Told and retold in many languages, the legend of the Blood Countess has consumed cultural imaginations around the world. But despite claims that Elizabeth Báthory tortured and killed as many as 650 girls, some have wondered if the Countess was herself a victim- of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns known to history. So, was Elizabeth Báthory a monster, a victim, or a bit of both?
My guest is Shelley Puhak, author of the new book “The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster”. She helps us separate fact from fiction as she reexamines the life of Elizabeth Báthory, long labeled one of history’s most notorious killers, and unpacks a complex story of power, politics, and how it all led to the making of a “monster”.
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Interview transcript:
Erik: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Most Notorious podcast. I’m Erik Rivenes. Welcome to the show. A quick reminder, I don’t say this very often, but if you are interested in ad-free episodes, you can either go to patreon.com/mostnotorious (link in the show notes), or if you are listening from your iPhone or other Apple device, you can become a subscriber through Apple Podcasts to Most Notorious Plus.
Besides ad-free listening, there is occasional bonus material as well, delivered by yours truly. Well, it is so great to have award-winning author Shelley Puhak on the show. She is a poet, historian, and writer who takes a fresh look at some of the most famous and infamous figures from the past. Those of you who are interested in the Middle Ages might know her from her 2022 book, The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World.
And her latest book, which comes out on February 17th, is called The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster. It revisits the legend of Elizabeth Báthory, long considered one of the worst serial killers in world history, and we will definitely be addressing that claim today. I so appreciate you being a guest. Thank you so much for your time, Shelley.
Shelley: Thank you so much for having me.
Erik: Absolutely. So, yeah, tell us, if you don’t mind, how you first decided to write this book and what your initial assumptions were in regard to the accusations against Elizabeth Báthory.
Shelley: So, I first encountered Elizabeth Báthory back in my twenties when I was doing a castle tour of Slovakia, and she’s kind of the eternal boogeyman. And on a lot of the plaques of her castles, you’ll see a little history about her and a mention of her, you know, dubious distinction of being the world’s most prolific serial killer—female serial killer—uh, with, you know, a reported body count of over 600. And, you know, also the legend that she has been reported to have bathed in the blood of virgins.
So I did know that beginning in the eighties some scholars and historians were challenging these accusations against Elizabeth Báthory and there was a sort of “did she or didn’t she” debate. And I had followed it sort of on the back burner, but I became much more interested in it, you know, in our current age of disinformation and online rumor campaigns. And so I was really curious to see with modern technology and what we know today if this historical cold case could be solved once and for all.
But I have to tell you that when I first approached it, I was a little hesitant, ’cause I thought, okay, I’m gonna be living with a serial killer for however long I’m writing this book. And I had assumed that while she was likely not guilty of murdering over 600 people—because the logistics of that seemed rather difficult—that, you know, where there’s smoke there’s fire, that she most likely had murdered or mistreated a lot of the young women, you know, in her care or on her estates. And I was approaching this trying to kind of sort out fact from fiction and see how overblown the story had become. But the more I researched, you know, the more I discovered that there was like a huge gap between the canonical legend and the actual person of Elizabeth Báthory.
Erik: Very interesting. So she was born and lived in a really interesting time, right? You write in your book that a lot of very influential people lived in the same era, the same time period—Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Galileo, among others.
Shelley: Yeah. Um, we have, you know, her life will intersect with that of Elizabeth I. And, uh, one kind of interesting, fun factual tidbit is Captain John Smith of Pocahontas fame. Like, he kind of trots in and out of this story. He earns his rank of captain fighting in a war very close to where Elizabeth Báthory lives, in the wars that the Hungarians are having with the Ottoman Turks at the time.
Erik: So let’s start with a geography lesson. Could you tell us more about this area of the world in the very early 17th century?
Shelley: Sure. Absolutely. So what you need to know is that Elizabeth Báthory is raised in Hungary, and most of this story is gonna transpire in Hungary and Transylvania. The Kingdom of Hungary, which during the Renaissance is hugely influential, has been divided into three parts when Elizabeth’s story essentially opens. And we have in the west the Kingdom of Royal Hungary that is ruled by the Habsburg Empire. In the east we have Transylvania, and in the south we have a section that’s been carved out by the Ottoman Turks. And another thing that’s important to mention is all of Europe is really watching with bated breath what happens in Hungary, because all of Europe is terrified that they might be conquered by the infidel Turks. This is like a tremendous fear.
So everyone—whether it’s people in England, people in Vienna, you know, the French—they’re praying, they’re watching these developments, and a lot of foreign mercenaries are streaming in and out of the area to fight off the Ottoman Turks. So because of this giant war, not only do we have a huge exchange of ideas and people coming in and out, but we also have the constant war. But we also have a lot of disease, you know, going in and out with the troops. And also different troops are bringing in their different religious beliefs and also their different superstitions, and, you know, kind of various fears and rumors are also traveling in and out of Hungary along with these troops.
Erik: And again, she is a Báthory, uh, part of a very influential family.
Shelley: Absolutely. So what you need to know about the Báthory family is at this time period they’re a tremendously influential family. So they would have the same name recognition of someone like Medici or a Habsburg, and they’re this incredibly powerful dynasty.
You know, Elizabeth is the niece of the King of Poland. She’s the cousin and aunt to more than one Prince of Transylvania. She’s the cousin of Catholic cardinals. So this is, you know, an incredibly influential family, not just in Hungary, but also in Transylvania and Poland and other parts of Europe. And they’re also a very progressive and tolerant family. So the women in this family are allowed a voice. And, you know, Elizabeth grows up with a mother, aunt, cousins who are really politically active, and they’re doing things like defying the church or deciding their own marriages and having a hand in the various political intrigues of the family.
