Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Dollsters. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Top Ten Wicked Women
Topic Started: May 7 2010, 06:14 PM (1,028 Views)
Miranda
Member Avatar
The Godmother
In no particular order; these are women who were exceptionally bad. Some were murderers, others despots. Still others chose to manipulate men for gain and use them for their own benefits.

10. Messalina.

Valeria Messalina was the daughter of a cousin of Claudius. Caligula had Claudius marry her when he was 50, she 15, apparently as a joke. Messalina was quite beautiful and Claudius soon fell deeply in love with her. After he became emperor, they had two children, Britannicus and Octavia. Messalina became a major political player and those she favored soon found their financial situations much improved. Holding power did not satisfy all of Messalina's desires and neither did her husband. While Roman women in imperial circles were not always faithful wives, Messalina went far beyond the quiet love affair. She had affairs with gladiators, dancers, other heads of state and anyone else she fancied. She was a hard woman to refuse and those who turned her down were accused of treason and executed. Messalina's adulterous and scandalous behavior marred the otherwise noteworthey reign of her husband and yet Claudius was the last person in Rome to know what his wife was doing.

When she fell in love with Caius Silius, the consul-designate known as the handsomest man in Rome, she had gone too far. Such was her passion for him, that determined to marry him, she coerced him to divorce his wife and lived openly with him furnishing his home with treasures from the Imperial Palace. This well organized and timely plan tempted even Claudius' most trusted men. Her plot against Claudius was so solid that she was able to secure the cooperation of Roman society, the approval of the guard, get a divorce, marry in public and feast with abandon at her bachanal! Had it not been for Claudius’ loyal secretaries, specifically Narcissus, who sent word of his wife's wedding plans to the emperor, Claudius would have certainly been slain.

Messalina shortly thereafter celebrated a public bigamous wedding. It was a bold act; an opulent religious ceremony that took place while Claudius was in Ostia. Messalina received a message during her wedding feast that informed her that troops were coming on behalf of her husband but she lacked the courage to commit suicide even after strong words from her mother who urged her to die honorably. When the guard arrived, Messalina was found in the Gardens of Lucullus with her mother preparing a petition for Claudius, but alas it was too late and she was slain. Tacitus tells us. The news of Messalina's death reached Claudius' ear at dinner time. He did not ask how she had died... he simply asked for more wine.

9. Belle Starr.

"I regard myself as a woman who has seen much of life," Belle Starr stated to the The Fort Smith Elevator about one year prior to her death. Belle Starr was born Myra Belle Shirley in a log cabin near Carthage, Missouri on February 5, 1848 to "Judge” John Shirley and his third wife, Elizabeth Pennington. Her father was the black sheep of a well-to-do Virginia family who had moved west to Indiana, where he married and divorced twice. His third wife, Eliza, was on the Hatfield side of the feuding Hatfield and McCoy families. After a Union attack on Carthage in 1864, the Shirleys moved to Scyene, Texas. According to legend, it was at Scyene that the Shirleys became associated with a number of Missouri-born criminals, including Jesse James and the Youngers.

In fact, she knew the Younger brothers and the James boys because she had grown up with them in Missouri, and her brother John Alexander Shirley (known as Bud) served with them in Quantrill's Raiders, alongside another Missouri boy, James C. Reed. Her brother served as one of Quantrill's scouts. Bud Shirley was killed in 1864 in Sarcoxie, Missouri, while he and another scout were being fed at the home of a Confederate sympathizer. Union troops surrounded the house and when Bud attempted to escape, he was shot and killed. Following the war, the Reed family also moved to Scyene and May Shirley married Jim Reed in 1866, after having had an earlier crush on him as a teen. Two years later, she gave birth to her first child, Rosie Lee (nicknamed Pearl), who is known to have been Cole Younger's daughter. Cole ran away after Pearl was born.

