Known as the "Soap-Maker of Correggio," Leonarda Cianciulli murdered three women between 1939 and 1940 because she believed that human sacrifice would protect her son during World War II.
ARCHIVIO GBB / Alamy Stock PhotoLeonarda Cianciulli’s mugshot.
Life for Leonarda Cianciulli had never been easy. In her youth, she attempted suicide twice. As an adult, she and her husband got pregnant 17 times — but suffered three miscarriages and lost 10 of their children at young ages. So when World War II began, Cianciulli became frantically determined to do whatever it took to protect her son.
Protecting him, she decided, would take extreme measures. Protecting him, she resolved, would require human sacrifice.
So, between 1939 and 1940, Leonarda Cianciulli lured three women to her home and murdered them. She then used their bodies to make soap and teacakes, which she ate herself — and served to her neighbors. Eventually, however, suspicion fell on Cianciulli, who admitted to her gruesome crimes.
This is the grisly story of Leonarda Cianciulli, the Italian serial killer known as the “Soap-Maker of Correggio.”
Leonarda Cianciulli’s Turbulent Early Life In Italy
Born on April 18, 1894, in the quaint southern Italian town of Montella, Leonarda Cianciulli had a tragic life from the start.
The History Collection / Alamy Stock PhotoA young Leonarda Cianciulli in the 1920s.
She attempted suicide twice before she became an adult. Then, when she married registry clerk Raffaele Pansardi in 1917, Cianciulli claimed her mother cursed her because she disapproved of the match. Whether or not this is true, Cianciulli did suffer from great tragedies during the course of her marriage — she had 17 pregnancies, but three ended in miscarriage, and 10 of Cianciulli’s children died at a very young age. As a result, Cianciulli became very protective of her surviving children.
Things weren’t much better outside of Leonarda Cianciulli’s home life. In 1927, Cianciulli was imprisoned for fraud after creating fake account information at the financial institution where she worked. Upon her release, she and her family moved from Lauria to Lacedonia — only to tragically lose their home in the Irpinia Earthquake of July 23, 1930.
Wikimedia CommonsThe 1930 Irpinia Earthquake, which cost Leonarda Cianciulli her family home.
Perhaps searching for some reassurance about the course of her life, Leonarda Cianciulli purportedly went to a palm reader to have her fortune told. Years earlier, another fortune teller had told her that all her children would die young — a terrible prophecy which had more or less come true. But if Cianciulli hoped that the palm reader would promise brighter days ahead, she was severely disappointed.
According to the Criminology Museum in Rome, the palm reader studied Cianciulli’s hands, then offered up a chilling prophecy: “In your right hand I see prison, in your left a criminal asylum.”
And in the end, though Leonarda Cianciulli and her family made a fresh start in the town of Correggio, she wasn’t able to outrun fate.
The Murders Of The ‘Soap-Maker of Correggio’
In late 1939, as World War II consumed Europe, Leonarda Cianciulli’s son Giuseppe told her that he was going to join the Royal Italian Army. Having lost 14 children, Cianciulli feared losing Giuseppe too. So she turned to the one thing that she believed would keep him safe: human sacrifice.
It’s unclear where Cianciulli got her idea to sacrifice humans in order to save her son from dying in World War II. Roman Catholicism, prevalent in Italy during Cianciulli’s life, forbade human sacrifice as an abomination before God. But regardless of where she got her idea, Leonarda Cianciulli would go on to murder three women before she was caught.
Public DomainThe victims of Cianciulli: Faustina Setti, Francesca Soavi, and Virginia Cacioppo.
Leonarda Cianciulli’s first victim was a local spinster named Faustina Setti. After inviting Setti to her home under the guise of setting her up with a husband, Cianciulli instructed Setti to write reassuring letters to her family members. Then Cianciulli gave Setti a glass of wine mixed with sleeping pills — and brutally murdered her with an ax.
Next, Cianciulli cut Setti into nine pieces and gathered her blood into a basin.
“I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the whole mixture until the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank,” Cianciulli later explained.
She continued: “As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it had coagulated, dried it in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk and eggs, as well as a bit of margarine, kneading all the ingredients together. I made lots of crunchy tea cakes and served them to the ladies who came to visit, though Giuseppe and I also ate them.”
