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Hey, weirdos. I'm Alaina. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. Yeah, girl. We're going to get real
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morbid today, my friends. Yeah, Alaina is back and better than ever. Not that she You never really went anywhere, but
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Thank you. Uh but, you know, this is uh a little far away from the spooky season
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um silliness of it all. Oh. say. Uh cuz, you know, like spooky season we got we you know, we like to go
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a little more haunted, a little more loosey-goosey with it. then we know that you guys like But you
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know, like a you know. You know, you got you want to hear the real stuff, too, and I'm going to get very real on you
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today. Oh, god. Uh we're going to be talking about the story of Leonarda Cianciulli. Mm. Who is also referred to
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as the Soap Maker of Correggio. I don't know how I personally feel about that. Yes. And whatever your first
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thoughts were when I said that, Yep. Yep, correct. Uh also, I'd like to just give a quick little trigger warning
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here. Mm. She has a very tragic story, as does her mother. So, like traumatic upbringing.
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there's some sexual assault in here, there's some like trauma. It's the whole beginning is pretty rough.
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There's also going to be some talk of pregnancy loss. Okay. And you know, that that that kind
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of thing. So, just if that's not really your your bag, then I think you can skip
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a little ways through and we'll get through all that and then you can get into even more horrible things.
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Okay. But yeah, this is going to be a rough one, so just everybody sit tight. So,
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Leonarda Cianciulli, her story begins tragically with her mom's story, to be honest. Um her mother, Amelia De Nolfi,
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um she was born in Montella Avellino, which is a small village in the south of Italy. Okay. Um Amelia grew up as the
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teenage daughter of one of the wealthier families in the region. Uh she grew up very well-off. She had everything she
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needed, very easy life relatively at the time. Um she grew up to be an attractive girl.
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She was kind, she was well-liked by her neighbors and her friends. Like really just kind of had it all grown up. Yeah.
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And in the summer of 1893, as Amelia was coming into adulthood, in that time we're in the late 1800s, so of course
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they immediately were like, "Gotta find her a suitor." Let's marry you off. And of course at that time there was no
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shortage of suitors lining up for her. Um she again came from a wealthy family, high social status. So, there was an
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understanding in that time that she was only really going to be entertaining dates and courting from men of similar
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class and status at that time. suitors. Yeah. So, this kept certain men out of the running. Certain men like Mariano
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Cianciulli. Uh unlike Amelia, Mariano was older, middle-aged. Uh he was very impoverished
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at the time, and he was known around the village for his cruel, nasty, piggish nature. Fantastic. I did notice his last
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name though, and I'm nervous now. But he really liked Amelia. I don't like that.
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They had never met. He just liked how she looked. knew her by sight and by reputation.
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That year, Mariano developed pretty much an obsession with her. Like he kind of stalked her. Um and again,
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they had a very large age gap. He was middle-aged, she was just coming into like adulthood, which means like 17, 18.
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going to say, right? Yeah. Um and he knew very well that he had no chance in this whole courting of her.
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Cuz he's impoverished. Exactly. He was impoverished, he was older, he was just totally out of
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everything. Um but he took this as an opportunity to let his true piggish nature out, because Ryan Green, the
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author of The Curse, a shocking true story of superstition, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, Oh. little little uh
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spoiler there. Okay. wrote quote, "He wanted to tear her down from her pedestal to make her no better than him.
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He wanted to ruin her." Oh, god. That's dark. So, one summer evening, Mariano Mariano,
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remember, he's like stalking her, he's obsessed with her. He followed Amelia to a party she was
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attending with one of her suitors, and he waited outside this estate that she was in. Mm. Um he just lurked in the
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shadows, he drank and drank and drank. Oh, no. And after several hours, she came out of this huge estate. She said
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goodbye to her hosts, and apparently she started down the path alone, which I was
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kind of shocked to read that her suitor was not bringing her home. But was not. Um and she started down the
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path. I think it was pretty close by her house. I don't know if that had anything
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to do with it. She was being followed, and she had no idea. Right. At first, Amelia thought she was
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being robbed, and she told whoever was attacking her that she had no money on her, but then she quickly realized it
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wasn't money that he was looking for. Oh. He ended up brutally raping her outside in the dark. That is horrific.
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Yeah. When he was done with the assault, he just got up and walked away. What? Leaving her completely confused,
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terrified, and alone in a muddy field. In the dark in the middle of like nowhere.
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she had seen him. Like and she knew she had seen him around the village. Like she knew once she saw him, she realized
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who it was. of him kind of thing. And she just laid there for hours before she got up and
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made her way home. Now, Amelia at the time was had a Catholic upbringing. And again,
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high social status, Catholic girl in the 1800s. She's going to be forced to marry
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him. At the time, she knew nothing of sex other than that it was what two people
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did after they were married, and even then, you did it to procreate. That was it.
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Yeah. So, she had no context for what had even just happened. Like this was just so
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this was so traumatic. It's traumatic anyways, and then they would there was all this confusion along with it.
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Right, that's the thing cuz when that happens, like people have something to call it. I can't imagine Oh, yeah, I
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can't even fathom and you don't even really know what it is. But you can feel inside of you that
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that's wrong. Yeah. And she also, because of this whole upbringing, she had come to believe that
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she committed a terrible sin. Oh, god. This was her fault. She did it. And then they were she felt it every time she had
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to walk around in the market or anywhere else in the village and see him. Ugh. Cuz she didn't say anything at
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first, cuz she was feeling so much shame and so scared and confused. So, her feelings of shame only became heightened
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when she realized that she was pregnant as a result of the rape. Oh, god. While she managed to keep
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everything for a time being quiet, after three or four months of pregnancy, it was pretty obvious, and her parents
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confronted her. Oh. Uh they didn't respond how loving parents should respond. Instead, they immediately quote
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threatened to go house to house visiting all of her suitors until they found the
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one who defiled her. Oh, god. So, she was terrified because um who wants to do that?
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pure humiliation. just having that shame that she's feeling spread around the entire town.
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So, she came forward and said, "Oh, I know who did this, and this is how it happened." So, in response, her parents
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had Mariano brought to the house, and they confronted him. And as far as Amelia's parents were
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concerned, there was one option here. Marriage. He was going to marry their daughter. Dude, that is
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I it's so [ __ ] [ __ ] doesn't even the word for it. can't even wrap around this, and what's
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worse is Mariano was pleased. Of course. Yeah, that's what he wanted. he can do that forever, like legally,
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weirdly. he did. He took what he wanted. That's what he's thinking. Wow, I I was out of
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the running, and here I took it into my own hands, and look, I'm getting rewarded for it. Oh, that's so heinous.
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[ __ ] up way to do Like I the layers of [ __ ] up here. Wow. And her parents immediately made arrangements for a
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priest to be brought to the house. They were married in a secret ceremony. Oh. And at this point,
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Amelia and Mariano had never spoken a word to each other. Of course not. Until she he raped her in the dark.
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Wow. And now they're being forced to get married, and she's having his child. And she's going to move into his home,
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I'm assuming. Yep, because after that wedding, she was sent to live in what he basically had a shack in like the worst
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part of the village. And her parents just sent her there and were wanted nothing to do with her after
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this. Oh my god. And according to Green, who I mentioned, who wrote that book that we will link in
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the show notes, Right. the home was completely unfurnished, and quote, "The bathroom
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was outside and shared with the others on the row of houses." So, she this is completely different
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turn turn your lifestyle on its head. Talk about So, she's this confident, happy, loving,
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like well-known in the community. well-loved, well-liked, wealthy, you know, of privilege, and is
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walking around being courted by these men of similar status, and then she goes through the most traumatizing thing you
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can imagine, and her parents forced her to be just indebted into this. Wow. And have it all taken away. Because if
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she did nothing to have this happen. course not. she's being punished and he's being
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rewarded. It's so wild. I have this picture of him him in my mind as this like vile character. Have
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you ever seen Ever After? Yes. You know, when she gets sent to live with that [ __ ] nasty guy?
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is probably what she's going to cut him open. That's what I'm picturing him as. And what's worse is he had no
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job and he had no prospects of work. And instead he just ordered Amelia around at
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work, physically abused her, verbally abused her, whenever she'd and also continued forcing himself on her.
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This is such a nightmare. This is beyond nightmare. It's tragic in every way it could be
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tragic. Now, remember she's pregnant. Right. Leonarda Cianciulli was born April 18th, 1894 and she was born after
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a long, very painful, very traumatic birth. Okay. That took a very large toll on Amelia.
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Oh, no. Uh she lost consciousness on more than one occasion during the birth. Like it was bad.
