There is a moment in which, after a long series of ‘mmh’ and ‘I don’t remember’, the president of the Court of Assizes Stefano Manduzio tries to exhort him: “It shouldn’t be excessively difficult to do a reconstruction.” Filippo Turetta, in dark jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, almost always keeps his gaze bent over the defendant’s bench towards an imaginary script that he doesn’t have and it can be seen because he hesitates and contradicts himself several times. Even though his lawyer gave the judges an 80-page handwritten memorial in the Verona prison whose content he partly repeats but often corrects. A few meters away, Gino Cecchettin is listening to him, Giulia’s father, the engineer with a passion for comics who he killed, “the wonderful girl whose future I took away”, Turetta defines her in his notes in the cell where he is followed by a psychologist. In the second row, in a suit and tie, straight on the chair, trying to contain the storm of feelings, during a pause in the hearing he decides to leave the courtroom and perhaps for the first time in one of his comments there is a spark of anger towards the boy.
If until now he had shown him substantial indifference, concentrated in his efforts around Italy to prevent other women’s lives from being destroyed, now Gino blurts out: «Why didn’t he look at me? Ask him. I looked at him every now and then while he spoke but this is not the point of the trial. The most painful moment was knowing what my daughter went through in the last moments of her life. Now I’m leaving, I don’t need to stay. The point is that we understood who Filippo Turetta is. For me it is very clear, what emerges today is that the life of others is a sacred thing and we must not go into the merits of the lives of others, but respect it.”
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The hearing gets to the heart of the indictment. It is known that the only point on which the defense could insist to have any remote hope of avoiding life imprisonment is the absence of premeditation. But this is not the case, on the contrary. Turetta admits that the “to-do list” was in anticipation of the murder, including buying the scotch which in the interrogation during the investigation he had claimed to have bought for Giulia’s graduation party. Instead it should have been used to “silence her” just as the purchase of the two knives, and not just one, was done “for safety”. He then contradicts himself by first saying that he only wanted to kidnap her to spend “a few days with her” but admits at a later point in the exam that “the kidnapping was a road of no return and I wanted to extend the time with her a little and then take away her life”. And commit suicide but admits that he couldn’t do it due to “fear of physical pain”.
The moment in which the breaths stop in the courtroom is when the lawyer Nicodemo Gentile, who assists Elena Cecchettin, says directly: “Why did he kill Giulia?”. The response lasts four minutes mostly punctuated by vocalizations and silences. «I wanted to get back together with her, go back to having a relationship, I suffered a lot from this and felt resentment towards her. I was angry because she didn’t want it. I think this is the truth. Obviously these are unfair thoughts: I blamed her for not being able to carry on with my life.” It’s the only time he cries. Some questions concern the dynamics of the crime, those of the prosecutor Andrea Petroni and of the civil parties in particular. The dynamics follows that already described in the interrogation. ‘Again’ he explains why he covered Giulia’s body with bags in the ravine near Lake Bracis. “I didn’t want the bad wounds to be seen, she was in bad condition and I wanted to avoid that moment and see the situation.” The last part of the examination falls to his lawyer, the lawyer Giovanni Caruso who wanted a quick trial, without witnesses, without requests for a psychiatric evaluation. Nothing, except the assumption of responsibility. However, he announces that he wants to let the judges know “who Filippo Turetta is because there is an interpenetration between the crime and the perpetrator of the crime”.
He describes himself, here too with great difficulty, calling himself “shy”, he mentions his school career, the volleyball he played at a competitive level, his few friends “because, I realise, I was not very enterprising, not very interesting”. With them he did not discuss the discomfort with Giulia, “my first girlfriend, the story I was obsessed with”. “They were private, personal things.” He mentions Giulia’s name twice when responding to Caruso. The first when he is invited to explain whether he knows why he is on trial. «For having committed Giulia’s murder with cruelty, premeditation, the emotional bond». And the second: «I think it is something right to be here, a duty towards justice, but above all towards Giulia and all the people affected. I want to atone for my punishment, I won’t apologize to her family because it would be ridiculous compared to the extent of what I did.” In the memorial he writes instead: “I’m so sorry, sorry for all this.” Elena Cecchettin, who has lived and studied in the USA for some time, is not in the courtroom. “I’m taking treatment, it would be a huge stress for me to attend the hearing” he writes on social media. The prosecutor will hold the indictment on November 25th. November 11th will be the first anniversary of the death of Giulia Cecchettin who filled the squares with noise and, if it did not change the fate of the other women killed after her, she brought the topic into schools and homes like never before. «What do I remember about her? What can I say: it’s my love” are Gino’s words as he leaves behind him a courthouse to which he has repeatedly declared that he has nothing to ask because his energy is for what’s outside, to avoid let us read more stories like this.
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