History's Deadliest Women: The Blood Countess

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the Ancient Greek Statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe. We're all going to be safer from here on out, right on with the show. This is awkward, I appear to have walked in on the Countess Elizabeth Bathery preparing herself for a bath. Her candles are lit, the servants are scurrying about enormous tubs of water are ready to go, oh it sounds lovely. Except instead of hot water and a nice lavender oil, legend has it that her servants are filling the bath with the blood of virgins. I'm all for a good tip to knock out a few wrinkles but I think that might be a stretch even for me. Apparently Elizabeth believes that this rather extreme skincare regime will keep her forever young. I'm going to stick with the retinal. But before we brand Hungary's infamous blood countess as one of history's most deadly women, there's a problem. There's a big problem. This almost certainly never happened. So where did the story come from? How did the legend get born? Was Elizabeth really a monster at all? And is any of it true? Any of it at all? Well I'm ready to find out if you are. Hello and welcome back to BetoXa Sheet's History of Sex, Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. Given that we are now streaming a little mini-series on history's deadliest women, it made sense that somebody who's known in the history book says the blood countess, the most infamous serial killer of all time, would be included. The stories about this 16th century countess include some really shocking details, like that she killed over 600 victims, many of them young girls, even children, that she bathed in their blood, that she was a sadist, that she loved torturing the weak and the innocent and was only stopped because she made the mistake of picking on rich victims. But was she as deadly as they say or is the whole thing a setup? Joining me today to tell us more about this extraordinary case of this fascinating woman is the fabulous, the wonderful author in historian Shelley Puhack to help us get to the bottom of all of this. So without further ado everyone, let's crack on. Well hello and welcome to BetoXa Sheet's Old Lee Shelley Puhack, how are you doing? I'm well, how are you? Oh, I'm so relieved that you are here and I'm so relieved that you've written this book, The Blood to Countess, Murdered Betrayal and the Making of a Monster about Bopper Bomb, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, about bloody time. We'll get into exactly who she is, there'll be people listening, maybe never heard of her, but like she's like such an infamous character in history, but when you actually try and like find actual biographies of her, there's not a whole lot of them, there's like a lot of internet blogs and there's a lot of like online stuff and there's like stuff on YouTube, but like an actual like serious study of her, not so many. So what made you want to write one? And thank God you have. Well, thank you. I became familiar with this legend because I have extended family in Slovakia, who live in the area of some of her former estate. So it was always kind of on the back burner, it's a hugely popular story in Slovakia. There's kind of a sort of cottage tourism industry right around a lot of her castles. So this was a fascinating cold case and I became aware that there were more and more central European scholars who were questioning, you know, whether or not she'd actually done all of these vile and disgusting things that she was accused of. So hell of a story, like it is. And a lot of that scholarship had never made it into, you know, English, never been translated. Oh, there we go. That's why, so it is there, which just I can't read the language there. Right. Well, some of it was misfiled. So I was really lucky to, you know, kind of stumble across some documents that write, you know, some new documents and, you know, work with new sources, but also work with new translations of old sources that were really revealing. Yeah. Okay. All right. So like I said, there will be people listening who don't know who the Countess Elizabeth Bathory is. So could you give us the headline story? Sure. Elizabeth Bathory or Bathory Air Shabet, as you might know, her in Hungarian. She's long been known as one of the world's most prolific serial killers, the most prolific female serial killer. She was accused of torturing and killing over 600 young women. It's an especially salacious story because over time, there's, you know, become this sort of SNM gruesome element transposed over the original legend. She's been cast as this lesbian vampire. And, you know, just to kind of situate listeners, if we want to think about like where and when we are, when Elizabeth is born, Elizabeth, the first is the brand new Queen of England. The Protestant Reformation is not even 50 years old. She's going to be a contemporary of people like Bacon and Marlow and Shakespeare and the canonical legend, the legend that, you know, you hear or if you look something up, if you google her, you'll see some version of this idea that she has this finishing school. She's this fabulously wealthy Countess from this depraved old aristocratic family who runs a finishing school and she is torturing and murdering young women in her care because she's become convinced that if she bathes in their virgin blood, she will stay eternally young. And eventually, there's such an outcry. So many families are complaining about their missing daughters that the king is forced to launch an investigation when they go to her house, they catch her red handed, and because of her aristocratic privilege spared the indignity of a trial. And instead, she is walled up in a tower with just a little slit for food where she will live out her days. The problem with that legend is almost every bit of it is completely wrong. Oh, no. I had a feeling that you were going to say that, you know, it's like one of those historical stories that you hear that you listen to it, like, you've got this sense that it's not it's not a good story, but it's too good to be true. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, it's too much somehow. And then when these stories are this exciting and it is, it's a very racy story that people can project or kinds of stuff onto from lesbianism to SNM to vampires to the blood countess is that people almost don't they don't want the truth anymore. They want the story. That's what they want. But you have managed to push past this. So let's start dismantling the story. Who was Elizabeth Bathory? Did she even exist? She certainly existed. She was born in, you know, 1560, and she is born into a great time to be born. And she's born into this, you know, really, really old. Her family has been in the air stockers for about 500 years. And she's related to, you know, all of these very important people. So she's the niece of the king of Poland. She's related to Cardinals in Rome. A lot of princes of Transylvania are in her family tree. And her brother is the chief justice of royal hungry. So, you know, her people go way way back. And she's a very big deal. And she's extraordinarily wealthy, extraordinarily true. She was definitely born, definitely existed. She was definitely very, very rich and very, very privileged. And where is this, by the way, where she born? So she is born in what is, I guess this is this area is changing hands between Transylvania and royal hungry. But we would know it as, you know, was once the kingdom of hungry. An important thing for people to know, I get into kind of the nitty-gritty in the book with maps, et cetera. But you just need to know that this area is divided and it has been invaded by the Ottoman Turks. And then there's also a civil war essentially going on at the same time. So we have this formerly great kingdom that's been divided into three. And a lot of things are changing hands, you know, it's an active war zone. So that's also going to kind of complicate the story. So it's turbulent. I think that might be an understatement, yes. Okay, fair enough. So she is rich, is from aristocracy. The other part of the legend is that she was spectacularly well educated and that she was super, super, super clever. Is that true? She seems to certainly have been intelligent. Some of the information that you'll see online, like, for example, that she somehow spoke Greek. No one can really track down where that's from or where that originated. There doesn't seem to be anything for that. However, for the time period, she's very well educated. She certainly can write and read Latin, Hungarian, German. And she lives behind quite a bit of correspondence. We know that her mother is extraordinarily well educated and like a really interesting figure too. So she does have this sort of really strong, wild, intelligent mother. And there's a really long tradition of, I guess, we'd say really independent, minded women and a very like kind of tolerant family. So she is from a background where it's expected that she can hold her own and that she is being prepared for the eventuality that she might need to step in temporarily or permanently in some capacity. An important thing too to keep in mind because this is a war zone is a lot of things that we would consider not traditional in other parts of the world at this time. It's kind of like in World War II where we're like, Rosie the Riveter, women get to work, go to the factories like normally, not acceptable, but because of the circumstances, people are saying, you know, the men have to go off to fight. You need to be prepared to take the reins. Should something happen to your father, brother, husband. And we see this across all social classes, not just the aristocracy, but you know, women having to step in and run printing crosses or a brew beer or run the farm and even some women stepping in as soldiers. So there's such a man shortage that there's a little bit of an opening for women to perhaps take on more responsibility than they might ordinarily. As a historian, what sources are you working with to try and track this woman? Because like from Hungarian sources from the 16th century in a war zone, it seems like, where did you find the sources? Where are they held? So four different countries. These documents are split between the archives of Austria, you know, modern-day Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, and a few in Romania. Okay. So that's the other I think issue is because the battery family has since died out, there's no family archive in the way that there are for some other ancient families, right? So little bits and pieces have been subsumed into other families' archives or other collections, but you have to piece it together. So you might go one place and you might say this is all that exists for 16, 10, let's say, this is this is all that we know, but you might not be aware that there's other bits of information bits and pieces that you can glean from the other archives and put together to get like a fuller picture. And obviously, a lot of this scholarship and work was complicated by, you know, virtue of the Iron Curtain. And then afterwards, this idea that territories are changing hands, documents are changing hands, archives are kind of coming and going. So this sense that there isn't in the way there is, for example, in, you know, Britain or France, like a central depository of these documents for hundreds of years. That as a historic research in this, that must have been so difficult for you. I think the hardest part is the hungarian. It's one thing to look at old Latin documents and you can piece together, right? Like what's going on? But and I was fortunate to work with some really outstanding translators and experts in old handwriting. But you know, there's, there's time when you look at a document like this is a will. Clearly, it's has to do with these people, you know, maybe have to pull in some experts to help me out. But there were some times when you're like, I have, I have no idea what this document even is. Like I don't even know. Isn't it fun? Is it not? It's the worst thing in it when like you, you can understand the language, maybe like you can translate the language, but the handwriting is insane. And you're just like, that just feels so unfair when you're like, but I should be able to understand this. And now I can't. Right. So the next part of the legend with battery is she's aristocratic. She's rich. She's privileged. She's, um, she's like running things in very, very clever is that she gets