Centuries before anyone coined the term “serial killer,” history recorded individuals whose patterns of murder mirror those of modern serial murderers. We retroactively apply this modern label to certain infamous figures – Roman emperors, medieval nobles – because their repeated, personally driven killings over time fit the definition of serial murder, even though no such concept existed in their era[1]. By examining figures like Caligula, Gilles de Rais, and Elizabeth Bathory, we uncover how power and legend allowed these proto–serial killers to commit atrocities largely unchecked.
Why We Retroactively Use the Term “Serial Killer”
The phrase “serial killer” only entered crime vocabulary in the late 20th century – likely first used by FBI agent Robert Ressler in the 1970s[2]. Before that, even prolific multiple murderers were not recognized as a distinct category; they might have been called “mass murderers” or simply monsters. Nonetheless, the behavior – murdering sequentially for gratification or perverse motives – has existed throughout history[1]. Applying the modern label retroactively helps us understand these historical figures through a contemporary lens. It highlights that their crimes were not isolated incidents of cruelty or war, but deliberate patterns of homicide, akin to how we describe modern serial killers. By today’s FBI standards (multiple separate murders with “cooling off” periods in between), Caligula, Gilles de Rais, and Elizabeth Bathory qualify as serial killers – even if their societies lacked the terminology to categorize them as such.
This retroactive labeling is useful but also cautionary. We must remember these figures lived in radically different contexts. Unlike modern serial killers who hide in the shadows, historical aristocratic killers often acted openly under cover of authority or superstition. Their stories show that serial murder is not a new phenomenon of the modern age, but rather an ancient human horror, only described in modern terms.
Caligula: Rome’s Bloodthirsty Emperor
A marble bust of Caligula (Roman Emperor from 37–41 AD) hints at his infamous cruelty behind a placid marble gaze.
Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus) ruled as Roman emperor for just four years (37–41 AD) but earned a grotesque legacy as one of history’s most sadistic tyrants[3]. As emperor, he wielded absolute power and exhibited a terrifying appetite for cruelty. Ancient sources (notably Suetonius) describe Caligula delighting in torture and execution as public spectacle. He reportedly murdered people for fun and used the law itself as an instrument of torment[4]. Caligula’s inventive sadism seemed boundless: he had people sawed in half vertically, limbs and tongues cut off, and even decapitated and strangled children, sometimes forcing the parents to watch their children’s executions[4]. He fed prisoners to wild beasts or had them beaten to death with chains, and on a whim he’d order unfortunate citizens killed “by elephants” or other bizarre methods[4]. One gladiator was said to have been beaten continuously for two days for Caligula’s amusement[5]. His perversions extended to horrific personal acts – at times he was said to chew the testicles of his victims after torturing them[6], an almost unimaginably vile detail that underscores his depravity. Caligula even famously wished “Rome had but one neck” so he could decapitate the entire populace in a single blow[7].
Though some historians suspect later writers exaggerated Caligula’s crimes, there is no doubt he was feared as a living nightmare in his time[3]. Ultimately, his reign of terror ended not through any court of law, but by assassination in 41 AD at the hands of his own guards. In Caligula, we see a serial killer on a throne – a man whose unlimited power and sadistic appetite led to countless murders for pleasure. His name remains synonymous with insane cruelty, serving as a grim benchmark for evil rulers in history.
Gilles de Rais: A Knight Turned Child-Killer
19th-century painting of Gilles de Rais, the medieval nobleman later accused of unspeakable crimes against children.
Once celebrated as a war hero, Gilles de Rais (circa 1405–1440) has gone down in infamy as one of history’s earliest recorded serial killers[8]. A wealthy French baron and former comrade-in-arms of Joan of Arc, de Rais held titles in Brittany and Anjou. After his military glory faded, he became notorious for a far darker legacy. Reports emerged in the 1430s of children disappearing around his estates – peasant boys lured to his castles and never seen again. In 1440, an investigation prompted by the church and local authorities uncovered evidence of horrific crimes: Gilles de Rais was accused of the abduction, sexual torture, and ritualized murder of dozens if not hundreds of children[9]. Contemporary accounts (obtained under threat of torture) claim he slaughtered at least 140 victims over several years[8], though the true count will never be known.
De Rais dabbled in the occult – he reportedly sought to summon demons with the help of alchemists – and perhaps he believed these gruesome sacrifices would aid his dark arts[10][9]. At his trial in 1440, he confessed in shocking detail to sadistic killings, which included hanging or strangling children, then defiling their bodies. The once-respected nobleman was condemned by both secular and ecclesiastical courts. In October 1440, Gilles de Rais was executed for his monstrous crimes: he was hanged and, in a final act of retribution, his body was burned to ashes beneath the gallows[11].
