Gilles De Rais achieved fame and fortune after leading a division of knights in the army of famed heroine Joan of Arc during the mid-fourteenth century. His good fortune came to a screeching halt when he was brought to trial as a heretic after imprisoning and mistreating a priest. Armed with this unbeatable case, French authorities took advantage by charging De Rais with additional crimes, including sexual perversions against children, which had been fairly common knowledge beforehand. The famed warrior had been practicing child sacrifice freely for a good deal of time before facing The Inquisition.

For his part De Rais claimed his sacrifices were an attempt to acquire even more power than he already possessed, which did not entirely explain why he felt it necessary to practice sadistic sexual acts on his victims before, during, and after their deaths. De Rais and his servants confessed that he had sodomized many of the youngsters before cutting off their heads, which usually excited him to further sexual degredations on the lifeless bodies. It should be noted that many of the admissions were extracted by physical and mental torture.

It is unknown how many may have died at De Rais' hands, though some speculations put the number at over 800. No matter the number of his total kills, the child slayer was executed in Nantes in 1440.