In 1921, the couple moved to Pansardi's native town of Lauria, Potenza, where Cianciulli was sentenced and imprisoned for fraud in 1927.

After their home was destroyed in the 1930 Irpinia earthquake, they moved once more to Correggio, Reggio Emilia, where Cianciulli opened a small shop.

Reportedly, Cianciulli also visited a Romani who practised palm reading, and who told her, "In your right hand I see prison, in your left a criminal asylum".

[2] In 1939, Cianciulli learned that her eldest son and favourite child, Giuseppe, was going to join the Royal Italian Army in preparation for the Second World War.

Cianciulli killed her with an axe and dragged the body into a closet, where she cut it into nine parts, gathering the blood into a basin.

As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it had coagulated, dried it in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk and eggs, as well as a bit of margarine, kneading all the ingredients together.

According to Cianciulli's statement: She ended up in the pot, like the other two ... her flesh was fat and white, when it had melted I added a bottle of cologne, and after a long time on the boil I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap.

She remained unrepentant, going so far as to correct the official account while on the stand: At her trial in Reggio Emilia last week Poetess Leonarda gripped the witness-stand rail with oddly delicate hands and calmly set the prosecutor right on certain details.

Her deep-set dark eyes gleamed with a wild inner pride as she concluded: "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 ..."[3]Cianciulli was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years in prison and three years in a criminal asylum.

A number of artefacts from the case, including the pot in which the victims were boiled, are on display at the Criminological Museum in Rome.

[2] A darkly comic play about Cianciulli, Love and Magic in Mama's Kitchen, was first produced by Lina Wertmüller at the Spoleto Festival in 1979.