Belle always harbored a strong sense of style, which would feed into her later legend. A crack shot, she used to ride sidesaddle while dressed in a black velvet riding habit and a plumed hat, carrying two pistols, with cartridge belts across her hips. Allegedly, Belle was briefly married for three weeks to Bruce Younger in 1878, but this is not substantiated by any evidence. In 1880 she did marry a Cherokee Indian named Sam Starr and settled with the Starr family in the Indian Territory. There, she learned ways for organizing, planning and fencing for the rustlers, horse thieves and bootleggers, as well as harboring them from the law. Belle's illegal enterprises proved lucrative enough for her to employ bribery to free her cohorts from the law whenever they were caught.

For the last two-plus years of her life, she took on a series of lovers with colorful names, including Jack Spaniard, Jim French and Blue Duck, after which, in order to keep her residence on Indian land, she married a relative of Sam Starr, Jim July Starr, who was some 15 years her junior. On February 3, 1889, two days before her 41st birthday, the outlaw queen met her own tragic end. She was riding home from a neighbor's house in Eufaula, Oklahoma, when she was ambushed. After she fell off her horse, she was shot again to make sure she was dead. Her death resulted from shotgun wounds to the back and neck and in the shoulder and face.

There were no witnesses and no one was ever convicted of the deadly crime. Suspects with apparent motive included her new husband and both of her children, as well as Edgar J. Watson, one of her sharecroppers, because he was afraid she was going to turn him into the authorities as an escaped murderer from Florida with a price on his head . Watson, who was killed in 1910, was tried for her murder but was acquitted, and the ambush has entered Western lore as "unsolved." One source suggests her son, whom she had allegedly beaten for mistreating her horse, may have been her killer.

8. Madame Rachel.

In the 1860s, it was not uncommon to find advertisements on the front page of The Times for a book on beauty by one Madame Rachel. The book, more of a pamphlet at only 24 pages, was published in 1863, and could be purchased at 47a New Bond-Street. Available to the discerning buyer for only 2s. 6d. it was entitled Beautiful for Ever, and, according to the advertisement, was a book "on Female Grace and Beauty." The 1860s was a decade in which beauty was increasingly seen as a commodity. The design of the commodity was based on those who were considered the beauties of the age. Morality had little to do with this as Skittles, one of the great courtesans of the nineteenth century, was widely admired and imitated by all classes of women. It was to those who sold "beauty" that many women turned, hoping to improve their chances, whether of marriage or of entering into a satisfactory liaison, by improving their looks.

Madame Rachel, or Sarah Rachel Leverson, was born in 1806. She claimed that she entered the beauty business as a result of having her head shaved when she was hospitalized with fever. The medical man told her that he would give her something that should make her hair grow rapidly and be more beautiful than ever. When, according to the story, this product worked, Madame Rachel began using it to colour grey hair and soon expanded her claims to her ability to remove wrinkles and generally to cheat the ageing process. It was particularly this reversal of nature's ageing process that had great appeal. The products sold by Madame Rachel and her ilk were of a most dubious nature. They promised much and great claims were made for their ingredients as well as their efficacy. In reality, however, most were simple concoctions, sometimes dangerous, but certainly unlikely to live up the the extravagent claims made for them.

Among the many "beauty" products offered by Madame Rachel were such delights as "Circassian Beauty Wash" and "Magnetic Rock Dew Water of Sahara, for removing Wrinkles;" the former for a price of one guinea and the latter for two guineas. A bottle of "Jordan Water" could be purchased for from ten to twenty guineas and something called "Venus's Toilet," for the same price. Madame Rachel was, however, much more than a "beautifier." She was certainly a confidence trickster and various sources suggest she was a brothel keeper - or at least a provider of accommodation for sexual activities - as well. One of her most lucrative methods was to blackmail victims with the loss of their reputations in return for money. Fear of scandal was like a disease in Victorian England; even when there was no truth in the allegations, Madame Rachel's victims were soon stripped of all their money and possessions in return for her silence.

