WEBVTT - Darya Saltykova, Serial Killer 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.120 Before we begin, just a little bit of housekeeping. I'm 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:07.360 sure you're tired of hearing about it, but I wrote 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:10.600 a book. It's a young adult novel called Anatomy a 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:14.480 Love Story. It takes place in the nineteenth century in Edinburgh, 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.400 and it's a story about the dawn of surgery, body 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.959 snatchers and and the like. And if you're looking for 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:25.000 a you know, post January holiday treat for yourself and 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:27.440 you wanted to pre order, that would mean a lot 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.480 to me. If you've heard anything about supply chain issues, 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.120 that's happening a ton of books, and so pre orders 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.920 are a really important way for publishers to make sure 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.599 that everyone who wants a book actually gets one. So 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:42.560 that's Anatomy a Love Story. Noble Blood is also on Patreon. 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.080 If you want to support the show, I upload episode 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.199 scripts there with you know, sometimes a little extra tidbits 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.200 or information. I'm also starting a brand new series where 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:56.840 my friend Karama and I go through the entire catalog 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.800 of the CW television show Rain for all of its 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:04.040 historical inaccuracies. So if that's something that you think might 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.840 interest you, that'll be over on the Patreon. There's also 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:11.600 Noble Blood merch at d F t b A dot com. 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:15.720 I use my Noble Blood beheaded Marie Antrinette tote basically 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:17.560 every time I go to the farmer's market, and I 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.480 don't care if I get weird looks. We have mugs, totes, 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.119 and pins which make a great holiday present. So without 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:31.040 further ado, here is this week's episode Welcome to Noble Blood, 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.160 a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:42.280 from Aaron Minky Listener. Discretion is advised. In a town 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:46.800 square in the center of Moscow in seventy a woman 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:51.440 is chained to a small wooden platform. The woman's hair 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:55.280 hangs lank around her face. Her eyes are fixed to 0:01:55.360 --> 0:02:00.480 the ground. She's ignoring the crowd gathering around her. Some 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.600 of the crowd is there just out of mere curiosity, 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.840 people who had heard rumors of this woman and who 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:11.280 wanted to see her face. Others in the crowd are 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.919 there to jeer and spit. Some are just there for 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.880 the spectacle of it all, the strangeness of a noble 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:24.840 woman reduced to this. The chained woman's name is Darius Saltikova. 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:28.840 Around her neck, she has a painted sign that reads 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:34.000 this woman has tortured and murdered. Being chained in the 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:37.640 town square was part of her sentence. She had to 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:42.440 remain out there in full public view, humiliated and scorned 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:47.120 for one hour. Her crime the murder of thirty eight 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:52.320 young women, though some believe that Darius Saltikova might have 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:57.280 murdered as many as one hundred more. In the annals 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:02.440 of popular history, female killers tend to be of particular fascination. 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:07.040 There's something about murderous is from Madame Lallery in New 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:11.680 Orleans to Lizzie Borden in Massachusetts, that people find strange 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:17.920 and scintillating. The extent of Darius Saltikova's crimes are extreme, 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.799 but I find that they're worth talking about, not just 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:26.760 out of prurient, morbid true crime fascination, but because of 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:31.840 the political context that enabled her dozens of murders, and 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.560 because of the political context in which she would finally 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:41.960 face consequences. I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.360 In the previous episode of Noble Blood, I discussed Countess 0:03:54.400 --> 0:04:00.280 Elizabeth Bathi, the Hungarian noblewoman who's become perhaps the most 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:05.360 famous female serial killer of all time. Her popularity is 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:11.200 in part because people love referencing the completely fabricated anecdote 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:15.000 about Bathory murdering servant girls so that she could bathe 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.920 in their blood. Elizabeth Bathory is certainly one of the 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:22.919 most famous historical figures in terms of appearances in trivia 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.120 books and in the true crime corners of the Internet, 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.320 but as I covered in my last episode, some recent 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:34.719 scholars have raised doubts as to whether Countess Bathory was 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:39.320 guilty of murder at all. To briefly refresh your memory, 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:44.320 Bathory was an incredibly wealthy landowning widow from the eastern 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:47.919 part of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Principality of Transylvania. 