Elizabeth Bathory: History's most notorious female serial killer.

The blood countess of Hungary

Countess Elizabeth Bathory was born in a Noble family on August 7, 1560. Her father George Bathory was a very powerful man and the family owned land in the kingdom of Hungary.

Elizabeth grew up in wealth and power. Her life was almost perfect but throughout her life she suffered from severe seizures. So to treat her, many doctors back in the day performed some very disturbing treatments on her. Such as feeding her another healthy person's blood mixed with a part of their skull.

Many historians believe that these encounters with the doctors as a child turned her into the blood thirsty adult that she became later on. 

The Bathory family took marriage inside the family very seriously to maintain their royal bloodline. Even her parents were blood relatives. 

So, at the age of 10 Elizabeth was set to marry a man by the name of Ferenc Nadasdy. Imagine everyone's surprise and disappointment when, before the marriage, at the age of 13, she gave birth to a child and the father wasn't her Fianc. Regardless, Elizabeth was forced to give away the child to a local woman. 

In 1575, through a royal wedding they were married. After the marriage, they moved into Ferenc's family castle where he built a torture chamber for all her victims. When her husband would be away for work it was said that Elizabeth brought in many lovers to keep her company. 

After 25 years of marriage, in 1604 Ferenc passed away. Which gave full freedom to Elizabeth to go on a murder spree.

 

Elizabeth would torture and kill her victims in very creative ways. Her victims were mostly young girls from the ages of 10-14. These girls were poor and were lured into her castle with promises of a better life or sometimes abducted. Once in a while she would even prey on the daughters of the upper class.

So Elizabeth would bring these girls to her torture chamber and brutally torture them. The tortures included beating, burning, biting and even cannibalism sometimes. These were her source of pleasure and satisfaction, something to do in her leisure time. 

After she was done with all that, she would drink the blood of her victims and even bathe in it. She believed it was good for her health and also would keep her youthful forever. 

Elizabeth is estimated to have killed hundreds of women from 1590-1610. In her journal she stated to have tortured and killed 650 girls in the span of 20 years. For years she did whatever her heart desired and got away with it for her high social status and power.

But in 1610, all that came to an end when Elizabeth made a bold move. Elizabeth, through the help of her servants, began abducting the daughters of the Nobles. When their daughters started to go missing, the nobles did not sit quietly and started putting the pieces together. 

Count Thurzo jumped on the case and began investigating. When he went into her castle to investigate, he ended up walking into Elizabeth torturing a girl who was tied up and there was another girl who was already dead. 

So Elizabeth along with her servants got arrested. They brought everyone in custody and many people started coming forward. Many servants even stated that they saw her preying on her victims but couldn't say anything, well because they were her servants. 

Almost everyone received a death sentence, except Elizabeth herself. Because she was member of a royal family. So instead they built a prison for her inside her own castle. 

After living in house arrest for years, in 1614, at the age of 43, this vicious serial killer passed away in her sleep. 

The urban legend of the Bunny Man

 The infamous Bunny Man of Virginia

Every state in the US has their own urban legend. For Virginia, it's the Bunny man. Virginia is one of the oldest states in America, rich in culture and history as well as in unsettling urban legends. 

The legend of the Bunny Man started when in the 1970's one couple decided to go on a drive and when they parked near a bridge, they saw a man in a bunny costume. All of a sudden the man went up to them and started screaming at them to get off of 'his' property. And before they knew it they saw glass shattering so they tried to escape as fast as they could. The woman even saw a hatchet. 

They immediately went to the police station and filed a report. That is when the police started receiving some other reports about a man dressed in a bunny costume. 

Still to this day, it is believed that if one goes near the bridge during Halloween, they will most likely encounter the Bunny Man. And he'll kill them, skin them and hang them from the bridge. 

Few days after the incident, there was construction going on near the site, A security guard was doing his duty, that is when he saw a man hacking at the roof of a nearby house with an axe. The security guard called out to the man and when the man turned around, he saw that the man was dressed in a full bunny costume. But the Bunny Man threatened the security guard to get off of his property or he was going to chop his head off with the same ax.

The guard reported the incident to the police but they couldn't find any evidence of any Bunny Man. That is when the reporters jumped in and started making headlines. This is how the mysterious man dressed in a bunny costume got the name "Bunny Man".

But there are other more terrifying cases. It is said that once 3 boys went near the bridge and they started chanting the name 'Bunny Man'. The next day they were found dead, hanging from the bridge. 

According to another case, once a boy was driving through the bridge with his parents, when he suggested that they should stop there for a while. That is when he killed his family before killing himself. Some say that it was the presence of the Bunny Man that influenced him to do so.

Over 50 different people claimed they saw the Bunny Man, but the police didn't find any traces of him. So everyone started wondering who this Bunny Man really is. So there are many different conspiracies. Different articles and different sources suggest different ones.

Some believe that the infamous mental asylum of Virginia was once traveling through the particular bridge with it's patients in a bus. But the bus had been in an accident and all of the patience died except two. Douglas and Lawrence. So one day the police went to look for them. But they found Lawrence's body hung up in the woods with a morgue note tied up in his toe. And the note said "You will never catch me" and it was signed by the Bunny Man. 

So the police realized it was obviously Douglas and they have to catch him as fast as they can. During that time they started getting a lot of calls from the locals stating that they're finding dead, hanged rabbits everywhere. It seemed like he was eating those bunnies for survival but also because he enjoyed killing them. Now some believe that Douglas was fascinated with bunnies mostly because he murdered his entire family during Easter. That is why he was in the asylum in the first place. 

Now according to some sources the police never caught the Bunny Man. While some others believe that right when they were about to catch him, he ran near the bridge where he was hit by a train. But interestingly enough, they never found his body. 

So, that was the urban legend of the infamous Bunny Man. 

The unsolved case of a hidden cult

 The case of Tate and Terrie Rowland

Tate Rowland was born in a small town in Texas, called Childress. It was a very small town and Tate was popular among many. Tate was a bit of a wild child. He had quite a reputation around the sheriff's office.

 Tate also had a girlfriend named Karen. She belonged to a wealthy family and she was well known too. Tate and Karen would constantly get into fights but then soon make up again. 

One day, their fight escalated and he tried to choke her. So Karen pressed charges but it didn't go any further. But he moved to Louisiana. During springtime when he went back to town, he found out that Karen ended up getting married while he was away. He was upset, sure but he did move on quickly.

On 26th July, 1988, around 6:00 PM Tate's friend Chad went to Tate's parent's house and told them that Tate had hung himself. At first they didn't believe him because of how emotionless Chad's face was. 

 Chad took Tate's parents to the place where Tate had committed suicide. They found him hanging from a tree. Apparently Tate's dad had to take him down the tree. 

The police got to the place and Chad was the first one they started interrogating. According to his statement, around 5:00 PM that afternoon, they met around a small field area to drink some beers. Then suddenly Tate strung a rope over a tree and announced that he was going to hang himself. Chad thought that he was kidding and he went to throw a beer can away. But when he came back Tate had already done the deed. 

But the Police didn't believe the story. Because when someone is hanged, there's only one robe mark above the Adams apple. But Tate had two. So the police suspected that he was strangled first and then hung. 

The police questioned Chad again after 2 days and this time he changed his story. He said that the first time Tate tried to commit suicide the rope broke so they went to his house again and brought another rope. He said he lied the first time because he didn't want to get into any trouble for not stopping him.

 Regardless Tate's death was listed under suicide and they didn't even do an autopsy. Many thought he was just very upset about Karen which led him to do such a thing.  However, something very interesting happened at his funeral. 

Many people noticed a mysterious lady, dressed all in black and her face was covered with a black veil. But she left before anyone could talk to her. There was also this other kid who was chanting the word 'Suicide' over and over again. 

Many other odd incidents started happening after that.

Few days after his death the police got a tip. So a mile away from the place where they found Tate, someone spotted a cow skull lodged in a tree. Beneath the tree there was a pile of sticks and rocks and it formed a circle. Another night, an officer saw a figure standing near Tate's grave. When he got there the figure was gone but he saw that there was tobacco spit all over his tombstone and there was also a burned cross. 

By this point, the rumors started to spread. Most of the people in town believed that Tate was a member of a cult and they killed him because he disappointed them in some way. Many even accused Karen of witchcraft and she was the one who made Tate join the cult in the first place.

Now around this time many attempts of kidnapping started to take place. The local school staff mentioned that they had seen a few people waiting in their cars in the school parking lot. They didn't recognize these people. One of them even tried to snatch a kid but the kid got away. 

So people were getting more and more sure that there was in fact a cult in town. At that point someone came forward with a confession.

A 15 year old boy by the name of Ray was arrested one night for drunk driving. Later he told the police that he was a member of a satanic cult in town and that he had been near the tree when Tate was hanged. But the next day he stated that he didn't remember saying anything of that kind. People even started calling his house "Devil house" because of a painting on the back of his house. 

Few months later when things started going back to normal, that is when Tate's sister Terrie was found dead in Ray's 'devil house'. 

Terrie was going through a rough patch in her life. One night she partied with some people who were close to Ray's brother. The next morning she was found dead by one of her friends. According to the autopsy report, Terrie had more than twice the legal blood alcohol limit and she died by choking on her own vomit. 

The police couldn't find any evidence but the people in town thought otherwise. Many believed that Tate and Terrie's deaths were linked somehow. Perhaps through a cult. 

Fortunately, One sheriff started a fresh investigation in the case. And he came across some very interesting evidence. 

They found that Ray's brother tried to commit suicide by swallowing almost 30 tablets of Elavil. Ironically, when 3 years after Tate's death they exhumed his body from the cemetery, they found some traces of the same drug in his body through autopsy. And after doing a new autopsy on Terrie's body, they yet again, found the drug Elavil. 

Many weird and suspicious activities happened after that. But apparently the police found nothing. Still to this day the case of Tate and Terrie Rowland remains a mystery. 

John List: America's most wanted

 The 18 year case of John List.

John Emil List was born on 17th September, 1925 in Bay City, Michigan. John followed his father's footsteps and became a Sunday school teacher and a devout Lutheran. During world war11 he enrolled in the army and worked as a laboratory technician. In 1946, after getting discharged from the army he enrolled in the University of Michigan. 

During the 1950's when the Korean war escalated, John was asked to serve the army again. Around this time he met Helen Morris Taylor. Helen was beautiful and already had a daughter. The two of them connected and soon got married. Later the family moved to Northern California. 

John then started to work at a paper company in Kalamazoo. There they had 3 children(Patricia, John Jr, Frederick) and started a family. 

Things were going good for the List family, but then in 1959 things started going downhill. When Helen became a raging alcoholic. It was said that she became very unstable at this time. She took out most of her anger on John. 

In 1965 John was offered a position at a bank in New Jersey. So the family, along with John's mother, moved there. They moved to a 19 room Victorian mansion called "Breeze Knoll". 

Everyone thought they had a "perfect life". His coworkers kind of envied him, but they also stated that John was 'cold'. Actually John  lacked social skills and that was the reason he lost his job. But instead of telling his family, he would go to the train station and sit there all day. So no one would know that he had lost his job. 

But the bills were due and he needed to come up with a plan soon. So he came up with a plan..

On 19th November, 1971, John decided to murder his whole family. At first he shot his wife in the head from behind, who was just enjoying her morning in the house. Then he went to his mother's room and shot her right above the left eye. In the afternoon when his kids, Patricia and Frederick, arrived home from school, he shot both of them in the head as well. Then he went into the kitchen and made himself some lunch. 

Afterwards, he went to his bank and closed his and his mother's account and took out all the money from her account. Then he went to his son, John Jr's Soccer game. He watched him play. But after they got home, he shot his oldest son as well. He shot him multiple times because according to John "he tried to resist and run away".

Now John considered himself  religious. So after committing all the murders he wrote a 5 page letter to his pastor, confessing to all the murders. He said that he killed his family to save their souls, and that the 70's were a very sinful time and he was worried that his family was giving into the temptations. 

Then he put the bodies in sleeping bags and kept them in the ballroom of the mansion. He even cut off himself from all the family portraits, so when the police do show up, they won't find him. He turned down the thermostat, turned on the radio and then just like that, he was gone.

So the family used to be very reserved, so no one came to check on them. John even stopped milk, mail and newspaper deliveries. But the neighbors noticed that all the lights were always turned on in the house. But then the lights began to burn out one by one. That is when they got suspicious. 

A month after the incident the neighbors reported the police and they immediately found the bodies. 

They searched and searched for John but they found 0 to no evidence. All the reliable evidence had already been destroyed. 

But 18 years later in 1989 John was found through the famous TV show 'America's Most Wanted'. In that show, they showed a forensic facial sculpture of John. Frank Bender created the sculpture according to what he thought John would look like after all these years. He even gave him glasses because he had a theory that John probably used glasses to disguise himself. And he was completely right about that. 

A couple in Denver watched the show and they realized that the sculpture looked oddly similar to their old neighbor. So they called the hotline and through this couple they were able to find John. 

They arrested him and ironically he looked exactly like the sculpture. He was even wearing the same frame of glasses. John stood by his fake identity for a month, but when they showed him all the evidence, he finally confessed.

So here's what John did in those 18 years:

According to John's statement, After the murders, he left the family car near the airport, then traveled by train and bus from New Jersey to Michigan and then to Colorado. He then went to Denver and took an accounting job there with the name Robert Peter Clark. 

In 1985, he married a woman by the name of Dolores Miller. Then they moved to Virginia and freely lived there for many years. 

Trial:

In his trial, John stated that back in the day he was financially struggling. He even blamed his wife's alcoholism at one point. Psychiatrists said that he had obsessive compulsive disorder. So for him there were only two options. Either ask for help or kill his family. Nothing in between. John was very prideful so asking anyone for help wasn't an option. He said that he was sparing them from the shame. He also believed that if he kills them, they'll go to heaven. 

On 12th October, 1990, he was convicted of five counts of first degree murder and sentenced to 5 consecutive terms of life imprisonment. He was ineligible for parole for almost 75 years. 

At the age of 82, on 21st March, 2008 John died from pneumonia. Regardless, John showed 0 remorse and no guilt for his actions. 

The woman who killed men with poisonous makeup

 Giulia Tofana: The serial poisoner.

Giulia Tofana is one of the most successful serial killers of all time. She killed over 600 men with her poisonous makeup. Yet she isn't talked about enough.

The case took place in the 1600's in Italy. Now, Giulia still to this day remains a mystery. There aren't much information about her. Although she was possibly the daughter of Thofania d'Adamo who was executed for the murder of her husband. Some say that Giulia learned how to make poison from her mother, and that her mother passed the recipe on to her. Some others believe that it was her own recipe. Giulia did spend a lot of time with apothecaries.

She loved working with medicines and drugs and she was good at it too. She loved making her own potions. That is how she made her infamous poison 'Aqua Tofana'. People said a few drops of it was, "Sufficient to destroy a man". 

As deadly the poison was, it didn't appear to be. It rather looked very normal. Like women's cosmetics or oil. 

So she, including her daughter, began to sell it to other women. At first she disguised it as powdered makeup. Then she sold it in small vials. 

The motive here was that, Giulia wanted to help women who were stuck in difficult and abusive marriages. So she would sell Aqua Tofana to women and they would poison their husbands with it. Apparently it was their only way out. Although, sometimes she sold it to men too. 

 Now people loved Aqua Tofana. Mostly because it was a slow action poison. So the deaths looked very natural and gave them time to write their wives a will.  Also it was colorless, tasteless and was in a liquid form. 

For almost 50 years Giulia sold her poison. But no one raised a finger at her because her clients were very protective and secretive of her. To everyone else she was just a woman who sold cosmetics. 

Many women were trained on how to act while poisoning. They were suggested to mix a small drop of the potion in their husbands food each day. When the husband would fall ill they were suggested to act very stressed and upset. And no one suspected them. Giulia even taught them how to act after the murder. She told them to act depressed and distressed. She even told them to demand a post-mortem. That way no one would suspect them. 

Giulia and her daughter sold Aqua Tofana for decades in Italy. Afterwards, they went to Naples and then Rome. They even changed up their game a little bit by putting labels on the bottles. This made the product even more convincing that it was, in fact, a beauty product. 

Giulia didn't just hand out her product randomly. She always made sure to do her research and do a background check on these women. But even after so much caution, things went downhill for her in 1650.

So, one day a woman went to Giulia and asked her for some aqua Tofana. Giulia did all her formalities and gave her the poison. Later the lady added a few drops to her husband's soup. But when he started eating it, she got cold feet. 

She yelled and begged him to not eat the soup. So he beat her up and asked her what's in the soup. So she confessed. He then took her to the authorities of Rome. They hooked her to a torture device and made her confess. 

After Giulia heard about it, she went to a church and asked for sanctuary. While she was there, rumors started spreading that she had poisoned the main water supply of Rome and people were furious. They went to the church and demanded the authorities to hand her over or they were burning the church down. 

After they got Giulia, they tortured her till she confessed. According to her confession, she killed over 600 men from 1633-1651. They even made her name some of her clients. 

In 1659, Giulia, along with her daughter and 3 employees was executed in Campo de'Fiori, Rome. Giulia's body was even thrown over the wall of the same church that offered her sanctuary. Even some of her clients were also punished. 