The fall of Gilles de Rais was so dramatic that it entered French folklore. His story is widely thought to have inspired the legend of “Bluebeard,” the aristocratic bogeyman who murders innocents in his castle[12]. Whether or not he was truly guilty of every crime (some modern scholars have debated the reliability of the trial), Gilles de Rais today stands as a proto–serial killer – a man of high birth who used his power to prey on the most vulnerable. His gruesome reputation, amplified by legend, made him a byword for absolute evil in the late Middle Ages.
Elizabeth Bathory: The Blood Countess of Transylvania
Portrait of Countess Elizabeth Báthory (1560–1614), who would later be mythologized as the vampiric “Blood Countess.”
Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory is often cited as the most prolific female serial killer in history[13]. Born into nobility in 1560, she commanded vast estates in the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Slovakia and Transylvania). Báthory’s legend is soaked in blood: according to accusations, she tortured and murdered hundreds of young women – with some witnesses later claiming her victim count exceeded 600 girls[14]. In her castles, servants and local peasant girls were said to have been brutally beaten, mutilated, and killed at her whim. Darkest of all, folklore insists that Elizabeth Báthory bathed in the blood of virgins, believing it would preserve her youth[14]. This grotesque image of a blood-bathing countess earned her the nickname “The Blood Countess” and comparisons to vampires.
For years Báthory acted with impunity, protected by her aristocratic status and powerful family. It was an open secret that servant girls sent to her castle would never return, yet authorities hesitated to intervene. Killing one’s serfs was not even considered a serious crime for a noble in that era[15]. Only when Bathory’s violence began touching the daughters of minor nobles did the king take action[15]. In 1610, King Matthias II of Hungary finally ordered an investigation into the disappearances surrounding her estate[16]. What they found confirmed the rumors: dozens of imprisoned and abused girls, and evidence of at least 80 murders for which Bathory was directly responsible[16]. Arrested in December 1610, Elizabeth Bathory never faced a normal trial – perhaps to avoid the scandal of executing a countess – but in 1611 her accomplices (servants who helped procure and torture victims) were tried and executed, and her guilt was considered proven[16]. As punishment, Bathory was imprisoned in her own castle: bricked up in a set of rooms at Čachtice Castle with only small openings for air and food. There she remained for four years until her death in 1614[17].
Elizabeth Bathory’s story quickly passed into legend. In the centuries after her death, writers embellished her crimes (a 1740s account by a Jesuit priest dramatically painted her as a demonic villainess[18]), and the “Blood Countess” became a figure of nightmares. Modern scholars have questioned some of the tales – noting the lack of trial records for hundreds of victims and suggesting that political rivals or family members may have exaggerated her crimes to seize her lands[19][20]. It’s possible Bathory was not quite the supernatural ogre later legend made her out to be. But the core facts of abuse and murder are well documented, even if the exact scale is debated. True or not, the lurid image of a countess bathing in maidens’ blood proved irresistible to the popular imagination. Bathory has since inspired countless stories, earning a place in Guinness World Records as history’s most prolific female murderer, and cementing her legacy as a vampiric archetype of evil.
Power, Impunity, and the Absence of Modern Law Enforcement
One thread common to Caligula, de Rais, and Bathory is how their power and social status shielded their crimes for far too long. These figures operated in times when modern law enforcement simply did not exist. There were no police detectives to notice patterns of murder, no forensic science to connect the dots – and crucially, if the killer was a noble or a ruler, few dared to challenge them. Justice was often selective. In the case of Bathory, for example, it was openly said that “killing serfs and servants” was frowned upon but not truly illegal for a noble[15]. As a wealthy countess, Bathory could torture peasant girls in her dungeons for years with little consequence; her family literally ran the local courts, and commoners’ testimony against aristocrats was easily ignored. Only when she preyed on girls of the lesser gentry did higher authorities feel compelled to act[15]. Similarly, Gilles de Rais was a Marshall of France – a war hero closely tied to the crown – which likely made local officials reluctant to investigate the whispers about missing peasant children on his lands. His eventual downfall required intervention from the Duke of Brittany and the Church after years of rumors. And Caligula, as Roman emperor, epitomizes absolute impunity: he was the law. Who could prosecute the ruler of the known world? Caligula’s murders were state-sanctioned by default, and only a conspiracy of his own guards could end his bloody reign.
All three killers exploited a lack of accountability. There were no systematic methods to catch a serial murderer in pre-modern times, especially when the perpetrator was high-born. Investigations, if they happened, were often spurred by outrage from other nobles or the Church rather than concern for common folk. The concept of equal justice did not apply – an emperor or countess answered to no ordinary court. This atmosphere of impunity allowed their crimes to continue far beyond what a modern killer could likely get away with. In a sense, their noble status was as deadly as any weapon, granting them the freedom to kill at will. Their stories underscore how the absence of modern law enforcement and forensic scrutiny, combined with rigid social hierarchy, created a perfect storm in which serial atrocities could flourish unchecked.