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:52.560 Her family was growing in power, and they were extremely 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:56.720 threatening to the Habsburg powers that be, which made Elizabeth 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:01.640 Bathory a prime target for a polit critically motivated framing. 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:07.080 Recent scholars also point to some of Elizabeth Bathori's Transylvanian 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:12.600 medical procedures, things like ice baths and cauterizing infections, which 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:17.520 could have been misinterpreted in more western Hungry as violent torture. 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:22.600 It's also worth remembering that Elizabeth Bathory was never publicly 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:27.200 charged or tried or convicted. The confessions that led to 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:32.080 her lifetime imprisonment were given under torture, and Elizabeth Bathori 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.680 was never allowed to speak on her own behalf. The 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:39.320 scholarship as to whether Elizabeth Bathory was framed or not 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:44.200 is still relatively recent and limited to academia, and plenty 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.240 of other historians still believed that she was guilty of 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:51.400 torture and murder to some degree, although probably not to 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:54.440 the degree of the hundreds of victims that some people 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:58.200 ascribed to her, and definitely not guilty of the blood 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:02.640 bathing thing. But suilty or innocent, The story of Elizabeth 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.760 Bathories is one of political power and privilege. If she 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:11.080 was framed, it was only because of her politically important family. 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:16.120 If Bathory actually was a murderer, her merely being placed 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.320 under house arrest was thanks to her noble blood and 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:25.200 her family's influence. Centuries ago, the justice system worked differently 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:28.920 for those with money and connections, very much in the 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:33.480 same way that unfortunately it too often does today and 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:38.440 sometimes today, as centuries ago, a conviction can be meant 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.440 as a political statement, meant to hold one man or 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:47.320 woman accountable for something. As an example, and so if 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:51.400 I ruined your favorite countess serial killer in my last episode, 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:57.359 consider this my consolation, yet another countess with yet another 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.120 slate of horrific murders, but of which this time she 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:06.279 is almost undeniably guilty. But the most interesting part of 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.440 the story of Daria sulta Kova, at least to me, 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.400 isn't her actual crime so much as her position in 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:17.680 Russian society and the balancing act that the reigning monarch 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.760 Katherine the Great was forced to do in order to 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:24.880 hold her nobles accountable for their actions while still keeping 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:34.760 them on her side. Daria Nikolayevna Ivanovna was born on 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:39.720 March eleven, thirty, just a few months after the future 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:44.000 Katherine the Great was born. Unlike Katherine, Daria was born 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:47.880 to a prominent family of Russian nobles, with princes on 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:52.840 both her mother's and her father's side of the family tree. Eventually, 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:57.120 that prominent lineage led Darya to make her own aristocratic 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:02.920 marriage to a man named Gleb Xyevitch Saltikov. The Saltikovs 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:07.600 make frequent appearances on the pages of Russian history. One Saltikov, 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:12.080 distantly distantly related to Gleb would be one of Catherine 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:17.840 the Great's first extramarital lovers, another Saltikov. Gleb's nephew, actually 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:20.560 would go on to be the tutor of Catherine the 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:25.560 Great son. Gleb himself was a captain in the Imperial Guard, 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:27.800 and it was thought that he would make a fine 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.000 match for the pretty young Daria, who as a young 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:35.160 woman was known for being pious and well behaved. But 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.520 Gleb died young. Though the couple had two children, Daria 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.079 would be a widow at age twenty five, living as 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:47.160 a single woman on a vast inherited estate south of Moscow, 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:52.080 with around six hundred serfs to work the land. One 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.560 of Daria's sons died when he was eleven, the other 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:59.679 would only survive until his early twenties. So even by 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.280 Shian standards, the salt Takova