Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

The two de Rais brothers were sent to live with their grandfather, Jean d’Craon, at Champtoce, despite the fact that their father had left strict instructions before he died that he was to have no part in their upbringing. Jean d’Craon was well known for his violent temper and was a bad role model for the two de Rais children. It is believed that it was Gilles’s years with d’Craon that embedded the bad seed that blossomed as he grew into adulthood. The only real lesson of importance that Gilles learned from his grandfather was the art of fighting.

  Jean d’Craon never made any secret of the fact that he intended to use his grandson to increase his own wealth, and when Gilles was just thirteen years old he negotiated a marriage with the daughter of Lord de Hambye of Normandy, Jeanne Peynel. Because Peynel was an exceptionally wealthy woman, the Parliament of Paris did not allow the marriage to go ahead, purely because their combined wealth would have made the house of d’Craon the most powerful in the whole of France.

  Ten months later, d’Craon announced the engagement of Gilles to Beatrice de Rohan, who was the niece of the Duke of Burgundy. However, for some unknown reason, this marriage never took place either.

  Eventually, under the advice of his grandfather, Gilles married his own cousin, Catherine de Thouars of Brittany, who was the heiress of La Vendee and Poitou, but he had to kidnap her first. The marriage took place in 1420, and his union to the extremely wealthy heiress meant that Gilles de Rais was now one of the richest noblemen in Europe.

  For the next eight years Gilles de Rais served as a commander in the royal army, fighting alongside Joan of Arc in the wars against the English and their Burgundian allies. It wasn’t until Gilles retired from the army in 1435, that the murders began.

  from hero to villain

  When the fighting subsided, the nobles were expected to disband their armies and return to their estates to try and rebuild the wealth lost during the years of war. Gilles returned to Champtoce, but the sedentary lifestyle after all the glory of the battle-field left him depressed and needing excitement. He yearned for the excitement of spilling blood and when his uncle, Jean d’Craon, died in either 1432 or 1433, Gilles had a totally free rein. He moved to his castle at Machécoul, where his bloodlust began in earnest.

  An accomplice to many of Gilles’s crimes was a young boy by the name of Etienne Corrillaut, better known as Poitou. He was taken to the castle one day and raped, after which Gilles prepared to cut his throat. However, one of Gilles’s servants pointed out that he was such a handsome young boy that he would make a perfect page and so his life was spared. From then on he became Gilles’s most trusted servant.

  The more Gilles craved blood, the more manic he became. He was fascinated with the beauty of young boys and the pain they seemed capable of enduring. He would lure them to his castle on some pretext or other and then once inside, Gilles satisfied his appetite. The victim would normally be hung from the ceiling on a rope or chain until he lost consciousness. Then, as part of his sick perversion, Gilles would take the boy down and comfort him, telling him that no further harm would come to him. This of course was a pack of lies, as he tore the clothes off the victim’s body and raped him, after which one of his servants would decapitate him. Often Gilles was not satisfied and would continue to abuse the dead body, playing grotesquely with the head as if it were some kind of trophy. In the height of his frenzy he would cut open the stomach, crouch among the entrails and then relieve himself by masterbating over the bloody mess. It was very rare that Gilles left a child alive for more than one evening and after he had finished with his victim, he would retire to his bed where he would remain comatose for many hours. His servants, in the meantime, disposed of the evidence by cremating it in a room called the chamber of horrors. The fire was designed to burn slowly so that it would not create too much smoke and alert the villagers to his evil ways. Afterwards the ashes would be removed and dumped in the moat surrounding the castle.

  The village on the outskirts of the castle at Machécoul became a place to avoid. Rumours started to spread as they heard of the castle’s fearful reputation, ‘They eat little children there . . .’

  However, even with all these rumours and many enquiries by the parents of the missing children, no investigation was ever carried out.

