For four years Fadime Sahindal's father had threatened to kill her. But last week she took a risk and went to say goodbye to her mother and her sisters before leaving to study in Africa.
Just before 10pm, as they sat in her sister's flat in the Swedish city of Uppsala, the doorbell rang. Her father burst in and shot Fadime in the head. She died in her mother's arms.
Sahindal, 26, paid the ultimate price for falling in love with the wrong man and defying the patriarchal values of her culture. Her father was an illiterate Kurdish farmer who moved to Sweden in 1980. His family arrived four years later, when Fadime was seven.
Her parents discouraged her from speaking to Swedish children at school. Instead, she was told the important thing was eventually to return to Turkey and get married. She grew up under the control of her father and younger brother, who physically abused her.
During a computer course in 1996 she met and fell in love with a Swedish boy called Patrik Lindesjö. Sahindal was under no illusion about her father's reaction. She knew that he would think she was dishonouring the family. They kept their relationship secret for a year. When her father eventually found out, his first reaction was to beat them both up.
Her father disowned her, but the couple refused to be intimidated. Lindesjö parents went to Fadime's family to propose on his behalf, but were turned down. Sahindal moved to another town, only to be pursued and threatened by her brother. The police simply advised her to stop talking to her family.
Instead she turned to the press, giving interviews about the conditions faced by Kurdish girls in Sweden. Single-handedly she started a debate about integration and double standards. The police's inaction in the face of her father's threats infuriated the public.
On a visit to Uppsala her father spotted her with Lindesjö. He attacked her, spat in her face and screamed: "Bloody whore. I will beat you to pieces."
She told police: "He said I was rejected from the family and was not allowed to come back to Uppsala. If I did I would never leave the city alive." Her father was charged, and in 1998 was convicted of making unlawful threats. Her brother, who had cursed her as a whore during the trial, was also found guilty.
It was a bittersweet victory for Sahindal, who had stood up for her beliefs but lost her family. She often said that she loved her father, and that he understood no better way of treating her.
Then, in June 1998, as the couple prepared to move into a flat together, Lindesjö was killed when his car crashed into a concrete pillar. A police investigation, which found nothing suspicious, has now reopened.
Fadime carried on, and last November spoke to the Swedish parliament about her struggle for freedom. Then, last week, her father caught up with her. He was arrested a couple of hours later. In court he called Fadime "the whore" and then confessed to having killed her. He said that he had to protect the family's honour.
The story has stirred deep emotions in Sweden. The government has promised about $170,000 to help girls in the same position. The legal age of marriage for foreigners will be raised from 15 to 18, on par with the age for Swedes.
Six groups representing foreigners in Sweden want to turn Sahindal's funeral into a demonstration against patriarchal cultures that allow "honour" killings.
Sahindal, who had said that she did not want a funeral according to the rites of her native religion, may be laid to rest beside Lindesjö at Uppsala's Protestant cathedral.