How twisted obsession drove ‘beast’ Luay Sako to kill Celeste Manno
When the relentless barrage of obsessive messaging from her former co-worker abruptly stopped, Celeste Manno believed her nightmare was finally over — but he couldn’t let her be.
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Her words were gentle. But they were clear.
Celeste Manno wanted nothing to do with Luay Sako.
She told her ex-co-worker as much in her reply to his sudden flurry of Instagram messages in June 2019, when the near-stranger professed she was “all I think about”.
“Hi Luay, those are really sweet words and I appreciate you saying all of that to me,” the 23-year-old wrote to the man 12 years her senior.
“I’m a bit surprised to read this all as it is new to me. As much as I appreciate this, I only feel a professional way towards you, and I wish you all of the best towards your new job and journey.”
The young woman’s gentle words echoed sentiments of the social media declarations she put out to the world.
“Be kind,” she etched beside her name on her Instagram page.
“Make your heart the prettiest thing about you,” was inscribed on her pink Facebook background.
Sako’s messages came out of the blue.
Just a week earlier, the 35-year-old who lived in Roxburgh Park with his parents had been sacked from Serco call centre for “performance issues”.
The customer service operator had worked there for just over a year, and the “popular and respected” Celeste had been appointed his team leader.
On his last day that June afternoon, the young woman escorted her sacked staff member from the building where, uninvited, he kissed her on the cheek.
Sako thanked her for her kindness and empathy during his exit and left, while Celeste went back into the building and told her work friends how uncomfortable and embarrassed his farewell made her feel.
Within a week, Sako found his former superior online and started his own Instagram page so he could send her a direct message.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t stop thinking about you,” he wrote.
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my entire life, It’s bordering along OCD. I’m totally infatuated with you, captivated and fascinated by you. You’re all I think about … This obsession with you, which is a crush, is an addictive and destructive feeling that’s interfering with my ability to concentrate, deal with others and go about my daily routine. To put an end to my suffering can you be direct with me and just tell me how you feel towards me. Candidness is one of the traits I value most in people.”
Celeste was blunt.
She told him she wasn’t interested, and wished him all the best.
“I appreciate your response and honesty,” Sako replied to her gracious rejection.
“If it was ever possible, I’d give my life and the world to you just to be with you. I hope that one day I’ll meet another Celeste for who I can do just that, and for which can be my sun that shines.”
But that wasn’t the end of it.
He messaged her again.
“I’m so infatuated with you that it’s now becoming unhealthy. I know my words don’t help me … I’m sorry for coming on strong, Celeste, I’m just another rival for your affection.”
Already blocked from her page after weeks of unwelcome notes, his latest messages appeared in her hidden requests folder.
“I just saw these message requests by pure chance as I don’t check message requests often”, Celeste said.
“I was quite shocked after reading them all.
“I would really appreciate if you could stop contacting me as this is making me very uncomfortable. Please respect my wishes and stop contacting me, Luay.”
“I’m truly sorry for making you feel uncomfortable,” he replied.
“I really just wanted to speak with you, and I honestly thought you were ignoring me.”
“I accept your apology. Please stop contacting me from here on,” she said.
But once her rejection sank in, he turned.
“My impression of you has changed,” Sako wrote.
“You’re no different to the majority of women. I’ll remember you and this lesson for all life, and I will devote every ounce of energy I have to climbing up and proving to the world that I’m somebody. That is my promise to you and final contact with you.”
His promise meant nothing.
Soon, her inbox was filling with more unwanted missives from different accounts each time she blocked him.
“I love you, Celeste. Merry Christmas with lots of love.”
“Hi Celeste. How are you? Hope you’re doing well enjoying this holiday period.”
Six months after his name first appeared on her Instagram, Sako’s messages started to take a more sinister turn.
In one, where he compared Australia’s summery Christmas weather to “snow for the majority of the world”, his words spiralled into an “obscene” diatribe that was so vulgar it was never read into the court’s public record.
Peppered with derogatory and sexually explicit remarks, Celeste described these messages as “disgusting and completely unwanted”.
It was clear Sako’s infatuation had now become a dangerous obsession.
“Both my family and the police have been made aware of this situation,” she told him.
Sako returned with feigned surprise.
“I feel a little hurt that you would go to that extent, Celeste,” he said.
“I wouldn’t hurt a soul, especially you. Why do you see me as a threat? It’s a genuine question that I may learn from by getting your answer.”
Constantly goading for a reply, Sako seemed to be fuelled by every response he received, even if they were pleas for him to end his torrent of texts.
He kept going, even when Celeste’s mother Aggie Di Mauro warned him to, “Stop contacting my daughter. We will be going to the police again today.”
“I’ve read every disgusting message you have sent my daughter, how dare you.”
“I’m sorry”,” Sako replied.
“I don’t know what I said was disgusting, but I will stop contacting Celeste if that’s all she wishes. My apologies again.”
“If these messages do not cease, I will be taking this to the police. Do not respond to this message,” Aggie wrote.
But he just went back again.
“Please, Celeste. What have I said that has upset you? I don’t mean any harm, I’m just in love with you, been in love with you from the first day I met you. You give me motivation and purpose to be the best person that I can be. Can you be a little more open with me and tell me what in any of these harmless messages which all express my deepest love for you makes you uncomfortable?”
And again.
“There’s absolutely no reason to feel intimidated by me, Celeste. Would you please say something. You’re having to rethink your responses, Celeste. Please speak your mind.”
