Leonarda Cianciulli

Leonarda Cianciulli was born on April 18, 1894, in Montella, Avellino, Kingdom of Italy. She was a child of rape. Her mother, Emilia di Nolfi, was forced to marry her rapist Mariano Cianciulli after her pregnancy was discovered. Leonarda had a turbulent upbringing. Raised in one of the poverty-stricken parts of late 19th and early 20th century Italy, she lost her father quite early in her life. Her mother remarried but that did not improve their financial situation much. Furthermore, she was emotionally abused by her mother and tried to kill herself on two separate occasions.

Going against the wishes of her parents, who had picked a wealthy suitor for her, Leonarda Cianciulli married a registry office clerk, Raffaele Pansardi, who was considerably older than her. She would claim throughout her life that her mother cursed her and her husband on this occasion. While the notion of placing a curse on someone might sound preposterous, her life was full of misery and pain from that point onwards.

Cianciulli and her husband moved to Lauria, a town and commune which is, in modern times, located in the province of Potenza, in 1921. They had financial troubles right from the beginning. Pansardi, with his meagre earnings, could not support their growing family as they soon started to have children. Cianciulli worked as well. However, in 1927, she was arrested for fraud and went to prison.

After she was released, she and Pansardi decided to move the family to Lacedonia, a commune which is presently situated in the province of Avellino, Italy. They were looking for a fresh start but tragedy and misery followed them here as well. In 1930, their house was destroyed in an earthquake. Close to being destitute, the family moved again, this time to Correggio, a town and commune in the Province of Reggio Emilia, Italy.

It was in Correggio that the family began to gain some amount of financial security. Cianciulli open a small soap shop. She was a well-respected member of the community and her shop was quite popular.

Over the years, she had 17 pregnancies, out of which, three ended in miscarriages. Ten of her children died in childhood. She became overly protective of the four that survived. She was an extremely superstitious woman who believed in fortune telling, astrology, and palm reading.

Cianciulli was a fortune teller herself and had garnered favourable reputation as such. All three of her victims were her clients who had come to her seeking help. Faustina Setti was a middle-aged unmarried woman who was looking for a husband. During her visit, Cianciulli told her that there was a suitable partner for her in Pola (modern-day Croatia) but instructed her not to tell anyone anything about it. Setti was also told to write letters and postcards so they could be sent back to her relatives and friends after she got to Pola.

On the day of her departure, she came to bid goodbye to Cianciulli, who gave her drugged wine to drink. After she had fallen unconscious, Cianciulli murdered her with an axe, pulled her body into a closet, and hacked it into nine pieces. She also collected the blood into a basin.

Following her arrest, Cianciulli gave a detailed account on what she did with Setti’s remains. She told the authorities that she threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, and stirred until the mixture had turned into a thick, dark mush. She then poured it into several buckets and disposed of it in a nearby septic tank.

As for the blood in the basin, she let it coagulate before drying it in an oven, grinding it, and mixing it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk, eggs, and margarine to make lots of teacakes. She gave many of these to visiting women and the rest were eaten by Giuseppe and herself. According to some sources, Cianciulli got Setti’s life savings as the payment for her services. It was about 30,000 lire.