The heartbroken mother of slain Melbourne woman Celeste Manno claims her daughter was let down by the justice system after doing everything she could to shake off the unwanted advances of an obsessed ex-coworker.
Celeste Manno was stabbed 23 times to death in her own bed by Luay Nader Sako on November 16, 2020, after he became enraged upon seeing a photo of her hand-in-hand with her new boyfriend Chris Ridsdale.
Aggie Di Mauro branded Sako a ‘beast’, shouting at him from the witness box as she delivered her gut wrenching victim impact statement in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday afternoon.
Aggie Di Mauro blames herself for allowing her daughter to be murdered in her bed while she slept just down the hall
Celeste Manno had been in the prime of life when she was stabbed to death in her own bed
Before addressing Sako in person, a touching video was played to Justice Jane Dixon outlining Ms Di Mauro’s raw pain at not being able to save her daughter from the deranged stalker.
Voiced over a photo montage of Ms Manno’s short life, Ms Di Mauro told the court she could not forgive herself for failing to save her daughter that awful night.
‘I’ll never forgive myself sweetie. Never. How did I not hear it? How did I not hear you? Did you scream sweetie? Did you call me? You must have. What were you thinking baby? Where was I? Why wasn’t I coming?
‘I’m so sorry sweetie. I’m sorry I failed you. People say I couldn’t have changed the outcome. Maybe not. But I’ll never know,’ she said.
Sako murdered Ms Manno inside her family home in Mernda, in Melbourne’s northeast, at 4.10am that morning.
He smashed his way into her bedroom with a hammer and attacked her in her bed.
The whole ugly incident took just two-and-a-half minutes, with Sako then driving directly to a local police station to admit what he had done.
CCTV footage captured from cameras across the road showed the moment Sako fled the Manno property after committing his heinous crime.
Sako had already been charged for stalking and harassing Ms Manno and had been subject to a intervention order supposedly protecting his victim at the time of her murder.
Both Ms Manno and her mother had pleaded with Sako for him to leave her alone in the months and weeks before he struck.
Celeste Manno went ‘Insta public’ with her relationship with Chris Ridsdale (pictured) with this post. Hours later, she was killed by Luay Sako
Luay Sako is led into court in July last year
When the video was finished, Ms Di Mauro’s grief turned to rage, addressing Sako directly from the witness box where she delivered her statement to the court.
‘Look up. Look ahead. I’m here. You gutless, gutless wonder. I hate you and the only other person I hate more than you is me,’ Ms Di Mauro told Sako.
‘You extinguished one of the only two reasons I lived for. She was everything to me. Nothing to you. My sweety felt safe with me. I thought she was safe with me. But she wasn’t, was she? I couldn’t protect her from you.’
The pair had no idea Sako knew where she lived after enduring a year of torment by the deranged stalker.
‘Look at me. What did you achieve? You’re such a coward, at least look at me. Is this what your family raised?’
‘You showed her. You showed me. You showed the world who you were,’ Ms Di Mauro told Sako.
‘You called yourself a beast … you are a beast. You’re an evil, repulsive demonic beast.’
The court heard Sako had previously threatened to kill himself when arrested by police over his relentless stalking.
‘You threatened to kill yourself at a train station. I felt sorry for you … God I wish you’d done it,’ Ms Di Mauro said.
The devastated mum claimed she had told police she was afraid Sako would retaliate after he sent a three page letter pleading with her daughter to withdraw her police complaints against him.
While an intervention order saw Sako cease his harassment for three months, the peace would not last.
‘We actually thought it was over. We thought he’d learnt his lesson,’ Ms Di Mauro said.
‘It provided a false sense of security and that proved to be our downfall.’
The mother of Celeste Manno, Aggie Di Mauro (centre) along with family and friends, are seen leaving the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne on Monday
Ms Di Mauro told the court she struggled to come to terms with how she could have slept through her daughter’s murder.
‘I tortured myself for weeks trying to understand how I could have been too late. I knew how fast I ran into that room that night. So it didn’t make sense,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t until I was finally told that the crash I went to was not the crash of him breaking in, but the crash of him leaving … I slept through the last two minutes and 39 seconds of the most horrific and crucial moments of my daughter’s life. And I was too late to protect her or be of any use to her.’
Ms Di Mauro took aim at the justice system that she claimed failed her daughter, pleading with Justice Dixon to sentence Sako to life in prison.
One by one, Ms Manno’s loved ones complained to the court at the level of redactions that were made to their victim impact statements.
Ms Di Mauro begged Justice Dixon not to fail her daughter.
‘As a grieving mother I can’t accept what the justice system delivers,’ she said.
‘The expectation of the law has, that any parent is subjected to accept leniency or mercy shown to their child’s killer is unreasonable – cruel and inhumane.
‘My sweetie was failed miserably. She was failed by a flawed system, the police and she was failed by me. Something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life because of this beast. So I’m begging you, please don’t allow Celeste to be failed by the system that already failed her all over again.’
Sako’s deranged messages to Celeste Manno
Ms Di Mauro told the court she spent her last Sunday together with her daughter watching a movie and planning her birthday celebration just six days later.