In August of 1868, Sarah Rachel Leverson, aged 43, was charged with unlawfully obtaining 600 pounds from Mary Tucker Borradaile by false pretences. In addition there was a further charge of conspiring to defraud Borradaile of 3,000 pounds. After listening to the evidence, the Jury retired but was unable to reach a verdict after five hours and was discharged. The following month, Madame Rachel was again placed on trial. The retrial allowed the further evidence to be brought forward. Mary Tucker Borradaile, had first met Madame Rachel in 1864 and had purchased some of her products. She continued over the next several years to visit the shop and buy beauty products until, in 1866 Madame Rachel "suggested a mode by which she could be made 'beautiful for ever,' asking for £1,000 for making her so." Clearly to encourage Mrs Borradaile to do so, Madame Rachel told her that a particular nobleman, Lord Ranelagh, was in love with her and would marry her.

The sorry fraud took its course; Lord Ranelagh denying he had ever "authorized her to use my name in any way as representing a desire or intention on my part to marry Mrs. Borradaile." It was a story about exchanges of letters in false names, money obtained under false pretences and a confusing body of contradictory evidence. In the end, the jury believed that Mrs. Borradaile had been the victim of a scheme by Madame Rachel to obtain money by false pretences. A sentence of five years penal servitude was passed on Sarah Rachel Leverson. Apparently she did not learn her lesson, but went back to the "beauty" business. She was to appear at the Old Bailey ten years later where she was once again convicted of fraud and sentenced to another term of five years penal servitude. Sarah Rachel Leverson, Madame Rachel to the beauty trade, died, still in prison, in 1880.

7. Bonnie Parker.

Bonnie Parker was the female half of the notorious crime duo, Bonnie and Clyde. She was born on October 1, 1910, in Rowena, Texas. She and partner Clyde Barrow died in a hail of machine gun fire from law enforcement officers on May 23, 1934. Her father was a bricklayer. When he died in 1914, Bonnie's mother, Emma Parker, moved her, along with her older brother Hubert and younger sister Billie, to the West Dallas community of "Cement City." In school Bonnie was an honor student. When she was sixteen, she married childhood sweetheart Roy Thornton. Though it was a troubled marriage, they did not divorce, even after Thornton was sentenced to five years in prison in 1929. Parker had a tattoo above her right knee that said "Roy and Bonnie".

In November of that same year, the Dallas café where Bonnie worked closed. She met Barrow in January 1930 and they began their romance. He was jailed in March but escaped using a pistol Bonnie smuggled past the guards. The next month he was captured and sent to a prison farm in Crockett, Texas. He was paroled in February 1932 and he and Bonnie began their reign of terror. They robbed grocery stores, filling stations, and small banks. One robbery attempt failed in March 1932, allowing authorities to capture Bonnie. She was jailed in Kaufman, Texas, but released in June when the grand jury no-billed her.

Reunited, Bonnie and Clyde continued their murderous crime spree throughout Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Missouri. Law enforcement initiated a massive, but unsuccessful, manhunt. They narrowly escaped a police raid on their hideout in Joplin, Missouri, where they were staying with Barrow's brother and sister ­in­ law. The shootout resulted in the death of two more policemen. Recovered from the hideout were six rolls of film containing the now-famous photographs of the criminal couple. Their murders, robberies and narrow escapes continued through 1933. Clyde's brother was killed in a shootout in Platte City, Missouri, and his sister-in-law was captured. In January 1934, Parker and Barrow made a daring machine gun raid on Eastham Farm prison to release Raymond Hamilton. One guard was killed.

By the time of the jailbreak, former Texas Ranger Captain Francis (Frank) Hamerqv and his associates had begun to track Bonnie and Clyde. On Easter Sunday, 1934, near Grapevine, Texas, two highway patrolmen unwittingly stopped to check on the wanted couple's car, which was stopped by the side of the road. She and Clyde opened fire on the officers and Bonnie, according to witnesses, walked over to one of the officers, rolled him over with her foot and fired her sawed­off shotgun at the officer's head. She then reportedly said, "look-a-there, his head bounced just like a rubber ball."