married to another high flyer. And the story that I've heard is that he was the one with a taste for sadism and he introduced his young wife to it. Yes, there's that where there's the older aunt, you know, who entices her to this like, you know, violent underworld. Um, okay, with the husband, like, some things just to clarify. First of all, as far as marriages go for this time period for an aristocrat, this is a pretty decent one. And the reason I say that is there's only a five year age difference. Okay. They're both orphans and they get to live together for a period before they're actually married. You know, obviously they're being big chaperone. She's learning the reins of the of the estate. And he had a very, he was raised by his, his mom, you know, essentially single mom for quite a, you know, bit of his life. And she's a very strong woman and also very tolerant. So he seems to have, you know, inherited a lot of that. So she's moving from one very liberal, uh, we might say household into another. Okay. And we have this idea that there aren't people said, well, maybe they have a terrible marriage because there aren't a lot of letters between the two of them. And a lot of, you know, historians have pushed back on that and said, no, the reason we don't have so many letters is because they're spending all their time together. You know, and people are traveling. There's no need to go there. Yes. And so he's always coming home, whenever he can, even when he's way at war to spend Christmas with her. When she's sick, he writes to people and says, I can't come. My wife's sick. I have to take care of her. And he doesn't have to do this. I mean, there are servants. There's enough money. So we do get the sense that, you know, he takes her along when he goes to Parliament that they spend quite a bit of time together. We can't know what was happening, you know, behind closed doors. Like we don't have a diary. That's like, yeah, you know, I love my husband. He's amazing or oh my god, he's such a bore. But as far as for the time period, they seem to have had at least a very good working partnership. And they, you know, are affectionate. Another thing that I think is very telling is we have a lot of existing surviving letters between other couples. And we can kind of compare what we have between these two with what we have from others. And so for a lot of other women, we have these very effusive and kind of simmering tones towards their husband, right? Like, oh, you are the light of my life. And you provide for me. And you're amazing. And you know, it's, it's very like, she writes to him as an equal. It's like, high beloved. We have an issue over here, you know, see you in two days. Interesting. Some people take that as a sign of coldness. I think a lot of us could take it as almost a contemporary text message. You know, she doesn't need to beg for his approval. She doesn't need to build up his ego. And when he leaves, he trusts her to maintain everything. I think where we get this idea that he was a sadist is he is a warrior, right? I mean, he's a bloody war. He's off fighting. And there are a couple instances where, you know, he's beheading people in battle. He's injured himself. And he does have some Turkish officers impaled down. That's not nice. No. But I will say he doesn't do it himself. It's ordered. And it's ordered as retribution. I'm not trying to excuse it. But because they've done that to his people, it's it's pretty horrific, but I was going to say I think it's in within the context of lots of horrific things. Most men in this time period have had to do things that are absolutely vile. Yeah. And it's very difficult there to say that. But it's not like no to it's not like exceptionally vile. They were all being vile. Yes. And in particular, he didn't have that reputation as a landlord, right, or as, you know, among his people. Yeah. I mean, it's very hard. People are, you know, we're not defending in paylers. No, no, no, we're not. Don't do that, please. But they're terrible. It's terrible. It's, you know, absolutely terrible. But he also has this, this reputation among the Ottomans where, you know, they think that he is a badass. Like he's, you know, like one of the best and brightest. And he's well respected. He's a target. You know, like they will, if they are raiding, go for him because they know he is a big shot if they can take him out. So I think we have to say that he's got blood in his hands, like any other prominent general of this time period. But we have no evidence that he has done anything out of the ordinary. And in fact, I think an interesting little fuel indulge me here, you know, tidbit is what he's very, very young, but he's taken over. He has some overseers who are tasked with overseeing, I guess, the, you know, serfs in a particular area. And these serfs are so upset with how they're being treated by these, you know, particular overseers that they all band together. They petition the king. They say, we don't like this guy's beating us too much. He's working us too hard. There's a set procedure to file complaints. And, you know, this case, it's respected. They say, like, cease and desist. You can't touch these people. We have to look into the working conditions. It's investigated. And it's improved. So we know at least as a young man he's learned, you have to be careful that people aren't abusing your serfs and we don't have any other complaints from that point on but we know that were there issues, there is a venue, you know, to voice those without fear of retribution for a lot of these serfs and they're not making complaints like that. In fact, they seem quite pleased with him. Okay, what's his name? What's the husband's name? It would be Francis if we anglicise it. Okay, Francis. So a badass on the battlefield, definitely somebody you'd want on your side, not somebody that you want to cross, it sounds like, but not noted for unusual cruelty. Absolutely. Okay, it does kind of sound from what you're saying that they had a reasonably happy marriage because you don't, you don't get a lot of those in the aristocracy. They tend to worthy of note. Yeah, no, you don't. And also, if you think some more about Francis is like, when they have children who die, he's brokenhearted. Like we have him writing. Oh, they