Hi there! I live and work in the same area Leonarda Cianciulli operated (some 30 minutes away from Correggio) and I know her story very well. It’s actually one of my favorite Italian true crime cases.

Some of the info in the article, though not incorrect, are more Leonarda’s attempt to defend and justify herself than anything else. Her memoir was also probably written largely by her lawyers, because she was almost illiterate and would have never been able to write a complex, well-thought 700-pages book.

A few examples.

She was the third of her parents' children, so her mother was not forced to marry her husband specifically because of falling pregnant with her. That’s likely a fabrication by Leonarda herself.

She surely wasn’t very much loved by her parents, though, and she also probably tried to commit suicide. She surely tried to kill herself twice later in life, when she was already in prison.

Although she was actually very superstitious (she used to read tarots and was regarded as something of a medium herself in Correggio), her crimes were not dictated by a desire to protect her surviving children (by means of "human sacrifice") but by mere greed.

She lured middle-aged, lonely, gullible women with promises of new, exciting job in big cities or future marriages with wealthy men and then proceeded to rob them of their possessions, carefully dispose of their bodies, and send fake letters from all around Italy to her victims’ relatives to reassure them that the women were alive and well, living their best lives in Milan or Florence.

She then sold the women’s jewelry in different cities where the items could not be recognized: her son Giuseppe was most likely an accomplice in this and in sending the letters, even though she always vehemently denied it.

Those are not the actions of an ignorant, credulous person, but of a clever, organized woman thinking coldly and clearly, planning with deep forethought and rarely making mistakes.

That's not to deny that she had a rough childhood, a probably violent husband, and a generally disturbed vision of the world: but that does not detract from the fact that she was also a cunning, cold-blooded murderer who never had a hint of repentance for her actions.

Her story is so fascinating to me exactly because of the duality of Leonarda: on one hand she was a poor, illiterate woman, mistreated by her abusive husband, who has seen most of her children die. On the other hand she conned, robbed and killed three women (and would likely have killed many more had she not been caught) without remorse, and made soap, candles and cake with their blood and flesh.