Giulia Cecchetin: Ex-girlfriend Turetta sentenced to life imprisonment

Over the past year, a vast amount of details about the killing have emerged, painting a picture of an increasingly tormented young woman harassed by her possessive ex-boyfriend, who refused to accept the end of their relationship.

The case that captivated Italians has put the concepts of femicide, patriarchy and male violence in the headlines.

On 11 November 2023, Mr. Turetta his fellow university student and ex-girlfriend Ms Cecchhettin, a 22-year-old biomedical engineering student from Venice Province, to take her shopping for an outfit for her upcoming graduation.

Later that evening, he stabbed her more than 70 times, leaving the student’s body at the bottom of a ditch, wrapped in plastic bags.

Then he disappeared. For a week, the Italians followed the search for the couple with bated breath. The discovery of Ms Cechettin’s body on 18 November was met with an unprecedented outpouring of grief. The next day, Mr. Turetta arrested in Germany. He readily admitted killing Ms Cecchettin and was extradited to Italy.

To raise awareness of the signs of controlling relationships, Ms Cechettin’s family recently shared a list she wrote a few months before her death, titled “15 Reasons I Had To Break Up With Him”.

In it, Mrs. Cecchettin said that Mr. Turetta insisted she had a “duty” to help him study, complained she was sending him fewer emoji hearts than usual, didn’t want her going out with friends and needed her had to text him all the time.

“They were the typical signs of possession,” Giulia’s father Gino told the BBC. “He would deny her her own space or always demand to be included. He always needed to know everything she said to her friends or even her therapist.”

“We realized later that she believed she was the cause of his pain, that she felt responsible for it,” he said.

In an 80-page statement written from prison in childlike handwriting, Mr. Turetta, since Mrs. Cecchetin broke up with him, that he spent every day hoping to get back with her. “I did not feel that I could accept any other outcome,” he wrote.

In his police interview, Mr Turetta confirmed that on the night he killed her, Ms Cecchetin had just told him he was too dependent and needy.

“I shouted that it wasn’t fair that I needed her,” said Mr. Turetta, adding that he killed her after becoming “very angry” when she tried to get out of the car.

“I was selfish and I’m only now realizing it,” he wrote. “I didn’t think about how incredibly unfair it was to her and to the promising and wonderful life she had ahead of her.”