Jessica Camilleri, covered in her mother's blood, outside the family home on the night of the killing in July, 2019. Photo / Channel 7
Jessica Camilleri, covered in her mother's blood, outside the family home on the night of the killing in July, 2019. Photo / Channel 7
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
When she attacked her mother with steak knives to stab her 200 times and decapitate her, Jessica Camilleri effectively made her own horror movie.
The tormented young woman – who was obsessed with scary film franchises like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw and Jeepers Creepers – emerged from her abominable acts like one of her favourite characters.
Standing outside her family home in a blue-flowered dress drenched in her mother's blood, the then 25-year-old asked repeatedly, "Mum's head is on the concrete over there? Can they sew the head back on?"
Rita Camilleri had been butchered by her own daughter, who had blithely dropped her mother's head outside the neighbour's house because she was too busy holding mobile phones.
Camilleri: "I thought doctors can do miracle surgeries and put the head back on. No?"
It was the most bizarre of sights for anyone watching it replayed at Camilleri's trial on the police bodycam footage starting at 11.43pm on July 20 last year, when Senior Constable Anthony D'Agostino pressed the record button.
Jessica Camilleri suffered from autism, an intellectual disability and an explosive disorder which exacerbated each other. Photo / Channel 7
Or watching her at the police station the following day, still covered in her mother's blood, gesticulating with her hands sheathed in brown paper evidence bags.
From the stories during the NSW Supreme Court murder trial of Jessica Camilleri, it was a strange and torturous life led by her with her mother, Rita.
Jessica Camilleri was found not guilty of Rita Camilleri's murder, but guilty of her manslaughter.
The story told by Jessica, and by family members, friends, neighbours and psychiatrists who have examined her, revealed what that existence was like before a tragic and probably preventable death.
It had almost ended well, or as well as could have been expected, before Jessica carried out the worst of murders likely motivated by jealousy, fear and, sadly enough, plain old hunger.
On the night she died, 57-year-old Rita had been determined to turn a corner and start living a life for herself rather than giving everything to her Jessica and her needs.
Jessica Camilleri will be sentenced next year. Photo / Supplied
On July 20, 2019, Rita had stopped her daughter from ordering a second round of Red Rooster, and was threatening to send her back to a mental health unit.
In Jessica's mind, Rita was also giving another relative too much attention.
In interviews with police and doctors since, Jessica has indicated that she knew her life as she had led it was coming to an end and she would do anything to prevent that happening.
The tragedy is the torturous life Rita had endured caring for her beloved and unique but profoundly mentally challenged daughter might have been about to be resolved in a positive way for the devoted mother.
Now, Jessica Camilleri sits in Australia's harshest women's jail a convicted killer.
The only person left who would care for her was dead by her own hand, and the few certainties in her looming future entail confinement, prison routine, and two-thirds of every day in a 3m by 4m cell.
There will be no access to past pleasures like her favourite pile of DVDs, takeaway food, and shopping trips.
Nor the endless hours in the sanctity of her childhood bedroom playing over and over with treasured toys and movie character figurines.
Or the opportunity to play with favourite numbers and make forbidden calls to strange men, hundreds of times a day, developing crushes on them and threatening to chop off their heads with a chainsaw if they hung up.
As Jessica herself told police in her bloodied state after killing Rita: "She's had enough of me. She was at her wit's end.
"I want everyone to know this. I have hurt a lot of people in the past, but I have never laid a finger on my mum until tonight.
"I understand she has had enough of me, because I am a piece of work.
"My mum lost her patience.
"I wanted to give her a taste of her own medicine, but not to kill her.
"I think that's what happened and then her head just came off."
Growing up
Jessica Camilleri's life began as the second daughter of Maltese Australian parents, Vince and Rita.
Her older sister Kristy was normal, but Jessica from an early age was clearly not.
According to Professor David Greenberg, with whom she consulted while in prison after her arrest last year, she was born with an intellectual disability which meant she had an IQ of 55 to 60.
That put her in the bottom 1 per cent of the population - normal IQs are 90-110 - although Jessica was still articulate and able to communicate.
Professor Greenberg said Jessica had delayed developmental milestones, such as walking, talking, and co-ordination at a young age.
Placed in intermediate class at school, teachers noted her delays in reading, writing, maths and language.
Years behind her age group, "that led to … being teased, taunted and harassed by her peers as being different" and that flowed into her reactions of rage, the intermittent explosive disorder (IED).
By way of her autism, Jessica also had "deficits in judgment and awareness of other people's thoughts, feelings and empathy".
Growing up she would have difficulties with complex daily activities such as grocery shopping, catching transport, banking, home care and employment.
Her autism would also make her fixated on certain things, which unfortunately in Jessica included a fascination with horror movies which was allowed to develop unchecked.
At school, Jessica had explosive outbursts, attacking other students or teachers, and got suspended.
