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Shelley Puhak, "The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello.
- [00:06]
B
And welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher. And I'm very pleased to welcome back onto the podcast Shelley Puhak to tell us about her latest book, the Blood, Murder, Betrayal and the Making of a Monster. Now, this book was published by Bloomsbury in 2026, and just from those words in the title, you can probably tell that this is going to be quite, quite a fun conversation and one that I've been looking forward to for a while now because we get to dive into a myth and do one of my favorite things, which is some myth busting. Like we have this story of this blood countest. I don't want to give too much away at this point, but let me tell you, this is an intense story that does involve blood, murder, betrayal, monstrousness, all the sorts of things in the subtitle. Was it true? Some of it, maybe. Why was this myth created? Stories come from somewhere, right? And this book helps us understand what was actually going on, what has gone on since, and why we've ended up in this place where there is a myth and not necessarily the history to go with it. Well, until now. So, Shelley, thank you so much for joining me back on the podcast to do some myth busting with me.
- [01:22]
A
Thank you so much for letting me come back.
- [01:24]
B
Well, I'm very excited, as you can tell. But before we get too far into this book, can you introduce yourself maybe a little bit for listeners who've not listened to your previous interview with me and then tell us about this project and its sort of origin story?
- [01:39]
A
Absolutely. So I'm Shelley Puhak. I'm a former English professor, now a full time writer who lives near Washington, D.C. the blood countess is my second nonfiction book. And the first, the Dark Queens, was like dual biography of two early medieval queens and rivals that most people had never heard of. And so with this book, I get to do the reverse and take on the case of a woman who many people have heard of because Elizabeth bathory is this 17th century Hungarian countess who has the dubious distinction of being known as the world's most prolific female serial killer with a body count of supposedly over 600. And you know, we, you may know her as the noblewoman who was reported to bathe in the blood of virgins. So she's inspired metal bands, horror films, even the character of Snow White's evil stepmother. And Beginning in the 1980s, some scholars and historians began challenging the accusations against Elizabeth Bathory. And a sort of did she or didn't she? Debate has ensued. The goal of this book was to see if this historical cold case could be solved once and for all.
- [02:50]
B
I mean, that's quite a task really, that you've set yourself. So can you tell us a bit more about the cold case, like what is the myth that we're investigating here?
- [02:59]
A
So the question is whether or not Elizabeth Bathory did what she was accused of. She never stood trial, although four of her servants did. But over 300 people testified against her. And, you know, the accusations are some of the most horrific you can imagine. But there certainly has been a lot of question about how the case was conducted, who was making the accusation, and a lot of irregularities in the case. So there's always been this idea of was she a monster, Were the charges against her perhaps exaggerated but rooted in some truth? Or is she the victim of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns we've ever seen?
- [03:41]
B
All right, so let's get into then some of the details. Obviously, before we get to what she was accused of and how the trial did or didn't go, we should probably start further back. So, so who was she? What sort of family does she come from? I mean, the way you describe it in the book, she's coming from quite a family with a lot of kind of by the time she's an adult, she's got power by birth, power by marriage. Like who is she and what is she coming from?
- [04:07]
A
Great question. So the Bathory family is at this time period, incredibly powerful and influential. Most of this story is going to be set in the kingdom of royal Hungary. But it's important to know that the Bathory family has influence throughout all of Europe. So, so they're the dynastic equivalent to the Medicis and the Habsburgs. At this time period, Elizabeth happens to be the niece of the King of Poland. She's a cousin and then an aunt to more than one prince of Transylvania. She's the cousin of Catholic cardinals in Rome. And this is also, it's important to note, a very progressive and tolerant family that's been very involved in the Renaissance. Women are allowed a voice. She is a mother, aunt and cousins who are very politically active. They do things like openly defy the church or they make love matches instead of arranged marriages, marrying lower born men if they prefer. And so she's used to and born into this very tolerant and certainly I'd say she's born into this incredibly high status family, but one that's also very tolerant and she's going to Marry into another very influential noble family, where her husband's father is essentially the number two to the Habsburg Emperor that rules over royal Hungary at this time period. And when she becomes a widow, she's going to control an immense amount of land and huge number of castles. So most of her property borders what is contemporary Austria and Hungary, but she also has estates all across Slovakia and across what is now Slovenia, Croatia and Romania. And just to give you an idea of the scope of land that she commands, the distance between her westernmost and her easternmost estates is more than 600 miles. So there's like an arc across central Europe that this woman. There is an arc across central Europe that this woman will be at the helm of.
