The horrific attack followed two days of rising tensions between the mother and daughter over the daughter’s behaviour,which began with her making a barrage of harassing phone calls to a stranger and culminated in Mrs Camilleri attempting to call an ambulance to have her daughter taken to hospital.
A jury in December found Camilleri not guilty of murder – due to her substantial mental impairment – but guilty of manslaughter. The NSW Supreme Court trial heard her multiple mental illnesses,including an “explosive rage disorder”,resulted in a significant loss of capacity to control herself.
In her sentencing remarks on Friday,Justice Helen Wilson described the killing as “a crime of extraordinary viciousness” that must have taken “many,many minutes”.
She said Camilleri’s early attempts to blame her mother for the crime by suggesting she acted in self-defence showed she “fully understood” the nature of what she had done and her culpability.
“I am completely satisfied that Mrs Camilleri was not in any sense or at any time the aggressor,” she said. The attack was “entirely unprovoked and represented nothing more than an expression of the offender’s rage”.
Noting more than 90 defensive wounds found on Rita Camilleri’s body,Justice Wilson said the woman was conscious for a significant part of the attack.