Watch The Most Evil Men and Women in History – 15 – Countess Dracula (2001) Documentary Online


This series of programmes consists of 16 episodes which profile 16 evil men and women throughout history who have used their power to torture, kill, maim and eradicate millions of people.

15. Countess Dracula (1560-1614)

Countess Elizabeth Bathory is considered the most infamous serial killer in Hungarian/Slovak history. Rumours had circulated for years about missing peasant girls; offered well paid work at the castle, they were never seen again.

Countess Elizabeth Báthory (7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. She is possibly the most prolific female serial killer in history and is remembered as the “Blood Countess” and as the “Bloody Lady of Cachtice”, after the castle near Trencsén (today Trencín) in the Kingdom of Hungary, (today’s Slovakia), where she spent most of her adult life. After her husband’s death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which she was convicted was 80. In 1610, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.

The case has led to legendary accounts of the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth and subsequently also to comparisons with Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia, on whom the fictional Count Dracula is partly based, and to modern nicknames of the Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.