The soft silvery-white metal known as sodium is soft enough that a kitchen knife can easily cut through it. Sodium is highly reactive and never found as a stand-alone chemical element in nature.
It even reacts with air, meaning it cannot practically exist in its pure form. That said, the feature is available in abundance in everyday items such as sodium chloride, more commonly referred to as table salt.
Another typical form, mainly used in the manufacturing process of soap and paper, is sodium hydroxide, also known as caustic soda.
The industry mainly uses sodium hydroxide as a potent corrosive agent to break down organic matter, including wood.
Unfortunately, sodium’s corrosive property and, of course, affordability attracts not only the manufacturing industries but also murderers, or at least one named Leonarda Cianciulli.
Between 1939 and 1940, she murdered three women and dissolved their remains in caustic soda. The human body is organic matter, after all.
Some sources even said that Leonarda used at least one of the victim’s bodies to make bars of soap and gave them away to her acquaintances and neighbors.
10 /10 Sweet Soap
Leonarda Cianciulli exploited sodium’s highly corrosive properties to get rid of any traces of evidence that possibly linked her to murders.
In her testimony – or more precisely unpublished memoir, she wrote referring to her third victim that she ended in a pot (presumably a pot of boiling sodium) just like the other two.
As the victim’s fat and white flesh melted, Leonarda poured a dose of cologne into the pot. After a short while of boiling, she was able to produce creamy soap of acceptable quality.
9 /10 Suicidal Girl
She was born in 1893 in Montella, Avellino. Details are scarce about Leonardo’s childhood, and there are some conflicting sources of her birth.
One said she was a child of rape; her father (the alleged rapist) was forced to marry the victim when her mother was pregnant.
Unhappy childhood and marriage turned her into a suicidal girl who attempted to kill herself twice.
Another source said she was the third child, and there was never a forced marriage. Leonarda was only suicidal later when imprisoned.