state was a sad and 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:08.560 gloomy place, strange and lonely, and there were stories that 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:12.680 surrounded the estate like mist. They said that the sound 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:16.920 of a cracking whip could be heard for miles away, 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:20.040 that the corpse of a woman was once wheeled away 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:24.280 in the middle of the night, hidden by darkness. According 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:28.280 to the rumor, the body was unmistakably that of a woman, 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.400 but all of her hair had been scorched, singed off, 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:43.080 and her skin was flayed from the chest. No One 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:46.800 in eighteenth century Russia expected that surfs were going to 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:51.480 have particularly long, fulfilling lives, but it seemed that the 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:56.400 surfs at the Saltakova state were particularly brittle and frightened. 0:09:57.280 --> 0:09:59.880 Young girls would go to work for Darias salt Ko 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.680 now and none of them would ever be seen again. 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:09.120 According to allegations, saltic Cova's bitterness and loneliness curdled in 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:13.000 her heart into a twisted cruelty. If one of her 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.880 servants spilled tea or forgot one of their chores, salta 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.800 Cova would beat them with logs or shove them down 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.640 the stairs. She would set their flesh on fire, or 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:29.000 pour burning water from teapots onto their bare limbs. Sometimes 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:31.880 she would tie a surf up and leave them naked 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:36.040 in the Russian cold to freeze to death. She used 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:40.920 hot irons, she flayed flesh and burned hair off. She 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:45.720 allegedly once crushed a pregnant woman's belly beneath her boot. 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.680 Those saltic Coba would later say that any cruelty she 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:53.199 exhibited towards her serfs was just because they were ineffective 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.880 at doing their jobs. It's impossible not to see a 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:01.360 more personal aspect to her brutality. Most of her victims 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:05.200 were young women. They were pretty girls who reminded the 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:09.080 aging Saltikova that she was no longer the youthful girl 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:17.559 of promise that she once was. After her husband's death, 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:22.200 Saltikova did have a lover, a man named Nikolay Kyotchev, 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:26.440 but Nikolay left Darya in order to marry another woman. 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:31.480 As cruel punishment, Daria sent two of her serfs to 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:36.000 set fire to the newlywed's home. Rather than obey, the 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.640 serfs warned Nikolay and his bride, and neither was harmed, 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.640 although I do have to wonder what fate might have 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.520 befallen the SERPs when they returned to the Saltikova state 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:52.240 with their mission incomplete. Unfortunately, most of the scholarship around 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:56.400 Darius Saltikova's life and her murders is written in Russian 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.800 and remains untranslated, and though I was able to learn 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:03.720 a lot through the miracle of online translation, I still 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:07.000 found it challenging to parse out what was rumor and 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.360 what was actually confirmed when it came to the extent 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:14.360 of salt Dakova's sheer sadism. But how was a woman 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:19.800 able to go decades brutalizing dozens, possibly hundreds of people. 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:26.280 Serfs in Russia existed somewhere between slavery and freedom. In effect, 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:30.160 their labor, but not their personhood itself, belonged to their 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.520 master or mistress. The original purpose of the serf class 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:37.600 was to tie laborers to the land so that they 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.800 couldn't migrate. There were vast swatches of Russian land that 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.480 needed to be farmed, but which no one would want 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:48.800 to farm voluntarily, so the surf class was born. Although 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:52.080 the position of serfs continued to evolve well into the 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:56.319 eighteenth century, and this is just a very cursory overview 0:12:56.400 --> 0:13:01.240 of a very complicated socio political issue. Serfs had little 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:06.360 recourse against physical or emotional abuse. They couldn't quit their jobs, 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:10.040 and they could be gifted or inherited to other estates. 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:14.319 But serfs weren't allowed to be outright killed, and though 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.719 they could be tortured in the name of discipline, they 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.200 weren't supposed to be tortured just out of sadistic pleasure. 