{"id":11800,"date":"2025-10-22T10:26:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/11800\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T10:26:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:26:34","slug":"staten-island-decapitation-murder-suspect-confessed-he-wanted-to-dismember-body-nypd-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/11800\/","title":{"rendered":"Staten Island decapitation murder suspect confessed he wanted to dismember body: NYPD sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mentally ill 19-year-old accused of decapitating<\/a> his mother\u2019s boyfriend wanted to chop up his body, in part by using a blender, police sources said.<\/p>\n

But Damien Hurstel\u2019s plan was short-circuited when his sister got home and found the mutilated body of Anthony Casalaspro<\/a>, 45, in the bathtub, the sources said.<\/p>\n

When police showed up at the scene \u2014 the family\u2019s Cary Ave. home in West Brighton \u2014 Hurstel stepped outside to surrender.<\/p>\n

\"NYPDInvestigators at the home on Cary Ave. in Staten Island where a teen allegedly stabbed his mother\u2019s boyfriend to death. (Gardiner Anderson \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

Hurstel confessed to detectives that he killed<\/a>\u00a0Casalaspro by pounding him over the head with a meat tenderizer then cutting his head off, sources said.<\/p>\n

The suspect, sources said, was apparently miffed because the victim earlier had intervened in an argument he was having with his mother.<\/p>\n

\"MurderMurder victim Anthony Casalaspro.<\/p>\n

Hurstel, wearing a blue hospital gown, sat upright in a hospital bed with a blank expression on his face when he was arraigned for murder via video hookup in Staten Island Criminal Court Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the victim had died, the defendant has stated that he then severed the head,\u201d Assistant District Attorney Amy Bedford said in court.<\/p>\n

Judge Biju Koshy ordered the suspect held without bail. Hurstel is due back in court Friday.<\/p>\n

Hurstel\u2019s lawyer Mark Fonte requested his client be put on suicide watch and receive medical and psychiatric care.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur prayers go out to everybody involved in this senseless tragedy,\u201d Fonte said in a statement after the arraignment. \u201cWe ask the public to withhold judgment. Damien Hurstel is an extremely troubled young man with a long documented history of mental health issues. Our firm is aggressively trying to pursue his psychiatric history so we can get a complete picture of the circumstances leading up this tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Casalaspro\u2019s loved ones are outraged by his slaying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is horrendous,\u201d the victim\u2019s ex-wife, Valerie Casalaspro, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m shattered.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said her ex, a recently retired sanitation worker, always tried to do the right thing by the suspect.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was literally just at the kid\u2019s graduation from high school,\u201d she said. \u201cSo this is a complete shock and disgusting. I mean that is just grisly, to cut somebody\u2019s head off. I am disgusted, and I want justice to be served.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trouble had seemingly been brewing in the home for years.<\/p>\n

Anthony Casalaspro\u2019s girlfriend had called cops five times on him in recent years, sources said, accusing him of breaking things in the home on one occasion and slapping Hurstel on another.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he was having trouble dealing with the suspect, the ex-wife said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me [Hurstel] was always very angry, no matter what Anthony asked him to do, like \u2018clean up, do the dishes.\u2019 He always fought with him about it. He always would say, \u2018You\u2019re not my father, you can\u2019t tell me what to do,\u201d Valerie Casalaspro said. \u201cVery not appreciative of the fact that Anthony was literally taking care of him and the sister and the mother. I know they didn\u2019t get along.\u201d<\/p>\n

But her ex \u201cdidn\u2019t think [Hurstel] was going to be violent because he was a teenager,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Hurstel, however, had been having psychological problems, his mother told police, according to sources, and had been on various medications.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 8, 2025 at 11:48 AM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mentally ill 19-year-old accused of decapitating his mother\u2019s boyfriend wanted to chop up his body, in part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9383,9,24,63,9384,134,136,135,9382],"class_list":{"0":"post-11800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-in-part-by-using-a-blender","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-police-sources-said","13":"tag-staten-island","14":"tag-staten-island-headlines","15":"tag-staten-island-news","16":"tag-the-mentally-ill-19-year-old-accused-of-decapitating-his-mothers-boyfriend-wanted-to-chop-up-his-body"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}