400 years later, the stories about the Hungarian ‘Blood Countess’ remain shrouded in mystery

ČACHTICE, Slovakia — More than 400 years after her death, the truth about “the Blood Countess,” a Hungarian noblewoman said to be the most prolific female serial killer of all time, remains elusive.

From her castle atop a rugged mountain peak in what is now Čachtice in western Slovakia, Elizabeth Báthory is said to have tortured and murdered up to 650 young women and girls. it would help her retain her youth.

Rumors of Báthory’s cruelty spread through the Kingdom of Hungary in the early 17th century, and after a royal investigation, four of her servants were convicted of murder and brutally executed. The Blood Countess was arrested and imprisoned in the walls of her castle until her death in 1614.

Báthory’s macabre story has captured the imagination and invited speculation for centuries, spawning books, films, television series and local legends. But some researchers have cast doubt on whether she was actually responsible for the alleged brutality, suggesting that as a wealthy and powerful woman in late Renaissance Europe, she may have been a victim herself.

“Was Báthory a serial killer who tormented and tortured 650 young women for nothing more than her pleasure?” asked Annouchka Bayley, a British author and academic who recently published a novel about the wealthy countess. “I am very convinced that it is, as we say in England, a stitching job.”

Bayley, author of “The Blood Countess” and associate professor of art and creativity at the University of Cambridge, says the popular narrative of Báthory as a serial killer relies on a “woman as monster” trope that is not supported by the available evidence.

Rather than a murderer, she argues, Bathory may have been a subversive figure who posed a threat to the kingdom’s power structure, especially given the evidence that she taught many young women to read and possibly owned a printing press—radical acts during the period when she lived.

“You have to remember that these are the years of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, when people were burned at the stake for their heretical beliefs. The printing presses, which had flourished across Europe, gave people much wider access to information, and this was seen as very dangerous,” Bayley said.

“There’s enough for me to go, whoa, wait a minute. Let’s pause here for a moment and investigate.’

Born into an aristocratic family in 1560, Báthory married a wealthy Hungarian nobleman, Ferenc Nádasdy, in 1575, and the couple controlled great wealth and lands throughout the kingdom. Nádasdy was a prominent soldier and key figure in regaining control of numerous Hungarian lands occupied by the Ottoman Empire.

But after Nádasdy’s sudden death in 1604, Báthory inherited his lands and wealth and had a “vast fortune in the style of Jeff Bezos,” according to Bayley.

It was that fortune and position of power that Bayley and other scholars have pointed to as a potential motive for other powerful figures of the time to destroy Báthory and seize her wealth.

Báthory’s refusal to remarry after her husband’s death, and her activities in educating young women “would set off alarm bells for anyone in power,” Bayley said.

Skepticism about Báthory’s guilt is not limited to academia; the question may still be polarizing in the Slovak village of Čachtice, where the atrocities are said to have taken place. The uncertainty about where Báthory is buried has also led to speculation. It is believed that she was buried in a crypt beneath the local church, but it is rumored that her body was later moved and the church did not allow an exhumation.

A local museum dedicated to the countess in Čachtice, and groups of tourists and villagers climbing the rocky hills to the castle above the town are a testament to the power her legend still has over the region.

But Ivan Pisca, a local farmer, said the power of Báthory’s story may diminish as generations come and go.

“There are legends about Elizabeth Báthory, relatively bloodthirsty ones about the young girls she tortured and then murdered,” he said. “Older people believe these stories, but younger people may know a little less about them.”

Bayley believes that popular culture throughout the ages has had an inordinate fascination with the most gruesome and violent stories, and that history has often stigmatized powerful women.

With a “counter-narrative” to Báthory’s story, she said, she hopes to provide her and everyone else with a measure of justice that history may have wrongly condemned.

“She deserves better, we all deserve better,” Bayley said. “Is there justice for Báthory 500 years later: ‘She didn’t do it’? Or is justice for Báthory actually the undoing of the monster trope for all women and for all men?