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All right, welcome back to another episode of the Psychopedia podcast. I am your co-host, Tank Sinatra, here with my co-host... Investigator Slater. And boy, do we have a special guest in studio today. He is just laying there, loving everything about life. His name is Cash. He's your rescue pit bull. And you are obsessed with him. I am obsessed with everything.
Every single part of him. His existence is my life. He's a great kisser. Oh, he's the best kisser. I'll tell you that much. He almost licked my facial hair off before. He just wants to go hard on the face. He's such a lover. He's an aggressive lover. He's an aggressive lover and he doesn't realize that he's 80 pounds. So when he comes at you full force with the tongue out, you have to brace for impact. Yeah. Yeah.
You have to brace for gross impact, but it's still very nice. It's not gross. Well, it's, I mean, it's a tongue and he's got teeth and a snout. He's coming at you like pretty aggressively. It's a little gross, but not for how loving he is.
You know what I mean? There is nothing gross about this animal. You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Cash, don't lick my face. He will. So everything's going great. Podcast is cranking along. The numbers are, I mean, best thing I've ever launched maybe in my entire life. That's amazing. And I just want to thank the listeners, obviously, for tuning in.
and being psychos and loving what we do. And Investigator Slater for making it all possible. And you, Tank, for making it possible with me and with our listeners. Round of applause for Investigator Slater. So listen, we've been reading reviews before the podcast. I'm not saying we're done with it, but I don't want to bore you guys with them. But there's one that came through this week that I screenshot and sent to Investigator Slater because it's like the one we've been waiting for.
Right? It was so good. I'm so glad you texted it to me. Yeah. And then we got to kvel over it together. Do you know what that means? I can imagine. It's like gush. Yeah, it's a Yiddish word. My grandmother used to use it all the time. Like you kvel, exactly. You gush. You together just like, oof, you mush about it. Oh, I want to have this review lick my face. The wishlist review was 80 pounds coming at me full force. Yeah.
It's from Maddie Heiner, and it's the best criminy dynamic duo, right? Five stars. Just real quick, I love this podcast. Investigator Slater and Tank Sinatra's personalities work so well together, and I'm always super impressed by how much detail they, she, can include in a relatively short amount of time. The added element of humor makes this podcast such a great, listen, maybe comedic relief isn't what you imagined for a true crime podcast, but I promise you it's the missing piece you never knew you needed
Huge appreciation for the time you take to create this content. Keep it coming. Oh, oh, we will. Oh, that was a good one. Thank you to the person who wrote that. Maddie Heiner, shout out to you for just speaking to my DNA with that review. You really got to me with that one. I read it multiple times. I'm not saying it's my favorite. It's my favorite because they're all my favorites, but that one got me pretty good because it's what we're trying to do. Obviously, we're talking about stuff
It's very dark and sordid and just like hard to listen to sometimes. And I, if you've been listening for a long time, know that I'm like, you know, the comic relief guy. I'm not really that obsessed with true crime or I wasn't. Now I'm obviously more into it than I was, but I always tried to bring that element of humor because these stories are so devastating and brutal and
And we never make fun of the people in the case, obviously, but it could be misconstrued as bad taste, but I'm glad that the people who get it, get it, get it. Exactly. So thank you for your ratings, your reviews, your feedback, your emails. You can email us at psychopedia pod at gmail.com. You can find us on Instagram, psychopedia pod, investigator Slater, tanks and Atra. Come get us and tell us how much you love the podcast because we are wildly insecure. Yeah.
And we need it. Was not being that. No, we're not. We're having fun. We're doing it because Investigator Slater loves true crime in a way that I don't even think is possible to communicate in a sentence or with words. I just hope it comes through in the cases. It can't be communicated directly, but if it comes through in these cases, then I'm happy. And I know I mentioned it on another episode, but I'll mention it again. Then we'll get to the case. The amount of work that she puts into these cases is really...
I've personally never worked this hard on anything in my entire life once. Wow. Forget about every week. But you come from a professional, legit, criminal, legal background. You know what you're doing. You know what to look for. You know what's interesting, what's not. So I am just along for the ride. It's a pleasure to do it, truly. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't do it.
You'd be doing it anyway. Maybe. Right? Again, it's the life that chose me. It is. So we're going to get into the case. For you freaks that are fast-forwarding through the pizza delivery to get to the good shot, it's coming for you. The money shot. The money shot is coming, and it's starting now. Generally, if a parent is asked what is absolutely most important to them, they will likely respond without hesitation that it's their children. I was going to say drugs. Unless they have a dog. Yeah.
Humans are genetically wired to love their children, which provides an evolutionary advantage over other species that may not have this innate bond. I don't like where this is going already. Yeah. Just a side note, but keep going. My side note here, because while I was obviously researching like the human...
parent-child bonds and how it really is just genetically coded in us. Oh, yeah. Right? Did you know that kimono dragons will abandon their young and then if they ever encounter them later in life, they will eat them? Really? Yeah. Isn't that interesting and horrible? I wish I didn't know that. Yeah, there's the story about, you know, why kids are so cute. It's literally so parents won't kill them. Right. They're annoying.
Since the dawn of time, the bond between human parents and their children has been seen as an essential instinctive connection that is both formidable and indisputable. Parents will often declare without skipping a beat that they would die for their children. And this truth tends to be universally understood and accepted.
But what about killing for one's children outside the context of imminent life-threatening danger? Oh, it's not going where I thought it was going. In other words, if there is no tangible threat to the safety of one's child, but rather an overall sense of impending doom, how do we feel about a parent who goes on to kill under those circumstances to protect their child against an unverified, unseen, not imminent threat?
That's a great question. It's a bit rhetorical. You're not, you know, you don't have to answer it, but... I thought that was a pop quiz. Tonight, we are examining the fascinating case of Leonardo Cianciulli, an Italian female serial killer from long ago whose superstitions pushed her to carry out some of the most horrific acts of violence, all in an effort to safeguard her child from evil.
Leonardo's depraved, immoral, and unlawful acts, which included murder, cannibalism, and ritualistic human sacrifices, were driven by her unyielding and all-consuming convictions in superstition and black magic. I mean, yeah, so before you posed the question, what do you do if there's a not imminent but vague potential threat against your kids? That doesn't sound like that's what this is. This sounds like this woman was a little cuckoo. What?
Not to minimize her to cuckoo-ness, but... She definitely struggled with mental health issues, which we are going to absolutely be exploring. But she truly, truly believed in superstition and black magic and all of the ways in which that threatened her child. But the question is, how do we feel about people who truly, truly believe that their child's life is in danger and take...
you know, matters into their own hands to the nth degree. Are you superstitious? I'm a little superstitious. Are you superstitious? I'm a little stitious. Michael Scott, what's up? All right, let's get into this case. Leonardo Cianciulli was born in 1894 in a town called Montella in southern Italy. In the spirit of superstition, it could be argued that Leonardo Cianciulli's life was cursed before it even began.