On May 23, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde met their own violent end in an ambush near their latest hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana. At 9:15 AM, officers waiting for their car on a roadside riddled them with bullets. Their bodies were publicly displayed in Dallas before being buried in their respective family's burial sites.
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Miranda
Member Avatar
The Godmother
6. Tzu-Hsi - The Dragon Empress.

Tzu-Hsi (pronounced "Tsoo Shee"), or Cixi, was one of the most formidable women in modern history. She was famed for her beauty and charm. She was either a great friend or terrible enemy. She was power hungry, ruthless and profoundly skilled in court politics. She would rise from a middle class family to a dowager empress affecting Chinese life forever. She was born on November 29, 1835. Her given name was Yehonala. She was born to parents of the middle ranks of Manchu society. By the time she turned 17, she was one of the concubines of the Emperor Hsien-Feng. "Tzu-Hsi", meaning kindly and virtuous, was her court name. The emperor had many wives and concubines, but only Tzu-Hsi gave him a son. Upon the birth of their son, she immediately moved up in the court and upon the death of her husband she was given the title of Empress of the Western Palace. Tzu-Hsi was now the dowager empress.

However, her relations with the Emperor were never that fulfilling. She resented all attempts on his part to exercise real power. Their fights were always a struggle for power between them. When the Emperor died in 1861, her son, Chih, became the Emperor. With the support of Jung Lu and his banner men, revolutionary eunuchs, the empress seized control of the government. However, she still could not rule openly; she had to rule through her son. When Chih turned 17, his mother's reign had come to an end. She selected a wife and four concubines for him, supposedly to keep him so busy that she could rule for him. After a few years, the emperor died of venereal disease in 1875 and Tzu-Hsi became ruler once again. However, the empress still was not totally free to rule, for her son's favorite concubine was pregnant and if she delivered a boy, the boy would be the new emperor and his mother dowager empress. Mysteriously, the concubine died before giving birth; many historians believe that she was ordered by Tzu-Hsi to commit suicide.

The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 was a key turning point of her reign. The Boxer Rebellion was named after the secret society of the "Righteous and Harmonious Fists" who were poor Chinese who blamed Westerners and their imperialism for their poor standing of living. First organized in 1898, they may have been tacitly supported by Tzu-Hsi's government. Rising in rebellion in early 1900, the empress and her government both helped and hindered the revolt. The Boxers attacked Western missionaries and merchants, as well as the compound in Peking where foreigners lived, beginning a siege which lasted eight weeks. On August 14th the 19,000 troops of the allied armies of the Western imperialist Powers captured Peking and ended the siege. Tzu-Hsi decided to flee the city with the emperor. The Boxer Rebellion was over; at least 250 foreigners had been killed and China had to accept a humiliating peace settlement.

In 1901, she returned to the city with a whole new outlook. She was now in favor of modernizing China and making moral and social reforms. One of her major reforms was to outlaw slicing, a practice of killing people with thousands of small cuts. The empress even promised the people a constitution and representative government. However, this was too little too late. In 1908, Tzu-Hsi suffered a stroke and, realizing she was dying, she began to think about who she wanted to succeed her. She chose her three year old nephew, P'u Yi. Upon her death she was buried in splendor, covered in diamonds. In 1928, revolutionaries dynamited her tomb and looted it while desecrating her body.

5. Ulrike Meinhof.

Ulrike Meinhof is without doubt one of the most famous female terrorists in history. She was a co-founder of the left wing German terrorist group the Red Army Faction (RAF) which also became known as the Baader-Meinhof gang after the two gang leaders. Ulrike was born on 7th October 1934 in Oldenburg, Germany, her father being a Doctor of Art History who became the head of the City of Jena’s museum when Ulrike was two years old. Both of her parents died of cancer, her father in 1940 and her mother in 1948. Ulrike and her older sister were then looked after by her mother’s former border Renate Riemack. Riemack was a committed socialist and his views were to have a big impact on the young and vulnerable Ulrike.