have kids today. They have kids and, you know, we have that horrific 50% child mortality rate, you know, even like the best medical care. Doesn't, doesn't get you out of that. And we see him absolutely like brokenhearted and at his wife's side. So we don't get the sense that he's, you know, kind of cold and arrogant and you don't want the children that they are both equally devastated each and every time that this happens. Okay, so we can kind of put that myth to bed. And there's no evidence at all that he was the sadist and he introduced her to torturing people, torturing the servants. Absolutely. Absolutely. Not right. That's gone. That one is out of the window. All right, what else have you heard? I heard that he died young, young today, yes, like young for the time you're in. Um, so he dies in his 40s. I, you know, it's 1604. Um, and he catches some sort of illness. It, the army camp. He's headed home to see his wife for the holidays. And, you know, it's a sudden illness. And he's dead pretty quickly. It could have been anything, couldn't it really? There's typhus going around. It seems to have been that they talk about the camp, you know, camp fever and how many other people have died at the time. So it could be anything, but it seems like, you know, he's caught up in this epidemic of which there are so many different ones circulating at the time. It's, it's so grim. Do we have any records that tell us how Elizabeth took this that he died? She's devastated, we might say. Absolutely. Not the happy widow. No, I mean, right away she has to project power and preserve the family jump and make sure there's this fabulous, you know, funeral and no one dares question her authority. But we also see that she's withdrawing from a lot of public life that she's writing to people, you know, things like I can't handle this. I don't want to go. She's, she's declining invitations. People are concerned. So she seems to have, you know, been upset or at least convinced enough people that she was, you know, genuinely upset. So the next page of the story, and it's interesting that they are kids because that's not mentioned anywhere in the mix that surrounds the, hugely important to the story because there's a lot of things to when you, when you see the lens of, you know, I think some, like horror fans are very upset because, like, this research does not confirm this, like bloody stately story. They want it. But it's even more chilly. If you imagine that you are a woman who's good at your job, you're in a reasonably decent marriage. You've lived through a whole bunch of trauma, right? And you are trying to do the best for your kids. Like, you are like, okay, I'm in a bad spot. I will do anything to secure the future of my children. People still take you down. Fine. It happens all the time in this time period. But then imagine that generations and generations and generations of 400 years later, people are still conspiring with your enemies unwittingly, you know, so you never rest in peace. Like you're a cartoon villain. You're just so angry. No, like, it's kind of like if we imagine, I don't know, some of the, not to bring Hillary Clinton into this, but some of the things she was accused of, right? Like, with doing with like baby skins with her, with her aid, like these like very bizarre, right? Yeah, the weirdest, the weird stuff. And then we imagine like 500 years later, people are dressing up like, you know, Hillary Clinton for Halloween and making horror films about this and everybody's talking about like the dead baby stuff. Yeah. And like, oh my gosh, like, how did this happen? I'll be back with Shelley and Elizabeth after the short break. All right, so let's get into the accusations then because that's that's where this story just starts to just go, woo, yeah. So the legend, and I say that I say this legend is in this, this is what the internet will tell you happened, is that the husband dies and she loses it completely and then she just goes on a killing bananza and then she's got a couple of loyal servants and that one day she hits a servant girl and the blood goes on her face and she goes, oh, that's knocked out a few wrinkles. And then she decides to go on a killing rampage, murdering virgins to bathe in their blood. That's the story, right? I mean, is there anything in this at all that you've found that's true? And even a beauty tip from Countess Elizabeth, right? Like a vampire facial. Unfortunately, though, no plan is tone of moisturize. That's all we need to do. And that's completely invented over a hundred years after her death by a priest, by a priest who's trying to sell travel guide and vampires are really hot at that time. So he's he's kind of recycling this vampire lore. You know, one thing though that makes me really angry is this guy, right? He's this like essentially religious extremist has such an outsize, I think impact not just on, you know, Elizabeth Bathery's story, but it impacts all of us because this Bathery legend gets used not just by this priest to sell his travel guide, right? But by then it's adopted by social scientists and really early psychiatrists to explain the inner workings of the female brain and that we are completely motivated by vanity, right? Like when women commit crimes or do something violent or a lady like it's not because they have their own ambitions or because they want to protect their children or, you know, their friends or family, but because they are vain and they are motivated, you know, solely by sexual competition, right? Like they want to be young and hot and women will do anything. And that really is like embedded in early psychiatry and it's so much of the ways we think about women. So I think it's such a story of one woman, but it's also how so many of us have been kind of categorized and dismissed. And it feeds right into a very old fairy tale trope that you have that gets recycled. I mean, if you think like, um, sleeping beauty or snow white in particular, that again, it's an older woman who's jealous of the younger woman's beauty and that she goes on this killing rampage because of it and this demonizing of older women and having the motivated only by their perceived value within a patriarchal society. It's just it's a nasty story that reinforces all of that. So who is