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Now, from the moment that Leonarda was born, she was very unwanted. Aw. Uh Amelia was still dealing with she's a
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young girl and she's dealing with the aftermath of the trauma of sexual assault and still is being raped and
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beaten by this man. And dealing with culture shock. with him. And so she could not she could
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not connect and she didn't want to connect. She just ignored, basically neglected her, didn't
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want anything to do with her. Oh, that's so sad. The whole thing is awful. And it only got worse as Leonarda got
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older because again, her mother would ignore her completely, Amelia. Uh but it was honestly preferable to the times
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that she paid attention to her because later Leonarda would say that she was frequently physically and verbally
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abused by her mother. So she just took out all of her anger on Leonarda. on her child, which is horrific.
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Yeah. Um and her and Amelia would criticize her all the time. Anything Leonarda did was criticized and that
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took a big toll on her later. Oh, yeah. Because she would criticize and brutalize her for the smallest mistake.
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She was probably taking out all of her anger just on that that one child. her anger at Mariano.
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guy. Her anger at everything around her. She was taking it out on this poor innocent
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child that she did not ask to be here. She's probably not even seeing like this child as her child. She's seeing it as
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his child. of what happened to her. Exactly. And it's like there's so many layers of psychological trauma here.
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Yeah. And the physical and emotional abuse that she suffered at the hands of her mother led to years of I mean
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loneliness, isolation, she had horrible self-esteem. And by the time she reached
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13 and this is trigger warning for suicide and suicidal thoughts. Um she attempted to kill herself at home. Wow.
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Um and she was found and stopped, but instead of looking at this and expressing sympathy or trying to, you
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know, empathize with her or anything, Amelia told her daughter that she was disappointed that she didn't succeed.
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Oh my god. Which is literally unthinkable. That is that's inexcusable. Un- thinkable.
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Unthinkable. I can't I reading that my brain like wouldn't even take in the words. Wow. And a few years later she
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actually attempted again. And this time she attempted by swallowing glass. Oh god, Jesus.
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um was stopped again. It didn't it was not um it did not happen. But uh so she was suffering very much so
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with her mother and her father, Mariano, was basically nowhere to be found. He just I like not that he would have been
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helpful, but um he basically spent most of his time drinking with friends and would turn
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return home in the middle of the night if at all. Anytime he was he just was nowhere. And one evening
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they actually Amelia and Leonarda had to go out looking for him because they couldn't find him and they found him
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passed out in one of his usual drinking spots, but he was totally unconscious and they could not wake him up. So they
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didn't call the doctor, they just carried his body back to the house and put it in an empty room and he died
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there. Oh. So Okay. Not long after that happened, Amelia married again. This time she did
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marry a more respectable and kinder man. Oh, wow. Uh and she hoped that this whole thing was going to change how her
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parents would think of her. That she would be welcomed back into her family. It's going to change how she mothers at
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all? No. And she was hoping that that would happen, but her parents were still very uninterested
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with having anything to do with her even though this guy was a step up from Mariano. That's so [ __ ] up. Um so, you
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know, she couldn't get back in her parents good gracious graces, couldn't get that social standing that Amelia was
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used to having and wanted back. She got a new plan that was going to get herself
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out of poverty. She said, you know, she figured she wasn't going to use her own skills, she wasn't going to use her own
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anything to climb that social ladder. She was going to scheme to find a wealthy suitor for Leonarda Okay.
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that that that her daughter, who she treated like absolute dog [ __ ] her entire life, would pull her out of the
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situation. I'm sure that's going to work out. It's like you get what you give, my
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friend. Uh-huh. And the problem was though that Amelia did not tell Leonarda this. She
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was scheming in the background. Scheming on the low. And Leonarda had already begun meeting
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and dating men. Right. was like taking things cuz she wanted to get the [ __ ] out of there.
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Mhm. And so she eventually met this man named Raffaeli Pensardi. Leonarda met this man and eventually like fell in
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love with him. They had like an actual relationship. Okay. And he was a little older than
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her, nothing crazy and he had what at the time would be considered a low status job. He was a registry clerk.
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Okay. And he was truly the first person in Leonarda's life to treat her well and
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with respect. Okay, I'm so happy you said that cuz as soon as you said she met someone I was
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like I'm so nervous right now. And he proposed marriage, she happily said yes and this meant that she was
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going to get the [ __ ] out of there, be free of her mother. But remember, she wrecked
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Amelia's plan. Uh-oh. Um so she was pissed and when she heard of the engagement, Amelia quote told her
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daughter that she had placed a curse on her and Pensardi for ruining her life for a second time.
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What? Leonarda had been abused her entire life and had been criticized. She had had her
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self-esteem slammed down at every turn. Mhm. So hearing this from her mother imprinted inside her and she left with
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the thinking I've been cursed and I'm going to live a life of tragedy because I did this.
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Jesus. So it turned out that when she left her mother's house to marry Raffaeli, Leonarda would never see her
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mom again, which is for the best. Uh but it didn't turn out well for anybody. Right.
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Um you know, Amelia had done so much psychological damage. Even though she never contacted
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her again and never saw her again to let her inflict more. It was in her. That influence was going
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to be felt for the rest of her life. She had she had changed her fundamentally. And although Raffaeli was by all
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accounts that we could find a very kind man who treated Leonarda very well, was patient, was loving. They had a very
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loving relationship. Yeah. A lifetime of abuse had left her waiting for the abuse to start.
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And so she was constantly paranoid about disappointing or irritating everybody. So she was just
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always on edge and always worried all the time. had so much anxiety. never came with Raffaeli. He never
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abused her, but she was always waiting for it. And it only grew as she got further into
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married life. She was just not able to accept this gentler environment and a partner that didn't criticize her. So
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she turned the criticize criticism into herself and became her own worst critic.
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Oh, no. Every mistake she made or any even perceived mistake that she would make, she would lob crippling criticism
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at herself. And that can be frustrating for your partner, too, when they're trying to be
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like I love you. You're great. You're fine. Like stop talking like that about yourself.
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Exactly. And she would fall into emotional turmoil. She cried a lot. She had a lot of intense bouts of, you know,
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emotions, fear, anxiety. She was dealing with probably PTSD or some form of that.
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Absolutely. And she didn't understand it. Her her husband at the time couldn't understand
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it. Like they, you know, this is again, this is like the 1800s. It's not like you know, well, at this time it's like,
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you know, we're getting into the 1900s here. Um but he did do his best to be supportive and sympathetic. He did not
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turn on her. Like he, you know, he was there. And all of this was also exacerbated by
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the fact that she was now having seizures that she started having after she moved
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in with Raffaeli and it they it's believed that she had this untreated illness as a child.
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Oh, wow. That this was a lingering consequence of. Oh, that's awful. abused. This could have been a result of
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that. Definitely. So again, she was raised a devout Catholic and she was in a very Catholic country
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at the time. But she also had some interest in some like superstitious beliefs and other beliefs.
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And by early adulthood she had a big interest in supernatural stuff and you know, magic and the occult.
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I wonder if the thought that she was cursed had anything to do with that interest.
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Yep. And she was, you know, through that lens, the various negative parts of her
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life like the, you know, the negative emotions, all the crying, the anxiety, the seizures, the paranoia.
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It all kind of made sense to her because she was like it's the result of the curse that my mother had placed on me
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because I married Raffaele. And as far as she could tell, the curse was affecting her husband as well because
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given her low social status, Raffaele's marriage to Leonardo was looked upon pretty poorly by his co-workers and
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superiors. So her low low status made him a target. couple steps above her. And whenever
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there was an opportunity to like get a promotion at work, he was always passed over because they had married
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her. They used that against her. That's so [ __ ] up. Regardless of how long he had worked at
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a place. like the marriage has nothing to do with the job. So desperate for any kind of guidance or
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any anything here, Leonarda turned to the Romani community hoping that the things she had heard about them being
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able to you know, help you with these kind of things like take the negative portions of your life and like help you
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turn them around like tell you the tell you your future, help you manifest, all that good stuff. She was hoping it was
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all true. And she was like I just need some guidance here. So one fall afternoon, she went to a local fair and
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she seeked out a fortune teller who could help her. She so she had been feeling you know,
00:21:08
dealing with the seizures, dealing she had headaches, she had crippling depression, anxiety, all this awful [ __ ]
00:21:13
happening her terror for months and months. And she was honestly at this point convinced that she was dying. Wow.
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was on the verge of death. And she just wanted someone to tell her no, you're not.
00:21:25
Right. And so she located this woman and the woman literally was walking her into
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the tent and Leonarda said, "Am I going to die? Is that what the curse is going to do?" That's the first thing she said.
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And so the lady looked at Leonarda's palm and told her, "No, you're not going to die, at least not anytime soon."
00:21:43
Okay. And she said if that was any relief, it was definitely short-lived because you said,
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"You're going to live a long life, but it will be a life full of sadness. You are going to outlive every one of your
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children." Oh god. Now this was in early 20th century Italy. It was pretty understood that she was
00:22:02
going to want and eventually have many children. That was part of the whole deal here.