In direct contrast to the ill educated Andreas Baader, Ulrike was well educated studying sociology, philosophy and German studies at Marburg. In 1957 she was studying at a University near Munster. Here she showed the radicalism that was to lead her to a path of violence, joining the Socialist Student Union and getting involved in anti rearmament protests and anti nuclear weapon protests. She also demonstrated her skill at article and report writing for the student newspapers which would be her future career. She joined the outlawed German communist party in 1957 and was the editor of the left wing magazine Konkret from 1962 until 1964. During this time she married Klaus Rohl, the publisher of Konkret and gave birth to twins Regine and Bettina in 1962. After writing an article about an arson attack she met up with Andreas Baader and his partner Gudrun Ensslin, it was meeting that was to directly lead to her becoming a terrorist and ultimately her death.

Her transition from journalist to terrorist was completed in May 1970 when she helped Baader escape prison via a library he was studying in. The resulting gun battle left 3 people wounded and Meinhof with a 10,000 DM bounty on her capture.

From 1970 to 1972 Meinhof took part in a wide variety of terrorist activities including bombings, robbery, kidnapping and shootings. She also continued to be a prolific writer producing many articles and doctrines for the RAF; these include the most famous “The concept of the Urban Guerrilla”. On 14th June 1972 following a tip off Ulrike Meinhof was arrested along with another member of the RAF, Gerhard Mueller. Like the other trials of the Baader-Meinhof gang, Ulrike’s trial was long and complex, after the first couple of years of hearings she was sentenced to 8 years while other charges were being considered. Two years into her 8 year sentence on 9th May 1976 Ulrike Meinhof was found hanged in her cell using a rope made from a towel. The official verdict was of suicide following her increasing isolation from other members of the gang who were imprisoned with her.

4. "Bloody" Mary Tudor.

Mary Tudor was the fifth child born to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. However, instead of joining a house full of siblings, Mary was the only living offspring. Of her mother's six or seven pregnancies, Princess Mary was the only child to live beyond a few months. Treated with affection, looked upon with respect (and as a useful diplomatic pawn by her father), Mary Tudor soon began a heavy regimen of study. To her mother, the princess would be the next monarch of England and she would be educated as such. Returning to court in 1527, however, Mary found a different woman standing by her father's side. Anne Boleyn had promised a son to whomever she married. The quest was on for a male heir. Catherine was out of favor... and so was Mary. The next nine years changed Mary forever. Her principles were severely tested, and any chance of married happiness, and the possibility of children, was denied her.

She found herself vilified, and her title of "Princess" removed. There was a new princess in the kingdom... the daughter of Henry and Anne: Elizabeth. Hated and in fear for her life, Mary's existence was a misery. Unhappily for Mary, her mother died at Kimbolton in 1536. It had been five years since Mary had seen her. Happily (from Mary's point of view), Anne Boleyn was executed in The Tower of London five months later. Now that all obstacles were gone, Mary felt that things would go back to normal. Until Henry VIII died at Whitehall, Mary was welcome at court. In Henry's eyes, she had completely submitted to his rule, to his laws, and to the Reformed religion. Her dissembling was marvelous. All pretence disappeared when her brother (by Henry and his third wife, Jane Seymour) Edward VI ascended the throne in 1547. Believing Edward was not old enough to decide about religion, Mary flaunted her Catholic beliefs, her crucifix, and had Mass said in her household.

