WWII Serial Killer Mom Sacrificed Victims to Keep Her Son Safe at War

By | August 16, 2018

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Leonarda Cianciulli was a particularly callous and brutal serial killer who killed her victims as a form of human sacrifice to ensure that her favorite son would emerge from the war unscathed. Cianciulli poisoned her victims, chopped them into pieces with an ax, made soap from their flesh and teacakes from their blood, earning her the nickname the "Soap Maker of Correggio.” Her trial caused a sensation in her native Italy in 1946, which at the time, wasn't exactly familiar with serial killers, let alone women serial killers.

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A Fortune Teller Told Cianciulli “I See Prison or an Asylum”

Leonarda Cianciulli was a dark and superstitious woman who lived from 1894 to 1970 in Italy. As a teen, she frequently visited fortune tellers. One prophetically accurate fortune teller read her palm and stated, “In your right hand, I see prison. In your left hand, I see a criminal asylum.” Another fortune teller told Cianciulli that she would marry and have several children, but that all of her children would die young. This prediction proved to be partially accurate. She did, indeed, get married and she got pregnant 17 times. She had three miscarriages and watched ten of her babies die as young children. She became insanely protective of the four remaining children…so protective, in fact, that she would do anything to keep them safe.