Celeste Manno’s killer stalked her online hours before stabbing her to death

The mother of murdered 23-year-old Mernda woman Celeste Manno has screamed in court at the “gutless wonder” who murdered her daughter after cyber stalking her.

Celeste Manno’s mother has screamed in court at the gutless “beast” who murdered her daughter to “look at me” as the coward evaded his eyes and smacked himself in the head during her harrowing victim impact statement.

Killer Luay Sako refused to glance up as Ms Manno’s mother Aggie Di Mauro detailed the torment her daughter’s stalker had caused when he smashed through her bedroom window and stole her life on November 16, 2020.

“Look up, look ahead, I am here you gutless, gutless wonder,” Ms Di Mauro said from the witness box to the man who murdered her “sweetie” in an attack lasting just two minutes and 39 seconds.

Aggie Di Mauro with her daughter Celeste Manno.

Describing her daughter, 23, as the Beauty and Sako as the “evil, repulsive, demonic beast”, she turned the killer’s own words against him, after he’d told Ms Manno he would prove “to the world that I’m somebody” when she’d rebuffed his constant advances.

“You showed the world who you were,” Ms Di Mauro said, as the 39-year-old repeatedly smashed himself in the side of his head with an open palm.

“You’re such a coward, at least look at me, is this what your family raised?”

Luay Sako had stalked his former colleague Celeste Manno, for months before killing her. Picture: Ian Currie

Brother Alessandro said his sister’s life was “unjustly taken at the age of 23 ... 23 ... like the amount of times you stabbed her to death”.

“This was no accident or mistake, just his intent to end my sister’s life in the most gruesome and horrific way possible and he can’t even look at me, f***ing coward,” he said.

The Supreme Court on Monday heard Sako killed his former Serco colleague within hours of her posting for the first time photos to social media with her boyfriend Chris Ridsdale.

Celeste Manno’s brother Alessandro and mother Aggie Di Mauro. Picture: Jason Edwards

Police found Sako had created a fake Instagram account posing as a young girl to gain access to Ms Manno’s page after she repeatedly blocked him.

On his laptop, police discovered Sako had photos of Mr Ridsdale, hunted down his LinkedIn page and even searched the pub where they’d spent a day together.

Then he drove to Ms Manno’s Mernda home, parked his car out the front, scaled her fence, broke into her bedroom window with a hammer and stabbed her to the heart in an attack that took less than three minutes.

Celeste Manno had repeatedly asked Sako to stop contacting her.

Moments after fleeing the scene, Ms Di Mauro made the horror discovery and as she desperately tried to bring her daughter back to life, Sako was at Mernda police station telling officers, “she’s dead” and “it’s your fault”.

Ms Manno had months earlier taken an intervention order out on her former Serco colleague, who had developed an obsession with her after she escorted him out of the building when he was fired in mid-2019.

Within a week, he Googled the kind hearted younger woman and sent her messages on Instagram, thanking her for the way she handled his exit and declaring his love.

Celeste Manno had told her manager Sako was going to kill her.

“If it was ever possible, I’d give my life and the world to you just to be with you,” he wrote.

“I’m so infatuated with you it’s now becoming unhealthy.”

Within two weeks, she’d blocked him, but he activated a second account then later, new fake accounts, repeatedly sending her unwanted declarations of his undying love and affections.

Concerned about his escalating messages, Ms Manno went to police and got an interim intervention order, and reported him to Serco telling her manager in August 2020, “He’s really going to kill me”.

Three months later, he did.

Ms Di Mauro told the court her daughter was “failed miserably” by a flawed system, and that she’d have to live with the fact she slept as her daughter’s life was ending.

She recalled that early on, when they’d gone to police about Sako’s messages, officers told her and Ms Manno that her stalker had threatened to kill himself at the train station.

“God, I wish you’d done it,” she said.

Sako has pleaded guilty to murder.

His pre-sentencing hearing, before Justice Jane Dixon, continues on Tuesday and Wednesday.