- [06:06]
B
Okay, that sounds like a lot for sort of anyone, but I would imagine in this time period that that was kind of seen as especially a lot for a widow. Right, for a woman, or was it normal for widows like her to kind of have this sort of control? I mean, as you said, she comes from a pretty established family. So was it sort of a given that when she became a widow she would be the one in control of all of this?
- [06:31]
A
Well, one thing that makes her situation, I think, particularly interesting is in Hungary at the time period, they've been in an on and off war with the ottoman Turks since 1526. And so most of the men have spent good portions of their life off fighting on the front, which means women have gotten used to in, if not formally, at least informally, exercising a great deal of power in terms of the day to day administration of estates. There's this precedent of women taking on their husband's political and administrative positions. So it's not unheard of. Her mother's done this. There's several other prominent women have done this. While it's not common, it's also not unheard of. And so when Elizabeth becomes a widow, she's going to take on her husband's position as lord lieutenant, initially of two major counties in a war zone, serving as regent until her young son comes of age.
- [07:27]
B
And were people okay with this? I mean, as you said, there was precedent, but also the whole 600 miles thing. So what was the reaction to her assuming this position?
- [07:36]
A
Officially, the reaction is mixed, but again, it's not unheard of. So for example, she has a seat in Parliament now and she joins two other prominent widows who are also in this sort of situation. So again, she's in the minority. There's just three of them. However, she's not the only one. And at this time, there are Certainly men who are very pragmatic and they're open to working with female rulers. But we're also at this inflection point in history where, you know, it's the end of the Age of Queens, this time of immense, you know, female rule throughout Europe, and the beginning of the Great Hunt, which are these, you know, explosion in witchcraft trials. So the role of women, particularly women in power, is particularly problematic at this moment.
- [08:28]
B
Hmm. Okay. So that might suggest then, that kind of it is the moment of her taking this official power, the seat in Parliament, for instance, that the accusations against her would start. Is that the case with the timeline?
- [08:41]
A
Not exactly. Initially, there is some conflict with religious authorities in 1604, when she becomes a widow and assumes this power, but it's not. Not until about a year later where we hear some rumblings. But the context for these is particularly important because around, beginning in 1605, there's a rebellion where the Hungarian aristocracy rises up against the Habsburgs, accusing them of violating their political and religious rights and accusing the Habsburgs of being a foreign occupying force. And they're appealing to the rest of Europe. Look at how oppressed we are and asking for their help. And. And as a Protestant nation, they're getting a lot of support. So the, you know, Hungarians are saying, look at us. Please come help us. And there's this sort of public propaganda campaign by the Habsburgs, who are referred to as the Germans, the Hungarians call them, you know, those Germans. There's a lot of ethnic tensions between people who are of German heritage or of Hungarian heritage, particularly in the border regions. And. And some of the first accusations against Elizabeth Bathory are in this context. And there's this incident where she seems to publicly humiliate a German servant. And this becomes part of this propaganda that the Habsburgs are using as sort of a counter offensive to say we might be oppressing the Hungarians, but look what they're doing back to us. Look what they're doing to, you know, their ethnically German servants.
- [10:15]
B
Okay, so that's interesting. I think there's some threads there that we want to pull out a little bit further. Can you tell us more about the kind of religious aspect of this and the ethnic one? Like, where are the sides being drawn and kind of how does accusing her fit into various agendas?
- [10:31]
A
That's a great question, and I'll try to give a very broad overview, because this time period, it gets, you know, incredibly complicated and tangled. But Hungary is essentially Protestant, and parts of it, the western part, closer to the Holy Roman Empire, happens to mostly be Lutheran, whereas the Eastern regions tend to generally be Calvinist. So we have sort of these tensions between different sects within the Protestant religion. And then the Habsburg Empire is Catholic and they're attempting a bit of a Counter Reformation. So anyone in this empire at this time period is grappling with these multiple identities, you know, to whom do they owe their loyalty? So you might end up with a German servant, for example, who is ethnically German and feels some loyalty to the Habsburgs, but then is also, you know, has a lot of loyalty to perhaps other Hungarian servants or of their same, like, class and status, and is being called upon to decide, like, who am I going to side with in this? Am I a traitor? You, if I go against what the Habsburgs are saying? Or, you know, am I a traitor if I go against what my fellow peasants or my fellow servants or even the people who I grew up with on this estate, perhaps, you know, the lady of the manor who's taken care of me since I was a young child. So sorting this out is. Is very complicated. And on top of this, we have this incredibly pitched religious rhetoric where we have Lutherans calling Calvinists, you know, baby killers, and Calvinists might be calling Lutherans, you know, wizards and witches, and Catholics are calling both Protestant sects, you know, horrific names as well. So at any given time, it's very, very difficult to sort of sort out these competing loyalties.
