Twist in the Cecchettin case: Filippo Turetta writes to the judges and renounces the appeal. “I am sorry, I accept life imprisonment for Giulia’s death”
A tiny handwriting, the line uncertain but decisive. It is the hand of Filippo Turetta, the self-confessed murderer of Giulia Cecchettin, who writes a few lines that weigh like boulders: «I renounce the appeal. I want to pay entirely for his death.” The handwritten letter arrived in recent days on the tables of the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Court of Appeal of Venice, where the second degree trial was supposed to begin on November 14th.
A gesture which, however late, marks a change of direction in the narrative of a case that has shaken the whole of Italy. Because in that renunciation – after months of silence, waiting and anger – we read the definitive surrender of a man who killed so as not to be left.
The weight of an obsession
Turetta had challenged the life sentence, arguing, through his lawyers, that there had been no premeditation. A fragile defensive line, belied by every clue: the list of “things to do” found on his phone, the searches, the messages, the knife. It all spoke of cold and lucid planning.
The judges of the Court of Assizes had seen in that sequence of gestures the obsession of a boy incapable of accepting the end of a story. And they had written, in black and white, that his had been a “determined will to suppress the freedom and life of Giulia Cecchettin”.
“I don’t ask for extenuating circumstances”
In his letter, Turetta says he doesn’t want mitigating circumstances. He writes that he is “truly repentant”, that he is not looking for “sentence discounts” and that he wants to “pay in full”. Words that come after months of tension: the attack suffered in prison, the threats, the media pressure, and above all the coldness of the Cecchettin family.
Gino Cecchettin, Giulia’s father, had rejected the idea of a restorative justice process. “Now is not the time,” he said. “There was no apology or request for forgiveness. It seems instrumental to me.” A sentence that closed the door to any attempt at symbolic reconciliation, at least for now.
The process remains open
Waiving the appeal does not, however, close every front. The Venice Public Prosecutor’s Office had also appealed the sentence, asking to add the aggravating circumstances of cruelty and stalking. This will now be the only point that will be discussed in the new trial.
Meanwhile, Turetta remains in the prison where he has been held since November 25, 2023, when he was extradited from Germany after ten days on the run. The same escape that preceded the confession: “I killed her when I realized she would never come back with me.”
A surrender, not a redemption
There is something profoundly tragic in this renunciation. It is not the gesture of a man who frees himself, but of one who surrenders. Turetta accepts the life sentence as one accepts a sentence already written, that of public opinion, that of a father who does not want to forgive, that of a country that does not forget.