She was born to a beautiful woman named Amelia Denolfi, who in the ancient town of Montella had not gone unnoticed by the men in her village. I feel like you're just saying Italian restaurant names. No, nope, not doing that. Amelia Fennelli and Dada La Tantella and Leonardo DiCaprio. Nope.
Okay, so we're following, this is Leonardo Cianciulla, who's the main character. This is her mother I'm talking about. With the dowry. With the dowry. Correct. By contrast to Emilia, though hailing from the same village, was Leonardo's father, Mariano Cianciulli, who
who lacked standing in the community and came from a family of poor socioeconomic status. That reminds me, I saw the Mario Brothers movie last night. It was really good. Oh, what the Mariano reminded you? It's a me, Mariano.
Mariano was getting on in age and had very few prospects before him in the way of marriage or employment. One might be curious then as to how Amelia, an attractive and affluent young woman with numerous attentive suitors, came to have a baby, Leonardo, with Leonardo's father, Mariano, a man portrayed as harsh, having very little to offer and frequently drunk on cheap wine and seen stumbling around the village.
Well, after leaving a chaperone dinner party one night, Amelia was abducted by Mariano, who had been watching and stalking her all night. I was hoping you were not going to say that. I'm going there. He was desperate to push Amelia off her high-class pedestal as she represented all that he felt he could never have and would never be. He dragged Amelia off the road and into a dark field where he proceeded to rape her as she fought, screamed, and cried out,
It took Amelia hours to move after the assault ended. And when she was finally able to walk and stagger her way home, she entered her house in a complete state of shock, shame, and confusion.
Amelia hadn't a clue what just happened to her. She came from a Catholic family where the topic of sex was never discussed. Oh my God. So she didn't even know what happened. Nope. And if it was ever hinted at the topic of sex, it was always in the context of marriage. So she could not wrap her head around what just happened to her. That is fucking crazy. She literally hold just, I mean, to belabor that point, cause it's worth, I think diving into, um,
not knowing what sex is and then being raped is horrific. It's like a double violation. You know, it's like that is obviously the physical violation, which we cannot ever begin to articulate the horrendousness of that. But then it's a psychological violation. It's a multidimensional violation. There are so many different ways because obviously you take somebody's innocence if you rape them, but
But I mean, to minimize raping a virgin, that's obviously horrible too. But it's like, actually now I'm at the point where I'm concluding the thought. It's like raping a kid who doesn't even know what sex is. Right. Well, she very much was. She was a young woman. She had never been with anyone. When she awoke the next morning with dried blood crusted on her thighs and mud caked on her dress from the night before, she realized what happened. And she knew that her life would never be the same.
Amelia cleaned herself up, put on fresh clothing, and began her months-long mission to conceal what she had endured that fateful night. She never wanted to breathe a word of it to anyone and refused to even think about it ever again to the extent that that was possible. She truly pushed it back, back, back in her mind.
How old was she at this point? Do you know? I don't. Late teens? It was, yeah. She was being suited, courted for marriage. Okay. And this was 1894. So she could have been anywhere from probably like 14 to... 14, exactly. 16. Yeah. But in spite of her best effort, the attack remained in the forefront of her memory and had begun to wear her down emotionally, psychologically, and even physically.
Gone was the joyful, social, carefree, highly eligible bachelorette. And in its place stood a quiet, now introverted young woman with a noticeably growing belly. Eventually, Amelia's parents caught on to the fact that their unmarried daughter was pregnant. And Amelia was forced to finally disclose the truth about what happened to her that night and to name her assailant.
I can imagine she was unable to even explain to them what happened. Like, I don't know. I was attacked and now I'm pregnant. They knew she was pregnant. She knew she was pregnant. So when she explained the attack, it was fairly obvious. Oh my God. To Amelia's absolute horror, the next night after telling her parents about what happened, she was forced to sit around the dining room table with her rapist, Mariano, and
and his family who insisted that their filthy son would, quote, make things right by marrying Amelia. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.
Of course, Mariano was thrilled. He'd been infatuated with Amelia and her status for months. He targeted her that night. But in
But Amelia, understandably, was devastated. Yeah, understandably. Mariano and Amelia married in a rushed and hushed secret ceremony before moving into an absolute shitbox of a home that lacked furniture and an indoor bathroom. This is a girl who came from wealth, but that was nothing compared to the fact that a very pregnant young Amelia was now expected to fulfill her wifely obligations to the beast who she was now forced to call her husband. Fuck this.
Fuck that. And if you were holding out any hope that marriage or the prospect of becoming a father may have softened Mariano, you'd be sorely mistaken because he remained vicious and abusive towards Amelia in every way you can imagine.
One day in the not-so-distant future after their unhappy union, Amelia felt that first unmistakable, excruciating pang of childbirth. And let me tell you from experience, and my situation was under the best of circumstances, when you feel that first pain, it is terrifying. Well, I can imagine what it's like because I've had a bellyache before. Okay, same thing. Yep. Yeah.
I've stubbed my toe before. I can pretty much imagine what it must feel like. I'm kidding. Jesus. I'm going to have my dog come at you. Yeah. Cashie, wake up, buddy. For the listeners, obviously, I'm not even going to pretend to understand what... I mean...
I want to say it's like being stabbed, but it may even be worse than that. I have no idea. It's ungodly. Yeah. It's fucked up that women have to... Let's do an episode about that. Oh, I could do many episodes about that. It is indescribable. The agony of childbirth. And for me, I had...
My loving husband. I had my mother. I had my father. I had my pit bulls. I had my doctor. I was in the best situation you can imagine. And my teeth were chattering. I was so petrified. Oh my God. You know what? Quick story. My stepdaughter, one day, six years old, seven years old, whatever, maybe even younger, we were eating dinner. And this is like when I first started dating my wife. And she's like, she's sitting at the table and she's got her head in her hands like this. And she's like,
I don't want to have a kid. And we were like, what are you talking about? She's like, I don't want to push it out. We were like, yo, you were just pushed out yourself. So why don't you forget about that? It was just so funny to see the pain of being a woman that young
Now, of course, Amelia's husband, Mariano, was off getting drunk somewhere while she was forced to endure the initial pangs of childbirth and the fear that comes with it. So she flagged down a random local woman in the street who took pity on her and called for the local midwife to come to assist. After a very traumatic delivery with little to no emotional support, during which Amelia blacked out multiple times from the pain, Amelia's new daughter, Leonardo Cianciulli, was born.
And to Amelia, this newborn baby represented everything that had gone terribly wrong in her life. Yeah, that's a psychological... Very tough. Mindfuck. Very tough. You want to love it, obviously, but it must be difficult to... I don't envy her situation. No.
As a child, Leonardo proceeded to grow up extremely poor with Emilia and Mariano as her parents and survived mostly on the kindness of others through the local church. She was regularly beaten and insulted by her father and was constantly at the receiving end of hatred and loathing by her mother, who resented her very existence and made no secret of this fact.
