EVIL PSYCHOPATHS (True Crime) (4 page)

Cesare was not best pleased and attacked the young chamberlain as he knelt before the papal throne. Perotto survived but was thrown into prison. A few days later it was announced that he had ‘fallen into the Tiber against his will’. The chambermaid who had helped Perotto and Lucrezia was also made to ‘swim with the fishes’.

The child born of the liaison between Lucrezia and Perotto was named the infans Romanus (Roman infant) by Alexander and he issued two papal bulls concerning him. The first said that he was the child of Cesare and an unknown woman; the second acknowledged that he, the Pope, was the father. Some have suggested that Lucezia insisted on the two bulls because Perotto was not, in fact, the father, although she herself was unsure whether it was her father or her brother who had sired the child.

Her next husband was Alfonso, Prince of Aragon and Duke of Bisceglie. One night he was set upon by a gang of armed men in St. Peter’s Square. He was brought to his apartments, close to death and Lucrezia knew that Cesare had been behind the attack. As he lay wounded in his room, Cesare arrived, ordering everyone out. When they returned Alfonso lay dead. He had been strangled.

Lucrezia’s third husband was chosen by Cesare. The heir to the Duchy of Ferrarra, Prince Afonso d’Este, was twenty-four and a childless widower. In return for the repeal of his papal tax and a huge dowry, he agreed to marry the twenty-one-year-old Lucrezia.

She had four children by the Prince, but this did not stop her having a fling with the poet Pietro Bembo.

She died on 24 June 1519 at the age of thirty-eight shortly after giving birth to a fifth child. In her latter years she had even gained some respect and managed to kick off the stigma of murder, incest and moral turpitude.

Countess Erzsébet Báthory

Villages would wait in dread as, in the dead of night, a carriage, drawn by powerful black stallions, would drive noisily past. Inside would be young girls, cowering in fear. They had every right to be afraid. They would enter the huge Castle Csejthe and never be seen again. People living nearby reported hearing horrific screams emanating from behind the castle walls. There was talk of witchcraft, orgies and vile practices.

Nothing could be done about it, however. The beautiful denizen of the castle, Countess Erzsébet Báthory, was as well-connected as they came. Her family included counts, princes, bishops and cardinals. She was a cousin of the prime minister, Thurso, her uncle Stephen had been King of Poland and she had once been married to the warrior count known to Hungarians as the ‘Black Hero’ due to the courage he showed in battles against the hated Turks.

King Mathias II of Hungary was reluctant to take action against her because if he did and the allegations and rumours turned out to be untrue, the political repercussions would be dreadful. Eventually, however, he decided that it was time to bring an end to the rumours that had been spreading about the Countess. Either that, or bring an end to what was going on behind the forbidding walls of the castle. He sent a party to investigate, a party that included her cousin the prime minister. They had to be careful – she was, after all, said to be a practitioner of the black arts and some even claimed that she used cats as emissaries and to attack people – but in all likelihood, on seeing her cousin’s colours, she would open the castle’s massive gates to them.

They had heard that she was likely to be holding one of her late-night gatherings where, they had heard, there were all kinds of goings-on. Screams were often heard coming from the castle while she held these events. The king’s mind had been made up when he heard that nine girls from good families had gone missing in the vicinity of the castle.

Most of the windows of the castle that they could see were in darkness as they approached, but the party was surprised to find that there was no guard at the open door. They entered a great hall. Immediately they found a young, partly-clothed girl lying on the floor. She was unnaturally pale, as if the blood had been drained out of her body. She was dead and another girl they found nearby was close to death. She, too, looked as if the blood had been sucked from her body and the many piercings that peppered her body seemed to confirm that fact. Further on, a woman was found chained to a post. She had been whipped and her body was lacerated and burnt. Like the others, her blood appeared to have been taken.

As they descended into the dungeons, they could hear screams and moans from below and the smell of decomposition was terrible. They discovered cells filled with women and children who had been beaten and abused. They released them and escorted them from the castle, before returning to continue their grim search.

