Five fiendish historical figures you would never want to meet

Herman W. Mudgett started out his adult life with a career as an insurance scammer. He ended up in Illinois about the time of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. There, he was to embark on a new career, as one of America's most prolific serial killers.He built a three-story inn, calling it his "Castle." He secretly added rooms equipped with hidden peepholes, gas lines, trap doors and soundproofed padding. Other rooms featured secret passages, ladders and hallways that led to dead ends. The building was to become a torture chamber.He also put in a greased chute that led down to the basement. There in the dark confines of the pit, he installed a surgical table, a furnace and a "medieval" torture rack. Finished with his construction project before the start of the World's Fair, he began his new career.Holmes would lead his victims, many of them young women, into his lair, asphyxiate them using poisoned gas, then send them down the chute to the basement. There, he indulged in gruesome "medical" experiments. Afterwards, he would either throw the bodies in the furnace, or skin them and sell the skeletons to medical schools.Holmes was eventually caught, and was convicted of four murders. although he did confess to over 27 killings. He was hanged in 1897, and the "castle" was turned into a "Macabre Museum." Thankfully, the building burned down before it could ever be opened.    Grigori Rasputin’s place in the court of Czar Nicholas II was to create chaos and terror. Known as the "mad monk," Rasputin was a populist holy man, known to preach a religious doctrine that professed that true salvation was only possible through indulgence in sin.And did he ever indulge! A prolific drinker and an even bigger womanizer, no lady was safe from his questionably amorous advances. It was his reputation as a faith healer that got him summoned to the royal court of Russia. The only male heir of Nicholas II had hemophilia,  an inherited blood clotting disorder.His summons to court was at the request of Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, and after helping her hemophiliac son recover from an injury he never left. By 1911, he was the Czarina's closest advisor. Rasputin was then able to appoint crooked officials who were also drunkards and sexual deviates.Rasputin took delight in humiliating women, having them lick his dirty fingers after dipping them in his soup. He was accused of raping a nun and consorting with prostitutes. These things and more he did by night, and by day he managed to advise the czarina on state policy.In 1916, a group of aristocrats, fearing Rasputin was leading Russia down the path to disaster, tried to poison him with cyanide. The poison failed to put him down, so they shot him several times, beat him and then dumped him in the freezing Neva River.Rasputin's death came too late to save the royal family. The czar, czarina and their five children were executed in 1918 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Since that time, many novels and films have been created about the "Mad Monk."Vlad III Dracula, or "Vlad the impaler," as he was known to his neighbors, was a 15th century ruler in Wallachia, now part of Romania. Although his military exploits led many people to think of him as a hero, his cruelty to his enemies struck fear into everyone, friend and foe alike.Vlad was known for the terrible and unspeakable ways he dispatched his enemies. From disembowelment, beheading, skinning alive and beheading to cooking people alive in cauldrons of boiling water, his ways of killing people knew no bounds.Vlad assured his place in the history books by the use of impalement, a most grisly process where a stake is driven up into the body, making sure to not kill the victim outright, and then leaving the victim to die a slow death from exposure.It is said that after one military campaign, he had 20,000 enemy soldiers impaled and set along the banks of the Danube River. He then dined among the forest of victims, even going so far as to dip his bread in their blood.Vlad's terrifying deeds, his last name, Dracula, and his being born in Transylvania all led to Bram Stoker immortalizing him in his 1897 novel, "Dracula."View the list »
Front page of the London News, November 1888.

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History is filled with stories and accounts of gruesome events, malevolent and diabolical rulers and totally bad men and women. In the case of some individuals, their acts have assured them their place in the history books, and sometimes their exploits have been so gruesome they have become the basis for films and literature.

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Let's meet a few of history's more renowned killers. From a Countess who enjoyed bathing in the blood of virgins, to one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, these people were real and larger-than-life.

