Following on from our strangest serial killer in the U.S., we now bring you one of the weirdest
tales from the dark side of humanity.
Ok, so our woman of the hour may not have been as maniacal as lady killer Ted Bundy,
or as utterly demented as Ed Gein – the man who liked to dress in skin suits made
from dead women – but she has certainly worked her way into the serial killer hall
of infamy just for originality.
It’s conceivable the novel and then movie “Fight Club” may have used her wicked
deeds as inspiration regarding soap made out of liposuction waste, so we can say she made
her mark on history.
Welcome to this episode of the Infographics Show, Leonarda Cianciulli A.K.A.
– The Human Flesh Soap-Maker.
Ok, so there isn’t really a big reveal to this show as the title pretty much explains
what this serial killer got up to.
But who was she before she started making lumps of soap out of the people she killed?
Let’s start with a short bio.
Leonarda Cianciulli, aka, the human soap maker, aka, the soap maker of Correggio (in Italian
it sounds much more poetic - la Saponificatrice di Correggio) was born in 1894 and lived until
an old age, dying in 1970.
Her childhood wasn’t easy, and reading about it, you might not be surprised that she turned
out, err, a little odd.
Apparently, her mother was a nasty woman, telling Leonarda that she was cursed by the
devil and that her life would come to nothing.
That’s not easy on a child, and when she was a teenager she tried to commit suicide
not once but twice.
She was yet another serial killer with what is known as an “overbearing mother.”
She then met a fella when she got older, a registry office clerk, but he wasn’t quite
what her mother was expecting and so the man was vociferously disapproved of.
She had in total 17 kids, which is quite the accomplishment.
But unfortunately, only 4 of them lived past the age of 10.
You could say after all that heartache and pain, she was a protective mother to those
that survived.
Leonarda doted on her kids, but she was full of anger at what life had thrown at her.
And it threw a lot more than dying children and miscarriages.
Perhaps it was very much her fault when she got imprisoned for fraud at the age of 33,
but when an earthquake destroyed her house a few years later, that seemed like rotten
luck again.
Nonetheless, this unlucky woman was apparently well liked in her community, if not in her
own mind doomed somewhat.
In fact, it’s said she even believed that her mother was right, and indeed, she was
cursed.
She went to see a gypsy fortune teller, but that just made matters a lot worse, as it’s
said this is what she was told, “In your right hand I see prison, in your left a criminal
asylum.”
Ok, so you kind of get the picture.
This is a woman who had had a brutal life, but on the surface of things, she looked ok.
Her neighbors liked her, and she was a loving mother to the dear children that didn’t
kick the bucket before they got out of primary school.
But something sinister was lurking behind the scenes.
Imagine this: One day your neighbor, a loving mother and good friend, the owner of a shop
in town, a trusted member of the community, invites you for cake and coffee.
You accept the offer and are greeted with some sweet-tasting cakes.
Only you don’t know that the cakes are part human.
Yes, between 1939 and 1940 (when she was about 42 or 43), Leonarda murdered three women.
The story goes that she wasn’t just killing because she was inherently evil, but she believed,
again, that she was cursed, and that to keep her remaining kids alive, she had to make
some sacrifices – as you do.
She was particularly concerned about her favorite son, Giuseppe, who’d just signed up to the
Italian army and was about to join the battlefields of bloody Europe.
So, that’s what she did, she made some sacrifices like those old school Aztecs who propitiated
the Gods with human blood.
Leonarda lured these women into her shop, and then drugged them.
After they passed out, she killed them with an axe and then boiled their bodies in caustic
soda.
So far so good, but that doesn’t mean everything just disappears.
In her own diaries, Leonarda described what was left as a “thick dark mush.”
So, our killer went a step further.
You might know that regular soap often contains animal fats.
So, Mrs. Cianciulli realized she could turn human fat into soap.
She actually explained this in her diaries, “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 neighbors and acquaintances.”
What a sweet gift that was, and Leonarda went as far as to call the remains of her victims
very sweet.
She didn’t stop there, though.
Waste not want not was likely her motto.
She used part of this mush to make what she called crunchy cakes.
This wasn’t, it seems, out of rage towards her neighbors, because she said she and her
sons all ate the delicious cakes.
She said of her process, “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.”
Voila!
Human cake.
You could at least call her resourceful, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing during a world
war.
But she wasn’t exactly a clever killer, and was easily found out.
You see, she didn’t just make things from her victims, but she scammed them out of money
too.
She went as far as to tell these women that she had found a great teaching job for them
abroad, and just before they set off, Leonarda coerced them write to their family and friends
explaining that they would be leaving the country for a while to work.
There was no job of course, and a fate worse than cake awaited them.
One such victim, Virginia Cacioppo, had disappeared and her sister had said the last person who
had seen her was that shopkeeper called Leonarda.
She didn’t buy into the teaching job and believed a cunning canard had taken place.
She was right.
Later Leonarda would remark that this was her best victim in terms of how she turned
out on the plate and in the bathroom.
In her diaries she wrote, “The cakes, too, were better: that woman was really sweet.”
At first the Italian cops accused Leonarda, who denied any wrongdoing.
But then the cops accused her son, good old Giuseppe, and that was too much to bear for
the doting mother.
She confessed to everything, even the soap and cake bit.
Not surprisingly, this soon became a cause celebre in Italy.
The trial lasted three days, and after that, our loving mother would spend a total of 30
years in prison and three years in an asylum.
She died at age 76 from a cerebral apoplexy.
She still causes shivers down people’s spines today, as you can see her axe and other instruments,
including the pot in which she boiled the bodies, at the Criminology Museum in Rome,
Italy.
Well, that’s all we have to say about this strange cannibal.
Only in Italy can a cannibal turn her victim not only into a delicious dessert, but also
a sweet fragrance.
What are your thoughts regarding this serial killer?
Pure evil or worthy of sympathy?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called Worst Punishments in the History of
Mankind!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!