Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  The Marquis de Sade was once again arrested on February 13, 1777, this time due to the contrivance of his mother-in-law, who had never forgiven him for seducing her daughter. He was imprisoned in the chateau at Vincennes before being moved to Aix to face the courts. However, he managed to escape while under guard and hid once again at La Coste. Having learned nothing from his previous experiences, de Sade immediately slipped back into his old ways. He enlisted the help of a local priest to bring in a new group of girls for his orgies, but this soon backfired on him. An outraged father tracked his daughter down to the chateau and attempted to shoot de Sade at close range. Luckily for de Sade, the gun misfired, but it was enough for him to re-evaluate his situation. He made the mistake of returning to Paris, where he was immediately arrested by the authorities on September 7, 1778.

  a life behind bars

  In 1778, de Sade began an eleven-year term in prison, first at Vincennes, and then later at the notorious Bastille in Paris. Denied the decadent lifestyle and pleasures that he was used to, de Sade started to write down his fantasies, living out his dreams in the form of words. His works became more and more disturbing, describing severe sexual mutilation, rape, murder and incest.

  It was during this period that he produced his famous works – Dialgoue between a Priest and a Dying Man, The 120 Days of Sodom, The Misfortunes of Virtue, Aline and Valcour and the first drafts of Justine and Juliette. Keeping his writing secret from his jailers, de Sade let his imagination run away with him, his mind matching the filthy prison cells where he was forced to spend his time. The contents of these works, along with other plays and numerous short stories, were so disturbing that they were secreted out of the prison and published anonymously.

  The Marquis de Sade’s philosphy was simple:

  Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all . . . ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.

  His most famous work, Justine, has been descibed as ‘fit for corrupting the devil’ and goes into graphic detail about the sexual encounters of a young peasant girl.

  freedom

  On Good Friday, July 14, 1789, following the outbreak of the French Revolution, the prisoners of the Bastille were freed by a revolutionary mob. This became known as Bastille Day, and the Marquis de Sade, with his new-found freedom, started to get involved in French politics.

  His wife, who no longer wanted anything to do with her husband, asked for a separation. His children, who he had hardly ever seen, were strangers to him and de Sade was now free from the constraints of family life. With Paris in the heat of a revolution and enormous changes taking place throughout France, the petty crimes of the Marquis de Sade were no longer of importance. He became politically active, writing political pamphlets, and was voted as the President of the Piques section in Paris. As part of his duties, he presided as Grand Juror over many trials, including, ironically, that of his mother-in-law. Given that she had been instrumental in his imprisonment, de Sade could have exacted his revenge, but he did for her what he did for most of the prisoners, he dismissed the case. He was loath to apply the death penalty to anyone.

  However, with the revolution came issues that de Sade was unable to accept. He started to advocate, somewhat hypocritically, for total socialism and the complete abolition of property, despite the fact that he insisted on keeping his own estates. The Reign of Terror, which took place between 1793 and 1994, saw thousands of public executions, something that made de Sade recoil in horror. Though he had committed far worse tortures to satisfy his own passions, he was unable to stand the sight of these indiscriminate deaths.

  Now grossly overweight and no longer technically a marquis, de Sade was still unrepentant for his previous life. He still lusted after the pleasures of the flesh and, even as he penned his revolutionary documents, he continued to write his novels of sexual depravity. Unable to get financial backing, de Sade decided to sell off some of his family holdings, which enabled him to continue to write.

  He resigned his post in 1793, but he didn’t remain a free man for much longer. He found himself in prison once again, this time at the hands of the Emperor Napoleon’s government, accused of writing damning literature. He served a 375-day sentence and wrote:

  My government imprisonment, with the guillotine before my eyes, did me more harm than all the Bastilles imaginable.

  On his release, it appears that much of the old drive and cravings had gone. Once again he found himself in financial difficulties and was forced to sell La Coste, making himself a very small profit. The money didn’t last long and he was forced to stay with a local farmer, far removed from his earlier luxurious lifestyle. He took a job as an actor in Versailles, which earned him about 40 sous a day, playing the part of Fabrice in his own play Oxtiern.

  life in an asylum

  In the early part of 1800, de Sade was forced to go into hospital, suffering from cold and starvation, and the thought of facing debtor’s prison once again affected his nerves. On April 5, 1801, he was imprisoned in Sainte-Pelagie, but with his sanity now in doubt, he was moved to Charenton, an asylum for the mentally insane. Madame Quesnet, a woman who had taken pity on the now pathetic figure, pretended to be his daughter and managed to get a room next to de Sade’s. Quesnet was a loyal friend and stayed by his side for the remainder of his life.

  In the security of an institution, de Sade settled and once again started his writings. From inside the asylum he was able to publish Philosophy in the Bedroom and completed a modified version of Justine and Juliette.

  He also started work on an immense ten-volume document called Les Journées de Forbelle, but, like his personal journals and memoirs, this work did not survive. Although de Sade continued writing, he became more and more paranoid and despite the fact that he was encouraged to stage plays with other inmates, their content was such that they often had to be stopped because they caused too much excitement.