Erik: You write that these events that surround her unfold at a very interesting point in history—the intersection of the age of queens and the great hunt. Can you explain that?
Shelley: Absolutely. So throughout the Renaissance, we’ve seen this huge surge in female rule. We have all of these women, you know, who are ruling as queens, as duchesses, and even as more kind of minor noblewomen administering their estates. But yet, at the same time, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, we have this huge increase in the witch hunts—what we’re gonna know as, you know, the witch trials—as they’re sweeping through Europe, starting particularly in the German territories.
Erik: Yeah. This is definitely an age of superstition, right?
Shelley: Absolutely. And along with that became a fear of demons, just a general fear of the unknown. And, you know, coincidentally also a huge fear of serial killers. So one thing that’s kind of, you know, fascinating is at the time there’s a lot of true crime literature—these handwritten newspapers that are circulating—and it’s reporting on the serial killers, you know, very frequently illustrated accounts of their horrific crimes. But there’s usually a supernatural element. There’s werewolves, you know, who are killing hundreds of people, or witches who are making off with hundreds of children. So there’s definitely the supernatural element, but along with the regular superstitions and fears, there’s also this huge fear of serial killers.
Erik: It’s interesting how things don’t change, do they?
Shelley: Yeah.
Erik: So your book starts at the very end of 1603, and it had really been a bad year—bad for Elizabeth Báthory. Can you tell us more about that?
Shelley: Yeah, absolutely. So in 1603, she’s going to lose her oldest son and heir. And, you know, her and her husband are going to be very broken up about this. And then at the very end of 1603 going into 1604, her husband is going to take sick and not recover, and die early in 1604. And that same year, in addition to like these personal tragedies, they’ve had their estates attacked and looted by the Ottoman Turks, and there’ve been, you know, tens of thousands of local people who’ve been taken captive and enslaved. So the area’s just been completely devastated, and she’s also facing a lot of personal devastation in her own family.
Erik: And her husband was known as the Black Lord, right?
Shelley: He was. So he’s, you know, really well known as this fighter of the Ottoman Turks—always considered this very lucky and daring warrior—just esteemed throughout Europe and esteemed by the Ottoman Turks as well. You know, he gets his nickname from them, and they consider him someone who is incredibly lucky in battle. And he’s also—because he is so prominent—it’s part of the reason he’s such a target of theirs.
Erik: Right. So you mentioned that they lost their son, the heir, the male heir. Were there no other sons then besides him?
Shelley: Well, she does have a son, but he is very, very young. So, um, I believe he’s five at the time. So, you know, he’s nowhere near old enough to be considered that he can take over the property. And so at this point in time, everything’s going to rest on Elizabeth. There are no other—she doesn’t have another brother-in-law, she doesn’t have, you know, kind of these assorted close cousins who might swoop in and help. She came from a family where, you know, her father had multiple brothers, and when there was a tragedy in the family, another brother could sweep in, defend those lands for a time, see to any of the legal battles, and generally they could look after one another, sort of trade duties.
But she’s married to an only child. Her husband was an only child. So when he passes, there’s no one to step in. And her heir is too young to take command, so everything falls into Elizabeth’s lap. If she wants to keep the family’s title and lands, she’s going to have to step up and not only defend the land, you know, from the Turks, but also make sure that she gains the respect of all of the local nobles, and also that she will assume her husband’s seat in Parliament.
Erik: And she does have a brother, uh, as an ally, correct? But he’s embraced Calvinism and that’s not looked upon very well by many.
Shelley: Yeah. So we have this divide between— even though most of the Hungarian lands are Protestant—um, we have Lutherans in the west and we have Calvinists mostly in the east. This is to generalize. And then we have the Catholic Habsburgs reigning over them. So it’s definitely a very fraught religious landscape that she’s stepping into. But her brother is very influential. I mean, he is the chief justice of Hungary and he wields quite a lot of influence. So for a time she does have this brother who’s looking out for her, although he isn’t going to live for very long. So she’s gonna find herself very, very soon without another, you know, more powerful male ally and having to strike out again on her own.
Erik: Would you mind telling us more about Elizabeth—your impressions of her, the type of person she was, her personality—but what did she look like to the best of your understanding?
Shelley: So Elizabeth would be considered conventionally attractive for the time period. She’s not the most famed beauty, but she certainly is, you know, admired, well respected, and she’s also very well turned out. So she’s going to be very well groomed, and all of, you know, her hairstyle, her jewels, her dress are going to be widely imitated and kind of top-of-the-line fashion. She’s also grown up in a family, again, where women speak their mind. She’s been in a marriage where she’s essentially been considered an equal to her husband.
Shelley: When you read the letters between them—they’re very businesslike in some aspects—but there’s also this sense when you read the letters between other couples where the wife is like simpering and bending over backwards to please her husband and kind of stroke his ego. There’s none of that. Like, she’s able to speak her mind when she’s upset with him, and he trusts her when he’s gone—which is, you know, very frequently throughout their marriage—to administer the estates. So she’s used to, I would say, very kind of plain speaking. Sometimes can be very stubborn, but has been raised in an environment where she doesn’t need to necessarily watch what she says. And she’s used to being listened to and used to being respected.
She does come from a family that seems a little obsessed with truth and justice, with what is right—agonizing over making sure that justice is served, that things are in order—and she frequently speaks out and advocates for the poor and vulnerable, particularly on her lands. But you know, while we might admire this quality, this is also a quality that’s going to gain her a lot of enemies. She’s very outspoken, particularly like going after any sort of perceived corruption and speaking out against powerful men that she sees taking advantage of her or other women that are in her circle.
Erik: I mean, it’s pretty impressive, right? Her ability to juggle so many things, the challenges that she faces just coming at her one after another—having to fight off the Turks, dealing with so much political intrigue. I can’t imagine that pressure.