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  • Vlad III Dracula, or "Vlad the impaler," as he was known to his neighbors, was a 15th century ruler in Wallachia, now part of Romania. Although his military exploits led many people to think of him as a hero, his cruelty to his enemies struck fear into everyone, friend and foe alike.Vlad was known for the terrible and unspeakable ways he dispatched his enemies. From disembowelment, beheading, skinning alive and beheading to cooking people alive in cauldrons of boiling water, his ways of killing people knew no bounds.Vlad assured his place in the history books by the use of impalement, a most grisly process where a stake is driven up into the body, making sure to not kill the victim outright, and then leaving the victim to die a slow death from exposure.It is said that after one military campaign, he had 20,000 enemy soldiers impaled and set along the banks of the Danube River. He then dined among the forest of victims, even going so far as to dip his bread in their blood.Vlad's terrifying deeds, his last name, Dracula, and his being born in Transylvania all led to Bram Stoker immortalizing him in his 1897 novel, "Dracula."
  • Grigori Rasputin’s place in the court of Czar Nicholas II was to create chaos and terror. Known as the "mad monk," Rasputin was a populist holy man, known to preach a religious doctrine that professed that true salvation was only possible through indulgence in sin.And did he ever indulge! A prolific drinker and an even bigger womanizer, no lady was safe from his questionably amorous advances. It was his reputation as a faith healer that got him summoned to the royal court of Russia. The only male heir of Nicholas II had hemophilia,  an inherited blood clotting disorder.His summons to court was at the request of Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, and after helping her hemophiliac son recover from an injury he never left. By 1911, he was the Czarina's closest advisor. Rasputin was then able to appoint crooked officials who were also drunkards and sexual deviates.Rasputin took delight in humiliating women, having them lick his dirty fingers after dipping them in his soup. He was accused of raping a nun and consorting with prostitutes. These things and more he did by night, and by day he managed to advise the czarina on state policy.In 1916, a group of aristocrats, fearing Rasputin was leading Russia down the path to disaster, tried to poison him with cyanide. The poison failed to put him down, so they shot him several times, beat him and then dumped him in the freezing Neva River.Rasputin's death came too late to save the royal family. The czar, czarina and their five children were executed in 1918 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Since that time, many novels and films have been created about the "Mad Monk."
  • Herman W. Mudgett started out his adult life with a career as an insurance scammer. He ended up in Illinois about the time of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. There, he was to embark on a new career, as one of America's most prolific serial killers.He built a three-story inn, calling it his "Castle." He secretly added rooms equipped with hidden peepholes, gas lines, trap doors and soundproofed padding. Other rooms featured secret passages, ladders and hallways that led to dead ends. The building was to become a torture chamber.He also put in a greased chute that led down to the basement. There in the dark confines of the pit, he installed a surgical table, a furnace and a "medieval" torture rack. Finished with his construction project before the start of the World's Fair, he began his new career.Holmes would lead his victims, many of them young women, into his lair, asphyxiate them using poisoned gas, then send them down the chute to the basement. There, he indulged in gruesome "medical" experiments. Afterwards, he would either throw the bodies in the furnace, or skin them and sell the skeletons to medical schools.Holmes was eventually caught, and was convicted of four murders. although he did confess to over 27 killings. He was hanged in 1897, and the "castle" was turned into a "Macabre Museum." Thankfully, the building burned down before it could ever be opened.    
  • Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman, was to give new meaning to the expression, "bloodbath." During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the "blood countess" was said to have fallen so deep into depravity that she is now considered history's most deranged female serial killers.Bathory would lure young peasant girls to her castle with promises of high-paying jobs as servants. Once in the castle, they were trapped., and then came the unspeakable tortures. Some were beaten and stabbed with needles, while others were stripped naked and left outside to freeze to death in the snow.It is said the countess even bathed in the blood of the young women, believing the vital fluid of her virgin victims would keep her skin young and healthy looking.History tells us that Bathory was responsible for the deaths of 80 to 800 young women. The figure is probably somewhere in between. She finally stopped her killing in 1610 when her interests turned to young noblemen. Caught red-handed, so to speak, she was bricked up within her castle walls, with an opening just big enough to slip food through, and was to die four years later in 1614. Some historians say she was innocent and had been framed by her political enemies, but there is little evidence to substantiate this claim.Elizabeth Bathory, like Vlad the impaler, was also said to be the inspiration for Bram Stoker's "Dracula."  
  • Who was "Jack the Ripper?" No one was to ever figure the mystery out, and even today, the answer to the question of his identity is still being sought. In 1888, London's Whitechapel District was gripped by terror, as an unknown killer roamed the streets, stalking victims and mutilating the bodies with a carving knife.Between August and November of 1888, five known prostitutes were accosted by an unknown assailant, lured into a side street or alley where their throats were slit. The bodies were found terribly mutilated by an instrument said to be a carving knife.The whole of London was in an uproar, and the newspapers were filled with stories of the "Whitechapel Murderer." The name of the unknown murderer was soon to be changed to "Jack the Ripper."Victorian police forensics were limited, and nothing like the techniques we have today were available to them. What limited eyewitness accounts they had were often contradictory. Strangely, the killings stopped on November 9, and the murderer never struck again.The files on the "Ripper" case were closed in 1892, but the story has endured to this day. The evidence suggests the killer was a surgeon or meat-cutter, and over 100 suspects have been named. There is now a new study, called "Ripperology," coined to describe the extensive study this case requires.
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, Richmond History Examiner

Karen believes that trivia has a place in our culture because it's value as information has been under-rated for too long. It is so easy now to think of something, and then quickly dismiss it because we don't want to take the time to learn more. Getting trivia in small doses is exactly the way to...

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