Leonarda Cianciulli

Leonarda Cianciulli (1894–1970) was an Italian serial killer whose crimes became some of the most horrifying of the interwar period. Born in Montella, Italy, Cianciulli had a troubled childhood marked by poverty and abuse. She developed a complex psychological state, believing herself cursed and driven by superstitious impulses. Between 1939 and 1940, she murdered three women in her home in Correggio, Italy, under the pretense of helping them find employment. She then dismembered their bodies and, in acts that shocked the world, claimed to have rendered portions into soap and incorporated their remains into baked goods she distributed. Cianciulli was arrested in 1940 and confessed in extraordinary detail to her crimes, displaying an unsettling mix of remorse and matter-of-factness. Her case became the subject of extensive criminological study and remains one of history's most infamous examples of serial murder. She spent her final decades in an Italian asylum, where she died at age 75.