Shelley: Absolutely. And there are even a few private letters where we get to see her exhausted. She’s like, “I’m just exhausted.” And you can understand why. It’s a lot and you have to be absolutely hyper-vigilant all of the time. There are, you know, so many potential landmines, whether that is worrying about the ongoing war with the Turks, whether it’s, you know, are you going to be accused of treason because you might be perceived to be rebelling against the Habsburg emperor.
Shelley: There’s also all of these religious tensions, so there’s various pastors that are very involved with people following the letter of the law in terms of what they see as the correct way to practice their religion. And then on top of this, you have constant epidemics, right? I mean, people are dropping dead left and right—disease, oftentimes famine. So it’s coming from all sides.
Erik: Right. Right. So when her husband dies, he entrusts his family to, uh, a man named Thurzo. Right. Would you call him a family friend?
Shelley: Well, Thurzo I would say isn’t exactly a family friend. So what’s really curious about György Thurzo is he is definitely new money, social climbing, and Elizabeth and her husband have had an eye on him for some time. He’s definitely eager to be included in their circle, which is the upper echelon of the aristocracy, but he’s not quite accepted there. And he’s, you know, been kind of courting them, particularly wanting his wife to, you know, court Elizabeth and have her come over for lunch or, you know, stop by their property.
So they do travel in the same social circles, but I think rather than considering them friends—which is one way that the story has unfolded—it would be, I think, more accurate to say that they were mindful of his ambition and the power he wielded, and wanted to make sure that he would be an ally for Elizabeth and her young children as opposed to an opponent.
So when he’s on his deathbed, Elizabeth’s husband does write to him, kind of asking, you know, that he will look out for his children’s interests at the Habsburg court on his behalf and flattering him. He also writes to his true best friend, you know, at the time, also saying, please, you know, help me out here. But he does write to György Thurzo and asks him to please look out for his family.
Erik: So Thurzo, as you said, is attempting to ingratiate himself into the very inner circle, and he’s from new money. Um, so he doesn’t have that pedigree, um, that guarantees you a spot inside these important political circles, and he’s kind of scratching to get in, right? Does he achieve that at any point early on, or does he feel that the only way to get there is to climb over Elizabeth Báthory? What creates the animosity between the two?
Shelley: Well, uh, there’s a few things. I mean, first, György Thurzo will climb over anybody, and he’s proved that. It’s not just particular to Elizabeth. I’d say it’s nothing personal per se, but he’s betrayed other noble families to the Habsburgs and then been rewarded for it, and then slowly is moving up in court. And at the time that, I guess, the most explosive allegations against Elizabeth will unfold, he has worked his way up to be the palatine of Royal Hungary. And what that means is he’s essentially the royal governor. He’s the number two in the nation, and, you know, he answers just to the emperor, and he is the emperor’s authority in that country. So he does slowly, steadily work his way up, and he frequently does so by taking advantage of, or kind of stepping on the toes of other noble families. And there are, you know, poems circulating and warnings among the nobility to watch out for him because everyone is aware that he is incredibly ambitious.
Erik: Right, right. So you’re right that there’s a pivotal moment in this story, um, which is potentially the origin of many of the rumors that would ultimately combine to create Elizabeth Báthory—mythical serial killer—the Blood Countess. And it’s this interaction she has at some point with her German housekeeper.
Shelley: Oh yes. Ms. Móhl. So Ms. Móhl, the German servant—and also potentially, you know, two other girls. But there will come a point where there’s a rebellion by a lot of the Hungarian nobility against the Habsburgs, who they call the Germans. They’re ethnically German. Uh, and this is an open armed rebellion, and they, you know, very nearly succeed in unseating them. And when the rebellion is over, they are able to gain some concessions from the emperor. That will be things like, uh, you know, that they’re able to freely worship as they choose, and that due process will be respected in the courts.
But over the course of this clash between the German Habsburgs and those loyal to the Habsburgs and the ethnic Hungarians, there’s a lot of tension, and there are a lot of propaganda campaigns about, you know, these are the awful things that the Hungarians are doing to the Germans, and these are the awful things that the Germans are doing in oppressing the Hungarians. So there seems to be an incident that takes place with a German servant that’s in Elizabeth Báthory’s household while she is traveling back to her brother’s funeral, where this particular German servant refuses to serve at a feast that’s in honor for her brother. So this is like a, you know, political affront, right? A German refusing to honor a Hungarian nobleman, particularly at his funeral. It’s, you know, would be considered insolent.
And there seems to be—everyone agrees, all of the sources agree—that Elizabeth Báthory punishes her servant in some way, and that this is sort of seized on by those who are loyal to the Habsburgs as an example of how cruel the Hungarians are to the Germans and their employees. But, you know, the rumors of what happened to Ms. Móhl vary: everything from she was flogged—which would be very typical for the time period—to this idea that she may have… because she said she did not want to serve dinner because she, you know, mentions that she has this young baby… that they give her a log baby. And she’s made to walk around and publicly humiliated by having to nurse this log baby… and then all the way to allegations that Elizabeth Báthory forces her to cannibalize herself, or that she murders her. So these accusations really spiral out of control—from “there may have been a punishment,” and that seems to be backed up by other members of Elizabeth’s household, all the way to “now Ms. Móhl has been murdered.”
Erik: And when you say “log,” it was like literally a piece of wood, right?
Shelley: Like a piece of wood. What’s really fascinating is in the German lands in particular, there are all these fairy tales about—and this is where we, if you think of Pinocchio, right?—like children that come from pieces of wood or come from logs. Or like, there are these couples that are, you know, absolutely desperate to have a child, so they’ll take home a log and they’ll, you know, nurse it and take care of it, and one day it turns into a real-life human baby. So this is a common folklore tale. So it’s unclear if it’s possible that this punishment was adapted from the folklore, right? Like, fine, you get to carry around this log and everybody can see you hanging out with your log baby. Or if it was such a part of the local folklore and that the story got glommed on to the folklore. Uh, so it’s hard to tell—kind of chicken or egg in this situation—but log babies were a thing.