The situation deteriorated steadily as time passed, even after Mariano died of a fever. Oh, that's good news. Well, and they thought it was going to be good news too. Yeah. Amelia and Leonardo. And for Amelia, it was good news in a sense that she was now gone of this piece of shit man. And she was able to start dating, which she did almost immediately. But for Leonardo, what it represented was being the sole target of her mother's
Oh, that's not good. And she was largely abandoned and neglected at that point because Amelia went off dating. It's like Amelia wanted to sort of pick up where she left off before the attack. And I'm not condoning the fact that she was a shitty mother, but I empathize with the fact that she went through that against her will. And now she felt like she had a second bite of the apple.
Understandably, in this environment, it didn't take long for Leonarda's mental state to crumble as her mother's neglect and hatred intensified. Before even entering her teenage years, Leonarda attempted to commit suicide by fashioning a noose out of dirty bedsheets. Since she wasn't proficient at knot tying, however, her attempt to hang herself failed when the knot slipped out.
Her second suicide attempt at just age 13 followed the same pattern with the knot untying and setting her hanging body free. Then she tried a third time to commit suicide by swallowing shards of glass, but this had only made her ill. Oh my God. Sadly, Leonardo would later recount that after enduring three failed suicide attempts, her mother's only reaction had been disappointment.
Leonardo said, quote, Mom made me understand that she was sorry to see me alive again. That's rough. Leonardo began to ponder, though, if the three times that she had been spared from death were part of some greater plan. And this thought kept her motivated throughout the tough months and years ahead.
By 1917, Leonarda was simply desperate for affection, having been deprived of that her entire life. And she felt intense bitterness towards her cruel mother. So she began dating men that her mother disapproved of. By the time Amelia started making matches for her, because remember, this is 1917. So the mother, the parents find the suitors for the children, for the daughter.
So Amelia is starting to find matches for Leonardo, but Leonardo had already set her own sights on an older man named Raphael Pensardi, who had a low-level clerk job and was seven years her senior. So in Amelia's eyes, he was not a great catch. And this is all in Italy, right? Yep, southern Italy. Okay.
Emilia did not approve of Raphael Pensardi, and he felt that he would not be able to bring any financial support to the family. But Leonardo went and married him anyway when she was 21 years old. Rebel. Pop quiz. How did Emilia react to their marriage? She made a ravioli. Oh, my Lord tank.
A, she physically ambushed Leonardo with a belt and hit her face so hard that she lost an eye. B, she told Leonardo in a final act of vitriol that she was unlovable and had been unwanted since conception. Okay. Or C, she put a curse on Leonardo and her new life. I feel like this is a trick.
It's obviously a trick. Well, there's obviously a right answer in there. I know, but...
She put a curse on her? Yes. Oh, I mean, that was an easy layup. How was that an easy layup? Because you said she believed in superstitions and whatever. Okay. Yeah. So you were setting me up for failure with that answer. Oh, okay. Nope. I was like, God damn it. Investigator Slater. I'm disappointed in myself. That's a separate, that's a me issue. I thought that was like, you know,
One of those quizzes where it's like, no, idiot, that would be too easy of an answer. Looks like the tides are turning on this pop quiz situation, aren't they? It must be Cash. Thank you for good luck, Cash. Oh, baby. But he's on my side. No, he's on my side now. Okay. Yeah. So Amelia told Leonardo that she placed a curse on her for ruining her life a second time. Wow.
And the effects of this curse, whether you believe in its actual power or not, would end up changing the course of history. During the early stages of Leonardo's marriage to Raphael, her mental health did not exactly improve. As a new wife and woman of the household, she treated herself quite cruelly,
And would refer to herself as unlovable and unworthy of being anyone's wife. It's almost like she stepped into her mother's toxic shoes. You know, her mother was kind of gone from her life at this point, but she could not exist without those insults coming at her. So she self-directed them.
Well, obviously she was raised with a lot of hatred and vitriol, but do you know what happens? Even Leonardo's children are going to be affected by what happened when the baby is in a mother's womb, especially when it's a woman and all the eggs that she's ever going to have in her life are in her.
They're all affected by whatever trauma the woman goes through during that nine months of pregnancy. Psychological trauma? No, like so much deeper than that. DNA trauma. I read this book called It Didn't Start With You about generational trauma. They actually discovered it. You've probably heard of this before by showing descendants of Holocaust people that died in the Holocaust, showing them pictures of inside the gas chambers in the prisons and they recognize them.
So never met them. They never met their grandparents, never got told stories, never saw them, just like knew what they were. So are you suggesting that the memories of the trauma pass through generationally? So then, because they couldn't recreate it with humans because the generational gap is too long, they did it with mice where they let a mouse smell strawberry and then gave it a little zap. Sorry. They gave it a little zap. They measured its cortisol. It spiked.
That mouse had a baby. Then that mouse had a baby. They let that mouse smell strawberry and its cortisol spiked through the roof. So it's passed down like in your cells. At least three generations. Could be more, obviously, but they can't measure that yet. That's fascinating. Yeah. That's really fascinating. Wow. Oh my God. I wonder if I passed anything down to my kids. Yeah. You think?
Obviously. Do you pass down good experiences as well? Is that why my son is obsessed with Halloween much like I am? I mean, he literally, nobody taught him about being obsessed with Halloween. Yeah. Listen, things can be enforced environmentally or created environmentally or socially, but there are... Maybe reinforced. Reinforced. But I mean, look, you have two kids. I have two kids. They're both very different. They both came from the same parents. Yeah.
What's that about? Do you know what I mean? Like they get different things from different parents, but yeah, the generational stuff is really fascinating. It's very fascinating. Interesting input there, Tank. It didn't start with you. It was the name of the book. So at this point, in addition to sort of self-deprecating, Leonardo also began suffering from seizures and fits, which she knew in her bones were being caused by her mother's curse.
So Leonardo decided to take action by seeking a remedy for the supernatural affliction. She enlisted the help of a Romani fortune teller who resided in the nearby forest. Just a quick little like history lesson here. So Romanis are often referred to as gypsies, but I believe that may be a pejorative term at this point. But they're an ethnic group of traditionally nomadic people who originated in northern India, but
But they live worldwide now, predominantly in Europe. About two to five million Romanis remain today, which I thought was fascinating. And traditionally, they've engaged in work that's conducive to their nomadic lifestyle. So things like fortune telling, being musicians, entertainers, metalsmiths, and animal trainers. And boxers. Tyson Fury's a gypsy. Well, do you watch Peaky Blinders?
I've tried, but no. You need the subtitles. Try again. It's so good. Yeah. They are Romani. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's interesting. So some of their relatives, like the more traditional nomadic ones, are referred to as gypsies in the series. And they live the lifestyle that...
