Hey Thoughty2 here.
How would you dispose of a body?
There are countless ways, or so I’ve been told.
But one 20th century Italian woman had a method of disposing of bodies that even Mrs Lovett
and her pies would have been disgusted by.
Serial killer Leonarda Cianciulli turned her victims into bars of soap and teacakes, and
that’s not even the worst bit, but before we get into that, let’s learn a little about
what drove her to murder in the first place.
Psychologists have long believed that an unsteady upbringing can contribute to one becoming
a psychotic murderer.
Both Stalin and Hitler, had a highly dysfunctional childhood.
Leonarda Cianciulli is no exception to this rule, she was born out of rape in 1894 in
Montella, Italy.
Her mother never wanted her, yet was left with no choice but to raise her.
Safe to say, Leonarda had a rather dysfunctional upbringing.
At the age of 23 Leonarda defiantly married a local registry clerk, against the wishes
of her parents.
Her mother was so upset that she “cursed” the newly-weds.
Leonarda had always been highly superstitious and paranoid, so she took a lot of offence
to the curse.
Things quickly got worse from here.
Leonarda, got pregnant 17 times, three were lost to miscarriges, and 10 others died when
they were very young.
Who knows whether this was a series of extremely unlucky coincidences, or had she really succumb
to the evil ways of her mother’s curse?
Needless to say Leonarda became ultra protective over her four remaining children.
She sought help by visiting a fortune teller, who decided that this poor women’s life
wasn’t already tragic enough and told her that she would either end up in prison or
a criminal asylum.
Despite being an ultra-paranoid potential psychopath on the brink of a mental breakdown,
all was going well for a while for Leonarda and her four children.
Until one of their lives came under threat; in 1939 her eldest son decided to fight for
the Italian army in World War II.
Leonarda didn’t like this and couldn’t bare the thought of losing another child,
so she came up with a genius plan.
She concluded that if she found another human sacrifice, they would then take her son’s
place in the afterlife, and so her son would somehow be supernaturally protected from death.
And so she set out to find her first victim.
Leonarda was actually an amateur fortune teller herself, she often practiced on the local
women in her village.
I’m not sure how you practice fortune telling, presumably you just keep makes guesses until
you get something right.
She chose her first victim carefully, Faustina Setti was a client of Lenoardas.
During one session Leonarda told a depressed and hopeless Faustina that she would find
the husband of her dreams and her life would be all rosy, if she leaves and travels to
a neighbouring town.
She also cleverly instructed Faustina that she must immediately write letters to all
her friends and family informing them that she intends to travel to another town to find
a husband.
And so Leonarda thought she had created the groundwork for the perfect murder.
Faustina visited Leonarda one last time before she left town.
Leonarda poured two glasses of wine as a toast to Faustina’s new life.
Of course, Faustina’s wine was drugged with sedatives.
After she was out cold, Leonarda bludgeoned her helpless victim to death with an axe.
And so began Leonarda’s twisted method of disposing of the corpse.
First she chopped the corpse into 9 equal-sized pieces, to make it more manageable.
She drained the blood then put the dried pieces into a giant pot along with caustic soda,
a primary ingredient in soap-making.
And yes, she then turned the corpse bits into bars of soap.
Which seems almost comical when you learn what she did with the blood from the body.
Leonarda dried the blood in an oven, mixed it with eggs, flour, sugar, milk, chocolate
and margarine, because you know, if you’re going to make delicacies out of dead humans
then at least have the decency to make them low fat.
She then baked the sickening mixture into Italian teacakes.
She then shared the teacakes around her neighbours.
Even more disturbingly, Leonarda and her son ate them up also.
Leonarda went on to carry out the same murderous process on two more of her female fortune-telling
clients.
Her final victim was a local soprano called Virginia Cacioppo.
Leonarda later wrote in her memoirs that she had flesh that was “fat and white” and
apparently she made “a most acceptable creamy soap”.
Also Leonarda noted that Cacioppo made the best teacakes so far quoting “that woman
was really sweet.”
The words don’t even exist to describe how disturbed this woman truly was.
But that sweet taste wouldn’t last long because the sister of Leonarda’s final victim
grew suspicious of her disappearance and she informed the police that she had last seen
her sister, Virginia Cacioppo, entering the home of Leonarda Cianciulli.
Leonarda was swiftly arrested and she confessed to all her messed-up soapy, tea cake murders.
She was sentenced to 30 years in prison and three years in a criminal asylum for the mentally
ill – just as the fortune teller had predicted all those years ago.
Thanks for watching.