  The Marquis de Sade died peacefully in his sleep on December 2, 1814, at the age of seventy-four. To this day the word ‘sadism’ is synonymous with cruelty and bloodshed, and will always be connected with his name. Although there is no doubt he was as an incredibly disturbed man, possibly even a freak, who wrote extreme erotica, it must be remembered that he was also a product of nineteenth century France. The motto of the upper classes during this period was plaisir a tout prix – pleasure at any price – something that de Sade lived up to in every respect. It was a period of unrestrained indulgence, which even the clergy were not exempt from. Parisian police records show that many hundreds of monks, curates and other religious workers were caught in acts of indencency. Prostitution increased to an estimated 30,000 during the French Revolution and regulations were abandoned as it was felt that it would be an affront to personal freedom.

  De Sade’s family, who were embarrassed by his writing, attempted to have all of his works burned after his death, but many survived to be published a century later. His grave was desecrated many years on, in order to take phrenological measurements of his skull for the purpose of medical investigations.

  His masterpiece, The 120 Days of Sodom, which was feared lost, was discovered in 1904, rolled up in a bedpost in one of his cells. It was published, despite earlier restrictions imposed by the Catholic Church, and the Marquis de Sade was declared as being a man who was ‘ahead of his time’.

  PART TWO: Female Fiends

  Countess Bathory

  Erzsébet (Elizabeth) Bathory was a Hungarian countess who was purported to be a witch, a vampire, a werewolf and supposedly bathed in the blood of young virgins to maintain her youthful appearance. She is certainly one of the first women ever recorded to be motivated by bloodlust and is believed to have murdered as many as 600 young women in an effort to maintain her failing grasp on youthfulness.

  training in sorcery

  Elizabeth Bathory was born in 1560 in Hungary, approximately 100 years after Vlad the Impaler. In fact one of her a
ncestors, Prince Steven Bathory, was a commanding officer in Vlad’s army. Her parents George and Anna Bathory, stemmed from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the country. Elizabeth’s cousin was the Hungarian prime minister, another relative was a cardinal, while her uncle Stephen became king of Poland. However, despite being rich and famous, the Bathory family had a dark and sinister side. Inter-marriage within the family led to some major problems including psychoses, evil geniuses and an uncle who was a known devil-worshipper. Insanity and perversion ran in the Bathory blood, and Elizabeth was no exception.

  Elizabeth was a fit and active child raised as Magyar royalty. She was a beautiful girl with delicate features, a creamy complexion and a slender build, but her nature did not match her appearance. From a young age she started to experience seizures and she had an uncontrollable temper revealing a vindictive side to her nature.

  At the age of eleven, Elizabeth was betrothed to Count Ferencz Nadasdy, and in the spring of 1575 they married when he was twenty-five and she was still only fifteen. This was not an uncommon practice in the sixteenth century, as the life expectancy then was only thirty-five to forty years. The wedding ceremony was a lavish affair, which joined together two Protestant families, and was held at Varanno Castle. Although Nadasdy added Elizabeth’s name to his, she defiantly chose to keep the name Bathory, claiming that her family name was older and therefore more illustrious than his own.

  After the ceremony the couple went to live in the Count’s remote, mountain-top Csejthe Castle, which overlooked the village of Csejthe in Transylvania. Count Nadasdy was a sadistic man with a love of the occult. Elizabeth shared his passion and was a willing pupil in her husband’s lessons on how to ‘discipline’ the servants. He showed her how to beat them to within an inch of their life, or to cover their bodies with honey and leave them tied up outside to the mercy of the bugs.

  However, Elizabeth was to experience much loneliness as her husband thrived on conflict and war, preferring the battlefield to his life of domesticity in the castle. Her home was deep within the Carpathian Mountains and deprived of any urban activity, life in the gloomy, dank castle became dull. While her husband was away fulfilling his passion, Elizabeth started to find ways of amusing herself.

  She started to take young peasant men into her castle as lovers and sat for many hours in front of the mirror admiring her own beauty. She carried the disciplining of her servants so far that today it would be classed as sadism. According to accounts, she beat her servants with a heavy club, inflicted pain by sticking pins under their nails, and her harshest, and most favoured punishment was to drag girls out into the snow, pour cold water on them and leave them to freeze to death.

  For the first ten years of their marriage, Elizabeth bore no children, which was hardly surprising as her husband rarely returned to the castle. Then around 1585, his visits became more frequent and she bore him a girl named Anna. Over the period of the next nine years she gave birth to two more girls, Ursula and Katherine and, in 1598, had her first son, Paul. Despite her appalling treatment of her servants, there is evidence that she was both a loving wife and mother.

