March 11, 2021- 7:48 p.m
Jessica Camilleri, 27, was last year cleared of murder by a jury and found guilty of manslaughter, after her lawyers argued she was impaired by a mix of mental disorders.
Justice Helen Wilson today said the unlawful killing of Rita Camilleri at her St Clair home in 2019 was the most serious example of manslaughter a court could consider.
“It was a crime of extraordinary viciousness and brutality, made all the worse by having been committed in her own home,” she told the NSW Supreme Court.
Camilleri was sentenced to a maximum 21 years and seven months, with a non-parole period of 16 years and two months.
Relatives in the public gallery began to cry and said “thank you” after learning the sentence.
Justice Wilson accepted the crime — which involved seven separate knives, four of which broke — was “entirely spontaneous” and predicated by Camilleri’s fear of being returned to a mental institution.
It involved “destructive and mutilating brutality” upon Rita Camilleri.
“She must have been in extreme pain, and both shocked and terrified by what was being done to her by her own beloved child,” Justice Wilson said.
“Mrs Camilleri’s life was cut short in the most horrible manner imaginable.”
The judge said by further mutilating her mother’s body after she had died, Camilleri was “indulging in a sort of macabre curiosity” sparked by her obsessive viewing of horror movies.
Last month, Jessica’s sister Kristy Torrisi pledged in court that she would never forgive her.
In a victim impact statement, Ms Torrisi condemned her sibling’s selfishness, saying Jessica was offered, but refused, all possible help from both relatives and professionals.
She said did not care what happened to her sister once she was released.
Rita Camilleri, 57, was remembered as having “a heart of gold” and always putting others before herself.
Ms Camilleri’s sister, Mary Hill, said the unconditional love she showed her troubled daughter was “remarkable” — but it also blinded her to the danger.
Justice Wilson today said Jessica Camilleri’s crime meant she had lost not only her mother, but “her carer, protector, and only real friend”.
During the trial, the court heard Camilleri’s diagnoses included autism spectrum disorder, an intellectual disability and intermittent explosive disorder.
The latter triggered what a psychiatrist described as “rage attacks”.
Camilleri had been off medication for months prior to the attack in favour of seeking natural alternatives.
Despite immediately confessing to the killing during a chilling triple-zero call and to police on the scene, she initially blamed her mother for attacking first and claimed self-defence.
Camilleri abandoned that version during later psychiatric examinations and gave candid accounts of her actions, at one point likening herself to a butcher.
Justice Wilson today accepted Rita Camilleri was “not in any sense, at any time, the aggressor” and coped with her daughter by placating her and being “generally submissive”.