Erik: So could you kind of walk us through the timeline when these crimes she had allegedly committed happened?
Shelley: So this is all going to span from 1604, when she is, you know, first widowed. Uh, she will be investigated in 1610, and, you know, then she will die in 1614. So we’re talking about essentially, you know, a six-year span of time—ten years if we count until her death. And so we have this account of potentially something, you know, nefarious happening with Ms. Móhl, the German servant. And then we also have some friction that Elizabeth is running into with a lot of the pastors on her estates, and, uh, they’re very upset about some of the healthcare that’s being conducted on Elizabeth’s lands.
And there’s also just this sort of general hysteria—this hyperbolic language at the time—where everybody’s calling everybody else…I mean, murderers and criminals and fornicators and liars and thieves. This is just bandied about, you know, rather casually. So it’s really fascinating to sort of trace—it’s like a game of telephone—and trying to trace it back to like the earliest instance of each of these rumors. But it seems that we have these ethnic tensions, these religious tensions, and then sort of the ordinary—we might say—kind of village tensions and jealousies and, you know, disgruntled former employees, that all converge. But, you know, what’s really unusual about Elizabeth’s case is usually—as I’m sure your listeners know—we start with a victim and then we try to discover the killer. And here we have an accusation that’s uttered, and then there’s a hunt to try to find victims to fit the accusation.
Erik: Right. Could you give us a general idea of some of these claims people were making against her? I mean, she was accused of being responsible for hundreds of deaths, as you said—committing cannibalism even.
Shelley: Absolutely. And the cannibalism doesn’t get nearly as much play as some of the other accounts, but that was like one of the first things that when the prosecutor—who will be György Thurzo—writes to the emperor, he, you know, includes that in his letter: that she’s a murderer and a cannibal, and then a description of how she’s been conducting these cannibal feasts. So the accusations against her are going to include witchcraft, uh, you know, political assassinations—attempted political assassinations—attempting to assassinate the emperor and the prosecutor and a few other officials on her estates, and then the torture and murder of young girls that are at the finishing school on her estate.
Erik: Yeah. Yeah. The accusations were just wild—severe beatings, hot pokers, burning flesh, needles being inserted into body parts. Many of these women were allegedly being starved for weeks, being tortured with tools like knives, scissors. I mean, if it was all true, it would be horrific.
Shelley: Yes. And we’re also gonna have the body count quickly spiral, where we start with, you know, a few, and then we’ll be up to 50, and then we’ll be up to—I think it’s 200—then 300, then 600, then over 600, you know, by the time the case is done. You know, one of the things that makes it hard to believe is that this period of time where she was accused of murdering all these people—you write in your book that it would’ve been really difficult for her to do that, ’cause deaths were being meticulously recorded during this time, and family members were being cataloged by administrators. So losing track of hundreds of people—it’s difficult to comprehend historically—and there just aren’t that many people. I mean, most villages are, you know, 150 people. So, you know, 600 people—we’re talking about multiple villages that are just, you know, wiped out in their entirety.
I mean, it’s difficult to find just that many young girls and, you know, to get them all in one area in such a short amount of time. So there is that sense that I think most people approach the case—even those people who do believe that Elizabeth Báthory is guilty—that, you know, okay, when we’re talking about 650, this has to be exaggerated, right? Like, where are we getting this number from? I think, too, something that’s really interesting is to talk about what’s typical for the time period for crime investigations and trials—murder trials. And so something that’s really important is to know is that, you know, Elizabeth is never gonna have a trial, though she’s gonna keep pushing for one. But four of her servants will have a trial. They’ll confess under torture to some really horrific things. And these confessions are gonna be the basis for a lot of what we know about the case. But also this idea a lot of people have, that during the time period all confessions are made under torture—like this is just how things are done—that all testimony is being done under duress. That’s not exactly true. That there is a sense of due process—at least for the nobility—you know, not the minor nobility, but the upper echelon of the aristocracy.
And there are a lot of people pushing back on this, saying, we shouldn’t accept confessions that are made under torture. Like, this doesn’t make sense. So this wasn’t just accepted as, you know, standard operating procedure. And the other thing that’s really fascinating is we have two other parallel cases in the same region and the same time period of two other people that are accused of being a serial killer. So we either have to, you know, accept that there’s three serial killers operating in the same region at roughly the same time, or that maybe, you know, one of those three, or two of those three, or all of them—there’s some irregularities. It’s really fascinating to see how those cases are handled versus Elizabeth’s case, right?
Erik: Who were the other people accused of being serial killers?
Shelley: I’m gonna mispronounce it. I could spell it for you. And then the other one is, um, Anna Rosina List. And she was actually a relative of the prosecutor—of György Thurzo. But so I think, you know, one of them is one of Elizabeth’s neighbors and fellow nobles who’s going to be accused of being a serial poisoner just a few years before, and he’s going to be exonerated in court. And this other countess, Anna Rosina, she’s much younger, but she’s in the same region. She travels in the same social circles and she will be tried and convicted for killing nine women by beating them to death. And what’s really fascinating is, is we do have her trial records, um, in detail. And in her case, the majority of the testimony against her is—well, let me backtrack for a moment—I’d say I also have the sense that, well, you know, hearsay and rumor, and that’s just the way people testified in cases. That’s just what was acceptable in court cases at the time. The same way that we might assume like, well, torture was just kind of non-controversial and acceptable—so that people were pushing back against torture.