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:25.520 It was Catherine the Great, a student and admirer of 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:29.760 the liberal politics of the Enlightenment sweeping Western Europe, who 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.600 attempted to advocate for more rights for the serfs in 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:38.120 order to, in her mind, poll Russia towards modernity. Not 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.800 only was want and cruelty forbidden under Catherine the Great, 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:45.600 but serfs also had a right to lodge complaints against 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.120 their masters. It should be noted, though, that most of 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:52.680 these complaints would be going to police forces who were 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:57.800 almost uniformly corrupt, police forces who worked primarily to protect 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:02.280 wealthy people like Daria Saltco buh So, just because surfs 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:06.720 were allowed to complain didn't mean necessarily that people would listen. 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:11.080 Russia was a very very large country, after all, with 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.640 a lot of serfs, and though the Empress Catherine the 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.960 Great purported to be liberal, there was still a deeply 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:22.120 entrenched power structure in place in Russia built to protect 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:27.320 the nobles. Even so, twenty one serfs conquered their fear 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.240 of what Darius Sultakova might do if she found out, 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.840 and they filed complaints against their mistress. But it would 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:38.640 be the twenty second complaint that would finally lead to 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:47.200 Saltikova's downfall. In the summer of seventeen sixty two, a 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.320 man who worked in the stables at the Sultakova state, 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.640 named her Malay Alien, fled the estate and made it 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.640 all the way to St. Petersburg, where he petitioned Catherine 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.600 the Great personally nil Ling on the throne room floor, 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:06.360 he informed the Empress that his mistress, Daria Saltikova, had 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:11.320 murdered three of his wives, one after another, every time 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:16.360 he got remarried. Darius Saltikova was arrested and held for 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:21.200 six years, while Catherine the Great authorized a full investigation. 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:27.360 For her part, Daria remained completely unrepentant. She maintained that 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:31.400 she did nothing wrong. She was merely disciplining her serfs, 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:35.080 and she maintained that story with full confidence that she 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:39.040 would face no consequences for her actions in this world 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.480 or the next. Even when a priest came to get 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:48.800 her confession, Daria didn't speak. The investigation would ultimately involve 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:53.240 interviewing hundreds of peasants. At the time, the Russian legal 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:57.240 system relied on an idea called odo brenno, which basically 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.160 translates to the notion of whether or not behave here 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:04.880 was considered acceptable by the wider community. The course of 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:10.280 the investigation against Darius Altakova yielded one hundred and thirty 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:14.960 eight suspicious deaths, all but three of them women and girls. 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.480 In the end, Darius Altakova was found guilty by the 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:24.480 Collegium of Justice of beating thirty eight female serfs to death. 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:33.600 This is a case unlike Countess Bathies, where the investigation 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:37.320 was thorough and the witnesses were interviewed at least to 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:41.760 the best of my knowledge, without torture. The verdict being 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:45.400 settled was the easy part of the process, at least 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:49.920 for the Empress Catherine. Sentencing accountess would be a more 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:54.720 complicated issue. The Empress wanted to set a larger example 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:57.440 to the country, to show that she cared about the 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.480 surf class, even though she didn't believe that she had 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:06.119 the political stability to eliminate serfdom altogether. Catherine also wanted 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.560 to live up to the ideals that she believed in 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:13.760 of the fair judicial systems of Enlightenment philosophers. She wanted 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:17.280 to make a statement both in Russia and also abroad, 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:20.520 that her empire had legal systems that were up to 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.600 snuff with what she believed to be the more rigorous 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:29.320 and egalitarian judiciaries in Western Europe. But on the other hand, 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:33.359 Catherine was well aware that her power in Russia was 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.720 dependent on the support of the noble class. Katherine didn't 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:42.520 inherit the throne she had claimed it, and the aristocracy 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:47.280 needed to feel protected to some degree. The death penalty 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:50.920 had been abolished in Russia in seventeen fifty four, and 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:54.520 even for a crime as brutal as mass murder, Catherine 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:59.120 still felt that execution would be too alienating to the nobility. 