If you’re looking for a reason to never trust your neighbors again then you’ve come to the right place. Leonarda Cianciulli is a lesser-known serial killer who committed disgusting acts with the bodies of the three women she killed in 1939 and 1940 in Italy. Not one to limit herself, Cianciulli wore a variety of hats - axe murderer, body defiler, cannibal - and she made them all work. That is, until she was caught.
Like a lot of 20th-century serial killers, Cianciulli never shied away from publicity, and she was up front with police about her murders, even though she knew that copping to the insane details of the case would ensure that she spent the rest of her life behind bars.
One of the greatest myths about serial killers is that they’re all creepy white guys who are in love with their mothers and wet the bed. While this is mostly true, there’s a wide world of murderers and sociopaths out there who look nothing like the famous serial killers we all know. On the outside, Leonarda Cianciulli was a sweet little lady who was friends with her neighbors and baked delicious tea cakes, but hiding behind that mask was the soul of a murderer who believed in the magical properties of human sacrifice. If you were looking for an excuse to start spying on your neighbors, you’ve found it in the case of Leonarda Cianciulli, the soap-making murderer.
17 Gruesome Facts About Serial Killer & Soap-Maker Leonarda Cianciulli,
She Wrote an Autobiography - With Recipes!
After she was convicted of the murder of three women and defiling their bodies, Cianciulli spent the rest of her life behind bars. To stay busy and hold onto any semblance of sanity still in her head, she wrote her memoirs. Titled An Embittered Soul’s Confessions, Cianciulli got into it about the murders and even offered up helpful hints for how the reader could turn people into soap:
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. 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.
A Palm Reader Predicted Her Crimes
It seems like Cianciulli couldn't leave well enough alone with all of the fortune tellers and palm readers. One story about the soapy killer alleges that she visited a palm reader in her youth who told her, “In your right hand I see prison, in your left a criminal asylum.” Which is exactly how her life turned out.
She Made Soap and Tea Cakes Out of Her Victims' Bodies
The most well-known part of Leonarda Cianciulli's story is that she used caustic soda, an industrial solvent used to break down wood, to dissolve human bodies. It can also be used to make a harsh soap if it's mixed with fat or meat from a human. In order to make cake out a person, she simply let her victim's blood coagulate, then she dried it out in an oven and mixed it with flour. From there she would use the flour to make cakes and give them out to her neighbors. And that's why you should never accept food from a stranger - or even people you know, for that matter.
Her Son Was in the Army, and She Was Convinced Human Sacrifice Would Save Him
After learning from a fortune teller that all of her children would die, Cianciulli freaked out. And then to add gasoline to the superstitious flame, he son joined the Italian army, which in her mind was akin to a death sentence. It's not her son's fault that she believed the only way to keep him alive was to commit murder as a form of human sacrifice, but it certainly played into her bizarre reasoning.
A Fortune Teller Told Her She Needed to Make Human Sacrifices to Save Her Children
Leonarda Cianciulli has been described as "superstitious" by a number of biographers for taking a fortune teller's words to heart when she was told that all of her children would die, and that the only way she could save them was by human sacrifice. A more accurate description of the killer would be to say that she had lost her damn mind. Superstitious is when you refuse to walk under a ladder or change your hotel room because it it has the number 13 in it, not when you murder a series of women because a fortune teller told you to.
The Opera Singer Was Her Most Delicious Victim
In her memoir, Cianciulli wrote about the opera singer:
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. I gave bars to neighbours and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were better: that woman was really sweet.
She Was Pregnant 17 Times, But Only Four Children Survived to Adulthood
Cianciulli became pregnant seventeen times, but suffered three miscarriages, then ten of her children died when they were still young. No doubt the strain of losing 13 children in total contributed to her insane paranoia about the safety of the remaining four.
Her Second Victim Thought She Had a Job Waiting for Her
Francesca Soavi, Cianciulli's second victim, was enticed by the killer with the promise of a job at the girls’ school in Piacenza, Italy. Cianciulligave similar instructions to Soavi that she gave to her first victim. Soavi was told to tell no one about her departure and instructed to write post cards to her friends and family that she could send once she arrived at the school. But of course there was no job, only a trip to Ciancuilli's soap factory.
Her First Victim Was a Lonely Spinster Lured with the Promise of a Husband
Are you ready to get sad? Cianciulli's first victim, Faustina Setti, was an older woman who was considered to be kind of a spinster, and she was lured into Cianciulli's web with the promise of a husband who was waiting for her in Pola, Italy. Cianciulli convinced Setti to tell no one about the marriage, and to write letters and postcards to her friends and relatives to send once she arrived in Pola (did the concept of a red flag not exist in the '30s?). But there was no suitor waiting for her, only Cianciulli's axe. After the murder, Cianciulli cut her friend ino nine pieces and melted the body down in her pot.
Her Third Victim Was Catfished Hard
Not to victim-blame, but Cianciulli's third victim, Virginia Cacioppo, kind of walked into her own murder. Cacioppo was a former opera singer, who at 53 was out of work and desperate. So when Cianciulli said that she found the perfect job for an ex-opera singer, working as a secretary to a "mysterious theater impresario" in Florence, Cacioppo jumped at the chance. But here's the thing - that sounds so dumb. As someone who was in the opera world, you would think that Cacioppo would have had a vague idea of who all the mysterious theater impesarios were.
Even if the job seemed too good to be true, Cacioppo jumped at the chance to re-enter the opera world and was turned into a creamy soap that was given out to her neighbors.