- [12:21]
B
And where is Elizabeth amongst all of this? Is she, like, fanning the flames or what is she trying to do?
- [12:27]
A
So the one thing that's remarkable about Elizabeth is that when she takes power, one of her first actions is to try to establish religious tolerance in her lands. And while they. She's Calvinist and has been raised Calvinist by a mother who was hugely influential in the Protestant Reformation and an aunt who was very involved as well. So she's a mother who, as a woman, as a widow, headed up the assembly in which Hungary declared itself to be Protestant and throw aside the authority of the Catholic Church, which is kind of amazing thinking of a woman doing that in that time period. And then her aunt, you know, was involved in forcibly running Catholic monks off of her land. So they're hugely involved with the Reformation. And so Elizabeth is raised by these very devout kind of Calvinist women, and that is where her loyalties lie. Her brother is another very devout Calvinist, but she's married a Lutheran. His estates are mainly Lutheran. And so when she becomes a widow, she essentially says to the Lutheran pastors, I am going to support you, but I'm also, at the same time, not going to allow you to shut down any other religion. And there has been this policy of tolerance on their lands, which I think is kind of amazing that given all this religious strife, we find these pockets or these areas of lands where you have peaceful coexistence. You have, for example, Protestants sharing the same church building with Catholics, and they're just having their services one right after the other, or living side by side and working together. And so despite kind of, you know, the intensifying rivalries and rhetoric, she really makes an effort, even though she's a Calvinist in a primarily Lutheran territory, to make sure that everyone, you know, is able to tolerate one another's differences and to say that she's not a threat to their right to worship as they wish.
- [14:26]
B
Yeah, no, that is notable. I'm glad we added that aspect of religion in. Let's make it more complicated, though. I'd love to throw something else into the pot in terms of things that are changing potentially with consequences for her, which is medicine. So can we talk about kind of what medicine was, who was doing it, who was meant to be doing it, and maybe how it intersects with these questions around gender and religion that we've already raised?
- [14:53]
A
Absolutely.
- [14:54]
B
So.
- [14:56]
A
One thing to keep in mind is there are these practical concerns surrounding medicine because there's this ongoing war. So it's also very, I think, important to note that there's a doctor shortage because of this. There's no real oversight. There are a lot of quacks sort of stepping into that gap. And there's also a lot of people who might be more informal healers who are taking on more and more responsibility simply because they have to. In the documents of this time period, you can see towns like, outbidding one another, trying to get a doctor complaining that the closest doctor is a couple days ride away. So there's this real competition for good medical care and a real scarcity of good medical care. And there are a lot of complaints in the time period of people saying they don't trust doctors. They don't know if this person's really qualified or if they've healed enough people. So we have this kind of swirling atmosphere of mistrust already around medical practitioners. And then to add into the mix the whole religious component, where we have these religious fundamentalists who've said any sort of active medical intervention goes against the will of God. So people should get fresh air and perhaps partake in some. Some food or some herbs. But anything, anything that is, you know, more Invasive than that is forbidden. It's God's will. You've just got to let people die. And at the same time, because there is a war going on, you know, diseases are running rampant, there's epidemics, you know, we have the plague, we have typhus, we have, we have all sorts of things. So people are much, much sicker. They don't have their usual medical infrastructure that they've come to rely on. And, and so they're also increasingly desperate. They're being told that, you know, all they should do is pray. But then there's also another group or camp that says, absolutely not. Like we're going to do what we can to try to save people's lives. And some of these efforts are, you know, things we would expect today, right, like setting broken bones, stitching things up, trying to take care of things like, you know, cataracts or infections. But they're taking much more aggressive measures. And there's this rhetoric that people that are taking these aggressive measures are somehow working against the will of God. And this has become. Medical care has become part of this religious battle. On top of that, everyone has been subscribing to this idea of balancing the humors, right? That's been the basis of medical care for over a thousand years. And now we have this introduction of the ideas of Paracelsus. You're starting to dabble with chemicals, things like mercury and antimony. So people who are eager to find new cures are also using heavy metals in an attempt to cure, which we now know not always the best idea. So some of these well intended healers are also inadvertently causing more harm or more death. So I guess to sum up this very problematic atmosphere, we have, at the same time we have a lot more death, we have many fewer practitioners, we have a religious debate about what constitutes appropriate medical care and at what point should practitioners be able to intervene. And then we also have the introduction of some new medical techniques that may be inadvertently killing more people than they are curing. And into this mix, we also have a lot of female healers because of the shortage of doctors who are becoming scapegoats, right? They've been asked to kind of step in and to maybe do things that they might not ordinarily do, but when things are going wrong, they're becoming increasingly scapegoated. Not just as bad medical practitioners, but also as agents of the devil.