But there were also people that really insisted on what we would consider testimony that would be acceptable by modern standards. By what that I mean is that for, you know, Anna Rosina, the majority of the testimony given against her is direct, detailed eyewitness accounts—things that would be admissible in court today. So to give you one example off the top of my head: we have, in the case of one of the victims, we have two people that say, you know, I saw her beating this person who’s going to turn up dead. Another person who says, I saw the victim running out of her house covered in blood into the street and being dragged back in. And then another person who says, you know, I witnessed the beating myself. And then there’ll be a priest who says, and she came and confessed to me that she murdered this person—although she didn’t mean to. You know, she thought she only hurt her. She didn’t mean to kill her. So they’ll have multiple witnesses, you know, who are going on the record with their full name and able to detail every kind of aspect of what happened. Whereas in the case of Elizabeth Báthory, everything is mainly hearsay and it’s third- and fourth-hand. And one of the things that’s trotted out against Elizabeth as evidence is like, well, there’s over 300 people testifying. But when you really look at the testimony, you know, there’s five rounds of depositions. And in all of these, most of the people don’t seem to know what’s going on. Like there’s this one—the largest set of depositions that’s taken, it’s the fourth one—and I believe there’s like 225 people who testify. What’s really fascinating is 80% of those people don’t testify against Elizabeth. They say, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this case. I’ve never heard anything about it. So if you can imagine like dragging people into a courtroom and saying, do you know whether this person murdered this person? They go, I don’t know why I’m here. Like, I don’t know these people. So even though we have this large number of witnesses, we have to really look at what they’re testifying to. And quite a few don’t know what’s going on. And then what most of the others are testifying to is the fact that they have heard rumors. So again, they’re saying, yes, I’ve heard this rumor, I’ve heard other people talking about this, but they don’t know Elizabeth Báthory personally. They’ve never met her. Most of them have never seen her. All they’re testifying to is that they have heard a rumor.
Erik: Did Thurzo have a vendetta against the Báthory family? Would you define it as that? Is that fair wording?
Shelley: Well, I think there’s certainly some jealousy there. But at the time period, he is in a battle with her nephew, who’s the Prince of Transylvania. This is where we get into political intrigue, and at the exact same time that Elizabeth is being investigated—that he initiates this investigation into her—there’s also an assassination attempt against her nephew and the arrest of her cousins. So the Báthorys are being attacked as a family at the same time this case is unfolding. Could be a coincidence, but, you know, it’s rather kind of a curious circumstance.
Erik: And that was Gábor Báthory, who is well liked by many, and he, in a way, was protecting her, right? He was an insurance policy in the sense that prosecutors weren’t necessarily all that eager to go after her, knowing that he was out there as her champion. I mean, he had influence. So she had influence.
Shelley: Absolutely. She’s got her nephew, who is the Prince of Transylvania. And although the politics of the time are very complicated, what I guess is important to know is Hungary being broken up into those various parts—and Transylvania and Royal Hungary, you know, are parts of the same whole. And there’s always been this question of will they be reunited? Can they be reunited again under one crown? And there was, you know, a real belief and hope that Gábor Báthory might be the one to do this. He might be the one to kick out the foreign Habsburg emperors and, you know, usher in a new golden age for Hungary. So for, you know, the start of his reign, he’s not just kind of this powerful, influential prince in the neighboring principality, but he’s also direct competition. And clearly, if Gábor Báthory is successful, György Thurzo loses everything, right? Even if he doesn’t entirely invade, but he’s able to extend some of his influence over Hungary, György Thurzo is not going to be the emperor’s number two anymore if he can’t take care of this problem. So Elizabeth Báthory is kind of directly in the line of fire between Thurzo and Gábor Báthory, the Prince of Transylvania.
Erik: And eventually her nephew is slain, right? Which I guess kind of ends the conflict in a way.
Shelley: Yeah, he’s assassinated. Um, and Thurzo is widely believed to have a hand in that assassination. And for a while, you know, we could say, was Elizabeth being imprisoned and held essentially hostage? Right—like so many women of influential political families were at the time. And, you know, they don’t really have a need for her once they’ve managed to take out Gábor Báthory because there’s nothing she can do there. While he’s alive, there’s this real concern that Elizabeth is able to give him aid and support that might one day, you know, aid him in his potential invasion. Or just that she might be able to give him political support that’ll help him win the hearts and minds of the general public.
Erik: What about her children? She had older daughters, right? Were they standing by her during the depositions? Interrogations?
Shelley: Yeah. I mean, one of her daughters will actually be accused of being an accomplice. Um, so one thing I think that gets lost often with this case is we see Elizabeth Báthory as like a singular figure who’s maybe assisted by some of her servants. But once the depositions are underway and things are rolling—as there are with most, you know, witch trials—everybody has to accuse somebody else. And so what starts happening is there’s this—it’s assumed that there’s this child trafficking slash kidnapping ring that, you know, Elizabeth’s at the head of this criminal enterprise, but she’s being assisted by all of these other noblewomen who are named as her accomplices, who are finding these children and bringing them to her. So a lot of other women fall under suspicion. And one of those who is named in one of the testimonies is one of her daughters. At this point, she has two daughters who are married, still, you know, a son who is just now old enough—he’s 12, and then will be a little bit older—to start coming into public life. And Elizabeth will have a daughter and son-in-law who definitely help support her and look out for her. And she will have another son-in-law that seems to be actively working against her, and, you know, plotting with the prosecutor to, you know, to take her land. And then she has this son who seems essentially to be a pawn that’s being used by, you know, other men who want to control him in order to control her lands.
Erik: It’s a giant soap opera, isn’t it?
Shelley: It is. And it’s such a mess, right? It’s such a mess.