It was almost always females, but on one occasion she bit a male student and even when they tried to pull her off him, she refused to disengage her teeth.
"After leaving school, she was placed in supportive environments where she had explosive outbursts and was asked to leave," Profess or Greenberg said.
"She was unable to cope in all of these environments, so she ended up on disability support pension, [and eventually when it came into being] the NDIS.
"She won't lose control on every occasion, loses control when there's a stressor, or she perceives provocation.
"And so from 2013, in fact she was sitting at home."
"She prefers to talk to men, because that excites her. She is not particularly interested in talking to women, if they insult her or become angry or distressed by her calls, she becomes distressed and that kicks into her IED," the court heard.
Jessica has favourite numbers and colours, and associates the two together in a condition known as neurasthenia.
Number two was yellow, five was purple and three was green.
She would make up phone numbers and then call them and try to speak to people, preferably men.
She called the number of a Bangladeshi family unknown to her up to 100 times a day just because she liked their number.
In 2018, Jessica began calling the numbers of staff at a Victorian meat company in Daylesford, and developed a crush on the boss, Matthew Layfield.
After she had called several male staffers, then moved on to Layfield's wife and sister-in-law – who Jessica told "I'll cut your head off with a chainsaw and flush it down the toilet" – he called Rita Camilleri, saying things were "getting out of hand".
She had also been aggressive to women in the street and at shopping centres.
Jessica had been banned from a doctor's surgery after she became paranoid about a female patient in the waiting room, became aggressive and had to be restrained.
Driven to Nepean Hospital in western Sydney by Rita, Jessica became aggressive with a female nurse.
She was admitted at Nepean Pialla Unit psychiatric unit for nine days for an episode of severe mood disorder and placed on lithium for purported bipolar affected disorder and antipsychotic medicines.
That had been in early 2018, but by late that year, Jessica was off her medication, which also served to suppress her IED.
Jessica's parents separated while she was a teenager, and Vince Camilleri despaired that his estranged wife could not discipline Jessica, and that his daughter treated her mother badly.
Rita's elder daughter Kristy Torrisi testified at the trial about her sister's troubled childhood and how, once in desperation, her mother had paid a medium $2500 to get "the demon out of Jessica".
Professor Greenberg said despite Jessica's low self esteem, she exhibited personality problems with narcissistic features.
She "presents as egocentric or self-centred, has a history of demanding attention and a problem when attention not focused on her," he said.
"She has a sense of entitlement, and an unreasonable expectation of favourable treatment.
"She believes she is unique because of her disability, and her sense of self importance and can be … exploitive.
"[She feels her disability] makes her needs special, fails recognise others also have feelings and needs.
"She is very sensitive to criticism, and may react with disdain or rage."
The day of the killing
By July last year, Jessica "had had a reasonable amount of therapy, seen multiple psychiatrists".
But "the gains … have been very small … because of her mental disorder" and her three conditions, intellectual disability, autism and explosive rage exacerbated one another.
The day of the alleged offence, Jessica became very distressed with her mother's preoccupation with another family member.
She also perceived her mother had humiliated her in front of a man, who was merely walking past them in a car park.
They visited her sister's place and pressure was building up, with Jessica arguing and her mother trying to placate her.
As the evening progressed, Jessica asked her mother to call a doctor, but when the doctor arrived she left very quickly "in fear of her life".
Jessica chased her down the driveway as the doctor escaped in a vehicle.
Jessica had been on the phone, callling Red Rooster three times – at 9.18, 9.20 and 9.21pm, agitating for more food.
According to Professor Greenberg, she said her mother had told her, "I've had enough. I'm ringing triple-0, to get an ambulance here and put you back into care, back into the mental health care system".
Jessica Camilleri's relatively calm state of mind by the time police arrived, Professor Greenberg said, was not unusual.
"I'm of the view her temper quickly dissipated after the alleged offence," he said.
"I think this was at the end part of the rage attack. She rapidly de-escalates."
In diagnosing her for the purpose of the court trial, he said he found no sign she suffered from schizophrenia or auditory or visual hallucinations.
Nor did she suffer from delusions of grandeur – such as people who think they are the Queen of England – or symptoms of thought control, when a person believes the TV is telling them what to do.
He found that when she described the macabre and horrific details of killing her mother she was quite "matter of fact" in her manner.
"She doesn't use social gestures in communicating. There's quite a bland lack of emotion on her face," he said.
Perhaps the professor's saddest conclusion was that Jessica's best friend, her mother, was now dead and in fact Rita Camilleri had been Jessica's only friend.
In her interview at St Marys Police Station the day after killing he mother, Jessica tells officers: "I don't know how my sister and my dad is going to be towards me after this."
The officer tells her that, no, they are very upset at this moment.
Jessica Camilleri will be sentenced in February next year.
