Speaker 1: Before we begin, just a little bit of housekeeping. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're tired of hearing about it, but I wrote
Speaker 1: a book. It's a young adult novel called Anatomy a
Speaker 1: Love Story. It takes place in the nineteenth century in Edinburgh,
Speaker 1: and it's a story about the dawn of surgery, body
Speaker 1: snatchers and and the like. And if you're looking for
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Speaker 1: you wanted to pre order, that would mean a lot
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Speaker 1: that's happening a ton of books, and so pre orders
Speaker 1: are a really important way for publishers to make sure
Speaker 1: that everyone who wants a book actually gets one. So
Speaker 1: that's Anatomy a Love Story. Noble Blood is also on Patreon.
Speaker 1: If you want to support the show, I upload episode
Speaker 1: scripts there with you know, sometimes a little extra tidbits
Speaker 1: or information. I'm also starting a brand new series where
Speaker 1: my friend Karama and I go through the entire catalog
Speaker 1: of the CW television show Rain for all of its
Speaker 1: historical inaccuracies. So if that's something that you think might
Speaker 1: interest you, that'll be over on the Patreon. There's also
Speaker 1: Noble Blood merch at d F t b A dot com.
Speaker 1: I use my Noble Blood beheaded Marie Antrinette tote basically
Speaker 1: every time I go to the farmer's market, and I
Speaker 1: don't care if I get weird looks. We have mugs, totes,
Speaker 1: and pins which make a great holiday present. So without
Speaker 1: further ado, here is this week's episode Welcome to Noble Blood,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Minky Listener. Discretion is advised. In a town
Speaker 1: square in the center of Moscow in seventy a woman
Speaker 1: is chained to a small wooden platform. The woman's hair
Speaker 1: hangs lank around her face. Her eyes are fixed to
Speaker 1: the ground. She's ignoring the crowd gathering around her. Some
Speaker 1: of the crowd is there just out of mere curiosity,
Speaker 1: people who had heard rumors of this woman and who
Speaker 1: wanted to see her face. Others in the crowd are
Speaker 1: there to jeer and spit. Some are just there for
Speaker 1: the spectacle of it all, the strangeness of a noble
Speaker 1: woman reduced to this. The chained woman's name is Darius Saltikova.
Speaker 1: Around her neck, she has a painted sign that reads
Speaker 1: this woman has tortured and murdered. Being chained in the
Speaker 1: town square was part of her sentence. She had to
Speaker 1: remain out there in full public view, humiliated and scorned
Speaker 1: for one hour. Her crime the murder of thirty eight
Speaker 1: young women, though some believe that Darius Saltikova might have
Speaker 1: murdered as many as one hundred more. In the annals
Speaker 1: of popular history, female killers tend to be of particular fascination.
Speaker 1: There's something about murderous is from Madame Lallery in New
Speaker 1: Orleans to Lizzie Borden in Massachusetts, that people find strange
Speaker 1: and scintillating. The extent of Darius Saltikova's crimes are extreme,
Speaker 1: but I find that they're worth talking about, not just
Speaker 1: out of prurient, morbid true crime fascination, but because of
Speaker 1: the political context that enabled her dozens of murders, and
Speaker 1: because of the political context in which she would finally
Speaker 1: face consequences. I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.
Speaker 1: In the previous episode of Noble Blood, I discussed Countess
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bathi, the Hungarian noblewoman who's become perhaps the most
Speaker 1: famous female serial killer of all time. Her popularity is
Speaker 1: in part because people love referencing the completely fabricated anecdote
Speaker 1: about Bathory murdering servant girls so that she could bathe
Speaker 1: in their blood. Elizabeth Bathory is certainly one of the
Speaker 1: most famous historical figures in terms of appearances in trivia
Speaker 1: books and in the true crime corners of the Internet,
Speaker 1: but as I covered in my last episode, some recent
Speaker 1: scholars have raised doubts as to whether Countess Bathory was
Speaker 1: guilty of murder at all. To briefly refresh your memory,
Speaker 1: Bathory was an incredibly wealthy landowning widow from the eastern
Speaker 1: part of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality of Transylvania.
