A grieving mother has labelled her daughter's killer as an "evil beast", as she stared him down during a tense hearing in Melbourne's supreme court. There were confronting details about how Luay Sako stalked his victim Celeste Manno, before breaking into her house and stabbing her to death with a kitchen knife.
Category
ðº
TVTranscript
00:00 Seething with anger and marked by grief, Celeste Mano's family came to court to honour a beloved
00:07 young woman and to unleash their fury on the obsessive, dangerous stalker who took her
00:13 life.
00:14 Prosecutors say Ms Mano was stabbed 23 times at her home in Melbourne's north in 2020.
00:19 In the middle of the night, killer Louay Sacco used a hammer to smash through a window and
00:24 then attacked her with a kitchen knife.
00:26 Aggie DiMuro rushed in to help her daughter, but it was too late.
00:31 She was my baby, my beautiful sweetie, Ms DiMuro told the court.
00:35 What did you achieve?
00:36 Look at me, she screamed at the killer.
00:39 You are a beast.
00:40 You're an evil, repulsive, demonic beast.
00:43 Louay Sacco was ambitious enough to try to carry out his own cross-examination of a prosecution
00:48 witness, but the killer's confidence crumbled when confronted by Celeste Mano's mother.
00:53 The killer began striking himself repeatedly to the side of the head and could barely meet
00:58 her gaze.
00:59 The court was told how Sacco stalked Ms Mano for months, undeterred by an intervention
01:04 order and her pleas for him to stop.
01:06 He'd become infatuated with his former colleague and bombarded her with messages on Instagram
01:12 a week after he was sacked from his job.
01:14 This obsession I have with you, which is a crush, is an addictive and destructive feeling,
01:19 he wrote to her.
01:21 I would really appreciate it if you could stop contacting me, she replied.
01:25 But he didn't, and carried out the horrific murder after discovering where Celeste lived.
01:31 Sacco's pre-sentence hearing continues tomorrow.
01:33 He's facing a potential life sentence for the murder.
01:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]