Jessica Camilleri guilty of manslaughter of mother

The jury has returned its verdict in the case of Jessica Camilleri, whose mother Rita was brutally beheaded and stabbed up to 200 times in her Sydney home.

Jessica Camilleri has been found guilty of manslaughter. Picture: Facebook

WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC

Jessica Camilleri has been found guilty of the manslaughter of her mother Rita in a brutal sustained decapitation attack involving up to 200 stab wounds.

The 27-year-old had pleaded not guilty by way of substantial impairment due to mental illness to the murder of her mother Rita Camilleri.

A jury returned the alternative conviction of manslaughter after deliberating for two days following a week-long trial.

Rita Camilleri died in a brutal assault at their 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 on Red Rooster before Jessica demanded a second delivery from the food outlet then turned on Rita, who had planned to have her daughter taken into mental health care.

Jessica dragged her mother into the kitchen by the hair, attacked her with steak knives, beheading her and removing her tongue, eyeballs and nose.

The week-long trial has heard gruesome and graphic police evidence, crime scene bodycam video and a police interview with Ms Camilleri, her face still coated with her mother’s blood and her hands bagged.

Ms Camilleri has been in custody since she was arrested, covered in blood and standing near her mother’s decapitated head which she had dropped on a footpath outside a neighbour’s house.

Her trial was played a wild police recording in which she is heard to say, “Mum’s head is on the path,” and asks if it can be sewn back on.

Ms Camilleri then appears to tell officers how she “chopped her head off with a knife” and then asks them continually if the head can be sewn back on, or some miracle worked to bring her mother back to life.

On the police recording, Ms Camilleri can be heard saying: “My mum’s head is on the concrete over there.”

Jessica Camilleri has been found guilty of manslaughter following the decapitation death of her mother at their home in St Clair, outside which she deposited her mother’s head.

Police at St Clair Avenue in St Clair the day after Rita Camilleri was beheaded by her daughter and her body mutilated. Picture: David Swift.

Rita Camilleri, 57, had become her mentally disturbed daughter’s sole carer before Jessica turned on her.

“Can you bring someone back to life if they don’t have a head? Can you bring her back to life?

“It was like from the neck and the back of my neck … are you sure you won’t be able to bring her back to life?”

When one officer tell her no, she continues, “Can I ask you is my mum dead? You just can’t bring her back to life?

“Did you find it? … it’s on the path.

“I won’t get the death penalty or anything?”

She continues: “Can I ask you, did they find the head? Has she gone, you just can’t bring her back?

“There’s nothing you can do, she’s a goner? They can’t restart her heart? ‘Cos I know doctors can do miracles they can’t resew her head?”

Police officer: “That’s a bit of a stretch.”

Ms Camilleri: “The nurses can’t do a miracle and bring her back? I think her eyes and her tongue came out.

“I thought doctors can do miracle surgeries and put the head back on. No?”

Family friend Jade Arena (above, right, with the accused’s sister Kristy Torrisi) had warned Rita she was in danger of being murdered, but was told Jessica ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’. Picture: Dylan Coker/NewsWire

The trial was played a police interview with Camilleri the day after her mother’s death.

In the interview, Ms Camilleri said of her mother, “half her nose fell off in the struggle” 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 found in her autopsy of Rita Camilleri, the 57-year-old had suffered monumental injuries.

Dr Pokorny told the court that Rita had sustained “innumerable. at least 100 stab wounds over her head” and “innumerable overlapping stab wounds associated with decapitation to the neck”.

She had died from “multiple stab wounds with decapitation” at the C2 vertebra at the top of her neck.

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Senior Constable Jodie Bennett, who examined the living room and a bedroom in the Camilleri house, found blood-soaked hair, human tissue, pools of vomit, overlapping blood-soaked footprints, plus a Crocodile Dundee figurine, the head detached.

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

Detective Sergeant Brett Griffin, who examined the crime scene between 12.42am and 7am on Sunday July 21, told the court that out on the footpath in front of the neighbour’s house he found Rita Camilleri’s mutilated head.

“I saw an area of apparent bloodstaining and human tissue,” he said.

“A short distance away I saw a human head with numerous injuries including a severed nose, removed eyes and numerous groupings of apparent lacerations and incised stab wounds.”

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

Sen Con Bennett found Rita Camilleri’s headless body lying by a horseshoe shaped kitchen benchtop covered in blood, with eyeballs lying on the tiles and a nose under the fridge.

Her body was: “in a prone position on floor, feet pointing towards the oven area, the legs were straight with the soles of the feet facing upward and a clump of dark hair on the right foot.

“The injuries on the right hand and wrist were defensive wounds; the left arm was bent at the elbow and the left hand resting on her neck area.”

Mrs Camilleri wore pyjama pants and a light pink top almost completely covered in blood, and apart from a superficial stab wound to the groin, almost all her injuries were above the waist.

She had numerous silver bangles on both wrists and a pair of earrings lay on the floor at the scene.

When Sen Con Bennett examined the severed head – which the court heard earlier Jessica Camilleri had dropped on the footpath outside – she found “eyes, nose and tongue removed”.

Ms Camilleri’s trial heard that the accused enjoyed horror movies including Sawn, Wolf Creek and the Jeepers Creepers film franchise based on a flesh-eating demonic creature, known as the “creeper” who devours people to replace its own body parts.

The court heard Ms Camiller told police “I lost it … I couldn’t stop … I kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing her, I took off her head”.

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