May 22, 2026

She Killed 3 Women To Save Her Son | Folk Horror Friday

She Killed 3 Women To Save Her Son | Folk Horror Friday
The Broadcasting Seeds Podcast
She Killed 3 Women To Save Her Son | Folk Horror Friday
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In this first episode of Folk Horror Friday, Bennett tells the disturbing true story of Leonarda Cianciulli, known as The Soap-Maker of Correggio. In 1939, three women vanished from a small Italian town after trusting Leonarda with their hopes for marriage, work, and a new life. But behind the friendly shopkeeper and village wise woman was a mother consumed by grief, prophecy, superstition, and terror over losing her son to World War II. This episode explores the case through true crime, folk horror, and spiritual discernment, asking what happens when fear becomes faith and a kitchen becomes an altar.

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WEBVTT

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All right, everybody, welcome to folk Horror Friday. Now I

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have to give credit where credit is due, because this

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idea was born while I was on an episode of

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Occult Rejects with Neck the host, and my fellow reject

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for that episode, Judith the Lone Go check out their

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stuff please. The guests on this episode were the wonderful

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hosts of Weekly Bizarre podcast, Jessica and Montana. And as

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I listened and I was on this to what they do,

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something just clicked right. They tell creepy stories in a

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way that is but thoughtful, unsettling and honest. Frankly, it

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was just fun. And it reminded me that some of

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the strangest stories are not hiding in fiction. They are

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buried in old court records and village rumors, straight up

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forgotten newspaper clippings, right, family legends, and the dark corners

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of history where folklore and reality start to shake hands.

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And so that is what we are doing here on

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Fridays every Friday. We're gonna step into the stories that

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live somewhere between true crime, dark folklore, strange history, occult belief,

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spiritual warning, and I mean good old fashioned campfire dread, right,

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and of course I can't just keep it in the

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little box, so that's extensive. But these are not just

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creepy stories for the sake of being creepy. We're going

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to ask, as usual, deeper questions. What did people believe

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or what were they afraid of? What kind of darkness

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were they trying to bargain with? Possibly? And what happens

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when grief becomes superstition? All kinds of stuff. Right, when

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a person stops praying and starts making deals, when does

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that happen? Right? So this is folk horror Friday, real cases,

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real people and things, real darkness, and sometimes the kind

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of story that makes you check the locks, maybe when

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you go to bed, say a prayer and wonder what

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else has been hiding in plain sight?

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Hear pass the trees where the old roads bend.

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There's a story Berry.

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Where the daylighting, blood on the roads and smoking the sky.

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True, don't sleep on folk horror Friday, Full horor Friday,

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Keep your land high, real dark stories where the dead

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don't lie Full color Friday.

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Don't you turn away? Something still whisper from.

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A shallow green. Today we're gonna start with a woman

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whose story sounds like folklore I mean reads like a nightmare,

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and somehow it is documented history. A mother, a fortune teller,

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three missing women, a terrible bargain, and a kitchen that

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became something much darker than a kitchen. This is the

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story of Leonarda Tanchuli, better known as the soap Maker

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of Correggio. Here we go. There is a bar of

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soap sitting in a glass case in a museum in Salerno, Italy.

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It is yellowish, waxy, I mean unremarkable to look at

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the kind of thing you'd find in a grandmother's bathroom,

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And in a way, that's exactly what it is. It

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came from a grandmother's home. It was made in her kitchen.