Erik: Well, you do a great job in the book of explaining it. So for anyone intrigued by all of this, it’s all laid out in your book—all of the crazy machinations and, again, political intrigue and back and forth. Uh, I’m just curious: now when we talk about serial killers, there’s such an interest in knowing why. Why do they do what they do? Did you get a sense that anyone at all cared about motive—why she would be bringing in all of these young women just to torture them and kill them?
Shelley: I think motive, the way we think of it, is much more recent, and you see that from kind of the 1700s on, where everybody is trying to find a reason, right? Like, we have this accusation—why would she have done this? And you get everything from, you know, female vanity to menopause to, uh, kind of childhood trauma—all of these different theories. But at the time, you know, people did these things because they were your religious enemies. You know, the Catholics said this is what the Lutherans were doing. The Lutherans said this is what the Calvinists were doing. All of the Christians said this is what the Ottoman Turks were doing.You know, people were eating babies. Uh, people from the opposing religion might come and, you know, I don’t know, kidnap your children, like do away with your wife.So, uh, you know, you did this because you were evil, because of the devil. Uh, it was kind of that idea—like what we see with a lot of the witchcraft trials that are happening in the area at the same time.And it’s important to know that one of Elizabeth’s close associates will be burned as a witch throughout the course of this.So, you know, there’s just this idea like, well, of course they do it. They’re witches. They’re evil. Um, you know, and there’s a lot of mention of the devil and, uh, you know, kind of demonic forces in some of the testimony—particularly that given by one pastor in particular.So I think there’s just this sense that once you embrace the devil, you just, of course you do these things.
Erik: Right. She was accused of practicing radical Calvinist rituals, right? What would those have been?
Shelley: I mean, in the eyes of her opponents, they could be things that were as simple as not following the Lenten fast.Uh, they certainly also—some of the rumors spring up from the sense of how different religions viewed what constituted a proper burial or a proper funeral. So you could be accused of burying somebody in secret if you didn’t follow the full ceremony. And that was often a matter of religious differences, where some people preferred a simpler, quieter affair, uh, whereas other people wanted the full kind of ceremony with the bell ringing and the singing and having a pastor give remarks.So a lot of times people would be saying, well, you’re not following proper funeral ceremony, you’re, you know, you’re hiding bodies.And we hear that in modern day, like, oh, you’re hiding bodies. Like the only reason you hide a body, right, is because you did something wrong. You murdered someone.But in that day and age, people were frequently levying this accusation that you were hiding bodies, you were doing, you know, evil things to bodies, because you didn’t want to follow proper Christian protocol.
Erik: Speaking of bodies, were there ever any bodies recovered—produced as evidence?
Shelley: We have one actual body in, like, the whole sordid affair, I should say. There are six possible victims in the sense there are six girls we know of who died while on Elizabeth’s estates. One’s a commoner maid, and the others are young girls whose families are members of the lower nobility.But in most of these cases, their families don’t think a murder’s been committed. And there’s like a lot of evidence in most of these instances that the girls had been ill before their deaths.But we do have the body of a single maid who was found in the infirmary of Elizabeth’s estate. She was reported to have been ill by pastors who had come to visit her a couple days before her death—so up to her death there’s no sense that there’s anything unusual.You know, this is a girl who’s very ill in the wintertime, in the middle of an epidemic. People see her, that she’s very sick. There are other girls that are very sick who are in the infirmary with her. They’re being quarantined.And then we will have this one body of this one girl who will be found dead. And Thurzo will use this body to claim that Elizabeth has committed murder there.There’s some suggestion that one young woman had been mauled by an animal, possibly. Or—well, there were two women. One was found dead, and then there was another girl in the infirmary at the same time.And that girl had wounds on her back and one on her hand. And her mangled hand was an object of great fascination—like people came, you know, where she was under the care of a doctor, to look at this hand.But there is that sense that she was injured, and she gave testimony where she discussed how she had flesh that had turned black, and that a woman who worked for Elizabeth Báthory had cut that flesh away.And that’s like what we would assume is a treatment for gangrene or infection.She doesn’t say that she was injured by Báthory or, you know, anyone who worked for her, but just that they were using scissors to cut the putrid flesh away.And so there’s been a lot of suggestions that it sounds like this was a girl who was injured, who was attacked by an animal of some kind, and she had sought medical care at Elizabeth Báthory’s estate, and they were following what was kind of standard procedure for an injury, for necrotic flesh.
Erik: Interesting. So one of the more dramatic moments in the story is when Thurzo—and this was the end of December, 1610—he comes for her. Mm-hmm. To arrest her. He raids her house and according to him later on, he caught her in the act of committing murder.
Shelley: Yes. He says that that one dead maid that we are talking about—the one body we know of—that, you know, he caught her in the act of murdering her, and she’s put under house arrest on his word, that this is what he witnessed. But the important thing to know is that Thurzo breaks into Elizabeth Báthory’s manor with his own private army, and he claims he catches her in the act of murdering one of her maids. And that later we said, you know, the body was strewn right across the front entrance—so he just saw it there.The important thing to know is: if you broke into another noble’s home, you could lose your title, your property—everything. You could be jailed, you could even lose your head. The one exception, though, is if you said you witnessed somebody in the middle of committing a serious crime.So you might think of it nowadays—you know, you can’t just wander into people’s homes—but if you said, you know, the door was open and I saw this man strangling his wife right in front of me, so I had to run in and punch him, right? The law gives you certain leeway that it wouldn’t ordinarily, to just burst into somebody’s home and punch them.So in much the same way, we have this very convenient—but we also have to ask ourselves: so in the middle of December, at dinner time, Elizabeth gets up and decides to murder one of her maids and then leave the body across the front threshold, and he just happens to be in the neighborhood with his army at the same time and sees this.
Shelley: I mean, it’s just an incredible coincidence, right? (laugh)
Erik: Right. (laugh) So did prosecutors believe that their case was a lead-pipe cinch? Were they confident in pursuing it?
