Elizabeth Bathory

1560-1614

One of the original serial killers. She was a Hungarian aristocrat who has been blamed for butchering dozens, perhaps hundreds of young girls.

Lately some historians have been trying to exonerate her. They insist she was framed, and try to explain that she was just an innocent victim caught in the middle of a larger power struggle.

However, she was tried and convicted, and the records of the trial are available, detailed and convincing. A readable and thorough discussion of the accusations and evidence against her can be found on the Ask Historians sub-Reddit, written by Orangewombat: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/eb4un2/comment/fcvnyij/

Mr. Wombat gives a TL;DR as

Her 4 accomplices all testified to similar things: the number of victims (30-50), the victims' demographics (all young girls), and the ways in which the Countess and the accomplices tortured and killed girls.
Other witnesses testified to personally seeing hundreds of corpses with suspicious injuries and a constant stream of coffins departing Báthory estates over years.
Hundreds of witnesses discussed rumors of torture and violence occurring on Báthory estates. Although rumors alone can't prove that the killings really occurred, they do indicate that Báthory had quite a reputation across a fairly large geographic area.
There is absolutely no evidence that Elisabeth ever bathed in anyone's blood. That was a later embellishment added to the legend.
Some historians argue that the king owed Báthory a large debt, and that this motivated him to conspire to eliminate her. There is no evidence that such a debt existed.

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