- [18:51]
B
Okay, you know, let's just go straight for the nasty accusation, right? Not just, oh, you may not know what you're doing, but it's the Devil. All right, so that helps us understand kind of the. The cocktail of things happening as well as the stakes here. So how does this all come together in terms of accusations against Elizabeth? Like, what is she actually being said to have done at this point?
- [19:13]
A
We don't get a lot of these accusations in writing until 1610, although by various things that people say. We can kind of date them and set up a bit of a timeline of who they're referring to. But there are concerns or accusations about two things happening on Elizabeth's vast estates. One are that there are a larger number of particularly girls dying than might be typical. Now, that could be something that's particular to Elizabeth. It could also, you know, be part and parcel of there being the plague raging and any various sorts of epidemics that you can trace running through the lands. But so we know we have a larger than normal number of deaths, and there have been some. Some questions about those. A lot of those happen to be among the friends and extended family members of Elisabeth herself. So these aren't necessarily strangers, but these are noble girls who are at her court, who are the daughters of family friends. And then at the same time, there is also some concern or complaints about the things that the. They call them old women or women scientists. But the female healers at Elizabeth's court may be doing that. What they might be doing in terms of medical care is too aggressive or it's not sanctioned by, particularly, like, the Lutheran Church. And there also seems to be, in adding to that sort of mix, these questions about how people who fall sick and die are being buried. There's this huge flashpoint over burials that has to do with what constitutes a proper Christian burial in this time period. But that could easily be misread or distorted into a body being, you know, like something being hidden, someone being buried in secret, which is adding some suspicion to, you know, these deaths, which seem to be happening with increasing frequency on her estates.
- [21:14]
B
Okay, that doesn't sound great. And as you said, this is sort of building from 1605 kind of up to 1610, where it really seems to be kind of. You describe it, I think, as the year that everything fell apart. So given that that's not the first moment that there are accusations like, could she have seen this coming? You know, did she go into 1610 going, oh, no? Or was this collapse more of a surprise?
- [21:38]
A
She absolutely seems to have been aware that there were accusations against her, although in this case, it appears that they were politically motivated. And she was like the daughter and the cousin and the niece of a lot of judges and lawyers. So her first instinct is to go to the courts. And we can see a few months before everything sort of falls apart. She's in one of the local county courts and the mother of one of the girls who has died under her care. This is a woman who she's very close with. This is a friend and intimate of Elizabeth who's testifying in court and giving a deposition that she's absolutely certain that her daughter died of natural causes. She knows this because she, the mother is speaking, washed the body and examined it herself and there are no marks, you know, upon it. She knows that her daughter died natural causes in an epidemic. But there have been rumors that Elizabeth Bathory was somehow involved and she is here in court to absolve her of that. So we know that Elizabeth is gathering testimony to bolster her case should she be accused of anything. She's getting her paperwork, so to speak, in order. So it appears that she is aware, she's concerned, perhaps not concerned enough, but she trusts in the courts and the judicial system to, you know, that there'll be a way that she can tackle these allegations head on.
- [23:09]
B
Okay, so maybe there's a plan there. How does that actually work? How does she manage, you know, what does she try to do to tackle this head on?
- [23:18]
A
Well, before she can, as she's appears to be, you know, gathering supporting statements, etc. She's surprised by a raid. So the way that things would normally, the way that a charge would normally be made against a Hungarian noble and particularly Hungarian noblewomen, is that they will be summoned to court to hear the charge against them. And at that point there will be, you know, they can involve lawyers, they can appeal. There's, there's going to be this long, long, long, long, long, long process before there even is a trial. And what's most typical too, is if there's an accusation that you have directly injured or harmed someone, there's a civil suit. And this is, this happens quite often. So, you know, two young men get in a duel, for example, one is injured, the parents of one end up suing the parents of the other and say, we want to be compensated for his injury or for, you know, his, his lost potential wages. So there's this set process by which Elizabeth is expecting things to go and she has some time because she knows if she's going to be summoned to court to hear charges against her, that's not going to happen until parliament is in session. The parliament won't be in session until the spring and so over the holiday season of late winter, 1609, early 1610, she's expecting to have a little bit of a respite.
