A man has been sentenced to life for stabbing his girlfriend to death and hiding her body inside garbage bags at a small ravine.
Filippo Turetta, 23, was found guilty of murder in Assize Court of Venice on Tuesday, Dec. 3, in a case that has shocked Italy.
His sentencing comes after he confessed to stabbing and killing his girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin, 22, on Nov. 11, 2023, CNN, the BBC and Italian newspaper L’Unione Sarda reported.
“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,” Giulia’s father Gino Cecchettin, who was in court on Tuesday, told reporters after the sentencing.
Biomedical engineering student Giulia went missing on Nov. 11, 2023, after Turetta picked her up to go dress shopping at a mall in the town of Marghera ahead of her graduation from the University of Padua, per CNN, BBC News and L’Unione Sarda.
After she vanished, Turetta also disappeared, which sparked a week-long search to find the pair. On Nov. 18, 2023, Giulia’s body was discovered in a small ravine beside a lake north of Venice. She had been stabbed 75 times and her body had been wrapped in black garbage bags, per L’Unione Sarda.
Turetta was reportedly located in Germany and arrested on Nov. 19, 2023.
In court on Tuesday, he was also sentenced for legal possession of weapons, kidnapping and concealment of a corpse and ordered to pay €760,000 ($798, 220) in compensation to the Cecchettin family, per CNN and The Guardian.
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Giulia split with Turetta in August 2023. During the 10-week trial, he admitted to writing a plan about how he would kill her as he confessed to murdering Giulia and hiding the body, per CNN.
“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, the outlet reported.
Prosecutor Andrea Petron deemed Giulia’s murder “premeditated” based on a list of items Turetta had written, which included knives, scotch tape, a shovel, black garbage bags, rope to tie ankles and a wet sock to use as a muffle, L’Unione Sarda reported. Petron asked the court for a life sentence, which in Italy is limited to 30 years.
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Over the past year, Giulia’s death has sparked heated debates on the topic of femicide and violence against women across Italy.
Giulia’s sister Elena previously said during an emotional interview that Tuerratta was a “monster” but “the healthy son of a patriarchal society,” adding to the discourse, per BBC News.
The Cecchettin family has since launched the Giulia Cecchettin Foundation campaigning to combat violence against women in her memory.
“Of course justice has been done, but the battle against violence against women continues, we must do more as a society,” Giulia’s father Gino added about the sentencing on Tuesday.
PEOPLE has reached out to the Assize Court of Venice for further comment.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
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