Speaker 1: Her family was growing in power, and they were extremely
Speaker 1: threatening to the Habsburg powers that be, which made Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Bathory a prime target for a polit critically motivated framing.
Speaker 1: Recent scholars also point to some of Elizabeth Bathori's Transylvanian
Speaker 1: medical procedures, things like ice baths and cauterizing infections, which
Speaker 1: could have been misinterpreted in more western Hungry as violent torture.
Speaker 1: It's also worth remembering that Elizabeth Bathory was never publicly
Speaker 1: charged or tried or convicted. The confessions that led to
Speaker 1: her lifetime imprisonment were given under torture, and Elizabeth Bathori
Speaker 1: was never allowed to speak on her own behalf. The
Speaker 1: scholarship as to whether Elizabeth Bathory was framed or not
Speaker 1: is still relatively recent and limited to academia, and plenty
Speaker 1: of other historians still believed that she was guilty of
Speaker 1: torture and murder to some degree, although probably not to
Speaker 1: the degree of the hundreds of victims that some people
Speaker 1: ascribed to her, and definitely not guilty of the blood
Speaker 1: bathing thing. But suilty or innocent, The story of Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Bathories is one of political power and privilege. If she
Speaker 1: was framed, it was only because of her politically important family.
Speaker 1: If Bathory actually was a murderer, her merely being placed
Speaker 1: under house arrest was thanks to her noble blood and
Speaker 1: her family's influence. Centuries ago, the justice system worked differently
Speaker 1: for those with money and connections, very much in the
Speaker 1: same way that unfortunately it too often does today and
Speaker 1: sometimes today, as centuries ago, a conviction can be meant
Speaker 1: as a political statement, meant to hold one man or
Speaker 1: woman accountable for something. As an example, and so if
Speaker 1: I ruined your favorite countess serial killer in my last episode,
Speaker 1: consider this my consolation, yet another countess with yet another
Speaker 1: slate of horrific murders, but of which this time she
Speaker 1: is almost undeniably guilty. But the most interesting part of
Speaker 1: the story of Daria sulta Kova, at least to me,
Speaker 1: isn't her actual crime so much as her position in
Speaker 1: Russian society and the balancing act that the reigning monarch
Speaker 1: Katherine the Great was forced to do in order to
Speaker 1: hold her nobles accountable for their actions while still keeping
Speaker 1: them on her side. Daria Nikolayevna Ivanovna was born on
Speaker 1: March eleven, thirty, just a few months after the future
Speaker 1: Katherine the Great was born. Unlike Katherine, Daria was born
Speaker 1: to a prominent family of Russian nobles, with princes on
Speaker 1: both her mother's and her father's side of the family tree. Eventually,
Speaker 1: that prominent lineage led Darya to make her own aristocratic
Speaker 1: marriage to a man named Gleb Xyevitch Saltikov. The Saltikovs
Speaker 1: make frequent appearances on the pages of Russian history. One Saltikov,
Speaker 1: distantly distantly related to Gleb would be one of Catherine
Speaker 1: the Great's first extramarital lovers, another Saltikov. Gleb's nephew, actually
Speaker 1: would go on to be the tutor of Catherine the
Speaker 1: Great son. Gleb himself was a captain in the Imperial Guard,
Speaker 1: and it was thought that he would make a fine
Speaker 1: match for the pretty young Daria, who as a young
Speaker 1: woman was known for being pious and well behaved. But
Speaker 1: Gleb died young. Though the couple had two children, Daria
Speaker 1: would be a widow at age twenty five, living as
Speaker 1: a single woman on a vast inherited estate south of Moscow,
Speaker 1: with around six hundred serfs to work the land. One
Speaker 1: of Daria's sons died when he was eleven, the other
Speaker 1: would only survive until his early twenties. So even by
Speaker 1: Shian standards, the salt Takova state was a sad and
Speaker 1: gloomy place, strange and lonely, and there were stories that
Speaker 1: surrounded the estate like mist. They said that the sound
Speaker 1: of a cracking whip could be heard for miles away,
Speaker 1: that the corpse of a woman was once wheeled away
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, hidden by darkness. According
Speaker 1: to the rumor, the body was unmistakably that of a woman,
Speaker 1: but all of her hair had been scorched, singed off,
Speaker 1: and her skin was flayed from the chest. No One
Speaker 1: in eighteenth century Russia expected that surfs were going to
Speaker 1: have particularly long, fulfilling lives, but it seemed that the
Speaker 1: surfs at the Saltakova state were particularly brittle and frightened.
