7. Exposure and Execution
As investigators discovered, de Rais routinely lured children from peasant or lower-class families to his castle with gifts, such as candies, toys, or clothing. He initially put them at ease by feeding and pampering them, before leading them to a bedroom, where they were seized by de Rais and his accomplices. As he confessed in his subsequent trial, de Rais got a sadistic kick out of watching their fear, when he explained what was to come. And what was to come was nothing good. Suffice it to say that it involved torture and sodomy, and ended with the child’s murder, usually via decapitation.
The victims and their clothing were then burned in the fireplace, and their ashes dumped in a moat. After de Rais confessed to his crimes, he and he and his accomplices were condemned to death. He was executed on October 26th, 1440, by burning and hanging, simultaneously. His infamy inspired the fairy tale of Bluebeard, about a wealthy serial-wife killer.