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She gave bars just like it to her neighbors, who

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used them to wash their face and their hands and

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probably thought nothing of it. But the museum is called

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the Museum of Criminal Anthropology. And the soap, the real soap,

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behind the real glass, is what remains of a woman

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named Virginia Katchopo. Got Chobo right, Virginia Katchopo. Welcome to

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folk for a Friday. I'm your host, and this is

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broadcasting seeds. Guys. Tonight we're going to going back to

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a small town in northern Italy. The year is nineteen

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thirty nine, the war is beginning, the world is about

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to come apart, and a quiet neighborhood in a town

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called Correggio, a woman named Leonardo Leonarda, is making soap

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in her kitchen, and she has decided that God, Fate,

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and the spirits of the dead have given her permission

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to do it. This is the story about superstition, about motherhood,

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about it the way a village can trust someone completely,

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and how that trust can become the most dangerous thing

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in the world. To understand what Leonarda Chantulli became, you

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have to understand what the world told her she was

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from the very beginning. She was born on April fourteenth,

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eighteen ninety four, in Montella, a small town in the

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Aveno province of southern Italy. The kind of place where

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anyone knows, where everyone knows your name, your business, your

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family's reputation going back three generations, the kind of place

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where a secret is never really a secret. And Leonarda

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arrived as a secret that couldn't be kept. Her mother, Amelia,

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had been raped, and when the pregnancy became impossible to hide.

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There was only one acceptable path. She was forced to

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marry the man who had assaulted her. Because that makes sense.

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That man became Leonarda's father, and her mother, trapped in

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a house with a rapist and the living proof of

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what he had done, never quite forgave the child for existing.

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Leonarda would later write that her mother made it clear

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in a thousand small and large ways that she was

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unwanted and cursed, just born wrong. The family was steeped

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in Southern Italian folk belief, the kind that included the

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evil eye, the power of blood, curses, and the idea

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that certain people are simply marked by fate from the

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moment they draw breath. Her mother didn't just neglect Leonarda,

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I mean she taught her carefully and deliberately to believe

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she was straight up doomed. She attempted to take her

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own life twice before she reached adulthood. The first time

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she tried to hang herself, someone found her in time.

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The second time the rope broke. Later, in her memoir,

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which is a seven hundred page handwritten document she called

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Confessions of an Embittered Soul, she would write about what

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her mother said when she survived that she was sorry

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to see her alive again. She grew up anyway right.

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She married a man named Raphael Pensardi in nineteen seventeen,

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against her family's wishes, which cost her their inheritance. The

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couple was poor. They moved often, trying to build something stable,

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and then, just when it seemed to be finding their footing,

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two things happened that shattered Leonardo's already fragile sense of safety.

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The first was children, and Leonardo became pregnant seventeen times.

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She gave birth to seventeen children. Ten of them died,

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some in infancy, some as toddlers, some older. If you

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are a parent, sit with that number for a moment.

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Ten children gone. Some sources say illness, some say miscarriage,

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but the effect on Leonarda was the same regardless of

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the cause. She became absolutely convinced that the deaths were

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not random, not medical, not the ordinary brutality of early

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twentieth century survival. They were a prophecy being fulfilled because

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there had been a prophecy before the loss. True, the

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loss is truly mounted. Leonardo had visited a fortune teller.

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Now the woman read her fortune and told her, you

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will marry, you will have children, and all of your

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children will die young. Then she visited a Romani palm

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reader who looked at her hands and said, in your

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right hand, I see prison, in your left hand a

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criminal asylum. Leonardo wrote those words down. She kept them,

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She turned them over in her mind for years, and

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where another person might have dismissed them as superstition, Leonardo

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Chenttiulli filed them away as facts. Now the shape of

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her future as fixed and real as the lines on

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her palm right. The second thing that happened wasn't earthquake,

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and in nineteen thirty the Erpini Irpinia earthquake destroyed their home.

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They had nothing. They rebuilt. They moved again, this time

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to a small town in the Amelia Amelia Romania Romandia

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region of northern Italy, a town called Correggio. In Correggio,

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something unexpected happened and Leonardo thrived. She opened a small shop.

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She was warm, personable, a naturally magnetic presence who who

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knew how to listen and how to make people feel seen.

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Came to her with their problems, money troubles, family disputes

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and loneliness, and slowly organically she slipped into a role

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that has existed in every small community in human history

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in one form or another. She kind of became the

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village wise woman. She wasn't advertising herself as a fortune

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teller exactly, but she knew things, she had instincts. She

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offered guidance. Women in particular came to her lonely women,

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older women, women who needed someone to help them imagine

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a better future than the one that they were currently living.

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And Leonarda would listen, think, offer advice. Sometimes she'd read

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cards or palms. She had the gift, people said. She

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had seven surviving children, and she was loved in the community,

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and for the first time in her life, she seemed

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to be winning against the fate her mother had predicted

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for her. And then, in nineteen thirty nine, her eldest

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and most beloved son, Giuseppe, came home and told her

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he was going to enlist in the Italian Army. Now

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the war. He was going to the war, World War two.

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Everything Leonardo Chinculi had ever feared collapsed into a single moment.

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This was it, this was the prophecy. She had already

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lost ten children, She was not going to lose Giuseppe.

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She could not, she would not. She began to pray,

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She made offerings, she visited churches, and somewhere in that

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spiral in the old Southern Italian folk religion, she had

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grown up with the superstitions her mother had planted so

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deeply they had become part of her bones. She arrived

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at a conclusion she needed to make a sacrifice, not

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a symbolic one, not a prayer or a fast or

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a candlelight lit like add an altar right, a real one,

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blood for blood, a life for a life. She would

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later explain this was with total calm and total sincerity.

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She believed, without any doubt that human sacrifice was the

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only currency Fate would accept in exchange for her son's safety.

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And she, who had already paid so much, who had

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surrendered ten children to the dark, was willing to pay more.

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The only question was who Leonarda's shop gave her what

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she needed. Period. Women came to her, women with needs,

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women with dreams, women who had nothing tethering them to

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Correggio and everything to hope for somewhere else. And Leonarda,

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the village oracle, the neighbor, Everyone trusted. The woman with

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the warm eyes and the steady voice knew just what

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to say. She started with Faustina Setti. Faustina was in

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her fifties. She had never married, and she desperately wanted to.

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She had been coming to Leonarda for guidance, and Leonardo

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had been patient and kind and fall encouragement. And then

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one day Leonardo told her she had wonderful news. She

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had found her a man, a suitable husband, waiting for

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her in the town of Pola. All Fustina had to

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do was write letters to her friends and her family,

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saying she was moving so no one would worry, and

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tell no one where she was really going, so not

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to jinx it. Faustina agreed to all of it. In

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Leonardo's kitchen, the same kitchen where she made her shop's goods,

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she killed Faustina Seti with an axe. She drained the blood,

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She cut the body into nine parts. She boiled the

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remains in a pot with seven kilograms of caustic soda,

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stirred until the flesh dissolved into what she described as

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a thick, dark mush, which she poured into buckets and

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emptied into a nearby septic tank. Then she took the

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blood she had collected and let it coagulate. She dried

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it in an oven, grounded into powder, and then mixed

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it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk, eggs, and margarine. She

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baked it into teacakes. She served them to her son,

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to her friends, to neighbors who came by the shop.

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She told no one. She felt no remorse. She had

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saved Giuseppe for now, but Giuseppe was still alive, still

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going to war, still in danger. One sacrifice, Leonardo decided

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was not enough. Six months later, she found Francesca So.

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Francesca was looking for work, specifically a job teaching at

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a school, and Leonarda told her she had connections and

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she knew someone in Piacenza who was looking for exactly

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the right person. Same instructions as before, Write your letters,

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tell no one where you're going, keep this between us,

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so not to tempt fate. Francesca did everything she was told.

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In Leonarda's kitchen, she met the same end as Faustina,

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the same acts, the same pot, the same caustic soda,

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the same slow, methodical process of your rature erasure, more

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soap for Leonarda's collection, more tea cakes, more silence. By now,

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Leonarda had a rhythm. She was not a woman who

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seemed to be unraveling. She was not frantic or unstable

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by every external measure. She was still the warm, capable,

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beloved neighbor of Correggio, and the woman who came to you,

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came to when you needed help, when you needed someone

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to see your future more clearly than you could see

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it yourself. That was, of course, the thing that made

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her so dangerous. The third victim was Virginia Catchpo. Virginia Catchopo.

