1939, in the quiet Italian town of Correggio, your affectionate neighbor hands you some delightful crunchy homemade cakes and a well-put-together set of soap cubes as a sign of their appreciation. Only for you to find out that the « special  » ingredient for these gifts was humans and your friendly neighbor was actually a murderer with a twisted mind. This is the story of Leonarda Cianciulli, the human soap maker of Correggio.

Born in 1893, Leonarda had a very disturbing upbringing in a household built upon pure resentment and toxicity. Her mother, a hateful and abusive woman, was constantly lashing at her filling her innocent mind with absurdities such as being a cursed child and no good will come from her. As she was growing up, these hurtful words kept pilling up pushing her to attempt suicide twice, convinced she truly was a curse who brought tragedy and misfortune to her mother.

Her sorrowful childhood left her scarred and resentful towards herself.

Despite the refusal of her mother, Leonarda married Raffaele Pansardi in 1914 but demise kept following her as she witnessed the death of 10 of her children at a young age, had 3 miscarriages, and left with only 4 children she deeply loved and protected, but that doting and her belief of being a malediction pushed her to commit grisly murders that shook the entire world in the name of love for her children.

In 1939, when her favorite son was chosen to join the army and fight in WW2, Leonarda’s twisted mind was determined to protect her son most absurdly. Just like how the Aztecs were offering sacrifices to appease the Gods, Leonarda killed 3 women “with the good intentions “ of protecting her child from the claws of war.

First, she lured her victims into her shop, promising them job opportunities abroad with stable salaries, offered them drugged drinks to make them pass out, and proceeded to kill them with an ax. She didn’t stop there as she boiled the remains of her victims in caustic soda, making soap with the fat and “sweet cakes” with the blood she gathered. She even thoughtfully shared her creations with her children and neighbors, occasionally offering them sweet pastries and homemade soap. A thorough description of the process and different ingredients she used to make her “human cakes” in her diaries as she carefully wrote the steps to get the perfect results and her observations.

Leonarda finally caught the eye of the police when a relative of her third victim reported that the loving mother running the shop in the neighborhood was the last person to see the unfortunate woman before her disappearance. Leonarda would deny the fraud and kidnapping accusations but then admitted everything including the killings and cakes when her son was facing the accusations instead of her. 

She was sentenced to spend the rest of her life behind bars but was sent for the last years to an asylum where she died in 1970 from cerebral apoplexy leaving behind a chilling legacy of brutality and barbarity.