Giulia Cecchettin, the thrilling interrogation of Filippo Turetta: “Our relationship had to continue”

«Obviously I would have always wanted to get back together with her, I would never have wanted to do this, I had sometimes thought about hurting myself, but I wouldn’t have wanted to do it to her… I would never have thought of doing it to her… of doing this to her, Here you are”. These are the words that Filippo Turetta pronounces, in his interrogation in the Verona prison, in front of the Venice public prosecutor Andrea Petroni. A full confession in which the twenty-two year old, with a scholarship and five exams for his degree in Biomedical Engineering, reconstructs the femicide of his ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin, 22 years old from Vigonovo (Padua). In the long report, viewed by Adnkronos and partly anticipated by the TV program ‘Quarto Grado’, Turetta reconstructs the relationship with his university friend, the arguments that ended on two occasions with tugging “to release the anger”, Giulia’s relationships with friends from whom «I didn’t want to feel excluded», the emotional blackmail (“I feel too bad because we broke up, I can’t do anything, it would make me feel better, it would help me to see each other”, he told her), the protective sister Elena to who “I felt from the beginning that I wasn’t liked”.

For a long time he appears incapable of accepting the end of a relationship, «the thing that mattered most of all was hearing from her and writing with her or seeing her and therefore the fact that she wrote less or wanted to cancel relationships a little made me feel very bad, that is, very sad.” A revelation that he also makes to a psychologist. The story of November 11, 2023 is that of a normal day, when before sinking the knife – the autopsy will say 75 times – “nothing happened”. The trip to the Marghera shopping centre, dinner together, then the first attack in the car park 150 meters from Giulia’s house. The graduate student has clear ideas about her future without Filippo. She refuses his latest gifts from her, including a stuffed animal and a picture book. «I screamed at her that it wasn’t right, that it shouldn’t be like this, that I had a vital need for her, for our relationship, that she shouldn’t want to erase me or anything, she shouldn’t want to eliminate our relationship because I would… I also thought of … I was sick, I thought about committing suicide and that she, in short, instead had to… had to continue with our relationship… she had promised me that she would never get back together with me in any case.”

An end that marks the end of Giulia Cecchettin. «I was very angry, I didn’t want her to go away. (…) I wanted her to be with me. First I wanted her not to scream, to get back in the car, I wanted her to still be in the car with me, for us to discuss again, for us to talk.” In the parking lot in Vigonovo, the student gets out of the car and he stops her, “blindly” launches a first stab at her, Giulia shouts ‘help then she is stunned by the fall, the knife breaks and he puts her in the car, on the seat rear, away from the bag with the cell phone which remains in front. «I didn’t know where to go» then he heads towards the industrial area of ​​Fossò, while Giulia tries to react but the second escape attempt becomes fatal. “I hit everything a bit, the arms, the neck, the face, the chest, the back of the head,” she says, miming the gesture with her hands in front of the prosecutor. «At that moment I was a bit panicked, I hit her… then she protected herself with her arms, at a certain point I didn’t even look where I was hitting anymore». The last stab is on the eye: “I stopped immediately, I didn’t want to hit her in certain places” and adds: “partly because I couldn’t hold it much anymore, partly because I realized I had stabbed her in the eye and it made too much sense to me and so I stopped.” He reloads it on his Fiat Punto when Giulia is already dead.

He doesn’t talk about a fit or blackout, but he doesn’t remember some details and confesses that he didn’t have an escape plan. He says that along the way he got rid of the blood-stained clothes, the knife and the cell phone of the twenty-two-year-old to save time, and that he headed towards the mountains with two objectives: to hide Giulia and commit suicide. The choice falls on Lake Barcis, in the province of Pordenone, one hundred kilometers from the Cecchettin home. Turetta abandons the victim and covers him with black bags «so that he would not be ruined and would be found in the best conditions», but also to have «a little time to be able to take my own life, and obviously I didn’t want to be found immediately otherwise I wouldn’t I would have done it.” An attempt that fails at least a couple of times because “I never had the courage” then the vision of the parents’ appeal on TV and then the ‘surrender’ with the arrest near Leipzig, Germany, seven days after the murder of Giulia Cecchettin. The prosecutor accuses him of voluntary homicide aggravated by premeditation, cruelty and emotional bond, and the crimes of kidnapping, concealment of a corpse and possession of weapons. On July 15th he will appear before the preliminary hearing judge in Venice for the first preliminary hearing.