Speaker 1: Young girls would go to work for Darias salt Ko
Speaker 1: now and none of them would ever be seen again.
Speaker 1: According to allegations, saltic Cova's bitterness and loneliness curdled in
Speaker 1: her heart into a twisted cruelty. If one of her
Speaker 1: servants spilled tea or forgot one of their chores, salta
Speaker 1: Cova would beat them with logs or shove them down
Speaker 1: the stairs. She would set their flesh on fire, or
Speaker 1: pour burning water from teapots onto their bare limbs. Sometimes
Speaker 1: she would tie a surf up and leave them naked
Speaker 1: in the Russian cold to freeze to death. She used
Speaker 1: hot irons, she flayed flesh and burned hair off. She
Speaker 1: allegedly once crushed a pregnant woman's belly beneath her boot.
Speaker 1: Those saltic Coba would later say that any cruelty she
Speaker 1: exhibited towards her serfs was just because they were ineffective
Speaker 1: at doing their jobs. It's impossible not to see a
Speaker 1: more personal aspect to her brutality. Most of her victims
Speaker 1: were young women. They were pretty girls who reminded the
Speaker 1: aging Saltikova that she was no longer the youthful girl
Speaker 1: of promise that she once was. After her husband's death,
Speaker 1: Saltikova did have a lover, a man named Nikolay Kyotchev,
Speaker 1: but Nikolay left Darya in order to marry another woman.
Speaker 1: As cruel punishment, Daria sent two of her serfs to
Speaker 1: set fire to the newlywed's home. Rather than obey, the
Speaker 1: serfs warned Nikolay and his bride, and neither was harmed,
Speaker 1: although I do have to wonder what fate might have
Speaker 1: befallen the SERPs when they returned to the Saltikova state
Speaker 1: with their mission incomplete. Unfortunately, most of the scholarship around
Speaker 1: Darius Saltikova's life and her murders is written in Russian
Speaker 1: and remains untranslated, and though I was able to learn
Speaker 1: a lot through the miracle of online translation, I still
Speaker 1: found it challenging to parse out what was rumor and
Speaker 1: what was actually confirmed when it came to the extent
Speaker 1: of salt Dakova's sheer sadism. But how was a woman
Speaker 1: able to go decades brutalizing dozens, possibly hundreds of people.
Speaker 1: Serfs in Russia existed somewhere between slavery and freedom. In effect,
Speaker 1: their labor, but not their personhood itself, belonged to their
Speaker 1: master or mistress. The original purpose of the serf class
Speaker 1: was to tie laborers to the land so that they
Speaker 1: couldn't migrate. There were vast swatches of Russian land that
Speaker 1: needed to be farmed, but which no one would want
Speaker 1: to farm voluntarily, so the surf class was born. Although
Speaker 1: the position of serfs continued to evolve well into the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, and this is just a very cursory overview
Speaker 1: of a very complicated socio political issue. Serfs had little
Speaker 1: recourse against physical or emotional abuse. They couldn't quit their jobs,
Speaker 1: and they could be gifted or inherited to other estates.
Speaker 1: But serfs weren't allowed to be outright killed, and though
Speaker 1: they could be tortured in the name of discipline, they
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to be tortured just out of sadistic pleasure.
