The World's Most Bizarre Murders by Marrison James

Author:Marrison, James [Marrison, James]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: True Crime, Murder, General
ISBN: 1844549755
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2008-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

THE VIRGIN AND THE MADWOMAN: LEONARDA CIANCIULLI

A gypsy fortune teller once told witch Leonarda Cianciulli that all of her three sons would die young and that she herself would end up dead and deranged in a madhouse. World War II was fast approaching and as the conflict drew closer Cianciulli became increasingly convinced that the fortune teller was right and that her sons would all meet violent deaths on the battlefield.

At a young age, she had married an impoverished government clerk called Raffaele Pansardi. From the outset, their marriage had been marred by misfortune and tragedy. Cianciulli had given birth to 14 children, but only four of them had survived: three boys and one girl. In 1930, their home and all of their meagre possessions had been destroyed in a single afternoon by an earthquake. The couple had been forced to move and had been living in the impoverished village of Correggio in the Po valley ever since. There, in order to help supplement her husband’s small pay, Cianciulli made soap and candles and read tarot cards to the locals. She soon earned a reputation as a matchmaker and an expert in the affairs of the heart.

When, in the summer of 1940, Cianciulli got the news that her favourite son, Giuseppe, had been drafted into the army, she became convinced that the gypsy’s prophecy was about to come true. One night, shortly before Giuseppe was scheduled to present himself at the nearby army barracks for training, Cianciulli had a vivid dream in which the Virgin Mary came to her and told her that she would spare the lives of her sons but required three human sacrifices in return. The next day, without any hesitation at all, Cianciulli went to work.

She told three of the older women in the village that she had found a suitable husband for each one of them. Even better still, each husband lived far away from the confines of Correggio and all were in a position to offer the women happy, comfortable lives. The women would, of course, have to pay for the service rendered by the matchmaker and it would be better also, so as not to cause any fuss, to keep it all a secret until they had left the village and had established themselves in their new lives. So that their relatives would not worry about them in the meantime, Cianciulli persuaded all three women to write letters to their families, telling them that they had found happiness elsewhere. She promised that she would pass the letters on later.

When everything had been arranged and the women came to her house to pay her, Cianciulli drugged them and murdered them with an axe before turning their bodies into soap and cakes. Both products were big hits with the neighbours.

Fifty-year-old Faustina Setti was the first to end up in one of Correggio’s pots, having just handed her 30,000 lire for the privilege. Correggio drugged her wine and then cut her up into nine pieces with an axe.

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