Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Soap-Maker of Correggio - Italian Serial Killer Leonarda Cianciulli

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Soap-Maker of Correggio - Italian Serial Killer Leonarda Cianciulli · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture of this. Uh, a world teetering on the edge.
• 0:03
  It's nineteen thirty nine. Whispers of war are everywhere like
• 0:05
  a chilling wind, you know, And in a small town
• 0:08
  nestled in Italy, a string of disappearances has everyone on edge.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah this isn't some made up ghost story though, Oh no,
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  this is the deeply unsettling, real life tale of Leonardo Chiancily,
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  the soap maker of Coregio. Hmm and yeah, that nickname.
• 0:24
  I promise you it'll make sense later, and it might
• 0:26
  just haunt your dreams a little bit too. But was
• 0:28
  she really driven by madness or a mother's love or
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  could it be something even more complex? Yeah, that's what
• 0:35
  we're going to unpack today.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I'm ready.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, So we've got quite the stack here, articles, core transcripts,
• 0:39
  even some folklore analysis thrown in for good measure.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Really, it makes bag, don't you think it's a fascinating case?
• 0:44
  It really is. So let's kick things off with Leonarda herself.
• 0:48
  She's living what seems like a pretty ordinary life in Correggio, right,
• 0:52
  a town where tradition runs deep, family ties or everything.
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  And well, maybe they put a little too much stock
• 0:57
  in what the fortune tellers had to say, right, right,
• 1:00
  So from these early years, what jumps out at you
• 1:02
  anything that might hint at the darkness to come, You know.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: It's intriguing. What gets me is that even before the murders,
• 1:09
  Leonarda's life was full of these really really tough breaks,
• 1:12
  I mean, multiple miscarriages and then losing ten of her
• 1:15
  seventeen children at such young ages. The emotional weight of
• 1:19
  all that loss back then, especially with all the pressure
• 1:22
  on women to be mothers, it's almost too much to comprehend.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in a lifetime of grief, even before the
• 1:29
  really horrific stuff.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Starts exactly, And that's where understanding the time period's so important.
• 1:34
  We have these accounts of a fortune teller's prophecy saying
• 1:37
  all of Leonarda's children were cursed to die young. Now,
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  I don't know about you, but whether you believe in
• 1:43
  that sort of thing or not, imagine the impact that
• 1:45
  would have on someone who's already experienced so much loss.
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  It's like this potent cocktail of grief, fear, and superstition
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  all mixed into one.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: It's really making me feel for her. And yet we
• 1:55
  know how this story unfolds she still had four children
• 1:58
  left by the late nineteen thirties, didn't she?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: She did. And that, my friend, is where the external
• 2:03
  pressures you mentioned clash head on with this fierce, primal
• 2:06
  instinct to protect her own. World War two is looming
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  and her eldest son, Giuseppe, he's about to be drafted, so.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: She's terrified, desperate to keep him safe. I can see
• 2:16
  how that fear could drive someone to act irrationally, But
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  how do we go from a mother's worry to well, murder?
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  And what's the deal with the soap? What is that
• 2:25
  all about?
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Ah? Yes, the soap. That's where the stories of our
• 2:28
  victims come in. Their lives become tragically intertwined with Leonarda's.
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  We have three women, Faustina Citi, Francesca Suavi, and Virginia Cacciopo,
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  all middle aged, all unmarried, and tragically all sharing of
• 2:40
  vulnerability that Leonarda was ready to exploit, exploit.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: So you're saying she was praying on these women in
• 2:46
  a way.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, she offered them things they desperately craved, marriage prospects,
• 2:50
  new jobs, a chance to finally escape their loneliness. Leonardo
• 2:54
  was cunning, though she used these really persuasive tactics, like
• 2:57
  she'd have them write postcards to their families to be
• 2:59
  mailed later. Oh wow, Yeah, it was a way of
• 3:01
  creating this false sense of security and delaying any suspicion.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Wow. So she was buying herself time, making it seem
• 3:08
  like these women were still alive out there somewhere. But
• 3:12
  what was the endgame? Did she ever actually intend to
• 3:14
  let them go?
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question, isn't it. From the historical records,
• 3:19
  we know that after she lured these women and she
• 3:21
  murdered them, right, But the why, the motive beyond just
• 3:25
  wanting them gone, That's where things get really interesting and
• 3:29
  incredibly disturbing.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's dig into this idea of motive a
• 3:33
  little bit further. We know Leonarda confessed to the murders,
• 3:36
  and she even gave these really gruesome details about what
• 3:39
  she did with the bodies.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: It's true, and it's those details, the soap making especially,
• 3:43
  that have captured people's imaginations for decades. But it is
• 3:47
  important to remember that while there's no doubt Leonarda disposed
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  of the bodies, some of those specific details might be
• 3:53
  a bit embellished over time.
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  Speaker 1: So you're saying, the reality, however, horrifying, might not be
• 3:58
  as shocking as the legend.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Wartime Italy was a breeding ground for rumors and sensationalism. Yeah,
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  just think about it. A lonely woman in a small
• 4:07
  town commits these unthinkable acts, and then the story, fueled
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  by fear and all the uncertainty, it morphs into something
• 4:15
  almost mythic in its.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Proportions, like a morbid game of telephone, where the story
• 4:19
  changes a little with each retelling, But even if some
• 4:22
  of the details got exaggerated, it doesn't change the horror
• 4:26
  of what she did.
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  Speaker 2: Do absolutely, and trying to understand how and why those
• 4:30
  stories took hold, well, that's a deep dive all on
• 4:32
  its own right. But the crucial thing for us is
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  that even without all the added sensationalism, the heart of
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  her crimes remains undeniably horrific. She took three lives, and
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  that brings us right back to that unsettling question. Why.
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  Speaker 1: It's like we're piecing together this really gruesome puzzle.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: We have these pieces, the tragic losses, the war on
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  the horizon, the victims, but how do they all connect?
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  Like what was going through Leonarda's mind when she committed
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  these awful acts.
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  Speaker 2: That's where we got to dive into the psychology of
• 5:00
  it all, right, the point where her mental state and
• 5:02
  her motives. Collie and you remember that fortune teller's prophecy
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  we talked about. Yeah, well, it seems like Leonarda actually
• 5:08
  believed that by taking these specific lives, she could somehow
• 5:13
  appease fate, you know, like offering them a sacrifice to
• 5:16
  protect her son.
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  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just about keeping him out of the war.
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  It was almost like fulfilling some dark bargain to save
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  him exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It's a chilling example of how grief, desperation, and superstition
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  can twist together to create this really warped sense of reality.
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  And it's important to note that while this might sound
• 5:33
  like pure madness, Leonardo was deemed mentally fit to stand trial.
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  Speaker 1: Which means there was a level of awareness there right right,
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  a chilling calculation to her actions. It's disturbing. It makes
• 5:45
  it even more disturbing because it means she knew what
• 5:47
  she was doing exactly.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And what's even more unsettling is that when she finally
• 5:51
  confessed to these horrific acts, it wasn't driven by remorse
• 5:55
  or guilt.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: You're right, it was all because she thought Giuseppe might
• 5:58
  be a suspect, confess to protect him, even if it
• 6:02
  meant condemning herself exactly.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: And that speaks volumes about her state of mind. It
• 6:06
  shows just how deeply ingrained that maternal instinct was, to
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  the point where it just completely overshadowed any other moral consideration,
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  even when she was staring down the consequences of what
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  she did.
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  Speaker 1: And then there's the trial itself. There are these accounts
• 6:20
  describing her as being surprisingly calm, even correcting details to
• 6:24
  make what she did seem more reasonable.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Almost like she was trying to justify the unjustifiable. This
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  complete lack of remorse, this detachment from the gravity of
• 6:32
  her own crimes, it points to a psychological complexity that
• 6:36
  continues to fascinate and horrify. Some experts have even suggested
• 6:40
  she might have had a dissociative disorder as a way
• 6:43
  to cope with the immense guilt and horror of her actions.