I'm describing here. In the woods, telling fortunes, supernaturally driven. Smoking cigarettes. Maybe. I heard they smoke a lot of cigarettes in Peaky Blinders. Oh, yeah. I was talking about, we're watching The Man in the High Castle right now. Do you know what that show's about? It's about what the world would be like if Germany and Japan won World War II.
Interesting. Hitler's still in power. He's like the ruler of the world. I'm sure I wouldn't be here. No, no, no. They're still killing Jewish people. It's horrible. I mean, there's a scene where the guy is on the side of the road and it looks like it's snowing.
And he's like, what is that? And the cop goes, oh, it's Wednesday. It's the hospital. And he's like, what does that mean? He's like, they burn cripples and the elderly. And it's just like a throwaway thing. Like, oh, oh, okay. But like, it's as bad as you think. But they smoke so many cigarettes in the show. And I said to Jessica, I'm like, don't you wish you could just fucking smoke cigarettes guilt-free and then obviously die of lung cancer like 60 years later, but like enjoy the cigarette in the hospital with the doctor telling you that you're sick? Ah.
Uh, no. Well, you were never a smoker, right? No, never. Oh, smoking cigarettes is the best. No, I tried it in college like everyone else. Couldn't get into it. It's the best, but it's the worst. There's nothing better than that little karate chop to the back of your throat when you're, yeah. I felt that. I felt good.
Instead of offering comfort or sage advice to a frantic Leonardo, the Romani fortune teller only served to cement her worst fears, causing an already precarious mental state to further break down. Oh yeah, obviously. Remember, she's there because she feels that she's having seizures from her mother's curse. The fortune teller told Leonardo that she would live to see a ripe old age, but in doing so, she would outlive all of her future children.
And this revelation was a devastating blow. Yeah. After three years of struggling to conceive, Leonarda finally became pregnant. She was over the moon and ready to look towards the future rather than focusing on her broken past. But sadly, her joy was short-lived as she miscarried after her first trimester. And she was devastated. And her belief in the curse seemed to have again been confirmed by this tragic loss.
But then in 1922, she had a successful pregnancy that led to a successful birth of her first son, Giuseppe, bringing forth not just an abundance of love for the boy, but also a much needed glimmer of hope that the curse could be beaten. We're starting to see that everything that happens in her life is somehow caused by the curse. Is Amelie still alive at this point? Amelia? She has no relationship with Amelia at this point, but the curse is a lifelong curse. Sure.
Unfortunately, however, that glimmer of hope did not last. Since giving birth to Giuseppe, Leonarda had gotten pregnant a total of 17 times. Wow. Resulting in three miscarriages and 10 babies who were born but all passed away during childhood. The level of trauma that Leonarda experienced really is beyond comprehension. The stress and heartbreak of losing so many children is
caused her to suffer from countless anxiety-induced seizures. She got pregnant 17 times and lost all... Yeah, whether it was miscarriage or them passing away. Oh, I did not think of that for some reason. Yeah. So there were 10 babies who passed away and three that ended in miscarriage. That's 13. So between 13 and 17, she had four kids after Giuseppe. Oh my...
God. Yeah. That's terrible. And it obviously takes its physical toll, right? As well as the psychological toll. So she started having many, many additional anxiety-induced seizures and she developed a compulsion to pluck out her own hair, which is a condition known as trichotillomania. She also became overly fixated, obsessed on her remaining children, which
quite literally monitoring their every breath and shaking them awake during the night to make sure that they were still alive. That's a very, very heartbreaking way to live. You never go into your kids' rooms to make sure they're still breathing? I do, but I don't do it every night and I don't expect them to be dead, thank God. When they were babies though, oh my God, I put them next to me in bed. I just had to watch the rise and fall of their chests. You know what the best...
Ironically, I'm kidding. Obviously, part of being a new dad is when the baby's screaming, crying, and you're like, oh my God, please stop. I need to sleep. And then the baby stops crying and you're like, is that baby alive now? Because I can't sleep. Frantically running. I can't sleep now. Right. You never get to rest. No, you don't. Either the baby's screaming their head off or they're maybe not alive anymore. No matter what, it's a shit night's sleep. Oh, it's terrible.
Given the intense grief she experienced for the multiple deaths and incomplete pregnancies, Leonardo's paranoia is understandable. Yeah. It's tragic and it becomes lethal, but at this point, it pains me to see it.
So at this point in the case, it's 1927 and the Panzardi family were now facing extreme financial difficulty, prompting Leonardo to take on a job as a cleaner at the local bank in the evenings. She used this opportunity to tinker with different soaps and chemicals, experimenting with ingredients to see which combinations would yield the best outcomes. And she really enjoyed it.
While it wasn't the most lucrative job, Leonardo enjoyed the tranquility, the chance to be creative, and of course the paycheck. The best outcomes for what? She was mixing different chemicals and soaps to see what would yield the best result. So she would clean with her like... Oh, cleaning. She was almost like a little chemist. Yeah. I thought she started Bath and Body Works or something.
One night after leaving work, Leonardo returned home to find that her daughter had passed away. Oh my God. And this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Yeah, of course. This death completely pushed Leonardo over the precipice of despair. Pop quiz. Oh man. What did Leonardo do at this point? A, clean out her employer's bank account so she could move her family. B,
B, kill her husband, Raphael, for failing to even notice that their daughter had been lying dead in her cot. Or C, swallow a mouthful of cleaning detergent. Kill her husband, Raphael? No. Damn. I missed the part where she got married, by the way, even though she got pregnant 17 times.
Yeah. She married the man that her mother did not want her to marry. Oh, that's right. Because he was seven years her senior. He didn't have a high-paying job. That's what the curse was about. This is something you need to be very aware of. Oh, my God. That's right. I do remember that. Okay, so that's the guy that her mom didn't want her to marry. She married him, got pregnant 17 times. And when Leonardo married him, Amelia placed the curse on her and said, you've now ruined my life a second time. Oh.
Oh my God, that's right. Okay, so cleaned out our employer's bank account or swallowed a mouthful of cleaning detergent. Cleaned out our employer's bank account. Yes. Yeah. Yep.
She needed to get her surviving children out of the city, which was rife with disease and plagued by cramped housing. But to move her family to greener pastures, she needed money. So she attempted to commit fraud. She basically created a false bank account at the bank where she worked. And then she tried to move money out of other accounts into that account. She was literally caught that night and arrested the next morning.
After her arrest, Leonardo was convicted of fraud and imprisoned for 18 months in 1927. And her kids were obviously left to fend for themselves. With her husband. Yeah. I mean, shit. Like, desperate times call for desperate measures, you know? I don't condone stealing, but at this point, I can see and feel...
What she's going through, right? Sometimes you got to do a little fraud. She's broken and she's terrified and she's lost so many children and she thinks she has to save her remaining children by getting them like out into the countryside, but they have no money. What do you do? You do what you got to do. I don't condone it, but I understand it. Yeah, listen, obviously we don't, you know, we don't condone crime here, but if there was no crime, we wouldn't be here. But fraud is the least of her contortions.