Shelley: No, absolutely not. So Elizabeth, uh, kept—you know, throughout this—she wants to go to trial. She’s, you know, constantly writing letters and trying to get support and asking to go to trial, and she very nearly gets to go to trial. And there’s even this moment where they’re debating whether or not she should be let out on bail. So she, you know, becomes very close to, like, tasting freedom. But throughout this, Thurzo is the one delaying, delaying, delaying the trial. You know, he’s always—it’s just too late. And it’s the emperor who’s insisting: if we’re going to do this, we have to do this right. Let’s make sure we have a trial. Let’s make sure that we’ve dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s. Let’s go back and get more witness testimony. And Thurzo’s the one who’s saying, ah, you know, we just—oh, you know, Parliament just left. I can’t, I can’t petition them for a couple more months. Or, oh, you know what? Like, it’s just taking too long. And the emperor’s the one who’s pushing him, pushing him to try to have this trial, and he’s constantly delaying it. So they don’t want this to go to court, and Elizabeth really wants it to go to court.
Erik: And you write that one of the things people often say or believe about Elizabeth is that she was kind of clueless to the forces plotting against her. But you argue that she was very clever in her navigation of the legal system.
Shelley: Yeah, I mean, she is the daughter, niece, um, granddaughter of tons of judges. Like, there are lawyers and judges throughout the Báthory family, and as I mentioned, her brother is the chief justice, so she knows her way around a courtroom, and her family has a long history of successfully winning cases. So she’s well aware of her rights. She discusses those when she’s been arrested, and she’s well aware of what’s admissible and not admissible in court. And so it really would be to her benefit to go to trial. And even if she goes to trial and she’s convicted, another important thing to remember is most women are pardoned—women of that, you know, the aristocracy are going to be pardoned. So the example of that second female serial killer who happens to be a countess, who happens to be in the exact same locale as Elizabeth Báthory committing her crimes allegedly at the exact same time: she is tried and convicted, and then she will be pardoned after a certain period of time and allowed to go into exile. So it’s really to her benefit to go to trial. And even if she’s found guilty, it’s not necessarily a death sentence. You know, there’s still a way out for her.
Erik: You stated in your book, right, that the prosecutors had made up their minds even before the depositions—that she was basically going to serve life in prison.
Shelley: That was the decision before anything ever really happened. They’ve decided that the night of the arrest. So there’s a letter that exists and they talk about how a lot of the gentlemen in this case—it’s already been decided that she will live out the rest of her days in this castle. So that’s again before there’s been any even talk of a trial, that they’ve decided that this is what’s going to be done with her. And they’ve already divvied up her land and decided this is how we’re going to divide up her land between her various sons-in-law and, you know, other members of the family.
Erik: Right. And she wrote out a will, right? Which you discuss in detail and it’s definitely an important part of this story.
Shelley: It is. And I’m sorry if we skipped over that. So I think when you were talking about Elizabeth being savvy—politically savvy and aware of the forces against her—she knows that it seems as though they’re coming for her. She just gets the timing wrong. She thinks she has a little more time and she doesn’t think people are going to do anything over the Christmas holiday. You know, there’s a ton of snow. Parliament’s not in session. Everybody’s out celebrating with their families. So she thinks she has a couple months. But she has already started to gather character witnesses who could testify on her behalf. And she has made a will in which she has given all of her lands to her children. So basically: if you come at me and I’m found guilty, like, you won’t be able to get anything anyway. She’s made herself into a less attractive target. There’s no need to necessarily go after me because I don’t have anything I can give you anyways. And she’s not only divided up the land between her children, but then she’s also said, well, the land will be divided up at a future date. So it’s not happening right away. It’s kind of just put in limbo. So what she’s done is essentially tried to take away any incentive that somebody’s going to benefit or profit right away by arresting her.
Erik: Like, like Thurzo specifically?
Shelley: Yes. Yes.
Erik: What about the alleged torture chamber?
Shelley: Right—the torture chamber. So, um, they’re looking for the torture chamber throughout this investigation, right? Because again, it’s this—we have an accusation and then we have to hunt to make things fit. So, uh, very early on, um, one of the pastors has said, you know, that they know that there’s this torture chamber, and it’s in her castle of, of Čachtice. And they believe it’s in the women’s quarters, like where nobody else can go. So that’s why, like, they haven’t seen it, but they talk about how there’s this, you know, wall that’s supposed to be all bloody, and this is where she does all of her bad things. The problem is, is when she leaves the castle and people who are moving against her go to this castle, like there’s no bloody wall, there’s no torture chamber.And when Elizabeth’s servants are tortured, one of the things they keep asking them as they’re being tortured over and over is to try to figure out where this torture chamber might be. And, you know, they even make one of her servants say, oh, well they washed all the walls and that’s why there’s no evidence anymore of the torture chamber. Um, and then some of them say, well, she just tortured people wherever she happened to be at the time. But they really have heard that there’s this torture chamber, they’ve believed there’s this torture chamber, Thurzo has broken into her house looking for this torture chamber, and there’s no torture chamber. So they have a problem in that they have to kind of change the story to fit, you know, what they’re able to find.
Erik: Yeah. So she passes away under house arrest at age 54, correct?
Shelley: Yes. Yeah. Age 54.
Erik: And she just dies in her sleep, right?
Shelley: Yeah, I mean there’s this question of was she ill, and that might have been the reason that they chose to move against her when they did. But she had complained of, you know, certain ailments throughout, so we don’t know if this was a new ailment or if this was something that she had had, you know, years before—it was potentially getting much, much worse. But she will go to bed one night, call to her guard, say, look how cold my hands are. And they’ll say, don’t worry about it. Go to bed. And she’ll be reported to have, you know, been singing hymns, fall asleep, and she’ll be found the next morning dead.