No one wrote a description of that night’s discoveries, so horrific were they. In a large hall, illuminated by torches, they found all the signs of a drunken orgy having taken place. Implements of torture were scattered around. But there was no sign of the castle’s owner. She had fled.

Born in either 1560 or 1561, she was the daughter of Gyrögy and Anna Báthory, who had embraced the new religion of Protestantism and she was raised on an estate in Transylvania. Her cousin Stephen, prince of Transylvania, who attempted to unite Europe against the Turks, was known for his savagery and many have claimed that he provides clear evidence of mental instability in the Báthory family, Erzsébet herself suffered from fits as a child, which, it has been suggested, indicate that she may have suffered from epilepsy. It is also said that she was very promiscuous and got pregnant at the age of fourteen by a peasant.

Aged 15, she married Count Ferencz Nádasdy, whose family, while powerful, shared with her family a reputation for being dangerously unstable and ruthlessly cruel. Her husband was a warrior who was rarely at home, giving Erzsébet ample opportunity to indulge in unsavoury pastimes. That was not unusual in her family, though. Her aunt was reputed to be a witch, she had an uncle who was an alchemist and a devil-worshipper and her brother was a paedophile. Her nurse was said to be a practitioner of black magic and was reputed to have been involved in the sacrifice of children.

As if that was not bad enough, her husband had a number of unsavoury habits, many of which he passed on to his young wife. He was partial to beating servant girls to within an inch of their lives or spreading honey on their naked bodies and tying them down in the open, leaving them to be bitten and stung by insects. When he was not doing that, he was freezing girls to death by pouring water over their naked bodies in the icy depths of winter and leaving them to die. His idea of a love token to his wife was a black magic spell brought back from whichever land he was fighting in.

She had begun to practice witchcraft as she got older and is reputed to have carried everywhere with her a parchment made from the caul – the membrane surrounding the baby in the womb that sometimes covers a baby when it is born. The parchment is said to have carried an incantation that would protect Erzsébet.

She moved into her husband’s castle and began her reign of terror over her servants. Beatings were commonplace and death was irrelevant to her when it was the death of someone of such lowly status. Her husband taught her the fine art of beating someone to the brink of death. She was vain, too and was known to have at least five changes of clothing a day and she demanded constant reassurance about how beautiful she was and how fine and pale her skin was.

While he was gone, she maintained the regime of cruelty and torture, even sending him letters in which she described her latest grim escapades. In his absence, she also took countless lovers, both male and female. Her entourage was specially selected by her to include people adept at the black arts, sorcery and alchemy. One strange individual arrived at the castle with a reputation for drinking human blood. She urged him to teach her everything about it.

Erzsébet and Nádasdy had four children, but he became ill in 1601 and died finally three years later. She was a widow at forty-four.

She returned to her estates after a spell in Vienna and it was at this point that pretty young women began to disappear from neighbouring villages. She was encouraged in this practice by friends, who joined in her vile activities. The girls were promised that they were going to be taken into service at the castle, but once there, they were subjected to horrific treatment, locked up in cellars, beaten and tortured, often by Erzsébet, herself. Their bodies were then cut up with razors and burned.

She was known to sew servants’ mouths shut or force them to eat pieces of their own flesh or burn their genitals. When she was ill and could not indulge in these horrors, she would attempt to bite those who approached her bed, like a wild animal. There was so much blood, that ashes were scattered around her bed to absorb it.

From peasant girls, she shifted her attention to girls of noble families, confident that no one would try to stop her. She offered to teach social graces to them, but when they arrived at Castle Csejthe, she would torture and kill them, as she had done the peasant girls. Even though the girls’ families were afraid to speak out against the nobility, it was a step too far and, like many psychopaths, she mistakenly began to think she was invincible. Following the murder of one young woman, whose death she had tried to make look like suicide, the king finally decided enough was enough.

The investigating party found bones and human remains, as well as clothing belonging to the missing girls, strewn throughout the castle’s chambers. There were bodies everywhere, their arms and eyes missing. Some had been burned or partially burned and many had been buried in shallow graves around the castle. Dogs ran loose with body-parts in their mouths.

She failed to attend her trial which began on 2 January 1611. Twenty-one judges sat in judgement, with Judge Theodosius de Szulo of the Royal Supreme Court at their head. Countless witnesses testified, many of whom had suffered at her hands in Castle Csejthe or were members of the families of the missing girls. It was her accomplices, however, who provided the most damning testimony. They were each asked the same eleven questions, amongst them whose murders had they taken part in, who had brought the girls to the castle, what types of torture were used? Ficzko, a dwarf who worked for Erzsébet testified that he was uncertain how many women he helped to kill, but he did know that thirty-seven girls had been murdered. He described how if they did not come willingly, they were beaten unconscious and carried to the castle. Describing the types of torture and beatings, he said, ‘They tied the hands and arms very tightly with Viennese cord, they were beaten to death until the whole body was black as charcoal and their skin was rent and torn. One girl suffered more than two hundred blows before dying. Dorko, (another accomplice and procurer) cut their fingers one by one with shears and then slit the veins with scissors.’ A nurse, Ilona Joo, confessed to taking part in the murder of about fifty girls. She described how she pushed red-hot pokers into victims’ mouths or up their noses. She described how her mistress had placed her fingers in the mouth of one girl and pulled hard until the sides split open. Victims were forced to indulge in deviant sexual practices and one was made to strip flesh off her own arm.

The Countess and her accomplices were convicted of 80 murders, although King Mathias wrote in a letter that there may have been as many as 300 victims and one estimate puts the number at 650.

While her accomplices were gruesomely tortured and killed – fingers pulled off, buried alive or beheaded – the Countess was imprisoned for life, proclaiming her innocence throughout. King Mathias had wanted her to be executed, but before he could have such a sentence pronounced, she would have had to be stripped of her royal immunity.

She was kept locked up in a small suite of rooms in her own castle at Cahtice, with the walls and windows bricked up, claiming all the while that she was innocent of all charges, blaming the girls’ deaths on a whole range of illnesses from disease to blood poisoning. She lasted only three years in captivity, dying in either 1613 or 1614.

Countess Erzsébet Báthory is fairly unique in the annals of criminal history in being a woman who indulged in cannibalism and vampirism. However, if she did take such an unhealthy interest in the blood of her victims – she was even said to bathe in it – it was more than likely because she thought that by doing so she could somehow preserve her looks.

Whatever the reason, whether she used the blood because she thought she was ‘worth it’ or merely got a sexual thrill from spilling it, she was one of the most prolific psychopathic women killers who ever lived.

Ivan The Terrible

Ivan the Terrible did everything to excess – drinking, worshipping, loving, hating and especially, killing.

The 16th century in Russia was a violent time when life was cheap, especially if you were a Tsar, trying to hold power against rival nobles and external forces. Ivan’s childhood was traumatic and possibly holds the secret to his later personality. That, coupled with an attack of what was probably encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can lead to confusion, hallucinations and altered states of consciousness following the death of his first wife, Anastasia, in 1560 probably contributed to the mood swings, the violent rages and the psychopathic tendencies that he would display throughout his life.

In 1533, when he was aged just three, his father, Tsar Vasili III, died from blood poisoning following the development of a boil on his leg. Ivan’s mother became regent for the young Grand Prince of Moscow, as Ivan was titled at the time. As was often the case in those perilous times, however, she was poisoned five years later. It was no great loss to the then eight year-old Ivan, in some ways, as his mother had never been that close to him. What was more of a loss to him was the removal of his beloved nurse, Agrafena, who was forced to retire to a convent. At this point, a powerful Moscow family, the Shuiskys, seized power, reigning until 1544. It was a terrible time for Ivan and his younger brother, Yuri. They were molested and ignored and had to scavenge for food in their own palace, dressed in rags and uncared for.

The Shuiskys were involved in a feud with rival noble family, the Belskys and the fighting would often be brought into the royal palace, gangs of armed men bursting into the young prince’s quarters, causing damage and stealing whatever they could get their hands on. The palace seethed with intrigue and murders and beatings became commonplace. Ivan witnessed horrendous sights such as the skinning alive of his loyal advisor, Fyodor Mishurin.