this priest? Who the hell's he? I'm going to put in my list. His name is Lazlo Taroxi and he lived in the area and I think it's about 1729. I believe his book comes out, but he, you know, just embellished it. And I really, it really took off, especially because when he's writing, it's at the height of this great vampire panic. One thing I think it's really, really, really important highlight is that, you know, one of the things I explored in my book is how the Elizabeth Bathory case is intertwined with the European witch trials and the Protestant reformation. That gets completely overlooked. But by the time the priest is writing, everybody's sick of the witch trials, right? Like they've burned everybody they can. No one wants to talk about it. We're done. We're doing vampires now. Like get, you know, get with the program. So everybody's very eager to say, yes, vampire had nothing to do with, you know, all of that. Now, I didn't thought of that. Yeah. Wow. And it is. It's like right in there just as the, the witch trials are starting to bubble up around Europe with the Protestant reformation. Cheese. So, but what is, so there's this priest in the 18th century, at least it wasn't the Victorians. Most of the time it's the Victorians who mess up. I mean, they add to it, right? Like they totally, like they totally like, you know, find it and they're go running with it. And you know why I think there's this element where as far as if we look at it as a legend and a crime, like there's so many of these elements, right? Like we have the right kind of aggressor. You know, she's like hot and wealthy, even if she maybe is like menopausal and crazy, who knows? Slightly on the turn. Right. We have the right victims, right? They're young victims. White dead women, right? Original. Everybody loves that. And now we don't just have one, we have like 600 of them. And we also have this excuse that for all of these priests and all of these early social scientists and all of these Victorians. to talk about, to sketch, to paint all of these naked, dead white women under the auspices of being really, really concerned about crime. So it's an easy way for this priest. There is no other access really to like naked bodies also, right? Folk concern. Yeah, I'm imagining, and I have to maybe write about it and maybe sketch it. Unfortunately, yeah. I have to imagine the more naked to be this concerned, and I am very concerned. Yeah, we've seen that, that trick before. So, all right, so there's a priest in the 18th century who embellishes something, but in the historical records themselves, is there anything about an arrest or a trial or, or like, like, her hurting anybody? Is there anything that this is based on? Absolutely. So, it's important to know that she is arrested. She's investigated and she's going to be arrested in 1610. There will be no trial. She will have subservents who work for her, who will be put on trial, and they will be executed. She will also have a good friend of hers who will be burned at the stake as a witch. If I don't mess about, do they? Yeah, they don't. And I think some other context, though, where everyone goes, okay, so she's accused of these awful things. There's 300, I think it's 304 people who testify, supposedly against her. It's quite a lot. This is bad, right? I mean, would you? That is bad. Look at the legend. And I think when I first started my research, I assumed what I think most people assume is there's no smoke without fire, right? Like, this has got to be widely exaggerated. There's no way there's 600 bodies, but, you know, obviously this woman was cruel to her servants and something happened. But I think we've got to really, really, really look at the context and look at what's happening, right? So first, I think we have to look at witchcraft, like go back to witchcraft. So it's important to know that Elizabeth Bathrey, like her mother-in-law, like her niece, like a lot of her cousins, like a lot of other noble women at this time period, is accused of witchcraft. So not just that she's, you know, accusations aren't just that she's torturing and killing girls. And it's important to know, too, that these accusations are not, that these are hot virgins, but that these are pre-pubescent children, okay? So she's got a satanic child trafficking rate going on. But also the pitch is changing a bit now, right? It's not very sexy, okay? And then, and she's hosting this ring that other noble women are aiding and assisting her with, and they're sometimes donating their daughters to be sacrificed, et cetera. So we have this whole, this whole take. We also have in the, in the record, accusations of cannibal feasts, right? Like they're, they're eating people. They're serving people to other people. She's got this army of invisible cats and dogs that she can, you know, stick on her enemies to annoy them. She's using charms and incantations to like try to kill her enemies. She's got these like supernatural spying devices. So it's interesting that we set aside all of these like witchcraft accusations. And then we, we like kind of cherry pick out some of these other accusations and say, well, they must be, be true. Because I think if we look at, for example, it's, you know, much later, but if we look at like, when Americans look at Salem, there's no way we would, you know, do movie portrayals of these, these poor men and women like flying around on broomsticks and speared with blood and, you know, like hanging out with the devil, right? Like we're like, that's insane. That's just put an entirely different lens on this. That's, that's a completely different. As soon as you said that, I never thought about it like that before. Why would I have done? But if this was a witchcraft accusation, suddenly the 600 victims and, and flying around on magic charms and satanic cannibalism, now that's fitting within a wider context of, well, of course, it's nonsense. Like you look at the witch trials all over the place and that they're accusing people of doing things like this, sometimes in vast numbers. Yes, absolutely. And I think that even helps explain the large number of witnesses. So, you know, the book I dig into all the nitty-gritty of people are really interested in like the specific, you know, numbers and who's saying what, but just