Elizabeth tortured and murdered numerous young women, this lead to her being known as one of the "true vampires" in history.
She was the daughter of George and Anna Bathory born in 1560 she grew up in the Slovak Republic, then part of the Hungarian Empire. Most of her adult life was spent at Castle Cachtice, near the town of Vishine, northeast of present day Bratislava. This is where the Austria, Hungary and the Slovak Republic came together.
Much of Hungary was overrun by the Ottoman Turks. This area was also split by religion. Elizabeths family sided with the wave of Protestantism. While she was a child she was subject to seizures and intense rage. Her cousin Steven in 1571 became Prince of Transylvania and about a decade later assumed the throne of Poland.
In 1574 Elizabeth became pregnant due to an affair with a peasant man. She was also engaged to Count Ferene Nadasdy at the same time. This marriage took place in May 1575. Her husband was away from home allot due to him being being a soldier. This left Elizabeth to manage the affairs of the Castle Sarvar, the Nadasdy family estate.
This was a period of cruel behavior toward those who were servants, Elizabeth's level of cruelty was noteworthy. She went out of her way to find reasons to torture and murder her victims. She would stick pins in various parts of their bodies. In the winter she executed her victims by having them striped naked and led out to the snow, and had water poured on them until they were frozen. Her husband also joined in this sport and taught her new ways to torture. For example he had a women striped naked and then covered in honey, then left outside to be bitten by thousands of insects.
Elizabeth's husband died in 1604, she then moved to Vienna after he was buried. Also she lived at her estate at Beclov and the manor house at Cachtice, located in present day Slovakia. She committed her most infamous crimes here. One of her cohorts that helped lead her to her ruin was Erzsi Majorova, she encouraged Elizabeth to include a few noble women as her victims. At some point in 1609, she killed a young noble woman and covered it by charges of suicide.
In 1610 a inquiry was started to investigate Elizabeth by 1611 she was sentenced to life imprisonment in her room at castle Cachtice. Food was passed through an opening and she got her air via a few slits in the walls. The evidence used was a list kept by Elizabeth in her handwriting noting the names of 650 of her victims. Her accomplices were sentenced to death.
Testimony during her trial claimed she bit the flesh of the girls while torturing them. This is the reason for her being linked to werewolfism and folklore states if your a werewolf in life in death your a vampire. She was also accused of draining the blood of her victims and bathing in it to retain her youth and beauty. Her records were sealed and King Matthias II forbade the mention of her name. A hundred years later a Jesuit priest, Lasylo Turoczy found copies of the original trial documents plus local stories that circulated among the people of Cachtice. With this he wrote a book of her life published in the 1720's this was during a wave of vampirism in Eastern Europe.