Speaker 1: It was Catherine the Great, a student and admirer of
Speaker 1: the liberal politics of the Enlightenment sweeping Western Europe, who
Speaker 1: attempted to advocate for more rights for the serfs in
Speaker 1: order to, in her mind, poll Russia towards modernity. Not
Speaker 1: only was want and cruelty forbidden under Catherine the Great,
Speaker 1: but serfs also had a right to lodge complaints against
Speaker 1: their masters. It should be noted, though, that most of
Speaker 1: these complaints would be going to police forces who were
Speaker 1: almost uniformly corrupt, police forces who worked primarily to protect
Speaker 1: wealthy people like Daria Saltco buh So, just because surfs
Speaker 1: were allowed to complain didn't mean necessarily that people would listen.
Speaker 1: Russia was a very very large country, after all, with
Speaker 1: a lot of serfs, and though the Empress Catherine the
Speaker 1: Great purported to be liberal, there was still a deeply
Speaker 1: entrenched power structure in place in Russia built to protect
Speaker 1: the nobles. Even so, twenty one serfs conquered their fear
Speaker 1: of what Darius Sultakova might do if she found out,
Speaker 1: and they filed complaints against their mistress. But it would
Speaker 1: be the twenty second complaint that would finally lead to
Speaker 1: Saltikova's downfall. In the summer of seventeen sixty two, a
Speaker 1: man who worked in the stables at the Sultakova state,
Speaker 1: named her Malay Alien, fled the estate and made it
Speaker 1: all the way to St. Petersburg, where he petitioned Catherine
Speaker 1: the Great personally nil Ling on the throne room floor,
Speaker 1: he informed the Empress that his mistress, Daria Saltikova, had
Speaker 1: murdered three of his wives, one after another, every time
Speaker 1: he got remarried. Darius Saltikova was arrested and held for
Speaker 1: six years, while Catherine the Great authorized a full investigation.
Speaker 1: For her part, Daria remained completely unrepentant. She maintained that
Speaker 1: she did nothing wrong. She was merely disciplining her serfs,
Speaker 1: and she maintained that story with full confidence that she
Speaker 1: would face no consequences for her actions in this world
Speaker 1: or the next. Even when a priest came to get
Speaker 1: her confession, Daria didn't speak. The investigation would ultimately involve
Speaker 1: interviewing hundreds of peasants. At the time, the Russian legal
Speaker 1: system relied on an idea called odo brenno, which basically
Speaker 1: translates to the notion of whether or not behave here
Speaker 1: was considered acceptable by the wider community. The course of
Speaker 1: the investigation against Darius Altakova yielded one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: eight suspicious deaths, all but three of them women and girls.
Speaker 1: In the end, Darius Altakova was found guilty by the
Speaker 1: Collegium of Justice of beating thirty eight female serfs to death.
Speaker 1: This is a case unlike Countess Bathies, where the investigation
Speaker 1: was thorough and the witnesses were interviewed at least to
Speaker 1: the best of my knowledge, without torture. The verdict being
Speaker 1: settled was the easy part of the process, at least
Speaker 1: for the Empress Catherine. Sentencing accountess would be a more
Speaker 1: complicated issue. The Empress wanted to set a larger example
Speaker 1: to the country, to show that she cared about the
Speaker 1: surf class, even though she didn't believe that she had
Speaker 1: the political stability to eliminate serfdom altogether. Catherine also wanted
Speaker 1: to live up to the ideals that she believed in
Speaker 1: of the fair judicial systems of Enlightenment philosophers. She wanted
Speaker 1: to make a statement both in Russia and also abroad,
Speaker 1: that her empire had legal systems that were up to
Speaker 1: snuff with what she believed to be the more rigorous
Speaker 1: and egalitarian judiciaries in Western Europe. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: Catherine was well aware that her power in Russia was
Speaker 1: dependent on the support of the noble class. Katherine didn't
Speaker 1: inherit the throne she had claimed it, and the aristocracy
Speaker 1: needed to feel protected to some degree. The death penalty
Speaker 1: had been abolished in Russia in seventeen fifty four, and
Speaker 1: even for a crime as brutal as mass murder, Catherine
Speaker 1: still felt that execution would be too alienating to the nobility.