Ivan, retreating into his own world, took out his frustrations on birds – he would mutilate them, pulling out their feathers, gouging out their eyes and dissecting them while still alive.

By the age of thirteen, Ivan had had enough of the Shuiskys and ordered the arrest of Prince Andrew Shuisky. He was thrown to a pack of hungry dogs and the nobles got the message; Ivan was in charge.

He indulged some of his basest instincts over the next few years. He was in the habit of throwing cats and dogs from the high walls of the Kremlin and roaming, roaring drunk, through the streets of the capital with his equally drunk cronies, beating up whoever got in their way and raping any woman unfortunate to bump into them. As if that was not enough, he often hanged, strangled or buried his rape victims alive. If he was feeling particularly adventurous, he would order his men to throw them to bears.

Surprisingly, Ivan was also a voracious reader, devouring historical and religious texts. He was also devout in his worship, although, as in many other things, he was a little extreme. In his worship of religious icons, he would throw himself recklessly to the floor, banging his head and creating a patch on the skin of his forehead.

He was crowned Tsar in 1547, a position that meant he had to get married. To this end, he organised a beauty parade of a kind, at which noblemen presented their daughters to him. He chose the very beautiful Anastasia Romanova for his wife and her influence seemed for a while to have brought his excesses under control. The couple would go on to have six children, but only two survived infancy.

The first years of his rule were marked by significant progress in Russia. He enjoyed the advice of three wise men – Alexej Adasjev, the priest, Silvester and the Metropolitan – head of the Russian Church – Macarius. With their help and council, he introduced reforms in government, minimising the corrupt power of the nobles, or boyars, as they were called. The church was reformed and he created an elite force in the army, known as the Streltsi.

He made territorial gains, too, conquering the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. He took several cities on the Baltic and opened important trading ties with England.

He was also seriously ill during this period, almost dying of a fever in March 1553. It may have been pneumonia but some have speculated that he suffered an attack of encephalitis. Around this time, he asked his boyars to swear an oath of allegiance to his baby son, Dmitri. They refused and Ivan would never forgive them, resolving from that day to destroy his enemies.

It was a tragic time. A few months after his recovery, he and his family visited a monastery where they planned to give thanks for the restoration of his health. A nurse accidentally let the baby prince slip from her arms into a nearby river. The baby drowned and Ivan was devastated.

In 1560, he was distraught once again when his wife Anastasia died following a long illness. Ivan seems to have suffered a nervous breakdown as a result, banging his head on the wall and destroying furniture in an emotional fury. It was a fury that deepened into depression and paranoia – he believed the boyars had poisoned his wife. The mood swings, sudden rages and habitual cruelty that he had displayed when he was younger, returned. He ordered the arrest of a number of nobles who were tortured and killed. He lost his three advisors – Adjasev died in prison, Silvester was sent into exile and Macarius died of natural causes in 1563.

There was nothing and no one to restrain him now from his worst excesses.

But, suddenly, in 1564, he abdicated and left Moscow. There was a clamour for his return which was exactly what the manipulative Tsar wanted. He agreed to return on condition that they accept him as an absolute ruler with the power to punish anyone he believed was being disloyal towards him. He also demanded the power to confiscate their estates. The people agreed and he returned even more powerful than when he had left.

In order to impose his will, he created a new military force – the Oprichniki. They consisted mainly of criminals who dressed in black and rode black horses. They instilled terror in anyone seeing them ride past and quite rightly so – they were known to even slaughter priests at the altar.

It got worse. Ivan transformed the Oprichniki into a kind of religious order - the troops were the monks and he was their abbot. Their religious ceremonies were abominations. Depraved masses would be followed by orgies during which women were raped, tortured and killed. Ivan is reported to have used sharpened, red-hot pincers to tear ribs out of people’s chests during these events.

But these perversions would be followed by abject repentance on his part. Sometimes he would bang his head on the ground before the altar until it was bloody and bruised.