Ms Manno wanted a coconut cake, which her mother has since baked three times and taken to her daughter’s gravesite – having never tasted it.
Ms Di Mauro said she had tucked her daughter into bed every night despite her age, kissing her goodnight for the last time on the night she died.
‘She didn’t know him, and she didn’t want to know him. He was a co-worker to her, nothing more … she didn’t provoke or insult him, Your Honour. Celeste had no interest in him and he couldn’t accept it,’ she told the court.
Ms Manno had done everything expected of her in attempting to deal with Sako’s unwanted advances, she said.
‘She didn’t provoke or insult him, Your Honour. Celeste had no interest in him and he couldn’t accept that. She wasn’t walking alone at night, she didn’t put herself in dangerous situations, she didn’t associate with the wrong crowd or make poor choices,’ Ms Di Mauro said.
‘And she wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘We thought she was safe and sound asleep in the bed.’
Ms Manno had been murdered just hours after making an online post making her new relationship ‘Instagram official’.
Sako, 37, of Roxburgh Park, pleaded guilty to her murder in April after trying to contest the charges for years.
Heartbroken mum Aggie Di Mauro pictured with her beloved daughter
Sako, 37, attended a local police station hours after Celeste’s death and was taken to hospital under police guard, and was charged with murder
The court heard Sako had bombarded Ms Manno with endless messages professing his love for her in the year before he ended her life.
Sako had worked with her briefly at Serco’s call centre in South Morang – she was a team leader – before he was sacked.
Ms Manno had shown kindness to Sako on his final day, walking him to his car and wishing him well before he unexpectedly kissed her on the cheek.
The court heard Sako peppered her with creepy, lewd and menacing messages via Instagram through various accounts, concluding with a three-and-a-half-page rant in which he demanded she withdraw her police complaints against him.
‘I’m sorry but I can’t stop thinking about you. I have never felt like this about anybody in my entire life, it’s bordering along a OCD. I’m totally infatuated with you, captivated and fascinated by you. You’re all I think about,’ he wrote.
‘After leaving you my productivity and my personal life in my new job has been impacted. This obsession with you, which is a crush, is an addictive and destructive feeling that is interfering with my ability to concentrate, deal with others and go about my daily routine.’
Sako begged Ms Manno ‘put an end to his suffering’ by being direct with him in her feelings towards him.
His terrified victim politely responded to Sako in the hope he would leave her alone.
‘Hi Luay, those are really sweet words and I appreciate you saying all of that to me. I’m a bit surprised to read this all as it is new to me.
‘As much as I appreciate this, I only feel in a professional way towards you and I wish you all of the best in your new job and journey.’
Sako bombarded Celeste with messages
But her gentle tone only seemed to make things worse, with Sako pledging to give his life just to be with her.
‘I’m so infatuated with you that it’s now become unhealthy. I know my words don’t help me … I’m sorry for coming on strong Celeste. I’m just another rival for your affection,’ Sako wrote.
When Ms Manno pleaded with Sako to stop messaging her, Sako became enraged.
‘I’m truly sorry for making you feel uncomfortable. I really just wanted to speak with you and I honestly thought you were ignoring me,’ Sako responded.
‘My impression of you has changed. You’re no different to the majority of women. I’ll remember you and this lesson for all life and I will devote every ounce of energy I have to climbing up and proving to the world that I’m somebody.
‘That is my promise to you and my final contact with you.’
Celeste tried to be polite to her stalker
As the messages continued, Ms Manno contacted Sako directly telling him they were going to the police to report his harassment.
While Sako stopped briefly, the respite was short lived, with Victoria’s Covid-19 lockdowns seemingly fueling his obsession, the court heard.
Sako was later seen lurking around Ms Manno’s vehicle outside her workplace, with a court issuing an interim intervention order against Sako on July 3 that year, the court heard.
The soon-to-be killer refused to accept the order, listing the matter for a contested hearing in March the following year.
Detectives arrested Sako in August, charging him with breaches of the order before releasing him back into the community.
With Sako back on the loose, Ms Manno confided in her boss that she believed her days were numbered.
‘He’s really going to kill me,’ Celeste confided in her colleague.
Hours after going public with her secret relationship to Mr Ridsdale she would be dead.
The court heard Sako stabbed Celeste to death in a wild frenzy, with defensive wounds found on her arms and hands as she fought for her life.
When he was done he told cops where they could find Celeste’s body.
‘She’s dead. Go have a look,’ he said. ‘You know what happened. It’s your fault.’
The home where Celeste Manno was murdered in her bed
In a further cruel blow to the friends and family, Sako contested the number of times he stabbed his victim.
The move required a forensic expert to give graphic evidence in court of the way Ms Manno was killed.
Celeste’s family has been forced to endure watching Sako cross-examine the expert on the various stab wounds he inflicted on their loved one.
Dressed in grey prison garb and wearing dark-rimmed glasses, the twisted killer did his best impersonation of a lawyer as he questioned the doctor’s findings.
Sako has taken issue with the doctor’s assessment of the injuries, claiming many of the wounds on Celeste’s body were caused by broken glass.
Sako sacked his barrister Tim Marsh on the eve of the trial over the issue, maintaining he only stabbed Celeste twice.
The hearing continues.