She was impervious to threats, bullying, snubs, and questions before the council. Eventually, Edward and his advisors stopped attempting to turn Mary to the 'proper' religion. It was this non-submission to the tenets of Protestant Edward VI's court that made Edward extremely reluctant to leave the throne to his Catholic sister. In his final illness, Edward wrote Mary (and his sister, Protestant Elizabeth) out of the succession. The crown was willed to their mutual cousin, the Protestant Lady Jane Grey. Queen Jane reigned for only nine days. Mary Tudor might have been a Catholic, but she was in the proper line of succession. England turned Queen Mary's entry to London into a triumph. But, the honeymoon was brief. Focusing entirely on her personal agenda, and totally misreading the attitude of her country, Queen Mary quickly turned her efforts to bringing England back to The Pope.

Those who didn't hold with Mary Tudor's religious opinions quickly found their way to the stake. When Mary married Philip of Spain in Winchester Cathedral, it wasn't just heretics Mary ordered to be executed. Rebels, dissidents, grumblers... commoners and churchmen alike fed the flames at Smithfield, or felt the headsman's axe. "Bloody" Mary had been born. In total, Mary was responsible for sentencing 283 martyrs to the terrible death by burning at the stake. Anyone who dared to question her statutes was sentenced to be flogged thru the streets. Like so much of her life, Mary spent her last years in grief and bewilderment. On November 17, 1558, Mary Tudor breathed her last at St. James Palace, London. Sorrowfully, she knew that her countrymen's eyes were all looking in the direction of Hatfield, and Elizabeth.

3. La Voisin.

Catherine Monvoisin, known as "La Voisin", a French sorceress whose maiden name was Catherine Deshayes, was one of the chief personages in the famous affaire des poisons, which disgraced the reign of Louis XIV. Her husband, Monvoisin, was an unsuccessful jeweller, and she practised chiromancy and face-reading to retrieve their fortunes. She gradually added the practice of witchcraft, in which she had the help of a renegade priest, Étienne Guibourg, whose part was the celebration of the "black mass", an abominable parody in which the host was compounded of the blood of a little child mixed with horrible ingredients. She practiced medicine, especially midwifery, procured abortion and provided love powders and poisons. Her chief accomplice was one of her lovers, the magician Lesage, whose real name was Adam Coeuret.

The great ladies of Paris flocked to La Voisin, who accumulated enormous wealth. Among her clients were Olympe Mancini, comtesse de Soissons, who sought the death of the king's mistress, Louise de la Vallière; Mme. de Montespan, Mme de Gramont (la belle Hamilton) and others. The bones of toads, the teeth of moles, cantharides, iron filings, human blood and human dust were among the ingredients of the love powders concocted by La Voisin. The revelation of the treacherous intention of Mme. de Montespan to poison Louis XIV and of other crimes, planned by personages who could not be attacked without scandal which touched the throne, caused Louis XIV to close the chambre ardente, as the court was called, on the 1st of October 1680. It was reopened on the 19th of May 1681 and sat until the 21st of July 1682. Many of the culprits escaped through private influence. Among these were Marie Anne Mancini, duchesse de Bouillon, who had sought to get rid of her husband in order to marry the Duke of Vendôme, though Louis XIV banished her to Nérac.

Mme. de Montespan was not openly disgraced, because the preservation of Louis's own dignity was essential, and some hundred prisoners, among them the infamous Guibourg and Lesage, escaped the scaffold through the suppression of evidence insisted on by Louis XIV and Louvois. Some of these were imprisoned in various fortresses, with instructions from Louvois to the respective commandants to flog them if they sought to impart what they knew. Some innocent persons were imprisoned for life because they had knowledge of the facts. La Voisin herself was executed at an early stage of the proceedings, on the 20th of February 1680, after a perfunctory application of torture. The authorities had every reason to avoid further revelations. Thirty-five other prisoners were executed; five were sent to the galleys and twenty-three were banished. Their crimes had furnished one of the most extraordinary trials known to history.

2. Amelia Dyer.

Her name was used like that of the bogeyman to scare young children into being good. "If you don't behave," Victorian parents would say, "I'll send you to stay with Amelia Dyer." And everyone knew what that meant; it meant that you didn't come back.