Speaker 1: But Darius Saltikova was a brutal killer. Her crimes were
Speaker 1: shocking and egregious. Katherine needed to make it clear that
Speaker 1: that behavior wouldn't be tolerated when it came to nobles
Speaker 1: and their serfs, and so Daria Saltikova Murderous, was sentenced
Speaker 1: to life in prison at the Ivanovsky Cloister, where she
Speaker 1: would stay in the dungeons below the surface, in a
Speaker 1: windowless wooden room, away from sunlight and fresh air. A
Speaker 1: nun would bring her food and one candle. Saltikova would
Speaker 1: only be permitted to leave her imprisonment once a week
Speaker 1: for church, but before her life sentence, Daria Saltikova was
Speaker 1: sent to a town square in Moscow to remain in
Speaker 1: chains with a sign around her neck for the public
Speaker 1: to see her and to see what she had done.
Speaker 1: Daria remained in the dungeons of the Ivanovsky Cloister for
Speaker 1: eleven years, after which she was transferred to a monastery building.
Speaker 1: The only primary change to her daily life was that
Speaker 1: her room now had a window. Spectators could gawk through
Speaker 1: the shutters, and Daria would spit back in their faces.
Speaker 1: Countess Elizabeth Bathory also lived under house arrest, but she
Speaker 1: only lived in prison for a few years. Darius selta
Speaker 1: Kova lived for more than three decades in confinement until
Speaker 1: her death at age seventy one. If she ever repented
Speaker 1: for her cruelty, it wasn't recorded. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: Darias selta Kova was mentally ill. It's difficult for me
Speaker 1: to imagine the type of person who would be able
Speaker 1: to torture and hurt other human beings the way that
Speaker 1: she did. But I think that it's also worth remembering
Speaker 1: that the system of serfdom was a system of d humanization.
Speaker 1: It's easy to be able to dismiss an individual like
Speaker 1: Darius Saltikova as a monster, and much harder to be
Speaker 1: able to reckon with an entire broken system. That's the
Speaker 1: story of the gruesome murders of Darius Saltikova. But keep
Speaker 1: listening a little bit after the sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: a bit more about the way she exists in our
Speaker 1: modern time. Elizabeth Bathy is far more famous than Darius Sultakova,
Speaker 1: but even when it comes to lesser known killers, salta
Speaker 1: Kova has something of a pr problem. Almost every photo
Speaker 1: of her on the Internet isn't actually her. You can
Speaker 1: google her now darias Seltakova, or you can even use
Speaker 1: her birth name Daria Nikolevna Ivanovna, and one of the
Speaker 1: most frequent portraits that comes up is a woman with
Speaker 1: powdered hair in a deep blue dress with a square neckline.
Speaker 1: The woman is pretty. She has pearls around her neck,
Speaker 1: at her ears and in her hair. This portrait is
Speaker 1: everywhere on the internet countless website about interesting historical murders.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that portrait isn't of Daria Saltikova,
Speaker 1: or rather it is, but not this Daria Saltikova. That's
Speaker 1: a portrait of Daria Petrovna Saltikova, a lady in waiting
Speaker 1: to Catherine the Great, who was born nine years after
Speaker 1: the murderess. Because of their shared names, their portraits have
Speaker 1: become almost interchangeable. That's one of the many problems with
Speaker 1: the Internet, the speed at which misinformation is copied and
Speaker 1: recopied again until it becomes indistinguishable from truth. Take it
Speaker 1: from me, someone who writes this podcast every other week,
Speaker 1: you always have to double check the details, or at
Speaker 1: the very least check the Russian patron on mcmiddle name.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkey. The show was written
Speaker 1: and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by
Speaker 1: rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on
Speaker 1: social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn
Speaker 1: more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows,