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Man Sentenced To Life In Prison For Killing Ex-Girlfriend

Published

13 hours ago

Dec 4, 2024.

Dennis

A court in Italy has sentenced 23-year-old Filippo Turetta to life in prison for the brutal murder of his former girlfriend, Giulia Cecchettin, in a case that has drawn attention to the ongoing issue of violence against women in the country.

EKO HOT BLOG reports that Turetta, who admitted to killing Cecchettin, 22, in November 2023—just a week before she was set to graduate from the University of Padua—was found guilty on Tuesday in Venice of murder, illegal possession of weapons, kidnapping, and concealing a corpse. In addition to the life sentence, Turetta was ordered to pay financial compensation to Cecchettin’s family and cover their legal fees.

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Following the murder, Turetta confessed to stuffing Cecchettin’s body into garbage bags and disposing of it in a ravine before fleeing. He was arrested in Germany 10 days later.

At the hearing, Turetta appeared emotionless as the verdict was delivered, sitting silently beside his lawyers. Cecchettin’s father, Gino, was in the courtroom but did not look at the man who killed his daughter. Cecchettin’s mother had passed away from an illness in 2022. After the verdict, Gino Cecchettin expressed a sense of emptiness: “I feel neither relieved nor sad. As a father, nothing has changed,” he said.

The prosecution had requested a life sentence, citing aggravating factors such as the premeditated nature of the crime and the items Turetta had gathered—including knives, tape, a shovel, ropes, and black garbage bags. He had kept these materials in his car for several days before luring Cecchettin into his car with a false promise of ending his stalking and just being friends.

Turetta testified in his 10-week trial, where he admitted to killing her and hiding her body. He admitted writing a plan that included a list of what he needed to do it, and he hypothesized how he would carry out the murder but insisted he didn’t intend to do so. “I was angry, I had many thoughts, I felt resentment that we had argued again, that it was a terrible period, that I wanted to get back together and so … I don’t know,” he testified.

“In a way it made me feel good to write this list to vent, to hypothesize this list that calmed me, to think that things could change. It was as if I didn’t have to define it yet, but I had thrown it down.”

Turetta’s lawyer Giovanni Caruso argued that his client should not be given an “inhumane and degrading” life sentence. “He is not Pablo Escobar,” Caruso told the court, referring to the notorious Colombian drugs lord who was killed in 1993.

The court also heard a list Cecchettin wrote entitled “15 reasons I should leave Filippo” that her family found. Among them, “He complained when I put fewer hearts than usual [in messages]” and “He has strange ideas about taking justice into one’s own hands for betrayals, torture, stuff like that.” She also wrote, “He needs to know everything, even what you say about him to your friends and the psychologist.”

The case has stirred the debate on violence against women, as well as what is largely seen as a failure to prevent the scourge. One woman is killed by a boyfriend, husband or ex-partner every three days in Italy, according to government statistics. More than 106 women were killed in the year since Cecchetin’s murder. The youngest was a 13-year-old girl allegedly pushed off a balcony by her 15-year-old boyfriend in early November. Giulia Cecchettin was the 105th victim of 2023.

Cecchetin’s sister Elena and father have launched a campaign to combat violence called the Giulia Cecchettin Foundation and blamed the government under Giorgia Meloni for failing to do enough beyond producing a brochure to outline the signs of an abusive relationship. Members of Meloni’s government have insisted that the patriarchy is no longer a problem in Italy. “Giulia was killed by a respectable, white Italian man,” Elena Cecchetin wrote on social media, adding, “What is the government doing to prevent violence?”