Early Life
Cianciulli was born in Montella. While still a young girl, Leonarda attempted suicide twice. In 1914 she married a registry office clerk, Raffaele Pansardi: her parents didn't approve that marriage, as they planned her to marry another man. Leonarda claimed that on this occasion her mother cursed them. The couple moved to Lariano in Alta Irpinia. Their home was destroyed by an earthquake in 1930, and they moved once more, this time to Correggio, where Leonarda opened a small shop and became very popular as a nice, gentle woman, a doting mother and a nice neighbour.
Cianciulli had seventeen pregnancies during her marriage, but lost three of the children to miscarriage; ten more died in their youth. Consequently she was heavily protective of the four surviving children. Her fears were fueled by a warning she had received some time earlier from a fortune teller, who said that she would marry and have children, but that all of the children would die. Reportedly, Cianciulli also visited another Gypsy who practiced palm reading, and who told her, “In your right hand I see prison, in your left a criminal asylum.” Cianciulli was a superstitious woman, and seems to have taken these warnings very much to heart.
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