"Wanted," read an ad, "respectable woman to take young child."

This was a common request in Victorian Britain, where life was very hard for any mother, especially unmarried mothers. The ad had been placed by Evelina Marmon, who two months earlier, in January 1896, had given birth in a boarding house in Cheltenham to a baby girl that she named Doris. Dyer had moved around many times, probably to evade detection of her horrific crimes. It was common in Victorian England for "Baby Farmers", or what we would call today, fostering agents, to place adverts in newspapers. the idea was that women who could not bring up their child would pay the baby farmer a fee, usually about £10, the baby farmer would then look after the child until a suitable home was found. In the case of Dyer, it is believed she may have farmed over 50 babies and young children, most of them, ending up in the river Thames. Dyer had been questioned several times by police about missing children, but always managed to avoid detection.

Dyer’s preferred method was to advertise to adopt or nurse a baby in return for an up-front fee and adequate clothing for the child. In her advertisements and meetings with clients, she assured them that she was respectable, married, and would provide a safe and loving home for the child. In reality Dyer pocketed the money and killed many of the babies within days - she later admitted killing one the same day it was placed in her care. Dyer strangled the infants, always with white tape, wrapped their bodies in paper packages and bags, and dumped them in rivers. It is not clear how long Dyer’s career as a murderer lasted, but it may have been as many as 20 years. Her family and friends testified at her trial that they had also been growing suspicious and uneasy about her activities, and it emerged that Dyer had narrowly escaped discovery several times.

During 1896 a section of the Thames was dredged, several bodies were found, and much evidence was gathered. Dyers address was found on one letter and police moved in. In Dyers house they found a mountain of unused baby clothes as well as copies of adverts and letters from mothers. Although police were certain that Dyer was responsible for many murder, they moved on only one, as this was all that was needed to remove her from society and send her to the noose. Amelia Dyer was hanged by James Billington at Newgate prison on Wednesday, the 10th June, 1896 for the murder of 4-month old Doris Marmon.

1. Elizabeth Bathory.

Csejthe Castle, a massive mountaintop fortress overlooking the village of Csejthe, was the site of Elizabeth's blood orgies and became know to the peasants as the castle of vampires and the hated 'Blood Countess.' Elizabeth was born in Hungary in 1560. Elizabeth and Count Ferencz Nadasdy had been betrothed since she was eleven years old. The marriage took place on May 8, 1575 when Elizabeth was fifteen. In those days, well before Women's Liberation, Elizabeth retained her own surname, while the Count changed his to Ferencz Bathory. The Count thrived on conflict and war, preferring the battlefield to domestic life at the castle, and earned a reputation as the 'Black Hero of Hungary. While Ferencz was away on one of his military campaigns, the Countess became bored with domestic chores. She looked around for something to occupy her.

Elizabeth began developing an interest in Black Magic. Thorko, a servant in her castle, instructed her in the ways of witchcraft, at the same time encouraging her sadistic tendencies. 'Thorko has taught me a lovely new one,' Elizabeth wrote to Ferencz. 'Catch a black hen and beat it to death with a white cane. Keep the blood and smear a little of it on your enemy. If you get no chance to smear it on his body, obtain one of his garments and smear it.' Now firmly rooted at her castle, Countess Elizabeth experimented in depravity with the help of Thorko, Ilona Joo (Elizabeth's former nurse), the witches Dorottya Szentes and Darvulia, and the dwarf major-domo Johannes Ujvary, who would soon become chief torturer. With the aid of this crew Elizabeth captured buxom servant girls at the castle, taking them to an underground room known as 'her Ladyship's torture chamber' and subjected them to the worst cruelties she could devise.