Yeah, what happens later in this case is inexcusable. So, Leonarda is now incarcerated, and the thought that's keeping her going during her imprisonment is her golden child, Giuseppe. Giuseppe was her lifeblood, her hope, her salvation from the curse. And in her eyes, which admittedly we're not seeing very clearly, she needed to keep him safe.
Once released from prison, Leonarda started to visit the Romani fortune tellers on the outskirts of town every single night. Even though they gave her bad news the first time? Yeah, she still believed it. Over the next several months, she began taking on a more active approach in the magical realm, acquiring solid foundational knowledge in the areas of fortune telling, spell writing, and curse casting. She officially transitioned from being a passive observer to an active participant.
Nevertheless, Leonarda still lived with a constant sense of doom and an astronomical amount of chronic anxiety. She was never not being crushed under the weight of her mother's curse.
Then one night in 1930, something occurred that drove Leonardo even closer to the edge of insanity. What happened? Pop quiz, you tell me. Oh, shit. A. Her beloved Giuseppe slipped into a fever-induced coma. No, not Giuseppe. B. One of her remaining daughters was abducted by a nomadic Romani. Fuck. C. There was a catastrophic earthquake.
Oh, Giuseppe, the abducted or an earthquake. This is something that did what to her? It made her go even crazier? Yep, in 1930. 1930. Let's say Giuseppe slipped into a fever-induced coma. No, sir. Okay, let's say there was an earthquake. Yes, sir. Oh, man.
July 23rd, 1930, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake known as the Erpina earthquake struck Southern Italy, killing about 1,400 people. Oh, wow. Every single home was destroyed and it would be 40 years before serious reconstruction of the area was finally undertaken. Wow. Leonardo and her family lost their home, livelihood, all of their possessions, and what little was left of Leonardo's sanity. Wow.
And of course, Leonarda once again blamed herself and the curse for this natural disaster. Of course, I would do the same thing. It always comes back to her. Yeah. A lot of ego on this. Narcissism. We're going to get into it. We are narcissists. Nice. Nice. When the literal and metaphorical dust settled, there were four children surviving in the family. Giuseppe, a younger boy and two girls.
After the earthquake, the entire family moved across the country to Correggio, where they were greeted by very charitable people who took pity on their situation and helped them to get back on their feet. That's nice. Very nice. Within a short period of time in this new town of Correggio, Leonardo was accepted into a large circle of female friends, and her life had become, dare I say, somewhat pleasant and predictable and stable again.
Leonardo was seen as an eccentric newcomer to the group, and the women in the area would seek her out for spiritual guidance and a bit of magic talk. They'd host dinner parties where Leonardo would read poetry and receive standing ovations, only leading to additional invitations to more and more social gatherings. Her home had even been transformed into a shop front where she began to sell which of the following items? Spaghetti. Oh my God.
Pop quiz. Spaghetti, magical crystals, fertility potions, soap. Magical crystals, fertility potions, or soap. These are all very equally possible choices. Your girl did good on this one. She was reading the poetry in Italian, right? What other language? Just kidding. Oh.
Creek. Tank Creek. I keep forgetting that they're in Italy. And then you say something like, then they moved to Correggio. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. This is White Lotus season two we're talking about here. Fertility potions. Balls. Obviously. Soap. Yes. All right. You know what? You seem to be getting it on the second try. Yeah, I'm pretty good. The shop was a wild success.
Because remember, when she worked at the bank, she was tinkering around with like mixing different chemicals and solutions to create her own soaps to see what would work best. She has a knack for it.
In addition to continuing to read people's palms, she also provided spiritual readings and life advice based on her apparently accurate premonitions. And this is in addition now to her soap shop. She should have told the people it was magic soap. Maybe she did. Maybe she did. She really had quite a business going for herself at this point. She made special teas for girls who were pregnant out of wedlock, as well as witchy Viagra for the men in town. I knew you'd like that.
Wow. And witchy Viagra. Yeah. So as you can imagine with that skill set, she soon became a secret consultant to almost everyone of influence in the area. Oh yeah. Right. It was the men who needed the push and then it was their mistresses they were knocking up. Yeah. Yeah.
Her once small library of books on the subject of fortune telling and magic expanded into an impressive library on topics including the occult, tarot cards, and the spiritualist and mesmerist movements. She truly established a positive, if not eccentric, reputation and had a solid standing in her community. This was a life that she really had never lived until this point.
So at this point, Leonardo's children are almost adults and the future for once is looking promising. But then, Leonardo's magical thinking began to stray from astrology and fortune telling and took a drastic turn towards much, much darker areas.
She began to move into the dark corners of witchcraft, specifically into folk magic known as Strigaria and Benedicaria. These are niche religions that are forms of Wicca, and they existed before the rise of Christianity in ancient Italy. And they were based on dark magic seeking to bring forth harm and illness. So it's now sort of like the yin to the yang. It's like she's been doing pretty...
good things with her magic at this point or at least making people happy. Now she's moving into the realm of how can I bring sickness and harm. Yeah, self-sabotage. She's got to make herself Right, it's going too well.
Leonardo had become a devout and active participant in all of the affiliated rites and rituals of these dark religions and learned all of the spells and connected with other black magic practitioners whenever she could. So she was networking at this point. LinkedIn for witches. Witched in.
The year is now 1939 for context. And something far beyond Leonardo's control had once again happened, which threatened to take everything away from her. Pop quiz. I knew it. What thing happened that once again placed Leonardo in a very bad psychological state? A, World War II.
B, the death of her last surviving daughter who drowned. C, her soap shop caught fire and burned to the ground. Her soap shop caught fire. No, sir. Jesus, I suck.
Her daughter died? No. World War II? World War II. Started in 1939? And this is when shit really hit the fan for her. And Italy was Axis power. Yes, sir. Right? It's bad. Yeah. Because Giuseppe enlisted. He wanted to fight with the bad guys? Yeah.
Oh, man. The point is he wanted to put his precious life on the line. Yeah. And when Leonarda discovered that he really very likely just signed his life away and his life was the most precious and guarded thing in the universe to her, she literally collapsed on the floor in total hysteria. Yeah. But through her shock and hysteria, Leonarda experienced a moment of clarity. Good. She knew exactly what she had to do.
She had to use her powers to save her son. Kill Hitler. Now, wouldn't that have been something? Yeah. I would have been for that. He was killed by some witch from Italy? From Correggio? She makes soap? I don't know. Fucking, this chick is crazy. Leonardo immediately got to work on a protection spell to ward off death magic from creeping into Giuseppe's world.
Now, in order for Leonardo to acquire what she wanted, which was to save Giuseppe, she had to abide by the law of equal exchange. That is, she would have to give something of equal value in return.