00:22:07
And this seemed like a very cruel premonition. Yeah. But it didn't stop her from wanting to start a family. It
00:22:15
was just a very scary thing and it was also something that just compounded on top of her already fear, anxiety,
00:22:22
paranoia, paranoia, depression. Now she's cuz she's already kind of obsessing over this idea of this curse
00:22:30
that her mother has placed on her and now she's hearing this and she's going, "Oh [ __ ] this is the curse." This
00:22:36
woman's nervous system, I can't even imagine. even fathom. And so after 3 years of trying, Leonarda
00:22:44
became pregnant in 1920. Okay. Unfortunately, it was an immediate source of anxiety
00:22:50
because of that lingering thought. anyway. Yeah. And eventually the seizures returned
00:22:58
because her anxiety got so bad and she had some falls, some accidental injuries because of the seizures. And 3 months
00:23:05
into the pregnancy, she had a seizure that caused a fall and she had severe abdominal pain and bleeding. Oh no.
00:23:11
And they went to the doctor and the doctor said, "I'm sorry, but you've miscarried." Oh god. So this was
00:23:17
devastating, obviously. Yeah. She really wanted to become a mother because one of her things was she
00:23:25
wanted to be the exact opposite of her mother. Mhm. And to be able to get that opportunity is like through.
00:23:30
And it also was reinforcing her belief that her mom's curse was real and she was going to have a life of tragedy and
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misery. Raffaele wanted to be supportive, so he was like, "You know what? Nothing's keeping us here in Montello
00:23:45
where we are. Let's relocate. Let's put Let's put all this [ __ ] behind us. Let's start somewhere new." So they
00:23:51
packed up the things they had and they moved they left Montello and they kind of bounced around to a couple of towns
00:23:57
looking for work and somewhere to settle and they finally went back to Raffaele's
00:24:02
hometown of Loria Potenza in 1921. Okay. And they had some temporary jobs along the way, so they had some money saved
00:24:10
and they were able to save enough to buy a small house in Loria and they both found work and they settled down and it
00:24:17
seemed like it was a new start for them. Now That was more than 100 miles away from
00:24:23
Montello, so they were thinking, "You know what? We left that in the [ __ ] dust. Like bye."
00:24:29
But just after a few months into starting their new life, her anxiety was starting to you know, slip away. It was
00:24:34
getting better. It felt like it was like, "Okay, the seizures were lessening because she wasn't as anxious."
00:24:40
And soon after, she was like, "You know what? Maybe he's right. Like maybe this curse is [ __ ]
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Maybe we just needed a fresh start. We had to get the hell away from my mom." Mhm. You know, like maybe I don't need
00:24:51
to worry about fate so much. Maybe I need to like just create my own [ __ ] I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
00:24:56
A year later in 1922, Leonarda became pregnant and she gave birth to a boy. And they named this boy Giuseppe and
00:25:04
from the moment he came into this world, she was determined to be an infinitely better mother than Amelia was to her.
00:25:13
She devoted every waking moment to this child, his health, his happiness. But she kept hearing that curse in the
00:25:20
back of her mind and along with the premonition told to her by that fortune teller.
00:25:25
And so she now had a whole host of new anxieties to start rolling around in her brain here because I mean any new
00:25:34
parent, the new anxieties that come with that are indescribable and a plenty. So
00:25:40
for someone who is already suffering from a monumental amount of trauma and anxieties and depression and paranoia
00:25:47
tour and fear, this is just unthinkable. for disaster. And it caused her to be hyper-vigilant and overprotective of
00:25:56
Giuseppe. And although the pregnancy wasn't a bad pregnancy, which is good, it did require
00:26:01
her to leave her job at the time. And so they were getting by on only Raffaele's
00:26:06
paycheck and she didn't even though she didn't want to be away from her son, she
00:26:10
wanted to find a job because there was a second fear she had of like she wanted his health and safety. And she was also
00:26:17
so scared that they would lose all their money and that he would be in the you know, it was always back to him. Like I
00:26:22
can't let something happen to him. Oh god. I feel I'm I'm like feeling for her so much right now.
00:26:27
It's a whole story. It's very sad. But the problem was that Leonarda didn't have a lot of marketable skills at the
00:26:34
time and also she was a woman at the time. Mhm. So she was at a pretty big disadvantage and so she was she just
00:26:41
took whatever job she could and she eventually found one as an after-hours cleaner at a local tavern.
00:26:47
Now when she was at work, she was just plagued with fear and worry about what might happen to Giuseppe while she was
00:26:54
away from him. And when she was home, she spent all her time just obsessing, micromanaging her
00:27:00
son in order to protect him. And initially, he was just like, "Oh, you know, like she's she's just you
00:27:06
know, she's just mom. Like it's fine." Yeah. But then he got older and he started
00:27:10
socializing and he started seeing other parents and he was Like not every mom is like this. Like
00:27:14
this is smothering and like a lot. And then she started kind of isolating him from other children
00:27:21
because she was discouraging him from socializing because she you know, she was so obsessed. So there's a lot of
00:27:28
psychological issues happening here. Very much so. Obviously, that's going on that I'm not
00:27:33
going to sit here and diagnose cuz I'm not a doctor, but like clearly there's other things going on here that it
00:27:38
that abuse has played into, that all kinds of manner of things have played into.
00:27:42
Definitely. And it's now it's like even though she's going a totally different route than her mother was, not a great
00:27:49
route. It's also not a positive thing. It's like we're going the pendulum's swinging too far the other way.
00:27:55
But despite the fears and stress that motherhood brought and the physical demands of her work now, Leonarda and
00:28:02
Raffaele were wanted more children. Mhm. And unfortunately, their attempts to have more children were kind of
00:28:10
thwarted for a while because she had a they had a lot of miscarriages over the next few years.
00:28:14
awful. And they had multiple in a row and finally after some heartbreaks, she gave birth to two girls in a very short
00:28:23
period of time back-to-back. And then after that, a son came again. Okay. she's got two sons, two daughters. Um
00:28:32
And each time she was like, "You know what? Like I'm that curse mercer. Like this is going to be fine." But within a
00:28:38
few years of them being born, the children began getting sick. And first her son, the youngest son, the
00:28:44
one that was born more recently, not Giuseppe, was getting rashes. And they would get very severe and then
00:28:50
one of the girls got a terrible cough and this one daughter, her lungs were filling with fluid and she was coughing
00:28:57
anytime she was laid down. So Leonarda would sit upright every single night holding her up so that she
00:29:04
could sleep. Oh my god. That's also not helping with her mental health. No. Because now she's not getting sleep.
00:29:10
She's she's so fearful that all this is going to happen. And she did everything she could and I'm sure what Raffaele did
00:29:17
too, but she ended up passing away, the little girl. Just a few months later, they woke one morning to find their
00:29:24
youngest son had died in his sleep. Oh my what like just could have been SIDS? Wow.
00:29:29
knows? Like that that point I don't know. right. Again, given they were so young,
00:29:34
like babies cuz they were all born in very quick succession, which is just something that happened. There in the
00:29:40
era in which they died, there wasn't an autopsy or anything you know, to say what happened to these children cuz this
00:29:47
was unfortunately a little common. Now, this is tragic. She's lost two children.
00:29:52
And this is a very short period of time. Her fear of the curse and the premonition. And she was just
00:29:59
inconsolable. Of course. And according to Ryan Green, the author I mentioned earlier, she abandoned her
00:30:04
part-time jobs entirely and devoted every waking moment to paranoid observation of her surviving children.
00:30:10
Oh god. Which I can't even fathom this. I really can't. And things only got a few later, that second daughter
00:30:17
contracted the same coughing illness Oh no. and died of the same illness. So now she just has Giuseppe again.
00:30:25
Oh my god. Now, three of your children die. The death of any child is incomprehensible.
00:30:33
And such a deeply traumatic experience that How do you go on? anybody would just fall into the the
00:30:39
void. But when you add like a curse and several deaths of children and the idea of a
00:30:46
curse and all that. And there's no way there's no autopsy to tell you that like this isn't a curse,
00:30:52
this is like a congenital thing. This is some kind of hereditary thing. This is a
00:30:57
this is a SIDS kind of thing where you couldn't have avoided it. It's just you know, like all this stuff.
00:31:02
But whatever the real explanation was, as far as Leonardo was concerned, this is just proof of the curse and
00:31:09
she was sure that this was just going to continue happening and that it was going
00:31:12
to come for Giuseppe eventually. So, the incredible loss caused a bout of depression unlike anything that she had
00:31:21
ever experienced before. And I mean the anxiety ramped up, the seizures were now ramping up. She was in
00:31:28
very poor health at this point. And you know, Raffaele was also struggling with the same grief like as the father.
00:31:35
But he was also trying to help her and trying to keep her from succumbing essentially.
00:31:42
really loved her. He really stuck around and he really he really loved her. He wanted her to be
00:31:48
better. Um and so he was he tried to like console her and then he was like, you know what? Like this was a bad time in
00:31:57
our lives, but again, we're of that era too, where he was like, let's have more children. Oh god.
