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Morbid

Leonarda Cianciulli: The Soap-Maker of Correggio

Morbid

Ash Kelley & Alaina Urquhart

Comedy, Paranormal, True Crime, Dark History

4.4100.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Having lost several children to childhood illnesses, Leonarda Cianciulli was very protective of her surviving children and was willing to do anything to protect them. So, when the deeply superstitious Leonarda was warned by a fortune teller that all her children would die at a young age, the forty-six-year-old shopkeeper determined that the best way to keep her son alive was to offer human sacrifices in exchange for Giuseppe’s safety. Ove the course of a year, Leonarda murdered three local women and disposed of their bodies with caustic chemicals, using any remaining biological evidence in the creation of soaps, candles, cookies, and cakes, which she shared with others in her community. Thank you to the lovely David White, of Bring Me the Axe podcast, for research assistance :) References Baltimore Sun. 1946. "Rendered her friends to wax, she says." Baltimore Sun, April 28: 3. Eddy, Cheryl. 2015. The Superstitious Murderer Who Turned Her Victims Into Cake And Soap. June 23. https://gizmodo.com/the-superstitious-murderer-who-turned-her-victims-into-1713486930. Green, Ryan. 2019. The Curse: A Shocking True Story of Superstition, Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism. Unknown: Independent. Museo Criminologico. 2006. The Correggio soap-maker. September 12. http://www.museocriminologico.it/correggio_uk.htm. Ortiz, Genoveva. 2022. The Deadly Soap-Maker of Correggio: The True Story of Leonarda Cianciulli. unknown: True Crime Seven.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to a morbid network podcast.

0:07.0

Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena.

0:10.0

I'm Ash.

0:11.0

And this is morbid. Oh, uh, I'm not.

0:23.0

Oh, uh,

0:25.0

uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

0:27.0

uh, uh,

0:28.0

uh, uh, uh uh... Yeah, girl. We're going to get real morbid today, my friends. Yeah, Elena is back and better than ever.

0:47.6

You never really went anywhere, but thank you. But you know, this is a little far away from the spooky season

0:57.3

silliness of it all.

0:59.0

I would say because you know like spooky season we got you know we like to go a little more

1:03.4

haunted a little more loosey goosey with it but then we know that you guys like you know like a you know

1:09.7

you know you know you got you want to hear the real stuff too and I'm going to get very real on you today.

1:15.7

Oh God. We're going to be talking about the story of Leonardo Chanculi.

1:20.5

Hmm. Who is also referred to as the soapmaker of Kereggio.

1:27.0

I don't know how I personally feel about that.

1:30.0

Yes, and whatever your first thoughts were when I said that.

1:34.0

Yep. Yep, correct.

1:37.0

Also, I'd like to just give a quick little trigger warning here.

1:41.0

Mm.

1:42.0

She has a very tragic story as does her mother.

1:46.1

So like traumatic upbringing.

...

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