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Virginia was a widow, a former opera singer. Former opera singer.

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Some accounts say she had performed at Lascala Lascala, the

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famous opera house in Italy. She had seen better days,

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and she knew it. She was lonely, underemployed, and hoping

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for something, for anything, to change, and Leonarda told her

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she had found her the perfect position, secretary to a

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mysterious impresario in Florence, a good salary, a fresh start,

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a new life, exactly what Virginia had been dreaming of,

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the same instructions, write your letters, tell no one come alone,

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Virginia Catchopa walked into Leonardo's Chanchuli's kitchen and did not

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walk out. But Virginia was different from the other two

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in one significant way. She was fat, and leonarda ever methodical,

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ever practical. Ever, the woman who wasted nothing noticed this.

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In her confession, she described what happened to Virginia in

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language so matter of fact it is almost more disturbing

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than any display of emotion could have been. She ended

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up in the pot like the other two, Leonardo wrote,

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her flesh was fat and white, and when it had melted,

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I added a bottle of cologne, and after a long

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time on the boil, I was able to make some

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most acceptable creamy soap. She gave the soap to her neighbors.

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She distributed it freely, with pleasure, because that was the

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kind of woman Leonardo. Leonardo Chantruli was generous to a fault.

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It was Virginia's sister in law who ended it. Unlike

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the others, Virginia had family who who paid close attention.

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When she disappeared and the letter stopped making sense, her

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sister in law didn't accept the story. She went to

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the police. She told them Virginia had been visiting Leonarda,

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and before she had vanished, witnesses confirmed it. The police

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went to Leonarda's door. What they expected we can only imagine,

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perhaps a confused woman, perhaps tears, denials, the panicked unraveling

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of a crime long hidden. Right what they got was

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Leonarda Janchuli. She confessed immediately, but not to protect herself.

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She confessed because the police had initially suspected her son, Giuseppe,

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and she could not allow that she was protecting him.

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Even now, right up to the end, everything she did

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was for him. She sat down, she told them everything.

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The police famously were not entirely prepared for the level

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of details she provided. The trial was held in nineteen

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forty six and it lasted three days. People came from

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across the country to see her. She was not what

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they expected at all. She was a small woman with

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deep set, dark eyes, and witnesses noted this specifically oddly

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delicate hands. She gripped the railing of the witness stand

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and listened as the prosecutor described her crimes, and then

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calmly she corrected him on the details he had gone

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gotten wrong. Not because she was defending herself. She wasn't really,

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she accepted what she had done completely, without apology. She

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corrected the record because she was precise, because she wanted

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the account to be accurate. I gave the copper pot,

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the ladle, and the rest of the items to the fire,

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she said, at one point, clarifying a procedural detail of

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the disposal process. With the steady patients of someone explaining

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a recipe, she expressed no remorse. She had saved her son.

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The sacrifice had worked. Gisseppi had come home from the

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war alive. In Leonarda's accounting, she had not committed murder.

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She had made a transaction with fate, and fate had

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held up its end. She was found guilty on all counts.

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The sentence thirty years in prison, followed by three years

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in a criminal asylum. And here's the part that made

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the this case famous not just among two crime researchers,

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but among folklorests and people who study the strange intersections

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of belief and violence. The Romani palm reader, years before

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any of this happened, had looked at Leonardo Chichuli's hands

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and said, in your right hand, I see prison, in

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your left a criminal asylum. The prophecies she had feared

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her entire life, the one that lived alongside the curse

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of her children's deaths, the one that she had tried

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to outwit and outrun by offering the lives of three

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women to a fate that apparently takes what it wants regardless.

