply no longer caring what happened to her. So far, no one had any real evidence, and no proper investigation had been launched. It was an open secret, that the Countess was torturing and killing her maiden servants, but it was still deemed rumors, and not fact.
However, since Bathory had moved on to torturing and killing young girls of noble blood, things quickly changed. The maids were now appearing in public, with bandaged hands, welts, black and blue marks on their faces, and burn scars. And efforts to keep the beatings a complete secret, were also failing. For example, when the Countess went to tension in early 1610, Georgi Pellio, a young man from town, watched as one of the girls was bound, and then violently beaten and lashed near the river.
The girl was then forced into icy water, in her clothes, and not permitted to remove them when taken out. Another local, Georgios Hubduck, testified under oath, that he had seen girls shackled by the creek, who were cruelly shattered and covered in bleeding wounds. Witness Michael Peblischki said that in the autumn of 1610, when the Countess came to Seche, he saw two ladies from her entourage with bruises and black and blue marks, and their faces scratched as if by nails. Another local man, Martin Bonda, said that he himself often saw virgins with swollen faces and hands covered with blue patches.
Andreas Somoghi, a city official in Ugele, observed two girls whose hands were so badly burned that they needed help ascending into their carriage, and Judge Tomáš Javorka, had frequently seen the faces of the virgins in her retinue, disfigured and covered with blue spots from numerous blows. When craftsman Adam Apollio was called to the castle to do a job, he actually witnessed a naked girl with her feet shackled to a table. Perhaps the worst slip occurred when a tortured servant girl managed to escape and make her way back to town with a knife still buried in her foot. While every other channel is fighting for your customers' attention, podcasts are where they've already given it.
No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here. They trust the voice in their ears, and when that voice talks about your brand, it doesn't sound like advertising. It sounds like a recommendation from a friend.
ACAST gives you that trust at scale. Digital precision, post-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention. Buy it with ACAST.
Learn more by visiting ACAST.com slash advertise. In addition to townspeople, church officials and gravediggers also saw their fill. Janosch Palanik saw for himself the bodies of the girls who died during the wedding celebration of Katalin and Georgi Homenai, covered with horrible wounds, their faces crushed, burned, and full of blue spots. The sexton at the church in Koshulani, Georgi Mladish, added that they were disfigured, shattered, and covered with stains.
And his assistant, Mikhail Palanik, testified to the same. Even the household staff was now seeing direct evidence of these crimes. Savar servant, Ferenc, Torok, testified to seeing girls with their arms tied up such that their hands were blue, and blood came from their fingers. The knight, Ferenc, born Nemizhe, said that once, as he arrived into the house of the lady, he witnessed girls with their hands bound, wrapped with rain straps, and hanging from the iron lattice at a window by their hair.
Details of how the noble girls were being tortured also soon became public knowledge. But what was perhaps most shocking were allegations of exactly how these girls were being tortured and killed, washed with and made roll on the floor in knuckles, pins stuck into their lips and under the fingernails, needles jabbed into their shoulders and arms, floggings on the breasts, while held in chains, their hands, arms, and abdomens scorched with burning irons, chunks of skin vringed from their backs with pliers, noses, lips, tongues, and fingers pierced with needles, mouths forced shut with clamps, flesh cut out from the buttocks, and from between the shoulders, then cooked and served to them. Flesh and proud parts singed with candles, knives plunged into arms and feet, hands crushed and maimed, fingers cut off with scissors and shears, red-hot pokers shoved up vaginas, bodies beaten to death with cudgels, lashings until flesh fell from the bones, and girls made to stand naked in the winter cold, doused with water, or submerged up to the neck in icy rivers. In a matter of weeks, in fact, the entire gynoseum had been wiped out.
Instead of using her usual excuse of a cholera epidemic, commentators say that this time, Ershevets concocted an elaborate explanation. According to the lady, one of the girls had murdered all the rest because of her greed for their jewelry. When servants discovered what she had done, the child committed suicide. This time, the countess had simply gone too far.
Nearly a dozen complaints on the families flooded both the Palatines and King's Courts, specifically in... accusing the countess of torturing and murdering young girls from the Hungarian aristocracy. When news reached the king that noble girls had been murdered, he finally had what he needed to seek a criminal conviction. Like other clergymen in his situation, the elderly pastor at Seche, 90-year-old Reverend Andras Barocius, was concerned over the countess's bizarre and repeated requests for burials.