00:32:04
And he was like, that's what makes you happiest is being a mom. So let's, you know, let's just fill our house with
00:32:09
children again. So like that is really what compounds her anxiety, too. Yeah, it's like this I I can I know the
00:32:14
intention Poorly and nicely. but oh god. Like watching from out here, you're just like, oh no. This is so sad.
00:32:20
Also probably thinking about all of this falling onto Giuseppe. Yeah, and he's and he and he's trying to
00:32:26
fill a void in his own heart, you know, like it's all very sad and like very incomprehensible truly. That's why I'm
00:32:32
like I can't even like put my own opinion in here cuz I I can't even go there. No. Um and she was reluctant at this
00:32:41
point cuz she was reluctant to tempt fate. But eventually they did try to get pregnant again and in a few years after
00:32:47
that, she did successfully deliver five healthy baby boys. What? Yeah. So she had four kids before that and
00:32:57
then had three of them pass away and then she had five more baby boys. Nine [ __ ] kids. All of them died.
00:33:05
What? Yes. How? And there was no from what all the sources, there was no sign of abuse. There was no sign of and her
00:33:14
children that like like to you know, there's no nothing that said that they were abused
00:33:20
or killed or poisoned, but there's also no autopsy around to Yeah. But there was
00:33:26
no like Raffaele didn't claim that there was any kind of shenanigans going on and
00:33:32
they all died very young. Wow. I don't know what to think of it. I think it's a a
00:33:39
horrifying and staggering number of children to to lose. Yeah. And she obviously becomes a
00:33:45
murderer. Yes. So it does make you question it slightly. Absolutely. But we don't know. No idea. Interesting.
00:33:52
is that all the sources are saying that it's it's without explanation. I wonder if there's any possibility of
00:33:58
Munchausen's by proxy? Yeah, I don't know. it's just [ __ ] tragedy on tragedy on
00:34:04
tragedy. regardless and later when she spoke about this, she was quoted as saying,
00:34:11
almost every night I dreamed of small white coffins swallowed one after the other by black earth.
00:34:17
Oh my god. Yeah. So the grief drove her deeper and deeper into depression and despair, you know,
00:34:25
and she she's just becoming more paranoid, more more anxious, more upset. And it was so bad that like Giuseppe, you
00:34:34
know, he couldn't let his guard down for even a minute with her. Like she was on him
00:34:41
24/7. Giuseppe was the focal point of everything. I bet. And luckily at this point, thanks to the connections that
00:34:50
Raffaele had made in the community through his job cuz he was a really hard worker and Yeah. like we said, a kind
00:34:55
guy. Right. Um they found more work for her as an after-hour cleaner at a local bank. Okay.
00:35:02
So it was a you know, a better environment according you like she liked it better. And now she could focus on
00:35:08
hopefully focus on something else. Yeah. job suited her for a time. And she didn't mind, you know, it was
00:35:14
repetitive. It was kind of isolated, the hours and all that, but she didn't really mind it.
00:35:18
Okay. The only complaint she really had was that after she had to pay out of her
00:35:21
pocket for cleaning supplies. Oh, that's shitty. that, she was left with very little. So
00:35:26
it was like she was away from her son and not really bringing home enough to really make it worth worth it.
00:35:31
Right. So in an effort to to change this, she started making her own soap and her own cleaning supplies.
00:35:39
Ruh-roh. And at this point, she's just making her own soap and her own cleaning supplies. But even that wasn't really a
00:35:44
much of an improvement in what she was taking home. And she was still obsessing over what was happening to her
00:35:50
son when she wasn't there. Now one evening after everyone had left the bank for the evening, she went into
00:35:56
the manager's office and she created a fake account for herself in one of the bank ledgers and transferred
00:36:03
um a not so subtle amount of money into her account. was it? know the exact amount, but it wasn't
00:36:09
subtle. Not like 20 bucks. And she ended up slipping out of the office. She was like, no one's going to
00:36:13
know that. But this is 1930. This is 1930, but like even in 1930, banks keep meticulous books. They know
00:36:21
when there's a discrepancy. And so when she came back to work the next afternoon, she was met by the
00:36:26
police. Oh. Who arrested her on a fraud charge. Oh [ __ ] Now, the the arrest and the criminal charge
00:36:33
were definitely a source of embarrassment and anxiety all by themselves. then she quickly realized that by doing
00:36:40
this to try to help her family, she could affect her family greatly with this. More important most
00:36:46
importantly her son. And unlike her usual, you know, fears and anxiety and paranoia, this wasn't
00:36:52
really an unreasonable one to be worried about. legit. Because although Raffaele, like we said,
00:36:57
he was well-respected, well-liked, um the shame and suspicion of this could have fallen back on him at his job where
00:37:04
they could say he had something to do with this or do about it. And she realized this and she was like,
00:37:11
oh [ __ ] So in order to place as much distance between that happening and her, she went out of her way to make sure
00:37:18
everyone knew that she did it by herself. That he had nothing to do with it. Raffaele did not know about it. She
00:37:23
said, I only did it because I was quote seized by madness. Okay. But she made sure like he did not know about it. Do
00:37:30
not punish him for it. clearing her husband's name. Yeah. Or trying to at the very least.
00:37:34
They did love each other. It sounds like it. one thing that I truly believe. Yeah. Now she went before a judge in 19
00:37:42
it was 1927. So when I said 1930 before, I meant like almost 1930. Not exactly. Um and she was found guilty of fraud and
00:37:50
sentenced to 18 months in an institution that had once served as a nunnery and was still operated by the church.
00:37:58
Now according to Genevieve Ortiz, who is the author of The Deadly Soap Maker of Correggio, the true story of Leonarda
00:38:05
Cianciulli, uh what would have been considered a very grueling sentence and mistreatment
00:38:11
at the hands of nuns because it was not a nice place. Mhm. Uh any other woman who was in that institution was just in
00:38:17
a hell of their own making at that point. Um it was child's play to Leonarda. She
00:38:23
was like, she had gone through so much. She was like, you kidding me? I grew up with Amelia. Like what this is nothing.
00:38:28
Like she didn't she was she dealt with physical and psychological abuse of her own mom. So
00:38:33
she was like, yeah, this doesn't even phase me. So unaffected. Unaffected. That's so [ __ ] up.
00:38:39
She got through every day easy as pie. Didn't bother her. And she said what got her through was thinking about Giuseppe
00:38:45
waiting for her on the other side. Yeah, she probably just had a level of disassociation that none of us can
00:38:50
imagine. Now Leonarda went through her sentence no incident and was released a little
00:38:56
over a year later. And when she got home though, it was not great because Raffaele had
00:39:02
lost his job because of the crime. Oh no. like regardless of her trying to distance it, they were like, no, we
00:39:08
don't buy it. Oh no. Um so his reputation was tarnished in the community. too. Yeah, and his family. It was tarnished
00:39:16
throughout the whole thing. Oh no. And after years of being super supportive and super patient and super
00:39:22
understanding, he got a little resentful at that point. And he figured and to him, he was like,
00:39:29
where has my patience gotten me? I mean, yeah. Yeah, this is what happened. And according to Ortiz, for the first time
00:39:35
in their marriage, he'd become openly critical of a mistake. Oh. And it's a hard one, man. And given the shame that
00:39:42
she had and you know, the turmoil that she had brought to her family now and the ways that her crime had affected,
00:39:48
you know, everything. Uh Raffaeli borrowed a small amount of money and was like, we got to get out of
00:39:53
here. Like we can't stay here. No way. So they relocated to Lacedonia, Avellino and
00:39:59
they hoped to start over again. Now for the second time, they had uprooted themselves, they were going to
00:40:05
start a new life, but now they have a small they have a child Great. So they can't sleep in strangers' hay
00:40:13
barns and like, you know, in exchange for a day's labor and all that, which is what they did the last time they
00:40:17
relocated and it was this like adventure together as a couple. Now they have a child. Who's got to eat. When they
00:40:24
finally reach Lacedonia, Raffaeli found a clerical job and they were able pretty
00:40:28
quickly to afford a very small house in a very rural village. It took a few months, but they settled in and once the
00:40:34
move was behind them, things calmed down. So Okay. Leonarda and Raffaeli were able to
00:40:40
reconnect, everything calmed down, the tension kind of chilled out and she again found herself pregnant.
