St Clair mum beheader Jessica Camilleri pleads guilty to another assault on correctional officers

A Sydney woman who decapitated her mother said threats from inmates sparked yet another attack on prison officers, before defecating herself and calling for her dad.

A woman who decapitated her mother and dumped her severed head outside their western Sydney home, defecated in her pants while calling for her father during a second attack on two female correctional officers.

Western Sydney woman, Jessica Camilleri, is currently serving a 16-year sentence for manslaughter, over the gruesome murder of her mother Rita Camilleri in 2019, in which she inflicted “at least 100 stab wounds” on the 57-year-old by “hacking like a butcher”.

She was found not guilty in 2021 of murder and was sentenced to a lesser charge of manslaughter owing to “substantial mental health issues”.

In September 2023, a further 22 months were added to her jail time after she assaulted two Silverwater prison guards by ripping hair from their scalp in 2021.

Photos from Jessica Camilleri’s social media accounts.

Now it can be revealed, Camilleri is before the courts once more having pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting a law officer following a similar, separate attack in prison in March last year.

Agreed facts tendered to the court, reveal on March 7, 2023, Camilleri had approached a group of inmates at Dillwynia Correctional Centre, who rebuked her efforts at conversation.

The supervising female officer, observed inmates yelling at Camilleri to “f — k off,” telling her “we don’t want to speak to you, we know what you did”, before one inmate attempted to throw water on her from the other side of the fence.

Rita Camilleri

Jessica Camilleri,

Camilleri ignored the guard’s direction to move away and continued pleading for the inmates to come talk to her.

CCTV footage show the corrections officer trying to direct Camilleri away from the fence by placing a hand on her shoulder, which prompted her to lunge at the guard striking her in the head and grabbing at her hair before several officers tackled her to the ground.

During or immediately after the attack on prison officers, Camilleri defecated in her pants, agreed facts state.

She refused to take a shower or change her pants, instead repeatedly begging staff to call her father, telling officers: “Dad doesn’t want to speak to me anymore”.

While talking to a medical officer, Camilleri, who appeared in an “anxious, heightened state”, without warning launched herself at the woman with outstretched hands.

A second officer intervened by getting in between the pair, prompting Camilleri to grab hold of her hair and rip out a small handful.

Pictured is the vigil in memory of Rita where Jessica Camilleri killed her mother in St Clair

In security tape of the incident, the guard can be heard yelling “let go”, with Camilleri yelling “call my dad”, begging to transfer prisons, while a second inmate is heard screaming “she’s got Ms Beard’s hair”.

Camilleri asked the officer: “Did I pull your hair out”.

“I think I ripped it out, I’m sorry, I’m frustrated, I need Dad, Dad, Dad,” Camilleri said.

“I didn’t mean to attack you, l’m sorry, it had nothing to de with you personally … it’s just all due to frustration.”

Jessica Camilleri

“She grabbed me by the shirt … that’s what set me,” she later told police.

“It made me anxious, and because of that I tried to chuck a swing at her.”

During sentencing for a previous attack on correctional officers, a previous court heard from a crown prosecutor that Camilleri “has a particular tendency towards grabbing the hair of her victims”, as indicated by a forensic psychiatrist.

In 2023, a Supreme Court Judge, who presided over a resentencing of Camilleri’s manslaughter conviction remarked that the killer had only a “simple understanding” of moral wrongfulness due to her intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder.

Camilleri will return to Penrith District Court on June 20 for her sentence to be handed down.