Giulia Cecchettin was just days away from graduating with a degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Padua, in Italy, when her disgruntled ex-boyfriend confronted her, demanding that she take him back. Her body was found a week later, wrapped in plastic bags and thrown in a ditch. She had been stabbed more than 70 times.

On Tuesday, more than a year after Ms. Cecchettin’s killing, her former boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, concluding a case that has outraged people across Italy, where chauvinistic attitudes remain deeply rooted at all levels of society.

In the first 11 months of this year, 101 women were killed in Italy, more than half by their current or former partners, according to Italy’s Interior Ministry. But Ms. Cecchettin’s story has stood out, striking a particularly deep chord across the country.

She was just 22 years old. Her life was about to take off. That it was cut short so brutally highlighted for many people the country’s failures to address the root problems of the pervasive violence.

Mr. Turetta, 22, confessed to the killing soon after he was arrested a year ago. When he took the stand in a court in Venice last October, he said he had been “upset” because Ms. Cecchettin broke up with him and refused to take him back.