00:40:48
Mhm. Which just brought back the same anxieties and fears that the baby was going to die like all the other ones. So
00:40:56
and she and fortunately, she was spared that tragedy right away because she did end up having a healthy baby. Um and she
00:41:05
ended up having another healthy baby right after that. Okay. Uh so she was 12 pregnancies
00:41:12
say I've lost count at this point. 11 or 12. So now she has a Giuseppe and two other
00:41:17
babies. They were very quick together. Um yeah, and it's so, you know, at this point the children seem to be doing okay
00:41:26
and her and Raffaeli's relationship was on the mend seeming to put the mistakes in the past
00:41:33
and we're going to just pretend that didn't happen. Uh but she was just unable to shake this fear and unable to
00:41:40
shake this paranoia and the feelings of you know, suspiciousness that something's going to the other shoe is
00:41:45
going to drop. Mhm. And whenever she had the chance to visit another traveling fortune teller,
00:41:51
she would do it. Uh-huh. Which only fed her anxieties and one afternoon about 2 years after they came
00:41:57
to Lacedonia, she visited another one and this woman took her hands in hers and looked at them and then looked her
00:42:04
in the face and said, "In your right hand I see a prison, in your left a criminal asylum."
00:42:10
Oh, wow. Which also makes me think like, damn, these were like the real deal. I was
00:42:14
going to say. And Leonarda just left this woman and went home. And this is she went right
00:42:20
back to obsessing over a possible future tragedy cuz that doesn't sound great. That's like, girly, that is in your
00:42:25
control. Yeah. And on 1930, after about 3 years after arriving in Lacedonia, there was a violent and destructive
00:42:34
earthquake that struck the region. It killed more than a thousand people and caused
00:42:39
so much damage including Leonarda and Raffaeli's house. It was completely destroyed. Oh, no. So they were
00:42:46
devastated, but they were able to collect what they had in the rubble and had to relocate again and this time
00:42:52
they still had their whole family, you know. they ended up going to the city of Correggio.
00:42:58
Mhm. And the residents of Correggio Correggio they knew of this devastating earthquake
00:43:04
and they welcomed all the people that were displaced from Lacedonia and these people in Correggio did everything they
00:43:11
could to make sure these people felt welcome and like gave them opportunity like they were super warm, super
00:43:16
hospitable to these people. And so they were so nice that they helped Raffaeli find a good job right
00:43:22
away. Wow. And you know, Community. Yeah, and it's like for the first time since the whole like jail
00:43:28
thing happened and since they went to Lacedonia, things weren't as [ __ ] terrible as
00:43:33
they have been. Like, you know, like it seemed like, okay, they were stable at this point cuz they had an income now.
00:43:39
Raffaeli got a pretty good job. The children were healthy, they were making friends, they were doing well in school.
00:43:46
Everything seemed like it was on the up and up, but Leonarda was still unsettled. She was just waiting.
00:43:53
And the earthquake had affected her so deeply, it shook her in a way that the other tragic events hadn't yet.
00:44:01
It was like after this event, she internalized all the collective horrible events that had happened and she was
00:44:07
like, this was all my fault. It was my fault for marrying Raffaeli in the first place. It's like, no.
00:44:12
And that curse. Like this is the this is it. She cannot look at this all and go,
00:44:17
it's in the past. I just got to move forward. I got to look at my happiness that I have and move forward. She just
00:44:22
can't seem to do it. No. And as a result, she kind of went the other way and just gave up the hyper
00:44:28
vigil vigilance because she was like, you know what? I can't protect them from this curse. So
00:44:33
I just have to live. Which so it was almost like a positive thing where she got hyper hyper hyper
00:44:39
obsessed and she couldn't settle herself down about it and then it got so bad and
00:44:43
so unsettled even though everything was so stable that she just went, [ __ ] it.
00:44:47
And then it was like she was able to just Okay. For a moment, it was difficult, but she was like, I'm going
00:44:53
to let go and I'm going to try to just live and I'm going to try to like be in this moment.
00:45:00
and she started to feel a little bit stable. She was starting to gain a little bit something she probably never
00:45:07
felt before, so I'm sure it was a scary feeling. And she was kind of trying to like integrate back into like being a
00:45:14
human and being So she started, you know, she made friends in the community. She participated in community events and
00:45:21
she and Raffaeli eventually became a very well-liked and very well-respected couple in the community. Wow.
00:45:28
They were working and eventually friends and neighbors like helped her buy this little open this little storefront
00:45:35
in the village. For soap. And it was attached to the family home. And so she did, she sold handmade soaps,
00:45:42
other handicrafts because that's what she was good at. Mhm. And her she was popular in town.
00:45:47
Like everybody was like, Leonarda and Raffaeli. Like everything was like, what the [ __ ] is this? This is like the most
00:45:54
on its head from what it was. It's like it's such a like success you would think it's a success tale. But
00:46:00
this is just like, holy [ __ ] you came out of the brinks of just despair, like the
00:46:06
depths of despair and just awfulness and look at you. You're you're feeling it. I'm so
00:46:12
worried. And by 1940, unfortunately, Italy had found itself drawn into the Second World War. Mhm.
00:46:20
You know, and the war effort was ramping up and they needed soldiers and the Italian military employed a campaign of
00:46:27
nationalism to convince young men to join the fight. Somebody who was very enticed by this
00:46:32
was Giuseppe. Giuseppe. Yeah. Uh he saw the war as an opportunity to, you know, fight for, you
00:46:39
know, his national pride, but also get away from his overbearing mother. Mhm. And so Leonarda didn't find out
00:46:46
from Giuseppe that he joined the army. She found out from neighbors at the market. That's not good. And she had
00:46:54
gone through her entire existence just trying to protect these children from this perceived curse, so this was pretty
00:47:00
devastating for her. Right. Because at this point the war hadn't reached its like peak combat
00:47:05
violence, but the risk was undeniable here. Like there was a very high certainty that something bad would
00:47:11
happen to him. Yeah. And after all the years that she had obsessed over protecting him and
00:47:16
watching him, she was like, I can't let this go. I'm not letting this happen. Oh, So she was literally unwilling to
00:47:23
let this happen, but he was an adult now and able to do it. So she decided to turn back to her
00:47:28
interest in, you know, books on the occult and superstitions and like old texts and she was like, I'm going to
00:47:36
find a way to save his life, to like keep him from something bad happening. Okay. I wish she looked up a way to like
00:47:43
lift a curse. Yeah. You know? like, you know, at that point self-help wasn't really like a thing, you know, like
00:47:50
that's what the unfortunate time period of the song self-help. Lift the curse. Yeah, you know? Now, in the years since
00:47:57
they'd moved to Correggio, Leonarda had relaxed like I said and settled into this kind of like less anxious
00:48:03
existence, but this Mhm. just turned it all on its head. Of course. I was I was waiting.
00:48:09
Yeah. And Leonarda had continued sporadically visiting fortune tellers and had become come a little bit of a
00:48:16
student of the occult at that point. Just like, you know, it it wasn't bothering her at that point. And she was
00:48:21
learning about magic and learning about fortune telling and like, you know, like
00:48:25
the cunning women that we talked about like, you know, in previous episodes of like the 1600s. Fun [ __ ]
00:48:31
And she ended up getting this huge collection of books that she was collecting about the different subjects.
00:48:37
All healthy. Yeah. Until then. Uh-huh. Um but she was So she went looking in this collection
00:48:43
trying to find something that could help her son and keep him safe. Sure. And she found what she thought was
00:48:48
the solution in a book called The Law of Equivalent Exchange. Mhm. Okay, I see where we're going.
00:48:55
Yeah. So according to the book, she could ensure Giuseppe's safety, but in order to do so, she would have to offer
00:49:01
another life as exchange. An equal exchange. According to Genevieve Ortiz, who I
00:49:07
mentioned before, the thought of human sacrifice deeply disturbed Leonarda. That's good.
00:49:12
But she felt she had no other choice. That's not good. No. Uh if she wanted to protect him, she was
00:49:17
going to have to exchange someone else's life. Oh, wow. As we can see, there is something There's a deep happening here.
00:49:25
There's a mental illness that lies within even begin to describe. And I think I think I don't think
00:49:30
there's just one, I think there's several and a lot of trauma, a lot of everything. Um so Leonarda started
00:49:36
collecting all the things she was going to need to create an effective poison to do this. And she began to think about
00:49:42
who her victim would be, who her sacrifice would be. If you say Raffaeli, I'm out. No. Okay.
00:49:47
Okay, good. Um, but she settled on a woman named Faustina Setti, who was a 76-year-old spinster.
00:49:55
Oh my god. And as far as Leonarda knew, she didn't really have a lot of family and not a
00:49:59
lot of ties in the community. And she's still 76-year-old woman. Now, in the years since since she opened
00:50:05
that shop in Correggio, um, Faustina had been one of the many women who would come by regularly. Even supported her
00:50:14
business, and you're going to sacrifice her. Yeah. And she would come by to like just
00:50:17
chat with her, share her like, you know, her woes kind of thing. And she would lament a lot about how lonely she was.
00:50:24
That's horrible. And her social position as a spinster meant that the community kind of looked
00:50:28
down on her as sort of like somebody deserving pity a little bit, and that's really it. It's like, okay, you've been
00:50:34
there before, too, Leonarda. Exactly. And Leonarda was able to convince herself It was okay.
