Photo Credit: Getty Images
A 22-year-old Italian student, Filippo Turetta, has been sentenced to life in jail after he admitted to stabbing to death his ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin last year. The murder case gripped Italy and sparked a heated debate on the issue of violence against women.
Speaking to reporters after the sentence was read out in a Venice court, Giulia's father Gino Cecchettin said:
"Nobody is giving me Giulia back so I am neither more relieved nor more sad than I was yesterday or than I will be tomorrow."
He added that the battle against gender violence was one "we'll have to fight together as a society... we look ahead and hope another dad won't find himself at my place".
Over the last year a huge amount of detail about the killing has emerged, forming a picture of an increasingly anguished young woman harassed by her possessive ex-boyfriend who refused to accept the end of their relationship. The case, which captivated Italians, has thrust the concepts of femicide, patriarchy and male violence into the headlines.
On 11 November 2023 Mr Turetta picked up his fellow university student and ex-girlfriend Ms Cecchettin, a 22-year-old biomedical engineering student from the Venice province, to take her shopping for an outfit for her upcoming graduation.
Later that evening, he stabbed her more than 70 times, and left the student's body at the bottom of a ditch, wrapped in plastic bags. Then, he disappeared. For a week, Italians followed the search for the couple with baited breath. The discovery of Ms Cecchettin’s body on 18 November was met with an unprecedented outpouring of grief.
The next day, Mr Turetta was arrested in Germany. He readily admitted to killing Ms Cecchettin and was extradited to Italy.
her to text him all the time.
In an 80-page statement written from jail in childlike handwriting, Mr Turetta said since Ms Cecchettin broke up with him he spent every day hoping to get back with her. “I was selfish and it's only now I realise it,” he wrote.
Mr Turetta’s lawyer Giovanni Caruso has argued that his client should be spared an “inhuman and degrading” life sentence and pushed back against allegations that the killing had been premeditated.