to kind of do like an overview. You know, essentially the number of witnesses, there, you know, there's 304 people who give testimony, isn't unusual for a couple reasons. First is you take any witch trial in the area at the exact same time. So, I looked at some of common women like healers that are just, you know, 10 mile south of here happening at exactly the same time. And they're able to turn out over 100 people, you know, right away, just for this one woman. If they don't have to say for Liz with battery, we have this, you know, very famous woman. And we have five rounds of testimony given over two years. So, they keep going back out in the community and pulling more people in. Pulling more people in. So, the fact that you could out of 10,000 or so people get 300 people to say something isn't so ludicrous. So, this isn't 300 people going, she killed my daughter. I know who she killed. This isn't 300 victims. This is 300 people testifying to random stuff like involved in a witch trial, which as we've seen in other trials can be anything from, I saw them out at night and then they'd look at me. That kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, well, the next thing I would say is of those 304, it's roughly about 80% who say, I don't know anything or yes, I heard a rumor. You know, most of these people who testify have never met her, have never set foot on her property. They may have seen her at a distance as her carriage was going through town, but a lot of them have no knowledge, right? And there's even people who say things, for example, that we can prove that are demonstrably false. I'll give you like just one example. There's this priest that testifies. He's absolutely certain he was a witness that she tried to poison the king when he was eating at her house, right? The thing is, it's a Habsburg king. The Habsburgs keep like ridiculous documentation, right? We know for a fact that the king never ever set foot on any one of her properties. He never dined with her ever. She had met him, but you know, that's in like, we're talking in Vienna, a Bratislava elsewhere. So this, you know, this couldn't have happened. He could not have have witnessed, you know, her trying to use some sort of like supernatural magic to poison the king at dinner because the king was never at dinner. So there are some things like this that you can kind of go through one at a time and say, well, this couldn't have happened because, you know, there's numerous examples of this. We also have examples of some of the people testifying who owe money to the prosecutor or who have other sorts of very clear conflicts of interest, the prosecutor himself. So I think as you start to look at this, you go, okay, what are we left with? We're left with a handful of people making some accusations. And in most cases, they're sure she's a murderer, but they're not sure who she's murdered. No one can really come up with like a first name, last name. And when they say, I know she must have murdered this noble girl. No one ever goes to that family and says, are you missing a girl? Like, did your girl guy? Oh, this wouldn't stand up in court today. Would it? This isn't 300 accusations. This is mostly people going on, no, and then other people making stuff up. Absolutely. Or people saying, I've heard a rumor. I mean, imagine if-- I heard something. You know, I don't know. You're involved in some sort of, you know, I know somebody says they've seen you out with Brad Pitt, let's say. And, you know, it gets splashed all over a tabloid. And then they just start interviewing people saying, have you heard this rumor? Have you heard this rumor? And they said, yeah, you heard the rumor. And then next thing we know, you're guilty because people say they've heard this rumor. They're reporting on the rumors. Yeah. Is there anything in the documents that you've looked at? I mean, it sound in less and less and less credible. But was there ever a body found in the castle? Because that's the other thing that you hear is that the police or the equivalent of the police turned up at her castle. And there was just bodies everywhere that just like dying people. So what we do have with it seems to be rooted in as, you know, actual illness, orient epidemic. And so the only thing we have in this case is we have a single body of a maid and we have an injured girl. And what's interesting about this maid is we have, you know, a group of pastors who visit her castle right before this girl dies. And they report, there's a group of girls who are all very, very ill and they're sick. So they say, you know, some of them are on the verge of death. And then one of these girls dies. But the fact that people have seen her the days prior, they don't mention any, you know, signs of torture murder. But the fact that she's quarantined with these other sick girls. And then she dies. Not the same, right? And then we also have a girl who's injured. And now it does sound like some of the treatment that this poor girl underwent was probably pretty horrific and traumatic. Because they talk about how people use scissors to cut necrotic black flesh off of you and infected wound. And it seems like she was attacked by a wild animal or something horrific has happened. And people are fascinated with this woman because she has these two gashes on her back. And she's got this really mangled hand. And people come to visit and are like, oh, her hand is super mangled. You know, it's really gross. And they ask her, how did your hand get like this? And she says, a woman working for the count is used scissors to cut the black flesh from my wound. But it doesn't seem to be a description of torture. It seems to be a description of attempted medical treatment. And then the interesting thing about this girl is that everybody visits her. They're obsessed with her hand. She's entered into evidence as a torture victim. But then essentially the judges of the county government pay her off with a farm. She never testifies again her and her family. Get land for the first time. And she kind of quietly disappears. So we're looking at this through the lens of the witch trials, which it's now sounding, I think, that you've just flipped this entire thing on its head. The one constant that you have in the witch trials, no matter