Leonarda Cianciulli was a shopkeeper and a part-time fortuneteller in Corregio, Italy. She had lived a tragic life, including giving birth to seventeen children, thirteen of whom died in infancy or childhood. Cianciulli cooked, she made soap, she dabbled in matchmaking, and she was fiercely superstitious. And eventually she became a serial killer.
For Leonarda, everything changed in 1939 when Benito Mussolini began drafting young men to prepare for Italy's entry into World War II. Il Duce's popularity had slipped during the 1930s and the prospect of Italy entering the war on the side of Nazi Germany alarmed most Italians. Leonarda became mentally unbalanced at the thought of her favourite son, Giuseppe, being drafted and possibly dying in combat. The prospect of losing Giuseppe apparently led to her decision to carry out human sacrifices to preserve her son from death. As she would later state during her testimony, killing others would keep her own children safe by providing God with other deaths in place of her own children. Since she had four remaining children, she would need to sacrifice four others to keep them safe.
The killings were pretty gruesome. Cianciulli made cakes out of the blood of her first victim, and turned at least one into soap. Read the story of the "Soap Maker of Corregio" at Providentia. -via Nag on the Lake