When his questions went unanswered, he began to keep a detailed record of the bodies. And this document eventually made its way into the hands of both Palatine and King. Elshebet had dealt with this type of situation before at Sarvar under Pastor Magyari. In those days, however, Ferenc Nadasti was there to protect her.
Whether through charm, reputation, or simple bribery, the count had always managed to extricate himself and his wife from harm, appeasing the clergy every time questions arose over mysterious deaths. Now, however, the countess was on her own, and this time the clergy was beginning to speak out, stand up, to her, wherever the killings were taking place. And so it is that we find ourselves in the year 1610. It began with a wedding.
Elshebet's daughter, Kathleen, was set to marry Lord Georgie Drugeth de Homenei on January the 6th. The wedding was to be held at Cheche Castle, and Countess Bathory planned a lavish event. Despite the political intrigue beginning to swirl around her like a hurricane of vengeance and justice, the countess temporarily put all of it out of mind. Kathleen was the youngest and supposedly a favorite child of Elshebet, and she had participated in her mother's torturing sessions on several occasions.
The soon-to-be countess of Homenei was spending time with Elshebet at Cheche just before her wedding day, and what better way to celebrate the wedding than by sexual torture and murder. Both Kathleen and the lady were reputed to have tortured and burned two servant girls in their chamber the night before Kathleen's wedding. The girls had been burned, and Elshebet had again put a red-hot iron fireplace poker into their vaginas. The two girls later died while the wedding festivities were going on, and numerous servants and townspeople were aware of how their bodies were taken away to Costolani for what was supposed to be a secret burial.
The church sextant at Costolani, as well as two gravediggers, testified under oath that the bodies were also covered in welts, and their faces were mangled. The witnesses to these murders were no mere peasants, but clergy and nobility, and Elshebet had finally gone too far. The first legal steps taken against the countess began in February of 1610. On the 5th of March, Georgi Thurzo dispatched two letters, one to Chief Notary Andras of Kereshtur, and the other to Deputy Notary and Judge Moses Jiraki.
Thurzo stated, You know how, both in the past and present time, several serious complaints have come to us regarding the noble lady Elshebet Bathory, namely, that she, through some sort of evil spirit, has set aside her reverence for God and man, and has killed in cruel and various ways many girls and virgins and other women who lived in her gynoseum. End quote. By June, with proceedings well underway, and evidence piling up against their mother-in-law, Counts Miklos Zrini and Georgi Drugeth de Homenei met with Georgi Thurzo for a round of secret negotiations. How, they wanted to know, could they keep this scandal from getting out of control?
Thurzo was already contemplating a plan, and asked the younger men if he could count on their loyalty. They agreed. Around this time, the Countess was likely receiving word that a formal inquest or even trial against her was only months away. She might also have received word that her sons-in-law were actively conspiring with Thurzo.
On the 3rd of September, 1610, she wrote her last will and testament, declaring that all of her assets pass equally to her three children, son Paul, and daughters Anna and Carta. Meanwhile, she also began corresponding with her younger cousin, Gabor Bathory, voivode of Transylvania, regarding the legal status of her holdings, and, possibly, a political alliance with him. One month later, she returned to Savar, where she collected most of her jewelry and other personal valuables and then ordered it all sent to Sheche Castle, officially establishing Sheche as her new court. She likely knew the walls were closing in on her.
Do you keep hearing podcast ads? Like this one, for example. I always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization. Well, it's easier than you think.
We're ACAST, and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts, choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget, and launch. And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers.
Get started at acast.com slash advertise. And so we come to this evening's conclusion. Next week, I will tell you about how the blood count has met her end in the final episode of this series. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned.
I have been your host, Thomas Vyborg Thun, and this podcast would not be possible if it had not been for my dear patrons who pledge their hard-earned money every month. There are especially a few of those patrons I would like to thank in person. These patrons are my 16 most loyal patrons. They have contributed for at least the last 13 episodes, and their names are Sandy, Maud, Amber, Anne, Charlotte, Christina, Claudette, Evan, Jennifer, Joe, Elizabeth, Mickey, Philip, PJ, Sarah, and Troy.
You guys really helped produce this show, and you have my deepest gratitude. Thank you. As always, I thank you, dear listener, for listening. Please, feel free to leave a review on your favorite podcast app, my Facebook page, at facebook.com slash theskpodcast, or Reddit.
And please, do subscribe to the show if you enjoy it. Thank you. Good night, and good luck. We'll see you next time.
Good night, and good luck. Did you see me in the interview? Thank you. I love you.