Elizabeth Báthory
| Elizabeth Báthory | |
|---|---|
Copy of the lost 1585 original portrait of Elizabeth Báthory
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| Born |
Erzsébet Báthory 7 August 1560 Nyírbátor, Kingdom of Hungary |
| Died | 21 August 1614 (aged 54) Csejte, Kingdom of Hungary (today Čachtice, Slovakia) |
| Other names | The Blood Countess The Bloody Lady of Csejte The Tigress of Csejte |
| Criminal penalty | confinement until death |
| Spouse(s) | Ferenc Nádasdy |
| Children | Paul Andrew Anna Ursula Catherine |
| Killings | |
| Victims | purported over 650 |
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Span of killings
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1590–1609 |
| Country | Kingdom of Hungary |
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Date apprehended
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29 December 1610 |
Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Hungarian: Báthory Erzsébet, Romanian: Elisabeta Bathory, Slovak: Alžbeta Bátoriová ; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a serial killer from the Báthory family of nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary. She has been labelled by Guinness World Records as the most prolific female murderer, though the precise number of her victims is debated. Báthory and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of young women between 1585 and 1609. The highest number of victims cited during Báthory's trial was 650. However, this number comes from the claim by a serving girl named Susannah that Jakab Szilvássy, Countess Báthory's court official, had seen the figure in one of Báthory's private books. The book was never revealed, and Szilvássy never mentioned it in his testimony. Despite the evidence against Elizabeth, her family's influence kept her from facing trial. She was imprisoned in December 1609 within Csetje Castle, Upper Hungary (now in Slovakia), and held in solitary confinement in a room whose windows were walled up where she remained imprisoned until her death five years later.
The stories of her serial murders and brutality are verified by the testimony of more than 300 witnesses and survivors as well as physical evidence and the presence of horribly mutilated dead, dying and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest. Stories which ascribe to her vampire-like tendencies (most famously the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth) were generally recorded years after her death and are considered unreliable. Her story quickly became part of national folklore, and her infamy persists to this day. She is often compared with Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia, on whom the fictional Count Dracula is partly based, and has been nicknamed The Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.
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