Monday, October 9, 2017

Grim History: Leonarda Cianciulli, 'The Soap Maker of Correggio'




"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 loving mother. The perfect neighbor. A friend. A pillar of the community. A woman so kind, that she thought nothing of giving away her lovingly-crafted bars of soap to any and everyone she knew. She ran a small shop, which I'm sure supported the family well enough.

Leonarda did not have an easy life. She'd attempted suicide as a young girl multiple times. As a young woman she committed fraud and landed in jail. After that, when she and her husband moved to another town, their home was destroyed in an earthquake. She had seventeen pregnancies, three of them being miscarried, and ten of them died as children. It's no wonder she became so very protective of the four she had left.

She was a very superstitious woman. In her youth, she went to multiple fortune-tellers, desperate no doubt for some bright glint of hope in her future. One of them told her she would lose all of her children, and one can only wonder if the fear of this awful fate was self-fulfilling. Did she spend every waking hour in her pregnancy in fear? Did she fill her children with tonics or syrups to keep them well, only to poison them with the tinctures that were meant to save? We'll never know what happened to all of those lost ones, but we do know that Leonarda desperately loved the remaining four.

It wasn't long after the earlier fortune was told, that she had her palm read by yet another gypsy in almost Hollywood-esque fashion. Her reading would spell out a far worse fate than meeting a tall, dark stranger. She was told that in her right hand the gypsy saw prison, and in the left a criminal asylum.

I don't doubt Leonarda spent her time crafting wards against the evil eye, tearing out her hair, and doing all manner of strange things one would expect of a madwoman behind closed doors. Somehow, after these two terrible fortunes in her life, and with the knowledge that her eldest son would be joining the army to fight in World War II, Leonarda decided she had to do something horrible to protect him.  But what could satisfy the blood-hungry fate that had snatched so many of her children from her?

Perhaps she thought she could simply swap one life for another. Appease death with someone else's life. After all, she'd begun to dig into a bit of fortune-telling herself. It isn't hard to believe a madwoman would give herself such a reading. So, Leonarda planned. She selected three friends, women who may very well have reminded Leonarda of herself. They were middle-aged, and ready to change their lives.

Her first victim, Faustina Setti, wanted companionship. She was lonely. Leonarda persuaded her that she would have to move to Pola, but there was the perfect man waiting for her there. Cleverly, she convinced Faustina to write several letters to be sent to her friends and family when she arrived. Then, on the morning Faustina was to leave, they shared some wine.

Faustina's glass was drugged. One can only hope she didn't suffer when that gleaming ax was hefted above Leonarda's head, and that the death was quick. Poor Faustina's body was cut into nine pieces and the blood was drained into a basin. Leonarda seemed to delight in recounting her story later after she'd been caught, likening her story to a recipe one would expect to find in an insane grandmother's cook book: 

       “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.“

Giuseppe was her eldest son. The one planning to enlist. Imagine the motherly delight she must have felt, serving up the remains of her former friend and client, while the death of that woman surely meant he would live that much longer. Still, it wasn't enough, and after Leonarda's first literal taste of death....

She wanted more.

The second victim, Francesca Soavi, suffered much the same fate. She'd been looking for a job. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong place to find it. This time, Leonarda told her to begin writing postcards to her friends and family, sending them while she was still in Correggio. Waste not want not, as they say. This time, however, Leonarda took a little money from her victim as well. 3000 lire, to be precise. Murder was becoming far more than a mother's desperate acts of love, but something quite profitable to boot.

Her third, final, and most famous (or formerly famous) victim was Virginia Cacioppo. An opera singer who had passed her prime, but the passion for art lived on. Poor Virginia didn't question why Leonarda apparently knew a powerful, mysterious 'theatre impresario' looking for a secretary. After all, she was a fortune-teller. A sweet, kind woman. A friend. A friend with 50,000 lire, and astonishing jewelry. Tokens of another life.

Instead of just stopping at tea-cakes, however, Leonarda decided to earn her infamous title...

"...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."

Virginia's sister-in-law reported her missing, and it wasn't long before the police made inquiries with Leonarda. She confessed, unashamed, and judging by her accounts, seems to have gloried in it. Her first prophecy was happily fulfilled. Leonarda would spend the next thirty years in prison, and her final three in a mental asylum.

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