He led his Oprichniki in horrors. Once he ordered a peasant woman to be stripped naked and used as target practice by them and on another occasion, he ordered them to throw hundreds of beggars into a lake to drown. Another trick was to lash a nobleman to a barrel of gunpowder and watch, laughing, as the unfortunate man was blown to pieces.

One gruesome story tells of the horrific demise of Prince Boris Telupa. He had a stake inserted from the lower part of his body up and out his neck. He remained alive, impaled on the stake for fifteen hours of excruciating pain. Ivan ordered that the prince’s mother be brought to see her son and then gave her to a hundred gunners who raped her until she died. She was then thrown to Ivan’s dogs who tore her limb from limb.

Nikkita Funikov, Ivan’s treasurer, was boiled to death while an advisor, Ivan Viskovaty, was hung before pieces were sliced off his body.

In warfare, Ivan was equally brutal. When he captured the city of Novgorod, the inhabitants were raped, impaled, sliced and roasted and Ivan personally played a full part in the horror. The archbishop of Novgorod was sewn into a bearskin before being hunted by a pack of snarling hounds. So many people were thrown into the freezing Volkhov River that it overflowed its banks.

In 1572, Ivan once again abdicated. This time he named a replacement, Simeon Bekboelatovitch, a Tartar general. For a year, Ivan lived on his country estate, making occasional visits to the city to pay homage to the new Tsar before becoming bored with the charade and returning to the throne.

He married a series of women and made England’s Henry VIII look like a saint in the way he treated his wives. In 1561 it was Maria Temriukovna, a beautiful woman from Ciscassia. When she died in 1569, he married the daughter of a merchant, Martha Sobakin. She died two weeks after the wedding and he married Anna Koltovskaya. Tiring of her, he sent her to a convent in 1575 and married for a fifth time, to Wassilissa Melentiewna. She made the mistake of committing adultery and her lover had the misfortune to be impaled beneath her window. She was allowed to live, but as a nun. When he discovered that his seventh bride, Maria Dolgurukaya, was not a virgin, he had her drowned the day after their wedding. He married his last wife, Maria Nagaya, in 1581.

Possibly the worst of the many examples of Ivan the Terrible’s rages occurred in 1581, an incident that resulted in the death of his son and heir, the Tsarevich Ivan. The young Ivan was something of a chip off the old block. Aged fifteen, he had been at his father’s side, witnessing the barbaric cruelty of the massacre at Novgorod first-hand. He took as much pleasure in the depravity of the Oprichniks as Ivan and once saved his father’s life, stabbing to death a Livonian assassin. However, his relationship with the Tsar had started to go downhill towards the end of the Livonian War that lasted from 1558 until 1582. In 1581, Ivan attacked his pregnant daughter-in-law, the Tsarevich’s wife, furious that she was wearing tight clothes. As a result, she lost the child she had been carrying. When the Tsarevich confronted him, Ivan accused him of inciting rebellion. The two argued and Ivan struck his son a blow to the head with his sceptre. The Tsarevich fell to the ground with blood pouring from the wound and died a short while later, despite his contrite father’s constant prayers for his survival.

Ivan the Terrible displayed all the signs of being a psychopath. He murdered without any emotion apart from enjoyment. He was self-centred, unreliable, manipulative and subject to wild mood swings and unexpected fits of extreme rage. His rages were so extreme, in fact, that he is said to have often foamed at the mouth during them. He was unable to maintain a relationship for very long and, indeed, most of his friends and advisors ended up dead.

It has been said that he probably suffered from syphilis. One treatment for the disease was the ingestion of mercury and it is known that he kept that metal bubbling away in a cauldron in his bedroom. A later exhumation of his body confirmed signs of syphilis and provided evidence of mercury poisoning.

Towards the end of his life, he had to be carried everywhere on a litter. He was in a terrible condition – he became obese, his skin peeled and flaked and a terrible smell emanated from his body.

In 1584, this tyrant who had done so many terrible things in his life, fainted and died during a quiet game of chess. Russia breathed a sigh of relief.