So she did.
“I want you to stop contacting me. I involved my mother because she can see how angry I am to you ignoring what I want. For the last time, stop contacting me. I’m blocking this account.”
Around this time, and months after he’d been fired, Sako had been seen parked outside Serco, watching where Celeste’s car was parked.
“He’s really going to kill me,” she told her manager, who put in a safety plan to have her escorted to her car every day.
In July 2020, armed with 12 months of unwelcome messages, Celeste and her mother walked into Mernda Police station and got an intervention order.
Sako, arrested by police on August 10, told officers his daily message ritual to the woman who had repeatedly told him to leave her alone was “therapeutic”.
There was nothing illegal in what he was doing, he claimed, and anyway, if his messages distressed Celeste “she shouldn’t have read them”.
Sako told the cops the young woman’s decision to take out an IVO against him led to him no longer wanting a relationship with her.
But within five days, in contravention of the IVO, he sent her a link to a three and a half page typed letter, “Celeste, my statement in PDF”.
“Celeste, there are people who are in real threat and who need protection,” he wrote.
“The law and the legal system can help them and it’s good that we have it in place … Only you can end this now, Celeste. Please end this nonsense by withdrawing the order and stopping the charges against me for stalking and harassment … And if you make the right choice, Celeste, both of us can move on and we can finally have peace of mind.”
Please, he wrote — 43 times — please, please, please.
She didn’t read it, sending the letter directly to the police who arrested Sako again for breaching the IVO and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Back in the Mernda police interview room on August 25, he told cops the letter was his “story” and final statement.
He was “lonely and depressed” because of Covid-19 restrictions, he said, and claimed Celeste had lied in seeking the order, but couldn’t say how.
After that day, Celeste heard nothing more from the man who had been stalking her for more than a year.
“We actually thought it was over,” Aggie recalled.
Lulled into a false sense of security that Aggie believes “proved to be our downfall”, they thought he’d learnt his lesson.
After months of silence, mother and daughter spent their final Sunday night together, November 15, planning a menu for Celeste’s birthday dinner the following week.
She’d be turning 24, and decided for something new this year — a coconut birthday cake.
Celeste opened her private Instagram profile and shared four smiling pictures with boyfriend Chris Ridsdale from The Provincial Hotel the day before — their first official post together after months of dating.
She had no idea Sako could see what she was posting, from his fake profile she’d unknowingly accepted where he posed as a young woman called Fera Atillia.
Sako saved a screenshot of Celeste’s post with her boyfriend on his phone, alongside 23 photos of her.
Photos of Chris, along with Google and LinkedIn searches of his name and of the Provincial Hotel were later found on Sako’s laptop.
At 3.22am on Monday morning, November 16, he got in his car with a hammer and knife and drove the 25 minutes from his house in Roxburgh Park to Mernda.
Sako already knew where Celeste lived.
He had been hunting through her social media accounts for a picture showing signs of her address, then compared Google Map images to Mernda streets to identify her home.
He’d driven past several times, and even searched the house’s floorplan to work out where her bedroom was.
The stalker parked his car and ran, scaling her side fence and smashing the window of her bedroom as she slept.
Celeste fought bravely, suffering defensive wounds on her forearms and hands, but she had no chance against the assailant who crept in the dark with a knife.
Sako stabbed her 23 times, ending her life with a blade through her heart, before running back to his car.
Aggie — awoken by the sound of breaking glass when her daughter’s killer jumped back out the window — desperately tried to revive her “sweetie”, but she’d already slipped away.
As she tried in vain to give her girl CPR, the murderer was driving to nearby parkland where he threw away his phone that was signed into the Fera Atillia Instagram, then moved to Mernda Police Station.
Muttering Celeste’s address to confused officers he told them, “You know what happened, it’s your fault … Are the police there? Is she dead? . Go, you will see … Is she dead?”
Two minutes and 39 seconds.
That’s all the time it took for Sako to run from his car, take a life, and get back in the driver’s seat.
More than three years later, and after a nightmare rollercoaster where he sacked lawyers, tried to claim a mental impairment defence, and even invented an imaginary figure called ‘Isha’ to blame the murder on, Sako finally admitted guilt for what he’d done.
He told court in January 2024 he stabbed Celeste, but refused to accept responsibility for the majority of her wounds, arguing many of her 23 injuries were caused by fallen glass from the window he’d broken in through with a hammer.
“I stick by my claim that I only inflicted two stab wounds,” he told Justice Jane Dixon.
His absurd protest forced a doctor to attend court so Sako could quiz him in gruesome detail about every injury on the young woman’s body in front of her distraught loved ones.
It was a final indignity that her family just could not accept.
After hearing more than 30 questions from the murderer who held an iPad of horrific pictures of Celeste’s injuries, her family walked out of court and away from the vulgar display by a killer with no remorse.
Murdered because she showed kindness to a man she barely knew, Sako couldn’t even allow her dignity in death.
He cut his questions short as soon as Celeste’s family were no longer watching.
Then Aggie walked up the rickety steps of the court witness box so she could face the man she called “The Beast”.
Three times now, she said she had baked the coconut birthday cake Celeste never got to taste.
Each year, she made it on her daughter’s birthday and took it to her gravesite, where some of her ashes are buried.
“She was everything to me, nothing to you,” Aggie Di Mauro screamed at the monster who stole her sweetie.
“What did you achieve?”.
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