Erik: Wow.
Shelley: Yeah.
Erik: So I’m really curious: this number—650 victims—and when you read that, it’s like, what?
Shelley: What a monster. (sarcastically)
Erik: What a monster. (sarcastically) So where, to your knowledge, did that number come from? How was it created, and how was her myth perpetuated as the years passed by?
Shelley: So there’s two things, I guess, that come into play with this 650 number. And one is: at the time there is, in all of the true crime literature, this really sensational story of this murderer—serial killer—who supposedly has kept a diary where he writes down everyone that he has murdered in this diary. And, um, he’s killed hundreds of people—not 650—but this is something that’s circulating in the press that everybody’s aware of, like the murderer’s diary, right? Where you write down all of your victims. And in the third set of depositions, a girl named Susanna—who is the only person to give testimony where they don’t list a family name or any sort of attachment for—so she’s not the wife of, the daughter of, we just know her, you know, she’s a servant—Susanna, a young girl who says that she has heard from someone else that one of Elizabeth Báthory’s administrators, who lives on an estate a hundred miles away, found a list of the victims that numbered 650, and it was signed in Elizabeth Báthory’s signature. And the person taking down the testimony notes that this is hearsay, but it’s still entered into the record. But that is where we get that number from. And again, even at the time, people were a little skeptical of that number and this idea that this young girl would somehow know what a man who lived a hundred miles away had found or not found, and, you know, would be able to report that accurately to a court. And then also that the story just happened to mirror exactly what was in the press at the time, uh, is kind of one of those interesting coincidences. But that’s where we get that 650 number from.
Erik: And to your understanding, where does this idea of her bathing in virgin blood come from?
Shelley: Yeah, that might be like the most well-known part of her legend. Uh, and that’s something that we’re not gonna see for, you know, till well over a century after her death, where we have this priest who is trying to write a travel guide. And for the kind of local lore and legend part of that travel guide, he says, ooh, I’m gonna tell you a story about Elizabeth Báthory. And this is where he invents this idea that she’s been bathing in blood. At the time, vampires are really hot. Like, this is a new thing. So if you’re going to write a travel guide about a particular area, you know, “we have our own little vampire story here” is extra titillating. But that’s where we get that idea of her bathing in the blood of virgins—it’s much, much, much, much later. No one during Elizabeth’s life—while they accused her of cannibalism and, you know, eating parts of people and doing all kinds of interesting witchcraft, like with a special “pretzel mirror” to spy on people—no one ever accused her of bathing in the blood of virgins in her lifetime.
Erik: What is it about this area of the world? I mean, you’ve got the story of Dracula, you know, whose myth has grown and grown, and the same here with Elizabeth Báthory. Is there something about this region that makes it so popular within the horror genre?
Shelley: I mean, I think part of it is just, it’s seen as so dark and inaccessible and foreign. And at the time this was an area that was literally, you know, being just destroyed, right, by these wars. But also this is where the Ottoman Turks were. This was, you know, considered like the edge of Europe and the edge of Western civilization, you know, as they saw it. So this is something that’s happening in those, you know, mysterious borderlands, uh, where civilization may or may not hold. And so I think it’s kind of natural that this is where those superstitions and legends spring up. It’s kind of the edge of the known world—just like if you think of explorers’ maps, the “there be dragons,” you know, kind of thing. I mean, this is the area where if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen. But, you know, if it happens too far off, nobody’s gonna hear about it or be able to report back. So it’s always that.When I was traveling through the area, I heard the story. And also, you know, there’s a practical reason so much of this travels back and forth—like the vampire legends. And that is that you have all these troops and mercenaries that are coming from their little village in Austria or France or somewhere to go fight the Ottoman Turks. And then they’re going to bring back some mention of what they hear or see—these tall tales—back to their little villages in Austria, um, or in France, or, you know, some little duchy. And they repeat these stories, they repeat these superstitions, and they sort of grow a life of their own. So “I went and I saw these scary monsters,” or “I saw these foreign people doing these strange things.” That becomes like the story they’re telling around the hearth when they get back home to their little village.
Erik: Right. And in these kinds of stories, these historical figures—especially one seen in a bad or evil light—the men are always brutal, vicious sword-carrying warriors. And in the case of women in power, they’re associated with sorcery, with cunning. They’re always witches, right? Or witchcraft-adjacent.
Shelley: Yeah. Why do you think that is? I mean, you can’t get rid of a powerful woman by challenging her to a duel. So you have to either, you know, um, kind of call into question her virtue, or you have to say, you know—I mean, women are agents of the devil, right? So she’s a witch. I mean, that’s the easiest way. You can say a man’s not a great warrior, he is not a good leader, he shouldn’t be king, or he’s illegitimate—all of these other things. But what are you going to do for a woman? You basically have two accusations you could level against her.
Erik: Fascinating. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to go into detail with us about your new book—again, out on February 17th.And you do have a website, right?
Shelley: Yes. It’s www.shelleypuhak.com. S-H-E-L-L-E-Y-P-U-H-A-K.COM
Erik: Great. Well, again, links will be in the show notes, and the book will obviously be available wherever books are sold. And yeah, it must be fun reintroducing this historical figure in a way that’s different from how people have perceived her for all these hundreds of years.
Shelley: Yeah. This was great fun to research and to write, and I hope readers have as much fun reading it as I did researching it.
Erik: Well, thanks again.
Shelley: Thanks so much, Erik, for having me. This was a real pleasure.
Erik: Again, I’ve been speaking to Shelley Puhak. She’s the author of The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster.
Erik: This has been another episode of the Most Notorious podcast, podcasting to every dark and cobweb corner of the world. I’m Erik Rivenes, and have a safe tomorrow…