A life for a life. Okay. She had no time to consider morality. This was her final play, her big moment, the reason why she endured so much hardship and pain in her lifetime. This was her final stand against her mother's curse.
And to do this successfully, Leonardo felt that she would need to protect Giuseppe both inside and out. Therefore, she concocted a plan that involved both food inside and soap outside. Keep his ass clean at war. Belly full, ass clean. And from there, a plan was born and a victim was chosen. Hmm.
A woman and client of Leonardo's named Faustina Setti. Faustina Setti was rather unlucky in the love department when she'd made her appointment to meet with the town's magical leader, Leonardo.
Faustina was in her 40s by this point and still unmarried, which only served to sweeten the pot for Leonardo because this meant that she was still a virgin and therefore more enticing to the sacrifice gods. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn't. When Faustina arrived at Leonardo's home, Leonardo fed her false premonitions about a man whom she'd seen in her visions who was to become Faustina's husband.
Leonardo indicated to Faustina that she would make plans to introduce her to this mystery man slash her future husband as long as she would agree to keep all of their plans and discussions a secret from everyone else in her life.
If she agreed to do this, the next move was for Faustina to transfer all of her life savings over to Leonardo so that she could arrange for safe passage for Faustina to embark upon the journey to her new home and her glorious life with her new sexy husband. Sounds like a scam, maybe. Yeah, think? Lastly, Faustina was to write a letter to each of her friends explaining that she was traveling to Pola, which is now Croatia,
to meet her new husband and to start a new life. But crucially, the letter was to clearly indicate that no one was to come looking for her. And Faustina did this. She wrote the letter because at the time, being in your 40s and unmarried was like the worst thing in the world. So she would do pretty much anything. Okay, but let's for a second here.
This story started off in 1894. Felt like a long time ago. Now we're in 1939, 1940. Were people that dumb back then that she would think, okay, I'm going to give up my entire life, transfer my life savings to this woman because she said, I'm going to meet a guy in Pola, Croatia, and I'm just going to believe her and go with it?
A couple of responses to that. First of all, Leonardo was well-respected in the community. So if she said she had a suitor for you, you believed it. Oh, it wasn't like a mystery guy that didn't exist. She actually had someone in mind. She said she had somebody in mind. And because she was a woman of good standing and a woman who had proven herself in other ways, she had premonitions that were like bizarrely accurate.
She created potions and love serums and Viagra and this and that. So she had a reputation around town as being the real thing. I thought she just told this woman, there's maybe a guy, I get a feeling in my gut, there's a guy in Croatia for you and you should go look for him. No, on the contrary. I had a premonition about the specific individual who's waiting for you. Gotcha. Okay. All right. I take back what I said about her being stupid. So Faustina wrote the letter.
And Leonardo brought her a decanter filled with wine and told her to drink it to settle her nerves. The wine tasted oddly like herbs, and Faustina's breathing had suddenly labored. She cried out to Leonardo, but the fortune teller was in the kitchen cooking soap on the stovetop. Faustina's head lulled back as she lost control of all her muscles. I don't like the word lulled. Yeah. Okay.
She laughed out loud at it? She did not lol in that sense. That was good, though. Then, Leonarda returned to the room with a now paralyzed Faustina sitting there, unable to move, and she was holding an axe. Oh, for what? Leonarda whispered sorry before taking her first swing at Faustina. Was she still alive? Yes. Why didn't she just wait till she died? No, she just needed to immobilize her. Oh, fuck.
Fuck that. The axe lodged into Faustina's shoulder and Leonardo could taste the iron from the spraying blood that created a mist in the air.
Faustina was unable to speak but pleaded for her life with her eyes. Oh, fuck this. As Leonardo again lifted the axe before bringing it down right in the center of this poor woman's head. All right, so at least she died. Pieces of Faustina's scalp and face flung off, but amazingly, unfortunately, she was still alive. No, no, this...
This, how the, how, how? It was not until Faustina had been quartered that she ultimately, mercifully died. What does quartered mean? She was chopped in four. Her limbs were chopped off her body. Oh my God. Well, she's awake the entire time. I'm sure she died somewhere between that blow to the head and the dismemberment. Yeah. But she was alive after the blow to the head.
Leonardo then drained the blood from each chunk of Faustina's butchered body into dishes that she then slid onto roasting trays and stuck on top of the oven to dry out before transforming the dried blood into a workable ingredient for the rest of her spell. She also collected pieces of flesh so she could render the fat into soap.
Every part of Faustina from her hair to her bones had been dissolved in pots using a corrosive agent called caustic soda, which is really just sodium hydroxide. Then, this freshly minted homicidal maniac, Leonardo, prepared the rest of the ingredients needed to make which of the following things? Pop quiz. Soap. A, pancake mix. Oof.
B, magical powder to sprinkle around like fairy dust to ward off the curse. C, flesh fillets to offer the gods of sacrifice. Or D, tea cakes. Wait, pancake mix, fairy dust, flesh cakes, and tea cakes? Just like a dessert. I mean, wild shot in the dark here. Fairy dust. No. Obviously. Flesh fillets. Nope.
Pancake mix. No. Well, I don't know what else it could be besides a fucking tea cake. Leonardo mixed Faustina with flour, sugar, eggs, and vanilla to make tea cakes. Cool. For who? Who do you think?
The gods? Her intention was to feed Giuseppe the Faustina tea cakes, thereby protecting him from the inside. Oh my God. While having him wash with the Faustina soap, thereby protecting him from the outside. Wow. This... So she made food out of her.
and then made soap out of her to protect her son, who's probably almost definitely going to die anyway. We'll find out, but that's her intention. Not for him to die, to feed it to him and wash him with it and have him be protected.
Wow. After she finished baking the tea cakes and mixing the soap. Telling people really know how to cook. They do. I bet it was really good. Yeah, probably. Leonardo scrubbed every inch of her home while soaking her bloodstained clothes in vinegar. Leonardo was calm and happy to know that she'd done what she had set out to do, which was to take one life in exchange for preserving another. Except there was one problem. When she lifted the cover off the pot to check on the soap, the
The consistency was all wrong. It looked like sludge instead of soap, and it was unusable, which meant that the whole ordeal had been for nothing. And she cried. She cried not for the life that she had senselessly and ruthlessly taken, but rather for the life of her son, which was now in jeopardy again because of her failure to make good soap. Every drop of sludge that flowed down the drain carried with it twice the sorrow.
Pop quiz. Now that the outside component of her plan literally went down the drain, what did she do with the tea cakes that were intended to have been the inside element of the plan? A, she fed them to the birds so they could fly up to heaven to make an initial offering. B, she fed them to her family. C, she fed them to the needy. Fed them to the needy. No. No.
Fed them to the birds? Nope. Fed them to her family? Yep. She wanted to test whether or not they would detect anything funky about the recipe. Smart. Spoiler, they didn't. And they ate all the tea cakes. But she now knew that she could do this again and it would go undetected. Okay. The year is now 1940 and Giuseppe's gearing up to leave with the military recruiter in just three months. So time was running out for Leonardo.
