Elizabeth Bathory was the countess who tortured and murdered numerous young women and, because of these acts, became known as one of the "true" vampires in history. She was born in 1560, the daughter of George and Anna Bathory. Though frequently cited as Hungarian, due in large part to the shifting borders of the Hungarian Empire, she was in fact more closely associated with what is now the Slovak Republic. Most of her adult life was spent at Castle Cachtice, near the town of Vishine, northeast of present-day Bratislava, where Austria, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic come together. (The castle was mistakenly cited by Raymond T. McNally as being in Transylvania).
Bathory grew up in an era where much of Hungary had been overrun by the Turkish forces of the Ottoman empire and was a battleground between Turkish and Austrian (Hapsburg) armies. The area was also split by religious differences. Her family sided with the new wave of Protestantism that opposed the traditional Roman Catholicism. She was raised on the Bathory family estate at Ecsed in Transylvania. As a child, she was subject to seizures accompanied by intense rage and uncontrollable behaviour. In 1571, her cousin Stephen became Prince of Transylvania and, later, in the decade, additionally assumed the throne of Poland. He was one of the most effective rulers of his day, though his plans for uniting Europe against the Turks were somewhat foiled by having to turn his attention toward fighting Ivan the Terrible, who desired Stephen's territory.
In 1574, Elizabeth became pregnant as a result of a brief affair with a peasant man. When her condition became evident, she was sequestered until the baby arrived because she was engaged to marry Count Ferenc Nadasdy. The marriage took place in May 1575. Count Nadasdy was a soldier and frequently away from home for long periods. Meanwhile, Elizabeth assumed the duties of managing the affairs at Castle Sarvar, the Nadasdy family estate. It was here that her career of evil really began- with the disciplining of the large household staff, particularly the young girls.
In a time period in which cruel and arbitrary behaviour by those in power towards those who were servants was common, Elizabeth's level of cruelty was noteworthy. She did not just punish infringements on her rules, but found excuses to inflict punishments and delighted in the torture and death of her victims far beyond what her contemporaries could accept. She would stick pins in various sensitive body parts, such as under the fingernails. In the winter she would execute victims by having them stripped, led out into the snow, and doused with water until they were frozen.
Elizabeth's husband joined in some of the sadistic behaviour and actually taught his wife some new varieties of punishment. For example, he showed her a summertime variation of her freezing exercise - he had a woman stripped, covered with honey, then left outside to be bitten by various insects. He died in 1604, and Elizabeth moved to Vienna soon after his burial. She also began to spend time at her estate at Beckov and at a manner house at Cachtice, both located in the present-day country of Slovakia. These were the scenes of her most famous and vicious acts.
In the years immediately after her husband's death, Elizabeth's main cohort in crime was a woman named Anna Darvulia, about whom little is known. When Darvulia's health failed in 1609, Elizabeth turned to Erzsi Majorova, the widow of a local tennant farmer. It was Majorova who seems to have been responsible for Elizabeth's eventual downfall by encouraging her to include a few women of noble birth among her victims. Because she was having trouble procuring more young servant girls as rumors of her activities spread through the countryside, Elizabeth followed Majorova's advice. At some point in 1609, she killed a young noble woman and covered it by charges of suicide.
As early as the summer of 1610, an initial inquiry had begun into Elizabeth's crimes. Underlying the inquiry, quite apart from the steadily increasing number of victims, were political concerns. The crown hoped to confiscate Elizabeth's large landholdings and escape having to pay back the extensive loan that her husband had made to the king. With these things in mind, Elizabeth was arrested on December 29, 1610.
Elizabeth was placed on trial a few days later. It was conducted by Count Thurzo as an agent of the king. As noted, the trial was initiated to not only obtain a conviction, but to also confiscate her lands. A week after the first trial, a second trial was convened on January 7, 1611. At this trial, a register found in Elizabeth's living quarters was introduced as evidence. Her accomplices were sentenced to be executed, the manner determined by their roles in the tortures. Elizabeth was sentenced to life imprisonment in solitary confinement. She was placed in a room in her castle at Cachtice without windows or doors and only a small opening for food and a few slits for air. There she remained for the next three years until her death on August 21, 1614. She was buried in the Bathory land at Ecsed.