  BLACK MAGIC

  Added to his depravity, Gilles loved to spend money and surrounded himself with riches. He had a retinue of over 200 knights, and was known to hold lavish banquets where he lorded over the festivities like a Roman god. In a period of three years it is estimated he spent the equivalent of millions of dollars, leaving him in a penniless state. He was forced to sell off some of his more valuable estates, something which alarmed his brother, who approached the king asking him to forbid Gilles to sell any further land. Gilles, without any money to spend, went into a deep depression and he decided to turn to his other love, black magic, to try and help him out of his predicament.

  In fact, mysticism, spirituality and religion played major roles in the life of Gilles de Rais. In direct contrast to his debauchery, Gilles was a generous supporter of the Church, and even went as far as building several chapels and one cathedral for his people. However, when he became desperate for money he was not opposed to pawning the gold from these churches. Having witnessed first-hand the miracles of Joan of Arc, Gilles was convinced that alchemy was the way forward, but unfortunately it had been outlawed by the Church and the king in the fifteenth century, so he had to carry out his black magic in secret.

  In his greed for riches, Gilles became easy prey for fraudulent alchemists, and for some strange reason he never seemed to be aware that he was being conned. Records show that he was tricked, quite humorously, on two separate occasions. The first alchemist was introduced to Gilles by his favourite priest, Blanchet. The conman was a goldsmith, who told Gilles that he had discovered how to turn silver into gold. Gilles arranged to meet the man at a local tavern, where he was asked to produce a silver coin. The blacksmith asked Gilles to leave him alone to practise his craft, but when he returned he found the man intoxicated and in a state of unconsciousness.

  It appeared the only magic that man could do was to turn a silver florin into a flagon of wine.

  Gilles’s second involvement with a magician cost him a lot more money than a mere silver florin. It was once again his priest, Blanchet, who introduced the magician to Gilles, who said he was able to conjure up the devil. They met up one evening, the magician, Jean de la Riviere, wearing white armour and carrying a sword. Riviere led Gilles and his men to a clearing in the woods, and told them to wait while he went to summon Satan. They stood and waited and then they heard the sound of clanging, as if Riviere was beating on his own armour. Seconds later, he arrived, ashen-faced and shaking, swearing that he had seen the devil in the form of a leopard.

  Gilles was impressed and was totally convinced that Riviere was genuine and took him back to his castle where he held a feast in his honour. Knowing that he had got Gilles hook, line and sinker, Riviere asked Gilles for some money to buy the supplies he needed to continue his evocations. He gave the man 20 ecus and asked him to come back to the castle as soon as possible. Needless to say, Riviere disappeared, along with the money, and was never seen again.

  the big mistake

  During his years of murder and lust, Gilles came close to being discovered on several occasions. The first real scare was in 1437 when he decided to sell off the family’s estate at Champtoce, despite a royal interdict to stop him. When the crown moved to seize the property, Gilles panicked because he knew he had left the mutilated bodies of numerous children there. Scared that they would also try and seize Machécoul, Gilles quickly removed the remains of about forty children with the help of his trusted servants. The bodies at Champtoce had, remarkably, gone unnoticed, but the Duke of Brittany imposed a huge fine on Gilles, aware that he would be unable to pay. At the same time he started an investigation into the disappearance of hundreds of children.

  Gilles made a major mistake when he decided t
o break into a church and kidnap the priest. Shortly after mass at the church of St Etienne de Mer Morte, Gilles had the priest dragged outside and beaten. The priest had a brother, Geoffroy de Ferron, who was the Treasurer to the Duke of Brittany, to whom Gilles had been forced to sell some of his property. The priest had been entrusted by his brother to watch over this property and Gilles decided to take control of the situation in his own way. Having violated ecclesiastical privilege, which was a capital offence, and also stepped on the toes of the Duke of Brittany, Gilles was in big trouble. Added to this, the duke’s investigations into the missing children was starting to pay rewards and Gilles was indicted for ‘the murder of children and sodomy, the invocations of demons, the offending of Divine Majesty and heresy’.

  Gilles was denied the privileges of Communion and Confession, so when he entered the court he was contrite and admitted to his perverse habits, but denied attempting to summon the devil. However, the court was not satisfied with his denial of black magic, and decided to try and extract a full confession by using torture. Ironically, there was a chance he could be pardoned for the murder and sodomy, but summoning a demon was heresy with a punishment of death.

