Wednesday, June 24, 2015

I Demand Accuracy

Elizabeth Bathory was a Hungarian Countess who lived from 1560 to 1614.

Her claim to fame was that she killed hundreds of young women and bathed in the blood of virgins  to retain her youth.

I like this story; I can work with it. It is bizarre and gruesome, paralleling my own existence.

Not that I have killed anybody but come on, I was an accountant for over 20 years.

What could be more bizarre and gruesome than that?

As I read up on her a black cloud of doubt was thrown over the whole bathing in blood thing. Apparently stories that suggest that reality were recorded years after her death and are considered unreliable.

Her serial murders and brutality were verified by the testimony of 300 witnesses and survivors as well as "physical evidence and the presence of horribly mutilated and dead, dying and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest", according to Wikipedia.

So there's that.

At her trial, two accomplices claim knowledge of up to 37 victims, other defendants estimated 50 or more, and one woman, who claims to have come across a book kept by Bathory tracking her victims, says the true number is 650. However the book was never found and the official number of victims settled at 80.

Elizabeth Bathory is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific female murderer.

It is good to have goals and to achieve them but still, it is the whole bathing in blood thing that fascinates me. It is so ghoulish that it appeals to the dark side of my brain (95% of my grey matter).

The fact that it is unverifiable frustrates me; I guess I will have to learn to live with the uncertainty.

Apparently the Hungarian legal system at the time was as efficient and corruption-free as ours is today.

Charges were initially brought against Bathory between 1602 and 1604. Hungarian authorities didn't begin to investigate until 1610. This might have been due to the fact that Bathory's family was noble and influential, rulers of Transylvania.

The "prosecutor" for the case initially wanted to send Bathory to a nunnery, because of her position, and to avoid a public scandal, but as rumors spread he suggested she be kept under house arrest and be punished no further.

It was the king who pushed for Bathory to be brought to trial and sentenced to death. The prosecutor, however, convinced the king that doing so would "negatively affect the nobility."

Ah the sweet wheels of justice go round and round.

Anyway, to make a long story short, old Betty baby was imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement.

Interesting to note that two of her accomplices were burned at the stake, one was beheaded and one was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Bathory died four years after being imprisoned, a pretty small price to pay for the horrific deeds she perpetrated.

I see more goddamn lines on my face every day.

Wonder what I can do to prevent this?

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