- [24:40]
B
And does she get that?
- [24:42]
A
Absolutely not. So I think it's important to know that something else is happening at the same time, too. She's attempting to make herself less of a target, but she might make herself inadvertently moribund. So in 1610, she's, you know, managed to marry off both of her daughters. And her young son has come of age. He's 12, which doesn't sound terribly old to us, but he's old enough now that he's able to not take over the estates entirely, but he's able to make some decisions with male advisors. And so she will no longer be regent and she will step back from public life. And the plan is that she's going to retire. She's going to retire to a holiday home in what is now northwestern Slovakia. And by doing this, at the same time, she's also divested herself of most of her property and divided it up among her kids. So the idea is that if anybody does come after her, if she is arrested or she's sued, there isn't much to obtain, right? Like, she's essentially has no more political official, political power at least, and she doesn't have much property to go after. However, she's also newly vulnerable because she now doesn't have that political power. She's without her normal bodyguard. She's at a holiday home that is closer to the man who will be prosecuting her. And at the same time, because of her vast influential Bathory family, her young nephew is prince of neighboring Transylvania, is essentially at war with the Habsburgs and the lands, and the influence she still does possess could be helpful for him to stage an attack or an invasion, which the Habsburgs are very paranoid about. So she's now kind of this target of suspicion by the Habsburgs and by the politicians who are ruling in their stead in Hungary. And she no longer has her political power or her or her lands or all of her resources to defend herself.
- [26:51]
B
So what then is being kind of marshaled as forces against her? Like, what kinds of testimony are we talking about being collected? You mentioned some numbers earlier in terms of, like, a decent number of people saying things, but then we don't know exactly what they said. So, like, how can we make sense of. Of what's been collected, but the gaps and issues that seem to appear pretty quickly in trying to build a case against her.
- [27:16]
A
These are great questions you're asking, and I think on the face of it, if you hear, oh, there's 300 people who testify against her, that sounds really compelling. But what's important to know is that this is done in five separate rounds and under very different circumstances. So initially, the man who serves his name is George Turzo as the Palatine of Hungary, which is essentially the royal governor. He is the Holy Roman Emperor, the Habsburg Emperor's representative in royal Hungary, and he's also a political rival of hers. He has started, at the same time, he has started an offensive against other members of the Bathory family. So it's important to know this is part and parcel of a larger action against the family itself. There's assassination attempts against her nephew, the prince, there's an arrest of one of her prominent cousins and commandeering of all of his papers and some of his trusted advisors. And at the same time, they start an investigation into her. And so initially, this investigation is to look at people who are willing to testify that they have heard a rumor about Elizabeth Bathory and that she has been cruel to servants or has in somehow, you know, killed or maimed or hurt people in some way. What's important to know is that initially two notaries are sent out to two completely different, different parts of the kingdom. And they are given kind of a very, very broad authority to interview anyone virtually man or woman, across multiple counties. And they're given a large amount of time to do so. And they'll are going to spend, you know, six months or more, and they're never going to interview a woman, or if they do, they're never going to.
- [28:55]
B
Put that on record.
- [28:55]
A
They're only going to interview men, they're only going to interview women. The most part, people who don't know her or haven't met her in person. And the only sort of testimony they're going to be able to collect, with one exception, is hearsay. So people who will say, yes, I have heard a rumor. I have heard a rumor, and there seems to be a rumor going around that there were two girls who may have died and they may have been buried improperly. But nobody knows who these two girls are. No one knows their name, no one knows them personally, and they're not directly accusing her, they're just agreeing, you know, that, yes, I have heard this rumor. But what's amazing is that, you know, they're given this latitude to interview essentially thousands and thousands of people, and they're only able to come up with a couple handfuls of people that are willing to say, yes, I've heard this rumor, and these people are being interviewed in free towns, meaning these are areas that Elizabeth Bathory exercises no political power over. So she can't do anything to these people. They're not her, you know, direct reports, her serfs, et cetera. And they're still kind of reluctant or. Yeah, they've heard something, but there isn't this huge public outcry. One part of the myth has always been this idea that there were all of these complaints, year after year they've accumulated, and at some point, the authorities were forced, even though they did not want to, to investigate. Right. That there's this huge public outcry, and they just. Eventually, their hand is forced. And in fact, we see the opposite, that there is a method for, you know, for filing complaints. And there are complaints about Elizabeth Bathory, but they all have to do with property lines or tax violations or sort of the minutiae of administrative and political life. And there isn't a single complaint about any sort of mistreatment, you know, physical mistreatment of a servant or anyone else for that matter. So at first, you know, it's really. They're struggling to get any traction for these accusations, even given, you know, the amount of time and money that they're investing into trying to collect testimony.