  After severe torture sessions – although they were not nearly as evil as those he carried out on the children – Gilles confessed to it all. Bravely he tried to take the total blame in an effort to allow his accomplices to go free. But the court was not convinced, especially after hearing the testimonies of over 110 witnesses. Gilles gave such lurid details of his perverse activities that the judges ordered the worst sections to be stricken from the record.

  On October 25, 1440, the ecclesiastical court handed down a sentence of excommunication against Gilles, followed by forty-seven charges including conjuration of demons, abuse of clerical privileges and sexual perversions against children. Charged and condemned with him were his faithful mignon Henri Griard and his page, Poitou. They were hanged on October 26, 1440, after which their bodies were placed on a funeral pyre.

  Before Gilles died he sang the De Profundis in a loud voice while standing underneath the gibbet. Then he got down on his knees and prayed along with hundreds of spectators who joined him. In his agonies of guilt, he said to the families of the murdered children:

  You who are present – you, above all, whose children I have slain – I am your brother in Christ. By Our Lord’s Passion, I implore you, pray for me. Forgive me with all your hearts the evil I have done you, as you yourselves hope for God’s mercy and pardon.

  Perhaps in deference to his status as a nobleman, Gilles’s relatives were allowed to remove his body before the flames took hold, and he was buried in the nearby Carmelite church. His two companions were not so lucky however, their bodies were burned to ashes.

  There is no doubt that Gilles de Rais was a fearsome, fiendish killer, who is considered by some to be the precursor of the modern serial killer. Rene, now the Baron de Rais, took over Champtoce until his death, but the de Rais line, which Jean d’Craon had fought so hard to preserve, faded into obscurity with the death of Rene’s daughter in 1473, who never bore any children to carry on the line.

  Elizabeth Bathory

  Erzsébet Báthory or Elizabeth Bathory was born into one of the wealthiest families in Transylvania in 1560. She came from good stock as her relatives consisted of a cardinal, princes, a cousin who was the prime minister of Hungary and, most importantly, Istvan Bathory who was prince of Transylvania and king of Poland from 1575 to 1586. However, among these prestigious relatives were a few strange ones as well. One uncle was known to be a devil-worshipper, while other family members were pronounced mentally insane. Quite what happened to Elizabeth to turn her into such a blood-thirsty killer, can only be conjectured, but she is alleged to have killed over 600 women and young virgins, quite literally to bathe in their blood. Her love of blood helped to inspire, in part, a young Irishman by the name of Bram Stoker to write about the legendary Dracula, the prince among vampires.

  It has been reported that at around the age of four or five, Elizabeth was subject to violent seizures. Although it is uncertain as to what caused them, it is possible that these were contributory to her psychotic behaviour later in her life.

  In spring 1575, when Elizabeth was fifteen, she married twenty-six-year-old Count Ferenz Nadasdy. Wishing to keep her family name, her husband adopted the name of Bathory. After the wedding the couple moved to Castle Cséjthe, which was situated high above the village of Cséjthe, in the north-west of Hungary.

  Elizabeth’s husband was a brave warrior, but this meant he was away from their home for much of the time. Elizabeth became lonely and depressed and spent endless hours admiring her own beauty. To pass away the time she took many young men as lovers, even going as far as eloping with one of them. But the affair fizzled out and she returned to her forgiving husband. Back at the castle she struggled because she hated her domineering mother-in-law, and she spent more and more time visiting her favourite aunt, Countess Klara Bathory, an open bisexual. It was also around this time that Elizabeth’s maid, Dorothea Sventes, also known as Dorka, introduced her to the joys of the occult.

  For the first ten years of her marriage, Elizabeth bore the count no children, purely because they spent so little time together because of his military career. She had her first daughter, Anna, in 1585, and over the next nine years gave birth to two more girls, Ursula and Katherina and finally, in 1598, her only son, Paul. She proved to be a loving and protective mother, but there was another, far more sinister side to her character.

