Creepy History: 5 Beautiful (But Deadly) Women

Beauty is only skin deep, you know. You can be the most beautiful woman in the world and still have a black heart and empty soul. Didn’t you learn anything from Disney movies? I mean, the wicked queen in Snow White was super hot, but she was EVIL. So are these women, who’ve gone down in history as beautiful but deadly.

Elizabeth Bathory

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

This Hungarian countess was so obsessed with staying young and beautiful that she resorted to killing young peasant girls in order to (allegedly) bathe in their blood. The story of Bathory has changed a lot over the years and it’s hard to tell what’s legend and what’s true; she has become a vampiric figure in most lore.

“She’d bite their skin off, mutilate their bodies and make them stand outside in frigid temperatures until they froze to death.”

Regardless, Bathory was truly evil and sadistic from an early age and when she came to power, she abused it. It’s not known for sure how many girls Bathory killed, but it ranges from 50-600. She’d bite their skin off, mutilate their bodies and make them stand outside in frigid temperatures until they froze to death. Bathory was discovered and sentenced to a lifetime in solitary confinement, though she only survived four years.

The legend of Bathory lives on in pop culture, from plays to music.

Jodi Arias

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Arias kept the nation enthralled during her trial, partially because she was so adept at changing her appearance from hot girl to frumpy. Arias was accused (and convicted) of murdering her former boyfriend. She had sex with him, shot him, slit his throat and stabbed him to finish him off, then went undercover. Arias changed her Playboy blonde hair to basic brown and swapped her sexy clothes for dowdy ones, hoping to slip under the radar. It didn’t work. Much was made about Arias’ appearance and how she’d gone from bombshell to basic.

Leslie van Houten

Van Houten was just 20 years old when she participated in the infamous LaBianca murders in the summer of 1969.

The pretty Van Houten grew up in an All-American family, going to church regularly and doing well in school until her parents’ divorce when she was a young teen. She ran away to the Haight and started doing drugs, and eventually fell in with the Manson Family. She was chosen to go along on the second night of the “Helter Skelter” murders and stabbed Rosemary LaBianca at least a dozen times. Since most of Van Houten’s wounds were inflicted after LaBianca was dead, her lawyers tried to have her sentenced differently than the other women on trial.

Van Houten was merciless on the witness stand, saying of the murder, “Sorry is only a five letter word.” She was sentenced to death alongside Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins, though California did away with the death penalty. Van Houten remains in prison though she has renounced Manson and turned her life around. She regularly applies for parole. The director John Waters is one of Van Houten’s supporters.

Karla Homolka

The pretty blonde Homolka wasn’t who jurors thought would be standing trial, but her role in the rape and murder of at least three women by her husband put her there.

Homolka and her husband first poisoned and raped Homolka’s own sister, Tammy, before she choked to death on her own vomit. They also murdered two young Canadian girls before their capture in 1993. Homolka claimed Bernardo was abusive and she was an unwilling accomplice, but she was sent to prison until 2005. She now lives under an assumed name.

Martha Charles/Needle

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons

In the late 1800s, Martha murdered not only her husband but her three children and her new fiance’s brother via arsenic poisoning. No one knows for sure why she did it, though she did collect insurance money on each death. However, Martha spent it on an elaborate, fancy grave for her family, so it’s not like she was hurting for money. She was hanged in 1894 for her crimes. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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