From Reality to Myth: Vampires, Werewolves, and Legendary Monsters
The terrifying deeds of these historical figures did more than horrify their contemporaries – they also bled into folklore and myth, blurring the line between human evil and supernatural evil. In ages past, when faced with inexplicable cruelty, people often explained it by turning killers into monsters in legend. We see this clearly with Elizabeth Bathory. Her blood-soaked reputation helped birth vampire lore: in local stories she was cast as one of history’s first vampires, literally feeding on virgin blood to retain youth[21]. To this day she is frequently nicknamed “Countess Dracula,” and her tale has directly inspired vampire literature, films and games[22]. The very idea of a noblewoman bathing in blood is so grotesque that it took on a life of its own, amplifying into the supernatural – effectively making Bathory an immortal boogeyman in popular culture.
In the case of Gilles de Rais, his atrocities likewise morphed into legend. It is widely believed that he became the basis for the French folktale of Bluebeard, the nobleman who serially kills (in the story, his wives) and hides their bodies in a secret chamber[12]. While Bluebeard is not a literal werewolf or vampire, the tale serves a similar purpose – converting a real aristocratic murderer into a cautionary mythical figure. In Gilles’ own lifetime, some who heard whispers of his crimes might have thought no mere human could commit such vile acts. Indeed, he was accused not only of murder but of sorcery and consorting with demons, framing his violence in a supernatural context[10]. His legend, therefore, straddles reality and myth: part historical criminal, part demon of fairy tales.
More broadly, many pre-modern serial killers became entangled with werewolf mythology and other monster lore. In medieval and Renaissance Europe, unexplained child killings or cannibalistic murders often led to accusations of witchcraft or lycanthropy. During Europe’s werewolf trials of the 1500s, for instance, some men were executed as “werewolves” for crimes that today we’d recognize as serial murders of children[23][24]. Lacking a modern understanding of psychopathy, frightened communities genuinely believed that a shape-shifting beast was on the loose. The case of Peter Stumpp, the so-called “Werewolf of Bedburg” in 1589 Germany, is a famous example – under torture he confessed to killing and cannibalizing victims while in the form of a wolf, a confession likely forced but rooted in actual gruesome murders[25][24]. Such stories illustrate how serial killers were literally dehumanized into monsters in folklore. The werewolf and vampire legends provided a way for people to make sense of senseless cruelty: the killer must be a creature, not an ordinary person.
Thus, the legacies of Caligula, Gilles de Rais, Elizabeth Bathory and their ilk live on not just in history books, but in haunting legends. These figures became archetypes – the mad tyrant, the demonic aristocrat, the blood-drinking countess – that persist in our cultural imagination. Their real crimes seeded enduring myths of vampires and werewolves, proving that when faced with profound horror, human beings often resort to storytelling, turning true crime into dark fairy tale. In a way, those myths are a tribute to how deeply their crimes resonated through the centuries: Caligula, de Rais and Bathory have achieved a grim kind of immortality as the monsters of history.
Conclusion
Looking back at these proto–serial killers, we see how the phenomenon of serial murder long predates the modern era, though it was understood very differently in its time. Caligula, Gilles de Rais, and Elizabeth Bathory exemplify how extreme cruelty, unchecked power, and superstition combined to create real-life nightmares that still fascinate and appall us today. Their stories bridge the gap between history and legend, showing that the darkest impulses in human nature – and society’s dread of them – are not new. In the context of our main discussion of serial killers through the ages, these historical figures stand as early harbingers of the terror that later killers like Jack the Ripper or H.H. Holmes would also instill. Before “serial killers” had a name, they already walked among us – wearing a crown, bearing a title, or hiding behind the walls of a castle, leaving behind a legacy of blood that became the stuff of legend.
Bibliography
- Scott A. Bonn, Ph.D. “Origin of the Term ‘Serial Killer.’” Psychology Today (Wicked Deeds blog). June 9, 2014[1][2].
- “Caligula’s Sadism and Cruelty.” Facts and Details – Ancient Rome[3][4]. (Citing Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars, and Patrick Ryan, Listverse, May 2012).
- Jonny Wilkes. “Was Gilles de Rais really history’s first recorded serial killer?” HistoryExtra (BBC History Magazine). Published March 7, 2025[8][9].
- Ronan O’Connell. “The bloody legend of Hungary’s serial killer countess.” National Geographic – History. October 21, 2022[26][16].
- History.com Editors. “Hungarian countess’s torturous escapades are exposed.” This Day in History – History.com. Originally published Nov 13, 2009 (updated May 27, 2025)[21][27].
- Melinda Beck. “Before America Had Witch Trials, Europe Had Werewolf Trials.” History.com. October 15, 2021[23][24].
- Aleksandra Bartosiewicz. “Elizabeth Báthory: Icon of Evil or Victim of Conspiracy?” University of Łódź Scholarly Works, 2018 – Thesis research (cited via National Geographic)[19][20].
- Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars – “Caius Caligula.” Written c.110 AD. (Translation by J.C. Rolfe, 1920; excerpts via factsanddetails.com)[28][29].
