Was This Man History's First Recorded Serial Killer?

Posted by Reinaldo Massengill on Sunday, May 5, 2024

As if murdering children wasn't bad enough, Gilles de Rais was also accused of committing atrocious sexual acts with his child victims before he dismembered and decapitated them. Most of what we know about his pedophilia came from the testimony of his servants during his trial. His personal attendant said, according to History Collection, that Gilles would "practice his libidinous pleasures on the said children" before killing them. The servant went into grotesque detail about the nature of the sexual acts, but that's not something we're going to get into because, quite frankly, it's horrible. You get the picture.

Another one of the baron's servants came forward during the trial to say that Gilles de Rais "took more pleasure in the murder of the said children, and in seeing their heads and limbs separated from their body, in seeing them die and their blood flow, than in having carnal knowledge of them." So, it's more likely that, if Gilles de Rais was indeed guilty of the crimes, he used the sexual acts as a way to instill even greater fear in his victims than it is that he got his kicks from the molestation itself. Either way, guilty or innocent, the story of the baron's crimes is surely something straight out of humanity's collective worst nightmare.

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