  Another thing Elizabeth did to occupy her time during her husband’s absence, was to make frequent visits to her aunt Klara. She was an open bisexual who always had plenty of young, beautiful girls around her. During these visits Elizabeth would participate in orgies with women and it was then she realised her passion for hurting young girls.

  the torture chamber

  It was also around this time that Elizabeth started to develop a serious interest in the occult. With the help of an elderly maid by the name of Dorothea Szentes, also known as Dorka, who claimed to be a real witch, Elizabeth was instructed in the art of witchcraft and black magic. As she experimented more and more in depravity, she enlisted the help of her old nurse Iloona Joo, her manservant Johannes Ujvary and a maid named Anna Darvula, who was allegedly Elizabeth’s lover. With the aid of her new clan, they set up an underground room in the castle, which became known as ‘her Lady’s torture chamber’. It was here that she subjected young girls to the worst possible tortures that she could devise. The more her victims screamed, the more excited Elizabeth became. The more copious the blood, the more her excitement heightened, watching in glee as their faces contorted in pain and horror. Before long, Elizabeth started to crave the taste of flesh and she started biting chunks of flesh from her victims’ necks, cheeks and shoulders. Soon her obsession with blood and her own beauty drove her to new depths of perversion.

  baths of blood

  Count Nadasdy died in 1600, which meant that Elizabeth was left completely unsupervised to carry on her perverse activities. As Elizabeth aged, her beauty began to wane and, despite the fact that she tried desperately to conceal it with cosmetics and expensive clothes, there was nothing she could do to stop the ever-spreading wrinkles. Then one fateful day, a young servant girl who was attending to Elizabeth, accidentally pulled her hair while she was combing her long, almost black locks. Elizabeth was fuming and slapped the girl’s face so hard, that spots of blood splashed onto her own hand. As the blood touched her, Elizabeth immediately thought that her own skin took on a new youthfulness, like that of the young servant girl. She asked Dorka and Johannes Ujvary to undress the girl and to hold her over a large bath while she cut her arteries. When the girl was drained of all her blood, Elizabeth stepped into the bath and soaked in the warm liquid, sure that she had now discovered the secret of eternal youth.

  Believing that she would take on the qualities of her victims, Elizabeth asked her trusted accomplices to capture beautiful young virgins and bring them back to the castle. Young peasant girls were procured from the local villages on the pretext of being hired as maids. Every now and then a particularly beautiful girl would be brought down to the chamber and, as a special treat, Elizabeth would drink the child’s blood from a special golden goblet.

  After a period of a few years, Elizabeth started to realise that the blood of simple peasant girls, was having little effect on her fading beauty. She believed that if she wanted to regain her former youth and radiance she would need a better quality of blood. Following the advice of an old sorceress, Erzsi Majorova, Elizabeth arranged for girls of noble birth to be brought to the castle. In 1609, she established an academy, offering to take twenty-five girls at a time to finish off their educations. However, she didn’t just finish off their educations – she brought them to an abrupt halt. These hapless students were consumed and killed in the same fashion as the peasant girls, culminating in a warm bath accompanied by witchcraft rites.

  However, as more and more girls of noble birth disappeared, Elizabeth started to become careless and suspicions were aroused. During one particular frenzy of lust, her accomplices threw four blood-drained bodies from the castle turrets. Added to this, a Lutheran pastor of Csejthe named Reverand Andras Berthoni had been commanded by Elizabeth to bury the bloodless corpses in secret graves. However, just before he died he left a note regarding his suspicions about the countess. Local villagers who had seen the bodies of the girls outside the castle, took their bodies for identification and started adding two and two together. Countess Bathory’s secret was out.

  the grim discovery

  As the rumours became more and more widespread it wasn’t long before they reached the ears of the Hungarian emperor. When he heard of the atrocities that had been taking place at Csejthe Castle, he ordered Elizabeth’s own cousin, Count Cuyorgy Thurzo, who was governor of the province, to organise a raid of the castle.

  On December 30, 1610, a group of soldiers, led by Count Thurzo, raided the castle at night. Nothing could have prepared them for the sights they encountered when they went entered the sinister Csejthe Castle. Lying in the main hall was a body of a young girl who had been completely drained of her blood. In another room they found a girl who was still alive, but had been pierced through the abdomen.

  As they went down into the dungeon, they heard the cries of young girls who wer
e imprisoned, some of whom had been unbelievably mutilated and tortured. When they came across Elizabeth’s torture chamber, not only did they find the countess herself but also the bodies of some fifty girls.

  a fitting end

  Elizabeth Bathory never attended her own trial in 1611, partly due to political reasons, but mainly due to her nobility. The trail was mainly for show, and to make it even more official, a transcript was made of the whole proceedings, which still survives in Hungary today. All of Elizabeth’s four accomplices were made to stand trial and a register of over 650 victims written in Elizabeth’s own handwriting was produced as evidence. As the accounts of her tortures were revealed, even the judges blanched at the macabre and sadistic behaviour of a once beautiful woman.

  While Elizabeth remained confined to her castle, her four cohorts were charged with vampirism, witchcraft and performing pagan rituals, and were sentenced to death. Two of the torturers were beheaded while Iloona Joo and Dorothea Szentes had their fingers pulled off before being buried alive. The Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who was found to be criminally insane, received her own form of fitting punishment. The emperor condemned her to lifelong imprisonment in her own castle, and ordered that stonemasons wall up the windows and doors of her bedchamber with Elizabeth still inside. The only light that permeated the room was a small opening through which her guards passed her food. As her sentence was read out, Count Thurzo stood up and said of Elizabeth: