The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (6 page)

the money for himself. By that time, Bai had earned the
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BALL, Joe

dubious honor of being labeled China’s “Public Enemy of several female corpses, acting under threat of death No. 1.”

when he fed their dismembered remains to the alliga-Returning to Beijing in October 1997, the 39-year-tors. From the safety of his new location, Joe’s ex-old gunman was traced by police and arrested on Octo-neighbor joined the litany, describing an evening in ber 16, charged with 14 homicides and various related 1936 when he had seen Ball chopping up a woman’s felonies. A local newspaper reported his confession, and body and tossing the fragments to his hungry pets.

he was returned to Xinjiang province for trial, where The Rangers had enough to indict Ball, but they most of his victims were slain. Convicted on all counts needed solid evidence for a conviction. On September and sentenced to death, Bai Baoshan was executed on 24, 1938, they dropped by the Sociable Inn to examine May 6, 1998.

Joe’s meat barrel, and Ball realized the game was up.

Stepping behind the bar, he rang up a “no sale” on the cash register, drew a pistol from the drawer, and killed
BALL, Joe

himself with one shot to the head. His handyman was Born in 1892, Joe Ball was a one-time bootlegger and jailed for two years as an accessory after the fact, while tavern owner in Elmendorf, Texas, near San Antonio.

Joe’s alligators were donated to the San Antonio zoo.

In the 1930s, he ran the Sociable Inn, distinguished by its lovely waitresses and alligator pit out back, where Ball would daily entertain his patrons with the ritual of
BÁTHORY, Erzsebet

feeding time. He seemed to have a problem keeping Born in 1560, Erzsebet (or Elizabeth) Báthory was the waitresses—and wives—but the variety was part of daughter of an aristocratic soldier and the sister of what made Joe’s establishment so popular.

Poland’s reigning king. Her family, in fact, was one of Ball possessed a darker side, however, and according the oldest noble houses in Hungary, its crest bearing the to reports from other residents of Elmendorf, he draconic symbol incorporated by King Sigismund into sounded anything but sociable. One neighbor, a police-the Order of the Dragon. The Báthory clan included man named Elton Crude, was threatened with a pistol knights and judges, bishops, cardinals, and kings, but it after he complained about the stench emitted by Joe’s had fallen into decadence by the mid-16th century, the alligator pond. (The smell, Ball normally explained, royal bloodline marred by incest and epilepsy, with was due to rotting meat he used for ’gator food.) later family ranks including alcoholics, murderers and Another local was so terrified of Ball that he packed up sadists, homosexuals (considered criminally deviant at his family one night and fled the state, without a word the time) and Satanists.

of explanation.

Though physically beautiful, Erzsebet was clearly the In September 1937, worried relatives reported Min-product of polluted genetics and a twisted upbringing.

nie Gotthardt’s disappearance to authorities in Elmen-Throughout her life, she was subject to blinding dorf. The missing 22-year-old had been employed with headaches and fainting seizures—probably epileptic in Ball before she dropped from sight, but under question-nature—which superstitious family members diagnosed ing the tavern keeper said that she had left to take as demonic possession. Raised on the Báthory estate at another job. Police were satisfied, until another wait-the foot of the brooding Carpathian Mountains, Erzse-ress—Julia Turner—was reported missing by her family.

bet was introduced to devil worship in adolescence by Ball’s answer was the same, but this time there were one of her Satanist uncles. Her favorite aunt, one of problems with his story, since the girl had left her Hungary’s most notorious lesbians, taught Erzsebet the clothes behind. Joe saved himself by suddenly remem-pleasures of flagellation and other perversions, but bering an argument with Julia’s roommate; Turner had young Erzsebet always believed that where pain was been anxious to get out, he said, and Ball had given her concerned, it was better to give than to receive.

$500 for the road.

When Erzsebet was barely 11, her parents contracted Within a few short months, two other women joined her future marriage to Count Ferencz Nadasdy, an aris-the missing list; one of them, Hazel Brown, had opened tocratic warrior. Their wedding was postponed until up a bank account two days before she disappeared, Erzsebet turned 15, finally solemnized on May 5, 1575.

then “left” without retrieving any of the cash. Texas The bride retained her maiden name as a sign that her Rangers entered the case, compiling a roster of Ball’s family possessed greater status than Nadasdy’s clan.

known employees over the past few years. Many were The newlyweds settled at Csejthe Castle, in north-found alive, but at least a dozen were permanently western Hungary, but Count Nadasdy also maintained missing, along with Joe’s second and third wives. Ball other palatial homes around the country, each complete stood up well under questioning, but his elderly handy-with a dungeon and torture chamber specially designed man cracked, reporting that he had helped Ball dispose to meet Erzsebet’s needs. Nadasdy was frequently
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BÁTHORY, Erzsebet

nipples of her victims, sometimes ramming needles beneath their fingernails. “The little slut!” she would sneer, as her captive writhed in pain. “If it hurts, she’s only got to take them out herself.” Erzsebet also enjoyed biting her victims on the cheeks, breasts, and elsewhere, drawing blood with her teeth. Other captives were stripped, smeared with honey, and exposed to the attacks of ants and bees.

Count Nadasdy reportedly joined Erzsebet in some of the torture sessions, but over time he came to fear his wife, spending more and more time on the road or in the arms of his mistress. When he finally died in 1600

or 1604 (accounts vary), Erzsebet lost all restraint, devoting herself full time to the torment and sexual degradation of younger women. In short order, she broadened her scope from the family staff to include nubile strangers. Trusted employees scoured the countryside for fresh prey, luring peasant girls with offers of employment, resorting to drugs or brute force as pervasive rumors thinned the ranks of willing recruits. None who entered Erzsebet’s service ever escaped alive, but peasants had few legal rights in those days, and a noble-woman was not faulted by her peers if “discipline”

around the house got out of hand.

By her early forties, Erzsebet Báthory presided over a miniature holocaust of her own design. Abetted by her Erzsebet Báthory (Author’s collection)

aging nurse, Ilona Joo, and procuress Doratta Szentes—

aka “Dorka”—Erzsebet ravaged the countryside, claiming peasant victims at will. She carried special silver pincers, designed for ripping flesh, but she was also absent for weeks or months at a time, leaving his bride comfortable with pins and needles, branding irons and alone and bored, to find her own diversions. Erzsebet red-hot pokers, whips and scissors . . . almost anything dabbled in alchemy, indulged her sexual quirks with at all. Household accomplices would strip her victims, men and women alike, changed clothes and jewelry five holding them down while Erzsebet tore their breasts to or six times a day, and admired herself in full-length shreds or burned their vaginas with a candle flame, mirrors by the hour. Above all else, when she was sometimes biting great chunks of flesh from their faces angry, tense, or simply bored, the countess tortured ser-and bodies. One victim was forced to cook and eat a vant girls for sport.

strip of her own flesh, while others were doused with One major source of irritation in the early years of cold water and left to freeze in the snow. Sometimes, marriage was Erzsebet’s mother-in-law. Eager for Erzsebet would jerk a victim’s mouth open with such grandchildren, Nadasdy’s mother nagged Erzsebet force that the cheeks ripped apart. On other occasions, incessantly over her failure to conceive. Erzsebet would servants handled the dirty work, while Erzsebet paced finally bear children after a decade of marriage, but she the sidelines, shouting, “More! More still! Harder felt no maternal urges in her late teens and early twen-still!” until overwhelmed with excitement, she fainted ties. Young women on her household staff soon came to into unconsciousness on the floor.

dread the visits of Nadasdy’s mother, knowing that One special “toy” of Erzsebet’s was a cylindrical another round of brutal assaults would inevitably fol-cage, constructed with long spikes inside. A naked girl low the old lady’s departure.

was forced into the cage, then hoisted several feet off Where torture was concerned, the bisexual countess the floor by means of a pulley. Erzsebet or one of her possessed a ferocious imagination. Some of her tricks servants would circle the cage with a red-hot poker, jab-were learned in childhood, and others were picked up bing at the girl and forcing her against the sharp spikes from Nadasdy’s experience battling the Turks, but she as she tried to escape. Whether she cast herself in the also contrived techniques of her own. Pins and needles role of an observer or active participant, Erzsebet was were favorite tricks of the trade, piercing the lips and always good for a running commentary of suggestions
15

BERKOWITZ, David Richard

and sick “jokes,” lapsing into crude obscenities and guard, but conviction on all counts was a foregone con-incoherent babble as the night wore on.

clusion. The “bloody countess” had run out of time.

Disposal of her lifeless victims was a relatively simple Erzsebet’s servant-accomplices were executed, Dorka matter in the Middle Ages. Some were buried, others and Ilona Joo after public torture, but the countess was were left to rot around the castle, while a few were spared, sentenced to life imprisonment in a small suite dumped outside to feed the local wolves and other of rooms at Csejthe Castle. The doors and windows of predators. If a dismembered corpse was found from her apartment were bricked over, leaving only slits for time to time, the countess had no fear of prosecution. In ventilation and the passing of food trays. There, she that place and time, royal blood was the ultimate pro-lived in isolation for three and a half years, until she tection. It also helped that one of Erzsebet’s cousins was was found dead on August 21, 1614. The exact date of the Hungarian prime minister and, another served as Erzsebet’s death is unknown, since several meals had governor of the province where she lived.

gone untouched before her corpse was found.

Erzsebet finally overplayed her hand in 1609, shift-Bizarre as it is, the Báthory legend has grown in the ing from hapless peasants to the daughters of lesser telling, most recent accounts incorporating tales of nobility, opening Csejthe Castle to offer 25 hand-picked vampirism and ritualistic blood baths supposed to help ingenues “instruction in the social graces.” This time, Erzsebet “stay young.” Erzsebet’s sanguinary fetish is when none of her victims survived, complaints reached usually linked to the spilling of some unnamed servant the ears of King Matthias, whose father had attended girl’s blood, with the countess accidentally spattered, Erzsebet’s wedding. The king, in turn, assigned Erzse-afterward impressed that her skin seemed more pale bet’s closest neighbor, Count Gyorgy Thurzo, to investi-and translucent than usual—traits considered beautiful gate the case. On December 26, 1610, Thurzo staged a in those days, before discovery of the “California tan.”

late-night raid on Csejthe Castle and caught the countIn fact, extensive testimony at Erzsebet’s trial made no ess red-handed, with an orgiastic torture session in mention of literal blood baths. Some victims
were
progress.

drained of blood from savage wounds or by design, but A half-dozen of Erzsebet’s accomplices were held for deliberate exsanguination was linked to Erzsebet’s prac-trial; the countess was kept under house arrest while tice of alchemy and black magic, rather than any design parliament cranked out a special statute to strip her of for a warm bath. In any case, Erzsebet’s murder spree immunity from prosecution. The resultant trial opened began when she was in her teens or twenties, long in January 1611 and lasted through late February, with before the threat of aging ever crossed her mind.