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Was the only prophecy that came true, exactly as foretold.

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Leonarda died in the Pazuli Criminal Asylum on October fifteenth,

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nineteen seventy. There's something about this case that keeps pulling

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at me, and I want to name it before we

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close tonight. Leonardo chu Leonardo Chinjulie was not a random predator.

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She didn't hunt strangers, she didn't strike in the dark.

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She killed three women who came to her specifically because

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they trusted her to see their futures, women who were

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lonely and vulnerable and hopeful, who wanted someone to tell

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them that something better was waiting for them just around

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the corner. She told them exactly that, and then she

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made sure they never found out it wasn't true. There's

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an old role in every village and every culture for

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the person who sits at the crossroads between theknown, the

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known and the unknown. The healer, the oracle, the wise woman,

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the reader of signs. That role carries enormous power, and

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because people who are suffering needs someone to tell them

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that suffering has a shape, that is, that it has

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an end, that somewhere out there, a husband is waiting,

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a job is waiting, a new life is waiting. And

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Leonarda Chantulli understood that need. She had been shaped by

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it herself, by the fortune tellers who told her she

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was cursed by the folk beliefs that made the world

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feel like a place where fate could be read, and

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maybe with the right sacrifice bargained with, she received a

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false prophecy, and she became a false prophet. And the

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most horrifying thing about the whole story, more horrifying than

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the soap, more horrifying than the tea cakes, is that

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she believed completely and without doubt, that she was doing

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something sacred. The bars of soap are in a museum

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in Sealerno. The neighbors who received them have been dead

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for decades. Virginia Cacopo, who once sang opera and dreamed

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of Florence, is behind glass. And Giuseppe Pansardi came home

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from the war alive. This has been Folk Horror Friday,

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brought to you by Broadcasting Seeds. If this story stays

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with you, share it with someone and come back next week.

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There are more doors than open. Sweet wall.

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Encourage you. And the church bells cried, and the walk

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came walking through. There was a mother by the candlelight

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with a fear she thought was true. Her mama cursed

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her wedding day.

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The fortune woman read her hand.

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One line, let the prison ws, one line to the

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madman's landy eye. The old bellsmove. I I don't walk

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alonge when the lantern burns in the shadow star.

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Do not make a bargain with.

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A broken hord. She very names beneath the rain, and

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small graves behind the eyes, and every child the earth

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a claimed made her trust the devil's lies. That her

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son was called too old, and the whole turned to flame.

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She wasper prayers to trembling lips, but fear answer back by.

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Name molyon the whatever you done, you trade it will

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to save your son.

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You read the signs, but lost the way and turned

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the kitchen to cleander than call.

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Three women gone behind you.

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All you thought the darness played its part, But it

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only came to claim your arms. Faustina came with the

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wedding dreams Fromcesca, came for Cambridge Virginia, sang of Florence lights,

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but found the silence. Their instead letters written doors, full tide,

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a promise sealed with wine.

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One by one they crossed the room and disappear from

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time my the.

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Old bell's moon.

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I don't walk along when the lantern burns in the

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saddle star. Do not make a bargain with a broken harly.

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What have you done? You traded blood to save your sun.

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Your read the signs, that lost away.

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And turned the kitchen into claylyonard them call three women

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behind you all.

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You thought the darst.

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Played far, but it only.

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Came to claim your heart. Soap on the show, ash

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in the pan, lines in the palm, blood on the hands,

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saints on the walls, smoke in the room. Mother's love

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became too moly.

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Why have you done?

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You trade and blood to save your sun.

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You read the signs, but lost away and turned.

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The kitchen into clear.

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Holy and I I them call three women gone behind

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your wall. You thought the bargain made you free, but

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the curse became your legacy.

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Hiye de Old Bell's.

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Moon, Hiye, Don't walk Alone.

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And if fear becomes

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The voice you trust, love can turn to blood and dust.