Italian convicted of murdering ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin

Giulia Cecchettin was just days away from graduating with a degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Padua in Italy when her angry ex-boyfriend confronted her and demanded that she take him back. A week later, her body was found, wrapped in plastic bags and dumped in a ditch. She was stabbed more than 70 times.

On Tuesday, more than a year after Ms. Cecchettin’s murder, her former boyfriend Filippo Turetta was sentenced to life in prison for her murder. This ended a case that outraged people across Italy, where chauvinistic attitudes remain deeply rooted at all levels of society.

According to the Italian Interior Ministry, 101 women were killed in Italy in the first 11 months of this year, more than half of them by their current or former partners. But Ms. Cecchettin’s story stands out and has left a particularly deep impression across the country.

She was just 22 years old. Her life was about to take off. The fact that it was so brutally aborted highlighted for many people the country’s failure to address the underlying problems of pervasive violence.

Mr. Turetta, 22, confessed to the murder shortly after his arrest a year ago. Giving evidence in a Venice court last October, he said he was “upset” because Ms Cecchettin had broken up with him and refused to take him back.