Femicide wave continues, over 90 women killed in 2024

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 25 - There have been over 90 femicides in Italy in 2024, five of them in the last week alone, the interior ministry said Friday amid the first appearance in court of Filippo Turetta, a young man who has confessed to the brutal murder last year of his 22-year-old former girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin in a case that shocked Italy and highlighted its problem with femicide and gender-based violence, which is showing a slight decrease but is still at near-record levels.
    The massacre of victims over 70, killed by their partners after very long marriages or cohabitations, shows no sign of stopping, the ministry said.
    Between January 1 and October 20, 2024, 89 femicides in all were recorded.
    Of these victims, 77 were killed in the family or emotional sphere and of these 48 were killed by their partner or ex-partner.
    The data, from the Ministry of the Interior, report an annual decrease in the number of victims from 100 to 89 (-11%).
    Crimes committed in the family and emotional sphere also show a decrease with a fall in the number of victims from 82 to 77 (-6%).
    Also decreasing compared to the same period in 2023 is the number of femicides committed by a partner or ex-partner, which goes from 53 to 48 (-9%).
    The age of the victims of femicides is also changing: about one in five victims in 2024 is over 70, all killed by their husbands after marriages lasting 40 or 50 years: like Serenella Mugnai, 72, an Alzheimer's patient killed by her husband Alessandro Sacchi, now in his eighties; like Elisa Scavone, 65, killed by her husband Luciano Sofia, 70 in Borgo Filadelfia, Turin, on January 11; like Rosetta Romano, at 73, who stood by her authoritarian husband until the end who, at 81, strangled and suffocated her on June 30; like Rosa D'Ascenzo, 71, who died at the beginning of January from a violent blow to the temple with an iron frying pan and was also beaten and kicked by her husband Giulio Camilli, 73, in their farmhouse in Sant'Oreste, in the province of Rome.
    A story similar to that of Lucia Felici, 75, killed by her husband Carmine Alfano, 82, in Castelnuovo di Porto on August 9; or that of Annarita Morelli, killed at 72 by her husband Domenico Ossoli, 73, on August 6 with a gunshot.
    In the last week there have been five other femicides: on Thursday Marina Cavalieri, 62, a retired nurse, was found by a nephew in her home, lifeless on the ground while her husband had disappeared without a trace. The man, 65 years old from Sant'Andrea Bagni, a municipality near Medesano (Parma), was tracked down in Orbetello (Grosseto) and arrested for killing his wife with his rifle.
    Flavia Mello Agonigi, the 54-year-old woman missing for days in Pontedera (Pisa), was found dead Thursday afternoon in a house not far from Casciana Terme (Pisa), in Valdera.
    The police arrested Emanuele Nannetti, 34, responsible for the femicide, who stabbed her and threw her body into a cellar cistern.
    Giovanna Chinnici, 63, died Thursday in hospital in Desio (Monza), stabbed to death by her brother-in-law, Giuseppe Caputo, 62, who wounded her with several stab wounds to the chest, after an argument in Nova Milanese (Monza).
    It was October 18 when Celeste Palmieri, 56, was shot dead as she left the supermarket by her husband Mario Furio, 59, a retired prison officer, from whom she was separating.
    She had five children.
    He was wearing an electronic bracelet but her receiver didn't work.
    Lucian Tuduran, 41, also had an electronic bracelet.
    On the same day, on the 18th, he killed his ex-partner Carmela Ion in Civitavecchia, a 56-year-old homeless woman who no longer had a cell phone and therefore didn't receive a notification of her killer's presence.
    The woman was first attacked and then suffocated. (ANSA).