Jessica Camilleri has been found guilty of manslaughter. Photo / Facebook
Jessica Camilleri has been found guilty of manslaughter. Photo / Facebook
Warning: Graphic content
Australian woman 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.
The week-long trial has heard gruesome and graphic police evidence, crime scene bodycam video and a police interview with Camilleri, her face still coated with her mother's blood and her hands bagged.
Jessica Camilleri has been found guilty of manslaughter following the decapitation death of her mother at their home in St Clair, western Sydney, outside which she deposited her mother's head. Photo / Supplied
Camilleri has been in custody since she was arrested, covered in blood and standing near her mother's decapitated head.
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.
The trial was played a police interview with Camilleri the day after her mother's death.
Rita Camilleri, 57, had become her mentally disturbed daughter's sole carer before Jessica turned on her. Photo / Supplied
In the interview, 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.
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.
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".
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 Camiller told police, "I lost it … I couldn't stop … I kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing her, I took off her head."