where they are or what that happened in it, who has been accused is someone somewhere is on the make. Someone, there's somebody in the background that has a reason for doing this, whether it's that they are trying to make a name for themselves, that they are a religious zealots trying to rid the world of the devil and trying to prove themselves. Or a lot of the time it's people accusing other people, they just happen to end up with their farm. Now, oh, look how that worked out. So whoops, a daisy, which is, can't be having farms. I'll just have that, thank you very much. What is the motivation for doing this, for launching an accusation of this magnitude against this woman? If you approach this case as a who done it, as in a who framed her, there are almost too many suspects for all of the motivations you outlined. You know, for example, we have the political angle where she is related to, you know, she's the aunt of the Prince of Transylvania. Transylvania, real hungry, are in the middle of these very contentious land negotiations. They're kind of on the verge of war, right? And she happens to be investigating a arrested at the same time as other members of her family and an assassination attempt on her nephew, the Prince. Oh, look at that. That happens to be organized by the prosecutor. So it is that idea of is she being held as a pawn? Okay, that's one option. Option two is we definitely have these religious zealots that are involved, like these men who legitimately believe, you know, they call her chazabel. They really, really, really think because she's not doing Christianity the right way, the way they would like to. She's Calvinist, they're Lutheran, therefore devil. Okay, so we definitely have the religious zealots. And then we have a lot of more just kind of ordinary greed and ambition, you know, certain nobles who want her land, who are in kind of court battles with her. And we have a prosecutor whose son is a direct rival for the same positions that her son is, you know, and also has, like it doesn't other reasons, like not to like her and to want to push her to the side. So it's almost like who didn't want her out of the way. A powerful, single woman, a powerful widowed woman in 15th century, 16th century Hungary. Yeah, she's got a lot of enemies. Absolutely. And she controls, you know, fast amount of land. I think we think of a castle or, you know, two castles, but she's got 17 castles and like kind of 500 miles of land. Like the land she commands is bigger than a lot of kingdoms and nations at this time. It stretches in a arc across the country. So if you wanted to invade, say you're not few, you know, was interested in doing that. There's like these little sort of stopping points right across. So it's not just that she's wealthy and that she's powerful, but it's also the strategic importance of the particular fortresses and castles that she commands. So this will be this will be one of the smoking guns. What happens to her land and possessions after she's accused and convicted of witchcraft? Well, she's never convicted. So that's the thing they keep putting off. They just imprison her. They just say, well, we're just going to put you under house arrest. And she's pushing for a trial. She wants a trial. And we actually have the Habsburg King say, well, let's let her have a trial. And they prepare for a trial. And the prosecutors always like, you know what? I just can't get around to it. The diaries don't good that way. Yeah, like, oh, the paper. It just didn't arrive. And now Parliament, you know, left for the holidays can't do it. Now he's delaying delaying delaying until she's dead. And then good portion of her property ends up being technically given to her minor son, but he's being controlled by men who are loyal to the prosecutor, right? And the rest of it is split up between like an ambitious scheming son-in-law and other people. So if we follow the money trail, follow what happens to that lady, it's pretty obvious. There's even a point where she has her daughter go back to her house, break in, and get all of her jewels because she's like, they're going to take those from you, too. And we have these complaints in the court. It's like, her daughter visits her. And she's like, you need to start securing all of this. They're going to go in and get the copper out the roof. This law, yeah. What happens to the kids, by the way? And also, like you mentioned there that she dies. So presumably she dies young-ish. Yeah, I mean, it's four years from the time she is accused to the time she's dead. Do we know how she died? Is that suspicious? Is that a-- Hmm. It could be, but we don't have any evidence. And there is some evidence that she may have had some sort of chronic illness. That might have been what initiated the proceedings is that she seemed maybe vulnerable or a little rundown. And they were like, this is the time to go. Which, right? So. But it seems that she-- we know that she goes to her jailers. And she says, my hands are really cold. They say, don't worry about it. She goes to bed. She's singing him. She thinks she's going to die. And she's dead in the morning. Could it have been poison? I mean, yes, but also very, very likely. It could have been a result of some sort of chronic disease cancer. You'd think that if she was a witch or the devil that she would have done something about that particular situation. That's the thing always baffles me about the witch trials. Well, all right, if they've made a pact with the devil and if they have the backing of Satan himself, why are they pissing around making cows milk sour? They have a big enough budget to do something better than this, surely. All right, all they do is annoy their neighbors. Yeah, like why? That's why. I don't understand that. At least if you're murdering 600 innocent servant girls, at least that is an impressive use of satanic power. But that's absolutely not what happened in this case. What happened to her kids? So it's like a mixed bag. She has a daughter who dies right after her. So her son, her poor son, just never can get out from under the thumb of these really powerful men. And then he's going to fall from a horse and have a traumatic brain injury and then have epilepsy. He's just basically going to be not good. She's going to have