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:04.000 But Darius Saltikova was a brutal killer. Her crimes were 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:08.520 shocking and egregious. Katherine needed to make it clear that 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:12.200 that behavior wouldn't be tolerated when it came to nobles 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:18.520 and their serfs, and so Daria Saltikova Murderous, was sentenced 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:22.000 to life in prison at the Ivanovsky Cloister, where she 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:25.240 would stay in the dungeons below the surface, in a 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:30.240 windowless wooden room, away from sunlight and fresh air. A 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:35.160 nun would bring her food and one candle. Saltikova would 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:38.560 only be permitted to leave her imprisonment once a week 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:44.000 for church, but before her life sentence, Daria Saltikova was 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.359 sent to a town square in Moscow to remain in 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.960 chains with a sign around her neck for the public 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:59.680 to see her and to see what she had done. 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:04.320 Daria remained in the dungeons of the Ivanovsky Cloister for 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:09.120 eleven years, after which she was transferred to a monastery building. 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:13.159 The only primary change to her daily life was that 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:17.880 her room now had a window. Spectators could gawk through 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:21.960 the shutters, and Daria would spit back in their faces. 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.760 Countess Elizabeth Bathory also lived under house arrest, but she 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.639 only lived in prison for a few years. Darius selta 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:35.359 Kova lived for more than three decades in confinement until 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:39.320 her death at age seventy one. If she ever repented 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.960 for her cruelty, it wasn't recorded. I don't know whether 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.800 Darias selta Kova was mentally ill. It's difficult for me 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:50.440 to imagine the type of person who would be able 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.679 to torture and hurt other human beings the way that 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:56.959 she did. But I think that it's also worth remembering 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:00.840 that the system of serfdom was a system of d humanization. 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:04.560 It's easy to be able to dismiss an individual like 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:08.240 Darius Saltikova as a monster, and much harder to be 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:18.720 able to reckon with an entire broken system. That's the 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:22.640 story of the gruesome murders of Darius Saltikova. But keep 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.480 listening a little bit after the sponsor break to hear 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:28.160 a bit more about the way she exists in our 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:40.560 modern time. Elizabeth Bathy is far more famous than Darius Sultakova, 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:44.119 but even when it comes to lesser known killers, salta 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:49.040 Kova has something of a pr problem. Almost every photo 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:52.920 of her on the Internet isn't actually her. You can 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.360 google her now darias Seltakova, or you can even use 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:00.240 her birth name Daria Nikolevna Ivanovna, and one of the 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.679 most frequent portraits that comes up is a woman with 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:07.200 powdered hair in a deep blue dress with a square neckline. 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:10.640 The woman is pretty. She has pearls around her neck, 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:14.479 at her ears and in her hair. This portrait is 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:19.400 everywhere on the internet countless website about interesting historical murders. 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:24.040 But the thing is that portrait isn't of Daria Saltikova, 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:29.560 or rather it is, but not this Daria Saltikova. That's 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:33.920 a portrait of Daria Petrovna Saltikova, a lady in waiting 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:36.720 to Catherine the Great, who was born nine years after 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:40.800 the murderess. Because of their shared names, their portraits have 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:45.600 become almost interchangeable. That's one of the many problems with 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:49.919 the Internet, the speed at which misinformation is copied and 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:55.119 recopied again until it becomes indistinguishable from truth. Take it 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:58.160 from me, someone who writes this podcast every other week, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:02.280 you always have to double check the details, or at 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.800 the very least check the Russian patron on mcmiddle name. 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:12.760 Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:15.919 Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkey. The show was written 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:20.240 and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Mankey, 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:24.800 Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:28.280 rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:31.280 social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:34.360 more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:37.000 For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:40.480 Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:41.399 your favorite shows,