00:50:39
actually be doing Faustina a favor by ending her life. I'm I'm just ending her misery.
00:50:45
Um, and she figured that it was going to ensure that Faustina's life became meaningful because she was sacrificing
00:50:52
her to save Giuseppe. So, she was convincing herself that this was fine. So, once she figured that out, she
00:50:59
invited Faustina to the shop, and she said, "I found a man who is interested in meeting you."
00:51:05
And he And so, she I mean, Faustina was desperate to be married, to get out of this this spinsterhood.
00:51:12
Even at 76? And so, Leonarda told her that she'd been exchanging letters with a man in
00:51:17
Pula, and once he'd seen a photo of Faustina, he was in love, thought she was beautiful. This is so cruel.
00:51:24
totally, cruelly exploited this woman's loneliness. And unfortunately, it worked. Of course.
00:51:31
And Faustina was so happy, she immediately made arrangements to travel to Pula to meet this man. And knowing
00:51:37
that she had at least like a couple family members in the area and scattered around the country, Leonarda said, "Oh,
00:51:43
you should write a series of letters to your family members so people don't become concerned about your absence, and
00:51:50
they won't interfere with your new relationship. So, just let them know that you're going to be gone." This is
00:51:54
cold-blooded. See. We start It's like a switch flicks. Seriously, like it This was already in
00:52:01
her somewhere. it was. Somewhere. Because it we get to a point where you go, "Huh?"
00:52:06
What was that about? Like, nothing makes sense here even with your your trying to
00:52:10
validate it in your own mind. Yeah. And Faustina did it all. She wrote the letters. And Leonarda promised to
00:52:17
mail the letters a few days after she'd left. So, on the morning that she was supposed to leave, she went to
00:52:21
Leonarda's shop, and she was so excited, so nervous. This is so mean. And Leonarda invited her to sit down and
00:52:28
have a drink of wine to calm calm her nerves. Uh, it obviously never would have occurred to her that this was a bad
00:52:34
thing to do because Leonarda was her friend. Yeah. So, she did. She sat down, but the
00:52:39
wine was drugged. So, she became very drowsy, very ill, very out of it, and she was starting to panic and becoming a
00:52:46
little immobile from the effects. And Leonarda went into another room and came back in
00:52:51
holding an axe. Oh. Later, Leonarda would tell authorities that she what her intention was to
00:53:02
swing the axe and cause a single blow to the back of her head to kill her quickly.
00:53:08
Uh-huh. But she misjudged. And the axe came down hard into Faustina's shoulder and shattered her
00:53:16
clavicle. Oh my god. The woman was paralyzed in agony, like just screaming. Leonarda had to literally like rip the
00:53:26
axe out and then brought it down again and again and again. And she said all she thought about was Giuseppe's safety
00:53:35
as she did it. No. So, what ended up what it ended up being was a [ __ ] massacre and a nightmare.
00:53:43
In her shop, right? The It was Yep, and it was covered in Faustina's blood. There was tissue,
00:53:50
all manner of biological matter all over the room, covering Leonarda. Wow. Later, in her published memoir
00:53:59
titled An Embittered Soul's Confession, she said this. This is me just backing into the trees like Homer Simpson right
00:54:07
now. Her [ __ ] These are her words. "I threw the pieces into a pot, added 7 kilos of caustic soda, which I had
00:54:15
bought to make soap, and stirred the whole mixture into the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into
00:54:22
several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank. As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it had coagulated,
00:54:29
dried it in the oven, ground it, and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk, and eggs, as well as a little bit
00:54:36
of margarine. Kneading all the ingredients together, I made lots of crunchy tea cakes and served them to the
00:54:43
ladies who came to visit. Though Giuseppe and I also ate them." I Yeah, that's how I acted when I first
00:54:52
read that. My mouth hung agape, and I just had nothing to say. She literally used her blood to make
00:55:01
crunchy tea cakes and served them to unsuspecting patrons of her shop, and also ate them herself, and served them
00:55:12
to her child who she is protecting? Question mark. What the [ __ ] Did she say that like the the book said he had
00:55:25
to eat it? So, there's nothing This is just her own little sprinkle of magic on top of it.
00:55:30
That's an upsetting way to describe that. I don't have words right now. What the [ __ ] [ __ ] you absolute
00:55:41
monster. Yep. See how it flips? The whole time you're sitting there going, "My god, this poor woman. The tragedy
00:55:49
she has endured." And this is when you look back and you go, "She went mad, huh?" She went [ __ ] mad.
00:55:58
of death happened around you. That's the thing. And I don't know There's nothing that
00:56:02
says she did anything to her children. And I will remain there, but I'm just saying there's no
00:56:08
We don't have It's questionable at the very least. look at this, you go, "Well, fuck."
00:56:14
Yeah. But again, there's nothing that says that she did anything to her children,
00:56:19
but my goodness, this is her first kill. Wow. Now, according to the law of equivalent
00:56:29
exchange, the sacrifice should have ensured, you know, an easy exchange. But as far as Leonarda could tell, this
00:56:37
wasn't an easy exchange. She was like, "You know what? This was not easy. I It ended up being very messy and very
00:56:43
horrific." And she said cake about it. Yeah, you know. And then she said the flesh and the fat that she was actually
00:56:49
cuz, you know, she made the blood into tea cakes. She was thinking, "You know what? I can have this equivalent
00:56:55
exchange and save Giuseppe. I can also make tea cakes out of the blood, and I can also use the fat fat and the flesh
00:57:01
to make some soap. And I can get some, you know, a lot of good stuff out of this."
00:57:05
But she said, "You know, cuz it was such a messy murder, it was all kind of rendered useless. She
00:57:10
couldn't use the fat and the flesh. It didn't work." Okay. "I don't know. I don't think it went
00:57:14
that well. So, you know, there was a lot of mistakes, a lot of mishaps here. And
00:57:18
so, she believed I don't think I did it correctly. I don't think it's going to work. I don't
00:57:23
think the magic is going to work. And you know what? Giuseppe's safety is on the line here, and I don't think it
00:57:28
worked. Giuseppe's safety is a scapegoat at this point. think that. I think that's a bunch of [ __ ]
00:57:33
she said, "Got to do it again." No. One murder is one murder. Too many. Like, that is not okay. And after several
00:57:41
weeks passed without anyone really suspecting any foul play in Faustina's absence, you know, they didn't think she
00:57:47
was murdered cuz she just went to see her man. Yeah, Leonarda began making plans for
00:57:51
the second sacrifice and found her next victim uh, would be Francesca Soavi. Now, unlike Faustina, Francesca was a
00:58:01
former school teacher, an active member of the community. And she didn't have any children of her own, um, but she was
00:58:07
actually a widow, a recent widow. And Francesca was going to be missed and noticed.
00:58:15
Yeah. She's young. So, very different like, unfortunately, from Faustina. Like, she really tried to
00:58:19
pick somebody that didn't have a lot of ties in the Yeah. Um, and but but uh, Francesca was in desperate need
00:58:26
of work at this moment since her husband had passed away. Yeah. And so, she turned to Leonarda
00:58:31
for advice. No, thank you. Now, on a visit to the shop, Francesca explained the whole
00:58:36
thing like, "Oh, jeez, like I need to find work. Like, this is awful." And Leonarda said, "Wow, lucky lucky
00:58:42
solution here." Because she said, "I happen to know a very good and well-paying job at a girls' school in
00:58:48
the northern city of Piacenza, I believe it is. I'm sorry, Italian listeners. Uh,
00:58:53
but, you know, you got to get there quickly to apply. It's not going to be vacant for long. We got to get you
00:58:58
there." So, you know, she was desperate. She was excited for an opportunity to get out of
00:59:03
her space and her grief at this point. And so, she didn't ask a lot of questions. She was just like, "Sure.
00:59:08
Awesome. Leonarda's a good lady. I like her and Raffaeli. Why would I worry about this?"
00:59:13
They're so well-respected. So, one September morning, she arrived at Leonarda's shop early before she
00:59:18
planned to leave to go apply for this job. And Leonarda was like, "Sit down, write a couple of postcards to loved
00:59:25
ones telling you why you're you know, telling them why you're leaving. You don't want to worry them. But you got to
00:59:30
get there like cuz you got to get there so quick that we don't you don't have time to tell everybody.
00:59:34
And she said, "Don't tell anyone where you're headed because people might try to stop you from taking this job cuz
00:59:40
they won't want you to move away from them. So, so don't tell them where you're going.
00:59:44
Just tell them that you're going to take a job so they don't stop you." Oh, man. She is Yeah.
00:59:49
[ __ ] wild, dude. That's the thing. There's so much [ __ ] cold callousness here and
00:59:54
cunning Yeah. involved in this and like manipulation. And just oh, just Yeah. Yeah. And so she said, "You know
01:00:01
what? Sit down. Have have a glass of wine before you leave." And she poured her a glass of poisoned
01:00:07
wine and quickly it disoriented her. She disappeared into the back room and returned with an axe in her hand.