- [31:06]
B
Yeah, that's a very different picture indeed than the myth. So worth asking then, about another aspect that has kind of come down in the version we think we know, which is that all this sort of builds up and eventually Elizabeth gets arrested. And in fact, the moment that she's arrested, she's interrupted in the middle of a torture session, which in and of itself, kind of proves her guilt. Yes.
- [31:30]
A
No, maybe. Absolutely not. So we know that Elizabeth is interrupted doing nothing other than eating her dinner. And that is something that is, you know, first of all, the man who supposedly interrupts her writes a letter that evening to his wife and doesn't mention. So one would think if you had interrupted someone in the middle of a torture session, that would be something worth noting along with the other minutiae of your day. But also we have other sources that aren't particularly loyal to Elizabeth, but that say decisively that she was eating dinner at the time.
- [32:09]
B
And like, you know, just to clarify, not like, feasting on the flesh of.
- [32:12]
A
Like, normal food, just eating. Eating normal food with a small group of people. It is. It is December 29th. So it's just after the holiday season at a small estate with, you know, a small group of her. Of her loyal retainers, and she's been visited before, you know, prior to this, and warned that something might be happening by local pastors who are concerned. So there is this idea that something. Something might be happening. But, you know, the snow is very deep on the ground. It's right after the holidays. And this is not arrest by imperial agents of the Crown. This is a private army that is commandeered by the prosecutors. So they owe their. Their loyalty to George Turzo, who invade and, you know, break down her door and search her home. So these are. This is not a law enforcement action as much as, you know, if we imagine someone's kind of hired goons coming into your house while you're eating dinner and turning it upside down, looking for evidence that you are a murderer, okay, Yep.
- [33:16]
B
That's definitely not usually in the myth. Why, though, do we have the myth? Why do we have the story of interrupting her with blood on her hands if that's really not what happened?
- [33:25]
A
So the minute that Turzo is in the house, he has been tipped off that by the pastors who have visited Elizabeth over the holiday season that there are five sick girls in the infirmary there. And it's customary for most manor houses to have some sort of arrangement on the grounds where they're going to care for sick members of the household or for families that work on the estates. And so keep in mind, this is December. We are in the middle of a plague epidemic. And we have the testimony of these pastors that there are these five girls. They're very clear that they're not injured in any way and torture, but that they are sick and very weak and ill. And he gets word that one of these girls has died. He may have gotten word that more than one have died, you know, mistakenly. So what they do find in the infirmary are four sick girls and one who has died. As you know, it's unfortunate, but. But not uncommon. And right away, George Torsos realizes he has a problem because he has just broken into a woman's house, right, searching for bodies. He hasn't really found one. And now he can be brought up on criminal charges because one of the privileges of the nobility, particularly the old aristocracy, is that, you know, your home is your castle, your castle is your home, and no one is to violate that right without good cause. So he's essentially come in without a warrant or without cause and. And broken the law himself. So not only can he be sued in a civil court, but he has broken the law of the kingdom and he himself is now in trouble. Now, the one way around this is, you are not held to the regular laws. If you are watching a crime unfold in progress, just like we might imagine today, there are certain things that you certainly cannot do. But if you were to see, for example, you know, a murder unfolding and you break down someone's door and run in, you know, you might be granted a little leniency. So the one thing that can get George Turzo out of this pickle is if he is somehow to say that he saw a crime being committed or he, you know, there's various versions of this in the myth. Whether it was he saw. He later said he saw body on the doorstep, because, you know, after you murder people, you typically just leave them there in the doorstep, half in and half out, for any passerby to see. But this idea that there was a crime in progress so that what he had done was no longer a crime, and it also then gave him permission to arrest her with his own private forces and to, you know, imprison her until further action could be taken.
- [36:00]
B
Got it. Okay. So he makes up a crime she's apparently in the midst of committing in order to cover up the crime he has actually committed.
