Jessica Camilleri guilty of manslaughter of mother

Warning: graphic content

Australian woman Jessica Camilleri has been found guilty of the murder of her mother Rita in a brutal sustained beheading attack that involved up to 200 stab wounds.

The 27-year-old had pleaded not guilty to a substantial deterioration due to mental illness from the murder of her mother Rita Camilleri.

A jury returned the alternate murder conviction after deliberating for two days after a week-long trial.

Rita Camilleri was killed in a brutal assault at her St Clair home in western Sydney on the night of July 20, 2019, when Jessica beheaded her mother and mutilated her body.

Mother and daughter had dined at Red Rooster before Jessica demanded a second delivery at the food establishment and then turned on Rita, who had planned to have her daughter taken to mental health care.

The week-long trial has heard gruesome and graphic police evidence, a body camera video at the crime scene, and a police interview with Camilleri, her face still covered in her mother’s blood and her hands in bags.

Camilleri has been in custody since she was arrested, covered in blood and standing near her mother’s decapitated head.

His trial was reproduced in a wild police recording in which he is heard saying, “Mom’s head is on the road” and asks if it can be sewn up.

The trial involved a police interview with Camilleri the day after his mother’s death.

In the interview, Camilleri said of her mother, “half her nose fell off in the fight” and when she left the scene, she had two mobile phones in her left hand and her mother’s head in the other.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Jennifer Pokorny discovered that at Rita Camilleri’s autopsy, the 57-year-old woman had suffered monumental injuries.

Pokorny told the court that Rita had suffered “countless, at least 100 stab wounds to the head” and “countless overlapping stabs associated with decapitation to the neck.”

He had died from “multiple stab wounds with decapitation” to the C2 vertebra at the top of his neck.

Senior Agent Jodie Bennett, who examined the living room and bedroom in the Camilleri house, found blood-soaked hair, human tissue, puddles of vomit, overlapping blood-soaked footprints, plus a Dundee crocodile figure, with the head separated.

The court heard that Ms Camilleri was obsessed with figurines and violent horror movies featuring beheading, such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Detective Sergeant Brett Griffin, who examined the crime scene between 12:42 and 7 a.m. on Sunday, July 21, told the court that on the path in front of the neighbor’s house he found the mutilated head of Rita Camilleri.

“I saw an area of ​​apparent stain of blood and human tissue,” he said.

“At a short distance I saw a human head with numerous wounds, including a cut nose, excised eyes, and numerous clusters of apparent lacerations and stab wounds.”

Detective Griffin said a collection of blood and human tissue about 1.2 m from the head indicated it was “dropped or positioned and then moved to its final position.”

Camilleri’s trial heard that the defendants enjoyed horror films such as Sawn, Wolf Creek, and the Jeepers Creepers film franchise based on a carnivorous demonic creature, known as the “creeper” that devours people to replace its own parts. of the body.

The court heard Camiller tell police: “I lost him … I couldn’t stop … I kept stabbing and stabbing her, took her head off.”