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  Speaker 1: So like creating a mental barrier between herself and these
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  unthinkable acts, like she was just an observer in her
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  own life. What does that say about us about humans,
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  about our capacity for compartmentalizing things, burying even the darkest
• 6:59
  parts of ourselves.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: It's a question that's haunted criminologists and psychologists for years
• 7:03
  and years. How could someone commit such horrific acts but
• 7:06
  still seems so normal on the surface, so in control.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And that normalcy, that ability to blend in. That's maybe
• 7:13
  the most unsettling thing of all. It makes you wonder
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  do we ever really know the people around us, the
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  secrets they might be hiding beneath the every day It
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  really is chilling, you know, the idea that these monstrous
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  acts can happen not in some far off place, but
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  right in the heart of ordinary towns, and committed by
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  people who seem just like everyone else, at least on
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  the surface. It makes you question everything.
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  Speaker 2: It really does, And that's exactly why Leonardo dei Cianci's
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  story still gets to people. Yeah, even after all these years.
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  It forces us to confront that dark side of human nature,
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  and to admit the line between sanity and madness, between
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  love and delusion. It can be Terrifyingly.
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  Speaker 1: Then we started this deep dive, asking if she was
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  driven by madness, or by a mother's love, or maybe
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  something else entirely so after looking at everything, what are
• 7:58
  your thoughts?
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's easy to want to put her in a box, yeah, right,
• 8:01
  to label her as simply evil or insane. Right. But
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  the truth, like it often is, is way more complicated.
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  From what we can tell, she really did love her
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  children fiercely to the point of obsession, but that love
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  got all tangled up with her grief for desperation and
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  that deep seated belief in that awful prophecy. I think
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  in her mind she wasn't taking lives. She was saving
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  a life, her son's life, and that's what I believe
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  a ladder to justify the unimaginable.
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  Speaker 1: It all circles back to that question you asked earlier.
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  Could a case like this, with that mix of fierce
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  maternal instinct, desperation, and a completely skewed view of reality,
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  could it happen again today?
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  Speaker 2: It's a disturbing thought, isn't it? But yeah, I think
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  it could. The specifics might be different, of course, our anxieties,
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  our belief systems, the way we do things, it's all
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  shaped by the times we live in. But those basic
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  emotional forces, the lengths of person might go to in
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  the name of love or fear those are tragically timeless.
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  Speaker 1: So where does that leave us? What can we learn
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  from a case as disturbing and frankly is bizarre as
• 9:00
  the soapmaker of Corrigio.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I think it's a stork reminder that the
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  world isn't black and white. Human beings are capable of
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  incredible things, both good and evil, and it highlights just
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  how vital critical thinking is, seeking help when we need
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  it and recognizing that even the most ordinary lives there
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  could be these extraordinary and sometimes very dark complexities hidden
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  beneath the surface.
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  Speaker 1: Definitely a lot to process, but like we always say
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  here on the Deep Dive, knowledge is power, even when
• 9:27
  it's tough to hear. Yeah, understanding the darkness facing it
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  head on, that's how we learn, That's how we grow
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  and hopefully how we can prevent these kinds of horrors
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  from happening again. So to everyone listening, what surprised you
• 9:38
  the most about leon Ardisten and Kobe's story? What questions
• 9:40
  are you still wrestling with? We really want to know.
• 9:43
  You can share your thoughts, your own theories, your own
• 9:44
  deep dies into this case. Just use the hashtag the
• 9:47
  Deep Dive on social media and if this conversation left
• 9:50
  you wanting more, and let's be real, it always does.
• 9:52
  Head over to our website. We've got a ton of
• 9:54
  extra stuff there, links to historical archives, psychological profiles, even
• 9:58
  some of that folklore analysis we talked about Earli. So
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  until next time, keep those questions coming, keep exploring, and
• 10:04
  never stop diving deep