one daughter who is going to kind of fight, right? She's going to like marshal her resources, try to get troops to get the land back that her mother had. And she's going to have a son who also similarly fights. There's going to be a long line of Habsburg rebels that continue in this family until the last one is caught, tried and beheaded and like spectacular fashion. In the late 17th century. So there's this pattern of this particular family, the battery family, being involved in political intrigue, political plots, rebellions in particular against the Habsburgs that you see throughout the generations. And it's weird how we think, oh, she wasn't a part of that. You know, she was just-- She was left to which. That's what she was accused of, witchcraft, specifically. A lot of the accusations are specifically of witchcraft. They never mentioned that to them. They say that it's very skilled in magic and sorcerers' crafts. They say that she has spells and incantations that she's, you know, all of these things. So there's definitely this dementia that I think is completely overlooked because the witch trials aren't nearly as sexy as vampires. No. No. That, Shelley, you have done the most incredible work with this. I mean, this episode is part of our history's deadliest women. But she's not at all, is she? She's a woman who's accused. No, don't be sorry, that that's a phenomenal piece of research that you've done there overturn in that. And the lens of that, no, she wasn't. She was a woman that was accused of witchcraft and effectively, we're still believing the witchcraft accusations 500, 600 years later. It's horrific, right? I mean-- Yeah. Justice for Countess Elizabeth Bathory. And there's no evidence at all that she'd hurt anybody, really. Yeah, I mean, when we-- if we really pair this down, there seem to have been five or six girls, noble girls. I mean, well, if we don't count this one made, but who died while under her care. The important thing to mention is that most of their parents believed that they died of natural causes and they died during circulating epidemics. These were young girls, you know, 8, 9, 10. One of the girls' mothers even went to court to exonerate Elizabeth Bathory and said, no, I-- Wow. myself. I know she died. I was there while she was sick. it wasn't a murder. So we do have a couple girls, you know, who die? But there's certainly not a serial killer, you know, at most, even if we want to believe the worst things about our, you're looking at just a few girls. And then we also have to say, these are, you know, the motive because these particular girls are family friends. Like these are the daughters of your friends. So you also have to think about why, why are you, why are you doing this? And why are their parents allowing you to do this? Because that's part of the accusations that her daughter, these other noble women are giving her their daughters to sacrifice, right? I mean, like, that's, I think there's a few girls that she was, that she was hurting a few girls. Or do you think that's, that's widely out of proportion as well? I think that the medical treatments of the time period were absolutely painful. I think that throughout this period, there's all kinds of medical malpractice. It's so awful. You know, I mean, there's people drilling people's heads open who are being sued, going, that didn't work. And there's somebody who, you know, leads somebody and they bleed out. Could she have employed on skilled healers? I guess aggressive procedures, absolutely. Part of the problem had been that she had female healers who were doing things that were often the province of men, right? Like things like stitches, setting bones, et cetera. There's an instance where we have a description of cupping, which is, you know, what we still do that today, if you've ever had that done, like a acupuncture treatment or massage, where you use a candle and a glass, right? And you create a vacuum and then you put it on the area. And we have a servant who's claims that he spied at the, you know, the keyhole, which first off really shouldn't be looking at naked, not your old girls, but that they're using glasses and candles and they're leaving a bruise. And you're like, well, that's what cupping does. Yeah, that's, that's not torture. That's just a shit medical treatment. But there are a lot of shit medical treatments. I mean, there's descriptions, for example, people accuse her of beating girls with nettles. And you're like, but in the actual medical books of the day, that's a treatment, you know, and it was something the Romans did. You actually do that because, you know, there's, there's like a real reason to do that, release, you know, particular histamines, try to try to get a particular like reaction on a paralyzed limb, for example, or to cure certain diseases. So a lot of the things that are descriptions of torture are also indistinguishable from medical treatments of the time period. There's nothing in this is the she may have had a servant flocked like that seems like that happened. That happened quite a lot didn't it? Yeah, not great by our standards, but it's certainly not she tortured 600 girls to death personally. Absolutely not. Shelley, you have been a revelation. You've been phenomenal. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? I'm at Shelley Puhack.com. So it's as H-E-L-L-E-Y-P-U-H-A-K. And the book is The Blood Countess. It's a murder of a trail and the making of a monster. Are you on social media at all? I am not. I am a lot excellent. Good. Good. Don't do it. It's insane. But people should go and they should buy your book and read it for the new researching because this has been phenomenal. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. This is a delight. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much to Shelley for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got episodes on the evils of Roman slavery and the Bayou Tapestry Sex Scandal all come in your way. And if you like us to explore a subject, if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixtathistihit.com. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, betwixta Sheets, History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by HistoryHit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.