Tuesday was a day of mourning in the Veneto region for Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old Padua student who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. On the day of her funeral, Tuesday, Nov. 5, the Veneto region lowered its flags to half-mast, and the Regional Council’s seat, Palazzo Balbi, was lighted in red throughout the night. Veneto and all of Italy united around the family, astonished by yet another tragedy of gender-based violence.
Giulia Checchettin and her ex-boyfriend, admitted felon Filippo Turetta, went missing on November 11. The girl’s body was discovered lifeless near Bacis Lake in Pordenone, Italy, after a seven-day search, with many knife wounds to the head and neck. Meanwhile, the kidnapper fled to Germany, near Leipzig, and was captured the next day.
On November 16, Giulia Checchettin was supposed to discuss her engineering degree. Earlier in the week, when little was known about what had occurred, the young woman’s aunt said that her ex-boyfriend did not want her to graduate, afraid that she would leave him. Turetta said to German authorities that he had slain “my girlfriend,” according to the report, and that he had been roaming around for seven days, attempting to find the guts to commit suicide. In reality, once in Italy and probed, he revealed the true reason for the murder: he refused to accept that the relationship was finished and Giulia was no longer “his.”
The autopsy later revealed that Giulia Checchettin died as a consequence of a huge number of stab wounds that caused her to bleed out when the aorta was cut, and as a result, the killer abandoned the body when Giulia was already dead.
The funeral was held on Tuesday, November 5, in Padua’s Basilica of Santa Giustina, attended by almost 8,000 people, the majority of whom watched from outside the church through two huge screens. The Veneto region’s authorities were there, including President Luca Zaia, while the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, remembered Giulia’s femicide from the Quirinale.