01:00:13
She's going to do the axe again? Well, this time she knew what to expect and she said she swung with confidence this
01:00:18
time. Oh, good. Francesca on the back of the head. Oh. The axe buried directly into her skull.
01:00:24
Oh, god. was hard and did the job in one swing. Oof. Now, certain that she had killed
01:00:31
her, Leonardo went through her belongings taking anything that was of value. What? So, wait. I thought I thought this
01:00:40
was a sacrifice to protect your son. Why are you stealing her [ __ ] That's not an even exchange.
01:00:45
got rid of the rest. She kept the stuff that was valuable. What? Yeah. So, it's like, "Honey, people are
01:00:51
going to find out." Yeah. And then she dismembered her body. Uh-huh. This time she was careful in the
01:00:57
execution of this because she wanted to use that flesh and fat to create some soap.
01:01:02
The blood was dried and eventually went into more popular tea cakes. Mhm. The remaining flesh and other
01:01:08
useless parts or what she deemed useless were tossed in that tossed into a vat of
01:01:13
caustic soda and then thrown into the sludge pit behind the house later that evening. Mhm. Later, after she had been
01:01:19
arrested, Leonardo said she only killed this woman because of her, you know, deluded belief that doing so would
01:01:27
protect her son during the war. And obviously that is deeply irrational. Um this would have been a plausible
01:01:35
explanation if you look at it like like a like she is deeply disturbed Yeah. and sick and needs to
01:01:42
be go taken away. Taken care of. That you'd be like, "Okay, like maybe she thinks that." You
01:01:47
know, like you can person that's the thing. Because like and it would still be horrific just saying that.
01:01:55
and you could almost look at it as she's saying that first one didn't feel right.
01:01:59
I suppose the law of equal exchange says that it needs to be easy. And it wasn't
01:02:05
easy. So, I was worried that I [ __ ] it up and that it wasn't going to work. So,
01:02:09
you could almost understand why a sick person would delude themselves into believing
01:02:14
that they need to do it correctly. You could almost believe that if you're looking at it like this is a sick
01:02:19
person. You know what I mean? Like not any rational person thinking this. Like looking at the sickness.
01:02:25
You could almost think that. But given that the murder, you know, this this murder, the second murder of
01:02:32
Francesca Suavi, it should have satisfied the law of equivalent exchange that would ensure
01:02:38
Giuseppe's safety, correct? Like we you did it. According to the deluded and irrational and deeply
01:02:46
disturbed and sick thinking Yeah. of Leonarda, Yep. this you did it in one swing.
01:02:54
It was {quote} {unquote} easy Mhm. relative to the first one. Yep. Faustina, Yep. this should be it. Correct? One
01:03:03
would think. Well, and one would think that also you wouldn't steal her things and make her into tea cakes and soap,
01:03:08
but Thank you. one thinks a lot, I guess. This was also not the last murder that
01:03:12
she committed. Yeah, I know. Uh Yeah. And I didn't even know that to be fact, but I just know.
01:03:18
You just know now. Her third victim was completely senseless. They all are, but even by her
01:03:25
own rationale, it would make this victim completely senseless. Mhm. And this one also comes off as very
01:03:32
personal and petty. Uh somebody pissed her off, huh? Yeah. So, in Correggio, there were not a lot of like famous
01:03:40
people walking around. It was a pretty small village. But there was one notable resident. Her name was Virginia
01:03:45
Cacioppo. Okay. She was actually a former opera star. Oh, [ __ ] And Cacioppo had retired from the stage
01:03:52
because it was after her husband had died several years earlier. Oh, so much death.
01:03:57
she was a wealthy patron of the arts. She was a beloved resident in Correggio. And according to Ortiz, {quote} Leonarda
01:04:04
resented and admired Virginia in equal amounts. Mhm. She was jealous. She wanted to be
01:04:09
her. Now, remember, Virginia is very well respected. So is Leonarda at this point.
01:04:14
Remember, she's a high, you know, thought of very respectable in this community. So, they became close friends
01:04:20
Oh, no. years earlier. And when Virginia decided, you know, "I miss the excitement of like urban life." And she
01:04:28
wanted to move to a larger city. She was like, "I got to get out of here. I want
01:04:31
to leave." Leonarda took this as a personal betrayal of their friendship. That she was leaving her. But she was
01:04:38
just abandoning her back here. That's wild. And she said and she thought, "You know what?
01:04:43
If according to Ortiz, she said, "If she wanted someone good enough to kill for Giuseppe, Virginia was as good as it got
01:04:51
in a place like Correggio." A charity killed someone twice for Giuseppe, so I think we can let go of
01:04:57
that theory. Yep. Now, she used a pretty similar tactic as she had in the first two
01:05:01
victims. She told uh Virginia that there was an available secretarial job in Florence. And you
01:05:08
know, that was really good for her skill set. It was a pretty It was a cute job,
01:05:11
you know? Like it was in a It was going to be in the city. And when Virginia arrived at the store
01:05:17
on the morning of September 30th, 1940, things got off to like not an easy start
01:05:22
for her plan. Because Virginia repeatedly refused Leonarda's offer for wine. She was like, "No, thank you."
01:05:31
She kept insisting, kept insisting. And after a while, she was like, "Fine, I'll
01:05:34
have a little drink with you." Uh-oh. Uh but it took a long time and some real zhuzhing.
01:05:39
And she took her time drinking that wine. She ended up finishing the entire glass as she sat and talked with her.
01:05:45
And that's when the poison began to work. Oh, no. Virginia became immobile and Leonarda laid her on the floor of the
01:05:52
shop and carefully, as she is conscious but immobile, removed all her expensive jewelry and
01:06:00
anything of value on her and stuffed them all in her own pockets. Oh my god. So,
01:06:06
That's [ __ ] up. it's to save Giuseppe anymore, everybody. That's not an even exchange.
01:06:13
to save Giuseppe. I mean, none of it would have been an even exchange, but this is definitely
01:06:17
not. And then she left the room as Leonarda's laying there immobile. Or no, um or excuse me, then as
01:06:25
Virginia's laying there immobile, and she returns with an axe and she raised it above her head as and
01:06:33
Virginia's laying on the floor and she brings it down on Virginia's chest Oh. and shattered several of her ribs in one
01:06:40
blow. And Virginia was said to let out one small gasp and then died on the floor.
01:06:46
Wow. Leonarda quickly dismembered the body as she had done previously. Uh saved any usable parts for soap and tea
01:06:54
cakes again. Oh my god. And recalling this whole thing, Leonarda wrote in her memoir, "She ended up in
01:07:01
the pot like the other two. Oh. Her flesh was fat and white. When it had melted, I added a bottle of cologne
01:07:07
and after a long time on the boil, I was able to make the most acceptable creamy
01:07:12
soap. I hate it. I gave bars to neighbors and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were
01:07:17
better. That woman was really sweet." That is so disturbing. So disturbing. That's monstrous.
01:07:26
That's monstrous. That's not I'm doing this for the sole purpose of my child's safety. This is
01:07:32
like, "I like doing this." And later to write in your memoir and try to make it like a
01:07:36
"That woman was really sweet." Like cakes were better." And and trying to say like she was so
01:07:43
sweet. Like that has a double meaning and you know what you did there. Oh, yeah. That's
01:07:48
[ __ ] atrocious. And now, apparently, remember Giuseppe is a grown boy here. At war. No, he
01:07:55
A few days later after she'd finished making the soap from Virginia's remains, Leonarda took a bar home and insisted
01:08:02
that Giuseppe wash himself with it. He was a teenager at the time and he was like, "No. Like that's weird that you're
01:08:08
just giving me this random bar of soap to wash with." So, he she dragged him into the tub,
01:08:13
pulled off his clothes for him and washed him entirely from head to toe with it.
01:08:19
And then she brought him to the kitchen and made him eat some tea cakes. This is
01:08:24
that were made with Virginia's blood. No, that's That's another crime. So, in the first two cases, she had
01:08:33
successfully avoided suspicion. You know, neither one of the women had huge family
01:08:39
ties. I guess like, you know, Francesca had more than Faustina, but But still not very many. Virginia, it
01:08:46
was like she went up in each time with how many people were going to wonder where they were. Well, and with
01:08:51
Francesca, she had her write letters, but she didn't have Mhm. uh Virginia write any letters.
01:08:56
Now, just a few weeks after the murder, Leonarda was beginning to feel as, "You know, I think I did satisfy the law of
01:09:03
equivalent exchange. Like I think I'm good." I think you're only balanced. sister-in-law,
01:09:08
Albertina Fanti, came knocking on the door looking for Virginia. And basically, Virginia had told her,
01:09:15
Albertina, about the potential job in Florence and had told her, "I heard about it from Leonarda."