Enter another magical client and her new chosen victim, who was a retired school teacher named Francesca Soavi. Leonardo served Francesca wine until Francesca felt loopy and unable to move. Sound familiar? Then...
She's like Patrick Bateman. She's like deja vu. Oh.
Then, Leonardo dismembered Francesca's head, torso, and limbs while pleasantly noticing a layer of yellow fat beneath the severed flesh that she hadn't noticed when she chopped up Faustina. So perhaps that was the missing ingredient that she needed for the soap. So she was thrilled. Good soap. She was thrilled. Good ingredients. What if it makes the tea cakes taste bad? Good question. Can't have it all. No. Leonardo. Pick your poison.
Like last time, Leonardo used Francesca's body to make soap and her blood to bake tea cakes. When Giuseppe came home, he ate the tea cakes and then helped his mother to clean up all the dirty pots that were absolutely covered in what he thought was just soap making ingredients. Totally unaware that he was helping to clean up a gruesome crime scene. Yeah.
But somehow, in spite of the fact that the soap and the tea cakes had been prepared to plan and served to Giuseppe all hot and nasty, he was still planning to leave for war.
This was preposterous. How could it be, right? Leonardo must have done something wrong in her spell for this curse to still be having influence. What did she think? He was going to not leave for war? Oh, I thought the tea cakes and the soap were to like protect him in war. I think at this point she thinks if he leaves, he's a goner. It's not making a lot of sense anyway. No, but look what we're asking a lot of her. Yeah. Right. Given her mental unfitness. Yeah.
But what did this mean? It meant she had to take another crack at the spell and she had to sacrifice another life. Enter her final victim on the morning of September 30th, 1940. Virginia Cacioppo was a former soprano who sang at the famous opera houses in Milan and was a bit of a local celebrity at the time.
And to Leonardo, this made her all the more perfect to sacrifice because she was higher value than her previous two victims. One of them was a spinster. The other was a washed up school teacher. But now she had this celebrity, this opera singer to offer. And for the listeners who were wondering how I knew the last name Cacioppo before she said it, that was our fourth take. She couldn't say the last name. So clear up any confusion for you. My mouth could not do it.
When Virginia showed up at Leonardo's house, she was covered in jewels and fern, was the absolute look of sophistication in class. Leonardo was thrilled because this was exactly the leveling up she felt she needed to bring to her spell.
Even better was the fact that Virginia had indicated that she planned to leave Correggio to return to the opera house in Milan. So after instructing Virginia to write a goodbye letter to her family, Leonarda served up some spiked wine before dropping an ax directly into Virginia's chest and
splitting the woman's ribcage and creating the aroma of expensive perfume mixed with fresh blood. Oh my God, gross. She dismembered the body and boiled parts of Virginia into soap while baking other parts into tea cakes. Giuseppe arrives home and Leonardo draws him a bath and she insists that he get into the bath with her present.
Giuseppe stripped down and awkwardly got into the bath with his mother watching, and then she proceeded to wash his adult body with Virginia soap while tenderly feeding him bites of Virginia tea cakes. I've seen this video before. Inside and out, her boy was now protected. But then something happened that Leonardo had not foreseen. Pop quiz.
A, Giuseppe indicated that he met a girl, and rather than joining the military, he planned to move away to America. B, Giuseppe got food poisoning from the tea cakes and wound up falling into a dehydration-induced coma. C, Giuseppe found himself unable to ever look at Leonardo again following that very bizarre bath scene.
Wow, these are some good choices here. So he meets a girl, not going into the military, falls into a coma because he gagged on the tea cakes. He couldn't look at her anymore because... Of the bizarre intimate bath scene. Let's say that he couldn't look at her anymore. Very good, Tank. Yeah. Very good.
Her final act of protection ended up pushing him away. Oh, yeah. He could not face her, even from a distance. And he completely pulled back from having any connection to her. Yeah, don't be an overbearing parent. I mean, that is some next... I won't even change in a dressing room at Bloomingdale's with my mother. You wind up washing your kid's junk. He's gonna create some distance. Gross. I remember having like an argument with my mother when I was trying on wedding gowns.
because I was like, just turn around. Just turn around. I'm just going to be like getting... She's like, you are literally trying on wedding dresses. Are we not past this? Nope. Nope. Avert your eyes. By this point, the families of the victims are all publicly searching for their missing loved ones. And now there are three missing women, all from Correggio.
Suspect. And it had been discovered that Leonardo's home was the last place that at least one of her victims, Virginia, had been seen going. A simple investigation revealed a link between the other disappearances and Leonardo Cianciulli. So they brought Leonardo in for police questioning. Sure. And when they raided her soap shop, sure enough, stashed away in a closet were all of the belongings of the missing women.
Wow. But what they hadn't discovered were the actual bodies. Rather than looking at Leonarda, however, as a suspect, they pointed their finger at Giuseppe. Oh. Remember how each victim was instructed by Leonarda to write a goodbye letter to their respective families? Well, Leonarda had Giuseppe mail those letters. So during the police investigation, there was a trail leading back to him.
All of the years and efforts and spells and homicides that were committed for the sole purpose of protecting her son had gone up in flames because he was about to go down for this. But this is exactly when Leonardo confessed to all of the murders and graphically detailed what she had done to each of her victims.
She explained the laced wine, the butchering, the dissolving of the extra body parts and bone and caustic soda, the tea cakes, the soap, everything. Giuseppe, who had been in the room during this full confession, immediately began to vomit. Yeah. Still, Leonardo felt no shame. She felt no guilt. She felt no remorse. She did what she had to do to protect her child as any parent would. Well...
As she would. As she would. Different ways. This was her thought process. I'm kind of speaking out her thought process. Yeah. All of her remaining children, horrified and humiliated, deserted Leonardo after her shocking confession. Her soap business obviously went under. Raphael became an alcoholic and literally drank himself into a grave on an unknown date. Raphael was her husband.
Her three other children moved away, changed their names, cut all contact with her, and her precious Giuseppe was deployed to Northern Africa and left Italy with his unit without even saying goodbye to his mother. So in the end, Leonardo lost Giuseppe, and the curse had won.
So we're wrapping up now. After six years of an ongoing trial and various stints in different facilities, Leonardo Cianciulli-Panzardi, known as the soap maker of Correggio, was convicted in just three days. Wait, six years of trial? Six years. Yeah, it was the times. It was, you know, wartime. Italy, they got a nap every day. That's not what I'm saying. That's what you're saying.
