The Crimes of Leonarda Cianciulli: The Soap-Maker of Correggio
Italy, a country steeped in rich history and cultural splendour, also bears the stain of one of the most chilling figures in criminal history: Leonarda Cianciulli, better known as the “Soap-Maker of Correggio” (La Saponificatrice di Correggio). In a twisted bid to protect her son during the uncertainties of World War II, Cianciulli committed three horrific murders in 1939 and 1940, transforming her victims into soap and teacakes. This grotesque tale remains one of Italy’s most infamous criminal cases, revealing a deeply disturbed mind whose actions shocked a nation.
Early Life and Dark Superstitions
Leonarda Cianciulli was born in Montella, a small town in the Avellino province, in 1894, within the Kingdom of Italy. Her early life was fraught with hardship and sorrow, and she made several attempts to end her life in her youth, signifying a deep emotional instability from an early age. In 1917, she defied her mother’s wishes by marrying Raffaele Pansardi, a clerk from a local registry office. This union, which her mother vehemently opposed, became a focal point in Cianciulli’s later claims that her life was plagued by a curse her mother had allegedly placed upon her.
The couple’s early years were marred by tragedy and misfortune. In 1921, the pair moved to Raffaele’s hometown of Lauria in Potenza. However, Cianciulli’s growing desperation for financial stability led her down a criminal path. In 1927, she was convicted of fraud and served a prison sentence. After being released, she and her husband relocated several times, finally settling in Correggio, Reggio Emilia, after their home in Lacedonia was destroyed by the devastating 1930 Irpinia earthquake.
In Correggio, Cianciulli opened a small shop and built a reputation as a respectable, popular member of the local community. But beneath her outward normality lay a woman consumed by grief and superstition. Throughout her marriage, Cianciulli experienced a staggering seventeen pregnancies, losing three children to miscarriages and ten more in their youth.
Only four of her children survived to adulthood. Haunted by her losses, she became obsessively protective of her surviving children, especially her eldest son, Giuseppe. This obsessive love became the driving force behind the monstrous acts she would later commit.
A Life Shaped by Prophecy
Cianciulli’s deep-seated fears were heightened by her visits to fortune tellers. One had ominously warned that all of her children would die young, while another, a Romani palm reader, foretold a future of criminal punishment, claiming she saw prison in one hand and a criminal asylum in the other. These prophecies seem to have taken root in Cianciulli’s mind, adding layers of paranoia and fuelling her belief in the occult.
When her beloved son Giuseppe was drafted into the Royal Italian Army in 1939, at the cusp of World War II, Cianciulli became desperate to ensure his safety. Convinced that the only way to protect him was through human sacrifice, she embarked on a gruesome killing spree, luring three vulnerable women from her community to their deaths.
The Gruesome Murders
Cianciulli’s first victim was Faustina Setti, an unmarried woman who had long sought companionship. Cianciulli promised to help Setti find a husband, fabricating the existence of a potential suitor in the town of Pola. She convinced Setti to keep the arrangement secret and persuaded her to write letters to her family, explaining her departure for Pola. In December 1939, Setti visited Cianciulli one last time before her supposed journey, unaware that she was walking into a trap.
Cianciulli bludgeoned her to death with an axe and then gruesomely dismembered her body. She boiled the remains in a pot using caustic soda, a substance often used in soap-making, dissolving the flesh into a gelatinous mass. What remained was turned into soap and tea cakes—disturbingly, Cianciulli would later admit to serving the cakes to visitors, as well as consuming them with her son Giuseppe.
“I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the 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.” Leonarda Cianciulli, during her confession to three counts of murder.
Next came Francesca Soavi, a schoolteacher lured by the promise of a job in Piacenza. Like Setti, Soavi was made to write letters detailing her plans, which were never meant to be sent. In September 1940, Soavi became the second victim of Cianciulli’s axe. Her body was disposed of in much the same manner as Setti’s, with Cianciulli pocketing a modest 3,000 lire for her troubles.
The final victim was Virginia Cacioppo, a former soprano who had once performed at the prestigious La Scala opera house. In September 1940, Cianciulli enticed Cacioppo with the offer of a job working for a mysterious impresario in Florence. As with the previous victims, she was told not to speak of her plans and to write letters before her departure. On 30 September, Cacioppo met her grisly end. Unlike the others, however, Cianciulli made soap from Cacioppo’s fat, which she claimed was of exceptional quality. She also baked tea cakes from her remains, boasting later that the cakes were “sweeter” than the previous batches.
Discovery and Arrest
The disappearances of Cianciulli’s victims might have gone unnoticed had it not been for the sharp intuition of Virginia Cacioppo’s sister-in-law, Albertina Fanti. Fanti grew suspicious after Cacioppo’s sudden disappearance and reported her concerns to the police, who launched an investigation. Authorities quickly turned their attention to Cianciulli, and although she initially denied any involvement, she eventually confessed in full detail after her son Giuseppe was implicated. In a bid to protect him, she revealed the extent of her crimes.
The Trial and Legacy
Leonarda Cianciulli’s trial began in 1946, and she remained unapologetic throughout. During the proceedings, she calmly corrected the prosecutor on the specifics of her methods, displaying an unsettling pride in her macabre craft. She even mentioned that she had donated the copper ladle she used to skim the fat off her victims’ remains to aid Italy’s war effort, a gruesome token of patriotism. Cianciulli was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years in prison, along with three years in a criminal asylum. Her foretelling from the palm reader had come true.
Cianciulli died in 1970 of cerebral apoplexy in the women’s criminal asylum in Pozzuoli. Her legacy lives on, a macabre chapter in Italy’s criminal history. Artefacts from her killings, including the pot used to boil her victims, are displayed at the Criminological Museum in Rome, a haunting reminder of the twisted depths of human depravity.
She was buried in the cemetery of Pozzuoli in a pauper’s grave. At the end of the burial period, in 1975, no one claimed her body, and the remains ended up in the common ossuary of the city’s cemetery.
A prison nun remembered her this way:
“Despite the limited means we had, she prepared very tasty sweets, which, however, no inmate ever dared to eat. They believed they contained some magical substance.”
The story of Leonarda Cianciulli, the Soap-Maker of Correggio, is not just one of cold-blooded murder. It is a tale of superstition, madness, and a desperate mother’s attempt to cheat fate, resulting in one of the most gruesome series of crimes in modern history.
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