Cianciulli also reportedly took Setti’s life savings, a total of 30,000 Italian lire, which she had received as payment for setting Setti up with a husband.
On Sept. 5, 1940, Cianciulli found her second victim: Francesca Soavi. As with Setti, Cianciulli lured Soavi to her home with a false promise. She claimed that she had organized a teaching job for Soavi, and convinced Soavi to write letters to her friends detailing her trip. Then, Leonarda Cianciulli drugged Soavi, killed her with an ax, baked her into teacakes, and stole her money.
Cianciulli’s third victim, however, would be her last.
colaimages / Alamy Stock PhotoSerial killer Leonarda Cianciulli interviewed by Professor Saporito in Italy.
Virginia Cacioppo was a noted soprano who once sang at the famed La Scala opera house in Milan. Cianciulli had promised her a job working with an impresario in Florence, which was sufficient to lure Cacioppo to Cianciulli’s home on Sept. 30, 1940. As with her previous two victims, Cianciulli fed Cacioppo spiked wine — and killed her with an ax.
This time, however, instead of only baking her body into teacakes and feeding them to her neighbors, Cianciulli also melted Cacioppo’s flesh down and turned it into soap.
“She ended up in the pot like the other two… her flesh was fat and white, when it had melted I added a bottle of cologne, and after a long time on the boil, I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap,” Cianciulli recalled. “I gave bars to neighbors and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were better: that woman was really sweet.”
But Leonarda Cianciulli’s murder spree would soon come to an end.
Leonarda Cianciulli’s Arrest, Death, And Legend
Although Leonarda Cianciulli may have believed that she had committed the perfect murders, she had made a mistake with Cacioppo. Unlike her first two victims, Cacioppo had a very worried sister-in-law. She didn’t believe Cacioppo’s letters detailing her quick departure, and had, in fact, seen Cacioppo entering Cianciulli’s home the night she had “left.” Almost immediately, she reported Cacioppo’s disappearance to the police.
Museum of Contemporary PhotographyLeonarda Cianciulli on trial in 1946.
The police went to investigate Cianciulli. They found damning evidence at her home: the personal belongings of the missing women, three axes, two knives, and a cauldron. Cianciulli initially denied everything, but when the police shifted the blame toward her beloved son Giuseppe, she admitted to the murders. According to Lombardy Cultural Heritage, Cianciulli proved that she was able to chop up the bodies alone — and without Giuseppe’s help — by dismembering a corpse at a local morgue in just 12 minutes.
In a short 1946 trial, Leonarda Cianciulli was found guilty and given a 33-year sentence that echoed the fortune teller’s prophecy with eerie accuracy: 30 years in a prison and three years in a criminal asylum.
While imprisoned, Cianciulli gained a reputation as a model prisoner. She was quiet, calm, and often spent her time crocheting and making baked goods — although no one was keen to try them. And on Oct. 15, 1970, Leonarda Cianciulli died of cerebral apoplexy, a type of hemorrhage, while she was still in the asylum. She was 79 years old.
Her body was returned to her family for burial, but her murder weapons — including the pot that her victims were boiled in — were donated to the Criminology Museum in Rome. To this day, visitors can see her collection of axes and peer inside the vat that she used to boil her victims.
Wikimedia CommonsLeonara Cianciulli’s victims and her preferred murder weapons in the Italian Criminology Museum.
But the story doesn’t end there. Indeed, the world’s fascination with the “Soap-Maker of Correggio” hasn’t waned. In 1979, Lina Wertmüller — best known for her work on the infamous Italian film The Seduction of Mimi — produced the play Love & Magic in Mama’s Kitchen, which was based on the life of Leonarda Cianciulli, for the Spoleto Festival. And, in 1983, Love & Magic in Mama’s Kitchen began a Broadway run, immortalizing Leonarda Cianciulli from the secluded hills of Avellino to New York City.
If you thought Leonarda Cianciulli was a brutal serial killer, wait until you read about Elizabeth Bathory, who was so brutal she was known as the Blood Countess. Then, read about the “Death House Landlady” Dorothea Puente.
