A British man was sentenced to 25 years in prison in Italy after a court found him guilty of stabbing his partner to death in their rural home and then driving across Europe to return to the United Kingdom.

Michael Whitbread, 75, was convicted at a hearing in Lanciano for the killing of 66-year-old Michele Faiers, who was found dead in a bedroom of the couple’s farmhouse near the hilltop village of Verratti in eastern Italy. Prosecutors said she had been stabbed nine times — eight times in the back and once in the chest — and that her body was discovered on November 1, 2023, under a sheet and dressed only in her underwear.

Prosecutor Mirvana Di Serio told the court that Whitbread acted with intent, saying he killed Faiers by stabbing her nine times and then washed himself, dressed and fled. The prosecution had sought a life sentence; the court took about 90 minutes to deliver a 25-year term and ordered Whitbread to pay 100,000 euros in compensation to Faiers’s three daughters.

Police investigations established that Faiers likely died on October 29, four days before a friend, Petrina Keay, went to the house after the victim failed to respond to messages. Keay, who had hosted Faiers at her home earlier in October after a violent row, told investigators that Faiers had been left ‘‘covered in bruises’’ and ‘‘fearing for her life’’ following a confrontation with Whitbread. Testimony presented at trial said Faiers had been considering leaving the relationship and returning to England.

CCTV and mobile-phone data were used to trace Whitbread’s movements after the slaying. Investigators said he was seen leaving the farmhouse in a Jeep Compass in the early hours of October 29 and began a roughly 1,000-mile drive across Italy, into Switzerland and through France toward the UK. Traffic cameras reportedly recorded him crossing from Italy into Switzerland near Lake Maggiore at about 4 p.m. that day; his last known mobile-phone ping was near Como earlier that afternoon.

Whitbread was arrested in the UK at his daughter’s home in Shepshed, Leicestershire, just hours after Faiers’s body was discovered, authorities said. Court accounts cited neighbours who described Whitbread as ‘‘always a bit tipsy’’ and Faiers as ‘‘calm and serene.’’

At the opening of his trial in January and again before sentencing, Whitbread expressed remorse, asked for forgiveness from Faiers’s three daughters — named in court as Sarah, Brooke and Harriet — and said he would miss her. He told the court that Faiers had accused him of having an affair and had described her as ‘‘obsessively jealous,’’ and he claimed she had been physically violent toward him. The defence argument that jealousy and alleged prior assaults explained his conduct was rejected by the prosecution and the court.

Di Serio said the defendant had been lucid and aware of his actions when he attacked Faiers. The court’s verdict reflects the prosecutor’s assessment that the repeated stabbings demonstrated intent rather than a loss of control.

After sentencing, the family’s lawyer, Nadia Germana Tascona, said the family had ‘‘respectfully accepted’’ the court’s decision but remained troubled by Whitbread’s insistence that he had been the victim. She said the daughters were still grappling with the loss of their mother and were distressed that the defendant continued to portray himself as such.

The killing shocked expatriate residents in the area and drew attention to the couple’s troubled relationship in the weeks before the slaying. Court records and witness testimony described escalating tensions, including the October altercation that prompted Faiers to stay temporarily at a friend’s home.

Whitbread, originally from Torquay in Devon, will serve the 25-year sentence under Italian law. The court also set the financial compensation to be paid to Faiers’s daughters for the loss of their mother.