  Influenced by Dorka, Elizabeth found pleasure in inflicting pain on her young servant girls. She liked to strip them naked, hang them up and then whip them, watching in delight as their faces contorted in pain. She also used to stick pins under their fingernails and other sensitive parts of their body. The other people who joined her in these sadistic pleasures were her old nurse Illona Joo, her manservant Johannes Ujvary and a maid named Anna Darvula, who many believed to be Elizabeth’s lover. With the help of this evil crew, Elizabeth turned Castle Cséjthe into a truly sinister place.

  the real terror begins

  Although Elizabeth’s behaviour had been far from saintly, it wasn’t until Count Ferenz died in 1600 that her real reign of terror began. As soon as she was in control, Elizabeth sent her detested mother-in-law away from the castle. Having borne four children and now forty years of age, Elizabeth became paranoid that she was losing her youth and good looks. Then one day a small incident was to change the course of her life. Her chambermaid was busy brushing Elizabeth’s hair when she accidentally pulled it. Elizabeth was fuming and slapped the girl’s head with such force that blood spurted from her nose. The blood splashed onto Elizabeth’s own skin and she was immediately convinced that where it had touched, her skin had taken on the youthfulness and vitality of the young chambermaid’s. She told Ujvary and Dorka to strip the girl naked and while they held her over a large vat, Elizabeth cut her arteries. When the body had completely drained of blood, they disposed of it and Elizabeth stepped into the vat and bathed in her young victim’s blood. She truly believed that at last she had found the answer to eternal youth.

  For the next ten years, her trusted, yet evil band of servants kept her supplied with beautiful young girls from the neighbouring villages. Each one was taken to the castle, bled dry, just so the countess could retain her beauty. Sometimes, as an added bonus, she would drink their blood in an effort to retain inner beauty as well.

  For some unexplainable reason Elizabeth decided that all her victims should have Christian burials and approached the local Protestant pastor. This worked well until he became concerned about the large number of young women who had died of what he was told were ‘unknown and mysterious causes’. When he refused to carry out any further burials and threatened to go to the authorities, Elizabeth intimidated him into keeping silent.

  moving up a class

  When Elizabeth realised that her blood baths were not having the desired effect on her
appearance, she decided she needed a better quality of blood. Instead of the peasant girls she had been killing, Elizabeth ordered her servants to bring her young virgins of nobility. These were destroyed in exactly the same beastly fashion as the peasant girls who preceded them, but Elizabeth was now becoming very careless and indiscreet. She started running out of burial sites and many of the bodies were disposed of in a haphazard manner. They were left in conspicuous places such as nearby fields, the kitchen garden and in the stream running behind the castle. Added to this, members of the nobility were not so prepared to let the matter rest when their daughters went missing, and rumours had started to reach the Hungarian Emperor.

  The final straw came when one of her young victims managed to escape and tell the authorities exactly what was happening at Castle Cséjthe. Elizabeth’s own cousin, Count György, was sent to search the estate. He sent his soldiers on the night of December 30, 1610, to raid the castle, but they weren’t expecting the horrific sights that met them. In the main hall of the castle lay the body of a young girl, drained of blood. Another girl was still alive, despite the fact that she had had her veins pierced. When they went down to the dungeons they found several girls waiting in prison cells, some of whom had been brutally tortured. When they dug up the floor beneath the castle, they found the bodies of over fifty other young women. They were sickened to their stomachs, realising that they had literally uncovered a factory of death.

  elizabeth on trial

  In 1611 a trial was held at Bitcse, but Elizabeth never actually appeared at the proceedings, refusing to plead either guilty or not guilty to the charges. Johannes Ujvary was cross-examined and said that about thirty-seven virgin girls had been killed, six of whom he had recruited personally to work at the castle. The truth of the matter was that Elizabeth Bathory had killed 612 women, proof of which was in a diary kept by her, which was retrieved from the castle by the authorities. A complete transcript was made of the trial and survives to this very day in Hungary, although all records were sealed for more than a century and her name was forbidden to be spoken in Hungarian society for many years.