Elizabeth Bathory is alleged to have been the most prolific serial killer of all time, responsible for butchering as many as 650 virgins and bathing in their blood. Her Hungarian water castles are the sites of gruesome ghost tours, a metal band named itself for her, and for years she was in the Guinness Book of World Records. The number of women she’s said to have killed is four times the population of an average 17th-century village, but when it comes to Bathory’s story, even the Guinness Book concedes that “it is impossible to separate fact from fiction.” Shelley Puhak disagrees: In her new book,The Blood Countess, she contends that Bathory was instead the victim of possibly the greatest misinformation campaign in history, brought against a powerful, wealthy woman at a tumultuous time. Lutherans and Calvinists were at one another's throats at the height of the Protestant Reformation, the Ottoman Empire lurked just across the border, and medicine in upheaval, with both new and old practices bringing accusations of heresy and witchcraft. It was a dark time to be a woman—especially one with 17 castles to her name, and no husband to defend her.

Go beyond the episode:

• Shelley Puhak's The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster

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