Under the pretext of punishing the girls for failing to perform certain trivial tasks, Elizabeth used branding irons, molten wax and knives to shed their blood. She tore the clothing from one girl, covered her with honey, and left her to the hunger of the insects of the woods. Soon, the Countess began attacking her bound victims with her teeth, biting chunks of bloody flesh from their necks, cheeks and shoulders. Blood became more of an obsession with Elizabeth as she continued her tortures with razors, torches, and her own custom made silver pincers. Elizabeth Bathory was a woman of exceptional beauty. Her long raven hair was contrasted with her milky complexion. Her amber eyes were almost catlike, her figure voluptuous. She was excessively vain and her narcissism drove her to new depths of perversion. As Elizabeth aged and her beauty began to wane, she tried to conceal the decline through cosmetics and the most expensive of clothes. But these would not cover the ever spreading wrinkles.

One fateful day a servant girl was attending to Elizabeth's hair and either pulled it or remarked that something was wrong with her mistress' headdress. The infuriated Countess slapped the girl so hard that blood spurted from her nose. The blood splashed against Elizabeth's face. Where the blood had touched her skin, the Countess observed in a mirror, a miracle had seemingly transpired. In her eyes, the skin had lost its lines of age. Elizabeth became exhilarated in the knowledge that she could regain her lost youth through vampirism. Darvulia instructed the credulous Elizabeth how she might again be young. The Countess believed the ancient credo that the taking of another's blood could result in the assimilation of that person's physical or spiritual qualities. Following the witch's instructions, Elizabeth had her torturers kidnap beautiful young virgins, slash them with knives and collect their blood in a large vat. Then the Countess proceeded to bathe in the virgin's blood. When she emerged from the blood she had seemingly regained her youth and radiance.

Elizabeth's minions procured more virgins from the neighboring villages on the pretext of hiring them as servants. When their bloodless corpses were discovered outside the castle, rumors quickly spread that vampires inhabited the old fortress. Countess Elizabeth continued such practices after the death of her husband in 1604. (Count Nadasdy apparently died of poisoning although his death was also ascribed to witchcraft.) When Darvulia died and Elizabeth found herself aging even more, another sorceress named Erzsi Majorova told her that the virginal victims must be of noble birth. But even though Elizabeth tortured young noblewomen and accompanied the blood baths with witchcraft rites, she could not retrieve her lost youth. For over a decade she perpetrated her acts of vampirism, mutilating and bleeding dry 650 maidens. Rumors spread that Elizabeth headed a terrible group of vampires that preyed upon the village maidens.

Reverend Andras Berthoni, a Lutheran pastor of Csejthe, realized the truth when Elizabeth commanded him to bury secretly the bloodless corpses. He set down his suspicions regarding Elizabeth in a note before he died. The Countess was becoming so notorious that her crimes could no longer be concealed. Using the note written by Reverend Berthoni, Elizabeth's cousin, Count Thurzo, came to Csejthe Castle. On New Year's Eve of 1610, Count Thurzo, Reverend Janos Ponikenusz, who succeeded Berthoni and had found the note, and some of the castle personnel found Elizabeth's underground torture chamber and there discovered not only the unbelievably mutilated bodies of a number of girls, but also the bloody Countess herself.

For political reason, Elizabeth never attended her trial. She remained confined in her castle while she and her sadistic accomplices were tried for their crimes. Elizabeth was tried purely on a criminal basis, while her cohorts were charged with vampirism, witchcraft and practicing pagan rituals. All of the torturers were beheaded, except for Ilona Joo and Dorottya Szentes, whose fingers were pulled off before they were burned alive. The Countess was found to be criminally insane and was walled up within a room of Csejthe Castle. Her guards passed food to her through a small hatch. The trial documents were then hidden away in the castle of Count Thurzo and remained there, apparently 'lost' for over a hundred years. Almost four years after her strange imprisonment, on August 14, 1614, a haggard looking Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess of Transylvania, was dead. She died alone, without a word of remorse.
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Create a free forum in seconds.
« Previous Topic · Advanced Discussion · Next Topic »
Add Reply