- [36:07]
A
Yep, that just about sums it up.
- [36:09]
B
Got it. Okay, so let's just note that is what happened. What happens next, then? Why wasn't she put on trial? What was kind of the expectation of how the next steps would go and what happened instead?
- [36:23]
A
So at this point, the expectation is right, that there will be this trial. And it's going to be a very salacious trial because this is one of the leading members of the kingdom who's going to be on trial for these horrific charges. Instead, what happens is that Tirzah takes four of her trusted intimate servants. These include her nanny, her longtime nanny, one of her female healers, her washer woman, and one of her footmen. And he transports them, you know, through the snow, through a mountain pass, to his own property, and he's going to have these servants stand trial instead of Elizabeth Bathory, who will, you know, ends up in prison under house arrest in one of her castles. And a deal is made with her family that Tirzo makes a deal kind of quietly, like, I won't seek charges against her where he's threatening them with. If she's found guilty, it could be the death penalty. These horrific things could. Could be done to her. I need you not to complain about the manner in which she was arrested. And there is a lot of documentation of. Of the family saying, yeah, but you were supposed to do it this way. You can't do it this way. And he says, well, if you don't file a complaint against me, we will divide up the land this way. And there's a lot of negotiation. But we know Elizabeth is taking a very active role in her defense. She's under house arrest. She's not bricked into a tower, as the myth tells us. So she has pen and paper, I should say quill and parchment, but she's actively writing letters. People are coming to visit her family members and friends, and there's some concern that she might even. There might even be a rescue mission, that her nephew in Transylvania might be sending troops, you know, to free her. So people are concerned about this. And at the same time, because of her letter writing campaign, there's this steady drumbeat of like, I want to stand trial, she wants to go to court. And at this point, the Habsburg Emperor even has writing to Tirzo saying, this is highly irregular. She's a leading member of the kingdom. We need to have a trial. And this needs to be. You need to follow this. You need to follow procedure to a T. We can't have any other. Any other issues. And what we see with Turzo is he's constantly delaying. Oh, I haven't had time to get to it. By the time he responds to him, he's apologetic, but, oops, it looks like everybody's gone home. We'll have to wait to next year. And we constantly have this series of correspondence where we have the Holy Roman Emperor asking Turzo, have we gotten to the trial? What do we need? We need to do this. Come on, let's get moving. And we have Tarzo essentially slow walking it and saying, oops, haven't gotten to it, Lost that. Didn't get to that. It's really kind of striking how he defies his emperor sort of time and time again. And they get quite testy with one another. So there is a point too, further on where it looks as though Elizabeth will actually get her trial. And preparations are being made. Additional testimony is being gathered, and they're even discussing whether she should be let out on bail to await her trial. So she nearly gets her day in court and nearly is released on bail. At the same time, her poor servants are, you know, hastily tortured, tried, and three of the four are executed, along with another one of. Along with another one of Elizabeth's kind of intimates and advisors who will be burned at the stake as a witch. So right away, though, all of the witnesses who could testify on her behalf are done away with and this again, goes against the laws of the kingdom, where they're supposed to be kept alive for trial, for a future trial. But Turzo makes sure that nobody who could testify on her behalf is around.
- [40:17]
B
That doesn't sound great for Elizabeth. What happens to her?
- [40:22]
A
Unfortunately, she's going to die in 1614, just four years into her imprisonment and, you know, seemingly of natural causes. So she'll be 54 years old. We don't know what would have happened had she lived a little bit longer. There are a lot of cases like this where oftentimes aristocrats were accused of, brought up on kind of flimsy charges or things that seem to be political in nature. And the usual course of events was that one had to sit under house arrest for quite some time. The family offered quite a deal of money or a very choice estate to someone in power, and often they were given a pardon or allowed to go into exile. So it seems as though, even if Elizabeth Bathory were not given the trial that she so dearly wanted and almost had, that she had a reasonable expectation of at one point being allowed to go free, being exiled to another country where she had plenty of friends and family.
- [41:24]
B
Okay, so that's the end then for her, like in actual life, but obviously not the end of the story. Was it a massive big deal, myth sort of story from the beginning, or when? And why do we see these accusations revived in such a kind of persistent way?
