Free CRIMINAL MASTERMINDS (True Crime) by Anne Williams, Vivian Head, Sebastian Prooth Page A

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