Six of The Most Dangerous Female Serial Killers in History

This article is a spin-off to my previous article, Eight of the Most Dangerous Murderers in History. I was just looking through my list a few days ago when I realized that I hadn’t mentioned a single female on that list, so I figured I should write a separate article that focused entirely on these horrible women and their horrendous crimes. Be sure to check that article out as well.

Now it is probably true that female serial killers are rare compared to their male counterparts, and there probably are reasons for this. For starters, most of the victims of male serial killers are sexually abused, either before or after their death, while females seldom have this motive. However, the thoughts running through some of these women’s heads are not that much better than the men I mentioned in my other article. We’re about to explore our prime example right now:

Elizabeth Bathory

Countess Elizabeth Bathory (often spelled Erzebet) was a Hungarian countess who lived from 1560 to 1614. She is widely known as the biggest serial killer of all time. Some common names for her were the “Bloody Countess”, “Bloody Lady of Cachtice” and “Countess Dracula”. In total, she is said to have killed around 650 young women, although the actual number might not be nearly as high. Some people believe the number to be around 100-200, although a servant claimed that Bathory had listed all 650 victims in a book, although this book was never found. Almost all the girls she killed were virgins, many as young as 12 years old. She believed that by bathing in the blood of these virgins, she would stay eternally young. She, along with four accomplices, tortured her victims before they died, and then drained their blood for her baths. She would bite the flesh off their genitals, faces, and other parts of their body. Sometimes, she would physically abuse her victims. She starved some of her victims and even froze them to death. She also used big needles that she heated in a fire.

Many of her victims were poor peasant girls lured to the castle with the promise of getting good work, while others were children sent to the castle to learn etiquette.  When she and her accomplices were caught, Bathory was made to watch as the other four had their fingernails ripped out, and as their were thrown alive into a fire and burned to death. She herself was only spared because she was royalty, and executing her would give nobility a bad name. She was locked up in Cachtice castle for the rest of her life. She was banned from looking in a mirror ever again, and authorities made sure there was nothing in her cell for her to see herself in. She was ordered to never hear human speech again and her guards were deaf and mute. She died four years later, screaming and trying to claw her way out of the castle.