Many believed that the numbers of the victims were exaggerated by Giulia to make the tortures stop and somewhat satisfy the authorities. Many even believe that she was completely innocent and that they were blaming innocent women for everything at that time. 

Still to this day the story of Giulia Tofana and her infamous poison remains a mystery. 

Gerald Stano: The serial confessor.

 Serial killer or not? 

Gerald Eugene Stano was born on September 12th, 1951. His birth name was actually Paul Zeininger. When he was 6 months old his mother decided to give him away for adoption, because she was unable to take care of him. Paul was very malnourished and was surviving on his own feces. They said that 6 months old Gerald had been functioning at an 'Animalistic level'. 

A nurse at the orphanage, named Norma Stano and her husband Eugene Stano decided to adopt Paul and they named him Gerald Eugene Stano. They knew Gerald wasn't the perfect child, he had many problems really, bad temper, little to no friends, bad grades etc. But they loved him regardless. 

As a teen Gerald was constantly getting in trouble. He was even arrested couple of times. At the age of 15, his family moved to Pennsylvania. 

Now he didn't get his GED until he was 21. Then he went to a computer school. He later on got a job at a hospital but it didn't last because he was caught stealing from a coworker. 

Gerald was kind of having an existential crisis. He just didn't know where he belonged or what he was meant to do with his life. His parents suggested him to move to Florida and take care of his grandmother. 

After moving to Florida, Gerald just moved from one job to another. In the 70's he married a woman by the name of Terresa. She was a hairstylist and she managed to give him a job at her fathers gas station. 

However, in 1976 Terresa filed for divorce because Gerald was constantly physically abusing her. 

In 1980, a 20 year old woman was hitchhiking home and looking for a ride. At that moment Gerald spotted her and offered her a ride home. Now it is unclear what actually happened in that car, but it is said that, Gerald asked the woman for sexual favors and she just laughed at him. This pissed Gerald off, so he stabbed her to death in his car. Then he disposed of  her body. Police found her body 2 weeks later.

On 25th March, 1980 Gerald took a sex worker to a local hotel and attacked her. He took money from her and stabbed her, cut her with a bottle opener and because it wasn't enough, he threw acid on her. Fortunately, she was able to escape from the hotel room. Once she was out, she was spotted by the police, she told them everything. Gerald Stano was finally arrested. 

Interrogation of Gerald Stano:

After Gerald was brought in for interrogation, police knew something was wrong with him. They decided to ask him about the other unsolved cases that were going around. 

The main officer in this case was a man by the name of Paul Crow. After interrogating for a while Paul decided to become friends with Gerald to get information out of him. Gerald loved him, he told him anything and everything. Paul's method had worked, and he was able to receive several confessions. 

Here are a few:

• Gerald picked up a college student named Mary Carol one night in Daytona, Florida. Gerald offered her a ride, they stopped for beers at one point. Gerald stated that for some reason she pissed him off, so he pulled out a knife and started stabbing her.
• Once Gerald picked up a woman from a bar. Her name was Cathy and she was only 17. They drove around for a while then he pretended to have car troubles. When Cathy got out of the car he shot her multiple times. 
• Gerald picked up a woman by the name of Cheryl from a hotel. They drove around, smoked some weed. When Gerald made sexual offers, she declined. So he strangled and stabbed her. Then he disposed her body in a swamp area. 

So Gerald was just confessing to all these murders without hesitation. According to his statement, from 1973-1980 he claimed to kill 33 women. The ages ranged from 13-30's. He even claimed to strangle a 12 year old girl that he used to play with growing up. 

The psychiatrist found it very odd how none of his victims were sexually assaulted. They assumed he committed those murders just for the thrill of it all. 

Gerald was only found guilty for 9 of the murders and received the death penalty for only one of them. On March 23rd, 1998 he was executed by the electric chair.

AFTERMATH:

Even though the police found many evidence against him, some things were just not adding up. There were a lot of plot holes in his story and the timeline wasn't accurate.

Many believed that Gerald was a serial confessor and not a serial killer. They said he just liked the attention that he was receiving from everyone. 

Some people looked into the case, and they realized that Gerald was almost being "spoon fed" the answers by Paul, the main investigator. They said he gathered a bunch of unsolved cases and blamed it all on Gerald. It was almost as if he was leading him to the answers he wanted to hear. In 1995, Paul Crow was removed by a grand jury for corruption. 

Some believe that Gerald only committed a few of the murders, and the corrupt cop blamed the rest on him. Where some others believe that he committed none of those murders and everything was blamed on him.