01:09:22
Right. So, she decided to go straight to the source. And she's like, "Listen, your tea cakes
01:09:27
are [ __ ] weird lately." Leonarda had not accounted for this possibility happening. So, she just
01:09:32
stared at her. And then this woman is peppering her with direct questions being like, "What
01:09:37
the [ __ ] happened here?" So, she just apologized and closed the door. Girly, I mean I'm glad that it went that
01:09:45
way cuz like that's sus, but So, Albertina was like, "That's weird. That's weird." So, she went about town
01:09:51
asking about her sister and this whole thing. And at one point she learned that two other women from town who had
01:09:57
disappeared after going to Leonarda's shop. Uh-huh. And eventually she took her suspicions to the local police who
01:10:04
started to investigate all the disappearances. Hello, I'd like to report a crime,
01:10:07
{question mark} Now, Leonarda had been careful to cover her tracks. She did a very thorough job of cleaning up after
01:10:13
herself. There was really not a lot in the way of evidence for the investigators to work with.
01:10:18
And it's the 40s. Yeah, at this point it's the yeah, 40s I think. really have like DNA or anything like
01:10:24
that. I don't have anything like that. But, what they did have were the postcards.
01:10:31
So, the postcards and letters that she had these women write, they were they were all mailed by Giuseppe.
01:10:39
She had had her son mail these and just like just being like, "Can you run this errand for Yeah, of course he didn't
01:10:43
know. And in this case so so Giuseppe had had mailed these letters. They knew this now. Yeah. So,
01:10:50
now just like when she was arrested for the fraud case, it hit her. Oh, [ __ ] Giuseppe's going to go down. I'm going
01:10:57
to get him in trouble for this. So, um her son was arrested Right, of course. to it now. And she went straight to the
01:11:05
police and confessed to everything. What? She went to the simple police. coming. That's what I'm saying. This is
01:11:12
a twisty turny. You cannot understand any of it. No, but she she was even suspected of killing her son.
01:11:18
She he was only arrested because his name he was the one who mailed those things. They were like, "He did it. He
01:11:24
obviously killed these women." She went confessed to all three murders, insisted
01:11:28
he had nothing to do with anything. He didn't know about anything. I told him just to mail these letters. She said, I
01:11:35
that she committed all three letters with the intention of protecting or all three murders, excuse me, with the
01:11:41
intention of protecting him. Uh-huh. And at first the investigators were like, "Yeah, right. I don't believe that at
01:11:47
all." And they were also like, "You're a respectable woman in town. I don't believe this. Like you're trying to
01:11:52
drive her crazy. three people. Like that doesn't make sense. But, then she showed them the soap and
01:11:59
tea cakes made from Virginia's remains and also showed them all the valuables that she'd stolen from all three women
01:12:07
and took them to the sludge pit behind the house where she disposed of liquefied body parts. I have to go. And
01:12:15
what she said to them in her written confession that she did, No. she wrote, "I used to mix human
01:12:21
blood with chocolate and add an exquisite flavor made of tangerine, aniseed, vanilla, and cinnamon.
01:12:28
Sometimes I added a sprinkling of powder from human bones." What the [ __ ] So, the investigators were [ __ ]
01:12:37
horrified, but were also like, "Uh pretty open and shut case, I guess." Under arrest.
01:12:43
showed us literally every bit of evidence that we never would have found and confessed all of it.
01:12:49
So, she was immediately arrested and taken to jail. You don't say. But, because the war was
01:12:54
raging across Europe at the time, all local prosecutions were temporarily on pause. So, she was held in a jail cell
01:13:01
until they were going to prosecute her. It was 6 years before she stood in front
01:13:06
of a judge. Holy [ __ ] That is me and Drew's entire relationship. Damn. Holy [ __ ]
01:13:13
Yeah, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. And during that time her family,
01:13:19
including Giuseppe, completely disowned her. Yeah, I don't say. all turned their back on her and they
01:13:25
referred to her as basically a monster and they referred to her as the soap maker of Correggio.
01:13:30
I don't like that, personally. And throughout her entire incarceration, she expressed no remorse, no regret. She
01:13:39
did what she had to do to protect her son and she wasn't going to apologize for it. What?
01:13:43
And she said it was completely worth it to ensure that he was safe. No, she doubled down?
01:13:50
That's the thing. So, she's sitting there saying that. She came forward and confessed when he
01:13:55
when he was going to be put on on trial for it. But, they don't align. Nothing aligns
01:14:02
here with what she is saying cuz because she's just so mentally ill. What there should have just been one
01:14:07
sacrifice if if that's what she was going with, you know what I mean? Like you would think that would satisfy her
01:14:12
deluded and very sick belief. Reasoning, yeah. But, it didn't. No. And then you would think, "Okay, in her
01:14:18
delusion and her sickness right, {quote} {unquote}. She didn't do it right, so she did she she did this
01:14:25
awful second thing. Yeah. But, then that third one was completely senseless. It did not align with any of
01:14:32
this. Very petty, very She's stealing from these women as she goes, which is not part of the whole thing.
01:14:37
She's very clearly somebody who gets some kind of pleasure from murdering people.
01:14:43
So, I think it's just And then part of her was obsessive about her child Yep. due to all the trauma and all the the
01:14:50
curse nonsense and all that. I do believe maybe it started off like that. she was a very very very very disturbed
01:14:58
very sick and disturbed and unhelpable human being, to be quite honest. Yeah. And I think there was also a part of her
01:15:05
that came from this tragedy and this trauma and it was in her somewhere. This this monstrous
01:15:16
way of being was in there somewhere. Yeah. I think it's a little bit of like a where did that come from? That was
01:15:21
that was lying dormant in there somewhere cuz you can't just bring an axe on three different people and chop
01:15:26
them up and make them into tea cakes and soap without having a little bit of something
01:15:31
off in there that was always there to begin with. That's a couple screws loose, my dude.
01:15:36
Now, Leonarda died in prison on October 15th, 1970. Wow. Never answered any more questions that
01:15:46
any authorities, reporters, anyone asked her. Wouldn't answer anything. She did what she did. She told you why she did
01:15:50
it. I have nothing else to say. of that whole story. you all the information. I gave you all
01:15:55
the evidence. I don't regret it. This is why I did it. like 90 when she died? Yeah, she lived
01:16:00
long. Holy [ __ ] Hey, that that fortune teller told her, "You're going to live a long life, but
01:16:04
it's going to be sad." Do you know if she outlived Giuseppe or could you not find that
01:16:08
don't know, actually. That's a very good question. Interesting. I I'm sure Giuseppe kind of faded into the
01:16:14
background after that. to, you know, I'm not going to go search him. No, no, no. But, when it comes to the
01:16:20
true murder uh the true motive for the three murders of these poor women in Correggio,
01:16:27
of like Faustina, Francesca, and Virginia. I just wanted to say their names. Yeah.
01:16:31
Uh we're not going to know whether what the motive really was. There was no I don't think there really
01:16:40
was. I think the motive started off with protecting Giuseppe and then I think she
01:16:45
just lost her mind. Yeah. Yeah, cuz it's like even the stealing of the valuables, she was running her own
01:16:52
shop at that point, you know, Raffaeli had a good job. They were stable. They weren't struggling. They were
01:16:58
She was well respected. She was People came to her. They came to her shop. It wasn't like she was
01:17:05
So, she didn't need to do like there wasn't even the robbery and like financial distress and all that. Like
01:17:11
that had to do with derived some pleasure from it and probably like looked back on those items
01:17:16
and and the fact that she was feeding the tea cakes to people, like that was for
01:17:21
laughs. That was for kicks. people tea cakes made with human remains and sell them bars of soap made from the fat
01:17:30
and flesh of three murder victims No. for any other reason than besides you wanted to do that and you thought you
01:17:39
you pulled the wool over people's eyes. Exactly. You were like, "Oh my god, look. They think I'm innocent." They're
01:17:43
sitting there washing with this and they have no idea. And then the whole like washing Giuseppe with the soap.
01:17:49
Yeah, it's a [ __ ] bonkers. eat the tea and even she ate the [ __ ] tea cakes. It's bonkers. It's on another
01:17:56
level. ever understand this. I don't think we'll ever understand this. think we should. I don't want to, but
01:18:02
it's a tale that just blew my [ __ ] mind apart. Yeah, my oh [ __ ] my. And that is the
01:18:10
story of Leonarda Cianciulli, the soap maker of Correggio. Yeah, after this we're watching Buffy and I have never
01:18:19
needed a palate cleanser more in my [ __ ] life. Yeah. So, Holy [ __ ] Yep. You just really sent me
01:18:28
with that one. That's that was what I intended to do, so I'm glad. Wow. Mhm. Well, we hope that you keep listening
01:18:35
after that. And we hope you keep it weird. But, not so weird that you decide to protect your
01:18:42
kid by murdering others and chopping them into bits and then making soap out of them because that is not weird. That
01:18:47
is [ __ ] insanity. Woof. What the [ __ ] Woo.