She was sentenced to 30 years in Pazuli Prison, followed by a three-year stint in a mental asylum. Leonarda never expressed any remorse for committing the murders and kept a cold, clear demeanor when describing the killings during her trial in 1946. At one point during the trial, in a statement that sounded like she was trying to redeem herself, she said,
She pointed out that, quote, I gave the copper ladle, which I used to skim the fat off the kettles, to my country, which was so badly in need of metal during the last days of the war. Yeah. All is forgiven, Leonardo. What a patriot. Thanks for the ladle.
And just one year before her prison release, after suffering years and years of ongoing strokes and seizures, Leonardo died on October 15th, 1970 at the ripe age of 76. Wow. Italian authorities cremated her and sent her remains to the Criminology Museum in Rome. So she's on display? Yeah. And so are some of her pots that she used and the axe. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah.
So to wrap up here, who was Leonardo Cianciulli, the soap maker of Correggio? It's a sad reality that Leonardo, or at least her actions, were defined in many ways by the psychological trauma that she endured as a child. The heartbreak and anguish she suffered through the loss of so many children, followed by or perhaps leading to the mental health issues she struggled with as an adult. And of course, we can't forget about the superstition and magical thinking she resorted to for guidance and direction.
It's believed that Leonardo had anti-personality disorder with primary psychopathy. What she did with the bodies and how she behaved at her trial confirmed her complete lack of remorse, poor behavioral controls, and of course, criminal behavior. Leonardo also exhibited delusional behavior and severe narcissism, which we touched upon. She genuinely believed that everything that happened in the world was supernaturally governed by her.
She was the one who could protect or destroy those around her. She was the target of supernatural powers, and those around her were either harmed or benefited, depending on the result. She quite literally thought she shook the earth back in 1930 with the earthquake. Ecomaniac. She quite literally thought she was responsible for the tragic deaths of so many of her children, both born and in utero.
Leonardo also exhibited OCD, obsessive compulsive behaviors, which took shape in crippling defense mechanisms where she had to perform elaborate rituals in the forms of spells and curses to counteract her intrusive thoughts. That makes sense. Yep. She also most likely had postpartum psychosis, clinical depression, and schizophrenia. Yeah. She was battling some demons. She was. Yeah.
Here's what's so fascinating about Leonardo Cianciulli. Though it may be unsurprising to hear that she suffered from a plethora of mental illnesses, as serial killers often do, she really did not present in the way that a typical serial killer does. So serial killers are typically very organized, right? And they're driven by a motivation that would appear random to the average person, but there's a method to their madness typically in terms of how and why they choose their victims.
For Leonarda, all that mattered was that she had a human life to exchange for preserving the human life of her son. One victim was a teacher, one was an unmarried woman, one was an opera singer. There was no pattern. There was no desire to actually kill those particular women other than to fulfill the law of exchange.
Leonardo presents as a very rare serial killer who did not kill for enjoyment and who was not targeting specific victims based on a certain set of traits that they possessed. So with respect to motive, she's a very rare breed of serial killer known as pop quiz, mission oriented, visionary, hedonistic, or power control.
Missionary. Mission-oriented? Mission-oriented. No and no. So a mission-oriented killer, serial killer, their goal is to like rid society of a particular group and follow an internal paradigm that calls for like one effective solution, murder. Okay. She wasn't that. So mission-oriented. Is not it. What were the other choices? Visionary, hedonistic, or power. Power control.
Is that your answer? Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Nope. Hedonistic?
No, my friend. You're not great with four. I'm going to stick with three choices moving forward. No, four is fine. Four is good. I don't even remember what the fourth choice was. Fuck it. The one that she is. Visionary. Visionary. So the visionary serial killer kills on behalf of what they believe to be a commanding otherworldly entity. In other words, you know, God instructed them. They're on a mission from God, or in this case, I'm being governed by this curse. I
I mean, mission-oriented is, I would call it that too, though. I see it. Yeah. I see it. But you knew that. That's why you put it in there. Yes, sir. Well, I just want to wrap up with one, like, fascinating thing. While serving her prison sentence, Leonarda found that people had taken quite an interest in her. We still are. We're 100 years later, and we're still fascinated.
As a result of her popularity and reputation both inside the prison and out, what did Leonarda do? We're going to wrap up on this pop quiz. Did she A. Write an autobiography, B. Create a book of spells and curses, or C. Provide palm readings to inmates, guards, and paying visitors? Provide palm readings. No. No.
I knew that. I was just saying that, wasn't it? Write an autobiography. Yes. Yes, that's how you got all this information. It's called The Confessions of an Embittered Soul. It's 700 pages long, and listen to this. Egomaniac, write 700-page autobiography. Her autobiography not only contains in salacious detail her experiences with her prison lover, but it also contains recipes, including her cannibalistic tea cake recipe.
Minus the human blood element. I was just going to say you need human blood. And there are images of her draining her victims in this cookbook. But listen, this is it. I was going to say this takes the cake, but that's too much of a pun. Takes the tea cake. Another fascinating fact, this book...
is one of the most complete collections of traditional Italian baking techniques ever written and is still referred to by some of the top chefs in Italy today. Mario Batali. Mm-hmm. Using the soul of an embittered woman. Yeah. Wow, that's crazy.
Yeah, I still hate it. I'm thinking about her draining these people and making soap for them like she's fucking Tyler Durden in Fight Club. Right. Don't like it. Nope. But then making food out of them, which is even worse. So to answer your question, to wrap things up, because you did say before we started you could talk about this case for three days. You whittled it down to the most important aspects. I don't think she was obviously justified in killing these people. Like if there's, you know, this is not an impending threat. Agreed. This is like some...
mentally ill person trying to justify keeping their children safe, which is understandable being that she lost so many kids and she thought she had a curse on her and she was a product of rape, a child of rape. You know what I mean? Like there was a lot of things that went wrong in her life. And, uh,
I feel sorry for her, but I'm glad she got put in prison. And I'm sorry more for the families of the people who, you know, the people she killed. And for her son. I mean, Italian mothers are overbearing to begin with. Can you imagine like this? Was she like the fucking prototype for this? Yeah, she made the playbook. Yeah. Oh, my mom, she just won't. She always makes me eat. Hey, at least she's not feeding you cakes made out of other people.
And then washing you butt ass naked. To keep you safe, you know? So if you're Italian and you think your mom's overbearing,
Think of Leonardo Chinchuli. Think of Leonardo Chinchuli. But I feel for her. I do. I think she's disgusting and I don't excuse what she did. And I don't think that it's justified on any level. And I'm a mother. But I think she obviously was so, so, so mentally unwell. And the thing that always gets me is she truly believed that she was doing this to protect her child. Of course. Why else would she do it? Inexcusable and she was placed in jail rightfully. Heartbreaking, nevertheless. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Well, thank you for listening. If you made it this far, we love you. I know you love us. Leave those ratings, those reviews, email us, psychopediapod at gmail.com. Let us know if you have any cannibalistic baking recipes you want to share with us. Don't do that. Just kidding. I was just going to say I'm here for it, but just kidding. And we will see you next episode. Yes, we will. Bye. Bye.