- [41:44]
A
This is such a great question. And what's so striking is that immediately following Elizabeth's death, there's virtually nothing. No one's writing about her, no one's celebrating, as one would expect, like the death of this horrific murderer. There's no commentary. And it's that sort of striking silence one sees after, for example, like the Salem witch trials or some other events where perhaps people have the sense that things went a little bit too far. But why that's striking, too, is at this time, True crime is a bestseller. There are broadsheets and kind of prototype newspapers that are illustrating everyone's horrific crimes. And they love serial killers. There's like a German serial killer that's in the news, and there's all these details about his. About his crimes and deeds, and they're illustrated. So this, this noble, you know, beautiful, rich heiress who also happens to be a serial killer. This should have been a bestseller. One imagines this would have made someone quite a lot of money. So it's very, very curious that no one writes about it. And they do write about some of the supposed crimes and sins of other members of her family. So there's just this silence around this case for almost 100 years, which is very, very striking. And then at about that time period, there's a Catholic priest named Laszlo Taroxy who has decided that he has not only found sort of the. What was meant to be the court proceedings and some of these testimonies in a local archive, and he happens to be trying to accomplish two purposes. One is he's part of the Counter Reformation. So he wants to tell people how, you know, Protestant women are particularly, particularly bad, so bad things happen if you won't, you know, convert back to Catholicism. But he's also trying to write a travel guide and sell a travel guide. And so he includes this as one of his chapters, if we think of, like local color, about this famous female murderer in the area. And he tells her story and he adds quite a bit of embellishment. So what we get is from him the story of this woman who bathes in the blood of virgins in order to appease her vanity and stay eternally young. And that's part of the myth that I think people are most familiar with possibly today. And that all stems from this, I guess, might say ambitious priest who's trying to write a travel guide and also happens to be obsessed with vampires. So a lot of this is part and parcel of his imagination.
- [44:19]
B
And I mean, the things you're talking about there kind of make sense of, you know, true crime is still relevant and interesting now. So that would be kind of why that sort of story persists. And that's obviously one kind of very clear continuity between then and now. But what other links do you see between this story of what actually happened, the myth around it, and kind of where we're at today?
- [44:40]
A
Great question. I think one of the reasons that this story that this priest put forward, you know, really resonated is it became essentially like a textbook case for how to caricature female rage and female vanity. Those are two things that people were, you know, obsessed with and still uncomfortable and frightened of. But I think there are also a lot of parallels with Elizabeth Bathory's case and today where we might say, you know, her story takes place in this very progressive nation that was once the envy of all that is sliding into an anti scientific sort of reactionary darkness. So we have, you know, if anything, Elizabeth's suffering for perhaps being too progressive and not realizing the danger she was in until it was a little bit too late. But also another parallel is we have this new Technology that's supposed to educate and connect everyone, that's instead being used to amplify division and spread disinformation, to amp everyone up against their neighbor, to make, you know, Lutherans suspicious of the Calvinist neighbors, suspicious of their Catholic townspeople. Another parallel is that the tactics used against Bathory and her contemporaries, things like gaslighting and projection and whisper campaigns and outrageous accusations, are still being used today against other women. This really has become sort of a textbook example of how it is that you can silence and sideline a powerful woman.
- [46:15]
B
Unfortunately, that does resonate pretty clearly. So thank you for investigating the myth to figure out what's actually going on so we don't just kind of fall into these sensationalist traps. And it does make me even more curious if there's anything you might be working on or thinking about starting now that this book is done, given the comparison you made at the beginning of, you know, first, a book investigating very powerful women but who no one knew about to. Now a woman that lots of people think they know about but actually don't. I mean, what. What does one do after that?
- [46:49]
A
That is a very good question, and I think part of it. This book might have broken my brain because I have to tell you, like, things in old Hungarian script. Now I'm just like, no. So I really, really would love to do something that works with text that has been typed. That's like my dream. But I have to say that there are a few women from Elizabeth Bathory's story that the sidelines of it who I'm just really, really taken by their stories and they're lesser known, but I am trying to see if there's some way I can work their stories into a future project of mine. So fingers crossed. But it's still in the very early stages.
- [47:28]
B
Well, fingers crossed as well that you'll find sources that are more legible. That would definitely be a good goal to achieve. But of course, in the meantime, readers can make use of the sources that you've already managed to parse and figure out in the book we've been discussing, titled the Blood Murder, Betrayal and the Making of a Monster, published by Bloomsbury in 2026. Shelley, thank you so much for coming back onto the New Books Network podcast to tell me about this latest project of yours.
- [47:56]
A
Thank you so much for having me. It was a real delight to be able to chat about Elizabeth Bathory and to get. To get to chat with you in particular.